three stories about life along the road: the survival of the benedictine monastery of andres

Viator 41 No. 2 (2010) 227–256. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.100799.

THREE STORIES ABOUT LIFE ALONG THE ROAD: THE SURVIVAL OF THE BENEDICTINE MONASTERY OF ANDRES

Leah Shopkow

Abstract: The monastery of Andres in the county of Guines may appear at first glance to have been poor and isolated, yet its monastic cartulary-chronicle, written by Abbot William of Andres in the early thirteenth century, reveals a house positioned to make the most of its small assets along the roads. Roads brought guests to the almshouse/hostelry, permitted the monastery to collect its rents and tithes, facilitated the ab-bots’ administration of the property, and allowed the monks to engage in investment and banking. The roads defined an axis along which the monastery forged social and political alliances as well as spiritual ones. Ties with Stephen Langton and the monks of Canterbury helped William gain the friendship of Innocent III, which permitted the monastery to escape the control of its motherhouse, Charroux in Poitou. The success of the monastery was intimately tied to its mastery of its geography through its roads. Keywords: Andres, Pas-de-Calais, France (abbey); Charroux, Vienne, France (abbey); William of Andres (Guillaume d’Andres); administration, Benedictine order; historical geography; historiography; hospitality; travel; Stephen Langton; ecclesiastical courts. In 1207, with the following words, Abbot Hugh of Charroux in Poitou ordered the messengers from the monastery of Andres (Pas-de-Calais), the future abbot William of Andres, the author of its chronicle and narrator of the passage, and Henry, the prior of the monastery, imprisoned until they agreed that their next abbot would be chosen from among the monks of Charroux and not from the college at Andres:

We deem that you are not to be believed on any point, because now we see that you, you who promised obedience and reverence, are obdurate and rebellious. For although only two of the college of Andres are here, you think that you can either deceive our multitude with your words or frighten us with appeals, we, who are stronger than you and more wealthy, and we, who can spend one hundred marks in silver in any court to your ten pounds. There-fore, we say to you finally, that we will imprison you within the boundaries of this cloister day and night by force and you will not leave for the appeal or any other event, until you elect an abbot from this college in the old manner.1

Hugh lost this particular battle. According to William he eventually tired of two pairs of disapproving eyes examining the shortcomings of his monastery and two mouths talking among themselves in Flemish, a language neither he nor his monks apparently * History Department, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall 742, 1020 East Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405-7103. I thank Chris Jones for his comments and my colleague and friend Ann Carmichael for reading this article and offering good advice. The research for this article was also supported by a summer fellow-ship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for which I am very grateful. My thanks to Tony Krus for the excellent map created on very short notice.

1 “Vobis in nullo credendum esse censemus, quia vos qui obedientiam & reverentiam hactenus pro-misistis, iam rebelles & contumaces videmus. Nam cum nonnisi duo de Andrensi Collegio compareatis, multitudinem nostram aut verbis decipere, aut appellationibus terrere putatis, qui validiores vobis et opulen-tiores sumus, & contra decem libras vestras, centum marcas argenti in curia qualibet expendere possumus: unde vobis finaliter dicimus, quod terminos istius Claustri die & nocte potentialiter vobis intercludimus: quare nec propter appellationem nec propter aliam occasionem hinc exibitis, donec antiquo more de hoc Collegio Abbatem eligatis.” The translation of the text is mine; the Latin comes from Luc d’Achery, Spicilegium, 2nd ed. (Paris 1723) 2.838, which was based on Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Lat. MS 12891, André Duchesne’s transcription of the text. A few variant readings are given. “Am” refers to Amiens, Bib-liothèques d’Amiens Métropole, MS 496; “Br” refers to Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, Ms. 7655-7; while “Pa” refers to Duchesne’s transcription. I am currently working on a new edition of the Chronicon Andrense of William of Andres. All references to the Latin text will be to d’Achery’s edition, except where d’Achery omitted the text.

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understood.2 He also lost the war. The smaller monastery won in 1211 despite the greater antiquity of Charroux, which was founded before 8003 (Andres was officially founded in 1084 as a priory4) and the considerably greater wealth of Hugh’s monas-tery, which had many dependent religious institutions and consequently much reve-nue,5 whereas Andres had no formal priories and only a few churches to its name, in-cluding the abbey church which served as the parish church of the village. Charroux was forced to enter into a composition with Andres—William reports with great satis-faction that Charroux’s procurator left his final private papal audience over the busi-ness in tears6—and to recognize the right of its daughter to elect its own abbots. Un-happy though this outcome may have been from the perspective of the abbot of Char-roux, Hugh then acted magnanimously, treating William with exemplary kindness on his way home and creating no difficulties when William was elected abbot by his fel-low monks and reappeared at Charroux.7 The monks sent him home with letters recog-

2 “While our prior was fearful and trembling, I, who write these words, manfully undertook consolation

day and night; I promised victory to our church and ourselves in our mother tongue, with our guards some-times present and sometimes absent, pledging and promising firmly that we would be released from this captivity within eight days. For those who held us prisoners thought themselves to be imprisoned and the prisoners instead. For instance, when we were crossing the dormitory at some time and some boys and ado-lescents were lying down there with two or three of the older monks, we rebuked others, greater in number, who were resting in private rooms; or when some were singing in the choir at the hour for God’s work and the Holy Sacrifice, and we corrected others who were openly giving themselves over to story-telling and leisure outside; or when at the dinner hour some were eating in the refectory, and we admonished those who were openly living luxuriously in private rooms, although it was Lent. The abbot had us as table mates in his chamber every day with our guards; hence it often happened that whatever was thought against us, whatever was attempted was known to us before sunset, either through the abbot himself or through our guards.” (Pavente & trepidante Priore nostro, ego qui haec scribo consolationi die ac nocte viriliter institi; custodibus nostris nunc praesentibus, nunc absentibus in lingua materna nobis & Ecclesiae nostrae victoriam promisi; spondens & promittens firmiter, quod ab illa captione nos infra octo dies oporteret expediri. Nam illi qui nos captivos tenebant se magis captos & captivos reputabant, dum per eorum dormitorium quemque [mss. quan-doque] transitum facientes nonnisi pueros & adolescentes cum duobus aut tribus de Senioribus ibidem decubantes, & alios in cameris, plures numero quiescentes arguimus: dum hora operis Dei & sancti sacrificii quosdam in choro cantantes, quosdam otiis & fabulis exterius vacantes palam corripuimus: dum hora prandii, licet tempore Quadragesimali, quosdam in Refectorio comedentes, quosdam in cameris delitiose viventes manifeste increpavimus: nos autem cum custodibus nostris in camera sua Domnus Abbas omni die commensales habuit; unde frequenter accidit, quod si quid contra nos fuisset excogitatum, quidquid at-temptatum ante occasum solis vel per ipsum Abbatem, vel per custodes nostros nobis innotuit.) D’Achery, Chronicon Andrense 838.

3 O. G. Oexle, “Le monastère de Charroux au IXe siècle,” Le Moyen age 76 (1970) 193; François Ey-gun, “L’Abbaye de Charroux. Les grandes lignes de son histoire et de ses constructions,” Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest, ser. 4, 10.1 (1969) 11.

4 D. P. de Monsabert, Chartes et Documents pour servir á l’histoire de l’abbaye de Charroux (Poitiers 1910) 100; Luc d’Achery, Chronicon 782; Adriaan Verhulst, “La fondation des dépendances de l’abbaye poitevine de Charroux dans le diocèse de Thérouanne: Andres, Ham et la Beuvrière,” Le Moyen age 92 (1986) 169–189.

5 Monsabert, L’abbaye de Charroux (n. 4 above) xxii–xxxv, lists over 150 dependent churches and nearly seventy dependent priories, monasteries or chapels.

6 D’Achery, Chronicon 850. 7 “Indeed he [Pope Innocent III] wrote special letters delivered through me to the abbot and chapter of

Charroux, full of every bit of sweetness and familiarity, urging and warning and enjoining them in the re-mission of their sins that they should completely efface every scrap of their earlier anger, zeal and bitterness from their hearts and to hold the settlement made and wholesomely ordained for the well-being of both churches as established and welcome, and also that they love the monks of Andres with sincere love as members of their household. When these apostolic letters had been read in the chapter of Charroux, every-one responded, ‘Thanks be to God.’ They showed me, who writes these things, every kindness beyond their usual manner. After I had recovered from an illness from which I languished and was sick there with our

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nizing his election and a pastoral staff, possibly the Limoges crosier excavated at Andres in 1989.8 It was perhaps a gracious recognition on Hugh’s part that he had been outmaneuvered at every turn.

Our view of this struggle is entirely seen through William’s eyes, the man who car-ried out the heroic battle for the liberty of the monastery. His narrative, which ended with his death in 1234, was written in part to chronicle his actions, much in the vein of Thomas of Marlborough’s chronicle of Evesham or Jocelyn of Brakelond’s tribute to abbot Samson of Bury.9 The emphasis on his role is particularly clear, as he narrates this part of the chronicle in the first person singular (using the third person or the first person plural to refer to himself elsewhere). He presents himself as a real man among monks, using the term viriliter a number of times to describe his own actions.10

It was necessary for William’s narrative to have the moral force he wanted it to have for Andres to seem small in the face of an immensely powerful enemy. It also highlighted his own contribution to its unlikely triumph. For instance, he reports that when his adversaries first arrived in Rome, the procurator, Geoffrey of Aubes, “gave many things and promised more,” luring away William’s legal advisors so that Wil-liam arrived in court with two lawyers to Charroux’s nine, two of whom had been

servant Manasses for several days, it was permitted that I return to my native soil.” (Scripsit enim per me Abbati & Capitulo Karrofensi speciales litteras omni dulcedine & familiaritate plenas, exhortans & monens, & in remissionem peccatorum injungens, ut omnem scrupulum prioris indignationis, zeli & amaritudinis de cordibus suis penitus auferrent, & compositionem pro commodo utriusque Ecclesiae factam, & salubriter ordinatam, ratam & gratam haberent: Andrenses quoque Monachos tamquam suos domesticos sincera cari-tate diligerent. Lectis in Capitulo Karrofensi litteris Apostolicis, ab omnibus, Deo gratias, respondetur. Mihi qui haec scribo praeter morem solitum omnis humanitas exhibetur. Postquam de infirmitate convalui, unde cum famulo nostro Manasse per aliquot dies ibi langui & aegrotavi, ad natale solum redire conceditur.) D’Achery, Chronicon 852.

8 On the enamel crozier, see Didier Derœux and Geneviève François, “A propos d’une crosse en émaux de Limoges du XIIIe siècle découverte a Andres (Pas-de-Calais)” Revue du Nord 74.296 (1992) 189–206 at 206, for the possibility that it was given to William by Charroux.

9 See Alain Boureau, “How Law Came to the Monks: The Use of Law in English Society at the Begin-ning of the Thirteenth Century,” Past and Present 167 (May 2000) 29–74, on Thomas of Marlborough; also see Thomas of Marlborough, The History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. and trans. Jane Sayers and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford 2003). Thomas has a surprising amount in common with William of Andres. On Samson, see Robert Brentano, “Samson of Bury Revisited,” Vita religiosa im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Kaspar Elm zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin 1999) 79–85; Jocelin of Brakelond, The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, concerning the acts of Samson, abbot of the monastery of St. Edmund, ed. and trans. H. E. Butler (London 1949).

10 See n. 2 above for one example. This term is frequently repeated in William’s narrative; his use of it is well worth exploring. William’s rather negative comments about monks appear in contrast to his depiction of himself when he describes setting out for the first time on his abbey’s business (D’Achery, Chronicon 836): “I was at that time in my thirtieth year, and had confidence in my powers and was not at all fearful about the case, as long as the unanimous sentiment of the brothers did not desert the proposal nor impede my way. For I had frequently read in the book of experience ... that many religious are ardent in beginning some great thing, but when any adversity comes against them, they grow tepid in their fervor, like that pas-sage of David, ‘As the sons of Ephraim were coming and shooting their bows, they fled on the day of battle’ (Ps 77:9 using the Vulgate numbering).” (Eram autem tunc temporis tricesimum agens aetatis annum, de viribus satis confidens, & de causa minime diffidens, dummodo Fratrum unanimitas nec propositum desere-ret, nec impediret iter meum. Jam enim in libro experientiae frequenter legeram ... quod multi Religiosi ad inchoandum aliquid magnum ferventes existunt, & aliqua adversitate eis imminente, in ipso fervore tepentes deficiunt iuxta illud Dauidicum: Filii Ephrem intendentes, & mittentes arcum, conversi sunt in die belli.) He makes a similar reference to the fearfulness of monks when he tells how in his absence, the monks suc-cumbed to pressure and elected an abbot, violating their earlier oath (D’Achery, Chronicon 840).

