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onventional beliefs, promoted by contemporaries of any historical period, may be the preferred face of an era or society, but reality proves the image brittle. People in all time periods push aside convention and social rules when circumstances demand expediency. The manner in which such events are rationalized reflect the symbols and beliefs of the time.

The inconsistencies remain fascinating.

In the western medieval world, we’ve been told, society was divided into men who fought, prayed, or labored. Women were weak creatures and must never have authority over men, thanks to that unfortunate incident involving a serpent and apple.

Nevertheless, knights took religious vows and fought in the military Orders like the Templars and Hospitallers. Bishops, prohibited from shedding blood, wielded maces instead of swords to give lip service to the ban. And women took over businesses, castles, and even countries when doing so was the practical choice.

One of the most interesting examples of an accepted conflict with convention is the Order of Fontevraud, founded at the turn of the twelfth century by a charismatic, controversial priest from southeast Brittany, Robert of Arbrissel.

Robert was born about 1045 near the Vilaine River and the Anjou border. He was probably the son of a married priest, a not uncommon custom at the time. Choosing to follow his father’s profession, he studied in Paris and Angers but became disillusioned by worldly Church practices and increasingly interested in Christian customs before Constantine invited the faith into the secular world of power and wealth. Thus Robert chose celibacy, unlike his father, and escaped into the forest of Craon near Arbrissel in 1095 to live as a hermit in emulation of the desert fathers.

Now the story gets interesting.

According to all accounts,
Robert was a reformist preacher of irresistible power, and his hermitage was soon surrounded with huts of disciples, including a large number of women. Although Pope Urban II called him “the sower of God’s word” and Robert had many influential supporters, including the Bishop of Poitiers and Gautier of Montsoreau, the Church was deeply troubled by his band. They exerted pressure on Robert to regularize it, arguing that the women must not be left without supervision while he was away preaching. Part of the concern involved rumors, ranging from the puritanical to the prurient, about what was going on in that group.

Robert, according to early biographers, believed Christianity must return to the simpler ways of the Jerusalem church when the faith was struggling to survive. During that time, men and women had more equal roles. Thus service to God would be improved if the sexes again lived and strived as one, albeit chastely.

Even if this concept smelled heretical, it was innocent enough. The problems arose because Robert longed to follow the desert fathers who purged themselves of lust by facing extreme temptation until all carnal desire was destroyed. To achieve this result, Robert allegedly shared his bed with women as an ordeal. He also preached in brothels and reputedly departed with numerous new disciples.

Robert never defended himself, although others did on his behalf. Faced with Church condemnation, he wisely modified his practices and principles into more palatable concepts. Settling his followers in Fontevraud, a valley near the Loire River, he raised walled buildings to separate the men and women, ordered the former to serve the latter, and commanded the women to spend their days in prayer. He still welcomed prostitutes (but they were housed apart) and provided care for lepers. This new Order might have become like other double houses of monks and nuns except for one unique aspect: the head of the abbey, and all daughter houses, would be a woman.

 

 

 

Rejecting the role of abbot, Robert allowed himself only the title of “Master”. Now that direct emulation of the desert fathers’ carnal sufferings was more theory than reality, he turned to the idea that a woman would rule men like a mother does her sons. As sons owe mothers, they must serve and protect her. He pointed to the crucifixion story as the basis for this: Jesus told Mary to take John as her son and said John should now consider Mary his mother. In an interesting example of pragmatism, Robert required that Fontevraud’s abbess must have lived in the world, like a widow, and have experience managing practical business matters to better rule a religious institution.

Thus Robert set his new Order up to survive and made it attractive for competent women of high ranks to join and exercise their abilities. In our era we might say he understood the equality of the sexes, but he sought only to find an acceptable way to promote his ideals and a pragmatic method of guaranteeing his living example survived.  

After Robert’s death, all attempts at canonization failed. Many thought him a saint, but an equal number called him a libertine or even a heretic. In the seventeenth century, the miracles needed for sainthood were claimed at his burial place, but exhumation revealed that Robert shared his tomb with Bishop Peter of Poitiers. Thus no miracle could be attributed solely to Robert, and he remains one of the few uncanonized founders of a significant, long-standing religious Order. 

At the height of its prominence, the Order of Fontevraud had 5000 members and daughter houses in England, France, and Spain. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II, and Richard Coeur de Lion were buried at the Anjou abbey as were the hearts of King John and his son, Henry III. Abbesses included the aunt of England’s Henry II, Henry III’s grand-daughter, and many close relatives of French kings.

Like most innovative concepts, time blurs the initial vision. Surviving institutions inevitably slip back into more comfortable ways. Thus the prostitutes and lepers soon disappeared from the abbey. In England, the Dissolution closed all daughter houses, but their wealth and influence diminished after England lost its continental lands and connection with Anjou. In France, the Order remained strong under royal favor until the French Revolution, although monks often rebelled against female rule. In 1792, the last nun left the abbey grounds, and the abbey was a prison from 1814 to 1963.

It is now undergoing restoration.

 

Fontevraud Chapel today

 

 

Priscilla has a degree in world literature from San Francisco State University, where she discovered the beauty of medieval literature.  She is the author of the medieval mystery series The Medieval Mysteries.  Her latest book, Chambers of Death is the sixth book in the series.  Her main characters belong to the very real Order of Fontevraud, a double house of monks and nuns, run by a woman in an era when conventional wisdom said that women were weak, illogical and should never rule men. The characters remain true to their time but exhibit universal characteristics.  Visit Priscilla at www.priscillaroyal.com

 

 

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