The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies - 002 - 2013 PDF

T h e jo u r n a l o f
M E D IE V A L M O N A S T IC S T U D IE S
Editors
Janet Burton, University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Karen Stöber, Universität de Lleida
Reviews Editor
Anne Müller, University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Advisory / Editorial Board

Frances Andrews, University of St Andrews
David Austin, University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Edel Bhreathnach, The Discovery Programme, Ireland
Megan Cassidy-Welch, Monash University
James Clark, Bristol University
Albrecht Diem, Syracuse University
Marilyn Dunn, University of Glasgow
Sarah Foot, Oxford University, Christ Church
Paul Freedman, Yale University
Martin Heale, University of Liverpool
Emilia Jamroziak, University of Leeds
William Chester Jordan, Princeton University
József Laszlovszky, Central European University Budapest
Julian Luxford, University of St Andrews
Colman Ó Clabaigh, GlenstalAbbey
Tadhg O’Keeffe, University College Dublin
Jens Röhrkasten, University of Birmingham
Antonio Sennis, University College London
Orri Vésteinsson, University of Iceland
T h e j o u r n a l of
M E D IE V A L M O N A S T IC S T U D IE S
2
(2013)
Edited by
Janet Burton
and Karen Stöber
BREPOLS
© 2013, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
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ISBN: 978-2-503-54732-9
ISSN: 2034-3515
Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper
C o n t e n t s
Translation, Controversies, and Adaptations

at St Sabas Monastery during the Sixth Century
AUGUSTINE CASIDAY 1
The Monk as Mourner: gendered Eastern Christian Self-Identity

in the Seventh Century
HANNAH HUNT 19
‘No One Can Serve Two Masters’: Abbots and Arch-Abbots

in the Monastic Networks at the End of the Eleventh Century
GUIDO CARIBONI 39
A Norbert for England: Holy Trinity and the Invention of

Robert of Knaresborough
JOSHUA EASTERLING 75
English Benedictine Monks at the Papal Court in the

Thirteenth Century: The Experience of Thomas of Marlborough
in a W ider Context
JANE SAYERS 109
The Monastic Ideal of Discipline and the Making of Clerical Rules

in Late Medieval Castile
SUSANA GUIJARRO 131
Questions and Answers on the Birgittine Rule:

A Letter from Vadstena to Syon Abbey 1421
ELIN ANDERSSON 151
vi CONTENTS
Reviews
The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070-1309

(by Jonathan Riley-Smith)
ANDREW JOTISCHKY 173
Odiosa sanctitas. St Peter Damian, Simony, and Reform

(by William D. McCready)
RALF Lü T z ELSCHWAB 174
The Origin, Development, and Refinement

o f Medieval Religious Mendicancy
(ed. by Donald S. Prudlo)
HANS-JOACHIM SCHMIDT 177
Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian Houses in Medieval

Scotland and Pomeraniafrom the Twelfth to the Late Fourteenth Century
(by Emilia Jamroziak)
PIOTR GÓRECKI 178
The Benedictines in the Middle Ages

(by James g . Clark)
J ö RG SONNTAG 180
Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual and Memory

(by Tomas Ó Carragain)
ANNE MÜLLER 182
The Gothic and Catholicism: Religion, Cultural Exchange

and the Popular Novel, 1785-1829
(by Maria Purves)
VERONICA ORTENBERG WEST-HARLING 184
Female ‘vita religiosa’between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages:
Structures, Developments and Spatial Contexts
(ed. by Gert Melville and Anne Müller)
ALISON I. BEACH 186
CONTENTS v ii
Custodians o f Continuity? The Premonstratensian Abbey at Barlings

and the Landscape o f Ritual
(by Paul Everson and David Stocker)
DAVID AUSTIN 187
Inventing Sempringham: Gilbert o f Sempringham and

the Origins o f the Role o f the Master
(by Katharine Sykes)
ALISON I. BEACH 189
Translation, Controversies, and
Adaptations at St Sabas Monastery
during the Sixth Century
Augustine Casiday
N estled in the cliffs of the Kidron Valley some ten kilometres from Bethlehem,
the Lavra of St Sabas the Sanctified occupies an important place in the his
tory of eastern Christianity. Cyril of Scythopolis, St Sabas’s sixth-century hagiog
rapher, reports that the community formed around Sabas in 483,1 which makes
the lavra one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited Christian monasteries.
Sabas was already prestigious in his lifetime: Emperor Anastasius interviewed
Sabas three times about the debates raging over the Council of Chalcedon (451).2
Indeed, the lavra was a major centre for debate about Christology.3 It soon became
the largest monastery in the Judean Desert. Given the monastery’s prominence, its
rubrics for monastic worship, or the typikon, were enormously influential. Sabas
himself laid the foundation for the ‘Jerusalem Typikon’, which was subsequently
revised and developed for several centuries, until the eighth century when the
monks of the Studios synthesized it with cathedral traditions to form the basis of
1
Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas, 16 (Cyril of Scythopolis, trans. by Price, pp. 108–09).
2
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 50–54 (Cyril of Scythopolis, trans. by Price, pp. 149–56).
3
Perrone, La chiesa di Palestina; Gray, ‘The Sabaite Monasteries’.
Augustine Casiday (CasidayA@cardiff.ac.uk): Lecturer in Greek, School of History,

Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University.
Abstract: This article identifies two texts from St Sabas Monastery that give important
information about theological crises that occurred there during the sixth century: Evagrius
Ponticus’s Gnostic Chapters as well as the Book of Cassian the Monk. The importance of the
monastery as a centre of spiritual and theological authority is explained, before our sources
of information are critically surveyed. Counter to the arguments of their respective editors, I
argue that the two texts studied here should be seen to correct the bias of a major source for
information about the crises (Cyril of Scythopolis’s monastic lives), rather than to corroborate
that bias.
Keywords: Cassian, Evagrius Ponticus, Origenism, Cyril of Scythopolis, theology, Syriac, Latin,
Greek
The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 2 (2013), 1–18 BREPOLS    PUBLISHERS 10.1484/J.JMMS.1.103646

2 Augustine Casiday
the Byzantine Rite. For this reason, Orthodox liturgical books frequently com
memorate Sabas. Furthermore, one of the monks involved in the elaboration of
the Sabaitic typikon was (according to legend) the monastery’s most famous son
— St John of Damascus (c. 676–749), defender of iconography and compiler
of the Fountain of Knowledge which includes his celebrated De fide orthodoxa.
In this paper, I focus on a particular period from the history of St Sabas
Monastery — namely, a fierce controversy about the legacy of the Alexandrian
theologian, Origen (c. 184–253). It is my contention that certain writings by
Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–99) and by John Cassian (c. 360–435) were being
studied and modified by Origen’s admirers there and that the surviving versions
of those writings give us invaluable evidence for that controversy. Study of those
documents will also provide an opportunity to consider the transmission and
translation of earlier sources in sixth-century Christian Palestine. To that end, I
will regularly use hagiographies of Palestinian monks that Cyril of Scythopolis
(525–58) wrote — particularly those of Sabas and Cyriacus — for the general
framework of the events.4 But Cyril’s accounts must be treated with more caution
than many modern scholars have used. He never disguised his conviction that
Origen and company should be repudiated. Like many heresiologists, Cyril was
less interested in dispassionately recording the events of the controversy than
in vividly characterizing the party opposite. Happily, Cyril’s evidence can be
balanced by two texts that have been published since the mid-twentieth century:
the second Syriac version of Evagrius’s Gnostic Chapters (designated hereinafter
as KG-S2)5 and the Book of Cassian the Monk (BCM).6 These texts, I argue, are
products of the environment that Cyril described. As such, they provide precious
information about the sixth-century controversy. My interpretation of those texts
differs from those of their respective editors, but in due course I will address the
differences directly.
4
The text is found in Kyrillos von Skythopolis, ed. by Schwartz; quotations are from Cyril of
Scythopolis, trans. by Price.
5
Both Syriac versions of Evagrius’s Gnostic Chapters, together with French translations, are
found in Les six centuries des ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’, ed. by Guillaumont.
6
The text and translation are found in Tzamalikos, A Newly Discovered Greek Father.
translation, controversies, and adaptations 3
Cyril of Scythopolis on Sixth-Century Origenism

We have already appealed to the chief literary source for information pertaining
to the events at St Sabas Monastery during the reign of Justinian, Cyril of
Scythopolis’s collection of hagiographies, for some details about St Sabas’s own
life. Cyril wrote seven lives: for Euthymius, Sabas, John the Hescyhast, Cyriacus,
Theodosius, Theognius, and Abraamius. John Binns notes internal evidence from
the lives that indicates Cyril was likely born c. 525, wrote all seven lives after his
arrival at the New Lavra (555), remained there for at least two years, and suddenly
ceased writing altogether; these observations lead Binns to hypothesize that Cyril
probably died suddenly c. 558.7 These dates indicate that Cyril himself witnessed
the roiling feuds about Origen, his theology, and his successors that are now
collectively known as the Second Origenist Controversy (to distinguish them
from earlier feuds that occurred in Egypt, c. 399–400). His testimony about the
events, chiefly conveyed in the Life of Sabas, is therefore invaluable.
Cyril has nothing to say about the deep roots of the controversy that interests
us. The problems are at least as old as he is, for twice he relates how his own mother
exhorted him to avoid ‘the error of the Origenists’ when he embarked upon the
monastic life.8 Cyril’s accounts of the strife in Palestine clearly indicate that he
took her exhortation to heart. He devotes considerable space to describing the
victories and defeats and, of course, ultimate victories of the orthodox faithful
in confronting the followers of Origen. These victories he celebrates as tokens
of divine favour and evidence of his heroes’ sanctity. The narrative begins c. 507
when Agapetus, abbot of the New Lavra, discovers that four Origenists, led by
a certain Palestinian called Nonnus, had infiltrated the New Lavra during the
time of his predecessor (‘a Roman named Paul, a simple-minded and detached
man, resplendent with godly virtues’). Agapetus promptly expels them, but when
he died (c. 512) Nonnus and the others approached his successor, Mamas, who
privately readmitted them into the New Lavra. Cyril darkly hints that Nonnus
and the others deliberately mislead them, ‘maintaining in their souls their wicked
fictions but keeping them totally secret from the hearing of the monks out of
fear of our sainted father Sabas’.9 Nonnus and his company return to the fore of
Cyril’s account as he relates the requests Sabas made to Justinian in 530 that the
7
John Binns, ‘Introduction’, in Cyril of Scythopolis, trans. by Price, pp. xxxviii–xl.
8
Cyril, Life of Euthymius, 49 (ed. by Schwartz, 71. 25–26; trans. by Price, p. 69) and Life of
John the Hesychast, 20 (Schwartz, 216. 14–15; Price, p. 235).
9
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 36 (ed. by Schwartz, 124. 12–125. 22; trans. by Price, pp. 133–34).
4 Augustine Casiday
emperor should ‘extirpate the Arian heresy, together with those of Nestorius and
Origen, and free the city and the Church of God from the bane of the heresies’.
Cyril glosses the reference to Origen stating that Sabas had become aware that
one of the monks admitted by Mamas — Leontius of Byzantium — ‘had been
found embracing the doctrines of Origen’.10 Sabas then expels Leontius and the
partisans of Theodore of Mopsuestia (whom he had designated as Nestorius’s
followers when addressing Justinian) from his community. Justinian grants Sabas’s
requests, which (Cyril reports as an aside) also move Justinian to write his edicts
against Nestorius and Origen and to convoke the Fifth Ecumenical Council.11
In 537, Gelasius becomes the abbot of the Great Lavra and expels the Orig
enists, who decamp to the New Lavra where they join Nonnus and Leontius,
under whose guidance they attempt to overthrow the Great Lavra and to pull
it down with ‘pick-axes, shovels, iron crowbars, and other tools of demolition’.12
Some years later, Ephraem, the patriarch of Antioch, anathematizes ‘the doctrines
of Origen’, eliciting an attempt by Nonnus and Leontius to have Peter, the
patriarch of Jerusalem, break communion with Ephraem (c. 543) — which in
turn moved Justinian to issue, and Menas of Constantinople and his synod to
subscribe to, an edict against Origen’s doctrines.13 Opposition from the emperor
and hierarchs notwithstanding, Nonnus and fellows take over the Great Lavra
by October 546 and in February 547 install George as the abbot; later that year,
Nonnus dies.14 Justinian and Menas escalate their involvement in the strife. Cyril
returns to his earlier remarks about how Sabas’s requests had galvanized Justinian’s
opposition to Origen. Thus, says Cyril, the Second Council of Constantinople
(553) anathematizes ‘Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia’ and ‘the teaching
of Evagrius and Didymus on pre-existence and the universal resurrection’, in
response to which the monks of the New Lavra break communion with the
subscribers to that council. The Origenists are forcibly expelled by dux Anastasius
and orthodox monks are installed in the lavra on 21 February 554/55. These
10
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 72 (ed. by Schwartz, 175. 23–176. 2, 176. 10–15; trans. by Price,
p. 185).
11
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 74 (ed. by Schwartz, 179. 3–8; trans. by Price, p. 188); see further
Scritti teologici ed ecclesiastici di Giustiniano, ed. by Amelotti and Zingale, iv: Scritti contro
Origene, pp. 67–125.
12
13
14
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 86–87 (ed. by Schwartz, 195. 11–196. 2; trans. by Price, pp. 201–05).
interventions bring the controversy to its end.15 However, Cyril’s knowledge of

the events is not exhausted: he could have said more about John the Hesychast’s
‘combats on behalf of the faith which he displayed against the doctrines and
champions of Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia’,16 and indicates he knew more
than he reports about Cyriacus’s struggle against the Origenists.17
Bernard Flusin has praised Cyril’s ‘startling historical certainty’ and shown
the value of Cyril’s writings for contemporary historians.18 We must, however,
be aware lest the engaging style of the lives and the exact dates he sometime
provides should beguile us into making too much of Cyril’s views. The lives are
stylish writings that demonstrate sophisticated use of biblical texts and themes,19
as well as the tenacious advancement of theological positions.20 They are by no
means naïve reports. These observations bear on our interest in Cyril’s historical
surveys in so far as he frequently incorporated elements of commentary, not least
theological, into his account. Cyril’s claims about the sequence of events, and the
positions taken by various actors in them, command our attention because Cyril
himself or perhaps his informants directly witnessed them. Cyril’s reliability as a
judge of theology, however, is a separate matter entirely.
For instance, when he first introduces Leontius of Byzantine, Cyril castigates
him as a self-professed advocate of Chalcedonian orthodoxy who nevertheless
held ‘the views of Origen’.21 Cyril elaborates on this claim when he reports
that, after Sabas’s death, Nonnus and Leontius propagated Origenism under
the guise of promoting Chalcedonian orthodoxy. In this way, being ‘zealous
and tireless in sowing the seeds of Origenism throughout Palestine’, they win
over the New Lavra, the monastery of Martyrius, the lavra of Firminus, and the
Great Lavra to their views.22 Cyril’s remarks fit so poorly with the christological
texts by Leontius — works that defend Chalcedon against the proponents of
Nestorius, Julianus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and that lack any indication
15
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 90 (ed. by Schwartz, 199. 1–200. 15; trans. by Price, 207–09).
16
Cyril, Life of John the Hesychast, 27 (ed. by Schwartz, 221. 18–22; trans. by Price,
pp. 240–41).
17
Cyril, Life of Cyriacus, 10 (ed. by Schwartz, 229. 4–6; trans. by Price, p. 252).
18
Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis, p. 9; and see now Flusin,
‘Un hagiographe saisi par l’histoire’.
19
See Horst, ‘The Role of Scripture in Cyril of Scythopolis’.
20
Thus, Hombergen, The Second Origenist Controversy.
21
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 72 (ed. by Schwartz, 176. 9–16; trans. by Price, p. 185).
22
Cyril, Life of Sabas, 83 (ed. by Schwartz, 188. 15–189. 9; trans. by Price, 197–98).
6 Augustine Casiday
of Origenism — that only with difficulty have scholars reconciled the two.
Marcel Richard strongly implies that Leontius found it expedient to disguise
his predilections for Origen under a veil of orthodoxy.23 And yet Richard argues
from a lack of inconsistency between Cyril’s testimony and Leontius’s writings,
rather than from any evidence taken from Leontius’s works. The argument is weak.
Furthermore, as Brian Daley has conclusively shown, Leontius’s writings provide
ample evidence of theological opposition to the pre-existence of souls and to
universal salvation, as well as to other putatively typical teachings of Origen’s
followers.24 Daley’s analysis demonstrates that Leontius’s theology was indeed
pro-Chalcedonian and shows how Leontius’s position could be misrepresented
as Origenist largely because it was not in line with Cyril’s preferences. The case
of Leontius shows that comparison of extant works to Cyril’s claims about their
author instils no confidence in Cyril’s reliability as a commentator on matters
theological, philosophical, or ideological. And so when we come to his general
remarks about Origen’s followers fighting amongst themselves, we should be
reluctant to extrapolate from the terms that (according to Cyril) they cast in each
other’s face to an elaborate account of competing schools of Origenist theology.25
Cyril’s vivid characterization of his enemies contributes to a simplistic view
of the events. That view is asserted in a brisk speech that Cyril attributes to
Cyriacus, who sharply contrasts the speculative, metaphysical ruminations of ‘the
supporters of Origen’ to the virtuous, practical labours of Origen’s opponents.26
That dynamic contrast runs like a thread through historical study of both the
First and the Second Origenist Controversies. Because multiple witnesses attest
to the First Origenist Controversy, scholars have in recent decades elaborated an
23
Cf. Richard, ‘Léonce de Byzance était-il origéniste?’, p. 55: ‘Il est bien évident qu’avant
d’attaquer de front les tares doctrinales de ces détracteurs de haut rang, étant donnée surtout
sa situation assez compromise, il [sc., Léonce] devait donner quelque preuve de sa propre
orthodoxie. C’est pourquoi il a écrit son ier livre. Sa polémique contre le nestorianisme et le
monophysisme — toute théorique avons-nous dit — n’est donc qu’un trompe-l’œil’.
24
Daley, ‘The Origenism of Leontius of Byzantium’, pp. 355–62; note, however, that I
am not endorsing Daley’s use of the term ‘Evagrian Origenism’ for reasons that will emerge.
Cyril says of Euthymius that he combated the doctrines of the pre-existence of souls and of the
general restoration: Life of Euthymius, 26 (ed. by Schwartz, 39. 29–40. 2; trans. by Price, p. 36).
25
Cyril says that the Origenists fall out into those at the New Lavra and at Firminus’s lavra;
Firminus’s group call those at the New Lavra ‘Isochrists’ and the New Lavriotes call Firminus’s
group ‘Protoktists’ or ‘Tetradites’: Life of Sabas, 89 (ed. by Schwartz, 197. 4–198. 6; trans. by
Price, pp. 206–07).
26
Cyril, Life of Cyriacus, 12–14 (ed. by Schwartz, 229. 31–231. 19; trans. by Price,
pp. 253–55).
increasingly complex account of those events and in doing so moved decisively

from endorsing the perspective of a single source. Contrasting advances in the
study of the First Origenist Controversy to the state of research into the Second
Origenist Controversy, Lorenzo Perrone candidly notes:
Our initial paradigm invites us to explore the second Origenist controversy within
the church of Palestine not so much from the point of view of dogma, but rather
as a chapter in the history of the intellectual and spiritual attitudes of Byzantine
monasticism, so as to balance the rather negative picture of this controversy pre
sented by our sources, in the first place Cyril of Scythopolis. A deeper investigation
would perhaps profit methodologically from recent studies on Egyptian monasti
cism and the first Origenist crisis, which are changing our perception of the opposing
sides, and leading us far from the current simplistic stereotype of ‘uncultivated’
and ‘cultivated’ monks. Our picture of monastic parties facing each other in
Palestine during the first half of the sixth century has not always been free from
such schematic representation, as was originally suggested by our documentation.27
Perrone is right to identify the simplistic dichotomy that vexes the study of the
Second Controversy — significantly, a dichotomy that comes directly from
Cyril’s testimony. And he is also right to identify the impact had upon our
understanding of the First Controversy by the recognition that multiple parties
were involved in the debates and arguments and fights. The problem that remains
is our relative lack of primary sources about the Second Controversy, which skews
our perspective toward Cyril’s uncompromising opposition to Origen and his
‘followers’. Consequently, scholars grappling with the sparse evidence often find
themselves obliged to take on Cyril’s paradigm for the events. And this practice
makes it extremely difficult to offer any persuasive account of the beliefs of
those against whom Cyril set himself.28 There are illuminating passages in the
contemporary correspondence to and from Barsanuphius of Gaza and John of
Gaza, and of course we have multiple works from Leontius of Byzantium, so it is
possible to work up parameters for what counted as ‘Origenist’ in the sixth cen
tury.29 What have been lacking chiefly are primary sources written by followers of
Origen. Or have they?
27
Perrone, ‘Palestinian Monasticism, the Bible, and Theology’, p. 246, with references to
publications by Samuel Rubenson, Paolo Bettiolo, and Mark Sheridan.
28
Perrone, ‘Palestinian Monasticism, the Bible, and Theology’, p. 247: ‘important links with
the preceding period are missing and more generally we lack information either to substantiate
the spiritual world of the “Origenists” or partly even of their adversaries’.
29
For example, Daley, ‘What Did “Origenism” Mean?’.
8 Augustine Casiday
Syriac Evagrius, Greek Cassian

In the Roman manuscript of Leontius’s works (BAV, MS Vat. gr. 2195), published
by Cardinal Mai and reprinted by Abbé Migne, there are two marginal notes that
point a way forward. When Leontius writes of the Nestorians and Eutychians
‘fittingly has a good and godly man called them both “contrary fictionalists”
['εναντιοδοκήτας]’, a helpful scholiast supplies, ‘He speaks of Abba Nonnus’.30
Migne also relates an understated observation from Francisco Torres, Leontius’s
first translator into Latin: ‘This Nonnus is depicted otherwise by Cyril in the
Life of St Sabas and of St Cyriacus’. The medieval scholion and the modern note
add an element consistent with, but lacking from, Cyril’s accounts. On Cyril’s
report of the crisis, Leontius overshadows Nonnus immediately, though whenever
the two are presented together Nonnus is mentioned first. Nonnus’s priority is
curious, since Leontius is presented as the intellectual standard-bearer. The two
notes reprinted by Migne indicate that Leontius was indebted to Nonnus (some
thing suggested but not developed by Cyril) and that both were interested in
defending Chalcedonian Christology against Nestorian and Eutychian Chris
tology (something Cyril acknowledges about Leontius, before subverting it by
claiming it is an active deception). Knowing that Nonnus was engaged enough
in Christological discussions to supply Leontius with a barbed name for their
shared adversaries modestly adds to our knowledge of the events. Since Daley
has provided a cogent evaluation of Leontius’s Christological works that belies
Cyril’s insinuations of duplicity, it is at least possible that Nonnus too may have
contributed to promoting Chalcedonian Christology (as suggested by the seem
ing reference to Nonnus in BAV, MS Vat. gr. 2195). This is a slender reed, of
course. But the second marginal note is more significant.
Leontius writes, ‘It was well said by a certain divinely wise man [ἀνδρὶ θεοσόφῳ]
before our time, “The one desire [πόθος] that is good and eternal is that which
longs for true knowledge”’.31 The marginal note is succinct: ‘Of Evagrius’. The
identification is plausible: the aphorism certainly sounds Evagrian enough.32 In at
30
Leontius, Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, i. 7 (Spicilegium romanum x, ed. by Mai, ii
(1844), p. 6; Patrologia graeca, lxxxvi (1865), col. 1275).
31
Leontius, Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, i. 14 (Spicilegium romanum x, ed. by Mai, ii
(1844), p. 15; Patrologia graeca, lxxxvi (1865), col. 1285).
32
Cf. Daley, ‘The Origenism of Leontius of Byzantium’, p. 335: ‘the other correctly
identifies an authorless quotation in the text (1285A15–B1) as coming from Evagrius Ponticus,
presumably the source of most of the “Origenism” current in the sixth century’.
least two other passages, Evagrius talks about a desire toward the divine or God.33
The expression ‘true knowledge’ is commonplace in his works. However, the ci
tation is imprecise and my early efforts to trace the exact source for Leontius’s
quotation have failed. Even so, it stands as a reminder that texts are not necessar
ily stable. Such is demonstrably the case for Evagrius’s texts. Himself a copyist,
Evagrius appended a note to one of his basic texts requesting that subsequent
copyists should preserve its order and presentation exactly.34 That text consists
in one hundred chapters, or ‘kephalaia’, many of which are easily memorable —
and indeed the ability to recollect pithy sayings, advice, or topical scriptures
is an important part of monastic development in Evagrius’s perspective. The
introductory comments to Evagrius’s On Prayer (a collection of 153 kephalaia)
gives a clear sense for how he thought they ought best to be used; he writes, ‘I
am amazed by you and am very jealous of your excellent purpose in desiring the
chapters on prayer, for you do not desire to have them simply at hand in ink on
paper, but also settled in your mind through love and freedom from grudge-
bearing’.35 The exemplary reader ‘settles’ the chapters in the mind and thus can
instantly access them as circumstances warrant. This very use of the kephalaia,
however, disposes the reader to move from the order in which Evagrius presents
them and to employ them freely and spontaneously. Practical application of
Evagrius’s teaching tends to promote the memorization of kephalaia as discrete
units within a general understanding. So it is not surprising that his students —
and in one memorable instance, his detractors — would eventually excerpt and
adapt his writings.36 The corpus of Evagrius’s work was fluid.
The fluidity of Evagrius’s writings is revealed nowhere so clearly as by Antoine
Guillaumont’s discovery and publication of a second version of Evagrius’s Kepha
laia gnostika. The ‘Six Centuries of Gnostic Chapters’ culminates Evagrius’s trilogy,
33
Evagrius, Praktikos, 57 (Traité pratique, ou, le Moine, ed. by Guillaumont and Guillaumont,
Sources Chrétiennes 171, p. 634): ‘πόθος πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἄπειρος’; Evagrius, On Prayer, 118
(Patrologia graeca, lxxix (1865), col. 1193): ‘Μακάριός ἐστιν ὁ νοῦς, ὃς ἀπερισπάστως εὐχόμενος,
πλείονα πόθον ἀεὶ πρὸς Θεὸν προσλαμβάνει’.
34
On the ‘Note to copyists’, see Traité pratique, ou, le Moine, ed. by Guillaumont and
Guillaumont, Sources Chrétiennes 170, pp. 384–85; that Evagrius was a scribe, see Palladius,
Historia lausiaca, 38 (The Lausiac History of Palladius, ed. by Butler, ii, p. 120. 12).
35
Evagrius, On Prayer, ‘Introduction’ (Patrologia graeca, lxxix (1865), col. 1165);
translation: Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus, p. 186.
36
See Teachings of the Disciples of Evagrius, ed. by Géhin (Sources Chrétiennes 514), and
twelve definitions from ‘the accursed Evagrius’ in Doctrina patrum de incarnatione verbi, ed. by
Diekamp, Phanourgakes, and Chrysos, §34, pp. 250, 254, 257, 258, 261, 263.
10 Augustine Casiday
which began with Praktikos (‘The Doer, or the Monk’) and continued with Gnostikos
(‘The Knower, or One Worthy of Knowledge’). In line with Evagrius’s tripartite
presentation of Christianity (ascetic practice, knowledgeable contemplation
of scriptures and creation, and theological encounter with God),37 the subject
matter of Kephalaia gnostika is understanding God, understanding the universe
as God’s handiwork, and as a result praising and adoring God appropriately. No
longer extant in Greek in its entirety, the chief witness to the Kephalaia gnosti
ka is a Syriac translation — or rather, following Guillaumont’s findings, two
Syriac translations. Guillaumont identified the textus receptus as KG-S1 and the
version he discovered as KG-S2, and he published both with supporting French
translations. Broadly speaking, the difference between the versions lies in their
Origenist content. Guillaumont compellingly argued that the features distinctive
of KG-S2 fit neatly with the evidence for the crises of the sixth century (not least
from Cyril, from Justinian, and from Menas of Constantinople). So far, so good.
But in a series of momentous publications, Guillaumont further argued that
KG-S2 is the integral version of KG whereas KG-S1 is expurgated.
Elsewhere, I have enumerated problems besetting Guillaumont’s argument
that KG-S2 faithfully witnesses to KG.38 To recapitulate, there is no substantial
evidence that the distinctive features of KG-S2 are closer to Evagrius’s other
writings than are those of KG-S1; nor is there lateral evidence contemporaneous
to Evagrius himself for those distinctive features — indeed, Evagrius’s name is
conspicuous for its absence from the contemporary evidence for the Origenist
controversy of 399–400. Guillaumont’s interpretation of events is coherent, but
not compelling. He claimed that KG-S2 (uniquely attested in a manuscript dated
to 534)39 is a better witness to the original Greek text of KG than is KG-S1, which
existed before the mid-fifth century (since it was the base for KG-Armenian, which
is dated to c. 450). This is a problematical claim. Subsequent to Guillaumont’s pub
lications, research into the First Origenist Controversy and the Second Origenist
Controversy has highlighted profound differences between those two periods.
The latter is not a direct continuation of the former. The major commonality
between the two controversies is that, in them, the dispute centres on what place
37
Evagrius, Praktikos, 1 (Traité pratique, ou, le Moine, ed. by Guillaumont and Guillaumont,
Sources Chrétiennes 171, p. 498).
38
See, e.g., Casiday, ‘Gabriel Bunge and the Study of Evagrius Ponticus’; Casiday, ‘On
Heresy in Modern Scholarship’; and Casiday, Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus,
pp. 65–71.
39
Les six centuries des ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’, ed. by Guillaumont, p. 7; for the dating of the
manuscript, see Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, ii, p. 637.
(if any) philosophy has in theology. Origen’s name is much in evidence, even in
instances where it is clear that his reputation rather than his writings are discussed.
These developments have made it difficult to suppose that KG-S1 represents the
de-contamination of the Urtext for KG-S2 by parties sympathetic to Evagrius.
Simply put, there is inadequate evidence that the distinctive features of KG-S2
were being debated before the Second Origenist Controversy. Guillaumont’s
reconstruction in effect asks us to suppose that the redactors who produced
KG-S1 were prescient enough to anticipate the themes and topics that would be
contested in Palestine roughly a century later and to expurgate them from their
translation. It is to Guillaumont’s credit that he explicitly acknowledged that
Evagrius was not a central figure in the controversies of 399–400.
I think we should go further. ‘Evagrian Origenism’ is a scholarly construct that
distinguishes Origen himself from the Origenism denounced by Cyril and others.
It is doubtful whether anyone would now maintain that Cyril’s Origenism (so to
speak) is identical with Origen’s teachings. But it is also doubtful whether ‘Evagrian
Origenism’ is identical with Evagrius’s teachings. And it seems perverse to accentu
ate the distance between Origen and the sixth-century debates by collapsing the
distance between Evagrius and those debates. Evagrian Origenism obliterates
the distinction between Evagrius’s writings and teachings and the reception of
those writings and teachings. It is unhelpful for further research into Origen’s leg
acy and Evagrius’s. Moreover, Guillaumont’s finding that KG-S2 showcases the
contested themes for the sixth-century controversies need not be disputed.
In view of the qualitative differences between the debates during Evagrius’s
lifetime and those that transpired a century and a half later, we can offer an in
terpretation of Guillaumont’s remarkable discovery different to his own. The
reason KG-S2 fits so well with the Origenist position of the Second Origenist
Controversy is precisely because it is a product of that time. To put it another way,
the second Syriac translation of Evagrius’s KG is invaluable evidence (not for
Evagrius’s own thinking, but) for the reception of Evagrius’s works in the days
before the Second Origenist Controversy. This interpretation of KG-S2 requires
only that we posit a willingness by enthusiastic followers of Origen to rework
older texts. And circumstantial evidence corroborating that position is available
from a second source: a collection of several Greek texts attributed to Cassian the
Roman.
The texts are three: one addressed to Bishop Castor on the constitutions and
rules of coenobitic life; the second, also to Castor, on the eight thoughts (gluttony,
luxury, avarice, wrath, envy, despondency, vainglory, and pride); and the third to
Leontius, about the fathers of Sketis, including discourses from Abba Moyses and
Abba Serenus. Lateral witnesses to these works go back at least to the Ladder of
Divine Ascent by John, abbot of Sinai (c. 525–606), who refers to Cassian’s writing
‘On discernment’.40 This corresponds to a discourse by Abba Moyses found in On
the Holy Fathers at Sketis.41 As Panayiotis Tzamalikos has noted, the occurrence
in the Ladder of Divine Ascent and in On the Holy Fathers at Sketis of the obscure
verb ἀπιδιάζειν increases the likelihood that the latter was indeed the text which
John of Sinai knew.42 The learned patriarch Photius (c. 810–93) summarized
three works by ‘the monk Cassian, said to be Roman’ and Photius’s summaries
coincide with the texts in the Book of Cassian the Monk (BCM).43 In modern
times, Nikodimos the Hagiorite and Makarios of Corinth included the same
texts in the Philokalia, a major collection of ascetical and monastic literature that
evolved over centuries.44 A hundred years ago, K. J. Dyovouniotis published the
texts as preserved in a manuscript at Meteora — but with sparing comments.45 By
that standard alone, Tzamalikos’s new edition with translation, annotation, and
commentary is a significant improvement. However, the interpretation of these
texts that he advances is neither persuasive nor satisfactory.
Tzamalikos attempts to show that these remarkable texts were originally
written by a Greek monk (whom, with an eye to Cyril of Scythopolis’s Life of
Sabas,46 he designates ‘Cassian the Sabaite’). He argues that these three writings
were subsequently translated into Latin, whereupon they were foisted upon a
character known now as John Cassian. Tzamalikos’s construal of the events has
some initial appeal: after all, transmission from Greek to Latin is overwhelmingly
more common during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages than transmission
from Latin to Greek. However, multiple problems make Tzamalikos’s thesis
unsustainable. Tzamalikos too hastily dismisses lateral evidence for John Cassian
provided by Latin sources who antedate Cyril of Scythopolis; he demonstrates
limited familiarity with contemporary historical and theological research into
Latin literature (included but not limited to ecclesiastical Latin literature); he
40
John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 4 (Patrologia graeca, lxxx (1864), col. 717).
41
Cassian, On the Holy Fathers at Sketis, 62r (Tzamalikos, A Newly Discovered Greek Father,
p. 180).
42
Tzamalikos, A Newly Discovered Greek Father, p. 235.
43
Photius, Myriobiblion, codex 197 (Photius: bibliothèque, ed. by Henry, iii, pp. 92–95).
44
For Cassian’s works, see Φιλοκαλία των ιερών νηπτικών, ed. by Tzelati, i, pp. 35–55. On
the evolution of the Philokalia, see Géhin, ‘Le Filocalie che hanno preceduto la “Filocalia”’.
45
Δυοβουνιώτος, ‘᾿Ιωάννου Κασσιανοῦ Διαλέξις Πατέρων’, pp. 51–65, 161–76, 225–43.
46
See Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas, 56 (ed. by Schwartz, p. 196); note that the figure
here is called Κασιανός (‘Casian’) rather than Cassian.
treats widely acknowledged gaps in the records about John Cassian as positive
evidence that he was fictional rather than historical; and he appeals to a hyper
active sense of cultural conflict between Latins and Greeks as a persistent feature
of history, within which his own claims for Cassian the Sabaite worryingly seem to
be polemical.47 His further attributions of multiple other documents to Cassian
the Sabaite inspire no confidence, precisely because they are based upon his ma
jor argument that Cassian the Sabaite wrote BCM and because that argument is
profoundly flawed. It may be the case that Cassian the Sabaite in fact wrote the
Scholia on the Apocalypse and other texts identified by Tzamalikos, but any such
attribution would need to be established independently from the arguments that
John Cassian is a historical fiction.
A passage in the First Contribution by Serenus, 89r, tells against Tzamalikos’s
conclusion that Cassian the Sabaite wrote BCM.48 There, Abba Serenus refers to
‘demons with aerial bodies’ (‘δαίμονες ἀερίοις σώμασι’). In discussing that clause,
47
For example Tzamalikos’s evaluation of Prosper of Aquitaine’s Contra collatorem is
wholly inadequate (Tzamalikos, The Real Cassian Revisited, p. 93). He misleadingly suggests
that the identity of the ‘Collator’ is uncertain: though Tzamalikos is right that Prosper (fl.
c. 435–55) does not mention the author’s name, Prosper specifically identifies the work he is
attacking as a dialogue lead by an abbot and entitled On the Protection of God — which applies
precisely to Cassian’s Conference, 13, and to no other known work from the period. Tzamalikos’s
treatment of evidence from Cassiodorus (c. 485–585) is remarkable for ignoring awkward
evidence: the texts excerpted accurately by Tzamalikos (p. 98, n. 205) suffice to show that
Cassiodorus knew that Prosper criticized John Cassian, referred to John Cassian’s Institutes,
and cited John Cassian’s Conference, 10. Furthermore, his treatment of the term ‘semi-Pelagian’
(pp. 212–14; A Newly Discovered Greek Father, p. 149, n. 135) is out of step with modern
scholarship. ‘Semi-Pelagianism’ is a construct of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation;
its utility for analysing older historical periods must be demonstrated, not assumed — and
there is no justification whatever for suggesting that the term somehow identifies traces of
Origen’s influence in the works of ‘Latin Cassian’ (The Real Cassian Revisited, p. 59). For the
gaps and uncertainties in our knowledge about John Cassian’s life, see Tzamalikos’s maladroit
appropriation of Richard Goodrich’s monograph and Goodrich’s claims about Marseilles
(pp. 55–57); Tzamalikos’s arguments would have been served better by recourse to Frank, ‘John
Cassian on John Cassian’. For the cultural conflict, see Tzamalikos’s extraordinary comments
on the occurrence of the term Graeculus in a note by Andrea Gallandi (1709–79/80), with
reference to Cicero (A Newly Discovered Greek Father, pp. 150–52). It is disappointing that
Tzamalikos does not make better use of Cicero’s works, for the extensive discussion of ultimum
(cf. τέλος) and propositum (cf. σκοπὸς) in Book iii of his De finibus bonorum et malorum might
have deterred Tzamalikos’s remark about how the distinction is unavailable in Latin (A Newly
Discovered Greek Father, pp. 216–17).
48
Tzamalikos, A Newly Discovered Greek Father, pp. 264 and 265 n. 223; cf. Tzamalikos,
The Real Cassian Revisited, pp. 174–78.
Tzamalikos notes that an anonymous correspondent raised with Barsanuphius of

Gaza the question of aerial and round bodies. Barsanuphius responded by flatly
discouraging speculation along those lines.49 That letter is one of several that ad
dress concerns that are obviously related to the Second Origenist Controversy.
The reference to aerial bodies in BCM therefore suggests a provenance in sixth-
century Palestine. That suggestion is bolstered when we recall Cyril’s report that
Cyriacus explicitly denounced belief that ‘our bodies will be raised ethereal and
spherical at the resurrection’.50 The ‘aerial bodies’ mentioned in BCM are strong
evidence that the text does indeed belong to the Second Origenist Controversy.
And yet the parallel passage in John Cassian’s Conference, vii. 15, indicates
that BCM may in fact be more interesting than Tzamalikos allows. In the Latin
text, Abba Serenus says that external indications are observed ‘by those aerial
powers’ (‘illis aereis uirtutibus’)51 so as to ascertain the inner disposition of
the people whom they are vexing. This phrase is an allusion to Ephesians, 2. 2
(‘κατὰ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος’; ‘secundum principem potestatis aëris
huius’). Comparing the two versions of Cassian’s material, then, we note the
Latin text provides a plain scriptural allusion with no particular relevance to any
debates known to be current c. 426 (when the man died to whom John Cassian
dedicated the first instalment of his Conferences); whereas the Greek text has
no particular connection to the scriptures and is relevant to debates that were
current c. 530 (when the Second Origenist Controversy was underway). There
are two possible ways to account for their relationship: either the Latin translator
made a significant stylistic improvement on the Greek text by substituting an
understated reference for a problematical assertion, or the Greek translator
made a subtle Latin reference more blatant by expanding it to identify that
the ‘airy powers’ are (in an elaboration of Ephesians 2. 2) demons ‘with aerial
bodies’. Supposing that the former is the case, then what we have is a Latin
translator eliminating a feature that was contested during the Second Origenist
Controversy. However, the Latin text of Conference vii features several startling
claims about God’s incorporeality and suffusion throughout all space which are
redolent of metaphysical claims made by Evagrius Ponticus and, as such, which
are deeply suspect after the Second Origenist Controversy. Supposing that the
Latin translator was expurgating a Greek text, it is difficult to account for the
49
Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, Letter 607 (Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza, ed. by Neyt,
Sources Chrétiennes 451, pp. 830–42).
50
Cyril, Life of Cyriacus, 12 (ed. by Schwartz, 230. 7–9; trans. by Price, p. 253).
51
Cassian, Conferences, vii. 15 (Patrologia latina, xlix (1846), col. 690).
survival of those claims. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that the Greek
text is what every other author who has considered the Greek text over the past
century has considered it to be: namely, a Greek translation from John Cassian’s
original Latin. But thanks to Tzamalikos’s work, we can make a more specific
claim. It is highly likely that the translation was made during sixth century within
the Second Origenist Controversy.
If this interpretation is accepted, then we have two specimens of texts from
the period c. 360–430 written by inheritors of Origen’s exegetical and spiritual
traditions that can be dated and situated to Palestine a century thereafter. More
importantly, we have evidence that these texts were adapted by readers who were
themselves promoters of Origen’s work. Both KG-S2 and BCM are primary
evidence of ‘Origen’s followers’ whom Barsanuphius discouraged, Cyriacus
lambasted, and Justinian condemned.
Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued that two texts — the second Syriac version of Evagrius’s
Gnostic Chapters (KG-S2) and the Book of Cassian the Monk (BCM) — should be
understood as a specific type of evidence for monastic involvement in the Second
Origenist Controversy. Their respective editors, Guillaumont and Tzamalikos,
established that those texts are important for our appraisal of the events of that
period. To that extent, I agree. Their analyses differed: Guillaumont argued that
KG-S2 is the authentic witness to Evagrius’s original writing and that it inspired the
‘followers of Origen’ a century later; Tzamalikos argued that BCM was written by
a specific figure, Cassian of St Sabas, whose profile he reconstructed as a moderate
intellectual inspired partly by Origen. The interpretation of those documents
advanced herein is different. Pace Guillaumont, I have argued that KG-S2 is a
testimony to the brisk adaptations of Evagrius’s work that occurred subsequent
to his death and that contributed to the Second Origenist Controversy. Pace
Tzamalikos, I have argued that BCM is a Greek translation of selections from
John Cassian’s earlier Latin writings — writings that were themselves witnesses
to the monastic response to Origen’s spirituality and that were as such valuable to
subsequent generations of monks who valued Origen’s teachings.
In the interests of clarity, it is good to stipulate two claims that I am not making.
First, I am not arguing that Cyril simply made up sixth-century Origenism. The
correspondences between content within KG-S2 and the anti-Origenist polemic
— as established by Guillaumont’s research — indicate that there were indeed
sixth-century followers of Evagrius who were preoccupied with speculating about
metaphysical aspects of Christian theology. I no more think that Origenism was

a fictional construct than I think John Cassian was. What I am claiming instead is
that Cyril’s understanding of Origen’s followers is suspect, and that neither Cyril
nor Justinian are trustworthy guides to the reconstruction of the teachings of
Origen’s followers in the sixth century. If I have accurately contextualized KG-S2
and BCM, then their further interpretation will significantly extend our ability to
describe and evaluate the Second Origenist Controversy. Tzamalikos’s attribution
of several writings (other than BCM) to Cassian the Sabaite may contribute to
that undertaking.
Secondly (and here I follow Daley’s work on Leontius), Cyril demonstrably
collapsed distinguishable groups in furtherance of his polemic and only ack
nowledged differences in outlook and activity when it suited him to portray
his enemies as a fissiparous group. We do well to remember that controversies
can be multilateral and therefore to treat with caution accounts that simplify
controversies into a dichotomy. With that caveat in mind, I am not suggesting
that there was a single, dominant Origenism during the period — nor indeed
that there was a grand coalition of Origenists. Perhaps there was, though it seems
unlikely and in any case would need to be established through study rather than
asserted as a principle. The differences in style and emphasis that distinguish
KG-S2 and BCM may well illustrate diversity amongst the broad number of
Origen’s followers. But comparing and evaluating KG-S2 and BCM is work for
another day.
Works Cited
Manuscripts and Archival Documents
Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vaticanus graecus 2195
Primary Sources
Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza: Correspondance, ed. by François Neyt and others, Sources
Chrétiennes, 426, 427, 450, 451, 468 (Paris: Cerf, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002)
Cassian, Opera omnia, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul
Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Migne, 1844–64), xlix (1846)
Cyril of Scythopolis, ed. by Edward Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis, Texte und
Untersuchungen, 49. 2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1939); trans. by Richard Price, Cyril of
Scythopolis: The Lives of the Monks of Palestine (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1991)
Doctrina patrum de incarnatione verbi: ein griechisches Florilegium aus der Wende des 7.
und 8. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Franz Diekamp, Vasileios Phanourgakes, and Euangelos
Chrysos (Münster: Aschendorff, 1981)
Evagrius Ponticus, Kephalaia Gnostica S1 and S2, ed. by Antoine Guillaumont, Les six cen
turies des ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le pontique, Patrologia Orientalis, 28. 1 (Paris:
Firmin-Didot, 1958)
—— , Opera omnia, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne,
161 vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–66), lxxix (1865)
—— , Praktikos, ed. by Antoine Guillaumont and Claire Guillaumont, Traité pratique, ou,
le Moine, Sources Chrétiennes, 171–72 (Paris: Cerf, 1971)
John Climacus, Opera omnia, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-
Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–66), lxxx (1864)
Leontius, Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, ed. by Angelo Mai, Spicilegium romanum x
(Rome: Collegium Urbanum, 1839–44),ii (1844); ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrolo
giae cursus completus: series graeca, 161 vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–66), lxxxvi (1865)
Palladius, Historia lausiaca, ed. by Cuthbert Butler, The Lausiac History of Palladius
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904)
Φιλοκαλία των ιερών νηπτικών, ed. by Panayiotis Tzelati (Athens: Leoni, 1893)
Photius, Myriobiblion, ed. by René Henry, Photius: bibliothèque, 9 vols (Paris: Belles
Lettres, 1959–91)
Scritti teologici ed ecclesiastici di Giustiniano, ed. by Mario Amelotti and Livia Migliardi
Zingale (Milan: Giuffrè, 1977)
Teachings of the Disciples of Evagrius, ed. by Paul Géhin, Sources Chrétiennes, 514 (Paris:
Cerf, 2007)
Secondary Studies
Casiday, Augustine M., Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Routledge, 2006)

—— , ‘Gabriel Bunge and the Study of Evagrius Ponticus: Review Article’, St Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly, 48 (2004), 249–97
—— , ‘On Heresy in Modern Scholarship: The Case of Evagrius Ponticus’, Heythrop
Journal, 53 (2012), 241–52
—— , Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013)
Daley, Brian, ‘The Origenism of Leontius of Byzantium’, Journal of Theological Studies, 17
(1976), 333–69
—— , ‘What Did “Origenism” Mean in the Sixth Century?’, in Origeniana Sexta, ed. by
Gilles Dorival and Alain Le Boulluec (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), pp. 627–38
Δυοβουνιώτος, Κ. Ι., ‘᾿Ιωάννου Κασσιανοῦ Διαλέξις Πατέρων’, Ἐκκλησιαστικός φάρος, 6
(1913), 51–65, 161–76, 225–43
Flusin, Bernard, ‘Un hagiographe saisi par l’histoire: Cyrille de Scythopolis et la mesure
du temps’, in The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the
Present, ed. by Joseph Patrich (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), pp. 119–26
—— , Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes,
1983)
Frank, Karl Suso, ‘John Cassian on John Cassian’, Studia Patristica, 30 (1996), 418–33
Géhin, Paul, ‘Le Filocalie che hanno preceduto la “Filocalia”’, in Nicodemo l’Aghiorita e la
Filokalia, ed. by Antonio Rigo (Magnano: Qiqajon, 2001), pp. 83–102
Gray, Patrick T. R., ‘The Sabaite Monasteries and the Christological Controversies
(478–533)’, in The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to
the Present, ed. by Joseph Patrich (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), pp. 237–42
Hombergen, Daniël, The Second Origenist Controversy: A New Perspective on Cyril of
Scythopolis’ Monastic Biographies as Historical Sources for Sixth-Century Origenism
(Roma: Sant’ Anselmo, 2001)
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—— , ‘Palestinian Monasticism, the Bible, and Theology in the Wake of the Second Orig
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Richard, Marcel, ‘Léonce de Byzance était-il origéniste?’, Revue des etudes byzantines, 5
(1947), 31–66
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Cassian of Marseilles, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 111 (Leiden: Brill, 2012)
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Century, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 112 (Leiden: Brill, 2012)
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the Year 1838, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1870–72)
The Monk as Mourner:
Gendered Eastern Christian
Self-Identity in the Seventh Century
Hannah Hunt
T he practice of mourning for sin, a joy-bearing grief which brings the penitent
closer to God, is found in many different monastic traditions, and the con
text determines the full impact of the monk’s identity as mourner. The life and
writings of two very different seventh-century monks in the Eastern Christian
world reveal distinctive interpretations of penitent grief. John Climacus lived in
the latter part of the sixth century and, having enjoyed forty years of solitude after
a life lived ‘in the world’, he became abbot of the monastery on Mount Sinai. His
writing expresses knowledge and understanding of the temptations and demands
of the secular life and talks about mourning for sin in a way which is accessible
to those still living outside the monastery.1 His legacy takes the form of one very
coherent account of what he calls the ‘ladder of divine ascent’, the thirty chapters
of which recall the thirty years of Christ’s active ministry, a text read every Lent
1
Exact details about his dates are contested; see John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine
Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, pp. xxi–xxv and Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, Chapter 2 for
analysis of the evidence.
Hannah Hunt (H.Hunt@leedstrinity.ac.uk): Senior Lecturer and Reader in Eastern

Christianity, Leeds Trinity University.
Abstract: The Eastern Christian term for a monastic from the desert fathers onwards was a
‘mourner’. The solitary grieved for his sin, and expressed his penitence in tears of lamentation.
The remorse he felt was, paradoxically, joyful because it brought him closer to God. The ‘mourner’
within the Christian community articulated the remorse of his fellows as well as himself. The
term was applied to men specifically, and denotes a shift from the practice of secular mourning
being the province of women. This article will explore male self-identity in two contemporaries
from very different contexts, John Climacus, an abbot of Mount Sinai, whose ‘Ladder of Divine
Ascent’ is the Lenten reading today in every Orthodox monastery, and Isaac of Nineveh, who
exemplifies the Syrian outworking of the tradition.
Keywords: Monk, mourner, gender, redemption, typology, Syriac literature, sin, women,
desacralization, first and second Adam

