One of the essential sources for understanding late medieval French Celestine culture is the Vita of Jean Bassand, written in the mid-fifteenth century by an anonymous Celestine monk. Its subject was the most important figure in the French Celestine congregation in the period under study, even eclipsing his mentor, Pierre Pocquet, who had been the first provincial prior of the independent French province in 1380 (see Appendix 1). Jean Bassand was elected provincial prior on five occasions, one more than Pocquet, and unlike Pocquet, he was promoted as a saint in the order. His Vita thus suggests much about the ideal, if not necessarily the real, standard of Celestine life. Beyond that, its author took time to reflect on the meaning of their reform – by way of Bassand's example – in the context of the events, concerns and aspirations of the Christian society that surrounded them.

Provenance and purpose

The text was edited by the Bollandists in the early eighteenth century from four manuscripts, only one of which is now known in French public libraries. The earliest seems to have been a now lost codex found at the Celestine monastery of Paris: the Bollandists used this as their primary witness. The existence of one or possibly two further lost Celestine copies can be deduced from other evidence. Ménard's summary of Bassand's life, based on copies of the Vita in Paris and Amiens, proves that there was a further manuscript at the latter house. The eighteenth-century catalogue of the libraries of the French Celestine congregation only mentions one copy, at Paris, but this codex appears to have been different from the one collated by the Bollandists at around the same time. There is, however, another late medieval witness that the Bollandists were unaware of, a manuscript that originally belonged to the Celestines of Avignon. This presents a very similar text to the edited version, with only minor textual variants, albeit that it excludes the final chapter of post-mortem miracles (c.9) included by the Bollandists. Its mid-fifteenth-century hand allows the text to be firmly dated to the decades immediately following Bassand’s death.

Whatever else may be said about the state of late medieval coenobitic monasticism in the West, it would be impossible to claim that the period under study was particularly generous to monasteries on a material level. The tales of financial diminution, of the collapse or secularization of houses struggling for funds, seem certainly to far outweigh those of expansion and new foundations. Such was not the case with the Celestines. Theirs is unquestionably a story of growth: between 1300 and 1450 seventeen monasteries were built for them, thirteen of them in the period directly under study. Their expansion can appear somewhat exceptional, however; in their region, only the Carthusians and the Colettine Claresses seem to have achieved comparable feats. Overall, moreover, there is a striking contrast with the monastic expansions of the early and high Middle Ages that saw hundreds upon hundreds of Benedictine and Cistercian houses built, and after them, a similar wave of mendicant growth. The financial instability of existing houses has often been understood from perspectives that take into account wider macro- and microeconomic trends. The Black Death and its recurrences took a particularly heavy toll on monasteries, both in terms of their own numbers and on their finances, the ongoing effects of depopulation hurting landed incomes. In France, meanwhile, the Hundred Years War caused damage to monastic property and population displacements that likewise destabilized communities. Nevertheless, the fact that late medieval reformers could not find a way to expand in new houses in the manner of previous generations might seem to suggest the declining prestige and social relevance that has sometimes been alleged of vowed religious life, and of coenobitic monasticism in particular, in the late Middle Ages.

And yet, Observant monastic reform was an explosion of the sort that surely required significant outside interest. In the case of the French Celestines, their founders and major benefactors represent a ‘Who's Who’ of late medieval France: the Valois monarchy, Louis, duke of Orleans, the Avignon papacy and so on. Moreover, these monks were drawn very close to the society that bestowed these gifts on a spatial level. As this chapter will make clear, their supporters were not only found within the highest echelons, but drawn from a spectrum that ran down to the mid-tier of society; it was not without breadth.

