This week’s will comes from a wildly different chronological and geographical context from the ones we’ve looked at so far. Both Roger the Old and Raymond III, for all their differences, were late tenth century counts from the Midi. Bishop Hugh III of Nevers was a late eleventh century Burgundian bishop. Descended from the vicecomital family whose main centre was at Champallement, on the Auxerrois side of the area, this will comes from his first year as bishop, 1074. Or, as he put it, his first year married to his church, a metaphor which is quite striking. It’s not uncommon, but usually I encounter it on the other side: I’ve seen lots of widowed churches, but few newlyweds. So what does this will, from a completely different background, actually look like?
Saint-Cyr no. 75 (1st November 1074, Nevers)
In the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the living God.
Let it be known to all the sons of Holy Mother Church, both present and their posterity, that I, Hugh, solely by the free goodness of God not in return for my own merits bishop of the holy church of Nevers, although unworthy, commanded this testament of the goods which have come to me from the bishopric be instituted for God’s praise and honour; and just as any lay person joined legitimately to a wife would in accordance with the tradition of worldly law endow and honour her from his worldly goods, thus I, spiritually joined to my betrothed, with goodwill and a good heart, in accordance with the tradition of the holy canons, endow and honour her.
That is, in such a way that whenever by God’s will it should happen that I pass from this fallen world, half of my goods from the bishoprics in both bread and wine, gold and silver, and garments, and all moveable goods, should by my command and gift be distributed to the canons serving God and St Cyric day and night (as much as is left after my debts, if any there be, have first been paid). Let the other half of the goods, on the other hand, be divided in half. I command that one part of them be paid out to pilgrims and widows ill in the Maison Dieu; and that the other part be paid out to the monks serving in the monastery of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Etienne in the suburbs of our city, in which monastery, that is, I chose the place of my burial, if death overtakes me here or in the bishopric of Auxerre.
If anyone does anything else, or presumes to violate the fixed confirmation of this testament in any way, let God destroy him, and by divine authority and the power of Our ministry let them be held under the chains of anathema for as long as it takes for God to harshly punish him in his present life; and let the clergy and people respond ‘Let it be done, let it be done’.
This testament was read out in the city of Nevers, in the church of Saint-Cyr, in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1074, in the twelfth indiction, on the kalends of November [1st November], on Saturday, when the same Bishop Hugh was enthroned in the pontifical see, with Bishop Geoffrey of Auxerre and Count William [of Tonnerre, Nevers and Auxerre] and many other leading men standing by and hearing, along with the clergy and people of the city.
It was read out a second time the following week in full synod.
Rainer, precentor of the church, dictated and wrote this, in the reign of Philip, king of the French.
I think this is the abbey of Saint-Etienne de Nevers in question, but I’m not entirely sure… (source)
Where all the southerners we’ve looked at were dealing with land, this is entirely moveable goods. It’s more like one of the most famous Carolingian wills, that of Count Eccard of Mâcon (a future subject for this series, hopefully) than anything we’ve seen so far. It’s also remarkably non-specific – rather than an enumeration of particular items, this is a list of categories and we don’t know how much Hugh has. Presumably, insofar as this will was made roughly fifteen years before his eventual death, neither did he.
What is therefore interesting is that he does assume that he’s going to have debts. I have a long-running theory to the effect that Early Modernity begins at some point in the thirteenth century, based on the political and economic significance of state debt from that point onwards. (The reason I developed this theory, if you’re curious, was that some years ago I was making my way through the Yale English Monarchs series in order, and they did not at that time have a volume for Henry III. What that meant was that I left King John, where money was important but debt wasn’t; and my next stop was Edward I, whose debt was significant enough to bring up constantly.) This is a noticeable difference to the Carolingian period – no-one I study has any debts we know about. In fact, at one point I was going to write a whole post outlining a radical new view of Carolingian accountancy until it turned out I was reading the Capitulare de villis wrong. I still think that most Carolingian nobles don’t have what we would think of as an income and certainly not a budget; but actual financial debt is way off the table. Hugh’s concern with it, then, reads like a sign of a developing late eleventh-century new world.
The other thing which struck me was the provision for his burial, which only specifies a location if he dies in certain places. I assume the thinking there relates to his rate of decomposition. Famously, Charles the Bald ended up being buried at Nantua, near Lyon, because he started smelling too badly for his retinue to cart him all the way to Saint-Denis. If that is the reason, that’s more consideration for the nostrils of his retinue than I’ve seen a medieval magnate display before…
The Historian's Sketchpad 
Really insightful point there about the debt. We do actually have one example of a Carolingian aristocrat getting into debt. Dhuoda writes in the Liber Manualis:
“From great need I have received into my hands loans not only from Christians, but also from Jews. I have paid back as much as I could, and shall continue to do so far as I can, but if, after my death, something remains outstanding, I ask and beg that you diligently find out who my creditors are. Once they are located, you should pay them everything owed not only from my own resources, if anything remains, but also from the resources you possess now and from those that you will, with God’s grace, legitimately obtain in the future.”
Still, I can’t comment on whether Dhuoda’s case was typical, and I would completely agree with you that by the thirteenth century, accounting, budgeting, credit and debt are much bigger ongoing concerns that are dealt with much more systematically than in the ninth century (certainly from what’s implied by Dhuoda herself), reflecting, above all else, that there’s a lot more money in circulation and financial institutions and practices have become a lot more advanced than they were four centuries earlier.
Regarding the whole idea of early modernity beginning in the thirteenth century, the late Timothy Reuter would certainly have been in agreement with you. I certainly think there are very big shifts around then in terms of how politics, the economy and society work that basically make medieval Europe c.1300 unrecognisable in many ways to an early medievalist i.e. Reuter himself noting the shift from traditional assembly politics to early forms of parliamentarianism after the 1180s. Whether that marks the end of the Middle Ages per se, I’m not entirely sure, but as far as I’m concerned anything after 1215 (Magna Carta and Fourth Lateran) is too late for me to be working on it, and those two events both serve as neat little markers of how far things have come from the time of the Carolingian reforms.
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