Emile Mâle:
Meaux was one of the pilgrimage places where Parisians best liked to go... In the church of St. Faron, [a] tomb attracted the pilgrims' attention: the tomb of the monk Ogier and his companion Benedict...[Religious Art in France: the Late Middle Ages by Emile Mâle, translated by Marthiel Matthews. Princeton University Press, 1986]
Ogier was one of the most illustrious figures of Charlemagne's court, and no warrior of his time was more famous. At the height of his glory, he decided to withdraw from the world and dedicate himself to God. He put on pilgrim garb, ad accompanied by a faithful friend named Benedict, wandered from monastery to monastery. When he entered the church of an abbey, he let his staff hung with bells fall on the paving; when the monks heard the sound, they always paused in their prayers and turned around. This was a decisive test for Ogier; he left the monastery at once, persuaded that he could not take his vows in a monastery where there was so little real piety. He finally came to St. Faron of Meaux. Once more he tried out his test and let his staff fall, but no monk turned his head; all were lost in inner contemplation. That is why Ogier and his friend Benedict asked the abbot of St. Faron to admit them to the monastery...
The monk Ogier was the famous Ogier the Dane celebrated by the poets. It was he who had rebelled against Charlemagne and alone had defended himself in the Chateau of Castelfort against an entire army; it was he who had been imprisoned at Reims in the Porte de Mars, and had come out to save France which had been invaded. Who could fail to be moved by such great memories?...
In the late 12th century, an extraordinary monument was erected in the choir of St. Faron, the tomb of Ogier and Benedict. The two friends, clothed in monks' robes, were shown lying side by side on the same sarcophagus. A relief represented their arrival at the abbey. Ogier carried his staff hung with bells; farther along, they were shown taking their vows in the presence of the abbot. One monk, holding scissors, made ready to cut their hair; another, to clothe them in the monastic habit; and a third held out a pen for them to sign their profession.
So far, there was nothing surprising about this tomb. What would have surprised us, however, was the magnificent setting. Before the sarcophagus was an imposing Romanesque portal; at each side, three large statues stood against columns. The first, at the right, carried a banderole on which was written:Audae conjungium tibi do, Rolande, sorois,
Perpetuumque mei socialis foedus amoris
Thus, this figure was Oliver. Beside him stood a young woman with long tresses, and beside her, another hero. There was no inscription, but they can only have been the lovely Aude and Roland, for in fact, Oliver turned toward Roland as he presented his sister to him. The three statues on the left were not so easy to identify; they represented a king with a scepter and a bishop with a crosier, and between them was the figure of a woman. The bishop, or rather the archbishop, was certainly Turpin, for it was he who had saved Ogier's life by secretly feeding him in the prison of the Porte de Mars, where Charlemagne intended to let him starve. The king was no doubt Charlemagne himself, first the faithful friend and then the implacable enemy of Ogier, but who later pardoned him nevertheless. Did the statue of the woman represent Hildegard, the wife of Charlemagne, as the Benedictines claimed? We do not know. The sculptor had placed around Ogier, as a guard of honor, the most celebrated heroes of our chansons de geste. The monks of St. Faron not only displayed Ogier's tomb; the displayed his sword. Its damascened blade was decorated with an eagle and a golden lion.
Ogier's tomb disappeared along with the church of St. Faron during the Revolution, and we know it only through Mabillon's drawings. The sad ignorance of those vandals who destroyed without knowing what they were doing! There was scarcely a more priceless monument in France. In it, the Middle Ages had expressed its deepest thoughts by glorifying what it most admired in the world: the hero's courage combined with the monk's self-denial.