THE JOURNEY TO Tiron began as an intellectual exercise. After I had translated the five romances of Chrétien de Troyes into English verse, I was asked to discern his identity. I postulated that the creator of the Arthurian legend was a gifted cleric, fond of hermits, and well-connected to the House of Blois-Champagne, whose members were prototypes for his characters. Chrétien's detailed descriptions of southern England in Cligès indicated that he had visited that country before settling in the court of Champagne. The genealogies of Thibaut II, count of Blois-Champagne, and his illustrious children show royal and episcopal connections in England and France. One genealogy included Thibaut II's natural son Hugh of Blois, a knight wounded in battle who became a monk of Tiron Abbey in the diocese of Chartres. Hugh's career took him to England under his uncle King Stephen, where he was abbot of St. Benet's Hulme (ca. 1141– 1146/ 49) and of Chertsey outside London (1150– 1155). Hugh returned to Champagne with his uncle, Henry, bishop of Winchester, upon the accession of Henry II, became prior of Notre-Dame d’Arable (1156) and ended his days as abbot of Lagny (1163– 1171). Rich, lame, and castrated, Hugh of Blois seems a prototype for Perceval's Fisher King. I speculated that Chrétien may have been associated with him and thus came to the attention of the literary court of his half-brother Henry, count of Champagne, and Countess Marie, the daughter of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Thus Chrétien de Troyes led me to Abbot Hugh, who led me to Tiron.

When I discussed my research with my Georgetown thesis advisers, Bennett Hill recalled that his mentor David Knowles considered Tiron much more important than Savigny among the twelfth-century reformed Benedictine orders that coexisted with Cîteaux. Thus the topic of my doctoral dissertation was the foundation and first century of the congregation of Tiron, which expanded from obscurity in the forests of the Perche to an international congregation with headquarters in Chartres and Paris and abbeys and priories in modern France and the British Isles. My research entailed translating The Life of Blessed Bernard of Tiron by Geoffrey Grossus, a retrospective tribute to its miracle-working and prophetic founder, written and recopied in the abbey's fine scriptorium.