One story for two places: a comparative study on the making of Christian landscapes

INTRODUCTION

Alise-Sainte-Reine (department of Côte-d’Or, France) is a town known for being the final stronghold of Gallic resistance against Julius Caesar; it was a Gallo-Roman town until the second half of the third century when it gradually abandoned the summit of Mont Auxois to occupy its southern flank and is an emblematic site in the history of France (Provost, 2009Provost, M. (2009) La Côte-d’Or. Carte archéologique de la Gaule 21/1: Alésia. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres.; Brunaux, 2012Brunaux, J.-L. (2012) Alésia. Paris: Gallimard.; Cazanove et al., 2012Cazanove, O. de, Vidal, J., Dabas, M. and Caraire G. (2012) “Alesia, forme urbaine et topographie religieuse: l’apport des prospections et des fouilles récentes.” Gallia, 69 (2), pp. 127-49.). Santa Mariña de Augas Santas (in the district of Allariz, in the province of Ourense, Spain) is a parish situated in the heart of inland and agricultural Galicia; while lacking the reputation of the French site, it also has an important archaeological heritage centred on a hill fort that was occupied from the end of the Iron Age until the end of antiquity, when it was Christianized and our story begins (Fariña, 2002Fariña Busto, F. (2002) Santa Mariña de Augas Santas. A Coruña: Fundación Caixagalicia.; García Quintela, 2014aGarcía Quintela, M. V. (2014a) “Marina concubina, Marina virgen, Boand adúltera: fecundidad extramarital y creación de paisajes.” In: M. Tausiet and H. Tropé, eds., Folclore y leyendas en la península ibérica. En torno a la obra de François Delpech. Madrid: CSIC, pp. 57-80., 2014bGarcía Quintela, M. V. (2014b) “Paisajes duales en la Galicia tradicional: estructura, génesis y transformación.” Disparidades. Revista de Antropología 69 (1), pp. 29-52. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/rdtp.2014.01.002 ). In principle, it may seem that there is no relationship between these two sites. They are nothing more than two of the 20,864 places in Europe which bear the name of a Christian saint, according to a study on the data from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (USA) (Fig. 1). We know that these places were not Christian for thousands of years. Previously these places had names that referred to “pagan” mental universes, although it is more correct to call them polytheistic to avoid a terminology impregnated with a Christian heritage. We also know that the gods of polytheism had a singular affinity with places that was expressed in many ways.

In the words of H.S. Versnel, referring to the Greek gods:

The same could be said of Roman religion and the widespread worship at a local level of their gods. The Roman offerings to “whether god or goddess” (sive deo sive dea) (Guittard, 2002Guittard, Ch. (2002) “Sive deus sive dea: les romains pouvaient-ils ignorer la nature de leurs divinites?” Revue des études latines, 80, pp. 25-54.), or the Greek dedication to an unknown god (agnosthos theos) so important in the history of Christianity (Acts 17, 23; van der Horst, 1989Van der Horst, P. W. (1989) “The Altar of the Unknown God in Athens (Acts 17:23) and the Cult of ‘Unknown Gods’ in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods.” In: W. Haase, ed. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II.18.2. Principat: Religion (Die Religiösen Verhältnisse in den Provinzen). Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, pp. 1426-1456.), reveal the possibility that the gods are everywhere, even if their characteristics are unknown. Within this context, the worship of stones, trees, and rocks that were so frequently denounced by the early Christians (Dowden, 2000, pp. 25-77Dowden, K. (2000) European Paganism. The Realities of cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. London: Routledge.) was based on the reality of a sensitive world full of gods, taking care to ensure that this worship was addressed to the gods who resided in them (Scheid, 2008Scheid, J. (2008) “Le culte des eaux et des sources dans le monde romain. Un sujet problématique, déterminé par la mythologie moderne.” L’annuaire du Collège de France. Cours et travaux, 108, pp. 622-637.). And so, the need to construct Christian landscapes was primarily derived from the fact that they were inhabited by polytheistic gods, who had to be eradicated. As a result, the study of the expansion of Christianity in rural areas can be understood as studying the topography of a “religious war” and of the places where this war was to be waged.

Here it should be noted that this situation is in no way exclusive to contact between polytheist pagans and monotheist Christians. We have examples from history and anthropology of places chosen to stage an ideological, symbolic, or event bloody struggle due to the religious significance they have acquired over time (Sahlins, 1985, pp. 60-65Sahlins, M. (1985) Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.; Greene, 2004Greene, S. E. (2004) Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter. A history of Meaning and Memory in Ghana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.; Christomy, 2008Christomy, T. (2008) Signs of the Wali. Narratives at the Sacred sites in Pamijahan, West Java. Camberra: ANU E Press.). The Crónicas de Indias (written by the chroniclers who accompanied the Spanish conquistadores in the Americas) are full of similar tales, which were also adapted throughout the colonial period, and even after independence (Lafaye, 1987Lafaye, J. (1987 [1974]). Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe. The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness 1531-1813. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.; Bernand and Gruzinski, 1988Bernand, C., and Gruzinski, S. (1988) De l’idolâtrie: une archéologie des sciences religieuses. Paris: Seuil.).

Therefore, the 20,864 places in Europe with a “saint” name are the product of a unique historical moment that transformed a situation with very ancient roots and heralded a new period that has lasted, following their assumption of the Christian holy name, for one thousand or fifteen hundred years. Concerning those multi-secular times, the moment of their Christian transformation, of giving them a holy invocation and name, is a brief historical fact, the outcome of a unique historical, cultural, and religious configuration. To properly perceive it, it would be necessary to imagine the intellectual conditions required for a wide-scale change of these Christian place names to occur.

To address the problem raised, it is important to highlight the pioneering role, from the perspective of sociological theory, of M. Halbwachs (1877-1945) who explored the idea of the value of places as a repository of religious memory:

This consideration is based on an earlier study of the need for Christians to identify places related to episodes in the life of Jesus (Halbwachs, 1971Halbwachs, M. (1971 [1941]) La topographie légendaire des évangiles en terre sainte. Paris: PUF.). The first literary trace of this process, noted by Halbwachs, comes from the testimony of Egeria in the fourth century. This is not the only factor that leads to triumphant Christianity setting its sights on certain places. Another need arises from the departure of the house-churches used by early Christians as places of worship (Cianca, 2018Cianca, J. (2018) Sacred Ritual, Profane Space. The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.; White, 1990-1996White, L. M. (1990-1996) The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. Vols. I-II. Valley Forge: Trinity Press International.) to conquer the public places occupied by the gods of defeated polytheism, starting with Rome (Curran, 2000Curran, J. (2000) Pagan City and Christian Capital. Rome in the Fourth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.). The final step in this multi-faceted process, whose echoes constitute the foundation of our history, is Christian expansion into a rural world populated by the myriad gods of polytheism, as we have already evoked.