20 Hannah Hunt
in Orthodox monasteries to this day.2 Step 7 of this, which follows a section on

the remembrance of death, is on ‘joy-bearing grief ’ and in it Climacus explains
the paradox of grieving for sin. It is both deeply penitent and profoundly joyful
as the ‘mourner’ strips away the defilement of sin and recognizes his need for
God. Such grief underpins penitence, and allows the spiritual aspirant to ascend
on the ladder towards deification and incorporation in Christ.
Isaac the Syrian, also known as Isaac of Nineveh, was born and educated in
Beth Qatraye and after becoming a monk was consecrated as bishop of Nineveh
some time during the 660s or 670s. However, his desire for solitude was such
that within a few months he resigned his see and withdrew to the mountains of
Khuzistan.3 Isaac writes from a more encratic Syrian perspective, suggesting that
weeping for sins committed is more literal and perhaps less joyful than his Greek
contemporary does. Indeed he goes so far as to say that this type of mourning
actually defines the identity of a monk:
What meditation can a monk have in his cell save weeping? Could he have any
time free from weeping to turn his gaze to another thought? And what occupation
is better than this? A monk’s very cell and his solitude, which bear a likeness to
life in a tomb, far from human joys, teach him that his work is to mourn. And
the very calling of his name urges and spurs him on to this, because he is called
‘the mournful one’ (abila), that is, bitter in heart. All the saints have left this life
in mourning. If, therefore, all the saints mourned and their eyes were ever filled
with tears till they departed from this life, who would have no need of weeping? A
monk’s consolation is born of his weeping. And if the perfect and victorious wept
here, how could a man covered with wounds endure to abstain from weeping? He
whose loved one lies dead before him and who sees himself dead in sins — has he
need of instruction on the thought he should employ for tears? Your soul, slain by
sins, lies before you; your soul which is of greater value to you than the whole world.
Could there be no need for you to weep over her? If, therefore, we enter stillness
and patiently persevere there, we shall certainly be able to be constant in weeping.
So let us entreat the Lord with an unrelenting mind to grant us mourning.4
This key passage from Isaac’s Homily 37 clearly states the role of the monk as
abila, the mourner. This constitutes for Isaac not only his function and purpose
2
Moore also translates some prologemena to the Ladder which explain the intended au
dience and circumstances of the text’s composition. His chapter on weeping for sin is ‘one of the
most influential in the whole of The Ladder’ according to Ware’s introduction in John Climacus,
The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, p. 23.
3
Brock, A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature, p. 54.
4
Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies, trans. by Miller, pp. 177–78.
The Monk as Mourner 21
in life but his very identity. The passage is steeped in the language of inner
contemplation, the monk’s gaze at his soul, an almost Ignatian visualization of
the soul wounded by sin lying at his feet, in need of the ‘medicine of repentance’.5
Compare this to an extract from Climacus’s Step Seven: On Mourning
In your heart be like an emperor, seated high in humility, commanding laughter:
‘Go!’ and it goes, and sweet weeping: ‘Come!’ and it comes; and our tyrant and
slave, the body: ‘Do this!’ and it does it […] the man wearing blessed, God-given
mourning like a wedding garment gets to know the spiritual laughter of the soul
[…] I have seen petitioners and shameless beggars melt even the hearts of kings by
the artful words they use. But I have also watched another kind of beggar, those
poor in virtue, men who have no knack with words, who talk in humble, vague, and
faltering fashion, who are not ashamed to implore the King of Heaven persistently
from the depths of a desperate heart and who by their tenacity lay siege to His
inviolable nature and His compassion […] When a baby starts to recognize its
father, it is filled with happiness. If the father has to spend time away on business
before returning home, it has its fill of joy and sadness — joy at seeing the one
it loves, sadness at the fact of having been deprived so long of that same love.
Sometimes a mother hides from her baby and is delighted to note how sadly the
child goes about looking for her, because this is how she teaches the child to be
always attached to her and stirs up the flame of its love for her. He who has ears to
hear, let him listen, as the Lord has said (cf. Luke 14. 35).6
Here Climacus is writing for those outside the cell, potential penitents who know
about the thrills of the imperial court, the demands of family life, the complex
matrix of human relationships which mirror the divine economy. The advice is
outward looking, addressing the practical concerns of the full gamut of people.
One could argue that the breadth of humanity he refers to is figurative language
rather than denoting audience. But this passage is radically different to Isaac’s
writing. Rather than suggesting that mourning is the sole identity of the monk
he sees mourning as a function, a remedy that he, as a physician of souls, can offer
to those who approach him for healing. Like Isaac he acknowledges the poignant
mix of joy and grief in such spiritual mourning: ‘As I ponder the true nature of
compunction, I find myself amazed by the way in which inward joy and gladness
5
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, xl. 8, p. 176.
6
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, pp. 140, 143.
Whilst the more modern translation by Luibheid and Russell is preferred, the Moore translation
includes the prologemena comprising a vita of John and correspondence between him and a
neighbouring abbot. The vita claims that ‘the hidden place where those tears were shed is still
known to the present day’. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Moore, p. 37.
22 Hannah Hunt
mingle with what we call mourning and grief, like honey in a comb’. Unlike Isaac
he seems to represent the more public face of the spiritual mourner. For him
mourning is not the raison d’être of his existence: it is an ascetic work he carries
out on behalf of others as well as for his own purification.
This article posits some reasons for the difference in focus between Isaac
and Climacus. It places the Syrian sense of monastic identity as mourner in the
context of the Semitic tradition of typology, and also within the Jewish attitude
to human mourning as a desacralization of the male griever causing his alienation
from Jewish religious society. This context suggests an element of gendering in
the Syrian abila which is absent in Climacus. First it is helpful to have some sense
of where mourning for sin fits within religious writing in the Judeo-Christian
tradition and other religious cultures in the seventh century.
The destruction of Jerusalem, powerfully recalled in Psalm 137, both recalls the
Lamentations of Jeremiah and feeds into much New Testament appropriation of
lamenting.7 The ‘exile’ of the people of Israel is reconfigured by Christian exegesis:
Egypt becomes the ‘alien land of the passions’ into which the sinner is cast, far
from God’s favour.8 The city lament is not just found in the Old Testament; it
resembles the Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur which is ‘the best known
and prototypical member’ of Mesopotamian City Laments.9 Later within the
Christian tradition the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, recorded by
among others the Greek contemporary Niketas Choniatës, occasioned a huge
range of texts and music lamenting the loss of an iconic Christian city.10 To Chris
tians at the time it seemed an apocalyptic event; God’s displeasure appeared to
be visited on an unrepentant or complacent populace. Jews might see a parallel
in the story of Jonah whose reluctance to convert the people of Nineveh invokes
God’s displeasure, or (more concretely) the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem.
The Book of Revelation presents the ‘new’ Jerusalem as a place where la
menting and grief has ended: it descends from heaven like a bride adorned for
her groom, a metaphorical city representing the new covenant of love of God for
humanity, a place where ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there
7
Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, p. 154.
8
See Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, pp. 77–88 and John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent,
trans. by Luibheid and Russell, Step 3, p. 86, n. 11: ‘the land of dispassion is an interpretation of
the meaning of Jerusalem’.
9
Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, p. 1.
10
Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O Daughter of Zion, p. 23 refers to the translation of Choniatës in
O City of Byzantium, trans. by Magoulias, p. 317.
shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor shall there be any more pain
for the former things have passed away’. Revelation 21. 3–4. Climacus is surely
recalling this when he writes:
Take away sin and then the sorrowful tears that flow from bodily eyes will be super
fluous. Why look for a bandage when you are not cut? Adam did not weep before
the fall, and there will be no tears after the resurrection when sin will be abolished,
when pain, sorrow and lamentation will have taken flight.11
Whether or not this was in conscious imitation of Isaiah 25. 8 (‘He will destroy
death for ever, the Lord will wipe away the tear from all faces’), the connection
of the new Jerusalem with a place of cessation of mourning through contrition is
explicitly connected to a time of God’s favour; the prophet places the comforting
of those who grieve in the context of the ‘swallowing up of death in victory’
echoed by Paul’s i Corinthians 25. 26: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’.
The fall of a city as a cause for mourning is one matter. This would be expe
rienced by the laity as well as religious people who might express a very natural
human grief at the loss of something material they treasured. The monk’s grief,
however, was for spiritual decay and destruction. The metaphorical nature of
grieving for sin lends itself to striking insights into monastic identity and its
gendering.
The early twentieth-century scholar of Syriac literature, A. J. Wensinck, writing
in 1917, finds parallels between Hebrew, Syrian, and Islamic uses of liturgical
mourning. He points out that Sūra 17. 10ff talks about the men ‘falling down on
their beards weeping’ with repentance and, although he questions the reliability
of evidence, he suggests that weeping may have occurred as a religious rite among
the earliest generation of Muslims very much at the time Isaac and Climacus were
writing.12 Whereas laity might grieve for the ending of a human relationship with
a loved one or for the loss of connection with a homeland, those men who were
granted other roles within a religious community experienced grief for something
rather different. Human mourning is for the physical death of a relative, friend,
monarch, or (for Christians) their Saviour. The monk grieves for the death of
innocence through sin. Remorse for awareness of such loss is readily expressed in
Psalm 42. 3: ‘my tears have been my meat day and night’ and Psalm 80. 4–5: ‘O
Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?
Thou feedest them with the bread of tears, and givest them tears to drink in great
11
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, p. 141.
12
Wensinck, Some Semitic Rites of Mourning, p. 84–85.
24 Hannah Hunt
measure’. When a priest or monk, a male functionary and role model for a religious
community, grieves, this adds a new dimension to mourning. The Psalmist is
expressing or exhorting the grief of the people; the Christian monk as mourner
expresses his grief for the people, for their loss of the intimate closeness they had
to God before sin divided them.13 The extent to which monastic mourning is
on behalf of human sin (vicarious or altruistic mourning as it were) determines
the actual identity of the monk, and the extent to which this is gendered varies
according to context.
Taking first John Climacus, the abbot of Mount Sinai, we have already es
tablished that ‘mourning for sin’ is the seventh step on a ladder of thirty such
steps of ‘divine ascent’, which commence with renunciation of the life of the
world and culminate in ‘faith, hope, and love’. Climacus is cast as a ‘new Moses’
who leads the penitent from the slavery of sin to the emancipation of contrition
and forgiveness.14 His role as abbot is very public, engaging with those newly
arrived from ‘the world’ which he had himself renounced. Although written
for a monastic community it is not addressed to a spiritual elite but for what
his hagiographer calls ‘the whole flock […] stupid people like us’.15 Internal evi
dence from the prolegomena suggests it was written for ‘brother athletes’ at a
neighbouring monastery, ‘simple folk like us’, in other words penitents aspiring
to ascend on the ladder towards perfection.16 Whilst this may not imply a read
ership of laity it is generous in its scope, and the enduring reception of the text
is attested by its popularity to this day.17 The references to a hugely diverse range
of world experiences, the jokes and anecdotes clearly indicate he was writing
for those who were grounded in the world and had possibly even been married.
Climacus describes mourning as a practice to be adopted by all spiritual athletes;
he does not reserve it for those already advanced on the ‘ladder’ towards spiritual
13
This altruistic type of mourning is readily expressed in Discourse xviii of the Liber
graduum. The relevant extract may be found in The Syriac Fathers on Prayer, trans. by Brock,
pp. 55–56. For an entire translation of the text, see The Liber Graduum, trans. by Kitchen and
Parmentier.
14
Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, p. 58.
15
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Moore, pp. 39 and 42. Such
exaggerated humility may of course be a hagiographic device.
16
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Moore, Step 4, p. 98.
17
The prologemenae of the text and its dedication suggests it was written for Abbot Daniel
and a monastic community at Raitha on the Gulf of Suez: John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine
Ascent, trans. by Moore, pp. 35–47, and John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by
Luibheid and Russell, p. xxi.
enlightenment. His text seeks to define mourning, to suggest its benefits and how
it might be found. ‘Ponder this, and apply it to yourself ’, he says.18
As noted above, Step 7 follows a chapter ‘on remembrance of death’; he thus
links his teaching on mourning to the necessity of recalling the death that sin leads
to.19 Living with the daily memory of impending death was a monastic discipline.
It is this, as much as mourning, which suggests a monastic identity for Climacus.
He raises this from the outset of his Ladder; ‘A monk is a mourning soul, that
both asleep and awake is unceasingly occupied with the remembrance of death’.20
Whilst this obviously relates to actual bodily death it implicitly refers to death
of innocence, loss of virtue; these are forsaken qualities to be grieved for. The
mourner grieves for ‘the loss of God’s presence’, and feels ‘the sadness and agony of
God’s absence and an unquenched thirst for God’s presence’.21 Yet from the outset
the grief is ‘joy-inducing’, joy-bearing.22 How can this be? Psalm 19. 9–10 describes
God’s judgements as ‘sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb’. Climacus
perhaps follows John Chrysostom, who writes that ‘this joy is not contrary to that
mourning; it is even born from it […] it is possible to be mourning for one’s own
sins and in joy because of Christ’.23 The joy and the grief belong together and feed
each other; they are mingled ‘like honey in a honeycomb’.24 The penitent who
experiences genuine sorrow at his awareness of sin becomes joyful and in that joy
becomes yet more aware of his separation from God and so grieves again.25
The scholar of penthos, remorse for sins, is much indebted to Climacus for a
concise and focused handling of the theme, gathered into this one chapter. By
comparison Isaac’s ideas about mourning are diffuse and less systematic. There are
other key differences between the two.
18
19
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, Step 6,
p. 132.
20
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Moore, Step 1, p. 50. This is
translated as ‘Awake or asleep, the monk is a soul pained by the constant remembrance of death’
in John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, p. 74.
21
Chryssavgis, John Climacus, p. 141.
22
23
In Ep. ad Phil. 14, Patrologia graeca, lxii (1862), col. 281, cited in Hunt, Joy-Bearing
Grief, n. 61, p. 73.
24
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Moore, Step 7, p. 120, cf. John
Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, p. 141. See also Hunt,
Joy-Bearing Grief, p. 73, n. 63.
25
26 Hannah Hunt
Climacus makes no special claim for his monastic identity being shaped es
pecially by mourning; as noted above, he suggests remembrance of death is as
much the key to monastic identity as is mourning. Nor is such mourning the
preserve of himself as abbot or even his male monks. Indeed a typical feature of
his style is his inclusiveness. The text abounds with injunctions: ‘Hold fast to the
blessed and joyful sorrow of compunction’; ‘never stop imagining and examining
the abyss of dark fire’; ‘wear something to encourage you in your mourning’; if
you are ‘endowed with weeping, hold fast to it’.26 Climacus describes the process of
mourning as much as the actuality of defining oneself as a mourner. He talks of ‘a
melancholy of the soul […] a golden spur within a soul that has been stripped of
all bonds and ties’.27 The mourner is no expert in avoiding the sin which calls for
mourning: ‘We have not been called here to a wedding feast. No indeed. He who
has called us has summoned us to mourn for ourselves’.28 Climacus casts himself
as a spiritual physician handing out his prescription for a salve or a remedy for
the disease of sin which he knows from his own experience to be efficacious. He
offers comfort by reminding his reader what the benefits of mourning will be —
he who wears ‘blessed, God-given mourning like a wedding garment gets to know
the spiritual laughter of the soul’.29 Weeping for sin is not only a joyful sorrow,
but an indication of the unity within the human person of physical, emotional,
spiritual, and intellectual aspects.30 When a person weeps they are fully human,
just as when Christ weeps at the death of Lazarus in John 11. 35 we see his full
humanity in the midst of his divinity. The tears are certainly real, physical ones;
the desert tradition records the witness of Abba Arsenius, whose chest is hollowed
out by the tears he had shed over his lifetime, and whose eyelashes had dropped
out ‘through much weeping’ and this is echoed in Step 5 of The Ladder.31
Climacus does not set himself apart as abbot. He acknowledges that he, too, is
in need of the cleansing afforded by holy mourning: ‘May he who has been found
worthy of it help me too. He himself has already been helped, for by taking this
26
27
28
29
30
Chryssavgis, John Climacus, Chapter 5 explains the context of this within Climacus’s
thought. See also Hunt, ‘Clothed in the Body’, Chapter 6.
31
Abba Arsenius, 41, 21 (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. by Ward, pp. 18–19), and
cf. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, Step 5, p. 125.
See Chryssavgis, John Climacus, p. 147 on this.
seventh step he has washed away the stains of the world’.32 For him mourning is
a bitter-sweet remedy for sin. As abbot he states his need for it, shows his un
derstanding of the challenges posed to it by worldly attachments, urges his ‘flock’
to attempt to practise it, and describes in graphic but intelligible terms the joy
such mourning will bring. Whilst there are plenty of passages in The Ladder
which brood on the darker side of extreme asceticism his writing on penthos is
characterized by moderation, compassion, pragmatic acceptance of the existence
of kings and emperors, children, beggars, women in childbirth, theatres, widows,
prisoners in mines, the convict facing a judge.33 He sees himself as a spiritual phy
sician, a Moses who can offer it as a routemap out of the land of bondage to sin.34
Mourning is a state he participates in collectively, a kenotic sharing of the
condition of his flock along with whom he is equally in need of healing. In the
desert tradition mourning is an altruistic activity, ‘part of the hesychast’s par
ticipatory ascetic discipline’ in which the mourner’s sorrow encompasses the grief
of others.35 Climacus’s own spiritual journey had included complete solitude,
the semi-coenobitic life, and fullscale institutional monasticism. His chapter of
weeping for sin is ‘one of the most influential in the whole of The Ladder’ accor
ding to Ware (p. 23). He sees tears as a gift from God, a charism which can be
sought and for which the ground should be prepared, but a gift which cannot
be commanded or compelled. Weeping because of penitence for sin returns the
exiled sinner to themselves and to God; by grieving the loss of ‘paradisial identity’
the mourner gets closer to returning to a state of innocence.36 We can apply an
analytical structure to the chapter on mourning just as we can systematize the
structure of the text as a whole.37 However the dominant feature of the text is its
practical, accessible advice, colourfully illustrated with anecdote and metaphor.
Representing the apex of desert monasticism, Climacus’s worldview synthesizes
insights from the monastic and eremitic traditions of Egypt, Palestine, and
Cappadocia where the model for monasticism was very much the flight from the
world advocated by Basil of Caesarea in his Epistle 2.38
32
33
34
35
36
37
Introduction to John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and
Russell, pp. 20–27 and cf. Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, Chapter 3, pp. 65–93.
38
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, p. xix. A
28 Hannah Hunt
The context for Isaac the Syrian shares some similarities but also has many
differences. As noted above, he early showed a marked preference for solitude,
and refused to persevere with the position of responsibility to which he was
appointed. His writings are very extensive and still being gathered and edited.
Two key texts survive: eighty-two discourses known as the ‘First Part’, which soon
after his death were translated from Syriac to Greek, and the recently discovered
‘Second Part’, which provides a further forty two texts.39
Compared with its Greek counterpart, the Syrian monastic tradition is far
more concerned to name and define the monk’s identity as something other than
the abbot or monk per se. For the Greeks monachos described the way of life of a
man devoting his life to a singleness of purpose: devotion to and contemplation
of God. It was related to the term monogenes, the only begotten (in other words
Christ) in imitation of whom the monk renounced the world for a life of right
eousness and intimacy with the Divine Father. The monachos might lead a solitary
life, but in any event would maintain a single focus, undeflected by material con
siderations. However, their writings spoke less about their own sense of identity
and more about their role for the community, hence the vast range of synonyms
employed for the spiritual guide. Father, pilot, shepherd, physician of souls, the ‘new
Moses’: all serve to describe the work of the monk who was living in community
with others in terms of his leadership of weaker or less experienced brethren. It
was the process of spiritual guidance that was of interest. This guidance included
advice to grieve for individual sins committed.
In the Syrian context, however, two important titles which are applied to monks
made substantial claims for their individual identities as men which in a way are
separate from the spiritual tasks they carried out for their monastery. In other
words, in the Syrian context there was a concern about the existential nature of
monasticism in addition to or even before its functionality.
One of these titles is ihidaya. This word, meaning literally the single one, is
related to the Hebrew yahid (single).40 It is used to translate the Greek monogenes
and as with the Greek term the prototype of the ihidaya is seen as Christ, the only
Son of God, the true Only Begotten One. Applying this term to human solitaries
typical desert insight into tears is found in Poemen, 144, where one father recounts to another
the visualization of being at the foot of the cross and wishing they could weep as the Mother of
God did. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. by Ward, p. 187.
39
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, p. 55, gives more detail on the trans
lation history of these texts and their stylistic nature, such as the inclusion of ‘centuries’ of
knowledge and the use of question and answer format.
40
Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, p. 61.
immediately elevates the status of the monk; he is in imitatio Christi and the
Syrian term, compared to the Greek, is primarily scriptural. Within the monastic
community those ascetics who consciously ‘put on’ the persona of the Ihidaya
from the bosom of the Father do so in conscious imitation of the kenosis of the
incarnation.41
His ‘singleness’ is not only akin to the Greek sense of single-mindedness of
focus but also suggests living in solitude, and this is much valued in encratic cir
cles; this is not to say that there were not communities of monks in Syria but
the life and witness of the solitary was especially valued. Isaac’s Homily 64 states:
‘The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than someone who
praises God in the congregation of men’.42
An ihidaya was not necessarily the same as one called an abila or mourner, the
other key term used to define monks in Syria. The ihidaya would live separated
from the world and seek to heal it through prayer. The abila on the other hand
undertakes a work of grief and mourning which, as in the Apophthegmata already
cited, is described in physical detail as carving channels down the face of the one
who weeps continually. Isaac himself makes the distinction:
A mourner (abila) is he who passes all the days of his life in hunger and thirst for
the sake of his hope in future good things. A monk (ihidaya) is he who remains
outside the world and is ever supplicating God to receive future blessings. A monk’s
wealth is the comfort that comes of mourning.43
Climacus advocates weeping as a remedy for those who are familiar with the distrac
tions of the world; Isaac by contrast internalizes the need for spiritual grief. He is
less concerned with teaching others how to grieve or explaining its usefulness; he
explicitly states that weeping for sin is what constitutes the existence and purpose
of a monk, thus defining his identity. Like Climacus he thinks this is related to a
necessary awareness of death; unlike Climacus he appears to be far more focused
on in his own ability to weep. The ‘very calling of his name’ is abila, the mourner,
the bitter hearted one. There are however some places where Isaac commends
weeping to others and shows his awareness of the intrusion of worldly demands
— if salvation depended on true righteousness, he says, only one in ten thousand
41
Griffith, ‘“Singles” in God’s Service’, p. 156.
42
Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies, trans. by Miller, p. 61.
43
Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies, trans. by Miller, Homily 6, p. 54, and see Alfeyev,
The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, p. 135 for a discussion of this passage.
30 Hannah Hunt
people would achieve a place in the kingdom of heaven, so ‘God has provided
them instead with a medicine suitable for everyone, namely repentance’.44
Like Climacus Isaac describes God’s merciful love for penitents as honey
which combines within it the comb and the sweet fluid.45 But he goes far beyond
Climacus in systematizing mourning and categorizing types of tears and their
source.46 Tears can be bitter or sweet. Copious tears from one who is naturally
humble are of less value than scant drops from one who has wrestled with his
nature rather more.47 Rather than illustrating what it might feel like to struggle
with finding an ability to weep, Isaac goes to some lengths to categorize the tears
themselves, dividing them into flowing from different causes and for different
reasons.48 Above all, what is distinctive about Isaac’s writings on mourning is that
he insists that the shedding of tears marks a boundary between the material stage
of the spiritual journey and the advanced illuminated stage. ‘Sweet tears’, along
with ‘groans, protestations, heartfelt requests, and supplications’ are all forms of
prayer the mourner may use.49 They show the transition into ‘pure prayer’ which
transcends the physical in an apophatic state of ecstasy:
When you attain to the region of tears, then you know that the mind has left the
prison of this world and set its foot on the roadway of the new age, and has begun
to breathe that other air, new and wonderful.50
Tears of grief are ‘a kind of boundary between what is bodily and what is spiritual
and between living passionateness and purity’.51 In mourning, therefore, the monk
transcends the limitations of human existence to take part in the ‘hidden things
of the spiritual man’.52 Casting tears as a boundary marker in a spiritual journey
44
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, xl. 8, p. 176.
45
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, xxix. 5, p. 131, cf. John Climacus, The
Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Luibheid and Russell, Step 7, p. 141.
46
Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, pp. 69–70, John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans.
by Luibheid and Russell, pp. 20–27. Climacus does systematise tears into stages but not to the
extent that Isaac does. Chryssavgis, John Climacus, pp. 144–48.
47
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, xviii. 7–15, pp. 97–100.
48
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, xviii. 4–6, p. 97.
49
Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies, trans. by Miller, Homily 23, p. 116.
50
Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies, trans. by Miller, Homily 14, p. 82. See Hagman,
The Asceticism of Isaac of Nineveh, p. 70 for more discussion of this point.
51
Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies, trans. by Miller, Homily 37, p. 174.
52
See Hagman, The Asceticism of Isaac of Nineveh, p. 71 for more on this point.
places the actual monastic identity as a man who mourns within a hierarchy of
virtues. This differs from Climacus, who ranks the virtues themselves (the whole
of the Ladder is split into fundamental virtues, higher ones, and so on according
to which system is chosen).53 Isaac, however, is more concerned with defining his
own personal place within a scheme of virtuous endeavour, to help him decide
whether he can call himself abila or the more generic ihidaya. ‘O Lord, hold me
worthy to taste of this fountain!’, he prays.54 He wants to be counted as one of
those elite who experience this gift of tears, and he does see it as a charism, not a
right or inevitable consequence of contrition. It is God who grants ‘a sorrowing
heart’ (lebbā abīlā), which relieves the heart constricted by sin, through the ‘com
fort which comes from sorrowing and from the gift of tears’.55 And he eulogizes
the experience of weeping, the physicality of it being so intense as to refute any
suggestion that Isaac takes a dualistic approach to the human person.56
Tell me, my brother, suppose there is someone who, for three nights and days,
more or less, will be prostrate before the Cross, as did some of the Fathers; or he
may receive the gift of tears during the office — something which the majority
of right-minded brethren experience — tears which so compel the brother with
their quantity that he is unable to complete the office, even though he struggles
greatly to do so. Instead he has to abandon the office because of abundant weeping,
and he is like someone aroused from the depths, his whole body becoming, so to
say, a fountain of weeping, stemming from the groaning of heart produced by the
grace that has been stirred within him; he is drenched in tears; or his tongue being
silenced because of some particular joy, in his stillness tears burst forth and soak his
face, owing to the wondrous insights he has, while his soul exults and is filled with
an indescribable hope.57
So we see in Isaac a far greater concern with the identity of the monk as mourner,
with the individual experience of weeping for sin than in Climacus’s practical
advice for fellow monks. What is there in Isaac’s context that focalizes mourning
as an existential identity, and how might these factors relate specifically to gender?
Two possibilities spring to mind.
53
See Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, pp. 66–75 and John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent,
trans. by Luibheid and Russell, pp. 12–13.
54
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, xviii. 16, p. 100.
55
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, v. 3, p. 7.
56
On Isaac and dualism, see Hagman, The Asceticism of Isaac of Nineveh, p. 71.
57
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, trans. by Brock, ii, 14. 46, p. 82.
32 Hannah Hunt
The first relates to Jewish mourning practices, both Biblical and Rabbinic.
Wensinck, writing very early in the twentieth century, lumps these together as
‘Semitic’ which he contrasts to Mandean and Islamic practices: ‘Semitic weeping
for the dead is a distinct rite, consisting in elevating the voice and crying aloud,
sometimes in uttering the zagharīt’.58 Ritual mourning for the death of loved ones
(like mourning for the fall of a city) is not directly synonymous with mourning
for sin; however, the Jewish practices suggest different expectations on men and
women in ritual lamenting which I believe throw light on Isaac’s self-identification
as a mourner. The Hebrew scriptures give various examples of mourning the
death of individuals; Genesis 50. 10 shows Joseph obeying Moses’s command to
lament Jacob’s death for seven days.59 ii Samuel 8. 4–6 describes both men and
women fasting in repentance.60 Mourning is associated with silence, a feature
of monasticism, especially for the later hesychast movement. Leviticus 10. 3,
Isaiah 23. 3, Psalm 4. 5, Psalm 30. 13, Lamentations 2. 10 and 3. 28, all make
the connection, and Psalm 94. 17 ‘My soul had dwelt in silence’ is glossed by
midrash as dumah meaning death, from the Accadian and Ugaritic cognates of
drum meaning to mourn or moan.61 The gendered allocation of responsibility for
mourning is quite telling and can offer a significant clue to aspects of gender in
Syrian monastic identity. Women were specially trained and employed to lament
deaths by a type of singing, but in the rare instances where they survive, the
words for these laments are recorded as being in Aramaic. This was the colloquial
language used by lay people and therefore appropriate for women to use; it was
their lingua franca.62 In other contexts female lamenters held professional status;
women were employed in the Babylonian New Year parade as ‘seasonal wailers’,
and a Minoan sarcophagus shows a procession of women following a flute
player.63 Even ‘a poor man’ was entitled to at least ‘two flutes and several wailing
women at his funeral’, according to Ketubot 46b.64 Mourning by men, however,
had quite different connotations and had serious ramifications on the mourner’s
place within the community. Men were required to mourn the death of someone
58
Wensinck, Some Semitic Rites of Mourning, p. 78.
59
Feldman, Jewish Mourning Customs, p. 80.
60
61
62
Feldman, Jewish Mourning Customs, p. 130–34. There is Biblical evidence of the training
given to women in order for them to fulfil this function.
63
Feldman, Jewish Mourning Customs, p. 134 and 135.
64
close to them but becoming an onen, a mourner, rendered a Jewish man estranged
from God. The defilement of death meant that the mourner’s relationship with
God was ‘temporarily suspended’ and he was effectively ‘desacralized’.65 The
normal ritual practices enjoined on Jewish males, such as wearing phylacteries,
pronouncing the blessing over food, reciting the sh’ma prayer are actually for
bidden to a mourner. However, these restrictions are ones imposed on priests —
and therefore in the historical context could only apply to men. Feldman argues
there is ‘no open and clear mourning legislation directed to non-priests’.66 Similar
prohibitions apply to excommunicants.67
There is a circularity here: in the Jewish world the mourner may not enact
the ritualized relationship to God. He therefore behaves as a dead/incomplete
person himself, hence the deliberate neglect of the mourner’s body and personal
appearance.68 Jewish mourning habits therefore ostracize the mourner from God,
creating a further sense of mourning. And this ritualized expression of grief was
explicitly required of men, and indeed only those men who enjoyed priestly of
fice. If we allow for some generic ‘Semitic’ customs and expectations to be present
in the Syrian context it is plausible that Isaac and other Syrian mourners were
aware of the constraints and implications of mourning. As an act of humility,
expressive of the alienation from God caused by sin, the Syrian male monk’s self-
identification as mourner takes on a new dimension. The Christianization of this
attitude to mourning allows for the grief for sin to engender joy, to break down
rather than sustain the barrier between the mourner and God. Whereas the Jewish
priest’s lamenting for physical death rendered the male mourner desacralized, the
Christian’s mourning for the metaphorical ‘death of sin’ broke down the barrier
between man and God and turned lamenting into joy.
That Syrian asceticism is influenced by or draws on the same pool as ‘Semitic’
views of the world and humanity’s place within it is well attested. An example
of shared cultural and ritual experience is that in Syrian churches there is a ‘veil’
drawn across the sanctuary, in imitation of the veil over the Holy of Holies in the
temple in Jerusalem.69 Christian monks’ reading is dominated by the Psalms; they
65
Feldman, Jewish Mourning Customs, pp. 81–82.
66
Feldman, Jewish Mourning Customs, pp. 91 and 103.
67
68
Some of this neglect, such as the rending of garments and placing of ashes on the head,
were also done in order to render the mourner unrecognizable to the dreaded spirits of the dead.
Feldman, Jewish Mourning Customs, pp. 91, 93.
69
Panicker, ‘Prayer with Tears’, p. 115.
34 Hannah Hunt
were known ‘by heart’ and the focus in many of them on grieving and alienation
from God, their yearning for forgiveness is well adapted to Christian rhetoric.
We come now to the second and final point about gendered self-identity in
the writings of Isaac. A very characteristic feature of Syrian ascetic writing is the
use of typology, foregrounded by Paul in the first and second Adam typology in
i Corinthians 15. 22. Syrian ascetic writers were poet-theologians, and imagery,
metaphor, typology, and other literary devices recur as means of explaining how
God’s word became flesh. Syrian typology tends to work in pairs and opposites;
the inner/outer, the visible/invisible, the first/second. But for both genders we
can find a third ‘type’ to add to that first and second pairing. Let us take the fe
male model first. Mary the Mother of God is frequently seen as the antitype to
Eve, the first woman. Many Syrian homilies and poems exist extolling the beauty
and merits of the actions of the Sinful Woman in Luke’s parable at 7. 35–45.70
To add a third strand to the ‘first and second woman’ motif we could posit Eve-
Mary-Sinful Woman. Feldman’s evidence from the post-biblical period suggests
reasons to support this: Since women, through the figure of Eve, are responsible
for the ‘severe judgment of death upon mankind, they are given the power to
overcome the pangs of death through their weeping’. The Angel of Death records
in Berokhoth 51a: ‘Do not stand in front of women when they are returning
from the presence of a dead person, because I go leaping in front of them with my
sword in my hand’.71 Luke’s Sinful Woman bathes the feet of Jesus with her tears
and dries them with her hair. She is sometimes conflated in biblical tradition with
Mary Magdalene, the anointer of Jesus’s feet with precious ointment at Bethany.
Maggie Ross (now known as Martha Reeves) a modern Anglican hermit has sug
gested that the ‘precious ointment’ mentioned here might be the bottle of her
tears collected for use on special occasions. She draws our attention to Psalm
56. 8: ‘You have noted my lamentation; put my tears into your bottle; are they not
recorded in your book?’.72 If the Sinful Woman is a typological extension of Eve-
Mary — linking Eve’s sin with Mary’s gracious obedience — why should there
not a parallel typology for the male monk as Mourner?
70
Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, Chapter 5, pp. 108–25, and Hunt, ‘Sexuality and Penitence in
Syriac Commentaries’.
71
72
Ross, The Fountain and the Furnace, pp. 159–60. Evidence for the practice of collecting
one’s tears is supplied by the presence of archaeological remains of unguntaria shaped so as to
fit under the eye; such bottles were still being used in Victorian times. Ross suggests that the
architecture of the chapel called ‘Dominus Flevit’ on the Mount of Olives may reflect such
bottles.
The first Adam’s sin is redeemed by the sacrificial death of Christ, the second
Adam. The Syrian monk as mourner, mirroring the desacralized Jewish priest
who laments a physical death, extends the typology of first and second Adam.
Adam cast out of Eden and lamenting his exile is paralleled typologically to
Christ’s triumphant entry into the New Jerusalem, where there will be no more
tears. The monk as mourner is an Adam acting in imitation of Christ, lamenting
for sin and leading his fellow men out of the exile of sin and into the new heaven.
The parallel to the Eve-Mary-Sinful Woman is therefore Adam-Christ monk as
mourner. In Isaac’s teaching, compunction, expressed by tears, ‘defines the very
identity of the monk. He is abila, the mourner, as much as he is the solitary one’.73
The gendering of such monastic identity fits within an extended typology of
first and second Adam. The first Adam weeps as he is cast out of Eden.74 The
second Adam weeps over his dead friend in John 11. 35. The mourning monk
weeps in order to regain entry to heaven, not just for himself but for all humanity.
73
Homily vi, on which see Hunt, ‘The Soul’s Sorrow’, p. 532.
74
The Lenten Triodion, trans. by Ware and Mother Mary, Canticle Six, Ikos, p. 175.
36 Hannah Hunt
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Isaac the Syrian, The Second Part, Chapters iv–xll, trans. by Sebastian Brock (Leuven:
Peters, 1995)
—— , The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, trans. by Dana Miller (Boston: Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, 1984)
John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Archimandrite Lazarus Moore (Lon
don: Faber and Faber, 1959)
—— , The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. by Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell (New
York: Paulist, 1982)
The Lenten Triodion, trans. by Kallistos Ware and Mother Mary (London: Faber and
Faber, 1977)
The Liber Graduum: The Syriac Liber Graduum, trans. by Robert Kitchen and Martien F.
G. Parmentier, Cistercian Studies Series, 196 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 2004)
O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatës, trans. by Harry J. Magoulias (Detroit:
Wayne State University, 1984)
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. by Benedicta Ward,
Cistercian Studies Series, 59 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1975)
The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life, trans. by Sebastian Brock, Cistercian
Studies Series, 101 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1987)
Secondary Studies
Alfeyev, Hilarion, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, Cistercian Studies Series, 175
(Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 2000)
Brock, Sebastian, A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature (Kottayam: St Ephrem Ecumenical
Research Insititute, 1997)
—— , The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of St Ephrem the Syrian, Cistercian
Studies Series (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1985)
Chryssavgis, John, John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., Weep, O Daughter of Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the
Hebrew Bible (Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1993)
Feldman, Emanuel, Jewish Mourning Customs: Biblical and Post-Biblical Defilement and
Mourning; Law as Theology (New York: Ktav, 1977)
Griffith, Sidney H., ‘“Singles” in God’s Service: Thoughts on the Ihidaye from the Works
of Aphrahat and Ephraem the Syrian’, Harp, 4 (1991), 145–59
Hagman, Patrik, The Asceticism of Isaac of Nineveh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
Holst-Warhaft, Gail, Dangerous Voice: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature (London:
Routledge, 1992)
Hunt, Hannah, ‘Clothed in the Body’: Asceticism, the Body and the Spiritual in the Late
Antique Era (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012)
—— , ‘The Concept of Penitent Weeping in the Psalms of David’, Ephrem’s Theological
Journal, 3 (1999), 172–77
—— , ‘Penthos and Repentance in St Symeon the New Theologian’, Studia Patristica, 335
(2001), 114–20
—— , Joy-Bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings of the Early Syrian and By
zantine Fathers, Medieval Mediterranean, 57 (Leiden: Brill, 2004)
—— , ‘Sexuality and Penitence in Syriac Commentaries on Luke’s Sinful Woman’, Studia
Patristica, 44 (2010), 189–94
—— , ‘The Soul’s Sorrow in Syrian Patristic Thought’, Studia Patristica, 33 (1997), 530–33
Panicker, Geervaghese, ‘Prayer with Tears: A Great Feast of Repentance’, The Harp, 4
(1991), 111–33
Ross, Maggie, The Fountain and the Furnace: the Way of Tears and Fire (New York: Paulist,
1987)
Wensinck, A. J., Some Semitic Rites of Mourning (Amsterdam: Muller, 1917)
‘No One Can Serve Two Masters’:
Abbots and Arch-Abbots
in the Monastic Networks
at the End of the Eleventh Century
Guido Cariboni
I n 1111 Pope Paschal II sent a letter to the monastic community of Montecassino

through Leo, bishop of Ostia and monk of that abbey. With the missive the
pope ordered the monks no longer to obey their abbot, Bruno — at that time also
bishop of Segni,1 — and to elect a successor according to the Rule of Benedict. In
an attempt to remove the abbot, up to that moment refractory to papal orders,
Paschal II put pressure on the Cassinese community touching a single point that
he considered highly sensitive. In fact, the pope feared that, should his directions
1
Cantarella, La costruzione della verità, pp. 16–63; Cantarella, Pasquale II e il suo tempo,
pp. 121–27. See also Grégoire, Bruno de Segni, pp. 11–58; Cowdrey, The Age of Abbot Desiderius,
pp. 219–21.
Guido Cariboni (guido.cariboni@unicatt.it): Assistant Professor in Medieval History,

Dipartimento di Studi Medievali, Umanistici e Rinascimentali, Università Cattolica del
Sacro Cuore, Milano (Italy).
Abstract: In the decades between the eleventh and twelfth centuries a fundamental evolution of
monastic life took place. Until then the structure of the vast majority of the monastic networks
was constituted by a central abbey with a conspicuous number of dependent structures. Even
abbeys were among the subject communities. The head of this monastic network became in this
case a sort of abbot of abbots, abbas abbatum, with the function of correcting the subordinate
abbots.
Under the influence of the Gregorian reform, during the papacies of Urban II and Paschal II,
substantial changes were affecting the relations between bishops and abbots and between abbots
and their subordinate abbots. One can observe these changes in action. This article will focus
in particular on the relationship between the abbey of Marmoutier in the diocese of Tours and
the abbeys of St Florentin of Bonneval and St Remi of Reims in the last decades of the eleventh
century.
Keywords: abbey, abbot, appeal, bishop, Cîteaux, Cluny, Marmoutier, order, Reims

40 Guido Cariboni
not be followed, each cell of Montecassino would be raised to the rank of abbey.2
The threat proved effective, so much so that almost immediately the contested
abbot laid his abbot’s staff on the altar and resigned his office.
Abbas abbatum
The event, which was part of the bitter dispute between Paschal II and Bruno of
Segni following the opposition of the latter to the agreement of Ponte Mammolo,
also provides an interesting indication of institutional change that was taking
place in religious life at the turn of the eleventh century. In the second half of
that century the vast majority of the Klosterverbände, from Montecassino3 to
Cluny,4 from Marmoutier5 to Chaise Dieu,6 and as far as Hirsau,7 was of a top-
down type. A central abbey usually had a conspicuous number of subordinate
priories, cells, and ecclesie, often distant from the mother house. Among the
subordinate communities were abbeys, even ones of considerable size and great
traditions, but these constituted a small minority when compared to the overall
number of dependent entities. In most cases the dynamic for the absorption of
such abbeys into a status of dependencies was the need for reform of houses that
were decadent, either economically or in terms of discipline. Indeed it was not
uncommon for such abbeys, once inserted into the juridical sphere of a monastic
network, to be reduced to the rank of priories.8 In the eventuality that the
transformation was not possible or was strongly opposed, the relationship of the
abbey to the mother house was negotiated case by case. This manifestation of
dependency could range from the simple payment of an annual census, to the as
2
Petrus Diaconus, Chronica monasterii Casinensis, ed. by Hoffmann, p. 511, rr. 5–9 (iv,
42): ‘Fratribus etiam per Leonem Hostiensem episcopum et huius coenobii monachum litteras
[Paschalis] misit, in quibus precepit, ut ulterius eidem viro obedientiam non exiberet, sed
secundum Deum regulariter sibi abbatem eligerent; quod si aliter agerent, in omnibus cellis huic
coenobio subditis abbates proprios ordinaret’.
3
Dell’Omo, ‘Montecassino altomedievale’, pp. 381–94.
4
Poeck, Cluniacensis Ecclesia; Cantarella, ‘È esistito un modello cluniacense?’, pp. 61–85.
5
Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, pp. 65–186.
6
Gaussin, L’Abbaye de la Chaise-Dieu.
7
Jakobs, Die Hirsauer.
8
Bautier, ‘De “prepositus” à “prior”, de “cella” à “prioratus”’, pp. 18–21; Becquet, ‘Le Prieuré’,
pp. 47–52.
‘No One Can Serve Two Masters’ 41
sumption of rules or customs, and could even extend to the nomination of one
or more consecutive abbots or even to the substitution of the entire community.
These types of reform, generally decided as the case arose by those who were
closely involved — popes, bishops, the communities themselves, or the lay own
ers of the monasteries — were also the objects of more general rules such as, for
example, those established by the Council of Meaux of 19 October 1082. In this
assembly, presided over by the papal legates Hugh of Die, archbishop of Lyon,
and Amato of Oloron,9 it was decreed among other things that abbeys with ten
or fewer monks should be subordinated to Cluny or Marmoutier.10
By the end of the eleventh century the head of a Klosterverband might consider
himself, or be considered, a sort of Oberabt, that is an abbot to whom other abbots,
often chosen or confirmed by him, were bound in various capacities to obedience
and by compulsory corrections. The particular status of the abbots subordinate
to the abbot of Cluny, for example, was already described in the Consuetudines
of Bernard, composed around 1080.11 From this text, in the chapter dealing with
the various forms of profession, it emerges that the subordination of an abbot
to the abbot of Cluny was also symbolically emphasized through the handing
over by the latter, called dominus abbas, of the abbot’s staff to the subordinate
abbot at the moment of his installation.12 This was a declaration of obedience
which closely resembled the investment ritual of a monastery to an abbot by his
Eigenklosterherr.13
In some eleventh- and twelfth-century sources the superior abbot was explicitly
indicated as abbas abbatum, archiabbas, domunus abbas, and sometimes even
archimandrita. To give only a few examples: in the poetic life of Anselm of Lucca,
9
Biron, ‘Amat d’Oloron’; Rennie, Law and Practice in the Age of Reform; Hiestand, ‘Les
Légats pontificaux en France’.
10
Pontal, Les Conciles de la France capétienne, pp. 185–87; Bur, La Formation du comté
de Champagne, pp. 223, 227. Toussaints du Plessis, Histoire de l’eglise de Meaux, ii, p. 12
n. 17: ‘Praeceperat Domnus Hugo Romanus legatus in Meldensi concilio, ut abbatiae decem
monachorum et infra aut Cluniaco, aut Majori Monasterio subderentur’.
11
Poeck, ‘Abbild oder Verband’, pp. 98–99.
12
Bernardus, ‘Ordo Cluniacensis’, p. 168, cap. XVI: ‘Abbas cui dominus abbas baculum
pastoralem dedit’; Poeck, Cluniacensis Ecclesia, pp. 227–29.
13
Foulon, ‘Les Relations entre le papauté réformatrice’, pp. 51–52; Foulon, Église et
réforme au Moyen Âge, pp. 417–21; Constable, ‘Abbatial Profession in Normandy and England’,
pp. 111–12. See also Guillot, Le Comte d’Anjou et son entourage, i, 183–85, 187–88 on the
distinction between the cura granted by the bishop, and the dominium exterior, represented by
the pastoral staff.
42 Guido Cariboni
composed by Bishop Rangerius in the waning years of the eleventh century, in