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suborned from William’s side.11 It was equally important to highlight the enormous and potentially pyrrhic financial sacrifice that had made the victory possible, which William did by presenting an account of the financial situation of the monastery in the aftermath of victory:

Then when a computation had been made concerning the debts of our church, both our debts incurred on the journey and in the Roman curia and the debts taken on in this country by loan and lavishly spent in the acquisition of rents while the monastery was vacant and also paid many times to many nuncios, it was discovered that our monastery owed 1400 livres parisis and that it was necessary to pay all these within the space of a single year. Our ser-vants asked for payment for the harvests or of their wages for two or some for three years, for they insisted that these had nearly all been put off or delayed by the prior and the gover-nors of the monastery until the promotion of the new abbot. And in particular, the cook of the monastery, named William, asked insistently that he be reimbursed his annual wages for the past seventeen years ... Our convent remained scattered as little as possible for the whole first year in the midst of these onslaughts of debt ... and prepared and manfully girded itself for its future dispersal, following the advice of many religious and secular men.12

And yet, threatened though the monastery may have been, it did not disperse and this is the last William tells us about this debt.

How did Andres, which William presents as so fragile and so often as surrounded by false friends and outright enemies, manage not only to survive, but to prosper? There are three stories one might tell about how this happened. The first is fairly straightforward, although it is hidden in the interstices of the cartulary-chronicle, namely that the assets of the monastery were not quite as puny as William’s narrative might lead readers to assume. True, in comparison to its neighbor Saint-Bertin, a mere fifteen kilometers or so down the road, it was not rich, but few monasteries were as rich and venerable as Saint-Bertin. Moreover, the tone of querulous complaint some-times sounded in this chronicle-cartulary is common in many similar texts, and for no particularly surprising reason; these sorts of writing were, among other things, about protecting monastic property, which would not require protection if the property were uncontested. They were also sometimes about advancing claims which might not stand in law, but which the monks wanted somehow to put on the record. In any event, they are often a record of quarrels and lawsuits, which may exaggerate our sense of the vulnerability of these houses.13 But these are not the only reasons: I will argue that one

11 D’Achery, Chronicon 843. “Praefatus interim Gaufridus patronorum suffragium multiplex exquirit,

multa dat & plura promittit, aliquos etiam quos mihi conjunxeram a mea fidelitate avertit.” 12 D’Achery, Chronicon 852 “Deinde facta computatione super debitis Ecclesiae nostrae, tam ex debitis

in via & in Curia Romana factis, quam ex debitis in patria ista mutuo acceptis, & in acquisitione reddituum vacante Monasterio sumptuose erogatis, & etiam multiplicibus nuntiis multipliciter collatis, inventum est Monasterium nostrum mille quadragintas [mss. quadringentas] libras Parisienses debere; & haec omnia infra spatium unius anni persolvi oportere. De messibus autem sive de mercedibus suis servientes nostri quidam duorum annorum, quidam trium restitutionem petebant, quia fere omnes in substitutione novi Abbatis se dilatos & prorogatos a Priore & Rectoribus Monasterii fuisse asserebant, & praecipue Monasterii coquus nomine Willel.[mus] qui de decem & septem annis transactis annuam mercedem sibi restitui instanter pete-bat. Mansit igitur inter has debitorum procellas Conventus noster per integrum primum annum minime dispersus ... & secundum consilium multorum tam Religiosorum quam saecularium se futurae dispersioni preparavit & viriliter accinxit.”

13 See O. Guyotjeannin, L. Morelle, and M. Parisse, eds. Les Cartulaires: Actes de la Table ronde or-ganisée par l’Ecole nationale des chartes et le G. D. R. 121 du C.N.R.S. (Paris 1993). On cartularies and on


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of the most important sources of Andres’s financial well-being was not such as to ap-pear in the cartulary in that capacity. The second explanation is a story of administra-tive efficiency and husbanding of resources, not least by William himself, and here William is quite modest. He was clearly an accomplished man of the type of Samson of Bury and Thomas of Marlborough, and his story suggests the ways in which some of the Benedictine monasteries of this period attracted and made good use of men with fine practical skills, active men accustomed to the hurly-burly of the world outside the cloister. The third story that might be told is one of the effective use of personal and monastic connections.

All three of these stories, however, are themselves connected. They all depend to some degree on the arteries of life in the high middle ages, the roads, and all three shed light on how we might rethink the way we approach the Benedictine monasticism of the turn of the thirteenth century, bringing to our other understandings a geographic perspective, looking not so much within monastic institutions or at the imaginative or sacred spaces they created, but also at the connections between these institutions, the larger networks within which they operated, and the landscapes they inhabited. Not every monastery with many connections necessarily thrived. Whether they did or not depended on how well these connections were managed and what resources had to be mobilized to do so. The geographic spread of the dependencies of Andres’s mother house, Charroux, and the difficulty of keeping all of its many pots on the boil may have contributed to its failure against its small daughter, particularly when Andres proved so able to exploit its connections and marshal its humbler assets.14

A STORY OF PROPERTY

The assets of Andres were painstakingly cobbled together from mostly modest dona-tions. The first charter of the monastery sets the tone. Issued by Gerard, the bishop of Thérouanne and the ordinary of the monastery, it confirms all of the gifts given up to 1084 and appears in various forms, updated and augmented and reconfirmed an excru-ciating number of times in the chronicle. The monastery was given the whole village of Andres with its parish church—a substantial donation—and a few other parish churches as well, although generally it had only the right to appoint the parson in these churches. The monks were also given a patchwork of day-works, in some cases as many as thirty, in some as few as four (but adding up to over 230),15 one and a half

cartulary history, see Benôit-Michel Tock, “Les textes non diplomatiques dans les cartulaires du province de Reims (ibid. 45–58) for a list and summaries. See also Karine Ugé, Creating the Monastic past in Medieval Flanders (York 2005) 13–14.

14 My evidence for the roads is taken largely from William’s chronicle, but A. Leduque completed a study in historical topography for the Ternois, “Essai de topographie historique sur la Morinie” (Ph.D. diss. École Pratique des Hautes Études, VIème Section, Lille 1968), which surveys the roads in the region, to which I will refer from time to time. Alain Derville, Saint-Omer des origines au début du 14e siècle (Lille 1985), repeatedly warns of the poor quality of the roads in the region in the 12th c. The Aa river was highly prone to flooding, and Saint-Omer could find itself under 3 feet of water before the river was canalized (ibid. 5). Bad though the roads were, however, the monks of Andres seem to have used them.

15 Dies, which I have translated as day-works. The dies could be literally a day’s work or could be a measure of land that could be ploughed in a day: Charles Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinita-tis conditum (Paris 1937–1938) 3.106, definitions 3, where Du Cange cites the Chronicon Andrense. In this case, it seems more likely that land is meant, not only because Du Cange thought so, but also because when

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carrucates of land, other lands in unspecified quantities, tithes and parts of tithes, a family of serfs or a single serf here and there. The foundation charter lists thirty-five donations in all.16 The second charter, issued by Baldwin I of Guines, the founder, recapitulates the properties in the foundation charter and includes other later gifts, adding the mill at Guines and the chapel at the castle, other lands, a number of fami-lies of sainteurs as well as more serfs.17 Included with some of these properties (but not all) were rights of justice.

These properties were located all over the very small county of Guines, with addi-tional properties in the neighboring county of Boulogne and castellany of Saint-Omer. This scattering must have presented some problems to the monastery, enough that Abbot Peter II granted the manor at Hardinxent (in the Boulonnais) to the monastery of St. Mary at Beaulieu (also in that county) in exchange for an annual payment of two silver marks and a cheese.18 It is difficult, however, to get a sense of the value of the donations, whether in land, labor, or kind. Andres lay at the southern edge of the plain of Flanders, where the lands slope down from the escarpment running from Cape Blanc-Nez to Bapaume that separates that plain from the northern French grain lands19 and where sweet-water marshland was abundant (the monastery owned or owned rights in some of that marsh). In contrast, the county of Saint-Pol lay on the other side of the ridge and was a major producer of grains.20 How productive were the monastic lands? How much labor was actually being done for the house? William comments that by the end of the twelfth century, the monastery was doing good business on its wheat production, good business clearly enhanced by several rounds of famine in the region, but what did it all amount to?21

There were many additions to the basic patrimony over the years of a similar na-ture, either more or less generous. The monastery in the second half of the twelfth

actual work was expected, the day was usually named, for instance, a day per week or days in the harvest season or the like.

16 D’Achery, Chronicon 782–783. 17 D’Achery, Chronicon 783–785. On sainteurs, who were not generally servile originally, but who took

on a formally servile status in relation to a particular church, see Léo Verriest, Le Servage dan le comté de Hainaut: Les Sainteurs–Le meilleur catel (Brussels 1910) 171–248.

18 D’Achery, Chronicon 812. At about 15 km away as the crow flies, this was one of the most distant properties owned by the monastery, although it seems from the chronicler’s comments that the monastery dealt with this by having more than one monk reside there with lay brothers; moreover, some members of the monastic community opposed this exchange.

19 On the terrain, see Albert Demangeon, La Picardie et les régions voisines: Artois–Cambrésis–Beau-vaisis, 4th ed. rev. Aimé Perpillou (Paris 1973) 7–11; also Derville, Saint-Omer (n. 14 above) 12–13; Dic-tionnaire historique et archéologique du département du Pas-de-Calais: Arrondissement de Boulogne (Ar-ras 1882) 3.1, notes that Guines is located at the declination point of the plateau separating the Boulonnais from the Calaisis.

20 The location of Saint-Omer near the conjunction of these two regions helped make it a major commer-cial center, as at least one quarter of its economy involved grain transshipment, although Derville (n. 14 above) cautions that small plots higher on the slopes were probably quite intensively cultivated and hence productive (54).

21 D’Achery, Chronicon 835. The chronicler notes that under Abbot Iterius, the polk of wheat brought in at least 10 shillings (he does not specify in what currency) and sometimes two or three times that (Iterius was abbot during a period of famine and war in the late 1190s). For famine in the period, see Lambert of Ardres, History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres, trans. L. Shopkow (Philadelphia 2001) 190; David Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London 1992) 102, 109.


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century was the beneficiary, as so many others were, of the lay resignations of tithes.22 Other gifts came as thanks for help with various personal difficulties. Alulf, for in-stance, gave the monastery an annual weight of cheese in thanks for Abbot Peter II’s help in proving his free status against a hostile neighbor (how much cheese? The charter does not say).23 Manasses, the lord of Thièmbronne, the brother of Count Ar-nulf II of Guines, was more generous in his thanks. When Abbot William arranged for him to be absolved of a crusade vow, he led the convent and witnesses around a long-disputed and desired section of marsh, encircling it and donating it—more than forty measures of land—to the monastery.24

However, one gift stands out in importance among the later grants, the donation of Warren of Fiennes. This donation is initially noted simply as one of many, in a charter of Count Manasses of Guines.25 In it Warren gave “whatever he had in the county of Guines, from the top of the mount of Fiennes: lands, woods, vavassors, serfs, slaves, and bondswomen, and one mill at Boucres.”26 The value of this gift isn’t entirely clear, for the measure of the lands included or the numbers of dependents are never speci-fied, although a mill was an obviously good thing to have (the monastery eventually had three). But what matters is what Abbot Gilbert did with these lands and revenues:

[Abbot Gilbert] disdained riches and found them suspect, just like a man truly poor in spirit; he liberally decided to allot and assign the many things collected for him to something which seems more valuable, the assistance of poor pilgrims and people going from realm to realm and traveling from one people to another. ... And making a poorhouse near the gate of the monastery, Gilbert assigned to it the lands and rents offered by Warren so that the members of Christ might be sustained by them. He appointed his former fellow-soldier in Christ, Eberhard, of whom we made mention above, as the almoner for this hospital.27

When I began to piece together my understanding of how this monastery operated, the almshouse did not particularly catch my eye. The chronicler mostly refers to it as an almshouse (domus eleemosynarie) although he sometimes refers to it as a poor

22 On this restoration see John Van Engen, “The ‘Crisis of Cenobitism’ Reconsidered: Benedictine

Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150,” Speculum 61 (1986) 279. 23 D’Achery, Chronicon 815. 24 D’Achery, Chronicon 860. 25 D’Achery, Chronicon 785. The family of Fiennes became both second patrons of the monastery and

sometimes monastic bêtes noires. The family owned lands in Guines and the county of Boulogne. When Warren decided upon the monastic life, he donated all his property, the property in Boulogne to the Cluniac priory of Le Waast, and the lands in Guines to Andres, but he settled at Andres as a monk.

