monks of Conques, and the
determination of the former to prove at all costs that their monastery
was the more ancient of the two. This would be a matter of
indifference to me had I not been myself entrapped by the snares laid
by certain abbots of Figeac for their contemporaries and posterity,
and been obliged to throw away much that I had written, and which was
far more interesting than the truth. If I had only suspected the
fraud, I might have been tempted to keep suspicion down in order to
spare the picture of the Carlovingian age which I had elaborated; but
it is known at the Ecole des Chartres, and the Abbe B. Massabie of
Figeac has, moreover, written a book that removes all doubt as to the
spuriousness of the charters upon which the abbots of Figeac, when
their jealousy of Conques reached its climax in the eleventh century,
based their pretensions to priority. The most important of these
charters, and the one that has sent various local historians on a
voyage into the airy realms of fiction, is attributed to Pepin le
Bref, and bears the date 755. Another is a Bull attributed to Pope
Stephanus II., also dated 755, in which is described the ceremony of
consecrating the church of St. Sauveur, attached to the abbey, which
in the first-mentioned document Pepin is said to have founded. Here it
is related that when the Pontiff approached the church strains of
mysterious music were heard issuing from the edifice, and such a cloud
stood before it that the procession waited for hours before entering.
Then, when the Pope walked up to the altar-stone, he found that it had
been miraculously consecrated, crosses being marked upon it in oil
still wet. Now, the charter attributed to Pepin contains many passages
copied verbatim from one preserved at Rodez, and signed by Pippinus,
or Pepin I., King of Aquitaine. Its date is 838, and it enriches the
monastery of Conques, already existing, with certain lands at Fiacus
(Figeac), which is thenceforward to be called New Conques; the motive
of this gift being to extend to the monks those material advantages
which a rich valley is able to afford, but which are not to be found
in a stony gorge surrounded by barren hills. There would have been
less scandal to Christianity if Pepin had put a curb on his pious
generosity, and had left the monks of Conques to contend with the
desert. The charter, moreover, sanctions the building of a monastery
at Figeac, which is to remain under the rule and gov