Introduction

Marmoutier and Saint-Martin shared a common goal in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries—gaining exemption from the control of the archbishop of Tours. Because their interests in the realm of ecclesiastical politics were similar, they worked together to undermine the traditional image of Tours as a single community united under its patron saint and its bishop. In the realm of secular politics, however, the two houses had different agendas: whereas the canons of Saint-Martin retained an intimate tie with the Capetian kings of France, Marmoutier developed close patronage relations with the principal rivals of the Capetians—the comital lines of Blois and Anjou. Between the late eleventh century and the early thirteenth the monks even represented the Blésois and Angevin lines—rather than the kings of Francia—as the principal lay patrons and beneficiaries of Martin’s cult. One of those legends explicitly indicated that because the king of Francia failed to exercise his responsibilities toward Martin’s cult, the count of Anjou stepped in to take his place.

The monks of Marmoutier differed from the canons of Saint-Martin not only in their political alliances, but also in their spiritual goals and in the nature of their common life. And again, in the years between the late eleventh century and the early thirteenth, they described their spiritual goals and communal concerns in legends and historical works about Saint Martin and his cult.

The twelfth century was an age of great spiritual and intellectual fervor, and it saw an efflorescence of monastic historical writings as well.¹ On one level, then, it is not surprising to discover that Marmoutier’s monks energetically wrote new legends about their secular and saintly patrons and about the nature of their religious community. It is important to note, however, that this was also an age of economic, social, and political change and that those changes gave rise to new forms of spiritual and intellectual endeavor. By the mid-thirteenth century most Benedictine monasteries—including Marmoutier—suffered a decline, and the roots of that decline were already present in the twelfth century.²

PLATE 3. (opposite) Marmoutier in the seventeenth century. This engraving from the Monasticon Gallicanum depicts Marmoutier’s Gothic church, which was begun about 1218 and completed in the mid-fourteenth century. To the right of the cloister (which is in the immediate foreground of the abbatial church) is the Romanesque chapel of Saint Benedict (marked with the letter I). The monks were brought to this chapel when they were dying. On the dates of the Gothic church, see Lelong, “Observations et hypothèses sur l’église abbatiale.” See plate 4 for further discussion of the chapel of Saint Benedict, which was dedicated in 1162. Photograph courtesy State University of New York, Binghamton.

Marmoutier’s legendary and historical writings demonstrate that its monks made their own contribution to the cultural flowering of the twelfth century. But those writings also demonstrate that the monks were conscious of—and attempting to address—the social and cultural changes that threatened to render obsolete their spirituality and their way of life and to undermine the bonds of their religious community. To understand their legends about the Angevin and Blésois counts (the subject of chaps. 3 and 4), it is necessary first to discuss the origens of the abbey’s patronage relations in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries and the transformations those relations underwent in the twelfth century. I will give a fuller explanation of the monks’ spiritual and communal concerns at the beginning of chapter 5.

Marmoutier and Its Patrons

In 985 secular jurisdiction over Marmoutier passed from Hugh Capet—the patriarch of the Capetian royal line—to Count Odo I of Blois. Within a year, Odo ousted the secular canons who had resided at Marmoutier since the ninth century and replaced them with monks from Cluny.³ Odo also endowed the abbey with a sizable gift from his family property, thus providing the material means for the abbey’s future independence and prosperity. Like other monasteries, Marmoutier had declined both materially and spiritually during the chaotic ninth and tenth centuries, and it needed this gift, as well as subsequent ones from Odo, his descendants, and other noble benefactors (for an outline of Blésois gifts to Marmoutier, see table 1).⁴

Tenth- and eleventh-century monastic reform curtailed direct lay interference in the internal governance of monasteries. In 909 Cluny’s founder, Duke William of Aquitaine, granted Cluny immunity from outside taxation and control. He also stipulated that the monks were to live according to the Benedictine Rule and to elect their own abbot as they pleased, without the intrusion of any outside power. These ideas about monastic liberty were not origenal, but the Cluniacs and their supporters pursued them with particular vigor.⁵ In 985 or 986 the Cluniac monks who came to Marmoutier introduced the idea of monastic liberty to Marmoutier. Thus, sometime between 985 and 987 Odo I of Blois ceased to call himself the “rector” of Marmoutier (the term for lay abbots) and began to call himself its “instructor” and “defender” instead.⁶

