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PRO TURPITUDINE VITAE: THE EXPULSION OF NUNS IN THE DIOCESES OF PARIS AND LAON, 1100-1150. BY CATHERINE ELISE SCHULZE A THESIS SUBMITTED IN CONFORMITY WITH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY CENTRE FOR MEDIEVAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO © Copyright by Catherine Elise Schulze, 2008. Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-39885-2 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-39885-2 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada Abstract Title: Pro Turpitudine Vitae: The Expulsion of Nuns in the Dioceses of Paris and Laon, 1100-1150. Submitted by: Catherine Elise Schulze Degree: Doctor of Philosophy, 2008. Department: Medieval Studies, University of Toronto In 1107, the nuns of Saint-Eloi were charged with immorality and expelled from their monastery by Bishop Galo of Paris. A similar accusation was made in 1128 at the monastery of Saint-Jean in the diocese of Laon, and again in 1129 at Argenteuil in the diocese of Paris. Scholars have frequently linked these reforms, suggesting one as a precedent for another, but have rarely examined them in greater depth. Yet these are not the only historical examples of reform through expulsion during the twelfth century, simply the most famous. Therefore the purpose of this dissertation is to increase our understanding of the use of expulsion as a method of reform through an in-depth study of the historical, social, and political context of the reforms at Saint-Eloi, Saint-Jean, and Argenteuil. Through a careful analysis of royal, papal, and episcopal charters directly related to the expulsion, as well as a wider examination of each bishop's reforming activities within his diocese, we learn that the three key issues in these reforms were reputation, corrigibility, and jurisdiction. Each of our monastic communities had gained a negative reputation in the years preceding their expulsion, although this sinistra fama was not exclusively a matter of sexual misconduct. Furthermore, in two of our three cases the bishop responsible for the expulsion carefully asserted that numerous attempts had been made to correct the nuns, thus the expelled community is labeled as incorrigible. Finally, there is the matter of episcopal and proprietary jurisdiction. These monasteries were not truly independent. Rather, they were subject to the episcopal jurisdiction of their bishop, and in two of these cases, as royal monasteries, they were subject to the proprietary jurisdiction of the king. Therefore in these expulsions we see collaboration between the li bishop, who held episcopal jurisdiction over these communities, and the king, the holder of proprietary jurisdiction, in the reform of communities of nuns during the first half of the twelfth century. m Acknowledgements This dissertation would never have been written without the support, love and encouragement of numerous people. I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Co- Supervisor Dr. Joseph Goering, Co-Supervisor Dr. Isabelle Cochelin, and Dr. Brian Stock, for their unfailing support, encouragement and advice as well as my External Appraiser, Dr. Bruce Venarde. I would also like to thank my parents, Russ and Mary Margaret Schulze, my grandparents, Russ and Lois Schulze, my brother Russell Schulze III, and all the rest of my family for their love and encouragement. I could never have come as far as I have without them. I would like to thank my friends, Sarah Downey, Lindsay Irvin, Shana Worthen, Connell Monette, Elizabeth Parker Pang, Jaime Pool-Soria and many others for lending a sympathetic ear when I needed one. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Daniel Thiery, for his love, advice, encouragement, support, patience and so much more. Thank you all for helping me aspire to and finally attain this special goal. IV Table of Contents Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Context of Reform 5 Chapter Two: Saint-Eloi 63 Chapter Three: Argenteuil 96 Chapter Four: Saint-Jean 153 Conclusions 208 Bibliography 216 v Abbreviations Brasington and Brett [Ivo of Chartres]. Panormia, edited by Bruce Brasington and Martin Brett. The ORB: On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies Text Library, http://www.the-orb.net/libindex.html. DHGE Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Geographic Ecclesiastiques. Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1912-. GC Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa. 16 volumes. Paris, 1744-1877. James [Bernard of Clairvaux], The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Bruno Scott James, trans. London: Burns Oates, 1953. Re-edition Stroud: Sutton, 1998. Leclercq and Rochais [Bernard of Clairvaux], Lettres II (Lettres 42-91), J. Leclercq and H. Rochais, eds. Sources Chretiennes n° 458. Paris: Les Editions duCerf,2001. MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores. Hanover, 1826-. MGH SS rer. Germ. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germaniae PL Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, edited by J.-P. Migne. 221 volumes. Paris, 1844-64. Radice [Abelard and Heloise]. The Letters ofAbelard and Heloise, translated by Betty Radice. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, 1979. Revised edition M.T. Clanchy, ed. London: Penguin, 2003. RHGF Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, edited by Martin Bouquet, et al. 24 volumes. Paris, 1869-1904. VI Introduction On August 7,1248 Archbishop Odo of Rouen visited the Cistercian monastery St. Mary Magdalena of Bival.1 He found a number of the nuns defamed of incontinence and required the abbess to surrender the government of the monastery into his hands, giving the nuns permission to elect another abbess.2 Two years later, on August 28,1251, he visited the monastery again. This time he found that the nuns occasionally left the cloister without permission, lay folk were admitted into the cloister, and silence was not well •J observed. In subsequent visits he found that the nuns continued to leave the cloister without permission, they were bringing up ten young boys,4 they ate with seculars,5 and a few of the nuns had recently had children.6 Bival hardly seems an example of a model nunnery, but in comparison with other thirteenth century female monasteries in the Archdiocese of Rouen it is not entirely atypical. Although conditions at Bival gradually improved, it was a process that took years. On his visitation in 1261, Archbishop Odo found the monastery to be in a satisfactory state for the first time since his initial visitation in 1248.8 Odo rarely used forceful measures to improve the monastic discipline at Bival and at other monasteries in 1 Eudes Rigaud, The Register ofEudes of Rouen, ed. Jeremiah F. O'Sullivan, trans. Sydney M. Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964). Studies of Archbishop Eudes' register include C.R. Cheney, The Episcopal Visitation of Monasteries in the Thirteenth Century 2nd edition (Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1983); Phyllis E. Pobst, "Visitation of Religious and Clergy by Archbishop Eudes of Rouen" in Religion, Text and Society in medieval Spain and northern Europe: essays in honor of J.N. Hillgarth ed. Thomas E. Burman, Mark D. Meyerson, and Leah Shopkow (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2002) 223-249; and Adam J. Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes of Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth Century Normandy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 2 Eudes Rigaud, The Register ofEudes of Rouen 6. 3 Ibid. 131. 4 Ibid. 165. 5 Ibid. 226. 6 Ibid. 227,300. 7 Ibid. 82-83, 93, 182, 212, 225-6, 237, etc. 8 Ibid. 462. 1 similar conditions. The most strenuous measure that he took was the removal of the abbess, who despite losing her position was still granted an annual pension.9 More commonly, he would issue an injunction to the nuns against their faulty behavior, expecting the abbess to enforce it through monastic obedience. Visitation records such as Odo's are an important and detailed source for the study of thirteenth-century monastic discipline. Unfortunately for the scholar of twelfth- century monasteries such records do not exist. Therefore it is necessary to draw from a wide variety of sources including charters, chronicles and letter collections to determine what methods were used in the reform of religious houses. One seemingly extreme, and correspondingly rare, strategy used by bishops to reform twelfth-century monasteries was the expulsion of an existing community and its replacement by a different, reformed community.