ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on praise and adoration of the ruler, however, late medieval Spanish royal entries have been reinterpreted by Teofilo Ruiz as dialogues of power and as keys to much larger ideological programs. It proposes that we can also read relic entries as sites of contestation, not over the nature of political authority, but over the ecclesiastical control of lay attitudes towards relics and the cult of saints. The chapter examines entries (and exits) of relics in northern France and Flanders in the central Middle Ages as just such a liminal zone, where the rights of itinerant relics to veneration and welcome might be actively contested between clergy and laity. The variance in Drogo's descriptions suggests a basic difference from the elaborate and even more elaborately described late medieval royal entries. Different forms of relic mobility were actively being explored and adapted during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which had significant consequences for the practice of relic entries.
