Politics, Holiness, and Property in Angers, 1080-1130

In the late eleventh century the monasteries of Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Aubin d’Angers entered a long and bitter dispute over the right to pasture hogs and gather firewood in the forest of Echats. In their parallel accounts of the disputes, the scribes of the two monasteries deliberately manipulated the facts to promote their own claims. Although the forest and its attendant rights were not very valuable, the monasteries used the case as one of multiple strategies for promoting themselves in the eyes of the secular community. In showing the intersection between religious, political, and material goals, the article suggests that monastic disputes should not be understood outside of their religious and economic milieux.