Wandering Abbots. Abbatial Mobility and Stabilitas Loci in Eleventh- Century Lotharingia

Wandering abbots. Abbatial mobility and stabilitas loci in eleventh- century Lotharingia and Flanders*

Helena Vanommeslaeghe

The ideals of stability and enclosure have always been central to Western monastic ideology. From his moment of conversio, a monk was expected to renounce the world: in Benedict’s own prescription for the promissio, or formal promise submitted by each monk when he definitively entered the monastic ordo, a key role is accorded to the vow of stabilitas, the promise to stay forever within the walls of the convent.[1] Nevertheless, this ideal of total enclosure could never be fully realized, as monasteries had to engage continuously with the secular word to provide for their material needs and receive protection, in exchange for which they offered their continuous prayers. In accordance with Benedict’s prescriptions, these intermediary contacts between the monastery and the outside world were predominantly maintained by the abbot, who negotiated with other abbots as well as with secular lords.[2]

This intermediary position was considered to be standard abbatial behavior for several centuries.[3]In the eleventh-century reform movement, however, abbatial mobility and action in the world became a topic of much discussion in monastic sources. These were wont to describe abbatial travels and attempted to legitimate abbots’ mobility within the framework of stabilitas. This preoccupation indicates a deeply felt concern about the interpretation of stability and mobility. This article will investigate this issue through a study of some of the most important abbots of eleventh-century lower Lotharingia. Abbots such as Richard of Saint-Vanne, Poppo of Stavelot, Olbert of Gembloux, and Thierry of Saint-Hubert were constantly on the road, in contact with the world outside their convent, and thus seemingly in violation of the stability they promoted among their fellow monks.

The way in which their mobility was represented in contemporary narrative sources is highly complex, because the discourse reflects both the self-representation of the abbot as a leader who was allowed to move within the world, and the interpretation of his mobility and representative strategies by the authors who composed the narrative and attempted to explain this abbatial behaviour.[4] This paper aims to deconstruct the legitimizing strategies in these narratives.

This paper will consider three key factors that determined the shape of abbatial mobility. I will give a short introduction to the history of mobility in Christianity and monasticism, as well an overview of the monastic reform movement of the tenth and eleventh centuries. This will lead to a discussion of the first major wave of abbatial travel, which sprang from monastic concerns. Much of this was closely linked to the reform movements, which were characterized by abbots who journeyed to several monasteries in order to reform them. Second, I will discuss the abbots’ role in the monasteries’ or their own secular affairs, such as the aristocratic networks that they belonged to. Third, I will explore how they propagated and actively participated in the pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to Rome that became increasingly popular from the year 1000 onward. This paper will demonstrate that various eleventh-century sources used rhetorical strategies, which all employed a master discourse about the ideal-typical abbatial leader, in various guises to legitimate the reality of abbatial mobility.

Historical context

The dichotomy between activity and stability and the discussion over which was the best way to serve God has always been imminent. On the one hand, mobility could signify an alienation from God, which had to be avoided.[5] On the other hand, wandering around could also be a devout way of life, as Jesus had promised eternal life to those who left their family and country for the love of him. From a biblical perspective, a true Christian had to follow the examples of Abraham leaving his native land and Paul going to Damascus by turning to God in a peregrinatio.[6]Because the Fall had caused an alienation from the perfect order of God’s creation, it was considered a Christian duty and privilege to detach oneself from the temporal terrestrial world in order to return to the bliss of paradise. Such biblical ideals can be related to the concept of the homo viator, the idea that a Christian is in exile on earth, on his way to the heavenly homeland. These ideas were essential elements of early Christian and medieval thought and life.[7]

