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Because it appears that two surviving documents
from the abbey of St. Lomer may provide unusually precise and reliable
corroborative evidence for establishing an absolute chronology indeed,
to the very day of both the beginning (25 April, 1138) and end (25
May, 1186) of the earliest building campaign of this important "Transitional/Early
Gothic"2
building, a careful examination of the history of the institution and
its surviving document base is perhaps even more warranted than usual.
The local tradition in the 17th century (in
part reinforced by since-lost documents) held that Lomer, a 6th
century native of the Drouais, probably from the farmstead of Neuville-la-Mare,
which later documents tell us belonged to the saint's abbey at Blois and
was the site of a chapel dedicated to him where, even in the mid-17th,
century, the saint's day (19 January) was celebrated by a procession to
the chapel from all the local parishes.3
He became a monk of one of the most important monastic houses of the period,
St. Mesmin of Micy (near Orléans4)
before retreating to the woods of the northern Perche and founding there
a monastery, dedicated to St. Martin, at "Corbion" most likely
the modern Moutiers-au-Perche.5
1 ©Christopher Crockett,
2014. This document in WORD format is here.
The present cursory summary of the history of St. Lomer is primarily based
on the extensive 1924 monograph by the erudite local historian, Dr. Frédéric
Lesueur ("L'Église et l'Abbaye bénédictine de
Saint-Lomer de Blois," Mémoires de la société
des sciences et lettres de Loir-et-Cher, XXV, 1924, pp. 59-162) who,
in turn, relied heavily on the excellent and detailed 17th century history
of the abbey by the Maurist historian, Dom Noël Mars (as in note
3 below), and also made use of an extensive (6 folio
volumes!), still-unpublished manuscript cartulary. Wherever possible,
all Lesueur's sources have been independently checked and, in the main,
this process has shown his meticulous narrative to be well founded; indeed,
he appears to have been one of the most reliable local historians working
in early 20th century France. I am indebted to Professor Sarah Blick for
reading an early draft of this essay and offering many helpful suggested
improvements. Needless to say, all remaining errors and mare's nests are
my own.
2
Of course, "Gothic," an early modern construct of the 16th
and 17th centuries, was never used in the Middle Ages to characterize
the architectural (or figural) style which is now so familiar that we
"know it when we see it." However, defining exactly what constitutes
a "Gothic" building in the second third of the 12th
century when confronted with an actual exemplar rather than in the
abstract is not an easy task. Indeed, it might be argued that the
imposition of the constraints of the construct prevents us from understanding
the true nature of some of these "transitional" buildings (and
the very use of such a term begs the basic question of the reality of
the construct). With its mixture of "Romanesque" and "Gothic"
elements, St. Lomer's is one of the best tests of the use and validity
of these constructs. The question is an important one because we often
find in the literature that the demands of adhering to the construct may
distort the interpretation of both a monument itself and even the document
base connected to it. (On this phenomenon, see Elizabeth A. R. Brown,
"The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval
Europe," The American Historical Review, LXXIX, 1974, pp.
1063-1088.)
3
Dom Noël Mars, Histoire du royal monastère de Sainct-Lomer
de Blois, de l'ordre de sainct Benoist, recueillie fidellement des vieilles
chartes du mesme monastère et divisée en quatre parties,
par dom Noël Mars... 1646, manuscrit de la Bibliothèque publique
de Blois, publié textuellement... avec notes, additions et tables,
par A[lexandre] Dupré,... (Blois: Marchand, 1869), Section
I, p. 55: "Pour le lieu de la naissance
c'est chose certaine,
selon la tradition que ce fut à Neusville-la-Mare
" [sic
for Neufville? -i.e., a half-crossed, interior "s"?]. This "tradition"
does not appear in the sources published in either Mabillon's ASOSB or
the AASS. Cf. Merlet, Dictionnaire topographique d'Eure-et-Loir,
p. 131: "Neuville-la-Marre, village, cm de Gironville
[cm de Châteauneuf], Nova-Villa (polypt. D'Irminon,
p. 133)," four leagues from Chartres"; and GC VIII, c. 1352:
Neuville-Lama, "ab urbe Carnotensi quatuor milliaribus Gallicis
dissitam, quo in loco exstat oratorium ipsi sacrum."
