Discussions of the turbulent history of ‘traditional’ monasticism in the early to mid-twelfth century often refer to the first General Chapter of Benedictine abbots, held in late October or early November 1131.Footnote 1 On that occasion, twenty-one abbots, nineteen of whom held office in the archdiocese of Reims, established a prayer community between their institutions,Footnote 2 and jointly issued a set of statutes simplifying the liturgy of the offices, imposing fasting and dietary restrictions as prescribed by St Benedict's Rule, and promoting the observance of silence in the cloister and refectory.Footnote 3 So far, scholarly analyses of the 1131 meeting and its written record have adopted a unilateral perspective, regarding the event in one of two ways. Either it is seen as a significant breakthrough in Benedictine attempts to organise supra-institutional modes of legislation and supervision, or it is viewed as a symptom of the waning popularity of ‘traditional’ monastic discipline and liturgy – in particular the practices observed at Cluny and its subsidiary institutions – and the growing influence of the Cistercians, especially the teachings of Bernard of Clairvaux. While both perspectives are valid, they have limited explanatory value as regards timing and the involvement of specific individuals and institutions. Looking at both these elements is significant, for they reveal how the 1131 meeting requires to be framed against the activities of various overlapping coalitions of ecclesiastical and secular agents pursuing a broad range of political, ideological and institutional interests, several of which transcended monastic discipline and institutionalism. Considering the questions of timing and participation also helps to explain why the long-term perspectives of the General Chapter were compromised from the beginning.
Traditional interpretations
Initial discussions of the 1131 General Chapter centred on its supposed relevance to institutional transitions in twelfth-century Benedictine monasticism. Upon discovering the statutes in a twelfth-century manuscript originally kept at the abbey of Saint-Martin in Tournai, Auguste Molinier identified them as the record of ‘a spiritual and institutional association concluded by several monasteries in Reims’.Footnote 4 Shortly thereafter, the great monastic specialist Ursmer Berlière argued that the text was in fact the protocol of the first provincial chapter of Benedictine abbots in the archdiocese of Reims and, as such, a record of the first attempt to create an institution with legislative and executive powers similar in form and purpose to the Cistercian General Chapter, established in 1119.Footnote 5 Berlière identified several such attempts, all of which took place in the archdiocese of Reims and all but one of which (the 1131 meeting) he identified as General Chapters. He concluded from their sporadic nature and failure to yield any documentary evidence of a sustained effort towards legislation or supervision that their emergence as an actual, effective institution did not take place before 1215, when Pope Innocent iii ordained that all Benedictine abbots would henceforth participate in yearly General Chapters.Footnote 6 More than three-quarters of a century later, Stanislas Ceglar provided the first complete edition of the Tournai manuscript, revealing for the first time exactly how limited the contents of the statutes were, and how disorganised their appearance.Footnote 7 The edition, by showing the scribe's insertion of a list of participants in the middle of the text, also raises the possibility that the statutes are in fact a compilation of decisions promulgated on different occasions.
The discovery in 2000 of a second copy of the statutes, dated to the 1130s or 1140s and inserted at the end of Bernard of Cluny's customary for use by the monks of Marchiennes, seemed to confirm these suspicions.Footnote 8 Although this version lacks the list of participating abbots, the remainder of the text is considerably longer, for instance offering substantial additional details on the practical organisation of the yearly Chapters (in particular the accomodation of participating abbots) and on certain liturgical matters. As with the Tournai copy, we can only guess at the extent to which its contents reflect decisions promulgated only at the 1131 meeting. Based upon the testimony of the two copies it seems justifiable to assume that the statutes were never intended for wider dissemination, and that the lost original of the text can be considered as having been little more than an aide-mémoire for participating abbots. This explains the laconic aspect of some sections that discuss matters of internal organisation and the keeping of silence, and, in contrast, the detailed approach to some of the liturgical parts, which required a precise record to be faithfully implemented.Footnote 9 Given the fact that there is no record, either in the texts or other sources, of provisions being taken to enforce the decisions contained in the two versions of the statutes, their presumed nature as normative instruments is also doubtful.
