University of Virginia Library

The CUSTOMS OF CORBIE

CONSUETUDINES CORBEIENSES

PREFACE

TO include in a book on the Plan of St. Gall a translation of Adalhard's Consuetudines Corbeienses hardly calls for
justification. The two documents have much in common. Both are examples of a type of ordinance that in the
Middle Ages were referred to as brevia, i.e., "briefs"—a designation which in modern general (and distinct from
legal) parlance is more appropriately rendered by the term "directives." Such administrative ordinances were
intended to make regular and generally uniform the usages and practices (consuetudines, i.e., "customs") of a
given institution.

The Plan of St. Gall delineates in the graphic language of the architect the aggregate of buildings of which an
exemplary Carolingian monastery should be composed, the manner in which they are to relate to one another,
and how they should be arranged internally. In a comparable manner, the Directives of Adalhard of Corbie set
forth in the form of a body of managerial directives what measures should be taken by the heads of the monastery's
various economic departments in order to guarantee an even and unfailing flow of food supplies and other
material necessities for the physical sustenance of life in the abbey of Corbie. One could not conceive of two
mutually more elucidating historical sources.

It is therefore with gratitude that I accept for inclusion in this book Charles W. Jones's masterful translation
of this unique and important document. It will be a valuable source of information for those who cannot read it
in its original language and of more than casual interest to those who are aware of the (in places exasperating!)
difficulties of interpretation presented by medieval texts of this nature. Jones's translation of Adalhard's Directives
is the first of this treatise in any modern language, so far as we know, and we hope to make it available in the near
future for broader distribution by means of a separate, more easily accessible edition. More than one hundred and
twenty years ago B. E. C. Guérard, one of the greatest students of the Age of Charlemagne, recognizing the need
for translations of primary sources of this type published a French version of another important managerial
treatise of the period, the famous Capitulare de Villis (q.v.), and thus made the subject of the management of royal
desmesnes available for study in a broad spectrum of neighboring disciplines. I have no doubt that Charles W.
Jones's translation of the Customs of Corbie will have a similar effect in broadening our historical perspective of the
monastic economy of the period.

[ILLUSTRATION]

TWO WAYS TO SHARPEN A SWORD UTRECHT PSALTER (CA. 830) fol. 35v

528.A

528.B

Utrecht University Library

THE CIVILIZING ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE CAROLINGIAN DYNASTY
CANNOT OBSCURE THE FACT THAT ITS POWER RESTED ON ITS PROWESS
IN WAR;

IT LOST THAT POWER WHEN IT CEASED TO BE CAPABLE OF
ANSWERING VIOLENCE WITH VIOLENCE.

Jean Porcher, The Carolingian Renaissance, p. 4

Sharpening by grindstone and whetstone may in fact show two stages, rough edge,
to finished, of one process. Fabrication and maintenance of arms were tasks of
major monastic centers, indicating their active military role. The Plan provides
such facilities (below, p. 65).

This illustration is for verses 2-4 of Psalm LXIII (64):

"Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked . . . who whet
their tongues like a sword . . . ."

*

INTRODUCTION

THE year 822 is red-letter in the history of Corbie, of its ninth abbot Adalhard (753-826), and of the Emperor Louis I.
Although at Adalhard's request Louis renewed and extended the privileges of Corbie (Addendum I, 124; 100 fig. 530) the
moment Charlemagne had died, in the same year he banished Adalhard to the island of Noirmoutier (dépt. Vendée), off
the mouth of the Loire. Then, in a mercurial shift of policy, Louis restored him in the year 821. Though the reasons for
both the banishment[1] and the amnesty are obscure, we may infer that Louis simply feared more intensely than did his
father Adalhard's Italian sympathies and tried to break up the coterie around young king Bernhard. Such a coterie would
have centered in Adalhard, the regent. With the stable Adalhard exiled, Bernhard unsuccessfully revolted against Louis,
who ordered him blinded. Bernhard died in consequence. His death, together with the death (11 February 821) of Louis'
close advisor, the monastic reformer Benedict of Aniane, deeply affected the emperor. Immediately he restored Adalhard,
who inherited Benedict's influence. These actions affected the course of Carolingian institutions, whether on the Bodensee
or on the Somme.