4
See Dom Mars' typically well-reasoned "Digression Apologétique
pour preuver que saint Lomer a esté religieux de Saint-Mesmin,"
in his Histoire
(as in note 3), pp. 57-60.
5
Acta Sanctorum (Antwerp, 1643), XIX, (2 January), pp. 225ff. On
the history of the abbey of Corbion, see GC, VIII, cc. 1350-4 (i.e., within
the text devoted to the abbey of St. Lomer of Blois), locating this place
in the "vicus dictus Corbon, non longe a Moritania, Mortagne, in
pago Perticensi versus Carnutum" (c. 1350, n. a). On the complex
early history of the Pagus Corbonesus/Curbionensis, see
Auguste Longnon, ed., Polyptyque de l'abbaye de Saint-Germain des Prés
.(Paris:
Champion, 1886-1895), II, p. 162, nn. 1-2. Alexandre Dupré noted,
in his edition of Dom Mars (p. 64, n. 2), that precisely locating this
"Corbon" is not an easy task and favored "le nom significatif
de Moustier-Saint-Lomer
.con de Remalard, (Orne, arr
Mortagne)
" This view was shared by Ferdinand Lot and Louis
Halphen (Le régne de Charles le Chauve
Paris: Champion,
1909, p. 46, n. 6), following Lot's edition of an 843 charter of Charles
the Bald ("Mélanges carolingiens, IX," in Le
Moyen âge, XII, 1908, p. 261-274, at p. 268). More recently
and definitively Georges Tessier revisited the problem and
also decided that "La tradition plaide en faveur de Moutiers-au-Perche,
anciennement Saint-Lomer-le-Moutier, où les moines de Saint-Lomer
de Blois avaient un prieuré
" (Recueil des actes de
Charles II le Chauve
. Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1943-1955, I,
p. 18, n. 1).
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Lomer died on a visit to Chartres around
590, and was buried in the Benedictine abbey of St. Martin-au-Val, on
the outskirts of the city.6
Shortly thereafter (as the tradition had it), two monks from Corbion
came to Chartres, wormed their way into the trust of the monks of St.
Martin's and were eventually able to steal the saint's body, taking
it back to the monastery he had founded in the Perche.7
Around 873 or 874, monks from Corbion,
fleeing Norse invaders with their saint's relics, came first to Le Mans,8
and then to Blois,9
where they were given asylum, most likely in the church (or chapel)
of Saint Calais, within the castrum which dominated the town.10
At a date which cannot be precisely determined most likely in
the late 10th century the monks of St. Lomer moved
from the church of St. Calais in the castrum to a site below
it, quite near the river i.e., to the church of Saint Lubin, (described
as being sub mnibus Blesis castri11),
which they took over and occupied until their precious relics were translated
to a newly constructed building immediately to the east, in 1186 (see
below12).
According to Dom Mars (and his sources), during the course of the 11th
century the monks apparently received many gifts of property, suggesting
that they were active and important in the region.13
When the relics were transferred from the castrum, this earlier
church of Saint Lubin apparently became that of St. Lomer; apparently
it occupied the site of the western-most bays of the nave of the present
church.14
6
Mabillion's best guess for the date of his death was "c.
590" (ASOSB, sæc. 1, Venice 1733 ed., p. 326, note
a). The Benedictine abbey of St. Martin ("St.-Martin-au-Val,"
now the parish church of St. Brice) occupied the site of the oldest
Christian cemetery of Chartres and was the necropolis for many of the
early bishops, including St. Lubin. After the Norse depredations of
the 10th century it was served by secular canons, then became
a priory of Marmoutier in 1128 (see Yves Delaporte, "Chartres,"
in Alfred Baudrillart, et al., eds., Dictionaire d'histoire et géographie
écclesiastique, VIII [Paris: 1952], cc. 544-574, at c. 560).
Architecturally, it is the largest and most significant surviving 11th
century building in the diocese of Chartres.
