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of the two versions of the Testaments, arguing that the second version was conveniently
produced in time to influence the Bishop of Tours‟s case for the St. Yrieix dependency. 37
After the fall of the Carolingians, St. Yrieix became a victim of the growing trend
of lay investiture of the clergy. While the practice of the landed nobles and bishops to
build churches on their lands and donate them to the Church was well established, it
became the trend in the tenth century for the lay proprietor to provide further
endowments and install church administrators for these establishments (priests, priors,
abbots, bishops), either from the clergy of his family or from those allied with him. 38
By this practice of “lay investiture” in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the nobles
in effect took it upon themselves to ordain the clerics of the churches they had founded.
By doing so, the lay proprietor could achieve higher status in the social hierarchy not
only by his continuing access to the Church establishment but also as an agent of church
reform. 39 Literally hundreds of churches and abbeys were built in this way through the
eleventh century in West Francia. 40
37 Carolo Le Cointe, Annales ecclesiasticum Francorum 2: 52-3, 392-393. This is criticism of
the 572 Testament as produced by Hilduin (mid-ninth century) as quoted in Arbellot. Le Cointe belonged to
the early group of scholars who studied St. Aredius and St. Yrieix in the seventeenth century. In the
scholarship of the twentieth century, the Testament version of 572 has assumed the dominant position,
particularly as the definitive source for the economic analysis of the region, and of particular interest to
these historians. The issue of the location of the Aredius relics would become important in the historical
scholarship of St. Yrieix and Aredius in the nineteenth century with regard to the eleventh- and twelfthcentury
translations of Aredius, ascribed to the establishments of St. Yrieix and of St. Hilary, respectively.
38 Maureen C. Miller, Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History
with Documents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) :3-14.
39 Susan Wood, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West ( Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006) : 25-26. Maureen Miller, “The Crisis in the Investiture Crisis Narrative.” History Compass
7/6 (2009) :1571-1580. Miller argues that these initiatives of the lay aristocracy were also significant
sources of legitimate ecclesiastical reforms in this period.
40 Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making 843-1180 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000;
reprinted 2005): 1-2. Dunbabin refers to the area of France, the Low Countries, Northern Spain, and
Northern Italy in the ninth century as West Francia, i.e., the western region of the Carolingian Empire, as
distinguished from Lotharingia and the German Areas of East Francia.
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