Anton Legner. Kölner Heilige und Heiligtümer: Ein Jahrtausend europäischer Reliquienkultur. Köln: Greven Verlag Köln, 2002. 506 S. (gebunden), ISBN 978-3-7743-0335-5.
Reviewed by Jennifer L. Welsh (Department of History, Duke University )
Published on H-German (November, 2004)
Sanctity and Civic Identity: The Relic Culture of Cologne
Anton Legner's impressive work on the relics and relic culture of Cologne is densely packed with photographs, document reproductions, primary source selections, and engagingly written description and analysis, presented in its own reliquary-like protective box. Part coffee-table book, part academic tome, it lays out the complicated phenomenon of relic veneration in the context of one of the most relic- saturated cities in Europe.
As the fourteenth-century poem Legner selected to open the book notes, Cologne was a city which enjoyed the tremendous good fortune of being not only the possessor of innumerable relics, but also an exporter of these relics and their attendant holiness to other parts of the world. Legner's purpose in writing this book was to provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to the entire relic- and saint-focused religious culture of Cologne, primarily during the high and late Middle Ages and the early modern period.
For modern scholars and visitors to churches and museums, the loving preservation of pieces of bone and other relics, the vast amounts of time and material resources used to construct the elaborate gold and jeweled reliquaries, and the devotion shown to them by the faithful is often baffling, a stark reminder of the differences between medieval and modern ways of thinking. Legner argues that this gap has frequently resulted in observers and researchers either ignoring the complexity and importance of this aspect of medieval and early modern religion or merely dismissing it in light of developments during the Reformation and Enlightenment. As he makes clear in the introduction, the important question is not the authenticity of the various bones, scraps of cloth, bits of wood, and other articles which were venerated as the relics of particular saints, but the culture of belief which accorded them such a prominent place in the life of the city.
Veneration of saints, specifically as they were present in their relics, was tightly woven into the culture of the city and the daily lives of its citizens to such an extent that it is extremely worthwhile to examine its "historical,theological, popular culture, and art historical aspects" (p. 8). Legner's tone in the introduction is slightly nostalgic, lamenting modern society's loss of the "secretive and wonderful ... the shine and the mystery, which the cult of saints provided" (p. 12). The main body of the book, however, fulfills his goal of giving a historically objective investigation of the complexities of the "Kultur der Heiltumsverehrung" through the framework of the history of the piety and mentality of those who saw the relics as more valuable than the gold and precious stones which contained them,and the saints as the living stones in the walls of the New Jerusalem "innerhalb der Mentalitaets- und Froemmigkeitsgeschichte der Menschen" (p. 9).
The starting point for any major discussion of the cult of saints in medieval and early modern Cologne has to be the cult of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins. It was their presence through the centuries which first gave Cologne the reputation as a site of particular holiness, a repository of relics both venerated and yet undiscovered. After relating the version of the story as recounted in Jacobus de Voraigne's Legenda Aurea, Legner traces the history of the legend and the development of the cult. While the legend itself dates back to the sixth century, it was not until the twelfth century that the cult truly spread, reaching its highpoint in the thirteenth century. Legner looks at the ways in which new relics of the virgins were found, tested for authenticity, and in turn incorporated into the religious culture of Cologne. As Legner makes clear, there was an interaction between the legends and the developing history of the city. While the Three Kings provided the most impressive relic acquisition for Cologne, one that served to define the reputation of the city, it was the homegrown cult of St. Ursula which originally established Cologne's religious identity, and which was most closely entwined with it.
Tying the city's religious culture into wider issues of European medieval religious culture, Legner notes that Cologne was not only the site of intense relic veneration but a center of the relic trade, both through acquisition and through export. Indeed, the often-overlooked role of Cologne as an exporter of relics (largely due to the useful and inexhaustible presence of the remains of the famed eleven thousand virgins) to other parts of Europe is one of the most interesting observations of the book. The export of relics and the attendant production of reliquaries by Cologne artists was a developed industry. Even though many relics were exported in temporary containers, Cologne exported reliquaries produced there, often with a ship motif or rock crystal inserts to display the contents. Relics were also imported, particularly in the tenth century by Bishop Anno, who went from a career as an avid relic collector and venerator to being an inhabitant of his own reliquary (p. 24).
