Collector and saint: Queen Radegund and devotion to the relic of the True Cross

Abstract

Radegund, queen of the Franks and launder of the monastery of Ste Croix, was a lifelong relic collector with a particular interest in saints from the holy East. With her acquisition of the first major relic of the True Cross to arrive in Northern Europe, a gift from the byzantine emperor Justin 11 and his wife Sophia, the Merovingian queen reached the culmination of an ambitious collecting program. Furthermore, through her celebration of the cult of the relic, as recipient, patron, collector and first among devotees, she secured her own future status as a saint.1 Radegund orchestrated the presentation of the relic to maximum effect. Although it was most probably already protected by a reliquary and accompanied by an imperial bequest, a lavish gold and gemmed Gospel book,2 she enclosed it in a larger casket along with other relics and in turn placed this arca in an oratory.3 The ensemble was presented to viewers with elaborately celebrated processions, conspicuous acts of private devotion, and the regular performance of ecclesiastical liturgy all of which stimulated miracles and pilgrimage. That the Vexilla Regis, the ‘world-famous hymn, one of the grandest in the treasury of the Latin Church,’ was composed by Radegund's friend Venantius Fortunatus to celebrate the adventus of the cross in Poitiers reveals the relic's contemporary and continuing fame.4