Читать книгу The Bernward Gospels - Jennifer P. Kingsley - Страница 11

2

SERVICE

While the dedication opening of the Bernward Gospels sets into motion mechanisms for fixing the bishop’s image in the monks’ memory, the manuscript’s succeeding illuminations shape that picture in ways specific to episcopal concerns. A significant theme develops from the related content of paintings that appear in each of the four gospels. These portray episodes from the lives of the saints Matthew, Mark, and John the Baptist. In the case of the two evangelists, the paintings show the key moments in which Matthew and Mark entered Christ’s ministry (fols. 18v and 75v; plates 5 and 8). A more extensive cycle is devoted to the Baptist.¹ Six scenes present stories about John, more than are devoted to any other figure in the manuscript except Christ. Two of these episodes appear frequently in medieval art because they involve Christ: the Visitation (fol. 111v; plate 11) and the Baptism (fol. 174v; plate 15). The remaining four scenes, however, are rarely represented. One shows the naming of John the Baptist (fol. 111v; plate 11) and another the Baptist preaching (fol. 75r; plate 7), while two vignettes serve to narrate how Zacharias learned, and doubted, the prophecy of John’s miraculous conception (fol. 111r; plate 10).

Matthew’s gospel is illustrated with four main scenes that run across three sequential sides of vellum (fols. 18r–19r; plates 4–6). While the first painting depicts Christ’s Nativity (fol. 18r), the next picture portrays two consecutive gospel episodes from Matthew’s life (fol. 18v; fig. 11). Above, Christ calls Matthew to his service, and below, Christ dines with Matthew at the house of Levi. Directly across from these paintings is Matthew’s author portrait; it is paired with the evangelist’s symbol, the man, which appears in an independently framed space above, depicted within a medallion and inside a garden framed by a ciborium-shaped structure (fol. 19r; fig. 11). Matthew is depicted as a youth, with unbearded face and full, wavy brown hair. The heavily ornamented background takes the form of a curtain.

The illustrations in Mark’s gospel consist of five scenes presented in sequence. The first page (fol. 75r; plate 7) depicts John the Baptist preaching (above) and Christ calling his first four disciples (below). On the second page appears the gospel episode known as the Noli me tangere (above), which will be discussed in chapter 4, and a single scene from the life of Mark (below) in which an older man hands Mark a book (fol. 75v; plate 8 and fig. 12). The scene relates to the gospel’s prologue, which explains how Mark entered Christ’s service by becoming a student of the apostle Peter.² The picture shows Peter charging Mark to write (or perhaps dictating to Mark) his gospel. Directly across from this painting is the evangelist’s portrait and symbol, the lion, which, like Matthew’s, appears in a separate scene within a garden setting and is framed by architecture (fol. 76r; plate 9 and fig. 12). Mark’s author portrait shares some characteristics with Matthew’s, most notably in the evangelists’ poses. Yet there are also important differences, such as the fact that Mark is portrayed as a mature man with long beard and widow’s peak and the fact that the background consists of a simple flat pattern of multicolored stripes rather than a curtain.

Neither the illustrations for the gospel of Luke nor those for the gospel of John include episodes from their lives. Instead, the portraits of Luke and John are paired with pictures of Christ; he appears in the space above the evangelists in conjunction with their symbols, the ox and the eagle (fols. 118v and 175v; plates 13 and 17, and see figs. 25 and 26). In contrast to the portraits of Matthew and Mark, the portraits of Luke and John each appear on the verso rather than recto of a bifolium, and they face text rather than narrative scenes. While there are certain compositional similarities between the paintings of these last two evangelists, most notably the tilted footstools and the combined scroll case and inkstand to the figures’ right, the pictures differ from each other in significant ways. Like Matthew, Luke appears as an unbearded youth with long brown hair and sits in front of a curtain. In contrast, John is portrayed as the visionary author of Revelation. He is an older man with a flowing grayish tan beard and hair and adopts a contemplative pose. As in the portrait of Mark, the painting’s background is a flat repeating pattern of ornament.

