Klöster im Hochmittelalter

The Mind as Cell and the Body as Cloister | 125
speak of up to seven hundred participants, Richard apparently organized it in such
a way so as to focus attention on his person. ⁷² In particular the timing of his visit to
Jerusalem was well-chosen, in that he could enact an adventus much like Christ’s,
and celebrate the Holy Week there. According to Hugh, Richard arrived on Palm
Sunday; on White Thursday he washed the feet of the poor; on Holy Friday, he
spent the day in mortification and the night in prayer; on Saturday, he attended
the office and various other liturgies at the Holy Sepulcher. On Easter Sunday, he
received communion, and spent the afternoon with the patriarch. ⁷³ Richard also
visited the lieux de mémoire of the suffering Christ; and if we are to believe the Vita
Richardi, he also visited the river Jordan. ⁷⁴
Richard’s imitatio Christi was heavily charged with emotions, and called for a
devotion driven by compassion of the suffering Christ. ⁷⁵ But his behavior, if accurately
represented by Hugh, also suggests that he wished to convey a message
that his actions derived from the single, ultimate goal of actually participating in
the Savior’s redemptive agency. Revealing as to how significant this idea was to
his self-conception is what happened to several relics associated with the Passion
that he brought back from the Holy Land. In 1028, shortly after his return, he
sold several of his abbey’s relics to relieve a hunger crisis, and called upon other
ecclesiastical and secular lords to follow his example. ⁷⁶ But the Passion relics remained,
and contrary to the many other relics he handled as abbot appear to have
been his private property. On his deathbed, Richard held on to them closely, while
he listened to some of his monks reading the Passion stories and appropriate excerpts
from Gregory’s Dialogues. ⁷⁷ At one point, he slowly passed the relics over
his entire body, self-administering a ritual act of cleansing, mirroring, both in act
and in meaning, the salvatory unction. He also arranged for his burial in the reorganized
crypt of Saint-Vanne, in front of the altar of Mary and John the Evangelist,
recreating as it were the scene at Golgotha. This final preparation constituted the
72 Hugh’s account of Richard’s pilgrimage can be found in his Chronicon (note 9 above), pp. 393 –396.
On the pilgrimage, see Dauphin, Le Bienheureux Richard (note 8 above), pp. 281–296 and 306 –308,
and Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History. Ademar of Chabannes, 989 –1034
(Harvard historical studies 117), Cambridge, Ma./London 1995, p. 157. Several of Richard’s associates
undertook pilgrimages to the Holy Land that were rather less auspicious affairs; for Poppo, see Onulph
and Everhelm, Vita Popponis, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, in: MGH Scriptores 11, Hannover 1853, pp.
291–316, here pp. 295 f.
73 Dauphin, Le Bienheureux Richard (note 8 above), pp. 291–293.
74 Vita Richardi (note 3 above), p. 529.
75 Landes, Relics (note 72 above), p. 158.
76 Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon (note 9 above), p. 400.
77 For a discussion of Richard’s death, and the representative strategies at play in the organization of his
death rituals and funeral, see Steven Vanderputten, Death as a Symbolic Arena: Abbatial Leadership,
Episcopal Authority and the ‘Ostentatious Death’ of Richard of Saint-Vanne (d. 1046), in: Viator 44,
2013, pp. 29 – 48.