1The processes associated with the dissolution of the Knights Templars created a wealth of documentation1. Extant sources allow contemporary researchers to investigate the order’s inner workings2. Beyond the many views and opinions recorded in brethren’s trial testimonies, the proceedings also created a rich portrait of the Templars’ communal possessions. The inventories of the Arago-Catalan Templar houses carried out under the reign of King Jaume II of Aragon (1291-1327) reveal a glimpse on the order’s most sacred and intimate religious spaces3. At times, the contents and furnishing of various Templar commandery chapels are documented in astonishing detail. While most objects are described by their simple utilitarian names, some liturgical utensils and reliquaries are described meticulously, and are even qualified by their geographic origin4. In a previous study of these inventories I brought to light the presence of Byzantine influenced reliquaries and crosses. The work of Jochen Schenk reevaluated this and other evidence to highlight the Templars’ particular devotion to the Cross5. The presence of opulent Eastern Christian reliquaries, while few, underscore their prized status inside Templar churches. Portions of the True Cross, and Byzantine styled reliquaries were objects poised as representatives of the order’s place of origin in the Holy Land.

2In light of recent research, the present study aims to offer a preliminary sketch of some of the dynamics active when Templars paid devotion to Byzantine-styled objects. Particularly, I propose that the Templars’ devotion to Eastern Christian reliquaries participates in a conceptual transformation of the object; an act of devotion turning, at times, contemporarily crafted reliquaries into reimagined witnesses of a historically distant and biblical Jerusalem. Examination of a thirteenth-century narrative source illustrates how the conceptual process of this transformation, or the appropriative realignment of Byzantine iconographic idioms, takes place in Arago-Catalunya6. This devotional contextualization of Templar’s practices permits interpreting other facets found in extant chapel decorations, such as those of the commandery of gardeny in Lleida. Briefly tracing the interpretative devotional framework operating inside the Templars’ religious spaces, this article argues for the need of further work on the Templars’ consumption and devotion to Eastern religious objects. As Schenk underscores, reliquaries were chosen by Templars as objects which articulated distinct facets of their religious identity7. Facets which they also used to project onto their brethren, and communities. Yet, the devotional mechanisms active in these choices has not been previously elucidated. Considering, briefly as I do here, the spiritual dynamics active in the cult to Byzantine-styled reliquaries also helps to underscore these objects’ broader reception in the Arago-Catalan territories.

3The Templars’ devotion to objects displaying Byzantine iconography is not a fortuitous occurrence. The seeking, obtaining, at times giving, and the practicing of devotion to Byzantine reliquaries and images reveals a thoughtful approach to the Templars’ cult objects and church furnishings8. The use of these types of reliquaries and images, or those objects which evoke Byzantine iconographic language, was not an artistic language displayed unconsciously and without regard to the connotations of their visual expression. On the contrary, as this paper demonstrates, the use of this visual language shows how Templar reliquaries participated in a discursive devotional context laden with extra-sensory imagery and meaning. Byzantine, or “Byzantinizing”, relics and objects did not travel alone. Rather, they traveled with an aura of devotional prestige: A prestige created both by the splendor of the Greek East, and by the miracles that were circulated about these objects9. Thus, the following considers how this kind of iconography was received, and how Templars and their Arago-Catalan contemporaries utilized and appropriated it.

4The iconographical repertory of this study revolves around three examples. Two objects are no longer extant, and while certainly belonging to Arago-Templar churches, they cannot be pinned down to any one particular commandery. The third visual source is fragmentary and still in situ. The two first examples have been briefly discussed previously in the abovementioned article, examining the liturgical objects from the Templar commanderies of Arago-Catalunya10.

Evoking the East Visually

5The first example is a diptych described in the inventory as follows:

Quasdam tabulas operis Venecie cohopertas folio argenti deaurato, intus quas tabulas in altera parte est figura Domini Ihesu Christi et figura duodecim apostolorum, ultra alias figures que sunt in ipsa parte, et dicte figure sunt cohoperte cristallo, et sunt in eadem parte viginti IIII inter perlas et lapides, et in alia parte est ymago beate Marie tenentis filium in brachio, et sunt ibi figure duodecim apostolorum et totidem lapides et perle sive nacres, sicut in alia parte11.