During the early Middle Ages, many monks left their homeland in voluntary exile to live somewhere else, in peregrinatio.[8] The best known supporters of the peregrinatio were the Irish monks, who had already adopted this ideal in the 4th and 5th centuries. For them, voluntary exile was one of the highest forms of penance and self-mortification. They were hermits, searching for the solitaria vita, but also ascetic pilgrims, going ex patria and hoping to encounter God in isolation.[9] From the 6th and 7th centuries onward, they were also supposed to take the duty of praedicatio with the blessing of their superior.[10] Early medieval saints’ lives clearly show that ascetic peregrination was highly esteemed as a radically Christian way of life.[11]

However, not everyone embraced this ideal of peregrinatio. In 451, for example, the Council of Chalcedon specified that monks had to love solitude and be ardent in prayer while remaining in the monastery in which they had first renounced the world. Monks were also placed under the authority of the bishop and could not leave the monastery without his authorization.[12] From the sixth century onward, several monastic rules, of which the Benedictine Rule was the most influential, stipulated that monks had to be attached to their community throughout their whole life. The first chapter of the Regula Benedicti divided monks into different categories. The first and most favored category comprised the cenobites, who lived in monasteries under the Rule and with an abbot as their superior. A second approved category included the hermits who had chosen to fight the devil in a cell. The two other categories, which Benedict deemed detestable, were the sarabaites, who did not have a rule and took their own desires as law, and the gyrovagues, who roamed their whole life through different regions and were always mobile and never stable. This last category was considered still more detestable than that of the sarabaites.[13] Benedict thus condemned the older ideal of peregrinatio and insisted that every monk take a vow of stabilitas, steady perseverance in the monastery. This stability represented the higher order that monasticism stood for. Although the rule prescribed stability for a community’s own monks, the monastery did receive travelling strangers and every true peregrinus, the authentic pilgrim who knocked at the door of the monastery, was to be received as if he were Christ himself.[14] Benedict also found it necessary to allow monks to travel or leave the monastery for short periods of time in order to manage the monastic domain, but regulated their prayers and meals.[15]

During the monastic reforms of Louis the Pious and Benedict of Aniane in the 8th and early 9th centuries, the ideal of peregrinatio was abandoned in favour of the vow of stabilitas. Focusing on a stricter Benedictine spirituality, reformers enforced a stricter separation between monks and canons in order to keep the secular influence away from monasticism. Monks no longer went on apostolic missions and had to pursue their own conversio by staying in the convent.[16]

Tenth-century monastic reformers relied on Benedict of Aniane’s model for the (re-) foundation or restoration of monasteries that had suffered from local wars or Viking raids.[17] In Lower Lotharingia and Flanders, the best known propagator of this monastic reform was Abbot Gerard of Brogne (919-959), who worked in close cooperation with count Arnulf of Flanders, who is credited as the initiator of these restorations in many sources.[18] As they had done in Carolingian times, the local nobility took the lead in the reform and the foundation of monasteries as a form of imitatio regis on a local level.[19] Those who had served as lay abbots to one or more monasteries stepped down in favour of a regular abbot. They did, however, manage to keep some control over the monastery by assuming the position of advocatus and promising to protect the abbey against its enemies in exchange for the jurisdiction over its domain.[20] This reform strengthened the separation between the monastic and the secular world, which provided the monks with a distinct moral superiority. Whereas previously only a few holy men had followed the rigid ideals of ascetism and seclusion, the whole monastic community became ascetic ‘professionals’ while staying within the walls of their convent.[21]

The regular abbots of the tenth century were chosen from this corps of ‘professionalized’ monks, but in practice behaved much like their predecessors, the aristocratic lay abbots. This created a paradox between the ideal of monastic enclosure and the reality of interaction with the lay world. The vita of Odo of Cluny (†942), who belonged to the first generation of reforming abbots, focused on his itinerary. Odo was continuously en route, managing his abbeys’ interests and maintaining his own aristocratic networks. A second example is provided by William of Volpiano (†1032), Abbot of Saint-Bénigne in Dijon and a reformer of several monasteries in Normandy and Burgundy. As multi-abbas, he frequently travelled to reform other abbeys, and because William himself was mostly absent from his own community, he relied on the prior or praepositus to replace him in the monastery.[22] Abbots like Odo and William were accepted as intermediaries between the abbey and the world. Instead of the traditional stabilitas loci, they embraced stabilitas menti, meaning that they were seen as exceptional monks who were able to close their mind to society and focus on God, even if they were unable to maintain physical stability.[23]