the episode of the penitent Henry IV at Canossa, Hugh of Cluny is called abbas
abbatum.14 In the Gesta abbatum sancti Bertini Sithiensium the monk Simon
writes of the intention of Abbot Pontius of Cluny to celebrate Easter at the abbey
of Saint Bertin in 1112. The chronicler, not without a strong controversial tone,
tells how on that occasion the abbot of Cluny could have deposed and substituted
anyone at his whim to occupy the position of the abbot, since he considered
himself the abbots’ abbot.15 In the Chronica monasterii Casinensis, Peter Deacon
tells how Pontius, reaching Rome in March 1116 for the synod, boasted that he
was the abbots’ abbot. However, his pretension was immediately curbed by the
chancellor John of Gaeta, who objected that the title was suitable only for the
abbot of Montecassino. This abbot held the title by papal concession since he was
the vicar of Benedict.16 Orderic Vitalis in the Historia Ecclesiastica afforded both
Pontius and the abbot of Cîteaux with the term archimandrite,17 holding them to
be equals in that each had numerous abbeys under him.
As early as the eleventh century, and especially at the turn of that century,
during the papacies of Urban II and Paschal II, there were, however, substantial
changes in relations between abbots and the abbots dependent on them. Such
changes which began to challenge institutional structures, already precarious
in themselves, do not emerge as much from an analysis of decrees and conciliar
precepts; rather they can be noted beginning from an analysis of certain important
cases, which had a certain resonance for the universal Church. Particularly pre
cocious and interesting in this respect are certain circumstances relating to the
abbey of Marmoutier in relation to two subordinate abbeys.
14
Rangerius Lucensis, Vita metrica s. Anselmi Lucensis episcopi, ed. by Sackur, Schawartz,
and Schmeidler, p. 1223, rr. 19–20: ‘Venerat a Clunio vir mente simillimus agno, abbas abbatum
maximus Hugo senex’.
15
Simonis Gesta abbatum Sancti Bertini Sithiensium, ed. by Holder-Egger, p. 653, rr. 10–13:
‘Cluniacenses nobiscum tunc conversantes caeterisque principantes, levitate animi, eius adventu
exhilarati, referebantur inter se dixisse, quod abbas Lambertus in presentia Cluniacensis debita
reverentia et potestate privaretur, Cluniacensis deponeret quos vellet substitueretque et in
cardinali abbatis sede staret ut abbas abbatum’. Neiske, ‘Das Verhältnis Clunys zum Papsttum’,
p. 309; Cowdrey, ‘Two Studies in Cluniac History’, p. 208 n. 110.
16
Petrus Diaconus, Chronica monasterii Casinensis, ed. by Hoffmann, p. 523, rr. 12–20
(iv, 60). Neiske, ‘Das Verhältnis Clunys zum Papsttum’, p. 309; Blumenthal, ‘Paschal II and the
Roman Primacy’, p. 87; Cowdrey, ‘Two Studies in Cluniac History’, p. 209, n. 110.
17
Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. by Chibnall, vi, p. 310 (lib. xii, n. 30); iv,
p. 324 (lib. viii, n. 26).
The present article considers first of all the origins and the development of
Marmoutier, in relation to the kings of France and the archbishops of Tours. It
then analyses the relationships between this abbey and the abbeys of St Florentin
of Bonneval, and St Remi of Reims in the eleventh century. In particular, it
reconstructs the affair of Abbot Robert of St Remi and his appeal to the Roman
Church during the Council of Poitiers of 1100. The article finally offers an assess
ment of the significance of the decisions taken by the Apostolic See, in connection
with the formation of the religious orders.
Marmoutier
The remote origins of the monastery of Marmoutier, in western France, by the Loire,
in the diocese of Tours, date back to the fourth century.18 Here Bishop Martin of
Tours settled to live the life of a hermit, surrounded by numerous disciples, and
together they contributed to the evangelization of that territory. Sacked by the
Normans shortly after the middle of the ninth century and semi-abandoned, the
abbey received a new impulse in 985, when it was placed under the authority
of Odo I, count of Blois and of Chartres, defined in the documentation as
rector monasterii, and again maioris monasterii instructor et defensor.19 Odo, to
gether with his brother Hugh, archbishop of Bourges, who had participated
in the consecration of Cluny II, at first entrusted the monastery to Majolus of
Cluny, who installed in Marmoutier a group of monks from the Burgundian
abbey.20 Two Cluniac abbots succeeded each other at the head of Marmoutier; the
first, Gilbert, died in 991, while the second, Bernerius, was turned out by his
own monks in 998 after being accused of fornication, attempted murder, and
attempted arson. He was succeeded by Gauzbert de Bourgueil, a member of the
family of the counts of Blois,21 who, although imposing Cluniac customs on the
monastery, did not establish any juridical ties with Cluny.22 Marmoutier therefore
18
Devailly, ‘Marmoutier’, cols 318–19; Cousin, Abbon de Fleury-sur-Loire, pp. 162–67;
Rosenwein, Head, and Farmer, ‘Monks and Their Enemies’, pp. 787–96; Farmer, Communities
of Saint Martin; Barthélemy, ‘Notes sur les cartulaires de Marmoutier’, pp. 247–59.
19
Guillot, Le Comte d’Anjou et son entourage, i, p. 174; Lo Prete, Adela of Blois, p. 576.
20
Sackur, Die Cluniacenser, i, pp. 245–47; Wollasch, Cluny — “Licht der Welt”, p. 86;
Poeck, Cluniacensis Ecclesia, p. 224.
21
Guillot, Le Comte d’Anjou et son entourage, i, p. 174; Farmer, Communities of Saint
Martin, p. 68.
22
Oury, ‘La Reconstruction monastique dans l’Ovest’, pp. 90–95.
44 Guido Cariboni
always proved to be more closely tied to the counts’ family, which more than once
made the abbey its burial basilica, endowing it with rich donations throughout
the eleventh and twelfth centuries.23
Relations between Marmoutier and the archbishops of Tours were problem
atic. In the course of the eleventh century the monks attempted to free themselves
from archiepiscopal tutelage. Tension intensified in the 1080s when the monks
quarrelled with two successive archbishops, Rudolf I of Langeais (1073–86)
and Rudolf II of Orléans (1087–1118). In 1082 the community of Marmoutier
was excommunicated probably because of the monks’ refusal to accept, as a sign
of submission, the annual Easter visit of the archbishop. The Tours abbey first
appealed against the excommunication to the papal legate Amato of Oloron,24
and then sent its representatives including the prior, Bernard of Reims, called
Pontius, and the bishop of Soisson, Hilgotus,25 to the Councils of Brioude, Autun,
and Dol, held probably in 1085 and led by Hugh of Die, flanked in the third case
by Amato of Oloron.26 Rudolf I, probably deposed in 1086, was succeeded by
Rudolf II of Orléans. The new archbishop, however, did not change the hostile
attitude toward Marmoutier held by his predecessor, so much so that the monks
were forced to apply directly to the Church of Rome, obtaining two privileges
in the space of two years, first from Victor III and later from Urban II.27 With
the second document in particular, the pontiff established a special relationship
between the monastery and the Apostolic See — ‘Statuimus quatinus idem ceno
bium romane soli ecclesie subditum nulli preter hanc videatur esse subiectum’
— affecting important areas of the exercise both of the jurisdiction and of the
pouvoir d’ordre of the archbishop. Among other things the archbishop of Tours
was not allowed to excommunicate the monastery; he was also obliged to bless the
abbot gratuitously and foregoing any promise of obedience. The same held true
for chrism, holy oil, the consecration of the altars, and the ordination of monks.
23
Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, p. 69.
24
‘Notitia seu libellus de tribolationibus et angustiis et persecutionibus Majori’, pp. 93–98;
Lemarignier, Étude sur les privilèges d’exemption et de jurisdiction ecclésiatique, pp. 181–92;
Foulon, ‘Les Relations entre le papauté réformatrice’, pp. 40–42.
25
Michiels, ‘Hilgod’.
26
Pontal, Les Conciles de la France capétienne, p. 187; Liron, Singularités historiques et
litteraires, pp. 454–94.
27
19 December 1089, Potestatem ligandi ( JL —), Ramackers, Papsturkunden in Frankreich,
pp. 83–84, n. 21. Particularly interesting is the comparison with the former privilege by
Victor III, only two years earlier and far less articulated ( July–August) 1087, Quoniam quidem
superna ( JL —), Ramackers, Papsturkunden in Frankreich, pp. 81–83 n.20.
This privilege was read publically during the Council of Clermont in No
vember 1095 before Urban II and in the presence, among others, of Hugh of
Die, Hugh of Semur, Amato of Oloron, Ivo of Chartres, and Rangerius, cardinal
bishop of Reggio Calabria and ex-monk of Marmoutier. The reading of the text
aroused contrasting opinions among the fathers of the council, to the extent
that the pope, having imposed silence, found himself forced to reassert, by the
prerogatives of the Apostolic See over all the diocese and regular institutions,
his right to welcome anyone under the protection of the Holy Roman Church.28
Something very similar probably occurred in favour of Cluny. As can be learned
from the privilege of Paschal II of 20 November 1100,29 also at Clermont, the
privilege of Urban II of 16 March 1095 was confirmed.30 The interventions in
favour of the two great abbeys represent particular cases in a council at which
otherwise the submission of monks to the episcopal sphere was confirmed. This
is indicated in one of the reviews of the council decrees, in which at canon 9
28
‘Notitia seu libellus de tribolationibus et angustiis et persecutionibus Majori’, pp. 97–98:
‘Post haec dominus Papa privilegium quod nobis dederat, coram omnibus legi praecepit,
concedens archiepiscopo Turonensi Rodulfo et clero ejus, caeterisque omnibus, qui fautores
ejus esse volebant, immo etiam aliis qui in neutra parte flectentes soli justitiae intendebant,
ut si quid canonice possent, privilegio auctoritati Romanae contradicerent. Cumque illi quos
causa gravabat obstinaciter oblatrarent, qui vero sanum sapiebant, justitiae assentiendo ratione
pacifica acclamarent: dominus papa, impetrato silentio, erectus in pedes coram omni concilio,
ex auctoritate apostolica et decretis pontificalibus concionatus est, licere sibi facere ex uno
episcopatu duos, et ex duobus unum similiter; et abbatias caeterasque congregationes, dictante
aequitate quolibet modo sibi melius videretur, aut coadunare posset aut disjungere, et quidquid
in dominium et patrocinium santae Romanae ecclesiae suscipere vellet, nullus ejus auctoritati
obviare posset. Quae et a praedecessoribus suis facta ostendit, et ipse in praesenti concilio, nullo
contradicente, fecit. Cum ergo tali ratiocinio vere sapientissimus papa omnium ora conclusisset,
ex auctoritate Dei et beati Petri apostoli, omniumque apostolicorum et sua, nodo indissolubili
firmavit et auctorizavit privilegium nostrum satisfaciens omnibus, praeter quos invidiae et
iracundiae furor exagitabat, quia eam talem, qualem praelibavimus, faciendi quod vellet haberet
potestatem’; Pontal, Les Conciles de la France capétienne, p. 230; Somerville, ‘The Council of
Clermont’. See also Constable, ‘Abbatial Profession in Normandy and England’, pp. 105–08.
29
20 November 1100, Ea religionis prerogativa ( JL 5849), Paschalis II, Epistolae et
Privilegia, col. 53: ‘Sed tam prioratus ipsi et cellae quam et caetera in quibuslicet locis omnia,
quibus fraternitas tua Arvernensis Concilii, quod per supradictum Urbanum papam celebratum
est, tempore investita erat, de quibus tunc nulla quaestio mota est, cui nimirum concilio per
temetipsum interfueras, tam tibi quam successoribus tuis in pace semper et quiete serventur’. See
also Somerville, ‘The Council of Clermont’, p. 85.
30
16 March 1095, Cum omnibus sancte ( JL 5551), Urbanus II, Epistolae et privilegia,
col. 410.
46 Guido Cariboni
it is established that ‘Monachi episcopis suis obedientes sint’.31 This canon was
also expressly cited by Bishop Lambert of Arras, also present at Clermont, in two
documents in favour of the monasteries of Abbeville and Sainte-Trinité, which
were in some way connected with his diocese.32
In March 1096 Urban II stayed for a week at Marmoutier, celebrating the
dedication of the greater basilica of the monastery.33 These rituals also included
the active participation of the bishop of Tours. As if to seal an agreement between
the prelate and the abbey, the pontiff ordered Rudolf of Orleans personally to
place under the altar the relics of the saints brought in procession by Hugh of
Die. Then Rudolf, this time together with Cardinal Rangerius, anointed the walls
of the basilica with holy oil, traced the Greek and Latin alphabet, and consecrated
the altar of the crucifix.34 The dispute between the archbishop and Marmoutier
did not, however, end on this occasion but continued for decades until the agree
ment established by the parties between 1118 and 1124.35
St Florentin of Bonneval and Marmoutier

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries Marmoutier became in turn a very ac
tive centre of reform for other monasteries, in particular thanks to the support
of the counts of Blois and of Anjou, also great benefactors of the monastery,
especially after the conquest of Tours by Count Geoffrey Martel in 1044. These
families used Marmoutier as a bridgehead to extend their influence over territo
31
Somerville, The Councils of Urban II, p. 114, n. 9; p. 149, c. 52; Foulon, ‘Les Relations
entre le papauté réformatrice’, pp. 51–52.
32
Le Registre de Lambert évêque d’Arras, ed. by Giordanengo, pp. 282–85, no. P 85: ‘Et
quia de metropoli alienae provinciae, scilicet Rothomagensi, et vos et monasterium vestrum
estis, constituendo constituimus, sicut in Calcedonensi concilio legitur confirmatum et in
Clarmonstensi concilio a dignae memoriae venerabili papa Urbano II est renovatum, quatenus
monachus ille quem apud Ambrisnam priorem esse volueritis, mihi fururisque ecclesiae
Atrebatensis pontificibus quantum ad nostram diocesim pertinet obedientiam canonicam
et promittat et exibeat’; Le Registre de Lambert évêque d’Arras, ed. by Giordanengo, p. 280,
no. P 83: ‘Scripto etiam nostro confirmamus ut tu et successores tui priores de Abbatisvilla
mihi successoribus meis, sicut in Clarmontensi concilio renovatum et constitutum est, dignam
exibeatis obedientiam’; Somerville, The Councils of Urban II, p. 58; Vanderputten, ‘Abbatial
Obedience, Liturgical Reform, and the Threat of Monastic Autonomy’.
33
‘Dedicatio ecclesie Majoris-Monasterii’, pp. 99–100; Foulon, ‘Les Relations entre le
papauté réformatrice’, pp. 48–49.
34
On these rituals see Hamilton, A Sacred City, pp. 13–55.
35
Rosenwein, Head, and Farmer, ‘Monks and Their Enemies’, pp. 788–89.
ries far from their centres of power.36 By sending abbots, priors, and monks, with
the task of founding new monasteries or of reforming institutions in difficulty,
a close-knit network was created both of priories, situated in different diocese
but closely tied to the mother house, and of abbeys which, however, remained
for the most part juridically independent.37 In this sense the activity of Albert,
former deacon of the Chartres cathedral chapter in the time of Bishop Fulbert,
and abbot of Marmoutier from 1028 to 1064, was trail-blazing. The abbot was in
volved, with the support of the bishops, in an attempt to reserve abbey elections
for the monastic communities, limiting the influence of the Eigenklosterherren
to the temporal sphere,38 and in this way anticipating what would be one of the
fundamental points of church reform of the Gregorian era.
St Florentin of Bonneval, in the diocese of Chartres, to the south of the city,
was among the abbeys which entered the sphere of influence of Marmoutier in
the second half of the eleventh century.39 This monastery, founded during the
reign of Charles the Bald (d. 877), and later destroyed by the Normans, was then
rebuilt, probably by Odo of Blois, also lord of Marmoutier, between 977 and 996,
almost certainly thanks to monks coming from the abbey of Fleury, in the diocese
of Orléans.
Before 1079 a monk from Marmoutier, Walter, was chosen as abbot of
Bonneval.40 The counts of Blois themselves were probably not uninvolved in this
transfer. In that period, in fact, the family was headed by Theobald III who, as
count of Chartres, held, both directly and through the family of the viscounts,
a strong influence over the city and the entire county.41 Walter led Bonneval
for little more than a decade; then at the beginning of the 1090s, because of an
unspecified scandal within the community, he resigned from office and returned
to his monastery of origin where he had made his vows. The renunciation of
36
Guillot, Le Comte d’Anjou et son entourage, pp. 175–81; Farmer, Communities of Saint
Martin, pp. 70, 72–73; Rosenwein, Head, and Farmer, ‘Monks and Their Enemies’, p. 787 n. 2.
37
Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, p. 13; Lohrmann, Kirchengut im
nördlichen Frankreich, pp. 190–91, 195–96; Gantier, ‘Recherches sur les possessions’.
38
Guillot, Le Comte d’Anjou et son entourage, i, pp. 156–62, 175–93; Avril, Le Gouvernement
des évêques, i, pp. 124–27; Genicot, ‘Rois, ducs, comtes’, pp. 105–06; Foulon, ‘Les Relations
entre le papauté réformatrice’, pp. 32–33.
39
Calendini, ‘Bonneval’; Bautier, ‘Bonneval’, cols 429–30; Thiroux and Lambert, Histoire
abrégée.
40
Thiroux and Lambert, Histoire abrégée, pp. 48–50.
41
Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres und seine Stellung, pp. 95–100; Lo Prete, Adela of Blois,
pp. 70–80.
48 Guido Cariboni
the abbacy provoked strong protest from Ivo, who had recently been elected
bishop of Chartres (1090–1115). It is possible to reconstruct the event from a
letter which Ivo himself sent in those months to Bernard, abbot of Marmoutier
(1084–1100).42 The well-known canonist observed that, contra instituta maiorum,
some monks, to whom he himself had entrusted pastoral office, had found refuge
at the monastery of Marmoutier. This fact, besides damaging souls, also damaged
the good name both of those who withdrew and of the abbot of Marmoutier
himself. Therefore Ivo asked the abbot of Marmoutier to send Walter back so that
he could interrogate him and hear from his own voice the cause of his resignation.
In fact, for Ivo approving or disapproving the resignation of an abbot was a
decision that was up to the bishop alone, who could even reinstall him in office
should the reasons given be considered insufficient.43
What provoked the strong protests of the bishop of Chartres, who in that
period had already begun a good relationship with Countess Adela, the daughter
of William the Conqueror and daughter-in-law of Theobald III,44 were not there
fore so much Walter’s resignations, probably justified by the conditions in which
Bonneval found itself, but rather the fact that the abbot withdrew to Marmoutier
without consulting his bishop.
In his letter, in judging Walter’s departure contra instituta maiorum, Ivo prob
ably refers to the canon Abbas potest agreed to in his Decretum, as canon 18 of
the Council of Magonza (813), probably through Burchard of Worms,45 but
originating instead from the so-called Penitentiale Theodori of the end of the
seventh century.46 In this the possibility of an abbot abandoning his office pro
42
The letter is dated by consent in Ivo Carnotensis, Correspondence, ed. by Leclercq,
pp.12–14 n.4 and in Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres und seine Stellung, p. 184.
43
Ivo Carnotensis, Correspondence, ed. by Leclercq, pp. 12–14 n. 4: ‘Quod quia prudentiam
vestram latere non ignoro, nescio utrum patientiam vestram vel negligentiam, quantum fas est
ex charitatis affectu, reprehendo, quod contra instituta majorum quosdam fratres semel a vobis
ad custodiam animarum dimissos apud vos detinetis, in quibus vestram et illorum famam laedi
permittitis et morbis ovium illis commissarum nullam medicinae curam praeparatis. Unde, ut
interim de caeteris sileam, rogando moneo et monendo rogo fraternitatem vestram ut, omni
occasione remota, usque ad praesens caput jejunii, transmittatis mihi domnum Gauterium,
quondam monasterii Bonaevallis abbatem, quatenus audita ab eo suae discessionis causa,
solutio eius si probanda est, a nobis approbetur; vel si approbanda non est, consilio et auxilio
cooperatorum nostrorum in officio et loco suo plenissime reformetur’.
44
Lo Prete, Adela of Blois, pp. 77, 95, 99–102; Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of
Chartres, pp. 232–33.
45
Burchard von Worms, Decretorum libri xx, ed. by Fransen and Kölzer, fol. 122v (viii, 86).
46
Wiech, Das Amt des Abtes im Konflikt, pp. 51–52.
humiliatione and with the permission of the bishop was established.47 More gen
erally the reference was without doubt to canon 4 of the Council of Calcedonia,
which called for the total submission of regular institutions to the bishop. This
decree, recalled more than once also by one of Ivo’s most authoritative prede
cessors at Chartres, Fulbert, was inserted in very many canonical collections at
the end of the eleventh century, and would also be taken up again at Clermont.
Also interesting is canon 19 of the Council of Orléans (511), confirmed in Ivo’s
Decretum.48 Based on these canons, the bishop of Chartres could conclude that
the dependence of an abbot upon his abbey of origin, and where he had been
professed as monk, had to be subordinated to the obedience due to the bishop of
the diocese where that abbot now was and lived. And this conclusion was more
effective still if both monasteries in question were subject to episcopal jurisdiction.
47
Ivo Carnotensis, Decretum, col. 568 (vii, 104): ‘Abbas potest pro humiliatione, et cum
permissione episcopi locum suum derelinquere. Tamen fratres eligant sibi abbatem de ipsis, sin
autem de extraneis. Nec episcopus debet abbatem violenter retinere in loco suo. Congregatio
debet sibi eligere abbatem post mortem abbatis sui, vel eo vivente, si ipse discesserit, vel
peccaverit. Ipse enim non potest aliquem ordinare de suis propinquis, vel amicis, sine voluntate
fratrum’.
48
Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. by Alberigo and others, p. 89 n. 4: ‘Qui vere et
sincere singularem sectantur vitam, conpetenti honore digni habeantur. Quoniam vero quidam
utentes habitu monachi ecclesiastica negotia civiliaque conturbent, circumeuntes indifferenter
urbes necnon et monasteria sibi instituere praesumentes, placuit nullum quidem usquam
aedificare aut constituere monasterium vel oratorii domum praeter conscientiam civitatis
episcopi. Monachos vero per unamquamque civitatem aut regionem subiectos esse episcopo et
quietem diligere et intentos esse tantummodo ieiunio et orationi, in locis, quibus renuntiaverunt
saeculo permanentes. Nec ecclesiasticis vero nec saecularibus negotiis communicent, vel
in aliquo sint molesti propria monasteria deserentes, nisi forte his praecipiatur propter opus
necessarium ab episcopo civitatis’. Decretales Pseudo-isidorianae, ed. by Hinschius, pp. 285–86;
Fulbert of Chartres, The Letters and Poems, ed. by Behrends, pp. 28–31; Collecio canonum Regesto
Farfensi inserta, ed. by Kölzer, p. 150 (i, 36); Ivo Carnotensis, Decretum, cols 541–43 (vii, 1);
Motta, Collectio canonum trium librorum, i: Liber i et ii, pp. 385–86 (tit. xxviiii, 1). See also
Vanderputten, ‘Abbatial Obedience, Liturgical Reform, and the Threat of Monastic Autonomy’,
p. 252, and Falkenstein, La Papauté et les abbayes française, p. 173. An important witness of
Ivo’s way of thinking about this problem is the brief n. 73 to Abbot Bernard of Marmoutier,
Ivo Carnotensi, Epistolae, cols 92–95. On the issue of obedience of an abbot to his bishop see
also Constable, ‘Abbatial Profession in Normandy and England’, pp. 106–08. Concilia Galliae,
a. 511–a. 695, ed. by de Clercq, p. 10 n. 19: ‘Abbates pro humilitate religionis in episcoporum
potestate consistant et, si quid extra regolam fecerint, ab episcopis conrigantur; qui semel in
anno, in loco ubi episcopus elegerit, accepta vocatione conveniant. Monachi autem abbatibus
omni se obedientiae devotione subiciant’. Ivo Carnotensis, Decretum, col. 565 (vii, 85).
50 Guido Cariboni
St Remi of Reims
Around the same time, dynamics not very dissimilar from those going on be
tween Marmoutier and Bonnevalle also occurred between Marmoutier and the
great monastery of St Remi of Reims.49 The original monastic community was
established in the second half of the eighth century at the hands of Turpin, arch
bishop of Reims from 748 to 794. The monks, who probably replaced a group
of canons, settled near the basilica where were conserved the remains of the holy
bishop Remigius (who died around 533), protagonist of the conversion and
baptism of Clovis, the first king of the Franks.50 During the first centuries of the
community’s existence relations with the prelates were very close, so much so that
up to the middle of the tenth century the bishops themselves fulfilled the role of
abbot and chose St Remi as the episcopal burial place. From the ninth century
relations with royal power also became central to the abbey. In 816, in an act
that recalled the baptism of Clovis by Remigius, Pope Stephen IV anointed and
crowned Louis the Pious at St Remi.51 On 29 June 922, at the monastic basilica,
Robert I was proclaimed king by the bishops and notables of the kingdom.52 In
fact, almost all of the last Carolingian kings and queens were crowned in this place.
This dynasty, by now fragile, made Remigius its patron saint and St Remi its burial
church, thereby partly withdrawing it from the influence of the archbishops.53
A turning point in this sense was reached in 945, when Archbishop Hugh of
Vermandois conceded to the monks the privilege of choosing their abbot and, with
the intention of reforming the community, asked the assistance of Erchenbaldus,
legate to Odo of Cluny and at that time head of Fleury. To this end the monk
Incmarus was sent to assume the office of abbot.54
The gradual withdrawal of the monks from the bishop’s sphere of influence
emerged clearly at the beginning of the Gregorian period with the Council of
Reims of 1049, celebrated at the abbey church and of which the abbot of St Remi,
Erimar, was an active organizer. During the first day of the council Leo IX
49
Isaïa, Remi de Reims, pp. 21–31.
50
51
52
Isaïa, Remi de Reims, p. 630.
53
54
Flodoard von Reims, Die Geschichte der Reimser Kirche, ed. by Stratmann, p. 424 (iv, 32);
Misonne, ‘Gérard de Brogne à Saint-Rémy de Reims’, pp. 167–76, and Semmler, ‘Das Erbe der
karolingischen Klosterreform’, p. 70.
consecrated the abbey church, moving the relics of St Remigius, while in the days
that followed the archbishop of Reims, together with twenty bishops and about
fifty abbots from various ecclesiastical provinces, were obliged to clear themselves
before the pope of charges of simony and misappropriation of the possessions of
the church.55
On the death of Erimar, on 7 December 1071, the friction between the bish
ops and the monks intensified further.56 Manasse I, archbishop of Reims from
1069 to 1080, acting perhaps too boldly but still not far from the prerogatives of
an Eigenklosterherr,57 took advantage of the vacant seat to dispose at his pleasure
of the monastic endowments and attempted to nominate a trusted man as the
new abbot. Part of the community, concerned by the archbishop’s rapacity and
considering the proposed candidate ill-suited, appealed directly to the Church
of Rome, first to Alexander II and later to Gregory VII. The latter, just elected,
sent two letters on 30 June 1073.58 In the first he ordered Manasse himself to stop
his harassment and to find the abbey a convenient guide both in temporal and in
spiritual matters. In the second he asked Hugh of Semur, abbot of Cluny, to take
temporary charge of the monks of St Remi who had been obliged to take refuge
with him because of the abuse endured at the hands of their own bishop.59
In these same months Manasse attempted to resolve the matter by placing a
person agreeable to the pope himself at the head of the coenobium, Abbot Walo
of St Arnulf near Metz. In May 1073 the archbishop of Reims, as must have been
usual also for his predecessors, consigned the abbey staff to Walo. This rite was
not only the simple episcopal benediction due to an abbot, but also a veritable in
vestiture to which was bound the promise of the abbot’s obedience to the bishop.60
55
Isaïa, Remi de Reims, pp. 712–24; Iogna-Prat, ‘Léon IX, pape consécrateur’, pp. 361–66;
Oberste, ‘Papst Leo IX. und das Reformmönchtum’, pp. 422–23, 432; Bur, ‘Léon IX et la France
(1026–1054)’, pp. 244–52.
56
Gaul, Manasses I. Erzbischof von Reims, pp. 28–47; Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I
of Rheims’, pp. 808–10; Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, pp. 375–78; Schütte, Die Briefe des Abtes
Walo, pp. 22–26; Blumenthal, Gregor VII, p. 158.
57
Gaul, Manasses I. Erzbischof von Reims, p. 29.
58
30 June 1073, Si loci tui ( JL 4784); 30 June 1073, Noverit sanctitas vestra ( JL 4785): Das
Register Gregors VII., ed. by Caspar, i: Buch i–iv, pp. 21–23 (i, 13–14).
59
Kohnle, Abt Hugo von Cluny, p. 101.
60
About the distinction between benediction and investiture of an abbot, particularly
in the presence of a bishop in what is at the same time also an Eigenklosterherr see Seibert,
Abtserhebungen zwischen Rechtsnorm und Rechtswirklichkeit, pp. 339–50.
52 Guido Cariboni
However, Manasse did not stop plundering the wealth of the monastery61 and
the two men were soon at loggerheads, to the extent that Walo could find no
other solution than to resign. For approval of his resignation, he presented himself
before Gregory VII during the Lenten synod of 1074. Papal intervention became
necessary to force the archbishop to release Walo from his promise of obedience.62
This submission, potestas subiectionis, with clear legal valence, is a central element
in relations between the two men, to the extent that it appeared more than once
in the correspondence of the former abbot of St Remi.63 Gregory VII attempted
to mediate by allowing Walo, who had continued to maintain his offices at Metz,
to choose freely whether to remain at Reims or to return to his coenobium of
origin.64 In the case of Walo’s resignation, the pontiff warned Manasse to establish
a new abbot at St Remi who, this time, would be elected by the community,
according to the Rule of St Benedict.65
Manasse I, who would be deposed by Gregory VII in December 1080, did not
follow the papal directives, but again autonomously chose as abbot of St Remi
Henry of Homblières.66 The reactions of some members of the community, cheated
of their right of election, were not long in coming. The monks, refusing to obey
the new abbot, were arbitrarily excommunicated even though they had previously
sent an appeal to the Church of Rome. Such recourse should have interrupted
any local procedures.67 Above and beyond the plausibility of the accusations, it
was this irregularity which induced Gregory VII, through Iosfredus, bishop of
Paris, to order Manasse either to release the monks from the excommunication, or
to appear before the pope, or send one of his legates to explain the reason for his
actions. The matter probably had no further consequences, since Abbot Henry
remained in office until his death in the spring of 1095.68
61
Schütte, Die Briefe des Abtes Walo, p. 66, rr. 1–13, n. 4.
62
Schütte, Die Briefe des Abtes Walo, pp. 61–63, n. 3.
63
Schütte, Die Briefe des Abtes Walo, p. 58, r. 11, n. 2; p. 61, rr. 16–17, p. 62, rr. 20–24, n. 3;
p. 66, r. 15, n. 4.
64
Schütte, Die Briefe des Abtes Walo, p. 60, rr. 3–4, n. 2.
65
14 March 1074, Romana ecclesia iam ( JL 4829), Das Register Gregors VII., ed. by Caspar,
i, p. 79, rr. 15–20 (i, 52).
66
25 March 1077, Vir iste videlicet ( JL 5030), Das Register Gregors VII., ed. by Caspar,
i, pp. 327–28, rr. 26–42, 1–21. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, pp. 378–79; Gaul, Manasses I.
Erzbischof von Reims, pp. 43–47.
67
Landau, ‘Die kirchliche Justizgewährung’, pp. 427–56.
68
Gallia Christiana, ix (1751), col. 230.
Robert of St Remi
At the end of the eleventh century the ecclesiastical and political panorama at
Reims had changed completely. After the deposition of Manasse I and the bishop
ric of Rainaldo, who was elected in 1083 and died on 21 January 1096, Manasse II
(1096–1106) was elected archbishop, with the support of Ivo of Chartres.69 Since
he was still subdeacon, after the approval of his election by Urban II, Manasse was
ordained deacon on 8 March 1096 by Lambert, bishop of Arras, and priest two
months later, on 23 March, by Hugh, bishop of Soissons, and was consecrated
again by Hugh, assisted by other bishops of the metropolitan province, in the
basilica of St Remi on 30 March 1096. Manasse II had previously been provost
of the cathedral of Reims and, together with Bruno, scolasticus and chancellor
of the cathedral and later, in 1084, founder of the Grande Chartreuse, had been
the reference point of a group of clerics strongly hostile to Manasse I and in close
relations with the legate Hugh of Die and therefore with Gregory VII.70
Shortly after his consecration Manasse II asked Abbot Bernard of Marmoutier,
who had already clashed with Ivo of Chartres some years before over the Bonneval
question, to invite one of his monks, Robert, to Reims to entrust St Remi to
him71 and in this way to reform the regular life of the abbey together with a group
of monks from Tours.72 The request was supported by a letter from Urban II,
not unrelated to the situation in the archdiocese of Reims, since he had been a
disciple of Bruno and canon of the cathedral until about 1067, before entering
Cluny. Manasse II did not choose Marmoutier to reform St Remi without good
reason. In fact the archbishop of Reims was a maternal uncle of Ebulus II, count
69
Falkenstein, ‘Lettres et privilegès pontificaux perdus’, p. 585.
70
Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, pp. 378–88; Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims’,
p. 810.
71
Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, pp. 615–16, rr. 49–51, 1–2: ‘Quod
cum apud se destinasset, quia idem locus [S. Remi] amplissimae dignitatis et maximae videretur
honestatis, tunc magis hoc ideo affectavit, quia didicerat ibidem abbatem quemdam ordinatum
Robertum Maioris ecclesiae monachum, quem ex dicto Urbani papae expetierat Manasses
archiepiscopus causa ibi artius augendae religionis’. Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed.
by Pertz, p. 616, rr. 4–7: ‘Litteras vel legationem cuiusdam monachi Maioris monasterii nomine
Roberti ad vos [Urbano II] iam venisse putamus, quem frater Manasses Remensis archiepiscopus,
quod per se non valuit, ordinadum in abbatem sancti Remigii litterarum vestrarum auctoritate
ab abbate suo impetravit’.
72
Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, p. 616, rr. 7–9: ‘Adiuncti sunt etiam
ei quidam religiosi fratres, quorum fretus consilio et auxilio subditorum suorum Remensium
monachorum animos informaret et ad sacrae religionis imitationem instrueret’.
54 Guido Cariboni
of Roucy.73 The latter, nephew of Ebulus I, archbishop of Reims from 1021 to

1033, had been a highly active protagonist of the pro-Gregorian party, and had
contributed, by allying himself with Count Theobald of Blois, to the struggle
against Archbishop Manasse I.74 In 1082 Ebolus, with his brother Stephen,
the brother-in-law of Hugh, count of Donmartin, and their respective wives,
donated the church of Ramerupt, one of the original seats of his family, and the
abbey of Celle-en-Brie to Marmoutier.75 This act, carried out explicitly following
the indications of Hugh of Die to the Council of Meaux,76 was confirmed
by Manasse II himself, still provost of Reims, and by Count Theobald III of
Blois, organizers of the council itself. At the beginning of the 1080s a group
could therefore be identified that was composed of both laymen (Ebulus and
Theobald III), and of ecclesiastics (Manasse III and Hugh of Die), who on the
one hand maintained close ties with Marmoutier, and on the other were strongly
implicated in the political and ecclesiastic vicissitudes of Reims.
However, something went wrong almost immediately in the reform of
St Remi. It is possible to offer a partial reconstruction of the matter from four
letters written during those months. The first three were addressed to Urban II,
respectively from Hugh of Die, Hugh of Semur, abbot of Cluny, and Lambert,
bishop of Arras, while the fourth was sent to Lambert of Arras by Robert
himself.77 If we can believe what was narrated by the legate, Robert soon entered
into conflict with the companions who had cooperated with him in the reform.78
Accused of assuming behaviour not in conformity with religious life, he was
73
About his family see Gaul, Manasses I. Erzbischof von Reims, pp. 110–18; Bur, La
Formation du comté de Champagne, pp. 136–38, 159–61.
74
Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims’, p. 812; Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, p. 380;
Bur, La Formation du comté de Champagne, p. 222.
75
Bur, La Formation du comté de Champagne, pp. 227, 253–56; Lo Prete, Adela of Blois,
pp. 286–87, 481.
76
See n. 10.
77
Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, p. 616, rr. 3–47 (Hugh of Die);
Cowdrey, ‘Memorials of Abbot Hugh of Cluny’, pp. 150–51 (Hugh of Semur); Le Registre de
Lambert évêque d’Arras, ed. by Giordanengo, pp. 372–76 (E 33) (Lambert of Arras); pp. 400–01
(E 54) (Robert of St Remi). On the register of Lambert of Arras see Morelle, ‘La Pratique
épistolaire de Lambert’ and Tock, Une chancellerie épiscopale, pp. 14, 69–72.
78
Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, p. 616, rr. 9–12 (Hugh of Die): ‘Ipse
autem, prout virorum bonorum relatione cognovimus, spreto eorum consilio qui ei dati fuerant
ad auxilium augendae religionis, coepit adhaerere complicibus levitatis et remissius relaxare
districtionem vitae regularis’.
repeatedly admonished in vain by Manasse II. However, Manasse did not take

the responsibility of correcting him directly, but preferred to address the abbey of
Tours from which Robert had come.79 It is difficult to establish the reasons that
led the bishop to act in this way, which among other things, went against what had
just been decreed at Clermont. Probably both the archbishop and Marmoutier
realised that any episcopal judgement would negatively affect the exemption that
the monastery had gained only two years earlier with great difficulty.
Robert refused to present himself at Tours before the monastic chapter and
was therefore excommunicated by Marmoutier.80 The sentence was immediately
contested since the abbot of St Remi, in his own defence, objected that he had
been assigned to the Church of Reims totally without the obligation of obedi
ence. Again, the initiative was taken by the archbishop. Robert’s criticism, indeed,
seems to have raised more than one problem if Manasse II decided to discuss the
case during a provincial council held in Reims, probably in January 1097.81 In that
79
Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, p. 616, rr. 12–16 (Hugh of Die):
‘Quo comperto Remensis archiepiscopus saepius eum per se perque alios religiosos viros, ut
erga ordinem suum et sibi subditos corrigendos studiosior esset, admonuit, nichilque profecit.
Tandem frustratum se cognoscens de eo quem religiosum putaverat et in abbatem consecraverat,
hoc ipsum abbati Maioris monasterii significavit, et ut eum corriperet et emendaret obsecravit’.
80
Le registre de Lambert évêque d’Arras, ed. by Giordanengo, p. 374 (Lambert of Arras):
‘Adjecit etiam abbas quod, cum plura de praedicto Roberto abbate inordinata et irregularia
audisset fieri, primo eum per epistolam, postmodum vero per idoneas personas sub nomine
obedientiae commonefecerit quatenus in determinato sibi die et tempore responsurus de vita et
conversatione sua, abbati se praesentaret in capitulo Majoris Monasterii, sin autem, daret abbas
sententiam in eum tanquam in reum professionis et sanctae regulae contemptorem’. Chronicon
Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, p. 616, rr. 16–19 (Hugh of Die): ‘Abbas vero
directis a latere suo religiosis personis, multotiens eum increpavit, et ne tam negligenter vivens
ecclesiam unde venerat dehonestaret, attentius admonuit, et nisi se emendaret, ut inobedientem
et professionis suae transgressorem se excommunicaturum intentavit’. Le registre de Lambert
évêque d’Arras, ed. by Giordanengo, p. 374 (Lambert of Arras): ‘Frater autem Robertus abbas
haec indicans domno archiepiscopo accepit ab eo consilium et praeceptum ne aliquo modo
vel occasione se erigeret contra patrem suum, abbatem videlicet Majoris Monasterii: quod si
facere praesumpsisset qualem in eum praedictus abbas daret sententiam donnus archiepiscopus
collaudaret et confirmaret’. Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, p. 616,
rr. 19–21 (Hugh of Die): ‘Die constituta se ad eum iturum et velut patri suo obediturum
promisit. Sed consiliariis suis pravis locutus, ire contempsit. Abbas autem sicut minatus fuerat,
eum consentiente episcopo excommunicavit’.
81
Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz, p. 616, rr. 21–24 (Hugh of
Die): ‘Ipso vero reclamante et anathematis eius vinculo se minime teneri dicente, quasi ab
eius obedientia et professione absolutus et Remensi ecclesiae ut sibi videbatur liber redditus,
constituta est dies ab archiepiscopo, quo iudicio episcoporum et abbatum lis illa terminaretur’.
56 Guido Cariboni
circumstance, in the presence also of the prior of Cluny, probably Joscerannus,82

Abbot Bernard of Marmoutier personally protested that he had never released
Robert from obedience.83 Something very similar had already taken place a few
decades earlier at Marmoutier. In 1056 the monk Theodoric had been invited as
abbot to the monastery of St Albins in Angers, with the charge of reforming the
house. Shortly afterwards the same Theodoric appears among the witnesses to
a concordia between Marmoutier and the monastery of St Serge, also at Angers,
described as ‘Teodericus, monacus sancti Martini et abbas Sancti Albini’, as if to
emphasize that being elevated to the office of abbot did not exclude the profession
made to the monastery of origin.84 The arguments of the abbot of Marmoutier
were accepted by the council, which judged the excommunication to be totally
legitimate and expelled Robert from St Remi. Here it was also established as a
general rule that a monk from elsewhere, could not be held by the archbishop but
must be conducted directly back to the domain of his own abbot.85
Robert had no alternative other than to appeal to Rome, where he went in
person. Manasse II, although he would have liked to keep him, by consigning
him to his abbot, did not move and, in deference to papal authority, allowed
him to leave,86 thus avoiding repeating the error of his predecessor, Manasse I,
82
Chaume, ‘Les Grands Prieurs de Cluny’, p. 151.
83
‘Scire volumus sanctitatem vestram nos et provinciae nostrae abbates et coepiscopos Reims pro
quibusdam ecclesiasticis negotiis convocatos a metropolitano nostro; ubi inter caetera negotia
reclamavit donnus Bernardus abbas Majoris Monasterii, animam fratris et filii sui Roberti,
abbatis monasterii Sancti Remigii, contestans in verbo veritatis quod eum nec per se nec per
personam ab eo missam Remensi ecclesiae omnino liberum nisi salva professione et subjectione
Majoris Monasterii contradiderit’.
84
Marchegay, ‘Chartes Angevines des onzième et douzième siècles’, p. 393. About this
document see Guillot, Le Comte d’Anjou et son entourage, i, p. 158; ii, p. 117.
85
‘Praefixa autem die convenientibus episcopis et abbatibus multisque aliis religiosis personis,
ipso quoque abbate Maioris monasterii et priore Cluniacensi, discussis utrimque rationibus
et obiectionibus, cum probari non posset, quod praedictus monachus Robertus a primae
professionis suae vinculo per abbatem suum praesentialiter vel per litteras eius signatas esset
absolutus ac sic liber archiepiscopo Remensi concessus: iudicatum est, ipsum ab abbate suo
excommunicatum esse, nec ab episcopo Remensi retineri posse’. Le registre de Lambert évêque
d’Arras, ed. by Giordanengo, p. 374 (Lambert of Arras): ‘Super omnibus his ab archiepiscopo
nostro commoniti, cum Robertus verbis abbatis sui canonica ratione contraire nequivisset,
judicatum est ab episcopis et abbatibus alterius monachum ab archiepiscopo non esse
retinendum, sed prorsus in potestatem abbatis sui redigendum’.
86
also with the monks of St Remi, in 1077.87 During his journey to Rome Robert
stopped in Lyons, where he presented his case to the papal legate Hugh of Die.
The excommunicated abbot also informed the archbishop that a delegation
from Marmoutier was following his tracks and would reach the city shortly
after him. Hugh offered in vain to settle the question personally, but Robert left
immediately for Rome without waiting for those who followed him.88 Three days
later a representation of very important individuals, composed of Hilgoldus, a
monk from Marmoutier, but also former bishop of Soissons, Pontius, probably
the prior of Marmoutier, and Rodolf, provost of the church of Reims, reached
Lyons. The three, bearing a letter from Manasse II, asked Hugh permission to
elect, with his advice, a new abbot for St Remi, so that a long vacancy would
not harm the monastery.89 The archbishop of Lyons, although fully sharing the
reasons of the three men, did not wish to proceed to a new nomination, which
might prejudice papal prerogatives, since an appeal had been sent to the Church
of Rome.90
The case was therefore discussed before a papal audientia at which the abbot
of Marmoutier, backed by the archbishop of Reims, sent Ulrich as his procurator,
bearing three letters addressed to the pontiff, respectively from Lambert of
Arras, Hugh of Lyons, and Hugh of Semur. These three, besides giving their own
‘Iudicio finito, saepedictus monachus minime adquievit, et ut pluribus videtur quaerens

occasionem vagandi, praegravari se dixit, et audientiam vestram reclamavit. Quem cum
archiepiscopus retinere vellet et abbati suo reddere, propter reclamationem vestram liberum
permisit ire’.
87
Cf. n. 67 and 68.
88
‘Qui illico ad nos veniens, rei gestae seriem nobis nuntiavit, et ex eius relatione didicimus,
iuste eum posse revocari ab abbate Maioris monasterii. Nuntiavit etiam nobis pro huiusmodi
negotio quosdam fratres Maioris monasterii ad nos venturos, et nobis offerentibus ut pro sua
commendatione vel restitutione, si fieri posset, eos expectaret, sustinere noluit, et a nobis
abscessit’.
89
‘Die autem tertio post eius abscessum domnus Hilgoldus quondam Suessionensis episcopus
et frater Pontius noster quondam notus, Rodulfus quoque Remensis ecclesiae praepositus ad
nos venientes, rem gestam nobis per ordinem narraverunt, et ex parte Remensis archiepiscopi
litteras obtulerunt, obsecrantes ut nostro consilio alterum abbatem in ecclesia beati Remigii sibi
ordinare liceret, ne detrimentum pateretur, si diu rectore careret’.
90
‘Quod quidem propter solam appellationem vestram facere noluimus, quamvis quod in tanto
conventu et a tam discretis personis factum fuerat, iustum censeremus’.
58 Guido Cariboni
versions of what had taken place, objected to Robert’s appeal both in its contents
and in its form. Lambert wrote that the recourse of the abbot of St Remi should
be considered a flight to escape the just judgement of the bishop. Should Robert
appear before the papal court, Lambert suggested to Urban II that he not listen
to him, but merely confirm what had been established in the Council of Reims
of 1097.91 Hugh of Die and Hugh of Semur were much more cautious. The papal
legate, while considering just the demands of Marmoutier to recall the abbot of
St Remi,92 simply submitted the case to pontifical prudence while exhorting the
pope to not entrust the coenobium to an irreligious person who could materially
and spiritually weaken the institution.93 In the same tone was the letter of the
abbot of Cluny, called in cause by Manasse II himself, his devoted friend, so
that he might intervene with the pontiff, warning him against the cunning of
Robert.94 The connection between Hugh and Marmoutier was very close. In
the Consuetudines of Bernard a brotherhood between Cluny and the abbey near
91
‘Ille autem hoc audiens avertit se a judicio justitiae et nos et coepiscopos cum abbatibus ut
subterfugeret disciplinam ad apostolicam invitavit audientiam. Cujus rei seriem propterea
justitiae vestrae descripsimus ut, si forte inobediens et excommunicatus iste ad vos venerit, non
audiatis contra judicium episcoporum, contra religionem abbatum; sed ut sententia eorum
vestra auctoritate robur obtineat, prostrati sanctitatis vestrae pedibus humiliter exoramus’.
92
‘Qui illico ad nos veniens, rei gestae seriem nobis nuntiavit, et ex eius relatione didicimus, iuste
eum posse revocari ab abbate suo Maioris monasterii’.
93
‘Itaque cum non sit nostrum sanctitatis vestrae prudentiam docere, provideat vestra paternitas,
qualiter praedicto monacho, si praesentiam vestram adierit vel litteras vobis direxerit, res
pondeatis. Si enim ecclesia beati Remigii venerit in potestate alicuius irreligiosi, et in
temporalibus et spiritualibus minuetur, et cum periculo animarum cultus divinae religionis ibi
adnichilabitur’.
94
Cowdrey, ‘Memorials of Abbot Hugh of Cluny’, p. 150: ‘Inter quos dominus Manasses
Remorum pontifex, vester humilis filius, noster quoque devotus amicus, quem et in alia epistola
vobis commendavimus, conquestus est nobis de Maiori Monasterio in ecclesia beati Remigii
se quemdam monachum abbatem ordinasse, et longe aliter quam sperabat de eius irreligione
maximum loco dampnum provenisse. Petiit autem ut interpellaremus inde vos; sed quia
dominus Hugo Lugdunensis archiepiscopus omnem ordinem rerum vobis significavit, sicut
audivimus, reverentie vestre suggerimus ut si ad vos venerit idem monachus, prudentiam vestram
nullis circumveniat calliditatibus, sed faciatis ei secundum sapientiam quam a Deo habetis’. See
also Kohnle, Abt Hugo von Cluny, p. 129. The reasons why the letter of Hugh of Die and that of
Hugh of Semur are both in Chronicon Sancti Huberti Andaginensis, ed. by Pertz are analysed in
Cowdrey, ‘Memorials of Abbot Hugh of Cluny’, p. 150.
Tours is mentioned.95 Between 1064 and 1065 Abbot Hugh also intervened in
the dispute between Marmoutier and Goffred the Bearded, visiting the monastery
and going personally to the exponent of the counts of Anjou, to intercede on
behalf of the institution. In that situation, moreover, the abbot of Marmoutier,
Bartholomew, went to Cluny to be ordained priest.96 The procurator Ulrich limit
ed himself to repeating before the pope what had already been ascertained in
Reims,97 that is, he observed that, despite the transfer, the abbot of Marmoutier
had not absolved Robert from the yoke of his dominion, that is, from the promise
of obedience pronounced on the occasion of his monastic vows.
Urban II, Robert tells us, answered this accusation with a few simple words.98
In fact he limited himself to affirming that in the entire series of sacred canons the
term archiabbas cannot be found, which would be used in the case in which an
abbot was above another abbot. Urban continued: ‘Just as no one can serve two
masters, no one can obey two vows. From this it can be deduced that a monk,
brought forth from his Church and elevated to the office of abbot, becomes a
monk of the abbey of which he is the abbot’, implying that he is released from the
bond of obedience pronounced at the monastery of origin.99 The pope’s judge
ment, pronounced orally, was reproduced in a letter which Robert himself wrote
to Lambert of Arras to prove the validity of his appeal and to ask the bishop to
intercede in his favour with Manasse II. There also exists a copy of a papal letter
about this decision, transcribed in the margin of the chronicle of the monastery
of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif in Sens. In the text, which is addressed to the archbishop
of Reims, Urban II cancelled what had been decided in the council of 1097,
explaining his decision with a general principle:
95
Kohnle, Abt Hugo von Cluny, p. 51.
96
Chroniques des Comtes d’Anjou, ed. by Halphen and Poupardin, p. 154; Kohnle, Abt Hugo
von Cluny, pp. 299–300.
97
Le Registre de Lambert évêque d’Arras, ed. by Giordanengo, p. 400 (Robert of S. Remi):
‘[Ulrico] hoc solum dicens quia abbas Maioris Monasterii penitus a jugo suae dominationis me
non absolvisset’.
98
‘In tota serie sanctorum canonum, archiabbatem nunquam invenimus annotatum, quod utique
fuisset si abbas abbati praeponi debuisset’.
99
‘Sicut nemo potest duobus dominis servire, sic nemo potest duabus professionibus obedire.
Monachus enim ex quo est ab ecclesia sua emissus et in abbatem promotus, cuius est abbas, eius
est et monachus’.
60 Guido Cariboni
Once a son has been emancipated from his father, he shall not be held legally to re
turn under the care and power of the father, unless he requests it spontaneously. We
consider the promotion of an abbot to be like an emancipation and therefore we judge
that the new abbot need not return under the dominion of the abbot of origin.100
First in Reims and later in Rome two opposite positions faced each other. The
first, supported by Bernard of Marmoutier and Manasse II, and also by Hugh of
Die, Hugh of Semur, and Lambert of Arras, held that a monk, on becoming abbot
of a monastery other than his own, was not freed of his vow of obedience with
respect to the abbey of origin, unless that bond had been explicitly released at the
moment of his transfer. The second, upheld by Robert, and in fact approved by
Urban II against the opinion of all, maintained instead in the case of a promotion
the automatic suspension of the ties with the monastery of origin. If we may
believe the words reported by Robert, the pontiff went even further, criticizing
the very roots of the concept of archiabbas, the power of one abbot over another.
This position, if applied on a general level, could have posed a serious problem
for monastic networks as they had developed during the eleventh century, and it
was perhaps for this reason, in the matter of Robert of Reims, that the monks of
Cluny had been so assiduous.
The Council of Poitiers

