Carolingian After-Images: Hariulf’s History of St Riquier and Its Context

ABSTRACT

Hariulf’s History of St Riquier is usually consulted for detail on liturgical, architectural and political history, but is rarely considered in its entirety. It was written in the changing and competitive world of the late eleventh century, when there were challenges for established communities, both in terms of innovative approaches to monasticism and the emergence of new political entities and potential patrons. In the past that Hariulf creates St Riquier had been the focal point of Ponthieu for generations and had stood the test of time as the conduit of royal patronage and liberality, symbolised by its great Carolingian church built by Abbot Angilbert. It remained, in Hariulf’s view, a centre of monastic excellence, whose abbots responded to and practised contemporary spirituality, and it had adopted strategies to strengthen its position, including care for its patrimony, securing new relics and memorialising its past.

KEYWORDS:

• Hariulf
• history-writing
• monastic self-representation
• Monasticism
• Ponthieu
• St Riquier

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to David Bates for his advice during the drafting of this article.

Notes

¹ The modern scholarly edition is Hariulf, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier (v^e siècle – 1104), ed. Ferdinand Lot (Paris: Picard, 1894), supplemented by Ferdinand Lot, ‘Nouvelles recherches sur le texte de la “Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier”, par Hariulf’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 72 (1911): 245–70. An English translation is forthcoming, Hariulf’s ‘History of St Riquier’, trans. Kathleen Thompson. Manchester Medieval Sources Series (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024). References to Hariulf’s history are embedded in the text and take the form book in roman figures: chapter in arabic figures, followed by page number of Lot’s edition. St Riquier refers to the monastery, Saint-Riquier to the place.

² The medieval manuscript of Hariulf’s history containing the image was lost in a fire at the monastery in 1719, but three engravings had been made. The evidence on the engravings is reviewed in David Parsons, ‘The Pre-Romanesque Church of St-Riquier: The Documentary Evidence’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 130 (1977): 21–51.

³ The abbey’s fortunes reached their lowest ebb in the later fifteenth century during Louis XI’s wars and, after Maurist reform in the seventeenth century, it was eventually dissolved during the French Revolution, Saint-Riquier: Une grande abbaye bénédictine, dir. Aline Magnien (Paris: Picard, 2009).

⁴ Ian Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its Hagiography’, in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to John Taylor, eds. Ian Wood and Graham A. Loud (London: Hambledon, 1991): 1–14 (2).

⁵ ‘Écrire l’histoire des abbés de Mont Saint-Michel: 3 édition critique et traduction’, eds. Pierre Bouet et al. Tabularia: Sources Écrites des Mondes Normands Médiévaux 2019 https://doi.org/10.4000/tabularia.3773 (Accessed 1 January 2024); Ingrid Rembold, ‘History and (Selective) Memory: Articulating Community and Division in Folcuin’s Gesta abbatum Lobiensium’, in Writing the Early Medieval West: Studies in Honour of Rosamond McKitterick, eds. Elina Screen and Charles West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 64–79.

⁶ Rosamond McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 57 identifies ‘historical amalgamations’; ‘Chronicle-cartularies’ are described by Patrick Geary, ‘Entre gestion et gesta’, in Les Cartulaires: Actes de la table ronde, eds. Olivier Guyotjeannin, Laurent Morelle and Michel Parisse (Paris: École des Chartes, 1993), 13–26.

⁷ Felice Lifshitz, ‘Beyond Positivism and Genre: “Hagiographical” Texts as Historical Narratives’, Viator 25 (1994): 95–113.

⁸ Éliane Vergnolle, ‘Saint-Arnoul de Crépy: Un prieuré clunisien du Valois’, Bulletin monumental 141 (1983): 233–72 (264, note 5).

