Mathilde's gift

In 1094 Enguerrand of Hesdin, lord of a small county in the valley of the river Canche, gave, together with his vassals, an abandoned sanctuary situated in the vicinity of his castle to the monks of Anchin, who converted it into a priory dedicated to St George.Footnote ¹⁸ The abbey of Anchin, situated on the south bank of the river Scarpe in the county of Hainaut, had been founded in 1079, and had originated as an eremitic settlement established a few years earlier by three knights.Footnote ¹⁹ Once turned into a monastic community, Anchin gained notoriety for its pioneering role in adopting Cluniac customs and became involved in the reform of other houses in Flanders and its neighbouring territories.Footnote ²⁰ The monks' actions attracted considerable interest from both lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries, and over three decades the monastery grew to be one of the most powerful and wealthy of such institutions in the region. Attesting to the abbey's importance and that of the county of Hesdin as a key region between the county of Ponthieu, that of Saint-Pol and its mighty counterpart Flanders, Enguerrand's donation and its conversion into a priory was approved by no lesser dignitaries than the count of Flanders, the archbishop of Rheims and the bishop of Thérouanne.Footnote ²¹ Reaping the obvious benefits from the association with its parent abbey, the modest community of Hesdin soon became a significant institution in its own right. By the year 1131 it housed no less than thirty monks, more than many independent houses.Footnote ²²

During the twelfth century the monks of Hesdin acquired (either by purchase, trade or gift) an important patrimony of estates, mills, tithes and other properties, taking care that many of the transactions were documented in writing. These records were added to a growing archive consisting of a small collection of charters and a substantial one of informal notices.Footnote ²³ At several stages during the century, the monks transcribed these into what eventually became known as the Chronicon Sancti Georgii de Hesdinio, a roughly chronological collection of 473 charters and notices largely devoid of formal diplomatic characteristics, giving this cartulary the superficial appearance of a chronicle.Footnote ²⁴ Ending in 1187, the Chronicon not only retraces the origins and development of even the smallest fractions of the priory's wealth, but also reveals the close-knit rural society in which the monks had embedded themselves over the previous century.

Because of its modest status as a priory, Hesdin's most frequent partners in property transactions were what the editor of the cartulary describes as ‘a mass of simple layfolk’ and members of the local lay elite.Footnote ²⁵ Among the latter feature the count of Hesdin, a dozen individuals referred to as his ‘men’ and linked to him by personal vassalitic ties, and a motley collection of seneschals, castellans, advocates and other members of the local nobility.Footnote ²⁶ Several of these thirty-odd individuals held important patrimonies and became benefactors of the priory. In addition, most property transfers effectively pertained to Hesdin's neighbouring villages, where it is known that at least part of the local aristocracy had grounded most of its wealth. As a result, many transactions involving the gift, trade or sale of lands or rights had an effect on the social and economic status and the social networks of the county's lay elite. This explains why the compilers of the Chronicon decided to underscore the necessity of understanding these networks and (uncharacteristically for the time) incorporated a large number of notices that relate to transactions which, though they look at first sight insignificant, explain the intricate politics of these property transfers.Footnote ²⁷ In some cases they also document seemingly petty disputes with laymen, who upon closer inspection were justifiably wary of a new community of monks breaking into their fragile and highly competitive networks. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that for the monks to establish themselves as property-holders in this area must have been a precarious exercise.

In theory, the priory's rich archives should make it possible to observe what kind of social networks were mobilised when property was transferred into the monks' hands. Unfortunately, a great deal of information contained in the Chronicon remains for the most part obscure because of its fragmentary nature. Even in cases when it is possible to identify those involved in gifts, trades and sales and to learn something about their motives, many questions relating to socio-economic and discursive contexts remain unanswered. However, by looking closely at the handful of notices relating to disputes over gifts to the priory clues can be found to a better understanding of the ways in which monks, their patrons and their lay enemies handled such delicate transactions. It is in these same sources that it is also possible to infer the aggressiveness with which the monks not only legitimised the withdrawal of property from existing lay networks but also criminalised any members of the elite who rejected their invitation to accept the terms on which such transactions were negotiated.

