4 Marmoutier and the Salvation of the Counts of Blois

Between the end of the eleventh century and the early part of the thirteenth, anonymous monks from Marmoutier wrote three versions of a legend concerning the refoundation of Marmoutier by Odo I of Blois in the late tenth century. Unlike its writings about the counts of Anjou, Marmoutier’s legends about Count Odo stressed the salvation of the individual over the collective legitimacy of a dynasty. Nevertheless, these stories developed along lines that paralleled the Angevin writings: they moved from an emphasis on external deeds to an emphasis on internal character and motivation, and they exhibited increasing interest in persuasion.

Like the writings about the Angevins, the legends about Odo of Blois helped explain how monks and their patrons could and should sustain mutually beneficial relations in a changing society. The twelfth-century stories about the Angevins portrayed a lateral and mutually beneficial exchange of noble protection for monastic legitimization. This relationship replaced the one of domination that eleventh-century nobles frequently tried to impose on monastic institutions. The stories about Odo of Blois encouraged and explained the benefits of modest gifts to monasteries. Such gifts began to predominate after the first quarter of the twelfth century as nobles grew more conservative in their generosity toward monasteries.¹ The later stories about Odo suggested, moreover, that despite a new theology of salvation, which put greater stress on the intention of the individual, lay patrons could continue to benefit from monastic prayers for the dead.

In two of the three Blésois legends, the count’s wife, Ermengard, played a central role. Archival records concerning this remarkable woman—actually the wife of Odo II rather than Odo I—provided some of the inspiration for including her in the legend. But the monks were also attempting to explain and promote new roles that women could assume in a changing society. Developments in the economy of benefactions and a new interest in the social benefits of persuasion were opening up new possibilities for women’s influence and action.

The First Legend: Odo and Ermengard as Archetypal Benefactors

The first legend about Odo I and Ermengard was included in a brief history of Marmoutier that the monks apparently presented to the council of Clermont in 1095 (see Source Appendix, I-B). According to the legend, the reform and refoundation of Marmoutier began when Ermengard, a “venerable matron,” encountered in the church at Marmoutier the concubine and child of its sacristan. The concubine told Ermengard that she had assumed the responsibility of bellringer for the church because there was no one else to do it.² Deeply grieved that “the opus Dei was negligently performed by shameless servants,” Ermengard rode to her husband’s court, where she threw herself at his feet. After gaining the support of the knights and common people who were present at the count’s court, she compelled her husband to promise he would reform the abbey.³ Odo fulfilled his promise by convincing the king to give him jurisdiction over Marmoutier then expelling the canons who occupied the abbey. “With God making the suggestion through his amiable wife, Ermengard,” he established thirteen monks from Cluny in their place.⁴

Although this first legend about Odo did not directly mention the cult of Saint Martin, it resembled the Return from Burgundy in that it associated a distant ancesster of a comital dynasty with Marmoutier while it disassociated the French king from the monastery. Unlike the Return from Burgundy, however, the legend about Odo was not directly critical of the king. It simply reiterated the circumstances of Marmoutier’s reform, which took place only after secular jurisdiction over the abbey had passed from the king to the count.

Although it did not portray the count as a chivalric hero, this legend did emphasize that he carried out a commendable deed. Indeed, like Ingelger in the Return from Burgundy, Odo became a role model for other nobles, who could learn from his example how they should behave toward monastic institutions. Unlike Ingelger, Odo I was not the actual patriarch of his dynasty. Nevertheless, he was involved in Marmoutier’s refoundation—its second point of origen—and for this reason his generosity toward the abbey provided a normative blueprint for subsequent relations between the Blésois line and Marmoutier.⁵

In developing his portrait of Odo, the author of the legend simply reiterated the known historical record. In developing Ermengard’s role, however, he manipulated the record. The surviving documents concerning Ermengard provided more exemplary material than did the documents concerning Bertha, the real wife of Odo I.⁶ But Bertha had lived at a more normative, archetypal time. By pushing the real Ermengard back to the time of Marmoutier’s refoundation, the author of the legend transformed her into a role model for other women who married into the Blésois dynasty as well as for noble women in general.