Christianity needs to occupy the places driven by its universalism and combined with the practice, identified since antiquity, of memorizing rhetorical discourses and arguments with the help of spatial devices. F. Yates (1999)Yates, F. A. (1999 [1966]). The Art of Memory. London: Routledge. studied the evolution of this type of intellectual endeavour from Antiquity to the Renaissance, and its medieval particularities are well known (Carruthers, 2008Carruthers, M. (2008 [1990]). The book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). In addition, anthropology offers studies on how different communities construct their social identity in close relationship with the places they inhabit (Smith, 1987, pp. 2-23Smith, J. Z. (1987) To Take Place. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.; Santos-Granero, 1998Santos-Granero, F. (1998) “Writing History into the Landscape: Space, Myth, and Ritual in Contemporary Amazonia.” American Ethnologist, 25 (2), pp. 128-148. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1998.25.2.128 ; Hayden, 2002Hayden, R. M. (2002) “Antagonistic Tolerance. Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites in South Asia and the Balkans.” Current Anthropology, 43 (2), pp. 205-231. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/338303 ; Holtzman, 2004Holtzman, J. (2004) “The Local in the Local. Models of Time and Space in Samburu District, Northern Kenya.” Current Anthropology, 45 (1), pp. 61-84. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/379635 ; Harrison, 2004Harrison, S. (2004) “Forgetful and memorious landscapes.” Social Anthropology 12, pp. 135-151. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2004.tb00096.x , amongst others). In other words, the approach to the relationship between story and place, which I refer to as “topology” in this paper, can be made by considering the specific circumstances and problems of triumphant Christianity, the psychology of memory, or anthropological comparison. In any of these ways, or by their combination, we can observe the strength of topological constructs in very different social and historical circumstances.

Furthermore, these considerations support the interest in studying Christianization from the perspective of places because it obliges us to dispense with the idea of “conversion”, i.e., a transformation of the inner self of individuals, according to a classical conception.¹ For example, Nock, 1988, p. 7 notes: “By conversion we mean the reorientation of the soul of an individual, his deliberate turning from indifference or from an earlier form of piety to another.” The topical point of view, however, raises the question of how a landscape is constructed (and also a time, although this is not the goal of my argument) so that rural populations adopt a “Christian way of life,” regardless of individual identity experiences. What is interesting about the two cases we will address is that their parallel trajectories allow for a better understanding of the importance played by the landscape in the construction of the Christian identity of rural communities and open a window on the historical and religious processes that operated behind the assignment of Christian names to places previously dedicated to polytheistic gods. It should also be stressed that this process has not been linear so that a retrospective view that spans the centuries becomes relevant to better understand the relevance of the topological discourse generated by Christianity. We will first consider how the hagiography of Saint Margaret was established in the places studied, and then examine how the critical, literary, or philological scholarship that took shape during the Renaissance questioned this relationship between story and place to ascertain, in third place, the failure of this critical discourse in its confrontation with the identified topological discourse.

THE HAGIOGRAPHY OF SAINT MARGARET OF ANTIOCH IN ALISE-STE-REINE AND SANTA MARIÑA DE AUGAS SANTAS

As previously noted, Alise-St-Reine and Santa Mariña de Augas Santas, our objects of study, are two echoes of the cult of Saint Margaret in Europe. The story begins with the Greek version of the hagiography of Margaret of Antioch of Pisidia (Usener, 1886, pp. 15-46Usener, H. (1886) “Acta S. Marinae et S. Christophori.” In: Festschrift zur Fünften Säcularfeier der Carl-Ruprechts-Universität zu Heidelberg. Bonn: Universitäts-buchdruckerei von C. Georgi.; Italian translation in Tammi, 1958, pp. 33-42Tammi, G. (1958) Due versioni della Leggenda di S. Margherita d’Antiochia in versi francesi del medioevo. Piacenze: Scuola Artigiana del Libro.). The oldest known version in Europe comes from the martyrology of Rabanus Maurus (c. 780 - 856), who identifies 13 July as the feast day of the passion of the Saint:

Rabanus captures the essence of the story, except for the date, as the usual dates are 18 or 20 July. The historicity of this tradition was questioned at a very early stage. For example, the Saint does not appear in the Syrian martyrology transcribed in the year 412 with contents from the end of the fourth century, and with only three entries for the whole month (Wright, 1865-1866, p. 428Wright, W. (1865-1866) “An Ancient Syrian Martyrology.” Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record (ser 4), 15, pp. 45-56 (edition), 16, pp. 423-432 (translation).), so it could be considered that she was unknown. In addition, in 494 Pope Gelasius declared the legend apocryphal (Keller, 2012, p. 8Keller, H.-E., ed. (2012 [1990]). Wace, La vie de Sainte Marguerite. Berlin: De Gruyter. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110930825 ), and the Vatican suppressed her cult in 1969 (Clayton and Magennis, 1994, p. 3Clayton, M., and Magennis, H., eds. (1994) The Old English Lives of St. Margaret. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). These incidents never stopped the devotion to Saint Margaret, as attested to by the proliferation of vernacular or Latin versions of her legend³ Clayton and Magennis, 1994; Keller, 2012, pp. 13-14, list seven Anglo-Norman poems from before the 13^th century. In French, fourteen versions in verse and eighteen in prose are known, see Thruston and Attwater, 1990, III, pp. 152-153. or the appearance of other Saint Margarets who were named after her as a tribute to their predecessor.⁴ For example, Margaret of Scotland (1045-1093), of Cortona (1247-1297), of Hungary (1242-1270); Thruston and Attwater, 1990, I, pp. 176-178 (of Hungary); I, pp. 396-399 (of Cortona); II, pp. 515-517 (of Scotland); Farmer, 2004, pp. 394-396. At the same time, her cult became specialized as a protector of pregnancies and as the prototype of Christian women (Heyes, 2020Heyes, M. E. (2020) Margaret’s Monsters: Women, Identity, and the Life of St. Margaret in Medieval England. London: Routledge.).

In this context, it is important to highlight the incorporation of her hagiography into the local worship in the two towns we are studying. For Alise-Ste.-Reine, a volume published in 1997 by Ph. Boutry and D. Julia contains the fundamental elements.

N. Courtine (1997, pp. 29-60)Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60. studies the written tradition by noting the archaeological find of a plate “for fish” dated to the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century with a graffito with the name REGINA. Although she doubts that it is a reference to the Saint, the fact is remarkable. This author also emphasizes that the Saint is not mentioned in liturgical texts where it would be expected, and yet she appears in legal documents between 717 and 722 where she is named in Alesia “the Basilica of Sainte Reine, where she rests so beautifully in her body” (Courtine, 1997, pp. 29-31, quote p. 31Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60.). The Martyrologium Hieronymianum refers to her birthday on September 7 in the version of the manuscript from Berne (first quarter of the seventh century) and the Weissenburg manuscript (start of the ninth century) says that in the ciuitas of the Aedui, in Gaul, in the place named Alisane was born the martyr Sainte Reine “which deeds we have” (cuius gesta habentur).⁵ Rossi and Duchesne, 1894, p. 117, from where Leclercq, 1934, p. 2442 deduces that the legend took shape during this interval. However, the ceramics with the word REGINA and the archaeological dossier (infra), would point towards an earlier date.

Other mentions from the eighth century merely indicate the celebration of the cult (Verdin, 1926, pp. 95-96Verdin, G. (1926) “Les plus anciens témoins du culte de Sainte Reine d’Alise.” Revue de l’histoire des religions, 93, pp. 95-107. Available at : http://www.jstor.org/stable/23664169 [Accessed June 3, 2020].; Courtine, 1997, p. 31Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60.). The first version of the Saint’s story appears in a manuscript from Autun, preserved in Montpellier, dating from the last third of the eighth century, perhaps the deeds of the Saint referred to by the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. This compendium is relevant, as it includes two other cases of local saints to whom biographies of Greek martyrs are attributed (Courtine, 1997, p. 34Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60.). “This relationship of the martyrdom of Reine-source or pretext for all subsequent developments in the life of the martyr-is a hagiographical construction of the Romanesque type renewing the story of Saint Margaret.” Furthermore, this manuscript also includes the life of Marina of Antioch of Pisidia, known as Margaret, being the first testimony of the simultaneous presence of the literary model and her double (Courtine, 1997, pp. 33-34, quote on p. 33Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60.). N. Courtine (1997, pp. 34-35)Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60. points to the monastery of Flavigny, close to Alesia, as the cultural enclave where the local adaptation of the Greek martyr’s tradition may have occurred in the eighth century.