One such instance is that recorded for the years 1111–19,Footnote ²⁸ when Mathilde, the wife of a prominent nobleman named Wido of Herly,Footnote ²⁹ called the monks of Hesdin to her deathbed and gave them parts of her estates for the redemption of her soul and, later events allow us to hypothesise, a burial in the priory's cemetery.Footnote ³⁰ The notice records her gift in appropriate detail: a mill in Aubin-Saint-Vaast with adjacent lands, a third of the tithe of the village of Fontaine-l'Etalon, half an arable field and a piece of woodland in Agincourt. ‘Deeply saddened’ by the illness of his wife, but ‘rejoicing over her act of recognition towards God’, Wido added to the donation a fourth of the villa of Lesin for the benefit of his soul and that of his wife. Shortly afterwards, Mathilde died, and the next day her body was brought to the priory church of Saint-Georges in Hesdin, where her funeral service was held.Footnote ³¹ When it was time to honour her grave, Wido in a loud voice began to enumerate Mathilde's donations and his own to the priory and ‘to other churches’, demanding that all those present, in particular those related to his wife, express their consent.Footnote ³² After he had spoken, all gave their assent, the notice specifically mentioning Mathilde's aunt Beatrice and her husband Robert of Belebrone.Footnote ³³ Only Robert of Fillièvres, Mathilde's heir through his mother's side, made no effort to hide his displeasure at the loss of his inheritance and refused to accept the proposed arrangement. In response to Robert's attitude, Wido fell at his feet, begging him tearfully to relent. Embarrassed by this scene and exhorted by those attending the funeral, the disgruntled heir found that he had no other option but to declaim his assent. He could, however, not be persuaded to conclude the transaction by ritually placing Mathilde's and Wido's gifts on the altar. Wido eventually proceeded to do this himself. Afterwards, several abbots attending the ceremony exhorted all those present to respect the donation on pain of excommunication.Footnote ³⁴ A gathering of laymen subsequently acted as witnesses to the written record of the events, including Robert and four of his brothers.

Monastic archives from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, including that of Hesdin, show a sharp upturn in the number of donations pro anima and ad sepulturam.Footnote ³⁵ This phenomenon is particularly evident among communities under the influence of Cluniac customs, the introduction of which appears to have catalysed an oral discourse aimed at promoting the rewards that monastic communities could offer in return for such gifts.Footnote ³⁶ With Anchin one of the first houses in Flanders to adopt elements of the Cluniac customary, the priory of Hesdin had undoubtedly followed suit from the moment it was founded. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to assess the strategies, rhetorical or otherwise, that they employed to convince members of the local lay elite to engage in such transactions. But the bare evidence of notices relating to gifts in articulo mortis found throughout the Chronicon shows that they must have been persuasive enough to convince patrons to make substantial donations soon after the priory's foundation.Footnote ³⁷

Property transfers such as these quickly came to play a key role in the monks' relations with the local elite. By accepting gifts in articulo mortis and pro anima as allodial properties, monastic houses were able to support themselves amidst a rural society where lands had been previously compromised by a form of ownership that was tied up in vassalitic or familial networks. In the monastic perception, gifts ad altare underwent a transformation from earthly goods (temporalia) into spiritual ones (spiritualia).Footnote ³⁸ Among other strategies of property acquisition, this way of representing things enabled the monks to engage in relations with the lay elite and to embed themselves in local and regional communitiesFootnote ³⁹ without having to resort to a system of compensation whereby the patron, his or her heirs or fiefholders could continue to demand involvement in the exploitation of a particular estate or right.Footnote ⁴⁰ But monastic discourse also asserted that the benefits for patrons were equally alluring. Previous generations of scholars have given much significance to exchange in property transfers to monastic institutions, whereby monks reciprocated a gift by means of prayers for a patron's soul. Barbara Rosenwein, Dominique Iogna-Prat and Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld however have shown that memoria only played a minor role in a donor's motives for bestowing wealth on religious institutions.Footnote ⁴¹ Instead, they argue, those who gave pro anima sought redemption and the intercession of the monks' patron saint at their time of death.Footnote ⁴² Just as important was the gift as an agent of social bonding. Laymen and monks actively sought to establish a privileged ‘friendship’, bringing two aristocracies together and creating the conditions as well as the symbolic means for a reinforcement of each other's status.Footnote ⁴³

As documents relating to Mathilde's previous relations with the priory illustrate, donations pro anima were but one part of a chain of transactions through which ties of friendship were fed by gifts and other property transfers at important intervals in the existence of either party.Footnote ⁴⁴ In the notice, mention is made that Mathilde, together with her unnamed daughter, had given away property and parts of a tithe to the monks ‘a long time ago’.Footnote ⁴⁵ The decisive moment, however, in the forging of lasting ties in this case had taken place shortly before her death, at which point she was joined by her husband in this privileged relationship with the priory. When the church of St George was dedicated in 1111,Footnote ⁴⁶ Mathilde and Wido had jumped at the chance to (to use Rosenwein's words) ‘buy into saintly power’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Their offering to the monks' saints included the tithe of Agincourt, a small estate there and one in the forest, and a small estate and the lands appended to it in the village of Vaulx.Footnote ⁴⁸ A gift bestowed in such auspicious circumstances and in the presence of notables and ecclesiastical dignitaries undoubtedly generated a great deal of prestige, both for the couple and Mathilde's daughter and also for the monks themselves, whose endeavours in Hesdin now enjoyed the public support of one of the most powerful and wealthy couples of the local lay elite. The fact that St George was at this time being promoted as the patron saint of the nobility may also have been an added impetus for the former's attraction to the priory.Footnote ⁴⁹

