The importance of Rouen as a commercial and industrial centre was not, however, dependent upon its form of government. Its ancient gild of cordwainers had been recognized by Henry I and Stephen, its trading privileges were confirmed in one of the earliest charters of Henry II. Save for a single ship yearly from Cherbourg, the merchants of Rouen had a monopoly of trade with Ireland; in England they could go through all the markets of the land; in London they were quit of all payments save for wine and great fish and had exclusive rights in their special wharf of Dowgate. Later in Henry’s reign they were even freed of all dues throughout his dominions. Only a citizen might take a shipload of merchandise past Rouen or bring wine to a cellar in the town. Besides the great trade in wine we hear of dealings in leather, cloth, grain, and especially salt and salt fish. Under Henry II the ducal rights over the town were worth annually more than 3,000 livres. Apart from their share in this general prosperity, the citizens had special exemptions in the matter of duties and tolls on goods which they brought in, while the freedom from feudal restraints which characterized all burgage tenures put a premium upon their holding of property. Besides the privileged areas belonging to the cathedral and the neighboring abbeys, a foothold in the city was valued by others: the bishop of Bayeux had a town house; the abbot of Caen prized a cellar and an exemption from wine-dues which he owed to the generosity of William the Conqueror; the clerks and chaplains of the king’s household took advantage of their opportunities to acquire rents and houses at Rouen, as well as at London and Winchester.
Unfortunately no one has left us in this period a description of the busy life of Rouen such as Fitz Stephen has given of contemporary London, and it is only with the imagination that we can bring before our eyes the ships at their wharves with their bales of marten-skins from Ireland and casks of wine from Burgundy and the south, the fullers and dyers, millers and tanners plying their trades along the Eau de Robec, the burgesses trafficking in the streets and the cathedral close, the royal clerks and serjeants hastening on their master’s business. Still more to be regretted is the disappearance of those material remains of its ancient splendor which until the last century retained the form and flavor, if not the actual wood and stone, of the mediæval city. To-day scarcely anything survives above ground of the Rouen of the dukes—of its walls and gates, destroyed by Philip Augustus, of the castle by the river, with the tower from which Henry I threw the traitor Conan and the great hall and rooms renewed by his grandson, of the stone bridge of the Empress Matilda, of the royal park and palace across the Seine at Quevilly. Only the great St. Romain’s tower of the cathedral and an early bit of the abbey-church of Saint-Ouen still body forth the unbroken continuity of the Norman past.
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The Norman church throughout the period of our study stands in the closest relation to the general conditions of Norman society. The monasteries and churches of the region had been almost completely wiped out by the northern invasions, and while the Northmen soon adopted the religion of their new neighbors, it was many years before ecclesiastical life and discipline again reached the level of the other dioceses of France. As late as the year 1001 a Burgundian monk reported that there was hardly a priest in Normandy who could read the lessons or say his psalms correctly. The prelates led the life of the great feudal families of which they were members, distributing the property of the church as fiefs to their friends or gifts to their numerous progeny; and the lower clergy, for the most part married, sought to pass on their benefices to their children. In the course of the eleventh century, however, more canonical standards began to prevail, largely through the influence of the monks of Cluny. Older foundations like Fécamp were renewed, and the Norman lords soon began to vie with one another in the endowment of new monastic establishments. To the half-century which preceded the Conquest of England we can trace the beginnings of twenty important monasteries and six nunneries, not counting priories and smaller foundations, a movement for which contemporaries could find no parallel short of the palmy days of monasticism in Roman Egypt. In course of time the monastic ideal reacted upon the secular clergy, and the monastic schools raised the level of learning throughout the duchy, until provincial councils succeeded in establishing the celibacy of the priesthood and the stricter discipline of Rome. In all this movement for reform the dukes took a leading part, inviting the reformers to their courts, aiding in the foundation and restoration of cloisters, and lending their strong support to the efforts for moral improvement in the secular clergy. They also asserted their supremacy over the Norman church, presiding in its councils, revising the judgments of its courts, appointing and investing its bishops and abbots. Moreover, while ready to coöperate with the moral ideas of the Papacy, they resisted all attempts at papal interference in Norman affairs. When Alexander II sought to restore an abbot whom William the Conqueror had deposed, the duke replied that he would gladly receive papal legates in matters of faith and doctrine, but would hang to the tallest oak of the nearest forest any monk who dared to resist his authority in his own land. William’s resistance was equally firm in the case of Gregory VII, who failed completely in his efforts at direct action in William’s dominions. Nowhere on the Continent, concludes Böhmer,[52] was there at this time a country where the prince and his bishops were so energetic in the suppression of simony and violations of clerical vows; nowhere was the church so completely subject to the secular government.