26 D’Achery, Chronicon 785. “Garinus ejus filius [Am & Br filius eius] dedit quidquid habuit in Comi-tatu Gisnensi a summitate montis de Filnes: terras, boscos, vavasores, hospites, servos & ancillas, & unum molendinum apud Bucretes.”

27 D’Achery, Chronicon 786. “Sed ipse ut vere pauper spiritu divitias fastidiens & suspectas habens, multa sibi collata, quae etiam videbantur pretiosiora, ad opus pauperum peregrinorum, & de regno in regnum, & de gente ad populum alterum transeuntium, statuit delegare, & liberaliter deputare. Quo studio & fervore charitatis accensus, Warinum quemdam nobilis, cujusdam matronae Athelaidis de Fielnes filium, qui omnia allodia quae in Comitatu Boloniensi habuit ad Ecclesiam de Wasto per instantiam sanctissimae matronae Idae Comitissae de novo fundandam disperserat, & omnia similiter allodia quae in Gisnensi habe-bat Comitatu ad cujus [mss. huius] Monasterii constructionem reservabat, in fratrem & Monachum recepit, & iuxta portam Monasterii hospitale pauperum faciens, terras & redditus ab eo oblatas [Am & Br oblatos] ut ex inde Christi membra sustentarentur, instituit. Cui etiam Hospitali suum quondam commilitonem, Everar-dum de quo superius mentio facta est, Eleemosynarium praefecit.”

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hospital (hospitale pauperum) or a poor hospice (hospitium pauperum).28 What I failed to pay sufficient attention to were the continual references to “poor pilgrims” and “travelers,” which appear from the start with the founding of the almshouse. The alms house is also referred to as a hostelry (ostellaria) in a charter of Eustace of Fiennes granted in 1117, which arose from a dispute between Henry of Campagne and the monastery after Eustace’s death, and in a charter of Lady Adelaide of Fiennes following the death of her son Cono.29

“Poor pilgrims,” “people going from realm to realm,” and “hostelry” all seem to add up to many travelers and to suggest that the monks were running an inn. But for the monastery successfully to operate an inn, it needed to be on a major route or linked by an easy access to such a route where many people traveled. Just consider the sad fate of the places that failed to be sufficiently close to interstates when the American interstate system was created.30 And once I began to look for evidence for the route, there it was.

The village of Andres was (and is) located about three and one-half kilometers from Guines and about three kilometers from Ardres as the crow flies, about four kilometers west of the main road currently running between Calais and Saint-Omer and just over a kilometer north of the modern road running between Guines and Ard-res.31 Modern Andres is connected to that road, the Route de Guines, by a short road. Medieval Andres was not directly connected to a public thoroughfare until the middle of the twelfth century. Up until 1159, the monks had a “narrow and rugged path, with hills along its steep side, rough and inclined to cause falls.”32 In 1159, though, the monastery was given a roadway south through the lands of a powerful neighbor, Henry of Campagne, as an oblation offering. Since the son Henry offered to the abbey was lame, this was a particularly suitable gift. But although the rationale for the gift was the disability of the son, we should not be distracted from what the gift did: it provided all the monks with easier access to the world outside via the road, and pro-vided easier access to the monastery by anyone passing by on that road.33

The monks were well aware that roads were the crucial connectors holding the monastery’s properties together, permitting the flow of revenues. Thus the chronicle notes the gift by Warren of Fiennes of land lying along the road to Wissant; a charter of Count Manasses dated to 1118 confirms a donation by an earlier Henry of Cam-pagne of lands around Andres, to which he added “roads and ways out everywhere in

28 D’Achery, Chronicon 786, 805, 810 (domus eleemonsynaria); 787, 788, 797 (domus pauperum); 794,

796 (eleemosynam pauperum). 29 D’Achery, Chronicon 787. 30See G. V. Fuguitt, “The Places Left Behind: Population Trends and Policy for Rural America,” Rural

Sociology 36 (1971) 449–470; Daniel T. Lichter and Glenn V. Fuguitt, “Demographic Response to Trans-portation Innovation: The Case of the Interstate Highways,” Social Forces 59/2 (1980) 492–512.

31 My modern geographic information is drawn from Google Earth. 32 D’Achery, Chronicon 811: “Iter habens arctum, & in devexo latere collis praeruptum, scabrosum &

praecipitio aptum.” 33 From site marked “the abbey” on the cadastral record of 1833 and the excavations done in the dig of

1982, which established the location of the monastic buildings, if not their precise layout, it seems to me more likely that the medieval path is the one now called the Chemin de la motte (testimony to the hills alongside the path?) which turns into the Chemin du vieux moulin. See Derœux and François (n. 8 above) 202.


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his land and every pasture in every piece of land of his which lay uncultivated up to his time and in every other land of his except that which was at that time sown.”34 When the monastery exchanged some land with Vivian and his wife, the monastery kept the legal jurisdiction and the abbot retained jurisdiction over the road.35

And the monastery helped maintain this vital link as well. In the late 1170s, Abbot Peter invested in improving the monastery’s lifeline:

In that time, Lord Peter the abbot was making frequent trips to the castle of Saint-Omer and to the town of Thérouanne for domestic business, and seeing that the river of Tornehem [the Hem] frequently left its natural course and often flooded onto the public road past the village of Nordausques, and feeling pity that on this account the visitors and pilgrims, the poor and the infirm, and particularly the pedestrians were suffering dangers and delays, he sent Master Aimon (who built the current church and rebuilt the almshouse) with some cementers and other workers to that place. Sustained by the help of God, restrained by no one, and for the aid of many, he began a bridge with elegant work, using the goods of this church, and he completed it in a short time with hard and squared stones brought long before from faraway quarries for the use of the sumptuous structure and adapted to this work, not without labor and at an inestimable expense, for the love of God alone and the repose of his poor people.36

Peter also attended to the part of the road near the monastery. When he decided to build a wall around the monks’ cemetery, he ran the road alongside the new wall, having to buy out the neighboring properties in order to do so. By this action, he im-proved the road that the monastery had acquired just before his election, protecting it with the wall on the one side and a raised hedge on the other, against strong opposition from the brother of the donor, who seems to have orchestrated an attempt to murder Peter.37 The road was clearly not the only issue: The perpetrator seems to have feared that the monastery was fortifying itself with the new wall and it is also clear that these events were triggered at least in part by a property dispute between the donor’s widow

34 D’Achery, Chronicon 795. “Concessit etiam & dedit vias & exitus ubique in terra sua, omnemque

pasturam in omni terra sua, quae jacuit inculta usque ad tempus suum, & in omni alia terra sua, nisi tunc dum seminata fuerit.”

35D’Achery, Chronicon 812. 36D’Achery, Chronicon 816.“Eodem tempore domnus Petrus Abbas ad castrum sancti Audomari & ad

urbem Morinensem frequenter transitum pro negotiis domesticis faciens, & sub villa de Elceka in strata publica fluvium de Tornehem saepius inundantem, & naturalem alveum frequenter egredientem prospiciens, ac per hoc advenas et peregrinos pauperes & debiles, & omnes praecipue pedites, moras & pericula pati compatiens, Magistrum Aimonem qui Ecclesiam praesentem construxerat, qui de novo domum eleemosy-nariam consummaverat, cum quibusdam caementariis & aliis operariis ibidem transmisit, & Dei fultus auxi-lio, nullius tamen fretus adminiculo, de bonis hujus Ecclesiae eleganti opere pontem incepit, & ad multorum subsidium in brevi tempore consummavit, lapidibus duris & quadratis de remotis lapidicinis ad opus sump-tuosae structurae non sine labore & sumptu inaestimabili longe ante adductis, & propter solius Dei amorem et pauperum suorum requiem, ad opus illud aptatis.” William appears here to be saying that Aimoin used leftover stones originally brought to the monastery for building the almshouse (the sumptuous structure) so that the bridge itself could be regarded as a sort of alms. With reference to the flooding, I note only that management of water and water resources was an important feature of life at this monastery; disputes over water-levels, water rights, and pasturage in the sweet-water marshes that surrounded the monastery were crucial. Parts of Saint-Omer are close to sea-level (some of the land around the town is still poldered) so flooding was a constant concern, but marsh was also a valuable resource. There was peat marsh to the north of the monastery (Dictionnaire historique [n. 19 above] 3.68.) On the general issue of water in the region, see Anne-Dominique Kapferer, “Entre le mythe et la contrainte: L’eau dans un moyen age picard et boulon-nais” in Danielle Buchinger and André Crepin, eds., Les quatre elements dans la culture médiévale (Göppin 1983) 239–248. The modern road D943 still crosses the Hem at Nordausque.

37 D’Achery, Chronicon 811.

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and her brother-in-law. My point here, however, is simply how significant to Peter and William the maintenance of the road was. The roads that connected the monastery to its properties were the routes along which its two polks of wheat here or its half a tithe there would have flowed.

From a financial perspective, however, one important aspect of Andres’s location was the particular road it was on; the monks’ road linked them with the route between Calais and Saint-Omer. This was the road upon which Abbot Peter supervised the con-struction of the bridge and it was one of the major routes between London and Paris and ultimately Rome, as Matthew Paris’s thirteenth-century pictorial itinerary shows quite clearly. Matthew marked Calais as being a day’s journey from Saint-Omer (the distance as the crow flies is just under 40 kilometers).38 However, for those who wanted to travel in a leisurely way or simply traveled more slowly, Andres was about halfway.

Merchants would certainly have used this road. Although not well known now, Saint-Omer was one of the most important commercial towns in France in the high Middle Ages. Indeed, one of the witnesses for the charter that granted the route to the public road to Andres was the twelfth-century merchant extraordinaire William Cade.39 But travelers of other sorts would have passed along the road as well, particu-larly the pilgrims William repeatedly refers to and crusaders going by land from Eng-land to Jerusalem on crusade, following Matthew Paris’s itinerary all the way.40 Peo-ple only going as far as Paris might also have used the road, and this would have in-cluded students. And of course, the route could be traveled in reverse. The chronicler reports that Innocent III had himself stayed at Andres: “At the time when we were enrolled in the schools at Paris and we were going on pilgrimage to St. Thomas, we had shelter in your church, and we found it in a good state and under the rule of a cer-tain venerable old man, as it seemed to us.”41 For clerical travelers, it would have been natural to seek shelter at the monastery. Thomas Becket, on his way back to England, stayed at the castle of Guines with the lord, four kilometers away.42 He merely blessed Andres from the road as he passed by on his way to his martyrdom, but other travelers,

38 Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, fol. 1r. I have not been

able to look at the original of Matthew’s manuscript, but it is available in facsimile through “Parker on the Web.” Leduque hypothesizes this road as the route from Béthune to Calais, although he notes that it does not appear on any antique itinerary (n. 14 above, 77).

39 D’Achery, Chronicon 811. Alain Derville, “De Godric de Finchale á Guillaume Cade, l’espace d’un revolution” Le marchand au moyen age (Reims 1988) 35–47, 38 n. 16, on the first English bibliography on William Cade, who was a towering financial figure in England, but who was probably from Saint-Omer (40). Because his trade ran between Flanders and England, Cade must have passed by the monastery fre-quently. Cade witnesses no other charters for the monastery. In the witness list he appears after members of the donor’s family, but before the viscount of Merck and lord of Licques.

40 Giles Constable, “Financing of the Crusades” Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century (Farn-ham 2008) 126–132, 106, notes that there was a marked preference for traveling by land rather than sea. Not all English crusaders would have gone by way of land, but those who did would most likely have sailed to Calais or Boulogne; from Boulogne, as Matthew’s map suggests, they might have gone on to Saint-Omer or gone in a different direction toward Montreuil.

41 D’Achery, Chronicon 839. “Nam tempore quo Parisiis [Am & Br Parisius] in Scholis resedimus, apud beatum Thomam peregrinantes, in Ecclesia tua hospitium habuimus, & sub regimine cujusdam venerandi senis prout nobis videbatur eam in bono statu reperimus.”

42 Lambert, History (n. 21 above) 121–122; d’Achery, Chronicon 812.


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sometimes quite important ones, stayed at the monastery, such as Richard of Canterbury, at whose coming “this monastery of Andres was overjoyed.”43

And for those “poor pilgrims” and “people going from one people to another” who were not or could not be housed within the monastic precinct, the hospital-almshouse-poorhouse-guesthouse stood ready to take them in. The rules of the hostelry/hospital were more flexible than the rules of the monastery. It was outside the monastic pre-cinct, at the gate, and was under the regulation of the almoner, not the abbot. Since Abbot Peter II on his deathbed reprimanded the almoner of the time for having trysts at the almshouse, women had to have been permitted to stay at the almshouse.44 In-deed, William says that when relatives of the monks came to the monastery in the time of Abbot Geoffrey Bertram, they would not only stay in the guesthouse, but the abbot would require their monastic kin to go out and stay with them there.45

It is impossible to guess how much additional revenue came into the monastery through the almshouse/hostelry, just as one cannot say how much in revenues streamed in from other monastic properties, nor can one estimate the volume of busi-ness. But what is clear is that it was one component of the sound finances of the mon-astery and one which the monastery vigorously defended. Among the charters that William took pains to secure from the pope was one forbidding anyone one else to build oratories or “guesthouses” (xenodochia) within the borders of the parishes in which the monastery had an interest.46 Although William never explicitly refers to the revenues coming from the almshouse, this charter again suggests that they were con-siderable and the monks wanted to defend them against potential competition.

