The edited volume under review here consists of eleven essays (including an introduction by the two editors and a conclusion by a colleague from the University of Caen) that originate from a two-day workshop held at Caen in the spring of 2016 with the aim of bringing into conversation new and ongoing research on the Norman abbey of Le Bec. Published by Brill in the well-established Anselm Studies and Texts series, the book follows on, more by accident than by design, from another edited collection dedicated to the same monastery and printed by the same publisher in 2018 as part of the Brill Companions to European History series, the contributions of which are duly acknowledged and summarised succinctly in the introduction. The two books’ respective remit and scope are distinct yet complementary, meaning they can--and hopefully will--sit comfortably alongside each other on the shelves of scholarly and institutional libraries. Whilst the earlier companion adopted a panoramic, if not necessarily comprehensive, approach--one in which the individual contributions acted as spotlights to illuminate both each other and, in combination, Le Bec’s place within the history of high medieval Europe--this new volume offers its readers a series of different and at times diverging perspectives that do not, and perhaps do not have to, cohere into an overarching vision or framework. Rather, they are presented, and appear to have been conceived, more as stand-alone articles than as book chapters stricto sensu, each with its own conclusion and bibliography. I will offer a few lines of commentary on each essay before assessing the volume’s conception and contribution to knowledge as a whole.
Beginning with the short but effective introduction, co-authored by Grégory Combalbert and Véronique Gazeau, the volume recapitulates the major milestones in scholarship dedicated to Le Bec from the turn of the twentieth century to the point of publication, drawing particular attention to recent (i.e., post-2000) work that, in the editors’ own words, marks a “renaissance in French and British universities over the last 20 years” (2). The book’s aims and rationale are then set out briefly both in their own right and in relation to (and demarcation from) the aforementioned 2018 companion. As Combalbert and Gazeau are keen to emphasise, the primary focus of the book and its constituent parts lies with primary sources pertaining to different aspects of Le Bec’s monastic life and culture, many of which are revisited, and some (re-)edited, here.
Jean-Hervé Foulon offers an insightful examination of the pastoral role(s) played by Le Bec’s abbots during the first hundred or so years of the community’s existence, drawing attention to the importance of monastic custom and autonomy, sometimes in conflict with secular princes or prelates. More could have been done, perhaps, to revisit and revise the relevant work by Jean-François Lemarignier. Judith Green then focuses more fully on the community’s engagement with, and dependence on, the world outside the cloister by studying its relationship with King Henry I. Marshalling a range of primary evidence that comprises documentary as well as narrative sources, she is able to draw out the extent and nature of Henry I’s patronage of Le Bec in unprecedented detail. Patronage remains the focus of Julie Potter’s discussion on the foundation and early history of Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, one of Le Bec’s earliest and most important priories. In what feels like a natural extension of her contribution to the previously published companion, Potter reveals the priory’s extensive sponsorship and support networks that encompassed several powerful aristocratic families, most notably the lords of Beaufou and the Viscounts of Montfort-sur-Risle, the genealogies of which are included alongside critical editions of nineteen previously unpublished documents concerning their relationship with and endowment of Saint-Philbert. These are extremely valuable resources for future scholarship, though perhaps the genealogies would have worked slightly better in landscape rather than portrait format. Yet another previously unavailable--or, in the author’s words, “forgotten”--primary source concerning Saint-Philbert is discussed and made available in critical edition by Combalbert, this time an important privilege (in both senses of the word) issued by John, bishop of Lisieux, that touches upon crucial judicial and spiritual rights extending beyond the priory to the motherhouse of Le Bec itself. Combalbert’s discussion is compelling, and his edition of the privilege of the highest diplomatic standard. Michaël Bloche’s highly detailed and masterful investigation of Le Bec’s abbatial and conventual seals includes evidence from several centuries, from physical impressions to mere mentions of seals, illustrating (both literally and figuratively speaking) the development of this type of material source and its significance for the monks’/abbots’ self-fashioning over time. Fabrice Delivré then directs the reader to an even lesser studied but no less important subject by elaborating on the use of canon law, and specifically decretals, at Le Bec. Delivré’s discussion sheds new light not only on Le Bec’s local adoption and adaptation of the Collectio Lanfranci, but also on other intriguing subjects such as the eclectic work of the so-called Anonymus Beccensis, a monk of Le Bec who elsewhere has been identified with a protégé and monastic pupil of Anselm’s called Maurice. In the next essay, Fabien Paquet offers a deep dive into the history of composition and transmission of the so-called “Chronicle of Le Bec,” a source that so far has all but eluded scholars’ attention. As Paquet demonstrates, this text is essential for studying “the writing of the history of Le Bec at Le Bec at the end of the Middle Ages” (223-24), and revealing the contexts of its production and reception will enable scholarship to make greater use of it in the future. Following on from this is Gilles Deshayes’ survey of the latest (2015-18) excavations at Le Bec, which produced new archaeological evidence of the medieval abbey church, the chapter house, and the later Maurist estate. Deshayes’s discussion will be mandatory reading for anyone staying up-to-date with the abbey’s intriguing architectural development over the centuries. The next and last proper essay is Lindy Grant’s review of this development in the period c.1100-1300, which takes the form of a historical-archaeological discourse that helpfully contextualises the buildings within their wider cultural and socio-political framework. The book is brought to a close by Pierre Bauduin’s reflections on Le Bec as a lieu de mémoire that deserves--and indeed needs--to be revisited to gain a fuller understanding of its long and fascinating history.
The book is generously illustrated with a total of fifty-six figures (plus three tables), though the vast majority of these illustrations are found in Bloche’s analysis of Le Bec’s abbatial and conventual seals (>90%) and Deshayes’s discussion of the abbey site’s recent archaeological excavations, respectively. It is a little surprising, by contrast, to see Grant’s contribution on Le Bec’s architecture making do with just three illustrations. There is also something of an imbalance between contributions in terms of their linguistic proficiency. The entire volume is published in English even though most of the authors are French/French-speaking. The help of native English speakers with pertinent subject knowledge has been enlisted and is fully credited both in the book’s general acknowledgements and by individual contributors, yet the result remains uneven. Some essay (sub-)titles are a little clunky, and the expression is not always idiomatic and sometimes archaic (e.g., “cenobitic regularization”; “the almery of the monastery”). Publishers insisting on using English as an academic lingua franca rather than permitting authors to write in their native language(s), presumably for broader market appeal, should invest in professional translating services. Rather more significant is the absence of a general bibliography at the end of the book, leaving it to the reader to mine the footnotes and bibliographies of individual essays for the shelfmarks of archival and manuscript sources or the titles of referenced books and articles. As a further consequence of this compartmentalisation, spellings have not been standardised consistently across the essays (e.g., “of Torigni” vs. “de Torigny”), nor do all of them cite the same critical editions and/or translations of the primary sources. This is fine, and to be expected, in academic journals, but feels awkward in an edited volume.
The overall verdict nevertheless remains a very positive one. Whilst as a conceptual unit the book may not offer more than the sum of its constituent parts, the individual essays are excellent and generate important new knowledge about Le Bec in the different fields of historical and material study to which they pertain, be it source criticism, history, or archaeology. An enormously useful and timely set of essays, though perhaps one that could have been published as a special journal issue.