s c L u Mup EA Journal of Medieval Studies

CONTENTSVol. 75, 2000

published byThe Medieval Academy of America

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Mary's Nativity, Fulbert of Chartres, andthe Stirps] esse: Liturgical Innovation

circa 1000 and Its Afterlife

By Margot Fassler

The ways in which liturgical practices changed and the degree to which the artswere affected by the transformation of liturgical materials are complex subjects.The study of those topics is even more vexed by the fact that significant shifts inliturgical taste in the Latin Middle Ages are, in general, poorly described and littleunderstood. Even when such shifts are identified, too rarely are they related todevelopments in other spheres of action, their force and significance commonlyremaining unconsidered.' Yet liturgical practice, the arts, theology, and under-standings of history were profoundly interrelated in the Middle Ages, especiallyin the centuries from the Carolingian period to the middle of the thirteenth century,when, I will argue, the interrelatedness began to break down.

Interaction between liturgical change and the perception of the past is too com-plicated a subject for a single paper. But it is possible to outline some of thewatersheds in the process of change, and to demonstrate how a single image that

I am grateful to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, to the Mellon Foundation, and toYale University for providing support for the academic leave during which this project was conceivedand much of the research completed. Gratitude is due to Giles Constable, Irving and Marilyn Lavin,Christiane. Klapisch-Zuber, Peter Jeffery, Hubertus Lutterbach, Johannes Fried, Klaus Schreiner,Charles McClendon, Genevra Kornbluth, Susan Boynton, Michael Powell, Tova Choate, NicholasHowe, Harold Attridge, Pamela Sheingorn, Sally Noll, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Anne Moyer, EdwardRoesner, Gunilla Iversen, and Craig Wright, who read versions of the work or who listened to andcommented upon its arguments; the readers for Speculum made many useful suggestions, and thanksare offered to all three of them, especially to Clark Maines, and to my assistant John Leinenweber,who offered invaluable editorial assistance. The staffs of the libraries of Yale University, the Institutefor Advanced Study, the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, the Bibliotheque nationale deFrance, the diocesan archives of Chartres, the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, and theBibliotheque Municipale of Chartres were exceedingly gracious. Profound gratitude is offered to Rev.Pierre Bizeau, diocesan archivist in Chartres, who made available many otherwise unobtainable re-sources, and to Mme Christiane Pollin, Bibliorhecaire of the Bibliotheque Municipale, Chartres. Thefinal form of the paper was influenced by its serving as a keynote address for the Nordic Network forLiturgy and the Arts, Copenhagen, October 1999.

1 For a discussion of the nature of liturgical change as reflected in written sources in the Latin MiddleAges, see Margot Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Cen-tury Paris (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), pp. 3-17. Change and its significance in late-eleventh- and early-twelfth-century sequence repertories are discussed in Lori Kruckenberg-Goldenstein, "The Sequencefrom 1050-1150: A Study of Genre," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa (1997). The liturgicalarts not only provoke changes in other realms but also reflect them, as Michael McGrade points outin two recent articles on politics and liturgical chants in Aachen: "Gottschalk of Aachen, the InvestitureControversy, and Music for the Feast of the Divisio Apostolorum," Journal of the American Musi-cological Society 49 (1996),351-408, and "0 Rex Mundi Triumphator: Hohenstaufen Politics in aSequence for Saint Charlemagne," Early Music History 17 (1998), 183-219.

Speculum 75 (2000) 389

390 The Year 1000defines the passage of time, and the sense of a particular character within time,evolved against a liturgical backdrop. In the evolution of the liturgical materialsfrom which the Stirps Jesse was made, the sense of the past was transformed aswell." The Virgin Mary acquired festal benchmarks for her life in the Roman riteof the seventh century; an actual life's story appeared in the West somewhat later;the incorporation of this vita into the liturgy began right away but took a longtime to become generally widespread. The transformation in the celebration ofMary's nature and character from around the year 1000 occurred in the midst ofthe most extraordinary proliferation of new saints' lives and histories associatedwith them that the Western world had ever seen, or was to see again.! In the spaceof a century cults of early Christian saints, often with readapted or newly createddeeds, spread in northern Europe and thereby changed the general understandingof history in fundamental ways. The first framework for this transformation ofthe past was the liturgy of the Roman rite; from the late twelfth century forward,interest in miraculous deeds and events allowed at least some of the saints, andmost particularly the Virgin Mary, to be viewed outside of the liturgical frame-work; some of these alternative circumstances would be hospitable to the survivalof liturgical veneration and others, ultimately, not."The multivalent Stirps Jesse image seems to spring fully formed from exegetical

heads in the early decades of the twelfth century.' Abbot Suger's famous descrip-

2 For background to the term "Tree of Jesse," a term not used in the Middle Ages, see Charles E.SciIlia's excellent study "The Textual and Figurative Sources of the 'Stirps Jesse' in the First Half ofthe Twelfth Century with Special Reference to the Rhine-Meuse Area," Ph.D. dissertation, Bryn MawrCollege (1977), pp. 4-36, which includes his valuable notes. Note 11 suggests that the term "Tree ofJesse" is a terminological conflation originating in the 1733-36 edition of Du Cange's Glossariummediae et infimae Latinitatis, s.v. "Jesse." It is clear that although the Stirps Jesse was often depictedas a tree in the Middle Ages, it was not commonly called one.

3 For an excellent introduction to recent writings on lives of the saints, see "Reading Hagiography,"the opening chapter of Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, Writing Faith: Text, Sign, and Historyin the Miracles of Sainte Foy (Chicago, 1999), pp. 1-21. The present study offers a corollary, andcould be called "Hearing Hagiography," emphasizing as it does that much of what we understand asread was actually known primarily in a musical context and in liturgical rendering. This is especiallytrue of many vitae written around 1000, conceived as they were as materials for newly institutedliturgical offices.• Scillia acknowledged that the liturgical work of Fulbert of Chartres was the context within which

the Marian Stirps Jesse would blossom (p, 54), but neither he nor other scholars have looked closelyat Fulbert's motivations, as disclosed in his writings for the Feast of Mary'S Nativity, or consideredfully the force that the liturgical performances of these texts and chants had on the creation of acomplex and synthetic image.

S See especially R. Ligtenberg, "De Genealogie van Christus in de beeldende Kunst der Middeleeu-wen, voornamelijk van het Westen," in Oudheidkundig [aarboek, Bulletin van der nederl. Oudheid-kundigen Bond (Utrecht, 1929), which deeply influenced the seminal studies of Arthur Watson: TheEarly Iconography of the Jesse Tree (London, 1934); "The Speculum Virginum with Special Referenceto the Tree of Jesse," Speculum 3 (1928),445 -69; and" A Manuscript of the Speculum Virginum inthe Walters Art Gallery," Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 10 (1947), 61-74. Further studies ofparticular Stirps Jesse images are numerous, including Adelaide Bennett, "The Windmill Psalter: TheHistoriated Letter E of Psalm One," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980),52-67; discussion in Anne Karen Menke, "The Ratmann Sacramentary and the Stammheim Missal: TwoRomanesque Manuscripts from St. Michael's at Hildesheim," Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University(1987); and E. V. del Alamo, "Visiones y profeda: EI arbol de Jese en el claustro de Silos," in ElRomanico en Silos: IX centenario de la consagracion de la iglesia y claustro, 1088-1988, StudiaSilensia, Series Maior (Silos, 1990),1:173-202.

Liturgical Innovation 391tion, precisely dated to 1144, refers to the image as if it were a well-known quan-tity:" "Moreover, we caused to be painted, by the exquisite hands of many mastersfrom different regions, a splendid variety of new windows, both below and above;from the first one which begins [the series] with the Stirps Jesse in the chevet ofthe church to that which is installed above the principal door in the church'sentrance."? Yet Stirps Jesse, like so many complex images appearing first in thevery late eleventh or early twelfth century, was the product of generations ofliturgical innovation and long-standing traditions of scriptural and liturgical com-mentary. At the time of Suger, then, although the image itself was quite new, thematerials from which it was made were not. The stages of liturgical change studiedthrough the development of this single image are useful guides for considering thecentral Middle Ages in general, and they are directly related to the way historywas perceived and the passage of time described during this period. This examplecan be evaluated in the future as parallel situations are brought forth, particularlyregarding the rise of the Virgin'S cult in the central Middle Ages and the influencethe magnification of this cult was to have on the arts and on religious sensibilities,especially, although certainly not exclusively, from the eleventh through the thir-teenth centuries."

• Watson's Early Iconography was intended to refute Emile Male's pronouncement that Abbot Sugerwas the inventor of the Jesse Tree. Watson collected many examples of the image that either predatedor were contemporary with the Stirps Jesse window at St-Denis, Suger's description, found in his Liberde rebus in administratione sua gestis, has been much discussed by art historians, but the window towhich it refers-clearly very like the twelfth-century lancet window at Chartres-is heavily restored.

7 "Vitrearum etiam nouarum praeclaram varietatem, ab ea prima quae incipit a Stirps Jesse in capiteecclesiae, usque ad earn quae superest principali portae in introitu ecclesiae, tam superius quam inferi-us, magistrorum multorum de diversis nationibus manu exquisita, depingi fecimus": Erwin Panofsky,ed. and trans., Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.· Denis and Its Art Treasures, 2nd ed. (Princeton,N.J., 1979), pp. 72-74. Panofsky translates" Stirps Jesse" as "Tree of Jesse."