Medieval exegetes and illuminators often treated the evangelists in pairs, and it is also not unusual for theologians to single John out from the other evangelists for having a particularly penetrating spiritual insight.³ Yet the usual grouping links Matthew to John because both were contemporaries of Christ, while Mark and Luke belonged to the following generation, being disciples, respectively, of the apostles Peter and Paul.⁴ Instead, the Bernward Gospels employs compositional devices that relate Matthew to Mark and Luke to John; simultaneously, youthful portrait types and the motif of a curtain connect the portraits of Matthew and Luke, while older portrait types and a flatly patterned background link the portraits of Mark and John.

These choices mark a departure from the manuscripts that served as models for the Bernward Gospels.⁵ A Carolingian gospel book to which the Bernward Gospels bears a close relationship (Prague, Kapitulni Knihovna, Cim. 2) pairs Mark’s portrait with a painting of Mark accompanied by Peter (fols. 82v–83r; fig. 13) and Luke’s portrait with a picture of Luke accompanied by Paul (fols. 125v–126r; fig. 14). Mark and Luke each appear, then, with the apostle who taught him. The equivalent arrangement in Matthew pairs the evangelist’s portrait with the scene of Christ calling Matthew to his service (fols. 23v–24r; fig. 15), and in John, the evangelist is presented alongside a painting of the Last Supper, where John appears as Christ’s most beloved apostle, resting his head against Christ’s breast (fol. 185v–186r; fig. 16). Byzantine manuscripts that have also been proposed as possible models for the Bernward Gospels follow a related pattern. Greek codices that include a painting of Mark accompanied by Peter usually substitute it for Mark’s portrait and do the same thing with the picture of Luke with his teacher, Paul.⁶ In those instances Matthew and John generally appear alone, each portrayed as an author. The Bernward Gospels varies from each of these Carolingian and Byzantine strategies. Why?

One possibility is that the shift in the codex’s decorative scheme discussed in the introduction occurred as a series of progressive modifications in the program. An alternative is that the differences among the gospels’ illustrations are the result of amalgamating independent models. Indeed, the biographical scenes depend heavily on the Prague gospels, while the Ascension that is paired with the portrait of John draws on Anglo-Saxon iconography.⁷ Neither of these explanations is entirely satisfactory, however, especially because each portrait combines a limited set of varying details—the background, portrait type, and composition—in ways that, in effect, link the paintings each to the others. For example, the portrait of Mark echoes some characteristics of Matthew’s portrait, and other aspects of Luke’s and John’s. It is worth noting that a fundamental tenet of the medieval understanding of the New Testament is the harmony of the gospels, a principle that more or less explicitly informs the decoration of most gospel books from the period.⁸ While not a main focus of the pictorial program in the Bernward Gospels, the alternating details of the miniatures do allow for this harmony while developing different themes in the portraits of Matthew and Mark versus those of Luke and John.

Of the evidence that these two sets of portraits (one paired with images of Christ, the other not) should be treated independently, the most important to consider is the inclusion in the manuscript of additional pictures of Christ that share the same iconic pictorial mode. These will be the subject of the next chapter. At the same time, the codex physically connects the paintings of the Crucifixion and Ascension, respectively, to the portraits of Luke and John just as the placement and content of the biographical episodes link the pictures of the Calling of Matthew to the portrait of Matthew, and the depiction of Peter charging Mark to write the gospels to the portrait of Mark. It is therefore important to consider how these two types of pictures might relate to each other.

