however, dependent upon its form of government. Its ancient gild of
cordwainers had been recognized by Henry I and Stephen, its trading
privileges were confirmed in one of the earliest charters of Henry II.
Save for a single ship yearly from Cherbourg, the merchants of Rouen
had a monopoly of trade with Ireland; in England they could go through
all the markets of the land; in London they were quit of all payments
save for wine and great fish and had exclusive rights in their special
wharf of Dowgate. Later in Henry’s reign they were even freed of all
dues throughout his dominions. Only a citizen might take a shipload of
merchandise past Rouen or bring wine to a cellar in the town. Besides
the great trade in wine we hear of dealings in leather, cloth, grain,
and especially salt and salt fish. Under Henry II the ducal rights over
the town were worth annually more than 3,000 _livres_. Apart from their
share in this general prosperity, the citizens had special exemptions
in the matter of duties and tolls on goods which they brought in, while
the freedom from feudal restraints which characterized all burgage
tenures put a premium upon their holding of property. Besides the
privileged areas belonging to the cathedral and the neighboring abbeys,
a foothold in the city was valued by others: the bishop of Bayeux had
a town house; the abbot of Caen prized a cellar and an exemption from
wine-dues which he owed to the generosity of William the Conqueror;
the clerks and chaplains of the king’s household took advantage of
their opportunities to acquire rents and houses at Rouen, as well as at
London and Winchester.
Unfortunately no one has left us in this period a description of the
busy life of Rouen such as Fitz Stephen has given of contemporary
London, and it is only with the imagination that we can bring before
our eyes the ships at their wharves with their bales of marten-skins
from Ireland and casks of wine from Burgundy and the south, the fullers
and dyers, millers and tanners plying their trades along the Eau de
Robec, the burgesses trafficking in the streets and the cathedral
close, the royal clerks and serjeants hastening on their master’s
business. Still more to be regretted is the disappearance of those
material remains of its ancient splendor which until the last century
retained the form and flavor, if not the actual wood and stone, of
the mediæval city. To-day scarcely anything survives above ground of
the Rouen of the dukes--of its walls and gates, destroyed by Philip
Augustus, of the castle by the river, with the tower from which Henry
I threw the traitor Conan and the great hall and rooms renewed by his
grandson, of the stone bridge of the Empress Matilda, of the royal park
and palace across the Seine at Quevilly. Only the great St. Romain’s
tower of the cathedral and an early bit of the abbey-church of
Saint-Ouen still body forth the unbroken continuity of the Norman past.
* * * * *
The Norman church throughout the period of our study stands in the
closest relation to the general conditions of Norman society. The
monasteries and churches of the region had been almost completely
wiped out by the northern invasions, and while the Northmen soon
adopted the religion of their new neighbors, it was many years before
ecclesiastical life and discipline again reached the level of the other
dioceses of France. As late as the year 1001 a Burgundian monk reported
that there was hardly a priest in Normandy who could read the lessons
or say his psalms correctly. The prelates led the life of the great
feudal families of which they were members, distributing the property
of the church as fiefs to their friends or gifts to their numerous
progeny; and the lower clergy, for the most part married, sought
to pass on their benefices to their children. In the course of the
eleventh century, however, more canonical standards began to prevail,
largely through the influence of the monks of Cluny. Older foundations
like Fécamp were renewed, and the Norman lords soon began to vie
with one another in the endowment of new monastic establishments. To
the half-century which preceded the Conquest of England we can trace
the beginnings of twenty important monasteries and six nunneries,
not counting priories and smaller foundations, a movement for which
contemporaries could find no parallel short of the palmy days of
monasticism in Roman Egypt. In course of time the monastic ideal
reacted upon the secular clergy, and the monastic schools raised the
level of learning throughout the duchy, until provincial councils
succeeded in establishing the celibacy of the priesthood and the
stricter discipline of Rome. In all this movement for reform the dukes
took a leading part, inviting the reformers to their courts, aiding in
the foundation and restoration of cloisters, and lending their strong
support to the efforts for moral improvement in the secular clergy.
