St. Denis 1534 Inventory

Expertise, Artifacts, and Time in the 1534 Inventory of the St-Denis Treasury
Author(s): Erik Inglis

Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 98, No. 1 (March 2016), pp. 14-42
Published by: CAA
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Expertise, Artifacts, and Time in the 1534 Inventory of the
St-Denis Treasury
Erik Inglis
In 1534 François I commissioned an inventory of the treasury of gold leaf by some faithful men w
of St-Denis, the monastery that sheltered France's patron nique, and has thus come down to o
saint and served as the royal necropolis. The treasury's continuing to provide new proof of
recorded history had its roots in the seventh century, with is how, they say, the place had its be
gifts from King Dagobert. It was greatly enriched by Carolin-
gian rulers in the ninth century, particularly Charles the Suger of St-Denis epitomizes this m
Bald, whose gifts were in turn celebrated in the twelfth cen- took great pride in the abbey's ve
tury by Abbot Suger, who made his own additions to the trea- by embellishing it embedded himse
sury, which continued to grow over the next four hundred Philippe Buc has underlined, "The abb
years. By 1534, the monastery possessed a tremendous array with treasures which . . . honored . . .
of ancient and medieval objects. previous owners
identity."7
Church Treasuries and Memory To lack such treasure was to lack a histo
Church treasuries were heterogeneous collections that man of Tournai 's The Restoration of the M
included the apparatus necessary for the liturgy, reliquaries of Tournai written in 1142 to recount t
holding the remains of saints, and precious objects given by dation fifty years earlier on the grou
the church's supporters.1 These collections also carried insti- monastery. The old complex offered the
tutional memory and identity. Pierre-Alain Mariaux writes, the tantalizing taste of ancient roots,
"Treasuries portray 'History'. .. through objects and images wanted more. One dreamed of a beautifu
staged as relics of that past "crosses, books, phylacteries and othe
church," is
objects which it possesses, the community indicating tohistory
linked to Herman that obje
and claims the continuity that dral
this rightfully
implies."2 belonged to St. Martin
The famous
image of Saint Erhard from the dream that located
Uta Codex buried
represents thistreasure,
turned
mediation (Fig. I).3 Painted about 1025,upthe
"a bronze
image vessel,
shows quite simi
churches."8
Erhard saying mass at an altar decorated with objects from
After 1250, we have evidence
the treasury of St. Emmeram in Regensburg; that aristocratic
several of these collections
could similarly
objects survive, including the ciborium furnish connections
made for Charles to important ancestors
the
Bald between 860 and 870, which and role models.aCharles
Arnulf, V's estate included
Carolingian cups that had
aris-
belonged to Dagobert and Charlemagne, "an old cross in
tocrat, had donated to St. Emmeram.
enamel" that
Early histories composed at St-Denis take had equivalent
belonged to Godefroy of Bouillon (d.
pride
1100), andcross,
in old objects. The monastery's gold a dozen objects
made once owned
by Eloyby Saint Louis
in (d.
1270, in
the seventh century, was celebrated canonized 1297). 9 Their value to
retrospective the Valois,in
terms successors
to the
the ninth-century Gesta Dagoberti: Capetians, is explained
"[MJodern by the entry for usu-
goldsmiths a ring "where
there is aleft
ally insist that there is hardly anyone large ruby
any . . . which
more belonged
who to Saint
wouldLouis, which
clearly be able - even after many has always been
years - to kept by the French
achieve kings in succession."10
mastery in
Thegemstones
this kind of refined work with prized ruby's unbroken
and provenance spoke to both its
cloisonne,
because it has fallen out of use."4saintly
At origin
St-Denis, the
and its owner's combina-
legitimacy.
tion of Dagobert' s prestige and The study of treasury
largesse objects has been led
eventually primarily
thethe prov-
monks to recognize him as their ince of medievalists; Mariaux identifies the twelfth and thir-
founder.
teenth
Objects like Eloy' s cross and the centuries as
Arnulf particularly important
ciborium for building and
testified
modifying
to the antiquity of the institutions that church
ownedtreasuries.11 However,and,
them this phenomenon
at
spansclaims.
times, to the authenticity of their the boundary Anwe impose between the
object's Middle Ages and
persua-
siveness rested on the recognitiontheof
Renaissance.
its age.The depiction
In the of Saint Erhard with distin-
twelfth
century, for example, Guibert ofguished
Nogent objects has parallels in the how
described German heiltumsbücher
his
monastery "was founded and the created between 1490 and 1526
antiquities it topossesses."5
publicize the relics held in
church
The monastery traced its roots to an treasuries;
English these books
king include illustrations
who, afterof the rel-
iquaries owned by
converting to Christianity in Jerusalem, the church.12
died The last and
at Nogent ongreatest of
these books was
his journey home. The king was buried withthe manuscript made for Albrecht
a reliquary that of Bran-
denburg to document his collection at the church of Sts.
held contact relics of Christ and Mary:
Maurice and Mary Magdalene in Halle, including two dozen
After a long time at God's direction the1400,
objects made before small
such as chest was
tenth-century ivories reset
unearthed. It had by then been on a sixteenth-century
covered with chest
a (Fig. 2). 13
costly layer
THE 1534 INVENTORY OF THE ST-DENIS TREASURY 15
The Mass of Saint Giles , painted in Paris about 1500, pro-

vides an even closer parallel to the Uta Codex (Fig. 3). 14 Set
in St-Denis's Gothic apse, the painting features important
objects from its treasury, including the seventh-century cross
of Saint Eloy, praised six hundred years earlier in the Gesta
Dagoberti, the golden altarpiece that Charles the Bald
donated in the ninth century, and the thirteenth-century
Holy Crown, so named for its fragment of Christ's crown of
thorns.15 Though separated by nearly five hundred years, the
images of Saint Erhard and Saint Giles have much in com-
mon, suggesting an underlying continuity.
The composed polish of these images, with their neat array
of precious objects in perfect condition, is complicated by
inventories that document the actual state of a treasury's
objects. At St-Denis, the process was as much an audit as an
inventory, documenting dozens of changes in the objects,
most for the worse. Recording damage, loss, theft, and trans-
formation, the inventory's authors knew that you could never
step into the same treasury twice.16
The St-Denis inventory is a late entry in the world of trea-
sury inventories, which have earlier and later medieval
phases. Bernard Bischoff cataloged the early material, pub-
lishing 116 inventories compiled between 800 and 1250,
mostly in Germanic lands.17 Church treasuries continued to
be inventoried from the fourteenth through the sixteenth
centuries; good comparisons for the St-Denis inventory
include that of the Guelph Treasure at St. Blaise in Braun-
schweig, compiled between 1482 and 1485. 18 If the founda-
tional archival work of earlier historians was chiefly motivated
by a desire to know who owned what when, more recent stud-1 Saint Erhard Celebrating Mass, from the Uta Codex, ca. 1025,
ies investigate the documents themselves. As Jennifer Kings- tempera and gold on parchment, 15 x 103/4 in. (38.2 x 27.4 cm).
ley argues, inventories "are not unproblematic records. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Clm. 13601, fol. 4 (artwork
Rather they are attempts to construct memory."19 Similarly, in the public domain; photograph provided by Foto Marburg/
Art Resource, NY)
Joseph Salvatore Ackley's synthetic study of Bischoff s corpus
shows that attentive reading of even the most lapidary exam-
ple yields valuable insight into its authors' understanding of The St-Denis inventory complements and tests Nagel and
material, techniques, and meaning.20 Wood's analyses. Acknowledging that the approaches they
Following this direction, I read the St-Denis inventory withforeground existed at least as early as twelfth-century monas-
and against monastic attempts to fix meaning in order to teries, they concentrate on later, secular figures, from Valla,
examine how its authors approached old objects. The inven- with his Roman coins, to Lorenzo de' Medici, with his micro-
tory demonstrates that while these viewers knew nothing ofmosaics, to Desiderius Erasmus, mocking simple-minded pil-
the discipline of art history (the publication of Giorgiogrims and the guides who share or exploit their gullibility.25
Vasari's Lives is sixteen years in the future), they possessed aThe inventory, on the other hand, is multivocal, offering
vivid art historical imagination: they ask where, when, and points of contact and contrast between monastic and secular
how objects were made, who commissioned or owned them, approaches, and medieval and early modern ones.
and how they had changed over time.
This question has received little systematic attention fromThe Inventory of 1534
medievalists, apart from E. F. Van Der Grin ten 's modest yet All research on St-Denis's treasury rests on Blaise de Montes-
powerful Elements of Art Historiography in Medieval Texts.21 Forquiou-Fezensac's exhaustive life's work. This culminated in a
the early modern period it has been addressed in a series of monumental edition of the monastery's 1634 inventory, pre-
revisionist publications by Alexander Nagel and Christopher pared with the assistance of Danielle Gaborit-Chopin.26 Mon-
S. Wood.22 In Forgery , Replica , Fiction , Wood asks how Ger-tesquiou-Fezensac attempted to collect every reference to
mans, between the 1480s and the 1530s, "make sense of old every object in the treasury, reaching back to Carolingian
buildings and images" and "fashion artifacts ... [to] helpsources and forward to the French Revolution. As Christopher
them find their own way back into history."23 Wood compli- Hohler observed, this corpus allows "the better documented
cates the traditional story of the Renaissance recovery of objects [to be] ... seen in rapid alteration with the eyes of dif-
ancient classical art; he is as interested in the logic of mis-ferent people over a remarkably long period of time."27
takes as he is in correct identifications, seeking "to bring out While the 1534 inventory no longer suņives as an
independent text, it provided the basis for the 1634
the peculiar patterns of faith and skepticism generated by
the material artifact."24 inventory, which transcribes it "almost word for word."28
20 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2016 VOLUME XCVIII NUMBER 1
2 Reliquary, from the Hallesche

Heil tum, ca. 1526, tempera on
parchment, 11 x 15 in. (28 x 38 cm).
Hofbibliothek, Aschaffenburg,
Hs. 14, fol. 355v (artwork in the
public domain; photograph provided
by Hofbibliothek, Aschaffenburg,
www.hofbibliothek-ab.de)
Montesquiou-Fezensac's edition distinguishes the sixteenth- charge of the treasury and liturgical objects, and most impor-
century core from the seventeenth-century additions, giving tantly, Jean Doc, the grand prieur (and later bishop of Laon),
us a solid grasp of the 1534 inventory. Complicating matters the abbey's main representative during the proceedings.36
slighdy, the compilers of the 1534 inventory worked with an The compilers started with the chests in the monastery's
earlier inventory prepared in 1505; the complete version of treasury room, surveying the contents of each before moving
this 1505 inventory no longer survives, though we do have a into the church proper to study the objects in the choir and
summary version.29 The 1534 inventory and 1505 summary chapels. The inventory appraises 326 items, from enormous
have significant overlaps, including passages where the later objects such as the shrine of Saints Denis, Rusticus, and Eleu-
writers adopt the earlier phrasing exactly.30 We would proba- therius to an individual silver chain and a small silver lamp.37
bly find even more overlap between the two if the extended Many entries have multiple subsections. Thus, the descrip-
1505 inventory survived, so it is perhaps best to think of the tion of the head reliquary of Saint Denis has 125 individual
1534 document as the product of both the 1505 and 1534 entries and the analysis of the Crest of Charlemagne (Fig. 4)
teams. has 309, each naming and evaluating discrete elements of
Understanding inventories requires knowing their the whole.38 We do not know how long the 1534 team took
authors. The inventory of St. Blaise was compiled by six to compile this inventory. François 's commission is dated
churchmen; the inventory of Charles V's goods was the work May 6, and the 1634 version reports that they finished
of a secular team of courtiers closely tied to the king, includ- on May 27. The 1634 inventory provides suggestive data;
ing Gilles Mallet, first guardian of his library, and Hennequin using the 1534 inventory as a guide (just as the 1534 group
du Vivier, a goldsmith in his service.31 The 1534 inventory, used the 1505 inventory), the 1634 team took fourteen days
which François I ordered from officers in his Chambre des to analyze the objects cataloged in 1534.39 In 1634, it
Comptes, was a collaborative partnership between insiders required more than a day to inspect just two works, the reli-
and outsiders, monks and laymen.32 It was recorded by a quary of Saint Louis's jaw and the arm reliquary of Saint
team of royal officials; not named in the text, they probably Benedict.40
came from the ranks of notaries and secretaries who staffed
In comparison, the St. Blaise inventory passes fairly quickly
over objects, devoting far more attention to the individual
the royal bureaucracy.33 They brought with them three Pari-
sian jewelers who served as experts and are named inrelics
the they contain: the 138 reliquaries held 1,220 relics from
286
text: Denis Hotman, who belonged to an important family ofsaints. And while using outside experts enforced a cer-
goldsmiths, Castillon, and Dennet.34 The cooperation tain
of time limit on both St-Denis inventories, the Braunsch-
weig inventory, compiled by resident ecclesiastics, took three
notaires and orfevres had multiple precedents; in 1528, for
example, Hotman sold cameos to the royal notaries prepar-
years to complete.41
ing the diplomatic reception of Cardinal Wolsey.35 TheAt St-Denis the chief purpose was to determine the mone-
inventory also names a dozen participants from the monas-tary value of the objects.42 Filled with counting, classifying,
tery. Most appear only briefly, during the inspection ofweighing,
the and appraising, the inventory has. the markedly
cool tone of the moneychanger rather than the religious
individual chapels they supervised, but two recur repeatedly:
Guillaume Vérard (or Berard), who, as the chevecier , wasappreciation
in best voiced by Suger four centuries earlier.
THE 1534 INVENTORY OF THE ST-DENIS TREASURY
3 Master of St. Giles, The Mass of Saint

Giles , ca. 1500, oil and egg on oak,
24V4 X 18 in. (61.6 x 45.7 cm). The
National Gallery, London, NG 4681
(artwork in the public domain;
photograph © The National Gallery,
London/Art Resource, NY)
Veneration appears only once, when the their

rareprosaic
removal of goldsmiths
task, the the discuss neither the allegori-
martyrs' châsses from their shrine, usuallycal meanings
restricted nor the medicinal or apotropaic properties of
to royal
military campaigns, prompted candles tothe bestones
lit intheyreverence.
tallied.44 Instead, their knowledge is manifest
Candles burning, Hotman and Castillon got in theback to
ability tobusiness
distinguish multiple types of these materials:
and, "after deliberating among themselves, appraised
three varieties of amethystthe(plain, d'Allemaigne , and orien-
three châsses , including their chains and talle)
buckles, at two
, two kinds hun-
of rubies (plain and Alexandrian), and eight
dred marcs, worth, at twelve livres tournois
sorts the marc,
of pearl (plain, the
brutessum
, plattes , rousses , d' Escosse, d'Chient,
of two thousand four hundred livres tournois , worth
de comptes, and de twelve
semence ).45 The same detailed identifica-
thousand ecus."43 tions are found in Charles V's inventory, compiled in part by
his goldsmith, Hennequin.46
What the Goldsmiths Know They also note several techniques of working material,
The monks and goldsmiths acted differently during including
the enameling, engraving, and niello.47 Suger's chalice
exposure of the martyrs' relics because they met different
has embossed images ("images de demy bosse") and Charles
tasks by drawing on different preparation. The goldsmithsthe Bald's altar frontal featured both embossed and engraved
devoted the majority of their attention to identifying materi-
images ("de demy enleveure") (Figs. 5, 3). 48 A beryl burette
als, techniques, and artifactual histories. In keeping with
is "cut in diamond point," and a pyx and a cross are both
ļg ART BULLETIN MARCH 2016 VOLUME XCVIII NUMBER 1
4 Étienne-Éloi de Labarre, Crest of

