Acts
of piety that assisted church-building in western Europe during the 11th and 12th
centuries. The expression was first used by Arthur Kingsley Porter in 1909 to
characterize the phenomenon of people, under close supervision, serving as
beasts of burden to haul materials to church building sites.
In a true cult of carts event the faithful
pulled cartloads of materials rather than just the materials themselves. Of the
fourteen superficially similar instances recorded between 1066 and 1308 (twelve
religious and two secular), seven took place at Benedictine churches or were
reported by Benedictine chroniclers, and the link may be significant. The cult
of carts was short-lived; the concept is justified by five historically related
examples that occurred in France between c. 1140 and 1171, at
Saint-Denis, Chartres, Rouen, Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives (Normandy) and
Châlons-sur-Marne (Champagne). The account of people dragging stones to help
rebuild the church of St Cuthbert at Lindisfarne (England) after 1093 does not
fall within this definition, nor do manifestations reported after 1200 in
France, at Calais, Beaucaire and the cathedrals of Auxerre and Le Mans.
The 12th-century events were inspired by
two 11th-century occurrences, at Montecassino Abbey (Italy) and Saint-Trond
Abbey (Lorraine). The event at Montecassino was reported by Peter the Deacon in
Chronica monasterii Casiensis. In 1066, after the arrival of marbles
purchased in Rome by Abbot Desiderius for the new monastery church, ‘a group
composed solely of the faithful carried up the first column on the strength of
their necks and arms’. This was a single, symbolic act of support. Peter may
have known the account of a similar event at the Cathedral of St Irene at Gaza,
Judaea, between 402 and 407, when the faithful dragged columns from the beach
to an inland construction site. At least one Greek version of Mark the Deacon’s
life of Bishop St Porphyry of Gaza (Vienna, Österreich. Nbib., Vind.hist.gr.3)
existed in Italy by c. 1100. Peter may also have been inspired by the
account in Suetonius (Vespasian 5) of Emperor Vespasian’s carrying away
the first basketful of rubble from the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, Rome,
which was burnt AD 68–70. Although the Montecassino event was not a strict cult
of carts, many aspects of Peter’s account are echoed in accounts of the
12th-century occurrences.
A possibly earlier cult of carts event took
place between 1055 and 1082 at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Trond under Abbot
Adelhard II. The account was written between 1108 and 1138 by Abbot Rudolf, who
may have been an eye-witness. Building materials, purchased by the faithful at
their own expense, were carried on their shoulders and in carts. He described
how ‘the people in their villages, their voices raised in hymns, took [the
columns] up with a most eager enthusiasm, their ropes attached to wagons,
without the least use of oxen or pack animals’.
The Saint-Trond event constituted
longer-lasting support of the building project. It is historically related to
the main group of 12th-century events in France, but Abbot Suger’s account of
the earliest of these, at Saint-Denis between 1140 and 1144, looks back to
Montecassino: after the miraculous discovery of columns in a Roman quarry at
Pontoise, Suger’s workmen and the pious faithful of all ranks tied ropes to
them and dragged them to the centre of Pontoise to load them onto carts. There
are other similar details and Suger certainly knew the Chronica monasterii
Casiensis from a visit to Montecassino in 1123.
The cult of carts activity at Chartres
Cathedral in 1145 is best documented in a letter of Haymo, Abbot of
Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives. Haymo was an eye-witness, although his account borrowed
from that of Rudolf of Saint-Trond. He described the thousands of participants
from different social ranks at Chartres who sang as they laboured under the strict
control of the clergy; one priest was assigned to each cart, to which people
were harnessed, perhaps in a similar manner to that shown in the Bayeux
Tapestry (see fig.). The whole event was a carefully
supervised act of penance, and adults and children welcomed scourging. Haymo
understood clearly that the hysteria for salvation had practical value, saying
that the monks of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives constructed a cart of the new type
built at Chartres so that their neighbours could help them to complete their
church.
The spread of the cult of carts phenomenon
from Chartres to Normandy was discussed in a letter written in 1145 by the
Archbishop of Rouen, Hugo of Amiens, a former Benedictine monk, who reported
that some of his people went to help at Chartres and that he later put their
faith to use at home. The last recorded 12th-century cult of carts
manifestation in France was at Châlons-sur-Marne, associated with the building
of the Benedictine abbey church and reported in a letter by Guy of Bazoches, canon
of Châlons Cathedral from 1162 to 1171. Guy’s account shows familiarity with
Haymo’s. In the 1180s the chronicler Robert of Torigny, whose sources were the
letters of Archbishop Hugo and Abbot Haymo, made it clear that the cult was
over.
In 1223 a distant reflection of
Montecassino may have been seen at the Franciscan church in Reggio nell’Emilia
in Italy, where the townspeople carried building materials on their backs and
helped to build the foundations. The last reported true cult of carts event in
the Middle Ages, however, was in Rome in 1308 when, according to contemporary
accounts, after the fire in the basilica of S Giovanni in Laterano, ‘women
hauled four-wheeled carts loaded with stone into the church, not permitting
animals to defile it’.