When Adalhard left Noirmoutier, he returned to Corbie long enough to prepare the Directives during the month of
January 822. Then he hastened on to Attigny, where Louis publicly humiliated himself as penance for his cruelty to Bernhard
and doubtless for his mistreatment of Adalhard and his brother Wala.[2]
According to Halphen, Attigny accentuated
the religious bent of the imperial government. From that event, unity of faith became surrogate for unity of empire: one
spoke of unity of empire and unity of church as equivalents. As all became subordinated to the cause of religion, the
Church dominated the life of the state. "The men of the Church were consulted before all others; after the death of Benedict
of Aniane, the bishops, abbot Adalhard of Corbie, his brother Wala the monk, made immediate impact on the emperor,
who ended by seeing only by their eyes and doing only what they desired."[3]

From Attigny Adalhard went on to Saxony. Long before, he had planned with Charlemagne to bring Christianity to
heathen Saxony; but during his exile his successors had established Corbeia nova (Corvey) in an ill-favored site at Hethis.
Adalhard now transferred it to a new site on the Weser at Höxter, where it soon became, as Hauck says, by far the most
important convent in Saxony.[4] In such ways did Adalhard influence the Carolingian social pattern for Italy and Germany
as well as France.

The English queen of Clovis II, Balthilde, had founded Corbie on royal demesne between 657 and 661, by transplanting
Luxeuil monks, who subscribed to the Luxeuil use of the Rules of Columban and Benedict.[5] The Irish customs evaporated,
leaving no trace in the Directives.[6] After Balthilde, the royal patronage continued: her son Clothaire III gave Corbie six
other demesnes,[7] and five other Merovingian kings, as well as the Carolingian Pepin III and Charlemagne, are recorded
patrons.

Carolingian Corbie was a model of culture—not only affluent but learned. It was on the main road from Britain to
Italy, an axis of Carolingian development. The brothers assembled an important library of classics, and copied more.
Like St. Gall, it was rich in the works of English and Irish writers. Adalhard himself, while in exile, ordered a copy of
the Tripartite History, which he then brought to Corbie; and Pope Eugenius II in 825 gave Corbie copies of the Hadrianic
Antiphons, which made the abbey a center of Roman liturgical tradition.[8] The "Maurdramnus Bible"[9] has sometimes
been called our first dated example of Caroline minuscule.

The residents of Corbie were in large part noblemen.[10] Adalhard himself was a grandson of Charles Martel, and therefore
first cousin to Charlemagne. No lesser Frank could rule so proud a house.[11] He had been instructed in the palace
school, inter palatii tirocinia, under the same masters as Charlemagne, cum terrarum principe magistris adhioitus.[12] His
sister Guntrada was a lady-in-waiting at the court.[13] His brother Wala, his successor at Corbie, was also a regent, legate,
and councillor.[14] Adalhard, who had arranged Charlemagne's betrothal to the Lombard princess Ermengarde, quit the
court to become a monk when Charlemagne rejected her. But like his prototype, St. Anthony, he could not remain a
recluse; his studious concern with both the theory and practice of managing men forbade it.[15]

Management of the temporalities of Corbie required worldly wisdom. The Directives specify twenty-seven villas[16] in
some form of tenure, but that number is far from exhaustive.[17] For example, Corbie held substantial grants in newly
conquered Saxony before the foundation of Corvey, to which some grants were transferred. It is known that Corbie also
held villas in Alsace and the Rhineland.[18] As with the portfolios of modern benevolent institutions, the holdings were
diversified. Adalhard evidently considered his abbey as consisting of four concentric operations: 1, the cloister; 2, the
compound, equivalent with the area visualized in the St. Gall plan; 3, the domain, made up of seven adjacent villas and
twenty more at a distance not exceeding sixty kilometers; and 4, a total feudality of indeterminate bulk, in allegiance to the
abbot, spreading across a considerable sector of empire, embracing not only the domain, but also distant tenures involving
a wide variety of rights and obligations, to which he does not allude.[19] The Directives show that the economy of Corbie,
though primarily dependent upon produce from the villas of the domain, also fundamentally depended upon the use of
money; they reveal that the old support in kind was yielding to such far-flung operations.[20]