The idea of stabilitas menti remained popular in the eleventh century, when abbots such as Richard of Saint-Vanne, Poppo of Stavelot, and Olbert of Gembloux spread a new wave of reforms though Lotharingia. These charismatic individuals tried to reconcile their identity as Benedictine monks with the necessity of taking action in the world. They did not limit themselves to reforming individual monasteries, but also undertook a much broader mission among laymen by setting themselves up as examples of desirable behaviour. They also strengthened the church’s bonds with these laymen through the popularization of relics and pilgrimages. In a more Christocentric world starting from the year 1000, these abbots had a willing audience among the laity, which hoped to share in the spiritual advantages of the monastic world, which represented the highest order of society.[24]

Nevertheless, the idea that the world was a dangerous place was omnipresent in monastic discourse. After 1050, the debates about lay interference in monastic matters and the duty of stability became more intense in the context of the Gregorian debates and the Investiture Controversy, as the papal party itself was monastic and tried to reduce lay influence on their sphere of authority. Since the sources concerning reforming abbots such as Richard of St.-Vanne were all written after 1050, they depict their abbot’s travels and actions in the world carefully in order to legitimize them.[25]

Monastic mobility

Reform was one of the most obvious reasons for abbatial mobility in this period. Charismatic abbots often acquired control over several monastic communities and thereby created a multi-abbacy, becoming abbot of every abbey they reformed. In their role of ‘reforming abbot’, Olbert (1012-1048), Richard (1005-1046), and Poppo (1020-1048) had several abbeys under their control.[26] Olbert was the reformer and Abbot of both Gembloux and Saint-Jacques in Liège till the end of his life. Richard and Poppo had an even wider terrain of action. Richard is commonly linked to Saint-Vanne and Poppo to Stavelot-Malmedy, but they both led many more abbeys spread throughout Lotharingia and Flanders for short periods of time. An important feature of this practice of multi-abbacy was that an abbot did not unite the abbeys he reformed in a single congregation, but allowed the abbeys to remain independent of each other. In most cases, abbots like Richard and Poppo did not try to holde on to their abbacies until the hour of their death. Instead, they trusted in short manifestations of their leadership, intervening in the affairs of a particular abbey for a relatively short period of time before leaving again.[27]

The abbatial travels that came with multi-abbacy were legitimized by a discourse of personal excellence. In contrast to these reforming abbots, an average monk had no reason to leave his monastery on his own initiative, as illustrated by the gesta abbatum gemblacensium, which records that one of Olbert’s first actions after his appointment to Gembloux was to put an end to the illicit roaming of his monks.[28] Monks were only allowed to travel when their abbot had ordered them to do so for the good of the abbey – to administer its domains, for example, or to expand its library. Narrative sources from the eleventh century are usually silent about the mobility of such monks. In contrast, sources usually portray the travels of charismatic abbots, teachers, and students in a positive light. These travellers were encouraged because of their personal excellence, which could be developed through education. By traveling to various schools, they gained a better understanding of God and laid the foundations of a monastic career. The monastic school system was based on attracting the best scholars and students, so the most talented monks were allowed to travel outside their home abbey. Olbert, for example, was educated as a child in the disciplina monastica and the study of the Scripture in the school of Lobbes. When the Abbot of Lobbes noticed Olbert’s talents, he introduced Olbert to the liberal arts. He later continued his studies in Saint-Germain-des-Prés (near Paris), Troyes and Chartres before he returned to the school of Lobbes.[29] His fame spread and not long thereafter he was sent to Worms, where Bishop Burchard had asked for a scholar to instruct him and help him compile his canon.[30] After they completed this task, Burchard asked Olbert to stay at Worms, but Olbert chose to return to Lobbes.[31] Education could also be a means to come into contact with charismatic scholars whose excellence radiated onto their students. Thierry of Saint-Hubert, for example, was an oblate in Lobbes under Richard of Saint-Vanne.[32] After completing his education, he became a scholar at Stavelot under Poppo[33] and later also became a scholar at Mouzon.[34]