Despite the papal decision in his favour Robert did not succeed in re-entering
St Remi. Instead his situation was taken up again during the council held in
Poitiers on 18 November 1100, presided over by two papal legates, Cardinals
John and Benedict,101 and in the presence, among others, of Ivo of Chartres and of
Lambert of Arras, but not by the primate Hugh of Die, who justified his absence
by the state of his health.102 The council had some dramatic repercussions. Its
100
[1097], Abbatis sancti Remigii ( JL 5693), Chronique de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens, ed.
by Bautier, pp. 260–61 n. 7: ‘Qui postquam filius a patre emancipatus est, sub curam et domina
cionem patris redire districtione legum non cogitur, nisi sponte ipse rogaverit. Promocionem
enim abbatis emancipationem accipimus et ideo sub potestatem abbatis redire non debere
judicamus’.
101
Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich, pp. 163–68; Monod, Essai sur les
rapports de Pascal II, pp. 7–11; Lawo, Studien zu Hugo von Flavigny, pp. 29–32.
102
Foulon, ‘Les Relations entre le papauté réformatrice’, pp. 53–54, Pontal, Les Conciles de
la France capétienne, pp. 244–45; Monod, Essai sur les rapports de Pascal II, pp. 16–24; Fliche, Le
Règne du Philippe Ier, pp. 67–73.
main concern was the position of the king of France, Philip I. In 1092 Philip,
after twenty years of marriage, had repudiated his wife, Bertha of Holland,
who had given him an heir, in order to wed Bertrada di Monfort, who was then
married to Fulk of Anjou.103 The king had been excommunicated for this at the
Council of Autun (October 1094) and again at Clermont, but despite everything
he succeeded in being crowned king of France for the third time at Pentecost
1100 in Reims by Manasse II.104 It was probably this act that provoked a fresh
excommunication at Poitiers, reinforced this time by an interdict on all the places
where the royal couple resided.
During the council these provisions were strongly contested as much by a
part of the public who were present, including the king’s representative, Duke
William IX of Aquitaine, as by the group of ecclesiastics in favour of Philip. The
hermit and itinerant preacher Bernard of Tiron, who had recently been chosen as
abbot of St Cyprian of Poitiers, also participated in the council. He was one of the
few, together with Robert of Arbrissel, to face the threatening crowd, while the
majority of the council representatives fled in fear from the seat of the assembly.105
The excommunication of Philip and Bertrada was only the final act of a council
in which various cases were dealt with, including the expulsion of Robert. In line
with the principles expressed some time before by Urban II, both the removal of
the abbot of St Remi, and his substitution with a new abbot, Burcard, were judged
to be unjust and illicit. The choice and consecration of Robert, also confirmed by
a letter from Urban II, were considered authentic and canonical, and any blemish
on his conduct was dispelled. It would have been a complete victory, since even
the opposing party no longer seemed hostile to reconciliation, but every decision
was suspended, since Robert, to strengthen his position, had presented before the
legates a papal letter which already in its extrinsic features was judged obviously
false. Both the style and the writing materials of the missive were not consistent with
those of the papal chancery; the document also ended with the expression Valete,
considered unusual for pontifical letters. To refute the letter it was decided to turn
directly to the Apostolic See, thereby suspending the judgment of the legates.106
103
Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, pp. 230–43.
104
Monod, Essai sur les rapports de Pascal II, pp. 5–6; Fliche, Le Règne du Philippe I er,
pp. 93–94.
105
Beck, Saint Bernard de Tiron, p. 364, n. 48.
106
Hugo Flaviniacensis, Chronicon, p. 493, rr. 44–51: ‘Tractatum est in concilio eodem
de expulsione abbatis sancti Remigii iniusta et Burchardi substitutione illicita, et cum diu re
ventilata conversatio eius sancta, intriotus ligitimus, promotio atque sacratio inventa fuisset
autentica et canonica, quae etiam litteris domni papae Urbani roborabatur, quibus merito
62 Guido Cariboni
It is almost impossible to identify with certainty the document considered

counterfeit at Poitiers. However, one cannot rule out that it was indeed the letter
from Urban II, Abbatis sancti Remigii,107 in which the decisions of the Council of
Reims of 1097 were explicitly annulled. In fact, the letter, of which a copy survives,
is without eschatocol and therefore it is not possible to verify the presence or
absence of the Valete, which the two cardinals considered a decisive element for
establishing the inauthenticity of the document. This hypothesis would explain
why Robert’s case was discussed again in Poitiers in 1100. The appeal before the
legates would hardly be necessary if already in 1097 and 1098 the expelled abbot
were in possession of an authentic papal letter which annulled the sentences
taken against him locally. It should be noted that although Robert did not have
complete success, his requests for the annulment of the excommunication and for
reintegration in the abbey seat were recognized as legitimate, while the reasons
for the serious disciplinary provisions against him lost credit. Perhaps the absence
from Poitiers of Hugh of Die, who had spoken expressly against the abbot of
St Remi two years earlier, contributed to this partial victory, while Ivo of Chartres
was present, who in the case of St Florentin of Bonneval was fairly critical of
the control exercised by Marmoutier towards an abbot of his diocese.108 Finally,
it should not be overlooked that what was decided at the council was also in
relation with the fall in disgrace with Urban II of one of Robert’s most implacable
adversaries, Manasse II, who in open disobedience of the papal directives had
crowned Philip I some months earlier. The matching of the vicissitudes of the
abbot of St Remi with those of the French sovereign can be found in a letter in
verse which Baudri, abbot of St Peter of Bourgueil,109 sent to Odo, bishop of
Ostia, perhaps after Poitiers.110 In this text Baudri pleaded with the Roman Curia
the case of Robert, defined by him as filius et coabbas, who has been oppressed
by the archbishop of Reims. The latter, according to the abbot of Bourgueil,
deserved the just anger of the pope since on the one hand he had placed the
fides adhiberetur, cum iam ipsa etiam pars inimica restaurationem eius non reprobaret: pro
quibusdam litteris confictis, quasi a sede apostolica directis, in quibus cardinales nec stilum
Romanum nec pergamenum Romanum agnoscebat, maxime cum in fine earum subscriptum
foret: “Valete”, quod Romana non habet auctoritas, pro illis inquam confutandis iudicatum est
ad sedem eundum apostolicam’.
107
Cf. n. 100.
108
Cf. n. 43.
109
A short biography is in Baudri de Bourgueil, Poèmes, ed. by Tilliette, i, pp. iii–x; Foulon,
Église et réforme au Moyen Âge, pp. 153–54.
110
Baudri de Bourgueil, Poèmes, ed. by Tilliette, ii, pp. 119–20, rr. 81–100, n. 194.
diadem on the king’s head and on the other now refused to obey the order of
Urban II to re-integrate one who had been unjustly removed from his abbey.
The Birth of the Orders

Robert, whom some scholars have tentatively identified with Robert the monk-
author of Historia Iherosolimitana,111 did not succeed in getting back his position
at St Remi, but he probably reached a compromise with the abbey. In 1122
in a letter from Calixtus II he was described as prior of St Oricole of Senuc, a
dependent church of the monastery of Reims.112 The solution to his problem, at
tempted between 1097 to 1100, was not the only such case. A few examples will
be sufficient.
In the same month as Robert was chosen as abbot of St Remi, from 8 to
12 July 1096, during the Council of Nîmes,113 Guiberto, abbot of St Germain
at Auxerre, accused by his own community, was forced to resign through the
intervention of Urban II.114 The pontiff assigned the returned pastoral staff to
the bishop of Auxerre, Humbald, entrusting to him the choice of the new abbot.
For the pontiff the one appointed had to possess two main characteristics: to
come from the abbeys of Chaise-Dieu, Cluny, or Marmoutier, and, the most
interesting element, to be free from any previous bond of submission (liber ab
omni subjectionis prioris jugo), that is, released from any promise of obedience
pronounced at the monastery of origin.115 Hugh of Cluny, at the prelate’s request,
111
Flori, Chroniqueurs et propagandistes, pp. 125–26; Russo, ‘Ricerche sull’“Historia
Iherosolimitana”’, pp. 651–55; Bourgain, ‘Robertus Monacus’. Doubts about this identification
are also in Sweetenham, Robert the Monk’s History, p. 3.
112
16 May 1122, Gaudemus de te ( JL 6975), Bullaire du pape Calixte II, ed. by Robert, ii,
pp. 407–08, n. 302.
113
Pontal, Les Conciles de la France capétienne, pp. 234–36.
114
Henry, Histoire de l’abbaye de Saint-Germain, pp. 178–82; Hofmeister, ‘Cluny und seine
Abteien’, pp. 220–22; Bouchard, Spirituality and Administration, pp. 26–28; Kohnle, Abt Hugo
von Cluny, pp. 177–79.
115
‘Gesta Abbatum S. Germani Autissiodorensis’, ed. by Labbé, p. 574: ‘Baculum a dicto
Guiberto sibi [Urbano II] redditum eidem episcopo [Humbaldo] tradidit, blande inquiens,
vide Fili, ut huic ecclesie secundum praecedentium patrum institutionem tuo regimini subditae
vigilantioris curae cautelam adhibeas et iuxta consilium meum unum monachum aut de Casa
Dei, aut de Cluniaco, aut de Majori monasterio pie et charitative dari tibi requiras, qui liber
ab omni subiectionis prioris iugo et catholice constitutus abbas, vigorem regulae firmiter et
decenter in sancti Germani cenobio militando exerceat’.
64 Guido Cariboni
sent a group of monks to Auxerre guided by Ivo, prior of the Burgundian abbey.
However, they were immediately obliged to give up the office since as soon as they
arrived they declared: ‘they received that place, consigned by laymen and conceded
by the bishop, under their dominion and having received it they subjected it to
the church of Cluny’.116 The seat remained vacant until Hugh of Semur sent to
St Germain a few years later unum monachum liberum et absolutum, his nephew,
also named Hugh.117
Even more interesting is the case of Bernard of Tiron, who, in the early years of
the twelfth century, to safeguard the liberty of the abbey of St Cyprian of Poitiers,
of which he was then abbot, from the designs of Cluny, went to the Apostolic
See. Having with great difficulty obtained an audience with Paschal II and before
the Curia he pronounced these words, reported by his disciple Geoffrey the Fat:
The abbot of Cluny, like an arch-abbot, seeks to dominate me, a simple abbot, and
strives so that his church reigns and commands ours, which must obey him like a
servant. What a new and unprecedented pretention. If this defect is not uprooted
its poisonous fruit will spread and the seeds of an immense corruption will extend
everywhere. […] In the letters drawn up under divine inspiration one reads of
archbishops, archpriests and archdeacons, but arch-abbots are not mentioned any
where. In Benedict’s Rule it is established that only the abbot has the right to direct
everything in his monastery. Benedict never mentioned arch-abbots as he thought
that there had been no-one, and there would be no-one in the future, who would
aspire to such proud vanity.118
Bernard, a person very close to Ivo of Chartres, seems to repeat, at times word for
word, the reply given by Urban II to Robert of St Remi. After all, the abbot of
116
‘Gesta Abbatum S. Germani Autissiodorensis’, ed. by Labbé, p. 575: ‘Ut locum illum et a
laicis datum et ab episcopo concessum in suum dominium acciperent et acceptum Cluniacensi
Ecclesie subiugarent’.
117
‘Gesta Abbatum S. Germani Autissiodorensis’, ed. by Labbé, p. 575.
118
Beck, Saint Bernard de Tiron, p. 374: ‘Cluniacensis abbas […] veluti Archiabbas superba
tyrannide dominari appetit; et quod nostra ecclesia ut ancilla sibi famuletur, sua regnet et imperet,
efficere satagit; quod genus ambitionis novum et inauditum: nam ab illo vitio axordium accipit,
quod nisi in sua radice stirpitus amputetur, multam virulentae prolis propaginem emerserit. […]
In litteris etenim divinitus collatis Archiepiscopos, Archipresbyteros, Archidiaconos legimus:
Archiabbatum vero nomina, in illis necdum invenimus. S. Benedicti regula (cuius ego professor,
qui impetor, et ille est, qui me impetit) ut Abbas solummodo jus disponendi omnia in suo
monasterio habeat, constituit: de Archiabbate vero penitus tacuit quia neminem hujus superbae
vanitatis appetitorem in mundo fuisse vel fore credidit: Poeck, Cluniacensis Ecclesia, pp. 84–91.
St Cyprian had been one of the protagonists of the Council of Poitiers, when the
case of the abbot of Reims had also been the topic of discussion.119
The problem of whether or not the promise of obedience be maintained in
the case of transfer was also clarified in a letter sent on 30 September 1112 by
Paschal II to Abbot Lambert of St Bertin, who for years resisted the control of
Cluny over his abbey. The pope wrote:
To your question we respond that which the custom of the entire church hands
down and which the juridical principles confirm: if a bishop transfers a cleric from
one church to another or an abbot transfers a monk from a monastery to another,
the cleric and the monk are not held to the bond of the vow regarding the stability
of the place and the obedience of the abbot.120
These interventions, which refer to particular cases, apparently did not affect
the structure of the monastic networks. Great monasteries, such as Cluny and
Marmoutier, still attempted, sometimes successfully, in the first half of the twelfth
century, to occupy the place that had previously been of the Eigenklosterherren,
both lay and ecclesiastic, influencing more or less heavily the election and the
correction of the subordinate abbots.121
Circumstances like those of St Florentin and St Remi should, however, be
considered episodes symptomatic of an evolution that was underway. In the late
eleventh century, in cases of conflicts within a monastic network, sometimes the
submission of an abbot to the ‘arch-abbot’ was not considered the normal practice
and, on the other hand, abbots had to be submitted first of all to their own
bishops, unless they had particular privileges. This way the relationships between
bishops and abbots, and between ‘arch-abbots’ and abbots, were closely related.
For contrary reasons, in the case of St Florentin as much as in that of St Remi, the
bishops interposed themselves between abbot and abbot, in the first instance to
try to assert their rights, in the second, to legitimize the supremacy of the abbot
of Marmoutier. However, for St Remi not even the intervention of the bishop
119
Cf. n. 105.
120
30 September 1112, Interrogationi vestre ( JL —), Sdralek, Wolfenbüttler Fragmente,
pp. 114–15, n. 5: ‚Interrogationi vestre id respondemus, quod tocius ecclesie consuetudo
conservat et quod legum scita confirmant. Postquam enim vel ab episcopo clericus vel ab
abbate monacus de ecclesia ad ecclesiam, de monasterio ad monasterium traditur, quantum ad
loci stabilitatem et abbatis obedientiam professionis vinculo non tenetur’. Poeck, Cluniacensis
Ecclesia, pp. 91–104. On the Cluniac reform of this abbey see Sabbe, ‘La Réforme clunisienne’,
and Vanderputten, ‘How Reform Began’.
121
Bredero, ‘A propos de l’autorité abbatiale’.
66 Guido Cariboni
was able to stop the termination of the bond of submission between an abbot
and his abbey of origin. This evolution sometimes put traditional monasticism
on the defensive. Very few days after the Council of Poitiers, for example, the
Cluniacs obtained a privilege from Paschal II in which for the first time a clause
was inserted to impede priories and subordinate cells from being raised to the
rank of abbeys:
We add to these things that in all the priories and in all the cells which are now
under your governance, no one ever in the future dare to ordain an abbot.122
The fact itself that in 1111 the papal threat to transform the cells of Montecassino
into abbeys, was enough to lead Bruno of Segni to resign is indicative of how this
institutional mutation was considered dangerous for the stability of the Church
of Montecassino.123 However, it was precisely in these years that what Cluny
and Montecassino believed to be dangerous was transformed for others into a
resource. The religious orders, as they were being formed in the early decades of
the twelfth century,124 were structured in fact as a sort of ‘confederation’, composed
substantially of abbeys that maintained strong ties with bishoprics and were
materially independent of each other. Their rise to prominence was not merely
the product of an innovative act of great creativity, but was also profoundly owing
to the positions of figures like Urban II, Paschal II and Ivo of Chartres who, in
the wake of tradition, inaugurated substantial changes in the relations between
bishops and abbots and between abbots and their subordinate abbots.
122
20 November 1100, Ea religionis praerogativa ( JL 5849), Bullarium sacri ordinis
Cluniacensis, pp. 32–33: ‘Ad haec adijcimus, ut in omnibus prioratibus et cellis quae nunc sine
proprio abbate vestro regimini subjectae sunt, nullus unquam futuris temporibus abbatem
ordinare praesumat’.
123
Cf. n. 2.
124
Melville, Cygler, and Oberste, ‘Aspekte zur Verbindung von Organisation und Schrift
lichkeit; Cariboni, Il nostro ordine è la Carità, pp. 20–28, 52–55.
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A Norbert for England:
Holy Trinity and the Invention of
Robert of Knaresborough
Joshua Easterling
W ithin monastic studies, interest in the literary and historical lives of

medieval hermits has flourished in recent years, and much of the work
has underscored the mutual debts that shaped eremitic and coenobitic cultures,
particularly in the later Middle Ages.1 So too have critical inquiries into the
twelfth-century reforms elucidated the cultural affiliations between hermits,
monks, and regular canons.2 The twelfth- and thirteenth-century Yorkshire her
mit Robert of Knaresborough (d. 1218), like many of his counterparts both in
England and on the Continent, became the subject of posthumously written vitae
through which religious groups sought various modes of identification. Robert
began his career as a subdeacon who entered then fled two separate monasteries,
later to be venerated at Knaresborough Priory, a Trinitarian foundation of the
mid-thirteenth century that was identified as the house of St Robert. The priory
1
On continental hermits, and not so recently, see L’Eremitismo in Occidente; and Leyser,
Hermits and the New Monasticism. See, too, the study by Licence, Hermits and Recluses.
2
The movements that form the backdrop of much of this essay have been so repeatedly and
variously examined as to make an exhaustive survey of the literature impractical. See especially
Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century; and Milis, ‘Hermits and Regular Canons’,
pp. 181–246.
Joshua Easterling (jeasterl@emporia.edu): Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern

Literature, Emporia State University, Kansas.
Abstract: This essay considers the relationship between two monastic vitae and their historical
subjects. The prose vita of the English hermit Robert of Knaresborough that is extant in
London, British Library, MS Egerton 3143 contains a number of passages borrowed from the
Vita B of Norbert of Xanten, the founder of Prémontré. These two otherwise unaffiliated figures
of religious reform are connected through Robert’s biographer, most likely a brother of the late-
established Trinitarian Order, who extracted key details from Norbert’s vita to shape Robert in
the founder’s image. In Egerton’s prose vita, Robert is ultimately made to serve as a legitimate
origin for, and as a founder of, the Trinitarian Order at Knaresborough.
Keywords: hermit, monastic order, Trinitarian, reform, Premonstratensian, twelfth century

76 Joshua Easterling
was almost certainly among the more distinguished English sites of the order of
Holy Trinity and housed a group of fratres who enjoyed steady ecclesiastical and
lay support.3
Founded in 1198 by two continental hermits, John de Matha and Felix de
Valois, the order committed to ransoming Christians taken captive in the Crusades
and, especially, to caring for the poor. For his part, Robert seems early on in his
career to have deepened his commitment to poverty, one that attracted a number
of followers including the Trinitarians. This commitment also helps explain
the local popularity to which the surviving vitae witness. Moreover, those who
promoted his cult were well aware that Robert flourished, albeit as a latecomer,
within a larger European context of eleventh- and twelfth-century eremitic
reformers and communities that were still active even well into the thirteenth
century and for which the virtue of poverty was of foremost importance. Yet
in critical accounts of insular and continental reform movements, Robert has
figured hardly at all.4
And not without good reason. Robert very likely never sought out a place
within the history of reformed monastic communities. In any case, little is known
about his life or the Trinitarians at Knaresborough, who eventually culted him.5
Still too, according to several accounts, including the extant body of writings
in London, British Library, MS Egerton 3143, Robert was little more than an
apostate monk (he fled two separate houses at Hedley and Newminster) and
subdeacon, and never became a figure who would establish a community of
reformed monks or regular canons.6 For movements backed by reformers like
Gaucher of Aureil, Gerald of Sales and their financial supporters, what was
critical in transitioning from the hermitage to a community, as well as in assuring
3
See Page, ‘Friaries: The Trinitarian Friars of Knaresborough’, pp. 296–300.
4
Moreover, references to Robert in scholarly literature have been, at best, fleeting. Rep
resentative examples can be found in Dauphin, ‘L’Érémitisme en Angleterre’, pp. 293–95;
Holdsworth, ‘Hermits and the Powers of the Frontier’, p. 65ff; Hanna, ‘Will’s Work’, pp. 40, 51;
Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action, pp. 59–66; Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England,
pp. 40–44; and Licence, Hermits and Recluses, pp. 173–96.
5
The Trinitarians have rarely been studied, and we still do not have a full-length account of
the English Trinitarian houses. See Deslandres, L’Ordre des Trinitaires. On the English houses,
see Gray, The Trinitarian Order in England, pp. 9–15.
6
The monasteries were Benedictine and Cistercian respectively. The manuscript contains
the largest surviving body of texts written about Robert; see below, note 10. Robert’s life is
also told in the Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. by Stevenson, pp. 25–27; and The Itinerary of John
Leland, ed. by Smith, i, pt 1, p. 87.
A Norbert for England 77
the community’s legitimacy as a new foundation, was the adoption of a monastic

rule.7 Thus, when Norbert of Xanten, the founder of the Premonstratensian
Order, gave in to external pressures to help establish the foundation, the material
and ecclesiastical supports for the order were eventually met by the challenging
task of adopting a rule.8 According to the Vita Norberti B, the young order
looked to the Augustinian rule (in its various forms) for Prémontré and its later
foundations.
The question of adopting the regular life, however, holds a central place
in the single prose vita from MS Egerton 3143, a text composed long after
Robert’s death.9 At one point, Robert’s life witnesses a ‘wonderful change’, and
his turbulent career takes on a far more reformist appearance than hitherto. The
constable of Knaresborough Castle, William of Stuteville (d. c. 1203), suddenly
turns from his previous hostility towards the hermit and determines to offer him
his financial support: the ‘tyrant [was changed] into a guardian, the mocker into
a defender, and the persecutor into a protector’.10 More wonderful still is that the
author of the prose vita used this moment to write Robert anew by borrowing an
extensive passage from the Vita Norberti B, more specifically from the moment
in Norbert’s life at which he is confronted with none other than the decision to
adopt the Augustinian rule and thus to help secure the foundations of the new
order. I have underscored the passages that have been altered or removed from
the Norbertine original.
7
Milis, ‘Hermits and Regular Canons’, p. 218. See also Constable, The Reformation of the
Twelfth Century, pp. 88–124; and Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, esp. pp. 23–44 —
on local eremitic and monastic ties.
8
Weinfurter, ‘Norbert von Xanten als Reformkanoniker’, p. 171.
9
The text is of uncertain date; see below, note 10.
10
A portion of the manuscript’s contents, including the prose vita, is printed in The Metrical
Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire; on dating see pp. 14–15. For the dates of
Stuteville’s death, see p. 90. The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 119,
10. 55–58: ‘O stupenda mutacio dextere excelsi! Nam Roberti humilitate et sanctitate mutatur
seviens in sanctitatem, tiranus in tutorem, derisor in defensorem et persecutor in protectorem et
in coadiutorem famuli Dei Roberti’.
Vita Norberti B
Erat enim severus in censura, et cum multi ad eum jam confluerent, totum spiritum
eorum Spiritu sancto docente exhauriebat; ut, spiritu superbiae evacuato, idem
Spiritus sanctus in eis melius locum inveniret. Et gratia Dei non deerat, quae,
quamlibet dissolutis et remissis, et quantumlibet marcidis cordibus, vigorem divini
solatii ministrabat. De corporalibus cura et sollicitudo vix aliqua erat; universum
vero studium ad spiritualia contulerat, Scripturas divinas sequi et Christum ducem
habere. Nam et hoc attendit spiritualis ille Pater, quod nunquam exorbitare
possent, qui secum vellent remanere, si professionem suam secundum Evangelia
et dicta apostolorum, et propositum S. Augustini facerent, et opere complerent.11
Vita Roberti
Erat enim severus in corripiendo et blandus in eloquio, et cum multi iam ad eum
confluebant, totum spiritum eorum Spiritu Sancto docente exhauriebat ut, evacuato
spiritu superbiae, idem Spiritus Sanctus in eis locum inveniret. De corporalibus
cura, preter de pauperibus, vix aliqua erat. Universum vero eius studium ad
spiritualia contulerat scripturas divinas sequi et Christum ducem habere.12
I argue below that the author of the vita in MS Egerton 3143, almost certainly
a Trinitarian, used the Vita Norberti B in exploring the fact or fantasy that a
wandering Robert at last had committed himself to the regular life. For the vita is
11
All borrowings by the vita in MS Egerton 3143 are from Vita Norberti B (BHL 6249)
not Vita A (Vita Norberti, ed. by Wilmans). Vita Norberti B, 9. 53, cols 1293B–C: ‘For he was
stern in censoring, and while many now flocked to him, with the Holy Spirit guiding him he
emptied out their entire spirit so that, with the spirit of pride removed, that same Holy Spirit
might better find a place in them. Nor was God’s grace wanting, which, in hearts howsoever
dissolute and lax and enfeebled, administered the vigor of divine comfort. Care and solicitude
for bodily matters was hardly present; but his entire energy was devoted to spiritual matters,
to following the divine Scriptures and to having Christ as leader. For the spiritual Father also
sought that they would never go off track who should wish to remain with him, if they make
their profession — and support it with deeds — according to the Gospel, the sayings of the
apostles and the way of life of Saint Augustine’.
12
Here and below I maintain the spelling from Bazire’s edition. The Metrical Life of
St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 119, 11. 2–8: ‘For he was stern in reproof and plain
in speech and while many now flocked to him, with the Holy Spirit guiding him he emptied
out their entire spirit so that, with the spirit of pride removed, that same Holy Spirit might
better find a place in them. Care for bodily matters, except as it concerned the poor, was hardly
present; but his entire energy was devoted to spiritual matters, to following the divine Scriptures
and to having Christ as leader’.
in fact riddled with borrowed passages, most of which reveal their significance by
the highly suggestive ways in which they address the problem of Robert’s irregular
life and model his image on its likeness to the founder of Prémontré.
To start with, it is immediately after William of Stuteville’s decision to sup
port the hermit that his biographer inserts the first of two passages (the second
of which will be explored below) from the Vita Norberti B, after which Robert’s
brother Walter enters the narrative and expressly encourages him to live more
stably.13 He is advised no longer to persist in the eremitic life, but instead to re-
establish himself ‘in a company of what men so ever living according to a rule’.14
That is to say, Walter’s advice ‘catches’ the hermit at a moment of major transitions
— textual as well as a financial. Whether Robert will continue as a hermit, or
re-enter (this time permanently) a monastic community living under a rule, is a
question that his own biographer seizes upon and to which he lends new meaning.
It is in this sense that the final ‘wonder’ ensues, for the narrative is marked by a
transition that eventuates in a new period of stability for the wandering hermit
— stability that brought Robert new followers, but that had not characterized his
life prior to this point.
What is fascinating about Walter’s comment is its first and only use in the vita
of the term ‘regular’. While the insertion of this passage from the Vita Norberti B is
not the first of its kind in the vita, its proximity to William of Stuteville’s donation
of land to Robert and Walter’s injunction to the hermit condenses what the vita
is largely about, namely the transition from ‘wild eremitism’ to ‘systemization’
that lies at the heart of the twelfth-century reform movements.15 If the adoption
of the Augustinian rule by regular canons does not imply that the regulatory text
used was always a fixed or codified document, nevertheless the immense power
that it held to legitimate the regular life was not lost on Robert’s biographer. In
fact, over half of the references in the Norbertine text to a ‘rule’ or to those who
live according to a rule are to be found in the section from which Robert’s author
inserts a great deal of his material. I therefore include in the passage above the
13
I use the term ‘biography’, rather than ‘hagiography’, throughout the essay. See Heffernan,
Sacred Biography. Though referred to as a saint — see Page, ‘Friaries: The Trinitarian Friars of
Knaresborough’, nn. 6 and 7 — Bazire observes that ‘no record of the canonization of Robert is
extant’ (The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 37 and note); his Latin
verse life insists that he still bestows benefits on his followers ‘although he is not canonized’
(‘licet non canonicatur’), p. 144.
14
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 119, 11. 15–17: ‘collegio
quorumcunque regulariter vivencium’.
15
Milis, ‘Hermits and Regular Canons’, p. 244.
reference to the Augustinian rule, which the vita in MS Egerton 3143 omits,
because it was doubtless what led Robert’s biographer to borrow this and other
portions of the Norbertine text. If the adoption of the rule at once distinguished
the early Premonstratensian community from others, notably Cistercians, and
provided the group with the legitimacy of the regular life, the same can be said
of the group most likely responsible for the materials in MS Egerton 3143, the
Trinitarians.16 For the order of Holy Trinity was established at roughly the same
time as William’s support — a time with which Robert’s biographer associates
Walter’s recommendation that Robert live according to a rule — after which the
group, like the white canons, adopted none other than the Augustinian rule.17
Yet the vita is still more interesting, focusing as it does on the problem of
origins and the historical continuity of religious traditions. While Robert’s
contemporaries, the hermits John de Matha and Felix de Valois who received
Pope Innocent III’s approval for the order in 1198, founded the order of Holy
Trinity, it was Robert’s presence that made Knaresborough a site of religious
reform and possibly one of England’s earliest Trinitarian foundations.18 Such
details, alongside the fact that Norbert’s Vita Norberti B is, among other things,
about the foundation at Prémontré and beyond, testify to an interest by Robert’s
16
Little can be said definitively about the authorship or provenance of the vita. It
remains very likely that a Trinitarian brother at Knaresborough, perhaps with connections
among the white canons at Newhouse in Lincolnshire, was responsible for the version we
possess in MS Egerton 3143. (However, as Bazire has observed, the author of the Middle
English Life was almost certainly not a resident of the house at Knaresborough, but resided
instead at a house located still further north, possibly at Walknoll (Newcastle); see The
Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, pp. 22–27.) The same assumption
must be made about the authorship of an earlier, but now lost, exemplar to the vita, even
if that text had originated elsewhere, perhaps at a site more closely connected to the white
canons or to the house from which the author of the Middle English Life wrote. One
possible line of transmission, that the author of the vita resided Walknoll and was associated
somehow with the nearby Premonstratensian house at Coverham and availed himself of
its copy of Vita Norberti B, is worth considering. Moreover, the Trinitarian community
at Newcastle itself neighboured with white canons (e.g., at Blanchland); see Gribbin, The
Premonstratensian Order, p. 4. The Trinitarian house may have owned the hagiographies
of both hermit-preachers. Finally, an interesting suggestion has recently been made for a
connection between the literature on Robert and the Cistercian house at Fountains; see
Licence, Hermits and Recluses, pp. 193–94.
17
As Knowles states of the Trinitarians, ‘their domestic life […] approximated closely to
that of the Augustinian canons’. See Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, p. 202.
18
The challenges of dating the foundations attend the lack of a full history of the Trinitarian
Order in England. See Gray, The Trinitarian Order in England, pp. 103–31.
biographer not only in the common ground of different monastic and para-
monastic traditions, but in their origins. This essay examines how Robert is
figured by the vita in MS Egerton 3143 as not only the essential point of origin
for the Trinitarian priory at Knaresborough (which he certainly was), but more
specifically as a Norbert-like founder in the twelfth-century tradition (which he
probably was not).
The passages that appear in the vita from the Vita Norberti B can be arranged
according to three stages of Norbert’s life with the highest concentrations of
borrowings coming from the first sections of the text, that is, from the initial
period of Norbert’s establishment of a monastic community and the foundation
at Prémontré. That is, while the vita contains material from various points of
Norbert’s life, it is here again that the origins of monastic traditions are at issue.
First Followers, Foundation, and Growth

VNB, cap. 3.18, cols 1268B–C (VR, cap. 8. 2–8)
VNB, cap. 4.20–1, cols 1271A–C (VR, cap. 17 [entire])
VNB, cap. 5.28, col. 1277A (VR, cap. 14. 15–18)
VNB, cap. 5.29, col. 1277D (VR, cap. 14. 12–15)
VNB, cap. 5.30, cols 1277D–1278B (VR, cap. 12. 9–26)
VNB, cap. 7.37, cols 1282B–C (VR, cap. 12. 1–4, 15. 2–8)
VNB, cap. 7.41, cols 1285A–D (VR, cap. 11. 22–30, 18. 13–15)
VNB, cap. 9.53, cols 1293B–C (VR, cap. 11. 2–8)
Miracles and Demonic Temptations

VNB, cap. 10.60, col. 1298C (VR, cap. 16. 27–30)
Death and Burial

VNB, cap. 18.111–13, cols 1338A, 1339A–B
(VR, cap. 21. 27–33; 22. 33–39)
VNB, cap. 19.114–5, cols 1339C–1341A
(VR, cap. 23. 19–24. 22)19
As a reader of the Vita Norberti B, Robert’s biographer lingered long on Norbert’s

decision to assemble a following of those who loved Christ and voluntary poverty.20
Throughout the instances of textual borrowing that are treated below, this last
point that will remain central. Like Norbert, who cannot quite bring himself to
settle at Prémontré, the wander-prone Robert remains at Knaresborough only
after much instability.21
If the author of the prose vita exploited the cultural and historical prestige of
the Premonstratensian Order and of Norbert, the figure whom tradition credited
with its founding, it is certainly worth asking why. I have already suggested
a possible reason, one that is exemplified in the term regulariter. Despite the
absence of a detailed and thorough analysis of the Trinitarians in England, it
is possible to discern that the order’s government, especially in England, was
not strongly centralized; in this respect, the Trinitarians are to be contrasted
with Cluniac and Cistercian monasticism. For our purposes, it is important to
recognize that this de-centralized organization is likely to have fostered the kind
of solidarity with other communities that followed the Augustinian rule like the
Premonstratensians.22 But if a Trinitarian reader of a Premonstratensian text is
not surprising, neither is it surprising that the Trinitarian rule was itself unstable
19
I have here included only longer sections, and have left out the passages borrowed from
the Vita Norberti B that are shorter than two sentences or are just a few words. Interesting as
they are, I am also not focusing on verbally less exact influences, which emerge through careful
reading of both texts. The list, therefore, while not exhaustive, nonetheless covers the most
extensive and significant material.
20
The course of Norbert’s career has been variously analysed. See Felten, ‘Norbert von
Xanten’.
21
See Felten, ‘Norbert von Xanten’, p. 82ff.
22
The fact that the fifteenth-century translator of Norbert’s life into Middle English, John
Capgrave (1440), was an Austin friar, not a canon among the Premonstratensians, stands as
further evidence that owner- and readership of the founder’s vita was by no means restricted
to the white canons. It has not gone without notice that Capgrave held a special devotion
to Norbert and a ‘desire for closer bonds between those orders which followed the Rule of
St Augustine’; Gribbin, The Premonstratensian Order, p. 158.
and repeatedly revised in the decades and centuries after 1198.23 Not only might
the example of Norbert have served as a stabilizing force, but so too was the
suggestion, implied throughout the prose vita and the Middle English Life, that
Robert’s ideals were wholly consistent with Trinitarian ones. Moreover, even if
the vita looks to Norbert, in the Life it was ultimately Robert who became a ‘rule’
for the house at Knaresborough. As the Life tells us, Robert observed a ‘ryghtwyse
reule’, and it is this phrase that appears again in a one of the manuscript’s prayers
(also doubtless Trinitarian in origin): ‘ryghtwislye[…] reul’.24 It is certainly
possible that the English community of an already loosely organized order did
not readily look to the Continent for spiritual continuity, but to Knaresborough’s
immediate past.
It is also possible that on its own Robert’s life recalled Norbert’s in surprising
ways. Yet parallels are hardly limited to the fact that both figures began their
careers as subdeacons, then inquired into a variety of monastic customs only to be
abused by resistant monks, and finally, after a period of apparent defeat, decided
upon a more strictly eremitic career. The resemblances are extensive indeed, and
in accounting for them it is best to discard any notion of a ‘historical’ Robert
whose experiences just happened to shadow Norbert’s to an astonishing degree.
Many tonal resemblances, moreover, are likely not to be the result of any direct,
verbal borrowings from the Vita Norberti B. Thus, while familiarity with the
text of Norbert’s life doubtless informs even the more ‘original’ portions of the
vita, its author was rather more interested in fashioning a decidedly reformist
Robert than in exploring the inherent and historical resemblances between
the two figures. The borrowings from the Vita Norberti B mark an attempt
to fashion him in highly specific ways and to imply that the hermit not only
possessed Norbert’s enterprising spirit, but that he deserves to be seen in other
respects as a reformist just as foundational to the priory at Knaresborough as the
Trinitarian Order itself. Repeated comparisons between Norbert and Bernard
underscored the recognition that the Cistercians and Premonstratensians were
affiliated in important ways. For less important than the fact that Bernard was
not the founder of his order was that both men were facilitators and cultivators of
the highest order. If Norbert was the primus plantator of the Premonstratensian
Order, it was the aim of Robert’s biographer to argue that the hermit occupied a
similar status vis-à-vis the Trinitarians.25
23
Deslandres, L’Ordre des Trinitaires, pp. 20–23.
24
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, pp. 69. 876, 77. 1180.
25
The term primus plantator is quoted in Elm, ‘Hugo von Fosses’, p. 35.
Robert, Knaresborough, and the Powers Of Uncertainty

The likelihood that Robert never sought to establish a new foundation at Knares
borough, together with the fact that he was not explicitly credited by his Trinitarian
biographers with having founded their English communities, and certainly not
with the foundation of the Trinitarian Order itself, means that our author’s
frequent use of the Vita Norberti B brought in its wake a host of complications.
I say ‘likelihood’ because there appear to be variant traditions that attached
to Robert, each of which is heavily informed by an uncertainty regarding his
status relative to the communities that, in one sense or another, ‘followed’ him.
To begin, the author of the vita was almost certainly familiar with accounts,
which were reproduced in the Itinerary of the sixteenth-century antiquarian John
Leland, that Robert was responsible for instituting the order of Holy Trinity at
Knaresborough. Leland does not mention who, besides himself, helped transmit
the tradition according to which Robert ‘institutid’ a Trinitarian house at Knares
borough and was later assisted by William of Stuteville: ‘apon opinion of sanctite
of hym, resorted other: and then he institutid his companie in the sect of freres of
the Order de redemption Captivorum, alias S. Trinitatis. Estoteville gave lands to
this house, at such tyme as he lay at Knarresburgh’.26
Yet the suggestion in the Itinerary that Robert had already ‘institutid’ a Trini
tarian community before Stuteville gave him lands might well be the order of
events that the vita’s author was imagining when he integrated the passage
from the Vita Norberti B that narrates Norbert’s transition from supporting a
community to establishing the authority of a rule. Since the order was in fact
founded in 1198 by the hermits John de Matha and Felix de Valois with the
support of Pope Innocent III, there is no a priori reason why Robert could not
have established Knaresborough as a Trinitarian site. The time of Robert’s death
and probable rise to prominence at Knaresborough also neatly coincides with
the order’s early-thirteenth-century expansion into England. Indeed, the spread
of Trinitarian houses into England — though their numbers must have been
extremely modest — had likely already begun even while Robert was still alive.27
However, it is hardly to be expected that Robert learned of and took an
interest in the Trinitarians sometime during the few years after the grant in
1198. As noted above, Stuteville was dead by 1203, and, as we will see, one of
26
See The Itinerary of John Leland, ed. by Smith, p. 87. For comments on Leland and for
possible dates for the foundation of the Trinitarian Order in England, see The Metrical Life of
St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 19 and notes.
27
Gray, The Trinitarian Order in England, p. 13
the documents from MS Egerton 3143 explicitly denies that Knaresborough was
made Trinitarian prior to Robert’s death. Evidence in fact indicates that the order
had been established there much later, around 1252.28 What is interesting about
the account of Knaresborough post-Robert is the chronology’s vagueness. And
it is possible that this vagueness proved helpful for Leland and others who were
looking for a single founder. In brief, while the tradition holding that Robert had
indeed ‘institutid’ his followers in the order of Holy Trinity well before 1218 is at
odds with other sources, the general uncertainty implied by these discrepancies
may well have assisted later Trinitarians, such as the author of the vita, who would
look back at the events around 1198, when both Robert and the order’s founders
flourished, in search of both continental and English origins.
It is therefore significant that despite dissociating Robert from the Trinitarians,
the foundation narrative appended to the manuscript’s Middle English Life carries
in it indications of multiple and rival traditions. Several passages from the Life
describe Robert in Trinitarian terms, namely as a hermit who sought to relieve
from their suffering those who were in difficult straights.29 The Life, moreover, in
the course of discussing Robert’s successor Ives, and prior to its narration of the
order’s foundation, obliquely indicates the importance of papal support for the
foundation at Knaresborough.
Þai may be glad and blyth þat has
Slyke a patrone off þair place
Þat ys off power forto pray
For thare plight bath nyght & day.
God for hys saike hys seruandes saues,
Nathyng denyes hym þat he craues.
All praers þus for þar place
To God to gouern þaim by grace,
And whaso greues god men þerin
Or payres þair place, þai do great syn
And er accursed by bulles sere
28
In terms of material support, the interest that King John took in Robert was of course
meaningful for the Trinitarians (The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire,
pp. 124–25) and must be viewed alongside the support that Stuteville, according to Leland’s
Itinerary, afforded Robert as an early Trinitarian. For discussion of the far better documented
conclusion that, beyond Henry III’s involvement, Trinitarian Knaresborough’s first patron was
in fact Richard, Earl of Cornwall, see Gray, The Trinitarian Order in England, pp. 116–17.
29
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, pp. 50–51. 291 and 295
(where Robert’s purpose was to give a portion of his bread ‘vnto the pore’ and to ‘brynge pore
men of baile’).
Þat Papys of Rome has graunt þaim here.

Forthi I rede you all forbere
Sanctuaries to do þaim dere.
Yue ledde hys lyff lang in that sted
Aftur the tyme Roberd was ded
In bedes, praers, and orisounes
And in other deuociounes.30
The reference to multiple papal bulls, which presumably refer to the modifications
made to the Trinitarian constitutions by, among others, Honorius III (1217) and
Urban IV (1263), forms part of an appeal to God as protector of both Robert’s and
papal power, these two now serving as closely associated agents in Knaresborough’s
protection.31 The link here reinforced between Robert and his successor Ives
(much like Hugh of Fosse and Norbert) binds the two hermits within a narrative
of succession at Knaresborough and with the papal privileges later granted to the
site (‘Þat Papys of Rome has graunt þaim here’).32 In other words, the Life strong
ly implies that a narrative of Robert’s life entails an account of papal efforts to
legitimize his foundation. More striking still, both the Life and the foundation
narrative that follows it suggest that the order had been the inevitable outgrowth
of Robert’s and Ives’s eremitic piety, an effect that supports and extends the
commitment implied there, as well as by Egerton’s borrowings from Norbert’s
Vita Norberti B, to the question of origins. This commitment also finally sup
ports Leland’s representation of Robert in the Itinerary and suggests a widely
popular tradition that held Robert to be the founder of a Trinitarian house.33
Nonetheless, after Ives holds the site for some time, he gives it to two canons
from the Premonstratensian abbey at Coverham. The De Initio Creacionis
Ordinis Sancte Trinitatis indicates that Robert’s hermitage became the site of the
order’s foundation only after his companion Ives had given it ‘with a charter fre’
(line 1022) to Coverham, a Premonstratensian abbey established around 1187.34
To be more precise, two canons were committed to the priory at Knaresborough
30
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 72. 989–1000.
31
On the thirteenth-century papal support for the order and modifications to its rule see
Deslandres, L’Ordre des Trinitaires, pp. 27–30.
32
That is to say, by Innocent IV in 1252; see Gray, The Trinitarian Order in England,
p. 117. On Hugh of Fosse as Norbert’s successor and first abbot of Prémontré, see Elm, ‘Hugo
von Fosses’, p. 40ff.
33
The author of the Life probably also composed the De Initio Creacionis Ordinis Sancte
Trinitatis; The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 23
34
See also Gray, The Trinitarian Order in England, p. 116.
which, for reasons unknown to the author, ‘went out off þair hand’ (line 1027)
only to fall into the hands of the Trinitarians sometime later. And it is only
subsequent to a period of abandonment that it first came to the Trinitarians. In
this sense, the foundation narrative for Knaresborough explicitly contradicts the
tradition according to which Robert had established his ‘companie’ as Trinitarians.
Bott trewly als I vndyrstand
That ytt [sc. the priory] some tyme stode desolate
For dede or ells for some debaytte,
And sway entird ay to be
The Ordir of the Haly Trinite.35
Hereafter the order’s continental origins are narrated, this time more extensively
and with direct mention of Innocent III’s involvement (lines 1087–1112). Inter
estingly, the author of the De Initio narrates the foundation only after observing that
he had been unable to consult written documents to substantiate his history (‘Bott
I haue seyn ytt in nay boke’ (line 1082)). This admission by the narrator that he
has never accessed written records of the foundation of Holy Trinity, combined
with the confusion surrounding the status of Knaresborough after it had been
alienated from the Premonstratensian abbey at Coverham, is not inconsistent
with the tradition according to which Robert ‘institutid’ a congregation at Knares
borough more or less identical with the Trinitarian Order.
I am arguing that despite agreement at different points in the De Initio that
the Trinitarians arrived at Knaresborough long after Robert’s death, a number
of facts considered thus far show a set of traditions, rather than a single tradi
tion, that may have been shaped and re-shaped over time. For the narratives,
exemplified in Leland’s Itinerary, that held Robert a Trinitarian founder, together
with the link that the author of the Life engineered between Robert and the
founding of Trinitarian Knaresborough, are to be viewed alongside the vita and
its borrowings from the Vita Norberti B. These texts make it far more difficult
to stabilize the hermit’s career and reduce it to a single and consistent account.
Certainly, Robert’s life may well have called to the mind of later Trinitarians the
lives of great twelfth-century reformists, including, of course, Norbert himself.
Living during an era of eleventh- and twelfth-century hermit-founders, including
John de Matha and Felix de Valois, the actual founders of the Trinitarian Order,
Robert looked like more of the same.
35
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 73. 1028–32.
How, then, does Robert stand relative to these founders in the absence
of the claim (found nowhere in the vita) that the hermit in fact instituted the
order in England? As the discussion above has attempted to show, however, it is
precisely through the absence of a stable set of traditions relating to Robert and
the Trinitarian origins at Knaresborough that he is able to function in crucially
indeterminate ways as a stand-in for what the English Trinitarian brothers
would have had to search for across the channel — a reformist hermit intent on
establishing a new community with ideals essentially identical with those of the
Trinitarian Order. What I am calling an indeterminacy and uncertainty regarding
Robert’s precise significance for the history of the Trinitarian priory constitutes
an opportunity to identify him in more precise ways. Ultimately, it was the Vita
Norberti B that was made to serve this purpose. The passages in the vita that
originate from the Premonstratensian text were inserted with care and, more
importantly, with the intent of making Robert into the leader of a community.
‘Vita Norberti B’ and the Foundation at Knaresborough

