Contested Elections and Reform

Chapter 7 investigates conflicts within Sainte-Croix around contentious abbatial elections. These conflicts demonstrate that Sainte-Croix’s advocates respected a properly elected abbess’s authority, and reveal that an abbess could be seriously challenged by accusations of immorality or mismanagement of resources, even if there was little merit to the charges. A running theme through these conflicts was a desire for reform, either from a minority of the abbey community or by the abbess herself, with these two often in tension. The last of these conflicts, in 1512, resulted in the removal of Sainte-Croix’s abbess by the king of France and the imposition of monastic reform on the abbey. The chapter investigates the king’s motivations for reforming the abbey, and his selection of Fontevraud as a reform model. Since the king of France had long been an ally of the monastery, this chapter especially investigates Francis’s change from that established pattern of support.