The almoner also seems to stand out among the other obedienciaries of the monas-tery, although the monastery clearly had a full complement of officials.47 As William’s narrative is to a great degree a story about the monastery’s abbots, it makes sense that almost everyone else gets somewhat short shrift, but the almoners are exceptions to this tendency; they are more frequently mentioned than the priors, for instance. The chronicle gives the names of many of these individuals, beginning with the first almo-ner, Eberhard, appointed by the first abbot, who took an active role in building the almshouse’s endowment through strategic purchases.48 The almoner appears by title alone in many of the charters. It is also interesting that Abbot Iterius, who became the

43 D’Achery, Chronicon 869. “Domnus Richardus Cantuar[iensis] Archiep[iscopus] ad Curiam Ro-

manam iter arripuit, & hoc Andrense Monasterium suo aduentu laetificavit.” 44 D’Achery, Chronicon 824. 45 D’Achery, Chronicon 806. 46 D’Achery, Chronicon 846. 47 In the charter of 1197 in which Andres reached a seemingly amicable settlement with the Cluniac pri-

ory of Le Waast over the lands formerly the property of Warren of Fiennes, which the two houses had split, seven monastic officials appear as witness to the agreement between the abbots of Cluny and Andres, the prior, provost, cantor, cellarer, wine-master, almoner and notary. This charter is copied in Amiens, Biblio-thèques d’Amiens Métropole, 496 and transcribed by Daniel Haigneré (Abbé Haigneré) in “Notice histori-que et archeologique sur le Prieuré de Saint-Michel du Wast, ordre de Clugny, Diocese de Boulogne,” Mé-moires de la Société des Antiquaires de la Morinie 9 (1851) 1–58 at 53–54. There is also one mention of a subprior and another of the sacristan elsewhere in the chronicle.

48 D’Achery, Chronicon 794. Other named almoners are Humphrey, ca. 1112 (d’Achery, Chronicon 788), although confusingly he appears in a charter before William is done speaking of Eberhard); Simon, who appears in a charter of the 1160s (d’Achery, Chronicon 812). A man named William was the almsmas-ter in the charter of 1197 outlining the agreement with the Cluniac priory of Le Wast (see n. 47).

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abbot of Andres after Peter II died in 1195, had been the almoner of Charroux.49 All of this suggests that the almshouse was close to the center of monastic administrative life, which reinforces the notion that the almoner was a financial pole of the monas-tery, perhaps more important than the prior.

What with one source of revenue or another, not only did the monastery seemingly pay off the debt it incurred in the lawsuit with rapidity, it absorbed other financial blows without too much apparent flinching. The chronicle catalogues a steady stream of what from the monastery’s perspective were importunities for money, such as money gifts to local notables.50 Abbot William paid the army of Count Ferrand of Flanders £250 not to burn the village of Andres in 1213, from what was seemingly cash on hand.51 And through it all, the monastery not only survived, but modestly ex-panded. For that to happen, it not only needed to have sound revenues, but the mon-astery also needed to have sound administration and management of those revenues. And so we turn to the second story.

THE STORY OF ECONOMIC ADAPTATION AND ADMINISTRATION

The case of Bury St. Edmunds shows that a monastery could have substantial revenues but still fall into financial disarray. Ambrose Raftis, in his discussion of monastic eco-nomic management argued that the increasing independent actions of obedienciaries, coupled with a lack of authority to acquire new revenues or reorganize old ones, was a major contributing factor to problems of this kind for monasteries from the twelfth century on.52 Raftis also argues that since Benedictine monasteries attracted people from all classes of society, but were oriented toward the countryside, monasteries were increasingly disadvantaged in the new commercial economy of the twelfth century.53 Ludo Milis has also argued that monks in this period were more or less uninterested or unaware of local cities, their new commercial spaces, and new modes of commercial enterprise and he uses William’s own narrative to support his position, although he does note that Andres existed because of its placement on the road, and that road brought them opportunities, not the least of them the opportunity to make a little money.54

I argue that neither of these situations was quite true at Andres. Andres seems to have enjoyed quite successful administration, and, although it too had obedienciaries with their own endowments who could be problematic, the abbot seems to have con-

49 D’Achery, Chronicon 825. 50 William complains, for instance, that Count Arnold II took a payment of 30 marks to confirm a settle-

ment (d’Achery, Chronicon 858). In other cases, the money in question would have been part of a purchase, as for instance, when Eustace of Hames sold the monastery a piece of marsh for £100 parisis (d’Achery, Chronicon 856). However, William later says of this man (d’Achery, Chronicon 866) that he “had given many things to us and sold us many more, and often did us an injury with respect both to the things given and sold” (Eodem anno nobilis vir Eustachius de Campaines, qui praesentem Ecclesiam saepius offenderat, qui multa nobis dederat, & multo plura vendiderat, & tam de datis quam venditis saepius injuriam fecerat ...).

51 D’Achery, Chronicon 854; the abbot of Capella also contributed some of this money. 52 Ambrose J. Raftis, “Western Monasticism and Economic Organization,” Comparative Studies in Soci-

ety and History 3 (1961) 466. 53 Ibid. 466 and 468. 54 Ludo J. R. Milis, “Monks, Canons and the City: A Barren Relationship?” Journal of Interdisciplinary

History xxxii:4 (Spring 2002) esp. 681–682, 684.


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tinued to be the determinative figure at the monastery. I would argue here as well that Andres’s case shows both considerable awareness of the new dimensions of the econ-omy in the twelfth century, including its urban life, and highly successful adaptation to it, even though William does not describe the city closest to him—Saint-Omer—or wax rhapsodic about its markets. Since he does marvel at the bustle of Viterbo as oc-cupied by the Roman curia, he was certainly not immune to the attractions of cities; perhaps he was so used to Saint-Omer (which was in any event considerably smaller than Viterbo or Rome) that he did not describe it.55 After years of going there on busi-ness, it may simply have been for him the air he breathed. It may also be that the term he uses to describe it—castrum—was chosen not because he thought the military function of the town was the most important thing about it as Milis argues, but as a technical term: it was the seat of a castellan and the administrative center of the cas-tellany.

While it is true that Andres was located in a village, the monastery was connected to three cities by its roads, although I don’t want to make this connection seem over-determined. I have already mentioned the connection to Calais and its travelers. There is an additional mention of a commercial relationship, however, that sheds some light on the monastery’s activities. The burghers of Calais, desirous of keeping their treas-ures safe, brought them to Andres.56 If there were other important commercial rela-tions with the Calaisis, though, the chronicle does not record them.

The connection to Boulogne is better documented, even though that city didn’t lie on the route that brought in the pilgrims.57 The road from Boulogne to Flanders went by way of Fiennes and Guines, so access to Boulogne was fairly straightforward for the monastery.58 The monastery had a manor along one of these roads, on the eastern part of the sea road “between Le Mat and the flowing sea,” courtesy of Warren of Fiennes. This road connected them with the port of Wissant as well as Boulogne.59

It was at Le Mat that the monks granted Hugh of Sanghen a vif gage on his lands.60 In other words, the roads facilitated the monastery’s banking activities. There is evi-dence that like many other monasteries, the monks of Andres held mortgages on tithes and lands. The monastery acquired the tithe of Axles (in the Calaisis, along the coast road) through a mortgage by its holder for forty marks; to retrieve the tithe, Alulf would have had to pay eighty-five marks, so substantial interest was built in, particu-

55 Ibid. 681–682; d’Achery, Chronicon 838f. Milis also notes that when William mentions the surrender

of Saint-Omer in 1198 to the count of Flanders, he calls it a villa. However, the town surrendered against the wishes of the castellan (for which the townspeople were rewarded with a renewal of its charter) and here William may be emphasizing the independence of the citizens from the castellan.

56 D’Achery, Chronicon 824. The burghers at the time wanted to get their assets beyond the grasp of the count of Boulogne, Renaud of Dammartin, so by sending them to Andres, they were taking them out of the county.

57 Pilgrims could, of course, have gone to Saint-Omer from Boulogne, but Matthew Paris’s route shows them continuing on from Boulogne to Senlis; Leduque (n. 14 above) in the map shows the coastal road.

58 Henri Malo, Un Grand Feudataire: Renaud de Dammartin et la Coalition de Bouvines (Paris 1898) 9. 59 D’Achery, Chronicon 787. Matthew Paris’s map is ambiguous about where pilgrims who landed at

the port of Wissant would go. It seems possible from his drawing that they might go to Calais or Boulogne. 60 D’Achery, Chronicon 831. On the distinctions between mortgages and vif gages, see R. Génestal,

Rôle des monastères comme établissements de crédit étudiés en Normandie du IXe a la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris 1901) 1–2. This seems to have been a vif gage rather than a mortgage, because Hugh could redeem the property whenever he wished and there was no interest.

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larly since the monastery was able to collect the tithe in the interim. The monastery was also holding the silk copes of St. Mary of Boulogne against £8 boulonnais that they had lent the monastery,61 so pawn-brokering was added to the real-estate loan business.

The crusades offered further financial opportunities as they did for many monas-teries.62 Abbot Peter II held a number of mortgages for crusaders going crusade, a pol-icy the chronicler thought unwise, because it gave rise to later disputes. For a little more money, he says, Peter could have bought the properties. William ascribes Peter’s unwillingness to buy out the properties outright to piety, but secured loans must have seemed like good business at the time, since anyone reclaiming the property would have had to repay at least the principal and the monastery might collect the revenues for some time.63 Only from the perspective of the reign of Innocent III did the holding of such loans come to seem risky or improper and did monasteries shift their financial focus to the sale of rents.64

The financial connections to Saint-Omer were closest of all. Not only did the mon-astery hold a considerable number of properties in the western part of the castellany,

61 Not the only ones: the leprosarium of Boulogne was also making loans, as is mentioned in the same

charter. 62 See Constable (n. 40 above) 126–132, on financial transactions (including loans and sales). Ingelram

of Fiennes, a man whose conduct was sufficiently notable to warrant mention in the major narratives of the Third Crusade, was a patron of the monastery and appears in a number of charters, including one in which the monastery, to help finance his journey, converted the annual gift from the almoner of a homespun cloak like those worn by the monks, to commemorate Warren’s endowment of the almshouse into an annual pay-ment of 16s. This transaction caused the monastery considerable trouble later on, when William of Fiennes claimed that his father had been cheated in the transaction–the cloak should have been appraised at 60 marks. The monastery eventually had to pay him off, but by giving him a large payment up front, they man-aged to get the annual payment reduced to 5s. (d’Achery, Chronicon 832). Guines and the Boulonnais were territories that sent a steady stream of men on crusade. Arnold II of Ardres and Fulk the brother of Ma-nasses, Count of Guines, both went on the First Crusade, and Baldwin of Ardres went on the Second Cru-sade. Baldwin’s “help” came from the monastery of Capella; Lambert, History (n. 21 above) 72, 104, 163–165, 176–178. The chronicle of Andres seems to take note only of financial activities from crusaders from the third crusade on.

63 D’Achery, Chronicon 822. “After the kings and princes of the whole west had been bound by a cru-sade vow following the preaching of those who were provided for this act, and the barons and knights and vavassors were as one stirred to help the Holy Land by their example, many people from the territories of Guines and Boulogne, not wishing to be wanting in a foreign land, when they saw themselves to flourish in their own land and to abound in worldly goods, revealed their tithes to the lord abbot Peter, which he took the mortgage of, granting them a reasonable price, although he could have bought them legitimately, if he had wished to burden himself a little with a greater payment. Having compassion on them, moved by a pious simplicity toward them, he said that it was more wholesome and more tolerable to hold their goods by the title of a pledge that to deprive them completely of their inheritance through purchase, because either they or their heirs could return in time and place to the heredity that had been alienated through the pledge they had made.” (Postquam Reges & Principes totius Occidentis ad praedicationem illorum qui ad hoc pro-visi fuerunt, voto Crucis sunt adstricti, & exemplo eorum Barones & Milites et Vavassores ad subuentionem terrae sanctae concorditer animati, multi de Boloniensi & Gisnensi territorio nolentes in terra aliena in-digere, qui in sua terra videbantur florere, & bonis temporalibus abundare, Domno Petro Abbati suas deci-mas exposuerunt, quas ille invadiavit; assignato eis rationabili pretio, cum eas legitime emisse potuisset, si modicum se voluisset gravasse in ampliori peculio: quadam enim pietate simplici erga eos motus eis com-passus, dicebat sanius esse et tolerabilius bona eorum titulo pignoris retinere, quam eos ex toto hereditate sua per emptione privare, quia per impignerationem factam vel ipsi vel heredes possent loco et tempore ad hereditatem distractam redire.)