It should be noted that these testimonies from the Merovingian period come from a fully Christianised Gaul where the remnants of paganism “can be acknowledged as an insignificant and marginal part of its culture” (Hen, 1995, p. 206, and see 154-206Hen, Y. (1995) Culture and Religion in Merovigian Gaul A.D. 481-751. Leiden: Brill.). They must also be seen as the written, and therefore cultured, expression of a profound and original process of mutation between the cultured language, Latin, in which the educated wrote and expressed themselves, and the evolved, vernacular forms of speech practised by the illiterate masses. Christian preaching establishes a powerful link between the two forms of culture, with Christian priests and preachers acting as mediators and agents in establishing connections between the two forms of culture. This is the context in which the lives of the saints, which we know from their written versions, but which were destined for mass consumption through oral forms of communication, were disseminated in a process that ended with a separation between the written and spoken language by 750 AD (Banniard, 1992, pp. 34-36 y 253-303Banniard, M. (1992) Viva voce. Communication écrite et communication orale du IV^e au IX^e siècle en Occident latin. Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes.). This observation is particularly important to us because it suggests that the anchoring of the tradition of Sainte-Reine in the territory took place in this context of orality, whereas, as we shall see, the written transmission of its history followed a different path.

Since the transfer of the relics of Alise-Sainte-Reine to Flavigny in 866, a textual corpus has taken shape that links these places with a written tradition and a cult that has continued for centuries. The parallel presentation of the hagiographies of Marguerite and Sainte Reine in several passionaries never elicited critical comment or hindered their dissemination. The tradition circulated first in Burgundy, then spread to northern France, parts of Germany, and the Netherlands (Wingens, 1997Wingens, M. (1997) “La diffusion du culte de sainte Reine dans l’espace germanique et les Pays-Bas.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 169-188.). At a local level, the cult gradually returned from Flavigny to Alesia from the sixteenth century onwards, while the written versions of the legend were enriched and supplemented by details that are absent from the medieval texts (Courtine, 1997, pp. 55-60Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60.).

A remarkable turnaround occurred at the end of the fifteenth century on the initiative of a local character. In 1498, Julien Clerget obtained the agreement of the bishop of Chalon to build a chapel that included a neighbouring fountain (Vincent, 1997, pp. 103-105Vincent, C. (1997) “Le culte de sainte Reine du XIII^e siècle aux débuts de l’âge moderne.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 95-112.). The previously-mentioned separation between the vernacular language transmitted orally and the Latin literary tradition suggests the hypothesis, probably unprovable, that Clerget’s action brings to the surface, expressing in written form a way of implanting the hagiography of Sainte-Regne in the local topography. From this point onwards, the literary endorsement of this situation comes with the printing in Paris in 1500 of a French version in verse of La Vie de Sainte Regne by Jehan Piquelin. The author “broadens a story, clarifies the geography, details the tortures, darkens the characters”, highlighting the miraculous nature of the fountain that rises in the place where the head of the decapitated saint landed (Courtine, 1997, pp. 53-55, quote p. 54Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60.). Since then, and until today, Alise has become a place of pilgrimage for those in search of the healing properties of the miraculous waters.⁶ See Courtine, 1997, pp. 39-53; Vincent, 1997, pp. 105-112 and the works of Le Hénand, Julia, Milbach, and Clerc in Boutry and Julia, 1997.

The fountain provides a solid anchoring point to precise places that the relics of the martyr, in Alise or Flavigny, had not guaranteed. The proliferation of sacred dramas (five in the second half of the seventeenth century) and their representation in the places where the episodes of Reine’s life occurred affect the topographical accuracy of the hagiography (Godin, 1997, pp. 217-223Godin, A. (1997) “La dramaturgie de sainte Reine.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 217-242.), forging a tradition of popular representations of the Saint’s martyrdom that is still in force today (Godin, 1997, pp. 227-242Godin, A. (1997) “La dramaturgie de sainte Reine.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 217-242.; Gaufillé, 1993Gaufillé Brenot, J.-C. (1993) Les fêtes et le culte de sainte Reine. Flavigny-sur-Onzerain.).

Turning to Galicia, the cult of Santa Mariña (the Galician name for Marina) is very widespread in the region, where she is the patron saint of 111 of the 3771 parishes in the territory, although the exact periodicity of its establishment has not been studied. The establishment of this cult likely coincides with the oldest phase of Christianization, as it is systematically associated with archaeological sites, as is the case with other martyr cults, most notably those dedicated to Santa Eulalia de Mérida (Armada 2003Armada Pita, X. L. (2003) “El Culto a Santa Eulalia y la cristianización de Gallaecia: algunos testimonios arqueológicos.” Habis, 34, pp. 365-388.). The cult of Mariña radiates from the present-day province of Ourense, where tradition situates the saint’s life and martyrdom.

The main literary source about Santa Mariña is provided by Juan Muñoz de la Cueva (1660-1728), who was Bishop of Ourense from 1717 until his death. Muñoz published two books with the same text in 1719 and 1726. Following the first one (Muñoz, 1719, p. 6Muñoz de la Cueba, J. (1719) Breve compendio de la vida y martyrio de la Gloriosa Virgen y Martyr Sta. Marina de Galicia, cuyo sepulcro y santo cuerpo se venera en su Iglesia de Aguas Santas. Available at: www.galiciana.bibliotecadegalicia.xunta.es/ ) he stated that to write his work he relied on “authentic information” that a priest of Santa Mariña de Augas Santas (place of martyrdom) received in 1592 “from seven very old witnesses”. This testimony leads us to oral information that circulated in the sixteenth century, and which is still alive today (“Lume na auga”, http://santamarinadeaugassantas.com/).

According to this testimony, Mariña was born in “Antioquía”, a town located in the surroundings of Antela lagoon in the high valley of the Limia River in the year 123 CE. She was the daughter of a notable Roman pagan named Theudius; her Christian mother’s name is not preserved. She was educated as a Christian by a wet nurse who lived in the parish of Piñeira de Arcos. When her father learned of Mariña’s faith, he abandoned her, and the girl continued to live with her wet nurse. When she was fifteen years old, while she was looking after her sheep under the tower of Sandiás, next to the west shore of Antela lagoon, Olibrius, a Roman persecutor of Christians, saw her and became attached to her. He immediately proposed to her, but she refused, so he arrested her and took her to Armea. There, several episodes of martyrdom are described, culminating in her beheading. The severed head of the martyr bounced on the ground three times, with miraculous fountains springing from each point, which are still in use today. Her body was buried in the place where the large Romanesque parish church now stands.⁷ Nodar, 2015, p. 193, refers to evidence from a previous church since the 5^th-6^th century (the style of a marble capital that was found there) and from the 11^th-12^th century (references in texts from the nearby monastery of San Salvador de Celanova).

