SOCIAL FRANCE AT THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS BY ACHILLE LUCHAIRE Membre de VInstitut AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE SECOND EDITION OF THE FRENCH BY EDWARD BENJAMIN KREHBIEL, Ph.D. Professor of European History, Ldand Stanford Junior University NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1912 COPTRIOBT, 1912, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published June, 1912 THE QUINN & SODEN CO. PRESS RAHWAY, N. J. A' x^f o TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Among the pleasantest experiences of my first visit to Paris was my meeting with M. Luchaire. It chanced that he had taken extensive notes in the provincial archives of France upon the period of Innocent III, a field in which I was inter- ested, and it was to consult him about these that I visited him. His knowledge of English was not much greater than my limited acquaintance with his mother-tongue, and the inter- view was hardly a success from any standpoint except the humorous. A subsequent conversation by means of an inter- preter proved more fruitful, and I came away with what was verily M. Luchaire 's treasure, — his manuscript notes, which represented years of patient and costly labor in various parts of France. The boundless kindness and confidence indicated by his intrusting these notes to me, and his subsequent interest in me and my plans, left me with an ardent desire to requite his services. It was not given to me to do so during his lifetime. If, however, I succeed in the following pages in bringing English readers who do not know French to enjoy the work of this charming Frenchman who did not know English, I shall feel that I have in some measure ap- propriately repaid the debt I owe him. It is, however, not only, or even chiefly, my personal rela- tions with this French scholar that prompted me to undertake this translation. I am a firm believer in social history, indeed in anything that will bring out the human side of the past. It is for this reason that Luchaire 's work appealed to me and that it is now placed before English readers. That the book has its shortcomings I know; that it is prolix in some parts and often repetitious I am fully aware; but that, even as it is, it is worth translating I am confident. That the translation will meet with the approval of its read- ers I am not so sure. It is intended to be a faithful rendering of the original, without deviation in any essential. The in- equalities in the text are in some measure, no doubt, to be iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE attributed to the translator; in part they find their explana- tion in the unevenness of the original, which is accounted for by M. Halphen's preface. For invaluable aid I take this place to express my indebted- ness to Miss Ella Beaver, Mr. Louis Lengfeld, Miss Belle Rankin, and Miss Marjorie Seeley, students in Leland Stanford Junior University. Edward B, KJaEHBiEL. Stanford Univkrsity, April 15, 1912. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Translator's Preface . . . . . iii Preface vii I. The Material and Spiritual Condition of THE People ....... 1 II. Parishes and Priests . . . ' . . .37 III. The Student . . . . . . .63 IV. The Canon . 104 V. The Bishop 142 VI. The Monastic Spirit .179 VII. Monastic Life . . . . . . . 212 VIII. The Noble at War 249 IX. The Noble in Time of Peace . . . . 306 X. Feudal Finance and Chivalry . . s. .325 XL The Noble Dame 350 XII. Courtesy and the Lettered Nobility . .374 XIII. Peasants and Burghers 381 Index . 429 PREFACE This study on French society at the time of Philip Augustus was the sole unpublished work found among the papers of M. Achille Luehaire. After having determined to write an exhaustive history of the reign of Philip Augustus, and after having for five years (1895-1900) made that reign the subject of his courses at the Sorbonne, Luehaire in 1901 turned his efforts in other directions and abandoned a project whicKliad seemed on the point of coming to fruition. The appearance of the first parts of Alexander Cartellieri 's Philipp II. August, Eonig von Frankreich, no doubt largely influenced Luehaire to take this action. The book of Car- tellieri, though perhaps too minute and somewhat lacking in perspective, proved to be conscientious and accurate in every respect. If a French history of Philip Augustus was to be given to the public, was it not sensible to await the completion of this German work? Social history, however, remained outside of the domain appropriated by Cartellieri. This was a gap worth filling. Luehaire had carefully kept the manuscript of the lectures he had delivered on this particular subject, and after having, in 1899, extracted a chapter on the University of Paris,^ he, in 1900, entered upon a complete publication in the Seances et travaux de VAcademie des sciences morales et politiques. Two chapters appeared in succession in this collection entitled L'Etat materiel et moral de la population (1900), and Paroisses et les cures (1901)^; then, having claimed the field, * L'Universite de Paris sous Philippe- Augusts. Paris, Chevalier- Marescq, 1899. 59 pp. (Forms a part of the Bibliotheque internationale de I'enseignement superieur published under the direction of M. F. Picavet.) Chapter III of this volume is a reproduction of this article with a new introduction. 2 These form Chapters I and II of this volume. The part on the cult of relics also appeared with a special introduction in La Revue de Paris, annee 1900, IV, pp. 189-198 {Le culte des reliques), and the part treating of the capuchonnes in La Grande Revue, annee 1900, XIII, pp. 317-328 [Un essai de revolution sociale sous Philippe- Auguste) . viii PKEFACE Luehaire postponed the publication of the other chapters. However, in January, 1908, he published an article on mar- riages and divorces in the feudal world ^ ; and he freely drew on his materials for the volume on the reigns of Louis VII, Philip Augustus, and Louis VIII, which he contributed to Lavisse's Histoire de France in 1901.* In his caution to leave nothing to the accident of im- provisation, Luehaire prepared his lectures with such care that the process of shaping them for the press would have been a simple matter for him: all that was required was to remove occasional prolixities, recast the lectures into a limited number of chapters, and now and then correct the form. This labor, which a sudden death prevented Luehaire from com- pleting, was a delicate task for another to undertake, I have voluntarily restricted my alterations to such as were strictly necessary, and, when omissions appeared necessary, I have, as far as possible,^ adopted the method pursued by Luehaire himself in the pages which he had published. I have touched the style but slightly, and then with great caution : the author alone could retouch the work satisfactorily in this respect. Had he lived, he would undoubtedly have added several com- plementary chapters on the mendicant orders,^ on the king and his court, on commerce and corporations, etc. He would, perhaps, have added bibliographical information and notes. But, such as it is, I believe that the book may be useful to historians, and that, like the six volumes on Innocent III, it will charm and instruct the public interested in the past. Louis Halphen. • Au temps de la feodalite. Mariages et divorces. Revue hleue, 1908, ler semestre, pp. 39-44. This appears in Chapter XI of this volume. * Some of the pages of that work are, in consequence, repeated in this. " During the academic year 1899-1900 Luehaire gave four lectures on the mendicant orders; but the manuscript of these lectures was not in a state to justify publishing them. Besides, the substance of the lec- tures is incorporated in the pages devoted to this subject in Lavisse, Histoire de France, III, Ire partie, pp. 352-363. SOCIAL FRANCE AT THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS CHAPTER I THE MATERIAL AND SPIEITUAL CONDITION OP THE PEOPLE *' The world is ill; it grows so old that it relapses into infancy. Common report has it that Antichrist has been born at Babylon and that the day of judgment is at hand." In writing these lines, Rigord, the monk of Saint-Denis, was ignorant of the fact that other monks had expressed the same sentiment in all preceding centuries. Why this discourage- ment and these sinister predictions? Because the popes of his day were short-lived and succeeded each other with a strange rapidity; because Saladin had taken Jerusalem in 1188, that most fateful of all years, — " those born in it had only twenty-two, instead of thirty-two teeth "; finally, be- cause natural calamities and scourges from heaven and earth, one after another, fell upon men and made them despair of their future. Earthquakes, especially, dismayed them. Anjou was shaken in 1207 ; Normandy, in 1214 ; Gascony, in 1223. The tremor of March 3, 1206, was felt at the same time in Burgundy and Limousin. According to the monk of Saint-Martial, the shocks came in the middle of the night. Monks, saying their offices in the choir, took to flight, and laymen leaped from their beds ; it was observed that even the birds trembled with fear and that water-courses were more boisterous than usual ; and, to appease an irate Heaven, an extraordinary procession was arranged at Limoges. Within forty-three years (1180-1223) fourteen cyclones ran riot with frightful ravages. Harvests and vineyards were destroyed, houses demolished, roofs carried away, belfries and 2 SOCIAL FRANCE towers beaten down, and turrets overthrown. The storm of Dun-le-Roi, in 1206, crushed a noblewoman with her two chil- dren beneath its ruins. That of 1221 lasted eight days and killed forty persons in the vicinity of Paris and Beauvais. While mass was being celebrated in the chateau of Pierref onds, lightning struck it; the officiating priest and twenty-four assistants were grievously wounded; five were killed. The chalice containing the Host was reduced to powder; but, lo! the Host itself remained untouched. One can imagine the damage done by floods. There were no means of forewarning those who dwelt by streams; reser- voirs, dams, and dikes hardly existed ; the bridges, overloaded with houses and crowded with shops, were not built to resist the swelling of the waters. The inundations of 1185 at Metz, of 1195 at Auxerre, of 1205 at Caen, of 1213 at Limoges left doleful traces. In 1196 the two bridges of the Seine at Paris were carried away, and Philip Augustus found himself oblige^ to quit the Cite and take refuge on Mont Sainte- Genevieve. The flood of 1219 rendered the Petit pont unap- proachable, and many burghers returned to their homes by boat. The monk of Sainte-Genevieve, who was an eye-witness, describes the enormous rising of the Seine in 1206, the year in which all the streams simultaneously overflowed their banks : " In the month of December, 1206, God smote the kingdom of the French. Rains fell with extreme violence, streams became tor- rents, the largest trees were rooted up, and in certain cities buildings were utterly destroyed. But of all places, Paris, the capital and the soul of France, was most sorely tried. The city was entirely in- undated, and was affected to its very foundations; one could go about the streets and squares only by boat. Most of the houses fell, and those which remained upright were so shaken by the unend- ing pressure of the waters that they became a menace. The stone bridge, known as the Petit pont, could not resist the impact of the torrent; great cracks were already visible and its collapse was momentarily expected. Thus was the precious city, the queen of them all, plunged into sorrow. Priests moaned, virgins mourned, Paris succumbed under the weight of her grief, and no one could console her." Science has not yet found the means of compelling over- flowing streams to return to their beds, but our fathers knew MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 3 one : they instituted processions in which they exhibited relics. The citizens of Paris, in 1206, had recourse to their favorite saint, Genevieve. A procession forms on the height on the left bank of the river, with the relics of tha saint in the lead. It reaches the Petit pont. " To cross it," relates the monk, " it is imperative to lean neither to left nor to right, but to keep exactly in the middle. The passage over the bridge, which threatens to crumble under the furious blows of the water, is exceedingly dangerous, — ^but Genevieve with her people crosses the raging Seine : the bridge supports her less than she supports the bridge." At last the cortege reaches Notre-Dame, and forthwith the waters begin to recede and the rain ceases. From the church comes the saint, still fol- lowed by the citizens; the bridge totters, but is crossed a second time, and the relics of Genevieve resume their place in the sanctuary. Half an hour later, at nightfall, after every one has returned home, the bridge falls. Three arches are carried away by the current. Next to wat^r, fire was the daily terror in medieval cities, with their narrow, winding streets lined with overcrowded, wooden houses. A stone house was uncommon. The authori- ties gave a bounty to citizens who built of stone : in the little village of Rue in Picardy, they were exempt from taxes. In these vast collections of inflammable materials, with only the most rudimentary means of fighting fire (we know of no text of this epoch which makes even the slightest allusion to the organization of a relief corps), a burning house menaced the whole quarter; often the entire city. Repeated fires be- came dreadful. From 1200 to 1225, Rouen burned six times. Not even the largest stone structures, churches, and the enormous fortresses were spared. The keep of Gisors burned in 1189, on the very day that Richard the Lion-Hearted made his entrance. When the chateau of Pompadour, in Limousin, burned, the keep collapsed and twenty persons perished in the burning pile. The flames reached the houses and streets so rapidly that it was impossible to escape. In 1223, two hundred persons were victims of fire in the village of Verlene, in the district of Nontron. In years when drought prevailed, or streams, springs, and wells dried up, fires multiplied from one end of France 4 SOCIAL FRANCE to the other. In 1188, Rouen, Troyes, Beauvais, Provins, Arras, Poitiers, and Moissac were the prey of flames. Some of the details of the fire of Troyes have come down to us. The fire began at night on the fair-grounds and quickly spread to the residences. The abbey of Notre-Dame aux Nonnains, the collegiate church of Saint-]&tienne which had just been rebuilt, the palace of the counts of Champagne, and the cathedral, Saint-Pierre, all burned. The flames moved so rapidly that the monks of Notre-Dame had not time to escape and were burned alive. These scourges of fire also occurred in years of storm and lightning. In 1194, a number of towns and villages were struck by lightning. This was the year of the great fire at Chartres, which destroyed so many unfortunates and almost obliterated the ancient cathedral. Struck by the frequency of the fires, popular imagination accepted the most sinister ex- planations. Rigord relates that ravens were seen flying from one place to another in the burning towns; in their beaks they carried burning coals and set fire to all houses which had escaped. To these not infrequent catastrophes were added systematic fires set by men-at-arms. It is well known that war at that time meant ravage, and, especially, the burning of towns, chateaux, and cities belonging to the enemy. Arson was a military operation, well regulated and organized; in short, an institution. Besides its foragers, who pillaged the fields, every army had its houtefeux, charged especially with burning barns and houses. Nearly every page of the Chansons des Lorrains shows them at work. The hosts of Garin are get- ting under way to concentrate at Douai. " The incendiaries fall upon the villages, the surprised inhabitants are burned or led captive with manacled hands. The smoke thickens, the flames grow, and the terrified peasants and shepherds flee in every direction." Further on it is the great city of Lyon which is captured and sacked. " On the morrow [after the pillage] Duke Begon on arising, commands fire, which is prepared and set in a hundred places. No one will ever know the number of those who perished in this great con- flagration. From the fields the retreating army could see the towers crumble, the monasteries burst open, and MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 5 could hear the despairing cries of the women and the little folk." The same scenes occurred at Verdun and Bordeaux, where " eighty citizens, not counting women and children, were reduced to ashes." Feudalism seemed to take a ferocious delight in seeing flames consume burghers' houses and the villeins who resided in them. One of the heroes of the Chanson des Lorrains, Bernard de Naisil, was among the defenders of Bordeaux. Resting his arms on the window of the chateau and holding in one hand the helmet he had just removed, he gazed upon the burning city. Said he to Fromont: " There, we are rid of a great care; Bordeaux is in flames. We are much stronger than we were this morning. ' ' History and fiction combine their testimony on this point. It is enough to enumerate the places burned in the wars of Philip Augustus : Chatillon-sur-Seine, Dreux, le Mans, Evreux, Dieppe, Tours, Angers, Lille. The fire of Lille, ordered by the king of France to punish the defection of its citizens, *' burned everything, even to the peaty soil of the place," says the historian, "William of Armorica. If one would know what such a campaign of arson, a regular part of all wars of the time, meant, he should read the accounts of the expe- dition of Louis of France, son of Philip Augustus, against Flanders in 1214, several months before the battle of Bouvines, when Nieuport, Steenvorde, Bailleul, Hazebrouck, Cassel, not to mention villages and hamlets, were systematically given over to the flames. At Bailleul the incendiaries barely escaped being victims of their own work. The chronicle of Bethune relates that the streets were so obstructed with fugitives and carts, and the night was so dark, that Louis and his knights had great difficulty in making their way to the gates. Epidemics, another sign of divine wrath, ran an unob- structed course among the anemic and squalid people in the undrained and unpaved cities, where houses were nothing more than leaky hovels, and streets, veritable sewers. At Paris, ' ' the most beautiful of cities, ' ' the citizens buried their dead in the meadow of Champeaux, the site of the present market. The cemetery was not closed. Pedestrians crossed it and markets were held there. In rainy seasons this charnel-house became a nauseous bog. It was only in 1187 / 6 SOCIAL FRANCE that Philip Augustus built a stone wall around it, and then out of respect for the dead, rather than for the public health. Two years later the king and the Parisians determined to make an attempt at paving, but only on the main streets which led to the city gates. The rest remained a slough, a choice breeding-place for those contagious diseases against which the middle ages knew no preventive or curative meas- ures. Men submitted to them as to a chastisement from on high, a divine fire, ignis sacer, ignis infernalis. For the sick, those who burned, ardentes, the remedies always remained the same: processions, public prayers, expositions [of relics] in the churches, and supplications to some healing saint, Saint Firman or Saint Antony. At Paris, persons ill of the plague were brought to Sainte-Genevieve or to Notre-Dame, with- out fear of aggravating the epidemic. Besides contagions, there was leprosy, the perennial scourge of all France, a respecter of neither rich nor poor. And often, in addition to all these ills, as though to complete the work of war and pest, famine, most destructive of all, held sway. It takes some effort of imagination to picture the economic condition of medieval France, especially the agricultural con- ditions, so different from those of to-day. The extensive for- ests and moors, the limited arable land, the rudimentary agricultural methods, the incessant compromising and anni- hilating of the peasants' efforts by war, or by the hard feudal laws of the chase, all explain why land yielded small returns, and why the necessary balance between production and popu- lation did not exist, except in years of abundance. The in- adequacy of traffic increased that of production. Since each district was isolated, and currency was scarce, nobles and clerics depended very largely upon incomes in kind from their tenants; and these incomes, by way of caution, they stored in their granaries and cellars. The subjects, the agri- culturists, lived on what remained after the deduction of the seigniors' portion. In good years the surplus of grain and wine might be sold, but the poor and insecure roads, and the enormous tolls and duties laid on goods by the seigniors, shackled trade. Markets were poorly provisioned; produce, half of which nowadays enters into trade, was then almost entirely consumed at home, and towns were correspondingly MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 7 less populous and trade less active. And thus it came about that in normal years the absence of a demand and the infre- quency of transactions depreciated prices; whereas, in years of want, the supply found itself suddenly far beneath the demand and prices rose to frightful figures. There was some improvement over the eleventh century, in which forty-eight famine years are recorded; yet, in the reign of Philip Au- gustus, eleven famines occurred. Men died of hunger, on an average, one year in every four. The famine of 1195, following in the wake of the hurricane which had destroyed the crops of 1194, was heartrending, because it lasted four years. Grain, wine, oil, and salt reached extraordinary prices. People ate grape-skins in place of bread and even dead ani- mals and roots. On Easter-day, 1195, Alix, the lady of Rumilly (a seigniory of the diocese of Troyes), was surprised to see the parochial mass very poorly attended. The cure informed her that most of the parishioners were busy hunting roots in the fields to appease their hunger. Touched by pity, Alix caused provi- sions to be distributed, and commanded that forever after one-third of the tithes, which belonged to her, should be remitted to the parishioners on Easter-day; and, besides, each of them was to be given a five-pound loaf of bread. But what could charity accomplish in the face of so enormous a disaster! " In 1197 a countless throng of persons died of hunger " (innumeri fame perempti sunt), says the chronicle of Reims. Such expressions as multi fame perierunt, mori- untur fame millia millium, appear again and again in the histories, and they must be taken literally. Hunger in this period meant not only privation, misery, and suffering ; it meant death. To understand to what extent it decimated whole provinces of France, one should consider what happens even nowadays in certain districts of South Africa, Australia, and Hindustan. Even the rich and power- ful suffered; the chronicler of Liege states that they were reduced to eating carrion. And he adds: " As for the poor, they died of hunger (multitudo pauperum moritur). They fell dead in the streets. We could see them lying at our church doors at early morning, moaning, dying, and begging for the alms which were distributed at the first hour." But 8 SOCIAL FRANCE the monks themselves were in want. " In that year [1197] the wheat gave out. From Epiphany to August we had to spend more than a hundred marks for bread. We had neither wine nor beer. Fifteen days before harvest we were still eating rye bread." The cries of the starving made themselves heard far be- yond the boundaries, in Italy, and even in Rome. Pope Inno- cent III, in a letter to the bishop of Paris, naturally attributes this scourge to the wrath of God, flagellum Dei. It is a pun- ishment for the sin which Philip Augustus, king of France, committed in putting aside his legitimate wife, Ingeborg of Denmark. It is the misfortune of the times that each of these calami- ties engendered others. Famine produced brigandage. " To escape death by starvation, many persons became robbers and were hanged," says the chronicler of Anchin. He misstates the facts: the greater part of the brigands lived on their thefts with impunity. Imagine a social state in which security for property and person does not exist; no police, and little justice, especially outside of the larger cities; each one defends his purse and his life as best he can. Robbers operate in broad day and on all roads, by pref- erence attacking sanctuaries where gold and precious objects abound. The chronicler of Saint-Martial of Limoges, Ber- nard Itier, notes the frequent disappearance of silver vases, golden chalices, and manuscripts ornamented with jewels. A sneak-thief carried away the famous gold reliquary given by Charlemagne to the chapter of Saint-Julien de Brioude ; he was never again seen, and the canons could do nothing but launch a terrible litany of anathemas against him : " May he be accursed living and dying, eating and drinking, standing and sitting! Be he accursed in the fields, the forests, the meadows, the pastures, the mountains, the valleys, the villages, the cities! May his life be short, and his goods pillaged by strangers! May an incurable palsy fall upon his eyes, his brow, his beard, his throat, his tongue, his lips, his neck, his breast, his lungs, his ears, his nostrils, his shoulders, his arms, etc.! May he be like a thirsty MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 9 hind, tracked by his enemies! May his children be orphaned and his wife widowed and crazed ! " A poor defence this excommunication of malefactors! As though. France had not enough of her own, England sent her audacious thieves in addition. In 1218, an islander from heyond the Channel attempted to appropriate the silver ves- sels and candelabra of Notre-Dame in Paris. After having remained concealed for several days in the top of the nave, then filled with timber-work, he came down at night by means of a rope with loops to seize the objects he coveted. Unhap- pily for him, the lighted candles set fire to the silk hangings arranged for the feast of the Assumption ; a blaze flared up, people gathered, and the thief was taken. Some of the more dangerous brigands moved about in armed bands, plundering travelers and merchants, burning farmsteads, and even attacking small villages. In 1206, a group of crusaders, returning from Constantinople, were traveling toward Picardy, their native land. They had es- caped the Lombards, and the Alpine mountaineers; but at Saint-Rambert, near Belley, they were assailed by a band of brigands. Their baggage was plundered; and, as they car- ried with them precious relics, they were eager to redeem themselves. Some leagues further on, at Ambrenay, there came another band and another ransom. And, without doubt, it was the same for a great part of the journey. These parasites of the highway were, for the most part, mercenary soldiers, Aragonese, Navarrese, Basques, Braban- ters, and Germans — desperadoes come to enter the service of kings and princes. When their pay stopped, they robbed and murdered on their own account. These routiers or cot- tereaux of Philip Augustus, who reappear in the " grand companies " of Charles V, and the ecorcheurs of Charles ^ VII, are an open sore of society, a necessary evil, an instru- ment of war which all the world decries, yet which no one can do without. In vain the church excommunicates these brigands and fulminates against those who employ them. They supply the lack of feudal forces, therefore are they seen in all campaigns and in all wars. Their chiefs rendered such important services that kings made them great person- 10 SOCIAL FRANCE ages, well paid and provided with titles and fiefs. Three of the bandits thus honored remain celebrated: Mercadier, the friend and general-in-ehief of Richard the Lion-Hearted ; Cadoc, the ally of Philip Augustus ; and Fulc de Breaute, the agent of John Lackland. The ravages of these paid or unpaid hordes in hostile, and even in friendly territory, were simply frightful. In north- ern France the Capetians, the Plantagenets, and certain counts of Flanders and Champagne were able to restrain the scourge and combat it with success, — but what could be done beyond the Loire in Berry, Auvergne, Poitou, Gascony, Languedoc, and Provence, regions more'diflficult of defense and surveil- lance ? There the highwayman flourished ; fires, murders, and rape everywhere marked his passage; especially did he prey on religious houses and churches ; he seemed to hate the priest and to feel an obligation to outrage everything which per- tained to religion and to worship. This was because the clerics had more that was worth taking, and because by ex- communication they aroused the people against him. The brigands of Berry burned churches at pleasure and took cap- tive whole troops of priests and monks. " They called them chantres in derision, ' ' says Rigord, ' ' and said to them, ' Come, chanters, intone your^ psalms, ' and at the same instant they showered on them blows with their fists and with rods. Beaten thus, some died ; others escaped the torment of a long imprisonment only by paying ransom. These demons tram- pled the sacred Host under foot, and made garments for their concubines out of the altar-cloths." The prior of Vigeois tells us that a chief of one of these bands sold monks at eighteen sous a head. Must we think that the chroniclers ex- aggerate? In 1204, a letter of Innocent III formally accuses an archbishop of Bordeaux of living surrounded by brigands, and^ of governing his province through terror of them ; he told his retainers what blows to strike and participated in the profits. Some years later the Albigensian war broke out. Naturally leaning toward heresy, the brigands rushed to Languedoc; without their aid the counts of Toulouse and Foix would never have been able to resist the chevaliers of Simon de Montfort for so long a time. Masters of the abbey at Moissac, MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 11 some brigands amused themselves the whole day by ringing the bells. In the cathedral of Sainte-Marie at Oloron, in Beam, they profaned the Host, decked themselves in priestly fineries, and pretended to sing the mass. These pleasantries were accompanied by their usual misdeeds ; burning churches, and ransoming or tormenting priests. The catholic chronicler, Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, is indignant at the extent of this sacrilege. Yet the crusaders had no right to reproach their foes : Simon de Montfort also hired brigands, among others the Spaniard, Martin Algais, who, to be sure, deserted him and went over to the count of Toulouse. The catholics having cap- tured Algais in 1212, first dragged him at a horse's tail, and then hanged him. In a letter directed to the king of Aragon, the inhabitants of Toulouse complained of the extreme severity of the bishops : " They exeommunieate us because we use brigands ; yet they themselves employ them. Do they not admit to their friendship and board those who killed the abbot of Eaunes, and mutilated the religious of Bolbonne?" It is instructive to hear the frightened accents in which an abbot of Sainte-Genevieve recounts to his monks the vicissi- tudes of a journey from Paris to Toulouse — *' the length of the way, the danger in crossing streams, the danger from thieves, the danger from bandits, Aragonese and Basque." He made his way across ruined and deserted plains, having before his eyes only the signs of desolation, most mournful sights; villages in ashes, houses in ruins, church walls half- crumbled, everything destroyed to the very ground, and human habitations become the lairs of wild beasts. " I con- jure you, my brethren, ' ' says the traveler in closing, ' ' to pray to God and the Blessed Virgin for me. If They judge me ca- pable of further service to our church, may They show me the grace of helping me back, safe and sound, to Paris." Beyond the Rhone, in the unhappy province of Aries, nominally governed by the emperor of Germany, brigandage and feudal anarchy were endemic. Pope Celestine III enu- merated for Archbishop Imbert the various categories of malefactors whom he ought to punish: 12 SOCIAL FRANCE " Deal rigorously with those who despoil the shipwrecked or annoy travelers and merchants; excommunicate those who dare to establish new tolls. I know that your province is the prey of Aragonese, Brabanters, and other bands of strangers; smite thevp., but smite also those who hire these brigands and receive them into their chateaux and villages." The church exerted herself but, limited to spiritual arms, accomplished nothing. Sometimes, when the deeds of the brig- ands became altogether intolerable, seigniors and kings permit- ted a few executions. One day Richard the Lion-Hearted sur- rounded a band of Gascons near Aixe, in Limousin, and inflicted various kinds of punishments on them: he drowned some in the Vienne, cut the throats of others, and put out the eyes of eighty of them. The brigands of Berry, being poorly paid by Philip Augustus, revolted and devastated the country. The king induced them to come to Bourges under the pretext of giving them their pay. But, once in the city, the gates were closed, and the king's men-at-arms attacked, disarmed, and deprived them of all the money they had stolen. But generally the crimes of highwaymen went unpunished, the nobles being their accomplices, or not daring to act against them. The evil steadily grew. Bands of plunderers on the march were augmented by the addition of all disreputable and outlawed characters: vagabonds, fugitive monks, un- frocked priests, and nuns escaping from the cloister. The terrified inhabitants of central France had long since reached the absolute limit of human endurance. About 1182 the point of saturation was reached, and from the excess of calamity and despair there emerged a popular movement, in itself something uncommon. A profound agitation occurred, a combined effort of rich and poor, of nobles and villeins, with the purpose of establishing a military force to keep order. The issue at stake was to destroy brigandage and make life tolerable for all. As in all great crises of this character, a celestial vision gave the original impetus. The Virgin appeared to a carpenter of Puy-en-Velay, named Durand Dujardin, and showed him a picture of herself holding Christ in her arms, and bearing this inscription: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem. Then she instructed him to seek the bishop of MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 13 Puy and organize a brotherhood of all who desired the main- tenance of peace. In the eleventh century the episcopacy had organized associations of the peace of God, but, after a time, in consequence of poor organization, most of these leagues dissolved. This, now, was not only the peace of God, but also the peace of Mary, the great divinity of Puy, the patroness of the cathedral, the Virgin before whom the pil- grims defiled. The carpenter's society grew with astonishing rapidity, ] spread to neighboring regions, and soon to all the provinces of central and southern France. Within a few months, from the end of December, 1182, to April, 1183, an army of peace was formed in each district. And this astonishing departure aroused the enthusiasm of Rigord, the monk of Saint-Denis, so that he exclaimed: " God has hearkened to the wretches who have groaned so long in oppression and affliction. He has sent a savior, not an emperor, not a king, not a prince of the church, but a poor man, Durand. ' ' The legend, of course, grew richer as it spread. The chronicler, Gervase of Canter- bury, describes the carpenter as a sort of Christ, who preached the word and was followed by twelve apostles, twelve citizens of Puy. Strange to say, a northern chronicler, a Premonstratensian of Laon, does not accept the supernatural origin of the society of peace, but gives a rational explanation of it. According to him, it was a piece of fraud perpetrated by a canon of Puy. Seeing that the brigands hindered pilgrims from com- ing to Notre-Dame, and that the profits of the church from that source threatened to cease, he and a young man, one of his friends, exploited the devout simplicity of the carpenter, Durand. The friend, dressed like a woman, with a sparkling crown of jewels on his head, appeared as the Virgin Mary to the artisan, who was praying in church, and charged him to make her pleasure known to the people ; those who failed to observe her wishes would die within a year. Notified by the carpenter, the citizens immediately flocked into the church, and the canon, speaking in the name of the man who saw the vision, informed his listeners that the Virgin had obtained, from her all-powerful Son, peace for all men, and those who refused to swear peace and opposed the action of the society 14 SOCIAL FRANCE would be stricken by sudden death. The crowd hastened to take the oath, the society was established, and soon filled town and country. The account of Geoffrey, prior of Vigeois, in Limousin, who wrote near the scene of these events, gives the mean between the miraculous tradition and the entirely rational account of the chronicler of Laon: " God, who exalts the weak and puts the powerful to shame, touched the spirit of a man of lowest degree, and of humble appear- ance, a simple and timid carpenter of Puy. He sought Peter, Bishop of Puy, and laid before him the necessity of securing peace. The bishop was much astonished at this sermon coming from lips so base, and the crowd began to jeer at him. But when Christmas came the «arpenter had more than a hundred adherents who had sworn to the pact of peace. Soon he had five thousalid of them; after Easter one could no longer count them." Whether it came from God or man, the brotherhood of Puy itself is beyond all doubt. As a means of recognition, the brothers wore a uniform, a small hood of white cloth or linen ; whence their name capucJionnes, capuciati, or ' ' white hoods." From these hoods hung two bands of the same mate- rial — one falling over the back, the other over the breast. " It resembled the pallium of an archbishop," says the prior of Vigeois. To the front band there was attached the miracu- lous emblem — a pewter badge showing the Virgin and Child and the words, Agnus Dei. Each Pentecost the members of the association paid an assessment. They swore to observe the rules of good conduct, to go to mass, not to game, blas- pheme, frequent taverns, wear foppish garments, or carry poniards. An organization to proceed against the brigands was undertaken. It was, first of all, necessary to prevent being like them; discipline and morality alone could deserve victory from God. Some of the brethren lived saintly lives ; indeed, miracles were performed oa the graves of certain of the '' white hoods " killed by the brigands. The soldiers of this army of uplift formed an intimate free-masonry, whose members swore absolute devotion to each other. If a ' ' white hood ' ' had by chance killed a man, and the brother of the victim was a member of the society, he was expected MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 15 to take the murderer home with him, give him the kiss of peace, and sit and drink with him. There is Christian charity- carried to heroism! The institution spread to all classes of society; it included barons, bishops, abbots, monks, simple clerics, burghers, peas- ants, even women. Societies similar to that of Velay were established in Auvergne, Berry, Aquitaine, Gascony, and Provence. Members of these associations called themselves ** the peace-lovers," or simply " the sworn." Their number was considerable; still the chronicles exaggerate it: numerus infinitus. One would like to know how they accomplished their difficult task of healing society, to understand the or- ganization of their armies, to see them on the march and in battle with the brigands. But, save for two or three episodes, all these details are lacking. In 1183, '* the sworn " of Auvergne massacred three thou- sand brigands, a victory which, it is said, did not cost the life of a single brother. Soon a concerted action was arranged be- tween the associates of Berry, Limousin, and Auvergne. The brigands en masse took refuge in the little town of Charenton, in Bourbonnais, while the army of the allies collected at Dun- le-Roi. The seignior of Charenton, Ebbe VII, was requested to expel the brigands from his territory, something easier to command than to do. Ebbe had recourse to a ruse: he strongly urged the bandits to quit Charenton and fall on their enemies. " When once you are engaged with the sworn," said he, "I shall suddenly fall upon their rear and not one will escape." The bandits agreed, and left the chateau, the gates of which were at once carefully closed. But, hardly were they in the field, without a place of retreat or a hope of escape, than they were surrounded. " "When they saw themselves betrayed," says the chronicler of Laon, " like wild beasts which a strong hand subdues, they lost their natural ferocity; they did not resist, but allowed themselves to be slaughtered like sheep." Ten thousand brigands perished in this butchery; in their camp was found a mass of crosses, gold and silver chalices, not to mention the jewels of in- estimable value worn by the five hundred women following .the camp (July, 1183). Twenty days later there was another execution in 16 SOCIAL FRANCE Rouergue ; the famous bandit chieftain, Courbaran, was taken prisoner near Milhau, and hanged with five hundred of his followers. His head was carried to Puy. Another brigand, Raymond the Brown, captured by the brothers of peace at Chateauneuf-sur-Cher, had his throat cut. Brigandage be- came dangerous in a measure; at last one could breathe, live/ and move freely. Unfortunately, this great movement drew after it political and social consequences, which had not been foreseen. Pro- fessional robbers and assassins were not the only ones threat- ened by the new institution; all who disturbed the public peace, the nobles, ever ready to plunder the serf and hold him for ransom, were included in its proscription. Why let the,- habitual brigandage of feudalism go unpunished? How close; one's eyes to the intolerable abuse and exploitation of the people by their seigniors? Little by little this association,, in which the bourgeois element was dominant, took on the- character of an enterprise directed against seigniorial powers. This institution, arising at the initiative of an artisan, had a leveling tendency, because it assigned equal rights and powers to all members of the league, regardless of their rank. The fusion of townsmen and countrymen into one body with a common object became a double-edged weapon: some used it to destroy brigandage; others, quite naturally, thought of using it for the reform of society in favor of the lower classes. A revolution, a truly formidable menace to the privi- leged classes, was hatching. It was not given the time to materialize. As soon as the prelates and the nobles perceived the danger and realized that the brothers of peace would attack the established order of things, they faced about and a strong reaction began. In the chronicles of monks and clerics, these confederates, in whose honor God had performed miracles, and who were so piously enrolled under the banner of the Virgin, now sud- denly became disturbers of society, anarchists, and heretics, whose activity ought to be suppressed without delay. In 1183, Robert, monk of Saint-Marien of Auxerre, wrote a laudatory resume of the exploits of the " hoods." In 1184, he considered them heretics, secta capuciatorum, and said: " As they insolently refused to obey the great, these have MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 17 .^. xUied to suppress them. ' ' To the anonymous chronicler of ' Laon their work was the result of a mad fury, insana rabies^ oapuciatorum: "Everywhere the seigniors trembled; they dared not exact from their vassals more than the legal services; the greater the exactions, he greater the danger; they were compelled to be content with the evenues which were due them. This fooHsh and midisciplined folk nad reached the height of madness; they dared to notify counts, viscounts, and princes that it behooved them to treat their subjects with more consideration, under pain of quickly experiencing the oieaning of their indignation." What an interest this proclamation of the brothers of peace would have had for history! But the church has not preserved it for us. The historian of the bishops of Auxerre goes even beyond his fellows. He calls the confreres ' ' abominable reprobates, ' ' and their attempt a ' ' horrible and dangerous presumption. ' ' " There was in Gaul a widespread enthusiasm which impelled people to revolt against the powerful. Though good at the outset, the movement was nothing else than the work of the devil, disguised as an angel of light. The league of the sworn of Puy was only a diabolic invention (diaholicum et perniciosum inventum). There was no longer fear or respect for superiors. All strove to acquire liberty, saying that it belonged to them from the time of Adam and Eve, from the very day of creation. They did not understand that serf- dom is the punishment of sin! The result was that there was no longer any distinction between the gTeat and the small, but a fatal confusion tending to ruin the institutions which rule us all, through the will of God and the agency of the powerful of this earth." But there is something still more serious: the monk of Auxerre attributes the enervation of religious discipline and the growth of heresy to the " hoods." Were they themselves not heretics of a kind, social and political heretics? " This formidable scourge (pestilentia formidabilis) began to spread in most parts of France, especially in Berry, Auxerre, and Burgundy. The adherents of the sect reached such a height of folly that they were ready to take by force the rights and liberties they claimed." Repression was not long in coming. The details about it we know only from what happened in the diocese of Auxerre.. 18 SOCIAL FRANCE A bellicose noble, Hugh of Noyers (1183-1206), a firm enemy of heretics and a resolved adversary of all rival powers, had just become bishop. The " white hoods " were numerous in his territory, and even on his own domain. "With a multitude of soldiers he came to his episcopal town of Gy, which was infected with this pest, seized all the sworn he found there, inflicted pecuniary losses on them, and took away their hoods. Then, in order to give all possible publicity to their punishment, and to teach the serfs not to rise against their seigniors, he commanded that for a whole year they should go with heads uncovered to heat and cold and the inclemency of all seasons. In summer one could see these unfortunates bareheaded in the fields scorching in the sun, in winter shivering with cold. They would have passed the year thus, had not the uncle of the bishop, Gui, the archbishop of Sens, been moved to pity and obtained a remission of their penalty for them. By this means the bishop rid his possessions of this fanatical sect. The same was done in other dioceses, and thus, by the grace of God, it entirely disappeared." Such is the strange history of that popular movement, which ended by having those who set out to secure social order treated as its enemies. In their turn the hooded found themselves tracked like bandits by the clergy and the no- bility. It even seems that finally the powers let loose upon them the very brigands whose extermination they had sworn. The bands that had escaped the brotherhood again took the field. One of the most ferocious brigands, the Gascon, Louvart, in 1184 undertook to avenge the massacres of his followers. ' ' He surprised an army of the hooded, ' ' says the chronicle of Xaon, " in a locality called Portes de Bertes, and destroyed it so completely that thereafter they dared show themselves no more." Later he took the town and the abbey of Aurillac by assault, and carried the chateau of Peyrat, in Limousin. Meanwhile Mercadier sacked Comborn, Pompadour, Saint- Pardoux, massacred all the inhabitants of the faubourg , Exideuil, and shared the benefits of his raids with the nobles of the land. This prowess he maintained for sixteen years. This great effort of the people, supported by order-loving men of all conditions, had turned against the people them- selves. Brigandage again flourished, the bandits were again the masters of the fields, and a considerable part of France MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 19 relaxed into a reign of terror and desolation, which, for it, was the natural condition. In this atmosphere of misfortune and fright the most char- acteristic trait of the middle ages appeared: the belief in marvels, portents, and the frequent intervention of super- natural forces. Superstition under a thousand forms is always at the bottom of individual intelligence and is the common mark of all classes of men. In this respect the middle age directly carried on the ancient world, and the Christian of the time of Philip Augustus resembled the pagan of former times. Impregnated with the supernatural, haunted by childish fancies and by visions well known to weakened constitutions, he was convinced that everything was an omen, a forewarning of punishment from on high, a good or a bad sign of the wiU of Heaven. To him, natural scourges were only visitations of the power of God or the saints: he must submit or seek to avert these calamities by prayer. There lay the chief utility of the church, and the first cause of her influence. The prayers of clerics and monks were the most important public services and must suffer neither interrup- tion nor respite, for they were the safeguard of the entire people. All the superstitious practices of antiquity were transmitted to the feudal age. Vainly did the church combat this survival of paganism. Superstition, stronger than religion, molded the idea of Christianity to its own uses. The church herself could not prevent it. Monks who wrote history shared in the belief of their contemporaries. The prior of Vigeois, in Limousin, asserts that one could foresee the ills with which his land was afflicted through the whole year 1183: the wolves in the forest of Pompadour howled steadily throughout the day of the feast of Saint Austriclinian. The southern French, especially, had inherited from the Romans a belief in augury. In the midst of the Albigensian wars, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse refused to execute a convention because he had seen a bird, a crow, which the peasants call Saint Martin's bird, flying on his left. A robber-chief, Martin Algais, was vastly delighted at seeing 20 SOCIAL FRANCE a white bird of prey pass from left to right, and, boasting mightily, said to the baron who hired him, '' By Saint John, Sire ! Whatever happens, we shall be victors. ' ' In 1211, a noble, Roger of Comminges, was going to do homage to Simon de Montfort. Just as the ceremony began the count sneezed. Immediately Roger, greatly troubled, took aside his escort and declared that he would not do homage, because the count had sneezed but once : everything done that day would turn out badly. But at last Roger yielded, at the instance of his companions, and from fear that Simon de Montfort would accuse him of heretical superstition. " All Gascons are very foolish," concludes the chronicler, Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay. But was this northern monk, whose writ- ings abound in miracles, less credulous than the Gascons ? Men believed in charms and sorcery. The council of Paris, under the presidency of Bishop Eudes of Sully, about 1200, expressly advised parish priests to keep baptismal fonts under lock and key, to prevent sorcery. Divination of the future by lot, also a legacy of antiquity, was in common use. A book, the Gospels, the Psalter, or the Bible, was opened and the first lines read contained a presage. Those who went to war, or on a crusade, did not fail to consult the lots on the outcome of their enterprise. Simon de Montfort, before tak- ing the cross, had opened a Psalter and sought to obtain a presentiment of his destiny. The church did not forbid the practice; she used it herself. On many an occasion, when a chapter confronted the question of instituting a bishop or a canon, the Gospel was consulted, and, from the verse found by chance, a prognostication (this is the sacred word, prog- nosticum) of the future of the recipient was made. Chance ! A word void of all meaning to people of the middle age! Everything is a manifestation of the divine will : this is the principle of the judicial duel and of ordeals ; it is a judgment of God. How could the church condemn a consultation of lots which made use of holy books? In the Chansons de la croisade des Albigeois, Pope Innocent III himself, before replying to the prelates who urged him to disinherit the count of Toulouse in favor of Simon de Mont- fort, demanded a moment of delay. " Barons," said he, * * take notice, if you please, that I consult. ' ' He opened a MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 21 book and, perceiving from the lot that the destiny of the count of Toulouse was not evil, he attempted to plead his cause before the hostile assembly. Those whom the church decried were the sorcerers, sortilegi, the professional prophets, the exploiters of the un- suspecting, the deceivers, who now and then sought their prognostications even in the table of Pythagoras. The mid- dle age has left us some collections of verses, or very vague phrases, obscure prophecies which fortune-tellers use to this day. One of these documents, edited in Provengal, is in the form of a chart, from which hangs a i*ow of silken threads, corresponding to the series of verses or prophecies. The per- son who seeks to know his future touches any thread he chooses, and the corresponding verse informs him vaguely of his destiny. Astrologers' predictions had free play. They were often made public, the sinister ones in such a way that terrors caused by actually existing calamities were increased by imag- inary fears created by these prophets of evil. Toward the close of 1186, one of these prophecies, in the form of a letter from Jewish, Saracen, and Christian astrologers, was circu- lated over France and all of western Europe. This letter prophesied frightful cataclysms for the following September, at which time the planets were going to be in the constellation Libra. A hurricane, such as no one had ever seen, was going to raise all the dust and the sand from the earth's surface and engulf tovsms and villages. The only means of escape would be to take refuge in tunnels and caverns. Besides the cyclone, there would be earthquakes, plagues, floods, and wars among Christians. Finally, a conqueror would come who would institute most horrible butcheries. This lugubrious missive is mentioned or cited by a goodly number of chroniclers; all note its sad effects. *' Even the savants were thoroughly frightened, ' ' says the monk of Saint- Marien in Auxerre. ' ' As the fatal time approached, ' ' asserts an English chronicler, " clerics and laymen, rich and poor, fell into despair." The archbishop of Canterbury ordered a fast of three days. To check this panic and reassure the people it was necessary to put out a counter letter, written by a savant of Cordova to the archbishop of Toledo, in which 22 SOCIAL FRANCE it was stated that the prediction had no foundation. Finally September arrived — and passed like all other months. What a relief! " We have escaped," cries the annalist of Anchin, " from the danger of a great hurricane. Praised be God! No one, except Him or His ministers, can reveal the future, ■^e, — we do not believe that any chance astrologer or Toledan necromancer can foretell His will." Comets and eclipses were more than ever causes of fright. A certain Master Eudes, in a letter to the archbishop of Reims, predicted that all who should look upon the eclipse of the sun on May 1, 1184, would have their complexions changed' to the same color. The comet of July, 1198, an- nounced the death of Richard the Lion-Hearted. The lunar eclipse of 1204 brought a disastrous winter. The comet of 1223 was only a harbinger of the death of Philip Augustus. The heavens were a theater of extraordinary phenomena. In 1182, the inhabitants of Limousin saw the moon change from black to red, and then resume its natural appearance. In 1185, a house of fire appeared several times in the air. In 1192, some people of Perche saw an army of chevaliers descend from the sky, fight, and then disappear. A dragon occupied the horizon in 1204, on the very evening of the death of the archbishop of Reims, William of Champagne. In 1214, there was a ball of fire ; in 1222, an enormous star, a burning torch, conical in shape, which threatened to set the earth afire. No less did terrestrial marvels strike the imagination. At Rozoy-en-Brie, at the instant of the sacrifice of the mass, the wine was actually changed to blood, the bread to flesh : visible transubstantiation ! In a church of Limousin, several crosses appeared on the altar-cloth. " This miracle," says the prior of Vigeois, " was confirmed by a viscountess, an abbot, and by all the people ; only, one could not well deter- mine the color of the crosses. God alone knows what He wished to signify thereby." In a church of Tarn the blood circulated in a statue of the virgin. At Chateauroux, during the war between Philip Augustus and Henry II, a brigand, who was throwing dice before a church door, in a fit of rage hurled a stone at a statue of the Virgin holding the Child Jesus. The arm of the Child was broken off, and a great deal MATEEIAL AND SPIEITUAL CONDITION 23 of blood flowed from the wound. The precious blood, capable c(f effecting marvelous cures, was kept; and John Lackland took the arm and never parted with it. The chronicle of Eigord alone cites three or four instances of resurrections. Geoffrey of Vigeois knew a dame of Limoges who had the fortune after death to interest Mary Magdalene. The saint touched her lips and the body regained life. A king, anointed and consecrated as was Philip Augustus, could not fail to be an object of divine protection. Three times at least, in his wars against feudal lords and the Plantagenets, he was miraculously carried out of harm's way. No one doubted that the souls of the dead returned to torment the living. The son of Hugh of Marche, in 1185, killed a knight named Bertrand, and the ghost of this Bertrand did not cease to rise before the face of the murderer until the victim's family had obtained satisfaction. The intervention of the devil is nearly as frequent as that of the saints. Not content with terrifying people, he some- times took possession of their bodies. William of Armorica bears witness that a knight of Brittany was suddenly, while at table, entered by the devil, who spoke through his mouth. A priest was called, and the devil cried out because the priest brought with him a book of exorcisms ; but it took some days to make him abandon his victim. Another time a demon took it into his head to assume the figure, arms, and steed of a departed noble. In the field he appeared to one of the friends of the deceased and commanded him to mount behind him on the steed. After covering two hundred paces or so, they suddenly found themselves confronted by a large troop of chevaliers, who upbraided the ghost for his tardiness. ' ' Come along, ' ' said he, and set off with these spirits, whereupon his friend, frightened, fell off the horse and remained uncon- scious on the ground for a long time, ' ' I saw him this morn- ing," says the historian of Philip Augustus, " just as he was telling the facts to the archbishop; he showed us the place where this strange episode occurred." To keep at a distance these diabolic apparitions and mischievous spirits, no one ever slept without a light. A night-lamp was always lighted above the bed. The innumerable miracles performed at saints' tombs, by; 24 SOCIAL FRANCE seeing or touching relies, will be considered later. But there were also living saints whose marvelous doings the contem- poraries of Philip Augustus attest. Alpais, a cowherd of Cudot, in the vicinity of Sens, ate nothing for ten years. She lived, constantly lying down, her body wonderful in its thinness, and her figure of angelic beauty. When there were great religious solenmities, she was seized with ecstasy and, led by an angel, walked in heavenly places. After several days she came to herself, feeling that she was reentering darkness. She saw what was far away and predicted the future. The chronicler of Saint-Marien of Auxerre adds that he has spoken with her several times, and has come away stupefied at the knowledge and speech of this girl, brought up in the country. The anonymous chronicler of Laon mentions another person, Mathilda, through whom divine power worked in the same way. Among the wonder-workers most celebrated in this epoch, two men have played an historic role : they are the two preach- ers of crusades — Eustache, abbot of Saint-Germer-de-Flai, and Fulc, cure of Neuilly. The abbot of Saint-Germer had revealed a vision to the Plantagenet King Henry II, in which the premature death of his two eldest sons was predicted. Charged with preach- ing the fourth crusade in England, he, like Saint Bernard, scattered miracles along his path. For him to bless a fountain was enough to make it restore sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, strength and health to the weak. Reaching a vil- lage wMch wanted water, he gathered the people in the church, and in their presence struck a stone with a staff and, lo! water flowed forth, healing aU maladies. At London he undertook to reform manners, he forbade trade on Sunday, and tried to compel the citizens to be charitable. This was very difficult. The English clergy, jealous of his success, considered him a nuisance and forced him to go back to France, crying after him, " Why dost thou come to reap the harvest of others? " Fulc of Neuilly, the great agitator, had the gift of persua- sion, the irresistible eloquence which swept thousands into the holy war; this converter of sinful men and women was, in addition, an envoy of Heaven, and he proved his mission MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 25 by miracles. French and English chroniclers try to outdo each other in telling how he healed the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and the palsied by prayers and by a mere laying-on of hands. But not all believe these marvelous stories, for Rigord declines to go into details, complaining of the unbe- lief of men. The Englishman, Roger of Hoveden, is less reserved. He pictures the saint at Lisieux rebuking the clergy of the place for irregular living. Furious, the clerics seize him, throw him into prison, and put his feet into irons. But, by the grace of God, Fulc frees himself and preaches at Caen, where he astonishes the crowd by his miracles. The keepers of the castle at Caen, thinking it will please their master, imprison him, and also throw him into chains. Again he issues from his dungeon, and pursues his roving life. This extraordinary man persuaded women of ill-fame to become respectable mothers, and induced usurers and confirmed de- bauchees to give all their goods to the poor. " These mira- cles, ' ' says an English chronicler, ' ' were no less astonishing. ' ' In this human society, excited by daily sufferings and terrors, and living in the midst of hallucinations and visions, everything happened, even the improbable. Some historians have questioned the truth of one of the most unbelievable occurrences of this epoch, the children's crusade of 1212. They have seen in it only the stuff of which a popular legend is made. Nevertheless, research has shown that this strange episode is historical. The movement spread from France to Germany like a contagion ; German children, like French chil- dren, made their crusade at the same time and under the same influence. The agreement of the chroniclers of both countries is so striking that one must accept it as a fact. In June, 1212, a shepherd of Cloyes, near Vendome, a young boy named Stephen, had a vision like the carpenter of Puy. God, in the form of a poor pilgrim, asked him for a piece of bread and gave him a letter, charging him to go and reconquer the Holy Land and deliver the Holy Sepulcher, A little later, when the shepherd was driving his sheep from a cultivated field, to his astonishment, he saw them kneel before him and beg for mercy. Then it was indeed a divine 26 SOCIAL FRANCE mission. He traveled over the land, uttering the cry of the crusades : ' ' Lord God, arouse Christianity ! Lord God, give us the true cross ! " As he worked miracles everywhere, other shepherds joined him, and soon a crowd of children, aged twelve or thirteen years at most, chose him as leader of the crusade. The chronicle of Rouen would have us believe that be had nearly thirty thousand under his orders, forming an immense procession with crosses and banners. Other chil- dren, inspired like Stephen (just as in the fifteenth century- several Joans of Arc appeared), are said to have raised simi- lar bands in various parts of France and then to have joined the command of the shepherd of Cloyes. According to a monk of Saint-Medard, in Soissons, some miracles announced this new type of crusade. Countless numbers of fish, frogs, butterflies, and birds were seen emigrating from the seaside. Likewise, a multitude of dogs assembled near a certain chateau of Champagne, separated into two camps, and fought a furi- ous battle, which very few survived. Coming events cast their shadows before them. How could this army of children form and organize in the face of the opposition of parents and local clergy? To those who asked them where they were going, the children responded, " To God." The masses favored them. They be- lieved in the miracles of Stephen, and were convinced that God verily manifested His will through these innocent souls, and that their purity would redeem the sins of men. "Wher- ever they passed, the inhabitants of towns and villages, far from stopping them, gave them supplies and money. Every one struggled to see the leader of the shepherds, the agent of God ; and sought a hair of his head or a bit of his clothing as a relic. Finally the state became aroused. Philip Augustus, after having sought the opinion of the prelates and masters of the university of Paris on the matter, commanded the children to return home. A part of them obeyed ; the greater number did" not. Even the papacy dared not heartily disapprove of the enterprise. Innocent III, so attached was he to his desire for a crusade, contented himself, it seems, with saying, " These children shame us; while we sleep, they cheerfully go forth to deliver the Holy Sepulcher." MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 27 The church was, to a great extent, responsible for this affair. To induce the French to take the cross, Rome each year sent preachers who, on crossroads, in public places, and in churches, never ceased urging the Christians to leave their homes and set out for Jerusalem. During the pontificate of \ Innocent III, the ardor and intensity of this propaganda fired the imagination to an inconceivable degree. Women and children, particularly, were aroused. The chronicler, Albert of Stade, reports that at Liege some hundreds of women, driven by religious enthusiasm, writhed in ecstatic convulsions. "Without doubt, the same nervous contagion con- tributed in France to the formation of the army led by the shepherd of Cloyes. This army did not continue to consist solely of children. Priests, merchants, peasants, and even some adventurers, bad characters who had nothing to lose and who formed the usual following of crusades, joined it. Passing town after town, these soldiers of Christ, whose number ever increased, at last approached Marseilles, which had been selected as the port of embarkation. In the lead came the wondrous child, Stephen, borne on a richly ornamented vehicle, surrounded by a body- guard; behind him marched a multitude of pilgrims of both sexes. The children made an arrangement with two Marseilles ship-owners, Hugh Ferri and William of Porqueres, who said they were willing to transport the young crusaders to Syria * ' for the glory of God. ' ' They secured seven vessels, in fact, and packed the children on them. Two of the vessels ran aground near Sardinia, on the island of San Pietro, and were lost with their passengers. The others were taken to Bougie, then to Alexandria, by the ship-owners, who had evolved the plan of selling the children in the slave markets. Thus several thousand of the children found themselves transported to the court of the caliph, and among them four hundred clerics. ' ' They were treated very kindly, ' ' says the chronicler Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, " because the caliph, under the guise of a cleric, had studied at Paris." Oriental sovereigns already/ sent their children to the university. It is a satisfaction to know that the two wretches responsi- ble for the outcome of this child's crusade, did not go un- 28 SOCIAL FRANCE punished. ' In the war which the German Emperor, Frederick II, conducted seventeen years later against the Saracens of Sicily, the two men attempted another crime. They conspired to sell the emperor to the chief Sicilian emir, but, instead, the emir was captured by the Germans and hanged. His accomplices perished on the same gallows. When, in 1229, Frederick II concluded a treaty with the Sultan Al-Kamil he stipulated that a certain number of the unfortunate cru- saders of 1212 be freed. One of them reported that not all of his companions in misfortune were released ; seven hundred still remained in the service of the governor of Alexandria. V * The true religion of the middle age, to be frank, is the worship of relics. How could men of that time raise them- selves to the metaphysical and moral conceptions of Christian doctrine ? To the masses religion was the veneration of the remains of saints or of objects which had been used by Jesus or the Virgin. It was believed that divine intervention in human affairs manifested itself especially through the power of relics. Therefore, hardly anything was done, whether in public or private life, without having recourse to the pro- tection or the guarantee of these sacred objects. Relics were brought to councils and assemblies; on them the most solemn oaths were taken, treaties between entire peoples and conventions between individuals, were sworn. They were the shield and buckler of cities. Was there need of asking God to end a long-enduring rain ? A procession was held and the relics were shown. Whoever undertook a distant pilgrimage, a dangerous voyage, or a campaign of war, first went to pray to a saint, to see and touch a relic. The chevalier put some relics in the hilt of his sword; the tradesman, in a little sack suspended from his neck. One of the most frequent penances enjoined by the church, and one of the surest means of safety, the great fountain of spir- itual benefits, was a pilgrimage to the tomb of some saint. The more remote and difficult of access the shrine, the greater was the merit of the pilgrim. These saints and relics, moreover, were graded like earthly powers. Happy those who could ' venerate the bones of an apostle, one of those privileged be- MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 29 ings who were in touch with Christ ; happy, above all others, those who could visit Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher! But it was not necessary to leave one 's country ; the Christian found right in France well-known sanctuaries to which the believers flocked: Sainte-Genevieve at Paris; Saint-Denis; Saint-Martin at Tours; Mont Saint-Michel; Notre-Dame at Chartres; Notre-Dame at Vezelay; Saint-Martial at Limoges; Notre-Dame at Puy; Rocamadour; Saint-Foi at Conques; Saint-Sernin at Toulouse. Here the sinner put himself at peace with God and gained a quiet conscience ; the sick found a cure, for saints heal more surely than medicines. The physicus, be he Christian or Jew, was very expensive, and was only an ignorant empiricist. The medical journals of the time were collections of miracles, lihri miraculorum, writ- ten in the centers of pilgrimage. The marvelous powers of relics are not only noted in writ- ings of a special character, but they also form a considerable part of the woof of chronicles. The monks who wrote them were interested in advertising the efficacy of the relics from which their abbey drew its prosperity. At Saint-Denis, Rigord either omits or states in a few lines historical facts of the highest importance, but he writes two large pages about the procession of 1191. Philip Augustus, the king of France, was then on a crusade; his only heir. Prince Louis, fell ill of dysentery, which gave cause for serious alarm. The monks of Saint-Denis were brought to Paris, carrying the sacred relics : the qrown of thorns, a nail from the cross, and an arm of Saint Simeon. The procession reached the church of Saint- Lazare ; there it was met by another gigantic procession, com- prising all the regular and secular clergy of Paris, with the bishop, Maurice of Sully, in the lead, and an enormous crowd of students and citizens. The procession moved to the palace in the Cite, where the sick child lay. A cross was traced on his abdomen with the relics, and all danger of death disappeared. Some months later it was a question of obtain- ing from Heaven the deliverance of the Holy Land, and the happy return of the king to his country. This time they were content with placing the bodies of the sainted martyrs — Denis, Rusticus, and Eleutherius — in view on the altar of the great abbey church. The members of the governing regency, the 30 SOCIAL FRANCE queen-mother, Adele of Champagne, the archbishop of Reims, and many of the faithful were guests at this expo- sition. All churches sought to procure some relics; this was a vital matter, and the first care of their founders was to col- lect some of these precious objects. We possess a sort of journal of the acquisitions of relics made by the priory of Tavaux between the years 1180 and 1213. There is no more curious document. In 1181, the abbot of Couronne, the head of the mother- house, gave the priory some relies of Saint Peter, Saint Lawrence, Saint Vincent, and Saint Genesius. In the next year a friend of the prior told him of an abandoned chapel, where there was a very old reliquary full of anonymous relics ; they were taken to the priory. The same year a priest pre- sented the monks of Tavaux with a piece of the garment of the martyr, Saint Thomas, a fragment of the Holy Sepulcher, and one of the stones with which Saint Stephen was stoned. A little later were acquired the relics of Saint Martial, Saint Grregory, Saint Hilary, Saint Germain of Auxerre, Saint Ausonne, Saint Eustache, Saint Fereol, Saint Front, Saint Vedast, and some hair of Saint Peter. A steward sent some relics of Saint Basil and Saint Flavian. The founder of the church, Aimeri Brun, who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, made a gift of a flask of oil which had flowed from a statue of the Virgin. The prior, likewise, began a quest; from the famous sanctuary of Saint-Yrieix he brought two teeth of the Prophet Amos, some relics of Saint Martin and Saint Leonard ; and, by another series of acquisitions, several relics of the Theban Legion, of Saint Priscus, and some bone- lets, hair, and bits of the cloak of Saint Bernard; and, last of all, a bit of wood from the true cross. But no one could equal the cellarer of the priory, Gerard, as a relic-hunter and collector. It is to him that the monks of Tavaux owe the relics of Saint Peter, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Satumin, Saint Sebastian, Saint Eustelle, and of the Patri- archs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thanks also to him, the abbey of Saint-Yrieix sent relics of Saint Peter, Saint Paul, of Saint Sixtus, Saint Lawrence, Saint Nicolas, and Saint Leonard. From the monastery of Hautmont came relics of MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 31 Saint Benignus, Saint Caesar, Saint Amand, and of the Holy Innocents. Such are the relics of known origin; but the journal of Tavaux mentions a good many others, of the highest interest to the faithful: bits of the Virgin's cloak, hair of Saint Stephen, a fragment of the manger of Bethlehem, a part of the Virgin's shoe, a small portion of the incense which the Magi carried to Bethlehem, hair of Saint Paul, a fragment of Saint Andrew's cross and of the stone on which Christ stood when he ascended into heaven, a finger of John the Baptist, a tooth of Saint Maurice, a rib of Saint Andrew, a piece of Mary Magdalene's hair-cloth, a scrap of the jaw- bone of Sainte Radegonda, etc. One must consider that all these objects were acquired within a very few years, and by a church of a Poitevin priory which had no especial reputation. Contemporaries accepted them with admirable assurance; they were not critical as to their origin, and asked no ques- tions as to their authenticity. No one wondered at the prodigious mass of relics scattered in a thousand different places, nor at the impossibility of explaining the existence in several sanctuaries of a unique object, for every one had faith. It was only in the higher places of the church that, there was any disquiet at the excessive developments which this material form of religious sentiment was taking. Innocent III attempted to limit it by recommending to the French clergy that they accept only objects of indisputable authenticity. The doubts and prudent precautions of the leaders of the church were ill-received by the masses, and those prelates who ever dared to express their skepticism ran great risks. They were regarded as evil characters and as enemies of religion. At the end of the reign of Louis VII, in 1162, a sudden rumor spread among the citizens of Paris that the head of Sainte Genevieve had disappeared ; that it was, without doubt, stolen; it was no longer in its reliquary. Great excitement! Louis VII was enraged (immensa furoris ira exacerhatur) , and swore by the Saint of Bethlehem that, if the relic were not found, he would have all the canons of Sainte-Genevieve whipped and expelled. He sent soldiers to the abbey to guard the treasure and other relics, and commanded the archbishop 32 SOCIAL FRANCE of Sens and his suffragans to proceed with an investigation. The canons were in distress, and above all the prior, William, who, as guardian of the shrine and the treasure of the church, felt himself directly questioned. On the day fixed for the investigation the king and his court, the bishops, abbots, and a crowd of curious persons fill the church of Sainte-G-enevieve. The archbishop of Sens and his suffragans have been officially designated to be present at the uncovering of the body of the saint. The box is opened, and — the head and other relics are found intact. See- ing this, Prior William cannot contain his joy, and with a loud voice intones a Te Deum, which fills the church and which the people chant with him. This incident had not been foreseen in planning the ceremony. Indignant, Manasses II of Garlande, bishop of Orleans, cries out: " Who is the intriguer who dares chant the Te Deum without the authoriza- tion of the archbishop and the prelates? And why this explosion of joy? Because the head of some old woman, (vetulae cujusdam), which the monks have surreptitiously placed in the shrine, has just been found! " The accusation was grave, and William replied with heat: " If thou knowest not who I am, do not begin by slandering me. I am not an intriguer, but a servant of Sainte Genevieve. The head thou sawest is, without doubt, that of an old woman ; but it is well known that Sainte Genevieve lived a pure and immaculate virgin to the age of seventy years or more. There is no need for doubt to enter any mind; let a pyre be pre- pared, and I, with the head of the saint in my hands, will pass through the fire without fear." Sneeringly, the bishop responded, ' * For that head I would not put my hand in a cup of hot water, and you, you would enter a furnace ! ' ' Finally the archbishop of Sens saw fit to intervene. He ordered the bishop to keep silent, and openly praised the zeal of William in defending the sainted virgin. " As for the slandering bishop," adds the author of the life of Saint Wil- liam, by way of moral, ' ' his crime did not remain