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ODO OF BAYEUX.

209

the land, the man who won a larger share of English CHAP. VIII. hatred than William himself, the man whose career of wrong was at last cut short by his royal brother, who, 1086. stern and unscrupulous as he was, at least took no pleasure in deeds of wanton oppression. Of Odo's boundless ambition and love of enterprise there is no doubt. The one quality led him to aspire to the Papal throne;1 the other led him first to forsake his diocese to rule as an Earl in England, and then to forsake it again to follow his nephew Duke Robert to the first Crusade. That he was no strict observer of ecclesiastical rules in his own person is shown by the fact that he left behind him a son, on whom however he at least bestowed the ecclesiastical name of John.2 Still Norman ecclesiastical history sets Odo before us in and in Normandy. a somewhat fairer light than that in which we see him in English secular history. He at least possessed the episcopal virtue of munificence, and, whatever were the defects of his own conduct, he seems to have been an encourager of learning and good conversation in others. He was bountiful to all, specially to those of his own spiritual household. He rebuilt his own church at Bayeux, His works at Bayeux. where parts of his work still remain. The lower part of The the lofty towers of the western front, the dim and solemn cathedral crypt beneath the choir, of that stately and varied cathedral, crated, are relics of the church reared by its most famous Bishop. These precious fragments, severe but far from rude in style, form a striking contrast to the gorgeous arcades which in the next century succeeded Odo's nave, and to the soaring choir and apse raised by a still later age. Besides renewing the fabric, he increased the number of the clergy of

1 Ord. Vit. 646 D. Here Odo is "præsumptor episcopus, cui principatus Albionis et Neustriæ non sufficiebat.'

2 Ib. 665 A. Up to this time scriptural names seem to have been hardly more usual in Normandy than in England. The sons of Archbishop Robert bore names of the usual Teutonic type, but his successor Malger called his son Michael. Ib. 566 D.

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conse

1077.

CHAP. VIII. his church, and founded or enriched a monastery in the

Ecclesiastical move

foundation

teries.

outskirts of the city, in honour of Saint Vigor, a canonized predecessor in the see of Bayeux. The name of Odo is one which will be found constantly recurring in this history, from the day when his Bishop's staff and warrior's mace were so successfully wielded against the defenders of England, till the day when he went forth to wield the same weapons against the misbelievers of the East, and found on his road a tomb, far from the heavy pillars and massive arches of his own Bayeux, among the light and gorgeous enrichments with which the art of the conquered Saracen knew how to adorn the palaces and churches of the Norman lords of Palermo.2

But though the appointments of Malger and Odo ment in might bode but little good for the cause of ecclesiastical Normandy; reformation, it is certain that a great movement was at of monas- this time going on in the interior of the Norman Church. The middle of the eleventh century was, in Normandy, the most fruitful æra of the foundation of monasteries. The movement in that direction, which had begun under Richard the Fearless, was continued under Richard the Good, and it seems to have reached its height under Robert and William. A Norman noble of that age thought that his estate lacked its chief ornament, if he failed to plant a colony of monks in some corner of his possessions.3

1 On these works of Odo see Will. Gem. vii. 17; Ord. Vit. 665 A. Orderic's words might seem to assert a more complete rebuilding of the cathedral than those of William. Orderic says, "Ecclesiam sanctæ Dei genitricis Mariæ a fundamentis cœpit, eleganter consummavit." William has only, "Pontificalem ecclesiam in honorem sanctæ Dei genitricis Mariæ novam auxit." Perhaps this means that he rebuilt it on a larger scale. It was consecrated, like many other Norman churches, in 1977. Ord. Vit. 548 D. Compare the many dedications of English churches in 1258. See Matt. Paris, 449, 481, Wats. 2 Ord. Vit. 765 C.

Ord. Vit. 460 A. "Quisque potentum se derisione dignum judicabat, si clericos aut monachos in suâ possessione ad Dei militiam rebus necessariis non sustentabat." So also Will, Gem. vii. 22. "Unusquisque optimatum

MONASTIC MOVEMENT IN NORMANDY.

