7 - Family Connections

Summary

The complexities of the relationship between Cava and its patrons can also be examined by analysing the links between the abbey and some of the families with whom it was involved over a lengthy period. In all but one of the six cases which will be examined here this relationship persisted over several generations. Yet there were usually several aspects to such a relationship – individual family members might be benefactors, monks, vendors or even sometimes antagonists of the abbey. Donations or sales to Cava might have consequences which affected other family members. Sometimes it was the internal family dynamic which affected the relationship with the abbey, not vice versa. Thus the relationship between Cava and its patrons was far from simple, and while such a bald statement might smack of cliché, in all the examples below we can examine the mutual relationship in some detail and view how and why particular families – or more appropriately, in most examples, kin groups – impacted upon the abbey.

Vivus ‘the Viscount’ and his Family

Vivus son of Peter of Dragonea was one of the first laymen to be associated with the abbey of Cava, playing an important part in its early development, and his career can be traced through the charters of the abbey over an extraordinary period of more than sixty years. He was a local official, described first as a gastald and then as vicecomes, but more significantly an entrepreneur active in the immediate environs of the abbey, who combined building up an impressive local property portfolio with co-founding with Abbot Leo the monastery of St Nicholas de Palma in Salerno, and towards the end of his long life becoming an increasingly generous benefactor of the abbey.

The first appearance of Vivus came in August 1037, when he pledged to his brother-in-law (cognatus) John son of Jaquintus that should he come to sell his property at Dragonea then the latter would have the right of first refusal to purchase this at a just price. This agreement seems to have been part of a partnership between the two men which continued for at least twenty years, and must have begun when Vivus was at most about twenty.