To the extent that biographers both produced and displaced the historical
lives of their saintly subjects, they also at once created and resolved difficulties
for subsequent communities. This biographical work also makes it difficult
to determine precisely how men like Robert and Norbert could have been re
imagined in terms consistent with the identity of a later community. As has
been observed of medieval biography, ‘the selection of a biographical subject
may be so fraught with unconscious bias that the analysis is never able to locate
the historical subject in a genuine past’.36 The Trinitarian borrowings are also
significant in large part because, while the ‘bias’ is guided by the retrospective
desires of a fully developed religious order, both Norbert and Robert in different
ways resisted the subsequent textual inventions of their biographers. In Norbert’s
case, a fair degree of re-figuration was needed to cope with the fact of his own
resistance to serving as a founder, that is to say, as one who would be understood
as a founder since without the initiative of Bartholomew, bishop of Laon, ‘the
foundation of Prémontré would never have taken place’.37 In turn, his biographers
would themselves resist an alternative Norbert, one presented to them by history,
and elide as seamlessly as possible his identity with that of the order. As Franz J.
Felten has noted, Norbert actually displayed rather little interest in becoming a
36
Heffernan, Sacred Biography, p. 50.
37
Colvin, The White Canons in England, p. 3.
Gründungsvater. Felten senses ‘wie schwer es einem Angehörigen des inzwischen

etablierten Ordens fiel, Norbert als Gründungsvater in die Normen und Vor
stellungen der späteren Zeit zu integrieren, ohne seine Individualität ganz zu
unterdrücken oder zu verfälschen’, or, one might add, without suppressing or
falsifying the identity of the order itself.38
The same can be said a fortiori of Robert and the Trinitarians, given the mas
sive borrowing by the vita from the Vita Norberti B. In other words, the textual
re-imagining of Robert’s life relied upon an appropriate exemplar, namely
Norbert, and ventured upon this same work of re-presenting him and his ties to
subsequent history. (One wonders whether the making of the prose vita rested in
part on an understanding by its author that the intentions of a ‘founder’ may well
not be reflected in the identity of the order, and that its later members may not
closely identify with the life and designs of actual founders.) Be that as it may, the
vita strongly foregrounds, if it does not outright invent, Robert’s companionship
with Ives, reference to whom is confined largely to MS Egerton 3143, and
fashions him as the hermit’s successor.39 The addition of Ives, who serves as the
guarantee of a monastic genealogy at Knaresborough directly traceable to Robert,
represents no minor alteration to the hermit’s memory.40 For Ives is not so much
as mentioned in the vita until he is borrowed wholesale from a description in Vita
Norberti B of Norbert’s successor Hugh of Fosse. This passage forms one of the
longest and most consecutive of the Trinitarian borrowings. I highlight the very
few points of difference between the two texts.
38
Felten, ‘Norbert von Xanten’, p. 96: ‘[I]t was a challenge for a member of the already
established order to integrate Norbert as a founder into the norms and imagination of a later
time without entirely suppressing or falsifying his individuality’. This difficulty probably explains
why the Vita Norberti B repeatedly styles him pater Norbertus as if to correct for the uneven fit.
39
Ives is also referred to in a charter of Henry III (see Page, ‘Friaries: The Trinitarian Friars of
Knaresborough’, n. 4) as a ‘hermit’. See Calendar of the Charter Rolls: Henry III, p. 66.
40
Other materials in MS Egerton 3143, notably the Middle English Life, mention Ives.
However, he does not figure in Leland’s Itinerary (though this work, after all, gives a short
account of the hermit’s life), or in the Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. by Stevenson. Though it may
seem remarkable that Ives is also not mentioned in the vita from MS Harley 3775, the text is
fragmentary and ends prior to the point at which Ives’ entry into the narrative would be most
sensible; see The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, pp. 129–33.
Vita Norberti B
Sanctus itaque vir, qui novum noviter Hugonem acceperat, sicut a Deo postula
verat, socium, ne in tanta poenitentiae asperitate titubaret, verbis hujuscemodi
alloquebatur, et multis admonitionibus sustentabat. […] Docebat etiam eum, quo
modo reconciliari Deo et appropinquare peccator debeat, quibus studiis, quibus
laboribus, quibusve virtutibus justus quilibet ad bonorum spirituum consortium
pertineat […]. Haec et his similia vir Dei plenus multoties de die in diem, exhorta
tionis gratia, repetebat.41
MS Egerton 3143
Sanctus itaque vir, qui novum noviter acceperat, sicut a Deo postulaverat, socium,
ne in tanta poenitentiae asperitate titubaret, verbis huiuscemodi alloquebatur, et
multis ammonicionibus sustentabat. […] Docebat etiam eum, quomodo reconciliari
Deo et appropinquare peccator debeat, quibus studiis, quibus laboribus, quibusve
virtutibus justus quilibet ad beatorum spirituum consorcium pertineat […]. Hec
et hiis similia vir Deo plenus multociens de die in diem, exhortacionis gracia ad
Yvonem repetebat.42
Just prior to this passage the author alters a key element of Vita Norberti B, which
tells how Norbert, before gathering his fratres, chose only a few of the many men
who wished to follow him. Although the Trinitarian author inserts socius in the
place of ‘brothers’, indicating none other than Ives whom he promptly introduces,
Robert does not only choose a single follower, but a select few (pauca).43 And
it is these that Norbert unites in the ‘bond of unity’ just prior to establishing
Prémontré at chapter 7. 41. Even while the tradition that Robert led a body of
followers is undermined in the prose vita, in its use of the term socius the vita
41
Since they are so similar, I here offer only one translation for both texts; Vita Norberti B,
5. 30, cols 1277D–1278B: ‘Therefore the holy man who had newly acquired the new Hugo as a
companion (just as he had begged God), lest he should tremble under such penitential severity,
spoke to him in words of this sort and supported him with many encouragements. […] For he
taught him how a sinner ought to be reconciled with and approach God, by what zeal, by what
efforts, or virtues, the just man must strive to attain to the fellowship of good spirits […]. By the
grace of exhortation it was these and similar items that man of God repeated many times, day
in and day out’.
42
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, pp. 119–20, 12. 9–26.
43
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 119, 12. 1–3: ‘Sunt
etenim cuncta premissa ex multis pauca que gessit priusquam socium colligeret’.
suggests that Robert had already gathered a following much like Norbert had.
The language deployed in a few earlier passages deserves a closer look.
We must begin by observing that Robert’s biographer is likely following
the entire section of Vita Norberti B from Chapters 3–7 (with emphasis on
the later portions) quite closely, since it is here that both Robert and Norbert
are persecuted by rival religious, give their possessions to the poor (though
Robert actually gathers the poor into a small community), grow proficient in
all-night vigils and prayers, and begin to preach. That both figures also briefly
take up residence at a chapel dedicated to the seventh-century hermit-founder
St Giles leaves little doubt that Robert is being crafted in Norbert’s image. It is
because Robert actively recruits the poor that the biographer can suggest that
the hermit harboured territorial ambitions, which led William of Stuteville
(his later benefactor) to drive Robert and his followers, who by that time had
constructed edificia, off of his lands. The term is used repeatedly as if to imply
that Robert was intent neither on wandering about nor residing alone, but was
founding a network of primitive residences for a new and growing congregation.
It is from this chapter in Norbert’s life that our biographer now borrows a
passage that he inserts after Robert and William are reconciled. From among
all the interpolations, this passage shows the fewest alterations. It is, moreover,
worth placing special emphasis on the language that, strictly speaking, applies
less to an eremitic movement, but rather looks toward and invokes a coenobitic
foundation. The passage is rich with metaphors of structural, institutional and
architectural permanence.
Vita Norberti B
Locato igitur fundamento in Christo Jesu, ut ait Apostolus, fundamentum
positum est, quod est Christus Jesus, paulatim de vivis et bene sectis et politis
lapidibus crescebat aedificium, et domus Dei ampliabatur, ad suscipiendos
peregrinos, spontaneam adeuntes peregrinationem, et ad Jerusalem coelestem
festinantes. Sed non defuere tentantis inimici et adversantis hostis insidiae, qui
plantata eradicare, fundata evellere, congregata dispergere, dispersa morti tradere,
multiformi dolositate et multimoda calliditate laboraret.44
44
Here again I give only a single translation for both; Vita Norberti B, 7. 41, cols 1285A–B:
‘Therefore with the foundation grounded in Christ Jesus, as the Apostle says, the foundation
has been established, which is Christ Jesus, […] But the ambushes of the adversarial enemy and
inimical assailant were not wanting, [that one] who with various deceits and manifold cunning
MS Egerton 3143
Locato igitur fundamento in Christo Iesu, ut ait Apostolus, fundamentum
positum est, quod est Christus Iesus, paulatim de vivis et bene sectis et politis
lapidibus crescebat edificium, et domus Dei ampliabatur, ad suscipiendos pere
grinos, spontaneam adeuntes peregrinacionem, et ad Ierusalem celestem festinan
tes. Sed non defecere temptaciones inimici et adversantis hostis insidie, qui
plantata eradicare, fundamenta evellere, congregata dispergere, dispersa morti
tradere, multiformi dolositate et multimoda calliditate laboraret.45
Immediately prior to this moment in the Vita Norberti B Norbert had been
established at Prémontré. And it is at this point that Robert’s vita first introduces
Ives who, as we have suggested, not only closely resembled Norbert’s Hugh, but
serves at this key moment to replace and embody Robert’s ‘companie’, without
which the Trinitarian Order at Knaresborough would not be indebted to Robert
for its foundation. Later it is none other than Ives who reproaches Robert for
failing to ask King John for his patronage. Thus, unable to resist, our biographer
describes the hermit as an electus Domini and cultor Trinitatis at the moment when
he receives John’s support and patronage for his ‘companie’ at Knaresborough.
For these reasons, the manner in which the prose vita describes the circum
stances of Knaresborough’s foundation prior to, and in anticipation of, Trinitarian
influence deserves close attention. This is especially the case since the author of
Egerton’s prose vita, after brilliantly fashioning Ives into the likeness of Norbert’s
Hugh, permits him such a critical role in establishing Knaresborough (through
the king’s support) and affords Robert a new identity as the electus with a special
devotion to the Holy Trinity — a cultor Trinitatis. And it was in fact Hugh, not
Norbert, who led the work of fashioning the unity and regulatory structure at
Prémontré.46 It is little wonder that the vita founds Ives in Hugh’s likeness just
a few lines after the passage on Prémontré’s foundation given above. It would be
missing the point to suggest that this moment in the vita serves as Trinitarian
propaganda since the passage is more important for its commitment to modelling
Robert on Norbert’s example. As noted above, in the Vita Norberti B it is at that
point just prior to and following the founding of Prémontré from which Egerton’s
prose vita drew so heavily, concentrating especially on those moments so crucial
labored to eradicate that which had been established, to overthrow what had been set up, to
scatter what had been gathered together, and to give the dispersed [congregation] over to death’.
45
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 119, 11. 22–30.
46
Elm, ‘Hugo von Fosses’, p. 45.
for establishing Knaresborough. And it is from this chapter that our biographer
obtained his most significant addition to Robert’s life.
This passage is followed immediately by Vita Norberti B’s only mention of
the Holy Trinity, albeit because Norbert himself one evening is set upon by a
demonic illusion that claims to be the Holy Trinity and, of course, attempts to
win Norbert’s obedience. Nonetheless, instead of here pursuing an association
between Robert and the Trinity — it is, after all, a curious and highly specific
vision that Norbert receives — the vita appears to rely in the implications of this
immensely powerful passage. Here, following his earlier description of Robert’s
edificia, which William sought to destroy, our biographer’s use of the language
of monastic foundation — fundamentum, aedificium, fundata, congregata, and so
forth — is astonishing, not to say overwhelming, and is derived from precisely
that point in the Vita Norberti B that narrates the beginnings of Prémontré
as a new foundation and order. This textual revision of whatever Robert had
historically accomplished at Knaresborough is remarkable in its effort to raise
him from the level of pious hermit, which he surely was, to the level of monastic
founder of an entire order, which he most certainly was not. Moreover, to
erase any doubt that Robert served as the focal point of a monastic network,
and not merely a small house at Knaresborough, the vita has chosen a passage
that underscores the growth (ampliabatur) and abundance (plantata, fundata,
dispersa) of Robert’s followers. Finally, the devil’s attempts to destroy Norbert’s
project afford a handy explanation for Robert’s ultimate failure to enlarge his
influence at Knaresborough and beyond.
Yet it is perhaps a reference in the Vita Norberti B to peregrinatio at this
point that proved most meaningful to our author, whose commitment as a
Trinitarian to assisting pilgrims finds in Robert an author of Trinitarian ideals
— indeed, a cultor Trinitatis — and suggests that this portion of the vita, as in
the Premonstratensian work, is centrally concerned with monastic origins and
external (papal) support. Of course, the author of the vita must have known that
any claim of a direct link between Robert and papal support for the foundation
at Knaresborough is entirely baseless and takes the refashioning of Robert a
bit far. Even so, if the support of Pope Callistus II (1119–24) was essential to
the formation of Norbert’s early community, just as Innocent III was for the
Trinitarians, it is reasonable to suspect that our author took an interest in the
support offered to Prémontré as he was in the foundation itself as a model for
Knaresborough. One detail is particularly noteworthy, namely that the vita
numbers Robert’s followers at exactly thirteen pauperes, the same number of
brothers that first settled at Prémontré. So too, Godfrey, count of Namur and
the man one who in 1121 gave Floreffe to Norbert as his second foundation, is in
some sense modelled by Robert’s biographer on William of Stuteville, who gave

the hermit’s followers land and cattle.47 This was arguably the most ‘foundational’
grant that secured Knaresborough as a site for its future residents, that is for those
who possibly considered themselves closest to a Trinitarian ‘origin’ in England.
Moreover, these passages, which have been taken from the critical and for
mative period of Norbert’s first foundation at Prémontré, contextualize and
explain the suggestion uttered by Robert’s brother that that hermit ought to
establish himself within a community sub regula. This particular detail, which
forms part of the ‘wonderful’ change that occurred in Robert’s life at this point,
argues more forcefully still that the Trinitarians at Knaresborough were deeply
invested in the cultural overlap between the reform movements of Holy Trinity
and the other canons who kept to the Augustinian rule. It is difficult to see
what other purpose could be served by underscoring Robert’s establishment of
a community sub regula if not to find in him a means of displacing the historical
significance of John de Matha and Felix de Valois. This very much appears to be
the intention of the vita. Its argument seems to be that Norbert and Robert were
essentially of a single mind and purpose relative to the reform communities that
followed and venerated them, even if the fact of papal approval suggested instead
a link between Norbert and the founders of Holy Trinity.
‘Robertt I Rede Thei Named Hym Ryght’ and Father Norbert

I have argued that the passages taken from the Vita Norberti B and inserted into
the prose vita in MS Egerton 3143 were not integrated in a scattered and random
fashion, but far more deliberately. Still more, it appears likely that the Trinitarian
text was actively being assimilated to the tradition, recorded in Leland’s Itinerary,
which held that Robert was more or less the founder of Knaresborough’s
Trinitarian community. There is also no reason why the vita might not possibly
also represent a point at which that tradition was initially constituted, even if it
there is no way of demonstrating the text’s historical priority. Yet since the vita
belongs within a larger network of variant traditions, it is important to recall that
other materials in MS Egerton 3143 had also set about remembering the hermit
in the same way. In the Life, the poet notes that the hermit’s name — ‘Robertt I
rede thei named hym ryght’ — carries with it a significance that, yet again, aligns
47
On Stuteville’s involvement with another hermit and his successors see Licence, Hermits
and Recluses, p. 94.
the Middle English text with the vita.48 For by observing that Robert was rightly
named, that precisely this name serves to exemplify his identity, the Life is in
fact associating him with important monastic founders, among others, Robert of
Chaise-Dieu, Robert of Molesme, Robert of Arbrissel, Robert of Tombelaine.49
Indeed, why might not the Life have drawn on more locally remembered figures
from Robert’s recent past, namely Robert of St Andrew’s Priory or Robert of
Newminster.50 To the extent that the Life reads the name ‘Robert’ as a religious
description (‘founder’), the name encodes the pleasures that his venerators took
in imagining him, as he was imagined in the vita, as the head of a community
that would eventuate in a foundation at Knaresborough. That is to say, this brief
literary conflation of Robert with great eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic
founders and reformers is an elaboration of the tradition which the borrowings
in the prose vita more aggressively advanced.
But here too the vita takes matters still further, extracting from Vita Norberti
B its language of paternity and rendering Robert a father in a monastic sense. To
be precise, Robert is referred to throughout as both pater and patronus. Well over
a dozen times the vita lends Robert the title given to Norbert (vir Dei), but it also
more modestly borrows a term almost as frequently applied to Norbert — pater
Norbertus.51 No father is without ‘sons’ within a monastic context where pater
inevitably implies a community, even if it does not necessarily render the head of
the community its founder.52 In Norbert’s case, the functions of father and founder
most certainly were linked. However, Robert is also called a patronus, a term that
is not restricted to the sense of ‘patron saint’ but which also incorporates ‘founder’
in precisely the sense that describes Norbert, John de Matha, and Felix de Valois.53
48
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 43–53.
49
For discussion, see The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 84;
on these reformers, see also Licence, Hermits and Recluses, pp. 32–42. It is also difficult to shake
the impression that the near-complete overlapping of vowels and consonants in the two names
Robert and Norbert had occurred to the author of the vita.
50
On the former see Smith and Ratcliff, ‘A Survey of Relations’, pp. 115–44.
51
The term is repeatedly used throughout chapters 46–47 of Vita Norberti B,
cols 1288C–1290A.
52
See Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus, s.v. ‘pater’.
53
See Maigne d‘Arnis, Lexicon Manuale, s.v. ‘patronus’. While the Lexicon includes the
word’s sense of ‘patron saint’, it also describes a ‘patronus’ as ‘qui alicuius ecclesiae exstruendae
aut alterius cuiuscunque fundationis ecclesiasticae auctor est’.
The vita’s repeated styling of Robert as patronus noster therefore complements

and extends its use of the term pater.54
It is from this perspective that the vita reads Robert’s companion Ives, namely
as a stand-in for Norbert’s first ‘son’, Hugh of Fosse, and as a synecdoche for the
remaining sons of Knaresborough.55 Ives says to Robert as the latter lay dying, ‘We
ask, father, that you bestow on us the gift of your blessing’.56 Shortly afterwards,
the hermit’s death is narrated, but not without another reminder of his paternal
significance for his followers and an additional borrowing from the Norbertine text.
Vita Norberti B
Defuncto itaque beatae et dignae memoriae Patre Norberto, spirituque suo ad
summae felicitatis aeternitatem vocato, sanctoque corpore ipsius exanimi relicto,
contentio non minima orta est, inter ecclesiam majorem et ecclesiam B. Mariae, de
loco sepulturae ejus.57
MS Egerton 3143
Defuncto itaque beate et digne memorie patre nostro Roberto, advocato et patrono,
spirituque suo ad summe felicitatis eternitatem vocato, sanctoque corpore ipsius
exanimi relicto, idem cum omni diligencia preparavit ad humandum.58
Remarkably, the ‘our father’ that Ives utters prior to the Robert’s death is repeated
(patre nostro Roberto) after he has died, and not by Ives, but by the Trinitarian
narrator himself. The addition represents a significant alteration to the Norbertine
54
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 126, 22. 9–12, 24. 2.
55
At fols 38v–39r, the manuscript also contains a prayer that, according to Bazire, asks Robert
to help his (Trinitarian) ‘son’; The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 6.
56
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 127, 23. 13–14: ‘Nobis,
pater, petimus, tue benediccionis munus impende’.
57
Vita Norberti B, 114, cols 1339C–1340A: ‘And so after father Norbert of blessed and
worthy memory died, and his spirit was called to an eternity of highest felicity, and with the
holy body of the same lifeless one left behind, no small disagreement arose among the larger
church and the church of the Blessed Mary concerning his place of burial’.
58
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 127, 23. 19–23: ‘And so
when our father, advocate and patron Robert of blessed and worthy memory died, and his spirit
was called to an eternity of highest felicity, and with the holy body of the same lifeless one left
behind, the same (i.e. Ives) diligently prepared [the body] for burial’ (my emphasis).
text since it underscores Robert’s authority as the spiritual leader (pater) of all his
children (nobis) who not only have lived with him at Knaresborough but will in
future live there. Here the Vita Norberti B has been borrowed and altered with
the effect of placing his followers within a monastic genealogy that extends to
the Trinitarians themselves. This impression is intensified a few lines later when a
brief discussion of Norbert’s body and its place of burial is transposed into the vita
as an attempt by the Cistercians at Fountains to appropriate Robert’s corpse.59
Norbert’s insistence that he be buried ‘among his brothers and sons’, that is,
among Premonstratensian canons, strengthens the sense that these ‘brothers and
sons’ interested the Trinitarian author precisely because the terms so unavoidably
implied the Trinitarians themselves.
Vita Norberti B
[E]t per ipsum seipsos et suam devotionem Domino Deo suo, a quo aversi fuerant,
redierunt, praecipue cum adhuc vivens homo praecepisset, et usque in finem suae
hoc voluntatis devotio postulare demonstrasset, quod inter fratres suos et filios,
quos Deo, Dei verbo, paupertatis suae tempore genuerat, sepeliri et quiescere
debuisset. Haec erat contentio; et evidens utrinque proponebatur justae certaeque
rationis responsio.60
MS Egerton 3143
Alii autem deneabant, dicentes quod precipue cum adhuc vivens homo precepisset
et usque sue hoc voluntatis devocio postulans demonstrasset quod inter fratres
suos et filios, quos Deo et Dei verbo pauperitatis sue tempore genuerat, sepeliri
et requiescere debuisset. Hec erat contencio et evidens utrimque proponebatur
certeque racionis responsio. Tandem autem Fontanenses tristes ad propria sunt
reversi.61
59
See Schwineköper, ‘Norbert von Xanten als Erzbischof ’, p. 205–07.
60
Vita Norberti B, 114, cols 1340A–B: ‘And they returned through the same and through
his devotion to his Lord God, from whom they had been turned, especially since while still alive
the man had instructed and shown to the end the commitment of his desire that he should be
buried and rest among his brothers and sons, whom he had fathered to God, in the word of
God, during the period of his poverty. This was the dispute; and it was clear on both sides that a
just and quite reasonable response was offered’.
61
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 127, 24. 11–17: ‘Others
however refused, saying that especially since while still alive the man had instructed and shown
In this context, namely at the point at which the first Premonstratensian canons
seek to maintain possession of Norbert’s body, the terms fratres and filios are
strictly analogous not so much with Robert’s ‘companie’ but with the Trinitarians
themselves. Stated another way, Robert is once again represented as having in
stituted a Trinitarian community at Knaresborough. Who precisely are these
fratres and filios standing over and laying claim to his body if not Trinitarians
whom the vita has, as elsewhere, projected back into Robert’s late career?
It is simply a fact that the Trinitarian reader of the Vita Norberti B was ex
tending the problematic parallel between Knaresborough and Prémontré, but
it is not clear how far he was prepared to go. While most Trinitarian English
houses were founded roughly around the middle of the thirteenth century, it is
worth underscoring that Robert was not only contemporary with John de Matha
and Felix de Valois, but that Knaresborough stands at the centre of a series of
Trinitarian foundations created by Richard, earl of Cornwall, and King Henry III.
The network that consisted of Knaresborough (founded at the latest in 1252),
Hounslow (1252) and Moatenden (1253) no doubt consisted of Trinitarian
brothers who were well aware of the order’s continental origins.62 Nonetheless,
they also had a perfect match, or ‘father’, in the English hermit, whose cult was
clearly alive and well by the mid-1250s. To what extent the grant by Innocent III
in 1198 and the identities of the original founders were meaningful to the English
brothers at Knaresborough is difficult to determine, but the fact that Norbert was
himself posthumously and biographically remodelled in the image of his ‘sons’
was admittedly too tempting a detail to leave unconsidered and unexploited.
This reminds us of the tenacity of saints’ cults in the making and the remaking
of the identities of monastic communities, which had been exploiting them since
at least the tenth-century Benedictine reform.63 Without question, Robert had
made Knaresborough a holy place, thus permitting the first Trinitarians to emulate
other reformers, including the tenth-century bishop, Æthelwold, whose search
for new Benedictine foundations led him to exploit England’s hermit sites ‘where
he could fit his new form of monasticism into the existing sacred landscape’.64
to the end the commitment of his desire that he should be buried and rest among his brothers
and sons, whom he had fathered to God, in the word of God, during the period of his poverty.
This was the dispute; and it was clear on both sides that a just and quite reasonable response was
offered. But at last the monks from Fountains, saddened, returned to their own’.
62
Gray, The Trinitarian Order in England, pp. 108–19.
63
For the survival of multiple saints’ cults, see Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society.
64
Licence, Hermits and Recluses, p. 46.
If much the same transpired among the Trinitarians, what distinguishes
Robert from Æthelwold’s saints is that the former had been credited with the
establishment of a community whose interests in strict poverty and attending to
the sick were not only compatible with the Augustinian and white canons but
specifically with the Trinitarians.65 John de Matha and Felix de Valois are nearly
rendered unnecessary, eclipsed by a hermit-reformer that resembles Norbert in so
many particulars.
The absence from the vita of a narrative on the foundation of 1198 or the
mid-thirteenth-century colonization of Knaresborough by Trinitarians is to be
expected since, as a reader of the Vita Norberti B, Robert’s biographer knew pre
cisely how he wanted to write Robert. Implicit in the vita is an understanding that
the label ‘founder’, which the hermit had neither envisioned nor cultivated, could
be avoided even if it was a label that also misrepresented Norbert. In other words,
the author of the vita in MS Egerton 3143 discerned that the work of reimagining
a local holy man could easily be conducted at the literary level without entirely
undermining the historical record. According to the vita, Robert resembled
Norbert as the sort of monk-chastening, penance-hungry reformer that, mutatis
mutandis, was no less worthy of the papal approval actually obtained by John
de Matha and Felix de Valois. The project that Norbert’s biographers had begun
was replicated by the Trinitarians with the result that a sense of inevitability
informs the vita, even if problematically. For it is likely to have been largely
under the influence of Vita Norberti B that Robert’s turbulent life became more
stable and less haphazard. To return to the emphasis I have placed on Robert’s
early wanderings and troubled form of living, the suggestion by Walter that his
brother live the regular life was to prove propitious. On the one hand, the circular
reasoning that may be operating in the vita — Robert closely resembles Norbert,
which justifies a quotation from the Norbertine vita, thus rendering the two even
more alike, and so forth — seems designed to maintain its momentum to the
point of transforming Robert into a founder every bit as genuine as Norbert, and
every bit a fiction. On the other, what lies at the heart of the borrowings from
Vita Norberti B is the ‘wonderful’ change that Robert experiences — his chance
not to join an established community and live the regular life (regulariter), but
to establish his own community that, by implication, will adopt a monastic rule.
Far from disrupting a history of Robert as a Trinitarian founder, the author of
the vita was intent on remembering that Knaresborough had been a haven of the
regular life ever since its first ‘father’ settled there.
65
See Burton and Stöber, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.
‘Conditor Noster’
Robert is nowhere referred to as a fundator. As we have seen, however, the vita’s
massive debts to the Vita Norberti B indicate that the text courts the possibilities
of framing him in precisely this manner—even if we must look to the Life for
how it binds Robert and Ives with later papal grants by Honorius III, Urban IV,
and Innocent IV made specifically to Trinitarians, thus frustrating the distinction
that existed between Cornwall’s founding of Trinitarian Knaresborough and
Stuteville’s grant of lands to Robert. At work are the author’s strategies of reading
his source in such a manner as to avoid unwarranted claims about Robert’s con
nections to the order of Holy Trinity even while imaginatively entertaining a
history in which Robert serves for Knaresborough precisely the function that
Norbert held for Prémontré. Thus, in one instance, instead of referring to God
as dominus (as he does at every other point in the vita), the biographer observes
how ‘marvellous’ was what ‘our establisher’ (conditor noster) displayed through
Robert.66 However, God is otherwise never referred to in the possessive (while
Robert often is!). What is interesting about the term conditor noster is not so much
the slippage that places the hermit, who is otherwise identified as ours (noster)
and vir Dei, alongside God as fundator noster. It is rather, and once again, what
passages such as this reveal about the author’s reading of the Vita Norberti B. The
text immediately prior to this one in the vita is taken from the section of Norbert’s
life that describes his relations with Bishop Bartholomew, Pope Callistus II, and
his settling at Prémontré, and as we have seen it is from that point where so much
of the vita’s material originates.
More precisely, the vita is borrowing from multiple points in the Vita Norberti
B, all of which are centrally concerned with the politics of legitimacy, both at
the monastic and ecclesiastical levels. I intensify the emphasis on those passages
that the author of the vita was reading but which were cut from the text as not
pertaining to the English hermit.
66
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 121, 15. 8–9: ‘Non enim
pretermittendum est quoddam mirabile quod per eum conditor noster ostendere dignabatur’.
Cf. p. 122, 16. 6–7: ‘[…] miris operibus que per eum Dominus ostendere est dignatus’.
Vita Norberti B
Erat praeterea in his omnibus, supra quam dici et credi potest, patiens in vigiliis,
sedulus in labore, gratus in verbis, gratiosus in visu, benignus in simplices, severus
contra hostes Ecclesiae. Nullus, temporibus illis, eorum qui religiosi videbantur,
tantum favorem ad populum, tantamve confrequentationem obtinuit.67
Vita Roberti
Erat utique in his omnibus supra quam dici et credi potest Robertus paciens in
vigiliis, sedulous in laboribus spiritualibus, gratus in verbis, graciousus in visu,
benignus in simplices, severus contra hostes et malefactores.68
Vita Norberti B
Ad reficiendum autem nullam sedem praeparare, non mensam apponere sibi vir
sanctus sinebat. Terra sedes, et genua mensa illi erant; fercula salis condimento
condita, et non alio; potus, aqua illis erat, nisi forte in civitatibus et abbatiis,
aliisque hujuscemodi locis, ab episcopis, archiepiscopis seu abbatibus invitati
cogerentur; ubi, propter simul discumbentium pacem, modum et consuetudinem
eorum nollent excedere.69
67
Vita Norberti B, 5. 29, col. 1277D: ‘Beyond this he was in all things, above what can be
said or believed, patient in vigils, industrious in working, gracious in his words, favourable in
countenance, kind to the simple, and severe against the enemies of the Church. None of them in
those times who seemed religious maintained such favour towards the people, or such crowding
attention’.
68
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, p. 121, 14. 11–15: ‘He
was certainly in all things, above what can be said or believed, patient in vigils, industrious in
spiritual labors, gracious in his words, favourable in countenance, kind to the simple, and severe
against enemies and malefactors’.
69
Vita Norberti B, 5. 28, col. 1277A: ‘But when refreshing himself the holy man allowed
himself neither a place to sit nor a table. The earth was his seat and his knees his table; for spice a
dish of salt and nothing else was prepared; his drink was water, unless perhaps they were invited
and urged in cities and abbeys and other such places, by (arch)bishops or abbots; where they did
not want to depart from the peace of the banqueters, their way and custom’.
Vita Roberti
Ad reficiendum autem nullam [sedem] preparare, non mensam apponere sibi vir
sanctus sinebat. Terra sedes et genua mensa illi multociens erat. Fercula salis condi
mento condita sunt, et non alio; potus, aqua.70
The same pattern is followed even much later.
Vita Norberti B
Et cum magna praecedentium Patrum facta narrantur, subsequentium opera fili
orum ad haec imitanda provocantur. Quinto anno episcopatus sui haec acta sunt, et
tribus postea sedit, de die in diem, ministerio a Deo sibi commisso dans honorem,
in omni religione et honestate proficiens; unitatem sanctae Ecclesiae conservans,
ejusque perturbatores et schismaticos omnes persequens et detestans, bonos
amplectens, desolatis dans consilium, pauperes et orphanos viduasque sustentans,
religiosos quoque fovens et dilatans, religionisque docens formam, seipsum,
prout dignitas officii pati poterat, tam minoribus quam majoribus affabilem
exhibens, divinae largitatis et gratiae non immemor, Domino Deo suo per singulos
dies bonae opinionis et intimae suavitatis et dulcedinis offerebat conscientiam.71
MS Egerton 3143
Sic utique iste devotissimus Dei famulus in sanctitate proficiens, perturbatores et
cismaticos omnes persequens et detestans, bonos amplectens, desolatis dans con
silium, pauperes, orphanos et viduas sustentans, seipsum tam minoribus quam
maioribus affabilem exhibens, divine largitatis et gracie non i[mmemor], Domino
70
I have slightly emended Bazire’s text. The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed.
by Bazire, p. 121, 14. 15–18: ‘But when refreshing himself the holy man allowed himself neither
[seat] nor table. The earth was his seat and his knees his table; for spice a dish of salt and nothing
else was prepared; his drink was water’.
71
Vita Norberti B, 18. 111, cols 1337C–1338A: ‘And since the great deeds of the former
Fathers are narrated, the works of the sons who follow them are provoked to imitate them. These
things were accomplished in the fifth years of his episcopate, and for three years afterwards he
sat, day in and day out, giving honour to God for the ministry that had been commissioned
to him, excelling in all religion and piety; maintaining the unity of Holy Church persecuting
and despising all of its disturbers and schismatics embracing the good, giving counsel to the
forsaken, giving relief to the poor, orphans and widows, cherishing and spreading the religious,
teaching the way of religion, and — as far as the dignity of his office would allow — showing
himself affable to both high and low alike, mindful of divine generosity and grace. On a daily
basis he offered to his Lord God a conscience of good opinion, deep delight and sweetness’.
Deo suo per singulos dies bone opinionis et intime suavitatis et dulcedinis offerebat
conscienciam.72
Though the vita strangely maintains the reference to ‘schismatics’, it cuts a path
through terms that relate to ecclesiastical or monastic culture just like its author
had been drawn to the reference mentioned above to the Augustinian rule,
only to remove this patently inappropriate reference from the text. Whereas
the discussion up to this point has treated the materials that the Trinitarian
text includes from the Vita Norberti B, it is with these final examples that I wish
to highlight that what the vita excludes proves equally revealing. Via Norbert,
Robert comes to represent an exemplary defender of orthodox doctrine and of
the monastic tradition.
But of course the vita does not include much of the material that has attracted
the attention of its author. The passages are remarkable for their shrewd avoidance
of the term religio — the vita does not so much as use the term once! — which
is carefully excised here. Since the term denotes a ‘recognized and regulated
monastic or canonical life’, it likely did not apply to Robert or his teachings, and
is therefore excised.73 Thus, the Trinitarian text appropriately omits Norbert’s
behaviour as a metropolitan unitatem sanctae ecclesiae conservans, which hardly
pertains to such a modest hermit as Robert, opting instead for the slightly more
appropriate perturbatores et scismaticos omnes persequens et detestans. The idea that
the wandering and robber-beaten hermit from Knaresborough was competent to
oppose schismatics invests Robert with ecclesiastical credentials more commonly
found among far more renowned eleventh- and twelfth-century hermit-founders
— figures like Bruno of Chartreuse, Robert of Molesme or Peter Damian. The
insertion of passages relating specifically to Norbert’s work as a protector of the
Church is curious indeed, but in both texts the passage appears within a broader
context of institutional legitimacy, of an institution’s resistance to external threats.
In Vita Norberti B, the section that immediately follows the one above relates
how Norbert piously supported Innocent II during the schism that destabilized
the latter’s papacy.
72
The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough, ed. by Bazire, pp. 125–26, 21. 27–33:
‘Thus certainly this most devoted servant of God, [was] excelling in all sanctity, persecuting
and despising all of its disturbers and schismatics embracing the good, giving counsel to the
forsaken, giving relief to the poor, orphans and widows, cherishing and spreading the religious,
teaching the way of religion, and — as far as the dignity of his office would allow — showing
himself affable to both high and low alike, mindful of divine generosity and grace. On a daily
basis he offered to his Lord God a conscience of good opinion, deep delight and sweetness’.
73
Felten, ‘Norbert von Xanten’, p. 70.
Arguably, therefore, the author of the vita did not ‘intend’ to include the
reference to schismatics, just like he did not intend to include language relating
to episcopal and abbatial authority. My argument here, as throughout this essay,
is thus about practices of reading Robert. The hermit, if not explicitly written as
a founder, was almost certainly was being read in this way. Inconsistent as it may
seem, it would have pushed the limits of credulity to transfer the term religio into
the vita, even though everything about these final examples serve as indications
that the Trinitarian author was meditating on the institutional legitimacy that
Norbert ultimately attained after his early years of illicit preaching.74
The term strangely applied to God, conditor noster, reads like a symptom of
the biographer’s chief problem, and one that we know he shared with the author
of the Vita Norberti B: how might Robert/Norbert function imaginatively as a
founder without misrepresenting both his and the order’s identity? Yet to ossify
and reduce his identity to one or the other — making him either a founder, or
just an unreformed ringleader of paupers; England’s Norbert, or just another
hermit — hastily forecloses the pleasures of imagining Robert in terms more
elastic and indeterminate. We should recall that, unlike religio, the language
discussed above relating to a foundation (fundamentum, positum, edificium, etc.)
affirms and denies nothing exactly. So too, the adoption of materials from the
Vita Norberti B mirrors at the biographical level what Prémontré accomplished
at the ‘regular’ level in allowing itself to be influenced by Cîteaux. Here again, the
difficult question of identity arises. And if later canons who looked back on the
twelfth-century reforms ‘had great difficulty in recognizing themselves in their
predecessors, whom they knew from the vitae and foundation narratives’, those
texts always stood to be revised to suit later interests.75
If the Trinitarian author of the vita failed to show much interest in the ac
tual historical origins of his own Trinitarian brothers, it is because his purpose
lay elsewhere, namely to witness to the status of the Trinitarians as a reformed
community and to identify Robert, if not as a founder, then at least as a monu
ment of reform. And it was this reformer, this cultor Trinitatis, who fathered
Knaresborough and, as England’s Norbert, established that which his ‘sons’ were
later able to make prosper under the aegis of Holy Trinity. The Trinitarian vita
remained powerless to change what so definitively distinguished Robert, who
never sought, let alone obtained, papal support to establish a new order. As
we have seen, however, it does not follow that Robert’s biographer was any less
74
Felten, ‘Norbert von Xanten’, pp. 69–70.
75
Milis, ‘Hermits and Regular Canons’, p. 246.
interested in weakening the impediments one by one that kept him from being
numbered among the great personalities in an age of monastic foundation. To
this extent, Norbert remained an ideal model.
The prose vita in MS Egerton 3143 creates a sense that the order’s continental
origins — and its author can hardly have known nothing of John de Matha
and Felix de Valois — were less significant than the fact that Knaresborough’s
pater Robertus established the site as a space consecrated to the regular life,
just as Norbert had at Prémontré, and was in effect the order’s father, even if
papal approval had been sought elsewhere and by others. It appears as though
certain brothers at Knaresborough wished to believe him their order’s founding
hermit, that is, wished to give their origins a more local and independent, even if
historically dubious, character and set about modelling him as closely as possible
on eleventh- and twelfth-century predecessors. So too in seeking his canoniza
tion, our author may well have been pursuing an added goal, namely to achieve
for specifically English Trinitarian communities whatever cultural purchase could
be had by rewriting their own origins and making the now thoroughly reformist
hermit into an English founder.
Stirred no doubt by desire for an age of rapid monastic expansion and the
development of new orders, the author of the vita seems beset by fantasies about
a monastic order that, but for unfavourable conditions, might have originated in
England, and indeed at Knaresborough. Did our author think perhaps that, had
it not been for the Fourth Lateran Council’s prohibition against the founding
of new orders, it may have been with Robert as founder of an entirely new order
that the English brothers at Knaresborough and elsewhere would be giving relief
to the poor and sick — a commitment that Trinitarians certainly believed they
shared with the hermit? For the author of the vita, Robert belonged to an age
of great monastic patres, and one means of registering nostalgia for that age was
precisely to model Robert on a figure who had not come too late, but who was no
greater a reformer on that account. This reading need not imply that the author of
the Latin vita in any way resented the continental origins of his order, but neither
could England boast anywhere near as many splendid monastic reformists as
its European neighbours to the east, despite its own host of celebrated hermits
including Godric of Finchale, Henry of Coquet, and Bartholomew of Farne, all
of whom flourished during the great eleventh- and twelfth-century reform. For
the brothers at Holy Trinity who culted him, Robert stood as one English figure
who could rival in reformist ardour the great continental personalities.
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The Itinerary of John Leland, ed. by Lucy Toulmin Smith (London: Bell, 1907)
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maniae Historica: Scriptores, 39 vols to date (Hannover: Hahn, 1826–), xiii: Historiae
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(Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 1–16
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settembre 1962, ed. by Società editrice Vita e pensiero (Milano: l’Università cattolica
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Kaspar Elm (Köln: Wienand, 1984), pp. 159–88
English Benedictine Monks at the
Papal Court in the Thirteenth Century:
The Experience of Thomas of
Marlborough in a Wider Context
Jane Sayers
I t would be manna from heaven to have a detailed diary of an English

Benedictine monk at the papal court, both to understand its workings as a
judicial tribunal and to enter, perhaps more perceptively, into the minds of those
involved in some of the causes célèbres. The nearest we may get to the experience
of petitioners who had need to go to Rome is the unique narrative account of
a monk of Evesham, Thomas of Marlborough, included in his history of the
abbey.1 Thomas’s very personal and frank description cannot be supplemented
by Evesham’s archives because they suffered badly at the Dissolution and are
virtually non-existent. However, using the account rolls and charters, notably
from the rich archives of the Benedictine houses of Christ Church, Canterbury,
and of Westminster, we can extend the range of view.
Thomas of Marlborough (presumably he came from the town of that name)
entered the ancient and prestigious Benedictine community at Evesham in
1
Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. by Sayers and Watkiss.
Jane Sayers (je17.sayers@btinternet.com): Emeritus Professor of Archive Studies,

University College London.
Abstract: Benedictine monks were frequent visitors to the papal court often as petitioners.
Using an exceptional narrative account, supplemented by financial records and charter
evidence, a picture can be constructed of what it was like taking a case to the papal tribunal,
the supreme court of the Church, or petitioning for certain privileges, confirmations of rights,
or dispensations. For many who had business there, the journey was a long one, across seas,
mountain ranges, and other treacherous areas subject to different overlords. Preparation had to
be made for transport, food, and clothing, and money had to be acquired along the route. Once
in Rome, the petitioners experienced the workings of papal administration and justice at the
centre of Christendom.
Keywords: Benedictine; papal court; petitioners; documents; Christ Church, Canterbury;
Westminster Abbey; Evesham Abbey

110 Jane Sayers
Worcestershire in 1199/1200.2 He was not a young novice, but probably a man

in his thirties, as we know that he had been a student of Stephen Langton’s at
Paris, in company with Richard Poore, and that he had continued his studies at
Oxford, this time in law, where he had taught for a brief period. A few years after
his arrival at Evesham, he became embroiled in the abbey’s claims of exemption
from the diocesan, when in 1202 Bishop Mauger of Worcester attempted to
carry out a visitation. Evesham was one of a very privileged group of English
Benedictine abbeys (including St Albans, Bury St Edmunds, and Westminster)
that claimed the right to answer solely and directly to the pope. The abbey also
claimed jurisdiction over the churches and people in the surrounding area of
the Vale (nine parishes in the vicinity of Evesham) in place of the bishop. Not
surprisingly, reforming diocesans, such as Bishop Mauger, began to challenge
these immunities when they saw faults going uncorrected and other kinds of
mismanagement. For an exempt abbey, however, to allow a visitation by the local
bishop was, of course, totally unacceptable, and appeal was made to the highest
court — that of the pope.
The abbot of Evesham at the time of the attempted visitation was Roger
Norreis, a former monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, who while a member
of that community had ingratiated himself with Archbishop Baldwin and with
King Richard I.3 He had sided with the archbishop in the dispute between
Baldwin and the convent over the division of property and income, the monks
alleging that he had let out the secrets of the chapter. Baldwin made him cellarer
and then prior. When the monks of Canterbury, however, succeeded in getting
him deposed as prior, he was then given the abbacy of Evesham by the king. He
did not, therefore, have a good reputation among the monks when he arrived at
Evesham in 1190.
There may have been an initial period of some agreement between the abbot
and the convent, but by 1202 Abbot Norreis had begun to take over the convent’s
property, resulting in hardship for the monks, who also alleged that the abbot
wore secular clothing, promoted his relatives, and was often drunk and violent.
The attempt of Bishop Mauger to investigate these allegations and put things
right simply resulted in bringing the abbot and the convent together in their re
sistance to the bishop. In order to present a united front at the curia, it was agreed
2
For a brief account of the life of Thomas of Marlborough, see the article in The Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography.
3
For a brief account of the career of Roger Norreis, see The Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography.
english benedictine monks at the papal court 111
that the convent would not pursue their charges against the abbot in return for
his support in the matter of the abbey’s exemption. But a lack of trust persisted
between the abbot and the convent and they went separately to Rome, Thomas
and the convent’s other representatives believing that Norreis’s presence there was
to see that they made no complaints against him.
Thomas kept an account of the case — and this will form the basis of the
following enquiry.4 He left Evesham on 29 September 1204 and arrived in Rome
after a journey said to be of forty days on the following 7 November.5 There is no
doubt that this is an allusion to the forty days and forty nights of Christ in the
wilderness and of Moses on the mountain (Exodus 24. 18 and Matt. 4. 2), but it is
also likely to be roughly the actual time taken riding from London to Rome in the
thirteenth century.6 Thomas set out with one companion (Thomas of Warwick,
a clerk of Abbot Norreis, assigned to Thomas by the abbot), two servants, and two
horses. The abbot had already set off once when a delegation was sent from the
convent to try to make peace with him. On this occasion Thomas describes him
as being in secular dress when he found him at Newbury on his way to the coast
and it is possible that he was dressed in civilian clothes on the second occasion
also. Wearing lay clothes, while travelling, seems to have been the reason for the
prior of Westminster being considered an apostate in 1351.7 We cannot follow in
exact detail either Thomas’s or Abbot Norreis’s journey; they travelled separately,
the abbot leaving later and proceeding at a slower pace. Abbot Norreis went via
Chalon-sur-Saône, where he ended up in gaol, for reasons that are not disclosed,8
then came via Vercelli. We can, however, follow the exact route of two monk-proc
tors of Westminster, Brothers Alexander of Pershore and Reginald of Hadham, at
the end of the century, for they kept a detailed roll of the expenditure and where
and when it was made, together with notes on the exchange. The Westminster
4
The story unfolds in Thomas’s bk iii, pts iii and iv; Thomas of Marlborough, History
of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. by Sayers and Watkiss, pp. 264–377 (nos 259–390), For a short
description of the whole affair, see Sayers, The Making of the Medieval History, pp. 15–25.
5
Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. by Sayers and Watkiss,
pp. 266–67 (no. 263).
6
See Landon, The Itinerary of King Richard I, p. 184, forty-one and a half days, and App. B
‘Rate of travelling in the Middle Ages’, which has a useful list of the places on the different
routes, together with distances.
7
Logan, Runaway Religious in Medieval England, p. 190.
8
Thomas says that he does not mention the reason for the arrest because he is not sure why
it occurred; Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. by Sayers and Watkiss,
pp. 268–69 (no. 265).
112 Jane Sayers
party took thirty-eight days, leaving Dartford on Monday 19 May and arriving
in Rome on Friday 27 June. They crossed the Channel from Dover to Wissant
in the Pas de Calais, the shortest possible route, doubtless laden with baggage
and accompanied by boys and horses; the boys and the horses perhaps made the
sea voyage separately from the main party, as the account for the return journey
specifies for the sea passage without the horses 4 tournois 3s 11d sterling, and
for the boys and the horses remaining temporarily at Wissant 12s 1d.9 (Christ
Church, Canterbury, accounts show that 67s 11½d was paid for the sea passage
of their proctors, horses, and boys, returning from Wissant to Dover).10 They
then travelled through France by way of Paris, Rozoy-en-Brie, Provins, Villeneuve,
Dijon, and Salins-les-bains. From Lausanne, their journey took them round the
lake to Vevey, and thence to Bourg-St-Pierre and St Remy-en-Bosses, from where
the road led to the Great St Bernard pass.11
A monk of Canterbury, Master John Brembre, writing home in 1188 had
described the Great St Bernard as a place of torment, the ground so slippery that
it was impossible to stand; if one falls it is certain death. He had attempted to
write more than the briefest letter but his ink was frozen, his fingers numb and
his beard stiff with ice.12 The descent to Aosta must have raised the travellers’
spirits considerably.
Through Italy the Westminster party proceeded from Aosta via Chatillon,
Ivrea, Vercelli, Pavia, Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, across the Appenines to Abetone(?),
Lucca, Pistoia, Florence, Poggibonsi, Sienna, Aquapendente, Viterbo, and so to
Rome. Both Thomas’s party and Abbot Norreis’s may have followed this route,
though some English parties favoured going via Sion and the Simplon pass,
ending up at Milan, and coming down Italy by way of Bologna. This was the route
taken by Walter Wenlok, abbot of Westminster, who made the journey for his
confirmation in 1284.13 When Thomas arrived at Rome and had his first interview
with the pope, he was told that the abbot had been imprisoned en route and that
he should return to find where he was so that the pope could liberate him. Thomas
and his companion went back to Piacenza, which he describes as being where
two roads meet. There they established that the abbot had been released. Not
9
London, Westminster Abbey Muniments (hereafter cited as WAM) 9249.
10
London, Lambeth Palace Library (hereafter cited as LPL), MS 242 (Christ Church,
Canterbury, Accounts), fol. 11v.
11
WAM 9244. This was also the way Hadham’s return journey was made, see WAM 9245.
12
Epistolae Cantuarienses, ed. by Stubbs, p. 181.
13
WAM 9241, and see Documents Illustrating the Rule of Walter de Wenlok, ed. by Harvey,
p. 14.
knowing which way he might be travelling, Thomas left for Pavia, his colleague
for Vercelli. At Vercelli the colleague did in fact meet up with the abbot, who
then made his way to Milan in order to avoid encountering Thomas.14 Obviously,
not only mutual hostility, but illness, adverse weather, or disruption from warfare
might cause variation in the usual route. When Archbishop Winchelsey’s party
returned from the curia in 1293–94, they came via Germany and Brabant to
Dordrecht because of the hostilities between England and France.15
Places where there were the facilities for changing horses and acquiring money,
as well as providing lodging, would have determined the choice of any particular
route. Thomas comments that in their forty day journey they had changed horses
three times. Expenses concerning horses appear frequently in the Westminster
travel accounts, for their equipment, halters, bridles, stirrups, saddlecloths, and
for their care, for blacksmiths, and for a boy remaining at Parma with an infirm
horse.16 Was he to follow them to Rome? Even when in Rome horses would be
needed in all likelihood to follow the papal court which was often itinerant.
When the Westminster monks arrived, the papal court was in Rome, but by
August it was in Rieti, whither they went, selling a black horse, perhaps the one
they had brought with them, and buying another for the journey.17
Illness, too, might cause a change of plan or means of conveyance. The West
minster party took a boat from Pavia on the Po to Piacenza, because Brother
Reginald was ill and this was a smoother form of travel, and medicines were
bought for him at Vercelli.18 Money was needed at every point so it was important
to pass through towns with fairs and money markets where credit notes, which
all these proctors would certainly have been carrying, might be changed.
Of Thomas’s first view of Rome, presuming that it was the first, we have no
record. His impressions of the basilicas, the citizens’ towers, the Roman remains,
the shrines, are locked away beyond our view. Master Gregorio, however, in his
‘Marvels of Rome’ was duly captivated: he speaks of the great forest of towers, the
palatial buildings, ‘indescribably beautiful’.19 It is difficult to believe that Thomas
14
pp. 267–69 (nos 264–65).
15
Graham, ‘Archbishop Winchelsey’, at p. 173.
16
WAM 9243, 9244 (the Parma reference), 9245, 9249.
17
WAM 9243 m. 1.
18
WAM 9244.
19
Master Gregorius, The Marvels of Rome, trans. by Osborne, c. 1; and Nardella, Il fascino di
Roma with Latin text and Italian translation.
114 Jane Sayers
would not have been impressed as he entered the ancient city, presumably by the
Porta Flaminia, the northernmost of the fourteen gates.
For many visitors the journey to Rome and the stay in the eternal city was likely
to be seen as a kind of pilgrimage. Indeed, the pursuit of a case before the papal
court was often linked with a pilgrimage. When John, rector of Eastry in Kent,
was engaged in litigation against the prior and the convent of Christ Church,
Canterbury, he was also on a pilgrimage.20 He may have remained in Rome for he
is mentioned as the chaplain of the cardinal bishop of Porto, Robert Kilwardby, a
post that required residence. When the pope’s decision was imminent in the first
part of the Evesham case, Thomas made a pilgrimage round the holy places, the
loca sanctorum, and he fasted.21 Which would these churches have been? Firstly,
undoubtedly three of the four great basilicas: St Peter’s, because the body of the
apostle was there (all the sources stress this), then St John Lateran, because of
its unsurpassed collection of important relics, and thirdly, S. Maria Maggiore,
since it was not only a basilica, but this was the Thursday before Christmas and
S. Maria Maggiore with its relic of the Bethlehem crib was the centre of the papal
court’s Christmas celebrations. Whether the fourth basilica, St Paul’s, where
the community was Benedictine, was included, we do not know. And whether
there were other places particularly important for English petitioners can only
be surmised — St Gregory’s on the Celian, perhaps, another Benedictine commu
nity, with its English connections. Before leaving England, and on saying farewell
to his brothers, Thomas had declared that if he were not successful in the outcome
of the case, he would enter a religious house in Rome and spend his last days
there.22 He was given to extreme gestures and, in the event, it was not necessary,
but there would have been plenty of choice.
Money
By the thirteenth century, money-lenders and bankers were to be found in no
small number around the papal curia. Benedictine monk-proctors left England
armed with documents empowering them to contract loans in the curia, as
Stephen de Worthe and Robert of Elham, monks of Christ Church, Canterbury,
20
Sayers, ‘Canterbury Proctors’, at pp. 333–34.
21
pp. 311–13 (no. 314).
22
pp. 265–67 (no. 262).
who had twelve carte worth in total 3000 marks.23 Evesham (both abbot and
convent) borrowed money from Roman creditors within the city. Thomas men
tions that he had loans from Petrus Pauli, a Roman, and so had the abbot. It is
also recorded that he and Thomas of Warwick borrowed 20 marks from another
Roman merchant, Petrus Malialardus, on the security of letters from the abbot
and convent.24 With the removal of the papal court away from Rome for long
ish periods, bankers from other cities became prominent, particularly from the
northern towns and Tuscany. As the papal tax system grew and papal tax collectors
were present in England, the Italian merchants established themselves in London,
close to the New Temple. Money therefore became easier to obtain on credit. But
at the beginning of the century this development lay in the future. The Evesham
creditors were finally paid off in England when the case was over.25 They had to
wait a long time for their money because of the papal interdict on England, but
when it was lifted they lost no time in coming to claim their due: 400 marks and
700 for compensation and expenses. The interdict, which Pope Innocent III had
pronounced in 1208, and which lasted until 1214, was caused by King John’s re
fusal to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop in place of an obviously unsuitable
royal candidate. It caused a complete breakdown in ecclesiastical administration:
churches were closed, services forbidden, and judicial cases unheard as the bishops
went into exile. Contact with Rome was thus brought to an end for a lengthy
period. Thomas accordingly pleaded that the delay in payment was not the abbey’s
fault. When a final agreement was reached and Thomas reported on it to the
convent, the abbot declared that, by the Queen of the Angels, he would never pay
a single penny; instead Thomas, who had done the spending he said, should pay
the money. Thomas retorted that he had contracted a loan of no more than seventy
marks during the two years of his stay, while the abbot, who was only there for six
weeks, had run up a debt of 530 marks, of which he had paid back merely 200.26
23
Cambridge, CUL, MS Ee.5.31, fol. 84v.
24
pp. 473–75 (no. 505); BL MS Cotton Vespasian B.xxiv, fol. 52v: a document in the name of
John, cardinal bishop of Albano, dated from S. Clemente on 19 December 1205, recording the
arrangement, printed pp. 514–15.
25
Two pairs of instruments called starrs — the Hebrew word is used — were made and
sealed with the seal of Luke Scarsi, described as general proctor of the Roman creditors, in the
final settlement; Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. by Sayers and
Watkiss, pp. 473–75 (no. 505).
26
pp. 429–31 (nos 447–49).
116 Jane Sayers
There is no indication that Thomas had difficulty in raising immediate money