Like St. Gall, Corbie was an arm of theocracy. Alcuin's nickname for Charlemagne was "David;" for the emperor
stood at the head of the religious and secular life of his realm as did King David of old, who was both priest and warrior,
and in whose kingdom each secular act had its religious counterpart. Carolingian magnates simultaneously tried to balance
secular and ecclesiastical offices (pope-emperor; bishop-count; priest-vassal) and to unite their duties in single persons
(cancellarii and missi, originally secular posts now held largely by clergy; abbacomites, lay abbots). Artists now exercised
their ingenuity to apply the figure of the Christian warrior (miles Christi), popularized in the days of Roman persecution
by the Acts and Passions of the Holy Martyrs, equally to the knight on horseback who carried Conversion in his sword
and to the prelate who carried it in the sacrament.

Indeed, the interrelations, even in etymology, of the monastic court (co-hortus) and the secular court (curia) cannot
be unraveled. Corbie's economy centrally supported 350 to 400 Christian knights (miles Christi) in the divine task (opus Dei)
of liturgical procession toward the New Jerusalem.[21] Though there is no record that he ever rode to secular warfare,
Adalhard was one of the royal prelates who made monk and knight two faces of the coin of Christian warfare. To support
400 knights, whether spiritual or temporal, was a logistical problem which depended for success on an even flow of goods
and services. Writing was a comparatively recent acquisition among the German rulers, but Adalhard had learned from
the heads of the royal court how valuable each preserved written document had proved to be for stabilizing power. Written
memoranda had been accepted as binding by the Franks ever since Insular missionaries like Boniface became involved in

court affairs. Before then, conquest, oaths, the spoken word, had served to secure man's loyalties and obedience, but from
Pepin's time onward, faith in the written order was established and accepted.

Adalhard solved his managerial problems by incorporating both custom and reform into writing.[22] Incompletely transmitted
though they are, the Directives are our most specific and circumstantial economic document at a key moment in
the evolution of feudalism. The editors of the Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum have listed[23] the works that in some
fashion might be considered rivals. The polyptych of Irminon is also valuable, but in a very different way. The two bear
somewhat the relation of the coronation charter and writs of the English Henry I to the Domesday Book of William I.

Adalhard's effective model was the Rule of Benedict of Nursia, with its reformation codicils, that regulated the claustral
division of the abbatial operation.[24] Benedict had had no need for more; beyond his Italian cloisters lay not a theocracy
but an essentially hostile state, chaotic if not anarchic. Benedict walled out that world. But Adalhard on the contrary had
to build a bridge between his cloister and the friendly, benevolent empire. The transitional area was the compound and
domain, where the Chapter, headed by the deans, melted into the familia Corbeiensis, headed by the mayors. Both were
under the fatherhood of the abbas. Here Adalhard needed a rule.

Doubtless he prepared directives for each of the monastic officials charged with any extra-claustral responsibilities.
These would have included the provost, the deans, and the chamberlain. Not all have survived. What have survived are
those for the magister pauperum (I?, II),[25] the custos panis (III), the hortolanus (IV), the cellararii, iuniores et senior (V, VII),
and the portarius (VI).[26] A fragment (VIII) on the vestarius suggests that Adalhard may have extended Benedict's Rule
by issuing directives for some internal officials too; for instance, the bibliothecarius, cantor, hospitalarius religiosorum. But
the evidence is minuscule.

