By 1100, signs pointed to a renewed cultural and religious florescence, but the monasteries faced another abbatial crisis. Between 1098 and 1119, two external abbots were in charge. One of these, Poppo II of Beaumont (1105–19), was remembered (according to an 1128 charter) as the “depopulator of our lands.”84 After Poppo II’s abbacy, the monks of Stavelot elected their own candidate, Warnier, but the emperor never confirmed him and the pope deposed him five years later. Finally, in 1124, the monks elected Cuono de Logne, and he was confirmed. However, Cuono was not a monk from Stavelot, but from Malmedy, making him the first monk of Malmedy to be appointed as abbot of both houses.85
When Cuono was elected, a monk named Wibald was the porter at Stavelot. Wibald was a native of the Ardennes. He became a monk at Waulsort and then went to Liège to study theology, liberal arts, medicine, and agronomy under Rupert of Deutz, an influential scholar and a leading figure in the investiture controversy. Wibald gained the attention of the royal government, and in 1131 Lothar III invested him as abbot of Stavelot-Malmedy. He was a powerful and learned abbot who reshaped both the material and intellectual property of the monasteries, and his abbacy heralds what many historians have identified as Stavelot-Malmedy’s “golden age.”86
In the 1130s, Wibald accompanied Lothar III to Italy, where he briefly served as abbot of Monte Cassino. This risky post did not go unrewarded. Only three days after he placed Wibald as head of Monte Cassino, Lothar gave Stavelot the “Golden Bull of Aquino.” Issued on purple parchment, written in gold ink, and sealed with the golden bull, this charter was “the most honorable, most distinguished, and at the same time most extensive charter that Stavelot ever received.”87 This was a comprehensive confirmation of the relationship between the monastery and the Empire. In addition to affirming all earlier holdings granted by former emperors, Lothar reestablished Otto II’s election rules, added to Stavelot’s landed wealth, and again confirmed Stavelot’s supremacy, decreeing that Malmedy was never to be allowed to separate from Stavelot “which it is now tempted to do for the third time.”88 He placed the monasteries under his explicit protection and control, stating that their holdings would remain “in the hands and in the service” of the emperor.
When elected abbot of Stavelot, Wibald swore “to regain scattered properties” and protect the monks and their lands.89 He actively pursued new lands and new privileges, procuring at least eight royal charters for Stavelot, and six for Corvey.90 This is more than have survived from the previous 130 years, and the two diplomas that Wibald received from Frederick Barbarossa in 1152 and 1153 would be the last surviving royal charters to the monasteries for almost two hundred years.91 Wibald also received privileges from at least five of the six popes who reigned while he was abbot.92
Yet because of his international reputation, Wibald was rarely in residence at Stavelot. His longest stay was from 1130 to 1135, and his last substantial residence at Stavelot was in 1148, when he remained for almost a year. From 1139 on, Wibald spent a considerable amount of time in the court of Conrad III of Staufen (1138–1155). He served in the royal chancery, attended imperial assemblies, and was involved in all affairs between Conrad and Byzantium.93 Wibald’s support for Conrad’s political concerns eventually led to his leadership of a third monastery, Corvey, which split his attention even further.94 He was also frequently involved in broader church affairs, traveling to other monasteries, attending church assemblies, and visiting Rome.
After the winter of 1150/51, Wibald spent most of his time at Corvey. Although not particularly beneficial for Stavelot, Wibald’s long periods of absence are advantageous for modern historians, since he accumulated a vast correspondence. Wibald wrote and received hundreds of letters from emperors, popes, bishops, nobles, and his own subordinates, and collected them in his “letter book.”95 Wibald’s letters (along with the other documents associated with his abbacy) comprise more than one-third of all of the documents surviving from the foundation of Stavelot and Malmedy to around 1200.96
A man of letters with an interest in science, Wibald was a true “twelfthcentury Renaissance” man. The subjects of his letters range from discussions of fine theological points to the handling of routine administrative tasks. He used these letters to exchange knowledge, manuscripts, medicines, and even, in one case, rabbits.97 Wibald was also a patron of local artisans, and invested heavily in the decoration of Stavelot’s altars and shrines. One of Wibald’s surviving commissions, a bust of St. Alexander, is a fine example of Mosan metal- and enamel-working, as is the thirteenth-century reliquary of Remacle, considered a masterpiece of the style.98 Wibald also commissionedand probably designed two elaborate golden altarpieces (or retables), both now lost. Their programs are known, however: the first depicted Remacle’s foundation of the houses, and the second showed the mysteries of the passion and the resurrection of Christ, with the figures of Wibald and his patroness and correspondent Empress Irene. Further underscoring his broad imperial connections, he may also have commissioned a gold and enamel reliquary known as the Stavelot Triptych to house a fragment of the true cross from Byzantium.99
Wibald died, at the age of sixty, on 19 July 1158, while returning from Constantinople. Fittingly, news of this reached the monks via letter. Wibald’s body returned to Stavelot, where he was formally buried inside the church over a year later, on 26 July 1159. This study needs an endpoint; reluctant as I am to tie this to the death of a single leader, 1159 saw the convergence of several things that mark an end to the early and central-medieval core identity of the houses.
Most significantly, though Wibald’s successor, Erlebald (1158–1192), tried to continue his predecessor’s programs, the age of Stavelot-Malmedy’s great saint-abbots was over. Despite (or perhaps because of) his fame and influence, Wibald was never venerated as a saint.100 No significant works of hagiography followed and there was less investment in the material infrastructure of the cults. Remacle’s relics are still venerated in a church in Stavelot, and Poppo would eventually be canonized in 1624, but the great flourishing of Stavelot’s medieval saint cults was drawing to a close.
Broader changes were afoot. By the 1150s, the crusades had opened for Europe a whole new world of conflict, cultural exchange, and international connections. The evolution of the Cistercian order had dramatically changed the monastic experience; though the Benedictine order remained important throughout the Middle Ages, their dominance of economic, political, and religious landscapes was effectively over. Royal abbeys, too, were eclipsed by institutions founded by minor nobles, knights, and powerful merchants. The decentralization of royal power in the German Empire and the Low Countries and the problems facing the Hohenstaufen house also meant that Stavelot-Malmedy’s special status as a royal house was no longer a guarantee of support and privilege. As their patrons dwindled and the vibrancy of the earlier reform movements shifted to other orders, the forces that had pushed Stavelot to prominence receded, and the monasteries faded away.
There were more subtle changes to monastic identity, visible in a document issued in 1159, just one year after Wibald’s death. The foundation charter for a hermitage at Mie was preserved at Stavelot.101 The Latin original was copied into Old French, and as such is the earliest vernacular document from the monastic archive, reflecting a significant change in archival