Blessed Robert of Arbrissel

At this same time, that is to say around the year 1085, the see of Rennes having become vacant by the death of Méen, its twenty-second bishop, Sylvestre de la Guerche, who had been chancellor to Conan II, Duke of Brittany, was put in his place; in this election, regard was undoubtedly had more to his birth and his credit than to his capacity for episcopal functions. However, as he was a man of probity and God-fearing, and as he did not wish to lose himself by neglecting the care of his flock, he applied himself above all to attracting into his diocese learned persons, well-versed in the Canons, to make up for the capacity and experience he lacked. He sought an ecclesiastic of great merit, upon whom he could discharge the ordinary cares of his bishopric. Robert, a doctor from Paris, was proposed to him; "he was a learned, laborious, vigilant man and a great example; moreover, he was his diocesan and as it were his natural subject; there was therefore for Robert a strict obligation to serve him in ecclesiastical affairs." No more needed to be said to the bishop to determine him to make this choice. He wrote to Robert, by a messenger he sent expressly to Paris, conjuring him to come to him as soon as possible, to assist him with his counsel and his lights in the guidance of the souls of which he had just been made the pastor.

Robert had too much zeal and piety to refuse an employment where, by rendering to his prelate the obedience he owed him, he could so usefully work for the glory of God and the salvation of his neighbor. He therefore left Paris, without delay, and went to Rennes. Sylvestre, who recognized that his merit surpassed what had been said of him and the idea he had formed of it, made him his archpriest, entrusted him with all his power, and considered him as his conductor and his guide in the government of his diocese. Robert, to respond to this benevolence, applied himself entirely to the affairs and necessities of the church of Rennes. He undertook to re-establish ecclesiastical discipline there: he declared war on all vices, and principally on those which caused scandal; he brought peace to families he found in dissension; he withdrew the goods of the Church from the profane hands of the laity; he undertook to reform the clergy, in which simony and scandalous morals reigned. One would not understand the life of Robert of Arbrissel, which was entirely a combat against the abuses of his century, if one did not cast a glance at the wound which then afflicted the clergy: this wound was simony. Hence the false vocations and the disorder of morals among those who had usurped the sanctuary without being called to it! Fortunately, faith was then lively; the Christian people understood that religion, good in itself, is not responsible for the scandals of some of its ministers.

Divine Providence having called Sylvestre from this world at the end of four years, the ecclesiastics, who should have seconded the zeal of our Saint and joined him to repress the disorders which afflicted the diocese, whether they were jealous of the high reputation his merit had acquired for him, or whether they were irritated that he reproved them for their crimes, resolved to ruin him; and, seeing him without support, they persecuted him so strangely that, to prevent the scandal which could arise on his account, he was forced to abandon Brittany and go to exercise his zeal elsewhere. He therefore retired to Angers, where he taught theology for some time, with all the more satisfaction as this excellent employment gave him the means to make piety flow into the hearts of his disciples. However, he constantly conceived new desires to consecrate himself entirely to God, and, to do so with less hindrance, he practiced austerities which might appear incredible: he ate very little and was almost always awake; he wore an iron cuirass on his back for two whole years, without taking it off. This way of life, admirable as it was, not yet satisfying the zeal he had to glorify Jesus Christ, he resolved to abandon the world and to retire into some solitude, to devote himself entirely to the contemplation of heavenly things. He therefore leaves the city of Angers, with a priest whom he takes with him, as the prophet Elijah associated his disciple Elisha, and goes to hide in the forest of Craon, on the borders of Brittany, Maine, and Anjou.

The life he led in this solitude is truly admirable. Most of the time, he lived only on wild herbs and roots, and never used either wine or meat in his meals. He would have thought himself too softly clothed had he used a tunic of goat or lamb skin, according to the custom of solitaries; he would have only one, woven with hog bristles, in order to torment himself further. When human infirmity compelled him to sleep, he lay on the hard earth, so as to make a torture of the very place of his rest. In a word, his historian says that there is no kind of penance that he did not invent to afflict his flesh. These austerities, however, great as they were, were not comparable to the pains he suffered inwardly: the trials by which God wished to purify him were sometimes so harsh and violent that, in the excess of his pain, he abandoned his heart to sobs and groans in a way that it is not possible to represent.