⁹ On Fleury, Robert-Henri Bautier, ‘La place de l’abbaye de Fleury-sur-Loire dans l’historiographie française du ix^e au xii^e siècle’, in Études ligeriennes d’histoire et d’archéologie médiévales, ed. René Louis (Auxerre: Société des Fouilles Archéologiques et des Monuments Historiques de l’Yonne, 1974), 25–33. On the archive, Laurent Morelle, ‘The Metamorphosis of Three Monastic Charter Collections in the Eleventh Century’, in Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Society, ed. Karl Heidecker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000): 171–204 (186–90).

¹⁰ The Liber pontificalis is recorded in the library catalogue attributed to 831 under the name Liber episcopalis (III: 3, 89); Les miracles de Saint-Benoît écrits par Adrevald, Aimoin, André, Raoul Tortaire et Hughes de Saint Marie, moines de Fleury, ed. Eugène de Certain (Paris: Renouard, 1858).

¹¹ Odorannus, Opera omnia, eds. Robert-Henri Bautier et al. (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1972). For earlier associations with St Colombe of Sens see III: 14, 125; III: 20, 142.

¹² It has been given detailed scrutiny and the building and the liturgy practised there have been linked to contemporary theological debates on the Trinity. Honoré Bernard, ‘Saint-Riquier: Une restitution nouvelle de la Basilique d’Angilbert’, Revue du Nord 71 (1989): 307–61 and references; Susan Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).

¹³ For interest in poor (IV: 8, 194); recovery of property (IV: 6, 188); for building (IV: 17, 217). the hymns (IV, 11, 202); other achievements including provision of liturgical vessels (IV: 17, 217) and for literary activities (IV, 8, 195–6). In the metalworking, Angelran resembles Odorannus of Sens, Odorannus, Opera: 16–25. See Steven Vanderputten, Imagining Religious Leadership in the Middle Ages: Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Politics of Reform (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 121–22, 148, 194–95.

¹⁴ Janet L. Nelson, ‘Public Histories and Private History in the Work of Nithard’, Speculum 60 (1985): 251–93; Dana M. Polanichka and Alex Cilley, ‘The Very Personal History of Nithard: Family and Honour in the Carolingian World’, Early Medieval Europe 22 (2014): 171–200. Book II of Hariulf’s History as we now have it, was modified in the interests of promoting Angilbert’s canonisation, defining the relationship of Charlemagne and Angilbert as father-in-law and son-in-law as the result of a marriage between Charlemagne’s daughter, Bertha, and Angilbert. See Lot, ‘Introduction’, in Hariulf, Chronique, xlviii–xlvii. There is no independent corroboration of this marriage, but the friendship between the emperor and Angilbert is well-attested.

¹⁵ David Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance. Beihefte der Francia 2. (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1990), 14–18; Michel Rouche, ‘La dotation foncière de l’abbaye de Corbie (657–661) d’après l’acte de fondation’, Revue du Nord 55 (1973): 219–26.

¹⁶ Constance Bouchard, ‘High Medieval Monks Contemplate their Merovingian Past’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 1 (2012): 41–62 (53).

¹⁷ For similar relic tours at Saint-Amand and Lobbes, see references in Steven Vanderputten, Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900–1100 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 163, note 50.

¹⁸ For discussion of abbatial commissioning of works of history, see Benjamin Pohl, Abbatial Authority and the Writing of History in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

¹⁹ Described as a portrait in vitriol, Laurent Morelle, ‘Les Chartes dans la gestion des conflits (France du Nord, XI^e-début XII^e siècle)’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 155 (1997): 267–98 (271, note 19).

²⁰ Julia M. H. Smith makes a case for Helisichar’s exclusion of women from the house as a response to Benedict’s initiative, ‘L’accès des femmes aux saintes reliques durant le haut Moyen Âge’, Médiévales 40 (2001): 83–100 (96); Jean Laporte, ‘Gérard de Brogne à Saint-Wandrille et à Saint-Riquier’, Revue bénédictine 70 (1960): 142–66; Alain Dierkens, Abbayes et chapitres entre Sambre et Meuse: Contribution à l’histoire religieuse des campagnes du Haut Moyen Âge. Beihefte der Francia 14 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1985), 239–40. See Steven Vanderputten and Brigitte Meijns, ‘Gérard de Brogne en Flandre: État de la question sur les réformes monastiques du dixième siècle’, Revue du Nord 385 (2010): 271–95 for a nuanced approach to the role of Gerard of Brogne.