211

of the mo

No doubt the fashion of founding monasteries became, in CHAP. VIII. this case, as in other cases earlier and later, little more than a mere fashion. Many a man must have founded a religious house, not from any special devotion or any special liberality, but simply because it was the regular thing for a man in his position to do. And as an age of founding monasteries must also be an age in which men are unusually eager to enter the monastic profession, we may infer that many men took that profession on them out of mere imitation or prevalent impulse, without any true personal call to the monastic life. Still, though move- Character ments of this sort may end in becoming a mere fashion, nastic rethey never are a mere fashion at their beginning. The in various Norman Benedictine movement in the eleventh century, ages. the English Cistercian movement in the twelfth century, the still greater movement of the Friars in the thirteenth century-we may add the revulsion in favour of the Seculars in the fourteenth century, and the great Jesuit movement in the sixteenth-all alike point to times when all classes of men were dissatisfied with the existing state of the Church, and were filled with a general desire for its reformation.2 The evil in every case was that the monastic reformations were never more than temporary. Some new

foundations were created, perhaps even some old ones were reformed; the newly kindled fire burned with great fervour for a generation or two; a crop of saints arose, with

certabat in prædio suo ecclesias fabricare, et monachos qui pro se Deum rogarent rebus suis locupletare." Each adds a long list of the foundations of the time. The expressions "clerici" and "ecclesias fabricare" would seem to apply to parish churches also. But not many parish churches of so early a date exist in Normandy. The great mass seem to have been built or rebuilt in the next century.

1 This seems recognized by William of Jumièges (vii. 22). Roger of Montgomery founded monasteries, "indignans videri in aliquo inferior suis comparibus."

Compare the remarks of Giraldus on the characters of the different orders in his time. It. Kamb. i. 3 (p. 41 Dimock).

formations

CHAP. VIII. their due supply of legends and miracles. But presently

Two monasteries claiming special notice,

Bec and

Saint Evroul. Three Archbishops

Bec;

1070-1089.

love again waxed cold; the new foundations fell away like the elder ones, and the next age saw its new order arise, to run the same course of primitive poverty and primitive holiness, degenerating into wealth, indolence, and corruption. Still there is a special charm in beholding the early years, the infant struggles, the simple and fervent devotion, of one of these religious brotherhoods in the days of its first purity. And, among the countless monasteries which arose in Normandy at this time, there are two which call for special notice at the hands of an historian whose chief aim is to connect the history of Normandy with that of England. The famous Abbey of Bec became the most renowned school of the learning of the time, and, among the other famous men whom it sent of Canter- forth, it gave three Primates to the throne of Augustine. bury from Thence came Lanfranc, the right hand man of the ConLanfranc, queror the scholar whose learning drew hearers from all Christendom, and before whose logic the heretic stood abashed-the courtier who could win the favour of Kings without stooping to any base compliance with their willthe ruler whose crozier completed the conquest which the ducal sword only began, and who knew how to win the love of the conquered, even while rivetting their fetters. Anselm, Thence too came also the man of simple faith and holiness, the man who, a stranger in a strange land, could feel his heart beat for the poor and the oppressed, the man who braved the wrath of the most terrible of Kings in the cause at once of ecclesiastical discipline and of moral righteousness. Such are the truest claims of Anselm to the reverence of later ages, but it must not be forgotten that, if Bec sent forth in Lanfranc the great reformer of ecclesiastical discipline, it sent forth also in his successor the father of the whole dogmatic theology of later times. The third Metropolitan who found his way from Bec to

1093-1109.

ABBEYS OF BEC AND SAINT EVROUL.

Saint

213

Canterbury cannot compete with the fame of either of his CHAP. VIII. great predecessors; yet Theobald lives in history as the Theobald, 1139-1161. first to discern the native powers of one whose renown presently came to outshine the renown of Lanfranc and of Anselm. The early patron of Thomas the burgher's son of London may fairly claim some reflected share of the glory which surrounds the name of Thomas the Chancellor of England, the Primate and the Martyr of Canterbury. By the side of the house which sent forth men like these Ouche or the name of the other Norman monastery of which I speak Evroul. may seem comparatively obscure. Yet the Abbey of Ouche or Saint Evroul has its own claim on our respect. It was the spot which beheld the composition of the record from which we draw our main knowledge of the times following those with which we have immediately to deal; it was the The home home of the man in whom, perhaps more than in any other Vital. man, the characters of Norman and Englishman were inseparably mingled. There the historian wrote, who, though the son of a French father, the denizen of a Norman monastery, still clave to England as his country and gloried in his English birth—the historian who could at once admire the greatness of the Conqueror and sympathize with the wrongs of his victims, who, amid all the conventional reviling which Norman loyalty prescribed, could still see and acknowledge with genuine admiration the virtues and the greatness even of the perjured Harold.2 To have merely produced a chronicler may seem faint praise beside the fame of producing men whose career has

1 Ord. Vit. 547 C. "Ego de extremis Merciorum finibus decennis Angligena huc advectus, barbarusque et ignotus advena callentibus indigenis admixtus, inspirante Deo Normannorum gesta et eventus Normannis promere scripto sum conatus." So 548 A. " De Anglia in Normanniam tenellus exsul, ut æterno Regi militarem, destinatus sum." See also pp. 579-581. His father Odelerius was a priest of Orleans. Of the importance of these passages I shall have to speak again.

* See Orderic 492 B, and Appendix D.

of Orderic

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