unpunished. Some years after, beset with accusations of all sorts, he was driven from his episcopal see, and finished his miserable life by a death which was no better. ' ' MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 33 Here the historian, in his desire to make known to all the chastisement of a despiser of relics, has taken great liberty with history. The truth is that the bishop of Orleans, the skeptic, was never deprived of his functions; he remained a bishop more than twenty years after the incident of Sainte Genevieve, and died peacefully in his bed. To meet attacks and to keep the faith of believers alive, " expositions " or even " revelations " of relies were insti- tuted. The presence of the sacred- remains in the shrines was verified, a procedure which always reassured consciences ; and searches were conducted under altars and in tombs for new objects of veneration. In either case the religious solemnity demanded the assembling of all authorities of the land, and drew a large concourse of people. The church gained by it in every way. It was imperative to guard these precious objects with the greatest care. The owners of relics had to fear warriors, like the seignior of Limousin, who, in 1182, stole the body of Saint Ancildus from Saint-Martial and concealed it in the chapel of his chateau, ad tutelam castri; and also robbers like those who in 1219 removed the remains of Saint Leoeadia from the priory of Vic-sur-Aisne at night. The people could not do without the saint; they found her again at the bottom of the Aisne. It was also necessary to contend against competitors; for often several churches claimed to possess the same relic. The inconvenience was slight when the rival establishments were remote from one another; but two well-known and neighbor- ing churches could not long remain in competition without scandal. In 1186, there were exposed in Saint-Etienne, at Paris, thirty-two hairs of the Virgin, an arm of Saint Andrew, and the head of Saint Denis, But this head already existed in the celebrated abbey where the kings of France are buried. The monks of Saint Denis protested; in 1191, the silver box containing the whole body of Saint Denis was opened in the presence of representatives of the Capetian government. They made it a point to put the head apart in a special shrine, which was open for a whole year to the gaze of pil- grims. This incident was the more disagreeable to them because 34 SOCIAL FRANCE they had already had considerable difficulty in combating a sentiment hostile to their relic. From the time of Louis the Pious they had claimed that the Saint Denis, whose body they possessed, was Denis the Areopagite, that celebrated bishop of Corinth converted by Saint Paul. They would not admit that their saint was a Gallo-Roman bishop, an obscure martyr of later date, who had been put to death with Rusticus and Eleutherius by the pagans of Montmartre. They considered as enemies those skeptics who dared maintain that their Saint Denis could not be the Areopagite, because, according to certain documents, he had never left Greece, but had died and been buried there. For five centuries this question had consumed floods of ink and had raised bitter discussions. Abelard was driven from Saint-Denis, where he had found refuge after his misfortune, for having indiscreetly disturbed the traditional conviction of the monks. The controversy, always bitter, still continued in the time of Philip Augustus. The doubts lived on and increased; and the chief of royal abbeys truly suffered from them. Pope Innocent III, in 1216, found the remedy. One of his legates, Peter of Capua, had had the good fortune to discover in Greece a tomb which, it appeared, was unques- tionably that of Denis the Areopagite, and had carried the body to Rome. Innocent III made a present of it to the prior of Saint Denis, who had just attended the Lateran Council, and he accompanied this gift with a letter dated January 4, 1216, a document worth reading. To send the monks the body of Saint Denis, the Areopagite, of a properly certified origin, was equal to saying that they did not already' possess it. In order not to appear to take a part against a tradition dear to the great French abbey, the pope adopted a neutral position, stated that there was a difference of opin- ion, epitomized the history of the contention, and added, " Wishing to hurt neither the one nor the other of the con- victions before us, we present to your monastery ", he did not say " the body " of Saint Denis, for that would have touched the point at issue, but he ingeniously employed a very vague word, pignus, that is a token, a souvenir, sacrum heati Dionysii pignus. " In that way," said he, '* since you MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 35 will have both bodies, no one can doubt that, between the two, you have that of the Areopagite." To problems of this kind the church could find other solu- tions. For a long time the monks of the abbey of Saint- Pierre-le-Vif, at Sens, and those of the abbey of Jouarre, were at rivalry over the possession of the body of Saint Potentin. In 1218, an unusually solemn exposition of the relics of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif was arranged; on the very day, by a providential chance, the bishops gathered at Sens found in the tomb of the saint written proof that the remains offered to the veneration of the faithful were, indeed, those of Saint Potentin. A similar difference in Auvergne toward the end of the twelfth century started a quarrel between the monks of Mozac and those of Issoire, From time immemorial the Christians of Auvergne and elsewhere had been satisfied that the body of Saint Austremoine, the apostle of Auvergne, reposed at Mozac. It was considered well established that, in 764, Pepin the Short had presided at a Council of Volvic, and that the remains of the saint had then solemnly been transported to Mozac, from which place they had never been removed. But, at the beginning of the reign of Philip Augustus, a rumor spread in the district that the head of the saint was in the church at Issoire. A legend arose, according to which a seignior of Aquitaiue, named Roger, who was present at the ceremony of translation in 764, had surreptitiously detached the' head of Saint Austremoine and placed it in his chateau, Pierre-Incise. Thence it was said to have passed to the monks of Charroux, the celebrated Poitevin abbey, and finally to have found a resting-place at Issoire. The middle age has left us a whole literature of pseudo-historical writings, made of whole cloth, to explain the peregrinations of some relic or other and favor the claims of a given church. In the eyes of our fathers it was a pious act, in no wise reprehensible, to put the interests of some saint or monastery ahead of the truth. The motive was considered, and a forger was excused for his devotion. The legend spread by the monks of Issoire had a disastrous effect on Mozac ; the latter sanctuary threatened to be aban- doned for the rival establishment. In 1197, the abbot of 36 SOCIAL FRANCE Mozae asked the bishop of Clermont to come and institute a verification of the relies of Saint Austremoine in the legal way. The chest which held them was opened and the com- plete body was found, tightly wound in linen and silk, " in the same condition," says the record, " in which King Pepin had left it." The bands still bore the imprint of the royal seal. Doubt was no longer possible ; the victory remained with Mozac. To-day these matters appear to us to be of small moment in the history of France; then they were of vital interest. For medieval society there were no more important events than an exposition or translation of relics, a miracle per- formed at the tomb of an apostle or saint, a dispute over the possession of a sacred body. When, in 1204, the French and Venetians had taken Constantinople, the whole of France, stirred to its depths, uttered a great cry of joy. "Was it at the thought that a Latin Empire would replace the Greek, or that our feudalism would establish a second France on the shores of the Bosphorus and the --^gean Sea? By no means. The cause of this boundless delight was that knights and pilgrims would return with their share of a particular booty, the fruit of a systematic pillage of Byzantine churches ; that in all provinces there would be an enormous distribution of Oriental relics. The fourth crusade brought a sudden, unexpected, and unheard-of increase of Christian riches. There is the fact which mightily interested the masses; and it is precisely that which our general histories fail to mention. CHAPTER 11 PARISHES AND PRIESTS The preceding pages have shown that religious sentiments and religious fears were in the time of Philip Augustus still the most effective motives of individual and collective acts, the most powerful of all human levers. This lever was in \ the hands of the clergy. Despite the violent attacks which were beginning to be leveled against her, the church steadily retained her exalted place in the respect of men. It was because she fulfilled, and alone could fulfil, the greater part of the social functions which have to-day devolved upon the state. Historians, like Henri Martin, who do not admit the legitimacy and necessity of this role of the church, have not at all grasped the middle age. Doubtless the essential function of the clergy was to pray and perform religious offices for the entire nation. But it W£is also the teaching staff; it preserved scientific and lit- erary knowledge. It was charged with the care of the poor, the sick, and the pilgrims. It decided a great part of all civil and criminal cases. Armed with excommunication and interdict, it contributed to policing. It presided over all civil acts of the faithful. For feudal sovereigns it was the indis- pensable instrument of rule and administration. Finally, al- most alone, it formed the classes which practised the liberal professions — doctors, teachers, judges, and lawyers. All the intellectual and moral interests of society, and an important part of its material affairs, were intrusted to it. In short, this international corporation of churchmen did not stop with directing the common destiny of Christendom; it was, in addition, the mainspring of all national organiza- tions. Landed proprietor, master of a considerable amount of territory; capitalist, unable to alienate property, but, despite 37 38 SOCIAL FEANCE all canonical prohibitions, engaged in every kind of busi- ness, even that of money-lending; privileged in every way, evading the direct tax and often also the indirect; exempt from military service, judged by special tribunals, the clergy of this epoch had an incomparable position. Nothing in the France of to-day can give an idea of it. But one must remember that the clerics of the middle ages were like their times. Their traditions and professional rules did not protect them sufficiently from violent habits and gross manners, the atmosphere which they breathed with all their contemporaries. In striving to better and pacify feudalism, they did not escape the influence of the dominant regime, and, in spite of themselves, yielded to the contagion of example. Any number of the tonsured, coming as they did from the military class and leading a noble's life, shared the senti- ments, the prejudices, and the vices of their kind. Under the cassock and the frock there were the same vivacity of behavior, the same exuberant passions, the same taste for battle. Failing to expend their energy and their need of exercise in wars, they compensated themselves by revolts, con- flicts as to rights and duties, and rude competition between temporal and religious interests. In churches and cloisters there fermented the feelings of independence and rebellion, which are characteristic of feudal temperaments. Flesh and blood retained their dominion over this kind of priests. A rough and militant church was she, justifying her immense power by the services she rendered to the people, and having a virtue and an intelligence vastly superior to that of other classes; she had not the submissive, servile, and pliable ap- pearance of the modern priesthood. She lived, she moved, and she fought like every other body of society. At the base of ecclesiastical society was the parish, served by a cure; that is, by a guardian of souls, qui Jiabet curam animarum. The greater number of cures belonged to the secular church and depended entirely on the bishop. But, when the parish was the property of an abbey or a chapter, it could be intrusted to a canon regular or even to a monk PARISHES AND PRIESTS 39 endowed with the priesthood and delegated to this service by his establishment. The combination of several parishes and their dependencies, the village altars served by chaplains, formed a group called a deanery or archpresbytery, depend- ing on the region. The dean or archpriest, the natural inter- mediary between bishop or archdeacon and the cures of single parishes, exercised the right of jurisdiction and correction over the latter. Such was the lower clergy, in direct contact with the peasant, itself drawn largely from the populace, the most numerous, but at the same time the most irregular and least manageable element in the church. The history of these rural priests is obscure. Parishes of those times left no archives. Records of episcopal visits do not exist for the epoch of Philip Augustus. As for the chroniclers, they tell only of ecclesiastical magnates, of bish- ops, chapters, and abbeys which rank among the seigniories. The sources are especially devoid of information respecting material and external conditions. Illuminators of manu- scripts and sculptors pictured bishops, abbots, and monks; they did not dream of presenting cures. The seals of parishes and deaneries with which these priests validated the civil acts of their parishioners — such as gifts, sales, and testaments — are, unhappily, small in size and bear hardly anything else than symbolic objects: the Agnus Dei, the fleur de lys, the eagle of St. John, the chalice used at the mass. It is unusual if one of them, like that used by Renaud, archpriest of Bourges in 1209, shows a priest officiating before an altar upon which is seen a pyx. The museum of Bayeux contains a small bell of the time of Philip Augustus ; it bears its date, 1202, something very unusual. It is true that some of the parochial churches where these cures officiated are still in existence. But how few can be dated with certainty ! Some of them rival the sanctuaries of celebrated cathedrals or abbeys in wealth and elegance; such are those two beautiful specimens of gothie art — Saint-Pierre of Gonesse and the church of Petit- Andely. In other parts of France, in the central and southern prov- inces, the parochial clergy strove less to be luxuriously in- stalled than to be prepared to resist nobles, warriors, bandits, and pirates. Therefore, the cures constructed massive 40 SOCIAL FRANCE churches, provided with heavy pillars, with high walls, and with belfries like donjons. There they could give asylum to the peasants round about. Still it was to be feared that the cure would use them to tyrannize over his parishioners and to resist his bishop. The council of Avignon, in 1209, speaks of the abominations which occur in certain fortified churches " where unworthy priests transformed the house of the Lord into a den of thieves." It forbade the fortifica- tion of churches and cemeteries; bishops were to destroy everything which gave a sanctuary the appearance of a chateau. The parish priests found another means of guarding against the dangers of isolation and of securing themselves against the exactions and violence of the barons. They formed broth- erhoods among themselves, or even with laymen, veritable mutual assurance societies with rules, which they swore to observe, and with penalties pronounced against those who should violate them. But the church, hostile to the com- munes and the corporations of the bourgeoisie, had her rea- sons for mistrusting these brotherhoods, even though they consisted of churchmen. The council of Rouen in 1189 con- demned them. " Canonical regulations detest this kind of association, canonica detestatur scriptura/' say the bishops. And the ground they give is singular: " This is because it is difficult to observe the rules of the brotherhood, and be- cause" they are the cause of perjury for some." The truth is that the episcopacy would not tolerate an instrument of independence in the hands of the lower clergy. The brother- hoods of priests disappeared. Still it seems that the associa- tion of priests of Crepy-en-Val6is {confraria presbiterorwm de Crespeio), organized under Philip Augustus, did not alarm the authorities, for it endured throughout the middle age, and, contrary to the rule, the documents of its history have come down to us.^ Still the fears of the bishops were well-founded. If they wished to keep the personnel of the parishes under that direct authority which became theirs on the day they took the miter and crozier, they had to preserve in the country priests a ^ Bibliothfeque Nationale, Nouvelles acquisitions latiaes, No. 2311. PARISHES AND PRIESTS 41 spiritual and religious character, without which they would promptly have lost their control. The parish was not then, as now, a purely ecclesiastical organization. This petty seigniory with its special character belonged not only to the church represented by the bishop or his delegate, the archdeacon; it was, in certain respects, also the property of the " patron." And this patron was often a layman, the owner of the neighboring chateau, an ordinary knight, a notable resident of the village, and some- times a more important personage — a count, duke, or even the king. The lay patron possessed a church under his patronage exactly as a family property which passes from father to son. Besides the satisfactions to his vanity, the chief place in the church and the honors in the procession, he received a share of the tithes and the revenue of the parish, a share which he could sell, give away, or pledge like any other possession. Finally, he had the right of " presenting " to the living — that is, of designating the cure, reserving the confirmation and investiture to the bishop. In many parts the cure was no more than the vassal, partner, agent, or tenant of the patron. One can imagine what kind of bargains resulted from this presentation to livings by laymen who were under the ne- cessity of converting their patronage into ready money. Still, under the influence of religious ideals and of the growth of monastic orders, the evil diminished day by day. The consciences of certain patrons were moved and troubled by the situation of the parishes, so contrary to the order of things religious and laws ecclesiastical. Impelled by the fear, of hell, they strove to rid themselves of this dangerous posr session. They gave, or rather sold — for often these gifts were only concealed sales — the churches and the revenues they had to some nearby monastery, to a celebrated abbey, or to the bishopric. Thus the revenues of the church returned to the church, and churchmen became the patrons who nominated the cures, a warranty for a better selection of the parochial clergy. But, in the time of Philip Augustus, this progressive movement had not reached the same stage in all dioceses. 42 SOCIAL FEANCE Many parishes, perhaps the majority, still remained under lay patronage, a grievous situation for the dignity and even the morality of the incumbent priests, and unfavorable to the exercise of episcopal rights. The first of these rights, and one of the most important, was the control of the foundation of parochial churches and chaplaincies; for new ones were always being created, and the church did not lack the opportunity of extending her spiritual and temporal domain, and of increasing the number of clerics. As soon as the church, to satisfy the needs of the faithful, determined to divide a parish, some benefactor, in order to insure the safety of his soul, paid the expenses of the foundation. It was the episcopal authority which decided the matter. Toward the end of the twelfth century the church of Saint- Pierre of Ribemont, a large town in the environs of Saint- Quentin, was under the patronage of the neighboring abbey of Saint-Nicolas-des-Pres, and the widely extended limits of the parish included the locality of Villers-le-Sec ; but there was only one *cure to serve Ribemont and Villers. The in- habitants of the latter requested the bishop of Laon to declare their chapel an independent parish, because they had a little church, Notre-Dame, in their midst where baptisms and inter- ments had taken place for many, many years. They stated that the distance between Ribemont and Villers was too great for the one priest of Ribemont to serve both churches satis- factorily. Besides, the priest lived within the walls of the chateau of Ribemont; this made it difficult for him to come out, especially at night, and thus it happened that resi- dents of Villers died without having received the Extreme Unction and without having been able to make their wiUs. This question of division gave rise to a long process which reached as far as Rome. The abbot of Saint-Nicolas and the cure of Ribemont did not wish to have the parish divided. They asserted that the revenues of the church of Ribemont were not enough to support two persons. The people of Villers, on the other hand, urged on by a cleric who aspired to the leadership of the future parish, persistently demanded the separation. But they did not stop with pleading and PARISHES AND PRIESTS 43 with exhausting every degree of jurisdiction. They came to blows. On the strength of a certain judgment the priest of Villers, imagining himseK cure already, one day entered the chapel of Notre-Dame, together with all the faithful. The abbot of Saint -Nicolas hastened forward to forbid them to enter. He was put out of doors, and complained that he was even struck. The men of the abbey came up in force and surrounded the chapel, which the priest of Villers refused to leave. There he was watched by sentinels, who did not let him get out of the chapel or out of sight, and who deprived him of nourish- ment for four days. They proposed to reduce him by starva- tion. The wretch would rather have died than surrender what he considered his right had not the bishop of Laon ordered the siege to be stopped. Innocent III, on May 16, 1198, concluded to authorize the division. But the town of Villers proved too poor to sustain its new cure. The abbot of Saint-Nicolas and the cure of Ribemont showed the great- est iU-will in giving the cure of Villers any part of the revenues of the old parish. In 1204, the bishop of Laon inter- vened anew, at the order of the pope, to settle the difference : " Seeing," said he, " that since the division the priest of Ribemont has less to do and he of Villers lacks the necessary resources, the abbot of Saint-Nicolas shall be compelled to give the latter a measure of wheat in addition to the living furnished to the cure of Ribemont." A curious history this, which shows us the papacy as supreme authority intervening in the most minute affairs of the ecclesiastical life of the land. When some individual founded a church, the ecclesiastical authorities accepted the gift eagerly, but they took good care to fix the conditions. They no longer permitted the founder to be, as had once been the case, the absolute master of his church and cure. In 1195, the seignior of the district of Beauvoir, in Limousin, sought from the bishop of Limoges the permission to build a parochial chapel in his town. The bishop assented, but stipulated that the cure be endowed ; the whole income from the tithes should be his and, in addition, the kitchen of the seignior should furnish him the necessities of life for the balance of his days; the chaplain should be 44 SOCIAL FRANCE subject immediately to the bishop and should always be ap- pointed by him. In 1202, two property-holders announced that they stood ready to pay the costs of a chaplaincy at Rennemoulin (Seine-et-Oise), provided the chapel was served by a member of the order of the Trinity. The bishop of Paris gave the authorization, but in the charter, together with a detailed statement of the revenues, he inserted a clause, by which he reserved the right of naming and dismissing the cure and of exacting an oath of obedience from him. It was not enough for a founder to give an endowment ; when, in 1204, a lord of Chevreuse obtained the permission to estab- lish a parochial church and chapel, he was compelled to give the site on which to build the church with its presbytery and cemetery, and the chapel with its garden; only during his life and that of his wife should he enjoy the advowson, which after their death should revert to the bishop. The heyday of feudal patronage had passed; the church was becoming more and more distinct from the lay world ; she accepted gifts, but she chose not to be subject to those who gave them. The bishop took these precautions even when the founda- tion proceeded from a churchman, either to secure his own rights or to assure the maintenance of the general condition of things. In 1204, a deacon of Saint-Cloud desired to endow a special chaplaincy in the grand chapel of the bishop of Paris at Saint-Cloud. Two conditions were imposed upon him: after the death of the founder and his brother, who were to be the first cures, the bishop should name their successors ; and the chapel should never enter into competition with the parish church of Saint-Cloud in the collection of offerings and other parochial revenues. It was important to see that these new services did not operate to the detriment of the old. This was a serious matter, like all questions in which the material interests of men are at stake ; and especially serious if the founder was a monk, because then it became an eternal competition, a permanent conflict between the secular church and the congregations. The latter were interested in multi- plying the creation of churches served by the monastic clergy ; for these increased their influence as well as their temporal resources. In 1205, the monks of the priory of Deuil sought permission to build a chapel at Gonesse. The bishop of Paris, PARISHES AND PRIESTS 45 in sanctioning it, carefully safeguarded the interests of the cure of Gonesse and of Saint-Pierre, the parish church. The cure should as before keep the income from visits, confessions, burials, marriages, churchings, baptisms, and the offerings of the five high feast days — Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, All Saints' Day, and the Nativity of Saint Peter and of Saint Paul. To be sure, these five feasts should also be celebrated in the chapel of the monks, but these were expressly forbidden to admit any of the parishioners of Saint-Pierre to their mass on those days. Detailed as these rules were, they could not foresee all the causes of trouble, and the interested parties found means of circumventing them. At the time of Philip Augustus, contests between cures and monks on the subject of parochial rights were of daily occurrence in all provinces; the rivalry of the monastic, menaced the secular clergy more and more. A new chapter was to be added to the story when the mendicant orders appeared. Another difficulty lay in the recruiting of the parish clergy. "When the patronage was clerical the true cure was the bishop, the dean of the chapter, or the abbot ; the officiating clergyman was only a substitute, a vicar. He had all the cares without the dignity; he received only a small part of the revenues of the parish. Here was the first fault. Churchmen who held the advowson to parishes felt the necessity of avoiding too poor a choice. But lay patrons, more concerned about their own interests than the capacity of the candidates, nomi- nated their own creatures or even sold the living to the highest bidder. The parishes, then, were managed by unworthy or ignorant clerics, who often enough were not priests, and refused to strive to attain that rank. Many of them, either incapable or > too young, did not take the trouble or had not the right to \ officiate personally in their chui^phes. They did not reside there, and had services performed by more or less underpaid substitutes, who themselves had little promise. Others, hus- bands and fathers, arranged to transmit their benefices to their sons. Inheritance of these functions did actually exist in some parts, despite all prohibitions. 46 SOCIAL FRANCE True, the bishop had the right and duty of controlling the nomination of the cures. The patron was obliged to present his candidate to him. The bishop, prompted by the arch- deacon or dean, examined the candidate and was expected to refuse to invest him with the cure of souls, if he showed himself unfit or lacking the canonical qualifications of age and morality. But how could all bishops do their duty in an age which lacked means of communication and regular and effective facilities of control? Usually the bishop contented himself with approving the choice made by the patrons. The examination was a joke : the candidate declined a Latin noun, conjugated an indicative mood, named the principal parts of a verb, chanted a little, and that was all. The law was not only misapplied ; it was evaded. A candi- date who feared the examination of his bishop had himself ordained by a bishop of some other diocese, of another prov- ince, or even by one of the many bishops in partibus {trans- marini). All that was necessary was for him to show his diocesan an act of ordination sealed with an episcopal seal. And, if the head of the diocese was seized with scruples and refused to accept the cure presented by his patron, the re- jected candidate appealed to Rome. This made an investiga- tion and a decision by papal delegates necessary. During all this time the parochial office remained vacant, and its func- tion suffered; or, perchance, the intruder installed himself provisionally in the living, and ended by keeping it. All these operations were condemned by a series of councils, an indication that it was impossible to stop them. The papal prohibitions were hardly more effective. Lucius III, in 1181, wrote to the archbishop of Rouen: " Do not allow clerics to serve parishes, who are not priests and who are not disposed to enter the priesthood. Do not, hereafter, accept those who are not disposed to enter the priesthood. Do not, hereafter, accept those who are unwilling to officiate in their churches in person. When patrons make a bad choice, name an incumbent yourself, and do not let appeals to Rome stop you." In 1185, Urban III commanded the abbot of Fecamp ' ' not to tolerate it that, in certain churches of his patrons, the PARISHES AND PRIESTS 47 sons of cures succeeded their fathers." Habits and customs were stronger than law. These cures did not regard themselves as church func- tionaries subject to the bishop. The bishop was far away, and his tours of inspection intermittent; he could not make his rounds complete. To be sure, the cures were compelled to come to the chief place of the diocese to attend the annual synod, where the bishop reminded them of the duties of their positions, gave them useful advice, disciplined those who had been accused by means of penance, suspension, or removal. He required their attendance at the synod all the more strictly, because it gave him a chance to collect a tax. But priests with uneasy consciences took good care not to make the journey. One of the first statutes of a synod held be- tween 1197 and 1208 by Eudes of Sully, bishop of Paris, commanded clergymen to attend assemblies in person or^ in the event of having a legitimate excuse for not coming, to be represented by a chaplain or a cleric; manifestly not all cures came. Attendance upon synods was probably quite regular in a diocese like that of Paris, where the presence of Philip Augustus assured comparative peace. But how could a bishop hope to assemble all the priests of his diocese in the provinces, where the suzerain was impotent or war was perennial? The cure withdrew into his church, where he was almost as safe as the lord of the neighboring castle. Disobedience, even open rebellion, was not rare. In 1192, the synod of Toul threatened those excommunicated, sus- pended, and deposed clerics who persisted in saying the mass and in performing the duties of their offices, with deprivation for good and all of every benefice and ecclesiastical function. The council of Rouen excommunicated clerics who took force- ful possession of a living against the wish of the bishop and with the aid of a layman. Preachers thundered against these rebellious priests: "When some one undertakes to rebuke them for a fault they appeal to the supreme tribunal of the pope. They delight in bring- ing an action against their superiors, and insolently dare their bishops. Just as soon as any one attempts to correct them they begin to cry : ' To Rome ; to Rome ! ' They delude the pope, they 48 SOCIAL FRANCE artfully fill his bosom with lies, and they slander all who are set over them." At last the papacy itself found this crying abuse of appeal to Rome intolerable, fatal to the whole hierarchy and to all discipline, and Lucius III did not hesitate to brand it in a letter addressed to Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris: " We hear that certain priests of your bishopric do not blush openly to violate the law respecting concubiaage and that, when you seek to reprove them, they meet you with an appeal to Rome. They think they can in this way evade the lawful penalty, and persist in their vice. But the process of appeal was not invented to facili- tate the sinning of priests. By virtue of our apostolic power we grant you the following right : every priest who, informed and noti- fied, cannot or will not submit to canonical purgation within a space of forty days, shall be suspended. You shall pronounce against him, despite any objection he may make and, notwithstanding every appeal to our court. Recaleitraiits shall be punished by the loss of their benefices and livings." A sage measure; but, as a matter of fact, the vt^ell-known phrase " notwithstanding every appeal," a platonic satis- faction for the bishops, was never seriously applied. It still behooved the diocesan authority to be prudent in the use of its right to proceed with rigor against a rebellious priest. The cleric of this age, unworthy as he was, was a sacred being, upon whom it was dangerous to lay one 's hands. A priest had been convicted before Bishop Eudes of Sully of leading a vicious life and was compelled by the authorities to leave Paris. The bishop died in 1208; immediately the condemned returned to Paris without permission, and con- tinued his scandalous conduct. But the new head of the dio- cese, Peter of Nemours, had the audacious fellow arrested. He was thrown into the episcopal prison of Vitry. When he attempted to escape by digging the ground of the cell in which he was incarcerated, he was transferred to a safer prison at Saint-Cloud. There he made himself so disagree- able that one day the warden lost his patience, abused the prisoner and struck him, — a grave mistake! for ic was for- bidden to strike a cleric. The bishop was informed of what had happened, and commanded the prisoner to be set at PARISHES AND PRIESTS 49 liberty. The warden, knowing what consequences his act would have, abandoned his position and fled. The affair did not end there. The dishonored and incor- rigible priest, in his turn, became accuser and brought an action against his bishop. In 1209, Peter of Nemours ap- peared before a court of arbitration, composed of the abbot of Saint-Victor and a canon of Notre-Dame. The priest was perfectly willing to admit that the bishop was not responsible for the outrage and the violence of which he had been the victim, that the guard had acted without orders and without the knowledge of his superior, and he swore, with his hand on the Gospels, that for this reason he would never attempt to avenge himself upon the bishop or his connections. But he demanded to be restored into the favor of the bishop. At the request of the arbiters and as an evidence of reconcilia- tion, Peter of Nemours was obliged to give him the kiss of peace. Carefully reading the commands and prohibitions of coun- cils, one soon perceives that the chief occupation of the church authorities was to put a stop to the misconduct and vicious- ness of the lower clergy. To the church this was a secret \ malady, a running sore. Southern France apparently suf- ' fered especially from it. If we may believe the catholic chroniclers, the character of the cures of Aquitaine, Langue- doc, and Provence had fallen to the last stage of degrada- tion. William of Puylaurens asserts that they were held in utter contempt: " They were classed with the Jews. Nobles who had the patronage of parochial churches took good care not to nominate their own relatives to the livings ; they gave them to the sons of their peasants, or their serfs, for whom they naturally had no respect." The council of Avignon of 1209 states, in substance, that ** priests do not differ from laymen either in appearance or in conduct," and that ** they are forever plunging into the most shameful debauchery (immunditiis et excessibus im- plican-tur) .^ ^ One can understand the readiness with which 50 SOCIAL FRANCE the southern peoples abandoned Catholicism and embraced the teachings of the Albigenses and Waldenses. Still, it need not be supposed that the priests of the north were spotless. Less secularized and better controlled, they still laid themselves open to serious charges, which the church herself did not spare them. Conciliar decrees contain the outlines of a description of manners which is rich in color, and of which these are the principal features. In the first place, without speaking of those who are cures only in name and that only for the purpose of obtaining the revenues of their living, the active clergymen too willingly avoided the duty of residence. Everywhere they were seen outside of their parishes, on the pretext of studying in the schools, of seeking a shrine, or of visiting a colleague. Yet they were not supposed to absent themselves without the con- sent of the bishop or his representative. Their behavior was not seemly for churchmen. Not a few let their hair grow and concealed their tonsure. After the fashion of laymen, they wore green or red materials, open vestments, large sleeves, trimmings of silver or some other metal, garments scalloped at the bottom, and pointed shoes. They carried arms and walked about with dogs and falcons. Infractions of church laws were just as numerous as were the liberties denied to priests on pain of losing their benefices. Amongst other things, they were forbidden to have more than a given number of dishes at table. If clerics hoped to have authority over their parishioners, they must begin by being different from them. These cures were not content with being priests ; they prac- tised other professions. Some were lawyers, some doctors, others were stewards or officers of a lay seignior, and still others fuU-fiedged business men, trading in grain and wine and lending money at high interest. Councils stormed vio- lently against these merchant-priests and usurers. They were allowed to be attorneys in certain special cases only — those in which the interests of the church, of widows, or orphans were at stake. To be precise, they could still appear in behalf of their parishioners, but they were forbidden to exact fees. Their sole claim was to have their expenses paid, pro- vided these were not padded. *' We perceive from your PARISHES AND PRIESTS 51 communication," wrote Honorius III to the bishop of Poitiers, *• that certain clerics of your city and diocese, in their avidity to make money, trample under foot the dignity of the sacer- dotal office. They perform the duties of attorneys to an imprudent extent, much to every one's chagrin. Others for- get clerical honor to the point of engaging in trade and buy and sell merchandise. They seem traders rather than clerics. Thus they debase the high calling with which they are endowed." Avarice drove them to acts still more reprehensible. Re- garding the parochial church as their property, they rented it to some private individual; they sold or mortgaged the buildings or grounds which belonged to the benefice, without the authorization of the bishop. They gave certain persons, especially their relatives, shares of, or incomes from, the rev- enues of the parish. When their purses were exhausted, they pawned the sacerdotal vestments and utensils used in the services. In a word, they exploited their benefices in every possible way. The outcome was that some cures, not content with coining money out of their own charges, rented other churches and extended their operations to them. Ev6rythkig had its price, even the title and the functions of the dean. Needless to say, these business men shamelessly exploited their sacerdotal functions and the administration of the sac- raments. They performed clandestine marriages for money; they demanded pay before performing the ceremony of baptism, marriage, burial, or Extreme Unction. That they accepted a compensation afterwards, but never before, may be true; yet, they should have exacted nothing before or after. " They are forbidden to leave the bodies of deceased parishioners above ground in order to extort money, ' ' decreed the council of Paris in 1208. That of 1212 condemned certain cures who compelled invalids to bequeath sums for masses to be said for one, three, or even seven years. Manifestly they could not say all these masses ; they unloaded them upon hired substitutes. Finally, according to a canon of the coun- cil of Rouen of 1189, the cures scandalously abused their privi- leges by excluding from church and sacraments those parish- ioners whom they disliked, or from whom they desired to make some profit. 52 SOCIAL FRANCE Still, if they had conscientiously performed the duties of their ministry! One of the most important of these was preaching. But a great many of the cures, profoundly ignorant, did not preach at all, and for a good reason. Still, as it was necessary for the parishioners to be instructed, they imported professional preachers. There were clerics, and even laymen, who made a business of itinerant preaching. Fortunately for the incompetent cures, these moved from parish to parish for a pecuniary consideration. They even gave rise to an occupation of a peculiar character: they formed ' ' preaching companies, ' ' which contracted by the year for all the sermons of the diocese, or of a group of parishes, and furnished preachers to those who required them. There is proof that this strange organization actually operated in Normandy. The church was alarmed; in several instances she forbade the employment of itinerant preachers. She feared, and not without reason, that these strangers would spread the seed of false doctrines amongst the people, and that heresy would steal in through the sermon. The council of Paris of 1212 forbade all sermons by strangers, unless they were authorized by the bishop of the diocese, and also forbade cures to allow mass to be said by unknown priests. One is curious to know what could have been the nature of the teaching given to the parishioners by clerics almost absolutely illiterate, incapable even of memorizing or of read- ing correctly from the collections of ready-made sermons, such as that which Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris, had prepared for the use of his diocesans. To make up for their incapacity and to impress their hearers, certain village cures, in the remoter regions employed childish tactics. When they preached, they placed on the edge of the balustrade of the pulpit a wooden crucifix, within which was concealed a spring, by means of which the preacher could move the head, eyes, or tongue of Christ without any visible movement of his hands. The spring was set in motion by means of an iron rod, which extended through the whole length of the crucifix and its base, and which was worked by means of the foot. One of these fraudulent crucifixes, coming from a little church in Auvergne and dating from the end of the twelfth een- PARISHES AND PRIESTS 53 tury, is to be seen in the Musee de Cluny (Museum num- ber, 724). Finally, the councils reproach the cures with letting pa- rishioners dance in the church, in the cemeteries, in proces- sions, and with being present themselves at these dances, as well as at the improper exhibitions given by players and buffoons. They were accused of being gamesters; dice, even chess, and frequenting taverns were forbidden them. Some of them were blamed for their repulsive slovenliness and for the poor care of their churches. With an especial vigor were branded the two vices most common in this class: intoxica- tion and incontinence. The less reprehensible of the clerics were those who kept a concubine at the presbytery, whom the people quite naturally called the '* priestess," and the coun- cils focaria, " the keeper of the house " or of '* the hearth." The preachers at the time of Philip Augustus justify the strictures of the councils by giving testimony quite as un- favorable to the parochial clergy. " Our priests," says Geoffrey of Troyes, " immersed in material things, disturb themselves little about those of the spirit. They differ from the laymen in dress, not at heart; in appearance, not in re- ality. They belie by their deeds what they preach from the pulpit. Tonsure, garb, and speech give them the superficial varnish of piety; underneath the sheep's clothing are con- cealed hypocrites and ravening wolves." When Bishop Maurice of Sully, in the preface to his preacher's manual, addresses himself to the cures of his diocese, he himself unreservedly reveals their weak points, their bad manners, their ignorance, and their repugnance to preaching. He is obliged to remind them that a blameless life, vita sancta, is necessary in a priest who daily approaches the altar, and that their first virtue, next to continence, should be sobriety. He also urges them to be humble, to love their neighbors, to be patient and generous; on the other hand, he desires them to have a correct knowledge, recta scientia: for which reason they should read and procure books from which they can learn their duties — the indispensable liturgical works, a book of sacraments, of collects, a formulary for baptisms, a calendar, a psalter, a book of homilies, and a penitential. Finally, they must preach, not only by example, but by word 54 SOCIAL FEANCE of mouth — an essential part of their ministry, a duty which they are forbidden to evade. Compare the specific accusations made by the councils and preachers of this period with the conditions denounced thirty years later in the Journal of Visitation of Eudes Eigaud, archbishop of Eouen : the exact agreement of the facts leaves no doubt respecting the sad intellectual and moral condition of the lower clergy. The church herself fully confirms the evil. When one sees her judge her members so harshly, why be surprised at the attacks and the caustic satires of profane literature? The picture which we have just painted on the basis of ecclesiastical documents does not differ from the Journal of Eudes Eigaud, which might, for all the world, be an exact and living commentary on the fiction of the epoch. According to the most competent specialists, these lays for the greater part belong to the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century. The historian of Philip Augustus, then, may seek in them particulars about customs and traits of real life, which form the framework within which the fancy of the narrator plays, and which, so to speak, unintentionally escape from his thought and pen.^ The authors of the tales particularly blame the lower clergy. To them a priest is, of necessity, a perverted and sensual creature, who delights in adventures at the expense of noble and plebeian husbands. But they do take care to distinguish between the common cleric, the student who has only the tonsure and garb and is free to marry, and the cure — properly speaking, the minister of the parish. The cleric — the lover of the stories, as M. Bedier has very aptly expressed it — is interesting, and ordinarily fortune favors him; the cure — gluttonous, covetous, formidable in every respect to his flock — ^ In his excellent Eistoire de la litterature frangaise (1896), M. Lanson seems to attribute no historical value, or at least very little, to the fabliaux. According to him the authors described only imaginary social deformities or exceptional evils. They spoke of priests who lived evil lives; "but what brings mistrust, is precisely that there are too many of them." As far as the conduct of the parochial clergy of the country is concerned, it is enough to compare the eonciliar texts of which we have given the substance, the Journal of Eudes Rigaud of the thirteenth century, and the contents of the archives of the district of Troyea (Inventaire sommaire, 1898) of the fifteenth century, with the fabliaux, to convince one's self that the romancers were not exaggerating. PARISHES AND PRIESTS 55 is nearly always mistreated and dishonored as a villain. He is the laughing-stock and the victim. These scandalous stori- ettes generally end in his confusion and misfortune; some- times even in his death. The narrators fasten upon this char- acter with a ferocious pleasure and drag it through the mire. This malignant asperity of satire can be explained only by an accumulated malice against these unworthy priests, given to abusing their office by exploiting and dishonoring their parishioners. But in the excesses of these comical or gro- tesque narratives there abound traits of the time taken from life, and truth appears with the exact color of the past. Nothing is more instructive than the tale entitled Le pretre et le chevalier. A knight arrives at a village and, not know- ing where to spend the night, questions the first person he encounters, " By the soul of thy father, name for me the richest man of this locality." "It is our cure," responds the other, " the richest person for ten leagues round about; but at the same time perfidious and most selfish ; he loves no one but himself. About his house are scoundrels . . . hor- rible as wolves or leopards. It were better to go to the home of the priest, for of two evils one should choose the lesser." ' ' Where is the chaplain 's house ? " " That one yonder, with the chimney; the one so pretty and stylish." The knight rides up to the house and sees the cure stretched upon his back at the window. He requests entertainment for the night. " Sir Knight," says the cure, " leave me in peace and be on thy way. I shall lodge no one, not even the king, should he come hither. I am alone with my niece, and my friend," (the word serves in this literature to designate the priestess). The chevalier persists, '* I will give thee of my possessions what thou requirest for a handsome altar." Then the cure deigns to notice him and the bargaining begins. Before receiving the stranger, he stipulates that five sous (ten francs) shall be paid for each dish to be served. The knight agrees to the price. He enters; Dame Avinee (the symbolic name of the friend) prepares the table; the host himself assists in the kitchen: he shells the almonds. Then a sub- stantial meal is served and, after dessert, the cure presents his guest with an intermiaable bill, in which every article 56 SOCIAL FRANCE is reckoned at five sous — the meats, the wine, the salt, the table, the cloth, the pots, the oats for the horse, the hay, the stable-litter, even the bed upon which the chevalier is to sleep. Little matters the strange conceit by which the cheva- lier managed to pay his debt without opening his purse: the point at issue is that in this little comedy there is not a shadow of complaint at the cunning of the concubinary priest or at his irregular establishment. The family life of the priest and the priestess became a part of the times; almost a social institution. A cure depicted in the story, Boucher d'Ahheville, enjoys a comfortable home, for he has many conveniences and possesses a number of ani- mals. He, too, has a ' ' friend, ' ' who, aided by a servant, does the honors of the presbytery. She sups with him and with his guest, the butcher of Abbeville. " They were richly served with good meat and good wine; white linens were produced to make a bed fo" the butcher." Betimes in the morning the priest arose. " He and his cleric went to the convent to chant and do their duty ; the dame remained sleep- iug." This lady is portrayed for us as " very pretty and caressable." She is clothed in a green, well-pressed petti- coat, with clinging folds. She proudly fingers the folds at her waist. Her eyes are bright and smiling. She is pretty and pleasant as one could wish." W^ are even permitted to witness a private scene in which the lady insults and strikes the servant with her stick, " Lady," says the latter, " what have I stolen from you? " " My barley and my wheat, wretch; my peas, my lard, and my fresh bread." Clearly, she is mistress of the house. What proves that this family life shocked no one is another instance in which a priest in wrath against the priestess cried, " You shall no longer be my friend." He threatened to expel her, and to do it before all the neighbors. The cure feared only one power, the bishop ; but the bishops of romance are not especially severe. One narrator tells of three persons living at the presbytery — the cure, his mother, and his friend. The mother complained to the bishop that her son did not give her the bare necessities of life, though he found nothing too beautiful to clothe the *' priestess." ** He gowns her well and beautifully. She has a pretty skirt PARISHES AND PRIESTS 57 and a good cloak; two good and beautiful fur-coats — one of squirrel, the other of lambskin — and a costly silver-tissue, of which many people speak," The bishop summoned the cure to his court together with two hundred other cures, and threat- ened him with suspension if he did not treat his mother with more consideration. He never thought of rebuking him for living with a friend. Still (and this very likely partakes of historic fact) a less good-natured bishop of Bayeux commanded a cure of his diocese to dismiss his priestess, named Dame Auberee. He closed by condemning the priest to abstain from drinking wine, if he failed to obey the command. Dame Auberee, a sly creature, counseled the priest to obey : he would no longer drink wine, he would sip it. Informed of the subterfuge, the bishop forbade the offender to eat goose. " Good! " said the dame to the cure, ** in place of eating goose, you will eat as much gander as you like, for you have more than thirty of them." Again came the injunction of the bishop, who forbade the cure to sleep on his feather-bed. Dame Auberee made him a bed of pillows. It is impossible to relate in detail how these two culprits compelled the bishop to say no more. In certain tales one sees in what a strange way the cures discharged their functions. Here a priest falsely charges a villein with having married his godmother, expels him from the church, and fixes his fine at seven livres. There, on a Good Friday the officiating clergyman, at the point of chant- ing the Gospels, becomes confused in the bookmarks of his missal, with which he is none too well acquainted, and, losing his head, he stammers some vague Latin words, quite out of place in the liturgy of the Passion, until he is perfectly sure that all his parishioners have had a chance to contribute to the collection. Elsewhere the cure is the victim of a trick which a penniless cleric played on his innkeeper. He prom- ised the hotelkeeper, who demanded payment, that the cure would pay for him. The two went together to the church. There the cleric drew the cure aside: " Sire, I have taken lodging with this good fellow, your parishioner; since last night a cruel ailment troubles him: he has had a slight at- tack of insanity. Here are ten pence; read a gospel over 58 SOCIAL FRANCE him." The cure said to the tavernkeeper, " Wait until I have said my mass and I will attend to your affair." The latter, thinking that he was going to be paid, was reassured and patient, but in the interval the cleric made his escape. The mass finished, the cure desired his parishioner to kneel; but the latter stoutly declared that he wanted money, not ex- orcisms. What could be a better proof of his malady ! Held by the strongest swains of the parish, he protested in vain ; he was sprinkled with Holy-water, a gospel was read over him, but of the sum owing him he obtained not a mite. It would be easy to compare the prohibitions of councils with the corresponding features of the tales and show how the latter explain the former. To give a single example : the church authorities often forbade parish priests to play at dice. The tale, Du pretre et des deux ribauds, tells of a cure who lost his money and even his horse at playing dice with two fiddlers whom he chanced to meet on the way. The highway- men had cheated; their dice were loaded, and it was not without trouble that their victim regained possession of his mount, though not of his purse. In endeavoring to understand the condition of the parochial clergy of the time of Philip Augustus, there is no use in looking for analogies in present France, where the greater number of our rural priests has, as a whole, become respect- able and respectful to the laws of the church. One should look beyond the Atlantic at the inferior status of the Spanish clergy, in Chile, or in Peru, or among the American catholics of the South: the concubinary cures and their more than easy manners, sanctioned by the tolerance of Creole life, carry us back to the heart of the middle age. Still the middle age had the excuse of the low state of surrounding civiliza- tion, the rustic locality from which the priests came and where they were compelled to live. Besides, it is fair to think that the parish priests as a body were not so vicious and incapable as one might suppose from the accusations of their superiors and from the derision of the minstrels. We know at least one cure among the contemporaries of Philip Augustus who was quite the opposite of an ignoramus. PAEISHBS AND PRIESTS 59 for he occupies a high place in the historical literature of his time. This exception is worthy of notice. This cure, Lambert, was attached to the church of Ardres, the principal place of a petty serjeanty, belonging to the county of Flanders. He was a married priest, or perhaps had been married before taking orders; at any rate, he him- self speaks of his daughter and two sons without the least hesitation. The date of his birth is not known any more than that of his death; all that is certain is that he lived at the beginning of the thirteenth century; the last item in his chronicle belongs to the year 1203. This chronicle portrays him constantly engaged in the performance of his duties. It was not always pleasant to do them. No more than the monks were the cures sheltered from the brutality of the feudal barons. Baldwin II, count of Guines and seignior of Ardres, had a son, Arnoul, whom the archbishop of Reims excommunicated for an act of violence. The strict duty of the cure was to heed the decree of anathema and forbid the excommunicate to enter the church. One day it came to pa^s that the count of Guines notified Lambert that his son had just been ab- solved by an agent of the archbishop, and that he should ring his bells to announce the absolution to all the parishioners. This assertion of the father seeming insufficient, the troubled cure sought an avenue of escape and requested a delay, to secure information. Finally he decided to go to Baldwin in person. He met him on the road, accompanied by his son and an escort of soldiers. Baldwin received him with a fearful volley of reproaches and insults; that of disobedient and rebellious priest was the kindest of these. " Terrified," writes the cure, *' by the thunder of his voice and the light- ning of his eyes which glowed like burning coals, blasted by his invectives, I fell from my horse almost unconscious, at his feet. The soldiers helped me up and I regained my saddle as best I could. It was only after I had ridden for some time in his suite that he deigned to show me a more encour- aging visage." Some time after, about 1194, Arnoul married a lady of the neighborhood, Beatrice of Bourbourg. The nuptials were held at Ardres with great pomp. The account of Lambert 60 SOCIAL FRANCE permits us to be present at one of the ceremonies in which the priest played an important role — the benediction of the marriage-bed : " At nightfall, when groom and bride were placed in the same bed, the count of Guines, filled with the zeal of the Holy Spirit, called me and my two sons, Baldwin and William, and also Robert, cure of Audruicq, and asked us to sprinkle the pair with Holy-water. We, therefore, passed completely round the bed, swinging our censors filled with precious spices, and called down upon them the benedic- tion of Heaven. When we had performed our office with the greatest possible care and devotion, the count, still filled with the grace of the Spirit, raised his eyes and hands to Heaven and cried : ' Holy Lord, Almighty Father, God eternal, Who hast blessed Abraham and his seed, pour forth Thy mercy upon us. Deign to bless Thy servants joined in the holy bonds of matrimony, that they live in good accord in Thy divine love, and that their offspring increase until the end of the ages.' We responded ' Amen,' and he added : * My dear son Arnoul, who art the eldest of my children, and whom I love above all others, if there is any virtue in a blessing which a father gives his son, and if it is true that a tradition of our an- cestors gives us this right, I bestow on thee, with clasped hands, the same favor of benediction which God, the Father, formerly gave to Abraham, Abraham to Isaac, and Isaac to his son Jacob.' Arnoul bowed his head toward his father and devoutly murmured a Pater noster. And the count replied, giving the greatest force and ex- pression to his words : * I bless thee, saving the rights of thy brothers, that thou possess my blessing forever and ever.' We all responded * Amen,' after which we left the nuptial chamber and each went to his home." Cultured and erudite, this cure of Ardres furnishes one of the earliest examples of something nowadays quite com- mon: the need which the parish priest experiences of study- ing the past of his church and of the locality where it is situated. Lambert made himself the historian of the seigniory of Ardres and of the county of Guines. This, he himself de- clares, he did in the first place to please his master, whom the affair of the excommunication had chilled toward him, but also for the pleasure of communicating to others the fruit of his learned researches, to exhibit a learning rare in those days among his kind. An enthusiasm dominates this priest, and exuberantly dis- plays itself : the love of his parish and of the seigniory which surrounds it. For him, the whole world is contained in this PAEISHES AND PRIESTS 61 diminutive fief. In his eyes every part of it assumes imposing proportions. In his dithyrambie dedication to the seignior of Ardres, he celebrates the glory of Arnoul II as though he were treating of Caesar or Alexander. And in the body of the same work, speaking of the domains of Baldwin II of Guines — ^vassal, like all other barons along the shore of the Channel, of both France and England, — he asserts that his fief is one of the most precious pearls of the crown of France and one of the diamonds which glitter with a bright effulgence upon the diadem of the kings of England. A lit- tle further on he compares Baldwin II to Jupiter, David, and Solomon. Elsewhere, the siege of the castle of Sangate re- minds him of the siege of Troy, and he adds, " Had Troy been as well defended with soldiers as Sangate, it would have withstood the Greeks." Very proud of his knowledge, Lambert in his preface at one point mentions Ovid, Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Priscian, Herodianus, Prosper, Bede, Eusebius, and Saint Jerome — a mixture of the sacred and profane which was characteristic of the time. He plumes himself on writing a beautiful style. The truth is that his far-fetched, involved, and obscure phrases weary the reader with their pretentiousness, as la- borious as his derivations of certain names are ridiculous. Still, the writer does not altogether lack warmth and move- ment; several of his narratives have good color and leave a lively impression. He taxes his ingenuity from the start to vary his narrative and to reawaken the interest of his reader. He puts the second part of his story, that which concerns the origin of the seigniory of Ardres, into the mouth of an old chevalier, Gautier de Cluses, whom he imagines recalling the past in the midst of the little seignioral court. In short, the cure of Ardres has certain qualities of the historian. First, impartiality: for, though he exalts the seigniors of Ardres, he does not conceal their weaknesses, not even their vices. Throughout one finds a most realistic and lively picture of petty feudalism. Though he lacks a critical sense in the matter of sources and indiscriminately piles up historical facts and legends, he everywhere strives for accu- racy. He is cautious with the documents found in historical books and in the cartularies. He himself says that, in the 62 SOCIAL FRANCE absence of written sources, he has questioned old residents. In the latter part of his work he, like a conscientious witness, relates what he has seen and heard. Finally, he has the good sense not to attempt to write a universal history from the time of Adam and Eve, as did all other chroniclers. He re- marks that he has broken with that custom, " to seclude him- self in the annals of a very little county." It is regrettable that his example was not oftener followed ! This parish clergyman, then, somewhat raises the reputation of his class, which, as we have just shown, had great need of it. CHAPTER III ' THE STUDENT When one studies the documents which relate to the ecclesiastical society of the end of the twelfth and the begin- ning of the thirteenth centuries, one discovers that the names of a good many canons and bishops are preceded by the word magister, master. They have obtained the master's degree, the permission to teach (licentia docendi) in the great schools, the universities. They are graduated, a thing characteristic of their time : for a hundred years earlier the degree of mas- ter was rarely found. In the time of Philip Augustus these teaching degrees tended to become an almost necessary quali- fication for obtaining important benefices and the chief digni- ties of the church. The extent of education among the upper classes of clerics is a notable fact of the highest importance, an index of a very interesting social progress. Nearly all members of the higher clergy began as students: the schools were the nurseries of chapters and prelacies. And it is the student — or the scholar, scolaris, as he was then called — who is now to occupy our attention. Certain passionate admirers of the middle ages have gone so far as to hold that in the France of that epoch there were as many, if not more, schools than there are to-day. This is a decided exaggeration ; but the truth is that, for that age of inferior civilization, schools were more numerous than one would suppose. There was one wherever there was a center of religious life, an ecclesiastical community of any im- portance, especially in northern France, In every diocese, besides the rural or parochial schools which already existed, but of which we know nothing at all at the time of Philip Augustus, the principal chapters and monasteries had their 63 64 SOCIAL FRANCE schools, their clientele of masters and pupils. Here were in- stmcted not only choir-boys or novices destined to pass their entire lives in a cathedral church or an abbey, but scholars who wished to enter the clergy in order later to engage in. liberal professions or to hold benefices from the church; and the sons of nobles and seigniors, or laics, desirous of complet- ing the very elementary education their teachers had given them, were also welcomed. In a word, to understand the con- ditions in the field of instruction of that day, one must picture a society in which there were no other educational institutions than these large and small seminaries, where the clergy was molded and recruited. Thus it was that at Paris there existed three groups of scholastic establishments: first, the school of Notre-Dame, or the group of schools of the bishopric or cathedral, placed under the immediate direction of two dignitaries of the chapter — the cantor, who supervised the elementary schools, and the chancellor, who controlled the advanced schools; second, the schools of the principal abbeys, notably of Sainte-Genevieve, of Saint- Victor, and of Saint-Germain-des-Pres ; third, private schools, founded by clerics who had masterships, the license {licentia docendi), and who taught without restraint, though always under the control of the bishop or of the chancellor. A goodly number of these schools — conducted by ^savants, philosophers, or theologians of renown — were in the lie de la Cite; and, after the example set by Abelard, even on the left bank near the Petit pont; and above all, on the northern slope of the height of Sainte-Genevieve. Similarly in Cham- pagne we find three schools of the first kind, which are merely dependencies of three cathedral chapters : the school of Reims, which is the most celebrated; the school of Chalons-sur- Marne, and the school of Troyes; then the monastic schools, the appendants of the great abbeys of Montieramey, Montier- la-Celle, Saint-Remi of Reims, and Saint-Nicolas of Reims; and, finally, the smaller schools of certain priories, without mentioning the elementary schools. In short, it was the church which gave instruction, which created masters and conferred upon them the capacity of teaching. Bishops, chapters, and abbots had the supreme di- rection and control of teaching in the whole extent of their THE STUDENT 65 spiritual and feudal jurisdictions. No one could teach with- out their authorization. It was a considerable power which had thus passed into the hands of ecclesiastical society, but the directors of that society took some pains to make it acceptable and justifiable. At the end of the twelfth century, they already strove to pro- claim and to carry through two principles dear to modern society: the gratuity and the freedom of higher instruction. In 1179, the third Lateran council, under the presidency of Pope Alexander III, in its eighteenth decree, took an action of extreme importance. " Every cathedral church shall main- tain a master to give free instruction to clerics of the churcli and to needy scholars:" this meant gratuitous instruction, at least for those who could not pay. " Persons who have the duty of directing and supervising the schools — ^that is, chancellors and doctors — are forbidden to exact any remunera- tion whatsoever from candidates for granting them the license to teach : ' ' this is the freedom of the teaching profession. ' ' The license shall not be refused to worthy applicants:" this, at least in a certain sense, is the freedom of teaching. The eleventh decree of the fourth Lateran council, held by Inno- cent III in 1215, renewed the regulations. It further deter- mined that, in every archiepiscopal or metropolitan church, a master of theology, a theologus, should be named to teach his subject to priests of the province and to watch over the conduct of the parochial priesthood. These two decrees were the sign of real progress. By means of them the church, which had the monopoly and control of public instruction, attempted to justify the important power she enjoyed. The papacy, within the hands of which religious authority was concentrated, openly sought to complete, unify, and regulate this scholastic organization, which, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, had step by step established itseK in many French dioceses in the form of isolated and spontaneous creations. In respect to the crucial matter of the liberty of opening a course or a school, the middle age had thus obtained a sort of franchise from Rome. And the prescriptions of the councils did not end with being written on parchment; efforts were almost immediately made to put them into effect. 66 SOCIAL FRANCE Hardly two years after these principles had been pro- nounced at the Lateran council of 1179, they received a striking application at Montpellier. In establishing the free- dom of higher instruction through a charter of January, 1181, William VIII, seignior of Montpellier and immediate vassal of the bishop, without doubt acted in harmony with the church; for many other documents of that time prove that the school of Montpellier, like all other schools of the epoch, was strictly subordinate to the clergy. William VIII declares himself opposed to every monopoly of teaching medi- cine in his city and seigniory. Notwithstanding the most ardent urging and the most alluring offers of money precio seu sollicitudine, he will never grant any one the exclusive privilege of '* reading " or of conducting schools in materia medica {in facultate physice discipline). The motive is curi- ous and expressed with perfect lucidity: " Seeing that it would be too atrocious and too contrary to justice and re- ligion {contra fas et pium), to convey to a single individual the right of teaching so excellent a science." Consequently, he authorizes all persons, whosoever they be {omnes homines), and whencesoever they come, who wish to conduct a school of medicine at Montpellier, to teach in his seigniorial city with full and complete freedom, regardless of any opposition ; and closes by charging his successors not to depart from this line of conduct. This was as positive a declaration and application of principles as the partizans of the liberty of teaching could wish; too positive, in fact, for the lord of Montpellier made no mention of the qualifications which so- ciety has the right to require of those who constitute its medical corps. Later ecclesiastical authority found it neces- sary to regulate and define this concession by surrounding medical instruction with restrictions conformable to public interest. In regulating the exercise of the right to teach with a liberalism which it would be highly unjust not to recognize, the central power of the church gave especial attention to the " great schools," or the studia generalia, an expression much used in contemporary writings. Under ' * great schools ' ' are to be understood those in which the national, or indeed international, youth gathered, and THE STUDENT 67 where the whole range of the knowledge of the time was taught : in the first place, the * ' liberal arts, ' ' the trivium and quadrivium, the immutable foundation of the academic edi- fice, the traditional curriculum still divided and organized as in the time of the Carolingians ; in the second place, the special studies of a professional character — medicine (physica), civil law (leges), canon law (decretum), and the- ology {sacra pagina). Students of the liberal arts or " artists," medics, lawyers, decretists, theologians — all these followers of the universities who sought a sacerdotal career or what we to-day call the " liberal " professions — ^by prefer- ence crowded into certain cities. Paris, Orleans, and Angers in the north; Toulouse and Montpellier in the south, were, in the time of Philip Augustus, the preeminent school- centers. But some of these great centers of general studies already had specialties which attracted the Frenchman and the stranger : at Paris, dialectic and theology ; at Orleans, civil law and rhetoric ; at Montpellier, medicine. Before the grow- ing prosperity of these schools, others — as Chartres and Eeims, which had had their period of glory in the eleventh century — declined and were obscured. Bit by bit they fell to the rank of local seminaries. A common trait of these schools is the cosmopolitan char- acter not only of the students, but also of the teachers. Knowl- edge being then entirely ecclesiastical, and the church of the time cosmopolitan, education had the same character. Paris, like Orleans and Montpellier, furnished graduated clerics for all Europe. Not a few foreign masters were provided with benefices, eanonries, or even bishoprics in France, and vice versa. National boundaries did not exist for the ecclesiastical power, which had its head and government at Eome. The exchange of clerics between different countries became all the more frequent because the papacy, of its own accord, began to distribute a certain number of benefices in France as well as elsewhere, and bestowed them on strangers. As illustra- tion, it is enough to mention two literary and religious notables of the end of the twelfth century. While John of Salisbury governed the bishopric of Chartres, the Frenchman, Peter of Blois, who all his life in vain sought a benefice in his native land, particularly in Chartres, was chancellor of the 68 SOCIAL FRANCE arehbishoprie of Canterbury, and died as archdeacon of London. This internationalism of the student population surprised no one, and the ruling powers, even at Paris, found no espe- cial trouble with it, at least during the time of Philip Augustus. His father, Louis VII, had had to complain of the foreign students. According to a letter of John of Salis- bury, dated 1168, the German students at least verbally mani- fested the hostility they felt toward France and the king who showed them his hospitality. " They talk magniloquently, " he writes, '' and swell with menaces {minis tument).''