Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:25:10.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Monasteries as ‘War Memorials’: Battle Abbey and La Victoire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Elizabeth M. Hallam
Elizabeth M. Hallam*
Affiliation:
Public Record Office
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Charters, Chronicles and letters which record the foundation of religious houses in the period 1050–1250 abound in the images of both war and peace. Whereas king Henry I of England, a military leader of renown, founded an abbey at Cirencester for the repose of his soul and the stability of his realm, Bernard of Clairvaux, that celebrated man of religion, wrote of the new Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx as an outpost of his lord which he proposed to occupy. The juxtaposition of such conflicting ideas is epitomised by the military orders, formed to fight holy wars against the infidel; and a logical symbol of the triumph of Christianity is the foundation of a monastery such as Louis IX’s Franciscan friary at Jaffa, created in 1252 after the capture of this Moslem stronghold, or the building of Alcobaça by Alphonso I of Portugal (c1153) after his great victory over the Moors at Santaren.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 20: The Church and War , 1983 , pp. 47 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Cartulary of Cirencester Abbey, Gloucestershire, ed Ross, C.D. 1 (London 1964) pp 21–3.Google Scholar

2 St Bemarj of Clairvaux seen through his Selected Letters, ed and trans B. Scott-James (Chicago 1953) pp 130-1.

3 William of Saint-Pathus, La vie et les miracles Je Monseigneur Saint Louis, roi Je France, ed d’Espagne, M.C. (Paris 1971) p 40.Google Scholar

4 Janauschek, P.L., Originum Cisterciensium Tomus I (Vindobonae 1877) p 110.Google Scholar

5 ibid p 261 (he also founded Realvalle to celebrate the battle of Benevento); Muratori 16 p 670; Ughelli, F., Italia Sacra sive de episcopis ¡talie et insularum adjacentium 7 (Rome 1659) p 810.Google Scholar

6 Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford 1 (London 1853): Statutes of All Souls College pp 4-8, 10-12.

7 Cowdrey, H.E.J., ‘The peace and truce of God in the eleventh century’, PP 43 (1970) pp 42-62Google Scholar; Erdmann, [C], [The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, trans Baldwin, M.W. and Goffart, W. (Princeton 1977)] pp 62–4 Google Scholar: ‘the many provisions of the peace of God’s resolutions against breakers of the peace amount to no less than a new form of war, one provided for this time by the church itself (p 63).

8 Bainton, [R H.], [Christian attitudes towards war and peace, a Historical Survey and critical re-evaluation (New York 1960)] pp 109–116.Google Scholar

9 Wood, S., English Monasteries and their patrons in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford 1955)Google Scholar; Brooke, [C.N.L.], [‘Princes and kings as patrons of monasteries, Normandy and England’, Mendola 4 (1971) pp 125–44]Google Scholar; [ Hallam, E. M., ‘Aspects of the] monastic patronage [of the English and French royal houses, rl 130-1270’, unpublished Ph D thesis, University of London, 1976]Google Scholar; [Hallam, E.M.,] ’Henry II [as a founder of monasteries‘, JEH 28 (1977) pp 113–132]Google Scholar; Mason, E., ‘Timeo barones et donas ferentes’, SCH 15 (1978) pp 61–75 Google Scholar; Mortimer, R., ‘Religious and secular motives for some English monastic foundations’, SCH 15 (1978) pp 77–85 Google Scholar; Holdsworth, C, ‘A Cistercian monastery and its neighbours’, History Today 30 (August 1980) pp 32–7 Google Scholar; Ward, J.C., ‘Fashions in monastic endowment: the foundations of the Clare family, 1066-1314’ JEH 32 (1981) pp 427–51.Google Scholar

10 Hallam, [E.M.,] Capetian France [987-1328 (London 1980)] pp 260–3 Google Scholar; Hallam, E.M., ‘Royal burial [and the cult of kingship in England and France, 1060-1330’, J Med H 8 (1982) pp 359–80 Google Scholar. The role of Westminster and other English houses in upholding the ‘status of the dynasty’ in the period 1066-1154 is somewhat exaggerated in Mason, E, ‘Pro statu et incolumitate regni mei . . .’, SCH 18 (1982) pp 99–117.Google Scholar

11 ‘Henry II’, passim. This theme is treated more fully in my forthcoming study of the monastic patronage of the English and French royal houses.

12 ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 241; 368-71; Hallam, E.M., ‘Henry II, Richard I and order of Grandmont’, J Med H 1 (1975) pp 165-86Google Scholar; Capetian France p 232.

