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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Historians of early monasticism in Frankish Gaul either have little to say about the monastery founded by St Evroul or, like Dom Laporte, devote their attention to a discussion of the probable date of his life. The disappearance of almost all early documentary sources is one reason for this: there was certainly a break in the occupation of the site for perhaps half the century between the destruction of the monastery in the tenth century and its refoundation in 1050, and only one charter, dated 900, was rescued and copied in the eleventh century. The fact that there has been no systematic excavation of the site, so that archaeological evidence of buildings before the thirteenth-century church is lacking, is another. Early annals and reliable lives of other saints have nothing at all to say on the subject. The first historian to tackle it, Orderic Vitalis, writing in the early twelfth century, had to admit that he could discover nothing about the abbots for the four hundred years after St Evroul; and he had to draw on the memories and tales of the old men he knew, both in the monastery and in the villages round about. Needless to say he harvested a luxuriant crop of legends and traditions of all kinds. The problem of the modern historian is to winnow a few grains of historical truth out of the stories that he garnered, and the hagiographical traditions, some of which he did not know.
page no 31 note 1 Laporte, [Dom J.], [‘Les origines du monachismo dans la province de Rouen’], R[evue] M[abillon], XXXI (Ligugé 1941) pp 35-6Google Scholar
page no 31 note 2 Ord[erici], Vit[alis], Hist[oriae] Eccl[esiasticae Libri Tredecim], ed Le Prevost, A., 5 vols (Paris 1839-55)III PP 67-8Google Scholar.
page no 32 note 1 ASOSB, I, pp 354-60; B[ibliotheca] H[agiographica] L[atina], ed Soc. Bolland., 2 vols and suppl (Brussels 1898-1911) no 2377.
page no 32 note 2 BHL no 2374
page no 32 note 3 ‘Notice sur Orderic Vital’ in Ord Vit, Hist Eccl, v, p lxxx, n 3.
page no 32 note 4 Bulletin de la société historique et archéologique de l’Orne, VI (Alençon 1887) pp 273-92.
page no 32 note 5 Baedorf, B., Untersuchungen über Heiligenleben der westlichen Normandie (Bonn 1913) pp 111-24Google Scholar.
page no 32 note 6 Dodwell, C. R., The Canterbury School of Illumination 1066-1100 (Cambridge 1954)p 123 Google Scholar.
page no 32 note 7 [Oxford, Bodleian MS] Fell 2, pp 432-9.
page no 32 note 8 Hereford Cathedral Library, MS P vii. 6 fols 223r-5v.
page no 33 note 1 Fell 2, p 437, ‘ Vir autem domini magno confectus senio, videlicet octogenarium excedens numerum sicut ab ipso didicimus... ‘.
page no 33 note 2 Above, p 31, n I.
page no 33 note 3 Musset, L., ‘St Evroul’, in D[ictionnaire d’]H[istoire et de] G[éographie] E[cclesiastiques] ed Baudrillart, A., de Meyer, A., and Van Cauwenbergh, E. (Paris 1909- ) XVI, pp 219-20Google Scholar.
page no 33 note 4 Fell 2, p 433, ‘Ubi genua flectentes cum gratiarum actionc Deo referunt laudes... Expleta autem oratione nomen Domini invocabant cum capitulo et benedictione sicut monachorum exposcit ordo. De virgultis etiam frondium circumcingere claustra parvula sunt aggressi ubi in modico tugurio hospitari coeperunt. ‘ For the ‘chapter and blessing’ see Dom Odilo, Heiming, ‘ Zum monastischen Offizium von Kassianus bis Kolumbanus ‘ in Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, VII, 1 (Regensburg 1961) pp 141-3Google Scholar.
page no 34 note 1 Fell 2, pp 434-5, ‘Erat enim habitatio eius tarn vilis ut videretur tugurium esse pastorum. Fratres vero in circuitu eius commanebant cellulis inter se divisis, habitantes per dextras mille quingentas in unaquaque parte. Ipse vero circumibat cellulas eorum frequenter sedens mulo vel asino. ‘
page no 34 note 2 See Besse, [Dom J. M.], [Les moines de l’ancienne France] Archives de la France Monastique (Paris 1906) p 322 Google Scholar.