The rumor of his holiness having gradually spread around the forest, people flocked from all sides to admire this new prodigy. As much as he was rigorous with himself, he appeared gentle and affable toward those who visited him. His mere gaze inspired in libertines feelings of penance and fear of God. When he spoke of holy things, he had a truly heavenly eloquence, so that he captivated everyone with his discourses. Those who had heard him returned perfectly edified; and, as they published what they had seen and heard, they were the cause that others came from afar, in troops, toward the Saint, to profit from his conversations. He was like the oracle of the Lord, and he satisfied those who addressed him so well that one would have said his lips were the dispensers of the science of heaven. Indeed, most of those who had heard him renounced their past life and breathed only penance; many even, unable to resolve to leave him, wished to be solitaries after his example. Thus, the forest of Craon became in a short time entirely populated with anchorites, who, reviving the fervor of the ancient hermits of Egypt, led an angelic life there.

Among his disciples, the most considerable were the blessed Vital of Mortain, canon of the church of Saint-Évroul, in the diocese of Avranches, and later founder of the famous abbey of Savigny, in Normandy; and the blessed Raoul de la Futaie, religious of the abbey of Saint-Jouin, in the diocese of Poitiers, and, l ater, founder of Vital de Mortain Founder of Savigny, companion of Bernard. the famous abbey of Saint-Sulpice of Rennes, in Brittany. The example of these two famous personages attracted so many others after them that the fores t of Craon, spacio Raoul de la Futaie Disciple of Robert and founder of Saint-Sulpice in Rennes. us as it was, not being able to contain these holy solitaries, Robert was compelled to disperse them into the neighboring forests. Then, no longer able to watch over such a great number of hermits, he divided them into three colonies: he kept one for himself, and gave the other two to Vital and Raoul, whom he judged the most capable for this employment. It was a spectacle worthy of God and the angels to see all these solitaries dispersed in these woods, mingled among the wild beasts and lodged, some in one, others in huts made of bark or tree branches, practicing virtue in competition and all aspiring to perfection.

After they had lived for some years in separate cells, Robert, recognizing that many of them had an inclination for the cenobitic life, undertook to build them a kind of monastery in the forest of Craon, at the place called La Roë, and gave them the rule of Saint Augustine, which had been newly re-established in France by the blessed Yves, Bishop of Chartres: which caused him to call them canons regular. They lived in a fervor that surpassed, in some way, that of the Christians of the primitive Church; possessing neither rents nor income, they subsisted only on alms, and ate only roots. The Saint served, for some years, as father and abbot to these new religious, and estab Yves, évêque de Chartres Bishop and famous canonist, contemporary of Humbaud. lished them so solidly in piety that it was maintained for a long time in this monastery with much brilliance. A holy bishop of Angers, writing to a Pope in his favor, told him that this house was at once the poorest and the holiest in the whole kingdom. The care he took of this community did not prevent him from always watching over the anchorites, and from preaching the Gospel to those who came to him; for, as his charity was boundless, he went indiscriminately where necessity called him, and he gave himself so much to everyone that he seemed to be equally the father of the people and of the hermits.

As this holy Abbot was thus working for the glory of his God, U rban II, Urbain II Pope who preached the First Crusade. formerly a monk of Cluny, whom the design of a crusade had drawn to France, being in Angers, was asked to dedicate the church of the monastery of Saint-Nicolas, which Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou, had built before becoming a monk. This Pope, who had heard of Robert as a prodigy and as the wonder of the province, wishing to know for himself if his merit matched his reputation, ordered him to preach at this august ceremony, and to excite the people to take up arms for the conquest of the Holy Land. Never did our Blessed one appear on a more beautiful occasion; the Pope's court was filled with cardinals, bishops, and abbots, princes and great lords who accompanied His Holiness for a Council that was to be held in Tours, and there had gathered in addition a crowd so great at this extraordinary ceremony that one would have said that all the cities of France had flocked there. However, this audience did not astonish him: he preached with the zeal and boldness of a prophet, and exhorted the people so powerfully to take up the cross that the enlistments for the holy war were numerous. In a word, he filled the whole assembly with such admiration that the Pope confessed that the Holy Spirit had spoken through his mouth, and, as proof of his esteem, he honored him with the title of apostolic missionary, giving him the power to preach the Gospel, not in one single part of the world, but on all sides and throughout the extent of the earth.