On 25 January 1380, the Avignonese pope Clement VII granted independence to the French Celestines from their Italian brethren, in response to the ‘the humble supplications of our dearest son Charles, illustrious king of the French [Charles V], on your behalf’. He granted the French Celestines the right to hold provincial chapters every three years from then on and to elect a new provincial prior each time, in broad terms the same system of government that had been run on a larger scale in the previously united congregation, as will be seen. As mentioned in the introduction, the immediate background to this decision seems straightforward: the Great Western Schism, which had begun a mere sixteen months earlier and in which Clement VII and Charles V were central actors. The letter was somewhat vague about the reality of the Celestines being torn apart by competing papal obediences – it stated that the French Celestines were unable to get to the general chapter across the Alps due to ‘wars’, ‘divisions’ and finally ‘schisms, which alas reign in the sacred Church of God’ – but the real political context is clear enough: the French Celestines, with the support of the French king, were in allegiance to Clement VII, while their Italian brothers supported Urban VI. Nevertheless, the Celestine petition, as recorded by the letter, did not lead with external contingencies, but rather the internal situation of the French province. The loss of temporal goods is mentioned, perhaps a consequence of the risks of travel to the general chapter or the obstruction that the division presented for managing their affairs. But first and foremost among their complaints was that ‘since you lack a legitimate provincial prior at present, regular observance does not prevail as it ought to in the order, especially in its French parts’ (my italics). This could also be read as a fairly straightforward reference to the fact that the normal lines of obedience had been disrupted by schism: the Italian abbot chose the French Celestine provincial prior, but if the abbot was obedient to a different pope, then the legitimacy of their provincial prior, Pierre Pocquet, at least from the French standpoint, had to be reaffirmed – and indeed was. But the reference to ‘regular observance (observantia regularis)’ seems more significant.

The history of the Celestine monks of France – or to give them their full, contemporary title ‘the Celestine brothers of the province of France and adjacent regions’ – in the late Middle Ages has until recently lain buried. It is the history of a congregation that no longer exists, a self-governing province of an Italian Benedictine reform of thirteenth-century origin that likewise no longer exists, and which has received very little subsequent attention. Compared to many other monastic reforms, the volume of work on the French Celestines is slight; in fact, the Celestines as a whole remain one of the least studied medieval monastic congregations. Only one modern monograph has focused on them, Karl Borchardt's Die Cölestiner, an excellent study of the order's entire institutional history, which covers their presence in Italy as well as France. Beyond this, there is a body of work on their early Italian foundations, while a small number of doctoral theses and articles have devoted some attention to their French wing.

This lack of attention, however, is a grave injustice on every level. The history that will emerge in the course of this book is of a congregation that reached a significant apex of cultural impact and influence around the turn of the fifteenth century, on a scale disproportionate to its relatively small, albeit growing, size in this period. Theirs was a journey which has much to tell the modern reader about the ideals and practice of late medieval monastic reform; they represent one of the most prominent groups in France to label themselves as ‘Observant’ in this period, a banner for a wave of reform efforts across multiple orders of which the importance is only now coming to be fully understood. But they also represent a powerful example of the potential that still lay within the ties that bound monasticism and wider society together. It is the history not only of a monastic congregation but of those bonds that this book sets out to uncover.

The Celestines and the French Celestines

Who were these somewhat forgotten monks? The Celestines had their origins in Italy. They were founded by a hermit, Pietro da Morrone, later canonized as St Peter Celestine (c.1215–1296), who, according to his earliest biographers, had first lived as a Benedictine monk at Santa-Maria di Faifoli in the Molise region before becoming a solitary in the caves of the Abruzzo mountains.

Reductions of foundation Masses (beyond anniversary Masses) at the Celestine monastery of Paris, 1414 and 1436

Reduction of foundation Masses (beyond anniversary masses) at the Celestine monastery of Sens, 1414

Ascetic standards

The French Celestine constitutions present the image of a congregation concerned with a minute level of ascetic and penitential detail in their pursuit of purity. Nevertheless, the monks were simultaneously being drawn into ever-closer proximity with secular society. If the ascetic standards prescribed by their constitutions were enhanced in the face of this challenge, the inherent tension within this combination deserves to be brought into greater focus on the level of practice. How successful were the French Celestines in upholding their evolving vision of ‘purity’ in this environment? How did discipline operate within their communities? And what can be seen of the knock-on effects of these factors at an individual and communal level?

Rank-and-file discipline

It is not possible to provide anything approaching a complete study on Celestine discipline. The constitutions themselves provide hints of the challenges faced, but the discussions that produced them have not survived. Beyond this, the evidence is anything but comprehensive. One source, however, does stand out: the Celestine chronicle of Metz. Its initial part was written by Nicole de Luttange (d.1439), a long-time procurator of the house and prior in 1438. His work traces the history of the house up to the late fourteenth century and it is continued in the same style by another writer, most likely writing in the 1470s. Their work combines a simple record of the monastery's development and internal events with descriptions of its interactions with the life of the city and the region: professions and deaths of monks, the elevation of new priors and the elections of new provincials are recorded alongside benefactor burials and their founder's pious wishes. The intended audience would seem to have been internal: the work provides a quite candid reminder to the monks of the deeds of their predecessors, whether good or bad, and their place within Metz society. As a result, it provides excellent detail on the challenges of Celestine monastic life within a not untypical urban context.