7
Mabillon records -"Ex vetustis Legendariis & Breviariis Mss."-
that the relics were translated from Chartres on a 23 October, "circa
591" (ASOSB, sæc. 1, Venice 1733 ed., p. 317-327,
at p. 327). The account of the saint's life by Dom Mars (as in note
3) clearly contains several interpolations (presumably
based on the unpublished cartulary), most evidently those which connect
property owned by the saint in the diocese of Chartres and the Blesois
(e.g., Chapter I, Section XII, p. 373); it also recounts the circumstances
of his death (I, XII, pp. 373-4) and his first translation back to Corbion
(II, II, pp. 374-5). Unfortunately, the theft of Lomer's relics does
not fall within the 800-1100 range of Patrick Geary's "Handlist
of Relic Thefts" (Furta Sacra
Princeton, 1990, pp.
149ff.), though it probably does correspond to the pattern which is
illuminated there.
8
The account by Dom Mars (as in note 3, I, X, p.
377) includes at least one miracle associated with the relics of the
saint during his stay in Le Mans, suggesting that they may have been
there for some period of time.
9
Dom Mars (as in note 3), I, XI-XIII, pp. 377-80.
10
This reconstruction of events in part reflects the text of a forged
924 royal charter (discussed in note 12 below).
The question of the fabrication of this document aside, it seems clear
that the monks must have resided somewhere in Blois from the third quarter
of the 9th century until their translation to the church
of St. Lubin, perhaps in the early years of the 11th century
(which is Jean Dufour's conjecture of the date of the forgery see
below). The palace chapel (oratorio sancti Carelesi) seems as
likely a place as any, and inserting it in a charter which fabricated
the history of the abbey would, presumably, have been consistent with
and, indeed, may reflect that history as it was understood
by those living at the time of the forgery's creation, three generations
or more after the purported events recorded therein.
11
Cf. Lesueur 1925, p. 10: "Il est vraisemblable qu'elle se trouvait
sensiblement au même endroit que l'église Saint-Lomer
.l'église
Saint-Lubin occupait sans doute l'emplacement de là nef de l'église
actuelle. Nous verrons, en effet, qu'en 1186 on transporta les reliques
de la vieille église dans la nouvelle. La 'vieille église'
existait donc encore à cette date et par suite devait occuper
l'emplacement des parties qui n'avaient pas encore été
reconstruites, c'est-à-dire des premières travées
de la nef." For a sketch of the importance and dissemination of
the cult of St. Lubin, an important 6th century bishop of
Chartres, in the diocese, see François-Jules Doublet de Boisthibault,
"Le tombeau de Saint-Lubin, évêque de Chartres (544-556),"
Revue Archéologique, XV, 1858-59, pp. 35-39; Lucien Merlet,
"Notice sur l'église Saint-Lubin de Châteaudun,"
Mémoires de la société archéologique
de d'Eure-et-Loir, IV, 1867, pp. 180-189; Jan van der Meulen, Notre-Dame
de Chartres: I, Die vorromanische Ostanlage (Berlin: Mann, 1975),
pp. 65-82.
12
The date of 924 for this translation, commonly found in the secondary
literature on the abbey, is based on a supposed charter of King Radulph
purporting to document the monks' move from the castrum to the church
of St. Lubin in the settlement below (most conveniently published as
"Charta fundationis abbatiae S. Launomari Blesensis
Ex chart.
S. Launomari" in GC, VIII, instr. c. 412, i.e., after
the 17th c. cartulary of Saint-Lomer, Arch. dép.
de Loir-et-Cher, 11 H. 128, p. 5; the "original" is lost).
Though Joseph Depoin doubted this charter's authenticity ("Études
préparatoires à l'histoire des familles palatines,"
Revue des Études historiques, 1908, p. 578), as had others,
it was, rather stubbornly, accepted as genuine by the usually meticulous
and cautious Dr. Lesueur. However, based on the application of multiple
criteria, Jean Dufour has since convincingly declared it to be an "Acte
Faux" (Recueil des actes de Robert Ier et de Raoul,
rois de France: 922-936 [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1978], no.