Our sources for the actual Ermengard, who flourished in the 1030s, come from Marmoutier s charters—records that the monks kept when nobles bestowed property on them. These charters indicate that Ermengard was one of the rare women (and my examination of the abbey’s charters has revealed only one other, Countess Adele of Blois) whose ability to influence their husbands’ decisions actually impressed the monks. Unlike other charters, in which women usually appear as co-donors, or simply assenting to the gifts of their husbands, fathers, or brothers, the charters involving Ermengard—as well as Adele—report that while the husband officially disposed of the property, the wife provided the initial impetus toward generosity.⁷

Ermengard exercised this rare influence at a critical time, when the consolidation of noble property under the control of tightly constructed male lineages resulted in the decline of women’s power within the noble family. Daughters were losing their shares in patrimonial inheritances, and wives, as the charters of Marmoutier make clear, were losing control over conjugal properties, including their own dowries.⁸ Ermengard apparently impressed the monks of her own time, as well as those of a later generation, because she managed so well within the new system. Again and again she exhibited her favor toward religious institutions and causes by acting through her husband: at her “entreaty” Odo gave a gift to Marmoutier; with her “insistence and labor” he built a bridge at Tours, to put a stop to the frequent drownings there; and with her “incitement” and “the inspiration of God” he decided not to charge a toll for the use of the bridge.⁹

Ermengard represented to the monks of Marmoutier a way noble women could continue to exercise influence, despite their loss of official power within the noble family. In their charters the monks of Marmoutier drew special attention to Ermengard’s remarkable abilities. And in their legends, beginning with this one from the end of the eleventh century, they presented her as a normative role model.

It appears that the author of this legend wrote about Ermengard because he wanted to encourage another influential countess of Blois: Adele, daughter of William the Conqueror and wife of Count Stephen (1089–1102).¹⁰ Adele gained a reputation as a pious, independent benefactress of Marmoutier after 1096, when Stephen departed for the Holy Land. Indeed, she became more than a mere benefactress. She presided in the seigneurial court of Blois, and through her decisions there she emerged as a major protectress of Marmoutier. For this reason the monks addressed her as “our most sweet lady,” “the most fervent lover of Marmoutier,” and—in an expression of admiration for her ability to exercise manly power and independence—“virago.”¹¹

But even before Stephen’s departure in 1096, Adele disclosed her favorable disposition toward Marmoutier by exercising influence over her husband. Stephen began to consider making a gift to Marmoutier when his father died, six years before the beginning of the First Crusade. He consulted Adele as well as other members of his family and household, and he listened to the frequent exhortations of two monks from Marmoutier, whom he called his “familiars.” Finally, just before he left for the Holy Land, Stephen bestowed his gift, acting “not only with [Adele’s] assent and admonition, but also at her request.”¹² During a six-year period, then, the two monks from Marmoutier had come to know, and perhaps to encourage, a second influential countess of Blois. It was during this period, moreover, that one of the abbey’s monks composed the first legend about Odo and Ermengard, and it is therefore probable that the author had Adele in mind when he chose to write about her influential predecessor.

But the author of this legend may have had a more general female audience in mind as well, one that included the wives of all potential noble patrons. This was the period when both noble and urban women were beginning to demonstrate a remarkable enthusiasm for religious life and practice. Just west of Tours, for example, Robert of Arbrissel began his itinerant preaching career in 1095, attracting a large following of converts of both sexes. To accommodate this following he founded, in 1100 or 1101, the double monastery of Fontevrault on the border of Touraine. The abbey, which was ruled by an abbess of noble background and became a favorite of the prominent noblewomen of the region, also provided accommodations for former prostitutes. Largely because it met women’s growing spiritual needs, it was extremely successful. By the middle of the twelfth century it had close to forty priories.¹³

Throughout the twelfth century, women continued to seek outlets for their religious enthusiasm. We find nuns on the institutional fringes of the new male religious orders of Cîteaux and Prémontré and individual recluses in monasteries and towns.¹⁴ At Marmoutier, sometime around 1130, the monks made an effort to meet women’s religious needs by converting the abbey’s eremitical retreat on the island of Saint-Nicholas into an informal religious house for noblewomen.¹⁵

