Contenu du sommaire

This essay, which is devoted to martyrs and their relics, seeks to clarify the difficult question of their invention. On this subject, I defend the idea that the martyrs and the veneration given to their remains are positions invented by the play of social forces. I also indicate how the relic, conventionally understood, owes nothing to “fervor”, nor to “popular devotion”, and why its functioning cannot be described in terms of “participation” or “metonymy”. My article does not just describe the evolution of a historical process, but it questions a rupture which has yet to be explained.

Firstly we state the authenticity and establish the previously unpublished text and translation of the Adnotatio breuis in Danielem of Haimo, monk at Saint-Germain d'Auxerre (mid. IXth cent.). We then show how the fruitful achievements of the Carolingian revival are enlightened by Haimo's practice of exegesis. As his consistent use of the Theodulfian recension shows, he was deeply concerned in the Bible. Later, he was plundered by the Glossa ordinaria and constantly read until the Humanistic period. As a commentator on the Prophets, he adapts their admonitio to his own time by exalting monastic holiness. The Carolingian reforming movement that was encouraged by the kings thus finally turns against these in the works of Haimo, a forerunner of the Xth- XIth cent. monks' ecclesiology.

Funded by the king, a Danish expedition to Yemen left Copenhagen in 1761 in order to collect information intended to throw light upon certain parts of the Bible. Out of the six men who left, only Carsten Niebuhr, the astronomer-cartographer, returned. After his companions' death, he took over most of their duties and later published two books in German where Islam figures prominently. With French editions outdated and difficult to find, scholars will avail of a new French translation of Niebuhr's writings about oriental religions.