The servant of God, seeing himself charged with such a holy mission, believed himself obliged to fulfill it; as his office of abbot prevented him, he resigned it into the hands of the Bishop of Angers, to whom the monastery of La Roë was subject, and this with the consent of the canons, who had a mortal regret at losing such a good father. Robert, having said goodbye to them, as well as to the anchorites, took a few disciples with him and went from province to province to announce the Gospel. As he preached penance no less by the poverty of his clothes and the austerity of his life than by his speeches, he produced incredible fruits in all the places where he passed: the people followed him in troops, admiring the words of grace that came out of his mouth. The matter even went to such a point that most of the men, women, and children he had converted abandoned their country and their parents and went everywhere in his wake. As he saw himself surrounded by this innumerable multitude of persons of both sexes, whom he had won for Jesus Christ, his charity which, following the example of that of the Son of God, won over everyone, not allowing him to send them away, he was obliged, in order not to have them always around him, to seek for them a place of retreat where they could live in a regularity suitable to their fervor.

On the borders of Anjou and Poitou, a short league from the town of Candes, so famous for the death of the great Saint Martin, there are vast fields, which were then entirely covered with thorns and bushes, and which a valley, watered by a stream, separated into two parts. This place is called Fontevrault. Some have b Fontevrault Motherhouse of the order founded by Robert. elieved that this name was given to it because of a notorious thief, named Évrault, who retreated there, and who, having finally been won over to Jesus Christ by the preachings of the Blessed Robert, had abandoned it to him to establish his Order there. But Baudri, Archbishop of Dol, in Brittany, who, being a contemporary of our Saint, could not have erred in such a common matter, says that from time immemorial this place was called Fontevrault. Be that as it may, it is this desert that our new Elijah chose to house these troops of neophytes, and from which the religious Ord Ordre religieux qu'il a institué Religious order of the Abbey of Longpré. er he instituted took its name, just as the Orders of Cluny, the Carthusians, of Prémontré, Citeaux, and of Grandmont, all in France, drew theirs from the places of their first establishment.

The time of this foundation was at the end of the 11th century. Robert began by having a few cells or huts built, only to shelter his disciples and protect them from the inclemency of the weather; but to avoid the scandal that could arise in this assembly of both sexes, he deemed it appropriate to separate their dwellings. He therefore placed the men in one area, and the women in another further away: for the latter, he even made a kind of enclosure, which was only of ditches or live hedges. He lodged God in the midst of these holy troops; for he had two oratories set up, one for the men, the other for the women, where each went in turn to say their prayers. The occupation of the women was to sing the praises of God continually; and that of the men, after their spiritual exercises, was to clear the land and work with their hands at some trade for the needs of one another. It was an admirable thing to see the order and the regulation that were kept among such a large number of newly converted people. Charity, silence, unity, modesty, and gentleness were observed there inviolably. They lived only on what the earth produced by itself, or on the alms that the neighboring populations gave them. Thus, they called themselves nothing other than "the poor of Jesus Christ," to be distinguished from other religious.

These examples of piety attracted to the forest an innumerable multitude of people of all kinds of conditions, who, having heard the salutary exhortations of the Saint, were so touched by them that they no longer wanted to return to the world. One saw entire families coming to be enrolled in this colony. He received all those whom he judged to be called by God: the old, the poor, and the commoners, as well as the young, the rich, and the nobles. The infirm, the crippled, the sick, and even the lepers were not turned away, and no other recommendation was needed to be admitted than a true will to convert and to give oneself to God. This gathering of people of all ages grew so much from day to day that one could not build enough cells to contain them: this is what led Robert to resolve to build them various monasteries. He built three for the women: one, to house the virgins and widows, which was named the Grand-Moustier; another, for the lepers and other infirm, which was called Saint-Lazare; and the third, for sinful women, to which was given the name of Magdalene, because they were to imitate her penance. The same order was kept in proportion for the housing of the men. This is what composed the famous house of Fontevrault, whose magnificence has been preserved to our days. The beautiful name that was given to the main entrance of this house deserves to be noted: it was named Athanasis, that is to say "the gate of Eternity," to show that the people who would retreat there would have some assurance of their salvation.