^ He adds that they made fun of Louis YII " because he lived simply among his subjects, because he did not conduct him- self like a barbarian tyrant, and was not always seen sur- rounded by a guard like one who fears for his life {ut qui timet capiti suo).'" The same author states that the French government about that time expelled foreign students, but he speaks of the incident as entirely exceptional in hospitable France, " the most lovable and most civilized of all nations (omnium mitissima et civilissima nationum) ." Nothing like this occurred under the government of the victor of Bouvines. Still, between 1180 and 1223, there began in the principal academic centers that important transforma- tion, thanks to which these groups of masters and students became powerful corporations, capable of fighting successfully against all forces hostile to their development. Universitas magistrorum et scolarium; under this title appeared a new organism in ecclesiastical society. An understanding of the origin and the true nature of this ' ' university movement ' ' is desirable. To begin with, it is evident that the constituent elements of universities existed some time before the formation of the organizations themselves. The ' ' university ' ' was not created solely by the material fact that a corporate union or mutual- aid associations were established by masters and students; the moral bond, the similarity of feelingj of ideas, and of scientific method which unified a great part of the scholarly world, must also be taken into account. Certain it is that the school of Paris became conscious of itself and of its intel- lectual unity from the day on which a teacher, like Abelard, THE STUDENT 69 managed to collect about him the youth of France and of Europe. In this sense the university of Paris existed from the second third of the twelfth century. From another point of view the great association called * ' university ' ' was itself only a collection of smaller academic associations. In the bosom of the general corporation there were lesser corporations: those which embraced the masters and scholars devoted to a special field of study, called " fac- ulties, ' ' after the middle of the thirteenth century ; and those which embraced the masters and scholars having the same native land, the '' nations." The general corporation, at least at Paris, appears to have been the resultant of two minor corporations — those of the masters and the scholars. The diflScult and obscure question in all this is precisely at what epoch the general corporation and the individual corporations were formed. The profound labors of certain savants have failed to dissipate the obscurities and penetrate the mystery. Father Denifle himself, the incontestable master of this field, could do no more than reach approximations. These academic institutions, like all other medieval institutions, were not created in a day by means of legislative statute, but by a series of consecutive creations and of a gradual process, the traces of which history has not preserved. Certain dated texts reveal for the first time the existence of the faculties, the nations, the universities, but there is nothing to prove that their organization was not earlier by some years than the document which mentions these. In France, only two academic associations had been named university at the time of Philip Augustus: those of Paris and Montpellier. As to Paris, it is in an act of 1215, issued by the cardinal, Robert of Courgon, that one encounters the first use of the words Universitas magistrorum et scolarium; and it is in a bull of Honorius III of 1221 that the matter of a seal, which the masters and scholars of Paris have ' ' recently ' ' had made for the use of their corporation, is discussed. But many previous acts show us the masters and scholars acting like an organized body. At any rate, the association of teachers ap- pears in an act of Innocent III of 1208-1209, and that of the scholars in an episcopal act of 1207. Unquestionably, 70 SOCIAL FEANCE furthermore, the general corporation already had its chief or director {capitate) in 1200, the year in which it received its first-known privilege from the king of France, for in that famous charter Philip Augustus very evidently includes the whole personnel of the great Parisian school, both masters and students, under the term scolares. Likewise, all that one can say of the origin of the faculties is that they begin to be mentioned with their chiefs or " managers " after 1219. As for the '' nations," which appear for the first time in 1222, Father Denifle believes that they were formed after the facul- ties and later than 1215. The opinion of such an erudite has great weight ; but it is only conjecture. Light fails here ; one must resign himself to darkness. The actual university of Montpellier, as far as the union of its faculties goes, was not officially named and organized until it was done iu 1289 by a bull of Nicholas IV. But the faculty of medicine, at least, was an organized body after 1220, and already called itself " university " in a restricted sense. The statute of Cardinal Conrad of Porto, which organized it or sanctioned its organization, is the oldest act creating a French faculty. In it one can clearly see of what the original bond between the members of the association consisted. To begin with, it was placed under a special jurisdiction, at least in civil matters; and the special judge was one of the teachers named by the bishop of Maguelonne. He sat together with three, other professors (among whom was the oldest in service), but as a court of first instance only. Appeal could be taken from his decisions to the bishop, who, be it added, kept entire control of criminal justice. Besides this civil judge, " who can be called the chancellor of the university, cancellarius universitatis scolarium," there was room for an- other high office, that of the oldest professor. He should enjoy certain privileges of honor: he should have the power of fixing the time and length of academic vacations. Here is seen dawning the authority of the head of the faculty, whom later texts call the " dean." The corporation of Montpellier, then, had its officials and, in part, its own jurisdiction. Another article of the statute of 1220 puts its character as a mutual aid association against THE STUDENT 71 outsiders beyond all doubt : " If a master is attacked directly or through one of his adherents by one who is not of the school, all other masters and scholars, summoned for the pur- pose, shall bring him counsel and aid." Relations of close fellowship could be expected to arise between members of the teaching staff: " If a professor is in litigation with one of his pupils about his pay, or for any other reason, no other professor shall kaowingly accept the student before the latter has given or promised satisfaction to his former master." Professors are forbidden to engage in unfriendly competi- tion: " Let no master attract the disciple of another master by means of solicitation, gift, or any other means whatsoever, for the purpose of winning him away." A final clause, in effect, proves that there was indeed a sort of fraternity: " Masters and students shall punctually attend the funerals of members of the university." The university was a brotherhood almost entirely composed of clerics ; masters and students had the tonsure ; collectively, they constituted a church institution. To say that the cre- ation of universities was one of the characteristic signs of the em.ancipation of the mind in the religious domain, and that the " university movement " had as its principal object the replacing of the clerical schools of chapters and abbeys by corporations imbued with the lay spirit, is a gross error. Universities were ecclesiastical associations and were organ- ized accordingly. The first act emanating from the uni- versity of Paris (1221) is a letter addressed to the monks of the order of Saint Dominic, recently established in the city. The members of the university, as brothers of the Dominicans, desired to participate in the benefits of their spiritual works ; they sought the favor of being interred in their church or cloister with the same funeral honors as were reserved for members of the congregation. To convince oneself of the religious character of these academic associations, a glance ai the seal of the university of Paris is quite enough.^ It is divided into several sections. In the niche above, ^ The oldest specimen of this seal we possess dates from 1292 (Arch, nat., K. 964). Cf. Douet d'Areq, Invent, des sceaux des Arch, nat., No. 8015. Admitting that the original seal was not entirely similar, it must at least have had as religious a character. 72 SOCIAL FRANCE which is the largest and the place of honor, appears the Virgin, Our Lady, patron of universities and of the church in which the great school of Paris was born. To the left is the bishop of Paris, bearing his crozier; to the right, a saint encompassed by a cloud. These are important personages. In the lower frames, which are very small, teachers and schol- ars appear. The whole is dominated by the cross. How could this fraternity, dedicated to the Virgin and composed of clerics and monks, signify the lay element and independence of thought? Still, it is true that the university was born of an effort for independence; but, as far as the academic associations were concerned, the point at issue was escaping from the local ecclesiastical power, only to submit exclusively to the domina- tion of the central power of Christendom ; that is, to the pope. No more than the great schools of the preceding age did the universities cease to be ecclesiastical institutions; but they did cease to be diocesan institutions under the control of the bishop or his chancellor. They became an instrument of power in the hands of Rome, which meant a weakening of the episcopacy and the strengthening of the Holy See. It was the popes who created or developed these university corpora- tions when they wished to take possession of the institutions of higher instruction. And it is easy to understand why they wished to do this. In the hands of bishops, chapters, chan- cellors, and doctors, the right of granting permission to teach was regarded and practised as a source of profit. In many a bishopric the high ^nd noble calling of the professorship found itself subjected to oppressive formalities, restrictions, or even tyrannical conditions, which paralyzed and perverted its func- tions. Venality kept pace with intolerance: the permit to teach, the " license," was sold; it was granted or refused without any system, according to the caprice and interests of a body of canons or a diocesan dignitary. A reform move- ment arose; the papacy undertook to carry it through, nat- urally, for its own profit. The work was delicate, for, though favoring the development of the universities, the popes were bound to treat the bishops with caution and not shake tradi- tion too rudely. How their diplomacy managed to gain ground and attain its object is well known. THE STUDENT 73 The history of the origin of French universities is, in this sense, nothing more than a phase of that larger evolu- tion which from the beginning of the middle ages tended to exalt the papal monarchy above local ecclesiastical authorities. It would have been surprising had the supremacy of Rome not sought to establish itself in a domain so important as public instruction. In this field there was something worth conquering, and the conquest was brought about by a close alliance of the papacy with academic organisms. From the standpoint of the higher interests of instruction and knowl- edge, it was not regrettable. Beginning with the reign of Philip Augustus, the uni- versity of Paris played a considerable role in French society and was an institution admired by the whole of Europe. In 1169, a king of England had already spoken of it as a moral power, the opinion and decision of which ought to be law. In his struggle with Archbishop Thomas a Becket, Henry II, the founder of the Plantagenet Empire, declared himself will- ing to accept the arbitration either of the king's court in France, of the French clergy, or of the " school of Paris." At the time when Philip Augustus succeeded his father, the abbot of Bonne-Esperance, Philip of Harvengt, wrote to felicitate several of his friends on being able to study in Paris, " the city of letters." " Happy city," he adds, " where the students are so numerous that their multitude almost sur- passes that of the lay inhabitants." In a letter which must have been written shortly before 1190, Guy of Basoches, a cleric from Champagne, wrote a dithyrambic eulogy of Paris, the royal city where he lived, of all the most attractive. " The Grand pont is at the center of things ; it is surrounded with merchandise, merchants, and boats. The Petit pont belongs to the dialecticians {logicis) who cross or walk upon it while debating. In the He (the Cite), alongside the palace of the kings which com- mands the whole city, stands the hall of philosophy, where study reigns as sole sovereign, a citadel of light and of immortality. That He is the eternal home of seven sisters, the liberal arts; it is there also that decrees and laws resound from a trumpet of most noble 74 SOCIAL FRANCE eloquence; there, finally, bubbles the fountain of religious learning, from which flow the three linapid brooks which water the prairies of intelligence {prata mentium), that is theology under her triple form of history, allegory, and morality." This high-flown testimony of Guy of Basoches is important for its age alone ; but also because it shows the place where the schools were located and what three classes of instruction they gave : the arts, canon and civil law, and theology. There is no mention of medical teaching, which, without doubt, was as yet restricted and unnoticed. But from the time of Philip Augustus medicine was taught. The proof of this is found in a panegyric on the university of Paris, which the historian, William of Armorica, included in a passage of his chronicle under the year 1210. " In that time letters flourished at Paris. Never before in any time or in any part of the world, whether in Athens or in Egypt, had there been such a multitude of students. The reason for this must be sought not only in the admirable beauty of Paris, but also in the special privileges which King Philip and his father before him conferred upon the scholars. In that great city the study of the trivium and the quadrivium, of canon and civil law, as also of the science which empowers one to preserve the health of the body and cure its ills, were held in high esteem. But the crowd pressed with a special zeal about the chairs where Holy Scripture was taught, or where problenas of theology were solved." Theologians, decretists, " artists," professors, and students formed this multitude of scolares Parisienses, who appeared in the first ranks in all solemnities of the reign of Philip Augustus, They were seen, in 1191, taking their place in the grand procession which the Parisian clergy organized to procure from Heaven the healing of Prince Louis, the sole heir to the crown. After the battle of Bouvines, in 1214, they took a prominent part in the popular rejoicings and proved their attachment to the dynasty by feasting and dancing in- cessantly for seven days and seven nights. The reputation of the imiversity of Paris was so firmly established that in 1205 the first Latin Emperor of Con- stantinople, Baldwin of Flanders, prayed the pope to use all his efforts to induce some of the masters of Paris to come and reform the educational conditions of the Empire. Inno- THE STUDENT 75 cent III wrote to the university (universis magistris et scola- ribus Parisiensihus) , to make clear how important it was that this Greek church, which after a long separation had finally been reunited to the Latin Church, should have the benefit of their ardor and knowledge. Putting before them the most alluring prospects, he even invited them to migrate to the Orient en masse {plerosque vestrum). Greece, let it be known, is a true Paradise, " a land filled with silver, gold, and precious stones, where wine, grain, and oil abound, ' ' In spite of these inducements, the doctors of Paris do not appear to have left the Petit pont and the Cite in great numbers to go and ' ' read ' ' on the Bosphorus. Twelve years later Honorius III again addressed an invitation of the same kind to them; but this time they were to go a shorter distance, to Languedoc, there to sow sound doctrine in a soil moistened by the blood of the Albigenses. The church was proud of this great school, an immense seminary where France and Europe supplied their needs. Nevertheless, a certain group of ecclesiastics, austere or dis- contented spirits, did not join in the general enthusiasm. Seeing above all else the dangers of this enormous agglomera- tion of clerics in one center, they denounced the abuse of knowledge and the perils which faith encountered in the midst of this cosmopolitan youth, burning to know and discuss everything. Between 1192 and 1203, Stephen of Toumai called the pope's attention to " the malady which has little by little slipped into the university body " and which -^111 become incurable if a remedy is not quickly administered. The first symptom of illness, according to him, is the aban- donment of the old theology. Students applaud only those who bring them something new (solis novitatiius applaudunt) , and the professors aim rather to advertise themselves by this means than to stand by the true tradition. ' ' All their efforts tend to please, to retain, and to mislead their auditors." And the censor rises up against that pitiless dialectic which whets itself upon the dogmas and the most sacred mysteries of religion. "Babblers of flesh and bone (verbosa caro) irreverently discuss spiritual things, the essence of God, the incarnation of the Word! 76 SOCIAL FRANCE In the erossways one hears these subtle logicians divide the In- visible Trinity! There are as many errors as there are teachers, as many scandals as there are hearers, as many blasphemies as there are public squares." This conservative, for the sake of his cause, appreciably overstates things, but the expressions he employs are inter- esting. Together with other evidence, they prove that the teachers of the time were not lodged in palaces. There were not even always university sites. The masters held their lec- tures in their own homes, before pupils seated on the ground, or, in the winter, upon straw. As houses were small, those who desired a large audience held their school in the open air, in their own narrow confines, in the erossways, or in the pub- lic squares. Stephen of Tournai is especially indignant over what hap- pens in the teaching of the liberal arts. Some of the masters are entirely too young. " These well-primped adolescents have the impudence to occupy masters' chairs; they have no down upon their chins, yet behold them in the positions of mature men. They write manuals too, summas, poorly digested compilations freshened but not made taste- ful by the salt of philosophy." The conclusion of the complaint is that all these abuses must needs be corrected by the pope. This irregular and disjointed organization should be subjected to fixed rules and to a respect for tradition. "It is not fitting that things Divine be thus demeaned and made vulgar playthings. It is not meet that almost anybody may be heard shouting at the street corner : ' Here is Christ, He dwells with me ! ' Let not religion be east as food unto dogs and as pearls before swine." Many contemporary preachers were of the same opinion. Alain of Lille compares the university men who engage in incessant refining in logic to " talking frogs." Geoffrey of Troyes treats the grammarians and their scholars as beasts of burden or asses: jumenta sunt vel asini. Absalon, abbot of Saint- Victor, openly attacks those who occupy themselves with other things than seeking to understand man and God. THE STUDENT 77 " Our scholars, puffed up with a vain philosophy, are happy when, by force of subtlety, they have come upon some discovery! They do not accept the shape of the globe, the property of the elements, the beginning and the end of the seasons, the force of the wind, the bushes or their roots! Here is the object of their studies: they believe that they will find the reason of things. But the supreme cause, the object and the principle of everything, they only see with blear eyes if at all. 0, ye, who would know, begin not with the sky, but with yourselves; see what ye are, what ye should be and what ye shall be. Of what use is it to discuss the ideas of Plato, to read and re-read Scipio's Dream? What good is there in all these inextricable arguments which are the fashion and in that craze for logical subtleties in which many have found their destruction ? " A condemnation of science is here pronounced by the abbot of Saint- Victor ; happily, that monk's was a voice in the desert, and the human mind, come v^hat might, pursued its onward march. Many clerics, without being hostile to the part taken by the scientific movement and without wishing to subject all knowledge and instruction to theology, still made some reservations, criticised certain tendencies and cer- tain deeds as contrary to the organization, as well as to the spirit, of the church. In the study of those liberal arts which were comprised in the trivium, the masters and scholars were strongly drawn to profane literature, especially to Latin poetry. They aban- doned everything else to read and write Latin verse. They composed songs, tales, odes, comedies, often in a most frivolous vein, a circumstance to be explained by the general coarseness of manners and by the naive enthusiasm of the clerics, who, in olden days, admired everything indiscriminately. Many were the lettered prelates who made their first public appear- ance through playful poems, modeled on Ovid or other erotic poets — sins of youth which ripe age expiated by edifying productions. The severest critics, Stephen of Tournai and Peter of Blois, in this respect had none too clean consciences. A brother of Peter of Blois, "William, who was a benedictine abbot, wrote a Latin comedy, Alda, the conclusion of which would not bear translation. A sort of sensual idolatry of paganism is what the study of the humanities led to in the case of many clerics. As for the quadrivium, the sciences properly speaking, since they were less attractive in them- 78 SOCIAL FRANCE selves and brought only a meager return, the mass of students neglected or abandoned them entirely. The utilitarian spirit was developing among them. To obtain a prebend, a prelacy, it was enough, in a pinch, to have studied the liberal arts. After the quadrivium, the student left the school provided with a benefice. Either he surren- dered it to study theology or returned to it after a longer or shorter absence, depending upon his inclinations, mean- time escaping the burden of a canon's or cure's life. A student who was not content with his elementary course had the choice between the branches of higher instruction — medicine, canon law, civil law, or theology; but, a practical man, he picked the most lucrative. With civil law he might become a judge and administrator in the courts of the lay lords ; with canon law he was fitted for the same functions under a church lord. Medicine was already becoming a paying profession. Theology it was which suffered from this new spirit; but those who controlled the clergy and wished to maintain things in their traditional condition could not allow it to be sacri- ficed. Theologj, the science par excellence, the final aim of all teaching, must be protected against the utilitarians; and, indeed, every effort was made to fetter this vexatious tend- ency and preserve to the university of Paris its character as the international center of theological studies. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Prevostin, a chancellor of Notre-Dame, in a sermon, severely blamed the young clerics who abandoned the Holy Scriptures to devote them- selves to civil law. And we shall see the papacy prohibiting the study of that law. The university of Paris gave an opening to its adversaries in other respects. It is evident that, in a great city like Paris, the presence of so great a number of clerics, assembled from all parts of Prance and Europe, introduced certain dan- gers to public order and morality, especially to the morality of churchmen. There were present not only young people who were working for a degree in order to obtain benefices and dignities ; the university also attracted a crowd of monks, canons, and cures, who, under the pretext of completing their education with the masters in vogue, were delighted to leave their abbeys, chapters, or parishioners. Popes and councils THE STUDENT 79 vainly strove to stem this pressure of clerics toward the ' ' city of letters," to bring them back to the observance of their professional duties. For the defenders of the ancient disci- pline it was a great scandal. Many of these cosmopolitan students belonged to the class of poor itinerant clerics, vagi scolares, who to earn their bread engaged in any trade whatsoever. Debauchees, frequenters of taverns, and knaves — ^the " goliards," as they were then called, swelled the number of minstrels, composed Latin verses of a satiric or bacchic vein, or wrote the most licentious stories in French. A certain number of our fabliaux are the work of errant clerics, accustomed to live on expedients and alms. They are depicted in the story of the Povre clerc, the hero of which, a student without hearth or home, seeks his livelihood at the hand of public charity. "He had studied at Paris so long that he found it expedient to leave the city because of poverty. There was nothing more to pawn, nothing more to sell. He saw perfectly well that he could stay in the Cite no longer: evil had been the days he spent there. As he no longer saw whither to betake himself, it seemed better to abandon his studies. He set out for his native land, for which his heart yearned: but of money he had not a bit, which much dis- tressed him. The day on which he departed he had nothing to eat or drink. In a town upon which he came he entered the home of a peasant and found there only the landlady and a servant: ' Dame,' said he, ' I come from the school ; I have journeyed far this day. Be kind to me, and lodge me without more ado.' " And he was lodged; but, as always, it was the master of the house who bore the costs of this hospitality. Mischievous and roguish, always ready to tease the burghers and seduce the burgesses: that is the scholar-cleric of literature as well as of reality. A contemporary of Philip Augustus, the Italian teacher, Buoncompagno, writing his as yet unpublished Antiqua Bhetorica about 1215, gives a description — somewhat indefi- nite, to be sure — of the wretched students of Bologna. The life they led must have resembled very closely that of their unfortunate Parisian companions. ' ' I ought to spend my time in following courses and study- 80 SOCIAL FRANCE ing, ' ' writes one of these poor devils, ' ' but want compels me to go begging to the doors of churchmen." " I am reduced to crying twenty times in succession : * Charity, my good seigniors ! ' and generally to hear the response : ' God be •with you.' I betake myself to the houses of laymen where I am rudely repulsed, and if perchance some one says to me, ' Wait a mo- ment,' I receive a bit of disgusting bread, which the dogs would not have. Professional beggars, oftener than I, get the bad vegetables and the skin and sinews that one cannot eat, the offal that is thrown away, the damaged wine. At night I course about the city, stick in one hand and wallet and flask in the other: the stick to protect me against the dogs, the wallet to collect the leavings of fish, bread, and vegetables, and the flask for water. Often it happens that I fall into the mire, that mire of Bologna which smells like a corpse, and thus all besmirched I return home to satisfy a growling stomach with the leavings that have been thrown me." The existence of these wretches, a menace to public security, presently stirred up the church. Soon began that series of councils which thimdered against these loose-lived clerics, these goliards, and prohibited them to wear the tonsure ; that is, to claim ecclesiastical privilege. But, beginning with the reign of Philip Augustus, private charity endeavored to found institutions of refuge to supply these poor students with food and shelter. This is the humble origin of the " colleges,'* of those endowed establishments, with which the left bank of the Seine was little by little to be covered. Having become centers of instruction, they presently came to constitute the university itself. The beginning of these establishments was made in a char- itable grant of 1180, in which a burgher of London named Josce, returning from Jerusalem, bought a hall in the Hotel- Dieu of Paris and provided an income which permitted eighteen clerical scholars to eat and sleep there. In return, they undertook to watch over the dead of the hospital by turns and to carry the cross and Holy-water at burials. At a later date they were to move from the Hotel-Dieu and to have a house of their own. Thus was established the oldest of the Parisian colleges, that of the Dix-huit. A pattern had been given: other colleges would be established, such as that of Saint-Honore, founded in 1209 by the widow of Stephen THE STUDENT 81 Berot for thirteen poor scholars. Even at that time another house of refuge for students, Saint-Thomas du Louvre, was in full operation, for in 1210 its officials requested permission of Innocent III to build a chapel and to have a cemetery of their own. In the university of Paris there was an element making for immorality and disorder that was difficult to suppress in the lay domestics (servientes) , attached to the service of students. These, too, in a certain measure, shared the privileges of their masters. This serving class to a large extent consisted of rascals who victimized even the students. The Dominican, Stephen of Bourbon, recalling his youth, part of which he spent as a student at Paris in the later years of Philip Augus- tus, frankly states that the gargons of the scholars " were nearly all thieves." When these servants went to market or to the retailers for their masters, they managed to make ' ' as high as seventy -five and even four hundred per cent." on their purchases. Under these conditions the frequent appeals of the student to the paternal purse is intelligible. The greater part of students' letters preserved in the formularies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have this as their burden. From M. Leopold Delisle I borrow the translation of a missive sent by two students of Orleans to their family in the last years of the twelfth century. One would wager that it came from the Latin Quarter yesterday. " To our Dear and Revered Parents, Greeting and Filial Obedience. May you be pleased to learn that, thanks to God, we continue in good health in the city of Orleans and that we devote ourselves entirely to study, bearing in mind what Cato has said : ' It is glorious to know something.' We live in a good, stylish house, separated from the schools and market by only a single buUding, and we can therefore attend our daily courses without wetting our feet. We also have some good friends who are well advanced and thoroughly desirable in every way. We heartily congratulate ourselves upon it, for the Psalmist has said : cum sancto sanctus eris [" With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure"]. But because the lack of equipment hinders the achievement of the aims we have in view, we believed we ought to appeal to your parental love and to ask you to have the goodness to send enough money by the bearer to buy some parchment, ink, and ink-stand and such other things as we need. You will not leave us in embarrassment, and will 82 SOCIAL FRANCE insist that we finish our studies properly, so as to be able to return to our country with honor. The bearer will also take charge of the shoes and hose which you may have to send us. You can also send us news of yourselves by the same means." ^ Certain persons did not always distinguish between the good students, the bad ones, and the cosmopolitan crowd of valets which exploited the youth. The preachers of the time of Philip Augustus were not gentle with the Parisian scholars. To be sure, this was especially the case with the chancellors of Notre-Dame, born enemies of the university. Peter Comestor reproaches them with being too fond of wine and good cheer: "In eating and drinking, there are not their equals; they are devourers at table, but not devout at mass. At work they yawn; at banquet they stand ia awe of no one. They abhor meditation upon the divine books, but they love to see the wine sparkling in their glasses and they gulp it down intrepidly." In this matter the professors themselves did not always set a good example. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, sharply lectures a master of arts who, he says, has changed " from a dialectician of the highest power to an accomplished drinker (egregium potatorem) ,^ ' and, heaping up quotations of the Holy Scriptures, he attempts to turn him from his insobriety. Peter of Poitiers, another chancellor, insists especially on the depravity of manners: " What a shame ! Our scholars live in baseness which not one of them would even dare to mention ia his home among his relatives. They waste the riches of the Crucified with courtesans. Their con- duct, aside from shaming the church, is an ignominy to the masters and students, a scandal to the laity, a dishonor to the nation, and an injury to the Creator Himself." Chancellor Prevostin of Cremona is more specific in his complaints. He described the scholars, completely armed, coursing about the streets of Paris at night, breaking in the ^ L. Delisle, Annuaire-hulletin de la Soci^te de I'histoire de France (1869), Vol. 7, p. 149. Cf. the numerous examples of requests for money given by Haskins, The life of mediceval students as illustrated by their letters, in The American Historical Review, Vol. Ill, 1898, No. 2. THE STUDENT 83 doors of the bourgeoisie, and filling the courts with the bruit of their escapades. " Every day public women (meretriculae) come to depose against them, complaining of having been beaten, of having had their garments cut into shreds, or their hair cut off." A turbulent and combative spirit, indeed! but such was the university. One preacher compares the professors, in their scholastic quarrels, to cocks, ever ready to fight. The students imitated their masters, save that they quickly came to blows. From an unpublished sermon, Haureau ^ has ex- tracted the following utterance of Philip Augustus when the fighting scholars were mentioned in his presence: '' They are hardier than knights," said the king; " knights, covered with their armor, hesitate to engage in battle. These clerics, who have neither hauberk nor helmet but a tonsured head, playfully fall upon one another with daggers : decidedly fool- ish of them, and very dangerous." The external history of the university of Paris, to all effects, begins with a battle. In 1192, the scholars fell into a quarrel with some peasants attached to the abbey of Saint- Germain-des-Pres. These occupied the vaguely defined dis- trict which stretched away to the south and west of the monastery — either the Petit Pre-aux-Clercs, now bounded by the Rues Jacob, Bonaparte, Seine, and Beaux-Arts, or more likely the Grand Pre-aux-Clercs, which began at the Rue Saint- Benoit. This large property to which the scholars went for their diversion was the source of interminable wrangling be- tween the abbey and the university. In the fray of 1192, a student was killed. The murder of a cleric by laymen, to say nothing of their being serfs, could not go unpunished. The students entered a complaint at Rome. The abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, seriously compromised, had to prove his innocence before the archbishop of Reims and the assem- bled university and destroy the cottages of the murderers, who had taken flight. This reparation perfectly satisfied the court of Rome. Stephen of Tournai had some difficulty in ^ Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibl. nationale, VI, p. 250. 84 SOCIAL FEANCE proving to Cardinal Octavian, the pope's legate, that the abbot was not implicated. This pope was Celestine III, author of the first grant pos- sessed by the university of Paris. By a bull addressed to the bishop of Paris some time between 1191 and 1198, he provided that all clerics living in the great city should have the right of bringing their civil cases before the jurisdiction of the church. He reminds him that the clergy has its special judges and cannot be subject to ordinary legislation. The word scolares does not appear in the bull; it concerns only clerics. But the reason for, and the importance of, the pontifical concession are evidently to be sought in the enor- mous number of clerics whom the schools of Paris attracted. In 1200, there was a second milestone in the history of the university in the form of another battle. This time it was a rupture between the students and the citizens of Paris, supported by the provost of the king ; that is, by the police. At the time there was among the students a cleric from a powerful German family who had been proposed for the bishopric of Liege. His servant, having gone to a tavern to purchase some wine, fell into a quarrel with the trades- man, was struck, and his jug was broken. Furious, the Ger- man students took the part of their compatriot. They invaded the shop and left its keeper half-dead. Great was the excite- ment among the Parisians ; it was without doubt not the first time they had had a grievance against the scholars. Thomas, provost of Philip Augustus, followed by armed citizens, en- tered the quarters of the German clerics to arrest the culprits. These resisted; the police, as often happens, had a heavy hand, and five university men, of whom several were clerics, were killed. Immediately masters and students lodged a complaint with the king: they would suspend their lectures and would quit Paris unless the murderers were punished. A professors' strike; a suspension of lectures! even to-day this would mean serious inconvenience. At the time of Philip Augustus it was considered a public calamity; indeed, almost an offense against religion. The importance of the university of Paris for the recruitment of the clergy was such that a suspension of instruction meant a brusque check of the ecclesiastical life of Europe. The king of France did every- THE STUDENT 85 thing that was required of him. The provost of Paris was thrown into prison together with all his accomplices who could be found. Some of the murderers having fled, Philip had their houses demolished and their vines grubbed up. Some time later the scholars prayed the king to set at liberty the provost and the others condemned to life imprisonment on the condition that the guilty persons be delivered to them. They were to be scourged in one of the schools, after which they would be considered free from all blame for their crime. But Philip Augustus refused, saying that it was matter of honor with him not to have king's men chastised by others than the king. The provost remained in the royal prison for a long time. Finally he attempted to escape over the wall by means of a rope, but the cord broke and he fell from such a height as to be killed. An important object of the collegians was to secure from the lay authorities the recognition of their position as privi- leged clerics, subject only to the tribunals of their order and hence no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the king's police. The celebrated charter which Philip Augustus granted in 1200 completely satisfied them. The provost of Paris could lay his hands on a scholar only in case of a flagrant offense; and then he must arrest him without mal- treatment, at least if the culprit offered no resistance. And he could arrest him only to turn him over immediately to ecclesiastical justice. If the judges were not accessible at the time of the arrest, the delinquent was to be kept at the house of some fellow-student until he could be surrendered. The chief or director of the university {capitale Farisien- sium scolarium) could not be arrested on any pretext what- ever by the king's agents: the judges of the church alone had the right to put him under arrest. Even the servants or the lay domestics of the scholars had their privileges ! The king's men could lay hands on them only in case of an evident offense. But it was also desirable that the students be pro- tected against the ill-will of the citizens of Paris. These should take an oath that, if they encountered a scholar mis- treated by a layman, they would not hesitate to testify to that effect before the judges. If a scholar were attacked with weapons, clubs, or stones, the laics who were witnesses of the 86 SOCIAL FRANCE oeeurrenee were expected to seize the assailant and deliver him to the royal police. And, finally, the provost in office and the citizens of Paris should in the presence of the uni- versity swear to observe the clauses of this act in good faith. Thereafter each provost, upon assuming office, should take the same oath. This is the famous ordinance not improperly regarded as the charter establishing the liberties of the university. It was a considerable grant, since it withdrew the university from civil jurisdiction, declared it unassailable and inviolable by the king's agents, and subjected it to those church judges so indulgent to the clergy. It assured the independence, and consequently the prosperity, of the great international cor- poration for centuries; but, in guaranteeing the scholars al- most complete impunity, it had as a natural consequence the innumerable students' frays of later times. However, the charter of Philip Augustus was not, as has sometimes been averred, a decree constituting the university; it contained no provision for such an organization. In it the university appears as a body already formed and even provided with a head, the capitate. Who is this head? Is he of the faculty of arts, the " rector," who toward the end of the thirteenth century became the representative of the whole university? There is no good reason for saying so. Let us agree, then, that, in making the masters and scholars exclusively subject to ecclesiastical tribunals, Philip Augustus was introducing no innovations. He simply sanctioned the measures taken some years previously by Pope Celestine III, the identification of all students with the clergy. Were all students clerics? The question was considered in 1208 when Innocent Ill's legate. Cardinal Gualo, imposed a reform measure on the clergy of the diocese of Paris, aimed to correct their conduct. The severest penalties were fixed for clerics who did not have the tonsure and garb of their order, who sold the sacraments, went into business, or lived with women. Should one be equally rigorous with the mas- ters and students of the university? The cardinal believed it would be difficult, for he felt himself obliged to close his decree with a paragraph intended solely for the academic group. Delinquent scholars should not, like other clerics, THE STUDENT 87 be liable to immediate excommunication. The professors should first warn them collectively, and threaten them with anathema. If they persisted in their fault, the university should in full assembly pronounce a new summons, this time naming each individually. In the event of a prolonged re- sistance, they should be denounced before the chancellor of Notre-Dame as excommunicates, and regarded as such until they had given satisfaction to the bishop or, in his absence, to the abbot of Saint- Victor. It was the papacy which subjected the scholars to these disciplinary rules: it was acting as sovereign with this, a privileged corporation. In 1207, Innocent III, finding the number of teachers of theology too large, had on his own authority reduced it to eight. Two years later he authorized the university to reform itself. Certain young doctors of arts had freely violated the accepted usages. They were re- proached with having an improper deportment, with violat- ing the traditional procedure in lectures and discussions, and with entirely neglecting the obligatory attendance at the obsequies of their confreres. The corporation had elected eight deputies to draw up a rule applicable to all masters. A single one of these refused to submit and to take the oath. He was expelled from the corps of professors. After a time he submitted to making honorable amends, and asked for his rehabilitation. But a bull of Innocent III (1208-1209) was necessary to permit him to reenter the university faculty. Prom this intervention of the papacy in the petty affairs of university life one can imagine the role it assumed in important matters. Rome was the constant protectress, to whom masters and students appealed at once when the moral or material interests of the corporation were imperiled. In 1210, the university of Paris experienced a grave crisis. What mistrustful spirits and the adversaries of scientific progress had foreseen came to pass: heresy once again crept into the instruction given under the shadow of the cloister of Notre-Dame. A master of arts and theologian, Amauri of Bene, or of Chartres, openly taught that every Christian was a member of Christ, and therefore a part of divinity, and he pushed his pantheism to its extreme consequences. The other theologians, faithful to orthodoxy, were aroused. Amauri, 88 SOCIAL FRANCE attacked and condemned by all his colleagues, was compelled to make an explanation before the pope, with whom the uni- versity had registered a complaint. Innocent, after having heard a statement of his doctrines and the opposing opinions upheld by the delegates of the university, in his turn dis- approved of the heretic. The latter returned to Paris and was there compelled to abjure his theories before the whole university constituency. Sick with chagrin and humiliation, he died shortly afterwards, to all appearances reconciled with the church. His opinions lived after him. The pantheism of Amauri, propagated and even extended by his disciples, gave birth to a new cult, that of the Holy Spirit : the Old Testament had been supplanted by the New ; but the latter, too, had performed its service, and the reign of the Spirit was now to begin. Each Christian being an incarnation of Holy Spirit, a particle of G-od, sacraments be- came useless; the grace of the Spirit was enough to save all the world. This doctrine, issuing from theological teach- ing, born in the university, had university men as its apostles and martyrs. A skilful manoeuver of the bishop of Paris and of friar Guerin, chancellor of Philip Augustus, discov- ered the sectarians. Nearly all of them were teachers or students of theology, deacons or priests. One of them, David of Dinant, who had published a manual of doctrine, fled betimes. A considerable number of others was arrested and arraigned before the council of Paris under the presidency of Peter of Corbeil, archbishop of Sens. The text of the decision rendered by the council in 1210 still exists. It was decreed that the body of Amauri, father of the heresy, should be exhumed and cast outside of the ceme- tery, and his memory excommunicated in every parish of the province. Some of the arrested sectarians were degraded and delivered to the secular power; some ten of them suf- fered death by fire in the meadow of Champeaux on the twentieth of December ; the rest were condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Only women and persons of low estate, simple souls whose only fault lay in having yielded to the theolo- gians, were spared. The chastisement extended to books. The manuscripts of David of Dinant were publicly burned. Even Aristotle suffered from the incident. His natural philosophy THE STUDENT 89 and Averroes' commentary upon it were forbidden to be studied in the university, under pain of excommunication. Finally, the council declared all to be heretics in whose homes were found French translations of the Credo and the Pater noster. This episode was something of a disaster and a rude warn- ing to the incipient university. In the middle ages the lib- erty of the professoriate, so highly extolled by the popes, did not give the liberty of teaching anything whatsoever; it halted at the bounds of orthodoxy. Schools could be opened and things sacred could be discussed with a large freedom; but dogma must never be publicly treated! Intolerance in this case did not come alone from above, from ecclesiastical authority; the professors themselves avoided a colleague who was too bold, and constrained him to abandon his opinions. They denounced him, not to the bishop of Paris or his chan- cellor — they were too fearful of having the episcopate, the local power, meddle in their affairs, — but directly to the pope, whose sovereign judgment they invoked in matters of doctrine. It was the pope, therefore, to whom they addressed them- selves in 1212, when there occurred the first recorded inci- dent of that long and ardent struggle, which in the thirteenth century brought the university to blows with its immediate chief, the chancellor of Notre-Dame. This functionary was one of the chief dignitaries of the chapter, usually a theologian of renown, a writer or an es- teemed preacher. His importance proceeded from his double office : on the one hand, he wrote, sealed, and despatched the correspondence of the church at Paris ; on the other, he rep- resented the bishop as superintendent of instruction in the episcopal jurisdiction, supervised the schools, and conferred the license to teach. When the university was organized, the chancellor quite naturally found himself at its head; he continued to exercise the disciplinary and judicial powers, which he had over all schools of the diocese, over the corpora- tion of masters and students as well. This fact alone is enough to explain the inevitable con- flict. The university, like all powerful communities aspiring to govern itself, could not get along with a master having 90 SOCIAL FEANCE independent authority. Outside of the corporation, and not chosen by it, he nevertheless by virtue of his position under- took to direct it, control its acts, and to intervene from day to day in its private affairs. To-day state interests and necessities are grasped by all. Not so the university men of the middle ages; they understood only privilege, and were concerned solely for the interests and extension of their or- ganization. Their manners were violent. Besides, they felt themselves backed by the head of the universal church. Everything combined to put them into a state of perpetual conspiracy against the chancellor. In 1211, the chancellorship was held by Jean des Chan- delles, the successor of the theologian, Prevostin of Cremona, but of decidedly less reputation. According to masters and students, this dignitary did them every possible wrong. He exacted an oath of fidelity and obedience from candidates for professorships; sometimes he even made them pay for the permission to begin a course. If some schoolman committed an offense, he began by imprisoning him, even when there was no reason for believing that the culprit intended to flee judgment, and when taking bail would have been adequate. As a condition of liberating these fellows, the chancellor exacted a sum which he turned to his own uses, so that he appeared to be actuated less by a love of justice than by a desire to have a good income. Such was the complaint upon which Innocent III seized. " In my day," cried he, '' when I studied at Paris, I never saw scholars treated in that fashion." He immediately or- dered the chancellor to improve his conduct, and charged the head of a neighboring diocese, the bishop of Troyes, and not the bishop of Paris, with the task of inflicting ecclesias- tical censure, with no heed to an appeal, upon the chancellor if he failed to put an end to his misconduct. It was not necessary to use extreme measures against Jean des Chan- delles. He agreed to arbitrate, and accepted the decision of the arbiters given in August, 1213. Victory remained with the masters and the students. Never again could the chan- cellor exact oath or money from candidates for the license. He was forbidden to incarcerate clerics, save in cases of evi- dent necessity. In no trial of a schoolman, where he was THE STUDENT 91 the judge, eould he levy a fine: he could only condemn the offender to indemnify the injured party. All this was to be an absolute rule for the future; but the sentence contained temporary clauses relative to the particular chancellor in office. The granting of the license should no longer depend on his good will. He could still give the license to whom he wished, but he might not refuse it to candidates whom the majority of the professors of theology, law, and medicine had approved as fit to teach. As for the " artists," a com- mission of six professors, nominated by the chancellor and the faculty, and renewable each six months, was to be the sole judge of their fitness. If the chancellor took no account of this nomination of professors, the person designated was to be invested with the license by the bishop of Paris ex officio. The same bishop was also to decide finally whether the chancellor might or might not incarcerate delinquent scholars. Here for the first time the right of the bishop of Paris to intervene in the organization of the university is expressly mentioned. The bishop, Peter of Nemours, sanctioned this arbitral sentence; the first battle had been lost by the chan- cellor. But, at bottom, the episcopal power was struck by the Same blow. This the bishop well understood, and that is why in the same act in which he registered and confirmed the decision of the arbiters he took care to add this proviso: " saving in all things our jurisdiction and the authority of the church of Paris." A formula of this character in a society adhering most rigidly to legal forms permitted the revocation of the concession, if necessary. The authority of the church of Paris was singularly easy to confound with that of the chancellor of the church of Paris. However, the last word said in this business was not the charter of Peter of Nemours. The pope had taken notice of the complaint of the university; the pope, or his agent, must close the incident. In November, 1213, Herve, bishop of Troyes and representative of Innocent, in a letter of rati- fication assembled aU the preceding documents: that is, the bull of the pope, the episcopal charter containing the sen- tence of arbitration, and the confirmation of the chancellor. This was the end of the affair. It demonstrates very force- 92 SOCIAL FRANCE fully that Rome was in everything, especially in university affairs, the beginning and the end, principium et finis. At Paris, as at Montpellier, the first statute oi organiza- tion of the university was the work of a cardinal-legate, the representative of the Holy See. Cardinal Robert of Courcon had already in 1213, as president of the provincial synod of Paris, attempted a partial reform when he forbade the cures to learn the profane sciences in the schools. If with the consent of their bishop they went to Paris, they could only study theology. The prohibition was especially emphatic for monks. Too many monks sought to leave their monasteries to hear university courses in medicine and civil law, two subjects which, they said, made it possible to minister the better to their sick brethren and to work the more usefully in the temporal affairs of their congregations. But the authorities could not let this influx of the clergy into the schools go on indefinitely, and let the church fall into dis- order, merely to give clerics the leisure to be students at Paris. The council declared monks excommunicated if they did not return to their cloisters within two months. This was only a prelude to a more general rule which, by the authority of the head of the Roman church, be- came a law of the university in August, 1215. This new rule was not a systematic and complete constitution, an organic decree designed to settle all questions which the material, moral, and intellectual affairs of the school might raise, but a series of articles run together without any unity and, as it were, by accident. Nothing could be more discon- nected or fundamentally more incomplete. The legate simply repeated those points which experience had settled by some decision or reform. Above everything else, he concerned himself with the recruiting of professors, the conditions un- der which the professors worked, and with the confirmation of the essential privileges of the body. But, such as it was, the act of Robert of Courcon is notable for the light which it sheds on the habits of the university and on the abuses which were already practised in it. An age qualification was fixed for teachers of theology as THE STUDENT 93 well as for teachers of the liberal arts. The doctor of the- ology must be at least thirty-five years old, have had at least ten years of general studies and five years of theological training. He should not receive a license unless he led a good life, had good manners, and had proven his capacity. To be a master of arts, one must be at least twenty-one years old, have been a student for at least six years, and must pos- sess a license under the conditions fixed by the arbitral sen- tence of 1213. On the other hand, one was not allowed to open a course for the simple pleasure of giving a few lectures and then moving on : the teacher had to promise to teach for at least two years. The solemn assemblies of professors and the granting of licenses to students gave the occasion for great, prolonged, and costly banquets. The university brotherhood, like all brotherhoods of the middle ages, loved to feast. The cardinal formally forbade these orgies: nulla fiant convivia; he per- mitted only the invitation of a few friends or comrades. He was not wrong, if one considers the number of letters found in the formularies showing the deep inroad upon the purses of their fathers made by students in paying the expenses connected with attaining the mastership. The professor, Buoncompagno gives the form of a letter written from Bologna to a father to tell him of the success of his son. It begins in a lyrical strain, citing Psalms : " ' Sing unto the Lord a new song ' ; for your son has successfully undergone his solemn test in the presence of an immense assemblage of professors and students. He repHed without mistake to all the questions asked him, he shut up the mouths of all disputants : no one could bring him to the wall. Besides, he gave a banquet which will long be remembered; both poor and rich were invited; it was a feast without precedent. Finally, he has begun his course in such a way as to empty the schools of the others, attracting around his chair the mass of the students." Another letter, the counterpart of the preceding one, con- cerns the unfortunate candidate who lacked money: " The people invited to his banquet were so poorly fed that they did not even desire to drink. He opened his course with novices and hired listeners." 94 SOCIAL FRANCE The prohibition of feasts by Robert of Courgon seems to show that things at Paris were much as at Bologna, and that among the university's traditions the sumptuous feast of the licentiate was highly prized. If the cardinal suppressed the banquets, he still permitted the distributions of clothes and other things which accom- panied the licensing. " These might be increased," he said, *' so that the poor especially could benefit by them," He required the student who had become a master of arts to have a decent appearance, in keeping with his ecclesiastical position: he should wear a round cope of dark material, reaching to his heels. He should fulfil another require- ment of decency, one which, it appears, university men did not often observe: attend the funeral services of members of the university. Upon the death of a scholar, half of the professors of the faculty to which he belonged were to follow the train; at the next death, it was the turn of the other half. The legislator who established this rotation took care to specify that those attending should not leave before the end of the service. At the death of a professor, all his col- leagues must attend the vigil, which took place in the church " until midnight or even later." On the day of the burial all courses should be suspended. Two articles of the constitution of 1215 determined the status of the students. " Every student," said the cardinal, " must have a master to whom he attaches himself." This was directed against the innumerable quasi-students who did not attend any course of lectures. Further, ** every master must have jurisdiction over his scholar {forum sui scolaris habeat),^^ an indication of the close bond then existing be- tween the teacher and his students. He was their director, and their judge; he was responsible for their conduct, and had, therefore, the right of correction. He was both master and magistrate. This rule, emanating from Rome, naturally contained a clause designed to protect the university against the chan- cellor of Notre-Dame and the church of Paris. No one should be permitted to teach who had given money to the chancellor or to any other dignitary, who had sworn an oath of fealty, or who had surrendered his liberty in any way whatever. THE STUDENT 95 Masters and scholars were guaranteed the right to form, associations among themselves or with others ; to form sworn leagues {constitutiones fide, vet pena, vel juramento vallatas) under clearly specified circumstances: if a university man had been killed, wounded, or had sustained grave injury; if justice had been denied him, if a mutual burial associa- tion was contemplated, if it was imperative to impose lodg- ing prices on the citizens of Paris, etc. This last matter was a subject of frequent disagreement. The Paris house- holders took advantage of the difficulty the students had in finding lodgings to raise the price above all reason; and, under all circumstances, showed but little consideration for their tenants. " I rented a commodious apartment," wrote John of Salisbury, " but, before occupying it, I had to pay about twelve livres [fifteen hundred francs in cash] ; I was not allowed to establish myself in it without paying a whole year's rent." In short, Eobert of Courgon formally recognizes the right of organization within the university. The papacy gave it a means of fighting, of defense, and of attack. It was des- tined to be used against the police and the citizens, but espe- cially against the church of Paris and its chancellor. Barely four years passed after the reform when the latent conflict between the bishop and the university suddenly became active. In 1219, Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, and Philip of Greve, his chancellor, excommunicated all university men, who had, or who should, league themselves together by oath without episcopal permission. Any one who had seen armed scholars running about the streets at night and had not informed the officials or the chancellor was also to be excommunicated. Fundamentally, it was part of the conflict between the bishopric and the Holy See, for the bishop attacked the university because it made use of the right of confederation which a legate of the pope had granted it. Peter of Nemours did not recognize the legality of this concession; on this point he was in direct opposi- tion to Rome. And he so fully realized the gravity of the deed that he depended on a precedent authorized by another legate to legitimatize his step. He and Philip of Greve pretended that they were simply renewing an ex- 96 SOCIAL FEANCE commimieatioii laid by Eudes of Sully, former bishop of Paris, upon the masters and students with the approba- tion of Cardinal Oetavian, the legate of Innocent III. But no one has ever seen the text of this first sentence of anathema, and Peter of Nemours, if required to produce it, would have been unable to do so. The documents of the time of Eudes of Sully say nothing of it. Is it not, besides, very unlikely that a legate of the pope would have sanc- tioned this blow struck at the university, the protege of Rome? In his bull of March, 1219, Pope Honorius III seems to accuse the bishop of Paris of having invented the undis- coverable decree of Eudes of Sully. At any rate, he ordered the archbishop of Eouen to annul the recent anathema, and threatened any one who should dare to lay anathema on the university, without having been authorized to do so hy the Roman Church, with all the wrath of the Holy See. The rights of the pope and the rights of the bishop were here clearly at variance. "Who would carry the day? The bishop refused to yield. It became necessary for Honorius to order another representative of the Roman power, Herve, bishop of Troyes, to force Peter of Nemours to obey (May 11, 1219). Thanks to this second bull, we know certain details of the process. After having vainly asked the bishop of Paris to produce the sentence of Eudes of Sully, the university men went to the heart of the matter. " What is understood by this offense of coalition with which you reproach us? Does it mean a permissible organization for a praiseworthy and legiti- mate end, or an unjust or illegal coalition? " "It means," replied the adherents of the bishop, " any kind of a coali- tion, legitimate or illegitimate." " Then it is an attempt on our rights, and we appeal to the pope." The university decided that it would plead its case at Rome. But repre- sentation at Rome was expensive, and the professors and scholars had as yet no common funds for this purpose. They provided for it by a subscription (collecta). The masters and the clerics swore to subscribe the sum fixed by their advocates. The money having been collected, the representa- tives set out. Then the chancellor declared all the teachers THE STUDENT 97 and all the students who had combined or paid the sub- scription, excommunicated. They were no longer admitted even to confession. There was great commotion among the scholars ; one cannot imagine what such a prohibition meant in the middle ages. The university begged the bishop to recall this rigorous sen- tence. The canons of Notre-Dame and Guerin, the minister of Philip Augustus, added their importunities to those of the academic body. The bishop and his chancellor remained inflexible: they suspended some of the professors and im- prisoned some of the students; and, finally, the university answered by a general suspension of all of the courses. " The voice of science was silent at Paris," wrote Honorius III. It is a shame (these are his own words) " that an officer of the bishop harms the great school of Paris and stops the flow of the great river of knowledge which, through its many branches, waters and nourishes the land of the universal church." The decree of excommunication was again can- celled; the chancellor *' and accomplices " were commanded to come and justify themselves at Rome, whither the pope also summoned the representatives of the university. What was the outcome of this conflict of 1219 ? The docu- ments do not inform us. Only a few of the records of the process have come down to us : namely, those emanating from the Holy See or from its delegates. Neither the justification of the bishop of Paris nor the motives which had led him on are ascertainable. It was, no doubt, as always, the daily or nightly misdeeds which the students, sheltered behind their privileges, were forever committing, and the intolerable situ- ation into which these privileges forced the church by com- pelling her to close her eyes to innumerable scandals and to let many a guilty man go unpunished. This much is clear, that in November, 1219, Philip of Greve, the chancellor, pre- sented himself at Eome before the apostolic tribunal, to find that the university, his accuser, had sent no representative. Perhaps that body itself did not have a clear conscience; perhaps it was sufficient to have secured an annulment of the sentence. The plaintiff defaulting, the chancellor re- turned to Paris and resumed his office. It was in the last days of this year of troubles and during 98 SOCIAL FRANCE the following year that the mendicant friars of the newly- founded order of Saint Dominie were being introduced into Paris and into the quarter of the schools, — an event of great importance in university history. This new monastic creation furnished the papacy, on which it entirely depended, a thoroughly devoted army. Between the Dominicans and a university, both directed and pro- tected by the same power, sympathy could all the more read- ily be established, because they had a community of interests. If the university, forever at war with the bishop of Paris and with the Parisian clergy, was constantly menaced with deprivation of the sacraments and of the religious offices, the order of the Dominicans also from the beginning found itself at variance with the officially constituted clergy. These mendicants had not only the right, but also the duty, to influence Christian souls by preaching. Many of them were priests, who had obtained from the pope the permission to hear the confessions of the faithful and to exercise the same functions as the cures. This new clergy, compelled by its rule to be without possessions and to live by begging — ^more exemplary and more virtuous because, without being in the cloister, they practised its austerities, — proved to be a strong competitor to the priests of the parishes and chapters. The secular clergy could not patiently witness these aggressive monks establish themselves in the villages, and dispute the cure of souls with those who until then had had a monopoly of this function. On . the contrary, one can imagine with what joy the university received the new comrades. Preach- ing friars! it meant a full-fledged university clergy. The first Dominicans of Paris had originally been estab- lished in a little house near the Hotel-Dieu. In 1218, at thp demand of Pope Honorius, the university gave them quarters and a chapel. Increased and enlarged, these quarters became the convent of the Jacobins, situated opposite the church of Saint-!fitienne-des-Gres on the ground to-day between the Rues Cujas and Soufflot. These preachers, installed in a building of the university, in December, 1219, obtained the right to celebrate divine services in it, and the pope sent the masters and scholars a bull of congratulation. But the priests of the parish of Saint-Benoit complained to their THE STUDENT 99 superiors, the canons of Notre-Dame, of the competition of the mendicant friars, and objected to having a mass read in the chapel of Saint-Jacques. Irritated by this resistance, Honorius ordered the priors of Saint-Denis and of Saint- Germain-des-Pres to take the necessary steps to suppress it. The victory remained with the Dominicans, who were very popular on the left bank of the Seine. The first charter of the university as a body had for its object, as we have said, the alliance of the scholars and the mendicants into one reli- gious body (1221). Many of these monks studied theology, awaiting the time, which was not long in coming, to elevate themselves into the ranks of the professors and to occupy masters' chairs. Many of the university men, on the other hand, ceased to live as secular clergy and took the dress and the rule of Saint Dominic. The two bodies soon amalgamated so well that at the time of the death of Philip Augustus, the general of the order. Master Jourdain, in a letter expressed the hope that all the scholars at Paris would finally become Jacobins. The introduction of the order of Saint Dominie into the great scholastic center was another success for the papacy and another blow aimed at the power of the church of Paris. The passions of the adherents and the opponents of this church only became the more violent; almost immediately a new conflict broke out. In 1220, Honorius III had transferred William of Seigne- lay, bishop of Auxerre, to the bishopric of Paris against the wishes of Philip Augustus, who favored another candidate. "William was a combative man, who in his first position had already sustained a violent struggle against the feudal barons and against the king. At Paris he continued in the same course; he had three or four quarrels with Philip Augustus. To a bishop of this temper the university problem was sim- ple: declare war against the teachers and scholars, and un- reservedly support the claims of the chancellor. Evidently Bishop William of Seignelay and Chancellor Philip of Greve were in perfect accord. The historian, William of Armorica, asserts that the bishop made himself obnoxious to the king and to the entire university : 100 SOCIAL FRANCE " He conducted himself -with such rudeness, that all the doctors of theology and those of the other faculties stopped their courses for six months, which made him detested by the clergy, by the people, and by the nobility." But the annalist of the church of Auxerre strongly sup- ports William of Seignelay: " There were among the Parisian scholars real bandits, who at night ran armed about the streets, and committed adultery, rape, murder, robbery, and the most heinous crimes without being pun- ished. Not only was the university no longer secure, but the citizens themselves did not live in peace by day or by night. The bishop knew how to rid the city of these brigands. The worst were im- prisoned for life, the others hunted from Paris, and order was restored." Given these two contradictory opinions, what was the truth? The bishop of Paris represented a very respectable cause, that of good conduct. The privileges granted by Philip Augustus to the scholars were too great; but William of Seignelay had still other grievances. In a complaint sent to Pope Honorius III in April, 1221, he accused the masters and the scholars of having formed a permanent conspiracy against his authority and that of the chancellor: " They have made a seal and dispense with that of the chancellery. They arbitrarily j&x the scale of rents, in spite of the ordinance on this subject issued by the king and accepted by the university. They have set up a tribunal of their own before which they carry all their law-suits, as though the jurisdiction of the bishop and of the chancellor did not exist. In brief, they encroach in every way on the episcopal power, and enfeeble it to such a degree that, unless good order is restored, the greatest scandals may arise and the school of Paris may be dissolved." These accusations of the bishop are specific; they show the tenacity with which the masters and the scholars tried to shake off the yoke of the local ecclesiastical powers and to make a veritable sovereignty of their corporation. Honorius III must have given the complaints of William of Seignelay perfunctory consideration, at least. He ordered the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Troyes and of Lisieux to make an inquiry and to try to reconcile the parties. THE STUDENT 101 This was such a difficult task that in May, 1222, the pope himself, while awaiting the end of the process which was unraveling itself at Rome, was obliged to impose a modus Vivendi on the belligerents. But this act was equal to a new victory for the university. He annulled the excommunication of the masters and the scholars and forbade the bishop to incarcerate or disturb the suspected university students with a demand for satisfaction. They were to be allowed to give bail: this is the habeas corpus act of the school of Paris. The bishop, the judge, and the chancellor were forbidden to exact an oath of obedience or of fealty of any kind whatever from the licentiates. The prison erected by the chancellor was to be demolished. Neither the bishop nor his officers were to inflict any pecuniary punishment on the teachers or the pupils, under pain of excommunication. The chancellor was to give the master's degree in any of the faculties only to candidates whose fitness had been attested by their own professor and by a jury of professors elected for the purpose. Finally, the bishop and his officers were not to prevent the masters admitted to the licentiate by the abbot of Sainte- Genevieve from beginning their teaching. This last prohibition reveals an important fact in the de- velopment of the university corporation. A great part of the teachers who had formerly dwelt in the Cite, round about Notre-Dame, had crossed the Petit pont and had established themselves on the north slope of Mont Sainte-Genevieve. They were being smothered on the island, and they especially wanted to rid themselves of the episcopal power which perse- cuted them. The masters of arts, especially, installed them- selves in large numbers in the Rues du Fouarre, de la Bucherie, and de la Huchette, centers from which they spread over the whole left bank. But the abbot of Sainte-Genevieve, the seignior of this territory, had, like the chapter of Notre- Dame, his academic authority and the right to create licen- tiates. The university asked him to compete with the chancellor in the conferring of degrees. The exodus of the scholars from the Cite and the licenses of Sainte-Genevieve were the two decisive and effective steps toward independence taken by the university against its adversaries. William of Seignelay died at the end of the year 1223, 102 SOCIAL PRANCE but the conflict continued. Philip Augustus himself died before the parties had made peace. But by that time the university had attained its ends. We have seen its constitu- ent elements gradually evolve and we have been able to note the principal steps in its formation. By the royal privi- lege of 1200, the master and the student escaped from the jurisdiction of the police and of the lay sovereign. By the compromises of 1213 and of 1222 and by the decree of 1215 they began to limit the power of the chancellor, and were victorious in various contests. In all the acts of internal regulation which they accepted after 1192, they were made, or voluntarily made themselves, dependent on the pope, and freed themselves more and more from the local authority. All this decisive and rapid progress occurred during the reign of Philip Augustus. But he had little to do with it, for, with the exception of the single act of 1200, everything transpired without his participation. The pope had full power over the professors and scholars, administrative and legislative power — power of direction, of control, and of correction ; absolute power over the mind and over the body, over subjects to be taught as well as over the personnel teaching them. The most extraordinary proof of this unlimited authority is the famous bull of 1219, Super speculam, by which Honorius III expressly forbade any course in civil law to be opened or attended in Paris or in the neighborhood of Paris, under pain of excommunication. Now what did the papacy want? To stop the scientific movement, to substitute canon for Eoman law, to announce the inferiority of secular legislation, to prevent the civil powers from organizing, and so find a successful way of securing the dominance of church over state? This thesis has been maintained with heat by scholars of the highest rank, but it does not seem to agree with the facts or even with the language of the texts. It gratuitously attributes to the Roman Church profound designs and a Machiavellian plan to destroy the civil law, something that was certainly far from its mind. Neither Honorius III nor his successor, Innocent lY, who renewed the bull Super speculam, was deliberately hostile to Roman law. They prohibited it for Paris only: they allowed the study of the subject in other THE STUDENT 103 French universities created after the death of Philip Augus- tus. They had, in truth, a double purpose: first, to fortify the study of theology by giving the university of Paris a sort of monopoly of this branch of higher learning, by mak- ing this university the school of theology par excellence, charged with providing for the wants of the whole Christian world ; second, to forbid the monks and the clerics to abandon their professional duties and to prevent them from gaining sufficient knowledge of civil law to follow lucrative careers as officers of justice, or administrators and lawyers in Paris. The decree of 1219 was directed neither against science, nor against the liberty of the professors. It was directed against the clergy who threatened to disorganize the church by aban- doning the priesthood. It was an act of ecclesiastical reform, the object of which has been misunderstood. Whatever its later significance, it shows in a positive way the essential fact of the early history of the university of Paris : it was not the king of France, it was not the bishop of Paris; it was the pope who ruled over that institution. CHAPTER IV THE CANON We have seen the cleric in the parish, and in the school; we shall now see him endowed with a benefice or a prebend in a chapter. He is devoted to religious service in a cathe- dral church, the seat of a bishop or of an archbishop — as at Notre-Dame of Paris, Notre-Dame of Chartres, Sainte-Croix of Orleans, Saint-Etienne of Bourges, — or in a collegiate church, which is not the residence of a bishop — as Saint- Quentin, Saint-Spire of Corbeil, Saint-Martin of Tours, Saint- Hilaire of Poitiers. These churches are really served by a community or a college of priests, deacons, and subdeacons. These are the canons, canonic^ so-called, it has been said, because their community was subjected to a collection of canons, to a rule. But in that case the term is not very well justified. It would apply much better to those properly called religious — to the monks, who were subordinated to a decid- edly more rigorous rule of community life. Really, at the time which we are studying, the canons of the cathedral and of the collegiate churches lived together only at the times when they assembled to hold their chapter-meeting or to hold services. The service finished, they had their own quarters inside the cloister, or even outside the cloister, where they could take their meals and sleep, and where they lived with their families. They were more or less in contact with the faithful in the church to which they were attached, and even outside the church — for a certain number of them exercised the function of curates, having charge of the souls of the parish. They were not isolated and systematically secluded from the world like the monks. Their cloister, in spite of the name, was not the monastic cloister: it was only the space, often rather large, where their own houses were situ- ated; a space adjoining the church, it is true, but one which was not always actually inclosed by a wall. 104 THE CANON 105 The communities of canons are, then, easily distinguished from the communities of monks, for the spirit which pre- vailed was not the same, and the rule of life was very differ- ent. Still, one must be cautious in the use of medieval terms, which are often misleading, and about the character of its institutions, which are extremely complex. There were monks living in community who were called canons, but these were really monks under a monastic rule; and there were canons regular, in distinction from those of the cathedrals and of the collegiate churches, the canons secular. Of this kind are the canons regular of the congregations of Saint- Victor and of Premontre. But the canons of Premontre lived cloistered in an abbey, subject to a rule at least as severe as that