Charlemagne , 1794, watercolor on
paper, 22lA x 16% in. (57.3 x
41.6 cm). Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris, Cabinet des Estampes,
Le 38c (artwork in the public domain;
photograph provided by the BnF)
described as "taillée ... de taille d'espargne," a variety of The 1380 inventory of Charles V's goods includes several
champlevé enameling in which a shallow field is filled with such designations: two crosses featuring "ouvraige de Ve-
opaque enamel.49 A small navette was "gadrooned."50 The nise," textiles identified as in the "fashion of England," a
spurs now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (Fig. 6), feature "a Latin Bible "in Bolognese letters," and a cope in "ouvrage de
ball of leaves percée a jour"51 Charles V's inventory has similar Roumenie," that is, Roman work.55 The cope entered the
technical notes, recording four kinds of enamels: plain, de Duke of Bedford's collection, and his inventory also labeled
plite (cloisonne), de plite a jour (openwork cloisonné), and it as "ouvraige de Romene."56
véré (better known today as basse-taille) ,52 The goldsmiths make some isolated qualitative judgments.
The St-Denis inventory associates two works with Venice: a The reliquary of Saint Louis's jaw has a "beautiful crystal,"
ring of "Venetian work" and a chasuble with "two silver but- and a box of varied gems includes "four prases, one more
tons gilded in the fashion of Venice."53 These are the only beautiful than the others."57 Of the manyjewels on the crown
geographic indicators for workmanship, a range that is of Charlemagne, they single three out for praise: a "beautiful
smaller than in other inventories. In his survey of inventories tablet of balas ruby," "a beautiful emerald [cut] as a tablet,"
between 800 and 1250, Ackley cites not only Venetian work and a "beautiful balas ruby. . . of high color."58 The jewelers
but also Greek, Limousin, English, "Saracenic," and Arab.54 are almost entirely silent on the craftsmanship of their
THE 1534 INVENTORY OF THE ST-DENIS TREASURY ļg
6 Spurs, second half of the 12th, 16th, and 19th centuries, gold,
garnets, and copper, 63/4 x 3% in. (17 x 8.5 cm). Musée du
Louvre, Paris (artwork in the public domain; photograph by
Erich Lessing, provided by Art Resource, NY)
In their fine-tuned material analysis, both these inventories

outstrip the more limited range in church inventories from the
ninth to the thirteenth century, which "rarely . . . [go] beyond
the generic 'decorated.'"64 Comparison with the St. Blaise
inventory suggests that the goldsmiths deserve credit for the
technical specificity in the 1380 and 1534 documents. St.
Blaise's team of churchmen identify brass, silver, and gold, and
5 Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis, cup: 2nd-lst century BCE,
they distinguish Arab gold ("auro arabico") from Hungarian
sardonyx, mounting: 1137-40, gilded silver, stones, pearls, and
glass, 7 lA X 45/s x 47/s in. (18.4 x 11.7 x 12.4 cm). National ("auro ungarico").65 The Gertrude Altar is identified as "a pre-
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Widener Collection, cious shrine" with a "colored marble" top and "many gilded
1942.9.277 (artwork in the public domain; photograph images of saints around its sides."66 The inventory says nothing,
provided by the National Gallery of Art) however, about the enameled architecture of the shrine, and it
fails to mention - much less identify - the stones set in the bor-
ders. The identification of metals and lack of detail about
predecessors, their lone remark on skill recording thatstones run throughout the text, which, when it mentions stones
at all, usually settles for calling them precious ("edelen stene"
Charles the Bald's gold cross has "four clasps at the four ends
[that] work very subtly with hinges with screws."59 At oneor "lapidus preciosis") ,67 In contrasting the attention the teams
point the visitors in 1505 looked up from the objects to exam-paid to materials and workmanship, we must consider not just
ine the building they occupied; having evaluated a chande- their differing expertise but their different tasks as well: at St-
lier in the chapel of St. Eugin, they add: "The whole chapel Denis the king wanted to know how much the objects were
worth, while at St. Blaise the question involved whose relics they
paved with a single piece of hard limestone [ liaiz] , a singular
thing." The 1534 inventory paraphrases this passage, andheld. This devotional purpose also explains why the Braunsch-
then elaborates: "which was particularly remarked, and it was weig inventory details the liturgical use of some objects, like the
engraved, in the form of a heart."60 feast-day practice of placing the domical reliquary of Saint
In comparison, Charles V's inventory has far more qualita-Blaise's head on the Gertrude Altar, matters absent from the St-
tive judgments, from the effusive opening entry on "The veryDenis inventory.
large, very beautiful and the best crown of the king" down to Turning to assessments of age, vieil , antique , and ancien
a humble earthenware pot characterized as "well worked."61 denote
1 that an object looks old, most likely reflecting the jew-
believe that Charles V's objects are praised more often elers' judgment, though perhaps with input from the court-
dispatched recorders. "Antique" occurs once, referring to
because his was not an institutional collection appraised by
outsiders but the personal collection of the late king the intaglio portrait of Julia, daughter of the emperor Titus,
described by his close associates. Hennequin, after all, made made about 90 CE, that decorated the summit of the Crest of
some of the objects he cataloged, giving the inventory a Charlemagne (Figs. 4, 7) : "a large aquamarine engraved with
latent autobiographical aspect.62 This personal connection the head of a woman in the ancient mode [a la mode anti-
may also explain why only three objects in the entire collec- cque ]."68 "Ancien" and "d'ancienne façon" occur more fre-
tion are deemed bad (mauvais): two "saphirs du Puy" and a quently. At times, they label classical or classicizing cameos.
cameo "of bad color."63 Notably, this criticism targets the For example, the arm reliquary of Saint Benedict, a gift of
property of stones, not deficient artistry. Jean de Berry, has among its many cameos an "agate cameo
7 Euodos , Julia, portrait: ca. 90, mount: 9th century, 8 Dioscurides the Aegean, Augustus , portrait: ca. 25-20 BCE,
aquamarine, sapphire, pearls, and gold, 4Vs x 33/t in. mount: 14th and 17th century, sardonyx, sapphire, pearls, gilded
(10.5 x 9.5 cm). Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, silver, glass, 3Vs x in. (8 x 6.4 cm). Bibliothèque Nationale
Cabinet des Médailles (artwork in the public domain; de France, Paris, Cabinet des Médailles (artwork in the public
photograph © BnF, provided by RMN-Grand Palais/ Art domain; photograph © BnF, provided by RMN-Grand
Resource, NY) Palais/ Art Resource, NY)
carved with the head of a woman in the ancient fashion [de the term is not applied to the eleventh- and twelfth-century
V ancienne façon]" and "an agate cameo carved with the head objects in the collection.75
of a man, in the ancient fashion, a chasteau a bicaquette [?] on Damaged items were also characterized as ancien: a chest
his head."69 commissioned in the fifteenth century to hold Saint Louis's
Two factors complicate the apparently tidy equation of bones was "very ancient and decayed [fart ancien et caducque' ,
ancien with antique or classical. First, several ancient objects broken on top, more by force than by decay."76 Thus, ancien
were not so designated. A bust of Augustus was identified could be applied to old and dignified objects from classical
only as one of "three agate cameos with a man's face" antiquity or many points in the Middle Ages, or simply mean
(Fig. 8). 70 Similarly, the inventory says nothing about the age "very old" and in bad shape. "Vieille" occurs twice, and in sim-
or origin of some objects that we recognize as antique; the ilar ways.77 The crown of Charlemagne includes a "large ruby
ancient core of Suger's eagle flagon is simply "a porpyhry pot of old appearance, very milky."78 A cloth wrapper holds a
with two handles of the same [material]" (Fig. 9). 71 mass of "large old Oriental pearls, dulled with many faults."79
What's more, the terms ancien and d'ancienne façon are also Given their imprecision, these terms provide weak pur-
applied to a diverse array of postclassical objects. The cross of chase on the compilers' historical understanding of the
Philip Augustus, who died in 1223, featured "four golden enam- objects. This imprecision might seem to confirm what Nagel
els with images in ancient fashion [ d'ancienne façon ]."72 Other and Wood say about the rough chronological distinctions
objects glossed as "ancien" include three rings (two "d'ancienne possible in this pre-art historical age: objects were old or
façon," the other "de fort [very] ancienne façon"), a chalice and they were very old.80 Wood claims that:
spoon, and a pair of silk shoes, which, as they bore the fleurs-de-
lis, were recognizably postclassical.73 Charles V's inventory has material evidence is useless without protocols for evaluating
similar instances of medieval objects labeled ancien , including a its age and establishing its indexicality. When only rudimen-
bowl that belonged to Saint Louis, decorated with "ancient tary forensic techniques are available, indexical links have to
enamels [anciens esmaulx ]."74 The Hallesche Heil tum character- be asserted circumstantially and hopefully. The ideal piece of
izes six objects as old (alt); all date between 1200 and 1500, and evidence was a corpse, and the next best was something
immobile, like a tomb or a building
had always been there. Questions about their story, their his-
toricity, their actual physical makeup, when they were physi-
cally made, whether they had been repaired or improved,
whether they replaced earlier, similar artifacts - such ques-
tions were simply not asked.81
In a period that did not know art history, this explanation is

plausible.
However, it is complicated by the existence of composite
objects, very common in medieval and Renaissance treasur-
ies.82 For example, an image of Christ from the late eleventh
century was placed on a later twelfth-century shrine of Saint
Oda; when that shrine was replaced in the early thirteenth
century, the image of Christ and its twelfth-century framing
were redeployed on a new gable reliquary (Fig. 10). Cer-
tainly, the patron supplying the reused element recognized
its distinctiveness, as did the maker who assembled them. As
Neil Stratford observes, this "goldsmith . . . venerat[ed] . . .
earlier works in the region: he reused a somewhat earlier sil-
ver relief as one of the major focal points for his new châsse ,
and he admired the much earlier inhabited scrolls . . .
enough to reuse them, even if he cut them down."83 Stratford

here raises a major question for materials that have, perhaps
imperfectly, been named spolia : What mixture of material
need, aesthetic respect, and historical motivation informs
such reuse?84 At least one object at Halle suggests a histori-
cally motivated reuse: a new chest decorated with several
tenth-century ivories (Fig. 2). 85 These ivories were part of a
set commissioned by Otto I for the consecration of Magde-
burg Cathedral in 968.85 Albrecht, archbishop of Magde-
burg, was eager to give his new foundation at Halle a 9 Eagle flagon of Suger, imperial Rome and 12th century,
venerable imprint and to advertise his imperial connections, porphyry and gilded silver, 17 x 105/s in. (43.1 x 27 cm). Musée du
and reusing Otto's ivories let him do both.87 But there are Louvre, Paris (artwork in the public domain; photograph by Gianni
Dagli Orti, provided by The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)
two important questions. First, what did Albrecht know about
the origin of these ivories? While the easily parsed image of
Otto dedicating the church probably left Magdeburg in the large reliquary, the lower part in wood instead of the silver
twelfth century, even without this image the widespread habit that should have been there."91 They made similar observa-
of associating a church's old objects with its founder would tions about the reliquary of Saint Louis of Marseilles, which
lead to a correct understanding of the ivories' origin.88 Yet showed a queen and two angels supporting a gold container
Albrecht's manuscript makes no claims for his old objects' in front of a silver backing: "the goldsmiths said that it was
origins, saying only, "a gilded silver box with eight ivory pan- probable that the silver background was not the one that was
els. In which [are] carved eight scenes from the Gospels. there originally and that there should have been one in gold
Contains one holy body."89 Second: Did later audiences like the base, because it was not gilded and the base was."92
receive the intended message? For even if knowledge of the They brought the same sensitive eye to the châsse of Saint
ivories' origin motivated their reuse, it could not guarantee Hilaire, fashioned to look like a church and in imperfect con-
their reception. dition.93 The compilers observe that the 1505 inventory
St-Blaise gives reason for skepticism. This treasury featured declared that the marmosets supporting it were made of
several composite objects, including a book-shaped reliquary gilded silver. The jewelers in 1534 report that the marmosets
made about 1340 that incorporates an ivory from about 1000 they inspected were made of gilded copper, were not made by
(Fig. 11). The inventory treats this work in very summary the same artist who made the châsse , and seemed to be more
fashion, with no mention of its episodic creation: "In the fol- than thirty years old. Thus, they distinguish the supporting ele-
lowing plenarium lie four gospels written in four folios. Item ments from the reliquary and disagree with their predecessors.
the same object has relics of the 11,000 virgins and of four Similar precision marks the account of Charlemagne's
other saints."90 Crest (Fig. 4) .
The jewelers at St-Denis, in contrast, brought a finely
tuned sensibility to some objects that they recognized as The jewelers, goldsmiths, and appraisers . . . noted that
changed or composite. They recorded that two silver reli- the base was not the base of the Crest, but was a reli-
quary boxes were "decorated above with clasps of ungilded quary made independently, which had been added to
silver [argent blanc], showing that they had served for some the three levels of the Crest, as appeared clearly enough
10 Reliquary from the shrine of Saint

Oda, late 11th, 12th, and 13th
centuries, silver, silver gilt, copper,
copper gilt, enamel, rock crystal,
and horn, 23 x 15 x 2V4 in. (58.5 x
38 x 5.6 cm) . The Walters Art Museum,
Baltimore, 57.519 (artwork in the
public domain; photograph provided
by The Walters Art Museum)
because it was not large enough or strong enough as a What the Monks Know
base for the three levels; also because the three levels
The identification of Philippe de Villette 's arms on the
were made of gold and the base of gilded silver and Crest's base probably came not from the goldsmiths but
because the stones of the base are not comparable to from the monks, whose expertise is usually cited in reference
those of the top levels [ne faisoient a comparer ]; also
to an object's identity or origins, particularly when these are
because the iron legs entering into the base in holes not self-evident. In the case of their many crosses, the monks
to hold up the Crest are' not secure, but only fixed inidentified the one that contained a bar from Saint Law-
the holes ... ; and the base bears the arms . . . said to be rence's grill, the one given by the former abbot Guy de Mo
of Philippe de Villette, abbot [1398-1414], who was not ceau, and that donated by Philip Augustus.96
of the time of Charlemagne.94 The inventory often acknowledges the monks' contrib
tion with the words "thus the monks say" or "according to
This thorough analysis of the piece used its materials, facture, monks."97 Such phrases might betray skepticism; in 15
and heraldry to demonstrate a composite production of two Aernout von Büchel, a visitor from Utrecht and a later Prot
objects made at different times. Strikingly, the 1634 com- tant convert, hesitated to accept the monastery's identific
pilers disagreed with their predecessors, incorrectly crediting tion of the lantern held by Malchus at Christ's arrest, addin
the piece to a single campaign.95 "if one may believe it."98 However, in this inventory I belie
1 1 Circle of the Master of the

Registrum Gregorii, Miracle at Cana ,
ivory: ca. 1000, and book-shaped
reliquary: ca. 1340, gilded silver, pearls,
rubies, emeralds, crystals, onyx,
cornelian, and oak, '2lA x 95/s x 3 in.
(31.6 x 24.4 x 7.5 cm). The Cleveland
Museum of Art, Gift of the John
Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust,
1930.741 (artwork in the public
domain; photograph © The Cleveland
Museum of Art)
the phrases "according to the monks" or "so say the religious"did they know that this was Pierre d'Auteuil, abbot from 1221
explain how an identification was made and do not register to 1229?104 When they transcribed the inscription on the
skepticism about that identification on the compilers' part."arm reliquary of Saint Cucufat, did they know who "Gerardux
The monks had three sources of knowledge: inscriptions quin tus prior" was?105
and heraldry; the monastery's writings; and oral tradition. The monks deployed a more cultivated knowledge to
Let us take each in turn. The inventory quotes many identify heraldry. The compilers recognized the arms of
inscribed objects. Some inscriptions identify the object, such France, Berry, Dauphine, Artois, Navarre, Brittany, "the
as one ring labeled "sti dionisii," another "cest le signet du Empire" (that is, the Holy Roman Empire), and Bavaria.106
Roy SAiNCT louis."100 Inscriptions also correctly identify many In addition to Philippe de Villette, the compilers name
donations, including a pot and cross given by Suger101 and three abbots by their heraldry: Jean de Villiers (abbot from
the jaw reliquary of Saint Louis donated by Abbot Egidius, 1474 to 1499), 107 Jean Jouffroy (1464 to 1473),108 and Guy
and also inscribed with the names of Kings Philip IV and Phi- de Monceau (1363 to 1398). 109 While the monks recognized
lip V.102 The transcribed inscription from the angels around Guy's heraldry, the inventory overlooked the carved agate
the high altar conveyed not only the patron but also the seal with the same arms.110 Imprecision also marks the
artist's name and the date the object was made: "[In] the account of two objects donated by Jean de Berry. Appraising
year 1398 / this tabernacle was placed / Charles of France, the reliquary of the hand of Saint Thomas, the inventory
the king, gave it / Pierre Rozette made and completed it."103 names the arms of Berry without naming Jean.111 Catalog-
In such cases, reading objects sufficed to place them histori- ing the imposing arm reliquary of Saint Benedict, the entry
cally. But it cannot confirm that the monks used this informa- describes the arms of Berry - "fleurs de lys d'or et champ
tion. When they read on a miter that "petrus abbas me fecit," d'azur et dantelles de gueules" - but does not name
when Philip VI borrowed it from St-Denis, it was identified as

Philip Augustus's donation.121 We do not know how this
memory was perpetuated; the Grandes chroniques celebrated
the gift of this relic but said nothing about the reliquary. The
commemorations of Philip's death each July 14, entered in
both the monastery's mid-thirteenth-century necrology and
mid-fourteenth-century obituary, may have provided occa-
sions to rehearse his generosity.122 Similarly, those who
guided visitors to the monastery probably also kept the mem-
ory alive.
Monks and Goldsmiths Working Together

