Resumen de Der heilige Medard und seine Verehrer. Zur königlichen Patronage von Heiligenkulten im Merowingerreich
This paper discusses the origins of the cult of Medardus, a Merovingian saint who was to become fairly popular within and without the Frankish realms. Medardus was one of the numerous bishop-saints whose cults were typical for post-Roman Gaul. However, his case is a rather curious one: his cult was, at least in the beginning, almost exclusively sponsored by royal patronage. After having transferred Medardus’s body from his episcopal see of Noyon to the royal town of Soissons, the contemporary king Chlothar I commissioned a basilica to be built over the saint’s tomb. Serving as a burial place for at least two Merovingian kings - Chlothar himself (d. 561) and his son Sigibert (d. 575) -, the basilica continuously benefited from royal patronage during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods. The newly established cult quickly gained popularity and the Medardus basilica subsequently figured among the most prominent sanctuaries of Frankish Gaul. Even though Medardus’s posthumous ‘career’ is far from being commonplace, up to now very little attention has been paid to the origins of the cult and Chlothar’s reasons for linking this contemporary bishop closely to the reigning dynasty. An overall look at the scattered evidence will suggest that Chlothar consciously chose Medardus to become a particularly ‘royal saint’, i.e. a saint whose cult - unlike many others - was not linked to the tradition of a certain bishopric or to the authority of a living bishop. By actively supporting this new saint’s cult, Chlothar and his successors apparently adopted integral features of episcopal authority. As a comparison with royally sponsored saints’ cults in other royal cities will show, this approach was adopted by other kings as well.