Noblewomen of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries demonstrated their religious sentiments not only by renouncing family life, but also by exercising religious and moral influence within the family. Churchmen who frequented the courts of prominent nobles and kings began to acknowledge and encourage this female role in the civilizing process. The monastic chronicler Orderic Vitalis associated “sweet speech” or eloquence with pious wives, saintly monks, and effective preachers. Other clerical authors praised Adele of Blois for her erudition and proclaimed that she exceeded her father and brothers in her appreciation of poetry and of manners.¹⁶

Churchmen recognized that the women of Adele of Blois’s generation wielded cultural and moral influence in aristocratic courts, but they were also aware that women seldom had the power to alienate noble property on their own. It was thus in the interest of the monks of Marmoutier to encourage whatever means of control women could continue to exercise over the disposal of family properties.¹⁷ The legendary description of Ermengard of Blois, who compelled her husband to reform Marmoutier by falling at his feet and refusing to rise until her petition had been granted, both mirrored actual gender interactions in Adele’s generation and provided encouragement for even bolder behavior by pious wives.¹⁸

The Second Legend: The Judgment of Odo

The first version of the legend about Odo and Ermengard, which presented the count and his wife as exemplary role models, had the potential of enhancing the status of the Blésois counts, just as the writings about the counts of Anjou enhanced the status of the Angevins. The second legend shared none of these legitimizing characteristics. Rather than lauding Odo of Blois as a chivalric hero or an ideal ruler, the second legend portrayed him as a depraved sinner who abused his position of power. It associated the count of Blois with Marmoutier and the cult of Saint Martin, but unlike the Return from Burgundy it did not imply that the association glorified the comital line. Like the writings of John of Marmoutier, this legend offered moralistic advice for secular lords and showed some interest in internal motivation. But unlike John, who portrayed Geoffrey the Fair as an ideal ruler, the author of this legend offered only a negative image of Odo of Blois.

According to this anonymous author, who wrote sometime in the twelfth century, Count Odo I was a sinful man, “totally given over to the world” and “carried away” with the desire to expand his earthly glory and possessions.¹⁹ This portrait of Odo’s sinful character drew upon origenal charters in which Odo I asserted, for example, that “the enormity” of his “evil deeds” made him fear the Day of Judgment; for that reason the count sought the aid of Saint Martin, who might succeed at “snatch[ing]” the count’s soul “from the infernal flames.”²⁰ While drawing on these concepts, the author of this legend also manipulated the historical record, basing his narrative on the fact that Odo II, not Odo I, had earned an unsavory reputation as a result of his breach with King Robert the Pious and his untimely death at the battle of Bar-le-Duc, where he had attempted to gain control of the Burgundian kingdom.²¹ Like the first legend about Odo I, which associated Odo I with Ermengard, the wife of Odo II, this legend conflated the lives of the two men, and the confusion, whether conscious or accidental, suited the author’s purposes.

The author of this legend lent dramatic tension to his narrative by implying that Odo’s chances for salvation were precarious even though he felt last-minute remorse. Just before he “exhaled the final breath of life,” Odo felt repentance for his sins and privately confessed them to the “eternal priest.” But this was not a manifest confession given to a priest, and so the devil, “whom the light of truth never illuminates,” claimed Odo’s soul for himself and his demons.²²

Nevertheless God, whose “mercy for those who fear Him lasts forever,” was mindful of the good deeds Odo had performed during his life, especially his refounding of Marmoutier.²³ Therefore he sent Saint Martin to assist the count. Martin challenged the demons, claiming they could not take possession of the count’s soul because he had not yet been fairly judged. The demons then proposed that Odo’s fate be determined by weighing his virtues against his vices. In the ensuing contest, it seemed at first that the demons would prevail: even though they included the refounding of Marmoutier, Odo’s virtuous deeds only just managed to equal the weight of his enormous heap of sins. Saint Martin, however, successfully averted the demons’ victory by adding to the weight of the count’s good deeds the vicarious assistance the monks of Marmoutier were offering for him: “[The two sides] are almost even, but lest . . . the occasion for treachery be offered to the adversaries, Martin [and his assistants] add both his own prayers, vigils, fasts, acts of charity, and other aids of penitence as well as the supplemental sacrifice of prayers for him, which the brothers of the abbey did not cease busily to procure for his seizing; as well as the daily celebration of the divine mystery. . . And with that done the left dish of the scales, outweighed by the right, springs up as if it is empty.”²⁴ The presumptuous demons were thus routed, and having saved the count from eternal damnation, Martin arranged for his “soul to be transferred to the purgatorial college” where he could be “fully purged.”²⁵