of the Benedictines of Cluny or of the Bernardines of Clairvaux: they only bore the names of canons; they really belonged to monastic society. If the secular canons were not monks, they also differed from ordinary clerics in that they lived in a sort of com- munity and formed a spiritual and temporal seigniory, own- ing lands, vassals, and subjects. The chapter was a collective lord, which had its rank in feudal society. Finally, canons were distinguished from other clerics by their costumes: a surplice (superpellicium) , a loose linen dalmatic, with wide sleeves, covering the pelisson (pellicium) , the present cassock; and on the head an amice of thick black stuff, with a flat top, terminating at each corner in a sort of horn. Canons had a double reason for being. First, they did their religious services, the work of continuous prayer, and of the celebration of great Christian feasts. They were, so to speak, the officers of public prayer, a function of common interest which could not be interrupted or left in abeyance without menacing the security of the people. And, then, it was they who formed the council of the bishop, and, with the bishop, constituted the administrators of the diocese ; for, at the period of Philip Augustus, as a rule, the bishop was elected by the chapter, and the archdeacons, his assistants, were only canons. To pray, and in the meantime to perform administrative functions, that was their double mission. This word canon immediately brings before our minds the picture of a person with a florid complexion, large and fat, 106 SOCIAL FRANCE and well paid for doing nothing. Prebend has become a synonym for sinecure. One cannot speak of canons without being reminded of those whom Boileau has so well depicted, those prelates with triple chins, those subjects of Indolence who fought over a choir-stall. It is evident that, at the period of Louis XIV, the religious services, having been sim- plified and the needs of the faithful having greatly dimin- ished along with popular faith, the beneficiaries of the church lived luxuriously on their benefices without much worry. Many were not in residence, causing themselves to be re- placed by vicars and only having the bother of collecting their incomes. One cannot say that similar abuses were not practised in the middle ages, and that the canons of the time of Philip Augustus did not already try to get as much as possible for a minimum of trouble. But it is certain that the service of public prayer was then complicated, the faith- ful firmly convinced of its necessity and therefore very exacting. To obtain a good idea of what happened in cathedral or collegiate churches, one should read the '* ordi- naries," " pontificals," *' rituals," or even " manuals," which every bishopric and every church possessed. They contain a minute enumeration of the chants and ceremonies proper for each day of the year, for each religious ceremony. In the middle age much more importance was attached to the exact observance of the liturgy than in the modern epoch ; tradition was all-powerful, ceremonial was a sacred thing; the slightest sound of the voice, the smallest step, the minutest gesture of those officiating were anticipated, and indicated in the rituals with extreme care. It is enough to glance, through one of these books — for example, the ordinary of the cathedral of Laon, which was drawn up by the dean of the chapter just at the time of Philip Augustus — to be fright- ened at the interminable list of anthems, responses, psalms, prayers, hymns, and public ceremonies, marches, and pro- cessions to which the canons were subjected. Every day had its office, or rather its series of offices. The least significant of days, the one the least weighted down — for example, an ordinary week day, — still had five offices, or five " canonical hours," as they were then called: the THE CANON 107 office of matins at sunrise, the office of lauds, the office of the mass, after noon the office of vespers, and' at sundown the office of compline (completoriv/m) . Sundays the need increased, and there were nine offices: matins, lauds, prime, terce, high mass, sext, nones, vespers, and compline. And this only applied to ordinary Sundays; the complication of the services increased on days of great solenmity. To enter a little farther into details, take at random the offices of a week day: for example, the sixth day or Friday after Ascension. The office of matins comprises a chant called the invitatorium, three anthems, three psalms, and three lessons; laud, several anthems and prayers; mass, the traditional chants; vespers, certain anthems and chants; compline, a hymn and some prayers. And this is a minimum; on holi- days the number of chants grows to considerable proportions. It is well known how numerous festivals were in the calendars of the middle ages. To the regular festivals were added the festivals of saints honored in the diocese, the festivals of the martyr whose relics the church possessed. And, finally, the ordinary service, full as it was, was still more complicated by the services arising from endowments of masses for the dead. It was necessary to celebrate the anniversaries of the benefactors and great persons, lay and ecclesiastical, who had for some reason merited the recognition of the chapter. Manifestly, the religious functions of the canons of the mid- dle ages were not a sinecure. Add to this that the chapter was an electoral body, called upon to choose a bishop and certain canonical dignitaries and to name a certain number of cures ; that it was also a college of proprietors, which had a temporal seigniory to direct and administer. In the church, as weU as in the chapter, the canons were, therefore, sufficiently occupied. It is true that, as ministers of the ceremonies of the church, they were aided by a certain number of priests, of chaplains, and of clerics not members of the chapter. It is also true that, to adminis- ter their properties, they delegated certain of their number, known as provosts, to look after the material interests of the community. In spite of all this, there was in the chapters a considerable amount of work to distribute among the mem- bers; the professional obligations were pressing, so pressing 108 SOCIAL FRANCE that the canons — and this is merely human — sought means of divesting themselves of them, or at least of lightening their tasks. So it came that, at the time of which we write, ecclesiastical authorities were constantly forced to hinder this tendency and, by constraint or otherwise, compel the members of the chapter to fulfil the duties of their offices. That was the chief difficulty. The canons were always ready to take the revenues of their prebends — that is to say, the part of the property of the chapter which had been assigned to each of them, — but they showed less willingness to reside and take part in the offices. Certain of them had never put foot into the church to which they were attached ; they were canons in partihus, provided with benefices else- where. They only belonged to a chapter for pecuniary rea- sons, to receive an income. Others were always traveling outside of the town in which they should have been living, on the pretext of studying or making a pilgrimage. Finally, others absented themselves simply to go into business or to become lawyers, and they did not even take the trouble to ask for leave of absence from the head of the chapter. A letter which Pope Urban III in 1187 sent to the provost of the chapter of Maguelonne instructs us clearly on this point. " It is not without astonishment that we bear reports of the eon- duet of certain of your canons. They go away without your per- mission, to study civil law or profane literature, or they even absent themselves for worldly affairs, so as to be able to give themselves pleasure the more easily. Some of them are even more audacious; they leave your chapter to ofiSciate in other churches. This is abso- lutely wrong and contrary to the rules. If one of your canons, after having taken the oath and the cloth of his order, emancipates him- self to such a degree as to go into outside occupations, we authorize you in spite of any appeal to correct and punish him." Instead of punishing and putting down the evil which had established itself, the church judged it better to prevent it by making certain concessions to human weakness and by subjecting the chapters in the other things to a rigorous observance. At the end of the twelfth century and at the beginning of the thirteenth the chapters imposed on them- selves, or received from the superior authority of the bishop THE CANON 109 or the pope, miimte rules about the " stage " and residence. These rules resemble each other greatly in their essential dispositions. One need only know a few to know them all. As types, one can cite the statutes of the cathedral of Noyon of 1213 and of 1217, that of the collegiate church of Saint- Spire of Corbeil of 1203, those of the cathedral of Chartres of 1208 and 1222, and the reform of the Parisian collegiate church of Saint-Marcel of 1205. There are everywhere the same dispositions. On one side, they grant the canons the liberty of absenting themselves temporarily in certain cir- cumstances recognized as legitimate : a sojourn at the schools or at the university, a pilgrimage, personal service to the bishop. On the other hand, the church consents not to re- quire work of them for the entire year: sometimes they are given six months of non-residence as at Chartres, sometimes four months as at Noyon and at Paris, on the condition that for the rest of the term of service they be aided by a vicar, to whom they must give a part of their revenue, and that they be represented in the cloister by a decent establishment. To be classed as a canon " resident "-^that is to say, a resident with full powers, enjoying all his prebends — a canon must first have made a " stage " in the chapter, a sort of super- numerary service for six months, and then he must meet the conditions of actual -residence indicated above. Eesident canons with foreign titles, foranei, are admitted to the chap- ter; but they do not receive the revenues of their prebends. One part of this revenue is taken for the vicar who replaces them, and the rest is divided among the resident canons. Every canon guilty of illegal or overlong absence is con- sidered as a *' stranger ": that is to say, he loses the enjoy- ment of his prebend. These are the general rules; but the statutes about resi- dence contain the most detailed prescriptions to prevent a canon from circumventing the law. Those of 1213 and 1217 for the cathedral of Noyon in this respect show a curious minuteness. Suppose, for example, that a resident canon asked to spend a year at the schools. It might be an indi- rect means of getting free from service and of leaving with- out any particular object, while enjoying his prebend. The case is anticipated. The student-canon is forced to actual no SOCIAL FRANCE study during his year: he is authorized to take only a three months' vacation. If he leaves the university before time, he is obliged to come back to the chapter and to be in residence as usually required. To take a long journey — for example, to make a pilgrimage to Rome — ^he must have the permission of the chapter, and, when he returns, he is stiU forced to reside for a certain time. At the same time, the canon can be delegated for service to the bishop without losing his standing of resident, but he is not allowed to leave the bishop. If he leaves him before the usual time, he must return to the chapter and do his duty for a fixed period as a compensation. We know very well that the most severe and most minute rules were violated. In the middle ages, more than at any other period, personal privileges, individual dispensations, given by the pope or by the chapter itself, enabled one to evade the law. In the statute of Nbyon of 1217 appeared significant reservations such as these : ' ' without leave hav- ing been obtained, without special dispensation." It was the way for clever or moneyed people to get through the meshes of the net. To constrain the canons really to be in residence, another measure was taken. If the respect for the rule was not enough, men were influenced by money. If a canon re- mained in residence in order not to be deprived of his prebend, if he remained in his cloister or his city, he could still arrange to attend church irregularly. He passed whole days without appearing, in the choir, avoided certain offices, especially the office of matins, or he left before the end of the services. In doing so he committed what, in the time of Philip Augustus, was called marrantium, fraud. Certain chapters came to provide pecuniary punishments against the irregulars. In October, 1219, that of the cathe- dral of Laon, among other reforms, adopted a series of penalties for each infraction of professional duty: each of- fice missed, each chant unperformed, cost the delinquent a forfeit of a certain number of sous or deniers. But this system was not always easy to apply; it irritated the canons, without making them much less negligent. In- stead of punishing through forfeits, it was judged better to attract through the allurement of tokens of attendance, or. THE CANON 111 as they were then called, ** distributions." The distributions of money or even in kind are one of the characteristic traits of the profession of canon, one of the most curious sides of the institution. A canon received not only the more or less steady revenues which came to him from his prebend ; he was also paid every time — or as often as it was necessary — that he appeared at the choir to do his duty. The more assiduous he was, the more he profited. These continual distributions of sous and deniers to the canons and the chaplains were indeed novel spectacles, which, however, did not at all scan- dalize the middle ages. For these distributions occurred right in the choir of the church, often in full view of every- body- The canons immediately received the price of an of- fice executed, of an anthem sung. More than that, the canons did not only receive money ; they received payments in kind, wine, and even quarters of meat. Under certain circum- stances a canon was even given a full meal, pastus, which was served in the refectory of the chapter by the officer called the cook, coquus, who was attached to the community. Let us, for example, open the ordinary of the cathedral of Laon, and let us take the regular order of offices for the week which precedes Christmas. On Monday, one of the dignitaries of the chapter begins the anthem O clavis David, and he distributes two measures of wine to his colleagues. On Tuesday, it is the turn of the grand archdeacon; after the anthem he serves the canons with two measures of wine. On Thursday the wine is furnished by the hospitaler, on Friday by the chamberlain. On great festival days the bishop takes part in the offices, but this participation is far from being gratuitous. At the mass on Christmas, writes the editor of the ritual, he remains standing before the altar, surrounded by canons, priests, deacons, and subdeacons. He says the Confiteor, and each of his assistants advances and kisses him, as they kissed in the middle ages, on the lips. Then he says the prayer, and two canons, clothed in silk copes, chant the lauds before him. Then they approach and the bishop gives each of them twelve deniers " of good money." The same distribution follows to the cantor, to the subcantor, and to the other officers of the chapter. After the office of the sext, the bishop, with the dean and canons. 112 SOCIAL FEANCE goes to the refectory. They take their places. The steward — for the chapter, like every feudal lord, had its great offi- cers — rings a bell and says the Benedicite. The chaplain gives the benediction. Two subdeacons bring the bishop the water and towel ; the master of ceremonies, regnarius, or some one else, gives a talk; the musicians sing before the bishop during the whole meal. At the second course the stroke of the handbell is heard; benediction is said by the chap- lain, and he is given a leg of mutton, a large loaf, and a half -pint of wine. Then another benediction is pronounced by the hospitaler. He is given a piece of pork on a dish. Two canons standing before the table of the bishop sing a hymn, and the bishop gives them some money. On Maunday Thursday, after the same ritual, when the ceremony of wash- ing the altars has been terminated, the bishop gives them a measure of wine, which tha canons drink in the chapter- room. On Easter day, as at Christmas, the bishop gives a distribution of deniers, and it is the same at all the great feasts. In the cathedral of Paris, at Notre-Dame, anthems were sung, which, one might say, had a money value: those who sang them had a right to a distribution. The expense which they entailed was paid partly by the bishop, partly by the dean or head of the chapter, partly by the canons who fulfilled the functions of provosts. Eighteen of these anthems, bring- ing money or food, were sung in the week preceding Christ- mas. One of them was followed by a distribution of seventy rolls and seventy measures of wine to the clergy of the cathedral. There was a distribution at the time of the installation of a new canon, of course at his expense. There was also a distribution at the time of each of the administrative acts performed by the chapter, at the time of the emancipation of serfs, the sale of lands, unexpected changes in the per- sonnel of the officers charged with administering the capitular goods. But it must not be supposed that the canons were remunerated only on these uncertain occasions and on great feast days. They were remunerated daily, even for ordinary services, but especially when they were present at matins. The deniers of the morning (denarii matutinales) were a fund THE CANON 113 of special importance, for attendance of the clergy at matins was difficult to attain and, the ordinary resources of the chapter not sufficing, many individuals, to assure the safety of their souls, made foundations or left legacies specially designed for the distribution of money to the participants at matins. On this point documents are not lacking; among the foundations contemporary with Philip Augustus, it is enough to mention that of the sons of Aseelin, dean of Saint- Marcel, who in memory of their father, who died in 1180, gave to Notre-Dame twenty sous of income ad denarios matu- tinorum; that of 1189, likewise designed to recompense the clergy, whether canons or not, who came to the choir at day- break; finally, the foundation of Bishop Maurice of Sully, who left an important sum, one hundred livres (fifteen thou- sand francs) for poor clerics who celebrated the office of matins, ad denarios matutinales pauperihus clericis. This seems to show that the titled canons, those who were pro- vided with a good prebend, did not voluntarily appear at this office; they left the proceeds of it to clerics outside of the chapters, to the auxiliary priests, with whom the cathedral was filled. The endowments of anniversaries for the repose of the souls of certain persons, for the benefactors, both male and female, of the chapter, were extremely numerous; it was a new source and a very bountiful one, upon which they drew to establish new distributions. Here the facts are more abundant. It almost suffices to open the cartulary of Notre- Dame of Paris at hazard: in 1200, on the anniversary of Hugh of Chelles, a distribution of six deniers to all those who assist in the office ; in 1204, on the anniversary of Simon of Money, canon of Paris, forty sous to be distributed; in 1205, on the anniversary of a canon of Dun-le-Roi, sixty sous (six hundred francs), to be distributed as follows: on the day of the anniversary the members of the chapter are to re- ceive fifteen sous at mass, fifteen sous at vespers, and the remaining thirty sous on the day that the anniversary of Thibaud, bishop of Paris, is celebrated. In 1208, another bishop of Paris, Eudes of Sully, left the chapter the neces- sary sum to found several distributions of deniers and sous — one on Saint Stephen's day, another on the Circumcision, 114 SOCIAL FRANCE one on the anniversary of the death of the donor, another on Saint Bernard's day to the clergy who should be at matins; finally, another for Good Friday, on the occasion of the ' ' washing of feet ' ' : that is to say, of the ceremony which consisted of washing the feet of the poor. In 1211, Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, insured services on his anni- versary; each of the canons was to receive twelve deniers at vigils and as much at mass ; the assistant clergy, three deniers at vigils and three at mass. In 1219, the dean of the chapter, Hugh Clement, left Notre-Dame a still more important legacy. Every day of Lent, excepting Sunday, the feet of thirteen poor people were to be washed in the refec- tory of the chapter ; there was to be a distribution of money to these same poor people, and to the clerics who performed the ceremony. There were to be further distributions on the anniversary of the birth of the donor: all the members of the chapter should receive six deniers at the vigil and six at the mass. This was the regular rate for the ministrant. These facts suffice to give an idea of the number of special ceremonies and the quantity of money to be divided which came from the foundation of anniversaries or of masses for the dead. And yet we are far from knowing the number of these legacies; in the cartularies only those which serve to recall the memory of dignitaries of the chapter or of per- sons of note are indicated. But the people did not leave money only ; devout people, or those who wished that their souls should not suffer too long in the other world, left endowments for distributions of food. They instituted what were called ' ' pasts " or " stations ' ' : that is, distributions of bread, of wine, and of meat to the canons and to the clerics of the choir. In the Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Paris there is a rule of 1230, only seven years after the death of Philip Augustus, which exhibits the ar- rangements made by the canons of Notre-Dame in matters of this kind under his reign, and, without much doubt, much earlier. Besides the stations founded by individual dona- tions, there were public and traditional stations, which oc- curred on certain fixed days at the expense of the bishop and of certain dignitaries of the chapter, or of certain Pari- sian churches. A distribution of this kind generally cost THE CANON 115 ten livres, that is about fifteen hundred francs. For ex- ample, at Easter and at Christmas the clerics of the choir received one hundred half-pints of wine and one hundred large loaves; at Pentecost the station of pork consisted of one hundred and thirty-seven portions of meat, or frustra, which the canons or clerics divided, the highest in dignity, as always, receiving a double portion. On the feast days of Saints Gervais and Protais nine rams were distributed; each ram was cut into fifteen pieces, which the clerics as- sisting at the office carried home. The cook of the chapter had a right to all the skins, and his three under- cooks, minores servientes de coquina, took the feet and the heads. At the stations or distributions of pork, the chamber- lain and the cook of the chapter had for their part the blood and the bowels. Everything was regulated with this minuteness. But it must be acknowledged that these details give us a singular idea of what continually happened inside of collegiate churches. We find it hard to associate religious services with the distribution of money and food; to harmonize the uninterrupted sound of chanting with the clinking of money ; to conceive of chapters which are counting-houses and restau- rants, where the canon need only appear and sing to be paid and fed. It is true that, at the time when the rule of 1230 was drawn up, the inconveniences of distributions in kind were being felt and were gradually being replaced by a distri- bution of an equivalent amount of money. This was then a general tendency; in the feudal world, thanks to economic progress, pecuniary contributions were being substituted for fines in kind, for the corvee, for personal services. There- fore, the collecting became much easier. In the churches the services could only gain in calm and dignity by it. Nev- ertheless, the use of stations and even of real meals, or banquets, continued a long time. Thus, in 1177, a count of Champagne had founded a memorial service for himself in a collegiate church of Notre- Dame of Oulchy, consisting of two dinners, which should follow the funeral service. At the first dinner, all the clergy who should present themselves were to be served, and the 116 SOCIAL FRANCE menu was fixed by the donor: the first course a dish of cold pork, the second course a dish of goose, third course chicken fricassee, " garnished," says the deed of foundation, " with good sauce thickened with the yellow of eggs." It is to be noted that everything was anticipated. The second meal resembled the first, except that beef was served in place of the cold pork. Each guest had the right to a half-pint of wine, and the quality of this wine was determined : it was to be a good drinkable wine, halfway between the most deli- cate and the cheapest. The memory of these banquets lasted for twenty years in the chapter of Oulchy. It was in 1203 that Blanche, countess of Champagne, proposed to transform the two meals into monetary distributions. Each of them cost about thirty sous, that is, six hundred francs to-day. The clergy who appeared received money. One cannot say that the change pleased them greatly. These love-feasts were the joy of our fathers. It was sweet to eat and drink in the holy place before the eye of the Lord. When the canons took the trouble to be in residence, their lives were spent in the choir of their churches and in the cloisters which were next to them. Every cathedral and collegiate church consisted of two entirely distinct parts: the space open to the faithful, to the people, and that which was reserved for the canons. On the altars of the lateral nave, of the transept, of the apsis, and in general in all the chapels of the periphery, masses and the anniversary services were celebrated by clergy who were not a part of the chapter ; these were the chaplains. In great cathedrals, such as Notre-Dame of Paris, this auxil- iary clergy was often numerous, for the faithful had the right to found chaplaincies on the condition of furnishing the in- come necessary to maintain the cure and the worship in his chapel. It was thus that, in 1217, a citizen of Paris and his wife instituted a chaplain in the church of Notre-Dame solely for the purpose of saying daily masses for the repose of their souls. All rich and devout people being able to give them- THE CANON 117 selves this luxury of founding a perpetual or a temporary mass, the number of clergy who, without being canons, lived from the altars in collegiate churches was considerable and in a way unlimited. Among these clergymen or these chap- lains some had the privilege of serving in the choir at the high altar, with the dignitaries and members of the chapter. And the chief of these clerics was an important person; he was called the " grand chaplain " or simply " chaplain." The ministration of this priest was necessary to the canons, many of whom had not received the priesthood; he had a conspicuous place in all solemn ceremonies and received a part of the distributions. The church of a chapter was, therefore, filled with clerics, who sometimes officiated in the chapels, sometimes in the choir. But the choir was primarily the domain of the canons ; it belonged to them as their own ; it was there that they had their places, their stalls, radiating from the sanctuary, ac- cording to the character of their titles and of their seniority. The choir was that reserved part to which the faithful had no access. It is well known that, at the end of the middle ages, all the choirs of capitular churches were more or less inclosed, at first by a partition which served as a support to the back of the stalls and ran around the high altar, and also by a loft in front of the stalls, such as that we still see at Saint- Etienne-du-Mont. The choir, under these conditions, was a little church within a church; it was generally raised several steps above the rest of the building, so that the people could hardly see the officials, save through the grilles of the doors or when the latter mounted the gallery of the loft, there to read the epistle or gospel. Were the choirs already inclosed at the time of Philip Augustus, at the time when the great gothic churches were everywhere being built? On this point VioUet-le-Duc ad- vances a theory which most archeologists have accepted and repeated without much reflection. According to him, when the bishops constructed cathedrals — that is, at the close of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries — they did it in opposition to the monastic spirit; they wanted the church to be really the home of the people, open even 118 SOCIAL FRANCE to popular assemblies, and wished the faithful to be in con- tinuous touch with the clergy; therefore, no inclosures, no lofts. These could only have been put in later on, in the second half of the thirteenth century or in the fourteenth century, after long dissension between the bishops and their canons, the latter seeking for independence and wanting to be entirely shut off from the worshipers. Viollet-le-Duc is a very learned architect and a designer much above the average, but as an historian he must be taken cautiously. His theories must be tested; this one seems un- tenable ! At all times canons of cathedral churches have con- sidered these edifices, and especially the choir, as their ex- clusive domain, and one must remand the theory of the demo- cratic tendencies of the bishops who built our cathedrals to the realm of fiction. If it is true that the chapters did not build the inclosures and the lofts of stone before the end of the thirteenth century, there is nothing against be- lieving that before that time the canons surrounded them- selves with inclosures of wood or of tapestries and drap- eries, which screened them from the sight of the people. In the sources of the time of Philip Augustus, there is fre- quent mention of the dorsalia, or of the cloths suspended in the choir behind the seats of the canons. Everything leads one to think that, from the very time that the construction of the cathedrals began, the canons had the idea that the choir was a sacred place, reserved to the officials and forbidden to the laity, an idea which the permanent partitions of stone later expressed and materialized in a most significant way. They also wished to be in their own quarters outside of the church, in the cloister. When one speaks of the chapters of cathedrals and of collegiate churches, the word cloister has two meanings. It indicates either a building adjoining a church, a gallery of arcades, square or rectangular in form, analogous to the cloisters of the abbeys and like them serving as a promenade for the canons — such, for example, as the still existing cloisters of the cathedrals of Rouen, Laon, Noyon, and Saint Lizier; or (and this is the most common meaning in the sources- of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) it simply designates an inclosure, real or imaginary, within THE CANON 119 which are the private houses of the canons. These inclosures contained varying amounts of land, sometimes an entire quar- ter of a city. None but canons' houses were allowed within them, though not all canons' houses were situated there. There were some which were outside the cloister proper, though enjoying the same rights. Under Philip Augustus, as uuader his predecessors and successors, all the canons of Paris were required to have their lodgings in the cloister situated north and east of Notre-Dame; in the beginning of the fourteenth century, the cloister of the Cite contained only thirty-seven canons' houses, although the canons were almost sixty in number. What characterized the cloisters of chapters is that they had the privilege of immunity. This immunity was clearly defined in a bull of Innocent III given to the canons of Laon in 1206, which in turn is merely a confirmation of a bull of Pope Calixtus II of 1123. Neither the power of the king nor that of the bishop could be exercised in the limits of the cloister, where the houses of the brotherhood were found. No one save the dean of the chapter, and he only after a consultation with the canons and in accordance with their decision, had the right to enter it and arrest any one. In 1200, Philip Augustus solemnly confirmed the liberty and immunity of the cloister of Paris and threatened any one who should violate it with the direst penalties. Naturally, the canons everywhere reached out to appropriate the build- ings embraced within the inclosure, and ecclesiastical author- ity at least tried to exclude from the cloister the kind of inhabitants that tend- ^ to compromise its religious character. In 1203, the chapter v^f Saint-Spire of Corbeil decided that the cloister could not be inhabited by a Jew. A bull of Pope Lucius III, of 1183, informs us that the cloister of Saint- Pierre, at Troyes, counted among its proprietors some lay- men who rented their houses to minstrels, actors, innkeepers, and even to lewd women. The pope ordered the proprietors to occupy their houses themselves or to rent them to mem-' bers of the clergy. Presently, the greatest possible precau- tions were taken to prevent even the houses of laity in the vicinity of the cloister from being a cause of scandal to the canons within the inclosure. 120 SOCIAL FRANCE In 1223, a citizen, Etienne Berout, wanted to build a house in Paris fronting upon a cloister of Notre-Dame. The bishop intervened and imposed the following conditions on him: He must not, without the express authorization of the chap- ter, erect a building more than six feet above the cloister's inclosure ; he must take good care to put no window or open- ing in the wall which overlooked the cloister, save a dormer window, closed, barred, and high enough so that one could not from it look down into the cloister. The lateral walls of the new structure should get light through the same kind of window. In return for the graciousness which the canons showed him by letting him carry his building six feet above the wall, he agreed to give the chapter a sum of one hundred Parisian sous (twelve hundred francs). The charter which tells of this arrangement proves that the cloister of the chapter of Paris was, under Philip Augustus, already inclosed by a wall. But this was not the case everywhere at that time ; the cloister of the canons of Chartres, for example, was not walled until the middle of the thirteenth century. The custom of surrounding the space reserved for canons' houses by a continuous wall had many reasons, especially the neces- sity of defending this place of refuge against the lay powers, and even against the bishop, and also the need of defining the precise extent of the territory under the immediate juris- diction of the chapter. A peculiarly rare document gives us a glimpse of the interior of a canon's house. In 1220, the dean and the chap- ter of Saint-Pierre-en-Pont at Orleans, in consideration of a rental of fifteen Parisian sous (about one hundred and eighty francs), rented a furnished house situated in the cloister to a nephew of one of the canons. The enumeration of these furnishings is instructive. There are: linens — two table- cloths, two towels, six sheets; furniture — six coffers or chests, four beds with four blankets and five pillows, three chairs, two tables ; utensils — three copper cauldrons, one bronze caul- dron, one bronze plate, one iron plate, three drinking glasses, one trivet, one fireiron with nippers, two mortars with three pestles, a series of receptacles for measuring grains and liquids, and finally a pail with a cord. If that is all the furniture of a canon, it must be said that, at THE CANON 121 least in a small provincial chapter, there was not much luxury. The canon is, however, a person of high position in the social world, and the chapter of which he is a member forms a real collective seigniory. It has a chief, who is elected by all the canons, and who usually has the title of dean (decanus) ; sometimes, however, — as at Soissons, Reims, Maguelonne, — that of provost. A dean or provost of a chapter is a very potent person, capable of coping with a bishop. He personifies the judicial power of a chapter, and can, like the bishop, have his tribunal, his sphere of power. His election sometimes gives rise to incidents which anger the chapter and which carry their reverberation far beyond the cathedral church. We shall mention only one case. In 1218, the cardinal legate, Robert of Courgon, came to Amiens, visited the chapter, and found at its head a dean named Simon, who was uneducated and unworthy in other respects. He deposed Simon and, greatly irritated at the canons for making such a choice, he deprived them of the right of naming a successor. This right he reserved to the pope. Hardly had he left Amiens before the canons, little caring to obey, came together to elect. But, as it often hap- pened, they were divided: the majority voted for a canon of the seigniorial house of Roye; the minority for a well- known teacher and preacher, the learned Jean Halgrin of Abbeville. Out of this came quarrels and lawsuits. The inajority, which had on its side the common law, carried its cause before the archbishop of Reims, the judge regular; the minority, which believed it had made the better choice, ad- dressed itself to Pope Honorius III. The papacy, which was sustaining the universities against the bishops, also had reasons for interfering in the affairs of the chapters, and thus extending its authority over them at the expense of that of the bishops and of the metro- politans. Honorius III first delegated the bishop of Arras to settle the differences; then he decided on a more radical measure: he cancelled the election by the majority of the canons of Amiens and, by virtue of his office, he invested 122 SOCIAL FRANCE Jean Halgrin with the deanship, ordering the abbot of Saint- Victor to install him. There was a furious outcry of the canons, one of them, a provost of the chapter, directing the resistance. When the abbot of Saint-Victor arrived at Amiens, the provost received him with the most vigorous pro- tests and claimed that the bull of the pope had been secured, and even influenced in its form, by the lies of intriguers; he appealed to a pope better informed. But the delegate of Honorius did not consider this appeal of any account, and, seeing that the recalcitrants would not give ear to anything, he even excommunicated the canon who was the author of the protest. Excommunicate an appellant ! this was a serious step, out of which came a new suit. The adversaries of Halgrin filed a complaint at Rome against the abbot of Saint- Victor, and another suit grew out of the first. The question was whether the provost and his partizans were excommuni- cated before or after the time of his appeal. The pope was obliged to ask the dean of the church of Soissons to make a careful inquiry into this special point before giving his final decision of the main question. Meanwhile, the candidate of the minority of Amiens, Jean Halgrin, impatient to see things terminated and to enjoy his deanship, arrived at Rome. He came before the pope and pleaded his own cause with the skill of a man accus- tomed as preacher to impose his own opinion on his hearers; he would either resign the deanship or the papacy must energetically support, him against his enemies and, without taking account of any appeal and without any other inquiry or suit and despite any opposition and all dilatory tactics, must maintain the choice it had made of him. Brought to the wall, Honorius III refused to accept the resignation of a doctor so universally renowned for his eloquence, his knowl- edge, and his virtue. An attempt to prove that the Holy See was deceived by a lie is an insult to its dignity. And on November 22, 1218, by an energetic act which was not characteristic of him, Honorius wrote to the abbot of Sainte- Genevieve, the principal archdeacon of Paris, and to Doctor Peter of Capua, quashing all pending eases, revoking the order he had given to start new ones, and resolutely main- tained Jean Halgrin of Abbeville in the deanship of Amiens. THE CANON 123 The episode is instructive; it proves two things: first, that the place of dean of a chapter stirred up many ambitions; and, second, that the court of Rome made itself sole and supreme judge of the differences between canons. The authority of a bishop would previously have sufficed to de- cide them. Here is another manifestation of the new law. The dignity of dean was as lucrative as honorable, for, in prebends as well as in distributions, he had always a right to a double share. This dignity was in itself so considerable that certain chapters considered it dangerous; they took pre- cautions against the chief they had chosen. At Noyon, according to a statute of 1208, the dean, before receiving the obedience of the canons, must take a solemn oath. He swears to conform to a whole series of precise prescriptions and prohibitions which are imposed on him. He will con- tinuously be in residence, he will not accept any functions detrimental to the community, he will not hold two positions in the chapter, he will not oppose the execution of the stat- utes which control the partition of the prebends; at harvest time, he will not go into the barns of the chapter and obtain procurations — that is to say, take meals at the expense of the local officers of the inhabitants; he will not suspend a canon and seize his prebend without having consulted the chapter ; he will not receive clerics into the choir without the permission of the chapter. In brief, the canons do not wish their dean to become a sort of absolute ruler. He must al- ways act with the approbation of his colleagues and he must not consider the goods of the chapter as his private property. But, on the other hand, they recognize these his rights : he is the natural judge of the other canons and he exercises the cure of their souls. He is at once the magistrate and the priest of the community. Under the dean, in the second rank, was the cantor, charged with the important service of choral exercises, of policing the church, and of supervising the clergy outside of the chapter. He carried a baton as a mark of his dignity. A third dignitary was especially charged with the equip- ment and the maintenance of the establishment; he was the treasurer, called the chamberlain in certain chapters. He was the manager of the chapter, the minister of the finances 124 SOCIAL FRANCE of the seigniory. He had charge of the capitular treasure, not only the funds, but also the objects of value and the archives. At the end of the twelfth century, the treasurers or cham- berlains of many collegiate churches found their task greatly lightened by the creation of the new offices of church- wardens, matricularii, or of keepers, custodes. These, with their assistants, were charged with the repairing, mending, presenting of objects used in the ceremonies in the choir, with lighting the candles, ringing the bells, and guarding the church. They were both sacristans and beadles. The institution of churchwardens at the time of Philip Augustus is revealed especially by two documents r an instrument of Eudes of Sully, bishop of Paris in 1204, and a decree of 1221 by the chapter of Laon. The clerical churchwardens, much superior in dignity to the lay churchwardens, partici- pated in the honorary and pecuniary privileges of the canons. They officiated in the choir and took part in the distributions ; but all these guardians were obliged to sleep by turns in the church and were responsible for anything that disappeared. Finally, the ecoldtre, or chancellor, was charged with the double duty of sealing the charters of the chapter and of superintending the school of the cloister and, in general, all the schools of the diocese. In the church this dignitary was responsible for the lessons, as the cantor was for the chants. He was the librarian, was charged with keeping the books, correcting and repairing them if necessary. He was responsible for lessons which had been omitted by day or night, and was forced to read them. He examined the clergy charged with reading. He named and superintended the teachers charged with instruction. His strict duty was to be continually in residence, and to become a priest within the year in which he undertook his duties. This, at least, is what was exacted from the chancellor of the cathedral of Noyon at the opening of the thirteenth century, according to a document which carefuUy enumerates all his duties. Ordinarily, the seals of chancellors picture them in the customary way, holding a book. But Manasses, the chan- THE CANON 125 cellor of Amiens, sealing a charter of 1207, did not hesitate to have himself represented in the attitude and occupation which, without doubt, pleased him best; he appeared in hunting costume, on horseback, with a bird on his wrist and a dog following him. This chancellor, like so many other canons and dignitaries of a chapter, was evidently a noble, who had the tastes of his class and led a noble's life. With this characteristic seal, we can compare that of the chapter of Eoye in Picardy, which gives no indication whatever of ecclesiastical life; quite the contrary. These canons, mani- festly warlike like all Picards, in 1211 wished to be pictured as knights at a gallop, with halberts, round casques, bucklers, and proudly waving banners. Here we are far removed from the choir-stall and the altar. It is because, at the end of the twelfth century, the tendency of representatives of the large seigniorial houses to enter the churches of the canons was an accomplished fact. The chap- ters then recruited themselves in aristocratic circles, not only because the lay lords brought influence to bear on the nomi- nations of canons through the bishop or dean, but also because they directly controlled a number of prebends in all parts of France. There were canonships which, through a more or less dissembled hereditary right, devolved upon the clerical members of high baronial families. At Paris, to take one example only, the collation of the prebend of the chapter of Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre — that is to say, the nomi- nation of canons — was in 1209 regulated as follows: until his death, the bishop of Beauvais, Philip of Dreux, cousin of Philip Augustus, was to have the right of bestowing prebends; after him this right was to be exercised alter- nately by the bishop of Paris and by Eobert, Count of Dreux. The sons of noble families were not content with filling the chapters; they shamelessly accumulated the capitular digni- ties. One of the first ministers of Philip Augustus, "William of Champagne, nicknamed " of the white hands," who died as archbishop of Reims and cardinal, had commenced as a youth by holding livings in many chapters at once; he was simultaneously canon of Cambrai and Meaux, provost of the cathedrals of Soissons and of Troyes and of the collegiate chapter of Saint-Quiriaee of Provins. This accumulation 126 SOCIAL FRANCE was formally prohibited by the canons, but law did not exist for the powerful house of Champagne. When the great feudal houses set such an example, the small nobles in the lost corners of remote provinces did not hesitate to practise the same abuses to their own profit. It was not only the feudal spirit which reigned in these chapters; even feudal practices came to prevail in them. In certain respects, the relations of the dignitaries among them- selves, and especially to the bishops, were relations of vassals to a suzerain. A curious document, which was written be- tween 1197 and 1208, gives the official status of the vassals of Paris at the time of Philip Augustus. There we read as follows : "The dean of l,he church of Paris is the liegeman of the bishop save for the fealty due the chapter. The cantor of Paris is the liegeman of the bishop, and promises him fealty. The chancellor of Paris is the liegeman of the bishop and also promises him fealty. All the archdeacons of the church of Paris are the liegemen of the bishop and are sworn to him. The chaplain of the bishop is also his liegeman. The dean of the chapter of Saint-Marcel is the liege- man of the bishop for his deanery. It is the same in the case of the deans of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and Saint-Cloud." So all these persons in the church were bound to the bishop by a feudal tie, by liege homage, and, as a result, they swore to the bishop with the ceremonial used for the investiture of vassals. One might call it a hierarchy of barons. Was not this a violation of the spirit and the institutions of the church and of ecclesiastical laws? Without doubt. The church could not properly allow the chaplains and the deans of chapters to be vassals of the bishops, as is proven at Noyon, for example, by the statute of May, 1208, in which the dean was expressly prohibited from doing homage to the bishop or from accepting any fief from him. But the cus- toms of the time and the influence of the environment were stronger than all prohibitions. The canons were petty lords, many of whom lived as lords in spite of the laws, and the chapters seemed impregnated with the habits and ideas of feudalism. That is why the preachers and the councils of THE CANON 127 the time of Philip Augustus denounced the worldly behavior of certain of these bodies and the scandalous lives of their members. None the less, public opinion considered the canon charged with a duty, the social usefulness of which was of the high- est order. The piety of the faithful continued to manifest itself by gifts of land or money to chapters, or even by the foundation of new collegiate churches or new communities of canons. Rich and devout individuals did not content them- selves with founding chaplaincies or enlarging the funds for distributions of celebrated churches; they created chap- ters designed to pray for the safety of their souls. That is what, for example, Gautier, a bishop of Nevers, did in 1201 when he made Saint-Leger of Tannay, which before had been a simple parish church, a collegiate church. The act of this foundation has come down to us, and it is inter- esting as it shows how they proceeded in the time of Philip Augustus to change a parish church into a chapter and cures into canons. People did not confine themselves to enriching chapters already in existence or to establishing new ones. As it was of general interest that the office of public prayer in the larger churches be accomplished with care and by persons worthy of this high mission, it was considered important that the canons should lead an edifying life conformable to the law of their institution. Therefore, public opinion obliged ecclesiastical authority to make frequent reforms in the organization of chapters. These decrees of reform emanating from the pope, from the bishops, or from the chapters themselves, began appearing in great numbers in the ecclesiastical cartularies at the end of the twelfth and, the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. Some had only a restricted bearing; they only imposed par- tial reforms. Others, on the contrary, aimed at a general reorganization of a community. At Paris, the chapter of Notre-Dame saw its ancient constitution more or less modi- fied by reforms of 1204, of 1208, of 1211, of 1213, and of 1216, and the movement for reform extended to the chapters 128 SOCIAL FRANCE dependent on the cathedral — at Saint-Germain I'Auxerrois in 1209, at Saint-Cloud in 1204, at Saint-Mareel in 1205, at Saint-Martin of Champeaux in Brie in 1205, at Saint-Thomas- du-Louvre in 1209, at Saint-Merry in 1219, Outside of Paris, and from one end of France to the other, we see the same effort to regularize the lives of canons and put the constitu- tions of chapters into harmony with the needs of the church and with the requirements of the faithful. For the cathedral of Noyon, statutes came almost without interruption each year, from 1183 to 1218. At Chartres, there were rules in 1208 and in 1222. At Saint-Spire of Corbeil, there were those of 1191, 1203, and 1208 ; at Bayonne, that of 1188 ; at Laon, those of 1201 and of 1219 ; at Saint-Salvi of AIM, the reform was in 1212 ; at the chapter of Saint-Corentin at Quimper, ini 1223, at Saint-Pierre of Troyes in Champagne, in 1183, etc. This enumeration of dates and of localities, taken at random from the whole range of territory, is of interest in itself, as it shows how seriously the age of Philip Augustus sought to secure order, peace, and regularity of conduct in the chap- ters, and how widespread this movement was. All these statutes resemble each other; as is natural, be- cause the spirit of reform everywhere attacked the same abuses and tried to introduce the same reforms. There were measures to force the canons to be in residence, to do their duties, to distribute the prebends more equitably, to regulate the rights of the dignitaries and the relations of the canons to the bishop, to create new offices, to organize the administra- tion of the domains of the chapter on a better basis, and to define accurately the method of electing officials, espe- cially the dean. It is by the study of these documents that one can discover the defects of the capitular regime and the more or less well-founded criticism to which it gave rise. But it was useless to multiply the rules and prohibitions, for customs and habits were stronger than the law. All that public opinion rebuked in the canons, all the vices of the institution arose from the fact that a chapter was at the same time a sacred body and a temporal seigniory, a college of priests, charged with celebrating religious offices, and an association of proprietors, interested in making their capital and lands yield good returns. The increasing recruit- THE CANON 129 ing of the chapters from aristocratic circles and the influence of the environment too often made these sons of nobles, tonsured and provided with a prebend, forget the religious character of their positions and to see only the financial and feudal side. Bishops, popes, and councils strove to bring the over- worldly canons back to the observance of their religious duties, to remind them that they were members of the clergy and that they should have the appearance and habits of such. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Stephen, Bishop of Mende, wrote a curious letter to Rome in which he strongly complained of the irregular life of his canons. " They are the reason," he said, " why the church has be- come an object of derision for the entire population of my diocese, and your Holiness must finally reform this state of affairs." The deans of the chapters were themselves obliged to point out the evil and to demand that it be reme- died. In 1183, the dean of the cathedral of Troyes denounced the canons of his church, who refused ordination, to the bishop and to Pope Lucius III: they failed to do their duties and persisted in using the priests outside of the chapter as sub- stitutes. The pope ordered the bishop of Troyes to excom- municate the canons who refused to become priests, and they decided that in the future no stranger would be received at the high altar to celebrate mass. The council of Paris, of 1212, and that of Montpellier, held in 1214, have left several rules relating especially to the canons, and the accusations against them are instructive. First, the clergy lived and dressed too luxuriously — they wore red or green clothes, slippers, and short, flowing cloaks; on horseback they used golden bits and spurs ; they had hawks in their houses and they carried falcons on their arms; in short, externally, they were like laymen. All these abuses must cease. In the cloister, where the houses of the canons were located, meetings for games and debauchery were held. This practice was formally prohibited. The canons were for- bidden, under pain of excommunication, to hold several benefices and were ordered to rid themselves of the extra ones they possessed within two months. Certain chapters had ignorant or incapable persons over them, because they in- 130 SOCIAL FRANCE sisted on taking the dean and other dignitaries from amongst themselves; if men who were capable of filling these offices were not found in the community, they must choose outsiders as officers. And the election must be honestly conducted; care must be taken to publish the day on which it was to be held, and to warn the absent canons, so that they could come and vote. Finally, members of chapters were absolutely prohibited from going into any kind of trade, from lending on security, and from practising usury. This last prohibition was not purposeless. Many docu- ments prove that rich chapters lent their capital at high interest and practised certain banking operations with profit. The chapter of Notre-Dame of Paris seems to have been par- ticularly rich. In 1216, it paid three hundred and sixty Parisian livres (almost forty thousand francs) for a golden vase ornamented with precious stones that an archbishop of Cologne had put on sale. From an act of 1204, it is clear that the canons lent money to the citizens of Paris. One of these, owing one hundred and thirty livres, having died, his widow paid thirty livres down; for the rest of the debt the chapter took the booth of a money-changer on the Grand pont, which she owned, as security. The same canons added the profits of agricultural enterprise to their financial ven- tures; they undertook large operations in the clearing of lands in the diocese of Paris, which brought them into trouble with the foresters of the king after 1185. The history of the chapter of Arras, under the administration of Raoul of Neuville, between 1203 and 1221, also puts beyond doubt the fact that, under the pretext of sales and the levying of tithes, the canons made loans at interest and realized considerable profits, which, after the death of the bishop who encouraged these operations, caused a number of lawsuits. The chapters clung to money, but they also clung to land; they did not neglect any means of enlarging their domains; they paid a good figure for land which was not given to them, and, when an important acquisition was at stake, all methods were fair in their eyes. In 1216, the canons of Saint-Martin of Tours, proprietors of the seigniory of Chablis and of its vineyards, found a chance to annex the lands of a certain Guy of Montreal; but the purchase price was considerable — THE CANON 131 two thousand livres (two hundred and fifty thousand francs) — and the chapter did not have the necessary funds on hand ; it did not hesitate to sell a part of the gold which covered the table of the high altar of Saint-Martin for seven hundred livres; a sad extremity, no doubt, but they thought that the piety of the faithful would make up for it. Chapters were like individuals; there were some which understood how to manage their fortunes and who were prosperous; others, on the contrary, who could not make both ends meet. They were debtors instead of creditors and some- times even found themselves bankrupt. Such was the situa- tion of the chapter of Maguelonne in 1197. We know this from a letter of Pope Celestine III, which enumerated the causes of the failure: bad harvests of grain and wine, fre- quent private wars, and incessant quarrels between the fac- tions among the canons. To help the chapter out of this bad situation, the pope allowed its dean, the provost of Mague- lonne, to take charge of all the churches which were subject to the community : that is, to confiscate their revenues, gradu- ally to cancel the debt, '' so heavy," says the pontifical bull, ' ' that the canons could not support its weight any longer, ' * It is easy to see that money played a predominant part in the documents relating to the canons. A very instructive study could be made of the division of prebends among the members of chapters. Ecclesiastical authority was constantly obliged to take measures to prevent the canons from consid- ering their prebends as their own property, which they could dispose of to related clerics. It became necessary to force holders of prebends to participate in the expenses of the community, for they found it convenient to take their rev- enues, and evade the expenses which the services and the administration of the domain entailed. Chapters had, at the end of a certain number of years, to be forced to make a new distribution of prebends; for the value of these parcels of land and revenues diminished or increased considerably in the course of time and equality of the holders of prebends no longer prevailed. It was even necessary, from time to time, to force the chapters to increase the number of their members and to divide their prebends; for, the capitular do- main growing or increasing in value, those who enjoyed it 132 SOCIAL FEANCE had a very natural tendency to keep the numbers small in order to get a larger prebend. This was why, in 1205, the church of Notre-Dame of Paris decided that the prebends of the vassal chapter of Saint-Martin of Champeaux, in Brie, should be cut in two. The value of each prebend had become over fifty livres: that is, a canon of Saint-Martin had over seven thousand five hundred francs of income. It was found that, in comparison with this revenue, there was too small a number of canons. Naturally, those who were in posses- sion objected; they were calmed by the concession that the doubling of the prebends should not take place until the death or retirement of the incumbents. This proves that, even in the middle ages, administrative reforms were effected without brutality. Really pious souls, austere consciences, were indignant at seeing communities of canons so much absorbed in temporal interests, in the form of lands and money. The preachers of the time of Philip Augustus stigmatized the eagerness with which canonships were pursued. This race for prebends angered them. " The candidates," said one of them, " fall into a delirium when there is a vacancy, as mad dogs do when the course of the moon wanes." Preachers thundered against the cupidity of the clerics who held several prebends in spite of the prohibitions of the councils. Prevostin of Cremona, chancellor of the church of Paris, and himself a canon, made this confession: " We clerics, we want everything, spiritual treasures and temporal treasures. But the idol, Dagon, falls and the law remains firm. Time passes and eternity remains. We seek to raise up Dagon and make the temporal equal to, and even put it above the spiritual. . . . What can one say upon seeing the mass sung for money in the house of God?" Another contemporary of Philip Augustus, Elinand, the converted trouvere, who had become a monk of Citeaux, probably alluded to the worldly canons when he indignantly wrote of priests who appeared in public dressed like women, " with their hair curled and well parted, their faces freshly shaven, their skins polished with pumice-stone, bareheaded, bare-shouldered, tattooed, with shod hands and gloved feet." THE CANON 133 [Sic] Other preachers denounced the bad spirit, the spirit of insubordination among the canons: "If their bishop decides to rebuke them, they immediately say that the right to correct them belongs only to the dean of the chapter. If the dean wishes to reprimand them, they reply that they are under the jurisdiction of the entire chapter and not under that of the dean." And in this instance the preachers, who had the habit of striking heavily and of enlarging on the truth in order to make an impression, did not exaggerate. The canons of the middle ages were not strongly addicted to obedience and peace ; one must admit that cloisters and even churches did not seem like sanctuaries of peace and of peaceful seclusion. Men quarreled in them as much as elsewhere, and often even came to blows. Most of the clerics, sons of nobles as we have said, having come out of military surroundings, had the disposi- tion of their class and were very bellicose. We shall not speak here of the wars which chapters in the cities or in the country had to wage against great and petty barons, who constantly tried to invade their domains, or against the citizens, who sought freedom from ecclesiastical seigniory. These will be considered later. It is enough, for the moment, to note that the necessity of defense against the attacks of the castellans and the barons gave a peculiar character to certain communities of canons. Especially in the rugged and mountainous country, or in provinces lack- ing a high suzerain strong enough to police the district, chap- ters were constantly exposed to pillage by the seigniors, were drawn into war by a stronger force, and were therefore organized accordingly. These canons had nothing ecclesias- tical about them but the tonsure ; they were veritable soldiers. Ordinarily of a rich and noble family, they were ever ready to call together their kinsmen and repulse their enemies. In reality, they were chiefs of bands which were not content to be on the defensive, but avenged unexpected insults and in their turn attacked the castellans of the neighborhood. At the time of Philip Augustus, the most notable example of such chapters was that of Saint- Julien of Brioude; there were several of the same kind in Auvergne, the land of 134 SOCIAL FRANCE feudal anarchy par excellence. The canons of Brioude were notorious and their conduct and military life caused great scandal. Philip of Harvengt, the abbot of Bonne-Esperance, in his book, De continentia clericorum, mentioned them as the strangest class of the warrior-priest. He described them as coming out of the choir, where they had just sung psalms and hymns, and running to put on helmets and breastplates to battle on the highways. " This abnormal situation," he said, '* was well known to bishops and popes, but it had to be tolerated ; the canons were compelled to defend themselves or the rapacity of the laity would have reduced the church to nothing." Exclude these exceptional communities, and consider only the chapters under usual conditions and the relations of canons to other members of ecclesiastical society! It must still be admitted that quarrels were frequent and intermi- nable ; indeed, that the state of war was practically permanent. It is not to be wondered at that churches sometimes had the appearance of strong castles. One would never finish if he undertook to write the his- tory of all the conflicts which occurred in cathedral and collegiate churches at the end of the twelfth and the begin- ning of the thirteenth centuries. It was not, however, a condition peculiar to this period of the history of France. Many of these quarrels had commenced long before the reign of Philip Augustus and ended a long time after. There were some that lasted almost as long as the medieval period itself; generations of canons transmitted them like an in- heritance. These clerics quarreled for centuries because, in spite of all the pronouncements of justice and of all the compromises, they never, at the bottom of their hearts, re- nounced the exercise of what they considered a right. In cities where several chapters existed there were conflicts between the various communities of canons. Often it was a cathedral which sought to have its preeminence recognized by the ordinary collegiate churches, which themselves desired independence: it was the hostility of the sovereign and his THE CANON 135 vassal. It suffices to see what happened in Troyes, in Cham- pagne, in 1189. The canons of the cathedral Saint-Pierre were fighting with the canons of Saint-Loup. The latter finally rec- ognized their dependence and signed a treaty of peace. They would assist at the high mass of Saint-Pierre on the four great feast days of the year as a sign of their dependence; but in return, by way of indemnification, the chamberlain of Saint-Pierre would pay five sous after each assistance to the cellarer of Saint-Loup. At Chalons-sur-Marne the canons of Notre-Dame paid a quit-rent to the cathedral chapter of Saint-Etienne, in accordance with an arrangement concluded in 1187. They were also constrained to assist in the proces- sions of the cathedral and to attend the services which were celebrated there on certain great feast days. In return, the canons of Saint-!fitienne would come to Notre-Dame on the four feasts of the Virgin. In 1206, these same canons of the cathedral of Chalons made a strange use of their priority; they ordered the demolition of the church of the vassal chap- ter of Saint-Nicolas, on the ground that it was too near the cathedral. The canons of Saint-Nicolas sent the pope a vig- orous complaint, and Eome ordered the chapter of Saint- Etienne to rebuild the church on the same place as the old' building. It was imperative to keep order among these clerics and to see that the small were not oppressed or ab- sorbed by the great. At Etampes, where there was no cathedral, the fight between the chapter of Notre-Dame and of Sainte-Croix lasted through the whole reign of Philip Augustus and far beyond it; popes, kings, and archbishops exhausted themselves in vain efforts to restore peace. How- ever, an agreement was reached in 1210, in the terms of which Sainte-Croix saw its defeat. Money matters had antagonized the two communities; they quarreled over the revenues of the parish. The agreement stipulated that the priests of Sainte-Croix should never ring bells for matins; that they should never accept gifts from the parishioners of Notre- Dame, that they should not make Holy-bread, that they should not visit the sick, that the cantor of Notre-Dame should have a good prebend at Sainte-Croix, and that the parish rights of the new town of Etampes should belong exclusively to Notre-Dame. It was Notre-Dame of Etampes which was the 136 SOCIAL FEANCE chief chapter, the sovereign power; to her must come the honor — and also the money. Let us now enter a cathedral church; we shall find many- kinds of disputes between members of the same community. We already know that the religious services were confided to two distinct personnels; side by side with the body of canons lived a college of priests or chaplains, charged with saying the innumerable masses founded by individuals, and even permitted to officiate at the high altar. But the canons did not agree with the chaplains; the priests of the choir were rivals of those of the chapels or the altar, who, having on the whole the heaviest burden to carry, tried to exempt themselves from the jurisdiction of the chapter and to mo- nopolize certain revenues. There were collegiate churches, like that of Saint-Spire of Corbeil, where the canons and the chaplains were always in a state of hostility ; and decrees like those of 1191 and 1209, and the oath required of the chaplains of Saint-Spire before they assumed their offices did not succeed in establishing harmony. But in the very bosom of the chapter, among the seigniors who held prebends, passions were strong and brutal and conflicts were numerous. Election contests were a first cause of trouble. In the election of high dignitaries the canons were almost always divided; the minority would not yield to the majority, be- cause in the middle ages votes were not only counted, they were weighed. Besides the major pars, majority, there was the sanior pars, the wiser party, and each party claimed to represent the wisest opinion. Thus there came the inter- minable suit in the court of Rome and, while awaiting judg- ment, an internal quarrel in the church itself, which often went as far as brawls. We have already noticed the events caused by the election of a dean in the chapter of Amiens. The animated incidents that were caused by the election of a mere satristan in 1186, as related by the cartulary of Maguelonne, are worth reading. One party of the canons of Maguelonne had irregularly elected a certain Guy as sacristan. The bishop and other canons were opposed to his installation. They excommunicated the intruder and his electors. Guy persisted in keeping the sacristy and doing THE CANON 137 his duty. At the request of the bishop, the jarchbishop of Narbonne came to Maguelonne to reestablish order. But the sacristan, firmly clinging to his office, called to his aid the son of the count of Toulouse and the lord of Montpellier himself. These laymen forced their way into the hall of the chapter, insulted and menaced the bishop and his ad- herents. Pope Urban III was obliged to interfere and send special agents to terminate the quarrel. Outside of the electoral period, peace was no better assured, for there were disputes between canons about prebends and parochial .rights and opposition of the plain prebendaries to the dignitaries, who were accused of over- stepping their powers and taking revenues which ought to have been given to the entire community. This was why, in 1215, the chapter of Notre-Dame of Paris was at strife with the chancellor, who was accused of having taken more than the right amount of the income from the seal of the chan- cellor. The most numerous and violent conflicts were those between the chapters and those of their number who, under the name of provosts, were charged with the temporal ad- ministration of the capitular domains. The tendency which in the feudal world caused all the officers and proxies of the lords to appropriate their offices, together with the territory on which the office rested, and to change their positions as agents and administrators into proprietorships, had also had its effect in these small ecclesiastical societies. The canons invested with provostships came to consider these their own property and to turn the rights and revenues, which belonged to the whole community, to their own profit. The community, having to fear complete spoliation, was obliged to counteract this unfortunate manifestation of the feudal spirit. It was compelled to reduce the provosts to their real positions, as agents, and to take from the recalcitrants the domains which they tried to appropriate. In consequence, there was serious strife during the whole of the twelfth century between the canons and their colleagues, the provosts (at Chartres, at the time of the celebrated Ivo of Chartres, it went as far as bloodshed). At the end of the twelfth century most of the chapters had succeeded in reclaiming their domains from the provosts and in confiding their administration directly to the 138 SOCIAL FRANCE prebendaries themselves, either by suppressing the office of provosts and making the provosts simple lay agents, or by leaving the provosts simply a nominal authority. But at the time of Philip Augustus certain chapters still fought: for example, at Bordeaux, where the canons of the cathedral of Saint-Andre, in 1210, obtained from one of their provosts the recognition of their rights of hunting, fishing, and justice on the land of the provost ; and even at Paris, where, in 1216, the chapter of Notre-Dame regulated the position of the provost and reorganized the whole administration of the do- main. As the stewardships became vacant, they were to be restored to the community, which would control them; and the living provosts were to have their hands tied in such a manner that it would be impossible to trade in the lands which had been intrusted to them. But the great subject of discord in the bosom of the churches, the most abundant source of conflicts, and the permanent cause of disorder in cathedrals was the ambiguous position of the bishop, who was at once the colleague and the superior of the canon. The cathedral belonged to the bishop and to the chapter; it was the undivided and limited territory which these two powers were obliged to share. Realizing the litigious and bellicose spirit of the men of the middle ages, one well understands that it was often the scene of strife. Formerly, the head of the diocese had full and complete power over the priests of the cathedral, as over those of the diocese ; the properties of the church were common to all of them; the episcopal power, spiritually as well as tem- porally, remained complete and absolute. But when the donations of the faithful had greatly increased the domain of the cathedral ; when, by the general law of the differentia- tion of organisms, the chapter had been separated from the bishop and capitular property from episcopal property, the bishop and canons gradually entered into competition. The chapter tried to make itself independent of the bishop first in temporal things, then even in spiritual things, and pres- ently succeeded with the aid of the popes, who, as we know, had an interest in diminishing the powers of the episcopacy. On many points the bishop and his chapter found them- THE CANON 139 selves in the position of two brothers who are enemies; and the bitterness of family hatreds is well known. Their rivalry arofee from a thousand different causes, and it appeared in a thousand different forms. They disputed over everything: the church itself, its treasure, the jurisdiction over the parishes, the right to elect certain officials of the diocese especially the archdeacons, the right to designate the holders of prebends, the right to lay excommunications, etc. And in all French provinces the same antagonism produced the same result. One could at hazard take the most dissimilar regions, as remote as possible from each other; in the time of Philip Augustus their condition in this respect never dif- fered. At Bayonne, in 1198, Pope Celestine III was obliged to intervene to regulate the division of the revenues of the church between the bishop and the chapter. At Quimper, in 1220, the strife between Bishop Renaud and the canons was still in an acute state, still more violent here because the two powers were closely associated, the bishop of Quimper being a real canon who took part in the daily distributions. Here, as almost everywhere, it was the chapter which carried the day. Renaud abandoned his claims to policing the choir and nominating the prior of the hospital, and he restored to the canons various objects he had appropriated. At Beau- vais, Bishop Philip of Dreux, in 1212, admitted that he had not the right to excommunicate subjects of the chapter. His successor. Miles of Nanteuil, in 1219, gave the canons the power of laying excommunications, of having them pub- lished in the parishes of the diocese, and assuring the exe- cution of them. But the officers of the bishop and the cures did not easily submit to the anathemas of the canons of Beauvais, and between 1219 and 1221 there resulted a curious incident. The cathedral chapter of Saint-Pierre had excom- municated Peter of Bury, a provost of the bishop, guilty of having imprisoned a sergeant of the canons. The cures of the different churches of Beauvais refused to publish the excommunication. The dean of the chapter several times commanded them to heed it ; finally, he summoned them to his presence and declared them suspended from their offices. ' ' Take off your albs, ' ' he said to them ; ' ' you shall not take part in the procession." Most of them then decided to obey, 140 SOCIAL FRANCE but two of them protested and appealed to the archbishop of Reims. The document which gives us these details is interesting, because it shows how far the independence and claims of chapters could go in certain dioceses. "We can continue our tour of France. At Orleans, in 1217, the bishop, in conflict with Philip Augustus, laid an interdict on his city and on his diocese. This time he was in agree- ment with his chapter, that of Sainte-Croix ; but the canons of the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan refused to observe the interdict, and continued to ring their bells and to open their church. The bishop suspended the dean of Saint- Aignan. A complicated suit in the court of Rome resulted. At Tours the archbishop was, in 1211, at strife with his metropolitan chapter over the ownership of a parish, and also with the powerful chapter of Saint-Martin, about the jurisdiction over the abbey of Beaulieu. This last conflict was permanent; in 1208, it gave rise to three lawsuits — de- cided at Orleans, Bourges, and Chartres. At Rouen, the archbishop and his chapter were at outs over certain revenues of the town of Dieppe. The canons laid an interdict on the cathedral; the matter was submitted to arbitrators, and the dean of the chapter ended the matter by making an apology. At Verdun, there was a veritable war between the dean and Bishop Robert : the canons did not want him as their bishop ; they regarded him as ignorant and unworthy. They