The most prominent figure in the Norman church of the eleventh century, Odo, for nearly fifty years bishop of Bayeux, was far from fulfilling the stricter ideal of a prelate’s life. Half-brother of the Conqueror through their mother Arlette, he received the bishopric as a family gift at the tender age of fourteen and became thereby one of the greatest princes of Normandy. His hundred and twenty knights’ fees furnished him a body of powerful vassals; his demesne gave him manors and forests for the support of his household, fuel for his fires and reeds and rushes for his hall, rents and tithes at Caen and the monopoly of the mill at Bayeux, tolls and fines and market rights which produced a considerable income in ready money. For the invasion of England he is said to have offered a hundred ships, and he took an active part in the battle of Hastings, swinging a huge mace in place of spear and sword, since the shedding of blood was forbidden to an ecclesiastic. In the distribution which followed, Odo received large estates in the southeast, as well as the earldom of Kent and the custody of Dover Castle, and he seems to have ruled his lands with a heavy hand both as earl and as regent in William’s absence. It even became his ambition to succeed the mighty Hildebrand as Pope, and he had already spent considerable sums at Rome when William, accusing him of tyranny and oppression, put him in prison, answering his assertion of ecclesiastical privilege with the statement that he imprisoned, not the bishop of Bayeux, but the earl of Kent. There he languished for five years till William on his death-bed, against his better judgment, released him for ten years more of rule in Normandy. Yet, though Odo’s eulogists admit that he was given overmuch to worldly ambition, the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life, they tell us of his vigorous defence of his clergy by arms as well as by eloquence, of the young men of promise whom he supported in the schools of Lorraine and other centres of foreign learning, of the journey to Jerusalem on which he met his death, of the great cathedral which he built in honor of the Mother of God and adorned with gold and silver and probably with the very Bayeux Tapestry which is the chief surviving monument of his magnificence.
With the twelfth century the type changes. To the monastic historian a bishop like Philip d’Harcourt, likewise of the see of Bayeux, may appear wise in the wisdom of this world which is foolishness with God,[53] but his wisdom shows itself in frequent journeys to Rome and persistent litigation in the duke’s courts, not in battles and sieges, and he owes his appointment to his influence as Stephen’s chancellor and not to blood relationship. Arnulf of Lisieux is another royal officer, versatile, insinuating, shifty, anything but truthful if we may believe his fellow-bishops, but proud of his Latin style and his knowledge of law and prodigal of letters to the Pope. Their contemporaries continue to owe their promotion to service as chaplains or chancellors to the king, but they also have an eye toward Rome and must be canonists as well as secular officials. The contrast between Becket the king’s chancellor and Becket the archbishop of Canterbury is symptomatic of the new age, although the conflict to which it led affected Normandy but indirectly. Relations with the lay power which once rested on local Norman custom come to be formulated in the sharper terms of the canon law of the universal church; appeals to Rome and instructions from Rome increase rapidly in volume and importance; the Norman clergy attend assemblies of the clergy of neighboring lands; and by the end of the Plantagenet period the Norman church is ready to be absorbed into the church of France.