13 Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, ed Douie, D.L. and Farmer, H., 1 (London 1961) pp 85–7 Google Scholar; ‘Henry II’ pp 118-19.

14 Chibnall, M., ‘Charter and chronicle: the use of archive sources by Norman historians’, Church arut Government in the Middle Ages, ed Brooke, C.N.L., Luscombe, D.E., Martin, G.H. and Owen, D.M. (Cambridge 1976) pp 1–17.Google Scholar

15 [The] Chronicle of Battle [Abbey, ed and transa Searle, E., OMT (Oxford 1980)] pp 13-23Google Scholar; Gransden, [A.], Historical Writing in England c150-c1307 (London 1974)] pp 272-9Google Scholar.

16 Chronicle of Baule pp 15-23.

17 Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to AD 1100 .... ed Bishop, T.A.M. and Chaplais, P. (Oxford 1957) pp xxii–xxiv.Google Scholar

18 [Searle, E.,] ‘Battle abbey and exemption [: the forged charters’, EHR 83 (1968) pp 449-80Google Scholar].

19 Quoted from ibid p 469; see also RR 1 (1913) pp 16-17 no 62.

20 Chronicle of Battle pp 23, 36-7.

21 ibid pp 15-23.

22 ‘Battle abbey and exemption’ pp 15-23; see also Denton, J.H., English Royal Free Chapels, 1100-1300, A Constitutional Study (Manchester 1970) pp 82–5.Google Scholar

23 Morton, C., ‘Pope Alexander II and the Norman conquest’, Latomus 34 (Brussels 1975) pp 362–82 Google Scholar, with an edition of the penance on pp 381-2.

24 [Bates, D.,] Normandy [before 1066 (London 1982)] pp 198–202 Google Scholar; Erdmann pp 188-9.

25 Bainton pp 109-112; Vanderpol, A., La Doctrine scholastique du droit de guerre (Paris 1919) p 117.Google Scholar

26 Normandy pp 199-201; for a recent discussion of the problem see Bouchard, C., ‘Consanguinity and noble marriages in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, Speculum 56 (1981) pp 268-87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Les actes de Guillaume le Conquérant et de la reine Mathilde pour les abbayes Caennaises, ed M. Fauroux, Memoires de la société des antiquaires de Normandie 37 (Caen 1967) p 13; William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum ed J. Marx (Paris/Rouen 1914) pp 141-2. I am grateful to Dr Bates for discussion of these matters.

28 Brooke pp 128-33; de Bouard, M., Guillaume le Conquérant (Paris 1966) p 60 Google Scholar; Douglas, D.C., William the Conqueror (London 1964) pp 336–42 Google Scholar; ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 49-51.

29 dimmele of Baule pp 43-5; above note 19.

30 Gransden pp 92-4.

31 FHD 2 (1953) p 163.

32 Chronicle of Battle p 20; Brooke pp 134-5.

33 Capetian France pp 132-3, 178-9.

34 Blanche and Louis were probably major benefactors rather than founders of the house; Gal C 7. p 851; ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 231-2.

35 Duby, G., Le dimanche de Bouvines, 27Juillet 1214 (Paris 1973) pp 183–4.Google Scholar

36 Stein, H., Bibliographie générale des cartulaires Français (Paris 1907) p 266 Google Scholar; Archives départementales Oise H 742, published in [A. Vattier,] ‘Cartulaire [de l’abbaye de la Victoire’, Comité archéologique de Sentis: comptes-rendus et mémoires, 3rd ser, 2 (Senlis 1887) pp 33-60; ibid 4-5 (Senlis 1889-90) pp 129-33]; Archives] Nationales] LL 1469.

37 [Vattier, A., ‘L’abbaye de la Victoire:] notice historique’, [Comité archéologique de Senlis, comptes-rendus et mémoires, 3rd ser, 2 (Senlis 1887) pp 3-32Google Scholar] at p 6.

38 Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, 4 ed M. Nortier (Paris 1979) pp 468- 72 no 1796.

39 below note 47.

40 ‘Cartulaire’ p 35; AN LL 1469 p 4.

41 ‘Notice historique’ p 10.

42 ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 173-4, 193-4, 203-4, 231-3.

43 ‘Notice historique’ pp 10, 20.

44 Gal C10, inst pp 233-4, noted in ‘Cartulaire’ pp 42-3.

45 ‘Cartulaire’ pp 38-9; AN LL 1469 pp 5-6.

46 ibid.

47 ‘Cartulaire’ pp 33-5; AN LL 1469 pp 1-3; Gal C 10 inst p 232.

48 ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 195-207; Capetian France pp 126-35; 198-9.