Until then, he had not prescribed to the congregation any form of life that was peculiar to it; but, as charity pressed him to leave the desert to go and preach the Gospel, he wanted, before leaving, to declare the spirit of his institute. Here is what it consists of: the holy Patriarch, considering that there was not yet any congregation established in the Church in honor of the Virgin, had the thought of founding an Order to honor her maternity forever, and to execute, in his person and in that of his disciples, the testament of the Son of God, by which this divine Savior, dying on Calvary, made a mysterious alliance between his mother and Saint John, saying to the Virgin: Woman, behold your Son; and to John: Behold your Mother. For as, from that time on, this Apostle rendered to Our Lady all the duties that the quality of Son could require of him, and that in a word he looked upon and revered her as his mother, so Robert, seeing himself surrounded by this multitude of men and women, whom he had converted to God, wanted that, in his congregation, composed of both sexes, one should represent the divine Mary, and perform the function of Mother, and the other should take the place of John, and perform the function of son. And, as the mother, during the minority of her children, has the administration of their goods and full authority over their persons, he made his religious renounce the advantages of their sex and the disposal of their goods, which were previously common: by this means, submitting them to the nuns, after having submitted himself first, he rendered them as the children, or rather as the wards of the Blessed Virgin. He also enjoined them to dedicate their private chapels to Saint John the Evangelist, in order to take as patron of their churches the one he had given them as a model of their submission.

As a leader was needed to guide this great troop of nuns and to watch over the affairs of the congregation, our Saint established Hersende of Champagne as grand prioress of the women's monasteries. She was a close relative of the Count of Anjou and widow of William, Lord of Monsoreau, who held the rank of prince in the province. But, for fear that she might not be able to attend to all matters alone, although she had an admirable mind, he gave her, as coadjutor and assistant, Petronilla of Craon, widow of th Pétronille de Craon First Abbess General of the Order of Fontevraud. e Lord of Chemillé, who was hardly inferior in birth or holiness to Hersende: she was descended from one of the oldest and most flourishing families of Anjou, and she had so many fine qualities that she deserved the esteem of everyone. Having thus unburdened himself of the care of affairs upon the wise conduct of these two illustrious religious women, he set out on the road to go from city to city and from parish to parish, to enlighten the people who were in the darkness of ignorance and error. Passing through the forest of Craon, where he had once tasted such delights, he associated with his mission Vital, Bernard of Abbeville, and Raoul, his former disciples, in order to work together for the conquest of souls. He went to Brittany to share with his compatriots the graces of which he was the dispenser and minister, and, after having traveled through this province, he entered Normandy, which was then highly decried because of the great crimes committed there. The zeal he showed in abolishing the disorders of that country earned him such esteem that, after some persecutions he had to endure at first, he was respected by princes, cherished by bishops, honored by abbots, and admired by everyone.

However, the enemy of our salvation, unable to suffer the progress that our holy missionary was making with his disciples, stirred up adversaries against him who sowed various rumors against his doctrine, his morals, and his conduct. The heretic Roscelin, among others, published against him, under an assumed name, a letter full of insults and slanders: this is apparently the one that some modern authors have attributed too lightly to Geoffrey, Abbot of Vendôme; but all these slanders, although capable of discouraging the strongest, did not in the least cool his zeal. He always continued the functions of his apostolic ministry, and, as he suffered these insults with invincible patience, they turned to the confusion of his enemies and served only to increase the esteem that his virtue inspired: those very people who had been too credulous, having recognized the merit of Robert and the injustice of their proceedings, became the protectors of the monasteries he later founded in various places.

From Normandy, he made a trip to Fontevrault to lead there a large group of people he had converted through his preaching, and from there, he went to conduct a mission in Poitou. Peter, Bishop of Poitiers, who knew the merit of the servant of God, received him with great joy; and, seeing the admirable fruits he was producing through his institute, he offered to go himself to Rome to ask for the Pope's approval: which he successfully executed. Robert, having traveled through this province, that of Anjou, and Touraine, establishing houses of his Order everywhere, did the same in Berry, Auvergne, Limousin, Angoumois, Périgord, Gascony, and Languedoc. We do not undertake to report here, in detail, the wonders he performed in the course of this mission, nor the miraculous conversions he made through the ardor of his zeal; but we cannot omit that of Queen Bertrade, which happened a little after the return of our Saint to Fontevrault. This princess, who se beauty had reine Bertrade A woman whose scandalous relationship with Philip I caused the resignation of Arnulf. been so fatal to France, since it had drawn upon this kingdom the curses of heaven and the thunderbolts of the Church, having well considered the vanities of the century and weighed, in her mind, the Christian sentiments that had been inspired in her by our learned preacher during the visits she had paid him, finally resolved, although in the flower of her age and beauty, to leave the world and retire to the monastery of Fontevrault to do penance for the sins of her past life. She therefore came to find the blessed Robert, and, placing her crown at his feet, she humbly asked him for a veil to hide her face, which had made so many idolaters and adulterers. Upon taking the religious habit, she gave the Order a house called Haute-Bruyère, which she had eight leagues from Paris, to make it a convent; and, for fear that the income depending on it might not suffice for this design, she added to this gift what King Philip I, her husband, had assigned to her in Touraine as part of her dower. As she could not dispose of this domain without the consent of King Louis VI, successor to Philip, she had this donation accepted by this prince, who was delighted to contribute in some way to such a holy retreat for the Queen, his stepmother.