These cumulative findings would surely have relegated both the 1131 meeting and the statutes to the footnotes of twelfth-century monastic history were it not for the fact that several scholars had previously pointed out their relevance to the polemic resulting from Bernard of Clairvaux's criticism, published half a decade earlier, of Cluny's excessive liturgy and its overall lack of sobriety.Footnote 10 Crucial to this claim was the preservation of Matthew of Albano's (d. 1134) lengthy rebuke of the abbots’ decisions,Footnote 11 and the abbots’ defiant response, issued at their next meeting, in Soissons, in 1132.Footnote 12 Noting the statutes’ drastic reduction of liturgy and their emphasis on fasting and silence, as well as the caustic remarks of Matthew of Albano regarding their implicit criticism of the Cluniac model, scholars like Bredero, Ceglar and Piazzoni interpreted the 1131 statutes as an indicator of the success of Bernard's ideals among the Benedictine leadership of the archdiocese of Reims, a key region of early Cistercian development.Footnote 13 These scholars and others have provided ample evidence of Bernard's personal involvement with abbots who participated in the 1131 meeting, and of his interest (besides founding new Cistercian houses) in promoting renewal in traditional monastic contexts.Footnote 14 A second relevant polemic, it was suggested by Adriaan Bredero, set those who supported the reformist ideals of the disgraced Abbot Pontius of Cluny (1109–22) against those who aligned themselves with Peter the Venerable's more traditionalist vision.Footnote 15 Even though none of the institutions represented at the 1131 meeting was institutionally affiliated with the Cluniac system, they had all adopted the Cluniac customs at some point in the preceding decades. Bredero speculated that the initiative of the Reims abbots to promulgate substantial changes to that model was regarded as a criticism of Cluny's conservative direction at the time.
Even though they offer valid points, the problem with such perspectives is that they overstate both the institutional implications of the 1131 statutes and the significance of Bernard and William to the ‘Reims movement’. Even Rosanne Elders, in her detailed reconstruction of the relations between the participants of the 1131 meeting, disregards other factors when trying to explain the timing and circumstances of the event, arguing that the participating abbots had been driven to issue their statutes by the fact that observing Cluny's customs to the letter forced smaller monastic institutions to confront considerable financial and logistical challenges.Footnote 16 Such an argument is indeed found in the abbots’ letter of 1132.Footnote 17 But to take this claim at face value is to ignore the fact that the reform of these institutions did not necessarily imply that Cluniac customs were completely adhered to. Even the Cluniacs themselves did not expect as much of newly affiliated communities: for instance, a copy of the customary sent presumably from Cluny to the Flemish abbey of Saint-Bertin at the very beginning of the twelfth century actually contained a letter instructing the recipients not to be excessive in their ambition to imitate Cluny's example.Footnote 18 Another point worth considering is that it would be wrong to conclude that Bernard acted as orchestrator, behind the scenes, of the 1131 meeting, or that William was his de facto representative. Although Bernard was unquestionably interested in being involved in the region's ecclesiastical politics and wanted to stamp further developments in monastic discipline and institutionalism with his personal vision, by the later 1120s he had grown increasingly wary of engaging in the small-time politics of Benedictine institutionalism. In one of his letters he expressed regret over an earlier intervention in support of Alvisus’ candidate for the abbatial throne of Saint-Sépulchre.Footnote 19 And referring to his participation in the 1128 synod at Arras, in the heart of the region and close to Alvisus’ home institution, he claimed that he had been ‘dragged’ there.Footnote 20 Perhaps Bernard feared that becoming too implicated in the region's Benedictine houses, especially those that had been recently reformed, would jeopardise his own movement's success with episcopal and secular patrons. The Cluniac reform of many institutions in this region during the first decades of the twelfth century was closely tied to the desire of lay and ecclesiastical lords to reorganise the power networks around these monasteries,Footnote 21 and beyond any doubt all subsequent interventions in the development of such institutions were closely monitored by these parties.Footnote 22 Thus, when Bernard was invited to attend the second session of the General Chapter in Soissons in 1132, he referred to his busy schedule to decline the offer,Footnote 23 thereby possibly avoiding a mass conversion of Benedictine communities to the Cistercian mode of life, or a schism between the abbots and their patrons from the regional elites. It is also obvious that Bernard's fame and influence have been overstated by his modern biographers, because of his historical reputation and the preservation of abundant primary documents relating to his life and career. Other, less documented individuals and groups – in particular the Premonstratensians, but also local bishops and secular lords – played a role that was no doubt more direct, and more determinative, than Bernard's. Similar remarks could be made about assumptions regarding William of Thierry's dominant role in the 1131–2 meetings, the evidence for which is at best circumstantial.