8 Of special importance for the study of Marian emphases in the liturgy are the appropriate sectionsin the serial bibliography Bibliografia mariana, ed. Giuseppe M. Besutti (Rome, 1948-); relevantarticles in the Marienlexikon, 6 vols., ed. Remigius Baumer and Leo Scheffczyk (St. Ottilien, 1989-94); and the still useful series of articles on Marian liturgies East and West found in Maria: Etudes surla Sainte Vierge, ed. Hubert du Manoir, 6 vols. (Paris, 1949-61), especially "Marie dans la lirurgie,"1:213-413. Michael O'Carroll, Theotokos: Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin (Wil·mington, Del., 1982), also treats the development of feasts and other liturgical subjects. Reports ofMariological congresses frequently include scholarly papers along with devotional and pastoral works;of special interest to chant scholars and liturgiologists are La Mere de [esus- Christ et la communiondes saints: Conferences Saint-Serge XXXII, semaine d'etudes liturgiques, Paris, 25-28 June 1985, ed.A. M. Triacca and A. Pistoia (Rome, 1986); the reports of the Mariological Society of America (Day-ton, Ohio, 1950-); and Joseph Lecuyer et al., De cultu Mariano saeculis VI-XI, 5 vols. (Rome, 1961-72). Recent bibliography can be found in Marie: Le culte de la Vierge dans la societe medieuale, ed.Dominique Iogna-Prat, Eric Palazzo, and Daniel Russo (Paris, 1996); Rachel Fulton, "The Virgin Maryand the Song of Songs in the High Middle Ages," Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University (1994);Fulton, "Quae est ista quae ascendit sicut aurora consurgens? The Song of Songs as the Historia forthe Office of the Assumption," Mediaeval Studies 60 (1998), 55-122; and Margot Fassler, "The FirstMarian Feast in Constantinople and Jerusalem: Chant Texts, Readings, and Homiletic Literature,"forthcoming in The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West, ed. Peter Jeffery(Woodbridge, Suff., 2000).

392 The Year 1000THE FEAST OF MARY's NATIVITY IN ROME

There were no Marian feasts in Rome in the early seventh century, althoughfeasts commemorating events in the life of the Virgin were well established in theEast by this time, both in Jerusalem and in Constantinople." In the East Luke'saccount of Christ's infancy narrative found strong parallels with the life of Mary,for the apocryphal life of the Virgin, the second-century Proto-Evangelium ofJames, was well known and highly respected in many regions.'? Its influence canbe seen to underlie the senses of several Marian feasts." However, these detailedlegends of Mary's life, which established Mary's Davidic lineage and various as-pects of her character, were not part of the Roman complex of liturgical or ha-giographical materials in circulation at the time the first Marian feasts were im-ported from the East into Rome in the seventh century.

Mary had been venerated in Rome, not by specific feasts dedicated to her, butrather through the Annunciation themes connected with the week before Christ-mas, on the ember days of that week-Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday-whichwere days of fasting and of special solemniry.P Marian emphasis in the liturgy

• The earliest sources for the study of the Jerusalem liturgy are from the late fourth and early fifthcenturies, the first being the diary of the nun Egeria, who traveled to the Holy Land in 384 and recordedliturgical events in her diary; for dating and discussion, see the introduction by John Wilkinson to hisEgeria's Travels, Newly Translated with Supporting Documents and Notes (London, 1971). The firstliturgical book from Jerusalem is the Armenian Lectionary, representing an early-fifth-century state; itcan be used in a modern edition prepared by Athanase Renoux, Le codex armenien Jerusalem 121,Patrologia Orientalis 36/2, 168 (Turnhout, 1971). This lectionary is too early to contain the four majorMarian feasts, but it does include Hypapante, a feast of the Lord (from which derives the Westernfeast of the Purification of the Virgin) as well as the first Marian feast, which was celebrated on August15 (not a feast of the Dormition, but for Mary Theotokos). For the liturgical circumstances of thisfeast see Walter Ray, "August 15 and the Early Jerusalem Calendar: Its Origin and Significance forthe Development of the Calendar," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame (2000); and Fassler,"The First Marian Feast in Constantinople and Jerusalem." The later medieval Jerusalem liturgy forthe Feast of Mary's Nativity and other later Marian feasts is contained in the Georgian lectionaryprepared by Michel Tarchnischvili, Le grand lectionnaire de l'eglise de Jerusalem (Ve- VIIIe siecle),Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 189, Scriptores Iberici 10 (Louvain, 1959). An outlineof the liturgy of medieval Constantinople is contained in Le typicon de la Grande Eglise, ed. JuanMateos, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 165 and 166 (Rome, 1963).

,0 For a useful, if dated, discussion of the history of the Proto-Evangelium of James in the East, seeEmile Amann, Le Proteuangile de Jacques et ses remainements latins (Paris, 1910), pp. 109-37. Thetitle "Proto-Evangelium" was assigned by scholars in the sixteenth century who believed that the workwas a source for the infancy narratives in the canonical Gospels, an opinion long since discounted.For discussion of the text and English translation see New Testament Apocrypha: Revised Edition, ed.Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. MeL. Wilson, 1: Gospels and Related Writings (Cambridge, Eng.,1991), pp. 421-39; and J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of ApocryphalChristian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford, 1993), pp. 48-67. Both are based on theedition of C. Tischendorf, Euangelia apocrypha (Leipzig, 1876).

11 In Jerusalem, for example, the Feast of Mary's Nativity took place in "the House of Joachim,"the figure named as Mary's father in the Proto-Evangelium.

12 The origins of the ember days, which were celebrated four times a year, are not known. For anintroduction to the nature of these seasonal feasts and to the problems they pose for liturgical histo-rians, see Thomas J. Talley, "The Origin of the Ember Days: An Inconclusive Postscript," in Rituels:Melanges offerts au Pere Gy, Op, ed. Paul de Clerck and Eric Palazzo (Paris, 1990), pp. 465-72.

Liturgical Innovation 393around the time of Christmas, however, had a place in the East from the earlyfifth century and made its way not only into the Roman liturgy, as on the Adventember days, but into other Western liturgical practices as well: in Ravenna anearly collection of Marian texts for Advent shows dependence upon sermons bythe fifth-century preacher Petrus Chrysologus; in Spain the Virgin was veneratedon December 18, a week before Christmas; the Bobbio Missal, a Gallican hybrid,has a feast of Marian character for the Vigil of Christmas, in addition to theGallican feast for the Virgin celebrated on January 18.13 Themes of prophecy,lineage, and Annunciation were emphasized in the pre-Christmas season in severalearly Western liturgical traditions through readings from Isaiah and through se-lected sermons for Advent that appear in the homiliary of Alan of Farfa and otherearly horniliaries.t+ It is to be noted, however, that the Marian emphasis on January1 often claimed by modern scholars for the first layers of Roman Gospel texts isnow thought to be a later development.P

When Roman liturgists, operating under Eastern influence, brought Marianfeasts into their liturgy in the mid-seventh century, they turned to the feasts ofember weeks for liturgical texts and festal understanding." This can be demon-strated particularly in regard to the Gospel text for the Feast of Mary's Nativity,September 8. Once the Gospel of a feast was set, so, too, was the character of thefeast; therefore to identify the Gospel of a given feast is a crucial first step inunderstanding its liturgyY The list below contains the Gospel texts for all four

tl See Suitbert Benz, Der Rotulus von Ravenna (Munster in Westfalen, 1967). For the GallicanMarian feast, see The Bobbio Missal, a Gallican Mass Book (Ms Paris. Lat. 13246), ed. E. A. Loweet a!., Henry Bradshaw Society 58 and 61 (London, 1917-24); and Le lectionnaire de Luxeuil (Paris,ms. Lat. 9427), ed. Pierre Salmon (Rome, 1944), pp. 64-65. On the Feast of the Assumption inGallican sources, see B. Capelle, "La messe gallicane de l'Assomption: Son rayonnement, ses sources,"in Miscellanea liturgica in honorem L. Cuniberti Mohlberg, Bibliotheca "Ephemerides liturgicae" 22-23 (Rome, 1949), pp. 35-39.

14 For inventories of these sources, see Reginald Gregoire, Homeliaires liturgiques medieuauxi Ana-lyse de manuscrits (Spoleto, 1980), pp. 72-73.

IS Jacques-Marie Guilmard has argued that there was no Marian feast in Rome on January 1 in theseventh century, despite frequent arguments to the contrary. See his "Une antique fete mariale au lerjanvier dans la ville de Rome?" Ecclesia orans 11 (1994),25-67. In this paper Guilmard takes on asubstantial literature, including Bernard Botte, "La premiere fete mariale de la liturgie romaine,"Ephemerides liturgicae 47 (1933), 425-30; several works by Antoine Chavasse, of which the mostdetailed and representative is his long discussion of Marian feasts in Rome found in Le sacramentairegelasien (Vaticanus Reginensis 316): Sacramentaire presbyteral en usage dans les titres romains au VIlesiecle (Strasbourg, 1958), esp. pp. 375-402; and Georges Frenaud, "Le culte de Notre Dame dansI'ancienne liturgie latine," in Maria (see above, n. 8), 6:157-211. Guilmard argues that the Marianemphasis on January 1 developed north of the Alps in the eighth century and subsequently made itsway to Rome.

16 Pope Sergius I (687-701) established solemn processions in the city of Rome for all four Marianfeasts; thus it is known that they existed by his time but not, as one sometimes reads in the literature,that he created any of the feasts himself. That happened before his pontificate. Sergius was born inPalermo to a Syrian family from Antioch; he is known both as a restorer of churches and as a musician,with interest in liturgical reform and embellishment. See the Liber pontificalis, ed. Louis Duchesne,rev. ed. (Paris, 1955-57), 1:376, for the passage regarding the processions.

17 Series of Gospel texts for several stages of liturgical development in the Roman rite may be foundin Theodor Klauser, Das riimische Capitulate Evangeliorum: Texte und Untersuchungen zu seineriiltesten Geschichte (Munster in Westfalen, 1935). Klauser's earliest series of texts dates from around

394 The Year 1000seventh-century Marian feasts in Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome; the Gos-pel texts for the Advent ember days in Rome are also given. For feasts such as theAnnunciation and the Purification, whose primary action was described in theBible, the choice of the Gospel reading (although not its specific verses) was evi-dent. This was not the case, however, for the Nativity of the Virgin or for theAssumption, neither of which is described in the canonical Gospels:Assumption of the VirginMary (August 15):Jerusalem Luke 1.39-56Constantinople Luke 10.38-42; Luke 11.27-28Rome, mid-seventhcentury Not ObservedRome, mid-eighth century Luke 10.38-42

Nativity of the VirginMary (September8):Jerusalem Luke 11.27-32 (as on August 13)Constantinople Luke 10.38-42; Luke 11.27-28Rome, mid-seventhcentury Not ObservedRome, mid-eighthcentury Luke 1.39-47

Purification of the VirginMary (February 2, in the West):Jerusalem Feast of the Lord, Luke 2.22-32Constantinople Feast of the Lord, Luke 2.22-32Rome, mid-seventhcentury Not ObservedRome, mid-eighthcentury Luke 2.22-32

Annunciation of the VirginMary (March 25):Jerusalem Luke 1.26-38Constantinople Luke 1.24-38Rome, mid-seventhcentury Not ObservedRome, mid-eighthcentury Luke 1.26-38

Advent EmberDays in Rome, mid-seventhand mid-eighth centuries:Wednesday Luke 1.26-38Friday Luke 1.39-47Saturday Luke 3.1-6

Clearly, when specific feasts consecrated to the Virgin did come into Romeduring the seventh century, Gospel readings already established in celebration ofMary were borrowed for two of them, the Annunciation pericope being that firstassigned to Ember Wednesday, and the Gospel for the Feast of Mary's Nativitythat for Ember Friday." The reading for the Assumption, however, the story ofMartha and Mary from Luke 10, was not found as a Gospel pericope in seventh-

645 and is "purely Roman"; that is, the texts were apparently compiled without substantial influencefrom liturgical developments north of the Alps.