page no 34 note 3 Fell 2, p 439, ‘ Sicque venerabilis pater in basilica beati Petri principis apostolorum quam ipse ex lapidibus dudum aedificaverat in saxo marmoreo cum decore sepultus est. ‘
page no 34 note 4 Ibid, p 436. ‘ Consuetudo enim erat sancto viro ut post collectas fratrum, dum ad lectum suum revertebatur ad pausandum, ministrum suum ad se silenter vocans legere rogaret ... Et ut omnes cursus compleret, scilicet Romanum Gallicanum Sancti Benedicti, Scotticum seu Sancti Columbani, per diversa horarum spatia psallebat. Cotidie etiam cum sacredote oblationes suas Domino studebat offerre, et dominico die sacerdotes ante eum tres missas canere solebant. ‘
page no 35 note 1 Sancii Cohimbani Opera, ed Walker, G. S. M. (Dublin 1957) p xiii Google Scholar.
page no 35 note 2 Ibid, p XV. ‘ Bessę, pp 457-8.
page no note 4 [Terence P.] McLaughlin, [Le très ancien droit monastique de l’occident] Archives de la France Monastique (Paris 1935) p 77.
page no 35 note 5 This has been a subject of controversy. Dates suggested for the appearance of benedictine influence range from C 629 (McLaughlin, p 19) to the mid-eighth century (James, O’Carroll.’Monasticrules in Merovingian Gaul’, Studies, XLII (Dublin 1953) pp407-19)Google Scholar.
page no 35 note 6 One phrase (cursus suavorum) which might be an anachronism is more likely a scribal error (saevorum, as in Alençon, [Bibliothèque municipale] MS 11, fol 143).
page no 35 note 7 ASOSB, 1, pp 354-60.
page no 36 note 1 Alençon, , MS 11, fols 143-6Google Scholar.
page no 36 note 2 Ibid. ‘Erat autem viro Domini maxima sollicitudo erga habitationem pastorum illorum quos subrogaverat circum circa monasteriis a se constructis ut pro oportuna necessitate cure illorum mille quingentas dextras itineris, conficientes stadia sex insuper et passus viginti, frequenter in unius diei labore, asini aut muli evectione sustentatus, circuiret. ‘
page no 36 note 3 Ibid. ‘Oblationes etiam per singulos dies sacerdotibus sacrandas offerebat, et diebus dominicis omnibus tres jubebat se presente missas celebran, in quibus solitas offerebat oblationes.’
page no 37 note 1 Ibid, fol 145 v.
page no 37 note 2 Ord, Vit, Hist Eccl, V, p 147 Google Scholar.
page no 37 note 3 Ibid, III, pp 65-7, 81.
page no 37 note 4 The date was first questioned by Blin, Abbé J.-B.-N., Vies des saints du diocèse de Séez (Laigle 1873) pp 535-7Google Scholar.
page no 37 note 5 Ord, Vit, Hist Eccl, III, pp 68–71 Google Scholar.
page no 37 note 6 DHGE, XVI, p 219.
page no 37 note 7 Ord, Vit, Hist Eccl, III, pp 68–71 Google Scholar.
page no 37 note 8 Ibid, pp 298-9.
page no 38 note 1 Cf’Vita Wandregisili abbatis Fontanellensis’, MGH SRM, IV, pp 19-20.
page no 38 note 2 Levison, W., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford 1946) pp 22–3 Google Scholar.
page no 38 note 3 Jumièges, Congrès Scientifique du XIIIe centenaire (Rouen 1955) 1, pp 33-8.
page no 38 note 4 Ord, Vit, Hist Eccl, III, pp 71-3Google Scholar
page no 38 note 5 Ibid, III, p 438
page no 38 note 6 Ibid, III, pp 451-2.
page no 38 note 7 Recueil des actes de Charles III le Simple, roi de France, ed Philippe, Lauer (Paris 1949) PP 74-6.Google Scholar
page no 39 note 1 Ord, Vit, Hist Eccl, III, p 102, n 1 Google Scholar.
page no 39 note 2 Alençon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 14, fols 38r-38v.
page no 39 note 3 Dom Jacques, Hourlier, ‘ Le Mont-Saint-Michel avant 966 ‘, in Millénaire Monastique du Mont-Saint-Michel, 1 (Paris 1966) pp 19–28 Google Scholar.
page no 40 note 1 Ord, Vit, Hist Eccl, III, pp 96-7Google Scholar.