31, pp. 113-116, characterizing Lesueur's arguments for its legitimacy
as "désespérés"). Dufour suggests, rather
obliquely, that the forgery probably dates from the early to mid-11th
c., perhaps created to bolster a claim that the Count of Blois was the
chief patron of the newly-displaced abbey though he implies that
it is at least as likely that it was the Viscount of Blois who was in
fact the primary agent of the monks' translation to the new site, citing
(p. 115) a charter of 902 in the Arch. départ. Loir-et-Cher,
11 H 128, p. 1, published by R.-H. Bautier (Recueil des actes d'Eudes,
roi de France, Paris, 1967, n° 40, 2°, p. 166). Be that
as it may, at some point in the late 10th or very early 11th
c. it seems likely that the monks of St. Lomer did, indeed, leave the
chapel of St. Carilif in the upper castrum and relocate to the church
of St. Lubin, nearer the river, approximately on the site of the western
parts of the present building. Dufour's implication (pp. 114-115) that
the forged charter of King Radulph dates from the early 11th
c. suggests that the memory of the viscount's role in the abbey's history
had, by that time, faded or perhaps been suppressed while
the (supposed) tradition of the count's role in the translation of the
abbey had not only replaced it, but had been well established for some
generations by the time of the 1138 commemoration of Count Theobald
IV's sponsorship of the new building campaign and, indeed, may partly
explain his patronage. In any case, from the time of its concoction,
this forgery was fully accepted as genuine by later generations and
was not only used to reconstruct the history of the abbey, but also
for such purposes as the general confirmation of its property by Pascal
II in 1107 (cf. note 20 below). Indeed, Dom Mars believed that "l'abbaye
a été fondée par Raoul" (according to his
letter to Dom Anselme Le Michel, 26 January, 1645, published in Delisle's
review of Dupré's edition of Mars, BEC, XXXI, 1870, pp. 103-110,
at p. 107).
(GC VIII, Instr., c. 412: Charta fundationis abbatiae S. Launomari
Blesensis
Ex chart. S. Launomari). "
ego Rodulphus
penuria
& longa fatigione monachorum, qui de loco in locum fugati indecenter
morantur in castello Blesensi sursum in ecclesia sancti Carilephi in
loco non apto neque congruo ordini monastico, do & concedo preibus
amici mei Theobaldi inclyti comitis palatii victus sancto Launomaro
& monachis ejus, ecclesiam sancti Leobini constructam sub moenibus
Blesis castri & fiscum contiguum ipsi ecclesiae, ad construendam
abbatiam
together with all that pertains to it which the count
has ab antecessoribus meis jure hereditario
."
The general confirmation charter of Charles the Bald for Corbion, transcribed
by Dom Mars after a sealed "original" (Dupré ed., pp.
87-9), supposedly "remédier la destruction des titres de
cet établissement provoquée par les incursions des Normands,"
which included property in the Ile-de-France, Neustria, Acquitaine,
etc., based in part on the type of sealing method still visible on the
"original" which Dom Mars "had before his eyes,"
was adjudged an "acte faux" by Georges Tessier (Rec. actes
Charles le Chauve, II, no 484, pp. 608-11), and a post 9th
century fabrication from "une époque relativement récente,"
i.e., perhaps of the late 11th or 12th century.
In any case, this fabrication suggests that the monks of St. Lomer were
not without considerable resources at the time of its creation i.e.,
the property to which they laid claim mentioned in this fabrication
may have been somewhat in play.
13
Lesueur, p. 10, citing Mars, pp. 129, 139. Note that the 17th
century manuscript cartulary from this major house (Archives départementales
de Loir-et-Cher, 11 H. 128, containing more than 500 documents from
902-1771; cf. Stein, Bibliographie des cartulaires, nos 503 and
503bis) has apparently been neither published nor used in any systematic
subsequent study.