18 A useful summary of other texts making up the earliest known layer of liturgical materials for theFeast of Mary'S Nativity is found in Frenaud, "Le culre," pp. 182-85. In general, statements concerningearly sacramentaries found in Frenaud are dated and should be studied in light of more recent work;see especially Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, ed. and trans. WilliamG. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (Washington, D.C., 1986). An introduction to methods ofworking with early liturgical sources is described in Margot Fassler, "Sermons, Sacramentaries, andEarly Sources for the Office: A Methodological Introduction Using the Example of Advent," forth-coming in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, RegionalDevelopments, Hagiography, ed. Margot E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer (Oxford, 2000).

Liturgical Innovation 395century Rome. Its use for the new feast of the Assumption suggests a borrowingfrom the liturgical practices of Byzantium, where the text was well established forthis feast." Although the Gospel for the Purification was not borrowed from pre-Christmas and Christmas feasts, its initial set of prayer texts was an adaptationof material found there; thus the Purification, too, witnesses to the pattern de-scribed above for Mary's Nativity and the Annunciation.>'

THE FEAST OF MARY'S NATIVITY IN THE NORTH AROUND THE YEAR 800

The Gospels for the Nativity of Mary, the Annunciation, the Purification, andthe Assumption as listed above were widely accepted by the mid-eighth century;this was true in Rome and also north of the Alps, where the Roman rite wasintroduced in the course of the eighth and early ninth century. Yet Carolingianliturgists were not content with the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin as they hadreceived it earlier from Rome. During the late eighth and early ninth centuries thefeast was transformed, and in a major way: the Gospel of the feast was changedfrom the story of the Visitation as found in Luke to the genealogy of the Lord, asfound in Matt. 1.1-18. The reasons for the change must have been related to thenature of the Virgin's cult in the late eighth century, and a closer look at otherdevelopments surrounding the feast (as described below) will suggest that thetransformation was indeed part of this larger picture." Carolingian reformersexpended great energy on Marian feasts at this time: new liturgical texts andsermons were composed for the Assumption; new prayer texts more directly spe-cific to the feast were written for the Purification; the emphasis upon January 1as a feast for the Virgin developed as well.22 The guiding idea behind these changeswas to make Marian feasts more calendrically specific and more closely related to

I' Several chant texts were borrowed from the East for Roman Marian feasts. For discussion ofsome of these pieces, see Henri Barre, "Antiennes et repons de la Vierge," Marianum 29 (1967), 149-254.

20 The status of the Purification in the Vatican manuscript, Reg. lat. 316, the Old Gelasian Sacra-mentary, suggests recent establishment. Bernard Moreton observes in The Eighth-Century GelasianSacramentaries: A Study in Traditions (Louvain, 1976), p. 122, "The prayers for this feast in Reg. 316are all drawn from the Christmas collections: the secret and post-communion are to be found in thiscontext in Veronense, and the collect is markedly similar to the collect of the vigil mass of Christmasin the Gregorians. This suggests that the observance of the feast was relatively new in the 'old' Gelasiantradition, so that it had not acquired any prayer-collection of its own by the time of the redaction ofthe Sacramentaries."

21 The major study of Marian devotion in the Carolingian period remains L. Scheffczyk, Das Mari-engeheimnis in Frommigkeit und Lehre der Karolingerzeit (Leipzig, 1959); this book is now supple-mented by the writings of Mary Clayton, most particularly The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Ang/o-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 2 (Cambridge, Eng., 1990). For recentdiscussions of Marian devotion in the ninth and tenth centuries respectively, see Dominique Iogna-Prat, "Le culte de la Vierge sous Ie regne de Charles Le Chauve," and Patrick Corbet, "Les irnperarricesottoniennes et Ie modele maria I: Autour de l'ivoire du chateau Sforza de Milan," both appearing inMarie: Le culte de la Vierge (above, n. 8), pp. 100-107 and 109-35. The work of Pasch asius Radbertuson the Feast of the Assumption demonstrates a transformation of great importance; it is studied byRachel Fulton in the works cited above in n. 8.

22 See n. 15 above.

396 The Year 1000the developing historical character of the Virgin, while maintaining a biblicalframework for her person as well.

The shift of the Gospel of the Feast of Mary's Nativity to Matt. 1.1-18 changedthe feast dramatically, placing the emphasis on genealogy and lineage, suggestingthat Mary was herself descended from David, and superimposing a Christmassense. The Matthean genealogy was intoned around Christmas in many places,often as part of the first vespers or matins service. In twelfth-century Chartres, forexample, there was a procession after the ninth responsory of Christmas matins,and Matt. 1.1-18 was intoned from the rood screen (the jube) just before thesinging of Te deum laudamus.P The Epistle for the Feast of Mary's Nativity, stan-dardized in Carolingian liturgies at this time as well, was Ecclus. 24.16-22, whichdescribes the flowering vine of Wisdom and which offers the verdant arborealimagery seized upon by designers of Stirps Jesse images in the twelfth century."The Feast of Mary's Nativity, as it developed in Carolingian hands, drew these

two scriptural texts together, proclaiming them in a Marian context and providingthe raw materials for later exegetical understanding and visual exploration." Theplace of the Matthean genealogy on Mary's birthday called for greater understand-ing of Mary's place within this genetic tree, the vine of Wisdom described in theEpistle.Around the same time that the Gospel for the Feast of Mary's Nativity was

changed another shift began that would have dramatic effects on the Mariologyof the Middle Ages: after a long period of neglect, the Proto-Evangelium of Jameswas rediscovered in the West.26 The earliest Latin version of this second-century

23 See Yves Delaporte, ed., L'ordinaire chartrain du XIIIe siecle, Societe Archeologique d'Eure-er-Lair, Memoires 19 (Chartres, 1953), p. 85.

24 From the Douay-Reims translation: "And I took root in an honourable people, and in the portionof my God his inheritance, and my abode is in the full assembly of saints. I was exalted like a cedarin Libanus, and as a cypress tree on mount Sion. I was exalted like a palm tree in Cades, and as a roseplant in Jericho: As a fair olive tree in the plains, and as a plane tree by the water in the streets, wasI exalted. I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon, and aromatial balm: I yielded a sweet odour like thebest myrrh: And I perfumed my dwelling as storax, and galbanum, and onyx, and aloes, and as thefrankincense not cut, and my odour is as the purest balm. I have stretched out my branches as theturpentine tree, and my branches are of honour and grace." Several medieval liturgical and devotionaltexts play with this imagery, e.g., the Sigillum Beatae Mariae, PL 172:497-99. See discussion in Scillia,"Textual and Figurative Sources" (above, n. 2), pp. 44-45. Rupert of Deutz calls Mary the arborpulcberrima in his De sancta Trinitate et operibus eius 15 (In Leuiticum 2.37), ed. Hrabanus Haacke,Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis, 22 (Turnhout, 1972), p. 902 (= PL 167:827).

25 For the image of the Jesse Tree as related to images of the vine and the wine press, see DominiqueAlibert, "Aux origines du pressoir mystique: Images d'arbres et de vignes dans l'art medieval," in Lepressoir mystique: Actes du Colloque de Recloses, 27 mai 1989, ed. Daniele Alexandre-Bidon (Paris,1990), pp. 27-42.

26 Jan Gijsel, ed., Pseudo-Matthaei Euangeliumi Textus et commentarius (hereafter Pseudo-Mat-thew) (Turnhout, 1997), in Libri de nativitate Mariae, Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum,9. See Amann, ed., Le Proteuangile, pp. 138-76, and Pseudo-Matthew, pp. 7-10, on the rediscoveryof the text in the West. Other early Western authors besides Jerome (for whom see below) knew ofthe legends in the Proto-Euangelium, demonstrating that it circulated in one form or another in Latinat an early stage. Hilary of Poitiers, who wrote his influential commentary on the Gospel of Matthewbefore his exile in the early 350s, referred to materials in the Proto-Euangelium; Augustine, in histreatus against Faustus the Manichaean, offered his evaluation of legends in the Proto-Euangeliumisee his Contra Faustum 1.23. The Proto-Euangelium was banned in the so-called Decretum Gela-

Liturgical Innovation 397text is now thought to have originated in the first quarter of the eighth century,but at whose hands, or from what center, remains unknown.s? The original textcirculated with a short prologue attributing the work to James.28 Even before theyear 800, however, the Proto-Evangelium had been reworked into a new version,a version that came to circulate with a title attributing it to the evangelist Matthewand its translation from Hebrew into Latin to jerome.P This new work, the so-called Pseudo-Matthew, appears in the early ninth century but in a form thatsuggests eighth-century origins." Montpellier, Bibliotheque de la Faculte de me-decine, 55 (from the region of Metz, c. 800), is a "legendary," a book containinglives of the saints, compiled as a repository for liturgical and devotional readings."This source contains two adaptations of infancy Gospels of particular interest.One is a version of portions of the Proto-Evangelium; the other is a mixed textthat includes passages from an earlier version of the Proto-Evangelium alongside

sianum, a document now thought to have been written in the early sixth century, with the point oforigin still debated. For discussion and bibliography, see Pseudo-Matthew, pp. 5 and 84.

