The Cult of St. Anianus in the Carolingian Period

According to Sidonius Apollinaris, Anianus was the bishop of Orléans and the defender of the city against the attack of the Huns under Attila in 451.¹ This paper will examine the process of the development of Anianus's cult in the Carolingian period. Who evolved the cult? How did they do so? Many scholars have referred to the deeds of Anianus and the history of Saint-Aignan, the focal point of his cult in Orléans.² In the view of modern scholarship, however, Geneviève Renaud has made great progress in studying the cult of Anianus. She has completed the list of the hagiographical texts on Anianus and their manuscripts, and has dated each composition. Moreover, she has located the trace of his cult and concluded that it spread all over modern France, especially in the former dioceses of Orléans, Bourges, and Chartres, and his legend had achieved its full development before the end of tenth century or at the latest by the beginning of the eleventh century. However, she has hardly stated the concrete situations behind the process of its development. ³

Recently, Thomas Head has studied the cult of Anianus in his systematic research on the cult of saints in the Orléanais though he seems to be more concerned about monastic saints than episcopal ones like Anianus. He enumerates the promoters of Anianus's cult. The shrine of Anianus was "apparently under the control of the Gallo-Romans" in the times of Gregory of Tours. Queen Balthild "supported the reform of the house of Saint-Aignan" in the seventh century.⁴ "The Robertians directly controlled the monastery of Saint-Aignan throughout the tenth century."⁵ Then, who were the promoters in the eighth and the ninth centuries?

This paper will contribute to fill the gap of the previous scholarship, as mentioned above, and then will examine how the cult of Anianus was evolved in the Carolingian period.

St. Anianus had already gained a reputation by the seventh century, but his cult experienced great progress in the Carolingian period. Charlemagne and Bishop Theodulf of Orléans seem to have refurbished and extended the shrine of Saint-Aignan.⁶ Such behavior did not merely mean material re-foundation but contributed to the veneration for saints because shrines were thought of as the extension of their coffins. Theodulf devoted himself to prayers on the altar dedicated to the saint.⁷ In 814 and 818, Louis the Pious visited Saint-Aignan and asked the saint for his own protection.⁸ The emperor's visits must have heightened the saint's reputation. Sometime in the first half of the ninth century, canons of the cathedral chapter wrote the First Life of St. Evurtius and Second Life of St. Evurtius.⁹ The author of the latter called himself Subdeacon Lucifer. These lives admire the deeds of Anianus alongside of Evurtius, the fourth-century bishop of Orléans.

In 854, Bishop Agius of Orléans gave Saint-Aignan permission to build a new churchyard in the east suburbs of the city.¹⁰ This new cemetery could accommodate the gradually increasing people who wished to get to eternal rest with Anianus. Around 870, Bishop Walter instructed his priests to observe the feast of Anianus as well as those of other saints.

[The priests] should observe the celebrated feasts of the saints with solemn cult and should know them beforehand to let people observe them: That is the natal day of the Lord, [the feasts] of Blessed Stephen, of St. John the Evangelist, of the Innocents, the octave of the Lord, the Epiphany, the nativity of Holy Mary, the purification of Holy Mary, the Assumption of Holy Mary, Holy Saturday, the octave of Easter, the Rogation Days, the Ascension of the Lord, Pentecost, [the feasts] of St. John the Baptist, of St. Peter, of St. Paul, of St. Martin, and of St. Andrew, as well as [the feasts] of our fathers, by whose pious local patronage we are assisted in the presence of the Lord, [that is] of the death of...