Newman, William Mendel/ the Cartulary and Charters of Notre

William Mendel Newman, ca. 1940 THE CARTULARY AND CHARTERS OF NOTRE-DAME OF HOMBLIERES edited with an introduction by THEODORE EVERGATES in collaboration with GILES CONSTABLE on the basis of material prepared by WILLIAM MENDEL NEWMAN THE MEDIEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA Cambridge, Massachusetts 1990 Copyright © 1990 By The Medieval Academy of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-62270 ISBN 0-910956-88-X Printed in the United Slates of America TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface vii List of Figures and Tables ix Abbreviations xi William Mendel Newman (1902-1977), by Giles Constable xiii I. INTRODUCTION 1. History of the Monastery 1 2. The Abbots of Homblieres 16 3. The Cartulary and Charters 20 4. Editorial Principles 29 5. Concordance of the Cartulary Manuscripts 32 II. THE CHARTERS 35 III. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Sources 253 2. Secondary Works 259 IV. INDICES 1. Index Rerum 263 2. Index Nominum 270 PREFACE THIS EDITION of the charters of Homblieres, like many posthumous publica- tions, incorporates several stages of work, which were carried out at different times. The first stage, in 1936-1937, was the collection and preliminary editing of the texts; the second stage, in 1948-1950, was the annotation of the charters and the preparation of the introduction and index; the third stage was the checking of the texts, done in the 1950s byJean-Baptiste Giard and perhaps by Newman himself, who may also have revised his introduction at that time; and the final stage, from 1979 to 1986, was the revision of the en- tire work by Theodore Evergates, in collaboration with me. The user of this volume must bear these stages in mind, since some inevitable unevenness has resulted from our desire to preserve as much as possible of Newman's work while bringing it up to date in a way he would have wanted. With ref- erence to his first two collections of charters, for instance, Newman wrote in 1973 to the Executive Secretary of the Medieval Academy that "Maurice Prou, Actes de Philippe I" is my model. I have always followed Prou and wish to continue to do so. Unless something is really wrong one should not change my ms." We have tried to bear this in mind, though the changes resulting both from the appearance of new works and the re-collation of manuscripts may be more extensive than Newman envisaged. In the same letter Newman wrote: More serious is the question of the introductions. When in the 19th century the French scholars began to edit cartular[i]es, it was proper to have an introduction. But so many monastic histories have been published that the situation has changed. Thinking now of small houses, why do we publish their charters? The history of the monastery is of only local interest in as much as we know few facts not contained in the charters. These charters should be used to help understand social, economic and institutional problems rather than for [the] local history of the house. The present introduction, which is essentially the work of Professor Ever- gates, is based more on these principles than on what Newman wrote almost forty years ago. He also had strong views on indices, especially linguistic indices, and in a review written in 1965 he remarked severely "that the two VII viii HOMBLIERES indices are worthless," because they were incomplete. In 1972, in a personal letter, he wrote: I believe it a mistake for an indexer to be too learned and to group names in a linguistic fashion. People don't name their children with linguistics in mind. And how about identifying people? I did so whenever it was possible in my unpublished cartularies and finally decided that few scholars would undertake editing if they were obliged to do genealogical research of any extent. Is it not more realistic to get the documents published with an index, and hope that someday someone will publish an article on their genealogies? It is in this spirit, which we believe is also the spirit of Newman, that we offer the present collection to the public, with a consciousness of its unevenness but a confidence that it will advance both the knowledge of the region on which Newman worked and the understanding of the broader problems in which he was interested, though he rarely addressed himself to diem in his published works. The memoir, in addition to placing the cartulary of Hom- blieres in the context of Newman's life and work, likewise throws some light on his general historical thinking and on the influence upon him, which he generally concealed, of the great scholars under whom he studied. Giles Constable FIGURES AND TABLES FIGURES William Mendel Newman, ca. 1940 frontispiece 1. Newman's