in Rome. His sentiment that Evesham as a perpetual corporation had in theory
endless funds to fight this lawsuit (in contrast with the bishop of Worcester) is
expressed early on, though his impecunious state by the end of the affair may have
made the picture less rosy. By the time of the second part of the case over the Vale,
Thomas was bemoaning the fact that 440 marks from Roman bankers who had
been in England had not come through. He had spent his last fifty marks’ bond
and he could not find any further credit.27
Lodgings
Where did Thomas lodge in Rome? The hospital of S. Spirito in Sassia had asso
ciations with the English, but does not seem a likely place. Pope Innocent III’s
revival of the ancient but long deserted Scola peregrinorum of the Saxons as a
hospital (for which he received quite generous sums from King John) was more
of a clinic for the pope and the cardinals — though it did accept some poor pa
tients — than a hostel for pilgrims or for those with business to pursue.28 The
two English hospices of St Thomas and of St Edmund were not founded until
the fourteenth century; in any case, a working proctor, such as Thomas, needed to
be near the pope, the cardinals, and the offices, close to the Lateran palace where
all the activity took place.29 He also stayed long enough to go to Bologna for six
months, so that it seems likely that while in Rome he had lodgings. The abbot
meanwhile had a separate establishment, probably a rented house; it is described
as a domus.30 It would not have been Abbot Norreis’s style either to rough it or to
stay in a religious establishment. Thomas boarded with the abbot for a fortnight,
not exactly willingly though he did point out that it would be cheaper. From
what we know of the Westminster monks, Brothers Alexander of Pershore and
Reginald of Hadham, during three weeks in Rome in June to July 1298, they
were furnishing the abode, in all likelihood a rented lodging — the household
expenses specify a copper frying pan and a tripod, glasses, goblets, or bowls, and
27
pp. 209–11 (no. 201), and pp. 345–47 (no. 358).
28
When the papal court moved out of Rome hospices which were specifically for religious
often accommodated petitioners; see e.g. WAM 9256C where Abbot Colchester paid 10 florins
for a stay at a hospice.
29
On the later English hospices, see Harvey, England, Rome and the Papacy, Chapter 3.
30
pp. 269–71 (no. 267).
other necessaries for the hall and the kitchen, linen sheets for the beds, and a
bed of canvas with a straw mattress bought from Master Humfrey of St Martin, a
Westminster adviser.31 The next account, to the end of September 1298, includes
the purchase of dishes, plates, saucers, and earthenware pitchers and pots.32 Pre
sumably this sort of paraphernalia would have been bought for the abbot of
Evesham’s household; of Thomas’s arrangements we can say no more.
We have no indication about board, but later in the century details of expen
diture on provisions at the papal court survive, as for Robert of Selsey, monk and
proctor of Christ Church, who ran up accounts with butchers and poulterers, as
he chased the papal court from Viterbo to Perugia.33 The provisioners themselves
followed the papal court wherever it went so recovering their monies and when
indeed the butcher, Vanni Nicolai Bruni, caught up with Robert, the papal
curia was in Rome, and Vanni staying in the hospice from where the notarial
instrument was dated.34 In 1299 the Westminster proctors, Brothers Alexander
of Pershore and William de Chalk, together, perhaps, with Master Humfrey
of St Martin, entertained the Roman proctor, Master Peter of Chieti, and two
Augustinians at table.35 Otherwise we have no mention of entertainment or, more
particularly, of the food eaten. Poultry and game — capons, partridges, mallards,
pheasants, and larks, one woodland ‘Roo’ and two roebucks — appear under the
heading of expenses in obtaining papal letters on Alexander of Pershore’s account
from July to December 1298. They were sent as gifts to Master Peter Ispanus,
the papal referendary,36 and former chaplain of the pope as Cardinal Gaetani, to
Cardinal Francis Gaetani the nephew of Pope Boniface VIII, and to the cardinal
penitentiary. A fish called a ‘spina’ and six ‘melett’ (mullet?) were also sent to the
penitentiary.37 They seem perhaps to be considered as extras in addition to money
31
WAM 9244: ‘uno lecto de kanevac cum palea’. I am grateful to Barbara Harvey for her
suggestion that ‘kanevac’ is canvas. Humphrey of St Martin was paid 45 florins for his delay in
the curia in 1299 (WAM 9249).
32
WAM 9243 m. 1.
33
Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Chartae Antiquae P 58 and P 59.
34
CCA Ch. Ant. P 58.
35
WAM 9249.
36
WAM 9243 m. 2. The papal referendary examined the petitions and was accordingly
very influential. Peter Hispanus is the first recorded referendary, see Herde, Beiträge zum
päpstlichen Kanzlei- und Urkundenwesen, p. 152, and Nüske, ‘Untersuchungen über das
Personal’, at pp. 142–44.
37
WAM 9243 m. 3. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies as ‘some kind of fish’ (c. 1475);
Barbara Harvey suggests mullet.
118 Jane Sayers
payments, retainers perhaps. On 13 and 20 December expenditure was both

on these sorts of gifts and on actual salaries which were paid to Master Peter of
Chieti and other proctors of the audience, to the messengers, and to the proctor
on duty in the audience (the ‘custodiens’). Other rather curious presents, which
appear among the expenses of procuring letters, are knives: a pair each for the
chamberlain, for the secretary, and for the clerks of the cardinal (penitentiary).
A knife was bought and given to Martelucio, described as the pope’s supercocus,
head chef. Christmas presents, in the form of money, were given to officers in
the households — to the secretaries of the cardinal penitentiary and to the
chamberlain of the referendary.38
Clothing had to be provided for those in the proctors’ households, as some
times the proctors stayed for lengthy periods. Summer and winter clothes were
bought — tunics, bodices, cloaks, caps or hoods, shoes and sandals, and lots of
stockings. Clearly all these could not be carried. Sometimes these were perhaps
already made: Christ Church, Canterbury, accounts reveal money paid out for
capes or cloaks purchased or made before they left, and caps were sent out to
Robert of Selsey, Canterbury’s proctor at Rome in 1279, also a knife and a shirt of
linsey-wolsey.39 Sometimes the cloth was bought for making the garments, for the
cloaks and the stockings, for example.40 Shoes were repaired, as those of Brother
Alexander, but also bought new as for two serving boys. (Did they sometimes walk
beside the riders?) Riding gear, saddlecloths and gloves also figure. As Thomas
spent two years in Italy, including six months in Bologna, he would have needed
clothes and shoes. Winters could be cold and the costs of the Chamber include
clothes bought for winter, such as shirts and tunics and bodices with fur. Furs were
not necessarily douceurs, though the fur granted to Master Adam of Fileby by
Abbot Wenlock may well have been.41 Christ Church, Canterbury, accounts show
money paid out for furs and cloaks, purchased or made before the monks left.42
Servants and pages accompanied all but the really poor on journeys and had
duties in the households. Thomas, as he says, left with two servants: the abbot
seems to have had a retinue with him. Servants and pages had their clothes —
shirts, and on one occasion an old (second-hand?) tunic — and board obviously
provided for them. Some of the boys who are specified in the household were
38
WAM 9243 mm 2, 3.
39
LPL, MS 242, fols 51, col. 2, and 82v.
40
WAM 9249 and 9244.
41
WAM 9243 m. 1 and 31273.
42
LPL, MS 242, fols 41, 49, 180v.
taken on to look after the horses, acting as stable lads. Shoes were provided for the
boy who looked after the Westminster horse in Rome.43
Money was also spent on wax tablets, candles, parchment, ink, and green
and red wax for sealing because those with business to transact needed to write
letters and reports and to keep accounts of expenses.44 Documents were copied
by notaries for proctors to take with them; Alexander of Pershore was paid 30s for
the work of a notary.45 Hanapers were bought for carrying letters,46 and messen
gers were a constant and frequent, but essential, expense. They were paid both on
leaving and on arrival. A messenger sent to the abbot and convent of Westminster,
when the party had just crossed the Alps and were at Chatillon, was given 3d ster
ling.47 When Master Adam Sortes of Evesham arrived in Rome, he appears to
have brought some further documentation with him, possibly in response to a
message from Thomas.
The biggest need of money, of course, was to fight the case. Here there were
three kinds of expense: firstly, gifts presented before the case began; secondly,
the costs of the case: fees and offerings; and thirdly, gifts which were expected
on the completion of the case, at least from the victor. Medieval administration,
courts and diplomacy did not work without gifts. Thomas offered the expected
silver cup value £4 (6 marks) to the pope soon after his arrival.48 This cup may
or may not have been English in origin, and its value — if compared with other
expenditure of this kind — suggests that it served perhaps more as a token gift,
introducing the petitioner to the pope as it were rather than purchasing an ad
vantage, although it followed the grant of a letter favourable to Evesham. When
the abbot and Thomas visited the pope together, they took with them a gift worth
£100 sterling for the pope; for the cardinals and the curia they had gifts worth
100 marks, but these were refused until the prospective recipients were assured
that no case was already pending in the curia.
The main expenses were the fees of the legal counsel and representatives. Thomas,
following a period of study at Bologna, had engaged the best lawyers available.
43
WAM 9243 m.1.
44
LPL, MS 242, fols 7v, 194v; and WAM 9249 mm. 1 and 3.
45
WAM 24256.
46
At a cost of 15d; LPL, MS 242, fol. 49.
47
WAM 9244. WAM 24256 records 21s being paid to a messenger going to the Roman
curia.
48
p. 267 (no. 264).
120 Jane Sayers
Foremost amongst them was Merandus of Spain, an expert in both laws, ‘second
to none’, who had represented the king and the bishops of England against the
monks of Canterbury over the right to elect an archbishop. Secondly, he had
enlisted the services of Bertrand of Pavia, a civil lawyer, described by Thomas as
inferior only to the great Bolognese doctor and civilian, Azo, whom the monks
of Canterbury had brought to Rome on their behalf. Finally two men skilled in
practice, an advocate in the curia and an official, a clerk of the chancellor, who
knew ‘the secrets of the curia’, were hired. The first two who had figured in the
Canterbury cause célèbre, on opposing sides, could clearly command high fees.
Topping them all was Master Merandus of Spain who received 50s provesini for
each day the consistory deliberated. Bertrand of Pavia, the civilian, and Master
Peter of Benevento, the advocate, each received 40s per day, and the clerk of the
chancellor, Master William, twenty.49 The bond for 400 marks (£266 1s 4d)
which Thomas had would not have gone far.50 Furthermore, the officials of the
papal chancery, the vice-chancellor, the auditors, and the scribes would expect
payments. We sometimes have note of these disbursements. The papal vice-
chancellor, Richard de Senes, received a salary from Christ Church of £10 at
the end of the thirteenth century, and the same annual payment was made by
Archbishop Pecham to the vice-chancellor, Peter de Petris Grossis in 1285–86.51
A papal scribe, Master Jordan, received 7 marks from Christ Church in 1228.52
Thomas’s personal problems with the abbot, whom he thought sought to kill
him, cost him further: money to an ‘advocate’ in the curia whom he had known
previously, to be used to free him, should the abbot imprison him, as he feared,
and 40s of silver coin from his pocket to the abbot’s chaplain, Henry de Coleham,
in case the abbot seized it from Thomas and prevented his leaving the house to
pursue the case.53
49
pp. 283–87 (no. 285). For the various currencies and the exchange rates, see Spufford, Handbook
of Medieval Exchange, and for the money of Provins, pp. 164–67.
50
pp. 274–75 (no. 273).
51
LPL, MS 242, fol. 201; Registrum epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham, ed. by Martin, iii,
873. For the two vice-chancellors, see Nüske, ‘Untersuchungen über das Personal’, pp. 70–73,
77–82.
52
Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives, MA 1, fol. 72.
53
p. 269 (no. 266), and p. 273 (no. 269).
Once at the papal court, money was needed for framing or drawing up petitions
for the bulls, the letters of indulgence, and the letters of grace; for transcribing
copies of them; and for the engrossments, and the silk laces etc.54 Expenses of this
kind would have had to be borne by Thomas.
Doorkeepers were important. It was usual to give a gratuity to the papal door
keepers, or ushers. Thomas tipped them, and it paid off, as they placed him in a
better position than his opponent.55 The power of the doorkeeper is illustrated in
a report of 1288, when Master Reginald of St Albans, the proctor of Westminster,
protested that when he tried to see the pope, the hostiarius, Bartucius de Tuderto,
had refused him saying that it was not a convenient time for him to go in.56 Perhaps
the tip was lacking or not big enough, or perhaps the proctor’s empowerment
did not satisfy the doorkeeper. Ten years later the papal hostiarius received 12 turo
nenses by way of a Christmas present from Westminster.57
Thomas’s fears and gloom reached a peak during the final term of his stay in
Rome. He had to conduct the second part of the case (about the Vale) himself,
because his money had not come through. He feared imprisonment for debt and
played upon his own fears by recalling that the monk, Ermefredus, who had set
out for Rome on behalf of the convent at the time of the first appeal, had died in a
debtors’ gaol, and that his companion had died soon after he got back to England,
worn out by his labours.58 By the time the Vale case had reached as far as it could
go in Rome, the Evesham party were ordered to leave as they were now heavily in
debt. Master Adam Sortes, who seems to have had some of the documents used
in the exemption suit (the second diploma of Pope Constantine and a bull of
Pope Alexander III — he had brought them in response to a call — was urged by
Thomas to depart speedily with the mandate enforcing sentence. All the other
documents, so far acquired, were held in pawn by the Roman bankers as security
for the debt of 400 marks which was owing to them. Thomas’s colleague, the
54
WAM 9243 mm. 2, 3.
55
p. 313 (no. 314).
56
WAM 9517.
57
WAM 9243 m. 2: there is a marginal note that at Rome the tur. was worth 2s 10d provesini.
For the money of Tours see Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange, pp. 172–89, especially
p. 188. The Westminster accounts (9243, 9244) give details of the varied currencies with which
the proctors had to deal. 9243 records that at Rieti the tur. was worth 3s 4d Ravenens’ (of
Ravenna) and that ‘here the money was changed by order of the pope and the turr. is worth 5s’.
58
p. 229 (no. 226), pp. 345–47 (no. 358).
122 Jane Sayers
abbot’s clerk, who was ill, left with the merchants who were travelling to England
to collect the money owed to them. Thomas left soon after; he should have visited
the pope and as the victor offered the customary gifts on leaving Rome, in which
case he would have obtained the renewal of all Evesham’s privileges, but he had no
money, so he obtained the pope’s blessing by receiving it as one of the common
crowd of pilgrims and others.59
For many the experience of Rome was one fraught with the likelihood of
illness. Epidemics were common. The malaria that had controlled imperial
armies, in a far more effective way than any other power was able, was endemic
until the draining of the marshes. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had not
reckoned with this in August 1167: it virtually wiped out his army, nor did he
himself escape unscathed.60 In the summer months the papal court withdrew to
the Campagna but not all were so lucky. Many petitioners had to put up with the
unhealthiness of Rome. The Christ Church, Canterbury, obituary makes gloomy
reading between 7 and 18 July 1188, when five monks — Hamo of Thanet,
Edmund, Humfrey, Simon, and Ralph, the almoner — died of a pestilence: but
their deaths were seen by at least one observer as a kind of martyrdom in the case
against the archbishop.61 They were shortly to be followed to the grave by their
prior, Honorius.62 Dysentery was also a killer. One young monk at Rome in 1208,
in a case remarkably similar to the Evesham one, ate too many figs and grapes,
contracted dysentery, died, and was buried in the Lateran cloister.63 Thomas and
his party all seem to have been ill by the time that they wished to leave Rome.
Master Thomas Northwick, one of his companions and a fellow monk, was a doc
tor, perhaps chosen to be one of the Roman party for that reason. Writing home
from S. Martino in Monte in Viterbo in August 1293, Geoffrey of Romney, monk
and proctor of Christ Church, Canterbury, reported that they had had to consult
a doctor; he also requested more money, in credit through Italian bankers.64 We
have already seen that money was paid out at Vercelli for medicines for Brother
59
p. 373 (no. 386), pp. 375–77 (nos 389–90).
60
Munz, Frederick Barbarossa, p. 252.
61
Epistolae Cantuarienses, ed. by Stubbs, pp. 254–55.
62
Gervase of Canterbury, The Historical Works, ed. by Stubbs, i, p. 429; Greatrex, A
Biographical Register, p. 203.
63
Willelmi chronica Andrensis, ed. by Haller, p. 743.
64
CCA Ch. Ant. S 380, printed by Rose Graham in Registrum Roberti Winchelsey, ed. by
Graham, ii, pp. 1282–84.
Reginald of Hadham, and, indeed, after three weeks in Rome he returned to

England. On the journey out, one of the boys travelling with them had fallen ill
at Vevey and was sent home. When Hadham himself returned, his account ren
dered included a payment of 2s 6d for the handing over of a boy at Fontenay.65
Some monks attributed later ill-health to service at the papal court.
The Business before the Papal Court

Proctors when appointed were usually empowered to petition for all kinds of
documents, mandates, and privileges, and to object to any document granted to
another party that might adversely affect their clients. Thomas’s account contains
one of the earliest mentions of this procedure in the audience of contradicted
letters. Besides the cases concerning status and exemption, which occupied some
of the best brains in the great Benedictine houses, much of the business of the
communities concerned rights over churches. Some of the Westminster churches
— Kelvedon in Essex, Longdon in Worcestershire, and Morden in Surrey —
provide one of the reasons for the presence in Rome of the Westminster proctors
at the end of the century. While on such a tour of duty individual monks might well
petition for a personal indult or dispensation of some kind. Brother Alexander of
Pershore, feathering his own nest, took the opportunity to acquire an indulgence
for those visiting the abbey at Westminster and offering prayers for him and for
his soul after death, and for the soul of Thomas de Lenton, a fellow monk who had
recently died.66 Abbot Norreis, supposedly at the curia to support the claim of
his abbey as exempt from the jurisdiction of the diocesan, concerned himself,
according to Thomas, with petitioning for papal letters enabling him to correct
his monks without appeal being allowed, and also for a licence to expel two of
them whom he perceived as troublemakers.67
Elections were another reason for a visit to the Holy See. Papal confirmation
was required and enquiries would be made by the pope into the procedure of the
election and the person of the elect. Evesham monks went to get confirmation of
their abbots in 1229 (Thomas of Marlborough), 1243 (Thomas of Gloucester),
1256 (Henry of Worcester), 1264 (William de Maleburge), and 1283 ( John
65
WAM 9245.
66
WAM Muniment Book ii (Domesday), fol. 403r–03v, granted on 18 July 1298.
67
p. 271 (no. 268). Earlier on, he had petitioned for, and obtained, from Pope Celestine III, the
right to the use of full pontificals; pp. 331–33 (nos 339–41).
124 Jane Sayers
de Brochampton).68 Brother Alexander of Pershore had been sent to the papal

curia some fourteen years before his trip in 1298–99 in connection with the con
firmation of Abbot Wenlok’s election.69 Such visits in connection with elections
were extremely expensive. The expenses of Winchelsey’s election at Canterbury
cost Christ Church £3000 at the end of the century.70
Absolution from the pope was required in serious cases of violence and crimi
nal behaviour. Here the papal penitentiary was important. At about the time of
Thomas’s stay in Rome, a monk of Evesham came for absolution. This monk, who
appears in the papal register simply as A., had made his profession at St Osyth,
an Augustinian abbey in Essex, but he had not been happy there, so he had left
the monastery without permission, taking some money which he had stolen with
him. He had sought and been permitted to enter the abbey at Evesham. On his
confession, the abbot of Evesham (Roger Norreis) asked the abbot of St Osyth to
absolve him from the sentence of excommunication that he had incurred, but this
was refused. Nevertheless Abbot Norreis had then admitted him and had him
ordained to the priesthood, but had later decided to suspend him. When a better
relationship developed between the abbot and A., the abbot decided to send him
to Rome for absolution. This he received from the penitentiary, John of Salerno,
cardinal priest of S. Stefano in Monte Celio, but when he finally returned with
the letter of dispensation the abbot refused to admit him as a monk. The papal
mandate of 28 February 1207 ordered the abbot to receive him.71 The outcome
is unknown.
68
pp. 499–501 (nos 532–33); Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, i, nos, 334, 357 (Calendar
of Entries in the Papal Registers, ed. by Bliss, pp. 203 and 204); Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed.
by de La Roncière and others, i, no. 1294 (Calendar of Entries, i, 330); Les Registres d’Urbain IV,
ed. by Dorez, Guiraud, and Clémencet, i, no. 409 (Calendar of Entries, i p. 392); Les Registres de
Clément IV, ed. by Jordan, no. 1078 (Calendar of Entries, i, 420); Les Registres de Martin IV, ed.
by Soehnée and others, nos 250 and 345 (Calendar of Entries, i, 467 and 468).
69
WAM 9241.
70
LPL, MS 242, fol. 168v.
71
Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. by Murauer and Sommerlechner, x, pp. 3–4. On the
penitentiary, Cardinal John of Salerno, see Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg, pp. 107–09;
and Epistolae Cantuarienses, ed. by Stubbs, p. 398 no. 440, his absolution of two monks of
Christ Church who had been excommunicated by the archbishop after they had appealed to
the pope.
Postscript
Thomas visited Rome again at the time of the Fourth Lateran Council, together
with the new abbot, Randulf, the successor to Norreis who had finally been deposed
in 1213. They took with them the newly drawn-up ‘Customs of the House’ for papal
confirmation.72 The abbot attended the council and so presumably did Thomas.
Thomas died in 1236: he had been elected prior in 1218 and abbot in 1229. There
is no record that he went again to the papal court, two monks being sent to get his
confirmation, the abbot not wishing to travel abroad again. He was still in debt to
the Roman creditors to the tune of at least 300 marks. He was also by now infirm,
for no doubt time had taken its toll and in answer to a petition from Thomas, the
pope in July 1236 ordered the bishop of Coventry to allow Thomas to resign if
he found himself unable to share the refectory and the dormitory.73 Thomas died
on the following 12 September, possibly before arrangements had been made for
the election of a successor. As for Abbot Norreis, after being given the priorate of
Penwortham (Lancs.) so that he should not become a wandering monk, he was
deposed in April 1214 because of his extreme behaviour. He set out for Rome
once more and tried his influence in various quarters, this time without success.
Wherever the papal court was in the thirteenth century, the Benedictine peti
tioners were likely to be there, and often in considerable numbers. Sixteen monks
of Christ Church, Canterbury were summoned to Rome in 1206 concerning the
election and there were likely to be others in excess of this number on various
types of business for the convent or the prior. The abbey of Evesham, estimated as
having thirty to forty monks in 1209, was never such a large community as Christ
Church, Canterbury, or Westminster, but circumstances drew its monks and its
abbots to the papal curia. For Evesham, apart from Thomas of Marlborough’s
unique account of his visit, and entries in the papal registers, we do not have the
richness of the surviving archives of Canterbury and Westminster. Nor has the
monastic church at Evesham survived. The Cosmati work at Canterbury and
at Westminster, most spectacularly Abbot Ware’s great pavement in the abbey’s
sanctuary, provides visual witness of those houses’ contacts with Rome in the
thirteenth century.74 Perhaps we may imagine that Cosmati work formed part
72
pp. 385–413 (nos 398–431) and p. 489 (no. 521).
73
Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, vol. ii, nos 3215, 3257 (Calendar of Entries in
the Papal Registers, ed. by Bliss, pp. 154, 156).
74
See, in general, Hutton, The Cosmati with excellent plates; Glass, Studies on Cosmatesque
Pavements; Pajares-Ayuela, Cosmatesque Ornament, trans. by Alvarez; Claussen, Magistri
126 Jane Sayers
of Thomas of Marlborough’s building operations as prior and as abbot — in

particular in his reconstruction of the tomb of Evesham’s saint, Ecgwin, and its
surrounds.75 Be that as it may, it is Thomas’s written account that is the real jewel
of the surviving evidence.
Doctissimi Romani; Greenhalgh, The Survival of Roman Antiquities, esp. pp. 122, 126, 129;
Lehmann-Brockhaus, Lateinische Schriftquellen; Grant and Mortimer, Westminster Abbey puts
the Westminster pavements in a much wider context than the title implies.
75
pp. 493–507 (nos 524–41).
Works Cited
Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ee.5.31

Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Chartae Antiquae, P58
—— , P59
—— , S380
Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives, MA 1
London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.xxiv
London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 242
London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 9241
—— , 9243
—— , 9244
—— , 9245
—— , 9249
—— , 9256C
—— , 9517
—— , 24256
—— , 31723
London, Westminster Abbey Muniment Book II
Primary Sources
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal
Letters, i: a.d. 1198–1304, ed. by W. H. Bliss (London: HMSO, 1893)
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, in Papal
Letters, ed. by W. H. Bliss (London: HMSO, 1893) i: ad 1198–1304
Documents Illustrating the Rule of Walter de Wenlok, Abbot of Westminster, 1283–1307,
ed. by Barbara F. Harvey, Camden, 4th ser., 2 (London: Royal Historical Society,
1965)
Epistolae Cantuarienses: The Letters of the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury,
from a.d. 1187 to a.d. 1199, ed. by William Stubbs, Chronicles and Memorials of the
Reign of Richard I, 2 (London: Longman, 1865)
Gervase of Canterbury, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. by William
Stubbs, Rolls Series, 73 (London: Longman, 1879–80)
Master Gregorius, The Marvels of Rome, trans. by John Osborne, Medieval Sources in
Translation, 31 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987)
Die Register Innocenz’ III., ed. by Rainer Murauer and Andrea Sommerlechner (Wien:
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1964–), x (2007)
128 Jane Sayers
Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by C. Bourel de La Roncière and others, Bibliothèque

des Ecoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 15, 3 vols (Paris: Fontemoing,
1902–53)
Les Registres de Clément IV, ed. by Édouard Jordan, Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises
d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 11 (Paris: Thorin, 1893–1945)
Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Lucien Auvray, Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises
d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 9, 4 vols (Paris: Fontemoing, 1896–1955)
Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Élie Berger, Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises d’Athènes
et de Rome, 2nd ser., 1, 4 vols (Paris: Thorin, 1884–1921)
Les Registres de Martin IV, ed. by F. Soehnée and others, Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises
d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 16 (Paris: Fontemoing, 1901–35)
Les Registres d’Urbain IV, ed. by Léon Dorez, Jean Guiraud, and Suzanne Clémencet,
Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 13, 4 vols (Paris:
Fontemoing, 1892–1958)
Registrum epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, ed. by Charles
Trice Martin, Rolls Series, 77, 3 vols (London: Longman, 1882–85)
Registrum Roberti Winchelsey, Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, A.D. 1294–1313, ed. by Rose
Graham, Canterbury and York Society, 52, 2 vols ([London]: Oxford University
Press, 1952–56)
Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. and trans. by Jane Sayers
and Leslie Watkiss, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003)
Willelmi chronica Andrensis, ed. by J. Haller, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica:
Scriptores, xxiv (1879), pp. 684–773
Secondary Studies
Claussen, P. C., Magistri Doctissimi Romani: die römischen Marmorkünstler des Mittel
alters, Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte und christlichen Archäologie, 14 (Stuttgart:
Steiner, 1987)
Glass, Dorothy, Studies on Cosmatesque Pavements, British Archaeological Reports, Inter
national Series, 82 (Oxford: B.A.R., 1980)
Graham, Rose, ‘Archbishop Winchelsey: From his Election to his Enthronement’, Church
Quarterly Review, 148 (1949), 161–75
Grant, Lindy, and Richard Mortimer, eds, Westminster Abbey: The Cosmati Pavements,
Courtauld Research Papers, 3 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)
Greatrex, Joan, A Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories in the Province of
Canterbury c. 1066 to 1540 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
Greenhalgh, Michael, The Survival of Roman Antiquities in the Middle Ages (London:
Duckworth, 1989)
Harvey, Margaret, England, Rome and the Papacy, 1417–1464 (Manchester: Manchester
Herde, Peter, Beiträge zum päpstlichen Kanzlei- und Urkundenwesen im dreizehnten
Jahrhundert, 2nd edn (Kallmünz: Lassleben, 1967)
Hutton, Edward, The Cosmati: The Roman Marble Workers of the xiith and xiiith Centuries
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950)
Landon, L. S., The Itinerary of King Richard I, Pipe Roll Society, n.s., 13 (London: HMSO,
1935)
Lehmann-Brockhaus, O., Lateinische Schriftquellen zur Kunst in England, Wales und Schott
land, vom Jahre 901 bis zum Jahre 1307, 5 vols (München: Prestel, 1955–60)
Logan, F. Donald, Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c. 1240–1540 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Maleczek, Werner, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216 (Wien: Österreische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1984)
Munz, Peter, Frederick Barbarossa (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1969)
Nardella, Cristina, Il fascino di Roma nel Medioevo (Roma: Viella, 1997)
Nüske, Gerd Friedrich, ‘Untersuchungen über das Personal der päpstlichen Kanzlei
1254–1304’, Archiv für Diplomatik, 20 (1974), 39–431
Pajares-Ayuela, Paloma, Cosmatesque Ornament, trans. by Maria Fleming Alvarez (Lon
don: Thames and Hudson, 2002)
Sayers, Jane, ‘Canterbury Proctors at the Court of Audientia Litterarum Contradictarum’,
Traditio, 22 (1962), 311–45 (repr. in Jane Sayers, Law and Records in Medieval Eng
land (London: Variorum, 1988), no. iii)
—— , The Making of the Medieval History of Evesham Abbey, Worcestershire Historical
Society Occasional Papers, 10 (2004)
——, ‘Roger Norreis’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H. C. G.
Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2004)
—— , ‘Thomas of Marlborough’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by
H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2004)
Spufford, Peter, Handbook of Medieval Exchange, Royal Historical Society Guides and
Handbooks, 13 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986)
The Monastic Ideal of Discipline
and the Making of Clerical Rules
in Late Medieval Castile
Susana Guijarro
A t the present time, studies on social unrest and the construction of social
discipline through the regulation of individual and collective behaviour are
interested in knowing the places, institutions, and sectors in society where this
phenomenon took place.1 Cathedral chapters are a good laboratory for testing
1
This paper has been written in the framework of the research project HAR2010-19636
(funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) entitled: Culture, Power and Social
Networks in Medieval Castile: The Bishop Luis de Acuña and the Cathedral Clergy of Burgos
(1456–1495).

Medievalists concerned with these topics have found a great deal of inspiration in the con
tributions of early modern scholars who have explored the formation of methods of social
control and social discipline. See for example the classic work of Delumeau, Le Peur en Occident,
or the later studies collected in Roodenburg and Spiernburg, Social Control in Europe. An
enlightening overview of the social unrest and the method of social control in late Medieval
Spain was offered the same year in Conflictos sociales, políticos e intelectuales.
Susana Guijarro is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cantabria

(Spain). She did postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan (1994–95) funded
by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. Her
research has focused on medieval education (cathedral schools, universities, and libraries),
ecclesiastical careers, and religiosity in Medieval Castile.
Abstract: Cathedral chapters are a good laboratory for testing the role played by rules and moral
customs inspired by the monastic ideal of discipline in the creation of models of social conduct.
This paper is intended to analyse the rules promulgated by the Burgos Cathedral Chapter and
the bishop in order to regulate good relations within the institution and shape the behaviour
of clergy and faithful alike. It argues that these regulations, based on the model of monastic
discipline, clashed with the resistance of clerics immersed in the conflicts of daily life and tied
to the patronage and kinship relationship typical of late medieval society in Castile. A gap was
opened between the monastic ideal of discipline which aimed to achieve spiritual perfection
through control over the soul and the body, and the practical application of this ideal in the
secular world by clergymen.
Keywords: Monastic discipline, clerical rules, penitence, punishment, cathedral chapters,
medieval Spanish clergymen, late medieval ecclesiastical reforms

132 Susana Guijarro
the role played by rules and moral customs inspired by the monastic ideal of dis
cipline in the creation of models of social conduct. Together with the bishop, the
cathedral clergy had to keep watch over the attitudes and behaviour of the parish
clerics and the diocese faithful.
In this paper, I aim to analyse the rules promulgated by the Burgos Cathedral
Chapter in the fifteenth century, and the disciplinary and legal practices followed
by this chapter and the bishop in order to regulate good relations within the
institution and shape the behaviour of clergy and faithful. My argument is that
these rules and regulations evoked an ideal of behaviour based on the model of
monastic discipline. Control over the body and soul were the pillars of life in the
cloisters and the only way to spiritual perfection. However, the model of monastic
discipline clashed with the resistance of clerics immersed in the conflicts of daily
life, and tied to the patronage and kinship relationship typical of late medieval
society in Castile. The cathedral chapter appealed to the peaceful coexistence
among its members, and exercised a protective power to achieve that peace. On
one hand, it established reconciliation mechanisms and rituals like the ‘mass of
peace’.2 On the other hand, it founded a system of vigilance linked with system
atic information gathering about the behaviour of cathedral and diocesan clerics
that revealed continuous misdeeds and crimes. At the same time, the relapse of
the same type of misbehavior among the clergy of Burgos during the fifteenth
century demonstrated the limited effectiveness of this system.3 The legal proce
dure of inquisitio (interrogation of witnesses and offenders in order to obtain
information) was placed at the service of the clerical version of discipline and
applied to both ecclesiastical and lay people. From the thirteenth century onwards,
the doctrine of penitence and the procedural system imposed by canon law had
contributed to fostering culpability and contrition. At the same time, the legal
practice of inquisitio was intended to prevent, to correct, and to act as a medicine.4
2
Tom B. Lambert has pointed out that the concept of peace is closely linked to the
mechanisms of a protective power, especially when this is directed against violence; see Lambert,
‘Some Approaches to Peace and Protection’, p. 3. The rite of the ‘mass of peace’ sought both the
reconciliation of the members in conflict and the symbolic compensation for the damage caused
to the image of the cathedral chapter. It was usual for part of the money collected from fines was
used to pay for the mass.
3
This system to control discipline in Burgos Cathedral Chapter and its diocese was
modelled on the establishment of the inquisitio in common law, as the first step in opening a
legal process during the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), cf. Kelly, ‘Inquisitorial Due Process and
the Status of Secret Crimes’, esp. pp. 407–13.
4
Rousseaux, ‘Quelques hypothèses de recherche’, pp. 497–525.
the monastic ideal of discipline 133
Although we admit, following Foucault, that all discourse is an exercise of power,

the fact is that ecclesiastical authority and its official discourse never succeeded
in imposing a code of behaviour in an absolute way, not even among the clergy.5
In other words, a gap was opened between the monastic ideal of discipline and
its practical application in the secular world by clergymen. While monastic or
ders were reformed according to the original principles of their foundations in
late medieval Castile (observancia, that is, a strict fidelity to the rules of poverty,
chastity, and obedience), attempts to regenerate the life of the secular clergy did
not achieve the same degree of success.6 The case of the Burgos clergy is an appro
priate example of this and it is not the only one in Castile.
Traces of a direct influence of monasticism over the Spanish cathedral chapters
can be found from the early Middle Ages. After the Muslim invasion of the Iberian
Peninsula in the eighth century the diocesan structure of the Visigothic period
was modified. During the process of recovering territories under Muslim control
by the Christian kings, some episcopal sees were restored to their original location,
others were moved to a different place (as in the case of Burgos), and there were
even new foundations. However, life in these episcopal sees was unstable and most
of them did not achieve definitive restoration until the twelfth century.7 Due to
this instability, most cathedral chapters adopted a communal life according to
Visig othic rules (regula Sancti Isidori and others) until their secularization in
the twelfth century. Abbots and monks were very influential in the composition
of cathedral chapters. In 1055 the Council of Coyanza (Kingdom of León)
conferred three important tasks on the abbots: to establish canon rules for the
communal life in the churches, to supervise the teaching of clergy and to advise
the bishop.8 After the conquest of Toledo, capital of the Old Visigothic kingdom,
King Alfonso VI of Castile (1065–1109), following the policy of alliance with
the order of Cluny initiated by his two predecessors on the throne, appointed
the Cluniac monk, Bernando de Agen, as archbishop of Toledo. A community of
Cluniac monks took part in the cathedral chapter until the mid-twelfth century
5
Michel de Certeau showed how power never totally succeeded in dominating the social
sphere. See de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Rendall, p. 48.
6
Oro, ‘Conventualismo y observancia’, pp. 211–350.
7
A summary of the political evolution of Iberian Kingdoms can be found in Reilly, The
Medieval Spains, pp. 90–159.
8
Council of Coyanza, year 1055, García Gallo, ‘El concilio de Coyanza’. Castile and León
were separate kingdoms, except during the period from 1037 to 1157, before their definitive
union in 1230 under the leadership of King Fernando III (1217–52).
134 Susana Guijarro
and some of them became bishops of Castilian dioceses (e.g. Palencia, Segovia,

Sigüenza).9
From the thirteenth century onwards, Dominican and Franciscan friars were
appointed for some episcopal sees in Castile. However, the main influence of
the new monasticism over cathedral and diocesan clergy would come through
the preaching and the teaching of theology in their own schools and in the uni
versities. The emphasis placed by the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council on
moral theology and penitence reflected the significance of mendicant influence.
The Castilian councils of Valladolid (1228 and 1322) received the Lateran canons.10
Those canons concerning the basis of clerical discipline were repeated in all the
synods that took place in late medieval Castile. Synods stressed time and time
again the need for exemplary priests and focused on misdeeds and crimes related
to physical and verbal violence, sexuality, marriage, simony, and compliance
with sacramental practices.11 These synods aimed to create a fixed code of moral
behaviour for both clergy and laity, a moral code ultimately inspired by the
monastic ideal of discipline that could ensure social order.
The city of Burgos, located in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, was an im
portant commercial centre and the political capital of the Crown of Castile in
the late Middle Ages. Located on the route for traders and pilgrims on the Way
of St James, the construction of its Gothic cathedral began in the thirteenth
century and membership of its cathedral chapter became a prestigious step in
the professional careers of high Castilian clergy. The bishop of Burgos and the
cathedral chapter exercised jurisdiction over a large diocese with six archdeacons
and their corresponding archpriests in the fifteenth century.12 This diocese was
exempt from the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Toledo and dealt directly with
the Holy See in Rome from the eleventh century onwards.13
9
See Bishko, ‘Fernando I and the Origins of the Leonese-Castilian Alliance with Cluny’,
pp. 60–64. Reglero de la Fuente, ‘Los obispos y sus sedes’, pp. 195–288.
10
Colección de Cánones y de todos los concilios, ed. by Tejada y Ramiro. Similar canons had
being promulgated in the earlier España sagrada, ed. by Flórez and others.
11
All the synods celebrated in the dioceses of Castile and Aragón during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries legislated canons related to these issues. See the index of the synods
published in Synodicon hispanum, ed. by García y García and Cantelar).
12
Rilova Pérez, La ciudad y la Iglesia, pp. 304–13.
13
Martínez Diez, ‘La Iglesia de Burgos’, p. 45.
Creating and Breaking the Rules: Ecclesiastical Justice and Discipline

Unfortunately, few studies have been made of ecclesiastical courts in medieval
Castile before the sixteenth century. Diocese and cathedral archives conserve few
trial documents. Many of the legal actions opened by the episcopal court or the
chapter court must have been decided orally. We possess fragmentary information
about trials as they were written down in minutes books of the chapter meetings
(1400–99).14 In the late Middle Ages, the right of visiting and correcting members
of the chapter, attributed to the bishop, was replaced by the jurisdiction that the
cathedral chapter exercised over the churches in the city and the diocese under its
dominion. This situation was the cause of frequent conflicts of jurisdiction between
the bishop and the chapter. However, in practice, the bishops of Burgos succeeded
in exercising some influence over the legal actions taken by the cathedral chapter.
The bishop’s justice officers (the vicar general and vicar) generally belonged to the
chapter. In some cases, they held ties of blood or artificial kinship (e.g. a servant)
with the bishop. Some cases were outside the officials’ jurisdiction and were re
served for the bishop: granting absolution in the confession in the case of murder,
injuries to a priest, illicit relations with a woman, abortion, sin contra natura
(‘against natural law’), misuse of sacred objects, simony (the practice of selling or
buying ecclesiastical property and offices), giving mass whilst excommunicated,
perjury, forgery, and burning down churches.15
In turn, the cathedral chapter court comprised judges named periodically from
among the chapter’s members. The ‘judges of the four Ember days’ and the ‘judges
of silence in the choir’ contributed towards regulating the behaviour and deeds of
its clerics through fines, spiritual punishments (e.g. excommunication), and even
the loss of ecclesiastical benefice.16 The institution defended its ancient tradition
of autonomy against the attempts of some bishops to intervene in the control of
chapter discipline. The cathedral chapter did not write down the rules governing
chapter discipline until the mid-fifteenth century. In 1452, three versions of its
rules were drafted. The first two were given a title with moral content (Estatuto
14
A rigorous explanation of the organization of the episcopal court and Burgos Chapter
Court can be found in Ramos Merino, Iglesia y notariado, pp. 107–58.
15
It was established by Bishop Juan Cabeza de Vaca in the synod of 1412. See Synodicon
hispanum, ed. by García y García and Cantelar, vii: Burgos y Palencia, 188. 2.
16
Cathedral Archive of Burgos (hereinafter CAB), 16 February 1461, Register (of Chapter
Acts) 16, fols 227r–29r. Four judges were named (four times a year) from among the canons and
dignitaries. These judges were responsible for persecuting and judging the misdemeanours and
crimes committed inside and outside the cathedral.
136 Susana Guijarro
de injurias, that is ‘Statute of Offence’ and Estatuto de corrección y punición, that

is ‘Statute of Correction and Punishment’), whereas the third used the legal
term ‘crime’.17 These names express the diffuse boundary between sin and crime
in ecclesiastic language. All crime was ultimately a sin, but the punishment was
not confined to the spiritual. The cases I have studied show that most of the
punishments determined by the chapter judges were pecuniary, while jail was
sometimes used as a preventive measure before the trial was held.
A systematic examination of the fifteenth-century registers of chapter acts of
Burgos Cathedral Archive has revealed 282 cases of misdemeanours and crimes
committed by clergy and laymen in the diocese between 1418 and 1499. It
should be stressed that 140 members of the cathedral clergy (some in more than
one case), 110 clerics from the Burgos diocese and 145 lay men and women were
involved in these legal proceedings. Out of all the crimes listed in Table 1, for
this paper I have selected the cases connected with behaviour (words and deeds),
physical appearance, sexuality, and the marriage of clerics or laity.
Table 1. Types of Misdemeanours and Crimes

Registered by the Cathedral Chapter of Burgos (1418–99)
Misdemeanours and Crimes No. of Cases

Offence 45
Sacrilege 48
Excess 35
Defamation 7
Simony 1
Theft 6
Others 131
Not indicated 9
TOTAL 282
17
CAB, 1 December 1438, Register 10, fol. 120v: in a visit by the vicar of the bishop, the
chapter argued that it had been exempt from jurisdiction since time immemorial. CAB, ‘Statute
of Correction and Punishment’, 18 December 1452, Register 13, fols 81–82.
Control and Dissemination of the Values of Monastic Discipline

among the Clergy and Laity
From Benedictine monasticism to Mendicant preachers, all the medieval religious
orders regulated life in common by stressing the harmony between the body and the
soul. The novices were trained in the restraint of their bodies and words.18 Disci
pline over these two attributes of the human being was developed by disseminating
certain values. Restraint is the value which best encapsulates the monastic ideal
of individual conduct. Moderation in the use of the word, in gestures, and sexual
continence was transferred to the rules for clerics, and even to urban and country
dwellers through the preaching of the literature of behaviour in the late Middle
Ages. In the life of the cloister, discipline means self-control, strengthening an
inner life and contrition.19 However, the spreading of this model of conduct
to society demanded an exemplary life, a difficult requirement to accomplish
for clergymen who had abandoned the communal life that monks practised.
The clergy of the diocese of Burgos and its cathedral often crossed the narrow
boundary between discipline and indiscipline. The bishop and the cathedral
chapter had to codify the values inspired by the monastic principle of restraint.
By transforming these ideals of individual and collective behaviour into rules they
created the theoretical basis for a system of persecution and punishment. The sins
of the soul and body became misdemeanours and crimes in the language of the
cathedral canons trained in canon law. A moral misdemeanour was only considered
a legal crime when it was a serious sin, an external act, or if it caused a public
scandal. It was a common phenomenon from the early medieval Church that
the doctrine of penitence and the procedural system imposed in the thirteenth
century by canon law was intensified. Nevertheless, the sources are very imprecise
when attempting to classify a misdemeanour or a crime within a certain category.
This imprecision is possibly a reflection of the difficulty in distinguishing
between what was licit and illicit in the ecclesiastical field for medieval jurists and
theologians.20 The three most common categories are offence, sacrilege, and excess
(128 cases). However, the same types of misdeeds that are grouped within these
categories sometimes appear with the exact name of the misdemeanour or crime.
These cases, called ‘Others’ in Table 1 (131 cases), have been specified in Table 2.
18
Knox, ‘Disciplina’, p. 69.
19
Romagnoli, ‘Disciplina est conversatio bona et honesta’, p. 510. See also Guyon, ‘Refléxion
sur le modèle pénal’, p. 413.
20
Peters, ‘The Reordering of Law and the Illicit’, pp. 1–14.
138 Susana Guijarro
Table 2. Misdemeanours/Crimes Classified as ‘Others’
Others (Misdemeanours and Crimes) No. of Cases

Physical or Verbal Aggression 28
Quarrelling/Fighting 32
Murder 4
Blasphemy 1
Forgery 1
Debt 11
Breach of discipline 9
Insults 15
Gambling 7
Sexuality/Marriage 19
Dress 3
TOTAL 131
In the 128 cases classified as sacrilege, offence, and excesses, the common element is
the lack of restraint in the use of language (‘excessive words’) which is sometimes
accompanied by physical violence (‘irate hands’). The term ‘excess’ is used as a
synonym for both sacrilege and offence. In contrast, the term ‘offence’ implies
verbal violence and certain gestures in public places, in the cathedral and in reli
gious processions, except for the five cases in which weapons were used. Five
accusations of insults are not classified as ‘offence’ but received the same penalties.
‘Offence’ is a sign of the toughness in everyday sociability which also reached
clerical dominion. ‘Offence’ materializing in a verbal or physical aggression was
an attack on the honour of a person, including his social status and that of his
family.21 ‘Offence’, therefore, eroded the fame of a person. Fame is a symbolic
capital that men enjoy and which comes from the opinions of others about per
sonal behaviour. Public conversation created the fame of people, a concept that
medieval canonists accepted as proof in legal practice.22 For certain words and
deeds to become offence, there must have been a premeditated intention to cause
it, and it must have happened in a public place. If the offended person was of
a superior rank, the offence went beyond personal rivalry and questioned au
21
Madero, Manos violentas, palabras vedadas, pp. 21–25.
22
Wickham, ‘Fama and the Law’, p. 17.
thority.23 In 1433, the prebendary Pedro García de Olmillos was forbidden to

enter the church for having pronounced insulting words against members of the
cathedral chapter.24 In another instance, the entry of the chaplain of the abbot of
the collegial church of Covarrubias in the episcopal palace of Burgos with armed
men to place a summons on a judge was considered an offence against episcopal
authority.25 In a further case, Burgos Cathedral Chapter felt offended by certain
misdeeds committed by citizens of Burgos and asked the municipal justice officers
to impound the properties of those citizens.26
The Monastic Use of the Word and the Discipline of Language