6What is described here is a diptych, covered with gilded silver on the outside, which opened to reveal two lavishly decorated images. The diptych described here most probably had the depiction of the Christ in glory and the twelve apostles on the right hand side. It is significant that the image is described as being “covered by crystal.” This form of description is not found associated with any other objects and might be revealing an attempt to describe either the technique of champlevé enamel or micro-mosaic. Such techniques were known in Venice, and the champlevé technique was very prominently shown in Venice via its altarpiece12. On the left hand side of the Templar diptych, as is customary, was an image of a Byzantine iconographical type called the Virgin Hodegetria, or the virgin who shows the way13. The presence of this compositional type is fundamental, as I will show, for uncovering the devotional traditions latent in the image and which Templars had access to.

7The second example, a more complex object, is a reliquary of the True Cross14. As Schenk has recently discussed at length, Templars practiced ardent devotion to the Cross15. The abundant presence of these reliquaries in the Arago-Catalan inventories testifies to this devotion. Yet the following object appears to be the most lavish possessed in these territories, since it is described in great detail:

Quandam croetam argenti subtilem, que pertitur, queque deaurata est, in cuius parte quadam fermata est quadam parva crux cum quatuor brachiis, et videtur quod in ea fuerit de ligno Domini, et in alia parte dicte crucis est quadam media crux fixa, et ista medi crux cohopertur cum alia in qua est una pecia de ligno Domini; est eciam intus cruce predictam quadam modica croeta rotunditatis unius denarii, et in una parte dicte crucis que pertitur est quidam cruxifixus, et ex alia parte in medio crucis est ymago Virginis gloriose [te]nentis filium suum in brachio, et in quolibet quatuor brachiorum dicte crucis medie sunt singule imagines, medie quatuor evangelistorum, et eciam in dicta cruce quadam pecia reliquie nigre grossitudinis unius favete. In medio autem dite cruces fecimus poni de ligno Domini16.

8A complex multi-layered reliquary is being described in the inventory: First, the description starts with a larger double-sided gilded silver reliquary. On one side it has a four-armed relic of the True Cross, and on the other side is yet another reliquary of the True Cross. This gives way to a second reliquary. This one is shaped as another four-armed reliquary covered with pieces of the True Cross inside. It has a depiction of the Crucifixion on one side, and on the other, an image of the Virgin Mary holding Christ, which is another representation of the Byzantine standard iconographic type of the Virgin Hodegetria. Finally, this reliquary yet contains a third instance of a yet smaller portion of the True Cross.

9The last example is not a reliquary, but a portion of wall decoration still extant inside the Templar commandery chapel of Gardeny, Lleida (Ill. 39). Situated on the southern wall, this is a late thirteenth-century wall decoration that simulates marble ‘bricks’, or more properly formulated, small marble panels incrusted on the wall. While the technique and artistic quality of these depictions is not of the quality seen in other places of Europe, they still successfully communicate the effect of marble decoration. Since their recent discovery these wall decorations from Gardeny have begun to be discussed in scholarly literature17. Notwithstanding, no intent has been carried out to conceptualize why such decoration is depicted there. I will return to the significance of this type of decoration towards the end of this discussion, after proposing the meaning marble had for church decorations in Arago-Catalunya, and Templars residing in its territories.

10These three examples admittedly define only a small part of the devotional visual vocabulary experienced by Templar brethren in Arago-Catalan lands. The vast majority of devotional imagery were created locally, and displayed local artistic idioms. Yet, the fact that the first two examples are described in such detail, and given the appellate of “Venetian” (in the first example) shows that Arago-Catalan viewers of these objects in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century were aware of their distinctness. Immediately preceding the Fourth Crusade and in its aftermath, the artistic traditions of Venice, with its Byzantinizing artistic productions, helped popularize the devotional iconography of the East in the West18. The most important of these iconographic depictions was that of the Virgin Hodegetria. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Western Christians understood this as a depiction of Mary inextricably associated with the East, Jerusalem, and the biblical past. Byzantine hagiography noted that this was a copy of the portrait painted by St Luke himself19. The distinctness of this particular image in contemporary imagination is demonstrated by its reproduction in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Its depiction as being sold in an “icon shop” in the East has become an oft-repeated example in contemporary art historical scholarship20. The second iconographical type, that of the four-armed True Cross reliquary or Staurotheke, was equally distinct. After the Crusades, the four-armed vessel communicated the actual content inside, that is, the original cross Christ was crucified on. And in addition, the shape also communicated the site, the physical place of the cross’ provenance in Golgotha, Jerusalem. Expressing the True Cross in this way formed part of the traditional Byzantine and Eastern visual vocabulary. The last example treated in this article, that of marble, is a more complicated and not so easily definable category, and is not a part of a strictly “Byzantine” iconographic language. However, the lavish embellishment of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice made clear the associations, and appropriations, of the East’s use of marble to Western audiences. As scholarship shows, marble and its use in churches had a more developed theological tradition in the Eastern church21. For the present discussion, what is significant is that Venice and Venetian artwork acted as a prism refracting religious objects, as it were, from the East, and in particular, Jerusalem22. Venice was one of the most prominent conduits connecting Europe with the devotional material language of Jerusalem.