Since the studies of George Galavaris and Robert Nelson on the relationship between textual prefaces and the illustrations of Byzantine gospel books, representations of Mark with the apostle Peter have been connected to a particular evangelist portrait type in which an accompanying figure is introduced. Galavaris and Nelson have argued that this genre derived from the gospels’ prefatory commentary and served generally as a motif of witness, authority, or inspiration.⁹ Rainer Kahsnitz has made similar arguments about the Calling of Matthew in Byzantine and Western art.¹⁰ Kahsnitz’s conclusions point to the possibility that both biographical episodes in the Bernward Gospels function as authentication or inspiration motifs. However, as Kahsnitz also recognizes, outside of the Bernward Gospels and one manuscript from Corvey (a center closely connected to Hildesheim), there are no Ottonian paintings of Mark with Peter (or Luke with Paul, for that matter), and the programmatic linking of the Calling of Matthew to the “accompanied evangelist” picture is found only in the Prague Gospels and the Bernward Gospels. Kahsnitz’s argument also depends on interpreting the depictions of all four evangelists in the Prague Gospels, including the connections the manuscript draws between John’s portrait and John’s image at the Last Supper, which is not a feature of the Bernward Gospels.

Except for the Bernward Gospels, the rare Ottonian examples of the Calling of Matthew appear without any connection to an evangelist’s portrait. In Archbishop Egbert of Trier’s tenth-century lectionary, the scene, together with a depiction of Christ dining at the house of Levi, illustrates the pericope for the sixth week after Epiphany (Trier, Stadtbibliothek, cod. 24, fols. 28v–29r). The placement of both miniatures in the manuscript follows the liturgical calendar. The evangelist portraits, in contrast, appear together at the beginning of Egbert’s lectionary (fols. 3v–6r).¹¹ In a later manuscript that may have been influenced by Egbert’s manuscripts, the Codex Aureus from Echternach (ca. 1030), the same scenes do directly precede Matthew’s portrait (Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, MS 156142, fols. 19r–20v). However, they form part of a larger group of seventeen narrative miniatures laid out on two bifolia.¹² A final parallel may be the now-lost frescoes that once decorated the Cathedral of Mainz.¹³ According to extant verses that may have served as tituli for Mainz’s pictorial cycle, a scene involving a tax collector appeared among a series of healing miracles, a placement that logically derives from the order of events narrated in the gospel.¹⁴ There are no Ottonian examples to compare to the painting of Mark with Peter in the Bernward Gospels.

The evidence suggests that although not unknown in the West, these biographical episodes featuring the evangelists were far from popular. The only scene for which other Ottonian examples exist, the Calling of Matthew, did not bear the specificity of associations for Ottonian patrons and viewers that it held for Byzantine ones or for the Carolingians who commissioned the Prague Gospels. Moreover, the representation of the Calling of Matthew in the Bernward Gospels differs from the other depictions cited thus far in two main ways (fol. 18v; plate 5 and fig. 11). The first is that the Bernward Gospels portrays Matthew with a halo even in the narrative scenes. The second is that it offers a more dramatic presentation of both this and the gospel story depicted below (Christ dining in the house of Levi) than other Ottonian or Carolingian and Byzantine examples. In the painting of Christ calling Matthew to his service, Christ faces Matthew directly, but at a certain distance. Traces of the outline of a figure appear between Matthew and Christ, partly overlapped by Christ’s right hand. These remains suggest that the painting’s design was changed to show Matthew seated and to create more distance between Matthew and Christ. Indeed, in the Carolingian model for this scene, Matthew walks behind Christ, already following him (Prague, Kapitulni Knihovna, Cim. 2, fols. 23v–24r; fig. 15). In contrast, the Bernward Gospels composition places the energy of Christ’s command at the center of the painting. The focal point of the scene becomes the empty space between Christ and Matthew, which is charged with the force of Christ’s call. Behind Jesus, two disciples turn their bodies and gaze toward each other, absorbed not by the event before them but by their own conversation.

The miniature below depicts Christ dining at the house of Levi (fol. 18v; plate 5 and fig. 11). The scene centers on the moment when the Pharisees express reservations about Christ’s decision to keep company with publicans, tax collectors, and other sinners (Matthew 9:10–14; Mark 2:15–18; Luke 5:29–33). The men who stand for the Pharisees appear in the same place as Christ’s two disciples in the miniature above; this helps link the two groups and underscores that both doubted Christ. Although the two paintings show consecutive episodes in the gospels, the scene of Christ dining at the House of Levi is not necessary for narrating Matthew’s entry into Christ’s ministry. Together, however, they emphasize that Matthew was a sinner who proved himself worthy by accepting Christ’s call to serve.

