Wampum

All of us at Wampum are "Objectively Pro-Saddam" or "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkies" or, most devastating of all, "French". We know this because we subscribe to the "Vth Column Christmas Club" newletter, and while this used to be a rather exclusive club, all maner of hoi poloi are now OPS/CESM and rinky dinky parlez vous with the dead flat accents of mid-western Republicans having trouble asking for a glass of Perrier.

I set out yesterday evening to find Brie for Wampum. Christmas is coming, and millions of Americans need to take communion with toast-and-brie and make peace with Peace. And on the road to brie de meaux I came across l'abbaye Notre-Dame de Jouarre, where brie de meaux was first made.

Monasticism came to the mérovingienne Franks from Ireland.

Vers l'an 615, Saint Colomban est reçu à Ussy-sur-Marne par un haut fonctionnaire du Roy Clotaire II, dit le jeune, Saint Authaire, dont il bénit les trois fils. Il leur inspire la création, pour la gloire de Dieu, de monastères en cette terre de Brie.

In 630, Adon, the eldest of Clotaire le jeune's sons, together with some of his companions, established two monastic houses at Jouarre under the Colomban (Columbine) rule. One for men, one for women, and interestingly, the female house was the principle of the two. Salic Law was created in the reign of Clotaire le jeune, establishing primogenature, and disenheriting the distaff branchs of propertied mérovingienne families. As was the Council of Paris of 614/615, that recognized the traditional prerogatives of the Gallo-Roman and Germanic aristocracies. Both were deals cut for then-present necessities. The image is that of Clotaire le jeune, roy de Neustrie puis roy des Francs, in single combat with Bertoald, le maire du palais, in the year 604. Clotaire killed Bertoald sur le champ. The "maires du palais" were vestiges of Gallo-Roman civil administration, in Burgundy, and a century later another maire du palais ended the line of Mé rovingienne kings that began with Chlodweg, who defeated Syagrius, the last Roman magister militum per gallias, at Soissons in 486.

But enough detour. Adon turned over the religious community to Téodlecheldis in 637, the first abbess of Jouarre, who was succeded by her cousin, Aguilberte, who was succeded by their aunt, Balde. Téodlecheldis' brother Agilbert, became bishop of Dorchester, and later Paris. Aguilberte's brother Ebrégésile became évêque de Meaux.

At the Concile d'Aix-la-Chapelle, under the first of the carolingians, the houses at Jouarre adopted the rule of Benoît de Nursie. Unchanged was the primacy of the Abbess of over the nuns, monks, and properties of the religious community of Jouarre, independent of évêque de Meaux. In the IX century the abbesse Ermentrude expanded the material and spiritual wealth of Jouarre, the scriptorium at Jouarre contributed to the école franco-saxonne and Charles le Chauve established his mint there.

In 1131, during the schism of 1130-1137 (Gregorio Papereschi as Innocent II, in France, vs Pietro Pierleone as Anacletus II, in Rome), Innocent II came to Jouarre with Bernard of Clairvaux (Burgundian nobility) to hear an ecclesiastical case involving the Province de Paris, and the following year held a Council of Bishops at Jouarre.

The évêque de Meaux claimed authority over the abbaye Notre-Dame de Jouarre, Innocent II ruled for the Évêque de Meaux, Honarius II for the Abbesses de Notre-Dame de Jouarre. The independence of, and eccleastical authority, abbess de Notre-Dame de Jouarre was settled until 1681, when Bossuet, évêque de Meaux, argued against the authority of the Papacy over the French Church. First Bossuet argued for the illegitimacy of the independence of Jouarre from Meaux on the theory of simony. Five hundred years previously Jouarre gave Meaux, some grain. That was the attempt to buy spiritual office, the right (of women) to select the priests of Jouarre. When that theory failed Bossuet argued that councils of Vienne (1311-1313) and Trent (1545-1563) revoked the independent status of Jouarre. This too was a fabrication, but Bossuet was a great force in the French Church, and at the heights of his powers, and on January 26, 1690, a court ruled for Meaux. On March 3rd, 1690, l'évêque de Meaux forced the locks of l'abbaye Notre-Dame de Jouarre and celebrated mass in the abbey chapel dressed in the full splendor of a bishop. One thousand years of female independence and ecclesiastical authority in the Frankish Church ended, sacrificed on the alter of the national church.

The VII century mérovingienne funary work, the cénotaphe de Téodlecheldis, has the Vulgate text of the Parable of the Wise Virgins (Matthew, 25:1-13), des vierges prudentes allant au devant du Christ dans la nuit en s'éclairant de leurs lampes à huiles [the wise virgins who went to the Christ in the night illuminated with their own oil lamps], and le coquillage de Saint-Jacque, the symbol of those who made the pilgrimage to la tombe de l'apôtre Saint-Jacques, important in the myths of the mérovingienne church, and a relative as well as a follower of, the Christ.

It is a week short of seven months since Joseph Ratzinger became the Modernist at the Gate, and pleged to rid the Catholic Church of sexual hetrodoxy (pastoral predation not included), liberation theology, and all maner of relativisms (except his). Not only do millions of Americans need to take communion with toast-and-brie and make peace with Peace, but they also need to take communion with Abbesse Téodlecheldis and her sisters and brothers and their successors in interest.

The alternative to muscular beliefs is not more muscular beliefs. The alternative to muscular morons in uniform is not more muscular morons in uniform. Not even ones that appear to be slightly less, or merely differently, wedded to the National Security State as theology. The '04 cycle, from Howard Dean to John Kerry, with the exception of John Edwards, ran on testosterone as the anti-testosterone. What is needed is less intellectual fragility posed decoratively, with or without combat ribbons, and more like Auður djúpúðga (Aud the Deep Minded), slow to move, and certain in domestic purpose once moved.

On the other hand, the lives of Fredegonda, wife of Chilperic, and Brunhilda, wife of Siegbert, are wicked interesting, and we remain rather partial to coquille St. Jacques, and as everyone knows, God hates, not only shrimp, but all shellfish, including lobstahs.