64 On these points, see Génestal (n. 60 above) esp. x, where he notes that the monasteries did particularly well when the principal was never repaid and they collected years of interest. In the13th c. the sale of life-rents replaced the mortgage; ibid. 120ff. See also Constable (n. 40 above) 128ff.


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for instance at Tornehem, at Moulle, and at Nordausque, where the monks had man-aged to buy out all the holders of the parts of the tithe and where the bridge Peter II had repaired lay, but this last property brought with it a seat as an échevin at the cas-tellan’s mallus.65 William comments that Peter’s motive for repairing the bridge was partly compassionate, but it was also to facilitate his fulfillment of his political obliga-tions.

The obituary of the monastery is lost, so one cannot tell how many families from the town established ties with the monastery, but the monks promised to celebrate the anniversaries of the castellan and his family, when the castellan remitted the tariff on the wines the monastery purchased in the town for their own use in 1186.66 In 1200, the son of that castellan confirmed his father’s donation of the right of forage as well as other recent donations to the monastery in the castellany, including a gift of seven measures of land at Moulle, which a certain Nicholas gave when he made his son “G” a monk; it is tempting to see in this the endowment that Abbot William brought into the monastery.67 Whether this refers to the chronicler—it may well not, as William was one of the most common names of the high Middle Ages and the charter Andres signed with the priory of Le Waast was signed by no fewer than four monks of Andres named William68—it does show that the monastery was drawing monks from the sub-urbs of the town, who would have been familiar with the town, been to its market, and known people there. But as the abbots, from Peter II’s time on, sat on the castellan’s mallus, even an abbot from elsewhere would have gotten to know the town relatively quickly. From William’s narrative it is clear that the coming and going between Andres and Saint-Omer was constant. In fact, Abbot Peter II took as his confessor not a monk of his own monastery but the abbot of Saint-Bertin.69 Far from being an iso-lated rural monastery, Andres was at a crossroad, with all the economic opportunities presented by its positioning.

Managing all these properties and revenues required an effective abbot to take an active role in administration, that is, to travel. William admired the piety of Geoffrey Bertram, an early twelfth-century abbot, but charged him with putting too much of his energies into the spiritual life, and letting peripheral properties slip from his hands.

65 D’Achery, Chronicon 817. 66 D’Achery, Chronicon 819. The monks got their wine at Saint-Omer, which was a major entrepôt for

the wine business; see Derville, Saint-Omer (n. 14 above) 77–78, who mentions that the bridge at Nor-dausque facilitated the wine business by permitting the shipment of large tuns.

67 D’Achery, Chronicon 830–831. 68 Maurits Gysseling and P. Bougard, L’onomastique calaisienne a la fin du 13e siècle (Louvain 1963)

87, notes that 9% of the 1660 individuals in their study were named William in the 13th-c. Calaisis, out-stripped in popularity only by John (21%). Patrice Beck, “Personal Naming Among Rural Populations in France at the end of the Middle Ages,” Personal Names Studies of Medieval Europe: Social Identity and Family Structures, ed. George Beech, Monique Bourin, and Pascal Chareille (Kalamazoo 2002), notes that 15% of the men in 15th-c. Burgundy were named William. Robert of Torigni tells a charming anecdote about Henry the Young king’s visit to Normandy in 1172, during which two men named William threw a party for all men named William and served 110 men (not including Williams who chose to eat with Henry); Robert of Torigni, Chronique de Robert de Torigni, abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel, ed. Léopold De-lisle (Rouen 1873) 2.31. For the charter, see n. 47 above. Three of the Williams are officials: the almoner, the wine-master, and the notary. The fourth William, who witnesses after the prior and the provost is not said to have an office.

69 D’Achery, Chronicon 824.

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Thus he allowed the hospital of Saint-Ingelvert an easement on his monastery’s prop-erty, which turned into a land grab.70

In contrast, the great hero of the chronicle, Peter II, Peter “the Marmot,” small in stature, but mighty in deeds, was an active administrator and tireless traveler. William compares his work on the road and cemetery wall to Nehemiah rebuilding the temple with a sword in one hand and the other applied to building.71 While Peter is spiritually active—he reformed the chant at the monastery—what he is, strikingly, is physically active.72 When Peter is attacked, he is returning (presumably by the road he has him-self constructed) from a journey. Peter was present at the deathbed of Arnold II of Ardres, who died in England. Peter escorted Thomas Becket to Guines when Thomas was returning to England; it was at Peter’s request that he blessed the monastery from the road. Peter traveled to Saint-Omer to beg relics for the new church he built at Andres from Count Philip of Flanders, who was passing through. As abbot of Andres, Peter would have traveled frequently to Thérouanne, the seat of the ordinary. He went to Rome on behalf of the count of Flanders and went back to Charroux once.73 Only the end of his very long and stable reign was marked by an end to his traveling days:

From that time, the lord abbot Peter, who had completed thirty years of rule, began to grow weary, as much from old age as illness, and to head toward the end. Because he could not then leave the cloisters of the monastery easily, nor go to synods, nor take himself to any gathering in his accustomed way, but out of pious curiosity, none the less, wishing to be in-formed of all things, he sent everywhere.74

The end of his travels also marked the end of his effectiveness as abbot. Not only did he cease to travel, but he acquired no more property for the monastery and appointed a prior who was unable to establish monastic discipline.

But when Peter was still able to travel, all of his coming and going was seemingly very profitable. Peter was able to rebuild the monastic church, creating a fine new bier for its patron, St. Rotrude, without going to the expediency of sending monks round with relics to beg for help, as a consequence of which, William says, “he found him-self richer than before.”75 He left a full treasury behind him, which the next abbot pro-

70 D’Achery, Chronicon 806. This is, of course, the version from Andres. From the perspective of Saint-

Ingelvert, the property may have been a matter of survival, because its existence seems to have been a shaky matter in the 12th c. See Lambert History (n. 21 above) 85–86.

71 D’Achery, Chronicon 811. 72 On the chant, see d’Achery, Chronicon 809. 73 D’Achery, Chronicon 811, 815, 818. 74 D’Achery, Chronicon 824. “Ab eo tempore domnus Petrus Abbas jam peractis in regimine triginta an-

nis, tam senio quam morbo coepit lassescere, & ad finem tendere, ita quod deinceps non ex facili Claustra Monasterii exibat, nec Synodos adibat, nec alicui coadunationi more solito se ingerebat, sed pia tamen curi-ositate volens certificari de omnibus ubique mittebat.”

75 D’Achery, Chronicon 813. “Nunquam tamen Praedicatorem pro pecunia quaestuose acquirenda, ut quibusdam Ecclesiis & Monasteriis mos est, hinc emisit: nunquam a Principibus & Potentibus subsidium mendicavit, & tamen opera refecto se solito ditiorem invenit.” William does not here mention that Andres’s possession of relics of St. Rotrude was disputed. The monks of Marchiennes claimed that the virgin “St. Rotrude” was simply a thinly veiled version of their Merovingian founder the matron St. Rictrude, whose body they insisted that they possessed. The Bollandists agreed with Marchiennes that Rotrude was probably spurious, and it is noteworthy that the later charters of the monastery are less insistent on Rotrude’s patron-age and sometimes simply refer to the monastery as being the monastery of the Holy Savior. If Peter had had the relics carried around, he would have been offering a direct challenge to Marchiennes, whose chroni-


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ceeded to spend like crazy, but which was not exhausted by 1202 (seven years after Peter’s death), while the convent got a new stone infirmary and marble cloister, and its choir stalls replaced as well.76 When Iterius decided to move on to a greener pasture, the monastery of Ham-en-Artois, another daughter-house of Charroux, the monks were surprised:

All of those who heard word were marveling that he agreed at once to the suggestion made concerning him, being prepared to leave a church that to this point had flourished because of the foresight and resources of the lord abbot Peter, in which he could rejoice that he was the rector, because of the dearth of the time and the abundance of its temporal goods.77

William seems to have followed in Peter’s footsteps. He tells us little of his origins, if he isn’t the “G” from the suburbs of Saint-Omer. He was educated at the monastery, but joined it only around 1193, when he would have been around seventeen.78 He does not seem at any point to have held monastic office before becoming abbot, although he may appear in the charter of 1197.79 He must have been, however, a man of evident ability, familiar with the world and ready to take action in it, to be chosen by the mon-astery to represent them in their battle with Charroux, a charge which immediately put him on the road.

Peter got his education before he came to Andres, but William seems to have ac-quired some of it while abbot-in-waiting. While he claims to be largely ignorant of law, he presents himself as making a case under the ius commune in the papal curia, and he says that he listened to the legal lectures in Paris when he was there waiting for his case to be heard by the papal judges delegate.80 Unlike Thomas of Marlborough, he had no formal legal training, but he was wise enough to hire professionals to help him with his suit at Rome. Clearly he learned enough through watching and listening and transacting to be selected as a judge delegate himself, arbitrating a case in 1223 with the abbot of Capella.81 His life as abbot does not feature much in the chronicle

cler, Andreas, had a mighty pen of his own and who was at the height of his fame; William grafted his own chronicle-cartulary onto Andreas’s base. On Andreas, see Karl Ferdinand Werner, “Andreas von Marchiennes und die Geschichtsschreibung von Anchin und Marchiennes in der zweiten Hälfte des 12. Jahrhunderts,” Deutsches Archiv 9.2 (1952) 402–463.

76 D’Achery, Chronicon 827. 77 D’Achery, Chronicon 835. “Mirantibus omnibus qui audiebant verbum, postulationi de se factae pro-

tinus acquievit, paratus Ecclesiam relinquere, quae hinc de Domni Petri Abbatis providentia & opulentia adhuc floruit, inde pro temporis charistia et temporalium abundantia Rectorem suum exhilarare potuit.” This region of Flanders had gone through famine in the mid to late 1190s; when William speaks of the building of the cloister, he again mentions the famine and says that some of the workers were glad just to be fed.

78 William says that when he was chosen in 1206 to lead the monastery’s fight for independence he was thirty (d’Achery, Chronicon 836); since the convent elected him abbot in 1207 (841) he is here making the case that he was old enough to be elected canonically, so I am taking this to mean that he was around thirty in 1206. Since he also says that he served as a monk for two years under Peter (828) who died in 1195, he would have joined the monastery sometime in 1193.

79 See n. 68 above. If so, he would be the William not named as an obedienciary. 80 D’Achery, Chronicon 847. On judges delegate, see Charles Duggan, “Papal Judges Delegate and the

Making of the ‘New Law’ in the Twelfth Century” Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Thomas Bisson (Philadelphia 1995) 172–199, who also discusses ius com-mune; see also Jane Sayers, Papal Judges Delegate in the Province of Canterbury, 1198–1254: A Study in Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Administration (Oxford 1971).

81 Daniel Haigneré, Les Chartes de Saint-Bertin d’apres le grand cartulaire de Dom Charles-Joseph Dewitte (Saint-Omer 1886) 1.281, #645. He appears in a second document as well in 1227 (324, #722),

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after his great victory, apart from his efforts to further the economic well-being of his monastery, but he seems to have continued to travel, logging at least one more trip to Rome and a trip to England.82 He would have continued to travel to Saint-Omer to the mallus and to Thérouanne for synods and meetings with the bishop. In short, he was the kind of physically active abbot that Peter had been, pounding the roads on behalf of his religious duty and his monastery, no doubt with the help of friends made along the road.

A STORY OF PERSONAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CONNECTIONS Andres also prospered through its institutional affiliations and the personal relation-ships of its abbots, also made possible by life along the road, and this is my third story. Although it is more customary to think of informal monastic connections as residing primarily in communities of prayers, Andres was successful in part precisely because it was able to draw on connections and friendships for distinctly worldly purposes, connections that were, once again, maintained along the roads. Here the two important players were Canterbury and Saint-Bertin, where institutional links, seemingly spawned at the political level initially, created the opportunity for personal relation-ships.

