HE was archpriest and grand vicar of the diocese of Rennes, and
chancellor to the duke of Brittany; but divested himself of these
employments, and led a most austere eremitical life, in the forest of
Craon, in Anjou. He soon filled that desert with anchorets, and built in
it a monastery of regular canons. This is the abbey called De la Roe, in
Latin De Rota, which was founded, according to Duchesne, in 1093, and
confirmed by pope Urban II., in 1096. This pope having heard him preach
at Angers, gave him the powers of an apostolical missionary. The blessed
man therefore preached in many places, and formed many disciples. In
1099 he founded the great monastery of Fontevraud, Fons Ebraldi, a
league from the Loire, in Poitou. He appointed superioress Herlande of
Champagne, a near kinswoman to the duke of Brittany; and Petronilla of
Craon, baroness of Chemille, coadjutress. He settled it under the rule
of St. Benedict, with perpetual abstinence from flesh, even in all
sicknesses, and put his order under the special patronage of the blessed
Virgin. By a singular institution, he appointed the abbess superioress
over the men, who live in a remote monastery, whose superiors she
nominates. The holy founder prescribed so strict silence in his order,
as to forbid any one to speak, even by signs, without necessity. The law
of enclosure was not less rigorous, insomuch that no priest was allowed
to enter even the infirmary of the nuns, to visit the sick, if it could
possibly be avoided, and the sick, even in their agonies, were carried
into the church, that they might there receive the sacraments. Among the
great conversions of which St. Robert was the instrument, none was more
famous than that of queen Bertrade, the daughter of Simon Montfort, and
sister of Amauri Montfort, count of Evreux. She was married to Fulk,
count of Anjou, in 1089, but quitted him in 1092, to marry Philip I.,
king of France, who was enamored of her. Pope Urban II. excommunicated
that prince on this account in 1094, and again in 1100, because the
king, after having put her away, had taken her again. These censures
were taken off when she and the king had sworn upon the gospels, in the
council of Poitiers, never to live together again. Bertrade, when she
had retired to an estate which was her dower, in the diocese of
Chartres, was so powerfully moved by the exhortations of St. Robert,
that, renouncing the world, of which she had been long the idol, she
took the religious veil at Fontevraud, and led there an exemplary life
till her death. Many other princesses embraced the same state {460}
under the direction of the holy founder: among others Hersande of
Champagne, widow of William of Monsoreau; Agnes of Montroeil, of the
same family; Ermengarde, wife of Alin Fergan, duke of Brittany; {}pa,
countess of Thoulouse, wife of William IX., duke of Aquitaine, &c. After
the death of St. Robert, several queens and princesses had taken
sanctuary in this monastery, flying from the corruption of the world.
Among its abbesses are counted fourteen princesses, of which five were
of the royal house of Bourbon. The abbot Suger, writing to pope Eugenius
III., about fifty years after the death of the founder, says there were
at that time in this order between five and six thousand religious
persons. The order of Fontevraud, in France, is divided into four
provinces. B. Robert lived to see above three thousand nuns in this one
house. He died in 1116, on the 25th of February, St. Matthias's day, it
being leap-year, in the seventieth of his age, at the monastery of
Orsan, near Linieres, in Berry. His body was conveyed to Fontevraud, and
there interred. The bishop of Poitiers, in 1644, took a juridical
information of many miracles wrought by his intercession.[1] From the
time of his death he has been honored with the title of blessed, and is
invoked in the litany of his order, which keeps his festival only with a
mass of the Trinity on St. Matthias's day. See his life by Baldric,
bishop of Dole, his contemporary; Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Relig. t. 6,
p. 83, Dom Lobineau, Hist. de Bretagne, fol. 1707, p. 113, and, in the
first place, Chatelain, Notes on the Martyrol. p. 736 to 758, who
clearly confutes those who place his death in 1117.
Footnotes:
1. Some have raked up most groundless slanders to asperse the character
of this holy man, as, that he admitted all to the religious habit
that asked it, and was guilty of too familiar conversation with
women. These slanders were spread in a letter of Roscelin, whose
errors against faith were condemned in the council of Soissons in
1095. Such scandalous reports excited the zeal of some good men, and
they are mentioned in a letter ascribed to Marbodius, bishop of
Rennes, and in another of Godfrey, abbot of Vendome, addressed to
the holy man himself. This last letter seems genuine, though some
have denied it. But the charge was only gathered from hearsay, and
notoriously false, as the very authors of these letters were soon
convinced. It is not surprising that a man who bade open defiance to
all sinners, and whose reputation ran so high in the world, should
excite the murmurs of some and envy of others, which zeal and merit
never escape. But his boldness to declaim against the vices of great
men, and the most hardened sinners; the high encomiums and favorable
testimonies which all who knew him gave to his extraordinary
sanctity, which forced even envy itself to respect him; and his most
holy comportment and happy death, furnish most invincible proofs of
his innocence and purity; which he preserved only by humility, and
the most scrupulous flight of all dangerous occasions. Godfrey of
Vendome was afterwards perfectly satisfied of the sanctity of this
great servant of God and became his warmest friend and patron; as is
evident from several of his letters. See l. 1, ep. 24, and 26, l. 3,
ep.2, l. 4, ep. 32. He entered into an association of prayers with
the monastery of Fontevraud in 1114; and so much did he esteem his
virtue that he made a considerable foundation at Fontevraud, often
visited the church, and built himself a house near it, called Hotel
de Vendome, that he might more frequently enjoy the converse of St.
Robert, and promote his holy endeavors. The letter of Marbodius is
denied to be genuine by Mainferme and Natalis Alexander, and
suspected by D. Beaugendre, who published the works of Marbodius at
Paris, in 1708. But the continuator of the Hist. Litter. t. 10, p.
359, clearly shows this letter to have been written by Marbodius,
who, in it, speaks of these rumors without giving credit to them,
and with tenderness and charity exhorts Robert to reform his conduct
if the reports were true; to dissipate them by justifying himself,
if they were false. Marbodius was soon satisfied as to these
calumnies, and was the saint's great protector, in 1101, in his
missions in Brittany, particularly in his diocese of Rennes; whither
he seems to have invited him. Ermengarde, countess of Brittany, was
so moved by St. Robert's sermons, that she earnestly desired to
renounce the world, and retire to Fontevraud. The saint exhorted her
to continue in the world, and to sanctify her soul by her duties in
her public station, especially by patience and prayer: yet, some
years after, she took the veil at Fontevaud. See F. de la Mainferme,
in his three apologetic volumes in vindication of this patriarch of
his order, Natalis Alexander, saec. xii. diss. 6, and especially
Sorin's Apologetique du Saint. in 1702, a polite and spirited work.