The health of our Saint was greatly weakened by his advanced age, by the journeys he had made on his missions, and by the austerities he practiced continually. He fell dangerously ill in the Abbey of Fontevraud; and, fearing to be surprised by death before having been able to perfect the spirit of his institute, which was, so to speak, still only in its infancy, he had all his religious gathered around his bed, and told them that, wishing to have the consolation of leaving them content in their vocation, he was very glad to know from them if they were resolved to remain in the dependence of the nuns to whom he had subjected them, so that he might permit those who did not wish to remain there to move to another congregation. The religious having given him assurances and made protestations of persevering constantly in their state, he proposed to them the election of an abbess to whom they would be particularly subject, and who would be as the head and general of the whole Order. This was a point of the utmost importance: it was a question of the peace of the Order and the choice of a woman who would be capable of presiding over both sexes: which was not easy to find. That is why he assembled several prelates and doctors to consult them on this matter; following their advice, six months later, Petronilla of Chemillé , of whom we have alre Pétronille de Chemillé First Abbess General of the Order of Fontevraud. ady spoken, was elected Abbess of Fontevraud, with the general consent of the nuns and religious: she was installed in this dignity, despite the reasons that her humility suggested to her to be excused from it, on October 28 of the year 1115.

Robert, having returned to health, had this election confirmed by Gerard, legate of the Holy See, who was in Angoulême; and having given, upon his return, some constitutions to the new abbess, to be kept in her Order, he went to take possession of the Abbey of Haute-Bruyère, where he had previously sent Queen Bertrade and some other nuns. But, having learned on the way that Bernier, Abbot of Bonneval, was in a dispute with the blessed Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, he went to that city: he had so much influence over both of them that he re-established a perfect friendship between them. This peace being concluded, he continued his journey to Haute-Bruyère; he had no sooner arrived than he was sent word that the blessed Ivo had passed away. This news surprised and afflicted him equally: although the holy bishop had formerly been a little contrary to him in the forest of Craon, Robert did not fail to maintain for him the respect he owed to a person of his merit; moreover, this prelate had much changed his sentiment, as it appears by the deference he had for him in the reconciliation of which we have just spoken, and by the consent he gave him for the establishment of the convent of Haute-Bruyère.

When Robert was ready to return to Fontevrault, after having spent the Christmas holidays and having put very good order in this new house, he found himself, sick as he was, obliged to make another journey to Chartres, to appease the dispute of Theobald, Count of Champagne, with the clergy of the same city, regarding the election of a bishop in place of Ivo. (1116.) The clergy had elected Geoffrey Deslieues, a canon of the cathedral church of Chartres. But Theobald, not approving of this election, although the elect was a very virtuous man and little inferior in merits and holiness to the one who had preceded him, drove out this new bishop, and treated the canons who were of his party very indignantly. Saint Bernard of Abbeville, abbot of Tiron, worked with much zeal to pacify these troubles; but it was without effect, although he had an eloquence capable of persuading the stubborn. This great work was reserved for the blessed Robert, to whom God had given a particular talent for reconciling minds. He therefore took it upon himself to speak to the count, and he did so so successfully that this prince consented to the election of Geoffrey, made restitution to the canons of the goods he had seized from them, and returned with them to a perfect understanding.

This was not the only good office that the church of Chartres received from our Blessed one. Simony reigned there; whatever effort the blessed Ivo had made to destroy it, he had not been able to succeed. Robert undertook to make it disappear; and, after having reconciled the canons with their prince, to reconcile them with God he gave them a great horror of this sacrilege: not only did they promise him, by a solemn oath, never to fall back into it; but to prevent their successors from committing such a detestable crime, they decreed, by an inviolable statute that was long observed, that no canon would be received in the future without taking the same oath.

