Bishops, Authority and Community in Northwestern Europe, c.1050–1150 9781107017818, 2015007323

Table of contents :
List of illustrations and tables page vi
Acknowledgements vii
List of abbreviations x
1. THE BISHOP AND HIS AUTHORITY 1
2. BECOMING BISHOP: CLERICAL CULTURE AND EPISCOPAL
FORMATION IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF REIMS AROUND 1100 27
3. RESTLESS FLOCKS: CHALLENGES TO EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY 68
4. BAND OF BROTHERS: EPISCOPAL NETWORKS IN THE
ARCHDIOCESE OF REIMS 111
5. PERSONAL HISTORIES: THE REVIVAL OF ARCHIEPISCOPAL
HISTORIOGRAPHY AT REIMS IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY 154
6. SANCTITY AND HISTORY IN A BORDER DIOCESE: THE VITA OF
LIETBERT OF CAMBRAI (1051–76) 197
7. URBAN SPACE, MEMORY, AND EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY: THE
BISHOPS OF AMIENS IN PEACE AND CONFLICT, 1073–1164 222
8. BISHOPS AND THE WORD 257
9. TOIL AND TOGETHERNESS IN THE VINEYARDS OF THE LORD 283
10. CONCLUSION 309
Appendix 318
Bibliography 327
Index 367

Citation preview

BISHOPS, AUTHORITY AND COMMUNITY IN NORTHWESTERN EUROPE, C. 1050–1150 This important new study of episcopal office and clerical identity in a socially and culturally dynamic region of medieval Europe examines the construction and representation of episcopal power and authority in the archdiocese of Reims during the sometimes turbulent century between 1050–1150. Drawing on a wide range of diplomatic, hagiographical, epistolary and other narrative sources, John S. Ott considers how bishops conceived of and projected their authority collectively and individually. In examining episcopal professional identities and notions of office, he explores how prelates used textual production and their physical landscapes to craft historical narratives and consolidate local and regional memories around ideals that established themselves as not only religious authorities but cultural arbiters. This study reveals that, far from being reactive and hostile to cultural and religious change, bishops regularly grappled with and sought to affect, positively and to their advantage, new and emerging cultural and religious norms.

j o h n s . o t t is Professor of Medieval European History at Portland State University. He is the editor, with Anna Trumbore Jones, of The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, and the editor, with Trpimir Vedriš, of Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints.

Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series General Editor rosamond mckitterick Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College

Advisory Editors christine carpenter Emeritus Professor of Medieval English History, University of Cambridge

magnus ryan University Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Peterhouse

len scales Senior Lecturer in History, University of Durham

jonathan shepard

The series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought was inaugurated by G. G. Coulton in 1921; Professor Rosamond McKitterick now acts as General Editor of the Fourth Series, with Professor Christine Carpenter, Dr Magnus Ryan and Dr Len Scales as Advisory Editors. The series brings together outstanding work by medieval scholars over a wide range of human endeavour extending from political economy to the history of ideas. This is book 102 in the series, and a full list of titles in the series can be found at: www.cambridge.org/medievallifeandthought

BISHOPS, AUTHORITY AND COMMUNITY IN NORTHWESTERN EUROPE, C. 1050–1150 JOHN S. OTT Portland State University

University Printing House, Cambridge c b 2 8b s, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107017818 © John S. Ott 2015 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2015 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Ott, John S. Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c.1050–1150 / John S. Ott, Portland State University. pages cm. – (Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought. Fourth series; book 102) Includes bibliographical references and index. isb n 978-1-107-01781-8 1. Catholic Church. Archdiocese of Reims (France) – History. 2. Catholic Church – France – Reims – History. 3. Catholic Church – France – Reims – Bishops. 4. Episcopacy – History of doctrines. 5. Authority – Religious aspects – Christianity – History of doctrines. I. Title. b x1532.r 4o 88 2015 2820 .4426609021–dc23 2015007323 is b n 978-1-107-01781-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations and tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1. 2.

page vi vii x

THE BISHOP AND HIS AUTHORITY

1

BECOMING BISHOP : CLERICAL CULTURE AND EPISCOPAL FORMATION IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF REIMS AROUND

3. 4.

1100

RESTLESS FLOCKS : CHALLENGES TO EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY BAND OF BROTHERS : EPISCOPAL NETWORKS IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF REIMS

5.

111

PERSONAL HISTORIES : THE REVIVAL OF ARCHIEPISCOPAL HISTORIOGRAPHY AT REIMS IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

6.

(1051–76)

197

URBAN SPACE , MEMORY , AND EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY : THE BISHOPS OF AMIENS IN PEACE AND CONFLICT ,

8. 9. 10.

154

SANCTITY AND HISTORY IN A BORDER DIOCESE : THE VITA OF LIETBERT OF CAMBRAI

7.

27 68

1073–1164

BISHOPS AND THE WORD TOIL AND TOGETHERNESS IN THE VINEYARDS OF THE LORD CONCLUSION

Appendix Bibliography Index

222 257 283 309 318 327 367

v

ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

maps 1.1. The ecclesiastical province of Reims and northwestern Europe 2 5.1. Topographical and ecclesiastical map of Reims c. 1050 155 figures 7.1. The civitas and burgus of Amiens c. 1100 7.2. Locations of miracles and relic ostentations in Amiens c. 1060–1144

227 245

tables 2.1. Professional background of episcopate, province of Reims (c. 1050–c. 1150) 2.2. Capitular office(s) of secular clergy held prior to episcopal election (c. 1050–c. 1150)

vi

30 31

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some things you will read herein are excellent, some mediocre, and several defective; But this is inevitable – as otherwise, dear Avitus, there would be no book. Martial, Epigrams, Book 1, 16

If anything in this book should be reckoned excellent, then a great deal of the credit for that must go to friends and colleagues who gave their time and energy to improving it. Over the course of many years, from the project’s long-ago inception as a dissertation to its final, and very different, form in front of you, I have profited enormously from the close reading given its chapters and drafts by Rick Barton, Philippe Buc, John Eldevik, Fr James K. Farge, Jason Glenn, Joseph Goering, Brad Gregory, Brigitte Meijns, Maureen Miller, Edward Schoolman, Laura Ackerman Smoller, Anna Trumbore Jones, and two anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press. Still others have discussed the project, shared references and ideas, and offered encouragement: Evan Gatti, Tom Head, Diane Reilly, Jay Rubenstein, Fred Unwalla, and Steven Vanderputten. Other debts are acknowledged in the footnotes. All of these scholars have made this work much smarter than it otherwise would have been, and saved me from numerous errors. Several academic audiences likewise heard and commented upon the work in progress. Chapter 4 was presented before the University of California Medieval History Seminar on 27 February 2010; elements of the same chapter and chapter 6 were presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2010 and 2007, respectively; and I read portions of chapter 8 at the Biennial Hagiotheca Conference in Porecˇ, Croatia, on 28 May 2010. A preliminary version of chapter 5 was aired at the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies in Houston, Texas, in March 2007, while earlier versions of chapters 6 and 7 were published, respectively, in a volume of vii

Acknowledgements collected essays I edited with Anna Trumbore Jones, The Bishop Reformed (Ashgate, 2007), and in Viator 31 (2000). While their audiences may have forgotten these papers, I have not forgotten their ideas and suggestions. The research that went into this book unfolded over many years and received support from numerous agencies and institutions, whose investment I hope this book in some small measure repays. I have had the pleasure over the years of being welcomed by the staffs of a number of French archives, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Archives nationales de France, the Bibliothèque municipale de Reims, and the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT), Paris section. At the latter, I was warmly welcomed on separate occasions by Annie Dufour-Malbezin and the other staff of the section latine and section diplomatique. Archival research is seldom possible without external support. Mine was funded by Faculty Enhancement Grants from Portland State University, awarded in 2008 and 2012, and by Summer Stipends from the National Endowment of the Humanities, awarded in 2002 and 2008. I also advanced sections of this work under the auspices of a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, in 2004–5. The marvellous PIMS staff and library fostered my research in too many ways to recount. Public universities and humanities programmes are under nearly constant pressure to direct their support to endeavours other than archival research; that they chose to extend some of their dwindling funding to make my research possible honours and humbles me. At Portland State University, faculty research would be impossible without the many talented professionals who work at Millar Library. The Interlibrary Loan staff – Cyril Oberlander, Sherry Buchanan, Min Cedillo, and Turner Masland; the Circulation staff – especially Molly Blalock-Koral and her employees; and the Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Librarians – Charles Hixson, Jennifer Dorner, Graham Howard, Joan Petit, and Kristen Kern, have acquired literally hundreds of books and articles for me and tolerated my requests for obscure materials. They do their jobs with panache and good cheer in the face of changing demands, new technologies, and ever-diminishing public funding. They have my thanks and utmost respect; I could not do my job without them. If I could describe the editorial staff at Cambridge University Press in one word, it would be ‘patient’. Tireless and enthusiastic, Jonathan Shepard saw this book to conclusion, chapter by chapter, while offering corrections and suggestions for further reading, many of which I have gratefully incorporated. Elizabeth Friend-Smith, Rosalyn Scott, Bronte Rawlings, and Rebecca Taylor were both encouraging and indulgent of the many viii

Acknowledgements delays the completion of the manuscript incurred. Gillian Cloke ferreted out errors and inconsistencies in the manuscript, proving repeatedly the value of a good copy editor to academic publishing. This book has indeed been a long time in coming. Over the years, colleagues, students, friends, and family members have asked with genuine interest about its progress. I have been fortunate to enjoy the unstinting support of my colleagues at Portland State, including several chairs. Of the latter I must single out Lois Becker, Linda Walton, and Tom Luckett, each of whom found ways to finance and support my professional development. Among my colleagues in the field, Maureen Miller and Tom Head took on the task of mentoring me after I joined the profession. I consider Anna Trumbore Jones a kindred spirit in all things episcopal, but beyond that, she has been a tremendous friend. My parents, John and Marcia Ott, continue to offer their love and support of what I do. Finally, my family – daughters Madeleine and Ellery, and my wife, Tever Nickerson – have endured many prolonged absences, late evenings, and my general distractedness with love, patience, and good humour. To all of you I am now very pleased to say, ‘Here it is’.

ix

ABBREVIATIONS

AA

AAR AASS ACF AD AEA AEL AET AJ

Annales ESC APC BHL BL

Archives administratives de la ville de Reims. Collection de pièces inédites pouvant servir à l’histoire des institutions dans l’intérieur de la cité, ed. P. Varin, 3 vols. (Paris, 1839–1848) ‘Actes des archevêques de Reims d’Arnoul à Renaud II (997–1139)’, ed. P. Demouy, 3 vols., unpublished thesis, Université de Nancy II (1982) Acta Sanctorum, ed. J. Bolland, G. Henschen, et al., 1– (Antwerp, Paris, etc., 1643–) Actes des comtes de Flandre, 1071–1128, ed. F. Vercauteren (Brussels, 1938) Archives départementales (departmental archives) ‘Les actes des évêques d’Amiens jusqu’au début du XIIIe siècle’, ed. S. Lecoanet, 2 vols., unpublished thesis, École nationale des chartes (1957) Actes des évêques de Laon des origines à 1151, ed. A. Dufour-Malbezin (Paris, 2001) Les actes des évêques de Tournai (1146–1190), ed. J. Pycke and C. Vleeschouwers (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2014) L. Jacquemin, ‘Annales de la vie de Josselin de Vierzi, 57e évêque de Soissons (1126–1152)’, in A. Luchaire (ed.), Quatrièmes mélanges d’histoire du moyen âge (Paris, 1905), 1–161 Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 1– (Paris, 1946–) Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium, ed. G. Busson and A. Ledru (Le Mans, 1901) Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, ed. Society of Bollandists, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898–1901) British Library x

List of abbreviations BM BNF BR CCA CEA CCCM CCSL Cont. Praem. DHGE EFHU EH GA

GC GC, Instr. GEC GEC Cont. GPC HRE HSAA JL

Bibliothèque municipale Bibliothèque nationale de France Bibliothèque royale Cartulaire du chapitre de la cathédrale d’Amiens, ed. J. Roux and E. Soyez, 2 vols. (Amiens and Paris, 1905–1912) Les chartes des évêques d’Arras (1093–1203), ed. B.-M. Tock (Paris, 1991) Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medieualis, 1– (Turnhout, 1966–) Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 1– (Turnhout, 1952–) Chronica Sigeberti Gemblacensis. Continuatio Praemonstratensis, vol. VI, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1884), 447–56 Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, 1– (Paris, 1912–) Elenchus fontium historiae urbanae, ed. A.-M. Lemasson, P.Wolffe, B.-M. Tock, M. Pauly, vol. II/1 (Arras, 1996) Ordericus Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–1980) Gesta quibus Atrebatensium ciuitas sub Urbano Romane et apostolice sedis episcopo . . . in antiquam reformatur dignitatem, in L. Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 1093/1094 (Sigmaringen, 1994) Gallia Christiana, 1– (1716–) Gallia Christiana, Instrumenta, 1– (1716–) Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, vol. VII, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1846), 393–500 Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium continuata, vol. XIV, ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS (Hanover, 1883), 183–248 Gestes des évêques de Cambrai de 1092 à 1138 (Gesta pontificum Cameracensium), ed. C. de Smedt (Paris, 1880) Flodoard of Reims, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, vol. XXXVI, ed. M. Stratmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1998) Histoire de l’abbaye de Saint-Acheul-lez-Amiens. Étude de son temporel au point de vue économique, ed. J. Roux, (Amiens, 1890) Regesta pontificum Romanorum ab condita Ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII, ed. P. Jaffé, et al., 2nd edn rev. W. Wattenbach, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1885–1888) xi

List of abbreviations MGH MGH SS MGH SSRM PL PUF PUN RAL Reg. Registre RP SCH VI VL VSA VSG VSM

Monumenta Germaniae Historica Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores 1– (1826–) Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 7 vols. (Hanover and Leipzig, 1885–1951) Patrologia cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–1866) Papsturkunden in Frankreich, ed. H. Meinert, J. Ramackers, D. Lohrmann and R. Groβe, n s, 9 vols. (Göttingen, 1932–1998) Papsturkunden in den Niederlanden (Belgien, Luxemburg, Holland und Französisch-Flandern), ed. J. Ramackers, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1933–1934). Recueil des actes de Louis VI, roi de France (1108–1137), ed. R.-H. Bautier and J. Dufour, 4 vols. (Paris, 1992) Das Register Gregors VII., ed. E. Caspar, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1955) Le registre de Lambert, évêque d’Arras (1093–1115), ed. and trans. C. Giordanengo (Paris, 2007) Gregory the Great, Règle pastorale (Liber Pastoralis), ed. and trans. B. Judic, F. Rommel, and C. Morel, Sources chrétiennes, 381–2, 2 vols. (Paris, 1992) Studies in Church History Walter of Thérouanne, Vita domni Ioannis Morinensis episcopi, ed. J. Rider, CCCM, 217 (Turnhout, 2006) Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita Lietberti episcopi Cameracensis, vol. XXX/2, ed. A. Hofmeister, MGH SS (Leipzig, 1934), 838–66 Lisiard of Crépy and Arnulf of Oudenbourg, Vita sancti Arnulfi episcopi Suessionensis, PL 174, cols. 1371–1438 Nicholas of Saint-Crépin, Vita sancti Godefridi episcopi Ambianensis, ed. A. Poncelet, AASS November, vol. III (Brussels, 1910), 905–44 Vita sancti Medardi auctore Radbodo episcopo Noviomensi et Tornacensi, ed. J. Carnandet, AASS June, vol. II, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1867), 87–95

xii

Chapter 1

THE BISHOP AND HIS AUTHORITY

One of the most notorious and widely recalled events of the early twelfth century in northern France unfolded on 25 April 1112. On that day Gaudry, the bishop of Laon, was murdered in an outburst of mob violence that badly damaged the cathedral of Notre-Dame and destroyed many of the town’s residences and religious institutions.1 Gaudry was no innocent victim. Outrages great and small, from extortion to conspiracy to commit murder, marred his episcopacy. The bishop’s death and the events leading up to it nevertheless compelled contemporaries to offer an explanation. A nearby observer, Guibert of Nogent – local abbot, prolific author, and the riot’s best-known commentator – seized the opportunity, while visions of the smoking town were still fresh in everyone’s minds, to compose a vivid, moralizing account of the city’s woes and the reasons behind them. He assigned blame to the ‘perversities’ of Laon’s recent bishops and the wickedness of their errant flock.2 1

2

The two best narrative accounts of the riot are by A. Saint-Denis, ‘Pouvoirs et libertés à Laon dans les premières années du XIIe siècle (v. 1110–1112)’, in E. Magnou-Nortier (ed.), Pouvoirs et libertés au temps des premiers Capétiens (Maulévrier, 1992), 267–305; and A. Saint-Denis, Apogée d’une cité. Laon et le Laonnois aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Nancy, 1994), 96–108. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, ed. and trans. E.-R. Labande (Paris, 1981), 268–9, 296–423. Labande’s edition of the text should be supplemented with the corrections of F. Dolbeau, ‘Deux nouveaux manuscrits des “Mémoires” de Guibert de Nogent’, Sacris erudiri. Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen, 26 (1983), 155–76, at 169–76. The most recent and accurate translation of the memoirs into English is that of J. McAlhany and J. Rubenstein; Guibert of Nogent, Monodies and On the Relics of Saints. The Autobiography and a Manifesto of a French Monk from the Time of the Crusades (New York, 2011). Recent analyses of Guibert’s Monodiae with specific consideration for his depiction of the bishop and episcopal office are T. Lemmers’ Guibert van Nogents Monodiae. Een twaalfde-eeuwse visie op kerkelijk leiderschap (Hilversum, 1998); R. Kaiser, ‘Guibert de Nogent und der Bischofsmord in Laon (1112): Augenzeuge, Akteur, Dramaturg’ in N. Fryde and D. Reitz (eds.), Bischofsmord im Mittelalter/Murder of Bishops (Göttingen, 2003), 121–57, and, in the same volume, M. Soria, ‘Les évêques assassinés dans le royaume de France (XIe–XIIe siècles)’,

1

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 N

Tournai

Thérouanne

Lille

Arras Anchin So mm e

Cambrai

Amiens Noyon Laon Prémontré

Beauvais

Reims

Soissons

Rouen

Senlis Marne

Châlons

Meuse

Meaux Saint Denis

Paris Eur e

ine

Chartres

Aube

Se

Troyes

Clairvaux

Map 1.1. The ecclesiastical province of Reims and northwestern Europe

For decades after, medieval chroniclers in northwestern Europe synopsized the year 1112 with notices of Gaudry’s murder.3 One of these later writers was Herman, former abbot of Saint-Martin of Tournai and a chronicler of the deeds of Bartholomew of Joux

3

97–120; M. Soria Audebert, La crosse brisée. Des évêques agressés dans une Église en conflits (royaume de France, fin Xe–début XIIIe siècle) (Turnhout, 2005), 49–50, 116–17, 141–3, 154–5, 157–9, 213–16, 240–1; also J. S. Ott, ‘Writing Godfrey of Amiens: Guibert of Nogent and Nicholas of Saint-Crépin between sanctity, ideology, and society’, Mediaeval Studies, 67 (2005), 317–65. See the catalogue of sources in Kaiser, ‘Guibert de Nogent und der Bischofsmord’, 148–57. A century later, Bishop Gaudry’s death was still remembered annually by the canons of the cathedral, when they instituted a special commemorative mass; see J. Foviaux, ‘“Amassez-vous des trésors dans le ciel”: les listes d’obits du chapitre cathédral de Laon’, in J.-L. Lemaître (ed.), L’Église et la mémoire des morts dans la France médiévale. Communications présentées à la Table Ronde du C.N.R.S., le 14 juin 1982 (Paris, 1986), 69–117. R. Jacob, ‘Le meurtre du seigneur dans la société féodale. La mémoire, le rite, la fonction’, Annales ESC, 45 (1990), 247–63, esp. 249–50, 252–3, gives a broader context for the murder and its meanings.

2

The bishop and his authority (1113–51), Gaudry’s successor as bishop of Laon. Many years removed from events, Herman’s reaction was less visceral than Guibert’s, his moral conclusions more conventional. Writing On the Miracles of St Mary of Laon in the early 1140s, he summed up the riot’s ramifications for Christian society with a line from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: ‘since. . . the entire holy church is the one body of Christ, and the diverse churches, and every faithful person, are the limbs of his body, when one suffers all the limbs suffer as well, and when one limb is glorified so all the limbs rejoice’ (1 Corinthians 12:26; compare Romans 12:4–5).4 The analogy that Herman offered next was more unsettling in its implications. The Lord had once glorified Laon and its church so greatly, Herman continued, that when the wickedness and pride of its people provoked his wrath, he exacted a double price.5 The diocese lay desolate, ‘like a widow’, its bishop gone and its people scattered.6 Herman saw a precedent for Laon’s woes in God’s destruction of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzer. When Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, the other cities of Judah were destroyed along with it. In Laon, Herman noted that ‘nearly twelve’ other churches had burned alongside Notre-Dame, together with the residences of clergy and laymen.7 God’s punishment had not been confined to the bishop of Laon or his church, and it was surely not lost on Herman that the province of Reims contained eleven other episcopal churches. Thus Herman implied, prelates and their flocks should take heed from their sister church’s experiences, for what befell one city might happen elsewhere. Guibert of Nogent had foreseen the same possibility.8

4

5 7 8

Herman (Hériman) of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie de Laon, ed. and trans. A. Saint-Denis (Paris, 2008), 130: ‘Quoniam iuxta beatum Paulum apostolum tota sancta Ecclesia unum Christi corpus est, et huius corporis menbra sunt diverse ecclesie, vel singuli fideles, dumque patitur unum menbrum, compatiuntur omnia menbra, et dum glorificatur unum menbrum congaudent omnia menbra’. On the dating of the text, see the introduction of Saint-Denis (71–5) and G. Niemeyer, ‘Die Miracula S. Mariae Laudunensis des Abtes Herman von Tournai. Verfasser und Entstehungszeit’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 27 (1971), 135–74. Augustine of Hippo returned to this theme repeatedly in his writing, as did Ivo of Chartres in his canonical collections. See Augustine of Hippo, In Psalmum CI enarratio. Sermo I, PL 37, col. 1296; Possidius, The Life of Saint Augustine, trans. F. R. Hoare, in T. F. X. Noble and T. Head (eds.), Soldiers of Christ. Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 1995), 39; Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, PL 161, col. 845. Quoting Isaiah 40:2; Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 130. 6 Ibid., 132. Ibid., 132, 142. Guibert reacted with astonishment, for example, when Bishop Godfrey of Amiens agreed to institute a commune in his city after having witnessed the destruction at Laon; Guibert of Nogent Autobiographie, 404, 406; Ott, ‘Writing Godfrey of Amiens’, 341–2, 349–52.

3

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 As its title suggests, On the Miracles of St Mary of Laon was not limited to an account of the 1112 murder.9 Herman’s book celebrated the miraculous power of the Virgin Mary and her esteem for the church of Laon, and told of its subsequent restoration by the new bishop Bartholomew, to whom he dedicated the work.10 Herman exalted the bishop’s virtues and personal achievements in two ways. First, Herman underscored Bartholomew’s laborious rebuilding of the damaged cathedral ‘from glowing embers and ashes’. The renovation was possible thanks to two lengthy fund-raising tours made by a group of canons and townspeople. Bearing the cathedral’s precious Marian relics, the canons first toured the Loire and Indre river valleys, then followed this successful circuit with a trip through Flanders and southern England. The money they collected supported the cathedral’s reconstruction, and the canons’ adventures with Mary’s relics filled the first two books of Herman’s narrative. With this revenue in hand, Bishop Bartholomew rolled up his sleeves: And so this man of great leisure, of wealth, and of every sort of bodily commodity, on arriving at that godforsaken place (locum desolatum), gloried that he had not been promoted owing to the excellence of the honour, but said he had been called for the labour that needed doing; and likewise that if he desired the episcopacy, he desired good work.11

Herman began his third and final book with the people and clergy from the surrounding region coming to Laon to celebrate the cathedral’s renewal, less than three years after Gaudry’s murder and its burning. Along with Bartholomew, the bishops of Amiens, Châlons, Senlis, Soissons, and the archbishop of Reims attended the church’s consecration on 6 September 1114, in the presence of ‘200,000’ people of diverse ages and both sexes.12 Herman’s crowd estimate was no doubt a gross exaggeration, but it was a number which measured up to the sentiment of the prophet Haggai at the rebuilding of the Second Temple, which the abbot of Tournai recalled for his audience: ‘Great will be the glory of

9 10 11

12

See the comments of Saint-Denis, Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 71. Ibid., 50–1, 60–1. Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 142–3. He is quoting from 1 Tim. 3:1, a very old theme in commentaries on the priesthood. Compare with C. Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley, CA, 2005), 32–41, 166–71. The date of the cathedral’s consecration, 6 September, was the anniversary of the consecration of the original church, which was followed in Laon’s liturgical calendar by the celebration of the translatio of its saints Genebaud and Proba; see Foviaux, ‘“Amassez-vous des trésors”’, 71–2.

4

The bishop and his authority the second house, greater than the first’.13 For Herman, Laon was a perfect synecdoche. The cathedral’s calamity and restoration by its bishop were the calamity and restoration of the entire Church, the ecclesia, which Herman and his readers understood to be both the physical structure and the community of faithful, who turned out in epic numbers to bear witness. Second, and of even greater significance for Herman, was Bartholomew’s partnership with an itinerant former canon of Xanten, Norbert of Gennep. Herman devotes nearly all of his third book to Bartholomew and Norbert’s reform of monastic and canonical life in the diocese of Laon. Norbert had recently converted from his wealthy prebend to an apostolic life of abstinence, poverty, and preaching. In 1121, Norbert and Bartholomew laid the foundation not only for the mother-house of a new community of regular canons at Prémontré, but for a whole series of churches.14 Herman characterizes the new house as a ‘first vine. . . rooted in fraternal love’, that soon spread its young shoots as far as the sea. Sustaining the botanical imagery, Herman allowed that Prémontré’s fruit ‘inebriated many princes and judges of the land, youths and virgins, old men together with the young’.15 Together the bishop and preacher built ten new monasteries throughout the diocese, nearly the same number lost in the fire at Laon. Herman of Tournai’s highlighting of certain aspects of Norbert’s relationship with Bartholomew, and the latter’s restoration of the cathedral, reveals his view of the bishop’s calling and duties. Herman repeatedly characterizes the bishop of Laon as a founder, cultivator, and ‘consort’ in the Premonstratensians’ dazzling expansion.16 He evokes the monasteries’ growth in organic, floral imagery; Norbert’s foundation sprouted new houses like grapevines. He also notes Bartholomew’s

13 14

15

16

Haggai 2:9; Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 200. See the essays by F. J. Felten, ‘Norbert von Xanten. Vom Wanderprediger zum Kirchenfürsten’, and S. Weinfurter, ‘Norbert von Xanten als Reformkanoniker und Stifter des Prämonstratenserordens’, both in K. Elm (ed.), Norbert von Xanten. Adliger, Ordensstifter, Kirchenfürst (Cologne, 1984), 69–155, 159–87. A new English translation of writings concerning Norbert has been produced by T. J. Antry and C. Neel (trans.), Norbert and Early Norbertine Spirituality (New York, 2007); the first ten sections of Herman’s third book appear on 69–84. Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 200, citing Psalms 149:1 and 148:11–12: ‘vino fortitudinis sue, quod letificat cor hominis, iam ubertim inebriavit plures principes et iudices terre, iuvenes et virgines, senes cum iunioribus’. Ibid., 128, 202, 206, 214: ‘praefatum Batholomaeum episcopum fuisse consortem et participem’ (202). See also Felten, ‘Norbert von Xanten’, 82–8, and for a consideration of the sources detailing Norbert and Bartholomew’s early interactions, see C. Dereine, ‘Les origines de Prémontré’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 42 (1947), 352–78.

5

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 unceasing labor: gardens flourish by toil, and the bishop’s patronage of churches combined his personal, physical exertion with material gifts.17 Through his guidance, the church of Laon became a seedbed of ecclesiastical renewal. Bartholomew and Norbert’s spiritual progeny, members of the regular and secular clergy who professed in Laon’s abbeys and cathedral, assumed leadership of numerous other religious institutions, thus rebuilding the city’s riot-damaged reputation as a shining light of the world. Its ideals became the beacon of a renewed Church. questions and frameworks Herman and Guibert’s comments on the dramatic story of Laon and its bishops point to the central questions that animate this study. What did it mean to be a bishop in an age of impressive, and at times destabilizing, social, religious, and institutional transformation? At perhaps no time since the later Roman empire were church officials and Christian society at large so concerned to define the bishop’s role.18 Contemporaries, both lay and clerical, considered: how should a bishop conduct himself? What personal qualities and habits of mind and body should he cultivate? What should his priorities be, and how should he arrange them while managing the daily demands of his office? What was the appropriate balance between one’s personal spiritual care and engaged governance, between the pastor’s call to lead (praesse) and the simultaneous injunction to serve 17

18

Floral imagery and vitality are staples of monastic literary descriptions of institutional growth. See the overviews by G. B. Ladner, ‘Terms and ideas of renewal’, and G. Constable, ‘Renewal and reform in religious life: concepts and realities’, both in R. L. Benson and G. Constable, with C. D. Lanham (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 1–33, esp. 13–14, and 37–67; G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 138–9; and below, chapter 9. Rapp, Holy Bishops, 41–55; E. Elm, Die Macht der Weisheit. Das Bild des Bischofs in der Vita Augustini des Possidius und anderen spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Bischofsviten (Leiden, 2003), 23–32; É. Rebillard and C. Sotinel (eds.), L’évêque dans la cité du IVe au Ve siècle: image et autorité. Actes de la table ronde organisé par l’Istituto patristico Augustinianum et l’École française de Rome (Rome, 1er et 2 décembre 1995) (Rome, 1998). Overviews of some of the vast literature on bishops from the later Roman and medieval periods to c. 1050 are provided by Rapp, Holy Bishops, 3–16; S. Patzold, Episcopus. Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts (Ostfildern, 2008), 17–30; J. S. Ott and A. Trumbore Jones, ‘Introduction: the bishop reformed’, in J. S. Ott and A. Trumbore Jones (eds.), The Bishop Reformed. Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2007), 1–20; A. Trumbore Jones, Noble Lord, Good Shepherd. Episcopal Power and Piety in Aquitaine, 877–1050 (Leiden, 2009), 1–26; L. Körntgen and D. Waßenhoven (eds.), Patterns of Episcopal Power. Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe / Strukturen bischöflicher Herrschaftsgewalt im westlichen Europa des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 2011), 163–224.

6

The bishop and his authority 19

(prodesse)? Was it possible for a bishop to maintain administrative autonomy and flexibility and still fully obey papal authority? How should a prelate juggle local and regional concerns, while navigating the complex agenda of a universal Church in the midst of institutional and ideological transformation? Finally, how did bishops see themselves and their roles? This study focuses on ideas about the episcopal office and its responsibilities as drawn from contemporary commentators, bishops’ textual self-representation, and their expressions of historical consciousness – what we might call, provisionally, the literate products of a regional ‘episcopal culture’.20 It will be less concerned with political power and institutional relationships as aspects of episcopal lordship (potestas). Certainly the exercise of political and even military power were routine elements of episcopal governance. However, the bishop’s office in the Middle Ages was seldom defined in canon law, and rarely in ecclesiology, in terms of its coercive power. Nor does this study treat the daily practices of diocesan administration, our knowledge of which is fragmentary for the eleventh and twelfth centuries.21 Instead, the present investigation will approach the representation of episcopal office through an overarching consideration of the bishop’s auctoritas, his priestly authority, as it was established and projected through the idealized values described in episcopal writings. ‘Authority’ was a nebulous but easily recognizable quality, which may be summed up as a divine mandate to speak as God’s representative and to lead the Christian community in his stead. It was a quality conferred by consecration to office and reinforced by social status. Every prelate was aware that he possessed and exercised it. The chapters that follow trace bishops’ expression of authority through

19

20

21

These tensions were often expressed through the biblical models of Mary and Martha, Rachel and Lia, who stood (broadly) for the contemplative and active life. For the twelfth-century currency of these models, see G. Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge, 1996), 61–92. Maureen Miller, adapting arguments made in the 1980s by Joan W. Scott concerning gender, has made a case for religious identity as an analytical category useful for assessing discourses about power and authority, and for delineating ‘clerical’ from ‘lay’ cultures (M. C. Miller, ‘Religion makes a difference: clerical and lay cultures in the courts of northern Italy, 1000–1300’, The American Historical Review, 105 (2000), 1095–130). Her proposal merits additional testing and refinement, and directly concerns bishops. W. Hartmann, ‘L’évêque comme juge: la pratique du tribunal épiscopal en France du Xe au XIIe siècle’, in C. Carozzi and H. Taviani-Carozzi (eds.), Hiérarchies et services au Moyen Âge (Aix-enProvence, 2001), 71–92. Recent studies of later periods have emphasized episcopal administration through record-keeping, for example J. K. Bulman, The Court Book of Mende and the Secular Lordship of the Bishop. Recollecting the Past in Thirteenth-Century Gévaudan (Toronto, 2008), and A. J. Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat. Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy (Ithaca, NY, 2006).

7

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 their personal and professional sodalities, in their collective and individual self-representation, and in the shared experiences of their professional acculturation. Claudia Rapp has recently utilized authority as a pathway for investigating the nature of episcopal leadership in the eastern Mediterranean world of the fourth through sixth centuries.22 Part of its usefulness lies in the complexity of premodern (and, indeed, modern) notions of authority, which reached into many different spheres of life. First, authority was conceptually different from potestas, usually understood as coercive power or force, although as both medieval thinkers and modern commentators have noted, power and force were related to authority and complemented it.23 The bishop’s auctoritas was conferred at his consecration, was constitutive of his office, and was displayed through sacramental operations. It was perceived, at least since Pope Gelasius I’s (492–6) famously drawn distinction between sacerdotal auctoritas and worldly potestas, as a sine qua non quality of the priestly office and its holder.24 In addition to its total embrace of the bishop’s person and office, there are other good reasons for considering authority as an interpretive avenue for episcopal representation. Modern sociologists have discerned that authority contains both abstract–metaphysical claims and possesses a more utilitarian social dimension.25 Medieval thinkers also 22 23

24

25

Rapp, Holy Bishops. Ibid., 16. On the differentiation of power and authority, see L. Krieger, ‘Authority’, in P. P. Wiener (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas (New York, 1973–4), vol. I, 141–62, at 147; and B. Lincoln, Authority. Construction and Corrosion (Chicago, 1994), 4–6. Scholars often conflate the two qualities. Perhaps no single phrase in medieval political thought or ecclesiology has generated as much attention or controversy as the sentence ‘Duo quippe sunt’ of Gelasius’ letter to Anastasius. An excellent overview and analysis of the historiographical debate is R. L. Benson, ‘The Gelasian doctrine: uses and transformations’, in G. Makdisi, D. Sourdel, and J. Sourdel-Thomine (eds.), La notion d’autorité au Moyen Age: Islam, Byzance, Occident. Colloques internationaux de La Napoule, session des 23–26 octobre 1978 (Paris, 1982), 13–44; see also K. F. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300–1140 (Princeton, NJ, 1969), 98–104; A. Cottrell, ‘Auctoritas and potestas: a reevaluation of the correspondence of Gelasius I on papal–imperial relations’, Mediaeval Studies, 55 (1993), 95–109. Later medieval interpretations of the Gelasian distinction are examined by Benson, ‘Gelasian doctrine’, 22–37, and P. G. Caron, ‘Les limites entre le pouvoir civil et le pouvoir ecclésiastique dans l’interprétation médiévale de l’épître gélasienne (c. 10, D. XCVI)’, in Y. Congar (ed.), Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles). Mélanges offerts à EdmondRené Labande (Poitiers, 1974), 105–15. The letter is edited in Epistolae Romanorum pontificum genuinae et quae ad eos scriptae sunt a S. Hilaro usque ad Pelagium II., ed. A. Thiel (Braunsberg, 1867; repr. Hildesheim, 1974), vol. I, 349–58; the phrase in question is on 350. I am following here the basic distinctions of Max Weber in M. Weber Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, trans. E. Fischoff et al. (Berkeley, CA, 1978), vol. I, 212–45. Krieger, ‘Authority’, and S. Lukes, ‘Power and authority’, in T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet (eds.), A History of Sociological Analysis (New York, 1978), 633–76, offer useful

8

The bishop and his authority spoke to these dual qualities. For example, Augustine noted in his treatise On order that ‘Authority is indeed partly divine and partly human’, though the divine was unquestionably superior.26 Authority on one hand was considered God-given, a sacral quality, and hierarchically ordered from the divine to its human possessor.27 It could neither be undone nor claimed except through specific, religiously and legally recognizable rites, chief among them the rite of ordination.28 The bishop’s auctoritas granted him the capacity to arbitrate in matters affecting sin and salvation. It also gave him a role in more earth-bound matters. Modern and medieval conceptions of authority acknowledge its legal and political dimensions, which in the Middle Ages were rooted in the bishop’s position at the summit of society and displayed through his material assets (e.g., personal and institutional wealth), legal privileges, public deeds, and speech acts.29 Unlike his sacramental or theocentric authority, which the bishop claimed unilaterally through his office, his social authority operated within established, if often unspoken, contractual parameters existing between the bishop and his flock. Its acceptance by his parishioners and fellow authority figures was both contingent and dependent on law and custom. In practice, the bishop’s sacral and personal/social authority were difficult to separate and

26

27

28

29

approaches to the semantic and sociological contexts of the idea. See also Y. R. Simon, A General Theory of Authority (Notre Dame, IN, 1962), esp. at 13–31, and, for an etymological analysis of the related word auctor, M.-D. Chenu, ‘Auctor, actor, autor’, Bulletin Du Cange, 3 (1927), 81–6. A consideration of authority within a strongly confessional (and not always historical) framework is D. J. Stagaman, Authority in the Church (Collegeville, MN, 1999). Augustine of Hippo, De ordine, II.9.27, trans. R. P. Russell as Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil: A Translation of St. Augustine’s De Ordine (New York, 1948), 122: ‘Auctoritas autem partim divina est, partim humana; sed vera, firma, summa ea est quae divina nominatur’. This passage occurs in the context of the relative reliability of human and divine authority in obtaining knowledge of God. It should be pointed out that authority’s mixed nature is analogous to the bishop’s own. The Norman Anonymous, writing c. 1100, called attention to the bishop’s image as Christus et Deus, his embodiment of both God’s humanity and his divinity, much as his authority had human (social) and metaphysical (divine) aspects; see E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ, 1957), 55–7. This sense was reflected in the Greek word episkopos, which originally meant a protector or overseer, possibly divine; see J. Gaudemet, Eglise et cité. Histoire du droit canonique (Paris, 1994), 97–9; Rapp, Holy Bishops, 24–8; also N. Häring, ‘Auctoritas in der sozialen und intellektuellen Struktur des zwölften Jahrhunderts’, in A. Zimmermann (ed.), Soziale Ordnungen im Selbstverständnis des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1980), vol. II, 517–33. Guibert of Nogent (Autobiographie, 328), when referring to bishop Gaudry of Laon’s trip to Rome to absolve himself before the pope and have his sentence of excommunication lifted, noted that the bishop ‘was returned to us with authority restored’ (resumpta ad nos auctoritate remittitur), thereby drawing an explicit association between possession of office and possession of auctoritas. This is what Claudia Rapp would call the bishop’s ‘pragmatic’ authority; see Holy Bishops, 17.

9

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 mutually reinforcing. The sacrality of episcopal office augmented and certified the prelate’s social conduct, while conversely, his day-to-day actions reflected upon the sacred and divine origins of his authority. Ideally, the social and sacramental aspects of episcopal authority should operate in harmony.30 Providing his personal behaviour was consistent with society’s expectations of proper episcopal comportment, the bishop’s overall authority would in theory remain intact. He could expect to carry out his sacramental functions as priest and his secular functions as lord and face little or no criticism or dissent. Yet this balancing act was in practice difficult to carry out, as episcopal documents and canon law from this period constantly remind us.31 Because the bishop’s theological and sacramental authority merged fully with the social realm, one could not criticize the bishop’s personal qualities or conduct – say, his wealth, his pursuits or passions, or his qualities as a secular lord – without also being perceived as attacking his divinely ordained authority. Considering that in the ecclesiastical province of Reims (as elsewhere) bishops possessed comital jurisdiction, minted coins, administered vast estates, retained vassals, and collected rents, taxes, and tolls, criticism of episcopal lordship was bound to undercut sacerdotal authority.32 Conversely, a bishop could not act as though his personal authority was somehow disconnected from his spiritual authority. To act from evident self-interest or caprice in either his sacramental or 30

31

32

The distinctions I make here in the nature of episcopal authority differ slightly from Max Weber’s legal, traditional, and charismatic authority (see M. Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building. Selected Papers, ed. and trans. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago, 1968), 46–54) and Rapp’s spiritual, ascetic, and pragmatic authority (Rapp, Holy Bishops, 16–17). Sacral authority inheres in the bishop’s office, while social authority was produced by and through the individual. One could challenge the latter and not doubt the legitimacy of the former. In practice, however, neither medieval people nor medieval bishops made clear-cut distinctions in the modes of episcopal auctoritas; both types were bound up in the person of the prelate. R. L. Benson, The Bishop-Elect. A Study in Medieval Ecclesiastical Office (Princeton, NJ, 1968), 45–6; Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, PL 161, col. 371. For Beauvais and Noyon, see O. Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes. Affirmation et déclin de la seigneurie épiscopale au nord du royaume de France (Beauvais-Noyon, Xe–début XIIIe siècle) (Geneva, 1987), esp. 53–4. For Laon, where the bishops were counts of the Laonnois (the king retained comital authority in the town proper), see F. Vercauteren, Etude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde. Contribution à l’histoire du nord de la France de la fin du IIIe à la fin du XIe siècle (Brussels, 1934), 339–40; for Reims, see P. Desportes, ‘Les archevêques de Reims et les droits comtaux aux Xe et XIe siècles’, in Économies et sociétés au Moyen Age. Mélanges offerts à Edouard Perroy (Paris, 1973), 79–89; for Soissons, where from 1141 the count was the bishop’s vassal, see W. M. Newman, Les seigneurs de Nesle en Picardie (XIIe–XIIIe siècle). Leurs chartes et leur histoire (Philadelphia, 1971), vol. II, 29–33; for Cambrai, see chapter 6 below. On episcopal minting, see R. Kaiser, Bischofsherrschaft zwischen Königtum and Fürstenmacht. Studien zur bischöflichen Stadtherrschaft im westfränkish-französischen Reich im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Bonn, 1981), 83, 109–10, 547–8, 554–5, 561, 604.

10

The bishop and his authority social capacity would risk the total loss of his authority, a breakdown with potentially serious consequences. Gaudry of Laon discovered this, too late. At the height of the Laon riot, one of the bishop’s attackers cut his ring of office from his finger. Gaudry’s garments were also removed, and the crowd pelted his corpse with mud and filth. Guibert of Nogent, the only writer to mention this episode, surely intended these scenes, whose likelihood seems probable, to convey to his readers the bishop’s loss of status, of which the ring was a visible token.33 Yet for Guibert the purloined ring also had a deeper, spiritual meaning. Myriam Soria Audebert has suggested that in the symbolic economy of Guibert’s narrative, the removal of the bishop’s ring and finger was meant to signal his treachery towards the people of Laon – an apt punishment for his avarice and abuse of his flock.34 But this was not the only meaning the episcopal ring carried for medieval readers. Arguably the ring’s principal symbolic and spiritual value was its tokening of the prelate’s spiritual marriage to his church upon his ordination.35 The insignia conveyed the bishop’s theocentric authority and legitimacy. As mentioned, Guibert was deeply concerned with the moral imperatives of pastoral leadership and episcopal office.36 For Guibert the loss of Gaudry’s ring signalled the involuntary divorce of the bridegroom, the bishop, from his celestial spouse, the Church. Provided the bishop’s union with his church had been entered into lawfully, as Gaudry’s had, it was theoretically indivisible. Guibert admitted this when he noted that Gaudry’s status as the Lord’s anointed ought to have spared his ‘holy head’ (sacrum . . . verticem) from the sword, no matter what reprehensible deeds he may have done.37

33

34

35

36

37

On ecclesiastical ‘marks of status’, see H. Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century. Mentalities and Social Orders, trans. P. J. Geary (Chicago, 1991), 67–70. Soria Audebert, La crosse brisée, 116–17, 138, 152–9; Kaiser, ‘Guibert de Nogent und der Bischofsmord’, 134, 139–43, and R. Kaiser, ‘Das Geld in der Autobiographie des Abtes Guibert von Nogent’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 69 (1987), 289–314. V. Labhart, Zur Rechtssymbolik des Bischofsrings (Cologne, 1963); M. McLaughlin, ‘The bishop as bridegroom: marital imagery and clerical celibacy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, in M. Frassetto (ed.), Medieval Purity and Piety. Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform (New York, 1998), 209–37, esp. at 211–13. The symbolism of the ring, marital and otherwise, was the subject of extensive consideration in the polemical literature exchanged between the papal and imperial parties at this time. See Lemmers, Guibert van Nogents Monodiae, and T. Lemmers, ‘The crisis of episcopal authority in Guibert of Nogent’s Monodiae’, in A.-J. A. Bijsterveld, H. Teunis, and A. Wareham (eds.), Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power. Western Europe in the Central Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1999), 37–50; Ott, ‘Writing Godfrey of Amiens’, 336–44. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 342.

11

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Guibert’s rendering of Gaudry’s death captures the complicated interplay in the medieval mind between the social and theocentric components of authority. The individual bishop was both distinct from his office and shared seamlessly in its authoritative qualities. He was a persona gemina, a ‘twinned person’.38 However, when an individual was deemed unworthy of his office, as Gaudry was, the retribution exacted, even if divinely ordained, approached a dangerously thin line separating an attack on the person from an attack on the episcopal office itself. Guibert’s interjection that Gaudry, despite his moral failures, was nevertheless christus Domini, the Lord’s anointed, betrays the tension between person and office. The latter could only be undone by another christus, a higher authority such as the pope or God himself, and certainly not, as happened at Laon, by a mob. Historians have long argued that the heightened expectations of episcopal conduct sparked by the eleventh-century papal reform weakened the bishop’s autonomy within his diocese. More recently, some have asserted that this trend led to a ‘desacralization’ of episcopal office and exposed bishops like Gaudry to greater threats and violence.39 As eleventh-century popes re-energized the old Gelasian dyad of priestly authority and secular power, insisting that priestly auctoritas was superior to, not merely complementary of, secular power, claims for the hierarchical eminence of priestly auctoritas over secular potestas spurred second-hand debates about the nature, sources, and limits of episcopal authority.40 Indeed, many of the questions concerning clerical fitness and episcopal responsibility in this period were raised in Rome. Others originated in monastic

38

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Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 43–4. The notion was already current in Flanders in the early eleventh century; see D. J. Reilly, The Art of Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders. Gerard of Cambrai, Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Saint-Vaast Bible (Leiden, 2006), 126–32. General remarks in J.-H. Foulon, Église et réforme au Moyen Âge. Papauté, milieux réformateurs et ecclésiologie dans les Pays de la Loire au tournant des XIe–XIIe siècles (Brussels, 2008), 50–6. For Gaudry’s case specifically, see Soria Audebert, La crosse brisée, 228–9, 284; R. Kaiser, ‘Evêques expulsés, évêques assassinés aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, in M.-C. Florani and A. Joris (eds.), Le temps des Saliens en Lotharingie (1024–1125). Colloque du Centre d’Études Historiques, Monastère de Malmedy (12–14 septembre 1991) (Malmedy, 1993), 63–85, at 74. G. Tellenbach, Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest, trans. R. F. Bennett (Oxford, 1940; repr. Toronto, 1991), 97; L. Jégou, ‘L’évêque entre autorité sacrée et exercice du pouvoir. L’exemple de Gérard de Cambrai (1012–1051)’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles, 47 (2004), 37–55, at 39–40; I. S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest. The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester, 1978), 22–35 and passim. The debates were by no means restricted to discussions of political office holders; see C. S. Jaeger, ‘Courtliness and social change’, in T. N. Bisson (ed.), Cultures of Power. Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia, 1995), 287–309; H. Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars in the High Middle Ages, 1000–1200, trans. D. A. Kaiser (University Park, PA, 1998), 123–5.

12

The bishop and his authority communities that were experiencing institutional changes of their own, or had been newly established in reformed houses; still others were a natural by-product of the transmission and reorganization of canon law leading up to the mid-twelfth century.41 There was considerable public scrutiny of the clergy as well, produced in part by the spread of the peace movement across late tenth- and eleventh-century Francia, Burgundy, and Lotharingia.42 From the pontificate of Leo IX (1048–54) onward, popes insisted that local bishops be the point-men of a general societal and ecclesiastical reform directed from Rome.43 Bishops did not always welcome, nor implement, the mandates they received. Widely circulated letters and treatises, known among scholars as Streitschriften, debated the parameters of episcopal obedience to papal authority and the primacy of papal dictates over local church traditions, and further exposed bishops to public criticism, even when the writings supported traditional episcopal autonomy.44 Pope Gregory VII (1073– 85) was not afraid to mobilize public sentiment against bishops he considered adversarial or uncooperative, nor to chasten those whose understanding of their office was built upon traditional ecclesiologies or custom, or, as he saw it, unorthodox administrative habits. Gregory regularly absolved parishioners from their oaths of obedience to their bishops, with the explicit intention of undermining the

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43

44

For a few examples among many, see M. Mostert, ‘L’abbé, l’évêque et le pape. L’image de l’évêque idéal dans les œuvres d’Abbon de Fleury’, in D. Iogna-Prat and J.-C. Picard (eds.), Religion et culture autour de l’An Mil. Royaume capétien et Lotharingie (Paris, 1990), 39–45; M. G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity. Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098– 1180 (Stanford, CA, 1996); Benson, The Bishop-Elect, 203; J. Gaudemet, ‘Patristique et pastorale. La contribution de Grégoire le Grand au “Miroir de l’Évêqueˮ dans le Décret de Gratien’, in Études d’histoire du droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras (Paris, 1965), vol. I, 129–39. Recent works among an extensive literature examining the linkage between church reform and peace/truce councils are A. G. Remensnyder, ‘Pollution, purity, and peace: an aspect of social reform between the late tenth century and 1076’, in T. Head and R. Landes (eds.), The Peace of God. Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), 280–307, and J. Y. Malegam, The Sleep of Behemoth. Disputing Peace and Violence in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200 (Ithaca, NY, 2013). See the essays collected in G. Bischoff and B.-M. Tock (eds.), Léon IX et son temps. Actes du colloque international organisé par l’Institut d’Histoire Médiévale de l’Université Marc-Bloch, Strasbourg-Eguisheim, 20–22 juin 2002 (Turnhout, 2006), especially, with reference to France, M. Bur, ‘Léon IX et la France (1026–1054)’, at 233–57. For the polemical literature generated during the contest between the papacy and the German imperial bishops, much of which circulated in Lotharingia and western Francia, see L. Melve, Inventing the Public Sphere. The Public Debate during the Investiture Contest (c. 1030–1122) (Leiden, 2007); Robinson, Authority and Resistance; and I. S. Robinson, ‘“Periculosus homo”: Pope Gregory VII and episcopal authority’, Viator, 9 (1978), 103–32.

13

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 prelate’s authority in his own diocese, and he claimed the right to judge bishops in absentia for alleged misdoings.45 These developments characterize the period still occasionally referred to, in an old-fashioned way, as the ‘Gregorian reform’.46 Named for its dominant figure, Gregory VII, the era is usually demarcated by the reign of Pope Leo IX and the accord achieved at Worms between Pope Calixtus II and Emperor Henry V in 1122. The medieval meaning of the term ‘reform’, and verbs like it such as ‘correct’ (corrigere) and ‘restore’ (restorare), was multifaceted. Through both medieval and modern usages of the word – the Latin verb reformare implied an individual or institution’s return to a former, pristine condition, a golden age – run the veins of eschatological and theological expectation.47 For several decades now, scholars have been squeamish about using ʻreformʼ without serious qualification, whether applying it to individuals, specific religious institutions, legal collections, or papal initiatives.48 Gerd Tellenbach, for example, was critical of historians’ unexamined use of ‘reform’. In an important 1988 survey of the western church, Tellenbach wondered: reform for whom? by whom? towards what goal? to what standards?49 Apart 45

46

47

48

49

A notable instance being the case in 1080 of Manasses I, archbishop of Reims, but there are many others; Reg. vol. II, 540–1; The Register of Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085, trans. H. E. J. Cowdrey (Oxford, 2002), 384–5. See also K. G. Cushing, Papacy and Law in the Gregorian Revolution. The Canonistic Work of Anselm of Lucca (Oxford, 1998), 38. The locus classicus for the term and its use is the influential study of A. Fliche, La réforme grégorienne, 3 vols. (Louvain, 1924–1937); it has been recently redeployed by S. Gouguenheim, La réforme grégorienne. De la lutte pour le sacré à la secularisation du monde (Paris, 2009). On terminology, see G. B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform. Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, MA, 1959), 9–34, 427–42; G. B. Ladner, ‘Gregory the Great and Gregory VII: a comparison of their concepts of renewal’, Viator, 4 (1973), 1–27, and Ladner, ‘Terms and ideas of renewal’, 1–33; I. S. Robinson, ‘Reform and the church, 1073–1122’, in D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (eds.), The New Cambridge Medieval History (Cambridge, 2004), vol. IV/1, 268–334, at 268–75; and K. G. Cushing, Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century. Spirituality and Social Change (Manchester, 2005), 1–3. See the introductory comments of C. M. Bellitto and L. I. Hamilton (eds.), Reforming the Church before Modernity. Patterns, Problems and Approaches (Aldershot, 2005), xiv–xvi, xxiii; C. Violante, ‘La réforme ecclésiastique du XIe siècle: une synthèse progressive d’idées et de structures opposées’, Le Moyen Âge, 97 (1991), 355–65; J. Howe, ‘Gaudium et spes: ecclesiastical reformers at the start of a “new age”’, in Bellitto and Hamilton, Reforming the Church, 21–35; and J. Howe, ‘St Berardus of Marsica (d. 1130), “model Gregorian bishop”’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (2007), 400–16, where he writes (401): ‘The model of “Gregorian Reform” assumes that somehow local bishops implemented and even embodied Roman-style ecclesiastical programmes. This assumption is increasingly tested as research on pre-Gregorian and Gregorian bishops accelerates’. G. Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century, trans. T. Reuter (Cambridge, 1993; first published as Die westliche Kirche vom 10. bis zum frühen 12. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1988)), 109, 157–64, esp. at 158 n. 78, 164 n. 102; Cushing, Papacy and Law, 11–17; J. Gilchrist, ‘Was there a Gregorian reform movement in the eleventh century?’ Study Sessions of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association, 37 (1972), 1–10, esp. at 5–6.

14

The bishop and his authority from its place in confessional history and an innate determinism that separates winners from losers, the discourse of reform downplays tradition and custom in favour of celebrating progress. When applied to the papacy, reform celebrates institutional unity and the centralizing power of Rome while regarding regional diversity with disinterest or outright suspicion. Finally, the term requires absolute, and thus ahistorical, standards and models against which to measure its successes and failures.50 A regional study such as this, focused on bishops and their conceptions of office between 1050 and 1150, cannot avoid the long shadows cast by the historiography of church reform and its role in framing questions about change within the medieval church. Connections between the papacy and bishops of the archdiocese of Reims after 1050 were manifold and complex, and notions of renewal and rejuvenation, which we saw earlier in the writing of Herman of Tournai, were prevalent.51 An obvious feature of the period was the growing influence of the papal curia and its emissaries in regional affairs.52 Another was the transformation of local monastic life via the adoption of new customs and the renewal of existing rules for communal living, and the establishment of dozens of new houses and several orders.53 Bishops directly abetted these developments (and often resisted them), and continuously weighed ideas about reform and their implications for pastoral care and governance. I have nevertheless self-consciously avoided labelling individual bishops with the terms ‘reformer’ or ‘reformist’, and the historical developments of the papacy generally have been omitted here except 50

51

52

53

Consider J. Boussard, ‘Les évêques en Neustrie avant la réforme grégorienne (950–1050 environ)’, Journal des Savants, (1970), 161–96, at 161: ‘La Réforme grégorienne est un mouvement qui a rénové l’Église . . . Son œuvre consiste en une législation, en l’application de cette législation, et surtout dans le fait que ce fut un succès’. For two studies that address the effects of ecclesiastical reform on France, see A. Becker, Studien zum Investiturproblem in Frankreich. Papsttum, Königtum und Episkopat im Zeitalter der gregorianischen Kirchenreform (1049–1119) (Saarbrücken, 1955); and Foulon, Église et réforme. On the activities of papal legates in France, see K. Rennie, Law and Practice in the Age of Reform. The Legatine Work of Hugh of Die (1073–1106) (Turnhout, 2010); R. Hiestand, ‘Les légats pontificaux en France du milieu du XIe à la fin du XIIe siècle’, in R. Grosse (ed.), L’Église de France et la papauté (Xe–XIIIe siècle). Actes du XXVIe Colloque Historique FrancoAllemand organisé en coopération avec l’École nationale des chartes par l’Institut historique allemand de Paris (Paris, 17–19 octobre 1990) (Bonn, 1993), 54–80; W. Janssen, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich, vom Schisma Anaklets II. bis zum Tode Coelestins III. (1130–1198) (Cologne, 1961); T. Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich, vom Vertrage von Meersen (870) bis zum Schisma von 1130 (Berlin, 1935). For an excellent regional study of monastic reform, see S. Vanderputten, Monastic Reform as Process. Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900–1100 (Ithaca, NY, 2013), and for an overview, Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century.

15

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 when they directly influenced episcopal actions. Few contemporary prelates articulated the vision that their duties towards their churches and flocks were contributing to the reform of the universal Church. Nor did they necessarily understand their primary responsibility as being the implementation of a Roman or papal vision of the Church and Christian society. That does not mean, however, that they did not think about their duties or office at all. Quite the contrary! Contemporary meditation on the episcopal experience may not have been systematic or uniform, but it was plentiful. Herman of Tournai’s description of Laon’s transformation under Bartholomew joined with other episcopal gesta (deeds), charters, letters, and hagiography to note ideal (and negative) episcopal qualities. Themes associated with apostolic ideals and religious renewal, from the bishop’s central role as a preacher to the necessity of continuity between the pastor’s words and his deeds, pervade the sources, as do images of bishops’ brotherliness, cultivation, and shared labour for the benefit of the church. The prevalence and popularity of this imagery were not haphazard, and its interpretive and historical value is considerable.54 Herman and other writers employed it as one component of what I would loosely term a regional ecclesiology of episcopal office, that is, a set of ideas and values concerning church stewardship and episcopal conduct that resonated with the social, religious, and political transformations catalysing the civic and clerical communities of northern France and Flanders in the decades on either side of 1100. The imagery affords us access to the ideas bishops held and projected about their role in contemporary society, their relationships to their parishioners and fellow clergy, and the value they placed on their own historical traditions and stories. These contemporary ideals were layered upon long-standing prescriptive norms of clerical behaviour. Canon law summarized,

54

Recent collections of essays have explored the representation of bishops from a variety of methodological and disciplinary approaches. See Ott and Trumbore Jones (eds.), The Bishop Reformed; S. Gilsdorf (ed.), The Bishop. Power and Piety at the First Millennium (Münster, 2004); M. Aurell and Á. García de la Borbolla (eds.), La imagen del obispo hispano en la Edad Media (Pamplona, 2004), and most recently, S. Danielson and E. A. Gatti (eds.), Envisioning the Bishop. Images and the Episcopacy in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2014). Art historians and liturgists have also taken notice of episcopal representation, notably E. Palazzo, L’évêque et son image au moyen âge (Turnhout, 1999), and C. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart. Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley, CA, 2001), 129–71, esp. at 131–47. I would mention here that while pictorial and literary narratives do indeed represent similar aspects of episcopal office – notably, preaching and the bishop in his liturgical context – the literary sources I examine often downplay the bishop’s sacramental roles and official duties in favour of his personal charismatic qualities.

16

The bishop and his authority and sometimes offered conflicting views of, the sacramental and jurisprudential expectations and privileges of the clerical orders.55 Widely diffused legal collections compiled by prelates like Burchard of Worms (1008–12), Anselm II of Lucca (c. 1083), Ivo of Chartres (c. 1095), and John of Thérouanne (c. 1100), were joined in the midtwelfth century by copies of Gratian’s Decretum, composed in two recensions between 1139 and 1158 – the closest thing the church possessed in this period to a standardized law book.56 The bishops of the archdiocese had reliable access to multiple pre-Gratian canonical collections.57 The city of Reims in particular was a major centre for the compilation and dissemination of canon law.58 Canonistic works written by or attributed to Ivo of Chartres, notably the Prologue, Panormia, and Decretum, were widely copied in the region, and until his death in 1115 Ivo was a readily available consultant for legal questions of all kinds, ranging from episcopal elections to marriage law.59 Canon law collections delineated the bishop’s duties. Burchard’s Decretum, for example, a copy of which was in the possession of Manasses, the provost of Sainte-Marie of Reims (1075–96), was useful for educating clergy and consulted at church 55

56

57

58

59

R. E. Reynolds, ‘Ivonian opuscula on the ecclesiastical offices’, in R. E. Reynolds (ed.), Clerical Orders in the Early Middle Ages. Duties and Ordination (Aldershot, 1999). Ibid., 130. On these bishops and their concern with the pastoral applications of canon law, see G. Austin, ‘Jurisprudence in the service of pastoral care: the Decretum of Burchard of Worms’, Speculum, 79 (2004), 929–59, and G. Austin, Shaping Church Law around the Year 1000. The Decretum of Burchard of Worms (Farnham, 2009); Cushing, Papacy and Law, 109–10, 113–21; B. C. Brasington, Ways of Mercy: the Prologue of Ivo of Chartres. Edition and Analysis (Münster, 2004). On the recensions of Gratian, see A. Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge, 2000). Bishops Lambert of Arras (1094–1115) and John of Thérouanne (1099–1130) actively compiled; so, perhaps, did Hugh of Châlons (1100–13). On Lambert and John, see chapter 4. For Hugh of Châlons, possibly the compiler of the canon law collection known as the Collectio Catalaunensis I (Châlons-en-Champagne, BM 47, fos. 1–57), see L. Fowler-Magerl, Kanones. A Selection of Canon Law Collections Compiled Outside Italy Between 1000 and 1140 (Piesenkofen, 1998), 58, and, for the transmission of canon law collections in the same region, see L. Fowler-Magerl, ‘The collection and transmission of canon law along the northern section of the Via Francigena in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, in B. C. Brasington and K. G. Cushing (eds.), Bishops, Texts and the Use of Canon Law around 1100. Essays in Honour of Martin Brett (Burlington, VT, 2008), 129–39. In addition to a twelfth-century copy of the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals (Reims, BM 672; an eleventh-century copy was also at Saint-Omer), eleventh-century copies of Burchard’s Decretum (Reims, BM 673) and the Collectio Sinemuriensis (excerpted in Reims, BM 15) were also found at Reims; while the Collection in Seventy-four Titles also appears to have been a product of Reims. On the latter see C. Rolker, ‘The Collection in Seventy-four Titles: a monastic canon law collection from eleventh-century France’, in M. Brett and K. Cushing (eds.), Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages. Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl (Farnham, 2009), 59–72; L. Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140). A Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature (Washington, DC, 1999), 104, 136, 203–4. See C. Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres (Cambridge, 2009), 211–47; Brasington, Ways of Mercy, 6–10, with references.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 councils.60 Copies have also been noted at Saint-Omer and possibly Arras, with another apparently available at Cambrai by the mid1020s.61 Chapters in the Collection in Nine Books, which Bishop John of Thérouanne assembled, similarly exhorted prelates to, among other responsibilities, ‘be the defenders of the people’, while noting that ‘the people should be instructed [by the bishop], not followed [by him]’; that ‘none should contradict the bishop’s decrees’ (2.118–120) and, further, that he ought to be obeyed, should manage the possessions of the church, and should not be its ‘abuser’ (percussor) (2.179–181). Other sections in the same book concern the humility of pastors (2.168), their care for the poor (2.67), and episcopal negligence (2.198).62 Thus a bishop could turn to the nearest legal expert – often a fellow bishop – or compilation of canon law, and search out answers to specific questions or precedents to particular legal problems he might face. What he would generally not find in canon law were fully fleshed historical examples of, or meditations on, the pastoral–episcopal experience. Ruminations on the bishop’s pastoral priorities, his moral fitness, or how to maintain his standing before his congregation had to be found elsewhere. The standard source for these questions was Pope Gregory I’s Liber pastoralis, or Book of Pastoral Care; by our period, it was already five hundred years old. Widely available in northwestern Europe, Gregory’s book dispensed practical advice and philosophical musings on how prelates could manage the competing demands of their office, how to balance their personal religious needs with those of their congregation, and how to preach effectively to different groups of people. The Liber pastoralis indirectly influenced another extended reflection on the bishop’s office: Bernard of Clairvaux’s letter-treatise, On the Conduct and Office of Bishops (Tractatus de moribus et officiis episcoporum).63

60

61

62

63

Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, 68–9, 71–2; Austin, Shaping Church Law, 29–31, and see also her remarks in G. Austin, ‘Bishops and religious law, 900–1050’, in Ott and Trumbore Jones (eds.), The Bishop Reformed, 40–57. See the introduction by S. Vanderputten and D. J. Reilly (eds.), to Gerard of Cambrai, Acta synodi Atrebatensis, Vitae Autberti, Vita tertia Gaugerici: Varia scripta ex officina Gerardi exstantia (Turnhout, 2014), xxxv. These capitula are published in M. Sdralek (ed.), Wolfenbüttler Fragmente. Analekten zur Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters aus Wolfenbüttler Handschriften (Münster, 1891), 11–13. Bernard of Clairvaux, Tractatus de moribus et officiis episcoporum (Epistola 42), in J. Leclercq and H. Rochais (eds.), Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols. (Rome, 1957–1977), vol. VII, 100–31. The Tractatus has now been translated into English by Pauline Matarasso, with M. G. Newman, as On Baptism and the Office of Bishops (Kalamazoo, MI, 2004), 37–82. While this is Bernard’s only extended treatise directly concerning secular clergy, its ideas are widely found throughout his works and letters.

18

The bishop and his authority Addressed in 1127 or 1128 to the archbishop of Sens, Henry ‘the Boar’ (1122–42), Bernard’s letter circulated in the earliest manuscripts containing the influential abbot’s correspondence, and presents a steadfastly monastic, idiosyncratically Cistercian vision of the bishop’s ideal qualities.64 Although the abbot of Clairvaux nowhere directly cites the Liber pastoralis in the Tractatus de moribus, its stress on the necessity of the bishop’s humility above all other attributes makes Gregory’s book present in spirit throughout.65 In addition to the Liber and Bernard’s Tractatus, a host of biblical examples, a deep well of hagiographical exempla, personal reflections (often aired in letters, more rarely found in sermons), existing juridical documents such as charters, episcopal gesta (accounts of deeds) and other narrative sources, and regional conciliar decrees added to the mosaic of ideas surrounding the bishop and his duties.66 This textual potpourri included documents exchanged among bishops or which formed part of their common professional inheritance, the subject of chapter 1. These sources were copied and exchanged, archived in cathedral or monastery libraries, and could be accessed by serious researchers or curious readers. Finally, bishops – both as individuals and as social types – were featured in an impressive range of literary texts and ephemera, from poems and satires to epitaphs. Poetry, from writers like Hugh Primas and Walter of Châtillon, both of whom moved in the ecclesiastical court circles of northern France, offered up praise for virtuous prelates and scorn for the indolent.67 Written verse attests to what must have been a significantly vaster collection of stories circulating orally. It was primarily upon this array of sources, rather than legal texts, that contemporary prelates and clerical writers drew when formulating written representations of the bishop and his office.

64

65

66

67

For cogent analysis, see Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 156–70, and her introduction to Bernard of Clairvaux, On Baptism and the Office of Bishops, 22–36. On the manuscript transmission of the Tractatus, which began circulating in the late 1130s, see Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. VII, xi–xiii, xvii–xix. Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 119–20, 156–7, and C. Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life. Reading, Art, and Polemics in the Cîteaux Moralia in Job (Princeton, NJ, 1997), esp. 84–9, on the penetration of Gregory’s writings into Cistercian culture. J. Fontaine, ‘L’évêque dans la tradition littéraire du premier millénaire en Occident’, in P. Bouet and F. Neveux (eds.), Les évêques normands du XIe siècle. Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle (30 septembre–3 octobre 1993) (Caen, 1995), 41–51. The Arundel Lyrics / The Poems of Hugh Primas, ed. and trans. C. J. McDonough (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 108–21, 128–39, 189–99, and C. J. McDonough, ‘Hugh Primas 18: a poetic glosula on Amiens, Reims, and Peter Abelard’, Speculum, 61 (1986), 806–35.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 the awareness of the past Writings about bishops employed a wide range of language and symbols to depict the prelate’s office and values. Historical accounts were an important, though not exclusive, medium for their transmission. The past harboured a trove of examples of idealized episcopal conduct, and these could be readily deployed in ‘situated uses’ of texts written by and about bishops.68 The episcopate’s historical consciousness emerged powerfully in the last half of the eleventh century.69 At this time, ecclesiastical, secular, and civic elites began to place great stock in written documents as a locus of authority and memory.70 Bishops did not limit their expression of historical consciousness to specific literary genres; historia was inscribed everywhere, and in many forms: in saints’ lives and episcopal gesta, in charters, cartularies, letters, sermons, and episcopal lists.71 Within the bishop’s chancery and the scriptorium of the cathedral chapter, a scribal culture emphasizing the composition, transmission, and preservation of records flourished. This production of documents accompanied a heightened interest in ferreting them out of church archives. Contemporary authors enthusiastically mentioned their research forays into record collections. Walter, a late eleventh-century abbot of Saint-Sépulcre of Cambrai, tells in his Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis (Life of the Blessed Bishop Vindician) how he plumbed the church archives at Cambrai and the abbey of Maroilles, near Arras, for evidence about the deeds of his subject.72 Herman of Tournai travelled to Spain and across northern France, gathering evidence for his historical and devotional

68

69

70

71

72

See G. M. Spiegel, The Past as Text. The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, MD, 1997), 24–8, and the comments of E. A. Clark, History, Theory, Text. Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, MA, 2004), esp. 156–65. An impressive earlier example is Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai (1012–51), whose Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium (GEC) was begun around 1025. See chapter 6 for further references. Two now classic studies exploring different aspects of the interplay of oral and written practices are M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge, MA, 1979), and B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy. Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ, 1983). In general, see R. Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages. Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge, 1991); B. Guenée, ‘“Authentique et approuvé”: recherches sur les principes de la critique historique au moyen âge’, in La lexicographie du latin médiéval et ses rapports avec les recherches actuelles sur la civilisation du Moyen-Age (Paris, 1981), 215–29; Spiegel, Past as Text, 83–98. Walter of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, ed. J. van der Straeten, in Les manuscrits hagiographiques d’Arras et de Boulogne-sur-Mer avec quelques textes inédits (Brussels, 1971), 93–127, at c. 18, 109; c. 23, 115; c. 34, 126. Walter, writing between 1068 and 1090 to John, abbot of Mont-Saint-Eloi, made heavy use of the first book of the GEC, the Annals of Saint-Vaast, and various hagiographical sources.

20

The bishop and his authority 73

writings. Texts circulated with growing speed and volume, and as standards for the historical accuracy of written records mounted in an ever more literate culture, so did the efforts of clerical authors to parse, compare, and confirm their oral and written sources. A developing historical consciousness thus moulded episcopal experiences by furnishing bishops with past and contemporary models to emulate. No single, overarching vision of the ideal bishop existed in our period. Multiple notions jostled side by side, and not always harmoniously.74 Thus while prescriptive texts like Gregory’s Liber pastoralis were fundamental to bishops’ ideas about calling and office, bishops’ own sense of their historical connection to their predecessors contributed decisively to their individual and collective notions of identity, and to their own sense and understanding of authority. The middle chapters of this book (chapters 5–7), which focus on the prelates of Amiens, Cambrai, and Reims, present case studies of those bishops’ use of, and depiction in, written sources that supported their authority in ways relevant to the urban communities they ruled. parameters of this book My ambitions for this book are twofold. First, I hope to recover the shards of an episcopate as it really was: a sociable body of administrators and pastors who presided over diverse dioceses, and whose broad lines of professional solidarity are visible in the medieval documents. Second, I aim to present the episcopate as it was seen by others, and as it imagined itself to be. This study foregrounds the language, ideas, and representation of episcopal authority, but it proceeds in the conviction that language only possesses utility (and gains force) within particular social and historical contexts, and that a correlative and even causal relationship exists between language and material and social conditions.75 Behind emergent ideologies it is possible to see historical forces at work.76 As societies 73

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Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 68–70, 126–7; Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione monasterii sancti Martini Tornacensis, vol. XIV, ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS (Hanover, 1883), 274–317, at 292–3. C. B. Bouchard, Spirituality and Administration. The Role of the Bishop in Twelfth-Century Auxerre (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 14–15. J. Appleby, ‘The power of history’, The American Historical Review, 103 (1998), 1–14, at 9. Compare C. Geertz, ‘Ideology as a cultural system’, in The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays (New York, 1973), 193–233, at 220: ‘Whatever else ideologies may be – projections of unacknowledged fears, disguises for ulterior motives, phatic expressions of group solidarity – they are, most distinctively, maps of problematic social reality and matrices for the creation of collective conscience’.

21

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 change, explanations for the appearance of particular ideas concerning bishops and their roles must take the broader historical context into account, and venture hypotheses about their connections. Thus the opening and closing chapters of this book (chapters 2–4, 8–9) argue that the bishops in the province of Reims possessed a recognizable, professional homogeneity, and that they often – though by no means uniformly – spoke in a shared historical and symbolic language about the duties and qualities of their office. While they oversaw very different dioceses, they confronted similar sorts of problems in their administration, came out of similar social and educational backgrounds, and were acculturated through similar experiences. The middle chapters (chapters 5–7) offer a counterpart to this collective vision, by presenting case studies of bishops from different dioceses spanning the core decades covered by this book. These case studies suggest that whatever commonalities contemporary prelates shared, each diocese possessed a collection of places, social groups, memories, and histories unique to itself, in whose context bishops crafted useable visions of their office, authority, and role in their local communities.77 In fixing the years 1050 and 1150 as the rough chronological limits of this study, I do not wish to suggest that the events and figures of this century stand utterly apart from those before and after them. Still less do I mean to imply that the ideas about episcopal office are novel or unique to this historical time and place. In fact, ancient and well-used texts like Gregory’s Liber pastoralis furnished a continuous source of inspiration for readers in different eras. Sermons on John 10:11, ‘I am the good shepherd’, a standard hortatory piece on the qualities of a good rector, never went out of style. What is specific to the period is the ends to which these texts were being read and employed, and the vision of episcopal office that resulted. Considerations both pragmatic and methodological informed the decision to limit the book to the archdiocese of Reims, the ancient Roman administrative region of Belgica Secunda. Roman governors had set down its leading cities in the so-called Notitia Galliarum of the late fourth century.78 In 1150, Belgica Secunda consisted of twelve

77

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Another regional approach, but one geared specifically towards church reform, is that of Foulon, Église et réforme; see 11–12. See J. Harries, ‘Church and state in the Notitia Galliarum’, Journal of Roman Studies, 68 (1978), 26–43, at 30–1. A still useful overview is Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde, and the general remarks by J. Lestocquoy, ‘L’origine des évêchés de la Belgique Seconde’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 32 (1946), 43–52.

22

The bishop and his authority dioceses that had remained essentially unchanged since then: Reims, the metropolitan see, was followed by Soissons, Châlons, Noyon, Arras, Cambrai, Tournai, Senlis, Beauvais, Amiens, Thérouanne, and Laon.79 The area incorporated in Belgica Secunda was large and diverse, and extended along a roughly diagonal axis following the Roman Via Francigena, from northwest to southeast of Paris. Bordered on the north and west by the Channel and river valleys of the Scheldt and Somme, it incorporated the gently rolling hunting grounds and royal towns skirting the Parisian basin and Seine River Valley in the south. The archdiocese’s easternmost extent lay in the wooded hills and lakes of the Argonne, beyond the chalk plains of Champagne. Among the prelates of the archdiocese in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries were ranked some of the foremost men of their time: prominent intellectuals, builders, administrators, pastors, confidants to popes and kings, cultural patrons, reformers, saints. History has judged others of them less kindly, as pleasure-seekers, political favourites, ambitious social-ladder climbers, or, worse, indifferent to the concerns and needs of their flocks. Most common of all, perhaps, were bishops that combined personal traits from both lists, who defy easy categorization. I have endeavoured to make use of many different kinds of sources from across northwestern Europe, but it will be immediately obvious that the regions of Picardy and Flanders and their episcopal cities (Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, Laon, Noyon, Reims, Soissons, Thérouanne) receive the lion’s share of attention. Senlis, both the smallest diocese in the province and exceedingly impoverished in its documentation through the eleventh century (including in episcopal charters), has been largely omitted.80 So has Châlons-en-Champagne, whose history has only recently begun to attract historians’ attention.81 While the province

79

80

81

Contemporary bishops were familiar with the Notitia in its fourth-century version. The see of Noyon was originally located at ancient Vermand, while Boulogne, which appears as the twelfth city in the Notitia, was not established as an episcopal residence until the sixteenth century. The diocese of Laon, carved from the existing territory of Reims in the sixth century, was not included in the Notitia; see on its origins J. Lusse, Naissance d’une cité. Laon et le Laonnois du Ve au Xe siècle (Nancy, 1992), 138–46. The double see of ArrasCambrai was divided in 1093, while Noyon-Tournai was split in 1146 to reach an even dozen. G. Brunel, ‘Chartes et chancelleries épiscopales du Nord de la France au XIe siècle’, in M. Parisse (ed.), À propos des actes d’évêques. Hommage à Lucie Fossier (Nancy, 1991), 227–44, at 228 n. 4. See G. Clause (ed.), Le diocèse de Châlons (Paris, 1989), and S. Benner, Châlons-en-Champagne. Die Stadt, das Chorherrenstift Toussaint und das Umland bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Trier, 2005), reviewed by L. Falkenstein, ‘Zur Geschichte der Stadt Châlons-en-Champagne im Mittelalter’, Francia, 35 (2008), 527–37.

23

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 of Reims presented a convenient organizational unity for study, the bishops of this province were neither insulated nor isolated from other regions and churches, maintaining regular contact with colleagues in surrounding dioceses like Rouen, Chartres, Paris, Meaux, Troyes, and Sens.82 Yet a certain historical unity to the period presents itself. As I have already mentioned, this book will only be indirectly concerned with the notion of ‘church reform’. Nevertheless the period under study is bounded by two important ecclesiastical councils, both held at Reims: Pope Leo IX’s council at Saint-Remi in October 1049, the first papal council convened in France in several centuries, and Pope Eugenius III’s general council in 1148. Prior to Leo’s papacy, Michel Parisse recently avowed, ‘[m]uch was expected of [the bishop], but since there was no control over his choices or his actions, he did what he wanted’.83 This statement may give rather too much credit to episcopal autonomy prior to Leo IX. There is no question, however, that bishops from the last half of the eleventh century ruled in a period of exceptional social dynamism and religious ferment in northwestern Europe, propelled by a surging mobility of people, goods, technologies, and ideas. Historians have long highlighted this twelfth-century ‘renaissance’ and its counterpart, religious renewal, and catalogued their attributes and influence on medieval society.84 Though some have recently begun to challenge assumptions that the twelfth-century outlook was either as optimistic or radically novel as historians have made it out to be, that it was a period of cultural transformation, and that this transformation placed new pressures and constraints on bishops, is beyond doubt. This book argues, both directly and indirectly, that the bishops who ruled between 1050 and 1150 were both products of, and exerted considerable influence on, contemporary cultural and social currents. Less tradition-bound than their predecessors, less administratively constrained 82

83 84

For comparison see the survey of T. Reuter, ‘Ein Europa der Bischöfe. Das Zeitalter Burchards von Worms’, in W. Hartmann (ed.), Bischof Burchard von Worms, 1000–1025, (Mainz, 2000), 1–28, at 21; an English translation by Dominik Waβenhoven has been published in Körntgen and Waβenhoven, Patterns of Episcopal Power / Strukturen bischöflicher Herrschaftsgewalt, 17–38. M. Parisse, ‘The bishop: prince and prelate’, in Gilsdorf, The Bishop, 1–22, at 22. Benson and Constable, with Lanham, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, collects many influential essays, as does F. Gasparri (ed.), Le XIIe siècle. Mutations et renouveau en France dans la première moitié du XIIe siècle (Paris, 1994); and G. Wieland (ed.), Aufbruch – Wandel – Erneuerung: Beiträge zur ‘Renaissance’ des 12. Jahrhunderts. 9. Blaubeurer Symposion vom 9. bis 11. Oktober 1992 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1995). See also Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, and chapter 3, below.

24

The bishop and his authority and bureaucratic than their successors, the prelates surveyed here demonstrated a willingness to deal, for the most part flexibly – though not always successfully – with the array of changes confronting them. As we will see in chapter 3, the social boundaries of episcopal authority were continuously tested. Chapters 8–9, the concluding section of this book, survey how bishops continuously promoted the ideals of personal conformity between word and deed, and their role as labourers and stewards in the Lord’s house – ideas that possessed tremendous resonance for contemporaries in the process of reimagining religious and civic communities. While Europe’s social and cultural transformations hardly ceased after the mid-twelfth century, the years around 1150 saw a powerful and long-lived cohort of bishops, and their monastic allies, many of whom are the focus of this book, enter either retirement or the grave, thus bringing to close a dynamic epoch in the regional church. Abbots Suger of Saint-Denis and Bernard of Clairvaux, two of the most influential churchmen in Europe and friends to many of the bishops treated here, died about this time, the former in mid-winter (January 1151), the latter in the dog days of summer (August 1153). Alvisius, the bishop of Arras, died on the ill-fated Second Crusade in the company of King Louis VII, in 1147. Six months later on the same crusade, Louis’ kinsman, Simon of Vermandois, the bishop of Noyon-Tournai, followed. Bartholomew of Laon retired in 1151 after a career of thirty-eight years. Peter, bishop of Senlis, died in April of that year, while the road to Jerusalem claimed a third bishop, Bartholomew of Châlons, the following December. And in late October 1152, Suger’s close friend and correspondent, Josselin of Soissons, died. A few years later in 1158, the venerable Milo, the bishop of Thérouanne, found his grave; then Samson, archbishop of Reims, who died after more than two decades in office, in 1161.85 Contemporary chroniclers lamented the deaths of these bishops and prominent leaders of the church. They had come of age in the generation after the pontificacy of Gregory VII. Excluding only the five-year tenure of Bartholomew of Châlons, they held their offices for twenty-five years, on average. They moved in the same social and professional circles, worked together, wrote letters to one another, legislated, patronized emerging 85

Of the remaining bishops of the archdiocese, Odo III of Beauvais died in 1148. Henry of France, the brother of King Louis VII, followed Odo into office, but was considerably younger, having been born about 1121. He died in 1175 as archbishop of Reims. The bishop of Amiens at mid-century, Thierry, had succeeded Guérin, who withdrew from office in 1144. Thierry died in 1164. Nicholas of Mons was bishop of Cambrai, entering office in 1136 and ruling until 1167.

25

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 religious communities like the Cistercians and Premonstratensians, and jointly served kings and popes. Their understanding of episcopal office and pastoral duty, and their expression of its ideals (sometimes quite idiosyncratic), were shaped by the times in which they lived. Yet no two bishops, or dioceses, were precisely alike. The archdiocesan bishops of Reims were not the passive, isolated recipients of wider cultural and political changes, whether understood as church reform, the growth of bureaucratic culture, or something else. Nor were they authoritarian reactionaries to change, seeking to crush novelty wherever and whenever it surfaced. Far from labouring in solitude, they imagined themselves to be a charismatic, pastoral, and professional community. And, perhaps more so than at any time since late antiquity, they approached the lofty ideals ascribed to their order.

26

Chapter 2

BECOMING BISHOP: CLERICAL CULTURE AND EPISCOPAL FORMATION IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF REIMS AROUND 1100

In the Middle Ages bishops were not born, they were made. A prelate’s election usually capped a lifetime of social advantage, professional, educational, and political preferment, and personal ambition, all of which were deployed in the rough-and-tumble world of electoral politics.1 These painstakingly nurtured assets contributed as much or more to the making of a bishop than the final act of election or consecration, just as accumulated political service and experience, rather than an inauguration ceremony, make a head of state. This chapter sketches the social and cultural formation of bishops who rose through the ranks to attain sees in the province of Reims in the century from 1050–1150. It begins by surveying contemporary bishops’ professional backgrounds, with particular focus on their experiences as clergy attached to cathedral chapters.2 Most bishops were promoted from high-ranking offices or dignities in the church. As officers of the chapter, they would have joined with their colleagues to maintain the cathedral, its properties, and the pastoral care of its parishioners. Given this background, most prelates would have seen 1

2

On episcopal elections and electoral procedure, with emphasis on the legal tradition, see most recently A. Thier, Hierarchie und Autonomie. Regelungstraditionen der Bischofsbestellung in der Geschichte des kirchlichen Wahlrechts bis 1140 (Frankfurt am Main, 2011); J. Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest. Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater Anjou, c. 1140–c. 1230 (Cambridge, 2008), who discusses political influences, and offers an extensive bibliography at 1, n. 2 and 3, n. 8; and the collected essays in F.-R. Erkens (ed.), Die früh- und hochmittelalterliche Bischofserhebung im europäischen Vergleich (Cologne, 1998). The older works of E. Roland, Les chanoines et les elections épiscopales du XIe au XIVe siècle. Étude sur la restauration, l’evolution, la décadence du pouvoir capitulaire (1080–1350) (Aurillac, 1909), and J.-F. Lemarignier, J. Gaudemet, and G. Mollat, Histoire des institutions françaises au Moyen Age (Paris, 1962), vol. III, 165–76, remain useful. Only passing attention will be directed at bishops who began their careers as monks or other regular clergy. This decision is largely pragmatic: the number of bishops who started as secular clerks in this period was far greater than the number who began their careers in abbey cloisters. I do not mean to imply that bishops from the secular and regular clergy, once consecrated, behaved in radically different ways. In fact, they are likely to have had one key trait in common: prior executive experience.

27

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 collaborative involvement with their fellow bishops – an administrative mode conditioned by their time among the chapter clergy and reinforced at twice-yearly synods – as a natural component of their shared status in the episcopal ordo, and necessary for the upkeep of the provincial church. Biographical treatments of bishops’ lives in the period covered in this book are unfortunately rare.3 Vitae of contemporary bishops from the archdiocese of Reims tally a mere five between 1050 and 1150, less than one-tenth the number composed in the German regnum over roughly the same period.4 Episcopal gesta supply information about the careers of an additional handful. Scholars have long acknowledged this dearth of sources from northern France. One possible reason for it is that the royal court bureaucracy, which in neighbouring Germany furnished so many candidates for the episcopacy and so many subjects of episcopal biography, was comparatively anaemic in France.5 Even when biographies exist, their consideration of bishops’ early careers is scant. Despite these limitations, the documentary record, augmented by the evidence of charters and annals, is sufficient to permit us to reconstruct in broad outline the professional careers of more than three-quarters of the episcopal cohort.6 After assessing the episcopate’s professional background and social status, this chapter next considers their cultural formation, especially what they read, or what we can expect them to have read. It is hard to know what an individual clerk might have plucked from the shelves of a cathedral or monastery library. Necrological notices of donated manuscripts nevertheless give us some idea of what texts were guarded in personal collections, while surviving library catalogues help to fill out the picture. From these fragmentary notices it is possible to glean insights into what the secular clergy of our period considered the normative texts outlining pastoral responsibilities and expectations. 3

4

5 6

The same is true in the period immediately preceding ours; see H. Hoffmann, ‘Der König und seine Bischöfe in Frankreich und im Deutschen Reich, 936–1060’, in Hartmann (ed.), Bischof Burchard von Worms, 79–127. Hoffmann, ‘Der König und seine Bischöfe’, 83–4, and S. Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum. Eine Quellengattung zwischen Hagiographie und Historiographie, untersucht an Lebensbeschreibungen von Bischöfen des Regnum Teutonicum im Zeitalter der Ottonen und Salier (Stuttgart, 2000), 16–21. Haarländer treats fifty-five vitae written for thirty-five bishops between c. 1000 and 1150. The five vitae for Reims are for bishops Lietbert of Cambrai (d. 1076), Arnulf of Soissons (d. 1087), Odo of Cambrai (d. 1113), Godfrey of Amiens (d. 1115), and John of Thérouanne (d. 1130), a high figure relative to other French dioceses. Hoffmann, ‘Der König und seine Bischöfe’, 93–6. However, the region produced many more vitae of earlier bishops, nearly all from the Merovingian era, which were written or rewritten in religious communities (frequently at the bishop’s request). These texts often furnish idealized portraits of historical bishops and their acts, and have left behind a sizeable repository for literary representations of episcopal office, as I discuss below.

28

Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims The chapter then concludes with an assessment of clerical identities in the decades prior to 1100 and the changing relationship of bishops to the clerical communities from which they ascended. Beginning in the 1050s, a chorus of papal and reformist voices insisted that bishops root out clerical practices Rome considered scandalous and unlawful. Ongoing papal campaigns to banish clerical marriage, simony, and lay influence from clerical appointments created legal and emotional wedge issues that effectively pitted canons against their bishops and factions of clergy against one another. Already coloured by family interests, cathedral chapters atomized further as bishops made difficult choices about how, or how much, to implement the reforms being demanded. The politics of church reform made vacant episcopal offices and protracted election controversies routine. Clerical cohorts became deeply politicized. After 1077, when the papal legate Hugh of Die held an important council at Autun which led to the excommunication of most of the bishops of the province, it became untenable for bishops to identify with or defend the interests of their chapters and fellow secular clergy against Roman-led reforms.7 Precluded from embracing an identity or image too closely connected to the values of a clergy they were charged with reforming, bishops gravitated towards other available representations of their authority. A long-term consequence of this process, pursued in later chapters, was that the public face of the episcopate changed.

the episcopal cohort of northern france: a brief survey An even hundred bishops held office in the archdiocese of Reims between c. 1050 and 1150. The path of nearly half passed through the ranking offices of a cathedral chapter (Table 2.1).8 While the professional cursus of nearly one-third of the bishops from the archdiocese between 1050 and 1150 is either uncertain or somewhat unconventional (those identified in Table 2.1 as ‘Other’), we know that many of them were elevated from the royal household or were related to powerful regional families. The first condition is likely to indicate experience among the 7

8

For the council, see Rennie, Law and Practice, 91–4, 133–4, 141–4. Hugh suspended or deposed the archbishop of Reims and the bishops of Senlis and Noyon; the bishop of Cambrai, previously suspended, was reinstated. The actual proportion of bishops who entered office through the ranks of secular clergy is probably higher still, given that ‘unknowns’ are likelier to have ascended through secular ranks than been promoted from the regular clergy, a fact still considered unusual enough that contemporary sources go out of their way to mention it.

29

Table 2.1. Professional background of episcopate, province of Reims (c. 1050–c. 1150)9 City (period covered) Amiens (1058–1164) Arras (1094–1163) Beauvais (c. 1030–1162) Cambrai (1051–1167) Châlons (1042–1153) Laon (1049–1155) Noyon (1044–1167) Reims (1055–1161) Senlis (1043–1156) Soissons (1052–1158) Thérouanne (1030–1158) Tournai (1146–66) Totals

9

Cathedral chapter

Benedictine monks (non-reformed house)

4 1 3 6 8 4 3 7 3 6 4

3

49

3

Benedictine monks (reformed house)

Canons regular

Canons secular

1 1 1

1

1

Other Unknown Total 2

1 1

1 1 1 1 1

1

1 2

1 1

2

3

6

1 1 9

1 5

5

4

1 1 10 3 1 23

9 4 12 8 11 7 6 8 14 13 6 2 100

Episcopacies commencing less than two years prior to 1050 or two years after 1150 have been included in this table, as have all episcopacies beginning prior to 1050 and terminating five or more years after 1050. Only bishops consecrated and received into their bishoprics by their communities have been counted. In those cases where individuals lived in both regular and secular clerical communities, determination of professional background has been based on the last office held prior to consecration.

Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims Table 2.2. Capitular office(s) of secular clergy held prior to episcopal election (c. 1050–c. 1150) Archdeacon Provost Dean Treasurer Other Unknown Bishop Total

29 9 6 5 4 4 3 6010

secular clergy rather than a prior monastic profession.11 The true number of bishops who ascended through the ranks of secular clergy during this century was thus probably closer to 70 per cent. Within the chapter, the archdeaconate was the surest stepping stone to the episcopacy, followed, at a distant second, by the provostship (Table 2.2).12 In elevating their archdeacons, provosts, and treasurers, the electors (often, but not always, the cathedral chapters) showed a clear preference for men with hands-on administrative experience in the secular business of the church as opposed to those whose vocation 10 11

12

The total reflects jointly held offices as well, hence the number is greater than forty-nine. Hélinand of Laon (1052–96), for example, was promoted as a young man from the chaplaincy of the king of England, Edward I; Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 270. The Capetian kings preferred to stock the diocese of Senlis with members of their chancery and household. For surveys of canons and chapter dignitaries, see P. Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale. Les archevêques de Reims et leur Église aux XIe et XIIe siècles (Langres, 2005), 59–176; P. Desportes and H. Millet, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae. Répertoire prosopographique des évêques, dignitaires et chanoines de France de 1200 à 1500, vol. I, Diocèse d’Amiens (Turnhout, 1996), and vol. III, Diocèse de Reims (Turnhout, 1998); Newman, Les seigneurs de Nesle, vol. I, 11–18, 100–4, 225–30 (Soissons and Beauvais); W. M. Newman, Le personnel de la cathédrale d’Amiens (1066–1306) (Paris, 1972), 5–7; J. Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai de la fin du XIe à la fin du XIIIe siècle. Son organisation, sa vie, ses membres (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1986) and J. Pycke, Répertoire biographique des chanoines de Notre-Dame de Tournai, 1080–1300 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1988); R. Berger, ‘Archidiacres, officiaux, dignitaires du chapitre d’Arras (1093–1300)’, Bulletin de la commission départementale des Monuments historiques du Pas-de-Calais, 2nd ser., 8 (1970), 505–41; É. de Barthélemy (ed.), Cartulaires de l’évêché et du chapitre Saint-Étienne de Chalons-sur-Marne. Histoire et documents (Châlons, 1855), 71–92; O. Bled, Regestes des évêques de Thérouanne, 500–1553 (Saint-Omer, 1904), vol. I, 11–34; M.-A. Menier, Le chapitre cathédral de Senlis de 1139 à 1516 (Senlis, 1971); L. Genicot, ‘Aristocratie et dignités ecclésiastiques en Picardie aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 67 (1972), 436–42. For the neighbouring region of Burgundy, see M. Le Grand, Le chapitre cathédral de Langres de la fin du XIIe siècle au Concordat de 1516 (Paris, 1931), and C. B. Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister. Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980–1198 (Ithaca, NY, 1987), ch. 2, with additional references. For Normandy, see Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 15–17, 211–37, 260–2.

31

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 primarily centred on religious or liturgical observance, such as deans or cantors.13 Bishops-elect from the archdeaconate and provostship typically accumulated years of experience in those functions. Lisiard of Crépy, for example, was provost of the cathedral chapter of Soissons for at least twenty-three years prior to his election as bishop in 1108.14 Lisiard’s contemporary, Lambert of Zonnebeke, was an archdeacon of Tournai for seventeen years before assuming the episcopacy of Noyon-Tournai in 1113. Clarembaud, bishop of Senlis from 1115–33, had been an archdeacon at Arras since 1094/95, about twenty years.15 Their colleague, Bartholomew of Laon, who was consecrated bishop on the same day as Lambert, served as the treasurer of Sainte-Marie of Reims for more than a decade prior to his promotion.16 One could easily go on multiplying examples of bishops with at least ten years’ service in major capitular offices. Some did have less prior experience – John of Warneton was archdeacon of Arras from only 1095/96 until his election to the see of Thérouanne in 1099, for example – but very few were true neophytes. A minority of bishops, approximately 21 per cent, entered office via the cloister, and in only one city, Arras, which established its independence from Cambrai in 1094, can a marked preference for bishops with a background in the regular clergy be observed.17 Of those bishops who were formerly monks or regular canons, more than three-quarters (14/18) came out of traditional Benedictine houses, predominantly 13

14

15 16

17

M. Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections épiscopales dans le royaume de France, 1137–1180 (Paris, 1957), 108–9. For consideration of the secular clergy in Normandy, see D. Spear, ‘L’administration épiscopale normande. Archidiacres et dignitaires des chapitres’, in Bouet and Neveux (eds.), Les évêques normands, 81–102, and the references cited there. He appears as provost in a 1085 charter of Bishop Helgot of Soissons for Marmoutier; BNF Nouv. acq. lat. 2096, fo. 1; published in GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 101. Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 148. See G. Marlot, Metropolis Remensis historia, a Frodoardo primum arctius digesta, nunc demum aliunde accersitis plurimum aucta, et illustrata, et ad nostrum hoc saeculum fideliter deducta (Lille-Reims, 1666–1669), vol. II, 225–6, for an 1102 charter in which he appears in this capacity; prior to serving as treasurer he held the rank of subdeacon. Two others, Amiens and Beauvais, show a modestly high proportion of abbots, at one in three for the period covered. The relatively low aggregate number of abbots promoted to bishoprics across the province is mirrored in Normandy and Greater Anjou (Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 213–14), but contrasts with patterns elsewhere, for example, in Gascony at the same period. See Lemarignier, Gaudemet, and Mollat, Histoire des institutions françaises au Moyen Age, vol. III, 175–6, and B. Guillemain, ‘Les moines sur les sièges épiscopaux du sud-ouest de la France aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, in Congar, Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles), 377–84. Religious from reformed or new orders of monks and canons, such as Cistercians and Premonstratensians, made few inroads among the archdiocesan episcopate prior to 1150; the wider influence of these orders in the European episcopate was nevertheless considerable. For overviews, see R. Crozet, ‘L’épiscopat de France et l’Ordre de Cîteaux au XIIe siècle’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 18 (1975), 263–8; Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 148–55, 248–51.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims ones that had been recently reformed. Most had been abbots, sometimes at more than one house and typically for an extended period. Amiens offers an excellent example of this tendency. Gervin, bishop from c. 1090–1102, had been appointed his uncle’s successor as abbot of Saint-Riquier in 1071, and took over its reins in 1075.18 Gervin’s abbatial experience thus tallied nearly two decades, and he continued to hold the abbacy concurrently with his episcopal office until 1096. His successor, Godfrey of Moulincourt, came to Amiens from the less distinguished abbey of Nogent-sous-Coucy, where he became head of the house in 1085 and where, in 1097, he had been offered (but declined) the abbey of Saint-Remi of Reims. Thirty years later, a monk named Thierry, who had made his profession at Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois and later became abbot of Saint-Eloi of Noyon, followed Gervin and Godfrey into the see.19 He served at least fifteen years as head of Saint-Eloi before his elevation.20 Historians who have examined the social backgrounds of the upper clergy have come to general consensus about two of its defining characteristics. As we have already suggested, bishops were overwhelmingly of aristocratic descent. Noble status varied considerably, with regional prelates descending from comital families (for example, in Amiens, the comital dynasties of Ponthieu and Amiens-Vexin; in Reims and Soissons, the counts of Soissons; at Châlons, the counts of Troyes-Champagne) and less prestigious seigneurial, even castellanal, stock.21 The later decades of the twelfth century saw powerful urban clans, whose eminence stemmed from their wealth and local political clout rather than rural territorial domination, furnish episcopal candidates. Long before this, urban elites were already colonizing certain cathedral chapters, as the Osmont family, whose progeny became priors of Notre-Dame of Tournai by virtual default from the last quarter of the eleventh century until 1205, testify.22 Additionally, new bishops were typically the scions of local families, born to the diocese or city in which they ruled, as canon law required. An important exception to this condition was the bishopric 18

19

20 21

22

J. Pycke, ‘Gervin II, abbé de St-Riquier et évêque d’Amiens’, in DHGE, vol. XX, cols. 1098–1100. On Thierry’s profession at Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois, see Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de SainteMarie, 236–7. From c. 1129–1144 or 1145. Compare G. Devailly, ‘Les grandes familles et l’épiscopat dans l’ouest de la France et les Pays de la Loire’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles, 27 (1984), 49–55; Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 214. Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 87–9, 141–2, 164–5, 167–8. The post was held, in succession, by Herman I Osmont (1080–1101), Gonther (1101–17), Thierry I (1117/19–43), Letbert (1145–76), and Thierry ‘of Orcq’ (1177–1205).

33

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 of Reims, where the king often facilitated the election of clergy drawn from the archdioceses of Tours and Sens.23 Once a family managed to secure a foothold in the episcopacy or high capitular office, they were loath to let it slip from their grasp. While bishops could not, according to church law, name their successors, they usually exercised appointive power over a range of capitular offices. At Amiens and Tournai, for example, the bishop named all of the chapter’s officers save the dean; at Reims, he named the cantor and the treasurer; and at Laon, the entire chapter was named by the bishop.24 This power, though not absolute, heavily favoured familial successions.25 Nephews (nepotes) regularly succeeded their uncles (avunculi) into episcopal office, as happened at Amiens, Cambrai, Reims, and Soissons in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and, still more widely, clerics secured prominent positions to capitular posts through the influence of their kin.26 Once elected, bishops in the archdiocese of Reims stayed in place. Transfers were rare – just three in a hundred years.27 Depositions were common in the late 1070s and early 1080s under Gregory VII, but otherwise unusual.28 These findings have proven consistent with other studies of episcopal social origins and careers in France, and indeed across Europe, for the same period.29 23

24

25

26

27

28

29

Archbishop Gervais of Château-du-Loir (1055–67) was formerly bishop of Le Mans; Renaud I du Bellay (1083–96) was archdeacon and treasurer of Saint-Martin of Tours; Renaud II of Martigné (1124/5–39) was archdeacon and bishop of Angers; and Samson of Mauvoisin (1140–61), Renaud II’s nephew, was archdeacon and provost of Chartres. Manasses II and Raoul the Green were, however, local candidates. See Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 608–28. Newman, Le personnel de la cathédrale d’Amiens; and Les seigneurs de Nesle, vol. I, 11; Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 56–7. At Thérouanne, the bishop named everyone but the dean, cantor, and diaconate (Bled, Regestes des évêques de Thérouanne, vol. I, 11); at Châlons, he named all but the dean, cantor, and subcantor (Cartulaires de l’évêché et du chapitre Saint-Étienne de Chalons-sur-Marne, ed. de Barthélemy, 72). Compare Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 219–20, for Normandy and Anjou. See the cautionary observations of Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 61–8, and Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 220, 224. Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections épiscopales, 106–9; Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 61–4; Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 225–8. Note that the terms nepos and avunculus do not necessarily need to indicate an uncle–nephew relationship. Two transfers occurred at the instigation of the king: Gervais of Château-du-Loir was brought from Le Mans to Reims in 1055, and Renaud II of Martigné was brought from Angers to Reims in 1125. Manasses of Soissons was bishop of Cambrai from 1093–1103 before his transfer to Soissons, where he ruled until 1108. After the period under consideration here, Henry of France was transferred to Reims from Beauvais in 1175, and William White-Hands from Sens to Reims in 1176. Outside Gregory VII’s pontificacy (1073–85), bishops Gebuin of Laon and Gerard of Thérouanne were suspended and/or deposed by papal fiat in 1049 and 1096/97, respectively. General studies include: Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections épiscopales; J. Gaudemet, ‘Recherches sur l’épiscopat médiéval en France’, in S. Kuttner and J. J. Ryan (eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Boston College, 12–16 August 1963 (Vatican City, 1965), 139–54; B. Guillemain, ‘Les origines des évêques en France aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, in Le

34

Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims Much has been made of the power Capetian kings supposedly wielded over the episcopal sees under their influence, which in the eleventh and twelfth centuries included those in the dukedom of Burgundy and in all of Francia north of the Loire. Marcel Pacaut identified sixteen ‘effectively royal’ dioceses under King Robert I (d. 1031), a number which by the reign of Louis VII (d. 1180) had ballooned to twenty-six and expanded to include regions like Auvergne and southern Burgundy.30 By ‘royal diocese’ Pacaut meant that the Capetian kings enjoyed various rights over the see: general prestige as the diocese’s protector; the power to confirm episcopal or canonical nominations and bestow the bishop’s regalia; power over the immoveable temporal goods of the cathedral during periods of vacancy; and in some sees even a claim to its moveable possessions. In many instances throughout the province of Reims, Pacaut’s appellation must be seen as an effectively theoretical rather than applied right, especially when one considers sees like Thérouanne and Tournai, where the counts of Flanders held political sway (admittedly as vassals of the French king), or Amiens, which was dominated by a succession of comital dynasties.31 While they possessed theoretical rights and certain material advantages over the dioceses in the province of Reims, the ability of kings to intervene decisively in episcopal elections was, as far as our period is concerned, highly dependent on local circumstances.32 At Soissons, for example, where Ursio (1080–c. 1084), the brother of the royal seneschal Gervais, and a secular clerk named Henry (1087–92) had been King Philip I’s episcopal choices, local resistance and/or papal objections forced out the imposés after brief tenures. Both were opposed by candidates backed

30

31

32

istituzioni ecclesiastiche della ‘Societas Christiana’ dei secoli XI–XII: papato, cardinalato ed episcopato. Atti della quinta Settimana internazionale di studio (Mendola, 26–31 agosto 1971) (Milan, 1974), 374–402. The situation began to change slowly after 1150, as direct papal intervention in diocesan politics governing appointments and episcopal transfers became more common; see Gaudemet, ‘Recherches sur l’épiscopat médiéval’, 149–53; G. Barraclough, ‘The making of a bishop in the Middle Ages. The part of the pope in law and fact’, Catholic Historical Review, 19 (1933), 275–319, at 286–90; Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 254–7. Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections épiscopales, 63–73; more recently, and with revisions to Pacaut’s thesis, Hoffmann, ‘Der König und seine Bischöfe’, 90–4, and O. Guyotjeannin, ‘Les évêques dans l’entourage royal sous les premiers Capétiens’, in M. Parisse and X. Barral i Altet (eds.), Le roi de France et son royaume autour de l’an Mil (Paris, 1992), 91–8, and O. Guyotjeannin, ‘L’épiscopat dans le domaine Capétien (XIe–XIIe siècles): “Libertés ecclésiastiques” et service du roi’, in MagnouNortier (ed.), Pouvoirs et libertés au temps des premiers Capétiens, 215–30; Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 238–41. Philip I briefly assumed control of the diocese following the death in 1074 of Raoul IV, count of Amiens, Valois, and Vexin, and the abdication of his son Simon in 1077; the county had passed by 1085 to the lords of Boves and Coucy. See T. Reuter, ‘The “imperial church system” of the Ottonian and Salian rulers: a reconsideration’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33 (1982), 347–74, which has not fully changed minds on the operation of the so-called Reichskirchensystem.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 by the count of Champagne.33 Ursio, a monk, was deposed within a matter of months at the 1081 Council of Meaux.34 Henry was compelled to surrender his bishopric to Urban II (who then returned it to him) ‘because he had received investiture from the king of France’.35 Philip I likewise failed outright to impose his preferred candidates after long controversies at Beauvais (1100–4) and at Reims (1106–8), although he gained other concessions in each case.36 The Capetians had rather more luck with the tiny diocese of Senlis, whose prelates seem to have exercised a secondary role as royal chancellors in the latter years of Philip’s reign, and they also enjoyed success at Châlons and Reims.37 In the latter diocese, the installation of Gervais of Château-du-Loir in 1055, Renaud I du Bellay in 1083, and Renaud II of Martigné in 1124 amounted to royal impositions. Conversely, bishops Manasses I (installed c. 1069) and Raoul the Green (1108) were not royal candidates; while Samson (1140) was a compromise choice.38 Thus, in spite of Reims’ proximity to the centre of Capetian power and its bishops’ close rapport with the throne, royal influence was but one of many factors, and not always the most decisive, bearing on episcopal elections.39 Local familial agendas and external interventions from Rome or elsewhere also affected the electoral process and its outcomes. When forces outside the local church did involve themselves in episcopal elections in this period, it was often because either factionalism within the cathedral chapter or a 33

34 35

36

37

38 39

On Ursio, see the VSA, col. 1403, and N. Huyghebaert, ‘Saint Arnould de Soissons et la consécration de l’Église du prieuré de Coincy (1082)’, Analecta Bollandiana, 85 (1967), 317–29, at 317–18. On Henry, see C. Clark, ‘“This ecclesiastical adventurer”: Henry of Saint-Jean d’Angély’, The English Historical Review, 84 (1969), 548–60. At this time, Count Thibaud III of Blois and Chartres was successful in backing at least two candidates to the see of Soissons, namely bishops Arnulf of Tiegem (1081–84) and Enguerran (1084), though neither lasted long; see K. A. LoPrete, Adela of Blois, Countess and Lord (c. 1067–1137) (Dublin, 2007), 284–6. O. Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne jusqu’en 1215 (Paris, 1995), 185–6. R. Somerville, with S. Kuttner, Pope Urban II, the Collectio Britannica and the Council of Melfi (1089) (Oxford, 1996), 99–101. For an overview, see A. Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1060–1108) (Paris, 1912), and, for Beauvais, see chapter 4. For Senlis, see Menier, Le chapitre cathédral de Senlis, 11, 131–2. Ursio, bishop of Senlis from 1081/82–94, is referred to as ‘Silvanectensis episcopus, et regiae majestatis cancellarius’ in a 1090 charter for Saint-Remi of Reims; see M. Prou (ed.), Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1059–1108) (Paris, 1908), no. 120, 306. Although it cannot be demonstrated, I strongly suspect this to be the same Ursio as the one who was named bishop of Soissons in 1080, then deposed in late 1081. Another future bishop of Senlis, Hubert (1099–1115) served as notary and chancellor under Philip I from c. 1090–94. At Châlons, Roger III (1066–92), Hugh (1100–13), and William of Champeaux (1113–21) all seem to have enjoyed strong royal support; Hugh was a consanguineus of King Louis VI. Brief notices of these bishops’ elections are given by Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 608–25. See Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, for a recent close study of episcopal elections in neighbouring Normandy and Anjou.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims problematic or otherwise non-canonical candidacy presented them with an opportunity to do so.

the secular clergy: perceptions and realities Secular clerks who held prestigious posts within their chapters typically ascended to them by following a well-marked professional cursus. It was, in other words, possible to climb ranks, and climb they did. This tendency, along with other customary practices, led contemporaries to charge secular clergy – not always unfairly – with careerism and selfserving ambition. For instance, in the second quarter of the twelfth century, a regular canon from Liège known to us only as R. began a slender work, Libellus de diversis ordinibus et professionibus qui sunt in aecclesia (On the various orders and professions of the church). He addressed it to a friend, a monk, but for an unknown reason never finished it.40 R. described the different religious callings pursued in his day, and explained the practices unique to hermits, monks, and canons secular and regular. R. was well aware that the order of the book’s contents was likely to raise controversy, so he organized the libellus according to the numerical strength of the religious professions and where their practitioners lived in relation to secular society. Hermits, or solitaries, he treated first, followed by cloistered monks, then the different types of canons. The canons attached to cathedral chapters, who lived fully among the laity, he dealt with last. As R. describes them, a more diverse group of men within the clergy would be hard to find. To insult secular canons would be easy, he admitted, while to praise them presented a greater challenge. [W]e must now speak of those who live among men and must describe, though fearfully, their calling and behaviour. If we wished to praise them we should be afraid of offending men of a holier intention, who often speak ill of them . . . Avoiding sharp criticism, then, which could give rise to scandal among our listeners and which would in no way help the canons, let us consider their duties in the church.41

Carefully treading this path between praise and criticism, R. then offers a generous interpretation of those duties and their biblical prototypes among the priesthood of the Jewish Temple. The canons were ‘secular’ not because they lived in the world, R. suggested, but because their 40

41

Libellus de diversis ordinibus et professionibus qui sunt in aecclesia, ed. and trans. G. Constable and B. Smith (Oxford, 1972). On the author and origin of the sole manuscript copy, see xiii–xxiii; only the first of two envisaged books was written. Ibid., 96–7, 100–1.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 religious charge was to govern and educate (regere et informare) the men of the world.42 Chief among their obligations was to bar the unworthy or unrepentent from the church, and to correct, punish, and recall the chastened. Since the task of directing others fell on their shoulders, and since their position within the church was often the result of social preference rather than spiritual merit, the expectation that secular canons should lead upright lives and not shirk their duties was correspondingly great.43 Yet R. acknowledged, because he was charged with punishing others, the burdens of the secular canon could be bitter, and embittering.44 R.’s diplomatic overview of the secular clergy’s responsibilities and pitfalls strikes many of the same chords as Bernard of Clairvaux’s contemporary treatise on episcopal office, the De moribus et officiis episcoporum (On the Conduct and Office of Bishops). Unlike the more reticent R., Bernard salted his work with a generous dose of criticism for clerical vanities; though like him, Bernard emphasized the positive traits bishops shared with other religious groups rather than take the easy road and harp on the purely negative aspects of bishops and their conduct.45 In noting that the expectations of episcopal office were commensurate with its loftiness, Bernard warned: If honours are enticing to those who aspire to them, burdens fill anyone pondering them with fear and dread . . . Many would not run after honours with such confidence and alacrity if they realized that they were burdens too. Frightened of being weighed down, they would certainly not make such efforts and take such risks for the trappings of office . . . Schoolboys and beardless youths are elevated to ecclesiastical dignities on account of their noble birth, one day subject to the switch, the next lording it over priests.46

One of the more glaring weaknesses among the secular clergy was the overbearing ambition of many of its young clerks, who, having ‘scaled the first rungs of honours in the Church’ by wealth or birthright, zealously kept climbing until they reached its pinnacle.47 Bernard and R. agreed that among their least commendable characteristics, the secular clergy betrayed a lack of self-awareness and an arrogance commensurate with 42 44

45

46

47

Ibid., 98–9. 43 Ibid., 104–7. Ibid., 100–3. R. compares them to the biblical sons of Merari, who served both inside and outside God’s tabernacle; from Merari he puns that canons are ‘bitter’ (amarus). Bernard of Clairvaux, Tractatus de moribus; Bernard of Clairvaux, On Baptism and the Office of Bishops, 27–9. Bernard of Clairvaux, Tractatus de moribus, 121, 125; Bernard of Clairvaux, On Baptism and the Office of Bishops, 67–8. Bernard of Clairvaux, Tractatus de moribus, 123; Bernard of Clairvaux, On Baptism and the Office of Bishops, 70.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims their power and prestige. Their criticisms may be easily supported by specific examples of poor conduct supplied by other writers. Guibert of Nogent, not one to restrain himself when it came to reporting scandalous clerical conduct, unflatteringly described Ebles, an archdeacon of Laon, as ‘more than an average womanizer’, while Ebles’ fellow archdeacon Walter preferred, according to Guibert, the lifestyle of a warrior rather than a cleric.48 The claims of Bernard and R., then, were easily defensible. On the other hand, cathedral chapters were also home to individuals like Erlembald, the dean and treasurer of Cambrai (1093–c. 1117/19). Erlembald was a renowned ascetic and preacher, and classified among the many friends and acquaintances of Guibert. Guibert gave the dean of Cambrai special treatment in the first book of his treatise on saints and their relics.49 There he commented on Erlembald’s exemplary life and the miraculous visions which had posthumously confirmed, to Guibert and to others, his admission into heaven. In contrast to the lavish clothing which comprised the secular canon’s wardrobe and drew Bernard and R.’s ire, Erlembald wore a filthy hair shirt crawling with vermin (perpetuo cilicii squalore).50 His bed was a cramped bench, lacking a head- or footrest. And despite a lifetime of saintly conduct, his conscience was pricked at the end by doubts that he still had not done enough to correct the conduct of the clergy in his charge.51 Other canons either fled, or contemplated flight, from their chapter. A canon and dean of Notre-Dame of Laon, Luke of Roucy, quit his chapter along with a band of companions to reside communally in the church of Cuissy, which he had rebuilt for that purpose. He led this new community of regular canons, which a short time later became a daughter-house of Prémontré, for decades.52 Another who considered leaving his chapter but ultimately stayed was Raoul the Green, the 48

49

50

51

52

Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 282–3. Ebles appears in episcopal charters from 1079–1104; Walter between 1084–1112. Both futilely tried to obtain the bishopric of Laon when it fell vacant in 1104; Walter was assassinated in 1113 or 1114. Guibert of Nogent, De sanctis et eorum pigneribus, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 127 (Turnhout, 1993), 95–6; English translation by T. Head (ed.), Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (New York, 2001), 273–94. Guibert mentioned that Erlembald had died two years previously (hoc ferme biennium), and so must have composed this section of his work c. 1120. Guibert of Nogent, De sanctis et eorum pigneribus, 95. On the sumptuous clothing of most canons (and bishops), see Libellus de diversis ordinibus, 98–9; Bernard of Clairvaux, Tractatus de moribus, 104; Bernard of Clairvaux, On Baptism and the Office of Bishops, 42–3; Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books on Consideration. Advice to a Pope, trans. J. D. Anderson and E. T. Kennan (Kalamazoo, MI, 1976), 104–7. Guibert of Nogent, De sanctis et eorum pigneribus, 95: ‘intulit hoc sibi apprime a diabolis obici, quod sibi commissum minime plene coercuerat clerum’. AEL, no. 83, 158–9.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 provost of Reims from 1096–1106/8, who once dreamed with his fellow canon and schoolmaster-chancellor of Reims, Bruno of Cologne, of setting aside their duties and, inspired by divinus amor, becoming monks. Bruno, at least, did so.53 Decades later, he would remind the recently promoted Raoul of his earlier vow, writing, ‘Your prudence knows the saying, “The charity of the father is not in him who loves the world and worldly things”, which are the pleasures of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and ambition’.54 Despite his friend’s cajoling, Raoul opted to stay in the canons’ quarter and went on to become archbishop of Reims, even if his heart may have occasionally beckoned him to the hills of Calabria, where Bruno had settled. Bruno, for his part, could not sever all ties to Reims or to his friend.55 When Raoul died after sixteen years as archbishop of Reims, obituaries from near and far sang his virtues.56 Speaking of canons collectively, contemporaries found much to lament about their ‘unclerical’ conduct. Among individuals, a greater variety of religiosity obviously prevailed. And somewhere between these macro- and microsocial scales, cathedral chapters were divided up into interest groups balanced along familial and/or political lines. What united them, of course, was their religious vocation and institutional service – which, in the case of some canons, might span thirty, forty, or even fifty years – and their status as wealthy, semi-private, urban elites.57 Between the church and secular life, whose interests and ends were not always complementary, the ordinary canon lived in a state of flux. The overwhelming majority found the fit comfortable and the expectations of their social and religious status neither mutually contradictory nor morally problematic. If relatively few surrendered their choir stalls, some yet did, often to dramatic effect.58 The life of cathedral chapters coalesced around the liturgy and moved to its diurnal and calendrical rhythms. The canons sang in the choir, prayed for the dead, and took meals together in the refectory. On feast 53

54

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56 57 58

He recalled the moment in a letter written to Raoul in 1096 or 1097. Bruno went on to found La Chartreuse. See A. Wilmart, ‘Deux lettres concernant Raoul le Verd, l’ami de Saint Bruno’, Revue bénédictine, 51 (1939), 257–74, at 268. The exchange is noted by Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 257–8. Wilmart, ‘Deux lettres’, 267: ‘Nouit namque prudentia tua quis dicat: “Qui diligat mundum et ea quae sunt in mundo” – quae sunt uoluptas carnis, concupiscentia oculorum atque ambitio – “non est caritas patris in eo”’ (see 1 John 2:15–16). Raoul was accused of ambition by both his friends and his enemies; for the latter see PL 163, cols. 1418–19. In closing his letter, Bruno asked Raoul to send him a copy of the Life of St Remigius, which was unavailable in southern Italy. Wilmart, ‘Deux lettres concernant Raoul le Verd’, 257–8. See Lemarignier, Gaudemet, and Mollat, Histoire des institutions françaises au Moyen Age, 188–92. For examples, see chapter 3.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims days and other holy days, they were a common sight as they processed down city streets to liturgical stations at parish churches. Archdeacons and deans supervised rural parishes and their clergy. They gathered in the bishop’s chambers or church archives to witness episcopal documents, and participated in synods, councils, and various court assemblies, often acting as the bishop’s representatives. From around 1100, they drew up charters and made gifts of their own.59 Canons attended the prelate’s deathbed to carry out last rites and prepare his body for burial, and were on hand to welcome his successor into office. The canons’ communal existence continued outside the cathedral as well, although more loosely organized. It was not unusual for canons to own multiple residences and properties in the town and its surroundings, with their houses and extended families enclosed within a walled or gated quarter immediately adjacent to the cathedral and possessing clearly articulated privileges and protections.60 The quarter might also shelter one or more chapels or collegial churches, serving canons who wished to observe a fully regular life.61 In the province of Reims during our period, observant secular canons of this sort were a relatively rare species. Occasionally, a canon bequeathed his prebend to members of a reformed religious community. Such gifts might bring individual followers of regular canonical life into the canons’ midst for liturgical service, thereby providing a living example of a reformed clerical life, but in the aggregate, secular chapters attached to the cathedrals went unreformed.62 Reformed or not, the canons’ quarter was sacred space, protected by legal and spiritual wards. King Henry I, affirming the liberties of the canons’ cloister at Amiens in 1057, noted how many holy places (sancta loca) had lost track of both their lands and legal privileges thanks to 59

60

61 62

See, for example, BNF Coll. Picardie 234, fo. 49r and 179r-v (1101[?] and 1115–18 charters of the dean and chapter of Amiens on behalf of Saint-Corneille of Compiègne and Nongentel, near Beauvais, respectively); BNF Coll. Picardie 291, no. 14 (1144 compositio pacis of the archdeacon and chapter of Amiens). For canons’ quartiers in the province of Reims, see A. Saint-Denis, ‘Laon’, in J.-C. Picard (ed.), Les chanoines dans la ville. Recherches sur la topographie des quartiers canoniaux en France (Paris, 1994), 241–54, at 243–5; de Barthélemy, ed., Cartulaires de l’évêché et du chapitre Saint-Étienne de Chalonssur-Marne, 79–81; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 109–18; Desportes and Millet, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. I (Diocèse d’Amiens), 7–10, 21–4, and Desportes, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. III (Diocèse de Reims), 53–64; Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 36–42. Desportes and Millet, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. I (Diocèse d’Amiens), 7. The lack of reform is a pronounced characteristic of cathedral chapters in the archdiocese. See J. Becquet, ‘La réforme des chapitres cathédraux en France au XIe et XIIe siècles’, Bulletin philologique et historique (jusqu’a 1610) du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, année 1975 (1977), 31–41, which merits comparison with G. Robin, ‘Le problème de la vie commune au chapitre de la cathédrale Saint-Maurice d’Angers du IXe au XIIe siècle’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles, 13 (1970), 305–22, and Foulon, Église et réforme, 204–11.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 the violent attacks of the Northmen, and how, in light of the fact that Amiens was distinguished by the relics of so many saints, it fell to royal prerogative to correct these lapses.63 In a similar vein, the canons’ charter of privileges at Reims, which all new archbishops swore to uphold, invoked a decretal of Pope Stephen I stipulating that any episcopal action against goods consecrated to God – meaning, here, the chapter’s possessions – would be considered an act of sacrilege, because ‘they are holy, and should be violated by no one’.64 Canonical privileges varied from community to community. At Amiens, for example, they included exemptions from ecclesiastical or secular rents and taxes on the canons’ cloister and homes; freedom from ‘new customs’; the right to administer justice in cases of bloodshed within the cloister, and a monopoly over trade there. The canons of Beauvais received from king-designate Louis VI a series of concessions in 1104, among them the right to have any disputes between chapter and crown resolved in the chapter-house at Beauvais before two canons or their delegates.65 Besides themselves, canons sought protections for their familiae, including household residents and servants. The prerogatives of the Reims canons ran to nineteen articles, and included amid various other protections an exemption for the canons and their men from rents and tolls on their homes and fields. Another prized concession was the legal capacity of the chapter to pronounce sentences of excommunication, which the Reims canons won, and which stipulated that the archbishop must obligingly add his anathema to theirs.66 The economic protections guaranteed by royal and episcopal concession naturally benefited canons’ individual and collective wealth.67 Chapters were endowed with a mense, or communal property, which could be quite extensive and usually included numerous rural and urban altars.68 Canons’ personal assets were partible via inheritance, and evidence of their donative practices occasionally surfaces in charters. Among the best evidence for canons’ wealth are the capitular necrologies, which sometimes catalogued canons’ final gifts to their chapter(s). Illustrative 63 64

65 66 67

68

CCA, vol. I, no. 3, 7. AA, vol. I/1, 223–9, at 225–6: ‘Stephanus papa dicit: “Quicquid in sacratis Deo rebus ab episcopis injuste agitur, pro sacrilegio reputabitur; quia sacra sunt, et violari a quoquam non debent’”. See also Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 59–64. The canons’ privilege may be approximately dated to the last half of the eleventh century. RAL, vol. I, no. 8, 12–14. Louis confirmed this grant in August 1113 (RAL, vol. I, no. 83, 184–7). AA, 226–7. On the often very complicated nature of canons’ landholding and property rights see, with reference to Aquitaine, Trumbore Jones, Noble Lord, Good Shepherd, 27–59. For an example, see O. Guyotjeannin, ‘Noyonnais et Vermandois aux Xe et XIe siècles. La déclaration du trésorier Guy et les premières confirmations royales et pontificales des biens du chapitre cathédral de Noyon’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 139 (1981), 143–89.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims are the bequests of two Alulfs, members of the Osmont clan of Tournai, and the example of Odalric of Reims. The first Alulf, who was dean of Tournai until c. 1082, was married and had at least four sons, who as part of their paternal inheritance shared until 1101 the revenues of a mill owned by the cathedral chapter. The second Alulf’s wealth was displayed in his gift of several houses and an altar to the chapter of Tournai in 1105.69 A remarkable and virtually unique document for the region70 – the final testament of Odalric, the chancellor and provost of Reims (c. 1049–75) – enumerated his last gifts to the canons of Sainte-Marie of Reims, and bore witness to the pious works of his lifetime. He gave to his chapter an array of profitable extra- and intramural allods, including a house with vineyards and two mills, with instructions for the distribution of their revenues and produce.71 The provost bequeathed a literary inheritance as well: a pair of manuscripts to the chapter library at Reims, and, during a trip to Rome, another codex to the cathedral chapter of Lucca.72 Along with real estate, canons also accumulated dignities and offices, often in different towns, and the prebends accruing to them. Three examples are furnished by canons simultaneously attached to the chapters of Tournai and Cambrai, each connected with the two leading families of Tournai, the Avesnes and the just-mentioned Osmonts. Prior to ascending to the episcopacy of Cambrai in 1093, Gaucher of Oisy-Inchy, who was related to the advocate of Tournai and lord of Avesnes, served as treasurer of Tournai from 1080–91, treasurer of Noyon from 1084, and archdeacon of Cambrai from 1091. After Gaucher’s schism-wracked episcopal tenure and his final expulsion from the see of Cambrai in 1107, he succeeded in regaining his archdeaconry at Cambrai and the treasury of Tournai, both of which he held until his death sometime after 1126.73 Another member of the Avesnes family two generations removed from Gaucher, Everard, accumulated two 69

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71 72 73

Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 114–15, 137; Pycke, Répertoire biographique des chanoines, no. 1, 3; no. 123, 163–4. The surviving (autograph?) copy of Odalric’s testament may be found at Reims, BM 15, fo. 9r-v. It was published in GC, vol. X, Instr., cols. 27–9. See also Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 89–90, 104, 160, 663; B. de Gaiffier, ‘Odalric de Reims, ses manuscrits et les reliques de saint Clément à Cherson’, in Congar, Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles), 315–19; S. Albrecht, ‘Odalric von Reims und sein Bericht über die Translation der Reliquien des Hl. Clemens’, Byzantinoslavica. Revue internationale des études byzantines, 68 (2010), 157–71. Reims, BM 15, fos. 9r-v, 10v; GC, vol. X, Instr., cols. 27–9. See de Gaiffier, ‘Odalric de Reims’, 315–17. Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 156–8; Pycke, Répertoire biographique des chanoines, no. 50, 81–2; E. Van Mingroot, ‘Liste provisoire des actes des évêques de Cambrai de 1031 à 1130’, in W. Verbeke, M. Haverals, R. De Keyser, J. Goossens (eds.), Serta Devota in Memoriam Guillelmi Lourdaux (Leuven, 1992–1995), vol. II, 13–55, at 27.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 archdeaconries, of Tournai (1141–73) and Cambrai (from c. 1151–70) to go along with two minor provostships, and, finally, the episcopacy of Tournai itself.74 Finally, there was the powerful Thierry, a member of the Osmont clan who was provost (1118–43/45) and treasurer of the chapter of Tournai from c. 1132–43/45. He joined to these offices the provostship of Condé-sur-l’Escaut (held from at least 1122 to perhaps 1137; Everard seems to have taken it over from him) and the archidiaconate (c. 1096/97–1141/45) of Cambrai.75 With these offices came substantial incomes and just as important, familial influence over two dioceses which endured for decades, indeed centuries.76 These few examples, all of chapter dignitaries, testify to the collective and individual prominence of the secular canons attached to the cathedrals of northern France and Flanders. Of course, not all canons enjoyed incomes as generous as those featured here, and only a relative few succeeded in collecting multiple high offices. But the conspicuous accumulation and consumption of some served to bring down the fire of critics like Bernard on all of them. ‘Limitless ambition and insatiable greed!’ the abbot of Clairvaux fulminated. ‘To have scaled the first rungs of honours in the Church – attained by virtue of their conduct, through wealth or even the privilege of flesh and blood (which cannot inherit the kingdom of God) – will not set at rest their hearts, burning always with twofold longing: ever more to widen their embrace and to extend their upward reach’.77 Lesser dignitaries of the chapter in all likelihood aspired to the same status as their betters. Clerical service held the potential for promotion to higher office and access to its benefits. It is therefore not surprising to see secular canons rally to one and the same cause when their established privileges, including the holding of multiple benefices and securing positions for their sons, were threatened. Yet wealth and social status alone did not connect the secular clergy to one another. A shared educational background furnished them with intellectual and cultural ties 74

75

76

77

Pycke, Répertoire biographique des chanoines, no. 26, 39–40. The full tenure of Everard’s archidiaconate of Cambrai is uncertain; he was bishop of Tournai from 1173–90. The biographical background of Thierry Osmont has been confused with that of Thierry of Nesle, another archdeacon of Cambrai who combined this office with the provostship of the cathedral chapter between 1133 and c. 1183. Pycke has conflated elements of their biographies: Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 156–8; Répertoire biographique des chanoines, no. 54, 84–5. See also Newman, Les seigneurs de Nesle, vol. I, 63. Other members of the Avesnes clan who assumed cathedral dignities at Tournai were Burchard (treasurer, c. 1191–1205), Gossuin (archdeacon, 1182–1204; bishop, 1204–18), and William (treasurer, 1280–6); Pycke, Répertoire biographique des chanoines, no. 27, 40–1; no. 57, 87–8; no. 62, 93–4. Bernard of Clairvaux, Tractatus de moribus, 123; Bernard of Clairvaux, On Baptism and the Office of Bishops, 70.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims that, in addition to their socio-economic status, ultimately created the basis for a powerful collective identity.

what canons read May we assume that secular canons and bishops from their ranks were familiar with a core body of texts that structured and informed their outlook on their professional roles? The short answer is yes. The longer, more complicated response is, apart from a few individuals, most of whom come into focus after 1100, we have only scattered evidence concerning episcopal education and what bishops and canons actually read. We know still less about how they may have put what they read into practice, and the degree to which they consciously differentiated themselves from other clergy and laity of similar social standing.78 Our lack of knowledge is potentially problematic from an interpretive standpoint because, as scholars have become increasingly attuned to limning the contours of ‘clerical culture’, they have been challenged to offer a persuasive definition of exactly what it was. The term has generally been used to signal a collection of practices, values and experiences, and/or modes of expression particular to secular clergy and distinct from both lay and monastic experience.79 The few definitions of clerical culture, to say nothing of a distinctive episcopal culture, have thus remained

78 79

Compare M. F. Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2007), 82–97. A text which has done more than most to popularize the notion of monastic culture (meaning in general the intellectual and theological concerns particular to monks) as distinct from a clerical, scholastic culture, is J. Leclercq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. C. Misrahi (New York, 1961); see 2–7. More recently, scholars have identified clerical culture as ‘the particular way of life of the clergy, their institutions, their values, beliefs, and customs, their use of objects and their material life’ – Miller, ‘Religion makes a difference’, 1096; see also M. C. Miller, The Bishop’s Palace. Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 4 n. 4, and M. C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy. Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY, 2014); or else their ‘formation intellectuelle’ as a key component of clerical identity and locus of culture – J.-M. Matz, ‘La culture d’un groupe clérical. Les chanoines de la cathédrale d’Angers (milieu XIVe–début XVIe siècle)’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 88 (2002), 21–40, at 21; Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England, ch. 3. Alternatively, ‘clerical culture’ is sometimes defined implictly by what it is not, with secular ‘courtly culture’ acting as a dependable foil. The absence of clergy from considerations of courtly culture, or the clergy’s voiced opposition to courtly mores and customs, suggests difference on cultural, vocational, and material grounds, but often without identifying the actual sources or characteristics of the difference; J. Bumke, Courtly Culture. Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. T. Dunlap (Woodstock, NY, 2000); L. Harf-Lancner, ‘Les malheurs des intellectuels à la cour: les clercs curiaux d’Henri II Plantagenêt’, in C. Huber and H. Lähnemann (eds.), Courtly Literature and Clerical Culture / Höfische Literatur und Klerikerkultur / Littérature courtoise et culture cléricale. Selected Papers from the Tenth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Universität Tübingen, Deutschland, 28. Juli–3. August 2001 (Tübingen, 2002), 3–18.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 broad, flexible, ambiguous.80 And perhaps they should, for when subject to close inspection, the boundaries separating ‘clerical’ from ‘episcopal’ culture, or, at the secular courts where clerks and lay courtiers operated side-by-side, ‘lay’ from ‘clerical’, appear fairly porous.81 With the possible exception of his liturgical duties, not every member of the clergy or every bishop experienced his office as a clearly defined set of practices, or necessarily distinguished each of those practices from the practices of other religious, like monks; moreover, the degree to which clergy understood even the shared experience and symbolism of the liturgy surely varied greatly from one cleric to the next. The secular clergy of the cathedral, and bishops specifically, nevertheless constituted in medieval society an institutional site of what William H. Sewell, Jr, has termed ‘concentrated cultural practice’.82 That is, the secular clergy and bishop were primary makers and interpreters of meaning about ideas and practices essential to the entire Christian community. To name just a few: the nature and meaning of the ‘church’ as an institution and social body; the individual’s relationship to a salvific God and his community of saints; a host of sacramental and devotional religious practices; and notions of authority and social order.83 As we shall see in the next chapter, the clergy were neither the only makers of cultural meaning in these areas nor the sole practitioners in their public expression. But they clearly played a dominant role in the formation of social conduct and ideals, sifted from a millennium’s worth of prescriptive and theological literature, which identified and demarcated the clerical from the secular order, and, within the clerical sphere, which differentiated episcopal from other clerical roles. Clerical ideals often served as a barometer against which other groups measured and refined their understanding and public expression of their own social roles. In positing the existence of a distinctive clerical or episcopal culture which generated meaningful ideas about a range of beliefs central to 80

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Ambiguity is endemic to notions of ‘culture’ generally; see the editors’ introduction in V. E. Bonnell and L. Hunt (eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn. New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, CA, 1999), 11–12, and in the same volume, W. H. Sewell, Jr, ‘The concept(s) of culture’, 35–61. Responses to the essays of this volume may be found in The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 1475–1520; see especially R. Handler, ‘Cultural theory in history today’, The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 1512–20. C. S. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness. Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia, 1985), 15–16. This is doubly so when one takes into account English cathedral chapters, which were staffed by monks. See also the discussion in the following chapter on clerical clothing and hairstyles. Sewell, Jr, ‘The concept(s) of culture’, 55–6. See É. Palazzo, Liturgie et société au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2000).

