Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Barisis. 210 Neither were kings the only grantors: queen Balthild (d.680) endowed
Philibert with Jumièges. 211 The extent of these grants implies broad support for the aims
of Columbanus. Beyond the purely spiritual arena, however, it was also one way of
ensuring bonds between the nobility and the crown by creating an atmosphere of material
dependency on the king which spread wider than the individual grantees to their families.
As Regine Le Jan has pointed out for early medieval monasticism in general,
‘…monasteries were key centres of political power, where networks of clientage and
fidelity could be constructed and reinforced, and new bonds created.’ 212 Conversely, such
‘gifts’ were also of value to the aristocracy, as a mark of favour which could set them
above their peers and more concretely, mark royal protection of their interests in the
region of the monastery. For this reason, Dagobert’s death provoked a crisis for the
monastery of Faremoutiers, as it enabled Ega, at the head of a rival grouping, to move
against Burgundofara’s family. 213 There is a considerable difference here from the
portrayal of Caesarius organizing his monastery largely in spite of shifting political
currents, and on lands not of royal origin.
Alongside the oft-perceived shift in monastic dynamism from the south to the
north of Gaul, the monasteries founded (according to Jonas) as a result of Columbanus’
influence are also often seen as being the first stage in a transition from urban to rural
monastic life, a transition that would reach its apogee in the vast estate monasteries of the
central middle ages. 214 It is important not to overstate this change; monasteries had been
founded in rural surroundings before, from the late Roman villa conversions of men such
as Sidonius Apollinaris to the splendid isolation in the Jura of Romanus and Lupicinus.
Moreover, as noted above, monasteries for men and women continued to be founded in
towns.
210 Pardessus, Diplomata, CCLXXX; Vita Amandi 23 ed. B. Krusch, MGH SSRM V, 428-49.
211 Vita Balthildis 8 ed. B. Krusch MGH SSRM II, 482-508.
212 R. Le Jan ‘Convents, Violence, and Competition for Power in Seventh-Century Francia’ in F. Theuws
and M. de Jong (eds.) Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2001) 243-269, at 244.
213 Le Jan, ‘Convents, Violence, and Competition for Power’, 254.
214 See in particular F. Prinz, ‘Columbanus, the Frankish Nobility and the Territories East of the Rhine’, 76-
7.
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