The significance of Mathilde's and Wido's gift at the church's dedication may have been the greater because of the political circumstances in which it took place. The first two decades of the twelfth century saw the near-disintegration of the county of Hesdin and of the vassalitic network around the count. Following the death of Count Enguerrand in the early 1100s, his heir Walter had plunged the county into anarchy, organising an uprising against Enguerrand's widow Mathilde and confiscating goods belonging to the monastery of Auchy-les-Moines, a former foundation of the count.Footnote ⁵⁰ In 1111 Baudouin vii of Flanders annexed the county, and although he returned it to Walter the following year, he retained Auchy and Walter was forced to accept the increasing influence of Flanders. In these times of political turmoil, Wido and Mathilde most likely saw an opportunity in the solemn dedication of the church to distinguish themselves from other members of the local aristocracy. This they did not only by demonstrating their wealth and power in the absence of a strong head of the county, but also by strengthening a privileged association with a previous foundation of the count.

Mathilde's gift pro anima and her subsequent burial near the sanctuary of St George soon after its dedication marked another transition in the couple's relations with the monks.Footnote ⁵¹ Because Mathilde was giving from her own patrimony rather than the one she shared with her husband, Wido insisted on adding a gift of his own, underscoring his active participation in Mathilde's association with the monks and demonstrating his intention to continue to derive status and power from the couple's ties with the priory. Both spouses' behaviour not only corresponded with a desire to win status and divine redemption for themselves, but also to prevent the access of at least one of Mathilde's relatives to a similar status. It was this latter objective, and the fact that the monks played a crucial role in its implementation, which sparked great controversy in the aftermath of her death.

A reversal of human order

Property transfers in a rural society where most landholding was tied into a complex network of vasallitic relations, familial and inter-familial networks and other forms of shared property management naturally entailed a great deal of effort on behalf of donors and recipients to maintain the peace. Because of this, it was considered a token of common sense to involve all those affected by a donation (either as heirs, lords or otherwise). As Stephen White has shown for western France, the laudatio parentum or formal approval by the close relatives or associates of a donor, if not obligatory in any legal sense, constituted a crucial moment in the transfer of property to religious institutions.Footnote ⁵² The same can be said of those pertaining to communities in northern France, and Hesdin is no exception. Many instances are recorded in the Chronicon of relatives being consulted before a donor's death, or at least before a gift was made public. Wido and Mathilde themselves had previously given their assent to one gift made by a woman named Mathilde of Albin, who gave away a tithe that belonged to them on the day of her husband's funeral.Footnote ⁵³ In the notice regarding Mathilde's gifts pro anima, Wido's gift was also compromised, as he had previously given Lesin as a fief to a man named John, son of Wauzelin. John, no doubt after some debate, consented to his lord's donation and gave up his claims on the villa in return for a payment of thirty shillings.Footnote ⁵⁴ If the chronology of the events as described by the monks of Hesdin is to be trusted, this may have happened even before Mathilde drew her last breath. In contrast, declining to secure the assent of heirs, vassals and other individuals involved before it was publicly requested either reflected a good deal of faith in the others' inclination to comply or a deliberate challenge to their status and claims to future ownership. In this particular case, there are arguments that the second possibility, while not necessarily excluding the first, applied.

Before assessing the behaviour of Wido and Robert at the funeral, the networks in which Mathilde's gifts were embedded needs to be understood. In the notice detailing Mathilde's gift and in another one that follows it in the Chronicon, the monks briefly recorded the details of disputes that arose in the immediate aftermath of her death.Footnote ⁵⁵ From these it is clear that several individuals who had received lands and rights as tokens of their alliance with Wido's and Mathilde's family or considered themselves heirs to these properties saw no reason to respect the monks as the new owners of properties that had been donated without their previous consent. One such party was Waldricus of Beaurain, who had been given the mill of Aubin as a bail by Mathilde's father. After negotiations involving the monks and most likely Wido himself, Waldricus agreed to settle for six pounds of silver, while his oldest son Gerard received five pounds from the monks and five pounds from his own father for renouncing his inheritance. His younger son Hugo received two pounds.Footnote ⁵⁶ Wido's gift was relatively small and compromised the position of only one fiefholder, with no mention of heirs. In contrast, the dispute with Waldricus shows that at least part of Mathilde's gift was tangled up in an association between two families, stretching over at least two generations. Mathilde had cancelled the bail her father had given to Waldricus, one that she had allowed to continue beyond her father's death and which Waldricus himself had clearly intended to pass on to his son. Hence the compensation for both father and sons, who obviously considered the gift to the monks a direct intervention in their material security and, more important perhaps, ability to pass down wealth and status from one generation to another.