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims medieval religious life, it makes sense to try to perceive the foundations from which it operated, and this inevitably leads us to ask what we know about the secular clergy’s educational background and its transmission of a shared and generally consistent cultural knowledge. A biblically established expectation of bishops was that they be learned, litterati.84 Examples of highly educated bishops abound for our period. The celebrated William of Champeaux, bishop of Châlons (1113–21) and teacher of Peter Abelard, and Josselin of Vierzy, bishop of Soissons (1126–52) and Abelard’s antagonist, were both schoolmasters of foremost renown. Other prelates of distinguished intellectual pedigree included: Archbishop Manasses I of Reims (c. 1069–80), a student of Lanfranc of Bec and Herimann of Reims; bishops Enguerran and Walter II of Laon (1098–1104 and 1155–74, respectively), the former possibly, and the latter definitely, having studied at Reims; Odo of Cambrai (1105–13), former schoolmaster of Tournai and an eminent theologian; Alberic, bishop-elect of Châlons (1126–7) and schoolmaster of Reims from 1117–36; bishops John of Thérouanne and Lambert of Arras, students of Ivo, later bishop of Chartres (1090–1115).85 All save Lambert, a secular canon at Saint-Pierre of Lille, had been ranking dignitaries in cathedral chapters prior to their elevation. The expertise of these figures leaned heavily towards theology and canon law. Their schooling and teaching took place at the leading intellectual centres of the day, the cathedral schools of Laon, Paris, and Reims, but also, in the cases of John and Lambert, at monastic schools.86 Confirming the impression of these select examples, very few sources characterize the prelates in our period as illiteratus – unlettered – or idiota. The few exceptions prove the rule. Guibert of Nogent describes Hélinand, bishop of Laon (1052–96), in a general critique of his character which should be taken with a pinch of salt, as being of obscure birth and 84

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1 Timothy 3:2; compare ‘Introduction: the bishop reformed’, in Ott and Trumbore Jones, The Bishop Reformed, 2; Rapp, Holy Bishops, 32–41. For Manasses I of Reims, see J. S. Ott, ‘“Reims and Rome are equals”: Archbishop Manasses I (c. 1069–1080), Pope Gregory VII, and the fortunes of historical exceptionalism’, in Danielson and Gatti (eds.), Envisioning the Bishop, 275–302. On Enguerran’s education, see Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 272–3. Useful career summaries of Walter II of Mortagne, bishop of Laon, and his master, Alberic of Reims, are given in J. R. Williams, ‘The cathedral school of Rheims in the time of Master Alberic, 1118–1136’, Traditio, 20 (1964), 93–114. For the intersecting paths of William of Champeaux and Josselin of Vierzy, who was perhaps William’s student, see now C. J. Mews, ‘The foundation of St Victor (Easter 1111) and the chronology of Abelard’s early career’, in I. RosierCatach (ed.), Arts du langage et théologie aux confins des XIe et XIIe siècles (Turnhout, 2011), 83–104. On John, Lambert, and Odo, see chapter 4. Both Odo of Tournai and Enguerran were friends, and perhaps fellow students, with Godfrey, the schoolmaster at Reims from c. 1076/77–1094/95; see J. R. Williams, ‘Godfrey of Rheims, a humanist of the eleventh century’, Speculum, 22 (1947), 29–45; C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels. Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia, 1994), 114–16, 160–1.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 ‘of marginal learnedness’ (literatura pertenuis).87 Even otherwise ‘unworthy’ candidates still seem to have been well educated. The monk Ursio, who became bishop of Soissons in 1080, was attacked by the author of the Vita sancti Arnulfi episcopi Suessionensis for his dissolute character but still rated as ‘learned in letters’.88 The moral foundation of clerical learning was, naturally, biblical. The few biographies we have of saintly bishops place their subjects’ devotion to scriptural study front and centre. Amandus of Castello, who briefly chronicled the life of Odo, the bishop of Cambrai, praised the breadth of his knowledge while privileging his scriptural learning: ‘he was ever in his books, as though he thought he required no rest unless it should come upon him while he was labouring in pursuit of the scriptures; indeed, he was anchored in grammar, adorned by rhetoric, fortified by dialectic’.89 Eventually leaving off his interest in poetry and grammar, Odo’s contemporary John, bishop of Thérouanne, zealously pursued biblical study. Wrote his biographer, ‘[he] turned his mind to investigating the senses of the divine scriptures, by which the inner man is nourished and advances in godly love’.90 Most bishops probably received a standard education in the seven liberal arts which comprised the trivium and quadrivium, and many, if not most, episcopal courts were havens for classical learning and the cultivation of courtly mores.91 Bishops like Enguerran of Laon, Manasses I of Reims, Gui of Amiens, and Hugh of Amiens – all former canons – were either poets or patrons of poets. Hugh of Amiens probably wrote poetry while a canon of Thérouanne, before becoming archbishop of Rouen.92 Reims was a centre for the study of rhetoric, grammar, and exegesis under its late eleventh-century masters Herimann, Bruno of Cologne, and Godfrey, the latter an accomplished poet.93 The writings of Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid were also widely imitated and incorporated 87

88 89

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91 92 93

Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 270. For an adjustment to this image, see S. Martinet, ‘Elinand, évêque de Laon méconnu (1052–1098)’, Mémoires de la Fédération des sociétés d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’Aisne, 36 (1991), 58–78, at 59–60. VSA, col. 1403. Amandus of Castello, De Odonis episcopi Cameracensis vita vel moribus, vol. XV/2, ed. O. HolderEgger, MGH SS (Leipzig, 1925), 942–5, at 943: ‘ita in libris totus erat, quasi nullam se crederet habere requiem, nisi eum quem in exercitio scripturarum arripuisset laborem. Erat quippe fundatus grammatica, rethorica ornatus, armatus dialectica’. VI, 128: ‘diuinarum sensibus scripturarum, quibus interior homo saginatur et in amore proficit diuino, animum intendit indagandis’. Jaeger, Origins of Courtliness, esp. 31–40, 113–26. R. P. Freeburn, Hugh of Amiens and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Farnham, 2011), 26. Williams, ‘Godfrey of Rheims’ and Williams, ‘Cathedral school of Rheims’; A. B. Kraebel, ‘Grammatica and the authenticity of the Psalms-commentary attributed to Bruno the Carthusian’, Mediaeval Studies, 71 (2009), 63–97.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims into texts of both devotional and non-devotional bent written at this time. Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre, who was probably once a secular canon and who authored the Life of Lietbertus, bishop of Cambrai around 1100, turned to Cicero, Horace, and Virgil over and over for inspiration and quotations concerning his saintly subject.94 Manasses I’s court poet, Fulcoius of Beauvais, filled his patron’s ears with verse on subjects inspired by classical Latin authors.95 And Bishop Gui of Amiens’ Carmen de Hastingae proelio (Song of the Battle of Hastings) – a work composed around 1067, probably at William I or Queen Matilda’s request – contains echoes of classical textual models within its elegiac stanzas.96 There is no question that cathedral clergy enjoyed access to established schoolmasters and libraries, and, at Reims and Laon, to two of the foremost schools of the day.97 The contents of the libraries at Amiens, Beauvais, Cambrai, Laon, and Reims are at least partially known and have been inventoried.98 The capitular libraries at Laon and Reims were 94

95

96

97

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VL, 847–50, 855, 857–8, 863. See also A. Hofmeister, ‘Cicero in der Vita Lietberti’, Neues Archiv, 30 (1948), 165–74. On Fulcoius, see M. L. Colker, ‘Fulcoius of Beauvais, poet and propagandist’, and T. Haye, ‘Christliche und pagane Dichtung bei Fulcoius von Beauvais’, both in M. W. Herren, C. J. McDonough, and R. G. Arthur (eds.), Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Medieval Latin Studies, Cambridge, September 9–12, 1998 (Turnhout, 2002), vol. I, 144–57 and 398–409; and Ott, ‘“Reims and Rome are equals”’, 280–2. F. Barlow (ed. and trans.), The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens (Oxford, 1999), xlvi–xlvii. See Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 46–75. Tournai enjoyed a brief but meteoric efflorescence, for which see J. Pycke, ‘Le déclin de l’école capitulaire de Tournai au XIe siècle et le rouleau mortuaire de l’abbé Hugues Ier de Saint-Amand’, Le Moyen Âge, 85 (1979), 433–43. Soissons, though overshadowed by nearby Laon and Reims, nevertheless seems to have had a vital intellectual community; see L. Carolus-Barré, ‘Les écoles capitulaires et les collèges de Soissons au moyen âge et au XVIe siècle’, in L. Carolus-Barré (ed.), Etudes et documents sur l’Ile-de-France et la Picardie au Moyen Age (Compiègne, 1994–1998), vol. I, 363–465. For overviews, see B. M. Olsen, ‘Les bibliothèques bénédictines et les bibliothèques de cathédrales: les mutations des XIe et XIIe siècles’, and M.-C. Garand, ‘Les anciennes bibliothèques du XIIIe au XVe siècle’, both in A. Vernet (ed.), Histoire des bibliothèques françaises (Paris, 1989), vol. I, 30–43 and 44–63, and – to be handled with caution – J. W. Thompson, The Medieval Library (New York, 1965; 1st pub. 1939), 222–66, with specific studies as follows. Amiens: G. Lanoë, ‘Les livres de Notre-Dame d’Amiens’, in Desportes and Millet, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. I (diocèse d’Amiens), 11–15. Beauvais: H. Omont, ‘Recherches sur la bibliothèque de l’Église cathédrale de Beauvais’, Mémoires de l’Institut National de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 40 (1914), 1–93; and G. Lanoë, ‘Quelques manuscrits liturgiques de Beauvais (IXe–XIIe siècles) d’après les anciens catalogues et les “papiers” des érudits modernes’, in P. R. Monks and D. D. R. Owen (eds.), Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation. Studies for Keith Val Sinclair (Leiden, 1994), 12–27. Vanderputten and Reilly (eds.), Acta synodi Atrebatensis, xxxiii–xxxix, have reconstructed the literary sources available to Bishop Gerard I c. 1025. Laon: J. J. Contreni, ‘The formation of Laon’s cathedral library in the ninth century’, in J. J. Contreni (ed.), Carolingian Learning, Masters, and Manuscripts (Hampshire, 1992), 919–39; Reims: C. Jeudy, ‘La bibliothèque cathédrale de Reims’, in Desportes, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. III (diocèse de Reims), 23–44. The library at Tournai is essentially unknowable

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 firmly established in the ninth century, while Beauvais’ endowment is traditionally attributed to the early eleventh.99 Even by contemporary standards they were of modest size, and the ravages of time and the hazards of fire, theft, and war periodically reduced the collections. Medieval catalogues usually offer at best rough approximations of a library’s holdings, nor were they necessarily complete.100 For example, an early fifteenth-century inventory of the volumes at Beauvais lists 186 manuscripts, a 1347 account at Amiens gives 98 items, while a series completed at Reims between 1456–79 names approximately 520.101 The eleventh- and twelfth-century book lists were in most cases probably smaller than those given here, and, relatively speaking, cathedrals appear to have been less active as centres of manuscript production than monastic scriptoria.102 Itemizations of cathedral libraries’ contents are rare, and the intellectual programmes of individual chapters meant that no two libraries contained precisely the same texts, but Bibles and liturgical works (lectionaries, benedictionals, missals, pontificals) filled an obvious and significant proportion of their bookchests, followed by patristic tomes: Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Isidore, Ambrose, and others.103 Works by classical poets and writers, theology, canon and secular law, and hagiography (passionaries, legendaries, vitae) completed the remaining shelves. Capitular libraries grew incrementally with the private donations of bishops and canons. Bequests reflected individual intellectual and religious interests.104 The teacher of Peter Abelard, Roscelin of Compiègne, for instance, left a substantial gift of more than a dozen books to the cathedral library of Saint-Pierre, Beauvais. They covered subject matter essential to his curriculum in grammar at the cathedral school, including

99

100

101

102

103

104

given the state of the evidence, although books apparently circulated among the clergy; see Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 276; J. Pycke, ‘Matériaux pour l’histoire de la bibliothèque capitulaire de Tournai au Moyen Age’, Scriptorium, 33 (1979), 76–84. Contreni, ‘Formation of Laon’s cathedral library’; Omont, ‘Recherches sur la bibliothèque de l’Église cathédrale de Beauvais’, 1. See P. Grierson, ‘La bibliothèque de St-Vaast d’Arras au XIIe siècle’, Revue bénédictine, 52 (1940), 117–40, at 118; S. Vanderputten and T. Snijders, ‘Echoes of benedictine reform in an eleventhcentury booklist from Marchiennes’, Scriptorium, 63 (2009), 79–88. Omont, ‘Recherches sur la bibliothèque de l’Église cathédrale de Beauvais’, 4–5, 11–12; Lanoë, ‘Les livres de Notre-Dame d’Amiens’, 11; Jeudy, ‘La bibliothèque cathédrale de Reims’, 25–7. The tenth-century inventory of Notre-Dame of Cambrai lists 64 items, while approximately 125 were at Laon at the same time; see respectively Olsen, ‘Les bibliothèques bénédictines et les bibliothèques de cathédrales’, 39–40, and Contreni, ‘Formation of Laon’s cathedral library’, 125. T. Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c. 1075–c. 1125 (Oxford, 1992), 31–7; Lanoë, ‘Les livres de Notre-Dame d’Amiens’, 12; Omont, ‘Recherches sur la bibliothèque de l’Église cathédrale de Beauvais’, 12. See, for an Anglo-Saxon case study with strong continental (Lotharingian) connections, E. Corradini, ‘Leofric of Exeter and his Lotharingian connections: a bishop’s books, c. 1050–1072’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester (2008).

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims works of Augustine, Priscian, Macrobius, Boethius, Juvenal, Ovid, and Statius.105 We are likewise fortunate to have information on the bookgifts of several canons of Reims, including the aforementioned provost Odalric (d. 1075). Odalric left the chapter a codex containing a tripartite psalter and a volume containing Books 23–29 of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob, which complemented the ninth-century bequest of the same work by Archbishop Hincmar.106 The cathedral at Lucca received from him a lavishly decorated copy of the vita of St Martin.107 Three manuscripts in the municipal library of Reims bear the ex libris of Odalric’s successor as provost, Manasses (c. 1076–96): two passionaries and a lectionary/homeliary. A fourth, a complete copy of Burchard of Worms’ Decretum, was given either by the same Manasses or his eponymous predecessor, Archbishop Manasses I. Somewhat later, the dean Leo I (1130–67) bequeathed to the chapter copies of Gregory the Great’s homilies on Ezekiel and his Dialogues, as well as an epistle book and Haimo of Auxerre’s commentary on the Apocalypse.108 Finally, a former archdeacon (1137–44) of Reims promoted to the bishopric of Le Mans, William of Passavant, passed on to the chapter there his copy of Gratian’s Decretum, among ‘volumes of other works’.109 William’s bequest of the Decretum is indicative of the wider expertise and interest in canon law exhibited by secular clergy in the closing decades of the twelfth century, and of the extensive library of books on canon law available at Reims.110 Bishops also gave their privately owned books to cathedral chapters. Typical examples include Archbishop Gervais of Reims, who gave the cathedral library three benedictionals and a missal; Clarembaud of Senlis (d. 1133), who gave nine books (unnamed, regrettably) to Notre-Dame of Senlis; Archbishop Samson of Reims (d. 1161), who gave the chapter a copy of the gospels worked in gold and precious stones; and Bishop Hélinand of Laon (d. 1096), who left to the canons his sumptuous gospel

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106 108

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Omont, ‘Recherches sur la bibliothèque de l’Église cathédrale de Beauvais’, 2–3; C. J. Mews, ‘St Anselm, Roscelin and the see of Beauvais’, in D. E. Luscombe and G. R. Evans (eds.), Anselm: Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury. Papers in Commemoration of the Nine-Hundredth Anniversary of Anselm’s Enthronement as Archbishop, 25 September 1093 (Sheffield, 1996), 106–19, at 117–18. These manuscripts are now Reims, BM 15 and 102. 107 de Gaiffier, ‘Odalric de Reims’. Jeudy, ‘La bibliothèque cathédrale de Reims’, 24; H. Loriquet, Catalogue général des bibliothèques publiques de France (Paris, 1904), vol. XXXVIII/1 (Reims), 103, 118, 232, 560. Leo also sent a psalter to the bishop and clergy of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem between 1129–45; see M. Barber and K. Bate (trans.), Letters from the East. Crusaders, Pilgrims and Settlers in the 12th–13th Centuries (Farnham, 2010), 44. APC, 471. Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 56–72; Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, 60–73.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 books.111 The available sources suggest that individuals in our period gave few books on average, a far cry from the twenty-one codices Archbishop Hincmar gave to the churches at Reims before his death in 882, or the twenty given by Bishop Dido (d. 893) to the cathedral of Laon.112 Liturgical books and patristic works were preponderant. Canons naturally had access to a greater selection of texts than those contained in their cathedral archive or personal library. We know that texts were exchanged among institutions, copied, carried by travellers, or consulted on the spot by itinerant scholars.113 Seven of the eight largest monastic libraries known in late twelfth-century France, each holding hundreds of volumes apiece, were located in northern France, Flanders, and Lotharingia, in some cases only a few kilometres from the diocesan capital.114 While monks usually offer the best-known examples of roving researchers – one thinks of the indefatigable Herman of Tournai, Bartholomew of Laon’s biographer, who was personally familiar with archives in Châlons, Laon, Soissons, and Tournai (and no doubt many more) – secular canons likewise hunted down the documents necessary for their work. One of the canons who authored the Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, for example, copied down a charter of Saint-Humbert of Maroilles which he had found at the abbey, and tipped it between two folios of the Deeds’ autograph manuscript.115 In similar fashion, and perhaps with the documentary rigour of the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium in mind, the author of the Gesta quibus Atrebatensium ciuitas . . . in antiquam reformatur dignitatem (The Deeds by which the city of Arras . . . was restored to its former glory), also a canon, made a point of indicating in his chronicle that the original papal letters establishing the see of Arras’ independence from Cambrai had been stored in the archives 111

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Noted in Reims, BM 15, fo. 23r; GC, vol. X, col. 1398; AA, 338; and Martinet, ‘Elinand, évêque de Laon méconnu’, 60, 78, respectively. The biographer of John of Thérouanne, noted the ‘libros optimos’ which he left his church; VI, 154. Contreni, ‘Formation of Laon’s cathedral library’, 922–4. Recent studies exploring the circulation of canon law, hagiographical texts, and broader intellectual currents in our period have pointed to the Via Francigena, which passed through Châlons, Reims, Laon, Arras, and Thérouanne, as a major conduit of transmission; see V. Ortenberg, ‘Archbishop Sigeric’s journey to Rome in 990’, Anglo-Saxon England, 19 (1990), 197–246, with a map of the road at 230–2; G. Philippart and M. Trigalet, ‘Légendes hagiographiques des provinces de Parme et Plaisance: circulation des textes et voies de communication’, in R. Greci (ed.), Itinerari medievali e identitá europea (Bologna, 1999), 249–312; and FowlerMagerl, ‘Collection and transmission of canon law’, 129–39. Olsen, ‘Les bibliothèques bénédictines et les bibliothèques de cathédrales’, 41; Grierson, ‘La bibliothèque de St-Vaast d’Arras’. They were: Saint-Amand, Corbie, Lobbes, Saint-Bertin, Stavelot, Saint-Vaast, and Bec. The exception was Cluny, in Burgundy. GEC, 412; see T. M. Riches, ‘Episcopal historiography as archive: some reflections on the autograph of the GEC (MS Den Haag KB 75 F15)’, Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis, 10 (2007), 7–46, at 31.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims at Sainte-Marie of Reims, ‘in the golden coffer commonly called “the little cradle”’.116 These two examples concern diplomatic sources used to establish the veracity of written accounts in episcopal gesta, not historical or theological works. They nevertheless point to their authors’ general awareness of where crucial texts resided in regional repositories, and, in the case of the papal letters housed at Reims, to their precise location inside the church archives. There is every reason to think that scholars in this period either had a good idea where the copies of texts they wanted resided, or knew where to begin looking. If not, they simply asked colleagues from other locales or kept their eyes open.117 A marginal note in the encyclopedic Liber Floridus compiled at Saint-Omer, for example, indicates that Herbert, an archdeacon of Thérouanne (1108/9–33), brought back from a trip to Italy two verses concerning King Cyrus, which the Liber’s author, Lambert, inserted into his text.118 Having overviewed some of the literate practices and learned background of the secular clergy, we are now in a better position to ascertain their familiarity with the prescriptive and exemplary works on bishops and episcopal office available. Most clergy and bishops would have read Gregory the Great’s Liber pastoralis, since the Carolingian era the leading medieval text on episcopal conduct, as well as other works, like the Life of St Martin, Bishop of Tours, which offered archetypal portrayals of exemplary prelates. Gregory’s writings were widely disseminated and thoroughly penetrated medieval theology and exegesis.119 Manuscripts of the Liber, Dialogues, Homilies on Ezekiel, and Moralia in Iob were especially abundant and appeared in most library catalogues. Saint-Pierre of Beauvais owned a tenth-century copy of the Liber and a seventh-century 116

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GA, 191; Registre, 170–1: ‘Harum exemplar litterarum cum bulla, scias conseruari Remis in ecclesiae beate Marie semper uirginis domine nostre in sacrario in locello aureo qui uulgo dicitur berceolum’. As did Herman of Tournai, when he was seeking information about charters of Saint-Martin held at the abbey of Ferrières; Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 292–3. Church archives sometimes kept copies of the catalogues of other institutions. Saint-Thierry of Reims, for example, possessed in the twelfth century a copy of the eleventh-century catalogue of Gorze, found in Reims, BM 407, fos. 12–14. See A. Wagner, Gorze au XIe siècle. Contribution à l’histoire du monachisme bénédictin dans l’Empire (Nancy-Turnhout, 1996), 101–90. A. Derolez, The Autograph Manuscript of the Liber Floridus. A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of Saint-Omer, Corpus Christianorum. Autographa Medii Aevi 4 (Turnhout, 1998), 79–80 and 79 n. 122. René Wasselynck established Gregory’s influence in a series of studies produced decades ago ; see R. Wasselynck, ‘La présence des Moralia de S. Grégoire le Grand dans les ouvrages de morale du XIIe siècle’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 35 (1968), 197–240 (with further references at n. 1), and 36 (1969), 31–45. See more recently the editors’ introduction in the critical edition of the RP, vol. I, 88–102; E. A. Matter, ‘Gregory the Great in the twelfth century: the Glossa Ordinaria’, in J. C. Cavadini (ed.), Gregory the Great. A Symposium (Notre Dame, IN, 1995), 216–26; R. W. Clement, ‘A handlist of manuscripts containing Gregory’s Regula Pastoralis’, Manuscripta, 28 (1984), 33–44.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 copy of the Moralia, among other works.120 Notre-Dame of Cambrai owned at least one copy of Gregory’s treatise on pastoral care, and it was widely cited in local historical and hagiographical texts.121 Also common were the Life of Gregory by John the Deacon and the register of Gregory’s letters. In fact, a surviving twelfth-century catalogue of the library of Saint-Vaast of Arras (compiled c. 1120–30) was written on the final leaf of its copy of Gregory’s Registrum, which would presumably have made the codex one of the more regularly, if incidentally, consulted works in the abbey’s library.122 The Gregorian corpus was similarly present at Lobbes, in the diocese of Cambrai, by 1049, and the abbey of SaintThierry of Reims held the Homilies on the Song of Songs, Dialogues, and two copies of the Book of Pastoral Care.123 We have already seen that Gregory’s writings were a popular fixture of the personal collections of Reims’ canons.124 Widely referenced by monastic and clerical authors in contemporary writings on bishops, Gregory’s Liber pastoralis did not gather dust on library shelves. It is quoted, for instance, in the Chronicle of Mouzon, an account of the abbey’s foundation composed in the early eleventh century.125 The chronicle’s author was equally familiar with the Dialogues and Moralia in Iob.126 He drew on them for his descriptions of Mouzon’s episcopal champion, the archbishop of Reims Adalbero (969–89). When a Count Otto pilfered the relics of St Arnulf which 120

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Omont, ‘Recherches sur la bibliothèque de l’Église cathédrale de Beauvais’, 78, 83; Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England, 42–3, 87. Copies are also attested at Arras, Beauvais, Laon, Reims, and Soissons. See B. Judic, ‘La diffusion de la Regula pastoralis de Grégoire le Grand dans l’Église de Cambrai, une première enquête’, Revue du nord, 76 (1994), 207–30, with references to copies held elsewhere in Cambrai and Flanders. The Liber and Gregory’s Homilies were cited repeatedly in the GEC, at 446, 475, 479; in the Acta synodi Atrebatensium, and in the Cambrésien Acta altera (Vita tertia) sancti Gaugerici episcopi confessoris, AASS August, vol. II, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1869), 684–5. Gregory’s other major works were also at Saint-Vaast; see Grierson, ‘La bibliothèque de St-Vaast d’Arras’, 117–18, 129. H. Omont, ‘Catalogue des manuscrits de l’abbaye de Lobbes (1049)’, Revue des bibliothèques, 1 (1891), 3–14, at 8–19, 13; M.-P. Laffitte, ‘Esquisse d’une bibliothèque médiévale. Le fonds de manuscrits de l’abbaye de Saint-Thierry’, in M. Bur (ed.), Saint-Thierry, une abbaye du VIe au XXe siècle. Actes du Colloque international d’histoire monastique, Reims–Saint-Thierry, 11 au 14 octobre 1976 (Saint-Thierry, 1979), 73–100, at 93, and, in the same volume, J. Leclercq, ‘Livres et lecteurs à Saint-Thierry au XIIe siècle’, 101–11. Above, 50. A passionary owned by the provost Manasses of Reims (Reims, BM 1402) contained John the Deacon’s account of the life and virtues of Gregory, followed by copies of four of Gregory’s letters (fos. 250v–369r) and a shorter narrative of the sainted pope’s life and deeds (fos. 369r–380v). M. Bur (ed. and trans.), Chronique ou livre de fondation du monastère de Mouzon (Chronicon Mosomense seu Liber fundationis monasterii sanctae Mariae O.S.B. apud Mosomum in dioecesi Remensi) (Paris, 1989). Ibid., 71–4.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims belonged to Mouzon and installed them in one of his castles, Archbishop Adalbero, the chronicler wrote, stood fast ‘like a wall of the house of Israel’ – a favoured Gregorian passage found, among other works, in the Book of Pastoral Care.127 Later, following a period of prolonged engagement in the administrative concerns of his see and with Mouzon, Adalbero is depicted adhering to the Liber’s stipulation – quoted directly – that the conscientious pastor must neither become so preoccupied with external affairs that he neglects his own spiritual needs, nor so obsessed with the life of his soul that he ignores his neighbour’s plight.128 Gregory is the only church father the monastic chronicler of Mouzon cites word for word. Works produced in the intellectual circle of Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai (1012–51), including the written record of Gerard’s synod at Arras around Christmas 1024, the Acta synodi Atrebatensis, in which he famously interviewed a group of accused heretics, also excerpted the Liber, as did the Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, which was produced at the same time.129 In the Life of St Géry, bishop of Cambrai, composed at Gerard’s request c. 1023/4 by a canon of Cambrai, the sainted Géry preaches to his flock according to the Gregorian model established in Book 3 of the Liber pastoralis. Sulpicius Severus’ Life of St Martin offered another popular (virtually canonical) template for episcopal conduct.130 Martin served as bishop of Tours from about 371 to 397. During his lifetime and after his death, he was widely venerated as an ascetic, wonder-worker, and apostle to the Gauls.131 Later bishops, especially those considered saintly or exemplary, were routinely compared to him, and key moments in Martin’s biographical narrative, such as his reluctant election to the bishopric of Tours or his sharing of his cloak with a pauper outside the gates of Amiens, served as hagiographical topoi signalling episcopal modesty and generosity.132 These episodes would have been read aloud at religious institutions 127 128

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Bur, Chronique de Mouzon, 153–4. Ibid., 165–6: ‘Post haec . . . domnus Adalbero secundum Pastoralis libri sententiam quae dicit: “Sit rector”’. Gerard of Cambrai, Acta synodi Atrebatensis, 69. A partial ninth-century copy of the Vita sancti Martini survives from Cambrai (Cambrai, BM 546, fos. 103–117), as does an eleventh-century copy from Notre-Dame of Arras (Arras, BM 309), and a tenth-century passionary from Saint-Thierry of Reims (Reims, BM 1405, fos. 1r–38v). Sulpicius Severus, Vie de Saint Martin, ed. and trans. J. Fontaine (Paris, 1967), vol. I, 46–51. Churches and abbeys dedicated to Martin were part of the urban landscape at Amiens, Beauvais, Cambrai, Laon, Noyon, Reims, Tournai, and elsewhere. For the development of Martin’s early cult in and around Tours, see S. Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin. Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, NY, 1991), ch. 1. See R. M. Stein, Reality Fictions. Romance, History, and Governmental Authority, 1025–1180 (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), 57, who notes the parallels between the early eleventh-century Vita sancti Autberti Cameracensis episcopi and the Vita sancti Martini; it was also referenced in Gerard of Cambrai, Acta synodi Atrebatensis, 39.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 annually on Martin’s feast day from their compendia of saints’ lives or passionaries, until clergy simply internalized them as part of their cultural lexicon, citing them as desired to epitomize saintly episcopal behaviour. For example, St Géry of Cambrai is depicted making a pilgrimage to Martin’s tomb to render the saint homage.133 Three further examples, one a commonplace exchange drawing upon the famous account of Martin’s episcopal election, confirm this general rule. A letter sent to Bishop Lambert of Arras by the cathedral chapter of Reims, announcing the election of their provost Manasses to the archbishopric in 1096, drew its inspiration in describing his reaction from Martin’s response on receiving the news that he was his community’s choice for pastor. Owing to Manasses’ reluctance, the canons informed Lambert, ‘We did not so much elect him as seize him’ – as had been the case with Martin.134 The biographer of Lietbert of Cambrai (1051–76), writing about the same time, touched on a similar theme when it came to the circumstances of Lietbert’s election in 1051. Like Martin, Lietbert at first refused the episcopacy, and so was ‘seized, dragged forth, and raised to the pontifical throne’.135 Moving beyond this general topos of the unwilling candidate, the vita’s author advances a more specific comparison. A faction within the cathedral chapter, led by another archdeacon, contested Lietbert’s worthiness before the emperor. After hearing their complaints, the emperor calmly recognized in their rebuff of Lietbert a moment akin to St Martin’s rejection by a faction of clergy led by another bishop, despite Martin’s universal favour among the populace. Refusing to let the candidate’s detractors win him over, the emperor gave his approval to Lietbert’s election.136 Finally, when Bishop Radbod II of NoyonTournai (1068–98) authored a new vita of Medardus, the patron-saint of his see, he included an example of his subject’s conduct locating him firmly within the Martinian tradition. The privileged adolescent Medardus, Radbod recounted, showed signs of his virtue from his youth, including his care for the poor and abstinence. The former trait manifested itself when, while out walking one day, he came upon a blind man, naked and destitute, on the road. Without hesitating, the young Medardus gave the man a valuable cloak (casula) his mother had made for him.137 Later, he patiently bore his parents’ indignation at his generosity, because he knew he had given his gift to God. The parallels to Martin’s parting of his cloak with the beggar are obvious. 133 134 135

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Acta altera (Vita tertia) sancti Gaugerici episcopi Cameracensis, 684–6. Registre, 338–9 and 339 n. 8. VL, 846. Capitur and trahitur are also used in the vitae of Gregory the Great by John the Deacon and Gregory of Tours. Ibid., 848. 137 VSM, 87.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims Direct and indirect familiarity with Sulpicius’ Life of St Martin and Gregory’s works, especially the Book of Pastoral Care, as guides to paradigmatic episcopal conduct, comprised crucial components of the secular clergy’s intellectual and cultural inheritance. A variety of treatises and sermons on the ecclesiastical grades or offices, including copies of Isidore of Seville’s De officiis ecclesiasticis, also sat in northern archives.138 These texts naturally were useful to bishops. But they were also the possessions of canons who served under them, who turned to the church fathers and other foundational documents for moral support in their dealings with both their own and other bishops. Gregory and Sulpicius’ works do not begin to exhaust the wealth of prescriptive and didactic texts concerning the bishop’s duties and conduct available in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. They have been singled out here because they regularly served as touchstones and common points of reference for the episcopate and secular clergy when they pondered the ideals of episcopal office, from preaching to pastoral care. The texts’ commonplace presence in episcopal gesta and saints’ lives suggests not only their widespread availability but their enduring authority as sources on bishops’ mores and behaviour.139 These texts and their use furnish ready points of access into the ideals of a broader ‘clerical culture’ with which bishops and secular clergy identified, and of which they saw themselves as defenders and heirs. Those roles would crystallize and ultimately begin to divide in the turbulent decades of ecclesiastical reform. clerical identity and the assault on nicolaitism In the eleventh century, certain aspects of clerical life came under sustained scrutiny by reformist clergy, popes, and laypeople. One such aspect, and one of many markers of clerical identity, was the clerical family. Clerical celibacy and sexuality, and more deeply still the role of familial influence, with all of its attendant benefits in the life of the clergy, lay at the centre of debate between those seeking to reform or defend existing practices.140 Priests and clerical dignitaries above the rank of 138

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See R. E. Reynolds, ‘A ninth-century treatise on the origins, office, and ordination of the bishop’, and Reynolds, ‘Ivonian opuscula’, both in Reynolds, Clerical Orders in the Early Middle Ages. See I. Van ’t Spijker, Als door een speciaal stempel. Traditie en vernieuwing in heiligenlevens uit Noordwest-Frankrijk (1050–1150) (Hilversum, 1990), 68–9, 147–8. Some key studies among the growing number in Anglophone scholarship concerned with sexuality, gender, the clergy, and church reform: J. A. McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage: the restructuring of the gender system, 1050–1150’, in C. A. Lees (ed.), Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), 3–29; C. Leyser, ‘Custom, truth and gender in

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 subdeacon had long been explicitly forbidden to marry, and took a vow of celibacy. Yet few if any chapters lacked married clergy, and canons’ children and spouses would have been a common sight in most ecclesiastical quarters; other clerks married but remained separated from their wives. The dark gaze with which the late eleventh- and twelfth-century popes perceived clerical sex and marriage and the equally widespread ‘heresy’ of simony fell upon the archdiocese of Reims in 1049. Leo IX’s synod at Saint-Remi that year brought an unequivocal denunciation of those who purchased or sold sacred orders, altars, or the ecclesiastical ministry.141 Leo does not seem to have directly addressed clerical marriage or fornication at Saint-Remi, although he did so a few weeks later in his council at Mainz. By the mid-1070s, ‘nicolaitism’ (as nonobservance of clerical celibacy was dubbed) had fully joined simony as an issue dividing clerical and secular loyalties within the church.142 Bishops, who generally were neither married nor fathers, but who were for the most part products of cathedral chapters and had benefitted from familial preferment, were compelled under papal pressure to implement reform measures in their frequently hostile chapters. In this climate of mistrust and defensiveness, aggrieved individuals learned to use accusations of fornication and simony to undermine their rivals by putting in motion the bureaucratic and punitive machinery of the papacy. In other words, whether or not they personally felt uneasy about the sexual habits or familial ambitions of their fellow clergy, churchmen of the late eleventh century knew that the papacy most certainly did – and that the vicars of St Peter were prepared to act to stamp it out.143

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eleventh-century reform’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), Gender and Christian Religion, SCH 34 (Woodbridge, 1998), 75–91; D. Elliott, Fallen Bodies. Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1999); M. C. Miller, ‘Masculinity, reform, and clerical culture: narratives of episcopal holiness in the gregorian era’, Church History, 72 (2003), 25–52; Cushing, Reform and the Papacy, 120–8; H. Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West: c. 1100–1700 (Burlington, VT, 2009), esp. 87–122; M. McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000–1122 (Cambridge, 2010), 31–6 and passim; and the recent collection of essays on clerical identities by J. D. Thibodeaux (ed.), Negotiating Clerical Identities. Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2010), with additional references. Outright purchase was hardly necessary for gaining clerical office, however. As we have seen, families could just as easily pass down cathedral dignities to sons or nephews. The synod is synopsized by Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne, 154–9; edited by D. Jasper, Die Konzilien Deutschlands und Reichsitaliens, 1023–1059, vol. VIII, MGH Concilia (Hanover, 2010), 224–50; and was witnessed and described by Anselm of Saint-Remi, Histoire de la dédicace de Saint-Remy (Dedicatio ecclesiae beati Remigii Remensis), ed. and trans. J. Hourlier, in La Champagne bénédictine. Contribution à l’Année Saint Benoît (480–1980) (Reims, 1981), 250–3 (c. 2). The renunciation of clerical marriage seems to have been revived, if inconsistently enforced, during the pontificate of Leo IX. Cushing, Reform and the Papacy, 95–105, 125–8; H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII and the chastity of the clergy’, in Frassetto (ed.), Medieval Purity and Piety, 269–302. Tellenbach, Church in Western Europe, 171–5.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims The first sustained salvos of the fight against nicolaitism and simony in northern France were issued at two councils convened by the papal legate Hugh of Die, at Autun (September 1077) and Poitiers (January 1078).144 Many clergy from the province of Reims attended. Regrettably, nearly all the canons issued at Autun are lost; those of Poitiers have been preserved. At both councils, Hugh of Die’s handling of bishops accused of simony or other offences amounted to a scorched-earth policy. He suspended or deposed Archbishop Manasses I of Reims and the bishops of Amiens, Beauvais, Laon, Noyon, Senlis, Soissons, and Thérouanne – virtually the entire diocesan cohort.145 The canons issued at Poitiers were deeply problematic for the traditional practices of secular clergy. Many regulated aspects of their offices.146 Canon 2, for example, prohibited bishops, archdeacons, and archpriests from holding more than one prebend concurrently. Canon 6 forbade canons (along with monks and abbots) from purchasing or otherwise acquiring churches without episcopal consent – a firm check on the management of canons’ familial assets, which frequently included altars. Canons 7 and 8 regulated access to the canonical ranks. Higher orders must be acquired without skipping grades (that is, an archdeacon first needed to serve as a deacon, an archpriest first as a priest), and, more seriously, priests’ sons and others ‘born in fornication’ were barred from holy orders (ad sacros gradus).147 Finally, canon 9 renewed the ban on clerical concubinage among deacons, priests, and subdeacons, and prohibited them from having suspect women in their houses. Anyone who knowingly attended the mass of a simoniac or fornicating priest was to be excommunicated. Collectively, the canons of Poitiers undermined the heritability of clerical offices and enlisted parishioners to monitor and report on the clergy’s sexual conduct.

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146

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Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne, 176–9, 181–2. For background and context, see H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford, 1998), 348–413, and ‘Pope Gregory VII and the chastity of the clergy’, 279–80; compare the remarks of R. I. Moore, ‘Family, community and cult on the eve of the gregorian reform’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 30 (1980), 49–69. Autun and Poitiers were not the first instances of councils condemning clerical fornication and simony in France; initial efforts centred on Paris. But they were the first to be backed by consistent legatine oversight. The councils were held soon after Gregory’s 25 March 1077 letter to Geoffrey, bishop of Paris, commanding him to urge fellow bishops to bar fornicating priests from altar service. The suspended Gerard II, bishop of Cambrai, was restored at Autun; the bishop of Châlons, Roger III, had been suspended since 1075. The canons are published in J. D. Mansi (ed.) Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, (Florence and Venice, 1759–1798), vol. XX, cols. 498–9. B. Schimmelpfennig, ‘Zölibat und Lage der “Priestersöhne” vom 11. bis 14. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift 227 (1978), 1–44, at 15.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 The reaction to the councils at Autun and Poitiers was vehement, and triggered a coordinated response in the province of Reims. The secular clergy in the dioceses of Flanders led the way.148 A Treatise in Defence of Clerical Marriage (Tractatus pro conubio clericorum) surfaced at Thérouanne in late 1077 or early 1078, written, as Brigitte Meijns recently argued, by the hand of the archdeacon (and later bishop) Hubert.149 Hubert assembled – hastily, perhaps, given that much of the work consists of lengthy extracts from biblical, legal, and patristic sources, and lurches awkwardly from point to point – an array of texts in defence of married clergy and the ordination of priests’ sons. Building on and responding to the Treatise’s arguments, and marshalling evidence from other contemporary pro-marriage tracts, the clergy of Cambrai wrote an open letter to the church of Reims.150 They presented their brethren with a rallying cry to defend the clergy’s liberty. The Cambrai canons laid out numerous grievances. Foremost among them were the blows to the clergy’s honour inflicted by the ‘endless councils’ of the ‘Romans’, by which they meant Hugh of Die and his fellow legates. Specifically, acting under the cloak of religion but driven by their own ambition, the legates had restricted clergy to a single office and prebend and forbidden the promotion or ordination of their sons. These acts, the canons complained, defamed the holders of clerical offices. Until recently, dearest brothers, the order of clergy to which we belong enjoyed the highest honour and reverence, and the title of cleric, by God’s own design, was considered more honourable than others and also enjoyed the highest

148

149

150

See A. L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: the Eleventh-Century Debates (New York, 1982), 53–7, 123–5; E. Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung der Priesterehe in der Reformzeit (Hanover, 1997), 105–25. See for background P. Beaudette, ‘“In the world but not of it”: clerical celibacy as a symbol of the medieval church’, in Frassetto (ed.), Medieval Purity and Piety, 23–46, and R. E. Reynolds, ‘The subdiaconate as a sacred and superior order’, in R. E. Reynolds (ed.), Clerics in the Early Middle Ages. Hierarchy and Image (Aldershot, 1999), 1–31. B. Meijns, ‘Opposition to clerical continence and the gregorian celibacy legislation in the diocese of Thérouanne: Tractatus Pro Clericorum Conubio (c. 1077–1078)’, Sacris erudiri. A Journal on the Inheritance of Early and Medieval Christianity, 47 (2008), 223–90; the Tractatus has been edited by Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 254–66. Cameracensium et Noviomensium clericorum epistolae, vol. III, ed. H. Böhmer, MGH Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI. et XII. conscripti 1 (Hanover, 1897), 573–8, also edited by Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 243–51; references will be to the latter. The Cambrai author’s identity is unknown, but he may have been the chancellor Werimbold, whose son Arnulf was also a deacon of the chapter and an episcopal chaplain; see E. van Mingroot (ed.), Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, évêques de Cambrai et d’Arras, comtes du Cambrésis (1012–1092/93) (Leuven, 2005), 2.06, 101; 2.16, 141 and 142 n. 2. There is textual evidence that the author knew of the so-called Rescript of Ulric (Epistola Pseudo-Udalrici) and the Norman Treatise on Grace, two slightly earlier treatises in defence of clerical marriage; see Barstow, Married Priests, 124.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims consideration. Now, however, ʻwe have fallen into the contempt of our neighbours, and have become a source of derision and mockery to those around usʼ.151

The ban on marriage once applied mainly to priests was now being upheld for every clerical grade, against time- and text-bound proofs that chaste marriage was an appropriate condition for non-ordained clergy.152 For the canons of Cambrai, a more immediate concern was that they could not count on the support of their bishop, Gerard II (1076–92). The pope had deposed Gerard soon after his ordination because he had been invested by Henry IV, and in order to have his suspension lifted, the bishop had gone to Rome and come to an agreement with Gregory. In exchange for his formal and official consecration at the Council of Autun, Gerard would enact the clerical reforms mandated by Rome. These, according to the complaint of the Cambrai letter, he had implemented faithfully and forcibly.153 In the canons’ eyes, the new laws were reprehensible. The letter returns again and again to the ‘intolerable injury’ the clergy were suffering from such measures. They had been diminished in the eyes of the laity, who considered their married state a sufficient pretext for denying the efficacy of the sacraments they performed.154 The statutes issued at Autun and Poitiers flew in the face of the teachings of the church father Jerome, who had said that no evil should be spoken of the clergy. The decrees armed those who sought to subvert clerical authority, and worse, the entire sacramental edifice of the church.155 The Cambrai letter’s author pointed to the situation in Italy, where it was well known that in some places, the holy mysteries had ceased to be celebrated altogether.156 This reference to the Pataria in Milan and the cities of Lombardy also 151

152 153

154

155

156

Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 243: ‘Actenus, fratres karissimi, in clericali ordine quo vivimus maximus vigebat honor et reverentia, et clericorum nomen, tamquam in sorte dei attributum, caeteris insignius dignitate praeibat et gratia. Nunc autem facti sumus obprobrium vicinis nostris, subsannatio et illusio his, qui in circuitu nostro sunt’ (Psalm 78:4). Ibid., 245. Ibid., 246: ‘Quorum [the Romans’] astipulationi episcopus noster consentiens nos intolerabiliter aggressus, ad imponendum praedictum onus cervici nostrae multus ac vehemens nuper incubuit’. Ibid., 247: ‘In his igitur, quae praelibata sunt, et nominis nostri intolerabilem consideramus iniuriam et apud laicos, quibus futuri sumus in sibilum, maxime perhorrescere oportet infamiam: quantoque apud maiores nostros constat esse inauditum, tanto nobis indecens videtur atque inhonestum’. The canons of Cambrai were not alone in complaining of this. Sigebert of Gembloux made the same arguments in his Apologia contra eos qui calumpniantur missas coniugatorum sacerdotum. See Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 102–3, 220–2. Ibid., 245, 247: ‘Quicquid autem in talibus agitur, a quibusdam adinventum dicitur atque suggestum, qui totius catholicae religionis, eucharistiae videlicet atque baptismi, confessionis et penitentiae, quae pro nihilo ducunt, destruere machinantur sacramentum’. The letter quotes an epistle of Jerome (no. 14). Ibid., 245: ‘In quibusdam Italiae partibus cognovimus actum, ubi pro huiusmodi voto iam divinae religionis penitus non agitur misterium’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 appears in the Tractatus from Thérouanne, with the added warning that the mere rumour of clerical misconduct had given people an excuse to reject their priests’ masses and prayers.157 The bishops (pastores nostri), the letter concludes, were of no help in this situation; the canons must aid one another. The canons of Noyon answered their colleagues’ call. Their response offered reassurances and a rallying cry: ‘Behold, already a powerful storm lays on, and arms, namely the holy scriptures, are made ready on the ramparts for liberty’s defence’.158 The Noyon letter lent textual reinforcement to the defence of the ordination of clerical sons, which the author(s) evidently deemed the gravest of the issues raised by the canons of Cambrai. He drew upon biblical examples and canon law, including the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, in defence of the practice. In a lengthy passage whose formal canonical source has yet to be identified, the author employs 1 Timothy 3 to assert that clergy may legitimately have a single, carnal wife, while omitting mention of the reformists’ assertion that the priest’s only bride was the church.159 Moreover, the Noyon letter continued, history showed that many honourable bishops and abbots, along with popes and kings, were sons of concubines. On what grounds, then, might a priest’s son be barred from clerical office? The Noyon writer offered his colleagues at Cambrai an added textual weapon to wield against their prelate. This was a passage from Gregory’s Book of Pastoral Care, reminding the bishop (rector) that he should not be too quick to listen to ‘foreign voices’ (voces . . . alienas), trusting instead those who were close at hand and, though inferior in rank, his equals in the natural order.160 This passage from the Liber notably appears in Gregory’s lengthy consideration of the bishop’s calling to serve (prodesse), rather than rule over (praeesse) those subject to him. The canons’ correspondence and the arguments in the Tractatus illustrate several points. The first is that the secular clergy were obviously steeped in the same textual models of episcopal conduct as their bishops, and freely called upon those models to remind prelates of their duty 157

158

159

160

Ibid., 263: ‘Et hec est a Paterinis orta dissensio et facta canonum transgressio, qui dum se legum custodes altius videri volunt, legis veritatem convertunt in errorem. Nam quamvis verissime predicent sacerdotum mundiciam, falsissime tamen dogmatizant eorum preces et missarum sollempnia debere reprobari propter alicuius suspitionis infamiam’. Ibid., 248: ‘Ecce iam valida tempestas incumbit, ad defendendam libertatem parata sunt arma in propugnaculis, sacrae scilicet scripturae’. I disagree with Cowdrey’s assessment that the canons of Noyon were reluctant to commit themselves to the resistance of Cambrai; see his ‘Pope Gregory VII and the chastity of the clergy’, 289. Ibid., 248–9 and 248 n. 3. The same verse is also used in the Tractatus; Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 21. See on contemporary clerical marital imagery the remarks of McLaughlin, ‘The bishop as bridegroom’, 209–37, particularly at 224–6. RP, vol. I, 202–7; Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 250.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims towards their flocks and their clerical subordinates. The Noyon letter furnished the Cambrai canons with a passage from the Book of Pastoral Care to brandish before Gerard II. They also quoted from the epistolary corpus of Pope Gregory I and Augustine, along with a sampling of other patristic material, citing letters the church fathers had written to fellow prelates acknowledging that diverse customs existed in diverse churches.161 The authors of all three texts drew readily on church law, particularly the ninth-century Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, an influential collection of papal decrees and conciliar proceedings compiled near Reims.162 The letters of Cambrai and Noyon and the Tractatus from Thérouanne thus furnish precious indicators of how secular canons had recourse to and pragmatically applied learned authorities in their own defence. The letters and treatise were clearly intended to circulate among the cathedral chapters of northern France, and they reveal a striking sense of urgency and coordination among the correspondants. The canons felt they could not afford to be complaisant when their colleagues were directly threatened. Not only would an unfavourable outcome in Cambrai strengthen the hands of all bishops against their chapters, it portended future use of the charge of nicolaitism as a wedge to divide the clergy. Hoping to cut off the bishops’ support for the Gregorian positions on marriage and ordination of clerical sons, the author of the Noyon letter noted that he was anticipating the return of Archbishop Manasses I, who had been deposed at Autun and was obligated to travel to Rome to swear an oath of fidelity to Gregory in April 1078. The canons hoped that the archbishop would rein in Gerard, whom the clergy of Cambrai had presented with relevant passages from canon law insisting that he could not act unilaterally and without the archbishop’s consent. They had good reason to hope, because Manasses had earlier refused to consecrate Gerard owing to his installation by the emperor.163 Their expectations were soon dashed, however. On returning to his diocese, the chastened archbishop reissued the papal decrees concerning married clergy in a provincial council held at Soissons in April 1079.164

161

162

163

164

Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 250. The letters are of Gregory to Leander of Seville (no. 1.41), and of Augustine to Januarius (no. 54). H. Fuhrmann, Einfluß und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen. Von ihrem Auftauchen bis in die neuere Zeit (Stuttgart, 1972–1974). See Manasses’ letter to Gregory VII, in C. Erdmann and N. Fickermann (eds.), Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, vol. V, MGH Epistolae (Weimar, 1949–), no. 107, 182. Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 251. On the council, see L. Delisle (ed.), Littérature latine et histoire du moyen âge (Paris, 1890), no. 10, 23–4: ‘Praecepta apostolica quae facta [sunt] de conjugatis clericis et laicis altaria tenentibus, similiter facta sunt et confirmata et interdicta’. The language is vague

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Finally, the Cambrai letter demonstrates how the canons reflexively turned to one another in crisis. They knew one another, considered themselves colleagues. In addition to holding prebends in multiple churches, they convened regularly at provincial synods and secular courts. It was not unusual for canons from three or more chapters to gather on a single occasion to carry out the administrative business of the regional church.165 Accustomed to working in a communal environment at home, it was natural for them to perceive the interests of their ordo as extending to the chapters of other diocesan churches. The canons’ letters also demonstrate their awareness of a wider, pan-European discourse on the legitimacy of clerical marriage, and signals their entry into the lists of its defenders. This was a battle waged among a literate, well-connected public.166 Perhaps most crucially, it was also a network that increasingly had no choice but to distinguish its interests from those of its bishops, and which increasingly chafed under episcopal surveillance. Faced with growing pressure from Rome to bring change to the traditions of the secular clergy, and increasingly driven by charismatic prelates anxious to establish their own reputations as reformers, the bishops of the province of Reims eventually had to distance themselves from the very body of clergy from which most had ascended. Gerard II was the first bishop who tried to implement papal decrees on clerical marriage in the archdiocese. Given that he had served as archdeacon and provost of the chapter for some thirty years prior to his election, we can imagine the personal challenge that imposing the papal command on his former colleagues must have presented for him.167 Yet the pope decreed that change must come. If the bishops did not implement it, they faced suspension, deposition, and excommunication, as happened at Autun, Poitiers, and many later councils. Indeed, when Gerard of Cambrai was pressed by his canons to lift the onerous sentences, his response was that he dared not show

165

166 167

but unmistakable. See also J. R. Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims and Pope Gregory VII’, The American Historical Review, 54 (1949), 804–24. Many instances could be cited. In 1065 at Thérouanne, for example, canons from Thérouanne, Amiens, Noyon, and Reims were present at the issuance of an episcopal charter for the abbey of Messines; see M. Gysseling and A. C. F. Koch (eds.), Diplomata belgica ante annum millesimum centesimum scripta (Brussels, 1950), vol. I, no. 160, 275–7, with facsimile in vol. II, no. 56. The following year the issuance of a charter by Count Baldwin V of Flanders for Saint-Pierre of Lille brought together canons from Cambrai, Thérouanne, and Noyon (E. Hautcoeur (ed.), Cartulaire de l’église collégiale de Saint-Pierre de Lille (Lille and Paris, 1894) vol. I, no. 2, 7). See Melve, Inventing the Public Sphere, vol. I, 109–19. Gerard had been archdeacon from c. 1046 and provost from 1051 until his election. We hear nothing further of Gerard’s initiative, which the provincial council of the following year confirmed.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims leniency because his consecration had come from the hands of the papal legate, on the condition that he carry out the reform.168 Such penalties were impossible for a bishop to ignore, no matter how much ambivalence he might feel towards the papacy. A suspended or deposed bishop, or one suspected of simony or other faults, was a soft target for insinuations by rivals or enemies. A final example of episcopal–canonical conflict, the case of Gervin, bishop of Amiens (c. 1090–1102), confirms this last point. At the provincial council held in Reims in March 1093, an unnamed accuser came forward to assert that Gervin had acquired his office through simony.169 The validity of the charge is hard to determine. Gervin undoubtedly benefited from his family’s influence, as he had succeeded his uncle as abbot of Saint-Riquier in 1075 and continued to hold the abbacy for several years after becoming bishop.170 Because the accusation lacked sufficient proof, but was deemed grave enough to merit further examination, the archbishop remanded the case to Rome. Gervin crossed the Alps – his second trip to clear himself since his election (the first was in autumn 1091) – and waited at the papal court for his hearing. Gervin’s accuser(s) never went to Rome, and is never named. In a letter sent back with the bishop, Urban II dismissed the simony charge as invalid.171 The second half of Urban’s missive nevertheless strongly suggested that Gervin’s opponent was a married clerk at Amiens. In mid-letter, Urban abruptly shifted from defending the bishop to relate how he had ‘heard of clerics who, contrary to the discipline of the holy canons and in contempt of the practice of the Catholic Church, fornicate with women’. No doubt Gervin was the source of Urban’s information! The pope then assumed a more intimate, menacing tone. Addressing the fornicator(s), the pope commanded: ʻIf – God forbid! – you hold our precepts in contempt and pertinaciously presume further to resist your bishop at the risk of your salvation, we confirm by the weight of our authority whatever sentence [Gervin] extends against you that justice dictatesʼ.172 Resistance to Gervin from some quarters at Amiens was

168 169 170

171 172

Frauenknecht, Verteidigung, 246. For a brief biography, see Pycke, ‘Gervin II, abbé de S.-Riquier’. See R. Somerville, ‘The council of Clermont (1095) and Latin Christian society’, in R. Somerville (ed.), Papacy, Councils and Canon Law in the 11th–12th Centuries (Aldershot, 1990), 55–90, at 87 and n. 209. Registre, no. 132, 510–11; see also PL 151, cols. 335 (no. 55) and 362–3 (no. 82). Registre, no. 132, 510–11: ‘Si vero, quod absit, nostra praeceptione contempta, vestro antistiti ad salutis vestrae jacturam pertinaciter resistere ulterius praesumpseritis, quamcumque in vos sententia, justitia dictante, protulerit, nos auctoritatis nostrae pondere confirmamus’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 evidently determined, and extended at least as far back as the issuance of Urban’s first letter in the bishop’s defence, in December 1091.173 Then, the pope had also commanded the people and clergy of Amiens to obey their bishop. Now, Gervin was given carte blanche and the legal weight of apostolic authority to act as needed for the ‘salvation’ of his parishioners. Accusations of clerical fornication at Amiens thus served to strengthen the bishop’s self-defence against the charge of simony. Gervin had cannily turned the spotlight of inquiry away from himself and on to the rebellious clerks at Amiens. The immediate outcome of the clash is uncertain. Gervin stayed in office another nine years, before retiring to take the monastic habit. We know that married clergy remained at Amiens.174 Gervin’s case nevertheless shows how a prelate could turn charges against him into a referendum on the fitness of his diocesan clergy. It also demonstrates the inevitable choices that bishops were obligated to make from the late 1070s between siding with the interests of the canons against papal regulation of clerical conduct, or fulfilling papal decrees. The more politically secure choice for bishops, certainly from the pontificate of Urban II onward, usually lay in collaboration with Rome. Repeated and ever more stringent legislation against clerical fornication and marriage was issued; however, more than thirty years after Gregory VII’s decrees, married and sexually active clergy still could be found in the province.175 Through the bishops’ own appointive power over capitular offices and a mounting social pressure for the reform of canonical mores, slow change did come to the traditions of secular clergy. As the next two chapters document, in the archdiocese of Reims, the 1090s witnessed the emergence of a circle of bishops, drawn from the ranks of secular clergy, who had personally witnessed the tempestuous period launched when Hugh of Die called to order the councils of Autun and Poitiers. Working closely together and led by the bishop of the newly re-established diocese of Arras, this group forged for themselves a distinctive agenda and an identity that shaped the archdiocesan episcopacy for decades. That identity neither

173

174

175

Urban’s first letter on Gervin’s behalf mentions that he allowed two months for the bishop’s enemies to present themselves in Rome; none ever did. Considering his travel time to and from Rome and the fact that the pope’s letter was issued in the middle of winter (20 December 1091), Gervin may have been absent from Amiens a half-year or more; see PL 151, col. 335 (no. 55). They are mentioned in the vita of Gervin’s successor, Godfrey, where the author, Nicholas of Saint-Crépin, states that a clerk’s wife tried to poison him; VSG, 920. At Arras, for example; legislation issued at the general council of Reims in 1119, and at the first and second Lateran councils of 1123 and 1139, expanded prohibitions on marriage, even chaste marriage; see Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 103–4.

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Becoming Bishop: Clerical culture and episcopal formation in Reims mirrored the canonicate from which they had come, nor Roman structures of governance. Drawing deeply on the educational foundations and spirit of collaboration forged in the precincts of the canons’ quarter and at ecclesiastical assemblies, the bishops of the archdiocese gave expression to their authority in the face of transformational cultural change and emergent, rival sources of authority among their flocks.

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Chapter 3

RESTLESS FLOCKS: CHALLENGES TO EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY

Historians have long considered the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries a time of widespread transformation in European society. ‘Renaissance’ and ‘reformation’ are two terms still commonly used to qualify it.1 Yet these words hardly exhaust the descriptive terminology that scholars have employed to capture the mood of this period. Expectation, emotionalism, anxiety have all been used to denote the prevailing sentiment of the years around 1100: enthusiasm for new experiences; emotional self-expression (at times tinged with apocalyptic yearning); anxiety about change and difference. These sentiments flourished within an atmosphere of critical inquiry and intellectual debate. The proto-modern ‘individual’ is said to have appeared, self-aware and prone to existential inquiry and self-criticism. He could sample or join an array of new religious, social, or civic groups, or withdraw from society altogether.2 Model historical communities like the Apostles or ‘primitive church’ held immense appeal and were widely imitated. Schools in northern France developed around 1100 into robust centres for the study of theology and textual criticism.3 As R. W. Southern so eloquently put it, we find in the literature of the age ‘less talk of life as an exercise in endurance . . . and we hear more of life as a seeking and a journeying’.4 1

2

3 4

Among foundational studies are: C. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1927); R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, CT, 1953); the essays in Benson and Constable, with Lanham, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century; C. M. Radding, A World Made By Men. Cognition and Society, 400–1200 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), esp. 153–262; Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century; R. N. Swanson, The Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Manchester, 1999); and now T. F. X. Noble and J. Van Engen (eds.), European Transformations. The Long Twelfth Century (Notre Dame, IN, 2012). C. Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200 (London, 1972), with a rejoinder by C. W. Bynum, ‘Did the twelfth century discover the individual?’ in C. W. Bynum (ed.), Jesus as Mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1982), 82–109. Swanson, Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ch. 2. Southern, Making of the Middle Ages, 222. He identifies the years 1050–1150 as ‘the critical period of discovery’ of new experiences.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority Appraisals of the twelfth century as a watershed moment of societal renewal in European history have also invited revision. In a now-classic thesis that deftly called attention to the dark side of existing narratives about a European cultural ‘awakening’, R. I. Moore charted growth in the institutional oppression of religious and social outgroups, to such a degree that ‘[p]ersecution became habitual’.5 C. Stephen Jaeger documented the frequency with which many contemporaries described their age as one of decline, decay, and corruption.6 Some commentators, like Guibert of Nogent, were prone to pessimistic musings about ‘the increasing wickedness of modern times’; others denounced the worldly and venal courts of popes and kings.7 Jaeger and others rightly point out that terms like ‘renaissance’ and ‘decline’ often obscure more than they reveal.8 Both are elliptical means of qualifying change, and tend to de-emphasize continuities in favour of a narrative that stresses novelty.9 Whether people of the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw their age as one of renewal or decline, there is little doubt that they viewed it as a period of social dynamism and transformation. For some this dynamism signalled crisis or the approaching end of time; for others, an opportunity for self-determination and a chance to change the status quo.10 Religious and civic communities – in the form of new monastic and eremitic settlements, and urban and rural communes – appeared and multiplied. Mass movements, above all the crusades of 1096–1101 and 1147–49, drew participants from northern France and Flanders on an unprecedented scale. The crusades were merely the largest of contemporary mass movements. People from all walks of life took to the roads to visit holy places and the relics of saints, and in one of the newer developments of the period, holy men and the relics of saints increasingly came to them. Town squares and markets filled with crowds drawn by itinerant preachers. These phenomena were interrelated, if not causally

5

6 7

8

9

10

R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society. Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987), 5. C. S. Jaeger, ‘Pessimism in the twelfth-century “renaissance”’, Speculum, 78 (2003), 1151–83. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 74: ‘per succrescentem modernorum nequitiam’; R. Thomson (ed. and trans.), Tractatus Garsiae, or The Translation of the Relics of SS. Gold and Silver, (Leiden, 1973). Jaeger, ‘Pessimism’, 1183; Swanson, Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 1–7; J. D. Cotts, Europe’s Long Twelfth Century. Order, Anxiety, and Adaptation, 1095–1229 (New York, 2013), 1–13. For example, cathedral schools, the eremitic life, and monastic renewal all flourished in the tenth century; see G. Dagron, P. Riché, and A. Vauchez (eds.), Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours, vol. IV, Evêques, moines et empereurs (610–1054) (Paris, 1993), esp. ch. 3; and the comments of John Howe, ‘Gaudium et spes’, 21–35. On contemporary apocalypticism, see J. Rubenstein, Armies of Heaven. The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (New York, 2011).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 connected, and made the period one of extraordinary mobility.11 Bishops experienced these changes more acutely than most. They did not have the luxury of ignoring what was occurring in their communities, and the changes often presented a direct challenge to bishops’ administrative resources and authority. Spurred by fluid social conditions, people of all social ranks became prepossessed with questions about identity and representation, the relationship between appearance and reality, and the correspondence between action and intention.12 How can I be sure that someone is what he says he is? How does one tell a fraud – whether a wandering preacher, alleged relic, or coin issue – from the real thing? Traditionally, external appearance and behaviour had served as markers of social standing, and were thought to reflect one’s mental disposition.13 Bishops should be upright, dignified, and splendidly adorned. Episcopal documents stressed the importance of the individual prelate’s conduct as an example to others.14 The arenga of a 1079 charter of Bishop Gerard II of Cambrai for the abbey of Saint-Sépulcre, for instance, reads in part: ‘it is important that we all, and above all those who are the Lord’s priests, compel ourselves to present to the people the example of a beacon, after the fashion of a light placed on a candelabra in the night of this world’. The bishop should lead by the example of his ‘life, words, and almsgiving’, noted an 1132 charter of Simon of Noyon-Tournai, ‘for this is the path by which he arrives at the city of God’.15 But of course, such lofty standards were not always easily reached, and in times of rapid change, simulation was all too easy. Bishops, indeed anyone claiming authority, found themselves under a microscope. Ordinary religious and laypeople alike raised questions about clerical conduct, particularly clerical morality

11

12

13 14

15

T. Wetzstein, ‘Europäische Vernetzungen. Straβen, Logistik und Mobilität in der späten Salierzeit’, in B. Schneidmüller and S. Weinfurter (eds.), Salisches Kaisertum und neues Europa. Die Zeit Heinrichs IV. und Heinrichs V. (Darmstadt, 2007), 341–70, at 354–5. Morris, Discovery of the Individual, 73–5; important qualifications by S. R. Kramer and C. W. Bynum, ‘Revisiting the twelfth-century individual. The inner self and the Christian community’, in G. Melville and J. Oberste (eds.), Das Eigene und das Ganze. Zum Individuellen im mittelalterlichen Religiosentum (Münster, 2002), 57–85. Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century, 30–3, 50–1. Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, no. 3.02, 164–5; cited by J. Avril, ‘La fonction épiscopale dans le vocabulaire des chartes (Xe–XIIIe siècles)’, in H. Dubois, J.-C. Hocquet, and A. Vauchez (eds.), Horizons marins, itinéraires spirituels (Ve–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1987), vol. I, 125–33, at 128. Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l’église collégiale de Saint-Pierre de Lille, no. 21, 30–1, at 30: ‘Qui in alto vitam agunt et regimen ecclesiastice sollicitudinis suscipiunt, pia devotione et maxima diligentia curare oportet qualiter ecclesiis quibus debent preesse, valeant et prodesse exemplo vite, sermone et elemosinarum largitione. Hec est enim via qua pervenitur ad civitatem Dei, ad civitatem liberam’.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority and bishops’ participation in seigneurial violence.16 Some offered themselves as living alternatives to episcopal status and wealth. While the ex officio authority of the episcopacy remained intact in the face of this scrutiny, critics pressured bishops’ social authority by questioning the degree to which the prelates’ personal conduct conformed to the ideals of their office. Historians have often assumed that bishops must have perceived social and religious change as disruptive or threatening to their positions. They have rooted their arguments in confessional, political, or theoretical assumptions, for example about the supposedly antithetical relationship between traditional (i.e., episcopal) and charismatic authority; between popular religiosity and institutionalized expressions of religious devotion; or between the interests and motivations of the ‘church’ and urban mercantile classes.17 In fact, bishops in this period, especially from the last quarter of the eleventh century until the mid-twelfth, proved adaptable and willing to embrace many of the changes. Sometimes they acted from a sense of urgency and perhaps even danger, but in others they expressed genuine commitment to, or advocacy of, novel experiences, institutions, and boundary-pushing change. This chapter therefore assesses the dilemmas and opportunities which the various expressions of religious devotion, heightened mobility, and sociocultural change presented to bishops in northern France and Flanders around 1100. It suggests that while bishops were seldom physically threatened – leaving aside exceptional cases like Gaudry of Laon – their authority and judgement were routinely tested.18 Bishops were put in the delicate position of having to ascertain intention and determine how best to address novelties. This chapter does not furnish a comprehensive overview of the religious and social changes taking place in northwestern Europe in the twelfth century. Instead it highlights a selection of social and religious phenomena with which bishops contended, the hard choices they faced in dealing with them, and the challenges to diocesan administration as popular movements and charismatic figures 16

17

18

This was especially true of peace councils. L. C. MacKinney, ‘The people and public opinion in the eleventh-century peace movement’, Speculum, 5 (1930), 181–206; Head and Landes (eds.), The Peace of God, 18. See the essays by R. Landes and A. G. Remensnyder in the same volume, which may be contrasted with those of K.-F. Werner, ‘Observations sur le rôle des évêques dans le mouvement de paix aux Xe et XIe siècles’, in Mediaevalia Christiana, XIe–XIIIe siècles. Hommage à Raymonde Foreville (Paris, 1989), 155–95. Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, 51; R. I. Moore’s understanding of persecution depends on a Weberian model of antagonism between bureaucratic states and the groups disadvantaged by their rise to power; see Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, 112–13. Compare Soria Audebert, La crosse brisée, 18; the author identifies five instances of bishops in Reims in our period who experienced physical harm, captivity, or expulsion from their sees.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 became a part of daily life. We begin with a very basic issue requiring episcopal discernment, one addressed in contemporary conciliar legislation: changing fashions of dress.

an age of experimentation If the eleventh century was an age of experimentation, one’s external appearance, especially clothing and hair, offered the perfect canvas.19 Secular and ecclesiastical courts provided the ideal setting – public, competitive, cultured – for display, as did markets and urban squares.20 A striking aspect of the statutes issued at papal and legatine councils at this time is their attention to hair and clothing, especially as worn by members of the clergy. The laws regulate sartorial practices in two ways. First, they stipulate what types of clothing were appropriate to which clerical orders, and under what conditions. And second, they placed limits on the style of clothing being worn.21 Behind the regulations lay anxieties over inconsistencies between appearances and social roles. At the council of Poitiers in 1100, for example, Canons 4 and 5 decreed that monks could not wear a maniple, a band of cloth draped on the left arm, unless they had attained the ecclesiastical rank of subdeacon, and that abbots should not wear gloves, sandals, or ring – episcopal insignia – unless they had first received a papal privilege to do so.22 Additional canons from Leo IX’s council at Reims (1049), Urban II’s council at Melfi (1089); Paschal II’s councils at Troyes (1107) and Benevento (1108); Innocent II’s councils at Clermont (1130), Reims (1131), and Pisa (1135); and Eugenius III’s council at Reims (1148) address the style and sumptuousness of clerical garments.23 Hairstyles also troubled ecclesiastical officials, especially in the 19

20 21

22

23

See R. Bartlett, ‘Symbolic meanings of hair in the middle ages’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 4 (1994), 43–60; P. E. Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age (New York, 2004), 3–42. See Jaeger, Origins of Courtliness, 176–94. See now Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 35–50; G. Coolen, ‘Le costume écclésiastique’, Bulletin de la société des antiquaires de la Morinie, 20 (1964), 274–84. Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, 137: ‘Cap. IIII. Ut nemo monachorum deinceps manipulis utatur nisi subdiaconus fuerit ordinatus. Cap. V. Ut nullus abbatum utatur cirotecis, sandaliis, annulo, nisi quibus fuerit per privilegium a romana ecclesia concessum’. Canon 3 confirms that only bishops may bless sacerdotal vestments. Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 250. The councils of Poitiers, Troyes, Pisa, and Reims (all three, in 1049, 1131, 1148) were well attended by bishops from the province. Urban’s canons from Melfi, including c. 13 on clothing, were copied and circulated in northern France and appear to have been repromulgated at the Council of Clermont (1095). Lambert, bishop of Arras, had copies of the canons of Clermont (1095), Rome (1099), and Poitiers (1100) – all of which he attended in person – inserted into his register; see Registre, 186–99, 228–33. For Reims (1049), see Jasper, Die Konzilien Deutschlands und Reichsitaliens, 1023–1059, 243. For Troyes, see U.-R. Blumenthal, The Early Councils of Pope Paschal II, 1100–1110 (Toronto, 1978), 94. For the remainder, see Somerville, with Kuttner, Pope Urban II,

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority Anglo-Norman realm and especially the hair of laymen.24 The archbishop of Rouen, William Bona-Anima, issued legislation at his council in February 1096 insisting that ‘no man’ sport long hair, and that clergy bar those who did from entering churches. Long-haired men were to be denied access to divine offices, and even burial.25 Anselm of Canterbury pronounced similar strictures against long hair in his 1102 council at Winchester, decreeing (c. 24) that it should be cut so that part of the ears and the eyes were visible.26 Godfrey, the bishop of Amiens, followed suit a few years later. Acting perhaps with the Rouen legislation in mind, or after the example of Serlo of Sées, who cut the hair of Henry I of England and his court during Easter services at Carentan in 1105, Godfrey refused to accept oblations from members of Count Robert of Flanders’ entourage at his Christmas court in Saint-Omer who were inappropriately dressed, or wore their tresses like young women.27 Conciliar admonitions against inappropriate appearances for clergy ranged from the general to the precise. Reims (1131, c. 4) states ‘[t]hat bishops and clergy should strive to please God by both their internal and external bearing (habitu)’, which suggests the latter was not always a sure indicator of the former, and specifically indicated that bishops should relieve non-conforming clergy from their benefices.28 At Troyes

24

25

26

27

28

186–8, 202, 262, and 289 n. 103, with references. At least one copy of the Collectio Britannica, which contains canons of Melfi, was produced in northern France (perhaps in the archdiocese of Sens) around 1108; see C. Rolker, ‘History and canon law in the Collectio Britannica: a new date for London, BL Add. 8873’, in Brasington and Cushing (eds.), Bishops, Texts and the Use of Canon Law, 141–52. The canons of 1131 and 1148 are found in a thirteenth-century codex of Reims (Reims, BM 672, fos. 224v–225v and 225v–226r), and no doubt circulated widely within the province. See the remarks of H. Platelle, ‘Le problème de scandale: les nouvelles modes masculines aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 53 (1975), 1071–96, and P. Stafford, ‘The meanings of hair in the Anglo-Norman world: masculinity, reform, and national identity’, in M. Van Dijk and R. Nip (eds.), Saints, Scholars, and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies. Festschrift in Honour of Anneke Mulder-Bakker on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Turnhout, 2005), 153–71. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. XX, col. 924: ‘At ut nullus homo comam nutriat, sed sit tonsus, sicut decet Christianum: alioquin a liminibus sanctae matris ecclesiae sequestrabitur, nec sacerdos aliquis divinum ei officium faciet, vel ejus sepulturae intererit’. Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne, 238; Bartlett, ‘Symbolic meanings of hair’, 50. Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, vol. I (Oxford, 1981), 668–81, at 677–8. This canon seems to aim at all hair, whether sported by clergy or laymen, though the canon is sandwiched between two others devoted to marriage, a condition which the same legislation strictly forbade to clergy. The editors note (670) that Anselm did not consider the conciliar proceedings ‘official’, and the canons thus do not seem to have circulated. VSG, 926: ‘qui intonsi comis cernebantur, absque acceptione personarum, vultuum vestiumque, oblationem reppulit, indignum ducens eorum recipere munera qui instar muliercularum cervice comantes gestarent iubas’. This was probably at Christmas 1106. R. Somerville, ‘The canons of Reims (1131)’, in Somerville, Papacy, Councils and Canon Law, 125: ‘Vt episcopi et clerici tam interiori quam exteriori habitu Deo placere studeant’. See Reims, BM 672, fo. 225r. Canon 2 of the 1148 Council of Reims expands on c. 3 from 1131, and suggests a fair

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Paschal II was more specific, forbidding ‘priests and deacons to have or to wear long hair, curved shoes, tight clothes, or silk laces in their shirts or sleeves’.29 This canon ran in the same vein as one Paschal’s predecessor Urban had issued at Melfi (1089), prohibiting clergy from wearing ‘altered clothing’ and dressing in ornate garments. Such finery, that canon elaborated, scandalized the laity.30 The conciliar decrees on clerical clothing expressed the concerns that regular clergy not wear vestments designated for secular clergy unless the privilege to do so had been specifically conferred on them, and that non-liturgical clerical clothing be modest, or at any rate appropriate to the cleric’s station. Popes had long conferred the right to wear pontifical insignia to abbots. Pierre Salmon identified more than a hundred such concessions between the tenth and twelfth centuries.31 Pontiffs often bestowed insignia on abbots as gifts or at episcopal request, but also, Salmon notes, to cultivate political alliances or pursue other agendas. Usage might be confined to certain feast days, but the majority of the time abbots were permitted to wear clerical vestments without respect to time or place, including in churches other than their own.32 The canons issued at Poitiers in 1100 suggest that abbatial use of insignia had casually spread; at the same time, papal grants to abbots of the powers to excommunicate, absolve, anathematize, and consecrate had also multiplied. The circumscription of abbatial dress, echoed in other contemporary canons, signalled what Giles Constable has referred to as a ‘revived episcopalism’ in the early twelfth century that took umbrage with the privileges of Cluny and other monasteries.33 Defence of episcopal privilege was not the only motive behind decrees against the sumptuousness of clerical dress. The canon issued by Pope Paschal at Troyes in 1107 seems to have been concerned with preventing deacons and priests from dressing like courtiers or young

29

30

31 32

33

amount of papal exasperation at the failure of bishops to monitor clerical dress more closely – their own and that of their subordinates. Compare with the pared-down canon from Reims (1049) (ed. Jasper, above, n. 23): ‘De tonsura barbarum et ornatu vestium se pro Dei amore emendent’. Blumenthal, Early Councils, 94 (c. 8): ‘Presbiteris et diaconibus longos capillos, rostratos sotulares, fixas uestes, laqueos in blialdis uel camisiis habere . . . prohibemus’. Somerville, with Kuttner, Pope Urban II, 256: ‘Et ut omnia scandala, omnes occasiones laicis subtrahantur, scissis vestibus clericos abuti ulterius prohibemus, et ne pomposis induantur exuviis admonemus’. P. Salmon, Étude sur les insignes du pontife dans le rite romain. Histoire et liturgie (Rome, 1955), 51–6. Ibid., 55. Concessions of this sort were granted in northern France to the abbots of Bergues, Corbie, Lobbes, and Cluny. See the remarks of G. Constable, ‘The authority of superiors in religious communities’, in Makdisi, Sourdel, and Sourdel-Thomine (eds.), La notion d’autorité au Moyen Age, 189–210, at 195–6. For a parallel study on the bishop of Arras’ authority over monks, see the recent work of S. Vanderputten, ‘Abbatial obedience, liturgical reform, and the threat of monastic autonomy at the turn of the twelfth century’, The Catholic Historical Review, 96 (2012), 241–70.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority fops, or worse yet, women.34 Writing his Ecclesiastical History in the mid-1130s, Ordericus Vitalis animatedly described those secular fashions at the courts of Count Fulk IV le Rechin of Anjou (d. 1109) and King William II of England (d. 1100). He denigrated men who, in addition to wearing their hair long, add excrescences like serpents’ tails to the tips of their toes. . . and gaze with admiration on these scorpion-like shapes. They sweep the dusty ground with the unnecessary trains of their robes and mantles; their long, wide sleeves cover their hands whatever they do; impeded by these frivolities they are almost incapable of walking quickly or doing any kind of useful work.35

The pope’s condemnation of long hair, curved shoes, and fitted clothing of clergy at Troyes resembles Ordericus’ critique, though Paschal did not complain that ‘frivolous’ clothing impeded the clergy’s abilities, as Ordericus did. The Troyes canon nonetheless underscores the extent to which secular couture influenced clerical dress and the degree to which clergy innovated in the style of apparel they wore, generating underlying fears that either clergy would become outwardly indistinguishable from laymen or wholly effeminate in dress and mores.36 When Herman of Tournai recounted the strict mores and conduct of Odo, the schoolmaster of Tournai and later bishop of Cambrai, he made a point of saying that Odo would never have tolerated unsuitable hair and clothing, ‘which we see in evidence everywhere these days’, among his students.37 Bernard of Clairvaux took up the issue repeatedly. Drawing in his Tractus de moribus et officiis episcoporum on the same biblical passage employed in Canon 13 of the Council of Melfi to ridicule luxurious garments on clergy, Bernard lampooned prelates who decked themselves immodestly in marten furs and other ‘feminine trappings’.38 Bishops, he wrote, should blush in shame at wrapping furs around necks that ought instead to bear the yoke of Christ. He later wrote to pressure Pope Eugenius III to 34 35

36

37 38

EH, vol. IV, 186–93. Ibid., 188–9. See also Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 222–3. On the dating of Book 8, see EH, vol. I, 47. Compare Blumenthal, Early Councils, 106: ‘Uestimenta uero saecularia et pretiosa clericis reprehendit, et talibus uti interdixit’ (c. 2, Benevento, 1108). Guibert of Nogent (Autobiographie, 80–1) denounced the tight garments and curled shoes of contemporary women, similar to male and clerical fashions: ‘Nihil non ridiculum constat in moribus: vestium qualitates intantum sunt ab illa veteri frugalitate dissimiles, ut dilatatio manicarum, tunicarum angustia, calceorum de Corduba rostra torticia, totius ubique jacturam videas clamare pudoris’. Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 275. Both Melfi (c. 13) and Bernard (Bernard of Clairvaux, Tractatus de moribus et officiis episcoporum, 104; trans. Matarasso, 42–3) use the injunction of 1 Timothy 2:9, ‘Non in veste pretiosa’. A canon banning the wearing of fur by clergy was promulgated at Reims in 1148, over the objections of German prelates; Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 49.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 uphold the legislation passed at Reims in 1148 against bishops and clerics who wore extravagant clothing and undignified hairstyles.39 Restrictions on clerical dress were aired alongside other canons emanating from the same councils having nothing to do with dress, but everything to do with episcopal and papal anxiety over the proliferation and definition of clerical roles and the blurring of occupational boundaries.40 The canons of Melfi (1089) and Poitiers (1100) furnish a case in point. The canons of both councils were received in northern France, and they took up the problem of itinerant or unregulated monks and clergy, and, at Poitiers, the increasingly popular practice of fundraising relic ‘tours’ (delationes).41 On the second day of his council at Melfi, Pope Urban published a pair of decrees touching on ‘a new variety of acephalous clerics’ (c. 9) and ‘wandering monks’ (c. 10).42 Canon 9 on acephalous clerics does not appear to have had an immediate precedent in papal legislation of the eleventh century (though it may connect with ninth-century conciliar canons); whereas Canon 10 took up a longstanding problem. Both concern clergy not subject to a superior, house, or rule. Robert Somerville has pointed to the parallels in the language of the two Melfi canons, which are manifestly linked.43 Specifically, Canon 9 denounces ‘residential’ clergy at secular courts who were subject, not to bishops, but to laymen and -women. At court, these clerks supported or enriched themselves on tithes collected by their patrons. Canon 10 forbids any bishop or primate from hosting a wandering monk (monachum vagantem) in his diocese unless he was carrying a letter from his abbot. The canons issued at Poitiers were strongly pastoral in orientation, and of a different character than those of Melfi.44 Canons 10 and 11 of Poitiers concern the activity of regular clergy.45 The former authorizes regular canons, with the bishop’s permission, to administer parishes, baptize, preach, bury the dead, and assign penance; while in the latter, monks are completely (penitus) forbidden from doing so.46 Obviously, the 39 40

41 42 44 45

46

Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books on Consideration, 105. Compare with B. Jussen, ‘Liturgy and legitimation, or, How the Gallo-Romans ended the Roman Empire’, in B. Jussen (ed.) and P. Selwyn (trans.), Ordering Medieval Society. Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations (Philadelphia, 2001), 147–99, at 154–8, who offers many thoughtful points of departure. For evidence of their reception, see below, 101–2. Somerville, with Kuttner, Pope Urban II, 261, 281–5. 43 Ibid., 283. For a summary see Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne, 244–6. Canons 10 and 11 are combined in the manuscript edited by Sdralek into a single statute (= c. 8); Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, 137; compare with Registre, 232. A similar prohibition, omitting preaching, was issued at the First Lateran Council (1123) under Calixtus II (c. 16), along with an injunction that monks must humbly submit themselves to their bishops; see R. Foreville, Latran I, II, III et Latran IV (Paris, 1965), 177–8; N. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London and Washington, DC, 1990), vol. I, 193. Foreville states (69),

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority statutes suggest that the state of affairs was confused, as indeed it was in the early twelfth century, and that monks were conducting the duties of parish priests without episcopal permission, whether because the parishes and priests’ appointments fell to the authority of an abbey, or for other reasons.47 Immediately following Canons 10 and 11 comes a third, related statute on ‘relic tours’. Canon 12 denies permission to preach to those carrying relics from place to place in order to raise money.48 Preaching had to be authorized by a bishop; as we will see below, most relic tours were not. Apart from these canons, the council of Poitiers is noteworthy because of the presence of Robert of Arbrissel and Bernard of Tiron, two of the more notorious itinerant preachers and popular religious leaders then active in western France.49 Robert, recently the recipient of a damning letter from Marbod, the bishop of Rennes, which incidentally has much to criticize about Robert’s ragged mode of dress in spite of his condition as a secular canon, may have been summoned to Poitiers to account for his unregulated way of life and the status of his followers, which included a jumble of men and women, of all social ranks.50 The canons surveyed here do not amount to an orderly progression of legal rulings. If we consider them synthetically, however, a common thread of concern over clerical roles, appearance, and conduct appears. Melfi and Poitiers attempt to come to terms with itinerant clerks by insisting that their activities be authorized by episcopal oversight. The canons confirm bishops’ power to authorize pastoral activities, especially preaching and its practitioners. If clerics were to reside at secular courts, for example, Melfi (c. 9) stipulates that laymen must request the clergy directly from bishops. Their residence at court should be a temporary appointment and overseen by the prelate. Unauthorized preaching by professional speakers on relic tours and by monks was also abrogated at

47

48

49

50

without furnishing evidence, that the decrees of Lateran I were later promulgated at Chartres and Beauvais (1125), Arras, Rouen, and Troyes (1128), and Châlons-sur-Marne (1129). For background, see Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 227–48; P. G. Jestice, Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century (Leiden, 1997), esp. 189–94. A pair of monastic forgeries known as Pseudo-Gregory and Pseudo-Boniface circulated widely from the mid-eleventh century endorsing monastic cura animarum; see R. Somerville, with S. Kuttner, ‘The so-called canons of Nîmes (1096)’, in Somerville, Papacy, Councils, and Canon Law, 175–89. N. Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints. Formation coutumière d’un droit (Paris, 1975), 306–7. We will consider relic tours and the preaching that accompanied them below. The text of the statute (ed. Sdralek, c. 9) reads: ‘Ut sanctorum reliquias causa pecunie circumferentes ad predicationem non admittantur’. J. Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel. Sex, Sin, and Salvation in the Middle Ages, trans. B. L. Venarde (Washington, DC, 2006), 41–7, 104–5; J.-H. Foulon, ‘Les relations entre la papauté réformatrice et les pays de la Loire jusqu’à la fondation de Fontevraud’, in J. Dalarun (ed.), Robert d’Arbrissel et la vie religieuse dans l’Ouest de la France. Actes du colloque de Fontevraud, 13–16 décembre 2001 (Turnhout, 2004), 25–56. Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel, 41–7.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Poitiers. Even regular canons, by definition ordained priests and acknowledged at Poitiers as having the right to preach, baptize, etc., should only do so with episcopal permission.51 Together, the laws pronounce on recent trends (relic tours, acephalous court clerics) and try to ameliorate the prevailing confusion over priestly and abbatial privileges by more rigorously ‘licensing’ the pastoral care of souls. Regulating dress and clerical privileges further attempted to restore the outward markers of status that differentiated clergy from laymen, and clergy of diverse conditions from one another, and to square different types of religious conduct with those permitted them.

the lure of the outsider Yet if we take seriously Canons 9 and 10 of Melfi, bishops were as much a part of the problems they identify as part of their solution. They, too, attended secular courts without permission from their metropolitan, and they were likewise responsible for retaining wandering monks in their dioceses and supporting them with gifts. Corroborating evidence that hermits and preachers found support in episcopal quarters is offered by a well-known poem on the subject penned by Paganus Bolotinus, an archdeacon of Chartres, around 1130.52 Paganus pilloried the ‘insidious crowd of hypocrites’ and false hermits (pseudoeremitae) who spread across the land, simulating piety through their dress and appearance.53 These wolves in sheep’s clothing sought only their own satisfaction, frequenting cities rather than the forests, insinuating themselves like parasites at the courts of the powerful, mocking the epicurian lifestyles of the clergy.54 Bishops meanwhile honoured them like holy men and invited them into their halls: Now the episcopal table is filled with hermits. The bishop keeps religious company with them. The episcopal office is possessed by men in tunics.55 51

52 53 54

55

On regular canons, see C. W. Bynum, Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality (Missoula, MT, 1978), 18–19. Recent studies of regular canons include B. Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem? Het Ontstaan en de Hervorming van de kanonikale Instellingen in Vlaanderen tot circa 1155, 2 vols. (Leuven, 2000); J. Führer, König Ludwig VI. von Frankreich und die Kanonikerreform (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2008); and the collected essays in M. Parisse (ed.), Les chanoines réguliers. Émergence et expansion (XIe–XIIIe siècles) (Saint-Étienne, 2009). J. Leclercq, ‘Le poème de Payen Bolotin contre les faux ermites’, Revue bénédictine, 68 (1958), 52–86. Ibid., 78 (line 40): ‘Insidiatrix hypocritarum turba tetendit’. Ibid., 78–80. The rise of hermits and recluses is well discussed by T. Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950–1200 (Oxford, 2011), 27–66. Ibid., 82–3 (lines 249–51): ‘Nunc heremitis pontificalis mensa repletur. / His comitatus religiosus presul habetur. / Per tunicatos pontificatus cura tenetur’. See also 84, line 328.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority The hermits pronounce novel dogma, and finish their careers by being called up to the episcopal order themselves.56 Paganus’ poem evidently struck a chord. It circulated as far as Normandy, where Ordericus praised it as a ‘beautiful song’ that exposed ‘the covert susperstitions’ of hypocrites and counterfeit holy men.57 Paganus’ deep suspicion of ‘false hermits’ echoed concerns expressed decades earlier by Ivo of Chartres in a letter to the monastic community of Coulombes, warning them about wandering monks (gyrovagos aut Sarabaitas) who swayed others to leave the stability of the cloister.58 Yet bishops had legitimate reasons for retaining wandering monks and preachers in their dioceses, and they often proved, in the long run, to be among the staunchest supporters of the new itinerants.59 One thinks immediately of Norbert of Xanten. The first years of Norbert’s preaching mission following his conversion in 1115 were fraught with adversity and repeated setbacks. He was openly ridiculed and scorned in his native region of Cologne and, despite winning a dispensation to preach from Pope Gelasius II in 1118, only gained real traction once he entered the diocese of Cambrai.60 There, at Valenciennes, he unexpectedly lost his three closest followers to illness and gained a lifelong disciple 56

57

58

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Ibid., 136 (lines 136–8): ‘Ordine dignum pontificali uociferantur. / Sicque subintrans fur in honores ecclesiarum / Gaudet aceruis accumulandis diuiciarum’. Paganus gives a recent (and in this case, he states, praiseworthy) example of the phenomenon, Bishop Hugh III of Nevers (1110–19). EH, vol. IV, 312–13. In the same passage he condemned ‘modern men’ for dressing in novel fashions to distinguish themselves from traditional monks. PL 162, cols. 198–202, at 201 (no. 192); compare with PL 162, col. 120 (no. 101, to Adela, countess of Blois) and cols. 260–2 (no. 256, to Renaud), and see G. Morin, ‘Rainaud l’ermite et Ives de Chartres: un épisode de la crise du cénobitisme au XIe–XIIe siècle’, Revue bénédictine, 40 (1928), 99–115; H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism. A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 1000–1150 (New York, 1984), 78–86. Ivo was repeating concerns laid out six centuries earlier in Benedict of Nursia’s Rule. P. Henriet, ‘Verbum Dei Disseminando: la parole des ermites prédicateurs d’après les sources hagiographiques (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, in La parole du prédicateur, Ve–XVe siècle, ed. R. M. Dessì and M. Lauwers (Nice, 1997), 153–85, esp. 160–4; Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism, 80–1; Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 70–1, 100–1; Somerville, with Kuttner, Pope Urban II, 284–5. Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, vol. XII, ed. R. Wilmans, MGH SS (Hanover, 1856), 673. Appearing at the council of Fritzlar (26 July 1118), Norbert was asked ‘quare praedicationis officium usurpasset et quare religionis habitum praetenderet, et quare adhuc in saeculo agens, ovium seu caprarum vestibus uteretur’. While the story of the prophet scorned in his native land is a trope, Norbert was active primarily in France between July 1118–22, despite not speaking French. See C. Dereine, ‘Les prédicateurs “apostoliques” dans les diocèses de Thérouanne, Tournai, et Cambrai-Arras durant les années 1075–1125’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 59 (1983), 171–89, and Dereine, ‘Les origines de Prémontré’; see Felten, ‘Norbert von Xanten’, for key dates and itinerary. The classic starting point for studies of Norbert and his contemporaries Robert of Arbrissel, Bernard of Tiron, and Vitalis of Savigny is J. von Walter, Die ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs. Studien zur Geschichte de Mönchtums, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1903–1906).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 in Hugh of Fosses.61 Hugh was a chaplain of Bishop Burchard of Cambrai (1116–30), who had known Norbert from their time together at the German court.62 When Norbert himself fell ill at Valenciennes, Burchard saw that he was nursed back to health. Hugh visited him as he convalesced, and pledged to follow him. Norbert’s movements in the following months were clearly influenced by Burchard and Hugh, who led him to Cambrai (where he is attested at Rogationtide in 1119) and from there, according to Norbert’s Vita A, to Fosses and its surrounding areas.63 A few months later, Hugh accompanied Norbert to Reims for the general council convoked by Calixtus II, at which the pope entrusted his oversight and care to Bartholomew of Laon. Bartholomew was instrumental in establishing Norbert on episcopal land in the Voix (Saint-Gobain) woods west of Laon, the eventual site of Norbert’s abbey of Prémontré. During this time, Norbert’s activity centred on Laon and its surroundings. He (briefly, it seems) attended the cathedral school of Laon, oversaw the endowment of Prémontré, and travelled at least once more to Reims.64 In 1120, he went back to Cambrai, gaining additional converts.65 Bartholomew and Burchard were not the only bishops to assist Norbert in his apostolic pursuits.66 Although he was perhaps more fortunate in this regard than most, the number of cases involving itinerants, ascetics, or devotees of the apostolic life receiving episcopal support in the province may be easily multiplied. Wederic of Ghent; the founders of Pommerœul, Anchin, Afflighem, and other houses; the popular recluse Aibert of Crespin; the schoolmaster-turned-ascetic Odo of Tournai; the dean of Cambrai Erlembald; the secular turned regular canon Luke of Roucy at Laon – their experiences with episcopal support constitute the rule, not the exception. (We will turn to several exceptions – Ramihrdus of Esquerchin, Tanchelm, the ‘heretics’ 61 62

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Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 675. Before Norbert’s conversion in 1115. Burchard had been an imperial chaplain of Henry V. On Hugh of Fosses’ career prior to his conversion, see now E. Van Mingroot, ‘Hugo van Fosses als kanunnik in Fosses-la-Ville en Cambrai (1087/95–1121/23). Bijdrage tot de ontstaansgeschiedenis van de Orde van Prémontré’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 84 (2008), 250–477. Lambert of Waterloo, Annales Cameracenses, vol. XVI, ed. G. Pertz, MGH SS (Leipzig, 1925), 513; Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 675–7. Ibid., 678, 684; see also Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 206–11, 212–17. Note that the author of Vita A states that Norbert had gone to the Laon cathedral school to attend the lectures on the psalms of the famous masters Anselm (d. 1117) and Raoul (d. 1133), whereas Herman says it was to preach and find converts. Bartholomew issued two charters on behalf of Prémontré in 1121, though Norbert is not listed among the witnesses; AEL, nos. 93–4, 170–4. Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 679. Frederick, archbishop of Cologne (1100–31), was no less instrumental; Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 671.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority Clement and Everard of Soissons, Peter the Hermit – shortly.) As for those whose eremetic or itinerant mode of life bishops cultivated or endorsed, the number is difficult to estimate, but high. Charles Dereine counted twenty known examples of hermits and recluses in the diocese of Cambrai alone between 1075–1125, to say nothing of those who started out in northwestern Europe only to migrate elsewhere. Most benefitted directly from episcopal support, which came primarily in the form of land to settle on, or enclosure and patronage.67 Even with examples like Norbert to draw on, there are a number of challenges to interpreting the relationships between prelates and ‘unregulated’ religious and laymen. The first is presented by the sheer diversity of available life choices. Not all ascetics preached; not all recluses remained that way; not all who pursued the apostolic life succeeded in making a go of it.68 Because we are so poorly informed about many of the communities and their founders, it is sometimes easier to see broad similarities among them than sharp differences. Yet bishops would not necessarily have responded in the same way to a Norbert of Xanten or Wederic of Ghent, whose apostolicity was highly visible and expressed through preaching and the solicitation of disciples, and to a group of ordinary laypeople seeking communal seclusion. Bishops, rather like historians, had to evaluate each case on its own merits. The second obstacle is thrown up by the documentary record. Our sources tell us about the success stories, not the failures. Success seldom came easily, and the sources accentuate the humble roots and struggles of the communities whose progress they illustrate, usually at many decades’ remove from the events themselves and with the foundations of the religious communities firmly in place by a generation or more.69 Individuals and small groups seeking retreat from the world may well have been ambivalent or antipathetic towards episcopal oversight at first, or even avoided it; but by the time their origin stories were written down years later, they were 67

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See in general A. B. Mulder-Bakker, ‘Anchorites in the Low Countries’, and P. L’HermiteLeclercq, ‘Anchoritism in medieval France’, both in L. H. McAvoy (ed.), Anchoritic Traditions of Medieval Europe (Woodbridge, 2010), 22–42 and 112–30; Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 14–21; J. Heuclin, Aux origines monastiques de la Gaule du Nord. Ermites et reclus du Ve au XIe siècle (Lille, 1988), 181–92; C. Dereine, ‘Ermites, reclus et recluses dans l’ancien diocèse de Cambrai entre Scarpe et Haine (1075–1125)’, Revue bénédictine, 97 (1987), 289–313; also C. Dereine, ‘La spiritualité “apostolique” des premiers fondateurs d’Afflighem (1083–1100)’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 54 (1959), 41–65, and Dereine, ‘Les prédicateurs “apostoliques”’. On similarities and ties between western and eastern eremitism in this period, see A. Jotischky, The Perfection of Solitude. Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States (University Park, PA, 1995), 4–46; Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 95–6. Dereine, ‘Ermites, reclus et recluses’, 308–9. For examples, see the exordia or foundation accounts of Afflighem, Watten, Cîteaux, Saint-Martin of Tournai, Saint-Nicolas-des-Près, and many others.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 usually fully absorbed into the ecclesiastical hierarchy and had the episcopal charters, dependent priories or cells, and endowments to show for it. Premonstratensian houses, for example, proliferated in the dioceses of Cambrai and Laon with the support of Bartholomew and Burchard, and at Liège with the support of its bishop Albero I (1123–8), long after Norbert had vacated Prémontré for the archbishopric of Magdeburg.70 Long-term success of ‘apostolic’ communities depended upon episcopal intervention and popular support. Bishops also stood to gain from their relationships with ascetics. During his time in the diocese of Cambrai, one of Norbert’s chief skills was reconciling parties in conflict. The two versions of his vita contain several examples of aristocratic feuds calmed through Norbert’s preaching and example of forgiveness.71 The benefits of such peacemaking, which had been an objective of the episcopally sponsored Peace and Truce of God councils in the archdiocese since the mid-eleventh century, are obvious.72 It is precisely this lived example of humility and asceticism that bishops reckoned could have a salutary effect on their flocks. Moreover, it was questionable whether bishops could or should embrace these qualities themselves, and if so, to what degree.73 Most, like Burchard or Bartholomew, would not. Those that did, although they might later be venerated for it, endured tumultuous and sometimes violent prelacies. Norbert himself, as archbishop of Magdeburg, survived multiple assassination attempts, while the saintly bishops Arnulf of Soissons and Godfrey of Amiens were pressured into exile.74 By sponsoring charismatic figures who were the object of popular veneration, bishops could share in the goodwill accorded them, without assuming tremendous personal risk. For a figure like Burchard of Cambrai, whose appointment elicited controversy both because of his background as an imperial chaplain and because of his failed attempts to reunite the 70 71

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Libellus de diversis ordinibus, xviii–xix. Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 675–7, 680–1. Monks and clergy had been doing the same with relics, especially in Flanders, for decades before Norbert appeared. See below, 99–103. One thinks also of Bernard of Clairvaux, who was a close friend of bishops and active in the province of Reims, particularly in Reims itself, Châlons, and Laon. See Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 142–6. On the Peace and Truce of God in the archdiocese of Reims, much of the key literature is cited below in chapter 4, note 79. Jussen, ‘Liturgy and legitimation’, 160–7. I would argue that this is precisely what Hildebert, the bishop of Le Mans, had in mind when he gave the wandering preacher Henry licence to preach in his city at that very moment; see J. S. Ott, ‘Authority, heresy, and popular devotion: Le Mans (1116) reconsidered’, in S. Karant-Nunn (ed.), Varieties of Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Turnhout, 2003), 99–124, at 104–5. R. Nip, ‘Exile and peace: Saint Arnulf of Oudenburg, bishop of Soissons (d. 1087)’, in L. Napran and E. van Houts (eds.), Exile in the Middle Ages. Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 8–11 July 2002 (Turnhout, 2004), 199–212.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority separated diocese of Arras with Cambrai, association with Norbert may have been a calculated strategy to improve his local standing.75 Bartholomew’s biographer, Herman of Tournai, made his partnership with Norbert a centrepiece of his account of the bishop’s deeds, and made it the standard by which his entire episcopate, including his reconstruction, foundation, and reform of numerous abbeys, would be judged. Conversely, communities that failed often owed their failure to the inadequacy or absence of episcopal leadership. We may note three prominent and well-known examples from northwestern Europe before the mid-twelfth century: the followers of Tanchelm at Antwerp and in the maritime regions of Flanders and Holland; a small group led by Clement and Everard of Bucy, near Soissons; and Ramihrdus of Esquerchin and his supporters. These groups have several features in common. First, they have all been considered early examples of heretics. Second, they were all targets of either popular or clerical suppression. Third, their examples demonstrate the necessity of episcopal intervention for authorizing and sustaining grassroots religious initiatives in this period. Our first and earliest example is that of Ramihrdus.76 The story of Ramihrdus is known largely through two documents: a contemporary letter of Pope Gregory VII addressed to the bishop of Paris, and a chronicle penned in 1133 at the abbey of Saint-André of CateauCambrésis.77 A third, the letter of the canons of Cambrai in defence of clerical marriage, seems to allude to him.78 In his March 1077 letter to Geoffrey of Paris, the pope charges the bishop to investigate the burning ‘of a certain man’ by the people of Cambrai (Cameracenses). Gregory’s knowledge of the event is limited; he notes only that the man had dared to say that simoniacs and fornicating priests should not celebrate the mass and that their officium should be rejected. This had been Gregory’s own 75

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Burchard was elected late in 1114 and received imperial investiture at Easter 1115, but the archbishop of Reims refused to consecrate him. He ultimately fought to receive a papal dispensation and was ordained on 4 June 1116. His attempts to reunite Arras and Cambrai came in 1118 and 1123. See GPC, 145–56; Chronicon s. Andreae castri Cameracesii, vol. VII, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1846), 526–50, at 547. The fullest and best study is by E. Van Mingroot, ‘Ramihrdus de Schere, alias Ramihrd d’Esquerchin († 1077)’, in R. Lievens, E. Van Mingroot, and W. Verbeke (eds.), Pascua Mediaevalia. Studies voor Prof. Dr. J. M. De Smet (Louvain, 1983), 75–92. Other treatments are by R. I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent (London, 1985), 62; Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars, 48–9; J. B. Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1965), 1–2, 43–4, 239–40. Reg. vol. I, 4.20 (25 March 1077; see also Reg. vol. I, 4.22); Chronicon s. Andreae, 540. For an English translation of the chronicle account, see W. L. Wakefield and A. P. Evans, trans., Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York, 1969), 95–6. In the letter, written not long after Ramihrdus’ death, the author refers to ‘men who conspire to destroy the sacrament of the entire Catholic religion’ and campaign to do so ‘under the deceptive image of saintliness’. See Frauenknecht (ed.), Verteidigung, 244–5.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 position for some time, and the pope was horrified that ‘impious hands’ in Cambrai had perpetrated an act of such cruelty. The bishop of Paris was to enquire into the matter and excommunicate those responsible. There is no direct evidence that he ever did.79 The Chonicon of Saint-André embellishes on this rather sparse information. While visiting the villa of Lambres, the bishop of Cambrai learned of a man living at ‘Schere’ (Esquerchin, a few kilometres from Douai) who had been ‘teaching many things outside the faith’ (multa preter fidem dogmatisare) and had attracted a large number of disciples of both sexes.80 The bishop, Gerard II, summoned him without delay to account for his way of life and teachings (doctrina eius). When Ramihrdus replied to the charges against him, Gerard had him dragged off (pertrahi eum iubet) to Cambrai for a fuller investigation. The learned clergy and abbots of Cambrai assembled; when responding to their questions about Catholic belief, Ramihrdus’ answers were deemed orthodox. He refused, however, to participate in eucharistic communion as a means of validating his testimony, arguing that no one there present, not even the bishop, was free from the taint of simony or avarice. This angered the assembly, who ordered him to be held as a heresiarch (pro heresiarcha eum indicant haberi). But, the Chronicon then adds, the bishop’s servants (ministris episcopi) and ‘many others’ seized Ramihrdus and threw him into a wooden hut. The hut was set afire and Ramihrdus burned alive, all the time, the chronicle adds sympathetically, while prostrate in prayer. The account concludes by noting that his followers preserved his bones and ashes, and that many members of his sect continued to live in surrounding towns to the present day. In a final, curious line the chronicler asserted that textile workers identified themselves by his name.81 We know nothing about the Chronicon’s source or sources; it describes events that had occurred nearly sixty years earlier, and the author’s overall tone at this point in the text reflects mounting apprehension about the declining human condition.82 The only points on which it agrees with Gregory’s letter are the means of Ramihrdus’ death and his disavowal of 79

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Van Mingroot, ‘Ramihrdus de Schere’, 90, is inclined to think that Geoffrey fulfilled his mandate. It is hard to see how the bishop of Cambrai would have perceived this extra-jurisdictional intervention, though he did depart for Rome in April 1077. This was probably in February 1077; see Van Mingroot, ‘Ramihrdus de Schere’, 90–1. Historians have sometimes taken this to suggest that Ramihrdus’ call for church reform took hold among the working and artisanal classes (Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars, 49), but the belief that workers, and clothworkers in particular, were sympathetic to heresy was a hoary literary conceit and should be taken with a grain of salt. See Robinson, Authority and Resistance, 8 and 15, n. 64, for examples. The author considers the time of Gerard II a ‘silver age’ from which mankind had descended into the present ‘iron age’ preceding the end of time; Chronicon s. Andreae, 539 and 550, where he concludes: ‘Residuum seculi tempus humanae investigationi incertum est’.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority simony. Neither text refers to him as a preacher, let alone an itinerant one. It is only the monastic chronicle that characterizes him as a teacher with many disciples. Were we dependent on Gregory’s letter alone, we might even conclude that Ramihrdus was a solitary voice in the wilderness. There are other important divergences in the accounts concerning the bishop’s role. The Chronicon casts Gerard in a very pro-active position: it is the bishop who first comes across Ramihrdus’ teachings while out and about in his diocese, questions him, then orders him forcibly taken to Cambrai. Once there, the bishop yielded to the actions of the assembly, who pronounced Ramihrdus a heresiarch. Conversely, our only knowledge of the bishop’s action in Gregory’s letters is that the pope demanded that Gerard clear himself of complicity in Ramihrdus’ death by swearing an oath before the papal legate.83 Gregory was concerned that Gerard had ‘allowed’ Ramihrdus’ death to occur without a canonical hearing. In neither source does Gerard appear to be in command of the last moments leading to Ramihrdus’ death, and the actions of the people of Cambrai or the bishop’s ministers – depending on the version – constituted without doubt an abrogation of episcopal authority and canon law. Let us assume for a moment that the Chronicon’s account is reliable in the matter of Ramihrdus’ popularity. The text indicates that the memory of the man had a more lasting influence than his teachings. We learn nothing about the content of his ‘doctrine’, but we learn that ‘many remained who adhered to him’ – that is, to his name and physical remains, which became powerful symbols.84 But symbols of what, exactly? Ramihrdus’ personal character is not described. If he was venerated as a kind of martyr, we ultimately know little about the ideas for which he died, save perhaps for his opposition to clerical avarice and simony. Theological and doctrinal matters do not seem to have been in question, and Pope Gregory believed Ramihrdus’ teachings to have been aligned with his own. The opportunity thus seems to have been open to Gerard to convert Ramihrdus’ critique into a productive outlet of some kind, whether by addressing his concerns or by channelling his energy and perhaps that of his followers into a supervised eremitic or apostolic mode of life. The bishop did neither, or did not have a chance to. 83 84