At an earlier date, Bartolomé Sagrario de Molina (known as “Licenciado Molina”) dedicated a chapter of his book Descripcion del Reyno de Galizia (A Description of the Kingdom of Galicia) from 1549 to the cult of Santa Mariña:

The “ovens” are the remains of a sauna, locally known as Forno da Santa (“The Saint’s Oven”) (Blanco-Rotea et al., 2015Blanco-Rotea, R., García Rodríguez, S., Mato-Fresán, C. and Sanjurjo-Sánchez, J. (2015) “La Basílica da Ascensión y Os Fornos (Allariz, Ourense) y la cristianización de la arquitectura en la Antigüedad Tardía.” Estudos do Quaternário, 12, pp. 111-132 doi.org/10.30893/eq.v0i12.117 ), attached to the hill fort of Armea (Iron Age settlement that was still inhabited under the Roman Empire), in the town of Santa Mariña de Augas Santas, where tradition placed the martyrdom by the fire of the Saint. Local hagiography thus records the building’s primitive function, since Mariña (= water), in contact with the fire, produces the steam that rises from the chimney of the original sauna hearth. Several sixteenth-century procedural documents offer less hagiographic detail and more topographic information (Sandoval, 2013Sandoval Verea, F. (2013) “O Santuario, a igrexa colexial e o couto de Santa Mariña de Augas Santas a fiáis do século XVI: información testifical de Don Martín de Córdoba e do Licenciado Francisco Fernández, Prelado de Augas Santas.” Diversarum Rerum: revista de los Archivos Catedralicio y Diocesano de Ourense, 8, pp. 285-316.), while Benito de la Cueva († 1649), the chronicler of the monastery of San Salvador de Celanova on which Augas Santas depended for long periods, corroborates the hagiographic elements without the topographical details (González, 1991, pp. 283-287González Balasch, M. T., ed. (1991) Benito de la Cueva, Historia de los monasterios y prioratos anejos a Celanova. Granada: University of Granada.).

The situations presented offer considerable similarity in substance and notable differences in form. The background similarity is the use of the same eastern tradition around Sainte Marina of Antioch, which arrived in both places probably by different paths as a vector for the Christianization of places with an important, but disparate, polytheistic heritage. This is very common. What is unique about these cases is that the tradition of others is attributed to local saints, their holy bodies being the central object of the new cult. Another similarity lies in the miraculous fountains that spring up in the place where the Saint’s decapitated head falls, making both places destinations for pilgrimages of different magnitude. All the rest are differences derived, above all, from the heterogeneous cultural contexts of both locations. In fact, the influence of written traditions, literary versions, editions of pious texts, etc., is much greater for Sainte Reine than for Santa Mariña. Conversely, the influence of the local topography is much greater for Santa Mariña than for Sainte Reine.

An important difference for this argument is the probable heterogeneity of the origin of both traditions. For Sainte Reine, the Greek version of Marina’s hagiography likely spread in Byzantine Italy from the fifth to the sixth century. From there, the Latin versions were able to spread to Western Europe, as the first version was written in Autun in the eighth century of the original and of its adaptation to Sainte Reine. Autun was a place with a strong cultural tradition, well connected to Italy through Lyon, and it seems to be the appropriate means to accomplish the local adaptation of the legend (Courtine, 1997, pp. 33-34Courtine, N. (1997) “Sainte Reine et la tradition écrite, la Passio S. Reginae.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 29-60.).

In the Galician case, however, the story preserves the onomastics and toponymy of the original to situate them in the local settings.⁸ “It is not a vulgar conjecture that the name of Antioch has been changed to Antela because of corruption” (Muñoz, 1719, p. 20), also Flórez (1763, pp. 216 and 219) when he refers to Armea, the local name of the hamlet where the hillfort and “Saint Oven” is located, as coming from “Armenia”. It is interesting to note that the Greek name of the saint has been preserved, whereas the usual name in Europe is Margaret. This suggests that the hagiographic account may have arrived by sea, probably through the port of Vigo, an important commercial centre in late antiquity (Fernández, 2014Fernández Fernández, A. (2014) El Comercio tardoantiguo (ss. IV-VI) en el Noroeste peninsular a través del registro cerámico de la Ría de Vigo. Oxford: Archaeopress.) where goods from the eastern Mediterranean arrived, which may have included books.⁹ Mundell Mango, 2001, p. 98; Pirenne 1928, for Gallia, with testimonies by Gregory of Tours. On the solid cultural situation of Galicia at the time, see López, 1989. Neither does it seem accidental that Santa Tecla, a saint from Anatolia whose cult is widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean (Davis, 2008Davis, S. J. (2008) The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety In: Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.), gives her the name of the mountain that dominates the northern bank of the Miño estuary. This is another holy story that travelled from the Orient to Galicia. Furthermore, it can be argued that the local adaptation of the legend could be the work of the chronicler Hydatius of Chaves (end of the fourth century - c. 469), a local character (infra) who had travelled to the Holy Land in his youth and who mentions an earthquake in Antioch and other events in the East (Hydatius, Chronicle, 210 [215] = Burgess, 1993, p. 115Burgess, R. W. (1993) The Chronicle of Hydatius. And the Consularia Constantinopolitana: two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press.). The etymological speculation, witnessed in the local adaptation of the legend, was typical of its time (Amsler, 1989, pp. 133-172Amsler, M. (1989) Etymology and Grammatical Discourse in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. Amsterdam: Johns Benjamins Publishing Company.) and shortly afterward Isidore of Seville (560-636) would take it to the top. Finally, the Christian transformation of the Forno da Santa is done during the fifth century, roughly coincident with the life of Hydatius (infra). All of this suggests that Hydatius, or someone from his immediate surroundings, could have used a hagiographic account of Marina arriving by sea as a vector for the Christianization of the region around the Limia valley.

The probable disparity of the origins of both traditions reinforces the parallelism of the situation presented. Close to the end of the fourth century and during the fifth century, the first Christian transformation of Alesia took place around a martyrium (Whalen, 1997, p. 30Wahlen, P. (1997) “La basilique Sainte-Reine d’Alésia.” In Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 61-80.) and of Armea through the transformation of a sauna instead of martyrdom. From this point on, the impact of the local written traditions inclines Alesia’s scholars to not clearly admit that since then, the cult of Reine was being worshipped. However, the parallel evidence of the Galician saint and, above all, the evidence of the existence of a multi-secular oral tradition,¹⁰ On the complex relations between history, orality, and mythology, see Detienne, 1981; Vansina, 1985. It is not possible in this paper to explore in-depth the question of orality, its relation to written culture, how memory and the transmission of knowledge function in systems that have a predominantly oral or written tradition, or the innumerable diversity of mixed situations. Ong, 2012 is a reprint of a classic with an updated commentary. suggest that it was at this time that the hagiographic accounts became entangled with the topographical and archaeological features of both places.

CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP VERSUS LOCAL HAGIOGRAPHY

The reactions to the success of the pilgrimage to Sainte Reine reveal a triple direction. The first, which is very specific, concerns the complaint about the saint’s relics with the bishopric of Osnabrück (Boutry, 1997, pp. 291-294Boutry, Ph. (1997) “La critique savante.” In: Boutry and Julia eds. pp. 291-300.). The second consists of the rationalistic questioning of the healing power of the waters based on demonstrable evidence from the middle of the seventeenth century (Boutry, 1997, pp. 294-296Boutry, Ph. (1997) “La critique savante.” In: Boutry and Julia eds. pp. 291-300.) and which in 1713 led the Cordeliers monks responsible for the custody of the fountain to refuse their medical examination (Velay-Vallantin, 1997, p. 207Velay-Vallantin, C. (1997) “La guerre des livrets: sainte Reine dans la Bibliothèque bleue (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles).” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 189-216.). The third one is the erudite criticism of the tradition, which we will pause to examine because of its similarities with what happened to Santa Mariña de Galicia. In fact, as Ph. Boutry (1997, p. 291)Boutry, Ph. (1997) “La critique savante.” In: Boutry and Julia eds. pp. 291-300. explains, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a critical doctrine took shape and was asserted around the congregation of the Benedictines of Saint-Maur and the Jesuits who published the Acta Sanctorum from 1643, in a historical context full of controversy that touched upon the matter of Sainte Reine.

