countless armies of many wolves, which were holding their gaping mouths open with wild rage for the purpose of devouring the church of Stavelot and the greater part of Lotharingia. But God sent the holy spirit from the heavens and closed the mouth of the lion.”53 Of course, these examples draw on common Christian associations of religious care and leadership with the guardianship of a shepherd over his flock. However, these passages, like sections of vitae that contain quotations of other Christian works, cannot be ignored or eliminated as derivative. Although some biblical citations were arguably archaisms or citations of older ideas perhaps no longer relevant, the Bible was a living and vibrant part of contemporary medieval culture and a source that could be used by medieval writers at will to express numerous and often conflicting ideas. Though a universal symbol, the wolf was clearly meaningful for the monks, as they chose to use it in many different contexts. There were many older religious and literary images that could be borrowed or employed by medieval writers, and it is worth paying attention to the monks’ selection and frequent use of this particular metaphor.
And the wolf was an exceptionally good metaphor. The wolf represented alien threats and dangers. Bestiaries, which became increasingly prominent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but were based on earlier works, reported that the wolf was “a ravenous beast, and thirsts for blood.” The wolf was, moreover, “the devil, who is always envious of mankind, and continually prowls round the sheepfolds of the Church’s believers, to kill their souls and corrupt them.”54 In a tense exchange between Wibald and Robert, the deacon of Stavelot at a moment of crisis, the wolf became the vehicle for airing fears and criticisms. Robert, urging Wibald not to abandon the monastery, chided him that “a wolf having been seen, a good pastor would never abandon his pastoral office.”55 Wibald responded to this direct challenge, taking up the metaphor and extending it: “As to that which you wrote, moreover, because ‘a wolf having been seen, a good pastor would never abandon his pastoral office,’ your experience ought to recall how many, how great, what savage wolves [I] have pulled down while being in charge of Stavelot these past twenty years, which I have borne up not without the risk of mortal danger, grave scandals, and reproach.” He then added that (in part because of the political complexity of his assumption of control of Corvey), he could not serve only Stavelot, “since wolves are not lacking in the church of Corvey, and a pastor who is both present and vigilant is also necessary there.”56 This is but one of many times that Wibald felt that he was spread too thin, as seen in his comment that “pulled in many directions, I hold the wolf by the ears.”57
The wolf also represented the perceived boundary between men and animals. When Poppo heard of the shepherd attacked by the wolf, he was mortified by the violence of the attack, and prayed to God for the life of “this man who was made in your image and likeness [and] is now the prey of a wolf.”58 In the Miracula Remacli, the existence of this divide is reinforced by its transgression. In a sign of divine displeasure and disorder, “wolves and bears had been violently breaking into the city of Vienne, devouring many people throughout the entire year.”59 Wild animals threatened human life and violated the established border between the wilderness and civilization. Bestiaries from the twelfth century help provide insight into the interpretive context of such comments, connecting Stavelot-Malmedy’s sources to wider monastic ideas. Wolves represented a boundary of sorts between the wild and the domestic, as some bestiaries include discussions of how the wolf “loses its wildness” to become doglike. Additionally, in at least one bestiary, the dog is the animal that follows the description of the wolf.60
Powerful as such monastic images are, it is important to remember that the forests were filled not only with animals, but also with people. The frequent association of the ferocity of wild animals with danger carried over into representations of humans who posed danger to the monasteries as having beastly characteristics. As but one example of many, the eleventh-century Passio describes the enemy guards who kill Agilolf as animals gnashing their teeth and thirsting for blood.61 Aside from the spiritual danger of general consort with society, expressed in the desire for isolation, the monks faced specific threats from inimical people. The forest did not create true isolation, but its relative isolation from the main routes to larger communities and justice encouraged both planned and spontaneous criminality.
This was clearly linked to the main dichotomy of monastic settlement; though the monks strove to build in sites that were or appeared to be geographically isolated, the growing houses were closely tied to the local and regional economic framework and were wealthy and well endowed. This made monasteries prime targets for both minor and major theft, and the monastic concern with this is reflected in a multitude of stories. The Ardennes were crossed by several major roads, but since there were only a handful of options, and since these roadways were often flanked by forests or other inhospitable environments, travelers were vulnerable. Interestingly, many of these examples cluster around the year 1000, perhaps reflecting the possibility that Ardennes houses were affected by the increasing criminality that led to the Peace of God movement.
One case of highway crime in the Ardennes was immortalized in the tenth-century vita of saint Evermarus (d. ca. 700), who was killed near Tongres on his way to visit Remacle’s tomb at Stavelot. Allegedly, a brigand stopped Evermarus on the road, chased him through the forest, and killed him and his companions. Their bodies were then found by one of King Pippin’s royal hunters and buried in a woodland chapel. Two centuries later, the relics were translated, which occasioned the composition of the vita.62 The rigors and dangers of travel are also found in the eleventh-century Translatio Quirini, whose author wrote that the monks suffered exhaustion and hunger on the road, surviving storms and “extending many efforts, and also enduring as many thieves and fears of the road.”63
One morning the monks took to the road amidst a gathering of exultant locals. But, “they had scarcely traveled four milia before their rejoicing turned into sorrow.”64 Having heard a rumor that the monks were carrying worldly riches along with the relics, some men “all conspired as one to seize violently the monastic treasures.” But the would-be thieves, “inspired by devilish purposes,” were foiled by God, who “sent amongst them such a great fog that they were separated from one another and in no way able to succeed.” Though in this case the sudden appearance of a fog protected the monks, the story shows how weather and landscape could create spaces for evildoing; had it not been a divine boon, the blanket of fog might just as easily have allowed the thieves to act with impunity. The author directly compares this event to one of the great desert miracles of the flight from Egypt, adding that “using the fog as a servant, [God] saved [our] patron from the midst of an enemy people.” Invoking Egypt was not unexpected: the twelfth-century life of St. Bernard of Tiron equates the European forest explicitly with the biblical wilderness: “But there were in the border region between Maine and Brittany vast wildernesses (regionis vaste solitudines) which at that time flourished like a second Egypt with a multitude of hermits.”65
The later compositional phases of the Miracula Remacli, composed around 1040 during Poppo’s abbacy, contain numerous examples of thieves (who were, of course, ultimately caught through the saint’s intervention). Some of the thefts were of animals and agricultural products, but in other cases, more valuable goods were stolen. Some crimes took place on the road, for example when people bringing tithes to the monasteries were attacked en route. Other crimes occurred in the monasteries, as was the case when a cleric arrived at Stavelot as a newcomer. This stranger, the author claims, went to the monastery specifically to win the monks’ trust and rob them of their treasures. This man purportedly chose Stavelot because “the very solitude of the monastery aided him.”66 The miraculous protection of the monks against theft may also be connected to eleventh-century critiques of monastic wealth associated with monastic reforms.
Several of the hagiographical sources present the forests of the Ardennes as a shelter or haven for not just thieves, but also enemy troops. At Stavelot, this theme seems to have developed primarily as a response to the ninth-century Viking raids. The second book of the Miracula Remacli presents the Vikings as immoral, pestiferous, and a form