27 The Latin text was established from various fragments by Constantin von Tischendorf in his Deevangeliorum apocryphorum origine et usu (The Hague, 1851) and subsequently reprinted, with aFrench translation, by Amann in Le Proteuangile, pp. 272-339; for an English translation, see Elliott,The Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 91-99. For discussion of dating and authorship, see Jean-DanielKaestli, "Le Proteuangile de Jacques en Latin: Etat de la question et perspectives nouvelles," Revued'histoire theologique 26 (1996),41-102; and Pseudo-Matthew, pp. 4-6. For movement of Greektexts from East to West in general, see A. Siegmund, Die Oberlieferung der griechischen christ lichenLiteratur in der lateinischen Kirche bis zum twolften [ahrhundert, Abhandlungen der BayerischenBenediktiner-Akademie 5 (Munich, 1949).

28 The preface, which continued the original tradition of attributing the work to James, "son ofJoseph, who has written all these things having seen them with his own eyes, manifesting the plenitudeof the twelve tribes of Israel," distinguishes manuscript family P in Gijsel's edition. Hrosvit of Gan-dersheim, in her poem on the Virgin Mary, follows this tradition. SeeJ. Gijsel, "Zu welcher Textfamiliedes Pseudo-Matrhaus gehort die Quelle von Hrotsvits Maria?" Classica et mediaevalia 32 (1979-80),279-88. For discussion of the poem Maria, see Monique Goullet, "Hrotsvita de Gandersheim,Maria,"in Marie: Le culte de la Vierge (above, n. 8), pp. 441-70.

29 See Pseudo-Matthew, pp. 8-85. The attribution to James was long a difficulty. The real Jeromerailed against the idea advanced in the Proto-Euangelium that Joseph had a marriage prior to his toMary, that he had children from that union who were the brothers of Jesus, and that one of these wasJames the Lesser, sometimes claimed as the author of the treatise. (This figure is not to be confused,although he often was, with James the Greater, the brother of John the Evangelist: see Amann, LeProteuangile, p. 144. James of Compostela was also often conflated with James the Greater, less oftenwith James the Lesser; this explains the association of Marian legends from the treatise with the cityof Compostela.) Jerome's argument is made in his treatise Against Helvidius 19 (composed about 383),a work that was influential throughout the Middle Ages, along with its companion piece, AgainstJovinian (composed about 393). For their influence on attitudes toward virginity, see Ph. Delhaye, "Ledossier antimatrimonial de l'Adversus [ouinianum et son influence sur quelques ecrits latins au XIIesiecle," Mediaeval Studies 13 (1951), 65-86; and Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women,and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), where the importance of ceremoniesfor the consecration of virgins and ideals of virginity in the late-antique period are described.

30 For the differences between the Proto-Euangelium and Pseudo-Matthew, see Pseudo-Matthew, pp.7-15.

31 For bibliography on the various kinds of books recording saints' lives and the passions of themartyrs, and the evolution of more narrowly liturgical books from these collections, see Jacques Duboisand Jean-Loup Lemaitre, Sources et methodes de l'hagiograpbie medieuale (Paris, 1993).

398 The Year 1000passages from Pseudo-Mattheui/? This second fragment also contains passagestaken from the Vulgate Gospels of Matthew and Luke;" London, British Library,Add. 11880 (c. 820), is a legendary from the episcopal scriptorium of Ratisbon.In this source Pseudo-Matthew is found on fols. 215r-231r, for use in conjunctionwith the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin."

Thus around the year 800 attempts were made to extend the Gospel accountsof Christ's infancy with legends from the tradition of the Proto-Evangelium andto place the text in the context of the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary.Liturgists were attempting to draw the two texts together. We find discussions inthe commentaries on Matthew by Rabanus Maurus and Paschasius Radbertusthat would serve to strengthen the connection for learned monastic audiences,emphasizing as these authors do that Matthew was a Jew of the tribe of Levi whowrote his Gospel in Hebrew." Clearly, the idea that Matthew wrote texts aboutthe Virgin Mary was promoted in the ninth century, and it was directly and de-liberately supported by the change of the Gospel text for the Feast of Mary'sNativity and the acceptance of Pseudo-Matthew. Liturgy, theology, and exegesisworked together to offer Mary's life story legitimacy among thinkers suspiciousof allegory and apocryphal legends.wThe connection between the evangelist Matthew and Mary's vita was strength-

ened by the addition of two letters to the opening of Pseudo-Matthew at aroundthis same time.F The first is written as if from two bishops, Chromatius of Aquileiaand Heliodorus, actual contemporaries of Jerome to whom he dedicated his trans-lation of Tobias.38 In the second letter Pseudo-Jerome justifies his translation ofan apocryphal work on the ground that it is useful in the combatting of hereticalviews, especially those of the Manichaean Leucius, who was involved in transcrib-ing a version of the Virgin's life.39 There is an irony to the involvement of Pseudo-

32 SeeJ. M. Canal, "Antiguas versiones latinas del Proto-evangelio de Santiago," Ephemerides Mari-ologicae 18 (1968), 432-43; Jean-Daniel Kaesrli, "Recherches nouvelles sur les Evangiles latins del'enfance de M. R. James et sur un recit apocryphe mal connu de la naissance de Jesus," Etudes theo-logiques et religieuses 72 (1997),219-33; J. Gijsel's review of Canal's article in Analecta Bollandiana87 (1969), 503-5; and Pseudo-Matthew, pp. 16-21.

33 The fragment is on fols. 179v-182v and has been edited by E. De Strycker in "Une ancienneversion latine du Protevangile de Jacques avec des extra its de la Vulgate de Matthieu 1-2 et Luc 1-2," Analecta Bollandiana 83 (1965),365-410; for discussion, see Pseudo-Matthew, pp. 16-17.

34 See Pseudo-Matthew, pp. 118-19.3J See, for example, the prologue to Rabanus's commentary, PL 107:731.36 The most notable controversy in the ninth century concerning the use of non scriptural texts in

the liturgy centered on the activities of Agobard of Lyons, and especially his vicious attacks uponAmalarius of Metz.

37 For further evaluation of the letters, see Amann, Le Proteuangile, pp, 272-77; Bernard Lambert,Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta, 3A (Steenbrugge, 1970), nos. 350 and 350bis, pp. 205-12;and Pseudo-Matthew, p. 15, along with the notes to the edition and translation into French, pp. 278-85.

38 Chromatius wrote a commentary on Matthew's Gospel: Chromatii Aquileiensis Opera, ed. R.Etaix and L. Lemarie, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 9A (Turnhout, 1974), pp. 184-498. Thisfact, and the connection with Jerome (who dedicated other works to him as well), lent authority tothe fabricated letter.

39 Leucius was also credited with apocryphal acts of the apostles, for which see Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, "L'histoire des actes apocryphes des apotres du 3e au ge siecle: Le cas des Actes deJean," Cahiers de fa Revue de theologie et de philosphie 7 (1982),1-152, esp. pp. 137-43.

Liturgical Innovation 399Jerome in the reception of the texts of the Proto-Evangelium in the West: Jerome'sintense dislike for the text was a major reason why it did not circulate widely inthe West in earlier centuries.'?

The goal of linking Pseudo-Matthew to the Feast of Mary's Nativity wasachieved in Chartres before the year 1000, as can be seen in the tenth-centuryhomiliary of St. Pere of Chartres, Chartres, Bibliotheque Municipale, 25.41Thissource was burned along with hundreds of other liturgical manuscripts in the fireof May 26, 1944, which all but destroyed the municipal library of Chartres andits magnificent collection of almost one thousand medieval manuscripts.v HenriBarre was able to construct an inventory of MS 25 from the numbers of sermonsit contained, some printed tables of contents, and comparison with like manu-scripts.t! It contained Matt. 1.1-18 and readings from Pseudo-Matthew as read-ings for the Feast of Mary's Nativity. This was the tradition received by Fulbert,bishop of Chartres, in the early eleventh century.

MARY AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT: A NEW LIFE OF THE VIRGIN FROM C. 1000

The tenth and eleventh centuries witnessed the transformation of Carolingianliturgical materials through the creation of substantial numbers of new pieces forthe Mass and, to an even greater degree, for the Divine Office. A great period ofliturgical expansion took place in the decades on either side of the year 1000, asthe Peace Movement called historians, liturgists, and composers to the service ofthe cults of the saints." The saints offered protection; they required care and

40 See n. 29 above.41 For a newly revised list of Chartrain liturgical manuscripts, see Fassler, Making History: The

Liturgical Framework of Time and Cult of the Virgin at Chartres (forthcoming). Fundamental to thestudy of Chartrain liturgical manuscripts is Yves Delaporte's edition of the thirteenth-century Chartrainordinal, a book very close to the twelfth-century Ordo veridicus, which survives in Delaporte's hand-written copy. See Delaporte, L'ordinaire chartrain, pp. 203-13; and Fassler, "Liturgy and Sacred His-tory in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres," Art Bulletin 75 (1993),499-520. Several of thesources are also discussed in Jan van der Meulen, with Rudiger Hoyer and Deborah Cole, ChartresSources and Literary Interpretation: A Critical Bibliography (Boston, 1989); this mammoth compen-dium is the place to begin for research into Chartrain liturgy, ecclesial history, and the liturgical arts.

42 For a recent discussion of this senseless act by confused American pilots see Roger Joly, "Born-bardement de Chartres, 26 mai 1944," Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique d'Eure-et-Loir 47 (1995),48-55.

43 See his Les homeliaires carolingiens de l'ecole d'Auxerre: Autbenticite, inuentaire, tableaux com-paritifs, initia, Studi e Testi 225 (Vatican City, 1962), pp. 17-25. The Feast of Mary's Nativity is listedon p. 22. See further C. Lambot, "Sermon inedit de saint Augustin pour une fete de martyrs dans unhomiliaire de type ancien," Revue benedictine 68 (1958), 187-99. A microfilm of MS 25, made afterthe fire, is difficult to use: the very ink was singed from the pages, and so even the filmed fragmentsare bare of copy in most places.

