THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA Publication No. 85 CHARTERS OF ST-FURSY OF PERONNE CHARTERS OF ST-FURSY OF PERONNE edited by WILLIAM MENDEL NEWMAN with the assistance of MARY A. ROUSE Preface by John F. Benton THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA Cambridge, Massachusetts 1977 Copyright © 1977 By The Mediaeval Academy of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-36479 ISBN 910956-59-6 Printed in the United States of America TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface, by John F. Benton vii I. INTRODUCTION 1. The Cartulary i 2. The Present Edition 2 3. Dates of the Acts 3 4. Officers of St-Fursy Deans 4 Chancellors 6 Choirmasters 7 Treasurers 8 5. The Domain of St-Fursy: Geographical Distribution Table I (1102-1188) 10 Table II (1197-1247) 12 The Domain of St-Fursy 13 Map 15 6. History of the Chapter 14 7. Works Frequently Cited 16 II. THE CHARTERS 19 III. INDICES 1. Index Rerum 153 2. Index Nominum 155 PREFACE IN THE DECADE after World War II, twenty years before the publication of his monumental work on Les seigneurs de Nesle, William M. Newman prepared editions of the charters of three important religious houses in Picardy. The Mediaeval Academy of America has undertaken publication of two of these cartularies, the present volume of the charters of the chapter of Saint-Fursy of Pcronne up to 1300, and a second book, now in preparation, of the charters of the Benedictine abbey of Mont-Saint-Quentin, which lay just 4 km. north of Peronne. Since Peronne is 20 km. north of Nesle, the charters of these two houses closely complement the material in Dr. Newman's volumes on the lords of Nesle. Unfortunately there are no present plans for the publication of the cartu- lary of the abbey of Notrc-Dame of Homblieres, which is 6 km. to the cast of St-Quentin.1 When Dr. Newman retired from archival research, he had completed the typescript, including the indices, of these three cartularies, but he did not consider the volumes ready for publication. After consultation with Dr. Newman, Mary A. Rouse has done most of the editorial preparation, revising the analyses of the acts, correcting some errors in the texts, and revising and completing the indices. She has also added the text of document no. 175, the statutes of the collegiate church issued by Bishop Vermond of Noyon. In a few other places, she, I, or other interested people have also added details of precision or further informa- tion. On the whole, however, the judgments in this book remain those of Dr. Newman. Since the volume is largely a reconstruction of the lost cartulary of Saint-Fursy, it does not contain all the charters which concern the collegiate church before 1300, even though Dr. Newman was aware of a few other charters and cites some of them in his introduction.2 Perhaps the most crucial judgment 1 In anticipation of the publication of the charters of Mont-Saint-Qucntin (MSQ), references to that volume will be given in the following text according to the numbers assigned in Dr. New- man's edition. Numbers not preceded by the letters MSQ refer to acts in the present cartulary. Citations of the charters of Homblieres will indicate both the number of Dr. Newman's edition and a reference to a manuscript cartulary, Bibl. nat. ms. lat. 13911. William Newman's earlier publication cited in the paragraph is Les seigneurs de Nesle en Picardie: Lairs chartes et letir histoire, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 91, or Bibliothcquc dc la Socictc d'Histoirc du Droit des Pays Flamands, Picards ct Wallons, 27 (Paris and Philadelphia, 1971). 2 A list of some other charters not catalogued here is given in an addendum following this Preface. vii viii SAINT-FURSY which the reader will have to evaluate is whether document no. 28, an alleged papal bull of 1164, is a forgery, and if so, of what date, for a decision that this bull is authentic, or even that major parts of it date from the twelfth century, would affect the list of the property of the church which Dr. Newman prepared and call for additions to the map in this volume. Although I am more prepared to accept the authenticity of this bull than was Dr. Newman, his comments, list of prop- erty, and map have been left in their original form, for to do otherwise would distort the coherence of a carefully considered work of scholarship. Nevertheless, a few independent comments on this bull and a few other suspect documents may be in order in this preface. Several different controversies lie behind charges of fabrication made con- cerning the charters of Saint-Fursy. The first concerns a conflict with