1. See, among others, Katzenellenbogen, A., Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art (New York, 1964);Google ScholarLabande-Mailfert, Y., “Pauvreté et paix dans l'iconographie romane (XIe–XIIe siècles),” in Etudes sur l'Histoire de la Pauvreté, ed. Mollat, M. (Paris, 1974), pp. 319–343;Google ScholarLittle, L. K., “Pride Goes before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom,” American Historical Review 76 (1971): 16–49;CrossRefGoogle ScholarThérel, M. L., “Caritas et Paupertas dans l'iconographie médiévale inspiréé de la psychomachie,” in Mollat, Etudes, pp. 295–316.Google Scholar The Psychomachia of Prudentius exerted an enormous effect on medieval artists. It was usual, therefore, for the virtues and vices to be represented as battle figures. Katzenellenbogen surveys the subject broadly, explaining, however, that there are exceptions, especially in southwestern France, where sculptors of the romanesque period frequently seized upon the theme of human depravity: “The avaricious man is shown with purse hanging around his neck” (Allegories, pp. 58–59).Google Scholar In Auvergne it is this latter representation which is found almost exclusively.

2. There are other examples as well, at St. Paulien, Châtel-Montagne, Mailhat (south door), Chauriat, Volvic, Lavaudieu (cloister), and Besseen-Chandesse, but these differ in style or iconography from the examples cited in this article. All the capitals under consideration here are located within a thirty-five-mile radius of Clermont, except for the ones at Brioude, forty-two miles further south, and Chanteuges, about fifteen mites south of Brioude. The most complete photographic documentation available is found in Swiechowski, Z., La Sculpture romane auvergnate (Clermont, 1973).Google Scholar

3. Although its foundation charter was only confirmed by Henry II of England in 1173 (Gallia Christiana 2:78), the church at Ennezat was begun about 1070. The capital of usury calls particular attention to itself, since all other capitals in the nave are uniformly covered with a graceful nenuphar-leaf design.

4. Swiechowski, , Sculpture, p. 164.Google Scholar

5. Craplet, B., Auvergne romane (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1978), p. 55.Google Scholar Notre-Dame du Port also contains two other capitals pertaining to our subject, though in the Psychomachia tradition: Caritas and Auaritia on one, and Largitas and Caritas vanquishing avarice and greed on the other.

6. Bréhier, L., “Les chapiteaux historiés dans l'art roman auvergnat,” Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Locales de Thiers (1924): 32.Google Scholar Bréhier explains that “Mille artifex, l'être aux mille moyens, est donc le nom donné au diable dans l'ancien folklore auvergnat” (“Mille artifex, the contriver with a thousand tricks, is the name given to the devil in ancient Auvergnat folklore”). Gregory of Tours, originally from Auvergne, uses a similar reference to the Devil in the sixth century: “princeps tenebrarum mille habet artes nocendi” (“The Prince of Darkness has a thousand means of doing harm”) (Historia Francorum, 8:34).

7. Fau, J. C., Les Chapiteaux de Conques (Toulouse, 1956), p. 64.Google Scholar The inscription, held by two frightful demons framing the sinner, reads: TU PRO MALUM ACIPE MERITUM.

8. The literature is vast; for basic background reading consult both Nelson, B. N., The Idea of Usury (Princeton, 1949),Google Scholar and Noonan, J. T., The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, Mass., 1957).Google Scholar

9. LeGoff, J., Your Money or Your Life (New York, 1988), p. 26.Google Scholar Ambrose's words, “Usura est plus accipere quam dare” (Migne, J. P., Patrologia latina, 221 vols. in 223 [Paris, 1844–1891], 16:982Google Scholar [hereafter cited as PL], and Jerome's, , “Usuram appellari … si ab eo quod dederit plus acceperit” (PL, 25:117);Google ScholarNelson, , Idea of Usury, p. 4.Google Scholar

10. Nelson, , Idea of Usury, p. 9.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., p. 7.

12. Little, L., Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1978), p. 36Google Scholar (see PL, 144:234); Noonan, , Scholastic Analysis of Usury, (see PL, 143:659).Google Scholar