They also asserted their supremacy over the Norman church, presiding
in its councils, revising the judgments of its courts, appointing and
investing its bishops and abbots. Moreover, while ready to coöperate
with the moral ideas of the Papacy, they resisted all attempts at papal
interference in Norman affairs. When Alexander II sought to restore an
abbot whom William the Conqueror had deposed, the duke replied that he
would gladly receive papal legates in matters of faith and doctrine,
but would hang to the tallest oak of the nearest forest any monk who
dared to resist his authority in his own land. William’s resistance
was equally firm in the case of Gregory VII, who failed completely
in his efforts at direct action in William’s dominions. Nowhere on
the Continent, concludes Böhmer,[52] was there at this time a country
where the prince and his bishops were so energetic in the suppression
of simony and violations of clerical vows; nowhere was the church so
completely subject to the secular government.
The most prominent figure in the Norman church of the eleventh
century, Odo, for nearly fifty years bishop of Bayeux, was far from
fulfilling the stricter ideal of a prelate’s life. Half-brother of
the Conqueror through their mother Arlette, he received the bishopric
as a family gift at the tender age of fourteen and became thereby one
of the greatest princes of Normandy. His hundred and twenty knights’
fees furnished him a body of powerful vassals; his demesne gave him
manors and forests for the support of his household, fuel for his
fires and reeds and rushes for his hall, rents and tithes at Caen and
the monopoly of the mill at Bayeux, tolls and fines and market rights
which produced a considerable income in ready money. For the invasion
of England he is said to have offered a hundred ships, and he took an
active part in the battle of Hastings, swinging a huge mace in place
of spear and sword, since the shedding of blood was forbidden to an
ecclesiastic. In the distribution which followed, Odo received large
estates in the southeast, as well as the earldom of Kent and the
custody of Dover Castle, and he seems to have ruled his lands with a
heavy hand both as earl and as regent in William’s absence. It even
became his ambition to succeed the mighty Hildebrand as Pope, and he
had already spent considerable sums at Rome when William, accusing him
of tyranny and oppression, put him in prison, answering his assertion
of ecclesiastical privilege with the statement that he imprisoned, not
the bishop of Bayeux, but the earl of Kent. There he languished for
five years till William on his death-bed, against his better judgment,
released him for ten years more of rule in Normandy. Yet, though Odo’s
eulogists admit that he was given overmuch to worldly ambition, the
lusts of the flesh and the pride of life, they tell us of his vigorous
defence of his clergy by arms as well as by eloquence, of the young
men of promise whom he supported in the schools of Lorraine and other
centres of foreign learning, of the journey to Jerusalem on which he
met his death, of the great cathedral which he built in honor of the
Mother of God and adorned with gold and silver and probably with the
very Bayeux Tapestry which is the chief surviving monument of his
magnificence.
With the twelfth century the type changes. To the monastic historian
a bishop like Philip d’Harcourt, likewise of the see of Bayeux, may
appear wise in the wisdom of this world which is foolishness with
God,[53] but his wisdom shows itself in frequent journeys to Rome
and persistent litigation in the duke’s courts, not in battles and
sieges, and he owes his appointment to his influence as Stephen’s
chancellor and not to blood relationship. Arnulf of Lisieux is another
royal officer, versatile, insinuating, shifty, anything but truthful
if we may believe his fellow-bishops, but proud of his Latin style
and his knowledge of law and prodigal of letters to the Pope. Their
contemporaries continue to owe their promotion to service as chaplains
or chancellors to the king, but they also have an eye toward Rome and
must be canonists as well as secular officials. The contrast between
Becket the king’s chancellor and Becket the archbishop of Canterbury
is symptomatic of the new age, although the conflict to which it led
affected Normandy but indirectly. Relations with the lay power which
once rested on local Norman custom come to be formulated in the sharper
terms of the canon law of the universal church; appeals to Rome and
instructions from Rome increase rapidly in volume and importance; the
Norman clergy attend assemblies of the clergy of neighboring lands; and
by the end of the Plantagenet period the Norman church is ready to be
absorbed into the church of France.