44 For a collection of papers and editions of documents concerning the Peace Movement, see ThomasHead and Richard Landes, eds., The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in Francearound the Year 1000 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992). A useful review of the scholarship on the subject is foundin Frederick S. Paxton's essay, "History, Historians, and the Peace of God," ibid., pp. 21-40. Theessay closes with a plea for further study of the complexities of this historical movement and the manyforces that had a share in shaping it. For more recent bibliography and a detailed look at the politicalsituation in the area around Poitiers c. 1000, see Thomas Head, "The Development of the Peace ofGod in Aquiraine (970-1005)," Speculum 74 (1999),656-86.

400 The Year 1000

memoria in return. Every fresh altar stone demanded an appropriate space, a setof relics, a vita, and a newly composed or readapted office for the saint honored.vThis was a significant period not only for the composition of chants for the officebut also for the creation of new sequences and tropes for the liturgy of the Mass;many newly ordered collections of these pieces were produced as the works werecodified, and these newer genres became ever more widely accepted.w The earlyeleventh century was also a time of change and renewal in the hymn repertoryand of rethinking how hymns were used in the curricula of monastic schools aswell as within the liturgy,"?Just as many saints were being discovered or restored, and as the composition

of new saints' lives was playing a central part in the intellectual and artistic fervorof the times, a new life was created for the Virgin Mary. The Libel/us de natiuitateSanctae Mariae, once thought to have been composed in the late ninth century,has now been dated to around the year 1000 by Rita Beyers, the scholar who hasprepared the work's first critical edition." She states that the earliest sure testimony

45 Rodulfus Glaber has the discovery of large numbers of relics follow directly on the heels of thecampaign for new church building. Of course, the two went together: "When the whole world was,as we have said, clothed in a white mantle of new churches, a little later, in the eighth year after themillennium of the Savior's Incarnation, the relics of many saints were revealed by various signs wherethey had long lain hidden. Itwas as though they had been waiting for a brilliant resurrection and werenow by God's permission revealed to the gaze of the faithful; certainly they brought much comfort tomen's minds": Rodulfus Glaber, The Five Books of the Histories, ed. and trans. John France (Oxford,1989),3.6.19, p. 127. New discoveries of the relics upon which cults were based, and the effects theseelevations of cult had upon architecture, are discussed in Werner Jacobsen, "Saints' Tombs in FrankishChurch Architecture," Speculum 72 (1997), 1107-43. On later Marian cults and miracles and theirimpact upon church architecture, see Christian Sapin, "L'origine des rotondes mariales des IXe-XIesiecles et Ie cas de Saint-Germain-d' Auxerre"; Eric Palazzo, "Marie et l'elaboration d'un espace eccle-sial au haut moyen age"; and Gabriela Signori, "La bienheureuse polysernie miracles et pelerinages ala Vierge: Pouvoir thaumaturgique et modeles pastoraux (Xe-XIIe siecles)," all in Marie: Le culte defa Vierge (above, n. 8), pp. 295-312, 313-25, and 591-617, respectively.

46 The cataloguing of medieval tropes by the scholars compiling editions for the Corpus Troporumand the analytical studies prepared by them and associated with their work have paved the way foran entire rethinking of these crucial repertories of liturgical chants. For a discussion of tropes as relatedto the Peace Movement, see Daniel F. Callahan, "The Peace of God and the Cult of the Saints inAquitaine in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries," in Head and Landes, The Peace of God, pp. 165-83. A closer look at the construction and function of introit tropes in particular can be found in Fassler,"The Meaning of Entrance: Liturgical Commentaries and the Introit Tropes," in Yale Studies in SacredMusic, Worship, and the Arts-Reflections on the Sacred: A Musicological Perspective, ed. Paul Brain-ard (New Haven, Conn., 1994), pp. 8-18; and Wulf Arlt, "Zu einigen Fragen der Funktion, Interpre-tation und Edition dec Introitustropen," in Liturgische Tropen: Referate zuieier Colloquien des CorpusTroporum in Miinchen und Canterbury (Munich, 1985), pp. 131-50. Tropes for the Virgin have beenedited by Ann-Katrin Andrews Johansson, The Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Tropes for the Properof the Mass, 4, Corpus Troporum 9 (Stockholm, 1998). The many other editions of works by theCorpus Troporum are conveniently listed in this, the most recent volume of the series. For a studyrelating Marian tropes to cult and liturgical practice see Eric Palazzo and Ann-Katrin Johansson,"Jalons liturgiques pour une histoire de culte de la Vierge dans l'Occident latin (Ve-XIe siecles)," inMarie: Le culte de la Vierge, pp. 14-43 .

• 7 See Susan Boynton, "Glossed Hymns in Eleventh-Century Hymnaries," Ph.D. dissertation, Bran-deis University (1997), esp. chap. 4, "The Hymns' Function in Medieval Education," pp. 173-231.

48 Rita Beyers, ed., Libellus de natiuitate Sanctae Mariae: Textus et commentarius (hereafter Libellus)(Turnhout, 1997), in Libri de nativitate Mariae, Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, 10.

Liturgical Innovation 401to its existence is that of Bishop Fulbert of Chartres, as cited in his sermon Ap-probate consuetudinis, a work to be discussed in some detail below," A prologueand a different letter, this written as if by Jerome in response to a modified letterfrom the bishops of Aquileia, circulated with the Libel/us. Here "Jerome" claimsthat the Pseudo-Evangelium is filled with falsehoods and that it was written bythe heretic Seleucus, who also wrote "passions" of the apostles. Yet this "Jerome"from c. 1000 was willing to translate the work from the Hebrew, knowing thatsome of it was false and some not, and that it appeared to have incorporatedearlier work by Matthew. He comments that although many events reported inthe work are doubtful, yet they cannot be completely rejected: for people to thinkthat God can bring forth miracles of the sort described in the treatise does noharrn.!"

Beyers outlines the ways in which the Libel/us is to be distinguished from itssource, Pseudo-Matthew; her sketch points out the liturgical ideals held by BishopFulbert, who was apparently a contemporary of the person who wrote this newlife of the Virgin. Indeed, it would be tempting to suggest that the work is byFulbert himself. Although there is no hard evidence for this, the interplay betweenthe treatise, the letter that forms its preface, and the sermons attributed to Fulbertsuggests powerful affinities. Both the treatise and Fulbert's sermons are represen-tative not only of shifting liturgical tastes but also of a Mariological dimension ofthe Peace Movement." Drawing on Beyers's comments on the Libel/us, I note thatthe editor was bold, and took great liberties with the tradition of Pseudo-Matthew;he excised material concerning the infancy of Christ and concentrated rather uponthe birth and early life of the Virgin; he chose episodes carefully, leaving out themost controversial and anecdotal; he reinforced the scriptural roots of the work

The once accepted earlier dating is based on interpretations of a passage in Hincmar of Reims. In"L'homelie du pseudo-Jerome sur l'Assomption er l'Evangile de la Narivire de Marie d'apres une lettreinedire d'Hincmar," Revue benedictine 46 (1934), 265 -82, C. Lambot argued that Hincmar's defenseof certain texts referred to the Libellus and that thus it must date from before the letter, which waswritten in 868-69. Hincmar also stated that the pseudo-Hieronymian letters prefacing the text wereby Paschasius Radbertus, as was the famous treatise written for the Assumption, Cogitis me, alsowritten as if by Jerome. Rita Beyers and Jan Gijsel believe that Hincmar's reference is rather to aversion of Pseudo-Matthew and that there is no proof from this passage that Hincmar knew theLibellus at all. SeeJ. Gijsel in Analecta Bollandiana 87 (1969), 504-5; and Libellus, pp. 28-32. Beyersand Gijsel do not question the attribution of the letters and the treatise Cogitis me to PaschasiusRadbertus.

49 For evaluation of the passage from the Libellus that Fulbert cites in Approbate consuetudinis, seeBeyers's edition, pp. 140-46. For discussion of authenticity regarding Approbate and other sermonsattributed to Fulbert, see J. M. Canal, "Los sermones marianos de San Fulberto de Chartres (t 1028),"Recherches de tbeologie ancienne et medieuale 29 (1962) 33-51, which forms the introduction to hisedition of these texts, "Texto cririco de algunos sermones marianos de San Fulberto de Chartres 0 a€l atribuibles," ibid., 30 (1963), 55-87; see also Canal's additional note, ibid., pp. 329-33. Canal'swork, his choice of sources, and his evaluations of authenticity have been sharply criticized by HenriBarre: see "Pro Fulberto," ibid., 31 (1964),324-30. Yet another apparent reference to the Libellus isfound in a second sermon frequently attributed to Fulbert (and used for the octave of Mary's Nativityat Chartres): see Canal's edition of Mutuae dilectionis, in "Texto critico," esp. p. 64.

50 See Amann, Le Proteuangile, pp. 278-81; Libellus, pp. 268-76, contains an edition of the letter,a translation into French, and notes.

S! See Libellus, pp. 20-21.

402 The Year 1000whenever possible and used language to strengthen the biblical character of thecontents; and, lastly, he wrote in a more learned style than the author of Pseudo-Matthew.

The compiler of the Libel/us de nativitate Sanctae Mariae was a scholar wellversed in theology and exegesis and endowed with literary talent. His goals wereto legitimatize the legends found in Pseudo-Matthew and to streamline the ma-terials it contained, focusing it more intensely upon the Virgin. The Mary he pre-sents grows naturally from the character found in the New Testament, as furtherfleshed out in the second century. "From the beginning the emphasis is placed onher perpetual virginity and upon her royal descent from the family of David, uponher birth at Nazareth, and upon her youth spent in the Temple of Jerusalem."52Mary's conception parallels the miraculous story of the conception of John theBaptist, and this provides further biblical roots for the legend of her origins. Ful-bert of Chartres was to champion this work, and to link his own writings to it,but in understated ways that would make his liturgical decisions acceptable to hiscontemporaries and to the generations after him. Mary would have a life filledwith miracles paralleling those of the life of the Messiah; this life would reshapeher and her importance as the greatest of Christian saints. Western perceptions ofthe seminal first century of the common era changed significantly through thisdevelopment, and the Mariology of the central Middle Ages depended upon it.53This new focus on Mary's life was yet another way of contextualizing the cults ofthe many first-century saints as they developed north of the Alps in the medievalperiod." Through the lives of these saints, and particularly of Mary, Europe waspeopled by figures from the Holy Land.