threat- ened him with a suit at Rome and made him so miserable that, in 1217, they forced him to resign his position. At Bordeaux, there were frequent struggles between the arch- bishop and his canons; the latter, in 1181, obtained from the pope the right of electing their dean, and, in 1195, they consented to a new transaction with the archbishop. In 1188, the cathedral chapter of Saint-Pierre of Troyes accused the bishop of having taken a part of the treasure of the church, especially a golden chalice and a silver table. Bishop Manasses had to restore what he had taken. Even at Paris, where the two powers seemed to live in fair harmony, the chapter of Notre-Dame, in 1219, obtained from Honorius III the right to excommunicate their aggressors in case the bishop of Paris refused to punish them. But, to witness fierce and contiQuous strife and sometimes actual war between a bishop THE CANON 141 and his canons, one should go to Maguelonne. There the provost of the chapter and the head of the diocese were at outs, one may say, the whole of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In 1186, one of the bishops of Maguelonne, John of Montlaur, a veritable tyrant, imprisoned the canons and beat them. Things went so far that they almost all deserted the cathedral, and the popes had difficulty in inducing them to return. We know enough of this to conclude. The elements of ecclesiastical society were in a state of war, like those of the lay world. Chapters, far from living in peace in the cathedral, too often made it a field of battle. The bishop was not master there: he was forced to divide his power with the collective seigniory of the canons, his brothers; he saw them grow at his expense and, little by little, appropriate his wealth, his jurisdiction, and his independence. CHAPTER V THE BISHOP After a cleric had studied and become a master of arts and had obtained the prebend of a canon or of some capitular dignity, his chief ambition was to mount a step higher and become a bishop. However, in the time of Philip Augustus the episcopate was no longer what it had been in the earlier centuries of feudalism. The bishops had, in great number, lost both their spiritual and temporal preeminence. In the diocese they were no longer absolute masters of all that con- stituted ecclesiastical society and of every form of religious life, as formerly they had been. The independent monas- teries escaped them and obeyed only the head of the order or the pope; chapters, as we have seen, tended to become independent, even disputed the cathedral with the bishops; the archdeacons, their chief auxiliaries, sought to take from them a part of the power which they had over the parish and its cure. Again, outside the diocese the bishops had to reckon with two powers, the king and the pope, who, although far away, governed them with an ever heavier hand. The pope seemed to have gained spiritually all that the bishops had lost in this regard. Every day the papacy interfered more actively in the elections, in the nominations to benefices, the government of the bishopric, and even in the smallest details of local ecclesiastical life. As episcopal jurisdiction was rendered almost useless by the development of the appeal to Rome, the Roman treasury began to exploit the bishoprics until the bishops complained bitterly. The interference of the king in the affairs of the diocese was much less frequent and galling. But Philip Augustus did not deprive himself of the satisfaction of exacting military service with great rigor from the bishops, and especially of subjecting them in pecuniary things to a system of forced requisitions, which caused them to cry out against the persecution. Finally, the bishops had always to struggle against their constant enemies : 142 THE BISHOP 143 the bourgeoisie of the free towns, the feudal laity, the castel- lan, and the baron — aU of whom, especially in the country which royalty was not able to police, continually overran and pillaged the lands of the church and appropriated its do- mains, its revenues, and its episcopal rights. Thus the bishopj had to be constantly on the defensive, watching, as it were, at the breach. To sum up, it was a hard calling, and one which at the end of the twelfth century, it would seem, gave Jess power and brought less profit than in times past. But the importance and brilliance of the office obscured the unpleasant side so completely that it was still sought with the same avidity. Even though the authority of the bishop was weakened, the number of candidates did not diminish. The preachers of the period had not enough violent expres- sions with which to condemn the pursuit for a prelacy and the intrigues of the candidates. In the time of Philip Augus- tus and Innocent III money no longer played the same role as formerly in episcopal elections. Open, indecent simony was no longer possible, except in certain remote provinces, but the favor, influence, and recommendation of the Mng, of an important baron, of a great seigniorial family continued to show their effects. In spite of the demands of well-under- stood opinion, in spite of the efforts and surveillance of the popes, the episcopal personnel — although superior, taken as a whole, in its moral and intellectual worth to that of the preceding centuries — was far from attaining to the Christian ideal. The good and bad were strangely allied. In the lists of the French episcopate there was a curious diversity of types: the educated, pious theologian; the prelate or man of letters, who was a politician and a courtier; the turbulent prelate, who passed his life in a struggle; the highwayman, who treated his diocese like a conquered province ; the rapa- cious usurer, ingenious in oppressing the members of his diocese; the rascal, whose crimes would have dishonored the episcopate and the church if it were not profoundly wrong to judge all one class of men by these exceptions. The bishop of the time of Philip Augustus appears to us as the head of a diocese and as a great lord, holding a high 144 SOCIAL FEANCE position in the hierarchy of the nobility. Like every feudal prince, he ruled the territory of which he was proprietor and suzerain, while the revenues accruing from this right and which came to be called " episcopal income " were truly seigniorial revenues. As proprietor, the bishop possessed directly in his domain parish churches, abbeys, lands, forests, houses, and serfs : that is to say, everything that the other barons possessed. These properties, like those of the king and other lords of the laity, were administered by officers, called provosts, mayors, deans, and sergeants, having the double character of public agents or special intendants, and at the same time that of bailiffs, tax-collectors, judges, and police agents. The domain pos- sessed by a bishop in an episcopal city was sometimes consid- erable. To get a clear idea of this fact we must realize that the bishop of Paris was almost as great a proprietor as the king. The bishop of Paris under Philip Augustus possessed in the Cite the episcopal palace and its dependencies, the whole he Saint-Louis, the land of the Culture, and of the Ville-l'Eveque, which corresponded to the land lying between Saint-Eoch on one side and Saint-Philippe-du-Eoule and Saint- Augustin on the other ; the Champeaux, comprising the land between Eue Saint-Honore and the Pointe Saint- Eustache ; the Bourg Saint-Germain, which is a long ribbon of land reaching from Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois almost to the height of Montmartre; and on the left bank the field of Bruneau, a plot of ground near the Eue des Noyers and the Eue des Carmes. An act of Philip Augustus, issued in 1222, shows that the bishops of Paris divided the taxes and juris- diction of this city with the king, and that his was by no means the lesser share. As feudal lord, the bishop also possessed fiefs and drew from them the revenues which every suzerain enjoyed. His vassals paid him homage and owed him both military and court service, thus forming his seigniorial tribunal. Certain ones among them had besides the special duty of carrying him upon his throne, the sedia gestatoria, when just after his election he made his solemn entry, traversing the city and arriving at the cathedral for his installation. In order to find an account of the great number of fiefs which were at- THE BISHOP 145 tached to an episcopal suzerainty, one may, for example, observe the state of vassalage of the bishop of Paris as it was fixed in a cartulary of Notre-Dame drawn up between 1197 and 1208. The feudal status of the bishop differed from that of the lay barons especially in two ways. First, as concerns the highest suzerain — that is to say, the king — ^the bishop since the ecclesiastical reform of the eleventh century no longer paid homage, but limited himself to taking the oath of fealty, which, however, did not exempt him from being forced to military or court service. Then, he was himself a suzerain of a special kind of vassal : he had fiefs * ' incorporeal ' ' — that is, he required homage of cathedral functionaries for their ecclesiastical benefices. He received the liege-homage of the dean, the cantor, the chancellor, the head chaplain, the churchwardens, etc. The bishop resembled the baron all the more, as his house, his private establishment — ^that is, all the arrangements for the maintenance of his person and his entourage, — was the same as that of counts, dukes, and of the king. He was served by the same high and petty officers. He had his seneschal or steward, his cupbearer, his marshal, his cham- berlain or treasurer, his equerry, his master of the pantry, secretaries, chaplains, without counting lesser offices — porters, builders, drivers, etc. All these functionaries, supported by him and lodged in the houses connected with the episcopal palace, served him day in, day out. But, like the high suzerains and the king, he had high honorary officers — ^that is, certain vassals of the diocese, — who, by virtue of their fiefs, had the right of serving him at table, at the formal feasts, during special solemnities, and throughout the day of his installation. Such, then, was the status, as shown by its principal char- acteristics and taken from the temporal point of view, of a bishop seen in the normal condition of his office, who, though being a great proprietor, was yet neither count nor duke. There existed prelates — like the archbishops of Reims, Vienne, or Aries ; like the bishops of Puy, Mende, Lodeve, Viviers, or Langres — who were the only suzerains of their cities. They accumulated pecuniary with episcopal power, and they had, 146 SOCIAL FRANCE consequently, even more than their confreres, the bearing, authority, and resources of a great baron who is king in his province. There was seldom question here over the episco- pate, such as presented itself in a very great majority of dioceses where the authority of the bishop was in competi- tion with or dependent on that of a layman. And it would be interesting to see how these bishops actually lived, with what order, how they ordained their financial affairs, how their budget was regulated; in a word, to what amount the receipts of a bishopric could raise an episcopal fortune. The documents of the period of Philip Augustus are far from satisfying our curiosity in this regard. It has been attempted to fix approximately the annual income in revenue, grain, money, forest, and river produce which a bishop of Chartres received when incumbent of his extensive diocese in the thirteenth century, and the amount, in terms of actual money, was found to be five hundred thousand francs ; whi(^ is certainly a minimum, for one must add the revenues accru- ing from feudal rights and indirect taxes. Unquestionably, this sum of half a million is not too large in any case. One must think of the pace of the life which the bishops of that time were obliged to lead, of the frequence of journeys which their duties toward the king and pope imposed upon them, of the pecuniary demands of these two powers, and of the established traditions with regard to hospitality and char- ity. The duties of the episcopate were numerous, and, at the time of which we speak, the bishop did not, like his chapter, have sources of self-enrichment from the gifts and endow- ments of the faithful. The land and capital of the canons increased daily, while the fortune of the bishop remained practically stationary. He could only augment the revenues of the diocese by an administration at the same time energetic and clever, a thing in which not all prelates were gifted. In general, nevertheless, bishops did not die poor. Almost all — this is seen from the tenor of their wills and information from their obituaries — found means of making gifts to their churches, to monks, and to indigent persons. They enriched the treasure of their cathedrals more or less, leaving books, objects of great price, priestly vestments, and costly vases. The will of Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, dated June, THE BISHOP 147 1218, contains a curious enumeration of objects left by him to Notre-Dame, Saint- Victor, and Saint-Martin of Tours: Spanish tapestries, coffers from Limoges, beautiful manu- scripts, etc. In 1181, there died at Auxerre, Bishop William of Toucy, whose bequests to all the chapters and to all the abbeys of the diocese have been enumerated at great length by his biographer. He left to his cathedral a silver chalice and basins, valuable stuffs, and a portion of his library. An- other bishop of Auxerre, William of Seignelay, the successor to Hugh of Noyers, when he quitted his bishopric for that of Paris in 1220, gave to his chapter rich pontifical vestments, a gold miter set with pearls, two silver basins goldplated, some cushions of beautiful work, a gold cross containing a relic, nine gold marks to secure a cross and chalice, houses, vineyards, and incomes. Moreover, adds the chronicle of Auxerre, his successor found all the episcopal abodes fur- nished and provided with an abundance of grain and wines. In 1180, John of Salisbury, bishop of Chartres, had be- queathed to his cathedral precious stuffs, a cope of great value, his episcopal ring, and all his library. Details of this kind abound in church obituaries. But one need not conclude that the possession of a bishopric was necessarily a guar- antee of wealth. These generosities before and at the time of death are often to be reconciled with a poor financial condition. The history of the bishopric of Auxerre gives us a proof in titie person of Hugh of Noyers, that great builder of fortresses. He had borrowed money from the treasury of the cathedral and would have restored it with usury, says the chronicler, if death had only left him time. As a matter of fact, he bequeathed this debt to his successor. But there were others who knew how to enrich themselves. Such was the case of Maurice of Sully. Son of a poor peas- ant of the seigniory of Sully in Orleanais, he had studied at the university of Paris. There he led the life of a poor student. It was even said that he begged his bread and acted as servant to rich students. Master of theology, he became canon and then archdeacon of Notre-Dame. His reputation as teacher and preacher pointed him out for higher positions. Elected bishop of Paris in 1160, he had so good a talent for managing episcopal finances that he was 148 SOCIAL FRANCE able to get the money necessary for the reconstruction of his cathedral, and, on his death, to give a considerable amount of gifts to Notre-Dame: a house near the cloister, road- rights in the outskirts of Paris, religious ornaments, a sum of money for the decoration of the high altar, one hundred livres for roofing the cathedral, a hundred livres for poor clerics, a hundred livres for the canons diligent at matins, a hundred and ninety silver marks to buy land and vineyards, the usufruct of which his grandnephew was to have; to the abbey of Saint- Victor, nine hundred livres (more than one hundred and fifty thousand francs) ; to Saint-Germain- I'Auxerrois, forty livres, etc. Nor were the poor forgotten, but benefited by special bequests, the value of which is not known. Maurice of Sully, a type of the pious bishop having succeeded by his own merit , certainly possessed nothing before entering the church of Paris, showing that the functions of archdeacon and bishop enriched even those who exercised them honestly. As religious head, the bishop did not only preside over the cathedral services, but had charge of supervising and eon- trolling the conduct of priests in all the churches and in all the parishes of the diocese. It was he who named the cure of the parishes directly subordinate to the bishopric, or simply conferred the charge of souls upon the cure supported by patronage. He alone had power to ordain clerics and it was his duty to induce them to accept the priesthood. Then, having ordained and installed the priests, he had finally that very hard obligation of holding them in the narrow path : that is to say, of watch- ing to see that they were well taught and well behaved. And we can see how painful and difficult the uncouthness of the lower clergy rendered this part of the episcopal task. In order to carry it on at all, it was necessary for the bishop to keep himself as much as possible in contact with the min- isters of the parishes. Behold him, then, riding to all parts of his diocese in order to make his visits — that is, his tours of inspection of rural churches: he assembles the deans or the archpriests, conducts summary inquests, hears accusations THE BISHOP 149 against priests, suspends, corrects, and threatens the sus- pected and guilty. But this work of inspector and itinerant judge did not suffice; the bishop could not always be off on long journeys, and then it was that the parish priests left their parishes to come to him. Every year he held a synod — that is, a general assembly of clerics of the diocese in the great hall of his palace or in the choir of the cathedral ; and there again he preached, gave his instructions, reprimanded, and punished in a way to insure the maintenance of disci- pline and to reform customs. These were both things difficult to attain, for the clerics of this period, by nature violent and unmanageable, would not accept correction easily. They resisted, especially when they were forbidden to keep concubines publicly; they ap- pealed to Rome to suspend the punishment, and even openly revolted. The kindest and most virtuous of the bishops of this time, Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris, was himself in struggle against his clergy. And, as if the bishop did not have enough anxiety over keeping the parish priests in hand, he was obliged to struggle for this very control against cer- tain dignitaries who usurped his authority. These digni- taries were the archdeacons. Delegated by the bishop to help him in his task and to administer a part of the diocese in his name, the archdeacons had little by little forgotten that they were nothing but representatives of the episcopal power. They were inclined to keep the proceeds of the rev- enues of the diocese for themselves; they appointed, judged, and excommunicated cures at their pleasure, as if the arch- deaconry were a small-sized bishopric. This was a curious example of the phenomenon of feudal appropriation carried over into ecclesiastical society. Certain it is that the bishop, threatened with being deprived of his power throughout the diocese, had to struggle to defend himself. In many dioceses there was war, secret or declared, between the prelate and his archdeacons. In all cases there was toil and constant effort on the part of the bishop to keep the rights and money belonging to him, so that at the end of the twelfth century a certain number of prelates had taken a decisive measure. Instead of delegating their authority to the archdeacon, now become their enemy, they confided it to special clerics called 150 SOCIAL FRANCE " clerics of the bishop," chosen and removable by them. These confidential agents traveled with them constantly, forming their permanent council, carrying their messages, aiding them in giving judgments, and collecting their rev- enues. These clerics of the bishop gave rise to " official " and " high vicars," two institutions dating from the time of Philip Augustus. It is thanks to them that the bishop was able to combat victoriously the usurping tendencies of the archdeacons and to maintain his disputed authority over the parish and the cure. But in the diocese there were other organs of religious life than the parish; there were chapters and orders. There were then two classes of establishments which were another cause of labor and another source of difficulty and conflict for the bishop. Not all the canons were, like those of the cathe- dral, in competition with the bishop, but it was not less nec- essary to watch them, to oblige them to carry out their duties, and to give them regulations. As to the monks, either they were entirely exempt — that is, completely independent of the bishop — or else they were under his authority. In the first case, when the independent abbeys possessed a certain amount of wealth and fame, they were a decidedly serious obstacle in the exercise of episcopal power. Not only did they repel all interference of the bishop in their affairs to the point of not even admitting him to set foot in their churches, but they quarreled with him over jurisdiction, priories, and do- mains. There was constant struggle between the secular and regular clergy; certain abbots furnished opposition to the bishop even in the matter of dress, by obtaining from the pope the right to wear the episcopal insignia, sandals, miter, and crozier. The presence of exempt abbeys in the bishopric was a perpetual cause of uneasiness and irritation for the head of the diocese, but the subordinate abbeys in their turn bothered the bishop more than he wished; he had to inspect them like the parishes and correct abuses, protect them against plundering and do good in every way, particularly by means of gifts. Religious opinion required the bishops to be the benefactors of their abbeys, and even to found new ones in order to multiply the homes of learning in their dioceses. Monks, canons, archdeacons, and cures gave enough worry THE BISHOP 151 and trouble and occasions for strife to the bishop for one to suppose that his relations with the clergy of the diocese amply filled his time and that he had so much to do at home that no time remained to pay attention to his colleagues and equals, the suffragan bishops of the same province. And yet, since he was subordinate to an archbishop, he was obliged to fulfil certain obligations toward his superior. He had to leave his diocese in order to assist at archiepiscopal synods or to witness the consecration of the other bishops of the province. Moreover, the archbishop had the right to make use of him, — to delegate him as judge in certain lawsuits, — so that, while supporting all alone the exceedingly heavy weight of the diocese, the bishop was obliged, in a certain measure, to work in the affairs of the province. But here, too, there could be, and often was, cause for difficulties and contentions. Relations with the archbishop were not always peaceful; the archbishop was often tempted to encroach on the episcopal right of judging subjects of the bishop in the first instance, and the latter had to struggle to resist this claim. The conflict sometimes became violent, going to the point of open war. Thus, in 1196, we see Bishop William of Lisieux in open war against the archbishop of Eouen, Walter of Coutances. The latter excommunicated the un- manageable bishop and in a letter, which is extant, accuses him with vehemence, " of having raised his heel against his mother, the church of Rouen, impelled by a spirit of pride and by every pestilential breath of Erebus. ' ' The misfortune was that conflicts of this nature were not solved at home, but that the superior and the subordinate, the archbishop and bishop, were obliged to go beyond the Alps to seek the solu- tion of their strife at the hands of the pope and his judges. The pope himself was a superior in another way as re- doubtable and exacting toward the bishops as were the arch- bishops. In the time of Philip Augustus, centralization of the church under the hand of the papacy and the cardinals was an accomplished thing, and the episcopate was the first victim of this state of affairs. Thanks to the appeal to Rome, the majority of lawsuits of ecclesiastical society were now car- ried before the pontifical court. But, happily, not all cases went to Rome, for it was the habit of the pope to employ 152 SOCIAL FRANCE bishops as delegates of the Holy See for conflicts of little importance. They had charge of inquests, of hearing parties and testimonies, and of pronouncing the final sen- tence in the pope 's name. As if the bishop did not have enough to do with deciding all matters of his diocese and sometimes even those of his province, he was overwhelmed by the pope with extraordinary duties and special missions. Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris, who was in office thirty-six years, was delegated at least twenty times as judge by the popes; which is evidently the minimum, though it would be necessary to have all the contemporaneous documents to learn the total number of times he was commissioned by the Roman church. Still the bishop might think himself fortunate if the papacy simply obliged him to perform some duty in his country. In cases of particular gravity, when he was him- self the accused or the complainant, it was necessary for him to appear at Rome in person. Moreover, he also had to go there when the pope assembled all Christendom in a general council. The journey to Italy was a dreadful one for the contemporaries of Philip Augustus, entailing great fatigue, dangers of every kind, and considerable waste of time and money. But the obligation was imperative, and the pope did not allow them to escape it easily. He threatened the recalci- trants, urged the tardy, and punished those who stayed away without valid excuse. In this connection it is interesting to read the correspondence of Alexander III and Bartholomew, archbishop of Tours. The archbishop had not appeared at the third Lateran council in 1179, although his presence at Rome was necessary to regulate many affairs of great im- portance. The pope wrote to him several weeks after, re- proaching him for his absence. He bade him repair his fault by coming to Rome by the fourth Sunday in Lent or, at the latest, the second Sunday after Easter. The arch- bishop was not anxious to make the journey to Italy, and, instead of replying himself, he wrote to Alexander by one of his friends, Stephen of Tournai, abbot of Sainte- Genevieve, a man on good terms with Rome. Stephen ex- cused the archbishop of Tours as well as he could, testifying that at the time of the council Bartholomew was sick, that he could not have gone to Rome without danger, and that THE BISHOP 153 besides it was necessary for him to go to Paris to confer with the king. Next came another letter from the pope to the archbishop of Tours, but this time couched in almost threatening terms; Alexander trusted that, of course, the prelate would come to Rome on one of the days which he had set; he should have been punished for being absent from the council; he had been spared only at the request of Louis VII and his son, Philip Augustus. As for the final delay, he would give him until next Saint Martin 's day ; then, in case of non-appearance, the pope would be severe. Bishops had to invoke legal excuses and have recourse to every kind of legal subterfuge. The pope demanded the journey to Italy, under pain of excommunication, and his command often cost them their lives. The journey was not without danger for those who undertook it ; indeed, examples of French bishops who ended their lives in Italy are not rare. Aubri, archbishop of Reims, died at Pavia in 1218. Gerald of Cros, archbishop of Bourges, also died in the same year, a short time after leaving Rome. Henry of Dreux, bishop of Orleans, having come to Rome in 1197 to ask for the free- dom of his brother, the bishop of Beauvais, who had been imprisoned by Richard the Lion-Hearted, fell sick at Siena and never recovered. Hugh of Noyers, bishop of Auxerre, died ten days after his arrival. The occurrence became so frequent in the thirteenth century that the popes ended by taking a profit from it. They decided that, whenever the episcopal sees became vacant in curia — that is, during the bishop's sojourn at the Roman curia, — ^the papacy should have the right to nominate a successor to the office. If we possessed more documents for the reign of Philip Augustus, it is very probable that the number of French bishops whose presence was noticed in Rome would be greatly increased. One might mention Arnaud-Amauri, archbishop of Narbonne, pleading before the pope in 1217 against Simon de Mont- fort; "Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, pleading against his suzerain, Richard the Lion-Hearted; Walter Cornu, bishop-elect of Paris, in 1220 defending himself at Rome against the chancellor of his church; Matthew, bishop of Toul, a rascal of whom we shall speak again, coming to plead his own cause in 1210 before Innocent III; and many 154 SOCIAL FRANCE other examples of the same kind which would be easy to gather. Thus we see how business, lawsuits, fatiguing moves, and more or less perilous journeys, — the normal relation between the head of a diocese and the members of ecclesiastical so- ciety, whether his subordinates or his superiors, — were car- ried on. To carry out this much required a well tem- pered mind and body. But all is not finished : we have said nothing about the outside conditions which fastened even harder obligations on the bishops. The period of the reign of Philip Augustus was marked by four great crusades, with- out counting a certain number of expeditions to the Holy Land of less importance. Bishops could not possibly keep out of this movement, but were forced by their position to participate in it; indeed, public opinion demanded that they should set the people a good example. They were obliged to leave their country and go with kings, great lords, and knights. And the fact is that they did not fail in this re- spect. A great many of them departed to fight the infidel or heretic in Spain, Languedoc, the Holy Land or Egypt, and a certain number of these pilgrim bishops never again saw their dioceses or native land. Below is a simple enumeration of facts and dates which is eloquent enough in itself in giving an exact idea of the ex- traordinarily active life of the bishops of France. Aubri of Humbert, archbishop of Reims, took part in the crusade against the Albigenses from 1209 to 1212; in 1215, he went to Rome to the Lateran council; in 1218, he de- parted for Syria, remaining there several months; he then embarked at Alexandria and was surprised by the Saracens at Lisbon. Freed by the knights of Calatrava, he passed through Italy again and, as we have seen, died at Pavia. In 1212, Arnaud-Amauri, archbishop of Narbonne, and Wil- liam Amanieu, archbishop of Bordeaux, fought the Saracens of Spain with King Alfonso of Castile. In 1190 and 1191, Bernard, bishop of Bayonne, Girard, archbishop of Auch,. John, bishop of Evreux, Manasses, bishop of Langres, Philip of Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, and Peter, bishop of Toul, took part in the third crusade, remaining in Sicily and assisting at the siege of Saint- Jean-d 'Acre. In 1202 to 1205,, THE BISHOP 155 Nivelon of Cherisy, bishop of Soissons, and Garnier of Trainel, bishop of Troyes, — two heroes of the fourth crusade, — fought in the Greek Empire, taking Constantinople, play- ing an important role in the election of the first Latin Em- peror, and then returning to their dioceses laden with glory, money, and relics. From 1209 to 1219, there was a con- tinual coming and going of bishops who left their dioceses in order to perform their forty days' military service in the war against the Albigenses. Besides the archbishop of Reims, there appeared in Languedoc, simultaneously or successively, the archbishops of Rouen and Bourges; the bishops of Autun, Chalons, Cambrai, Limoges, Lisieux, Orleans, Paris, Chartres, Bayeux, Laon, Puy, and Saintes. After 1218, the period of the crusade of Damietta, the archbishops of Reims and Bor- deaux, the bishops of Autun, Limoges, Lisieux, Beauvais, and Paris departed for Egypt and the Orient. The fatigue and danger that a perilous and costly under- taking, a pilgrimage to a far country, or a crusade to the Holy Land, represented in the middle ages need not be em- phasized. One might for this period mention a long list of bishops who died during their journeys abroad: Aubri of Humbert, archbishop of Reims, in 1218; Eudes of Vaude- mont, bishop of Toul, in 1196; John of Bethune, bishop of Cambrai, in 1219 ; John of Verac, bishop of Limoges, in 1218 ; Jourdain, bishop of Lisieux, in 1218. In 1192, Manasses, bishop of Langres, died in France, but of a sickness con- tracted during the third crusade; Nivelon of Cherisy, bishop of Soissons, in 1207; Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, in 1219; Peter, bishop of Toul, in 1191, etc. It would be inter- esting to compile a complete obituary; then one might see how many victims the crusades had in the episcopal personnel and how lightly these bishops considered the risks of an expedition across the sea or an absence not only of many months but of many years. Motives for going varied, no doubt, among individuals. Some took the cross from scruples of conscience, from professional necessity, from deference to the demands of the age; others, for love of adventure and in the hope of enriching their church with relics from the Orient; or simply for devotion, to reap the benefits of a campaign against the enemies of the faith. But whatever the 156 SOCIAL FRANCE motive, whether willingly or not, they none the less went in the face of certain peril, and this again is proof of how much activity, moral energy, and physical strength the episcopacy demanded. The same conclusion is reached, if one considers the episco- pal calling from its temporal side and studies the relations of the bishop with the lay surroundings in which he was called to live. Though proprietor and lord, he was ex- posed to the attacks and pillages of which church property was always the victim on the part of nobles, both great and small. Without doubt, there were certain dioceses — that of Paris, for example — where resolute government, like that of Philip Augustus, had brought about a relative amount of order. Wherever there lived a high suzerain, strong and respected, the bishop had less trouble in defending his proper- ties and revenues from the castellans, brigands, or persecut- ing barons. But there were many bishoprics where the head of the diocese, ceaselessly harassed by pillages, had no other resource than to intrench himself within the episcopal house, which was transformed into a strong chateau, and hold him- self ever in readiness to engage in battle. Let one, for ex- ample, read the entertaining history of the bishops of Auxerre in the time of Hugh of Noyers and William of Seignelay; it is nothing but a series of conflicts with all the lay powers of the diocese, a perpetual and often danger- ous strife, in which the bishop defended himself, not only by acts of anathema, but with ready arms, with men-at-arms, and retainers. He found enemies everywhere: in the country the troublesome and surly petty nobility; in the cities the count with whom he shared authority, and the bourgeoisie, often organized into a commune that did not love the church lord and strove to impair his power. Among the cases of this kind which resounded loudest in the period of Philip Augustus it is sufficient to note the struggle of Bishop Stephen of Tournai with the inhabitants of his episcopal town; of Philip of Dreux and Miles of Nanteuil, bishops of Beauvais, with the bourgeoisie of Beauvais; of Hugh of Noyers, bishop of Auxerre, with the count of Auxerre, Peter of Courtenay; of Robert of Meung, bishop of Puy, with the bourgeoisie and nobility of his town ; of the bishops of Ver- THE BISHOP 157 dun and Cambrai with the bourgeoisie and knights of their two cities, etc. There were dioceses where the conflict with the laity became a real war, with sieges, massacres, and bat- tles, and sometimes it was the blood of the bishop which flowed. In 1220, the bishop of Puy was assassinated by a nobleman whom he had excommunicated ; in 1208, the bishop of Verdun was slain in a riot by a lance-thrust, while already, in 1181, another bishop of Verdun had met his death while besieging the chateau of Sainte-Menehould. These several facts suffice to show all the painful necessi- ties, the suffering, and daily peril which the career of a bishop comprised. To finish this demonstration there remain to be seen the consequences which the role of vassal and of high functionary to royalty entailed upon the bishop. For — let us not deceive ourselves — the bishop, in regard to the lay sovereign, was not merely in a position of a feudatory who had no more contact with the suzerain once he had ful- filled his feudal obligations. The bishop was in the king's dependence, a dependence close and intimate, and the king as the protector of the churches exploited his bishopric in every way. From his bishops he demanded contributions, their presence in the royal army, and political services of every nature. He disposed of their money, their men-at-arms, and time without scruple; in brief, he considered them and used them as servants and agents, of whom he could demand any- thing. And, if the bishops resented this manner of doing, if they resisted demands which they found excessive, there was conflict, there was war with all its consequences: inter- dict placed on the land, excommunication of persons, occu- pation of the land with armed force, confiscation of episcopal incomes, proscription of the bishop, who was driven from his see and perhaps from the kingdom. It will suffice here to recall the more severe conflicts, nearly all of which ended in the defeat of episcopal power: a con- flict with the archbishop of Sens, in 1181, over a question of jurisdiction ; with the archbishop of Kouen, in 1196, over a question of property; with the bishop of Paris and many other bishops of the north of France, in 1200, apropos of the affair of Ingeborg; with the bishop of Auxerre, in 1206, on the subject of the royal prerogative ; with the bishops of 158 SOCIAL FRANCE Orleans and Auxerre, in 1210, over military services; with the bishop of Paris, in 1221, over the question of juris- diction and property, etc. And the same quarrels which agitated Capetian France also troubled Plantagenet France. "We see Richard the Lion-Hearted, in quarrels with the archbishop of Rouen in 1197, with the archbishop of Poitiers in 1180; John Lackland, in a struggle with the bishop of Limoges in 1204. On all sides things were the same: the bishop who, in his relations with the clergy and nobility of his diocese, found so many difficulties to con- quer, so many adversaries to subdue, was obliged to cope with the sovereign and to strive against an oppressive roy- alty, a terrible superaddition of trouble, care, and danger. By dint of concessions and docili|;y, it was possible to avoid conflict and remain at peace with the king, but it was a peace singularly agitated and troubled by continual de- mands for money and services. The mere obligation of as- sisting at political and judicial assemblies and great gather- ings of the royal army, was a source of great fatigue and considerable expense for the French prelates. The bishops sought to escape it as much as possible, but still it was harder not to attend the king's convocations than to escape those of the pope. The king was always near and held mate- rial power. In 1193, Stephen, bishop of Tournai, a peace- ful man of letters, who dreaded traveling, sent the arch- bishop of Reims a tearful letter. The king had summoned him to appear with his men-at-arms at Mantes on the vigil of Ascension and the vigil of Pentecost. ^' What is to be done ? ' ' demanded the bishop. " I know nothing of nailitary affairs. I am vowed to religion, which is not to lead the life of the camps. Yet here I am called, who have never taken part in battle, and am ordered to arm myself, I who have never been able to bear arms. Since the time of Chil- perie the kings of France have never demanded anything from the bishops of Tournai except the oath of fealty and attendance at court. It is indeed hard for me to enter into a quarrel with my lord the king, but it is certainly impossible for me to do what he wishes. I find myself between the anvil and the hammer, where I shall have to offend the king or do a service which I am unwilling to do." A letter from this same bishop three years later shows him again overcome by the summons of Lent of 1196. He THE BISHOP 159 was summoned by the archbishop of Reims to come and assist at the consecration of the bishop of Chalons on March 24; was summoned by the king to be present between the Vaudreuil and Gaillon in Normandy, where there was to be an interview between the sovereigns of France and England, on March 31 ; was summoned finally to Paris on April 7, to be present at the lawsuit of the bishop of Paris and the abbey of Chelles. He excused himself to the archbishop of Reims : " My Father ; I am sixty-eight years old, and I feel death near. Spare thy servant; my spirit is prompt to obey thee but my flesh is weak. I cannot without great danger to my body undertake and endure such journeys. If I should start out on the roads, I would never arrive at my destination." The bishops did not always find it convenient to allege old age and infirmities; such excuses often found the king skeptical, and, instead of accepting them, he summoned the defaulters to justice for failure in feudal duty. Then they came to the king's court or his camp, no matter how painful the journey. But it did not suffice simply to be present. At every turn the king charged his bishops with business missions and with embassies abroad. The episcopal personnel furnished him with agents, diplomats, and administrators, who cost him nothing. Thus many bishops, willy-nilly, took an active part in politics, being obliged to add to the daily busi- ness with which they were burdened the extraordinary services which were demanded of them. Without speaking of William of Champagne, archbishop of Reims, and Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, — who were veritable prime ministers, the one to Philip Augustus and the other to the king of England, — one may mention William of Chemilly, bishop of Avranches, charged in 1198 with an embassy to Germany by Richard the Lion-Hearted ; William, bishop of Lisieux, sent in 1200 by John Lackland to Portugal to nego- tiate a suit for marriage ; Helie, bishop of Bordeaux, on whom devolved the mission of conducting Blanche of Castile from Spain to Normandy in 1200; John, bishop of Evreux, charged with several missions by Henry II and Richard the Lion-Hearted; John of Verac, bishop of Limoges, principal agent of Philip Augustus in western France; Maurice of 160 SOCIAL FEANCE Sully, bishop of Paris, charged with many diplomatic or administrative missions by the king of France. The list of these commissioned bishops would stretch out indefinitely. They were even employed to command military forces, like the bishop of Bayonne and the archbishop of Auch, who in 1190 took the office of admiral at the instance of Richard the ILion-Hearted ; and the archbishop of Bourges, Simon of Sully, who in 1221 conducted a corps of the army in Langue- doc which was sent against the Albigenses by Philip Augus- tus. Some of them made a specialty of war, as did Philip of Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, and Guerin, bishop of Senlis, strategist of Bouvines. Much did Philip Augustus owe them. But such labors did not yet suffice to cover all the activities of the bishop. At this time when gothic art appeared, — if not in its richest, at least in its purest and most soberly elegant form, — the majority of bishops were great builders. Contemporaries themselves were impressed by this fact. In this regard the chronicle of Auxerre contains a very appro- priate passage: " In those times men were again fired with a passion for building new churches. Our bishop [William of Seignelay] seeing that his church of Auxerre, built in the taste of former times, was badly preserved and falling from age while in all the neighboring dioceses new churches were raising their splendid apses to the skies resolved to rebuild his own according to the dictates of modern art and to intrust its decoration to more expert architects. He did not wish his church to be inferior, either in beauty of ensemble or in care of detail, to those of other bishops. Therefore he caused the ancient edifice to be pulled down commencing with the apse, so that, de- prived of its antique appearance, the cathedral of Auxerre might reappear brilliant in youth and elegance and in all the magnificence of its renovation." ^ Note this well-marked tendency of bishops to vie with each other in the grandeur and expense of the reconstruction of their cathedrals. It was a fad, a contagious passion ; each one of them, at least in northern France, wished a church built in the new style, and the old Roman churches were every- where torn down. It was not even necessary for them to be THE BISHOP 161 old. At Paris, in order to rebuild his cathedral, Maurice of Sully demolished the church of Notre-Dame, which had been carefully rebuilt seventy years before under Louis the Fat. At Laon, Bishop "Walter of Mortagne, in 1170, built his gothic church in place of a Roman cathedral dating from 1114. Roman was not the style of the day; something new was wanted, and that style which architects called gothic excited an admiration the expression of which has come down to us. Robert of Torigny, abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel, contemporary of Louis VII and Philip Augustus, said of Notre-Dame in Paris when he saw it under construction, " When this church is finished there will be no work this side the mountains which can be compared to it." The construction of a cathedral was to a bishop the cul- minating deed of his episcopacy, preeminently his magnum opus. The architect to whom he confided the chief technical direction of the enterprise was the master-builder {magister opens), but unfortunately the names of the creators of these marvels have not come down to us. Under the orders of the architect, the workmen (operarii) labored: that is, the mem- bers of the corps of different trades employed in the con- struction and decoration of the building. It was by these aids that the bishop, seconded by his chapter, accomplished the erection of a monument which was his best title to remem- brance and to recognition by the people. And there were few episcopal cities, especially in northern France, which, during the forty years of the reign of Philip Augustus, did not at least see their monument begun; very few regions which remained aloof from this great artistic movement. A remarkable thing, noticed by others long since, is that the towns and communes where the bourgeoisie was so restless, often so hostile to the bishop and the church, were not those which built the least gorgeous cathedrals, which certainly proves that, despite the theories of Viollet- le-Duc on the lay character of the corporations which built them, the work was religious and episcopal before everything else. It was the bishop with his corps of canons who always appeared as the inspirer, supervisor, and financial backer of the enterprise. The church was his work, and not that of the bourgeoisie, whatever the participation of the faithful in 162 SOCIAL FRANCE the expense. To satisfy ourselves of this, let us make a tour of France; we shall see just what the contemporaries of Philip Augustus said. First, in the region north of the Loire, especially in Cape- tian France, which is the cradle of the new architecture, the workshops are on all sides in full activity. At Amiens, there is Bishop Evrard of Fouilloy, who in 1220 begins to build the most complete of all our cathedrals with the plans of the architect, Eobert of Luzarches. At Auxerre, Bishop William of Seignelay lays the first stone of the choir of his church in 1215, for it is the choir which was generally begun first; it is important in the first degree for the canons to be able to officiate ; the nave, the portals, the towers, and the transept come after, and will be the work of one or many centuries. The work goes on so quickly at Auxerre that at the end of a year the high partition of the choir is almost finished. The chronicle does not name the architect, the magister operis, but it relates that, by his imprudence, he was the cause of a catastrophe. He thought that by props and trans- verse beams he had sufficiently strengthened the two towers of the old church which were situated on each side of the ancient choir. But it was perceived that fissures began to appear. The canons asked him whether they could continue celebrating their offices without danger. " Never fear," answered the architect. But one of his employees declared that he was not of the same opinion ; that he thought it would not be safe an hour hence. The architect replied that it was useless to frighten the chapter, since the props were firm. " But," returned the canons, " are you able to assure us that there is no risk? " "I cannot guarantee anything absolutely; I do not read the future." This reply decided the canons to transfer to the chapel annex ; and well for them that they did, for hardly had the bells rung in the south tower, than it fell with a crash like thunder upon the north tower. And then those miraculous acts were seen to occur which could not fail to accompany a work so pleasing to Heaven as the building of a cathedral. Two young men who were watching the masons work and who were on the tower at the moment it fell, by a real miracle had time to save themselves; while certain objects of worship were recovered THE BISHOP 163 from the rubbish, intact. A little later, when the workmen were laboring at the rubbish, a piece of wall which remained on the tower all at once threatened to give way. They all saved themselves, but one of them perceived that he had left his coat in a dangerous place, where the wall was tottering; he ran there and was thought to be lost; but happily God watched over him and just in time arrested the collapse of the wall, which would certainly have crushed him. God was with those who built to do Him honor. At Chalons-sur-Marne on the 29th of August, 1183, the nave and transept of Notre-Dame, rebuilt according to the rules of the new architecture, were consecrated. Here, though an exception, they had not begun with the choir. The choir itself was not built until the first years of the thirteenth century and consecrated in 1322. At Evreux, the cathe- dral, also dedicated to Our Lady, had been almost de- stroyed in 1194 by a fire in the course of the war between Philip Augustus and Richard the Lion-Hearted. In 1202, Bishop Robert of Roye undertook to rebuild the great nave and constructed the triforium of a subdued elegance. At Lisieux, Saint-Pierre had been commenced in 1141 by Bishop Arnoul, but left unfinished by him in 1183. In 1215, it was enlarged; the choir was lengthened and was surrounded by an ambulatory and several apsis chapels. At Rouen, after 1207, they worked at the cathedral Notre-Dame. At Meaux, the gifts of Countess Marie of Champagne per- mitted the bishops to continue the work begun in 1170. To- ward 1210 the rafters and galleries were built, and about 1220 the greater part of the choir was rebuilt. At Noyon, the cathedral begun in 1152 was practically finished in the first year of the ^thirteenth century. Ten years later, in 1211, Aubri of Humbert, archbishop of Reims, laid the first stone of the choir of his marvelous cathedral, but the work did not go on quickly here, the choir not being finished until 1241. But at least we know the name of the man who built it — Jean of Orbais, to whom belongs the honor, wrongly paid to Robert of Coucy, of being the first architect of the cathedral of Reims. Work was also done at Troyes, where Bishop Herve, before dying in 1223, finished the sanctuary of Saint- Pierre and the chapels surrounding it. At Laon, Notre-Dame, 164 SOCIAL FRANCE so imposing with its four towers and its enormous symbolic animals hanging over the town, had been commenced at the end of the reign of Louis VII by Bishop Walter of Mor- tagne at about 1170. It was building all during the reign of Philip Augustus. The choir, which is the oldest part of the building, was finished in 1225, and the fagade dates from the time of the battle of Bouvines. The cathedral of Soissons was the work of one of the heroes of the fourth crusade, Bishop Nivelon of Cherisy, one of the most ardent hunters of Byzantine relics. It was to lodge them more sumptuously that he enlarged or rather rebuilt the sanctuary of his church. "We are more fortunate in the cathedral of Soissons, for we know exactly at what time the choir was finished. It has its date carved in a stone in the wall and the inscription reads thus, " On May 13, 1212, the community of canons began to enter this choir. ' ' In the valley of the Loire and its confines the buildings are less numerous, but some are among the most beautiful. At Chartres, the Roman church had been burned in 1194. Bishop Renaul of Moucon began immediately to build an immense cathedral; about 1220 the great rose window was placed and the arches were for the most part finished. The historian, William of Armorica, compares the roof of the church to an immense tortoise shell: " See it," he writes, " as it arises anew, dazzling with sculpture. It is a work of art which has no equal in the entire world. It can withstand fire even to judgment day." At Mans, in 1217, the bishop had the choir of Saint-Julien rebuilt. At Poitiers, the high altar of Saint-Pierre was dedicated in 1199, and between 1204 and 1214 there were set up the beautiful windows of the crucifixion. Finally, at Bourges, the cathedral Saint- Etienne was begun in 1192. This movement spread even into the most distant prov- inces. The primatial church of Lyon was built under the direction of Archbishop Guiehard about 1175, and the cathe- dral Saint-Etienne of Toulouse (1211) rose in the midst of the war against the Albigenses. At Bayonne, Bishop Wil- liam of Donzac laid the first stone of Sainte-Marie in 1213. In Brittany, those of Quimper and Saint-Pol-de-Leon were THE BISHOP 165 completed. In the Alps, the cathedral of Embrun was com- menced. But, in the opinion of the Christian world, all these marvels were surpassed by the great royal church at Paris, the work of Maurice of Sully. Notre-Dame was the thought and occupation of his whole lifetime. It is said that Pope Alexander III, on passing through Paris in 1163, laid the first stone of the new church. This fact has not been directly vouched for by a contem- porary, but this much is certain: that the choir was almost entirely finished in 1177, three years before the accession of Philip Augustus, for Robert of Torigny, abbot of Mont- Saint-Michel, saw it at this time and speaks of it with ad- miration in his chronicle. " Maurice, bishop of Paris," he says, " has been working for a long time to build the cathe- dral of this city. The apse is about finished, except for the great roof." It is equally certain that in 1182, on the nine- teenth of May, the high altar of Notre-Dame was consecrated by a papal legate. At the time of the bishop's death, in 1196, the roof was finished, but neither were the towers built nor the portals of the facade complete ; these were the work of the immediate successors of Maurice, notably of Eudes of Sully, and in all probability were not finished until 1220 or 1225. It was necessary, to prepare the site of the new cathe- dral, to demolish the old Roman church of Notre-Dame and the little church of Saint-Etienne-le-Vieux, to buy and tear down many houses, to break through the Rue Neuve-Notre- Dame, which opened upon the vestibule and permitted a direct approach to the two bridges. Confronted with the great labor spent in preparation, as well as the construction of new buildings, one wonders how the bishops could defray such enormous expenses. Who paid the expense of building? Whence came the money? The question is interesting and demands a careful answer. To begin with, there is no doubt that the bishop consecrated a large part of his seigniorial revenues — his private fortune — to the great enterprise. This was what Bishop Walter of Mortagne did at Laon; this also was what Maurice of Sully did at Paris. A contemporary expressly says, " He built the edifice at his own expense, much more than by outside gifts." And it is known from his will that Maurice left to 166 SOCIAL FEANCE his church the sum of one hundred livres, in order to build the leaden roof. At Soissons, Bishop Nivelon gave the site and renounced his rights to the revenues of vacant prebends. At Auxerre, Bishop William of Seignelay spent seven hun- dred livres from his own purse in the first year, without counting the abandonment of revenues accruing from his rights of justice; and in the following years he, each week, gave the sum of ten livres, which amounts to about one thou- sand five hundred francs to-day. To the funds furnished by the bishop from the episcopal income were added contribu- tions from the members of the chapters, who ordinarily appro- priated certain revenues for this work. Money accruing from the regular offerings of the faithful, whether on the occa- sion of mass or other offices, or at the time of the exposition of relics, was also consecrated to it. It is known that in the middle ages the proceeds from offerings given at the altar or for relics formed an important and perfectly sure income. It was only the occasional man who never committed a fault. So far as concerns Notre-Dame of Paris, Cardinal Eudes of Chateauroux said in the middle of the thirteenth century, ' ' It was with the offerings of women that the cathe- dral of Paris was in great measure built," which was true, though exaggerated, for the funds from gifts only partially supported the work. In order to excite the generosity of the faithful, there was recourse to another means: individuals giving money were granted remission of their penance, or were guaranteed a shortening of their time in purgatory by means of indul- gences. A contemporary of Philip Augustus, the monk Caesar of Heisterbach of Citeaux, states that Maurice of Sully had recourse to these measures. A usurer having come to con- sult him for means to save his soul, the bishop induced him to consecrate to the building of Notre-Dame the money ac- quired by his business. The cantor of Notre-Dame, the fa- mous Peter Cantor, when he was consulted, replied that he ought rather to give back the money to those from whom he had taken it. But the cantor was opposed to luxurious churches and he did not have the cathedral to build. It was necessary, however, to procure funds in order to raise to God a temple worthy of Him; from the religious point of THE BISHOP 167 view, the end justified the means. For this object popes will- ingly gave bulls of indulgence — as for example, Innocent III in 1202, to aid in the reconstruction of the cathedral of Evreux. There was another method which many bishops used, and which was employed, for example, in the case of the cathe- dral of Auxerre. The priests of the bishopric or of the chap- ter took their most venerated relics and carried them about through the diocese, through neighboring dioceses, and some- times even to the borders of the country and into foreign parts. On all the highways they took up collections, which went to increase the funds for the work. Finally, to sums furnished and collected by episcopal authority, there were added voluntary gifts of private indi- viduals. To contribute toward the erection of a cathedral was one of the many means of achieving salvation. William of Armorica, the historian, — ^who, as we have seen, so much admired the cathedral of Chartres when it was rebuilt after the fire of 1194, — remarks, with something of a play on words, that the fire which had consumed the old church saved many souls, the souls of those who by their money helped to build the new church. We know at least one of them, a certain Manasses Mauvoisin, who in 1195 made a gift to the church of Notre-Dame of Chartres of an income of sixty sous, which was expressly to be used in the reconstruction of the church {ad opus ecclesie), " and when the work already begun," says the charter of donation, '^ is finished by the grace of God, the aforesaid income shall none the less permanently be at the disposal of the church." In return, the donor sim- ply demanded that the canons pray for him in this same church on the anniversary of the day of his death. At Paris, King Louis VII gave two hundred livres ; the Knight WiUiam of Barres, fifty livres ; a nephew of Pope Alexander III, two silver marks. At Auxerre, five years after laying the first stone of the cathedral, a " building association " was formed, composed of a group of the faithful who, desirous of gaining the indulgences attached to the enterprise, without doubt furnished funds for its achievement. It is probable that this institution spread into many other localities. In order to participate in the spiritual benefits of the work, 168 SOCIAL FRANCE it was enough to give a piece of land, to furnish some mate- rials, to undertake the expense of a stained-glass window, or of any object used in worship. And gifts of this kind abound in the archives of new cathedrals. It was a field in which the piety of individuals and corporations competed. At Soissons, Adelaide, countess of Vermandois, in order to help the reconstruction of the cathedral, caused the timber neces- sary to cover the apse of the church to be taken from her forests in Valois; she furnished the oak all cut and carved to make the choir-stalls, and finally she paid the expense of a great stained-glass window. Another person of the same country put in two other windows at his own expense. At Troyes, in 1218, a certain man gave to the building the right to take loose stones from his quarry. At Chartres, in 1210, the chancellor of the chapter, Robert of Berou, made a gift of one of the choir windows. This window still exists: it represents two groups of pilgrims and the donor himself kneeling before an altar, with this inscription, " Bohertus de Berou, Carnotensis cancellarius." At Paris, the Cantor Albert gave twenty livres for the completion of the stalls of Notre-Dame ; and the dean of the chapter, Barbedor, made a gift of a window worth fifteen livres. All these gener- osities, and many others which might be cited from the cartularies and obituaries, were indeed well invested, for they repaid their authors with consideration in this world and with hope of salvation in the next. Every Christian and every Christian corporation had the right thus to contribute to enrich and embellish the work of their bishop ; and a theo- logian of the time of Philip Augustus ^ gravely propounds this question apropos of a case which is said to have pre- sented itself under the episcopacy of Maurice of Sully : ' ' The syndicate of the demimondaine of Paris offers to give the bishop either a stained-glass window or chalice. Can the bishop receive the gift? Yes, provided he does it without publicity." Maurice of Sully, who had a broad mind, thought that the money of a courtesan was worth as much as that of a usurer. The excellence of the intention purified it all. ^ Cited by Haureau in his " Notices et extraits de quelques manu- scrits latins de la Bibliotheque Nationale," II, p. 10. - THE BISHOP 169 To have a new church large enough to satisfy all the needs of worship, high enough to symbolize the Christian ideal, and appealing to the eye by its carving and color was what the bishop wanted for his clerics and people, while recognition and general admiration sufficed for the present to pay him for his trouble until his recompense in the world to come. This highly edifying work brought pleasure to all, both poor and powerful. Nevertheless, it displeased some. There were men so full of the spirit of monastic authority that they would not even admit of Christian luxury nor of silver lav- ished in the service of God. In all periods of the middle ages there were perceptible two opposing currents of Christian ideals: the antagonism of those who thought that prayer ought to be especially a testimony of the spirit, an act of faith simply expressed in an austere form without ceremonies appealing to the senses; and those who, on the contrary, be- lieved that everything beautiful and precious among earthly objects ought to be consecrated to the divine service. Sixty years before the thirteenth century. Saint Bernard indig- nantly denounced ' ' the great pride of the churches, their ex- traordinary length, their rich marbles and paintings." He saw in them the vanity of vanities; he declared that, '' in- stead of adorning itself with gilding, the church ought rather to cover the nakedness of her poor, and that the money spent upon the temples had been stolen from the unfortunate." "What would he have said had he witnessed the sumptuous display of gothie art, the general movement toward the con- struction of great churches? Peter Cantor, a moralist of his school, who found fault with the bishops for building them- selves palaces, no more approved when he saw them erecting their cathedrals : "Why build churches, as is done at the present time? The apses of these churches ought not to be so high as even the body of the edifice, for they symbolize a mystical idea : Christ, who is the head of humanity, is more humble than his church. To-day they strive to raise the choirs of churches more and more. This love for build- ing is a fever, an epidemic." And he adds, " What are the conse- quences of this malady? This luxury and sumptuousness on the walls of the building has the effect of cooling piety and of lessening charitable distributions to the poor. But the churches have been constructed with the usury of avarice and by the artifice of lies." 170 SOCIAL FRANCE And lie branded the abuse of offerings so useful to bishops. Offerings were unnecessary, excepting in the great solemni- ties. There were too many churches, too many altars, ' ' Behold, ' ' he says finally, ' ' what was the case in Israel ; it had but one temple, one tabernacle, one offertory." Peter Cantor might have been right from the point of view of Christian asceticism, and even this argument is debatable. But, from the point of view of art, he was wrong. Had he been listened to, Notre-Dame and all the cathedrals which arose from the earth in so many places in the France of the time of Philip Augustus would not be before our eyes to-day. For one must not forget that it is by the masterpieces of Roman and gothic art, and not by literature, that the spirit of the middle ages shows its power and originality. Besides their religious mission, bishops rendered other in- disputable services to society, for they protected their sub- jects in town and country at the same time that they were defending themselves against the brigandage of the lay lords, and were the king's aids in his work of concentrating the national forces for the sake of order. This life of continual activity and of incessant strife, which was the life of the majority of them, could not help but gain sympathy and popular recognition. In reality they were often nothing but soldiers, who lacked what we to-day call episcopal virtue, but they lived and died, enjoying the respect and affection of a great majority of their diocesans. And when the historian of the bishops of Auxerre — speaking, for example, of the death of William, bishop of Toucy, in 1181, and of the uni- versal regret it created — asserts " that it would be impos- sible to tell how great was the mourning throughout the entire city, and with what groanings and lamentations sor- row was shown by all who were present at the obsequies," we believe that it is not a ready-made, stereotyped phrase forming a part of an official ceremony. These men of the middle ages loved their bishop sincerely; they had need of his zeal, and we have seen that he spent himself as much for their benefit as for that of the monarchy. The nobles, feudal lords, barons, and castellans were less THE BISHOP 171 favorable to the episcopacy, and for a different reason: in the eyes of a lay lord the bishop was often an obstacle and an enemy. We shall presently discuss the perpetual an- tagonism which everywhere in France brought on quarrels between bishop and baron. Nobles did not write history, and as a result we do not know historically what they thought and said of the head of their diocese. We can only guess it at the best from the fact that they often made desperate war against him, braving his anathemas for a long time. But, for want of history as such, we must direct ourselves to those works of imagination thoroughly saturated with the spirit of feudalism and nobility and especially composed for listen- ers in chateaux. These are the chansons de geste, heroic poems — a literature which attained its height in the time of Philip Augustus. It must be remembered that, primarily, the chansons de geste, in a more or less hyperbolic form, give us the opinions which prevailed in feudal society and in military circles. But in reading these poems, written par- ticularly to amuse or flatter men of arms, one perceives from the start that the bishops do not play — so to speak — any role; if they appear at all, it is as shadowy figures, as per- sonages in the background. They are not noticed in time of peace, and it is with reluctance that they are mentioned in armies or battles. The same thing is noticed of other clerics in general, both secular and regular members of the church. The authors of the epics — such as Oarin le Lorrain or Girart de Eoussillon — always present the clergy in an absolutely subordinate and inferior position. If we believed them, clerics were useful only to serve as secretaries to illiterate nobles, to collect the dead on the field of battle, to place ointments on wounds, and say masses for those who paid for them. They speak of clerics only casually, in a line, and then with visible disdain. We have no need of remarking that this indifference, this easy and contemptuous way of sacrificing episcopacy and church, is decidedly in opposition to historical fact. It is known, on the contrary, what a considerable place bishops held, not only in religious, but also in civil society; what a frequent part they took in the military expeditions, legal and political councils of kings and high feudal suzerains. 