Reg. vol. I, 4.22, 332. Chronicon s. Andreae, 540: ‘Plurimi tamen, qui ei adhaeserant, de ossibus et pulvere eius aliquid sibi rapiebant. De cuius secta per quaedam oppida multi manent usque adhuc. Et eius nomine censentur textrini operis lucrum exercentes’. Compare R. I. Moore’s concept of the cult of the ‘heresiarch’; see R. I. Moore, ‘New sects and secret meetings: association and authority in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, in W. J. Shiels and D. Wood (eds.), Voluntary Religion, SCH, 23 (1986), 47–68.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Ramihrdus thus appears to represent an opportunity lost for Gerard II of Cambrai and the regional church leadership. This reading is implied by the very next section of the Chronicon of Saint-André. It describes the founding and episcopal patronage of the abbey of Anchin ‘at nearly the same time’ (in 1079) by two aristocrats, Sicher of Loos and Walter, son of Ursio of Douai, and their companions.85 Sicher and Walter identified a remote island on the Scarpe River to which to retreat and establish a hermitage. Rather than Gerard of Cambrai finding them as he had found Ramihrdus, it was they who sought out the bishop and obtained from him licence to build and dwell in a church. According to the Chronicon, not only did Gerard grant them what they wished, he acted as their helper and fellow builder (adiutor eorum et cooperator aedificationum). Within a short time, the church was filled with clergy and upright men, and God’s service was carried out there ‘zealously and religiously’.86 The abbey flourished under an abbot, and both aristocrats and people from the surrounding countryside existed under the norms of holy religion down to the chronicler’s own day. In nearly every respect, the Chronicon’s depiction of Anchin’s beginnings inverts the details of its description of Ramihrdus and his followers. Its founders go openly to the bishop, while Ramihrdus is unearthed by chance. The bishop of Cambrai aids and abets Sicher and his companions, quickly issuing a foundation charter and naming an abbot, whereas he hauls Ramihrdus in for questioning and has him imprisoned as a heresiarch. The community at Anchin infuses other monasteries with the ‘scent’ (odore) of its sanctity, while Ramihrdus’ followers lived scattered about in small towns, nostalgically remembering their dead hero. When these passages of the Chronicon of Saint-André are read together, rather than as isolated pieces of evidence for the particular events they describe, they present a sort of moralizing diptych on how eremitic or apostolic communities should be properly established and incorporated into the church. Episcopal supervision was key. This was a view offered with the benefit of five decades’ hindsight, and even at its best, the Chronicon offers us a hazy glimpse of the religious ferment in the diocese of Cambrai in the late 1070s. By the time it was written in the 1130s, the literary formulas for describing eremitic and apostolic foundations, including the conditions surrounding the 85

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Chronicon s. Andreae, 540–1: ‘Sub iisdem fere temporibus duo viri genere nobiles’. See also Dereine, ‘Ermites, reclus, et recluses’, 291–5; J.-P. Gerzaguet, L’abbaye d’Anchin de sa fondation (1079) au XIVe siècle. Essor, vie et rayonnement d’une grande communauté bénédictine (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 1997), 49–73; Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, nos. 3.03, 166–71; 3.05, 173–9. Chronicon s. Andreae, 541: ‘studiose et religiose servitus Dei ibi ageretur’.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority founders’ conversion and trials, followed by their ultimate success in establishing an influential new community, were well known.87 The necessity of episcopal leadership in establishing devotional communities was considered obvious, and Bishop Gerard II of Cambrai was duly celebrated for his piety and liberality in the official narrative histories of the houses he founded.88 A second case involving a proclaimed heretic in the province again demonstrates the crucial role bishops played in legitimating religious communities. It is the well-known, even infamous, example of Tanchelm. As Tanchelm’s tale has been much discussed, I will limit myself to a few observations. Aspects of Tanchelm’s story bear similiarities with those of Norbert, Ramihrdus, and other contemporary religious leaders.89 A number of twelfth-century sources mention him, but only one, a letter composed by the canons of St Martin’s cathedral in Utrecht, is directly contemporary with his life.90 The letter, to Archbishop Frederick of Cologne, was sent between May 1112 and June 1114, during an episcopal vacancy in Utrecht.91 At the time it was written, Tanchelm and two of his followers, named Manasses and Everwacher, were being detained by Frederick. The circumstances by 87

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Compare, for example, the Exordium [Chronicon] Affligemense, vol. IX, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS (Hanover, 1851), 407–17; Dereine, ‘Les prédicateurs “apostoliques”’, 171–2, 175–8; and C. H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution. The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia, 2000). Exordium [Chronicon] Affligemense, 409; Chronica Sigeberti Gemblacensis. Auctarium Aquicinense, vol. VI, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS (Hanover, 1844), 392–8, at 393. Scholarly debate concerning Tanchelm fills many pages. Leading studies include: J. van Moolenbroek, ‘Conflict en demonisering. De volksprediker Tanchelm in Zeeland en Antwerpen’, Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis, 7 (2004), 84–141; Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars, 52–5; M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy. Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992), 50–2; Dereine, ‘Les prédicateurs “apostoliques”’, 178–9; Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 96–101, 672–3; Moore, Origins of European Dissent, 63–6, 272–3; Russell, Dissent and Reform, 56–68, 265–9 (with an overview of the sources and scholarship to 1965); É. de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église en Belgique, vol. II, La formation de l’Église médiévale, 2nd edn (Brussels, 1945), 304–13. Peter Abelard makes passing reference to Tanchelm’s supposed beliefs in his Introductio ad theologiam, 2.4, in PL 178, col. 1056, which was composed before 1121, when it was burned at the Council of Soissons. See Russell, Dissent and Reform, 266; Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars, 54; Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 673, n. 7. The canons make no mention of their bishop. Burchard of Utrecht (1099–1112) died on 18 May. His successor, Godebald, was not consecrated until June 1114. The letter (and other documents) concerning Tanchelm is found in P. Fredericq (ed.), Corpus documentorum inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis neerlandicae. Verzameling van Stukken betreffende de pauselijke en bisschoppelijke Inquisitie in de Nederlanden (Ghent and The Hague, 1889–1906), vol. I, 15–18; as an appendix to the Vita sancti Norberti, AASS June, vol. I, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1867), 807–47, at 832–3; and edited in Monumenta Bambergensia, ed. P. Jaffé, Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 5 (Aalen, 1964), no. 168, 296–300, derived from an alternate version of the letter. The latter has been translated by Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 97–100, and re-edited in van Moolenbroek, ‘Conflict en demonisering’, 134–41.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 which the archbishop had come to hold Tanchelm are unclear, but there are several hypotheses. The canons reported in their letter that he had begun preaching in the maritime provinces in the westernmost parts of the diocese of Utrecht, well over two hundred kilometres from Cologne. He eventually began to move eastward, and found an audience in Antwerp, which sat on the border of the dioceses of Cambrai and Tournai. The canons of Utrecht give no indication that they turned him over to their archbishop, and the bishop of Cambrai does not seem to have played any role. Given this silence on the matter, it is not inconceivable that Tanchelm and his companions had responded to an official archiepiscopal summons and gone to Cologne willingly to defend their views, or had been sent there by the chapter of Utrecht.92 That they would have gone freely is suggested by the apparent orthodoxy of their views and the certainty of their convictions, both of which are in evidence in the canons’ letter to Frederick. The second possibility is that Tanchelm and his companions were sent to Cologne by the pope, after having journeyed to Rome to seek papal support.93 In either case it was at this point, with Tanchelm in his court, that the archbishop of Cologne wrote to the canons of Utrecht seeking further information about him and his beliefs, no doubt to weigh it against the itinerant preacher’s own testimony. Jozef-Maria De Smet proposes that Tanchelm was a monk; R. I. Moore thinks a priest; while Abelard and the Praemonstratensian continuator of Sigebert of Gembloux’s Chronicon referred to him as a layman.94 To the canons of Utrecht he was simply ‘our Antichrist’, ‘a very angel of Satan’.95 That Tanchelm successfully preached a vision of an apostolic Christian community with elements of Marian devotion is probable; that he preached the rejection of the existing church and its clergy for corruption and ‘pollution’ is certain. Like Ramihrdus, he is 92 93

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The latter possibility is raised by van Moolenbroek, ‘Conflict en demonisering’, 91–2. Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis, vol. I, 17; van Moolenbroek, ‘Conflict en demonisering’, 92, 138. The canons’ letter asserts that Tanchelm had gone to Rome to work towards the partitioning of the diocese of Utrecht and the attachment of its maritime provinces to the diocese of Thérouanne. See L. Milis, ‘Beroering omtrent Bisdomssplitsingen in Vlaanderen in de Jaren 1112–1113’, in Lievens, Van Mingroot, and Verbeke (eds.), Pascua Mediaevalia, 5–14; J.-M. De Smet, ‘De monnik Tanchelm en de Utrechtse bisschopszetel in 1112–1114’, in Scrinium Lovaniense. Mélanges historiques Étienne Van Cauwenbergh (Louvain, 1961), 207–34; Russell, Dissent and Reform, 57–9. He is identified as a monk by De Smet, ‘De monnik Tanchelm’, 227–33, followed by Dereine, ‘Les prédicateurs “apostoliques”’, 179. As a priest: Moore, Origins of European Dissent, 63. As a layman (‘laicus’): Cont. Praem., vol. VI, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1884), 447–56, at 449; Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis, vol. I, 26; Abelard, Introductio ad theologiam (‘quidam laicus’). Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis, vol. I, 16.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority attributed with attracting a following among both sexes. His follower Everwacher was a priest (presbyter . . . quidam), and his companion Manasses, whom the canons identified as an ironworker, established a guild or confraternity devoted to the Virgin Mary.96 Tanchelm possessed intimate knowledge of the condition of the church and its clergy. Despite the many lurid accusations made against him by the canons and later writers, Tanchelm seems to have consistently espoused a controversial though identifiably reformist doctrine, warning his followers against participating in masses or paying tithes to priests whom they deemed morally unfit to administer the sacraments. The canons’ citation of a passage from Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos defending the validity of the sacraments irrespective of the merits of the celebrant or parishoner receiving them supports the argument that Tanchelm’s preaching had attacked simoniac or uxorious clergy.97 This interpretation gains further support from elements of the vita of Norbert.98 Whatever Tanchelm’s precise tenets, there is no evidence that Frederick of Cologne detained him for long, let alone pronounced him guilty of heresy, as the canons hoped he would. Modern commentators have sometimes implied that Tanchelm and his followers somehow eluded the archbishop, perhaps by escaping confinement.99 The simpler explanation was that he was released and sent on his way.100 Tanchelm may even have beeen accorded 96 97 98

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Ibid., vol. I, 17. Ibid., vol. I, 16: ‘Ex meritis et sanctitate ministrorum virtutem sacramentis accedere’. The vitae of Norbert (versions A and B) differ in important details in their description of his role in addressing Tanchelm’s followers at Antwerp, and the Praemonstratensian Continuation of the Chronica of Sigebert of Gembloux, though it depends heavily on the vitae, adds novel elements, including a description of Tanchelm’s death. In fact, the precise date of Tanchelm’s demise is unknown, though it is often given, on the uncertain testimony of the Vaucelles continuation of Sigebert’s Chronica, as 1115. It may be reckoned to have occurred in any case sometime before 1124, when Bishop Burchard of Cambrai deeded the church of St Michael in Antwerp to Norbert and his followers, in part to assist in turning Tanchelm’s followers back to orthodoxy, but in which there is no indication that Tanchelm himself was still active; see Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 690–1, and the (forged) charters of Burchard and the provost of St Michael’s, Hidolf, edited by Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis, vol. II, 3–6. This is not the place for a full consideration of the evidence from the vitae for Tanchelm’s actual teachings, but Vita A takes up the question of the validity of sacraments administered by uxorious priests (681), mentioning that ‘instances of heresy’ had arisen in which many said or believed that married priests did not confect the body of the Lord on the altar – a possible allusion to Tanchelm’s teaching. See for example de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église en Belgique, 421–2; Russell, Dissent and Reform, 60 (‘Tanchelm succeeded in slipping through Frederick’s hands’); Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 673 n. 11 (‘apparently escaped from custody’). That Tanchelm and his followers were arrested in the first place is dubious. In this I concur with van Moolenbroek, ‘Conflict en demonisering’, 107–8. It was not unheard of, even for pious laymen; Pope Paschal in 1117 accorded a licence to hear confession to Aibert, a recluse in Hainaut. See Dereine, ‘Ermites, reclus et recluses’, 303, and C. Dereine, ‘La critique de la Vita de Saint Aibert, reclus en Hainaut († 1140)’, Analecta Bollandiana, 106 (1988), 121–142, at 139.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 a licence to preach by the archbishop. One indication that Frederick might have been open to this possibility occurred just a few years later, when he acceded to Norbert of Xanten’s pleas to ordain him and consented to his preaching.101 As with Ramihrdus, the episcopal response to Tanchelm’s sect was both late and reactive. This was largely due to circumstance. There was no bishop of Utrecht for two years between 1112 and 1114, the see of Cambrai was essentially vacant from early 1113 until late 1114, and the diocese of Noyon-Tournai was embroiled in an episcopal election controversy from May 1113 until late spring 1114.102 The only local prelate who possibly interacted with Tanchelm – and it is by no means certain – was John of Thérouanne, who may have used him to help secure jurisdiction over the coastal provinces of Utrecht, which were at the time bereft of their bishop, from Pope Paschal II.103 Whether or not John did become involved with Tanchelm, the little evidence there is concerning Tanchelm’s connection to Frederick of Cologne suggests that he was not reflexively deemed a threat by episcopal authorities. Yet he also did not receive their active support, and the absence of episcopal intervention on behalf of Tanchelm and his followers (who remained active for many years after his death104) is most noticeable in the literary reckoning of the ensuing decades, and chiefly in Premonstratensian sources, that is, the vitae of Norbert and the Premonstratensian continuation of Sigebert’s chronicle. The Premonstratensian hagiographical and chronicle traditions use the story of Tanchelm as a kind of moral exemplum on the threats posed by an unregulated, extra-institutional apostolic life. The preacher’s supposed anti-clerical and anti-eucharistic beliefs are one of the texts’ striking features. The chronicle, for example, allows that Tanchelm ‘used to say that the ministers of holy orders and the episcopal and priestly rank were nothing of consequence’, which echoes the vita’s assertion that ‘he would say that compliance with bishops and priests

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Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 672–3. An election controversy was roiling the diocese of Noyon-Tournai; see Liber de restauratione monasterii sancti Martini Tornacensis. Continuatio, vol. XIV, ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS (Hanover, 1883), 318–27, at 321–2. Milis, ‘Beroering omtrent Bisdomssplitsingen’; but see the critique of van Moolenbroek, ‘Conflicts en demonisering’, 90–1. W. M. Grauwen, ‘Enkele notities betreffende Tanchelm en de ketterijen in het begin van de 12de eeuw’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 56 (1980), 86–92, at 90; Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 690–1.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority was pointless’.105 These assertions are then followed directly in the texts by accusations that he denied the validity of the eucharist. Such claims both echo the defamatory letter of the Utrecht canons and form part of the Tanchelmian ‘dossier’ created in Praemonstratensian circles at mid-century. Norbert’s Vita A was composed in 1145 at the earliest, and before 1153; Vita B and the chronicle shortly after.106 By this point, a full generation after Norbert’s death, the story of his conversion and the order’s establishment and growth were being cemented into an official narrative. This narrative, as was earlier mentioned, emphasized Norbert’s obedience to the clerical hierarchy and his insistence that his preaching activities be authorized by the pope. Yves Congar, drawing upon mid-century writings by prominent Premonstratensians like Anselm of Havelberg (d. 1158), has argued that a central element of the early Norbertines’ religiosity was the exaltation of the priesthood and devotion to the eucharist, a ‘sacerdotal sacrament’.107 Tanchelm, of course, was depicted as holding to precisely opposing principles, and the vitae present Norbert’s preaching in Antwerp as the only successful antidote to the lingering effects of Tanchelm’s ‘heresy’. Even the two men’s deaths are presented as mirror opposites in the official sources. The sole testimony of Tanchelm’s end comes from the otherwise derivative Praemonstratensian continuation of Sigebert’s Chronicle. His death is awkward, even bizarre. The Chronicle simply reports that he was done in by a blow to the head administered by a priest – while in a boat.108 That it occurred in a boat may be meant to imply that he was not buried in consecrated ground. Or it may obliquely refer to Matthew 18:6, in which Jesus advises his disciples that it would be better if a man who confounds simple believers had a millstone hung about his neck and were thrown into the sea.109 The perpetrator, a priest, may have been an outraged 105

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Ibid., 691: ‘ut obsequium episcoporum et sacerdotum nichil esse diceret’; Cont. Praem., 449: ‘sacri ordinis ministros et episcopalem ac sacerdotalem gradum nichil esse dicebat’. Long before, of course, the canons of Utrecht had said much the same: ‘he asserted that the pope, archbishops, bishops, priests, and clergy were as nothing’ (ʻnichil papam nichil archiepiscopos nichil episcopos nichil presbiteros aut clericos asseruitʼ). The dating and relationship of the vitae have been recently summarized by Antry and Neel, Norbert and Early Norbertine Spirituality, 121–5. I am suggesting that the date of 1153 is the terminus ante quem for Vita A based on the grounds that the text does not indicate, as one would expect, that the provost Ansculf (mentioned in c. 15) had been elevated to the episcopacy of Soissons, which he was in that year. Vita B is conventionally dated to 1152–61/64, and the chronicle, which is dependent on both versions of the vita, to the mid- or late 1150s. Y. Congar, ‘Modèle monastique et modèle sacerdotal en Occident de Grégoire VII (1073–1085) à Innocent III (1198)’, in Congar, Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe–XIIe siècles), 153–60, at 156–9. Cont. Praem., 449: ‘dum navigaret, a quodam presbitero in cerebro percussus occubuit’. My thanks to Nikki Malain for sharing her thoughts on this passage with me.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 target of his preaching, or a disturbed follower. Whatever the reality, Tanchelm’s reported death was sudden and ignoble, befitting a heretic. By contrast, Norbert escaped death on several occasions, most narrowly when he was archbishop of Magdeburg. In that instance a would-be assassin struck his shoulder with his sword during a riot, only to have it glance off and stain his mitre with blood.110 Norbert survived unscathed, and later reconciled his enemies. He came to a ‘blessed end’, fulfilling the words of Augustine that one who ‘lived well could not die badly’.111 Thus Norbert of Xanten and Tanchelm were actively preaching and sharing their visions of the Christian life at almost the same time, and in regions not terribly distant from one another.112 They proved equally adept at moving crowds of people with their messages and left an impression on those who saw them. One benefitted from episcopal intervention in the crucial early years of his apostolate. The other experienced limited intercession from church authorities and was ultimately branded an antichrist by his literate, powerful opponents. In these years, the line between heresy and sanctity was a thin one indeed. A bishop’s discernment and patronage were frequently the difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy, success and failure. Should the bishop not actively step in, others, including mobs, were ready to do so. Indeed, episcopal hesitation or indecision could be fatal, as it was for four men convicted of heresy at Soissons in 1114.113 In this final instance of ‘heresy’, the bishop, Lisiard of Crépy (1108–26) prescribed an ordeal by water to determine the guilt or innocence of two men, Clement and Everard of Bucy. They apparently came to the bishop’s attention because of their association with the count of Soissons, a rumoured apostate. Summoned to the episcopal court, they were questioned about their beliefs and responded ‘in a most Christian way’ (christianissime), according to Guibert of Nogent.114 Guibert was deeply hostile to the men, and inclined to see all that they did and said as subterfuge. When they admitted to holding meetings outside of church, perhaps (as Guibert implies) as an expression of the apostolic life, the

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The event occurred during an uprising in 1129; see Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 699. Ibid., 703: ‘Neque enim, ut ait Augustinus, poterat male mori qui bene vixerat’. Norbert would later preach at Utrecht, and Norbertine canons were established at Antwerp in 1124. The only source to mention this episode is Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 429–35. The secondary scholarship is vast, but see Moore, Origins of European Dissent, 67–9; Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, 121–2, 124–30; Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 101–4; Russell, Dissent and Reform, 78–81 (with many embellishments). Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 432.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority bishop ordered them to be subjected to the water ordeal.115 This was not an uncommon sentence in northern Europe at the time, but the bishop clearly had doubts about Clement and Everard’s guilt, and seems to have employed it as a last resort. No witnesses had come forward to accuse them publicly.116 When Guibert questioned them privately, they quoted from the Gospel of Mark that whoever believes and is baptized would be saved (Mark 16:16). In all else, they deferred to the abbot of Nogent’s doctrinal expertise and agreed with his statements.117 Guibert implies that Lisiard did not want the interrogation to be decided by ordeal, asserting that it was his archdeacon Peter, ‘a man of most steadfast faith’ (vir fide integerrimus – a tacit implication of the bishop’s diffidence) who denied the accused’s pleas to be spared a trial by water. Tearfully, Lisiard performed the liturgy of the ordeal. When the water rejected Clement, signalling his guilt, his brother immediately confessed. But to what, exactly? To the stories of wild orgies and murder concocted by Guibert? That would probably have cemented their fates. Instead Lisiard hesitated and had the men put into prison. He then sought out his fellow bishops at the council of Beauvais for advice on a course of action.118 While he was gone, the people (populus), ‘fearing clerical weakness’ (clericalem verens mollitiem), broke into the prison, hauled the men outside the city, and burned them alive. R. I. Moore was surely correct when he argued that popular sentiment drove much of the judicial process of ordeals.119 Guibert describes the crowds that pressed into the church for the ordeal, and their joyous response at Clement’s rejection by the water. The abbot of Nogent also gives every indication that the bishop himself was not entirely convinced that the men were guilty, nor that the ordeal was a valid means of judgement, a perspective that is confirmed by Lisiard’s willingness to defer sentencing the men until after he had met with his colleagues. The people evidently saw his actions as a sign of equivocation, so they took matters into their own hands – much as the people of Cambrai had done forty years earlier with Ramihrdus – and burned to death Clement, 115

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Guibert (ibid., 430) says, ‘Si relegas haereses ab Augustino digestas, nulli magis quam manicheorum reperies convenire. Quae olim coepta a doctioribus, residuum demisit ad rusticos, qui vitam se apostolicam tenere jactantes, eorum actus solos legere amplectuntur’. Ibid., 432. R. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water. The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1986), 52–3; R. Kaiser, ‘Verbrechen und Strafe in Nordfrankreich um 1100. Zwei Wundererzählungen der Äbte Guibert von Nogent († um 1125) und Hermann von Tournai († 1147/48)’, in D. Berg and H.-W. Goetz (eds.), Ecclesia et Regnum. Beiträge zur Geschichte von Kirche, Recht und Staat im Mittelalter (Bochum, 1989), 89–109. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 432. Ibid., 434. Guibert also attended this council, held on 6 December 1114, and attended by the papal legate, Cono of Praeneste. Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, 115–16, 124–30.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Everard, and two others. Here again, as Guibert suggests, the bishop’s hesitation, his ‘softness’, led the people to act. As for the abbot of Nogent himself, he and the archdeacon Peter do not seem to have experienced any qualms about the outcome. The restless religious experimentation and social dynamism of the age presented bishops and other clerical authorities with a very real set of challenges. For every itinerant preacher, mobile monk, lay convert, or recluse that circulated through his diocese, and against a backdrop of fluid clerical fashions and roles, the bishop had to make a careful evaluation of individuals’ public comportment and intent, while weighing the potential benefits presented by displays of exemplary religiosity against the possible dangers of mob hysteria or excessive zeal. As the examples of Norbert, the recluses of Anchin, and many others not discussed here show, a decisive episcopal response could go a very long way towards channelling pious energies into ‘productive’ – that is, sanctioned – channels. Direct episcopal ‘control’, in the sense of exercising coercive power over such amorphous and unpredictable forces, was seldom practised. Two of the instances just considered, in which the bishops of Cambrai and Soissons compelled Ramihrdus of Esquerchin and the Soissons ‘heretics’ to appear in their courts, ended with disastrous abrogations of episcopal authority. Indeed, we should not hesitate to label them failures of episcopal leadership, since, as I have argued, a close reading of the sources describing Tanchelm, Ramihrdus, Clement and Everard, and their followers reveals not so much the presence of concrete heretical thought as religious enthusiasm and perhaps apostolic yearnings left unsupervised. We must remember, too, that bishops were being judged for how they handled popular itinerants, preachers, and social critics. It would be wrong to assume that ecclesiastical authorities were unmoved by charismatic individuals or displays of devotion, or unwilling to endorse them. When Robert, an archdeacon and schoolmaster of Arras (d. 1141/2), wrote a vita of the recluse Aibert shortly after the latter’s death in 1140 and dedicated it to Alvisius, the bishop of Arras, he proclaimed the universality of Aibert’s appeal. Aibert’s fame drew to his cell not only the vulgar and unlettered. ‘On the contrary’, Robert wrote, ‘bishops, archdeacons, abbots, hermits, monks, and every sort of religious and lettered man, [together with] noble men and women’, visited the holy man. So great was his sanctity that they marveled at Aibert as if he were ‘a many-headed beast’.120 One suspects that Robert was among the 120

Robert of Arras, Vita sancti Ayberti, ed. J. Carnandet, AASS April, vol. I, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1865), 669–79, at 676: ‘et hominem Dei belluam multorum capitum admirantes’.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority archdeacons who visited Aibert, and on the basis of his encounter concluded that it would be ‘unbecoming and absurd’ if the reputation and works (fama et opera) of such a man should be cloaked in silence.121 A bishop like Alvisius (1131–47), whose own career spanned multiple abbeys and culminated in the see of Arras, might understand if not appreciate the variety of Aibert’s religious life, which led him from recluse to pilgrim to monk and back again to recluse. As these examples demonstrate, rapid social change and experimentation, affective religiosity, and the ever-present possibility of simulation – on the part of self-proclaimed holy men and ordinary clergy alike – produced anxiety among ecclesiastical authorities. It is apparent in the conciliar statutes with which we opened this chapter and in the equivocation of the bishop of Soissons. The blurring of social boundaries between lay and clerical orders, or institutional and charismatic authority, invited scrutiny, and in some cases condemnation.122 Yet when individuals transcended conventions, they could also spark admiration and garner episcopal support. The bishop’s discernment, backed by his authority, was the critical tool for establishing the difference between decadence and piety, charlatanism and genuine holiness, sincerity and simulation. Much rested on his judgement: not only the safety of his flock, but the success of those who sought to perfect their own spiritual lives and the lives of others. The bishop’s discernment, like his authority, was also subject to pressures from within the community, and it is to another source of that pressure, the crowd, that we now turn.

the medieval crowd: devotion, autonomy, and dissent As challenging as it was for prelates to assess the influx of wandering preachers, holy men, and recluses dotting the landscapes and plying the highways of northern Europe, managing the passions of the masses presented a greater challenge still. Some years ago R. I. Moore summed up the climate of the eleventh century by noting that ‘one of [its] most obvious novelties . . . is the appearance of the crowd on the stage of public events’.123 The crowd exercised its voice with growing force and effect 121

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Ibid., ‘Prologus’, 671: ‘Valde enim indecens et absurdum nobis visum est, si fama et opera tanti viri silentio clauderentur’. Guibert of Nogent, for example, was deeply suspicious of careerist churchmen who changed religious habits to match their ambitions, as his biting critique of Godfrey, bishop of Amiens, demonstrates. See Ott, ‘Writing Godfrey of Amiens’. Moore, ‘Family, community and cult’, 49–51.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 in political and religious affairs. Medieval sources employed a variety of terms to describe groups of people, generally non-aristocratic, who gathered together. Most often they referred to them using the term populus (loosely, ‘people’), while words like turba (‘crowd’) and vulgus (‘crude masses’) were used to denote potentially disorderly or violent groups. Distinctions between orderly and disorderly assemblies lay in the eye of the beholder; much depended on context. For instance, in the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, when the populus assembled ‘without observance of the law, without discipline and government’, it harboured the potential for disorder, even heresy.124 Then, Bernard remarked, ‘it is not a people (populus), but is called a crowd (turba); it is not a city (civitas), but confusion’. By contrast, when the populus observed the law it mirrored the celestial Jerusalem, becoming the ‘vision of peace’.125 Positive representations of popular assemblies such as Bernard’s were influenced by descriptions of social consensus inherited from Roman law, and in liturgical contexts reflected the unity of the Church as a mystical body.126 The presence of the people was likewise employed as a literary topos to signal an occasion’s legitimacy or illegitimacy. Violent or peaceful, collective behaviour was thought by commentators and jurists to be difficult to restrain and even harder to control.127 This is underscored by the dramatic language frequently used in clerical sources to describe popular action: people ‘curse’, ‘rage’, and act ‘audaciously’, but also ‘flock in multitudes’ to holy events and listen ‘most devotedly’ to sermons.128 Contemporary writers believed that the crowd’s passions were always simmering just under the surface, capable of erupting at a moment’s notice. In one instance, as people arrived at 124 125

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Moore, ‘New sects and secret meetings’, 47–8. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo V in dedicatione ecclesiae, in Leclercq and Rochais, Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. V, 388–96; cited in B. Jacqueline, Episcopat et papauté chez Saint Bernard de Clairvaux (Lille, 1975), 146. In classical usage the word populus possessed a more variegated meaning than the broad translation of ‘people’ suggests. Augustine, following Cicero, defined the populus as ‘a gathering of a multitude of rational beings united in fellowship by their agreement about the objects of their love’; see Book 6.19 of Augustine of Hippo, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. W. C. Greene (Cambridge, MA, 1960), 230–2. J. duQuesnay Adams, The Populus of Augustine and Jerome. A Study in the Patristic Sense of Community (New Haven, CT, 1971), explores the word’s meanings in patristic texts. The translation of Augustine above is his, 19. As we saw in chapter 1, above; see also J. Gaudemet, ‘Unanimité et majorité (Observations sur quelques études récentes)’, in Études historiques à la mémoire de Noël Didier (Paris, 1960), 149–62. P. Michaud-Quantin, Universitas. Expressions du mouvement communautaire dans le Moyen-Age latin (Paris, 1970), 219–29. On the suspicion of canonists towards sworn communities, especially when aligned against bishops, see J. Sydow, ‘Fragen zu Gilde, Bruderschaft und Zunft im Lichte von Kirchenrecht und Kanonistik’, in B. Schwineköper (ed.), Gilden und Zünfte. Kaufmännische und gewerbliche Genossenschaften im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1985), 113–26, esp. 116–18. Examples are from the GPC, 165, line 188; 217–18, lines 308–18; APC, 398, 401; Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 200.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority Amiens to witness the elevation of the relics of St Firmin by the bishop Godfrey in 1106/7, the proceres and other nobles were said to have remained ‘anxiously vigilant that no tumult or sedition should arise among such a multitude’.129 The mere presence of crowds gave rise to authorities’ fears of loss of control. Most literary references to the ‘people’, whether they are distinguished as urban-dwelling ‘citizens’ (cives) or ‘rustics’ (rustici), ‘rich’ (divites) or ‘poor’ (pauperes), were simplistic approximations of social realities. Yet there is no denying that the collective needs and expectations of laypeople shaped daily life and affected diocesan administration. The remainder of this chapter will survey incidences of popular or collective action that emerged and became a routine part of the urban social landscape in northern France and Flanders between the mid-eleventh and mid-twelfth centuries, focusing on relic delations and episodic pilgrimages; crusade preaching, and the development of communes. In each, bishops played a role in their cultivation, expansion – and restraint. disease, famine, and episodic mass pilgrimages Famine, drought, or disease catalysed large groups of people, particularly the poor. In northern France and Flanders, enthusiasm for crusade may have been spurred in part by a series of poor harvests and famine stretching from 1090 until 1096, and again in 1146–7. The years 1094–5 were especially bad. Herman of Tournai’s account of the restoration of the monastery of Saint-Martin notes that in 1095 ‘the lack of food and atrocity of famine vehemently afflicted the whole province’, and reached as far as Champagne.130 The food shortages followed by just a few years a dire bout of ergotism around Tournai, also probably brought on by wet weather. At the height of the outbreak, the cathedral of Notre-Dame became so filled with the sick and dying that the canons felt they had no choice but to evict them. Another period of sustained scarcity and mass movement occurred in the mid- to late 1120s. In Flanders, particularly near Ghent and the Scheldt and Leie rivers, a hard famine in 1124–5 weakened the populace and forced many poor on to the roads to seek 129

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VSG, 925: ‘Huic pio spectaculo fere universi Ambianensis urbis suburbici defuerunt, alii hospitibus affinibusque occupati, alii nundinis operam dantes, proceres quique ac nobiles, ne quid tumultus vel seditionis in tanta populi multitudine exoriretur, sollicite invigilantes’. Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 307–9; and see L. H. Nelson (trans.), The Restoration of the Monastery of Saint Martin of Tournai (Washington, DC, 1996), 226–9; P.-A. Sigal, ‘Maladie, pélerinage et guérison au XIIe siècle. Les miracles de saint Gibrien à Reims,’ Annales ESC, 24 (1969), 1522–39, at 1524. For the food shortages prior to the Second Crusade, see J. Phillips, The Second Crusade. Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven, CT, 2007), 106–7.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 food.131 A few years later, in 1128–9, a new outbreak of ergot poisoning gripped northern France, owing to successive harsh winters and wet growing seasons.132 Anselm of Gembloux describes how a ‘plague of holy fire’ descended on Chartres, Paris, Soissons, Cambrai, and Arras.133 Waves of pilgrims, some travelling from Flanders and Maine, arrived at the doorsteps of Notre-Dame of Soissons and other sanctuaries seeking cures. At Soissons, a brief but intense cult developed around Mary’s slipper, sustained principally by sufferers from ergotism.134 Mary’s hair and breast-milk attracted cure-seekers to Cambrai.135 Bishops had no choice but to intervene during times of want. They distributed church valuables to pay for scarce foodstuffs, ministered to the poor, and led penitential processions around the city and countryside to stave off disease. The dire situation at Tournai in 1090 forced its bishop, Radbod II, into action on multiple fronts. To combat the disease he first preached a terrifying sermon. Then, according to Herman of Tournai, just before conducting expiatory processions around the city, he sheared the hair and cut up the fashionable clothing of ‘more than a thousand young men’.136 Echoing familiar concerns, Herman believed the luxurious clothing and long hair of the young men facilitated their sexual licentiousness. Radbod decreed that the penitential processions around Tournai that year should be an annual event, held on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. In that way it would act as a perpetual prophylactic against disease – though one wonders whether Radbod also hoped to keep contemporary fashions in check. Directing such penitential conduct was expected of bishops, but a trickle of poor or hungry people could quickly become a flood, and 131

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Galbert of Bruges, De multro, traditione, et occisione gloriosi Karoli comitis Flandriarum, ed. Jeff Rider, CCCM 131 (Turnhout, 1994), 7–11. Anselm of Gembloux notes the difficult climactic conditions of the years 1126–9 in his continuation of the Chronica of Sigebert of Gembloux (vol. VI, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1884), 375–85, at 380–1); see also the continuation of Ourscamp (vol. VI, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1884), 472 (s.a. 1128). The years 1142 and 1144 saw the return of the ‘holy fire’ and famine due to poor, late harvests. Anselm of Gembloux, Continuatio, 381. G. Signori, Maria zwischen Kathedrale, Kloster und Welt: hagiographische und historiographische Annäherungen an eine hochmittelalterliche Wunderpredigt (Sigmaringen, 1995), 132–7; B. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind. Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215, rev. edn (Philadelphia, 1987), 142–5; A. L. Clark, ‘Guardians of the sacred: the nuns of Soissons and the slipper of the Virgin Mary’, Church History, 76 (2007), 724–49; J. S. Ott, ‘Educating the bishop: models of episcopal authority and conduct in the hagiography of early twelfth-century Soissons’, in S. N. Vaughn and J. Rubenstein (eds.), Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe, 1000–1200 (Turnhout, 2006), 217–53, at 225–9. Anselm of Gembloux, Continuatio, 383. Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 277: ‘Factoque cunctis generali sermone, omnibusque nimium perterritis, plus quam mille iuvenum comas totundit vestesque per terram defluentes et libidini potius quam necessitati servientes precidit’.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority urban religious institutions easily became overwhelmed. This was the case in 1090 at Tournai, where an overflow of sick and dying people forced the religious authorities to evacuate the cathedral. Crowds could grow agitated, boisterous, clamouring for access to relics or, when given access, seeking a piece of the relic for themselves.137 When a sustained period of drought decimated the area around Soissons, perhaps in 1097, the bishop Hugh became desperate. Not knowing what to do and not wanting to see his people suffer, he consulted with Godfrey, the abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, who counselled him to impose a fast upon all men and beasts in the diocese, ‘in the custom of the Ninevites’.138 On the appointed day, ‘an innumerable multitude of both sexes’ (infinitus populus utriusque sexus) gathered with the relics of the saints at the suburban church of Saint-Etienne, where the bishop preached a sermon of such eloquence and learnedness that he managed to soothe the spirits of the desperate people.139 As Hugh spoke, it began to rain and the crowds dispersed. Nicholas of Saint-Crépin, who tells the story, was left to remark that despite being burdened by their physical sufferings, the people were united in spirit with Christ as a result of their devotion to the saints and the bishop’s preaching. As these incidents show, though bishops sometimes faced overwhelming suffering and distress, popular devotion brought on by dearth also presented opportunities for them to consolidate their influence as intercessors with their communities, arbiters of morality, and impresarios of local cults and their relics.140

relic delations If local, regional, and international pilgrimages and processions to saints’ shrines were sometimes intense (though not unusual by the standards of the late eleventh century), one of the more distinctive features of religious enthusiasm in this period was that the relics of the saints attained a level of mobility approaching that of the pilgrims. Most probably an outgrowth of the common practice of transporting relics to peace councils and in communal processions, around 1060 communities of monks and canons 137

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A woman attempted to take a bite out of the holy slipper at Soissons, and at Saint-Remi in 1145 the monks had to remove the head of St Gibrian because it was being showered with kisses and crushed by the mass of pilgrims. On the former see Hugh Farsit, Libellus de miraculis beatae Mariae Virginis in urbe Suessionensi, PL 179, col. 1780; on the latter, Sigal, ‘Maladie, pélerinage et guérison’, 1530. VSG, 915 and n. 1. Ibid.: ‘ita lepore ac dulcedine verbi, in gratia sale conditi, auditorum mentes ad compunctionis suavitatem medullitus accendebat’. Gabriele Signori has suggested bishops did the same with many Marian cults in the twelfth century: Signori, Maria zwischen Kathedrale, Kloster und Welt, 45–9.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 began taking the bones of their holy dead on extended tours (delationes) around nearby towns and settlements.141 The practice originated in Flanders before spreading south to the Île-de-France. Abbeys and chapters undertook the processions to generate funds for the construction or rebuilding of churches, to subdue aristocratic feuds or regain lost lands, or to encourage pious devotion (and perhaps further pilgrimages and donations) to their patron. Relic processions regularly traversed the province of Reims for more than two hundred years.142 Itineraries, which covered distances ranging from a few hundred to several thousand kilometres, were mapped out by a mixture of careful planning and ad hoc decision-making.143 When word got out that such tours met with success, they encouraged imitators. For example, the monks of the priory of Corbény (in the diocese of Laon), were inspired to process with the relics of their patron St Marculf in 1102 because the canons of Saint-Martin of Tours had made a successful journey through the diocese in 1096. The monks of Corbény even visited some of the same cities as the canons.144 Moreover, as the communities were quick to record, the saints seemed to look favourably upon the excursions. Written accounts of delations reported miraculous cures, the settlement of feuds, spontaneous donations, and other manifestations of the saints’ pleasure during the journeys.145 The arrival of a procession was dramatic, and the local response unpredictable. The travelling bands of monks and canons were usually warmly welcomed.146 Excited townspeople, the sources say, would often 141

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On the development of relic processions, see in the first place P. Héliot and M.-L. Chastang, ‘Quêtes et voyages de reliques au profit des églises françaises du Moyen Age’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 59 (1964), 789–822, and 60 (1965), 5–32; Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 296–312; P.-A. Sigal, ‘Les voyages de reliques aux onzième et douzième siècles’, in Voyage, quête, pélerinage dans la littérature et la civilisation médiévales (Aix-en-Provence, 1976), 75–103, here at 75–6 and 91 nn. 6–7; G. Koziol, ‘Monks, feuds, and the making of peace in eleventh-century Flanders’, in Head and Landes (eds.), The Peace of God, 239–58; and R. Kaiser, ‘Quêtes itinérantes avec des reliques pour financer la construction des églises (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, Le Moyen-Age, 101 (1995), 205–25, at 209–12. Héliot and Chastang, ‘Quêtes et voyages de reliques’, 796–9, provide a (incomplete) handlist; see also Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 297–300; and Kaiser, ‘Quêtes itinérantes’, 210–12. Sigal, ‘Les voyages de reliques’, 78; Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 303; Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 87–95. Miracula sancti Marculfi anno MCI facta Peronae in Picardia, ed. J. Carnandet, AASS May, vol. VII, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1867), 525–31, at 525–6. The author of the miracula mentions that the delation of St Brix by the canons of Tours went as far north as Péronne, where the monks of Corbény left the relics of Marculf for some time; Héliot and Chastang, ‘Quêtes et voyages de reliques’, 802. All of these occurred through the miracles of St Ursmer, for example, and were recorded in the Historia miraculorum sancti Ursmari in circumlatione per Flandriam, ed. G. Henschen, AASS April, vol. II, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1865), 570–5. Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 304–5; Sigal, ‘Les voyages de reliques’, 86–9.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority go out to meet the processions, and formed an entourage when they departed for their next destination. When the monks of Saint-Amand, having finished their visit to Laon in 1066, attempted to leave with the relics of their patron, a mob of people prevented their progress for three hours.147 A ‘numerous multitude of people of both sexes’ accompanied the aforementioned relics of Marculf from Corbény to Reims in 1102, and a concourse of clergy and townspeople came out to meet the monks at Châlons a few days later.148 On yet another occasion, a group of pilgrims from Tours followed the canons of Laon from the city during the canons’ procession with their relics of the Virgin in 1112, proclaiming to all they encountered the miracles that they had witnessed.149 Occasionally, the relic processions encountered a cooler reception. During the Laon canons’ same tour in 1112, a monk of Saint-Laurentde-Lin refused to place their relics of Mary on the major altar dedicated to Lawrence, and evicted the group from the church. The canons were also rebuffed a year later, in England. The dean of Christchurch (near Winchester) ejected the relics from the church after a group of merchants gave offerings to Mary instead of placing them on the church altar.150 The processions frequented cathedral cities, stopping at various times between 1060 and 1113 at Reims, Châlons, Noyon, Tournai, Laon, Soissons, Arras, and Cambrai.151 Episcopal reactions to the practice varied. Some bishops, like Ivo of Chartres, welcomed the relics and even proclaimed miraculous cures.152 Conversely, the author of the Miracula sancti Marculfi does not mention the presence or patronage of the bishops of Noyon or Soissons when the saint arrived in those cities in 1102, nor is there any indication in Herman of Tournai’s account of the relic tour of the Laon canons of an episcopal reception at Le Mans or Arras.153 Moreover, the two tours undertaken by the canons and people of Laon embarked without episcopal approval.154 147 148

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Ibid., 85. Miracula sancti Marculfi, 526; see also Héliot and Chastang, ‘Quêtes et voyages de reliques’, 811–12. An enthusiastic crowd also greeted the monks at Péronne, where they were begged to stay as long as possible (530). Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 150–1. 150 Ibid., 150–3, 176–7. Sigal, ‘Les voyages de reliques’, 78–86. Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 155–7. The archbishop of Tours and bishop of Angers warmly welcomed the canons during the same tour (148, 152), as did several English prelates on their subsequent tour through England. Miracula sancti Marculfi, 526. As the procession arrived at Soissons after Pentecost in 1102, it seems more than likely that the bishop, Hugh, had already departed for the Holy Land. It should be mentioned that the monks of Corbény asked for and received permission from Lambert of Arras to bring the relics of their patron to his city, but the procession did not, in the end, stop there. The canons departed on their first tour on 4 June 1112, after the murder of Gaudry and before his successor, Hugh, was elected. Hugh died in March 1113, and the canons departed on their second

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 These examples hint that not all churchmen were enthusiastic about the practice, and some clearly viewed the visiting relics and their promoters as a threat to local cults. Guibert of Nogent, predictably, was outraged. ‘We repeatedly see [the cult of saints] trivialized through gossip and made an object of ridicule through the dragging around of reliquaries’, he fumed.155 Other indications of unease about the delationes surfaced about the same time Guibert was writing, and developed into outright condemnation by the thirteenth century. As noted earlier, the canons issued at the council of Poitiers in 1100 included a statute specifically outlawing preaching during relic tours.156 The conciliar ban may have been intended to curb the practice, then emerging, of institutions contracting with third-party preachers to travel with their relics and advertise their powers. The abbey of Saint-Faron of Meaux had done just that, hiring a priest in 1094 to wander the archdiocese of Reims for nine years with relics of St Fiacre and collect offerings to the saint.157 The canons of Laon employed a prolocutor for the same reason.158 It is undeniable that relic processions were, in their ‘golden age’ in the decades around 1100, hugely popular. Accompanied by preachers and alms collectors, they introduced a novel and charismatic presence into the community. They siphoned donations and devotion away from local cults, and attracted large crowds. But bishops themselves did not organize any delations until long after our period. In view of this spectacle, what then was the appropriate response? Prelates might welcome the processions into the local church. An endorsement of the visiting relics or their miraculous cures risked insult to local saints’ cults, but rejecting them might raise popular ire. In short, bishops faced the same set of difficult choices with relic tours that they did when itinerant preachers came to

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(longer) delation on 28 March 1113, before the election of Bartholomew one month later. See for the dates Sigal, ‘Les voyages de reliques’, 81. Herman of Tournai makes no mention of episcopal involvement in the decision to carry out the delations; see Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 142–5, 160–1. If anything, the canons seem to have timed their processions to avoid episcopal involvement, or at least saw no need to wait for approval. Guibert, writing in 1115 (Autobiographie, 378), gave the practice a lukewarm endorsement in his first report on the journey of the Laon canons: ‘Interea secundum illum qualemcumque morem ad corrogandas pecunias coeperunt feretra et sanctorum reliquiae circumferri’. Writing a few years later, his tone had become more sarcastic and embittered; Guibert of Nogent, De sanctis et eorum pigneribus, 97–8; McAlhany and Rubenstein, Monodies and On the Relics of Saints, 206. See also Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 307–12. Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 306–7; and above, n. 48. M. Toussaints du Plessis, Histoire de l’Eglise de Meaux, avec des notes ou dissertations, et les pièces justificatives (Paris, 1731), vol. II, 15, also noted by Héliot and Chastang, ‘Quêtes et voyages de reliques’, 813; and Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 302. Guibert of Nogent, De sanctis et eorum pigneribus, 98: ‘Celeberrima quaedam ecclesia huiusmodi circunvagationes agebat et ad sui reparationem damni questus adhibito prolocutore querebat’.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority town. But delations also presented opportunities. When the canons of Laon arrived with their relics of the Virgin at Chartres on the vigil of Mary’s Nativity, a woman of the bishop’s household had a vision telling her to go to the portable bier containing the relics, which Ivo had had placed above the major altar.159 She was cured of her paralysis, and ran through the streets, followed by the episcopal household, proclaiming the news. Ivo ordered the Te Deum sung, and the first cure was followed in short order by two others, both announced in the cathedral. The Te Deum was sung a second time, then a third, to general rejoicing. The bishop of Chartres commanded the moment. He confirmed the woman’s vision, authenticated the three miracles, and led the celebration. Ivo orchestrated his response to the arrival of Laon’s Marian relics to great effect, affirming his authority and his status as arbiter of the holy before the community. In the same way, it is likely that when bishops positively received the wandering monks and canons, they did so knowing that their arrival had the potential to generate an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation. Bishops could both cater to the needs of the community, and use the opportunities presented by the delationes to promote their position within it. crusade preaching There were nevertheless limits to the reach of episcopal suasion and influence when it came to popular devotion. The advent of crusading tested both, as ecclesiastical and secular authorities struggled to direct, let alone control, fervour of the sort inspired by the apocalyptic crusade preaching of a Peter the Hermit, or the dramatic self-mutilation of an Abbot Baldwin (who later became archbishop of Caesarea160), infamous for branding a cross upon his forehead. Thousands of people from northern France and the Low Countries made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem between 1096 and 1101.161 Additional waves of pilgrims and crusaders followed regularly thereafter. While we are relatively well-informed about Peter’s actions, we know very little about the extent to which bishops followed through on Urban II’s call to preach crusade, nor how, or even whether, they roused the masses to take the road to Jerusalem. Baudry of Bourgeuil, who was present at Clermont in 1095, notes that following the council ‘the bishops preached . . . the word of God was 159 160

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Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 156–7. In 1101. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, trans. F. R. Ryan (Knoxville, TN, 1969), 155. J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 sown, and daily the number of Jerusalemites grew’.162 Other direct evidence is lacking. Although Lambert of Arras copied down Urban’s decrees from Clermont in his pastoral registers, there is no indication that he preached. There are only slivers of circumstantial evidence that some prelates may have encouraged their flocks to take up the cross and go to Jerusalem.163 We do know that bishops and ranking cathedral clergy participated in planning the expeditions, transmitted information from the east to their parishes and colleagues, and went on crusades themselves. The relatively sophisticated transmission of the crusading message effected by the preaching orders in the thirteenth century was, however, a long way off.164 The silence on the subject of episcopal preaching is thus noteworthy, as it is in the sources for the Second Crusade.165 But it is primarily explicable in light of the nature of our sources, rather than an actual absence of clerical initiative. Historical accounts often begin their narratives of crusades by highlighting the activities of the charismatic Peter the Hermit and Bernard of Clairvaux, or the papal activity and formal councils held at Clermont in 1095 and Vézelay in 1146, rather than the more mundane institutional avenues by which the call to crusade was disseminated locally. Historians are also poorly informed about the content of episcopal preaching in general for this period, though we fortunately do possess a number of contemporary episcopal charters which confirm donations to religious institutions by laymen preparing to take up the cross.166 If the bishops of northern France were facilitating these transactions, there is a very good chance that they also had something to do with encouraging the decision to go to Jerusalem that precipitated the donations in the first place. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, many bishops went on crusade, including a number from northern France in 162

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Baudry of Bourgeuil, Historia Jerosolimitana, Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, 4 (Paris, 1879), 16. See P. J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 18; M. Bull, ‘The roots of lay enthusiasm for the First Crusade’, History, 78 (1993), 353–72; J. Rubenstein, ‘How, or how much, to reevaluate Peter the Hermit’, in S. J. Ridyard (ed.), The Medieval Crusade (Woodbridge, 2004), 53–69, at 60–1, 66. On Peter, see also J. Flori, Pierre l’Ermite et la première croisade (Paris, 1999), and E. O. Blake and C. Morris, ‘A hermit goes to war: Peter and the origins of the First Crusade’, in W. J. Shiels (ed.), Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition, SCH, 22 (Oxford, 1985), 79–107. C. T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades. Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994), 96–110. On preaching the Second Crusade, which Pope Eugenius III assigned to Bernard of Clairvaux, see Phillips, The Second Crusade, 66–70, 80–3, 96–7; Cole, Preaching the Crusades, 42–8. There are several examples in C. Slack (ed. and trans.), Crusade Charters, 1138–1270 (Tempe, AZ, 2001); also BNF Coll. Picardie 234, fos. 42r–43v (chirograph of 1100 done by Hugh, bishop of Soissons).

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority both 1101 and 1147.167 Despite the silence of the sources concerning episcopal preaching of crusade, they appear to have been involved in all aspects of the endeavour. bishops and communes Bishops also faced their flocks in the civic arena. Between 1077 and 1150, rural and urban communities in northern France and Flanders began seeking political, juridical, and economic liberties as communes. Communes were chartered, politically autonomous associations that possessed jurisdiction in civil and economic affairs and over most secular criminal matters.168 Membership consisted of the free adult men and women within a specified radius, most often including the centre, marketplace, and adjacent suburbs of a city, town, or villa. Communes were governed by mayors and male representatives elected from their members in good standing (boni homines).169 All swore to give aid to one another in disputes with outsiders or other authorities. Bishops, who often possessed rights of secular jurisdiction in their cities, consented to communal charters, while the highest-ranking secular authority of the land, either the king or a count, granted the charter itself and retained the right to abolish the commune if he saw fit.170 The earliest communes were established in the cathedral cities of the province.171 Several – Cambrai, Laon, Reims – had violent beginnings. 167

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According to Guibert of Nogent, Bishops Hugh of Soissons, Enguerran of Laon, and William of Paris travelled east in the entourage of Stephen of Blois in 1101. Alvisius of Arras, Simon of Noyon-Tournai, and the bishops of Langres and Lisieux accompanied Louis VII forty-five years later. Michaud-Quantin, Universitas, 160–1; S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984), 176–9. Albert Vermeesch observes that there are few ‘defining characteristics’ of communes for which exceptions cannot be found; see A. Vermeesch, Essai sur les origines et la signification de la commune dans le nord de la France (XIe et XIIe siècles) (Heule, 1966), 9–21, esp. 15–17. On women’s citizenship and (limited) political participation in late medieval communes, see M. C. Howell, ‘Citizenship and gender: women’s political status in northern medieval cities’, in M. Erler and M. Kowaleski (eds.), Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens, GA, 1988), 37–60. French kings fully expected communes to fulfill their obligations and duties to the crown by rendering money and men to the royal host; A. Luchaire, Les communes françaises à l’époque des Capétiens directs (Paris, 1890), 264–75. The question as to whether communes were in fact the ‘vassals’ of French kings has long been disputed; for a historiographical summary of the debate, see B. Lyon, ‘What role did communes have in the feudal system?’ Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 72 (1994), 241–53. At Cambrai (1077, 1102–7), Beauvais (c. 1099), Noyon (1108), Laon (1111/12, 1128), Amiens (1113/14), Soissons and its surrounding rural villae (c. 1116), Reims (1139–40), and Senlis (1173). Other rural and urban communes were established in Saint-Quentin (c. 1081); Mantes-enYvelines (c. 1110); Aire-sur-Lys (1111); Valenciennes (1114); Corbie (1123); and at Bruges, Saint-Omer, Ghent, and neighbouring Flemish towns (1127–28). For a survey, see Vermeesch, Essai, 88–120.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Contemporary clerical authors did not concern themselves overmuch with the judicial, political, or social origins of the communes, and the terms they used to describe urban associations were often hostile.172 For example, the monastic author of the Chronicon sancti Andreae referred to the pact of mutual aid sworn by the citizens of Cambrai in 1077 simply as a coniuratio, or ‘sworn assembly’.173 Though an unusual event, the chronicler says only that the swearers refused to allow anyone to enter the city and barred the gates to the bishop. We learn nothing of its political structure, social composition (beyond the fact that they were ‘citizens’), leadership, or aims.174 Conversely, the language communes used to characterize their associations, including pax (‘peace’) and amicitia (‘friendship’), was irenic.175 Only in the thirteenth century were debates about the communes’ legal nature and the privileges of its members taken up with enthusiasm by canon lawyers and jurists. Yet nearly all communal charters contain statutes putting maintenance of the peace as a primary concern, and most were established with episcopal acquiescence and to episcopal advantage.176

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So far as I know, Guibert of Nogent and Hugh of Poitiers are the only writers to have assessed the juridical, political, or electoral powers of communes, and their descriptions have often been taken as representative of the clerical attitudes towards sworn communities; Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 320; Hugh of Poitiers, The Vézelay Chronicle and other documents from MS. Auxerre 227 and elsewhere, ed. and trans. J. Scott and J. O. Ward (Binghamton, NY, 1992), 168. Coniuratio was used favourably to refer to peace associations in the eleventh century; conspiratio was used in the Middle Ages to refer to revolts against authority. See Michaud-Quantin, Universitas, 129–33. Chronicon s. Andreae, 540. The continuator of the eleventh-century deeds of the bishops of Cambrai, writing in 1092, used communia and conspiratio interchangeably; see the GEC, 498. So, too, did clergy commenting on the Beauvais commune, cited in Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, 176. Communes at Valenciennes (1114) and Laon (1128) employed ‘pax’; Aire-sur-la-Lys (1188) was called an ‘amicitia’; see also Malegam, Sleep of Behemoth, 230–2. Because peace councils and communal charters sought to impose peace and social order within their jurisdictions, historians have debated whether the councils inspired the communes. Luchaire, Les communes françaises, 41–3, rebutted this thesis. The debate was reopened with the publication of D. Kennelly’s ‘Medieval towns and the Peace of God’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 15 (1963), 35–53, which drew attention to the parallels between the peace of God and communal statutes without going so far as to pronounce a causal link between the two. Her thesis was taken up and expanded by Vermeesch three years later in his 1966 Essai sur les origines, esp. 135–82. Vermeesch labelled the commune ‘une institution de paix’ and saw the so-called diocesan communes of the mid-eleventh century as transitional institutions between the peace and later (primarily) urban communes. He did not, however, see a direct relationship between communal charters and the legislation that arose from the peace assemblies. Vermeesch’s conclusions were adopted by H. Platelle, ‘La violence et ses remèdes en Flandre au XIe siècle’, Sacris erudiri. Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen, 20 (1971), 101–73, here at 123–5; and P. Desportes, ‘Le mouvement communal dans la province de Reims’, in Les chartes et le mouvement communal. Colloque régional (octobre 1980), organisé en commémoration du neuvième centenaire de la commune de Saint Quentin (SaintQuentin, 1982), 105–12, at 107–8; and see now Malegam, Sleep of Behemoth, 230–63.

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority The extent of communal jurisdictions varied, as did the articles of their charters.177 With respect to the bishop’s legal prerogatives, some charters, such as those of Soissons (c. 1116) and Laon (the Institutio Pacis of 1128), explicitly preserved the prelate’s customary rights and privileges.178 But communes might limit bishops in other ways. In addition to maintaining jurisdiction over sworn members in civil matters, communal charters frequently stipulated prelates’ obligations to render their debts to communal creditors within a stated period of time (as at Soissons); curtailed their freedom to admit into the town men whom the communes considered ‘enemies’ (Beauvais, Soissons, Senlis, Laon); and restricted their right to try criminal cases involving members of the commune for offences committed on church land. Communal privileges also could affect the ability of men and women who lived in other jurisdictions, including the bishop’s, to work. For example, a legal complaint brought by the bishop of Soissons against the commune in 1136 charged that the commune had illegally levied tolls on goods brought to town by traders who did not belong to the commune.179 The communes also assumed primary responsibility for keeping the peace between their citizens and outsiders. Cases of violent behaviour or injury, once punished by episcopal excommunication as infractions of the Truce of God, were now tried before the mayor and sworn representatives (jurés) of the commune, with the guilty disciplined through fines, loss of property, or corporal punishment.180 Communes also adopted the symbols, rituals, and administrative tools that bishops once monopolized. As Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has shown, written charters and the use of seals marked the city as a ‘centre of credibility’ in a world where the use of written instruments was gaining ascendance over oral forms of communication.181 From the mid-twelth century, communal governments in northern France began producing 177

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See Luchaire, Les communes françaises, 124–35. At Beauvais, for example, capitulae 7 and 14 of the communal foundation charter regulated use of the town’s many mills and the hanging of bolts of cloth (presumably for drying and curing); EFHU, no. 36, 95–6. EFHU, no. 66, 155, and no. 28, 82, respectively. See also no. 75, 175 (1190 charter of Philip Augustus for Amiens). Editions of this charter are in RAL, vol. II, no. 380, 297–300, and EFHU, no. 30, 85–6. These correct the numerous errors in G. Bourgin, La commune de Soissons et le groupe communal soissonnais (Paris, 1908), pièce justificative no. 12, 420–2. The judgement is summarized by L. Jacquemin, AJ, nos. 73–74, 49–51. An eighteenth-century copy of the charter is at BNF Coll. Picardie 235, fos. 77r–79r. For example, communes assumed responsibility for guaranteeing the safe conduct of all people coming and going from town, especially merchants, a group protected under the statutes of the Peace and Truce of God. B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Civic liturgies and urban records in northern France, 1100–1400’, in B. A. Hanawalt and K. L. Reyerson (eds.), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), 34–55.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 sealed charters of their own.182 Communes erected town halls and belfreys and had their own law courts, and gradually developed a ‘civic liturgy’ around days and events significant to the political community and its shared memory. They also embraced material and symbolic icons that represented the civic society to those both inside and outside its walls.183 All of these developments contributed to the urban community’s sense of identity and authority, the latter codified in its charter and embodied in its mayor and sworn men.184 From the mid-nineteenth century, historians vigorously debated whether communes were inherently anti-seigneurial and thus opposed to episcopal interests, or a natural ally in the common cause of maintaining peace and limiting violence. Arguments on both sides often rested on unwarranted assumptions about the nature of political institutions and so-called ‘bourgeois’ class interests, and need not detain us here.185 On 182

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The earliest surviving seals date from the last quarter of the twelfth century, however. See B. Bedos, Corpus des sceaux français du moyen âge, vol. I, Les sceaux des villes (Paris, 1980), 14; and B. Bedos, ‘Les types des plus anciens sceaux des communautés urbaines du nord de la France’, in Les chartes et le mouvement communal, 39–50; J.-L. Chassel, ‘L’usage du sceau au XIIe siècle’, in Gasparri (ed.), Le XIIe siècle, 61–102, at 70. Evidence is slim prior to 1150, though see the comments of Bedos-Rezak, ‘Civic Liturgies’, 44–6. The commune of Soissons had a communal bell no later than 1181; Cambrai carried out legal hearings in a ‘domus pacis’ no later than 1184; EFHU, no. 66, 155; no. 72, 164. B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Towns and seals: representation and signification in medieval France’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 72 (1990), 35–47, and Bedos-Rezak, ‘Civic liturgies’. Bedos-Rezak adopts Brian Stock’s terminology in referring to towns as ‘textual communities’, whose behaviour and sense of identity were shaped through written texts. On the sources of communal authority, see EFHU, no. 30, 86 (1136); no. 36, 96 (1144). At Noyon the commune was constituted by the ‘pontifical authority’ of its bishop and confirmed by the king; see A. Lefranc, Histoire de la ville de Noyon et de ses institutions jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1887), pièces justificatives no. 5, 184–5; nos. 8–9, 189. Frederick Barbarossa’s 1184 charter for Cambrai (EFHU, no. 72, 164) indicates the jurés’ ‘authority and testimony’ in deciding matters of inheritance. A. Thierry, Recueil des monuments inédits de l’histoire du Tiers Etat, vol. I, Région du nord (Paris, 1850), and E. Sémichon, La paix et le trêve de Dieu: histoire des premiers développements du tiers-état par l’église et les associations (Paris, 1857), argued (though for different reasons) that the medieval church and urban communes were natural partners. For Sémichon the commune was effectively an extension of the church itself. This view was rejected some years later by Luchaire (Les communes françaises (1890)), who pointed to the growing antagonism between urban communities and their prelates in the later Middle Ages as evidence of urban elites’ fundamentally different value system. By the mid-twentieth century, continental historians led by Ch. Petit-Dutaillis (C. Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes françaises. Caractères et évolutions des origines au XVIIIe siècle, 2nd edn (Paris, 1970; 1st pub. 1947)) attempted to define and analyse the commune along juridical lines. This approach was criticized as overly narrow by Sidney R. Packard, Jan Dhondt, and Suzanne Deck; see S. R. Packard, ‘Review of Ch. Petit-Dutaillis’, Speculum, 24 (1949), 609–14; J. Dhondt, ‘Petit-Dutaillis et les communes françaises’, Annales ESC, 7 (1952), 378–84; and S. Deck, ‘Formation des communes en Haute-Normandie et communes éphémères’, Annales de Normandie, 10 (1960): 207–27 and 317–29. Though Petit-Dutaillis’ thesis remained influential, the studies of Kennelly, ‘Medieval towns and the Peace of God’ (1963) and Vermeesch, Essai sur les origines et la signification de la commune (1966) put to rest once and for all the idea that the commune was, by definition, antagonistic to ecclesiastical authority. More recent scholarship, for

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Restless flocks: challenges to episcopal authority the whole, before the last decades of the twelfth century, outbreaks of violence between bishops and their men and urban and rural communes were uncommon and short-lived. What is clear is the pressure that communes’ legal jurisdiction and authority put on other local authorities, especially bishops, since prelates in the province of Reims usually held secular powers in their cities. About 1113 at Châlons, for example, the townspeople – not yet formed into a commune, but seeking an amendment of existing duties owed to the bishop along the lines of communal charters later – appealed to the king for relief from their payment of their share of the gîte, or host tax, to the bishop. The king sided with the prelate.186 Communal jurisdictions existed in parallel to ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and communes rapidly developed a corporate identity performed through civic rituals. Individually, members of the urban classes assumed ever larger roles in supporting and donating their wealth to urban religious institutions, thus exercising patronage, piety, and influence in a way once claimed predominantly by secular aristocrats and churchmen.187 If modern historians struggle to capture the sheer variety of social and religious ferment around 1100, so must medieval bishops have often deliberated about how to respond to the ever-changing array of religious enthusiasms and forms of political expression they encountered. Greater physical and social mobility, religious choices, and varieties of self-expression confused existing social boundaries. Bishops were called upon to discern between charlatans and seducers and inspired seekers of religious truth, and had to weigh the threat or benefit to their flocks that both groups posed. They had to decide whether the erection of popular associations and communes would benefit or diminish their privileges and ability to govern. Yet it would be misleading to depict the prelates under consideration here as merely reactionary or resistant to change. Quite the contrary – they are often found encouraging

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example the works of R. Hilton, English and French Towns in Feudal Society. A Comparative Study (Cambridge, 1993); Lyon, ‘What role did communes have in the feudal system?’ and H. Jakobs, ‘Stadtgemeinde und Bürgertum um 1100’, in B. Diestelkamp (ed.), Beiträge zum hochmittelalterlichen Städtewesen (Cologne, 1982), 14–54, esp. 16–19, have tended to see communes as well integrated into the ‘feudal’ landscape of landholders and lawgivers. RAL, vol. I, no. 78, 171: ‘querimoniam vestram super hoc nullatenus audiremus contra episcopum’. A number of examples may be found throughout the province. The contributions of nonaristocratic laymen were celebrated in monastic and episcopal gesta and chronicles at Cambrai and Tournai, for example. See GPC, 122–39; Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 308–9; Liber de restauratione. Continuatio, 322; and H. Platelle, ‘La conversion du “marchand” cambrésien Werimbold et les courants spirituels de son temps (XIIe siècle)’, in Histoire des mentalités dans le nord de la France. Actes du XVIIIe Congrès de la Fédération des Sociétés Savantes du nord de la France, Lille, 1979 (Lille, 1979), 1–28.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 and even embracing the avatars of social transformation, from new fashions in clothing to charismatic preachers. Some no doubt did so in order to maintain or impose their authority at a time when it was being challenged by alternatives. Others realized the benefits that accrued by associating themselves with popular figures or causes. Whatever their reaction, complacency was not an option. All eyes were on the bishop, and it mattered how he responded to the needs, demands, and enthusiasms of his flock. The three cases of ‘heresy’ discussed above provide the exceptions that prove the rule. In those cases, slow episcopal action led to loss of life, and, arguably, lost opportunities to divert popular expressions of religiosity into productive channels. In later chapters, I will return to the argument that bishops actively participated in, and, through the modalities of their church administration and selfexpression, affected and reflected the social, cultural, and religious currents of the age. Now, however, it is time to examine the varieties of episcopal collaboration and bishops’ professional sodalities.

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Chapter 4

BAND OF BROTHERS: EPISCOPAL NETWORKS IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF REIMS

In mid-July 1099, five bishops from the province of Reims gathered in the collegiate church of Notre-Dame at Saint-Omer, above the marshy banks of the River Aa in the western limits of the county of Flanders. Also present was an assortment of other churchmen and laypeople, with one notable exception: the count himself, Robert II. At that precise moment Robert was labouring in the dust and heat of the crusader siege camp arrayed around the city of Jerusalem. With him were other powerful magnates and their vassals from neighbouring regions: the count of Saint-Pol, the count of Boulogne, the counts of Guines and Hainaut.1 Despite the four-year absence of so many aristocratic heads of household and castle lords, law and order had remained in hand, thanks to the steady leadership of the Flemish Countess Clemence and the advocacy of bishop Lambert of Arras.2 The crusaders’ gnawing concern that peace be maintained in their lands had been largely fulfilled in Flanders.3 The bishops assembled at Saint-Omer, especially Lambert, freshly returned from attending a papal synod in Rome, had been working hard in previous months to arrive at the moment at which they now 1

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H. J. Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies. Boulogne and Politics in Northern France and England, c. 879–1160 (Leiden, 2004), 135–40, 142, with additional references; Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 85–7, 140–1. Robert returned from the Holy Land early the following year. On Clemence, see K. S. Nicholas, ‘Countesses as rulers in Flanders’, in T. Evergates (ed.), Aristocratic Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia, 1999), 111–37, at 117–18. On her family, see Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, 146–7, 152–5, 266–75. Evidence of her close relationship with Lambert may be found in their letters (Registre, no. 30, 370–1; no. 38, 380–1; no. 44, 388–9; no. 124, 496–9 (= PL 162, cols. 659 (no. 31); 662 (no. 39); 664–5 (no. 45), where Clemence refers to him as ‘suo carissimo’; 693 (no. 126)) and by her cooperation in Lambert’s installation of some of Robert’s crusade relics in the abbey church of Watten in October 1097, for which see Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, 142; H. Hagenmeyer (ed.), Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100. Eine Quellensammlung zur Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (Innsbruck, 1901), no. 7, 142–3. Anselm, lord of Ribemont, Bouchain, and Valenciennes, wrote two letters to Archbishop Manasses II of Reims in which he beseeched him to maintain the peace at home. They are in Kreuzzugsbriefe, ed. Hagenmeyer, no. 8, 144 (November 1097), and no. 15, 160 (July 1098).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 found themselves.4 Of special significance, and undoubtedly a prime motivation for the bishops’ gathering at Saint-Omer, was the impending consecration of the region’s newest pastor, John of Warneton, bishopelect of Thérouanne. Not only would it conclude the two-year election controversy that been raging at Thérouanne, it also inaugurated a lengthy and fruitful period of collaboration among a network of bishops from Flanders and northern France, guided by Lambert (1094–1115) and John (1099–1130). Their administrative cooperation forged a reputation that led later observers to credit their episcopacies as marking a golden age in the history of the regional church. The bishops gathered at Saint-Omer that summer – alongside Lambert and John were Baudry of Noyon-Tournai, Manasses of Cambrai, and his uncle, Archbishop Manasses II of Reims – had matters both urgent and routine confronting them. Renewing the peace of God and upholding legal procedures for addressing feuds and violence topped their list. Dealing with married or fornicating clergy, an ongoing concern of Urban II, was a close second.5 The prelates’ interpersonal relationships, and the issues they addressed both in council and afterward, show a regional administrative cohort adapting to a changing world. This chapter explores the contours of episcopal sociability and collaboration in the first decades of the twelfth century. Building on the overview of episcopal professional formation laid out in chapter 2, it aims to shed light on how ecclesiastical administration in the province of Reims was practised, and how bishops’ sodalities unfolded.6 What comes into view is an episcopate which, contrary to once standard notions, was neither purely nor primarily defined by its relationships to the monarchy or the papacy. Rather, the bishops shared concerns particular to their ordo and to the regional context in which they lived.7 Their understanding of the area’s ecclesiastical development, defence of their own legal prerogatives, and their unique capacity to mediate local conflicts permeate the records of the period. These qualities were considered both at the time and in hindsight 4

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Lambert was present for Urban II’s Roman synod on 24 April 1099; GA, 188–9. He had accompanied John to lobby for his formal recognition as bishop of Thérouanne. For Urban’s legislation on the ‘carnal commerce’ of clergy and the status of their offspring, see F. J. Gossman, Pope Urban II and Canon Law (Washington, DC, 1960), 166–8, 190–1; Barstow, Married Priests, 80–5, 98; Somerville, with Kuttner, Pope Urban II, 117–20, 253, 256, 260–2, 268–71, 287–9. These findings may be fruitfully compared to the work of Walter Ysebaert, whose study of the interpersonal and professional networks revealed in the correspondence of Stephen, bishop of Tournai (1192–1203), offers both similarities to Lambert’s circle, and differences: W. Ysebaert, ‘The power of personal networks: clerics as political actors in the conflict between Capetian France and the county of Flanders during the last decade of the twelfth century’, in B. Bolton and C. Meek (eds.), Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2007), 165–83. On episcopal collegiality in Lambert’s circle, see the remarks of Giordanengo, Registre, 39–41.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims to be among their exemplary features, and should encourage historians to focus our understanding of regional episcopacies away from overarching narrative frameworks grounded in the institutional histories of ‘church’ and ‘state’. The enterprising Lambert of Guines, bishop of the newly independent diocese of Arras, was the cohort’s leader. His letters constitute a nearly unparalleled source for the study of the contemporary episcopate and its doings.8 Copied into his personal register together with other important texts, they include more than seventy missives sent by correspondents.9 The register is incomplete, but taken together with other sources, the letters thrust one fact into high relief: Lambert’s influence helped usher his colleagues at Saint-Omer into office. His credentials at home and abroad as a servant of Rome and an ally of Flanders were impeccable.10 Yet he also acted independently and on behalf of the regional church. Clergy at Arras and Saint-Pierre of Lille had hand-picked him to head the diocese in 1093, and Urban II himself consecrated Lambert in March 1094.11 Powerful friends, among them Bishop Ivo of Chartres and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, held him in high regard and lent him their political and moral support.12 Their confidence was not misplaced. More than any other figure, Lambert laid the foundations for a powerful network of prelates to take office in the dioceses of France and Flanders during the waning years of the eleventh century. The bishop of Arras could not take direct credit for the elevation of the long-time provost of the cathedral chapter at Reims, Manasses, to the 8

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Registre, 15–16, 30–3, and, for an overview of the collection, L. Morelle, ‘La pratique épistolaire de Lambert, évêque d’Arras (1093–1115)’, in D.-O. Hurel (ed.), Regards sur la correspondance (de Cicéron à Armand Barbès) (Rouen, 1996), 37–57. Morelle, ‘La pratique épistolaire de Lambert’, 40. Of its 128 letters (Morelle’s reckoning), 73 (57 per cent) were written by others to him. Lambert’s candidacy in 1093 received comital support. He witnessed two charters of Robert II before the latter departed on crusade in 1096; see ACF, no. 19, 61; no. 23, 69, and another by the countess in 1097 (above, n. 2). Lambert’s election and installation were recorded in GA, 152–97; and Registre, 92–173. The GA served as the foundational historical record for the independent diocese of Arras and was undoubtedly intended as a counterpoint to the famous account of the GEC. For background, consult L. Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 1093/1094 (Sigmaringen, 1994), 4–6 and passim, and B. Delmaire, Le diocèse d’Arras de 1093 au milieu du XIVe siècle. Recherches sur la vie religieuse dans le nord de la France au Moyen Âge (Arras, 1994), vol. I, 39–59. See W. Fröhlich (trans.), The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990– 1994), vol. III, 218–20 (nos. 437–9); also vol. II, 294–6 (no. 285), to Cono, probably of Arrouaise; and Lambert’s letters nos. 90–1, Registre, 454–7. For Ivo’s correspondence with Anselm, see PL 162, cols. 45–6 (no. 33) and 117 (no. 97). Ivo and Lambert were among the most outspoken opponents of Philip I’s adulterous marriage to Bertrada of Montfort, and both suffered for it politically. See Soria Audebert, La crosse brisée, 74–8, 168–71, 177–82.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 archbishopric.13 It was nevertheless to Lambert that the leading clergy of Reims wrote to announce both the death of archbishop Renaud I and to seek assent for their swift election of Manasses in January 1096.14 Urban II, in letters dispatched from the Loire Valley, gave his approval and granted an unusual dispensation for Manasses’ lack of priestly orders.15 Already Manasses had written to Lambert in words that leave little doubt of his esteem for him: ʻI write to you, my beloved, that . . . you should come and throw yourself into our loving embraces. For I burn and clamour to be promoted to the diaconate and priesthood by the imposition of your hands.ʼ16 Once Lambert had come to Reims, Manasses hoped he would accompany him on the perilous journey across the ‘lands of his enemies’ to attend the pope, then residing at Tours.17 The archbishop’s trust in Lambert was so great that a few months later he wrote to him again, requesting his participation in the ordination of the bishop-elect of Cambrai, also named Manasses – the archbishop’s own nephew and an archdeacon of Reims.18 Lambert’s presence at the consecration, the archbishop believed, would bridge the ongoing schism

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Manasses had been provost of the cathedral chapter of Reims since at least 1076 and had weathered difficult years under his namesake, Archbishop Manasses I of Gournay (c. 1069–80); Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims’, 810–11, 815, and 810 nn. 32, 37. Renaud I died on 21 January; Manasses II was elected by 2 February, the date of Lambert’s reply to the cathedral chapter; see Registre, nos. 8–9, 340–3 (= PL 162, cols. 650–2). Given the bitter feuds and long vacancies that characterized archiepiscopal elections at Reims throughout the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Manasses’ election was a marvel of efficiency. Its speed may have been intended to avert unwanted involvement by King Philip I, at that moment excommunicated over his union with Bertrada. Urban II, Epistolae, PL 151, cols. 445–7 (nos. 171–3); 449 (no. 176); see also Registre, no. 13, 346–9. Manasses’ candidacy was vigorously endorsed by Ivo of Chartres, a close friend and ally of Lambert, whom the cathedral clergy of Reims may have enlisted, together with the bishop of Arras, to intercede before the pope; see Ivo of Chartres, Correspondance, ed. and trans. J. Leclercq, vol. I (Paris, 1949), no. 48, 194–7 (written between 21 January and 23 March). For Lambert and Ivo’s friendship, expressed in the latter’s letter no. 33 (Ivo of Chartres, Correspondance, 136–9), see R. Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres und seine Stellung in der Kirchengeschichte (Stuttgart, 1962), 14–15, 19–20. On Urban’s dispensation, see L. Falkenstein, ‘Lettres et privilèges pontificaux perdus adressés aux archevêques de Reims (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, Revue du nord, 86 (2004), 585–603, at 590. Registre, no. 10, 342–3: ‘scribo tibi, dilecte mi, ut . . . complexibus dilectionis nostrae te ingeras, te praesentes; promoveri enim ad diaconatum et sacerdotium per impositionem manuum tuarum ardeo et clamo’. Lambert did so, it seems, on 8 March 1096. As second in rank behind the archbishop, it was the canonical prerogative of the bishop of Soissons to consecrate Manasses, which he did, with Lambert and the other bishops of the province in attendance. See the De restitutione episcopi in Atrebatensi ecclesia, in GA, 208; and Registre, no. 13, 346–9, but note that the passage describing Manasses’ consecration is not a part of Urban II’s letter, PL 151, col. 449 (no. 176). Registre, no. 10, 342–3. Manasses had been archdeacon of Reims since at least 1089, when he appears in a charter of Renaud I; see AA, vol. I, 240; GA, 197.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims between the churches of Arras and Cambrai, and he urged Lambert to encourage the count of Flanders to forcibly eject a rival episcopal candidate, Gaucher, from the city of Cambrai.19 Lambert probably saw in Manasses of Cambrai a kindred spirit of sorts. Their names had been put forward together during the provincial councils in early 1093 as the preferred candidates for the newly separated dioceses of Arras and Cambrai, against bitter resistance from elements of the clergy and laity in Cambrai.20 Even with papal and comital support, a full year passed before Lambert could assume authority in Arras. Manasses was obliged to wait even longer, until 1096, when the rival bishop of Cambrai was temporarily expelled from the city. Only then could he be consecrated.21 During these three difficult years, Lambert served as Manasses’ leading advocate – and was labelled a heretic, hypocrite, and ‘invader’ of the church by Gaucher’s partisans – and for a time Urban even remanded to him the administration of the diocese of Cambrai, including the power of binding and loosing.22 Manasses thus had the bishop of Arras to thank that he was able to participate in the council of Saint-Omer, and he would again seek his aid when his position at Cambrai deteriorated.23 At about the same time, the clergy and people of Noyon also sought Lambert’s support. They hoped he would intervene before Archbishop Manasses on behalf of their choice for bishop, Baudry. Baudry’s springtime 1098 election had been controversial in Noyon’s conjoined see of Tournai, where the clergy – perhaps encouraged by the recent 19

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Registre, no. 16, 350–3: ‘Querela enim illa, quam Cameracensis ecclesia adversus Atrebatensem ecclesiam habet, multum infirmabitur si illius consecrationi praesentia vestra cooperatrix et testis exhibeatur . . . Vestra igitur vigilantia comitem [Robert II] adeat, quibus potest persuasionibus eum compellat ut Cameracensi ecclesiae compatiens schismaticum illum [Gaucher] ejiciendo subveniat’. Kéry gives a thorough overview, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 287–306, 334–5, 353–412. The schism at Cambrai is fully treated in W. Reinecke, Geschichte der Stadt Cambrai bis zur Erteilung der Lex Godefridi (1227) (Marburg, 1896); A. Cauchie, La querelle des investitures dans les diocèses de Liège et de Cambrai, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1890–1891), vol. II, 119–206; E. Hoeres, Das Bistum Cambrai. Seine politischen und kirchlichen Beziehungen zu Deutschland, Frankreich und Flandern, und Entwicklung der Commune von Cambrai von 1092–1191 (Leipzig, 1882), 6–32, and elsewhere. Shortly after the octaves of Pentecost (8 June) 1096; see Registre, no. 16, 350–1; Hoeres, Das Bistum Cambrai, 16–17; De restitutione, in GA, 208 and n. 34. Registre, no. 19, 354–7; no. 23, 362–3. Lambert’s integral role in Manasses’ candidacy is confirmed by the vitriol spat at him by the author of the GPC, 13–15 (strophes 71–5); 19–20 (strophes 99–102); 32–5 (strophes 179–94): ‘Sed infra illud gladium et infra morae terminum Urbanus papa Lambertum consecravit hereticum, consecravit hypocritam, propter datam pecuniam, qui per magnam audaciam hanc invasit aecclesiam’ (strophes 99–101). Manasses was obliged to flee Cambrai before Gaucher’s forces in late 1101, and seems never to have returned. He appealed to Lambert for aid at this time (Registre, no. 58, 406–7). In late 1103 Manasses was transferred to the diocese of Soissons, where he ruled until 1108.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 uncoupling of Arras and Cambrai – lobbied the pope for their own pastor.24 Baudry obligingly travelled to Rome, bringing along partially falsified documents concerning the twinned status of Noyon and Tournai.25 Concerned that the dioceses might be separated, the dean of Noyon wrote to Lambert praising Baudry’s virtues and appealing to his pastoral concern for his congregation, which ‘at this moment [is] tossed about by many storms, oppressed by the many whirlwinds of persecution, [and] with difficulty lead back into the port of salvation-giving consolation’.26 It was the dean’s hope that ‘father’ Lambert would extend to Noyon his ‘charitative consolation and support’, and back Baudry.27 The election went through, and Archbishop Manasses invited Lambert to Reims for Baudry’s consecration.28 The new bishop of NoyonTournai was thereafter a regular correspondent of Lambert.29 John of Warneton’s elevation to the troubled see of Thérouanne, and Lambert’s role in it, are well known. In addition to contemporary correspondence, several narrative sources furnish valuable reminiscences on the events of 1097–9.30 The most detailed of these, a posthumous hagiographical account by John’s close friend and archdeacon, Walter, links Urban II’s installation of Lambert at Arras in 1094 with the later renewal of Thérouanne. According to Walter, when Lambert found the lands appointed him overgrown with ‘thorns and thistles’, he summoned to his side ‘religious and wise men’. Among them was John, then a regular 24

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Baudry’s campaign for confirmation ultimately succeeded; he was consecrated on 9 January 1099 after a seven-month delay. See Registre, nos. 40–2, 382–7; nos. 47–8, 392–3, and PL 151, cols. 517–18 (no. 248); Lefranc, Histoire de la ville de Noyon, 33–4; Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes, 177. Bishop Hugh of Soissons appealed ‘[d]ilectissimo confratri immo patri Lamberto’ in a letter of c. 1097/8 (Registre, no. 29, 368–9), and later claimed to desire him ‘sicut angelum Dei’ (Registre, no. 61, 410–13). PL 151, col. 518 (no. 248). Registre, no. 41, 384–5: ‘Noverit, domine, paternitas tua ecclesiam nostram . . . multis in momento jactatam naufragiis, multis etiam persecutionum oppressam turbinibus, vix ad salutiferae portum reductam consolationis’. Baudry was known in Tournai, to which he had travelled at least once in the company of his predecessor, Bishop Radbod II. See Gysseling and Koch, Diplomata belgica, nos. 171–2, 300 (28 December 1089). I have not been able to confirm the assertion of Lefranc, Histoire de la ville de Noyon, 33, that Baudry was the son of the castellan of Tournai, Everard, though it seems unlikely. Registre, no. 41, 384–5: ‘ut ad consecrandum pastorem vos nobis charitative solamen et auxilium exhibeatis’. Registre, no. 48, 392–3. In fact, Manasses invited him twice, once in 1098 and again in 1099. For Baudry’s letters, mostly mundane, to Lambert, see Registre, nos. 71 and 73, 428–31; no. 93, 458–9; no. 115, 486–7. Letters: Registre, nos. 49–50, 394–7. Narratives: Walter of Thérouanne, VI, 130–6; Simon of SaintBertin, Gesta abbatum sancti Bertini Sithiensium, vol. XIII, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SS (Hanover, 1881), 635–63, at 645–7; and (completing Holder-Egger’s edition) B. E. C. Guérard (ed.), Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Bertin (Paris, 1840), 264–6, with a French translation from the latter source in L. Trenard (ed.), Histoire des Pays-Bas français. Documents Flandre, Artois, Hainaut, Boulonnais, Cambrésis (Toulouse, 1974), 129–30.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims canon at Mont-Saint-Eloi, just a few kilometres from Arras.31 Lambert and the younger John had a long history together. Both had been pupils of Ivo of Chartres.32 In November 1095, John had joined his bishop and the cathedral dignitaries of Arras on their trip to the Council of Clermont.33 It may have been on the road to Auvergne that Lambert pitched the idea of making him archdeacon of Arras, with responsibility for Artois, a region of vital political importance to the counts of Flanders and home to many powerful religious houses.34 As archdeacon, John was immediately placed among the men and women who would later promote his candidacy at Thérouanne: the count and (especially) countess, and the abbots of Ham, Watten, and Saint-Bertin.35 His former abbot and namesake, John of Mont-SaintEloi, remained a mentor-figure.36 These notables convened, before 1097, at the comital court, and afterward at Lambert’s vibrant diocesan synods, which attracted abbots and churchmen from throughout Flanders. It was from this milieu that John was plucked – reluctantly, if we accept his biographer’s account – to serve. If he had doubts about becoming bishop, they were not ill-founded. Thérouanne in 1099 was not a post for the faint-hearted. The previous twenty-five years there had been tumultuous: three bishops were removed for political and personal offences, one 31 32

33 34

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VI, 131–2. VI, 129; Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 356; Registre, 25–7. Rolker thinks this attribution is unlikely; Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, 241 n. 184. GA, 194–5. Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 242–55. John first appears as archdeacon in a comital charter of 3 Febuary 1096 issed at Arras, three months after Clermont; ACF, no. 19, 61. John’s career is considered, albeit with too strong an emphasis on his putative ‘gregorianism’, by W. Simons, ‘Jean de Warneton et la réforme grégorienne’, Mémoires de la Société d’histoire de Comines-Warneton et de la région, 17 (1987), 35–54. On John’s cohort, see Simons, ‘Jean de Warneton’, 43, 46; B. Meijns, ‘The “Life of Bishop John of Thérouanne” by Archdeacon Walter (1130) and the bishop’s pastoral activities’, in W. Verbeke, L. Milis, and J. Goossens (eds.), Medieval Narrative Sources. A Gateway into the Medieval Mind (Leuven, 2005), 77–90; B. Meijns, ‘“Without were fightings, within were fearsˮ. Pope Gregory VII, the canons regular of Watten and the reform of the church in the diocese of Thérouanne (c. 1075–c. 1100)’, in P. Andersen, M. Münster-Swendsen, and H. Vogt (eds.), Law and Power in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the Fourth Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History, 2007 (Copenhagen, 2008), 73–96, at 74–5, 80, and 80 n. 83; and the observations of Rider in VI, xxxix and n. 86. John had known abbot Gerard of Ham (1080–1106) since at least 1096 (ACF, no. 19, 61; and CEA, no. 5, 10), and Bernold of Watten (c. 1087–c. 1114) since at least 1097 (Hagenmeyer, ed., Kreuzzugsbriefe, no. 7, 143). John’s connections to Lambert of Saint-Bertin (1095–1123, d. 1125) are harder to discern, but John may have been among the clerical dignitaries – which included Lambert of Arras and Lambert of Saint-Bertin – who gathered in 1095/6 to witness a comital charter on behalf of Saint-Georges of Hesdin and Anchin; ACF, no. 23, 69. In any case, Lambert of Saint-Bertin would be later portrayed as John’s leading advocate in Rome before the pope (see below). After his promotion to the archdiaconate, John of Warneton and Abbot John of Mont-Saint-Eloi appeared together in 1096 (ACF, no. 19, 61); 1097 (CEA, no. 1, 4; no. 3, 7; no. 5, 8; no. 5, 10; Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, no. 7, 143); and 1098 (CEA, no. 7, 13).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 minus his tongue and the fingers of his right hand.37 Moreover, prior to John’s election the episcopal seat had been vacant for more than eighteen months, and two previously nominated candidates had failed to go through.38 An episcopacy preceded by a long vacancy, itself usually the result of infighting among local clerical parties or owing to aristocratic resistance, presented a delicate situation for a new prelate. So it was for John. Yet his path was smoothed by Lambert, whose role in John’s ascent scholars have often played down, tending to accept the much later accounts of Walter, John’s biographer, and Simon of Saint-Bertin, who mentions the election in his Gesta abbatum sancti Bertini.39 Both Walter and Simon emphasize an abbatial influence in John’s election. Like John, Walter had been a regular canon, and the John he remembers championed the needs of regular canons above all others.40 As for Simon of Saint-Bertin, he not unexpectedly gives his abbot Lambert a leading role in taking John’s nomination before the pope. According to Simon, Abbot Lambert gathered letters of support and pleaded at Rome for the approval of John’s election. The opposition party folded immediately, Simon reported, and the winners returned home with the pope’s seal of approval.41 But Lambert of Arras, John’s bishop, was also at Rome in April 1099, clearly in an excellent position to lobby Urban and represent the interests of the Flemish comital house.42 A letter rapidly dispatched by Archbishop 37

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VI, 133–5; Simon of Saint-Bertin, Gesta abbatum sancti Bertini, 646. Many modern accounts of these tumultuous times exist; see A. Giry, ‘Grégoire VII et les évêques de Térouane’, Revue historique, 1 (1876), 387–409, and more recently Meijns, ‘Without were fightings’, 73–6, with additional references. Erkembold, a canon at Saint-Omer, refused the honour, while Otbert of Heilly, canon and provost of Amiens, canon of Thérouanne, and later provost of Saint-Omer, was rejected because he held multiple benefices. Walter wrote John’s vita just months after the latter’s death in 1130, and stressed the decisive voice of abbates religiosi (VI, 134); Simon of Saint-Bertin concluded the first phase of his chronicle in 1125. VI, xl n. 86; Meijns, ‘The “Life of Bishop John of Thérouanne”’; B. Meijns, ‘Inaudita novitas canonici ordinis. L’accueil des idées de réforme canoniale dans les milieux canoniaux du comté de Flandre pendant le dernier quart du XIe siècle’, Revue Mabillon. Revue internationale d’histoire et de littérature religieuses, ns 18 (2007), 39–71, at 69. Simon of Saint-Bertin, Gesta abbatum sancti Bertini, 647: ‘Pater Lambertus, duobus abbatibus secum comitantibus fretus quoque litteris suae et meliori parti suffragantibus, Clementiae scilicet Flandrarum comitissae, Morini cum suo electo nuda voce armati ad Hugonem Dyensem . . . pervenere . . . Abbates itaque causam suam in curia explicantes . . . [n]ec mora pars adversa caput flexit nostrisque consensit’. GA, 188 n. 140; Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, 39–40. While the text of the GA gives the year of Lambert’s journey to Rome as 1098 (with a variant in Baluze’s edition of the manuscript having 1099; this is followed by Sdralek), Kéry, following the overview of A. Becker, Papst Urban II. (1088–1099) (Stuttgart, 1964–2012), vol. II, 200–1, opts for the latter year. This accords with the known date of papal synodal legislation on 24 April and with the timing of John’s election and Lambert of Saint-Bertin’s embassy to Rome. See also VI, 153.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims Manasses to the clergy of Thérouanne following John’s confirmation referred to the pope’s ‘precepts transmitted to us by our bishops who have returned from Rome’ – meaning Lambert – and granted the bishop of Arras immediate right of ordaining John to the priesthood in his place.43 Manasses’ strident tone was echoed in a subsequent letter of the clergy and people of Thérouanne, who pleaded that Lambert make haste to carry out the ordination.44 He did so, on 4 June, slightly more than a month after the Roman synod concluded. A scant forty days after that, Lambert and his fellow bishops convened at Saint-Omer, where John was consecrated bishop.45 The inescapable conclusion from Lambert’s involvement in these four episcopal elections is that he both acted as and was perceived to be a power-broker of tremendous influence.46 Although no formal indication survives, he seems to have served in concert with Countess Clemence as regent of Flanders during Robert’s four years on crusade. Correspondents wrote seeking favours and his pull with Urban II, and, later, with Pope Paschal II. Supplicants from beyond Flanders – bishops, abbots, clergy, laymen – in places like Soissons, Beauvais, Chartres, Reims, Nantes, even Metz, solicited his support for their causes.47 Archbishop Manasses II called on him to broadcast news about the crusade and hold would-be crusaders accountable for their vows.48 And as Lambert’s letters make clear, he pursued the dictates of the prevailing peace legislation with zeal.49 Thus it was that under Lambert’s aegis, five prelates with intersecting careers gathered in Flanders that July day in 1099.

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Registre, no. 49, 394–5. The bishop of Senlis was also at Rome (known from PL 151, col. 544 (no. 292, dated to 24 April 1099)) and the bishop-elect of Beauvais, Ansellus, was probably with him. Registre, no. 50, 394–7: ‘Et quoniam diutius ab episcopalibus officiis nostra carere non valet ecclesia, supplicamus sanctitati vestrae ut, pro periculo quod ipsi ecclesiae quotidie scitis imminere, electum nostrum in sacerdotem promovendo vestra charitas acceleret succurrere’. Lambert also helped John manage his diocesan business early on in his tenure by hearing the complaints lodged against him by a canon of Ypres concerning an altar; see Registre, nos. 63–5, 414–19; Paschal II, Epistolae et privilegia, PL 163, cols. 452–3 (no. 5). A letter (Registre, no. 82, 442–3) of papal legate Richard of Albano to Count Robert II of Flanders refers to Lambert as ‘apostolicae sedi commendabilis est persona, ut eum quadam praerogativa inter reliquos Galliarum episcopos habeat principalem’. Lambert’s central role does not seem to be an intentional illusion fabricated by the selective retention of correspondence favourable to him, though it was undeniably meant to serve as an archival witness of his activities; see Morelle, ‘La pratique épistolaire de Lambert’, 40–1. See Registre, 38–41; no. 26, 364–5; no. 29, 368–9; no. 31, 370–3; no. 61, 410–13 (Hugh of Soissons); no. 62, 412–15 (clergy of Beauvais); no. 54, 400–1 (Robert, abbot of Saint-Remi); no. 129, 506–7 (Robert, bishop of Nantes); no. 14, 348–9; no. 45, 388–9 (Poppo, bishop of Metz). Registre, no. 55, 400–3. 49 See below, n. 92.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 saint-omer, provincial councils, and diocesan administration The convocation of provincial councils at Reims, which made episcopal administrative collaboration normative if not routine, became an annual event from the 1070s through the mid-twelfth century.50 Historians have often wondered why. Unfortunately for us, archbishops kept no minutes of these councils, so their internal dynamics are hard to know. They appear to have been well attended by the diocesan bishops. The councils’ routinization in the 1070s corresponded to a diminished episcopal presence around the king, a development commented upon a half-century ago by Jean-François Lemarignier.51 Lemarignier characterized the declericalization of the king’s entourage after 1077 as nothing less than a ‘flight’ of bishops resulting from the enfeeblement of royal power in the eleventh century. He further observed that a concomitant surge in papal oversight of higher clergy in France directly contributed to the bishops’ absenteeism from royal assemblies and witness lists. Lemarignier pointed to September 1077, when, in the first of a series of councils held in Burgundy and southern France, Gregory VII’s legate Hugh of Die decimated the ranks of Philip I’s closest episcopal allies with a wave of depositions.52 Chastened by the legate’s sentences and pried away from secular business by the ideological programme of the Gregorian popes, the bishops deserted the king.53 Additionally, Gregory VII’s desire to bring to heel the powerful archbishop of Reims, Manasses I, announced 50

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P. Demouy, ‘Synodes diocésains et conciles provinciaux à Reims et en Belgique seconde aux XIe–XIIIe siècles’, in G. Clause, S. Guilbert, and M. Vaïsse (eds.), La Champagne et ses administrations à travers le temps. Actes du colloque d’histoire régionale Reims–Châlons-sur-Marne, 4–6 juin 1987 (Paris, 1990), 93–112, esp. the table at 111–12, and Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 647–57; see also the Appendix. Provincial councils are attested for the years 1064, 1074, 1078–9, 1084–7, 1091–7, 1099–1100, 1103–7, 1111–25, 1128–33, 1135, 1137–8, 1140–5, 1148–9 (note that this list does not accord exactly with that of Demouy). For general considerations of synodal practice at this time, see L. Jégou, L’évêque, juge de paix. L’autorité épiscopale et le règlement des conflits entre Loire et Elbe (milieu VIIIe–milieu XIe siècle) (Turnhout, 2011), 399–476; J. Avril, ‘L’évolution du synode diocésain, principalement dans la France du Nord, du Xe au XIIIe siècle’, in P. Linehan (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of Medieval Canon Law (The Vatican, 1988), 305–25; and O. Pontal, ‘Le synode diocésain et son cérémonial du XIIe au XIVe s.’, L’année canonique, 14 (1970), 53–61. J.-F. Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal aux premiers temps capétiens (987–1108) (Paris, 1965), 146–8 and Table B3. At Autun. Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal, 146–7; Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich, 99–101; Rennie, Law and Practice, 141–5. For a rundown of those deposed, see Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne, 176–9; and Hiestand, ‘Les légats pontificaux’, 58, who characterizes Hugh of Die’s 1077 and 1078 councils as a veritable ‘decapitation’ of the French church north of the Loire. Lemarignier developed these ideas more fully in his contribution to Lemarignier, Gaudemet, and Mollat (eds.), Histoire des institutions françaises, reiterating them in Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal (147): ‘Mais Philippe Ier est impuissant à les défendre contre les sanctions d’Hugues de Die. Diminués, déçus, contraints d’assister aux synodes des légats qui sont d’une autre exigence et aussi

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims at Autun with the latter’s excommunication and suspension, has been seen as a crucial step towards reducing metropolitan authority.54 Papal investment in provincial ecclesiastical business compelled individual episcopal obedience to the pope, thus disrupting regional solidarities. The pope’s legates became, according to one argument, ‘the true heads of the Church of France’.55 Lemarignier’s thesis overstates the reality.56 Certainly, bishops closely allied with (or dependent upon) the Capetian house – Chartres, Orléans, Paris, Senlis – regularly witnessed royal acts during the rules of Louis VI and Louis VII. But large assemblies of bishops at court remained infrequent until the later twelfth century.57 Moreover, the king rarely participated in synods after 1095, though from time to time foreign bishops and papal legates sat in on or presided over the meetings.58 As for papal policy towards metropolitan authority in the archdiocese of Reims, it varied from pontiff to pontiff, and Roman legates alternated extended tours through the region with prolonged absences.59 Certainly, an archbishop could be a formidable obstacle to papal ambitions. It is equally true that he could be a powerful helpmate. For example, Gregory VII ousted Manasses I after initially supporting his election, but had nothing to do

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d’un autre relief, les évêques désertent l’entourage du roi’. He is followed in the main by Hiestand, ‘Les légats pontificaux’, 76–8. Demouy, ‘Synodes diocésains’, 98–9, connected the provincial bishops’ rebuff of Manasses II at Saint-Omer in 1099 directly to this trend, but see below, 127–8. On Manasses I, see Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims’, 811–13; Robinson, ‘“Periculosus homo”’, 124–7; Ott, ‘“Reims and Rome are Equals”’; and generally J. Gaudemet, Le gouvernement de l’Église à l’époque classique: le gouvernement local, vol. VIII/2 in G. Le Bras and J. Gaudemet (eds.), Histoire du droit et des institutions de l’Église en occident (Paris, 1979), 26–33. The quote is from Hiestand, ‘Les légats pontificaux’, 76. Historians such as Éric Bournazel (see following note), Olivier Guyotjeannin (‘Les évêques dans l’entourage royal’) and Hartmut Hoffmann (‘Der König und seine Bischöfe’, 85–93, 96–107) have taken into greater account evolving documentary practices within the royal chancery and the restructuring of monarchical methods of governance to explain the change. É. Bournazel, Le governement capétien au XIIe siècle (1108–1180). Structures sociales et mutations institutionelles (Paris, 1975), 10–12, 19–20, 134–43, 157–61. Even the cadre of bishops closest to the throne was fluid, as Bournazel notes. The last grand assembly of bishops under Louis VI was in 1133; see RAL, vol. II, no. 335, 209; AD Aisne H 692 (Cartulary of Longpont), fos. 12v–13v. Demouy, ‘Synodes diocésains’, 97–100, and see below. Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich; Hiestand, ‘Les légats pontificaux’, 65–7, and see below, 146. Richard of Albano, a former dean of Metz cathedral, was sent to France in late 1102 and remained through most of 1104. Cono of Praeneste, a founder of Arrouaise, presided at four provincial councils between 1114–15 and several in 1119–21, including the council of Soissons that condemned Abelard. Matthew of Albano, former prior of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, was active in the archdiocese between 1128–31. All three, especially Cono and Matthew, were intimately familiar with northern France and its prelates. On Richard, see B. Monod, Essai sur les rapports de Pascal II avec Philippe Ier (1099–1108) (Paris, 1907), 36–42; for Cono, C. Dereine, ‘Conon de Prénestre’, in DHGE, vol. XIII, cols. 461–71; for Matthew, see R. P. Freeburn, ‘“A greater honour and burden”: the predicament of Matthew of Albano, monk and cardinal-bishop’, Journal of Medieval History, 39 (2013), 179–96.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 with his successor, Renaud I (1083–96). Neither did Pope Victor III, during his brief reign. Urban II favoured Archbishop Renaud, confirming his primatial powers and authority in December 1089; yet Renaud was initially resistant to Urban’s vision of splitting the diocese of ArrasCambrai, and the pope condemned him for affirming King Philip’s ‘bigamous’ marriage to Bertrada of Montfort in 1092.60 It seems the relationship between Manasses II and Urban II was reasonably compatible for the three years their rules overlapped (between 1096–9). By contrast, Manasses II had little interaction with Paschal II that was not strained.61 Under Pope Hadrian IV, the archbishop Samson was himself a papal legate.62 Generalizations about the rising number of provincial councils and the role played in them by papal and royal agents are thus hard to sustain. If anything, given their routine nature, provincial councils built up regional solidarities, as the relationship between the participants at SaintOmer confirms. Regional administration probably improved over time as a result of regular provincial councils, if for no other reason than a functioning, regional court of appeal regularly met to address litigation that could not be resolved in local diocesan synods.63 What, then, was the atmosphere at the provincial council in 1099 like? A certain amount of procedural formality must have marked the occasion. Lambert probably brought to Saint-Omer the codex containing the foundation documents of his diocese and his personal correspondence, to serve as a reference book for the assembly.64 We know, largely from two seventeenthcentury copies of the first recensions of this codex, that Lambert preserved in it canons issued by Urban II at Clermont in 1095 and at Rome in April 1099, councils he had attended.65 John of Thérouanne may have personally recorded those canons from Clermont while still acting as 60

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62 63

64 65

Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims’; for Urban’s grant to Renaud and later chastisement, PL 151, cols. 309–11 (no. 27) and 354 (no. 68); Becker, Papst Urban II., vol. I, 187–226, esp. at 194 and 204; Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 350–2, 358–9; Registre, 43–4. A letter of Urban to Renaud recently discovered by Martin Brett also shows aggravation with the archbishop’s conduct; see M. Brett, ‘Some new letters of Popes Urban II and Paschal II’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58 (2007), 75–96, at 95–6. See below, 140–1. Their relationship got off to a poor start when Manasses presided over a Pentecostal coronation of the excommunicated Philip I in 1100; Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 6, 29–31; the letters of Ivo of Chartres, PL 162, cols. 105–6 (no. 84); col. 117 (no. 97); cols. 120–3 (nos. 102 and 104); and PL 163, cols. 453–4 (no. 6). Janssen, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich, 166. A jurisdictional dispute between the monks of Saint-Valéry and the bishop of Amiens, alluded to below (125), furnishes a convenient example; the case went from Amiens to Reims to Rome. On Lambert’s background in canon law, see Registre, 27–30. See in the first place R. Somerville, The Councils of Urban II, vol. I, Decreta Claromontensia (Amsterdam, 1972), 6–7, 46–56, for the Codex or Liber Lamberti; also Gossman, Pope Urban II and Canon Law, 4–10. For a hypothetical reconstruction of the Liber’s contents taken from the

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims Lambert’s archdeacon, and during the early years of his pontificate John showed a keen interest in maintaining and expanding a working ‘law library’ for his own diocese.66 At any rate, into this same codex, Lambert (or his clerks) entered the statutes from Saint-Omer. Given its legalistic and procedural tenor, to venture before a provincial synod must have been a daunting experience. We know little about the ambiance at Saint-Omer, but when the council met at Reims, the bishops convened in the chevet at Sainte-Marie.67 The drama may be tantalizingly glimpsed in a few narrative sources, liturgical ordines, and in the full witness lists of charters promulgated in synodo.68 An early twelfth-century ordo preserved from Reims indicates that synods opened with Psalm 68 (Salvum me fac, Deus), followed by a gospel reading (which might include John 10:11, ‘I am the good shepherd’), and the archbishop intoning the Veni creator spiritus.69 After several more prayers, the archbishop called the council to order by exhorting his ‘most holy brethren’ to deliberate in the spirit of justice and pastoral zeal, untainted by favouritism or mundane concerns.70 At Soissons, the diocesan synod opened after sext.71 A group of clergy (clericuli) bearing crosses and candles processed to the episcopal palace to fetch the bishop, archdeacons, and abbots, who were vesting themselves for the occasion. All then returned to the cathedral,

66

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68

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aforementioned seventeenth-century copies (formerly of Saint-Vaast, now Arras, BM 1051 and 1062), see Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 61–6 and 80–1. Somerville, Councils of Urban II, 56–64; Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, esp. 3–25; L. Waelkens and D. Van den Auweele, ‘La collection de Thérouanne en IX livres à l’abbaye de Saint-Pierreau-Mont-Blandin: le codex Gandavensis 235’, Sacris erudiri. Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen, 24 (1980), 115–53; bibliography in Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages, 262–4. Occasionally, provincial synods were held in Soissons: in 1079, 1090/2 (trial of Roscelin of Compiègne); in 1093, at Saint-Médard (promulgation of peace statutes); on Christmas Day in 1094; in 1100 (a synod regulating the election controversy at Beauvais); and in 1115. For meetings in the chevet, see Anselm of Saint-Remi (below, n.75, and for mention of the stained-glass programme at Notre-Dame of Reims, see below, 315). A fairly typical charter, of Lambert bishop of Noyon-Tournai, issued at the provincial council held at Soissons in January 1115, bears the names of five bishops, an abbot, the papal legate, and canons from Noyon, Arras, Cambrai, Senlis, Paris, and Saint-Quentin of Beauvais (eighteen names in all); see B. E. C. Guérard (ed.), Cartulaire de l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris (Paris, 1850), vol. I, 306–9, at 309. H. Schneider (ed.), Die Konzilsordines des Früh- und Hochmittelalters, MGH Ordines de celebrando concilio (Hanover, 1996), 90–1, 505–8, esp. at 506–7. For a contemporary example from SainteMarie of Reims, see Reims, BM 341, fo. 15r. Ibid., 507: ‘Deinde simili vos obtestatione coniuro, ut nullus vestrum in iudicando aut personam accipiat aut quolibet favore vel munere pulsatus a veritate discedat . . . ut nec discordans contentio ad subversionem iusticie inter nos locum inveniat nec item in perquirenda equitate vigor nostri ordinis vel sollicitudo tepescat’. The synodal ordo for late twelfth-century (1180–9) Soissons has been published by A. Poquet (ed.), Rituale sue mandatum insignis ecclesiae Suessionensis, temporis episcopi Nivelonis exaratum (Soissons and Paris, 1856), 222–3.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 singing litanies.72 Arranging themselves in the choir before the main altar, the group awaited the arrival of the deacon and subdeacon bearing the gospels and temporalia of the church. After a series of readings and prayers, the bishop then addressed a sermon to the clergy before the business of the council began.73 One of the more vivid contemporary depictions of a clerical assembly has been transmitted to us by Anselm of Saint-Remi, an eyewitness to the papal council of Leo IX held at Reims in October 1049.74 Though modest in comparison to the papal assemblies held at Reims in the twelfth century, Leo’s council was richly ceremonious and left a lasting impression. Anselm remembered that [Pope Leo] stipulated how the bishops’ seats would be arranged in the style of a crown, and in the middle of them would be placed the dais for his own seat, and he commanded the details to be carried out by the archbishop of Reims. The latter, summoning his archdeacons and certain leading clergy, with their consent arranged the bishops’ chairs in the shape of a crown as ordered, placing in the middle the insignia of the pontifical throne . . . After this, all took their seats in the order which the archbishop of Reims had disposed, the lord pope in the middle of the choir, as was said, and facing the reliquary of the blessed Remigius. Before his eyes to the east, Reims was seated to the right, Trier to the left. After Reims, according to the order noted, sat Berold of Soissons, Drogo of Thérouanne, Frolland of Senlis (etc.).75 72

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Ibid., 223: ‘Post Sextam ueniant Clericuli cum Crucibus et Cereis ad domum Episcopi. Interea preparet se Episcopus Mitratus, Baculo pastorali, Capa de pallio scilicet; Abbates et Archidiaconi, Capellanusque Capis de pallio; et sic ueniant ordinate ad Ecclesiam cantando Letaniam’. At Chartres, the synod commenced behind the closed doors of the cathedral when the archdeacon solemnly said, ‘Pray’. Immediately, ‘everyone bent low in prayer, bishops together with priests, quietly praying for a long time with tears and moans’. See Pontal, ‘Le synode diocésain’, 57 and n. 23, and compare with Schneider (ed.), Die Konzilsordines, 259, 374. The prayers, but not the synodal rite itself, are given in a pontifical of Amiens contemporary to the Saint-Omer synod of 1099; see V. de Beauvillé and H. Josse (eds.), Pontifical d’Amiens, publié d’après un manuscrit original du XIe siècle (Amiens, 1885), 59. Anselm of Saint-Remi, Histoire de la dédicace de Saint-Remy, 181–297, at 236–9, 284–5. Anselm wrote this text in the late 1050s; his memory of the seating arrangements is both precise and signals its procedural and symbolic importance at the council, especially given that the archbishops of Trier and Reims were at loggerheads over the primacy of their sees. See D. Iogna-Prat, ‘Léon IX, pape consécrateur’, in Bischoff and Tock (eds.), Léon IX et son temps, 355–83; G. Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor. Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY, 1992), 61–2. Anselm of Saint-Remi, Histoire de la dédicace de Saint-Remy, 236–7: ‘in modum coronae sedilia episcoporum disponi, et in medio eorum suae sedis suggestum praecepit locari, cujus ordinationis modum ex arbitrio Remensis archipraesulis sanxit amministrari. Qui convocatis archidiaconis, et quibusque cleri sui praecipuis, cum eorum consilio, in modum ut dictum est coronae, pontificum sedilia, et in medio ejus apostolicae sedis apparari fecit insignia . . . Post haec consederunt omnes, ordine quo Remensis archipraesul disposuit, domnus quidem papa in medio, ut dictum est, chori, verso vultu ad sepulchrum beati Remigii; ante oculos autem ejus, ad orientalem plagam, Remensis in dextera, Treverensis vero in parte recedit sinistra. Post Remensem deinde secundum subnotatum ordinem resederunt Beroldus Suessionensis, Drogo Morinensis, Frolandus Silvanectensis’.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims In all, Anselm lists the places of thirty-seven bishops and abbots; lesser clergy, perhaps hundreds strong, must have ranged around the chevet several rows deep. Provincial synods were conducted on a smaller scale than Leo’s assembly, yet they were impressive nonetheless. Nicholas of Saint-Crépin described the 1106 provincial council at Reims as maximus primatum gallicae regionis conventus. Among its business, the monks of Saint-Valéry aired a jurisdictional complaint against their bishop, Godfrey of Amiens, whom Nicholas describes as standing in council before the monks and their partisans ‘like a lamb among wolves’. Nicholas detailed the ‘enormous tumult’, mocking words, and shouts during the boisterous proceedings, which Godfrey bore patiently, standing stock-still in the middle of the assembly.76 If authorial licence may be allowed for this particular mis-en-scène, what is certain is the crucial role the provincial council played as a venue for episcopal consultation or cooperation in regional matters.77 The council was, to borrow Geneviève Bührer-Thierry’s clever term, ‘therapeutic’ – an opportunity to bring feuding parties together in the interests of peace or to resolve standing controversies.78 Indeed, the slate of issues confronting local churches in the later eleventh century, ranging from uxorious clergy, to persistent simony and lay dominion of churches, disputes over ecclesiastical jurisdictions, the king’s adulterous marriage, and crusade, to name a few, were nothing if not contentious. With the exception of the peace statutes, no charters or legislation from Saint-Omer survive.79 The timing and eccentric location of the council 76

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VSG, 921: ‘Celebrabatur illic [at Reims] maximus primatum gallicae regionis conventus . . . Quibus iussu archipraesulis perlectis [the disputed charters], subito ingens fragor ab invinctis seu ab illis, qui iam virentis specie auri corrupti fuerant, adversus Godefridum oboritur . . . Cum his itaque aliisque innumeris subsannationum probris serpentinisque morsibus illustrem virum lacerarent, in medio illorum, uti agnus inter lupos, columbino vultu, ut erat et animo, immotus perstabat’. In the same source see the descriptions of the councils at Troyes and Reims in 1104 (917). T. Reuter, ‘Bishops, rites of passage, and the symbolism of state in pre-gregorian Europe’, in Gilsdorf, The Bishop, 23–36, esp. at 33, and Reuter, ‘Ein Europa der Bischöfe’; R. McKitterick, ‘The church’, in T. Reuter (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. III (Cambridge, 1999), 130–62, at 152; Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century, 198–9, 202–3. G. Bührer-Thierry, Évêques et pouvoir dans le royaume de Germanie. Les Églises de Bavière et de Souabe, 876–973 (Paris, 1997), 106–33, at 106; Jégou, L’évêque, juge de paix, 412–24. The term also seems serviceable for Gaudemet’s assertion that for the bishop, a regional council ‘brise un moment leur isolement, combat leur lassitude ou leur présomption’ (Le gouvernement de l’Église, 28), though in a relatively close-knit province like Reims, isolation would have to be virtually self-imposed. Even the dating of this council has been controversial, with scholarly opinion divided between the years 1099 and 1100. Opting for the year 1100 are E. I. Strubbe, ‘La paix de Dieu dans le nord de la France’, Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour l’histoire comparative des institutions, 14 (1961), 489–501, at 501 (but inconsistently, see below); H. Hoffmann, Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei (Stuttgart, 1964), 190–2, 265–6; and Platelle, ‘La violence et ses remèdes’, 118–19. Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 69 and 300 n. 91, is noncommital but appears to favour 1100. Dating the council to 1099 are, in the first instance, Etienne Baluze (1630–1718), who copied the statutes from a manuscript he

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 are explicable by the events surrounding John’s election; the ascent of a new episcopal cohort to power and Urban’s issuance of conciliar statutes at Rome in April; and Count Robert’s absence on crusade. Saint-Omer, and nearby Saint-Bertin, whose reform may also have been a subject for discussion, was a prospering site of comital patronage. It was also home to one of the unsuccessful candidates for bishop of Thérouanne.80 Its close proximity to that city would have sent a strong message about the restoration of episcopal authority in the diocese, but it was not too close to incite an angry response from clergy or laypeople disgruntled with the see’s change of direction. All the bishops attending had a direct stake in the political stability of Flanders, and Robert himself had probably requested the council to take place in his lands while he was away.81 The bishops addressed two pressing issues. The first was the renewal of the peace of God. The statutes promulgated during a provincial council six years earlier at Soissons (1093) – before any of the prelates present at Saint-Omer had been consecrated – were largely confirmed and slightly

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found at Arras, now BNF Coll. Baluze 7, 175, the inscription of which, with the date of 1099, is given in Vermeesch (Essai, 58 n. 141) and Hoffmann (Gottesfriede, 265); the seventeenth-century Jesuit scholars Philippe Labbe and Gabriel Cossart, using a manuscript from the abbey of Igny (dioc. Reims), reprinted in Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. XX, cols. 969–72 (reprinted in Vermeesch, Essai, 59–62); E. I. Strubbe, De Godsvreden in Vlaanderen. Oorkonden en losse aanteekeningen (Bruges, 1929), 14–15; R. Bonnaud-Delamare, ‘La paix en Flandre pendant la Première Croisade’, Revue du nord, 39 (1957), 147–52 (which contains many errors); and Vermeesch, Essai, 57–69, who furnishes a complete edition of the council proceedings from the works of Baluze, Labbe-Cossart, and Jean Hardouin. They are followed by Koziol, ‘Monks, Feuds, and the Making of Peace’, 257–8, and Giordanengo, Registre, 20, 57, 222–9, whose edition of Lambert’s record-book seems to confirm 1099 as the year. Hoffmann raised the most serious objections to dating the council in 1099, but they can be readily countered; see below. The candidate was Erkembold, who had been the first choice for bishop. Clemence, with Robert’s assent and at the instigation of its abbot Lambert, helped implement the reform of Saint-Bertin and its adoption of Cluniac customs in late 1099 to early 1100; see PL 159, cols. 939–40; ACF, no. 34, 99–101, which should bear a date of 8 February 1100/1 rather than 1106, for which see J.-M. De Smet, ‘Quand Robert II confia-t-il Saint-Bertin à Cluny?’ Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 46 (1951), 160–4. De Smet argues for 1100 on the grounds that ‘Flanders did not employ at this time the Easter style [of dating documents]’, but this assertion is overly sweeping given that the only surviving copy of the charter is found in a cartulary of Cluny, which did employ the Easter style of dating, and that Easter or Annunciation style may have been employed at this time in Arras. See CEA, lviii and n. 11. The peace statutes indicate in two places that Robert requested the council be held but give no indication as to his attendance; his plea precedes mention of the actual attendance at Saint-Omer of unnamed laity and clergy: ‘petente domino Roberto juniore Flandrensium comite cum primatibus suis, adstante quoque non parva multitudine cleri et populi’ (Vermeesch, Essai, 59–60), and ‘annuente praedicto Comite Rotberto, et praesenti clero et populo assentiente’ (ibid., 65). Although the letter no longer survives, we know that Robert wrote to Clemence from the Holy Land in 1099 to request that she found an abbey dedicated to St André at Stratenlez-Bruges to fulfill a vow he had made at Antioch; see ACF, no. 25, 75–7; Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies, 139.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims expanded.82 Churches, church lands and their tenants, and unarmed travellers were to pass unmolested on pain of excommunication; castleand city-lords were bound to uphold the peace on oath to their bishops, while those refusing to do so were to be excommunicated and their lands placed under interdict. Bishops were to rally their parishioners to defend the peace and refuse aid to anyone excommunicated by a fellow bishop; priests and monks were to bar excommunicated peace-breakers from participating in divine office; and judicial procedures were established for those seeking to contest accusations or make amends. Finally, the count’s earlier promise to enforce the peace statutes in his lands was reiterated.83 In 1099, similar protections were newly extended to fieldworkers, hunters, fishermen, those going to episcopal synods or to the comital court, and anyone seeking refuge at cross markers along roadways.84 In northern dioceses whose borders intersected with counties perhaps weakened by the absence of their lords, the reissuance of such statutes under a new episcopal regime was timely. The council’s second order of business, known to us only through a later missive of Archbishop Manasses to a repatriated Robert II and in two letters from the pen of Ivo of Chartres, concerned the fate of uxorious clergy.85 In the first letter, the archbishop recalled how at the 82 83

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The exception is c. 10, concerning fines and judicial proof, which was truncated in 1099. Vermeesch, Essai, 60–5. The sole, twelfth-century manuscript containing the 1093 peace statutes (Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, 140–2) is from Thérouanne. This last addendum on cross markers seems to have been predicated on cc. 27–8 of the decrees issued by Urban II at the 1095 Council of Clermont, at which bishops Lambert, John, and Manasses of Cambrai had been present, and from which Lambert had returned with a copy of its canons. (I have been unable to confirm the presence at Clermont of Manasses II of Reims, then still provost of the cathedral chapter.) See Somerville, Councils of Urban II, 8, 46–56, 81; Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, 136 (c. 28); Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 192. The letter of Manasses to Robert (Registre, no. 59, 408–11) and the two from Ivo of Chartres (to the provincial bishops of Reims and to Manasses (PL 162, cols. 104–7 (nos. 83 and 85)) are all undated, but probably were composed in mid- to late 1100. The wording of the first has been probed to marshal support for dating the council of Saint-Omer to that same year. There is no doubt Manasses wrote it once Robert had returned from the Holy Land (no later than 20 June 1100, perhaps as early as 8 February 1100), and in it the archbishop refers back to the ecclesiastical business conducted at the council ‘de conjugatis presbyteris et caeteris ecclesiasticis ordinibus’. Hoffman argued that the wording of the sentence ‘apud sanctum Audomarum nobiscum una cum coepiscopis nostris sermonem habuissemus’ should properly read ‘vobiscum [meaning Robert] una cum coepiscopis’, thus indicating that Robert had been present and, therefore, that the council could only have taken place in July 1100. But Manasses frequently refers to himself in the first person plural when speaking of episcopal business in the archdiocese, as he does later in the same sentence, when he notes ‘mentionem fecisse nos meminimus’. Similar phrasing can be found elsewhere in Lambert’s correspondence, for example letter no. 33 (Registre, 374), where Lambert refers to ‘nos et . . . abbates et coepiscopos’. The letter also appears among those written in 1099 to early 1104 (Registre, nos. 57–65), although the chronology of the letters here is jumbled. A second objection to dating the proceedings to 1099 has noted the mention in the peace statutes of John of Warneton as ‘bishop’, even though on 14 July 1099 he was still only bishop-elect. The past-tense tone of the introductory and concluding sections of the statutes, however, suggests that the

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 council he had butted heads with his fellow bishops in seeking to permit the count and his vassals the right to seize the consorts and wives of any cleric who refused to dissolve his conjugal relationship. Manasses’ contention was apparently based on a canon from Urban II’s 1089 council at Melfi (c. 12), the legal precedent for which appears to have been flimsy, at best. From the perspective of at least some of the bishops in the archdiocese – which ones, beyond the bishop of Soissons, is not entirely clear, but perhaps from others who were not present at Saint-Omer to object – this gave undue licence for both lay and archiepiscopal interference in internal diocesan affairs, and they complained that Manasses had established this prerogative without their consent or counsel.86 Moreover, the Melfi canon on seizure of wives had not been reiterated by the pope at Clermont or at Rome, the canons of which, from Lambert’s register-book, were probably consulted at Saint-Omer. The bishops’ initial protests apparently yielded no results, for they sent a letter to Ivo seeking his legal insight and complaining of Manasses’ threatening treatment of the bishop of Soissons, who may have objected most loudly to the archbishop’s claims. Ivo advised the bishops to stand firm together, then forwarded a chastening letter to the archbishop, who backed down.87 Manasses thus wrote to Robert in 1100 offering clarification that episcopal privilege and diocesan independence should be respected, and that lay authorities should seize the spouses of recalcitrant clergy only upon episcopal request.88