Given the importance of the gift, and given that Robert of Fillièvres was universally recognised as Mathilde's heir,Footnote ⁵⁷ it is no wonder that he also voiced his displeasure. Even though to be an heir constituted less of a legal categorisation than a notion touching upon the status of an individual,Footnote ⁵⁸ his protests could hardly have been unexpected in light of Wido's behaviour. Instead of indicating a willingness to negotiate or to compensate his wife's heir, the latter had resorted to self-humiliation and had begged him to consider the implications of Mathilde's gift.Footnote ⁵⁹ This put Robert in an awkward position, as he sensed that not responding to such a plea would be considered unacceptable, or at least inappropriate, by his peers. Exactly why this was so is not clear. Perhaps Robert reacted to Wido's and Mathilde's elevated status among the lay elite and was keen to bring an end to Wido's ritualised reversal of rank. It is also possible that at this point, protesting in the way he did was considered inappropriate in the sacralised setting in which Mathilde's funeral was taking place. Wido's calling out for the assent of the bystanders at his wife's solemn funeral, although common practise at the time,Footnote ⁶⁰ here clearly served the purpose of defusing the likelihood of public confrontations and forcing a laudatio parentum upon those involved. Much as in the case of relic translations, a discourse relating to the supremacy of divine law reigned over these ceremonies.Footnote ⁶¹ The presence of Mathilde's body and that of a relic of St George, but also the social pressure at a gathering of her relatives, noble cognates, members of the church and of the saint himself embedded his announcement in an atmosphere not likely to be disturbed by the fainthearted. Finally, the events in the aftermath of Mathilde's death also suggest that Robert was weary of Wido himself and keen to avoid a feud. He may well have experienced all three sentiments at once. There is, however, no question that his refusal to perform the ritual of laying the donation on St George's altar was understood by all those present as a harbinger of trouble, as it was considered the decisive moment for such transactions.Footnote ⁶² For Robert, participating in this ritual performance would have signified a capitulation to the attempt to remove Mathilde's gift from the conventions of human order, in other words to acknowledge the gift's new status as spiritualia and to renounce his rights as heir.

The fear of a feud and the extraordinary context in which the dispute had arisen are likely to have stopped Robert from retaliating immediately after the funeral. When Wido left on a journey to Jerusalem,Footnote ⁶³ however, Robert, according to the monks ‘filled with devilish jealousy’, felt free to carry out the threat of retaliation that he had made by refusing ritually to confirm the donation. Seven months after the death of Mathilde, he staked his claim to the mill of Aubin-Saint-Vaast, undoubtedly the most valuable part of her bequest, and to parts of previous gifts to the priory which belonged to his heritage. To pressure the monks into negotiating a settlement, he stole the tithes of Agincourt and Fontaine-l'Etalon and destroyed the mill, so that they would see no income from it for at least a year.Footnote ⁶⁴ His timing was well-chosen: the attacks took place in the month of August, the time of harvest when tithes were collected and use of the mill was economically critical.

Robert's motives for acting in the way he did appear to have been different and more complex than those of Wauzelin and his two sons. Evidence scattered throughout the Chronicon suggests that he was a wealthy man, and by no means dependent on the disputed estates for the maintenance of his standard of living. The problems also extended beyond his worries about losing the prospect of a feudal relation with local bailholders and an economic foothold in and around these properties, although the failed prospect of establishing his own social network, however small, in the village of Aubin may not have been easy for him to accept.Footnote ⁶⁵ There are, however, indicators suggesting that the behaviour of Mathilde and certainly of Wido as benefactors was at least partially inspired by other motives.Footnote ⁶⁶ A look at these shows that the critical issue at stake was status, or the loss of it, deriving from an amalgam of socio-economic and symbolic arguments.