172 SOCIAL FRANCE History shows them to us intervening and acting on all sides and under all circumstances. This, then, is evidently a note- worthy example of the liberty with which the authors of chansons de geste treated contemporary truth, and shows, therefore, that one must be prudent when trying to draw useful historical conclusions from these fantastic composi- tions. It is clear that here we meet firmly fixed prejudice. The author who wrote for the diversion of the nobles shared all the prejudices of the nobility whom, above all, he at- tempted to picture ; he is only an echo, an instrument of the malice of the military caste. They had too much strife with the bishops to recognize their superiority, to render them justice, or even to permit having them mentioned in the songs composed for their own distraction. For the minstrels usually said little or nothing of these mitered and croziered powers; when they spoke of them, it was to present them in a most unfavorable light. For ex- ample, the author of the poem, Oarin le Lorrain: in a sort of introduction he spoke of the episcopacy as an egotistical, avaricious corporation, which refused to contribute to the expenses which the defense of the realm necessitated. When the archbishop of Eeims, the highest ecclesiastical personage of France, was asked to give pecuniary aid to the Emperor Charles Martel and his knights, who were ready to fight the pagans, he replied: "'We are clergy; it i& our duty to serve God. We gladly pray that you may gain the victory, and may be defended from death. As for you, knights, God has commanded you to come to the aid of the clergy and to protect Holy Church. But why so many words ? I swear by the great Saint Denis, you shall not have an Angevin sou from me.' ' Sire archbishop,' responded the abbot of Cluny, ' you are wrong in not guarding the memory of our benefactors. If we are rich (for which the Lord be praised), it is from the good lands which their ancestors bequeathed us. Let each one of us to-day contribute something of his own; it would be foolish, by refusing entirely, to expose ourselves to greater losses.' ' Do as you wish,' replied the angry archbishop ; ' but I would let myself be tied to the tails of their horses before I would give two Angevin farthings.' " In this passage there is evidently an allusion to the pecuniary requisitions of which the bishops were the victims THE BISHOP 173 on the part of the kings of France and the popes in the mid- dle of the twelfth century; or perhaps even an allusion to some particular episode, like that of the Saladin tithe exacted by Philip Augustus in 1188. The truth is that the church and her subjects supported this heavy tax almost entirely alone. Without doubt, some bishops murmured and let their contributions wait, and others did not yield without pressure. But, on the whole, the high clergy paid. They are seen pawning even the altar cloths and holy vessels for the aid of king or pope. The feudal poet has in this instance perpetrated an intended exaggeration, almost an historical lie. The class of players who at this same time created and developed another kind of profane literature, the fabliaux, as we have seen, especially attacked the clergy and the parish cures. The bishops did not often appear in these tales, but, when they did play some role, it was not always just to their advantage. According to their narrator, they led scandalous lives, which, considering the example set by their superiors,, explains the loose manners of the average cures. Here again the spontaneousness of the satirists, which is more than blunt, abused certain all too true facts by attributing to the episco-. pal personnel as a whole the faults of some of its members. But, after all, it must be admitted that, in this respect, ver-. nacular literature was only turning to its own uses what a cer- tain class of religious literature said concerning the episcopacy. In the middle ages, members of the clergy were never more mistreated verbally than by the clergy itself. The nobles and the bourgeoisie, the enemies of the church, were never harder or more unjust to the episcopacy than were certain preachers, who believed themselves obliged to strike heavily in order to move and correct the more surely. Besides, many of the authors of these sermons were monks or clerics, imbued with the monastic spirit — a spirit, as we know, pro- foundly opposed to the official and worldly prelates of the church. One of these, Geoffrey of Troyes, leaves us the following picture of the episcopacy: " The bishops are past masters, as wolves and foxes. They flatter and bribe in order to extort. They are devoured by avarice, burning with a desire to possess. Instead of being the friends and 174 SOCIAL FRANCE protectors of the church, they are its ravishers. They despoil it, selling its vestments, and violating justice. Their only rule is their own wish. See them walk; they have a proud bearing, a cruel air, sullen eyes, a harsh word. Everything in their personality breathes pride. Their conduct is the reverse of good manners; theirs is even a life of wickedness. They wish to be an object of terror to their flocks, forgetting that they are physicians, not sovereigns." Adam of Perseigne compares the life of the clergy with that of Christ: " He suffered, and they live in luxury ; He wore hair-cloth, and they silken vestments. It is with the patrimony of the Crucified that they maintain their luxury and their pride. They care not for souls but for their hunting birds. They care not for the poor but for their dogs. They play at dice, instead of administering sacra- ments. The churches instead of being holy places, have become market-places and haunts for Drigands." Peter of Blois especially attacked the judges and adminis- trators of the bishops, the " officials " who took the place of the prelate and his tribunal and relieved him in part from the worry of affairs. Lately instituted and revocable at will, these agents represented in the diocese that unity, direction, and authority so singularly compromised by the encroach- ments of the archdeacons, though they also abused their power : " They have but one thought, to oppress, to fleece, to flay the members of their diocese. They are the blood-suckers of the bishop, or the sponges which he squeezes from time to time. All the money which they extort from the poor goes for the pleasures and dainti- nesses of episcopal life. These wranglers, hairsplitters, ready to en- snare the unfortunate litigant in their nets, interpret the law in their own way and handle justice like despots. They break contracts, nourish hatred, break up marriages, protect the adulterer, penetrate into the interior of homes under the pretext of being inquisitors, slander the innocent, and absolve the guilty. In a word, these sons of avarice, live wholly for money. They have sold themselves to the devil." Some official documents attest how very many bishops led a life which was hardly exemplary. The decrees of two councils — the one held in Paris in 1212, and the other at THE BISHOP 175 Montpellier in 1214 — contain orders and prohibitions, show- ing us indirectly the customs of the episcopacy. Bishops were ordered to wear the tonsure and vestment of their order ; they were forbidden to wear luxurious furs, to use decorated saddles or golden bits, to play games of chance, to go on the chase, to swear or to suffer one among them to swear, to introduce players or musicians to their table, to hear matins while still in bed, to talk of frivolous things during an of- fice, or to excommunicate at random. They were not to quit their residence, were to convene a synod at least once a year, and, on their visits in the diocese, they were not to take a numerous suite with them, it being too heavy a charge to those who entertained them. They were prohibited from receiving money for conferring orders, from tolerating the concubinage of priests, from dispensing with the marriage bans, and from failing to excommunicate the guilty. Finally, they were not permitted to celebrate illegal marriages, to annul lawful wills, to allow dancing in holy places, or the celebration of fools' holiday in the cathedral, or to allow any one to proceed with legal combat and judgments of God in their presence. One need not believe the authors of these sermons word for word, since they aim to show up the bad rather than the good, nor to conclude from the orders of the councils that the general customs of the church were deplorable. Never- theless, it is certain that, in spite of the great reforms of the previous age, the episcopacy in great measure remained feudal. A great many of the prelates, indeed, belonged to the noble class and lived like castellans. Hugh of Noyers, bishop of Auxerre, is the type of fighting bishop who contended against the nobles, coped even with the king, and worked eagerly to increase his territory and the revenues of his church. He built houses which were really fortresses, " surrounded by great moats, to which the water was directed from afar at great expense ; protected by great palisades, surmounted by a donjon; equipped with turreted ramparts, gates, and drawbridges." One day Thibaud, count of Champagne, exercising his right of suzerain, razed to the ground the walls and towers of one of these formidable manors, leaving nothing standing except the 176 SOCIAL FRANCE dwelling-house. " The bishop of Auxerre spent too much," adds the chronicler of the bishop. " He loved the society of men-at-arms and knights, and took as active a part in their exercises and sports as the dignity of the priesthood permitted. He was well lettered, reading books, and willingly remaining at study when he had time. Very active in his own interests, he cared little for those of others, and was harsh toward his subjects, whom he crushed with intolerable exactions." At Narbonne, Archbishop Berenger II (1192-1211), was among those who, according to the expression of Innocent III, " served no other god but money, and had a purse in place of a heart." Everything had to be paid for, even the con- secration of bishops. When a church came to be vacant, he refrained from naming an Incumbent, in order to profit from its revenues. He reduced the number of canons at Narbonne by one-half, in order to appropriate their prebends, and like- wise retained the vacant archdeaconries. The pope writes in 1204 that one might in his diocese see ' ' monks and canons regular laying aside the frock, taking wives, living by usury, becoming lawyers, players, or doctors." Six years later, Berenger had not reformed; Innocent III, therefore, begged his legates to use the ecclesiastical censures against him and against his colleague, the archbishop of Auch, who it seems was no better than he. Helie I, archbishop of Bordeaux '(1187-1206), brother of a Gascon highwayman employed by Henry II and Richard, lived surrounded by men-at-arms and subjected his diocese to regular plunder. We saw above ^ how the pope accused him of sharing the profits of his raids. Once Helie installed himself in the abbey of Saint- Yrieix with his highwaymen, his horses, his hunting-dogs, and his courtesans, and led such a life at the expense of the inhabitants and the monks that after his departure some of them, despoiled of everything, died of starvation. In a letter of 1205, Innocent III com- pared him to " a bare and rotten tree, which delights in its rottenness as a beast of burden in its filth." The most extraordinary bishop of this period was Matthew ' Chapter I. THE BISHOP 177 of Lorraine, bishop of Toul (1198-1210). He belonged to the ducal family. Provost of the church of Saint-Die before his election, he was already living as a magnificent and dis- solute lord, squandering the revenues of his charge and forc- ing his colleagues, the dean and canons, to quit the place. When he became bishop, he exploited his diocese with such shamelessness that the chapter of Toul asked the pope to depose him. Innocent III ordered an investigation of his conduct, but, on the eve of the day on which Matthew was to appear, the dean of Toul was seized by some men-at-arms, placed on an ass, his feet tied together under the belly of the animal, and was taken to the bishop, who had him chained and thrown into prison. A legate of the pope ex- communicated Matthew, but it was eight years (1202-1210) before his deposition became effective and the faithful of Toul could choose another bishop. During the interminable lawsuit, Matthew had built a chateau on the elevation over- looking Saint-Die, from which he plundered all the coun- try. His relative, the duke of Lorraine, was himself obliged to demolish it. Expelled finally from his domain, Matthew retired to a little hermitage in the midst of a forest, where he lived by hunting and brigandage, only waiting for an opportunity to avenge himself on his successor. In 1217, he found it. The new bishop, Renaud, was stabbed in a pass of ;6tival, and Matthew fled into the mountains, taking the episcopal luggage, the chasubles, the vases, and the holy chrism. It became necessary for Thibaud, duke of Lorraine, to free the church and with his own hand kill this bishop who was both brigand and assassin (May 16, 1217). In contrast to this type of prelate, a survivor of primitive and savage feudalism, others are found — ^like Stephen of Tournai, William of Champagne, and Peter of Corbeil — who were theologians, politicians, men of letters, and courtiers. Even Paris, in the time of Louis VII and Philip Augustus, had a model bishop, Maurice of Sully. Elected bishop of Paris in 1160, he did not seek to play a political role, although he enjoyed the confidence of both king and pope. He excelled in the moral and administrative management of his diocese, which he governed for thirty-six years. He is almost considered as a saint, and a monk of 178 SOCIAL FRANCE the abbey of Anchin, who saw him in 1182, has left us this enthusiastic picture of him. "Maurice, bishop of Paris, vessel of affluence, fertile olive tree in the house of the Lord, flourished among the other bishops of Gaul. Without speaking of those inner qualities, which God alone knows, he shone without by his knowledge, his preaching, his many alms, and his good deeds. It was he who constructed the church of the most Holy Virgin, in his episcopal residence, and in this work, at the same time so beautiful and sumptuous, he employed the resources of others less than his own revenues. His presence at the cathedral was frequent, or rather continual. I have seen him at a feast which was not a solemnity, at the hour when vespers were chanted. He was not seated in his episcopal chair, but sat in the choir, intoning the psalms like the others and surrounded by a hundred clerics." CHAPTER VI THE MONASTIC SPIRIT It does not seem that there was ever a time in the middle ages when the monk fully and rigorously conformed to the rule of his institution, which required him to flee all contact with the world and to live in perpetual seclusion, absorbed in study, prayer, and manual labor. The monk was an agent of enlightenment and a spiritual influence; but he was also for this very reason a social power. How could society help using for other ends the influence and prestige which monks enjoyed among the people ? The greatest monk of the middle ages was Saint Bernard, but there is no monk who lived oftener and for longer periods of time outside of his abbey. He passed his life on horseback in France, Germany, and Italy. Blamed for it, he often grieved over it and scruples of conscience troubled him. He found " monstrous " — ^the word is his — the life to which the church condemned him. ' ' I am, ' ' said he, " I know not what fantastic animal, neither cleric nor layman, wearing the robe of a monk and not prac- tising its observances." Fifty years after the death of Saint Bernard, at the end of the twelfth century, monks no longer felt these scruples. It is said that, shortly after the death of the founder of the order of Grandmont, Stephen of Muret, the tomb of this holy man, where numerous miracles were per- formed, attracted such a multitude of pilgrims and visitors that it angered the monks of Grandmont, whose solitude was destroyed. They objected to the saint performing miracles and threatened, if he continued it, to throw his body into a cesspool. I do not know whether this story is well founded, but, in any case, this fervor did not last. In the time of Philip Augustus, the monks not only found it very conven- ient and exceedingly profitable to allow laymen to come to the church in multitudes, but they themselves voluntarily left 179 180 SOCIAL FRANCE their cloister and went out into the profane world. In spite of canonical prohibitions and the severity of the rules, they were to be seen everywhere, upon every road. Philip of Harvengt, abbot of Bonne-Esperance and a contemporary of Philip Augustus, indignantly complains of it: " Where is the road, the village, where is the crowded thorough- fare, in which one does not see the monk on horseback? Who is now able to leave his house without stumbling upon a monk? Is there a feast, a fair, or a market-place where monks do not appear? They are to be seen in all assemblies, in all battles, in all tourneys. Monks swarm everywhere that knights assemble for battle. What do they in the midst of the shock of bucklers and the crash of furious lances, and wherefore are they authorized to go out thus and ride about?" The people of the middle ages were almost as superstitious as the ancients. But, if it was an ill omen to meet a hare, a disheveled woman, a blind person, or a cripple, it was scarcely less lucky to meet a monk. A letter of Peter of Blois contains a characteristic anecdote on this point. A cleric, who had his degree, Master "William le Beau, was leaving an inn when he met a monk and, what is more, this monk earnestly appealed to him to reenter the inn, assuring him that he was threatened with a great disaster if he risked trav- eling that day. Master le Beau, adds Peter of Blois, regard- ing everything that did not rest on faith as foolishness, mounted his horse to join the retinue of the archbishop, whom he accompanied. " But he had gone only a few steps when, with his horse, he fell into a deep pond, from which he was rescued with difficulty." And Peter of Blois moralizes on this incident, " My opinion is that Master le Beau would have fallen into the pond even if no monk had spoken to him." Educated people, like him, no longer accepted such beliefs; but, as far as meeting monks was concerned, there was no great virtue in this attitude, as monks were at that time to be found everywhere, and he was obliged to habitu- ate himself to meeting them. The assertion of Philip of Harvengt is not exaggerated; it is enough to open a chronicle and read the correspondence of the time to see how the monks were employed in politics THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 181 and business and how princes and kings little hesitated to take them from their cloisters and intrust them with the most diverse missions. They were discreet, clever men, understand- ing how to do things. The respect which their robes inspired permitted them, more than any others, to go about without fear. As negotiators and as messengers to the court and to the armies, one frequently sees them taking their places in the entourage of the Capetians and the Plantagenets. In 1202, when John Lackland triumphed over his nephew, Arthur, at Mirabeau, a victory unhoped for but complete, he hastened to communicate his success to the body of his Eng- lish councillors, who were then in Normandy — notably Wil- liam Marshal, earl of Pembroke. And to whom did he intrust the message? A monk. Observe the passage which we find on this subject in the versified chronicle of the biog- rapher of William Marshal : "A monk set out and, traveling day and night, made his way to Marshal. He courteously delivered his message, announcing the capture of Arthur, of Geoffrey of Lusignan, of the count of Marche, of Savari of Mauleon, and of other great personages who supported Arthur. Marshal rejoiced greatly and said to the monk : ' You shall carry this news to the host of France, to the count of Eu at Arques, to give him joy.' ^ ' Sire,' said the monk to William Marshal, ' I beg your mercy. If I go there the count will be so angry that he will surely kill me. Send another than I.' ' Monk,' said Marshal, ' do not make excuses ; you are the one to go. It is not the custom in this country to kill messengers. Go at once; you will find him with the army.' The monk went with a large retinue to Arques and communicated the news of Poitou to the count of Eu. The count, who had expected very different news, changed color and re- mained silent. He lay down in his tent, much depressed, not know- ing what to do, for he did not wish to repeat to any one what he had just heard." Philip Augustus, like his English rivals, gladly employed monks. He always kept one of them, Brother Bernard of Coudray, a Grandmontain, near him and intrusted him with the most delicate negotiations. It was William, a monk of the abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, whom he sent to Denmark to 1 One should note that the count of Eu, brother of the count of Marche, whom John Lackland had just made prisoner, was an ally of Philip Augustus, and one of the most rabid enemies of the English king. 182 SOCIAL FKANCE handle the matter of his marriage with Ingeborg, and who brought the young fiancee back to France: the marriage turned out badly, as is well known, but that was not the fault of the negotiator, an excellent cleric, whom the church canonized. An abbot of Sainte-Genevieve, the scholar and philosopher, Stephen of Tournai, was also for many years the man of aifairs and ambassador, appointed by Philip Augustus. We have not spoken of Brother Guerin, the hospitaler, who was a valuable clerk of universal competence to the king of France during the last twenty years of his reign, for he exercised at one time the functions of chan- cellor, minister of foreign affairs, and chief of the army. We know the important part which he took in the victory of Bouvines. Monks were good for everything, and sovereigns imposed upon them. It was not always of their own free will that the monks left the monastery to journey afar in a time when long journeys were as uncomfortable as perilous. One need only to read the terrified letters in the correspond- ence of Stephen of Tournai, in which he speaks of his mis- sion' to Toulouse and of the countless dangers which he had encountered; especially a note in the year 1183, in which he thanked Heaven and man for having escaped a journey to Rome, the king having changed his mind. One would say that a criminal condemned to death had just received pardon. It is not only the historical documents, properly so called, which show us the monk taken from his convent by -the rulers and traveling the roads and busying himself with temporal affairs, even with matrimonial negotiations. The testimony of the chansons de geste, which were written in the time of Philip Augustus, agrees exactly with that of the chronicles. Open, for example, the poem Garin le Lorrain, one of those which most certainly date from this period. Duke Hervis of iMetz entered his estate and happened to take shelter at the convent of Gorze. He said to the abbot, in whom he had great confidence, " Go and find me a maiden, for I want a wife." The abbot answered that he would willingly do so, but that he wished to know where he was to find her. " By God who created me," said Hervis, " I want Aelis, the sister of Gaudin. Under heaven there is not another more beauti- ful. Likewise, in this century there is not a better knight THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 183 than her brother. ' ' The abbot made ready immediately upon receiving the order. He left with fifteen monks and a num- ber of knights. He was rich and traveled " very luxuri- ously." The roads were covered with mules, packhorses, and palfreys. A month sufficed for the mission, and he returned to Metz with the young girl. Hervis le Lor- rain went to meet them. " Welcome," he said to the abbot, and, taking the girl by the hand, said to her: " Beautiful maiden, by the God who does not lie, thou art beautiful of face and form; I will make thee a very rich woman." " Sire," responded Aelis, " I give thee many thanks." Further on the author of the poem shows us Lietri, the abbot of Saint- Amand in Pevele, intrusted with carrying the body of his brother Begon, whom assassins had surprised by treachery in a forest, to the mighty Duke Garin. He left with fifteen monks and twenty-six knights, and, his errand accomplished, he returned to his abbey after a fifteen days' journey. ' ' Scarcely seated in his cloister, his monks crowded about him, asking him why he had been sent and what he had done." He satisfied their curiosity and ended by saying, ' ' Go, pray that peace be made ^mong these powerful barons. ' ' Evidently the profession of messenger and negotiator was almost a specialty of the monk; a wearisome profession and one at times fraught with dangers of a grave character. The poem Garin, in another scene, tells of two monks whom the archbishop of Reims sent to the court of France to bear false testimony. He wished to prove an imaginary relationship between the Princess Blanehefleur and Duke Garin in such a way as to hinder their marriage. For King Pepin himself wished to marry the intended bride of the duke, his vassal. At the moment when the archbishop solemnly announced the marriage of Blanehefleur and Garin, one of the monks, whom he had stationed together with the king, advanced and stated that the father of the baron was a near relative of the father of the fiancee. " These words threw Begon, brother of Garin, into a fit of anger. He leaped upon the monk, knocking him down, and trampling him with his feet, and cried : ' Where have you gotten what you tell us ? * He would have killed the unlucky wretch if some one had not has- tened to the rescue. ' Sire vassal,' said the king angrily, * it seems 184 SOCIAL FRANCE you hold me in great contempt to beat this monk thus before me.' ' He, a monk ! Sire, he is not, he is a traitor, a renegade ; he has been paid, by whom I do not know, to talk as he has. I swear by Saint Denis, if I lay hands on him a second time he is a dead man.' ' Enough,' answered the king, ' I shall send for the saints, and the monks shall swear on the relies to the truth of what they have said.' The relics came, and the two monks took the oath required of them." The feudal spirit predominates in the poem Garin, and it is not all well-disposed toward churchmen. Without pre- tending that there were many monks capable of accepting a task as that above, it is certain that great numbers and all kinds of them were to be seen in the assemblies and in the court, and that they were used in all professions. They even followed the armies, a circumstance which moved Philip of Harvengt to wrath and to demand why they were seen in battles and tournaments. Why? It is surprising that the abbot of Bonne-Esperance should ask this question. He, like all contemporaries of Philip Augustus, must have known that, wherever there was an army, there was found a whole troop of clerics and monks of every kind — " men of peace," who had a double mission: first, they intervened between belliger- ents in order to induce them, in the name of the church and of the crusade, to conclude, if not a definitive peace, at least a truce, an armistice. On every page of the chronicles there is talk of the efforts of the " religious men " to prevent the knights from joining battle. Then if, in spite of attempts at peacemaking, the battle began, these clerics and monks served to care for the wounded. They carried the wounded to the physicians, the mires, and many of these physicians were themselves monks, who had studied at Montpellier or Salerno. It was the monks also who performed the service of inter- ring the dead, for the noble knight desired to be bestowed in an abbey and was happy if, before he died, he could assume the monastic habit. The chronicles and charters give us a thou- sand examples of this; the chansons de geste are here only an echo of the truth. G-arin said to the abbot of Saint- Vincent of Laon : ' ' Let the bodies of my good friends, who have just been killed, be collected, enshrouded, and buried. THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 185 I shall raise funds so that God may show them mercy." Likewise, Hervis of Metz sent for the abbot of Saint-Seurin of Bordeaux, who came, accompanied by ten monks. ' ' Seignior abbot, ' ' said Hervis, * ' I have sent for you to bury two varlets before the high altar of Saint-Seurin. If you consent, I will give you a large part of my treasure." '* As you wish," answered the abbot. Immediately bathing the corpses, he took them to the monastery of Saint-Seurin, to the place the duke had named. It was a windfall for the monastery. One is, then, not astonished that the monk played his part in the military life of the knight and that wherever the nobles did battle and killed each other, whether in war or in the tournaments, so frequent in the time of Philip Augus- tus, one finds the monks nursing the wounded, blessing and burying the dead. The wandering foot (acedia), that incurable spleen, that mystical conception which all preachers condemned, is only a passionate desire to leave the monastic prison to live at large and at liberty among people who act and talk. One of the most celebrated contemporaries of Philip Augustus, the philosopher and theologian, Alain of Lille, spoke of it in no-^uncertain terms : " The acedia makes one rebel against the severity of the rule in the cloister. They wish to eat more delicately, to sleep on softer beds, to lessen the watching, to observe the rule of silence less, or even break it entirely. It is this which nourishes vice, and takes the monk away from his abbey." Thus one sees the church taking more severe and minute precautions to hold the monk and prevent him from quitting his frock. In all the acts of the councils, in all the statutes of the diocesan synods, there is on this point a prohibitory article. " The monk who leaves his frock shall be excom- municated," says the council of Paris in 1213. A canon of the same council orders the walling up of the little doors of the monastery, in order to take away all occasion and all temptation to misconduct. The synodal statute of Eudes, bishop of Toul, which dates from 1192, excommunicates fugi- tive monks. The reform rule of Cluny, promulgated by the abbot Hugh V in 1203, contains a whole chapter relative 186 SOCIAL FEANCE to the monks who went outside the doors of the abbey with- out permission. " For it often happens that our monks go about among the houses in the villages and in the woods saying and doing that which they should not say and do, from which it results that we are blamed and the people are scandalized; therefore every monk going outside the monastery must have a letter from his abbot, a permit in good and correct form to leave." And the reform of the abbey of Saint-Victor of Marseilles, published in 1195 by Pope Celestine III, added the now well- known precaution, " The monk who goes into the town shall never go alone: the abbot or the prior shall send with him an honest companion." But what could rules, prohibitions, and anathemas do against the irresistible fojce which drew the monk from his cloister? Any pretext for leaving seemed good to him, and he used them freely. Here, according to a sermon of Peter Comestor is a monk who is sick, or who says he is sick, and who, in order to recuperate, asks to return for a little while to his own country : " Under the pretext of ill health he goes to his relatives ; he returns to his native soil, to breathe for a few days the purer air, the air of his childhood ; and when he returns he pays close attention to the time of his entrance; he never returns at mealtime or at prayers, for he dislikes a dish of cooked ribs, of the vegetables pre- pared without gravy, the watered wine, and the silence and mortifica- tion of the cloister." There are other monks, and they are numerous, who leave the abbey to study in the schools, especially in Paris, where the student life, as we have seen, was not without its charms. These latter gave excellent reasons to justify their absence and their travels: they needed to study medicine, to heal their sick brethren, and law, to conduct the lawsuits of the community with good results. But the monk-scholars soon became legion: so that ecclesiastical authorities became wor- ried, and finally took measures to keep the cloisters from be- ing further deserted. Already the council of Tours, in 1163, had pronounced with severity against them. It prohibited THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 187 the study of law and medicine, especially to those who had made profession of monastic life. Orders were given them to repair to their abbeys in two months, under pain of excom- munication, and those who returned should have the last place among the monks in the choir, in the chapter, in the refectory, and should lose all hope of promotion to any dig- nity unless the mercy of the Holy See disposed otherwise. This prohibition was renewed in 1213 at the council of Paris. And in his famous bull Super speculam, 1219, which pro- hibited the study of law in the university of Paris, Pope Honorius III had a very harsh word for those monks who became students: " They no longer endure," said he, " the monastic silence. They repulse the law of God which con- verts souls, that law which they should love more than gold or precious stones." And why this flood of monks in the great schools? It is because they liked to mingle with the crowd, to reap the applause of the vulgar, and to amuse the ladies '-maids, *' ad pedisequas amplectandas." It is a pope who says this. To the monks who vainly multiplied objec- tions and gave plausible reasons to justify their absence in the schools, Pope Honorius wished to have the penalty, de- creed by the council of Tours, rigorously applied : excommuni- cation without heed of an appeal to Rome. \ There was a whole category of monks and nuns whom it was very difficult to retain in the cloister, and these were the noble lords and great ladies who entered the cloister because of weariness, remorse, or lack of quiet and repose. After some time they perceived that the monastic rule was harsh; they were homesick for the world, its liberties and its joys, and they doffed the cowl and returned to chateau life. "What abbot could stop them? But the example was bad for the ordinary monks from the common people, and they utilized all opportunities which presented themselves for leaving the cloister and having provisional liberty with alacrity. The bands which plagued all central France at the begin- ning of Philip Augustus' reign collected a great number of exiles and fugitives from all provinces : men and women with lost reputations, monks, canons, nuns — a medley of adven- turers and adventuresses who had abandoned ecclesiastical robes and now gave themselves over to every excess. 188 SOCIAL FRANCE There is on this subject an amusing tale of the year 1183, which is recorded in a biography of "William Marshal in French verse. William was one day riding in Brie with his squire, Eustache of Bertrimont: " He wished to sleep so he threw himself down by the side of the road, while the squire loosened the bridles of the horses and let them graze. While Marshal slept there passed a man and a woman both of fine appearance and mounted upon large, swift horses. The two travelers had considerable baggage packed on their mounts and were traveling rapidly. Just at the moment when they passed near Marshal the woman said in a low voice : ' God, how tired I am.' - Marshal awoke, and asked who it was : ' Sire,' answered Eustache, ' it is a man and a woman, traveling at a great rate ; they have a rich equipage.' ' Put on the bridles,' said Marshal, ' for I want to know whence they come, whither they are going, and who they are.' He mounted at once but in his haste forgot to take his sword. Having overtaken the travelers he plucked the man by the sleeve of his riding-coat and demanded who he was. ' Sire,' answered the other, whom this question visibly annoyed, ' I am a man.' ' By my head,' said Marshal, ' I know right well that you are no animal.' The other disengaged himself and put his hand on his sword. ' You are looking for a quarrel?' said Marshal. 'You shall have it. Eustache, bring my sword.' The stranger hastily dismounted, but Marshal followed, and seizing him by the riding-hood pulled it so rudely that it came off; and then he saw that it was the handsomest monk one could find on this side of Cologne. ' Ha ! ' said Marshal, * I have found you out. Who are you and who is this woman ? ' "Much ashamed, the monk confessed that the woman was his mistress, that he was taking her from her country, and that at present they were going to a foreign land. ' Tell me, young woman, who are you and of what family ? ' ' Sire,' answered the young woman, weeping, ' I am of Flanders, sister of Raoul of Lens.' ' Girl, you are foolish. If you will promise to give up this folly, I will reconcile you with your brother, whom I know very well.' ' Sire, I will never be seen in the country where I am known.' ' Well, at least,' said Marshal, ' that being the case, have you money with which to live ? ' The monk raised the skirt of his riding coat, and took off a large belt. ' Certainly,' said he, ' here is our money. Here are forty-eight livres ! ' ' And what are you going to do with them, my friend ? How do you plan to live with this money ? ' ' I'll tell you ; I have no intention of investing these deniers, but I shall deposit them in some foreign village and we will live on the income.' ' A usurer,' said Marshal, ' by the sword of Gcd that shaU never be! Take the money, Eustache! Since you refuse to return, go, and the devil be with you ! ' " Marshal went to his inn. There he found Seignior Baldwin and Hugh of Hamelineourt, who had arrived before him, and who THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 189 laughed at him, saying, ' Marshal, you are late. You are making us fast.' ' Seigniors, do not regret it. I have made a winning of which you shall have your share. Eustache, the money ! ' Eustache threw the money before them. Marshal sai4 to them: * Take enough to pay your pledges.' ^ * Marshal,' they asked, ' where did this money come from?' 'Have patience and I shall tell you presently.' They ate joyously, and counted the money which really amounted to forty-eight livres. Then Marshal told them in detail how he had gotten the money. *By God's lips,' exclaimed Master Hugh, * you were too good to leave them their horses and baggage. Here, my horse! For, by my faith, I want them to have an affair with me.' But Marshal restrained him." Thus, one after another, the regular clergy left the cloister and lived in contact with the profane world. Monks of the court, of the army, fugitive and unfrocked monks, appeared in greater numbers than ever before. It was one of the signs of the new time. However, in the great majority of convents, though the monk had become more unsettled, he had, in his method of thought and feeling, remained what he was in the past century. His state of mind must be guessed at, for it cannot be positively ascertained. Men of the middle ages generally had no conception of autobiography: they did not analyze them- selves for the satisfaction of being talked of, or preserve themselves for the curiosity of a future generation. Conse- quently, we can only get at their psychology indirectly, taking them unawares, as it were. We extract it from their writings. But the writers of monastic society belong to three cate- gories: monks who composed treatises on theology, some philosophic works, or sermons; monks who wrote chronicles, biographies, or history; and, finally, literary monks, men of wit, poets, especially satirists, troubadours clad in the robe, and, therefore, one must add, very irregular monks. What do the theologians, the philosophers, or the authors of sermons tell of themselves? Practically nothing. In their works of tiresome scholasticism, stuffed with verses and cita- * That is, to redeem objects pawned in order to pay debts. 190 SOCIAL FRANCE tions from sacred books, there is not the least personal note. Not one gives the life, habits, or surroundings of the author. All that is evident from the confused mass is that the minds which compiled it were endowed with a remarkable capacity for abstraction and a curious passion for the most bizarre subtilities. It was a time when they strove to find an alle- gorical and mystical meaning in every word of the Holy Scriptures — ^the golden age of subtile paraphrase, of Byzantine commentary. The monk employed in this work treasures of ingenuity and patience. He did not always subtilize in soli- tude on parchment, for his own pleasure alone. When he was a preacher, as he frequently was toward the end of the twelfth century, he shared with the faithful his refinement of ideas, and the auditor, whether he comprehended or not, went into ecstasies. Among the innumerable commentaries on the Canticles which the middle ages have bequeathed to us, that of a Cistercian monk, named Thomas, is one of the chief works of allegorical interpretation. This monk already employed sym- bolism, and the most skilled symbolists of after times doubt- less had some diifficulty in rising to his level. Each of the expressions of living tenderness, of which the Canticles are full, gives the occasion for a dissertation, according to rule, where the abstractive and analytical mania rages without limit and without check. The nature of the subject and the candor with which the author undertakes the grossest explanations makes citation difficult. One example will suffice. In the first verse of the Canticle, the wife says to her hus- band, Osculetur me osculo oris sui [Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth] , and this passionate appeal Thomas the Cistercian explains thus: "It is the cry of the Jewish nation, which knows that Christ must come into the world, as it has been told by the angels, and by the prophets. This is why, desirous of seeing Him, she cries Osculetur me, that is to say, she longs for Christ to come, instruct, and save her. He must not send His angels, patriarchs, or prophets ; He must come Himself in person. And what is this kiss which she desires, osculum ejus? It is the knowledge which issues from His own lips. Let Him come then, that I may learn from Him what I ought to know." THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 191 There follows a very long disquisition on the kiss, of which the author distinguishes four species. Then he even analyzes the kiss, learnedly decomposing it into its physiological ele- ments; finally, comes a study of the diverse ways in which it is given — all defined, subdivided, rigorously classified, and symbolically interpreted. By this one can judge the rest. The allegorical commentary on the tenth verse is also very interesting, but it defies translation. It will suffice to glance over the sermons of the preachers then most in vogue — the abbot of Sainte-Genevieve, Stephen of Tournai, Absalon, the abbot of Saint- Victor, the Abbot Adam of Perseigne, and Alain of Lille, who has been called the " Universal Doctor," — to discover the current allegories and the popular symbolisms. They handed them on from pulpit to pulpit, and the audience heard them over and over, always with pleasure. "We give only two of them: Le Char spirituel and Le Verhe qui se conjugue. The " spiritual chariot " is that which conveys the soul of the just. It has four wheels: the two front wheels are the love of God and fellowman; the two rear wheels are the incorruptibility of the body and the integrity of the soul. In the first wheel the hub is the knowledge of the Lord, the spokes which radiate from it are meditation, and the tire of the wheel is devotion. And thus with the other wheels. The axle which joins the back wheels represents the peace of God, and that joining the front wheels represents the up- rightness of intention. The bullocks which draw the chariot are the angels yoked to the beam by the bonds of the love of man. In order that the chariot may not jostle on the stones of the road, it must have before it the thought of the presence of God, behind it the scorn of the world, to the left strength of mind in adversity, to the right good use of pros- perity. And whither goes this allegorical chariot? To the celestial Jerusalem. The conjugable Word (verhe) is the application of gram- mar to religion. It concerns the Holy Word: that is to say, the second person of the Trinity. But this Word belongs to four conjugations: to the first conjugation in the bosom of the Virgin, to the second in the baptismal font, to the third on the table of the altar, to the fourth in the soul of 192 SOCIAL FRANCE the just. We shall state only why it is of the first conjuga> tion in the bosom of the Virgin; because it unites itself to human nature only through love of us, and because the word which represents the act of loving, amare, is the model of the first conjugation. Moreover, the Word is at the same time active, passive, neuter, and deponent; active, because Christ was active in His preaching; passive, because Christ suf- fered the passion in the pretorium and on the cross ; neuter, because, after having given up the ghost, Christ was wrapped in a shroud and put in a tomb; deponent, because, having descended into hell, Christ deposed the mighty — that is, the devils, from their thrones. Finally, the Word manifests itself also in a series of modes: indicative, by the incarnation and preaching ; imperative, by the passion and the cross ; optative, by the resurrection and the ascension ; infinitive, by glory and eternity. Scholastic education left an ineffaceable trace on the monk. Instilling into him from infancy the love for playing on words, of antitheses, of metaphors, of bad taste, and extrava- gant allegory, it gave him an intellectual malady which the long reflections in the leisure moments of monastic life brought to an acute state. The monastic historian, who collects contemporary facts and sets them down in the form of dry chronological annals or of more devout narratives, does not escape the contagion. Witness Rigord, that monk of Saint-Denis, a physician by profession, who made himself the historian of Philip Augus- tus. He is a student who knows the sacred and profane authors and practises subtile exposition. His chronicles are strewn with quotations from the Old and New Testaments, and in his dedicatory epistle he finds means of slipping in some verses from Horace and Virgil. He has a very keen taste for etymology. Why does he give the surname Augus- tus to his hero, King Philip? Because this king, like the Cgesars of Rome, had considerably increased the territory of France, (Augustus, from the verb augeo, auges, he says), and also because he was born in the month of August, augusto mense. Rigord does not give his choice between these etymologies; he takes both into account. And he does not fail to tell us apropos of the paving of the streets of THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 193 Paris, undertaken by Philip Augustus, that the ancient name of Paris was Lutetia, the muddy, from lutum, the mud. But the word Paris itself he derived from Paris, son of Priam, whence an enormous digression devoted to the genealogy of the descendants of Priam, and to the history of the Trojan origin of France. The monk of Saint-Denis accepts with entire confidence all the genealogical fables which he did not himself invent, and he exhibits quite a scholarly precision : it was in the year 895 B.C. that twenty-three thousand Trojans, coming from Sicambria, established themselves at Lutetia and, in memory of the son of Priam, gave themselves the name of Parisii. Here, however, a scruple of conscience obliges him to repeat that the name Parisii had been explained in another way: that it had come from the Greek word parisia, which means audacious, bold. The Parisians are the auda- cious ones, Franks preeminently. And he continues his digression by a long resume of the history of the Merovingian, Carolingian, and Capetian kings. Among the monks the refinement of pedantic subtility was allied with an infantile credulity. Rigord believed in astrology. He makes note of all prodigies which he has heard spoken of and gives a large place to miracles in his history. He not only repeats the extraordinary cures which have been performed in his time at the abbey of Saint-Denis by contact with the relics of saints — infants brought to life, the blind and paralytic healed, etc., — but he even introduces miracles into the life of Philip Augustus, into the wars against the feudal lords and the Plantagenets. The Capetian kings are to him providential and almost superhuman be- ings, the objects of divine manifestations and protection. To give an idea of the state of mind of this monk of Saint- Denis, it wiU be enough to quote a page of his history de- voted to the year 1187: " This same year at the feast of Saint Luke, in the month of October, Pope Urban III died: he had reigned one year and a half. His successor was Gregory VIII, who held the see a naonth and a half. The latter was replaced the same year by Pope Clement III, a Roman by birth." It was a lamentable fact, these changes of popes, who be- came popes only to die in the chair of Saint Peter: 194 SOCIAL FRANCE " It is the result of faults committed by the popes themselves, and also of the disobedience of men, their subjects, who refuse to return to righteousness by the grace of God, for no one can come out from Babylon — ^that is the confusion of disorder and transgression — by his own strengih or his own knowledge: for that it is necessary that God grant us His grace. The world is growing old; everything grows old here below, and becomes decrepit, or rather falls again into infancy * But here is what especially terrified the historian and led him to see everything on the dark side. It is that " all the infants, who were born in the year that Jerusalem was taken by Saladin, had only twenty or twenty-two, instead of the usual thirty or thirty-two teeth." Let us not judge Rigord by this bizarre observation. One cannot say that he merits no confidence as a historian or that he was completely lacking in critical judgment. He expresses himself thus in his preface: " I have related those facts which I have seen with my own eyes, and others upon which I have informed myself with care. Those which I had no means of testing, I have omitted." Truly, Rigord 's history transgresses much more by its omissions than by its lack of exactitude; at least, in the things touching con- temporary events. He has even a certain concern for truth and justice, a good feature in a semi-ofiicial his- torian who relates the facts and actions of an all-powerful king. In the first part of the chronicle he makes Philip Augustus a hero, endowed with all virtues, but in the second he reproaches him frankly for his conduct toward Ingeborg of Denmark and the readiness with which he extorted money from his clergy. He exliibits a supreme candor in telling how he came to undertake his work and through what trials he had to pass to finish it. The first difficulty was the lack of resources and of time and the necessity of working to live, acquisitio victualium: medicine in the middle ages did not always support man. It was only when he had become a monk at Saint-Denis that Rigord had the food and assured protection and could go seriously to work. Another diffi- culty was the lack of experience. His pen was not practised in beautiful language; it wrote things with too much sim- plicity. Finally, the last obstacle was the difficulty of ascer- THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 195 taining the truth in the midst of passionate judgments and contrary meanings which obscured it. ''It is astonishing," says he, " how human kind, from its origin, is rather in- clined to condemn than to be indulgent, and with what facility we take things in bad part. Everything is deceit and .falsehood here below. Ill is spoken of those who are good, those who are bad are justified; how can one tell where he is? " And this scruple tormented the historian so much that he was one day on the point of destroying his book, the fruit of ten years' labor; but his abbot (happily for Philip Augustus and the history of France) dissuaded him. Despite his impartiality and a certain straightforwardness, one must note in him one very strong passion — the hatred of the Jews. He reproaches them, in the first place, with possessing half of Paris and of demanding, as pitiless creditors, what was due them; and- he further accuses them of killing Christian children and of desecrating the sacred vessels which their creditors confided to them as security. It was the popular prejudice. Rigord breaks into lyrical ex- pression when, toward the beginning of his reign, Philip Augustus, with as much brutality as cynicism, plundered the perfidious Jews (perfidi Judei). He was not less happy when, ten years later, the same king of France, at Brie- Comte-Robert, burned eighty Jews, accused of having hanged a Christian. Rigord is in this also of his age, an age the passing of which is not to be regretted. Another monastic historian is Bernard Itier, who was li- brarian and chronicler of the abbey of Saint-Martial of Limoges. He had been a monk for forty-eight years of his life, from 1177-1225: that is, during all the reign of Philip Augustus and even a little more. He passed regularly through all the grades of his profession to the dignity of precentor. His chronicle, which is essentially local, is above all devoted to acquainting us with what happened at Limoges and in the region thereabouts. Bernard Itier from time to time, by some few brief words, calls to mind the great events of the political history of the time, the salient facts about the Plantagenet kings and Philip Augustus, the Albigensian crusade, the third crusade, and always in a very scant way; he seems absolutely to ignore the battle of Bou- 196 SOCIAL FRANCE vines. However, this monk did not remain confined without stirring from his abbey ; he also, like all other monks of his time, felt the need of travel and the change of atmosphere. One sees him now at Poitou, where he himself says he re- mained more than three years ; then at Grandmont, at Cluny, at Clermont, at Puy-en-Velay, at La Chaise-Dieu, at Saint- Martin of Tours. Pilgrimages nearly always: a pilgrimage was a very convenient thing for monks who could not ac- commodate themselves to seclusion- Open-minded, Itier did not occupy himself solely with guarding manuscripts, putting beautiful bindings on them, and covering the margins with historical notes. He did a little of everything : philosophy, ethics, natural history, music, and Latin verse. But in all this there is nothing personal or original: simply reminiscences of authors of antiquity and the early middle ages, a patchwork of quotations put end to end, resumes of the knowledge of others. He wrote a kind of manual of philosophy, in the form of a catechism, with questions and answers. " What is philosophy? The love of wisdom, for the Greeks called pJiilo love, and sophia wis- dom. How is philosophy defined? It is the knowledge of things human and divine. Into how many parts is philosophy divided? Into three parts: physics, ethics or morals, and logic. Into how many parts is physics divided ? Four parts : arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Into how many parts is ethics divided? Into four parts: prudence, justice, courage, and temperance." And so it goes on. There is here an evident effort to state the definitions precisely and in a concise form. Here is his definition of man, " Man is an animal who laughs, who has reason, who is subject to death, and capable of good and evil." This monk of the twelfth century localizes in the brain certain faculties of intelligence. The ability to comprehend, the ingenium, has its seat in the front part of the head. How does he prove this? It is because the physicians, he says, have stated that a man, well endowed with this faculty, loses it when he receives a wound in that part of the head. Likewise, there 'exists in the back part of the head a cell of the brain, guaedam cellula cerebri, where the memory resides; when this place is wounded, the memory disappears. In speaking THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 197 thus, it is true Bernard Itier invented nothing; he read it, and admits it, in an ancient author. He also cultivated allegory and symbolism. In matters of subtility he is not exceeded by that monk who was spoken of above. For him pride is a tree the trunk of which produces seven principal branches, which are the seven capital sins, from which come in the form of lesser branches all the vices of mankind. In order to overcome these capital sins and vices, one must turn to God, and this is the object of the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. Thanks to these seven petitions, one obtains the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, with the gifts of the Holy Ghost are obtained the seven virtues, and finally one is given the seven beatitudes. The number seven is sacred; it is a perfect number. It is found every- where : the seven words of Jesus on the cross, the seven peni- tential psalms, the seven canonical letters, the seven damna- tions, the seven stars shining in the north, the seven rules of discourse, the seven tables of ancient law, the seven degrees for attaining the contemplation of the Lord, the seven mountains of gold which the Greeks said were sisters, etc. Some lines lower, the monk of Limoges also celebrates the number twelve. He exhibits the same abuse of scholasticism as others, the same naivete which sees prodigies everywhere, and the same tendency to carefully collect the various facts about mon- strosities, miracles, and horoscopes. Bernard Itier was con- vinced that those who were born upon Christmas day would die a violent death, and he mentions examples. If the walls of the Chateau of Limoges crumbled one day in the year ,1203, it was because the day before some excommunicated priests had chanted near that part of the ramparts. In the resume of universal history which precedes his own recital of contemporary events, the reign of the Emperor Theodosius is sammarized by this single fact: in the village of Emmaus, in Palestine, a child was born, who was double above the navel — he had two breasts and two heads, and the two parts of the human trunk had a separate life; while one ate and drank the other took nothing for nourishment; while one slept the other was awake. Sometimes, however, the chron- icler adds, these two children played together and wept to- 198 SOCIAL FEANCE gether. They lived two years. And, under the year 1203, he writes:^ " One day, in the abbey of Souterraine, the monks were singing at matins the anthem Spiritus sanctus in te descendet, Maria, when suddenly the church was en- tirely illuminated by an intense light, to the great stupefac- tion of those present." In 1198, there died William, bishop of Poitiers, by whom Bernard Itier had been in former times ordained deacon. A great number of miracles were worked at his tomb. Bernard was a little astonished, and asked what virtue had been worth this honor. He discovered that the prelate had been a very charitable and patient man; "" however," said he, "as he seemed to have led a life of sloth, there have been some people who found that the wor- ship of his relics was not absolutely justified." After all, Itier was not a fanatical admirer of everything connected with religion and the church. He was sometimes outspoken. Under the year 1209 he says, apropos of a legate of the pope, the Cardinal Gualo, and the exactions of which the clergy of France were then the victims, " Gualo, the legate, exasperated many people, midtos exasperavit." The word is striking. It explains the severity with which other monks discuss the cardinal Rome had sent to France. The monk of Saint-Martial of Limoges possessed certain virtues for his profession of historian: he was generally ex- act, and he was fairly impartial. He searched for the truth with care, as is proved by the passage in his history which he himself corrected when he found that he had been de- ceived by false information, or he tells us of his uncertainty of what has been said. He does not take in everything with- out criticism. Like Rigord, he is credulous; he gives proof of a certain method in his choice of historical facts, at least for the time in which he lived. He has his preferences, his passions, but one scarcely sees them, for he almost always con- tents himself with setting down the facts without giving a personal appreciation. Can one reproach him for believing that Saint Martial, the patron of his abbey, had been an 1 The original reads : " Et voild pour le regne de Theodose ! " This is clearly a mistake, as appears from the allusion to Emperor Theodosiua a few lines above, and a comparison with the original. Hence the change in the translation. — Translator. THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 199 apostle and lived in the circle about Christ? All the people of Limousin were convinced of this: to have doubts on this point was a crime of high treason against one's birthplace. No more should one be astonished that he interests himself in the success of the crusaders, in the war against the Albigenses. He even voluntarily exaggerates it. He speaks of thirty thousand heretics killed at Beziers, of twenty thou- sand at Lavaur, which is a gross exaggeration. But all these massacres make for the greater glory of the Lord, and this monk, in his fashion, exterminated as many heretics as he could. He has no more love for the infidel and their chief, Mohammed — " a false prophet," he says, " who taught that every man who killed his enemy, or was killed by his enemy, entered Paradise." And what a Paradise! A carnal Para- dise, where ran rivers of wine, honey, and milk; where only the basest pleasures and all sorts of things full of luxury and foolishness, quaedam luxuria et stulticia, are known; in short, a Paradise where there are too many women; and, according to Bernard, woman is the greatest enemy of man, the cause of all evil and of all the vices of humanity. We here recognize one of the axioms of ecclesiastical edu- cation which furnished so many of the virile tirades to preachers and passionate satires to moralists of the tonsure. One monk composed a special treatise, where he brought together a whole series of historical examples of women who had drawn men iato grave faults or dangerous errors, and he also drew up a list of celebrated persons who had been persecuted by women. Woman is merely the image of Antichrist. What is the most enormous of all crimes ? Adul- tery. Those guilty of it are not to be pitied. This infrac- tion of the divine law, Bernard Itier assures us, will not be pardoned in this world or in the next. Whatever they do with theology and history, these monks are, in the last analysis, merely grown-up children, molded by prejudice. They put a naive ardor into the search for historical truth or the analysis of philosophical ideas and morals. But, above all, they amuse themselves with the exer- cises of scholastic philosophy. It is thus that Bernard Itier, the historian and philosopher, turns some Latin verses, and 200 SOCIAL FRANCE composes some acrostics and enigmas. The day when he took it into his head to write in the manuscript of his history- words exclusively composed of consonants or with the vowels replaced by dots, he must have been well pleased with him- self : he had found a new game. Besides the monks who are philosophers, historians, and theologians, there are the poets. Without doubt, the stran- gest of them all is Guyot of Provins, a monk of Champagne. We know little of his life: only what he himself tells us in his Bible, written between 1203 and 1208; and that is practically nothing. We do not even know where he was a monk. It comes out in his verses that he wore the black robe, that his abbey depended on Cluny, and that he had been a monk for a dozen years when he wrote his work. He seems, however, to have passed four months at Clairvaux among the Cistercians, the White monks, but he does not appear to have adopted their habit, or to have followed their rule. His satirical humor strikes with the same spirit at the Black and White monks, as we shall presently see. He seems to have been of burgher stock and without means. Before entering his cloister, he had led the life of many of the trouveres of humble condition, strolling with his verses and his music from chateau to chateau, and from court to court. For, if we believe him, he must have known personally almost all the kings and great barons of northern France and of Burgundy at the end of the twelfth century. He had even traveled abroad, for he is said to have seen the king of Aragon, Alfonso II, and a king of Jerusalem, Amauri, and to have been present at the famous court held at Mainz by the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa in 1184. He was a poet-errant, who probably traveled in the retinue of some great lord at his expense. The proverb, " a rolling stone gathers no moss," could well be applied to him, for it is certain that, at the approach of old age, he was obliged to become a monk, to secure a living and shelter. Many men of letters of the time did this. Guyot, to be sure, had a decidedly feeble stock of religious devotion: this is brought out by the way in which he expresses himself con- THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 201 cerning his fellow-monks and aU the dignitaries of the church in general, and also in all the passages of the Bible where he discloses his personal sentiments on the obligations of monastic life. He was not made for the cloister with its mortifications. This should not surprise us. To-day, one is a monk be- cause he chooses to be; but it was not so in the middle ages. In the time of Philip Augustus, the number of people who were cloistered in spite of their wishes, the number who were monks or nuns in spite of themselves, was considerable. One must not suppose that the personnel of the monasteries was entirely composed of devotees or reformed sinners. Faith and penitence alone would not have peopled the abbeys and innumerable priories which then covered the soil of France. Recall that in each noble family — -and these families were then numerous — there were sons and daughters whom parents from the cradle destined for the monastic life; remember that younger sons left without fortunes, and daughters on the unattached list, voluntarily imprisoned themselves in the cloister; in exchange for a little land or income, they there found a fairly sure shelter and bread for each day. The weak in this way evaded the struggle of life. Recall, also, that some entered the cloister out of pure ambition, knowing that the cloister led to the bishopric and to the highest posi- tions of the church. Recall, finally, that abbeys even served as houses of discipline and that more or less repentant crimi- nals were shut up there; the religious life was for them an expiation, and the monastery a prison. This was not the case with Guyot of Provins. But he, like many others, does not appear to love his profession. This monk absolutely lacks enthusiasm, and he allows it to be seen in a most nai've fashion. He tells of the austerities which they practised in the order of Chartreux, and he enu- merates them with a kind of dismay: "For nothing in the world would I be a Carthusian; their rule is too harsh. Each monk is obliged to do his own cooking, to eat alone, and to sleep in a solitary cell. When I see them blowing and kindling their fires it seems to me that this is not the duty of honest men. I do not know what the dear Lord thinks of it, but as for me, I do not wish to live isolated even in Paradise. The 202 SOCIAL FRANCE place where I had no companions would be no paradise for me. It is not good to be alone; solitude is a bad life which often engenders sadness and anger." There was still another thing which Guyot did not like among the Carthusians: that is, they did not eat meat, and did not even give it to the sick. The harshness of this rule grates upon him: " These men are murderers of the sick. I would not allow a poor man to die before me rather than give him meat. Do they forget what the disciples of Jesus Christ ate, and what He Himself said to them : Eat such things as are set before you, and whatever meats the good God sends you, do not ask from whence your food and drink cometh." Guyot does not concede that this abstinence from meat is necessary to the virtue of the monks. On the contrary, he has heard it said by wise people that a diet composed exclusively of milk, butter, and cheese is very dangerous. One should, then, give meat to the sick, if they desire it. " Decidedly," he concludes, " I do not like this order. If I had entered it, I should leave the very first day ; and, if my superior did not wish to give me leave, I should know where to find a corner of the wall to jump over." Here is a disposition that is quite unbecoming in a monk; for, upon searching, it appears that there is no religious con- gregation in which Guyot of Provins would care to live. He would like, however, to be a Templar. He would prefer the Temple of Cluny, he says. But the order of Templars has one great drawback, which is that the brothers are obliged to fight, and our monk is nothing less than he is a fighter. " The Templars are much honored in Syria. The Turks fear them terribly. They defend the chateaus and the ramparts, and in battle they never flee. But there is exactly what worries me. If I belonged to that order I know very well that I should flee. I should not tarry for blows, for I do not dote on them. They fight too bravely. I do not care to be killed. I would rather pass for a coward and live, than to be the most glorious of earth dead. I would sing for hours for them; that would not inconvenience me in the least. I would be very exact in the service, but not at the hour of battle. There I should completely fail." THE MONASTIC SPIEIT 203 It would be hard to be more candid. This monk of Cluny does not even find that at Cluny all goes for the best. One cannot talk in the refectory; all night the brethren bray (it is his expression) in the church. During the day they work without rest. It is only in the refectory that one can sometimes rest. But there are other drawbacks : " They give us bad eggs and unshelled beans. What often arouses my wrath is that the wine is too thin; they have put in too much of what the oxen drink. No, I will never get drunk on convent wine. At Cluny it is better to die than to live." And Guyot ends by sighing for the rule of canons of Saint Augustine. " Blessed be Saint Augustine. His canons have good meat and good wine in abundance." We now know with what kind of a monk we have to deal. This naive simplicity has a great charm, and one plainly sees that Guyot is just the opposite of an ascetic and a fanatic. Under it all he has high sentiments. His idea, which he expresses in very clear terms, is that the work of the religious lif& has no value, if it is not accompanied by piety and charity: " A congregation is builded in charity and of charity it should be full. A monk can indeed be at great pains to read, to sing, to work, and to fast, but if he has not charity in his soul it avails him nothing to my mind. He is like an empty house in which the spiders spin and wind their webs, and then immediately destroy what they have spun. Singing and fasting are not what save the soul, but charity and faith." Observe this declaration of principle. By it Guyot of Provins appears to place himself ahead of his time, a time when religion was almost wholly in the works, when general belief attributed an absolute efficacy to the external prac- tices of worship, and especially to the cult of the saints and of relics. One is not astonished that, permeated by such a principle, our monk, in reviewing the various congregations, including his own, found occasion to use his satirical humor, which is not malicious, for he declared at the beginning of his poem that he would tell the whole truth without attack- ing individuals, and he kept his word. He wisely adhered 204 SOCIAL FRANCE to generalities. With this reservation, we must admit that Guyot was not gentle with the monks of any color, his broth- ers, and that no order found grace in his eyes. What he says of each of them, making allowances for the exaggeration of the satire, is of very great interest for our study. He com- mences with the Black monks, those of Cluny, and reproaches the abbots of that order with being poor administrators, who ruin the priory by exploitation and who have installed in the cloister three ugly, foul, and cruel old women: treachery, hypocrisy, and simony. Then he passes to the White order, that of Clairvaux or Citeaux, an order in which the life is hard and where one finds the least of fraternity. The Cis- tercians have no pity for each other. They think only of acquiring land and money; they covet everything they see, and frighten the poor people, whom they despoil of their lands and reduce to begging. At home the plain monks are miserable, but the heads of the monasteries, the abbots and the cellarers, treat themselves well. They have the money, the meats, and the big fish. They have a twofold weakness: they drink the clear wine and send the cloudy to the refec- tory. "It is fraternity inverted. I would rather be in Persia than in a wretched cloister where there is no pity." We already know that our monk reproaches the Carthu- sians with an excessive austerity and harshness in the treat- ment of the sick. This is for some reason all the bad he says of them. The order of Grandmont pleases him better, for he has heard that they mortify themselves less than others. The monks talk in the dormitory, the church, and in the cloister. They like good fish and hot, well-spiced sauces. At night, upon going to bed, they bathe and care- fully comb their beards ; ' ' they even cover them and divide them into three braids, in order that they may be beautiful and glossy on the day they shall be seen by outsiders." But what is bad at Grandmont and makes Guyot thankful he is not there, is that there are lay brothers, half-laymen, who govern the monks and priests, and who strike the true monks when they resist: it is a case of cart before the horse. This strife and disorder arouses the indignation of the author. His allusion to the intestine wars which revo- lutionized the order of Grandmont at the time of Philip THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 205 Augustus, and which then resounded throughout the Chris- tian world, is noteworthy and confirms what the historical documents proper tell us concerning it. We shall come back to it. Then come the White canons of Premontre. For Guyot this is an entirely decadent order. They disagreed, the monks fought their abbots, they had great estates which they were in danger of losing, were head over ears in debt, did noth- ing but sell and mortgage. " What I say of them," adds the poet, " could not make them bad. They have done more than any one to destroy themselves." The Templars, with their white mantles and shining crosses, are the valiant knights, who guard their houses well and render justice; but they have two vices for which they are severely blamed — covetous- ness and pride. With regard to the Hospitalers, Guyot has seen them in Jerusalem, but they have forgotten their name j although very rich, they are not hospitable and know noth-. ing of charity. Another kind of Hospitaler, the lay brothers, of the order of Saint Anthony, found no grace before our author, who considers them vagabonds and charlatans. He depicts them, with bells hanging from the necks of their- mounts, soliciting everywhere from Scotland to Antioeh for- their hospitals and giving not one sou of all they gather to^ the church. In each hospital there were fifty lay brothers^ fat and sodden — some having five hundred, others one thou- sand, marks. They carried on business and even usury. They had wives and children. " The whole country is peopled with them," says Guyot, and they marry their daughters well. As for Saint Anthony, they do not care two straws about him. Finally, even the carpenter Durand, the promoter of the brotherhood of White Hoods, or Enca- puchonnes of Puy-en-Velay, — of whom we have already read the half-legendary history, — is a victim of this pitiless critic. Guyot makes him out a vagabond and a trickster, who plainly had made his fortune by selling the insignia of the brotherhood to a multitude of credulous people. " He well knew how to deceive his world, and he deceived two hundred thousand." This is bold, indeed, in a Benedictine! He spares others no more than the secular clergy. Cures, canons, bishops. 206 SOCIAL FRANCE archbishops are all put through the mill. He accuses the prelates of seeking money and honor before everything else, of selling the things belonging to the church, of being proud and covetous. His satire becomes particularly violent and spiteful when the cardinals and the papacy are attacked. In this connection he shows us how intolerable the exactions of the court of Rome and its agents already appeared to the clergy of France, and to what degree of exasperation the venality of the Holy See and of its representatives had, little by little, led them. It recalls the words of the historian, whom we quoted above, apropos of Cardinal Gualo, the envoy of Innocent III: Gualo legatus multos exasperavit. Guyot of Provins seems to be merely paraphrasing the monk of Limoges when he speaks of Rome and the Romans: " Rome, Rome ! When ■« ilt thou cease to kill mankind 1 Thou killest us every day. Christianity is marching backwards. All was lost and confounded from the day that thy cardinals were sent. They came blazing and on fire with eovetousness ; they came full of simony; they came void of reason, without faith, and without re- ligion. They sell God and His Mother ; they trample everything with their feet and devour all. What do they with the gold and silver they take beyond the mountains? If only they made roads, hos- pitals, and bridges with it ! " Guyot hardly dared to accuse the pope himself of taking his part in the plundering of the Christian world, but he reproaches him with closing his eyes and allowing it to be done. He advises dukes, princes, and kings not to allow themselves to be subjected by Rome — advice which Philip Augustus and his nobles were not slow to follow, if they had not already done it; for it was in 1205 that the king and the great barons of France, in a sealed letter, protested against the exactions and the abuse of power by the Holy See. Finally, the poet ends with this imprecation: "Rome sucks us up and devours us. Rome destroys and kills everything. Rome is the source of the mischief from which spring all evil vices. It is a fishpond full of vermin. Why did not the world throw itself on Rome instead of attacking the Greeks ? " This monk proceeds with no tender hand. In the time of Luther, men said no worse things of Rome and the papacy. THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 207 Gruyot of Provins is bitter when he speaks of polities; he is simply good-natured and spiteful when he attacks the shortcomings common to certain social classes and diverse professions. An old trouvere, he is full of respect for kings and great barons. He enumerates with pride all those he has known during his travels, and the list is long; but he declares that those of the present are very inferior to those who lived in his youth. They no longer hold a brilliant court, as formerly, and they no longer know how to be generous. This is a commonplace in the mouths of all trouveres. And then they have the great fault of protecting the Jews and keeping them in their lands. Guyot detested Jews, like all his fellows, but he especially blamed those princes who em- ployed these usurers and benefited by their operations, in- stead of putting them out of the country. This is probably an allusion to the conduct of Philip Augustus and of several feudal lords, notably the count of Champagne. Curiously enough, monk though he is, Guyot of Provins is not too hard on woman. He says, to be sure, that she is false at times, that she is lighter than the wind, that she often changes her mind, that she in one day forgets what she has loved for many years. But all this is pardonable. Woman to him is an enigma that frightens him, and an enigma that need not be fathomed. " The wisest are led astray when they wish to judge or correct a woman. She has never found her master, and who can flatter himself that he knows her? When her eyes weep her heart laughs; she little considers what she says. I remember Solomon, Constantine, and Samson, whom women deceived, and truly I come to the con- clusion that I have more hope of understanding the sun and the moon, those two marvels, than of understanding what woman is. There are men who teach astronomy, necromancy, geometry, law, medicine, theology, and music; but I have never known a person, at least who was not a fool, to take woman for a subject of study." Guyot compensates himself at the end of his poem by attacking the theologians — the " divines," as he calls them. He eulogizes theology as " the art which crowns the soul, the art honored of all," but he depreciates those who practise it. They are very adept in language, but they think only of making an income. They show others the right road, but 208 SOCIAL FRANCE they do not preach by example. Eegarding the professors of jurisprudence, or lawyers, they think only of teaching chicanery and trickery, pleading the bad as well as the good, and doing anything whatsoever in order to obtain good benefices. Finally, comes the turn of the fisiciens — that is, the doctors, — against whom our monk seems to have had a special grievance, for he heaps on them pleasantries which later became proverbial. " They kill numbers of sick, and exhaust themselves to find maladies in everybody. They have had me in their hands, but I do not like their company when I am well. Woe to him who falls into their power." He makes fun of their medicines. " I prefer a fat capon to all their mixtures." And he finds that those who come from Montpellier sell their syrups much too dearly. He, how- ever, admits that, if there are some bad doctors, there are also some very good ones, who know how to strengthen the sick. " When a man is afraid of death, he is in great need of comfort, and it is by the confidence which they inspire, rather than by their medicines, that the cure is effected. When I am sick," concludes Guyot, and it is with this that his book ends, ' ' I want some one to bring them to me. Their presence does me good. But, when the sickness leaves me, I wish that a galley would take them straight to Salonika, them and all their physic, so far that one may never see them again. ' ' This monk is interesting, both for what he tells us of him- self and of others. He is an intensely practical spirit; he has the good sense to je^r at the bourgeoisie in whose eyes the slightest excess is a sin, and to relieve the ennui of the cloister by raillery. In this Guyot little resembles his contemporary, the monk of Auvergne, known in Provencal literature as the monk of Montaudon. We must call him this because we do not know his family name. Montaudon is the priory of which he was the head. He was a singular monk! — the type of those who passed their lives outside the cloister and reentered it to rest from the fatigue of the world. He was, moreover, a noble of the family of the lords of Vic-sur-Cere in Auvergne. His father had at an early age shut him up in the neigh- boring abbey of Saint-Geraud of Aurillac. The abbot in- THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 20^ trusted him with the priory of Montaudon. But this monk was a writer with an original and sarcastic vein. The lords of the region wrangled with him, and his fame was not long in spreading beyond Auvergne. He led the life of a trouba- dour, while wearing the robes of a monk, and traveled from chateau to chateau in all the regions of the south. According to his statements, he had seen the Perigord, Limousin, Querci, Rouergue, Gevaudan, Provence, Toulousain, Gascony, Poitou, Angoumois, Forez, and even Spain, taking his part in all the knightly fetes, as judge awarding the prize of a sparrow- hawk at the solemn concourse at Puy-en-Yelay. How did the abbot of Aurillac tolerate so unmonastie a life in his subordi- nate? He dared say little or nothing, because the monk of Montaudon, from time to time returned to his priory, whither he brought all gifts with which he had been loaded. At last he obtained the priory of Villafranea, in Roussillon, on the property of his friend, Alfonso II, king of Aragon; and the latter, adds the Provengale biographer, " ordered the monk of Montaudon to eat of meat, entertain the ladies, and to sing and make verses." Here is all we know of the life of the monk of Montaudon, and it is apparent that the monk is anything but exemplary. This is seen especially in his poetry, certain couplets of which are absolutely not to be translated. It is not only in Latin that words can brave propriety ; they can do it in Provencal, and the monk of Montaudon is one of the troubadours who defied propriety most brazenly. Like all his contemporaries, he wrote love songs addressed to the woman of his fancy. But these are not the ones which here chiefly interest us. This monk is, above everything else, a satirist, and his talent displays itself particularly in the sirvente. He wrote one in which he said something bad of every troubadour of the time, including himself. He speaks of himself in the third person and calls himself " the false monk of Montaudon " — the expression is extremely appropri- ate — a monk who had quarreled with every one, who had left God and the convent for the pleasures of the table, whose poetry and songs are fit only to be thrown to the winds. He seems, however, to have had some scruples of conscience, for, in one of his poems, he tries to justify himself for being. 