‘Against the Custom’: Hagiographical Rewriting and Female Abbatial Leadership at Mid-Eleventh-Century Remiremont

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of a recently identified campaign of hagiographic writing from the mid-eleventh-century monastery of Remiremont to reconstruct how this female convent positioned itself at a time when clerical resistance to the lifestyle and autonomy of 'non-Benedictine' communities was gaining momentum. In a first stage it looks at the three hagiographies from this campaign and how they reveal a cohesive strategy to drastically review the abbey's narrative of origins. In a second it reconstructs how their argument fits into Abbess Oda's (before 1045-1065/70) governance strategy and how that strategy was influenced by historical leadership choices at the nearby male houses of Luxeuil and Lure. And in a final one it considers memories of abbatial agency and discourses of communal identity at Remiremont, and how these influenced the abbess and her associates. In doing all these things, this study reveals that the abbey's leadership deployed a multi-faceted strategy to secure Remiremont's independence, taking ownership of its identity narrative at a critical juncture in its existence.