the ideas, actions, and sources of other medieval people. But because local identity and history matter, before broader issues are addressed it is important to understand the political and religious history of these houses.
Historical Background: Stavelot and Malmedy
Stavelot and Malmedy were founded by St. Remacle (Remaclius or Rimagilius,60 d. 670), one of a cadre of seventh-century monk-bishops who led the conversion of the Ardennes and founded almost fifty monasteries in modern Belgium by about 725.61 Remacle began his religious career at Luxeuil, then became abbot of Solignac in 632.62 After more than a decade, he left in order to establish his own monastery in the Ardennes, first choosing a site called Cugnon. This foundation failed, and Remacle moved to the Meuse River valley where he founded Stavelot and Malmedy in the mid-seventh century. Charters claim a foundation date of 648, and the Annales Stabulenses (compiled in the eleventh century) date the building of the monasteries to 652.63 Records do not show which house was founded first, and the two houses would debate this for centuries.
Remacle’s motives in founding two houses are also unknown. He may have intended the houses to be a double monastery with a monk-bishop as its abbot, comparable to similar foundations at Ghent and Marchiennes. He may also have been working in the model of Solignac, creating an Irish-style community that would have been the first of its kind in eastern Belgium.64 The double foundation was further complicated by the fact that Remacle founded Stavelot in the diocese of Tongres-Maastricht/Liège and Malmedy in that of Cologne.65
The two monasteries were bound together not only by Remacle’s joint foundation, but also by patronage and politics. Around the year 648 a charter appears under King Sigibert’s name, confirming the houses’ foundation and bequeathing them lands and privileges. Grimoald, the Pippinid mayor-of-the-palace, also signed the charter, and it has been suggested that he was the real force behind the new foundation.66 The monasteries do appear to have enjoyed steady royal protection and privilege through the Merovingian period, and Stavelot and Malmedy may have been among the best endowed of the royal monasteries.67 The houses also received papal support from an early date. In 660, Pope Vitalian (657–672) issued one of the houses’ oldest surviving charters. The pope not only gave Babolenus a legal document; he also gave him a saint. Vitalian allowed Babolenus to move the relics of a little-known martyr, St. Semetrius, to Stavelot.68 This became the first of an important series of translations, and marked the start of Stavelot-Malmedy’s rich cult of saints.
The houses received another boon as the Pippinid/Carolingian dynasty rose to power and prominence. Grimoald had been an early supporter of Stavelot-Malmedy, and the houses were near not just the site of Charles Martel’s victory at Amblève, but also Pippin’s homeland of Herstal and the government centers of Aachen and Cologne. These connections were the launching point of the houses’ regional prominence, and proved important to monastic power, memory, and self-definition. Over the course of the ninth century, Stavelot and Malmedy solidified their relationships with the Carolingian monarchy. Louis the Pious (r. 814–840) was particularly prominent in this process, confirming the monasteries’ core holdings and protecting their interests. Later abbots (and monarchs) repeatedly referenced Louis and his rulings in later charters, and the monks later included a story about him in the collection of miracles attributed to St. Remacle.69 It was around the end of Louis’s reign (840) that the first biography of Remacle (the vita prima) was written.
Stavelot-Malmedy continued to acquire new lands and grow, and by the late 800s, Stavelot and Malmedy seem to have been relatively successful, prominent, and economically secure. Baix characterized the monks of the period as “tenacious,”70 but a crisis point was approaching. In the winter of 881, according to the Annales Fuldenses, Vikings attacked the monasteries of Stavelot, Malmedy, Prüm, and Inda, the palace in Aachen, and the cities of Cologne and Bonn. Regino of Prüm confirms the attack on Stavelot-Malmedy, and the Annales Stabulenses report that in 881, “the monastery of Stavelot is burned up by the fire of the Normans.” As a result of the attacks, “the body of St. Remacle was brought out of its tomb on 6 December.”71 The monks abandoned the monastery, taking Remacle’s relics with them. This led to a forced tour of monastic properties that allowed the monks to remind the residents of the broader region of the presence and miraculous powers of St. Remacle.
Whether or not there was any substantial damage done to the monasteries by the Vikings, the cultural, political, and religious impact of the attacks was wider reaching and longer lasting than the loss of buildings and treasure alone could possibly have been. The attacks encouraged the monks to rebuild infrastructure, to promote themselves in order to find new benefactors and defenders, and to consolidate both their administrative and religious records. They also triggered a flurry of hagiographical writing, most particularly the second book of the Miracula Remacli (hereafter Miracula), a collection of almost forty miracle stories that were pivotally important in the preservation of the houses’ religious memory and in setting religious and behavioral models for later monks, patrons, and dependents. The tales range from the curing of the ill and possessed to the preservation of the monks against nature and the elements and the punishment of those who (like the Vikings) chose to attack rather than support the houses and their mission.
The Vikings were not the only setback Stavelot-Malmedy endured in the ninth century; they also had to deal with more direct control by the crown. Under Lothar II (855–869), the royal court took direct control of the houses, and in the subsequent forty years, there were seven external lay abbots.72 The narrative sources for Stavelot and Malmedy are silent about this period of lay abbacy, but the vita of John of Gorze claims that Stavelot’s next reform abbot, Odilo, sought “to correct to straight lines, with the help of Christ, those whom he had found to be powerfully crooked.”73
Odilo was also a royal appointee, and he linked Stavelot to the Gorze reforms, part of a general reform trend in the tenth century that included the better-known reforms at Cluny.74 Early historians of Stavelot saw Odilo’s abbacy (937/38–954) as ushering in a new era of religious fervor, intellectual drive, and monastic prestige at Stavelot. A. Courtejoie wrote that as a result, Stavelot again became “a seed-bed for saints and a training school for great men.”75 Yet no literary or religious works survive from his abbacy. Instead, there are only a handful of administrative charters.76 Odilo encouraged the bureaucratic consolidation of the monastic estate and the development of the chancery, a focus that would be repeated by subsequent “reform” abbots.
Another result of Odilo’s abbacy was that in 954 he was able to restore Stavelot-Malmedy’s rights to free abbatial election. He died shortly thereafter, and for the first time in nearly a century, the monks elected their own abbot, Werenfrid (954–980). The monasteries enjoyed a renewed sense of self-directed purpose, but in that same year an external factor confirmed many of their fears. At the beginning of the military excursion that would culminate in the Battle of the Lechfeld (955), the Magyars crossed through Belgium. En route, a small group attacked and burned Malmedy. The attack is recorded in a charter from 1007 and in the Annales Stabulenses, which reports that in 954 the “Hungarians filled the regions of Gaul.”77 Thus, less than a century after the Viking attacks, and in the wake of marked internal attention to religious and fiscal management, the monks were again forcibly reminded of the range of potential threats to their properties.
In the following years, they compiled their first cartulary, the Codex Stabulensis. Like many central medieval cartularies, this appears to have been intended to shore up property claims, confirm existing social bonds, protect their legal rights, and preserve monastic history and memory.78 As part of this same process, Stavelot-Malmedy also commissioned new hagiographic works, most notably the vita Remacli secunda (hereafter Vita Remacli).79 Notger, the archbishop of Liège, claimed authorship of this work in a preface, but it appears that he farmed it out to Heriger of Lobbes.80
This renewed