11Once situated in a Templar church, the Byzantine reliquaries were conceptually transformed in a way that was not possible for other items in their treasury. Items such as those manufactured in Limoges, for example, held the properties of a consciously fabricated Western European object. In turn, Eastern icons or reliquaries possessed an aura of authenticity uniting them with the image or relic they displayed. The difference between the Limoges works, and those of the East, is that these Byzantine items arrived to their Western users accompanied by miracles. These narratives provided the basis of the authenticity I refer to, wherein the narratives enacted a conceptual transformation making these objects reflect and embody a biblical and ancient past. Thus, these Eastern reliquaries were not viewed as strictly contemporary productions.

Conceiving Eastern devotional objects

12An early thirteenth-century Catalan manuscript evidences the process by which Byzantine iconography was devotionally remapped. The public library of Tarragona contains such a collection of Marian miracles, exemplifying the devotional apparatus connected with these Byzantine objects23. The manuscript in question, Tarragonensis 55, was copied in the Cistercian monastery of Santes Creus around the year 1230. This source compiles different bodies of miracles. A first section, comprising 50 folios, contains the following: The first 25 folios are anonymous Byzantine Marian narratives, while the second 25 folios contain works by Hugh Farsitus, recounting miracles of the Virgin at Soissons. Following this section, a ten-folio description of Constantinople, which also recounts Marian miracles in the East, is included24. The manuscript then closes with a portion of the Codex Calixtinus of about 40 folios, and finally Petrus Alfonsus’ Dialogo contra Judaeos25. While this source was most recently studied by Krijinie Ciggaar and Kathleen Stewart, its collections remain scantly studied26. As previous studies reveal, during the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century, Arago-Catalan Templars had close ties to the Cistercian order27. And at times, most probably celebrated a form of their liturgy in their churches28. The presence of these narratives in a Cistercian library demonstrates a possible source for how the Arago-Catalan Templar’s devotional perception of their Eastern reliquaries was formed29.

13The first collection of miracles of the Tarragonensis 55 is particularly significant due to the kind of narratives it contains. Its miracles recount events in the Holy Land and Constantinople, often recounting stories which shift imperceptibly between events of a distant past, and those of the narrative present. On folio 9 the following miracle is recounted:

De quadam imagine Beate Marie que velud in marmore picta est. In Libia [sic] est enim civitate que proxima est civitati que vocatus Diospolis [est] imago quidam Sancte Dei Genetricis semperque virginis Marie qui non est facta manu hominis; sed quasi picta in marmore, in figura quasi viva in corpore sit. Vestimenta autem eius quasi purpurea sunt. Quae ymago est in ecclesia quam sancti apostoli emerunt precio a iudeis qua utebantur synagoga et in honore Sancte Dei Gentricis dedicaverunt: quo modo est domus episcopi30.

14Before presenting the events of the narrative, it is instructive to pause at these opening lines. The object being described is a marble icon of the Virgin Mary, and situates this icon in a church in Lydda (Libia is misgiven in the source). Two aspects are further relevant. First, is the image described as “non est facta manu hominis.” Then, the image is in a church which the apostles themselves placed. Actually, St Peter is the only apostle mentioned by name in the miracle. Much like the twelfth-and thirteenth-century churches of the order of the Templars, the synagogue St Peter and other disciples of Christ purchased from the Jews was equally dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Besides the dedication to the Virgin Mary, the act recounted in the miracle is also similar to what occurred with the mosques Christians converted to churches throughout the Iberian crusades31. Peter and other disciples are participating in a multitude of anachronistic acts which further link the customs of contemporary Templars with the biblical past. The brief story finishes by recounting how certain Jews wanted to take back the synagogue. However, when St Peter prays to the effigy of the Virgin Mary for council, Mary tells him to stay and that she will not move. The conclusion of the miracle states how the marble image of the Virgin is still, to this very day, present in the fore-mentioned church, “usque in hodiernum diem ibi venerabiliter perseverat32.” The past and the present are inextricably welded in the miracle. The icon, a devotional invention of the 6^th and 7^th centuries is transported back as existing during the apostolic past. Then, through its mention as still extant “hodiernum diem” is re-transported into the reader’s present.