If the house did not represent a foundation of the very highest elites – its founder was a prominent bourgeois, Bertrand le Hongre –, it was nevertheless founded within the city and its membership had a distinctly bourgeois feel to it, whether drawn from Metz or from elsewhere.

French provincial priors from Independence (1380) to 1450

1380 – Pierre Pocquet

1383 – Robert de Bordes

1384 – Pierre Pocquet

1387 – Lambert Rolons

1390 – Pierre Pocquet

1393 – Jacques le Chien

1396 – Pierre Pocquet

1399 – Pierre de Guerot

1402 – Pierre Prudhomme

1405 – Besonce Devaux

1408 – Simon Bonhomme

1411 – Jean Bassand

1414 – Simon Bonhomme

1417 – Jean Bassand

1420 – Besonce Devaux

1423 – Étienne de Coublans

1426 – Jean Bassand

1429 – Simon Trouvé

1432 – Jean Bassand

1435 – Eudes le Roi

1438 – Jean Bassand

1441 – Simon Trouvé

1444 – Nicaise le Roi

1447 – Pierre Castaing

1450 – Simon Trouvé

Source: The information on the French provincial priors is derived from Nicolas Malet’s seventeenth-century history of the congregation (Avignon, BM, MS 1438), Nicolas de la Ville’s prospographical work of the same century (Avignon, BM, MS 1439), 3–75, and an anonymous eighteenth-century antiquarian compilation (Paris, BA, MS 5145, 547).

Note: For provincial priors before 1380, the information is less consistent. See Chapter 2, 88–9.

The French Celestines as a political symbol

On 14 November 1432, Anne of Burgundy, duchess of Bedford, died suddenly during an outbreak of pestilence, of the sort that were recurrent throughout the late medieval West from 1348 onwards. The sister of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in 1423 she had married Henry V's brother, John, duke of Bedford, who acted as regent in France for the minor Henry VI; she was thus a cornerstone of an Anglo-Burgundian alliance in the years after the death of Henry V (31 August 1422). Already weakened by Lancastrian military setbacks against the forces of Charles VII, that alliance received a further blow with her death: the reconciliation between Philip and Charles VII would be confirmed on 20/21 September 1435. But her political importance went beyond interactions between princes. Writing contemporaneously, the ‘Bougeois of Paris’ described the effect of her death on the citizens of the town, as well as her funeral, held at the Celestine house of Notre-Dame de l’Annonciation:

The Bougeois's words – and indeed the entirety of his journal – give a flavour of the ‘public opinion’ that existed in Paris at this time: Anne of Burgundy was considered ‘the most delightful of all the great ladies then in France’ – ‘The Parisians loved her’.

What was the legacy of this period in French Celestine history? What was the position of the congregation at the end of the Hundred Years War, at the end of the division in the Church that carried through intermittently into the 1450s? Their high symbolic status did not end immediately with the collapse of Lancastrian power in France. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Charles VII placed such value on the connection between the French royal office and the Celestines that he completed John, duke of Bedford, and Henry VI's attempted foundation at Rouen, at the end of November 1449, just a few weeks after having won back the city. His words make clear that the previous grant of the Joyeux Repos manor (the duke's former residence within the city) – ‘which the defunct John, duke of Bedford, built, constructed, albeit for from the moneys of our realm, and formerly resided in’ – was as illegitimate as John's claim to the regency. Charles, meanwhile, declared himself ‘principal founder’ (fundator principalis); by founding a Celestine monastery, he followed in the footsteps of his royal predecessors, and cited similar motivations to those that had moved his grandfather Charles V. The house was founded so that ‘these same Celestines, as if a new plantation, newly planted in our Duchy of Normandy, which has until now not been decorated by a Celestine monastery, should pour out, we hope, the odour of sanctity upon all by the zeal of their religion, by the cleanliness of their way of life, and by the stricture of their regular observance.’

These words of Charles VII – citing their importance within political society, but also the features that made the monks themselves stand out as reformers – stand as further testament to the relevance that the Celestines and their ideals had found in this period. But their attractiveness to such donors in the preceding years had arguably also rendered some of their monasteries as monuments to the confusion of that period. In 1436 or 1437, Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, built a fine tomb for his sister, Anne, duchess of Bedford, in the Celestine house of Notre-Dame de l’Annonciation in Paris.