Mont-Saint- Quentin over rights to the tithe of Grosse Foret, a large wooded area to the north of Peronne which once was contiguous to the forest of Arrouaise. In 1181 the bishop of Arras and the abbot of Anchin settled a dispute between Saint-Fursy and its Benedictine neighbor, declaring that the canons had asserted a false claim to the tithe of Grosse Foret, using a forged bull of Pope Leo in the process.3 Another charter (no. 2), dated 1010 and attributed to Otto, count of Vermandois, and to Robert I of Peronne, is also an obvious forgery prepared in connection with Saint-Fursy's claim to Grosse Foret, as Dr. Newman has pointed out in his commentary.4 The wood of Grosse Foret is included among the possessions of Saint-Fursy in the alleged bull of Alexander III of 1164 (no. 28), and this reference is one of the reasons Dr. Newman has classified it as a forgery.5 The tithe of Grosse Foret is also specifically mentioned in a bull of 1178 (no. 39), which the editor considers authentic. I agree with Dr. Newman in seeing no reason to question the authenticity of the bull of 1178, but I am at the same time not able to see any more reason to use the reference to the controversial forest as a basis of rejecting the bull of 1164 than to use it to invalidate the bull of 1178. The cardinals who witness both bulls are appropriate to the claimed dates of issue, and since in the first case that particular group of witnesses could have appeared together only between 21 February 1163 and 21 July 1165, it seems that if the bull as we have it is a fabri- cation, it must have been based on a genuine papal privilege of about the same date. The place names in document no. 28 are in some cases so badly deformed that they cannot now be identified, but this fact in itself is not proof of inauthen- ticity.6 Once the dispute had been settled by the ruling of 1181 and Mont-Saint- 3 MSQ, no. 78; the forged bull attributed to Leo II is no. 1 of the present collection. 4 This charter, accepted as genuine by the editors of L'art de verifier les dates, 3d ed. (Paris, 1783-87), II, 704, identifies the location of Grosse Foret, but in order to maintain the authenticity of the charter, the editors are forced to assert that Count Otto twice succeeded his predecessor Albert I. There is no sound evidence that Otto ever ruled Vermandois before 1021. 5 Reference to this forest may also have been included in an alleged bull of Anastasius IV (no. 25), known to us only by printed copies which dismiss the list of possessions with a casual "etc." 6 It should be remembered that a papal privilege did not necessarily mean that the papal curia had seen evidence showing that a given establishment held title to the property it claimed. A papal bull of the twelfth century, though giving a great appearance of security, may simply reproduce PREFACE ix Quentin had established its claims to Grosse Foret by a series of well-authenticated documents, it would have been foolish for the canons to prepare another fraudu- lent document. In short, I am not at all certain that this bull is a forgery, and even if it is, it most likely provides a list of the property to which Saint-Fursy claimed possession before 1181. The document therefore should be of use in establishing the twelfth-century possessions of the church.7 Since, according to the report of a contemporary chronicler, the church of Saint-Fursy was completely destroyed by fire in 1130,8 it is not surprising that no authentic charters from before that date survive today. Indeed, it is possible that all the early charters had been lost by the mid-twelfth century and that the canons then sought a papal confirmation of their property rights. A second conflict involving charges of forged charters was still active in the seventeenth century. In 1665 the bishop of Noyon, Francois de Clermont- Tonnerre, intent on making an official visitation of Saint-Fursy, found the doors of the collegiate church shut in his face. After agreeing to a short and limited truce with the chapter, the bishop tried another visitation the next year, and once more found the church doors closed. This time the bishop instituted an interdict against the canons and chaplains of Saint-Fursy and lodged an appeal. At issue was the historic claim of Saint-Fursy to hold rights of ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the parish churches of Peronne, which were served by chaplains of the collegiate church. The canons based their claim to local jurisdiction independent of a list of property sent to the curia by someone making a petitio to the pope and therefore really represents a claim to property, not proof of ownership.