The Abbey of Arrouaise was the centre of a form of the Augustinian monastic rule, the Arrouaisian Order, which was popular among the founders of abbeys during the decade of the 1130s. The community began to develop when Heldemar joined the hermit Ruggerius in 1090 but its first abbot, elected in 1121, was called Gervaise. He impressed people who had the wealth sufficient to found an abbey, who usually had the secular power likely to go with their landed wealth.