ABSTRACT
In Poitiers in the year 569, a relic of the True Cross was installed in the convent of Notre-Dame (afterwards known as Sainte-Croix) “cum honore debito grandique psallentio” [with the due honor and great ceremony of psalm and hymns] that Gregory of Tours tells us its royal foundress, Queen Radegund, had desired.1 A Thuringian princess raised as a war-captive of Clothar of Neustria and later forced into polygamous marriage with him, Radegund had lived a devout life while married but succeeded in separating from her husband and having herself declared a nun. It took the intervention
Earlier versions of this paper were given at the 41st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 2007, and at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Maine Medieval Association, September 2009. I would like to thank the editors, Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown, for their invitation to present at Kalamazoo and for their enthusiastic encouragement of this project. Thanks are also due to the participants at the Colby/Bates/ Bowdoin Medieval and Renaissance Faculty Seminar, Fall 2007, for their generous comments. Particular gratitude is owed to my colleague, Arielle Saiber, whose questions and comments on rhetorical figures were invaluable during the early stages of research. All translation in the following pages is my own, except where a published translation is cited.