Respecting the daily life and conversation of the cathedral and parish clergy the twelfth century is silent, save for the condemnations of particular evils in the councils of the province. From the middle of the thirteenth century, however, Normandy furnishes us, in the diary of visitations kept by the archbishop of Rouen, Eudes Rigaud, a picture of manners and morals which for authenticity and fulness of detail has probably no parallel in mediæval Europe; and one is tempted to carry back two or three generations his description of the canons of Rouen wandering about the cathedral and chatting with women during service, the nuns of Saint-Sauveur with their pet dogs and squirrels, and those of other convents celebrating the festival of the Innocents with dance and song and unseemly mirth, the monks of Bocherville without a Bible among them to read. It is hard to believe that there was anything new in the disorders which this upright archbishop chronicles place by place and year by year—ignorance, drunkenness, and incontinence among the parish and cathedral clergy, lax discipline, loose administration, and neglect of learning in the monasteries and nunneries. What was old in the time of Rabelais was probably old in the thirteenth century, and there is abundant evidence of abuses in the mediæval church, in Normandy and elsewhere. What we want most to know is how general these abuses were and how many there were to counteract them like Chaucer’s ‘povre persoun of a toun,’ who taught “Cristes lore and his apostles twelve,” but first “folwed it himselve.” Data of this sort are always lacking in sufficient amount for any moral statistics, and they must be supplemented and interpreted by the evidence which has reached us of popular piety and devotion. Such are the processions of priest and people throughout the diocese to the cathedrals at Whitsuntide, the miraculous cures of disease by Our Lady of Coutances, and the extraordinary burst of contrition, religious enthusiasm, and zeal for good works which broke forth at the building of the spires of Chartres in 1145 and spread throughout the length and breadth of Normandy. Forming associations of those who confessed their sins, received penance, and reconciled themselves with their enemies, the faithful harnessed themselves to carts filled with stone, timber, food, and whatever might help the churches which they sought to serve, and drew them long miles until they seemed to fulfill the saying of the prophet, “the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.” The abbot of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, to whom we owe our fullest account of the movement, tells us of these processions:[54]
When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but the confession of sins and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtain pardon. At the voice of the priests preaching peace hatred is forgotten, discord thrown aside, debts are remitted, the unity of hearts is established. But if any one is so far advanced in evil as to be unwilling to pardon an offender or obey the pious admonition of the priest, his offering is instantly thrown from the wagon as impure, and he himself is ignominiously and shamefully excluded from the society of the holy. There, as a result of the prayers of the faithful, one may see the sick and infirm rise whole from their wagons, the dumb open their mouths to the praise of God, the possessed recover a sane mind. The priests who preside over each wagon are seen exhorting all to repentance, confession, lamentations, and the resolution of a better life, while old and young and even little children, prostrate on the ground, call on the Mother of God and utter to her, from the depth of their hearts, sobs and sighs, with words of confession and praise.... After the faithful resume their march to the sound of trumpets and the display of banners, the journey is so easy that no obstacle can retard it.... When they have reached the church, they arrange the wagons about it like a spiritual camp, and during the whole of the following night the army of the Lord keeps watch with psalms and canticles, tapers and lamps are lighted on each wagon, and the relics of the saints are brought for the relief of the sick and the weak, for whom priests and people in procession implore the clemency of the Lord and his Blessed Mother. If healing does not follow at once, they cast aside their garments, men and women alike, and drag themselves from altar to altar ... begging the priests to scourge them for their sins.
