Created Wednesday 12 March 2014
Nov. 860 [or 846? see below], the first charter in the cartulary, Archbishop Raoul of Bourges's testament to endow St-Pierre de Beaulieu, phrased in Apocalyptic terms. The property granted includes the seat of the monastery itself (again!) at Velline and estates that we have seen acquired at Belmont, Estivals and Nonars and ones we have not at Astaillac, Membriac, Saint-Genest, Curemont, Champagnac, Champagnol, Bardine and Tersac, although in several of these cases previous transactions are mentioned. Much of this is not new, but the governance is: the whole lot is placed under the control of the two abbots of Solignac and twelve named monks, of whom one, Gairulf, is presumably the abbot of St-Pierre of that name. One would not know from this that construction of the house had already begun: it is ordered afresh, although only one of the Solignac abbots (Cuniberht, perhaps the religious one with the other one, Bernoul, being a lay abbot?) is invoked to carry it out with the monks.This makes me wonder if Deloche'ss dating for the document (by the regnal years of King Charles the Younger) is accurate and whether a date of 846 by Charles the Bald would not be preferable. Further evidence for this might be seen in the fact that one of the named monks is a Silvio: this is presumably he who appears as Abbot of Solignac in the 856 foundation of Végennes, and it seems unlikely that he would step down between 856 and 860 rather than be stepped up between 846 and 856.
Anyway, it is now to be built. Poor relief is explicitly envisioned, and something very like an immunity is given, denying Raoul's family any further rôle in the house and ordering the new controllers to seek protection for it from the king (something that Raoul had already done by 860, of course, further suggesting an early date). The fine is about the largest in these documents, 100 pounds of gold and 500 of silver, and the anger of God and being extraneous to Christian company are in the deal too. The witnesses include a great many of the great and good, including the bishop of Limoges, Raoul's old collaborator Stodilo, one or two other bishops (Launo of Angoulême and a Raoul who may be the donor again), the Count of Toulouse, Raoul's mother Aiga and three of his brothers (Godfrid, Landric and Immo) as well as Godfrid's son Raoul and twenty-eight others of various orders, including three abbots and the monk Gairulf closing the list.