Silk for Saints: Wrappings for Relics in the Carolingian Empire

Few textiles remain from the period of Carolingian rule (c.715-c.915) in western continental Europe. Of those that do many are silks that survived in association with the relics of saints, preserved in precious reliquaries. Most studies of these silk fragments, covers, pillows, and bags have focused upon dating them and explicating their technical aspects. This paper will rather examine their meanings to those people in the Carolingian world who most probably obtained these foreign fabrics, altered them for use with holy relics, and placed them in proximity to the remains of saints. Among these overlapping groups were clerics, monks, nuns, members of the royal family, and aristocrats. This paper will focus on three extant silk fragments from western Carolingian contexts in order to discuss the dressing of relics in silk more broadly. These silks will include a late eighth- or early ninth-century Byzantine fragment depicting the hunt of the Amazons, now housed in the museum of Meaux, and two silk fragments from the Sens Cathedral Treasury that wrapped the relics of St. Potentien at their elevation on 24 August 847. By examining these pieces, referring to others, and drawing upon textual sources, such as letters, saints' lives, miracle accounts, and inventories, this paper will demonstrate the crucial social, political, and spiritual roles that such textiles played in Carolingian culture, where the cult of the saints served as a crucial focus of Christian piety. Individuals in the Carolingian world made conscious selections of foreign-made textiles for use in religious settings, and this paper will explore possible reasons for their choices and what such silks reveal about communications between the Carolingian empire and the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. This study will contextualize this form of material culture while offering brief comparison to earlier, contemporary, and later cultures' similar use of silk.