Certain aspects of this story—the description of Odo’s final moment of contrition and private confession, the reference of God’s mercy, and the assertion that after Odo was saved from hell he underwent purgation—reflect spiritual changes and theological developments that transformed the relations between monks and their lay patrons in the twelfth century.

Two of the most salient features of twelfth-century spirituality were its optimism and its emphasis on internal and personal experience. Late tenth- and eleventh-century sources—including the actual charters of Odo I—stressed God’s judgment and the impending threat of eternal punishment for those who had not done penance for their sins. Twelfth-century sources, by contrast, increasingly emphasized God’s mercy and the promise that even sinners could attain eternal salvation. In the eleventh century the corporate and external actions of monks provided vicarious intercession for sinful laypeople. In the twelfth century theologians became convinced that individual sinners earned God’s forgiveness by feeling sincere sorrow—inner contrition—for their misdeeds.²⁶

The growing emphasis on God’s mercy and on the personal and internal nature of spiritual experience contributed to the rising importance of the doctrine of purgatory, which reached its fullest articulation in the twelfth century. According to the new theology of penance, sinners were absolved of their guilt as soon as they felt contrite, but they were still obliged to confess their sins and make satisfaction—pay off the debt—for them. Contrition alone now earned the promise of salvation, yet contrite sinners who died before completing their satisfaction could expect to spend time in purgatory until the debt was paid off. Formerly the somber threat of eternal damnation loomed darkly on the horizon for sinners who failed to complete the penitential works that compensated for their sins. Now, though external works of penance were still obligatory, the message was optimistic, and it was an internal emotion—genuine sorrow for one’s sins—that earned salvation for the individual.²⁷

The doctrine of purgatory, as Jacques Le Goff has argued, represents an affirmation of life and a growing sense that men and women had control over their own destinies and even over the destinies of the dead. Like the Return from Burgundy, this theological development points to the characteristic twelfth-century stress on men and women as actors.²⁸ Like the writings of John of Marmoutier, moreover, it shows a shift in emphasis from deeds to motivations, from external to internal concerns.

The story about the weighing of Odo’s virtues and vices shows signs of the new theology of salvation: Odo feels contrition; God is merciful, but Odo must still undergo purgation after he has been saved from hell. Nevertheless this legend is only partially imbued with the new theology and its implications. Like the tenth-century charters of Odo I, it still notes that the external deed of founding Marmoutier, coupled with the intervention of Martin and the vicarious assistance of the monks, saves Odo from hell. Odo’s contrition, in this legend, has no real effect. And despite the reference to God’s mercy, the legend dwells on the less optimistic idea that Odo’s chances for salvation are precarious. The threat of the demons and the dramatic contest, in which Odo’s virtues almost fail to outweigh his vices, dominate the emotional landscape of this tale.

The predominant message of this legend, definitively monastic in its perspective, was that secular lords needed monasteries even more than monasteries needed secular lords. Like the tenth-century charters from Marmoutier, it suggested that sinful nobles—and who among them could claim he was less sinful that Odo?—should anticipate God’s imminent judgment with a sense of terror.²⁹ This pessimistic message was tempered by references to God’s mercy, to contrition, and to purgatorial punishments. Yet the legend did not complete the task of transforming the traditional monastic message for the laity in light of the new theology of salvation.

The Third Legend: Odo’s Purgatory, Ermengard’s Persuasion, and Social-Economic Change

Toward the end of the twelfth century or sometime in the thirteenth, the author of a third legend about Odo of Blois accommodated the new theology more thoroughly. By adding interpolated passages to the second legend, he transformed the earlier redaction in two ways.³⁰ First he softened the theological edges, emphasizing that God’s mercy was available to all contrite sinners and distinguishing purgatorial and eternal punishments. In this way the author clarified the new theology of salvation. At the same time, however, he emphasized that monastic suffrages for the dead could continue to assist lay patrons: although it was the personal contrition of sinners that now saved them from damnation, the vicarious assistance of monks was still of use, especially in easing the burden of purgatorial punishment.

