foundation of Lérins, in Provence, followed a rule that went back to Cassian. Luxeuil,
founded at the end of the 6th century by Irish monks—who had themselves been
influenced by monks from Tours fifty years earlier—was another house whose customs,
called the Rule of Columbanus, were widely imitated. Also influential was Saint-Maurice
of Agaune, in the Burgundian Alps. The Rule of St. Benedict, written for the monks of
Monte Cassino in Italy in the first half of the 6th century, became widely adopted in
Gaul. The Life of St. Benedict, written by Pope Gregory I (r. 590–604), did much to
popularize this Rule. Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, Benedict’s Rule was adopted
at an increasing number of French houses, replacing the other rules in circulation,
including the so-called “mixed” rules, which took elements from several. The
combination of strictness with flexibility in Benedict’s Rule made it both appealing for
those looking for a holy way of life and adaptable to a variety of situations. The
Benedictines, or Black Monks (so called from the color of their habits), became by far the
most common form of the institutionalized religious life in this period.
The Merovingian period witnessed the foundation of a large number of monasteries,
the majority, indeed, of all French houses founded before the 11th century. Kings, lords,
and bishops all established communities of monks that would receive gifts of property
from other wealthy individuals. Most of the monks were settled in existing churches at
the edges of the old Roman provincial capitals. The churches, and hence the communities
of monks, were most commonly dedicated to a local saint, often one martyred when
trying to spread Christianity to a pagan population under the late empire, such as Saint-
Marcel of Chalon or Saint-Valérien of Tournus. Other basilicas had been rededicated to a
local bishop buried there, such as Saint-Germain of Auxerre or Saint-Remi of Reims, by
the time monks were settled there. Still other Merovingian monasteries were founded in
what had once been a hermitage, such as Moûtier-Saint-Jean in the diocese of Langres,
and were dedicated to the first holy hermit who had lived there. Houses for monks greatly
outnumbered those for nuns.
Many of these Merovingian foundations remained small, and some seem to have
sheltered monks only intermittently. By the 8th century, however, virtually every French
episcopal city had one major monastery, which was in constant if low-level competition
with the bishop throughout the rest of the Middle Ages. Such a monastery was usually
located just outside the city walls, though sometimes it was slightly farther away. The
competition between bishops and monks—expressed in everything from quarrels over
monastic immunities to attempts to build more elaborate edifices than the cathedral
church—was especially marked if, as at Tours, Auxerre, or Reims, the monastery could
claim the influence, or even the body, of an early sainted bishop whom the bishops
themselves treated as a font of their spiritual authority.
Founded in large numbers in France in the 6th and 7th centuries, monasteries
experienced serious setbacks in the 8th century. Muslim attacks devastated many
monasteries, especially in the south but as far north as Burgundy. Both laypeople and
bishops seized monastic property as their own; a number of monasteries had received
enough generous gifts over the years that a layman was tempted to take the office of
abbot and the revenues. Many of the smaller urban and suburban monasteries founded in
the Merovingian period remained empty of religious men from the 8th century to the
12th.
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