Introduction

The abbey of Marchiennes (dep. Nord, arr. Douai) was founded around 640 by St Amand in the context of his mission to the Scarpe region. It was located on the bank of the river Scarpe, a few miles from Saint-Amand. The foundation story of the abbey is related in the vita of its patron saint, Rictrude, who, at the death of her husband Adalbald, entered Marchiennes and became abbess. The abbey may have been built on land that belonged to her husband's patrimony, as was the case for its close neighbor, Hamage. The history of Marchiennes from its foundation to its restoration in 1024 is, however, obscure because of the scarcity of sources. The overall impression left by the few remaining documents related to Marchiennes is that of a low-profile community, living in the shadow of Saint-Amand, which never fully recovered from the ninth-century secularization and the vikings’ depredations. The abbey of Marchiennes only really took off after the 1024 restoration, which transformed the hitherto mixed community into an exclusively male one. The restoration initiated a period of artistic and intellectual activity as well as an intense operation of recovery of spoiled assets.

Since the abbey of Marchiennes is the central locus of St Rictrude's legend, the first section of this chapter will be devoted to the history of the abbey from its foundation to the twelfth century. In the second section, I will discuss the formation and transformations of Rictrude's legend at Marchiennes and I will show how these transformations reflect changes in the situation of the community itself. The seminal text of the legend is the Vita Rictrudis (VR) by Hucbald of Saint-Amand. It was written in 907 after a period during which the community had lost track of the shrines of its tutelary saints and of the documents pertaining to its foundation legend. Hence, the VR aimed not only to tell the story of the life and deeds of its patron saint, but also to create a narrative of the origins of the abbey. In order to provide a historical context for Rictrude's life and to show her spiritual and social distinction as well as the prestige of her abbey, the VR emphasized Rictrude and her family's relations with major religious and lay figures of their time.