CARL F. BARNES JR
Mark the Deacon: Bios tou agiou
Porphuriou [Life of St Porphyry]; in H. Grégoire and M. Kugener, eds: Vie
de Porphyre (Paris, 1930), chaps 75–9, 84 [with Fr. trans.]; Eng. trans. in
C. Mango: The Art of the Byzantine Empire, Sources & Doc. Hist. A.
(Englewood Cliffs, 1972), pp. 30–32
Leo of Ostia: Chronica monasterii
Casiensis; in J. von Schlosser, ed.: Quellenbuch zur Kunstgeschichte des
abendländischen Mittelalters, Quellenschr. Kstgesch., vii (Vienna, 1896),
pp. 202–3; Eng. trans. in C. Davis-Weyer: Early Medieval Art, 300–1150,
Sources & Doc. Hist. A. (Englewood Cliffs, 1971), p. 136 [the account of
the events of 1066 is by Peter the Deacon]
Rudolf of Saint-Trond: Gesta
abbatum Trudonensium; ed. D. R. Koepke in Mnmt. Ger. Hist., Scriptores, x (Hannover, 1852), pp. 234–5;
excerpt in V. Mortet and P. Deschamps, eds: Recueil des textes relatifs à
l’histoire de l’architecture et à la condition des architectes en France au
moyen âge, ii (Paris, 1929), pp. 157–8
Reginald of Durham: Reginaldi
monachi Dunelmensis libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus; ed. J. Raine (London, 1835), p. 45; Eng. trans.
in L. Salzman: Building in England down to 1540 (London, 1952)
Suger of Saint-Denis: Libellus
alter de consecratione ecclesiae sancti Dionysii; ed. in E. Panofsky: Abbot
Suger on the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis and its Art Treasures (Princeton,
1946, rev. 2/1979/R 1986), pp. 90–95, 215 [with Eng. trans.]
Haymo of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives: Relatio
de miraculis beatae Mariae; ed. L. Delisle in Bibliothèque de l’Ecole
des Chartes, v/i (Paris, 1860), pp. 120–39; Lat. excerpt and Eng. trans. in
A. K. Porter (1909), pp. 151–6; Eng. trans. in G. Coulton: Art and the
Reformation (Oxford, 1928), pp. 339–41
Hugo of Amiens: Epistola Hugonis
Rotomagensis archiepiscopi ad Theodoricum Ambianensem episcopum; ed. in M.
Bouquet: Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, xiv (Paris,
1877), pp. 318–19; Lat. with Eng. trans. in A. K. Porter (1909), pp. 156–7; Eng.
trans. in T. Frisch (1971), p. 25, and in R. Branner, ed.: Chartres
Cathedral, Norton Crit. Stud. A. Hist. (New York, 1969), p. 94
Robert of Torigny: Ex chronico
sanctis Michaelis in periculo maris; ed. D. L. C. Bethmann in Mnmt. Ger.
Hist., Scriptores, vi (Hannover, 1844), p. 496; and in L. Delisle, ed.: Société
de l’histoire de France, i (Paris, 1872), p. 238; Lat. with Eng. trans. in
A. K. Porter (1909), p. 159; Eng. trans. in R. Branner, op. cit., p. 93 [Robert
of Torigny’s account is in a continuation of the Chronicle of Sigebert
of Gembloux]
Additional,
less specific 12th-century texts referring to cult of carts activities at
Chartres and in Normandy are given in V. Mortet and P. Deschamps, op. cit., p.
65, no. 1.
Guy of Bazoches: Epistola;
ed. in L. Demaison: ‘Les Chevets des églises Notre-Dame de Châlons et
Saint-Remi de Reims’, Bull. Archéol. Com. Trav. Hist. & Sci. (1899), pp. 106–7
Lambert of Ardres: Historia
comitum Ghisnensium et Ardensium dominorum, ed. J. Heller in Mnmt. Ger. Hist., Scriptores, xxiv (Hannover, 1883),
p. 640; Eng. trans. in G. Coulton: Life in the Middle Ages, ii
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 18–20
Guillaume of Tudèle: La Chanson
de la croisade contre les Albigeois; ed. P. Mayer in Société de l’histoire
de France, I, v (Paris, 1875), p. 406; excerpt with Fr. trans. in V. Mortet
and P. Deschamps, op. cit., pp. 225–6
Gesta pontificum Autissiodorensium; ed. in L. Duru: Bibliothèque
historique de l’Yonne, i (Auxerre, 1850), pp. 475–6; Lat. excerpt in V.
Mortet and P. Deschamps, op. cit., pp. 204–9; Eng. trans. in T. Frisch (1971),
pp. 27–8
A. Bertani, ed.: Cronica regii
(Parma, 1857), pp. 34–5 [see V. Mortet and P. Deschamps, op. cit., p. 63, no.
2]
G. Busson and A. Ledru, eds: Actus
pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium (Mamers, 1901), pp. 489–92; Lat.
excerpt in V. Mortet and P. Deschamps, op. cit., pp. 257–8; Eng. trans. in T.
Frisch (1971), pp. 28–30
Ptolemy of Lucca: Historica
ecclesiastica; ed. in G. Mollat: Vitae paparum Avenionensium, i
(Paris, 1914), pp. 31–2
A. K. Porter: Medieval
Architecture, ii (New York, 1909), pp. 150–60 [first pubd ref. to the cult
of carts]
H. Adams: Mont-Saint-Michel and
Chartres (New York, 1913) [popularized the cult of carts concept although
Adams did not use the term]
T. Frisch: ‘On the Question of the
Participation of the Common People in the Building of Gothic Churches’, Gothic
Art, 1140–c. 1450, Sources & Doc. Hist. A. (Englewood Cliffs, 1971),
pp. 23–30 [gen. review with trans. of some of the doc.]
(Carl Barnes,
Jr., "Cult of carts" in