The evaluation of Charlemagne's Crest showed us the monks
and goldsmiths working together to document how an object
changed over time. They collaborated for similar reasons in
assessing the condition of the treasury's objects. Damage is a
constant refrain, for the St-Denis inventory is a litany of losses
great and small, with objects described as "desgarnie,"
"rompu," "caducque," "défaillant," "deteriorez et usez."
The twelfth-century châsse of Saint Osmanne, one of
12 Cup of Solomon, 5th-6th century CE, garnet, rock crystal, Ursula's eleven thousand virgins, had several "empty settings
glass, and gold, diameter llVs in. (28.2 cm). Bibliothèque [ chattons ]";12S the châsse of Saint Peregrin, "of ancient fash-
Nationale de France, Paris, Cabinet des Médailles (artwork in ion," had "six empty settings."124 Louis XI (d. 1483) had
the public domain; photograph © BnF, provided by RMN- given the abbey an impressive reliquary designed as a church
Grand Palais/ Art Resource, NY)
within a city; the monks recalled that it once hung from the
vaults above the high altar, but already by 1505 the city had
them.112 Similarly, there are at least five objects with her- gone missing.125 Smaller objects also suffered. Suger's cross
aldry not recognized; the reliquary of Saint Bartholomew's had multiple losses: its foot had "four places missing their
finger, for example, had a "pommel garnished with four stones," its corpus "four places empty of pearls."126 His chal-
small lozenges with heraldry," but the arms are neither ice was also missing many parts (Fig. 5). 127 Another chalice
described nor identified.113 Still, knowing that even uniden- had a broken enamel, and a cross was missing one of its
tifiable heraldry commemorated a donor kept these objects enamels.128 There was an ivory Virgin with some broken ele-
from being assigned to other figures. ments, and a lapis tablet broken in two and missing parts
The absence of heraldry or inscriptions could prevent an from its frame.129 Some objects, especially textiles, were just
object's origins from being identified. For example, Suger's worn out. One cope was "very worn out [ fort usée]," and
chalice and eagle flagon do not bear his name and are not another two were "damaged and stripped [ endommagées et
linked to him in the inventory (Figs. 6, 9). 114 However, many desgarnies] "13° Even the royal oriflamme, displayed near the
unmarked objects had lengthy written trails at the monastery, martyrs' shrine, was "very decayed" according to both the
which maintained their identity for centuries, as with Suger's 1505 and 1534 inventories.131 In one case, the compilers cal-
celebration of Charles the Bald's altar frontal (Fig. 3). 115 culate how much value was lost because of damage: a cameo
The retrospective praise of Eloy' s cross in the ninth-century on the shrine of Saint Denis, broken in seven pieces, was
life of Dagobert was read throughout the Middle Ages at St- "appraised at one hundred fifty escus; which could have
Denis; in the 1270s, Primat translated it almost verbatim in been worth two thousand whole."132
the Grandes chroniques de France , assuring that Eloy' s reputed Sometimes they record that lost parts were replaced with new
mastery of a lost art endured into the age of print.116 Even ones. One of the jewels on the crown of the queen was not origi-
administrative documents preserved its identity; an account nal.133 The cross of Charles the Bald had "Eight prases around
of 1287-88 documents a payment for restoration of "the an amethyst, of which that above is not the one first put there."134
cross of St. Eloy."117 Here there was a stone-for-a-stone substitution; elsewhere, hum-
The monastery's written tradition also conveyed identities bler materials replaced precious originals. One book binding
that had been invented centuries earlier. Take the cup of Sol- has a piece of "green glass in the fashion of peridot in place of
omon (Fig. 12). 118 The Grandes chroniques offer the earliest another stone that was there originally," another a bit of "glass
extant trace of this identification, claiming that Charles the resembling amethyst" substitutes for a lost stone.135
Bald "happily gave the hanap Salemon, which is pure gold, The monks explained some damages.
and of fine emeralds and fine grenates, so marvelously
worked that in all the realms of the world there is no work so Behind the matutinal altar, in a cavity in the wall between
subtle."119 the choir and the crossing, closed with the two pieces of
Written sources were not always necessary to preserve an wood, here and there [were] several small pieces of silver
object's origins. The 1505 and 1534 inventories both cite Phi- and gilded brass, which showed that there was once some
lip Augustus's cross, which sheltered the relic of the True noble and rich figured ornament which, when asked
Cross he presented to the monastery in 1205. 120 In 1340, about it, the grand prieur , subprior, cantor, and other
religious responded that there had been a gilded silver he had lived at the college of Saint-Denis in Paris for fourte
Trinity; which was carried off by the Armagnacs, in the or fifteen months, but that he had only seen a tin chal
time of the wars. They also said that in front of this Trinity there."143 Similarly, in the 1534 inventory the monks rema
Saint Louis's body was buried and, on the base of his sep- that the chapel of St. Louis "should have had candlestick
ulcher and equal to in length, was a silver relief image of censers, and other silver objects, which had been take
»144
Saint Louis, which was likewise carried off by the away.
Armagnacs.136 Here it is not clear whether the objects had been m
placed or stolen; in other cases, recent losses are explic
When bits of metal scattered "here and there" in a hollow in blamed on theft. The châsse of Saint Hippolytus origin
the wall are all that remains of a splendid Trinity, it is showed
clear the saint's martyrdom, but now the figure of Hipp
that the polished artifice of the "Mass of Saint Giles" conceals
tus was missing. Jean Chambellan, the cantor, responsibl
a chaotic reality (Fig. 3). The monks blamed this shameful
this chapel, "said the image had been stolen five or six ye
condition on a famous trauma fròm 1418, during the earlier."145
Hun- These entries are not the only document
dred Years' War, when the Duke of Burgundy's foes occupied
thefts from the treasury. The very first mention of objec
the monastery. Contemporary documents only accuse the
St-Denis concerned a theft reported by Gregory of Tours
Armagnacs of robbing the kitchen.137 Here, then, monastic
the sixth century;146 in 1469 Louis XI heard that a gem h
memory shifted the blame from institutional neglect tobeen
the stolen from a crown at St-Denis and replaced wi
depredation of specific vandals. false stone of a similar color.147 All treasuries feared thef
In one case the inventory names an individual responsible
his Rationale for the Divine Offices, written in the 1290s, Bis
for damage. The 1505 inventory includes a glass crystal cup,
William Durandus urged that treasuries be displayed r
which in 1534 was no more than a collection of broken larly to guard against it.148
shards. The monks explained that "the queen Mary of En-
These accounts point to another striking aspect of the tr
gland [Louis XII's wife and Henry VIII's sister],sury:
being it at
was filled with isolated bits and pieces. Medievali
St-Denis [and] visiting the treasury, had broken the
arecup."138
used to fragments, such as the kneeling prophets
If accurate - as seems plausible - the report documents
alone remainafrom the châsse of Saint Germain-des-Près,
madehave
memorable collision of dignity and accident that must in 1409 and destroyed in the French Revolution
mortified the clumsy queen, probably present at St-Denis forThe 1534 inventory confirms the existence of
(Fig. 13). 149
her coronation in 1514 or her husband's funeral the next
such miscellaneous arrays already in the Middle Ages. Both
year. Lacking independent confirmation, though,the
one can of Saint Fremin and of Saint Eugin were accompa-
châsses
imagine the monks conveniently shifting blame for the niedbreak
by boxes of stones that had fallen from their settings.150
to the sister of the hated Henry VIII, a foreign-born, This is not an isolated case; the Duke of Bedford's invento-
recently
deceased ex-queen whose husband died sonless afterriesthree
include a similar entry: "Item, twenty large pearls of var-
ied kinds
months of marriage; perhaps the monks imply she broke the without settings, which had fallen from some
cup the way she broke the king. jewelry."151 At St-Denis fallen pieces were sometimes kept
The broken cup is one of many losses that occurred
near their source. After the inspectors counted fifteen pearls
and one sapphire missing from the crown of Jeanne
between the 1505 and 1534 inventories. The 1505 inventory
records a chalice in the chapel founded by Charles V; in used in the coronation of queens, Doc reported
d'Evreux,
1534 that chalice had been replaced by a lesser one.139 An were several small stones and pearls that they had
"that there
kept after they had fallen, which he would show next."152
ivory hand and two crowns were missing and not replaced.140
New objects got lost, too: the 1505 inventory includes They subsequently record a plentiful collection of stones,
a crown
dated to 1504 and inscribed with Anne of Brittany's name,
without specifying which belonged to the crown.153
In 1505
and her marriages to both Charles VIII and Louis XII; bythe auditors checked to make sure a loose stone fit
1534 it was gone.141 the mount it was said to have fallen from. Shortly after an emer-
The monks even lost a note about a missing jewel. The six hundred ecus was found to be missing from Saint
ald worth
complete 1505 inventory reports "a note, reporting that Phi-hand reliquary, "Germain Le Pere, sub treasurer . . .
Thomas's
lip, abbot of St-Denis, confesses to having received from a paper in which were several groups of pearls,
[showed]
brother Anceau, the prior, a sapphire with its setting,among which he showed and delivered two emeralds, which
coming
from the crowns, to make himself a ring, in place of were
oneapplied
of to the setting of the emerald mentioned above
and itthe
his [rings] that he had lost." After quoting this passage, was found . . . that the two stones had come from it."154
1534 compilers add: "the note was nowhere to be found, Fragmentary figures are the most poetic items in this col-
because of time [a cause du temps] ."142 A small but lection
weighty of bits and pieces, as Hohler observed in his review of
phrase, "à cause du temps" encapsulates how time Montesquiou-Fezensac's
pressed work.155 A reliquary of Saint Mau-
the treasury, with one loss leading to others. rice featured two angels; apparently fine in 1505, one angel
Some losses remind us that in addition to being thehad
sacred
a broken wing in 1534. 156 The 1505 inventory reported a
patrimony of France's patron saint, the collection wingless,
housed aheadless angel in a box with a comb and some but-
working set of liturgical gear whose circulation mighttons; bybe1534 the angel amputee was lost.157 The most dra-
maticthe
hard to track. Take the report of a chalice missing from fragments came from the great reliquary of Saint
chapel of St. Romain. The monks claimed that theBenedict's
chalice arm, whose last element is described with a quote
had been moved to the abbey's college in Paris. Whenfrom the 1505 inventory: "On the base [were] "two round
the vis-
holes
itors asked if they might find it there, Jean Doc replied in which there should have been two gilded silver
"that
stolen two years ago next Monday, the thief captured in Paris
and punished by the lieutenant criminel , as it would appear
from the trial of it which took place at the Chateie t." The
monks had made a new cross by using
several pieces of the stones and part of the gold of the sto-
len cross, or all that the religious had been able to recover
of the stones and gold, with other pieces that they said
they took from the chozier of the church, but they said
nothing about which ones and their quality and worth,
and the surplus which made up the gold in the new cross,
for the loss that one had found in [the old one, that is,
the parts that had not been recovered] , and amounted to
sixty or eighty livres, had been paid from the deniers of the
lord Cardinal of Bourbon, abbot of St-Denis.162
This passage points to the treasury's role as the monastery's

"chozier," its repository of pieces kept for future use.163 Such
a trove was particularly important at St-Denis, custodian of
the regalia required by coronations, funerals, and other rit-
uals as unforeseeable as they were important. With a well-
stocked chozier, the monks were ready at the drop of a king to
fill any empty spots on the crowns, scepters, and swords
needed for subsequent ceremonies. Hélène Cambier notes
that such a store of fragments makes it difficult to determine
whether antiquity or mere availability motivated reuse.164
Good evidence for the treasury's role as a chozier comes
from the account of a box of varied stones and pearls.165 The
box held several smaller containers, and two of these lacked
13 Jean de Clichy and Gauthier du Four, kneeling prophet from pieces inventoried in 1505. For the first, the inventory reports:
the reliquary châsse oí Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 1409, gilt bronze,
55/s X 35/s X 35/s in. (13.8 X 9.3 x 8.7 cm). The Cleveland Museum Doc, the grand pńeur, said that he remembered having
of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund, 1964.360 (artwork in the
been present when the lord Cardinal of Bourbon, abbot,
public domain; photograph © The Cleveland Museum of Art)
had visited and viewed them, and, himself, had the stones
separated and put aside following what it seemed to him
angels who helped support . . . the arm and the angels were should be done, to have them applied to the châsse of my
missing; and of the angels only the two wings were found in lord Saint Louis which he is having made.166
the cupboards." Predictably, the 1534 compilers add: "The
two wings are missing."158 Doc also specified that other jewels from the same assemblage
Poor Jean Doc! He did not know the word entropy, but he "had been taken and furnished for furthering the châsse of
must have sensed its awful power each time he entered the trea- Saint Louis, as will be duly verified, and handed over to the
sury. Every prior did. A 1247 inventory of objects pawned by goldsmith Piramne, residing at the corner of the Pont-aux-
Bamberg's cathedral includes one broken cross.159 St. Blaise's Changes, near the Châtelet."167 Doc's memory did not have
inventory included one object become so fragile with age that it to stretch far here; Louis de Bourbon became abbot of St-
was no longer used and a reliquary containing several broken Denis in 1529, and it makes sense that soon after his installa-
ampullae.160 Just as tellingly, Andrea Boockmann has docu- tion he commissioned a replacement for the box, "fort ancien
mented a regular series of repairs over the fifteenth century.161 et caducque," that had held the royal relics since 1418. 168
Wingless angels and angel-less wings make the treasury Aristocrats mined their treasuries in similar ways. For
seem a graveyard of dead objects, but - like every Christian example, Charles V's inventory starts with his three great
graveyard - it was actually a hopeful placé. The fragments crowns, and also documents that a dozen other objects he
indicate both an inability to preserve objects and a strong owned supplied their jewels.169 A representative entry reads:
preservationist desire. The queen broke a cup? Keep the
shards. A wing fell off an angel? Keep the wing. Like scattered a middle-sized crown
bones awaiting the resurrection, these fragments anticipated make the three crowns mentioned abov
redemption, for their preservation was motivated by the rubies, seven large emeralds with three
hope of repair, reform, or reuse. rubies, all from the circle of the crown
The interplay of these hopes is seen to best effect in the four emeralds, a balas ruby with eight
fate of an old cross, made by Gossuin de Dynant in 1285. The made the boutz of the crown.
1505 inventory documented its compromised condition,
which did not deter sticky hands: it was gone in 1534. Show- With the crown thus ravaged, it is perhaps not surprising
ing its replacement, Doc explained "that the first cross was that a 1381 annotation to the inventory documents that
Charles VI turned the crown over to Hennequin du Vivier There follows a transcription of the lengthy inscription, and
"to take a part and meet certain needs [ pour despecer et the concluding remark on this space: "Below the tomb, on
faire certaines besongnes] "17° the tiles of the chapel, was found a long wood box, its cover
Reading the St-Denis inventory's endless descriptions of loss unattached and in it the bones of the body of Alphonse, the
and decay, we are less surprised by the Bohemian ambassadors tomb broken as said, and without its missing parts, appraised
who reported in 1464 that the monks of St-Denis "keep [their at one hundred ecus."174
treasure] very badly."171 Such criticism is not uncommon Numerous factors might have fed this outburst: fatigue, as
among later medieval pilgrims; the poor state of St. Ambrose in the compilers neared the end of their painstaking work; insti-
Milan shocked Georges Lengherand of Möns in 1486, and tutional jealousy, as this was the lone chapel supervised by a
Nompar de Caumont lamented Monreale's condition in secular priest instead of a monk. More crucially, perhaps, chi-
1420.172 But it came not just from visitors; a 1481 document valric nostalgia, for martial tombs from the good old days
from the chapter's archives responds to Martin de Bellefaye, a were charged monuments, at necropolises like St-Denis and
royal official who had apparently questioned the decision to across Christendom. Jerusalem's pilgrims visited Godefroy of
press the more precious treasury objects into service, and per- Bouillon's tomb in the Holy Sepulcher, and Nompar de Cau-
haps to harvest some of their materials: mont paid his respects at the tombs of the kings of Sicily in
Palermo and Monreale.175 Visiting distinguished tombs also
my lord has no cause to question the diminution expected figures in medieval literature, from Marie de France's Yonec
[given] that he has completely stopped making repairs of in the twelfth century to the Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies in
everything, and there is no longer a mason or a worker in the fifteenth (Fig. 14). 176 However motivated, this rare
the church, which is a great dishonor and damaging to lament gives particularly vivid voice to the compilers' art his-
the church and of those in charge of it, as are the orna- torical imagination. Contemporaries of Vasari and Michelan-
ments of the church, which are so decayed and worn out gelo, they mourn not the ruined excellence of the classical
that one no longer dares use them. And it was agreed for past but the broken shell of a two-hundred-fifty-year-old aris-
the honor of the church, to take from those in the trea- tocratic tomb, once the most beautiful among the dozens at
sury, to serve the church.173 St-Denis.
There is little sense of the monastery's honor in the inven- The Shrine of Saints Denis, Rusticus, and Eleutherius
tory, as the compilers tallied most damages and membra dis- So far, we have attended to the goldsmiths' knowledge in
iecta in their customary neutral tone. But one object's decay, materials and techniques and the monks' knowledge of their
recorded near the end, broke their composure. The elabo- treasury's history and benefactors, using their audit of dam-
rate tomb of Alphonse d'Eu, who died on Crusade with Saint ages and losses to almost capture them in midconversation.
Louis, was created for his burial in 1271, according to the The inventory's survey of the massive shrine of Saint Denis
inscription transcribed in the inventory. By 1534 it was in bad and his companions provides the best insight into how the
shape, and the report on it crackles with dismay, evoking in monks and visitors combined their expertise to evaluate a sin-
turn its original splendor and present ruin. gle object.177 The largest and most important object in the
treasury, the shrine in 1534 featured a black marble base, a
The only thing found was a very badly broken and dam- large stone vault in which the three coffins were held, and
aged representation of a tomb, raised on a square wood above that a large church-shaped tabernacle. The shrine's
[base] , formerly all covered in gilded copper [and] enam- complex history had three major stages. The Merovingian
eled in thick color, with capitals and pillars below, and shrine of the saints, credited to Saint Eloy by his biographer,
between the capitals escutcheons with many coats of arms had been in the church's crypt. The Carolingian campaigns
and, within the capitals, images; the whole raised in low on the church occasioned the production of a new shrine
relief, also of gilded copper and, above this, the represen- in the ninth century, incorporating some elements from
tation of an armed man, also raised in low relief, with a the Merovingian shrine and again placed in the crypt. In
coat of arms arrayed with several escutcheons, his sword at the twelfth century, Suger placed a massive new shrine in the
the side and on it his coat of arms, a lion at his feet and a center of his new east end. The twelfth-century work incorpo-
pillow below his head, with many settings on the capitals rated some elements of one or both the earlier shrines and -
and its borders garnished with stones; which tomb was nei- by 1505 - had some later additions as well; it was a composite
ther attached nor secured in the wall, nor in the ground, it object, like those discussed earlier.
was placed carelessly on the pavement of the chapel, lifted Assessing the shrine's facture was complicated by the tex-
from elsewhere, where it should have been the most beau- tual tradition which made Eloy' s contribution at St-Denis
tiful and rich tomb in this church, and in it were missing both well known and unclear. Eloy's work on the shrine was
an image and its backing, [and] at the feet, three images recorded in his early medieval Vita , and William Caxton's
and their backings, a capital and a half, four pillars and an 1483 edition of the Golden Legend says that "S. Loye did do
escutcheon; the greater part of the settings were empty ordain much richly . . . the house of S. Denis the martyr at
and many bands of the border torn away, such that there Paris, and the tigurion of marble which is upon him, of mar-
was nothing but twenty German amethysts and some dou- vellous work of gold and of gems."178 In contrast, the Grandes
blet! ;; and there were also several escutcheons missing from chroniques* s story of the church's foundation, based on the
the coat and several stones and [they] were in a box in the ninth-century life of Dagobert, does not explicitly say that
chapel. Eloy designed the martyrs' shrine and never mentions
14 Liévin van Lathem, The Author