The first testimony is by the Dutch Jesuit Daniel van Papenbroeck (or Papebroch, 1628-1714) who, on his visit to Alise on August 3, 1662, after a brief description of the place, writes:

“There are no records of the Saint, she has had the records of Saint Margaret passed off instead, changing only her name [...] the learned men of Auxerre are certain that she is totally imaginary (omnino commenticiam)” (Halkin, 1947, p. 94Halkin, F. (1947) “Le synaxaire grec de Chifflet retrouvé à Troyes (manuscrit 1204), appendice: Témoignages des premiers bollandistes sur leur passage en Bourgogne et à Paris.” Analecta Bollandiana, 65, pp. 71-102.; trad. Boutry, 1997, p. 296Boutry, Ph. (1997) “La critique savante.” In: Boutry and Julia eds. pp. 291-300.).

A few years later, and now in a published text, L.-S. Le Nain de Tillemont (1637-1698)Le Nain de Tillemont, L.-S. (1698) Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles. Paris: Charles Robustel. combines philological scepticism with topological truth when he writes “but all we can say is that it is a very wicked story”. He then concludes “what makes St. Reine more famous today is the fountain and the chapel of her name which is visited by all [...] at the foot of Alize mountain, between the rivers Onzerain, Loze, and Brenne.” (Le Nain de Tillemont, 1698, p. 546Le Nain de Tillemont, L.-S. (1698) Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles. Paris: Charles Robustel.). Shortly afterwards, Adrien Baillet (1649-1706) builds a more elaborate argument:

This philological observation is not an obstacle, according to this author, to believing in the existence of a holy martyr in Alise as proven by the cult and local traditions, which suggest an erudite recuperation of the tradition. The Bollandists, in their edition of the Acta Sanctorum for September (1750), and the Benedictines of Saint Maur (1757), followed this line of thought (Boutry, 1997, pp. 298-299Boutry, Ph. (1997) “La critique savante.” In: Boutry and Julia eds. pp. 291-300.), culminating in fully rationalistic proposals in the twentieth century.¹¹ Verdin, 1926; Leclercq, 1934, p. 2438, who writes “What results from these accounts is that we have nothing about Saint Reine d’Alise that needs to be taken into consideration, either from an archaeological and monumental point of view or from a hagiographical point of view.” These arguments do not detract from the local tradition based on the topological truth demonstrated by the pilgrimages which, admittedly with certain fluctuations, have taken place up to the present day.

Moving on to the Galician case, the answers to the traditions around Santa Mariña appear from the 16th century, coinciding in time with the printed testimonies about the cult of the place of Augas Santas. The debate was initiated by the Portuguese humanist Andrés de Rezende (also known as Lucius Andreas de Resendius or André de Reesende, 1498-1573) in his Letter to Bartolomey de Quevedo (1567). As part of his criticism of counterfeiters, he points out to the writer that instead of the life of Santa Mariña “he endorsed the life of Saint Margaret from the first to the last line [...] and that he dreamed that Antioch, the city of Olybrius, was Tui of Galicia” (Soares, 1988, pp. 102-103Soares Pereira, V. (1988) André de Resende, Carta a Bartolomeu de Quevedo, introduçao, texto latino, versão e notas. Coimbra: INIC.). The text reflects the dissemination of the story of Santa Mariña, and for the first time proposes the dissociation between a local Santa Mariña and the fact of attributing to her episodes taken from the life of Saint Margaret of Antioch (Soares, 1988, pp. 174-175Soares Pereira, V. (1988) André de Resende, Carta a Bartolomeu de Quevedo, introduçao, texto latino, versão e notas. Coimbra: INIC.). Ambrosio de Morales (1513-1591) reiterates this position twice: the first time when he takes up Resendius’ position and points out how in Augas Santas: “… show other memories of her martyrdom. The rest of his writings seem to be taken from those of Saint Margaret: as noted by Master Resendio in his letter to Quevedo. And the devotion to the saint is so old in Galicia, that it has lasted for more than six hundred years” (Morales, 1574, X, XXVII, pp. 384-385Morales, A. de. (1574) La Coronica general de España. Alcalá de Henares: Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica.)

In a later work, he insists: “They found no story of their own to give her, so they took a piece of St. Margaret’s and attributed it to her. Having said this, I have worked, as well as I can, to clarify the truth of our devotion and veneration of Spain with our blessed saint” (Morales 1586, XIV, XXI, p. 120Morales, A. de. (1586) Los cinco libros postreros de la coronica general de España. Córdoba: Gabriel Ramos Bejarano.; similarly, Villegas, 1794, p. 474Villegas, A. de. (1588) Flos Sanctorum, Historia General de la Vida, y Hechos de Jesu-Christo, Dios, y Señor Nuestro; y de los Santos, de que Reza, y haze Fiesta la Iglesia Catholica. Madrid: Pedro Madrigal.).

Ambrosio de Morales compiles details about the places where tradition situates episodes of Mariña’s life, to establish a historical truth located between the logic of the stories and the logic of the places, between critical erudition and topological tradition. In this way, Morales notes the similarity between the traditions surrounding Saint Margaret and Saint Mariña of Galicia, but also the antiquity of the cult and the materiality of the places that bore witness to the martyrdom.

The Bollandists persisted in the critical line, in a similar way to what was seen concerning Sainte Reine (Sollerio et al., 1725, pp. 376-377Sollerio, J. B., Pinio, J., Cupero, G., and Boschio, P. (1725) Acta Sanctorum Iulii. T IV. Amberes: Jacobum du Moulin.; 1727, pp. 24-54Sollerio, J. B., Pinio, J., Cupero, G., and Boschio, P. (1727) Acta Sanctorum Iulii. T V. Amberes: Jacobum du Moulin.), and in the Hispanic field the authority of the great scholar H. Flórez (1702-1773) stands out when he states:

However, these critical expressions never altered the loyalty of the local peasantry to their traditions, as Muñoz de la Cueva explains: “Nor is our Saint the same as Saint Margaret in Pisidia [...] For although serious authors give the same name to the place of birth of each one, to the parents, and to the President, who martyred them [...] Marina and Margaret are different and diverse” (Muñoz, 1719, pp. 14-15, 16-17Muñoz de la Cueba, J. (1719) Breve compendio de la vida y martyrio de la Gloriosa Virgen y Martyr Sta. Marina de Galicia, cuyo sepulcro y santo cuerpo se venera en su Iglesia de Aguas Santas. Available at: www.galiciana.bibliotecadegalicia.xunta.es/ ).

In this way, Muñoz overcomes the ambiguity that the bookish current establishes between philological criticism and topological tradition to fully adopt the position of spokesman for the second option. We will now see how this topological tradition operates in our two case studies.

FROM HAGIOGRAPHY TO TOPOLOGY

In the following pages, we use the concept of topology to refer to the stories that give meaning to places, using the etymological meaning of the Greek terms that make up the word in a commonplace way. In the cases that concern us, these narratives are hagiographies, and the question is to see how they became attached to the local territory to construct the topologies of Alise and Augas Santas.

For the topography of the first (Fig. 2) we start from the oppidum of Alesia, the capital of the Gallic civitas of the Mandubians, and the scene of the last battle of the Gauls against Caesar. During the Empire, this location became a “secondary agglomeration”, i.e., a Gallic-Roman city without a defined legal status. This situation did not prevent the construction of large buildings such as a theatre, a forum with its basilica, and various temples. The city was reduced from the second half of the third century, and by the fifth century, the settlement had already moved to the site of the present Alise-Ste.-Reine.