Narrative sources described these travels in an even more positive light when the travellers could be portrayed as combining personal excellence with complete obedience to a superior. A good example is Poppo, who started his career as a monk at Saint-Thierry but obeyed Richard of Saint-Vanne when he asked Poppo to come with him to the abbey of Saint-Vanne. The vita Popponis stressed Poppo’s virtuousness, mentioning that he left only physically but stayed at Saint-Thierry in mind, incorporating a reference to the ideal of stabilitas menti instead of stabilitas loci. The vita describes Poppo’s decision to follow Richard as an act of obedientia, one of the most important monastic duties emphasized by the reform movement.[35] Monks not only had to be obedient to the Rule and to their abbot, but also had to practice obedience as a purpose in and of itself.[36] Richard was clearly pleased with Poppo’s qualities and soon appointed him as Prior of Saint-Vaast, which Richard had reformed at request of Baldwin, count of Flanders.[37] After a while, Richard removed Poppo to test his humility and obedience. Poppo, who had foreseen his removal in a vision, naturally obeyed him. Not long afterwards, Poppo became Prior of Vasloges, one of Richard’s reformed abbeys, which he renamed Beloacum.[38] Poppo also became Prior of Saint-Vaast, which was reformed by Richard of Saint-Vanne, and soon became one of the centres of reform. The vita’sfocus on Poppo’s role as a prior is not only revealing for Poppo’s career, but also shows the obvious consequence of the multi-abbacy. Because reforming abbots were constantly moving from abbey to abbey, they had to rely on priors to take care of the day-to-day government of each community. The passage about Poppo’s obedient and virtuous travel thus exemplifies the ideal of the perfect monk, who excels in monastic duties and was (as was proven by Poppo’s vision) in contact with God. As such, Poppo’s career is a perfect illustration of the typical ideal description of the career of a reforming abbot in narrative sources.

The mobility of reforming abbots as a point of discussion is even more present in the sources concerning Richard of Saint-Vanne. Not long after he had reformed Saint-Vaast, Richard reformed Florennes, Saint-Amand of Elno, and Hautmont, whereupon he handed the abbacy over to one of his disciples. Lobbes was reformed in 1020 and not long after, the Bishop of Liège asked him to reform the abbey of Saint-Laurent in Liège.[39] Several French dioceses also benefited from Richard’s guidance,where the introduced monks and relics from Saint-Vanne to help with the reforms.[40] According to the chronicle of Hugh of Flavigny, Richard also reformed Saint-Hubert and several French abbeys, but these assertions are not corroborated by other sources.[41] Hugh describes an abbot who was constantly on the road. Nevertheless, the sources rarely specify exactly what Richard was doing during all his visits. Reconstruction works or the ‘improvement of religion’ were mentioned with respect to his most important abbacies, such as Saint-Vanne.[42] In most cases, however, his abbacy was not long enough for a profound reorganization of the monastic life and domain. Richard thus trusted in short manifestations of his leadership in a monastery to effect change, especially when his name was already well-known and more and more abbeys wanted to take advantage of his charisma.[43] Because abbeys could be ‘reformed’ by Richard in a very short stretch of time, Hugh of Flavigny thought that he could credibly assert that Richard had reformed abbeys such as Saint-Hubert, even though there was no proof that Richard had ever visited those places.