The county of Guines had long-standing political connections with England. Count Manasses of Guines, whose father founded Andres and whose reign ran from the late eleventh century into the 1130s, married Emma of Tancarville, the widow of Odo of Folkestone.83 Emma appears in at least one charter favoring the monastery, along with her daughter by Manasses, Rose (also called Sibyl), and appears in others alongside her husband confirming grants to the monastery and as witness to donations.84 Ma-nasses’s granddaughter, Beatrice, who inherited the county through Rose, married Aubrey III de Vere, the earl of Oxford, although she seems to have gone to England only once during her life and that to have the marriage annulled.85 Arnold II of Ardres, the lord of a subordinate territory in Guines, whose lands lay on the other side of Andres from the castle of Guines, held lands in Kent derived from his participation in the Norman Conquest, the which lands eventually came down to the counts of Guines by intermarriage.86

Political connections between the counts and England seem to have made possible the establishment of religious connections. Andres does not seem to have any proper-

alongside other abbots and the bishop of Thérouanne concerning the jurisdiction of the monastery of Saint-Bertin over the church of Arques.

82 See Derœux and François (n. 8 above) 205. The notice of his death appears in extracts made from the cartulary of Ham.

83 Perhaps because of this connection, Manasses was designated a guarantor of a secret treaty between Robert II of Flanders and Henry I of England made in 1110 at Dover, a repeat of an earlier treaty made in 1103. See Fernand Vercauteren, Actes des comtes de Flandre (1071–1128) (Brussels 1938) 109–116.

84 D’Achery, Chronicon 785, 787, 795, 801. 85 Lambert, History (n. 21 above) 86–87, 92, 100–101. 86 Ibid. 105–106; in the Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. Hubert Hall (1896; repr. Nendeln 1965) 2.500,

the count of Guines appears as a tenant of the honor of Boulogne in the inquisition of 1210–1212. Arnold II also appears in various places in the Curia Regis Rolls (Curia Regis Rolls of the Reigns of Richard I. and John [repr. Nendeln 1971]) concerning a lawsuit in England in Kent concerning these lands against Simon of Avranches in 1200 (1.265); 1201 (1.400, 421; 2.40, 64). Baldwin III appears in the Patent Rolls (Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III [repr. Nendeln 1971]) putting his land of Little Hoyland to farm in 1226 (1.36) and receiving a safe-conduct to travel to England in 1227 (2.127) and 1229 (1.246).


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ties in England—or at least none appear in the chronicle—but when the monastery was struck by lighting and burned to the ground, one of Count Manasses’s close friends, Ralph of Dover, who retired to the monastery, arranged for used cowls, other garments, and bedding to be donated to Andres by the monks of Christ Church Can-terbury, a practice which continued into the 1190s.87

This connection may help explain why, when William arrived in Rome for the first time to press his monastery’s suit, he was taken in by the monks of Canterbury:

We saw there the venerable brothers, the monks of Canterbury, who had stopped there for nearly two years after the death of Lord Hubert, their archbishop, on account of the two elections made by them and completely quashed, and at long last they agreed, following the advice of the lord pope (as it is said), upon the venerable man, Lord Stephen, a cardinal priest, their compatriot, a man adorned with character and sublimely erudite in letters and they requested him as their father and pastor. Indeed, we were present at his consecration a few days later and on that day, beseeched and invited, we were his table mate. And at his side we also found the grace entreated from him, just as we had hoped. Also we were re-ceived for a time by these aforementioned monks of his in their lodging in the spacious house that they rented, because of the poverty of our dwelling; we were dutifully refreshed by their words and advice; we were informed more fully of the state of the court, how we might approach the lord pope and how we might explain our business; and we were well taught how we should visit cardinals.88

Clearly, a monk from Andres was a known quantity. Lord Stephen (Stephen Langton!) did more than just welcome the monk of Andres in; he advised him and helped him. William had gotten to Rome well ahead of the competition and was obviously hoping to have the case settled before they got there. The curia was wise to these sorts of legal dodges, and William was quite properly informed that he would have to wait forty days, to give his opponents time to arrive. This indeed he did, and then “at last, with the mediation of the aforementioned lord Stephen, the archbishop of Canterbury, also with some cardinals putting in their oars on our side, I asked for an indulgence or con-firmation concerning the liberty of election following the form of the privilege of the lord pope Alexander III that had been shown to him and read in his presence to the end.”89 William got his privilege, although it was rescinded when his adversaries, long

87 D’Achery, Chronicon 802–803. St. Leonard of Guines, however, seems to have received a bequest in

England from Countess Emma, who became a nun at St. Leonard and died there; Lambert, History (n. 21 above) 92–93. That Ralph was from Dover and not from Douvère seems likely not only because he was the means for making the connection and also because of his relationship to Manasses, who appears in the charter (n. 83 above) at Dover.

88 D’Achery, Chronicon 839 “Vidimus ibi venerabiles Fratres Monachos Cantuarienses, qui fere per biennium post mortem domini Huberti sui Archiepiscopi [Am & Br archiepiscopi sui], pro duabus elec-tionibus a se factis, & penitus cassatis ibidem moram fecerant; & tandem in venerabilem virum [mss. domi-num] Stephanum Presbyterum Cardinalem compatriotam suum, moribus ornatum, litteris apprime eruditum, de consilio Domini Papae, sicut dicebatur, consenserant, & eum in Patrem & Pastorem postulaverant: cujus etiam consecrationi post dies aliquot interfuimus, & ipsa die ab eo admoniti et humiliter invitati, ejus com-mensales exstitimus. Gratiam quoque ab eo flagitatam prout sperabamus, apud eum invenimus; a praefatis quoque Monachis suis, propter penuriam hospitii, in spatiosa domo quam conduxerant, sumus ad tempus hospitio recepti, verbis & consiliis officiose recreati, de statu Curiae plenius informati, qualiter ad dominum Papam accederemus, & nostrum negotium exponeremus, & qualiter Cardinales visitaremus sufficienter edocti.”

89 D’Achery, Chronicon 839. “... & tandem mediante praefato domino Stephano Cantuariensi Archiepis-copo, quibusdam etiam Cardinalibus pro parte nostra partes suas interponentibus, et praenominatis

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afterward, showed up and pressed their own suit.90 Thereafter, the monks of Canterbury and Stephen Langton appear to have played no direct role in how Andres’s case came out, although since one of the documents of the case made its way into the third ancient collection of canon law and from there into the Decretals of Gregory IX, it may be that Langton’s involvement made the case of higher profile than it otherwise would have been.91 Ties remained very friendly, however, for William seems to have been among the figures invited for the solemn elevation of Thomas Becket by Stephen Langton in 1220 and throughout the remainder of his chronicle, William follows the electoral difficulties of the see fairly closely.92

It is also difficult to imagine that without Langton’s help, perhaps in the form of an introduction, that William would have had the kind of access he had to Innocent III. Certainly Stephen might have given William advice about the right sort of approach to make to a pope who does not seem to have liked a know-it-all:93

When the occasion at length arose, at a time when the lord pope had awoken from his noon siesta and was not busy, I who write these words went alone one day to him alone, and I greeted him on bended knees. Afterward, having been invited to receive his kiss and over-joyed over this, at his order I sat at his feet. I explained and showed him the privilege of the lord pope Alexander once granted to our church, and I told him in order all the things done by us or which were tried against us, how there was a suit against us, and I did not leave out how the suit was cut short by us to this end. I faithfully recited one thing after another to him, what we had sought at Charroux and how we had suffered a repulse and I laid it out, placing before his feet all the things that might move him, just as they were proposed and shown in the chapter of Charroux, noted in a brief charter and formed in the manner of a pe-tition, with authentic letters sent on the part of our chapter to him, and marked with the seal of the chapter, and concerning all of these past matters, I begged as a supplicant for grace and mercy.94

Monachis Cantuariensibus mecum die ac [Am & Br et] nocte ad aures domini Papae clamantibus, secundum formam Privilegii domini Papae Alexandri III. ei ostensam, & coram eo fine tenus lectam, indulgentiam seu confirmationem super libertate electionis sub hac forma ab eo impetravi.”

90 It may be, however, that getting the privilege in first and thus making his monastery the reus rather than the actor provided an advantage in law to the monastery. It certainly would have helped that they were in possession. Boureau, “How Law Came to the Monks” (n. 9 above) 54–56.

91 See Emil Albert Friedberg, Quinque compilationes antiquae (1882; repr. Graz 1956) 106 (III.I.iii.7). Duggan, “Papal Judges Delegate” (n. 80 above) 185, notes that “the professional transmission of the de-cretals was influenced by the English judges and collectors.”

92 D’Achery, Chronicon 841, 860, 867, 869–870. When the Canterbury monks were expelled in 1207, they were not taken in at Andres, but at Saint-Bertin, but they were accompanied to Saint-Omer by the count of Guines and presumably some of the monks of Andres.

93 Boureau, “How Law Came to the Monks” (n. 9 above) 60, where he notes that the lawyer for the Eve-sham opposition wore Innocent out with his bombastic oratory; and 61–63, where the pope becomes angry at Thomas of Marlborough for his various legal maneuverings.

94 D’Achery, Chronicon 839. “Nacta tandem oportunitate, ego qui haec scribo quadam die domino Papa post somnum meridianum expergefacto, & nusquam occupato, solus ad solum accessi, & eum genibus flexis salutavi; postmodum ad ejus osculum invitatus, & ex hoc exhilaratus ipso jubente ad pedes consedi, privi-legium domini Papae Alexandri dudum Ecclesiae nostrae indultum explicui & ei exhibui, cuntaque a nobis facta, vel quae contra nos appellatum fuerit, & a nobis appellatio abbreviata ad hunc terminum exstiterit, dicere non omisi; quid apud Karoffum petierimus, & qualiter repulsam passi fuerimus, ei per ordinem fi-deliter recitavi, & omnia quae eum possent movere, prout in Capitulo Karroffensi proposita & ostensa fuere in charta brevi annotata, & in modum petitionis formata, cum litteris authenticis ex parte Capituli nostri ei transmissis, & sigillo Capituli signatis ante pedes ejus ponens exposui, & super omnibus retroactis gratiam & misericordiam suppliciter imploravi.”


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This sort of humble presentation was exactly the right approach to a pope insistent on his authority and knowledge. But Innocent knew Andres already, as I have noted above, and his knowledge of the good state of the monastery (his visit would have been while Peter II was abbot), also inclined him to favor Andres. Once again the road served Andres well.

Once in William’s corner, the pope was a faithful personal advocate for him. When the convent elected William abbot (quite evidently illegally) and sent him back to do further legal battle, Innocent quashed the election, but he declined the opportunity to uphold the sentence of excommunication against “the abbot-elect of Andres, who we know to be a good man and who, we have heard and have found for ourselves, to be a man very suitable for the rule of any monastery and literate ... they [the messengers of the church of Charroux] have proven nothing thus far before us that the sacred canons would judge worthy of punishment in him or which seems contrary to the canons.”95 Moreover, in a private moment afterward, he reassured William about his intentions:

“Do not,” he said, “be disturbed or upset that I quashed your election, because God knows that I did so not out of rancor but out of charity. Cleansing matters through this act, I can-celed the sentence brought against you and your brothers by the diocesan bishop, nor did I harm you much, because you could be elected again, and if you wish, you shall carry back with you our letters to your brothers concerning this.”96

And he sent William back with new privileges confirming donations previously made to his monastery, the privilege forbidding the creation of other guest-houses in the region, and a privilege that when vavassors of the monastery pledged their lands to lay lords as security for debts, the lords could not charge interest from the fruits of those lands and thus endanger the monastery’s ultimate possession of the lands. Personal connections, forged along the roads, here contributed to effective administration.

Saint-Bertin was even closer to Andres than Canterbury was. Relations between the two monasteries seem to have been primarily informal, but the smaller abbey looked to the larger as an example and encounters were generally friendly. Andres seems to have copied some of the liturgical practices of the larger monastery, as well as the form of the gates, and kept track of local celebrities,97 and William used the chronicles of the monastery to support the later parts of his own chronicle.98

But there were also more personal relations. When Abbot Geoffrey Bertram of Andres realized that his difficulties with the congregation at Andres were such that he should leave, the abbot of Saint-Bertin took him in and eventually made him a prior

95 D’Achery, Chronicon 845. “Contra Andrensem Electum, quem bonum virum credimus, & quem ad

regimen cujuslibet monasterii satis idoneum & litteratum & audivimus & experti sumus, Dilecti filii Karro-fensis Ecclesiae nuntii multa proposuerunt, sed nihil adhuc coram probaverunt quod sacri Canones censeant in eo puniendum, vel quod eisdem videatur contrarium.” It may also be the case that Innocent felt that ex-communication had been overkill. Sayers, Judges Delegate (n. 80 above) 75, notes that excommunication was generally used against lay people for non-compliance with legal proceedings.