The Basilica of Sainte Reine in Alesia is the result of four constructive phases. The first, dated between the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, probably corresponds to a martyrium built over the course of the former “rue 1” in Alesia which was no longer in use; this date coincides with that of the previously mentioned tableware with inscriptions (above). At the end of the fifth century, a building with a “Tau” floor plan was built, incorporating the martyrium as its apse. This building was extended towards the end of the sixth century with a corridor where burials took place (Wahlen, 1997, pp. 64-99Wahlen, P. (1997) “La basilique Sainte-Reine d’Alésia.” In Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 61-80.). The final phase involves a contraction of the previous building during the ninth and tenth centuries, followed by its definitive abandonment in the twelfth century (Wahlen, 1997, pp. 79-80Wahlen, P. (1997) “La basilique Sainte-Reine d’Alésia.” In Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 61-80.). This coincides with the development of Flavigny as the seat of a Benedictine community that has overseen the custody of the martyr’s body since 866. The abbey, founded in 719, went through a complex history related to its function of preserving the relics of Reine (Sapin, 1997Sapin, C. (1997) “La crypte de Flavigny, ‘un reliquaire’ pour sainte Reine?” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 81-94.). Beset by difficulties, the cult of Reine developed between Alesia and Flavigny, marked by the introduction of the miraculous fountain as the scene of martyrdom since the end of the fifteenth century.

The local tradition uses the precise locations of the events related to the life and martyrdom of the saint in the surroundings of Alise. The interests of the local elites, the quantity, and variety of devotional texts, and oral traditions are intermingled to fix the locations related to the Saint. We have already indicated how the tragedies of the sixteenth century had a topical basis (Godin, 1997Godin, A. (1997) “La dramaturgie de sainte Reine.” In: Ph. Boutry, and D. Julia, eds., Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlegrinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours. Paris: Cerf, pp. 217-242.). A. Quillot represents the apex of this trend when he reviews, with supposed historical accuracy, the underlying arguments of the tradition, establish different episodes in the life of Reine as solidly proven facts. About her birth, he states that: “She was born in the town of Alise. Moreover, the silence of the ancient monuments is very natural; they only had to recount the death of Saint Reine and not her birth; on the other hand, the universal belief in Saint Reine d’Alise dispensed with the need to talk about it” (Quillot, 1881, p. 96Quillot, A. (1881) Sainte Reine d’Alise. Études sur sa vie, les actes de son martyre et son culte. Paris: R. Haton.).

Concerning her detention when she was tending sheep at the place called “Aux trois Ormeaux”, he writes:

F. Grignard (1881, pp. 350-351, 353)Grignard, F. (1881) La vie de sainte Reine d’Alise, précédée d’études critiques sur ses actes et ses historiens. Paris: A. Picard et H. Grigne. offers a similar story; however, it is preferable to follow Quillot because of his greater attention to places. Regarding the imprisonment and torture at Grignon Castle, Quillot proposes an archaeological argument:

Finally, regarding her execution in the place of the sacred fountain:

F. Grignard follows this idea in other ways when he quotes authors who postulated that the Christian origin of Reine is the legacy of a sacred Pre-Christian source.¹² Grignard, 1881, p. 356 “The nymph of the fountain would have been the primary cause of the pilgrimage” and see pp. 351, 353. A school of contemporary studies examines the possible legacy of a pre-Christian deity in the cult of Sainte Reine, Charnier, 2011; Merceron, 2012.

It should be noted that the constant reference to tradition by these authors conveys and systematises an oral tradition in the form of a written compendium, probably preserved through the cult of Sainte Reine and whose written expressions are the tip of an iceberg that makes it possible to detect its presence. That said, the varnish of classical culture and archaeology with which the oral transmission of topological knowledge, referred to by these authors as “tradition”, is covered is a particular feature of the literate culture of nineteenth-century France.

In contrast to Alise, the topology of Santa Mariña is much more complex. Firstly, the birth and childhood of the saint are set around Antela lagoon (Fig. 3) which occupied some 3,600 hectares in the centre of the A Limia plain until it was controversially drained in the 1960s.¹³ See at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YUsj3PLQ9I&feature=fvwrel a 1955 video edited by Javier Gómez Salgado where the fragility of the border between land and water in the Antela lagoon can be appreciated. On the drying up of the lagoon, see Fernández Prieto, 2011. It was located on the axis that connects southern Galicia with the interior of the Peninsula, where human activity in the area is known since prehistoric times. Its rich history has made the lagoon into a “place of memory” with a significant accumulation of myths and legends (Taboada, 1969Taboada, J. (1969) “Las leyendas de la laguna Antela.” Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, 24, pp. 348-362) together with explanations about the precariousness of the living conditions in its vicinity (Madoz, 1850, pp. 286-287Madoz, P. (1850) Diccionario Geográfico, Estadístico, Histórico de España y sus posesiones de ultramar. Vol. X, Madrid: Imprenta del Diccionario Geográfico, Estadístico, Histórico de Pascual Madoz.). This is the place where Santa Mariña was born:

Xinzo de Limia, the “Antioch” of the tradition of Santa Mariña, is identified with the Forum Limicori, the central settlement of the Limici Iron age ethnic group, (Cl. Ptolemy, II, 5; II, 6.43; Pliny, Natural History, III, 28) of Celtic speakers (Luján 2009, pp. 235-237Luján, E. R. (2009) “Pueblos celtas y no celtas de la Galicia Antigua: fuentes literarias frente a fuentes epigráficas.” Estudios de Lenguas y Epigrafía Antiguas, 9, pp. 219-250.) whose name is preserved in the River Limia. Excavations of the parish church of Xinzo, dedicated to Santa Mariña, revealed that it was built on the foundations of a Roman building dating from the Flavian period. A Christian necropolis was later established on it and, finally, the first pre-Romanesque church was built between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The function of the building remained unchanged thereafter (Xusto, 1999Xusto Rodríguez, M. (1999) “O núcleo urbano de Xinzo de Limia e as súas orixes romanas.” In: A. Rodríguez Colmenero, ed., Los orígenes de la ciudad en el Noroeste Hispano. Lugo: Deputación, pp. 1291-1304.; 2000Xusto Rodríguez, M. (2000) “Iglesia Vieja de Xinzo de Limia (Ourense) Intervención arqueológica y lectura histórica.” Restauración & Rehabilitación, 37, pp. 26-33.). It is also the birthplace of the chronicler Hydatius of Chaves, who presents himself as natus in Lemica ciuitate (Hydatius, Chronica, 1, l. 15 Burgess; Burgess, 1988, pp. 6-19Burgess, R. W. (1988) Hydatius: A late Roman Chronicler in Post-Roman Spain. An Historiographical Study and new Critical edition of the Chronicle. PhD. Oxford: Wolfson College. ; 1993, pp. 3-5Burgess, R. W. (1993) The Chronicle of Hydatius. And the Consularia Constantinopolitana: two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press.) and who I propose to identify as the person responsible for introducing the cult of Mariña in the form we can study (see below). Muñoz de la Cueva situates the home of Mariña’s wet nurse in Piñeira de Arcos:

The described location towards the northwest of Antela lagoon is the hill fort of Pendón de Santa Mariña, two hundred meters from a chapel dedicated to the Saint, but the site has not been excavated.