15While this particular collection of Marian miracles does not discuss the True Cross, the same conceptual process takes place with the four-armed reliquary33. With this reliquary the process is actually more emphatic. Unlike the image of the Virgin Mary that has to be given a posteriori narrative to include it in biblical times, the wood of the True Cross is the very same wood which touched the body of Christ. As the epitome of touch relics, it manifests the past concomitant with the present34. The East and the biblical moment of the Crucifixion is present for the beholder in the West. The sumptuous cross reliquary given by king Ferdinand I of León (1037-1065) and queen Sancha of León (1037-1067) to the monastery of St Isidore for its founding ca. 1063 suggest that it was also accompanied by a collection of miracles of the True Cross35. These miracles function in the same way as those of the Virgin Mary. They help propel the contemporary reader back in time, and equally push the eleventh century reliquary as a concomitant participant in biblical past. Cult to the large number of reliquaries of the True Cross documented by Schenk in Iberian Templar houses, would be devotionally enriched by miracle collections such as those of the Tarragonensis 55 or those of the St Isidore.

16Returning to the Tarragonensis 55 collection, the description of Constantinople following the miracles of the Virgin Mary adds yet another facet inextricably associated with these relics. Ciggaar’s edition and study of the Tarragonensis 55’s description of Constantinople underscores the significance this passage holds for contemporary views of the East and its physical materiality. As Ciggaar argues, this passage is pivotal for elucidating how marble, and particularly, the Eastern associations of marble were communicated to Western audiences36. A brief passage suffices to communicate how the East is presented:

Constantinopolis est quedam civitas inter Asiam et Greciam constituta, orientalis capud regni, et in toto orbe romano omnium civitatum nobilissima. In hac a plerisque auri et argenti dicitur et creditor esse tercia pars mundi, a quibusdam vero medietas, porro a quibusdam due partes Constantinopoli assignantur, tercia vero pars mundo ascribitur. […] Ibi ergo cum advenissem et huc et illuc circumspexissem, mentis fui in stupore captus tot mirabilium rerum mirabili visione. Ibi nempe videbam quod non videram, temple videlicet marmorea innumerabilia intus auro depicta, deforis plumbo cooperta, palatia eque marmorea […] Hec ergo civitas nobilis cum super alias mundi civitates omnes fit ammirabilis auro et argento, marmore et plumbo37.

17At the time this was copied into the Santes Creus manuscript Constantinople was in the hands of the Venetians. Constantinople is described as the most noble of all cities in the roman world, “toto orbe romano.” The past greatness of Rome is made concomitant with the thirteenth century, and it is a past that now forms part of the Latin sphere38. The nobility of Constantinople as a city is based on its lavishness, its opulence, its excess and overabundance of marble, gold, silver and lead. The greatness is achieved by the hyperbole of opulence. The author of the description states they entered a state of stupor upon beholding the grandeur of the city. The stupor experienced is immediately associated with the opulence lavished on religious sites. The description of the Blacherna church continues to elaborate how this sublime experience is staged and funneled for religious purposes:

Huius pavimentum ecclesie marmoreum, parietes et columpne et ipse marmoree, capitella aurea, celum aureum, deforis totum plumbo coopertum et, ut breviter dicam, et clara et pulcra valde est nec aliquid in ea videtur nisi aurum aut argetum aut marmor speciosissimum aut vitrum39.

18The sacredness of the East is constituted through the rich material sensuality of its shrines. Going further, the materiality of marble is not a vacuous substance, it is an animate substance bringing forth sacrality.

19The work of art historians Thomas Dale, Fabio Barry and Bente Kiilerich demonstrate how marble was an animate and miraculous substance in the Byzantine theological horizon40. Marble formed part of the incarnation of paradise that a church was supposed to represent on earth. In his discussion of Venice’s appropriation of the East, Barry explains how the massive columns of the Hagia Sophia were both thaumaturgic corpora and reliquaries of saintly bodies41. The columns of the Hagia Sophia had a devotional apparatus construed to transform the shrine into a hyper sacred space42. All surfaces emanated sacrality, pillars were to be sacred entities, much like the apostles were the ‘spiritual’ pillars of the church. One of Hagia Sophia’s columns housed the body of St Gregory Thaumaturgos. His miraculous presence was evidenced by the “sweat” emanating from its marble shaft, which still occurs to this day43. The impact of this type of thinking, which transforms marble into an animate saintly-thaumaturgic substance, is exploited in thirteenth-century Venice. The body of St Mark was supposedly interred in one of the central pillars of the basilica. The miraculous transformation the building’s fabric occurred when St Mark showed himself by pushing out a marble slab from the pillar, thereby revealing his remains (reliquary) in the column44. The thaumaturgic miracles that ensued in Venice attest the miraculous transformation of this marble pillar from mere stone into animate sacred substance.

