Arrouaise Abbey

The Abbey of Arrouaise [ɑʁ.wɛz] was the centre of a form of the canonical life known as the Arrouaisian Order, which was popular among the founders of canonries during the decade of the 1130s. The community began to develop when Heldemar joined the hermit Ruggerius in 1090 and approved by the local bishop in 1097. The priory was raised to the status of an abbey in 1121, electing as its first abbot, Gervaise. He impressed people who had the wealth sufficient to found an abbey, who usually had the secular power likely to go with their landed wealth.

The abbey had originated as a hermitage. That had developed into a community which adopted the task of providing a service to travellers through the then, great Forest of Arrouaise in Artois. The Order of Arrouaise was differentiated from others by being basically that of St. Augustine with the more restrained approach of the Cistercians as a guide to its more austere regimen than that of other canons regular. In general, as time passed, the distinction between the Arrouaisians and other groups of canons regular was less likely to be made, so that in their later history, Arrouaisian houses were often referred to simply as being houses of canons regular.

The forest where the community was established was in the form of a belt extending westwards from the Forest of The Ardennes, to the north of the town of St. Quentin and towards the town of Bapaume. It is now largely felled. Traffic passed through the forest, in many cases along the remaining lines of Roman roads. The routes were important commercially and diplomatically for traffic between Paris and Flanders, also between England and Burgundy. It will have been mainly by this route that the English and Western Flemings went to Rome on pilgrimages and diplomatic journeys.

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