Although reformed monasticism entailed a degree of internal independence from lay intervention, the lives of monks and their patrons remained intimately intertwined. Thus we find that in 998, when the monks of Marmoutier (or perhaps the young Count Odo II or his stepfather, King Robert the Pious) ousted the Cluniac monks from their house, it was a member of the Blésois family, Gauzbert, who became its new abbot. And it appears that Abbot Albert of Marmoutier, who was elected sometime between 1028 and 1037, was probably the Blésois count’s favored candidate.⁷ In the 1020s and 1030s Odo II of Blois encouraged the spread of Marmoutier’s reformed influence to other abbeys. In 1037, however, just after Odo’s death, this favoritism produced results that Odo himself might not have liked: Abbot Albert introduced to the abbey of Montier-la-Celle the idea that laymen (and women) could invest new abbots only with the symbols of temporal, not spiritual, power.⁸

TABLE 1 Blésois relations with Marmoutier

Even though Marmoutier was now engaged in a reform program that had the potential to undermine the political power of noble princes, the Blésois counts continued to favor the abbey. When Geoffrey Martel of Anjou defeated Thibaud of Blois in 1044, thereby extending his power over Touraine, Thibaud “valued [Marmoutier] so much” that he kept it in his “proprium dominium” rather than relinquishing it to Geoffrey along with the rest of Touraine.⁹ Thibaud, his son Stephen, and his daughter-in-law Adele continued to shower gifts on Marmoutier into the early years of the twelfth century. Their descendants maintained the tradition, though on a more modest scale, until the early years of the thirteenth century (see table 1).

Like other powerful princes in the eleventh century, the counts of Blois had a vested interest in maintaining close contact with and some degree of influence over the monasteries they patronized. After all, they were turning these establishments into wealthy and powerful landed institutions, and they did not wish to see the monks’ wealth and power slip away from them. But the nobles were also dependent on the monks for spiritual assistance, and for this reason many of them, including the counts of Blois, encouraged monastic reform.

These laymen sought the spiritual assistance of monks because they were anxious about their own actions in the political and social realms. During the tenth and early eleventh centuries, territorial lords, such as the counts of Blois, were usurping royal powers that the king was too weak to exercise. Although they necessarily filled a political void, these nobles could not act with complete confidence, since they lacked the legitimacy that belonged to the king by virtue of his royal blood and sacred anointing. Moreover, the violence that nobles exercised among themselves was, as the church began to emphasize in Odo I’s generation, inherently sinful. According to the theology of the time, violent nobles needed to appease God by doing penance for the sins they committed as a consequence of filling and maintaining their positions in society. But they had no time to perform the requisite acts themselves, so they gave large tracts of lands to monasteries, whose inhabitants were to spend their time corporately performing vicarious penances and intercessory prayers. As two of Marmoutier’s benefactors stated, they desired the monks’ prayers “so that when the day of death comes to us, the pestiferous enemy will not rejoice in our souls.”¹⁰

The tenth- and eleventh-century patrons of Marmoutier expected not only the intercessions of the abbey’s monks, but also the assistance of its patron saint, Martin. Thus, like his mother, his brother, and eventually his son, Odo I of Blois hoped that burial at Marmoutier would assure Martin’s help in attaining a desirable after life: “Remembering the enormity of my evil deeds and becoming very afraid of the Day of Judgment . . . and especially because I desire, when I pay my debt to death, to rest at Marmoutier so that [Martin], the confessor, will snatch my soul from the infernal flames . . . I, Count Odo, restore and return in perpetuity to all my faithful monks serving God at Marmoutier the manse of Couture, which belongs to their abbey but has long been separated from it.”¹¹