THE LIFE OF THE VIRGIN IN FULBERT'S SERMON FOR MARY'S NATIVITY

Fulbert was bishop of Chartres from 1006 until his death in 1028. Little isknown of his early life. His student Adelman of Liege provided sufficient detailsin a biographical poem to connect him with Reims at a time that would have made

52 Translated from the French of Rita Beyers, Libel/us, p, 22.53 Around the year 1000 cults of first-century saints from the Holy Land sharply increased in number

north of the Alps as many churches and regions claimed apostolic associations to increase their stature.A team of scholars is now editing the works of Ademar of Chabannes, a contemporary of BishopFulbert, another figure exemplifying the tenor of the times. Ademar wrote histories and elevated thecult of St. Martial as an apostle, for which purpose he composed chants and other liturgical materials.For further discussion, see Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademarof Chabannes, 989-1034 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); and James Grier, " 'Ecce sanctum quem deuselegit Marcialem apostolum': Ademar of Chabannes and the Tropes for the Feast of Saint Martial,"in Beyond the Moon: Festschrift Luther Dittmer, ed. Bryan Gillingham and Paul Merkley (Ottawa,1990), pp. 28-74.

54 For an evaluation of St. Denis legends and their retranslations into other guises, see the forthcom-ing study by Tova Leigh Choate, "Cultivating Sainthood: Borrowed Images in the Liturgy of St.Cheron, Martyr of Chartres. "

Liturgical Innovation 403him a student of the renowned Gerbert of Aurillac." Fulbert's justly famous lettersrecord events from the early and last years of his tenure (most letters from theyears between 1008 and 1019 having been lost); they show him to have been aman with close ties to several regions in Francia." He was a master of canon law,frequently consulted for his knowledge of medicine, and famed as a teacher of theliberal arts." Fear of ambush and of deceit punctuates his constant efforts atcalming down the small-scale, but seriously dangerous, military maneuvers thatthreatened continually to ravage his diocese. There is nothing particularly out ofthe ordinary in this sketch of the most famous of the Peace Movement bishops,until the single event occurred that refocused his energies."

In 1020, on the eve of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, who was the patronsaint of Chartres cathedral, the tenth-century church building began to burn. Asthe story has it, the fire raged all during the feast day itself and into the morning

SS For the evidence of Adelman, see Frederick Behrends, ed., The Letters and Poems of Fulbert ofChartres (Oxford, 1976), p. xvi n; for an edition of the poem, see J. Haver, "Poerne rythmiqued'Adeiman de Liege," in Notices et documents publies POUT la Societe de l'histoire de France al'occasion du cinquantieme anniversaire de sa fondation (Paris, 1884), pp. 71-73. The only full-lengthstudy of Fulbert's life in its historical setting remains C. Pfister, De Fulberti Carnotensis episcopi vitaet operibus (Nancy, 1885); updated by P.Viard, "Fulbert of Chartres," in Dictionnaire de spiritualite5 (Paris, 1964), cols. 1605-11; L. C. MacKinney, Bishop Fulbert and Education at the School ofChartres (Notre Dame, 1957); and by the introductory material in Behrends. The scant evidenceadvanced in these works is drawn from Fulbert's letters, autobiographical poems, epitaphs, and noticesin chronicles and necrologies. The nonliturgical poems are edited and translated by Behrends, pp. 242-45; his obituary and epitaph are contained in appendix A, p. 272. If Fulbert did study with Gerbert,he could have learned from him about cultic practices in a region of France important in the devel-opment of the Peace Movement. (For a discussion of saints in Aurillac, representative of the cults inthe Auvergne, see Christian Lauranson-Rosaz, "Peace from the Mountains: The Auvergnat Origins ofthe Peace of God," in Head and Landes, The Peace of God, pp. 104-34.)

S6 Whether in his youth or later, Fulbert came to know Aquitaine and the Auvergne. He was a closeally of Duke William V of Aquitaine, related to the house of ChartresIBlois through his mother, Emma.Duke William was a first cousin to Fulbert's major supporter, Count Odo II of ChartresIBlois. CountOdo's wife, Ermengarde, was the daughter of Robert, count of Auvergne. For discussion of the houseof ChartresIBlois, see Leonce Lex, Eudes, comte de Blois .•. et Thibaud son frere (Troyes, 1892); andFassler, Making History.

57 Fulbert is pictured teaching in an eleventh-century manuscript, now Munich, Bayerische Staats-bibliothek, Cod. Lat. 14272, which represents the texts and subjects taught in his school. The illu-minations were added after the manuscript was brought to St. Emmeram in Regensburg. It was ap-parently transported there by one of Fulbert's students, the monk Hartwic, who became abbot of St.Emmeram. For further commentary on the illumination within the letter 0 (fol, 4f) see G. Swarzenski,Die Regensburger Buchmalerei des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1901; reproStuttgart, 1969), pp.56-60 and plate 10. The inscription reads "Dornnus Fulbertus episcopus," as stated in FlorentineMiitherich et al., Regensburger Buchmalerei: Von frithkarolingischer Zeit bis zum Ausgang des Mit-telalters (Munich, 1987), p. 35.

58 Fulbert's fame in the eleventh century is attested by Rodulfus Glaber, who uses him to characterizethe finest of the age: "As 1033, the year of the millennium of the Passion of Christ approached, manymen famous in the Roman world, veritable standard-bearers of the holy faith, ended their lives.Amongst them were Benedict, the universal pope, Robert, king of the Franks (to whose death we havealready referred), and that incomparable bishop and wisest of men, Fulbert of Chartres": Histories4.4.9, pp. 184-87.

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thereafter (from September seventh, through the eighth, and into the ninthj.vWhen it was over, nothing of the church remained, and the town, too, had sufferedgrave losses.s" There is no mention in Fulbert's writings of Chartres's greatest relic,the chemise Mary wore when giving birth, but it was certainly there by his life-time." The Norman Dudo of St. Quentin, who is thought to have written hishistory in the first decade of the eleventh century, told the story of the siege ofChartres in 911 and of the relic's saving power as wielded in the hands of a bishop:"[S]uddenly, bishop Walter charged out of the city robed as if to celebrate mass,and bearing the cross and the tunic of the Holy Virgin Mary in his hands, withthe clergy and the citizens following behind, attended by 'steel-clad squadrons' hestruck the backs of the pagans with spears and swords. And seeing that he wasstanding between two armies, and that he himself was not winning, and that hismen were growing fewer, Rollo 'passed through the midst' of those armies, andbegan to withdraw from them, lest he be 'seized by untimely death.' "62

S9 Fulbert's epitaph in the necrology of the cathedral emphasizes his efforts at rebuilding the church:"IIII Idus Aprilis [10 AprilJ. Beloved by God and people, our father, of good memory, Fulbert, bishopof this holy seat, outstanding light given by God to the world, sustainer of the poor, consoler of thedesolate, restrainer of predators and robbers, a man most eloquent and wise equally in divine mattersas in the liberal arts, who for the restoring of this holy temple, which he himself began to rebuild fromthe foundations after the lire, contributed the best part of his own gold and silver, and illuminated thisplace with rays of discipline and wisdom, and did many good things for his clergy": E. de Lepinoisand Lucien Meriet, Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Chartres, 3 vols. (Chartres, 1865), 3:85. See alsoBehrends, Letters and Poems, pp. xliii-xliv and 272. The words are ascribed to Fulbert's student, themaster musician Sigo.

60 A list of five major fires in Chartres is found in the life of St. Aniane, believed to have been writtenaround 1138. Rene Merlet corrected what he believed were blatant mistakes in dating, but the extentto which the report of the fire of 1020 is accurate has been a subject of dispute by architecturalhistorians. The passage in question reads as follows: "The third [fire occurred) in 1020, the fourteenthyear of the episcopate of Fulbert. This time, the cathedral was not only damaged by the flames, butwas ruined from the top to the foundations. Fulbert then devoted his genius, his activity, and his moneyto the reconstruction from the foundations; he made it of an astonishing beauty and grandeur, and heleft it a little less than finished when he died." See Rene Merlet and Jules Alexandre Clerval, eds., Unmanuscrit cbartrain du Xle steele (Chartres, 1893), pp. 56-57. For the original text, transcribed fromChartrain sources from the twelfth through the fourteenth century, see Alexandre Clerval, "Transla-tiones S. Aniani Carnotensis episcopi annis 1136 et 1264 factae," Analecta Bollandiana 7 (1888),321-35.

61 See Yves Delaporte, Le voile de Notre-Dame (Chartres, 1927), for a seminal discussion of therelic. Further information, especially regarding manifestations of the relic in the liturgy and art of theeleventh and twelfth centuries, can be found in Fassler, Making History. Cloth relics and cloth wrap-pings in medieval reliquaries are discussed in Anna Muthesius, "Silks and Saints: The Rider and Pea-cock Silks from the Relics of St Cuthbert," in St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200,ed. Gerald Bonner, David Rolla son, and Clare Stancliffe (Woodbridge, Suff., 1989), pp. 343-66.

