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Monasteries as ‘War Memorials’: Battle Abbey and La Victoire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Elizabeth M. Hallam
Elizabeth M. Hallam*
Affiliation:
Public Record Office
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Extract

Charters, Chronicles and letters which record the foundation of religious houses in the period 1050–1250 abound in the images of both war and peace. Whereas king Henry I of England, a military leader of renown, founded an abbey at Cirencester for the repose of his soul and the stability of his realm, Bernard of Clairvaux, that celebrated man of religion, wrote of the new Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx as an outpost of his lord which he proposed to occupy. The juxtaposition of such conflicting ideas is epitomised by the military orders, formed to fight holy wars against the infidel; and a logical symbol of the triumph of Christianity is the foundation of a monastery such as Louis IX’s Franciscan friary at Jaffa, created in 1252 after the capture of this Moslem stronghold, or the building of Alcobaça by Alphonso I of Portugal (c1153) after his great victory over the Moors at Santaren.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 20: The Church and War , 1983 , pp. 47 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1983

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References

1 The Cartulary of Cirencester Abbey, Gloucestershire, ed Ross, C.D. 1 (London 1964) pp 21–3.Google Scholar

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20 Chronicle of Battle pp 23, 36-7.

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29 dimmele of Baule pp 43-5; above note 19.

30 Gransden pp 92-4.

31 FHD 2 (1953) p 163.

32 Chronicle of Battle p 20; Brooke pp 134-5.

33 Capetian France pp 132-3, 178-9.

34 Blanche and Louis were probably major benefactors rather than founders of the house; Gal C 7. p 851; ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 231-2.

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39 below note 47.

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41 ‘Notice historique’ p 10.

42 ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 173-4, 193-4, 203-4, 231-3.

43 ‘Notice historique’ pp 10, 20.

44 Gal C10, inst pp 233-4, noted in ‘Cartulaire’ pp 42-3.

45 ‘Cartulaire’ pp 38-9; AN LL 1469 pp 5-6.

46 ibid.

47 ‘Cartulaire’ pp 33-5; AN LL 1469 pp 1-3; Gal C 10 inst p 232.

48 ‘Monastic patronage’ pp 195-207; Capetian France pp 126-35; 198-9.