Hears the Story of Gillion de Trazegnies,
from the "Roman de Gillion de
Trazegnies," after 1464, tempera
colors, gold, and ink on parchment,
15 Vi X 11 in. (38.9 x 28 cm). J. Paul
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, MS 111,
fol. 9v (artwork in the public domain;
digital image provided by the Getty's
Open Content Program)
Suger's twelfth-century work. Thus, unlike in the case of thebottom, a piece of brass was attached, in place of the
at the
cross of Saint Eloy, there were conflicting traditions in
gold
the
one which had been wrested from it, and the border of
shrine's documentary trail. that side was gilded brass."185 They found, framing another
Their detailed observations about the shrine's condition, set of scenes of the saint's life, "one piece of gilded copper
epigraphy, media, style, and composite nature demonstrate applied in place of gold, in the second arch near the front of
the compilers' awareness of its complex history. They knew the tabernacle."186
Suger's role, having transcribed the inscription he placed on Two remarks indicate metalwork added to the finished shrine:
the work: "written in golden letters: 'Suger made both sides, "The face of the large tabernacle covered with weak gilded cop-
the front, and the roof.'"179 This brief inscription would have per, bordered with enamels also of copper, and the lower cover
allowed the monks to place the reliquary in time, since Suger of the large tabernacle on this side, also covered with weak gilded
remained a significant and remembered figure.180 copper with several pieces added since its first making."187 "The
Several signs of age in the shrine are recorded: the "base was upper spandrels of five arches on the side of the large tabernacle,
very worn and broken in several places . . . with several old covered with weak copper, the borders of the plaques applied
moldings," and its tabernacle featured "old-fashioned bases since its first making."188
and capitals."181 While the word "ancien" tells us neither what These comments add up to a very complex picture of the
made the capitals and bases look old, nor how old they were shrine's fabrication: it was old and featured elements of dif-
thought to be, the account of another architectural element is ferent styles, some repairing earlier losses. The inventory
more helpful: the tabernacle's windows are "turned in a half offers one additional insight into the monastery's discrimi-
circle, carrying their round arches [tournées a demy rond , portant nating grasp of the shrine's varied components. The apprais-
leur plain scintre ]."182 This unique specification distinguishes ers recorded that the 1505 inventory cataloged "the image of
this object from the other relfquaries described in such abun- a baby in solid silver, weighing three marcs, one ounce and a
dant detail. The round arches are for us the sign of Roman- half," which was now missing. Doc reported that the baby
esque architecture, and although sixteenth-century observers had been removed by Courtillier, the monastery's late cheve-
had no such name for this style, Erwin Panofsky demonstrated cier, with the agreement of the abbey's administrators, and its
that it was recognized as archaic by 1400. 183 material converted "in two candlesticks to accompany the
The compilers also recognized elements from different Holy Nail and the head of Saint Denis, which [Doc] . . . had
periods. The base had "eight lattice panels of cast copper of shown."189 This rare pruning, which took place between
different fashions." Similarly, the front of the coffin was 1505 and Courtillier's death in 1522, testifies to the abbey's
"garnished . . . with several enamels of gilded copper and confidence in its art historical judgment, for it would only
applique in several pieces and fashions."184 All the scenes have been permitted if the baby was recognized as an added
from the life of Saint Denis were golden "except that in one, element not integral to the shrine.190
The most telling passage details the epigraphy, media, and

condition of the tabernacle's front:
blessed bodies of the martyrs Dionysus, Rusticus and Eleu-

therius. Peace and Life to those making this. Amen."
7. In the middle of the inscription, a long golden tablet

and within it a raised Hospitaler cross, also of gold, for-
merly garnished with glasswork similar to that on the
aforementioned cross of St. Eloy. . . .
8. The aforementioned cameos, agates, inscription and

tablet, all set on a field of very worn gilded brass.
only one could be read, which follows: "Bertranda, venerat-

ing, consecrated [this] to Christ and God"; and the religious
said, that they had seen many knowledgeable people, who
had forced themselves to read the remainder and had not
known how, because of the diversity of the letters.191
The name Bertranda helps date this element: there were two
Bertrandas in the monastery's past; one the wife of Pepin,
the other Charlemagne's daughter.192 Either makes15sense
Eloy, fragment from the cross of Saint Eloy, ca. 600-650, gold
and colored glass, 37/s x 35/s in. (10 x 9.2 cm). Bibliothèque
given the appearance of these elements on an aged surface.
Nationale de France, Paris, Cabinet des Médailles (artwork in
Characterizing the writing as "lettre romaine fort ancienne"
the public domain; photograph provided by the BnF)
is also significant. Among the inventory's many transcribed
inscriptions, these are the only letter forms evaluated in
terms of age, so they must have struck the viewers as older
than the inscription with Suger's name. Their statement that link an element of the tabernacle to the most celebrated
it they
work from the monastery's earliest days, a datable object
the other inscriptions had frustrated "many knowledgeable
people" demonstrates that the monks had ponderedthat these had generated new attributions in the past. The compari-
inscriptions previously and sought help deciphering them.
son is unusual but not unprecedented; Charles V's inventory,
Such paléographie work was common.193 Both the monks for example, listed, alongside many objects owned by Sain
and the royal officials had a professional familiarity with
Louis, oldthree pitchers in "the fashion [façon' of that of Saint
letters, the monks from their contact with the old booksLouis."197
in
In the inventory these comparisons indicate that the com-
the monastery's library, the bureaucrats from their secretarial
munity
training; both trafficked in old charters, decrees, and wills. Atcould argue that the saints' very old tabernacle,
St. Blaise, many of the relic labels in the chief reliquarylargely
werebuilt by Suger in the twelfth century, also included
so aged that they were no longer legible; the compilerselements
also dating from the monastery's foundation by Dago-
bert and
had trouble determining whether another was written in the Carolingian dynasty (just as Charlemagne's
Crest had acquired a new base in the fourteenth century).
Greek or Hebrew.194 Writing in the early fifteenth century,
Aymeric de Peyrac, abbot and historian of St-Pierre inThis
Mois-impressive testimony to their art historical ability sug-
sac, noted that the twelfth-century inscriptions in the gests that at least some later viewers could parse the consid-
cloister
eredfor
were difficult to read, and that the same script was used deployment of spolia evident in medieval objects like
the church's dedication stone.195 the shrine of Saint Oda and the Guelph Treasure's book-
These epigraphic observations flank the comparison
shapedto
reliquary (Figs. 10, 11). Of course, not everyone was
Eloy' s cross, a more unusual remark about an artistic
this sensitive. The inventory's remarkably nuanced evalua-
medium. Because the inventory's account of Eloy's cross con-
tion stands in contrast to that of Giles Corrozet, who fifty
years later
sists almost entirely of elements very like the other entries in ignored the shrine's complex facture and attrib-
the inventory, the comparison must point to one specificuted ele-
it directly to Saint Eloy. Yet even this oversimplified
ment, fortunately evident in the cross's extant fragmentpraise relied on some textual research, as Corrozet used the
(Fig. 15): "The surface of the cross, in front and behind,
Grandes chroniques' s praise of Eloy's cross to celebrate the
[covered] with glass resembling jacinths, grenats, emeralds
shrine: "of such great artifice that there is no goldsmith or
and sapphires and [with] many small [parts of] mother-of-
jeweler who does not hold it in great admiration."198
pearl around the circle in the middle of the cross, and a The
fewextended examination of the shrine was not an iso-
lated
small places missing this glass."196 This is the only time the event in late medieval and early modern France; riv
compilers compare two works. They may have been motivatedclaims to relics sparked similar scrutiny of reliquaries.199 In
by the glass work's rarity, which demanded explanation.her excellent study of the early fifteenth-century dispu
With
companion paten is likewise an ancient stone, probably dat

to the first century, whose age did not interest the compilers
In short, unlike art historians, who, imbued by their field
Renaissance origins with an almost genetic need to cherch
l'antique, devote great attention to the presence of ancient ma
rial, the monks were less fascinated.206 We are far from the se
teenth century, when the cup was first associated with th
Ptolemies and when Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Peter
Paul Rubens corresponded about the monastery's classical antiq-

uities.207 The distance can be measured in evaluations of a por-
trait of Augustus (Fig. 8). In 1534, when the portrait decorated
the martyrs' shrine, it was not even singled out among the "three
agate cameos with men's faces."208 In 1634, after its move to the
reliquary of Saint Hilaire, the goldsmiths identified it: "a large
agate with a man's face that the goldsmiths said was the figure of
the emperor Augustus."209
16 Cup of the Ptolemies , 1st century BCE-lst century CE, sardonyx, While the 1534 inventory slights classical antiquities, other
35/s X 7V4 X 47/sin. (8.4 x 18.4 x 12.5 cm). Bibliothèque periods loom larger. Biblical antiquity was represented by the
Nationale de France, Paris, Cabinet des Médailles (artwork in
shallow bowl, made in Iran in the sixth or seventh century and
the public domain; photograph © BnF, provided by RMN-
Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY) depicting a Sassanian ruler, said to be the cup of Solomon
(Fig. 12).210 No last gasp of a waning Middle Ages, such associa-
tions multiplied as time went on. A visitor in 1599 claimed the
between St-Denis and Notre-Dame in Paris, Ingeborg Bahr cup of the Ptolemies had belonged to Solomon.211
explains that the antagonists used several criteria to deter- If the 1534 compilers recognized some objects from the
mine whether an image was historically trustworthy, includ- ancient and biblical past, what we would call medieval antiq-
ing its age, patronage, and intended audience.200 At St-Omer uities mattered much more to them. Both the monastery's
in the 1460s, a dispute over relics of the town's name saint institutional history and its location in northern France con-
pitted the monastery of St-Bertin against the collegiate tributed to this greater attention to medieval objects, which
church of St-Omer.201 A reliquary at St-Bertin had inscrip- aligns these French monks with the German humanists stud-
ied by Wood. "Medieval," of course, is a modern and mono-
tions identifying its contents and an image labeled as Saint
Omer on its corner. St-Omer' s canons claimed that this
lithic term, so it is more appropriate to think in terms of
kings
image had been produced in the last fifty years, a claim and dynasties. The Merovingian and Carolingian
coun-
tered by the monks of St-Bertin, who said that "these dynastieshad were the most important, and the pivotal figures
been written and portrayed on the corner of the châssethose for
most closely associated with the monastery: the Mero-
vingians
ages [de toute ancienneté] ."202 These disputes provoked monks Dagobert, St-Denis 's legendary founder, and Eloy,
and laymen to inspect objects for signs of age and who decorated it; and the Carolingian Charles the Bald,
compli-
cated facture, the same historically minded scrutiny whose
of oldlargesse made him a veritable second founder.212 For
objects seen at St-Denis. the audience in 1534 these dynasties stood at a great and
measurable temporal distance, from each other, and from
Art Historical Imagination at St-Denis the present.
The desirable
Having used the inventory to discover the skills and expertise of match between an institution's objects and its his-
two groups of witnesses, we are prepared to consider tory
howwas common in the Middle Ages. Mariaux terms this
these
"projective memory,"
skills might inform the art historical imagination at St-Denis in Amy Remensnyder, "imaginative memo-
ry."213
the first third of the sixteenth century. This imagination Foundation legends were so strong at Moissac that the
differs
townspeople
from ours. Believing that great objects deserve great origins, theidentified Christ in the church's tympanum as Cló-
monks of St-Denis were less interested in periodizing
vis, objects
the monastery's legendary founder; at Magdeburg old images
than in personalizing them: as Mariaux writes, "all treasure
of Christleads
and Mary were taken as portraits of Otto I and Edith, his
queen.214 The
back to the past through the use of names that act as elements of habit was recognized already in the fifteenth cen-
a legendary heritage of myths and events."203 tury. In the "Roman de Girart de Roussillon" presented to Philip
The monks' understanding of their heritage dominated their
the Good of Burgundy, Jean Wauquelin notes that people link his-
attributions. This institutional focus explains the inventory's
torical deeds from many different periods to Charlemagne, in
lament for a damaged tomb from Saint Louis's day, on order
the to one
"offer to [Charlemagne] . . . more honor."215 When it
comes
hand, and its generic evaluation of the treasury's Roman to objects owned by monasteries, honor runs in the other
antiqui-
ties, on the other.204 As we have seen, the monasterydirection
had many- from legendary patron to institution.
The monastic approach to objects echoes the monks'
classical gems, but only a single work was labeled "antique"
(Fig. 7) . The object now known as the cup of the Ptolemies
approach todid
relics, which valued identified body parts more than
not receive that name until 1644 (Fig. 16); in the 1534 unidentified
inventory ones.216 However, whereas any old body part might
it is simply "an agate chalice with two handles and a be a saint,
foot all an
inobject needs to stir interest before its history is
one piece, carved all around with several trees, heads of men,
sought, and man-made objects invited a different sort of scrutiny
of beasts and birds and several other strange [things]."
than bits ofIts
bone. So: How did monks select the objects on which
17 St-Denis chancel screen, 8th-9th

century, marble, 38V2 x 79V2 x 57/s in.
(98 x 202 x 15 cm). Musée du Louvre,
Paris, Département des Antiques,
Reserve MA 2977 (artwork in the public
domain; photograph by René-Gabriel
Ojéda, © RMN-Grand Palais/ Art
Resource, NY)
to project their memory? Was it only wishful thinking, in which

the object deemed best was associated with the most important
person from the monastery's past? Or does their personalization
follow criteria we can recover?
Remensnyder's study of Conques supplies some answ-

ers.217 St. Foy's treasury included a reliquary with fragments
of Christ's body, dating to the tenth or eleventh century. At
some point in the twelfth century, the monks invented a glo-
rious history, claiming that it was a gift from Charlemagne.218
Remensnyder demonstrates that the monks did not just pick
a striking object and invent a desirable history for it. They
knew that Charlemagne was their founder, that he had
acquired a relic of Christ's foreskin, and that their old reli-
quary had unnamed parts of Christ's body. They determined
the reliquary's Carolingian provenance by aligning what they
saw with what they knew.
The monks of St-Denis thought similarly in the twelfth century
18 Entombment of Chńst, ca. 1072, fresco. S. Angelo in Formis
in connecting two panels from an earlier chancel screen, proba- (artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author)
bly dating from the eighth or ninth century, to the legendary
consecration of Dagobert' s church; one panel survives in the
Louvre (Fig. 17). 219 The legend, first elaborated in the twelfth several objects: a chalice that belonged to Saint Denis, a cru-
century, held that Christ had consecrated the church the nightcifix that spoke aloud about the church's miraculous conse-
before the scheduled ceremony, healing a leper and charging cration, Clovis's baptismal font, and Charlemagne's chess set
him to testify to Christ's action. The leper, eventually named(Figs. 19, 24, 21). While these objects arrived at the monas-
Saint Peregrin, became an important protagonist in the mon-tery at various dates, some perhaps as far back as the seventh
astery's history, and these panels from the old chancel screencentury, these identities are first attested in the inventory or
were identified as his tombstone. Two factors contributed to this in closely contemporary documents. Before examining their
reorientation of the object's meaning. First, it must have stood significance, we must acknowledge that the monks did not
out as an unusual element in the church, inviting explanation. differentiate between these newly invented provenances and
Second, the chancel's strigillated carving was broadly recognized those of long standing. We have seen that many of the prove-
as ancient by medieval viewers; among other instances, Christ is nances they knew were secured either through markings on
placed in a strigillated tomb in the eleventh-century Entomb-the object, written records, or the oral tradition so powerful
ment from S. Angelo in Formis (Fig. 18) and in the twelfth-cen- at a memory center like St-Denis. Such evidentiary scaffold-
tury St. Albans Psalter.220 Early Christian and Merovingian ing probably reassured the community that their newer iden-
sarcophagi were frequently reused for the burial of significant tifications were as trustworthy as those known from heraldry
figures in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe, indicating theiror inscriptions.
perception as a class possessing an antique dignity.221 Identifying The inventory does not reveal how these identities were
determined. Instead, the demonstration of the monks' atten-
the chancel screen as the leper's tomb, then, followed a two-step
process: a recognition of its significance and antiquity, based ontive and comparative scrutiny enables us to envision how this
skill fueled the "projective," "imaginative" memory that com-
comparisons with similar objects, followed by a match of its status
to the monastery's history. bined equal measures of high hopes and art historical rea-
The monks of St-Denis still practiced this approach in the soning. For example, the same sort of comparison that
later Middle Ages, when new provenances were invented for linked the cross of Saint Eloy to the martyrs' shrine probably
19 Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Chalice of Saint Denis, 17th