Furthermore, while helpful in framing at least some of the issues addressed in the sources, neither of the scholarly interpretations of the 1131 General Chapter succeeds in providing a satisfactory explanation for the fact that the subsequent debate over what had been decided at the first meeting nearly descended into a literary shouting match. The novel nature of the decisions recorded in the 1131 statutes hardly warranted Matthew of Albano's impassioned plea:
Brothers, by God, return to your hearts, and consider carefully what you have said and what you have done. To impose silence, to shorten the psalmody, not to go out to do manual labour, what is this new law? What is this new doctrine? From where comes this new doctrine? From where comes this new rule? From where, I dare say, this new and unheard-of presumption? My dearest beloved, until now you had a good reputation, full of authority and grace; I ask you, do not make for yourselves a name of vanity and arrogance.Footnote 24
Some scholars have suggested that the fierce tone of the letter can be explained by the fact that Matthew had just been gravely ill, and was still in a frail state of mind when rumours of the 1131 meeting reached him. But the papal legate's letter to the monks is far too well conceived to have been written by a monk overcome by emotions, and its discourse seems to be designed specifically, with flattery and threats, to force the abbots into recognising the legitimacy and moral superiority of Cluny's model. Nor is it sufficient to dismiss the abbots’ 1132 letter as merely cynical or arrogant, for that would be to overlook the fact that they were acting in defence of a range of political, institutional and other interests. Three key factors need to be considered if the vehemence of the dispute is to be understood: Cluny's increasingly marginal role in international politics and the Church; timing, which proved nearly disastrous for the Cluniacs, in particular Abbot Peter the Venerable; and the broader interest groups with which the abbots at the 1131 meeting were involved.Footnote 25
Pope Innocent II, Peter the Venerable and the ‘Reims group of reformers’
Looming large over the events of 1131–2, and indeed over all that happened in the Western Church at the beginning of the 1130s, was the papal schism. When Pope Honorius ii died in February 1130, a small group of cardinals, led by papal chancellor and cardinal Haimeric, elected the future Innocent ii as the new pope; the other cardinals promptly elected Anacletus ii as counter-pope.Footnote 26 Innocent found himself with minority support, and during the late summer of the same year, he left for France. Peter the Venerable, on learning that Innocent had crossed the Alps to rally support for his cause, received him at Cluny with all due honours. Peter's actions had considerable political ramifications, and carried considerable risks. Since the late eleventh century, Cluny had been highly favoured by most popes – in fact, papal candidates were often recruited from there or were at least former monks. With the accession of Pope Calixtus ii (1119–24), this alliance had abruptly ended, and the papacy had adopted a less lenient position as regards exemptions.Footnote 27 The Worms Concordat of 1122, which Innocent had actually helped to negotiate, strengthened the papacy's resolve to take a tougher stance towards the Cluniacs, helped no doubt by the chaotic succession at Cluny itself during the years 1122–6.Footnote 28 When the majority of cardinals elected the former Cluniac monk Anacletus as pope, an opportunity presented itself to return the abbey to its former prominent position at the papal court. However, backing Anacletus’ candidacy would have isolated Cluny in relation to nearly all secular and ecclesiastical rulers north of the Alps.Footnote 29 Thus Peter had no choice but to support Innocent.
