The statutes of the earliest general chapters of Benedictine Abbots (1131-early 1140s)

is paper relies on a comparative analysis of the three known versions of the Statutes of the first 'General Chapters' of Benedictine Abbots (1131-1135/40) to establish more securely the processes behind their creation, transmission, and further development. In a first part, I investigate how it is possible to hypothetically reconstruct several versions of the Statutes from their first drafting in late 1131 until the mid-1130s or even the early 1140s, and to argue that this reconstruction reflects the abbots’ lack of adequate means to meaningfully sustain their legislative action beyond one or two meetings. A second part looks at textual influences and references in the Statutes, arguing that processes of mutual inspiration between different monastic movements were more complex than so far has been suspected. Based upon these two observations, I argue that the Statutes shed new light on the role of the written word in the emergence of supra-institutional bodies for legislation and supervision in twelfth-century monasticism, a topic that is subject to a great deal of debate due to considerable problems of chronology, transmission, and attribution. I also hope to demonstrate that the interest of the Reims Statutes for the study of the General Chapter’s development in the 1130s and for that of ongoing debates over monastic discipline is far greater than has been suspected. Appended to this paper is an edition, with comparative notes relevant to the versions previously known to scholars, of a recently discovered, significantly longer copy of the Reims Statutes