Respecting the daily life and conversation of the cathedral and parish
clergy the twelfth century is silent, save for the condemnations of
particular evils in the councils of the province. From the middle of
the thirteenth century, however, Normandy furnishes us, in the diary of
visitations kept by the archbishop of Rouen, Eudes Rigaud, a picture
of manners and morals which for authenticity and fulness of detail has
probably no parallel in mediæval Europe; and one is tempted to carry
back two or three generations his description of the canons of Rouen
wandering about the cathedral and chatting with women during service,
the nuns of Saint-Sauveur with their pet dogs and squirrels, and those
of other convents celebrating the festival of the Innocents with dance
and song and unseemly mirth, the monks of Bocherville without a Bible
among them to read. It is hard to believe that there was anything new
in the disorders which this upright archbishop chronicles place by
place and year by year--ignorance, drunkenness, and incontinence among
the parish and cathedral clergy, lax discipline, loose administration,
and neglect of learning in the monasteries and nunneries. What was old
in the time of Rabelais was probably old in the thirteenth century,
and there is abundant evidence of abuses in the mediæval church, in
Normandy and elsewhere. What we want most to know is how general these
abuses were and how many there were to counteract them like Chaucer’s
‘povre persoun of a toun,’ who taught “Cristes lore and his apostles
twelve,” but first “folwed it himselve.” Data of this sort are always
lacking in sufficient amount for any moral statistics, and they must
be supplemented and interpreted by the evidence which has reached us
of popular piety and devotion. Such are the processions of priest
and people throughout the diocese to the cathedrals at Whitsuntide,
the miraculous cures of disease by Our Lady of Coutances, and the
extraordinary burst of contrition, religious enthusiasm, and zeal for
good works which broke forth at the building of the spires of Chartres
in 1145 and spread throughout the length and breadth of Normandy.
Forming associations of those who confessed their sins, received
penance, and reconciled themselves with their enemies, the faithful
harnessed themselves to carts filled with stone, timber, food, and
whatever might help the churches which they sought to serve, and drew
them long miles until they seemed to fulfill the saying of the prophet,
“the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.” The abbot of
Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, to whom we owe our fullest account of the
movement, tells us of these processions:[54]
When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but the confession
of sins and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtain pardon.
At the voice of the priests preaching peace hatred is forgotten,
discord thrown aside, debts are remitted, the unity of hearts is
established. But if any one is so far advanced in evil as to be
unwilling to pardon an offender or obey the pious admonition of
the priest, his offering is instantly thrown from the wagon as
impure, and he himself is ignominiously and shamefully excluded
from the society of the holy. There, as a result of the prayers
of the faithful, one may see the sick and infirm rise whole from
their wagons, the dumb open their mouths to the praise of God,
the possessed recover a sane mind. The priests who preside over
each wagon are seen exhorting all to repentance, confession,
lamentations, and the resolution of a better life, while old and
young and even little children, prostrate on the ground, call
on the Mother of God and utter to her, from the depth of their
hearts, sobs and sighs, with words of confession and praise....
After the faithful resume their march to the sound of trumpets and
the display of banners, the journey is so easy that no obstacle
can retard it.... When they have reached the church, they arrange
the wagons about it like a spiritual camp, and during the whole of
the following night the army of the Lord keeps watch with psalms
and canticles, tapers and lamps are lighted on each wagon, and
the relics of the saints are brought for the relief of the sick
and the weak, for whom priests and people in procession implore
the clemency of the Lord and his Blessed Mother. If healing does
not follow at once, they cast aside their garments, men and women
alike, and drag themselves from altar to altar ... begging the
priests to scourge them for their sins.