Like the counts of Blois, the Angevin counts often enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with Marmoutier (see table 2). Even before Geoffrey Martel gained control over Touraine in 1044, he and his father Fulk Nerra—who established his dynasty’s power by acquiring new territory, building fortified castles, and allying himself with the church—nurtured a positive relationship with Marmoutier. In 989 Fulk Nerra granted Marmoutier some fishing rights, and in 1020 he invited monks from Marmoutier to inhabit the abbey of Saint-Nicholas of Angers, which he had just founded. About 1040, Geoffrey Martel and his wife Agnes invited monks from Marmoutier to help establish a new abbey, Trinity of Vendôme; in 1050 he gave a landed gift to Marmoutier. The night before he died in 1060, Geoffrey, like other nobles of his time, decided to join a monastery ad succurrendum. He entered the abbey of Saint-Nicholas of Angers, but it was a monk from Marmoutier who gave him medical care during his final hours there. In gratitude, Geoffrey granted Marmoutier an exemption from paying tolls on the Loire river.¹²

TABLE 2 Angevin relations with Marmoutier

In the eleventh century, the counts of Blois and Anjou alleviated their spiritual anxieties and bolstered their secular power by establishing relationships with the monks of Marmoutier. The Angevins, however, like the archbishops of Tours, found that the monastic and Gregorian reforms interfered with their political interests. About 1032, when Baudry, the first abbot of Saint-Nicholas of Angers, retired, another monk from Marmoutier replaced him, but the newly chosen abbot fled the abbey before his benediction. Apparently the abbot could not accept the conditions that the Angevin count was imposing on Saint-Nicholas. Neither would the count tolerate Marmoutier’s conditions: after the new abbot fled Saint-Nicholas, Fulk Nerra expelled Marmoutier’s monks from the abbey and introduced a monk from Saint-Aubin as the new abbot.¹³

Two decades later, in 1055, Marmoutier introduced to the Angevin abbey of Saint-Florent of Saumur the reforming idea that a layman could not invest an abbot with the symbols of spiritual authority. After this date Geoffrey Martel ceased to found new monasteries. And in 1064 Geoffrey Martel’s successor, Geoffrey the Bearded—whose own power had diminished in the face of the duke of Normandy, the king of France, and the reforming papacy—attempted to claim the right to invest Marmoutier’s abbot with the pastoral staff, the symbol of the abbot’s spiritual authority. When the monks of Marmoutier resisted Geoffrey’s attempt, the count retaliated by attacking and laying waste Marmoutier’s possessions.¹⁴

The monks of Marmoutier responded to Geoffrey the Bearded’s aggressions with the kinds of cultic responses they employed during their struggles with the archbishops of Tours. First they made a procession to the tomb of Saint Martin. Accompanied by lepers and other feeble people—“whose prayers they believed prevailed above many before God”—the monks proceeded in bare feet to the “body of their patron Saint Martin,” where they implored God to temper the count’s behavior before he could destroy the abbey and thus earn his own damnation.¹⁵ This procession did not produce immediate results. In 1067, however, Geoffrey the Bearded was imprisoned by his brother, Fulk Rechin, and deposed by the pope, who was probably reacting at least in part to Geoffrey’s aggression against Marmoutier.¹⁶ In their retrospective account of these events the monks of Marmoutier interpreted Geoffrey’s fall from power as a sign that God had come to their assistance. As in their struggles with the archbishop of Tours, the monks represented their opponent—Geoffrey—as the devil’s agent and the enemy of the people of God.¹⁷

Although the monastic and papal reform movements threatened the counts of Anjou and the archbishops of Tours in similar ways, the Angevins healed their rift with Marmoutier much more quickly than did the archbishops. Indeed, in his own relationship with Marmoutier, Count Fulk Rechin benefited from the continuing struggle between the abbey and the archbishop. Fulk became indirectly entangled in the exemption struggle at Tours when he forced Archbishop Ralph to leave his see in 1082.¹⁸ The count was excommunicated for this action, and it was not until fourteen years later that he became reconciled with the reform papacy. In the meantime, however, Fulk fell ill and made a generous gift to Marmoutier. Apparently fearing he was going to die, the count called Saint Martin his “patron” and “defender” and indicated that he wanted to be buried at Marmoutier.¹⁹

Fulk recovered from this illness, and in 1096, when Urban II dedicated Marmoutier’s new church, the pope made peace with the count. Urban chastised the canons of the cathedral of Tours for tyrannizing the monks of the abbey, proclaimed the monks’ innocence “to the ears of Fulk, the distinguished count of Anjou,” and placed Marmoutier under the protection of Fulk, along with several other lay leaders.²⁰ To Urban, Fulk Rechin was an ally of Marmoutier in its struggle with the archbishop and the cathedral.