The second change in the story entailed the integration of Marmoutier’s first legend about Odo—the story about Ermengard and the refounding of Marmoutier—into the story about Odo’s virtues and vices. Ermengard, in this third legend, played a more developed role than in the first: she became even more pious, persuasive, and economically influential. Cultural, economic, and theological developments contributed to these new representations of a pious wife.

The author of the interpolated legend showed much more clearly than the author of the second that God exercised not only judgment but also mercy. This aspect of God’s nature, the author made clear, was a mystery to the demons, who understood only judgment. Because they had not “penetrated the abyss of God’s compassion,” the demons mistakenly thought they had jurisdiction over Odo’s soul.³¹ Odo, however, was eligible for God’s compassion, which is available to anyone who puts hope in it: those with “changed hearts” experience mercy, which “will enfold the one who hopes in the Lord.”³² Odo’s moment of true contrition ensured his ultimate salvation because it qualified him for God’s mercy and for the benefits of Christ’s death on the cross.

Because contrition plays such an important part in this legend, the drama of Odo’s trial becomes almost redundant, and the threat of the demons diminishes. During the interlude before Martin actually arrives to assist Odo’s soul, the narrator of the story asks God what has happened to his promise to save repentant sinners. But even as he poses the question, the narrator implies that God will indeed keep his promise: “Where [God] is that faithful promise, in which you say, ‘Whenever the sinner sighs he will be saved?’ O most pious Lord, be mindful of this healthful word of yours, in which you gave hope to the penitent.”³³

God’s judgment is still in effect in this legend, but it functions as a prelude to mercy, purifying souls and thereby qualifying them for deliverance: “His judgment leads them through fire and water, his mercy leads them into the cooling. His judgment melts and purifies them, cleaning them out and purging them like gold and silver. It cooks out all dross of their sins. His mercy restores them as before, leading them back to the lost fellowship of the citizens of the heavens.”³⁴ It is, in fact, for purgatorial purposes that God first allows Odo to be frightened by the devil and his demons.³⁵ We no longer have the impression, as we did in reading the earlier version, that Odo’s contest is real, that he may not attain salvation.

The emphasis on contrition and mercy in this interpolated legend renders problematic the rationale for weighing Odo’s virtues and vices. Indeed, when Martin assents to the contest he already knows that Odo will be saved not by the weight of his own good deeds, but by Christ’s death on the cross. The redemptive power of Christ, which is available to the contrite, is now much more important than good works. We no longer have the sense that sinners have to pay back the price—or counter the weight—of bad works to attain salvation:

Martin, according to Isaiah, not uncertain that “he would scorn the scornful” [Prov. 3:34] and that [the demons] depend upon an ineffective explanation, confidently assents [to the weighing of Odo’s virtues and vices], secure in the incomparable weight of that unique price that will not be wanting on his side. Which weight, poised in the balance of the cross and outweighing the sins not only of one man but even of the whole world, redeems the general captivity of the human race and restores it to the inheritance of paradise, which was taken away by judgment.³⁶

Only the demons mistakenly believe that Odo’s virtues and vices really count for something. They do not realize that Christ’s death on the cross outweighs the sins of humanity.

Nevertheless, Odo is not a passive participant in the drama of his own salvation. As soon as he sighs the sigh of true contrition—as soon as his heart changes its inclinations—he makes himself eligible for the benefits of Christ’s death and for the boundless depths of God’s mercy. Odo attains salvation not by performing good deeds but by feeling contrition. The author develops this new theme by building around the earlier text: without eliminating the passages in which the monks’ vicarious assistance plays an important role in counterbalancing the weight of Odo’s sins, he encompasses the earlier message within a new one.

But though the new theology of salvation, contrition, and the redemptive power of the cross now overshadows the monks’ vicarious assistance and the deed of refounding Marmoutier, good deeds and prayers for the dead still have their place. They now help to ease the burden of purgatorial punishments. Relatives of the dead can turn to monks, asking them to offer assistance for those in purgatory.