20The subsequent miracle recorded in the Santes Creus manuscript, directly after the above-mentioned one, continues to elaborate on the sacredness of marble as a vehicle for sanctity:

De ipsa imagine Virginis et ipsa non est hominis manu facta sive effigiata. In sancta Gethsemani que inter Iherusalem et Montem Oliveti in medio est, posita ubi monumentum Beate Marie, adest, ubi ipsam sepulta fuit: ibi sunt columpne virides quatuor. Super unam de his columpnis, in finite latere, posita est imago quasi Christum dei filium in manibus portans, que tantam habet claritatem sicut speculum que manibus hominis sancta neque depicta, sed primum apparuit in ipso lapide quanta picta: et valde ibidem pro eius amore idest sancte Marie veneratur45.

21The substance of marble, its almost divine translucent materiality, is fit for the miraculous appearance of the effigy of Virgin Mary and Christ. The iconographic type appearing in the column is again that of the Virgin Hodegetria. The factor of the image not made by human hands is equally underscored. And, similar to the previous miracle, an anachronistic placement of a relatively modern iconographic image is made to be concomitant with a shrine from the biblical past. The image itself, and its very materiality in marble, are made to be touch relics of the shrine at the Church of the Dormition46.

22The marble, the columns they formed, and the marble slabs decorating Eastern churches, also evoked the materiality of paradise itself. As the above miracle underscores, they are fit for the embodiment of divine presence. Byzantine authors, influencing Western readers through narratives as those in the Tarragonensis 55, envisioned marble as a living substance being able to instill a vision of heavenly gardens to its viewers47. Photios’ commentary on the Pharos chapel gives us a deeper impression of the theology latent behind these decorations:

It is as if one had entered heaven itself with no one barring the way from any side, and was illuminated by the beauty in changing forms shining all around like so many stars, so is one utterly amazed. […] It seems that everything is in ecstatic motion, and the church itself is circling around. For the spectator, through his whirling about in all directions and being constantly astir, which he is forced to experience by the variegated spectacle (poikilia) on all sides, imagines that his personal condition is transferred to the object48.

23Marble (and in this instance, mosaics) are the substances catapulting the believer to an experience of divinity on earth, in the church as the house of god. Photios’ vivid invocation of the Byzantine church is not in the Santes Creus manuscript. However, the description of the lavish churches of Constantinople presented in the Tarragonensis 55 speak of such texts reverberating in the minds of the West.

24It is now possible to return to the wall decoration of the Gardeny commandery. Is this really an allusion to marble, and specifically of a theologically charged marble, as the Santes Creus manuscript would lead us to believe? I would like to assert in the affirmative. A concluding example allows me to assert this. Once the archbishopric of Tarragona was reconquered in the 12^th century, reconstruction of its cathedral began. In this process one of the few currently extant opus sectile works in Arago-Catalunya was laid down on its sanctuary area49. What where clergy trying to achieve with this? In the pavement’s intertwining circular motif, masons were referring at once to Rome, Constantinople, and of course, Jerusalem. The purpose in laying down this comparatively humble rustic decoration was to recreate the splendor of the biblical past in the present post-conquest climate of Arago-Catalunya. Secular clergy in Tarragona were trying to reawaken the glory of past roman monumentality and opulence. The same process is taking place in Gardeny. However, at even more modest levels, that are also employed in the Latin East with certain wall paintings ‘mimicking’ marble panels.

25The three examples presented in this brief exposition are meant to start a discussion towards the way Eastern relics were received in Arago-Catalan territories. The Tarragonensis 55 manuscript provides an entry onto the devotional environment which made relics from the East desirable and valuable spiritual objects. Templars acquired these items not only because they were representatives of Jerusalem, but also because they participated in the kind of miracles recounted in the Santes Creus manuscript. These were elite items which helped transport their beholders to a biblical moment. The objects discussed, inclusive of the marble wall decorations, are comparable to the corporal relics of saints: they were real presences, actually changing the environment they inhabited. The miracles recounted in Tarragonensis 55, thus, provided a devotional apparatus which blurred temporal lines. The narratives allowed transforming the (potentially contemporary Venetian) representations of the Virgin Mary, and pseudo-marble decorations into gateways onto biblical times. For the Templars, these temporally dynamic relics were objects which linked their order diachronically and spatially to Jerusalem and biblical times. Yet, through their importation into the West, they were also objects which at once helped recreate the East in the heart of the West. Their very implantation and presence in the Iberian Peninsula, thereby, helped create a sacred past for the Arago-Catalan 13^th century.