The Chronicles of Marmoutier

Summary

During the eleventh century, an anonymous collection of miraculous stories, a number of which feature apparitions of the dead, was compiled at the Benedictine abbey of Marmoutier, near Tours. It is likely that the stories were intended to be used in an exemplary manner within the monastery itself, to foster the communal sense of institutional ancestry necessary for monastic harmony, and to emphasise the duties of fair treatment and brotherhood owed by individual monks to each other. The historical continuity of the monastic community, of which individual monks would have been encouraged to be continually aware, is apparent in the following story. The ghost of the dead priest Herveus makes an appearance not so much in a cautionary guise, to encourage a living colleague to change his manner of life, but to guarantee a debt arrangement and ensure that the repayment which he and the colleague agreed upon when they were both alive is honoured for the benefit of the Marmoutier community.

Herveus and his Debtor

Tale VIII

A certain priest called Herveus, who came from a noble family, was greatly disposed to a worldly and voluptuous way of life. His wealth, which derived from interest-bearing loans, was constantly increasing. Nevertheless, he gradually came to realise that the only hope for his future health and salvation was to deal honourably with religious men, and in particular with the monks of Marmoutier. Finally, advanced in years but still physically sound, he gave himself and all his possessions over to them, although even then he was not entirely able to free himself of the chains of the secular world.

At long last the greedy hand of death, which batters equally upon the cottages of paupers and the towers of kings [Odes of Horace I, 4, 13] reached out towards him. Sensing that the hour of his death was near, he hurriedly called the brothers of Marmoutier to him. Humbly confessing his sins, and with many bitter tears, he divided his possessions in an appropriate fashion between the brothers and the poor, making over the bulk of his moveable wealth and real estate to the monastery. He also made clear to all his debtors that, however much they owed to him, they thenceforth owed to the monks, and he set out a specified time for the repayment of these loans.