²¹ Steven Vanderputten, ‘Crises of Cenobitism: Abbatial Leadership and Monastic Competition in Late Eleventh-century Flanders’, English Historical Review 127 (2012): 259–84 (261).

²² Gervin may have been appointed as an adiutor, see Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie 911–1066, ed. Marie Fauroux (Mémoires de la société des antiquaires de Normandie xxxvi, 1961), no. 12. For his associates, see IV: 15, 212.

²³  … nulla certa intimat narratio.. (III: 20, 140).

²⁴ For another example of social forgetting within a monastic history, Steven Vanderputten, ‘Individual Experience, Collective Remembrance and the Politics of Monastic Reform in High Medieval Flanders’, Early Medieval Europe 20 (2012): 70–89.

²⁵ Janet L. Nelson, ‘The Church’s Military Service in the Ninth Century: A Contemporary Comparative View’, Studies in Church History 20 (1983): 15–30; Jean-François Nieus, ‘Montreuil et l’expansion du comté du Flandre au X^e siècle’, in Quentovic: Environnement, archéologie, histoire:Actes du colloque international de Montreuil-sur-Mer, Étaples et Le Touquet et de la journée d’études de Lille sur les origines de Montreuil-sur-Mer, 11–13 mai 2006 et 1^er décembre 2006, eds. Stéphane Lebecq, Bruno Bethouart et Laurent Verslype (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Éditions du Conseil scientifique de l’Université Lille 3, [2010], 493–505; Kathleen Thompson, ‘The Perspective from Ponthieu: Count Guy and his Norman Neighbour’, in Anglo-Norman Studies XLIV: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2021, ed. Stephen Church (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022), 19–34 (22–24).

²⁶ On the politics of relic transfer, Edina Bozoky, ‘La Politique des reliques des premiers comtes de Flandre fin du IX^e siècle-fin du XI^e siècle’, in Les Reliques: Objets, cultes, symboles: Actes du colloque international de l’Universite´ du Littoral-Côte d’Opale Boulogne-sur-Mer 4–6 septembre 1997, eds. Edina Bozoky and Anne-Marie Helvetius (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 271–92; Brigitte Meijns, ‘The Policy on Relic Translations of Baldwin II of Flanders 879–918, Edward of Wessex 899–924 and Aethelflaed of Mercia d. 924: a Key to Anglo-Flemish Relations’, England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison 1876–1947, eds. David Rollason, Conrad Leyser and Hannah Williams (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 473–92.

²⁷ On the distinction between lay abbots and lay advocates, Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 118–19; on origins, Charles West, ‘The Significance of the Carolingian Advocate’, Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009): 186–206, and on the use of advocacy in West Francia, ‘Monks, Aristocrats, and Justice: Twelfth-Century Monastic Advocacy in a European Perspective’ Speculum 92 (2017): 372–404 (391).

²⁸ Thompson, ‘The Perspective from Ponthieu’.

²⁹ Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, manuscrit latin 10113, Obituaire de Saint-Vulfran, fol. 34: XI kal. Octobris. Obitus Ingeranni comitis, edificatoris hujus loci, quoted in Recueil des actes des comtes de Pontieu, ed. Clovis Brunel (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1930), iv.

³⁰ King Philip had granted legal title to the site, de terra nostra in loco qui dicitur Vetus castellaris quantum eis sufficiat ad faciendum monasterium (‘enough of our land in the place called the old castle for them to make the monastery’), Recueil des actes de Philippe I^er roi de France (1059–1108), ed. Maurice Prou. Chartes et diplômes relatifs à l’histoire de France (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1908), no. LXXIX.