It follows from the fact that the Bernward Gospels includes a painting showing Mark with Peter, but not the equivalent picture of Luke with Paul, that this scene has meaning beyond the mere tracing of Mark’s religious lineage to Peter in order to authenticate his writings. The portrayal of Peter with Mark takes as its primary subject the circumstances under which the evangelist entered Christ’s service, which he performs by writing his gospel. The representation dramatizes the communication between the scene’s protagonists. Set at a distance from one another, but sharing the same long bench that spans the entire miniature, Peter and Mark turn to each other. Peter extends the book with his left hand and makes a speaking gesture with his right hand. Mark turns both palms up in order to receive both the codex and Peter’s words. In contrast to equivalent paintings in Byzantine art and the Carolingian model (Prague, Kapitulni Knihovna, Cim. 2, fol. 82v; fig. 13), where both the titulus and picture show Mark to be subservient to Peter, in the Bernward Gospels painting, Peter and Mark have equal weight.¹⁵ That difference underscores the point that the Ottonian painting is less about Mark’s inspiration or about lending authority to his gospel than it is about Mark’s participation in Christ’s ministry. What the Calling of Matthew and Peter’s charging Mark to write about Christ have in common is that both present the key moment when the evangelists began to serve Christ. Matthew is an apostle chosen by Christ, and Saint Peter, one of Christ’s foremost disciples, prompted Mark to write his text. Their service includes bearing witness to Christ, and through that witness, the evangelists enter into a privileged relationship with Him.

It is probable that at least the latter two themes also inform the decision to pair the portraits of John and Luke with visions of Christ, a point to which I shall return at the end. The portrait of John appears in conjunction with a painting of the Ascension that follows an iconographic type first developed in Anglo-Saxon England during the tenth century. In his study of this so-called disappearing Christ imagery, Robert Deshman offered one explanation for John’s vision, suggesting that it, together with John’s contemplative pose, demonstrated this evangelist’s superior spiritual understanding.¹⁶ While this observation helps illuminate the Bernward Gospels program, on the surface it does not immediately explain why a second vision would be depicted above the portrait of Luke, who is not generally considered a visionary, nor how these two miniatures relate to the episodes drawn from Matthew’s and Mark’s lives.

The two visionary miniatures may best be understood through the scenes illustrating the life of John the Baptist. Of twenty narrative pictures in the gospel book, six present John in different guises that articulate linked themes. These scenes are half-page miniatures that open the painting cycles of the last three gospels. The gospel of Mark depicts John addressing Jewish priests (fol. 75r, above; plate 7); the gospel of Luke illustrates John’s infancy (fols. 111r and 111v; plates 10–11); and the gospel of John presents the Baptist in his best-known act from the gospels, baptizing Christ (fol. 174v, above; plate 15).

A significant focus of these paintings is the typological relationship between the Baptist and Christ. The first picture is a rarely illustrated scene of the Baptist preaching (fol. 75r, above; fig. 17). John stands before a group of men whose pointed caps, along with the foremost figure’s staff and costume, mark them as Jewish priests.¹⁷ He wears a tunic girded with a golden sash that drapes over his left shoulder and wraps around his waist in the manner required of medieval deacons when they participated in the Mass.¹⁸ These details echo aspects of the painting below, which shows Christ calling the first disciples (fol. 75r, below; fig. 17).¹⁹ In these paired scenes, Christ and the Baptist stand one above the other, each proselytizing to a group of exactly four men. Both adopt the same pose—head tilted and holding a book in the left hand while gesturing with the right—and have the same halo, which, in contrast to those of the other figures, incorporates white dots in its borders. In addition, the two plants that flank John are prominent framing elements that appear throughout the manuscript primarily in association with Christ. For example, in the manuscript’s Noli me tangere (fol. 75v, above; plate 8), this motif frames Christ’s empty grave. In two paintings of the Crucifixion, as well as the pictures of the Raising of Lazarus and Ascension (fols. 118v, 174v, 175r, and 175v; plates 13 and 15–17), the same motif accompanies Christ himself.