Innocent's visit did little to change the obvious fact that the Burgundian abbey and its leader would play but a marginal role, both literally and figuratively, in his campaign and in future papal politics. Innocent's ultimate destination, the archbishopric of Reims and the neighbouring diocese of Liège,Footnote 30 could hardly have surprised anyone, for in that region was concentrated the largest membership of a group of like-minded bishops and abbots whom Cardinal Haimeric and the papal legate Matthew of Albano had previously brought together in a series of ecclesiastical gatherings, organised in 1128 and 1129. Most important, it was a region where the ecclesia Cluniacensis was under-represented,Footnote 31 and where the emerging Cistercian and Premonstratensian movements were rapidly expanding, with several of the region's bishops acting as early supporters of both movements. This is reflected in the involvement of prominent representatives of these movements in Innocent's campaign: Bernard of Clairvaux, with the assistance of others, negotiated with Louis vi of France and Henry i of England; Norbert of Xanten, already archbishop of Magdeburg at that time, made the initial steps towards Emperor Lothar iii; and he and Bernard met at Liège in spring 1131 to negotiate the final deal over the emperor's allegiance to Innocent. Before going to Liège, Innocent and Bernard travelled on to Lobbes, where they stayed from 16 to 22 March;Footnote 32 after Easter, they visited Beauvais.Footnote 33 From 18 to 29 October of that year, the campaign's main protagonists gathered in Reims, where the results of their efforts were reviewed in the presence of the king of France and ‘a large number of archbishops, bishops, abbots and clerics’.Footnote 34 It was during or immediately after the council that Innocent called for a meeting of the region's Benedictine abbots; and with that move he made it patently clear that Cluny's hopes for the restoration of a privileged alliance with the papacy were in vain.Footnote 35 It seems beyond reasonable doubt that the tense correspondence between Matthew, who in the 1120s had actively promoted Peter's case at the papal court, and the Reims abbots reflects the tensions resulting from these developments.
In addition to Cluny's marginal position with regard to the papacy and reform movements within the Church, the timing and focus of Matthew of Albano's criticism suggests a direct relationship with recent events at Cluny itself. According to his letter, news of the Reims chapter reached Cluny via unspecified but disgruntled monks in the spring or summer of 1132.Footnote 36 Whether, as Matthew suggested, the Cluniacs had for nearly half a year been truly unaware of what had happened in the north cannot be securely established. It is possible that Pope Innocent's return to Cluny in early February of 1132 was the first occasion on which first-hand witnesses were available at the Burgundian abbey to relate what had happened at Reims.Footnote 37 But an altogether more plausible explanation for the timing of Matthew's response is Peter the Venerable's recent attempt to re-establish abbatial authority at Cluny. On 13 March 1132 Peter had called a major assembly of priors and monks, the first of its kind, where he proposed a number of measures designed to give the monks’ lifestyle a more sober aspect (more silence and fasting), and to focus more on devotion than on liturgy.Footnote 38 This meeting, the first of at least three to have taken place during Peter's tenure (others are documented for 1140, 1146/7[?] and 1150), was presented as a reform chapter.Footnote 39 Although, as Giles Constable has pointed out, the fundamental differences between the old and new model of monastic discipline were negligible,Footnote 40 Cluny's head felt compelled to adopt a discourse of renewal that echoed the criticisms of its detractors. Just as significant was Peter's formal acknowledgement – spurred on, no doubt, by the difficulties following Pontius’ abdication, the success of reformers like Bernard and Norbert, and Bernard's criticism of Cluny's exemption from episcopal authority – of the fact that, although legally speaking the abbot of Cluny had unlimited power over all associated institutions, in reality his abbots and priors were able to develop their own policies, and abbatial authority was always negotiated.Footnote 41 By proposing a formal procedure for this process of negotiation, Peter intended to preserve the unity of the Cluniac system and his own position as its supreme head. That these objectives rather than the ‘reform’ of monastic observance, were central to his intentions, became apparent when, upon finding that his priors thought his new precepts were too severe, he simply withdrew some of his proposals.Footnote 42
The fact that a group of abbots from ‘Clunicised’ institutions in Reims had taken a similar initiative less than five months earlier may have been a source of embarrassment, and may have added to the resentment caused by the missed opportunity to connect with Innocent. Not only did these abbots represent a part of Benedictine monasticism that was much closer to the papacy, but they also showed that it was possible to renew internal discipline by mutual agreement, and that they could reach that agreement in a setting where all participants were equals. Given Peter's failure to have his priors accept customs very similar to those presented in the Reims abbots’ statutes, Matthew's criticism of the latter could have been intended as a means of fostering feelings of restored unity and consensus among the Cluniacs. Thus Matthew's prickly reaction may in fact have been intended as much for a home audience as it was for the Reims abbots and their supporters, and have worked to deflect attention from Peter's failure to introduce new customs. According to the abbots’ reply in 1132, Matthew's fellow monks at Cluny had received his scathing comments with much hilarity,Footnote 43 an effect which may well have been intentional, given the circumstances.