14
Regardless of whether or not the 924 charter is legitimate, the fact
is that, at some point, the monks of St. Lomer probably did indeed leave
the church of St. Carilif in the castrum and bring their relics
to a site nearer the river (i.e., first the site of St. Lubin). According
to a charter of 1186, these relics were transferred "de veteri
in novam
ecclesiam" at that time (see n. 23
below). Note that the "orientation" of St. Lubin (as well
as that of most of the other churches of Blois) was determined by its
relationship to the Loire; thus, the choir/apse of the present St. Lomer
is oriented toward the northeast. For the sake of simplicity, we shall
assume here that its orientation is toward the east.
[Was there a chapel of Sts. Carilif or Lubin in the new St. Lomer's?
AASS on Carilif and Lubin??]
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Over a century later we have a laconic mention in a chronicle
(from outside the region) of a fire in the monastery of St. Lomer in 1114,
but it lacks details concerning the extent of any damage to either the
abbey church or its conventual buildings and it is not known what, if
any, reconstruction work might have taken place following this fire.15
In any event, as far as can be determined, the monks of St. Lomer were
at that time occupying the former church of St. Lubin (see above) in the bas ville,
which may well have been in the space of the present western bays of the
nave (i.e., the post-1186 building campaign of the present building).
However, it seems that a 9th-10th century manuscript from the abbey16
contains a 12th century interpolation which reliably tells us, in an unusually
precise fashion, that construction on a new church began on 25 April in
1138, under the patronage of Count Theobald of Blois17:
UT UERO IN DU[IBUS?] INTERUS[?] || Anno
. Mo.Co.XXXoVIIIo. ab incarnatione
domine. indictione I. epactis || existentibus; .VII. in mense Aprili*.XXaVa.
die mensis. [in margin: *eodem die luna existente XIIa.]
id est .VII. Kalendas Maii || quo scilicet die celebratur festum sancti
Marci euuangelistæ ; cepta est fundari || æcclesia sancti
launomari blesis . comite theobaldo tocius franciæ reg-||num post
regem ; ordinante ; & communi tocius eclesiæ utilitati feliciter
|| [there follow two lines in the earlier hand of the Bede text and, on
line below those, inserted in the same 12th century hand and
red ink(?) as the rest of the interpolation:] consulente ;18
Despite its extraordinarily precise yet somewhat
enigmatic nature, this date has been generally accepted as the terminus
post quem for the beginning of the earliest construction campaign of the
eastern part of the building.19
Apparently no other documentrary evidence survives which specifically concerns this
1138 campaign, though there may well be some charters in the massive unpublished
cartulary which might shed some ancillary light on its financing; however,
from both this text and a charter of 1186 (see below) it would seem that
the count played a major role in the construction of the new building.
In addition to whatever resources might have come from that source, those
of the abbey itself were, of course, not inconsiderable.20
In this context, for example, a charter of 1155 from St. Sulpice-sur-Risle (Orne),
near L'Aigle in Normandy,21one of the oldest
and most significant priories of the abbey,
records in extraordinary length and detail no less than two dozen gifts
of property to that priory, old and new, confirmed by Richer, Lord of
L'Aigle. It is clear that his confirmation of gifts made by his predecessors
and their fideles (including at least a few which were then in dispute, post multum temporis contradicentes), as well as a considerable
number of new gifts made by Richer himself (or, at least, in his own time,
meo tempore), must have represented a significant increase in the priory's
income, a very substantial part of which was quite likely destined for
the mother house, which was then in the middle of an extensive building
campaign.22 No
doubt further analysis of the unpublished charters in the abbey's cartulary
would serve to clarify its fiscal condition during this critical period
of the construction of its new home.
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15
In typically meticulous fashion, Dr. Lesueur (p. 11, n. 1) quotes the Chronicon
Sancti Maxentii Pictavensis from the original manuscript (B.n., ms.
lat. 4802, fol. 205 v°, col. 1): Anno M.C.XIIII Cenobium sancti Launomari
Blesi Castro igne consumptum est, and, noting that the previous publications
of this passage (Philippe Labbé, Nova bibliotheca manuscript.
librorum, II, p. 218 and GC VIII, cc. 1052A and 1154E; PL???), had misread
the date as "1014," and that it was misread yet again -this time
as "1204"- by both 17th century Blesois historians (Mars, op.
cit., p. 165 and Bernier, p. 40), even though they refer to the Labbé
publication. Difficult as it is to make sense of these two, different misreadings
of the date, it would seem that we must assume that, in view of his otherwise
meticulous scholarship, Lesueur's transcription of the manuscript is accurate.
