Establishing Authority in Poitiers

Abstract

Chapter 1 examines the sixth-century foundation of female monastic authority in Poitiers and its model created through artifacts of Radegund’s life written by Gregory of Tours, Venantius Fortunatus, and Baudonivia. Radegund’s biographies articulated her sanctity and established Radegund’s two strategies for protecting her monastery: first, she relied on networks of allies, primarily bishops and kings, to support her; and second, she created a set of cultural ideas, symbols, and materials that later nuns used to attach new allies to the Abbey. Radegund left two holy objects that became key elements in the abbess’s efforts to assert her authority: the True Cross relic and her own physical relics. Radegund sought to free Sainte-Croix’s abbesses from their local bishop and connect them, instead, to the bishop of Tours, Frankish kings, the Byzantine emperor, and the papacy, believing that this would strengthen Sainte-Croix. Documents Radegund secured began an archive of privileges crucial to the authority of future abbesses.