When the Reims group of abbots learned of the contents of Matthew's letter, their reaction, drafted in the autumn of 1132, was one of profound irritation. They rejected outright Matthew's presumption to criticise their decisions: ‘we have’, they argued, ‘sworn not to the customs of Cluny, but to the Rule of St Benedict’.Footnote 44 The underlying reasons for this statement were multiple. To begin with, it constituted a criticism of Cluny's position of moral authority within Benedictine monasticism. While in the past the Burgundian abbey had represented a superior standard of monastic observance and government, the emergence of the Cistercians and Premonstratensians, with whom the Reims abbots were closely associated, had undermined this exclusive position. Secondly, the statement reflected their dismissal of Cluny's role as a vector of reform within the Church, and their preference for a coalition of reformist agents from a wide range of institutional backgrounds. Unsurprisingly, this coalition largely overlapped with the one that had been actively involved in Innocent's recent campaign, and whose members over the past decade had provided mutual assistance in promoting various forms of religious renewal. The case of Bishop Bartholomew of Laon illustrates how this coalition worked. Besides being involved in the appointment of at least six of the abbots present at the 1131 meeting,Footnote 45 Bartholomew relied on their support and that of Bernard of Clairvaux to promote the Premonstratensian movement. In 1124 Bernard, together with the abbots of Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois and Saint-Vincent, acted as witness to Bartholomew's transformation into a Premonstratensian house of the ailing monastic community of Saint-Martin in Laon.Footnote 46 Such activity on the bishop's part was to be expected: in 1119 the pope had instructed him to assist Norbert in founding the latter's first monastic community.Footnote 47 At the aforementioned synod of Arras in 1128, Bartholomew, along with Matthew of Albano and Bernard himself, was a noted presence.Footnote 48 Likewise, his colleague in Cambrai, Burchard, besides supporting the Benedictine houses in his diocese, was involved between 1124 and about 1128 in the foundation or ‘pre-foundation’ of at least six Premonstratensian institutions.Footnote 49 From 1119 Burchard's right-hand man, Hugo of Fosses (d. 1161), became increasingly involved in the affairs of Norbert and the abbey of Prémontré, and in 1128 succeeded Norbert as abbot there.Footnote 50
The abbots’ dismissal of Cluny's authority was also inspired by recent conflicts over the legal status of the institutions that had adopted its customs. At the turn of the twelfth century, the Cluniac customary had been introduced in the region via the abbey of Saint-Bertin, where Abbot Lambert (1095–1123) and Countess Clementia of Flanders initially submitted the abbey to Cluny's authority. Count Robert i of Flanders soon intervened to prevent Saint-Bertin's incorporation into Cluny's system, sparking a dispute over Cluny's overlordship that would continue for decades.Footnote 51 While Saint-Bertin's role in promoting reform was limited to a few neighbouring houses, from 1111 onwards Abbot Alvisus of Anchin, a former prior of Saint-Bertin, took the lead in the reform of nearly two dozen institutions in the dioceses of Arras, Cambrai, Soissons and Laon, either personally or through the action of his ‘disciples’.Footnote 52 Around the same time, Abbot Pontius of Cluny began campaigning to incorporate Saint-Bertin into Cluny's institutional structures, in accordance with the original 1099/1100 agreement. Sparking fierce opposition from the count, the castellan of Saint-Omer and Abbot Lambert, Pontius’ move rendered Saint-Bertin's juridical position uncertain until the matter was finally resolved in 1138.Footnote 53 The years following the death of the former Abbot Lambert in 1125, in particular, constituted a critical episode in the dispute. His successor John inadvertedly complicated the abbey's situation by travelling to Rome to request approval of his institution's status from Pope Anacletus; for this he was excommunicated by Innocent. This prompted the Cluniacs to reassert their claims over the abbey; since