The characterization of the monk's location in the Blesi castro in this
"foreign" chronicle cannot be taken too literally, since it might
simply refer to the castrum of Blois generically, rather than specifically
to the count's fortified area above the town; likewise, the "cenobium"
which was "consumptum" might refer to the conventual buildings
of the monks as easily as to the fabric of the ecclesia which they then
occupied. In any event, there is certainly no part of the existing church
which might be datable to this period, and the 1186 charter (see below)
specifically tells us that the saint's relics were transferred "
de
veteri in novam
ecclesiam", implying that if there had been any
damage to the church in 1114 it was either minor or had been repaired by
that latter date. All of this suggests that the 1114 fire affected the site
of the former church of St. Carilif in the bas ville, which was then occupied
by the monks of St. Lomer.
16
As noted in 1924 by Lesueur (p. 17, n. 2.), B.n., ms. lat. 7297 contains
(on fol.1r, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/) a perhaps late
13th century ex-libris: Iste liber est ecclesie sancti Launomari.
This line is followed by "mccxxxiiii," perhaps in the same hand;
next to this are two later shelf marks, "1451" (in the same ink
which crossed out the first "x" above and refers to its place
in the Depuy collection), and "5364". Apparently the last detailed
description of its content (and that used on the gallica.bnf.fr site) is
to be found in Guillaume de Villefroy's 1744 Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum
Bibliothecæ Regiæ (pars tertia, IV, p. 337, ms. vii
mccxcvii): "1° Venerabilis Bede, Presbyter, liber de temporum ratione.
2° Fratris Hezelelonis sententia de Nativitatis, Dominicæque passionis
Concordia. 3° anicii Manlii Serverini Boëii, de musica libri quinque.
4° Epocha fundationis ecclesiæ sancti Launomari apud Blesas, an. scilicet
1138", adding "Is codex, si paucissima excepteris, decimo sæculo
exartus videtur." Clearly the "paucissima excepteris" in
question was part "4o", since it is indeed written in a script
contemporary with the event it describes.
17
Noting that it is in added red ink, Lesueur's edition of this interpolation
(p. 11) contains a few variants from the original. The interpolation is
consistent in its paleography with the 1138 date, and appears at the end
of the text of the Boethius De Musica, on the bottom of the last
leaf of the codex (f.102v): http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9072594n/f110.zoom.
However, with its precise and extraordinarily detailed and redundant dating,
it would seem that it might not simply be, for instance, a copy of an inscription,
or a "first draft" of one yet to be executed, but rather that
its purpose was somehow connected with the primary (and first) work in the
manuscript, Bede's De Temporum Ratione; in any event, it is clear
that it was placed where it is in the codex because that was the only blank
space available for those few lines to be inserted -the somewhat cramped
text of the curious De Nativitatis & Passionis Dominae Concordia
having taken up the blank quarter folio (54v) at the end of the Bede. It
is not at all clear how it happened that this one line 12th c. interpolation,
concerned as it is with the beginning of construction on the church at that
time, was inserted into this 9th-10th century literary/scientific manuscript
however, it is more likely that it relates to the Bede treatise rather
than to that of Boethius. Might it have been some kind of "exercise"
involving describing the date of the 1138 event in the fullest and most
precise way possible, according to the parameters explicated in the Bede?
Or perhaps there might have been some sort of "astrological" purpose
to its content well i.e., an attempt to define as precisely as possible
the date of the "birth" of the abbey building, in order to determine
its future life. Was the insertion of eodem [Lesueur reads "eadem"]
die luna existente XIIa (via a marginal note) significant? Was it just a
transcription error, the "dropping" of a line during the transcription
from a wax tablet to the parchment? This may well be true, since the insertion
is in the identical hand and apparently even the same ink as
the rest of the text. Alternatively, if the "exercise" explanation
is true, then the die luna may have been added as an additional dating parameter
which the monk/reader/scribe had as a (soon) afterthought.
