Jordan of Laron

[2] Adhemar of Chabannes composed a fictional account of the debates that took place at the council of the Peace movement in 1031, and published them as the conciliar minutes under Jordan's name, a forgery which has duped more than one modern scholar.

Late in January 1024, at Saint-Junien, Jordan, the lay provost (prepositus) of Saint-Leonard of Noblat and from the ranks of the castellans, was chosen, in opposition to the preference of the family of the Viscounts of Limoges for one of their own.

[5] The election of Jordan therefore represented a coup for the duke against the viscounts of Limoges and his nominal suzerain, the king, but it also marked a break with reforms associated with the Peace and Truce of God movement.

[6] Adhemar first went to the Cathedral of Angoulême and later to the city of Limoges, leaving marginalia in the manuscripts of the libraries as evidence of his presence, to copy texts and make notes.

[7] The final work defended the ordination of bishops per saltum ("by a leap", i.e. raised from non-clerical rank), such as the cases of Jordan and his predecessor, as a guard against highly politicised ecclesiastical procedures.

According to Adhemar, this represented true piety and not defeat, since the penitents could have (successfully, in the monk's mind) appealed Gauzlin's excommunication to Rome on account of his simony.

He asked Fulbert of Chartres and Hildegar of Poitiers in a letter to supply the appropriate hagiography, and the earliest versions of the Vita Leonardi (Life of Saint Leonard) date from this period, sometimes even being ascribed to Jordan's pen.