Since we have come to speak of the zeal that our new Elijah displayed to abolish the abuses that had crept in among Christians, we will report here an illustrious example, which one will also find in the life of the blessed Bernard of Abbeville. In the year 1100, a Council of one hundred and forty prelates of the kingdom was held in the city of Poitiers, where the cardinals John and Benedict presided as legates of Pope Paschal II, and where it was a question of fulminating anathema against an adulterous prince and princess. Robert, whose holiness shone forth on all sides, received orders to come to this assembly, whether as a Doctor, or as an Apostolic Missionary, or as the head of a Congregation. He was there with Bernard of Abbeville, who was then abbot of Saint-Cyprien of Poitiers. The sentence of excommunication was given by the Council; but not all the prelates had the courage to remain to publish it: laymen, undoubtedly at the instigation of William, Count of Poitou, guilty of the same crimes as the King of France, rained a hail of stones upon the Fathers of the Council. Some prelates disappeared and sought their safety in retreat. But Robert and Bernard, who were accustomed to generously defend the honor of the Church, to support the truth without fear, and to fight everywhere against impiety, were among those who remained firm in the midst of this riot, and, braving death, they publicly read the sentence of condemnation that the Council had rendered.

But let us resume the thread of our history. From Poitiers, the blessed Robert, accompanied by the blessed Bernard of Abbeville, went to Blois; upon his arrival, he went to see William III, Count of Nevers, who was a prisoner of war there. This prince had so much joy from this visit that, forgetting the troubles of his captivity, he said, in the excess of his joy, that he would willingly remain in prison for the rest of his days, provided he often saw such consolers. Indeed, he profited so well from this conversation that, once set at liberty, he became a Carthusian in the humble condition of lay brother, in which he died the very year of his novitiate. From Blois, Robert went into Berry to visit his house of Orsan. An accident happened to him on the way which, being able to serve his glory, must not be omitted here. Two thieves having thrown themselves upon him and the religious who accompanied him, plundered their small baggage and vomited all sorts of insults against them. And, as his indisposition had obliged him to use a horse against his custom, these inhumans, without respecting his old age, nor having regard for the relief that his infirmity deserved, threw him to the ground and treated him indignantly. But a religious of this company, having shouted to these barbarians that it was Robert of Arbrissel (that great man whose reputation flew throughout the world) whom they were maltreating thus, they were seized with such terror that, throwing themselves at that very moment at his feet, they asked his pardon and promised him to amend and to quit their brigandage. Robert, delighted by such a beautiful conversion, forgave them with a good heart all the evil they had done him, and, raising them from the ground, he embraced them with a paternal tenderness and gave them the kiss of peace. Finally, by an excess of charity, as if he had been much obliged to them, he made them participants in the prayers and good works of his entire congregation: which is ordinarily granted only to the founders and benefactors of monasteries; in this our Saint showed that he was the new Elijah of the law of grace, whose mercy and charity far outweighed the rigorous zeal of the ancient Elijah of the law of Moses.

Our traveler having emerged from the hands of the thieves, or rather having changed into lambs these wolves who had wanted to devour him, continued his journey and fina lly a Orsan Place of the saint's death. rrived at Orsan. After having spent fifteen days there, he left to go to the abbey of Bourgdieu, to console by his presence the religious who had asked him for this grace. After having satisfied their desire, he set out again on the road to go to the neighboring towns and villages, where he was also ardently desired; but, the very day of his departure, he fell into such a faint that it was with great difficulty that they transported him to Orsan, where he arrived on a Sunday, February 18. As soon as he saw himself in this house, his first cares were to provide himself with the last Sacraments of the Church; that is why, the very next day, after a very exact confession, he received the holy Viaticum: which did not prevent him from communicating every day, according to his custom, until the end of his life. On Tuesday, he had Extreme Unction given to him. The following day, he was visited by the greatest lords of the country, and particularly by Léger, Archbishop of Bourges. He recommended to this prelate the house of Orsan, of which he was the principal founder, and expressed to him the desire he had to be buried at Fontevrault, not in the church nor in the cloister, because he believed that these places were too honorable for him, but in the mud of the cemetery, in order to rise again with the greater part of his children, and not to be separated, even by death, from those whom he had so tenderly cherished during his life. After that, he had the crowd that was pressing around his bed removed, in order to attend to prayer and to raise his heart more freely to heaven. As soon as they had left his room, he began to pray for the Pope, for the Doctors of the Church, for his Order, for his benefactors and for his enemies, of whom William, Count of Poitou, was one of the principal ones; he asked with great insistence of God that it might please Him to recall him to the path of salvation; which happened some time after his death, for this prince surrendered to his duty and received absolution for his faults.

