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The Other Saint Bernard: The ‘Troubled and Varied Career’ of Bernard of Abbeville, Abbot of Tiron
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009
Abstract
Geoffrey Grossus' lengthy life of Bernard of Abbeville leaves unanswered many questions. Comparison with contemporary sources suggests that Bernard was a career churchman with an interest in ascetism and the apostolic life, who left his original house in Poitiers because of resistance to reforms that he had introduced as abbot. A successful search for a patron enabled him to establish an entirely new community at Tiron in the Perche, where he was able to implement his ideas, although the community did not remain at the forefront of monastic thinking after the death of its charismatic founder in 1116.
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References
1 David Knowles, The monastic order in England, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1966, i. 200–2.
2 Thiron-Gardais (Eure-et-Loir, ch. l. du cant.). A tour of the site can be found at http://www.mairie-thiron-gardais.fr/sommaire.php?partie_id=5
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6 The epithet Grossus has become attached to Geoffrey's name. It appears to have been derived from the only manuscript of the Vita to have survived from the Middle Ages, which was used by René Courtin, an early historian of the Perche around the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Courtin says that the livret he used was entitled Vita venerabilis Bernardi, primi abbatis monasterii sanctissimae Trinitatis de Tironio, Ordinis sancti Benedicti, diocesis Carnotensis, scripta per Gaufredum grossum, monachum: Histoire du Perche, ed. O. de Romanet and H. Tournouer, Mortagne 1893, repr. Marseilles 1980, 156.
7 The most accessible text is PL clxxii. 1362–446. A French translation has been published by Bernard Beck, Saint Bernard de Tiron, l'ermite, le moine et le monde, Cormeilles-le-Royal 1998.
8 See, for example, the Fleury compilation, Miraculi s Benedicti, published as Les Miracles de saint Benoît écrits par Adrevald, Aimon, André, Raoul Tortaire and Hugues de Sainte Marie, moines de Fleury, ed. Eugène de Cartain, Paris 1858, and Baudouin de Gaffier, ‘L'Hagiographie et son public au xie siècle’, Miscellanea historica in honorem Leonis van der Esse, Brussels 1944, 135–66.
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33 Georges Duby, The knight, the priest and the lady: the making of modern marriage in medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray, Harmondsworth 1984, 7–13.
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37 OV iv. 328.
38 For the foundation of Montierneuf see F. Villard, ‘La Fondation de l'abbaye de Saint-Jean’, in R. Favreau (ed.), Poitiers Saint-Jean-de-Montierneuf, Poitiers 1996, 9–24.
39 PL cxxxix. 438, ep. xii.
40 Cartulaire de Saint-Cyprien, p. xiii.
41 Ibid. 44 n.1.
42 ‘Defuncto abbate R et necdum sepulto, statuitur domnus B. Hunc Cluniacenses recenter a parte apostolica commonent, qui, veniens Cluniaco, abbati et monachis indicat se in via jam esse positum et paratum respondere de objectis ante domnum apostolicum Rome. Veniens ergo Romam et causam suam presuli summo ostendens, sine effectu rediit; qui post non multum temporis videns se non posse sufficere tantis negociis, diligens otium, relictis omnbus, secessit in heremum’: ibid. no. 43 at pp. 45–6.
43 ‘uti erat diffusus charitate, coepit omnes intus introducere et pauperes et ignobiles ad Deum trahere. Monachi vero tepentes et frigidi, plus de praesenti quam de futura vita solliciti, ex invidia coepere pluries resistere, dicentes possessionem monasterio, quae tot recipere posset, deesse’: VBT, para 47.
44 ‘dum sanctum virum hoc modo extrudere nequeunt, alium inquirunt. Cluniacensibus namque monachis fuerunt, sese in auxilium fore spondentes, ut S Cypriani monasterium suis legibus subjiciant; quia si hoc fieret, Bernardum inde recessurum minime dubitabant. Qua suggestionis exhortatione animati Cluniacenses, dominum papam iterum adeunt, et ut Bernardum ab officio abbatis suspenderet nisi illis subderet monasterium denuo compulerunt’: VBT, para 56; Treffort, C., ‘Le Comte de Poitiers, duc d'Aquitaine et l'église aux alentours de l'an mil (970–1030)’, CCM xliii (2000), 395–445, esp. p. 430.Google Scholar
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46 ‘Zelo igitur justitiae accensus, illud Salomonis secutus: Justus ut leo confidens absque terrore erit, dominum papam, et omnes illius in hac re complices, non praesumptuosa audacitate, sed libera magnanimatate, in extremei judicii examine ante judicium, nullis ignorantiae, tenebris falli, aliquibus muneribus corrumpi nescium, constanter invitavit’: ibid para 57; ‘Et quia scriptum et ‘iustus ut leo confidit’, in Romana sinodo contra Paschalem papam pro libertate aecclesiae litigavit': OV iv. 328.
47 ‘Papa autem tantae constantiae tantaeque sanctitatis hominem, qui nihil in mundo cuperet, nihil nisi Deum solummodo quaereret, quia secum retinere non potuit, ei hujusmodo officium injuxit: scilicet ut populis praedicaret, confessiones acciperet, poentitentias injungeret, baptizaret, regiones circuiret, et omnia quae publico praedicatori sunt agenda sollicitus expleret’: VBT, para 59.
48 Bienvenu, L'Etonnant Fondateur, 42.
49 Ibid. 34–6.
50 On the licence to preach see G. G. Meerseman, ‘Eremetismo e predicazione itinerate dei secoli xi e xii’, in L'eremetismo in occidente, 164–81.
51 L. C. Loyd, The origins of some Anglo-Norman families, ed. C. T. Clay and D. C. Douglas (Harleian Society Publications ciii, 1951), 79.
52 Identified as Chenedet (Ile-et-Vilaine, cant. Fougères, comm. Landéau): Beck, Saint-Bernard de Tiron, 29 n. 34.
53 ‘Comperto autem, fama referente, quod ille ad S Cyprianum ulta non rediret, nec ad insulae mansionem, omnibus inamabilem propter difficilem ingressum et exitum, remearet, multi ad eum confluere coeperunt, cupientes ejus eruditionibus institui, vitaeque exemplis roborari’: VBT, para. 61.
54 J. S. C. Riley-Smith, The first crusaders, 1095–1131, Cambridge 1997, 104–5, 136, 144–5, 155, 166, 222.
55 Kathleen Thompson, Power and border lordship in medieval France: the county of the Perche, 1000–1226, Woodbridge 2002.
56 VBT, paras 62ff.
57 Ibid. para. 78.
58 Ibid. paras 96, 97, 99.
59 See the general observations in Paul Antony Hayward, ‘Demystifying the role of sanctity in western Christendom’, in James Howard-Johnston and Paul Antony Hayward (eds), The cult of saints in late antiquity and the Middle Ages: essays on the contribution of Peter Brown, Oxford 1999, 115–42.
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63 VBT, para. 62.
64 Ibid. para. 63.
65 Ibid. para. 70. For the gift of a cup and its lid to the Cluniacs at Nogent-le-Rotrou, see Saint-Denis de Nogent-Le-Rotrou, 1031–1789, ed. Charles Métais, Vannes 1894, no. liv. For gifts made by Henry i's wife see Lois Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: a study in medieval queenship, Woodbridge 2003, 119, and for those made by the empress Matilda see Marjorie Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: queen consort, queen mother and lady of the English, Oxford 1991, 189. For Peter Damian see Lester K. Little, ‘The personal development of Peter Damian’, in William C. Jordan and others (eds), Order and innovation in the Middle Ages: essays in honor of Joseph R. Strayer, Princeton 1976, 317–41.
66 VBT, para 70. For the famine see OV vi. 166, 172.
67 VBT, para 80.
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71 Bede, ‘Life of Cuthbert’, ch. 10; VBT, para. 27.
72 I. Wood, The missionary life: saints and the evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050, London 2001, 34. A full study is available in A. Angenendt, Monachi peregrini: Studien zu Pirmin und den monastischen Vorstellungen des frühen Mittelalters, Munich 1972.
73 Phyllis Jestice, ‘A new fashion in imitating Christ: changing spiritual perspectives around the year 1000’, in M. Frassetto (ed.), The year 1000: religious and social response to the turning of the first millennium, New York 2002, 165–85.
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78 VBT, para. 74.
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80 Ibid. paras 61–2. For a possible parallel with Robert of Arbrissel and the development of a rule at Fontevraud see Jessee, ‘Robert’, 232; with Gilbert of Sempringham see Brian Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine order, c. 1130– c. 1300, Oxford 1995, 78ff.
81 Cartulaire de Tiron, no. xx.