While modern visitors will often make the obligatory pilgrimage trek from train station to Dom without stopping to consider the wider range of religious sites in the city, Legner is determined to give the reader a much fuller understanding of the extent to which churches and shrines saturated, indeed defined, the structure of the city. The geography of Cologne's religious culture is established through the use of an imaginary pilgrim who travels through Cologne and visits the various churches and shrines. The detailed journey of "our pilgrim," starts with the cathedral, and then proceeds to wend along the routes of Cologne, ending up with a view based on Anton Woensam's panoramic view of the city, presented to Karl V in January of 1531. This literary device is not intrusive, largely because Legner refrains from personalizing the pilgrim, instead using his journey as a point of reference for a sequential description of religious sites in Cologne, from the famous, such as the cathedral, to the less well-known, such as Sankt Anna zum unteren Laemmchen, Sankt Maria in der Kupfergasse, or Sankt Anna zum oberen Laemmchen. The inclusion of these sites enables the reader to understand the richness of religious culture in medieval and early modern Cologne, the ways in which the life of the city was molded by its religious topography.
To construct the route he details, Legner utilizes medieval and early modern pilgrimage guides to the city, most notably the Sacrarium Agrippinae. Hoc est designatio ecclesiarum coloniensium grecignarum reliquiarum, written by the Carthusian monk Erhard Winheim, first published in 1607 and republished in 1736. The description of each of these sites is as thick as Legner can make it, ranging across history to include the origins and eventual fates of the churches and their relics.
One of the strengths of this book is the photography. Legner's focus on the art history aspects of Cologne's relic culture leads him to include countless images of the reliquaries he is discussing. Aside from an inexplicably blurry picture of the Baroque main altar of St. Pantaleon on page 168, the quality of the photographs in this book is exceptional, providing a real highlight for the reader/viewer. Reliquaries, paintings, and carved figures are shown in exquisite detail, often from multiple points of view which allow the reader to fully appreciate the complexity and artistry of these works. Legner's work on the book also gave him access to things which ordinary visitors would never get to see, another valuable feature of this book. For example, the lead box packed full of relics collected by Canon Constantinus in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, normally housed in the main altar of St. Kumibert, was removed, opened, and partially unpacked so that it could be photographed (p. 268). Viewing the display of unfolded bits of fabric, the small bottles and indeterminate bits and pieces of relics wrapped in cloth, with their attending medieval descriptive notes gives the reader an insight into the ways in which relics formed a part of the religious life of Cologne even when they were not on public display, but were a hidden source of collected sanctity and power.
While the majority of this book concentrates on the evocation of vanished mentalities and the densely woven religious culture of Cologne through the use of thick description, quotes, and innumerable photographs, Legner also makes interesting historical arguments. The most important one is the shift he sees in the fourteenth century between veneration of relics and veneration of images. The fourteenth century was a period of transition for the religious culture of Cologne, representing both the heyday of Cologne's status as a center of sacred relics and the beginning of its decline.
Legner provides several examples of images that contained relics as evidence of the shifts in piety and changing focus for veneration. Two thirteenth-century statues of St. Mary (one from Kendenich, the other from Ollesheim, both currently among the holdings of the Schnuetgen Museum) were constructed with doors in the back of the Virgin, in order to place relics inside (p. 70). Using endoscopic photography, Legner also discovered that a Crucifixion statue from the same period had a relic and its attendant descriptive note inserted into the statue through the wound in Christ's side either during or even after the figure was constructed (p. 68). Since none of these cases presumably involved relics of either the Virgin Mary or Christ, what Legner is demonstrating with these examples is how the evolving religious culture of late medieval and early modern Cologne could seek to combine sources of holiness and power, since all saints were holy through the power of God. With these images, while the anonymous relics would provide additional holiness, it was the image itself that became the focus of veneration, according to Legner.
After tracing the journey of his imaginary pilgrim, Legner turns back to the cult of St. Ursula, focusing on the eventual spread of the cult through the Jesuits, who took their relics across the sea, spreading Cologne's religious heritage far further than the virgins of legend had ever traveled. This nicely poetic epilogue to the story Legner has told throughout the book allows him to end with an emphasis on growth rather than the decline which he has referred to earlier. Indeed, although he recognizes and regrets the loss of a community consisting of both the living and the holy dead, Legner does try to show ways in which the city continues to define itself and be defined as a site of particular saint-and relic-based holiness.
While Legner's investigation ends in the eighteenth century, he draws a parallel in the introduction between two major processions in Cologne, one in 1634 and one in 1948. Through these processions, the city established its identity through its relics and saints, referring back to an older, unimpeachable source of authority which remained a constant presence over the centuries, either openly or under the surface (p. 12). With Koelner Heilige und Heiligtuemer: Ein Jahrtausend europaeischer Reliquienkultur, Anton Legner successfully investigates the culture of holiness within one of the most relic-packed cities in Europe as it developed and changed over the centuries and shows the extent to which it permeated and defined Cologne.
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Citation:
Jennifer L. Welsh. Review of Legner, Anton, Kölner Heilige und Heiligtümer: Ein Jahrtausend europäischer Reliquienkultur.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9948
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