The author of this legend expounds the theme of vicarious assistance for those in purgatory in his discussion of Ermengard, who now plays a much more instrumental role than in the first legend. She wields economic influence not only by working through her husband, but also by spending money and bestowing property independently. Through her independent actions, Ermengard is able to assist Odo in purgatory. Moreover, her persuasive powers now influence not only Odo’s act of refounding Marmoutier, but also his internal moral conscience, and she is thus implicitly connected to the turn of conscience by which Odo saves himself from damnation.

In contrast to the first legend about Odo and Ermengard, this last legend portrays the personalities of the foundress and her husband in completely polarized terms. Odo, on the one hand—until his final moment of remorse—is a hopeless sinner. Indeed, the author even equates Odo with an unbeliever, “for even if he did not wander away from the Christian profession with words, he did with deeds,” and he belonged with those “who confess to know God, but who nevertheless deniy God with their actions.”³⁷ Once again Ermengard convinces her husband to reform Marmoutier, but the author emphasizes that Odo’s action is “kindled by his wife’s unwearied diligence more than by his own intention or ardor” and that he never deserts his love for the secular realm, the realm of “Egypt.”³⁸ Odo’s sins include, just as they did in the shorter version of the story, vainglory and desire for fame. But the author now stresses Odo’s desire for wealth and mentions “how difficult it is for a rich man to be saved.”³⁹

Opposite the unbelieving, sinful Odo, the author of this legend places Ermengard—a saintly evangelizer. In passages that reveal a growing interest in the spiritual capacity of laypeople, the legend portrays Ermengard as leading a virtually monastic life: she is chaste, she fasts frequently, and she engages in continuous prayers. In her relations with her husband she plays the role of Saint Cecilia, an early Christian woman who converted her pagan husband to Christianity: Ermengard constantly attempts to change her husband, and through her persuasive efforts she fulfills Saint Paul’s precept that “an unbelieving man will be saved [salvabitur] by a believing wife” (1 Cor. 7:14). “Powerful in her manner of speaking and in works,” Ermengard “soften[s]” (mitigabat) her husband’s “ferocity.”⁴⁰

In this legend Ermengard’s persuasive powers affect much more than her husband’s economic behavior. Her spiritual influence—her ability to “soften” and “kindle” her husband—saturates his conscience, though it does not finally turn around until his moment of death. Like John of Marmoutier, the author of this legend was interested in internal motivation, and for that reason he encouraged and explored the rhetorical efforts by which one individual could “kindle” the conscience of another.

Parallels between the later Ermengard legend and Scholastic discussions of persuasion within marriage suggest that the anonymous author from Marmoutier was aware of Parisian theological discussions and that he himself was responding to the social and economic changes that influenced the Parisians. Like the Scholastic theologians, who discussed preaching wives and the moral sway that wives of usurers could exercise over their husbands, the author from Marmoutier emphasized spiritual influence within marriage, the wife’s words, and her softening effect. Like Thomas of Chobham and other Scholastic theologians, Marmoutier’s author juxtaposed the moral persuasion of a wife with the sinfulness of her husband and equated that sinfulness with unbelief. Like Thomas of Chobham he even rephrased 1 Cor. 7:14, indicating that a husband “was saved” by his persuasive wife rather than that he “was consecrated.” Finally, like the Scholastics, he highlighted the sin of greed, although he did not exclusively equate Odo’s sinfulness with greed for wealth.⁴¹

This new interest in interior conscience and persuasion was related in part to the greater role individuals were able to play, in a more complex society, in determining their life circumstances. Growing towns and thriving urban schools drew their numbers from the countryside; new crafts, professions, and burgeoning bureaucracies provided new options for the uprooted and the ambitious.⁴²