century, watercolor on paper. Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris, Est. Reserve AA-53-FOL, fol. 95 (artwork in the public
domain; photograph provided by the BnF)
informs the attribution of the chalice of Saint Denis, a lost 20 Ewer, late lOth-early 11th century, lid: 11th century, rock
object known from Peiresc's drawing (Fig. 19). 222 A Fatimid crystal and gold, 9Vz x 5 */2 in. (24 x 13.5 cm). Musée du Louvre,
glass vessel set in a medieval mount, it is not mentioned prior Paris (artwork in the public domain; photograph by Peter Willi,
© RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
to its identification as the saint's chalice in the early sixteenth
century. What led to this identification? It might have
resulted from simple, credulous reasoning: first, Denis, as a
bishop, would have had a chalice; second, it would be good Suger's chalice. The treasury had another Fatimid vessel, a
to have his chalice; third, therefore, let's say he owned this pitcher, decorated with birds and bearing an Arabic inscrip-
chalice. This approach probably did lead to the identification tion that the inventory describes as "strange letters [lettres
of objects such as the inkwell of Saint Denis, a unique work estranges ]" (Fig. 20). 224 The carved glass of both these objects
whose presence in the treasury was only explicable by associ- recalled the cup of Solomon (Fig. 12), signaling an old, East-
ating it with the sainted author.223 ern origin appropriate for Saint Paul's famous Athenian con-
Chalices, however, are far from unique: the 1534 inventory vert. Avinoam Shalem argues that in the later Middle Ages,
counts fifteen. Four of these had heraldry and/ or inscrip- the association between "pseudo-Kufic inscriptions . . . [and]
tions that indicated more recent origins, leaving eleven. Of Biblical figures and Christian saints suggests . . . that Arabic
these, four were classed as "ancienne façon." In this case letters may have been interpreted as ancient Hebrew script
"ancienne façon" seems to imply old-fashioned rather than or as letters used in early Christianity."225 Indeed, the
ancient, for the four works so labeled did not include the pitcher's appearance led Jacques Doublet, the monastery's
Fatimid vessel, Suger's chalice, and the cup of the Ptolemies seventeenth-century historian, to report in 1625 that it had
(Figs. 19, 5, 16). These were the monastery's three most spec- been used in Solomon's Temple.226
tacular chalices, the most appropriate for association with the A similar sort of comparison probably contributed to the
saint. identification of the chess set as Charlemagne's (Fig. 21). 227
Three factors could inform the identification of these cha- The set was made in southern Italy, in the late eleventh cen-
lices. The cup of the Ptolemies bore an inscription naming it As with the chalice of Saint Denis, we do not know when
tury.
as a gift of Charles the Bold, and it had never been associated this work arrived at the monastery. It is not mentioned before
with Saint Denis; this long reputation may have protected the 1505 inventory, which assigned it to Charlemagne without
the cup's identity from drifting. The Fatimid crystal cup assessing
had its value. The 1534 inventory reports more effusively:
no such associations - as far as we can tell, it was without an
"a complete game of chess ... in ivory . . . which the religious
existing story. Moreover, its exotic appearance distinguished say to be the game of Charlemagne, . . . very magnificent things,
it from the prized sardonyx and Western metalwork of estimated to have cost more than two thousands ecus."
Several factors probably associated the work with Charle- a donation from Louis XI, in 1480. These old crucifixes were
magne. The monks must have recognized that the pieces not the only Romanesque sculptures taken as sacred; some
were very old; observers who could parse the different styles statues of the Virgin and Child met the same reception, like
of metalwork on the martyrs' shrine would certainly recognize the one pilgrims visited in the church of Notre-Dame in Bou-
that the chessmen differed from contemporary ivory carving. logne-sur-Mer, said to have arrived miraculously by boat in
Their magnificence demanded a great patron; since chess was Merovingian days.237
a courtly game, that patron ought to be aristocratic; a chess The story told about St-Denis 's wooden cross is part of this
set of Saint Denis would be nonsensical.228 These factors may broad reception of Romanesque sculptures. The other stories
have sufficed to identify the objects with Charlemagne. usually point to the object's apostolic origins, but at St-Denis,
Were this the case, Dagobert and Charles the Bald were three factors led the monks to assign the cross a more local
arguably more prestigious candidates, given their closer links meaning. First, St-Denis already had a copy of the Volto Santo
to the monastery. I believe one further factor contributed: in the funerary chapel of Blanche of Navarre.238 Second, unlike
other objects in the treasury already identified with Charle- Cénac, Charroux, Boulogne, and Lucca, St-Denis had a miracu-
magne, including his crown, Crest, and sword.229 In addition lous origin story that exerted a gravitational pull as time passed
to making it plausible that the chess set might be and the cross's age became distinctive. Finally, the cross's loca-
Charlemagne's, these objects supplied comparative material. tion, on the church's main axis and just behind the martyrs'
The handle of Charlemagne's sword, a composite object first shrine, invited attention and demanded explanation. It was
documented in 1271, features twelfth-century dragons with also quite close to the chapel of St. Peregrin, the healed leper
alert ears, broad cheeks, and wide eyes like those of the whose relics were kept in the first chapel north of the
horses in the chess set (Fig. 22). 250 Additionally, St-Denis ambulatory's axial chapel. Its location can help us understand
owned an ivory horn, which, like the chess set, was first men- why this wooden cross, and not the other one mentioned in
tioned in 1505 (Fig. 23). 231 This object was naturally con- the inventory, acquired a miraculous history.
nected with Roland, as were many oliphants in church The strategy of comparison is even clearer in the identifica-
treasuries.252 Made in Spain in the eleventh century, it has tion of the porphyry tub dating to the late Roman Empire; it
the same hallmarks of early Romanesque art seen in the received limited mention in the inventory, which calls it "a
chess set, and the interlaced figures in its ornamental band tub of porphyry, not appraised, and of unknown value"
recall those on the pommel of Charlemagne's sword. Thus, (Fig. 24). 239 We know from other sources, though, that the
as the monks inspected the chess set, they would have found work was assigned an important history. The Grandes chro-
numerous formal similarities with objects they knew were niques credits Dagobert with its donation, part of his endow-
linked to Charlemagne. These comparisons also help explain ment of the monastery.240 By 1500, it was identified as the
why the chess set was not assigned to Dagobert, who was asso- tub in which Clovis had been baptized, as in the painting by
ciated with Eloy' s distinctive metalworking, or Charles the the Master of St. Giles once part of the larger altarpiece that
Bald, who had no ivory works like the chessmen. included the Mass of Saint Giles (Fig. 25). 241
Another historicist invention involves a gilded wooden This identification probably arose when someone recog-
cross in the grotto beneath and behind the martyrs' shrine, nized the formal similarities between the tub and the
one of two in the collection. The monks declared it "to be almost identical basin at the Lateran Baptistery in Rom
the crucifix which was first put in the church, which spoke a basin cited in the famous Donation of Constantine
(Fig. 26). According to the Donation, Constantine

on the day of its dedication, to testify that God, our creator,
rous, was advised to cure himself by commissioning
had dedicated the church, in the presence of a leper who
large tub in which to bathe in the blood of freshly slaug
had shut himself in for the night."233 This is a late entry into
the narrative of the church's miraculous consecration; the tered infants. Constantine proceeded with this plan u
earliest document I know of the cross's identification comes taking pity on the children's mothers, he instead acc
from the German pilgrim Arnold von Harff, who saw it dur- baptism from Pope Sylvester, which cured him. The
ing his extensive travels in 1495-96.234 Barely known today,was well known: it was the first text in St-Denis 's thir-
teenth-century Book of Privileges, and Jacobus de Vora-
the cross was sufficiently famous to attract Jean Calvin's scorn
and the destructive blows of the Huguenots in 1567.235 gine included it in the Golden Legends Life of Saint
Although the cross is lost, we can reconstruct something ofSylvester.242 The tub attracted pilgrims in the late fif-
its reception. The monks must have thought it venerable to teenth century: visiting the Lateran Baptistery in 1486,
Lengherand saw "the font where the emperor Constan-
claim that it was present at the church's seventh-century
founding. Given its perceived age and medium, it was almosttine was baptized, that he had had made in order to put
certainly an eleventh- or twelfíh-century crucifix, one of a the blood of several innocents in it and to bathe in it
class of objects that stirred viewers' historical imaginations because he had leprosy; and it is marvelously large and
across Europe in the later Middle Ages. The best known of deep."243
these is the Volto Santo in Lucca's cathedral, a Romanesque Clovis was France's Constantine, its first Christian ruler,
work later attributed to Nicodemus. In the early fifteenth who like Constantine had converted to Christianity following
century, Aymeric de Peyrac compared Lucca's cross, which a divinely ordained victory won wearing a heaven-sent
he knew by reputation, to two he had seen locally, one at emblem. The formal similarities between the tubs in Rome
Charroux, the other at Cénac.236 Aymeric claimed that Cén-and St-Denis suggested that they played analogous roles in
ac's cross was the most beautiful, the product of angelic the lives of these analogous rulers. For St-Denis, the tub's
labors; Charroux's remained sufficiently celebrated to attractidentification had a special virtue, gaining the abbey a relic
34 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2OI6 VOLUME XCVIII NUMBER 1
21 Pieces from the chess set of

Charlemagne, late 11th century, ivory.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris, Cabinet des Médailles (artwork in
the public domain; photograph by
Erich Lessing, provided by Art
Resource, NY)
These invented provenances personalize these objects

ways that mattered for the monks. If such personaliza
dominates monastic memory, the determination of wh
objects deserved it relied on the sort of art historical and
thetic judgments we see in the inventory. These judgmen
also helped determine their possible origins, as histori
informed formal comparison was a tool toward personaliz
tion. These provenances demonstrate how desire and reaso
"faith and skepticism," contributed to the monks' interp
tion of the evidence of objects.245
Though my account stresses the role of reason, I do not w
to overlook the fragility of its results. The Crest of Char
magne, for example, shows that even prestigious, documen
provenances could come undone (Fig. 4). The Crest is f
mentioned in a tenth-century account of St-Denis, and agai
the twelfth by Suger; neither named its origin. Rigord, S
Denis's early thirteenth-century historian, is the first to say
Charles the Bald gave the Crest to St-Denis, a claim repeate
the Grandes chroniques .246 When the inventories of 1505
1534 identified the Crest as Charlemagne's, then, the c
pilers contradict the abbey's earlier accounts. It migh
tempting to see in this shift a decline in the local fortune
Charles the Bald and an ascent in the reputation of his gran
ther - also first identified in these years as the owne
the monastery's great chess set. However, this new ident
did not endure: a 1600 document returns the work to
Charles the Bald, as does Doublet.247 The Crest's oscil
between Charles the Bald and Charlemagne demonstr
both the desire to fix objects in history and the difficult
doing so.
22 Sword of Charlemagne, 10th-14th centuries, gold, lapis
lazuli, steel, and glass, hilt 7Vs x 87/s in. (18 x 22.6 cm). Musée Such drift is not unique to St-Denis. Remensnyder com-
du Louvre, Paris (artwork in the public domain; photograph by ments on memory's fluidity and impermanence at Conques,
Daniel Arnaudet, © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY) and there was similar oscillation in Hildesheim, where
objects were variously associated with Bernward or Gode-
of Clovis, till then largely the pride of Reims, where he was hard.248 At Hildesheim and Conques, though, the drift is
baptized and his chrism kept, and the Parisian church ofcontrolled because there were few players and less history. St-
Ste-Geneviève, which showed off his tomb to importantDenis was nine centuries old in 1534, and it enjoyed France's
. . 944
visitors. most dignified roster of royal and saintly donors. Given the
23 Horn of Roland, 11th century,

carved elephant tusk, 20 x 4V4 in. (51 x
10.8 cm). Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris, Cabinet des Médailles
(artwork in the public domain;
photograph © BnF, provided by RMN-
Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
24 Tub, 307-425 CE, porphyry, 19V2 x

66V2 x 27V2 in. (49.5 x 169 x 70 cm).
Musée du Louvre, Paris (artwork in the
public domain; photograph by Hervé
Lewandowski, © RMN-Grand
Palais/ Art Resource, NY)
prestigious attributions that the crest might receive, it is strik- The St-Denis inventory thus demonstrates that while
ing that it alternates only between Charlemagne and his monks may have been imaginative and projective in their
grandson, never entering the orbit of the patron Saint Denis, approach to old objects, they were not fantastic, but worked
the founder Dagobert, or later kings such as Philip Augustus with the complex evidence that close scrutiny provided. This
or Saint Louis. The range of plausible attributions was combination of imagination, history, and attention enabled
restricted by the combined strength of multiple forces: writ- the treasury, against the pressure of time and decay, to
ten evidence; the metalwork's similarity to Charles the Bald's carry institutional history as it had from the monastery's
altar frontal; and its difference from earlier works (Eloy's foundation. This self-centeredness also explains why, though
cross) and later ones (Philip Augustus's cross). commissioned by the Renaissance king who welcomed
3ß ART BULLETIN MARCH 2016 VOLUME XCVIII NUMBER 1
Erik Inglis is professor at Oberlin College. The author of Jean Fouquet

and the Invention of France: Art and Nation after the Hundred
Years War (London: Yale University Press , 2011), he is currently
researching the medieval art historical imagination [Art Department ,
Oberlin College , Oberlin , Ohio 44074].
Notes
Heather Galloway exemplifies close looking, and she taught me to recognize

it in this inventory. Christina Neilson's work on Verrocchio's material exper-
tise has also been inspirational. I am grateful to Marisa Bass and Stephanie
Porras for the chance to air this research at their "Other Antiquities" panel at
the 2012 Renaissance Society of America conference, where Hanns Hubach,
Allison Stielau, and Mark Trowbridge offered valuable feedback. I thank Kirk
Ambrose, The Art Bulletin's editor, for his role in shaping the article; the two
anonymous readers he found, whose generous and stimulating critiques
broadened its scope and eliminated errors; and Lory Frankel, whose copyedit-
ing caught more mistakes and made everything read better. All remaining
faults and infelicities are my responsibility. Unless otherwise noted, the trans-
lations are mine; in these I have received valuable help from Elizabeth Hamil-
ton, Steve Huff, William L. North, Kirk Ormand, Matthew Senior, and Drew
Wilburn. I thank Joseph Romano and Sebastiaan Faber for their assistance
with the images and the Oberlin Art Department's Jody Maxmin Fund for
underwriting them. I dedicate the article to Susan Kane, who introduced me
to art history.
1. For an overview of treasury objects, see the fundamental work of Emile

Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France, vol. 3, L'inventaire de la
propriété : Églises et trésors des églises du commencement du Ville a la fin du Xle
siècle (Lille: Faculté Catholique, 1936), 155-273; and Anton Legner, ed.,
Ornamenta ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik, exh. cat. (Cologne:
Stadt Köln, 1985). For reliquaries in particular, see Cynthia Hahn,
Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries,
400-circa 1204 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2012); and Martina Bagnoli et al., eds., Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics,
and Devotion in Medieval Europe, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University
25 Master of St. Giles, Baptism of Clóvis , ca. 1500, oil on panel, Press, 2010).
24V4 X 177/s in. (61.5 x 45.5 cm). National Gallery of Art, 2. Pierre-Alain Mariaux, "Collecting (and Display) ," in A Companion to
Washington, D.C., Samuel Kress Collection, 1952.2.15 (artwork Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad
in the public domain; photograph provided by the National Rudolph (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006), 213-32, at 223-25. Mariaux's
article provides an excellent overview and bibliography of the field.
Gallery of Art)
See also his "Der Schatz als Ort der Erinnerung - Vorbemerkungen
über die Neuordunung der Kirchenschätze im 12. Jahrhundert," in
Vom Ungang mit Schätzen, ed. Thomas Kühtreiber (Vienna: Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007), 345-57; and
Cynthia Hahn, "Relics and Reliquaries: The Construction of Imperial
Memory and Meaning, with Particular Attention to Treasuries at
Conques, Aachen and Quedlinburg," in Representing History, 900-1300,
ed. Robert Maxwell (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2010), 133-48.
3. Adam Cohen, The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy and Reform in Eleventh-Century Ger-
many (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 90-96; Jen-
nifer Kingsley, "Picturing the Treasury: The Power of Objects and the Art of
Memory in the Bernward Gospels," Gesta 50 (201 1) : 19-39, at 27-28; idem,
The Bernward Gospels: Art, Memory and the Episcopate in Medieval Germany (Uni-
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014) , 15-32.
4. I thank William L. North for this graceful translation of the nuanced
Latin original: "Nempe moderniores aurifices asseverare soient, quod ad
praesens vix aliquis sit relictus, qui quamvis peritissimus in aliis exstet
operibus, hujuscemodi tamen gemmarii et inclusoris subtilitate valeat
per multa annorum curricula, eo quod de usu recesserit, ad liquidum
experientiam consequi," Gesta Dagoberti I, regis Francorum, in Fredegarii et
aliorum chronica: Vitae sanctorum, Scriptorum rerum Mererovingicarum, ed.
B. Krusch (Hannover: Monumenta Germaniae Histórica, 1888), vol. 11,
407, cited in Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique, 185-86.
26 Tub, basalt. Lateran Baptistery, Rome (artwork in the public 5. Guibert of Nogent, Monodies, in " Monodies " and "On the Relics of the
Saints, " trans. Toseph Mcalhany and Tay Rubenstein (London: Penguin
domain; photograph by the author)
Books, 2011), 82.
6. Ibid., 88.
Leonardo and Benvenuto Cellini to France, the com- 7. Philippe Buc, "Conversion of Objects: Suger of Saint-Denis and Mein-
werk of Paderborn," Viator 28 (1997): 99-143, at 127. For the fate of
pilers focus their appreciative attention on what we callSuger's memory, see Erik Inglis, "Remembering and Forgetting Suger at
Saint-Denis, 1151-1534: An Abbot's Reputation
medieval art: the seventh-century cross of Saint Eloy, the between Memory and
History," Gesta 54 (2015): 219-43.
seventh-, ninth-, and twelfth-century shrine of Saint Denis,
8. Herman of Tournai, The Restoration of the Monastery of Saint Martin of
and that once-glorious wreck, the thirteenth-century tombTournai, trans. Lynn H. Nelson (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University
of Alphonse d'Eu. of America Press, 1996), 74-75.
9. Jules Labarte, ed., Inventaire du mobilier de Charles V, roi de France (Paris: 32. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Tresor de Saint-Denis, vol. 1,61.
Imprimerie Nationale, 1879), nos. 365 (Dagobert's cup), 256 33. André Lapeyre and Rémy Sch eurer, Les notaires et secrétaires du roi sous les
(Charlemagne's cup), 2925 (Godefroy's cross), 363, 364, 370, 372, 450, régnés de Louis XI, Châties VIII et Louis XII ( 1461-1515 ) (Paris: Bibliothèque
491, 498, 614, 2738, 3046, 3303, 3304 (Saint Louis's objects). Nationale, 1978) ; and Sylvie Charton-Le Clech, Chancellerie et culture au XVIe
10. Ibid., no. 491. For Charles V's investment in art associated with Saint siècle: Les notaires et secrétaires du roi de 1515 à 1547 (Toulouse: Presses Univer-
Louis, see Bernd Carqué, Stil und Erinnerung: Französische Hofkunst im sitaires du Mirail, 1993) .
Zeitalter Karls V. und im Zeitalter seiner Deutung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck 34. The first two of whom are twice referred to in the inventory; Montes-
8c Ruprecht, 2004). For Louis's objects in Blanche of Navarre's collec- quiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 1, 82, par. 13, 221, par. 2.
tion, see Marguerite Keane, "Most Beautiful and Next Best: Value in the
Collection of a Medieval Queen "Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008) : 35. Sylvie Le Clech-Charton, "Les notaires et secrétaires du roi et la com-
360-73; and Brigitte Buettner, "Le système des objets dans le testament mande artistique officielle: Service du roi, des grands, de la ville,"
de Blanche de Navarre," Clio 19 (2004): 37-62. Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes 146 (1988): 307-35, at 312-13.
11. Mariaux, "Collecting (and Display)," 223-25. 36. In addition to Doc (Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 1,
176, 178, 196, 221,254, 272) andVérard (213, 221), the other named
12. Andreas Tacke, ed., "Ich armer sundiger mensch": Heiligen- und Reliquien- monks are Jean Chambellan, cantor (221, 275), Germain Lepere, sub-
kult am Ubergang zum konfessionellen Zeitalter (Götttingen: Wallstein, treasurer (221), Ithier d'Asnieres, subprior and ceynier (an official
2006) ; Livia Cardenas, Die Textur des Bildes: Das Heiltumsbuch im Kontext
responsible for helping to feed the monks) (256, 259), Louis de May,
religiöser Medialität des Spätmittelalters (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013); quart prieur (246, 250), Louis Benoist, pannetier (the monk responsible
and Bagnoli et al., Treasures of Heaven, 224-29. for the monastery's bread supply) (262), Guillaume Girault, chaplain
13. Philipp Maria Halm and Rudolph Berliner, Das Hallesche Heiltum: Man. and deacon of the abbot (264, 265), Charles Brullart (248), Jean Boyau
Aschaffenb. 14 (Berlin: Deutschen Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1931), (252), and Regnault Dampont (260). The inventory also names a secu-
14, 59. lar priest, Jean Philippe (278).
14. For this painting, and the altarpiece it comes from, see Martha Wolff, 37. Ibid., nos. 199, 200, vol. 1, 220-31, no. 208, vol. 1, 235, no. 314, vol. 1, 276.
ed., Kings , Queens and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France (New 38. Ibid., no. 214, vol. 1, 237-44, no. 4, vol. 1, 89-110; and Gaborit-Chopin,
Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 88-90. Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 13, 92-99.
15. Blaise de Montesquiou-Fezensac with Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Le Trésor 39. The inspectors were at St-Denis on June 1, June 8-10, June 28, and then
de Saint-Denis, vol. 1, Inventane de 1634, vol. 2, Documents divers, vol. 3,
for a continuous span from July 3 to July 13, with two days off: Sunday
Planches et notices (Paris: Éditions A. et J. Picard, 1973-77), nos. 188, 189, July 9 and the feast of Saint Benedict on Tuesday, July 1 1 .
205, vol. 1, 207-12, 213-15, 233-35, vol. 2, 292-303, 304-8, 367-71; and
Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, ed., Le Trésor de Saint-Denis, exh. cat. (Paris: 40. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 19-20, vol. 1, 127-46.
Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1991), nos. 1, 48, 56-59, 239-41. 41. Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des " Weifenschatzes , " 44-47.
16. For the never-finished nature of treasuries, see Cynthia Hahn, "The 42. A similar emphasis on monetary value motivated the Protestant invento-
Meaning of Early Medieval Treasuries," in Reliquiare im Mittelalter: ries of Catholic treasuries prior to their metal objects being melted
Beiträge einer Tagung des kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der Universität Ham- down; Allison Stielau, "The Weight of Plate in Early Modern Inventories
burg 2004, Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte 5, ed. Bruno and Secularization lists," Journal of Art Historiography 1 1 (2014): 1-30.
Reudenbach and Gia Toussaint, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 43. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 1, 221. Boockmann, Die
2011), 1-20, esp. 1-3, 14-16; and Lucas Burkart, "Das Verzeichnis als verloren Teile des "Weifenschatzes, " 56-58, contrasts the materialist
Schatz: Überlegungen zu einem Inventarium Thesauri Romane Ecclesie der
approach of the St. Blaise inventory with an earlier emotional outpour-
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana," Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen
ing in Braunschweig during a relic translation.
Archiven und Bibliotheken 86 (2006): 144-207, at 166-69.
44. For such approaches, see Brigitte Buettner, "From Bones to Stones:
17. Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse (Munich: Prestei
Reflections on Jeweled Reliquaries," in Reudenbach and Toussaint, Reli-
Verlag, 1967). quiare im Mittelalter, 43-59; Beate Fricke, "Matter and Meaning of
1 8. Patrick de Winter, The Sacral Treasure of the Guelphs (Cleveland: Cleveland Mother-of-Pearl: The Origins of Allegory in the Spheres of Things,"
Museum of Art, 1985) ; and Andrea Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des Gesta 51 (2012): 35-53; Christina Normore, "Navigating the World of
"Weifenschatzes" : Eine Ü bersicht anhand des Reliquienverzeichnisses von 1482 der Stifts- Meaning," Gesta 51 (2012): 19-34; Ulrich Henze, "Edelsteinallegorese
kirche St. Blasius in Braunschweig (Göttingen: Vandenhoek 8c Ruprecht, 1997) . im Lichte mittelalterlicher Bild- und Reliquienverehrung," Zeitschrift für
19. Kingsley, "Picturing the Treasury," 29. Kunstgeschichte 54 (1991): 428-51; and Christel Meier, Gemma Spiritalis:
Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins
20. Joseph Salvatore Ackley, "Re-approaching the Western Medieval Church 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: W. Fink, 1977).
Treasury Inventory, c. 800-1250," Journal of Art Historiography 11 (2014):
1-37. See also Burkart, "Verzeichnis als Schatz"; and Christina Normore, 45. The entry for Saint Benedict's arm reliquary (no. 20) presents a
"On the Archival Rhetoric of Inventories: Some Records of the Valois good example. The specialists identified plain amethysts (elements
47 and 153), an "amatiste orientalle" (element 170), an "amatiste
Burgundian Court "Journal of the History of Collections 23 (201 1 ) : 215-27.
d'Allemaigne" (element 171), multiple "rubys de Alexandrie"
21. E. F. Van Der Grin ten, Elements of Art Historiography in Medieval Texts (The (including elements 7, 8, and 10), and three kinds of pearl: plain
Hague: Mārtiņus Nijhoff, 1969). I am grateful to the Art Bulletin reviewer (element 7), brutes (elements 9, 26, and 294) and plattes (element
who pointed me to this work. 177); Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 1, 129-46.
22. Beginning with Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, "Toward a Jenny Stratford notes that "rubies of Alexandria" are comparatively
New Model of Renaissance Anachronism," Art Bulletin 87 (2005) : 403- common, while the Duke of Bedford's inventories include a rare
15; and idem, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010). reference to emeralds of Alexandria; The Bedford Inventories: The
Worldly Goods of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France 1389-1435
23. Christopher S. Wood, Forgery, Replica , Fiction: Temporalities of German
Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 23.
(London: Society of Antiquaries, 1993), 211, 333. For Venetian gem
brokers in Alexandria, see Maria Pia Pedani, "Balas Rubies for the
24. Ibid., 35. King of England (1413-15)," Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies 7
25. Ibid., 55, 109-10; and Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 12-13, (2004): 1-13.
107, 128-35, 242, 246-47. 46. While the 1380 inventory lists only plain amethysts, it identifies three
26. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis. kinds of ruby (plain, d'Alexandre, and d'Orient [Labarte, Mobiiierde
Charles V, nos. 8, 20, 25, 34, 54, 160, 555]) and five kinds of pearl (plain,
27. Christopher Hohler, review of Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-
brutes, d'Escosse, d'Orient, and de comptes [nos. 1, 2, 25-27, 46, 103, 612,
Denis, vols. 2, 3, Burlington Magazine 121 (1979): 452.
2292, 2644]), and also both sapphires and balas rubies d'Orient (nos.
28. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 1,61. 563, 2937, 3444).
29. First published by Henri Omont, "Inventaires du trésors de Saint-Denis 47. The niello works appear on the arm reliquary of Saint Cucufat (Montes-
en 1505 et 1739," Mémoires de la Société de l'Histoire de Paris et de l'île de quiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint Denis, no. 273, vol. 1, 260) and the belt of
France2S (1901): 163-212; and reprinted in Montesquiou-Fezensac, Tré- Saint Eugin (no. 276, vol. 1, 260, 261). For information on medieval metal-
sor de Saint-Denis, vol. 2. 1 cite the 1505 inventory from Montesquiou- working techniques, see R. W. Lightbown, Secular Goldsmiths' Work in Medie-
Fezensac's edition. val France: A History (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1978) , 62-68, 75-82.
30. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 1, 60-61, presents 48.
theMontesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 71, 188, vol. 1, 164,
relation between the 1505, 1534, and 1634 inventories. 207-12; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 28, 173-76.
31. Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des " Weifenschatzes , " 46; and Labarte,49. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 64, vol. 1, 161, no.
Mobilier de Charles V, iii, v, 1-2. 169, vol. 1, 199, no. 266, vol. 1, 258; and "Glossary," in "Renaissance
3g ART BULLETIN MARCH 2016 VOLUME XCVIII NUMBER 1
Jewelry in the Alsdorf Collection," by Ian Wardropper et al., special 82. Thomas Head, "Art and Artifice in Ottonian Trier," Gesta 36 (1997): 65-
issue of Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 25, no. 2 (2000): 82; Avinoam Shalem, "Hybride und Assemblagen in mittelalterlichen
111-12 at 112. Schatzkammern: Neue ästhetische Paradigmata im Hinblick auf die
50. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 182, vol. 1, 203. 'Andersheit,'" in Le trésor au Moyen Age: Discours, pratiques et objets, ed.
Lucas Burkart et al. (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2010),
51. Ibid., no. 117, vol. 1, 184; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no.
297-313; Beate Fricke, "Schatzgestalten: Diebesgut, Liebespfand und
32, 202-3. Fesselkünstler am Werk," in ibid., 265-81; and Hélène Cambier,
52. Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, nos. 2, 4, 23, 366, 371, 978, 1312, 1666, "Fragments from Older Reliquaries Reset in New Ones: Memorial or
2129, 2609, 2663, 2732; for definitions of these terms, see 35 n. 1, 123 n. Practical Act?" in Objects of Memory / Memory of Objects: The Artworks [s¿c] as
1. a Vehicle of the Past in the Middle Ages, ed. Alžběta Filipova, Zuzana Fran-
tova, and Francesco Lovino (Brno: Masaryk University, 2014), 26-43.
53. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 298, 135, vol. 1, 270,
189. 83. Neil Stratford, Northern Romanesque Enamels, Catalogue of Medieval Enamels
in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1993),
54. Ackley, "Re-approaching the Western Medieval Church Treasury
vol. 2, 94; see also Cambier, "Fragments from Older Reliquaries," 35-36;
Inventory," 25-27; see also Van Der Grinten, Elements of Art Historiogra-
Bagnoli et al., Treasures of Heaven, 176-77; and Glenn Gates, Susan La
phy, 6-10.
Niece, and Terry Drayman-Weisser, "A Shrine Reunited? The Collabora-
55. Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, nos. 146, 849, 2101,1037, 1159, 1040. tive, Scientific Study of Two Reliquary Panels from the Walters Art
56. Stratford, Bedford Inventories, 187. Museum and the British Museum," in Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary
Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, ed. Anna Harn-
57. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 19, 110, vol. 1, 127,
181. den, James Robinson, and Lloyd de Beer (London: British Museum,
2014), 116-25.
58. Ibid., no. 1, elements 16, 17, 37, vol. 1, 78, 79. "Spinel" is the modern
84. Dale Kinney, "Spolia," in Rudolph, Companion to Medieval Art, 233-52.
term for balas ruby; see Pedani, "Balas Rubies," 3-4.
See also Normore, "Navigating the World of Meaning," 29-31; Cambier,
59. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 15, element 51, vol. 1, "Fragments from Older Reliquaries"; Anthony Cutler, "Reuse or Use?
123: "quatre fermilletz des quatre boutz ouvroient fort subtilement à Theoretical and Practical Attitudes toward Objects in the Early Middle
charnieres à visse."
Ages," in Ideologie e pratiche del reimpiego nell'alto medioevo, Settimane di
60. Ibid., no. 283, vol. 2, 416, vol. 1, 262. Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 46 (Spoleto:
Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1999), 1055-80; and Pierre-
61. Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, nos. 1, 2084; see also nos. 371, 1828.
Alain Mariaux, "Trésor, mémoire, collection à Saint-Maurice d'Agaune,
62. According to Christine de Pisan, Hennequin and Gilles Mallet had the 1 128-1225," in Burkart et al., Trésor au Moyen Age, 333-44.
privilege of showing Charles's crown to the visiting emperor Charles IV
85. Hallesche Heiltum, Hofbibliothek, Aschaffenburg, hs. 14, fol. 356; and
in 1378; "Christine de Pizan's The Book of the Deeds and Good Character of
Bagnoli et al., Treasures of Heaven, 228-29.
King Charles V, the Wise," ed. and trans. Judith Laird (PhD diss., Univer-
sity of Colorado, 1996), chap. 45, 251. 86. Hermann Fillitz, Die Gruppe der Magdeburger Elfenbeintafeln: Eine Stiftung
Kaiser Ottos des Grossen für den Magdeburger Dom (Mainz: Philip von
63. Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, nos. 649, 732, 2902.
Zabern, 2001).
64. Ackley, "Re-approaching the Western Medieval Church Treasury
87. Livia Cárdenas, "Albrecht of Brandenburg - Herrschaft und Heilige:
Inventory," 25.
Fürstliche Repräsentation im Medium des Heiltumsbuch," in Tacke,
65. Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des "Weifenschatzes, " 55-56, no. 120, 149, " Ich armer sundiger mensch, " 239-70, esp. 260-61; and Cárdenas, Textur
no. 42, 139. des Bildes, 240-81.
66. Ibid., no. 8, 130; de Winter, Sacral Treasure, 36-40; and Holger Klein, ed.,88. Fillitz, Magdeburger Elfenbeintafeln, 30. On the place of founders in monas-
Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland tic art historical imagination, see Stephan Albrecht, Die Inszenierung der
Museum of Art (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007), 116-18; see Vergangenheit im Mittelalter: Die Klöster von Glastonbury und Saint-Denis
also Ackley, "Re-approaching the Western Medieval Church Treasury (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003), esp. 183-90; Anne Lombard-
Inventory," 34. Jourdan, "L'invention du 'roi fondateur' à Paris au Xlle siècle: De
67. Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des " Weifenschatzes , " nos. Ill, 120, 122. l'obligation morale au thème sculptural," Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes
155 (1997): 485-542; and Inglis, "Remembering and Forgetting Suger."
68. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 4, element 2, vol. 1, 90; and
Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, 96-98. "Antique" never appears in 89. Halm and Berliner, Hallesche Heiltum, 59: "Eyn Silbernn vbergulter Sarch
Charles V' s inventory. For its varied meanings in sixteenth-century France, mitt viij Elffenbeynen teffeleyn. Doreyn Acht historien ausz den Euange-
see Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French lien geschnitten. Inhalt I heiliger Leib."
Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) , 1 . 90. Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des "Weifenschatzes, " no. 4; de Winter,
69. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 20, elements 67, 155, Sacral Treasure, 21-28, 118-20; trans. Klein, Sacred Gifts, 126-27.
vol. 1, 133, 138. 91. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 25, vol. 1, 149.
70. Ibid., no. 200, element 5, vol. 1, 222; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-
92. Ibid, no. 18, vol. 1, 127: "disoient lesd. orfebvres priseurs qu'il estoict
Denis, no. 61, 282-83. vraysemblable que le dessusd. fonds d'argent n'estoict celuy qui pre-
71. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 28, vol. 1, 150; and mièrement y fust mis et qu'il y en soulloit avoit ung d'or comme lad.
Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 31, 183-87. table, parce qu'il n'estoict doré et l'entablement l'estoict mesmement
dessoubz moings; veu et necessaire."
72. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 3, vol. 1, 89.
93. Ibid., no. 263, vol. 1, 256-57.
73. Ibid., nos. 58, 59, 60, 174, 175, 118, vol. 1, 160-61, 202, 185.
94. Ibid., no. 4, element 309, vol. 1, 110.
74. Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, no. 372.
95. Ibid.
75. Halm and Berliner, Hallesche Heiltum, 11, nos. 10, 141, 260, 263, 264,
327. 96. Ibid., nos. 16, 17, 3, vol. 1, 123-26, 85-89.
76. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 192c, vol. 1, 216. 97. At St. Blaise, most relics were identified by attached inscriptions; when
these were missing, the inventory reports the identity with the phrase "ut
77. Van Der Grinten, Elements of Art Historiography, 47, notes the use of vetus-
creditur"; Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des "Weifenschatzes, " 59, 64,
tas (age) to indicate poor condition. nos. 43, 48.
78. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor tie Saint-Denis, no. 1, element L, vol. 1, 80:
98. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 209, vol. 2, 376. The ori-
"Ung gros ruby de vieille mine, fort glaceux
gins of this identity are unclear. While the 1505 and 1534 inventories list
79. Ibid., no. 108, vol. 1, 181: "Grosses vieilles perles d'Orient
the lantern without ternies
linking it de plu- it is difficult to imagine why a
to Malchus,
sieurs grosseurs." lantern lacking this association would enter the treasury; vol. 1, 236, vol.
2, 376.
80. The impossibility of dating objects with any precision is a leitmotif in
their works; see in particular Wood, Forgery,99.25, Though64, 134-35,
it is worth 194;
noting that and
a year after the inventory, two Parisian
Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 134-46, 281.suspected
goldsmiths, Van of Der Grinten,
Lutheran sympathies, were almost executed;
Elements of Art Historiography, 46, notes that Isidore
E. William of Seville's
Monter, distinction
Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Six-
between vetus and antiquus - "vetus recounts years, antiquus
teenth-Century Parlementscenturies" -
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
was not widely followed in medieval usage; for Press,
the1999), 72.
passage from Isidore,
see 122-23.
100. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 56, 57, vol. 1, 160; and
81. Wood, Forgery, 245. Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 37, 56, 213-15, 262-63.
101. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 27, 195-98, vol. 1, 150, de la muraille d'entre le coeur et la croisée, fermant à deux pantz de
217-20. bois, plusieurs petites pièces ça et la, de cuivre et layton doré, qui de-
102. Ibid., no. 19, vol. 1, 127-29. monstroient y avoir eu autres fois quelque notable et riche ornement de
images; surquoy enquis lesdicts grand prieur, soubz prieur, chantre et
103. Ibid., no. 192b, vol. 1, 216: "l an mil trois cens quatre vingtz douze et six
autres relligieux auroient respondu qu'il y a avoict une Trinité d'argent
/ FUT CY PRESENT CE TABERNACLE ASSIS / CHARLES DE FRANCE, ROY SIRE, LE DONNA.
doré; laquelle fut emportée par les Armaignacs, du temps des guerres.
/ PIERRE ROZETTE LE FIST ET ACHEVA."
Pareillement fuct diet par les desusdicts que, devant icelle Trinité, fut
104. Ibid., no. 295, vol. 1, 269-70, vol. 2, 425, vol. 3, 5, in Michel Felibien, His- inhumé le corps monsieur saint Louis et, sur l'entablement de la sepul-
toire de l'abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France (Paris, 1706), pl. I, letter L. ture, estoict enlevé en argent, de la longueur d'icelluy l'image dudict
saint Louis, laquelle pareillement fut emportée par les dessusdietz
105. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis , no. 273, vol. 1, 260.
Armaignacs." The 1505 account is very close but not identical; vol. 2,
106. Objects with the arms of: France (ibid., nos. 21, 66, 86), Berry (no. 6), 286, 292.
Dauphine (no. 21), Artois (nos. 23, 178), Navarre (no. 318), Brittany
137. Georgia Sommers Wright, "The Tomb of Saint Louis," Journal of the War-
(no. 325), the empire (no. 21), and Bavaria (nos. 21, 137).
burg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 65-82, at 71-72.
107. Ibid., nos. 170, 222, vol. 1, 200, 245.
138. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 77, vol. 1, 167, vol. 2, 190.
108. Ibid., no. 66, vol. 1, 162. Before it broke, the cup was valued at six ecus, one-third the value of the chal-
109. Ibid., nos. 9, 12, 13, 17, 67, vol. 1,. 115-16, 117, 126, 163. ice of Saint Denis (no. 62) and a fraction of the value assigned to the cup of
110. Ibid., no. 55, vol. 1, 160 n. 3. the Ptolemies (no. 69, 6,000 ecus, with its paten) and the chalice of Suger
(no. 71 , 500 ecus) . By 1634 the broken pieces were missing.
111. Ibid., no. 6, vol. 1,112.
139. Ibid., no. 305, vol. 1, 272, vol. 2, 430.
140. Ibid., nos. 91-93, vol. 1, 169-70, vol. 2, 199-200.
113. Ibid., no. 35, vol. 1, 154; see also nos. 23, 223/223bis, 250, 267.
141. Ibid., no. 129, vol. 1, 187, vol. 2, 247.
114. Ibid., nos. 71, 28, vol. 1, 164, 150; Jacques Doublet's 1625 history of the
142. Ibid., no. 134, vol. 1, 189, vol. 2, 251. Montesquiou-Fezensac suggests
monastery was the first to link these objects with Suger in writing, vol. 2,
that this is probably Philippe II de Gamaches, abbot from 1442 to 1464.
178, 117. See also Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 28, 31, 173-
76, 183-87, noting that the inscription of Suger's name on the eagle 143. Ibid., no. 289, vol. 1, 264.
flagon is later. 144. Ibid., no. 290, vol. 1, 265.
115. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 188, vol. 1, 207-12, vol. 145. Ibid., no. 313, vol. 1, 275-76.
2, 292-303.
146. Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, 41 .
116. Ibid., no. 189, vol. 1, 213. Jules Viard, ed., Les grandes chroniques de
France, 10 vols. (Paris: Société de l'Histoire de France, 1920-35), vol. 147. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 2, 532.
2, 133. For the Grandes chroniques, see Gabrielle Spiegel, The Chroni- 148. William Durandus, quoted in Hahn, "Meaning of Early Medieval Treas-
cle Tradition of Saint Denis: A Survey (Brookline, Mass.: Classical Folia uries," 16.
Editions, 1978); Bernard Guenée, "Les Grandes chroniques de France. 149. Bagnoli et al., Treasures of Heaven, 87, 143, 230-31.
Le Roman aux roys (1274-1518)," in Les lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre
Nora, 3 vols. (1984-92; reprint, Paris: Gallimard, 1997), vol. 1, 739- 150. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 234, 240, 274, 275, vol.
1,248-49, 250, 260-61.
58; idem, "Histoire d'un succès," in Les grandes chroniques de France,
by François Avril, Marie-Thérèse Gousset, and Guenée (Paris: Phi- 151. Stratford, Bedford Inventories, 203.
lippe Lebaud, 1987), 81ff.; and Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image : 152. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 104, vol. 1, 176.
Illustrations of the "Grandes Chroniques de France," 1274-1422 (Berke-
153. Ibid., no. 105, vol. 1, 176-80.
ley: University of California Press, 1991).
154. Ibid., no. 6, vol. 1, 113: "par frere Germain Le Pere, soubs tresorier de
117. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 2,304.
lad. Eglise devant nommé, fut exibé ung papier auquel estoient plu-
118. Ibid., no. 76, vol. 1, 166; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. sieurs troches de perles, parmy lesquelles il monstra et bailla deux
10, 80-82. See also Avinoam Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable pierres d'esmerauldes qui furent appliquées au chatton de l'esmeraulde
Objects in the Medieval Church: Treasuries of the Latin West, 2nd ed. (Frank- dessud. et fut trouvé par la declaration d'icelle que lesdictes deux
furt: Peter Lang, 1998), 78. pierres en estoient sorties."
119. Grandes chroniques, quoted in Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint- 155. Christopher Hohler, review of Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-
Denis, vol. 2, 187. Denis, vol. 1, Burlington MagazineWl (1975): 251.
120. Ibid., no. 3, vol. 1, 85-89, vol. 2, 13, vol. 3, 100-101. 156. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 252, vol. 1, 253, vol. 2,
403-5.
121. Ibid., vol. 2,11-12.
157. Ibid., no. 317, vol. 1, 277, vol. 2, 440.
122. Auguste Molinier, Obituaires de la Province de Sens, vol. 1 , Dioceses de Sens et
de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), pt. 1, 305-42, at 321; André 158. Ibid., no. 20, element 315, vol. 1, 146: "Sur ledict entablement deux
Wilmart, "Les anniversaires célébrés à Saint-Denis au milieu du XlVe trous ronds ausquelz souloict avoir deux angelz d'argent doré qui
siècle," Revue Mabillon 14 (1924): 22-30, at 24, 26. aydoient ... à soustenir led. bras et y defailloient iceulx angelz; et seule-
123. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis , no. 241, vol. 1, 250-51, vol. ment fut trouvé desd. angelz esd. armoires deux ayles
2,401. ayles manquent."