210 SOCIAL FRANCE such an irregular monk, and to prove that God Himself authorized his conduct: " The other day I was in Paradise, because I am gay and happy, and deeply love the dear God Whom all obey, earth, sea, valleys, and mountains. And God said to me : ' Monk, why did you come here, and how do you fare at Montaudon, where you have numerous companions ? ' * Lord, I remained in the cloister one or two years, which was enough to lose the barons' friendship; but Thou art the only One Whom I wish to love and serve.' ' Monk,' answered God, ' do not think that you give Me pleasure in shutting yourself up in the abbey. Why let v/ar songs and love-plaints cease? I would rather see you sing and laugh. The princes are more generous for it, and the priory of Montaudon can only gain by it." Thus the monk of Montaudon excuses himself for his in- fractions of the rule. The works of our monk reveal much less of the sentiments and ideals of their author than the Bihle of Guyot of Provins does of its composer, for there is not much of them, and the extreme conciseness of the style renders the thought obscure. He devotes several poems to ridiculing women who use paints; and, by way of a jest, which is a little far- fetched, he fancies that the saints instituted a suit because women had so monopolized the red, black, and white colors, to paint themselves, that none was left to color the images and statues in the churches. Another series of poems belongs to a class of which the productions of the monk of Montaudon are almost the only examples in Provencal literature, the class of " ennui " (enueg). It consists of enumerating all the things that the poet dislikes or which bore him. This would throw some light on, at least, the negative tastes and prejudices of the monk of Montaudon, if one could find any ethics or interesting psychological observations in them. But this is not the case, as one can judge from this fragmentary- translation : "What tires me is a good talker who performs his duty badly, a man who always seeks to kill his neighbor, a horse with a hard mouth, a noble who wears too haughtily a shield which has received no blows, a bearded priest or monk, a reckless slanderer. I cannot endure a tiresome woman who is at the same time poor and proud, a man too much in love with his wife, knights who make trouble THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 211 outside of their country and at home powder pepper in a mortar. What provokes me is a poor falcon, a small helping when there is plenty in the kitchen, too much water in a glass of wine, meeting a lame person or a blind man on the road; I despise dry, poorly cooked meat, a preacher who lies and perjures himself, an old woman with bad manners. It annoys me to ride horseback on icy roads, or to eat without fire when it is cold." And so on. This enumeration of unpleasant things is, on the whole, commonplace enough, and tells us little of the intimate and personal sentiments of the author. Another selection, which serves as the companion-piece of this, is just the opposite, for the monk composes a litany of things which he likes: " Jests and gaiety please me greatly, as also fine deeds, liberality, prowess, a courageous and courteous woman who understands rep- artee. It pleases me greatly to see a rich and generous man, to sleep when it storms and thunders, to have a plump salmon for my meal. I also enjoy being near a fountain or a brook in summer, when the meadows are fresh and green, and when the birds are singing. I am delighted at having a good companion, to feel again the caresses of my sweetheart, and to see my enemies unhappy." All this we must admit was not very monastic. The prior of Montaudon had not risen in his tastes above the almost vulgar mediocrity of the great majority of the nobles of his country and his time. He, at least, represents well enough the type of involuntary monk, the large class of monks who, at the wish of their fathers, had been condemned to the ecclesiastical life, and subjected themselves as little as pos- sible to a profession they had not themselves chosen. CHAPTER VII MONASTIC LIFE The epoch of Philip Augustus was not one of those periods of the middle ages which were marked by the founding of a large number of abbeys. Beginning with the middle of the twelfth century, the ardor of individuals and of the feudal princes for these endowments had considerably decreased. The large foundations of the various Benedictine brother- hoods had been made. Long before the time of Philip Augustus, France was covered with the establishments of monks and nuns: in other words, the old monastic move- ment which, through the voice of powerful reformers of the time of the investiture struggle, as though by magic called into being the hermitages, rural priories, and the monas- teries of the towns and cities — that movement had ceased and that feudal period was closed. On the other hand, the new monachism of the mendicant orders — by which the France of Louis VIII, of Saint Louis, and of Philip the Fair was en- dowed with so many Dominican or Franciscan convents and churches — had scarcely begun to spread in the latter years of the reign of Philip Augustus. His period was then, one may say, an intermediate or a neutral period between two grand epochs of religious effervescence, marked by the ac- tivity and the extraordinary fervor of the builders of the abbeys. It must not be said that, between 1180 and 1220, no monas- tic foundations were created. Although less active than in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, faith continued to have an influence, and the faithful, still convinced of the efficacy of material works, did not leave off establishing religious houses and insuring their duration by gifts. Let us take any prov- ince : Maine, for example. During the reign of Philip Augus- tus, we find in that region alone four foundations, of which three are important. In 1188, a seignior of Asse founded 213 MONASTIC LIFE 213 "the abbey of Champagne, where he established the White Monks, the Cistercians; in 1189, Bernard, seignior of Ferte, founded the abbey of Pelice, with the Black Monks; in 1204, arose the abbey of Fontaine-Daniel of the order of Citeaux, thanks to the donations of a high noble, Juhel III, a seignior of Maine; in 1218, finally, a certain Ralph of Beaumont founded a new abbey, dependent on the abbey of Couture at Mans, the priory of Loue. Let us betake ourselves a short distance from Paris into the French Vexin, along the road which leads from Chau- mont to Trie, in the neighborhood of Grisors and its feudal fortress. There, in a very pleasant dale, one still sees a vast structure, the ruins of a nunnery, which was rebuilt under Louis XIII and Louis XIV; it is the abbey of Gomerfon- taine, in which the seigniors of Chaumont-en-Vexin had of old chosen interment. The Cistercian abbey of Gomer- fontaine was founded in 1207 by Hugh of Chaumont, the most powerful lord of the vicinity, and the act of founda- tion has come down to us. Here are its essential clauses : " I, Hugh of Chaumont, with the consent of my wife, Petronille, of my sons John and James, and of my other sons, for the salvation of my soul, of the soul of my wife, the soul of my father Galon, and of my mother Mathilda, for the salvation of the souls of all my predecessors and of all my heirs, I make and concede in pure and perpetual alms the following donation ..." These first lines give us the religious motives of the founder. This lord thought not only of himself and of his own welfare in the future world, but of that of all his rela- tives and even of all his predecessors. He sought to assure Paradise to all. And to whom does he make this gift? '* To God," he says, " and to the nuns of the order of Citeaux." He gave them his land of Gomerfontaine, with the orchard which was hard by, in order that they might serve God in that place, in an abbey dedicated at once to God and to the Holy Virgin, to Saint John the Baptist, Saint James, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Eustache, and to all the saints. Thus, Hugh of Chaumont was not content with a single patron for his foundation, as was usual in similar circum- stances; the protection of many saints, designated by name. 214 SOCIAL FRANCE was a much better guarantee. He invoked the protection of all the saints en masse (omnium sanctorum). There follow the provisions intended to complete the donation: " I give to said nuns the whole tithe of my eels in the fish-ponds of Gomerfontaine and Latinville; a hundred sous each year for six years, to enable them to construct their monastery, and a per- petual rent of three measures of wheat to be taken from my mill of Gomerfontaine." There, then, the future of the nuns was assured; but they took care to have inserted in the charter some provisional clauses : " If the aforesaid mill should be destroyed, burned, or suspend operation, we pledge ourselves, I and my heirs, to furnish the three measures of wheat, securing :hem elsewhere." Such is the substance of the charter of foundation of the abbey of Gomerfontaine, signed by the founder in 1207 in the presence of a canon of Rouen, an abbot of the vicinity, and of many other witnesses. But one must conclude that this first gift was not consid- ered sufficient, for two years afterward Hugh of Chaumont did a second act of charity. Besides the house and garden of Gomerfontaine, he gave it two neighboring gardens, a wood, the right of fishing one day a year, twenty sous of rent from his income from Chauinont, a vineyard, and the tithe from a specified locality. Then, from the family of Chaumont or from other families of the vicinity, came additional alms : in 1210, the gifts of two peasants and two innkeepers; in 1212, twenty-two perches of land; in 1213, an estate and ten Parisian sous in rent; in 1218, the tithe of a forest; in 1219, three perches of land; in 1220, a rent of two measures of wheat; in 1223, a house at Gomerfontaine. We witness thus the steps in the formation of an abbey's domains. Do- nations continued to accumulate during the whole thirteenth century, but they did not consist solely of estates, forests, and revenues in grain or in money. In 1252, a countess of Boulogne made a gift to the nuns of Gomerfontaine of five MONASTIC LIFE 215 hundred herring, for their fish-days. These, then, are the reasons and conditions under which abbeys were founded dur- ing the time of Philip Augustus, In this instance it concerns a little community of nuns, a humble dependency of a pow- erful abbey of Citeaux, the domain and authority of which extend only a very short distance round about its buildings and the abbey church. But, whether the religious establish- ment was large or small, the sentiments animating the founders and the benefactors, and the processes employed in founding the monastery and increasing its domain, were exactly the same. Not only did the faithful found new houses, but they con- tinued to enrich those which were already in existence; though, it is true, with less zeal than before. From 1164 to 1201, Clairvaux, the abbey of Saint Bernard, received nine hundred and sixty-four donations, being an average of a little more than twenty-five per year. From 1201 to 1242, the number began to decrease: it was five hundred and twenty-two, which still gave an average of thirteen. At Vauluisant, one of the ancient abbeys of the order of Citeaux, founded in 1127, out of the one hundred and fourteen char- ters comprised in the cartulary for the years 1180 and 1213, there are sixty which mention gifts made to the monks ; which proves that the Christian fervor, if it had diminished in intensity, was not extinct. In it we also see the domain of the monks Mncreasing and their treasure growing year by year. They received all kinds of properties and revenues: lands, woods, meadows, vineyards, incomes, or rents in money ; rents in kind of wine, wheat, barley, oats, flocks, even of iron and coal ; rights to pasture ; mills and coal mines and judicial rights. In brief, the monks were enriched and were pro- vided with every necessity of life. What motives animated the donors? They were always the same. Here is a woman who enriched Vauluisant " for the salvation of her soul, for that of her husband, of her children, and of her ancestors." Some made donations " for the expiation of their sins ' ' ; others because they were leaving for the crusade. In 1216, a noble, " on the point of setting out against the Albigenses, ' ' following the counsel of his friends, made his will before the priest who had the cure of 216 SOCIAL FRANCE his soul ; and the priest made him give the abbey six pieces of land and three setiers of wheat from the revenue of a certain locality. It must be added that many of the donations were only to become effective posthumously : they were to be valid " after the death of the donor," valid post mortem. But the monk was patient, he knew how to wait, and some day or other he would come into possession. There is a proverb: Who has land has trouble. During the reign of Philip Augustus, the abbey of Vauluisant had to undergo not less than forty lawsuits: lawsuits against neighboring religious establishments, against rival churches, and lawsuits against individuals, especially those who had had the sorrow of discovering the bequest of a parent and had refused to give up the heritage. One of these contests of the date of 1209 is especially curi- ous. The abbey of Vauluisant had been attacked in the courts of justice by the abbey of Paraclet. The two communities were in strife over the estate of a priest named Girard. This priest had been the almoner of the abbess and nuns of Paraclet, but he had been buried in the cemetery of Vau- luisant. There was no reason for the monks considering themselves authorized to take all the objects belonging to the deceased, even to his clothes, an annotated psalter, and a sum of thirty sous in the coin of Provins. The abbess of Paraclet claimed them. The decision of the case was con- fided by superior authority to two arbitrators, and the monks of Vauluisant had to return what they had taken. Suits which they began against other religious communities did not always end in their favor, but, when monasteries had a case against ordinary individuals, they nearly always won their cause; often they did not even have to go into court. Men thought twice, in the middle ages, before pleading against an abbey: was it not pleading against the saint whose relics the convent possessed, and consequently against God Him- self? The Christian, anxious for the safety of his soul, nearly always chose to abandon his claim or, by means of a slight pecuniary sacrifice, the monks obtained his desistenee. There was one other source of wealth of the abbeys: it was the possession of the abbey churches. In 1185, Manasses, bishop of Troyes, enumerating in detail the parochial rev- MONASTIC LIFE 217 enues which the abbey Montier-en-Der (Haute-Marne) pos- sessed in his bishopric, wrote to the monks: " You have at Rosnay the right to name the cure. Each Sunday the cure shall receive a denier from the offering, but the proceeds from the other public masses are yours. In the ceremonies for Vomen who come to be churched, that which is placed on the candle- sticks is for the cure and all the rest is yours. Three days of the week, on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, if the cure says the mass for individuals, the money which is offered is his. He also receives the proceeds of the confession and the offering at marriages. But he has no right to the tithes, they are yours. Of the money accru- ing from alms, the cure shall receive twelve deniers. If the alms exceed twelve deniers the surplus shall be divided equally between the cure and you." The same details are given for each of the twenty other churches which the monks of Montier-en-Der possessed in the diocese of Troyes. Besides the proceeds from religious ceremonies, which they shared with the cure, they sometimes took the whole tithe, and sometimes the largest part of the tithe, which formed the most important parochial revenue. It was money easily earned, since the cure did all the work, and the abbey had only the trouble of collecting it. This lasted throughout the middle ages and the whole of the old regime. It would be interesting to know whether the monks to whom so many gifts and alms, in money and real estate, were made accepted them without disturbing themselves about their source, without inquiring to what extent the donor had rightfully or wrongfully acquired the properties which he was giving up. The truth is that this scruple did not worry the monks of that time very much, for the very simple reason that, at bottom, the great mass of the faithful was convinced that giving to a saint or to God was a pious deed, which in itself justified everything. It mattered little whether the source of the gift was pure or impure; from the moment that the church was enriched, even with possessions wrong- fully acquired, the sin was expiated and the wrong repaired. A letter which a certain Simon of Namur, in the first years of the thirteenth century, addressed to Henry of Villiers in response to an inquiry on that delicate subject, reveals the 218 SOCIAL FKANCE sentiments and ethics of monks of that time. Simon com- mences, as usual, by referring to the authority of a church father, to Saint Jerome, who said: '' We must guard against receiving anything from the hand of those who have en- riched themselves by making the poor weep, for we should not be the associates of thieves, and it is imperative that no one may say of us, * When thou sawest a thief, thou con- sentedst with him ' (Si videhas furem, currehas cum eo)." Therefore, concludes Saint Simon, what shall one say of monks if they receive indiscriminately from all hands 1 There are four kinds of property which should not be given as alms : that which is acquired by simony, by usury, by robbery, or by depredation. Suppose that a usurer should wish to make a gift to a monastery. One should first warn him to return that which he has wrongly acquired. That is what Tobit said to Anna when some one brought him a kid: " From whence is this kid? Is it stolen? " But, if the usurer or robber responds, " I do not know whence it comes or to whom I should return it," what should be said? Simon of Namur does not hesitate : " In that case he ought to promise to give it to the church, and the monks, with the authorization of the bishop, may accept it." This applies to the case where the donor possessed only wrongfully acquired property. But it is possible that his possessions be of a mixed nature {mixta hona), that part of it was gained honestly and the rest dis- honestly. It is then that the subtilities of the casuistic scholars find their employment. In a case of mixed pos- session, says Simon, the monks may always accept: they go on the hypothesis that the thing given was honestly acquired, since it is impossible for them to show the contrary. Another recommendation made to the monks was not to buy an estate or any property when rumor says that the seller holds it improperly: for instance, when it is claimed by the heirs, or when it is known that they might claim it, with good grounds. And here the casuist continues to prove his ingenuity. Suppose, he says, that a usurer is in possession of an estate unjustly acquired by usury. May the monks buy it, granting that the usurer does not know to whom he should return it ? On this point there are two opinions. One holds that a monastery is permitted to receive the estate as MONASTIC LIFE 219 alms, if the usurer consents to make a gift of it, but that it may not be bought of him. Why this distinction? It is because the usurer restores it to the church by the gift; it is not restored by the sale. The other claims that the monks can buy even in that case; but, adds Simon, " that does not seem permissible to me." Here his letter ends abruptly; unhappily, the end of the document is lacking. We would like to see how far the resources of this special casuistry go on a question so important and complex as that of the legal- ity of monastic acquisitions. When one studies the cartularies of the abbeys of that time, filled with deeds of donations and purchases, it seems very im- probable that the monks took the trouble to make inquiries about each of their acquisitions and heroically rejected gifts of a doubtful sort. One constantly sees them in suits against the heirs; they defend the case; they win or they compro- mise; and, finally, they nearly always remain in possession of the objects of litigation. However, in order to be charitable, it must be remarked that, in the epoch of Philip Augustus, the ecclesiastical authorities began to be stirred by certain scandals. A statute of the general chapter of the order of Citeaux, in 1183, forbade the monks to receive gifts com- ing from a person excommunicated by name. Another statute of the same chapter, in 1201, forbade the receiving of alms from the hands of those who practised their usury notori- ously. It remained a question to what extent these orders were heeded. The supreme generosity in the faithful of that time con- sisted of giving oneself to a monastery, or in giving a member of the family with a part or all of the inheritance. Gifts of that kind, very frequent in the primitive age of feudalism, and until the tenth and eleventh centuries, were becoming very much less common in the epoch of Philip Augustus. Faith was no more so simple. Men less readily than for- merly consented to bestow their property and personal inde- pendence upon the church or upon the saint who was its patron. They continued to do it, because they still found it to their religious or material advantage. Some agreed to be monks and to live the spiritual life, that they might be assured eternal happiness; others gave themselves to an 220 SOCIAL FRANCE abbey, though remaining laymen, in order to enjoy the rela- tive security attached to possessions of the church and to have their living and shelter assured under the immediate protection of the monks. Thus it is that, in the first years of the thirteenth century, one sees an entire family — composed of a father, his daugh- ter, and grandmother — make a gift to the abbey of Saint- Vincent of Mans of their own persons and of a third of their patrimony. The other two-thirds they sold to the same reli- gious establishment for the sum of twenty-two livres in the money of Mans. But this was not a gift made purely and simply out of good will. The family which gave itself, in return, required of the abbey: first, an annual rental and annuity of twenty sous; second, a rental in kind of fifteen setiers of grain, consisting of seven of rye and eight of barley ; third, the possession of an arpent of vineyard in good condition, of an estate, and of a woodland solely for their personal use. At the death of the father, the monks were to pay one-half of the rental of twenty sous and resume half of the vineyard, the estate, and the woods. At the death of the daughter and of the grandmother, they were to reac- quire the other two quarters and pay nothing more. In fact, the donors were sellers. They contracted a sort of insurance against war and famine. They placed themselves and their goods at interest. It was a financial deal, advantageous both to individuals whom the insecurity of society prevented from living independently and to the religious community which, in the final reckoning, found itself possessed of one more domain in perpetuity. More often it happened that, when a man or woman gave himself to a monastery, it was in order to assume the monas- tic habit and to practise the religious life. This was expected when the head of a family gave the monks a son, a daughter, or a brother, thus singularly simplifying the family duty. On this point documents abound. Here is a noble, Hugh of Thiebaumenil, who gives the abbey of Haute-Seille his son Ulrich. But every monk had to bring his dowry with him; one could not enter the cloister empty-handed: Hugh ceded a part of his freehold of Laschere. Some time after he be- came a monk himself and transferred another part of his MONASTIC LIFE 221 freehold. Finally, after some years, his wife in her turn embraced the religious life and gave the church what re- mained of their common patrimony. There was a whole family cloistered and an estate forever lost to civil society. This happened in the first years of the reign of Philip Augus- tus. In 1194, at the other end of France, a lesser noble of the region of the Pyrenees, Raymond Bernard of Esparros, gave the abbey of Escale-Dieu his son Bernard, ' ' in order that he may serve there as a monk, ' ' says the deed, and with him all that he possessed in the church of MazeroUes. The same thing happened in all other parts of the country. In 1193, a pro- prietor of Vexin gave the monks of Meulan two vineyards and two arpents of land, in order that his younger brother might enter the abbey. The donor himself appeared in the church of the abbey with the child. He placed a candlestick, which is the symbol of a gift, on the altar of Saint Nicaise. The prior of the community, with the consent of his brethren, conferred " fraternity " on the donor: that is, association in the spiritual benefits of the monks. He, in return, promised the monks that in his old age or even before, if he should so desire, he would enter their house " with his property." We do not know whether the promise was kept in this particular case, but there is no doubt that, up to the epoch of Philip Augustus, many individuals, when they felt them- selves attacked by some serious disease and felt their end approaching, took the habit, became monks, and at the same time enriched an abbey. It was the surest way for a human conscience to settle its accounts with God. The burden of a large family in an epoch when the fam- ilies of France counted a large number of children; the difficulty of giving land to sons and daughters in a way which would permit them to maintain an honorable rank; the pressure of sentiment, which urged into the cloister be- lievers eager for peace and mortifications and repentant sin- ners or the faithful trembling before death and the prospect of a hell in which all the world believed — these should suffice to explain how the innumerable monasteries and priories of the France of Philip Augustus so easily recruited their per- sonnel. But another motive must be taken into account: namely, the pressure to escape the struggle for life in a time 222 SOCIAL FRANCE when there was security neither for property nor for indi- viduals and when the nobles themselves were not always sure of their next day's bread. There is a very curious page on this subject in the Dialogues of the Cistercian monk, Caesar of Heisterbach, who wrote in 1221. The author presents a dialogue between a monk and a novice. ^' The Monk : We often see, every day we see rich and dis- tinguished persons, knights, for example, and citizens, come into our order for the purpose of escaping misery, preferring rather to serve by necessity a rich God, than to bear the shame of poverty in the midst of their kinsmen and acquaintances. A man who had occupied an honorable position in the world told me how he had come to enter a monastery : ' Certainly,' he added, ' if I had suc- ceeded in my affairs I should never have entered into the order.' I have known some who did not wish to follow their fathers and brothers when these entered the monastery. They wasted the prop- erty which had been left them, and it was then only that they came and with the mantle of devotion covered the misery which brought them. " Novice : It is not necessary to give many examples, for we see many men, especially lay brothers, enter the order for the same reason. But blessed be they who have had riches and have despised them for the love of Jesus Christ." Finally, one must add to this diverse category of voluntary and involuntary monks all the disinherited of the world, whom infirmities or defective physique did not permit to lead a normal life. When a father had crippled children he made them clerics or monks, so that the church was obliged to take steps to avoid becoming merely a vast asso- ciation of defectives. She required of her priests, canons, and especially of her bishops certain qualifications in the way of health and esthetic appearance, and opposed the admission of persons who had weak constitutions or were subject to ridicule into the sacerdotal body. In a time when bodily strength was so honored and physical beauty so appreciated among the nobles, it was important that the ministers of God should not have a grotesque or repulsive appearance. On principle, then, rules were established on this point, which were, however, often violated: it could not be otherwise. The church was always less particular about the monks, because in theory they would have but little contact with the world, MONASTIC LIFE 223 and because infirmities hidden in the depth of the cloister were not likely to arouse laughter or scandal. The monasteries were also the natural refuge of a number of men who, for physical reasons, were not able to lead the hardy existence of a knight and of a number of non-marriageable women. It was a necessity which certain abbots found hard to accept. One of them, Peter Mirmet, a contemporary of Philip Augus- tus, became abbot in 1161 and was charged with the man- agement of the abbey of Andres, near Boulogne-sur-Mer. *' On entering the monastery," says a chronicler of the time, ' ' he drew back in horror before the deformity . of the band which he was called to lead. Some monks were lame, others were one-eyed or cross-eyed or blind, and others one-armed." A reaction was necessary. During the thirty-two years in which he was abbot, Peter Mirmet refused admittance into his monastery to all persons having any bodily defect. That was, perhaps, going to the other extreme. Thanks to the liberality of the faithful for gifts of land and money, the monks were rich ; and the first use they made of those riches was to make their house worthy of the saint whose relics they possessed and who had brought them so many alms. This meant the enrichment of the sanctuary with precious objects and the erection of beautiful edifices in the style of the day. It is thus, at least, that one finds things in the ancient Benedictine congregations, notably in the vast monastic empire of Cluny. The principles of the Cistercians were different. Saint Bernard, the founder of Clairvaux, with extreme rigor ban- ished everything from the churches of his order which ap- pealed to the eyes or the senses, everything which could dis- tract the monk from contemplation and prayer: no orna- mented pavements, no mosaics, no stained-glass windows. Only the cross was allowed, and that was not to be large, gilded, or silver-plated. Ornaments of silk were prohibited, even in the great ceremonies. On the outside there was the same simplicity. Towers of stone were forbidden. They had to be built of wood and be of limited proportions. Small bells only were allowed, etc. We recall the celebrated decla- 224 SOCIAL FKANCE ration of Saint Bernard, where he condemned the zeal of the Cluniacs, in adorning their churches and in consecrating art to the service of God and the saints. " The church is resplendent with its high walls, and lacks every- thing for its poor. She gilds her stones, and leaves her children naked. With the money of the wretched the gaze of the rich is charmed. Of what good are the symbohc pictures, colored and sculptured objects? All this stifles devotion and recalls Jewish ceremonies. Works of art are idols which lead away from God, and are good at most to excite the piety of feeble souls and of the worldly." One could speak thus in the twelfth century, when there was a fervor of religious reform and a rivalry between the orders for mortifications and asceticism. But, in the time of Philip Augustus, the fashion of beautiful structures and of luxury in the ceremonies of the cult was so far developed that the Cistercians themselves began to yield to the con- tagion. In 1192, the chapter-general of Citeaux was obliged to recall the abbots to the observation of the rule and to pro- hibit the construction of oversumptuous churches. In 1182, it had ordered the destruction, within two years, of all the stained-glass windows erected in violation of the precepts of the founder. In 1213, it became necessary to prohibit all pictures other than those of Christ. A statute, in 1183, forbade the abbots and monks to wear chasubles of silk. But, in spite of all prohibitions, the rule gradually ceased to be observed, even among the Cistercians, and the Cluniac con- ception, that nothing was too beautiful or too rich for the service of God, finally prevailed. The good abbot, the model abbot, the one whom the chron- iclers mention with praise, and of whom they speak most, is he who devoted the most time, effort, and money to increas- ing the properties of the abbey and repairing or construct- ing its buildings. For the most part, the heads of abbeys had at that time a passion for building, and it is as adept builders that they are presented to posterity. Open, for example, the Histoire de Saint-Florent de Saumur. Here is a funeral eulogy of the sixteenth abbot, Mainier, who died in 1203. Some few lines are devoted to his moral qualities, and then come the essentials. MONASTIC LIFE 225 " He acquired very much property. He built many edifices, the entry to the church, the refectory, the hospital, and the reception room. It was he who began carefully and finished manfully (viriliter) the high wall which encloses our vineyard. May the Son of the Most High absolve this venerable abbot." But the successor of this Mainier, the seventeenth abbot, Michel of Saumur, was a still more remarkable man. " In temporal things God gave him such grace that there was not his equal as a constructor of buildings. It is to him that we owe our new grand hall, the greater part of our houses, and the mills which he built against the will of all the inhabitants of Saumur. It was he who enriched our church with mantles, stoles, copes, dalmatics, and tunics of silk, to the value of five hundred livres. At the end of his life he built the abbatial chamber, a masterpiece of elegance, with its beautiful bay-windows. Fiually it was he who obtained the magnificent bells of the tower from Chartres at gTeat expense." All the eulogies resemble each other, because the tendencies were everywhere the same, and because the abbots generally took especial care of the material interests of their commu- nity. Eead, for example, the passage from the chronicle of Saint-Martial of Limoges, which relates to a monk, a contem- porary of Philip Augustus, the twentieth abbot, Isembert. " He was a very gentle and peaceful man, who knew how to please the powerful. In his youth he governed first of all the priory of Ruffee. There he built the church, cloister, the houses, all the workshops, and the entire wall from its foundations. It was he also who furnished the priory and built the altar, and the gilded shrine of Saint Alpinien. Finally he increased the revenue in such a way that seven monks could live there, where before two had had trouble to find their maintenance. At Saint-Martial, itself, he re- built the infirmary with such magnificence that one would have said it was the palace of the king. Thanks to his acquisitions the provostship of Verneuil annually brings us four hundred sous. From that sum he set apart ten livres to increase the fund intended for clothing the monks. He built a mill at Aigueperse, and he assigned sixty sous for an additional meal to be given the brothers on the Monday which follows the second Sunday after Easter. The chapel of the cemetery was built and dedicated through his efforts, and it was he finally who built the cellar near the chapel of the Virgin. Thanks to the revenues with which he enriched the abbey two hundred poor received a meal at the almonry, three hun- dred at the bakery, and the brothers at the refectory." 226 SOCIAL FRANCE To manage to obtain money and to spend freely for the service of God, for the poor, and for the convenience of the monks, was to the abbot of the middle ages the surest way of living in the memory of men and of insuring his salvation. The most important event in the administration of an abbot, and one which formed an epoch in the annals of the mon- astery, was the construction of a church. The abbatial church is the large shrine which covers the small one containing the relics of the patron of the abbey. The higher and loftier it is and the more the saint is honored, the greater is the veneration which the sanctuary excites; and, consequently, the greater the offerings and money of pilgrims. The monks had an interest in having their church of the greatest grandeur. The money devoted to a building was well in- vested, temporally as well as spiritually. This explains why the contemporaries of Phil:p Augustus saw the churches of abbeys arising in all parts of France, as sumptuous as the cathedrals. To the south of the Loire, the Roman style produced two beautiful abbatial churches — Saint-Julien of Brioude and Sainte-Croix of Bordeaux; but those in the north — ^the abbey of Val, the church of Longpont (Aisne), the choir of Montier- en-Der, the church of Saint-Yved of Braisne, that of Saint- Pierre-le-Vif of Sens, the abbey of Ourscamp, the church of the abbey of Saint-Mathieu-du-Finistere, and the " Mer- veille " of Mont Saint-Michel — are mostly in the gothic style. The last structure, the work of four abbots, — Robert of Torigny, Jourdain, Raoul of Isles, and Thomas of Chambres, contemporaries of Philip Augustus and Louis YIII, — is a masterpiece of monastic art. It is composed of two separate buildings, of many stories. On the west is the cellar (1204- 1212), which is surmounted by the splendid chapter-room, called " Chevaliers " (1215-1220), with its four naves, its pointed arches, and sculptured keystones, its columns fin- ished with rich capitals, and its two fireplaces with mantels in the form of pyramids ; and above, the cloister, finished at the end of the reign of Saint Louis, one of the jewels of gothic art, where everything is made to charm: the elegance of the arch-work, and of the small columns, which run in MONASTIC LIFE 227 two rows, and the infinitely varied ricliness of the sculpture which runs throughout the length of the gaUery. To the east lie the almonry (1204-1212), and the refectory (finished in 1218), so imposing with its double nave, with its two large windows, and its high arches resting on slender, soberly decorated columns. This group of buildings is placed on the summit of an inaccessible rock, resting on a wall of singular roughness, sixty-six meters long and from forty to fifty high. This abbey is a fortress, which testifies to the ruggedness of the monk and the turbulence of the time. It is the same with the church of the Black Monks of Saint- Victor of Marseilles, rebuilt in 1200. With its two towers resembling keeps, its porch and walls built of enor- mous uncemented blocks of Pelasgian appearance, its four thick buttresses supporting the polygonal apse, and its few high windows, it was made to sustain sieges. The history of the monks of Saint- Victor is, in fact, filled with wars and combats, with the suzerains of the city and with the counts and lords of the region. Similar cases were not at all rare in that epoch. In all provinces where there was no powerful and commanding baron capable of acting as police, anarchy was permanent, and the monk, like all others, was attacked and obliged to defend himself, if he did not wish to be ruined. The chronicler, Geoffrey, prior of Vigeois, a dependency of Saint-Martial of Limoges, relates the events of which he was eyewitness during a single year and a half, in 1182 and 1183. Here are the depredations and exactions which the monasteries of Limousin had to suffer during that very short period. "We may believe him: he does not exaggerate, is not even particularly indignant ; it seems that he was accustomed to these scenes of war and disorder. In November, 1182, the cloister of the priory of Chalais was destroyed by a rela- tive of the viscount of Castillon. The monks were scattered, and the soldiers seized the relics of Saint Ancilde and carried them to the castle of their captain, in order to protect it. In February, 1183, the citizens of Limoges took advantage of the war between Henry II, king of England, and his eldest 228 SOCIAL FEANCE son, Henry the Young, to satisfy their grudges against the monks of Saint-Martial. They devastated the magnificent gardens of the abbey, demolished five or six small churches which belonged to it, burnt the belfries of Saint-Martin-les- Limoges, another of their dependencies ; destroyed the belfry, walls, workshops, and the church itself. A few days later, a band of mercenaries seized two monks of the abbey of Pierre-Buffiere and dragged them along, half-naked, till they bought themselves off. An adventurer in the pay of the Eng- lish, says the chronicler, made a specialty of seizing monks and of offering them for sale at eighteen sous apiece. In March, 1183, the son of the king of England, Henry the Young, invaded the abbey of Saint-Martial and drove out all the monks, even the novices and the school children. Such dignitaries as the dean, the precentor, the subcantor, and the provost of the abbey had to pass the night out of doors. ' ' Who would believe it, ' ' adds Geoffrey of Vigeois, ' ' if these facts had not had a number of witnesses? " The following day, Henry the Young compelled them to surrender all the treasure of the sanctuary, the altars, the golden statues, the chalices, the cross, and the shrines. It was only a loan: he gave them a receipt sealed with his seal. But all these riches were put on sale or given as security to pay his soldiers, and were seen no more. In May, the same prince carried away the treasury of Grandmont and that of the abbey Couronne; he stripped also the monasteries of Dalon and of Obazine. In October, 1183, the priory of Vigeois was men- aced by a band of soldiers, and the monks carried away the most precious objects, in order to store them in a safe spot. A few days later another priory of Saint-Martial, Saint- Pardoux of Arnet, was ransomed in its turn ; the monks were obliged to buy back their property for six hundred and fifty SOUS; the men of the priory were taken captive and were held until the prior had paid the sum required for their ransom. At Saint-Geraud of Aurillae, the chief of the band taxed the monastery fifteen thousand sous. "We may stop here. The enumeration is sufficiently instructive, for it cov- ers a period of only twelve months, and we can conclude that, at that time, it was not good to live in the monasteries of central France. MONASTIC LIFE 229 We may assume that the same things happened in all the regions which were the scene of a war between kings or barons; and war often broke out, to the misfortune of the peasants and monks, who were its principal victims. The monasteries irresistibly attracted the soldiers, because of their riches. The religious devotion of the time did not prevent their being pillaged or even burned: a sacrilege, no doubt, but one which could easily be atoned for by a gift or a pil- grimage. This is a matter on which we could speak at length : we shall return to it later. Let us note for the moment sim- ply that, in feudal atmosphere with its incessant wars, abbeys, though fortified, were not a very safe shelter, and that it was necessary to struggle for life and property there as else- where. But many other reasons prevented monastic life, composed of prayer and labor, from being carried on peacefully and regularly as it ought. The hastiest glance over the documents is enough to reveal the principal disorders from which the regular clergy then suffered in all parts of France and in all congregations. In temporal affairs the communities of monks and nuns were badly managed, and they got into debt, until almost completely ruined. Internal divisions disturbed them and weakened them considerably. Finally, the rule was no longer observed: scandals of every sort occurred, and the ecclesiastical authorities found themselves obliged to inter- vene constantly in order to subject the monks to the obliga- tions of their positions; to impose reforms on them, with or against their will. In the material, as well as in the moral, conditions of monasteries signs of decadence were not lack- ing, and precisely this decadence of the orders of the ancient Benedictine system is one of the characteristics of the history of the French church and of France during the epoch of Philip Augustus. To communities as well as to individuals the financial question, the question of the budget, has at all times been a vital question. The history of the middle ages furnishes plenty proof of this. In the thirteenth century, to give only two examples, the disappearance of the French communes, those strong republics of northern France, was due in large part to the bad financial organization, to their inability to 230 SOCIAL FRANCE provide for their expenses, or to meet their liabilities. Many of them ended in bankruptcy, by which the royal power bene- fited. The question of money dominated all the internal and external policy of the monarchy during the reign of Philip the Fair and of his first successor, after having held a place in the affairs of Philip Augustus not sufficiently noted by historians. But it was not only the kings and common people who suffered from the evil of money : we see, when we study the feudal laity, that many of the noble families were ter- ribly indebted, ruined by usurers, were obliged to mortgage or sell a patrimony, which thus went to pieces, in order to fulfil their obligations and keep their rank. The church itself did not escape the general calamity, and the monasteries es- pecially suffered from it. The German monk, Csesar of Heisterbach, relates a curious anecdote on this subject in his Dialogues, written in 1221 : " One day a usurer deposited a sum of money in trust with the cellarer of our order. He put it in a safe place with the money of the monastery. Later the usurer demanded his deposit. The cellarer opened the coffer and found there neither the money of the usurer nor the money of the monastery. The locks were intact, the seals of the sacks had not been broken; there was no reason to suspect a theft. It was clear that the money of the usurer had devoured that of the monastery." The allegory is clear, and is amply justified by the facts. Thus, in 1196, the abbey of Saint-Benigne of Dijon borrowed the sum of seventeen hundred livres from a Jew named Valin at the rate of sixty-five per cent. The abbey went eleven years without being able to pay anything, so that, at the end of the eleven years, the debt of seventeen hundred livres had increased to nine thousand eight hundred and twenty-five livres. In 1207, Blanche, countess of Champagne, was obliged to take over the debt of the monks of Saint-Benigne, and, in 1222, Alix, duchess of Burgundy, had to reimburse a Jew named Salamine, who was also a creditor of the abbey of Saint-Benigne and of the abbey of Saint-Seine, In order to indemnify its creditors and bondsmen, its moneylenders, Saint-Benigne was compelled to sell considerable property which it possessed in Burgundy. Similarly, in 1220, we see MONASTIC LIFE 231 the abbey of Saint-Loup of Troyes admitting that it owed four hundred and fifty livres of Provins to a Jew of Dam- pierre; it gave as security the whole village of Molins in Aube, on which it had already granted him a life annuity. At Verdun, shortly after the year 1197, the abbey of Saint- Vanne found itself loaded with debt, and a chronicler relates the following story on the subject. The monastery had an abbot to elect; on the demand of Agnes, countess of Bar, a monk of Cluny, named Stephen, was chosen to direct Saint- Vanne. One day, when the new abbot found himself in the presence of the countess, she demanded of him how he in- tended to root out the inextricable thicket of thorns, which was the cause of the abbey's bad financial condition, and in which it had been entangled for a long time. ' ' Our debts ? ' ' replied the abbot; '* they will be paid with the red tunic of Saint- Vanne ; I have full confidence in it. ' ' He meant to say that the abbey would pay the debt with the relics of the saint to whom it was dedicated. This was, in fact, one of the means which indebted monasteries employed to free them- selves. The chronicler was indignant at what he considered a cynical response of the abbot, and added: " Such irreverence was punished on the spot. There before the eyes of the ladies and the barons who were present the abbot sud- denly fell, touched by a stroke of paralysis. He began to foam at the mouth and to tear himself with his nails, and he never recovered the use of his speech from that day. At sight of these things the countess gave the order for him to be lifted and carried away to a couch." Here was a chronicler who took such matters seriously. There were other regions of France where they were not shocked to see the monks coin money from the relics of their patron saint. Let us, in imagination, betake ourselves to Saint-Martial of Limoges. Here, also, the monastery and priories sank un- der the weight of their debt. In 1213, the sacristan owed a thousand sous, and the abbey twenty thousand more. In 1214, the debts of Saint-Martial increased to more than forty thousand sous. " In such a situation," says the chronicler Bernard Itier, " the church is truly in danger." In 1216, 232 SOCIAL FRANCE the abbot personally owed twenty thousand sous. " For twenty years," adds the chronicler, " the usurers have ex- torted incalculable sums from our abbots, and they boast of continuing it." In 1220, the abbey was so loaded with debt and so impoverished that the abbot, Raimond Gaucelin, was on the point of resigning. Fortunately, however, the report of miracles performed on the grave of Saint Martial com- menced to spread, and money flowed into the monastery to such an amount that the abbot was able to rid the monks of a large share of their creditors. Here the miracle occurred very opportunely, indeed. At the other end of France, in Provence, the abbey of Saint- Victor of Marseilles, in 1185, found itself in an even more critical condition. It owed eighty thousand sous to the Jews of Marseilles, and was compelled to give them a cer- tain amount of its property, which comprised villages and churches. Churches to the Jews! The bishop of Antibes, in order to avoid this scandal, felt compelled to buy off the creditors himself, giving them half of the sum in cash; and, in a cartulary of Saint- Victor, we have the charter by which the abbot surrendered to him a castle and all the revenues of the sacristy as a compensation for his expenditures. The scene is everywhere the same. In the Cluniac priory of Charite-sur-Loire, in 1209, the prior Geoffrey, crushed with debt and interest, was obliged to sell the important seigniory of Laigneville, near Senlis, to the Templars for ten thou- sand livres of Tours. In 1200, Raoul, abbot of Saint-Germain of Auxerre, was compelled to sell the gold and jewels which decorated the shrine of Saint-Germain. The saints them- selves were plundered by those who had charge of serving them, and there was not a year when monks did not give the gold and silver paraments of the altar — chalices, crosses, and even sacerdotal vestments — as security to usurers, who were then nearly always Jews. Knowing the sentiments of the middle ages in regard to the Jews, one can comprehend the enormity of the scandal without considering that the ac- cumulated debts often led to actual bankruptcy of the mon- asteries. The monks finally scattered, and the abbey, de- prived of a means of existence since it had lost everything, disappeared. It cannot be doubted that a large number of MONASTIC LIFE 233 monastic establishments, which are not found later than the end of the middle ages, ceased to exist for this reason, suc- cumbing under financial embarrassment. In the Cistercian order, the founders took the greatest precautions to avoid such catastrophes. It appears, however, that their successors did not succeed any better in preventing the Cistercian abbeys from getting into debt than in making them observe the rules, which forbade the acquisition of real estate, for, at the end of the twelfth century, the chapter- general of Citeaux almost every year uttered a cry of alarm. In 1181, it said in its seventh statute, *' It is truly a matter for shame that one sees certain of our brothers running their house into debt in order to buy wine." And, in 1182: " The debts increase in enormous proportions. They threaten the ruin of many of our communities. Every house which has more than fifty marks of debt is prohibited from buying any land or constructing any new buildings." The statute of 1184 permits abbots to sell movable property and even real estate in cases of absolute necessity, where the debts are over- whelming and must be paid. In 1188 there was a new pro- hibition against buying land and against building. But the prohibitions remained ineffectual, and two years after the death of Philip Augustus the abbey of Citeaux itself, the head of the order, which should have been an example, was in such a desperate situation that the whole congrega- tion was obliged to come to its aid and to vote it a subsidy. How did the monks use their money? Without doubt, their greatest expenditures were in the purchases of land, and especially of buildings. But it must be noted that they had other heavy expenses. They were first of all obliged to give many alms and shelter travelers, pilgrims, and beggars. One of their strictest duties was to feed the poor, clothe them, and even give them temporary shelter. In every notable abbey there were two important offices: that of the almonry and the hostelry; and two special dignitaries had charge of the offices. In the Cistercian order the almoner was called the " porter " (portarius). He must always have in his cell, situated near the entrance to the monastery, loaves of bread ready to be given to the passersby who might need them. Caesar of Heisterbach states that, in 1217, fifteen thousand 234 SOCIAL FRANCE poor received alms at the gate of his abbey in one day. Every day on which meat might be eaten, until harvest time, a beef was killed and cooked with vegetables, and the whole distributed to the poor. On fish-days the meat was left out and only vegetables were given. The alms of bread were so large that the abbot feared his granaries would be emptied before the harvest and suggested to the baker that he make the loaves smaller. " But," said the baker to him, " I put them into the oven small and they come out large." It was a permanent miracle, and Ceesar adds, " The grain was seen to increase in the sacks." Another very burdensome obligation devolved upon all monks, whether vassals of the king or of the lord of the province, or subordinates of the prelates and of the pope: to meet the pressing needs of the church or simply to fill the voids in the royal treasury, monks had to pay taxes, under the pretext of aiding a crusade ; and these were rigorously collected. We recall what certain monks, like Bernard Itier and Guyot of Provins, said of the rapacity of the Romans, that is, of the papacy, its cardinals, and its agents. This abuse, the Roman exaction, had, by the end of the twelfth century, taken on such proportions that the chapter-general of Citeaux could not refrain from complaining publicly and from taking measures to have it cease. In the statutes of the year 1193, the seventh article ends thus: " It is necessary to write to the pope to inform him that Gregory, cardinal of the title of Saint Angelo, exacts new taxes from the abbots of our order, of which there has been no instance up to this time." And the chapter-general punished the abbots who had given the legate money by a day of penance on bread and water. As regards the demands of the royal treasury, it is enough to see how Philip Augustus dealt with the abbey of Saint- Denis in 1186, as related by Rigord. William of Gap was then its abbot. That year the king called upon the monks of Saint-Denis to deposit with him a thousand marks in money. It was a very large sum, and the abbot was not able to comply, " One day," says Rigord, " the king, passing by Saint-Denis on the business of the realm, entered the abbey as though it were his own room. But the abbot, in- MONASTIC LIFE 235 formed of the coming of the king, in great fright hastened to call his brothers into chapter-meeting, and tendered his resig- nation." These few lines tell volumes: he had to abdicate or pay. The abbot, then, was not always responsible for the bad financial condition of his community : he had constantly to struggle against more or less unjust and unreasonable de- mands from without, and often to struggle unsuccessfully. But when, to make things worse, the head of the monastery was a bad administrator, a negligent person, or- a prodigal, everything went from bad to worse, and complete ruin came at last. The greatest objection to the rule of Saint Benedict was that it gave the abbot an almost absolute temporal power over the monastery. He was entitled to passive obedience ; he had all the rights. He was the sovereign of the establishment : he was called doniinus. It is true that, to counterbalance this almost autocratic power, the rule required him to consult the assemblage of his brothers, the chapter. In theory he was bound to take their advice, but in fact he very often enjoyed an authority without limit and without control. He admin- istered the property of the community as he pleased, without rendering an account of his administration to delegates of the monks who were under him. When this sort of absolute monarchy fell into the hands of an honest and systematic man, affairs of the community could not suffer; they might even prosper. But when the abbot was feeble, without per- sonal worth, or disposed only to satisfy the passion of greedi- ness, the debts of the house increased and all was lost. That is why, in the councils of that epoch, urgent recommendations to abbots were always being adopted. What they were for- bidden to do, for example, in the canons of the council of Paris in 1243, reveals what they did. The following enu- meration speaks for itself: "1. The abbots shall not exercise the functions of advocates and judges. " 2. They shall not be followed by a large escort, and shall not have too many young domestics around them. " 3. They shall not give the goods of the monastery to their rela- tives. " 4. They shall not allow young women to enter the monastery. 236 SOCIAL FRANCE " 5. They shall not take the priories from those in whom they are vested in order to transfer them to persons of their family. " 6. They shall, twice a year, receive the accounts of the officers of the abbey and of the priories. " 7. They shall not handle important affairs, and borrow large sums without the advice of the seven oldest monks, chosen by the chapter for that purpose." There is here a very clear attempt to limit the abbot's power over the temporal affairs and to substitute constitu- tional for absolute monarchy. " 8. They shall not sell the priories. " 9. Finally the abbots and priors are expressly forbidden to menace and maltreat monks who shall propose to the chapter measures teu'ding to reform the house." In 1216, at the council of Sens, it was necessary for eccle- siastical authority to direct abbots and priors to render an annual account to the chapter of the amount of their ex- penditures and of the state of the finances of the community. And the same council forbade them to borrow beyond a certain amount, especially of the Jews. These regulations were renewed nearly every year at all the meetings of the bishops which occurred during the thirteenth century, a proof that they were but little observed. When, in the time of Saint Louis, an archbishop of Rouen wrote a journal of his pastoral visit and pointed out the misdeeds committed in the religious establishments under his inspection, on each page of the journal appear the words non computat: this abbot does not render an account to his chapter. Often the abbots themselves did not know what the debts of their com- munity amounted to. It seems incredible, but these adminis- trators neither kept accounts nor drew up a budget. When the councils and bishops failed, the popes inter- vened and imposed reforms on the monasteries threatened with failure. That, for example, is what Pope Celestine III did in 1195 to save the abbey of Saint- Victor of Marseilles from ruin. The pontifical decree gave the abbot full author- ity to dismiss bad priors. He exacted a collective tax from all the priories of the abbey to aid the abbey itself and to MONASTIC LIFE 237 diminish its debt. The pope also commanded the priors to pay the tax which each owed the abbot regularly at the usual times; for the system of subject-houses was one of the most frequent causes of the bad financial condition of the abbeys, inasmuch as the priors refused to contribute toward the expenses of the mother house or to make the annual pay- ment of a part of their receipts to the chief place. Strict injunctions were given the priors against parting with their real estate and against contracting debts larger than a hun- dred sous without the consent of the abbot. They were or- dered to come every year and give an accounting to the chapter-general. Cumulative expenses of the priories must be limited, and the abbot or grand-prior must not practise exactions on the priories. Finally, the abbot himself had not the right to borrow more than a thousand sous without the consent of his chapter; and, in general, he was forbid- den to transact any important business or the more serious matters of the monastery without having first taken the ad- vice of the chapter or of a majority of the chapter. By this decree of reform one can judge the others; they all resemble each other, and their number and frequent repetition prove that the evil was great and that it was very difficult to root out the abuse. Making new rules was relatively unimportant ; putting them into execution was decidedly more to the point. In spite of councils and of popes, the monastic world was too often exposed to real catastrophes. Abbeys, completely ruined, closed their doors and disappeared. In order to prevent such scandals, it was not rare to have the church punish abbots who were unruly or deceitful by suspending or even deposing them. In 1205, Robert, abbot of Couture, the great monastery of Mans, was dismissed for having wasted the revenues of his house in a scandalous manner. Two years before the pope had proceeded in the same way to depose Arnold, abbot of the monastery of Saint-Michel of Cuxa in Roussillon. He can be taken as the type of the bad abbot. Not content with neglecting the domains of his monastery and with allowing the conventual buildings to fall into ruins, he had given away, mortgaged, or sold the largest part of the lands and revenues of his community, so that the abbey had fallen into the last degree of misery. The lay sovereign 238 SOCIAL FRANCE of Roussillon, Peter II of Aragon, had to intervene, and rendered a decision, by virtue of which the sales effected by the Abbot Arnold were declared null and void and redeem- able at a price which arbitrators chosen by himself should fix. The measure may appear somewhat despotic to us to- day, but in that time when the interests of the church and of its domain — that is, property of God and the saints, hence sacred and inalienable — were at stake, private agreements and the rights of individuals did not count. Let us, to conclude, cite a letter of Stephen of Tournai, written to the archbishop of Reims and relating to a mon- astery in insolvency, the monastery of Bredeene. It brings us to the heart of things, and the incident which it reveals to us, far from being isolated, then occurred frequently enough everywhere. The large abbeys were not permitted to die, but the small ones, not being helped, went to pieces themselves without creating comment: " We proceeded to the monastery of Bredeene, to hold our synod there. But what was our astonishment! and what a sad spectacle for the church, what a scandal for strangers! We had been told that the abbey consisted of twelve regularly established monks, that the offices were there celebrated punctually, that the poor were fed, the unfortunate comforted, and pilgrims harbored. We arrived, and what did we behold? Buildings in ruins, no sound of religious services, everywhere silence and desolation, not a monk to serve the holy place. We found ourselves facing a desert; one would call it a miserable hovel in a vineyard or a field of gourds. And yet, the abbey had possessed large estates with rich tithes; but nearly everything had been mortgaged or sold. That unfortunate church had no one to care for it except a solitary priest. The parishioners lamented and complained deeply. They stated that the church had been founded and enriched by the donations of their ancestors, and they persistently claimed what had disappeared." And what did the bishop do in this ease? He placed the interdict on that deplorable (lacrymahilem) church, forbade the celebration of divine offices there, and prohibited the parishioners from paying tithes or from making any offering whatever as long as the monks and the prior, to the last man, had not returned. We do not know the effect of this meas- ure, for the correspondence of Stephen does not say any- thing about it, but we may assume that the disaster was MONASTIC LIFE 239 absolute and that the abbey of Bredeene only went to swell the list of ruined and dissolved monasteries. Another evil of the monastic world was discord. Diso- bedience, open rebellion, and internal struggles raged in the house of peace and prayer. In 1212, the abbot of Cluny commanded a member of his order, Geoffrey of Donzy, prior of La Charite, — who lived scandalously, — to come to the chapter-general. Geoffrey re- fused, and sent a monk to the abbot, who declared that his prior appealed to the pope. The abbot himself went to La Charite to compel the monks to return to their duty. Scarcely had he crossed the threshold of the priory with his suite when he was greeted by a shower of stones, hurled from the bell-tower. His horse was badly wounded and he him- self, half -killed, " trembling in all his members, and livid," says the letter of Innocent III which relates the incident, had ito seek refuge in the home of a citizen. Soldiers, hired by the prior, occupied all the high places of the buildings of the priory, organized a patrol, and closed the gates of the town. It became necessary to parley with the rebels. An interview took place at one of the gates between the representatives of the chapter-general and Geoffrey of Donzy, who appeared surrounded by monks carrying enormous cudgels. The prior declared that he had no concern about the chapter and its corrections. " He was responsible in spiritual matters to the pope alone, and in temporal matters to the count of Nevers, under whose care his priory was placed. He would not accept any proposal for peace or any agreement until the abbot should leave the town." The chap- ter excommunicated him with all his accomplices, removed him from his office, and put a monk of Cluny in his place. But to execute these measures required the help of Philip Augustus, who obliged the count of Nevers to force an en- trance into the priory. In the statutes of the chapter-general of Citeaux there often appear conspiracies formed by the monks against their abbot. The chapter, in 1183, compared the conspirators to thieves and incendiaries and declared them liable to excom- 240 SOCIAL FRANCE munication. That of 1191 decided that the leaders shonld be expelled from the abbey and transferred to another estab- lishment of the order, where they should each week receive the discipline and should for a whole day be put on bread and water. The head of the congregation of Saint- Victor of Marseilles also had the greatest difficulty in retaining under his dominion the dependent abbeys or the priories which were always disposed to free themselves. The rebellions were so frequent that, in 1218, every monk charged with the admin- istration of a priory was obliged to take the following oath: "I swear by the Holy Gospels of God in your hands, Seignior Abbot, that from to-day henceforth I will be obedient to you and to your successors, the abbots of Saint- Victor, and that I will, with all faithfulness, fulfil the office which I receive from you. Any time that it shall please you, on the advice of the elders of the monastery, to relieve me of my post, I swear not to protest any- thing, and to place in your hands without protest or resistance, the priory with all that is dependent on it." Even tragedies were not lacking. In 1186, the abbot of Trois-Fontaines of the order of Citeaux was assassinated by a monk. In 1210, the canons of Salles, near Rochechouart, murdered their prior at the moment when he arose to sing matins. In the same year, the abbot of Fontgombault was poisoned. In 1216, a monk of the abbey of Deols was killed by one of his brothers. The history of the abbots of Saint- Vanne at Verdun, at the end of the twelfth century, is noth- ing more than a series of revolts and enforced abdications. That of the abbey of Senones, crushed with debt, is scarcely more edifying. At Tulle, in 1210, the monks were divided into two factions, each of which elected its abbot; the con- sequent conflict brought about the destruction of the mon- astery. Very nearly the same catastrophe happened at Saint- Martial of Limoges, where, in 1216, three abbots disputed over the crozier. What envenomed these conflicts was that the monks, in the struggles among themselves or in their revolts against the abbot, appealed to the support of outsiders. They ap- pealed from their abbot to higher ecclesiastical authorities, to the bishop, the archbishop, the pope, or even at times MONASTIC LIFE 241 to the laity, against the laws of the church. The correspond- ence of Stephen of Toumai puts this beyond all question. For example, the regular canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes of Soissons entered into an open struggle against their abbot, Hugh. The canons, who were delegated to direct what was called a priory-cure, lived like parish cures, which was hardly in keeping with the rules of their order. The abbot of Saint- Jean-des-Vignes sought to preserve his authority over these canon-cures: he sought to reserve the right of transferring them, dismissing them, or recalling them to the abbey at any time he judged suitable. But this did not take the canons into account, and they invoked the support of the bishop of Soissons, who defended them against their superior. Out of this came a lawsuit in the court of Eome. The abbot and the bishop went to Rome to plead their causes, but, as always, the process dragged itself out eternally. Tired of the delay, they submitted their case to arbitrators, who decided in fa- vor of the abbot. Stephen of Toumai wrote a very fiery letter on the subject to the pope, in which he formally accused the canon-cures of having acquired money, which their rule forbade, and of using it to corrupt the bishop and influence him to work in their favor. In the abbey of Saint-Amand of Toumai, the monks com- plained of their abbot to the archbishop of Reims and re- fused him obedience. The archbishop ordered Stephen of Toumai to make an inquiry, and he reported on his commis- sion in these terms: "At your order, my father, I went to Saint-Amand where I found the monks far from amiable.^ The rebels continue in sedition and will perhaps die impenitent. They have nothing with which to reproach their abbot ; he is a learned man, pure, sober, and peace- ful, and an honest man. Of what do they complain? That he is more inclined to economy than to extravagance, and that he is not familiar enough with the sign language,'' and that he does not know how to say the words bean, cheese, and egg with his fingers." Pretexts, all of them! Stephen of Toumai adds that he attempted to punish the leaders of the conspiracy by trans- * Non amandos. Stephen of Tournai was fond of puns, * Language similar to that of our deaf and dumb, which the cloistered monks used when the rule of Saint Benedict forbade their speaking. 242 SOCIAL FEANCE ferring them temporarily to another monastery and pro- hibiting them from leaving, under threat of excommunica- tion. But the rebels did not obey their bishop any more than their abbot, and they found the means of being ab- solved by the vidame of the archbishop of Reims, of which the bishop of Tournai then complained with indignation. He also addressed a strong protest to the bishop of Bourges, who protected the monks of Saint-Satur, a monastery of Berry, against their abbot. They appealed to the archbishop as soon as the abbot gave evidence of seeking to bring the order to the observance of the rule, and the latter allowed himself to be so influenced by their lies, says Stephen, that he commanded the abbot not to proceed against any of his monks as long as the suit begun by them in the archiepiscopal court was undecided. But Stephen of Tournai remarked very properly to the archbishop that such an injunction was a disaster for the monastic clergy. No discipline was longer possible in the abbeys ; there was disorder, dissoluteness, con- fusion in everything. He entreated the archbishop to give the abbot of Saint-Satur the right, consecrated by the rule of Saint Benedict and by the canons of the councils, of regu- larly correcting the faults of the monks; the right of ap- pointing, changing, and dismissing the officers placed under his orders. It is in the letters of Stephen of Tournai that the story of the monk Nicolas of Saint-Martin of Tournai is found — who, eternally in struggle with his abbot, one fine day, after having stolen the seal of the community, fled from the abbey, forged false letters intended to ruin his accuser, and, equipped with these documents, went to Eome to lodge his complaint. Stephen of Tournai was obliged to write to the pope, to warn him against the allegations of the fugitive monk, and it was on this occasion that, at the beginning of the letter, he gave vent to the following opinion on the inveterate evil from which the monastic world suffered: "It is a very eommon and usual fact that there are sons of con- tradiction and disobedience in our holy communities who love law- suits and disputes, who sow hatred among the brethren, who dehght in producing scandals, and in preparing civil wars which ruin us and make us an object of scorn for the stranger." MONASTIC LIFE 243 When the abbot was a dishonest man or a spendthrift, he usually sided with the younger monks, stirred them up against the older ones, who were thus reduced to impotence, and thus, sustained by the vigorous and turbulent faction of the community, he wasted the property of the abbey as he pleased. Instances of this kind are not rare, and we are informed among others, again by Stephen of Tournai, of an abbot of Saint-Martin of Tournai, named John, who used such methods until he provoked the most intolerable scandal. The archbishop of Eeims and the bishop were obliged to take rigorous measures. The abbot, John, threatened by excom- munication, submitted to confessing his faults and to signing a document, making the following promises on the Gospel: "I promise to preserve perpetual chastity, to assist re^larly in the offices, to eat in the refectory with the brethren, to sleep with them in the dormitory, not to entertain any but respectable guests in my chamber, to take with me, when it is necessary to leave the monastery on business, old and discreet brethren about whom there can be no unpleasant gossip, not to allow any monk to go out unless he is accompanied and for no reason except that of urgent necessity, and especially not to allow young monks to leave the abbey to go to plays, processions, or places of worldly amusement. Finally never to make a decision without having previously consulted a council of six monks whom the bishop shall designate from among the older brethren." This is a series of promises which fully enlightens us con- cerning the conduct of the heads of certain abbeys. The facts disclosed in the letters of Stephen of Tournai will suffice to bring to light the internal vice which disor- ganized and broke up the ancient Benedictine order: the tendency of the monastic personnel to thrust aside the au- thority of its natural head, the abbot, and to rely on outside powers to resist him. But what shows best how deep the evil was, is the civil war which broke out in the order of Grand- mont and lasted nearly seventy years. The order of Grandmont in Limousin, founded in 1073 by Stephen of Muret, at the outset received a very strict rule. Like the Cistercians and the Carthusians, the Grandmontains, in the beginning, went to the extreme of asceticism and mor- tification. One of the characteristic traits of their rule was 244 SOCIAL FRANCE the absolute isolation of the monk, his anxiety to avoid all contact with the worldly element and to spare himself every occupation and every thought of a temporal nature, in order to devote himself exclusively to prayer and to tasks of moral perfection. The founder of the order also desired the care of the material interests, to be confided exclusively to a company of lay brothers, who should be instructed to look after the subsistence and support of the monks, who were the true religious ; the latter, absorbed in monastic serv- ices, were to live a purely spiritual life, without any cares of a profane sort. The intention was excellent, and all went well during the first years of the foundation. But when, in the course of the twelfth century, the order, — heaped with the gifts of kings, high barons, and the faithful of both France and England, — had great possessions, both in land and money, it was necessary to increase the number of lay broth- ers charged with the administration, in the same proportion, because the monks of Grandmont were not permitted to aid in any way and did not even have the right to write letters or pass acts. Thus the order of Grandmont, at the acces- sion of Philip Augustus, presented the curious phenomenon of a religious congregation which was composed of a small number of monks who were governed in temporal affairs by a body of lay administrators twenty times as large. The monks could do nothing and knew nothing of the material and financial status of their monasteries. The lay brothers, on the contrary, — who only belonged to the monastery ex- ternally, — had all the money, all the property, and all the authority in their hands. The latter, having the numbers and the material power, naturally came to believe that they represented the order itself and that the real management of the congregation, — that is to say, the office of the prior- general, the head of the mother house of Grandmont, and the positions of the individual priors in the branch houses, the obediences, — should belong to them. This was the re- versal of the natural order of things, as the contemporary writers, especially Guyot of Provins, said. A religious con- gregation, dominated and directed by laymen, was, to use a metaphor which was frequently applied to the condition, putting the plow before the oxen. MONASTIC LIFE 245 War was inevitable between the clerical and lay elements of the order of Grandmont: it broke out in 1185 on the occasion of the election of a prior-general, the monks having one candidate and the lay brothers another. The schism lasted three years, and the destruction which was the con- Bequence affected every house of the order. In all the convents of the Grandmontains the lay brothers deposed the monks, shut them in their cells, gave them scarcely anything to live on, oppressed them with bad treatment, and did not even hesitate to expel them. It was a terrible scandal! Bishops, kings, and popes intervened to stop it and to re- establish peace between the hostile brothers, but scarcely had the mediatoics ceased their efforts than the struggle broke out more violently, and everything began anew. In 1188, after serious efforts on the part of the papacy and of the government of Philip Augustus, peace was believed to be definitive. Pope Clement III annulled the election of the two priors-general, about which the chapter was wran- gling ; caused a third to be elected, to whom a large majority of the Grandmontains swore obedience ; renewed the privi- leges of the congregation, and confirmed the rule. On his side, the king of France sanctioned the unexpected agree- ment with his approval; and the heads of the two factions appeared before him and gave each other the kiss of peace. But, two years later, war raged anew within the order: everywhere the same scenes of violence were repeated; the same expulsions of monks by the lay brothers took place. The monks appealed to Rome, where their suit was conducted with traditional slowness. But the papacy, which should have ended the debate by stringent measures, hesitated, did not act, and for a very simple reason, which Stephen of Tournai gives, without any beating round the bush, in a letter addressed to the pope. It was not the monks, but the lay brothers of Grandmont who had the money, and these boasted of using it to render all the claims of their adver- saries useless. " They did not rely on Justice ; they placed their hopes, as they themselves said so that any one could hear it, in their pecuniary gifts, and in the corruption which they freely practised." 246 SOCIAL FRANCE However, the disorders took on such proportions that the Capetian government found itself obliged to intervene for the second time. In 1190, Philip Augustus, before leaving for the crusade, summoned the monks and lay brothers of Grandmont to Saint-Denis and used threats and prayers to persuade them to keep the peace. But scarcely had he left than the quarrels were revived, while the representatives of the two factions continued to plead before an irresolute, powerless pope at Rome. It was then that Stephen of Tour- nai, in concert with the abbots of Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain- des-Pres, and Saint- Victor, wrote that letter of 1191 to the pope, in which he denounced the abuses committed by the lay brothers and the deplorable situation of the oppressed monks, and threatened the Holy See with the indignation of the king of France. Nothing was done. The papacy, even that of Innocent III, did not dare to settle this inextricable affair. In 1214, they were still struggling within the order of Grandmont, and the pope received a distressing letter from the monks. " What is going to become of us, wretches that we are, fallen under the hard bondage of the laity, and the object of scorn and derision to all who know us? We continually cry out and com- plain but no one hears our cry; we have thoroughly exposed our sufferings, but no one comes to our aid. There are no more prophets in Israel! Moses is no more, and his successor does not imitate his works. Joshua is not faithful to his people; he has made an alliance with the stranger; he has become corrupt, and he now pleads against us. We do- not see in all the people a leader called of God to deliver us from the lay brothers. They oppress us in an incredible way, . . . destroy the houses of our order, violate the rules of religion, waste the goods of the community, and dis- tribute them to the lay members of their families, or to their friends. They lay violent hands on us, threaten to break our heads if we attempt toi resist their caprice in any way whatever, and in order to punish us they put foul things into our food. They claim all our temporal goods, and then pretend to teach us in spiritual matters. . . . One would never finish if he attempted to complete the list of outrages, calumnies, threats, and deeds of which we are the victims on the part of those false brothers, especially this year. Holy Father, we are sending to you, as bearers of this letter, our true brothers, men faithful and religious and of good repute. You can learn from them in full confidence what would take too long to set forth in writing. They have been eye witnesses of the MONASTIC LIFE 247 things they will reveal to you. We throw ourselves at the feet of Your Holiness; we devoutly pray and beseech you, if you have any sentiment of pity, to grant the request which our brethren shall present on behalf of our whole group. You are our hope; since your promotion to the see of Saint Peter you have been our only refuge. Save us, Seignior, from the dominion of the bar- barians, from the servitude to the laity to which we have been subject for so long a time, as a punishment perhaps for our sins. If your support fails us who will aid us? We do not see any one besides you to whom we could have recourse. Make an end of our suit, which no one has yet settled conclusively. Our letter is already too long and risks fatiguing you. We close now, your humble though unworthy servants, tried beyond all limits and profoundly anxious. Seignior, have mercy on us." The popes of the middle ages were often broader-minded and more accessible to sentiments of humanity and justice than those v^ho represented them. They were better than their cardinals and legates: as was true, for instance, of Gregory VII, who was much less uncompromising and harsh than those who acted in his name; and this also applies to Innocent III, who was often betrayed by his agents. What brought on the crisis of Grandmont was the singular attitude of the cardinals sent to France, and especially of the legate, Robert of Courcon. He showed such partiality in favor of the lay brothers that they availed themselves of it to renew their excesses. Beaten, wounded, expelled from their con- vents, the monks appealed to the legate of the pope. Robert of Courcon replied by suspending their prior-general and declaring their appeal null and void. Thereupon Innocent III reproved his agent in very strong terms: " Truly we are astonished at you, on being informed of your incredible conduct. A man possessed of reason would not have dared to act in that way. By what right are you constituted judge of appeals to us? What wise and prudent man would permit him- self to declare the prior of Grandmont suspended from office after his appeal legally lodged at Rome? How are you on your own authority able to absolve these lay brothers, and to exempt them from obedience to their superiors?" And the pope ended by annulling the act of his legate, by confiding to the archbishop of Bourges the task of executing the decisions justly made by the prior of Grandmont. 