Created Saturday 19 April 2014
c. 971, an administrative document (breve) written up by Abbots Gerald I and Adalgar in collaboration, listing the churches and vicairies that the monks of St-Pierre de Beaulieu hold, which are these:
Favars, with 100 manses;
Girac, with its vicairies (a level of hierarchy that they don't explain);
Belmont with its casale;
Biars likewise;
Condat likewise;
St-Pardulf de Maumont with 15 manses and a iudex;
Matrinhac with 60 manses and the obedience of Puys and Colombier and their 40 manses;
'Rundenario'.
All of these go to the monastery's cellarers for ornamenting the church. They go on to list rights coming off the Dordogne from Gour-Nègre to St-Martial de Tauriac, within which all landing-stages and fisheries belong to the monks; everything else the abbey has belongs to the abbots, and if they are entrusted to laymen those properties are forfeit to the monks. The abbots consequently appoint slave-vicars to each of them, all of the men concerned coming from the central fiscal complex at Chameyrac. These men have quite stringent sumptuary requirements placed upon them: they may not be made knights or carry shield, sword or any weapon beyond lance and spear; they may not wear garments cut at the front and back, but only closed; they are not allowed to exact vectigalia; and if they breach any of these they are returned to servitude, as if this status is not servitude really. Meanwhile, they each get a manse and a steady revenue from their vicaria of 4 denarii, a chicken and a third of the proceeds of all pleas and investitures, of which the latter is surely where any real profit is, and they will be buried honourably in the precinct of St-Pierre when they die, whereafter a successor will be appointed by the monks and have to pay a relief of 100 solidi and swear fidelity. It's all quite feudal but there are no fiefs! It's also obvious that quite a ariety of arrangements exists within these estates, and that while they are in some sense imposing a uniform structure over it that doesn't by any means imply that they are trying to systematize the substructures. A good example in many ways!