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The Knight Herluin and the Founding of the Le Bec Abbey: A Complex Issue between Eremitic Leanings and Coenobitical Normalization

2012; Presses Universitaires De France; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

2104-3825

Jean-Hervé Foulon,

Medieval Literature and History

Le Bec Abbey is considered one of the most renowned Benedictine abbeys in the Middle Ages. The image conveyed by the twelfth century narrative sources, as well as the hypotheses of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars, make one believe in the founding of a soundly constituted monastery by the humble knight Herluin. A close examination of the sources, however, compels us to make a distinction between a historical reality in which the founder’s deep liking for eremitical life prevails, and a later process of re-writing the beginnings of the founding. In the twelfth century, the monks from Le Bec Abbey intended to conceal these eremitical origins which had become suspicious in a context of rivalry with the new monachism, and to uphold the primacy of a coenobitical and Benedictine life, actually established later. Therefore, the chronology of the traditionally admitted events had to be revised, contributing, as a result, to throw light on the conqueror’s adolescence. In 1034, in a prevailing tone of penitential expiation, Herluin decided to embrace a hermit’s life on lands of his own. Joined by a few brothers, and despite his lack of learning and religious background, he organized a first “more Patrum” community, which rejected the Benedictine monastic rule. This first experiment, however, could not lead to an enduring institutional form. As such, he was brought to accept a progressive regularization of his way of life under the joint influence of Count Gilbert de Brionne and of the episcopacy. The count probably hoped he could reap the glory of this foundation, partly built on others’ fortune, and thus take advantage of the mediation and merits of his former vassal, but he was murdered. Nevertheless, the change of site led to the building of a second church, dedicated in February 1046 or 1047, precisely at the time when William the Bastard was facing the uprising of his aristocracy’s most powerful members. The revolt of the new owner of Brionne Castle, a strategic stronghold close to the foundation, offered the Duke Guillaume the opportunity to interest himself in this obscure institution by confirming its estates. The control of both castle and abbey was relevant and coherent politics for the duke in the years 1047 to 1055 in a context where his seditious kinsmen–the descendants of Duke Richard the First–had to be subdued. The contemporary arrival of the scholar Lanfranc (1046 or1047 not 1042) together with the ducal protection enabled to make up for Herluin’s difficulties in ruling the abbey, as the knight was failing in organizing a genuine convent life. Le Bec’s prosperity was consequently strengthened. The close association of the duke with Lanfranc, his intellectually beaming school after 1055, the incessant influx of donations, and the increasing number of brothers led to a third change of site around 1060, in spite the abbot’s strong reluctance. While Herluin’s foundation, under this combined pressure, resulted in an abbey under Benedictine rule (symbolized by the latest dedication in 1077), it maintained original customs offering a thoroughfare between former and new monachism, which accounts for its success. Herluin’s inventive itinerary portrays the precocious seduction exerted by eremitical life in Normandy and a first reappraisal of the Benedictine normative framework wished by the Carolingians.