In persuading potential patrons to give property to their priory, the monks undoubtedly laid great emphasis on the gift as an agent of redemption and as a token of privileged relations with their institution. But various authors have argued that gifts to ecclesiastical institutions equally constituted a means by which members of the aristocracy could prevent the fragmentation of their territories into smaller units and thus retain a certain degree of control over their ertswhile property.Footnote ⁶⁷ The transferral of wealth into monastic hands, besides spiritual and direct status-related motives, reflected a desire to contain the number of families grounding their power in the possession of land, to minimise the risk of competition and to manage demographic expansion in a way that preserved the economic viability of noble families.Footnote ⁶⁸ In her analysis of women's gifts pro anima to the abbey of Cluny, Maria Hillebrandt suggested that the reduction over the course of the eleventh century in the numbers of individuals mentioned as taking part in a gift from the extended group of relatives to the ‘nuclear’ family may be associated with the changing organisation of aristocratic families and their attitudes to succession.Footnote ⁶⁹ Giles Constable explained this transition by arguing that aristocratic families evolved from clans of ‘related contemporaries … all taking their names from their individual landed holdings’, to ones ‘based on lineal descent … of which the members took their names from a single centre of power’,Footnote ⁷⁰ which led to a tightening of modes of access to positions of prominence in the lay elite.

In the case of Mathilde and Wido, the situation, although more complicated, is not incompatible with this interpretation. Mathilde, who inherited her wealth from her father, had one daughter from a marriage that probably preceded that with Wido. Her subsequent union with him saw no traceable offspring, and there is no evidence that Wido had any living children from a previous union. His only direct relative appears to have been a nephew named Bernard, who is mentioned immediately after Wido in the list of witnesses to the notice.Footnote ⁷¹ Although it thus seems that Wido and Mathilde's families were quite distinct, there are strong indications that Wido had been preparing the assimilation of the two partners' wealth and status even before Mathilde's death. Although her gifts to the priory suggest that Mathilde managed her father's inheritance independently, she had, in giving property to the monks at their church's dedication in 1111, acted together with her husband. At the time of her death, Wido demonstratively staked his claim on the couple's privileged relation with the monks by adding a gift of his own, thus recovering some of the prestige that he feared he might have lost. Despite the apparent absence of a son, the fact that he wished to exclude Robert from the transaction strongly suggests that he may have also been concerned about transmitting some of the couple's prestige to his closest relative (perhaps the aforementioned Bernard) and preventing his noble peers from tapping into some of the wealth and status Mathilde had accumulated. Robert was thus blocked from obtaining Mathilde's inheritance because of the perceived necessity of preventing competing members of the lay elite from obtaining and, catastrophically for Wido, fragmenting carefully accumulated symbolic and actual power. Wido was protective of Mathilde's wealth and status in order to manage his own and that of his presumed successors.

Little more is known of the reason for Wido being so anxious to prevent Robert's access to his wife's wealth. As Fossier has suggested, at least part of the lay elite in the county of Hesdin could be divided into two distinct groups. The first grounded its wealth and power in a seignorial entity based on direct or semi-direct exploitation of land concentrated mostly in the village of origin. Robert, who was based in the village of Fillièvres, belonged to this first category. Wido (and, most likely, Mathilde's father) belonged to a second, whose property was dispersed throughout the region and consisted of an amalgam of tithes, rents, mill rights and mills, tolls and landed property.Footnote ⁷² As far as can ascertained, and there is a definite margin of error based on a lack of relevant sources, Robert missed out on expanding his wealth, not so much of a linear kind (since he already was one of the largest holders of allodial lands in the region)Footnote ⁷³ but in a way which would have provided him an entry into a group of owners like Wido. The latter are likely to have enjoyed greater wealth and higher status because of the nature of their property and the ways in which they exploited it. Obtaining Mathilde's inheritance would have been crucial to achieving this goal.

But Robert's loss extended beyond that. While being denied his right to be Mathilde's heir and acquire some of her status and crucial property, his loss increased another local aristocrat's status. Régine le Jan has shown that the argument of hereditas became particularly urgent in the case of donations to saints, because of the prestige, power and social links that accrued to the giver and his family.Footnote ⁷⁴ For Mathilde to present such large gifts to the monks signified a strengthening of the ties between herself and the monks, and a certain increase of status for her direct relatives, her husband in the first place, in light of a continued friendship that had originated at the latest at the church's dedication.Footnote ⁷⁵ The ‘buying into saintly power’ of Mathilde and especially Wido directly affected Robert's position in the laity: as a member of the aristocracy he would be sensitive to relatives and political rivals gaining political and symbolic advantage in an environment that had recently been the scene of political turmoil.

‘Meaningful’ violence and monastic retaliation

Although the written record suggests that Robert's attacks on the mill marked the first time that the monks became involved in the dispute, they had undeniably played a crucial part in setting up the conditions for a transfer of property that was beneficial both for themselves and for their patrons. It was, for example, under the influence of a monastic discourse advocating the benefits of gift-giving that Mathilde and Wido had given away parts of their wealth. From the same monastic repertoire originated the ritual setting in which Wido declared his wife's and his own intention to do so and in which their relatives and associates were asked to give their consent. As keepers of their patron's relics, the monks played a key role in creating the right conditions for, and rallying consensus regarding, a transferral of worldly goods into saintly hands. Whereas the laudatio parentum was habitually preceded by discussions and negotiations and usually reflected the desire to defuse potential disputes, its rituals were now being put into use as a means to pressure members of Mathilde's family and prevent status from being transferred in ways considered undesirable.