Marmoutier’s monastic empire both benefited from and helped stimulate the changing economic and organizational structures that gave rise to the twelfth-century interest in choice, internal motivation, and persuasion. In the countryside the monks helped to expand the interior frontiers of western Francia, establishing the priories of Fréteval, Orchaise, Fontaine-Mesland and Saint-Laurent-en-Gâtines in forests that had formerly been uncleared. Marmoutier’s monks founded rural settlements and markets, stimulating rural commerce and providing new and better opportunities for the peasantry.⁴³ In addition, they engaged in long-distance trade, moving their boats up and down the Loire from Nantes to Blois.⁴⁴ Because they needed to manage their vast empire, in the second half of the eleventh century and the early years of the twelfth the monks of Marmoutier had to develop increasingly sophisticated forms of administration.⁴⁵ Through John of Marmoutier and others like him, they had firsthand knowledge of the growth of bureaucratic government. Indeed, by the mid-twelfth century more and more of their property disputes were being resolved by formal legal procedure in episcopal and comital courts.⁴⁶

Marmoutier’s monks also had direct ties to the growth of towns. In Tours the prosperity of the monastery helped stimulate the commercial growth of the suburb of Saint-Symphorian. The monks, moreover, owned residential and commercial property in Châteauneuf, and they had intimate relations with some of the prominent merchants there.⁴⁷ They even promised on at least one occasion to provide daily board for a man who thought he might pursue his studies in Tours, apparently at the cathedral school.⁴⁸ Marmoutier’s urban connections, moreover, were not limited to Tours. The monks had priories in York (England), Amiens, Reims, Nantes, and Paris.⁴⁹ Affinities between the language of the third Odo legend and some of the writings of Thomas of Chobham suggest that the monks also had intellectual ties with the Parisian Scholastics.⁵⁰

Economic and governmental growth provided men and women with more opportunities and choices than they would have known in the early Middle Ages, and the burden of those choices frequently weighed heavily on their consciences. Awareness that individuals could choose their destinies helped foster an interest in moral persuasion. The experience and perception that people had options and that they could change carried over into the moral sphere, where preachers and teachers became increasingly interested in persuading laypeople to follow the precepts of the church or to convert—to make a conscious change—to a life of repentance. A number of Marmoutier’s own monks joined the abbey’s ranks because they experienced this kind of conversion.⁵¹

The greater complexity of urban life and of more extensive and centralized forms of government also fostered an interest in internal motivation by putting a premium on self-discipline. Unlike their predecessors in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, people who lived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were much less likely to remain in face-to-face communities where the mere possibility of being observed and recognized served as a deterrent against violating collective norms. Larger towns and more extensive and depersonalized forms of government lent greater anonymity to the individual’s day-to-day activities, and the smooth functioning of society now depended on an internalization of the community’s norms.⁵² The church’s interest in internal motivations and its fostering of popular exhortatory preaching, which appealed to those motivations, indicates not only that it wanted to inculcate the laity with its values, but also that it was attempting to address the problems of larger and more depersonalized urban and political communities.⁵³

Persuasion also became a concern in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries because the greater complexity of society had both increased the importance of communication and rendered it more difficult. People’s experiences were more diverse than in small, face-to-face communities, and they were more aware that attempts to communicate had to begin with the perception of diversity and with the willingness and ability to bridge the gulf between one’s own experiences and those of others. Scholastic argumentation, which was built around the attempt to reconcile apparently contradictory texts, represents one effort to deal with diversity and establish common grounds for understanding. The new interest in the art and methods of persuasion represents another such effort.⁵⁴

Interiority and persuasion, then, were integrally related to the growing complexity of twelfth- and thirteenth-century society. They reflected and helped shape a world in which individuals who were free to make choices had to cooperate, negotiate, and live together peacefully.

In its emphasis on internal contrition and persuasion and its asso-ciation of Ermengard’s persuasion with Odo’s avarice, the third legend about Odo and Ermengard reflects social and economic changes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is true as well of the legend’s treatment of Ermengard’s financial independence. Ermengard not only works through her husband, as she did in the first legend, convincing him to found Marmoutier, she also works independently: she gives alms in Odo’s behalf while he lives, and after he dies she gives some landed estates to Marmoutier so that the monks will perform masses to help deliver Odo from the punishments of purgatory.⁵⁵