Ornament both associates and differentiates the two scenes, visually presenting a similarity of form that simultaneously highlights difference (fol. 75r; plate 7). Broad horizontal bands of color articulate both pictures’ backgrounds; a gold and purple palette sets off Christ, while slightly paler hues appear behind John the Baptist. The water under the Baptist flows from the mouth of a personification of the river Jordan, whose head is aligned with Christ below, evoking a trope discussed by numerous medieval writers, including Hrabanus Maurus, that identified the flow of water from Paradise as the image of Christ flowing from God’s fountain and hence also as the Word of God irrigating the Church.²⁰ The typological relationship established between the Baptist and Christ, together with this latter detail, places John between the Old Law, to which he preaches, and the New Law of Christ, for whom he “prepares the way” (Mark 1:1–8). It also places the Baptist in the company of Christ’s followers, the first of the Christian priesthood. Indeed, John is linked in this painting not only to Christ but also to his disciples, who wear variations on the Baptist’s costume; the strips of gold that border their tunics echo the shape and material of John’s sash.

The illustrations in Luke’s gospel continue to present the Baptist as a type for Christ and for the Christian priesthood. Four scenes illustrate the Baptist’s infancy as it is described in the text’s opening verses.²¹ The first page shows two consecutive moments from the prophecy of John’s miraculous conception, which parallels Christ’s (fol. 111r; plate 10 and fig. 18). In the painting above, John’s father, the priest Zacharias, enters the inner sanctum of the Jewish temple to perform the incense offering. There the archangel Gabriel announces to him the coming of the Baptist. Zacharias expresses his skepticism and, because of this doubt, loses his voice. That event appears below.

The second page presents two scenes: the Visitation and John’s naming (fol. 111v; plate 11 and fig. 19). In contrast to the usual pictorial convention for the Visitation, in which Mary and Elizabeth embrace, the codex emphasizes Mary’s spoken response to Elizabeth’s greeting: the Magnificat (Luke 1:40–56), whose lines culminate in the interpretation of Mary’s conception as the fulfillment of the divine plan foretold in the Old Testament. To the right is a throne from which hangs a votive crown; these are conventional motifs drawn from Annunciation imagery. Below, standing next to his wife, Elizabeth, Zacharias displays a vertical scroll marked “Iohann[nes] e[st] nom[en] eius,” indicating with these words that his son will be named John. In another instance of the idiosyncratic iconography of the Bernward Gospels, Zacharias is depicted holding a tablet engraved with the word “Benedictus,” a reference to his canticle (Luke 1:68), which begins by emphasizing Christ’s Incarnation as the Redeemer and concludes with a description of John’s service to prepare the way for Christ.

The infancy cycle articulates the ways in which the Baptist’s birth is a sign of Christ’s impending advent and shows John to be a type for Christ. It also refers to the liturgy of the hours. The Magnificat and Benedictus were important hymns recited daily as part of the Divine Office. The Benedictus was generally chanted during morning prayers, at lauds, and the Magnificat in the evening, at vespers. Familiar to both the patron and recipients of the codex, these liturgical canticles formed the basis for understanding John as the forerunner and type for Christ. The picture reinforces the prayers’ message. The alignment of Mary’s Magnificat, acknowledging Christ’s presence inside her body, with Zacharias’s Benedictus, acknowledging God’s message about his son, evokes the typological relationship between John and Christ that exegetes traced to their very birth.²² The depiction of Mary’s throne in the Visitation, because it acts as a reference to the Annunciation, also creates a parallel between the miraculous nature of both her and Elizabeth’s conceptions.