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additional material added to the peace statutes at Saint-Omer was collated and published after the council, once John had been consecrated. It’s plausible the author simply interpolated John’s episcopal status after the fact, since only a few days separated the council from his consecration. Finally, Ivo’s two letters, which manifestly refer to archiepiscopal intereference in local diocesan affairs pertaining to the clergy, are placed by Migne alongside two letters looking ahead to the council of Poitiers held in 1100 (PL 162, nos. 84 and 87). Registre, no. 59, 408: ‘absque consensu consilioque eorumdem coepiscoporum nostrorum’. The canon in question says nothing about excommunication, only loss of clerical orders and seizure of wives. The provincial bishops seem primarily to have been concerned about their compromised jurisdictional autonomy vis-à-vis lay authorities. See Somerville, with Kuttner, Pope Urban II, 256, 261–2, 287–9; Barstow, Married Priests, 100. That Ivo’s sympathies lay with the bishops who wrote to him is apparent in his salutation ‘reverendis in Christo fratribus diaecesis Remensis episcopis’, especially when compared to the ironic greeting he extended to Manasses, ‘reverendo Remorum archiepiscopo . . . charitatis visceribus abundare’ (compare Luke 1:78). Ivo urged solidarity: ‘vestrum est tam pro vobis quam pro confratre vestro Suessionensi episcopo pondus earum [the archbishop’s threats] animadvertere, et in periculo ejus periculum vestrum studiose praecavere’. The bonds of episcopal fraternity thus could and did shift when questions of hierarchical authority were involved, in this case isolating the archbishop. However, it should be emphasized that the identities of the bishops involved in the protest remain obscure, and that we later see both Lambert of Arras and John of Thérouanne interceding on Manasses’ behalf with Pope Paschal II; see PL 162, cols. 104–7 (nos. 83–5); PL 163, cols. 453–4 (no. 6); Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 6, and below, 140. There is no evidence that such requests were forthcoming.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims In retrospect, the agenda of the bishops who gathered on the Aa River seems conservative and familiar, a local reiteration of long-standing episcopal and papal initiatives. The prior peace legislation of 1093 (Soissons) and 1095 (Clermont) offered a clear foundation for SaintOmer, while the elimination of married clergy in the archdiocese had been a papal desideratum, albeit one unevenly pursued, for more than two decades.89 The predominantly regional and episcopal character of the Saint-Omer peace statutes, as with Soissons before them, is inescapable. Bishops are foremost bound to uphold the judgements of their colleagues, on pain of loss of orders.90 They acted as guarantors – by oath, law, and, if necessary, the sword – of social stability and clerical purity.91 These were not hollow expectations. Lambert’s letters show that he and Manasses of Reims repeatedly and in concert invoked and enforced existing peace legislation to rein in belligerent noblemen, and dealt routinely with married clergy.92 By contrast, secular authorities remain a peripheral presence, the voice of consent rather than a juridical force of first resort. Yet an indication that a complementary relationship between spiritual and secular powers was still envisaged at Saint-Omer lies in the new addendum to the conciliar statutes guaranteeing safe passage to those travelling to both episcopal synods and the comital court.93 The business of each was to be held sacrosanct.94 89

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As we have seen, Flanders, specifically the diocese of Thérouanne, became a veritable test-case for Gregory VII’s legislation against clerical marriage; see Meijns, ‘Opposition to clerical continence’; Barstow, Married Priests, 67–77; Giry, ‘Grégoire VII et les évêques de Térouane’, 394–9. Paschal II was still pursuing married clergy in Thérouanne in the 1110s (PL 163, col. 369). It seems likely, given the strong imprint of Urban’s policies regarding concubinage and extension of the peace, that the bishops also addressed the abiding issue of simony, likewise regulated at Clermont. No direct evidence for this remains, though simony’s influence was a recurring theme in a variety of regional venues at the time. It was raised, for example, by the clergy of Cambrai who opposed the election of Manasses to that see (GPC, 34 (strophes 186–9)); and polemicized against in contemporary charters of Lambert (1097; CEA, no. 5, 9–10) and Urban II for Saint-Bertin (1096; PL 151, cols. 453–4 (no. 181)); and in the Liber Floridus of Lambert of Saint-Omer (1112–21; see Derolez, The Autograph Manuscript of the Liber Floridus, 134). Vermeesch, Essai, 63 (c. 7). Vermeesch, Essai, 62 (c. 6): ‘Statuimus iterum ut si episcopus ex consilio bonorum virorum super excommunicatum illum, qui pacem non confirmaverit vel confirmatam infregerit exercitum ducere decreverit omnes parochiani eius ad defensionem pacis eum unanimiter adiuvent et ipse episcopus secundum modum laborum penitencie eorum modum imponat’. For the peace, see Registre, nos. 2’–3, 330–3; no. 15, 350–1; no. 17, 352–5; no. 30, 370–1; no. 39, 380–3 (with explicit reference to Soissons/1093); nos. 68–70, 422–9 (with explicit reference to Clermont/1095); also Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 150–1. For married clergy, see Registre, no. 56, 404–5; no. 132, 510–11. Vermeesch, Essai, 65: ‘et ad synodos episcoporum vel ad curiam praedicti comitis euntes et redeuntes cum rebus suis in securitate pacis consistere’. This stipulation appears to have been a local addition to prevailing legislation, and was not included among the various canons regulating the Peace and Truce of God at Clermont. On the utility of mutual support between count and countess and the bishops of Flanders while

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 From an administrative perspective, the routine aspects of the council are revealing of the archdiocesan episcopate’s ongoing engagement with the business of their local churches and society, in which the papacy and its legates remained secondary.95 The council also yields clear evidence for the bishops’ concern with administrative continuity, a pressing matter in 1099. Saint-Omer served as the venue for John’s debut as bishop-elect of Thérouanne, the stage from which he was introduced to his diocese in the company of the bishops who had worked to confirm his election. At the council’s closing, the company of prelates travelled to Reims to carry out John’s consecration. The known business of the council – uxorious clergy and the peace – had specific resonance in Flanders, which had struggled to end the former condition and enforce the latter. The council operated as an organ of governance in both the civil and ecclesiastical spheres, emphasizing law, order, and precedence in its decrees. The peace statutes bolstered the position of Clemence, acting as lord in her husband’s absence. And the evidence from the council suggests that the bishops supported one another, and the secular authorities, in upholding those same decrees.

episcopal fraternity and regional partnerships The council at Saint-Omer put on exhibition different elements of episcopal culture. The prelates pursued an agenda relevant to the contemporary political and ecclesiastical context, and disseminated papal decrees. This was business as usual. What is less immediately apparent from the written sources is the degree to which the attending regional bishops comprised a sort of fraternal équipe, a charismatic court that recalled the apostles, whose collective authority represented the highest echelon of legal appeal short of the Roman curia, and who enacted

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Robert was away on crusade, Bonnaud-Delamare was surely correct (‘La paix en Flandre’, 149), although this was not necessarily such a bitter pill for Robert to swallow as the author implies. Count Baldwin IV held with his bishops and abbots a council at Oudenaarde to proclaim the peace in 1030 (P. Grierson (ed.), Les annales de Saint-Pierre de Gand et de Saint-Amand (Brussels, 1937), 89), while Count Baldwin V (1035–67) and Bishop Drogo of Thérouanne (1030–78) proclaimed the Truce of God in the 1040s or 1060s – again, there is no consensus about the exact date. On the latter, see for commentary and translation: www.web.pdx.edu/~ott/drogopeace/ index.html. For the bishops’ public role in promoting the peace, Werner, ‘Observations sur le rôle des évêques’, 166–9, makes pertinent comments, as does Koziol on the issue of episcopal and secular condominium and the language of peace expressed through the councils and charters (Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, 133–7, 275–83). Compare A. Duggan, ‘De consultationibus: the role of episcopal consultation in the shaping of canon law in the twelfth century’, in Brasington and Cushing (eds.), Bishops, Texts and the Use of Canon Law, 191–214.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims legislation in a sacral and liturgical atmosphere.96 Within this circle, Lambert of Arras acted as a charismatic father-figure and talismanic presence, at Saint-Omer and elsewhere.97 As we have already seen in letters concerning the episcopal consecrations of the two Manasseses and the ordination of John, Lambert’s presence was thought to lend a certificatory gravitas and authority to solemn occasions. His relative Gui, the count of Ponthieu, certainly thought so, urging him in a letter to come to Abbeville for the knighting of Prince Louis, the future king Louis VI. ‘I pray’, Gui wrote, ‘that you shall come to honour Louis. For I have desired the authority of your counsel to be present for the occasion’.98 Fellow bishops wrote to request Lambert’s assistance at liturgical ceremonies. Philip of Châlons, expressing both his own wish and, he added, that of his ancient predecessor St Memmius, wrote ‘to his dearest friend and lord’ requesting that ‘the excellence of [his] sanctity’ attend a church dedication. ‘Blessed Memmius implores you, and we beseech you’, Philip intoned.99 When acting as legate on behalf of Pope Paschal II in 1104, Lambert spoke with the apostolic authority of St Peter himself.100 The many epistolary references to Lambert’s fraternitas, auctoritas, and sanctitas – his brotherliness, his authoritative imprimatur, his sanctity – remind us that bishops and laymen alike admired his charismatic influence, as well as his political sagacity and command of the law.101 As has already been suggested, Saint-Omer was in many respects his showcase. Thus the provincial council’s real power and significance did not lie purely in its transmission of routine agendas, but in its regional sociopolitical context and the personal prominence of the bishops in attendance. Lambert’s personality and charisma were more powerful than most, but every prelate embodied hieratic and charismatic authority in some measure. As Lambert’s letters reveal, they conceived of themselves as part of a tight-knit fraternal network. We find there literary supplications 96 98

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Pontal, ‘Le synode diocésain’. 97 Morelle, ‘La pratique épistolaire de Lambert’, 48. Registre, no. 43, 386–7: ‘Precor itaque ut ad ipsum Ludovicum honorandum veniatis; auctoritatem enim vestri consilii in hoc facto interesse desideravi’. Gui calls Lambert his ‘cognatus’, which can mean brother-in-law. Registre, no. 53, 398–9: ‘Vos enim tantae solennitati interesse volumus, tum sanctitatis qua praeeminetis excellentia, tum quia dilectionis pristinae recreari volumus collocutione mutua. Rogat ergo vos beatus Memmius, rogamus et nos, ea qua confidimus’. Benner, Châlons-enChampagne, 133. Bishop Gervin of Amiens had earlier sought Lambert’s assistance at the translation of the relics of St Fuscian into a new reliquary in September 1096; see Registre, no. 2, 328–9. PL 163, col. 453 (no. 5). In a letter to Paschal regarding his judgement in a dispute between the canons of Saint-Martin of Ypres and John of Thérouanne, Lambert wrote: ‘Nos [Lambert] vero vestra [Paschal’s] apostolica auctoritate, videlicet in hoc negotio vice vestra fungentes, interdiximus ut a nostra, imo vestra praesentia non nisi judiciali et canonico ordine recederent’. See also PL 163, cols. 128 (no. 116) and 454 (no 7). From 1103 until his death in 1115, Lambert was the senior bishop in the province of Reims.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 that publicly expressed humility and deference, and were meant to secure the favour and pleasure of the individual being petitioned.102 But the bishops’ regular appeals to fraternal charity reflected more than the rhetorical flourishes common to the epistolary medium through which they communicated. They constituted expressions of love founded on biblical bedrock: to love God meant to love one’s brother.103 They appealed to their shared friendship and brotherhood – referenced three times in rapid succession in one brief missive from Manasses of Reims to Lambert.104 In one of many letters to his friend John of Thérouanne, when requesting support for an abbatial election at Anchin, Lambert recalled the proverbial saying that when ‘brother helps brother, both are consoled’.105 Archdiocesan churches were similarly perceived in familial terms. An 1103 charter of Enguerran of Laon for the abbey of Saint-Remi, for example, recalls how the see of Laon was established by St Remigius and made a ‘uterine sister’ of Reims through an endowment from its lands.106 Around the same time, the beleaguered canons and people of Beauvais wrote to Lambert detailing their (to that point) fruitless attempts to have their chosen bishop consecrated, explaining the necessity that Beauvais achieve peace with its mother, Reims, and its other sisters, the churches of the archdiocese.107 Ascriptions of 102

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Popes used the same terminology when addressing bishops. For some examples from Urban II’s correspondence, see PL 151, cols. 447 (no. 174, to Bishop Philip of Châlons); 459 (no. 186bis, to the archbishops and bishops of France); 499 (no. 229, to Manasses II of Reims); 517 (no. 248, also to Manasses). See also McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority, 212–14, and Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, 27, 31–4, 44–7, 49, 60–1, 65–76. 1 John 4:21; compare APC, 367. Registre, no. 48, 392–3: ‘Manasses, Dei gratia Remorum archiepiscopus, dilecto fratri et coepiscopo suo Lamberto . . . Scire vos volumus, frater in Christo dilectissime . . . ad hanc itaque ejus consecrationem [Baudry of Noyon’s] fraternitatem vestram . . . invitamus’. Also Registre, no. 23, 362–3, a letter from Manasses of Cambrai to Lambert beseeching him, ‘like a friend from a friend’ (ut amicus ab amico), to confer his liturgical powers so that he might consecrate a church. For Lambert’s forms of address, see Morelle, ‘La pratique épistolaire de Lambert’, 49–52 (who does not mention appeals to fraternity), and generally, G. Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections (Turnhout, 1976); G. Constable, ‘Dictators and diplomats in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: medieval epistolography and the birth of modern bureaucracy’, in G. Constable (ed.), Culture and Spirituality in Medieval Europe (Aldershot, 1996), 37–46; C. Vulliez, ‘Lettres et société au temps de la Renaissance du XIIe siècle’, in D.-O. Hurel (ed.), Correspondance et sociabilité (Rouen, 1994), 35–51. Proverbs 18:19. The Vulgate reads: ‘frater qui adiuvatur a fratre quasi civitas firma et iudicia quasi vectes urbium’; see Registre, no. 114, 484–5. The abbot-elect was Alvisius; the year, 1111. AEL, no. 54, 127: ‘de corpore ipsius Remensis ecclesie portionem uterinam ei constituit sororem’. On the literary ‘ancestry’ common to the saintly histories of the dioceses in the province of Reims, see the summary of L. Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, vol. III, Les provinces du nord et de l’est (Paris, 1915), 141–52. The Beauvais clergy and people hoped the bishop of Arras would intercede on their behalf before the Roman cardinal legates at an upcoming council. See below and Registre, no. 62, 412–15: ‘Super isto autem negotio, a domno Manasse, Remorum archiepiscopo, et caeteris coepiscopis qui conventui Suessionis habito interfuerunt quaesivimus et impetravimus litteras summo pontifici

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims brotherhood with modifying adjectives like carissimus, amantissimus, and dilectissimus thus reinforced and recalled the social, professional, and sacramental connections of the bishop to his peers, with whom he was regularly involved from the moment of his consecration.108 When, in a charter of 1151 confirming a legal decision reached between the abbeys of Saint-Martin of Tournai and Saint-Vincent of Laon, Archbishop Samson of Reims noted that the allegations of both sides had been heard by ‘our most beloved brother’ Josselin of Soissons (1126–52), he signalled his personal trust in Josselin’s decision and indicated that the court of Reims considered it binding.109 Each bishop should have the best interests of his colleagues at heart, since their concerns were one and the same.110 Of course, conflicts did erupt from time to time. Not every bishop could, or would, attend a summons to council. Fully half the bishops of the province were missing in 1099, an unusually high rate of absenteeism.111 The dust-up between Manasses II and some of his suffragans (notably the bishop of Soissons, who had been absent from SaintOmer) over the seizure of married clergy by secular authorities illustrates that episcopal interests did not always coincide, but were joined with one another and the interests of secular powers in a delicate pas-de-deux. Episcopal desires for autonomy sometimes chafed against hierarchic interests represented by the archbishop or papal legates, and external

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dirigendas, quoniam necesse est ut Belvacensis ecclesia per sanctam Remensem ecclesiam, utique matrem suam, et caeteras sorores suas curae pastoralis sollicitudine perveniat ad quietem’. Registre, no. 32, 372–3 (letter of Manasses II of Reims to Lambert of Arras calling him ‘frater in Christo amantissime’); no. 18, 354–5 (letter of Manasses II referring to Lambert as ‘dilectissimo confratri et coepiscopo’). Expressions of confraternitas among bishops were likewise normative in charters. For example, an 1104 act of Bishop Baudry of Noyon notes how the archbishop of Reims and abbot of Saint-Nicaise ‘called on our brotherly assent’ (super hoc nostre fraternitatis interpellavit assensum) to confirm donations to that abbey (J. Cossé-Durlin (ed.), Cartulaire de SaintNicaise de Reims (Paris, 1991), no. 28, 206). In an 1137 charter of Archbishop Renaud II of Reims (1124–39) concerning a dispute over the water rights of the abbey of Saint-Thierry of Reims, Renaud refers to Bishop Bartholomew of Laon, with whom he judged the long-running controversy, as ‘carissimus confrater noster’ (AA, vol. I, 291). They might also be used as an indication of closeness between bishops and cathedral clergy, as when Bishop Enguerran of Laon in an 1103 charter referred to the canon Ebalus as frater noster (AEL, no. 54, 128). A. d’Herbomez (ed.), Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tournai, vol. I (Brussels, 1898), no. 73, 77. Josselin is also the first signer of the charter. Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, 281–7, points out the parallel language of fraternity shared among members of the aristocracy at this time, and one finds it in letters among schoolmates, for example when Adelman of Liège addresses Berengar of Tours as his conlacteus, or foster-brother (both had been students of Fulbert of Chartres; the letter is cited by Radding, World Made by Men, 165). School-based affinities were unquestionably a principal source of episcopal solidarity and collective identity; see below, chapter 9. Not present were Amiens, Beauvais, Châlons, Laon, Senlis, and Soissons. Senlis may have been vacant; Bishop Letald is last attested in April 1099, and his successor was consecrated later that year. It is certainly also possible that the other provincial bishops attended part of the council but were not present on the day on which the peace statutes were transacted.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 authorities, including secular magnates, might manipulate internal divisions to their advantage. Yet despite periodic conflicts, the prelates of the archdiocese of Reims around 1100 repeatedly demonstrated their mutual affinity. The drawnout election controversy at Beauvais (1100–4) presents an excellent case study of that affinity, and of the degree to which papal and monarchic agendas hinged on regional church support. The Beauvais affair has been well and thoroughly studied, and there is no need here to rehearse all its twists and turns.112 Earlier generations of scholars cast the conflict in terms of a heavyweight bout between ‘church’ and ‘state’ – represented by King Philip I and Pope Paschal II – over rights of episcopal election and nomination in France.113 The controversy’s outcome, however, pivoted directly on the cooperation of the archdiocesan episcopate and the decision-making of Lambert, John of Thérouanne, and Archbishop Manasses II. Because the archbishop did not readily acquiesce to the demands of either Pope Paschal or Ivo of Chartres – whose direct involvement in and voluminous correspondence concerning the affair has deeply coloured our understanding of events – his reputation has fared poorly. Manasses has been made into King Philip’s creature, an agent of royal interests.114 This conclusion may be admissible if the election controversy at Beauvais is viewed through the prism of the papal–monarchical struggle for primacy over the church. But it overlooks the self-directed character of the Reims provincial church and its episcopal leadership, and its prelates’ principled desire to defend their autonomy against outside interference. Briefly, the events were these. Following a vacancy of more than half a year, the canons of Beauvais elected as their bishop Stephen of Garlande, an archdeacon of Paris and a member of a noble family closely allied with the Capetian house.115 The canons’ choice elicited the moral recrimination and trenchant objections of Ivo of Chartres, whose intervention in the ecclesiastical business of his former diocese had continued long 112

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A. Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros. Annales de sa vie et de son règne (1081–1137) (Paris, 1890), clxi–clxvi; B. Monod, ‘L’Église et l’État au XIIe siècle. L’élection épiscopale de Beauvais de 1100 à 1104: Étienne de Garlande et Galon’, Mémoires de la Société Académique d’Archéologie, Sciences et Arts du département de l’Oise, 19 (1904), 53–74; Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 27–34, 74–9, 89–92. More recently, its strategic place in Capetian intervention in Beauvais and its region has been highlighted; see Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes, 75–8. For a perspective emphasizing local politics, see J. Rubenstein, Guibert of Nogent: Portrait of a Medieval Mind (New York, 2002), 87–92. For example, Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 31, asserts that ‘Manasses, deaf to the orders from Rome as to the prayers of his fellow bishop, remained resolutely on the king’s side, against the pope, against the reformists, against canon law’. Philip remained excommunicated because of his marriage; Urban II had renewed the sentence just before his death. Bournazel, Le gouvernement capétien, 37–40; Führer, König Ludwig VI. von Frankreich und die Kanonikerreform, 98–108; Rubenstein, Guibert of Nogent, 90.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims after he vacated the abbacy of Saint-Quentin of Beauvais in 1090.116 Stephen’s backers in the chapter insisted the election had been executed canonically and had the full support of the people and clergy. They presented their candidate before a provincial council convened by Manasses at Soissons sometime before November 1100. The bishops in council consented to their choice, but the canons of Beauvais quickly ran into other unspecified problems (multa et innumera . . . incommoda), for they soon wrote to Lambert of Arras, urging him to send a letter fortified with his seal directly to the pope, and to write further to his ‘dear friend’ (familiari amico vestro), the papal legate John of Santa Anastasia, on behalf of their candidate Stephen.117 Although it is never explicitly stated in their letters, the source of the canons’ problems was no doubt Ivo, for the bishop of Chartres had acted as soon as the election was announced, writing to the same legates and to Pope Paschal to convince them of its illegitimacy and Stephen’s lack of fitness.118 It seems that Ivo had no basis from which to dispute the canonicity of the electoral process itself, because he raised no procedural objections in his letter, and no legal prerogative permitted him to intervene in the affairs of another diocese. Instead he raised other objections to Stephen’s promotion. Two that he repeated were that Stephen was in minor orders – ‘not yet even a subdeacon’, he complained to Paschal – and that he was of disreputable character, having once been excommunicated by the papal legate Hugh of Die for his ‘public adultery’ (publice olim de adulterio publico infamatum, et . . . ecclesiae communione privatum). He further padded these charges by asserting that Garlande was unlettered (illiteratus), a gambler, and a womanizer.119 The bishop of Chartres succeeded in having the papal legates and Paschal himself suspend the election and forbid Stephen from assuming the see.120 But what chance did Ivo have of persuading Manasses of the merits of his complaints? On the principle of Stephen’s lack of major orders, the answer is patently none whatsoever. Manasses knew that Urban II had made an allowance just a few years earlier for a candidate 116 117

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For further context on Ivo’s involvement, see Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres, 161–9. Registre, no. 62, 412. The exact date of the provincial council is unknown, but preceded the 18–23 November synod convened by the papal legates John and Benedict at Poitiers. It does not appear that Lambert attended the provincial council at Soissons, because the canons of Beauvais review the council’s proceedings in a way that suggests he was unfamiliar with what had happened there. PL 162, cols. 107–8 (no. 87), 109–11 (no. 89), 112–13 (no. 92). PL 162, col. 110 (no. 89): ‘procul a sacris ordinibus inventum, utpote nondum subdiaconum’. See also PL 162, cols. 108 (no. 87) and 117 (no. 97). Hugh had last exercised legatine powers in France from late 1093/early 1094 through 1097 (Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten, 153–62), so Stephen’s ‘infamy’ was relatively old news in 1100. PL 162, col. 110 (no. 89).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 lacking major orders to become bishop. That candidate had been Manasses himself. Adding to the irony – bordering on hypocrisy – of Ivo’s complaint about Stephen was the fact that Ivo had personally advocated Manasses’ consecration to Urban II, despite his lack of major orders.121 What was probably still more perplexing to Manasses was that Ivo had also publicly endorsed – against Urban’s judgement – the promotion of the previous bishop-elect of Beauvais, Ansellus (elected 1096; consecrated 12 June 1099), who, it seems, had been married and/or had children. In a letter from three years earlier addressed to the very legate Hugh who excommunicated Stephen of Garlande for ‘public adultery’, the bishop of Chartres argued that Ansellus’ ‘advantageousness’ (utilitas) to the church of Beauvais and the peace of the realm should outweigh any concerns about his canonical eligibility for office.122 A central feature of Ivo’s conception of the law was the necessity of differentiating whether a ‘rigorous’ or a ‘dispensatory’ application of law was appropriate in a given context, with the goal of avoiding schism within the church.123 This sometimes required overlooking the disqualifying conditions of a particular candidate for office in favour of securing the most advantageous person for the church’s overall well-being.124 Quoting from Augustine, Ivo wrote in his Prologue: ʻThe princes of churches often pass judgement more severely according to the tenor of the canons; and they tolerate many things from the necessity of the times. They often give dispensation for the utility of persons or to avoid harm to the people.ʼ125 There is no indication that the provincial bishops had been divided over Stephen’s election. Not only did the prerogative of confirming Stephen’s election belong to Manasses, but by Ivo’s own rationalization, the archbishop could well and legally argue that Stephen’s election served the utilitas of the church, and hence his past sins and faults could be overlooked. Moreover, there was the matter of Ivo’s letter to Manasses of 1099 or early 1100, concerning an issue unrelated to the 121

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See PL 162, cols. 59–60 (no. 48); Ivo of Chartres, Correspondance, 194–7. See also Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 21. PL 162, cols. 66–7 (no. 55); Ivo of Chartres, Correspondance, 222–7: ‘cum ecclesia ad praesens aeque utilem sibi non inveniat quem cum pace regni et consensu ecclesiae in episcopum eligat’. On Ansellus’ election in 1096, see Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes, 75 and n. 39. See Foulon, Église et réforme, 454–8, and Ivo of Chartres, Prologue, ed. and trans. Jean Werckmeister (Paris, 1997), 25–6, 30–8; which should be compared with Brasington, Ways of Mercy, 26–89, esp. 41–4. (I have followed Brasington’s edition.) In Ansellus’ case, Ivo eventually got his wish: Ansellus was consecrated bishop of Beauvais in June 1099, only to die a few months later. Brasington, Ways of Mercy, 77–8; also Prologue, 34–5. Brasington, Ways of Mercy, 61–2 and (for the text) 125: ‘Multa quoque principes ecclesiarum pro tenore canonum districtius iudicant multa pro temporum necessitate tolerant multa pro personarum utilitate uel strage populorum uitanda dispensant’.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims Beauvais affair and no doubt still very fresh in the archbishop’s mind. Writing shortly after the council of Saint-Omer, the bishop of Chartres had chastised the archbishop for his ‘scandalous’ intervention in the internal affairs of his suffragan dioceses in pursuit of uxorious clergy.126 Now here, in a province where he was not even a suffragan, Ivo was acting in precisely the same way. Is it any wonder that Manasses turned a deaf ear to the bishop of Chartres?127 It is important to note here that the papal prerogative for intervention in local councils was well established by 1100, but only in those cases where improper procedure had been followed. Late eleventhcentury legal compendia, most starkly Gregory VII’s Dictatus papae (1075), gave papal legates precedence over any bishops gathered in council.128 Gregory VII and his successors asserted that provincial councils could be annulled by papal fiat and that they had no constitutional powers.129 But Gregory had also endorsed the metropolitan’s right to confirm and consecrate bishops-elect, and no papal legate had been present at Soissons in 1100. Nothing that Manasses did suggests he broke with apostolic authority or abused his prerogative as metropolitan.130 Aware, then, that Lambert and Ivo were bound for Poitiers, where the papal legates John and Benedict had convened a council in November 1100, the ranking officers of the Beauvais cathedral chapter composed their supplicatory letter to the bishop of Arras on behalf of ‘the entire congregation of the church of Beauvais, the bishop’s vassals, and all the people of the same city’.131 In language they quite probably used at the provincial council of Soissons, the canons assured Lambert that Stephen had been chosen by the common will and counsel of the clergy and

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PL 162, col. 106 (no. 85), and see above, 128. Ivo all but admitted his conflict of interest in a letter to Manasses the following year; PL 162, col. 121 (no. 102): ‘Sed, quia ecclesia illa in Christo me genuit . . . cum scandalizatur, non possum non uri. Unde non miretur vigilantia vestra, si apud paternitatem [al. fraternitatem] vestram intercedo pro genitrice et nutrice mea, ut vos qui quotidianas ejus ruinas frequenti relatione cognoscitis’. Perhaps Ivo felt that Manasses owed him for his earlier support. Reg. 2.55a, vol. I, 206–8; Cowdrey, Register, 149–50. R. Foreville, ‘The synod of the province of Rouen in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, in C. N. L. Brooke, D. Luscombe, G. Martin, and D. Owen. (eds.), Church and Government in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to C. R. Cheney on his 70th Birthday (Cambridge, 1976), 19–39, at 19–20, citing Deusdedit and Gratian. A prerogative Gregory VII had himself endorsed. See Peltzer, Canon Law, Careers and Conquest, 21, 50, citing Thier, Hierarchie und Autonomie; Gaudemet, Le gouvernement de l’Église, 27. Registre, no. 62, 412–15: ‘omnisque congregatio Belvacensis ecclesiae, casati etiam, cum universo populo ejusdem civitatis’. The term casatus embraced a wide range of figures in the episcopal entourage, to which ‘vassals’ does not do complete justice; see Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes, 96–9.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 people, free of the taint of simony.132 The writers even took a page from Ivo’s playbook in referring to Stephen as a ‘suitable (utilem) and upright man’, the very word the bishop of Chartres had employed when advocating for the promotion of Ansellus as the right bishop for Beauvais.133 Although we do not know what words Lambert, Ivo, or the papal legates exchanged when they met at Poitiers, Ivo wrote directly to the pope, who forbade Stephen from assuming the see and demanded that the canons undertake a new election.134 Ivo clearly anticipated resistance on the archbishop’s part to this diminishment of his legal prerogative. Rather than persuade with legal arguments, however, the bishop of Chartres opted to pressure Manasses by tapping his friendship network. Ivo wrote to Lambert and John of Thérouanne, urging them in flattering language to counsel Manasses to allow a new election. ‘It was always your custom’, Ivo reminded the bishops, ‘to reject with perfect hatred any wolves sneaking into the Lord’s sheepfold, and like faithful hounds in God’s house to fight them wherever apparent’.135 Appeal to the archbishop’s sense of honour, the bishop of Chartres suggested to John and Lambert, lest others do what he would not.136 Did Ivo expect his friends to comply? He certainly had reason to believe in Lambert’s goodwill, as the bishop of Arras had affirmed his friendship and, like Ivo, assumed great personal risk in denouncing Philip’s marriage.137 The bishop of Chartres clearly hoped to appeal to men who shared his political sympathies and who would, as his former 132

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As Giordanengo points out (Registre, 35–6), Lambert’s letters frequently key in on the details of episcopal elections, the canonicity of which, at least with respect to the letter of law, he was keenly interested in. Compare Ivo of Chartres, Correspondance, 224, and Registre, no. 62, 412: ‘utilem et honestum virum’. It is not inconceivable that the canons of Beauvais had before them a copy of Ivo’s 1096 letter to Hugh of Die. A ‘useful’ or ‘beneficial’ candidate would have been immensely appealing given the troubled history of elections at Beauvais, which had since the late 1080s been plagued by procedural delays, accusations of simony and influence-peddling, and fractiousness. For overviews, see L.-H. Labande, Histoire de Beauvais et de ses institutions communales jusqu’au commencement du XVe siècle (Paris, 1892; repr. Geneva, 1978), 52–8; Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes, 73–5; M. Horn, ‘Zur Geschichte des Bischofs Fulco von Beauvais (1089–1095)’, Francia, 16 (1989), 176–84; Somerville, with Kuttner, Urban II, 100–1. This occurred sometime after the council of Poitiers, in late 1100 or early 1101; see PL 162, cols. 109–11 (no. 89). PL 162, col. 117 (no. 97): ‘Quoniam igitur vestra semper consuetudo fuit lupos in ovilia Dei subintrantes perfecto odio reprobare, et eos sicut fideles in domo Dei canes ubi licuit impugnare’. The letter is undated, but must have been written in late 1100 or early 1101. Ibid.: ‘Quod si praeblandiente desidia facere distulerit, aut dissimulaverit, monendus est a vobis quatenus sic honorificet ministerium suum, ut quod per eum faciendum est, per manus non impleatur aliorum’. Soria Audebert, La crosse brisée, 74–8, 168–71, 177–82. Both men had been imprisoned, Lambert just briefly. Lambert’s important role in the Beauvais affair is mentioned by Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, 241.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims pupils, be inclined to accept his authority. Yet the situation was not so clear-cut. Lambert plainly could not accept all of Ivo’s arguments against Stephen. The bishop of Arras had willingly participated in Archbishop Manasses’ fast-track promotion through the canonical grades prior to his consecration, as was noted earlier.138 Ivo seems to have recognized the legal complexities involved, for he baldly stated: ‘we admonish that what you have done to this point from love of justice, you now more willingly do in this business from the debt of obedience’.139 Put in other words, Ivo told Lambert and John to forget canonical arguments, and listen to the pope and their old master. What is revealing about these exchanges is that both Ivo and the canons of Beauvais agreed on the two key pressure points in the controversy. First, the initial election had been procedurally sound, and Lambert, John, and Manasses seem to have recognized this fact – hence Ivo’s reference to Lambert and John’s amor justitiae. Second, the bishop of Chartres and the canons knew that to make their cases they had to co-opt the collegial solidarity that bound John and Lambert to Manasses, and vice versa. Appeals to papal or royal authority alone would probably produce a stalemate, but personal pressure from within the bishops’ circle might tilt the scales in their favour. In the short term, the bishop of Chartres got what he wanted. With or without Manasses’ consent – the sources do not tell us – a new election was held and the now divided cathedral chapter produced a second candidate, who happened to be a favoured friend of Ivo, namely Galo, his successor as abbot of Saint-Quentin of Beauvais. The bishop of Chartres rejoiced. Stephen of Garlande still had supporters among the chapter dignitaries, however, and King Philip refused to recognize Galo as bishop-elect or to turn over the church’s possessions, of which he had retained use since the vacancy first opened.140 Galo and his electors were preparing to travel to Rome to obtain a papal consecration when Manasses summoned them to mediation. To Ivo this smacked of intentional delaying tactics done on the king’s behalf, and he told Paschal as much.141 At the same time, he wrote directly to Manasses, urging him to consecrate Galo.142 Ivo’s letter again suggests that the archbishop was 138 139

140 141

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Above, 114. PL 162, col. 117 (no. 97): ‘monemus, ut quod hactenus fecistis amore justitiae, propensius faciatis in hoc negotio ex debito obedientiae’. PL 162, cols. 123 (no. 104) and 123–4 (no. 105); Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 30–1. PL 162, col. 123 (no. 104): ‘Unde electores ejus [Galo’s] ad paternitatem vestram jam confugissent, nisi quia metropolitanus eorum eos detinet condicto die inter contradictores et electores, sicut dicitur pacem volens componere, vel forsitan propter voluntatem regis rem callide impedire’. PL 162, cols. 120–2 (no. 102).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 standing on procedure, but there was no reason that Galo’s election should not be debated in the provincial synod, and peace attempted, before the case passed on to Rome. Exasperated and, it seems, warned off by Manasses, Ivo complained to him in familiar language: ʻYour vigilance should not marvel if I intercede on behalf of my mother and nursemaid [i.e., the church of Beauvais] before your paternity, since you, who are aware by frequent reports of its daily ruination, strive to hasten its lamentable decline for the sake of your prerogativeʼ.143 Ivo again appealed to the honour due Manasses’ rank, and warned him that if he did not do what he should – that is, consecrate Galo – he would cede his prerogative to another person. This could only have meant the pope.144 Manasses was not without resources of his own. About the time Ivo was pressing his case for Galo, the archbishop’s friends intervened on his behalf with the pope. Lambert wrote a brief letter to Paschal, confirming that Manasses was God-fearing, a lover of papal decrees, and a friend to the poor. John of Thérouanne, travelling to Rome on other business, also put in a good word for him.145 It is probably no coincidence that at precisely this time, on 15 April 1101, Paschal renewed the privileges of the church of Arras at Lambert’s request.146 Did the pope’s confirmation signal a quid pro quo, a boon to Lambert in the hopes that he would sway Manasses? It is difficult to say, although the timing is suspect. Ultimately, however, Manasses did not consecrate Galo, nor did his refusal to do so open any apparent schism within the episcopal ranks of the province or bring about direct retributive action from Paschal.147 The archbishop insisted on his procedural powers as metropolitan vis-à-vis the church of Beauvais and its elections until at least 1104. Galo eventually trudged off to Rome, where the pope made him bishop of Beauvais in spite of Manasses and then sent him to Poland as a legate, effectively tabling the confrontation.148 Two years later, in 1104, and having never occupied Beauvais, Galo was transferred to Paris. The see’s five-year hiatus without 143

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Ibid.: ‘Unde non miretur vigilantia vestra, si apud paternitatem [al. fraternitatem] vestram intercedo pro genitrice et nutrice mea, ut vos qui quotidianas ejus ruinas frequenti relatione cognoscitis, pro officio vestro lamentabilibus ejus lapsibus occurrere studeatis’. Ibid.: ‘consecrationem electi praedictae ecclesiae acceleraretis, ne differendo, vel non faciendo quod vestrum est, honorem vestrum alteri detis’. This was the second instance in which Ivo pursued this particular line of argumentation with Manasses. Registre, no. 67, 420–1. The editor gives a date of ‘1099–1106’. PL 163, cols. 69–70 (no. 48). See Ivo’s final letter to him at PL 162, col. 151 (no. 145): ‘Unde consulendo suggerimus, et suggerendo consulimus, ut rigorem justitiae quem nunc tandem . . . erga Belvacensem ecclesiam nescio quo impellente intendistis, consultiori moderatione remittatis’. Probably in early 1103. See P. David, ‘Un disciple d’Yves de Chartres en Pologne – Galon de Paris et le droit canonique’, in La Pologne. Au VIIe Congrès international des Sciences Historiques, Varsovie 1933 (Warsaw, 1933), vol. I, 99–113.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims a prelate in residence finally came to an end in 1105 with the election of a new bishop.149 Earlier historians assessed the controversy of 1100–4 largely in terms of whether the pope, or the king, most imposed his will in the clash between regnum and sacerdotium. Bernard Monod, who carried out an admirably detailed study more than a century ago, concluded that both Philip and Paschal only really succeeded in negating the other’s decisions, rather than carrying the day by the force of their legal arguments or authority. A ‘simple compromise’ resulted.150 Monod considered the archbishop’s role in the affair ‘strange’, but concluded that Paschal clearly had bypassed Manasses’ metropolitan authority by calling the canons of Beauvais to a second election after the council at Soissons.151 In fact, Manasses appears to have held his ground against the pope all the while without overtly caving to royal influence – hence Ivo’s many and increasingly vexed appeals to him on procedural matters. Not only did he not yield his legal prerogative – Manasses never does seem to have recognized the validity of the second election, and never did consecrate Stephen or Galo – but he may have even brokered the compromise that sent Galo to Rome and Stephen back to Paris. This mediatory role would not have been disinterested; Manasses’ metropolitan prestige and privilege were at stake. Lambert and John, whose reputations in Rome were nearly spotless, seem to have supported Manasses on these grounds and even interceded directly before Paschal as character witnesses on his behalf, assuring the pope, in a letter sent in 1101, that Manasses ‘venerated the decrees of the apostolic see, loved truth, feared God, honoured men religious and of good testimony, and showed himself to be especially devoted to care of the poor’.152 In the end, no candidate was imposed at Beauvais in contravention of Manasses’ prerogative. Most striking, from the perspective of archdiocesan administration, is the degree to which the solidarity of Manasses and his suffragans persisted despite enormous external pressure from Ivo of Chartres, the king, the electors of Beauvais, and the pope. That both Ivo and the canons of Beauvais appealed to the bishops in the language of familial relations indicates both the prelates’ actual closeness, and the political power of appeals to that ideal. Lambert and John, 149

150 152

That is, it came to an end for everyone except Ivo, who quickly wrote to the new bishop, Geoffrey, to protest the latter’s installation of a certain Odo as Galo’s successor at Saint-Quentin ‘against my request and your promise’ (ʻcontra petitionem etenim meam et promissionem vestramʼ); see PL 162, col. 156 (no. 151). Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 92. 151 Ibid., 75–6. PL 163, col. 454 (no. 6). Monod (78) suggests that Manasses ceded his right to transfer Galo from Beauvais to Paris to the pope, but since there is no evidence that the archbishop recognized Galo as lawful bishop of Beauvais, his exact sentiments on the transfer must be left to speculation.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 whatever their sympathies may have been, fell in behind their archbishop and refused to put others’ agendas before the juridical prerogative of the provincial council and their archbishop. Episcopal bonds trumped outside influences. Indeed, the impression that emerges from the evidence is that, despite occasional controversies, some of which were quite protracted, functional if not genuine harmony seems to have been the rule in the archdiocese around 1100. In later years the cohort of bishops around Lambert continued to act in concert even while embracing a ‘new generation’ of episcopal friends and allies. The bishop Manasses, transferred by political compromise from Cambrai to the see of Soissons (happily, one is inclined to think, given his decade-long struggle to assume control of that contentious diocese), soon faded from the regional scene; his influence perhaps diminished with the death of his uncle, Archbishop Manasses, in 1106.153 His place in Lambert’s circle was rapidly assumed by Bishop Godfrey of Amiens, an ambitious former abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy. Godfrey had long been familiar to the region’s bishops. In 1097, he had been summoned as a young man in his thirties to Reims and pressured to take over the abbey of Saint-Remi.154 Seven years later, the people and clergy of Amiens pursued him as their choice for bishop, and he was ultimately consecrated at the provincial synod held in Reims in 1104, in the presence of – Godfrey’s hagiographer lists them by name – Archbishop Manasses, Lambert, and John. In what reads like a rite of fraternal initiation, Lambert and John then accompanied the barefooted Godfrey in a formal adventus into the city of Amiens.155 153

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In late 1103 (and no longer bishop of Cambrai), Manasses, his uncle the archbishop, Lambert, and John of Thérouanne confirmed in provincial synod a charter of Count Baldwin III of Hainaut conceding Saint-Saulve of Valenciennes to Cluny; see C. Dereine, ‘La donation par Baudouin III, comte de Hainaut, de Saint-Saulve près de Valenciennes à Cluny (1103)’, Sacris erudiri. Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen, 26 (1983), 119–53. As Dereine notes (120), this year was crucial for the return to political equilibrium of Hainaut and the Cambrésis, and it is noteworthy that, despite the presence of other bishops at the synod (Châlons, Laon, Noyon, Senlis), these prelates acted in concert in matters touching the Flemish sphere. For an edition of Manasses’ charter, see AAR, vol. II/2, no. 136, 370–2. A partial edition may be found in M. Marrier and A. Du Chesne (Andreas Quercetanus) (eds.), Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, in qua SS. patrum abbatum Cluniacensis Vitae, miracula, scripta, statuta, priuilegia, chonologiaque duplex . . . omnia nunc primum ex MS. Codd. collegerunt (Mâcon, undated; repr. Brussels and Paris, 1915), cols. 535–6. A charter of Enguerran of Laon (AEL, no. 54, 128), bears the signatures of the other bishops at the synod. Manasses of Cambrai/Soissons died on 1 March 1108. Godfrey had been elected abbot of Nogent in his early twenties, in 1085. VSG, 915; Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 230–1. See also Ott, ‘Writing Godfrey of Amiens’, 323–4; L. Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir des ses chartes: Geoffroy, évêque d’Amiens (1104–1115)’, in Parisse, À propos des actes d’évêques, 177–218, at 180–3. VSG, 918: ‘de iumento in terram desiliens, per asperrimam et horridam viam, silicibus et cautibus consitam, utrumque latus ipsius praesulibus, Lamberto scilicet et Iohanne, ambientibus, textum

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims Odo, renowned master of the cathedral school at Tournai (c. 1087–92) and the founder and later abbot of Saint-Martin (1092–1105) in the same city, assumed episcopal orders as bishop of Cambrai a year later, in July 1105.156 Odo’s rapid professional rise and dramatic conversion to the life of a regular canon, coupled with his academic reputation, had won him widespread fame. Like Godfrey, he was well known to the provincial bishops; unlike Godfrey, his election was deeply controversial in his own see and was for many years resisted by the German emperor Henry V.157 Indeed, Odo lived a sort of peripatetic existence as bishop, initially returning to Saint-Martin at Tournai after his consecration, then residing in the castle of Inchy (about 6 kilometres west of Cambrai), and later at the abbey of Anchin, the ‘sweet refuge’ where he ultimately retired, died, and was buried.158 In all, he dwelt perhaps four years, if that, in Cambrai proper. The affinity among Lambert, John, Godfrey, and Odo – Manasses was replaced as archbishop in 1108 by Raoul the Green, the former provost of Reims – may be glimpsed in their collaborative endeavours.159 Beyond the business of provincial councils and princely courts, and the routine business of their letters, they participated together at liturgical ceremonies.160 John invited Odo and some of his clergy to assist in the consecration of the abbey church of Saint-Bertin; John and Godfrey, at Lambert’s invitation, consecrated the abbey church of Arrouaise and, later, Saint-Georges of Hesdin (a priory of Anchin); and Lambert and

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evangelii reverenter in pectore gestans, crebris singultibus pectus quatiens, ad ecclesiam Beati Firmini martyris nudipes, cunctis inspectantibus, progreditur’. Odo spent much of his episcopacy effectively barred from entering the city, however, and Gaucher, still protesting that he was the legitimate bishop of Cambrai, did not drop his claim until December 1107. Odo’s rocky tenure is covered by I. M. Resnick, ‘Odo of Cambrai and the investiture crisis in the early twelfth century’, Viator, 28 (1997), 83–98, esp. 90–8. Odo’s first known engagement with Lambert of Arras, for example, occurred in 1094 or 1095, when the bishop conceded the village of Odomez to Odo and the monks of Saint-Martin; see d’Herbomez, Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tournai, no. 2, 4. Resnick, ‘Odo of Cambrai’, 93–7, at 97 n. 82 (‘dulce refugium exsilii mei’); Van Mingroot, ‘Liste provisoire’, 35. Saint-Martin had taken its customs from Anchin in 1094 and the two abbeys were very close. Hugh, castellan of Oisy-Inchy, was a supporter of Odo; ACF, no. 43, 119; A. Le Glay, Glossaire topographique de l’ancien Cambrésis, suivi d’un recueil de chartes et diplômes (Cambrai, 1849), no. 20, 29–30, 165. For the close rapport among Lambert, John, and Godfrey, which has been frequently acknowledged in passing, see Rider, VI, xxxv–xlii; Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 180, 186–7. Letters among Lambert, Odo, and Godfrey may be found in Registre, no. 94, 458–9; no. 100, 464–5; nos. 115–16, 486–9; no. 118, 490–1; no. 120, 492–5. Some or all the bishops of this group are attested together at councils held in: 1102 (Reims), 1103 (Reims, Cambrai), 1104 (Troyes, Reims, Beaugency, Paris, Soissons); 1105 (Reims), 1106 (Reims), 1107 (Troyes), 1109 (Paris, probably), 1110 (Arras), 1112 (Reims), 1113 (Reims), 1114 (Reims, Beauvais), 1115 (Reims, Châlons).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Godfrey attended John’s dedication of Notre-Dame of Thérouanne.161 The bishops maintained lasting connections to the communities to which they had belonged prior to their elections, and sought out one another’s assistance in establishing new religious houses or reforming existing ones, with some preference for houses of regular canons, and offered counsel and encouragement to nobles doing the same. One of Odo’s first acts as bishop was to confirm the chapels and tithes of his former monastery, Saint-Martin. In his charter, Odo made a special note of an altar earlier given by ‘Lord Manasses, the archbishop of Reims of revered memory, and Lord Manasses, bishop of Cambrai and our predecessor’.162 John and Lambert, whose support for houses of reformed canons in their dioceses has been elucidated by Brigitte Meijns, were connected in their endeavours by a dense web of associated abbots and clerical colleagues who witnessed their charters and patronized the same institutions.163 Endowments by powerful laymen, including the comital house of Flanders, also brought together bishops from this circle. First Countess Clemence granted, then her husband Robert II confirmed, the transfer of the abbey of Saint-Bertin into the jurisdiction of Cluny and its abbot, Hugh. To both acts, executed between 1099 and 1101, John of Thérouanne and Lambert of Arras lent counsel, witness, and consent.164 A full decade later, John, together with Godfrey of Amiens, Odo of Cambrai, and a clutch of abbots, witnessed Robert and Clemence’s gift of an allod to the nunnery of Bourbourg in 1110 – a testament to the durability of their bond.165 The same preferences in patronage even held 161

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In 1112 (?), 1106, 1111, and 1108, respectively. On these consecrations, see BNF Coll. Picardie 234, fo. 108r-v (for Saint-Bertin), and Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 187 (for the rest). Van Mingroot, ‘Liste provisoire’, 35; d’Herbomez, Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tournai, no. 9, 12 (1105). Just a few years earlier, while still bishop of Cambrai, Manasses granted two altars to the same monks ‘rogatu et consensu domni Manasse, Remorum metropolitani, petitione quoque Roberti junioris et egregie Clementie, Flandrensium comitis et comitisse’. Here again we see a familiar network in action: the count and countess of Flanders, and the two Manasseses, uncle and nephew (ibid., no. 4, 7). See notably Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem?, vol. II, 729–825, 913–15, and Meijns, ‘Inaudita novitas canonici ordinis’; also the comments of Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 124–30. Arrouaise furnishes an excellent example of one house that benefited from the patronage of John, Lambert, and Godfrey. It was established by a charter of Lambert (1097) with John present as archdeacon of Arras, its church was later consecrated by Godfrey and John, now bishop; and it was favoured by charters of bishops Baudry and Lambert of Noyon-Tournai; see CEA, no. 3, 5–7; GC vol. X, Instr., col. 373. Godfrey and Odo also witnessed one of Manasses II’s last charters, for Saint-Remi, in 1106; see Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 146, 390. For Clemence’s concession to Cluny, ‘consilio episcoporum meorum’, see PL 159, cols. 939–40; Robert’s concession, ‘communicato tandem consilio cum venerabilibus episcopis’, is in ACF, no. 34, 99–101 (on its dating, see above, n. 80). ACF, no. 43, 118–19. See also T. M. J. Gousset (ed.), Les actes de la province ecclésiastique de Reims, vol. II (Reims, 1843), 178, for an 1102 donation charter of Clarembaud, archdeacon of Arras, to Saint-Bertin, witnessed and guaranteed by Count Robert II of Flanders, John, and Lambert.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims true of those bishops who had never assumed a monastic habit. Baudry of Noyon, in an 1101 charter witnessed by Odo of Saint-Martin of Tournai, soon to be his fellow bishop, gave to the abbey of Anchin an altar ‘with the intervention and counsel of the venerable lord archbishop Manasses of Reims and the clergy of the holy church of Reims’.166 A few years later, he installed regular canons at Notre-Dame of Ham (diocese of Noyon) and Phalempin in 1108 (diocese of Tournai), in both cases with the explicit encouragement of his fellow bishops John, Lambert, Godfrey, Odo, and Raoul of Reims.167 A more striking indication of this group’s ongoing cohesion and mutual dependability was the extent to which Pope Paschal relied on them to resolve some of the region’s most protracted legal disputes. Lambert, John, and Godfrey were together, and in combination, deputized to resolve conflicts involving religious houses in the dioceses of Amiens, Arras, Thérouanne, and Tournai in 1104, 1106, 1107–8, 1111–14, and 1113–14.168 Odo of Cambrai was also involved, adjudicating two controversies, witnessing the accord that restored harmony between the abbey of Saint-Martin and the canons of Tournai in 1108, and three years later bringing judgement with a group of fellow bishops in an acrimonious, decades-long jurisdictional struggle between SaintNicaise and Saint-Remi of Reims.169 166

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C. Duvivier (ed.), Actes et documents anciens intéressant la Belgique (Brussels, 1898), 298: ‘domno etiam Manasse Remorum venerabili archiepiscopo, necnon et clericis sanctae Remensis aecclesiae intervenientibus atque consiliantibus’. Anchin was another institution favoured by bishops of this circle, especially Manasses and Odo of Cambrai, a quick indication of which may be gleaned by surveying the handlist of charters in Van Mingroot, ‘Liste provisoire’, 31–41. Given this constellation of prelates, one is inclined to think that the groundwork for the reforms was laid in the provincial council of 1107 or 1108 or, in the case of Phalempin, when precisely these men (Odo, Baudry, John, and Lambert) gathered at Saint-Médard of Cappy in the diocese of Noyon to resolve a dispute between churches. Baudry’s charter for Ham is printed in GC, vol. X, Instr., cols. 372–3 (‘consilio et assensu domini R. Remensis archiepiscopi, fratrum quoque et coepiscoporum nostrorum L. Attrebatensis, domini G. Ambianensis’). On Phalempin see Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem?, vol. II, 782–5, at 785 n. 2041 (‘fratribus et coepiscopis nostris Odone Cameracense, domino Joanne Morinense, domino Lamberto Atrebatense, multisque venerabilibus personis pro illa postulantibus’); and for the meeting at Cappy see CEA, no. 13, 22, and below. 1104: Saint-Wulmer and Count Eustache III of Boulogne (PL 163, col. 127 (no. 113)); 1106: Corbie and Saint-Donatien of Bruges (J. von Pflugk-Harttung (ed.), Acta pontificum romanorum inedita, vol. I (Graz, 1958), no. 95, 88); 1107–8: Saint-Martin and Notre-Dame of Tournai (PL 162, cols. 696–702 (nos. 139–44); PL 163, cols. 237 (no. 249); 310, (no. 353); CEA, no. 13, 21–3); 1107 and 1111–14: canons of Notre-Dame of Arras and monks of Saint-Vaast (PUF, ns, vol. III, ed. J. Ramackers (Göttingen, 1940)), 46–7 (no. 10); Registre, 302–21; CEA, nos. 12, 20–1; 21, 31–2; PL 162, col. 694 (no. 128); PL 163, col. 294 (nos. 336–7)); 1113–14: election controversy between the sees of Noyon and Tournai, JL, vol. I, nos. 6358, 6361–2, 750; nos. 6418–19, 754–5; PL 163, col. 332 (no. 368); Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, 115–16). See also Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 187. In 1111; the conflict was nevertheless prolonged until 1113. The other bishops presiding were Raoul of Reims, Lisiard of Soissons, Hubert of Senlis, and Gaudry of Laon. See H. Meinert,

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Episcopal intervention in these cases seems to have been preferable to, or was at least more responsive and flexible than, administration by papal legates. This was especially true for disputes erupting in northern France and Flanders between 1100 and 1115. Pope Paschal’s turn through France in 1106–7 went no further north than Paris–Troyes–Châlons, and his legate to the region, Richard of Albano, similarly confined himself to Châlons and points south during this period.170 Only with Cono of Praeneste’s tour in 1114 would a papal legate again venture north of the Seine – Cono was at Beauvais in December and Arras the following year – but the handful of ecclesiastical councils he convened in 1114–15 took place in southern Picardy and Champagne.171 Litigants dutifully trekked from northern dioceses to the provincial, legatine, and papal councils to air their complaints, and it was expected that prelates would attend these assemblies if they were reasonably close (and even sometimes when they were not). Nevertheless, entrenched parties would not necessarily yield their positions at the councils, even with the pope or his legates sitting in judgement, and many cases dragged on for years or decades. Mediation was best resolved locally by judges who had the pope’s confidence, who personally knew the litigants, and who could adjudicate the back-and forth exchanges that eventually led to compromise. A convenient example and one of the most violent contests, ‘a dispute long and vehemently pursued’, pitted the monks of Saint-Martin of Tournai against the cathedral chapter of the same city over the issue of the abbey’s burial rights and tithes to the canons.172 Its twists and turns are chronicled by Herman of Tournai, who was an eyewitness to the events and eventually abbot of Saint-Martin, and who, in his later years, wrote a lengthy chronicle of his abbey’s foundation and expansion.173 The controversy between the two communities seems to have erupted in late

170

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‘Libelli de discordia inter monachos S. Remigii et S. Nicasii Remenses agitata tempore Paschalis II papae. Ein Reimser Klosterstreit zur Zeit Paschals II.’, in L. Santifaller (ed.), Festschrift Albert Brackmann, dargebracht von Freunden, Kollegen und Schülern (Weimar, 1931), 259–92, at 286. Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten, 178–98; Monod, Essai sur les rapports, 48–58. Richard’s legation in 1110 took him to Fleury for a general council and to Châlons for the consecration of the church of Cheminon; Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten, 182–3; GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 160. For Beauvais (1114), see VSG, 932; Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne, 260–1; R. Somerville, ‘The council of Beauvais, 1114’, in Somerville, Papacy, Councils and Canon Law, 493–503. At Arras (1115) Cono witnessed a charter of the count of Flanders. Many secular clergy, but no bishops, were present; ACF, no. 68, 159–61. The phrase is from the charter issued by Lambert at Cappy in 1108; CEA, no. 13, 21: ‘querimoniam eorum diu et vehementer exagitatam’. A similar jurisdictional dispute divided the monks of Saint-Vaast and the canons of Notre-Dame of Arras; it flared periodically from 1090–1113; see Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 271–3. Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 316–17; Herman of Tournai, Restoration, 121–7.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims 1105, shortly after Odo, the former abbot of Saint-Martin, now bishop of Cambrai, issued a charter confirming his old foundation’s privileges.174 The institutional and personal relationships between the cathedral chapter of Tournai and the newly founded monastery were numerous and well-established. Yet when Pope Paschal reiterated and expanded the abbey’s privileges in a bull the following year, the canons of Notre-Dame complained bitterly that the abbey’s freedom to offer burial to anyone who asked for it, and its exemption from tithes on the produce of certain fields, infringed their own long-held fiscal prerogatives.175 The canons appealed to their bishop Baudry and went to Rome seeking assistance, but found no satisfaction from either quarter. They and their servants then refused – with violent force, Herman adds – to accept the monks’ claims, and tensions percolated for perhaps a year or more. The reasons for Baudry’s unwillingness or inability to resolve the dispute are hard to discern, but he had been an earlier donor and patron to Saint-Martin and his election had initially been resisted by the same canons of Tournai – thus, he may not have been an impartial judge.176 In any case, Paschal called in Lambert and John, whom he described as ‘religious men most vehemently pursuing peace’.177 Lambert later copied down into his register the documentation of the case alongside his correspondence. There it was grouped together under its own heading, De querimonia [et Concordia] inter canonicos Tornacenses et monachos S. Martini.178 The bishops’ initial solution – we do not know its details – apparently favoured the cathedral chapter.179 The litigants returned to Rome, only to hear the pope declare that Lambert and John’s decision was zealous, but ultimately ‘uncanonical’. Paschal upheld the rights of Saint-Martin 174

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The affair is summarized by A. d’Haenens, ‘Moines et clercs à Tournai au début du XIIe siècle’, in La vita comune del clero nei secoli XI e XII. Atti della Settimana di studio: Mendola, settembre 1959 (Milan, 1959), vol. II, 90–103, at 98–9; see also Registre, 53–4. Odo’s charter is catalogued in Van Mingroot, ‘Liste provisoire’, 35, and published in d’Herbomez, Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tournai, no. 9, 11–12. Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 316; see also d’Herbomez, Chartes de l’abbaye de SaintMartin de Tournai, nos. 12, 15. Indeed, tithes seem to have been the real sore spot for the canons, rather than burials. Charters in d’Herbomez, Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tournai, nos. 5–7, 8–10 (all 1103); no. 10, 13 (1105). For the charter of Baudry providing for Saint-Martin the priory of SaintAmand-lez-Thourotte in the diocese of Noyon in 1103, see also Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 310–11; GC, vol. X, col. 998. PL 163, col. 310 (no. 353); Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 316; Herman of Tournai, Restoration, 123. The ordering and contents of the Codex Lamberti have been meticulously reconstructed by Kéry, Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 79–83, from multiple surviving copies. See also Registre, 61–70. That Lambert and John initially defended some or all of the canons’ rights in the case may be inferred by a friendly letter from the dean of Tournai to Lambert, thanking him for his ‘pious and paternal oversight’; PL 162, cols. 697–8 (no. 142).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 and ordered Baudry to do the same.180 The pope’s rebuff of the otherwise trusted Lambert and John again highlights the degree to which locally mediated results could clash with papal desires. Paschal’s decision might have ended the struggle, but the canons engaged the monks again, only now more violently. Their servants assaulted a monk at one of the abbey’s farmsteads. A war-party of the monk’s kindred responded in kind, killing eighteen men of the cathedral in a pitched battle, probably in late 1107.181 Once the feud widened to include the kin-groups and familia of the monks and canons, the castellan of Tournai stepped in. Herman recalls that the castellan persuaded the monks to moderate their position and follow the burial customs of older, more established monastic houses rather than continue to diminish the canons’ privileges.182 The abbot and community of Saint-Martin agreed to a brokered compromise, and Paschal committed the case back into the hands of Lambert and John in the first week of the new year, 1108.183 After a prolonged illness, the bishop of Arras summoned representatives of both parties, regional bishops, and neighbouring abbots – perhaps abbots of those houses after whose burial practices Saint-Martin had agreed to pattern their own – to a conventum in the church of SaintMédard of Cappy on 17 July. There, the ecclesiastical judges brought the parties to ‘fraternal peace’. The monks would freely retain all produce harvested for their own use, but would pay a tenth on all sales from their crops and livestock to the canons. Moreover, they would seek permission before burying anyone in their cemetery not previously a member of their lands and parishes.184 The composition was witnessed by twenty-five clergy, including four bishops (Odo of Cambrai and Baudry were there) and five abbots.185 With this agreement, which offered something to both sides but was, in the main, quite favourable to the canons of Notre-Dame, a lasting peace was achieved and affirmed with Lambert’s seal.186

180

181 182 183 185

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Pflugk-Harttung, Acta pontificum romanorum inedita, no. 113, 101–2, and PL 163, cols. 310–11 (no. 353), a letter addressed 10 November (probably sent in 1107 – not, as appears in Migne, 1113, or, as appears in Pflugk-Harttung, 1109). The letters in Migne and Pflugk-Harttung bear minor differences; I have followed the latter’s edition. Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 317; Herman of Tournai, Restoration, 125. Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione, 317; Herman of Tournai, Restoration, 126. PL 163, col. 237 (no. 248); JL, no. 6189, 734 (7 January 1108). 184 CEA, no. 13, 22. Despite the central role Herman attributed to Everard, he did not participate in the conventum. The abbots were: Henry of Saint-Vaast, Albert of Hasnon, Fulcard of Marchiennes, Richard of Mont-Saint-Eloi, and Cono of Arrouaise. Cono became papal legate in 1111. The two archdeacons of Arras who were also present, Robert and Clarembaud, later became the bishops of Arras (1115–31) and Senlis (1115–33), respectively. Lambert then sent to Rome a summary of the decision; PL 162, cols. 700–2 (no. 144).

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims Several points bear remarking on the case, its development, and the eventual compromise. First, the court’s composition was characteristically regional. The bishops were drawn from the four dioceses holding Flemish lands, while the abbots present came from Lambert’s home diocese of Arras, as did the remaining identifiable clergy. Both regular and secular clergy were present, and the number of witnesses whose sympathies may have extended a priori to one party or the other seems to have been balanced.187 The papacy may have been represented by a hermit named Odo from Arrouaise, who is qualified in the witness list as a ‘canon and priest of the holy see’, but Lambert’s charter and summary letter to Paschal confer Odo no special role. Indeed, Lambert’s commission to resolve the affair was shared only with his fellow bishop, John. Second, in the course of the proceedings between 1105 and 1108, the local bishops clearly overrode Paschal’s dictates in adjudicating the dispute. The tenor of the pope’s surviving letter to Baudry of Noyon, Herman’s recounting of the confrontation, and the dean of Tournai’s letter to Lambert all indicate that the bishops had been predisposed to order the monks to make concessions to the canons, and indeed, their final judgement favoured Notre-Dame – so much so that the dean of Tournai, Gonther, travelled to Rome following the settlement to present the pope with Lambert’s letter of judgement (and presumably a copy of the composition). The canons also specifically requested a copy for their archives.188 Thus Paschal’s initial decision in favour of Saint-Martin, made from Rome and supported with references to ancient papal decrees and the writings of Gregory I, was ignored by the canons of Tournai, who sought local mediation.189 The pope – perhaps aware that his first ruling was marred by incomplete information or was otherwise defective – was obliged to remand the case to the competence of his bishops, who then delivered their final, binding judgement. In this incident and in others from the period, local competencies trumped the centralizing authority and oversight of Rome. These episodes drawn from the tenure of Lambert of Arras sketch for us the depth and breadth of the solidarities forged among the episcopal cohort who governed the archdiocese of Reims in the years around 1100. 187

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Among the secular clergy were canons from Notre-Dame of Arras, Douai, and Béthune. The canons of Arras had been locked in debate with the monks of Saint-Vaast over similar rights in the suburban parishes of that city – a debate that had flared up the previous year, in 1107 (CEA, no. 12, 20–1) – and so would have witnessed the proceedings with keen interest. PL 162, col. 700 (no. 144): ‘Antequam autem conventus noster solveretur, rogati sumus a clericis Turnacensibus ut pactum et concordiam inter eos et monachos factam, ne in posterum alicujus maligni malitia vitiaretur aut corrumperetur, scripto nostro eam confirmaremus, quod et nos fecimus. Monachis autem nullum scriptum fecimus, quia ut faceremus rogati non fuimus’. PL 163, cols. 310–11 (no. 353).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Other evidence, primarily anecdotal, fleshes out the gaps left by the epistolary and administrative record. It shows a cohort of bishops whose personal connections were meaningful to them. Baudry of Noyon, for example, died at Thérouanne and was buried in its cathedral, with John, presumably, presiding.190 A moving scene depicted in the vita of Godfrey of Amiens recalls a visit he paid to John towards the end of his life, and offers another example of the pair’s closeness.191 After the two bishops had consulted one another on church business, John, invoking both Godfrey’s former status as a monk and their brotherly bond, tearfully beseeched the bishop of Amiens to perform a mass for his sins and attend his funeral.192 At this Godfrey threw himself on John’s feet, protesting his own readiness to depart the shackles of the earth. ‘I beseech your paternity’, Godfrey said, ʻthat you deign to fulfill for me – I, a mere likeness of a man – that which you compel my smallness to do on behalf of your sanctity, with that fraternal love which we are honoured to bear towards one another, and which we are also admonished to offer up in prayer for one anotherʼ.193 Godfrey’s petition offers us a final, integral aspect of the prelates’ reciprocal expectations of one another: mutual prayer. Lambert expressed this desire frequently, routinely concluding his letters to his colleagues with the fervent wish to ‘pray for us’.194 Death’s approach often left the bishops seeking the company of their fellow prelates. Canon law codified that a bishop must be buried by another bishop, but personal affinities drew prelates to the bedsides and tombs of their departed fellows.195 When Godfrey died at Soissons, clerical dignitaries from local and distant churches attended his last rites: two younger colleagues and friends, the bishops of Soissons and Senlis; the abbots and abbess of Soissons’ religious houses, and clergy from farther afield, including Châlons and Amiens.196 Nicholas of Saint-Crépin was left to remark that such an assembly could only have occurred by divine will, 190 192

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GC, vol. X, col. 999; Pycke, Le chapitre cathédral Notre-Dame de Tournai, 326. 191 VSG, 940. Ibid.: ‘Cum igitur de his coram fratribus plurima perorasset: “O frater Godefride”, flens uberrime proclamat Iohannes, “pro absolutione delictorum meorum omnipotenti Deo sacrificium offerre meisque exsequiis, si facultas assit, memento adesse”’. Ibid.: ‘Hoc ergo quod parvitatem meam vis pro tua sanctitate facere, id ego qualiscumque homuncio ea caritate, qua invicem honoramus portare, qua etiam pro invicem praecipimur exorare, paternitati tuae supplico ut in me digneris implere’. For example, PL 162, cols. 690 (no. 118, to Odo of Cambrai); 692 (no. 122, to Godfrey of Amiens); 685 and 693 (nos. 106 and 125, to Raoul of Reims). He requested prayers of the pope, abbots, and other clergy as well. Walter of Thérouanne, whose knowledge of canon law, as we have seen, was extensive, made note of the canonical obligation when writing how Robert, the bishop of Arras, carried out John’s final rites; VI, 151. Reuter, ‘Bishops, rites of passage, and the symbolism of state’, 27–32, considers the formal and ritual aspects of bishops’ funerals. VSG, 942.

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims given that so many people ‘had flown to that spot from diverse sees at that very moment and devotedly rendered services at the exsequies of God’s servant’.197 Behind the personal requests for prayers among prelates stood the abiding reality of the bishop’s unique position in medieval society. He, and he alone, was solely responsible for his flock. Who would intercede for him before the stern Judge if not one of his fellows? Who else was in a position to understand, and to weigh, the bishop’s pastoral duties and qualities? As a final note, we should add that Godfrey’s biographer, Nicholas, had heard the story of his and John’s warm meeting from two of John’s archdeacons. One of them, Walter, was John of Thérouanne’s biographer; he, too, mentioned the prelates’ partnership in John’s vita. Walter remembered the early days of John’s episcopacy as ‘happy times, in which heavenly favours shone from above!’ For there were at that time bishops of diverse churches outstanding in religion and distinguished in their learning, of the greatest fame, among whom were Hugh, archbishop of Lyon and legate of the apostolic see in Gallia; the aforesaid Manasses, archbishop of Reims; Ivo of Chartres; Lambert of Arras; Odo of Cambrai; Galo of Paris; and Godfrey of Amiens; among the other illustrious men of the age.198

The generation of bishops that included Godfrey, Lambert, John, Odo, Manasses of Reims, and others, left an impression that still resonated almost two decades after their passing. Theirs was a pastoral societas that Walter would use to demonstrate the auspicious time into which John had emerged as a bishop of the French church. It was a time, moreover, marked by Urban’s pontificacy – Urban, who watched over his flock with discerning care and protected it from the jaws of ‘slavering wolves’ (rapacium morsus luporum). That Walter’s recollection was fashioned by the personal connection of these men to John and his times, rather than a precise concern for historical chronology, is evident. Urban lived only a few months after consecrating the new bishop of Thérouanne, and had been dead for years before the episcopacies of Odo, Galo, or Godfrey. What mattered were the pastoral values and personal qualities they shared. 197

198

Ibid.: ‘Pie etiam credendum censeo istos omnes instinctu ipsius commonefactos, ut ex diversis sedibus illic in momento advolarent et exsequiis servi Dei devote obsequia impenderent’. VI, 136: ‘O tempora felicia quibus superne indulta probantur beneficia! . . . Fuerunt enim illo tempore diuersarum ecclesiarum episcopi religione conspicui, scientia precipui, fama celeberrimi, ex quibus fuit Hugo Lugdunensis archiepiscopus, apostolice sedis in Galliam legatus; Manasses archiepiscopus Remensis prelibatus; Yuo Carnotensis; Lambertus Attrebatensis; Odo Cameracensis; Walo Parisiensis; Godefridus Ambianensis; preter alios quos illustres illa habuit etas’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 In later decades, similar patterns of collaboration flourished among the bishops of the province and were channelled to support the expanding Cistercian and Premonstratensian orders, as well as more routine administrative and judicial business, of the sort for which Paschal II repeatedly enlisted John, Godfrey, and Lambert. As we shall see, the close-knit circle of Josselin of Soissons, archbishops Renaud II and Samson of Reims, and Bartholomew of Laon founded dozens of houses over a quarter-century span from the mid-1110s to the late 1140s. We will follow the actions of these prelates in a later chapter, but I mention them here because they became, in many respects, the successors of the Arras circle in arbitrating the regional business of the archdiocese. As it happened, Lambert, Godfrey, Odo, and Baudry of Noyon-Tournai all died within two years of one another between 1113–15, a span of time that signalled a tectonic shift in the personnel of the archdiocese. For a full decade these prelates collectively had exerted an immense influence on the direction of the regional church.199 To a greater and more efficient degree than the papal legates who periodically operated in northern France during the period from 1100–15, they resolved disputes, calmed feuds, punished malefactors, and supported the regular clergy. The provincial council was their primary theatre of operation, a liturgical space where their charismatic force and administrative authority were on full display. The councils carried forward in a more-or-less consistent fashion the growing body of church law, served as centres for the publicizing of recent papal decreta to the clergy and laity, and became forums for debate about the laws’ implications for traditional social bonds and behaviours. Urban II and Paschal II relied implicitly and explicitly on this group of bishops to serve as go-betweens, messengers, diplomats, and mediators. During these same years, which saw such transformation in the patterns of monarchic and papal governance, a regional church – as opposed to a monarchic or papal church – came to the fore in the political and judicial spaces between transregional institutional powers. The regional church depended for its smooth functioning on the personal relationships and collegiality, as well as the political and professional experiences, of its bishops. These bonds admitted the leadership and seniority of certain figures, like Lambert of Arras, but did not easily tolerate an overly 199

Baudry died on 29 March 1113; Odo on 19 June 1113; Lambert on 16 May 1115; and Godfrey on 8 November 1115. Moreover, in the same two-year period, new bishops entered office in Beauvais, Châlons, Laon, and Senlis, for a total of eight out of eleven sees. Two of this cohort’s other collaborators, Ivo of Chartres (23 December 1115) and Galo of Paris (3 February 1116), died soon after. With this wholesale changing of the guard, John of Thérouanne assumed full seniority and a dominant place among the bishops of Flanders and Picardy. The next closest to him in tenure of office were Archbishop Raoul the Green of Reims and Lisiard of Soissons (both confirmed in 1108).

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Band of brothers: episcopal networks in the archdiocese of Reims intrusive hieratic authority represented by the papal legates, or, despite relatively friendly relations between the bishops and Rome, the pope himself. And as we saw, the archbishop was obligated to tread with care the line between metropolitan authority and the episcopate’s autonomy and collective interests. Yet our investigation of the bishops’ sense of regional identity and administrative and judicial collaboration leaves significant questions unresolved. As we have repeatedly seen, the bishops held up their fraternitas, their shared brotherhood, as an ideal. ‘Fraternity’ was a form of address, an expression of mutual love and friendship, a rhetorical mode of appeal or supplication. In a largely administrative and judicial context, the bishops’ cooperation and reliance on one another seems straightforward, despite inevitable conflicts. ‘Splendid isolation’ simply was not a possibility for the holder of episcopal office, as Pope Gregory the Great had recognized five centuries earlier when he penned his Liber pastoralis for bishops.200 But what, exactly, were the models for bishops’ sense of brotherliness? By what ideals were episcopal identity and the bishops’ concept of their duties shaped in this period, in what texts, and by whom? It is to these questions, and the rich imagery of episcopal cooperation and collegiality, that we will return in the final two chapters of this book. The three chapters that follow, however, pursue a different tack. Each zooms in on the unique historical and political contexts of three prelates, whose lifetimes span much of the period covered in this book. Each chapter examines the self-consciousness and identity of, as the case may be, a single prelate or series of prelates. Collectively, the following chapters show the impressive range of episcopal textual production, the range of ideas about episcopal authority, and the uses to which bishops put the past as they weathered contemporary changes in their respective sees. Whatever the common experiences and expectations that bound the prelates of the archdiocese together in the years around 1100, each diocese, its institutions, and its local concerns was unique. Episcopal historiography was composed in an idiom calibrated to each diocese; common to all, however, was an abiding sense that the expression of episcopal authority was rooted firmly in tradition, deep in the past, and there found its relevance and meaning. 200

Godfrey of Amiens would find this out the hard way, when his self-imposed retreat to the mountaintops outside Grenoble was ended by a conciliar summons to return to his see. See below, chapter 6.

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Chapter 5

PERSONAL HISTORIES: THE REVIVAL OF ARCHIEPISCOPAL HISTORIOGRAPHY AT REIMS IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

Reims – the ‘first city’ of Christian Francia, the city of St Remigius, of the Holy Ampule of the royal consecration, of martyrs, saints, and kings – was, and is, more than any other episcopal city in northwestern Europe a place where memories linger in monuments: parchment, glass, and stone.1 The archiepiscopal see and its stunningly full cathedral archive established the foundation for a scholastic centre of international renown in the ninth and tenth centuries, among whose ranks of scholars and masters are counted some of the most prominent intellectuals and cultural patrons of the early Middle Ages: Ebbo and Hincmar of Reims, Remigius of Auxerre, Hucbald of Saint-Amand, Gerbert of Aurillac. And historians: building on the historiographical legacy of Archbishop Hincmar (d. 882), including his continuation of the annals of Saint-Bertin and famous vita of St Remigius, Flodoard, a canon of the cathedral, left us three works of signal historical import. These were the Annals, which run from 919 to 966; a History of the Church of Reims, composed in four books between 948 and 954; and an epic poem in three parts, De triumphis Christi.2 Flodoard’s much younger contemporary Richer, canon and cantor of Sainte-Marie and monk of Saint-Remi, composed his Histories (covering the years 888–998) in the last decade of the tenth century. All are works of wonderful detail, among the richest of the entire tenth century in Europe.3 Flodoard 1

2

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B. Guenée, ‘Chancelleries et monastères. La mémoire de la France au Moyen Âge’, and J. Le Goff, ‘Reims, ville du sacre’, both in P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire, vol. II, La nation (Paris, 1986), 5–30, at 11–15, and 89–184, esp. at 95–131; also Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 13–57. See, on De triumphis Christi specifically and Flodoard more generally, P. C. Jacobsen, Flodoard von Reims. Sein Leben und seine Dichtung De triumphis Christi (Leiden, 1978), and J. Glenn, Politics and History in the Tenth Century. The Work and World of Richer of Reims (Cambridge, 2004), 173 and n. 8. On the dating of Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae and its place in his scholarly production, see the introduction to the edition of M. Stratmann, HRE, 4, and Jacobsen, Flodoard von Reims, 59–62. Flodoard and Richer both made use of the historical writing of Hincmar, archbishop from 845–82. See R.-H. Bautier, ‘L’historiographie en France aux Xe et XIe siècles’, in La storiografia altomedievale, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo, 17/2 (Spoleto, 1970), 793–850, at 815–16, 830–1; M. Sot, Un historien et son église au Xe siècle: Flodoard de Reims (Paris, 1993), 649–63;

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Monastery Collegial chapter

Map 5.1. Topographical and ecclesiastical map of Reims c. 1050

and Richer drew self-consciously upon the city’s historical and literary legacy in their writings, benefiting from the libraries assembled under archbishops Hincmar and Adalbero (d. 989) and authenticating their the introduction of Stratmann (ed.) to HRE, 2–4; Glenn, Politics and History; M. E. Moore, ‘Prologue: teaching and learning history in the school of Reims, c. 800–950’, in Vaughn and Rubenstein, Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe, 19–49, esp. 41–8.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 narratives with documents retrieved directly from the cathedral archives.4 Their historical vision extended far from their home city to embrace the regional and international politics of their times.5 But something happened. By the turn of the millennium, the city of Reims and its histories ceased, in the striking phrase of Bernard Guenée, to be ‘la mémoire de la France’, the memory of France.6 A sort of translatio historiae occurred, and the centre of historical writing, closely allied with the institutional needs of the new Capetian monarchy, shifted south to the royal abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury). One of Fleury’s scribes, Aimoin (d. after 1008), even used as material for his Historia Francorum (History of the Franks) a copy of Hincmar’s Annales which he had personally retrieved from Reims.7 For the next half-century, Fleury served as a principal locus of historical production and historiographical memory in northern Francia.8 Reims’ loss was not limited to its pride of place in the preservation of Frankish memory. The deeds of its archbishops, the literary record of which one might expect to have been maintained, given the rich foundation established by Flodoard and Richer, were eclipsed in the eleventh century by the achievements of the episcopal and capitular ateliers of Auxerre, Cambrai, Liège, Metz, Trier, and Verdun.9 Reims was even deserted by one of its own historians 4

5 6

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Richer invoked the historical writings of Hincmar and Flodoard directly in the prologue to his Histories and utilized the latter’s works extensively; see Richer’s comments in the most recent edition of the Historiae prepared by H. Hoffmann; Richer of Saint-Remi, Historiae, vol. XXXVIII, MGH SS (Hanover, 2000), 35. See also Moore, ‘Teaching and learning history’, 28–36, 42–4, 46–7; Glenn, Politics and History, 173–4, 176–8; and J. C. Lake, ‘Rhetorical and narrative studies on the Historiae of Richer of Saint-Remi’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University (2008), 12–19. M. Sot, ‘Autorité du passé lointain, autorité du passé proche dans l’historiographie épiscopale (VIIIe–XIe siècle). Les cas de Metz, Auxerre et Reims’, in J.-M. Sansterre (ed.), L’autorité du passé dans les sociétés médiévales (Rome, 2004), 139–62, at 157, notes: ‘L’information [for the ninth century] de Flodoard repose maintenant sur des documents d’archives de plus en plus nombreux et l’autorité du passé devient de plus en plus une autorité du document invoqué ou produit par l’historien’. Glenn, Politics and History, 172. Guenée, ‘Chancelleries et monastères’, 15; compare Le Goff, ‘Reims, ville du sacre’, 99–100: ‘un des centres de gravité de la France’. Guenée, ‘Chancelleries et monastères’, 16–21; R.-H. Bautier and G. Labory (ed. and trans.), L’abbaye de Fleury en l’an Mil (Paris, 2004), 11–13. T. Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints. The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge, 1990), 58–9, 64–5; É. Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France, vol. V, Les écoles de la fin du VIIIe siècle à la fin du XIIe (Lille, 1940), 191–6. Bautier, ‘L’historiographie’, 811–15. See now J. R. Webb, ‘Cathedrals of Words. Bishops and the Deeds of their Predecessors in Lotharingia, 950–1100’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University (2008), who gives particularly close attention to episcopal historiographical production at Liège. (My warm thanks to the author for furnishing me with a copy of his dissertation.) At Auxerre, the redaction of the gesta of its bishops first occurred en bloc in the late ninth century, and then either seriatim or en bloc in the eleventh. See M. Sot, G. Lobrichon, M. Goullet, et al. (eds. and trans.), Les Gestes des évêques d’Auxerre, 3 vols. (Paris, 2002–2009), vol. I, vii–xxxiv, esp. xxi–xxv.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims and his precious work: the autograph copy of Richer’s Histories followed the man to whom it was dedicated, Archbishop Gerbert, after he quit his see for the German imperial court in 997.10 Richer, phantom-like, disappeared from written history at the same time. The reasons for the near cessation of historical composition at Reims are difficult to ascertain. Jason Glenn has argued that the city’s intellectual life remained active even after the departure of Gerbert, and the cathedral school’s reputation as a centre for cultivation in elite mores and Carolingian learning persisted well into eleventh century.11 That reputation continued to attract students, notably Richard, future abbot of Saint-Vanne (d. 1046), and Gerard, future bishop of Cambrai (d. 1051), whose interest in history is well attested.12 So, too, did the discipline and liturgical regularity of the cathedral chapter hold beyond the year 1000.13 And the archiepiscopal diocese was stable. Eight men ruled between 998 and 1124, on average in tenures longer than fifteen years, and despite periodic episcopal vacancies (1067–8, 1081–3) local politics were no more tumultuous in the eleventh century than they had been in the tenth. So explanations based on a broadly degenerating political or intellectual 10

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There is, to my knowledge, no definitive evidence that Richer’s work was used or known at Reims, though a copy – perhaps now missing – appears to have been consulted by Hugh of Flavigny and Frutolf of Michaelsberg. On the work’s Nachleben, see Lake, ‘Rhetorical and Narrative Studies’, 2 (and n. 5) and 3 (and n. 6); Glenn, Politics and History, 158–65, 269–73. (My thanks also to Courtney DeMayo for her helpful suggestions regarding Bamberg Ms. Hist. 5, Richer’s autograph.) The rest of Gerbert’s impressive library appears to have gone with him to Italy. At the abbey of Mouzon at the eastern edge of the diocese near the border with Verdun, a chronicle was maintained, probably commenced in the early 1030s. Despite including considerable historical content on Archbishop Adalbero of Reims, much of which overlapped with the Histories of Richer, the text’s anonymous author shows no evidence of having consulted or been aware of the existence of Richer’s work, and the chronicle of Mouzon remained obscure, even in its own day. See the comments of its editor, M. Bur, in Bur, Chronique de Mouzon, 6, 16–17, 64, 141–43. J. K. Glenn, ‘Master and community in tenth-century Reims’, in Vaughn and Rubenstein, Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe, 51–68. J. R. Williams, ‘The cathedral school of Rheims in the eleventh century’, Speculum, 29 (1954), 661–77, at 661–3, is considerably less sanguine about the fortunes of the cathedral school in the wake of Gerbert’s departure, and suggests the school only began to recover under the episcopate of Gui through the guidance of Master Herimann (fl. 1043–c. 1076); a similar conclusion was reached by Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique, 279–84, who considered the cathedral school to be robustly attended but turning out an inferior product (‘pâles successeurs de Gerbert’, 281). C. Stephen Jaeger finds examples of a continued reputation for instruction in mores and honestas (elegant manners and/or probity) at Reims from both tenth- and eleventh-century sources; see Envy of Angels, 56–62. Gerard commissioned the gesta of the bishops of Cambrai, at least one vita (of Gaugericus, or Géry, a patronal saint of Cambrai), and an account of the heresy he confronted at Arras in 1025. The gesta’s author, a canon of Cambrai, employed Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae. The text was also known to Abbot Folcuin of Lobbes (965–90), who used it for his Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium; to the author of the so-called Libellus de rebus Trevirensibus (composed 1047–66); to Sigebert of Gembloux (d. 1112), and other, still later, authors (see Jacobsen, Flodoard von Reims, 84–7; HRE, 41–6 and 42 n. 392). For Richard of Saint-Vanne, see Glenn, ‘Master and Community’, 64 n. 42. Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 87–8.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 climate do not easily satisfy. Moreover, neither Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesia nor his Annales, the two most prominent works of local history in the mid-tenth century, were considered by their author to be ‘closed’ texts. The Historia’s fourth and final book ends not with a clear explicit, but with a series of miracle stories about local saints and brief historical notices of local abbeys and their abbots.14 Indeed, later scribes felt compelled to supply an ending for it.15 Annals, of course, were composed serially, with continuations a standard practice. At Reims, as we shall see below, Flodoard’s annals were maintained, but sporadically, and lacking the self-conscious level of detail supplied by their original author. Flodoard’s historical writings gained immediate authority as archival repositories, whose potential for expansion nevertheless remained unrealized for decades afterward.16 The ebbing of historical consciousness at Reims may have had something to do with the individual personalities of its prelates after Adalbero and Gerbert of Aurillac, both of whom were esteemed as patrons of ecclesiastical life in its institutional and intellectual forms. Their successors – Arnulf (989–91 and 998–1021), Ebles (1021–33), and Gui of Soissons (1033–55) – stemmed from high-status noble families and were in essence locals.17 Various difficulties dogged each of their reigns. Arnulf was deposed for his treasonous betrayal of his lord, Hugh Capet. Ebles was elevated from the laity to the archiepiscopacy and was disdained in some quarters for his non-clerical background. Gui fell under papal suspicion in 1049 for simony. None of these facts excluded them from recognizing the utility of history, however, and indeed would have given them a powerful incentive to put quill to parchment. What they lacked was a will or interest in continuing Flodoard’s work, and they failed to inspire the scribes who belonged to the religious communities over which they presided. 14 16

17

Ibid., 439–57. 15 HRE, 457 and note ‘m’. On episcopal gesta as ‘archival’ texts – that is, as sources meant to be used as reference works as opposed to complete narrative accounts – see Riches, ‘Episcopal historiography as archive’, which gives added attention to the use of Flodoard’s work in eleventh-century Cambrai. Jacobsen’s list of later manuscripts that made use of miracles cited by Flodoard further confirms Riches’ thesis; see Jacobsen, Flodoard von Reims, 86 n. 22. Arnulf was the illegitimate son of the Carolingian king Lothar (954–86) and a canon of Laon, chosen to rule by Hugh Capet; see Glenn, Politics and History, 89–92. Ebles and Gui were attached to two local comital families; their genealogical connections have been respectively studied in separate articles by J.-N. Mathieu: ‘La succession au comté de Roucy aux environs de l’an mil. Les origines de l’archevêque de Reims Ebles (1021–1033)’, in K. S. B. Keats-Rohan and C. Settipani (eds.), Onomastique et parenté dans l’Occident médiéval (Oxford, 2000), 75–84, and J.-N. Mathieu, ‘L’origine de l’archêveque de Reims Guy (1033–1055) et les comtes de Soissons du XIe siècle’, Mémoires de la Société d’agriculture, commerce, sciences et arts du département de la Marne, 111 (1996), 15–22. Biographical notices may also be found in Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 605–8.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims The status quo changed under Archbishop Gervais (1055–67). Gervais was an outsider. He arrived in the autumn of 1055 from the see of Le Mans, which had a venerable tradition of episcopal historiography of its own.18 Although Gervais had had no apparent role in crafting his own biography for the Actus pontificum Cenomannis (Deeds of the Bishops of Le Mans), the biographical record of Le Mans’ bishops, he came to Reims aware of the power of the written word in shaping identities and moulding memories. Once in his new home, Gervais took subtle but significant steps towards mining the local historical tradition in support of his own administrative and pastoral initiatives. He familiarized himself with the writings of Flodoard and Hincmar, and by using their works inserted himself into his adopted city’s historical legacy. Gervais also imposed his own sense of the past, above all the record of his personal and familial achievement, on the city of Reims. The new archbishop used history to graft his authority upon regional traditions and legends, to create and bolster social bonds with friends and allies – to make, in short, the local past his own. In this and the following two chapters, we will examine the complicated relationships of individual prelates to local histories and their sources. In each case, historical memory proved crucial to constituting episcopal authority, often in the face of conflict and change. Bishops’ embrace of the past enabled them both to connect with local communities and to participate in the sacred history of the place they inhabited. By taking literary and liturgical possession of their predecessors’ stories and connecting themselves to an ultimately apostolic tradition, the prelates featured here proclaimed their authority and inscribed themselves within both living and historical communities. a stranger among the apostles of france: gervais of chaˆ teau-du-loir comes to reims Gervais’ consecration as archbishop of Reims on 15 October 1055 was for him a familiar ritual in a foreign place. It was not his first episcopal appointment. From 1036–55, Gervais, the lord of Château-du-Loir, was also bishop of Le Mans, a see at the juncture of powerful territorial interests, including the lordships of Maine, Anjou, Blois-Chartres, and Normandy. His tenure there had been rocky. Gervais was no retiring clerk; his reputation as a warrior-bishop was already established in 1038, 18

The Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium (APC). On its stages of composition, see R. Latouche, ‘Essai de critique sur la continuation des Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium (857–1255)’, Le Moyen Age, 2nd ser., 11 (1907), 225–75.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 when he confronted the ambitions of the count of Anjou, Geoffrey II Martel, with military force. He invested himself in regional politics; took risks; made enemies more easily than friends. Gervais also paid dearly for his political imbroglios. From 1048, he lived in a state of exile from his homeland and church – at first unwillingly, as a prisoner-of-war of his bitter rival, Count Geoffrey Martel; and after 1051/2, of his own doing, at the court of William, duke of Normandy.19 Though in title still bishop of Le Mans, Gervais was dispossessed of the cathedral city and his ancestral castle as a condition of his release from prison. While he seems later to have recouped the lordship of Château-du-Loir (and its wealth), Gervais never regained Le Mans.20 In October 1055 King Henry I enabled his transfer to the just-vacated see of Reims. The reasons for his installation at Reims are far from clear. There is no evidence whatsoever that he was elected by its cathedral chapter. Historians have surmised that Gervais’ elevation marked a ‘retrenchment’ of Capetian policy on one front and its consolidation on another. It certainly signalled a royal withdrawal from Maine, which had been dominated by the Angevin counts from 1051, and an extension of kingly power in the soissonnais and Champagne, part of an ongoing campaign there.21 Yet though Gervais had looked to the Capetian Henry for support during the turbulent times of his episcopacy, he had found more sympathy than active support from the king.22 His principal ally during his time as bishop of Le Mans was, in fact, the count of BloisChartres, Thibaud.23 Moreover, as far as Capetian royal policy in the west was concerned, Gervais had come to present something of a problem. He was, as mentioned, an implacable enemy of the count of Anjou and, since his release from prison, on friendly terms with the duke of Normandy. Since August 1052, however, Geoffrey Martel had entered 19

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On the political background of Gervais of Château-du-Loir and his losing struggle with the count of Anjou, well-covered by many authors, see R. Latouche, Histoire du comté du Maine pendant le Xe et le XIe siècle (Paris, 1910), 26–30; O. Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou et son entourage au XIe siècle (Paris, 1972), vol. I, 54–5, 65–8, 333–5; B. Lemesle, La société aristocratique dans le Haut-Maine, XIe–XIIe siècles (Rennes, 1999), 27–32; and R. E. Barton, Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890–1160 (Woodbridge, 2004), 46–76, 112, esp. 49–50. Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 32; Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, vol. I, 76–7. Gervais’ only confirmed presence between his release in 1052 and his promotion in 1055 was as a witness to a charter of William of Normandy for Marmoutier in September or October 1055; see M. Fauroux (ed.), Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066 (Caen, 1961), no. 137, 314. On Capetian influence in Maine, see G. Louise, ‘Népotisme épiscopal et politique capétienne dans la cité du Mans: Xe–XIe siècles’, in F. Bériac and A.-M. Dom (eds.), Les prélats, l’église et la société, XIe–XVe siècles. Hommage à Bernard Guillemain (Bordeaux, 1994), 29–40, esp. 36–40; for its extension east of Paris, see M. Bur, La formation du comté de Champagne, v. 950 – v. 1150 (Nancy, 1977), 256. Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 27–8. Ibid., 28–9; Barton, Lordship in the County of Maine, 50 n. 105.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims into peace with the king, and the object of their mutual ire, in 1054, became Normandy. In other words, between 1052 and 1055 Gervais went from being the enemy of the king’s enemy (Anjou), to being the friend of the king’s enemy (Normandy) while remaining an enemy to the king’s friend (Anjou, again).24 His appointment to Reims may have been intended to remove Gervais from the hub of Norman–Angevin politics, place him more directly in service to royal interests, and bring him under the auspices of Count Thibaud, his former ally, who still had possessions in Reims and the surrounding regions. Whatever the precise reason for his promotion, the new archbishop could count on little pre-existing local support save perhaps from Thibaud, and that probably more theoretical than real.25 Yet once at Reims, Gervais wasted little time in forging alliances of his own. Within weeks he concluded a pact of liege-homage with Manasses II, count of Rethel.26 Manasses relinquished the castellanies of Mouzon and Omont, along with a villa and various altars, the latter to be held by his son, Roger, a cleric. In return Gervais confirmed the benefices that Manasses and his ancestors had held from the archbishops. Manasses of Rethel and Gervais were likewise brought together in the entourage of the young Philip I, as supporters and participants in his 1059 coronation and witnesses of one of his first royal acts.27 Their relationship during the next five years appears to have been peaceful. As to the archbishop’s other doings prior to 1059, we are poorly informed. He does not appear outside of Reims. Pope Stephen IX urged him to come to Rome with his legate Hildebrand in order to discuss matters touching on Archbishop Aimon of Bourges, but there is no evidence that he obeyed.28 It has often been speculated, largely on the basis of his other episcopal activities and a general reputation for being cultivated in the liberal arts, that Gervais took an interest in the cathedral 24

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Bur, La formation du comté de Champagne, 199–203; Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, vol. I, 91–2, 97; J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford, 1985), 193, 202, 204–5. The hypothesis forwarded by Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou, vol. I, 97–101, that Gervais was a key component of a broader political alliance between the French crown and the papacy against a suddenly fragile German empire, merits additional scrutiny. On the long-term relationship between the counts of Champagne and the archbishops, see Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 524–33. Reims, BM 15, fo. 2v: ‘Notum sit . . . [quod] comes Manasses domni Gervasii archipresulis homo liges factus est’; see Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 522. Manasses was the brother-in-law of the former archbishop of Reims, Ebles. According to F. Soehnée (ed.), Catalogue des actes d’Henri Ier, roi de France (Paris, 1907), no. 86, 90–1, Manasses of Rethel began to witness royal acts in the late 1040s and early 1050s. He and Gervais appear together in one act of Philip I, in 1061 (no. 10, 31). See also Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, 3, 25. PL 143, cols. 869–70 (letter of September–October 1057).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 school and extended it his support.29 But with this as well, there is no tangible proof. Posthumous sources are somewhat more forthcoming about the archbishop’s reputation. In the same breath with which they praised his learning, virtually every encomiastic notice of Gervais mentions his bellicosity. He ‘threw himself into the affairs of war and defended foremost his homeland (patriam) and personal interests with a military hand’, said one source. ‘Untamed (ferus)’, said another.30 This same quality flavoured his epitaph by the poet Fulcoius of Beauvais.31 There is no question that the new archbishop of Reims presided over a grand court. His curialitas (courtliness) and personal wealth were likewise commented on, and his worldliness – lust and avarice – elicited cautionary verse from Fulcoius.32 On one occasion, Gervais’ love of pomp and military matters joined in two impressive, choreographed diplays. Towards the end of his episcopacy, Gervais journeyed to Verdun with his French retainers (magna Francigenarum comitatus frequentia) in train.33 There he was received by the bishop, Thierry (1047–89), a man no less experienced in military affairs. When Thierry paid a return visit to Reims with an equally

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Williams, ‘Cathedral school of Rheims’, 665. The continuator of the APC, 362–3, characterizes him as ‘vir nulli in regno sapientia et honestate secundus’; while the author of the Chronicon s. Andreae, 539, writing in the 1130s, portrays him as ‘vir sane utraque scientia preditus’. Other praise came from Lambert of Lobbes in his vita of Thierry of Saint-Hubert (c. 1086–91), where he identifies Gervais as ‘in disciplina liberalium artium apprime eruditus’ (Vita Theodorici abbatis Andaginensis, vol. XII, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH SS (Hanover, 1856), 49). Raoul of SaintSépulcre, composing the vita of Lietbert of Cambrai around 1100, follows suit, calling Gervais a ‘vir omni bonitate conspicuus’ (VL, 861). Vita Theodorici abbatis Andaginensis, ed. Wattenbach, 49; Chronicon s. Andreae, 539. ‘Cui Deus et Cesar, cui serpens cuique columba / Convenere, pari pondere disparia. / Ad portam Martis [Reims was accessed from the northwest by a Mars gate] conspirant Cesar et anguis, / Actor avis simplex ad decus ecclesiae’. See H. Omont, ‘Épitaphes métriques en l’honneur de différents personnages du XIe siècle composées par Foulcoie de Beauvais, archidiacre de Meaux’, in Mélanges Julien Havet. Recueil de travaux d’érudition dédiés à la mémoire de Julien Havet (1853–1893) (Geneva, 1972), 211–36, at 225–6. M. L. Colker (ed.), ‘Fulcoii Belvacensis epistulae’, Traditio, 10 (1954), 191–273, at 253–6, and ‘Fulcoius of Beauvais, poet and propagandist’. Fulcoius later became a court poet at Reims under Gervais’ successor, Manasses I; there is no evidence he filled a similar role under Gervais, and the tone of the poem is indulgent but hardly warm. See T. C. Moser, Jr, A Cosmos of Desire. The Medieval Latin Erotic Lyric in English Manuscripts (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004), 22–9; Colker, ‘Fulcoius of Beauvais’, 151–2, 156–7. ‘Courtliness’ need not have negative connotations when applied to bishops, but with Gervais the term seems consistent with other descriptors of his public, worldly pursuits; see Miller, ‘Religion Makes a Difference’, 1124. What follows is described by Laurent of Liège, writing about 1144, in Laurent of Liège, Gesta episcoporum Virdunensium et abbatum S. Vitoni, vol. X, ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS (Hanover, 1852), 495. The purpose of Gervais’ visit is unknown, but he may have been seeking to end a feud that had pitted one of his vassals against the church of Verdun and the duke of Lower Lotharingia, Godfrey the Bearded. For an embellished account, see C.-N. Gabriel, Verdun au XIe siècle (Geneva, 1975), 167–70, 203–5.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims impressive cortège, the gates to the city lay closed. With ceremonial splendor, Gervais had two cantors sing out a verse from Psalm 59 from above the walls, ‘You have moved the earth and rent it asunder’. Thierry then rejoined the cantors with singers of his own, completing the verse, ‘which is thus healed of its miseries, because it was shaken’. With that flourish, a paean to the bishops’ self-image as world-movers, Gervais admitted Thierry into the city for a mass at Saint-Remi. Given these proclivities, it is perhaps unsurprising that Gervais’ pact with Manasses of Rethel did not hold. A feud (werra) soon erupted between them and opened a deep rift between the archbishop and the canons in the cathedral chapter loyal to Manasses and the Rethel clan.34 Indeed, Gervais’ rapport with the canons of Sainte-Marie, probably not strong to begin with given his alien status, clearly disintegrated in the 1060s. The only direct account of his dispute with Manasses exists in a source hostile to Gervais. This was a written report from Saint-Remi of the abbey’s complaint against Saint-Nicaise and its claim to possess, along with the altar of the suburban parish church of Saint-Sixte, rights to part of the suburbium surrounding Saint-Remi which pertained to Saint-Sixte’s atrium, or churchyard.35 It says: Gervais, wishing to display the magnanimity of his soul, instigated a feud (werram) against Count Manasses [of Rethel], and because the aforesaid Count Manasses had many friends among the knights and clergy in the city of Reims, by whom the archbishop’s will against the count was impeded, by his violence [he] expelled them all from the city, and from their possessions gave some things to his favourites and kept some for himself. Among those who were expelled and whose things had been seized a certain canon of SainteMarie named Erlebald was expelled, who held the church of Saint-Sixte with its altar and the burg-rent attached to that altar.36

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Meinert, ‘Libelli de discordia’, 272. The reasons for the feud are unclear, but may have been connected with Gervais’ manipulation of ecclesiastical property in favour of his houses of SaintNicaise and Saint-Denis. The altar had been given to Saint-Nicaise by the archbishop no later than 1066, when the donation was confirmed by royal charter. Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 26, 78, and Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 224. Meinert, ‘Libelli de discordia’, 272: ‘G[ervasius] volens magnanimitatem sui animi ostendere werram contra Manassem comitem arripuit et quoniam in urbe Remensi praefatus comes M[anasses] multos habebat amicos tam milites quam clericos, per quos contra comitem voluntas impediebatur archiepiscopi, idem archiepiscopus violentia sua omnes ex urbe pepulit et de rebus eorum quaedam quibus placuit dedit, quaedam sibi retinuit. Inter ceteros igitur qui expulsi sunt et quorum res direptae sunt, quidam ecclesiae s. Mariae canonicus nomine Erlebaldus expulsus est, qui ecclesiam s. Sixti cum suo altari et censu burgi eidem altari subiacente tenebat’. A canon named Erlebald is listed as a witness to charters of Archbishop Gui in 1040 and 1043 (PL 142, cols. 1407–8) and in a 1025 charter of Archbishop Ebles for Mouzon (Bur, Chronique de Mouzon, no. 6, 196). An obituary appears in Reims, BM 15, fo. 18v.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 The feud lingered into the final months of Gervais’ episcopacy, and appears to have widened. Two letters of Pope Alexander II, written between 1061 and 1067, note an ongoing controversy between the archbishop and two canons, Amalric and Manasses, who journeyed to Rome to seek resolution for some unspecified complaints.37 The pope’s second letter notes the damages done to the church of Reims and its canons by counts M. and R.; the former was probably Manasses of Rethel. It is difficult to know the exact circumstances of these bitter conflicts. Gervais’ reputation as a papal ally has led historians to suggest that the canons were resistant to the administrative and liturgical reforms he sought to implement within the cathedral community. Perhaps. What seems incontrovertible, however, is the heavy-handed way in which he divested some canons of their prebends in order to endow his monastic foundations. It is remarkable that, apart from his initial pact with Manasses of Rethel and his final deathbed testament, just two canons appear as witnesses to his acta – the provost, Odalric, and a single archdeacon, Odo. Only in his final days, stricken by illness, did the archbishop relent and acknowledge the harmful consequences of his actions towards the chapter.38 Gervais of Château-du-Loir had arrived at Reims unfamiliar with its clerical communities, family networks, religious institutions, and its history. Yet as we will see in the pages that follow, he, more than any of his predecessors since Archbishop Adalbero (d. 989), seized on and developed Reims’ sacred history to serve his episcopacy and to assert his personal authority over the city and its past. The written evidence is fragmentary, a partial mosaic at best. Viewed in the aggregate, however, it presents a picture of a bishop aware of the image-making potential of history, aware of its pragmatic political uses, and sensitive to its rhetorical and mnemonic power. Under Gervais, engagement with the episcopal past of Reims was rekindled, albeit with an admittedly feeble flame, were we to compare eleventh-century historiography to Flodoard and Richer’s great works. But Gervais was not interested in writing grand narratives. His historiographical sensibilities were directed not towards the collective, institutional past of the local church and its saints, but to secure his own position and prestige. 37

38

PL 146, cols. 1319 and 1322 (nos. 39 and 46). The canons’ identities beyond their names are unknown, but Manasses may have been the son of the vidame of Reims, Manasses Calvus, and future archbishop of Reims. A canon named Amalric witnessed Gervais’ peace-pact with Manasses of Rethel. For Gervais’ final testament, see below, 171–2. The canon Erlebald did not come back into ownership of his possessions until Gervais had died; on his return, see Meinert, ‘Libelli de discordia’, 272–3.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims archbishop gervais and the cult of family The new archbishop brought with him to Reims a well-developed sense of his personal and familial legacy, and an emergent self-consciousness of his place in the local history of his adoptive home. We can directly attribute to his hand only three brief works from his time as archbishop: the Miracula sancti Melanii, composed and delivered to Evenus, abbot of Saint-Melaine of Rennes, between 1055–60 (BHL 5894); a letter De vita sancti Donatiani archiepiscopi (Concerning the life of St Donatian, archbishop) directed to Baldwin V, count of Flanders (1035–67); and with the letter an accompanying Sermo de beato Donatiano (BHL 2281).39 Gervais’ fingerprints are nonetheless all over other contemporary sources, including two annals whose content was augmented during his episcopacy. Gervais also expressed his connection to the past in the preambles to several of his charters, and the historical sensibility expressed in those documents endured in the posthumous hagiographical literature that featured him. In part, the archbishop’s historiographical production was self-serving – personal commemoration as a hedge against historical oblivion and a bulwark against opposition. It also played a crucial role in establishing his authority and political position in a foreign city. As mentioned, in Reims Gervais initially had few close allies or friends, and historical memory in the city was sustained primarily in its local institutions, above all the cathedral of Sainte-Marie, the abbey of Saint-Remi, and their communities. The historical materials in which Gervais had a hand present a fascinating glimpse into the archbishop’s personal religiosity and identity as a pastor, and into the way in which these traits affected his presentation of the episcopal past in Reims. We will look first at his interventions into local record-keeping. In addition to a few scattered continuations of Flodoard’s historical record, two annalistic sources were sporadically kept up at Reims during the eleventh century: the Annales s. Dionysii Remenses at Saint-Denis and the Chronicon Remense, almost certainly a product of the cathedral chapter.40 Both annals, especially the latter, bear indications that they were 39

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On the dating of the Miracula sancti Melanii, see A. Schönbach, Studien zur Erzählungsliteratur des Mittelalters I–IV (Vienna, 1898; repr. Hildesheim, 2005), 21–2. For the dating of the epistola and sermo on Donatian, see below, 186–7. The manuscripts containing the Annales s. Dionysii, first published by Philippe Labbe in P. Labbe, Novae bibliothecae manuscriptorum librorum, vol. I (Paris, 1657), 358–61, now appear to be lost; Georg Waitz subsequently published the text in vol. XIII of MGH SS (Hanover, 1881), 82–4. The Chronicon Remense exists in a single copy in a thirteenth-century manuscript at Montpellier, Bibliothèque interuniversitaire (Section médecine) H 280, fos. 54–7 which are partially edited by Georg Pertz, under the title Annales Remenses et Colonienses. The Reims annals commence with the birth of Christ and continue until 1150; Chronicon Remense (Annales Remenses et Colonienses), vol. XVI, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS (Leipzig, 1925), 731–3.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 maintained at Gervais’ pleasure and with the aim of marking important milestones in the archbishop’s life. The Annales s. Dionysii, which begin in 845 with the ordination of Hincmar, were augmented irregularly. At least three distinct series of entries are discernible, however. The first were put down in 1067 and may have incorporated all prior years from 845 (twenty-one entries); the second series seems to have been sustained from 1096–1151 (twenty-three entries); while the third, and final, group covers the period from 1161–90 (ten entries). We shall keep our attention on the additions made in 1067, specifically the eight covering the years from 1007–67.41 This appears to be an integrated unit, as five of the eight entries concern Gervais. His birth-year, archiepiscopal ordination, restoration of Saint-Denis, coronation of Philip I, and death are all mentioned.42 Not only is Gervais the sole archbishop of Reims mentioned between Gerbert of Aurillac and the death notice of Raoul the Green (in 1124), but the inclusion of his birth-year is conspicuous in an annal otherwise directed towards events of a loftier scale.43 Given the concentration of dates associated with Gervais in this section of the annals, it seems likely that the archbishop’s birth was added during his episcopacy – it is highly improbable that Gervais’ birth would have been noted in a rémois annal before he became archbishop of Reims! – and thus at the same time as the later entries, that is, in about 1067. This hypothesis nevertheless presents two difficulties. The first is that Gervais’ death is ascribed to the year 1066 rather than 1067, which would make little apparent sense were the annals directly associated with him. Although we must speculate about the discrepancy, it may be significant that the ordering of events under the years 1066 and 1067 proceeds in straightforward chronological fashion. The annalist first mentions 41

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Rather than indicating a steadily maintained chronicle, the entries down to 1067 appear in distinctive ‘runs’ of several decades apiece: 845–87/8 (the ordination of Hincmar until the fifth year of Archbishop Fulk’s rule), 972–99 (from the foundation of Saint-Thierry until Gerbert’s elevation to the papacy), and 1007–67. For reasons explained below, I have included the entry for 1007 in the last group rather than the middle one comprising the years 972–99. Waitz postulates that the ninth- and tenth-century entries were later additions collected from existing sources (e.g., for the ninth-century entries, Flodoard’s Historia and the Annals of Saint-Bertin), rather than contemporaneously maintained entries, a view I support. Annales s. Dionysii, 82–3 (s.a. 1007, 1055, 1056, 1059, 1066). The remaining entries detail the dedication of Saint-Remi and translation of the saint’s relics by Pope Leo IX (s.a. 1048), the death of King Henry I (s.a. 1060), and the harsh winter of 1066–7/1067–8 (s.a. 1067). The entry for 1066 also mentions the appearance of Halley’s comet and the destruction of the Anglo-Saxons by William I in a poetic couplet, which is also found in the (in)famous Battle Abbey Roll listing the supposed participants in the Battle of Hastings. Another curious exception (s.a. 994), 82, is the mention of ‘Ordinatio Gerardi in diaconatum’. Was this Gerard an author of some of the entries? Might it be a reference to Gerard I, bishop of Cambrai, who was born c. 975 and educated at Reims?

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims Halley’s comet and the destruction of the Anglo-Saxons by William of Normandy (24 April and 14 October 1066, respectively); the death of Gervais (3/4 July 1067, s.a. 1066); and then, for the year 1067, a ‘horrible winter’ from the feast of St Brice (13 November) to the feast of St Gregory (12 March). Gervais did indeed die between 14 October 1066 and 13 November 1067. Thus the faulty location of the archbishop’s death date in 1066 may simply be a copyist’s error.44 A second apparent error places the construction of the canonry of Saint-Denis in 1056 rather than 1067, the year in which Gervais issued his charter of endowment for the house and asked both Philip I and Pope Alexander II to confirm its privileges.45 Yet it is significant that the annals apply the word ‘built’ (aedificavit) to describe Gervais’ work on Saint-Denis, rather than ‘established’ or ‘founded’ (fundavit). Indeed, both the royal and episcopal charters indicate that the task of reconstructing the canonry entailed considerable time, effort, and money. The walls, riven by cracks and holes, had to be rebuilt. The roof was raised and a dormitory, refectory, and other buildings were constructed from the gound up.46 About 1063 or 1064, Gervais conferred personal oversight of the community, now following the rule of St Augustine, to the powerful provost of the cathedral chapter, Odalric.47 A clear ordering of events, implying the passage of time, is thus present in the archbishop’s charter. Gervais acquired the house from Sainte-Marie and began reconstruction of the crumbling structure; he then installed regular canons and restored the institution’s endowment; next he appointed Odalric its head; and finally he gave to it gifts from his own holdings to establish a perpetual anniversary in his memory. Although the evidence is circumstantial, it is thus entirely possible that the actual rebuilding of Saint-Denis did begin as early as 1056, and that this and the other entries concerning the 44

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That an error of some kind was made – either by a copyist or later editor – seems confirmed by reference to the same horrible winter under the year 1077 in the Chronicon Remense, 732. Annales s. Dionysii, 83 (s.a. 1056): ‘Gervasius archiepiscopus aedificavit Remis ecclesiam sancti Dionysii sociorumque eius’. For Gervais’ charter, see AA, 215–19. For a brief history of the house, see F. Poirier de la Coutansais, ‘Saint-Denis de Reims jusqu’au milieu du XIIe siècle’, in La vita comune del clero nei secoli XI e XII. Atti della Settimana di studio: Mendola, settembre 1959 (Milan, 1962), vol. II, 104–7. Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 31, 94–7, at 96: ‘Coepit [Gervais] igitur parietes gelu et ymbri exesos renovare et exaltare, tecta altiora erigere et opus priori sumptuosius multo atque venustius vigilantia instanti aedificare, refectorium, dormitorium et ceteras aedes servorum Dei necessitati accommodas a fundamentis construere’. Compare with AA, 217–18: ‘adhibitaque tandem diligentia, restaurationis opus operosiore structura Dei praesente gratia non distuli, destructa reaedificans, quae fundata non erant, a fundamentis construens’, and ‘Ecclesia . . . ad integrum restituta, cum diversis aedificiis ad necessitatem fratrum accommodatis’. AA, 218; Poirier de la Coutansais, ‘Saint-Denis de Reims’, 105; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 609. The wording of the charter establishes the sequence of events.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 archbishop in the Annales indicate Gervais’ influence.48 It would hardly be unusual for an institution to commemorate its benefactor in its historical record. Whether the entries in the Annales s. Dionysii noting Gervais’ activities were contemporary to the archbishop or represent later additions, the text’s close association with the former lord of Château-du-Loir is unmistakeable. The so-called Chronicon Remense furnishes an even starker example of Gervais’ direct role in his own historical memorialization. The Chronicon, called in its modern edition the Annales Remenses et Colonienses, commences with the birth of Christ. Though its editor printed only the entries extending from 961 to 1150, the text’s chronology of events seems to have been fairly regularly kept up.49 The Chronicon’s connection with the cathedral chapter is obvious. Apart from its focus on archiepiscopal deaths and ordinations and its regular mention of the church councils held at Reims from 1049–1148, the notices indicate the passing of the archdeacon Nicholas and the dean Joffridus in 1127, along with the deaths of Ansegisus and Drogo, ‘levites and canons’, in 1150.50 At some point during its composition, Gervais co-opted the text as a familial memory-book of sorts. Of the fourteen entries covering the years between 1024–66, eight concern Gervais or his relatives. Another entry, for 1007, notes the birth of ‘the future archbishop of Reims’.51 In order, the eight entries record: the death of Gervais’ mother; the death of his father; the death of his uncle Avesgaud and his succession to the episcopacy of Le Mans; his capture by Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou; his release from captivity; his elevation to the archiepiscopacy; his coronation of Philip I; and his death. No other archbishop is accorded this kind of 48

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We must exercise due caution in handling the Annales s. Dionysii, but other (circumstantial) evidence gives the date some credibility, and so pushes the commencement of Gervais’ building activities in his city back to the early days of his episcopate. Moreover, if he began rebuilding Saint-Denis in 1056, this would mean that he did not conceive of placing regular canons in the house until later in the process of its restoration – customarily, according to historians, in 1059 or 1063, after initiatives promoting the reform of canonical life were announced by popes Nicholas II and Alexander II in those years, and after an initial attempt to install canons at Saint-Nicaise had failed. Chronicon Remense, 731–3. The year 961 contains information about the death of Archbishop Artaud and elevation of Archbishop Odalric that was probably obtained from Flodoard’s Annales. The next year catalogued is 967, which picks up where Flodoard leaves off. Several fourteenthcentury interpolations fill gaps in the text, and the wording of at least two entries (s.a. 1005 and 1006) is shared by the universal Chronica of Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronica, vol. VI, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1844), 354. Nicholas and Joffridus were dignitaries of Sainte-Marie of Reims; and among several Drogos listed in the chapter obituary contained in Reims, BM 15, fos. 10r–20v, at fo. 19r may be found a ‘Drogo priest and canon’ (nones of November) and a ‘Drogo canon and levite’ (8 ides November). One or more of these men may have been responsible for maintaining the annals; that it ceases in 1150 strongly suggests so. Chronicon Remense, 731–2 (s.a. 1007, 1024, 1031, 1036, 1048, 1053, 1055, 1059, 1066).