Finally, Muñoz de la Cueva situates the meeting between the Roman “president” Olybrius and Mariña, who tended his sheep, at the foot of the Tower of Sandiás (Muñoz, 1719, pp. 41-42Muñoz de la Cueba, J. (1719) Breve compendio de la vida y martyrio de la Gloriosa Virgen y Martyr Sta. Marina de Galicia, cuyo sepulcro y santo cuerpo se venera en su Iglesia de Aguas Santas. Available at: www.galiciana.bibliotecadegalicia.xunta.es/ ). Next to the tower, there is a basin excavated in the rock that may have had a ritual function in the Iron Age (Seoane, García and Güimil, 2013Seoane-Veiga, Y., García Quintela, M. V., and Güimil Fariña, A. (2013) “Las pilas del Monte de Santa Mariña de Maside (Ourense): hacia una tipología de los lugares con función ritual en la Edad del Hierro del NW de la Península Ibérica.” Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 60, pp. 13-50. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/ceg.2013.126.01 ). In Roman times, the mansio Gemina of the Antonine Itinerary was located there, on the Roman via XVIII between Bracara Augusta (present-day Braga in Portugal) and Asturica Augusta (present-day Astorga in Spain, two of the most important Roman cities in the NW of the Iberian Peninsula, built around 80 AD and whose layout is well known (Rodríguez, Ferrer and Álvarez, 2004, pp. 370 and 543-550Rodríguez Colmenero, A., Ferrer Sierra, S., and Álvarez Asorey, R. D. (2004) Miliarios e outras inscricións viarias romanas do Noroeste Hispánico (Conventos Bracarense, Lucense e Asturicense). Santiago: Consello da Cultura Galega.). In the Middle Ages, Antela lagoon was flanked by four twelfth-century towers: Pena, Porqueira, Cenlle, and Sandiás, in the context of the border disputes between the kingdoms of Castile and Portugal.¹⁵ In the video cited in n. 13, the Pena tower appears at 1’25’’ and 2’26’’ and the Sandiás tower at 1’45’’.

In summary, the cult of Mariña constructs the Christian landscape based on known locations in a chronological horizon of late antiquity, without it being possible to offer further details on the date. From here, the evil Olybrius took the maiden to the “prison” of Armea, in whose surroundings, in the parish of Augas Santas, her martyrdom took place. This parish extends over the mountain of Os Canteiros, at the western end of a mountain range called Lombas de Santa Mariña.

Mariña’s hagiography closely embraces the territory, especially highlighting three points (Fig. 4). Firstly, at the western end of Mount dos Canteiros is the hill fort of Armea and, in the construction of the Christian cult, three more or less Romanized Iron Age structures are reused. (1) Descending from the village, in a valley before climbing up to the hill fort, is the Basilica of the Ascension or Forno da Santa. It is an old Iron Age sauna that was remodelled in the Middle Ages as a crypt to commemorate the martyrdom by fire suffered by Santa Mariña. The construction of the unfinished basilica began above ground level. The dating by physical-chemical methods of the first Christian transformation of the sauna provides dates from around the fifth century (Sanjurjo et al., 2020Sanjurjo Sánchez, J., Blanco Rotea, R., García Quintela, M. V., and Burbidge, C. I. (2020) “OSL dating of earthen mortars from a medieval building in North Western Spain: Crypt of Basílica de Ascensión (Allariz, Ourense).” Radiocarbon, 62, pp. 679-692. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2020.70 ) and, although there is no certainty of its relationship with the introduction of the cult of the martyr, this seems to be the only plausible hypothesis. (2) The Pioucas of Santa Mariña, a few tens of meters away, are two basins located under a large oak tree and surrounded by a wall, and in which San Pedro supposedly refreshed Mariña when he rescued her from the oven. (3) From there, there is a path to the top of the hill fort, the Outeiro dos Pendóns, a possible place of ritual interest since the Iron Age and mentioned in the local tradition since the sixteenth century. This is the destination of the procession of Os Pendóns, which consists of carrying banners from the parish church to the site on the days of the Ascension and Santa Mariña.

Next, climbing the slope, in the village of Augas Santas is the parish church with the tomb of the saint and the three fountains that sprang forth as her decapitated head bounced along the ground. The easternmost one has lost its religious significance. The second one, which has excellent water, occupies the centre of the village and its social life. The third is miraculous and is in a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas (Fig. 5). Two Roman altars without epigraphs preserved in the sacristy-museum of the church suggest the earlier religious character of this area.¹⁶ In the church of Santa Eufemia de Ambía (Baños de Molgás, Ourense), dated for stylistic reasons to the Visigoth period and located seven km east of Augas Santas, there is a Roman altar dedicated to Nymphs located 100 m from a fountain. Eufemia, like Tecla, Eulalia, or Mariña, is another of the saints who operated as a vector of early Christianization in Galicia.

Finally, at the top of the mountain are the rock carvings of A Vacariza, surrounded by a circular wall. According to the tradition, the engravings are the evidence of a miracle of Mariña, as a Christian slave of the Moors obtained his freedom thanks to the intervention of the Saint who manifested herself in an epiphany (García and Seoane, 2011García Quintela, M. V., and Seoane-Veiga, Y. (2011) “La larga vida de dos rocas ourensanas.” Archivo Español de Arqueología, 84, pp. 243-266. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/aespa.084.011.010 ).

The construction and meaning of these topologies explain the social failure of scholarly claims about the veracity of the legend. In the two cases studied the boundary between critical scholars and gullible devotees is identical. The spokespersons of the critical current are outsiders,¹⁷ For Alise: see Papenbroeck, Le Nain de Tillemont, Baillet, the Bollandists, etc.; for Augas Santas see Resendius, Morales, Flórez, and once again the Bollandists. deskbound intellectuals who detect genealogical relationships and interconnections between the texts about Margaret of Antioch and the stories about Reine or Marina. The spokespersons of the topological vulgate are characters who were close to the Saint, or at least locals.¹⁸ For Alesia: scriptoria of Flavigny or Autun, ‘bleue’ literature (Velai-Vallantin, 1997), authors of tragedies (Godin, 1997), or local priests such as Quillot or Grignard. For Santa Mariña: Molina, Benito de la Cueva, Muñoz de la Cueva, the local oral tradition. Without ruling out the narrative similarities pointed out by the critics, these authors argue from the fancy archaeological bases of the episodes of the legend to construct a truth about the places. The topologies transmitted from generation to generation also use the periodicity of the rites as a mnemonic activator of the sense of the places. It is important to be aware that the defenders of this approach are not limited to intellectuals, incapable of understanding critical scholarship. They are, on the contrary, the defenders at all costs of the Christian sense of the landscapes where the peasant communities acquire meaning and identity under their guidance.

It should be pointed out that what has been described here is a specific aspect of a much more complex reality that has been studied in a disjointed manner. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the contributions of W.A. Christian Jr. in his studies of the religious life of small peninsular communities in different periods and places. This author (Christian Jr., 1991Christian Jr., W. A. (1991 [1981]) Religiosidad Local en la España de Felipe II. Madrid: Nerea.) highlights the dynamism and richness of local religious expression-based, from the sixteenth century onwards, on a very numerous clergy that, in comparison with previous periods, was well trained in theological matters, capable of maintaining a close relationship with the territories where they exercised their functions, and which were characterised by the multitude and variety of religious practices linked to local cults, traditions, hermitages, etc. Similarly, for more recent periods, the richness and theological solidity in Catholic terms detected in the practices and beliefs in studies of twentieth-century contexts in Northern Spain are particularly noteworthy (Christian Jr., 1972Christian Jr., W. A. (1972) Person and God in a Spanish Valley. New York & London: Seminar Press.; 1996Christian Jr., W. A. (1996) Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ. Berkeley: University of California Press.).