At the close of the Angevin period there were in Normandy something like eighty monasteries and convents, not counting the numerous cells and priories, as, for example, the various dependencies of the great abbey of Marmoutier at Tours. These were chiefly Benedictine foundations, though the newer movements of the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and Augustinians were well represented, the only distinctively Norman order, the Congregation of Savigny, having been early absorbed by the Cistercians. The oldest of these establishments were at the two extremes of the duchy, Mont-Saint-Michel at one end and Jumièges, Saint-Wandrille, Saint-Ouen and Fécamp at the other; but the distribution was speedily equalized, and the great abbeys of the centre, Bec and Caen and Saint-Évroul, were soon known throughout Europe. The conquest of England opened a new field for monastic influence: twenty Norman monasteries had received lands in England by the time of the Domesday survey, and the number was considerably greater when the holdings of alien priories were confiscated at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Mont-Saint-Michel, for example, had a priory in Cornwall as well as one at LeMans, and its lands in Maine, Brittany, and various parts of England did not allay its desire for more whenever opportunity offered. For a period of five years, from 1155 to 1159 inclusive, we have a record of the activity of its abbot, Robert of Torigni, in relation to the monastery’s property, and a very instructive record it is. It takes him to England and the Channel Islands, to the king’s assizes at Gavrai, Domfront, Caen, and Carentan, to the courts of the bishops of Avranches, Coutances, and Bayeux, and to that of the archbishop at Rouen; proving his rights, compromising, exchanging, purchasing, receiving by gift or royal charter; picking up here a bit of land, there a mill, a garden, a vineyard, a tithe, a church, to add to the lands and rents, mills and forests, markets and churches and feudal rights which he already possessed. There are also various examples of loans on mortgage, for the monasteries were the chief source of rural credit in this period, and as the land with its revenues passed at once into the possession of the mortgagee, the security was absolute, the annual return sure, and the chances of ultimate acquisition of the property considerable. With the resources of the monastery during his administration of thirty-two years Abbot Robert was able to increase the number of monks from forty to sixty, to enlarge the conventual buildings, in which he entertained the kings of England and of France, and to add a great façade to the abbey-church, a contribution to the massive pile of the Marvel which we are no longer privileged to behold. He also labored for the intellectual side of the monastery’s life, restoring the library and enlarging it by a hundred and twenty volumes, and composing a variety of works on historical subjects which make him the chief authority for half a century of Norman history.
There is, however, not much concerning monasteries in Robert’s chronicle, and even his special essay on the history of the Norman abbeys is confined to externals. Perhaps he was cumbered about much serving; more probably he saw nothing worthy of the historian’s pen in the inner life of the institution. When the abbot had a new altar dedicated or renewed the reliquaries of St. Aubert and St. Lawrence, that was worth setting down, but the daily routine of observance was the same at Mont-Saint-Michel as in the other Benedictine foundations, and has remained substantially unchanged through the centuries of monastic history. At any rate no monkish Boswell has done for Normandy what Jocelin of Brakelonde did for contemporary England in that vivid picture of life at Bury St. Edmund’s which Carlyle has made familiar in his Past and Present. A monk of Saint-Évroul, it is true, did a much greater thing in the Historia Ecclesiastica of Ordericus Vitalis, but he was an historian, not a Boswell, and his experience of half a century of monastic life lies embedded deep in the five solid volumes of this wide-ranging work. One phase of the religious life of mediæval monasteries is admirably illustrated in Normandy, namely the mortuary rolls of the members and heads of religious houses. It early became the custom, not only to say prayers regularly for the departed members and benefactors of such a community, but to seek the suffrages of associated communities or of all the faithful. To that end an encyclical was prepared setting forth the virtues of the deceased and was carried by a special messenger from convent to convent, each establishment indicating the prayers which had there been said and adding the names of the brothers for whom prayers were solicited in return. The two most considerable documents of this sort which have come down to us are of Norman origin, the roll of Matilda, the first abbess of Holy Trinity at Caen, and that of Vitalis, founder of the Congregation of Savigny, which belongs to the year 1122 and is the oldest manuscript of this type extant in its original form, with all the quaint local varieties in execution. Each of these was carried throughout the greater part of England and of northern and central France, reaching in the first case two hundred and fifty-three different monasteries and churches, in the second two hundred and eight, and as the replies were often made at some length in prose or verse, they constitute a curious monument of the condition of culture in the places visited.