Introduction (by Richard Barton):
The Gesta Vulgrini is one of the shortest chapters in the collection
of bishops' lives known as the Continuations of the Actus Pontificum
Cenomannis in urbe degentium ("Acts of the Bishops Living in Le Mans").
The Actus proper was a ninth-century compilation of episcopal lives
up to the episcopate of Aldric (died in the 850s ..?). Subsequent
scribes (all anonymous) continued what they felt to be a laudible history
of the diocese by appending continuations to the Actus in the 1050s, the
late 1090s or early 1110s, and so forth. Vulgrin's life is as short
as it is because his episcopate fell squarely between the first and the
second continuation of the Actus. The first continuator, as Robert
Latouche demonstrated in the brilliant article cited below, probably compiled
the lives of the bishops from Gunherius (c.890) to Gervais (translated
to the archdiocese of Reims in 1055) at some point in the late 1050s; that
is, during Vulgrin's episcopacy. Yet the second continuator did not
begin his labors until the middle of the episcopate of Bishop Hildebert
(1097-1125). As a result, the life of Vulgrin was relatively remote
from the personal experience and knowledge of the second continuator, who
preferred to focus his energies on the better known events that occupied
the lives of bishops Arnald, Hoel, and Hildebert. We can thus learn
quite a bit more about Vulgrin's predecessor, Bishop Gervais, and his successor,
Bishop Arnald (d. 1081), from the continuations of the Actus than
we can about Vulgrin.
Still, we can supplement our knowledge of Vulgrin from other sources. As his Gesta records, he had previously been the abbot of the important monastery of Saint-Serge d'Angers. The recently published cartulary of Saint-Serge (edited by Yves Chauvin, Presses de l'Université d'Angers, 1997) provides some small details of Vulgrin's abbatial career. As such, he was a protégé of Count Geoffrey Martel of Anjou (1040-1060), and his election to the see of Le Mans indicates the amount of control that Count Geoffrey exercised in neighboring Maine. Indeed, as the Gesta Gervasii describes in some detail, Count Geoffrey and Bishop Gervais had struggled for dominance in Maine for most of the 1040s; one of the consequences of the Angevin count's triumph was Gervais' oath to never set foot in his episcopal city again. Thus Gervais was translated by King Henry I to the archdiocese of Reims in 1055, and Count Geoffrey had a free hand in Maine. Who better to cement that hold over Maine than Abbot Vulgrin of Saint-Serge, an able builder and organizer and a man who owed his abbatial career to the count? Despite the paucity of details provided in this Vita, it nevertheless serves as an important symbol of the successful Angevin dominance over Maine that occurred in the 1050s.
Text: The Deeds of Lord Vulgrin, Bishop [of Le Mans, 1055-1065]
When moreover Count Geoffrey heard that Bishop Gervais had properly taken up the rule of another church, he gathered together the people of his land and all the clergy so that they might elect a bishop of the church of Le Mans. When they come together as one, they elected Vulgrin, monk and abbot, an experienced man [vir prudens] and a good builder. This Vulgrin came from the region around the castle of Vendome and, although he was first a knight, he soon became a monk and fought [militavit] regularly for Christ in the monastery of Saint Martin at Marmoutier under Abbot Albert, who was virtuously ruling Marmoutier at that time. Seeing Vulgrin's diligence, the aforesaid abbot made him prior of all the monks of the monastery. Moreover, when Geoffrey, count of the Angevins, heard of Vulgrin's reputation as a good prior and an exceedingly good builder, he asked Abbot Albert to give him Vulgrin so that Geoffrey could make him the abbot of the monastery of saints Sergius and Bacchus, which had been ruined and in which scarcely twenty monks were then able to live. Abbot Albert complied with the count's petition, and Vulgrin, the prior, was made abbot of the monastery of St Serge.
Although he lived only a few years in that monastery, he restored it from a state of ruin and almost total destruction to one of greatness. He decorated it with various ornaments, enriched it with vines, lands, churches and all manner of good things, and made it so that in his time sixty monks could live there in abundance.
When they saw his ability and the wisdom of his soul, the churches of Maine, which had fallen into an equal state of ruin, ordained [him] bishop. However poorer and more humble than the previous bishops he might have been, Vulgrin nevertheless tried to achieve greater deeds. Truly in the fifth year of his ordination he commenced the foundations of a mother church wider than what had existed before. But, due to the unexpected arrival of death, he was unable to complete this task. Thanks to God's gift and the diligence of his own soul, this man ascended to the heights through five [ecclesiastical] grades: from cleric to monk, from monk to prior, from prior to abbot, and from abbot to bishop.
He lived in the diocese for nine years, eight months and eleven days, and he died and was buried in the church of Saint Vincent the Martyr.
To each canon [of the Cathedral Chapter] he gave one gold piece; the rest [of his wealth], however, he designated for the building of the [new] cathedral, except for that which he bequeathed to his household [familiae] or to his relatives.
SOURCE:
Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium, ed. Gustave Busson
and Ambrose Ledru (Le Mans, 1900), pp. 373-374. Translated by Richard
Barton
REFERENCES:
Robert Latouche, "Essai de critique sur la continuation des Actus Pontificum
Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium," Le Moyen Age 11 (1907): 225-275.
Stephen C. Fanning, "Les origines familiales de Vulgrin, abbé de Saint-Serge d'Angers (1046-1056) et évêque du Mans (1056-1065), petit-fils du vicomte Fulcrade de Vendôme," La Province du Maine 82 (1980): 243-255.