A carved stone block, found among the ruins of the old Saint-Vincent church in Badefols-sur-Dordogne, will allow us to open a window onto the territory called "Albuca" between 481 and 751 Anno Domini, during the Merovingian era. Let's put ourselves in context.

After successfully invading Gaul (Alesia, 52 Before Christ), the Roman Empire was in turn driven out by the invasions of many barbarians that led to its fall in 476. Among these invaders, it was the Franks, barbarians of Germanic origin, who had the final say. A clever strategist, their leader Clovis managed to outmaneuver the Alamans and the Burgundians, while also dislodging the Visigoths who were already settled. In the process, he managed to win the favor of the Gallo-Romans by conveniently converting to Christianity. By becoming in the year 496 the first Christian king of France, he magically made people forget his heavy past as a bloodthirsty pagan barbarian. He traded the toad on his coat of arms for the famous iris flower, which allegedly ensured his victory.

According to the historian Louis Girard, the fleur-de-lis were originally iris flowers. In 507, the Battle of Vouillé pitted the army of the Visigoths under Alaric II against the Frankish army. Clovis' warriors, outnumbered, were pushed into the marshes of the swollen Vienne River. Not knowing how to escape this trap, they had a lifesaving vision. A deer appeared out of nowhere and peacefully crossed the Vienne River at a ford lined with tall yellow irises. The presence of these flowers up to the bank revealed a passage on stable ground that could be crossed by Clovis' armies. This sign from the marsh irises against the blue sky allowed the Franks to get out of this predicament and defeat the Visigoths. This victory was decisive and constituted the founding act of the Frankish kingdom, extending its vast territory from the Loire to the Pyrenees.

ANNIBERT, THE FORMER FRANKISH LEADER OF ALBUCA

How did these Frankish warriors establish lasting roots throughout Gaul? By drawing inspiration from the tactics of the Roman legions they had witnessed in action. On freshly conquered lands, the Franks established a garrison. A troop of one hundred armed men, led by an officer. The Romans called him the centurion, the Franks would call him the "centenier." This leader had at his disposal to feed his men a surrounding territory called the "hundred." Having managed not without difficulty to drive out the previous invaders, the Franks likely wanted to materialize their victory by establishing military colonies, hundreds, and by surveying the lands. This is the analysis of François Michel, PhD in History and Archaeology of Antiquity. He presents it in his study entitled "Annibert the centenier and the Frankish domain of Villadeix" published in the bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord – Volume CXLIII – Year 2016.

Below, we present the only known vestige to date of a Frankish hundred established in Périgord, under the Merovingian dynasty. A stone block engraved with writings, deciphered by this researcher who has provided us with these two photographs. This precious block is now located in Périgueux, in the collections of the Museum of Art and Archaeology of Périgord.

ALBUCA MEANS "GOOD CLAY SOIL" IN GAULISH

Thanks to collections of ancient documents from churches and monasteries of young Christian France, we learn that in the 6th century, the Dordogne was occupied by three Frankish hundreds located one in Nontron, the other in Petit-Bersac, and the third in Albuca. Here we are... Why was Le Bugue called Albuca at that time? Because that was its Gaulish name! The Gauls had the habit of naming places according to the nature of their soil, which determined the choice of crops. Albuca refers to a clayey and heavy soil. A good soil for cereals, vines, fodder, and meadows. This name of Albuca was later taken up to baptize the hundred that the Franks established there. A territory large enough to be able to sustain, in addition to its population and thanks to it, a military colony of one hundred able-bodied men, the famous hundred, therefore. How do we know this? In two ways:

In the cartulary of Saint-Martin de Limeuil preserved in the Benedictine Annals, Canon Hippolyte Brugière found a document from the year 856 AD setting the terms of a donation. That of the Church of Sainte-Radegonde in the village of Millac* as well as the goods of its parish, namely all its buildings, lands, vineyards, meadows, streams. All located "in centena Albucensis," that is, in the hundred of Albuca. A territory that stretched from North to South from Millac d'Auberoche to Limeuil, and from West to East from Trémolat to Sireuil. This Merovingian hundred of Albuca contained the parishes of the following municipalities: Le Bugue, Limeuil, Paunat, Saint-Avit-de-Vialard, Campagne, Saint-Cirq, Manaurie, Journiac, Savignac, Fleurac, Mauzens-Miremont, Saint-Cernin-de-Reillac, Saint-Félix-de-Reillac, Mortemart, La Douze, Saint-Geyrac, and Millac d'Auberoche.