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims biographical attention and care; indeed, the number of Gervais’ personal and familial entries exceeds the official record of his archepiscopacy, which is limited in the annal to his ordination and the coronation of Philip.52 Gervais’ long-standing antipathy with the lord of Anjou, which could only have been entered after he took up the see of Reims in 1055, receives special attention, as does his close connection with kings Henry I and Philip I.53 Indeed, a conspicuous echo of the Chronicon’s notice of his release from prison sounds from another historical text of Gervais’ reign, the Dedicatio ecclesiae beati Remigii Remensis of Anselm of SaintRemi, written perhaps between 1055 and 1058.54 That Gervais had transferred the cultic memory of his ancestors to his new see is ultimately confirmed by the Chronicon’s obituaries of Gervais’ parents, Haimo and Hildeburge, and his uncle, Avesgaud. These notices, together with the one mentioning his consecration as bishop of Le Mans, parallel commemorative statements in the so-called ‘Testament of Bishop Gervais’, a charter of c. 1037/8–47 inventorying gifts made to the canons of Saint-Julien of Le Mans.55 In the ʻTestamentʼ, both of his parents and his uncle Avesgaud are prominently recalled as donors.56 This charter was later copied into the Le Mans cathedral cartulary and necrology, thus fixing Gervais’ distinguished genealogy, and his own deeds, in that clerical community’s memory. His self-identification as the nephew of the bishop of Le Mans, Avesgaud (997–1036), celebrated his matrilineal family. Avesgaud was his mother’s brother; they belonged to the house of Bellême. From the same branch of his family tree could be found a great-uncle, the bishop of Le Mans Sigefroi (971–97), and a first cousin, Ivo III, bishop of Sées (c. 1032–70).57 52

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It is striking, for example, that the Chronicon Remense says more about Gervais’ family members than does the Actus pontificum Cenomannis. Henry I’s death (1060) and Philip’s coronation (1059) are the only two entries interposed between Gervais’ ordination (1055) and his death (s.a. 1066). Anselm of Saint-Remi, Histoire de la dédicace de Saint-Rémy, 252: ‘[Gervais] postea vero ab ejusdem tyranni potestate exemptus’, reminiscent of the entry in the Chronicon Remense, 732 (s.a. 1053): ‘Eripuit Dominus Gervasium a praefati tyranni captione’. On the dating, see M.-C. Isaïa, Remi de Reims. Mémoire d’un saint, histoire d’une Église (Paris, 2010), 713. An edition of the document is produced in the APC, 367–72, but the act itself does not appear in the manuscript. Compare the APC and Chartularium insignis ecclesiae Cenomanensis, quod dicitur Liber Albus capituli (Le Mans, 1869), no. 177, 95–8, with E. Vallée (ed.), Nécrologe-obituaire de la cathédrale du Mans (Le Mans, 1906), 10, 151 and n. 4, 285; described in L. Cellier (ed.), Catalogue des actes des évêques du Mans jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1910), no. 24, 22–4. APC, 370–1, for the familial commemoration: ‘Annualis avunculi mei domini Avesgaudi, episcopi, quotannis decenter agatur . . . sic et qui eadem die accidit, sororis ejus, matris quippe mee Hyldeburge: nec pretermittatur ille patris mei Haimonis XVIII kalendas februarii accidens; necnon et ordinationis mee, XIIII kalendas januarii, meque nutu Dei migrante vertatur in illud’. For their genealogy and familial connections to Le Mans, see Louise, ‘Népotisme épiscopal’; and J. Decaens, ‘L’évêque Yves de Sées’, in Bouet and Neveux (eds.), Les évêques normands, 117–37.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 A brief epistle from Gervais’ own hand commemorates the other side of his family, his father’s, the lords of Château-du-Loir.58 The letter, addressed to Evenus, abbot of Saint-Melaine of Rennes, describes the miracles worked through the relics of St Melanius, founding bishop of Rennes. The relics had been a possession of Gervais’ family going back at least four generations, to his great-grandmother Rorans, who bequeathed them with her dowry to his father Haimo.59 Evenus wanted them for his abbey, and Gervais eventually consented to his repeated requests. He set one condition: that his ‘eternal memory’, together with that of his parents and King Henry I, be honoured at Saint-Melaine. A fond reminiscence follows, in which Gervais lends his eyewitness testimony to the relics’ wonder-working power at his family château, and his great-grandmother and father’s devotion to Melanius. Gervais’ recollection, going back at least a quarter-century to his father’s lifetime and incorporating the family’s oral history of the relics’ bestowal by Rorans, draws heavily on personal experience.60 ‘While I looked on’ (me vidente), the archbishop wrote, he saw a man who swore a false oath over the saint struck blind.61 And in the subsequent anecdote, he stressed that ‘I myself truly saw’ (Egomet vero vidi) the saint’s episcopal pallium preserved, along with his relics, from a fire that consumed the portable reliquary in which they had been carried.62 By writing these miracles down, presumably for the first time, Gervais fulfilled his role, as scion and lord of Château-du-Loir, in keeping alive his ancestral legacy. St Melanius was the personal patron of the family. His great-grandmother deployed his relics to stop a fire; they were kept at the family castle and worked most of their miracles there; and his father had once taken them along when he prepared to enter into a personal bond with a powerful neighbour, presumably so that he might swear fidelity over the bones.63 It was especially fitting that Gervais’ familial patron should be a bishopsaint, and that the final miracle he records in his letter to Evenus should involve Melanius’ pallium, a shared symbol of metropolitan privilege. The archbishop’s concern for his own memory is evident in his last testament, drawn up shortly before his death in early July 1067. From the chapter’s perspective, Gervais had rather a lot to atone for, and so was – gently? severely? – reminded of his past transgressions and given a chance 58

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On the family of Château-du-Loir, see E. Vallée (ed.), Cartulaire de Château-du-Loir (Le Mans, 1905), v–xv; Lemesle, La société aristocratique, 98–102, 227–31; and Barton, Lordship in the County of Maine, 90. Miracula sancti Melanii, ed. J. Carnandet, AASS January, vol. I, new edn (Paris, 1863), 333. E. Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Toronto, 1999), 6–11. Gervais introduces his great-grandmother’s personal connection to Melanius by recalling ‘a certain day of happy memory’ (die quadam felicis memorie) in which she used the relics to extinguish a fire. Miracula sancti Melanii, 333. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims to make satisfaction for them.64 The testament, recorded by the provost of Sainte-Marie, Odalric, presents a full catalogue of Gervais’ gifts to the canons: liturgical vestments and altar vessels, books, saints’ relics, and four ‘well-built mills’ along the River Vesle.65 While Gervais’ final testament does not mention his family, it furnishes added proof of his concern for his self-image, especially his role as patron and provider. Gervais’ lifetime devotion to the saints of his homeland is also evident in the selection of relics he disbursed to the chapter of Reims, as is the extent to which his religiosity was intertwined with his personal connections to people and places. Among his gifts to the chapter were three phylacteries, small cases or amulets containing relics worn around the neck as apotropaic devices.66 They are listed in descending order of significance. The first held wood of the True Cross. The second contained relics of the apostolic bishop Julian, patron saint of Le Mans cathedral; the last, relics of St Martin. Gervais also bequested a ‘purpled marsupium’, or liturgical pouch, containing relics from the Lord’s Sepulchre; relics of another ‘apostolic’ bishop, St Fronto of Périgord; the remnants of a sixth-century hermit of Maine, St Carileff; and relics of St Scholastica. Scholastica and Carileff were both venerated at Le Mans and had altars consecrated to their memory in the cathedral.67 We cannot know precisely where Gervais obtained either the saints’ bones or the relics associated with Christ’s passion. It is possible that the former, like the relics of Melanius, were family possessions, once installed in the chapel altar at Château-duLoir. The passion relics may have been collected on pilgrimage, perhaps taken between the time of his imprisonment by Geoffrey Martel and his elevation to Reims, or else somehow obtained from the personal effects of his uncle, Avesgaud, who had died at Verdun while returning from Jerusalem in 1036.68 64

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Reims, BM 15, fo. 23r: ‘Post haec admonitus ut de malis quae fecerat in terris nostris resipisceret; vadium dedit Odalrico praeposito, quod adhuc penes nos habemus et de omnibus forisfactis, invasionibus et iniusticiis quas in terris et villis nostris preceperat fieri, iustificavit et se emendaturum de omnibus si viveret repromisit. Sic etiam fecit Herimaro abbati sancti Remigii. Erant autem ibi predictus O. praepositus, Guidricus decanus (etc.)’. Reims, BM 15, fo. 23r; AA, 221–3. The testament is ordered in two distinct parts, beginning with the long list of items bequeathed to the chapter, and followed by the death notice and witness list. The impressive inventory of items was perhaps drawn up prior to Gervais’ final illness. Several of these items are on display at the Musée du Tau in Reims. On phylacteries, see C. Hahn, Strange Beauty. Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA, 2012), 84. APC, 304–5. Carileff was also patron of Saint-Calais, about 45 km east of Le Mans. We know nothing of Gervais’ whereabouts between c. 1052 and September 1055, when he witnessed a charter for William of Normandy. Given that he had sworn not to return to Le Mans or Château-du-Loir as a condition of his release, a pilgrimage may well have presented itself as a viable option. His apparently cordial relations with Thierry, bishop of Verdun (1047–89), may have facilitated the later transaction of his uncle’s belongings.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Dying bishops sometimes gifted relics to cathedral chapters as part of their personal treasuries, so Gervais’ gift was not all that unusual.69 When taken together with the miracle stories about Melanius, the selection of relics nevertheless demonstrates his deep affection and longing for his birthplace. That they were further stored in personal (bodily) accessories, the marsupium and phylacteries, implies that they, like Melanius’ relics with his father, went wherever he did. They were tokens of favour and prestige, objects of protection and veneration, and, ultimately, items of exchange that solidified personal bonds in life and death. One last piece of evidence confirms that Gervais viewed these holy men and women as extensions of his religious identity and of his episcopal and personal prestige. The archbishop affixed a seal bearing the image of Mary, holding and gesturing to the infant Jesus, to his archepiscopal charters.70 In doing so, he departed not only from the precedent of his predecessor, Gui, whose seal featured the likeness of an archbishop, but also from contemporary episcopal documentary practice in this region of Europe. Bishops generally sealed their official acts with an image of a bishop taken from a small pool of archetypes, not with the patrons of their cathedrals or cities.71 Considered as a sign of Gervais’ episcopal authority, then, the image of Mary as Hodegetria, around which was the legend, in capitals, ARCHIEPISCOPUS REMENSIS GERVASIUS, presented a striking visual reminder of his authority’s divine source. Gervais’ name surrounding Mary’s likeness personalized the seal, and so the archbishop’s authority, in a to that point – so far as we know – novel combination of word and image.72 69 70

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For another example of the practice, see APC, 453. P. Demouy, ‘Les sceaux des archevêques de Reims des origines à la fin du XIIIe siècle’, in L’encadrement religieux des fidèles au Moyen-Age et jusqu’au Concile de Trente. La paroisse–le clergé–la pastorale–la dévotion (Paris, 1985), 687–720, at 694. Only one original seal (from his 1067 charter for Saint-Denis) survives from Gervais’ episcopate, so a certain amount of caution is necessary and we cannot conclude that this was the only seal he employed. His successor, Manasses I, was using the same matrix for his seal as late as 1079. On episcopal sealing, see B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘The bishop makes an impression: seals, authority and episcopal identity’, in Gilsdorf (ed.), The Bishop, 137–54; which builds upon her earlier article, B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medieval identity: a sign and a concept’, The American Historical Review, 105 (2000), 1489–533; and R.-H. Bautier, ‘Apparition, diffusion et evolution typologique du sceau episcopal au moyen âge’, in C. Haidacher and W. Köfler (eds.), Die Diplomatik der Bischofsurkunde vor 1250/La diplomatique épiscopale avant 1250. Referate zum VIII. Internationalen Kongress für Diplomatik, Innsbruck, 27. September–3. Oktober 1993 (Innsbruck, 1995), 225–41, at 228 and 233–5. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medieval identity’, 1524–7, 1530–1. The question of Gervais’ model for his seal is an interesting one; an ivory Hodegetria in the possession of Bishop Berthold of Toul (996–1019) furnishes a regional parallel; see W. North and A. Cutler, ‘Ivories, inscriptions, and episcopal self-consciousness in the Ottonian empire: Berthold of Toul and the Berlin Hodegetria’, Gesta, 42 (2003), 1–16, esp. Figure 1; reprinted as ‘The bishop as cultural medium’, in The Bishop, ed. Gilsdorf, 75–111.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims A century and more later, one might expect to find a seal of this kind employed by a cathedral chapter or municipal government, which regularly chose the images of patron-saints to signal their corporate identities.73 Capitular sealing was not practised in northern France in the mid-eleventh century, so Gervais cannot be accused of co-opting the cathedral chapter’s emblem. But was his use of Mary on his seals a bold attempt to claim the chapter and church’s patroness for himself? Gervais’ troubled relationship with the canons of Sainte-Marie, and the way in which his choice of seal departed from the practice of his predecessor, Gui, have already been noted; his successor Manasses I had even worse relations with the chapter, and he, too, retained the Marian seal.74 Whether or not the archbishop utilized Marian iconography to make a political point, it certainly gave a visual fixity to the hierarchical authority descending from St Mary to Gervais that would seem to subordinate the status and authority of the chapter. In these scattered attestations to Gervais’ familial, patronal, and religious identities, a full pyschological portrait of the archbishop remains elusive. We will never know how or what he thought about the saints whose bones he carried about his neck, any more than we can be precisely certain of his motivation in compiling the annals that contain his biographical details. Some general conclusions present themselves all the same. For the former bishop of Le Mans and archbishop of Reims, family lineage and cultic traditions went hand in hand as sustaining elements in an individual personality that depended on strong interpersonal and patronal bonds to navigate often-hostile surroundings. Gervais bore responsibility for creating his own enemies, of course, and his defence against those enemies depended on the strength of his social network – his personal friends and the ‘friends’ of God. The network’s strength was in turn augmented by its connection to the past. Memories of patria and kin inscribed in annals, miracle stories, and physical objects lent a tangible 73

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Including, for example, at Reims from c. 1150–60, which featured a seated Virgin bearing Christ and a sceptre in her right hand; see Desportes, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. III (Diocèse de Reims), 20–1. Capitular sealing practices are still poorly known across Belgica Secunda, though BenoîtMichel Tock has published two studies, for Arras and Thérouanne, which note the seals used (including a standing Virgin Mary at Arras): B.-M. Tock, ‘Les chartes promulgées par le chapitre cathédral d’Arras au XIIe siècle’, Revue Mabillon, n s, 2 (1991), 49–97, at 54, and B.-M. Tock, ‘Le chapitre cathédral de Thérouanne et ses chartes au XIIe siècle’, Revue du nord, 86 (2004), 633–48. For communal seals, see Bedos, Corpus des sceaux français. See Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims’, 809–11; for the seal, Demouy, ‘Les sceaux des archevêques de Reims’, 694–5. Manasses’ successor, Renaud I, who sought to restore the archiepiscopacy after Manasses (see on this B.-M.Tock, ‘The political use of piety in episcopal and comital charters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, in Bijsterveld, Teunis, and Wareham, Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power, 19–35, at 29), reverted to a seal-type bearing the image of a bishop.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 quality to that past, multiplying the number of the archbishop’s familiares and furnishing him with a treasury of gifts and tokens from which to enlarge his entourage. Family memories, once they became institutional memories (for example, in the annals kept at Saint-Denis and the cathedral archives), bolstered the interdependence between the archbishop and those communities and grafted on to their relationship reciprocal bonds of obligation, from prayer to political support. As we turn now to investigate Gervais’ role as founder and reformer of monasteries, we will see these patterns, and Gervais’ clear-eyed sense of the power of history, in another context. rebuilder of past glories: gervais as paterfamilias of monastic revival at reims To the extent that Gervais’ archiepiscopacy enjoys a modern reputation, it is nearly always on account of his restoration of three clerical communities in Reims: the Benedictines of Saint-Nicaise (c. 1055–60, 1061), and the regular canons of Saint-Timothée (1064) and Saint-Denis (c. 1063–4, 1067).75 None of these houses was established ex novo; an existing church stood on each site. In large measure because of his rebuilding and endowment of these institutions, Gervais has earned nearly unanimous praise as a reformer. He has been similarly tagged as an endorser of papal initiatives for his comparatively early support of regular canons.76 These ideals ultimately leeched into the posthumous medieval mythography surrounding Gervais, and were from there forwarded to the present by seventeenth-century historians and antiquarians, none more influential than Guillaume Marlot, the modern father of rémois ecclesiastical history, who referred to Gervais as ‘le grand et magnifique restaurateur des églises de nostre ville’.77 Such evaluations have effectively obscured the pragmatic and political side of the archbishop’s building programme. 75

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Outside Reims proper he also reorganized the priory of Senuc and placed it under the oversight of the abbot of Saint-Remi; G. Marlot, Histoire de la ville, cité et université de Reims, métropolitaine de la Gaule Belgique (Reims, 1843–1846), vol. II, 610–11; F. Dolbeau, ‘Un vol de reliques dans le diocèse de Reims au milieu du XIe siècle’, Revue bénédictine, 91 (1981), 172–84. AA, 215 n. 1; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 88–9 and 609: ‘un réformateur à la manière carolingienne’; P. Demouy, ‘Chancellerie archiépiscopale et province ecclésiastique: l’exemple de Reims (989–1175)’, in Haidacher and Köfler, Die Diplomatik der Bischofsurkunde vor 1250, 243–54, at 244. His conclusion is similar to that of Bur, La formation du comté de Champagne, 208 n. 50: ‘the last great representative of the Carolingian tradition’; see also Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, 452–3. P. P. O’Keefe, ‘A History of the Metropolitan Office at Rheims from Hincmar (845–882) to the Romana Ecclesia of Innocent IV (1243–1254)’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Fordham University (1971), 116, 121, perceives in Gervais a loyal backer of papal initiatives. Marlot, Histoire de la ville, cité et université de Reims, vol. II, 607; more effusive praise follows at vol. III, 144.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims From the perspective of a traditional ecclesiastical historiography that views the eleventh-century reform as a kind of moral and material rejuvenation of Christendom, Gervais undoubtedly deserves praise. Indeed, the archbishop advertised his role as a restorer of churches in the arengae to his charters for the same institutions, and saw that similar language was employed in royal diplomas. But in what sense did Gervais understand his work of restoration? Did he see it as an extension of a broader programme of church reform? An act of pastoral care? A testament to his personal religious zeal? The surviving charters, which date to the second half of his episcopacy (1061–7) emphasize two motives repeatedly: his personal investment of wealth and labour in the work of restoration; and his desire to return the religious institutions to a hallowed, primeval state from their current condition of neglect and decrepitude.78 Such depictions of once grand and historic churches fallen into ruins and brought back to life cloaked the politics of patronage in the language of ministerium. It might be useful to begin with Gervais’ medieval reputation as a builder and reformer. An unedited and anonymously written account of the translation of the relics of St Nicasius to Reims, probably composed at Saint-Nicaise not long after the archbishop’s death, tells the story of the abbey’s rebuilding.79 In the suburbs of Reims, it begins, there was a church ʻmarvellously adorned with columns and golden vaults, with glass throughout, shimmering with precious little stones; gloriously founded by Jovinus, a Roman prefect sent from Rome to Gallia, by whom it was called the Jovinianaʼ.80 By the mid-eleventh century, few signs of the church’s former glory remained. Thanks to the passage of time and ‘the 78

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For an overview of archiepiscopal building at Reims, see F. G. Hirschmann, Stadtplanung, Bauprojekte und Großbaustellen im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert. Vergleichende Studien zu den Kathedralstädten westlich des Rheins (Stuttgart, 1998), 172–96, esp. 194–6. I have employed for what follows Reims, BM 1411, fos. 5r–9v (an early thirteenth-century legendary of Saint-Niciase) and Brussels, BR 8974–5, fos. 79r–84v (a seventeenth-century copy, made from the notes of Nicolas Belfort/de Beaufort). The latter contains excerpts from Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae; the account of the translatio of Nicasius’ relics from Tournai to Reims; and a series of miracle stories (including BHL 2203a). The translatio account and later debates over the relics’ authenticity are edited in Marlot, Metropolis Remensis historia, vol. II, 129–30, and summarized in Marlot, Histoire de la ville, cité et université de Reims, vol. III, 156–60; see also J. Cousin, Histoire de Tournay, ou Quatres livres des chroniques, annales, ou demonstrations du christianisme de l’evesché de Tournay (Douai, 1619–1620), vol. III, 49–52; and Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 310–11. While some of the miracles in the collection are dated and/or appear in the works of other authors (for example, Guibert of Nogent), the uncertain tradition of the thirteenth-century legendary makes a precise dating for the texts difficult. What matters most for our purposes is that the tradition developed after Gervais’ death and is consistent with other posthumous remembrances of his building activity. Reims, BM 1411, fo. 7r: ‘miro columnarum ornatu, arcubus auro, et uitro lapillis interposito micantibus, a iouino urbis rome prefecto, ad gallias uero a romanis destinato, a quo et iouiniana dicitur’. On Jovinus, see Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise de Reims, 190 n. 3.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 carelessness of the townspeople’ (civium incuria), the church had become a ruin, a den for wild animals and livestock. While out for a walk one day with his household, Gervais came upon the ramshackle building and inquired about its origins. Told it was the basilica dedicated to Reims’ saintly bishop Nicasius, his sister Eutropia, and other local martyrs, he ducked inside to have a look. There, gazing upon the faded glory of its stonework, he could only sigh: ‘O glorious house, how neglected you lie, and virtually destroyed!’81 Gervais resolved to rebuild. Using his own money (infinitarum divitiarum copia), he restored the basilica and contemplated how to return the relics of its martyrs to their former resting place. A cleric from Tournai heard about the archbishop’s desire, and, when a fire in his church provided a window of opportunity, absconded with the bones of Nicasius and Eutropia.82 When the cleric brought them to Reims the archbishop rejoiced, then hesitated: as the Historia of Flodoard made clear, the cathedral of Sainte-Marie already possessed the complete body of Nicasius, retrieved from Tournai by Archbishop Fulco in the late ninth century.83 A trial by fire would thus be necessary to prove the stolen bones’ authenticity. A blaze was kindled, and Gervais ordered the clerk to pass the relics through, adding in a jesting tone, ‘If those aren’t the relics of the glorious bishop, you’ll find out soon enough’.84 When the thief blanched, he was struck blind and fell to the ground, letting a piece of bone slip into the fire, where it was quickly enveloped. At that point, a man (presumably another member of the clergy) burst upon the scene, demanding to know why a bone shard had suddenly appeared on the nearby altar of the ‘palatine church’, perhaps a reference to the cathedral.85 The reliquary containing the known relics of Nicasius was then produced from the cathedral, and the contents were compared with the bones from Tournai. Gervais, as though solving a jigsaw puzzle, assembled an intact skeleton using the two bone caches, and thus confirmed the Tournai relics’ authenticity. His work finally done (demum viri

81 82

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Reims, BM 1411, fo. 7r: ‘O domus gloriosa quanta negligentia pene destructa iaces’. Cousin, Histoire de Tournay, vol. III, 51, ventured an opinion that the actual year of the relic theft may have been 1054, when Henry III marched on Tournai and set fire to the city (see Grierson, Les annales de Saint-Pierre de Gand, 26 (s.a. 1054); 157 (s.a. 1054). HRE, 78. On this point, the anonymous translatio is silent. Sainte-Marie’s tradition was that the entire body of Nicasius was buried behind its main altar, not just a part of it. Reims, BM 1411, fos. 7v–8r: ‘Mox ad iussionem allatis in sartagine prunis ardentibus ut in ipsis proiciantur precipit, alludensque ait, “Nisi gloriose pontifex te eripueris, statim igne isto cremaberis”’. Ibid., fo. 8r: ‘Cumque ad inuicem fabularentur et secum quererent, subito quidam ingreditur interrogans quis et cur illa ossa super altare quod est in ecclesia que iuxta palatium posita posuisset’.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims industria quievit), the abbey, with the bones of its namesake safely repatriated, could be consecrated.86 Mention of Gervais’ wealth and labour, present in the royal charters for Saint-Nicaise, appear in the translatio account as well. So does report of the abbey’s age and neglected condition (vetustate et incuria) prior to the archbishop’s intervention. The translatio account’s relevant language is, in fact, lifted directly from the abbey’s charters.87 For example, the episcopal charter establishing Saint-Denis noted that he had rebuilt the edifice from the ground up, and that this particular act of reconstruction had followed ‘the restoration of other churches which had appeared destitute and deserted from ancient times, as much by old age as by negligence’.88 Gervais’ 1064 act for the canonry of Saint-Timothée likewise heralded his care in returning that house, which had declined over time ‘partly from adverse conditions and partly from neglect’ to its ‘former upright state’.89 Restoration – Gervais preferred to use verbs like renovare, reformare, reparare – meant an outlay of his personal wealth to replace what had been lost. In the case of Saint-Nicaise, a hundred pounds bought the abbey from the count of Champagne, while SaintDenis, Gervais claimed, was ‘completely restored by my wealth and labour’ (Ecclesia itaque meo sumptu et labore ad integrum restituta) and the necessary possessions for it ‘acquired by my authority and labour’ (Quae omnia . . . meo jure et labore adquisita).90 86

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Ibid.: ‘Adhuc uero mirabilis pontificis animus nullam habens certitudinem, aliquantulum fluctuabat, dicens, “Quemlibet sanctum hoc facile posse, deposita itaque quadam archam aperta, in qua reliqum corporis beati Nichasii in ecclesia beate uirginis Marie hactenus honorifice seruatur”, et os apponens ossi utpote unius corporis membra equalia inuenit. Sic demum faciata atque certificata uiri industria, nil amplius querens quieuit’. Compare the 28 September 1066 charter of Philip I for Saint-Nicaise (Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 26, 77; Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 15, 190): ‘Noverit . . . Gervasium venerabilem Remorum archiepiscopum, quandam abbatiam in archiepiscopatu suo construxisse et que ei suo labore et industria adquisita sunt ut eidem nostre confirmationis scripto corroboremus, nostram regiam serenitatem sedulo postulare. Est enim ecclesia in suburbio Remense posita miro opere quondam a Jovino prefecto edificata que in primordio archiepiscopatus sui ab eo inventa est vetustate et in curia (sic) magna ex parte consumpta’. AA, 216–17. GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 24: ‘piae sedulitatis opera adhibere curavimus ut eam in antiquum honestatis statum repareremus’. Even the priory of Senuc was so described: ‘[the priory] his modernis temporibus ad tantum neglectum devenit ut qui eam custodirent vel pro loci dignitate divinum inibi servitium exsolverent, defuerint’. See Dolbeau, ‘Un vol de reliques’, 183. Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 15, 191; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 310. Thibaud of Blois-Champagne sold the abbey to Gervais sometime before 14 May 1061. It had been one of Thibaud’s residences, part of the possessions and lands in the pagus Remensis that were secured by Thibaud’s father Odo II in 1021–3, at the expense of the archbishops, and held in fief from Sainte-Marie. See also Desportes, ‘Les archevêques de Reims et les droits comtaux’, 82–4. For Saint-Denis, see AA, 218.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 It was not uncommon for episcopal charters in the eleventh century to comment on the dilapidated state of church buildings along with their clergy’s tepid religious mores as a prelude to restructuring the community.91 In Cambrai, Gervais’ contemporary Lietbert (1051–76), another rebuilder of conventual communities who is the focus of the following chapter, favoured similar language in his charters.92 Lietbert artfully, and repeatedly, invoked the wisdom and example of Solomon, who, ‘having built the Temple of the Lord, heard the revelation of the divine promise’.93 The same charter adds that in the new dispensation, the apostles and saints were the church-builders and destroyers of pagan shrines, and for that are called the friends of God. Whoever builds a church and thereby strives to exalt God should merit the same designation.94 Gervais does not employ language this direct about the sanctity of church-building, but he clearly shared Lietbert’s sentiments. The rebuilt edifices were pious offerings, drawn from his personal resources and carried out by his own exertion, gifts to God for his salvation. The most direct statement of Gervais’ understanding of his episcopal obligation for the material restoration of churches and the rewards to be reaped is found in his 1064 charter for the collegial church of Saint-Timothée. Providing we diligently apply ourselves for the usefulness and uprightness of the church committed to us by [God]; and preserve unshaken whatever was ordered in it by the vigilant care of our predecessors for the cult of divine religion; and strive to repair whatever has fallen into ruin from negligence or other misfortunes; we believe we will reap manifold wealth from the daily wage we are owed from our paterfamilias, and hear the acclaim of a just recompense.95 91

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For example, the 1025 charter of Archbishop Ebles of Reims for the abbey of Mouzon, reads in part: ‘sed negligentia et incuria suorum antecessorum aliquandiu substractam, amore Dei et causa parvitatis loci seu remedio animae meae antecessorumque meorum ad supplementum victus fratrum inibi . . . militantium restituerem’. See Bur, Chronique de Mouzon, no. 6, 195. See Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, nos. 2.01, 80; 2.04, 93; 2.05, 98; the latter, a 1066 charter for Saint-Aubert of Cambrai, reads: ‘quibus iniunctam seruitutem negligentibus coepit locus ille uilescere et in dies a prioris honorificentiae statu declinare. Hoc ergo considerans, condolui coepique animo uoluere qualiter melius ad diuinum cultum possem releuare’. Ibid., 2.09, 115; 2.10, 118; 2.17, 144; here 115: ‘Ita namque Salomon in ueteri testamento, [ae]dificato templo Domini, audiuit reuelationem diuine˛ promissionis’. Ibid., 2.09, 115: ‘in nouo uero testamento apostoli et sancti successores eorum, e˛dificando aecc[l]esias et des[t]ruendo delubra, amici Dei appellati sunt. Vnde proculdubio credimus existere similiter amicum Dei quisquis aecclesiam Dei construere et exaltere studuerit’. GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 24: ‘Si utilitate et honestati ecclesiae nobis ab eo commissae diligenter intendimus et quaecumque in ea, ad divinae religionis cultum provida praedecessorum nostrorum vigilantia, ordinata sunt, inconvulsa servamus; et quae ex his negligentia vel aliquibus infortuniis deperierunt, reparare contendimus, patri familias nostro de credito nobis talento multiplex lucrum reportaturos, et euge certissimae remunerationis nos credimus audituros’. Compare Matthew 25:21–23. The charter was promulgated during an episcopal assembly or synod. On the themes of labour and recompense see below, chapter 9.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims Gervais’ labour would, this charter acknowledges, be duly compensated. A second miracle story from the translation accout of Nicasius later confirmed the archbishop’s intuition. It tells of a knight, once part of Gervais’ household at Le Mans, who travelled to Reims while en route to Rome. At Reims his former lord welcomed him warmly, then sent him on his way. After paying his devotions at the tombs of the apostles, the knight decided to visit the shrine of Sant’Angelo in Monte Gargano. On his way he sought out a famous recluse. The hermit inquired where he was from, and on learning that he was from Le Mans, asked him if he knew Gervais. When he replied that he did, the old man told him of the archbishop’s recent death. Asked how he knew, the hermit replied that one night, while singing psalms, he had heard a ruckus outside his window. There he saw two men, who identified themselves as angels of Satan and explained their outrage: when they had tried to carry off the archbishop’s soul, they were violently prevented from doing so by two beheaded martyrs. When the knight returned to Reims he confirmed the archbishop’s death. These headless saints, the anonymous author concluded, must be Dionysius and Nicasius, whose churches and communities Gervais had restored. His eternal life was ultimately redeemed by his building campaigns.96 Two additional aspects of the charters and Gervais’ choice of foundations bear mention. The first concerns the institutions selected, and the conditions of their endowment: all three (Saint-Nicaise, Saint-Timothée, Saint-Denis) were dedicated to beheaded martyrs connected to the venerable episcopal past of the city. Saints Timothy and Apollinaris, and their associate, the priest Maurus, though not bishops, were revered as the first Christian martyrs in the region and enjoyed the dedication of numerous parishes in their names.97 The basilica dedicated to them lay along the Roman Via Agrippa towards Châlons, adjacent to the suburb of Saint-Remi among a cluster of early necropolises.98 The site quickly became associated with miraculous cures, and the martyrs’ tomb was later richly endowed by the archbishop Tilpin (748–94). Later ‘holy fathers’ – Silvanus and Silvinianus, Tonantius and Jovinus – were all interred there. Saint-Timothée accrued further historical notoriety as the burial place St Remigius chose for himself.99 In more recent times, however, its reputation had declined. Flodoard noted in the mid-tenth century that 96

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Ibid., fos. 81v–82r. His rebuilding of local monasteries endured in local memories. Archbishop Manasses II specifically recalled Gervais’ restoration of Saint-Denis, which he had found fit only for pigs, in a charter of 1100; see Gousset, Les actes de la province ecclésiastique de Reims, vol. II, 150–2. Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 15–16, 265, 281–2. Ibid., 281; Hirschmann, Stadtplanung, 173, 180–1; Sot, Un historien et son église, 671–6. HRE, 67–71, 100.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 the once robust community of canons had dwindled to a single priest (ad unius est redacta presbiteri titulum), and Gervais drew on Flodoard’s Historia to provide context both for his own endowment and the rehabilitative work done earlier on the canonry by his predecessor Adalbero (d. 989).100 Saint-Denis’ episcopal associations were even more prestigious. Its first mention is again found in the pages of Flodoard, who notes that Archbishop Hincmar installed in the church the bones of St Rigobert, an eighth-century archbishop of Reims (d. 743/4) and patron saint of the canons of Sainte-Marie. Saint-Denis served as the chapter’s mausoleum, a mere stone’s throw from the cathedral.101 The early church eventually had to be demolished in order for the walls of the city to be reconstructed following the Norman incursions, and it was not rebuilt until the episcopate of Herveus (900–22). Archbishop Adalbero, as he did with many local churches during his reign, later took Saint-Denis under his wing and expanded its liturgical and architectural connections with the cathedral.102 Gervais later bought Saint-Denis from the chapter, prior to his massive reconstruction of the edifice. Finally there was Saint-Nicaise, the seat of Bishop Nicasius, the organizer and effective builder of the Christian community and first cathedral church of Reims; its tenth archbishop; martyr to the Vandals; paterfamilias to his Christian flock.103 Nicasius’ life and death are celebrated in the registers above the doorway of the Portal of Saints on the northern transept of the gothic cathedral. His burial place was the so-called basilica Joviniana, which he shared with his sainted sister Eutropia, opposite the bourg Saint-Remi along the same Roman road where Saint-Timothée nestled.104 According to Flodoard, who is again our best informant of the necrological traditions of Reims’ early bishops, he there joined his five episcopal predecessors – all saints – in their eternal rest.105 Gervais of Château-du-Loir took all three institutions, and with them their episcopal histories and patronal connections, firmly in hand. He had read Flodoard, and cited Flodoard’s History of the Church of Reims in 100

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Ibid., 70; GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 24: ‘ad titulum unius presbyteri esse redactam’. Also Hirschmann, Stadtplanung, 186–7; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 280–1. HRE, 164–6; Poirier de la Coutansais, ‘Saint-Denis de Reims’, 104; Hirschmann, Stadtplanung, 179–80; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 324–5. Rigobert’s relics were soon joined by those of St Theodulf, an early abbot of Saint-Thierry of Reims. Bur, Chronique de Mouzon, 170; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 324. See, on Adalbero’s other reforms, M. Bur, ‘Saint-Thierry et le renouveau monastique dans le diocèse de Reims au Xe siècle’, in M. Bur (ed.), Saint-Thierry, une abbaye du VIe au XXe siècle. Actes du Colloque international d’Histoire monastique Reims–Saint-Thierry, 11 au 14 octobre 1976 (Saint-Thierry, 1979), 39–49. HRE, 74: ‘prorsus instituit aut cum eis [his flock] pariter vivere aut pariter, quod eos paterfamilias perpeti vellet, sufferre, ne fugiendo Christi videretur’. Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 16–19. Hirschmann, Stadtplanung, 180, 194–5. 105 HRE, 100.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims his charter for Saint-Timothée. He inscribed himself as a continuator of that same history, portraying his rebuilding work as an extension of his saintly predecessors’. To take a convenient example, in King Philip’s 1066 charter for Saint-Nicaise, in language which Gervais in all probability had himself proposed, he is praised for restoring the abbey ‘for the love of God and his holy predecessor’, Nicasius.106 Gervais held the abbacy of Saint-Nicaise until the year of his death, and future archbishops retained the right, along with the chapter, to elect its abbot.107 As we have already seen, the archbishop was roundly denounced for seizing the prebends and possessions of cathedral canons, and despoiling other churches, in order to endow his new foundation. Meanwhile, he delegated his authority over Saint-Denis and Saint-Timothée to trusted allies. The newly installed canons of Saint-Timothée were put under the stewardship of Abbot Herimar of Saint-Remi, a steadfast associate, and exempted from the parish jurisdiction of the city’s archdeacons and archpriests.108 Gervais conceded Herimar and his successors the power to name the canons and their dean, and the cathedral chapter relinquished its right to an annual meal on the saints’ feast day. But ultimate jurisdiction over the canonry Gervais left for himself.109 He pursued a similar tack with Saint-Denis, installing a trusted friend in the cathedral chapter, the provost Odalric. Odalric’s appointment was purely personal: oversight of the canonry did not pertain to the provostship of the chapter, and its holder was answerable in jurisdictional matters to the archbishop alone. The canonry’s foundational support came from a generous mixture of altars, archiepiscopal vineyards, allods, and mills, as well as rents.110 The private nature of the arrangement is underlined by the absence of witnesses or a public 106

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Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 15, 190; and Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 26, 77: ‘ob amorem Dei et sancti predecessoris sui studuit que in ea omnino corruerant a fundamentis restaurare’. Gervais signed and witnessed the charter, and although he is noted in it as having relinquished his formal duties as Philip’s royal chancellor to the (working) scribe Baldwin (ad vicem Gervasii archiepiscopi subscripsit), that he was present for its drawing up seems probable. Only in 1067 does the first named abbot appear, a monk of Saint-Remi named Remigius, chosen by Gervais. See the 1067 papal bull, addressed generically ‘to the abbot’ of Saint-Nicaise: CosséDurlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 17, 193; Meinert, ‘Libelli de discordia’, 272. No abbot is named in the royal charters of 1061 and 1066, which were signed in the abbey itself and witnessed by large groups of local clergy and laity. Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 282. Herimar witnessed his 1064 charter; assisted in his restitution of the relics of St Oricle and restoration of the priory of Senuc, where they were housed (Dolbeau, ‘Un vol de reliques’, 179–80); witnessed the 1066 charter of Philip for Saint-Nicaise; and was present at Gervais’ bedside for his final testament. Gervais would be later commemorated in the stained glass of the abbey church. GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 24: ‘Preterea notum esse volumus ut sint immunes ab omni archidiaconorum et archipresbyterorum exactione positi tantum sub sancti Remigii dominatione, sub nostra tamen potestate et abbatis subjectione quemadmodum et monachi ipsius sancti Remigii’. AA, 218–19; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 325.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 reading of the charter – only Odalric, as the new head of Saint-Denis, signed and bore witness.111 When Gervais had arrived in Reims in 1055, the two most powerful religious institutions in the city were without doubt Saint-Remi and the cathedral chapter. Despite his antagonistic relationship with elements of the chapter, it would clearly be misleading to see in Gervais’ restoration of Saint-Denis, Saint-Nicaise, and Saint-Timothée a purely hostile posture towards the canons of Sainte-Marie. At Saint-Denis, for example, the cathedral chapter retained rights of free burial and a prayer association with its regular canons. The language of the charters, however, leaves no doubt about the archbishop’s moral authority and dominant role in these houses’ restoration. Recalling the language of renovation and restoration prevalent in Gervais’ charters, and his characterization of Saint-Denis’ desuetude, who bore the final blame for its decline? As Gervais unmistakeably put it, the neglected church pertained ‘to the mense of the canons of my holy lady, the mother of God’.112 It fell to the prelate to install a new community, reflecting reformed mores and customs, in the canons’ dependent church. Similarly, the rhetoric of institutional disrepair in his charters situates Gervais in the tradition of the abbeys’ founders and early protectors, namely the martyred saints Nicasius, Dionysius, and Timothy, and, by inference, its builders and protectors like Remigius. It establishes him in the heroic position of rebuilder of the city’s Christian past, and – in the same vein as the city’s religious founders immortalized in the writing of Flodoard – it positions him as a great, even saintly, bishop-founder. Thus the charters describe in detail the historical dimensions of decline, offer reasons for it – the carelessness of predecessors, the passage of time – and herald an age of rebirth under Gervais. If Gervais is seen as a continuator of Adalbero, and before Adalbero of Nicasius, Remigius, and others, it is surely because he was astute enough to see the historical and political value in the connection.113 Lastly, I would suggest that a reading of the spatial dimension of Gervais’ ecclesiastical reforms within the urban landscape of Reims presents further evidence for a broader political strategy. All of the archbishop’s foundations were suburban. Saint-Nicaise and Saint-Timothée were clustered near the bourg Saint-Remi, where Gervais enjoyed a 111

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A papal bull of the same year (1067) guaranteeing Saint-Denis’ privileges is considered suspect (AA, 219–20; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 325–6; the bull is published in Marlot, Metropolis Remensis historia, vol. II, 142). AA, 217: ‘[I, Gervais] non distuli, destructa reaedificans, quae fundata non erant, a fundamentis construens. Et quia ad mensam canonicorum Dominae meae S. Dei genitricis pertinebat’. Compare Bur, ‘Saint-Thierry et le renouveau monastique’, 48, who calls Gervais a ‘véritable continuateur de l’œuvre d’Adalbéron’.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims friendly relationship with Herimar and the monks of Saint-Remi. SaintDenis was also extra-mural, just outside the city’s southern wall.114 Did these foundations represent a conscious attempt to shift the axis of archiepiscopal patronage away from the cathedral? Gervais’ interactions with Saint-Nicaise hint at it. His confirmation of its claim to possess a portion of St Nicasius’ relics, for which the later translatio story provided written verification, led to a centuries-long dispute with the cathedral chapter over the bones’ authenticity.115 So does his confident bestowal of jurisdictional privileges over Saint-Denis to Odalric, and his collaborative reform of Saint-Timothée (and the priory of Senuc) with Herimar. Rather than build partnerships with the cathedral chapter, where he was – and appears to have remained – something of an outsider, he invested himself in the history and power of the episcopal necropolises and foundations in the bourg Saint-Remi.116 Many years ago, Michel Bur concluded his study of monastic reform in tenth-century Reims with a general observation that, in the city of Remigius, ‘reform express[ed] the will of the archbishops to put their diocese in order’.117 New foundations in this period were rare, and remained so throughout the eleventh century; existing communities were rehabilitated, and institutional representatives of new monastic orders, above all Cluny, were barred from entering. Management of monastic life was an archiepiscopal concern, an expression of the archbishop’s private will and personal authority. To a far greater degree than in many places, Reims’ written history, above all Flodoard’s depiction of local church tradition and the deeds of its bishops, contributed to this view. Gervais clearly saw himself in this tradition. He refers to it in his charters, and his reformist impulses were driven by his own personality and understanding of his place in the city’s historical tradition. It may have influenced his actions; it undoubtedly influenced his representation of his actions. Like Nicasius another paterfamilias of the local church, he and he alone would raise up the city’s abbeys from their dust and disrepair. But Gervais of Château-du-Loir was no mere reader of history. He was also its scribe.

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These churches were, it should be pointed out, not the sole beneficiaries of the archbishop’s largesse; he also bequeathed an altar to the collegial church of Saint-Symphorien, inside the city walls; Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 278. Marlot, Histoire de la ville, cité et université de Reims, vol. III, 159–60. From the chapter, only Odalric and the archdeacon Odo appeared in his charters. A chaplain named Drogo was also by his side on numberous occasions; see Reims, BM 15, fos. 2v and 23r; R. Charles and Vicomte Menjot d’Elbenne (eds.), Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Vincent du Mans (Ordre de Saint Benoît) (Mamers and Le Mans, 1886–1913), nos. 234–5, 144. Bur, ‘Saint-Thierry et le renouveau monastique’, 47.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 gervais’ sermon on st donatian, saint-nicaise, and count baldwin v of flanders We may glimpse Gervais’ fashioning of history and his connections to his predecessors through two final, precious documents: his sermon on the exemplary virtues of St Donatian, seventh archbishop of Reims, and an accompanying laudatory epistle he addressed to Baldwin V, the count of Flanders. These texts celebrate the past and acknowledge the tenuous condition of human memory. Ever susceptible to erasure by the destructive power of wars and human negligence, the ‘happy antiquity’ (felix illa antiquitas) of Donatian’s lifetime offered up models of virtuous conduct for the present. The resuscitation of St Donatian’s cult through the efforts of Gervais and Baldwin of Flanders also brought to life, in a pattern we have already remarked, a rather more pragmatic political relationship. Donatian, seventh archbishop of Reims, was, in Gervais’ time, an historical enigma. His hagiographical dossier, consisting of edifying sermons, pseudo-biographical tales, and miracle stories, was assembled in stages over a period of more than 150 years, primarily at the impetus of the collegiate church of Saint-Donatien of Bruges, which housed his relics, and the counts of Flanders, its patrons.118 Historians traditionally have attributed little of historical value to the dossier’s contents, which explains in part why Gervais’ sermon on Donatian remains unedited and unpublished.119 Precise knowledge of Donatian at Reims was virtually non-existent in the tenth century. All Flodoard could say about him was that his relics were revered in the maritime districts of the diocese of Tournai for their wonder-working.120 By Gervais’ time, Donatian’s bones had resided in Bruges for at least a century, and perhaps for much longer.121 A first 118

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See B. Meijns, ‘Hoe een heilige verdienstelijk werd. Het beeld van Sint-Donatianus van Brugge in de elfde-eeuwse mirakelverhalen’, in R. Bauer, M. De Smet, B. Meijns, and P. Trio (eds.), In de voetsporen van Jacob van Maerlant: Liber amicorum Raf De Keyser. Verzameling opstellen over middeleeuwse geschiedenis en geschiedenisdidactiek (Leuven, 2002), 114–39. (My sincere thanks to Prof. Meijns for furnishing me with a copy of her article.) The dossier that has come down to us was not completed until sometime in the late 1090s, at the earliest. It survives in two, late twelfthor early thirteenth-century legendaries from Cistercian monasteries in Flanders, Brussels BR 7460, fos. 72rb–88ra (Vaucelles), and Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque de l’Agglomeration 716 V (formerly VII), fos. 109vb–125vb (Clairmarais), though it was more widely diffused. On the sermon attributed to Rather, see F. Dolbeau, ‘Un sermon inédit de Rathier pour la fête de Saint Donatien’, Analecta Bollandiana, 98 (1980), 335–62, here at 337. P. Grierson, ‘The translation of the relics of St. Donatian to Bruges’, Revue bénédictine, 49 (1937), 170–90, dismissed it, at 171 n. 3, as ‘of no importance’. Other elements of the dossier have been edited and/or translated, however; see below. HRE, 72. Precisely when they arrived in Bruges is uncertain. They may initially have been given by Archbishop Ebbo of Reims to Anskar of Hamburg c.830–2; installed by Anskar in the cella of Torhout; and then passed from Torhout to Bruges sometime after 862, the first attestable date for

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims inquiry about Donatian seems to have come from Bruges just before Flodoard began working on his history of the church of Reims. Between 940–6, Count Arnulf I (918–65) wrote to his brother-in-law, Archbishop Hugh of Reims (925–31, 940–6) seeking additional information about the saintly bishop’s life. Hugh could furnish his relative nothing definitive from the Reims church archives, but may have attached a short sermon on Donatian’s virtues commissioned from Rather, occasional bishop of Verona and one-time monk of Lobbes. Rather apparently composed the blandly titled Pauca de uita et actibus sanctissimi Donatiani presulis [A Few Things concerning the Life and Deeds of the most holy Bishop Donatian] between 944–6.122 Thus when Gervais prepared his own letter and accompanying sermon on Donatian for Baldwin V, the saint’s extant dossier was slim indeed.123

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Baldwin I of Flanders, who is attributed with their translation. See Grierson, ‘Translation of the relics of St. Donatian’, 180–90; Meijns, ‘Hoe een heilige verdienstelijk werd’, 115–17; and for the broader context of comital relic management in Flanders, E. Bozóky, ‘La politique des reliques des premiers comtes de Flandre (fin du IXe–fin du XIe siècle)’, in E. Bozóky and A.-M. Helvétius (eds.), Les reliques: objets, cultes, symboles. Actes du colloque international de l’Université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale (Boulogne-sur-Mer), 4–6 septembre 1997 (Turnhout, 1999), 271–92, at 274–5. Dolbeau, ‘Un sermon inédit’, 349, 351–3. There are nonetheless significant questions raised, but not answered, by Dolbeau’s hypothesis. It is certainly possible that Hugh could have received the request from the canons of Bruges and commissioned Rather, who happened to be at Reims, to write the sermon on the spot, which he then conveyed to the canons. As Dolbeau notes (352), Rather’s sermon follows Hugh’s letter in the hagiographical dossier. As he also states (351–2, 354), Rather’s sermon was not directed to the canons of Bruges, but to the city and church of Reims (‘Septimum, gloriosa Remorum civitas, tibi a Deo datum sollempniter recolentes episcopum Donatianum reverentissimum’). However, it would have been an extraordinary coincidence indeed should Arnulf have written to Hugh asking about Donatian at precisely the same time that Rather was penning his Pauca de uita et actibus sanctissimi Donatiani presulis. There are two more issues to confront as well. First, a phrase in Hugh’s letter to Arnulf (‘Septiformis sancti spiritus gratia sensus vestri illuminet intima’) – or, more precisely, its opening words – which Dolbeau adduces (352) refers to Rather’s sermon (‘Septimum, gloriosa Remorum civitas, tibi a Deo datum sollempniter recolentes episcopum Donatianum reverentissimum, septiformem nobis adesse quesumus spiritum’), conforms precisely to a passage from a charter of Louis the Pious for Reims done at the request of Archbishop Ebbo and published by Flodoard (HRE, 180): ‘in qua auctore deo et cooperante sancto Remigio gens nostra Francorum cum equivoco nostro rege eiusdem gentis sacri fontis baptismate ablui ac septiformis spiritus sancti gratia illustrari promeruit’. The phrase, then, is not specific to Rather, and is in fact duplicated in the HRE, which may be its ultimate source. As a final objection, why would Flodoard have failed to incorporate at least some elements of the sermon his friend and colleague Rather had written about St Donatian, just a few years before he began work on his own Historia Remensis ecclesiae? Besides the above-mentioned documents, it had been further augmented by an independent miracle story about a blind woman from West Frisia cured at the saint’s tomb in 1011, a story of which Gervais shows no knowledge. See Meijns, ‘Hoe een heilige verdienstelijk werd’, 118–23. The letters of Arnulf and Hugh were edited by Siard Van Dyck (1758–1830), with minor discrepancies, in the prefatory matter to the Miracula s. Donatiani, AASS October, vol. VI, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1868), 496–7. The commentarius praevius by Van Dyck, ‘De s. Donatiano episcopo Rhemensi confessore Brugis in Flandria’, runs from 487–502, and also includes extracts from Gervais’ letter (497–8) and two short passages from the sermo (498), with the missing sections from Van Dyck’s excerpt of the letter supplied in the Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Gervais’ sermon on Donatian is a work of pure craft. It has never been closely studied, nor even dated more precisely than to the archbishop’s reign (1055–67).124 In truth, when considered in light of its internal structure – much of Gervais’ Sermo de beato Donatiano is based on common hagiographical tropes and biblical allusion, adaptation, or quotation – there is little to sustain the casual reader’s interest. As Rather had done before him, Gervais engages in wordplay on Donatian’s status as seventh bishop of Reims. He also puns on the etymological connection between the saint’s name and the noun/verb pair of donum (gift) and dono-donare (to give as a gift).125 François Dolbeau is certainly correct when he asserts that Gervais knew and made use of Rather’s earlier sermon when composing his own. The archbishop also combed through Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae for the few biographical tidbits on his subject he could glean, as well as Hincmar’s famous Vita sancti Remigii.126 The Sermo is, in a word, derivative. Yet when read with an eye towards its audience – namely Count Baldwin of Flanders and his family – the archbishop’s intention in writing, and the historical events of his archiepiscopacy, the historical worth of Gervais’ Sermo shines through. In May 1061, King Philip I and a group of his councillors and familiares arrived in Reims. The visit, part of a royal tour of Compiègne, Reims, and Senlis, was the second such perambulation in the nine-year-old Philip’s young reign.127 The visit was probably orchestrated to demonstrate the monarchy’s vigilance and to undergird the unity of the fragile kingdom, concern for which Gervais had aired in a letter to Pope Nicholas II written at about the same time.128 Whatever its purpose,

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Bibliothecae Regiae Bruxellensis, part 1/vol. II, Codices Latini membranei, ed. Hagiographi Bollandiani (Brussels, 1889), 10–11. (The Catalogus codicum enumerates the full contents of Brussels, BR 7460, and its companion volume, BR 7461, at 1–31.) Another element of the dossier, the Tractatus de ortu et ordine sancti Donatiani archiepiscopi, has been discussed by H. Platelle, ‘Legendes médiévales sur les naissances multiples. À propos d’un passage curieux de la Vita Donatiani (XIIe s.), archevêque de Reims et patron de Bruges’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, 123 (1986), 183–95. Platelle dates this text, following Dolbeau, to c. 1096. Finally, Gervais’ letter to Baldwin V, but not the sermon, was edited by O. Holder-Egger under the title Ex miraculis s. Donatiani Brugensibus, vol. XV/2, MGH SS (Hanover, 1888), 854–6. The work was certainly known, however; see B. de Gaiffier, ‘L’hagiographie dans le marquisat de Flandre et le duché de Basse-Lotharingie au XIe siècle’, in B. de Gaiffier (ed.), Études critiques d’hagiographie et d’iconologie (Brussels, 1967), 415–507, at 504. Occasionally doing so in the same sentence; see Brussels, BR 7460, fo. 73v: ‘Beatus igitur Christi confessor Donatianus spiritus sancti dono septiformis repletus, huius mundi transitoria despiciens, [a]eterna complectens, dono diuin[a]e grati[a]e’. (All quotations taken from the Sermo will be from this manuscript.) Compare with Dolbeau, ‘Un sermon inédit’, 351 and 354–62. Dolbeau, ‘Un sermon inédit’, 351–2. For Gervais’ use of Flodoard, see below. The first occurred the year before, in 1060; see Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, 7–14, at 13. Nicholas II, Epistolae, PL 143, cols. 1299–366, at 1361–2 (no. 39, composed between 4 August 1060 and 20/27 July 1061 (probably in August/September of 1060)); Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, 29–30.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims the king’s stopover yielded a royal diploma for Gervais’ recently refounded abbey of Saint-Nicaise.129 The archbishop later drew inspiration from Philip’s charter, for in the sole reference to contemporary events that Gervais makes in his Sermo de beato Donatiano, he acknowledges the refoundation of Saint-Nicaise in language bearing clear parallels to Philip’s diploma for the abbey.130 We may have grounds, then, for dating the Sermo to 1061. But was Count Baldwin V of Flanders in the king’s entourage, and thus in a position to have asked for it at that time? Although he does not appear as a witness in the king’s charters issued during his tour, this fact alone does not rule out his presence.131 If he were in Reims, he may well have taken the opportunity to persuade Gervais to see if he could locate any information on Donatian or his miracles.132 Assuming this connection is correct, it is likely that the Sermo was written that same year – perhaps in anticipation of Donatian’s feast day on October 14 – following a request delivered in person by the count. On the other hand, we also know that Gervais and Baldwin were together on various occasions in 1065, along with the rest of the royal court, at both Laon and Corbie.133 The request could just as likely have come then. While neither date is certain, it is probable that the Sermo was composed between 1061 and 1065. 129

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Editions of the 14 May 1061 charter may be found in Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 10, 30–1; and Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 16, 192–3. This does not appear to be the first royal diploma issued on behalf of Saint-Nicaise; Henry I and his queen, Anna, with Philip’s consent, confirmed Gervais’ foundation between October 1055 and August 1060. This latter charter is not extant, however, and does not appear in the abbey’s thirteenth-century cartulary. Soehnée (ed.), Catalogue des actes d’Henri Ier, no. 104, 105–6, argues that Guillaume Marlot (1596–1667), the former grand prior of Saint-Nicaise and historian of Reims, may have intentionally suppressed it. Brussels, BR 7460, fo. 74r: ‘Cuius [Donatian’s] sacratissimum corpus in basilica sancti Nichasii sepultur[a]e traditum est, in qua nos deo annuente abbatiam constituimus’. Compare with the diploma, Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 10, 31: ‘in ecclesia beati Nichasii martiris, in qua predictus archiepiscopus divino instinctu abbatiam . . . instauravit’. It is possible that this phrasing came from an earlier, lost foundation charter for Saint-Nicaise, but there is no way to test this hypothesis. Moreover, Gervais’ link to Baldwin, whose role in the Capetian regnum soared exponentially when he assumed guardianship of Philip in 1060, points to the 1061 diploma being the source for this line from the Sermo. As a final addendum, the phrase ‘non ambigimus’ appears in the first line of the diploma and the last line of Gervais’ letter to Baldwin (Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 856; compare also the Sermo’s second sentence, in Brussels, BR 7460, fo. 73r: ‘non ambigit’). Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, 13 n. 1. On the other hand, Manasses of Rethel and Raoul of Crépy both appear as witnesses to Philip’s 1061 charter for Saint-Nicaise; their presence makes Baldwin’s absence all the more conspicuous. It has long been thought that Baldwin wrote to Gervais requesting the information, but there is no evidence he did so, and indeed, Gervais states in his letter to the count, ‘Petisti a me . . . Qua petitione me bene acceptum noveris’, which would imply that the archbishop gave an immediate, verbal reply; Ex miraculis s. Donatiani Brugensibus, ed. Holder-Egger, 854. They appear jointly in several acta (Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, nos. 21–3, 59, 62–3, 66).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 The motivation behind Baldwin’s petition must be reconstructed from the documents Gervais composed. The count may have simply sought the Sermo for the liturgical use of the canons at Saint-Donatien in Bruges, a city he had laboured to rebuild and expand as part of a broader campaign to centralize his administration of Flanders.134 If so, Gervais made only token efforts to tailor the work to a clerical audience.135 The contents of his accompanying letter to Baldwin, the overall hortatory tone of the sermon, and a few precious clues tucked into the text of the homily itself all suggest that the count and his family were the intended audience – or at least among the intended audience. First, there is Gervais’ prefatory letter, which seems to have been kept and copied alongside the sermon.136 In it, in language occasionally echoed in the attached Sermo, Gervais showers praise upon the count: among the princes of the western world you stand virtually alone, you who hold in spirit the reverence and celebration of the saints and with the zeal of goodness exert care for the restoration and construction of churches; you, who live among the storms of this world, that as a more upright man you might cultivate devotion to probity, and with a clever disposition gather up the fruit of the present life in anticipation of the things to come.137

The count’s wife Adela (the sister of King Henry I, Gervais’ long-time patron), and their son, Baldwin, already count of Hainaut and soon to be count of Flanders, receive equally florid accolades. Gervais then extols the count’s wealth and his stewardship of the land, which under his guidance had flourished with vineyards, crops, and pastures.138 The letter closes with a justification, and a lament, for Donatian’s lapse into oblivion. The passage of time, the ‘civil and parricidal wars in the provinces of Germania 134

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J. Dhondt, ‘Développement urbain et initiative comtale en Flandre au XIe siècle’, Revue du nord, 30 (1948), 133–56, at 144–6. Its brevity, format, and opening line make clear that it was intended for devotional reading on the saint’s feast day (fo. 73r: ‘cuius hodie largiente domino sollempnitatem celebrare satagimus, eiusque dignis laudibus sincera cordis devotione adesse studemus’); its designation for a clerical community is suggested by the singular instance in which its listeners are characterized as ‘brothers’ (fo. 74v: ‘Habemus igitur fratres sacerdotem summum et confessorem’). The sermon and letter appear together in the surviving manuscripts, with the letter serving as prologue to the sermon. It is rubricated as Epistola domni Gervasii Remensis archiepiscopi de uita sancti Donatiani eiusdem sedis archiepiscopi Balduino Flandrensium comiti directa, thus identifying it as part of the hagio-literary canon of the saint. Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 854–5: ‘quippe cum inter occidentales principes pene solus inveniaris, qui sanctorum reverentiam vel caelebrationem animo teneas et ad aecclesiarum restaurationem edificationemque probitatis studio curam intendas; qui ita in huius seculi tempestatibus vivas, ut honestius studia probitatis exerceas, ut sollerti ingenio presentis vitae fructus colligas, ut expectes futurae’. Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 855: ‘Quid, quod tellurem paulo ante minus cultilem sic sollerciae tuae industria fertilem reddidisti . . . ?’

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims and Belgica’, the intrusion of laymen into episcopal sees, and the devastation of the church of Reims – all had effaced memory of the Christian religion and its saints, even, at one time, of St Remigius himself.139 Given the violent history of Reims, the disappearance of Donatian’s deeds from the historical record was regrettable, but unsurprising.140 Nevertheless, Gervais concludes, what little knowledge remained was sufficient ‘for walking a virtuous path in imitation of him’ (et imitatione eius per virtutum semitam gradiendo). That pathway is laid out in the Sermo in roughly three parts. An opening meditation on Donatian’s virtues, the longest section, recalled his reception of God’s gift of the sevenfold spirit of wisdom, intellect, counsel, fortitude, knowledge (scientia), mildness (pietas), and fear of the Lord. Having received the sevenfold gift of the divine spirit, he grew in it through faith, hope, and charity, and showed his growth by his piety, mildness, humility, patience, and justice towards everyone.141 Following this catalogue of virtues, Gervais turns to highlight Donatian’s imitatio Christi, his putting of these virtues into action by offering the Lord his priestly service and self-sacrifice. God in turn worked miracles through him: the blind received sight, the lame were given power to walk, the dead resuscitated, and the sick returned to health.142 Clothed in these virtues Donatian ended his life, and Gervais concludes the second section of the sermon. The last section consists of a more historical peroration, drawn partly on Flodoard, which notes Donatian’s devotion to St Nicaise, his burial and the fate of his relics, the ongoing celebration of his life and deeds by people of all ages and stations, and his intercessory role on behalf of ‘our region and people’.143 Gervais begins and ends the Sermo by noting Donatian’s protective patronal role and by asserting his conviction that the former archbishop, thanks to his exemplary life, now resides among the heavenly hosts.144 139

140

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142 144

Ibid.: ‘propter frequentia civilia ac parricidalia bella in Germanicis et Belgicis provinciis christianam religionem pene fuisse destructam, et beati Remigii, qui nonus sancto Donatiano in archiepiscopatu successit, aliorumque sanctorum plurimorum, partim propter aecclesiarum vastationem, partim propter hoc quod laici episcopatibus presidebant, quam plurima deperisse miraculorum scripta’. Ibid., 856: ‘licet dolendum sit, non tamen est mirandum, si inter hos litigiorum turbines sancti confessoris Donatiani disparuere miracula’. Brussels, BR 7460, fos. 73r–74r, at 74r: ‘Omnis enim precepti finis, caritas est, in qua deuote perseuerando, erga subditos pietatem exercuit, mansuetuinem coluit, humilitatem seruauit, patientiam tenuit, iusticiam dilexit’. Brussels, BR 7460, fo. 74r. 143 Ibid., fo. 74r-v. Ibid., fo. 73r: ‘Debet sane fidelis populus huius patris et patroni nostri sollempnitati uacare’; fo. 74v: ‘Adeamus ergo dilectisiimi cum fiducia tam preclari sacerdotis Christi patrocinium, imploremus suffragium, ut nobis in presenti uita festum, seu memoriam ipsius recolentibus interesse dignetur’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Apart from a handful of passing references to his priestly station – his service to God, for example, is anagogically likened to service in the Lord’s temple – the sermon offers a general template to a Christian life, virtuous and well-lived, culminating in the celestial afterlife. Donatian may have been Christ’s minister, but he was, more generally, a simple lover and imitator of Christ – and these were virtues Baldwin V (and his family) might also attain. The saint’s mildness, humility, patience, and justice were all virtues expected of the secular prince, and were qualities enumerated in the Mirror of Princes literature.145 Donatian, Gervais noted, had been established as a living example (Qui dominico gregi ad uiuendam in exemplo positus) to the Lord’s flock. He spurned carnal cupidity, and was second to none in his liberality.146 In faith he believed, in hope and love (spe et caritate) he prayed. None of these qualities were particular to the priesthood, suggesting that Gervais had a broader audience in mind as he wrote. And in at least one instance, Gervais departed from an otherwise verbatim reference to scripture to accent how the Lord enlightened Donatian with knowledge (scientia), and ‘showed him the path of clemency (clementiae)’. This passage derived from the Vulgate edition of Isaiah 40:15, which asks rhetorically ‘Who . . . showed [the Lord] the path of prudence (prudentiae)?’147 Later in the Sermo, in the only place where the term appears, prudentia is likened to worldly knowledge, held inferior to divine grace, and associated unfavourably with carnal cupidity.148 Clemency has thus replaced sagacity as the aim of knowledge. Along with liberality, clemency was a universally desirable (and expected) trait of the medieval prince.149 Its subtle insertion here into the Sermo, I would argue, was intended by Gervais to remind Baldwin not only of his general calling to be an example to his people, but specifically to govern with benevolence and mercy. Donatian, saintly archbishop of Reims, would, in this and all ways, be a model to imitate. With his Sermo de beato Donatiano, Gervais did his best to fulfill Baldwin’s request for more information on the seventh archbishop of Reims. Though short on specifics concerning Donatian’s life and deeds, 145

146

147

148

149

See G. Althoff, ‘Ira regis: prolegomena to a history of royal anger’, in B. H. Rosenwein (ed.), Anger’s Past. The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1998), 59–74, at 60–1, 64–7. Brussels, BR 7460, fo. 73v: ‘Inseruiebat nanque largitati continue, attendens illud sacrae scripturae testimonium, episcoporum omnia esse communia, et qui iustus est tribuit, et non cessabit’. Brussels, BR 7460, fo. 73r: ‘erudiuit illum dominus scientia, et uiam clementiae ostendit illi’. The Vulgate reads: ‘et erudivit eum scientiam et viam prudentiam ostendit illi’ (http://artfl.uchicago. edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.22:1:39.vulgate.125462.125471). Ibid., fo. 73v: ‘Impleuit [Donatian] legis litteram, non per carnalis cupiditatis prudentiam, sed per Dei gratiam’. On liberality, see Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century, 41–2.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims the sermon offered in its place a brief exhortation to Christian virtue, a quality Gervais applauded in Baldwin, his wife, and his son.150 This literary gift was hardly a selfless act, however. Like nearly all medieval gifts, it carried with it the seeds of an anticipated social relationship – in this case, tokens of Gervais’ political and personal ambitions in Reims and beyond. At the most obvious level, the Sermo celebrated a shared relationship between Reims and Flanders, in the person of its prince and his successor. Of Bruges, let alone the collegial church of Saint-Donatien, not a word is uttered. As we have already seen, Donatian is styled as ‘ours’; he is the shared father, protector, and patron of all who venerate him, whether at Reims or in Flanders. The saint’s relics provided a common point of integration between the political and religious ambits of Flanders and Reims, and insofar as Reims was the site of the royal coronation, the familial dynasties of Flanders and Francia. Social bonds established through a shared patron saint implied that the devotional and political identities of Reims and Flanders were historically linked, as indeed they were through the translated relics of Donatian and Nicasius. The archbishops of Reims had customarily – since Hincmar’s day, and before – shared the relics of their predecessors with allies and adherents.151 Gervais probably took notice of this when he read the chapters of Flodoard’s first book on the rémois church in search of information on Donatian.152 The archbishop, however, was aiming at a connection both more personal and more directly self-serving during the final, politically troubled years of his rule. His falling out with the partisans of Manasses of Rethel and seizure of the possessions of certain canons seems to have occurred sometime around 1065. The king’s tour in that year may have presented Gervais with an opportunity to seek royal and comital support in his feud, and indeed, in the following year Philip came to Reims and issued a second and far more comprehensive charter guaranteeing the privileges and possessions of Saint-Nicaise. In light of these events, it seems probable that the Sermo was aimed at building his personal solidarity with Baldwin. 150

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Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 855 (on Adela): ‘Quam exornat in elemosinis largitas’ – largitas being one of Donatian’s qualities as well (above, n. 146) – ‘in affabilitate benignitas, in conversatione humanitas, in abstinentia sobrietas, in vigiliis pernoctatio, in oratione devotio. Quicquid morum, prudentiae, doctrinae et venustatis in muliebri sexu poterit inveniri, totum illi natura parens ministratione benigna concessit’. The archbishops’ collection and distribution of relics is noted by Sot, Un historien et son église, 209–10, 238, 497–503. An analogous case from the diocese of Cambrai is examined by P. Bertrand and C. Mériaux, ‘Cambrai-Magdebourg: les reliques des saints et l’intégration de la Lotharingie dans le royaume de Germanie au milieu du Xe siècle’, Médiévales, 51 (2006) (http://medievales.revues.org/document1514.html). HRE, 69–72; this was the section from which he took biographical information on the saint.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Count Baldwin, he wrote, devoted himself to the veneration of saints and the restoration and building of churches, and had used his immense wealth to turn his territories into a fertile, edenic landscape.153 Gervais freely ascribed similar attributes to himself in both his own charters and those he had requested from Philip I for Saint-Nicaise, Saint-Timothée, and Saint-Denis. In his diploma for Saint-Denis, issued shortly before his death in 1067, he noted proudly how the church had been outfitted ‘by my wealth and labour’.154 Wealth and personal patronage, as we know, were central to Gervais’ sense of archiepiscopal power and privilege. They inhered in his understanding of, and self-identification with, his episcopal office. In concluding his letter to Baldwin, Gervais lamented how the violence and litigiousness of the day had virtually obliterated prior knowledge of St Donatian. Conditions in the present were likened to the Vandal wars that had led to the destruction of the early church of Reims and the martyrdom of St Nicasius, and to the many ‘tempests of persecution’ (quam plures persecutionum procellas) that nearly eradicated the memory of Remigius.155 Only Remigius’ careful self-memorialization had saved his name from oblivion. According to Gervais, by engraving on a chalice a series of verses containing his name, Remigius was able to let later generations know his true identity.156 The final historical lesson that 153

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Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 855: ‘Quid, quod tellurem paulo ante minus cultilem sic sollerciae tuae industria fertilem reddidisti, ut natura fertiliores fertilitate superet patiensque culturae agricolarum votis respondeat ac opimo sinu pomorum sufficientiam frugumque profundens, diversorum proventu fructuum cultoribus suis arrideat et ad prebendum pastum animalibus pratis et pascuis affluenti fecunditate turgescat?’ It is possible that there are allusive echoes here to Flodoard’s description of Hincmar’s burial at Orbais; HRE, 114: ‘Hic [Orbais] quoque beatissimi huius patroni nostri [Archbishop Hincmar] suffragiis omnis commoditas aeris circumquaque degentibus attribuitur incolis cum insolita fertilitate telluris’. AA, 215–19, at 218: ‘Ecclesia itaque meo sumptu et labore ad integrum restituta’. Copies also appear in PL 143, cols. 1402–4 (abridged) and GC, vol. X, cols. 26–7. The 1066 charter of Philip confirming Gervais’ donations to Saint-Nicaise cites the archbishop’s ‘labour and industry’ (suo labore et industria) in establishing and endowing the monastery; see Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 26, 77; Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 15, 190. Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 855–6, at 856: ‘Inter caeteras Galliae clades quis expedire valeat, quantis calamitatibus Remensis ecclesia sit afflicta ingruente illa Wandalorum persecutione sevissima, qua preciosus pontifex Christi Nicasius in ipso sanctae Mariae templo capite truncatus, glorioso meruit coronari martyrio? Qua propter, si ex antiquo tempore universalis aecclesia multarum scripturarum est perpessa iacturam, in novissimo autem seculi tempore Belgica, immo etiam Gallicana aecclesia propter sevas persecutiones multorum deflet se amisisse monimenta sanctorum, licet dolendum sit, non tamen est mirandum, si inter hos litigiorum turbines sancti confessoris Donatiani disparuere miracula’. Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 855: ‘Quo etiam contigisse manifestum est, ut apud posteros de nomine beati Remigii dubitatum sit, utrum Remedius an Remigius vocaretur. Hec vero de eiusdem sancti viri nomine nobis ambiguitas non esset exempta, nisi in quodam calice ab eo consecrato per hos versus, quos ipse composuerat, sui nominis certam nobis reliquisset noticiam’. This story was first reported in Hincmar’s vita of Remigius, and later incorporated in Flodoard’s

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims Gervais hoped to convey in his letter to Baldwin thus seems clear. In parallel fashion, and with their own names prominently displayed in text and letter, Baldwin and Gervais would rescue Donatian from the same forgetfulness that almost consigned Remigius to oblivion. Gervais presented himself and the count as joined by an ‘inviolable pledge of love’ and committed to the restoration, by their wealth and labour, of the places and memories entrusted to them.157 This was the proper work of great men, whose achievements should be honoured in monuments of parchment and stone. Throughout his episcopal career, Gervais’ actions displayed his conviction that a historical actor’s deeds moulded the conditions of his posthumous reception. Remigius left behind his cup and testament, both of which the archbishop had commented upon in his sermon and letter; while Donatian imparted the example of his good deeds.158 As certain as Gervais was on this point, he knew equally well that those responsible for transmitting the deeds of others possessed the power to supply the meaning of those deeds for contemporary audiences. In the historical section of his sermon, Gervais turned again to Flodoard to establish the connections among archbishops Nicasius, Remigius, and Donatian: [Donatian’s] most sacred body was given over for burial in the basilica of SaintNicaise, in which we established an abbacy with God’s consent. Indeed the aforementioned venerable martyr Nicasius, the fourth to succeed him in the archiepiscopacy, for as long as he lived served him with vows, beseeched him with prayers, and at last followed the great father in his burial. Also blessed Remigius, who was the ninth to succeed him in the archiepiscopacy, offered in his testament evidence of his holy confession, saying that the five previous confessors, the predecessors of lord Nicasius, together with the most holy virgin and martyr Eutropia, had been interred in the aforementioned basilica, among whose number St Donatian most evidently ranks.159

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HRE, 81; see also the Appendix to the edition of Defensor, Liber Scintillarum, ed. H. M. Rochais, CCSL 117 (Turnhout, 1957), 473–87. Ex miraculis, ed. Holder-Egger, 855: ‘et propter inviolabile pignus michi compertae tuae dilectionis’. Brussels, BR 7460, fos. 74r-v: ‘O egregius et dignus Deo sacerdos, qui suis posteris, boni operis formam reliquit, et per quam feliciter currerent se uiam quodamodo rectitudinis premontrauit’. On Remigius’ testament, see Flodoard, HRE, 97–105. Brussels, BR 7460, fo. 74r: ‘Cuius sacratissimum corpus in basilica sancti Nichasii sepulturae traditum est, in qua nos deo annuente abbatiam constituimus. Illum uero predictus uenerabilis martyr Nichasius, quartus in pontificatu secutus est, quo aduixit uotis excoluit, precibus exorauit, et demum tanto patri sepultura successit. Beatus quoque Remigius, qui ab illo in pontificatum successit nonus, sacrae confessioni ipsius in testamento suo testimonium perhibet, dicens quinque confessores proximos antecessores domni Nichasii, cum sanctissima uirgine et martyre Eutropia, in predicta basilica fuisse conditos, de quorum numero sanctum Donatianum manifestissime constat’. Compare with HRE, 78, 100.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Two elements of this description are Gervais’ own interpolations. Nowhere does Flodoard assert that Nicasius was devoted to Donatian’s cult. And nowhere does he state that Donatian was ‘most evidently (manifestissme)’ among those interred by Remigius in the basilica dedicated to the martyred Nicasius and Eutropia. The latter statement is an inference, the former an invention. What this assertion of Nicasius’ and Remigius’ fidelity to Donatian achieves is their hierarchical and devotional subordination to the seventh archbishop of Reims, and the association of all three episcopal saints with Gervais’ restored abbey of Saint-Nicaise. In the local memory and landscape of Reims, all three saintly prelates are joined in celestial confraternity at Gervais’ foundation, with Gervais as the self-appointed guardian – and, as overseer of SaintNicaise, spiritual father – of their cult. In drawing some conclusions about Gervais’ historical consciousness and his utilisation of the past, it might be helpful to dwell for a brief moment on two texts which testify to his success. Manuscript 15 of the Bibliothèque municipale of Reims, the personal psalter of the provost Odalric, offers visual confirmation of Gervais’ ambitions to link himself to the leading bishop-saints of Reims. At the bottom of fo. 20v, in six orderly columns of seven lines each, a list of ‘the names of the archbishops of the church of Reims’ was compiled sometime during Gervais’ episcopacy.160 Its presence in the manuscript accords well with what we know of Gervais’ historical consciousness. The list accurately reflects local tradition and Flodoard’s Historia in ordering the archbishops down through Rigobert (d. 743/4), thereafter omitting the contended episcopacies of Hugh of Vermandois (925–31, 940–6) and Gerbert of Aurillac (991–8).161 What is visually arresting about the catalogue is that five names, together with the heading, are highlighted by a single line in red ink running horizontally through their letters: Sixtus, Sinicius, Nicasius, Remigius, and Gervais. The first four, of course, were the instrumental saints of the church of Reims: the see’s two legendary apostolic founders, sent from Rome by Peter; the martyred builder of the church and its defender against paganism; and the baptizer of the Frankish monarch Clovis.162 And then there is Gervais. In this episcopal 160

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A seventh column was added later, keeping the list current through the tenure of Archbishop Guido (1204–6). The list down through Gervais was done in a single hand of the eleventh century, contemporary with several other texts in the manuscript. Following Rigobert, the list leaves off Archbishop Abel (743/44–7); local tradition, which Flodoard seeks to correct (HRE, 166–7 and 166 n. 2), held that Abel was a chorbishop, so he was left off episcopal lists. The continuation of the list after Gervais, beginning with Archbishop Renaud I, also excludes the contentious Manasses I, who was deposed by Gregory VII. Donatian is not similarly highlighted; it is possible the list was produced prior to Gervais’ sermon to Baldwin.

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The revival of archiepiscopal historiography at Reims list, a sacro-historical connection between the contemporary archbishop and his saintly predecessors, an indication of their saintly fraternity, has been established in red.163 This was a bold claim indeed. Did Odalric, the provost, highlight the saints’ names in red? Did Gervais? In its own way, the red line establishes another small link between the agenda of his episcopacy and the accomplishments of the city’s founding bishops, which he saw himself continuing. The second text dates to the 1230s. Alberic of Troisfontaines, in his famous universal chronicle, summarized Gervais’ archiepiscopacy with the following line: ‘He placed regular canons at Saint-Denis of Reims, and had a copper stag [put] in the courtyard of Reims’.164 The copper stag proved an enduring memorial; it stood adjacent to the archiepiscopal palace until the end of the seventeenth century.165 On its breast Gervais had etched the following verses: When Gervais used to wander the woodlands of Le Mans, he had stags aplenty. He had this one copper-made, that it should be an eternal tribute to his homeland.166

This copper stag was in many ways a fitting monument. Gervais’ nostalgic remembrance of his homeland called attention to his outsider status, perhaps his solitude, at Reims. But the stag was also ostentatious, cast on a scale large enough to bear a three-line inscription: a proud animal, whose wildness and dignity he undoubtedly related to. And, of course, the stag symbolized the hunt, a pastime the archbishop of Reims probably enjoyed, a masculine pursuit appropriate to his lordly status. Above all, the stag held an unmistakeably personal meaning as part of Gervais’ own past and as an indelible stamp on the church of Reims which stood nearby. In the way it synchronized place (Le Mans, Reims), memory (personal, familial, professional), and archiepiscopal identity, the stag, though a secular monument, bore all the hallmarks of Gervais’ use and representation of the past as we have followed it in this chapter through his written records. The archbishop yoked history to serve a range of personal needs, not least of which was his own commemoration. 163

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Gervais was the only archbishop of the eleventh century accorded special commemoration by the monks of Saint-Remi in their liturgical books and the stained glass of the abbey choir. See Demouy, Genèse d’une cathedrale, 40–2, 50–1. Alberic of Troisfontaines, Chronica, vol. XXIII, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst, MGH SS (Hanover, 1874), 791 (s.a. 1056): ‘Hic posuit canonicos regulares in Sancto Dyonisio Remensi et ipse fecit cervum ereum in curia Remensi’. Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 610. Chronicon s. Andreae, 539: ‘Dum Cenomannorum saltus lustrare solebat / Gervasius, cervos tum sufficienter habebat. / Hunc, memor ut patriae sit semper, condidit aere’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 His sense of the past was not aimed at a wider celebration of the church or even, except in the broadest sense, of the place he served. Gervais did not so much subsume his personal story within the grander narrative of Reims and its church. Instead, the historical works of Flodoard, Hincmar, and others became accomplices to the prelate’s self-celebratory, exalted present, and secured his memory for future generations. The stag was Gervais’ Remigian chalice. Gervais of Château-du-Loir was the product of a world which praised the virtues of nobility, wealth, prestige, and power in its bishops. His courtliness was probably an asset that convinced King Henry I to place him at Reims in 1055. As we pass on in the next two chapters to investigate other bishops and places, Gervais’ confident self-image will slowly but surely yield to episcopal iconographies emphasizing very different virtues. This change will be partly an effect of shifting social and cultural values. But it is also the product of entirely different representational idioms, particular to cities with diverse pasts and with different expectations, historical and contemporary, concerning the qualities of their bishops.

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Chapter 6

SANCTITY AND HISTORY IN A BORDER DIOCESE: THE VITA OF LIETBERT OF CAMBRAI (1051–76)

The city of Cambrai enjoys one of the richest documentary troves in Europe to have survived from the central Middle Ages. The deeds of its bishops, from the see’s founder Vedastus down to the prelates of the late twelfth century, fill around 185 printed folio pages in 2 volumes of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. The episcopal gesta are further supplemented by a robust collection of diplomatic and narrative sources, including annals, chronicles, and saints’ lives.1 Medieval Cambrai held a further distinction, one that has been commented upon by historians since the nineteenth century: like Reims it was a Grenzprovinz, a border diocese.2 Its prelates obeyed the archbishop of Reims in spiritual matters. Politically, however, Cambrai was an imperial city. The diocese was bounded by the German-leaning county of Hainaut and dukedom of Lower Lotharingia, and by the independent-minded and expansionistic county of Flanders, whose rulers successfully absorbed Hainaut from 1056–71 and were later instrumental in fashioning the re-established diocese of Arras out of the westernmost part of Cambrai in 1093–4.3 Its 1

2

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The following texts detailing the lives and deeds of Cambrai’s bishops are principally employed here; others are detailed in the notes: GEC, vol. VII, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1846), 393–500; GEC Cont., 183–248; Chronicon s. Andreae, 526–50. The tradition of gesta writing for episcopal sees was well established in Lotharingia in the tenth through twelfth centuries; see M. Sot, Gesta episcoporum, gesta abbatum (Turnhout, 1981), 32–7. A feature noted among others by Cauchie, La querelle des investitures, vol. I, xxi–xxiii, xxxii–xxxiii; Reinecke, Geschichte der Stadt Cambrai; T. Schieffer, ‘Ein deutscher Bischof des 11. Jahrhunderts: Gerhard I. von Cambrai (1012–1051)’, Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters, 1 (1937), 323–60; M. Rouche, ‘Cambrai, du comte mérovingien à l’évêque impérial’, in L. Trenard (ed.), Histoire de Cambrai (Lille, 1982), 11–42, at 23, 39; Jégou, ‘L’évêque entre autorité sacrée et exercice du pouvoir’. For an overview of the political situation, see Hoeres, Das Bistum Cambrai; M. Bruwier, ‘Le Hainaut, le Cambrésis, et l’Empire au XIIe siècle’, Annales du 36e congrès de la Fédération archéologique et historique de Belgique (1955–1956), 207–26; and E. Boshof, ‘Lothringen, Frankreich und das Reich in der Regierungszeit Heinrichs III.’, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter, 42 (1978), 63–127. On the bishops’ interventions in Hainaut, and the region’s frontier status, see A.-M. Helvétius, Abbayes, évêques et laïques: une politique du pouvoir en Hainaut au moyen âge (VIIe–XIe siècle) (Brussels, 1994), esp. 35–6, 284–90, and for the division of Arras and Cambrai, Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 bishops thus were obliged to negotiate long-running political contests between the counts of Flanders, the German monarchs, the French kings and, after 1071, the counts of Hainaut. To assist them in doing so, the East Frankish king Otto I conferred comital authority over Cambrai to its prelates in the mid-tenth century, later extending their powers over the entire Cambrésis. Linguistically, the see was home to speakers of both Romance and, in its northern reaches, Flemish.4 Cambrai’s position at this political crossroads has led historians to perceive its economic, civic, and above all ecclesiastical and religious development as the product of a uniquely contested space.5 Of the bishops who ruled Cambrai from the tenth through the twelfth centuries, scholarly interest has long favoured Gerard I of Florennes (1012–51). Gerard was a dynamic individual – a descendant of the dukes of Lower Lotharingia; a man of letters who commissioned the gesta of his see and other works; a reformer and founder of monasteries; and a confidant to three German monarchs.6 For all his sterling attributes, however, it was Gerard’s nephew and successor, the often overshadowed Lietbert of Lessines (1051–76), who garnered a more transcendental distinction as the first bishop of Cambrai in approximately four hundred years to be elevated to sainthood and endowed with a posthumous vita.7 4

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On the linguistic division, which did not intersect French-speaking Cambrai or the Cambrésis proper, see J. Dhondt, ‘Essai sur l’origine de la frontière linguistique’, L’antiquité classique, 16 (1947), 261–86, and D. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London, 1992), 8–11. The linguistic boundary between medieval French and thiois lay further north, in Brabant. On its economic and especially civic development, see Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde, 205–32; Rouche, ‘Cambrai’; H. Platelle, ‘Les luttes communales et l’organisation municipale (1075–1313)’, and H. Platelle, ‘L’essor d’une cité (1075–1313)’, all in Trenard, Histoire de Cambrai. Works on Gerard and Gerard’s episcopacy abound. Essential biographical information, drawing heavily on the portrait in Book 3 of the GEC, may be found in: Cauchie, La querelle des investitures, vol. I, xxiv–xxvi, xli–xlvi; Schieffer, ‘Ein deutscher Bischof’; de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église en Belgique, vol. II, 16–21, 166–8, 412–13; M. H. Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk (1012–1067 [sic: should read ‘1076’]) (Tongerlo, 1953), 11–22, 34–51, 68–85; E. Van Mingroot, ‘Gérard Ier de Florennes, évêque de Cambrai (†1051)’, in DHGE, vol. XX, cols. 742–51; Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 233–6; Stein, Reality Fictions, ch. 1. Gerard’s role in the peace of God movement has been much discussed. See G. Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980); D. C. Van Meter, ‘The peace of Amiens-Corbie and Gerard of Cambrai’s oration on the three functional orders: the date, the context, the rhetoric’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 74 (1996), 633–57, at 644–57, and most recently T. M. Riches, ‘Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai-Arras, the three orders, and the problem of human weakness’, in Ott and Trumbore Jones (eds.), The Bishop Reformed, 122–36. On Gerard as a visionary of episcopal office, see Reilly, Art of Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders. A useful adjustment to the image of Gerard I as a reformer of monasteries in Hainaut is in Helvétius, Abbayes, évêques et laïques, 286–90. In some cases, Gerard’s ‘reform’ of an abbey consisted only of replacing its abbot with the permission of the lay or ecclesiastical lord who exercised direct power over the house. In addition to the works of Cauchie, de Moreau, and Koyen, brief biographical sketches of Lietbert’s life and episcopacy have been compiled by H. Platelle, ‘Liberto, vescovo di Cambrai’, in Bibliotheca Sanctorum (Rome, 1961–1970), vol. VIII, cols. 28–9, and R. Schieffer, ‘Lietbert, Bischof von Cambrai’, in Neue Deutsche Biographie (Berlin, 1953–), vol. XIV, 542.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai Scholarly views of Lietbert have been fairly consistent. Earlier Frenchand Flemish-speaking historians such as Alfred Cauchie and Milo Koyen sought to demonstrate the sympathies of Cambrai’s eleventh-century ‘imperial’ bishops for church reform. Episcopal reforms of the local church were seen as prefiguring the aims of the ‘Gregorian revolution’, and were presumed to have been carried out in the same spirit.8 Lietbert, whose rule overlapped with the first few years of Gregory VII’s pontificate, has been viewed as sympathetic to papal reform initiatives, if not as a bona fide proto-Gregorian reformer.9 Yet neither the historical details of Lietbert’s life nor the Vita Lietberti episcopi Cameracensis, composed a quarter-century after his death to commemorate it, conform easily to either the ‘imperial’ or ‘Gregorian’ episcopal type.10 Indeed, as we shall see, Lietbert charted his own course through the turbid political waters of his day. To be sure, his vita displays literary and thematic features common to contemporary episcopal biographies composed elsewhere in the German regnum, and to the literary type of the imperial ‘courtier bishop’ outlined by C. Stephen Jaeger and described in detail by Stephanie Haarländer.11 For example, like other episcopal biographies it describes Lietbert’s secular engagements, particularly his connection to the emperor and the imperial court, his dedication as pater patriae and defender of his city, and his education and mores.12 8

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The influence of Cauchie’s La querelle des investitures has been enormous; his general line of argumentation was applied to the early eleventh century by Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk. For modern echoes of the warm welcome Gregorian reform supposedly enjoyed in Cambrai, see J.-M. Duvosquel, ‘Les chartes de donation d’autels émanant des évêques de Cambrai aux XIe–XIIe siècles éclairées par les obituaires. À propos d’un usage grégorien de la chancellerie épiscopale’, in H. Hasquin (ed.), Hommages à la Wallonie. Mélanges d’histoire, de littérature et de philologie wallonnes offerts à Maurice A. Arnould et Pierre Ruelle (Brussels, 1981), 147–63, at 161. The roots of this latter characterization, largely based on the existence of three 1075 charters of Gregory VII for religious institutions in Cambrai, may be found in Cauchie, La querelle des investitures, vol. I, lxxxviii–lxxxix, and were further developed by Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk, especially 86–94: ‘Op het einde van zijn leven schijnt Lietbert zuch nochtans te hebben aangesloten bij de hervormingspartij’ (94). Koyen was influenced by the work of A. Fliche, La réforme grégorienne et la reconquête chrétienne (1057–1123), in A. Fliche and V. Martin (eds.), Histoire de l’Église depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours, vol. VIII (Paris, 1950), although he does not always agree with Fliche’s emphasis on the central role of Gregory VII in the reform process. For the charters in question, see below. See in the first place Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum, 442–52. On the Gregorian model, see H. Hürten, ‘Gregor der Große und der mittelalterliche Episkopat’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 73 (1962), 16–41, at 40–1, who contrasted the ideal of episcopal office formulated in the writings of Gregory the Great with the reality and the biographies of the German episcopate in the Central Middle Ages. C. S. Jaeger, ‘The courtier bishop in Vitae from the tenth to the twelfth century’, Speculum, 58 (1983), 291–325; Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum. Compare the approaches of S. Coué, Hagiographie im Kontext. Schreibanlaß und Funktion von Bischofsviten aus dem 11. und vom Anfang des 12. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1997), 23, and Haarländer,

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 However, the text also portrays him as largely disconnected from the broader currents and controversies surrounding church reform and lay investiture of prelates, and downplays Lietbert’s allegiances to the grander reform programmes of his day while still characterizing him as a conscientious pastor who was personally admired by the German emperors and French kings.13 The evidence of Lietbert’s literary dossier and the value of his episcopacy as a case study is that they directly challenge the applicability and utility of categorical ascriptions such as ‘reformist’ or ‘imperial’ to bishops – and other religious figures – of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In fact, Lietbert was neither a ‘proto-Gregorian’ bishop nor an anti-Gregorian ‘imperial’ bishop, categories at once too rigid and too limited to contain most contemporary prelates. Raoul of SaintSépulcre, the author of Lietbert’s vita, certainly did not confine himself to either type, and the evidence we have for Lietbert’s pontificacy shows a prelate adept at fashioning his own place between and independent of competing political and ideological spheres. The prelate, his diocese, and his literary legacy occupied a political and conceptual borderland, and precisely for this reason they defy the facile interpretive moulds historians have often ascribed to eleventh-century prelates. An analysis of the literary construction of Lietbert’s sanctity not only demonstrates the particularity of Cambrai’s ecclesiastical history, but also problematizes the interpretive lenses historians have brought to bear on it. the vita lietberti episcopi and its subject The vita’s author was named Raoul.14 He was a priest and monk of Saint-Sépulcre, an abbey founded by Lietbert outside the old Roman

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Vitae episcoporum, 348–78. The first historian to take up fully the image of the imperial bishop in Germany was O. Köhler, Das Bild des geistlichen Fürsten in den Viten des 10., 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1935), to whose work the above writers (nn. 10 and 11) responded. Jaeger, ‘The courtier bishop’, 295, noted the presence of Gregory’s pastoral ideals in the vitae of Brun of Cologne and Ulrich of Augsburg, and they are likewise present in the biography of Otto, bishop of Bamberg (d. 1139), analyzed by M.-L. Laudage, Caritas und Memoria mittelalterlicher Bischöfe (Cologne, 1993), esp. 262–8, 307–17. Hürten’s argument for antipathy between the types must also be tempered given the favoured place of Gregory I’s writings, including the Liber pastoralis, in tenth- and eleventh-century scriptoria like those of Trier and Cologne, discussed by H. Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination. An Historical Study (London, 1991), vol. II, 104–6, 116–23, 205–10. On Gregory VII’s embrace of Gregory I’s ideas, see Robinson, Authority and Resistance, 22–4, 31–9, 139–42. VL, 838–66.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai castrum of Cambrai in 1064.15 Raoul’s life is mostly a mystery.16 It is clear that he personally knew Lietbert and several key figures in Lietbert’s circle; that he was well acquainted with the works of classical and Christian authors (and particularly fond of Cicero); and that he attended a central event in the bishop’s life, his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1054.17 Like Lietbert, Raoul has often been classified as a Gregorian.18 Scholarly consensus correctly secures the vita’s composition to sometime around 1100.19 This date puts it squarely in the middle of the fifteen-year episcopal succession dispute which rocked Cambrai from 1093–1116, pitting imperial, papal, and French-leaning bishops, clerical factions, and townspeople against one another.20 As we shall see, this political context is critical for understanding Raoul’s narrative strategies. The vita’s diffusion was limited to the dioceses of Cambrai and Arras. Three manuscript copies from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century have survived – one from Saint-Sépulcre, a second from Saint-Géry of Cambrai (a possession of the cathedral), and a third from the abbey of Anchin.21 Veneration of Lietbert as a saint appears to have been 15

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For a map of eleventh-century Cambrai, see Rouche, ‘Cambrai’, in Trenard (ed.), Histoire de Cambrai, 24; for Raoul’s obituary, see VL, 838 n. 2. He was undoubtedly a monk under Walter, abbot of Saint-Sépulcre, who ruled from 1064–96 and was an ally of the bishop. The fact that Raoul was also a sacerdos in close company with the bishop suggests he may have converted to a monastic profession after a career as a secular clerk. On Raoul’s learnedness and fondness for Cicero, see Hofmeister, ‘Cicero in der Vita Lietberti’ʼ. By Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk, xx, 25, who does note that Raoul is not a polemist for the Gregorian or imperial causes. Koyen is followed by E. Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek omtrent de datering van de Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 53 (1975), 281–332, at 294, who refers to Raoul as ‘gregoriaans-gezinde’. Raoul’s ‘Gregorian’ sympathies appear to lie in his rewriting of the account of Lietbert’s elevation to the see by Emperor Henry III, first detailed in the GEC, 492. In the much later vita, 847–8, Raoul has Lietbert first elected canonically by the acclamation of the clergy and people of Cambrai, and only then chosen, or approved, by the emperor. As I will show, here as elsewhere Raoul is merely covering all bases by mentioning the people and clergy, since he leaves the emperor a primary role in the election process. For the text’s dating consult VL, 838, and above all Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk, xix–xx; they are followed by Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 239 n. 101, and Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum, 521–2. Raoul’s focus on the pilgrimage, his frequent application of epithets such as miles Christi to Lietbert and his fellow pilgrims, and his reflection on the life of Anselm of Ribemont, who died on crusade in early 1099, suggest a date around 1099–1100. The episcopal succession controversy at Cambrai following the death of Gerard II in August 1092 has been recounted many times. Detailed studies may be found in Hoeres, Das Bistum Cambrai, 6–32; Cauchie, La querelle des investitures, vol. II, 119–206; Reinecke, Geschichte der Stadt Cambrai, 55–9; de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église en Belgique, vol. II, 92–5, 100–1; and more recently E. Van Mingroot, ‘Een decennium uit de geschiedenis van de stad Kamerijk (1092–1102/1103). De voornaamste acteurs’, in A. Dierkens (ed.), Villes et campagnes au moyen âge. Mélanges Georges Despy (Liège, 1991), 713–45; Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 297–306; and Resnick, ‘Odo of Cambrai and the investiture crisis’. These are detailed by Hofmeister in his introduction to the VL, 839–40.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 restrained: beyond Raoul’s biography, there is little evidence of a formal cult until the thirteenth century.22 Luckily, we are not wholly dependent on Raoul’s vita for our image of the bishop. Two separate continuators to the gesta of the bishops of Cambrai composed, in the period from 1054 to 1076, an uneven narrative of Lietbert’s episcopate. Later, an anonymous monk at Saint-André of Cateau-Cambrésis near Cambrai, drawing heavily on the pre-existing vita and gesta, detailed Lietbert’s tenure in a chronicle finished in 1133.23 As a necessary prelude to assessing the literary image of the bishop in Raoul’s vita, it is worth establishing Lietbert’s actual political orbit. Generally speaking, Lietbert (and his predecessor, Gerard I) supported the German Reichspolitik. They participated in imperial campaigns in Flanders and Lotharingia, and in turn depended heavily on imperial military support to counteract the power of the castellans of Cambrai and the increasingly ambitious Flemish counts.24 Lietbert attended the German court on four or five occasions during his episcopacy: in 1051 (Cologne), 1054 (near Béthune), 1056 (Cologne), possibly 1066 (at Dortmund), and 1071 (Liège).25 Three of these assemblies addressed the emperor’s relationship with the count of Flanders, of paramount concern to Cambrai. In 1054, Lietbert was in Henry III’s camp during his campaign against Baldwin V of Flanders, probably acting in both an advisory and military capacity.26 He also journeyed southeast to Reims on at least three occasions, and periodically collaborated with his fellow diocesan bishops. According to Raoul, Lietbert was present for Henry I’s nuptials with Anna of Kiev, which coincided with his own consecration 22

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His relics were elevated in 1211 and again in 1271. An episcopal list written down during the episcopacy of Burchard (1116–30) and attached to a manuscript copy of the early eleventh-century Vita sancti Gaugerici episcopi confessoris (AASS August, vol. II, new edn (Paris, 1869), 692) did not qualify him as ‘sanctus’, nor did the author of the Chronicon s. Andreae, writing c. 1133. Above, n. 1. Van Mingroot, ‘Kritisch onderzoek’, 289–99, postulates that the author of the first part of Lietbert’s deeds may have accompanied the bishop on his pilgrimage in 1054, because the account breaks off at that point and resumes coverage only of the last years of the bishop’s rule. In any case, Lietbert’s gesta to 1054 were elided to the account of Gerard I’s episcopacy, a convention likewise followed by Raoul in the vita. E. N. Johnson, The Secular Activities of the German Episcopate, 919–1024 (Lincoln, NE, 1932), 125–35; Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk; Boshof, ‘Lothringen, Frankreich und das Reich’; Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 242–54, among others. GEC, 492–3; VL, 847–8, 858; G. Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbücher des Deutschen Reiches unter Heinrich IV. und Heinrich V. (Leipzig, 1890–1909; repr. Berlin, 1965), vol. II, 46–59, at 47. Lietbert apparently issued the charter installing Benedictine monks at Saint-Aubert from Dortmund. It bears the signatures of Henry IV and the royal chancellors Sieghard and Siegbert, but is in some respects unusual; see D. von Gladiss (ed.), Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, vol. VI/1, Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV. (Berlin, 1941; repr. Hanover, 1978), no. 178, 231–3. Unlike Gerard I, who frequently attended the imperial court and military campaigns between 1012 and 1040, Lietbert appears as an imperial counsellor just this one time. For Gerard I’s engagement with the German emperors, see Schieffer, ‘Ein deutscher Bischof’, 335–47.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai in 1051, and there performed the queen’s unction.27 He attended the Capetian court twice more, in 1059 and 1066.28 His presence on these two occasions coincided roughly with the minority of Henry IV in Germany and the growing power of the count of Flanders in Hainaut and at the French court, and Lietbert may have been seeking to secure French royal support against Flanders in light of diminished German ability to protect Cambrai.29 He kept various Flemish and Picard connections alive as well. In May 1067 Lietbert assisted at the elevation of the relics of St Macarius of Antioch at Saint-Bavon in Ghent, where the elderly Count Baldwin V, the Countess Adela, and their son, Baldwin VI, were in attendance.30 The same year, he witnessed, in the presence of four fellow bishops from the province of Reims, a charter of Heribert IV, count of Vermandois, on behalf of the canons of Notre-Dame of Paris.31 As to Lietbert’s relationship with Rome, it was limited to the final year of his life. In 1075, while quite ill – Raoul reports that he suffered severely from gout – and at an advanced age, he requested papal protection and confirmation of the privileges and possessions of three abbeys: SaintSépulcre, Mont-Saint-Eloi, and Saint-Aubert.32 Of the three papal bulls Gregory VII ostensibly issued in response, those for Mont-Saint-Eloi and Saint-Aubert appear suspect.33 The bulls place the institutions and 27 28

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VL, 850. On episcopal reunions with the French kings, see Guyotjeannin, ‘Les évêques dans l’entourage royal’, who does not include the 1066 date in his overview; the diplomatic evidence and discussion of Anna’s consecration is furnished in Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, xix–xxiii; no. 22, 60–1 (1065 after 4 August); no. 26, 79 (28 September 1066). Lietbert was also involved with Baldwin V in the reform of Saint-Pierre of Hasnon in 1065, in Hainaut. The charter was confirmed by Philip I at Baldwin’s request that year. Henry IV attained his majority in 1065. Hainaut’s absorption by Baldwin V was recognized by Agnes and Henry IV in 1056. See I. S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106 (Cambridge, 1999), 24, 31, 51–2. Vita altera Sancti Macarii Antiocheni, ed. G. Henschen, AASS April, vol. I, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1865), 881. Guérard, Cartulaire de l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris, 308. The charters in question are reproduced in Pflugk-Harttung, Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, nos. 49–50, 47–9 (Saint-Sépulcre and Saint-Aubert); and Duvivier, Actes et documents anciens intéressant la Belgique, 148–9 (Mont-Saint-Eloi). The grounds are these. The wording and issue date (1 November 1076) of the bulls for MontSaint-Eloi and Saint-Aubert are virtually identical, and closely mirror both a papal bull of 7 March 1075 for Saint-Pierre of Lille (Pflugk-Harttung, Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, no. 48, 46–7) and the papal bull of 18 April 1075 for Saint-Sépulcre. Only the names of the recipients, dates of issue, and pontifical regnal dates differ, although Saint-Sépulcre’s bull contains a full enumeration of its possessions. Bulls conferring papal protection of ecclesiastical liberties employed similar language at this time, but as only the original bull for Saint-Pierre of Lille survives, there remains a good chance that those for Saint-Aubert and Mont-Saint-Eloi (both preserved in copies at Paris, BNF Collection Moreau 31, fo. 134r) were modelled on it. More suspicious still is that by 1 November 1076, the date of issue for the bulls of Saint-Aubert and Mont-Saint-Eloi, Lietbert had been dead for more than four months. Note that Jaffé and Wattenbach (JL, no. 5009, vol. I, 619),

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 their possessions under perpetual papal protection against lay or clerical usurpation. Such bulls, commonly issued in the eleventh century for monasteries and canonries across Europe, added papal anathema to episcopal injunctions against violators of the abbeys’ liberties. In SaintSépulcre’s case, the bull also upheld episcopal prerogative in the consecration of churches and ordination of monks and clergy belonging to the abbey.34 Thus Lietbert’s apparent ‘Gregorian’ sympathies – an assertion based on what may be a single, authentic papal act – do not look like an engagement with the pope’s reform agenda. At most they indicate that the bishop of Cambrai believed that a papal anathema provided a disincentive to those who would infringe monastic liberties, and a further layer of protection to the legacy of the institution(s) he had reformed and endowed in the years between 1064 and 1068. The bulls’ issuance at the end of Lietbert’s tenure also conforms to the bishop’s pattern of drawing up charters; fifteen of his twenty known charters were issued between 1070 and 1076.35 For his part, Raoul makes no mention in his vita of any papal bulls or papal involvement in Cambrai during Lietbert’s episcopacy.36 Evidence of Raoul’s adaptation of, and also his clear departure from, prevailing traits in German episcopal gesta and vitae appears throughout his biography of Lietbert. In general, German episcopal biographies stressed a bishop’s education, the elegance of his mores (essentially meaning refined conduct and behaviour), his superior administrative capacities and service to the German emperors, his reform of religious communities, his resources as a builder and patron, and his exemplary personal qualities such as patience, eloquence, and gravitas – often furnished in service to the court.37 Raoul’s Lietbert exhibits many of these virtues, especially in his education. As a young novice Lietbert was, Raoul says,

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considered the bull for Saint-Aubert authentic, but on the (faulty) grounds that they believed Lietbert had died on 28 September 1076 rather than 23 June. Pflugk-Harttung, Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, no. 49, 48. Such provisions distinguish this bull from those granting full abbatial exemption from episcopal prerogatives, outlined by JeanFrançois Lemarignier in two studies, J. F. Lemarignier, ‘Political and monastic structures in France at the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century’, in F. L. Cheyette (ed.), Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe: Selected Readings (New York, 1968), 100–27, and especially J. F. Lemarignier, ‘L’exemption monastique et les origines de la réforme grégorienne’, in Recueil d’articles rassemblés par ses disciples: structures politiques et religieuses dans la France du haut moyen âge (Rouen, 1995), 285–337. See Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, 100–57. There is also no evidence that Lietbert supported Henry III or Henry IV in opposing papal initiatives. He did not attend the January 1076 Council of Worms, at which Henry IV demanded that Gregory abdicate the throne, but this probably was owing to his illness rather than from sympathy for the papal cause. On the synod see Robinson, Henry IV, 143–7. For examples, see Jaeger, ‘The courtier bishop’; Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum; J. Nightingale, ‘Bishop Gerard of Toul (963–94) and attitudes to episcopal office’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Karl Leyser (London, 1992), 41–62, at 41–3.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai ‘led running with a thirsting spirit to the font of philosophy, and . . . drinking from the seven rivers of threefold wisdom’, he studied logic, medicine, and ethics.38 Trained in the episcopal school under the careful eye of his predecessor Gerard, the young clerk’s masters soon took note of his industry, sollicitudo, scientia, mores, and religio munda et immaculata.39 These were qualities conducive to his rapid professional ascent, first to the dignity of schoolmaster (archiscolus), then to provost and archdeacon of the cathedral chapter. In the gesta account of Lietbert’s election by Henry III, written about 1054, the emperor agrees on his suitability for office on the grounds that Lietbert had at one time been his chaplain and had proven his fidelity on many occasions, and Raoul follows this account nearly verbatim.40 Raoul also noted his accomplishments in the service of local church reform. Copying and slightly augmenting passages from the earlier gesta of Lietbert, Raoul detailed the bishop’s rehabilitation of the city’s churches and the reform of their communities, and above all his building campaigns – including, most importantly for Raoul, the foundation of Saint-Sépulcre and the extension of the city’s walls around it.41 If Lietbert shared in some of the personal and professional qualities esteemed of a Reichsbischof, Raoul nevertheless limited his description of the bishop’s attendance at the imperial court and his involvement in the affairs of the empire to just two occasions.42 He is far more effusive, and contributes all new material to the pre-existing account of Lietbert’s deeds, when talking about the prelate’s involvement with the French king and the bishops of the archiepiscopal province of Reims. Not only did the bishop of Cambrai preside at Queen Anna’s unction in 1051, but, according to Raoul, so great was his reputation that King Henry I was said to have requested the queen’s coronation ceremony be carried out in conjunction with Lietbert’s episcopal consecration.43 Henry I’s esteem of Lietbert was likewise shared by his fellow suffragans, including two 38

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‘Ducitur sitibundo pectore currens ad fontem philosophiae, et saporis tripertiti septem rivos ebibens modo studet logicae, nunc insudat phisicae, sic intendens vacat ethicae’. VL, 844. VL, 844–5. Compare with James 1:27: ‘religio munda et immaculata apud Deum et patrem’. GEC, 491; VL, 847. VL, 859–61, 862. These tropes are commonly part of episcopal vitae; see Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum, 187. Raoul omits any mention of the bishop’s presence during Henry III’s military campaign against Baldwin V of Flanders in 1054 – which the gesta of Lietbert and the Chronicon s. Andreae (532–4) describe in detail – and for which Lietbert would almost certainly have been obliged to furnish troops. When Raoul later recounts the bishop’s presence at the imperial court in Cologne in 1056, on his return from a two-year pilgrimage, it is to remark on the bishop’s excellent relationship with Baldwin V, whose union of Hainaut to Flanders the Empress Agnes and the child-king Henry IV formally recognized at the council. VL, 850.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 archbishops of Reims, Gui (1033–55) and Gervais. Raoul heaps praise on the latter, describing Gervais as ‘conspicuous in all goodness’.44 Gervais so loved Lietbert, Raoul adds, that the archbishop ‘revered and honoured him above all the bishops of his archdiocese’, and even once requested him to perform the Easter mass at Reims cathedral.45 Raoul writes that when Lietbert proceeded to Châlons for his ordination into the priesthood and then to Reims for his consecration, the towns and their prelates welcomed him triumphantly.46 In sum, Raoul presents Lietbert’s consecration as the very picture of social and religious concord, and the prelate himself as politically amphibious, equally at ease with his fellow bishops of Reims or at the German court.47 We will return to the significance of these associations shortly. Of even greater significance for Raoul than Lietbert’s knack for mingling with different crowds, was the prelate’s ability to transcend the borders separating regnum from sacerdotium, active life from the contemplative, and earthly life from the celestial. While Raoul borrowed heavily from the gesta of Lietbert and Gerard I and drew inspiration from them, this thematic and literary emphasis was strictly his own. Lietbert’s presence in Cologne and Reims and his familiarity with his fellow bishops and the two monarchs take place within specific, essentially liturgical, contexts – Easter celebrations and royal coronations. For Raoul, these moments reflected the ideal bond that should prevail between prelates, monarchs, and people, and expressed his own understanding of the proper relationship between the lay and priestly powers. lietbert, the good pastor To describe Raoul’s viewpoint as ‘Gregorian’ or ‘imperialist’, assuming these terms could be satisfactorily defined, would be misleading. Raoul accepted the superiority of clergy and canon law over secular dignity and tradition,48 but stressed their essential complementarity. He set the tone in the opening chapters of the vita, waxing eloquent and perhaps 44 45

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VL, 848–9, 861. VL, 861. At 848 (c. 16), Raoul exalts Gui as ‘an utterly distinguished man, renowned in all things among his compatriots’ (ʻvir sane conspicuus interque suos compatriotas per omnia clarusʼ). VL, 848–50. VL, 849: ‘Infulis redimitus procedit metropolita, consequuntur pontifices populorum stipante caterva . . . Sistitur Deo, presentatur pontifici, recitatur electio, testificatur a cunctis. Fit concursus populorum, fit strepitus gaudiorum’. As, for example, when he compares Henry I’s marriage to Anna of Kiev with Lietbert’s espousal to his church: ‘Regi Francorum coniungitur carnalis sponsa, domno Lietberto Cameracensium pontifici, regio et sacerdotali cubiculario, sancta committitur ecclesia. Sed haec copula quanto sanctior, tanto melior’. VL, 850.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai nostalgic about the harmony of regnum and sacerdotium that prevailed during the reigns of Otto III and Henry II. Those times, he wrote, ‘marked a solstice of peace and tranquility, when kingship and priesthood were in harmony’, and when, ‘sustained by the arm of a peace-loving king, mother church delighted in the concordant justice of the saints’.49 Lietbert was born to this happy age. By implication, in Raoul’s own day a century later, such harmony was a fond but distant memory. Raoul’s retelling of Lietbert’s election confirmed how the prerogatives of clergy, people, and emperor, when left to operate cooperatively, yielded a consensus candidate. According to Raoul, Lietbert arrived at court on Good Friday in 1051 with other legates from the city, to announce Gerard I’s death and Lietbert’s election by the joint consent of the clergy and people. Henry III put off confirming the election until Easter Sunday, when, following the mass, he gathered his magnates and weighed the people and clergy’s decision.50 Rather than describing the imperial deliberation as a rubber-stamp process, Raoul first insisted that Henry III confirmed the popular choice: ‘mother church celebrated . . . [and] applauded the election of the celebrated lord Lietbert, above all at the prerogative of imperial election’.51 When another candidate for the bishopric objected to Lietbert’s election, it was Henry – citing the case of Martin of Tours, whose own election had been contested by a faction of clergy – who pronounced in favour of the bishop-elect.52 Scholars have repeatedly noted that Raoul whitewashed the more believable account of Lietbert’s election contained in the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium. The Gesta’s author attributed his elevation solely to the emperor’s will, and asserted that Lietbert had pledged faith to Henry III before returning to his city.53 Raoul, by contrast, carefully noted that Lietbert received from the emperor’s hands the city of Cambrai ‘with 49

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VL, 844: ‘Tripudiabat christianus orbis pacifici regis sustentatus brachio; gaudebat mater ecclesia sanctorum concordi iustitia, de virtute in virtutem gradientibus cunctis . . . In hoc ergo pacis tranquillitatisque solstitio bene sibi consentientibus regno cum sacerdotio, preclui decoris iubar effulsit . . . nobilis infans nobili prosapia’. See the comments of D. A. Warner, ‘Saints and politics in Ottonian Germany’, in N. Van Deusen (ed.), Medieval Germany: Associations and Delineations (Ottowa, 2000), 7–28, at 11. VL, 846–7. VL, 848: ‘Sollempnizabat mater ecclesia . . . plaudebat domni Lietberti celebri electione, presertim ad prerogativam electionis imperatoriae’. VL, 848; Sulpicius Severus, Vie de Saint Martin, vol. I, 270–3. GEC, 491–2: ‘Pontifex, facta fidelitate imperatori, et omnibus competentibus adimpletis, satagebat ad civitatem suam reverti’. The performance of homage by churchmen to secular rulers was explicitly banned at the Council of Clermont in 1095 (‘Ne episcopus vel sacerdos regi vel alicui laico in manibus ligiam fidelitatem faciat’), and lay investiture prohibited. Numerous clergy from Cambrai attended the council owing to the then-raging succession dispute in the diocese. For the quote see S. Beulertz, Das Verbot der Laieninvestitur im Investiturstreit (Hannover, 1991), 11, 41–2, 75; and Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk, 22–6.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 all its appurtenances’ (cum suis appenditiis omnibus), not his church. Establishing Henry’s electoral role and his defence of Lietbert were for Raoul critical to the legitimacy of the bishop’s candidacy. Raoul was clearly staking out a middle ground between imperial custom and canonical procedure at a time when the subject of lay investiture and the performance of homage to laymen were hot topics of debate. This leitmotif of equilibrium also seeps into Raoul’s description of the bishop’s words and actions. In an encomium celebrating Lietbert’s virtues as pastor, Raoul includes the following passage adapted from Augustine’s De ordine: The bishop lived as a student of divine law and as an example to his people . . . He did nothing weakly, and nothing audaciously. With respect to the sins of his people, he either cast out all anger or so restrained it that it was like anger dismissed. He observed as closely as possible that when he took vengeance he was not excessive, and not stingy in forgiving. He punished nothing that was not the better for it; he indulged nothing that might become worse.54

In the passage in the De ordine which Raoul paraphrases, Augustine explains to several interlocutors that there is a branch of learning (disciplina) that yields metaphysical knowledge of God and his order. This knowledge is revealed to those wise men who both contemplate it with their understanding and adhere to it in their manner of living. Thus knowledge of God means regulating one’s life and directing one’s mind to its study – it results neither from contemplation nor action alone, but a balance or proportion between the two.55 By his personal example, Lietbert demonstrated to his parishioners the best means for accessing knowledge of God. Here, as elsewhere in the vita, harmony between word and action, between interior and exterior dispositions, is the pastoral ideal.56 This is confirmed early in the vita’s seventh chapter, where Raoul allows that ‘you would see in [Lietbert] Mary and Martha, now going about the business of the ministry, now humbly laying at Jesus’ feet . . . with tears and attentive prayers’.57 For Raoul, who took his cues from Augustine and, as we shall see, Gregory the Great, Mary and 54

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VL, 851–2 (my translation of Augustine): ‘Studiosus divinae legis pontifex exemplumque suis ita vivebat . . . Nichil faciebat enerviter, nichil audacter. In peccatis autem suorum vel pellebat omnino iram vel ita frenabat, ut esset pulsae similis. Magnopere observabat, cum vindicabat, ne nimium; cum ignoscebat, ne parum. Nichil puniebat, quod non valeret ad melius; nichil indulgebat, quod verteretur in peius’. Augustine of Hippo, De ordine libri duo, PL 32, cols. 1006–7; Russell Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil, 118–19. Augustine of Hippo, De ordine libri duo, PL 32, cols. 1006–7. Compare, for example, VL, 849, at his ordination into the priesthood; and 851, with his sermon on the parable of the man given two bags of money. VL, 845.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai Martha, represented complementary ideals of action and contemplation, rather than mutually exclusive pursuits.58 Another feature of the good pastor central to Raoul’s depiction of episcopal sanctity was the bishop who withstood tyranny and protected his flock from danger. This model was grounded in biblical tradition, drawing especially on passages from Ezekiel and John. In depicting Lietbert’s conflicts with the castellan of Cambrai and the count of Flanders, Raoul had ample opportunity to put this ideal on display. In one memorable encounter, the aged Lietbert, ailing from gout, was transported by carriage into the siege tents of Count Robert of Flanders, which were arrayed outside Cambrai (in 1076?).59 From his seat, he ordered the count to cease and desist, only to have Robert laugh him off. Lietbert then struggled to sit up, stood on his own feet, and taking crozier in hand excommunicated the tyrant pontificaliter, ‘with full episcopal authority’. Robert, ‘in awe of the bishop’s authority’, quit the siege. To frame and contextualize Lietbert’s pastoral conduct in this encounter, Raoul excerpted heavily from the fourteenth Homily of Gregory the Great, the sermon ‘Ego pastor bonus sum’, ʻI am the Good Shepherdʼ.60 General arguments from the fourteenth Homily are also found in the fourth chapter of the second book of Gregory’s Liber pastoralis, which Gregory wrote at precisely the same time as the homily (September 590–February 591). Together, this sermon and the Liber pastoralis represent some of Gregory’s earliest reflections on the obligations of pastoral care.61 Both Gregory’s gospel homilies and the Liber pastoralis enjoyed demonstrably wide usage in and around Cambrai in the eleventh century.62 Indeed, locally written episcopal gesta and vitae were saturated with allusions and excerpts from these texts. Bishop Gerard I 58

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Constable, Three Studies, 19–22, 30–1, 40–1. This evocation of the bishop as both Mary and Martha is often found in the vitae and gesta of eleventh-century bishops, including Wazo of Liège. VL, 863–4. John 10:11–12. Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia, ed. R. Étaix, CCSL, 141 (Turnhout, 1999), Homily 14, 96–102, here at 98 (“I am the Good Shepherd.”/ʻEgo sum pastor bonusʼ.); RP, vol. I, 188–9. David Hurst has translated the homily into English: Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. D. Hurst (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990), 107–12, but designates it Homily 15, not 14. Gregory the Great, Homiliae, lxi and lxx, proposes that Homily 14 was originally composed for the second anniversary of Pope Pelagius’ death, thus 6 February 591. The editors of the Liber pastoralis, vol. I, 21–2, place the composition of its first two books between September 590 and February 591. In the RP, Gregory’s commentary on the passage from Ezekiel concerns pastors who keep silent when they should not, and speak when they should be silent. Fearing to lose the favour of men, they do not speak freely when it is good and necessary, and in that respect are like the mercenary who flees when the wolf approaches his flock. However, Gregory’s commentary on Ezekiel’s Non ascendistis ex adverso is essentially the same in Homily 14 and the RP, even if the Homily is concerned less with the pastor’s speech and more with general issues of pastoral responsibility. Gerard of Cambrai, Acta synodi Atrebatensis, 69.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 himself, and subsequently the author of Gerard’s gesta, employed Gregory’s Homilies 17 and 26, as well as the Liber, in their writings.63 Raoul availed himself of Gerard’s gesta, a debt he explicitly acknowledges, and also appears to have been inspired by the Vita sancti Gaugerici episcopi’s use of Ezekiel 13:5, a passage commented on in Gregory’s fourteenth homily and the Liber pastoralis.64 In Homily 14, expounding on the passage, ‘He rises up in opposition, standing like a wall of the house of Israel, so that he might stand in combat in the day of the Lord’, Gregory states that to rise up in opposition is to constrain with a free voice of reason any powers acting with depraved reason, while ‘To stand in combat for the house of Israel in the day of the Lord and to raise up like a wall’, is to vindicate innocent believers with the authority of justice against the injustice of perverse men. Raoul incorporates both Ezekiel 13:5 and Gregory’s commentary wholesale into the Vita Lietberti episcopi, using Count Robert’s ‘tyranny’ as the bishop’s foil. Lietbert is thus a bishop who acts viriliter and pontificaliter, embodying John’s ideal of the good pastor who lays down his life for his sheep.65 Gregory the Great’s pastoral model was central to Raoul’s image of Lietbert, from the bishop of Cambrai’s initial refusal to ascend the episcopal throne – an episode modelled on Gregory’s own experience – to the very words he preached. Familiar ideas from Pope Gregory’s writing on pontifical office are here: the bishop’s attention to the consistency between the hortatory word and personal example; his utility as an exemplar of mores and good Christian conduct; his humble but determined defence of his flock; his power as a preacher; and his willingness to improve by correction (also an Augustinian theme). He blends these with contemporary episcopal virtues celebrating Lietbert’s nobility, education, and statesmanship to create a bishop-saint not only capable

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Eleventh-century manuscripts containing the vitae of bishop-saints Remigius and Gaugericus (Géry), which borrowed directly from the Liber, were copied and kept at Notre-Dame of Cambrai and Saint-Sépulcre. Passages in the GEC which employ Gregory’s texts include 1.106, 446; 3.28, 475; 3.32, 479. Cambrai, BM 864 (eleventh century, Saint-Sépulcre) and 865 (eleventh century, cathedral of Notre-Dame), contain the vitae of Remigius and Gaugericus. For the influences of Gregory’s work in the latter text, the third recension of which was composed in the early eleventh century, see the Acta altera (Vita tertia) sancti Gaugerici episcopi confessoris, 2.2.43–46, 684–5, and Judic, ‘La diffusion de la Regula pastoralis’, 213–19. VL, 863; RP, vol. I, 188–9; Gregory the Great, Homiliae, 98–9. John 10:11; VL, 863: ‘Libertate nobilis animi sese viriliter ingessit hostibus, auctoritate pontificali redarguit tirannorum rabiem’. (compare Psalm 31:25). The same use of Ezekiel occasionally appears in episcopal charters at this time, for example in an 1135 charter of Josselin of Soissons (Gousset, Les actes de la province ecclésiastique de Reims, vol. II, 217–19) and an 1160 charter of archbishop Samson of Reims (Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 27, 203).