At the close of the Angevin period there were in Normandy something
like eighty monasteries and convents, not counting the numerous
cells and priories, as, for example, the various dependencies of the
great abbey of Marmoutier at Tours. These were chiefly Benedictine
foundations, though the newer movements of the Cistercians,
Premonstratensians, and Augustinians were well represented, the only
distinctively Norman order, the Congregation of Savigny, having been
early absorbed by the Cistercians. The oldest of these establishments
were at the two extremes of the duchy, Mont-Saint-Michel at one end
and Jumièges, Saint-Wandrille, Saint-Ouen and Fécamp at the other;
but the distribution was speedily equalized, and the great abbeys of
the centre, Bec and Caen and Saint-Évroul, were soon known throughout
Europe. The conquest of England opened a new field for monastic
influence: twenty Norman monasteries had received lands in England
by the time of the Domesday survey, and the number was considerably
greater when the holdings of alien priories were confiscated at the
beginning of the fifteenth century. Mont-Saint-Michel, for example,
had a priory in Cornwall as well as one at LeMans, and its lands in
Maine, Brittany, and various parts of England did not allay its desire
for more whenever opportunity offered. For a period of five years,
from 1155 to 1159 inclusive, we have a record of the activity of its
abbot, Robert of Torigni, in relation to the monastery’s property,
and a very instructive record it is. It takes him to England and the
Channel Islands, to the king’s assizes at Gavrai, Domfront, Caen, and
Carentan, to the courts of the bishops of Avranches, Coutances, and
Bayeux, and to that of the archbishop at Rouen; proving his rights,
compromising, exchanging, purchasing, receiving by gift or royal
charter; picking up here a bit of land, there a mill, a garden, a
vineyard, a tithe, a church, to add to the lands and rents, mills
and forests, markets and churches and feudal rights which he already
possessed. There are also various examples of loans on mortgage, for
the monasteries were the chief source of rural credit in this period,
and as the land with its revenues passed at once into the possession of
the mortgagee, the security was absolute, the annual return sure, and
the chances of ultimate acquisition of the property considerable. With
the resources of the monastery during his administration of thirty-two
years Abbot Robert was able to increase the number of monks from forty
to sixty, to enlarge the conventual buildings, in which he entertained
the kings of England and of France, and to add a great façade to
the abbey-church, a contribution to the massive pile of the Marvel
which we are no longer privileged to behold. He also labored for the
intellectual side of the monastery’s life, restoring the library and
enlarging it by a hundred and twenty volumes, and composing a variety
of works on historical subjects which make him the chief authority for
half a century of Norman history.
There is, however, not much concerning monasteries in Robert’s
chronicle, and even his special essay on the history of the Norman
abbeys is confined to externals. Perhaps he was cumbered about much
serving; more probably he saw nothing worthy of the historian’s pen
in the inner life of the institution. When the abbot had a new altar
dedicated or renewed the reliquaries of St. Aubert and St. Lawrence,
that was worth setting down, but the daily routine of observance was
the same at Mont-Saint-Michel as in the other Benedictine foundations,
and has remained substantially unchanged through the centuries of
monastic history. At any rate no monkish Boswell has done for Normandy
what Jocelin of Brakelonde did for contemporary England in that vivid
picture of life at Bury St. Edmund’s which Carlyle has made familiar
in his _Past and Present_. A monk of Saint-Évroul, it is true, did
a much greater thing in the _Historia Ecclesiastica_ of Ordericus
Vitalis, but he was an historian, not a Boswell, and his experience of
half a century of monastic life lies embedded deep in the five solid
volumes of this wide-ranging work. One phase of the religious life
of mediæval monasteries is admirably illustrated in Normandy, namely
the mortuary rolls of the members and heads of religious houses. It
early became the custom, not only to say prayers regularly for the
departed members and benefactors of such a community, but to seek
the suffrages of associated communities or of all the faithful. To
that end an encyclical was prepared setting forth the virtues of
the deceased and was carried by a special messenger from convent to
convent, each establishment indicating the prayers which had there
been said and adding the names of the brothers for whom prayers were
solicited in return. The two most considerable documents of this sort
which have come down to us are of Norman origin, the roll of Matilda,
the first abbess of Holy Trinity at Caen, and that of Vitalis, founder
of the Congregation of Savigny, which belongs to the year 1122 and
is the oldest manuscript of this type extant in its original form,
with all the quaint local varieties in execution. Each of these was
carried throughout the greater part of England and of northern and
central France, reaching in the first case two hundred and fifty-three
different monasteries and churches, in the second two hundred and
eight, and as the replies were often made at some length in prose or
verse, they constitute a curious monument of the condition of culture
in the places visited.