Robert, for his part, showed his awareness of the role of monastic discourse by intervening in the monks' rituals to enact his disapproval of the transition of his claimed heritage into saintly hands and prevent the transaction from being completed. It is worth remarking, though, that the documents left to us by the monks of Hesdin remain silent about the symbolic and practical meaning of Robert's refusal to lay Mathilde's gift on the altar, and falsely suggest that Wido's act sufficed to indicate the full transferral of the property. In addition, the descriptions of Robert's behaviour avoid making reference to any other than his direct claims on Mathilde's property, suggesting that he had only been interested in immediate material gain. As if such descriptions were not sufficient to underscore his inability to interact in a meaningful way with members of the ecclesiastical aristocracy, the monks also offhandedly rejected his subsequent attempt to pressure them into negotiations and compensation as criminal and insane.Footnote ⁷⁶

In the past few years, scholars have drawn attention to the fact that many instances of brutality on the part of the lower lay elite deserve to be read rather as the result of a desire to get oneself recognised as a valid party with whom to negotiate than as acts of insanity or other affects now considered inappropriate for historical analysis.Footnote ⁷⁷ Less a man insane than one determined to make his claim in a forceful manner, Robert had prepared his ‘audience’, that is the monks of Hesdin, the ecclesiastical elite in general and also his lay peers for his behaviour by leaving the ceremony at Mathilde's funeral unfinished. He subsequently chose to use common feuding techniques, not with Wido or his relatives, but with the recipients of Mathilde's and Wido's gifts. Aware of monastic propaganda, he undoubtedly considered the monks to be the instigators, or at least the enablers, of a property transferral scheme much to his disadvantage. He also understood that a successful attempt to induce negotiations would eventually lead to a compromise and possibly a privileged association with the monks, thus regaining some of his lost status. Nor were his attacks random, as they targeted exactly those estates and rights that Mathilde had given away, not just any of the priory's properties. For him to destroy the mill of Saint-Aubin constituted not only a means of affecting the monastic economy, but also demonstrating what exactly he had been claiming. Given the high incidence of behaviour such as Robert's among the lower lay elite,Footnote ⁷⁸ it is also likely that Wido, his relatives and associates, and also the monks themselves had more or less known what to expect. In addition, it is also hardly a matter of doubt that all those parties understood that Robert's acts were not the result of desperation or insanity, but belonged to an arsenal of common, if highly violent, means to pressure one's adversary.

Sensing that Robert would continue to refuse to accept the unconditional transfer of wealth into saintly hands, the monks began publicly to criminalise their adversary, using a degree of aggression similar to his own. Their practical and discursive involvement in the events that preceded Robert's violence and the latter's choice to target them as feuding partners explain why they set a typical monastic, highly aggressive ‘vengeance script’ in motion as soon as he took action against them.Footnote ⁷⁹ They first decided to appeal to the court of the bishop of Thérouanne. He responded to their clamour by summoning Robert; when two attempts failed, the bishop excommunicated him and imposed a ban on his native village of Fillièvres. In the meantime, the monks tried to enhance the impact of the excommunication by using the rituals proper to the monastic practice of marginalising enemies. For as long as Robert refused to restore order, they took up the daily habit of laying down the crucifix super spinas, a variant on the common practise of humiliating a saint's relics by laying it on spines before the altar. The monks also prostrated themselves three times a day, reciting a ritual clamor while the bells of the church were tolled, ‘so that justice would be done to them from heaven’.Footnote ⁸⁰ By means of these last two rituals, they indicated the crucial nature of their recourse to the argument of divine order, invoking God and his saints to take action against their enemy. In other words, Robert was now at war with God.

Despite such violent attacks, the lord of Fillièvres was not inclined to relent. His position as heir to Mathilde had been challenged by the community of Hesdin, by the bishop of Thérouanne and most likely by Mathilde and Wido themselves, who had all appealed at some point to divine order as a justification for bypassing his customary right.Footnote ⁸¹ They had all used a discourse expressed in ritual and verbal form which avoided all references to the relevance of Robert's claims, beginning with the fact that he was not consulted before Mathilde's funeral, that no attempt was made to strike a deal with him, that he was forced to give his assent in exceptional circumstances and that his subsequent behaviour was publicly branded as the acts of a man struck down by insanity.Footnote ⁸² When the bishop's appeal arrived, Robert undoubtedly feared another incident in which he would be required to recognise his ‘errors’ and again renounce his rights as heir. Such repeated humiliation, based principally on the argument that he had failed to subjugate his own interests to the divine,Footnote ⁸³ carried in itself the risk of marginalisation. This was not an exercise that he would care to repeat.