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai of navigating the sometimes treacherous waters between regnum and sacerdotium, but harmonizing them in action. lietbert, the would-be jerusalemite For all his concern with pastoral activism, the central event of Raoul’s vita, and perhaps Lietbert’s life, was the bishop’s two-year pilgrimage to the Levant. For Raoul, Lietbert’s motivation to endure the trials of pilgrimage was best summarized as a profound desire ‘to embrace and kiss the pathways trod by Jesus’ feet’.66 The reality was more complicated. It was probably no coincidence that the bishop’s journey followed on the heels of a serious political setback in Cambrai. Despite Lietbert’s strenuous attempts to keep the castellany of Cambrai out of the hands of John, the advocate of Arras – a layman who, in short order, had usurped the honour from the legitimate heir, blockaded the city to prevent Lietbert’s ceremonial first entry as bishop, despoiled the cathedral’s treasury, and bedded down with his wife in the episcopal palace – John had scandalously renounced his fidelity to Count Baldwin V of Flanders and led Henry III’s army into the county during the summer of 1054.67 In exchange for his loyalty and military leadership, Henry restored John as castellan, displacing Lietbert’s favoured candidate, Hugh d’Oisy, nephew of the legitimate castellan. ‘Humiliated and distraught’, Lietbert resisted. The emperor had him seized and threatened him with violent expulsion from his see.68 On the advice of his fellow bishops, Lietbert relented and was freed, but the political damage and personal dishonour had been done. A few months later, as autumn approached, the bishop departed for Jerusalem. Raoul’s report of the events leading to the pilgrimage mention nothing of Henry’s deal with John of Arras; he notes only that John went over to the emperor’s camp and had nefarious dealings with him.69 Hinting at the threat of unrest, he described the people’s fears about the bishop’s departure, painting in vivid colour how weeping townsfolk followed the episcopal party a full three miles from town.70 From there, Raoul’s 66

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VL, 853. Little attention has been paid to Lietbert’s pilgrimage; brief mention is given in de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église en Belgique, vol. II, 437–8. The events are recounted in the GEC, 490–4; VL, 846, 848, 853 (borrowing largely from the GEC), and summarized by Koyen, De prae-gregoriaanse hervorming te Kamerijk, 51–7; Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 237–8. GEC, 494: ‘Humiliatus igitur et conturbatus episcopus usquequaque, vivificationem petebat a divina miseratione, volens donum suum legitime perfectum inviolabiliter permanere’. VL, 853. Raoul then adds: ‘Cuius rei seriem, quoniam in gestis pontificalibus plenius describitur, omittimus et ad exequendum pontificis iter stilum dirigimus’. Ibid., 853–4.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 account strikes chords similar to other pilgrimage stories, tinged by elements of realism. He detailed the trials of the road, the suspicions of the lords through whose lands they passed, the threat posed by Bulgarian bandits, dream-visions and saintly interventions, and visits to holy shrines. Raoul favoured epic prose descriptions of the journey to furnishing gritty details, but in all it is a remarkable account of Holy Land pilgrimage, one of the best from the eleventh century.71 As the travellers left behind familiar cities and provinces, Raoul’s narrative focused on the increasingly alien landscapes and people. The crossing of frontiers – the extremos fines and fines limitaneos of Hungary and Bulgaria – marked a descent from cultivated to uncultivated lands, from cities to nomadic settlements, from peoples bounded by laws and religious cult to lawless and irreligious tribes, animal-like in their behaviour and appearance.72 For Raoul, this journey into a world lacking law or religion laid bare Lietbert’s virtues. As Lietbert and his party crossed through the ‘deadly wastes’ (mortiferas solitudines) of Bulgaria, they encountered wandering bands of ‘thieving Scythians’ and frightened refugees from ‘barbarian’ attacks.73 Bulgaria in 1054 was deeply unsettled; just the year before the Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos had concluded a treaty settling thousands of rebellious and semi-nomadic Pechenegs between the lower Danube and the Balkans.74 Facing hazardous roads, the bishop’s fellow travellers considered fleeing with the refugees, but Lietbert calmly drew words of wisdom from the Bible (which he had been contemplating as he walked) and offered them to his companions. Citing Luke 9:62, he 71

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The bishop’s pilgrimage prefigured by a decade the massive German pilgrimage of 1064, which was led by the bishops of Mainz, Regensburg, Bamberg, and Utrecht; for this pilgrimage, see E. Joranson, ‘The great German pilgrimage of 1064–1065’, in L. J. Paetow (ed.), The Crusades and Other Historical Essays Presented to Dana C. Munro by his Former Students (New York, 1928), 3–43, and H.-H. Kortüm, ‘Der Pilgerzug von 1064/65 ins Heilige Land. Eine Studie über Orientalismuskonstruktionen im 11. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 277 (2003), 561–92. Others who departed for the Holy Land about this time include Abbot Thierry of SaintHubert-en-Ardennes, Bishop Werner of Straßburg, and Benno of Osnabrück; for a summary and sources see S. Runciman, ‘The pilgrimages to Palestine before 1095’, in M. W. Baldwin (ed.), A History of the Crusades, vol. I (Madison, WI, 1969), 68–78; Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 25–39; Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum, 276. Bishop Hélinand of Laon, already in the eastern Mediterranean, accompanied Lietbert back to northern France; VL, 858. VL, 854. ‘Pretergressus Pannoniorum fines limitaneos ingreditur solitudines saltuosas, quas deserta Bulgariae nominant quasque latrunculi Sciticae gentis inhabitant. Hi degentes more ferarum nullis cohercentur legibus, nullis continentur urbibus. Sub divo manent, quas nox coegerit, sedes habent, pretereuntes obsident, obvios interficiunt, ceteros depredantur. Gregatim vadunt, omnia sua secum portantes cum tota suppellectile, parvulis et uxoribus. Nullius heresis nominata secta, nullius religionis divino cultu tenentur’. Ibid., 854. The pilgrims’ meeting of refugees on the road is also a feature of the Annalist of NiederAltaich’s account of the German pilgrimage. See Joranson, ‘The great German pilgrimage’, 19. P. Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier. A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204 (Cambridge, 2000), 93. My thanks to Jonathan Shepard for this reference.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai counselled that ‘no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’.75 Thus cheerfully awaiting martyrdom at the brigands’ hands, the bishop continued his voyage until he reached Latakia. There, the hardship of overland travel gave way to the monotony of delay. Three months passed while the travellers waited for the political situation to ease and the road to Jerusalem to open. The company of pilgrims, save for the bishop and his closest companions, dispersed.76 Determined to make the passage by sea, Lietbert finally boarded a vessel and disembarked at Cyprus. There he was delayed another two months, only to be fraudulently returned to Latakia by another sailing crew. Dispirited, he at last agreed to return home, almost two years after his departure. Instead of making his devotional offering at Jerusalem, Lietbert made it to St Andrew at the abbey of Cateau-Cambrésis, on the return journey to Cambrai. Although the immediate objective of the bishop’s pilgrimage had not been achieved, for Raoul the marvels of the journey and the pilgrims’ perseverence furnished evidence of Lietbert’s transcendant virtues: his assiduousness in prayer, his devotion to the saints and to Mary, his serenity in the face of death. As a pilgrim, the bishop had fulfilled the commands of Augustine’s On the true religion, whose words Raoul then put into Lietbert’s mouth on the occasion of his first sermon to the people of Cambrai. ‘Love not the world’, the prelate said, because all around us is the concupiscence of the flesh . . . and worldly ambition. Those who love to depart rather than return shall be sent into more distant places, because they are flesh, a spirit moving and never returning. However, whoever makes good use of the five senses of the body to believe in and preach God’s works and cultivate his love (ad credenda et praedicanda opera dei et nutriendam caritatem ipsius) . . . in order to pacify his nature and know God, shall ‘share in his Lord’s joy’ [Matt. 25: 23].77

As Lietbert traversed frontiers, he did not, with Luke’s ploughman, look back. But following Augustine’s exhortation, he returned and put himself to the task of supporting the city’s religious institutions and leading its flock. Scholars have sometimes argued that the act of pilgrimage marked passage into liminal space and time. On the road, the pilgrim leaves behind everyday social and religious structures and enters a physical 75 77

VL, 855. 76 Ibid. VL, 851: ‘Non diligamus mundum, quoniam omnia sunt concupiscentia carnis et concupiscentia oculorum et ambitio seculi. Qui enim magis amant ire quam redire, in longinquiora mittendi sunt, quoniam caro sunt et spiritus ambulans and non rediens. Qui vero bene utitur vel ipsis quinque sensibus corporis ad credenda et predicanda opera Dei et nutriendam caritatem ipsius vel actione vel cognitione ad pacificandam naturam suam et cognoscendum Deum, intrat in gaudium domini sui.’ Compare with Augustine of Hippo, De vera religione liber unus, ed. K.-D. Daur, CCSL, 32 (Turnhout, 1962), 255; trans. J. H. S. Burleigh in Augustine, Of True Religion (Chicago, 1959).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 and mental place where he embraces a more profound and idealized understanding of religious ideas and symbols. He leaves the norms of ‘church’ and society, and encounters the symbols of Christian religion and its founder face-to-face.78 It is doubtful that Raoul understood Lietbert’s pilgrimage in these terms. True enough, for Raoul the pilgrimage was an event where mundane sociopolitical preoccupations ceased to exist. Within the narrative framework of the vita, the pilgrimage is recounted in strict isolation from political events in Cambrai or the German empire.79 But the bishop’s passage to the east intensified his already present religious and saintly qualities; it did not create them. The pilgrimage, set off from the other events of the vita, showed how Lietbert was at once of the world but fixated beyond it – a good pastor who left his city a pilgrim but returned to lead his people to God. Its inclusion in the vita established a thematic counterweight to Raoul’s emphasis elsewhere on the ways in which Lietbert balanced the opposing demands and impulses of episcopal administration. The ‘solstitial harmony’ prevailing in Lietbert’s life was a harmony born, in part, of refusal: refusal of political ambition, refusal of favouritism, refusal ultimately, as a pilgrim, of the world itself. the disputed episcopal succession and regional identities in the vita lietberti episcopi To this point we have not discussed the circumstances of the Vita Lietberti episcopi’s composition, yet Raoul’s depiction of the bishop and any interpretation of the text must be weighed in light of the fact that, when he wrote, Cambrai was in the midst of a pitched controversy over the episcopal succession to the see. The death of Bishop Gerard II (1076–92), Lietbert’s successor, brought momentous change to the diocese. As different factions in the town threw their support behind rival candidates, the cathedral chapter of Arras, with comital and papal support, split from the diocese of Cambrai in 1094. Arras took with it two of Cambrai’s archdeaconries and spiritual oversight of a number of important religious houses, including Anchin, Arrouaise, Mont-Saint-Eloi, and SaintVaast.80 In the disputed election at Cambrai, Manasses, archdeacon of 78

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V. Turner and E. L. B. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. Anthropological Perspectives (New York, 1978), 1–39. VL, 853, 858–9. At some point after summer 1054, Henry III had restored the castellany to Hugh d’Oisy and his descendents. Soon after re-entering his see, a new political controversy with the castellan of Cambrai confronted the bishop. Although the chronological sequence of the affair is hazy, in Lietbert’s absence Hugh had imprisoned the bishop’s chamberlain and made off with his goods. For this and what follows, see the thorough account by Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 353–412.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai Reims, was nominated in 1093 but rejected by Henry IV. Favoured (though not always consistently) by Urban II, he acted as bishop until 1103. His claim was countered by the long-time archdeacon of Brabant, Gaucher, who was elected after Henry’s refusal of Manasses. Gaucher received the emperor’s blessing, and was finally consecrated in 1095. He exercised episcopal functions intermittently in the diocese from 1095 until 1107, despite his deposition and excommunication in 1095 and again in 1106. In support of their candidates, two archbishops of Reims, Popes Urban II and Paschal II, Count Robert II of Flanders, and two German emperors waged campaigns of propaganda, spiritual warfare, and military aggression. The city of Cambrai was caught in the middle, and the devastation there was particularly severe between late 1101 and 1103, when Robert II and Henry IV launched a series of military expeditions across the region. Seeking to broker their own deals and treaties with the parties in conflict, the citizens of Cambrai established an autonomous commune which played to all sides of the dispute – now treating with Gaucher, now the emperor, now the count of Flanders – until it was suppressed by Henry V in 1107.81 The episcopal succession dispute was largely concluded in 1109, after Henry V enfeoffed Robert II with the castellany of Cambrai and Gaucher renounced his claim to the see, but full resolution remained elusive for many years.82 Seen against this background, the Lietbert of Raoul’s vita has an aura of mass appeal. Here was a former bishop loved by two monarchs and the archbishops of Reims, who was a doting shepherd to his flock, a pacifier of tyrants, and a builder of the city. Because we know so little about Raoul, the early development of his abbey of Saint-Sépulcre, or the immediate reception of the vita of Lietbert, determining Raoul’s intention for the biography beyond general surmises is tenuous. The written memory of Lietbert in the gesta and vita certainly would have held appeal for urban commercial elites. The gesta acclaim the prelate for restoring peace to the city after the military campaigns and sedition of 1054, and describe in some detail how Lietbert excommunicated the castellan Hugh d’Oisy for unjustly afflicting the ‘better and wealthier’ residents of the city with imprisonment and exactions.83 As bishop, Lietbert led the people of Cambrai against one 81

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Full accounts in Hoeres, Das Bistum Cambrai, 20–5; Cauchie, La querelle des investitures, vol. II, 122–205; Reinecke, Geschichte der Stadt Cambrai, 110–18; Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 301–6. Bruwier, ‘Le Hainaut’, 214; Kéry, Errichtung des Bistums Arras, 413–17; Resnick, ‘Odo of Cambrai’, 93–6. ‘Cives namque meliores et ditiores contumelia et iniuriis afficiebat, alios indempnatos et iniudicatos in cippo vilissimo concludens, et inter dedecora plurima barbam aliis evellens’; see GEC, 494–5.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 of Hugh’s castles, a collaborative endeavour that served the mutual interest of the townspeople and bishop and resembled similar ventures in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries.84 More broadly, however, Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre extols Lietbert as a defender of liberty. As we have seen, he elaborated in some detail on Lietbert’s confrontation with Robert I of Flanders and his siege army, which camped outside the city, perhaps in 1076. In a typical play on words with the bishop’s name and his protection of the city’s libertas, Raoul writes: ‘those who had come armed in the fury of war, departed chastened by divine fear. The city, thus liberated (ita liberata civitas) from the terror of siege by the striving of its bishop, gave thanks to God and to his glorious mother’.85 Elsewhere, the bishop is called libertas patriae, libertas publica, libertas reipublicae.86 Even his images, Raoul says, were inscribed with the motto ‘Lietbertus publica libertas’. For Raoul, ‘liberty’ embodied a double meaning. Materially, it meant freedom from oppression by outsiders like the counts of Flanders. In its spiritual sense, liberty meant freedom from the love of mutable things, another quality Lietbert embodied.87 Raoul’s use of such epithets and the themes of harmony, mass appeal, and worldly transcendance he evokes throughout the Vita Lietberti furnish an image of a bishop revered not for his embrace of any one political or religious agenda, but for his embodiment of a particularly Cambrésien sociopolitical and religious identity – an identity both favourable to engagement (on its own terms) with outside ideas and political forces and contemptuous of them. In a city at the intersection of various cultural, political, and linguistic borders, suspicion of interference from external agents is commonly found in its eleventh- and twelfth-century histories. Bishop Gerard I’s well-known refusal to extend the Peace of God within his diocese stemmed from the incommensurability of the new practices and philosophy of a bishop-led peace – which was first propagated in northern France by bishops of Franco-Burgundian origin – with the imperial overlordship of 84

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GEC, 495: ‘Quod [devastation] etiam episcopus moleste accepit, copiosamque armatorum multitudinem ad locum illum deduxit; fuissetque continuo municipium illud solotenus subversum, nisi Rotbertus de Perrona cum suis dolo obstitisset, qui venerat in pontificis auxilium. His ita incassum decursis, Cameracenses infecto negotio ad civitatem suam sunt reversi’. Bishop Burchard and the cives of Cambrai joined forces to attack Hugh II d’Oisy, and Bishop Nicholas of Mons teamed with the townspeople to combat the castellan again in 1153. For these episodes, see GEC Cont., 214, and Lambert of Waterloo, Annales Cameracenses, 526–9; Platelle, ‘Les luttes communales’, 49–50. VL, 863: ‘[Q]ui venerant armati furore bellico, recedebant gratificati timore divino. Ita liberata civitas ab obsidionis terrore studio sui pontificis laudes refert Deo suaeque gloriosae genitrici’. VL, 844, 846, 850, 863–4. VL, 852 (quoting from Augustine, De vera religione liber unus, 248): ‘Et quoniam delectabat libertas, quam nomine et opere praeferebat, ab amore mutabilium rerum liber esse appetebat’.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai the diocese of Cambrai.88 In continuations of the episcopal gesta, Cambrésian bishops originating from outside the region are often the subject of derision or slurs. The Saxon descent of Bishop Berengar (956–8) contributed to the later characterization in the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium that he ‘seemed to his people to be a barbarian in his speech, descent, and mores’. Bishop Tetdo (972–8), like Berengar a Saxon, was forced from the city by hostile vassals who villified his origin.89 Scorn for the imperial bishop Lietard (1131–5) also drips from the continuation of his deeds, written following his suspension and deposition in 1135. The author of Lietard’s deeds denounced him for having ‘loved foreigners like sons; / Germans were his intimates, / beardless youths and smooth young boys’.90 Conversely, two proimperial, twelfth-century accounts describing the election of Manasses to the see in 1093 refer to him disparagingly as ‘francigena’.91 Local identities predicated on disdain for involvement by powerful outsiders in regional affairs often inhere in regions that comprise political borders.92 Clergy and bishops from Gaucher to Burchard (1116–30), for example, reacted angrily to the reconstitution of an independent diocese of Arras from Cambrai’s diocesan territories.93 88

89

90

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GEC, 474. On the diffusion of the Peace of God in northern France, see Strubbe, ‘La paix de Dieu dans le nord de la France’, 497, and H.-W. Goetz, ‘La paix de Dieu en France autour de l’an Mil: fondements et objectifs, diffusion et participants’, in Parisse and Barral i Altet (eds.), Le roi de France et son royaume, 131–45, at 137, 140. On Berengar, see GEC, 431: ‘Hic etiam tantae feritatis extitisse dicitur, ut non modo lingua et natione, sed etiam moribus populo suo barbarus esse videretur’. On mockery of Tetdo’s ignorance of French by his vassals, see GEC, 441. GEC Cont., strophes 16–18, 224: ‘Quos enim debebat amare oderat, / suum servitium pati non poterat; / expellit proximos, fugat domesticos / atque extraneos amat ut filios; / suique privati sunt Teutonici, / imberbes iuvenes et lenes pueri’. GEC Cont., strophe 32, 187: ‘Quidam tandem francigena, / cui Manasses onoma, / electus est per iurgia, / non per iura canonica’. The hostile Gesta Manassis et Walcheri excerpta, vol. VII, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1846), 500, composed in 1180, and the 1191 Gesta pontificum abbreviata per canonicum Cameracensem, vol. VII, ed. L. C. Bethmann, MGH SS (Hanover, 1846), 504, show the persistence of this characterization. While Cauchie, La querelle des investitures, vol. II, 119 n. 2, 123, 123 n. 3, seeks to downplay usage of this adjective by contemporary authors, favouring a view of the hostilities around 1093 as pitting ‘Gregorian’ against ‘anti-Gregorian’ camps, there is no question that francigena was used to identify Manasses by his regional and kin-based affiliations and power base. For recent treatment of the particularity of border regions and their inhabitants’ identities, see P. Sahlins, Boundaries. The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley, CA, 1989), 103–23; D. Power and N. Standen, ‘Introduction’, in D. Power and N. Standen (eds.), Frontiers in Question. Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700 (New York, 1999), 11–12, 21–2; and, in the same volume, D. Power, ‘French and Norman frontiers in the central Middle Ages’, 105–27, esp. at 106–9. More recently, the issue has been revisited in the essays in D. Abulafia and N. Berend (eds.), Medieval Frontiers. Concepts and Practices (Aldershot, 2002); see xi. L. Genicot, ‘Ligne et zone: la frontière des principautés médiévales’, in L. Genicot (ed.), Études sur les principautés lotharingiennes (Louvain, 1975), 172–85, is also useful. Burchard was still lobbying for the repatriation of Arras at the Lateran Council in 1123; Chronicon s. Andreae, 547.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Yet this hostility did not preclude an openness to alliances with external powers who had a stake in the city and diocese. There was no absolute line separating Flanders, the German empire or France in the early twelfth century; the Cambrésis and surrounding regions constituted a zone of interaction among polities and cultures, rather than exclusion. Consequently, the townspeople, clergy, and bishops coupled and uncoupled with secular powers as they negotiated changing political currents. This is immediately obvious from a reading of the continuations of the gesta composed in the wake of the succession dispute of 1093–1107.94 If Cambrésiens embraced a particular orthodoxy, it was that of political self-determination. The precocious erection of a commune in 1077, the first in either Francia or Flanders, furnishes evidence of this.95 To an extent, this sentiment was shared by the secular and regular clergy of the region. In addition to the various legations dispatched to Reims and Rome to lobby against the dissolution of Arras from Cambrai and in favour of Gaucher in 1093 and 1095, local writers were at the very least ambivalent about, if not openly hostile to, the intervention of papal authority in local affairs and any imbalance in the carefully calibrated relationship of regnum and sacerdotium. The author of the Chronicon s. Andreae castri Cameracesii furnishes a prime example of this ambivalence. The abbey of Saint-André of Cateau-Cambrésis was an episcopal foundation, closely attached to the memories and largesse of bishops Gerard I and Lietbert.96 The Chronicon’s anonymous author had also accompanied Gaucher to Clermont to defend his succession to the see.97 As he was writing his chronicle in 1133, he frequently looked back with regret on the years of discord that the reforms of Gregory VII and Urban II had produced in the region. Referring to Gregory VII by his birth name, Hildebrand – an indication of his scorn – he dutifully listed the pope’s programmes to end clerical incontinence and lay investiture of clerical dignities.98 These initiatives, he said, not only sparked a grandis contentio between the pope and German emperor, but pitched the church headlong into scandal everywhere in

94

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96 98

GEC Cont., passim. See also Hoeres, Das Bistum Cambrai; Reinecke, Geschichte der Stadt Cambrai, 118–32. The commune is said by the continuator of the deeds of Gerard II to have been ‘diu desideratam’. It may be a testament to the friendly relations between Lietbert and the townspeople that a commune was not established earlier. For (hostile) accounts of the commune’s foundation, see the Gesta Gerardi II episcopi, in GEC, 498, and the Chronicon s. Andreae, 540. A general summary is furnished by Vermeesch, Essai, 88–98. Chronicon s. Andreae, 530, 537–9. 97 Ibid., 544. The author qualifies him as ‘Hildebrandus papa Romanae sedi’; Chronicon s. Andreae, 539, 542.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai the world.99 Of Odo, the future Urban II, the author of the Chronicon had more generous things to say, though as pope he followed in his predecessor’s footsteps.100 The chronicler remarks with resignation that it would be ‘useless’ and ‘superfluous’ to describe how, after Urban deposed Gaucher at Clermont and overturned his lawful election, ‘the homeland (patria) of Cambrai was utterly devastated and the city left nearly desolate’.101 The outcome was unjust for Gaucher, who as bishop had ‘brought justice to those seeking it and pacified the entire province from the doings of its enemies’ – a line that echoes Raoul’s assessment of Lietbert. Much harsher anti-Urban sentiments were still being aired at Cambrai a half-century later.102 In light of this, it is unsurprising that, despite devoting much of the second book of his Chronicon to Lietbert’s episcopacy, to which he added new material on Lietbert’s patronage of his abbey, the chronicler of Saint-André established no connection between the bishop and Gregory VII.103 He does narrate, following the main lines of Raoul’s vita, Lietbert’s election by the common consent of the people and clergy of Cambrai, his elevation by Henry III and his consecration by the archbishop of Reims.104 He omits any hint of controversy surrounding Lietbert’s election or investiture, noting only, and obliquely: ‘he [the emperor] gave the gift [of the bishopric? of the city?] to the bishop’.105 Beyond hinting that Lietbert attended Henry III’s campaign into Flanders in 1054, the chronicler of Saint-André makes no further mention of the 99

100 101

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Chronicon s. Andreae, 539: ‘Qua de re non solum inter eum et imperatorem grandis exorta est contentio, verum etiam per orbem exinde grave scandalum sancta pertulit ecclesia. Quae controversia usque ad tempora Calixti papae post eum quarti permansit’. Compare with 545, referring to affairs between Calixtus II and Henry V: ‘Quid seditionis, quid perturbationis, quae divisio regni ac sacerdotii tunc fuerit Romae, quod nemo potest, non est nostrum explicare’. Chronicon s. Andreae, 542: ‘Odo, qui et Urbanus, in Romana sede successit, vir sapientissimus’. Chronicon s. Andreae, 544: ‘Multa de ipso concilio, plura quae de ipsis postea contigerunt, et quomodo eorum Cameracensis patria omnino devastata et civitas pene fuerit desolata, quamvis sint stupenda, preterimus, qui iam amplius haec rememorari superfluum esse et inutile ducimus’. Note that the Chronicon’s use of patria to describe the diocese of Cambrai bears a strong affinity with the word’s frequent usage in the Vita sancti Lietberti. The author futher laments that after Gerard II’s death in 1092, the world seemed to devolve from a silver age to an age of iron: ‘sub quo iam ad argentea, et post eius obitum ad ferrea saecula nos devolutos esse graviter sentimus’ (539). Chronicon s. Andreae, 544 ‘iustitiam quaerentibus faciens, omnem provinciam subactis hostibus pacificavit’. The author of the 1180 continuation of the Gesta Manassis et Walcheri is withering in his criticism of Manasses of Soissons, whom he accuses of openly bribing Urban II, and of Urban himself; see 502–3. Chronicon s. Andreae, 533–9. His notice of Gregory’s election is followed by the obituaries of Gervais of Reims and Lietbert, but their proximity within the text is not used to show any further affinity between the pope and the bishop of Cambrai. Ibid., 533. Ibid.: ‘donum episcopii largitus est’. The author thus charts a vague middle ground between the accounts of the gesta and the vita.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 bishop’s involvement with the German emperors.106 Indeed, he devotes the majority of his description of Lietbert’s episcopacy to the pilgrimage, which was of special interest to the monks of Saint-André owing to the visions of St Andrew experienced by one of the bishop’s companions, and to Lietbert’s subsequent monastic foundations and reforms. Such was the image of the bishop deemed worth perpetuating in 1133, and it, too, confounds simple classification according to either imperial or Gregorian ideologies. To the anonymous chroniclers of his episcopal gesta, to the monk of Saint-André, and to Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre, Lietbert was neither an ‘imperial’ bishop nor a ‘Gregorian’. Like his predecessors generations before, Bishop Lietbert owed service to the German emperors, and attended their courts. He routinely dated his charters by imperial regnal years and occasionally by comital years (he never employed papal regnal years).107 He also attended the French court and mingled, at least twice, with his fellow bishops of the province of Reims. He founded or reformed the religious houses of Mont-Saint-Eloi, Sainte-Croix, SaintSépulcre, and Saint-Aubert of Cambrai. He collaborated with Baldwin VI of Flanders to reform the abbey of Saint-Pierre of Hasnon.108 He resisted the ambitious designs of John of Arras, Hugh d’Oisy, and Count Robert I of Flanders. In sum, Lietbert both engaged with and resisted the competing and frequently antagonistic political and religious forces that swirled about his border diocese. Similarly, Raoul’s vita does not neatly conform to the literary category of imperial episcopal biography, nor does it bear the hallmarks of a purely Gregorian bishop. Lietbert’s example makes clear that such descriptive categories are of limited applicability or utility for understanding the political, ideological, and cultural dynamics of a Grenzprovinz such as Cambrai. Indeed, ignoring those categories presents opportunities for seeing local bishops and their dioceses as they saw themselves. Writing a quarter-century after his hero’s death, Raoul transformed the political necessities of life in a contested diocese, one torn apart by a succession dispute between 1093–1107, into saintly virtues. With Lietbert, Raoul developed an image of episcopal sanctity in which the bishop, because of his mass appeal to secular and religious authorities, remained insulated from the political agendas of the day. He was foremost a pastor, one who would ‘rise up in opposition, standing like a wall of the house of Israel, which is the church committed to him’, and lead his flock 106 107

108

Ibid., 535. See Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, nos. 2.01–2.20. Dating of charters by papal regnal years began under Gerard II (1076–92), and was utilized only sporadically. Prou, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, no. 22, 59–63.

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Sanctity & history in a border diocese: the Vita of Lietbert of Cambrai by word and deed.109 The saintly Lietbert, who embodied the complementary traits of action and contemplation found in Mary and Martha, held out the hope of a return to the solstitial harmony between regnum and sacerdotium of days long past. This was an ideal that even in 1133, a decade after the Concordat of Worms, remained elusive. The Vita sancti Lietberti is clearly nostalgic for the past, and presents a bishop adept at negotiating multiple forces and interests. While there is no evidence that either Gaucher or his rival bishop Manasses were in any way connected with its composition, one could read the vita as an olive branch extended to the powerful group of prelates who surrounded Lambert of Arras, Manasses’ chief advocate and supporter against Gaucher. Raoul portrays Lietbert as a member in good standing of the provincial episcopal community; he is cherished by the archbishop of Reims and tied to the French royal court. One could almost imagine Lietbert, had he lived longer, taking his place in Lambert’s circle. But Raoul’s Lietbert is primarily, and distinctively, a man of Cambrai and its political culture. His authority could not be constructed upon purely imperial or papal foundations, nor on one that was wholly French, Flemish, or German, without inviting dissent. In this book’s final case study, we will move from the politics of late eleventh-century episcopal towns to those of the twelfth, focusing on Godfrey, bishop of Amiens (1104–15), and his successors. Like Gervais, Godfrey was an outsider to his diocese and faced opposition from inside and outside of his city. And as we saw with the Gervais, the experiences of Godfrey and his fellow bishops of Amiens demonstrate that bishops’ assimilation and use of local historical idioms and traditions comprised a key strategy for mediating conflict, asserting authority, and burnishing episcopal prestige. 109

‘Ascendit ex adverso, opponens se murum pro domo Israel, hoc est ecclesia sibi commissa, ut posset stare in prelio in die Domini (Ezekiel 13:5)’; VL, 854. See above, nn. 60 and 61.

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Chapter 7

URBAN SPACE, MEMORY, AND EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY: THE BISHOPS OF AMIENS IN PEACE AND CONFLICT, 1073–1164

When bishop Godfrey of Amiens returned to his see on 11 April 1115 – Palm Sunday – following an exile of more than six months, he must have been disturbed by what he saw. The king of France, Louis VI, had established a siege army at the base of a fortified urban tower, the Castillon, and the city was divided by war. Holed up inside the Castillon with his garrison was the castellan of Amiens, Adam. Adam’s powerful allies included Enguerran of Boves, the lord of Coucy and count of Amiens, and Enguerran’s son, Thomas of Marle. The townspeople of Amiens, who had recently won from Louis the privilege of establishing a commune, sided with the king against the count and castellan.1 The bishop’s chief lay officer, the vidame (vicedominus) Guermond of Picquigny, did the same.2 Peace in Amiens, which Godfrey had worked ten years to establish, had utterly disintegrated.3 Six months before the siege began, Godfrey had suddenly quit his diocese. Godfrey’s hagiographer, a monk from Saint-Crépin of Soissons named Nicholas, later recorded that the bishop had been ‘persecuted by violators of the peace’ and ‘hemmed in on all sides by the insolence of the 1

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The townspeople won a communal charter between April 1112 and November 1113. On the events leading to the siege, see Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 400–1; Vermeesch, Essai, 113–16; P. Desportes, ‘Les origines de la commune d’Amiens’, in Magnou-Nortier (ed.), Pouvoirs et libertés au temps des premiers Capétiens, 247–65, at 254–8; RAL, vol. I, no. 85, 190 and 190 nn. 1–2. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 400–16. Louis had been actively pursuing Thomas of Marle in the Laonnois and Amiénois at the request of the provincial bishops, for which see D. Barthélemy, Les deux âges de la seigneurie banale. Pouvoir et société dans la terre des sires de Coucy (milieu XIe–milieu XIIIe siècle) (Paris, 1984), 80–2; Suger of Saint-Denis, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. and trans. H. Waquet, 2nd edn (Paris, 1964), 178; English trans. by J. Moorhead and R. C. Cusimano, The Deeds of Louis the Fat (Washington, DC, 1992), 106–9; and Nicholas of Saint-Crépin, VSG, 935. Ivo of Chartres, Epistolae, PL 162, cols. 258–9 (no. 253), describes the turmoil in a letter he wrote to Louis VI on Godfrey’s behalf as a failure of the peace; see also A. Graboïs, ‘De la trêve de Dieu à la paix du roi. Étude sur les transformations du mouvement de la paix au XIIe siècle’, in P. Gallais and Y.-J. Riou (eds.), Mélanges offerts à Réne Crozet à l’occasion de son 70e anniversaire (Poitiers, 1966), vol. I, 585–96, at 588–9.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens people’ (populorum importunitate circumvallatus), and had fled the city in order to devote himself to a life of spiritual contemplation.4 Guibert of Nogent, a staunch critic of Godfrey, offered a different version of events. The bishop, wrote Guibert, fled ‘when he saw that his presence was acceptable neither to the clergy nor to the people’.5 Whatever his motivation, if Godfrey expected that his return would lead to a quick resolution of the conflict, he was mistaken. The siege dragged on for nearly two years. In the end it outlasted the bishop, who died in November 1115.6 The king ultimately prevailed, the Castillon was demolished, and a parish church was erected upon the spot. A preamble to one of Godfrey’s charters, composed shortly before the siege and echoing Isaiah 62:6, sheds light on the tumultuous political environment in Amiens and gives voice to his perception of the bishop’s duty when faced with trying circumstances: Truly, we are established as guardians upon the walls of this terrestrial Jerusalem, placed by the guilt of our first ancestor in the vale of tears . . . and we profess by reason of our order to observe its care, government, protection, and guidance. Therefore, we ought to provide for it at all times against the incursion of hostile men, and be on guard with indefatigable vigilance so that, worn down by the sudden injuries of the wicked, the necessary little donations given to it by the faithful should not be dispersed . . . through our negligence.7

As Godfrey and other bishops of Amiens around the turn of the twelfth century knew, ‘indefatigable vigilance’ was necessary to weather the frequent power struggles among the city’s three other lords, which 4

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VSG, 931. Nicholas echoed Psalm 55:9–11: ‘I have seen violence and strife in the city; day and night they encircle it, all along its walls; it is filled with trouble and mischief, alive with rumour and scandal, and its public square is never free from violence and spite’. The theme of spiritual withdrawal is common in biographies of saintly bishops who, like Godfrey of Amiens, had previously been monks, for example Hugh of Montaigu, bishop of Auxerre; Hugh of Grenoble; and Odo of Cambrai; see Bouchard, Spirituality and Administration, 37–42 and 41 n. 13. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 406–7: ‘Cum ergo videsset suam nec clero nec populo praesentiam esse gratam, quia neminem juvare poterat . . . repudii dedit et archiepiscopo Rhemensi annulum sandaliaque remisit, et se in exilium iturum, nunquamque deinceps episcopum futurum utrobique mandavit’. For Guibert’s take on Godfrey, see Ott, ‘Writing Godfrey of Amiens’. He was summoned to the provincial council of Reims in March 1115 and ordered back to his see. During the siege, Guibert of Nogent claimed, the townspeople suffered death and injury on a daily basis; Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 416: ‘et dici non potest, quot de burgensibus solis quotidie pene depereant’. Godfrey of Amiens, Epistolae et diplomata, PL 162, col. 744: ‘Super muros nempe hujus terrestris Jerusalem, quae in valle lacrymarum primi parentis culpa posita . . . custodes constituimur, ejus culturam, regimen, tutelam, jugemque observantiam ordinis nostri ratione profitemur. Proinde omni tempore ab hostili incursu sibi debemus providere, indefessaque vigilantia praecavere ne repentinis perversorum oppressa injuriis, substantiolas ad usus sibi necessarias a fidelibus delegatas negligentiae nostrae tempore amittat’. The same theme appears in another of Godfrey’s charters, edited by S. Lecoanet in AEA, vol. I, no. 40, 153–4; vol. II, no. 40a–d (1108/9).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 routinely undermined the bishop’s ability to maintain the local peace. Caught up in a shifting network of political alliances and enmities between the count, the castellan, and the episcopal vidame, a power array not wholly dissimilar from the conditions faced by the bishops of Cambrai, the bishops of Amiens saw their authority frequently challenged. In the contest for political control over the town, the bishops of Amiens articulated a place for themselves and their saintly predecessors as centres and anchors of the community’s collective identity and history.8 The historical consciousness they cultivated – which drew on literate and non-literate repositories of memory – reserved a fundamental role for urban space imbued with sacred status. Charters, hagiographical texts, miracle collections, and liturgical rituals were the media that conveyed the episcopal association with places in the urban landscape, and holy places offered visible, accessible arenas for the elaboration and extension of episcopal authority. Why did the bishops of Amiens privilege space as a conduit for expressing their authority? One possible explanation is that the diocese lacked a written tradition commemorating its prelates. The bishops and cathedral canons did not record episcopal gesta, as they did at Reims, Cambrai, and elsewhere. Nor did local monks and canons of Amiens compose vitae recording the accomplishments of contemporary bishops, as Raoul had done for Lietbert.9 Lacking a written tradition of episcopal deeds, the bishops of Amiens nevertheless forged a history of the local episcopate through narrative sources, including charters and miracle collections, which built upon their connection to the community’s sacred spaces and to the local cult of bishop-saints. The example provided by Amiens’ bishops and their use of space and memory is instructive in several ways. First, it underscores how bishops mobilized both written and spatial media – whatever was at hand – to assert their claims to authority. Capable of reaching different audiences in different contexts, documents and physical spaces were often complementary, with the latter offering tangible (and malleable) proof of written claims. Charters mentioned historical details drawn from local liturgy and hagiography, while saints’ lives recalled historiographical traditions associated with the places and institutions identified in charters. Moreover, unlike the prelates in contemporary Soissons and Rouen, 8

9

Anthony Cohen has pointed out that as the geo-political boundaries of a community change, so might its symbolic expression of solidarity and identity; in identity formation, the past becomes a reference point for constructing contemporary meaning. See A. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (Chichester and London, 1985), 50, 102–3. Of course, Godfrey of Amiens was the subject of a vita. However, its author promoted Godfrey’s cult not at Amiens but at the site of the bishop’s tomb in Soissons.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens for example, the bishops of Amiens faced little direct competition from rival religious communities bent on creating their own versions of the past.10 As a culturally and materially significant basis of power in the Middle Ages, urban space offers a rich field of analysis for the exercise of episcopal authority in northwestern Europe.11 Every city contained a congeries of spaces – civic, seigneurial, ecclesiastical – tied to different authorities and privileged both by jurisdiction and proximity to the holy. Among the episcopal sees in the archdiocese of Reims, Amiens’ landscape was particularly fractious. A stroll across the civitas would have taken a traveller through the jurisdictions of the cathedral chapter, bishop, castellan, count, and vidame.12 Because jurisdictional boundaries protected the right to try criminal cases and established the legal immunities of their inhabitants, documents confirming these privileges were highly sought prizes.13 A dispute over the legal dominion of the count and commune precipitated the siege of 1115. A sacred geography existed in apposition to the secular. The town’s holy spaces loomed large in the collective identity and memory of the populace precisely through their association with the lives and deeds of the community’s patron saints.14 At the centre of the city’s network of sacred space stood the cathedral, the physical and metaphorical representation of the Christian community.15 Surrounding the cathedral were 10

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13 14

15

For Rouen, see F. Lifshitz, ‘The politics of historiography. The memory of bishops in eleventhcentury Rouen’, History and Memory. Studies in the Representation of the Past, 10 (1998), 118–36; for Soissons, see Ott, ‘Educating the bishop’. The significance of place in the formation of medieval social, political, and religious bonds has been frequently noted. I am here using ‘place’ as a cultural construct which derives meaning from its relation to other meaningful events, objects, and places, and ‘space’ to refer to a physical location. See E. Muir and R. F. E. Weissman, ‘Social and symbolic places in Renaissance Venice and Florence’, in J. A. Agnew and J. S. Duncan (eds.), The Power of Place (Boston, 1989), 81–103, at 93. Good treatments of the role of place in sociopolitical relationships may be found in B. Rosenwein, Negotiating Space. Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1999), and Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin. J. Massiet du Biest, Études sur les fiefs et censives et sur la condition des tenures urbaines à Amiens (XIe–XVIIe siècle). Texte et atlas de 10 cartes en deux parties (Tours, 1954), Map 4, gives an idea of the town’s jurisdictional divisions. The Roman wall boundaries hypothesized by the author should, however, be set aside in favour of the reconstructions of D. Bayard and J. L. Massy, Amiens romain (Heilly, 1983), 222–8. For the jurisdictional privileges claimed by the cathedral chapter, see CCA, no. 3, 7–8. Two studies by Jean-Charles Picard stress this point from different perspectives and sources: J.-C. Picard, ‘Conscience urbaine et culte des saints. De Milan sous Liutprand à Vérone sous Pépin Ier d’Italie’, in Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés, IVe–XIIe siècles. Actes du colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 mai 1979) (Paris, 1981), 455–69; and J.-C. Picard, ‘Le recours aux origines. Les Vies de saint Clément, premier évêque de Metz, composées autour de l’An Mil’, in Iogna-Prat and Picard, Religion et culture autour de l’An Mil, 291–9. On the important conjunction between space and memory, see J. Fentress and C. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), 30–1, 58–9. Michaud-Quantin, Universitas, 77–9.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 buildings associated with the deeds of the community’s first martyrs, confessors, and bishops. Saints’ feast days, when both the townspeople and religious institutions paid their annual rents and obligations, made the connections between the town’s sacred places, contemporary social bonds, and the collective memory of Amiens’ holy patrons explicit.16 The bishops of Amiens privileged the memory of one group of patron saints, and the places associated with their deeds, above all others: their ancient predecessors and the bishop-saint Martin of Tours. They evoked their authority by associating themselves with those places in the cityscape connected to their episcopal forebears. In a town divided into multiple and competing jurisdictions, where urban space was a focal point of collective memory and political influence, control over space became a key part of the local idiom of power. The bishops of Amiens understood this and, as they struggled to maintain their authority against rival powers, skilfully employed it to meet their own needs. a city divided: the political context of amiens, 1075–1125 Two edifices symbolizing the local division of power dominated the skyline of Amiens until 1117: the cathedral and the count’s tower, the aforementioned Castillon (Figure 7.1). The cathedral quarter, which first developed as a burgus outside the primitive walls of the Roman civitas, occupied the eastern half of the city.17 The doubled cathedral of SainteMarie et Saint-Firmin was built adjacent to the northeastern corner of the city wall. Nearby were the collegiate church of Saint-Firminle-Confesseur, the canons’ houses and cloister, and the episcopal residence.18 South and slightly west of the cathedral lay the Augustinian 16

17

18

Saints’ feast days, especially St Firmin’s on September 25, were the most important of these occasions. The so-called ‘répit Saint-Firmin’, for example, was an annual head-tax of 4 denarii paid by the town residents to the bishop; see J. Massiet du Biest, ‘Le chef cens et la demi-liberté dans les villes du nord avant le développement des institutions urbaines (Xe–XIe siècles)’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 6 (1927), 470–88; Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde, 313–15; and BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fos. 174r–5r (episcopal charter of 1120). The exact trace of the town walls has been much debated and remains inconclusive. Bayard and Massy, Amiens romain, 222–6, summarise the debate on its location, on one side of which stands J. Massiet du Biest, ‘Y-a-t-il eu à Amiens un bourg épiscopal fortifié complétant, à l’est, l’enceinte gallo-romaine?’ Revue du nord, 40 (1958), 329–37, and, on the other, F. Vasselle and E. Will, ‘L’enceinte du Bas-Empire et l’histoire de la ville d’Amiens’, Revue du nord, 40 (1958), 467–82. Massiet du Biest, Études sur les fiefs et censives, and Vasselle and Will, ‘L’enceinte’, provide detailed maps of the city. The cathedral’s double appellation ‘beatae Mariae et sancti Firmini’ was current in the twelfth century; CCA, no. 14, 20 (charter of 1115–27). On the canons’ cloister, see CCA, no. 3, 8; on the bishop’s residence, AEA, vol. I, no. 36, 150–1. On Saint-Firmin-le-Confesseur, see S. Abdi, ‘L’intégration des collégiales Saint-Firmin le Confesseur et Saint-Nicolas au Cloître dans la ville

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens St.-Acheul St.-Michel

N

Cathedral SS. Marie et Firmin St.-Firmin-le-Confesseur

St.-Nicolas St.-Martin-aux-Jumeaux

St.-Remy Burgus Suburbium

St.-Martin-ad-Burgum

Castillon Civitas

St.-Germain

Avre River

= Jurisdiction of count and castelian

= Jurisdiction of bishop and cathedral chapter

Figure 7.1. The civitas and burgus of Amiens c. 1100

priory of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux and the small collegiate church of Saint-Nicolas, founded contemporaneously in 1073 to provide a regular life for members of the cathedral chapter.19 A short distance away was the

19

d’Amiens à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in R. Le Bourgeois, A. Massoni, and P. Montaubin (eds.), Les collégiales et la ville dans la province ecclésiastique de Reims (IXe–XVIe siècles). Actes du colloque d’AmiensBeauvais, 3, 4 et 5 juillet 2009, Organisé en l’honneur d’Hélène Millet (Amiens, 2010), 83–99. The early history of the chapter of Saint-Nicolas remains poorly understood beyond the identity of its founders, bishop Drogo of Thérouanne and his archdeacon Warnerius, for whom see Bled, Regestes des évêques de Thérouanne, vol. I, no. 248, 80; Bayard and Massy, Amiens romain, 225; Abdi, ‘L’intégration des collégiales’, 89. The suburban parish church of Saint-Maurice was also rehabilitated at this time and given by the bishop to the cathedral chapter; CCA, no. 4, 8–9 (the date for which should read 1058–75).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 parish church of Saint-Remi.20 The comital tower, the Castillon, loomed over the adjoining Roman castrum. It stood atop the ruins of the Roman amphitheatre, along the southern wall.21 By 1100, the half of the city under comital control contained two churches, Saint-Germain (founded possibly c. 1100) and Saint-Martinad-Burgum. The count and the castellan, his vassal, exercised rights of high and low justice over the entire western half of Amiens, including the market.22 To the north of the city lay a large and expanding suburb. Tucked inside a loop of the River Avre, the suburbium housed the mills that drove the town’s dyeing and clothmaking industries.23 A handful of modest suburban monasteries and churches ringed the town, including, to the east, the Augustinian priory of Saint-Acheul. Absent from the urban and suburban landscape of Amiens, however, were large and powerful monastic houses such as those that dominated the towns of Reims, Soissons, and Laon.24 From the mid-tenth century, the counts of Amiens-Valois and the bishop had jointly governed the town of Amiens. This jurisdictional arrangement lasted until 1074, when Count Raoul IV died and his only son Simon surrendered the comital office to take up the monastic habit.25 The countship suffered a decade of decline before its assumption nine 20

21

22 23

24

25

Saint-Remi is identified for the first time in an 1105 charter as ‘ecclesiam . . . sancti Remigii in suburbio hujus civitatis sitam, que specialiter ad cathedram nostram pertinet’; J. Estienne, ‘Chartes de Saint Geoffroi, évêque d’Amiens (1105–1112)’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 90 (1929), 37–50, at 45–6. The designation of Saint-Remi as being ‘in the suburbs’ of the city suggests that the wall enclosing the cathedral and cloisters was a later annex to the original Roman castrum, although archaeological findings remain inconclusive on this point. Godfrey granted the church to the abbey of Saint-Fuscien in 1105. Flodoard of Reims, Les annales de Flodoard, ed. and trans. P. Lauer (Paris, 1905), 127, mentions an ‘episcopal tower’ at Amiens during Hugh the Great’s siege of the town in 932; Bayard and Massy, Amiens romain, 242, suggest that this may have been a remnant of the old Roman forum along the southern ramparts; see also Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde, 310–11. Kaiser, Bischofsherrschaft, 603, puts the episcopal tower on the eastern wall of the Roman castrum, although he wrote his monograph before Bayard and Massy had published the results of their archaeological findings. Kaiser, Bischofsherrschaft, 598–603; Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde, 312. Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde, 315–16. On the suburban mills, many of which belonged to the cathedral chapter after 1075, see J. Massiet du Biest, ‘Les ports fluviaux et le chemin de l’eau à Amiens (Xe–XVIe siècles)’, Bulletin trimestriel de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie, 40 (1954), 235–41. The largest monasteries in the diocese, Corbie and Saint-Riquier (Centule), were some distance away – Corbie 15 km to the east, Saint-Riquier at a farther remove to the northwest. Relations between the episcopal see and Corbie, poor in the mid-eleventh century, had improved by the twelfth. A. de Calonne, Histoire de la ville d’Amiens (Amiens, 1899–1906), vol. I, 107–16; P. Feuchère, ‘Une tentative manquée de concentration territoriale entre Somme et Seine: la principauté d’AmiensValois au XIe siècle. Étude de géographie historique’, Le Moyen Age, 60 (1954), 1–37, esp. 6–10; Desportes, ‘Les origines de la commune d’Amiens’, 248–9.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens years later by Enguerran of Boves, lord of Coucy and La Fère, who held it between 1085 and 1116.26 As Enguerran seems to have been an infrequent presence in the Amiénois, his powerful vassal, the castellan of Amiens, assumed a correspondingly greater share of local power.27 Enguerran’s absence may also explain the brief appearance in Amiens between 1091 and 1094 of an (unidentifiable) Ivo and Gui, the count of Ponthieu. Little is known of their activities, though together they issued a single charter in the cathedral in which they referred to themselves as ‘counts’ of Amiens.28 Royal visits between 1075 and 1150 were virtually non-existent. The prelates who ruled Amiens until 1075 – Fulk I (991/3–1030/6), Fulk II (1030/6–58), and Gui of Ponthieu (1058–74/5) – enjoyed largely amicable relations with the counts of Amiens-Valois and Ponthieu, to whom they were closely related.29 The relative strength of the bishops declined after 1075, however, owing to the short-lived tenures of Fulk III (fl. 1076, never consecrated) and Raoul (1076–78/9). From the mid-1070s on, the bishops’ weakened position opened them to political challenge by the count, the castellan, the vidame, and the townspeople of Amiens.30 The subsequent rules of bishops Rorico (1079–c. 1090) and Gervin (c. 1090–1102) were troubled. As we have already seen, Gervin, plagued by accusations of simony, travelled to Rome twice to exculpate himself before Pope Urban II.31 In part because he held the abbacy of SaintRiquier concurrently with his episcopacy for almost six years, Gervin’s reputation suffered posthumous erosion at the hands of monastic authors 26

27

28 29

30

31

Barthélemy, Les deux âges, 66–8. Enguerran first appears as ‘comes Ambianis et bothuensis advocatus’ in a 1085 charter for Saint-Acheul, for which see J. Roux, HSAA, pièce justificative no. 1, 487. Enguerran’s brother, Ansellus, was an archdeacon of Amiens from 1075–95, and the family maintained ties to the cathedral chapter into the thirteenth century; see Newman, Le personnel de la cathédrale d’Amiens, 6–7, 22 n. 4; and Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 183–4, on Enguerran of Boves’ role in the election of Godfrey in 1104. The castellans of Amiens may be traced back to a Drogo ‘of the Tower’. Drogo is first attested in a 1066 charter of Gui, bishop of Amiens, for Corbie; GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 289. De Calonne, Histoire de la ville d’Amiens, vol. I, 145, provides a genealogical table of the castellanal dynasty, albeit a flawed one – the fourth generation of Drogo’s descendents were the son and daughters of Mathilda, not Alelmus as the table states. The castellan expressed his elevated status in an 1151 charter in which he proclaimed himself the ‘fourth ruler of the city’; Amiens, BM 781, Cartulary of Saint-Jean, fo. 91v (1151): ‘Alelmus Ambianensis civitatis princeps quartus’. CCA, no. 9, 14–15; Desportes, ‘Les origines de la commune d’Amiens’, 251–3. Fulk I and Fulk II were the brothers of the counts of Amiens-Valois. Fulk I was Fulk II’s uncle; Fulk II was Gui’s uncle, and Gui was the son of Count Enguerran I of Ponthieu. Genealogical background in de Calonne, Histoire de la ville d’Amiens, vol. I, 113; Desportes, ‘Les origines de la commune d’Amiens’, 248; AEA, vol. I, 12–13. Fulk III was elected bishop in 1076, but died before being consecrated; Raoul’s episcopacy was contested; see GC, vol. X, col. 1166. Above, chapter 2.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Hariulf of Oldenburg and Nicholas of Saint-Crépin.32 Hariulf, a former monk of Saint-Riquier, wrote that he ‘saw many times and heard more often that not a small multitude of the older monks bitterly bemoaned that man’s madness, and . . . “blessed him with their mouth [while they] cursed him with their heart”’.33 Nicholas of Saint-Crépin was even more blunt: ‘Gervin’, he stated, ‘was not in his right mind’.34 The simony charge against Gervin may have hindered his ability to govern the diocese effectively. During the first four years of his episcopacy, he witnessed the charter promulgated by the aforementioned ‘counts’ of Amiens, Ivo and Gui of Ponthieu. The charter aimed to rein in the judicial abuses of the viscount, and has long been considered a barometer of the troubled political climate in the Amiénois during the 1090s.35 Employing imagery drawn from Exodus, the charter describes a region afflicted ‘with new and unheard of calamities’ and resounding with ‘the groans of the people’, who, like Israel, were ‘oppressed in Egypt by Pharaoh’s tax collectors’.36 It was recited in the cathedral and lists as witnesses the bishop, archdeacons, primores of the city (perhaps the bishop’s vassals), and those among the clergy and people ‘possessing the weight of sworn testimony’ (aliis juris autenticis in clero et plebe habentibus pondus testimonii) – in short, the leading social orders of Amiens. The political drama continued under Gervin’s successor, Godfrey. Following a vacancy of more than two years (from 1102–4), Godfrey, the former abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, ascended the episcopal throne only to face a simmering feud between his chief lay officer, the vidame Guermond of Picquigny, and Adam, the castellan of Amiens.37 32

33

34

35

36 37

Hariulf, later abbot of Oldenburg from 1105–43, finished a first draft of his Chronicle of SaintRiquier in 1088, before modifying the final chapter on Gervin’s abbacy and episcopacy in 1104/5. Ferdinand Lot’s edition, Hariulf of Oldenburg, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier (Ve siècle– 1104) (Paris, 1894), v–xvi, provides useful background information. Hariulf of Oldenburg, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier, 276: ‘Vidi multoties et audivi saepius quod seniorum monachorum non parva multitudo amare gemescebant illius vesaniam, et ut scriptum est, “Ore suo benedicebant, et corde suo maledicebant”’ (Psalm 61:5). VSG, 916, 924. Gervin’s reputation may not have been wholly deserved. He is credited with reorganizing the cathedral chancery and supporting monastic reform at Marmoutier and elsewhere. See Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 203, 213; AEA, vol. I, no. 24, 139–40; C. Brunel (ed.), Recueil des actes des comtes de Pontieu (1026–1279) (Paris, 1930), no. 8, 10–15. Desportes, ‘Les origines de la commune d’Amiens’, 252–3, 263 n. 17, believes this charter is indicative of the urban orders’ yearning for peace. See also Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, 226–7, 267–71; Kaiser, Bischofsherrschaft, 606. CCA, no. 9, 14–15 (c. 1091–4). The vicedominus Eustache is attested in a 1066 charter, together with his brother, Guermond. Eustache was succeeded by his son, also named Guermond. The family of castellans had had its own problems with the cathedral chapter of Amiens over their pillaging of a villa belonging to Saint-Corneille of Compiègne about 1101. The chapter, monastery, and archbishop of Reims excommunicated the family for this offence; BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fo. 49r-v.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens Guermond ambushed Godfrey and Adam as they returned from Christmas service at Saint-Omer in 1106, and dragged the castellan away in chains over the bishop’s objections.38 In response, Godfrey humiliated the relics of the town’s patron, St Firmin, and publicized the vidame’s assault before a large assembly. Despite these exhortations and remonstrances, Godfrey was unable to win Adam’s release.39 And his troubles did not end there. As has already been hinted, the final years of his rule were marred by his abdication and the beginning of the siege of the Castillon. Godfrey’s successor, Enguerran, also confronted intractable aristocrats. A preamble to one of Enguerran’s charters to the abbot and monastery of Saint-Pierre of Gouy (1120) complained that men ‘sunk into . . . extreme error’ would ‘daily disperse ecclesiastical dominions, violently and with the greatest cupidity, and do not cease wholly to diminish or steal them through concealed deceit, violence, or outright persecution’.40 Enguerran condemned those who preyed upon church lands as ‘sons of Edom’, a reference to the people who had plundered Jerusalem with the Babylonians.41 In a later (1123) charter, he again noted the rapacity of lay nobles, comparing them to wolves.42 The city’s political fortunes thus had remained uncertain after the siege and Count Enguerran’s death in 1116.43 In sum, the diocese and city of Amiens between 1075 and 1125 was a place divided. The political turmoil may be traced to the decline of 38 39

40

41

42 43

VSG, 926–7. The negotiations are described by Nicholas of Saint-Crépin, VSG, 926–7, 928–30. Only when Guermond was captured by the count of Ponthieu was Adam finally freed. AEA, vol. I, no. 60, 169–70; copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fo. 177r-v (1120): ‘Noverit prudentia vestra inde plures impii in hunc extremum errorem devoluti, ut etiam Deum esse non credant. Summa libidine, violenter dominationem ecclesiasticam quotidie dissipant, et occulta fraude, sive violenta et aperta persecutione ea prorsus minuere vel auffere, vel etiam propriis usibus, quod nefas est, applicare non cessant. Ii sunt de numero filiorum Edom’. Psalm 137:7–9. On bishop Enguerran, see Newman, Le personnel de la cathédrale d’Amiens, 23–4, nn. 11, 13–16. Enguerran was the son of Enguerran of Boves, the count of Amiens, according to the genealogy established by A. O. Janvier, Boves et ses seigneurs. Étude historique sur la commune de Boves (Amiens, 1877), 48. The junior Enguerran seems to have risen through the cathedral chapter’s ranks: an ‘Ingelrannus subdiaconus’ witnessed an episcopal charter c. 1090–5; CCA, no. 10, 17 (substituting the date of c. 1090–5 for ‘1091–1102’). He was later promoted to archdeacon, a post he held from around 1095/9 to 1116. AEA, vol. I, no. 61, 170–1; copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fo. 202r-v. After the count’s death and his son Thomas of Marle’s eviction from Amiens, the county fell to Marguerite of Clermont, daughter of the countess of Vermandois, and through Marguerite to her husband Charles, count of Flanders (1119–27). Following Charles’ death, the county passed to Marguerite’s second husband, Hugh IV Candavène, count of Saint-Pol, and through Hugh and Marguerite to their daughter, Beatrix. Beatrix’s husband, Robert of Boves, was none other than Thomas of Marle’s second son. The county thus passed back into the hands of the lords of Boves and Coucy some thirty years after Robert’s grandfather had lost it. The complex descendance is laid out by de Calonne, Histoire de la ville d’Amiens, vol. I, 173–4, and Thierry (ed.), Recueil des monuments inédits de l’histoire du Tiers Etat, 34 n. 2.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 the counts of Amiens-Valois in 1077 and the weakened episcopal succession between 1075–1104. No faction emerged as dominant, and new rivals – the castellan, the vidame, and ultimately the commune – competed with the count and bishop for power. Confronted by these political challenges, the bishops of Amiens frequently recalled the community’s holy past, their unchanging role as its guardians and heirs, and their connections to the local cult of saints. They accomplished this in three ways. Beginning under Gui of Ponthieu, the bishops memorialized the episcopal succession in the charters they produced for the cathedral chapter and local monasteries; they consecrated sacred spaces within the town that reflected their unbroken bond with its patron saints; and they carried out relic translations and oversaw the production of hagiography commemorating the lives of the town’s bishop-saints. Their efforts culminated under bishops Godfrey and Enguerran, but reverberated into the episcopacies of Guérin (1127–44) and Thierry (1144–64). The common denominator in their endeavours, which were cumulative rather than coordinated, was the sacred landscape of Amiens itself.

place, texts, and episcopal genealogies: the diplomatic evidence A handful of twentieth-century French chartistes have been largely responsible for the current state of knowledge about episcopal diplomatic practice in Amiens. Joseph Estienne, Simone Lecoanet, and Laurent Morelle have established the catalogue of surviving episcopal acts for the diocese prior to 1170.44 Lecoanet edited more than 130 episcopal charters, letters, and attestations for Amiens from this period in her 1969 thesis for the École nationale des chartes.45 This rich collection, of which only twenty-eight original acts survive, remains our most detailed source of information about the physical topography and sociopolitical landscape of eleventh- and twelfth-century Amiens.46 At Amiens and elsewhere, bishops frequently used charters to commemorate the episcopal succession, to exalt the sacred places in the urban landscape with which they enjoyed a special relationship, and to link 44 45

46

Estienne, ‘Chartes de Saint Geoffroi’; AEA; Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’. Lecoanet’s thesis for the École nationale des chartes is unpublished. I would like to thank Annie Dufour-Malbezin, Emmanuel Rousseau, and Mme. Lecoanet herself for making her valuable thesis available for me to consult. A small number of charters from other individuals – the count and castellan of Amiens, for example – also survive. An original charter (c. 1095–1116) of Roger, the dean of the cathedral chapter, is at BNF, Coll. Picardie 238, no. 3.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens themselves to the community’s patron saints. Episcopal charters commonly recalled and affirmed, in a few words or short phrases, the acts or donations of the bishops’ predecessors. In this way, they memorialized a tradition of episcopal authority and patronage that often extended beyond the threshold of living memory. An 1108 charter of Godfrey for the nunnery of Berteaucourt offers a typical example, noting that he had ‘with the present charter confirm[ed] those [possessions] which a charter of our predecessor Gervin confirmed’.47 Enguerran acknowledged and confirmed donations by his predecessors Gervin and Godfrey on at least five separate occasions, and Guérin and Thierry maintained the practice.48 Godfrey, who was revered as a saint at Soissons and was the subject of a later vita, was particularly venerated by his successors in charters to institutions where he had held a place of honour: he was venerated as a saint at Saint-Crépin of Soissons; revered at Nogent for his abbacy of nearly twenty years (1085–1104); and remembered at Mont-Saint-Quentin, where he first took up the monastic habit.49 For example, six months after Godfrey’s death in November 1115, his successor Enguerran commemorated the gift of an altar to the abbey of Mont-Saint-Quentin by recalling his ‘predecessor Godfrey, adorned with many forms of discretion and, as is thought, many 47

48

49

AEA, vol. I, no. 40, 153–4; vol. II, no. 40a-d; copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fos. 84r–85r: ‘Et quia desideramus ut absque ulla angariatione quietam et tranquillam vitam virgines sacre in omni pietate et castitate inibi agant, instituimus et presenti privilegio confirmamus quos ab antecessore nostro Gervino in sinodalibus gestis suis confirmatum privilegio cognovimus’. Other examples: HSAA, pièce justificative no. 5, 491 (1109); AEA, vol. I, no. 36, 150–1 (21 July 1106); no. 50, 161–3 (4 July 1114), with a copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fos. 137r–139v: ‘Quod tempore Gervini predecessoris nostri per ejus privilegia’. AEA, vol. I, no. 56, 166 (10 May 1116), with copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fo. 147r-v; no. 57, 166–7 (November 1116 or 1117), copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fos. 160r–161r (misdated 1119); no. 59, 168–9 (25 March 1118 or 1120), copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fos. 160r–161r; no. 63, 172 (28 October 1124), copy at BNF, lat. 5460 (Cartulary of Lihons), fo. 8r-v (dated 28 October 1123); no. 66, 174 (5 March 1125), copy at AD Aisne H 455, fos. 45v–47v (typographical error in date by Lecoanet); BNF, Coll. Picardie 235, fo. 5r-v (c. 1130); AEA, vol. I, no. 89, 192–3 (26 June 1134), copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 235, fos. 47r–49r; no. 93, 195–96 (15 March–15 October 1135), copy at AD Somme H (02) 4 (Cartulary of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux), fos. 10r–11r; no. 103, 103–4 (1138), copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 235, fo. 100r; no. 111, 207–8 (1140), copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 235, fo. 137r-v; CCA, no. 34, 48–50 (1151). Much earlier, bishop Gui recalled the memory of his predecessor Fulk II in an undated charter for the cathedral chapter (‘presertim a predecessore meo Fulcone beate memorie sancita’); CCA, no. 4, 8. An 1125 charter of Enguerran, promulgated ‘for the health of the soul of our predecessor bishop Godfrey of sacred memory’, gave the altar of Fresnoy to the monastery of Saint-Crépin of Soissons, where Godfrey was buried; AEA, vol. I, no. 66, 174; see also AD Aisne H 455, fos. 45v–47v. An 1138 charter of Guérin for the abbey of Nogent noted that it was done ‘for the love and memory of our predecessor lord Godfrey of blessed memory, bishop of Amiens and abbot of the same church of blessed Mary of Nogent’; AEA, vol. I, no. 103, 103–4: ‘pro amore etiam et memoria predecessoris nostri donni Godefridi bone memorie Ambianensium episcopi [et] ejusdem ecclesie beate Marie Nogenti abbatis’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 miraculous signs, beloved and dear to the brothers of Mont-SaintQuentin’. Enguerran’s 1116 charter was a virtual paean to Godfrey, who, ‘it is believed’, had been ‘added to the fellowship of just men’.50 It praises his charity (caritas), wisdom (ingenium), and virtue (virtus), the last of these a reliable indicator of sanctity.51 Through charters of this tenor, the bishops of Amiens not only cemented and renewed social and spiritual bonds with monasteries that had received donations from their predecessors, but also perpetuated the institutional memory of the episcopal succession and their own place within it.52 A striking example of this practice may be found in an 1135 charter of Guérin for the priory of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux. The dispositive included an episcopal list dating back sixty years or six episcopal ‘generations’ to the priory’s founder, and ‘confirm[ed] all the tithes . . . conceded to the aforesaid church by our predecessors Gui, Raoul, Rorico, Gervin, Godfrey, and Enguerran’.53 Guérin seems to have added the episcopal list into the charter, for it is absent from the 1109 papal bull of Paschal II that served as its model.54 Another contemporary episcopal list was inserted into a pontifical of Amiens sometime in the early twelfth century, probably under Godfrey.55 50

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AEA, vol. I, no. 56, 166; copy at BNF, Coll. Picardie 234, fo. 147r-v: ‘Predecessor noster Godefridus multiplici discretionis genere adornatus et ut creditur multis virtutum insigniis et charus et acceptus fratribus cenobii Monti Sancti Quintini’; ‘Previdebat vir excellentissimi ingenii quia plus communibus mutuisque orationibus juvamur, quam propriis atque singularibus; et quia caritas quanto se latius extendit tanto ampliora premia a Domino recipit, ecclesiasticamque possessionem nulla damna sentire que pro modicis atque transitoriis magna atque eterna fide plena se confidit a supremo remuneratore expectare. Defuncto itaque predecessore predicto Godefrido atque ut creditur justorum societati aggregato, predicti cenobii fratres nos adierunt’. The charter’s witnesses included, in addition to the monks of Mont-Saint-Quentin and the cathedral chapter of Amiens, Raoul, the archbishop of Reims. It offers the best evidence of a nascent cult devoted to Godfrey in the months following his death at Soissons. Nicholas of SaintCrépin did not compose his vita of Godfrey until 1137–8, some twenty years later. Most of the charters in question were promulgated in the cathedral of Amiens, some in synod, e.g., AD Somme H (02) 4 (Cartulary of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux), fos. 10r–11r; AEA, vol. I, no. 56, 166; no. 59, 168–9; no. 66, 174. AD Somme H (02) 4 (Cartulary of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux), fos. 10r–11r: ‘Omnes decimas omnium noualium et segetium episcopalium urbi adiacentium sic a predecessoribus nostris Widone, Radulfo, Roricone, Geruino, Godefrido, Ingelranno, predicte ecclesie concessum est, nos quoque confirmamus’. GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 302. The papal bull states simply ‘by the bishop’s predecessors’. The witnesses to this charter included the bishop of Arras, members of the cathedral chapter, and the abbots of Anchin, Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, Saint-Germer of Fly, and Saint-Eloi of Noyon. The abbot of Saint-Eloi, Thierry, became bishop of Amiens after Guérin. Thierry’s close relationship with the abbey thus predated his episcopacy, and continued until his death. The cartulary of Saint-Martinaux-Jumeaux contains, after Guérin’s charter, fourteen concessions by Thierry. On the uses of episcopal lists see B. Arnold, ‘Episcopal authority authenticated and fabricated. Form and function in medieval German bishops’ catalogues’, in Reuter (ed.), Warriors and Churchmen, 63–78. A late eleventh/early twelfth-century ordinary/pontifical from Amiens (BL Ms. Add. 17004) contains, on fo. 120r, an interlinear episcopal list composed, it appears, during Godfrey’s

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens Besides using them as a means to link themselves to their predecessors, the eleventh-century bishops of Amiens employed charters periodically to recall their bonds with the town’s sacred space. In addition to the cathedral chapter, the Augustinian priories of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux and Saint-Acheul figured prominently in the nexus of episcopal patronage. The priories occupied a special place in the sacred geography of Amiens, based both on the circumstances of their foundation and their historical association with the town’s patron saints. Of the total number of charters the bishops of Amiens conceded to religious institutions prior to 1170, Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux, an episcopal foundation, and Saint-Acheul respectively ranked first and fourth in the number received.56 Bishop Gui of Ponthieu founded Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux in 1073. He chose for its site the putative spot at the gates of Amiens where the soldier Martin, later the sainted bishop of Tours, shared his cloak with a pauper.57 From the moment of its foundation, Saint-Martin-auxJumeaux became the favoured institution of Amiens’ bishops. The cathedral cartulary preserves its foundation charter.58 In vivid imagery drawn from Exodus, the preamble first recalls the salvation awaiting Christians who had been led ‘from the power of the Egyptians through the baptism of the celestial lamb’, and describes their subsequent nourishment upon heavenly manna and water sprung from the rock. After expressing his desire that the Lord ‘may . . . speak and work in us, so that through me, a limb attached to such a head, he may lead to a better state certain sheep of the Lord’s flock, which he entrusted to my meekness’, Gui recalls the sacredness of the priory’s site, ‘in that part of our city . . . in which the Lord Jesus Christ, appearing in the likeness of a pauper, received a part of his cloak from the as yet unbaptized [St Martin]’.59

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epicopacy, as the last name on the list belongs to Gervin. It furnishes further evidence of Godfrey’s commemorative practices, which as we shall see were quite pronounced. A catalogue of Amiens’ bishops also exists in a late twelfth-century collection of the works of Robert of Torigny. The list posits a direct descent from Firmin Martyr to Firmin the Confessor, Firmin the Confessor to Salvius, Salvius to Honoratus, and Honoratus to a St Berchundus (or Berthundus); see Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, 122–3. AEA, vol. I, 23–30. The cathedral chapter and Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux each received twentyseven charters prior to 1170; Saint-Laurent-au-Bois, eighteen; Saint-Acheul, sixteen. There is no evidence to support Jules Corblet’s claim that Gui founded Saint-Martin-auxJumeaux to commemorate the miraculous cure of a paralytic at the site; see J. Corblet, Hagiographie du diocèse d’Amiens (Paris and Amiens, 1868–1875), vol. III, 49–51. CCA, no. 7, 11–13. Ibid., no. 7, 11–12: ‘faciat nos filios correctionis, ne ulterius pro nostre lepre contagio eliminemur a castris Dei . . . Adsit ergo summus pontifex, sol justitie, lumen de lumine, princeps de principe, lapis angularis, mediator Dei et hominis, initium et finis . . . loquatur et operetur in nobis, ut per me tanti capitis membrum et dominici gregis peccora que mee credidit parvitati, quedam ad meliorem statum ducat. . . id ea parte nostre urbis sita in qua Dominus IHC XPC in effigie pauperis apparens ab eodem catechumino adhuc clamydis partem accepit’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 In the same charter, Gui refers to himself archaically as ‘procurator rei publice Ambianensis’, a title reserved for Roman officers responsible for supervising the financial administration of the city.60 The epithet is unusual. The broader context of the charter’s promulgation suggests that Gui may have been forwarding a claim to full secular jurisdiction over the city.61 He read the charter aloud before the cathedral chapter and provincial synod, ‘with the support of all good men and the acclamation of the clergy and of the people of both sexes’ (largitore omnium bonorum cooperante, clero et populo utriusque sexus acclamante). Gui’s use of tropes from Exodus, with their underlying theme of persecution, hints that the prelate identified with Moses’ pastoral leadership of his people in unsettled and politically repressive conditions. Gui’s successors likewise invoked St Martin’s act of generosity towards the beggar in later charters, as the cartulary of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux frequently attests, and the priory became an episcopal mausoleum in the twelfth century.62 The bishops’ memorialization of their special relationship with Martin is understandable, given his cult’s widespread popularity in France and its specific connection to Amiens. The quintessential example of a man of the world (a soldier) converted to a life of religious service, Martin’s virtues and deeds were often referenced in contemporary hagiographical sources in the archdiocese.63 Gui’s memorialization of St Martin and foundation of Saint-Martinaux-Jumeaux are paralleled in his successor Rorico’s reform of the Augustinian priory of Saint-Acheul in 1085. While nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians regularly debated Saint-Acheul’s antiquity and origin, Rorico and his successors had no such concerns. They revered the priory as the oldest Christian edifice in Amiens, and knew that it had been built by St Firmin the Confessor over the tombs of saints Firmin 60

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Vercauteren, Étude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde, 406–7. The phrase surfaces only one other time, in an 1131 charter of Guérin for the abbey of Saint-Pierre of Selincourt, edited by G. Beaurain, Le cartulaire de l’abbaye de Selincourt, 1131–1513 (Paris and Amiens, 1925), no. 6, 24. See also the comments of Desportes, ‘Les origines de la commune d’Amiens’, 254. Perhaps Gui sensed that Count Raoul IV was reaching the end of his life; the count died the following year, and was not present at the charter’s issuance. Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes, 239, refers to the bishop’s self-designation as ‘pédanterie’, but given the charter’s content, this seems an overly narrow reading. See, for example, AD Somme H (02) 4 (Cartulary of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux), fos. 9r–10r (1131); fos. 10r–11r (1135); fo. 11r-v (1145); fos. 18v–20r (1147); fo. 29v (1170). Bishops Thierry, Thibaud Briton (d. 1204), and Richard (d. 1211) elected to be buried there. See chapter 6 above and Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, 11–37, who has traced the cult’s diffusion, popularity, and elaboration at Tours and beyond. Contemporary examples of the topos’ use may be found in the VSG, 921–2, and Guibert of Nogent’s Autobiographie, 402–3. R. Kaiser, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Civitas und Diözese Soissons in römischer und merowingischer Zeit (Bonn, 1973), 279, mapped the cult’s expansion in the diocese of Soissons.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens the Martyr, Acius, and Aciolus.64 Their knowledge of the site’s origin derived from a textual tradition dating back at least as far as the tenth century.65 Saint-Acheul’s prominent place in Amiens’ sacred history had thus been long established when Rorico installed canons there in 1085, and the priory remained a favoured site of episcopal largesse throughout the twelfth century.66 The oldest extant vitae of the town’s first bishop-saints – Firmin the Martyr, Firmin the Confessor, and Salvius – mention Saint-Acheul.67 All three works share similar components. The penultimate chapter of the Vita sancti Firmini martyris describes how, after Firmin’s execution by a Roman soldier, the senator Faustinian took the martyr’s body and secretly buried it in his personal cemetery at ‘Abladana’.68 Faustinian’s son, Firmin – whom the pious senator named after the martyr, and who according to tradition became the second bishop of Amiens – constructed a church over the tomb. The vita of St Firmin the Confessor repeats this account, adding that the younger Firmin was buried in the same church (the future Saint-Acheul) as his namesake.69 A seventh-century bishop of Amiens, St Salvius, discovered their tombs, plus those of the martyrs Acius and Aciolus.70 Salvius then transferred all four saints to the cathedral and buried them in the eastern crypt. 64 65

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HSAA, 1–10, provides an overview of the abbey’s origins based on the hagiographical evidence. On the earliest surviving manuscripts of Amiénois hagiographica, see J. Dubois, ‘Firmin (Saints), évêques d’Amiens’, in DHGE, vol. XVII, cols. 252–7, and below, note 67. Basic though incomplete orientations may be found in Corblet, Hagiographie du diocèse d’Amiens, vol. I, 1–6; vol. II, 52–211; vol. III, 38–75, 463–78; and Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, 122–30. HSAA, pièce justificative no. 8, 494–6. In 1145, bishop Thierry elevated both Saint-Martin-auxJumeaux and Saint-Acheul to full abbeys; CCA, no. 19, 28–9. The earliest surviving collection of Amiénois hagiographica I have found is in Montpellier, Faculté de Médecine, Ms. 360. This codex contains three integrated manuscripts of the tenth century: the passio of Firmin the Martyr; the Inventio sancti Firmini martyris, and the vita of Firmin the Confessor. The Vita sancti Salvii episcopi Ambianensis, ed. J. Carnandet, AASS January, vol. I, new edn (Paris, 1863), 704–6, borrows passages from the Inventio. The earliest manuscript of the Vita sancti Salvii I have consulted, BNF, lat. 5275, fos. 33r–37r, is contemporary with the dossier on the two Firmins (tenth century); H. Moretus, ‘Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum Bibliothecae Scholae Medecinae in Universitate Montepessulanensi’, Analecta Bollandiana, 34–5 (1915–1916), 228–305, at 266–7. Vita sancti Firmini episcopi martyris, ed. J. Stilting, C. Suysken, J. Pereiro, J. Cleo, AASS September, vol. VII (Antwerp, 1760), 50–7, at 50: ‘in suo cimiterio, quod Abladana dicitur’. The Vita sancti Firmini confessoris, ed. J. Pien, et al., AASS September, vol. I, new edn (Paris, 1868), 178–80, at 179–80, truncates the spelling of ‘Abladana’ to ‘Bladana’ but otherwise follows the details closely. Vita sancti Salvii, 706. The vita is derivative and largely borrowed from the Life of St Salvius, a bishop of Albi, found in Book 7 of Gregory of Tours’ Libri historiarum X, vol. I, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levinson, new edn, MGH SSRM (Hanover, 1951), 323–7. Salvius’ inventio was later expanded by an anonymous author and became a separate account, the Inventio et translatio beati Firmini episcopi et martyris quae celebratur in octavis epiphaniae domini. An incomplete, twelfth-century copy of the Inventio, of local provenance, is found in Amiens, BM 46, fo. 142r-v.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Saint-Acheul’s credentials as a locus of divine contact were further expanded through miraculous occurrences at the site. Firmin the Confessor and St Honoratus, believed to have been the fourth bishop in the episcopal succession, experienced identical visions while celebrating Mass in the church. The vitae of both saints describe how God had stretched forth his hand from the heavens and reached down to bless them.71 Moreover, Honoratus had been preaching at Saint-Acheul when he was miraculously alerted to the inventio of the bodies of the saintly evangelists of the Amiénois, Fuscian, Gentian, and Victoricus.72 SaintAcheul was thus a place where God had worked miracles involving the bishops of Amiens. Rorico acknowledged this history in his 1085 foundation charter for the priory. He recalled how Firmin the Confessor had liberated the town from its slavish worship of demons (a cultu demoniace servitutis) and consecrated a church to the Virgin Mary that later became Saint-Acheul. After detailing the canons’ possessions and obligations, Rorico concluded by recalling how the ‘holy bishops’ Firmin and Honoratus witnessed the hand of God, and how a ray of celestial light illuminated for St Salvius the spot of Firmin the Martyr’s concealed tomb.73 The foundation charter for Saint-Acheul exists in a variant, contemporary version, which echoes the themes of Gui’s charter for SaintMartin-aux-Jumeaux. The variant describes donations to Saint-Acheul 71

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Vita sancti Firmini confessoris, 179; Vita sancti Honorati episcopi Ambianensi, ed. J. Carnandet, AASS May, vol. III (Paris and Rome, 1866), 610–13, at 610. The Vita sancti Honorati clearly borrows from the Inventio sancti Firmini to describe this event. In Honoratus’ case the vision signalled the discovery of the bodies of saints Fuscian, Gentian, and Victoricus by a priest of Amiens named Lupicinus. I discussed the Vita sancti Honorati’s textual tradition in an earlier version of this chapter. Honoratus was not, in fact, Firmin the Confessor’s successor, although he was believed to be in the eleventh century. The edition published in the Acta Sanctorum is actually a hybrid of miracle stories that describe events ranging from the years 600 to 1205, which, by the fourteenth century, had been collected into a single corpus, as can be seen in a legendary possessed by the Augustinian canons of Paris. The miracula were partially transcribed by Nicolas de Beaufort in the sixteenth century from an unidentified Amiens manuscript, and copied by him into BNF, lat. 3088, fo. 36v. The latter manuscript is mentioned by F. Dolbeau, ‘Notes sur la genèse et sur la diffusion du Liber de Natalitiis’, Revue d’Histoire des Textes, 6 (1976), 143–95, at 181, while a summation of the saint’s acts may be found in Corblet, Hagiographie du diocèse d’Amiens, vol. III, 38–75. On the theme of the ‘divine touch’ in medieval hagiography, see Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, 105–6. Contemporary episcopal lists of Amiens posited a direction succession from Firmin the Martyr to Honoratus. HSAA, pièce justificative no. 1, 485–6: ‘Ecclesiam quandam quam beatus Firminus confessor, dum primitus hanc urbem a cultu demoniace servitutis erueret et per salutis lavachrum idem ipse paranimphus coelestis virignem castam maculam non habentem aut rugam . . . in honorem sancte et perpetue virginis Marie fundavit, postea vero a sanctis martiribus Acio et Aceolo, antiquitatis nostre tempore sibi nomen aptavit’; ‘quatinus pro invicem orantes in libro vite imprimantur digito Dei, palmam cujus in loco eodem in consecratione corporis sui cernere gloriati sunt Firminus et Honoratus, pontifices sacri, et a nobis peccatoribus tenebras depellat sancta Trinitas Deus, lux inaccessibilis qui testem suum Firminum ibi innotescere dignatus est quasi radio solis’.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens by the count, Enguerran of Boves, and Eustache, the bishop’s vidame. Rorico seems to have welcomed the return of stability to the comital line of Amiens marked by Enguerran’s ascent, for the charter extols the ‘reflourishing’ of justice and the law, ‘which for a long time prior had been enfeebled’, and further notes how ‘the zeal of God and the sternness of the Church . . . cuts away E[gypt], that splintered cane of reeds and smoking wick, without hope of recovery . . . [May there be] peace upon Israel, and among the people of God’.74 The charter was issued in the first year of Enguerran’s countship (1085), and its biblical allusion to the restoration of justice and the plight of a persecuted Israel reminds listeners of the political disorder in the region around Amiens in the early 1080s.75 The charter’s allusion to Isaiah 42:3–4 implies Rorico’s pleasure at seeing the restoration of the count’s temporal authority after a nearly ten-year vacancy, and exalts the sword of justice wielded by the count, executor of the Church’s – thus God’s – will. A final element of the charter’s preamble merits consideration. Rorico avowed that he had been ‘touched by the heavenly hand of divine redemption’ (divine propitiationis manu celitus attacti) in making the donation. The bishop’s pious expression was significant, for it would have come to mind when the charter later referred to the hand of God that had blessed saints Firmin and Honoratus. With this epithet, Rorico recalled his presence in the holy fraternity of Firmin and Honoratus, an association he made explicit by expressing his fervent desire ‘to rest perenially with God’s servants upon his holy mountain’.76 Thus both Rorico and Gui emphasized their brotherhood with the saintly patrons of their foundation. Each employed rhetorical flourishes suggesting his piety and charity; each incorporated imagery of persecution and exile that evoked local political unrest; and each intended that his foundation should remedy temporal ills.77 74

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HSAA, 487–8: ‘Hoc autem anno justicie cultura legumque, que longo ante tempore marcuerat, refloruit. Dei enim zelus et ecclesie rigor, immo gladius in concilia Compendii de ore Dei procedens, E[gyptum], baculum scilicet arundineum confractum, et lignum fumigans de soliditate et splendore regiminis Corbeie sine spe recuperationis abscidit’. Compare Isaiah 42:3–4, Matthew 12:18–21 (‘Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, on whom my favour rests . . . He will not snap off the broken reed, nor snuff out the smouldering wick, until he leads justice on to victory. In him the nations shall place their hope’.), and Revelation 1:16. Rorico attended the council held at Compiègne in 1085. Rorico’s episcopacy followed upon the brief and contested tenures of Fulk III (1076) and Raoul (1076–78/9). HSAA, pièce justificative no. 1, 485: ‘ac cum domesticis Dei in monte sancto ejus perhenniter quiescare’. Godfrey aired a similar sentiment in the preamble to his 1105 charter for Saint-Fuscien; PL 162, col. 739. HSAA, pièce justificative no. 1, 485–7: ‘de valle lacrimarum feliciter exire’; ‘In hac igitur requie et ad nuptias agni cum sinceritate mentis et eloquii nitore, antequam janua claudatur, mereamur accumbere’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Rorico’s successor, Gervin, followed in his footsteps. Gervin’s 1093 charter for Saint-Acheul appears after Rorico’s donation in the abbey cartulary.78 Although not as detailed, Gervin’s charter recorded his donation ‘to that . . . church which the blessed confessor Firmin founded in honour of the blessed and perpetual Virgin Mary, and which afterwards took its name from the holy martyrs Acius and Aciolus, [and] to the honour of our patron Firmin the Martyr, whose most holy body lay in the aforesaid church over the course of many years’.79 Gervin also mimicked the rhetorical language of Rorico’s preamble. He, too, claimed to have been ‘touched by the heavenly hand of divine propitiation’, and repeated word-for-word Rorico’s professed desire to ‘pass from the valley of tears’ into eternal salvation. Gervin’s much briefer charter thus sustained the principal themes, if not the elaborate metaphorical imagery, of Rorico’s donation. Like his predecessor, Gervin incorporated himself into Saint-Acheul’s sacred history and remanded his soul to the protection of the church’s patrons. By the beginning of Godfrey’s episcopacy in 1104, Saint-Acheul was a well-established locus mirabilis.80 Godfrey recognized in the abbey a powerful pulpit and ceremonial stage. During his inaugural entry into the city, accompanied by Lambert of Arras and John of Thérouanne, the new bishop dismounted his donkey at Saint-Acheul. From there he followed the road by which St Salvius had translated the relics of St Firmin to the cathedral. Passing through crowds, sobbing and barefoot, and clutching the gospels to his chest, Godfrey proceeded to the cathedral.81 Eleven years later, he returned to Saint-Acheul in equally dramatic fashion. Following his return from exile, Guibert of Nogent reports that he preached a Palm Sunday sermon to a huge crowd of people and the king in order to prepare them for warfare against the Castillon.82 He then went to Saint-Acheul, barefoot, to pray. Guibert is 78

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HSAA, pièces justificatives nos. 2–3, 488–90. Roux’s pièces justificatives nos. 2 and 3 appear in inverse order in the medieval cartulary; that is, pièce justificative no. 3 is on fo. 9r, no. 2 on fo. 9v. HSAA, pièce justificative no. 3, 489: ‘ecclesie cuidam quam beatus Firminus confessor in honorem beate et perpetue virginis Marie fundavit, postea a sanctis martiribus Acio et Aceolo, a posteris nomen accepit, ad honorem patroni nostri martiris Firmini, cujus sacratissimum corpus per annorum multorum curricula in ecclesia prefata requievit’. In the address of one of his two charters for the priory, ‘to the prior Stephan and the other canons present and future of the church of the blessed Virgin Mary and of the holy martyrs Firmin, Acius, and Aciolus’, Godfrey acknowledged the priory’s foundation legend; HSAA, pièce justificative no. 5, 491 (1109). In HSAA, pièce justificative no. 6, 492, he describes the priory in a similar fashion (1 February 1109/10); see AEA, vol. II, no. 43, 156–7, for the dating of this charter. VSG, 918: ‘Cum vero ad ecclesiam Sancti Acioli martyris extra muros sitam accessisset, de iumento in terram desiliens . . . textum evangelii reverenter in pectore gestans, crebris singultibus pectus quatiens, ad ecclesiam Beati Firmini martyris nudipes, cunctis inspectantibus, progreditur’. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 414–15.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens hostile to Godfrey, but there is no reason to doubt this detail of his account. Indeed, the bishop’s decision makes considerable sense, given what we have seen of Saint-Acheul’s connection to Amiens’ sacred history. The church enjoyed a tradition of divine revelation, and was remembered as a place where God displayed his favour and intervened on behalf of the community and its bishops. It would appear that Godfrey hoped for another such intecession during the crisis of the siege. The ritual use of sacred space was but one means by which Godfrey associated himself with Amiens’ saintly patrons. Upon assuming office, he instituted an innovative sigillographic practice in the episcopal chancery, impressing some of his charters (at least six are known) with a triple-seal combination.83 On the evidence provided by two originals, the three seals appear to have consisted of the archdeacon’s, Godfrey’s own episcopal seal, and a ‘seal of St Firmin the martyr’.84 His charters were calculated to make a striking visual impression. The eight surviving originals are large – measuring a minimum of 45 by 25 centimetres – and they have widely spaced lines, a clear hierarchy of witnesses (signing clergy are ordered by rank, laymen following), and the date and place of redaction.85 The charters presented a clear exposition of episcopal – and saintly – authority to all who received, witnessed, or signed them. Firmin’s presence thereby passed outside the cathedral, into the very halls of the institutions that received the diplomas, one of which was a monastery founded by the count of Amiens.86 More to the point, beginning with Godfrey, the bishop’s official acts were routinely associated 83

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Laurent Morelle has persuasively shown that Godfrey’s charters and the chancery’s diplomatic take-off were facets of his reform of ecclesiastical institutions in the diocese. The recipients of charters included the Cluniac priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs (dioc. Paris); the abbey of Saint-Fuscien (dioc. Amiens, twice); Notre-Dame of Breteuil (dioc. Beauvais), the abbey of Berteaucourt (dioc. Amiens); and a cell of the abbey of Molesme (dioc. Langres); see the catalogue in Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 215–18. AEA, vol. I, 59–60; vol. II, no. 31, 144 (25 February 1105); no. 33, 145–8 (1105); no. 34, 148–9 (1105); no. 35, 149–50 (22 January 1106); no. 36, 150–1 (21 July 1106); no. 40, 153–4 (3 August 1108–24 March 1109). Regrettably, none of the original seals survives. It should be noted that of the first nine of Godfrey’s charters registered by Lecoanet, six of the extant originals appear to have possessed the triple-seal combination. AEA, vol. I, 57–66; see also Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 193–8, 205–14. For a nearby comparator, see B.-M. Tock, Une chancellerie épiscopale au XIIe siècle: le cas d’Arras (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1991), 92–6. The monastery in question was Saint-Fuscien, for which see Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir de ses chartes’, 183–4, 193 n. 105. Count Enguerran’s concession of several altars to the bishop, who in turn bequeathed them to the abbey, is noted in the 1105/6 charter published by Estienne, ‘Chartes de Saint Geoffroi’, 45. During the same period treated here – that is, from about 1085 to the 1130s – formulas and attestations derived from papal charters began to find their way into regional chancery use; see O. Guyotjeannin, ‘L’influence pontificale sur les actes épiscopaux français (Provinces ecclésiastiques de Reims, Sens et Rouen, XIe–XIIe siècles)’, in Grosse (ed.), L’Église de France et la papauté, 83–102, at 89, 93–4.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 with the will of Amiens’ patron saint. When Godfrey spoke, Firmin spoke with him. The practice caught on: his successors Enguerran, Guérin, and Thierry all employed the seal of Firmin.87 Thus Gui’s foundation of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux and Rorico’s elevation of the parish church of Saint-Acheul into an Augustinian priory provided both bishops with opportunities to proclaim their special relationships with the city’s founding bishop-saints. Their successors’ diplomatic practices remembered and solidified these bonds, merging the sacred history of Amiens with its present. The episcopal succession and the bishops’ membership in the fraternity of Amiens’ saints was continuously renewed with each episcopal charter, each enactment of a liturgical or ritual moment, and each reading of a saint’s life. mapping miracles: hagiography, liturgy, and sacred space The bishops of Amiens did not limit their associations with the city’s sacred space to their charters. They also promoted the production of hagiography and miracle stories – notably, the lives and miracles of Amiens’ first prelates – and staged relic translations and elevations before large assemblies of laymen and clergy, all of which linked them to their saintly predecessors and certain sites in the town’s sacred topography. Their hagiographical production, relic elevations, and translations peaked during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Analysis of the miracles reported at Amiens from 1060–1150 shows that, almost without exception, they occurred in churches or on lands under the jurisdiction of the bishop or cathedral chapter, never on lands or in churches held by the count or castellan. Four principal cults existed in Amiens, all devoted to bishop-saints: those of the two Firmins (martyr and confessor), Honoratus, and Salvius.88 The extant vitae of the saints and their earliest surviving 87

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CCA, no. 13, 19 (c. 1123–7, based on list of adsignees): ‘cartamque presentem sigilli beati Firmini martyris et nostri testimonio insignitam’; no. 16, 23 (1142); no. 17, 25 (1142, a confirmation of the preceding charter); no. 27, 37 (1146): ‘cyrographo confirmata, et tam sigillo beati Firmini quam nostro corrborata’; no. 30, 41 (1149, a charter of the cathedral chapter, without the bishop present). Martyrs of somewhat lesser distinction, including Acius, Aciolus, and the companions Fuscian, Gentian, and Victoricus, although celebrated in the local liturgy, did not have extensive cults. Amiens, BM 19, a twelfth-century Amiénois psalter, is dedicated to Fuscian and his fellow martyrs (see fos. 1, 5v, 6v); Amiens, BM 154, a twelfth-century missal belonging to Saint-Nicolas, lists these saints in the liturgical calendar (fos. 3v, 6v), as does a late eleventh-century pontifical (de Beauvillé and Josse, Pontifical d’Amiens, 26, 104 n. 44). The only published edition of the acts of Fuscian and the others is that of C. Salmon, ‘Actes inédits des saints martyrs Fuscien, Victoric et Gentien’, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie, 2nd ser., 8 (1861), 113–43.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens exemplars are the Vita sancti Salvii (tenth century); the Vita sancti Firmini martyris (tenth century); the Inventio sancti Firmini martyris (tenth century, plus a twelfth-century copy at Amiens); the Vita sancti Firmini confessoris (tenth century); the Vita sancti Honorati (c. 1104–15); and, finally, a collection of miscellaneous miracles of Firmin the Martyr from a local breviary (c. 1127–44).89 Of these six sources, the last two – the Vita sancti Honorati and the miscellany concerning Firmin – contain accounts of miracles that occurred in Amiens between 1060 and 1144.90 Based on the praises of its anonymous author, who urges the ‘blessed church of Amiens’ to keep ‘most vigilant custody of such a treasure [as St Honoratus]’, we may surmise that the Vita sancti Honorati was composed by a member of the cathedral chapter.91 This impression is reinforced by the author’s claim to have witnessed many of Honoratus’ miracles, virtually all of which occurred in the cathedral.92 The vita’s date of composition is difficult to pinpoint, especially as it appears that miracle stories of different origin were incorporated into the collection over time. Since the first group of three miracles occurred in 1060, however, this marks the terminus post quem for the collection as a whole. Textual and circumstantial evidence suggests that the corpus was assembled later, perhaps during Godfrey’s episcopacy.93 The miscellaneous and anonymously written miracles of St Firmin the Martyr are found in a sixteenth-century breviary belonging to the cathedral.94 We know little about the collection’s composition, only that it contains two distinct sets of miracles, the first written shortly after a 89

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The Vita sancti Salvii episcopi Ambianensis may be dated to the tenth century based on the hand of BNF, lat. 5275, fos. 33r–37r. The vita was poorly copied and has been separated from its original manuscript. Its possible provenance is Montreuil-sur-Mer, the monastery to which Salvius’ relics were translated in the seventh century. A seventeenth-century copy by Du Cange is compiled with other local documents in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 3870 (ancien côte 237bis H.F.), fos. 139r–144v. See also Corblet, Hagiographie du diocèse d’Amiens, vol. III, 463–78. I am discounting the miracles reported in the VSG, as it was penned at Soissons and was not a local product. The cults of the two Firmins and of Salvius were by no means inactive during this period. As we saw earlier, historical elements from their vitae turn up in contemporary episcopal charters, and at least one twelfth-century manuscript of local provenance, Amiens, BM 46, fo. 142r-v, contains an unfinished text of the inventio of St Firmin. Vita sancti Honorati, 612: ‘Beatus sui temporis censemus oviculas, quae tantum gavisae sunt habere pastorem: beatam dicimus Ambianensem ecclesiam, quae tanti viri conservat reliquias, sibi Domino praestante commissas. Tantum igitur vigilantissime thesaurum custodiat . . . per quod in coeli curia potentissimum adepta est advocatum’. Vita sancti Honorati, c. 12, 612: ‘Multa praeterea sunt per B. Honoratum apud nos miracula perpetrata, quorum quaedam breviori stylo recensenda esse decrevimus’. For a full discussion and presentation of the evidence, see J. S. Ott, ‘Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens in peace and conflict, 1073–1164’, Viator, 31 (2000), 43–77, at 76–7. Described in the prefatory matter to the Vita sancti Firmini, AASS September, vol. VII, 36.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 devastating fire razed the town in 1106/7, and the second set somewhat later, under bishop Guérin (1127–44).95 All the miracles were reported as eyewitness accounts, and none forms part of the vita or inventio of St Firmin.96 The author’s presence at an episcopal synod suggests that he may have been a member of the local clergy. Although the identity of the author(s) remains unknown, the miracles nevertheless provide strong evidence that Firmin the Martyr’s cult was active in the first decades of the twelfth century. A plot of the miracles reported by these two sources – there are a total of twenty-two – reveals a telling distribution (Figure 7.2). The vita of St Honoratus details seventeen miracles, eight of which may be localized: at the cathedral (6), at Saint-Acheul (1), and at the ‘church of Saint-Martin’ (1).97 Five miracles make up the small miscellany in the breviary, four of which are localized within the cityscape: at the ‘UltraPontem’ gate (1); in the cathedral (2); and on lands belonging to the cathedral (1).98 A quick look at Figure 7.2 reveals that the distribution of miraculous activity in Amiens centred, as we might expect, on the cathedral, near the tombs of Firmin the Martyr, Firmin the Confessor, and Honoratus. The remainder – as well as those which occurred elsewhere but were not recorded by the canons – were enacted during three separate episcopal processions.99 On one of these occasions during Godfrey’s episcopacy, St Firmin interceded when a fire razed the town (in 1106/7), yet spared the cathedral and episcopal house. The devastation prompted the clergy and people to tour with Firmin’s relics in order to raise money for rebuilding. As the procession prepared to exit the city, a second miracle occurred: the cortège could not budge Firmin’s relics beyond the town limits.100 95

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The date of the fire is open to argument, although evidence supports the year 1107; see the comments of Albert Poncelet in his introduction to the VSG, 897 n. 3. The author of the second set of miracles notes (Vita sancti Firmini, 37): ‘S. Firmini miracula, quae in textu Passionis atque Inventionis ejus etiam contra naturae cursum facta scribuntur, repetere superfluum ducimus. Pauca tamen, quae coram positi vidimus, litteris decrevimus annotare’. His notation that miracles happened ‘contra naturae cursum’ may situate this text in the early twelfth century; see the comments of Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 4–8. Although eight of the remaining nine miracles in the Vita sancti Honorati are said to have happened ‘in Amiens’ or ‘in our presence’, I have excluded them from Figure 7.2 because we do not know the author’s precise location when the miracles occurred; Vita sancti Honorati, 611–12. The fifth miracle, the cure of a paralysed woman, occurred during an expiatory procession around the city, but it is not stated where; see the prefatory matter to the Vita sancti Firmini, 37. Two appear: in the Vita sancti Honorati, 614, and the prefatory matter to the Vita sancti Firmini, 37. The gate in question was the so-called ‘Ultra-Pontem’ gate at the edge of town. The UltraPontem gate may have been at either the stone ‘Grand Pont’ that gave entry to the faubourg from the north, or what would be called the ‘Port du Don’ in the thirteenth century. The former lay on the edge of town adjacent to a manse donated to the cathedral chapter in 1121, while the latter belonged to the bishop. See CCA, no. 12, 18; and Massiet du Biest, ‘Les ports

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Cathedral SS. Marie et Firmin

St.-Acheul

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Ultra-pontem gate

= Miracle location

= Relic elevation, ostentation, translation

Figure 7.2. Locations of miracles and relic ostentations in Amiens c. 1060–1144

Stirred by the saint’s refusal to leave the community, the joyous townspeople donated their valuables to his cult. A third miracle unfolded when, after the fire had ravaged the city, flowers spontaneously bloomed ‘on our lands [and in] fields with orchards belonging to the church’ on Firmin’s feast day. Rumour of the marvel attracted people from distant fluviaux’, 242, who does not, however, mention the ‘Ultra Pontem’ gate or include it in his plan of the town.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 regions, who picked the flowers and returned home with them.101 The saint later cured a mute girl and an old man during a synod.102 The flurry of miracles around the turn of the twelfth century was accompanied by a parallel upswing in relic-related liturgical activity. The bishops of Amiens performed a total of five relic translations, elevations, and ostentations between 1096 and 1113. Of these, four took place in the cathedral. Gervin transferred the relics of St Fuscian to a new reliquary on 29 September 1096, an event to which he invited Lambert of Arras.103 A decade later, Godfrey transferred Firmin the Martyr’s relics into a golden reliquary.104 According to Godfrey’s vita, he performed a second ostentation in the cathedral a few weeks later on All Saints’ Day.105 During the second ostentation, a black fog that had enshrouded the town for more than twenty days suddenly lifted, so that ‘the radiance of the sun illuminated the entire space of the basilica’.106 Godfrey followed this double ostentation by elevating the relics of St Salvius in May or June 1111 – presumably at Montreuil-sur-Mer where the saint’s body was buried – and the relics of the priest Lupicinus in 1113, in the cathedral.107 He was also something of a collector of relic-souvenirs: Godfrey returned from a trip to Italy with the episcopal ring of St Honoratus and an ampulla of oil from the tomb of St Nicholas, bishop of Myra.108 101

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The fire is described by Nicholas (VSG, 939–40) as having occurred on 23 August, which the editor of the text places in 1106; see 939 n. 2. As one of the ‘miracula miscellanea’ (prefatory matter to the Vita sancti Firmini, 37) states that flowers bloomed on Firmin’s feast day (25 September) following a massive fire, it seems likely that the two accounts are describing the same event. Miraculously blooming flowers is a theme often repeated in local hagiography, for example, after St Firmin’s exhumation by St Salvius (Vita sancti Salvii, 706) and in the Inventio et translatio beati Firmini (Amiens, BM 46, fo. 142v). Between 1127–44; see the prefatory matter to the Vita sancti Firmini, 37. Registre, no. 2, 328–30. It is unknown whether Lambert attended the ceremony. Godfrey’s cultivation of St Firmin’s cult is confirmed by other sources. Guibert of Nogent complained in his treatise De sanctis et eorum pigneribus that Godfrey had elevated false relics of Firmin in 1106/7. The abbot of Nogent attests that he had heard from both Godfrey and the bishop of Arras that St Firmin’s reliquary lacked documentation confirming the authenticity of its contents; Guibert of Nogent, De sanctis et eorum pigneribus, 103. Nicholas develops the topos of Godfrey’s devotion to Firmin throughout the VSG, for example at 1.28, 916; 2.26–7, 924–6; 2.31, 927; 3.4, 930; 3.20, 938. VSG, 925. Compare Exodus 40:34–38 and 1 Kings 8:10–13 on the ‘cloud of the Lord’. VSG, 925–6. I have been unable to learn more about Godfrey’s elevation of Lupicinus beyond its notation in Corblet’s Hagiographie du diocèse d’Amiens, 3:179–80 and 180 n. 1. Corblet reproduces a notice from a ‘Chronique de Dom Cotron’, which reads: ‘S. Godefridus, Ambianensis episcopus, e terra levavit corpus B. Lupicini presbyteri, illudque in decenti feretro recondidit’. Lupicinus was the priest who discovered the hidden bodies of St Fuscian and his companions while St Honoratus celebrated mass at Saint-Acheul. He does not appear to have had a significant cult at Amiens. VSG, 2.17–19, 922–3; 2.24, 924. On the significance of rings as a symbol of episcopal faith, authority, and dignity, see Labhart, Zur Rechtssymbolik des Bischofsrings; Gaudemet, Le

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens Collectively, these miracles and translations, which displayed intimate physical contact between the celebrant and the relics, dramatized the historical relationship between the bishops of Amiens and the community’s patron saints. Nicholas of Saint-Crépin described Godfrey’s second ostentation of Firmin’s relics, for example, by recounting how the bishop, barefoot and sobbing, had poured out the saint’s relics on to a purple pallium and clutched them to his chest (sacros artus super pallium purpureum effundens ac pectori astringens).109 As successors to the Apostles and the city’s founding bishops, contemporary prelates of Amiens had every reason to think that in times of tribulation God and his saints would reinforce their own authority. This impression is strengthened by the concentration of episcopal relic elevations in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, precisely when the political climate at Amiens was so unsettled. In the half-century prior to Gervin’s elevation of St Fuscian’s relics in 1096, we have evidence for only one episcopal elevation or ostentation, Bishop Gui of Ponthieu’s elevation of the relics of Paschasius Radbertus at Corbie in 1058.110 Godfrey was especially active. After 1115, the bishops of Amiens continued to carry out relic elevations, but erratically and exclusively outside the town.111 The contemporary experiences of the neighbouring Flemish dioceses of Noyon-Tournai and Thérouanne demonstrate that monks and bishops, together with the counts of Flanders, frequently harnessed relic elevations and delations to further the ideals of the Peace and Truce of

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gouvernement de l’Église, 120–21; McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority, 59–61, 80–6. Godfrey did not restrict his support of saints’ cults to Amiens. He collected and ate the nuts from a tree that miraculously bloomed on St Gentian’s feast day. Bishop Guérin, then an archdeacon, witnessed the event and later reported it in a letter he wrote between 1115 and 1122 to Turold, the abbot of Coulombs, which was copied into BNF Coll. Picardie 1, fo. 206. See also AEA, vol. II, no. 74, 179; and Edmond Soyez, Notices sur les évêques d’Amiens (Amiens, 1878), 51–2. Godfrey also responded in 1110 to the request of the abbot of Saint-Riquier that he judge the validity of the miracles worked by St Angilbert, a patron of that monastery; Miracula sancti Angilberti, AASS February, vol. III, 104; Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier, ed. Lot, xiii and xiii n. 1. VSG, 925. 110 GC, vol. X, col. 1164. Guérin opened the reliquary of St Judoc (at Saint-Josse, dioc. Amiens) together with Gui, the count of Ponthieu, in 1134, while Guérin’s successor Thierry (1144–64) elevated the relics of St Eloi at Noyon in 1157, see Brunel, Recueil des actes des comtes de Pontieu, no. 140, 210; and AEA, vol. II, no. 214, 287. It would not be until sixty years after Godfrey’s death that a bishop of Amiens elevated or translated the relics of one of the town’s patron saints. In 1175 Bishop Thibaud Briton (1169–1204) prepared a new reliquary for St Fuscian and his companions. Twenty years later he elevated the relics of St Judoc, and shortly before he died in 1204, he transferred Firmin’s bones into a golden reliquary. Thibaud’s successor Richard (1205–11) contributed to St Honoratus’ hagiographical tradition at the beginning of his episcopacy with the addition of several miracle stories. See Desportes and Millet, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. I (Diocése d’Amiens), 49–50; Vita sancti Honorati, 612–13.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 God pronounced in local councils.112 Scholars who have analysed the canonization and elevation of Godelieve of Gistel at Saint-Winnoc of Bergues in 1084 and the delatio by the monks of Lobbes with the relics of their patron Ursmer in 1060,113 argue that bishops and monks mobilized saints’ relics within social and liturgical contexts that permitted or compelled enmities to soften and feuds to wither.114 The timing of the relic elevations at Amiens also suggests that the bishops hoped to quell strife and bolster their authority by harnessing ritual displays. Gervin and Godfrey attended councils at which the Truce of God was renewed, and the latter elevated the relics of Amiens’ patrons in moments of heightened political tension.115 For example, Godfrey displayed Firmin’s relics in 1106/7 and had earlier humiliated them when he fell into conflict with his vidame Guermond of Picquigny and the monks of the nearby monastery of Saint-Valéry.116 Seven years later, in 1113, he elevated the relics of the priest Lupicinus, at a time when the townspeople of Amiens were agitating for a commune. Likewise, the timing of Godfrey’s elevation of the relics of St Salvius at the monastery of Montreuil-sur-Mer on 11 June 1111, two weeks after Count Robert of Flanders had renewed the peace of God in his domains, does not appear coincidental.117 112

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In addition to the literature cited above in chapter 4 in connection with the 1099 council at SaintOmer, see Bozóky, ‘La politique des reliques des premiers comtes de Flandre’. R. Nip, ‘The canonization of Godelieve of Gistel’, Hagiographica, 2 (1995), 145–55; and Koziol, ‘Monks, feuds, and the making of peace’, respectively. See now, however, the approach to reading peace assemblies suggested by J. Y. Malegam, ‘No peace for the wicked: conflicting visions of peacemaking in an eleventh-century monastic narrative’, Viator, 39 (2008), 23–49. The number of relic elevations performed by the bishops of Thérouanne and Noyon-Tournai in Flanders and northern France during the decades from 1030–1110 is striking. Drogo of Thérouanne presided over elevations at Blangy in 1035, Corbie in 1036, and Saint-Bertin in 1052; Gerard of Thérouanne at Furne in 1089; John of Thérouanne at Boulogne in 1100/2 and Thérouanne in 1108; Baldwin of Noyon-Tournai at Saint-Bavon of Ghent in 1067 (with Lietbert of Cambrai); Radbod II of Noyon-Tournai at Tournai in 1070 (with Lietbert of Cambrai), Saint-Pierre in 1072, Châteauneuf in 1073, and Saint-Winnoc of Bergues in 1084. In addition to the monks of Lobbes’ delatio in 1060, the monks of Saint-Winnoc (1058) and Saint-Amand (1066 and 1107) carried out relic processions across Flanders. For the bishops of Thérouanne, see Bled, Regestes des évêques de Thérouanne, no. 205, 74; no. 206, 74; nos. 219–22, 75–6; no. 307, 91; no. 365, 100; no. 402, 105. For Noyon-Tournai, see GC, vol. IX, cols. 996–7, 1000; and N. Huyghebaert, ‘Dedicationes Tornacenses (616–1395)’, in Horae Tornacenses. Recueil d’études d’histoire publiées à l’occasion du VIIIe centenaire de la consécration de la cathédrale de Tournai (Tournai, 1971), 9–27, at 16. Gervin in 1093 at Soissons and 1095 at Clermont; Godfrey in 1107 at Troyes. See Vermeesch, Essai, 60; Pontal, Les conciles de la France capétienne, 250–2. Nicholas of Saint-Crépin was not overly scrupulous in the chronological organization of his vita of Godfrey. Godfrey’s elevation of Firmin’s relics is recounted in VSG, 924–5. His quarrel with the monks of Saint-Valéry precedes this, beginning in Book 2.9, 921, and ending at 2.24, 924; his feud with Guermond is discussed beginning with Book 2.30, 926, and continues until Book 3.5, 930. VSG, 899, 925–6; ACF, no. 49, 126.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens In sum, the bishops of Amiens monopolized and strategically deployed Amiens’ saints’ cults. They displayed their relics to the people and transferred them into new reliquaries, creating moments of liturgical drama that invited God and his saints to glorify the bishops by their presence and to establish peace among those witnessing the events. And when the saints demonstrated their miraculous power to the people of Amiens, they did so in places controlled by its bishops.

sacralized space and the extension of episcopal authority The saints’ presence hovered about the cathedral and its connected churches. By contrast, the old Roman civitas, which comprised the count and castellan’s lands, was ritually and liturgically barren earth. The libelli composed at Amiens in the early twelfth century record no miracles there; no religious edifices connected with the town’s patron saints stood within its landscape. This slowly began to change after 1100, however, and by 1117 the bishops had established or gained control of a priory and two parish churches in the comital half of Amiens: the churches of Saint-Germain-l’Ecossais and Saint-Firmin-en-Castillon, and the priory of Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte.118 The circumstances surrounding the foundation of each edifice suggest a concerted episcopal effort to reclaim that space and extend ecclesiastical authority into the comital half of the town. The church of Saint-Martin-ad-Burgum, which lay at the eastern end of the east–west road bisecting the Roman civitas, was the sole religious edifice near the count’s jurisdiction until 1100. Little is known of this church of Saint-Martin aside from its physical location, which is, however, significant. François Vasselle and Ernest Will believe that Saint-Martin-ad-Burgum was the small basilica which Gregory of Tours said had marked the place where St Martin shared his cloak with the beggar.119 Bishop Gui of Ponthieu later claimed the site of this famous miracle for his own foundation of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux, at the eastern gates of the episcopal quarter, effectively transferring the historical setting of Martin’s signature act of charity to a place under his own authority and that of cathedral chapter.120 118 119

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Here again, Massiet du Biest, Etudes sur les fiefs et censives, Map 4, has been helpful. Vasselle and Will, ‘L’enceinte du Bas-Empire’, 471–2 and 471 n. 2; Gregory of Tours, Liber de virtutibus sancti Martini, vol. I/2, ed. B. Krusch, new edn, MGH SSRM (Hanover, 1969), 134–211, at 148. As mentioned, the count did not witness or sign Gui’s 1073 foundation charter.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 We know less about Saint-Germain-l’Ecossais, a parish church erected adjacent to the northern wall of the city. The earliest mention of the church or its possessions occurs in an 1131 charter of Bishop Guérin.121 An even later charter of Alelmus, the grandson of the castellan of Amiens, Adam, mentions that the altar of Saint-Germain-l’Ecossais had formed part of his family’s original donation to the Premonstratensian priory of Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte.122 The church thus seems to have belonged to the castellans of Amiens, and may have been founded by the same family. Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte’s history is likewise complicated, but less obscure than Saint-Germain’s. Mathilda, the daughter of the castellan Adam, had founded Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte in 1115 for the salvation of her brother’s soul.123 Her brother, also named Alelmus, had joined his father Adam in resisting the bishop during the siege of 1115–17 and was killed in the fighting. Mathilda and her husband Gui, the lord of Flixecourt (a castellanal holding northwest of Amiens), established Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte at the western gate of the Roman civitas, opposite Saint-Martin-ad-Burgum. Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte’s foundation charter has not survived. Nevertheless, its establishment appears to have functioned as a penitential act for the castellan’s opposition to the bishop.124 Alelmus, Mathilda’s son, recalled the circumstances of SaintFirmin-à-la-Porte’s foundation some years later when he and his sisters conceded the donations and alms which their father Gui and mother Mathilda, and their ‘ancestors and their men, gave a long time ago . . . for the soul of my uncle Alelmus and for their own souls’.125 The priory at the city’s western gate thus stood as a testament to the castellanal family’s fall from grace in 1115. 121

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Amiens, BM 781, Cartulary of Saint-Jean, fo. 13r-v. Godet, ‘Amiens’, col. 1258, claims the church dates to approximately 1100, but it is unclear upon what evidence he bases his assertion. Amiens, BM 781, fos. 91v–92v (an 1151 charter listing the family’s donations to the abbey of Saint-Jean). GC, vol. X, col. 1354. Mathilda, Gui, and their son Alelmus were all summoned before the bishop ‘on account of the pillaging that [Alelmus] had carried out against the [church]’, and for which he had been excommunicated. They bequeathed with the count’s consent a number of privileges to the cathedral chapter, including the nocturna, an annual fish-catch in the river, and rights to wine sales for fifteen days around the festival of St John. CCA, no. 26, 35 (1146): ‘Proinde notum facimus quod Alelmus de Ambianis cum ab ecclesia Ambianensi propter rapinas quas adversus eam exercuerat diu excommunicatus fuisset, tandem ipse et parentes ejus Guido et Mathildis ante nostram constituti presentiam pro absolutione illius . . . donaverunt’. Amiens, BM 781, fo. 91v (1151): ‘Ego et sorores mee Flandrina, Milesendis et Mathildis laudavimus et concessimus donationes et elemosinas quas Guido pater meus et Mathildis mater mea et parentes nostri et homines eorum pro anima Alelmi avunculi mei et pro animabus suis longo tempore ante donaverant ecclesie sancti Iohannis Amb. Baptiste’. Alelmus identifies the house by its more recent dedication to Saint-Jean, the dedication it assumed when the canons outgrew their priory and moved outside the town walls.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte attracted donations and quickly outgrew its confines, providing the bishops of Amiens with an opportunity to intervene in its administration. Bishop Enguerran requested Milo, abbot of the Premonstratensian abbey of Saint-Josse-au-Bois, to introduce the regular life to its canons.126 Milo took the priory under his wing, overseeing both its reform and the growth of its properties. Enguerran’s successor Guérin became a doting patron of the priory, endowing and confirming its possessions throughout his episcopacy.127 At some time between 1131 and 1139, the canons moved to a larger building outside the town walls dedicated to John the Baptist. Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte then reverted to a parish church under Saint-Jean’s control.128 The castellanal family was not the only noble clan to provide the priory and monastery of Saint-Jean with altars, moveable goods, and lands.129 The vidames of Amiens, the lords of Picquigny – at various times the bishops’ political adversaries – also gave generously. Gerard of Picquigny gave gifts of land to Saint-Jean in 1136 and 1144. An 1144 charter, issued on the death of Gerard’s mother Beatrix, commemorated the vidame’s extended clan: his mother, brother, four sisters and their spouses, and his three sons.130 Non-noble families also made pious bequests to Saint-Jean. The family of Raoul Qui-non-Ridet, a prominent citizen, donated the suburban plot of land on which the monastery was founded in 1124.131 Saint-Jean, owing to Guérin’s patronage, became the common beneficiary of an extended network of once-rival political parties.132 Yet it would be the foundation of the parish church of Saint-Firminen-Castillon, consecrated by Bishop Enguerran in 1117, that best 126

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A year later Enguerran petitioned the archbishop of Reims to confirm Saint-Josse’s possessions and privileges; GC, vol. X, Instr., cols. 303–4. For example, Amiens, BM 781, fos. 1r-v (1141), 13r-v (19 June 1131), 13v–14v (1139), 14v–15v (1144). Amiens, BM 781, fo. 2v (1196 pancarte for abbey). The family continued to dote on Saint-Jean: Alelmus issued a second confirmation charter in 1159 to the recently elected abbot, Eustache, in the presence of Bishop Thierry; Amiens, BM 781, fos. 92v–94r. Beatrix, the wife of the former vidame Guermond (Godfrey’s antagonist), was ‘solemnly interred before the church of blessed John the Baptist’ in the family’s presence; Amiens, BM 781, fos. 17v–18r. Milo, the abbot of Saint-Josse and later bishop of Thérouanne (1131–58), recalled the donation in a (post-1144) letter to Samson of Reims and Thierry of Amiens; Amiens, BM 781, fo. 19v. The editors of the Gallia Christiana (GC, vol. X, cols. 1354–6) date Milo’s involvement at SaintFirmin-à-la-Porte to 1124, but I have found no evidence to support this date. On the Qui-nonRidet family, see J. Massiet du Biest, ‘Les origines de la population et du patriciat urbain à Amiens (1109–XIVe siècle)’, Revue du nord, 30 (1948), 113–44 at 117, 127–8. In addition to Raoul Quinon-Ridet, the cives Mainerus de Abbatisvilla (of Abbeville) made donations that were included in abbey charters of 1131 and 1144. Together, bishop Guérin and Milo of Thérouanne signed confirmation charters for the abbey in 1139 and 1141; Amiens, BM 781, fos. 1r-v, 13v–14v.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 represented the new balance of power between episcopal and comital authority in Amiens. As its name implies, the church was erected atop the ruins of the count’s tower, the Castillon. The siege had finally been resolved in 1117, to the advantage of the king, bishop, and commune.133 By consecrating a new church dedicated to the town’s patron saint in the comital half of the city, Enguerran was also reclaiming part of the city’s sacred geography. The Castillon had been built atop the remains of the Gallo-Roman amphitheatre, which had been converted in the third or fourth century into a defensive barricade and integrated into the city walls. Next to it were the ruins of the Roman forum. A gate pierced the wall nearby, identified by archaeologists as the probable site of the so-called ‘porta Clippiana’, which is described in the Vita sancti Firmini martyris.134 Here again the church’s location is significant, because it was in the forum near the ‘porta Clippiana’ that St Firmin was first summoned before a Roman judge and questioned about his faith. He was ordered to cease preaching or face death, but ignored the threat and later healed two lepers at that very gate.135 Firmin was then seized and ultimately beheaded, thus becoming the city’s first martyr. The profane Castillon thus squatted over the site of Christianity’s triumph over paganism in Amiens, usurping and obscuring the glory of the community’s first patron saint and bishop – just as, in parallel fashion, the count and castellan attacked Firmin’s episcopal successors.136 In 1117, the bishop restored that sacred ground to the saint. The defeat of Count Enguerran of Boves and the bishops’ opponents would thus appear to have been total in 1117. Yet even as the count and castellan’s landed possessions in the city were slowly colonized, the bishop elected to succeed Godfrey near the conclusion of the siege was none other than Count Enguerran of Boves’ own son and namesake.137 Bishop Enguerran’s election in late 1115 or early 1116 may have been part of a compromise attempted between the warring factions near the mid-point of the siege. Formerly an archdeacon of the cathedral chapter, Enguerran faced divided loyalties: his father and brother, Thomas of Marle, were fighting against his bishop, Godfrey. Perhaps by conceding defeat and remanding control of the land on which the Castillon sat into the bishop’s hands, the count hoped to keep the property in the family and retain indirect control of it. If so, his hopes did not reach fruition. Bishop Enguerran does not appear to have favoured his brother, 133 134 135 137

Suger of Saint-Denis, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. Waquet, 178–9. There it is described as ‘ad spectacula theatri’; Bayard and Massy, Amiens romain, 222, 227–8, 237. Vita sancti Firmini martyris, 49–50. 136 Vasselle and Will, ‘L’enceinte du Bas-Empire’, 470. Janvier, Boves et ses seigneurs, 48.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens and the family eventually lost the countship of Amiens for more than a generation. Collectively, these events – the ‘translation’ of St Martin’s miracle to the abbey of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux, the foundation of SaintFirmin-à-la-Porte, the destruction of the Castillon and the reclamation of the place of St Firmin’s martyrdom – led to a gradual transformation of the city’s space in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Over the course of a few decades, and particularly in the years following the siege, St Martin deserted the comital half of the city and St Firmin thoroughly occupied it. The proliferation of sacred space corresponded with the diminution of the count’s status and authority and the rise of that of the bishops. Saint Firmin became omnipresent: in the priory and parish church consecrated to him; at the elevation and ostentation of his relics by Godfrey in 1106/7; through his likeness on the seals appended to episcopal charters. Firmin’s presence provided a constant reminder that the bishop’s spiritual and temporal authority was ultimately ordained by God and passed down through his saints.138 In medieval reckoning, human beings did not ‘choose’ sacred space. It was sacralized through a manifestation of divine will and persisted in local memory because it was a physical and visible point of contact between man and the divine.139 Although the initial moment of that contact might fade from memory, charters and miracle stories reminded each generation that the place retained the potential for future communion. Of course a place marked by an initial ‘theophanic irruption’ – to borrow the words of Amy Remensnyder – might well be forgotten altogether, if human agents did not keep the event alive in collective memory. In Amiens, the bishop was both heir and progenitor of the community’s sacred stories, a role he maintained long after the siege had ended and peace returned. Well into the third quarter of the twelfth century, episcopal charters for Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux would continue to evoke the abbey’s ‘origin’ as the place where Christ had appeared to Martin.

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The saint was also present when townspeople paid tolls on carts entering the city on May 1: the archdeacon received rents on cart-traffic at ‘the oven of Firmin of the Cloister, located outside the gate of [the church of] Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte’; EFHU, vol. II/1, no. 75, 175: ‘et censum illum ad furnum Firmini de Claustro, extra portam Sancti Firmini in Valle situm, archidiaconus sumit’. The clause was added to the communal charter under Bishop Thierry (thus between 1144–64). A. G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past. Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY, 1995), 43. See also M. Sot, ‘Organisation de l’espace et historiographie épiscopale dans quelques cités de la Gaule carolingienne’, in B. Guenée (ed.), Le métier d’historien au moyen age. Etudes sur l’historiographie médiévale (Paris, 1977), 31–43, at 35–6.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 The bishops’ commemorations of their predecessors were made publicly as well as privately, and shared jointly with the townsfolk. For example, the ‘clergy and people’ assented to Gui’s 1073 charter founding Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux. A group of cives ambianenses – the earliest example I have found for northern France and Flanders of ‘citizens’ witnessing an episcopal diploma – signed Godfrey’s first charter for the priory of Saint-Acheul in 1109.140 The non-noble laity of Amiens were also frequently present in the cathedral either as witnesses to charters or as donors to the chapter, a practice that intensified from 1121 on.141 Moreover, the commune of Amiens, the bishop’s ally during the twoyear siege of the Castillon, participated in the episcopal reclamation of sacred space by erecting its hôtel-de-ville adjacent to the church of Saint-Firmin-en-Castillon, on lands formerly belonging to the count.142 The members of the commune likewise associated themselves with the town’s sacred places. The mayors and leading citizens of Amiens witnessed charters and made donations to Saint-Jean and Saint-Martinaux-Jumeaux, the bishops’ favourite foundation, in 1147, 1153, 1154 and 1167.143 A later (1170) charter clearly illustrates the extent to which the citizens and mayors of Amiens came to embrace episcopal favour towards St Martin. In the charter, Bernard, the mayor of the commune of Amiens, and all the magistrates [scabini] of our city, together with all our sworn men, wish to make known that Raoul de Espesmaisnil, our sworn man, sold in our presence his house for the price of fifty livres . . . with his wife’s consent and with the consent of all his sons and daughters, to the church of Saint-Martin which is called ‘aux-Jumeaux’. And because we love the same church so greatly, we have made the present charter, sealed with our seal, for the church of Saint-Martin, as much for the honour of blessed Martin who at that place clothed Christ in a beggar’s form, as from reverence for the holy place, and above all because many of our fathers and our ancestors chose to be buried there.144

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HSAA, pièce justificative no. 5, 491: ‘Cives quoque ambianenses, Herveus Fulcredus, Mamerus Wido gener ejus, Mamerus monetarius et Stephanus frater ejus, Milo thelonearius et alii plures’. The above-mentioned 1091–4 charter of counts Ivo and Gui was redacted ‘coram clero et populo’. Members of the urban citizenry were also present at the 1121 donation of one Odo, eques, to the cathedral chapter, as well as the 1144 donation of Nicholas, ‘Ambianice urbis civis strenuus’; CCA, no. 9, 14–15; no. 12, 18; no. 18, 26–8. De Calonne, Histoire de la ville d’Amiens, 165–6. The name of the first known mayor of Amiens was Firmin, an indication of his family’s devotion to the bishop-saint. AD Somme H (02) 4, Cartulary of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux, fos. 15v–16r, 18r-v, 30r-v. The earliest mention of a communal seal appears in the 1147 charter; the next mention occurs in 1152, in the cartulary of Saint-Jean (Amiens, BM 781, fo. 25r). AD Somme H (02) 4, Cartulary of Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux, fo. 29v (1170); Recueil des monuments inédits, ed. Thierry, 94–5.