62 Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge, SuEf.,1998),p. 43. The story is also related in the miracles from Chartres, first collected in their Latin versions inthe late twelfth century and translated into French in the thirteenth century: see Miracula BeataeMariae Carnotensis, ed. A. Thomas, in Bibliotbeque de l'Ecole des chartes 42 (1881), 508-50, at pp.549-50; and Jean Le Marchant, Miracles de Notre-Dame de Chartres, ed. P. Kunstmann (Chartresand Ottawa, 1974), pp. 217-21. See also Stephanus de Borgone, in Anecdotes historiques, legendeset apologues, tires du recueil inedit d'Etienne de Bourbon, Dominicain du XllIe siecle, ed. A. Lecoyde la Marche (Paris, 1877), Standard indices of Marian miracles provide further references: A. Mus-safia, "Studien zu den mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden," in Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserl. Akademie

Liturgical Innovation 405Bishop Fulbert was confronted with an extraordinary set of circumstances: his

church had burned on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, and the principalrelic of that church was the birthing chemise of the Virgin, associated in Chartreswith miraculous powers to save the city from war and destruction. Fulbertworkedto heighten the power of the Virgin's cult at Chartres by upgrading the very feaston which the church was destroyed, thus linking Mary, her relic, and his churchin a fiery marriage that would capture the imaginations of Chartrains and pilgrimsto Chartres for centuries after his liturgical innovation." The several sermons andchants he (or those in his entourage) wrote for the feast would become knownthroughout Europe, and they would also promote the relic of the chemise, asso-ciated as it was, and would be, with ideas of birth and of the Davidic lineage ofMary and her son. The cloth, with its exotic properties and the stories associatedwith it, came to represent the flesh upon which it was believed to have rested, notonly in giving birth, but also at the Annunciation, on which feast one of the chantsattributed to Fulbert and composed for the Nativity of the Virgin would be re-peated at Chartres;"

Of the several eleventh-century sermons written by Fulbert and his contempo-raries for the Feast of Mary's Nativity, one became the most famous: Approbateconsuetudinis, a work always attributed to Fulbert in the sources, and by histo-rians of the Middle Ages as well.v A close reading of the work demonstrates thatFulbert's goals in its creation were, indeed, very close to those of the compiler ofthe Libel/us, as outlined above. Fulbert sought to dispel early problems over thelegends in the Mary stories for the purpose of making them part of the liturgy ofher nativity, the feast he worked to magnify.

He apparently wrote several sermons for this feast, probably because he wishedto provide it with an octave's worth of sermons and because he wanted to createa festive character distinct from that of the Assumption. In many regions chanttexts for the Mass and Office for Mary's Nativity were borrowed or readapted

der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Classe 113 (1887), 917-94; 115 (1888),5-92;119/9 (1889), esp. p. 38; 123/8 (1891); 139/8 (1898); Bibliotheca hagiographica Latina (Brussels,1898-1901), nos. 5365 and 5389; H. D. L. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department ofManuscripts in the British Library (London, 1883-92),2:603 and 693; and A. Ponce let, "Index mira-culorum B.V.M. quae Latine sunr conscripta," Analeeta Bollandiana 21 (1902), 241-360, beginningwith no. 76, p. 250. For historical studies, see J. Lair, Le siege de Chartres par les Normands (Caen,1902); and W. Vogel, Die Normannen und das [rdnkiscbe Reieh bis zur Griindung der Normandie(Heidelberg, 1906).

63 An overview of Fulbert's contributions is found in Jacques Pintard, "Saint Fulbert it l'origine duculte chartraine de la Nativite de Notre-Dame," in De cultu mariana saeculis 6-11, ed.]. Lecuyer(Rome, 1972),3:551-69 ... An engraving from 1697 by Nicholas de Larmessin illustrates the several local miracles associated

with the chemise and their staying power in Chartrain history. The engraving is discussed at length inFassler, Making History.

65 Regardless of what definitive pronouncements will one day be made about the authenticity of thesermons artributed to Fulbert (and this will not happen until a critical edition is prepared), there canbe no doubt that a particular group of Marian sermons written in the eleventh century (and includingall those works edited by Canal; see n. 49 above) was used for celebrating the Nativity of the Virginand the octave of the feast at Notre Dame de Chartres and that by the late eleventh century theseworks formed the backbone of her veneration at Chartres.

406 The Year 1000

works, merely taken from the Assumption liturgy. If Mary's Nativity was to bespecial, serving as the patronal feast for the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres,this would not be appropriate. Chartres celebrated the octave of the Assumptionby the early eleventh century, and Fulbert's evident goal was to make the Nativityof Mary an equally solemn feast with unique characteristics. Approbate consue-tudinis reveals the intentions reflected in his other sermons, but it was this workthat made Fulbert famous, from England to eastern Europe, in the decades afterhis death. Along with the chants to be discussed here (most importantly the re-sponsory "Stirps Jesse"), it was a major source for the image bearing the name ofthe chant itself.

In contrast, a sermon for Mary's Nativity by Fulbert's contemporary, the Anglo-Saxon Aelfric, who struggled with similar problems regarding apocryphal mate-rial, did not rely upon or even mention the legends of Mary's infancy,w Aelfricwas less scrupulous in regard to the Assumption, however, and shows himself hereto be very like Fulbert in his goals and liturgical sensibilities, reflecting the litur-gical ideals of the age.'? The sermons of Fulbert for Mary's Nativity (and of Aelfricfor the Assumption) recast Mary's life to be in tune with the thousands of othersaints' lives being written at the time. Through hagiographical writings of thistype, the Mother of God was becoming a medieval saint: the converging facets ofher character as Theotokos and as a local cultic figure with an apocryphal life andnumerous miracles explain the unique powers she exerted in the central MiddleAges.

Approbate consuetudinis is a carefully constructed work. It falls into clearlydemarcated sections, each of which is worthy of discussion, although I will analyzeclosely only the opening in detail. This was the part most widely adapted forliturgical use and the section crucial for development of the Stirps Jesse motif. Thesermon's introduction, which has been much cited in the scholarly literature, hastwo goals: to herald the importance of the Feast of Mary's Nativity and to justifythe use within the liturgy of apocryphal Marian infancy legends, and other miraclelegends associated with her. Fulbert claims that reasons for celebrating the feastwith a solemnity matching that of "older" Marian celebrations have to do notonly with the idea that she is the greatest of the saints, but also with devotiofidelium, with popular piety, a force demanding that the feast have priority:

The establishedcustom among Christians is to observe the birthdays of the holy Fatherswith careful attention, and then especiallyto recite aloud in church the virtues ascribedto them in writing for the praise of God, by whose gift they exist, and for the use of thelittle ones. Among all the saints, therefore, the memory of the most blessedVirgin ismost often and most joyously celebrated, since she is believedto have found the most

66 See Mary Clayton, "Aelfric and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary," Anglia 104 (1986),286-315.

67 See Fulton, "The Virgin Mary and the Song of Songs" (above, n. 8), pp. 179-89. Fulton comparesthe much-studied Cogitis me on the Assumption by Paschasius Radbertus to the sermon of Aelfricbased on it, finding that whereas Paschasius's work is "interrupted by doubts, digressions and exhor-tations," Aelfric "condenses and reorganizes Paschasius's arguments" (p. 185). Aelfric also briefly sumsup two Marian miracles at the close of the sermon, one of which is that of Theophilus, highly favoredby Fulbert as well.

Liturgical Innovation 407favor with God. Hence, after certain other and older feasts were established in her honor,the devotion of the faithful was still not content without this day's solemn feast of herNativity being added. And so particularly on this day it seemed that the book that wasfound written concerning her origin and life ought to be read in church, even thoughthe Fathers did not decide to include it among the apocrypha. And since it seemedappropriate to great and wise men, let us-as we read certain other apocryphal textsthat are not hostile to the faith-follow ecclesiastical usage with due respect."

A famous likeness claimed in the twelfth century to be of Fulbert (Fig. I) showshim preaching to the people of Chartres. In the sermon he claimed to listen tothem as well, and to advance the piety of the folk as a proper consideration in thedesigning of liturgies.s?

Thus the opening of the sermon introduces the problematic legends of Mary'sNativity and with an immediate and unapologetic stroke legitimatizes their use asoffice readings. Fulbert does not, as his Carolingian counterparts did, pretend tobe Jerome (the letter accompanying the Libel/us does this); he does not expressserious doubts or caustic criticisms of Marian legends. The stories of Mary's birthare appropriate to her feast, and there is precedent for their liturgical use; the feastmust be celebrated with appropriate attention rendered. For those liturgists whowished to have the legends and the feast function together, this sermon from afamous and well-respected churchman would have been most welcome." Thesermon began to circulate in the course of the eleventh century, and early manu-scripts of the Libel/us were finding their ways into various centers at that time aswell; the two became coordinated in the eleventh century, as we will see was thecase in the Chartrain liturgy from the second half of the eleventh century."

68 "Approbatae consuetudinis est apud xpistianos, sanctorum patrum dies natalitios obseruare di-ligenter,et tunc praecipue uirtutes eorum, assignatas litteris, in aecclesiarecitare al [sicJlaudem dei,ex cuius munere sunt, et ad instrumenta minorum. Inter omnes autern sanctos, memoria beatissimaeuirginis eo frequentius agitur atque festiuius, quo maiorem graciam apud deum creditur inuenisse.Unde post alia quaedam ipsius antiquiora sollempnia, non fuit contenta deuotio fidelium,quin na-tiuitatis eius solempnesuperadderet hodierum."Hac itaque die peculiariter in aecclesiarecitandus esse uideretur ilIe liber qui de ortu eius atque

uita scriptus inueniebatur, si non iudicassent eum patres inter apocrifa numerandum. At quoniammagnis ac sapientibus uiris ita uisum est, nos alia quaedam sed non aliena legentes,aecclesiasticummorem debitis officiisexequamur": Canal, "Texto crftico," p. 56.

69 The illumination is found in Chartres, BibliothequeMunicipale,nouv.acq. 4, parts of whichwereedited by Merlet and Clerval in Un manuscrit chartrain du Xle siecle. The evaluation made of thismanuscript byMerlet and Clervalhas longcoloredthe scholarshipon the cult of theVirginofChartres.In a forthcoming study GeorgesBonnebaswill challengeearlier opinions of the manuscript, arguingthat the eleventh-centuryilluminationwas not of BishopFulbert but rather of an abbot of St. Pere ofChartres and that the building depicted is the famous BenedictineAbbeyof St. Pere, not, as has beenso frequently argued, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres. In the twelfth century, according tohis argument, the illuminationwas claimedto be of Fulbertand becamea key ingredientin the Fulbertmyth as it evolved at that time. Once Bonnebas'swork is published, scholars will set to the task ofevaluating his controversial ideas. I am grateful to him for discussinghis work with me before itspublication and realizethat it may undergo transformation before appearing in print.

70 The pseudo-Hieronymian letter quoted above makes the point that apocryphal literature shouldbe respected if it is orthodox in its principles.