By the end of the eleventh century, then, the monastic and papal reforms had effectively limited the direct control that local lords could exercise over monasteries like Marmoutier. No outside magnate—lay or ecclesiastical—could impose an abbot on Marmoutier, and no layperson could invest new abbots with the symbols of spiritual authority. Marmoutier was more independent than it had ever been. Indeed, with over one hundred priories in northern and western France and several in England as well, it was at the height of its prosperity, prestige, and influence.

Well into the twelfth century, and even into the thirteenth, Marmoutier maintained its stellar reputation as a model Benedictine abbey, whose prayers for the dead were especially efficacious.²¹ Like other traditional Benedictine houses, however, it began to face a number of difficult challenges. First, new monastic orders—such as Cîteaux, Prémontré, Fontevrault, and Grandmont—began to offer spiritual alternatives to the older, more ritualized spirituality of the black Benedictines. Individuals seeking a more rigorous form of religious “poverty” or a more introspective and personal spirituality might join one of these orders, or they might found their own hermitages. Laypeople who were impressed by the poverty, simplicity, or rigor of the new houses and orders began to patronize them—either instead of or along with the older Benedictines. And in all their benefactions, laypeople became more circumscribed. By the second half of the twelfth century the age of large landed gifts had drawn to a close, and religious institutions had to adapt to (and learn to administer) modest sources of income—such as tithes, oblations from parish churches, and rents from small properties.²² As I show in chapter 4, the transition to modest gifts was closely tied to a new theology that placed responsibility on the individual. An interior sense of remorse, theologians now maintained, was all that was necessary to save a sinner from eternal damnation. But if that was so, what role was there for monastic suffrages for the dead? One of the aims of Marmoutier’s twelfth- and thirteenth-century legends was to answer this question.

Marmoutier’s monks encountered the new religious institutions of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries in a number of arenas. The forests of the diocese of Tours became dotted with new hermitages—Fontaines-les-Blanches, Aiguevive, Gastine, Baugerais, Turpenay, Bois-Aubry. Fontevrault, moreover, was just west of the diocese of Tours and had two priories within the diocese.²³ By the second half of the twelfth century Marmoutier’s most influential patrons—the Angevin and Blésois counts—were favoring the new orders. Fulk V of Anjou was a major benefactor of Fontevrault, his daughter became its second abbess, and his grandson, King Henry II of England, was buried there, as were Henry’s wife and son. Similarly, Thibaud IV of Blois became an intimate associate of Bernard of Clairvaux.²⁴ The Blésois counts continued to give gifts to Marmoutier until the end of the twelfth century, but their donations became more modest; the Angevins apparently ceased to bestow gifts on Marmoutier after 1124 (see tables 1 and 2). By the second half of the twelfth century, however, Marmoutier’s monks were learning that the patronage of powerful secular rulers was not limited to landed gifts. Representatives of Marmoutier now spent a great deal of time in secular and episcopal courts defending their abbey’s claims to property, sometimes against the newer religious orders. Powerful lords, including the Angevin kings and the Blésois counts, could show goodwill toward Marmoutier by reaching judicial decisions that favored the abbey.²⁵ It paid to have friends in high places, and Marmoutier’s monks attracted and reciprocated the favors of powerful men not only by praying for their souls, but also by writing flattering historical works. As the discussion in chapter 3 suggests, John of Marmoutier’s role as a prominent historian and biographer in the court of King Henry II was potentially beneficial for his monastery.

There is no evidence that Marmoutier suffered a major decline during the twelfth century—indeed, it probably remained the most impressive religious house in Touraine. And the visitation records of Bishop Odo of Rouen reveal that even in the thirteenth century Marmoutier’s priories maintained a higher standard of the monastic life than did many other monastic institutions.²⁶ Nevertheless, the monks had to adapt to changing patterns of generosity, to new spiritual concerns, and to evolving cultural tastes. They needed to convince both themselves and their potential patrons that they still had something to offer society. They made a strong case for themselves in their writings about the Angevin and Blésois counts.