Naturally, there is no suggestion of written rules or memoranda for lay officials (vassali, maiores, actores, fabri). Among
Teutoni generally, only clerical fratres were expected to be literate.[27] Charlemagne had learned the uses of literacy and
had pressed the abbeys to take some noble scions for tutelage. At St. Gall, for example, their number was considerable
before the end of the ninth century. But most monks regarded such intrusion of secularity an abuse. The reformers did
what they could to control mingling which they were not powerful enough wholly to prevent. There are faint suggestions,
no more, in the Directives that Corbie had a few external scholars, but Adalhard presumably would not favor the practice.[28]
At all events, we may doubt that any of them graduated to any other vocation than that of royal or episcopal cleric. And
it would be inconsistent with the evidence to believe that in the year 822 written regulations or directives governed secular
officials on the manors.

The diction of the Directives shows that the Carolingian proprietors were feeling their way toward a new orthodoxy
in feudal relations. Adalhard seems to choose his words rather loosely,[29] using labels like prior, provendarius, maior, custos,
magister, and vassalus in overlapping and contrary senses. But with each year of Louis's reign these tenures became more
particularized, as the discriminating research of Professor Ganshof and other recent scholars shows. The Directives record
a moment of rapid social change: vassalus is equated (402.1) with homo casatus, "a housed man."[30] However, the casa
vasallorum (367.8) is a separate hospice within the compound to house visiting vassals. Are they there to transact business
in goods and services, to render homage, to worship? Or is their servitium as a military guard? The curticula abbatis (366.2)
is etymologically only a "modest atrium," but is developing into a domus or palatium, and also into a curtis dominica.[31]
At Corbie domus is not necessarily an aristocratic word; note the domus infirmorum. Lesne too forcefully contended that
there is no evidence of mensae, or inalienable livings for the cloistered, at Corbie, though they were already appearing
elsewhere. He maintained[32] that Adalhard was himself a monk, not a lay abbot, and that only under civil governors did
monks demand protection from those who would waste their substance in secular affairs. But this is a point of view from
later reforms: under Charlemagne, Adalhard was both monk and courtier. Many of the Directives concern specific differentiations
between what is due allowance for the cloister—monks, prebends, and matriculants—and what lies outside their
call. The abbot clearly states that specific lands have been ceded to the provost and deans, that is, to the fraternal officials.
All else doubtless was secularly managed by the abbot in some capacity of vassalage.

*

[ILLUSTRATION]

529. LUTTRELL PSALTER (CA. 1340)

BRITISH MUSEUM ADD. MS. 41320. fol. 66b, detail

[By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]

MAN WITH BROAD-AXE, DOG, AND GOOSE

Adalhard describes equipment for gardeners (below, p. 109 and notes, 108) who
were to have "hatchets and pick-axes"; the sophisticated broad-axe of the later
Psalter is more appropriate gear for a forester or game warden.

Adalhard is a diplomatic innovator. He is quite proud of his solution[33] of the problem of tithes in kind from distant
villas, but is wary of his brothers' reaction against his change.[34] He introduces other reforms (e.g., banishment of seculars
from the kitchen; establishment of tithed sheep in the claustral sheepfolds) in an easy spirit of conciliation, suggesting
that his innovations be tried only until better methods are found. His grants of privileges to millers in exchange for increased
production is masterful. His style suggests that he dictated his remarks to a secretary: it shows haste, and his
sentences contain administrative jargon and circumlocution. But he has exceptional ability to make himself understood,
to both the ninth and the twentieth centuries. Only Benedict's exemplary Rule is a model for this unique work.[35]

The Directives of Corbie and the Plan of St. Gall are remarkably interrelated; for they were prepared at almost the
same historical moment, under the impact of a political and social change which was itself unifying. The two abbeys were
comparable in aims and power, though ethnically separated. Wiesemeyer writes: "Well-known facts show that Corbie
was the most important monastery of Northern France, comparable in all ways with Saint-Denis, Saint-Gall, and Monte
Cassino." In the Plan of St. Gall and the Directives we have the specifications of abbey life, easily bridging the gulf between
spiritual and temporal and manifesting how slight was that separation in the days of Louis I and Benedict of Aniane.[36]