The emphasis on the Baptist’s typological relationship to Christ developed alongside the growth of his cult in the fourth century. Augustine is the first witness to a feast commemorating the birth of John the Baptist on 24 June. His significant remarks on the Baptist—in the dozen or so surviving sermons he preached on the Nativity of the Baptist, in three of his tracts commenting on the gospel of John the Evangelist, and in one of the De diversis quaestionibus—lay the basis for the medieval understanding of the Baptist. Augustine’s commentary is primarily concerned with analyzing the parallels between the Baptist and Christ, both of whose births the gospels presented as miraculous events announced by the angel Gabriel. John was born above hope, to a sterile woman, while Christ was born above nature, to a virgin. For Augustine, John the Baptist, the forerunner and herald of Christ, is the voice to Christ’s word and the lamp to Christ’s light. He is the boundary stone between the two testaments, the Old and the New.²³

Following Augustine, early medieval exegetes continued to underscore the similarities between Christ and John the Baptist, but beginning with Bede, they particularly highlighted John’s priestly lineage. While Bede follows Augustine in describing the Baptist as the line between law and gospel, Bede adds to Augustine’s discussion that John came from a priestly lineage in order to proclaim a change in the priesthood. In a homily for the Vigil of the Nativity of John the Baptist, Bede deliberately narrates John’s bloodline through his father back to Abijah, the descendant of the high priest Aaron, who was the eighth priest David had selected to serve as chief to one of the twenty-four orders into which David divided the priesthood (1 Chronicles 24).²⁴ Carolingian exegesis on the Continent, such as the sermons of Haimo of Auxerre and Hrabanus Maurus, continues in the same vein.²⁵

The Bernward Gospels infancy cycle includes significant liturgical content that suggests an attempt to draw particular attention to the fact that John was born of priests. In the Annunciation to Zacharias, there is a special emphasis on ritual implements. Zacharias holds a censer, featured prominently as it crosses over the column that appears between Zacharias and the angel. The area between the chains that carry the censer is activated by squiggly lines on a blue band that contrasts with the predominantly pink tones of the painting; the implement thus stands out starkly from the page. On the far right appears a series of liturgical objects—a hanging lamp, bowl, and candelabra, whose strict alignment emphasizes the importance of these works to the painting’s meaning. Finally, as already described, the paintings of the Visitation and of John’s naming include allusions to canticles recited daily as part of the Divine Office. Although by no means a direct sign of John’s priesthood, it is worth noting that the references to these prayers are uncommon additions that add one more liturgical reference to the infancy cycle. Finally, in the last representation of the Baptist, which illustrates the gospel of John (fol. 174v above; plate 15 and fig. 20), the Baptist performs a paradigmatic priestly act, the sacrament of baptism.

The Bernward Gospels presents the Baptist not only as a type for Christ and the priesthood in general, but also as a surrogate for the manuscript’s episcopal patron, a point the codex makes explicit in certain unusual aspects of the iconography of the Baptist. The choice to vest John in the contemporary liturgical garb of a deacon in the scene that shows him preaching (fol. 75r above; plate 7 and fig. 17) relates to the emphasis that the dedication painting places on the fact that Bernward wears Mass vestments (fol. 16v; plate 2). Bernward is clothed in the alb, cope, stole, and dalmatic required by the liturgy. His garments are highlighted by an inscription in the lower frame that reads “Bernwardus ornatus tanti vestitu pontificali” (Bernward adorned with such great episcopal vestments). Like John’s father, Zacharias (fol. 111r above; plate 10 and fig. 18), Bernward stands before an altar set for the celebration of a ritual—the Eucharistic sacrament, with the chalice, paten, and portable altar. Bernward’s book helps move him into the space of the altar toward the saints. Similarly, Zacharias’s censer crosses into the innermost sanctuary of the Jewish temple toward the angel. Finally, Bernward’s two-handed grip on the gospel book during a moment that the dedicatory picture constructs as both gift-giving and sacramental performance imitates the Baptist’s unusual touch of Christ’s shoulder in the Baptism, which was for the Church the sacramental act through which Christians became part of the community of the saved (fol. 174v above; plate 15 and fig. 20).²⁶

