Une grande dame, Chrodoara d'Amay

In the small town of Amay, on the river Meuse, not far from Liège (Belgium), wasfound, in the choir of the church, the sarcophagus of a lady who is designated as Sancta Chrodoara by the inscription on it and who is represented with an abbess stick in her hand. This major discovery was an incitment to carefully reviewing the other two documents concerning this person, i.e. the testament of Adalgyselus quiet Grimo who, in 634, left some properties to Saint-Georges church in Amay, where his (not namely designated) aunt had been buried, and the Vita S. Odae,from the early thirteenth century, which presented the holy woman as a rïch widow and the foundress of Amay. From this survey, it appears that Chrodoara belonged to one of the most powerful Frank families, akin to the Chrodoinides but also to the ancestors of the Carolingians, through the couple of Hugobertus and Irmina of Oeren and possibly through Arnulfus of Metz. The beginning of the cult is to be related to the eleuatio of saint's remains, in or around 730, by the bishop of Liège Florebertus who was himself somehow akin to Hugobertus' and Irmina's family, and consequently to Chrodoara. For epigraphic and stylistic reasons, the sarcophagus must be regarded as dating of this latter period. The exceptional beauty of this sarcophagus can be easily understood in view of the growing power of the carolingian dynasty just about to emerge from multiple intermarriages between these few families. [Auteur]