(References to ms. 7297 in the annual Scriptorium index only seem to relate
to the De Musica: [1970 A] B 413; [1974] B 370; [1982] B 363; [1988
p. 233 [Bower.])
For a very brief description of this manuscript's copy of the Bede treatise
and its place among the many exemplars of this popular work, see Bedae
Opera de temporibus, ed. Charles W. Jones. Cambridge: The Mediaeval
Academy of America, 1943. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015066446363;
I have not seen the recent translation, De temporibus. Bede, The Reckoning
of Time, translated, with introduction, notes and commentary by Faith Wallis
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.
(Note that the short "sententia de Nativitatis, Dominicæque passionis
concordia" of "Fratris Hezelelonis" at the end of the Bede
probably in the same hand, though in a different ink has, apparently,
never been published, at least under that title and author.)
[according to http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phases1101.html there was
a full moon on 26 April, at 20:54 p.m. (UT = GMT); and http://www.rodurago.net/en/index.php?month=4&year=1138&geodata=48.52%2C2.20%2C1&site=details&link=calendar
says that there was a partial eclipse of the moon (in Paris) at 22:55 on
26 May, 1138]
The phrase "comite Theobaldo totius Franciæ regnum post regem
ordinante, & communi totius eclesiæ utilitati feliciter consulente"
is rather curious. Louis VI died on 1 August of the previous year (1137)
by which time the future Louis VII had been a consecrated and generally
recognized co-king and heir for nearly seven years and the sometimes stormy
relationship between the Capetians and their occassionally unruly Thibaudian
vassals had cooled considereably from that in the previous decades. So the
idea that this phrase might be suggestive that the "palatine"
count Theobald might have made an attempt to become king can only be entertained
by a close look at the precise situation in place in late April of 1138.
(For this manuscript, see further http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ead.html?id=FRBNFEAD000066496;
mentioned briefly by Delisle, Cab. Mss. in his list of mss. from
St. Lomer II, p. 406: "Mss. lat. 6810, 7297, 8312 et 10700. Il y a
un manuscrit de Saint-Lomer, à Wolfenbüttel (Voy. le Solin de
Mommsen [= C. Iulii Solini Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium Gaius Iulius
Solinus, Theodor Mommsen Nicolai, 1864], p. LXXXII; [SIC, 1894 ed.,
XXIII {probably just a typo, but perhaps an error in the first ed., corrected
in the second?} > Wolfenbüttel?? = Leiden. Vossianus Q. 87: Saec.
IX
ex bibliotheca aliqua Aurelianensis ad Petavium -no mention
of Blois; the justification for Delisle's attribution is not clear.]
Other hits (from this source?) to be checked: Rev. Bened. 1935, 158
[=?André van de Vyver, "Les oeuvres inédites d'Abbon
de Fleury," R.B., XLVII, pp. 125-169]; Rigault, n° 1334; [Gallica
X; wikipedia.fr. X]; coll. Dupuy, n° 1451; [the later cote found on
f.1r of the manuscript; hist. "coll. Dupuy?"]; Bischoff, Mittelalterliche
Studien. Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und zur Literaturgeschichte
Bd. 3 (Stuttgart 1981), 142.
18
Curiously, the meticulous Maurist historian of St. Lomer, Dom Mars, who
knew the documents of his abbey very well and makes several extraoridinarily
perceptive comments about the dating of the architecture of his abbey, does
not mention this important text in his 1646 manuscript; but it did come
to the attention of Jean Mabillon (no doubt through one of the Maurist monks
of Blois in his own time), who first published it in full in
1739, as an inscriptio ad calcem
.ex veteris codicis bibliothecæ
regiæ
5346 [sic, for 5364, one of the cotes found on f. 1r
of the ms.], in his Ann. benedict., VI, lib. LXXVII, ann. 1138, xl,
pp. 312-13. Frédéric Lesueur published it again in 1923, in
a transcription which is essentially correct (excepting its modern punctuation)
and agrees with that of Mabillon's, save for replacement of the quite legible
cepta est fundari ecclesia in the manuscript with his 1739 edition's
cpta est ædificari ecclesia (the reading is clear in
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9072594n/f110.zoom). Presumably this
was because he wished to clarify that fundari was not literally true in
the sense of "founded," while ædificari was somewhat
clearer in its meaning.
