CHAPTER 1

Chartres in Early Histories and Legends

Suddenly, Bishop Walter charged out of the city robed as if to celebrate Mass, andbearing the cross and the tunic of the Holy Virgin Mary in his hands, with the clergyand the citizens following behind; attended by "steel-clad squadrons" he struck thebacks of the pagans with spears and swords.

—Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans

Southeast of the site where the medieval Abbey of St. John in the Valley oncestood, the land rises steeply past the medieval walls of Chartres and upward to thecathedral; on the other side of the cathedral a high, sharp cliff falls eastward to theriver. Were a fortress located here instead of a church, the viewer would naturallycontemplate the military advantage accruing to those occupying the summit ofsuch a hill. In modern-day Chartres the cathedral dominates the landscape fromits high vantage point, and one can easily forget that when the counts of Chartres/Blois built their military enclave in the region, they located it on the plateau southof the cathedral. From there it stood guard to the rear flank of the town. From themid-tenth century on, those laying siege to the town on the north and east confrontedthe cathedral's walls and tower or towers, while those attacking from thesouth and west faced the ramparts of the Thibaudians. By that time two fortressesprotected the town, and each offered its own kind of defense. Each institutionslowly developed its own qualities of remembrance, and these grew independentlyin the ninth and tenth centuries, only to converge during the tenure of Bishop Odoin the late tenth century (see chapter 2). Early legends surrounding the nascentVirgin's cult and the earliest history of the bishops of Chartres explain how a senseof the past developed in Chartres, where, as in the vast majority of places, there wasno early school of history writers to record events.

The earliest known priestly class of the region was described by Caesar in theGallic Wars, book 6, as learned and responsible for the ritual life of the culture;he reports in chapter 13 that the Druids of Gaul assembled once a year in "a consecratedplace in the territories of the Carnutes." Stretching the cult of the Virginback into early Christian times and finding her pagan archetypes was, however,the work of Chartrain historians from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries(see chapter 12); the central Middle Ages had little interest in such machinations,except for an omnipresent desire to connect early saints with the apostlesand the Franks with the Trojans. Sulpicius Severus, the late fourth-century biographerof Martin of Tours, followed the saint throughout Gaul, documenting hissermons and miracles. Saint Martin twice saved children in Chartres, raising onefrom the dead and curing muteness in another. Both miracles are of a kind laterassociated with the miraculous powers of Saint Mary in this place. But there is noVirgin in Chartres during Saint Martin's time, or at least not documented in theextant sources. Chartres is also mentioned in a prominent source from the latesixth century: Gregory of Tours, whose history provides a general understandingof northwestern Merovingian Gaul, mentions Chartres briefly several times. Onlyonce does he offer details, in a passage concerning an aborted attempt of officialsat Châteaudun to create a new diocese next to that of Chartres. The earliest documentincluded in Lépinois' and Merlet's edited charters from Chartres Cathedralconcerns a Synod of Paris held in 573 to settle the dispute mentioned by Gregory ofTours. No Virgin is mentioned there either.

Two sources from the eighth and early ninth centuries witness to the fact that thecathedral at Chartres was dedicated to Mary. A donation by King Pepin the Shortto the Abbey of St. Denis in September 768 of the forest of Iveline exempts thoseparts of it previously given to other churches, which include "ecclesia Sancte-MarieCarnotensis urbe." A supposed eighth-century burning of Chartres recorded inthe early ninth-century Annales Mettenses never became part of local traditions orhistoriography. It too mentions the cathedral as being dedicated to the Virgin. Thestories that did develop over time were those...