The count's anger

Sensing that Robert was unwilling to comply with their demands, even if they included the threat of divine retaliation, and understanding the peril in which the dispute placed the credibility of their socio-economic strategies, the monks, now supported by the abbot of Anchin, decided to register a clamor against Robert at the court of count Baudouin vii.Footnote ⁸⁴ When Baudouin sent one of his servants to summon Robert to a session of his feudal court, the latter refused to come, prompting the count's anger (‘vehementer iratus’) and an immediate threat that his troops would destroy his home and all his possessions in Fillièvres. ‘Frightened by the bannum of the bishop, the threats of the count and the prayers of the monks’, Robert finally relented, and besides returning most of his usurpations (with the exception of the tithe of Fontaine) to the abbot of Anchin, he also promised to maintain peace with the abbey and the estates of Hesdin for the rest of his life. To demonstrate the binding nature of his promise, he swore an oath on the relics of the saints, and his example was followed by the monks themselves and by the men who attended the pax. Afterwards, Robert repeated his oath to the count. In return for keeping the tithe which he should have returned to the priory, he gave the usufruct of another piece of land from his estates. According to the notice, Robert only refused to return the disputed tithe because of discord among his brothers.Footnote ⁸⁵

The Hesdin notices mirror a contemporary trend witnessed in the joint efforts of monastic houses and the counts of Flanders to contain the fragmentation of lay power, to reduce the influence of the lower lay elite on the government of ecclesiastical institutions and to establish or re-establish strong links between the monasteries and the higher aristocracy.Footnote ⁸⁶ This policy is particularly evident in the support the counts gave to the reforms of Benedictine houses in the first two decades of the twelfth century, a movement inspired as much by the desire to homogenise the observance in these houses as by a joint policy of ecclesiastics and lay leaders to reassess the nature of the monks' alliances with members of the local elite.Footnote ⁸⁷ Counts and abbots often entered into privileged relations with the most powerful laymen in a given region to contain the rise of others. This often took the form of the recognition of lay offices as more or less hereditary titles, though formulated on a conditional basis. The reward promised to members of the lay elite for accepting negotiations often consisted of a spiritual and material association with the monks.

At the same time, the count also aimed to regain his position as legislator and, most important, highest juridical institution in the county. In the case of older monastic institutions, he resumed his role (which for several decades had been largely nominal) of upper-advocate. From the time of Robert ii (1087–1111), the counts were also willing to perform their divinely-ordained duty of bringing justice to the monastic communities that appealed to their court,Footnote ⁸⁸ although one has to keep in mind that in many cases they acted as mediator rather than judge. The fact that they too were tied up in a complex network of interlocking relations that involved lordship, vassalage and landownership also ensured that they showed little inclination to alienate any of the major players, be they ecclesiastical institutions or members of the lay aristocracy.Footnote ⁸⁹ Nevertheless, the highly staged performances that accompanied sessions of the comital court were effective insofar as they allowed the counts to test whether members of the lay elite were willing to subordinate themselves to their authority or not. Aristocrats who showed their readiness to accept him as such quickly became associated with the count's court circle, while the others were cornered into acknowledging the fact that they refused to accept his authority.Footnote ⁹⁰

Robert's son Baudouin vii, although a minor at the time of his father's death, especially pursued a strategy of profiling himself to his subordinates as the bearer of justice and as president of the highest court of appeal. The monks were aware of the count's willingness to intervene and to test his subordinates' attitudes, especially so because the dispute with Robert coincided with, or came shortly after, the interventions of the Flemish in the county of Hesdin. Abbot Alvisus of Anchin (1111–31), a man of fierce determination and one of the main protagonists of Cluniac reforms in Flanders, may also have played a decisive role in taking the dispute to the count's court. Eager to promote disciplinary reform and to rationalise the government of his institution, he took particular interest in the patrimony of Hesdin, especially as it had greatly expanded over the preceding decade but still lacked much regulation.Footnote ⁹¹ In 1112, around the time of the dispute with Robert, he called upon Bishop John of Thérouanne to confirm the priory's rights, to return a number of usurped goods, and to describe in detail the mutual obligations of the monks and the bishop.Footnote ⁹² This increased supervision of the priory apparently did much to harden the monks' attitudes towards their lay adversaries.

