Aristocratic Sociability and Monastic Patronage in Eleventh- and Early-Twelfth Century Brittany

Abstract

My dissertation examines the local and personal meanings of reformed Benedictine monastic networks as they developed in Brittany. Between c.1000–1120, Brittany, like Western Europe as a whole, saw an efflorescence of Benedictine monasticism, driven by aristocrats donating property to Benedictine abbeys, and in Brittany, by foundations of priories dependent on Benedictine abbeys located elsewhere. Recent historians have noted that patronage of particular abbeys tended to move through social networks, with families supporting the same abbeys over space and time, and lower aristocrats choosing to support the abbeys favored by their lords. I interrogate these patterns, placing the relationships that connected individual aristocrats with particular abbeys at the center of my study. I begin by analyzing the nature of Breton aristocrats’ relationships with each other, and then reconstruct the social contexts in which they interacted with Benedictine monks and nuns. I examine foundations of priories, at their inception and as they developed over time; monastic vocations, and property disputes. I argue that monastic patrons typically encountered the monks or nuns they chose to support in the context of significant affective relationships. Moreover, I argue that those relationships shaped patrons’ perceptions of the monks and nuns they supported, and the meanings they attached to their patronage. In doing so, I offer a methodological framework for uncovering some of the affective content of aristocrats’ relationships with each other and with monks and nuns, which is otherwise difficult to extract from the limited evidence preserved in monastic charters.