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Urban space, memory, and episcopal authority: the bishops of Amiens The charter was signed by the mayor and thirteen others, presumably the sworn representatives of the commune, and was done with the consent of the ‘full assembly of the commune’ (universitas totius communie). The association of the townspeople and commune with Saint-Jean and Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux indicates that the bishops’ patronage of these houses struck a resonant chord among the urban populace. The commune, too, understood the usefulness of controlling urban space as a means of asserting and extending its authority. Eight statutes of the communal charter mandate that the house of an enemy of the commune be torn down as punishment, for crimes ranging from slandering a member of the commune to abetting its enemies.145 The offender’s possessions then became communal property. The destruction of houses and property, although an ancient legal custom and a relatively common civic punishment among the communes of northern France and Flanders, seldom appeared (or not at all) in the charters of nearby Arras, Beauvais, Laon, and Soissons.146 The correspondence between the episcopal consecration and commemorization of sacred space on the one hand, and the memorial and legal practices of the urban community on the other, suggests that political and religious authority in Amiens was recognizably established through the idiom of urban space. The late eleventh- and twelfth-century bishops of Amiens governed in a fractious urban community, split among competing jurisdictions and authorities. Though divided politically, the community’s memory of its bishop-saints and their deeds was held collectively. The city’s sacred history was intimately tied to the very spaces of the town itself, forming a connection that contemporary bishops, who frequently governed that same space, could manipulate to serve their own agenda. Moreover, it was space in which the counts of Amiens – particularly the lords of Boves – did not share. After 1073, the bishops of Amiens assembled and linked the accumulated deeds of their predecessors into a loose but coherent historical narrative, in the process using charters, hagiography, miracle collections, relic elevations, and church consecrations to cement and remind their flock of their ongoing role in that narrative. The record of their activities was impressed not only on parchment, but also into the 145

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EFHU, vol. II/1, no. 75, 170–5 (cc. 8–9, 11, 15–16, 18, 37, 39, 47). The earliest surviving copy of the charter is Philip Augustus’ 1190 confirmation. The original date of the concession has traditionally been ascribed to 1117, but without evidence. See, e.g., de Calonne, Histoire de la ville d’Amiens, 146–7; A. Giry (ed.), Documents sur les relations de la royauté avec les villes en France de 1180 à 1314 (Geneva, 1974), 20 n. 1. We have no reason to doubt that the commune received its first charter from the king at its founding sometime in 1112 or 1113. The charter did go through at least one revision and possibly more before 1190, notably in 1149–64. A. Delcourt, La vengeance de la commune. L’arsin et l’abattis de maison en Flandre et en Hainaut (Lille, 1930), 20–2; EFHU, vol. II/1, nos. 28, 36, 66, 77.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 stones of Amiens. It was a cumulative process, one that culminated in the second decade of the twelfth century and endured thereafter. Ultimately, the prelates drew the townspeople into their orbit of patronage and power. Due to the efforts of Godfrey and his fellow bishops, Amiens indisputably became in the early twelfth century Firmin and Martin’s town, and, to a greater degree than any time in the preceding century, their own.

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Chapter 8

BISHOPS AND THE WORD

When holy men (sancti uiri) abound in words, they shine sublimely with miracles and compel the hearts of their audience towards faith by the sweetness and terror of words . . . And while strong preaching deters [listeners] from vice, the display of virtue prompts them to better things. Snatched from the snares of sinners, they are recalled into the light of a once-lost inheritance. Thus the world, born to ruin, recovered from its error through the public virtues of the saints; and so long as it heeded their advice by believing, it returned to life converted by their continuous instruction.

Sometime between 1131 and 1152, Milo, the bishop of Thérouanne, composed a sermon, or brief vita in rhymed prose, about the fifth-century saint Principius, bishop of Soissons and half-brother of Remigius of Reims. Milo sent the sermon, from which the above passage is excerpted, to his friend and colleague, Josselin of Soissons. Josselin then had it copied into a legendary that he later bequeathed to his cathedral library.1 The bishop of Soissons, who was an avid collector and patron of local hagiography, undoubtedly commissioned the sermon directly from the bishop of Thérouanne.2 Josselin’s commission presented Milo with a serious challenge, much as Baldwin of Flanders’ request had for Gervais of Reims decades earlier. For starters, Principius was poorly known in the twelfth century. Only a few shreds of information could be found on him in Hincmar of Reims’ Life of St Remigius and in Remigius’ famous 1

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Vita sancti Principii Suessionice ciuitatis episcopi et fratris gloriosissimi Remigii Francorum apostoli, ed. by F. Dolbeau in Dolbeau, ‘Hagiographie latine et prose rimée: deux exemples de Vies épiscopales rédigées au XIIe siècle’, Sacris erudiri. Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen, 32 (1991), 223–68, at 250. The index to the volume of Josselin’s legendary containing the sermon on Principius was copied down by Nicolas de Beaufort (1554–1624) in the late sixteenth century and is now found at BNF, nouv. acq. lat. 950, fo. 1v. Dolbeau reprints it on 227–8. I have retained the title Sermo in sanctum Principium, as this is how the text is identified in Beaufort’s catalogues of the legendaries from the cathedral and Notre-Dame of Soissons. On Josselin’s interest in local hagiography, see Ott, ‘Educating the Bishop’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Testament.3 These included the names of Principius’ parents, his place of burial, and a short list of properties deeded to him by Remigius.4 The lack of precise information about Principius nevertheless gave Milo the freedom to supply the bishop with virtues of his own choosing. As the extract above indicates, he elected to emphasize how the pastor intervened on behalf of his flock, notably through the soul-saving power of preaching and his personal moral example. One of Milo’s principal sources was Gregory the Great’s Homilies on the Gospels, and in particular Homily 14 on the good shepherd, who gives his soul for his flock.5 We saw previously that Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre had employed the same homily in his vita of Lietbert of Cambrai.6 Milo of Thérouanne and Josselin of Soissons were known for their preaching.7 To judge by the content of the Sermo in sanctum Principium, they also had a mutual interest in the ideals and conduct of episcopal office. Indeed, what seems to be a work of pure anachronism – there is no new material about Principius and certainly nothing reliable about the fifth century, and the whole thing appears rather banal at first glance – holds important insights into the images and ideas about episcopal conduct circulating among the bishops of northern France in the second quarter of the twelfth century.8 It is precisely its apparent lack of originality that makes the text so compelling. Without access to precise information about his subject, Milo supplied content – he referred to it as generalia, general attributes – that he selected himself and deemed befitting a virtuous bishop. He assembled from scripture well-known hagiographical tropes, and he believed Gregory the Great’s depictions of pastoral conduct in the Homilies were appropriate for episcopal office, making the sermo into a repository of pastoral wisdom. Principius was a perfect cipher, on to which the bishop of Thérouanne projected an effectively 3

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Both texts were later incorporated into Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae, where Principius is noted at HRE 1.10, 80, and 1.18, 97 and 101 – although Milo used a different version of the Testament than Flodoard. See also Kaiser, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Civitas und Diözese Soissons, 145–6, 217–19, 226. Dolbeau, ‘Hagiographie latine et prose rimée,’ 251–2, 257–8. 5 Ibid., 235, 252, 256–7, 259. Above, 209–10. Josselin is attributed with having written sermons on the Creed (Expositio in symbolo) and the Lord’s Prayer (Expositio in oratione dominica), edited in E. Martène and U. Durand, Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum, dogmaticorum, moralium, amplissima collectio, vol. IX (New York, 1968), cols. 1101–20, and discussed below; a sermon of Milo is cited by Peter the Chanter, Verbum abbreviatum (PL 205, cols. 252–3), specifically concerned with the state of feminine dress. (It is also possible the sermon was composed by Milo II of Thérouanne.) See also B. Guillemain, ‘L’action pastorale des évêques en France aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, in Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della ‘Societas christiani’ dei secoli XI–XII: diocesi, pievi e parrocchie. Atti della sesta Settimana internazionale di studio, Milano, 1–7 settembre 1974 (Milan, 1977), 117–35, at 128. Dolbeau (235) writes: ‘En ce sens [Milo’s reliance on the Church Fathers for hagiographical material], la légende de Principius appartient à l’héritage grégorien plus qu’au XIIe siècle.’

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Bishops and the word contemporary vision of the ideal prelate in the guise of an historical account. Milo’s sermon for Josselin was part of a corpus of texts that shaped, in ways large and small, contemporary ideals of episcopal office in the archdiocese of Reims. This chapter and the one that follows focus on those texts, including vitae, episcopal gesta, and charters that circulated among and connected the episcopal cohort of the archdiocese of Reims. Collectively, they depict an episcopate actively and consciously engaged in a process of self-critique and self-fashioning – aware of their political and professional connections, conscious of their responsibilities, and in some cases, of their shared history and their place in that history. This episcopal ‘workshop’ of ideas was not closed to external input. Other authors, namely monks and canons, were actively, even predominantly involved, and often at episcopal request. The focus of the present chapter – on preaching or the ‘word’ as a core element of pastoral care, and its eleventh- and twelfth-century examples – was a central concern in many of the texts. The next chapter considers ‘deeds’, specifically written emphases on labour, the responsibilities of the bishop as paterfamilias, and the shared toils of episcopal office, virtues we saw connected with Bartholomew of Laon through his rebuilding of his devastated cathedral in the first chapter. Contemporary prelates considered the two activities to be fundamentally linked, dual aspects of a unified ministerium that must be pursued complementarily, and for which they would be judged at the end of time. The examples of episcopal preaching in this chapter help to bring into focus the contours of priestly communication in the half-century or so before the rise of the Parisian schoolmasters, and allow us to see, to paraphrase Claire Waters, the bishops of the archdiocese of Reims in the process of articulating their roles and responsibilities.9 They will also take us a step closer to understanding the foundations of episcopal identity and collegiality in the archdiocese.

milo of the´ rouanne’s sermo in sanctum principium The Sermo in sanctum Principium begins with an encomium on the virtues of the saints and the conversion of pagan peoples from superstition to Christian belief. In Reims and Soissons their conversion was effected through the joint efforts of the half-brothers Remigius and Principius, whom, the Sermo holds, God established to evangelize their respective territories, just as he had previously sent forth Peter and Paul. Milo first 9

C. M. Waters, Angels and Earthly Creatures. Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1997). See in general Guillemain, ‘L’action pastorale des évêques’, 128–30.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 describes Principius’ boyhood and adolescence, adding that the Lord made him ‘distinguished in words’ so that he might know how to proclaim the ‘perfected word of holy preaching’.10 A consideration on the parable of the faithful servant and the talents of Matthew 25:14–30 follows, and serves to preface Milo’s summation of Principius’ episcopacy and his assimilation to the good shepherd of John 10:1–14.11 Milo then speaks circumspectly about Principius’ power to heal the blind, deaf, and sick, before closing with the bishop’s death and a brief defence of his own hagiographical method.12 As is often the case, we must guess at how Milo’s sermon on Principius was used.13 It evidently served as devotional and liturgical reading, perhaps intended for Josselin himself. Copies and extracts circulated in and around Soissons, and may be found referenced in catalogues and present in extant manuscripts from the Cistercian abbey of Longpont (Josselin’s foundation), Notre-Dame of Soissons, and Saint-Remi of Reims.14 Several features of the Sermo invite further consideration. First, given the brevity of the sermon’s chapters (capitulae), they were probably intended for recitation on the saint’s feast day. Second, Principius appears as Milo of Thérouanne believed him to be, not as he was. Milo did not portray him as an all-powerful, miracle-working saint, but as a holy man (a sanctus, or virtuous person) and preacher whose sollicitude kept his flock on the right path.15 When [temptation] strived to turn them from the right-hand path of virtue and divert them towards sinful stumbling blocks, the saint, deploying the singular shield of the faith, repeatedly turned away the fiery coils of the wicked one with the shield of preaching. So that [the devil] should not tear apart the minds of the faithful by temptation and triumph over the destruction of souls, that same man who acted as the good pastor, by enclosing their sheepfolds, vigilantly extended the diligent care of sollicitude to those under him.16 10

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Dolbeau, ‘Hagiographie latine et prose rimée,’ 253 (c. 3): ‘ipse hunc in uerbis constituit idoneum / ut sancte predicationis perfectum nosset edere uerbum’. As we have already seen, the Ego sum pastor bonus of John 10 was routinely read either to open provincial synods or before one of its sessions, and was widely employed in episcopal texts. For northern French examples, see Schneider (ed.), Die Konzilsordines des Früh- und Hochmittelalters, 323, 506, 566. Ibid., 257. No specific miracles are mentioned. T. N. Hall, ‘The early medieval sermon’, in B. Mayne Kienzle (ed.), The Sermon (Turnhout, 2000), 203–69, at 228. Including in two thirteenth-century breviaries of Soissons, BNF, lat. 1259, at fos. 304r and 321v, and Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 102, at fo. 343v. Milo at one point refers to Principius as ‘the preacher’ rather than by name; see Dolbeau, ‘Hagiographie latine et prose rimée’, 251 (c. 1): ‘Celestibus namque illa sacramentis iniciata / diuina christiane professionis suscepit tirocinia, / et planam post hec ibi uiam predictor repperit, / ubi prius nulls patebat locus predicationi’. Dolbeau, ‘Hagiographie latine et prose rimée’, 256–7 (c. 6): ‘Quos cum ille a recto uirtutum tramite auertere / et ad preposita conaretur uitia diuertere, / uni sanctus scuto fidei opposito / ignea tela

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Bishops and the word Principius presented an attainable example. His life exhorted its readers to protect their parishioners from sin by preaching – a goal suitable for any bishop who aspired to fulfil the basic duties of his office. Milo may even have intended elements of his Sermo, particularly its material on priestly duties, to be incorporated into other sermons. Developing the theme of the faithful servant in Matthew 25, which he had earlier introduced, Milo recalls how the servant who multiplied his master’s investment later shared in his good fortune.17 Milo adapted this material from passages in several of Gregory the Great’s Homilies. Homily 14, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’, features prominently among them.18 Having enclosed his flock with a sheepfold to protect their minds from temptation, he turned to supporting the sick and disabled.19 Imitating the example of the ‘all-powerful shepherd’, Principius’ inner disposition and mores aligned harmoniously with the external administration of his office.20 Milo’s sermon on Principius then concludes much like Homily 14, by stressing that the good shepherd will reap the same reward as the flock that he has led to salvation. Principius’ loyal service led at his life’s end to the joy of eternal rest, and having been ‘removed from transitory things, he was happily counted among the everlasting’.21 Milo thus established a connection between the moral of Gregory’s fourteenth homily and the qualities that eventually permitted Principius to rejoice ‘in the heaven without end’ (sine fine in ethere . . . perfruetur). Behind the general virtues of his saintly subject, Milo did offer a handful of details concerning Principius’ early life, and these deserve a closer look. One of the few texts to which Milo could turn for concrete information on Principius was Hincmar of Reims’ Life of St Remigius. The vita of Remigius established Principius’ relationship to the bishop of Reims; they were half-brothers, sons of the same mother.22 Although their births were separated by many years they were, in Milo’s words,

17 18

19 20

21

22

nequissimi sepius orationis abegit clipeo. / Et ne fidelium mentes in temptatione dilaniaret / eorumque circuiens caulas de animarum interitu triumpharet, / ille qui uicem boni pastoris egit, / diligentem subditis curam sollicitudinis attentius impendit’. Ibid., 258–9 (c. 7). The others are Homilies 9, 22, and 40; Homily 14 is quoted in cc. 2 (252), 6 (256), and 7 (257), and is excerpted in the block quote above. For an edition of Gregory’s fourteenth sermon, see Gregory the Great, Homiliae, 96–102. Dolbeau, ‘Hagiographie latine et prose rimée’, 257 (c. 6). As Dolbeau indicates, this theme is taken directly from Gregory’s Liber pastoralis; Ibid., 257 (c. 6): ‘Itaque pia summi pastoris imitatus uestigia, / pastoralis cure conspicuus floruit industria / et intus in moribus tenuit / quod foris sue prelationis administratione exibuit’. Ibid., 259 (c. 7): ‘Igitur sanctus Principius occiduis quidem subtractus / sed permanentibus feliciter est insertus’. Hincmar of Reims, Vita Remigii episcopi Remensis, vol. III, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SSRM (Hanover, 1896), 260.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 equals in piety, and through their respective evangelizing of the peoples of Reims and Soissons they joined their flocks ‘into a single sheepfold of faith’.23 Extending the comparison still further, Milo notes that just as God had brought together Peter and Paul as joint heads of the church – or, as he memorably puts it in the Sermo, ‘in the circumcision of the apostolate and . . . in the foreskin . . . of the principate’ – Remigius and Principius worked together as the ‘remedy’ and ‘foundation’ for the Christianized dioceses of Reims and Soissons.24 Teaching and preaching together as equals, one confided the light of apostolic faith, the other truthful doctrine, to his flock. Remigius later buried his half-brother and endowed the church of Soissons in his memory.25 Like any good preacher, Milo embroidered on the few solid details that he had at his disposal. Intentionally or not, the bishop of Thérouanne underlined the exceptionally close, indeed fraternal relationship between the dioceses of Reims and Soissons, one that endured in fact in the second quarter of the twelfth century. Soissons was second in order of dignity in the province, behind Reims. Its bishop was responsible for consecrating new archbishops-elect.26 Milo affirmed the historical bonds connecting the two sees, and synchronized the moment of their conversion to Christianity. The Sermo de sancto Principio thus celebrated the seriousness of episcopal preaching and pastoral care, and stressed the brotherly spirit in which it had been carried out in the archdiocese since the earliest Christian times. The lessons of Principius’ life, and the Sermo’s multiple borrowings from the homilies of Gregory the Great, further underscored their relevance to contemporary bishops.

preaching as episcopal calling From the earliest centuries of Christianity, preaching the word of God was considered one of the pastor’s instrumental duties. Ambrose of Milan commented on its form and on the value of polished, practised speech in his De officiis, a text available in the archdiocese of Reims in the eleventh

23

24

25 26

Ibid., 252 (c. 2): ‘et pietas utriusque totius ueritatis preconio equalis / utrumque gregem in unum fidei ouile coniungit’. The latter phrase is taken from Gregory the Great, Homiliae 14.4, 100. Ibid.: ‘Qui enim Petro in circumcisione apostolatum / et Paulo in preputio contulit principatum, / idem ipse beato Remigio euangelizandi in Remensi pago gratiam / et sancto Principio predicandi in Suessionico territorio largitus est constantiam’. We shall see in the following chapter that a similar spirit of collaboration informed the working relationship of the bishops of Reims and Soissons. Ibid., 257–8 (c.7). Just as Josselin had consecrated Samson of Reims in 1140; Milo worked closely with both men.

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and twelfth centuries. Pope Gregory devoted the entire third book of his Liber pastoralis to its techniques. Surviving manuscripts and archival inventories amply attest to the preservation of Gregory’s Liber.28 Early medieval episcopal vitae extol the preaching of their heroes, and both ninth-century synodal legislation and royal and episcopal capitularies, including collections produced by Hincmar of Reims, enjoined bishops and priests to preach and to teach.29 Pontificals, the widely diffused liturgical handbooks specifically designed for bishops, gave the celebrant directions on when to preach.30 Several collections and individual sermons attributed to contemporary bishops have also survived, including homilies by Fulbert, bishop of Chartres (1006–28), Gerard I of Cambrai, Ivo of Chartres, Radbod II of Noyon-Tournai, Odo of Cambrai, Hildebert of Lavardin, bishop of Le Mans and archbishop of Tours (1096–1125; 1125–33), Josselin of Soissons, and Geoffrey Babion, archbishop of Bordeaux (1136–58).31 All except Gerard and Radbod had been schoolmasters prior to their promotions into the episcopacy, and all were active intellectuals; their sermons constituted but one element of their published works and were an outgrowth of their pedagogical and pastoral roles. Herman of Tournai tells us, for example, that Odo of Tournai used to preach a ‘beautiful and prolix’ (pulchrum et prolixum) sermon on the incarnation of Christ every year at Christmas – a homily that Herman 27

28 29

30

31

Ambrose of Milan, De officiis, ed. M. Testard, CCSL, 15 (Turnhout, 2000), 1.9.29–1.10.30–34 (10–12); 1.22.99–101 (37–8); also Ambrose, De officiis, ed. and trans. I. J. Davidson (Oxford, 2001), vol. I, 134–7, 174–7. On the text’s diffusion, see Testard, De officiis, xiv–xix, xxxiv–xliv; Davidson, De officiis, vol. I, 99–101. See above, 53–5. Patzold, Episcopus, 496–7; S. Floryszczak, Die Regula Pastoralis Gregors des Groβen. Studien zu Text, kirchenpolitischer Bedeutung und Rezeption in der Karolingerzeit (Tübingen, 2005), esp. 139–75, 383–96; T. L. Amos, ‘Preaching and the sermon in the Carolingian world’, in T. L. Amos, E. A. Green, and B. Mayne Kienzle (eds.), De Ore Domini. Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, MI, 1989), 41–60; C. van Rhijn, Shepherds of the Lord. Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (Turnhout, 2007), 107–10, 156. E. Palazzo, Histoire des livres liturgiques. Le Moyen Age, des origines au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1993), 204–18. References to Fulbert’s sermons are found in Hall, ‘The early medieval sermon’, 242. Odo’s works were collected shortly after his death by the monks at Anchin, and they, including his sermon ‘Homo quidam erat dives, qui habebat villicum’, or ‘De villico’, are found in Douai, BM 201 (notice in C. Dehaisnes, Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des départements, vol. VI, Douai (Paris, 1878), 98–100). The sermons of Hildebert (many falsely attributed to him) have been studied by A. Wilmart, ‘Les sermons d’Hildebert’, Revue bénédictine, 47 (1935), 12–51, and G. Morin, ‘Trois manuscrits d’Engelberg à l’Ambrosiana’, Revue bénédictine, 39 (1927), 297–316, and those of Geoffrey Babion by J. B. Bonnes, ‘Un des plus grands prédicateurs du XIIe siècle: Geoffroy du Loroux dit Geoffroy Babion’, Revue bénédictine, 56 (1945–1946), 174–215, and J.-H. Foulon, ‘Geoffroy Babion, écolâtre d’Angers (†1158), l’exemple d’une collection de sermons’, in C. Carozzi and H. Taviani-Carozzi (eds.), Le médiéviste devant ses sources. Questions et méthodes (Aix-en-Provence, 2004), 65–96, with additional references to scholarship on Babion. For Josselin’s sermons, see above n. 7; for Radbod, see below, 268–9.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 still vividly remembered decades later.32 In Hildebert and Ivo’s case, we are fortunate to have a number of surviving pastoral sermons, including several intended specifically for priests gathered in synod, and a firm indication from Hildebert that he composed sermons for preaching to the people in the cathedral at Le Mans.33 When compared to the number of surviving sermons from the late twelfth century and beyond, the sheer paucity of attributable episcopal sermons for the period from 1050 to 1150, and the physical limitations that the size of the dioceses imposed on regular episcopal perambulation, would seem to suggest that episcopal preaching was limited to select audiences.34 The absence of authored homilies is misleading, however. Hundreds of sermons circulated in the twelfth century, collected and recopied in homiliaries for use, according to the liturgical calendar, by bishops and other clergy whose duties included preaching and instruction of the laity.35 Independent collections of sermons attributed (sometimes falsely) to contemporary figures are also in evidence. Two twelfthcentury collections, one attributed to Geoffrey Babion and the other to Geoffrey Cou-de-Cerf, abbot of Saint-Thierry of Reims and later bishop of Châlons-en-Champagne (1131–43), were kept at Reims, for example.36 But did bishops and authorized clergy actually preach these sermons to the laity, or merely read and circulate – or even ignore – them?37 This is a much more difficult question to answer. There is scattered evidence that episcopal preaching occurred at least semiregularly, even if we cannot identify precise sermons. One instance is noted in a dedicatory letter by Abbot Ursio of Hautmont (1054–79) to Lietbert of Cambrai, concerning the miracles of St Marcellus. Ursio remarks in passing that the bishop was travelling about the province,

32

33 34

35

36

37

Herman of Tournai, De incarnatione Christi, PL 180, col. 9. Herman further recalled that Odo’s sermons would last from daybreak until noon! Wilmart, ‘Les sermons d’Hildebert’, 32–7, esp. 35; PL 171, cols. 751–83. See the overview of R. E. McLaughlin, ‘The word eclipsed? Preaching in the early Middle Ages’, Traditio, 46 (1991), 77–122. After mid-century, the number of attributed sermons, heavily represented by the collections of Parisian masters, begins to climb. See J. Longère, La prédication médiévale (Paris, 1983), 68–93; N. Bériou, L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole. La prédication à Paris au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1998), vol. I, 15–30; M. Zier, ‘Sermons of the twelfth-century schoolmasters and canons’, in Kienzle, The Sermon, 325–51; Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat, 20–5. R. Étaix, ‘Répertoire des homéliaires conservés en France (hors de la Bibliothèque Nationale)’, in R. Étaix (ed.), Homéliaires patristiques latins. Recueil d’études de manuscrits médiévaux (Paris, 1994), 3–57; Hall, ‘The early medieval sermon’, 237. A particularly nice example from Reims is a late eleventh-century homiliary given by the provost and treasurer, Manasses, to the cathedral chapter (Reims, BM 294). Reims, BM 579 and 581, belonging to the chapter and Saint-Thierry, respectively. On the former, however, see Foulon, ‘Geoffroy Babion’, 74. Jégou, L’évêque, juge de paix, 93; Bériou, L’avènement, vol. I, 17–19.

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Bishops and the word preaching to the people about the passion of the martyr.38 Another occurs in Josselin of Soissons’ preface to his sermons on the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, where he indicates that he was sending them off, at a friend’s request, ‘just as I am accustomed to preach [them] in churches’ for the instruction of the faithful.39 While these two examples are suggestive, a third, involving Lambert of Arras, is more concrete. While present at the chapter of Saint-Léger of Lucheux in mid-June 1095, Lambert witnessed and affirmed the donation by Count Hugh II of Saint-Pol and his wife Helisende of prebends, tithes, and other privileges to the abbey of Molesme. On the following day, when the donation was publicly confirmed, Lambert ‘preached a sermon to the people who had thronged there in multitudes from all over to hear his preaching’. When he pronounced the charter’s clause of excommunication upon any who would infringe it, the crowd (turba) shouted, ‘May it be done!’40 The charter evidence from Lucheux for Lambert’s preaching is unusual, but hardly unique. We know that bishops and capitular clergy exhorted their flocks in times of natural disaster and on special occasions, such as the dedication of churches, assemblies and synods, and the elevation or translation of saints’ relics. During a period of crop-destroying rainfall in 1151 or 1152, the archdeacon of Arras, Luke, who was acting in the bishop’s place, delivered a sermon ‘both religious and urbane’, calling upon the people to repent and pray to their holy patron Vedastus. In the words of the anonymous author of the account, Luke ‘brandished the distinction of his apostolate to resounding acclaim; he silenced neither his preaching, labours, nor zeal’.41 The vita of Arnulf, bishop of Soissons, a first version of which was composed by his eventual successor Lisiard between 1095–1108, and a longer version by Hariulf, abbot of Oldenburg, between 1114–21, depicts its hero actively preaching in 38

39

40

41

Ursio of Hautmont, Ex miraculis s. Marcelli, vol. XV/2, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SS (Leipzig, 1925), 799–802, at 801: ‘Curritur ad episcopum, ubi provincium sermocinandi ingressus, de passione martyris perorabat ad populum’. Josselin of Vierzy, Expositio in symbolo et orationis dominicae, in Martène and Durand, Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum, cols. 1101–2: ‘sicut in ecclesii soleo praedicare . . . [s]icut ergo populis ad intelligentiam exponere solemus’. Other examples are given in Bériou, L’avènement. J.-F. Nieus (ed.), Les chartes des comtes de Saint-Pol (XIe–XIIIe siècles) (Turnhout, 2008), no. 2, 85: ‘Et quia interdum repeticio dici solet confirmatio, idem domnus Lambertus episcopus de eadem causa in crastino sermonem fecit ad populum qui ad eius predicationem de circumquaque copiosius confluerat et preterite diei excommunicationem in audientia tocius populi iterum recensuit, turba iterum cla[ma]nte “fiat! fiat!”’. Miracula S. Vedasti nostris temporibus visa atque facta, ed. J. van der Straeten in Les manuscrits hagiographiques d’Arras et de Boulogne, 93: ‘religioso et urbano sermone peroravit . . . Favorali laude extulit apostolatus eius insignia; predicationem, labores et studia non tacuit’. The see of Arras had been vacant since the death of its bishop Alvisius on the Second Crusade in September 1147.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Flanders in 1083.42 Arnulf, who was of Flemish origin, was sent to the court of Count Robert I by Gregory VII in the hopes that he might make peace between the count and his opponents. Once there, ‘a large crowd of nobles’ beseeched him to travel through coastal Flanders and make peace among the ‘indocile and cruel spirits’ of the Flemish.43 He agreed and, Lisiard wrote, tamed their diabolical rage ‘by the word of delightful preaching and by the example of his exceptional sanctity’.44 Guibert of Nogent, who was quite proud of his own abilities as an orator, is an especially valuable witness to episcopal preaching. One of his earliest works was a brief treatise on how to give a good sermon, which he dusted off and rededicated to Bartholomew of Laon in 1115, a short time after the latter’s arrival in the stricken city.45 It enjoyed fairly wide circulation.46 Drawing repeatedly upon the work of Gregory the Great and Ambrose’s De officiis,47 Guibert offered advice to his readers on who should preach, on what subjects, and using what techniques.48 He also incorporated into his memoirs excerpts from bishops’ sermons, delivered on various occasions, usually in response to social disorder. Following the riot at Laon, for example, Guibert wrote that the archbishop of Reims had delivered a sermon on the theme of 1 Peter 2:18, ‘Servants, submit yourselves to your lords in all fear’; later he would preach resistance to the activity of a rapacious knight, Thomas of Marle.49 He reported unfavourably on a sermon allegedly preached by 42

43 44

45

46 47 48 49

The most widely available edition of the Vita sancti Arnulfi episcopi Suessionensis (VSA) is that printed in Migne, PL 174, cols. 1371–1438. I have used it here. I have also consulted the more recent, and superior, edition of R. Nip, ‘Arnulfus van Oudenburg, bisschop van Soissons (†1087), Mens en model. Een bronnenstudie’ (Unpublished PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1995), 252–91. See also D. Barthélemy, ‘Exorciser les démons de la vengeance, en Flandre autour de 1100’, in P. Henriet and A.-M. Legras (eds.), Au cloître et dans le monde: femmes, hommes et sociétés (IXe–XVe siècle). Mélanges en l’honneur de Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq (Paris, 2000), 269–80. VSA, col. 1412. VSA, col. 1413: ‘Horum autem diabolicam rabiem . . . verbo dulcifluae praedicationis et exemplis eximiae sanctitatis mirabili modo mansuefecit’. See also VSA, col. 1415, and Nip, ‘Arnulfus van Oudenburg’, 272; Nip, ‘Exile and peace’. Guibert of Nogent, Quo ordine sermo fieri debeat, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM, 127 (Turnhout, 1993), 47–63; the letter of dedication to Bartholomew has been printed in PL 156, cols. 19–22. He first composed the Quo ordine about 1084, and it survives in at least six manuscripts, mostly from the twelfth century and of northern French provenance. See on its contents W. Zemler-Cizewski, ‘Guibert of Nogent’s How to Preach a Sermon’, Theological Studies, 59 (1998), 406–19; G. R. Evans, ‘Guibert of Nogent and Gregory the Great on preaching and exegesis’, The Thomist, 49 (1985), 534–50; H. Platelle, ‘Le traité de Guibert de Nogent sur la manière de prêcher’, in P. Racinet (ed.), Pratique et sacré dans les espaces monastiques au Moyen Âge et à l’époque moderne. Actes du colloque de Liessies-Maubeuge, 26, 27 et 28 septembre 1997 (Amiens, 1998), 117–26. Guibert of Nogent, Quo ordine, 7–9. Guibert of Nogent, Quo ordine, 49, 52, 54, 62; Evans, ‘Guibert of Nogent and Gregory the Great’. Zemler-Cizewski, ‘Guibert of Nogent’s How to Preach a Sermon’, 410–18. Ott, ‘Writing Godfrey of Amiens’, 343–8, with references.

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Bishops and the word Bishop Godfrey of Amiens to King Louis VI and the people of the city, urging them to assault a fortified tower while using words not ‘typical of God, but of a follower of Catiline’.50 Prelates frequently expressed ideas about their pastoral duties, including exhortations to preach, in the preambles to their charters. Along with a charter’s ego-clause, the arenga or preamble resembled a mini-sermon or profession of the duties of office, and would have sounded as such when the documents were recited aloud.51 For example, the arenga Bishop Drogo of Thérouanne (d. 1078) appended to his 1065 charter for the nunnery of Messines reads, in part: while it is fitting that all of us ought to be lovers of divine religion, it is nevertheless especially important that we attend with the greatest zeal to being its preachers. For they cannot be worthy of the office of preaching, unless they practice with the greatest diligence what they preach . . . Nor does it befit those who wish to stand forth as preachers and orators of the virtues, to fall away from virtue.52

Charters sometimes linked episcopal preaching with the conduct of the apostles, whose successors bishops were, or alluded to it as a specifically episcopal calling, as did a joint charter issued by Hugh of Soissons and Hélinand of Laon.53 They also, as Drogo had done, connected the pastor’s speech to his personal conduct. Both the way the bishop lived and what he said had didactic power; ideally, they should reinforce one another. An 1132 charter of Simon of Noyon-Tournai for the collegial 50 51

52

53

Ibid., 342. Morelle, ‘Un “grégorien” au miroir des ses chartes’, 187–8; AEL, 40–2; CEA, li–lii. A foundational survey of preambular formulas is H. Fichtenau, Arenga. Spätantike und Mittelalter im Spiegel von Urkundenformeln (Graz-Cologne, 1957), 16: ‘Am Beginn der Proömien und Arengen steht das gesprochene, nicht das geschriebene Wort’. Gysseling and Koch, Diplomata belgica, vol. I, no. 160, 275–7: ‘Que cum communiter omnes ut diximus obseruare oporteat diuinae religionis amatores, precipue tamen summoque studio obseruare decet eiusdem religionis predicatores. Non enim aliter poterunt esse digni predicationis officio, nisi cum summa diligentia eadem obseruent, quae obseruanda predicant populo. Nec decet eos a virtutibus recedere, qui uirtutum predicatores atque persuasores uolunt existere’. Drogo issued a second, nearly identical charter shortly thereafter (vol. I, no. 161, 277–8, facsimile in vol. II, no. 57). Both were done at Thérouanne, the former in the presence of the count and countess of Flanders and ecclesiastical personnel from four different dioceses. See N. N. Huyghebaert, ‘L’abbesse Frisilde et les débuts de l’abbaye de Messines’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 50 (1955), 141–57. See, for example, AEL, no. 51, 123–4, at 124 (1096): ‘in exordio nascentis Ecclesiae fertur quod plerique fidelium apostolorum vestigia sequentes. . . ne in praedicatione deficerent de suis substantiis subsidia ministrabant’; CEA, no. 87, 101–2, at 102 (1146): ‘Luce clarius constat, quod omnis pontifex apostolorum gerens officium eorum necesse est imitetur exemplum’; no. 215, 239 (1188/9): ‘inter nos habere et aliis exemplo et verbo predicare debemus’. A twelfth-century charter apparently issued by the cathedral chapter of Amiens explicitly notes Christ’s command to his disciples to go forth and preach the gospels; see CCA, no. 14, 20–1 (‘vers 1115–1118’); and compare AET, no. 84, 124 (1169).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 church of Saint-Pierre of Lille, for instance, stated that those who took up the topmost rung of the church hierarchy ought to lead by the example of their life, words, and almsgiving.54 Taking this sentiment a step in the direction of self-promotion, Archbishop Renaud of Reims stated that bishops ought to broadcast their good deeds – a task accomplished by recording episcopal gifts in writing and preserving them in memory, through oral recitation.55 In the case of Drogo’s charter above, the audience for his message was impressive: five archdeacons from four different dioceses and as many deans.56 As Messines was a nunnery whose occupants were forbidden to preach, the bishop’s admonitions must have been directed at the secular clergy present as witnesses. Drogo’s words reminded those gathered (communiter omnes), at that moment and every time the charter was reread, recopied, or its contents confirmed, that the clergy possessed the officium of preaching, which required them to observe the highest standards of conduct. Episcopal vitae likewise extolled preaching as an element of pastoral care. Historians have sometimes argued that the prevalence of preaching as an ideal type of conduct in the vitae of saintly bishops indicates that it was so rarely done in practice, that contemporaries deemed it characteristic of especially diligent or virtuous prelates, rather than a routine part of the bishop’s ministerial duties. The celebration of preaching by saints need not prima facie exclude the possibility that ordinary prelates regularly undertook preaching, however. Two hagiographical texts attributed to Radbod II of Noyon-Tournai demonstrate this: a sermo detailing a Marian miracle, composed sometime after 1081 for the nocturnal office on the feast of the Annunciation; and his vita of Medardus, the sixthcentury bishop of Vermandois and Noyon-Tournai.57 Elements of the Marian sermo circulated orally and in a written version. Composed as a series of short readings for the clergy, Radbod’s sermo also included a miracle story in which a young textile worker was freed by Mary’s 54

55

56

57

Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l’église collégiale de Saint-Pierre de Lille, no. 21, 30–1, at 30: ‘Qui in alto vitam agunt et regimen ecclesiastice sollicitudinis suscipiunt, pia devotione et maxima diligentia curare oportet qualiter ecclesiis quibus debent preesse, valeant et prodesse exemplo vite, sermone et elemosinarum largitione’. AA, no. 72, 244–5, at 244 (1093): ‘Quoniam ad dilucidanda coram hominibus opera nostra bona predicationis euvangelice [sic] preconiis erudimur’. Thérouanne, Amiens, Noyon, and Reims were all represented. Additional clergy and laymen from Guines, Ghent, and Valenciennes appear in the list of signatories – twenty witnesses in all. Radbod is also attributed with writing a sermon on the Nativity (noted by J. Le Vasseur, Annales de l’eglise cathedrale de Noyon, jadis dite de Vermand (Paris, 1633), 783–4, 786) and the Vita sanctae Godebertae virginis (PL 150, cols. 1517–28), in which the episcopal patron of Noyon, St Eloi, figures prominently. Notably, Eloi educates Godebertha, not only by his preaching, but by the example of his virtue (‘verum etiam multimodo virtutum informabat exemplo’). Eloi’s preaching and exhortation of the people of Noyon are mentioned in several instances in the text (cc. 4–5).

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Bishops and the word intervention from a piece of thread that had become lodged in her tongue.58 A literary exemplum such as this was tailor-made for preaching, and Guibert of Nogent attested to the tale’s popularity by referencing it in his memoirs. Numerous copies of the story survive in manuscripts from the late eleventh through thirteenth centuries.59 Based on the provenance of the extant copies, the story was well known in Noyon, Tournai, Cambrai, and, by the thirteenth century, in Corbie and Paris.60 Set in Noyon, the story of the transfixed thread contained many elements that would have appealed to ordinary folk: a sympathetic sufferer, a young girl (puellula) named Eremburgis, who paid a heavy price for a moment of carelessness; scenes of weeping townsfolk, distressed over the girl’s plight; a stern but ultimately compassionate Mary, who freed the tongue of the devilish thread; and a happy ending, in which the girl, once again able to speak, employed her tongue to glorify Christ and his Mother. Radbod’s greater purpose in recounting the story was to establish a commemorative event for the celebration of the Annunciation in Noyon. The Sermo concludes with this.61 But the miracle gives evidence of how the bishop communicated to his clergy and flock the importance of observing Marian feast days, which was, not surprisingly, the poor girl’s omission. One is tempted to read her tongue-tying lesson as an exhortation to all people to ‘loosen their tongues’ in praise of the Virgin. Radbod’s longest work was his ‘life’ of Medardus of Noyon. By the time he rewrote his predecessor’s vita, Medardus had been the subject of multiple posthumous hagiographies.62 Radbod drew repeatedly on the existing narrative tradition concerning the saint’s deeds, particularly the ninth-century vita, while freely expanding on it. Whereas the ninthcentury author said little about preaching as an aspect of Medardus’ pastoral ministry, Radbod returned to the subject again and again. Commenting on the saint’s activity in Tournai, he wrote: The people [of Tournai] were wild and indomitable; a folk both implacable and thickheaded, and completely given over to depraved idol-worship, and defending the worship of their gods with great tenacity. This saintly bishop, manfully 58

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Radbod of Noyon-Tournai, Sermo de annuntiatione beatae Mariae Virginis, PL 150, cols. 1527–34, at 1531–2. Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, 438–9. K. Fuchs, Zeichen und Wunder bei Guibert de Nogent. Kommunikation, Deutungen und Funktionalisierungen von Wundererzählungen im 12. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2008), 129 and nn. 179–82. Radbod of Noyon-Tournai, Sermo de annuntiatione beatae Mariae Virginis, PL 150, col. 1534: ‘Sed quia populus ille Noviomensis se ad augendam fidem credentium exauditum cognovit, quia in palam miracula mirabiliter ad honorem sanctae Virginis perpetrata fideliter percepit, solemnitatem . . . illo in loco in perpetuum novit celebrandam . . . verum . . . et in hoc servituros non diffidentes’. Including a ninth-century vita composed at Soissons.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 imposing himself, unwaveringly preached the evangelical and apostolic institutions to those people, magnanimously responded to their false objections, and courageously expelled by the prophets’ truthful pronouncements their fanciful opinions.63

With ‘sedulous preaching’, Medardus released the unwitting folk from the devil’s clutches, and his sermons offered comfort and salvation to his flock while making him beloved among the people. On the saint’s death, the mourning residents of the region specifically recalled his ‘most benign preaching’.64 Contemporary episcopal biographies also routinely showed their heroes preaching or praised their qualities as preachers and orators. In a vita not otherwise overly effusive concerning its subject’s pastoral activities, Walter of Thérouanne says of the bishop John that ‘whenever he would urge others to do good things with words of exhortation, he first demonstrated in his own deeds, thus showing concretely (realiter) that whatever his tongue sounded forth in preaching, his life did not deviate from in action’.65 Of Lietbert of Cambrai, Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre – paraphrasing Cicero – said that ‘from his lips flowed speech sweeter than honey’, his voice ‘shining forth in every way like that of grey-haired men’.66 Similar attributes were praised in Lietbert’s successor at Cambrai, Odo, whose biographer Amandus of Castello wrote, in about 1114, that Odo “seemed to arise like a new light . . . For the people were converted by his preaching. Holy separations were mutually agreed upon among married people, and fathers were divided from sons and sons from their parents by the sword of God’s word.”67 Nicholas of Saint-Crépin likewise repeatedly portrayed Godfrey of Amiens preaching – if somewhat fruitlessly – to his flock.68 Preaching was also epitomized in the actions 63

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VSM, 3.19, 90: ‘Erat enim gens ipsa fera et indomabilis, durae cervicis populus et implacabilis, pravis admodum subditus obsequiis idolorum, et cum multa obstinatione suorum defendens culturam deorum. His ipse se viriliter injiciens sanctus spiscopus, evangelicas et apostolicas institutiones imperterrite praedicabat, falsis eorum objectionibus magnanimiter respondebat, et imaginarias eorum opiniones veridica prophetarum praenuntiatione viriliter expugnabat’. The ‘wildness’ of Tournaisiens was a quality mentioned in several eleventh-century Flemish sources, for example the Vita altera sancti Macarii, ed. Henschen, 875–6 (composed in 1067). VSM, 90 (‘supplex oratio’; ‘sedula praedicatione’; ‘pastoralitatis multa praedicationis instantia confortabat’); and 91 (‘benignissimam praedicationem’). VI, 140: ‘etenim quecumque alios ut facerent bona uerbis exhortando monebat, in suis primum operibus faciens realiter ostendebat, quatenus ab eo quod lingua sonabat in predicatione, uita non discreparet in actione’. VL, 845, 864. Amandus of Castello, De Odonis episcopi Cameracensis vita vel moribus, 944. The continuation of the deeds of the bishops of Cambrai (GPC, 111) also note Odo’s skill as a preacher: ‘Omnes subjectos pascebat et multiplicabat in doctrinis celestibus quemadmodum pascit et multiplicat oves suas pastor bonus’. VSG, 933–5, 940.

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Bishops and the word of bishops who held office elsewhere but whose achievements were widely promoted in and around the archdiocese of Reims.69 Eadmer’s popular biography of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury (1093–1109), to take a convenient example, was transmitted among the monastic communities in northern France and Flanders and frequently copied into legendaries.70 Eadmer described how this exemplary pastor (then still an abbot), while on a preaching tour of monastic estates in England in 1079, ‘adapted his words to every class of men, so that his hearers declared that nothing more appropriate to their station could have been spoken. He spoke to monks, clerks, and to laymen, ordering his words to the way of life of each’.71 A similarly expansive approach to preaching was displayed in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Life of St Malachy (composed after 1148). Malachy was bishop of Connor and archbishop of Armagh in Ireland. He deeply impressed Bernard on the two occasions he visited Clairvaux while on the Continent, so much so that Bernard composed his vita – a genre in which the abbot of Clairvaux had not, to that point, worked – shortly after Malachy’s death.72 Like Anselm, Malachy preached to a diverse flock. As the apostles had once done, Bernard recalled, when [Malachy] went out preaching he went on foot along with companions . . . This is the apostolic model and therefore the more wonderful in Malachy as it is extremely rare in others. Truly he who does such things is the true heir of the Apostles. But it is worth observing how he would divide the inheritance with his own brothers [Luke 12:13] who are equally the kinsmen of the Apostles.73

Whether it was explicitly evoked as an act in imitatione apostolorum, as it was in Bernard’s vita of Malachy, or portrayed as a collective pastoral pursuit, as in Drogo of Thérouanne’s 1065 charter, preaching’s universality as a standard of episcopal conduct in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries is amply attested in normative and prescriptive sources.74 69

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The lives of Norbert of Xanten offer numerous examples of preaching as a foundation for episcopal leadership; see the Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 672–8. According to its editor, R. W. Southern, the first, shorter version of the Vita sancti Anselmi archiepiscopi was circulating in northern France by c. 1112–14. Southern’s stemma posits a now-lost Saint-Bertin manuscript (the beta exemplar) as the model of twelfth-century copies at the abbeys of Saint-Vaast of Arras (c. 1120/30), Saint-Martin of Tournai (1142 or 1150–75?), Marchiennes, Clairmarais (near Saint-Omer), and a number of other unknown, but probably northern French or Flemish, monasteries. See R. W. Southern (ed. and trans.), The Life of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1962), viii–x, xiii–xviii. Southern, The Life of St. Anselm, 55–6. Although Southern does not note it, this passage would seem to derive directly from Gregory I’s advice in the third book of the Liber pastoralis. Bernard of Clairvaux, Vita sancti Malachiae, translated by R. T. Meyer as The Life and Death of Saint Malachy the Irishman (Kalamazoo, MI, 1978). Bernard of Clairvaux, Vita sancti Malachiae, 58–9. It was not unique to this period; see Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 141–7, many of whose examples date from the ninth and tenth centuries.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 The surviving evidence nevertheless does not permit us to conclude that every bishop in fact preached, or that all who preached, preached memorably.75 Some no doubt shirked the duty or left it to their deacons; for many others we simply have no evidence one way or the other. Nor does the available evidence permit us to pronounce on the effectiveness of episcopal preaching. As we saw earlier, the bishop’s was one voice among many competing for listeners. The presence of so many wandering preachers suggests prima facie that they were filling a void, and the willingness of bishops to endorse itinerant preachers indicates that they saw the same need, and could recognize an effective preacher when they saw one. Even with these reservations, it nonetheless appears that, particularly among the cohort of bishops around 1100, preaching was embraced as an important catechetical and admonitory tool, and was upheld as a foundational and distinguished aspect of episcopal office. the content of preaching: establishing peace How did contemporary sources describe episcopal preaching? On what subjects did preachers preach in the early twelfth century, and how did contemporary prelates understand the role of preaching in pastoral care? These are not easy questions to answer. The sources tend to characterize what bishops said, and how they said it, in general terms. There are rare exceptions. We have already encountered the sermons of Radbod II on Mary, Milo on Principius, and Gervais on Donatian (although there is less evidence that the latter text formed the basis for preaching), as well as Ursio of Hautmont’s reference to Lietbert of Cambrai’s ‘sermonizing’ on St Marcellus. A certain amount of episcopal preaching comprised lessons on the saints and their virtues. It was also catechetical, as suggested by the surviving sermons of Josselin of Soissons, which provide exegeses of the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, the two prayers that all laity since Carolingian times were expected to memorize.76 Certain themes nevertheless surface repeatedly in descriptions of bishops’ preaching, and these coincide with what we know about episcopal activities from other sources. One of the more widely reported is that when bishops spoke or preached, they did so in the pursuit of peace. Peace-making, mediation, and judging were episcopal functions of long standing.77 The setting of pacificatory speech and mediated resolutions, when it is reported, is 75 76 77

See the comments of McLaughlin, ‘The word eclipsed?’ McLaughlin, ‘The word eclipsed?’, 110–12. See below for a discussion of Josselin’s sermons. E. James, ‘Beati pacifici: bishops and the law in sixth-century Gaul’, in J. Bossy (ed.), Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (Cambridge, 1983), 25–46; Hartmann, ‘L’évêque

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Bishops and the word almost always liturgical or judicial in context. Speaking in public, often sacred, places replete with liturgical or para-liturgical ritual, bishops reconciled enemies, regulated conflict, restored peace (or attempted to), and created conditions that allowed for justice to be established. Recent scholarship has raised cautionary flags against infering that bishops acted as neutral or disinterested parties in the disputes they mediated. Not only did they have much to gain or lose in terms of their personal authority in the outcome of the disputes, but they might also be personally invested in the type of peace that was established.78 As we saw in chapter 3, however, bishops were on the front lines in resolving regional disputes, sometimes at papal request, more usually of their own volition or of necessity, and particularly in conflicts between religious institutions, which could last, in the most extreme cases, for decades.79 Mediation and dispute resolution assumed many forms and employed different methods. Here I will limit myself to a few examples, taken from a range of sources, which indicate the connection between peace-making and episcopal speech. The first is somewhat unusual, in that a bishop intervened at his own expense to end a feud between the Cistercian abbey of Vauclair and the Premonstratensian abbey of Cuissy over a contiguous wood situated between the Ailette and Aisne rivers. Both abbeys claimed the wood had been given them in donation. The bishop in this case was Bartholomew of Laon, and the controversy was especially painful to him both since it involved two houses he had personally established in his diocese, and because it set a poor example (malumque exemplum) for laymen inclined to ignore monastic privileges.80 It appears to have lasted for two years or more, and was serious enough that Bartholomew involved the bishops of Reims and Soissons. When the three prelates could make no headway, Bartholomew himself purchased another parcel of land from a local lord and gave it to Cuissy. He issued a charter resolving the discord in 1143, noting in its preamble that bishops ought especially to support peace between religious persons and institutions.81 Herman of Tournai, who wrote about the episode, was more emphatic:

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comme juge’; Jégou, L’évêque, juge de paix, 83–93, 328–40. The duty is referenced in episcopal charters, e.g. AET, no. 89, 131 (1170). See S. Gilsdorf, ‘Bishops in the middle: mediatory politics and the episcopacy’, in Gilsdorf, The Bishop, 51–73; Malegam, Sleep of Behemoth; Jégou, L’évêque, juge de paix, 328–476; F. Keygnaert, ‘Interdict, conflict resolution and the competition for power in the episcopal seigneuries of Laon and Reims (c. 1100)’, in P. Anderson, et al. (eds.), Law and Disputing in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the Ninth Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History 2012 (Copenhagen, 2013), 213–34. A full study of episcopal dispute resolution in the archdiocese is sorely needed. Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 232–3; AJ, no. 145, 88. AEL, no. 238, 350: ‘Quae ad pacem ecclesiarum a catholicis episcopis, inter religiosas maxime personas, juste ordinata et canonice stabilita sunt firma debent et perpetua pace muniri’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 for his action, Bartholomew deserved to be counted among those of whom the Lord said, ‘Beati pacifici’ – ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’.82 Two years earlier, again acting in concert, Bartholomew and Josselin of Soissons had concluded an agreement between the abbeys of Nogent and Prémontré, and in their charter noted that whatever measures were taken ‘for the peace of churches by catholic bishops’ (ad pacem ecclesiarum a catholicis episcopis), ought to remain fixed and firm.83 Elsewhere, proclamations that in order to thrive, religious houses must be bound ‘by chains of peace’, appear, inter alia, in Bartholomew’s charters for Prémontré, Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois, Saint-Martin of Laon, and Thénailles.84 The bishop of Laon repeatedly employed a preamble similar to that of 1143 in his charters treating ecclesiastical disputes. In that same year, he, Samson of Reims, and Josselin of Soissons brokered an accord between the abbey of Saint-Thierry of Reims and a vassal of the count of Roucy named Levulf. Levulf and his son, Ebles, had violently exercised their viscomital rights and carried out ‘many and serious evils’ over the men and villa of Trigny, which belonged to the abbey.85 In the chirograph establishing the litigants’ rights, the bishops expressed their wish to uphold and maintain the peace of churches and abbeys and insisted that future discord be resolved only in their presence.86 Several years later, the same Ebles gave the viscounty, along with its rents and other appurtenances, to Saint-Thierry. Bartholomew and Samson confirmed the donation at Reims. In clear language, the charter’s preamble established that the authority of their episcopal office urged, or rather, compelled them to provide for the peace and tranquility of churches and monasteries.87 Such statements were not uncommon in episcopal diplomas, and were in some instances coupled with exhortation to obey pontifical authority.88 It is thus tempting to view them as boilerplate expressions, offering little of utility for understanding the actual content of bishops’ speech. Yet by taking in this case Bartholomew of Laon’s charters, we may make a number of observations. First, the charters were read aloud and their assertions thus performed before those assembled. Calls for peace in the arengae provided verbal testimony to the legal agreements the charter enacted. As the above examples show, the diplomas 82 84 85 87

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Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 232. 83 AEL, no. 218, 325 (November 1141). AEL, no. 168, 265 (1135); no. 182, 282 (1138); no. 189, 291 (1128–38); no. 281, 400. Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 354–5. 86 AEL, no. 233, 342–3. AEL, no. 277, 395; see also no. 276, 394, issued at the same time (1146–7); and no. 297, 418 (1148), which repeated the same language: ‘Pontificalis officii nos hortatur, immo compellit, auctoritas pro statu ecclesiarum et monasteriorum sollictos esse et illorum quieti et paci, auxiliante Deo, providere’. For examples, Guyotjeannin, ‘L’influence pontificale’, 91–2; CEA, no. 43, 59 (1125); no. 48, 65 (1129); no. 49, 66 (1129); no. 205, 229 (1186–7), etc.

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Bishops and the word employing calls ‘to peace’ often settled a conflict between two parties in a dispute, frequently religious institutions, a task deemed the special responsibility of bishops. Bishops characterized the promotion of peace and tranquility for religious institutions as an aspect of pastoral care and as a by-product of their labour.89 The charter or chirograph itself was referred to as an ‘instrument’ of peace, and several were co-signed by Bartholomew’s fellow bishops, thus identifying the establishment of peace to be the collective endeavour of prelates.90 A jointly issued charter of Bartholomew and Samson of Reims underscores this point, the preamble noting that ‘the authority [auctoritas] of pontifical office urges, or rather compels us to be concerned for the condition of churches and monasteries, and to provide, with God’s help, for their peace and tranquility’.91 A final example, in this case a charter of Bartholomew’s colleague Josselin of Soissons, ties together all of the above elements: the concern for peace, the responsibilities of pastoral care, and the performance of episcopal speech. On Christmas Day 1134, Josselin ascended the pulpit in the cathedral after the reading of the gospel. This was the moment in the liturgy for his sermon to the people. He chose, in the place of a more conventional homily, to lay out before the large crowd of clergy and people a lengthy account of the conduct of the count and countess of Soissons, who were present, detailing their seizure of an altar belonging to the abbey of Saint-Paul of Forêtmoutier and the count’s two-year exile from the church.92 After the bishop’s peroration, and with all eyes upon the count and countess – the charter reads, ‘in the eyes of the entire church’ – they renounced their claim to the altar, and Josselin pronounced a sentence of excommunication on all who dared violate the concession. All this must have made for a dramatic mass indeed, and Josselin quickly ordered a charter drawn up before twenty-five witnesses, a mixture of clergy and laymen. In the charter’s prologue, the bishop made note of two themes discussed earlier: namely, that the charter itself was to serve as an instrument of peace by recalling how peace had been restored to the abbey and its complaint appeased, and how the good 89

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AEL, no. 214, 321 (1141): ‘Cum omnibus nobis commissis ex pastorali officio curam exhibere debeamus, maxime paci illorum et tranquillitati’. AEL, no. 218, 325 (signed by Josselin); no. 255, 370; see also no. 268, 381–2 (a compositio pacis signed by Samson, Josselin, and Bartholomew). At least one charter was pronounced in Bartholomew’s synod at Laon (no. 218); see also no. 202, 307 (1140, signed by Josselin). Ibid., no. 277, 395: ‘Pontificalis officii nos hortatur, immo compellit, auctoritas pro statu ecclesiarum et monasteriorum sollicitos esse et illorum quieti et paci, auxiliante Deo, providere’. Gousset, Les actes de la province ecclésiastique de Reims, vol. II, 217–19, at 219: ‘solemni die Natalis Domini, cum verbum facturi ad populum post evangelium, in pulpitum ascendissemus, rei actionem praesente comite, clero et populo qui ibi multus convenerat, exposuimus’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 pastor, following the model of Christ, ought to place himself in the way of trouble to protect his flock.93 We do not know if Josselin in fact preached on the theme of the good pastor after presenting the count and countess’ act to the congregation. Normally, a sermon on this topic was reserved for the Sunday after the octaves of Easter.94 Yet the language of the charter; the public, Christmas-Day atmosphere of the bishop’s announcement; and the liturgical timing after the gospel reading, certainly established a moment redolent of peace, and of the bishop’s role as peace-maker. the content of preaching: converting hearts and educating minds The basis of much episcopal preaching to the laity was also catechetical, aimed at educating individuals in, and refreshing memories about, the basic elements of Christian creed and dogma. This had been a concern for pastorally minded ecclesiastics and laymen for centuries.95 For this, we have concrete examples: two surviving sermons penned by Josselin, the bishop of Soissons, devoted to the Lord’s Prayer and the Nicene Creed, or profession of faith. We will turn to these texts momentarily. In addition, in many saints’ lives a connection between preaching and education was implied by stories concerning the bishop’s conversion of his pagan or semi-Christian flock. Narratives in contemporary hagiographical texts about Merovingian bishops teaching their flocks and sweeping away the remnants of paganism reminded the bishop that the work of conversion begun by their forebears was never truly finished. This theme was especially prevalent in the local hagiography of Soissons. As I have discussed elsewhere, Josselin was an avid patron and collector of hagiography, particularly episcopal hagiography. One such vita produced in all probability during his pontificacy, perhaps about 1141, was the anonymously authored Vita sancti Bandaridi episcopi Suessionensis.96 Its author was probably a monk at Saint-Crépin, just outside Soissons, where Bandaridus was buried. Bandaridus ruled Soissons in the sixth century, but by the twelfth century, when his vita was rewritten, he had fallen into 93

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Ibid., 217: ‘Quod enim bonus pastor sibi commissarum ovium vexationibus opponere se debeat, earumque injurias sui ipsius interpositione refellere, divinum est oraculum. Bonus enim Pastor Christus et animam suam posuit pro ovibus suis’. In the homiliary of Paul the Deacon; see for a contemporary example Reims, BM 294, fo. 62r, and Étaix, ‘Répertoire des homéliaires’, 34. Amos, ‘Preaching and the sermon’, 45. Vita sancti Bandaridi, ex ms. ecclesiae cathedralis Suessionensis, ed. J.-B. Du Sollier, AASS August, vol. I, new edn (Paris, 1867), 63–8. For discussion of this text and its dating, see Ott, ‘Educating the Bishop’, 235–7, 242, 249.

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Bishops and the word obscurity, and the few biographical details concerning him had been relegated, in the words of its author, to a notice appended ‘to a certain piece of parchment’. Thus much like Milo of Thérouanne, the writer of Bandaridus’ life had to make certain editorial interventions, per exaggerationem, to fill in the gaps in the saint’s story.97 The bishop’s biography prominently features his preaching, which is described in general terms. From the moment of his ordination, the saintly Bandaridus began to instruct the people committed to him in the scriptures, modelling what he taught by his own conduct.98 Following a political exile in England, where he lived anonymously as a monk, Bandaridus returned to the region of Soissons during a drought and immediately resumed teaching the people, who thirsted to hear the word of God from him as they had before.99 With the people clamouring like the Israelites to Moses for his intervention, Bandaridus ended the drought through his prayer and by making an impression in the earth with his staff. Water burbled up on the spot, and the people proclaimed their recently restored bishop the equal of Moses in virtue and merit.100 Moses was, of course, an archetypal figure of pastoral leadership, the original good shepherd, whose words repeatedly consoled the Israelites.101 The vita of another seventh-century bishop-saint of Soissons, Drausius, also stresses the positive effects of his preaching.102 Scholars have paid very little attention to this text. Absent a full codicological analysis, it is difficult to date with certainty, but copies appear to have been kept in twelfth-century legendaries belonging to Notre-Dame of Soissons and the Cistercians at Longpont, and were subsequently catalogued by the seventeenth-century canon of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, Nicolas Belfort.103 As Drausius was associated with the nuns of Notre-Dame, it is probable that a member of that community composed his vita, perhaps in the eleventh century or earlier. One of the text’s major preoccupations concerns the simony of Drausius’ predecessor, Bettolenus, who had 97

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Vita sancti Bandaridi, 67: ‘repertam esse quodammodo tantillam materiam hujus operis, in cujusdam membranae pittaciolo tamquam sub epilogo breviter annotatam; quae postmodum sagaci studio indagata, per exaggerationem a nobis aliquantulum amplificata est’. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 66: ‘quae praeceptis salutaribus a sancto viro jam ante edocta, cum adhuc dupliciter aestuaret, scilicet siti audiendi verbum Dei’. Ibid., 66–7. M. Harl, ‘Moïse figure de l’évêque dans l’Eloge de Basil de Grégoire de Nysse (381)’, in A. Spira (ed.), The Biographical Works of Gregory of Nyssa. Proceedings of the Fifth International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Mainz, 6–10 September 1982) (Philadelphia, 1984), 71–119. Vita sancti Drausii, auctore anonymo Suessionensi, ed. J. Carnandet, AASS March, vol. I, new edn (Paris and Rome, 1865), 403–9. See also Kaiser, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Civitas und Diözese Soissons, 232–3, 253–9. BNF, nouv. acq. lat. 950, fos. 2r and 10v.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 acquired his office unlawfully. Bettolenus conducted himself honourably, but ultimately stepped down because of the unlawful means by which he had come to the episcopacy. Before retiring to a monastery, Bettolenus confessed, in language taken from John 10:1, that he had not entered his sheepfold through the door, like a shepherd, but like a thief or robber – a phrase often employed by Pope Gregory VII in condemning simoniacs. Bettolenus ensured that Drausius, his archdeacon, was unanimously acclaimed by the people of Soissons and approved by both king and pope.104 The new prelate then began little by little to instruct the flock committed to him and to prompt them to higher things with heavenly admonitions. Nearly everyone tried to obey him like a father and comply with his instructions. And what he preached to them to do, he first took care to fulfil in his own deeds. For he held himself in spirit to that apostolic dictum, that should he preach forcefully to others, and not carry out what he preached in his own deeds, he would be found wanting.105

The text continues, noting that Drausius never ceased ‘sprinkling the seeds of the divine word’ among the people. Indeed, the anonymous author, who plainly could not find many details to write about the bishop’s life and times, made an extended description of his teaching and conversion of the people the centrepiece of her (?) narrative. Who, she asks, could reject the preaching of a man who lived a life of such probity, sanctity, and grace?106 The themes sounded in these (and other) episcopal vitae from Soissons were not novel, but they were relevant and were echoed in hagiography produced elsewhere in the archdiocese in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.107 Their relevance to contemporary pastoral concerns is confirmed in two treatises attributed to Josselin of Soissons himself.108 At a friend’s request, Josselin composed an exposition on the Creed (Symbolum) and the Lord’s Prayer, ‘as I accustomed to preach [them] in 104 105

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Vita sancti Drausii, 404–5. Ibid., 405: ‘coepit paullatim gregem sibi commissum monere, et monitis coelestibus ad alta provocare. Cui pene omnes acsi patri obsequi studebant, et monitis ejus obtemperare: quia quod praecipiebat eis agere, ipse primitus procurabat opere implere. Proponebat enim sibi in animo illud Apostolicum, ne forte cum aliis praedicaret, et praedicationis verba opere non impleret, ipse reprobus inveniretur et esset’ (compare 1 Corinthians 9:27). Ibid. For example, in the Acta altera (Vita tertia) sancti Gaugerici episcopi Cameracensis, 684–5, composed in the mid-1020s at Cambrai in the circle of Gerard I. This text makes heavy use of Gregory the Great’s writings, including the Liber pastoralis. These texts deserve both a new scholarly edition and further scrutiny than I can give them here. They survive in at least three manuscript copies of the mid-twelfth and early thirteenth centuries: BNF, lat. 2946 (Preuilly, dioc. Meaux); BNF, lat. 5129 (Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, dioc. Tournai); and Douai, BM 271 (Marchiennes, dioc. Arras). The edition of Martène and Durand was made from the Douai manuscript.

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Bishops and the word 109

churches’. Proceeding line by line, occasionally word by word, Josselin explained their meaning, in the process elucidating foundational but intellectually challenging statements about the beliefs of Nicene Christianity, including the nature of the Trinity and consubstantiation, the resurrection and ascension of Christ, the virgin birth, and the last judgement. In explaining the concepts, the bishop used unadorned Latin, the better to facilitate its translation into the vernacular. This choice probably reflects the fact that a preacher would have to use simple language to convey the complex ideas contained in the Creed and Lord’s Prayer, an interpretation supported by the fact that Josselin reminded his listener to pay close attention to his discourse, and because the treatises referenced common knowledge about the natural world and the life of St Martin. For example, as he discussed the virgin birth, Josselin used an analogy concerning the generation of worms, comparing the incarnation of Christ to ‘a worm born from pure mud with the warming of the soil’. In the same way, the body of Christ was ‘brought forth uniquely from the flesh of the Virgin’.110 While the tracts were certainly meant to be read as exegeses on the foundational statements of Christian belief, these and other passages indicate that they might have served equally well for the oral instruction of a congregation. Josselin offered cautionary advice to his friend on the ‘immoderate’ use of the ideas they contained – for who, he asked, ‘is fully able to understand or explain the Lord’s Prayer, which Divine Wisdom dictated, not through a prophet, nor through an apostle, but by his own mouth?’111 His caution was pragmatic, perhaps borne from personal experience. In discussing the meaning of the four directions of the cross (east, west, above, below), the bishop of Soissons noted that elements of sacramental theology were ‘exceedingly profound’, and potentially harmful (nocitura) to those who knew them superficially.112 The risk of becoming confounded was great. Thus Josselin reminded his friend that although the Lord’s Prayer begins with ‘Our father’, it is followed by the phrase ‘who is in heaven’ so that the supplicant would not confuse his own carnal father with his spiritual one when in prayer.113 Elsewhere he 109

110

111

112

113

Josselin of Vierzy, Expositio in symbolo, cols. 1101–2: ‘ut tibi exposita transmitterem, sicut in ecclesiis soleo praedicare, postulavit f[r]aternitas tua’ and ‘ergo populis ad intelligentiam exponere solemus et tu postulas, Spiritu sancto dictante, dicere tentabimus’. Ibid., col. 1106: ‘Sicut enim vermis calefaciente sole, de puro limo nascitur, sic Christi corpus de sola carne Virginis propagatur’. Ibid., col. 1101: ‘Quis enim plene aut intelligere aut exponere potest dominicam orationem, quam Divina Sapientia, non per prophetam, non per apostolum, sed proprio ore ipsa dictavit?’ Ibid., col. 1108: ‘Sacramenta crucis exequi formidamus, profunda enim nimis sunt et nocitura compendio’. Josselin of Vierzy, Expositio de oratione dominica, col. 1114.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 encouraged his reader, using an axiom from Anselm of Canterbury’s teaching on Christology, ‘If you do not yet understand, believe and you shall’.114 These advisory comments are coupled with Josselin’s awareness that competing theologies and critics, including Jews, ‘heretics’, and nonChristians, could easily confuse the minds of novice learners on the finer points of trinitarian theology, the communion of saints, and other difficult subjects.115 The bishop attempted to prepare his friend for inevitable confrontations by doubters and the curious: ʻif anyone asks you, by interrupting you in the middle of speaking, what you think concerning baptism, or the Lord’s body and blood, or concerning the other sacraments, do not stand there with your mouth agape like an oven, but respond briefly, ‘I believe that . . . ’.116 Here and elsewhere in the same passage, Josselin alluded to the debates and arguments between Christians, Jews, and gentiles then occurring throughout medieval Europe and along the borders of the Islamic world, and with regular frequency in northern France, where figures like Guibert of Nogent and Odo of Cambrai produced disputational literature.117 The bishop of Soissons’ treatises acknowledged that questions about Christian beliefs were just as liable to come from outside the Christian community as from within it, and that Christian doubts might well be sparked by Jewish or gentile critiques – or that, at the very least, it was necessary to distinguish for ordinary believers what creeds and prayers differentiated them from non-believers. Thus he noted to his friend (who would presumably have known this already), ‘Jews and gentiles who do not believe Jesus to be the son of God, also do not believe God to be his father, consubstantial and co-eternal, and they likewise do not believe in the regeneration of baptism’.118 This is the language of theological distinctions boiled down to basic ingredients for the consumption of ordinary folk. While the saints’ lives mentioned in this chapter are typically perfunctory in their descriptions of what their subjects preached, they are virtually unanimous in stipulating that bishops did indeed sow God’s 114

115 116

117

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Josselin of Vierzy, Expositio in symbolo, col. 1104: ‘Si nondum intelligis, credo [sic] et intelliges’. I have chosen to read ‘credo’ as the imperative ‘crede’; although ‘credo’ is possible, it renders the sentence awkward. Ibid., cols. 1104, 1110; Expositio de oratione dominica, cols. 1114–15. Josselin of Vierzy, Expositio in symbolo, col. 1110: ‘si quis te interroget, ut in sermone te capiat, quid sentias de baptismo, quid de corpore et sanguine Domini, quid de ceteris sacramentis, noli cum furno hiare, sed breviter responde, id credo’. See the collected essays in A. S. Abulafia, Christians and Jews in Dispute. Disputational Literature and the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West (c. 1000–1150) (Aldershot, 1998). Josselin of Vierzy, Expositio de oratione dominica, col. 1114: ‘Judaei et gentes quae non credunt Jesum Dei Filium, non credunt Deum ei esse Patrem consubstantialem, coaeternum, sed et ipsi non credunt in baptismate regenerationem’.

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Bishops and the word word among their flocks, and that the people were hungry for it, perhaps curious about the content of the preaching or drawn to the spectacle of a preacher in action. While, as Milo’s sermo on Principius indicated, episcopal preaching was presented to eleventh- and twelfth-century readers as belonging to the historical context of conversion from pagan error, as Josselin’s discussions of the Creed and Lord’s Prayer plainly show, the work of education and moral instruction was ongoing. It constituted a form of prophylaxis against, as the bishop put it, ‘what is whispered by heretics in bedchambers or behind the loom’.119 In other words, the example of episcopal preaching in saints’ lives would have been understood both as pertaining to the conversion of pagan peoples in the distant past and to its necessity in the present. Contemporary descriptions of preaching insisted over and over that the preacher’s deeds must fulfill the promise of his words. Inconsistency between word and deed undermined the bishop’s authority and any compunction on the part of his flock to respond to his exhortations. Exemplary texts like vitae celebrated the conjunction of word and deed in pastoral conduct. For example, Amandus of Castello notes that Odo of Cambrai called his people back from their worldly preoccupations ‘as much by the word of [his] preaching as by the perfect arrangement of [his] habits’.120 Teaching ‘by word and deed’ was a maxim of pastoral care, one rooted in tradition extending back to the Liber pastoralis, and also common in contemporary spirituality, particularly among regular canons and the figures who, like Peter Damian, inspired them.121 The link between speech and personal action made a practical contribution to preaching as well, as Guibert of Nogent explained in his treatise on how to give a sermon. The preacher who willingly drew upon his personal experience and struggles to inform his sermons would be a more effective communicator to his audience, not only in explaining the moral necessity of spiritual struggle, but in speaking with authentic and sympathetic knowledge about it. ‘Any untrained person who has never taken up or engaged in warfare can still speak at length about wars because he will have seen warriors or heard war-stories’, Guibert wrote, ‘but is totally different from someone who actually remembers war, who exchanged blows in battle, who performed and suffered military feats’.122 For the same reason 119

120

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Josselin of Vierzy, Expositio in symbolo, col. 1110: ‘et non ea quae in cubiculis, vel post telas ab haereticis susurratur’. Amandus of Castello, De Odonis episcopi Cameracensis vita vel moribus, 943: ‘omnes tam verbo predicationis quam optima morum institutione a seculo revocabat’. Bynum, Docere verbo et exemplo, 15–17; P. Ranft, The Theology of Work. Peter Damian and the Medieval Religious Renewal Movement (New York, 2006), 56–8. Guibert of Nogent, Quo ordine, 57: ‘Potest quilibet iners et qui militiam nunquam exercere vel ceperit, quia bellantes viderit vel bella narrari audierit, de bellis multa dicere, sed longe dissimiliter

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 itinerant preachers of the apostolic life, who appeared in towns to spread the word of God barefoot and decked in rags, were all the more impressive to contemporary witnesses. They presented a visible example of words enacting and conjoined with deeds of physical deprivation and evangelization, consistent with the model of the apostles whom the preachers often claimed to emulate. Episcopal texts produced in the province of Reims, from charters to hagiography, reminded their readers and hearers of the same need for authenticity, for harmony between words and actions. Regrettably, we usually lack detailed accounts of the sermons themselves. Yet the absence of sermon texts may be partially compensated for by the presence of charters and vitae that repeatedly expressed the need for prelates to link their own personal conduct with their teachings. It is striking, but hardly coincidental, that many charters extolling the peace-making role of prelates were signed and witnessed by other prelates in assemblies or synods.123 Peace-making, pastoral education and conversion, were, of course, collective ideals of the episcopate. In Reims around the twelfth century, they appear to have been taken fairly seriously. The next chapter will consider a linked idea, namely, how episcopal conduct was envisioned as labour and toil on behalf of their flocks – toil that bishops were uniquely suited to perform. As the bishop’s labour was celebrated in contemporary texts, it was idealized as an activity carried out both individually and in conjunction with fellow labourers. It also reflected ongoing patterns of collaboration in the archdiocese of Reims among the cohort of prelates who came into office in the second quarter of the twelfth century.

123

ille bella rememorat, qui in bello pugnavit et impugnatus est, qui militaria fecit et passus est’. See Zemler-Cizewski, ‘Guibert of Nogent’s How to Preach a Sermon’, 415–16. Above, 275, n. 90.

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Chapter 9

TOIL AND TOGETHERNESS IN THE VINEYARDS OF THE LORD

A common trope circulated by clerical writers concerning preaching in the Middle Ages equated it literally and metaphorically to a form of labour: to preach was to sow the word of God. Preaching was the special gift and tool of the apostles, whose mission Paul and later writers likened to the agricultural labour of ploughing and sowing.1 While medieval attitudes towards labour were ambivalent and often negative, the product of social and cultural conditioning which drew upon biblical and classical literary traditions that associated physical toil with punishment and degradation, scholars have also noted that the language of work – variously expressed as labour, industry, toil, sweat – could, when applied to spiritual activities, carry positive associations.2 God is regularly characterized as a planter in the Hebrew scriptures, as is Christ in Christian scripture.3 Jesus enjoined his disciples to work for their keep.4 Paul is no less explicit: ‘the man who will not work shall not eat’.5 Harnessing agricultural metaphors, medieval writers like Augustine and Gregory the Great, following Paul’s exegesis of Deuteronomy 25:4, ‘You shall not muzzle a threshing ox’, allegorically equated oxen to preachers.6 If the preacher was an ox, then his tongue was a plough that cleaved open the hearts of listeners, so that they might then be sown.7 In the twelfth century, Bernard of Clairvaux asserted that one who sweated 1

2

3 5 6

7

Compare 1 Corinthians 9:10. S. A. Barney, ‘The plowshare of the tongue: the progress of a symbol from the Bible to Piers Plowman’, Mediaeval Studies, 35 (1973), 261–93, at 262–4. P. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford, CA, 1999), 28–32; Ranft, Theology of Work, esp. 13–29; M. G. Newman, ‘Labor: insights from a medieval monastery’, in C. Chazelle, S. Doubleday, F. Lifshitz, A. G. Remensnyder (eds.), Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice (Hoboken, NJ, 2011), 106–20, at 110–11. Barney, ‘Plowshare’, 262–3. 4 Matt. 10:10; Luke 10:7. Barney, ‘Plowshare’, 265. 2 Thessalonians 3:10; Ranft, Theology of Work, 21. Barney, ‘Plowshare’, 267–9. Gregory the Great further compared pastors to the oxen supporting the washing basins at the doors of the Temple, in that those who would gain entrance to the kingdom of heaven must cleanse their souls through confession to their priest; see RP, vol. I, 200–1. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, 33–4; Barney, ‘Plowshare’, 268–9.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 and toiled willingly and with good intent, rather than from necessity or to serve one’s own needs, emulated the striving and pain of Jesus.8 The Cistercian theology of labour exemplified by Bernard’s writing associated toil with penance, that is, a type of behaviour that contributed to individual conversion and collective reform. Other Cistercian writers understood labour in eschatological terms, as preparing for the second coming of the Lord, or as a means of communion with him.9 In this sense, work was both a positive expression of human potential, and signalled the human ability to change the world for the better in the here and now.10 The language of toil, much like the exhortation to preach, gave expression to related apostolic virtues such as humility, industry, and poverty, which enjoyed wide currency in northwestern Europe at the turn of the twelfth century. The sources for these ideals were traditional: biblical texts and prescriptive writings like Gregory’s Liber pastoralis and Moralia in Iob, as well as the Benedictine rule and the Augustinian rule for canons.11 Bishops often took up and propounded the virtues of living like the disciples of Christ, or patronized those who did. The same ideals lay at the heart of contemporary notions about episcopal authority – for instance, that prelates must model their own actions after the words they preached. Simon of Noyon-Tournai’s 1132 charter for Saint-Pierre of Lille noted that pastors should serve others by offering their own lives, words, and almsgiving as an example.12 Bishops who themselves did not act as they said others should act, not only compromised their own authority, but by their inconsistency encouraged their flocks to ignore them, or worse.13 As we saw in the previous chapter on episcopal preaching, the frequency with which the imagery of labour and toil appears in 8

9 10 11 12

13

Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, 25–7; Newman, ‘Labor’, 112; Ranft, Theology of Work, 134–5. Ranft, Theology of Work, 123–4, 128–9. Newman, ‘Labor’, 112; Ranft, Theology of Work, 134–5. Ranft, Theology of Work, 25–9, 113–20. Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l’église collégiale de Saint-Pierre of Lille, no. 21, 30–1 (1132): ‘Qui in alto vitam agunt et regimen ecclesiastice sollicitudinis suscipiunt, pia devotione et maxima diligentia curare oportet qualiter ecclesiis quibus debent preesse, valeant et prodesse exemplo vite, sermone et elemosinarum largitione. Hec est enim via qua pervenitur ad civitatem Dei, ad civitatem liberam, ubi cives liberi quia a vestutate antique pravitatis et a servitute hostis iniqui in sanguine Christi liberati et penitus emancipati’. An 1114 charter of John of Thérouanne for Saint-Bertin invokes the linkage between words and deeds: ‘Quia apostolus dicit: quecumque facitis in verbo aut in opere, omnia in nomine Domini facite [Colossians 3:17]; in ejus igitur nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, notum sit cunctis fidei catholice cultoribus’; see Tock, ‘The political use of piety’, 25. The power of example to instruct, as well as wisdom and speech, had a venerable tradition reaching back to the desert fathers; see P. Rousseau, ‘The spiritual authority of the “monkbishop”: eastern elements in some western hagiography of the fourth and fifth centuries’, Journal of Theological Studies, ns, 23 (1971), 380–419, at 384.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord contemporary episcopal sources raises three questions. First, what priestly and pastoral qualities did expressions of episcopal labour promote, to what ideals were they connected, and how were they conveyed? Second, to what degree, if any, did prelates commit to these ideals in their pastoral care? And third, to what extent did they form the basis for a collective episcopal identity?

labourers in the vineyard of the lord Episcopal documents produced in the province of Reims in the decades around 1100 frequently described the various duties of the bishop’s office as constituting a form of labour. The language of labour assumed various guises. It was often compared to agricultural work performed on behalf of the church and its members, such as the expectation that bishops would feed their Lord’s flock.14 Charter preambles and narrative sources routinely assimilated the prelate to the labourers in the parable of Matthew 20:1–16, who toiled for their daily wages in the vineyard of the wealthy landowner. The Lord’s vineyard, or his garden, was naturally the church, sometimes described as plagued by thorns or weeds and in need of cultivation. To strive in the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth was thus the bishop’s special prerogative, as the preamble to a 1082 charter of Hélinand of Laon announced, and he should keep the examples of the life and mores of his predecessors in mind.15 Hélinand’s successor Bartholomew embraced the repair of that city’s cathedral following the fire of 1112 as ‘labour that needed doing’, in the words of his biographer Herman of Tournai.16 Using the rich metaphorical language of cultivation, Herman described how, thanks to his diligent toil (industria), Bartholomew ‘planted’ and ‘watered’ the first little community of Premonstratensians in the soil of his diocese.17 Applying similar terms, an 1132 charter of Archbishop Renaud II for Saint-Wulmer of Boulogne noted that the bishop’s industry was necessary to recall to peace and serenity those churches and religious possessions which ‘lay ambition’ had invaded.18 All those to whom dioceses were committed, Renaud’s charter 14

15 16

17 18

See for examples AEL, no. 123, 208 (1129); no. 142, 232 (1132); no. 143, 234 (1132); no. 201, 305 (1140). Ibid., no. 35, 111: ‘Quia pastorali prerogativa in vinea Domini Sabaoht preesse laboramus’. Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 142–3 (‘ad operandi laborem dicebat vocatum’); 216–17 (‘in Premonstratensi solitudine firmiter plantare, plantatumque iugiter rigare studuit’). Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 216–17. AAR, vol. II/2, no. 224, 589 (1132): ‘Cum omnibus qui intra ambitum nobis commissae dioeceseos continentur vigilantium debeamus, ad hoc potissimum nostra se accinxit industria, ut ecclesias et sanctorum locorum possessiones, quas laïca invaserat ambitio, in pacem quietemque revocaremus’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 stipulated, must apply themselves to this goal. Given this message, it is perhaps no coincidence that other bishops, namely Josselin of Soissons and Milo of Thérouanne, were witnesses to Renaud’s act. In addition to contributing the sweat of his brow to the maintenance and protection of the church, episcopal acts regularly noted that the bishop should lend his aid to like-minded Christians ‘labouring for their daily wage’. This was especially true of monks and canons carrying out the spiritual work of prayer and veneration of God, as many charters from Noyon and Tournai attest.19 It also applied to the canons of Tournai. When, in 1170 and under pressure from Rome, their bishop Walter I (1167–72) reformed the chapter and added ten new prebends, he noted in the preamble of the charter that the Lord assigned more men when ‘the harvests were plentiful, but the number of workers few’.20 Toil was perceived to be a collective undertaking, necessary to construct and sustain the material and spiritual church.21 The preamble to Gerard II of Cambrai’s 1093 charter for Saint-Vincent of Soignies illustrates these sentiments. The charter – his final act – uses labor and its close synonym, sudor (sweat) to describe the work of the brothers of Saint-Vincent, while also noting his own enthusiastic response to the biblical parable: ʻSince it is fitting that those doing fieldwork in the Lord’s vineyard should receive its first fruits, I, Gerard II . . . roused by the apostolic call, upon seeing the faithful sons of the church of Soignies sweating worthily for the good of their aforesaid mother church, decreed that I would aid in their labour and satisfy their requestʼ.22 In a diploma drawn up around 19

20 21

22

Charter of Radbod II (16 March 1088) for Saint-Pierre of Lille, in Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l’église collégiale de Saint-Pierre of Lille, no. 6, 12; charter of Baudry (1107) for Saint-Amand, in Duvivier, Actes et documents anciens intéressant la Belgique, 54; two charters of Gerard of Tournai (both 1149) touching on Saint-Martin of Tournai, in d’Herbomez, Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tournai, nos. 67–8, 72–4: ‘Quoniam . . . nostrum est gaudere atque in vinea Domini pro mercede laboris operantibus auxilium ferre, dignum est ut quod fidelis quislibet pro ipsius multiplicatione devote postulaverit attendamus’; AET, no. 94, 137 (1173/4). AET, no. 87, 128 (referencing Matt. 9:37 and Luke 10:1). The emphasis on material and spiritual repair was widespread in the literature of the regular clergy, as noted by Constable, ‘Renewal and reform’, 44–5, and from both those sources and papal ideologies of institutional reform found its way into episcopal historiography. Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, no. 3.40, 311 (1093, for Saint-Vincent of Soignies): ‘Quoniam laborantem agricolam in vinea Domini oportet primum de fructibus accipere, ego secundus Gerardus . . . hac apostolica tuba excitatus, cum uiderem quosdam fideles filios Sonegiensis ecclesiae. . . digne insudare matris suae praedictae ecclesiae utilitatibus, laborem eorum adiuuare decreui et eorum satisfacere petitione’. Compare 2 Tim. 2:6 and Mark 12:9. In the case of this particular act, which was passed before Gerard’s death in 1092 but only elaborated in writing the following year, the preambular sentiment above was probably supplied, according to its editor (310), by Gaucher, the archdeacon of the altar whose donation the act records, and who would succeed Gerard as bishop a short time later. The preamble thus acts as a kind of memorial to Gerard, whose last labour this act was, and as an example to which his successor might aspire.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord the same time, Bishop Roger III of Châlons proclaimed that whenever he protected the possessions of other churches just like his own, he was toiling to gain the wages of the soul.23 Exhortations like Gerard and Roger’s ratified episcopal support of the work of other ecclesiastics, and recognized the prelate’s work on behalf of the churches in his diocese.24 Bishops also understood that those who worked on behalf of others in the Lord’s vineyard would receive its first fruits or their just wage, namely admission into the kingdom of heaven.25 In addition to depicting the prelate as a help-mate and fellow-worker to others, charters and other sources also presented him in another role connected to householding and administration, namely that of an overseer or dispensator. This term had deep classical and biblical roots.26 Following the model of 1 Timothy and other biblical passages, the bishop was often qualified as one assigned by the supreme father to manage his household, serving as its steward and dispenser of goods – ‘a measure of wheat’, in the words of a 1091 charter of Gerard II of Cambrai. In doing so he emulated Christ himself, who procured daily bread for anyone who was his servant and in a state of need.27 As steward or speculator of the Lord’s house, the bishop must wisely (prudenter) manage the resources entrusted to him, and actively defend and protect his lord’s house from ‘the presumption of worldly men’, as an 1143 charter of Samson of Reims declares.28 This trope, like those invoking the toil and industry of episcopal office, stressed that the prelate’s heavenly reward depended upon his fulfilment of these assigned tasks.29 Thus at the restoration of the canonry of Saint-Timothée in Reims, Archbishop Gervais issued a 23

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Gousset, Les actes de la province ecclésiastique de Reims, vol. II, 105 (charter of 1092): ‘cum ubique res ecclesiarum ut nostras curamus, ob emolumentum mercedi animarum nostrarum laboramus’. For example, an 1138 charter of Geoffrey of Châlons for Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts (GC, vol. X, col. 169): ‘Ecclesiasticis utilitatibus fideliter insudantes, et contemplationis studio sollicitius inhaerentes congruo sunt remunerationis beneficio prosequendi, ut et nos eorum obsequiis digne respondisse videamur, et illi ex indulta consolationis gratia utiliores existant’. 2 Tim. 2:6; Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, no. 3.28, 273 (1089/90); Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte Marie, 216–17; AEL, no. 206, 311; AET, no. 19, 40 (1151); no. 27, 54 (1154). For a thoughtful study of early medieval representations of the bishop (and pope) in the terminology of classical householding, see K. Sessa, The Formation of Papal Authority in Late Antique Italy. Roman Bishops and the Domestic Sphere (New York, 2012), 65–7, 76–8. For these themes, see Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, nos. 3.11, 210 (1082) and 3.35, 295 (1091): ‘nobis specialiter, quos Ille summus Pater familias in domo Sua – que est Ecclesia – ad hoc constituit ut tritici mensuram in tempore erogemus Eius familie’. Similar language is employed by the bishops of Laon; see AEL, nos. 119, 203 (1129); 130, 217 (1131); 146, 240 (1133); 153, 250 (1133); 170, 267 (1135); 206, 311 (1141); and Arras; see CAE, nos. 80, 95 (1142); 102, 116 (1153). See also Avril, ‘La fonction épiscopale’, 128. AEL, no. 144, 236 (1132); no. 189, 291 (1128–38): ‘prudenter dispensare debemus’; Cossé-Durlin, Cartulaire de Saint-Nicaise, no. 26, 202 (1143); AET, no. 121, 169 (1179–80). Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, 94–8.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 charter witnessed by four other prelates expressing his certitude that the careful management of the ‘talents’ entrusted to him by the divine paterfamilias would yield spiritual benefits.30 A charter of Godescalc of Arras granting an altar to the abbey of Corbie referred to the bishop as an ‘executor of the office of dispenser in the Lord’s church’, and noted that his entrance into perpetual life was the ‘fruit’, or reward, ‘of good stewardship’.31 While selfless labour and stewardship were understood to be redemptive, those who toiled longest and hardest to attain the kingdom of Heaven would receive the same compensation as those who toiled for only a comparatively brief time. This was a call for the worker’s humility, another motif often expressed in episcopal charters and repeatedly urged upon bishops by writers like Bernard of Clairvaux.32 Whether the bishop’s role was expressed as that of a helpmate, steward, or paterfamilias, his industriousness should serve as an example to others. Two surviving original charters of Renaud II of Reims, produced in the archiepiscopal synods of 1133 and 1135, and confirming donations to the abbeys of Saint-Aubert of Cambrai and Selincourt, respectively, employ identical preambular language in making this point. ‘In order to do well, we ought’, the charters begin, ‘to mould the spirits of those set under us, and offer a model of life if, as sinfulness requires, we strive to fulfil at a minimum the office of their shepherd and to celebrate their good works, and undertake to be a partner (particeps) in some way’.33 What is noteworthy about Renaud’s charters of 1133 and 1135 is that they, like the above-mentioned charters of Gervais of Reims (1064), Godescalc of Arras (1154), and Samson of Reims (1143), were witnessed by large assemblies of prelates and abbots, with six bishops witnessing the 1133 charter for Saint-Aubert, and four the 1135 charter of Selincourt.34 All were enacted at Reims, three of them probably during the provincial synod, a fact suggested by the presence on the witness lists of capitular clergy and abbots from outside the diocese. Such themes certainly would have been appropriate given the episcopal witnesses, and would have echoed and recalled the readings with which synods in Reims were opened, 30

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34

PL 143, cols. 1401–2: ‘patrisfamilias nostro decreto nobis talento multiplex lucrum reportaturos, et euge certissimae remunerationis nos credimus auditoros’. CEA, no. 109, 125–6 (1154): ‘Pastorali cure et episcopali congruit discretioni, ut qui in ecclesia Dei dispensatoris vice fungitur, ita studeat in ea dispensare, quatinus dispensationis bone fructum vitam perpetuam mereatur introire’. Compare also CEA, nos. 80, 95 (1142), and 102, 116 (1153). Discussed by Tock, ‘The political use of piety’, 29; Guyotjeannin, ‘L’influence pontificale’, 91–2. AAR, vol. II/2, no. 235, 623 (1135): ‘Cum ad bene operandum subditorum animos informare et vite exemplar esse debeamus, si, peccatis exigentibus, pastoris officium minime adimplere valemus eorum, vel bonis operibus congratulari, et in aliquo particeps esse studeamus’. And see ibid., no. 229, 603–5 (1133). Two additional bishops witnessed the 1143 and 1154 charters of Samson and Godescalc, respectively.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord specifically the Ego sum pastor bonus (‘I am the good shepherd’) of John 10 and the Omnis arbor bona (‘You shall know a tree by its fruits’) of Matthew 7.35 Moreover, it seems likely that the preambular motifs of the bishop as steward, exemplar, and helpmate were intentionally chosen to address the prelates in attendance. When an 1146 charter of Alvisius of Arras witnessed by the bishops of Reims, Soissons, and Thérouanne, as well as Bernard of Clairvaux, notes in its opening lines that ‘every bishop conducting the office of the apostles ought necessarily to imitate their example, so that his daily perseverance may be the solicitude of all churches’, we are clearly hearing a message calculated to remind prelates of, and publicly proclaim to them, their common pastoral mission.36 The terminology of toil and oversight also would have struck a receptive chord with mixed audiences that included abbots, who looked to episcopal support for the protection and augmentation of their houses. Bernard of Clairvaux witnessed Samson’s 1143 charter of Saint-Nicaise of Reims, for example, and abbots from houses in the dioceses of Reims, Arras, Cambrai, Thérouanne, Noyon, and Tournai appeared as witnesses for the others. Moreover, many of the same abbots to whom the charters were addressed headed houses of regular canons, including SaintWulmer of Boulogne and Saint-Aubert of Cambrai. Given the centrality, even primacy, of toil to regular canons’ corporate identity, the use of the language of work in the charters’ preambles no doubt resonated with their audience.37 Thus singly or together, whether issuing charters themselves or present as witnesses, bishops in the archdiocese of Reims employed and repeatedly heard biblical injunctions to work and to support their fellow workers. The keywords of laudatory toil – labor, sudor, industria – and stewardship – dispensare, distribuere, providere – appear commonly in charters from the region, especially those from Laon, Reims, and NoyonTournai. Until the charters for all the dioceses have been edited and published, we will lack a complete corpus of texts necessary for a thorough analysis of the language of labour in episcopal acts. Its prevalence is unquestionable, however, and a comparison with the preambular wording of episcopal acta from other dioceses is suggestive. One finds, for example, no occurrences of the above terms in the contemporary

35 36

37

Schneider (ed.), Die Konzilsordines, 255, 506, 566, all with ties to the archdiocese of Reims. CAE, no. 87, 102 (1146): ‘Luce clarius constat, quod omnis pontifex apostolorum gerens officium eorum necesse est imitetur exemplum, ut sit ejus instantia cotidiana sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum’. Ranft, Theology of Work, 103–19.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 charters of the bishops of Limoges.38 The preambles to the charters of the pontiffs of Verdun, edited through the reign of Richer to 1107, rarely contain similar or analogous terms. An act of Rambert from 1032 expresses the prelate’s desire to be a cooperator, exortator, and auxiliator of monastic houses.39 Others describe the bishop as a provisor or dispensator of goods and privileges.40 While this language could assume a stock quality – the same lines about the prelate’s need to support workers in the Lord’s vineyard appear repeatedly in the charters of Noyon-Tournai, for example, suggesting they were simply recopied by the bishop’s chancellors – its frequent invocation in charters produced in the province of Reims suggests that among the various expectations for holders of episcopal office in the region, labour, stewardship, and their cognates carried particular weight. The impression gleaned from the charter evidence of a strong regional emphasis on discourses of episcopal labour is further reinforced by narrative sources, including contemporary saints’ lives. Walter of Thérouanne employed imagery of toil and its rewards in his Life of John, bishop of Thérouanne. He stressed both his subject’s active life in the church and the attendant notion that a bishop’s labour was best carried out in collaboration with others. Writing within months of John’s death in 1130, Walter – John’s archdeacon for fourteen years – began his vita by comparing the transitory quality of the literary and architectural monuments laboriously raised to the great men of classical antiquity to the lasting monuments of those who recorded virtuous deeds for the utility of their fellow man and to the honour of God. Estimating the work of the latter, and hence his own, as worthy of God’s remuneration,41 Walter expresses in the prologue that whoever sought to imitate John’s deeds – not merely read about them – would receive his wages from the Lord.42 Walter follows the narrative cursus typical of episcopal vitae in this period, describing John’s birth, naming, youth, and early education, first at the feet of prominent churchmen, then as a secular canon at Saint-Pierre of Lille, a community whose standards he judged too lax, 38

39

40 41

42

Based on comparison of keywords indexed by J. Becquet (ed.), Actes des évêques de Limoges des origines à 1197 (Paris, 1999). The terms industria, sudor, particeps, dispensor, paterfamilias, and their cognates do not appear in the charters. Labor is used once, but not in moral or hortatory terms, as is distribuere. Language relating to sowing (seminavo) appears in a single mid-tenth century charter (no. 9, 32). J.-P. Evrard (ed.), Actes des princes lorrains, ser. 2, vol. III, Les évêques de Verdun, des origines à 1107 (Nancy, 1977), no. 45, 97. Ibid., no. 27, 65 (971); no. 73, 148 (1082). VI, 126–7: ‘Vnde illorum non solum non spernendum sed et a Deo remunerandum non immerito iudicamus laborem’. Ibid., 127: ‘Expectet autem mercedem a Deo non quicumque legendo scrutatus sed quicumque agendo ea fuerit imitatus’.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord and finally as an Augustinian canon at Mont-Saint-Eloi, near Arras.43 Having established his subject’s religiosity and intellectual pedigree, and likening John to the wise and faithful servant of the steward in the Lord’s house, Walter shifts gears, leading his readers through the history of the reconstitution of the diocese of Arras and Thérouanne’s decline before John’s episcopacy.44 This context furnishes the archdeacon with his first opportunity to illustrate the theme of collective labour and wise stewardship. Walter describes the installation of Bishop Lambert of Guines at Arras, newly detached from the diocese of Cambrai. Having been consecrated by Urban II, Lambert returned to Arras and surveyed with the due vigilance of solicitude the Lord’s field which he had taken up to be cultivated. He perceived the many and diverse injuries inflicted upon it by the neglect of its overseer: everywhere thorns and thistles were sprouting among the crops, and useless thorn-bushes mixed in among the wheat fields. Considering himself alone insufficient for the task, he decided to summon others to share in its care. So he brought together from all over religious and wise men, by whose assistance he might be able to lighten the weight of his burden by distributing it. From among them we received our venerable John.45

Together with John, Lambert recruited two other archdeacons, namely Clarembaud, later bishop of Senlis (1117–33), and Robert, who succeeded Lambert at Arras (1115–31). All three would in time become ‘religious bishops’ in Walter’s words, their success not only a reflection on Lambert but indicative of Walter’s conviction that strong pastoral leadership is in some sense heritable, capable of being passed on from a bishop to his clergy. The latter notion is particularly clear in Walter’s description of John’s course of action upon assuming office. ‘Immediately’, he wrote, the new bishop ‘assembled men of upright religion chosen from diverse monasteries, who would be fellow labourers in his company, earning their daily bread in the vineyards of the great Paterfamilias’.46 Walter then named 43 44

45

46

Ibid., 127–30. Ibid., 129: ‘Huius itaque serui prudentis et fidelis in domo magni Patrisfamilias dispensatoris Ioannes noster’. Ibid., 131–2: ‘Reversus, dum agrum dominicum quem susceperat excolendum debita sollicitudinis uigilantia circuit, multa per diuersa cultoris neglectu incommoda inflicta deprehendit: hinc spinas, hinc tribulos latis pullulare germinibus, illinc zizaniorum inutilia triticeis immixta segetibus. Vt se considerat non posse sufficere, alios deliberat accersere sollicitudinis in partem. Religiosos quoque et prudentes uiros undecunque contrahit, quibus adiutoribus sue pondus sarcine diuidendo leuiare posset. Inter quos nostrum de quo hic agere suscepimus uenerabilem Ioannem’. VI, 138: ‘Statim igitur ut episcopalis cathedram dignitatis accepit, probate religionis uiros de diuersis electos monasteriis congregauit, quos in uinea magni Patrisfamilias pro denario diurno laboraturos suo comitatui sociauit’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 the men who followed John’s example or received their ecclesiastical appointments from him. Local monasteries sought to fill vacant abbacies with clerics from John’s household, among them his archdeacon Achard (1100–8), formally a hermit at Arrouaise, who became prior of the Templum Domini (the Dome of the Rock) in Jerusalem. John’s chaplain Gerard, Walter’s own teacher, was appointed abbot of the canonry of Saint-Martin of Ypres; and a second chaplain named Gerard became abbot of the reformed monastery of Loo.47 All these institutions were, or became, houses of Augustinian canons. Other zealous abbots adhered to John and imitated his example: Cono of Arrouaise, later cardinalbishop of Praeneste (c. 1108–22); Lambert of Saint-Bertin; Bernold of Watten; Gerard of Ham; Hugh of Amiens, later abbot of Reading and archbishop of Rouen (1129–64), and ‘not a small mob’ of others. Supported by these men, John laboured to lead lax clergy back to the proper path of virtue ‘by deed and by word’, a motif Walter repeatedly references.48 Systematically expunging simoniacs from the diocese, John ‘filled the Lord’s vineyard with other workers’.49 Evidence of Walter’s (and John’s) attention to clerical mores in general and to the life of regular clergy in particular abounds in the vita. Walter’s detailed lists of the men whom John brought into his inner circle and installed in religious houses, and who went on to become distinguished leaders within the church, favoured, as Brigitte Meijns has pointed out, regular canons.50 John had been a regular canon at the reformed house of Mont-Saint-Eloi – a connection to which I will return shortly – and Walter himself had been the student of the above-mentioned Gerard of Saint-Aubert, who went on to become abbot of Saint-Martin of Ypres.51 The intersection of the various aspects of John’s episcopal identity and his role as a model to others strikingly appears in a passage of the vita which follows Walter’s final list of John’s supporters. [John] considered them witnesses in private to his inner way of life, and in public to his works. Indeed, whatever good works he urged that others should do by his words, he displayed first in his deeds, actually practising [faciens realiter] them to

47

48

49

50

51

Ibid. Similarly, Walter’s fellow archdeacon, Herbert, had been a canon at Voormezele, then John’s chaplain, before his promotion to the archidiaconate in the departed Achard’s place. Ibid., 140; see also 141: ‘ad normam recte uiuendi reducere laborauit tam exemplo quam uerbo inuitatos’. VI, 142: ‘Illis enim de ecclesia, quam per simoniam sibi comparauerant, eliminatis, uineam dominicam aliis locauit agricolis’. Compare also the wish of the abbot-electors who chose John for a ‘worthy steward of God’s house’; ibid., 134. Meijns, ‘The “Life of Bishop John of Thérouanne”’, esp. 82–8; also Simons, ‘Jean de Warneton’; Führer, König Ludwig VI. von Frankreich und die Kanonikerreform, 283–4. VI, 138.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord such an extent that whatever his tongue resonated with in preaching, his life did not deviate from in action.52

The harmony between word and deed had been expressed of course in Gregory the Great’s vision of the ideal pastor, a vision the saintly bishop of Thérouanne fulfilled. To other clergy, in Walter’s telling, John combined the roles of paterfamilias, fellow worker, and exemplar. Furthermore, Walter clearly understood the bishop’s influence in generative – and ‘generational’ – terms. One who laboured attracted to himself other labourers, and modelled for them a way of life; they in turn modelled the same features for their own communities, and so on. In the context of Walter’s vita, John’s ultimate model was God – the great Paterfamilias himself – but more immediately Lambert of Arras, under whom he had served as archdeacon. Their collaboration and example produced the ‘happy times’ which Walter so warmly connected with John and his fellow bishops Lambert, Odo of Cambrai, Godfrey of Amiens, and others.53 Walter of Thérouanne’s biography of John was not the only contemporary work to stress co-operative labour as a pastoral virtue. The Life of the Blessed Pontiff Vindician (Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis) was equally rich in images of episcopal collegiality. Its author, another Walter – the abbot of Saint-Sépulcre of Cambrai (1064–90) – composed the vita between 1068/76 and 1090 at the request of another John, the abbot of MontSaint-Eloi (c. 1068/76–1108). Lietbert of Cambrai may have had a role in commissioning the work as well.54 Vindician (d. 713) was the eighth bishop of Cambrai. According to tradition, he had been interred at MontSaint-Eloi, which Lietbert restored in the latter years of his reign and staffed with Augustinian canons.55 The vita represents a concerted effort to invigorate and publicize Vindician’s cult, and to silence those ‘virulent 52

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VI, 140: ‘Hos interioris sue conuersationis in secreto, hos operum suorum testes habebat in publico; etenim quecumque alios ut facerent bona uerbis exhortando monebat, in suis primum operibus faciens realiter ostendebat, quatenus ab eo quod lingua sonabat in predicatione, uita non discreparet in actione’. Similar words echo in the writings of Premonstratensian canons; see, in general, C. W. Bynum, ‘The spirituality of regular canons in the twelfth century’, in Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 22–58; and the collected writings in Antry and Neel, Norbert and Early Norbertine Spirituality, especially Philip of Harvengt’s ‘On the knowledge of clerics’, 201–17. VI, 136: ‘O tempora felicia, quibus superne indulta probantur beneficia!’ See above, 151. Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, nos. 2.03, 84–91; 2.18–19, 146–54; Walter of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, 97 (c. 2): ‘domnus Iohannes, consacerdos noster amantissimus . . . suggereret nos ad hoc comonendos edictis etiam episcopalibus’ (see also 95 nn. 1–2). If Lietbert did commission the work, then its date of composition can be narrowed to the period between 1068–76. GEC, 413. Bethmann supplies his death date as 713. See on the dating of the episcopal restoration, traditionally given as 1068, but certain only before the death of Lietbert in 1076, Meijns, Aken of Jeruzalem?, vol. II, 719–26.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 tongues’ that questioned his sanctity.56 To achieve that end, Walter of Saint-Sépulcre included in his work letters exchanged between Vindician and an unidentified pope named John concerning the privileges and immunities of Notre-Dame of Arras, documents which he had mined from the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium.57 Walter of Saint-Sépulcre confronted some of the same challenges in reconstructing Vindician’s life that Milo of Thérouanne had faced in composing the biography of Principius. Fortunately for Walter, the church archives at Cambrai and the deeds of its bishops furnished him with solid details about the bishop’s foundations and institutional connections, as well as miracle stories and traditions to which he was connected.58 In the absence of any information concerning his parentage and upbringing, Walter argued that Vindician’s saintly fellow bishops should be considered his ‘family’. He wrote: What? Does the dazzling renown of blessed Vindician not shine forth in his spiritual ancestry? For what [ancestor] can be thought more distinguished than [St] Autbert? What more joyful than [St] Géry? What more noble than [St] Vaast? The most blessed Vindician is their most authentic son in Christ, the most legitimate heir of these men by divine law.59

Having established Vindician’s saintly descent, Walter followed an order of events already established in the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, which detailed Vindician’s endowment of the churches in his diocese, beginning with Notre-Dame of Arras and the abbey of Saint-Pierre of Honnecourt. In both cases, he stressed that Vindician confirmed his gifts to Notre-Dame and dedicated Honnecourt ‘having convened an assembly of not a few of his fellow bishops’.60 These passages prepare the ground for athe polemical attack on lackadaisical contemporary prelates that follows. In language which self-consciously echoed the denunciations of seigneurial violence prevalent in the legislation of the Peace and Truce of God, whose roots had been struck in northern France

56 57

58 59

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Walter of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, 114. Walter of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, 100–2; GEC, 410–13. Pope John V died in 686; John VI in 705; John VII in 707. GEC, 409–10. Walter of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, 100: ‘Quid ergo? Numquid non extat, in spirituali parentela dico, clarissima beati Vindiciani claritudo? Quid enim comparari potest Autberto insignius? Quid Gaugerico gaudiosius? Quid Vedasto nobilius? Horum filius in Christi verissimus, horum heres celesti iure legitimus beatissimus est Vindicianus’. This passage follows upon an earlier one that situates Vindician within the episcopal register of Cambrai’s founding (saintly) prelates (98–9). Ibid., 103: ‘convocato coepiscoporum non paucorum collegio ad cumulandum superni regis gloriam’. See also the privilege for Notre-Dame (101).

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord some decades earlier, Walter excoriated those pastors who, rather than sustaining churches, dispersed and plundered their goods.61 Following this denunciation, Walter returned to the main thread of his account. Again going back to the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, he associated Vindician with two regional saints. First, Walter noted the bishop’s attempt to secure the body of the martyred prelate Leger for his diocese, and his celebration of the murdered virgin Maxelendis’ cult.62 He then described the devastation of the region by the Northmen and Hungarians, which accounted for the loss to posterity of Vindician’s other deeds.63 In the final sections of the vita, Walter posited Vindician as a new Martin of Tours, embedding him in a society of saintly episcopal luminaries and distinguished contemporaries.64 Vindician was conjoined to Martin, Walter wrote, because he would retreat from the world in order to exert himself in the arena (palaestra) against unclean spirits. Sounding by now familiar notes of pastoral diligence, Walter then eulogized Vindician as one who ‘rarely ceased from apostolic exhortation, [and] converted an uncountable number of people with his frequent preaching’. He planted in his land ‘not a few fertile young plants of this eternal life, and gave them a healthy dose of water . . . drawing upon the waters from the Saviour’s fountains’. He consequently received, together with his fellow labourers (desudanti ipsi) in the vineyards of the church of the all-powerful Paterfamilias, the daily wage that was his due.65 Walter drew his vita to a close by describing in detail all the holy men and women of Vindician’s time, loosely defined, beginning with a series of bishop-saints – Autbert of Cambrai, Audomar of Thérouanne, Eloi of Noyon, Lambert of Maastricht/Liège, and many more – whom he qualified as the bishop’s fellow ‘strivers’ (sudores).66 Walter of Saint-Sépulcre’s Life of Blessed Vindician enjoyed modest regional success. Two twelfth-century copies were kept at Mont-Saint-Eloi; a 61

62 64

65

66

Ibid., 103–4: ‘Quodque maxime dolendum est, ipsi hodie facti sunt dispersores, qui fuerant instituti pastores’. His choice of the term dispersores suggests an intentional inversion of the typical episcopal ascription of the dispensator. Might Lietbert of Cambrai have issued his 1074 charter to Notre-Dame of Arras, ceding it the church of Beaurains and its altars, in response to Walter’s denunciation? See Van Mingroot, Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, no. 2.11, 119–22. On the Peace and Truce of God in northern Francia, consult Van Meter, ‘The peace of AmiensCorbie’, and the sources cited in chapter 4 above, n. 79. Walter of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, 104–9. 63 Ibid., 109–12. Ibid., 112: ‘preciosissimus Martini consacerdos Vindicianus’. Vindician retreated to an oratory dedicated to Martin at Écoivres, near Mont-Saint-Eloi, for contemplation and prayer. Ibid., 113–14: ‘Postea vero quam hec fertilissima et non pauca huiusmodi vite perhennis plantaria suis in locis numerose plantaverat et . . . hauriens aquas de fontibus Salvatoris, saluberrime rigaverat, cum sic laboriosissime desudanti ipsi in vinea ecclesie summus paterfamilias decrevisset denarium promisse olim mercedi reddere’. Compare Isaiah 12:3. Ibid., 114–17. Walter lists holy bishops ahead of other confessors, abbots, hermits, and recluses.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 third partial copy from the thirteenth century survives from SaintVaast.67 The abbey’s restoration under Lietbert was also publicized in Arras, probably by the abbot John and his namesake and future bishop of Thérouanne, John the archdeacon. Bishop Lambert remarked on the abbey’s special connection to Vindician and its patronage by the bishops of Cambrai in a 1097 charter, one of the first he issued as bishop.68 As noted earlier, John of Warneton had lived as a regular canon at MontSaint-Eloi before coming to Arras. Had John or his archdeacon Walter read the vita of Vindician, or heard it recited during the liturgy on the saint’s feast day?69 It would have been hard to miss. In any case, the connection between Mont-Saint-Eloi, Arras, and Thérouanne through the person of John of Warneton, and the emphasis in both the Vita Ioannis and the Vita beati Vindiciani – works that promoted communities of regular canons and their linkage to holy bishops – on the productive labour of prelates, their common tasks in preaching, their use of agricultural metaphors, and the situation of their subjects in extended communities of like-minded prelates, argues for a shared language and conceptualization of pastoral care. The language of toil similarly occupies a vivid and fundamental place in Herman of Tournai’s portrayal of the deeds of Bartholomew of Laon, a text that has already been touched upon several times in previous chapters. Herman’s institutional affiliation at the time of his writing is unclear. He had been formerly the abbot of Saint-Martin of Tournai (1127–37), where he had lived since his childhood, and continued to serve the political interests of the diocese of Tournai after resigning. He greatly admired Bartholomew and Norbert of Xanten, and wrote an account of the latter’s deeds at the former’s request.70 Much of Herman’s knowledge of Bartholomew’s activities and of the bishop himself came first-hand. He served as the bishop’s personal archivist, sleuthing for copies of Ildephonsus of Toledo’s opuscules on the virginity of Mary in regional libraries. Concerning details of which he was uncertain, Herman sought feedback from at least one other witness, namely Leo, the abbot of Saint-Bertin (1138–63).71 The work he produced is heterogeneous in its content, describing, besides the deeds of the bishop, the early mission of Norbert and the origins of Prémontré; a small collection of Marian miracles at Laon; and the long fund-raising tours 67 68 69

70 71

Van der Straeten, Les manuscrits hagiographiques d’Arras et de Boulogne-sur-Mer, 58, 60, 93–4. CEA, no. 4, 8. The opening line of the vita proper references the occasions on which the text should be read; Walter of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, 98. Niemeyer, ‘Die Miracula’, 172–3. Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 210–11, 216–17.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord of the canons of Notre-Dame with their relics of Mary following the destruction of the cathedral.72 The common thread, however, is the episcopate of Bartholomew. Herman described the bishop of Laon as Norbert’s companion and helper (consortem . . . participemque et cooperatorem): he enabled Norbert to establish his first house of canons, endowed it, and facilitated its rapid growth.73 Applying agricultural metaphors, Herman described how Bartholomew ‘planted [Norbert and his followers] firmly in the solitude of Prémontré, and once planted strived to water [the community] continuously’.74 In a subsequent passage he draws on arboreal imagery to similar effect. Referencing Gregory the Great’s twentieth homily on Luke 3:1 and its association with Isaiah 41:19, Herman compares the bishop to an elm tree. The elm, unlike precious or fruit-bearing trees such as the grapevine, cedar, or silver pine, could be counted among the Lord’s gifts of arbores fructiferas to Israel because it bears the weight of grape-laden vines on its limbs, just as, Herman wrote, the bishop of Laon ‘always endeavoured so much to help the men of God fleeing the worldly life’.75 Bartholomew’s collaboration with Norbert then carried over into the abbacy of the latter’s disciple and successor at Prémontré, Hugh of Fosses (1128–61, d. 1164). In Herman’s telling, Hugh proved himself, with the bishop’s ongoing support, a loyal continuator of Norbert’s plans. For Hugh ‘assiduously strived to water the vineyard which lord Norbert had planted with him by exhortation and collaboration’, and so grew the community. Bartholomew was invited to lay the foundation stone of the new abbey church.76 Nor was the bishop of Laon’s patronage of regular clergy limited to Prémontré. He gave to some monks of Clairvaux a place called Foigny, spending sometimes a week there, sometimes fifteen days, consoling the small community in its ‘poverty and labour’.77 Herman repeatedly employs verbs evoking growth, efflorescence, and fructification in his descriptions of Bartholomew’s foundations and the

72 73

74

75

76 77

See the introduction of Saint-Denis to Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 81–123. Ibid., 214: ‘Quid alii sentiant ignoro, ego corde credo, et fideliter ore pronuntio, omnium bonorum, que in tot predictis monasteriis fiunt, vel deinceps fient, domnum Bartholomeum episcopum consortem esse, participemque et cooperatorem’. Ibid., 214–16: ‘profecto liquet quod pontifex iste . . . ad ultimum in Premonstratensi solitudine firmiter plantare, plantatumque iugiter rigare studuit, fructus utique illius dulci mercede non carebit’. Ibid., 216: ‘tamen dum servos Dei mundanam vitam fugientes tantopere semper adiuvare studuit’. In the next chapter (218) Herman refers to Norbert thus: ‘sue institutionis primus fuit plantator primusque Dei dono inceptor’. Ibid., 226. Ibid., 228; see also 230, where Bartholomew’s pattern of staying during the construction of a new house is repeated at the 1130 foundation of Thénailles, a daughter house of Prémontré.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 work of his monastic companions.78 Even women religious contributed to the process of taming the dense woodlands and overgrown terrain around Laon. At Montreuil-en-Thiérache the Cistercian nuns worked the land, ‘rooting out the felled trees with axes and mattocks, tearing out thorns and briars, assiduously labouring with their own hands’.79 Herman also reserved the language of pruning and uprooting for his description of Bartholomew’s expulsion of the nuns from Saint-Jean of Laon and their replacement with monks. He compared the nunnery of Saint-Jean to the fig-tree in the scriptural parable, which, when it had failed to produce fruit year after year, the bishop finally uprooted and placed under the care of new cultivators.80 Herman described what – or better, whom – Bartholomew ‘planted’ in his new religious foundations in considerable detail in his third book On the Miracles of St Mary of Laon. He named the illustrious men the bishop installed with a relish that matched, indeed exceeded, the portraits of Walter of Thérouanne: in diverse churches we see flourishing today nine of the most upright men, elected from their own monks. In the monastery of Orbais, Baldwin; at Morimond, William; Parvinus at Saint-Sépulcre of Cambrai; Adam at SaintAndré of Neufchâtel [Cateau-Cambrésis]; at Hasnon, Fulk; Gerard at Fesmy, Robert at Vertus; William at Saint-Nicolas near Ribemont; and John at Saint-Michel en Thiérache; today there govern venerable abbots, who all call the church of Laon their mother and Bishop Bartholomew their father and shepherd.81

To these upstanding abbots Herman later added a list of regular and secular clergy who went on to become bishops elsewhere. They included the dean of the cathedral chapter, Guido, who became bishop of Châlons (1143/4–7) and made his nephew Haimo an archdeacon there; Anselm, the abbot of Saint-Vincent of Laon, who became the first bishop of the newly independent diocese of Tournai; and Thierry, formerly a monk of Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois, consecrated bishop of Amiens in 1144.82 On behalf of his own church at Laon, Bartholomew ‘worked most of all’ to 78

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81 82

Some examples: 216 (‘non minus fructificasse’; ‘religio florebat’); 236 (‘in multimoda floreret possessione’); 238 (‘floridum reddidt’); 240 (‘florere’). Ibid., 234: ‘et cum securi et ligone silvam succisam extirpando, spinas et vepres evellendo, manibus propriis assidue laborantes’. Ibid., 248. On the reform of Saint-Jean, see now C. Schulze, ‘Eliminating a “cause of ruin”? Expulsion and reform at the abbey of Saint-Jean of Laon, 1128’, Revue bénédictine, 119 (2009), 164–88. For the parable, see Luke 13:6–9. Ibid., 240. See also 236, 238. Ibid., 240–2, 252. Haimo, Guido’s nephew, would follow in his uncle’s footsteps to become bishop of Châlons in 1152.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord augment its resources.83 In all, Herman would conclude, Bartholomew’s efforts and patronage of others confirmed that a ‘second house’ of Laon – its cathedral rebuilt and religious life rejuvenated – shone forth with greater glory than the first. As if to confirm the diocese’s positive direction, Herman noted that no bishop since the see’s founder, St Genebaud, could count as many miracles during his episcopacy as had been performed in Bartholomew’s time. Laon, under its tireless pastor, had found divine favour once again.84 The images and stories concerning episcopal toil in these narratives are regularly situated in contexts that suggest that labour is especially productive when undertaken in concert with others, and that it has a generative capacity, producing not only good ‘harvests’, in the form of new and restored religious communities and observances, but also begetting new generations of labourers. To use a common scriptural metaphor, a good tree produces good fruit; in the same way, the root stock of the church of Laon sprouted many branches. Language of this kind was not exclusive to the archdiocese of Reims, nor was it confined to the period around 1100. Metaphors of florescence are common in the literature of monastic foundation and renewal, and both Herman’s abbey of Saint-Martin and Walter’s of Saint-Sépulcre had been established as reformed houses.85 In a passage that is strikingly reminiscent of those Herman employed to describe the efforts of Bartholomew and Norbert of Xanten, the Premonstratensian continuator of Sigebert of Gembloux’s Chronica described in his entry for the year 1131 how at that time the religious orders of Cîteaux and Prémontré had proliferated, founding houses as far away as Syria and Palestine. The regular canons and monks, ‘like two olive branches in the Lord’s sight, administered to the world the light of piety and the richness of devotion, and like fruit-bearing vines, the shoots of piety propagated everywhere’.86 Later in the same chronicle, under the year 1139, the continuator, who probably hailed from a house in the diocese of Reims or Laon,87 observed: The church in France flourished at this time through men illustrious in religion and wisdom: Milo, the bishop of Thérouanne, distinguished by the virtue of 83 84

85 86

87

Ibid., 250. Ibid., 252. Herman recycles the verse from Haggai 2:10, which he had used at the beginning of Book 3 to describe the consecration of Notre-Dame of Laon in 1114. See the Introduction, 5. Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 138–9. Cont. Praem., 450 (s.a. 1131): ‘quasi duae olivae in conspectu Domini, pietatis lumen et devotionis pinguedinem mundo ministrabant, et quasi vites fructiferae, religionis palmites circumquaque propagabant’. The author of the Libellus de diversis ordinibus also applied the verb ‘florere’ to describe the current condition of the order of canons in his time (56). Cont. Praem., 447; C. J. Mews, ‘The council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard, and the fear of social upheaval’, Speculum, 77 (2002), 342–82, at 347.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 humility; Alvisius of Arras, eminent in liberality, counsel, and eloquence (facundia); Godfrey of Langres, Hugh of Auxerre, Josselin of Soissons, Geoffrey of Châlons; Alberic, the archbishop of Bourges, most renowned by his knowledge of letters and by the prudence of his counsel. Among these many other men noteworthy in learning (scientia), Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux . . . shone forth most eminently.88

The continuator compiled this entry between 1146 and 1155.89 The seven prelates he listed had either belonged to the ranks of the regular clergy in northern France, or were members of Bernard of Clairvaux’s circle, or both. Bishops Hugh III of Auxerre (1136–51) and Godfrey of Langres (1139–63) had been Cistercian abbots prior to their elevation to the episcopate. Geoffrey Cou-de-Cerf of Châlons (1131–43) had been abbot of Saint-Thierry of Reims and Saint-Médard of Soissons.90 Alvisius of Arras (1131–47) was prior of Saint-Vaast and abbot of Anchin, and Milo of Thérouanne had been abbot of the Premonstratensians at Saint-Josse-au-Bois and Dommartin.91 Alberic and Josselin had risen through the ranks of the secular clergy to become the bishops of Bourges (1137–41) and Soissons, were both schoolmasters, and were Bernard’s friends and intellectual allies, particularly in his fight against Peter Abelard.92 Five of the seven bishops pursued professional careers in the archdiocese of Reims. Later in the continuation, the same author added a series of necrological notices under the year 1151. He recorded the deaths of Hugh of Auxerre and Josselin of Soissons, together with abbots Suger of Saint-Denis, Odo of Saint-Rémi of Reims, and Renaud 88

89

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91

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Cont. Praem., 451: ‘Florebat hoc tempore Gallicana aecclesia per viros religione ac sapientia illustres, Milonem Morinensem episcopum, humilitatis virtute precipuum, Alvisum Atrebatensem, liberalitate atque consilio et facundia clarum, Godefridum Lingonensem, Hugonem Autisiodorensem, Ioslenum Suessionensem, Giffridum Catalaunensem, Albericum Bituricensem archiepiscopum, scientia litterarum atque consilii prudentia clarissimum. Inter hos et alios multos tunc claros scientia viros etiam Bernardus Clarevallensis abbas . . . eminentissime clarebat’. Martha Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 195, has noted that many of these prelates were instrumental in supporting Innocent II at Reims in 1131. The final entry in the chronicle mentions a series of earthquakes in Burgundy in January 1155; he may have begun his record-keeping in 1146, following the last entry of the Chronica’s continuations of Laon and Vaucelles. Godfrey of Langres, abbot of Fontenay (1118–27), owed his elevation to the episcopate directly to Bernard’s efforts on his behalf, and was related to the abbot of Cîteaux; he was also prior of Clairvaux from 1127–39. See Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. VII, 372–85; E. Vacandard, Vie de Saint Bernard, abbé de Clairvaux (Paris, 1895), vol. II, 26–34; Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 134–8, 173; Jacqueline, Episcopat et papauté, 254, 257. Hugh had been urged by Bernard to enter Cîteaux, where he was a monk from 1112–14, and later became abbot of Pontigny (1114–36), for which see Bouchard, Spirituality and Administration, 52–3. Godfrey and Alvisius participated in the Second Crusade, during which the latter died at Philippopolis; see Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem. The Journey of Louis to the East, ed. and trans. V. Gingerick Berry (New York, 1948), 44, 68, 78. Bernard advanced Alberic (unsuccessfully) to the episcopacy at Châlons in 1126.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord of Cîteaux, and marked the episcopal elections of Godescalc at Arras (1151–63/4) and Walter I at Laon (1151–53/5), both abbots of Premonstratensian houses.93 Elsewhere, the compiler had carefully noted the deeds and personal qualities of other bishops connected to Reims by various ties, including bishops Ivo and Geoffrey of Chartres (1116–49), archbishops Manasses II and Raoul of Reims, and Bartholomew of Laon.94 A sense of reminiscence on the passing of this generation of bishops permeates the chronicle entries; one might even call the tone wistful. The author offers capsule eulogies for many of the departed prelates, praising Master Alberic’s knowledge of letters and referring to Josselin as a ‘man of good counsel’ (vir consilii).95 Other figures were ascribed qualities that reflected a wider consensus or reputation among their contemporaries. Echoing Herman, for example, the continuator praises Bartholomew for his industria and religious fervour.96 Milo of Thérouanne receives recognition for his humility, a trait attributed to him elsewhere in Premonstratensian circles.97 More than most annalists, the Premonstratensian chronicler selfconsciously linked the religious renewal he perceived with the tenures of noteworthy bishops, clustering descriptions of monastic foundations with eulogies of great pontiffs and abbots in a way that suggested he was bearing witness to a golden age of episcopal leadership. One reason he portrayed virtuous bishops and monastic proliferation so prevalently is obvious: the two trends were interconnected. Contemporary vitae and gesta of John of Thérouanne, Vindician of Cambrai, and Bartholomew of Laon showed them working shoulder to shoulder with monastic or canonical reformers, whose success frequently depended on episcopal patronage. Monastic histories often celebrated the networks of religious leaders who revived or extended communities.98 Such images connected with the religious audiences of the archdiocese, who knew who their 93 94 95

96

97

98

Cont. Praem., 455. At Mont-Saint-Martin (dioc. Cambrai) and Saint-Martin of Laon, respectively. Ibid., 447–8. Ibid., 449 (s.a. 1127); 451 (s.a. 1139); 453 (s.a. 1148). For the significance of Josselin’s epithet, see below. Ibid., 447: ‘Cuius industria et episcopalis aecclesia, quae incensa fuerat, in brevi reparata iterum consecratur, et civitatis ac provinciae desolatione sublevata, in multis locis, in quibus antea nunquam fuerat, religionis fervor et Dei cultus fundator, et inde in multas ac remotas et etiam transmarinas regiones propagatur’. Vita [B] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 672: ‘Unde quidam cum diceret, quis illius in quo ipse vivebat temporis excellerat, ait: “In Norberto eminet fides, in Bernardo Clarevallensi abbate caritas, in Milone Tervanensi episcopo humilitas”.’ For example, the Vita Richardi abbatis s. Vitoni Virdunensis, vol. XI, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH SS (Hanover, 1859), 284, lists the virtuous bishops who ruled in the time of Richard (d. 1046) and supported Saint-Vanne: Gerard I of Cambrai, Fulbert of Chartres (1006–28), Wolbodo of Liège (1018–21), and Haimo of Verdun (c. 988/90–1024).