The coincidence of Baudouin's first public appearances as president of the count's court and the election of Alvisus created favourable conditions in which to test Robert's resistance. A dispute that had arisen from the latter's refusal to accept the supremacy of divine order over its human counterpart now quickly turned into a politically test case for his attitude with regard to the changing organisation of secular society. In this context, it is important to underscore the fact that the count's ‘anger’Footnote ⁹³ did not stem from the troubles between Robert and the monks, but from the man's refusal to obey the count, and was basically unrelated to arguments referring to the divine. Baudouin's newly-won authority had been rejected, and to maintain his position credibly the count had to respond with strong threats.

Although Robert may have harboured suspicions with regard to Baudouin's impartiality, it was in this setting, where the monks did not completely control the discourse, that he finally agreed to negotiate. While returning most of his inheritance to the monks, he benefited from the settlement in that he was accepted as one of the priory's ‘neighbours’. He thus obtained a certain degree of status, having recovered some of the losses that he had incurred at the time of Mathilde's gift by forcing the monks into a symbolic war. This explains the relative ease with which he accepted the settlement once he felt that the monks were forced by circumstances to accept him as a partner for negotiations and could no longer dismiss his behaviour offhandedly as the ravings of a frustrated nobleman. Robert was ready, perhaps even happily so, to accept a settlement that signified a near-complete restitution of stolen property but elevated him to a place among the privileged partners of the monks.Footnote ⁹⁴ The compensation itself also indicated that the battle between arguments of divine and human order had not ended in a clear victory for either side, but in a settlement. Ostensibly the foundation upon which social order was based, an arrangement such as this was undoubtedly satisfying to all, if perhaps only for the time being.

For a newly-established priory, Hesdin managed to associate itself with important members of the local aristocracy and accumulate a considerable amount of property in a short amount of time. Its success in achieving these aims depended in large part on the monks' own efforts to convince the lay elite of opportunities to seek redemption for their souls and to distinguish themselves from their rivals and peers. Their discourse was catalysed by the introduction of Cluniac customs, which at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries radicalised the attitude of monastic communities with regard to the laity and caused them to seek out opportunities to intervene in lay networks to their advantage. Understanding the status and political advantages that could be derived from associations with groups of monks, a particular section of the lay elite in the county of Hesdin actively nurtured such privileged friendships, as it allowed them a degree of management of their family's wealth and to control the extent to which members of their extended family network could share in their accumulated wealth and status. This meeting of minds made it possible for the monks to engage in privileged relations with the foremost members of the local elite and to insinuate themselves as proprietors into a society in which all manageable property had already been divided, quite often subdivided, fiefed or promised as part of an inheritance. Relations of this kind, albeit intended to be durable, warranted revalidation at critical junctures in either party's existence but allowed for cohesion between the two elite cultures.

While monks liked to represent themselves as the mere recipients of pious gifts, it is evident that they played an active role in convincing their patrons of the utility of such transferrals, and that they also offered to guide their patrons through the withdrawal of property from the conventions of human society. It would probably be going too far to assume that the monks actively encouraged people like Mathilde and Wido to follow a carefully scripted scenario designed specifically to manage the socio-economic status in and around Hesdin. It may, however, be confidently argued that rituals and other performances associated with their world-view provided laymen with the appropriate circumstances to represent their transactions as a withdrawal of property from the conventions of human order and to avoid the division of wealth and property and the dissipation of status. The close involvement of the monks in fulfilling Wido's and Mathilde's spiritual and political goals, among other reasons, explains why Robert of Fillièvres as an heir bypassed by his own relatives so purposefully aimed to force the monks, and not Wido, into negotiations.

The events leading up to Robert's attacks on the monks' properties were preceded by an aggressive discourse aimed at forestalling any attempts to block their acquisition of material wealth in a manner which did not take into account pre-existing social and familial networks. This explains the monks' fierce determination to continue referring to divine order as a justification for their actions and as a rejection of the equally justifiable arguments of their enemy. When these arguments eventually failed to pacify Robert, they found an ally in the count, who at the time was striving to confirm his position as the highest lay authority. Finding that his arguments would not stand up against military action, but also understanding that the monks had failed to end the dispute by emphasising the transferral into saintly hands, Robert agreed to negotiate a settlement in which he exchanged the disputed inheritance for friendship with the monks. Withdrawing the dispute from the deadlock of contradicting arguments referring to human and divine order eventually allowed the parties involved to negotiate a settlement in which they exchanged the disputed inheritance for a spiritual association. For the monks of Hesdin, and undoubtedly for many of their peers, seemingly banal compromises such as this generated material and symbolic returns far greater than has previously been assumed. Paradoxically, it was the enactment of seemingly anti-social discourse that helped them to pursue these objectives most efficiently.