Saint-Bertin had been the first institution to be reformed, and since the Cluniac customs had been disseminated from there, in theory the question of its status also affected that of many other reformed institutions in the region. Fearing a spread of the legal dispute to all institutions that had recently adopted the customary, Alvisus began taking measures to transform his personal network – which connected many of the reformed institutions – into a more formalised, congregational ‘movement’. To achieve this aim he organised visitations of key monasteries, effectively compelling non-reformed houses to join, and reformed ones to adopt an explicitly anti-Cluniac stance. Thus, in 1128/29, he and several associated abbots (including Absalon of Saint-Amand) used brute force to eject Walter from the abbatial throne of Lobbes, replacing him in early 1131 with Leonius, one of Alvisus’ closest collaborators.Footnote 54 According to a later chronicler from that abbey, Leonius almost immediately began campaigning for a yearly meeting of Benedictine abbots.Footnote 55 No doubt he did not miss the opportunity to bring up his plans during Innocent's visit to his abbey, and no doubt all participants in the subsequent meeting at Reims were keenly aware of the acute legal issues underlying this initiative. Seven years later, the same Leonius, now abbot of Saint-Bertin, played a key role in resolving the dispute between that abbey and Cluny, and thus assisted in terminating a period of profound uncertainty for the Reims Benedictines and their patrons.Footnote 56
Founding an order?
According to modern commentators the obvious source of inspiration for the organisational concept underlying the 1131 meeting at Reims was the Cistercians' Carta caritatis prior (or prima), approved by Pope Calixtus in 1119. This document – the authenticity of which is notoriously disputedFootnote 57 – laid out the principle of decision-making by consensus. It guaranteed the unity of the movement, and the implementation of its particular vision of monastic discipline and liturgy, through the creation of a supra-institutional organ representing the members of the movement, as a cohesive body in legal and practical terms, as well as through a system of visitations.Footnote 58 In referring to this source of inspiration, scholars have disregarded the role of the Premonstratensians, with whom the Reims abbots were in fact more involved, both on an institutional and on a personal level, and whose situation as a movement at the time was transforming itself in ways that were very similar to those attempted by the Reims group. In 1126 Norbert's abdication as abbot of Prémontré had caused a crisis: not only had the emergent Norbertine movement been entirely focused on his leadership but, in effect, the abbey of Prémontré had also been his Eigenkloster.Footnote 59 Hugo of Fosse's proposal for a new regime, and a new identity, for the movement was founded on a model of consensual government based upon a gathering of abbots from individual monasteries, as represented in the Cistercian's Carta caritatis.Footnote 60 Although it does not seem that initially the date (later 9 October of each year), place (Prémontré) or even the nature of the meetings (a General Chapter with legislative power) were agreed upon, the first gathering of leaders of Premonstratensian houses appears to have taken place in 1130.Footnote 61 The statutes issued presumably to document this occasionFootnote 62 demonstrate that preparations were being made to establish permanent institutional structures for supervision and legislation.Footnote 63 Thus, shortly after Hugo and his fellow abbots had taken the first formal steps to avert the dissolutio of Norbert's movement,Footnote 64 so the Benedictine coalition in Reims was doing the same in order to establish itself as a cohesive response to Cluny's pretentions, and to present to the world a Benedictine alternative which relied on state-of-the-art modes of government and supervision. The fact that, in April 1131, Pope Innocent ii had issued a major privilege to the Premonstratensians, granting them the beati Petri patrocinium and the protection of the Holy See,Footnote 65 surely galvanised the Reims abbots’ interest in setting up a similar structure.