13. Lynch, J. H., Simoniacal Entry into Religious Life from 1000 to 1260 (Columbus, 1976), p. 70.Google Scholar Saint Paul warned Christians against choosing men as bishops who were “seekers after filthy gain” (1 Tim. 3:8) (turpe lucrum). The prevailing canon law of the eleventh century perpetuated the view that particular forms of income were “filthy” for clerics, monks, and even all Christians; Ivo's work included banning “usury, buying crops cheaply at harvest and selling them dearly during famine, and managing a business” (see PL, 161:47–1036).

14. During the eleventh century many Auvergnats likewise joined in the effort to reconquer Spanish territory from the Islamic threat. A valuable source is Defourneaux, M., Les Français en Espagne aux XIe et XIIe siècles (Paris, 1949).Google Scholar

15. Bréhier, L., “Les traits originaux de l'iconographie dans la sculpture romane de l'Auvergne,” in Medieval Studies in Memory of A. K. Porter (1939; reprint, New York, 1977), p. 395,Google Scholar and “Les chapiteaux historiés,” p. 35. Swiechowski, , Sculpture, p. 12,Google Scholar likewise refers to these “agents d'affaires” and the active usury practice in Brioude.

16. Oursel, R., Les pèlerins du Moyen Age (Paris, 1963), pp. 171–172;Google Scholar for details on the relic cult itself, see Scott, C. W., “Romanesque French Reliquaries,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 9 (1987): 167–236.Google Scholar

17. Lauranson-Rosaz, C., L'Auvergne et ses marges du VIIIe au XIe siècle (Le Puy-en-Velay, 1987), p. 279.Google Scholar

18. Little, , Religious Poverty, p. 12.Google Scholar

19. Alphandéry, P., La Chrétiené et l'Idée de Croisade (Paris, 1954), p. 13.Google Scholar

20. Oldenkircher, C., trans. and ed., The Life of St. Alexius (Leyden, 1978), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

21. Gieysztor, A., “La légende de Saint Alexis en Occident: un idéal de pauvreté,” in Mollat, Etudes, p. 133.Google Scholar

22. Bolton, B., “Paupertas Christi: Old Wealth and New Poverty in the Twelfth Century,” in Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, ed. Baker, Derek (Oxford, 1977), p. 98.Google Scholar

23. Lindberg, C., “Through a Glass Darkly: A History of the Church's Vision of the Poor and Poverty,” The Ecumenical Review 33 (1981): 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Pellistrandi, C., “La Pauvreté dans la Règle de Grandmont,” in Mollat, Etudes, p. 230;Google ScholarBecquet, J., “S. Etienne de Muret,” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique, vol. 4 (Paris, 1961), pp. 1505–1514.Google Scholar

25. Leyser, H., Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 1000–1150 (New York, 1984);CrossRefGoogle Scholar see especially chapter four, “The Origins and Development of the Movement: A Geographical Sketch,” pp. 29–37.

26. Milis, L., “The Regular Canons and Some Socio-Religious Aspects about the Year 1000,” in Etudes de Civilisation Médiévale (Poitiers, 1974), p. 554;Google Scholar see also Little, L., Religious Poverty, pp. 61–96.Google Scholar

27. Little, , “Pride Goes before Avarice,” p. 27.Google Scholar

28. Craplet, , Auvergne romane, p. 293:Google Scholar Not all this development was peaceful; Chanteuges, for example, had fallen on difficult times, becoming a den of thieves and murderers (receptaculum predonum et homicidarum), before being taken under the wing of La Chaise-Dieu.

29. The most complete study is Gaussin, P. R., L'Abbaye de La Chaise-Dieu, 1043–1515 (Paris, 1962).Google Scholar The author supplies a superb bibliography of some forty pages concerning not just La Chaise-Dieu and its history but the political, social, and ecclesiastical conditions in Auvergne as well.