19
Without specifically citing Lesueur, the 1138 and 1186 dates were both accepted
as respective termini for the building's construction by Marcel Aubert ("Les
plus anciennes croisées d'ogives: leur rôle dans la construction,"
Bull. Mon., XCIII, 1934, pp. 5-67; 137-237, at p. nnn. [Offprint:
Paris: Picard, 1934, p. 119]); while Jean Bony only mentions the first date
(French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries [Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983], p. 56). For him, Blois is "a
building which in its lower story is still half-Romanesque
.Begun in
1138
was built very slowly in several campaigns and completed only
in 1186" (p. 163). However, he is for some reason reluctant to see
anything significant being built in most logical decade of the 1140s: "At
the level of the ambulatory and chapels the construction appears to date
mostly from the 1150s and early 1160s" (p. 473, n. 8). Of course, Bony
is writing a survey (based primarily on the previous work of others), not
a monograph on St. Lomer.
20
See for example the 1107 confirmative bull of Pascal II listing all of the
abbey's holdings (largely based on the forged charter of King Raoul), transcribed
by Mars, p. 146-7 (but, curiously, not published in GC, VIII did Dom
Verninac have reason to doubt the charter's authenticity?), and edited by
Johannes Ramackers, Papsturkunden in Frankreich. VI. Orléanais
(Abhl. Akad. Wissensch. Göttingen. Phil.-hist. Kl., 3. Folge,
Nr. 41, Berlin: Weidmann, 1958), no. 20, pp. 72-73.
21
The charter was transcribed in its entireity by Dom Mars (who calls this
priory "St. Sulpice de l'Aigle"), pp. 351-6, after the original,
which was then in the archives of St. Lomer (now Arch. Dép.
Loir-et-Cher, 11 H 27); and was also published by Dom René Porcher, "Histoire de l'abbaye de Pontlevoy," Revue de Loir-et-Cher,
15° année (avril 1902[3?]), col. 52ff., at P.j., col. 161. A
prospective new edition of it was announced by Jean-Michel Bouvris ("Les
plus anciennes chartes du prieuré de Saint-Sulpice près de
l'Aigle, dépendance normande de l'abbaye Saint-Laumer de Blois, XIe-XIIe
siècles," Annales de Normandie, XXXI, 1981, pp. 327-330,
at p. 330, n. 1), to appear in the Bulletin de la Société
historique et archéologique de l'Orne, but apparently has not
yet been published (as of 2013). For an analysis of this "great charter"
from the Norman point of view, see Daniel Power, The Norman Frontier
in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), pp. 219-220 and 225.
22
The charter was drawn up by Richer's chapelain and publice Aquilae
(presumably today's St. Sulpice-sur-Risle), but the acts recorded in it
were done in aula abbate Blesensi Gauffredo, in the presence of Johanne
priore Blesensi and Fulcone, sacrista S. Launomari, suggesting
that, whatever Lord Richer's own motivations for his concessions might have
been, they certainly coincided with the intentions of Abbot Godfrey (II,
c. 1151-c. 1156: GC, VIII, col. 1357), who had presumably traveled all the
way to l'Aigle with his prior and sacristan to hold court, with Richer and
his entourage of homines in attendance (why would the copy in the abbey's
cartulary note that the charter was "published" at L'Aigle, if
the acts recorded in it had not taken place there?). This charter also records
what appears to be the "entry gifts" of several new monks of St.
Lomer, presumably done in the time of Richer, which suggests that the events
recorded in his charter might have had as much to do with whatever was happening
at L'Aigle as at Blois. Either way, of course, the mother house would have
profited from the confirmations recorded, much to the benefit of her building
fund.
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