In the general catalogue of sins established by monastic rules, canon law, and,
in general, medieval ecclesiastic doctrine, the sins of language occupy a major
section. Early Benedictine monasticism had noted that three of these sins were
highly dangerous for monastic discipline: blasphemy, calumny, and rumours.
Monks were warned of the dangers of excessive talking in the face of the virtue
of silence.27 Without doubt, certain words spoken by members of the clergy in
the cathedral naves or in the meetings of the cathedral chapter were the cause
of frequent accusations of offence. The choir and the chapter-house were places
for the display of hierarchy where verbal violence brought latent conflicts to the
surface. In 1453, the chapter decreed that insults made in the choir would be
punished with a fine of 1000 maravedís (Iberian coin) and if the words were
accompanied by violence and weapons, the punishment would be doubled.28
Numerous cases refer to trouble derived from the relationship of authority and
obedience between greater and lesser beneficiaries of the choir: the choirboy and
chaplain Nicolás Alonso de Villegas disobeyed and pushed the choirmaster when
he reprimanded him for falling asleep.29 Another chaplain, Juan Alonso el Rojo,
had insulted the canon Juan López, the manager of the choir, with indecent words
23
Houreau-Dodinau, Dieu et le Roi, p. 11.
24
CAB, 21 July, 1433, Register 10, fol. 50v.
25
CAB, 29 February, 1418, Register 4, fol. 120v.
26
CAB, 20 July 1423, Register 6, fol. 118v: Offences are not described in the source.
27
Craun, ‘Introduction: Making Out Deviant Speech’, p. x.
28
CAB, 5 June 1453, Register 19, fol. 38v.
29
CAB, 8 October 1462, Register 17, fol. 51r.
140 Susana Guijarro
and gestures, to the astonishment of witnesses.30 Other disputes were derived

from the status of the dignitaries and canons within the chapter. The canon Gil
Gómez and the treasurer Gonzalo de Aranda exchanged insulting words after an
argument over the value of each one’s vote.31 On another occasion, the archdeacon
of Lara, Sancho de Prestines knocked the archdeacon of Treviño’s bonnet off, an
offensive action made worse by the fact that the former was accompanied by a
group of people including the bishop.32 A slap was also regarded indistinctively as
either offence or sacrilege. In the ten cases that have been studied, it was punished
severely, whether it was a simple slap or the cause of greater harm occurring in a
sacred or public place. The half prebendary Diego Martínez Delgado was sent to
jail for arguing with and slapping a canon in the cathedral.33
Offensive words and violent arguments between clerics often occurred
during the celebration of liturgical acts outside the cathedral, in cemeteries or
processions, and were equally punished. The prebendary Juan de San Juan was
punished for addressing some canons with indecent language during a funeral.34
The term insulto (insult) was only applied in fifteen cases to describe offensive or
excessive language. The common insults in medieval Castilian literature refer to
sexual morals35 (‘cuckold’ and ‘whore’) and, in general, to the standing and fame
of the person36 (‘fool’, ‘despicable’, and ‘villain’).37 Some insults, like ‘traitor’ and
‘forger’ (forger of documents), were typified as serious misdemeanours in canon
law. The archdeacon Ivo Moro, while he was with his men, attacked a cleric in
the church of San Román in Burgos by spitting out a veritable cascade of insults:
villain, whoreson, forger, and traitor.38 Naturally, behind these insults, there
30
CAB, 16 November 1463, Register 17, fol. 349r.
31
CAB, 8 February 1454, Register 14, fols 119v–21r.
32
CAB, 8 March 1462, Register 17, fols 12r–12v.
33
CAB, 12 April 1468, Register 19, fol. 38v.
34
CAB, 25 September 1478, Register 20, fol. 172r.
35
CAB, 2 June 1418, Register 4, fol. 132r: a villager from Hontañón had said these insults
to Juana Sánchez’s husband, alluding to her unfaithfulness.
36
CAB, 8 February 1454, Register 14, fols 119v–21r: in the middle of a discussion on
the value of the vote in the cathedral chapter, the canon Gil Gómez called the treasurer a fool,
disparaging his intelligence.
37
CAB, 18 December 1466, Register 17, fols 439v–40r: insulting words between the
chaplain Bartolomé Alonso who called the half prebendary Martín Sánchez despicable, over a
church benefit they both aspired to.
38
CAB, 13 August 1434, Register 9, fols 255r–55v.
were rivalries and well-matured conflicts of interest. Curiously, a single case of

blasphemy has been documented, for which chaplain Juan Alonso el Rojo was
condemned to pay 300 maravedís.39
In the second half of the fifteenth century, the crime of infamy began to be
used regularly in Castilian legal texts. Infamy was an inevitable consequence
of nearly all crimes and sins.40 In reality, the offensive language persecuted and
corrected by the cathedral chapter and the episcopal court in Burgos until that
time led to the defamation or loss of reputation of the victim. However, the
crimes of adultery, false testimony or perjury, and simony were only classed as
infamy on seven occasions.41 Most of the forty-eight misdemeanours and crimes
classed as sacrilege by the ecclesiastical officials (except for seven cases) involved
aggression and physical violence (‘irate hands’). These examples tell us about the
significance that physical violence continued to represent among the clergy of
Burgos in the fifteenth century (35.8 per cent of the total of documented crimes
and misdemeanours). The use of legal methods to shape ecclesiastical discipline
was doubtlessly efficient, but insufficient. It often came up against the resistance
caused by patronage networks among the clergy and the defence of interests. By
the fifteenth century the old monastic ideal of conduct guided by restraint was far
from being a reality among the cathedral clergy.
The Monastic Discipline of the Body and the Model of Clerical Sexuality
Since its beginnings, the Latin-Roman Church had promoted the doctrine of
clerical celibacy. In accordance with the ascetic tendency of monasticism in the
early Middle Ages, the essence of clerical celibacy was based on equating sexual
continence with purity and saintliness.42 However, until the tenth century, many
of the priests in the Western Church were married clerics.43 The Gregorian reform
in the eleventh century was a true turning point. The origins of this reform have
been found in the Cluniac revival of monasticism that preceded it. The papacy,
influenced by Cluniac emphasis on chastity, put clerical celibacy at the centre of
the reform movement as a main concern in their attempts to regulate the conduct
39
CAB, 17 August 1461, Register 17, fol. 321r.
40
Masferrer Domingo, La pena de infamia, pp. 315 and 322.
41
CAB, 17 December 1462, Register 17, fol. 66v: canon Pedro Rodríguez accused the
archdeacon of Álava Diego Fernández of defamation, as he had called him a simonist.
42
Audet, Mariage et celibat, p. 114 and Parish, Clerical Celibacy, p. 91.
43
Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 150–51.
142 Susana Guijarro
of the clergy.44 Canonists and theologians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
established legal foundations for the doctrine of clerical celibacy. The conflict
between the sacrament of marriage and ministry was resolved in the creation of a
celibate priesthood.45
The sexual morality of the clergy was still a constant in council and diocese
legislation in the late Middle Ages.46 The fight against the marriage of priests had
been won, but it had not put an end to the practice of concubinage among the
secular and regular clergy. The twenty-eight cases connected with sexual mo
rality and marriage penalized by the episcopal court and the cathedral chapter
judges in Burgos illustrate a limited persecution of clerical concubinage and a
concern with respecting canonical marriage. Two basic principles of marriage
were a concern: the honour of the wife and limitations on kinship (the limit of
kinship allowed by canonical law was the fourth degree). The registers of chapter
acts of Burgos Cathedral between 1418 and 1481 record fifteen legal accusations
against clerics for keeping concubines. This is a low number, in comparison with
the insistence in cathedral regulations on correcting the behaviour of clerics who
kept concubines publicly. Six of the women involved in these accusations were
married. In addition, six of the accused clerics were related in some way to their
concubine or to the person who made the accusation before the ecclesiastical
court. In 1418, Diego de Sahagún, squire of the bishop of Burgos, accused the
cleric Fernando Martínez of maintaining relations with his godmother who
was a married woman.47 On other occasions, the reason for the accusation was
not the practice of concubinage itself but the fact that the concubine was kin of
the accused cleric. Juan Martínez, a priest from Carrias, was accused in 1418 of
concubinage with a woman who was his relative in a fourth degree.48 Moreover,
it was not infrequent for false accusations to be derived from the existence of
a previous dispute among the parties. That same year, Pedro Gómez, a priest
from Santa María de Ezcaray, was accused of concubinage for maintaining sexual
relations with a married woman. He had had previous problems with his accuser
over a matter of theft.49
44
For an overview of this see the study of Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform.
45
Liotta, Continenza dei chierici, pp. 260–77 and 300–58.
46
Arranz Guzmán, ‘Amores desordenados’, pp. 227–62.
47
CAB, 21 July 1418, Register 4, fol. 139r: the woman was finally absolved, which indicates
that the bishop’s protection was not a total guarantee to avoid condemnation.
48
CAB, 12 April 1418, Register 4, fol. 125v.
49
CAB, 8 April 1418, Register 4, fol. 124r.
The legal decisions in the cases connected with clerical concubinage show that
it was difficult to provide proof: out of the fifteen cases that have been studied, the
accused was absolved in four of them, the sentences is unknown in another six,
and the accused was sentenced in the remaining five. The sentence might involve
the maximum spiritual penalty, excommunication. It was more serious, however,
if the clerical concubinage produced a scandal of public dimensions that harmed
the reputation of the main church in the diocese. In 1456, Canon Pedro Sánchez
de Oteo was accused of concubinage with a woman who at the same time was
the concubine of another man. This man, with the aid of other people, castrated
the canon. Private vengeance continued to be used in cases when family honour
was infringed.50 As regards the laity, the greatest concern was to ensure that the
rules of canonical marriage were complied with. A clear difference can be seen
between the importance of this question in the synods and legal records of crimes
connected with marriage. The fact that only five cases have been recorded, one of
them involving adultery, is evidence of this discrepancy.51
It is difficult to know whether the cases documented about misdemeanours
involving cathedral and diocese clergy and sexual morals represent the real di
mensions of the phenomenon or are only the tip of the iceberg. The most re
vealing evidence of the concern of ecclesiastical authorities about restricting the
cohabitation of priests and women is seen in the fines imposed on three canons
for carrying women on their mules, between 1477 and 1479.52
They are not numerous in comparison with the insistence with which the
cathedral chapter legislated the sexual morality of its members. On twelve
occasions from 1418 to 1494 it repeated the obligation of the cathedral clerics
to lead an honest life. Honesty is the concept that synthesizes the values under
pinning the discipline of the soul and the discipline of the body. The 1418
50
CAB, 30 July 1456, Register 14, fol. 223v–23v. The cathedral court sentenced the canon
to the loss of his position, but was granted a monthly pension for his keep. See Throop, ‘The
Study of Vengeance’, p. 2.
51
Breaking the kinship rules could be circumvented by obtaining a papal licence. Diego
López de Aguilar and Catalina García his wife, who had been excommunicated in 1498 because
they were related in the third degree, applied for a papal licence. Cf. CAB, 8 November 1498,
Register 32r, fol. 156v. The most extreme case that was recorded involved Canon Diego de
Mendoza who in 1457 kept a tailor’s wife in his house against her husband’s will, cf. CAB,
1 November 1457, Register 16, fol. 122v.
52
A fine of 500 maravedís for the canon Pedro de Covarrubias for carrying a woman on his
mule, cf. CAB, 16 November 1477, Register 20, fol. 112r. Canon Francisco de Torquemada was
fined 500 maravedís for the same reason. Gonzalo de Puentedura was fined 300 maravedís, cf.
CAB, 29 June 1479, Register 20, fol. 205r.
144 Susana Guijarro
regulation that forbade certain members of the chapter to keep their servant-girls
as concubines is an expression of the difficulty in reconciling celibacy with the
social structure.53 Perhaps the key to understanding the difference between the
regulations about the clerics’ sexual behaviour and the few cases that have been
recorded lies in the adjective ‘public’ qualifying the noun ‘concubinage’ in the
1455 statutes and the 1488 agreement on jurisdiction reached by the bishop and
the cathedral chapter.54 When the clerics’ sexual conduct broke the principles of
clerical discipline and became a bad example for both the laity and other clergy,
ecclesiastical justice had to act effectively. The conversion of the values of clerical
discipline into a mirror of social morals was in danger without the exemplarity of
the churchmen.
The Control of Physical Appearance: Hierarchy, Purity, and Austerity

The inner discipline governing behaviour and language had also to be shown
through the body and physical appearance. The hygiene of the body and clothing
was a symbol of purity and honour. In medieval societies, clothing and hair-styles
were used to differentiate socio-professional and economic status, in other
words, to make a person’s honour visible. In addition, the length of the hair was
linked with virility. In the second half of the fifteenth century, coinciding with
the episcopacy of Bishop Acuña and his determination to reform the customs of
the Burgos priesthood, rules about clothing and hair were repeated as many as
fourteen times between 1469 and 1486. They sometimes reflected the aspiration
of lesser chapter beneficiaries to wear items of clothing distinctive of a higher rank.
Most of the rules established by the cathedral chapter repeated the limitations
to the dress of higher-ranking clerics, who resisted the appearance of austerity
and simplicity that church and civil laws dictated. Bishop Acuña promulgated
the ‘statute of silk’, which forbade chapter members to wear coloured silk with
a satin finish, fur on the outer part of their cloak, and sleeveless garments.55 He
equally had to insist on the chapter clerics having the appropriate hair style, in
other words, a tonsure, depending on whether they belonged to the higher or
lower holy orders.
53
CAB, 10 December 1418, Register 18, fol. 462r.
54
CAB, 21 February 1455, Register 14, fol. 142r and CAB, 1488, Libro xlvi, fol. 41r.
55
CAB, 16 November 1472, Register 18, fol. 459v. Bishop Acuña instigated the Statute of
the silk in 15 January 1473, Register 18, fols 468v–80r.
Resistance to Control: Clerical Indiscipline in Public Places

To respect the monastic values of obedience, purity, moderation, and chastity
that inspired the clerical version of discipline was a real challenge for the men who
lived beyond the walls of the cloisters. The use that clergy and laity sometimes
made of the numerous written texts (statutes and didactic literature), devoted to
offering codes of conduct in the late Middle Ages, proved to be in itself a form
of resistance.56 The control over the behaviour and physical appearance of the
cathedral and diocesan clergy was not restricted to actions in religious buildings.
Public places, especially streets and taverns, were regarded as places liable to
conflicts and transgressions of clerical discipline. It was not by chance that Bishop
Cabeza de Vaca had decreed in the 1412 synod that clerics who caused scandals
in the surroundings of the cathedral would be punished with excommunication.57
In the constitutions promulgated by this bishop the previous year, the priests in
Burgos diocese were expressly forbidden to walk through the streets by day or by
night playing musical instruments and dancing. Equally, they were forbidden to
take part in activities connected with certain trades (like grape-grower, peddler,
inn-keeper, butcher, forest warden, and field warden).58 These were all trades in
which financial profits could be made.
While it proved to be impossible to eradicate clerical concubinage, to shape
the conduct of the clergy, and to avoid verbal and physical violence during the
fifteenth century, it was equally difficult to stop them gambling. The custom of
playing table games was deeply rooted among the cathedral chapter members.
They played both in their homes and in public places, especially taverns, which
represented the anti-church space in the urban environment.59 Seven members
of the Burgos Cathedral Chapter were penalized between 1430 and 1475 for
playing dice, backgammon, chess, and cards. It was a custom among the clerics to
obtain money by gambling. In the seven cases of penalties for gambling that were
recorded, it is seen that the punishment could be severe (jail, flogging, or large
fines), but aggravating circumstances had to exist for these punishments, like
56
Robert L. A. Clark has studied, for example, how women read manuals of devotion in
Clark, ‘Constructing the Female Subject’, pp. 160–82.
57
II Synod of Bishop Cabeza de Vaca, 1412, Synodicon hispanum, ed. by García y García
and Cantelar, Burgos VII, 19, [235].
58
Constitutions of Bishop Cabeza de Vaca, 1411, Synodicon hispanum, ed. by García y
García and Cantelar, Burgos VII, 19, [99]. Clerics who took part in activities connected with
these trades only once would be fined 200 maravedís.
59
Asenjo, ‘Integración y exclusión’, p. 199.
146 Susana Guijarro
insults, offence, the presence of women, or lack of a chapter licence for gambling.60
Rather than the act in itself, what decided the punishment was the context in
which the gambling took place and the possible result of public scandal.61 After
all, in late medieval merchant societies like Burgos, ecclesiastical authorities had
to attempt to reconcile personal morals with financial profit.
Conclusion
Throughout the late Middle Ages, the dioceses in the Crown of Castile passed
reforms to strengthen clerical discipline. The statutes promulgated and the legal
practices used by Burgos Cathedral Chapter in order to regulate the behaviour
of its clergy are good examples of this endeavour. The study of the misconduct
and crimes that were persecuted by the cathedral chapter and the bishop in the
fifteenth century reveals that a gap existed between the insistence in the statutes on
complying with the values of clerical discipline and the number of cases penalized
legally. The most frequent crimes contradicted the pillars of the discipline of the
soul and body: verbal and physical violence and sexual incontinence. This code
of conduct emanated from the monastic ideal of moderation in language and
corporal behaviour, which encountered resistance amongst the secular clergy.
The Burgos clerics had to reconcile their obligations derived from their social
position in family and patronage networks with clerical discipline. It was even
more difficult to achieve social acceptance of a model of sexuality that was
ultimately inspired by the monastic ideal of chastity. The episcopal and cathedral
authorities apparently responded to the resistance of clergy and laymen with
firmness through certain legal practices and a policy of surveillance of their
conduct. However, the limited effect of these policies reflect certain tolerance
as well as the precarious harmony between principle and practice. Nevertheless,
physical and verbal violence were penalized legally in many cases if it affected
the social reputation of the clergy and sacredness of religious places or in the
case of women, when they belonged to a high social rank or had ties of kinship
with clerics accused of concubinage. The examples of clerical concubinage that
reached the church tribunals had, for some reason, crossed the limits of discretion
60
The prebendary Rodrigo Gómez was condemned to ten days in jail, twenty lashes and
a fine for gambling for money and in kind, cf. CAB, 8 July 1467, Register 18, fols 37v–39r and
13 July 1467, Register 18, fol. 40r.
61
The canon Juan Sánchez de la Puebla was fined 1000 maravedís for going to gamble
despite the prohibition, and for insults, cf. CAB, 18 December 1469, Register 18, fol. 265r.
or breached the principles of canonical marriage. Gambling was regulated but was
never totally forbidden. In contrast, the rules about physical appearance (dress and
hair) did not accept any extenuating circumstances. In other words, tolerance in
cases of clerical indiscipline ended when the clerics’ behaviour possessed a public
aspect that harmed the example they were expected to set in order to uphold the
reputation of the cathedral.
148 Susana Guijarro
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Questions and Answers on the
Birgittine Rule: A Letter from
Vadstena to Syon Abbey 1421
Elin Andersson
S t Birgitta (1303–73),1 Swedish saint and foundress of the Birgittine Order,

gained renown already in her lifetime for her spiritual Revelations and her
monastic Rule, the Regula Salvatoris (henceforth RS). By the time of her death,
the Birgittine Order had begun to form with a first monastery, Vadstena, under
construction in Sweden. During the decades to follow, the order steadily grew as
new monasteries were founded throughout Europe.2
The Birgittine monastery of Syon was founded at Twickenham outside
London in 1415. The same year, a group of Swedish sisters was sent from Vadstena
to England to help out in the new community,3 and the first professions took
place in 1420.4 The following decades, the English community was sometimes
1
While working on the present article, I have received valuable suggestions and advice
from the Latin Seminar at Stockholm University, for which I am very grateful. I also want
to thank Prof. Denis Searby for correcting my English, and the anonymous peer reviewer for
comments. For a biography of Birgitta and the history of the Birgittine Order, see e.g. Morris,
St Birgitta of Sweden.
2
Nyberg, Birgittinische Klostergründungen; Olsen, ‘Arbejdspraksis og arbejdsethos’,
pp. 346–48.
3
See further below, n. 13.
4
Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, ii, p. 179.
Elin Andersson (elin.andersson@klassiska.su.se): PhD in Latin, Stockholm University.

Abstract: In 1421, the Birgittine monastery of Vadstena in Sweden wrote a letter to Syon Abbey
in England with answers to questions raised by the English daughter house. A copy of the letter
— preserved in MS A 20 at the National Archives of Sweden — discusses rules on silence and
speech, the weekly chapter, gifts, the division of power between the abbess and the confessor
general, as well as other matters. The letter also contains a discussion about St Birgitta’s
Revelations. The present article contains an edition and translation of the letter, including a
short introduction.
Keywords: Birgittine Order, monastic rules, Syon Abbey, Vadstena Abbey, Medieval Latin

152 Elin Andersson
in contact with the Swedish mother house, Vadstena, to discuss questions and
difficulties regarding the Birgittine Rule. The most extensive material in this
respect, the so-called Responsiones of 1427, consists of about one hundred and
seventy questions and answers.5 Touching upon the same subject and genre is
a letter preserved in MS A 20 (fols 164r–65v), the large copy-book of Vadstena
Abbey, today kept in the National Archives of Sweden.6 This letter — directed to
an unnamed brother — was, according to the dating at the end of the document,
written in 1421. Syon Abbey or England — or indeed Vadstena — is never
explicitly mentioned; however, it is very likely that a Vadstena brother wrote the
letter to an English colleague.7 The present article consists of an edition of the
letter with a short introduction and a translation.
Background of the Letter

The most prominent feature of Birgittine monasteries of the Middle Ages is ar
guably their structure and organization: one monastery for sixty nuns, and one
convent for thirteen priest-brothers, four deacons, and eight lay brothers. The
caput et domina8 of the monastery was the abbess, who was responsible for
temporal matters (such as books, clothes, and purchase). On the other hand, the
head of the male convent, the confessor general, had the greatest authority in
spiritual matters. The distinction and, as it were, power balance between these
two persons and duties sometimes led to discussions, even acrimonious disputes.9
5
Edited in Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses.
6
SDHK 19591. Hedlund, ‘Katillus Thorberni’, p. 70, points out that some of the letters
in the copy-book may have been drafts and never actually sent.
7
In particular, the following points suggest that Syon was the recipient: the dating of
the letter; the mention of a Swedish sister (see below in the summary of question one) and
of ‘brother K’ (see below in the summary of question seven); the fact that Syon reportedly
contacted Vadstena with questions on the Rule a couple of times before the Responsiones of
1427 (Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, p. 27); the nature of the questions, esp. those con
cerning the Additions to the Rule and the confirmation of Birgitta’s Revelations (Andersson,
Responsiones Vadstenenses, pp. 96–102, 188); and, most importantly, the mention of a version of
the Revelations divided into fourteen books, a version which probably existed only in Syon (see
below in the summary of question seven).
8
RS § 167: ‘Abbatissa…eligatur a conuentu. Que…caput et domina esse debet’.
9
See Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, pp. 3–5, and literature quoted there.
questions and answers on the birgittine rule 153
It has earlier been suggested that Thomas Fishbourne, the first confessor
general of Syon, sent the first letter with questions to Vadstena.10 Fishbourne
seems to have been personally involved in Birgittine affairs even before he took
on the duty of confessor general in the early 1420s; for example, he was present
already in 1416 when the English Birgittines discussed the interpretation of
certain passages in the Rule and subsequent legislation at a formal meeting.11
Fishbourne also travelled to Rome in the 1420s to help the order in a time of
struggle with the papacy,12 and, once in Italy, asked for counsel from famous
Italian canonists regarding certain ambiguities in the Rule.
The questions asked by Syon in the present letter give us a glimpse into daily
life in a new order and monastery. For example, the new community is concerned
about rules on silence, the chapter, and the duties of the confessor and priest
brothers. An interesting passage deals with the additions to the Rule, the
Addiciones, explained further below. In short, the letter shows once again that
Syon and Fishbourne — if he was indeed the writer of the original letter — were
engaged in interpretations of the Rule from a very early date in their history. The
letter is also interesting when put in perspective with the much more extensive
material covered in the Responsiones of 1427. Finally, the ending of the letter
briefly touches upon the different recensions of Birgitta’s books of revelations.
Summary of the Letter

The letter starts with a typical humble proclamation. The Vadstena community
has received a letter containing ‘rather reasonable questions’, and the writer will
now try to answer them as far as his ‘utterly weak mind’ permits.
The first question (1) regards a clause on silence in the so-called Addiciones
prioris Petri. One of the Vadstena sisters sent to England in 1415 to assist in the
foundation of the new community13 had apparently claimed that the confessor
may ‘in times of silence’ only speak with the abbess or important persons. To this
10
Tait, ‘The Brigittine Monastery of Syon’, p. 120.
11
Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, p. 12; see also below in the summary of question
1 (viz. Articuli Extracti).
12
In the 1420s, the pope temporarily banned the Birgittine practice of double convents;
Cnattingius, Studies in the Order of St Bridget of Sweden, pp. 115–27; on Fishbourne in Italy:
Cnattingius, Studies in the Order of St Bridget of Sweden, pp. 131–48.
13
Diarium Vadstenense, ed. by Gejrot, § 254; Gejrot, ‘Anna Karlsdotters bönbok’, pp. 41–43;
Bainbridge, ‘Who Were the English Birgittines?’, pp. 42–43.
154 Elin Andersson
statement, Vadstena answers that the confessor may indeed speak not only with
the abbess, but also with the brothers, sisters and people outside the clausura; the
addressee, then, should not bother about the quoted Addiciones passage because,
the writer says, ‘I consider that clause to be false, since it is nowhere to be found in
our old and original constitutions’.
This discussion touches upon a complicated matter. The Addiciones (or
Constituciones) Prioris Petri were composed in the 1380s by St Birgitta’s former
confessor, Petrus Olavi of Alvastra (d. 1390), and were intended as a supplement
to Birgitta’s Rule, however, the text was somewhat altered over the decades to
follow and therefore existed in different semi-official versions.14 The status of
the Addiciones or Constituciones remained undefined throughout the fifteenth
century: they were never given any formal status by a higher institution, which
made it possible to interpret the text in various ways or to attribute various grades
of importance to it. In the Responsiones of 1427, there are a couple of examples of
this tendency.15 There is also an earlier document, the so-called Articuli Extracti,
showing that the Additions/‌Constitutions were subject for debate in Syon as
early as 1416.16 In any case, the present letter shows that the Birgittines were very
aware of the fact that different versions of the Additions existed and that some
versions of the document could be disregarded.
The second question (2), the shortest in the present letter, discusses when the
abbess and confessor may speak to people from the outside world. The third question
(3) continues on the topic of silence and deals with the question of whether the
priest brothers may speak to people outside the clausura in times of silence: here,
we may note that the letter-writer quotes a very useful part of the Rule: Omnia
enim racionabiliter fieri debent — ‘Everything should be done in a reasonable
way’, a sensible statement which, of course, can be applied to almost anything.17
The fourth question (4) regards the chapter, whether it can be held in times of
silence, and how often. Regarding the first matter, Vadstena points out that since
disputes and quarrels may rise in the chapter, it is not advisable to hold them
during times of silence. As for the second point, the Birgittine Rule prescribes
14
Vitalis, ‘Addiciones Prioris Petri’, pp. 47–56; Nyberg, ‘Prior Petrus’s författarskap’,
pp. 47–54.
15
Resp. 148, 162–63 in Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, pp. 8, 180, 188.
16
Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, pp. 10–12. The Articuli Extracti are in Uppsala,
Universitetsbiblioteket, MS C 6, fols 78v–80r.
17
Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, p. 163, remarks about this quote: ‘[The Rule] reflects
Birgitta very much as the woman with an eye for practicalities and close detail, and it is
characterised by common sense and expediency; “everything should be reasonably executed”’.
a weekly chapter,18 while the Syon community apparently considered holding a

chapter daily. Vadstena considers this to be unnecessary, because it is unlikely that
so great a number of offences would occur that a daily chapter would be needed.
The fifth question (5) recalls similar issues later raised in the Responsiones of
1427.19 Syon wants to know if it goes against the Rule to receive ‘small gifts,
such as caskets, knives or the like’. Vadstena answers by giving a reference to the
Corinthians: ‘Everyone that strives for mastery should refrain from all things’.
Birgittine brothers and sisters were prohibited by the Rule to keep personal
belongings; it can also be mentioned here that the matter of ‘small gifts’ (munus
cula) was forbidden already in the Rule of St Benedict.20
The sixth question (6) raises the important question whether the confessor
may assist the abbess in secular matters and give advice regarding the affairs of the
monastery. According to the writer, this is allowed.21 An interesting metaphor is
given when the writer describes the confessor as ‘caught between the embraces
of the two sisters Rachel and Leah, [trying to defend] the will of both’. Once
again, both question and answer touch upon one of the most sensitive issues in
the medieval Birgittine Order: the power balance between the abbess and the
confessor as well as between the female and male community.
The seventh question (7) concerns grace after meals and whether these should
be read or sung, but the simple and practical answer from Vadstena is that it is
best to adopt the custom of the country one lives in.
After these questions, the preamanda fraternitas wants to obtain information
on some other important matters. The first concerns a ‘great volume of Revela
tions’, containing eight books,22 and whether this volume was ever authorized by
the Apostolic See. In perspective, this question can be said to foreshadow similar
matters discussed in the 1427 Responsiones, where Syon raises the question
18
RS § 185.
19
See e.g. Resp. ii, 114, 120, 127–28 in Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, pp. 162, 166, 168.
20
RS § 192–96; Benedict, Regula, ed. by Hanslik, chap. 54 (‘Nullatenus liceat monacho
neque a parentibus suis neque a quoquam hominum nec sibi inuicem…munuscula accipere aut
dare sine praecepto abbatis’).
21
This passage is mentioned in Norborg, Storföretaget Vadstena kloster, pp. 117–18.
22
See Birgitta of Sweden, Revelaciones, Book i, ed. by Undhagen, p. 21, n. 81; Jönsson,
Alfonso of Jaén, pp. 85–89; Birgitta of Sweden, Revelaciones, Book viii, ed. by Aili, pp. 18–21,
for discussions about the division of the books of Revelations. Aili reckons ‘viii’ in the present
letter to be a scribal error for ‘vii’, since the redaction of the Revelations containing eight books
instead of the earlier seven was finished after the death of Pope Gregory XI in 1378.
156 Elin Andersson
regarding the authenticity of the Rule a couple of times.23 We may easily get the
impression that the English Birgittines want to make sure that their new patron
saint is one hundred per cent trustworthy.
The letter-writer confirms that after Birgitta’s death, her revelations were
presented to Pope Gregory XI, who committed them to be studied by a committee
of cardinals and masters in theology. When these learned persons had closely
studied the texts, they found nothing suspicious or worthy of reproach in them,
and nothing that contradicted the orthodox faith; however, when Gregory XI
died in 1378, his successor Urban VI started a new examination of Birgitta’s
texts24 and finally permitted the revelations ‘to be read and preached in the
church of God’. Thereafter, Boniface IX mentioned the revelations in the bull that
confirmed Birgitta’s canonization.25 We may note that the list of persons taking
part in the committees is incomplete in the present letter; for instance, Alfonso
of Jaén, Birgitta’s confessor and first editor of her Revelations, is not mentioned.
Furthermore, the English Birgittines want to know if the Ad vincula indul
gence has been confirmed by the pope. This indulgence could originally be
obtained at the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, but St Birgitta claimed to
have been granted to extend it to Vadstena by divine revelation.26 Consequently,
by a papal bull of 30 July 1378,27 Vadstena was given permission to grant the Ad
vincula indulgence annually to those visiting the monastery on 1 August, the feast
of St Peter in Chains. However, the letter-writer denies here that the revelation
regarding the indulgence has been confirmed by the Apostolic See. In fact, the
generous indulgences given to the Birgittine Order sometimes led to disputes
with secular priests and other monastic houses throughout Europe (although less
so in Sweden).28 The Ad vincula indulgence eventually enjoyed vast popularity in
England, with masses of pilgrims visiting Syon every year.29
The next question mentions that Birgitta had written ‘a large volume, divided
into fourteen books’. According to the answer given in the letter, such a version
23
Resp. ii, 2–3 in Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, pp. 96–103.
24
On the examination and canonization process, see Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden,
pp. 145–52.
25
7 Oct. 1391; SDHK 13955.
26
Birgitta of Sweden, Revelaciones Extravagantes, ed. by Hollman, chap. 44; Tait, ‘The
Brigittine Monastery of Syon’, p. 145, n. 149.
27
SDHK 11279 (Diplomatarium Suecanum, ed. by Liljegren and others, no. 9778).
28
Höjer, Studier i Vadstena klosters, pp. 98–99.
29
Cunich, ‘The Brothers of Syon’, p. 50; Powell, ‘Preaching at Syon Abbey’, p. 233.
of the Revelations did not exist in Vadstena. Carl-Gustaf Undhagen, the editor
of Book i of Birgitta’s Revelations, points out that the only extant manuscript
divided into fourteen books of revelations (instead of eight) is London, British
Library MS Harley 612, a Syon manuscript produced c. 1440.30 Undhagen there
fore concludes that ‘this singular redaction, which in all probability was drafted
in Syon, existed as early as 1421’.31
The ending of the letter gives us a short glimpse of medieval travel. The writer
mentions a bull being sent to Syon by confrater K, who may already have ‘returned
to your monastery’. This most likely refers to Katillus Thorberni, a Vadstena
brother who first arrived in England in 1408 to prepare the foundation of Syon
but eventually stayed there for more than ten years. A preserved travel-pass issued
at Syon shows that he returned to Sweden in 1421, but the reference in the
present letter might imply that he also returned to England that same year.32
The Manuscript
Stockholm, Riksarkivet, MS A 20,33 as mentioned above, is the large copy-book
of Vadstena Abbey. It contains copies of letters, papal bulls, theological tracts,
juridical texts etc. The measurements are 32.3 × 22 cm; the covers are made of
oak, covered with skin. Two folios out of a total of 332 are made of parchment;
the rest is paper. The ink is mostly brown; there are no illuminations in the codex.
The scribe of fols 164–65 is the deacon Johannes Benechini, active at Vadstena
Abbey 1416–61,34 who for the present letter uses a cursive hand typical for this
time and genre.
30
Birgitta of Sweden, Revelaciones, Book i, ed. by Undhagen, p. 21 n. 81; pp. 182–83.
31
Birgitta of Sweden, Revelaciones, Book i, ed. by Undhagen, p. 21 n. 81; Birgitta of
Sweden, Revelaciones, Book viii, ed. by Aili, p. 20.
32
SDHK 19636. Hedlund, ‘Katillus Thorberni’, p. 70. The travel pass is edited in
Andersson, ‘Birgittines in Contact’, pp. 25–26. On travels between Birgittine monasteries in the
Middle Ages, see Gejrot, ‘Travelling Bridgettines’. Katillus Thorberni died in Vadstena in 1442,
see Diarium Vadstenense, ed. by Gejrot, § 528.
33
Facts on Stockholm, Riksarkivet, MS A 20 from Ståhl, ‘Vadstena klosters stora kopiebok’,
pp. 35–64.
34
Ståhl, ‘Vadstena klosters stora kopiebok’, p. 54. On Johannes Benechini as a scribe and
author, see Diarium Vadstenense, ed. by Gejrot, pp. 38–41.
158 Elin Andersson
Editorial Principles
The letter u is given for the vocal sound, the letter v for the consonantal.
The letter j is rendered i.
The spelling wltis is rendered vultis.
Numbers are printed as they occur in the manuscript.
A modern punctuation has been applied.
Verbatim Biblical quotes are italicized.35
The numeration (in parentheses) has been added by the editor.
The Translation
A translation has been made in order to render the edition accessible for a larger
group of readers. The translations of Biblical quotes are, as a rule, based on the
Douay-Reims translation with slight alterations and modernized spelling.
Edition
(Stockholm, Riksarkivet, MS A 20, 164r)
De aliquibus dubiis in regulam Salvatoris declarandis.36
Salutem fraternam et spiritus sancti consiliis in sacra religione dirigi continuum

ad profectum.
Confrater in Christo karissime! Suscepi nuper non sine exultacione animi frater
nitatis vestre epistulam multa subtilitate contextam et in se continentem aliquas
de regulari observancia satis racionabiles questiones, quarum solucionem a me
quasi docciore cum devota instancia postulastis. Unde quamvis verendum sit,
ne fraternitas vestra, cuius subtiliorem considero intelligencie claritatem, hoc
temptacione faciat, ut sic me in simplicitate mea contemptibilem nauseam
preparantem callide comprehendat, ego tamen non in suspicionis sed sinceritatis
35
References to Biblical books in the apparatus are abbreviated in accordance with the
principles of the Stuttgart edition (Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. by Weber).
36
Verba Abbatissa loquatur post completorium et cetera quomodo intelligatur (cfr Add.
p. 60) in marg. cod.
spiritu eidem fraternitati vestre verbum aliquod respondebo, non quasi

diffiniendo dictarum dubia questionum, sed parumper tangendo, quid de hiis
ambiguis senserit meus tenerrimus intellectus.
(1) Et primum de primo, quod est istud: Quamvis per constitucionem quandam
dispensetur cum abbatissa et confessore, ut possint loqui de necessariis tempore
silencii,37 utrum tamen ipsi duo adinvicem tantum, sive eciam cum aliis indifferenter,
non expressatur ibidem. Idcirco queritis, an illa licencia quo ad confessorem
ita debeat moderari, ut solum cum abbatissa et magnatibus loqui poterit in
tempore silencii, uti quedam soror de nostris affirmat, an ulterius se extendat.
Ad quod respondeo — non in profunditate sermonis sed fervore fraterne

dileccionis — quod iudicio meo confessor generalis nedum cum abbatissa,
fratribus et sororibus loqui poterit, sed eciam cum extraneis indistincte, quando
pia utilitas aut iusta necessitas id exposcit. Cum enim secundum regulam sorores
ad conscripta silencia universaliter astringantur38 preter illas, que ad talia officia
deputantur, que sine loquela competenter non possunt exequi,39 existimo
abbatissam, que precipue tale tenet officium, et eadem racione confessorem
ad regulare silencium in necessitatis casibus non teneri, (164v) sed forsitan
in ipsorum pocius pendebit arbitrio tociens ad invicem colloqui ac eciam
cum aliis dispensare, quociens evidens necessitas dinoscitur imminere, non
obstante supradicte constitucionis clausula per vos allegata, que dicit, quod
‘caveant diligenter, ut ista licencia loquendi tempore silencii non utantur’40 et
cetera. Quam quidem clausulam quasi adulterinam iudico, eo quod in nostris
veris et originalibus constitucionibus non habetur. Verumtamen apud nos per
consuetudinem inolevit, ut talis ruptura silencii fiat de necessariis in timore
Domini et sub verbis paucioribus et vocum gravitate. Et si tunc contigerit fragiles
colloquencium consciencias notabiliter pollui, excessibus vanitatis secrete
confessionis lavacro secernentur.
(2) Ad41 secundum autem dubium — hoc est, cum regula tempus exponat quo
cum extraneis sit loquendum, dubitatis, an abbatissa et confessor sic excipiantur,
37
possint…silencii] cfr Add. p. 60.
38
astringantur] constringantur ante corr. cod.
39
sorores…exequi] RS § 78.
40
caveant…utantur] cfr Add. p. 61 (nota).
41
Ante verbum Ad signum paragraphi add. cod.
160 Elin Andersson
ut possent generaliter cum extraneis in omni materia communicare — dico

salvo semper saniori iudicio aliorum, quod non generaliter eis liceat sed specifice
dumtaxat in hiis, que concernunt statum domus aut que ad salutem pertinent
animarum.
(3) Ad42 tercium vero — quod movistis ambiguum, scilicet quod movemini
aliqualiter sub dubio, an excepto confessore eciam ceteri sacerdotes per licenciam
preterquam in causa consciencie cum extraneis communicare possent in tempore
silencii — respondeo, quod sic, dummodo status domus de necessitate hoc exigat
aut instans periculum animarum. Concludit enim regula silencium moderando,
quod omnia racionabiliter fieri debent et ut a pravis occasio excludatur.43
Sed ad id quod sub eadem questione vestra subiunxit fraternitas — scilicet an ipsi
sacerdotes eque huiusmodi tempore obligentur ad silencium ut sorores — dico,
quod preterquam in consciencie causa et sacre predicacionis et exhortacionis
materia equaliter astringantur.
(4) Ad44 quartum autem — si contingat capitulum celebrari tempore silencii,

an talis celebracio sit contraria regule et ruptura silencii et cetera — respondeo,
quod primi patres ordinis dictum capitulum in tempore silencii per annos
plurimos celebrarunt, sed attendentes quandoque in eo lites et contenciones
abusive45 moveri et fragilitate et impaciencia aliquorum, statuerunt ipsum
ad maiorem conscienciarum securitatem tempore alio, quo liceat silencii fila
rumpere, fore pocius celebrandum. Unde si talis celebracio in hora silencii non
fieret quo ad dictas lites et contenciones, simplicis peccati aggravacio profecto
non esset immutanda, nec illa capitularis excessuum proclamacio magis foret
ruptura silencii seu ad aliquam singularem temporis convenienciam limitanda
quam secreta confessio peccatorum. Vos igitur consideracionis oculo personaliter
attendatis, quomodo circa huiusmodi caucius ambuletis, nam in constitucionibus
continetur, quod capitulum habeatur tempore quo confessori consulcius videatur.46
Sed an, sicut sub eodem dubio intulistis, liceat dictum capitulum eciam diebus
singulis celebrari, respondeo, quod quociens in conventu graves ceperint clarescere
42
43
omnia…excludatur] RS § 78.
44
45
Post verbum abusive verbum fieri scr. sed postea del. cod.
46
capitulum…videatur] Add. p. 78.
culpe, tociens expedit haberi capitulum. Sicut vestris proponitis racionibus, satis
poterit persuaderi et ex constitucionibus perpendi, que dicunt ‘quod si frater
continue deliquerit contemptor ammonicionum, vocetur in capitulum quociens
deliquerit’47 et cetera. Sed si singuli conventualium per regularem tramitem sine
gravi offensa incesserint, necessitatem non video propter quam debeat totus
quotidie vexari conventus ultra terminum sibi divinitus constitutum. Ymmo
in hoc temeritatem nimiam pocius intueor, cum id presumat humana fragilitas
immutare et sine causa racionabili aggravare, quod divina per se maiestas, que in
sua disposicione non fallitur, dignata est singulariter ordinare et sedes apostolica
confirmare.
(5) Ad quintum — an contravenitis precepto regule si minuta munuscula,

puta loculos, cultellos vel consimilia aut esculenta vel poculenta ab adventiciis
usualiter recipiatis, cum sitis sufficienter predotati — respondeo, quod nos fere
per annos la (165r) ad perfecte dotacionis nostre bravium discurrentes48 nondum
meruimus illud apprehendere, quamvis iam in extremis eius terminis laboramus.
Vos igitur, qui sub modico tempore nobis cicius precurrentes ipsum feliciter
arripere meruistis, pocius habetis discernere, an huiusmodi minuta munuscula
debeant dona, que regula exprimit, computari et inde, cum unusquisque in
sensu49 suo abundet,50 potestis hanc faciliter solvere questionem, quam iam malo
vobiscum habere dubiam quam per me temere diffinitam. Verumtamen id in
ruditate mea sencio, quod si velimus ascendere ad eminenciam perfectorum, tunc
securius iuxta apostolum incedemus dicentem ‘Omnis qui in agone contendit ab
omnibus se abstinet’.51 Utinam ergo ita ab omnibus abstineamus illicitis et manus
nostras servemus innoxias, ut nichil in nobis princeps huius mundi inveniat quo
ab eternitatis bravio nos retardet.52
(6) Ad sextum dubium — scilicet cum dicat regula, quod sacerdotes isti tredecim,
in quorum numero conputatur confessor, tantummodo divino officio studio
quoque et oracioni vacare debent nullisque aliis se implicare negociis,53 an hiis
47
quod…deliquerit] Add. p. 80.
48
ad…bravium discurrentes] cfr i Cor. 9. 24.
49
sensu suo abundet] sensu abundet suo ante corr. cod.
50
unusquisque…abundet] Rm. 14. 5.
51
Omnis…abstinet] i Cor. 9. 25.
52
retardet] retardat ante corr. cod.
53
sacerdotes isti tredecim…implicare negociis] RS § 173.
162 Elin Andersson
dictis non obstantibus posset confessor abbatisse in secularibus assistere et de

bonis monasterii per viam consilii ordinare — respondeo, quod sic. Nam dicit
Augustinus, quod ocium sanctum querit caritas, negocium iustum suscipit
necessitas.54 Confessor igitur inter duarum sororum Rachelis et Lye constitutus
amplexus utrarumque sibi vendicat voluntatem alteri delectabiliter intendendo,
alterius vero necessitatibus salubriter consulendo. Nec hoc intencioni regule
obviare existimo quo ad clausulam superius allegatam, cum constat aliud esse ad
meliorem profectum negocii consulere et hortari, aliud vero negocio implicari.55
(7) Ad viim — an differt aut refert si gracie legantur vel psallantur — dico, quod
magis commendabile est, si secundum morem patrie, in qua vivitur, decantentur.
Item, post premissa dubia ad alia se convertens vestra preamanda fraternitas

inquisivit, an illud magnum volumen revelacionum continens viii56 libros sit a
sede apostolica canonizatum.
Ad hoc respondeo, quod revelaciones ille post obitum57 sanctissime matris nostre
beate Birgitte per manus familiarium eiusdem fuerunt Gregorio xi presentate, qui
statim sine dilacione eas examinandas commisit circumspectis et peritissimis viris
dominis cardinalibus et magistris in theologia hic subsequenter insertis, videlicet
cardinali Pictavensi; cardinali Montis Maioris58; cardinali de Ursinis; cardinali de
Agrifolio et cardinali de Luna; item domino Martino de Salva, doctori utriusque
iuris, archiepiscopo59 Panpilenensi; item magistro sacri palacii, ordinis fratrum
predicatorum, magistro in theologia; item magistro Iohanni de Hispania,
magistro in sacra pagina, qui fecit coram ipso papa Gregorio in consistorio generali
primam proposicionem super canonizacione prefate sancte Birgitte. Quibus
quidem revelacionibus inspectis et cum diligencia sepe transcursis attenciusque
intellectis nichil in eis reperiri potuit reprobum aut suspectum seu60 orthodoxe
fidei nostre dissonum vel adversum. Verum quia processus predicte sancte Birgitte
sub eodem papa Gregorio inceperat, quo sublato de medio remansit huiusmodi
54
ocium…necessitas] cfr Aug. civ. 19. 19.
55
Nam dicit Augustinus…implicari] verba nota de confessore in marg. cod.
56
viii] fort. vii scribendum secundum Aili, Revelaciones, p. 20.
57
verba post obitum iter. cod.
58
Montis Maioris] fort. Monasterii Maioris scribendum (vide Höjer, Studier, p. 66).
59
post verbum archiepiscopo litt. panli scr. sed postea del. cod.
60
seu] seui vel sim. ante corr. cod.
negocium incompletum, idcirco ipsum totum quasi exordialiter iniciandum et

consequenter novum examen dictarum revelacionum ad Urbanum vi exstitit
devolutum. Quas quidem revelaciones dictus Urbanus iterato examinandas
commisit valentissimis viris dominis cardinalibus et magistris in theologia
infrascriptis, videlicet cardinali Nucerino; cardinali Corfiensi; cardinali de
Anglia; cardinali de Ursinis; cardinali Ianuensi et cardinali de Manupellis; item
episcopo Urbeventano, magistro in theologia, qui fecit secundam proposicionem
super canonizacione beate Birgitte presente papa in consistorio publico; item
domino Iohanni (165v) de Lignano, excellentissimo utriusque iuris doctori;
item dominis Iohanni de Basilea, qui fecit terciam proposicionem; Augustino
de Roma ordinis sancti Augustini et Mathie61 de Crachovia, qui fecit quartam
proposicionem, magistris in theologia, et domino Ludovico, licenciato in utroque
iure, cum multis aliis. Qua quidem commissione, ut premittitur, facta et diligenti
examinacione earum62 per commissarios attentissime habita,63 et64 demum, ut
fieri oportebat, ad aures ipsius Urbani relacione subsecuta, tunc idem Urbanus
ipsas tamquam catholicas et a spiritu Dei editas admisit et permisit legendas et
in ecclesia Dei predicandas. Item Bonifacius ix allegat dictum volumen in bulla
ipsius canonizacionis65 commemorans prefatam beatam Birgittam contenta in
eo per Spiritus sancti graciam et per prophecie spiritum accepisse. Quis ergo
non audeat aut quem pudeat illa allegare et publice predicare, que allegat sedes
apostolica et commendat? Sed forte confirmacionem apostolicam bullatam
super hiis revelacionibus affectatis, quam seu qualem non consueverunt Romani
pontifices super dictis sanctorum doctorum concedere et minus super aliquibus
revelatis. Fundata66 tamen sunt in lapide Adiutorii,67 in quo obstruatur tandem os
loquencium iniqua68 et dentes mordacis invidie contundantur.69
61
Mathie] litt. e male scr. cod., ut vid.
62
earum] scil. revelacionum.
63
attentissime habita] habita attentissime ante corr. cod.
64
et] ut ante corr. cod.
65
bulla…canonizacionis] SDHK 13955 (1391.10.07).
66
Fundata]ffundata cod.
67
lapide Adiutorii] cfr i Sm. 4. 1; 5. 1; 7. 12.
68
os…iniqua] cfr Ps. 62, 12.
69
Fundata sunt…contundantur] cfr Petr. Bles. ep. 92, PL 207 col. 289 B.
164 Elin Andersson
Item queritis, an ista revelacio de concessione indulgenciarum in festo Advincula

sit ab aliquo papa confirmata. Dico, quod non in forma revelacionis, neque
totaliter in virtute.
Item de rubrica, que dicit beatam Birgittam unum maximum scripsisse volumen,
quod in xiiii libros dividitur, nichil mihi constat. Puto tamen, quod aliquas
revelaciones habemus, quas vos non habetis, unde si vultis illas accipere, tunc
conscribatis principia singularum revelacionum extravagancium, quas iam habetis,
et transmittatis ea mihi, ne contingat me in scribendo supervacue laborare. Item
de bullis vobis mittendis prout ex titulis in epistula vestra descriptis possum
perpendere, fraternitas vestra desideratum iam accepit rursum per confratrem70
nostrum K ad vestrum monasterium forsitan iam reversum.
Ceterum, confrater karissime, hoc71 illud adicio devotis precibus, ut in singulis

premissis responsionibus meis imperfectum meum videant oculi vestri et
indulgeant propter Deum maxime, si limites excesserim honestatis, personasque
horum monasteriorum sub vestris degentes clausuris velitis singulariter habere
dilectas et semper sub proteccionis vestre pallio paternaliter conservatas.
Scriptum Anno Domini mcdxxi.
Translation
Answers to some questions regarding the Rule of the Saviour.
I send a brotherly greeting through the counsel of the Holy Spirit with a wish for
continuous progress in sacred religion.
Dearest brother in Christ! With great exaltation of my soul I recently received

the letter from your fraternity, very subtly put together, containing some rather
reasonable questions regarding the observance of the Rule, and with pious
insistence you demand a solution to these questions from me, as if I were more
learned than you. But although I fear that your fraternity — whose bright intelli
gence I consider to be much greater — does this in order to tempt me, that is, to
70
post verbum confratrem litt. n K vel sim. scr. sed postea del. cod.
71
hoc] h fort. superflue scr. cod., vel confrater karissime H legendum.
lure me shrewdly into uttering some worthless nonsense72 in my simplicity, I will

answer your fraternity with a few words, not in a feeling of suspicion but rather of
sincerity, and not as to put an end to the doubts you express in the said questions,
but to mention briefly what my utterly weak mind thinks about these problems.
(1) First things first, namely this: Although a certain constitution grants a dispen
sation to the abbess and the confessor that they may speak of necessary matters
during times of silence, it is not clearly stated whether they may only speak with
one another or with others as well. Therefore you ask if the licence pertaining to
the confessor should be moderated, so that he may only speak with the abbess
and important persons in times of silence, as one of our sisters claims, or if this
licence should be further extended.
To this I answer — not in the profound language of a sermon but in the fervour
of brotherly love — that in my opinion the confessor general may speak not only
with the abbess, the brothers and the sisters, but also with people outside the
clausura without distinction when it is piously useful and justly necessary. Since
according to the Rule all the sisters are bound to follow the prescribed regulations
about silence, apart from those taking care of such duties as cannot be carried
out competently without speaking, I believe the abbess, who in particular holds
such an office, and the confessor for the same reason, are not bound to follow the
rules of silence when necessary. Perhaps it must depend on their own decision
when they decide to speak with each other or give others the dispensation to
do so, when there is an absolute need for it. We do not have to bother about the
clause of the above-mentioned constitutions to which you allude that states, ‘They
should be careful not to use this licence to speak in times of silence’ etc. I regard
that clause as false, because it is not found in our true and original constitutions.
Indeed, it has become our custom that such a break of silence may take place
when necessary, in fear of God and with very few words and a grave voice. And if
it should happen that the delicate consciences of the speakers are notably affected,
they can wash away any excess vanity by means of private confession.
(2) Regarding the second question — that is, when the Rule mentions the occa
sion when one is allowed to speak with people outside the clausura, you are not
sure if the abbess and the confessor are excepted from this, since they may in gen
eral speak to people outside the clausura in all matters — I say, always with the
72
This is a tentative interpretation of the Latin nausea.
166 Elin Andersson
wiser opinion of others in mind, that they may not do this in general, only when
it is a case of the condition of the monastery or the salvation of the souls.
(3) Regarding the third question — where you bring up a certain ambiguity
and want to know if the priests, with the exception of the confessor, may with a
certain licence speak with persons outside the clausura during times of silence on
any other matters than those of the conscience — I answer yes, provided the state
of the monastery or some danger threatening the souls absolutely demands this.
In moderating silence, the Rule concludes that everything must be done with
reason in such a way as to avoid any occasion of sin.
But regarding that which your fraternity added to the same question — namely
whether the priests are obliged to adhere to the times of silence in the same way
as the sisters — I say that except for matters concerning conscience or sacred
preaching or exhortation, they are equally obliged to follow the rules.
(4) Regarding the fourth question — if it happens that a chapter is held during
times of silence, whether this practice is contrary to the Rule and a breach of si
lence etc. — I answer that the first fathers of the order held the said chapter in
times of silence for many years, but when they saw that inappropriate quarreling
and disputing sometimes took place in the chapter because of the weakness and
impatience of some persons, they decided that it would be better to hold the
chapter at some other time, when it was allowed to break the thread of silence, and
that this would be much safer for everyone’s conscience. So if such a celebration
does not take place during times of silence, with respect to the aforesaid quarrels
and disputes, the accusation of a simple sin should not be changed, nor would the
declaration of transgressions in the chapter be any more a breach of silence than
the secret confession of sins, nor would it have to be limited to a certain occasion.
You, then, must with the eye of contemplation determine for yourselves how you
are going to act in these matters, for the constitutions say that the chapter should
be held at a time which the confessor deems suitable.
But regarding whether the said chapter may even be held daily, as you suggest in
the same question, I answer that a chapter must be held as soon as grave errors
start to come to light in the convent. Just as you put forth in your questions,
the matter can be sufficiently explained and verified by the Constitutions, which
say: ‘If a brother, acting like someone who disregards all admonition, continually
sins, he will be summoned to the chapter as often as this happens’. But if single
members of the convent follow the way of the Rule without grave offences, I do
not see the need to disturb the convent daily, beyond the measure ordained by
divine inspiration. Actually, I rather consider it to be too daring when human
weakness presumes to change and without reasonable cause worsen that which
divine majesty, whose nature never falters, has remarkably considered worthy to
ordain and which the Apostolic See has confirmed.
(5) Regarding the fifth question — whether you contradict the command of the
Rule if you regularly receive small gifts, such as caskets, knives or the like, or food
or drink, from visitors, although you have what you need already — I answer that
we, running to receive the prize for our completed endowment for almost fifty
years, have not yet come to deserve a way to gain this prize, although we work
in the utmost borders of His kingdom. You, then, who since only a short time
have quickly run before us to happily gain the prize, are more suited to determine
whether these small gifts should be considered to be such gifts that the Rule
expresses, and therefore, since every man abounds in his own sense, you can easily
solve this question yourselves. I prefer that you have doubts about it rather than
receive a random explanation from me. Yet in my ignorance I believe that if we
want to ascend to the eminence of the perfect, then we should safely follow the path
of the apostle, saying ‘Everyone that strives for mastery should refrain from all things’.
May we therefore avoid all forbidden things and keep our hands clean from sin, lest
the Lord of this world finds anything in us that keeps us from the prize of eternity.
(6) Regarding the sixth question — that is, when the Rule says that the thirteen
priests, among whom we also count the confessor, should only devote themselves
to the divine office and prayer and not become involved in other matters, whether
regardless of these words the confessor may assist the abbess in secular matters
and give advice regarding the affairs of the monastery — I answer yes. For
Augustine says that love makes us search for holy leisure, while necessity makes us
undertake a righteous cause. The confessor, then, finding himself caught between
the embraces of the two sisters Rachel and Leah, defends the will of both by de
lightfully paying attention to one, while advantageously comforting the needs of
the other. I do not believe the above-mentioned clause contradicts the meaning
of the Rule, since it is clear that giving counsel and encouragement in matters of
business is one thing, but to meddle in it is something else.
(7) Regarding the seventh question — whether it makes any difference or is of

any help if the Graces are read or sung — I say that it is better if they are sung
according to the custom of the country one lives in.
168 Elin Andersson
After these questions your most beloved fraternity turns to other matters and asks
if the great volume of Revelations containing eight books has been authorized by
the Apostolic See.
To this I answer that after the death of our most holy mother, St Birgitta, the
Revelations were presented by her servants to Gregory XI, who immediately
without delay committed them to be examined by the most experienced and
skilful men, cardinals and masters in theology mentioned below:73 the cardinal of
Poitiers; the cardinal of Marmoutier;74 Cardinal Orsini; Cardinal d’Aigrefeuille;
Cardinal de Luna; furthermore Martin of Salva, a doctor of both laws and arch
bishop of Pamplona; furthermore the master of the sacred palace, a brother of
the Dominican Order and a master in theology; furthermore master John of
Spain, master in holy scripture, who made the first proposition regarding the
canonization of the above-mentioned St Birgitta before the same Pope Gregory
in the public consistory. When these revelations had been examined, diligently
read through and through and carefully analysed, nothing worthy of reproach
or suspicion, or contrary to our orthodox faith, had been found in them. But the
above-mentioned process had started under the same Pope Gregory, and when
he died the examination remained unfinished. Therefore the whole matter had
to be taken up again, and consequently, a new examination of these Revelations
was initiated by Urban VI. The said Revelations were once again committed by
the said Urban to be examined by the most trustworthy cardinals and masters
in theology mentioned below: the cardinal of Nocera; the cardinal of Corfu;
the cardinal of England; Cardinal Orsini; the cardinal of Genua; Cardinal de
Manupello; furthermore the bishop of Orvieto, a master in theology who made
the second preposition regarding the canonization of St Birgitta in the presence of
the pope in the public consistory; furthermore John of Lignano, a most excellent
doctor of both laws; furthermore John of Basle, who made the third proposition;
Magister Augustinus of Rome of the order of St Augustine, and Matthew of
Cracow who made the fourth proposition — all are masters in theology — and
dominus Ludovicus, a licentiate in both laws, and many other persons. When this
commission, as mentioned above, had been appointed and a careful examination
of the Revelations had been diligently made by the members, and then, as was
73
For references to the persons mentioned here, see Höjer, Studier i Vadstena klosters, p. 66,
nn. 1 and 3; Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, pp. 144–49.
74
Gérard du Puy, d. 1389; Collijn, Acta et processus canonizacionis Beate Birgitte, p. 4,
p. 658. Stockholm, Riksarkivet, MS A 20 has ‘Montis Maioris’ for the expected ‘Monasterii
Maioris’.
appropriate, related to the ears of Urban himself, the same Urban agreed that
they were of the Catholic faith and sprung from the spirit of God, and permitted
them to be read and preached in the church of God. Furthermore Boniface IX
acknowledged the said volume in the Bull of Canonization and mentioned that
the said St Birgitta had received the contents of the book by the grace of the Holy
Spirit and in a state of prophecy. Who, then, does not dare, or who is ashamed
to admit and publicly preach that which the Apostolic See acknowledges and
agrees to? But perhaps you ask for an apostolic confirmation regarding these
Revelations? The Roman popes do not have the custom to grant this for the
sayings of holy doctors, and even less so for revelations. However the Revelations
are founded in the Stone of help, by which the mouth of those who speak wicked
things is stopped and the teeth of biting envy are crushed.
Furthermore, you ask if the Revelation concerning the permission to grant indul
gences in the feast of St Peter in Chains is confirmed by a pope. I say that this has
not been done in the form of a Revelation, nor completely to full effect.
Furthermore, I do not know anything regarding a rubric stating that St Birgitta

has written a very big volume, divided into fourteen books. I believe, however,
that we have some Revelations which you do not have. If you would like to receive
those, write down the beginning of every single chapter that you already possess
of the Revelaciones Extravagantes and send this to me, so that I do not have to
work in vain with the copy.
Furthermore, regarding the bulls whose headings you have described in your letter
and which you want me to send, I believe that your fraternity has already received
this from our brother K., who may have returned to your monastery by now.
Moreover, dearest brother, I want to add only this with pious prayers: please let
your eyes see how worthless I am in every single one of my answers and forgive me
for God’s sake, especially if I have transgressed the limits of honesty. Please love
every single person from this monastery who comes to live under your clausura
and always keep them under the mantle of your protection with fatherly care.
Written ad 1421.
170 Elin Andersson
Works Cited
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Stockholm, Riksarkivet, MS A 20
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Universitetsforlag, 1991), pp. 329–48
Powell, Susan, ‘Preaching at Syon Abbey’, Leeds Studies in English, 31 (2000), 229–67
Ståhl, Peter, ‘Vadstena klosters stora kopiebok: en presentation av handskriften A 20 i Riks
arkivet’, in Kyrka, helgon och vanliga dödliga. Årsbok för Riksarkivet och Landsarkiven,
ed. by Kerstin Abukhanfusa (Stockholm: Riksarkivet, 2003), pp. 35–64
Tait, Michael, ‘The Brigittine Monastery of Syon (Middlesex) with Special Reference to
its Monastic Usages’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Oxford University, 1975)
Vitalis, Henrik, ‘Addiciones Prioris Petri — on Birgittine Rules and Regulations’, in A
Catalogue and its Users: A Symposium on the Uppsala C Collections of Medieval Manu
scripts, ed. by Monica Hedlund (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1995),
pp. 47–56
Reviews
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070–1309