The rise of the Premonstratensians in the following years was rapid:Footnote 66 as early as May 1144 Innocent's successor Lucius ii recognised them as an ordo in the institutional sense of the word, denied archbishops and bishops the right to prevent abbots from participating in its General Chapter, and formally recognised this General Chapter as its legislative organ.Footnote 67 In contrast, the Reims abbots never made it to that stage, at least not in the twelfth century. No documentation is available for either the third Chapter, supposedly held in 1133,Footnote 68 or for the 1134 meeting, except for an inconclusive reference in the Anchin continuation of Sigebert of Gembloux's chronicle.Footnote 69 According to Ceglar, a crisis occurred when, in the summer of 1135, Thierry resigned as abbot of Saint-Thierry and, later that year, entered the Cistercian house of Signy.Footnote 70 At their meeting in October 1135 the abbots sent a letter asking for papal support; the reply, dated November of that same year, approved of their initiative, but hardly as explicitly as they must have hoped. For one thing, the pope addressed them not as a cohesive movement, but as leaders ‘coming together in the name of the Lord, and … gathered (congregatis) in the same spirit’.Footnote 71 Secondly, while he acknowledged and approved of their initiative to meet on a yearly basis, and of their taking joint decisions ‘to preserve the monastic ordo, and to correct brothers according to the Rule of St Benedict and the other rules of the Holy Fathers’,Footnote 72 he did not mention the statutes – an official version of the 1131 statutes may not even have existed – and did not refer to the assembly as a body for legislation and supervision.Footnote 73 Most important, his use of the word ordo in the text, in contrast with his 1131 privilege for the Premonstratensians, appears to refer to the older, non-institutional meaning of the word. All in all, the pope's letter changed little about the way in which the ‘Chapter’ functioned and did not help to resolve the problem that its set-up was basically flawed. All abbots remained effectively independent, no law code was established, and little was done to supervise the execution of any of the decisions taken jointly.Footnote 74
There is substantive evidence to suggest that, in subsequent years, the initiative of the Reims abbots was considered a failure, especially so by its participants and their supporters. Reconstruction of the monastic policies of Alvisus, then bishop of Arras, in the later 1130s and early 1140s reveals that he had given up on the abbots’ yearly meetings as an effective means of pursuing legal and disciplinary union, and was intent on substituting his own diocesan synod to supervise the observance of the reformers’ decisions. The violent conflicts that he had with the leadership of several monasteries, and even several of his former associates and ‘disciples’, reveal how little consensus existed among the leadership of Benedictine houses in the region about the need for such a supervisory institution in the first place. In the early 1140s Pope Innocent repeatedly intervened in favour of abbots resisting Alvisus’ plans.Footnote 75 Documentation concerning further meetings of the ‘Reims group’ suggests that they soon lost their yearly character: Berlière identified meetings for 1154/58, 1159/62 and 1170.Footnote 76 Of the first two, we only know that the abbots appealed each time to the then-current pope (Adrian iv and Alexander iii, respectively) to intervene against Abbot Rodulphus of Lagny-sur-Marne, whose bad example was allegedly corrupting his monks.Footnote 77 In the two letters that they sent, they identified themselves as ‘the humble convent (conventus) of abbots under the archiepiscopate of Reims’, testifying to the fact that they had hardly been successful in previous years in presenting themselves as either a true order, a congregation, or even a formal assembly with legislative and executive aspirations.