When the Saint had finished all his prayers in the silence of the night of Thursday, he suffered a horrible temptation, stirred up by a troop of demons, who presented themselves to him to put him to the final test; but he immediately made them disappear, by arming himself with the sign of the cross, and saying to them with true faith: "What are you doing here, cursed troop; withdraw from me, I command you in the name of God." After this victory, he had a relic of the true cross brought to him, which has since been carefully kept at Orsan, in order to be able to die at the foot of the cross of his Master, if he did not have the happiness of dying upon it. The presence of this adorable instrument of our salvation inspired in him such great sorrow for his sins that he made a general and public confession of those of which he had knowledge; and, although he had led a life entirely holy and entirely innocent, he accused himself in such a way that, if one had not known him well, one would have taken him for some great sinner. In this, he spoke the language of the Saints who recognize themselves as sinners, to lead true sinners to penance, and who never lose the memory of their sins, for fear of drawing vanity from the applause of men.

On Friday, around two o'clock in the afternoon, having called his nuns and his religious, he gave them, on the spirit of their Order, a small exhortation in which he used the same words that the Savior said on the cross, and which have served as the foundation for the institute of Fontevrault; for, beginning with the abbess Petronilla, he said to her, while pointing to his religious: "Woman, behold your children"; and, turning toward the religious, he said to them: "Children, behold your Mother." Then, having imposed a penance on them all, he gave them his blessing. Immediately after, he rendered his spirit to God, on February 25 in the year 1116 or 1117. So that this divine man had the advantage of dying on the same day and at the same hour as the Savior of the world, and in blessing his children: God having wished to make him conformable to his Son in the circumstances of death, as he had tried to imitate him perfectly in those of life. This death caused a general affliction, not only in the Order of Fontevrault, but also throughout all of France, where this prodigious man had given so many marks of his zeal and his piety. There was no condition that did not testify to sadness, because there was no one who did not lose much in losing him.

## RELICS AND CULT OF THE BLESSED ROBERT OF ARBRISSELLE.

His body was solemnly transported to Fontevrault, as he had desired. The Archbishop of Bourges wished to pay him the final respects himself and attend the procession. The Archbishop of Tours, the Bishop of Angers, and the Count of Anjou were also present at this holy ceremony with several abbots and religious from neighboring monasteries, and a great number of priests, followed by all the nobility of the country and an almost innumerable crowd of people. All of Fontevrault went to meet this famous procession as far as Candes, barefoot and bareheaded, even though it was the middle of winter. Once the body arrived, it was led as if in triumph into all the churches, dressed in his priestly vestments. It was carried on the first day into the choir of the great monastery, the next day into the church of Saint-Lazare, and the following day into that of the Madeleine, and in each of these monasteries a solemn service was held: then, to satisfy the devotion of the people, it was taken back to the great church. After having been exposed there for several days to the piety of those who came to see it, he was buried by the same Archbishop of Bourges, not in the cemetery as the Saint had desired, but to the right of the altar, in his capacity as founder, everyone having concluded that it was more appropriate to do him justice than to satisfy his humility. This prelate, passing through Orsan, rendered to the heart of the Saint, which had remained there, an honor equal to that which he had rendered to his body: for he had it placed as close to the altar as possible, in a pyramid of hard stone, which was erected in his honor; and this altar was thereafter held in such veneration in the province that it was called nothing other than the altar of the Holy Heart, and people came from all parts to make vows and prayers there. This pyramid is no longer intact today, because, during the disorders of the Calvinist war, in the year 1562, a soldier of the Duke of Deux-Ponts' army broke a part of it. He was even going to smash it to pieces; but, by a marvelous power of God, he had barely struck a few blows on the stone when he became blind and felt his arm become immobile. Moreover, this impious man, in losing the sight of the body, happily opened that of the soul, recognized the truth of our religion, and detested his errors; finally, to repair the outrage he had committed against the Saint, he made a pilgrimage to the same place, after which he recovered the faculty of sight, which he had lost. This is what the inhabitants of Orsan could not forget, having learned it from their fathers, who were the spectators of this wonder. Several other miraculous things have been done through the merits of the Blessed Robert, as can be seen in the authors we shall soon cite. There is still a fountain at Fontevrault that bears his name, and which he caused to spring from a place where one would not have expected a source; its waters continue to perform miracles. Persons worthy of belief have testified to having noticed that a very pleasant odor sometimes exhaled from his heart. Several miraculous healings performed at his tomb and through his intercession are reported; which obliged the Bishop of Poitiers, in 1644, to conduct a legal inquiry, in order to serve the process of his canonization, for which the Most Christian King and the Queen of England have implored His Holiness to work.

