Lilleshall Abbey

Arrouaise lay between Bapaume and Arras. Gosse, the 18th century historian of the community, portrays the region as bandit country in the early Middle Ages. He specifies the arrival in 1090 of Heldemar of Tournai and the German Conon or Kuno as the key event in the genesis of the Arrouaisians. Both were court chaplains of William the Conqueror who embraced the Augustinian Rule, and after William's death, set off across France to pursue a series of pilgrimages. Together with a local hermit called Roger or Ruggerius, Heldemar was murdered and Roger stabbed by a cleric, apparently attracted to the community, who was angered by their calls to penitence. After Heldemar's death on 13 January…