There may, however, have been an unexpected glimmer of hope when an opportunity presented itself to establish a prayer fraternity with the Premonstratensians. The abbreviated text of such an agreement, concluded ‘between [the above] abbots and those of the ordo of Prémontré’, surfaced in 2000, when Jean-Pierre Gerzaguet located it at the end of the Marchiennes copy of the 1131 statutes.Footnote 78 Despite the fact that in the first sentence it refers only to the Premonstratensians as an ordo, further on it states that both parties agreed to commemorate, on the Feast of St Chrysogonus (24 November), the deceased brothers of each respective ordo. But appearances are deceptive, for while the agreement reveals the Premonstratensians’ growing self-awareness as an institutionalised order, it tells little about the situation of the Reims abbots. In 1140 and October 1142, the Premonstratensians concluded similar agreements with, respectively, the CluniacsFootnote 79 and the Cistercians,Footnote 80 and while the agreement with the Reims abbots is clearly a synopsis of a longer document, its vocabulary clearly matches the agreement with Cluny. This suggests the Premonstratensians’ use of a generic text for at least two different agreements, and thus may not have any significance at all for our understanding of the (self-)perception of the Reims group. This happens to be significant not just for an understanding – or lack thereof – of the evolution of the Reims group and the Premonstratensians (who are clearly identified in all three documents as an ordo), but could actually offer new arguments in the debate over the origins of the Cistercians as an institutionalised movement. The authenticity of the 1142 agreement with the Cistercians has been the subject of fierce debate among scholars, resulting in a published discussion that is essentially a subsidiary one to the debate concerning the origins of the Cistercian order and the authenticity of the ‘primitive’ (pre-1170) Cistercian documentation. Thus it is unsurprising to find that Constance Berman has rejected the accepted dating of the agreement, arguing that the fact that the Cistercians are identified as an ordo is a clear pointer to its origins in later times,Footnote 81 while Chrysogonus Waddell has taken the opposite view;Footnote 82 neither author has however managed to suggest a satisfying way to resolve the debate. The discovery of the fraternity agreement between the Premonstratensians and the Reims abbots may be helpful in this sense, in that it suggests that the then current use of the word ordo encompassed multiple definitions, not all of which were necessarily institutional. This helps to answer Berman's main criticism of the 1142 document's authenticity (namely that the Cistercians were not, and did not see themselves as, an ordo as defined by late twelfth-century standards) without making it necessary to reject her scepticism over the Cistercians’ existence as an ordo prior to 1170.Footnote 83 It should, however, be noted that the phrasing, vocabulary and actual contents of the Cistercian agreement are very different from those found in the other two, which do show distinct similarities, are in a much simpler style, and are much more limited in their implications. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the original texts were not (or not all of them) drafted by the Premonstratensians, but by at least two of their respective partners. It certainly seems reasonable to surmise that Bernard of Clairvaux himself would have had a strong interest in actively participating in the drafting of such an agreement.Footnote 84 Or perhaps we are looking at a reworked version of an agreement originally concluded in 1142; however, even then the argument that the word ordo speaks against the existence of such an agreement at that time seems unacceptable in light of what we have observed about the agreement with the Reims abbots.
Certainly any suggestion that the Reims abbots belonged to, or even considered themselves as belonging to, an actual institutionalised ordo can be safely relegated to the realm of fantasy. Until Pope Innocent iii created the Benedictine General Chapters in 1215, their association would remain a mere conventus, an informal gathering of abbots, with no real power, no legal meaning and, most important, no discourse likely to support the creation of a shared identity. About a decade after the agreement with the Premonstratensians, the monks of Saint-Thierry independently concluded a prayer fraternity with those of Cluny. And if that were not enough to demonstrate the definitive failure of the 1131 initiative, in 1160 they concluded one with former co-participants, the monks of Saint-Vaast in Arras.Footnote 85 Such individual initiatives, many of which would follow, showed that the conventus of Reims abbots had dissolved, and that if there ever had existed between them anything resembling the early Cistercians’ caritas, it had soon evaporated.Footnote 86
The shortcomings of the Benedictines' first ‘General Chapter’ – no true legislative or executive power, and no effective supervision – unquestionably contributed to that body's failure to develop into an effective instrument of monastic supervision, or to sustain itself as an annual gathering beyond the first five years of its existence. But as this article has tried to show, this ‘failure’ did not derive from a failure to emulate a ‘model’ proposed by the Cistercians or Premonstratensians, for in the early 1130s these groups themselves were far from being established as institutionalised movements. Rather, the ‘failure’ springs from the conditions in which the Reims assembly was first organised – these conditions were too specific, and depended upon alliances that were too ephemeral, to guarantee the continued relevance of its meetings. Resentment of Cluny's legal and moral pretensions; a certain yearning for renewal in monastic life; peer pressure and encouragement from supporters and representatives of the rapidly growing Cistercian and Premonstratensian movements; coalition-forming around the disputed papal election; and the hot-headedness and sheer ambition of several abbots and other leaders involved: this mixture of motives was strong, but eventually too dependent upon transient factors to guarantee any long-term future for the initiative.