124. Ibid., no. 257, vol. 1, 254, 255. 159. Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse, 20;
ing the Western Medieval Church Treasury Inven
125. Ibid., no. 213, vol. 1,236.
160. Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des "Weifenschat
126. Ibid., nos. 195, 196, vol. 1, 217-18.
161. Ibid., 33-42, 68.
127. Ibid., no. 71, vol. 1, 164.
162. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 162, vol. 1, 196, vol. 2,
128. Ibid., nos. 215-16, vol. 1, 244.
268: "qu'il y auroict deux ans au landy prochain, que lad. premiere croix
129. Ibid., nos. 277, 40, vol. 1, 261, 155-56. fut desrobbée, le malfaicteur prins à Paris, et puny par le lieutenant
130. Ibid., nos. 145, 147, vol. 1, 191. criminel, ainsy qu'il pourroict apparoir par le proces qui en estoict
demeuré au Chastellet. Plusieurs pieces desd. pierres et partie de l'or de
131. Ibid., no. 201, vol. 1, 229; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, 21. lad. croix perdue [s] touttesfois de ce que lesd. relligieux avoient peu
132. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 200, element 82, vol. 1, recouvrir desdictes pierre et or, avec autres pieces qu'ils disoient avoir
229: "prisé cent cinquante escus; qui pouvoict valoir entier deux mil prinses au chozier de ladicte eglise, mais quelle et de quelle qualité et
escus. . . ." valeur, n'en disrent rien, et le surplus que monctoit l'or estant en ladicte
133. Ibid., no. 2, vol. 1,82. croiz neufve, pour la tare que l'on y avoict trouvé, et montant soixante
ou quatre vingtz livres, avoict esté payé des deniers dud. sieur cardinal
134. Ibid., no. 15, element 2, vol. 1, 120: "Huict presines d'esmerauldes allen- de Bourbon, abbé de lad. abbaye de St-Denis."
tour d'icelle amatiste, dont celle de dessus n'estoict celle qui première-
ment y fut mise. . . ."
163. Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, "Lexicographie,"
http://www.cnrd.fr/definition/dmf/CHOSIER; see also Frederick
135. Ibid., nos. 95, element 22, 97, vol. 1, 171, 173.
Godefroy, Complément du dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de
136. Ibid., nos. 185-86, vol. 1, 204: "Au derrière dudict autel matinel, soubz tous ses dialectes du IX e au XVe siècle (Paris, 1895-1902; reprint, Vaduz:
ladicte chasse monseigneur sainct Denis de Corinthe, dedans ung creux Kraus Reprint, 1965), vol. 9, 87. The term also appears in a capitular act
from 1582 at the abbey; Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 181. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 199, element 1, no. 200,
2, 277. element 2, vol. 1, 221, 222: "assize fort caducque et cassée en plusieurs
164. Cambier, "Fragments from Older Reliquaries," esp. 39. lyeux ... à plusieurs mouleures anciennes"; "basses et chappiteaux
d'ancienne façon."
165. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 104, 105, vol. 1, 176-80.
166. Ibid., no. 105, element 25, vol. 1, 178: "Doc, grand prieur, a diet qu'il
estoict memoratif avoir esté present lorsque ledit sieur Cardinal du Bour- 183. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
bon, abbé, les avoict veuz et visitez et, luy mesme, ladicte pierrerie faicte University Press, 1953), 134-40. Wood, Forgery, 184-201; and Nagel and
separer et mettre selon qu'il luy sembloit qu'elle debvoict estre, pour Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 147-58, both argue that while round-
icelle faire applicquer en la chasse monsieur sainct Louis qu'il faict faire." arched buildings were taken as older than pointed-arched buildings,
their precise chronology was unknown.
167. Ibid., no. 105, element 30, vol. 1, 178: "ont este pris et fournis en
advancement de lad. chasse monsieur St. Louis, ainsy qu'il sera deu- 184. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 199, element 1, vol. 1,
ment veriffié, et baillez à l'orfebvre Piramne, demeurant au coing du 221, no. 200, element 4, vol. 1, 222: "huict panneaux de treillis de fonte
Pont-aux-Changes, pres le Chas tele t." de cuivre de plusieurs façons"; "le devant du cercueil du milieu, joignant
ledict autel, garny en la bordeure de embas de plusieurs emaulx de cui-
168. Ibid., no. 192c, vol. 1, 216.
vre doré et façon d'applicque de plusieurs pieces et façons." The chande-
169. Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, nos. 1-3. liers near the shrine were also "de plusieurs façons," no. 220, vol. 1, 245.
170. Ibid., no. 37; see also nos. 15, 25, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 38, 104, 114, 595. 185. Ibid., no. 200, element 95, vol. 1, 230: "excepté que en l'un estoict atta-
171. Diary of an Embassy from King George of Bohemia to King Louis XI. of France in
chée et rapportée, par bas, une piece de laitton, au lieu d'autant d'or
qui en avoict estée arraché, et la bordeure dudict costé estre de laitton
the Year of Grace 1464, trans. A. H. Wratislaw (London: Bell and Daldy, doré."
1871), 58-59.
172. Georges Lengherand, Voyage de Georges Lengherand, ed. Godefroy Ménil- 186. Ibid., no. 200, element 100, vol. 1, 231: "une piece de cuivre doré rap-
portée au lieu d'or, au deuxiesme arc devers le devant audiet taber-
glaise (Möns: Masquillier et Dequesne, 1861), 23; and Nompar de Cau- nacle. . . ."
mont, Voyaige d'oultremer en Jhérusalem par le Seigneur de Caumont, ed.
Marquis de la Grange (n.p., 1858), 116. 187. Ibid., no. 200, element 99, vol. 1, 230: "La face du grand tabernacle cou-
173. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vo'. 2, 483: "Mondit sei- vert de cuivre foible doré, bordé d'esmaulx aussy de cuivre, et la couver-
gneur [Martin Bellefoye] n'a cause de demander ladite dimunicion ture basse dudict grand tabernacle dudict costé, aussy couverte de cuivre
actendu que du tout il a delessé à faire reparacions, et n'y plus ne mas- foible doré à plusieurs pieces rapportées depuis sa première façon."
son, ne plombier en ladicte église, qui est à grant deshonneur et dom- 188. Ibid., no. 200, element 103, vol. 1, 231: "L'entre deux du hault des cinq
maige d 'icelle eglise et de ceulx qui en ont la charge, et mesmement des arcs dud. costé dudict grand tabernacle, couvert de cuivre foible, les
ornemens de l'église, qui sont tant decheuz et usez que on ne les ose bordeures de placques applicquez depuis sa premiere façon."
plus mettre. Et a convenu pour l'onneur de l'eglise saulver, en prendre
189. Ibid., no. 200, element 71, vol. 1, 227-28.
de ceulx du trésor, pour servir à la dite église."
190. Montesquiou-Fezensac suggests that the figure of the infant was an ex-
174. Ibid., no. 321, vol. 1, 278-79: "[F] ut seulement trouvé une representa- voto; ibid., vol. 3, 101. For Courtillier's death in 1522, see vol. 1, 227 n. 3.
tion fort desrompue et endommagée de sepulture, enlevée en esquierre
de bois, anciennement toute couverte de cuivre doré esmaillé de cou- 191. Ibid., no. 200, elements 6-9, vol. 1, 222: "6
leure espoisse, à chappiteaux et piliers par bas, en entre les chappiteaux fort ancienne: 'hic habentvr feliciter corpora martirvm dionisii rvstici et
écussons de plusieurs armoiries et, dedans iceulx chappiteaux, images; elevtherii pax et vita FACiENTi sit. amen.' 7. Au milieu de ladicte escrip-
le tout enlevé de demye bosse, aussy de cuivre doré et, sur le dessus ture, une table d'or longuette et dedans icelle une croix hospitalière
d'icelle, la representation d'un homme armé, aussy enlevé de demie enlevée aussy d'or, autresfois garnie d'enverremens semblables à la
bosse, à cotte d'armes semée de plusieurs écussons, son espée au costé croix St. Elloy devant ditte
et sur icelle son escu d'armes, ung lyon à ses pieds et ung oreiller soubz et table, assis sur ung champ de laitton doré fort desdoré. 9
sa teste, à plusieurs chattons sur les chappiteaux et bordeures d'icelle, icelles pieces, escriptures de plusieurs sortes, d
garny [s] de pierrerie; laquelle sepulture n 'estoict attachée ne scellée en leu que ce qui s'ensuict: Bertranda domini vener
la muraille, ne en la terre, icelle mise par nonchallance sur le pavé de disoient lesdicts religieux, qu'ilz avoient veu plu
ladicte chappelle, ostée d'ailleurs, où elle soulloict estre la plus belle et s'estoyent efforcez de lire le reste et n'avoyent
riche sepulture d'icelle eglise, et en icelle defailloict ung image et son lettres."
endossement, aus pieds, trois images et leurs endossemens, ung chapi- 192. Ibid., vol. 3, 101.
teau et demy, quatre piliers et ung escusson; la plus part des chattons
vuides et plusieurs bandes de la bordeure arrachées, tellement qu'il n'y 193. For the perception of old scripts and the creation of archaic ones, see
avoict que vingt amatistes de Allemaigne et aucuns doubletz; et y defail- Wood, Forgery, 125, 125 n. 53, 190-91, 201-10, 248, 287-98; and Nagel
and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 144-45, 218-39.
loient aussy plusieurs escussons sur ladicte cotte et plusieurs pierres et
estans dedans une aulmoire de ladicte chappelle 194. Boockmann, Die verlorenen Teile des u Weifenschatzes , " nos. 1, 72.
sepulture, sur les carreaux de ladicte chappelle, fut trouvé ung coffre de
195. Aymeric de Peyrac, Chronique des abbés de Moissac, ed. and trans.
bois longuet, son couvercle descloué et dans icelluy les ossements du
Régis de la Haye, 3rd ed. (Maastricht-Moissac: Régis de la Haye,
corps dudict Alphons, ladicte sepulture desrompue 2010), 118. comme dicte est, et
sans lesdictes choses y deffaillans, prisée cents escus."
196. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis , no. 189, element 30, vol. 1,
175. For visitors to Godefroy's tomb, see the 1432 report of Coppard de Vel-
215: "Le champ de ladicte croix, tant devant que derriere, de verres
leine, Les voyages d'un tournaisien du XVe siècle, ed. Armand d'Herbomez
ressemblans à jacinthes, grenats, esmerauldes et saphirs et plusieurs
(Tournai: H. et L. Casterman, 1907), 27-28; and the 1516 report of Jac-
peticts nacles autour du rond du milieu de ladicte croix, et quelque peu
ques Le Saige, Voyage de facques Le Saige, ed. H.-R. Duthilloeul (Douai:
de place vuide desd. verres." Ibid., no. 189, element 30, vol. 1, 215.
Adam d'Aubers, 1851), 111. Nompar describes the Sicilian tombs in
Voyaige d'oultremer, 105-6, 113-14. 197. Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, nos. 421, 423. For a related discussion, see
Madeline Caviness, "De Convenientia et cohaerentia antiqui et novi operis.
176. Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France, trans. Glyn S. Burgess and
Medieval Conservation, Restoration, Pastiche and Forgery," in Intuition
Keith Busby (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 92-93; for Gillion, see
und Kunstwissenschaft: Festschrift fur Hanns Swarzenski zum 70. Gerburtstag,
Thomas Kren and Scott Mckendrick, eds., Illuminating
ed. Peter Bloch et the Renaissance:
al. (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1973), 205-21.
The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, exh. cat. (Los
198. Giles Corrozet, quoted in Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis,
Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 240-42.
vol. 2, 295.
177. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 199, 200, vol. 1, 220-
31, vol. 2, 329-50, vol. 3, 100-103; and 199. Erik Inglis, "Art
Erwin as Evidence in Medieval
Panofsky and Relic Disputes:
Gerda Three Cases from Fif-
teenth-Century
Panosfky-Soergel, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church France," in Harnden etand
of Saint-Denis al., Matter
Itsof Art
Faith, 159-63.
Treasures, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University 200. Ingeborg Bähr, Press,
"Aussagen zur1979), 55-57,
Funktion und zum Stellenwert von Kunst-
172-80.
werken in einem Pariser Reliquienprozess des Jahres 1410," Wallraf-
178. William Caxton, The Golden Legend of the Saints as Englished by William Cax- Richartz-Jahrbuch 45 (1984): 41-57.
ton, ed. F. S. Ellis (London: J. M. Dent, 1900), vol. 3, 266. 201. O. Bled, "Les reliques de Saint Omer et les reliques de Saint Bertin,"
179. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 200, element 88, vol. 1, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de la Morinie 32 (1914-20) : 5-1 10; and
229. Louis De Bonnaire, La vérité de l'histoire de l'église de S. Omer, et son antéri-
orité sur l'abbaye de S. Bertin (Paris, 1 754) .
180. Two other objects are linked to his name in the inventory; ibid., nos. 27,
195-98, vol. 1, 150, 217-20; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, 202. De Bonnaire, Vérité de l'histoire de l'église de S. Omer, 416; and Bled,
no. 29, 177-81. "Reliques de Saint Omer," 60-61.
203. Mariaux, "Collecting (and Display)," 215. See also Wood, Forgery, 33. Shalem, Islam Christianized, 61-62, 214-15. The 1380 inventory of
Charles V's possessions is much more specific, citing multiple inscrip-
204. See the apposite remarks in Lawrence Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules
tions in "lettres sarrazines"; Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V, nos. 1348, 2285,
and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court (Philadelphia: Univer-
3322, 3366, 3369, 3371, 3374, 3381, 3382, 3384, 3388.
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 3-17.
225. Shalem, Islam Christianized, 137.
205. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 69, vol. 1, 163; and
Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 11-12, 83-91. 226. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 33, vol. 2, 124-25.
206. Cambier, "Fragments from Older Reliquaries," 29. 227. Ibid., nos. 101, 102, vol. 1, 174-75, vol. 2, 213-15; Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-
Denis, nos. 18-19, 130-41; and Cordez, "'Objets légendaires' de Charlemagne."
207. For Peiresc's discussion of the vase, see Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de
Saint-Denis, vol. 2, 165-70; and for more context, Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor 228. Shalem, Islam Christianized, 40-42, who also cites a seventeenth-century
de Saint-Denis, 81, 284-85; and David Jaffé, "The Barberini Circle: Some document associating the medieval chess set in Osnabrück's cathedral
Exchanges between Peiresc, Rubens and Their Contemporaries," Jour- with Charlemagne.
nal of the History of Collections 1 (1989) : 1 19-47. 229. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, nos. 1, 4, 111, vol. 1, 76-81,
208. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 200, elementó, vol. 1, 89-110, 182.
222; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 61, 282-83. 230. Ibid., no. Ill, vol. 1, 182; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no.
209. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 328, element 1, vol. 1, 33, 204-9. Neither the brief 1505 mention nor the 1534 inventory notes
283. Note that the same compilers who recognized the portrait of its composite production.
Augustus were mistaken about the Crest of Charlemagne's late medieval 231. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 159, vol. 1, 195; and
base, which had been correctly identified in 1534. The treasury's other Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 20, 142-43.
portrait of Augustus was unnamed in the 1534 and 1634 inventories; it
was identified as Marcus Aurelius in 1576, and as Augustus by Peiresc; 232. Avinoam Shalem, The Oliphant: Islamic Objects in Historical Context (Lei-
ibid., no. 81, vol. 1, 167, vol. 2, 191-93; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de
den: Brill, 2004), 107-35.
Saint-Denis, no. 62, 285-87. 233. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 193, vol. 1, 217: "estre le
210. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 76, vol. 1, 166-67, vol. 2, crucifix que premièrement fut mis en ladicte eglise, qui parla le jour de
187-90. la dédicacé d'icelle, pour porter tesmoignage que Dieu, nostre
createur, avoict dédié icelle eglise, present un ladre qui s'y estoict
211. Ibid., no. 69, vol. 1, 163-64, vol. 2, 165-75. The 1634 inventory also men- enfermé le soir"; see vol. 2, 321-22. The entry on the cross was almost
tions a stone on the Crest of Charlemagne framed by a border inscribed identical in the 1505 inventory. The second wooden cross is no. 224,
in Latin with "gothic letters . . . This stone was of David and the proph- vol. 1,246, vol. 2, 393.
ets'"; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, 99.
234. Arnold von Harfif, Die Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff, ed. E. von Groote
212. Dagobert, Charles the Bald, and Louis III are the only pre-Capetian (Cologne: Verlag von J. M. Heberle [H. Lempertz], 1860), 246-47.
kings commemorated in the monastery's mid-fourteenth-century
necrology, and the names of the first two are written in gold to des-235. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, vol. 2, 322.
ignate their stature; Wilmart, "Anniversaires célébrés à Saint-Denis," 236. Aymeric de Peyrac, Chronique des abbés de Moissac, 126; and Jean Cabanot,
29. "Deux nouveaux crucifix de la famille du 'Volto Santo' de Lucques, le
213. Pierre-Alain Mariaux, "Objet de trésor et mémoire projective: Le vase 'Saint Veu' de Charroux et le 'Digne Votz' de Cénac en Périgord,"
Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 24 (1981): 55-58.
'de saint Martin,' onques faictpar mains d'omme terrien ," Le Moyen Age:
Revue d'Histoire et de Philologie 114 (2008) : 37-53; and Amy G. Remen- 237. Antonio de Beatis reports the early history of the church in his Voyage du
snyder, "Legendary Treasure at Conques: Reliquaries and Imaginative Cardinal d'Aragon en Allemagne, Hollande, Belgique, France et Italie: 151 7-
Memory," Speculuml' (1996): 884-906. 1518, trans. Madeleine Havard de la Montagne and Henry Cochin
214. For Moissac, see Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembeńng Kings Past: Monastic (Paris: Perrin, 1913), 131-32. The statue's origin story seems a recent
Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni- invention; according to the mid-fifteenth-century La manure de la fonda-
versity Press, 1995), 296; for Magdeburg, see Wood, Forgery, 110-11. tion et augmentation de l'église Nostre-Dame en Boullogne, the Virgin herself
arrived on the boat to commission the church; Daniel Haigneré, Etude
215 Jean Wauquelin, quoted in Elizabeth J. Moodey, Illuminated Crusader Histories sur la légende de Notre-Dame de Boulogne (Boulogne-sur-Mer: Au Depot des
for Philip the Good of Burgundy (Tumhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012), 64. Objets de Piété et Souvenirs de Pèlerinage, 1863), 39-53. The unique
216. Wood, Forgery, 245; and Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 31. manuscript is discussed in Pascale Charron, Le maitre des champion des
dames (Paris: Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, 2004), 39-42, 417-18.
217. Remensnyder, "Legendary Treasure at Conques." See also Philippe Cor-
dez, "Vers un catalogue raisonné des 'objets légendaires' de Charle- 238. Marguerite A. Keane, "Memory and Identity in the Chapel of Blanche of
magne: Le cas de Conques (Xle-XIIe siècles) ," in Charlemagne et les Navarre at Saint-Denis," in Citation, Intertextuality and Memory in the Mid-
objets: Des thésaurisations carolingiennes aux constructions mémorielles, ed. dle Ages and Renaissance, voi. 2, Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Medieval
Cordez (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012), 135-67. Culture, ed. Yolanda Plumley and Giuliano di Bacco (Liverpool: Univer-
218. For Charlemagne's legendary reception, see Matthew Gabriele, An sity of Liverpool Press, 2013), 123-36, at 135. 1 do not know if Blanche's
Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem Volto Santo was the second wooden cross mentioned in the inventory.
before the First Crusade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); and For more on the Volto Santo's reputation in late medieval France, see
Anne A. Latowsky, Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construc- Hilary Maddocks, "The Rapondi, the Volto Santo di Lucca, and Manu-
tion of Imperial Authority, 800-1229 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University script Illumination in Paris ca. 1400," in Patrons, Authors and Workshops:
Press, 2013). Books and Book Production in Paris around 1400, ed. Godfried Croenen
and Peter Ainsworth (Louvain: Peeters, 2006), 91-122.
219. Rolf Große, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König: Die Zät vor Suger ( 1 053-
1122), Beihefte der Francia, 57 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002), 147-51; 239. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 221, vol. 1, 245; and
Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 6, 69.
and Anne Lombard-Jourdan, "Le legende de la consécration par le
Christ de la basilique mérovingienne de Saint-Denis et de la guérison du
240. Grandes chroniques , quoted in Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-
lépreux," Bulletin Monumental 143 (1985): 237-69, esp. 255-57. Denis, vol. 2, 446.
220. For a similar consciousness of historical style at Canterbury about 1200, 241 . The same tub appears in a depiction of Qovis's baptism from a manuscript of
see Matthew M. Reeves, "A Seat of Authority: The Archbishop's Throne Noël de Fribois's Abregé des croniques de France, illuminated about 1500, in
at Canterbury Cathedral," Gesta 42 (2003): 131-42. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris, MS 3430, fol. 1, reproduced in P. S. Lewis,
"Two Pieces of Fifteenth-Century Political Iconography, "Journal of the
221. See Edward M. Schoolman, "Reassessing the Sarcophagi of Ravenna,"
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964): 317-20, pl. 38a.
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 67 (2013): 49-74; and Dorothy Verkerk, "Life
242. Olivier Guyotjeannin, "Retour sur le cartulaire blanc," in Suger en ques-
after Death: The Afterlife of Sarcophagi in Medieval Rome and
Ravenna," in Roma Felix: Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, ed. tion: Regards croisés sur Saint-Denis, ed. Rolf Große (Munich: Oldenbourg
Éamonn O Carragáin and Carol Neuman de Vegvar (Aldershot, U.K.: Verlag, 2004), 141-53, at 142; Rolf Große, "Remarques sur les cartulaires
Ashgate, 2007), 81-96. See also Guibert of Nogent's careful observations de Saint-Denis aux Xllle et XlVe siècles," in Les cartulaires, actes de la table
on ancient tombs, Monodies, 83. ronde organisée par l'Ecole Nationale des Chartes et le G.D.K 121 du C.N.KS.,
Paris 5-7 décembre 1991, Mémoires et Documents de l'École des Chartes,
222. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 62, vol. 1, 161, vol. 2,
39, ed. Olivier Guyotjeannin, Laurent Morelle, and Michel Parisse
155-58; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 25, 160-62.
(Paris: Librairie Droz / Librairie H. Champion, 1993), 279-88, at 282;
223. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 52, vol. 1, 159, vol. 2, and Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans.
145-47; and Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 40, 221-22. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),
224. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 33, vol. 1, 153; vol. 2, vol. 1, 64-65.
124-25; Gaborit-Chopin, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 26, 282-84; and 243. Lengherand, Voyage de Georges Lengherand, 63.
244. For Saint-Denis's rivalry with Reims, see Thomas G. Waldman, 245. Wood, Forgery, 35.
" Sigillum Sanctii Dionysii archiepiscopi'. La fabrication d'une legende," 246. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Trésor de Saint-Denis, no. 4, vol. 2, 20-21.
Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes 164 (2006): 349-70; and Patrick
247. Ibid., vol. 2, 22-23.
Demouy, Genèse d'une cathédrale: Les archevêques de Reims et leur église
aux Xle et Xlle siècles (Langres: Dominique Gueniot, 2005). For visi- 248. See Gerhard Lutz, "Memorising Bern ward of Hildesheim in the 12th
tors to Clovis's tomb, see C. Milanesi, ed., "Il viaggio deglie ambascia- Century: A Contribution to High Medieval Imitatio ," in Romanesque and
tori fiorentini al re di Francia nel MCCCCLXI descritto da Giovanni the Past: Retrospection in the Art and Architecture of Romanesque Europe , ed.
di Francesco di Neri Cecchi, loro cancelliere," Archivio Stońco Italiano John McNeill and Richard Plant (London: British Archaeological
1 (1865): 7-62, at 31-32. Association, 2013), 25-36; and Kingsley, Bernward Gospels , 103-9.