³¹ Philippe Racinet. ‘Les prieurés clunisiens en Picardie au Moyen Age et au XVI^ème siècle’, Revue archéologique de Picardie n°4 (1982): 199–230.

³² For Guy’s acts, Recueil, ed. Brunel, nos VIII and IX, both in pancarte form dated 1100.

³³ These acts, which record concessions by Guy in return for an outlay by the monks, were republished in Recueil, ed. Brunel, nos IV and V. Guy also conceded all the customary exactions in Neuville on the occasion of Abbot Gervin I’s burial (IV: 36, 273).

³⁴ Thompson, ‘The Perspective from Ponthieu’, 32–3.

³⁵ Hariulf’s negotiating skills are analysed by Thomas Haye, Lateinische Oralität: Gelehrte Sprache in der mündlichen Kommunikation des hohen und späten Mittelalters (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 83–94.

³⁶ Lisiardus et Hariulfus, Vitae, Miracula, Translatio et alia Hagiographica sancti Arnulphi episcopi Suessionensis, ed. Renée Nip. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 28. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), xv-xvi, xxxi, 211–17.

³⁷ Ernst Müller, ‘Der Bericht des Abtes Hariulf von Oudenburg über seine Prozessverhandlungen an der römischen Kurie im Jahre 1141’, Neues Archiv 48 (1930): 101–15, translated by Bruce Brasington in Order in Court: Medieval Procedural Treatises in Translation (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 61–80. The attribution of Hariulf has recently been challenged, Thomas Ledru, ‘Saint-Riquier (VII^e-XI^e siècles): Histoire, mémoire, hagiographie’ (Thèse doctorale, Histoire, Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille III, 2019), 81–82, https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02563091 (Accessed 24 August 2022). For the networking, Claudia Zey, ‘Hariulf von Oudenburg und der usus curiae im Prozess vor Papst Innozenz II. (1141)’, in Stilus – Modus – Usus. Regeln der Konflikt – und Verhandlungsführung am Papsthof des Mittelalters / Rules of Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Papal Court in the Middle Ages, eds. Jessika Nowak and Georg Strack. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 44. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 97–117 (106–7).

³⁸ Renée Nip, ‘The Dispute of Hariulf of Oudenburg and the Abbey of Saint Médard: A Convenient Confusion of Names’, in Media Latinitas: A Collection of Essays to Mark the Occasion of the Retirement of L. J. Engels, ed. Renée Nip (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 275–80.

³⁹ St Riquier had lost the lands it had been given by Ralph the Staller by the time of the Domesday survey, Helen Cam, ‘The English Lands of the Abbey of Saint-Riquier’, English Historical Review 31 (1916): 443–47.

⁴⁰ Theodore Evergates, 'Historiography and Sociology in Early Feudal Society: The Case of Hariulf and the “Milites” of Saint–Riquier', Viator 6 (1975): 35–49 (46, n. 59); On Alcuin’s work, Michel Banniard, Viva voce: Communication écrite et communication orale du IV^e au IX^e siècle en Occident latin (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1992), 254–56.

⁴¹ Compare the ‘reshaping of valued materials to produce new forms’, detected at the abbey of Farfa by Susan Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 16.

⁴² Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), section 3.

⁴³ Nip, ‘The Dispute of Hariulf of Oudenburg’, 279.

⁴⁴ For similar suggestion, Parsons, ‘The Pre-Romanesque Church of St-Riquier’, 24–25, 38.

⁴⁵ Vanderputten, Monastic Reform, 21.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathleen Thompson

Kathleen Thompson is an independent scholar who holds a senior honorary research fellowship in the History Department of the University of Sheffield. Since the early 1990s she has written on the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and in 2014 published The Monks of Tiron with Cambridge University Press. Her translation of Hariulf’s History of St Riquier is in the press. She is the secretary of the Bristol Record Society https://bristolrecordsociety.org/