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 dependable allies were, and bolstered the prelates’ prestige. Another site of affinity between bishops and monks lay in their school-based connections, often rooted in the intellectual bonds and discipleship of students to their masters. The schools at Paris, Laon, Reims, Chartres, and Bec acted as primary nodes for such affinities and may have served to some degree as models for other social and professional networks.99 When the canons of Notre-Dame of Laon processed with their relics to England in 1113, for example, they stopped in cities whose ecclesiastical leaders had studied under the schoolmaster Anselm.100 Finally, and as we saw earlier, the archdiocesan structure itself, with its twice-yearly synods and cross-diocesan collaboration, consistently supported personal relationships and cemented professional solidarities among the regular and secular clergy. Thus behind the language of toil and collaboration in the charters and narrative sources lay the reality of an episcopate whose members worked closely with one another and with regular clergy, forging friendships, working relationships, and reputations that lingered in the memory of later writers. Let us now inspect a little more closely one such circle and its influence in archdiocesan affairs.

the canopy effect: collaboration among soissons, laon, reims In the decades around 1100, the lynchpin of the episcopal network in the archdiocese had been Lambert of Arras. A generation later, four figures took the centre upon the diocesan stage: Josselin of Soissons, Bartholomew of Laon, and the archbishops of Reims, Renaud II and Samson. Of these four, Josselin was arguably the most influential prelate, regularly sought after for his advice, administrative and judicial experience, and political clout. Bartholomew had been bishop the longest and was highly esteemed by the clergy of Reims, where he had been treasurer 99

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Wibald of Stavelot-Malmédy listed famous masters of recent memory, including William of Champeaux, Anselm of Laon, and Alberic of Reims, in one of his letters; Wibald of StavelotMalmédy, Epistolae, in Monumenta Corbeiensia, ed. P. Jaffé, Bibliotheca rerum Germanicarum, 1 (Berlin, 1864), no. 167, 278, while John of Salisbury famously recalled his teachers in his Metalogicon of 1159; see John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury. A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, trans. D. D. McGarry (Berkeley, CA, 1962), 95–100. Recent studies of master-student networks include M. Münster-Swendsen, ‘The model of scholastic mastery in northern Europe, c. 970–1200’, in Vaughn and Rubenstein, Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe, 307–42; S. N. Vaughn, ‘The students of Bec in England’, in G. E. M. Gasper and I. Logan (eds.), Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy (Durham, NC, and Toronto, 2012), 73–91; C. DeMayo, ‘The students of Gerbert of Aurillac’s cathedral school at Reims: an intellectual genealogy’, Medieval Prosopography, 27 (2012), 97–117. Herman of Tournai, Les miracles de Sainte-Marie, 168, 180, 182, 184; J. S. P. Tatlock, ‘The English journey of the Laon canons’, Speculum, 8 (1933), 454–65.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord in his younger days, and by whom he had been elected archbishop (albeit unsuccessfully) in 1139.101 The bishops worked together in a multitude of ways. The documentary record of their relationship demonstrates the frequency of episcopal collaboration in the second quarter of the twelfth century.102 Operating jointly and in pairs, the bishops, whose sees were contiguous, appeared together on approximately 110 occasions between 1126 and 1151, or 4.4 times per annum (Appendix 1).103 They operated together as a unit; in the company of other bishops and abbots; in the presence of the king, the pope, or his legates; and with influential figures like Bernard of Clairvaux and Suger of Saint-Denis. The events for which they assembled ranged from the mundane to the momentous. Examples of the latter included papal councils at Reims in 1131 and 1148, the 1141 council at Sens that condemned Peter Abelard and the Paris council in 1147 that examined the teachings of Gilbert de la Porée, as well as moments of political significance to the Capetian kingdom, such as the consecration of Saint-Denis in 1144 or the royal assemblies convened in 1128 and 1130 to deal with a succession crisis in Flanders and schism in Rome. On more than fifty occasions, the prelates met at Reims (52), and much less frequently at Soissons (6) and Laon (5).104 They also travelled to smaller venues, including religious houses and villas within their dioceses, or to other cities, including several, like Paris, Sens, Troyes, and Bourges, that lay outside the archdiocese.105 A significant proportion of the business on which the bishops acted in concert was carried out during the regular meetings of provincial synods.106 There, inter-ecclesiastical disputes of all kinds and conflicts pitting religious institutions against members of the local aristocracy were mediated and resolved. It is important to stress the degree to which episcopal cooperation and communication occurred outside the administrative framework of the synods, however. Liturgical events such as church consecrations, ordinations, and relic translations brought the bishops of the province 101

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Pope Innocent II refused to transfer Bartholomew to Reims, but he was the clergy’s first choice following the death of Renaud II in January 1139; PUN, vol. II, no. 35, 133–4. Collaboration between Reims and Soissons is obvious earlier, too. A letter of Renaud I of Reims (1083–96) to Hugh of Soissons (1093–1103) preserved in the GA, 169, gives notice that he is sending Hugh a letter of Urban II so that Hugh could publicize its contents to his fellow bishops and seek their counsel. These dates were selected because they correspond to the episcopate of Josselin and coincide with the end of Bartholomew’s tenure at Laon. Figures are taken from Appendix 1. Note that in many instances where no location is specified in the documentation, there is nevertheless a high probability that it was one of the three cities. On the archbishops’ travel, see P. Demouy, ‘Les voyages des archevêques de Reims aux XIe–XIIe siècles’, in La communication dans l’histoire. Travaux de l’Académie Nationale de Reims, Colloque de Reims, septembre 1983 (Reims, 1985), 49–68. Demouy, ‘Synodes diocésains’.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 together. Samson of Reims assisted Josselin at the translation of the relics of Crépin and Crépinien in May 1141, for example, and the bishop of Soissons was present when his colleague at Beauvais elevated the relics of saints Just and Germerus in 1132.107 The consecrations of the Cistercian abbeys of Igny, Ourscamp, Longpont, and Vaucelles, and of Saint-Pierre of Hasnon, were attended by concourses of prelates.108 Perhaps most impressive of all were the liturgical celebrations connected with the building of the abbey church of Saint-Denis. On three occasions, in 1140, 1140/1, and 1144, prelates from across the Capetian regnum and in neighbouring domains assembled outside Paris. Five of the seven bishops who witnessed Suger’s endowment of Saint-Denis in 1140 were from the archdiocese of Reims, including the newly ordained archbishop Samson.109 The province was also represented by five bishops later that year (or in 1141) at the ostentation of Charles the Bald’s relic collection, and eight prelates were present for the consecration of Saint-Denis’ choir on 11 June 1144.110 Samson and Josselin participated on all three occasions, as did the bishop of Beauvais. Most commonly, the bishops of Soissons, Laon, and Reims confirmed the possessions of religious institutions and judged disputes at the request of popes and their legates, fellow bishops, and local abbots.111 We see them adjudicating together at sites like Chalon, a villa in the diocese of Reims (1129); the abbey of Foigny (1130) in the diocese of Laon; PontVarie (1131) and Gland (1132), both in the diocese of Reims; and of course in their own sees. At Soissons, Bartholomew of Laon, Samson, and Josselin witnessed, at the request of the papal legate Alberic of Ostia, an accord between Abbot Suger and Hugh of Roucy concerning 107

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AJ, no. 131, 80–1; P. Louvet, Histoire et antiquitez du pais de Beauvaisis, vol. I (Beauvais, 1631), 502; Historia translationis S. Geremari, auctore anonymo seculi XII monacho Flaviacensi, AASS September, vol. VI (Antwerp, 1757), 704–8, at 706. Igny: AAR, vol. II/2, no. 219, 575–9; AJ, nos. 27–8, 20–1. Ourscamp: AJ, no. 58, 38. Longpont: RAL, vol. II, no. 335, 209; AD Aisne H 692, fos. 12v–13v. Vaucelles: AJ, no. 211, 123. SaintPierre of Hasnon: AJ, no. 213, 124. Suger of Saint-Denis, Œuvres, ed. and trans. F. Gasparri, vol. II (Paris, 2001), 257. The actual date of this charter must be after 1 August 1140, the day of Samson’s consecration. E. Panofsky (ed. and trans.), Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, 2nd edn (Princeton, NJ, 1979), 68–71, 112–13, 196–7. The date was 9 October in either 1140 or 1141. See Appendix 1 for the prelates in attendance. The bishops together confirmed charters for the houses of: Blangy (Thérouanne), Cuissy (Laon), Igny (Reims), La Chartreuse of Mont-Dieu (Reims), Longpont (Soissons), Marmoutier (Tours), Molesme (Langres), Mouzon (Reims), Reincourt (Soissons), Saint-Acheul (Amiens), SaintAubert (Cambrai), Saint-Crépin-en-Chaie (Soissons), Saint-Denis (Paris), Saint-Jean (Amiens), Saint-Lucien (Beauvais), Saint-Martin of Épernay (Reims), Saint-Maurice (Reims), SaintNicaise (Reims), Saint-Pierre of Cassel (Tournai), Saint-Remi (Reims), Saint-Thierry (Reims), Sauve-Majeure (Bordeaux), Selincourt (Amiens), Val-Chrétien (Soissons), Val-leRoi (Reims).

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord Hugh’s monetary exactions from peasants labouring on the estate at Concevreux.112 Josselin especially was designated to mediate conflicts and supervise ecclesiastical elections, a role that increased in the 1140s. From that time, he received numerous papal mandates to resolve disputes as a judge-delegate. In 1144, Pope Lucius II named him, together with the bishops of Auxerre and Paris, to resolve a complaint between the canons of Saint-Victor of Paris and Saint-Martin-des-Champs over a disputed prebend; in the following year, at the request of Eugenius III, he judged with Milo of Thérouanne a controversy between their fellow bishop Alvisius of Arras and Abbot Gislebert of Saint-Nicolas-auxBois.113 Eugenius came back to Josselin again in 1148, instructing him, along with Samson, Bartholomew, and Henry of Liège (1145–64), to ‘attentively’ listen to any allegations (querelas) about the misconduct of their parishioners that the abbot of Saint-Médard might raise, and to carry out ‘canonical justice’ against anyone failing to make satisfaction.114 In the matter of elections, Innocent II commanded King Louis VII to ensure that Josselin and the bishops of Chartres, Arras, and Auxerre would oversee the installation of a new archbishop of Reims in 1139, following a difficult vacancy, and he was commanded by Eugenius III, together with Suger and Hugh of Auxerre, to intervene in a contentious election at Arras in 1148.115 The bishop of Soissons was also called upon by his fellow prelates, including those from outside the archdiocese, when they found themselves in need of a third-party judge. In the same year in which he had observed the election at Reims, bishops Hugh of Auxerre and Geoffrey of Châlons asked Josselin to join them in resolving a dispute between the bishop of Meaux and abbess of Faremoutiers.116 His friend Suger of SaintDenis also appealed to Josselin and Hugh of Auxerre to resolve a capitular rift between the dean and cantor at Notre-Dame of Paris, though they

112 113

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AJ, no. 178, 104–5 (1145); Suger of Saint-Denis, Œuvres, 286. JL, no. 8624, vol. II, 14 (23 May 1144); JL, no. 8745, vol. II, 23 (29 April 1145). For another judgement rendered by the bishops of Soissons and Thérouanne in 1148, see W. Uruszczak, ‘Les juges délégués du pape et la procédure romano-canonique à Reims dans la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 53 (1985), 27–41, at 34 n. 49. Alvisius had a reputation for being confrontational, both as abbot of Anchin and as bishop of Arras; on him see S. Vanderputten, ‘“A time of great confusion”: second-generation Cluniac reformers and resistance to centralization in the county of Flanders (c. 1125–1145)’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 102 (2007), 47–75. PUF, vol. VII, no. 66, 326–7. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M.-J.-J. Brial, (Paris, 1877), vol. XV, col. 394; AJ, no. 112, 69; AA, vol. I, 301–2. For the election at Arras, see JL, no. 9306, vol. II, 60; and Suger of Saint-Denis, Œuvres, 110–11, 114 (November 1148). AJ, no. 111, 68–9.

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Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 were unsuccessful.117 A final instance of the faith which contemporaries placed in the bishop of Soissons as mediator is furnished by a chirograph which preserves the settlement of a complaint in 1136 between the abbeys of Saint-Symphorien and Saint-Quentin of Beauvais over their rights to a mill and its appurtenances. After repeatedly trying, and failing, to resolve their differences before the bishop of Beauvais, the parties agreed to choose six ‘upright persons’ by whose counsel they would come to agreement; the foremost judges were Josselin and Renaud of Reims. Convening at Soissons, the bishops made provision for both churches, and reached an accord in the presence of a large number of abbots and churchmen from the dioceses of Reims and Beauvais.118 By the end of his long career, Josselin had earned a reputation as a specialist in the application of canon law, if not as a theorist, through his numerous appointments as a papal judge-delegate, a position whose procedures were just then being defined. From the mid-1140s, as the number of cases being appealed to Rome continued to grow, he, along with the bishops of Thérouanne, Reims, and Auxerre, were routinely appointed to resolve controversies and arbitrate disputes, commissioned to act with papal authority and confidence. The bishop of Soissons thus stood at the forefront of an evolving legal praxis in northern France and throughout medieval Europe.119 His legal expertise was recognized by his colleagues. Haimo of Bazoches, an archdeacon at Châlons and a noted canon lawyer, wrote to Josselin for legal advice on a question of marital misconduct after a frustrating and confusing search for answers elsewhere.120 Shortly after Josselin’s death, and perhaps to fill the void left on his passing, Samson of Reims was promoted to papal legate, a position he occupied for five years.121 The close professional and interpersonal relationships among bishops in the archdiocese of Reims, particularly regional sodalities such as the 117

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Suger of Saint-Denis, Œuvres, 10; AJ, no. 199, 114–15. It was not the only time Suger looked to Josselin for help during his regency; AJ, no. 209, 122. AAR, vol. II/2, no. 240, 638–40; AJ, no. 77, 49. C. Duggan, ‘Papal judges delegate and the making of the “new law” in the twelfth century’, in Bisson (ed.), Cultures of Power, 172–99; G. G. Pavloff, Papal Judge Delegates at the Time of the Corpus Iuris Canonici (Washington, DC, 1963), esp. 12–18; D. Lohrmann, ‘Papstprivileg und päpstliche Delegationsgerichtsbarkeit im nördlichen Frankreich zur Zeit der Kirchenreform’, in S. Kuttner and K. Pennington (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Berkeley, California, 28 July–2 August 1980 (The Vatican, 1985), 535–50; L. Fowler-Magerl, Ordines iudiciarii and Libelli de ordine iudiciorum (From the Middle of the Twelfth to the End of the Fifteenth Century) (Turnhout, 1994). Châlons-en-Champagne, BM 48, fo. 5r–6r (letter composed between c. 1143–52): ‘Emersit apud nos quaestio de ecclesiastico iure. Quaesiui ego mecum et non inueni, quero adhuc et non inuenio, quaesiui cum altero et magis implicitus sum, nunc quero a uobis’. From c. 1155–9; see Janssen, Die päpstlichen Legaten, 166; Falkenstein, ‘Lettres et privilèges pontificaux’, 601 n. 75.

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Toil and togetherness in the vineyards of the Lord one connecting the prelates of Laon, Soissons, and Reims, were thus continually reinforced in political, judicial, or liturgical settings. The cumulative effect of their collaboration was, I would argue, twofold. First, it furnished a visible example of pastoral and professional partnership which was in turn supported by textual and oral expressions valuing collective labour. Secondly, it reinforced the collective and individual authority of the diocesan bishops, and became constitutive of their group identity. As stewards of the Lord’s house and fellow toilers with religious men, bishops projected an authority based simultaneously and paradoxically on their humility and willingness to do hard labour, and on their positions as overseers.122 The role of dispensor was one of great responsibility. He, and he alone, was called upon by the divine paterfamilias to manage his estates; and he would have to answer for his management on the day of judgement. This special calling was reserved for the bishop, and the bishop alone. The texts we examined earlier in this chapter thus presented the episcopate both as it was – at least on those occasions, not infrequent, when they acted corporately – and, perhaps more powerfully, as the bishops themselves and their allies perceived it to be: a fraternal body defined by shared traits, prerogatives, and values that distinguished them from other groups. When bishops wrote and read texts that elaborated the pastoral ideals of shared work and companionship, and as they worked together as judges and administrators, they consciously and unconsciously assumed a role as cultural arbiters in a religious and social landscape in which images of apostolic brotherhood and shared labour held a great deal of appeal to laypeople and their fellow clergy. They came to embody labour not in the monastic sense as a form of penance (much as writers like Bernard of Clairvaux might wish it), nor, following literary archetypes, as an act of necessity, drudgery, or debasement, but rather, in the words of 1 Tim. 3, as ‘good work’.123 Timothy’s exhortation to prelates that they should seek office from a desire to do good, rather than for personal gain or honour’s sake, was certainly not novel. One finds it discussed in Gregory’s Liber pastoralis and referenced in the first canon of the papal council held at Rome in 826.124 This sentiment was especially prevalent in the archdiocese of Reims at the turn of the twelfth century, however. The combined ideas about labour and the crucial role of preaching 122 123 124

Compare Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, 95. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, 26. Concilia aevi Karolini, vol. II/2, ed. A. Werminghoff, MGH Concilia (Hanover and Leipzig, 1908), 566–7: ‘Beatissimi Pauli discretione atque ammonitione episcopum consecrari omnino oportet desiderabilem boni operis inreprehensibilem et reliquis optimis apparitionibus quae secuntur’. RP, vol. I, 148–55, and noted in Floryszczak, Die Regula Pastoralis, 119, 326.

307

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 undoubtedly reflected wider social and religious currents, but also confirmed the place of episcopal experience in contemporary discourses about their office and pastoral care. Indeed, one conclusion we may draw from the textual evidence presented here, which echoes the consideration of bishops and social change in chapter 2, is that the prelates of northern France were sensitive to the cultural changes and yearnings around them. Many embraced the changes. If because of their administrative roles they could not precisely fulfil them in practice, then they supported those, like regular canons and monks, who did, and valorized that role in their writings. Moreover, the language of labour and stewardship bolstered their social authority with their flocks and aligned it with their sacramental authority as God’s anointed representatives. As this chapter has argued, textual representation of episcopal collaboration was reflected, at least in part, in the actualities of bishops’ working relationships. While not every bishop in the archdiocese worked as closely together as Josselin and the archbishops of Reims, other prelates, including Milo of Thérouanne and Geoffrey of Châlons, routinely did. A full survey of surviving epistolary evidence would further round out our perceptions of episcopal solidarity. Bishops certainly worked with and wrote to one another in earlier times, but I would argue that the period around 1100 saw bishops engaged in the task of administering their own dioceses and managing conflicts across the archdiocese to an unprecedented degree, reflected in the business of synods and the growing number of papal and interdiocesan delegations. The pace and variety of cultural and religious change demanded that bishops be nimble administrators. While not all were, the practices and representation of collaboration answered both pragmatic administrative needs and reinforced the authority of pontiffs made tenuous by changing times and rising expectations. The proof for this lies in the recollections of third parties, like the Premonstratensian continuator of Sigebert’s Chronica, who looked back on the deaths of Josselin, Milo, and others, and saw the passing of a great age of church leaders.

308

Chapter 10

CONCLUSION

Why did episcopal texts and the prelates themselves place such emphasis on collegiality, labour, and living and preaching by word and example in the decades around 1100? As Carolyn Walker Bynum and others have demonstrated, the period was one in which medieval society witnessed the proliferation of new groups, both religious and secular.1 Emergent groups fashioned themselves and expressed their corporate ideals using biblical and post-biblical models.2 Jesus and the Apostles, John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, Martin of Tours, Gregory the Great, and Augustine and Benedict’s rule-bound religious communities, among others, offered examples of pastoral and communal life for emulation, interpretation, and elaboration. Expressions of episcopal solidarity and brotherhood, with their emphasis on the shared experience of labour and the specialized practice of preaching and its union of words and deeds, flourished in this broader sociocultural context where communities of all kinds were being tested and established. None of the traits examined in this book was the exclusive preserve of bishops, but they came to be associated indelibly with episcopal office and episcopal identities – even if individual prelates did not always display them. Correlation and context do not in themselves explain the changes discussed in this book, however. Many critics saw contemporary bishops as glaringly defective in meeting the expectations and responsibilities of their office. As we have seen, Bernard of Clairvaux was both a tremendous supporter of episcopal authority and a harsh critic of clerical conduct in general, and episcopal conduct specifically. Writing to Pope Innocent II (1130–43) sometime in the early 1130s to defend Bishop 1

2

Bynum, ‘Did the twelfth century discover the individual?’; A. Haverkamp, ‘Leben in Gemeinschaften: alte und neue Formen im 12. Jahrhundert’, in Wieland (ed.), Aufbruch – Wandel – Erneuerung, 11–44. Bynum, ‘Did the twelfth century discover the individual?’, 102–6.

309

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 Atto of Troyes (1122–46), who had sought to impose some form of correction on his clergy, the abbot remarked: The insolence of the clergy, whose mother is the negligence of the bishops, everywhere disturbs the land and troubles the church. The bishops throw what is holy to the dogs, and cast pearls before swine, who turn upon them and trample them underfoot. Deservedly, they must put up with what they foster. They enrich them with the goods of the church, fail to correct their wicked doings and, worn down, have to bear their evils.3

Such trenchant criticism, which was readily voiced by ordinary laypeople as well as high-placed ecclesiastics, may explain why prelates cultivated images of themselves as patresfamiliae, as labourers in the Lord’s vineyard, and as shepherds feeding their flocks with the spiritual food of the word. More broadly, episcopal authority came under considerable pressure in the early twelfth century.4 Challenges to that authority assumed forms both subtle and overt, and came from different directions. Gregory VII sought to reign in episcopal independence, stressing obedience to St Peter as the key attribute expected of the church’s pastors. Eleventh- and twelfth-century theologians and writers like Peter Damian and Hugh of Saint-Victor meanwhile argued that, while the bishop was the highest and most powerful member of the priestly order, he was nevertheless only a priest among priests. Scholastic debates still raging at the time of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) continued to question whether the bishop belonged to a special ordo.5 The canonist Gratian confronted legal ambiguities when he tried to establish the definitional parameters of episcopal office in the second quarter of the twelfth century.6 Uncertainties and debates about episcopal status may owe something to the fact that a clear legal tradition establishing an ordo episcoporum, or college of bishops, never took firm root in the early Middle Ages.7 3

4

5

6 7

Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. VII, 358–9 (no. 152); Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. B. S. James, new edn (Kalamazoo, MI, 1998), no. 158, 228. On Atto of Troyes, see A. Prévost, Le diocèse de Troyes. Histoire et documents (Dijon-Ouges, 1923–1926), vol. I, 77–85. For example, debates about the validity of the sacraments offered by simoniac priests concerned the bishop’s sacramental authority in a broad sense, although the issue here was the validity of the celebrant’s status rather than the sacramental authority of episcopal office as such. See Dereine, ‘Les prédicateurs’, 178–82; Vita [A] Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis, 690–1. A. McDevitt, ‘The episcopate as an order and sacrament on the eve of the high scholastic period’, Franciscan Studies, 20 (1960), 96–148, at 109–11; Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 67. Benson, Bishop-Elect, 45. Y. M.-J. Congar, ‘Notes sur le destin de l’idée de collégialité épiscopale en occident au moyen age (VIIe–XVIe siècles)’, in Y. M.-J. Congar (ed.), La collégialité épiscopale. Histoire et théologie (Paris, 1965), 99–129.

310

Conclusion Other ecclesiological traditions, including the widespread belief that bishops were the successors to Christ’s apostles, furnished contemporaries with a conceptual basis for viewing the episcopate as a corporate body. Hincmar of Reims, for example, conceived of bishops as constituting ‘a single choir’ (omni episcoporum choro), a unity personified in the figure of Peter, whose task it was to pray collectively on their own behalf and on behalf of their flocks.8 Another view held that the bishop was a member of the priestly order exemplified by Peter and his descendants. Hugh of Amiens, a former canon of Amiens, a student of Anselm of Laon, and archbishop of Rouen, wrote in his work Against the Heretics of his Time, or Three Books Concerning the Church and its Ministers that ‘the bishop was the foundation of the church because through the bishop the Church has the Holy Spirit’. Hugh later elided the language of the Petrine privilege and Cyprian of Carthage’s analogy, comparing the bishop to Christ: ‘Peter is in [the church] and [the church] in Peter: the bishop in the church, and the church in the bishop’.9 Language like this, which Hugh raised against unnamed heretics who questioned the clergy’s special privilege as conduits of the Holy Spirit, reinforced that the bishop embodied the community of believers in the image of Peter. Typical of other medieval writers, Hugh stopped short of proposing that there existed a special collegium of bishops or that bishops constituted an order unto themselves. Hugh’s treatise, which he composed after encountering heretics in Armorica, also bears witness to the rise of alternative claims to authority, made by wandering preachers and hermits, new religious communities, communal governments, and even popular mass movements, all of which competed with bishops for attention and adherents. Anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Anthony Cohen have argued that the formation and expression of ideologies and networks of symbols representing collective identities and solidarities often occur when an affinity group’s integrity is threatened, or when social realities no longer correspond to the prevailing ideas used to define the group.10 In other words, groups deploy images and symbols denoting collective identity to reinforce compromised social and authoritative boundaries. The widespread utilization of the language of collaboration, labour, and paternal stewardship in the province of Reims suggests one response – equal parts 8 9

10

Cited in Congar, ‘Notes’, 102–3. Hugh of Amiens, Contra haereticos sui temporis, PL 192, col. 1275, cited in J. M. Joncas, ‘A skein of sacred sevens: Hugh of Amiens on orders and ordination’, in L. Larson-Miller (ed.), Medieval Liturgy: A Book of Essays (New York, 1997), 85–120, at 92. For a comprehensive treatment of Hugh’s works, including the Contra haereticos (composed about 1147), see now Freeburn, Hugh of Amiens and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, esp. ch. 8. Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community, 108–9; Geertz, ‘Ideology as a Cultural System’, 216–19.

311

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 proactive and reactive – to changing social and cultural expectations around authoritative behaviour. The occurence of this symbolic language across the province indicates lines of influence, probably extending from one see to the next. While the written evidence does not quite furnish insurmountable proof of a coordinated episcopal response, the indirect evidence of oral transmission of miracle accounts and other information at synods and assemblies, together with the common practice of issuing charters witnessed by multiple bishops, suggests possible routes by which these themes and images of pastoral office were reproduced. The influence of the see of Reims was considerable, given both the preponderance of its charters utilizing the aforementioned language, and the diffusion, apparently from Reims, of another form of episcopal self-representation: the wax seal. As episcopal seals came into widespread use from the mid-eleventh century – the earliest for which we have evidence dates to 1040, in Reims – they employed a narrow range of images, stressing likeness over variety.11 Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has argued that the likeness the episcopal seal transmitted was not the likeness of the image to its author (or, to put it another way, of the sign to its signifier), but of likeness to a transpersonal, ‘episcopal’ identity rooted in the material and symbolic signs of the bishop’s office.12 Individual or personal characteristics of bishops were largely absent from their seals, which depicted the prelates in their regalia, holding accoutrements of office such as their crozier, and making gestures, like raising a hand in blessing, reflective of their religious function.13 Seals expressed perfectly what I have termed the bishop’s sacral or official authority. At the same time, at the turn of the twelfth century medieval writers returned over and over again to the notion that outward representations of office and authority were rarely sufficient in themselves, but should be harmonized and augmented by one’s inward, personal attributes. Gregory the Great stressed this ideal in his widely read Liber pastoralis. To take one example from this influential text, Gregory compared the priest’s garb worn by Aaron to the inward virtues the prelate should cultivate. Of Aaron’s pectoral, or decorative breastplate – medieval writers referred to it as the rationale – which displayed the power of reason upon his chest, Gregory asserted that the priestly heart (sacerdotale cor) it 11 12

13

See chapter 5, 172–3. Bedos-Rezak, ‘The bishop makes an impression’; and ‘Medieval identity: a sign and a concept’; T. E. A. Dale, ‘The individual, the resurrected body, and romanesque portraiture: the tomb of Rudolf von Schwaben in Merseberg’, Speculum 77 (2002), 707–44, at 717–22. Bedos-Rezak, ‘The bishop makes an impression’, 140–3, 148–50. For Bedos-Rezak, the seal’s impersonal likeness of the bishop came to replace his personal representation in, chiefly, his written correspondence, a conclusion with which I do not agree.

312

Conclusion covers should not be open to whim or vice, but should discern good and evil through staid judgement.14 The rationale emerged as a favoured form of episcopal vestment in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, perhaps, Maureen Miller has argued, as a means of distinguishing the special authority and role of bishops from other priests. Gregory’s exegesis of priestly vestments in the late sixth century foreshadowed a proliferation of works on clerical clothing, which lent themselves to meditation on clerical virtues, in the twelfth. In documents, seals, and priestly clothing, bishops collectively embodied and displayed their special status and authority. Gregory also described the care of souls as ‘the art of arts’; as an art, it depended upon the individual pastor to perfect its techniques and enact the lessons he wished to impart. Through the narratives of vitae and gesta, their letters, and even the arengae of their charters, bishops described their individual responsibility to preach and to labour on behalf of others. Many of the texts we have reviewed here, especially those featured in the case studies of Reims, Cambrai, and Amiens, offered highly specific contextualizations of the prelate’s personal, socially based authority. Individual prelates exercised their power and authority in ways specific to the communities in which they lived. Their authority was tied to regional histories, traditions, and cults; it was idiosyncratic in form because it was conditioned by the expectations of local audiences; determined by local institutional relationships; and informed by the contours of local religious praxis. The precise features of the bishop’s social authority therefore varied from diocese to diocese. To use a linguistic metaphor, while bishops employed a common language pairing words with deeds to represent their office, they also spoke in dialects inflected through the specific experiences and histories of their communities. Collective and transregional expressions of collegiality did not obviate the need for prelates to address local concerns with locally meaningful images of episcopal authority. Rather than comprising separate identities, the bishop’s official and social/charismatic authority were linked, the latter mutually reinforcing and aligning the individual prelate’s inner and outer self, the former joining him to his fellow prelates. These observations raise other considerations for understanding episcopal identity in this period. The first is that representations of episcopal authority and sodalities, while often parallel or analogous to the collective identities expressed by other groups, did not necessarily situate bishops antagonistically against them. Regional episcopal solidarities, whether expressed symbolically, textually, or materially, established bishops as a 14

RP, vol. I, 176–7. On the rationale, see Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 64–76.

313

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 group by incorporating, not rejecting, many of the symbols and images employed by other groups. Individual bishops and their biographers, who came from different religious and political milieux, located common facets of episcopal identity around the pastor’s sacramental status and official duties, and drew inspiration from shared textual and educational traditions. From these foundations, they then elaborated upon the individual’s particular qualities, skills, and experiences.15 This leads to a second point, which is that we should not leap to the conclusion that the elaboration and expression of episcopal identities and authority somehow signal a crisis of belief in the bishop’s authority or communal necessity. As the public’s attention concerning the nature of legitimate authority shifted its focus to individual comportment, the prelate’s behaviour came to speak for the imposing power of his ex officio authority. His speech and actions were weighed against the words and deeds of other charismatic figures, or against the corporate and legal authority of nascent institutions like communes, as well as against the ideals of episcopal office itself. Laypeople contested and at times rebuffed their prelate’s authority, often in the hopes that his behaviour might be corrected. It is against this background that narrative representations of episcopal toil, preaching, and solidarity should be viewed. Such ideals were modelled on traditional sources, chiefly biblical, while finding resonance with contemporary religious practices, beliefs, and ambitions. In espousing these images, bishops showed they were responsive to shifting notions of authority that placed emphasis on the demonstration of merit through work, preaching, emulation of the apostolic life, and fraternal collaboration. The proliferation of such images indicates that bishops were concerned to pronounce and perform those values to their audiences. Although notions of episcopal collegiality endured beyond the mid-twelfth century, their emphasis and the language used to express that collegiality changed. The cohort of bishops in northwestern Europe and elsewhere grew increasingly taxed with administrative and legal matters; they grew more distant, perhaps, from their parishioners. The language and appearance of their charters reflect these changes. As chanceries produced ever more documents, preambles and arengae, the primary places where episcopal ideology and creativity were expressed, disappeared.16 In his survey of preambular themes in bishops’ charters, Joseph Avril noted a diminishment in expressions of 15 16

See Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community, 74–5. See, for example, CEA, li; A. Rinckenbach (ed.), ‘Les chartes des évêques de Noyon, 1148–1221. Etude diplomatique et édition’, 3 vols., unpublished thesis, École nationale des chartes (1991), vol. I, 72–4.

314

Conclusion pastoral care (cura pastoralis) and a corresponding rise in references to the bishop’s administratio and juridical authority.17 These changes became pronounced after 1150. Visual evidence furnished by the lower windows of the cathedral choir at Reims opens another perspective on to the changes detectable in the charters. An iconographic programme instituted by Archbishop Henry of Braine (1227–40) in the 1230s depicts the twelve bishops of the archdiocese (the ‘episcopal college’) surmounted by images of the apostles. Following the Reims liturgy, they include Barnabas the companion of Paul, Matthias, and the non-apostles Mark and Luke.18 The portrayal of the bishops’ apostolic descent – complete with the archbishop arranged beneath the image of Christ – echoes the literary themes of a century before.19 But the organization and elevation of the windows, far above the heads of parishioners, emphasize the hieratic qualities of episcopal authority as much as apostolic inclusiveness. The windows were placed to reflect the archdiocesan bishops in their role as legislators and administrators of church business. The arrangement of the bishops in the windows mirrored their seating positions during provincial synods, when the archbishop of Reims was surrounded by his suffragans, arranged according to the dignity of their dioceses. Twice a year the prelates took their places beneath those windows, and, as Patrick Demouy has argued, the setting would have conveyed to viewers that salvation lay in observance of church law – not in the living, charismatic example of the pastor.20 That bishops embraced an increasingly juridical corporate identity was further reflected in the punishments meted out to townspeople who revolted against episcopal authority in the thirteenth century. Bishops punished town representatives by requiring them to carry out penitential processions, which they performed not only before the offended church, but at other cathedrals in the province. For example, a long-simmering conflict between the bishops of Cambrai and the citizens over the latter’s privileges and the exempt status of the cathedral clergy erupted in 1223 into a full-fledged riot. During the dispute, the townspeople threatened the safety of the canons, who quickly fled the town and suspended divine offices. The commune eventually sought to reconcile with the canons,

17 18

19

20

Avril, ‘La fonction épiscopale’, 129–30. Demouy, ‘Synodes diocésains’, 105–6. Most, but not all, of the bishops were depicted next to representations of their churches. The full complement of Christ and the twelve disciples could not be perfectly conformed to the twelve dioceses of the province; ibid., 105–6. Ibid., 107.

315

Bishops, authority and community in northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 but the bishop imposed harsh conditions: fifty citizens had to visit five cathedrals in the region in groups of ten, processing in penitential habit in sight of each one, before being publicly disciplined. The bishop’s demand, which the people executed, was then renewed at Cambrai. The delegates disavowed their conduct from the previous years, doing so first before the city’s maison de paix (town hall), and again in the cathedral’s interior. They ultimately paid a fine of 200 livres in reparations.21 Similar processions, assigned by the archbishop of Reims, were carried out by townspeople guilty of revolting in 1235 over the cost of that cathedral’s construction. In 1237, in addition to paying hefty reparations, the citizens undertook a series of penitential processions in Reims, in the cathedral cities of the archdiocese, and in select additional churches as well.22 Henry of Braine, architect of the episcopal choirwindow scheme in the cathedral, orchestrated the citizens’ penance. Indeed, collective action on the part of the province’s bishops and cathedral chapters, which included lobbying the pope and king to respond to incidences of communal violence against local churches and clerical communities, became increasingly common.23 These examples point towards a fundamental shift away from a collaborative model of pastoral care, communicated through the prelate’s personal example, to a more stratified and hieratic clergy, one that saw increasingly powerful municipal institutions as a collective threat to its legal standing and privileges. Successful ecclesiastical governance came to depend on the administrative skills of bishops, whose pastoralism took the form of competency in institutional management and the discipline and judgement of souls.24 There were exceptions, but whereas five bishops in the archdiocese around 1100 generated local cults and were revered for their sanctity, and several more inspired extended accounts of their deeds, no prelates were sainted in the century between 1150–1250. Later bishops instead gained fame and sometimes notoriety as royal courtiers, like the chancellors Hugh of Champfleury, bishop of Soissons (1159–75), and Guérin of Senlis (1214–27); or as crusaders, like the battling bishop of

21 22

23

24

The events are recounted by Platelle, ‘Les luttes communales’, 51–4. B. Abou-El-Haj, ‘The urban setting for late medieval church building: Reims and its cathedral between 1210 and 1240’, Art History, 11 (1988), 17–41, at 22. At Saint-Quentin in Picardy, town officials performed public penance and were sent on pilgrimage to Rome by the clergy following the death of a canon in 1213; see on this E. M. Shortell, ‘Dismembering Saint Quentin: Gothic architecture and the display of relics’, Gesta, 36 (1997), 32–47, at 34–6, 45 nn. 22 and 24. J. Denton, ‘The Second Uprising at Laon and its Aftermath, 1295–1298’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 72 (1990), 79–92, at 80–8. See, for example, the studies of Bouchard, Spirituality and Administration; Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat, 176–8.

316

Conclusion Beauvais, Philip of Dreux (1175–1217); or they achieved enhanced status as peers of the French crown.25 I have argued throughout this study that bishops reflected and influenced the wider social and cultural transformations to which they were witness. It is no longer possible to relegate them to a corner of institutional history and to earlier historiographical categories that paint them as a group apart, aloof, and resistant if not hostile to wider cultural conceptions and expectations of their authority and their office. Bishops could, and did, self-consciously appropriate images of community that had widespread social value around the turn of the twelfth century. In exploring the narratives they wrote about themselves or which were dedicated to them, and by examining them collectively across one archdiocese, we gain crucial insight into the corporate aspects of episcopal identity and the measures prelates took to present their authority to society at large. We have also seen how each diocese possessed a unique blend of institutions, history, and social memories which its prelates navigated, and with which they engaged in order to contextualize and extend their individual authority. From this evidence, the bishop of the years around 1100 in northern France emerges vividly as an integral part of contemporary culture, open to change and adaptation; a reflection of, and model for, the society he ruled. 25

The six episcopal peers were the bishops of Reims, Laon, Beauvais, Noyon, Châlons, and Langres. See Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes, 241–4; B. Guillemain, ‘Philippe Auguste et l’épiscopat’, in R.-H. Bautier (ed.), La France de Philippe Auguste, le temps des mutations (Paris, 1982), 365–84.

317

APPENDIX: COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE BISHOPS OF REIMS, SOISSONS, AND LAON, 1126–1151

key a. = ante; p. = post A = Amiens; Ar = Arras; Au = Autun; Av = Avranches; Ax = Auxerre; B = Beauvais; Bd = Bordeaux; Bo = Bourges; By = Bayeux; C = Cambrai; Cant = Canterbury; Ch = Châlons-sur-Marne; Cha = Chartres; Cl = Clermont; Cou = Coutances; K = king; L = Laon; Ln = Langres; Ly = Lyon; Lx = Lisieux; M = Meaux; N = Noyon(-Tournai); O = Orléans; P = Paris; PL = papal legate; R = Reims; Rn = Rennes; Ro = Rouen; S = Soissons; Se = Senlis; Smo = Saint-Malo; Sn = Sens; Ss = Sées; T = Thérouanne; To = Tours; Tn = Tournai; Tr = Troyes; V = Vannes; Bernard = Bernard of Clairvaux; Suger = Suger of Saint-Denis Letters in brackets indicate that the event involved the bishop in question, though he was not necessarily present.

318

DATE

PLACE

SOURCE

BISHOPS

OCCASION

1126, p. 18 Oct. – 1127 1127, a. 3 Aug. – 1128

Reims

AJ, no. 5, 7

R, S, Bernard

Reims

R, S

1128, 13 Jan.

Troyes

Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 207, 545–6; AJ, no. 6, 7–8; BNF latin 17043, 25 [with date of 1128] AJ, no. 7, 8; Pontal, Les conciles, 300–1

Bishop of Soissons mediates betw. people and archbishop of Reims Charter of Renaud for abbey of St-Maurice of Reims

1128, a. 10 May

Soissons

AJ, no. 8, 9

R, S, L, B, Ch, Sn, P, T, M, O, Cha, Ax, PL, Bernard S, L, Bernard

Council of Troyes; Templars established, dispute between king and Bishop Stephen of Paris resolved

Episcopal synod treating Templars and abbey of St-Jean of Laon 1128, 10 May Arras RAL, vol. II, no. 263, 62; GC vol. X, R, S, L, B, N, Ar, A, T, Se, Royal council to address succession crisis in Flanders and Instr., cols. 192–3; Gousset, Les K, PL other business actes, vol. II, 200; AJ, no. 10, 10 1128, 10 June Janville RAL, vol. II, no. 266, 64 n. 1; AJ, R, S, L, N, Cha, P, O, M, Louis confirms rights of St-Martin-des-Champs no. 14, 13 Suger 1128, 11–17 June Reims AJ, no. 11, 11 R, S, Bernard Consecration of abbot of St-Martin of Épernay 1128, 1 Aug. Reims AJ, nos. 15–16, 14; GC vol. IX, cols. R, S, L, N, B, Cha, Sn, P, Council convened at Reims by papal legate; confirms 187 and 357; Pontal, Les M, Tr, O, PL acts done at Arras (1128) conciles, 302 1128, Oct. Rouen Pontal, Les conciles, 303 S, PL, Cha, Av, By, Cou, Council of Rouen Lx, Ss 1129, 2 Feb. Châlons-surd’Herbomez, Cart. de l’abbaye de R + suffragans, PL, Council rules on dispute betw. bishop of Verdun and Marne Gorze, no. 153, 273–5; Pontal, Les Bernard St-Vannes conciles, 304 1129, 2 Feb.–14 Paris RAL, vol. II, no. 281, 105; AJ, no. R, S, L, N, P, Tr, Bo, O, Louis confirms rights of St-Denis over Argenteuil Apr. 21, 18; Pontal, Les conciles, 304–5 Ln, Cl, Cha, Au, K, Suger, PL

(cont.) DATE 1129, 14 Apr. 1129, 14 Apr.– Oct. 1130, a. 14 Apr. 1130 1130

PLACE

SOURCE

RAL, vol. II, no. 281, 100–6; AJ, nos. 22–4, 18–19 Chalon (villa, Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 212, dioc. 558–60; AA, vol. I/1, 285–7 Reims) s.l. [Laon RAL, vol. II, no. 292, 132–4 /Châlons?] Igny and Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 219, Reims 575–9; AJ, nos. 27–8, 20–1 Foigny AEL, no. 128, 214–15 Reims

BISHOPS

R, S, L, N, P, Tr, Bo, O, Coronation of Philip at Reims; Louis issues charter for Ln, Cl, Cha, Au, K, PL St-Denis over the abbey of Argenteuil R, L Issue charter settling claims of Gerard of Roucy to lands of St-Thierry of Reims R, S, L, N, K R, S, Ursio, bishop-elect of Verdun, Bernard R, L, Cha, Bernard

AEL, no. 136, 225; AA, vol. I/1, 284 R, L (mention) 1130 Reims AEL, no. 136, 225; Pontal, Les (Remis conventus conciles, 309 episcoporum) 1130, 11 Sept. – Étampes Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, no. 460, R, Sn, To, Bo + suffragans, 24 Oct. 214–15 Suger, Bernard, K 1127, p. 16 Oct.– Reims Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 220, R, S, L, N, B, A 1130 580–2 1131, 12–13 Laon AEL, no. 136, 224; AA, vol. I/1, 284 L, [R], Pope Innocent II, Mar. (mention) presentibus aliis episcopis et cardinalibus 1131, p. 3 Aug. Reims Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 222, R, S 585; AJ, no. 37, 25 1131, 18–25 Oct. Reims AJ, no. 34, 24; JL, no. 7488; R, S, L, Se, Cha, P, K, Somerville, ‘The canons of Reims Pope Innocent II, and (1131)’ many others 1131, 2 Nov. R, S, Trier, PL Reims AJ, no. 36, 25 1132, after Oct. Reims Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 224, R, S, T 589–91; GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 400; AJ, no. 41, 27 1132 Gland/ Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 225, R, S, L Reims 592–4; AJ, no. 43, 28; 1133, 14 May Soissons RAL, vol. II, no. 335, 209; AD Aisne K, coram archiepiscopis et H 692, fos. 12 v–13 v episcopis 1133, 3 Aug.–15 Reims Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 227, R, S, Ch, Ar, T Oct. 598–600 1133, a. Oct. Reims Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 229, R, S, L, Ch, Ar, T, C 603–5 1134, p. 3 Aug. Reims Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, R, S nos. 232–3, 608–13 1134 Reims BNF latin 17034, 27 R, S 1134 s.l. [Reims?] GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 113 R, S 1134 Reims GPC, 167–8 R + suffragans 1134 Ourscamp AJ, no. 58, 38; Chron. Sig. Gembl., R, S, + 6 other bishops Auc. Aquicinense, 395 (cf. BNF latin 17043, 29) 1135, a. 14 Feb. s.l. [Reims?] AJ, no. 60, 39–40; GC, vol. X, Instr., R, S col. 113. 1135, 19 June s.l. PUF, vol. VII, no. 47, 295–6 R, S, L, Ch 1130

Pont-Varie

1135, a. 3 Aug.

Reims

1135, p. 3 Aug. 1135

Reims s.l.

Beaurain, Cart. de l’abbaye de Selincourt, no. 21, 69; Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 235, 623–6 AJ, no. 66, 42–3 AJ, no. 71, 46–7

OCCASION

R, S, Ch, Ar, T, [A]

R, S R, S

King confirms donations recently given to monastery of Ourscamp Dedication and endowment of Igny Thomas of Marle, his wife and son exempt Foigny of wionage on its goods Bishops attempt to settle grievance of St-Thierry re: Hugh of Roucy Bishops pass judgement on Hugh of Roucy and his vicomte Royal council to discuss Anacletian schism Approve accord between St-Vaast of Arras and St-Nicolas-au-Bois Dispute betw. St-Thierry and Hugh of Roucy addressed

Donation confirmed to abbey of Cuissy Papal council: Anaclet and Conrad excommunicated; Ursio of Verdun dethroned; Louis VII consecrated Dispute settled between Suger and St-Michel of Verdun Archbishop confirms privileges of St-Wulmar of Boulogne Confirm donation to Cuissy Confirmation of Louis VI of foundation of Longpont (last full royal assembly under Louis VI) Bishops confirm donation to Mont-St-Eloi Confirmation of the goods of St-Autbert of Cambrai Confirm two charters making donations to Cuissy Confirm donation on behalf of Marmoutier Foundation of Val-Chrétien Judgement of Liétard of Cambrai Renaud consecrates abbey church of Ourscamp (dioc. Noyon) Confirm donation of fief Riencourt for use of Premonstratensians Innocent II orders bishops to observe excommunication of Hugh of Roucy Provincial council; charter of Renaud confirming possessions of Selincourt Confirm privileges of Igny Donation to St-Martin of Épernay

(cont.) DATE

PLACE

SOURCE

BISHOPS

OCCASION

1136

Soissons

R, S, [B]

Bishops resolve dispute between St-Quentin and St-Symphorien of Beauvais Synod at Reims; Renaud mediates dispute between Alvisius of Arras and the abbot of Blangy Renaud confirms donation to St-Feuillien de Roeulx

1137–1138, 13 Jan.

s.l.

AJ, no. 77, 49; Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 240, 638–40 AJ, no. 84, 54; Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 242, 645–6 Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 243, 647–8 AJ, no. 82, 53; BNF Coll. Picardie 235, fo. 88r–v AEL, no. 179, 278–9

1138, 3 July – 1 Aug. 1138, a. 1 Aug.

Reims

AJ, nos. 91–2, 57–8

R, S, T, Ar [Ch, Ro]

Reims

R, S, Ar

1138

Laon

Demouy, AAR, vol. II/2, no. 245, 652 AJ, no. 97, 61; AEL, no. 187, 288–9

s.l.

AJ, no. 100, 62

S, Ch, Ar, Cha [R]

1137, a. 1 Aug.

Reims

1137, 1 Aug.– Oct. 1137, a. 25 Dec.

Reims

1131 – 1139, a. 13 Jan. 1140, p. 14 July

s.l.

R, S, L, Ch, T, Ar R, L, Ch S, L, N R, S, L

S, L

Charter of Josselin confirming donation of Hadvidis of Attichy to Prémontré Bartholomew suspends sentence of excommunication against Enguerrand II of Coucy and his provost; the former recognizes the rights of the abbey of St-Jean of Laon Synod at Reims; Pope Innocent II orders prelates to resolve dispute betw. bishop of Arras and St-Vaast Renaud concedes altar to St-Thierry of Reims Bishops request restitution of prebends to monks of Nogent-sous-Coucy Bishops rule on annual cens of St-Remi to church of Reims Suger endows abbey of St-Denis

Suger, Oeuvres, vol. II, 229–57; AJ, R, S, B, T, A, Cha, To, no. 117, 71–2 Suger 1140, p. 1 Aug. Reims AJ, no. 121, 74 R, S Consecration of new archbishop of Reims 1140, p. 1 Aug. Reims AJ, no. 122, 74–5 R, S, L, Ch Confirm donation to St-Remi of Reims 1141, 19 May Soissons AJ, no. 131, 80–1 R, S Translation of relics of saints Crépin and Crépinien 1141, 26 May–2 Sens Mews, ‘The Council of Sens (1141)’; R, S, Ch, Ar, Sn, Cha, O, Ecclesiastical council condemns teachings of Peter June GC, vol. IX, col. 897; AJ, Tr, M, Ax + bishops of Abelard nos. 114–15, 70–1 prov. of Reims 1141, a. 29 Mar./ s.l. [Soissons] AJ, no. 128, 78–9; Newman, R, S, N Tribune convened to determine inheritance of county of 31 July Seigneurs de Nesle, vol. II, no. 6, Soissons 29–33 1141, a. 1 Aug. Reims AJ, no. 132, 81; Pontal, Les conciles, R, S, T, A, Ar, Ch, C Provincial council; confirmation of goods of St-Pierre of 319; Mansi, vol. XXI, cols. 573–4 Cassel 1141, 9 Oct. [alt. St-Denis Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 68–9 R, S, B, Se, M, Ro, Ly, Authentification of Charles the Bald’s relics at St-Denis 1140] To, Rn, Smo, V, Suger 1141 (Nov.) Laon AEL, no. 218, 325–6; AJ, no. 138, 84 S, L Resolve dispute between abbots of Nogent and Prémontré 1141 Reims BM Amiens 781, fo. 1r–v R, S, T, A Confirmation charter for St-Jean of Amiens 1141 Disia Higounet et al., Grand Cart. de La R, S Thibaud of Blois confirms donations made in favour of Sauve-Majeure, no. 1286, 738–9 Belval, priory of Sauve-Majeure 1142 p. 1 Aug. Reims CEA, no. 77, 92; AJ, no. 140, 85–6; R, S, L, N, A, Ar Confirm foundation of La Chartreuse of Mont-Dieu; GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 44; confer three altars on Etrun Gousset, Les actes, vol. II, 225–6 1142, p. 1 Aug. Reims AJ, no. 141, 86–7 R, S, Ch Witness act for St-Thierry; resolve dispute betw. St-Thierry and Ste-Marie of Reims 1142, p. 18 Oct. s.l. AJ, no. 144, 88 R, S, Se Confirm donation to St-Crépin-en-Chaie 1142 (1143) s.l. AJ, no. 145, 88; Herman of Tournai, R, S, L Resolve dispute between abbeys of Cuissy and Vauclerc Les miracles, 232 1143, a. 21 June Reims Cart. de St-Nicaise de Reims, ed. R, S, Ch, Bernard Charter of Archbishop Samson, remitting to St-Nicaise Cossé-Durlin, 202–3; AJ, no. 147, the church of Ste-Marie of Château-Porcien 89–90 1143, p. 1 Aug. Reims AEL, no. 233, 342–3; AJ, no. 151, R, S, L Confirm accord betw. St-Thierry of Reims and Levulf, 91–2 ‘viscount’ of Trigny 1143, Aug.– [St-Denis] Suger, Oeuvres, vol. II, 284–5; AJ, R, S, C, Bernard [Suger] Charter ceding church to St-Denis 1144, 25 Mar. no. 161, 97 St-Denis

(cont.) DATE

PLACE

SOURCE

BISHOPS

1144, Mar.

PUF, vol. VIII, no. 21, 181–2

R, S, Ax, P

1144, a. 2 June 1144, 11–14 June

Froidefontaine Reims St-Denis

1144, c. 14 June 1144, p. 1 Aug.

[St-Denis] Reims

AJ, no. 161, 97 AJ, no. 164, 98–9

1144

[Reims?]

AJ, no. 165, p. 99

1144

Mont-Dieu

GC, vol. X, col. 1547; AJ, no. 166, 99 AJ, nos. 168–9, 100–1

1144, p. 12 Mar.–1145, a. 1 Mar.; 1145, 29 Apr. 1145, 15 Feb.–1 Aug. 1145, 29 Apr. 1145, a. 1 Aug. 1145, 25 Dec.

s.l.

Reims s.l. Reims Bourges

1145

Reims

1145 1145 1145

Reims Noyon Soissons

1145 1145

Laon s.l.

1146 1146 1146, 1 Sept.– 1147, 19 Apr. 1140–1146 1147, 11 Apr.

1147 1147, 25 Mar. – 1148, 25 Mar. 1148, 21 Mar. 1148, 14 Apr. 1148, 14 and 23 Apr.

1148, p. 1 Aug.

Arras Laon Reims Mouzon Paris

Reims Reims Reims s.l. Reims / BrienneleChâteau Reims

AJ, no. 159, 95–6 AJ, no. 160, 96–7

AJ, no. 175, 103; PUN, vol. II, no. 53, 167–8 AJ, no. 169, 100–1

OCCASION

Resolve dispute between St-Victor of Paris and St-Martin-des-Champs R, S, L Resolve dispute betw. St-Corneille and Hugh of Roucy R, S, N, B, Ch, T, Ar, Se, Consecration of apse and choir of St-Denis Sn, P, O, M, Cha, Ro, Bd, Ax, Cant, K, Suger R, S, C, Suger, Bernard Bishop of Cambrai grants St-Denis church of Vertigneul R, S, L, Ch, C Confirm charter for St-Remi concerning milling and oven-use R, S Accord betw. abbot of Molesme and archbishop of Reims R, S, T Consecration of Chartreuse Mont-Dieu R, S [T, Ar]

Bishops of Reims and Soissons write to pope seeking to resolve conflict betw. bishop of Arras and St-Nicolasau-Bois

R, S, [C]

Resolve dispute betw. St-Saulve and St-Jean of Valenciennces Eugenius III writes bishop of Laon re: dispute betw. bishop of Arras and St-Nicolas-au-Bois Confirm donation to Igny Coronation of Louis VII and general assembly of kingdom Charter confirming possessions of St-Acheul

S, L, T, [Ar]

AJ, no. 171, 101 R, S Mansi, vol. XXI, cols. 666–7; AJ, R, S, K + fellow suffragans nos. 183–4, 106–7 of Reims HSAA, no. 7, 494; BL Add. 15604, R, S, L, Ch, N, B, A fo. 7r BNF nouv. acq. lat. 2309, fo. 4 R, S, L Charter of composition between Vauclair and Cuissy AJ, no. 177, 104 R, S Confirm donation to Longpont AEL, no. 268, 381–2; AJ, no. 178, R, S, L, Suger Resolve dispute betw. Suger of St-Denis and Hugh of 104–5 Roucy AEL, no. 256, 370–1 R, L, A Resolve dispute betw. St-Jean and St-Vincent of Laon Uruszczak, ‘Les juges délégués’, R, S, T Judgement on controversy between Sisla matrona and 34 n. 49 St-Remi CEA, no. 87, 102 R, S, T, Ar, Bernard Witness charter conceding altar to St-Aubert of Cambrai AEL, 3, no. 262, 461–71 R, L Confirm pancarte for Vauclair AEL, no. 276, 394–5 R, L Confirm donation of lands to St-Thierry of Reims AJ, no. 192, 111 R, S Renewal of donation for Carthusians of Mont-Dieu Otto of Freising, Deeds of Frederick R, S, pope + many others Council presided by Eugenius III; examination of Barbarossa, I.52–7, 88–95; AJ, teachings of Gilbert de la Porée no. 195, 112–13 AJ, no. 197, 114 R, S Donation to Chartreuse of Mont-Dieu Laurent, Cart. de l’abbaye de Molesme, R, S Charter for Molesme vol. II, no. 553, 448 Pontal, Les conciles, 328–33; AJ, R, S, T, pope + many Council convened by Pope Eugenius III no. 202, 116–17 others AJ, no. 204, 118 R, S, L, + 21 others Eugenius III sends letter urging named bishops to observe privilege of Marmoutier PUF, vol. VII, no. 66, 326–7; AJ, R, S, L + many others Eugenius III sends letters ordering bishops to resolve no. 204, 118 various disputes

AJ, no. 206, 119; Gousset, Les actes, vol. II, 238–9

R, S, L, C

Charter conceding leprosarium to St-Quentin-en-l’Isle

(cont.) DATE

PLACE

SOURCE

BISHOPS

OCCASION

1148, p. 1 Aug.

Reims

R, S

Charter for St-Lucien of Beauvais

1148

Reims

BNF Coll. Picardie 111, fo. 10; AJ, no. 206*, 119 AJ, no. 207, 120–1

R, S, T, A

1148

Reims

AEL, no. 297, 418–19

R, L

1148

Reims

GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 45

R, L

1148 1149, Mar. 1149, 8 May

Reims? Crépy Soissons

BNF lat. 17043, 35 (notice) AJ, no. 210, 122–3 PL 186:1386–8 (nos. 54 and 58)

R, S R, S R + suffragans, Suger

1149, 21 May

AJ, no. 212, 123–4

R, S, N, T, Tn, C

1149, 26 May 1149, 29 May 1149 1150, p. 1 Aug.

‘Specula sancti Remigii’ Vaucelles Hasnon Reims Reims

Resolve dispute between St-Vincent and St-Martin of Laon Confirm charter for St-Thierry of Reims re: viscounty of Trigny Witness charter of Hugh of Roucy establishing Cistercian abbey of Val-le-Roi Confirm donation to St-Martin-des-Champs Bishops visit Raoul of Vermandois on deathbed Assembly convoked by Suger and Samson to address affairs of realm Resolve dispute between Baldwin IV of Mons and Sybille of Flanders

R, S, T, Tn R, S, N, T, Tn, C R, S, N, T, Tn R, S, Se (N), Suger

1150 1151

s.l. Puisieulx

AJ, no. 211, 123 AJ, no. 213, 124 AJ, no. 214, 125 AJ, no. 222, 129; GC, vol. X, Instr., col. 380; PL 186:1391–2 (no. 86) AET, no. 17, 36–8 Demouy, Genèse d’une cathédrale, 656

1151

Reims

d’Herbomez, Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin, no. 73, 77

R, S, N, T, Tn, A

R, S, N, T, Tn, A R, L, N, Tn, C

Consecration of Notre-Dame of Vaucelles Consecration of St-Pierre of Hasnon Confirm donation for St-Lucien of Beauvais Resolve dispute betw. bishop of Noyon and count of Vermandois Confirm possessions of St-Pierre of Ghent Establishes accord between abbeys of St-Feuillien and Villers-la-Ville Resolve dispute between St-Martin and St-Vincent of Laon

BIBLIOGRAPHY

manuscript sources AD Aisne H 455 H 692 AD Somme H (02) 4 Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale Ms. 19 Ms. 46 Ms. 154 Ms. 781 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale Ms. 7460 Ms. 8974–5 Châlons-en-Champagne, Bibliothèque municipale Ms. 47 Ms. 48 Douai, Bibliothèque municipale 271 London, British Library Ms. Add. 17004 Montpellier, Bibliothèque interuniversitaire (Section médecine) H 280 Montpellier, Faculté de Médecine, Ms. 360 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal Ms. 102 Ms. 3870 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Coll. Picardie 111 Coll. Picardie 234 Coll. Picardie 235 Coll. Picardie 238 Coll. Picardie 291 lat. 1259 lat. 2946

327

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366

INDEX

Abbeville, 131 Abel, archbishop of Reims, 194 Achard, archdeacon of Thérouanne, 292 Acius and Aciolus, Sts, 237, 240, 242 Actus pontificum Cenomannis, 159, 162, 169 Adalbero, archbishop of Reims, 54–5, 155, 157–8, 164, 180, 182 Adam, abbot of Saint-André of Cateau-Cambrésis, 298 Adam, castellan of Amiens, 222, 230, 250 Adela, countess of Blois, 79 Adela, countess of Flanders, 188, 203 Adelman of Liège, 133 Afflighem, abbey of, 80–1 Agnes, German empress, 203, 205 agricultural labour, metaphors of, 283–4, 286, 291, 297–9 Aibert of Crespin, 80, 89, 94–5 Aimon, archbishop of Bourges, 161 Aimoin of Fleury, 156 Aire-sur-Lys, 105 Alberic, schoolmaster of Reims and bishop-elect of Châlons, 47, 300–2 Alberic of Ostia, papal legate, 304 Alberic of Troisfontaines, 195 Albero I, bishop of Liège, 82 Albert, abbot of Saint-Pierre of Hasnon, 148 Alexander II, pope, 164, 167–8 Alulf of Mortagne, canon of Tournai, 43 Alulf Osmont, dean of Tournai, 43 Alvisius, bishop of Arras, 25, 94, 105, 132, 265, 289, 300, 305 Amalric, canon of Reims, 164 Amandus of Castello, 48, 270, 281 Ambrose of Milan, 50, 262 De officiis, 262, 266 Amiens, 23, 55, 97, 105, 150, 222–56, 313 capitular library, 49–50 castellanal family of, 229–30, 250–1

cathedral chapter, 41–2, 64, 225, 227, 230, 232–3, 235, 242, 244, 252, 254, 267–8 cathedral of Sainte-Marie et Saint-Firmin, 226, 234 citizens of, 254 commune of, 222, 225, 232, 248, 254–5 diocese of, 32–5, 145, 225 Amiens, bishops of, 224, see Enguerran; Firmin; Firmin the Confessor; Fulk I; Fulk II; Fulk III; Gervin; Godfrey; Guérin; Gui of Ponthieu; Honoratus; Raoul; Richard of Gerberoy; Rorico; Salvius; Thibaud Briton; Thierry Amiens-Valois, counts of, 33, 229, 232 Anchin, abbey of, 80, 86, 94, 117, 132, 143, 201, 214, 234, 263, 300 Andrew, St, 213, 220 Angilbert, St, 247 Anjou, 32, 34, 36, 159 Anna of Kiev, queen of France, 187, 202, 205–6 Annales sancti Dionysii Remenses, 165–8 Annals of Saint-Vaast, 20 Ansculf, bishop of Soissons, 91 Ansegisus, canon of Reims, 168 Ansellus, bishop of Beauvais, 119, 136, 138 Anselm, abbot of Havelberg, 91 Anselm, abbot of Saint-Vincent of Laon, 298 Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 73, 113, 271, 280 Anselm, schoolmaster of Laon, 80, 302, 311 Anselm II, bishop of Lucca, 17 Anselm of Gembloux, 98 Anselm of Ribemont, 111, 201 Anselm of Saint-Remi, 58, 125, 169 Anskar, archbishop of Hamburg, 184 Antioch, 126 Antwerp, 83, 89, 91–2 Apollinaris, St, 179 Apostles, 315

367

Index apostolic life, 5, 68, 80–1, 86, 90, 92, 271, 284 Aquitaine, 42 Arnulf, archbishop of Reims, 158 Arnulf, St, bishop of Soissons, 36, 82, 265–6 Arnulf, canon and chaplain of Cambrai, 60 Arnulf I, count of Flanders, 185 Arnulf of Metz, St, relics of, 54 Arras, 18, 20, 23, 32, 52, 54–5, 66, 77, 98, 101, 115, 126, 146, 173, 296 cathedral chapter, 117, 123, 145–6, 149, 214 cathedral of Notre-Dame, 55, 294–5 commune of, 255 diocese of, 83, 95, 113, 122, 145, 197, 201, 217, 291 Arras, bishops of, 287, see Alvisius; Godescalc; Lambert; Robert; Vedastus Arrouaise, abbey of, 113, 121, 143–4, 214, 292 Artaud, archbishop of Reims, 168 Artois, 117 Atto, bishop of Troyes, 310 Audomar, St, bishop of Thérouanne, 295 Augustine, bishop of Hippo, 3, 9, 50–1, 63, 89, 92–3, 96, 136, 283, 309 De ordine, 9, 208 De vera religione, 213, 216 Enarrationes in Psalmos, 89 rule for canons, 284 Autbert, St, bishop of Cambrai, 294–5 authority, 7–10 authority, episcopal, see bishops, authority of Autun, council of (1077), 29, 59–61, 63, 66, 121 Auvergne, 35, 117 Auxerre, 21, 106, 156 Avesgaud, bishop of Le Mans, 168–9, 171 Avesnes, lords of, 43–4 Avril, Joseph, 314 Baldwin, abbot of Orbais, 298 Baldwin, archbishop of Caesarea, 103 Baldwin, bishop of Noyon-Tournai, 248 Baldwin I, count of Flanders, 185 Baldwin III, count of Hainaut, 142 Baldwin IV, count of Flanders, 130 Baldwin V, count of Flanders, 64, 130, 165, 184–93, 202–3, 205, 211, 257 Baldwin VI, count of Flanders, 188, 203, 220 Bandaridus, St, bishop of Soissons, 276–7 Bartholomew, bishop of Châlons, 25 Bartholomew of Joux, bishop of Laon, 2–6, 16, 25, 32, 52, 80, 82, 102, 133, 152, 259, 266, 273–5, 285, 296–9, 301–2, 304–5 Battle Abbey Roll, 166 Battle of Hastings, 166 Baudry, abbot of Bourgeuil, 103

Baudry, bishop of Noyon-Tournai, 112, 115–16, 133, 145, 147–50, 152, 286 Beatrix, daughter of Hugh IV Candavène, 231 Beauvais, 23, 54–5, 77, 105, 107, 119, 152 capitular library, 49–50 cathedral chapter, 42, 119, 132, 134–5, 137, 141 cathedral school, 50 commune of, 255 diocese of, 10, 32, 36, 306 election controversy of 1100–4, 123, 134–42 Beauvais, bishops of, 317; see Ansellus; Geoffrey; Gui; Henry of France; Odo II; Odo III; Philip of Dreux Beauvais, council of (1114), 93, 146 Bec, abbey of, 302 Bedos-Rezak, Brigitte, 107, 312 Belfort (de Beaufort), Nicolas, 175, 238, 257, 277 Belgica Secunda, 22, 173 Benedict of Nursia, 79, 309 Benedict of Santa Eudoxia, papal legate, 135, 137 Benevento, council of (1108), 72 Benno, bishop of Osnabrück, 212 Berchundus, St, 235 Berengar, bishop of Cambrai, 217 Berengar of Tours, 133 Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, 18, 25, 38, 44, 75–6, 96, 104, 271, 283, 289, 300, 303, 307, 309 Tractatus de moribus et officiis episcoporum, 18, 38–9, 75 Bernard, abbot of Tiron, 77, 79 Bernard, mayor of the commune of Amiens, 254 Bernold, abbot of Watten, 117, 292 Berteaucourt, abbey of, 233, 241 Berthold, bishop of Toul, 172 Bertrada of Montfort, 113, 122 Béthune, 202 Béthune, canons of, 149 Bettolenus, bishop of Soissons, 277 bishops, 159, 164, 237, 240–2 and historical consciousness, 20–1, 153, 164–8, 173–4, 194–6, 224–5, 241 anointing of, 11 as pastor bonus, 211, 260–1, 275–6, 278 as paterfamilias, 174–83, 259, 288, 293, 310 as peacemakers, 272–6 as stewards, 25, 261, 287–90, 292, 307 authority of, 7–11, 12, 70–1, 94–5, 110, 284, 310, 313–14, 317 conduct of, 70–1, 310 depositions of, 34

368

Index education of, 47–9, 314 election of, 27, 35–7 familial origins of, 29, 33–4, 168–70 labour of, 4, 16, 25, 259, 275, 283–302, 307–11 office and roles of, 6–7, 309 preaching of, 16, 99, 103–4, 258, 260, 262–82, 295, 307, 314 professional cursus of, 29–33 solidarities, 112–19, 130–3, 138–42, 149–53, 306–9, 311, 313–14 textual representation of, 7, 19, 189–91, 199–202, 204–14, 258–62, 297–9, 313–14 transfers of, 34 Blangy, abbey of, 248, 304 Boethius, 51 botanical imagery, 5–6, 285, 295, 297–9 Boulogne, 23, 248 Bourbourg, abbey of, 144 Bourges, 303 Bourges, archbishops of, see Aimoin; Alberic, schoolmaster of Reims and bishop-elect of Châlons Boves, lords of, 35, see Enguerran; Robert; Thomas of Marle Brix, St, 100 Bruges, 105, 184–5, 191 Brun, archbishop of Cologne, 200 Bruno of Cologne, schoolmaster of Reims, 40, 48 Bührer-Thierry, Geneviève, 125 Bulgaria, 212 Bur, Michel, 183 Burchard, bishop of Cambrai, 80, 83, 89, 202, 216–17 Burchard, bishop of Utrecht, 87 Burchard, bishop of Worms, 17, 51 Decretum, 51 Burchard of Avesnes, treasurer of Tournai, 44 Burgundy, 13, 31, 35, 300 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 309 Calabria, 40 Calixtus II, pope, 14, 76, 80, 219 Cambrai, 18, 23, 52, 54, 80, 98, 101, 109, 115, 156, 197–221, 224, 269, 313, 316 castellans of, 202, 209, 211, 215 cathedral archives, 20, 49–50, 54–5, 210, 294 cathedral chapter, 43, 60–2, 83, 123 commune of, 105–6, 215, 218, 315 diocese of, 10, 32, 54, 79, 81–3, 88, 90, 115, 122, 197–8, 201, 214, 217, 291 episcopal succession crisis of 1093–1116, 201, 207, 214–20

Cambrai, bishops of, 34, 94, 224, 296, 315, see Autbert; Berengar; Burchard; Gaucher; Gerard I; Gerard II; Géry; Lietard; Lietbert; Manasses of Soissons; Nicholas of Mons; Odo; Tetdo; Vedastus; Vindician Cambrésis, 142, 198, 218 canon law, 7, 10, 16–18, 47, 50–1, 122, 150, 206, 306 canons regular, 76, 78, 118, 292, 297 Carileff, St, 171 cathedral chapters, 29, 31–2, 37, 40, 58 and liturgy, 40 necrologies, 42 privileges and immunities of, 41–2 property of, 42 quarters of, 41–2, 58, 67 Cauchie, Alfred, 198–9 celibacy, of clergy, see fornication, of clergy Châlons, 23, 77, 101, 109, 146, 150, 152, 179, 206 archives in, 52 diocese of, 36 Châlons, bishops of, 317; see Bartholomew; Geoffrey Cou-de-Cerf; Guido; Hugh; Philip; Roger III; William of Champeaux Champagne, 23, 97, 160 counts of, 36, 161, 177 Charles, count of Flanders, 231 Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, 304 Chartres, 24, 77, 98, 103, 119 cathedral school, 302 Chartres, bishops of, see Fulbert; Geoffrey; Ivo Château-du-Loir, lords of, 170 Cheminon, abbey of, 146 Chronicon Remense (Annales Remenses et Colonienses), 165, 168–9 Chronicon sancti Andreae, 83–7, 106, 162, 205, 218–20 Cicero, 48–9, 96, 201, 270 Cistercians, 26, 32, 152, 284, 298–9 Cîteaux, abbey of, 81 civil law, 50 Clairmarais, abbey of, 271 Clairvaux, abbey of, 297, 300 Clarembaud, bishop of Senlis, 32, 51, 144, 148, 291 Clemence, countess of Flanders, 111, 119, 126, 130, 144 Clement and Everard, ‘heretics’ of Soissons, 81, 83, 92–4 clergy dress and appearance of, 72–8, 94, 313

369

Index ‘clerical culture’ debates concerning, 45–7 clerical marriage, see nicolaitism Clermont, council of (1095), 104, 117, 122, 127, 129, 207, 218, 248 Clermont, council of (1099), 72 Clermont, council of (1130), 72 Clovis, king of the Franks, 194 Cluny, abbey of, 74, 126, 144, 183 Cohen, Anthony, 224, 311 Collectio Catalaunensis I, 17 Collectio Sinemuriensis, 17 Collection in Nine Books, 18 Collection in Seventy-Four Titles, 17 Cologne, 79, 88, 200, 202, 205 communes, 69, 97, 105–9, 311, 314 Compiègne, 186, 239 Concordat of Worms (1122), 221 Congar, Yves, 91 Cono of Praeneste, papal legate, 93, 113, 121, 146, 148, 292 Constable, Giles, 74 Constantine IX Monomachos, Byzantine emperor, 212 Corbény, 100–1 Corbie, 105, 187, 269 Corbie, abbey of, 74, 145, 228, 247–8, 288 Coucy, lords of, 35 Coulombes, abbey of, 79 Cuissy, abbey of, 39, 273, 304 Cyprian of Carthage, 311 Cyprus, 213 Cyrus, 53 De Smet, Jozef-Maria, 88 Demouy, Patrick, 315 Dereine, Charles, 81 Deusdedit, 137 Dido, bishop of Laon, 52 Dionysius, St, 179 Dolbeau, François, 186 Donatian, St, archbishop of Reims, 184–94, 272 Dortmund, 202 Douai, canons of, 149 Drausius, St, bishop of Soissons, 277–8 Drogo, bishop of Thérouanne, 59, 130, 227, 248, 267–8, 271 Drogo, canon of Reims, 168 Drogo ‘of the Tower’, castellan of Amiens, 229 Eadmer of Canterbury, 271 Ebbo, archbishop of Reims, 154, 184 Ebles, archbishop of Reims, 158, 161, 163, 178 Ebles, archdeacon of Laon, 39, 133 ecclesiology, 7–8, 16, 311

Edward the Confessor, king of England, 31 Eloi, St, 247, 268, 295 England, 4, 101, 271, 277, 302 Enguerran, bishop of Amiens, 231–4, 242, 251–3 Enguerran, bishop of Laon, 47–8, 105, 132, 133 Enguerran, bishop of Soissons, 36 Enguerran I, count of Ponthieu, 229 Enguerran of Boves, lord of Coucy, 222, 229, 231, 239, 241, 252 episcopal lists, 20, 194, 234, 294 Epistola Pseudo-Udalrici, 60 ergotism, 97–8 Erkembold, canon of Saint-Omer, 118, 126 Erlebald, canon of Reims, 163–4 Erlembald, dean of Cambrai, 39, 80 Estienne, Joseph, 232 Eugenius III, pope, 24, 72, 75, 104, 305 Eustache, abbot of Saint-Jean of Amiens, 251 Eustache, vidame of Amiens, 230, 239 Eustache III, count of Boulogne, 145 Eutropia, St, 176, 180, 193–4 Evenus, abbot of Saint-Melaine of Rennes, 165, 170 Everard, bishop of Tournai, 43 Everard, castellan of Tournai, 116, 148 Everwacher, priest and companion of Tanchelm, 89 Faremoutiers, abbey of, 305 Ferrières, abbey of, 53 Fiacre, St, 102 Firmin, St, 97, 226, 231, 235–41, 243–8, 252–3, 256 Firmin the Confessor, St, 235–8, 240, 244 First Crusade, 111, 119 Flanders, 4, 12, 23, 44, 52, 54, 60, 69, 71, 83, 97–8, 100, 105, 111–12, 117, 119, 129, 142, 146, 152, 191, 197, 202–3, 205, 218–19, 248, 254–5, 271, 303 Flanders, counts of, 117, 198, 202–3, 216, 247, see Arnulf I; Baldwin I; Baldwin IV; Baldwin V; Baldwin VI; Charles; Robert I; Robert II Fleury, abbey of, 146, 156, 355 Flodoard of Reims, 156, 158–9, 165, 180, 182–3, 185, 189, 196, 228, 258 Annals, 154, 158, 168 De triumphis Christi, 154 Historia Remensis ecclesiae, 154, 158, 166, 175–6, 179–80, 194, 258 Foigny, abbey of, 297, 304 Folcuin of Lobbes, 157 Fontenay, abbey of, 300 fornication, of clergy, 58–9, 65–6, 83, 112

370

Index Frederick, archbishop of Cologne, 80, 87–90 Frederick Barbarossa, German emperor, 108 Fritzlar, council of (1118), 79 Fronto, St, bishop of Périgord, 171 Frutolf of Michaelsberg, 157 Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, 133, 263, 301 Fulcard, abbot of Marchiennes, 148 Fulcoius of Beauvais, 49, 162 Fulk, abbot of Hasnon, 298 Fulk, archbishop of Reims, 166, 176 Fulk I, bishop of Amiens, 229 Fulk II, bishop of Amiens, 229, 233 Fulk III, bishop-elect of Amiens, 229, 239 Fulk IV le Rechin, count of Anjou, 75 Furne, abbey of, 248 Fuscian, St, 131, 238, 242, 246–7 Galo, abbot of Saint-Quentin and bishop of Paris, 139–41, 151–2 Gascony, 32 Gaucher, bishop of Cambrai, 43, 115, 143, 215, 217–19, 221, 286 Gaudry, bishop of Laon, 1–4, 9, 11–12, 71, 101, 145 Gebuin, bishop of Laon, 34 Geertz, Clifford, 311 Gelasius I, pope, 8, 12 letter to Emperor Anastasius, 8 Gelasius II, pope, 79 Genebaud, St, 4, 299 Gentian, St, 238, 242, 247 Geoffrey, bishop of Beauvais, 141 Geoffrey, bishop of Paris, 59, 83 Geoffrey II, bishop of Chartres, 301 Geoffrey II Martel, count of Anjou, 160, 168, 171 Geoffrey Babion, archbishop of Bordeaux, 263–4 Geoffrey Cou-de-Cerf, abbot of Saint-Thierry and bishop of Châlons, 264, 287, 300, 305, 308 Gerard, abbot of Ham, 117, 292 Gerard, abbot of Loo, 292 Gerard, abbot of Saint-Etienne of Fesmy, 298 Gerard, abbot of Saint-Martin of Ypres, 292 Gerard, bishop of Thérouanne, 34, 248 Gerard, bishop of Tournai, 286 Gerard I, bishop of Cambrai, 20, 55, 157, 166, 198, 202, 207, 209, 216, 263, 278, 301 Acta synodi Atrebatensis, 55 Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, 20, 113, 157, 207, 210 Gerard II, bishop of Cambrai, 59, 61, 63–5, 70, 84–7, 201, 214, 218–20, 286–7

Gerard of Picquigny, 251 Gerbert of Aurillac, archbishop of Reims, 154, 158, 166, 194 Germerus, St, 304 Gervais, seneschal of Philip I, 35 Gervais of Château-du-Loir, archbishop of Reims, 34, 36, 51, 159–96, 206, 219, 221, 257, 272, 287–8 Epistola de vita sancti Donatiani archiepiscopi, 165, 199–202 final testament, 171–2 Miracula sancti Melanii, 165, 170 Sermo de beato Donatiano, 165, 185–94 Gervin, bishop of Amiens, 33, 65–6, 131, 229–30, 233, 240, 246–8 Géry (Gaugericus), St, bishop of Cambrai, 56, 157, 294 gesta episcoporum, 19, 28, 57, 197, 205, 209, 224, 259 Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, 202, 217, 294–5, see also Gerard I, bishop of Cambrai Gesta episcoporum Virdunensium et abbatum S. Vitoni, 162 Gesta quibus Atrebatensium ciuitas, 52, 113, 118 Ghent, 97, 105, 268 Gibrian, St, 99 Gilbert de la Porée, 303 Gislebert, abbot of Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois, 305 Glenn, Jason, 157 Godebald, bishop of Utrecht, 87 Godebertha, St, 268 Godelieve of Gistel, St, 248 Godescalc, bishop of Arras, 288, 301 Godfrey, abbot of Nogent, see Godfrey, bishop of Amiens Godfrey, bishop of Amiens, 3–4, 33, 66, 73, 82, 95, 97, 122, 125, 142–5, 150–3, 221–4, 230–4, 239–44, 246–8, 252–4, 256, 267, 270, 293 Godfrey, bishop of Langres, 300 Godfrey, schoolmaster of Reims, 47–8 Godfrey the Bearded, duke of Lower Lotharingia, 162 Gonther, provost of Notre-Dame of Tournai, 33, 149 Gorze, abbey of, 53 Gossuin of Avesnes, treasurer and archdeacon of Tournai, 44 Gratian, 17, 137, 310 Decretum, 17, 51 Gregory I, pope, 18, 50–1, 149, 153, 200, 208–10, 266, 271, 283, 293, 297, 309, 312–13 Dialogues, 51, 53–4

371

Index Gregory I, pope (cont.) Homiliae, 209–10, 258, 261, 297 Homiliae in Ezechielem, 51, 53 Liber pastoralis, 18, 21–2, 53–5, 62–3, 153, 200, 209–10, 263, 271, 278, 281, 284, 307, 312–13 Moralia in Iob, 51, 54, 284 Registrum, 54, 63 Gregory VII, pope, 13, 25, 34, 61, 63, 66, 83–5, 120–1, 129, 137, 194, 199, 203–4, 218–19, 266, 278, 310 Dictatus papae, 137 Gregory of Tours, 56, 249 Guenée, Bernard, 156 Guérin, bishop of Amiens, 25, 236, 242, 244, 246–7, 250–1 Guérin, bishop of Senlis, 316 Guermond of Picquigny, vidame of Amiens, 222, 230, 248 Gui, archbishop of Reims, 158, 163, 172–3, 206 Gui, bishop of Beauvais, 59 Gui, count of Ponthieu, 131, 229–30, 247, 254 Gui, lord of Flixecourt, 250 Gui of Ponthieu, bishop of Amiens, 48, 229, 232–6, 239, 247, 249, 254 Carmen de Hastingae proelio, 49 Guibert, abbot of Nogent, 1, 3, 6, 9–12, 39, 47, 69, 75, 92–5, 102, 105, 175, 223, 240, 246, 269, 280–2 Quo ordine sermo fieri debeat, 266–7, 281 Guido, bishop of Châlons, 298 Guines, 268 Haarländer, Stephanie, 199 Hadrian IV, pope, 122 Haimo, archdeacon of Châlons, 298, 306 Haimo, bishop of Verdun, 301 Haimo of Auxerre, 51 Haimo of Château-du-Loir, 169–70 Hainaut, 89, 188, 197–8, 203, 205 Hainaut, counts of, 198 hair, 98, see clergy, dress and appearance of Ham, canonry of, 145 Hariulf, abbot of Oldenburg, 230, 265 Hélinand, bishop of Laon, 31, 47, 51, 59, 212, 267, 285 Helisende, countess of Saint-Pol, 265 Henry, abbot of Saint-Vaast of Arras, 148 Henry, bishop of Liège, 305 Henry, bishop of Soissons, 35–6 Henry, wandering preacher, 82 Henry I, king of England, 73 Henry I, king of France, 41, 160–1, 166, 169, 187, 196, 202, 205–6

Henry II, German emperor, 207 Henry III, German emperor, 56, 176, 202, 204–5, 207–8, 211, 214, 219 Henry IV, king of Germany, 61, 203–5, 215 Henry V, German emperor, 14, 80, 143, 215, 219 Henry of Braine, archbishop of Reims, 315–16 Henry of France, bishop of Beauvais and archbishop of Reims, 25, 34 Henry ‘the Boar’, archbishop of Sens, 19 Herbert, archdeacon of Thérouanne, 53, 292 Heribert IV, count of Vermandois, 203 Herimann, schoolmaster of Reims, 47–8, 157 Herimar, abbot of Saint-Remi of Reims, 181, 183 Herman, abbot of Saint-Martin of Tournai, 2–6, 15–16, 20, 52–3, 75, 83, 97–9, 101, 146–8, 263, 273, 285, 296–9, 301 Herman I Osmont, prior of Notre-Dame of Tournai, 33 hermits, 37, 79, 81, 86, 94–5, 179, 311 Herveus, archbishop of Reims, 180 Hidolf, provost of St Michael’s abbey, Antwerp, 89 Hildebert of Lavardin, bishop of Le Mans, 82, 263–4 Hildebrand, archdeacon of Rome. See Gregory VII, pope Hildeburge, mother of Gervais of Château-duLoir, 169 Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, 51–2, 154–6, 159, 166, 191, 196, 263, 311 Annals of Saint-Bertin, 154, 166 Vita sancti Remigii, 186, 192, 257, 261 Holland, 83 Holy Ampule, 154 Honoratus, St, 235, 238–9, 242–4, 246–7 Horace, 49 Hubert, archdeacon and bishop of Thérouanne, 60 Hubert, bishop of Senlis, 4, 36, 145, 150 Hucbald of Saint-Amand, 154 Hugh, abbot of Cluny, 144 Hugh, archbishop of Reims, 185, 194 Hugh, bishop of Châlons, 17, 36 Hugh, bishop of Die and papal legate, 29, 59–60, 66, 120, 135, 138, 151 Hugh, St, bishop of Grenoble, 223 Hugh I of Oisy, castellan of Cambrai, 143, 211, 214–15, 220 Hugh II, count of Saint-Pol, 265 Hugh II of Oisy, castellan of Cambrai, 216 Hugh IV Candavène, count of Saint-Pol, 231 Hugh Capet, king of France, 158

372

Index Hugh of Amiens, archbishop of Rouen, 48, 292, 311 Contra haereticos sui temporis, 311 Hugh of Champfleury, bishop of Soissons, 316 Hugh of Flavigny, 157 Hugh of Fosses, abbot of Prémontré, 80, 297 Hugh of Mâcon, bishop of Auxerre, 300, 305–6 Hugh of Montaigu, bishop of Auxerre, 223 Hugh of Orléans, bishop of Laon, 101 Hugh of Pierrefonds, bishop of Soissons, 99, 101, 104–5, 119, 267, 303 Hugh of Poitiers, 106 Hugh of Roucy, 304 Hugh of Saint-Victor, 310 Hugh Primas, 19 Hugh the Great, 228 Hungarians, 295 Hungary, 212

John the Deacon, 54, 56 Life of Gregory, 54 Josselin of Vierzy, bishop of Soissons, 25, 47, 133, 152, 210, 257–60, 262–3, 272–6, 278–81, 286, 300–6, 308 sermons, 258, 265, 272, 276, 278–81 Judah, 3 judges delegate, 304–6 Judoc (Josse), St, 247 Julian, St, bishop of Le Mans, 171 Just, St, 304 Juvenal, 51 Koyen, Milo, 198–9, 201

Igny, abbey of, 304 Ildephonsus of Toledo, 296 Innocent II, pope, 72, 303, 309 Inventio sancti Firmini martyris, 237, 243, 246 investiture, of prelates, 36, 83, 200, 208 Isidore, bishop of Seville, 50, 57 De officiis ecclesiasticis, 57 Ivo, bishop of Chartres, 3, 17, 47, 79, 101, 103, 113–14, 127–8, 134–41, 151–2, 222, 263–4, 301 Ivo II, bishop of Senlis, 59 Ivo III, bishop of Sées, 169 Jaeger, C. Stephen, 69, 199 Jerome, 50 Jerusalem, 3–4, 25, 96, 103–4, 111, 171, 201, 211, 213, 223, 231, 292 Jews, disputations with, 280 Joffridus, dean of Reims, 168 John, abbot of Mont-Saint-Eloi, 20, 117, 293 John, abbot of Saint-Michel en Thiérache, 298 John, advocate of Arras, 211, 220 John, count of Soissons, 92 John V, pope, 294 John VI, pope, 294 John VII, pope, 294 John of Salisbury, 302 Metalogicon, 302 John of Santa Anastasia, papal legate, 135, 137 John of Warneton, bishop of Thérouanne, 17–18, 32, 47–8, 52, 90, 112, 116–19, 122, 126, 130–2, 134, 138–45, 147–52, 240, 248, 270, 284, 290–3, 296, 301

La Chartreuse, abbey of, 40 La Chartreuse of Mont-Dieu, abbey of, 304 La Sauve-Majeure, abbey of, 304 Lambert, abbot of Saint-Bertin, 117–18, 126, 292 Lambert, bishop of Arras, 17, 47, 56, 72, 101, 104, 111–19, 122–3, 128–9, 131–2, 134–45, 147–52, 221, 240, 246, 265, 291, 293, 302 De querimonia inter canonicos Tornacenses et monachos S. Martini, 147 Lambert, bishop of Noyon-Tournai, 32, 123, 144 Lambert, St, bishop of Maastricht, 295 Lambert of Lobbes, 162 Lambert of Saint-Omer, 53, 129 Lanfranc, abbot of Bec, 47 Langres, bishops of, 317 Laon, 1, 3–6, 11, 23, 54–5, 80, 101, 105, 152, 187, 228, 266, 289, 303 capitular library, 49, 50, 52 cathedral chapter, 2, 4, 34, 302 cathedral of Notre-Dame, 1, 3–6, 285, 299 cathedral school, 47, 49, 80, 302 commune of (Institutio pacis), 105–7, 255 diocese of, 5, 10, 23, 82 Laon, bishops of, 287, 317; see Bartholomew of Joux; Dido; Enguerran; Gaudry; Gebuin; Genebaud, St; Hélinand; Hugh of Orléans; Walter I; Walter II Latakia, 213 Lateran council First (1123), 66, 76, 217 Fourth (1215), 310 Second (1139), 66 Laurent of Liège, 162 Le Mans, 101, 159–60, 169, 179, 195, 264

373

Index Le Mans, bishops of, see Hildebert of Lavardin; Julian, St; William of Passavant Leclercq, Jean, 45 Lecoanet, Simone, 232, 241 Leger, St, martyr, 295 Lemarignier, Jean-François, 120–1, 204 Leo, abbot of Saint-Bertin, 296 Leo, dean of Reims, 51 Leo IX, pope, 13–14, 24, 58, 72, 124–5, 166 Leofric, bishop of Exeter, 50 Letald, bishop of Senlis, 119, 133 Letbert, prior of Notre-Dame of Tournai, 33 Levulf and Ebles, viscounts of Roucy, 274 Libellus de diversis ordinibus, 37, 299 Liber Floridus, 53, 129 Liber pastoralis, see Gregory I, pope liberal arts, 48 libraries cathedral, 54 monastic, 52–4 Liège, 37, 156, 202, 339 diocese of, 82 Lietard, bishop of Cambrai, 217 Lietbert, bishop of Cambrai, 56, 178, 198–221, 224, 248, 258, 264, 270, 272, 293, 295–6 as good pastor, 206–11, 214, 220 pilgrimage of, 201, 211–14, 220 Limoges, bishops of, 290 Limoges, episcopal charters of, 290 Lisiard, bishop of Soissons, 4, 32, 92–4, 145, 150, 152, 265 liturgy, 16, 46 Lobbes, abbey of, 54, 74, 248 Longpont, abbey of, 260, 277, 304 Lotharingia, 13, 50, 52, 197, 202 Louis VI, king of France, 36, 42, 109, 121, 131, 222, 240, 267 Louis VII, king of France, 25, 35, 105, 121, 305 Louis the Pious, emperor, 185 Lucca, cathedral chapter, 43, 51 Lucius II, pope, 305 Luke, archdeacon of Arras, 265 Luke of Roucy, canon of Laon and abbot of Cuissy, 39, 80 Lupicinus, St, 238, 246, 248 Macarius of Antioch, St, 203 Macrobius, 51 Magdeburg, archdiocese of, 82 Maine, 98, 159–60, 170–1 Malachy, St, archbishop of Armagh, 271 Manasses, canon of Reims, 164 Manasses, companion of Tanchelm, 89

Manasses I, archbishop of Reims, 14, 36, 47–8, 51, 59, 63, 114, 120–1, 162, 172–3, 194 Manasses II, archbishop of Reims, 17, 34, 51, 54, 56, 111–16, 118–19, 121–2, 127–9, 132–45, 151, 179, 264, 301 Manasses II, bishop of Meaux, 305 Manasses II, count of Rethel, 161, 163–4, 191 Manasses Calvus, vidame of Reims, 164 Manasses of Soissons, bishop of Cambrai, 34, 112, 114–15, 142, 144, 214, 217, 219, 221 Mantes-en-Yvelines, 105 Marbod, bishop of Rennes, 77 Marcellus, St, 264, 272 Marchiennes, abbey of, 271 Marculf, St, 100–1 Marguerite of Clermont, 231 Marlot, Guillaume, 174 Marmoutier, abbey of, 160, 230, 304 Maroilles, abbey of, 20, 52 Martin, St, bishop of Tours, 56, 171, 207, 226, 235–6, 249, 253–4, 256, 279, 295, 309 Mary and Martha, as biblical exemplars, 7, 208–9, 221 Matilda of Flanders, queen of England, 49 Matthew of Albano, papal legate, 121 Maxelendis, St, 295 Meaux, 24 council of (1081), 36 Medardus, St, bishop of Noyon, 56, 268–70 Meijns, Brigitte, 60, 144, 292 Melanius, St, bishop of Rennes, 170–1 Melfi, council of (1089), 75–6, 78, 128 Memmius, St, 131 Messines, abbey of, 64, 267–8 Metz, 119, 121, 156 Milan, 61 Miller, Maureen C., 7, 45, 313 Milo I, bishop of Thérouanne, 25, 251, 257–62, 272, 277, 281, 286, 294, 299–301, 305, 308 Sermo in sanctum Principium, 257–62 Milo II, bishop of Thérouanne, 258 Miracula sancti Marculfi, 101 Molesme, abbey of, 241, 265, 304 Montreuil-en-Thiérache, abbey of, 298 Montreuil-sur-Mer, abbey of, 243, 246, 248 Mont-Saint-Eloi, abbey of, 117, 203–4, 214, 220, 291–3, 295 Mont-Saint-Martin, abbey of, 301 Mont-Saint-Quentin, abbey of, 234 Moore, R. I., 69, 71, 85, 88, 93, 95 Morelle, Laurent, 232, 241 Moses, as episcopal archetype, 236, 277 Mouzon, abbey of, 54–5, 157, 163, 178, 304, 325

374

Index Nantes, 119 Nebuchadnezzer, 3 Nicasius, St, 175–7, 179–80, 182–3, 189, 192–4 Nicholas, archdeacon of Reims, 168 Nicholas, St, bishop of Myra, 246 Nicholas II, pope, 168, 186 Nicholas of Mons, bishop of Cambrai, 25, 216 Nicholas of Saint-Crépin, 66, 99, 125, 150–1, 222, 230, 234, 246–8, 270 nicolaitism, 29, 58–61, 63, 89, 125, 129–30, 137 Nieder-Altaich, Annalist of, 212 Nogent-sous-Coucy, abbey of, 33, 142, 233, 274 Norbert of Xanten, 5–6, 79–83, 87, 89–90, 94, 271, 296–7, 299 Norman Anonymous, 9 Normandy, 32, 34, 36, 159 Northmen, 295 Notitia Galliarum, 22 Notre-Dame of Breteuil, abbey of, 241 Notre-Dame of Soissons, abbey of, 98, 257, 260, 277 Noyon, 23, 55, 101, 105, 108, 247, 269, 286, 289 cathedral chapter, 62–4, 123, 268 diocese of, 10, 90, 116, 145, 147, 247 Noyon-Tournai, bishops of, 317; see Baldwin; Baudry; Lambert; Medardus; Radbod II; Simon Odalric, archbishop of Reims, 168 Odalric, provost of Reims, 43, 51, 164, 167, 171, 181–3, 194–5 Odo, abbot of Saint-Quentin of Beauvais, 141 Odo, abbot of Saint-Rémi of Reims, 300 Odo, archdeacon of Reims, 164, 183 Odo, bishop of Cambrai, 47–8, 75, 80, 143–5, 147–9, 151–2, 223, 263, 270, 280–1, 293 Odo, hermit of Arrouaise, 149 Odo II, bishop of Beauvais, 306 Odo II, count of Blois-Chartres, 177 Odo III, bishop of Beauvais, 25 Ordericus Vitalis, 75, 79 Oricle, St, 181 Orléans, bishops of, 121 Osmonts, family of Tournai, 33, 43 Otbert of Heilly, canon and provost of Amiens, 118 Otto, bishop of Bamberg, 200 Otto I, count of Warcq and Chiny, 54 Otto I, king of Eastern Francia and German emperor, 198 Otto III, German emperor, 207 Oudenaarde, council of (1030), 130 Ourscamp, abbey of, 304

Ovid, 48, 51 Pacaut, Marcel, 35 Paganus Bolotinus, archdeacon of Chartres, 78–9 pallium, 170, 247 papal legates, 15, 120–1, 146 Paris, 23–4, 59, 98, 146, 269, 303 cathedral chapter, 123, 203, 305 cathedral school, 47, 302 Paris, bishops of, see Galo; Geoffrey; Thibaud; William Paris, council of (1147), 303 Parisse, Michel, 24 Parvinus, abbot of Saint-Sépulcre, 298 Paschal II, pope, 72–4, 89–90, 119, 122, 128, 131, 134–49, 152, 215, 234 Paschasius Radbertus, 247 Pataria, 61 Paul the Deacon, homiliary of, 276 Peace and Truce of God, 106–7, 112, 216, 222, 247–9, 294 councils of, 13, 71, 127 Pechenegs, 212 Pelagius, pope, 209 Péronne, 100 Peter, archdeacon of Soissons, 93–4 Peter, bishop of Senlis, 25 Peter Abelard, 47, 50, 87, 121, 300, 303, 353 Introductio ad theologiam, 87 Peter Damian, 281, 310 Peter the Chanter, 258 Peter the Hermit, 81, 103–4 Phalempin, canonry of, 145 Philip, bishop of Châlons, 131 Philip I, king of France, 35–6, 113, 120, 122, 134, 138–9, 161, 166–8, 177, 181, 186–7, 191–2, 203 Philip II Augustus, king of France, 107, 255 Philip of Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, 317 Philip of Harvengt, 293 Picard, Jean-Charles, 225 Picardy, 23, 152 Picquigny, lords of, 251 pilgrimages, 97, 212 Pisa, council of (1135), 72 Poitiers, council of (1078), 59–61, 66 Poitiers, council of (1100), 72, 74, 76–8, 102, 137–8 Pommerœul, abbey of, 80 Ponthieu, counts of, 33, 229 Pontigny, abbey of, 300 Poppo, bishop of Metz, 119 populus, 96–7

375

Index preaching, 77–9, 81, 91–2, 97, 102–5, 262–84, 311 Premonstratensians, 5, 26, 32, 82, 91, 152, 293, 299, 301 Prémontré, abbey of, 5, 39, 80, 274, 285, 296–7 Principius, St, bishop of Soissons, 257–62, 272, 281, 294 Priscian, 51 Proba, St, 4 Pseudo-Boniface, monastic forgery, 77 Pseudo-Gregory, monastic forgery, 77 Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, 17, 62–3 Qui-non-Ridet, Raoul, cives of Amiens, 251 R., author of Libellus de diversis ordinibus, 37–9 Rachel and Lia, as biblical exemplars, 7 Radbod II, bishop of Noyon-Tournai, 56, 59, 98–9, 116, 248, 263, 268–70, 272, 286 Sermo de annuntiatione beatae Mariae Virginis, 268–9 Rambert, bishop of Verdun, 290 Ramihrdus of Esquerchin, 80, 83–8, 90, 93–4 Raoul, bishop of Amiens, 59, 229, 234, 239 Raoul, schoolmaster of Laon, 80 Raoul IV, count of Amiens, Valois and Vexin, 35, 228, 236 Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre, 49, 162, 200–16, 220–1, 224, 258, 270 Vita sancti Lietberti episcopi Cameracensis, 49, 199–202, 204–14 Raoul the Green, archbishop of Reims, 4, 34, 36, 39–40, 83, 143, 145, 150, 152, 166, 234, 266, 301 Rapp, Claudia, 8–9 Rather of Verona, 185–6 reform monastic, 15, 183 papal, 14–16, 29, 58, 199–200 Reims, 17, 47–9, 54–5, 101, 105, 119, 154–96, 202, 206, 224, 228, 262, 289, 303, 312–13, 316 archdiocese of, 10, 34, 36, 58, 102 capitular archive, 49–51, 53, 154, 156 cathedral chapter, 34, 42–3, 56, 60, 64, 157, 160, 164–5, 171–3, 182–3, 264, 268 cathedral of Sainte-Marie, 17, 32, 123, 165, 315 cathedral school, 47, 49, 154, 157, 162, 302 province of, 3, 35, 41, 100, 109, 112, 132, 205, 259, 290

provincial councils, 65–6, 120–5, 142–3, 152, 223, 288, 302–3, 315 Reims, archbishops of, 34, 262, 289, 316–17, see Abel; Adalbero; Arnulf; Artaud; Donatian; Ebbo; Ebles; Fulk; Gerbert of Aurillac; Gervais of Château-du-Loir; Gui; Henry of Braine; Henry of France; Herveus; Hincmar; Hugh; Manasses I; Manasses II; Odalric; Raoul the Green; Renaud I; Renaud II; Rigobert; Samson; Tilpin; William of the White-Hands Reims, council of (1049), see Saint-Remi, council of (1049) Reims, council of (1119), 80 Reims, council of (1131), 72–3, 303 Reims, council of (1148), 72–3, 76, 303 Reincourt, abbey of, 304 relics delations of, 69, 76, 78, 97, 99–103, 248 Laon, 4, 296 humiliation of, 231 of St Donatian, 184, 191 of St Nicasius, 177, 191 of Sts Crépin and Crépinien, 304 of Virgin Mary, 4, 98–9, 101, 103, 297 ostentation of, 97, 246–7 Remensnyder, Amy, 253 Remigius, abbot of Saint-Nicaise, 181 Remigius, St, 132, 154, 179, 182, 192–4, 257–9, 261–2 Remigius of Auxerre, 154 Renaud, abbot of Cîteaux, 301 Renaud, hermit, 79 Renaud I, archbishop of Reims, 34, 36, 114, 122, 173, 194, 268, 303 Renaud II, archbishop of Reims, 34, 36, 133, 152, 285–6, 288, 302, 306 Richard, abbot of Mont-Saint-Eloi, 148 Richard, abbot of Saint-Vanne, 157, 301 Richard of Albano, papal legate, 119, 121, 146 Richard of Gerberoy, bishop of Amiens, 236, 247 Richer, bishop of Verdun, 290 Richer of Reims, 154–7, 164, 351 Historiae, 154, 157 Rigobert, St, archbishop of Reims, 180, 194 ring, episcopal, 11, 246 Robert, abbot of Saint-Remi of Reims, 119 Robert, abbot of Saint-Sauveur of Vertus, 298 Robert, archdeacon and schoolmaster of Arras, 94–5

376

Index Robert, bishop of Arras, 148, 150, 291 Robert, bishop of Nantes, 119 Robert I, count of Flanders, 209–10, 216, 220, 266 Robert I, king of France, 35 Robert II, count of Flanders, 73, 111, 113, 115, 119, 126–8, 130, 144, 215, 248 Robert of Arbrissel, 77, 79 Robert of Boves, lord of Coucy, 231 Robert of Torigny, 235 Roger, dean of Amiens, 232 Roger, son of Manasses II, count of Rethel, 161 Roger III, bishop of Châlons, 36, 59, 287 Rome, council of (826), 307 Rome, council of (1099), 72, 119, 122, 126 Rorico, bishop of Amiens, 229, 234, 236–40, 242 Roscelin of Compiègne, 50, 123 Roucy, count of, 274 Rouen, 24, 77, 225 Saint-Acheul, canonry of, 228–9, 235–42, 244, 254, 304 Saint-Amand d’Elnone, abbey of, 101, 248, 286 Saint-Amand-lez-Thourotte, priory of, 147 Saint-André, Straten-lez-Bruges, abbey of, 126 Saint-André of Cateau-Cambrésis, abbey of, 83, 202, 213, 218, 220 Saint-Aubert of Cambrai, abbey of, 178, 202, 220, 288–9, 304 Saint-Bavon of Ghent, abbey of, 203, 248 Saint-Bertin, abbey of, 126, 129, 143–4, 248, 271, 284 Saint-Corneille of Compiègne, abbey of, 41, 230 Saint-Crépin of Soissons, abbey of, 233, 276 Saint-Crépin-en-Chaie, abbey of, 304 Sainte-Croix of Cambrai, abbey of, 220 Saint-Denis, abbey of, 303–4 Saint-Denis of Reims, canonry of, 163, 165–7, 172, 174, 177, 179–82, 195 Saint-Donatien of Bruges, collegiate church of, 184–5 Saint-Eloi of Noyon, abbey of, 33, 234 Saint-Faron of Meaux, abbey of, 102 Saint-Firmin-à-la-Porte, priory of, 249–51 Saint-Firmin-en-Castillon, parish church of, 249, 251–4 Saint-Firmin-le-Confesseur, collegiate church of, 226 Saint-Fuscien, abbey of, 228, 239, 241 Saint-Georges of Hesdin, priory of, 117, 143 Saint-Germain-l’Ecossais, parish church of, 228, 249–50 Saint-Germer of Fly, abbey of, 234

Saint-Géry, abbey of, 201 Saint-Jean of Amiens, abbey of, 251, 254–5, 304 Saint-Jean of Laon, abbey of, 298 Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, canonry of, 277 Saint-Josse-au-Bois, abbey of, 247, 251, 300 Saint-Julien of Le Mans, cathedral of, 169 Saint-Laurent-au-Bois, abbey of, 235 Saint-Laurent-de-Lin, 101 Saint-Léger of Lucheux, collegiate church of, 265 Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, abbey of, 234, 304 Saint-Martin of Épernay, abbey of, 304 Saint-Martin of Laon, abbey of, 274, 301 Saint-Martin of Tournai, abbey of, 81, 97, 133, 144–9, 271, 286, 299 Saint-Martin of Tours, cathedral of, 100 Saint-Martin of Ypres, canonry of, 131 Saint-Martin-ad-Burgum, parish church of, 228, 244, 249–50 Saint-Martin-aux-Jumeaux, canonry of, 227, 234–8, 242, 249, 253–5 Saint-Martin-des-Champs, priory of, 241, 305 Saint-Maurice, parish church of, 227 Saint-Médard of Cappy, church of, 145, 148 Saint-Médard of Soissons, abbey of, 123, 305 Saint-Melaine, abbey of, 170 Saint-Nicaise, abbey of, 145, 163, 168, 174, 177, 179, 183, 193–4, 289, 304 Saint-Nicolas, collegiate church of, 227, 242 Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois, abbey of, 33, 274 Saint-Nicolas-des-Près, abbey of, 81 Saint-Omer, 17–18, 73, 105, 111, 113, 119, 231 Saint-Omer, collegiate church of Notre-Dame, 111 Saint-Omer, council of (1099), 111–12, 121–3, 125–30, 133, 137, 248 Saint-Paul of Forêtmoutier, abbey of, 275 Saint-Pierre of Beauvais, cathedral of, 53 Saint-Pierre of Cassel, abbey of, 304 Saint-Pierre of Ghent, abbey of, 248 Saint-Pierre of Gouy, abbey of, 231 Saint-Pierre of Hasnon, abbey of, 203, 220, 304 Saint-Pierre of Honnecourt, abbey of, 294 Saint-Pierre of Lille, canonry of, 47, 64, 113, 203, 268, 284, 286, 290 Saint-Pierre of Selincourt, abbey of, 236, 288, 304 Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts, abbey of, 287 Saint-Quentin, commune of, 105 Saint-Quentin en Vermandois, collegiate church of, 316 Saint-Quentin of Beauvais, canonry of, 123, 135, 139, 306 Saint-Remi, council of (1049), 24, 58, 72, 74, 166

377

Index Saint-Remi, parish church of, 228 Saint-Remi of Reims, abbey of, 33, 36, 58, 99, 132, 142, 144–5, 154, 163, 165, 174, 195, 260, 304 Saint-Riquier, abbey of, 65, 228, 230 Saint-Riquier, abbot of, 229, 247, see Gervin, bishop of Amiens Saint-Saulve of Valenciennes, abbey of, 142 Saint-Sépulcre, abbey of, 20, 70, 200–1, 203–4, 210, 215, 220, 299 Saint-Sixte, parish church, 163 Saint-Symphorien of Reims, abbey of, 183, 306 Saint-Thierry of Reims, abbey of, 53–5, 133, 166, 264, 274, 304 Saint-Timothée, canonry of, 174, 177–83, 287 Saint-Vaast, abbey of, 54, 145–6, 149, 214, 271, 296, 300 Saint-Valéry, abbey of, 122, 125, 248 Saint-Victor of Paris, canons of, 305 Saint-Vincent of Laon, abbey of, 133 Saint-Vincent of Soignies, abbey of, 286 Saint-Winnoc of Bergues, abbey of, 74, 248 Saint-Wulmer, abbey of, 145, 285, 289 Salmon, Pierre, 74 Salvius, St, 235, 237–8, 240, 242–3, 246, 248 Samson, archbishop of Reims, 25, 34, 36, 122, 133, 152, 210, 262, 273–5, 287–9, 302–4, 306 Scholastica, St, 171 Scott, Joan W., 7 seals and sealing, episcopal, 241–2, 253, 312 Second Crusade, 25, 97, 104, 300 secular clergy, 44, see also cathedral chapters accumulation of dignities, 43–4, 59 education of, 45–57 wealth of, 42–4 Senlis, 23, 105, 107, 152, 186 cathedral chapter, 51, 123 diocese of, 36 Senlis, bishops of, 121, see Clarembaud; Guérin; Hubert; Ivo II; Letald; Peter; Ursio Sens, 303 Sens, archdiocese of, 24, 34 Sens, council of (1141), 303 Senuc, priory of, 174, 181, 183 Serlo, bishop of Sées, 73 Sewell, Jr, William H., 46 Sicher of Loos, 86 Sigebert of Gembloux, 88–9, 157, 168, 299, 308 Sigefroi, bishop of Le Mans, 169 Signori, Gabriele, 99 Simon, bishop of Noyon-Tournai, 25, 70, 105, 267, 284

Simon, count of Amiens, Valois and Vexin, 35, 228 Simon of Saint-Bertin, 118 Gesta abbatum sancti Bertini, 118 simony, 29, 58–9, 65, 83, 89, 125, 138, 158, 229, 277, 310 Sinicius, St, 194 Sixtus, St, 194 Soissons, 23, 49, 54, 63, 98–9, 101, 105, 107, 119, 150, 224, 228, 233, 262, 303, 306 archives in, 52, 257 commune of, 106–7, 255 counts of, 33, 275 diocese of, 10, 236 provincial councils, 123, 126–9, 135, 137, 248 Soissons, bishops of, 94, 262, see Ansculf; Arnulf; Bandaridus; Bettolenus; Drausius; Enguerran; Henry; Hugh of Champfleury; Hugh of Pierrefonds; Josselin of Vierzy; Lisiard; Manasses; Principius; Thibaud of Pierrefonds; Ursio Soissons, council of (1121), 87, 121 Somerville, Robert, 76 Soria Audebert, Myriam, 11, 71 Southern, R.W., 68 Spain, 20 Statius, 51 Stephen, bishop of Tournai, 112 Stephen, count of Blois, 105 Stephen I, pope, 42 Stephen IX, pope, 161 Stephen of Garlande, archdeacon of Paris, 141 Stock, Brian, 108 Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis, 25, 300, 303–6 Sulpicius Severus, 55–7 synods, provincial, see Reims, provincial councils of Tanchelm, 80, 83, 87–92, 94 Tellenbach, Gerd, 14, Tetdo, bishop of Cambrai, 217 Thénailles, abbey of, 274, 297 Theodulf, St, abbot of Saint-Thierry, 180 Thérouanne, 23, 48, 62, 64, 173, 296 cathedral chapter, 64, 119, 268 cathedral of Notre-Dame, 144, 150 diocese of, 32, 35, 60, 88, 116–19, 145, 247, 291 Thérouanne, bishops of, see Audomar; Drogo; Gerard; Hubert; John of Warneton; Milo I; Milo II Thibaud, bishop of Paris, 305

378

Index Thibaud III, count of Blois-Chartres, 36, 160–1, 177 Thibaud Briton, bishop of Amiens, 236, 247 Thibaud of Pierrefonds, bishop of Soissons, 59 Thierry, abbot of Saint-Hubert, 162, 212 Thierry, bishop of Amiens, 25, 33, 232–4, 236–7, 242, 247, 251, 253, 298 Thierry, bishop of Verdun, 162–3, 171 Thierry d’Orcq, prior of Notre-Dame of Tournai, 33 Thierry I Osmont, provost and treasurer of Tournai, 33, 44 Thierry of Nesle, archdeacon and provost of Cambrai, 44 Thomas of Marle, lord of Coucy, 222, 231, 252, 266 Tilpin, archbishop of Reims, 179 Timothy, St, 179 Tock, Benoît-Michel, 173 Torhout, 184 Tournai, 23, 32, 47, 55, 101, 109, 175–6, 248, 269, 286, 289 capitular library, 49, 52 cathedral chapter, 43, 145–9, 286 cathedral of Notre-Dame, 33, 97, 145 cathedral school, 49 diocese of, 34–5, 88, 145, 247, 296, 298 Tournai, bishops of, see Everard; Gerard; Stephen; Walter I Tours, 55, 101, 114 archdiocese of, 34 cathedral of Saint-Martin, 34 Tractatus pro conubio clericorum, 18, 62 Treatise on Grace, 60 Trier, 156, 200 Trier, archbishops of, 124 Trigny, villa of, 274 Troyes, 24, 77, 146, 303 Troyes, council of (1104), 125 Troyes, council of (1107), 72–5, 248 Turold, abbot of Coulombes, 247 Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg, 200 Urban II, pope, 36, 65–6, 72, 74, 76, 103, 113–16, 119, 122, 126, 128, 132, 134–6, 151–2, 215, 219, 229, 291, 303 urban space, construction of, 224–6 Ursio, abbot of Hautmont, 264, 272 Ursio, bishop of Senlis, 36 Ursio, bishop of Soissons, 35–6, 48 Ursmer, St, 248 Utrecht, 92 cathedral chapter, 87–9, 91 diocese of, 88

Val-Chrétien, abbey of, 304 Valenciennes, 79–80, 268 Val-le-Roi, abbey of, 304 Vasselle, François, 249 Vaucelles, abbey of, 304 Vauclair, abbey of, 273 Vedastus, St, bishop of Arras and Cambrai, 197, 265, 294 Verdun, 156–7, 162, 171, 290, 320, 344 Verdun, bishops of, 290 Vermand, 23 Vexin, lords of, 228, see Raoul IV; Simon, count of Amiens, Valois and Vexin Vézelay, 104 Via Francigena, 23 Victor III, pope, 122 Victoricus, St, 238, 242 Vindician, St, bishop of Cambrai, 293–6, 301 Virgil, 48–9 Vita altera sancti Macarii, 270 Vita beati Vindiciani pontificis, 293–6 Vita sancti Arnulfi episcopi Suessionensis, 48, 265–6, see also Hariulf, abbot of Oldenburg Vita sancti Autberti, 55 Vita sancti Bandaridi episcopi Suessionensis, 276–7 Vita sancti Firmini confessoris, 237, 243 Vita sancti Firmini martyris, 237, 243–6 Vita sancti Godefridi episcopi Ambianensis, 66, 246, see Nicholas of Saint-Crépin Vita sancti Honorati, 243–4 Vita sancti Martini, 51, 53, 55–7 Vita sancti Remigii, 40, 154, 210 Vita sancti Salvii episcopi Ambianensis, 237, 243 Vita tertia sancti Gaugerici, 55, 210 vitae, 50 of bishops, 28, 204–5, 259, 263, 268–72, 276–8 Vitalis of Savigny, 79 Walter, abbot of Saint-Sépulcre, 20, 201, 293–6 Walter, archdeacon of Laon, 39 Walter, archdeacon of Thérouanne, 52, 116, 118, 150–1, 270, 290–3, 298 Vita domni Ioannis Morinensis episcopi, 290–3, 296 Walter I, bishop of Laon, 301 Walter I, bishop of Tournai, 286 Walter II, bishop of Laon, 47 Walter of Châtillon, 19 Walter of Douai, 86 Warnerius, archdeacon of Thérouanne, 227 Waters, Claire, 259 Watten, abbey of, 81, 111 Wazo, bishop of Liège, 209 Weber, Max, 8–10, 71

379

Index Wederic of Ghent, 80–1 Werimbold, chancellor of Cambrai, 60 Werner, bishop of Straßburg, 212 Wibald of Stavelot-Malmédy, 302 Will, Ernest, 249 William, abbot of Morimond, 298 William, abbot of Saint-Nicolas of Ribemont, 298 William, bishop of Paris, 105 William, duke of Normandy, 49, 160, 166–7, 171 William II, king of England, 75 William Bona-Anima, archbishop of Rouen, 73

William of Avesnes, treasurer of Tournai, 44 William of Champeaux, bishop of Châlons, 4, 36, 47, 302 William of Passavant, archdeacon of Reims and bishop of Le Mans, 51 William of the White-Hands, archbishop of Reims, 34 Winchester, 101 Winchester, council of (1102), 73 Wolbodo, bishop of Liège, 301 Worms, council of (1076), 204 Ypres, 119

380