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Expertise, Artifacts, and Time in the 1534 Inventory of the St-Denis Treasury

Author(s): Erik Inglis

The Mass of Saint Giles , painted in Paris about 1500, pro-

2 Reliquary, from the Hallesche

3 Master of St. Giles, The Mass of Saint

Veneration appears only once, when the their

4 Étienne-Éloi de Labarre, Crest of

In their fine-tuned material analysis, both these inventories

immobile, like a tomb or a building

In a period that did not know art history, this explanation is

enough to reuse them, even if he cut them down."83 Stratford

10 Reliquary from the shrine of Saint

1 1 Circle of the Master of the

when Philip VI borrowed it from St-Denis, it was identified as

Monks and Goldsmiths Working Together

This passage points to the treasury's role as the monastery's

14 Liévin van Lathem, The Author

The most telling passage details the epigraphy, media, and

blessed bodies of the martyrs Dionysus, Rusticus and Eleu-

7. In the middle of the inscription, a long golden tablet

8. The aforementioned cameos, agates, inscription and

only one could be read, which follows: "Bertranda, venerat-

known how, because of the diversity of the letters.191

companion paten is likewise an ancient stone, probably dat

Paul Rubens corresponded about the monastery's classical antiq-

17 St-Denis chancel screen, 8th-9th

to project their memory? Was it only wishful thinking, in which

Remensnyder's study of Conques supplies some answ-

19 Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Chalice of Saint Denis, 17th

(Fig. 26). According to the Donation, Constantine

21 Pieces from the chess set of

These invented provenances personalize these objects

23 Horn of Roland, 11th century,

24 Tub, 307-425 CE, porphyry, 19V2 x

Erik Inglis is professor at Oberlin College. The author of Jean Fouquet

Heather Galloway exemplifies close looking, and she taught me to recognize

1. For an overview of treasury objects, see the fundamental work of Emile

2,401. ayles manquent."

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