assured, though, that his son and heir, Erard II, was also committed to
supporting the monastery.^75
Despite the house of Bar-sur-Seine’s closeness to the Cistercians, the
main line of the dynasty soon came to prefer a quite different new order:
the Premonstratensian canons. The first clear sign of this came in
the early 1140s, when Walter II was the effective founder of a Premon-
stratensian abbey at Basse-Fontaine, just adjacent to the castle-town of
Brienne itself (and so even closer than Beaulieu).^76 The count’s initial
beneficence to this monastery was clearly a great regional event, to judge
by the multitude of local dignitaries who attended, and his largesse
was imitated by his successors.^77 Maybe the most remarkable of all the
Briennes’ donations to Basse-Fontaine was a deal that was struck
between Erard II and the abbey in 1185–6. Erard made a series of
significant concessions to the abbey, but, in return, the monks were to
provide all the churches in the county with wafer for the celebration of
Mass.^78 Yet there is much more to add than this. At around the same
time as the foundation of Basse-Fontaine, Beaulieu made the switch to
become Premonstratensian, and, in the mid-1150s, Walter II’s younger
son, John, succeeded as abbot there. Beaulieu was clearly at its height
under Abbot John–to such an extent that John was elected as head of the
entire order in 1171. Pope Alexander III quashed the election, however,
clearly taking the view that John was not the man to solve Prémontré’s
mounting debt problem.^79 Indeed, it would seem that the pope was quite
right about this. As a result of Alexander’s intervention, John was obliged
to remain at Beaulieu for the rest of his life, and it appears that the
monastery was in seriousfinancial straits by the end of his abbacy there.^80
The papal decision to reject John cannot have gone down very well in the
Brienne family. By staying at Beaulieu, though, Abbot John continued to
be one of the closest advisors and confidants of his brother, Erard II.
(^75) See various charters that can be found in the BnF: MS Français 20690, fols. 180–2, and
also in Duchesne 76, fols. 71–2.
(^76) SeeCollection des principaux cartulaires du diocèse de Troyes, iii, pp. xi–xii, and also
B. Ardura,Abbayes, prieurés et monastères de l’ordre de Prémontré en France, des origines à
nos jours: dictionnaire historique et bibliographique(Nancy, 1993), 92.
(^77) ‘Catalogue’, no. 40, and also nos. 41–2, 50, 59–60, 66, 68–9, 89–90, 101–2.
(^78) Ibid., nos. 92–3.
(^79) Collection des principaux cartulaires du diocèse de Troyes, iv, pp. xl–xliii.
(^80) ‘Catalogue’, no. 104, which actually dates from 1194–5 (below, 35). It is worth noting,
though, that John’s abbacy at Beaulieu may have been interrupted in the mid-1180s: see
Ardura,Abbayes, prieurés et monastères de l’ordre de Prémontré en France, 96.
26 ‘Between Bar-sur-Aube and Rosnay’(c. 950–1191)