Welcome to the Abbey of La Trinité and the Cult of the Holy Tear project. This Scalar digital book is a teaching resource for a forthcoming book on the visual and performance culture at the Benedictine abbey of La Trinité in Vendôme, France. This Scalar companion presents 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. As the archival record is never complete, and all reconstructions of medieval environments are contingent, it is crucial for our evidence and reconstruction methods to be as transparent and accessible as possible. 

I created this digital companion with the assistance of student scholars at Hope College (Holland, MI). Jonathan Bading '18 transcribed, analyzed, and sang the chants from the office of St. Lazare found in the abbey's fifteenth-century antiphonary. Emily Lindbloom '20 created pen and ink drawings of the abbey's interior and Holy Tear armoire. Her drawings are based on material, visual, and documentary evidence. Mariam Tiews '25 created the comparisons of the lost Vendôme coffer after traveling through Germany looking at and studying Ottonian metalwork.

This project was generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholars Program in the Arts and Humanities at Hope College, the Clarke and Nancy Borgeson Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Grant in the Arts, the Bill and Maura Reynolds Student Research Grant, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.