Furthermore, in the Gallia Christiana which traces the history of Christian France, the "Villa Albuca" is mentioned in the year 936 AD, where "villa" in Latin refers to a group of agricultural estates.

* The municipality of Millac is now called Millac d'Auberoche.

It is indeed under the name of Albuca that the village of Le Bugue, as well as about twenty surrounding parishes, will experience, starting from the year 1000, a notable development. Thanks to a couple from the nobility, founder of an Abbey. This Abbey will have full authority over the entire extent of the former Frankish hundred which became in the 10th century an archpriesthood, the intermediate territorial level between the parish and the diocese.

PRAYING AND DISPOSSESSING TO SAVE ONE'S SOUL

It is important to remember that in a final gasp before its decline, the Roman Empire shifted from paganism to Christianity overnight. Out of opportunism and pragmatism. While conversions to Christianity were booming, the Empire itself risked imploding, unless it attempted to unite its peoples around a common ideal. The religion of the One God became the state religion in the year 380. Polytheistic temples were destroyed or transformed into churches. Pagan resistors were persecuted or massacred. The Roman Empire was not really saved by its last-minute spiritual reversal. It collapsed nonetheless. So, when the Middle Ages began, at the end of Antiquity, immersed in Roman decay and the convalescence of barbaric times, Europe was literally on its knees.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, was beginning to make good progress, and to ensure smooth sailing, it revived a practice inherited from Roman law. To soften manners and fill coffers, it encouraged the practice of "indulgences". By undertaking pilgrimages, mortifications, and prayers, or even better by giving a portion of their wealth to the Church, generous believers could completely erase their sins. The possibility of making donations to secure a place in paradise would appeal to many members of the wealthy knighthood.

DAME ADÉLAÏDE AND SIR GRIMOALD OF MONTIGNAC, FOUNDERS OF THE ABBEY OF LE BUGUE

It is in this context that Dame Adélaïde and her husband Sir Grimoald, Lady and Lord of Montignac, decided to transfer, in the year 964, the real estate they owned in Le Bugue and its surroundings, to the abbot of Paunat and his monks. Among the Latin manuscripts from the Abbey of Saint-Martial de Limoges, this decisive sales deed dated the tenth year of the reign of King Lothair was found by the archivist Jean-Léon Dessalles in the imperial library of Paris. And it is with great joy that I can read it to you here..

"I, Grimoald, and Adelaïde, my wife, selling by common consent, declare, in the name of God, to have sold, on this principle, to a man named Guigues, abbot of Paunat, monastery of our allodium*, in the Périgord territory, in the hundred of Le Bugue, in the town called Albuca, and in another town called Apabone, a town which has come to us as an inheritance from our cousin Basen, all that we have and possess there, and which is known to belong to us, except for the church of Saint-Sulpice. We sell, we say, to the aforementioned holy place, to Abbot Guigues, who is also abbot of Saint-Salvador or of Saint-Martial, and to the monks who honor God in the said convent of Paunat, all that it encompasses in lands, fields, forests, vineyards, meadows, mills, fisheries, and the port served by boatmen, whether cultivated or to be cultivated, recognized or to be recognized on the banks of the river Vézère; for which sale, we receive from you the price that I have agreed upon, of my own free will, between us and you, namely two hundred silver sols, and so that, from this day forth, you may enjoy, hold, possess, and do, in all things, as you please, without opposition, from anyone, as a repeat, which I do not believe should be done; if we or any of our heirs, or any other person assigned for this purpose, should go against this sale, whoever it may be, let them incur first the wrath of the Almighty, and with Dathan and Abiram and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed the Lord, let them burn forever in hell, and let them not obtain what they claim."

* From our "allodium": Land freed from all fees in the Middle Ages.

By doing so, Dame Adélaïde and Sir Grimoald partially disinherit their descendants. This is likely the reason why, to avoid any lawsuits, mention is made at the end of the deed of the wrath of the Almighty that would strike any impious challenger. How do we know that Dame Adélaïde, in particular, harbored a pious desire in parting with her beloved hundred of Le Bugue? Thanks to a manuscript written at the beginning of the 13th century, found in the records of the Abbey of Le Bugue, on which one can read the following:

"The lady who built Le Bugue was named Adélaïde, and she built the convent in honor of Saint-Marcel (...) She gave this as a domain to God and to the house of Saint-Marcel and Saint-Salvador, and built Le Luc in their honor (...)"

