The inventio of St Marin's relics and its consequences at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe

In the early 11th century, the monks of the abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (Poitou, France) rebuilt their church thanks to a financial gift from Aumode, countess of Poitiers married to Guillaume le Grand, duke of Aquitaine. Rebuilding it they discovered underground graves and relics which had been hidden earlier and long-forgotten by all the monks. One of these graves belonged to Marin, identified later as saint Marin of Maurienne. According to the monks, this discovery was due to a “miracle” or a “prodigious fact” unfortunately unknown to us, but important enough back then to cause a great joy and lead them to celebrate saint Marin as the second patron of their church, dedicating the axial chapel to his cult and burying his relics in a separate crypt, right under the axial chapel. Then they composed a hagiographic life of saint Marin and painted the walls of the axial chapel with the major episodes of his life granting a lot of importance to his martyrdom and death. Marin, monk, ermit and martyr, was said cephalophore to legitimate his cult, and therefore compared to saint Denis, bishop of Paris, also represented as a cephalophore in the tribune of the church. Moreover one of the paintings in the axial chapel focused on Marin’s burial surrounded by a whole monastic community, precisely to recall the day the monks of Saint-Savin discovered him and buried his relics into the crypt. The impact of this event was so important that one century later, a homily probably composed to be said on the celebration day of the Inventio at the abbey, and today known as the Inventio reliquiarum sancti Marini, still depicted it as one of the starting points of the construction of the abbeychurch. In a liturgical calendar dated from the 18th century, the 11th of May is till indicated as the day when this event should be commemorated.