30. Ibid., p. 120: La Chaise-Dieu “méritait la qualification que lui donnait Lucius II en 1144 de ‘miroir de la perfection monastique’ de notre époque” (“deserved the description given to it by Lucius II in 1144 as being a ‘mirror of monastic perfection’ of our era”).

31. Ibid., p. 517. As noted by Gaussin, , from the Liber tripartitus miraculis a. Roberti, in Acta Sanctorum (Paris, 1863–1887),Google Scholar Aprilis 3:30: “Scitis, Fratres, quomodo caritas Christi huc vos adduxerit, quomodo caritatem per nos vos habere docuerit, et omnibus notis et ignotis, divitibus et egentibus, nolentibus et petentibus, nostra caritative largiri instituerit. Ob hoc etiam hujus sancti loci majus altare in praecipuo summi Dei nomine, quod est caritas, consecrare disposui, ut istius coenobii membrorumque ejus, caritas obtineat principatum, nullumque tenacitatis atque avaritiae malum in eo reperire valeat angulum.” What little we know about Robert of Turlande is found in the Vita sancti Roberti by Marbod of Rennes (Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis 3:319–328), based on the report by Robert's chaplain, Geraud de la Veine, and by the life written in the twelfth century, from which the above quotation is drawn, by the monk Bertrand. Fournier, Gabriel, the noted historian of Auvergne, in Peuplement rural de Basse-Auvergne (Paris, 1962), p. 51,Google Scholar claims that the Liber tripartitus can be dated only after 1160, whereas the work of Marbod before 1096.

32. Bossuat, A., “Clermont,” in Dictzonnaire de I'Historie et de Géographie ecclésiatiques, ed. Baudrillart, A., vol. 12 (Paris, 1953), pp. 1435–1458.Google Scholar

33. Cowdry, H. E. J., The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970), p. 82,Google Scholar on Sauxillanges, and on Peter the Venerable, pp. 260–262.

34. Craplet, , Auvergne romane, p. 224.Google Scholar

35. Cahn, W., “Souvigny: Some Problems of its Architecture and Sculpture,” Gesta 27 (1988): 51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Gallia Christiana, 2:259: “Renco…sororem habuit Raingardem S. Roberti Casae-Dei primi abbatis matrem,” and Gaussin, , L'Abbaye de La Chaise-Dieu, p. 108 n. 107.Google Scholar

37. Bossuat, , “Clermont,” p. 1455.Google Scholar

38. For practical aspects of Suger's working psychology, see Panofsky, E., Abbot Suger (Princeton, 1946), pp. 30–37,Google Scholar and Constable, G., “Suger's Monastic Administration,” in Abbot Suger and Saint-Dents, ed. Gerson, P. L. (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

39. Sève, R., “La Seigneurie épiscopale de Clermont des origines à 1357,” Revue d'Auvergne 94 (1980): 85–268.Google Scholar This reprint of Sève's 1947 doctoral thesis (unpublished) amply documents the episcopacy of Aimeri and emphasizes his dogged determination and ambition. It was Aimeri who begged Louis VI of France to protect him from the count of Auvergne with the subsequent military expeditions of 1122 and 1126 into the Clermont region; later, Aimeri was involved in a lengthy and controversial dispute with Peter the Venerable over various property holdings. As Sève explains, “Des le début de son épiscopat, Aimeri voulut faire valoir tous ses droits…il ne semble pas que ce soit l'intérē qui l'ait incité à agir mais plutot l'inventaire et la mise en order du temporel de l'église de Clermont” (“From the very beginning of his episcopacy Aimeri wanted to press for all his rights…it does not seem that he was driven by self-interest, but that he wished to take stock of, and to put into order, the temporal matters of the church of Clermont”) (pp. 116–117). Among others, the churches of Saint-Nectaire, Notre-Dame du Port, and Brioude were under construction during his episcopacy.

40. For details on these roads, see Fournier, G., “Essai sur le peuplement de la Basse-Auvergne à l'époque gallo-romaine,” Revue d'Auvergne 73 (1959): 129–163.Google Scholar