But would one need to seek other miracles to prove the holiness of Robert than the beautiful actions of his life? Is there anything more admirable than to see a poor man, far from his country and his friends, and supported by Providence alone, building, in the middle of a desert, great churches and beautiful monasteries, assembling there up to two or three thousand people of both sexes, finding them sufficient income to feed them, without them having any other care than to praise the most holy name of God without ceasing, founding an infinity of others in France and outside of France, with such success that they yield to no others in either wealth or magnificence; in a word, accomplishing, in a very short time, a design that kings and princes would have had difficulty executing in a great number of years? It is therefore not surprising if, since his death, that is to say for more than six hundred years, he has been given the title of Blessed and Saint, and if, in this capacity, his name has been inserted in the Martyrology of his Order.

We do not dwell here on the praises of this famous Institute of Fontevrault, which was the fruit of the labors, as well as the prayers and tears of this holy founder. Popes, legates, archbishops, bishops, kings, and princes have given it an infinity of eulogies. The regular observance, which has always been kept there with the same fervor as it was in the beginning, is its continuous panegyric. There are so many princesses and ladies of the highest quality who have embraced it, without exempting themselves from keeping its rules exactly, that one can say, without false glory, that it has been linked to all the crowns of Europe. One has seen no fewer holy maidens there than noble ones, and all the houses of this congregation have been so fertile in great souls that they could provide us with long lists. What happiness for France that this Order, destroyed during the French Revolution, was able to gather its remnants and re-establish itself! In 1803, two Fontevrist nuns founded a boarding school, and, in 1806, a community at Chemillé, in the Vendée bocage, the homeland of Petronilla, the first abbess of Fontevrault: they resumed the habit of their Order in 1810. Soon there were thirteen former Fontevrists in this house; as new nuns increased this number, a chapel was built in 1827. The precious remains of Robert of Arbrisselle, which lay without honor in a corner of the ancient abbey church of Fontevrault, transferred to the chapel of the Chemillé community in 1847, received the cult that is their due. Besides this house of Chemillé (diocese of Angers), there are two others today, all three devoted to prayer and the education of young girls: those of Brioude (diocese of Le Puy), and that of Bonior (diocese of Auch).

As for the abbey of Fontevrault, a marvel of Chris tian art, with its fi abbaye de Fontevrault Motherhouse of the order founded by Robert. ve churches and three cloisters, it is today a detention house, where two thousand prisoners occupy the remains of the vast buildings inhabited, until the last century, by the Order of Saint Robert of Arbrisselle.

The life of the Blessed Robert was first written in Latin, at the request of Petronilla, the first abbess of the entire Order, by Bandri, abbot of Bourgueli, and later Archbishop of Dol, in Brittany, who had been his intimate friend. Andrew, grand prior of Fontevrault, added what had happened most particularly during the last three years of his life. The Reverend Father Sébastien Garrot, a religious of the same Order, gave these two works to the public in our language, with observations that he dedicated to the queens of France and England. Father Beuvier, a Celestin, speaks of him in his collection of Founders of Congregations. Father Honorat Miquet, of the Society of Jesus, treated him very amply in his History of the Order of Fontevrault. Finally, in 1696, the Sieur Paullion gave us his life, justified by several titles drawn from various monasteries in France, Spain, and England: it is a very curious work, which leaves nothing to be desired. We have mainly used it to compose this history.

Besides these authors, the Reverend Father Jean de La Mainforme, professor of theology, of the same Order of Fontevrault, gave to the public, in the 17th century, two dissertations in which he shows evidently that the letter against the Blessed Robert, attributed to Geoffrey of Vendôme, is not by him, but rather by the heretic Roscelin, as we have already remarked, and justifies, by invincible reasons, that it contains only calumnies and pure impostures. Everyone was already well persuaded of this, but we owe it to this learned author to have proven it so clearly that no one, in the centuries to come, will be able to be deceived by it anymore.