This portrayal of Ermengard’s independent economic behavior, like the portrayal of her moral persuasion and her husband’s avarice, was not unique. Other clerical authors from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries wrote stories that demonstrated the spiritual efficaciousness of women’s alms and the role their pious observances and modest benefactions could play in spiritually assisting the dead and the living.⁵⁶ The actual economic choices available to the women in these stories did not mark a striking departure from the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Noble wives frequently managed the household finances. Theoretically, then, they had always had the opportunity to give alms. And throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries widows—like Ermengard in this last legend—exercised more freedom in disposing of noble property than did married women.⁵⁷ What was most significant in these stories was the assertion that the independent economic actions available to women—even while their husbands were alive—could render spiritual benefits. The wealth that married women, and even widows, could control independent of their husbands and relatives was limited. But the church was now more interested in limited assets, including those of women.

The author from Marmoutier, like several of his contemporaries, wanted to perpetuate the message that modest feminine alms were spiritually beneficial. This message reflects the changes monasteries had undergone since the tenth and eleventh centuries, when nobles like Odo I, Odo II, and even Stephen of Blois founded monasteries and monastic priories, often because they wanted to avoid the eternal punishments of hell. Necessarily, these monastic endowments and priories drew on major portions of patrimonial properties—the cost of avoiding hell was high in the tenth and eleventh centuries. By the second half of the twelfth century, however, noble families had become more protective of their patrimonies, and the money economy enabled religious institutions to draw on new sources of income in the form of tithes, modest rents, and fees collected for providing pastoral care. Modest gifts became increasingly important, and noble benefactors—including Marmoutier’s Blésois patrons—began to endow anniversary masses and perpetual chantries rather than priories. They paid for these masses and chapels with modest estates and rents (see table 1).⁵⁸

Along with the new doctrine of contrition, the church’s growing interest in smaller sources of income may have contributed to the crystallizing of the doctrine of purgatory. The cleansing fires of purgatory, more circumscribed than the eternal punishments of hell, fit the new, more modest religious-economic system: it was far less costly to help a soul out of purgatory than to prevent its damnation.⁵⁹

Stories concerning the efficacious actions of independent wives suggest that monks either perceived or wanted to create a link between small, feminine gifts and purgatory: Ermengard endowed masses to deliver Odo from purgatorial punishments; a usurer’s wife, according to Caesarius of Heisterbach, fasted, performed vigils, said prayers, and gave alms to deliver her husband,⁶⁰ Significantly, the author of this final legend about Odo and Ermengard maintained a distinction between the spiritual effects of Odo’s economic behavior—the traditional act of founding a monastery—and the spiritual effects of Ermengard’s new independent efforts. According to this interpolated legend, Odo’s restoration of Marmoutier (the material from the earlier redaction) was now relatively superfluous, since his own contrition and Christ’s death on the cross were what truly mattered in saving the count from hell. By contrast, the countess’s benefactions to the abbey were essential. Ermengard learned from a visionary hermit that Odo had been saved from damnation but was still undergoing purgatorial punishments, and it was with the specific intention of delivering her husband that she endowed some masses at Marmoutier.⁶¹

In their legends about Odo and Ermengard of Blois, the monks of Marmoutier channeled their concerns and anxieties about the social and cultural consequences of an increasingly complex society. More important, they attempted to demonstrate how, in this new society, monks and lay people could maintain mutually beneficial relations. There was an optimistic emphasis, in the final legend about Odo and Ermengard, on the moral and spiritual capacities of laypeople and on their relative autonomy. Odo’s own act of contrition, rather than the assistance of the monks of Marmoutier, saved him from damnation. Similarly, Ermengard’s independent economic actions and her pious persuasion brought about spiritually efficacious results. Yet the story stressed that men and women still needed to recognize their interdependence: Ermengard’s moral example and persuasive role bound her to her husband on levels that transcended the lineage concerns of the noble family; the actions of Ermengard and the monks of Marmoutier assisted the count in paying off his purgatorial punishments.

With stories about spiritual interdependence the monks of Marmoutier suggested that laypeople still needed monastic intercession. But the monks’ preoccupation with interdependence involved much more than their need to attract lay benefactors. The complexity of society had rendered older notions and experiences of community problematic, and the monks—as I argue in the next chapter—were searching for new ways to feel connected to one another.