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1 Introduction In 1162, an anonymous monk from the Benedictine monastery of Lobbes, now in the Belgian province of Hainaut, compiled a history of his community from the final decades of the tenth century to the present.1 His account was modeled on the gesta abbatum, or deeds of abbots, a genre in which a monastery’s past was subdivided into sections that chronologically and thematically corresponded to the individual abbacies of its leaders. The length and contents of these sections in the chronicle of Lobbes vary greatly. The availability of sources, the interest to a contemporary audience of the events that were preserved in memory, and the author’s own preferences as a chronicler and an individual all played a role in shaping the narrative. In cases where the author had little to say, he padded his story with information taken from sources other than those documenting Lobbes’s institutional history. Among these parts of the chronicle, surely the most remarkable is the following passage: In the thirteenth year of his ordination, Ingobrand was thrown out of the abbacy by Wolbodo,. . . bishop of Liège,and it was decided that in his place Richard,the venerable abbot of Verdun,was to govern Lobbes 1. Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium continuata,ed. Arndt,308–33. On the history of Lobbes,see,among others, Warichez, Abbaye, and Dierkens, Abbayes, esp. 91–136. 2 INTRODUCTION as abbot. This he did laudably, as was revealed in all the exercises of holy religion. His authority was recognized as being such that almost all monasteries in Lotharingia observed his institutions as their law and transmitted them to future generations for preservation. During that same time Poppo of Stavelot and Stephen of Liège were recognized for having glorified the church with the same religious fervor. In the twelfth year of his government, Richard returned the abbacy in the hands of Bishop Reginhard.2 In this extract, the chronicler sends out conflicting messages, which are symptomatic of the difficulties facing historians of monastic reform. For Richard, better known as Richard of Saint-Vanne (d. 1046), was one of the great reformers of the early eleventh century, and his fame was indeed such that his name still resounded among monastic audiences of the twelfth century.3 This the Gesta duly acknowledge, adding the names of Poppo (d. 1048) and Stephen (d. 1061), both disciples of Richard and trained at the abbey of Saint-Vanne, to show that Richard’s action as a reformer at Lobbes was part of a larger movement that made an impact on institutions both in the Western Frankish (Richard’s main field of action) and in the imperial (Poppo’s and Stephen’s) parts of Lotharingia. Yet, in contrast to many of the entries for other abbots, the author makes no effort to say anything concrete about Richard’s government at Lobbes. What is merely suggested is that the monks, like many of their peers, had adopted the instructions (or, literally, “institutions”) of their new abbot and transmitted them to later generations. Since almost no evidence securely datable to Richard’s abbacy at Lobbes (which lasted from 1020 to 1033) has been preserved,4 we have little or no idea what his reformist government actually meant for life within the monastery and how his agency as a reformer clashed, or meshed, with existing structures, such as disciplinary traditions, modes of economic management, the management of social networks, and so on. However, such a lack of sources is barely evident in scholarly literature, where the consensus about Richard’s government in other, better-documented institutions is simply assumed to be similarly valid for Lobbes.5 2. Translated from the Latin text in Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium continuata, ed. Arndt, 310. 3. On Richard of Saint-Vanne and his reforms, see, among others, De Moreau, Histoire, 161–69; Dauphin, Bienheureux Richard; Hirschmann, Verdun, 1:135-83; and Hirschmann, “Klosterreform.” 4. On Richard’s presumed interventions in the management of Lobbes’s estates,see chapter 4;on scriptorial activity during his government, see chapter 6. 5. As previously noted in Dierkens, Abbayes, 126, n. 306. For an example, see Warichez, Abbaye, 69–71. INTRODUCTION 3 Representations of Reform These observations on the modern historiography of Lobbes apply to discussions of the history of many monastic communities of the Middle Ages, where little-known phases of reform and their long-term impact are analyzed and explicated by relying on preconceived ideas about the uniformity of reformist government. The remarkable longevity...

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