The houses received another boon as the Pippinid/Carolingian dynasty rose to power and prominence. Grimoald had been an early supporter of Stavelot-Malmedy, and the houses were near not just the site of Charles Martel’s victory at Amblève, but also Pippin’s homeland of Herstal and the government centers of Aachen and Cologne. These connections were the launching point of the houses’ regional prominence, and proved important to monastic power, memory, and self-definition. Over the course of the ninth century, Stavelot and Malmedy solidified their relationships with the Carolingian monarchy. Louis the Pious (r. 814–840) was particularly prominent in this process, confirming the monasteries’ core holdings and protecting their interests. Later abbots (and monarchs) repeatedly referenced Louis and his rulings in later charters, and the monks later included a story about him in the collection of miracles attributed to St. Remacle.69 It was around the end of Louis’s reign (840) that the first biography of Remacle (the vita prima) was written.
Stavelot-Malmedy continued to acquire new lands and grow, and by the late 800s, Stavelot and Malmedy seem to have been relatively successful, prominent, and economically secure. Baix characterized the monks of the period as “tenacious,”70 but a crisis point was approaching. In the winter of 881, according to the Annales Fuldenses, Vikings attacked the monasteries of Stavelot, Malmedy, Prüm, and Inda, the palace in Aachen, and the cities of Cologne and Bonn. Regino of Prüm confirms the attack on Stavelot-Malmedy, and the Annales Stabulenses report that in 881, “the monastery of Stavelot is burned up by the fire of the Normans.” As a result of the attacks, “the body of St. Remacle was brought out of its tomb on 6 December.”71 The monks abandoned the monastery, taking Remacle’s relics with them. This led to a forced tour of monastic properties that allowed the monks to remind the residents of the broader region of the presence and miraculous powers of St. Remacle.
Whether or not there was any substantial damage done to the monasteries by the Vikings, the cultural, political, and religious impact of the attacks was wider reaching and longer lasting than the loss of buildings and treasure alone could possibly have been. The attacks encouraged the monks to rebuild infrastructure, to promote themselves in order to find new benefactors and defenders, and to consolidate both their administrative and religious records. They also triggered a flurry of hagiographical writing, most particularly the second book of the Miracula Remacli (hereafter Miracula), a collection of almost forty miracle stories that were pivotally important in the preservation of the houses’ religious memory and in setting religious and behavioral models for later monks, patrons, and dependents. The tales range from the curing of the ill and possessed to the preservation of the monks against nature and the elements and the punishment of those who (like the Vikings) chose to attack rather than support the houses and their mission.
The Vikings were not the only setback Stavelot-Malmedy endured in the ninth century; they also had to deal with more direct control by the crown. Under Lothar II (855–869), the royal court took direct control of the houses, and in the subsequent forty years, there were seven external lay abbots.72 The narrative sources for Stavelot and Malmedy are silent about this period of lay abbacy, but the vita of John of Gorze claims that Stavelot’s next reform abbot, Odilo, sought “to correct to straight lines, with the help of Christ, those whom he had found to be powerfully crooked.”73
Odilo was also a royal appointee, and he linked Stavelot to the Gorze reforms, part of a general reform trend in the tenth century that included the better-known reforms at Cluny.74 Early historians of Stavelot saw Odilo’s abbacy (937/38–954) as ushering in a new era of religious fervor, intellectual drive, and monastic prestige at Stavelot. A. Courtejoie wrote that as a result, Stavelot again became “a seed-bed for saints and a training school for great men.”75 Yet no literary or religious works survive from his abbacy. Instead, there are only a handful of administrative charters.76 Odilo encouraged the bureaucratic consolidation of the monastic estate and the development of the chancery, a focus that would be repeated by subsequent “reform” abbots.
Another result of Odilo’s abbacy was that in 954 he was able to restore Stavelot-Malmedy’s rights to free abbatial election. He died shortly thereafter, and for the first time in nearly a century, the monks elected their own abbot, Werenfrid (954–980). The monasteries enjoyed a renewed sense of self-directed purpose, but in that same year an external factor confirmed many of their fears. At the beginning of the military excursion that would culminate in the Battle of the Lechfeld (955), the Magyars crossed through Belgium. En route, a small group attacked and burned Malmedy. The attack is recorded in a charter from 1007 and in the Annales Stabulenses, which reports that in 954 the “Hungarians filled the regions of Gaul.”77 Thus, less than a century after the Viking attacks, and in the wake of marked internal attention to religious and fiscal management, the monks were again forcibly reminded of the range of potential threats to their properties.
In the following years, they compiled their first cartulary, the Codex Stabulensis. Like many central medieval cartularies, this appears to have been intended to shore up property claims, confirm existing social bonds, protect their legal rights, and preserve monastic history and memory.78 As part of this same process, Stavelot-Malmedy also commissioned new hagiographic works, most notably the vita Remacli secunda (hereafter Vita Remacli).79 Notger, the archbishop of Liège, claimed authorship of this work in a preface, but it appears that he farmed it out to Heriger of Lobbes.80
This renewed interest in hagiographical production was sustained by Stavelot-Malmedy’s next reforming abbot, Poppo (1020–1048), who worked to develop the material infrastructure of Stavelot and to expand Remacle’s cult.81 Poppo, another external appointee, had connections to the emperor and the reform leader Richard of Verdun. In all, Poppo was involved with the reform and leadership of least twenty houses, and ensured that many of his followers and supporters became leaders of monastic communities in the region.82 These political and religious connections gave Poppo an immense ability to effect change at Stavelot. He rebuilt Stavelot’s basilica, oversaw the completion of the Miracula Remacli, worked to ensure Stavelot’s rights to free abbatial election, and restored and consolidated properties. Yet he was ultimately unable to fully unite the two houses, which had been fighting off and on over supremacy since the tenth century.
The final stages of this conflict are recorded in the Triumphus Remacli (hereafter Triumphus), which was written around 1065 by monks from Stavelot. The Triumphus provides details of the worst part of the schism and the formal separation of Malmedy from Stavelot, which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. It also makes a powerful hagiographical claim of Remacle’s ultimate control of both houses. Malmedy’s monks countered Stavelot’s claims in part by producing their own hagiographic literature, including the Translatio et Miracula s. Quirini (hereafter Translatio Quirini) and the Passio Agilolfi. Both works, probably written between 1061 and 1071, are attributed by most scholars to the same unknown author (a monk from Malmedy). The Translatio Quirini records the translation of the bodies of saints Quirin, Nicasius, and Scubicule from the outskirts of Paris to Malmedy. The text contains stories of the trip, including the miracles performed by the saints and the reception of the monks by various communities. The second source, the Passio Agilolfi (hereafter Passio) tells the story of a single saint, Agilolf, the semi-mythical eighth-century abbot we met at the start of the chapter.
The burgeoning hagiographical output was part of