[Carl F. Barnes, “Cult of Carts”, in : The Grove Dictionary of Art (1996)]
Cult of Carts.
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’.
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.]
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