* * * * *
If the impulse toward religious reform in Normandy was of Burgundian
origin, intellectual stimulus came chiefly from Italy. The two
principal figures in the intellectual life of the duchy in the eleventh
century, Lanfranc and Anselm, were Italians: Lanfranc distinguished
for his mastery of law, Lombard, Roman, and canon, for the great
school which he founded at Bec, and for his labors in the field of
ecclesiastical statesmanship; Anselm his pupil and his successor as
prior of Bec and as archbishop of Canterbury, remarkable as a teacher,
still more remarkable as one of the foremost theologians of the Western
Church. “Under the first six dukes,” we are told, “there was hardly
any one in Normandy who gave himself to liberal studies, and there
was no master till God, who provides for all, sent Lanfranc to these
shores.” Teaching first at Avranches, Lanfranc established himself at
Bec in 1042, and his school soon drew students from the remotest parts
of France and sent them out in all directions to positions of honor
and influence. Abbots like Gilbert Crispin of Westminster, bishops
like St. Ives of Chartres, primates of Rouen and Canterbury, even a
pope in the person of Alexander II, figure on the long honor-roll of
Lanfranc’s pupils at Bec. For an institution of such renown, however,
we know singularly little concerning the actual course and methods
of study at Bec, and its historian is compelled to fall back upon a
general description of the _trivium_ and _quadrivium_ which made up
the ordinary monastic curriculum. We do not even know whether Lanfranc
actually taught the subject of law of which he was past master, though
we can be sure that theology and philosophy had a large place under
Anselm, and that the school must have felt the influence of the large
part which its leaders took in the theological discussions of their
time. An important form of activity in the monasteries of the period
was the copying of manuscripts, a sure safeguard against that idleness
which St. Benedict declared the enemy of the soul. Lanfranc sat up a
good part of the night correcting the daily copies of the monks of
Bec; the first abbot of Saint-Évroul had an edifying tale of an erring
brother who had secured his salvation by voluntarily copying a holy
book of such dimensions that the angels who produced it on his behalf
at the judgment were able to check it off letter by letter against
his sins and leave at the end a single letter in his favor! The monks
of Saint-Évroul prided themselves on their Latin style, especially
their Latin verse, and on their chants which were sung even in distant
Calabria; yet the best example of their training, the historian
Ordericus, freely admits the literary supremacy of Bec, “where almost
every one seems to be a philosopher and even the unlearned have
something to teach the frothy grammarians.”
In the course of the twelfth century the leadership in learning passes
from the regular to the secular clergy, and the monastic schools
decline before the cathedral schools of Laon, Tours, Chartres, Orleans,
and Paris, two of which, Paris and Orleans, soon break the bounds of
the older curriculum and develop into universities. As the current
of scholars sets toward these new centres, Normandy is left at one
side; no longer a leader, its students must learn their theology and
philosophy at Paris, their law at Orleans and Bologna, their medicine
at Salerno and Montpellier. The principal Norman philosopher of the
new age, William of Conches, the tutor of Henry II, is associated
with Paris rather than with the schools of Normandy. Perhaps the most
original work of the pioneer of the new science, the _Questiones
naturales_ of Adelard of Bath, is dedicated to a Norman bishop, Richard
of Bayeux, but its author was not a Norman, nor do we find Norman names
among those who drank deep at the new founts of Spain and Sicily.