THE ADDENDA

I have appended four Addenda. Addendum I, the Emperor Louis's charter of immunities (29 January 815), confirms
that issued by Charlemagne (16 March 769) to Abbot Hado of Corbie,[37] as Charlemagne had confirmed the immunities
granted by the Merovingian kings and his father Pepin before him. The editor Levillain has persuasively but not irrefutably
argued that this charter was presented to the second Adalhard ("the Younger") rather than to our author; however,
any doubt about who received it does not affect the precision of its contents, which clearly indicate the legal status of all
Corbie property alluded to in the Directives. Addendum II, a document contemporary with the Directives, was issued
at the abbey of St. Wandrille[38] (Fontanella), about seventy-five air miles southwest of Corbie on the lower Seine River.
Fontanella and Corbie were of comparable size. Addendum III indicates by genealogy the relationship of Bernhard's
family, including our Adalhard and his brother Wala who succeeded him to the abbacy, to the royal Carolingians.
Addendum IV, an epitaph commemorating Adalhard's death, was written shortly after that event by Paschasius Ratpertus,
monk of Corbie and later its abbot.

THE TEXT

Adalhard's Directives survive in the two tenth-century manuscripts (bound together at Corbie before the thirteenth century),
in Dachery's printed edition of 1661 drawn from an early (ca. A.D. 900?) manuscript now lost, and some fragmentary copies
made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries essentially from the previous items. Four printed editions preceded
Semmler's. The two surviving early manuscripts agree with each other neither in contents nor arrangement, nor with
Dachery's edition.[39]

Professor Émile Lesne (1925, 385-420) proposed that Adalhard had originally prepared separate directives for each of
his major officials:

"The brevis dictated by Adalhard in 822 was composed of a considerable number of separable items, though forming a continuous
series. Presumably, either because of the natural disruptions among the separated letters as sent to each monastic official concerned, items
which quite possibly consisted of small gatherings or detached sheets, or simply because of the deterioration of the archetype or its early
copies, the text has come down to us in the shape of fragments very diversely chopped up by the scribes, who doubtless had at hand only torn
or partially illegible folds. [p. 418] . . . the three manuscripts together preserve, despite some easily identifiable additions, each partially
and in different grouping, the essential contents which Adalhard drafted in 822 [p. 419]."

Professor Semmler, in preparing his excellent edition ("Consuetudines Corbeienses," Corp. Cons. Mon. I, 1963, 355-422),
adhered to Lesne's proposals while altering important details in the light of convincing evidence. He relegated the later
interpolations to an appendix and changed some parts of Lesne's suggested arrangement.[40]

I have translated Semmler's edition without alteration. "The Rubrics (Capitula) of the Abbot, Dom Adalhard" (below,
pp. 121-122) are not to be found in an extant manuscript, but were published by Dachery's co-worker, Jean Mabillon,
in the Acta (saec. IV, pars prima), 1677, 757-58. Mabillon transcribed them from Dachery's manuscript, now lost; the
consensus is that they are authentic.

[ILLUSTRATION]

530. THE CHARTER OF LOUIS THE PIOUS (9TH CENTURY)

BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE, MS 2718, fol. 80 v

[courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]

The origins of ancient stenography are obscure. Isidore of Seville may be the source of the later phrase "Tironian notes":

"At Rome Cicero's freedman, Tullius Tiro, first worked out shorthand signs, but only for prepositions . . . Finally Seneca, by contraction and division of
all words and numbers, brought the total number of signs to five thousand" (ETYM. I, xxii).

In the poverty of the seventh and early eighth centuries, monastic scribes sometimes saved precious vellum by employing shorthand. From civil offices
diplomas employing it survive from Merovingian notaries of the late seventh century, but only under Louis I did tachygraphy predominate. Under the
Carolingians CANCELLARII (a term of Byzantine origin) replaced REFERENDARII as chief notaries, and under Louis I the archchancellor, in charge of the
emperor's seal and therefore of highest responsibility, was drawn from the episcopate, usually a trained monk.

This charter is translated on page 124, below. Contractions and abbreviation signs in the Plan of St. Gall are discussed above, page 11.