The abbess and her Benedictine nuns, knowing they owe a great debt to their founder and benefactress, never fail to celebrate her memory every year, on the eve of Saint Luke's Day:

"The abbess must present a candle each year in commemoration of the anniversary of Dame Adélaïde, who built the Abbey of Le Bugue and gave Le Luc, and the candle must burn, at night, before Dame Adélaïde who was from Montignac."

PRAYER MILLS, RIVER MILLS, THE SACRED UNION OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM!

So here we have about twenty parishes of the Black Périgord fallen into the hands of the Church, with the aim of establishing in their capital, Albuca, a convent of Benedictine nuns. Thanks to this containment, austerity managed to rhyme with prosperity. Certainly, the Benedictine order is strict. Pray, read, and work – ora, lege, et labora – such is the rule of Saint Benedict. However, the perimeter of an abbey protects its flock. This bubble benefits from a status of no man's land. Let me explain.

• Cooks, bakers, butchers, and tavern keepers who belong to the Monastery are subject to its sole law.
• Millers, blacksmiths, and other men of the Abbess are freed from the corvée and the host, meaning they are exempt from the obligation to go to war under the leadership of the Lord who, having ceded his property, has renounced his prerogatives.
• Sisters, and a fortiori the prioress and the sacristan, escape forced marriages and strenuous pregnancies, in the demand for male heirs.

Since the beginning of this new millennium, many Ladies from the first houses of the Périgord have taken the veil and then made their profession. In short, it is the only career offered to them.

In the Monastery, in contact with them, the nuns learn poise, reading, writing, and even the basics of medicine so that they can go and help the villagers.

Summary judgments, absurd wars, domestic violence, and crass ignorance, ultimately, are things we can do without. And that is also what made the success of the abbeys.

SAILS YES, DRAGONS NO!

The bloodthirsty raids of Viking hordes from the late 10th century still haunt memories. In the aftermath of those troubled times, religious communities represent a haven of peace. And though hard work is the price to pay, a major upheaval is soon to prove beneficial. The providence for these Catholic enclaves of the new millennium is the rapid development of mills along the riverbanks. Their hydraulic power will replace the hand or animal-powered millstone, an energy transition that will change everything.

THE ENERGY REVOLUTION OF THE MIDDLE AGES: THE RISE OF MILLS AND THE END OF SLAVERY

The Roman Empire remained slave-based, with no search for alternative means of production. In France, the use of slaves was still tolerated under the Merovingian dynasties, which were still somewhat barbaric on the edges, albeit Christian.

With the Carolingian Renaissance, increased fervor gave the Church a central place in society. The Church then instituted the "Truce of God." This peace of God aimed to protect ecclesiastical possessions, the number of which increased thanks to numerous donors eager to ensure the salvation of their souls after death.

CThis led to mills, originally under the control of local lords, changing hands. During the first half of the 11th century, from the year 1000 to 1050, in this fervor of piety, mills and their dependencies massively integrated into the Church's property, either through sale or donation.

These mills used the kinetic energy of water, renewable and abundant. All banks near other resources – cereals, nuts, oak bark, hemp, flax, wool – equipped themselves with hydraulic mills with increasingly sophisticated mechanisms and higher yields.

At a time when food was mainly composed of cereals in the form of bread or porridge, this progress would feed many more people while freeing up labor that could cultivate previously fallow land.

MEDIEVAL MILLS USE RENEWABLE ENERGY AHEAD OF THEIR TIME

Both the Cistercians and the Benedictines played a significant role in spreading this technological innovation throughout Europe. Their agricultural complexes located outside the monasteries became veritable model farms. It must be imagined that the term "mill" at this time encompassed a dream entity. The sale of a mill, as detailed in ancient deeds, typically included: a pond, a mill composed of rotating and stationary millstones, a miller's house, barns, stables, and other buildings, a courtyard, a garden, a hemp field, vineyards, and meadows.

Thanks to the power of the mills, all the essential needs that gave so much trouble to the populations of the Early Middle Ages are satisfied. Indeed, they can be relied upon to:

• Grind grain between the rotating and stationary millstones to produce flour from various cereals
• Press walnut kernels to extract oil used for lighting every household
• Crush oak bark to make the tannin necessary for tanning hides
• Crush and scutch hemp and flax to separate the fibers from the nevotte and produce clothing, sheets, canvas, and ropes
• Full the wool woven in the fulling earth to soften it, degrease it, and obtain a supple and clean fabric.