71 It must be noted that both Pseudo-Matthew and the Libellus circulated in the eleventh century,although the newer work was the more popular of the two. The critical edition of Pseudo-Matthew

408 The Year 1000

1. Chartres, BibliothequeMunicipale,nouv. acq. 4. Fulbert preaching.(Heavily restored version of theoriginal from Merlet and Clerval,Un manuscrit chartrain)

The next section of the sermon fuses three important themes. Mary's role in thehistory of salvation was foretold by signs and prophecies in Scripture (canonicaland apocryphal), and these needed to be fulfilled by her birth and its circum-stances. The lineage of the human race had a particular cast of sin, the lust of theFall, which blocked the coming of salvation; this sinful progression of events couldbe countered only by a particular type of human being, one who was humble inmind and unmarked by the sin of concupiscence: "A child prophetically ordainedby her lineage, she shone forth, marked by the privilege of her virtues. " It is Mary'schastity and utter goodness that block the accustomed flow of our human heritageand staunch the wound of sin; she provides "most pure flesh" for the Messiah,called in the fullness of time to become the throne of Wisdom and to consummate

contains a listing of manuscripts of both treatises in chronological order: for Pseudo-Matthew thereis one source from around 800 (Montpellier 55 discussed above), eight manuscripts from the ninthcentury, three from the tenth, and seven from the eleventh; the Libel/us has sixteen witnesses from theeleventh century, and twelve of these are from Francia. The greatest numbers of manuscripts in bothcases, however, were copied in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Liturgical Innovation 409David's lineage. Mary's flesh is suitable for three reasons: it is pure; its coming asthe throne of the Messiah is foretold by the prophets; and its descent is appropriateto fulfill the prophecies. To give her being this position in the history of humankindhelps explain the favor she won from theologians in the central and later MiddleAges:

The blessed mother of the Lord and ever virgin Mary, before she was to be born, wasproclaimed by prophecies and pointed out by miracles. A child prophetically ordainedby her lineage, she shone forth, marked by the privilege of her virtues. She brought fortha Savior by whom she has been glorified in heaven, yet she has never ceased to supportthose who are on earth. May the story follow this theme in its own order. Let us nowrecall one of the prophecies already mentioned, and then we can proceed in a few words.The Eternal One said to the Old One, God to the Serpent: "1 will put enmities betweenthee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shaltlie in wait for her heel" (Gen. 3.15).72 Brothers, what does "crush the head of the ser-pent" mean in this passage, unless it is to conquer the chief temptation of the Devil, thatis, concupiscence, by resistance? If then we ask what woman could achieve a victory ofthat sort, surely one is not to be found in the lineage of human generation'? until herwhom we are now celebrating, the holy of holies. And if we ask in what way even shecould crush the head of the serpent, of course it is in this way, for she offered the sacrificeat once of both virginity and humility. By preserving her virginity she demonstrates thatconcupiscence of the flesh had been destroyed; by preserving her humility, which pro-duces the poor in spirit, she demonstrates that concupiscence of the mind has beendestroyed as well. And so with the chief temptation of the Devil conquered, she hascrushed the vicious head through the action of the heel of virtue. Yet not by this actionalone, but she has triumphed especially by this: the Wisdom of God, having been fur-nished with a body from her most pure flesh, conquers, reaching evil everywhere end toend mightily, and ordering all things sweetly (Wisd. of Sol. 8.1).

This then is the woman to whom the divine prophecy was pointing; when it intimatedthat she was to be born, it indicated that she would be born in a unique way."

72 Quotations from the Vulgate are taken from the Douay-Reims translation, first redacted by Greg-ory Martin (d. 1582) and other English scholars in exile in France at the close of the sixteenth century.The archaic language has been retained.

73 The phrase used by Fulbert, "linea generationis humanae," is rare in medieval exegesis.74 "Beata ergo domini mater et perpetua uirgo Maria, priusquam nasceretur, oraculis enunciara est,

et designata miraculis. Nata uero, progenie diuinitus ordinata, priuilegio uirtutum insignis enituit.Saluatorem edidit a quo glorificata in celo, nunquam terrigenis patrocinari desistit.

"Propositionem sequatur ordine suo narratio. Iamque referamus unum de praetaxatis oraculis, acdeinde paucis expediamus. Dixit aeternus ad ueterem, deus ad serpentem: Inimicitias pan am inter teet mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum. Quid est, fratres, in hoc loco,serpentis caput conterere, nisi principalem diaboli suggestionem, id est concupiscentiam, resistendosuperare? Si ergo quaeratur quaenam mulier huiusmodi uictoriam operata sit, profecto non reperiturin linea generation is humanae, donee perueniatur ad illam de qua nunc agimus, sanctarum sanctam.At si interrogetur in quo serpentis caput uel ipsa contriuerit: nimirum in eo quod uirginitatem simulet humilitatem sacrificauit deo. Uirginitate namque seruata, probatur extinxisse coneupiseentiam ear-nis; humilitate, quae facit pauperem spiritu, concupiseentiam mentis. Sicque principali suggestionediaboli uicta, uitiosum caput uirtutis pede contriuit. Non tamen hoe solo, sed eo quam maxime trium-phauit quod, de sua carne mundissima corporata, dei sapieneia uineit, usquequaque malieiam artingensa fine usque ad finem fortiter, et disponens omnia suauiter. ,

"Haec est ergo mulier ad quam diu inurn illud intendebat oraculum, hanc quandoque nascituraminnuebat, hanc singulariter intimabat": Canal, "Texto crftico," pp. 56-57.

410 The Year 1000In the next section Fulbert chooses two of the miracles he has referred to above,

as he continues to expand upon themes of lineage. The compiler of Libel/us denativitate Sanctae Mariae turned miracles into Scripture, as described above; inApprobate Fulbert works in a different way. He begins with events found in theBible and recasts them to emphasize their miraculous aspects. Subsequently heomits discussion of the parallel events in the Libel/us, allowing the Bible to pro-claim the legends of Mary's birth indirectly. He chooses two biblical events orcomplexes of material and expands upon each of them: the flowering rod of Aaronand the messianic prophecies of Isaiah:

At the Lord's command a rod was taken by blessed Moses from each tribe of Israel,inscribed with the name of each, and then they were laid up in his tabernacle: on thefollowing day, the rod belonging to Aaron was found to have budded, flowered, sproutedleaves, and produced almonds. The Lord, knowing this work of his to be part of a greatmystery, ordered that the rod be preserved as a memorial (d. Num. 17.1-10). The sonsof Israel had been instructed by the presence of the rod to seek carefully what such amiraculous deed might signify; long after, proceeding to disclose this, blessed Isaiah said:"And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up outof his root, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him" (Isa. 11.1-2). At these wordsit is as if his hearers were to say, "0 father Isaiah, you speak obscurely; we beg you, tellus this thing openly!" Isaiah then added an explanation and said: "Behold a virgin shallconceive, and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (Isa, 7.14). The Virgin'sson, that is Emmanuel, Isaiah describes plainly: "For a child is born to us, and a son isgiven to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be calledWonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince ofPeace. His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace" (Isa. 9.6-7).What God, then, pointed out by a miracle, this prophesying revealed from its secretcounsels, and what the prophet celebrated in song, subsequently the conclusion of thematter confirmed. For just as that rod without a root, without any support of nature orartifice, bore fruit, so Mary the Virgin, without the act of marriage, brought forth a son,a son surely denoted by the flower and the fruit, by the flower in accord with beauty,by the fruit in accord with service. He is indeed "most beautiful above the sons of men"(Ps. 44.3), and the life-sustaining food not only of humans alone but also of angels. Withthe first section of this proposition briefly affirmed, we take up what follows."

75 "Expedite quam paucis oraculo, unum quoque de miraculis absoluatur. Acceptaesunt a sanctoMoyse singulae uirgae de singulis tribubus israel, nominibus earum inscriptae, iubente domino, etpositae sunt in tabernaculo eius: inter quas una quae fuerat Aaron inuenta est sequentidiegerminasse,floruisse,fronduisse,ac peperisseamycgdala.Sciensergo dominushoc opus suummagniessemysterii,iussitseruari uirgam ad monimentum.Monebantur enimfiliiisraelpraesenciauirgaequaerere sollicitequid significarettam mirabile factum: quod longo post aperire pergens diuinus Ysaias: Egredietur,inquid, uirga de radice iesse, et flos de radice eius ascendet, et requiescet super eum spiritus domini.Adhaecuerba tamquam auditores eiusdicerent:0 pater Ysaia,obscure loqueris;dienobis,quaesumus,ipsam rem manifeste:adiecit c1aritatemet ait: Ecceuirgo coneipiet et pariet filiumet uocabitisnomeneius Emmanuhel. Filiumquoque uirginis, id est emmanuhel, praeclare describens:Puer, inquit, natusest nobis, filius datus est nobis, et uocabitur nomen eius admirabilis, consiliarius, deus fortis, paterfuturi saeculi,princepspacis;multiplicabitureius imperiumet regnieiusnon erit finis.Quod ergodeusdesignauit miraculo, hoc a secretis eius prodidit uaticinatio; et quod uates cecinit consequenter reiexitus approbauit. Nam sicut ilia uirga sine radice, sine quolibet naturae uel artis adminiculo, fructi-ficauit: ita uirgoMaria, sine coniugali opere, filiumprocreauit, filiumsane floredesignatumet fructu;florepropter speciem,fructu propter utilitatem. Estenimspeciosusformaprae filiishominum,et uitalisrefectio non solum hominum sed etiam angelorum. Huius breuiter asserta propositionis particulaprima, quod sequitur attingamus": ibid., pp. 57-58.

Liturgical Innovation 411It is instructive to compare the mode of treating the miracle of joseph's flowering

rod as found in Approbate with those of Pseudo-Matthew and the Libel/us. Evenbrief analysis of this single event will demonstrate changes in treatment that aresignificant for the development of the image of the flowering rod and its theolog-ical and liturgical undergirdings.w The miracle of joseph's rod appears in Pseudo-Matthew as a version of the tale from the Proto-Evangelium of james. In this storyMary, who has lived in the Temple since her infancy, must leave with the onset ofpuberty and the impurity caused by her menstrual cycle. The priest Abiathar an-nounces that a husband is required for Mary, a man who will respect her vow ofvirginity." Lots are cast to determine from which tribe of Israel the man will c