Research Interests, ca. 1937 facing p. xlii 2. Possessions of Homblieres, Tenth Century facing p. 6 3. Localities Cited in the Charters facing p. 10 4. (A) Charter Issued by Abbot Baldwin and the Chapter of Homblieres (Act no. 118) facing p. 26 (B) Abbot Baldwin's Seal facing p. 29 (C) The Chapter's Seal facing p. 29 TABLES I. The Family of Eilbert of Florennes 4 II. The Counts of Vermandois 5 III. Filiation of the Cartulary Copies 22 IV. Classification of Texts by Originator of Document 24 V. Classification of Texts by Date of Issue 25 ABBREVIATIONS A.D. Archives Departementales A.N. Archives Nationales B.M. Bibliotheque Municipale B.N. Bibliotheque Nationale Coll. Collection in the B.N. d. denarius or denarii GC Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distribula. 16 vols. Paris, 1716-1865. H 588 Aisne, A.D., H 588 1. libra or librae lat. 13911 B.N., lat. 13911 Matton Matton, Auguste. Inventaire sommaire des Archives departementales anterieures a 1790: Aisne, Archives ecclesiastiques, series G et H. Laon, 1885. Citations are to pt. 2 (Serif H). MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores. In fol. 32 vols. Hanover, 1826-1934 PL Patrologiae cursus completus . series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne. 222 vols. Paris, 1844-1864. RHF Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Dom Martin Bouquet, Leopold Delisle, et al. 24 vols. Paris, 1738-1904. s. solidus or solidi Wyard Wyard, R. "Humolariensis monasterii historia." Saint- Quentin, B.M., MS 95 (see p. 20, n. 106) XI WILLIAM MENDEL NEWMAN (1902-1977) By Giles Constable INTRODUCTION THE REPUTATION of William Mendel Newman rests entirely on his publica- tions. He was an active researcher for less than half his adult life, taught for only three years in three different institutions, and received none of the honors dear to the hearts of academics; but as a publishing scholar he ranks among the leading American medieval historians of the twentieth century.1 In his first book, which was devoted to the French monarchy in the eleventh century, he was able, according to F. M. Powicke, who reviewed it when it came out in 1929, "to modify and define more closely the conclusions of Lu- chaire and other scholars."2 His two Strasbourg theses, on the royal domain in France from 987 to 1180 and the acts of King Robert II, were widely praised when they appeared in 1937 and are both standard works. By the time Les seigneurs de Nesle was published in 1971, Newman was a well-known scholar and was described as "the very image of a great historian" by Guy Fourquin and as the peer of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century genealogical and archival giants by John Benton. Leopold Genicot said that his method was "classic, exacting, sure," and Georges Duby called the book "of the very first importance" and "a model of method and an inexhaustible mine." Among Newman's unpublished works at the time Les seigneurs de Nesle appeared were four collections of monastic charters, including St-Fursy of PeVonne, which came out in 1977, the year of his death, and Homblieres, 1 See the list of Newman's printed works on pp. lv-lviii, where the reviews which are quoted below are cited. 2 Newman copied this review and inserted it into his copy of The Kings. Ferdinand Lot was more severe in his review of Le domaine, which he considered "tres sup^rieur au livre precedent du meme auteur, TheKings, the court and the royal power in France in the eleventh century (1929), le- quel n'ajoute rien d'essentiel aux Institutions de Luchaire." xui xiv HOMBLIERES which is published here.3 An unpublished work of another type was the diary which he kept from 1919 until 1950, with a gap from 1925 to 1930, and which fills nine volumes with a total of about a million and a half words.4 It is no accident that he began keeping it when he left home to go to boarding school, or that it ends on the eve of his departure for France, which marked the beginning of a busy and relatively happy period of his life, since the diary was a companion in his loneliness and an alleviation for his unhappiness. In 1932 he considered giving it up because he might then be less moody, and in 1934 he admitted that he preferred writing his diary to working. In an isolated supplementary entry written in September 1967 he wrote that he stopped keeping a diary because "it seemed to have a bad effect upon me— of finality," and writing it undoubtedly encouraged him to^dwell on his troubles, both real and imagined. But for the years it covers the diary gives a vivid account of Newman's life, especially when he was a student working under Marc Bloch, and of his attitudes towards himself, his family, his teachers, and his work.

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