Later in the 12th century, iron mills and their large tilt hammers called "martinets" would strike the anvil either to crush ore or to give a flattened shape to ingots. Many forges would develop in Périgord thanks to the abundance of surface iron deposits. Subsequently, sawmills and paper mills would appear.

By the end of the 13th century, there were 40,000 water mills installed in France, equivalent to 1,200,000 workers.

STILL STANDING A THOUSAND YEARS LATER!

These providential mills naturally and historically settled on the banks of watercourses with sufficient flow. Let us recall that the Ladouch is described in archives as "a large stream that originates from a precious spring with abundant and clear waters." Among these mills that revolutionized the feudal era between the 9th and 13th centuries, we have in Le Bugue a survivor that has defied the ages, precisely on the course of the Ladouch.

The Moulin de la Barde, flanked by its defensive arrow slits, emblematic of castle architecture in the Périgord during the Middle Ages, was once connected to the Château de la Barde, now called the Manor. From the 11th century, it served as a wheat mill, a walnut oil mill, a bark mill and a coot mill.

By the end of the 19th century, thanks to the consistently abundant flow of the Ladouch, it even became a hydroelectric power plant equipped with two powerful turbines, which provided electricity to the entire village of Le Bugue until 1907.

ALL THE WHEEL MILLS OF OUR HEARTS…

So what became of that famous Benedictine Abbey that flourished in Albuca from the year 1000 onwards thanks to Dame Adélaïde? Troubled by numerous wars of all kinds, Aquitaine experienced much suffering, and the residents of the Abbey of Le Bugue endured many horrors. This venerable building was looted, razed, rebuilt, relocated, and ultimately... buried.

It is noteworthy that at the pivotal moment when the Huguenots revolted against the excesses of the Catholic Church, which had begun practicing a trade in indulgences as lucrative as it was indecent, the Abbess of the Le Bugue convent, Gabrielle du Breuil, decided to convert to the Reformed Religion. She closed her Church of Saint-Marcel and had a Temple built, of which nothing remains except the Place du Temple, where it no longer stands.

Its last resurgence, the Abbey experienced it on the banks of the Vézère, where the convent was reinstated at the initiative of Marie-Catherine de Rocquart, appointed abbess in 1677. She is therefore considered the second founder of the Abbey of Le Bugue, after the initiator Dame Adélaïde.

The final blow for the rebuilt convent in the 17th century under the current royal Vézère occurred during the major works that took place in the second half of the 19th century. The axis from Limoges to Périgueux to Cahors cut straight through Le Bugue to its new bridge, sufficiently elevated this time to withstand the floods of the Vézère. These floods had previously swept away part of the old cemetery, which was indeed located right at the water's edge.

It is worth recalling that the old bridge of Le Bugue, established at the end of the Middle Ages, was destroyed during the Fronde in the mid-17th century. Crossing the Vézère was done aboard a ferry, tethered to a cable crossing the river at the current Port district.

In 1876, to connect the new Rue de Paris to the new stone bridge, the old Church of Saint-Sulpice and its Presbytery located to the East were demolished. Only their ground floors remain, buried under tons of rubble and asphalt that raised the new Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. A stone cross marks these architectural funerals on the current parapet.

The esplanade where the Royal Vézère now stands was filled in later, at the very end of the 19th century. Thus, it covers the last remnants of Dame Adélaïde's convent.

The Church of Saint-Sulpice that we know today in the center of the village was rebuilt between 1871 and 1876.

One could say that the final tribute to the founder of the Abbey of Albuca was paid in the 1970s, during the opening of the famous "Caveau de Dame Adélaïde." The nightclub of the Royal Vézère, so named, resonated with a completely different tune, as one might imagine. "You can ring my bell," innocently sang Anita Ward in the early days of disco. An invitation that undoubtedly made all the wheel mills of our hearts spin faster until late into the night.

Sophie Cattoire

We warmly thank Pierre-Lucien Bertrand, who provided us access to all of his archives and his knowledge to assist us in our demanding and meticulous research.

Author's Note: While I have focused here on the narrative of the emergence of abbeys and their mills from the year 1000, the entirety of Le Bugue's history up to the present day, with a comprehensive compilation of sources and archives, can be found in the latest work by Gérard Fayolle:
"Le Bugue, un village et ses historiens," published by the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord and distributed by PLB Le Bugue.