Baptismal rites played a significant role in developing John as a model more specific to the episcopate; they involved the priest’s authority of incorporation, an authority to which Western bishops sought to maintain a privileged relationship throughout the Middle Ages.²⁷ The Baptism is John’s most celebrated act from the gospels and the earliest to be represented in art. Yet where the gospels use the event primarily to develop John’s identity as a witness to Christ’s divinity, the liturgy offered a way to understand John typologically in relation to the baptizing priest. Already in the fourth century, monuments used images of the Baptism to develop connections between the biblical narrative and contemporary baptismal rituals. In the baptisteries of Ravenna, for example, a mosaic rendering of the Baptism appears at the center of each dome directly above the baptismal font. This placement establishes a visual link between the Baptist above and the living bishop below.²⁸ When Christian artists first started representing John the Baptist as an isolated figure in the sixth century, they continued to relate him to the episcopacy. The ivory cathedra made for Archbishop Maximian of Ravenna in the middle of that century may be the earliest direct comparison between the Baptist and a historical bishop, while the ivory book covers of the Carolingian Drogo Sacramentary (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 9428) use the Baptist to present Bishop Drogo, the patron and user of the manuscript, as part of the sacramental priesthood.²⁹

In light of such liturgical and pictorial associations, it is not surprising to find that eighth- and ninth-century hagiographers often compared historical bishops to the Baptist when establishing claims for their subjects’ sanctity. Much of the point of the textual comparison’s focus in this early period is on the fact that the Baptist’s saintliness was indicated even before his birth. The early anonymous life of Saint Cuthbert, a bishop and monk from Northumbria, for example, explains how Cuthbert was like Samuel, David, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, all having been “a vulva matris sanctificati leguntur” (sanctified for the work of the Lord in their mothers’ wombs).³⁰ Alcuin’s life of Archbishop Willibrord and Hincmar of Rheims’s biography of Bishop Remigius compare their episcopal subjects to the Baptist on the same grounds.³¹

Among these, Hincmar offers the most extensive presentation of his subject’s Baptist-like attributes, arguing two main points. First, Hincmar suggests—conventionally—that Remigius’s sanctity was indicated even before his birth.³² With his second point, however, he offers a fresh comparison for which the Baptist serves specifically as a model of pastoral action. Hincmar explains that Remigius converted the Franks to the light of the gospels, just as John had brought his people to Christ.³³ The Baptist serves in these Carolingian texts to establish the hagiographic subject’s holiness as an intrinsic quality, one with which the saint is born, although the comparison might be extended to characterize a bishop’s engagement in the world as a saintly pursuit, a theme that would become increasingly important during the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

References to the Baptist continue to appear in tenth- and eleventh-century biographies, but as part of a subtle shift of focus compared to earlier examples.³⁴ Although rarely treating officially canonized subjects, these texts use the formulas of hagiographic writing, wherein comparisons to biblical models serve to prove the sanctity of their subjects. In several instances, for which the life of the monk John of Gorze is illustrative, authors justify their treatment of their subjects as saints by citing the example of the Baptist. The preface to the Life explains, “And now we may pass over the rest in silence, for John himself, compared to whom, according to the gospel witness, no one was greater among those born from woman, made no miracle [signa]. It has been put to sleep for perpetuity in the silence of all of Scripture whether while he was struck by the sword in prison, he was distinguished by some last miracle [signa] from any type of murderers or thieves.”³⁵ Here the author reveals his purpose: he cannot or will not prove John of Gorze’s holiness by establishing that he performed miracles. Rather, as with much of the hagiography written under the influence of the tenth-century reforms emerging from Gorze and Cluny, the biography constructs John of Gorze’s sanctity primarily by means of cataloguing the monk’s virtues and good deeds.³⁶ The Baptist, like John of Gorze, did not perform miracles but was nonetheless among those saints whom exegetes acknowledged to be most like Christ.