The Holy Tear of Christ: Visual and Performance Culture at the Benedictine Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme, c. 1150-1550

FAIN: FT-285726-22

Anne Elizabeth Heath
Hope College (Holland, MI 49423-3663)

Research leading to a book on the veneration of the Holy Tear of Christ, a relic at the Trinity Abbey (La Trinité) in Vendôme, France, from the 12th through the 16th centuries.

This book project examines the visual and devotional culture constructed around one of the most fascinating relic cults of the Middle Ages: the Holy Tear of Christ. I investigate the Holy Tear's history and meaning and argue that the relic was “created” out of a piece of rock crystal through the construction of a sensory-rich environment made of stained glass, sculpture, and chant. The monks of La Trinité employed the tradition of crusader narratives in developing a context that justified their possession of the relic. This case study addresses the central question of how devotional practices were established around a relic that had no significant pre-existing cult. This project is of value to the humanities because it advances our understanding of the enshrinement and display of Christ relics and the development of crusader and Holy Land relic narratives, two issues of significance in medieval studies. A digital teaching companion will complement the book.

Media Coverage

ANNE HEATH OF ART AND ART HISTORY FACULTY RECEIVES NEH SUMMER STIPEND (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Hope College Public Affairs and Marketing
Publication: Hope College Campus News
Date: 4/4/2022
URL: https://hope.edu/news/2022/academics/anne-heath-of-art-and-art-history-faculty-receives-neh-summer-stipend.html

Anne Heath receives new National Endowment for the Humanities award (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Ronald Fleischmann
Publication: Hope College Sponsored Research and Programs Blog
Date: 5/2/2088
URL: https://blogs.hope.edu/sponsored-research-programs/art/anne-heath-receives-new-national-endowment-for-the-humanities-award/

Associated Products

"Monastic Imagination and Historical Preservation: The Role of Geoffrey Martel in the Translatio Scene on the Shrine of the Holy Tear at the Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme" (Article)
Title: "Monastic Imagination and Historical Preservation: The Role of Geoffrey Martel in the Translatio Scene on the Shrine of the Holy Tear at the Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme"
Author: Anne Heath
Abstract: Relics and the legends surrounding them are often deeply connected to monastic communities’ commemoration of their foundations, patrons, and sacred objects within a framework that deepened their meaning in the present. This article addresses the depiction of Geoffrey Martel, eleventh-century founder of the Benedictine abbey of La Trinité, in the sculptural program of a thirteenth-century stone shrine erected to house the abbey’s relics. Despite Geoffrey’s historically less-than-virtuous character, the monks commemorated him as a loyal Capetian vassal and valiant crusader who transported a tear shed by Christ at the tomb of Lazarus, known as the Holy Tear, from Constantinople to Vendôme. Unfurling across the shrine’s vaulting and spandrels, the sculptural program augmented Geoffrey's role in the Holy Tear legend. Comparing the shrine's translatio narrative to a later vernacular poem recounting the legend of the Holy Tear, I contend that shrine and poem were part of a visual and textual culture that grew out of established crusader legends celebrating men who transported relics from the Holy Land and Constantinople to Europe and donated them to monastic foundations. The shrine itself is no longer extant, but a drawing of it remains in one of the portfolios of medieval patrimony commissioned by the seventeenth-century antiquarian François-Roger de Gaignières. While Geoffrey’s presence on the shrine has not garnered much scholarly attention, the drawing may be seen as evidence of the monks’ success in transforming him from a midlevel member of the French nobility into a great crusader and vassal of the king of France.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728465
Primary URL Description: University of Chicago Press
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Gesta
Publisher: International Center of Medieval Art/University of Chicago Press

The Abbey of La Trinité in Vendôme, France and the Cult of the Holy Tear: An Exploration of a Multi-Sensory Devotional Experience (Web Resource)
Title: The Abbey of La Trinité in Vendôme, France and the Cult of the Holy Tear: An Exploration of a Multi-Sensory Devotional Experience
Author: Anne Heath
Abstract: This Scalar website is a teaching resource for a forthcoming book on the visual and performance culture at the Benedictine abbey of La Trinité in Vendôme, France. I present the primary sources from the archival and material record in a dynamic and accessible form. I hope that these presentations will spark the excitement and pleasure of humanities research of the distant past.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/la-trinit-de-vendme/index
Primary URL Description: The Scalar platform is an open-source authoring and publishing platform managed by the University of Southern California.

Ekphrasis and Encounter: The Making of the Holy Tear of Christ at the Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme (Article)
Title: Ekphrasis and Encounter: The Making of the Holy Tear of Christ at the Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme
Author: Anne Heath
Abstract: This essay traces the “creation” of a relic known as the Holy Tear. According to the Benedictine abbey of La Trinité in Vendôme, the relic was a teardrop shed by Jesus Christ at the tomb of Lazarus. The Holy Tear’s unique physical properties, water imprisoned in crystal containers, sparked a visual and textual culture focused on the materiality and the miraculous nature of Christ’s tear and the vessels that enshrined it. One way in which this culture was expressed was through the technique of ekphrasis, which appears in texts and images produced for the cult of the Holy Tear. The Holy Tear ekphrasis established an ontology of sacred matter based on the relic and its containers as a mutually interdependent ensemble. Those who read (or heard) this ekphrasis on the Holy Tear thus encountered a textually produced object, whereas those who came to the abbey for venerating the Holy Tear would have seen multiple representations of the relic before seeing it suspended before their eyes. The Holy Tear, as both an object and a verbal-visual construction, raises significant questions about how medieval people interacted with relics—particularly relics from the body of Christ—and how their material and visual characteristics prompted believers to contemplate and venerate them.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/729282
Primary URL Description: University of Chicago Press
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics
Publisher: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University/University of Chicago Press

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