Robert d\' Arbrissel

Robert d' Arbrissel , called name of the village of Arbrissel (Ille-et-Vilaine) in the diocese of Rennes in Brittany where it was born towards 1047, is a Breton monk founder of the Ordre of Fontevraud and abbeys of Fontevraud and Roë.

Biography

Origin

The father of Robert d' Arbrissel was a priest named Damalioch and his/her mother named Orguen, being downward probable Breton S come from Great Britain and installed with the Romance edges of the Armorique, perhaps with a defensive aim on the request of the dukes or kings de Bretagne. Robert would have succeeded his father in the load of vice-chancellor of Arbrissel (current village of Ille and Vilaine, to 35 km in the South East of Rennes) and as would have lived to him with a woman (it is only with the Ier council of Lateran of 1123 that the marriage or the cohabitation of the priests was repressed by making their children of bastard prohibited heritage).

The arrival in Paris

Compromised in the irregular election of a bishop, it is exiled with Paris where it is converted with the reform promoted by the pope Gregoire VII. It came early to Paris, where it made fast progress in the letters, and was accepted Doctor of Divinity. Its bishop, Woodland of Guerche, recalled it near him, made use of his lights, conferred to him dignities of Archiprêtre and official, and had satisfaction to see it successfully fighting the Simonie, the incontinence and the other defects of its clergy. After having worked during four years with the eradication of these disorders, Robert lives himself exposed, by the death of his guard, with the resentment of the ecclesiastics whom he had humiliated; and Marboclus, successor of Guerche, which apparently did not like as much as this one the reforms and the reformers, thanked it for its care, and let it leave for Angers, where it went to teach theology.

Anjou, Hermit in the forest of Craon

It binds to Angers with Marbode, future bishop of Rennes and Geoffroi, abbot of Vendôme which assesses its intellectual and religious qualities.

Little before the end 11th century, Robert d' Arbrissel endorses the principles of poverty preached by Gregoire VII and, yielding to its taste for the solitary life, will live as a hermit in the forest of Craon, near the Brittany and of its village of origin, towards 1091.

The February 11th 1096 (N. S.), the pope Urbain II, which launched, one year before, the call to the First crusade, was with Angers, accompanied by many prelates, Hugues of Burgundy, archbishop of Lyon; Amat d' Oloron, archbishop of Bordeaux; Yves of Chartres, bishop of Chartres; Hoël, bishop of Mans, and the noblest lords of the area.

Robert d' Arbrissel was at this famous assembly; he had preached the day before in front of the pope with the dedication of the church of Saint Nicolas's Day de Craon. It is in Angers that Urbain II, which intends it to preach, is so content with its sermons, which it confers to him the title of apostolic preacher, with the permission to preach per universum mundum . Geoffroy de Mayenne, bishop of Angers, accepted it in its room with Renaud Ier de Craon, wire of Robert Burgundian the, lord of Craon, and his sons. It is there that the concession of seven hovels in the forest took place where the canons could be established in peace.

It is seen there soon surrounded by a crowd of Anachorète S attracted by the fame of its virtues and the holy austerity of its life. Hermits, they became coenobites under the direction of their chief, who gave them the rule of the regular canons recently reformed and remelted by Yves of Chartres.

Its reputation of holiness is spread and of many clerks and laic join it, which results in creating residences which become the Abbaye of Roë. It divides them in three colonies, is given the responsability to control one of them, and entrusts the others to Vital of Mortain and Raoul of the Grove. In Craon it also meets other hermits of the area like Saint Alleaume or Bernard de Tiron.

The sermon

Robert leaves then this loneliness and from goes away preaching the word of God everywhere, and everywhere involving after him a crowd of listeners of any age and any sex, that its eloquence attaches to its person. This mixture of men and women does not fail to wake up the public curiosity and of to scandalize some people.

It must, to avoid the disorders, to separate from many people who take the monastic dress then, but much of women do not want to leave it.

Fontevraud

On the councils of Marbode, it must be stabilized and settles in 1101 in a wood where a fountain bore the name of a man called Evraud or Evrault. The huts built near the castle of Montsoreau (currently in Maine-et-Loire) will become powerful the Abbaye of Fontevraud which will give rise to the town of Fontevraud-l' Abbaye. It was, like known as Bayle, to fix its gate vaults in lonelinesses of Fontevraud , to subject the men to the empire of the women; and while it imposed on those the obligation to request, it wanted that these, their perpetual servants , were occupied draining swamps, to clear moors, to plow the grounds which they had conquered on water and the desert.

This abbey is made up of a part for the women and another for the men. The abbey of Fontevraud, founded by its care in 1103, became in little considerable and famous time, no matter what some prelates of its time said some, of which he had not dared to show manners, if his had not been to them free from reproach and the sad echoes of Bayle, which found pleasant to repeat after him that Robert d' Arbrissel did not make that the same bed with his more pretty Prosélyte S, in order to be occupied more conveniently with the speech. It is certain that its piety was never contradicted; that its reputation was attacked and not faded by the charges from which we come to speak; that the most distinguished popes, kings and prelates returned justice to him and protected it from all malignant interpretations.

Robert d' Arbrissel, whom one sometimes described as feminist, pleads for the dignity of the “ wives of Jesus-Christ ” vis-a-vis the Misogynie of the anxious clergy of possible promiscuities and it will impose that after him, the abbess has the direction of the monastery of the men.

It is the duchess of Brittany Ermengarde of Anjou which, by its arrival in 1106, brings a fame even larger as well as the support of his/her brother Foulque V, duke of Anjou. The duchess seeks an adviser for her request for cancellation - which will be rejected - of her marriage with Alain Fergent, because she wishes to enter to the convent.

One preserved a letter of the monk at the duchess in whom it gives him councils of a high behavior all while feeling sorry for it to be obliged to live in a barbarian country. The duchess will come to mix with the moniales, sharing their prayers partially.

Return to preaching

When he believed that its establishment could do without him, he took again its first use of travelling preacher, traversed the France, exhorting the rich person with charity, the poor with humility, the women with the continence, and the men with the love of god. He assisted, in 1104, with the Concile of Beaugency, and took seat among the prelates. The bishop of Poitiers was so satisfied with its doctrines and the laws which it had given to his disciples, that it requested near the the Holy See the bubbles of confirmation; and, by delivering them, the pope Pascal II declared that it took this order under his special protection.

It was in the middle of its apostolic work that Robert fell sick; it was obliged to stop with the Prieuré of Orsan, diocese of Bourges in the Berry. It died there the February 24th 1117, bequeathing its heart to Orsan and its body with Fontevraud. The archbishop of Bourges, his clergy, the nobility of the surroundings and a crowd the laic ones, accompanied his body to the abbey by Fontevraud, where him splendid funerals were made.

Epitaph

In 1655, Louise de Bourbon, abbess of Fontevraud, made place the remainders of Robert in a superb marble tomb, on which one read the epitaph that Hildebert, évèque of the Mans, had made in its honor, and of which here some worms:

Attrivit lorica long-winded speech, silis arida fauces, Lasted famed stomacbum, lumina cleaned vigil. Raro requiem sibi, rarius eseam induced. Gultura pascebat graraiue, twisted Deo. Legibus is subjecta carq dominated rationis; And sapor unus I.E.(internal excitation), sed sapor ille Deus.

Random links: