Possession: Sacred Crusading Treasure in the Material Vernacular

Abstract

In the year 1176 a dispute erupted over possession of a sacred object known as the Holy Cross of Antioch. Two claimants, the abbey of St. Peter of Brogne and the family of the crusader Manasses of Hierges, argued that they were the rightful heirs of the object. The nature of their claims and the mode of their argumentation, as documented in a lengthy treatise composed in the year 1211, exposes the variety of interpretations of sacred material associated with the crusades. In claiming rightful possession of the object, the monks of Brogne insisted upon their monopoly over the legitimate interpretation of the Holy Cross as a reminder of the body and Passion of Jesus Christ. This article argues, however, that the dispute reveals traces of the family’s vernacular reading of the sacred material of the Holy Cross as a symbol of lordship and chivalric knighthood. This material vernacular was understood and perhaps even deployed by the monks in their subsequent campaign to emphasize the importance of the relic in the first decade of the thirteenth century.