96 D’Achery, Chronicon 846. “Ne, inquit, turberis neque movearis, quod electionem de te factam cas-savi: quare [Am & Br quia], Deus scit, quod non ex rancore sed ex caritate processi. In hoc enim facto sen-tentiam contra te & Fratres tuos a Dioecesano tuo latam purgans revocavi, nec te multum laesi, quia iterum eligi poteris, & si vis super his litteras nostras ad Fratres tuos reportabis.”

97 D’Achery, Chronicon 809, 810. 98 D’Achery, Chronicon 825.

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there.99 And when Abbot Iterius was elected as the abbot of Ham and the monks accompanied him as far as Saint-Bertin, Abbot John of Saint-Bertin warned them not to continue with Iterius to Thérouanne, because Iterius would take the opportunity to file a suit against them to prevent them from attempting to elect a member of their own congregation as abbot. The monks didn’t listen, but it was good advice.100

William availed himself of such advice as well. When in Rome during his final round of litigation William had a disturbing dream after he returned to bed after noc-turnes, in which he saw himself shut out of his monastery and attacked by wolves, which he managed to subdue so that he could enter the monastery. William turned to a monk from Saint-Bertin, Gilbert, who was staying in the same hostel in Rome for in-terpretation of the dream, and Gilbert drew the expected reassuring conclusions and then accompanied William to mass. William wrote a fond obituary for Abbot John when he died in 1230, presumably having enjoyed many years of his friendship.101

Although I will not take this analysis beyond these individual cases, I stress these were not the only connections Andres had. A William of Andres (tempting to think this is our chronicler and abbot) wrote the memorial book for the convent of St. Leo-nard of Guines. Abbot William himself appears in that book and Andres was in the

99 D’Achery, Chronicon 806–807 100 D’Achery, Chronicon 836. Why Iterius thought the monks would take this action isn’t entirely clear

from William’s narrative. However, William suggests that relations between the abbot and the congregation went sour very early on. He reports this incident, occuring around 1197, the third year of Iterius’s reign: “While the aforementioned abbot Iterius was honest enough with reference to his own person, he began to be luke-warm and very remiss about correcting the errors of those subject to him; hence when he was often reprimanded by the older monks, he promised improvement, but he did not correct the delinquent in the proper manner nor did he punish their faults with pastoral rigor. And making improper use of his patience, they spurned him to his face and approaching him with rebellious words, they threw up to him things fre-quently that were not decent. To which he was wont to respond, overcome by a sort of false piety and not very religiously motivated, ‘Indeed, I have spared you a great deal and for a long time, and where I ought to have thanks, I have gotten back rebellion. Now, therefore, I will not accuse you any more, but I will aban-don you to your own wishes and the pleasures of the flesh, so that should you make yourselves infamous, you will not be able to upbraid either me nor any other pastor of yours.’” (Praefatus igitur Abbas Iterius circa personam suam satis existens honestus, circa subditorum excessus corrigendos tepidus coepit existere, & nimis remissus: unde cum a Senioribus saepius argueretur, emendationem quidem promittebat, sed neque delinquentes more debito corripiebat, neque eorum excessus pastorali rigore puniebat: unde iidem ejus pa-tientia male utentes ipsum contemnebant, & verbis contumeliosis cum aggredientes, & quae non decebant ei frequenter objiciebant; quibus ille respondere consuevit falsa quidem pietate superatus, & minus religiose motus: Ego quidem vobis diu & multum peperci & unde gratiam habere debui, contumeliam reportavi; jam igitur de caetero vos non arguam, sed voluntatibus propriis & carnis voluptatibus vos exponam; quatenus infames ita vosmetipsos efficiatis, ut nec me, nec alium Pastorem vestrum redarguere valeatis amodo.) D’Achery, Chronicon 827. Given the state of affairs, it can hardly be surprising if there was a great deal of murmuring, and if that murmuring took the form of wishing for a local abbot.

101 D’Achery, Chronicon 868. “Lord James was blessed as the abbot of Saint-Bertin by him, following a religious man, Lord John, who for nearly forty-four years ruled the famous monastery of St. Bertin nobly, and sustaining many damages, pressures, persecutions, and injuries in the time of Lord Philip, the most noble count of Flanders, and always going on to better, he blissfully died at the beginning of Lent, and he left his church in a good state for his successor, who was elected in the greatest peace and quiet and pro-moted.” (Dominus Jacobus in Abbatem sancti Bertini ab eo benedicitur, succedens viro religioso domino Joanni, qui per quadraginta quatuor fere annos famosum sancti Bertini Monasterium nobiliter rexit, & a tempore [Am & Br] domni Philippi nobilissimi Flandriae Comitis multipliciter damna, pressuras, perse-quutiones, & injurias sustinens, & semper in melius proficiens, in initio Quadragesimae feliciter obiit, & in bono statu Ecclesiam suo successori in summa pace & quiete electo & promoto dimisit.)


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community of prayers of the nuns.102 William reports that Peter II insisted that the patron saints of other monasteries, even the farthest away, be commemorated in the liturgy of Andres.103 These kinds of spiritual relationships were not unique to Andres. What is interesting here is that it is possible to see the ways in which these amicable and day-to-day religious connections were politically useful to Andres, relationships that flowed along the roads.

CONCLUSIONS Well into the fourth decade of the thirteenth century, when William’s chronicle ends and he died, the monastery of Andres continued to do well. It had institutional stabil-ity, it was well-connected to the cities of its immediate region, and it had regular sources of revenues that were seemingly well managed by its abbots. Once the abbey had the right to elect its own abbots, won in 1211, there was no need to fear foreign abbots who endangered the Flemish character of the monastery or caused the disdain of the local nobility.104 The decision about who would be admitted as monks was also now made locally, and the abbots were at least in theory—for we know no facts—able to train their own successors and officials. Berlière’s now old but not yet superseded study notes that most Flemish monasteries recruited from the lower nobility and bour-geoisie; Andres seems to fit this mold. Since that class in the region of Saint-Omer

102 Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 112, 25r. “I William, a monk such as I am, of Andres,

desiring to be inscribed in the book of celestial life, wrote, illuminated, and bound this book and having bound it and corrected it, I offered it St. Leonard, so that the convent to be situated in his church may for-ever be enlightened by the reading of it, and that the blessed confessor may deign to be mindful of its writer. For ever and ever, amen.” (Ego Willelmus Andrensis ęcclesie qualiscumque monachus cupiens in libro cęlestis uite conscribi presentem librum scripsi. illuminaui. ligaui. ligatumque emendatum beato leonardo obtuli. quamuis in perpetuum in ipsius ecclesia substituendum conuentus in lectione eius edificetur que pius confessor sui scriptoris memor esse dignetur. Per omnia secula seculorum. Amen.) This folio and the one that follows are older than the obituary itself, which was recopied in the 13th c. Peter the Marmot appears in the obituary under 14 Kalends of March (4r); an abbot William is commemorated on the ides of August (15r); while another abbot William is commemorated on the 3 Ides of January (1v); “Bello loco” is written in the margin and may refer to this abbot William, but a modern hand has written “Andrensis” above Wil-liam’s name. Roger Berger, “Colligite fragmenta. Deux listes abbatiales revisitées: Ham-en-Artois et Andres (1079–1352),” Revue du Nord 86 (2004) 613, reports that William’s funeral was announced on 6 September 1234, while the chronicle goes past the beginning of 1234, making it more likely that this second William is the abbot (although Simon, William’s successor, is commemorated on September 6 in the obitu-ary [17r]. The community of prayers is also noted on 25v. of the obituary.

103 D’Achery, Chronicon 809. 104 D’Achery, Chronicon 837. “Lord Iterius [William’s predecessor] received certain adolescents as

monks in our monastery and coming there he found that there were already some monks, whose language he did not completely know, and for that reason we do not believe it will profit you nor us that someone should rule us who could not understand his subjects or be understood by them. It is the custom, also, of our coun-try that every fortnight in our courts human laws and secular judgements are carried out, all of which ought not to be discussed and determined except in Flemish speech, and it appears more clearly than light that because our prelates would be less able in this regard, because they would have less familiarity and grace of the princes and nobles of the land on account of the dissonance of tongues, our church would be disinherited at some time through the flaws of the prelates, and to that degree be put in danger.” (Praeterea domnus Ite-rius quosdam adolescentes in nostro Monasterio [mss. coenobio] monachavit, quosdam etiam ibidem ve-niens jam Monachos invenit, quorum linguam penitus ignoravit; & ideo nec vobis nec nobis credimus ex-pedire, ut aliquis nobis praeesset, qui subditos suos non intelligeret, nec [Am & Br aut, Pa ut] ab ipsis intel-ligi posset. Ex consuetudine quoque patriae nostrae in Curia nostra per singulas quindenas humanas leges & judicia mundana constat exerceri, quae omnia nonnisi Flandrensi idiomate discuti debent & terminari; & luce clarius apparet, quod dum nostri Praelati [mss. praelati nostri] circa hoc [Am & Br haec] minus idonei exstiterint, dum Principum & Nobilium terrae propter linguarum dissonantiam minus notitiam & gratiam habuerint, Ecclesiam nostram quandoque fuisse ex defectu Praelatorum exheredatam, & adhuc periclitari.)

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turned over, this meant that the monastery would have been able to draw from an ur-ban pool of steadily emerging talent.105 Some of the success of the monastery also assuredly came from continuity, Peter’s long and successful reign, followed after a twelve-year hiatus by William’s twenty-three year reign, William’s memory of the practices that had led to Peter’s success, and his own experience as [perhaps] a son of the city. If there was a “crisis of monasticism” at his monastery, he does not speak of it, but only of the normal struggle to keep the monks on the straight and narrow, out of the beds of women, at their prayers during the hours and fasting during Lent and the secular struggle to survive the turbulent politics of the period.106 Even the financial pressure put on the monastery toward the end of his reign as abbot, caused by the in-creasing financial desperation of the count of Guines, seems to have been irksome rather than unbearable, although pressures would have gotten worse after that.107

This is not a surprising finding, given the work of Erin Jordan, who has already demonstrated that some other monasteries in Flanders were coping reasonably well in the commercial environment by playing to their strengths.108 Her research and mine

105 Ursmar Berlière, “Le Recrutement dans les monastères bénédictins aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles,” Mé-

moires de l’Académie royale de Belgique. Classe des Lettres, 2nd ser. 18 (1924) 15. Berlière notes that some female monasteries were reserved for the nobility, but this was certainly not the case at Andres. On the turnover of the ruling group at Saint-Omer, see Derville, Saint-Omer (n. 14 above) 261–292, esp. 261–262. The bourgeoisie were highly intermarried with the knights; of the bourgeoisie at Saint-Omer only the Sainte-Aldegonde family managed to rise into the nobility proper (ibid. 274).

106 Apart from the near destruction of the monastery, the chronicle also records a number of donations made in the month of July 1214, seemingly just before the battle of Bouvines, as local notables who might have expected to go soon into battle made appropriate dispositions for the good of their souls. D’Achery, Chronicon 854–855.

107 After the battle of Bouvines, the counts of Guines were in a complicated position. They held a few lands in Aalst in Flanders and the office of castellan of Bourbourg, both of which made them subordinate to the counts/countesses of Flanders; however, Guines was now officially part of the domain of Prince Louis VIII and part of the future county of Artois. Baldwin III of Guines seems to have been chronically short of money. William says he never paid the bequest to Andres left by his mother Beatrice nor the bequest made by his father. It seems likely that he was being squeezed by his conflicting obligations. In 1231 Baldwin III of Guines was forced to give up his claims to the lands at Aalst to Count Ferrand of Flanders, who had been freed from prison in 1226 and was no friend of the son of the man who had fought on the other side at Bou-vines (André Du Chesne Tourangeau, Preuves de l’Histoire des maisons de Guines, d’Ardres, Gand et Coucy [Paris 1631] 279). He left the abbey only an annual rent of £10, his armor and his horse, although he was to be buried at the abbey; he paid the same amount to all the monasteries where he wished his anniver-sary celebrated (ibid. 283). According to Chanteux-Vasseur, Baldwin had spent little time in his county anyway, prefering to crusade and to spend time in England. Things got worse for Baldwin’s successor, who was taken prisoner while fighting for the countess of Flanders and had to ransom himself. He had to borrow from the échevins of Guines (his charter acknowledging the debt from 1253 is preserved as Dainville, Ar-chives départemental du Pas-de-Calais, A12-22). He ultimately sold the county to pay his debts, although the legality of the situation was not clear at the time. (Dainville, Archives départemental du Pas-de-Calais, A29-9 contains an inquiry in 1282 about the legality of the sale.) On the later history of Guines, see André Du Chesne Tourangeau, Histoire Généalogique des Maisons de Guines, d’Ardres, de Gand et de Coucy (Paris 1631), who had access to documents that did not survive the French revolution. See also the summary of the thesis of Marguerite Chanteux-Vasseur (“Étude géographique et historique sur le comté de Guines, des origines a 1283,” Ecole des Chartes 1935) published in Positions des thèses soutenues par les élèves de la promotion de 1935 (Paris 1935) 57–64.

