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This short charter records a grant made to the monks of Saint-Florent at Saumur by Baldric, archbishop of Dol. Its preamble observes that the good deeds of earlier generations are often corrupted by later ones, and that ecclesiastical as well as secular rights are disturbed by greed, so that the arrangements of predecessors should be strengthened by the consent of their successors. It then narrates that Baldric, returning from Rome in the second year of his ordination with the pallium, lodged at Saint-Florent, entered the chapter on the following Sunday, preached to the brothers, and was asked by them to confirm all their possessions within his diocese.
Baldric of Bourgueil, the poet and historian of the First Crusade, became archbishop of Dol in 1107, which places this document in the first years of his episcopate. Charters of confirmation like this one were a common means by which monasteries secured their property against later claims. The text is a small but concrete record of relations between a Breton archbishop and a major Angevin abbey.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 166, Parisiis 1854), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.