(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. xv, 334, £58.50. ISBN 978-0-
230-29083-9.
Almost all visitors to the old city of Jerusalem today must stroll through the
Muristan, a small neighbourhood of shops and cafes a stone’s throw from the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre that grew up in the nineteenth century on waste
ground. Probably few of them realize that they are walking on the site of what was
in the twelfth century the largest and most impressive hospital known to Euro
peans. Although the archaeology of the site is still uncertain, we know that this
is where the Hospital of St John once stood. Founded as part of the Amalfitan
Benedictine monastery of St Mary Latin in the last third of the eleventh century,
at its peak in the years before 1187 it had over a thousand beds and could at a
pinch cater for several hundred more. The Hospital provided nursing for the sick
and destitute and buried those it could not cure in a consecrated cemetery at
Alkedama, just outside the walls of the city. By 1113 the Hospital had become an
autonomous institution, and like their great rivals the Templars the Hospitallers
also constituted a private army within the kingdom of Jerusalem, garrisoning
some fifty-six castles at one time or other, from which they exercised complete
lordship over the surrounding regions.
The tension between the two strands of its mission, the enigma of the Order
as one might say, provides the central theme of Jonathan Riley-Smith’s book. It is
only in the 1120s that the first hint of a military role for the Hospitallers can be
discerned, but the first military statutes date from sixty years later. By this time
a point of crisis had already been reached. The Grand Master Gilbert d’Assailly
committed the Order’s resources to supporting King Amalric I’s invasions of
Egypt in 1164 and 1167. The invasion failed, and Gilbert resigned in 1171.
Because he had also bought and built castles, he left the Order hugely in debt.
This provoked soul-searching among the brothers of the Order. Should they be
committing their resources in this way to military action, even for the defence
of Jerusalem? Could they continue to bear what Riley-Smith calls ‘the cost of
ambivalence’, and to fulfil two apparently contradictory functions, both of which
demanded huge resources, at the same time? In fact, the choice was not theirs
to make: the feudal resources of the Crusader States were not by themselves
adequate to defend vulnerable regions or to provide sufficient troops, and the
threat of Saladin in the 1170s and 1180s required a tough response.
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In this book Jonathan Riley-Smith returns to the theme of his first major
publication, The Knights of St John in Jerusalem […] (London, 1967). Like the
best of his work, it serves equally well as both an informed introduction and
a faultless guide through the intricacies of the topic. Although in some places
the conclusions he reaches are identical, this is more than simply a rehash of
earlier work. A good deal of recent research, especially on the finances of the
Order in the crucial two generations after 1187 in which the kingdom had to
be rebuilt from scratch, has provided a new picture of the practical functioning
of the Hospitallers as a multi-national corporation. One cannot but be struck
by the combination of practical efficiency and christomimetic spirituality that
lay at the heart of the Order’s mission, and at the ruthlessness with which other
considerations, including ecclesiastical regulations, were subordinated to this
mission. It was this combination that prevented them suffering the same fate as
the Templars when the Holy Land was lost. Seizing Rhodes in 1305, they simply
carried on providing military defence and nursing in the same capable way.
Andrew Jotischky
Department of History, Lancaster University
William D. McCready, Odiosa sanctitas. St Peter Damian, Simony, and

Reform, Studies and Texts, 177; Mediaeval Law and Theology, 4 (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2011), pp. x, 321, ISBN: 978-0-
888-44177-5.
Can sanctity be negatively connotated? Can it lead directly into heresy? For
Peter Damian (died 1072), one of the most influential protagonists of church-
reform in the eleventh century, it could. By attributing an odiosa sanctitas, a
hateful sanctity, to the Vallombrosans, whose founder Giovanni Gualberto
he knew personally, Peter Damian underlined his reticence regarding extreme
conceptions of purity. That Peter, who himself belonged to a congregation of
reform-minded monks at Fonte Avellana, would become one of the most bitter
enemies of the Vallombrosans was not at all evident. This enmity had its roots in
one particular incident: the controversy surrounding Pietro Mezzabarba, bishop
of Florence from 1061. In 1067/68, the Vallombrosans accused the bishop of
simony — and Peter Damian rose to Mezzabarba’s defence. Three things raised
Damian’s ire against the monks: besides spreading calumny against the bishop,
Damian complained of their adherence to a defective sacramental theology and
their public behaviour which he judged irreconcilable with monastic ideals.
The Vallombrosans in his eyes had become locusts ravaging Holy Church,
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undermining its stability, peace, and harmony: isti sunt locustae quae depascuntur
viriditatem sanctae ecclesiae.
The Mezzabarba affair with all its theological, dogmatic, and political im
plications is at the centre of William D. McCready’s new book. Seven chapters
meticulously investigate Damian’s involvement in the affair — a comprehensive
treatment of his thought(s) and career is not intended and therefore matters
that shed no light on how and why he acted in this particular moment are not
discussed. Chapter 1 (‘Conflict in Florence’, pp. 7–34) investigates the events
up from Mezzabarba’s installation as bishop of Florence up to 1067, particularly
underlining the political side of the affair. Damian travelled to Florence on behalf
of Pope Alexander II early in 1067 to talk to the Vallombrosans, it is true, but
did not achieve any results. Rather the contrary: at the Roman synod in April the
monks dared to denounce the bishop publicly as a simonist — a synod teetering
on the brink of chaos. Chapter 2 (‘Godfrey of Lorraine and the Case against
Mezzabarba’, pp. 35–65) therefore looks at the role Godfrey, margrave of Tuscany
and one of Mezzabarba’s chief protectors, played in the affair. McCready succeeds
in offering a fresh look at old, established, but not necessarily true certainties. Is
it conceivable that Peter Damian backed Mezzabarba because the reform papacy
depended on the support of the margrave? That is at least the opinio communis
of earlier research. It is shown, however, that Damian criticized Godfrey quite
often in other contexts. Perhaps McCready oversimplifies by defending him from
accusations of hypocrisy and ‘wilful blindness’ (p. 39), a defence culminating in
the sentence: ‘He thought that the case against the bishop of Florence had not
been made’ (p. 65). This might be true, but the sources do not explicitly exclude
political involvements on the protagonists’ side. And who can successfully
separate politics from theology in the reform process of the eleventh century?
Subsequent chapters (3 to 6) enable the reader to contextualize the affair —
an affair in which theological considerations, dogmatics, and spirituality were
intimately connected. Chapter 3 on simony and the sacraments (pp. 66–111)
is particularly revealing, showing Damian’s conviction that simoniacs should be
condemned. This condemnation, however, should not be extended to those who
were freely ordained by them. Interestingly enough, Damian does not distinguish
between those who knew their ordaining bishop was a simoniac and those who
did not. In just a few pages, McCready outlines a vast panorama one could easily
use as an introduction to simony and its impact in the Middle Ages.
Damian judged the Vallombrosans’ activities critically. He was convinced that
they were guilty of having compromised the highest standards of monastic life
and practice. Chapter 4 (‘Monastic Ideals’, pp. 112–66) could be characterized as
a brief survey of the foundations and intentions of a monastic movement which
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was supposed to support the papacy in its reform efforts. But McCready also
underlines the apparent inconsistency between what Peter Damian wrote or said
and how he acted. Peter was not only actively involved in the work of reform
— an activity which resulted in his creation as cardinal — but also delivered
an effective pastoral ministry as a preacher. While striving to recall others to an
upright life, he — as McCready aptly remarks — ‘himself was scarcely able to
avoid the charge of wanderlust’ (p. 150). It was only in his last years that he tried
to distance himself from a declining world which every day edged a little closer to
its final collapse. This behaviour, strengthened by the outcome of the Mezzabarba
affair, is the subject of Chapter 5 (‘Contemptus mundi’, pp. 167–95) whereas in
Chapter 6 (‘Settimo and the Aftermath’, pp. 196–251) the affair is central once
again. The events in Florence eventually culminated in an ordeal: in February
1068 the Vallombrosan monk Petrus Igneus successfully underwent a trial by fire
— an event which led to Mezzabarba’s removal from office.
The question of the legitimacy of ordeals is at the centre of the final Chapter
7 (‘Ordeals and Other Miracles’, pp. 252–76). Why did Alexander II change his
mind, accepting an ordeal which he had categorically refused before? McCready
seems quite harsh in his judgement of Alexander II, describing him as political
realist who sacrificed his convictions on the altar of pressing political needs —
an opponent to his ‘not so secular’ and therefore more sympathetically judged
protagonist.
McCready shows an impressive familiarity not only with Damian’s own works,
but also with the extensive Italian and German secondary literature. This enables
him to adjust and correct older statements or to scrutinize what others have failed
to take into account. He ably demonstrates that for a proper understanding of
Damian’s works, one has to read them diachronically. McCready follows his own
suggestions and succeeds in showing the fluidity and mutability of his protag
onist’s views. How strong the political impulses influencing Damian’s acts were,
however, remains still open to debate. The book, brilliantly written, sheds new
light on old stories and considerably enlarges our knowledge of the papal reform
movement of the eleventh century.
Ralf Lützelschwab
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
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Donald S. Prudlo (ed.), The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medi

eval Religious Mendicancy. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition,
24 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. xviii, 382, index, € 139. ISBN: 978-9-
004-18180-9.
The collection revisits a well-discussed issue in the historiography of the Middle
Ages. By insisting on the application of mendicancy as one key element of the
practice of voluntary poverty, the authors attempt to question which religious
ideals underlay and justified mendicancy and the controversial discussion it pro
voked, especially among some of the Parisian university members critical of the
new mendicant orders, and to identify older practices that prepared for the full
evolution of voluntary mendicancy, as well as the forms of mendicancy established
by the orders. The contributors to the book favour the analysis of the proper view
of the mendicants as the best basis of information which led to a large panorama
of different opinions to solve the problems linked with mendicancy. Without
discussing every aspect of these finely crafted articles, I would like to underline
their innovative character.
The problem of why mendicancy should have been the distinguished mark of
the new orders founded at the beginning of the thirteenth century is not entirely
clear because poverty was generally admitted to be as one of the vows that even
a monk had to make. To be sure, there were other claims, for example manual la
bour, and there were other characteristics of the mendicant orders, expressed for
example by Pope Alexander when he founded the Order of the Austin Hermits,
such as preaching, urban settlement, or territorial mobility. That the notion
of ordines mendicants was introduced quite late, it seems only by Salimbene da
Adam in his Chronicle in the 1280s, shows sufficiently clearly that mendicancy
could not be understood as the main issue of the definition of those orders, and
nevertheless, the pretension to guarantee the daily consumption by mendicancy
provoked such a huge polemic against the orders that it became eventually the key-
point of their definition. In consequence, this put them in a position to defend
themselves and clarify their ideals. The difficulty, or better, the impossibility for
women of realizing the ideal of the poverty by mendicancy provoked solutions
which brought St Clare of Assisi and her female followers even closer than the
friars to the realization of the ideal of poverty. The interpretation of hagiographic
texts gives further information of the concepts governing mendicancy. Generally,
the studies in this book use a broad range of sources. Polemical writings, sermons,
treaties, chronicles, and poetic texts, have all been analysed, in addition to the
texts of rules, constitutions, and papal bulls. One of the weaknesses of the book
is the general lack of research on how the mendicant friars actually begged and
178 REVIEWS
based their economy on mendicancy — only the contribution of A. Rigon deals

with this aspect. It could be suggested that the book might lead to the conclusion
that mendicancy was a mere ideological claim without affecting the daily life of
mendicant existence. This does not, however, affect the positive impression of
this book, which sheds new light on the different aspects of the religious ideal of
mendicancy and its impact on the emerging of a new sort of orders.
Hans-Joachim Schmidt
Institute d’études médiévales, Université de Fribourg
Emilia Jamroziak, Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian

Houses in Medieval Scotland and Pomerania from the Twelfth to the Late
Fourteenth Century, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 24
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. xvi, 215, £59. ISBN: 978-2-50353-307-0.
For over a quarter of a century, the medieval European ‘frontier’ has been a vibrant
area of inquiry. Historians have variously examined it as a single phenomenon, or
in terms of particular ‘frontier’ regions, or as a type of space, and have identified a
range of relevant phenomena such as migration, colonization, intercultural con
tact, institutions, and identities. An especially important approach, most fully
elaborated by Robert Bartlett, considers the medieval ‘frontier’ in the singular, as
a huge macro region of Europe, encircling the Continent’s ‘core’ (or ‘cores’), and
subsuming specific ‘frontier’, or ‘border’ regions and related phenomena.
This line of inquiry implies two corollaries: that the individual segments of
Europe’s ‘frontier’ were, in some sense, similar, and that a close comparison between
such regions, and between them and Europe’s ‘core’, or ‘cores’, is a valuable area of
historical inquiry. Emilia Jamroziak has produced an important contribution to
this direction of analysis. Her subject, the Cistercian Order, is an excellent test case,
as a textbook example of a ‘core’ European phenomenon — based in the cultural
and geographic ‘core’, and encompassing a set of standardized attributes — while
affected by a myriad of regional and local contexts, some situated on the European
‘frontier’. The book is a richly textured comparison between two such contexts:
Pomerania and the Anglo-Scottish ‘border’ zone, and an interesting test case for
the utility — and the limitations — of the ‘frontier’ as an analytical construct.
The comparison is based on six Cistercian monasteries: Kołbacz, Himmelstädt,
and Marienwalde in Pomerania, Melrose and Dundrennan in Scotland, and
Holm Cultram in England. A substantial introduction, previewing the project,
and sketching out the political scene and the historiography, is followed by
five chapters and a conclusion. Each chapter begins with a standard account
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of an attribute of the Order, then moves onto the specificity of that attribute
in each region. The most important such characteristic is the formation, and
presence, of a ‘support network’ around each monastery. Chapter 1 explores
the beginnings of such ‘networks’ with the monastic foundation. The founders
initiate larger populations of ‘benefactors and friends’, who are the subject of
Chapter 2. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on an intra-ecclesiastical ‘network’ between
the monasteries and their mother houses and bishops, respectively.
We get a rich panorama of founders, ‘benefactors’, and ‘friends’, presented as
generic categories and through individual vignettes, and of patterns of association:
foundation, subsequent gifts, other kinds of support, confraternity, monastic
hospitality, commemoration, and burial in the monastic space. Filiation is explored
through visitation, attendance at the general chapter, and other supervisory
contact, and — in an especially interesting section of the book — as a subject
of monastic memory and identity, reflected by the content, transmission, and
transformation of texts. The bishop appears as a supporter of particular founda
tions, a donor of tithe revenue, a player in the institutional framework, centred
upon the papacy, with which the Cistercians also interacted.
While emphasizing the constructive, functional aspects of these ‘support
networks’, Jamroziak is fully sensitive to their murky underside, and so the final,
fifth chapter turns to conflict — above all, ‘violence’, inflicted by the population
otherwise comprising the ‘benefactors and friends’, by other clerics, and by external
contenders for supremacy over the two regions, the rulers of England, Scotland,
Denmark, Brandenburg, Pomerania itself, and Poland. On this subject, I have a
quibble. Fully realising that this book is not principally about violence or conflict,
I would have wished for a more nuanced appreciation of those two aspects of
medieval life and their place in the social order. I am concerned about the implicit
polarization — in the arrangement of the book, and conceptually — between the
normative, good side of the place of the monks in their context, and its dysfunc
tional opposite, rather simplistically summed up here as ‘things going wrong’.
In a short review it is difficult to do full justice to the great strength of this
book, namely Jamroziak’s sustained attention to this range of phenomena —
their shared attributes, and their variations — in her six instances, and in the
two regions these instances exemplify. This is an excellent collective study of six
monasteries, and a close, textured comparative history. However, the book raises,
at least for me, one nagging question. Where, in all this, is the medieval ‘frontier’?
At first glance, the question is absurd: the entire subject of the book happens ‘on’
the ‘frontier’, which exists here as a kind of pre-existing, independent variable. But
I am not able to discern the specific significance of that variable. Which aspects
of the story are specifically pertinent to ‘frontier’?
180 REVIEWS
At one point, the answer seems to be filiation, since Jamroziak situates

‘mother’ monasteries ‘across the frontier’ from their ‘daughters’. But what turns
on that fact? How were the ties between, say, Esrum and Kołbacz, or Rievaulx
and Melrose, different from the ties within filiation lineages anywhere else in
Europe? One could pose that same question about the other aspects of the ‘social
networks’ surrounding the six monasteries described and compared in this book.
Paradoxically, the problem is further complicated by another major contribution
of the book, namely Jamroziak’s demonstration that her two ‘frontier’ regions
were vastly different from one another. In fact, she emphasizes that difference,
and rightly thinks that she has demonstrated that Europe’s ‘frontier’ — in the
singular, as an encircling macro region — was enormously diverse.
But, I would add, so was the Europe it encircled. And, for this reason, my res
ervation is in fact a tribute. The elusiveness of the ‘frontier’, or ‘border’, reflects
one especially important legacy of the current interest in that subject. That
legacy is an insistence, unprecedented in its intensity — though still new in its
substantive results, with an enormous amount of work yet to be done — on a
uniformly careful comparison between the different regions, polities, and peoples
comprising medieval Europe. In this book, as in her earlier writings, Jamroziak
gives us exactly that kind of work. Until fairly recently, perhaps the most real
‘frontier’ phenomenon pertinent to medieval Europe has been the presumptive
neglect of some of those regions by contemporary historians. Now, thanks to
comparative work as good as this book, it becomes thinkable for us to move
beyond the ‘frontier’. Or, better yet, declare it closed.
Piotr Górecki
Department of History,
University of California, Riverside
James G. Clark, The Benedictines in the Middle Ages, Monastic Orders, 3

(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), pp. x, 374, £25. ISBN: 978-1-84383-623-0.
There is no doubt that medieval Benedictine monasticism was a cultural phe
nomenon strongly characterized by complex spiritual, organizational, regional,
and chronological heterogeneity. However, since the six-volume work of Philibert
Schmitz (1942–57) no author has dared to attempt a true overview. One must,
accordingly, value the courage of James G. Clark to address the Benedictines
in a monograph designed to re-introduce this topic to students and specialists
alike. Indeed, Clark’s book is a treasure-trove of information and insight, one
REVIEWS 181
well-suited as a handbook for anyone making an initial study of the medieval

Benedictines.
Clark divides his study into six chapters. The title of the first, ‘The Making of
the European Order’, is somewhat puzzling, for there was no ‘Benedictine Order’
until the nineteenth century. Clark discusses the lines of evolution from the
sixth century through the so-called ‘mixed rules’ period until the High Middle
Ages. He considers the reform movements associated with Cluny, Gorze, and
Winchester (pp. 5–59).
The chapters that follow are thematically structured. In the second chapter,
‘Observance’, Clark describes the social structures of Benedictine convents, the
noviciate, education, the opus Dei (liturgy), music, manual labour, discipline, and
the ‘culture of observance’ from the early to the late Middle Ages (pp. 60–129).
Chapter three, ‘society’, treats the changing interrelations between convents
and their environments. It addresses economy, lordship, guests, corrodians
and pensioners, men, women and children, the parish or charity (pp. 130–88).
The title of chapter four, ‘culture’, does not discuss culture in general, but the
scientific and artistic ‘output’ of the monasteries. It covers the beginnings of
Benedictine culture, scripture, the liberal arts, history, academia, material culture,
the decorative arts, and patronage (pp. 189–254). The fifth chapter concerns
the ‘later Middle Ages’, a period already discussed to some extent in the previous
chapters. Clark pays particular attention to the struggles of Benedictine houses
with plague and war and also the role played by reforming congregations up to
the sixteenth-century renaissance (pp. 255–315). In his final chapter, Clark dis
cusses the ‘reformations’ of the sixteenth century (pp. 316–41).
By striving to treat the diversity of Benedictine monasticism from neither a
strictly chronological nor thematic perspective but, instead, blending both into an
intellectually challenging method, Clark doubtless has made the right decision.
However, it quickly becomes apparent that the book’s worth does not lie in its
sometimes confusing thematic subsections that are frequently overlapping and
sometimes belong to completely different categorical levels. These subdivisions
are also characterized by enormous spans of time and evoke more than once the
misleading image of a homogenous, European-wide monasticism. For this reason,
a clear definition of the terms ‘order’, ‘ordo’ or ‘congregation’ at the beginning of
the book would have been a great help to the reader.
The worth of Clark’s survey lies, instead, in its multiplicity of phenomena,
which are presented in a ready handbook for readers to use. It is also clear from this
well-written book that its author is a specialist in the later medieval monasticism.
Above all in the sections treating the earlier and central Middle Ages, we find
some difficult passages, for example when Clark clearly, and correctly, emphasizes
182 REVIEWS
that the conversi were not a Cistercian invention (pp. 71ff ). However, he
incorrectly traces their founding to the conversi of the ‘old type’ who lived within
the monastic convents. His discussion of manual labour (pp. 105–12) also fails to
mention the fundamental motif of Mary and Martha, a topic which generations
of monks (and historians) have exhaustively discussed.
James G. Clark has written a work that would challenge any historian attempt
ing to treat this topic in a single book. In fact, it is characterized by a great engage
ment of its author. That challenge, however, is also, possibly, the greatest problem
with the study: a reader familiar with international scholarship will be struck
by Clark’s overwhelming focus on examples and sources from the British Isles.
Likewise, non-English scholarship from the last sixty years, sometimes ground-
breaking, is almost completely missing. English-language essays of marginal
relevance are preferred to modern, important monographs in other lang uages,
for example in the case of the novitiate. Articles of English historians become
references for French, German, or Italian local phenomena that have already
received extensive research in their countries. Though Clark’s handbook certainly
deserves a broad international audience, my concern is that this study, due to its
limited reference to new academic work from continental Europe, might lose a fun
damental part of its relevance in the academic community outside the British Isles.
Jörg Sonntag
Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte,
University of Dresden
Tomás Ó Carragáin, Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual

and Memory (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 392,
298 illustrations, €48. ISBN 987-0-300-15444-3.
This impressive and richly illustrated book, which is based on Ó Carragáin’s
doctoral thesis, takes up a current scholarly trend towards analysing conceptions
of space from both its functional side and symbolical dimension. Its focus is on
churches and ecclesiastical sites built in Ireland from the period of Christianiza
tion in the fifth century up to the transition of the Romanesque around 1100.
Tomás Ó Carragáin’s discussion of about one hundred and eighty churches,
that came into being in that time, emanates from a striking phenomenon, which
is that during this time span of nearly 700 years most of the stone churches, and
also those of later periods, appear to have been stuck in a rather basic, or archaic,
stage of development. Whether serving as pastoral churches for the tribes (túath),
as episcopal churches, churches for male or female monastic communities, or
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shrine chapels designed to house relics, most of these churches, regardless of

their diverse functional role, seem to have shared a more or less uniform style,
characterized by a small single cell and pure, unsculpted exteriors. This simplicity
and plainness in style forms a perplexing contrast to what the monastic treasure
houses of the so called Irish Golden Age had stored at that time, notably the
magnificent manuscripts, the richly decorated high crosses, or splendid metal
works. Given this obvious imbalance and indeed conservatism of the Irish church
architecture, the argument behind Ó Carragáin’s book is that this perpetuation
of a long established building tradition must have been meaningful and was,
perhaps, an intentional linkage to distant sacred spaces and topographies.
By attempting a holistic approach to ecclesiastical space, the book aims at
reconstructing the building form of these early churches, their utilization in
everyday life, the perception of these buildings and the role they played for the
‘symbolization’ of a sacred past. These questions are discussed on the base of a
broad range of sources, which includes, apart from archaeological and material
evidence, hagiographical texts and hagiography. In this way the book takes a con
vincing step towards the much demanded transgression of disciplinary bounds.
There are nine chapters, running along a chronological and thematic struc
ture, though a complete architectural tour through the country’s regions is not
intended. Chapters 1 to 3 consider the turf, wattle, and timber, as well as earliest
mortared stone churches and the possible proto-types they were designed to
model. Here the earlier Romano-British forms as well biblical spaces, such as
tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, are addressed as being formative for the overall
layout of the major sites. Chapters 4 to 8 look at the later developments from
the tenth to the early twelfth century, and Chapter 9 at the small group of the so
called double-vaulted churches (among the most famous is St Kevin’s House in
Glendalough), the first significant departure from the ‘archaic’ type for centuries.
In all these chapters the appearance and location of these churches and the
phenomenon of their long homogeneity in form and style are discussed in the
context of wider social and cultural developments, such as royal power, secular
and ecclesiastical rule, political strategies, spirituality, religious practice and be
lief. In this debate, space indeed is approached as a product of broad cultural
(inter)action. Here among the many interesting issues the author stresses, is, for
example, how ritual and ritual use came together with the role and meaning of
materials. In this synthesis churches were marked out as ‘associative relicts’ that
would have functioned not only as a reminder, but as a symbolic inauguration
of the sacred past. Such exploration of the linkages between material culture and
human action no doubt develop our understanding of how space at that time was
constructed and conceived.
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Enhanced with nearly three hundred colour and black-and-white photographs,

ground plans, maps, and reconstructions, Churches in Medieval Ireland is not
only a beautiful book, but an important contribution to our understanding of
pre-Romanesque churches as well as their religious and cultural contexts. Along
with that the book is a fine model study for demonstrating in an unobstructive,
yet convincing way that modern spatial theories can be fruitfully applied to
the investigation of defined ecclesiastical (or other) buildings, without pulling
theories too dominantly in the foreground.
Anne Müller
School of Archaeology, History, and Anthropology,
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Maria Purves, The Gothic and Catholicism: Religion, Cultural Exchange and
the Popular Novel, 1785–1829, Gothic Literary Studies (Cardiff: Univer
sity of Wales Press, 2009), pp. 238, illustrations, £71.25. ISBN 978-0-708-
32091-4.
This book challenges the prevalent orthodoxy of the Gothic novel as a reflection
of a tradition of English, Whiggish, Protestant, and anti-Catholic genre. This
understanding, based on previous critics’ use of far too small a sample of the genre is,
the author argues, untenable if one examines a large number of more obscure novels.
Such a reading shows much greater understanding of, and sympathy for, Roman
Catholicism than previously thought. The rising tide of pro-Catholic sympathies
in England is traced, notably though the study of the Gentleman’s Magazine
as a reflection of popular feeling, to show that the English elite, impressed by
the resistance of the French émigré clergy in the 1790s, did not display an anti-
Catholic bias, as has been argued by critics guilty of both ‘oversimplification
and presupposition’ (p. 13), and by those who have failed to acknowledge the
importance of Christianity in people’s lives at this period by projecting modern
critical views which reduce it to either tokenism or satire.
The first two chapters show the way in which Roman Catholicism was ‘reha
bilitated and romanticized’ in the 1790s (p. 15), notably due to the influence of
Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, and of Hurd, Walpole, and Beckford,
which created a ‘discourse of enthusiasm for England’s Catholic (Gothic,
monastic, chivalric) past’ (p. 30). Catholicism was also increasingly appealing
for the Church of England and the Conservatives against the progress of both
secularism and evangelicalism. This romanticized Catholicism is reflected in the
numerous borrowings of themes from French pre-revolutionary novels and plays,
REVIEWS 185
and was greatly enhanced by the success of Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, all of which
contributed to a renewal of interest in monasticism as a form of model Chris
tianity. Purves studies the cloister theme in Matthew Lewis and Ann Radcliffe,
and argues convincingly that Lewis’s views were not anti-Catholic but rework
standard devices borrowed from French novels. Radcliffe’s use of the fashionable
cloister theme leads the author to strike a sometimes uneasy balance between
the modern feminist interpretation of the convent as a model of sisterhood, a
‘disimprisoning space for women’ (p. 107), and Radcliffe’s use of Catholicism
as a counter-revolutionary, anti-secular trend focusing on Christian virtue and
spiritual life. The last two chapters focus specifically on the figures of the nun
and monk respectively. Becoming embodiments of Christian piety and virtue,
they provide better models for both women and men than the traditional ones
of overblown sensibility, in an attempt to fight both the enthusiasm of the
evangelicals and the deistic Romantic sensibility, and religious indifference.
This shift becomes increasingly apparent in the 1810s and 1820s, and offers an
image of female empowerment through self-command and self-possession, and
an image of the monk as a hero, predicated on a male model of Christian virtue,
a chivalric figure displaying a nobility of the soul above that of the social origin.
Medieval chivalric motifs are used to provide this new model of masculinity for
the upper and middle classes, their purpose being to reinforce the ideal of Church
and King at the time when they were perceived to be under siege from scepticism,
materialism, and immorality. The author’s argument associates the Catholic
sympathies of both writers and readers with the interest in England’s monastic
and chivalric past, and challenges the perceived image of the convent as a symbol
of ‘the superstition, oppression and corruption of the Catholic Church’ (p. 165).
The argument works better in some cases than in others, and by definition extreme
anti-Catholic writers such as Maturin are left out. The main value of the book is
twofold, first in its attempt to nuance our perception of the genre as one made up
of a more varied constituency than previously thought, running the gamut of all
degrees of Catholic sympathies, and secondly in highlighting the evolution and
the changes reflected in the novels between the 1790s and the 1820s as a result of
external influences.
Veronica Ortenberg West-Harling
Faculty of History, University of Oxford
186 REVIEWS
Gert Melville, Anne Müller (eds.), Female ‘vita religiosa’ between Late An
tiquity and the High Middle Ages: Structures, Developments and Spatial Con
texts, Vita Regularis. Abhandlungen 47 (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2011), pp. 456,
€ 44.90. ISBN 978-3-643-90124-8.
The essays that comprise Female ‘vita religiosa’ between Late Antiquity and the
High Middle Ages. Structures, Developments and Spatial Contexts were origi
nally presented at the third in a series of international congresses sponsored by
the Forschungstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (FOVOG) held on
19–21 March 2009 at the Catholic University Eichstätt. The overarching theme
of the conference was women’s religious life, broadly conceived, with scholars
invited to present work focusing on diverse geographical landscapes from the
deserts of Egypt to the ‘Island of the Saints’. The chronological focus of the con
ference, and thus the volume, was equally ambitious, extending from the fourth
to the twelfth century. The broader purpose of the conference, consonant with
the central mission of FOVOG, was to explore the variety of forms that female
vita religiosa could take across this broad expanse of space of time with an eye
toward identifying common structural elements that might offer the basis for
further comparative research.
A number of the articles do just this. In his article on religious life for women
in Italy in Late Antiquity, for example, Georg Jenal attempts a kind of typology,
identifying four primary types of female religious life within a landscape that, at
first glance, appears chaotic and improvisational (‘Frühe Formen der weiblichen
vita religiosa’, pp. 43–77). Anne-Marie Helvétius (‘L’organisation des monastères
féminins’, pp. 151–69) explores forms of religious life for women in Frankish
Gaul, drawing attention to the imprecise terminology used in Merovingian
sources to describe and define religious women. This imprecision provides a chal-
lenge to those who would compare, for example, sanctimoniales or monachae
in Frankish Gaul to the sanctimoniales and monachae named in the necrologies
produced and used in the dual-sex Hirsau communities that Hedwig Röckelein
traces in her article on women in the Benedictine reform movements in tenth- to
twelfth-century Germany (‘Frauen im Umkreis der Benediktinischen Reformen
des 10. bis 12. Jahrhunderts’, pp. 275–327).
Other articles, while taking the reader farther from the stated theme of the
conference, nevertheless make important contributions to our understanding
of various dimensions of women’s religious life. Janet Burton’s piece on the
question of female Cistercian identity in England and Wales (‘Moniales and
Ordo Cisterciensis in Medieval England and Wales’, pp. 375–89) builds on the
work of Constance Berman as it looks at the complex relationship between
REVIEWS 187
women and the Cistercian Order, exploring the question of identity from the
standpoint of the nuns themselves. Fiona Griffiths’s contribution offers a new
window on the liturgical world of medieval religious women (‘‘Like the Sister of
Aaron’. Medieval Religious Women as Makers and Donors of Liturgical Textiles’,
pp. 343–74), advancing the provocative and interesting argument that women
might be ‘present’ at the sacrament of the altar through the production and gifting
of liturgical textiles. The jewel of the collection is Albrecht Diem’s study of the
Regula cuiusdam ad virgines (‘Das Ende des monastischen Experiments. Liebe,
Beichte und Schweigen in der Regula cuiusdam ad virgines’, pp. 81–136), which
includes his translation into German of this seventh-century monastic rule. In
his article, Diem advances the provocative and paradigm-shaking hypothesis
that women not only exercised considerable agency in shaping their own forms
of religious life, but that these forms might have provided a pattern for men’s
communities, and not the other way around.
Female ‘vita religiosa’ between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages is an
interesting collection of articles that will be of interest to specialists in the field
of monastic history for both women and men, and a few of the articles might be
suitable for use in graduate courses on pre-modern monasticism. The international
team of scholars invited to participate in the conference, and the inclusion in the
volume of articles in English, French, German, and Italian, also reflects a healthy
exchange of ideas among scholars working within different academic traditions.
Alison I. Beach
Department of History, Ohio State University
Paul Everson and David Stocker, Custodians of Continuity? The Premonstra

tensian Abbey at Barlings and the Landscape of Ritual, Lincolnshire Archa
eology and Heritage reports Series no. 11, (Sleaford: The Heritage Trust
of Lincolnshire, 2011), pp. 472, 319 figs., 2 tables, £25.00. ISBN: 978-
094863-961-6.
For monastic studies in Britain and Europe this is an important study, although
it is specifically local in its topographic scope. These are not contradictory state
ments, largely because the specific is modulated through theory to become the
universal. This is the work of two scholars who have, over a long period now,
sustained a hugely productive academic relationship which spans an extensive
range of disciplines within the historic periods of Britain. All, however, is bonded
together by the methodologies of landscape archaeology and history and the
theoretical tenets of contextualization. In essence this combination carries
188 REVIEWS
with it a strong belief that material survivals of the past embedded within the
fabric of the contemporary landscape (including its natural topography) can,
along with documents, provide insights into the mentalité behind the human
agency which interacts with the structures of social order, institutions and
states. Importantly also in this study time and human action are regarded as
a continuum untrammelled by the false barriers of period which mark the
conceptual boundaries of historic studies.
The local context is a group of parishes, some 200 km2 in extent, to the north
and east of the cathedral city of Lincoln in Eastern England. This is a landscape of
low upland, good rich limestone, dip-slope soils and extensive bogs at the northern
end of the great Fenland around the Wash at the point where the River Witham
flows into it. This landscape contains the estates of the Premonstratensian abbey
of Barlings founded in 1154 on the marsh island of Oxney, one of a remarkable
string of monasteries stretching along the east bank of the Witham, including
the ancient Benedictine site of Bardney. The study is remarkably thorough in its
analysis of every surviving fabric of architecture, of every earthwork and of every
document available, drawing on the diverse talents of the two primary authors,
each piece of work brilliantly and extensively illustrated with tables, drawings,
and photography. This includes some key discoveries in buildings previously
unrecognized as important elements of the narrative, such as the wonderful
monastic grange building at Grange de Lings at the edge of the upland component
of the Barlings estate. This is all put into the framework of the landholdings and
settlements which have been subjected to close scrutiny and mapping.
The result of all this work, conducted over a long period of time, is a huge
wealth of empirical information of an interdisciplinary range only now beginning
to emerge as the gold standard in studies of medieval institutions. But this is only
the starting point for this monograph. All this data underpins an overarching
proposition which is contained in the title. The authors propose that Barlings
was deliberately sited on the island of Oxney because it was a pivotal point in
ancient perceptions of sacredness which can be traced back to the Neolithic and
sustained over the intervening millennia. For some this will be a speculation too
far and this issue is addressed head-on by the authors in an important rolling
critique of the discourse of monastic landscape studies. However the proposition
is even bolder: the perception of sacredness is not a vague sentiment sustained
by local communities, it is one consciously understood by those who had power
over the land and its people and applied when the abbey was founded, based
on responsibilities of custodianship identifiable from the very fabric of the
landholdings and the location of the key monuments within them.
REVIEWS 189
This is a book which is hard for a reviewer to summarize. It is, however, rich
in texture and complex in argument, but at the core is a brilliant proposition
which I am prepared to countenance, but some may not. All, however, within the
discourse of the European monastery must take account of this and the emerging
agenda it represents.
David Austin
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Katharine Sykes, Inventing Sempringham: Gilbert of Sempringham and the

Origins of the Role of the Master, Vita Regularis. Abhandlungen 46 (Berlin:
LIT-Verlag, 2011), pp. 280, € 29.90. ISBN 978-3-643-90122-4.
Katharine Sykes’s Inventing Sempringham: Gilbert of Sempringham and the Origins
of the Role of the Master traces the evolution of the Gilbertine Order from c. 1130
to c. 1300 through the lens of the title and role of the Master of Sempringham.
Through a detailed study of the language used in an impressive body of charters,
papal documents, episcopal acta, letters, and other contemporary texts (tabulated
in three appendices), Sykes argues for a revised assessment of founder’s role
within his evolving order. In Inventing Sempringham, Sykes takes on what she
considers to be the ‘simplistic assumptions and explanations previously offered’
(p. 209). She is particularly critical of the interpretation of Gilbert that Brian
Golding advanced in his monograph, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine
Order, c. 1130–c. 1300 (Oxford, 1995), which remains the standard work on the
Gilbertines. In contrast to Golding’s weak and ineffective Gilbert, Sykes’s Gilbert
played a strong and guiding role in the community as it morphed from a single
community comprising nuns, to an increasingly complex order, with lay brothers
and sisters arriving by the early 1140s, and canons by the early 1150s. Gilbert,
Sykes argues, remained an active and effective leader until just before his death
in 1189.
Sykes traces the long and complex process of the institutionalization of the
Gilbertine Order by analysing changes in terminology in the surviving sources.
Sources dating to the earliest years of the community, for example, refer to the
founder simply as ‘Gilbertus de Sempringham’ or ‘Gilbertus sacerdos’. After the
arrival of the canons, however, Gilbert becomes ‘magister’ — an unusual title, she
points out, for an unusual situation: Gilbert was thus identified as the head of a
community — perhaps first now an ‘order’ — of which he was not a member. In
the wake of the scandals that plagued the order in the 1150s and 1160s, and the
revolt of the lay brothers in c. 1164, Sykes reads conscious image management in
190 REVIEWS
texts emerging from within the order itself. By the time of his death, Gilbert had
evolved from ‘sacerdos’ to ‘magister’, and finally to ‘magister ordinis’.
In the course of her analysis, Sykes challenges the notion of the ‘routinization
of charisma’ so often interwoven into accounts of the institutionalization of
religious orders. She suggests a more nuanced narrative of institutionalization
in which Gilbert’s role evolved from founding priest to leader of a new order,
shifting in response to its changing and increasingly complex needs. This disrup
tion to the standard narrative of the ‘routinization of charisma’ also compels a re
assessment of the roles of Gilbert’s successors, Roger (c. 1188–1204) and Gilbert II
(1205–25), placing them in a continuous line of evolution with Gilbert rather
than as functionaries operating in the wake of a charismatic (yet not institutionally
inclined) founder.
Sykes’s argument would have stood well enough on its own without the
numerous ad hominem criticisms of the interpretations of other scholars, and
particularly of Brian Golding. These references distract the reader from the point
of the narrative and give the book an oddly antagonistic tone. In spite of this,
Inventing Sempringham advances an interesting argument for a revision, not only
of the image of Gilbert and his role in community and order, but of the early
history of the order itself.
Alison I. Beach
Department of History, Ohio State University
Su b m issio n In f o r m a t io n
The Journal o f Medieval Monastic Studies seeks to fill a gap in current journal
provision. We anticipate this to be an annual publication of international, in
terdisciplinary, peer-reviewed articles on issues related to medieval monastic
history. It will include scholarly contributions on monastic history, archaeology
and architectural history, art history, literature, etc. We are keen to make this
a comprehensive publication, covering all of medieval Europe in geographical
terms. We also anticipate including relevant book reviews and shorter notices.
W hile the focus is bound to be on Christian monasticism, the journal will
welcome contributions on other religions as well. The language of publication
will be English, but abstracts in the original language of individual contributions
may be included.
Submissions are invited for future issues. Please contact the editors: Janet Burton
(j.burton@tsd.ac.uk) and Karen Stöber (karen.stober@historia.udl.cat). Sub
missions are double-blind peer-reviewed. Authors should follow the M H R A Style
Guide (available at <http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/
download.shtml>). For more information about JM M S, with further details
about submissions and peer review policy, please visit the journal’s website:
<http://www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk/en/archaeologyhistoryandanthropology/
journalofmedievalmonasticstudies/>. For information about subscriptions and
orders, please contact periodicals@brepols.net.

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Translation, Controversies, and Adaptations

The Monk as Mourner: gendered Eastern Christian Self-Identity

‘No One Can Serve Two Masters’: Abbots and Arch-Abbots

A Norbert for England: Holy Trinity and the Invention of

English Benedictine Monks at the Papal Court in the

The Monastic Ideal of Discipline and the Making of Clerical Rules

Questions and Answers on the Birgittine Rule:

The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070-1309

Odiosa sanctitas. St Peter Damian, Simony, and Reform

The Origin, Development, and Refinement

Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian Houses in Medieval

The Benedictines in the Middle Ages

Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual and Memory

The Gothic and Catholicism: Religion, Cultural Exchange

Custodians o f Continuity? The Premonstratensian Abbey at Barlings

Inventing Sempringham: Gilbert o f Sempringham and

Augustine Casiday (CasidayA@cardiff.ac.uk): Lecturer in Greek, School of History,

The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 2 (2013), 1–18 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/J.JMMS.1.103646

Cyril of Scythopolis on Sixth-Century Origenism

interventions bring the controversy to its end.15 However, Cyril’s knowledge of

increasingly complex account of those events and in doing so moved decisively

Syriac Evagrius, Greek Cassian

Tzamalikos notes that an anonymous correspondent raised with Barsanuphius of

metaphysical aspects of Christian theology. I no more think that Origenism was

Manuscripts and Archival Documents

Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vaticanus graecus 2195

Casiday, Augustine M., Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Routledge, 2006)

Hannah Hunt (H.Hunt@leedstrinity.ac.uk): Senior Lecturer and Reader in Eastern

The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 2 (2013), 19–37 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/J.JMMS.1.103647

in Orthodox monasteries to this day.2 Step 7 of this, which follows a section on

I n 1111 Pope Paschal II sent a letter to the monastic community of Montecassino

Guido Cariboni (guido.cariboni@unicatt.it): Assistant Professor in Medieval History,

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composed by Bishop Rangerius in the waning years of the eleventh century, in

St Florentin of Bonneval and Marmoutier

of Roucy.73 The latter, nephew of Ebulus I, archbishop of Reims from 1021 to

repeatedly admonished in vain by Manasse II. However, Manasse did not take

circumstance, in the presence also of the prior of Cluny, probably Joscerannus,82

‘Iudicio finito, saepedictus monachus minime adquievit, et ut pluribus videtur quaerens

The Council of Poitiers

It is almost impossible to identify with certainty the document considered

The Birth of the Orders

Ivo Carnotensis, Correspondence, ed. by Jean Leclercq, Les Classiques de l’histoire de

Dell’Omo, Mariano, ‘Montecassino altomedievale e il suo sistema di dipendenze: genesi e

Michiels, Guibert, ‘Hilgod’, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, dir. by

Seibert, Hubertus, Abtserhebungen zwischen Rechtsnorm und Rechtswirklichkeit: Formen

W ithin monastic studies, interest in the literary and historical lives of

Joshua Easterling (jeasterl@emporia.edu): Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern

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the community’s legitimacy as a new foundation, was the adoption of a monastic

First Followers, Foundation, and Growth

Miracles and Demonic Temptations

Death and Burial

As a reader of the Vita Norberti B, Robert’s biographer lingered long on Norbert’s

Robert, Knaresborough, and the Powers Of Uncertainty

Þat Papys of Rome has graunt þaim here.

‘Vita Norberti B’ and the Foundation at Knaresborough

Gründungsvater. Felten senses ‘wie schwer es einem Angehörigen des inzwischen

some sense modelled by Robert’s biographer on William of Stuteville, who gave

‘Robertt I Rede Thei Named Hym Ryght’ and Father Norbert

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Donald S. Prudlo (ed.), The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medi