108 Raftis, “Western Monasticism” (n. 52 above) 465–468, gives the worst case scenario; for qualifica-tions, particularly as applying to Flanders, see Erin Jordan, “Shared Rule, Separate Practice? Assessing Benedictine Economic Activities in Flanders during the Thirteenth Century,” Revue Bénédictine 115.1 (2001) 187–204. For a reassessment of the spiritual issues, see van Engen, “The ‘Crisis of Cenobitism’ Reconsidered” (n. 22 above) 269–304.


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suggest that blanket statements about the economic situation of monasteries will no longer do: each monastery will have to be examined on its own, but also within the context of its own region, although the notion of region is particularly complicated on this northern border.109 However, there are a few factors that may be considered and some assumptions may need to be discarded. The experience of Andres shows that we should not assume that monasteries located in the country were isolated in any sense from new commercial realities, any more than the Cistercians were isolated from the market. Some undoubtedly were, but others were located on the road to opportunities. Whether they could take advantage of these opportunities depended on their connec-tions.

But simply having a lot of connections would not necessarily be a good thing, since monasteries required both human and financial resources to maintain them and the more far-flung the properties or friends were, the more difficult control was to main-tain or friends to mobilize. All of Andres’s possessions were within a 30 km radius of the monastery as the crow flies, so none of them should have required more than two days to get to them, even on foot, or a day if mounted.110 Many seem to have been quite well located on roads, whose significance, as I have pointed out, the monks were quite aware of. In contrast, Charroux’s properties were spread widely across France. For instance, the monk chosen to accompany William and Prior Henry back to Andres after their first visit to Charroux was Geoffrey of Aube, the prior of Fresnoy, pre-sumably selected because of his familiarity with “les ch’tis” and because there were already connections between Fresnoy and Andres through Abbot Peter II’s stint as Fresnoy’s prior. But Fresnoy (Boissy-Fresnoy in the department of Oise) is around 240 km from Andres by the shortest route on the modern road system and 459 km distant from Charroux. These distances created a serious barrier to effective admini-stration; the trip was doable, but must have taken a few weeks.

The problem with the distances is illustrated by what happened when Abbot Hugh sent the monks back to Andres to order their congregation to elect an abbot from among the monks at Charroux. Their custodian Geoffrey made the fatal mistake of leaving the two monks of Andres at Saint-Denis outside Paris for Easter, while has-tening to Fresnoy, because “he was not accustomed to spending much time in clois-ters, a man accustomed to take pleasure in priories and [isolated] cells,” an obvious dig at Geoffrey’s lack of dedication.111 William and Henry took the opportunity to split up, with William turning around and heading to Rome, and Henry continuing on to Andres to inform the monks of William’s plans. Once Geoffrey discovered the subterfuge, he could not act quickly enough to prevent William from winning the first round; there was almost no way he could have arrived at Rome within the forty-day waiting period required by the curia.

109 On the general history of the Artois, which was created in 1237, see Carola Small, “Artois in the Late

Thirteenth Century: A Region Discovering Its Identity?” Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 19.2 (Spring 1993) 189–207, esp. 202, where she discusses the implication of constantly absent counts in the Artois..

110 This figure comes from plotting the donations on a Google Earth map, so distances are not precise. 111 D’Achery, Chronicon 838. “Et quia eidem ductori nostro mos non fuerat diu in Claustris moram

facere, qui in Cellis & Prioratibus solebat delitescere ...”

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The distance wasn’t the reason that Andres won their battle with Charroux, but it meant that when there was discontent, the mother-house was in no position to cope with it and frequent trips were out of the question, which undoubtedly exacerbated feelings of disconnection. Abbot Peter II went to Charroux only once, as William was at pains to point out, in the thirty-two years of his reign and Abbot Iterius also once in thirteen. When William offered an initial compromise to Charroux—that if Charroux permitted Andres to elect its own abbots, the abbot would visit Charroux regularly—he promised an annual visit, a generous offer considering that the round trip would probably have taken a month and cost a great deal, since it would have required a size-able entourage.112 But in the document of composition, the pope, probably wisely, given that the abbot would have had to be absent from Andres for around a month to visit Charroux, stipulated triennial visits.113

The distance was not only physical, but cultural, with language and customs play-ing an important role. With every election, the Poitevin monks, who were at Andres because they came with Poitevin abbots, and the Flemish monks, locally recruited, fought and the dissatisfied, whatever their ethnicity, made trouble for an abbot who came in without building sufficient local support to be reckoned with. Being mooned by an insubordinate monk was the last straw for the fourth abbot, Geoffrey Bertram, originally from Poitou, who decamped shortly thereafter.114 The natural response for abbots without monastic support was to curry local support outside the monastery, which generally involved alienations of monastic property, which William bitterly decried and which seem to have come up continually as causes of grievance. The wrong sort of dependence on the road was as problematic as the right sort was helpful.

For Andres, though, geography mostly worked in its favor. The possessions of the monastery were compactly located, and the roads brought a major source of revenue to

112 D’Achery, Chronicon 837. William and Henry traveled with servants, but it isn’t clear how large their party was. William mentions servants twice, once when he mentions the death of one of his servants at Rome on his first trip and again on his return home to Andres after the successful conclusion of the case.

113 D’Achery, Chronicon 851. 114 Chronicon Andrense, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Lat. MS 12891, 56r. “Nor at length did verbal

injuries suffice them, since they wished to bring their desire into being in the end. For one day, when a certain one of them asked the abbot to be given britches and the abbot answered to these things that he would at present not do it, this man impudently turning his rear end toward the abbot, and showed that he was clearly without britches, paying less attention to what was decent and proper than what his disordered will presumed irreverently to do. The abbot, truly stupefied and more astonished by this than all the earlier injuries, seeing that all unanimously disagreed with him alone and that no one of them corrected bold daring with a zeal for order, and deeming just as much that he could not do well in this place, decided upon giving in, and going to Lord Milo the bishop of Thérouanne, he asked and sought to be absolved of both the honor and the onus together.” (“Quadam enim die dum quidam ex eis ab abbate dari sibi femoralia peteret et abbas hiis se ad praesens minime egere responderet, idem impudenter uersis contra abbatem posterioribus se esse sine braccis patenter ostendit, minus attendens quid esset honestum et ordinatum, quam quod inordinata uoluntas irreuerenter facere praesumpsit. Abbas uero stupefactus et omnibus retroactis iniuriis ista magis attonitus, uidens omnes contra se solum unanimiter dissentire, et neminem ex eis ausum temerarium zelo ordinis corripere, pariterque se perpendens in loco non posse proficere, cedendum iudicauit. Et adiens dom-num Milonem Morinensem episcopum, ab honore simul et onere se absolui petiit et impetrauit.”) William explicitly links the insolent behavior to the hostilities between the Poitevin and Flemish monks, although the story clearly draws on the role debate about these undergarments played in arguments over monastic reform. Luc d’Achery seems to have found this story offensive; it is edited out of the printed edition although it appears in all three manuscripts, but unlike many of his other omissions, he did not signal the omission in Duchesne’s manuscript by putting an “X” in sepia crayon in the margin, and he had to rewrite the grammar of the preceding and following passages to get it to work.


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the monks, while requiring only that they sit and wait for it to ride down the road to them. The monastery was conveniently located to have fruitful relations with powerful friends, at a sufficient distance to keep relations sweet and beneficial, but not so far as to hinder the regular exchange of favors. It was able to draw on local talent and exper-tise, but the abbots could get out into the world when they needed to do so and they frequently did. These last two factors, the informal relations of friendship and the ability of the abbots to administer well were more important in the case of Andres than formal ties. Modest revenues well managed were probably more useful than great revenues poorly managed. Revenues could pay for lawyers in Rome, but friends could get you in to see the pope. It may also not be a coincidence that when, during the in-termediary stages of Andres’s case against Charroux, the case was heard by a panel of three judges delegate, the dissenting judge who ruled in Andres’s favor, was the dean of Salisbury, an Englishman, and a former student of Stephen Langton.115 The dissent threw the case back into the pope’s lap to be settled, ultimate in Andres’s favor.

Quite a lot of attention has been paid to the way medieval religious institutions thought about space, about how they organized the monastic precinct (in the case of monasteries) and about how they conceived of their space in religious terms, about their communities of prayers and association. In Michel Sot’s work, for instance, the interplay between history and that kind of imagined and sacred space has been very strong.116 This view of place primarily as an imaginary persists, despite some move-ments to break away from this way of thinking about space in the Middle Ages.117 But there are important lessons to be learned from locating monasteries in a dynamic physical space and mapping both their economic relations, and also their networks of practical friendship enacted across that space, as being central to their experience in the Middle Ages.

The final irony for Andres was that its location, so fortunate in so many ways, was its downfall. Despite the troubles of the thirteenth century, Andres was still in exis-tence in the fourteenth century, although in what state cannot be said.118 But after Ed-

115 D’Achery, Chronicon 845. William gives only the initial “R,” but this would seem to have been

Richard Poer or Poor, the dean of Salisbury and future bishop of Chichester, Salisbury, and then Durham. Richard had been a student of Stephen Langton in Paris and stayed in Paris during the interdict; Philippa Hoskin, “Poor, Richard (d. 1237)” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed. (Oxford 2009) (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22525).

116 Michel Sot, “Organisation de l’espace et historiographie épiscopale dans quelques cités de la Gaule carolingienne,” Le Métier d’historien au moyen age: Études sur l’historiographie médiévale, ed. Bernard Guenée (Paris 1977) 31–43.

117 See the essays collected in A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, ed. Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing (University Park, PA 2006), some of which do discuss real physical space, but many of which are concerned with how people thought about spaces. Amanda Jane Hingst, The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis (Notre Dame 2009), is primarily concerned with the verbal construction of geography, although her study does go further to recognize the physical dimension of space.

118 As Haigneré commented in his notice on Andres (Dictionnaire historique [n. 19 above] 3.82), after William’s death, “the flame is extinguished and night falls.” The chronicle was not continued and only one of the charters contained in the cartulary survived. Many monasteries in the region were shrinking or had shrunk by the end of the 13th c. Berlière, “Le Nombre des moines dans les anciens monastères, pte. 1,” Revue Bénédictine 48 (1929) 241, notes that the number of monks at the start of the 12th c. at Saint-Bertin was around 120, but this shrank by more than half by 1288, while in 1383 there were 34. However, this does not take into account the stress that must have resulted from being on or near the front lines between France and England. The monastery of Capella, around 25 km away had only 6 monks in 1354, and shortly there-

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ward III took the city of Calais in 1347, the border between the English and French holdings was drawn between Guines (English) and Ardres (French), more or less right through the monastery. Even the best connected monastery could not survive that one.119 The monks finally underwent the dispersal that William had feared for them after their victory over their mother house and took to the road for the last time.

after the abbots became titular; A. Desplanque, Recherches sur l’abbaye de la Capelle en Calaisis (1868) 36. The goods of St. Leonard of Guines were assimilated by the convent of Bourbourg; E. de Coussemaker, Notice sur les archives de l’abbaye de Bourbourg (Dunkerque 1859) 3. Berlière connects these kinds of statistics to the economic difficulties of the late 13th and 14th c., but in individual cases it is probably useful to look at more local and specific factors. Andres was probably never very big. Jos Declerq, “De abdij van Andres gezien door kroniekschrijver Willem,” De Franse Nederlanden: Jaarboek/Les Pays-Bas français: annales 9 (1984) 19, suggests that since the monks of Canterbury gave the monks of Andres 24 sets of gar-ments after the fire that there were 12 monks (2 sets for each monk) at the time of the fire, around 1130.

119 The last documents from Andres concern Abbot Nicholas de Blangy, who had been deposed, but was defending his claim; Jean Pecket, however, seems to have been the last abbot. Andres was occupied by the English in 1352, and the monks had probably been driven out by then. On these points, see Berger, “Colli-gite fragmenta” (n. 102 above) 613–614. The properties of the monastery were assigned to Saint-Jean-du-Mont in Thérouanne, and when Thérouanne was burned in the 16th c., to Saint-Jean in Ypres.


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FIG. 1. Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, fol. 1r., reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College. The map reads up the column from bottom left to top left (the English Channel) and then begins at the bottom right after the Channel crossing. From the three ports of Calais, Boulogne (represented by Sainte-Marie of Boulogne), and Wissant, travelers could continue to Saint-Omer (where Saint-Bertin is prominently shown) or along the coast to Montreuil, each a day’s journey.

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FIG. 2. The monastery of Andres and its connections (map created by Tony Krus).