THE DOSSIER OF SAINT-DENIS

King Henry I of France died in August 1060 and his eight-year-old son, Philip, associated as king since the previous year, ascended the throne. Of course, a young monarch needed guardians, and Philip's mother, Anne of Kiev, took on this role. She was assisted (especially after her remarriage in 1062) by the king's paternal uncle through marriage, Count Baldwin V of Flanders, until Philip attained his majority in 1066–7. During the guardianship, starting in 1061, a dispute erupted between the monks of Saint-Denis and the bishop of Paris over how free the monastery was from the bishop's control. Philip (and Baldwin) would be the initial arbiters of this dispute. After much wrangling, the monks appealed to Pope Alexander II (1061–1073), who agreed to hear the matter at a synod in Rome in May 1065. Accordingly, the monks of Saint-Denis prepared a dossier of charter copies to support their claims which was taken to Rome. On May 6 in the Lateran palace, Pope Alexander II and at least 35 bishops (among whom were 8 French bishops, including Godfrey, the bishop of Paris) reviewed Saint-Denis’ privileges, and the Pope decided in the monks’ favor. Remarkably, this dossier (BnF NAL 326, ff. 1–19v), composed between 1061 and 1065, survives. The manuscript containing the dossier lacks a contemporary title and even modern scholars are not consistent in what they call it. The first folio of the manuscript bears a title in a fourteenth-century hand: Privilegia carte beati Dyonisii in Francia. Perhaps the most apt phrase is “cartulaire-dossier” (a collection of copies assembled for a purpose) preferred by recent scholars. For the sake of clarity, I will use the term “dossier” when referring to the group of charter copies produced before 1065, “cartulary” when referring to the “dossier” plus entries added soon after 1065, and “codex” to refer to the volume as a whole.

The dossier produced for the Lateran Synod of 1065 was a series of royal and papal charters, which offered a story about Saint-Denis’ past from its earliest years to 1065. Although there came to be many layers of history at Saint-Denis, the dossier provides a snapshot of the monks’ view of their past at a particular moment in time for a specific purpose.