and a bull was obtained from Alexander VI in 1494 permitting the foundation of a Congregatio Casalina, which was joined by a large number of Benedictine houses in the neighbourhood:  St. Sulpice, St. Laurence and St. Menulphus at Bourges, St. Vincent at Le Mans, St. Martin at Seez, St. Mary’s at Nevers, and even by more distant foundations, St. Peter’s at Lyons and the great Abbey of St. Germain des Pres at Paris.  One point of the new practice, that Abbots should be elected for only three years at a time, struck at the prevailing abuse by which members of powerful families, non-resident and often children, were intruded into rich benefices, to the great detriment of their charges.[15] Consideration was also had of the rule adopted at St. Justina’s at Padua, the centre of reform in Northern Italy; and thus it was not till 1516 that the new ordinances were finally sanctioned by Leo X.

[15] Thus the family of d’Illiers at this time almost monopolized the see of Chartres; members of it holding the bishopric consecutively for fifty years, the deanery for a hundred, the arch-deaconry and the rich abbey of Bona Vallis also for fifty.

About 1490, Jouveneaux, fired with enthusiasm by the success of du Mas’ reforms at Chezal Benoit, determined to quit his professor’s chair at Paris and take upon him the vows and the life of a monk under du Mas’ rule; and subsequently he was the means of bringing into the Congregation the Abbey of St. Sulpice at Bourges, being invited thither by John Labat, the Abbot, to introduce the new rule, and himself succeeding to the abbacy for a triennial period.  A year or two after his retirement from the world, he was followed to Chezal Benoit by Charles Fernand, who subsequently went on to St. Vincent’s at Le Mans.  John Fernand also ended his days at St. Sulpice in Bourges.

Charles Fernand is a personality who deserves more attention than he has received.  Whilst he was in the world he enjoyed considerable esteem amongst the learned.  He was a friend of Gaguin, and published a commentary on Gaguin’s poem on the Immaculate Conception; he also dedicated to Gaguin a small volume of Familiar Letters.  But his most important literary work was done in the retirement of his cell:  a volume of Monastic Conversations, composed at sundry times, and published in 1516; a treatise on Tranquillity (1512), in which he gives an account of the motives which led him to take the monastic habit; and a Mirror of the Monastic Life (1515), dwelling at length on the ideals that should be held before the eyes of novices and animate their lives when they were professed.  Unfortunately his style is so excessively elegant, with wide intervals between words closely connected in sense, that he is difficult to read; and hence, perhaps, in some measure the neglect which has been meted out to him.