In this context, it is also important to emphasise the role of the pulpit as a mediator between the theological dogma of scholarly elaboration and the Christian traditions handed down orally from generation to generation that defines the forms of local worship, as we have already indicated above for the medieval period: in this precise sense the situation remains unchanged. The processional routes, the saints that comprise the pantheons on a parish scale, and the erection of devotional structures such as oratories, shrines, and wayside crosses, are always the result of local initiatives that official Christianity, through its priests, had no difficulty in integrating into religious practices. To emphasise this aspect, it is worth making a quick reference to studies on literacy in the modern period in both Galicia and Burgundy. For the first, the study by O. Rey (1998)Rey Castelao, O. (1998) “Niveles de alfabetización en la Galicia de fines del Antiguo Régimen.” Bulletin Hispanique, 100 (2), pp. 271-311. indicates an uneven literacy rate by areas and also periods, highlighting an increase towards the coastal areas and towards the eighteenth century, a situation that suggests a low literacy rate in our study area which explains the emphasis of Bishop Juan Muñoz de la Cueva on the use of oral traditions about Santa Mariña, possibly similar to those still circulating today. This situation went hand in hand with the scarcity of books in the rural world, and those that were in circulation were of a religious nature. (Rey, 2003, pp. 144-147Rey Castelao, O. (2003) Libros y lectura en Galicia. Siglos XVI-XIX. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia.). The situation is similar in Burgundy. It was a deeply agricultural region throughout the Modern Age, but there were marked territorial inequalities. In the Côte-d’Or, male literacy was less than 30% at the end of the seventeenth century and 54% a century later, and it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that literacy was fully achieved (Lévêque, 1977Lévêque, P. (1977) “Problèmes de l’alphabétisation en Bourgogne sous la monarchie censitaire.” In : F. Furet, J. Ozouf, Lire et écrire. L’Alphabétisation des Français de Calvin à Jules Ferry. Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit, pp. 153-186.). In a more qualitative analysis, R. Chartier (1993, pp. 177-199)Chartier, R. (1993). Libros, lecturas y lectores en la Edad Moderna. Madrid: Alianza. points out that at the beginning of the French Revolution, reading was not very widespread among the peasant population, there was a shortage of books and, among those that were available, there was a clear predominance of books on religious subjects. In other words, a context favourable to the oral dissemination of religious content from generation to generation.

Back to our case study, it is pertinent to signal that the local or topological tradition combines the safeguarding of the Christian identity of the communities through the ritual worship of the holy martyrs with the interest in the income provided by their custody.¹⁹ The pilgrimages to Alesia are rife with economic interests: see Boutry and Julia, 1997; for Augas Santas, see Muñoz, 1719, p. 103; González, 1991, pp. 281-283. However, once the economic privileges of the church institutions have disappeared, the tradition continues to define the identity of the community. The people of Alise-Sainte-Reine and Santa Mariña de Augas Santas continue to tell the stories and miracles of their saints, and every year they perform the sacred dramas commemorating their martyrdom (Fig. 6).

THE TRIUMPH OF TOPOLOGY

Throughout this article, I have applied a perspective of historical anthropology defined as the discipline that poses questions specific to ethnology or anthropology to the information contained in the archives or sources usually exploited by historians (Coello and Mateo, 2016Coello de la Rosa, A., and Mateo Dieste, J. L. (2016) Elogio de la antropología histórica: enfoques, métodos y aplicaciones al estudio del poder y del colonialismo. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad.). It is from this methodological orientation that I will attempt to highlight the value of the limited case study presented in this paper. These are only two cases out of more than 20,000. However, these two cases open the way for us to reflect on how thousands of stories, often transmitted orally, sometimes carefully preserved in monastic texts, flowed into medieval Europe, which on certain occasions were set in specific locations to construct the Christian landscape of the continent. P. Brown (2013, pp. 13-17, 355-379)Brown, P. (2013) The Rise of Western Christendom. Malden (USA) & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. coined the term “micro-Christianities” to describe the diversity and multi-polarity of the early medieval Christian traditions. Finding inspiration in this idea, I suggest the usefulness of extending it to those thousands of sites with “holy” names. In this way, we can understand how the evangelizers of these places acted as religious engineers in charge of the construction of the new landscapes, providing them with specific buildings for the new worship, or as we have seen, by adapting pre-existing buildings, changing the name of the places, and also attributing to them stories (and often relics), which gave them a new religious meaning.

The use of the same basic story in two such distant and different places for so many reasons allows for a comparative look at how the “games of truth” work, an expression used by M. Foucault,²⁰ This term appears repeatedly in this author’s work to identify the pressures and issues at stake in each society or historical moment to build its own “regime of truth”. It is not a question of discovering what is true, but rather the rules according to which, what a subject says about a certain object can lead to the question of what is true or false; see Revel, 2002, pp. 64-65. developed in these places over time, when the logic of bookish erudition and the tradition established in the places clash. The victory of the latter allows us, in short, to return to the initial theoretical approaches to emphasize how our study enables us to identify the convergence of three separate cultural situations.

Firstly, it highlights the specific religious value of certain places, which differ and change depending on the religion, and which were appropriated by the triumphant Christianity following the logic of its universalism. To do so, the previously mentioned engineers of evangelization provide these places with a new narrative that very probably preserves and renews a pre-existing religious value, while diversifying the strategies of appropriation of these spaces. Secondly, and temporarily in a subsequent period to the previous one, these places are configured as the custodians of a memory that is now new, and now Christian. In this way, they are based on the well-studied facility that memory is better preserved when it is fixed in specific places. In our case, it is this feature that allows the multi-secular triumph of the topologies examined over the onslaughts of critical and philological scholarship that has expanded since the time of the Renaissance. Thirdly, our study brings to the field of the dissemination and implantation of Christianity the type of analysis developed through anthropology which explains the multiplicity of the relationships between landscape and discourse as the basis of the identity of populations who inhabit specific spaces, and which also has outstanding examples in modern geographies of phenomenological inspiration.

In conclusion, we can return to an idea that was expressed at the beginning of this article. The places we have studied were inhabited by polytheistic populations for millennia and both places were Christianized, around the 5th century, in the way we have explained and have remained so for fifteen centuries. Between these two long periods, the adoption of Christianity was a singular and ephemeral event with a tremendous capacity for transformation. To grasp its importance, we would have to reflect on the social and cultural conditions that are necessary for these places and others to lose their Christian name. Without indulging in an effort that is more befitting of science fiction, in the past, there was an attempt in this direction that affected, precisely, Alise.

According to the text of the decree dated 29 Pluviôse, Year II (17 February 1794) “Sainte-Reine took back its primitive name of Alize which recalls its splendour when the Gauls, our dear ancestors, enjoyed freedom...” (Dumay, 1902, p. 70Dumay, G. (1902) Géographie historique du département de la Cote-d’Or suivie de la nomenclature des communes et hameaux ayant changé de nom pendant la période révolutionnaire. Dijon: Darantiere.). The French Revolution attempted to change previous Christian physics by imposing new orders of time and space with the reform of the calendar and the suppression of holy names (Vovelle, 1991, pp. 41-46Vovelle, M. (1991) The Revolution against the Church. From Reason to the Supreme Being. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. and, more specifically on the revolutionary calendar, Mathiez, 1903Mathiez, A. (1903) La théophilanthropie et le culte décadaire. 1796-1801. Essai sur l’histoire religieuse de la révolution. Paris: Felix Alcan.). In the example of Alesia, it is interesting to observe the parallel attempt to recover the pre-Christian past. The failure of the French Revolution in this endeavour makes it possible to emphasize the historical originality that the widespread, deep-rooted, and long-lasting territorial implantation of triumphant Christianity in Europe represented. This observation also makes it possible to understand why, within the limits of our case study, official rationality never had the necessary strength to triumph over the symbiosis of story and place built-in the two places studied. Moreover, it can be affirmed that something like this will not happen until a deconstruction of Christian space/time of at least a similar magnitude to what was involved in its construction takes place. It does not seem likely that a situation of this kind will occur soon.