248 SOCIAL FRANCE This letter of Innocent III was dated in the month of March, 1214, but a proof that it did not produce any great effect is the fact that two years later, in 1216, the order of Grandmont being still the prey of civil dissension, the same pope wrote to the archbishops of Bourges, Sens, and Tours, ordering them to punish those who were in insurrection against the prior-general and against the rules of the con- gregation. The troubles continued until the middle of the thirteenth century. CHAPTEE VIII ' THE NOBLE AT WAR Considering feudalism as a whole, with the exception of an elite class of which we shall speak later on, the habits and customs of the nobles had not changed since the eleventh century. Almost everywhere the castellan remained a brutal and pillaging soldier, making war, fighting in tournaments, hunting in times of peace, ruining himself in excesses, op- pressing his own peasants, levying contributions on those of his neighbors, and sacking the lands of the church. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the monks of the abbey of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou drew up an inter- minable list of misdeeds committed by Pons of Vernet, a castellan of Roussillon. This noble was a veritable brigand. "He broke down our fence, and seized eleven cows. One night he entered our property at Vernet and cut down our fruit trees. The next day, he seized and bound two of our servants in the woods and took three sous and six deniers away from them. The same day, he took the tunic, stockings, and shoes of Bernard of Mosset on our farm at Egat. Another time he kUled two cows and wounded four others on the farm of Col-de-Jou and he carried away all the cheeses that he found there. Another day, he forced the men of Rial to ransom themselves for fifteen sous, and their fear was so great that they put themselves under the protection of Peter Dumo- lait, in consideration of ^fifteen sous down, and an annual rental of a pound of wax. At Eglies, he took one hundred and fifty sheep, a donkey, and three children whom he would not give up without a ransom of one hundred sous, some capes, some tunics, and cheeses. Another time, he took a tunic from Peter of Rial, a leather-strap and a knife from Bonfils, two capes, a fur, and a table-cloth from Pierre Amat. . . . And, after he and his father, R. du Vernet, had sworn in the church of Sainte-Marie of Vernet that he would leave the abbey in peace, he stole eight sous and seven hens from our men of Avidan, and he forced us to buy over again the boundary-line of Odilon which his father had sold to us. . . . He stole from us our herd of Vernet, consisting of more than five hundred sheep, and he seized four men, who, happily, succeeded in escaping. He 249 250 SOCIAL FRANCE then seized two men of Odilon whom he ransomed for fifteen sous, and one of whom is still in captivity." This Pons of Vernet was not the only tyrant of the canton ; in the same mountainous region other barons of higher rank acted similarly: the only difference was that their field of operations was wider and their profits were larger. The will of Guinard, count of Roussillon, written in 1172, — that is, a few years before the time of Philip Augustus, — is a most instructive document. It was feudalism itself at the point of death, admitting its robberies, and trying to expiate them by indemnifying its victims. Almost all the articles of this testament were modeled on the same formula; here are the most expressive: " To the church and the inhabitants of Palestres, because of the harm which I have done them, I return two thousand Melgueil sous. " To the men of Ceret, because of the misdeeds from which they suffered, one thousand Melgueil sous. " To the men of Candeill, from whom I stole their herd, I give one hundred Melgueil sous. " To Peter Martin, a merchant of Perpignan, for the harm which a robber caused him, I give one hundred and fifty Melgueil sous." This Count Guinard had evidently had his share in the robbery. " To the men of Villemolaque, one thousand sous ; to the men of Canomals, three hundred sous ; to the men of Moreillas, five hundred sous; to the men of Boulon, five hundred sous; to the men of Domanova, one thousand «ous; to the men of Begis, one hundred sous ..." This is not the end of the list. There follows a formal unambiguous confession: " On account of the share of the pillage of Pons of Navaga, which I received {pro parte atroeini Pontii de Navaga quam ego hahui), I give one thousand Melgueil sous, and I direct that one hundred new tunics be given to the poor out of this sum." It would be impossible to show more clearly that Guinard, count of Roussillon, was participating in the profits of a band of robbers. THE NOBLE AT WAE 251 It is not probable that these two lords of Roussillon, about whom chance has given ns information, were exceptions. They acted we will not say like all the nobles of their coun- try, — for in all times and in every country there are honest men, — but like many men of their caste. If we betake our- selves to other parts of France, we see the same spectacle. In Berry, in 1209, the lord of Deols and, in 1219, the lord of Sully were declared guilty of having plundered merchants ; and Philip Augustus was obliged to interfere and treat them with rigor. And the great barons, the feudal sovereigns, stole like the ordinary castellans. Qui V, viscoimt of Limoges, found it convenient to send his soldiers to seize goods in the markets, and he imprisoned those who resisted them. Hugh III, the duke of Burgundy, always at the end of his resources, was really a robber on the great highways: he plundered the French and Flemish merchants who crossed his lands; and this was one of the reasons for Philip Augus- tus' expedition into Burgundy in 1186. The famous Renaud of Dammartin, count of Boulogne, one of the greatest lords of this time, the special enemy of the king of France and the man who worked hardest to or- ganize the coalition vanquished at Bouvines, was in other respects only a common brigand. One of his recent biog- raphers, M. Henri Malo, has tried to ennoble this man by representing him as the incarnation of feudal hatred for monarchical centralization. He has shown that this baron, in fighting against royalty, was merely true to his principles and fought for the independence of his possessions, as a man who wanted to remain master at home. That is all very well, but, as a matter of fact, we know that the count of Boulogne received money from the English and the Germans to resist Philip Augustus and to raise enemies against him on all sides. The idea of a nationality or of a country to which one must be loyal barely existed among the great lords of the time of Louis XIV and Conde ; the more reason why one should not search for such a spirit in a baron of Philip Augustus. But M, Malo was, at any rate, obliged to recognize that his " good-looking, brave and strong, intelligent and learned " hero did not content himself with the rewards of his 252 SOCIAL FRANCE political role; he was, besides, a robber with an anned band, and a vulgar pillager of peasants, merchants, and citizens. " From the beginning of the government of Renaud of Boulogne," admits M. Malo, " his reputation of loving money and of securing it by somewhat sharp practices was already well established: it is true that, if he loved it, it was only to spend it; the nobility of this motive, however, could not convince the people whom he despoiled of the righteousness of his procedure. Every one tried his best to escape him, and whole communities found it prudent to put their wealth out of his reach: the inhabitants of Calais, for instance, con- fided all their wealth to the monks of Andres in 1191." And M. Malo himself tells us a few of these " somewhat sharp practices " which Renaud of Boulogne employed to fill his purse. He pictures him stealing the flocks of the monks of the neighborhood, seizing the grain which they had stored in their barns, and appropriating what suited him from their woods, their lands, and their meadows. He tells us another exploit of his which caused a great stir in 1190. William, bishop of Longchamps, an old chancellor of Richard the Lion- Hearted, exiled from England, came to seek a place of refuge on the soil of France. He landed on the shores of Boulonnais. But hardly had he entered the country before Renaud fell on him with his troop and took from him his horses, his bag- gage, the sacred vases of his chapel, even his episcopal cope, and then allowed him to continue on his way. The episode created a scandal. The archbishop of Reims reprimanded the young count of Boulogne severely, demanded the return of the stolen goods, and excommunicated the robber. Noth- ing came of it. " Renaud," says M. Malo, " listened to the remonstrances, but returned nothing, not even the cope of the bishop." This was the man whom his biographer calls " the type of the great French lord of the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century," And when M. Malo, a little later, adds, ' ' At this period, the pettiest owner of a coat of mail or of a tower believed he had a right to pillage and assault anybody passing within reach of his sword," and justifies this phrase by examples taken from the counties of Guines and of Boulogne, where the ravages of THE NOBLE AT WAE 253 the feudal lords were frightful, he states a fact, a truth, which could be applied to almost all France. The men of the time recognized this themselves. Giraud of Borneil, a troubadour who wrote at the beginning of the thirteenth century, deplored these habits of pillage, unworthy of men of the sword: " I used to see the barons, in beautiful armor, giving and follow- ing tournaments, and I heard those who had delivered the best blows spoken of for many a day. Now, honor lies in stealing cattle, sheep, and lambs. Oh, fie upon the knight who drives off flocks of bleating sheep, or pillages churches and travelers, and then appears before a lady ! " Another contemporary, also a Provengal troubadour, Ber- tran of Lamanon, composed what was called a tengon, a satiric dialogue, in which he ridiculed Gui, a former brigand, who had become a bard: "Friend Gui, I am indeed charmed with your good sense, for you propose to try every occupation. I hear it said that you, who for so long infested the highways, have now advanced so far that you represent law and order. After having stolen cattle, goats, lambs, and sheep, you have become a minstrel and recite verses and songs. You have raised yourself to a higher honor." Giraud of Borneil, whom we have just quoted, was the better fitted to complain of the ravages of the lords, because he himself had been their victim. These men had no respect for poets. One day Giraud was returning from the court of Castile, where he had been received with enthusiasm and overwhelmed with gifts; as he was passing through the mountains of Navarre, he was despoiled by the officers of Sancho the Strong, king of Navarre. Feudalism lived on booty: it stole by robbing merchants and travelers; it also stole by levying illegal taxes on the peasants and the citizens of the fief; and this exploitation was universal. To brigandage by force was added brigandage by seigniorial agents, which consisted of arbitrary taxes and corvees. It had, no doubt, decreased in many respects within the century, for a certain number of cities, towns, and even /villages had obtained guarantees in the form of charters or 254 SOCIAL FRANCE contracts. The seignior finally began to comprehend that the way to get a return from his fief was not to exhaust it by exaction and turn it into a desert. But, one must admit that the nobility did not everywhere show this elementary intelligence; and, if there were many localities which were guaranteed against arbitrary exploitation by a duly executed charter, much more numerous were those which had no fran- chises and which the seignior could fleece at will. The cities found a means of defence; but what resistance was possible in the country? The property and the life of the peasant were hardly safer in peace than in war. On this subject one should read the bold utterances against feudal excesses contained in one of the sermons expressly addressed by the famous preacher, Jacques of Vitry, to the princes and the knights, ad proceres et milites:^ "All that the peasant amasses in a year by stubborn work, the knight, the noble, devours in an hour. . . . Not content with his pay as soldier, not content with his revenues and with the annual tax levied on his subjects, he further despoils them by illicit taxes and heavy exactions. The poor are exhausted, the fruit of their years of pain and sorrow is extorted from them." Especially does the preacher attack the odious right of mortmain. He thunders against the nobles who steal the inheritance of the dead, the goods of the widow and the orphan : " The father dies, and the seignior takes from the unfortunate children the cow which should have nourished them. Those who take advantage of the right of mortmain are murderers, because they condemn the orphan to death by hunger: they are like the vermin which feasts on corpses." Elsewhere he compares the nobles to wolves, and their agents and officers to crows: "As wolves and jackals devour a carrion, while the crows croak overhead awaiting their share in the feast, so, when the barons and the knights pillage their subjects, the provosts, the preceptors, and others of the hellish crew rejoice at the prospect of devouring the rest." 'Bibl. nat., ms. lat. 17509, fol. 104-108. THE NOBLE AT WAK 255 And these metaphors become ever stronger: " Those lords who do not work and live off the work of the poor are like those unclean parasites which imbed themselves in the skin, prey upon it^ and live off the substance which serves them as a home." The provosts were no less rapacious than their masters: they ground down and were ground down in turn. One might call them leeches: they sucked the blood of the miser- able and were obliged to disgorge it for the profit of the seignior, more powerful than they. What form did this exploitation of the poor by the lord and his agents not take ? Means were found for everything ; Jacques of Vitry, to renew the attention of his auditors and bring them to their senses, relates the following anecdote: " One day, a bailiff, the officer of a certain count, wishing to please his master, said to him : * Seignior, if you will Usten to me, I will tell you a way to make a good sum of money each year.' * With pleasure,* replied the count. ' Allow me then, seignior, to sell the sun on all your land.' *How,' asked the count, 'can one sell God's sun ? ' ' Very simply : many of your men wash their clothes and dry them in the sun. If they give you no more than twelve deniers for each piece of cloth, you will make much money.' And this is how that bad officer led his seignior to sell the sun's rays." Jacques of Yitry incessantly complained of the rapacity of the strong and the misery of the oppressed; he felt that this was the fundamental evil of feudal society, and he tried to make the guilty afraid. " You have been ravening wolves," he told them, " and that is why you shall go to howl in hell." But, for those whom the prospect of eternal pains would not sufficiently frighten, he had another argu- ment, which was more human and more convincing: " The great must make themselves loved by the small ; they must be careful not to inspire hate. The humble must not be scorned: if they can aid us, they can also do us harm. You know that many serfs have killed their masters or have burnt their houses." No preacher or moralist of this period of the middle ages has more clearly painted the sad effects of the avidity of the noble classes and has assailed feudal brigandage in more vigor- 256 SOCIAL FRANCE ous terms. After speaking of this thirst for money, which was the principal vice of the nobility, he might have gone further and have described the nobles with their passion for fighting and their bloody instincts, which the custom of pillage and the continuity of a state of war too well explain. This was the second salient characteristic, another general trait of feudalism. On this point, as on the other, history shows that the preachers could hardly exaggerate. Here, for example, is Bernard of Cahuzac, a petty lord of Perigord, who is described by the historian, Peter of Vaux- de-Cernay. A veritable wild beast: " He spends his life in looting and destroying churches, in attack- ing pilgrims, in oppressing the widow and the poor. It pleases him especially to mutilate the innocent. In a single monastery, that of the black monks of Sarlat, one hundred and fifty men and women were found, whose hands and feet had been cut off, or whose eyes had been put out by him. His wife, as cruel as he, aided in his deeds. She took pleasure in torturing these poor women herself. She had their breasts slit, or their nails torn out so that they would not be able to work." Another example: "Foueaud, a knight and a comrade of Simon de Montfort, angered even the warriors by his cruelties. Every prisoner who did not have the means of paying one hundred sous as ransom was condemned to death. He inclosed his prisoners in subterranean dungeons and let them die of starvation: sometimes he had them brought forth half dead and thrown into cesspools before his own eyes. It was said that on one of his last expeditions, he returned with two captives, a father and son, and that he forced the father to hang his own son." To realize how far the love of war and of its butcheries could go — to what point pillaging, burning, and killing were a pleasure and a veritable need to the barons of this period — it is enough to study the life and the works of the troubadour, Bertran de Bom. This poet was himself a noble and castel- lan; he spent his life fighting and in making others fight. He liked war for its own sake, because it was beautiful to see troops clash and blood flow; all the more because booty was thus won and princes were obliged to give largess to the THE NOBLE AT WAR 257 knights who fought for them, Bertran de Born's authorship of the famous sirvente, " The gay time of Easter that makes flowers and leaves come forth is very pleasing to me," has been contested. It is a martial song, in which this well- known verse is found: "I tell you that I never eat, sleep, or drink so well, as when I hear the cry : * Up and at them ! ' f ronj both sides, and when I hear the neighing of riderless horses in the thicket, and hear voices shouting : * Help ! Help ! ' and see men fall on the green of the moats, and see the dead pierced in the side by the shafts of spears gay with pennons." If this poetry was not of his writing, — ^which has never been proved, — it is much like his style, as appears from the following selection, the authenticity of which has never been questioned : " The joyous season approaches when our ships shall land, when King Richard, wanton and valiant as he never was before, shall come. Now shall we see gold and silver spent; newly built founda- tions shall break with envy, walls shall crumble, towers shall subside and fall to pieces, and his enemies shall taste the prison and its chains. I love the mel^e of shields with blue and vermillion tints, flags and pennons of different colors, tents and rich pavilions spread over the plain, the breaking of lances, the riddling of shields, the splitting of gleaming helmets, and the giving and taking of blows." This man could not understand why the barons should make peace, and he covered those who did so with sarcasm. * * They are, ' ' he said, ' * like base metal, from which nothing can be formed, however much one reshape and recast it; the spur cannot make them stir." ** I have broken on them," he says elsewhere, '* more than a thousand goads without being able to make a single one of them run or trot; there is not one of them that one cannot clip, shear, or shoe." " They are full of audacity at the beginning of winter," he continues, ** but they lose their courage in the spring, when the time for action comes." To content Bertran de Bom, slaughter would have to be continuous; as soon as it ceased, he wrote dejectedly: " Bravery and valor are dead. There are kingdoms, but no more kings; counties, but no more counts; there are strong castles, but 258 SOCIAL FRANCE no more castellans. One can still see beautiful ladies, and beautiful clothes, and well-dressed people; but where are the doughty knights of the lays? Richard is a lion, but King Philip appears to me to be a lamb." Richard the Lion-Hearted was the ideal of Bertran de Bom ; but to make a lamb out of Philip Augustus, because he only liked profitable wars, passes the bounds of poetic license. It must be noticed that the region in which our author lived, Limousin and the neighboring countries of Perigord and Angoumois, was perhaps the part of France where feudalism was most turbulent; where the nobles fought most bloodily among themselves or against their king. There, especially, war raged and was a permanent scourge. It was truly diffi- cult to satisfy Bertran de Born. However, his poems are not those in which the voluptuous- ness of carnage was voiced with the most expressive savagery. The authors of certain chansons de geste, contemporaries of Philip Augustus, in at least their later writings, — such as the poem Lorraitis or Girart de Boussillon, — went further. Their heroes reached the limit of ferocity. In the song Garin le Lorrain, Duke Begon, seizing in his hands the entrails of an enemy whom he had just killed, threw them in the face of William of Montclin, with these words, " Here, vassal, take the heart of your friend: you can salt it and roast it." Garin himself opened the body of WiUiam of Blancafort. " He drew the heart, the lungs, and the liver out of it. Hernaut, his companion, seized the heart, cut it into four pieces, and both strewed the road with these pieces of still palpitating flesh." After a battle, noble prisoners were kept, to be put to ransom; but as no profit could be made out of prisoners of an inferior class, — such as archers, arbalisters, and servants of the army, — they were massacred or mutilated, to make them incapable of service. The lay Girart de Boussillon leaves no doubt on this point. Here is a pertinent passage: " Girart and his men conducted the massacre; among the living they kept two hundred and eighty men, all owners of castles, and put them apart at one side." Later : * ' The Burgundians were barbarous and cruel ; we had not a squire or a cross-bowman whom they did not give an empty sleeve or a wooden leg." Here the writer seems to THE NOBLE AT WAE 259 condemn these practices; but, as a fact, no one gave them up, not even the king: " ' By my head,' said Charles Martel, ' I do not worry over what you have said, Fulc; I laugh at your threats, as at a quince. Every knight that I take, I shall honor by cutting off his nose or his ears. If it be a squire or a foot soldier, he shall lose an arm or a leg.' " In another passage thirty squires, all disfigured, arrive at the palace of the king : " Each had a foot or an arm cut off, or an eye put out. They came before the king in this state and said to him : ' Sire, it was in your service that we were mutilated in this way.'" We know how much we can depend on the historical value of information furnished us by the chansons de geste. We know that even in his pictures of war, even in his recitals of battles, the poet could not help introducing features which were entirely fanciful or distorting the truth by stretching it beyond all measure. When, for example, we see the armies of kings or great lords meet in formidable clashes, general melees, or drawn battles, — in which enormous numbers of men, hundreds of thousands, appear in line and kill each other, — we say that the poet allowed his imagination to run riot. In actual history, as it appears in the wars of the Capetians and the Plantagenets, the armies were, on the con- trary, very small, the battles extremely rare ; there were skir- mishes and ravages, but few engagements of great masses: decisive action was avoided, they did not venture to ruin the adversary in a single blow; they only aimed to ruin him by degrees: the nobles captured and ransomed much oftener than they killed each other. Besides, when one reflects that in the poems all knights are of herculean force; that with a single blow of the sword they strike off arms, legs, and heads ; that they cut an enemy in two and cleave his helmet, his head, and his breast with a marvelous ease; when, too, one notes that, though wounded, they have an incredible power of resistance, so that, though transfixed, mutilated, or with brain laid bare, they resume the saddle and continue to fight 260 SOCIAL FEANCE as though they had felt nothing, one must say that here imagi- nation had reached its utmost bounds. Barring this kind of exaggeration, these tales of wars and battles contain a mass of material taken from real life. The poet needed not resort to imagination ; he had only to look at what was going on about him. What he says of the ferocity of the warrior and of the massacre of useless prisoners is fully confirmed by historical documents. What he says of butcheries of peasants and of frightful devastation of an enemy 's territory is also entirely true. War at that time consisted chiefly of destruction and pillage. The object was to do the greatest possible harm to the adversary, by setting his villages on fire and by massacring the peasants, who were his property and his source of income. Here the authors of the chansons de geste say no more than is found on every page of the chronicles. It was the citizen, the monk, and especially the peasant who bore the expense of feudal wars. The lay Girart de Boussillon is very instructive in this respect. One of the heroes of this poem, speaking of an adversary, cries out: " He may attack us, the cruel coward. He will chop down our vines and our trees, he will undermine our walls and our fish-ponds, he will open our water-mains." And, farther on, the same definition of war : " He sees a stronger come and attack him, cut off his vines, root up his trees, lay waste his land, and make it a desert; he sees his castles taken by storm, his walls broken, his moats filled up, all his men captured or killed." Here is what victory meant to the leader of an expedition: " He does not leave a good knight alive as far as Baiol, nor treasure, nor monastery, nor church, nor shrine, nor censer, nor cross, nor sacred vase; everything that he seizes he gives to his com- panions. He makes so cruel a war that he does not lay hands on a man without killing, hanging, or mutilating him." But in Lorrains we find a more detailed and complete picture of the effects of the march of an army through an THE NOBLE AT WAR 261 enemy's country. Here is a picture ready-made for us, in which nothing is lacking: " They start to march. The scouts and the incendiaries lead ; after them come the foragers who are to gather the spoils and carry them in the great baggage train. The tumult begins. The peasants, having just come out to the fields, turn back, uttering loud cries; the shepherds gather their flocks and drive them towards the neighboring woods in the hope of saving them. The incendiaries set the villages on fire, and the foragers visit and sack them; the distracted inhabitants are burnt or led apart with their hands tied to be held for ransom. Everywhere alarm bells ring, fear spreads from side to side and becomes general. On all sides one sees helmets shining, pennons floating, and horsemen covering the plain. Here hands are laid on money; there cattle, donkeys, and flocks are seized. The smoke spreads, the flames rise, the peasants and the shepherds in consternation flee in all directions." Where the knights have passed, there is nothing left : "In the cities, in the towns, and on the small farms, wind-mills no longer turn, chimneys no longer smoke, the cocks have ceased their crowing, and the dogs their barking. Grass grows in the houses and between the flag-stones of the churches, for the priests have abandoned the services of God, and the crucifixes lie broken on the ground. The pilgrim might go six days without finding any one to give him a loaf of bread or a drop of wine. Freemen have no more business with their neighbors; briars and thorns grow where villages stood of old." The ideal of the noble vsrho fought was to make the land of the enemy desert; and the noble was ever fighting. At this period war existed everywhere. War was the function, the profession of the noble; he was above all else a soldier, the leader of a band, and had corresponding tastes and habits; he not only loved war, but he lived from it. He passed his youth in preparing for it; when he became of age, he was knighted, and he waged war as long as his strength per- mitted him to do so, even in his old age. His home was a guard-room or fortress; his castle a means of attack and of defense. When by chance he was at peace, — which was not often, — he still kept up the appearance of war, by fighting in tournaments ; for we shall see that tournaments were 262 SOCIAL FRANCE diminutive wars and the occasion of slaughter and booty. In spite of the (inconsiderable) advance of culture, in spite of the efforts of the clergy, of kings, and of several great lords who had become rulers, war was practically a perma- nent scourge, almost everywhere in France. In the society of that day war was the normal state. We have some difficulty in admitting the truth of this para- doxical and monstrous fact. With our habits and peaceful customs, with the overscrupulous protection with which mod- ern society surrounds us, our properties and our persons, we have great trouble in picturing to ourselves a country like the France of Philip Augustus — divided into provinces, whose inhabitants formed so many small nations, which hated each other; these provinces themselves subdivided into a multi- tude of seigniories or fiefs, whose owners were forever fight- ing; not only the barons, but the little castellans, living in an unsociable isolation and constantly fighting against their sovereigns, their equals, or their subjects; and, furthermore, those rivalries between city and city, village and village, val- ley and valley, those wars between neighbors, which then seemed to burst forth almost spontaneously from the diversity of the soil itself. How could laborers live in such chaos, in the midst of these hostile elements? How could the peas- ants, already so exhausted by the excesses of seigniorial ex- ploitation and natural scourges, resist these daily disorders, of which they were always the first victims? That is what we wonderingly ask; and we can only answer that these men worked in the midst of devastation and pillage, as they lived in the midst of pestilences and famines; that the nobles al- ways found enough men to murder and torture, and enough hovels to burn. We must pass from province to province to convince our- selves of the reality of these innumerable wars, which put lay feudalism at outs with itself and with the other classes of society at one and the same moment throughout all France. Though information is precise and abundant for some re- gions, it is not for others: a complete and minute statement of these scenes of devastation would be impossible; in any case, it would be interminable. We can, however, choose certain striking events which left the strongest impression THE NOBLE AT WAR 263 on contemporaries and which were, therefore, embodied in the records and the chronicles. Here and there we can point out the more general types of feudal wars, with an almost absolute certainty that what happened in one province also happened in others, and that the warlike and pillaging in- stincts of the caste of knights caused the same evils every- where. Naturally, the commonplaces of political history — like those, for example, which concern the war of the Cape- tians with the Plantagenets and the great feudal lords — AAdll not be discussed here. We remember that the wars and the conquests of Philip Augustus put a great part of France to fire and bloodshed for almost the whole of his reign; at least, until 1214, the date of his final victory at Bouvines. But, under this first substratum of historical wars, there were many others among the different classes of the feudal hier- archy — an infinity of small wars, devastation, and local con- flicts, in which the inferior feudal barons were alone inter- ested, but which were no less murderous and ruinous for the peasants. War existed everywhere, and especially between seigniorial families. Questions of inheritance and of succession, which are now settled by civil justice, then usually ended in vio- lent conflicts. When the eldest son of the lord, heir- presumptive to the fief, reached the age when he was made knight, he demanded a certain part of the domain and the seigniorial revenues, as he needed money for his pleas- ures, his friends, or for his appearance in tournaments. Sometimes he even demanded a formal partnership in the seigniorial power and the right to use the seal of the seigniory to legalize his acts : that is, his participation in the sovereignty as co-seignior and co-proprietor while awaiting the whole inheritance. There were fathers who consented to advance the inheritance, who benevolently gave the young cavalier domains, and even associated him with themselves in the government of the seigniory ; others gave him money or land, but kept their seigniorial rights intact; still others objected to increasing their incomes at all and gave nothing. In that case the son, egged on by evil counselors, made open war on the father, and the whole fief was disturbed for several years. In this way is explained the long quarrel between the two 264 SOCIAL FRANCE lords of Beaujolais — Humbert III, the father, and Humbert IV, the son — at the end of the reign of Louis VII and at the beginning of that of Philip Augustus. We do not know the details of this family war; we only know from the arbitral act of the archbishop of Lyons, which terminated it in 1184, how great was the desolation in the country of Beaujolais and Lyonnais. Here are the expressions employed by the arbitrator : "Among all the misfortunes which have struck our region, one must place first that tempest {tempestas ilia), that pitiless war which Humbert of Beaujeu and his son waged against each other, and which men almost despaired of ever seeing ended." In 1184, however, the belligerents decided to swear, by the relics at Lyons, to keep the peace. And then, says the charter : " The father received his son like his natural heir, and as the legitimate seignior after him of his whole fief and domain of Beaujeu, and he swore to this before all the witnesses. The son, in his turn, did him homage. And it was in this way that, through our media- tion, the young Humbert gave back to his father the greater part of the seigniory on which he had laid his hand." The heir, then, had almost entirely despoiled the father of his fief. In the chronicle of Lambert of Ardres, dedicated to the history of the petty seigniories of Guines and of Ardres, in Artois, we learn that Arnoul, son of Baldwin II, count of Guines, received the sword of knighthood in 1181. He was hardly in possession of his title before he began to claim the inheritance : "Amoul had a counselor, Philip of Montgardin, whom he kept in spite of the wishes of his father, the count of Guines. This counselor steadily urged the young man to claim the city of Ardres and the property which had come to him from his mother. There were long conferences and frequent interviews between the father and the son on this subject. The count of Guines was not satisfied with the attitude of his son; the intervention of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, was necessary to appease him; finally after long negotiations young Arnoul obtained Ardres and Colvide, but with only a part of their dependencies." THE NOBLE AT WAR 265 Here the difference between the father and the son, between the owner of the fief and the presumptive heir, does not seem to have resulted in war; at least, the chronicler does not say so; but evidently very little was lacking. Defiance of the heir by the holder of the seigniory was then a general rule in all stages of feudal society. It is well known how Henry II, the mighty master of the Plantagenet empire, acted toward his eldest son, Henry the Young, and also toward Richard the Lion-Hearted. It is also a matter of common knowledge that PhiKp Augustus was not even willing to give his son, Louis — the future Louis VIII, who was a model son— the sovereignty of Artois, which the heir-apparent held in his own right from his mother. Louis never bore the title of count or of seignior of Artois; he had no chancellery of his own; his charters were countersigned by his father's officers. Always jealous of his authority, Philip Augustus, to the end of his life, closely watched and restrained this son, who was more than thirty-five years old when he became king. " My son, you have never caused me any trouble," said Philip to him on his death-bed. Indeed, the old king had taken such precautions that it would have been very hard for his heir to cause him much worry. But we have just seen that such precautions were necessary, and that young knights, rapacious like their fathers, were anxious to speed the day of their inheritance. Between the sons and their mothers other difficulties arose ; for, after the death of the holder of a fief, the heir was obliged to leave his widowed mother in possession of a certain number of domains and castles, which were thus removed from his direct control. It was for this reason that war broke out, in 1220, between the widow of Arnoul II, the count of Guines, and her son, Baldwin III. It lasted two years; the mother and son finally made peace, post multiplices discordias, says the chronicle of Ardres, and these three words without doubt cover many depredations and murders. Brothers did not agree any better, especially when misfor- tune decided that they should own a fief or a domain in common. This happened in districts where the right of the eldest son was not rigorously enforced; and then it was a source of interminable wars. Let us go into Limousin, at 266 SOCIAL FEANCE the beginning of the reign of Philip Augustus: two brothers were wrangling over the possession of the castle of Haute- fort, the ruins of which are still to be seen above the village of Bellegarde, in the Dordogne, at the edge of a pond situated in the midst of the forest of Bom. This chateau was a re- doubtable fortress; but the seigniory of Born, of which it was the principal seat, was only of ordinary importance. Bertran de Born, the troubadour, and his brother, Constan- tine de Born, both residing at Hautefort, seemed to live there in harmony at first; then there was discord between them; they fought and each tried to expel the other from the pater- nal manor. According to Bertran de Born, the entire fault lay with his brother, who would not be contented with his part: "If I have a brother or a eousin-gennain, I divide the egg and the money with him, but if he wishes my own part also, then I drive him from the community." Bertran finally got the upper hand, and Constantine, hav- ing been expelled, complained to his suzerains — the visceunt of Limoges and Richard the Lion-Hearted, duke of Aquitaine. Then, said Bertran, the melee became general and the land of Hautefort was ravaged: " Each day I fight, I exert myself, I ride, I defend myself, and I argue. My land is sacked and is burned. My trees are cut down, my grain is mixed with straw, and I have not an enemy, brave or cowardly, who does not profit by the occasion to attack me." It is not certain that Bertran de Born defended himself as well as he says, for the castle of Hautefort, in spite of its very strong position, surrendered without striking a blow to Richard the Lion-Hearted, who besieged it in 1183. Con- stantine de Born entered it; but, a little while later. King Henry II made a present of it to the troubadour, who did not leave it again. The law of primogeniture was a way of avoiding wars between brothers; and the barons made the surer of it by vowing their younger sons from infancy to an ecclesiastical career. But when the rights of inheritance were not entirely THE NOBLE AT WAE 267 clear, when there remained only distant relatives or women to succeed to the fiefs, when different principles of heredity conflicted, — such as the principle of the succession of progeni- tors, of relatives, or that of representation, — ^then competition came into play and wars of succession broke out. These quar- rels about inheritance occurred in many parts of feudal France at the time with which we are occupied ; but the most celebrated, the longest, and the most disastrous of all in- volved the county of Champagne, which was claimed both by Erard of Brienne and by Blanche, countess of Champagne, for her minor son, Thibaud IV. It lasted fourteen years, from 1213 to 1227; the hostilities which resulted from it affected not only Champagne, but also a part of Burgundy, the lie de France, and Lorraine ; the pope, the king of France, the emperor, and many French, Belgian, and German barons were involved in it. It gave rise not only to a number of skirmishes and local raids, but to two considerable bat- tles. It resulted in diplomatic negotiations of extraordinary complication and interminable processes before all possible jurisdictions. Finally, it completely subverted feudal rela- tionships; vassals changed from one party to another, as they found it to their interest, and changed their homage and their suzerain with a truly remarkable freedom. This typical letter sent by a baron to Blanche, countess of Cham- pagne, is enough to illustrate: " To Blanche, countess, and to Thibaud, her son, greetings. I, seignior of Sexfontaines, let you know by these letters that I was formerly your man and that of Thibaud, your son. But now there has just appeared an heir who has better founded rights and who asks my homage, and there is already a lien between us that will prevent me from ever leaving him. Know then, that I have joined the side of the legitimate heir and that I am no longer your vassal." This was what the famous law of feudal vassalage was in practice — the keystone of the whole system of fiefs, of that monarchical edifice which seemed so regularly and so har- moniously ordered in the theories of the jurists of the thir- teenth century. In fact, this bond of vassalage was de- plorably fragile and inconstant; it vanished at the slightest excuse ; the merest shadow of a claim, a gift of land, a hint of 268 SOCIAL FRANCE money was enough to cause a vassal to change his sovereign and to transfer his homage and his personal services to an- other seignior. v To wars between relatives, therefore, were added wars between sovereigns and vassals, which were no less disas- trous and no less frequent. It would be impossible to enu- merate them ; they fill the history of France ; for contentions over vassalage were the very basis of the wars of Philip Augustus with the Plantagenets and the counts of Flanders ; and of the Plantagenets themselves with the barons of their continental domains. They also fill the provincial histories, for at that time there was not a single part of France that was not the scene of a war waged by a vassal, or by a league of vassals against the sovereign of the fief. These conflicts and these wars were, so to speak, the woof of all seigniorial existence. There are so many facts to relate, so many ex- amples to give, that it is useless to collect evidence or to lay stress on what constituted the daily and normal life of our barons. We must not be deceived by appearances; at bot- tom, the sovereign was the enemy of his vassals: he was respected when he was strong; he was defied and attacked when he was not. On his side, the sovereign was not more respectful of the feudal bond. Here is a pertinent anecdote taken from the book of the Dominican, Stephen of Bourbon : " There was in the diocese of Macon, about the year 1190, a certain viscount, who had several castles or donjons. Relying on his fortresses, he watched for opportunities to rob rich travelers and he lived on the plunder of his men. One day, however, perhaps through fear of the king of France, perhaps through personal con- viction, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and confided his land and his castles to his overlord, Girard, count of Macon. The latter promised to marry the viscount's daughter to his own son William, already associated with the count of Macon. But, far from keeping his oath, he kept the land of his vassal for himself, and gave the daughter to one of his knights. In vain the heirs of the viscount appealed to the king: he refused to hear them." As to the viscount himself, despoiled of everything, he died of misery and of hunger when he was about to embark at Genoa. Here the suzerain was no better than the vassal, THE NOBLE AT WAR 269 and the disloyalty of the first was on a par with the immo- rality of the second. We have not enumerated all the different kinds of wars in discussing this endemic malady of the feudal body. There were also the wars of lords against their own officers, the agents of the seigniory. The word agent brings up in our minds the idea of a more or less zealous but faithful and obedient person, attached by his own interests to the suc- cess of the state which employs him. It was otherwise in the middle ages. The seigniorial officer was himself a petty lord, as anxious for land and money as his seignior and striving in all ways for independence. We have noticed that Jacques of Vitry described the feudal agent as a leech, whom the mas- ter must from time to time compel to disgorge — a difficult operation and one that often required force. History shows that the preacher did not overstate the facts. Let us see what happened in 1203 in the county of Boulogne. The seneschal of Renaud, count of Dammartin, was a certain Eustache le Moine, an adventurer who had a most singular destiny. The count was informed that the seneschal was appropriating the taxes collected from the land which he administered. He summoned Eustache to render his ac- counts. Fearing that he would be thrown into prison, Eustache took refuge in the great forest of Boulogne. Renaud confiscated the possessions of his agent and burned his do- mains. On the day that the count was celebrating the mar- riage of one of his favorites, Eustache avenged himself by burning two of the count's mills, in honor of the event. The bloody war between the seneschal and his lord dragged on. Eustache stole his lord's horses and maimed his men. One day he was taken, and thrown into prison, but escaped and, crossing the channel, offered his services to John Lackland and to the English. Finally, — for we must make an end, even though the mate- rial is inexhaustible, — war between nobles was not always caused by the hope of gain. With passionate and extremely susceptible temperaments, with men who had brutality in the blood and choler in their florid complexions, it needed only a trifle, a gesture, a word, a bit of mockery to provoke hostilities and an interminable vendetta. The assembly of 270 SOCIAL FRANCE barons in the army or in the court of the sovereign was a particularly fruitful source of disputes, which were often grave and were followed by bloody quarrels after the barons had returned to their fiefs. In the epic Qarin le Lorrain there is a very vivid picture of the struggle which took place between the barons at the court of the king, in the presence of the king himself. The knights of the two parties of Lor- raine and Bordeaux abused each other, in spite of the inter- vention of their sovereign, and, after having heaped each other with the most abominable insults, they came to blows. " Garin struck Fromont on the head ; so mighty was his fist that Fromont, stunned, measured his full length on the floor. Then the Bordelais left their seats and came to aid their seignior. The melee became general: men seized each other by the hair, they fought with their feet, their fists, and their teeth, all in the sight of the king, to whom no one v.ould listen. But, in the midst of the severest fighting, Coimt Hardre went out, down the stairs, and ran to his inn. He took from the head of his bed a strong stick of oak, came back to the palace, closed all the exits, and reappeared before the Lorrains, who stood rigid with fear. Fourteen knights fell mortally wounded." Hernais of Orleans, of the Lorrain party, came on the scene and, in turn, fell on the Bordelais. " There was then a real butchery. The knights, vying with each other, set upon the Bordelais, who were soon mutilated and cut to pieces. The wounded hid under the tables, in the vain hope of escaping; they were found, drawn out of their hiding places, and kiUed." And this fray at the court of the king was the beginning of the war between the Bordelais and the Lorrains, of which the epic tells us so many incidents. Evidently, the imagination of the minstrel here had free play; but, on the whole, he only enlarged and blackened his- toric fact. In 1197, the court of Philip Augustus was held at Compiegne. A discussion arose between Renaud of Dam- martin, count of Boulogne, and Hugh, count of Saint-Pol. Hot words were exchanged : Hugh of Saint-Pol struck Renaud full in the face, so hard that the blood flowed. Renaud drew his dagger and flung himself on his assailant. The king and THE NOBLE AT WAR 271 the bystanders interfered in time ; but the count of Boulogne bitterly reproached Philip Augustus for not allowing him to avenge himself, and this was one of the grievances which led him to ally himself for the first time with the enemies of the king of France. If the members of the feudal caste fought much among themselves, they were not any more at peace with the other elements of society. Internal wars were numerous; external wars were not less frequent. In the middle ages social dis- tinctions were more clean-cut, and class feeling was much stronger and more persistent than in modem times. This was, on the one hand, because passions were then more in- tense and customs more brutal; and, on the other hand, be- cause the various social groups were separated by barriers which were higher and more difficult to overcome. The noble had an untamable antipathy and profound con- tempt for the villein: that is (using the word in its most comprehensive meaning), for the serf, peasant, the laborer, and the citizen or burgher. It would be easy to cite a hundred passages of the chansons de geste, written at the time of Philip Augustus, in which this contempt is very clearly expressed. In these songs villeins who had succeeded in emerging from their status, entering the military class, and reaching knighthood are sometimes mentioned; but, in such a case, the poet never fails to put strong protests into the mouths of his noble characters. It is true that in real life this transformation from villein to knight did several times occur, especially in southern France, where the gulf between the classes was narrower; but, on the whole, the occurrence was rare. The noble considered the villein — whether he was isolated, in a state of servitude, or part of a community of more or less free citizens — as an inferior be- ing, whom he could despoil and massacre without scruple. In this light, certain incidents of the war against the Al- bigenses are very instructive. It was not only religious pas- sion which animated the knights of the crusade against the citizens infected with heresy: it was also the contemptuous repulsion that these nobles of the north felt for the villein. 272 SOCIAL FEANCE who in their eyes had no value. This, for example, explains the horrors of the sack of Marmande in 1218. " The cru- saders," says the historian of Philip Augustus, " killed all the citizens with their wives and little children, and all the inhabitants to the number of five thousand." But they spared the count of Astarac, who had directed the defense of the city, and all the nobles who had participated in it. If the noble hated the peasant and crushed him without mercy, the latter, when he could, repaid in kind. The same year, 1218, William of Baux, prince of Orange, fell into the hands of the inhabitants of Avignon, who were friendly to the Albigenses: the citizens flayed him alive, then cut his body into pieces. One would think that relations between nobles and church- men were less strained. Feudalism furnished a part of the personnel of the church: many abbots, canons, and bish- ops belonged to seigniorial families; a number of prelates, as we have seen, led a noble's life, the life of the castle, and went to the chase and to war surrounded by knights and armed men. The feudal classes and the clerics, as a whole, constituted the privileged class, the proprietors of the soil. Between the nobles and the clergy, or better between the lay seigniors and the church seigniors, there was this in common — that they exploited the lower classes, often by the same tyrannical and odious processes. But not only did they not agree, but they were continuously at war. The antagonism between the nobles and the clergy at this period (and one may say at all periods of the middle ages) is, indeed, one of the most ordinary, most salient, and best proved facts of social history. As a proprietor and as a sovereign, feudalism was jealous of the cleric ; it disputed his rights, his revenues, his tithes, his patronage of parishes ; it coveted the property and the capital accumulated by him through the piety of the faithful. Needy and wasteful, it disliked this spiritual power which competed with it for property, for power, and for money, and which enriched itself without limit; because the church always amassed, and never or rarely surrendered anything. Barons considered church property as an inex- haustible source of booty; they spent their lives in pillaging the territory of monks, of canons, and of bishops, or at THE NOBLE AT WAR 273 least of those who did not defend themselves or who defended themselves poorly. The spiritual lord protected church goods as well as he could by appeal to pope, king, or duke; by excommunication, and by arms. There was not a corner of France where the nobles and clerics were not in disagreement. In brief, the clergy was always a tempting prey to the no- bility; it was the competitor, it was the enemy. In this last expression there is no exaggeration. This statement finds its proof in the general impression as well as in the details given by history ; in the countless facts coming from every single province of France. And it is completely corroborated by a study of the works of Latin and vernacu- lar literature, of the writings of preachers and religious moralists, as well as of the ballads written by the minstrels for the amusement of knights and ladies. Let us first ask what the church thought and said about feudalism. She was hostile to it for two principal reasons: first, because she stood for peace and public order, and the nobles stood for just the opposite thing; and then especially because she was the continual victim of their aggressions and depredations. Out of a sense of duty, she supported the weak against them, but, out of self-interest, she defended herself, her rights, and her continually threatened properties and treasures. And this is enough to explain the bitterness and the violence of certain utterances of the clergy. Archdeacon Peter of Blois, a wit of the time of Henry II and of Philip Augustus, uttered a stinging tirade against the feudalism and the military class of his day. It would seem that no priest ever spoke worse of a soldier. One of his letters w^s addressed to a friend, an archdeacon, whose nephews, who were knights, had expressed themselves inso- lently about the clergy. " I cannot," wrote Peter to his correspondent, ** suffer the boastful self-esteem of your nephews, ' ' " These young men dare to boast of the superiority of the military over the ecclesiastical state, libeling us, by comparing our manner of Living and acting with theirs. Admitting that our pro- fession is in decadence, theirs is not for that reason more elevated. They do not know what knights and chivalry mean; otherwise they would kiss the earth before the clergy, they would apply to their 274 * SOCIAL FRANCE impertinent language the restraint which is proper for their age. The knighthood of to-day! Why, it consists of disorderly living! In these military circles, who is it that is reputed the strongest and the most worthy of esteem? It is he who says the most abominable things, who swears the most violently, who treats the ministers of God the worst, and who respects the church the least. . . . Since your nephews have adopted the profession of their companions in arms, they have also acquired their detestable habits. . . . What has be- come of military art, so well taught by Vegece and so many others'? It no longer exists: it is the art of giving oneself up to all sorts of excesses and of leading a sottish life. Formerly the soldiers swore to defend the state, to stand firm in the field of battle, and to sacrifice their lives for the public interest; to-day our knights receive their swords from the hand of the priest, and thus declare that they are the sons of the church, that their arms serve to defend the priesthood, to protect the poor, to pursue malefactors, and to save their country. But in reality they do just the opposite: they have hardly donned the baldric before they rise against the anointed of the Lord, and throw themselves on the patrimony of the Crucified, They despoil and ransom the subjects of the church; they crush the miserable with unequaled cruelty; they seek the satisfaction of their illicit appetites and their extraordinary desires in the pain of others. Saint Luke tells us that the soldiers came to Saint John the Baptist and asked him this question : ' Master, and we, what shall we do ? The saint replied : * Respect the goods of others, do not harm your neighbors, and be content with your pay.' Our soldiers, who ought to employ their strength against the enemies of the cross and of Christ, use it to vie with each other in debauchery and drunkenness; they waste their time in sloth; they starve in gross intemperance; by their degenerate and impure lives they dis- honor their name and their profession." We cannot quote all of this letter because, according to the custom of the time, Peter of Blois in every line drifts into quotations from the Bible and profane literature. With a great backing of texts, he recalls what the Roman soldier was — his sobriety, his endurance, his love of work ; and the comparison with the knight of his period was not to the advantage of the latter. The satire grows ever more bitter and more stinging: " To-day our warriors are reared in luxury. See them leave for the campaign; are their packs filled with iron, with lances and swords f No! but with leathern bottles of wine, with cheeses and spits for roasting. One would suppose that they were going to picnic, and not to fight. They carry splendid plated shields, which THE NOBLE AT WAR 275 they greatly hope to bring back unused. On their armor and on their saddles are pictured scenes of battle; these are sufficient for them: they have no desire to see more." To our archdeacon the knights were not even brave; they only had courage against defenseless men, and especially against clerics. That was especially why Peter of Blois was incensed at them. " Oh, they are ever ready to take our tithes away from us, to despise the church and the clergy, to mock at excommunication, to defy God, to persecute priests, to despoil the church of what the liberality of their fathers has given her! They forget that God said to his priests : ' He that despiseth you despiseth Me, and he who toucheth you toueheth the apple of Mine eye.' " This is the real feeling of churchmen toward feudalism. They did not spare the barons in their sermons. From the pulpit they told them some very plain truths. In a sermon addressed to the nobles, Jacques of Vitry strongly reproached them for their conduct toward clerics. First he condemned the indifference of the nobles to religious services: "Formerly, they eagerly came and devoutly heard the word of God. To-day, there are few of them who deign to come to listen to the preacher, who care to sit at the feet of the spiritual doctors with the poor and the humble. They only have one idea, that is to hurry the cure and to urge him to finish his mass. When it is finished, they hasten to the material table, where they eat and drink. There they stay a long time without wearying. Oh! indeed, they do not sleep there, though they sleep or dream in the church at the spiritual table, which bores them." Jacques of Vitry had a theory about the social classes and their respective functions. To him, the world was a vast body, all of whose members were subordinated to a common end. The clerics and the prelates were the eyes of this body, for it was they who taught men the way of safety, who pointed it out, and who served as guides. The barons and the knights were its hands and arms: God ordered them to defend the goods of the church, to protect the weak, to pre- vent the poor from being oppressed and despoiled; they should promote peace and justice and oppose violence. That 276 SOCIAL FRANCE is what they were for; and Providence gave them revenues so that they would not surrender their subjects to exaction and rapine. Finally, the common people (minores), the or- dinary laymen, were the base of the social body, for they formed the lower parts of it; their function was to sustain and keep the eyes and the hands in good condition by their work. But the order of the knights did not at all fulfil its earthly function. These hands of the social body were, like the hands of a raving maniac, busy in plucking out the eyes and crushing the feet. Instead of defending the poor, the nobles despoiled and oppressed them; instead of protecting the church, they persecuted and attacked it. Exasperated by the daily outrages of the nobles, the clerics were provoked to say audacious and even absurd things. In a manuscript of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Haureau,^ in 1886, found a treatise on canonical jurisprudence written by a cleric of the time of Philip Augustus. He thinks this cleric was an English canon, Robert of Courcon, who later became a cardinal and legate of Innocent III. Whoever he was, the author of this unpublished treatise was a very radical spirit, who condemned many abuses, notably the church's policy of receiving gifts from all hands without inquiring how the fortune given by the donors was acquired; he even opposed the acceptance of gifts from repentant sinners. He, too, had a social theory, or rather a socialistic theory, quite surprising for the middle ages. He wanted to rid society of all who did not work; not only of , all the idle nobles who lived on their incomes or by brigandage, but even of all the citizens who were capitalists: that is, who practised usury, which in the middle ages meant financial or banking operations. There follows a literal translation of the passage in which he ad- vances this curious theory. " The evil from which we are suffering cannot disappear unless the following measures are taken : there should be convoked a general assembly of all bishops and all sovereigns under the presi- dency of the pope; and then all the prelates and all the princes should ordain, under pain of excommunication and civil condenma- ^ Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Biil. nat., XXXI, part 2, p. 261. THE NOBLE AT WAE 277 tion, that each person be forced to work either spiritually or manu- ally, so that no one may eat bread not gained by his labor, according to the words of the apostle: 'If any shall not work, neither shall he eat.' As a result, there would be no more idlers among us. Thus usurers and brigands would disappear." Who would then remain in this Christian world? Only priests and workingmen, living on the wage of their spiritual or manual labors. " No one," says Haureau, " in any place or in any book has ever written or uttered anything more extreme or more absurd." This is a waste of indignation. We have in the passage the bizarre revery of an ecclesiastic, of a man who desired more justice in the world, who disliked the bankers because the church at that time condemned bank- ing and its profits, and who also detested lazy and malicious feudalism : that is, the nobles whom he characterized as brig- ands, raptores. This word well summarizes the attitude of the church, the principal victim of these excesses. It would be interesting to learn what feudalism, in its turn, thought and said of the clergy. But this is much more diffi- cult. The nobles hardly ever wrote, and for a good reason. Not the feudal, but the ecclesiastical records, the chronicles of monks, have come down to us from that time. Therefore, we cannot ascertain at first hand anything but the opinion of clerics; which we find expressed in their correspondence, their sermons, and their literary works. The opinion of the feudal classes must be discovered indirectly. In the first place, it may perhaps be deduced from their conduct towards the clergy. We have said, and we will show, that the barons spent their lives in pillaging ecclesias- tical domains and waging ruthless wars against abbeys, chap- ters, and bishoprics, in which the person of the cleric was not much more respected than his property. They willingly confiscated religious treasures and did not hesitate to burn churches and cloisters, though they were ready to do penance afterwards. It is hard to believe that such men had any real consideration or sympathy for priests and monks. To be sure, religious sentiment was not wholly lacking among the soldiers; it manifested itself in the habits of the class, 278 SOCIAL FRANCE in superstition concerning relics, in the founding of abbeys, in pilgrimages to sanctuaries, and iu the hatred of heretics. But, among the nobles, religious sentiment appeared especially at the time of sickness or at the approach of death : theirs was a religion of remorse and fear, an intermittent religion, quite compatible with their lack of respect for holy things and sacred persons in ordiuary times. In the absence of records left by the nobles themselves, it is only in the baUads that their real opinions can be found. "Written as they were for the nobility, these epics pictured the life and expressed the feeling of the noble. The author of an epic saw all things with the eyes of the soldier, who profoundly despised everything that was not military, who comprehended and prized nothing but martial pursuits and the turbulent life of camps or castles. In a word, it is the feudal spirit more or less exaggerated that dominates and animates the ballads — a spirit of brutality and of violence, hostile to the peasant, insolent and rebellious to the king, contemptuous of the clergy. For this incontestable fact must be noted that, in works like Garin le Lorrain or Girart de Boussillon, the church — that great power of the middle ages — played an inferior and incidental role. Clerics and monks were useful only as chap- lains or secretaries to the barons, whose letters they read and wrote, or as reserves — to pick up the dead on the battlefield, to bandage the wounded, and to say masses for those who paid. The knights employed clerics, especially monks, but held them in low esteem. Odilon, one of the heroes of the lay Girart, haranguing his warriors, told them that, " if he found a coward among them, he would make him a monk in a monastery." In the lay Hervis de Metz, a knight cries out : ' ' All these fat monks, all these canons, all these priests, and all these abbots ought to be soldiers. Oh, if the king would only give them to me ! " It was not rare for the poet to represent the monk performing a disagreeable duty. In Garin le Lorrain and in Girart, the monk frequently acted as messenger, a trying and sometimes dangerous task. One day, Girart of Roussillon, attempting to appease the wrath of King Charles Martel, his enemy, sent the prior of Saint-Sauveur as his ambassador. " Monk," said Girart THE NOBLE AT WAR . 279 to his messenger, " go find King Charles Martel, and humbly ask him to give me his confidence and friendship." The monk hastened to deliver the message. " Never until that moment was he so terrified." He came into the pres- ence of the king, who asked him his name. " ' Sire, I am Friar Bourmon. Girart, your vassal, sent me.' — 'How dared you come hither?' — 'Sire, Girart sent me from afar. He will eome to pay you full homage, according to the decision of your men and your barons, provided you will grant him a hearing.' 'His homage! What do I care about that?' said Charles. 'I will not leave him a handful of earth, and as for you. Monk, who brought this message, I wonder what shameful treatment I can inflict on you.' The monk, when he heard these words, would fain have been far away. ' It was not by his strength,' continued the king, ' that Girart defeated me, for had I not been surprised, he would have been captured or killed; no place of refuge, however strong, whether town, citadel, or castle, would have saved him any more than a simple shepherd's hut. But it is you, Sir Monk, who shall pay for this. I will . . .'" We do not know how to put the threat Charles Martel uttered. The poet adds, as a sort of refrain, " and the monk, when he heard these words, would fain have been far away. ' ' When he saw that Charles was wroth and when he heard the threats, he feared for his safety. Hardly would he have continued his mission had Charles been sorry for his words; therefore, as a sagacious man, he asked leave, in God's name, to retire: " I want," he said, "to go back to my master." " Monk," said the king, " I swear, by Jesus above, that, if I had Girart of Roussillon, I would hang him like a thief from the eaves of my house." And the messenger, hearing these words, did not say him nay, but would fain have been far away. ' ' Monk, how dared you come hither ? You would have done better to remain in your monastery saying mass, or in your cloister reading your book, praying for the dead or serving God, than to have brought me this message from Girart. If it were not for the fear of God and eternal death, I would have a mind to ... " A new threat followed. The monk, hearing speech of this sort, knew not what to say, but took his servant by the hand and departed ; and, having mounted his animal, he set out without once looking back. 280 SOCIAL FRANCE He did not stop until he had reached Girart. The count asked him what he had accomplished. * ' Do not detain me ! " cried the monk. " I am overwrought. I am going at once to the monastery to ring the bell; then I shall say a Te Deum and a prayer to Saint Thomas for his mercy in saving me from the hands of Charles Martel. You can arrange mat- ters as you please with him ; but you shall never again have me as your messenger." In Oarin, one of the barons sent two monks to the court of the king: he had bribed them to swear falsely, and one of these unfortunate clerics was half-killed by a knight of the opposite party. In this instance the monk was not only ridiculous: he was odious. The bards treated the archbishops and the bishops with more consideration, because they were great lords and formed a part of the feudal hierarchy. However, in the lay Hervis de Metz, the episcopacy is represented as egotistical, grasping, miserly, and unwilling to contribute to the expense of the defense of the kingdom. When the king asked the archbishop of Reims, the highest ecclesiastical personage in France, to contribute money for the war against the Saracens, the prel- ate declared that he would not give a denier. Then one of the barons cried out : ' ' We want other words than these. In Gaul, there are twenty thousand knights whose fireplaces and mills are held by the clerics. Let them remember that, or, by the Lord God, things shall take a different turn." But the archbishop persisted in his refusal. " We are clerics," he said; " our duty is to serve God. We will pray to Him to give you victory and guard you from death. And, as for you, knights, God commanded you to aid the clerics and to aid Holy Church. Why so many words ? I swear by the great Saint Denis that you shall not have an Angevin sou. ' ' As to the head of the church, the pope, it was indeed not to be expected that an epic written by the contemporaries of Philip Augustus would leave out a personage who at that period dominated the entire world and commanded kings as well as the humblest of the faithful. Therefore, the pope has his place in the lays, but an unimportant one, very dif- ferent from the position he really held in history. He did THE NOBLE AT WAR 281 not even possess Rome ; he was hardly a sovereign, but rather a person of secondary importance, who appeared in the suite of the emperor or of the king of France, whose chief chap- lain he would seem to have been. Note these first verses of Girart: *' It was Pentecost, in the gay springtime. Charles was holding his court at Reims. Many open-hearted persons were present. The pope was there and preached. ' ' Later the pope, as an ordinary bishop, went as one of the embassy that Charles Martel sent to Constantinople. To be sure, the poet ascribed to him a moral authority over bishops and barons; he made him the chief counselor of the king of France : " He was a churchman who knew much, and spoke wisely and to the point." In Garin, the pope stood for peace and tried, with small success to be sure, to calm feudal passions by reminding the barons that their first duty was to make peace among themselves and to march against the enemies of their faith. This all contains something of historical fact ; but, on the whole, it is certain that the literature of chivalry lessens and at pleasure effaces the religious sovereign who dominated the middle ages. On the whole, the feudal class despised the priest, as peace- ful and lazy; it relegated him to the church, there to preach virtues contrary to those he practised. Besides, the noble envied the wealth of the church and considered himself robbed of all that was given to the church. The author of Hervis de Metz very naively and bluntly says as much at the beginning of his poem: " To-day when a man falls ill, and lies down to die, he does not think of his sons, or of his nephews, or of his cousins; he summons the Black Monks of Saint Benedict, and gives them all his lands, his revenues, his ovens, and his mills. The men of this age are impoverished, and the clerics are daily becoming richer." But the nobles and the clerics did not stop with words. Wars between them were so frequent and so common that they hold a place of high importance in historical documents. If they occupied the attention of the chroniclers to such an 282 SOCIAL FRANCE extent, it is because they were so conspicuous a manifestation of the turbulence of medieval life, so evident a form of social disorder and of class antipathy. There was war between the lay and the ecclesiastical seigniors in all provinces and in nearly all cantons. For there was not a city in France where the count did not find himself at variance with the bishop or the chapter. The step from disagreement to violence was not a long one in the middle ages; hence, every lord's donjon implied danger to the neighboring monastery. From the top to the bottom of the feudal system the same disposition appears: the men of the castle tried to deprive the men of the church of their lands, their revenues, their rights, and their serfs. At any rate, they made their living by pillaging ecclesiastical do- mains and appropriating treasures accumulated in the sanc- tuaries through the devotion of the faithful. The hungry and needy noble from the inferior classes of feudalism found that the cleric and the monk were tempt- ingly rich, and he attacked and despoiled them. The barons from the upper ranks complained that their political and judicial sovereignty was being appropriated by the tribunals of the church and by the temporal power of the clerics ; and, accordingly, they attacked the ecclesiastical powers in order to prevent their expansion. One should not, however, look at these conflicts from so narrow or so mean a point of view as to exclude their larger significance. Undeniably, the sources show that the seigniors, both great and small, engaged very freely in pillaging the lands of the church ; but in the conflict between the baron and the bishop, as in the struggles between the citizen and the cleric, the first manifestation of a lay spirit, the first revolt of the civil power against reli- gious authority is to be found. In the lower levels of society we have the exploitation by the feudal lord, who forces the granary and the cellar of the monks, puts their serfs to ransom, steals their cattle, and returns to his castle when his raid is complete. In the upper levels, we have the great lords of France gathering about Philip Augustus, as they did in the year 1205, when they protested as a body against the exag- gerated development of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and op- posed the political and financial encroachment of the papal THE NOBLE AT WAB 283 power. In each case it is war on the church; to the modem world, the second is of greater interest. The church knew how to defend herself against all kinds of attacks. One need not believe, because of the complaints of preachers like Jacques of Vitry, that the church was al- ways an unresisting and resigned victim. She defended her- self from feudal violence by her temporal power, by appeal- ing to the king or the pope for aid, or by excommunication. At the beginning of the thirteenth century this weapon of excommunication was not as dulled as some have been wont to say. To be sure, the seigniors of that time took excommu- nication and interdict more lightly than ever before; they had become accustomed to them and could resist for a period before yielding. But we know from many narratives that in the end they were often compelled to make honorable repara- tion. In this epoch, when faith was still intense, a baron could at a pinch endure a personal excommunication; it was more difficult for him to force his subjects to submit to an interdict. If he became accustomed to these censures, the church was in a measure responsible, for she had multiplied them beyond all bounds. Not only did churchmen in their internal quar- rels excommunicate each other without adequate reason, but, on the pretext of defending themselves against laymen, they most grievously abused this weapon. Taking the seigniors of the time of Philip Augustus for any given date or any one year, one would find surprisingly few of them who were not, or had not been, censured with interdict or excommuni- cation. To demonstrate this, it is sufficient to run through the chronicles, the correspondence — especially that of the pope, — and the cartularies of bishoprics and abbeys: the barons who are mentioned are excommunicated or their lands are inter- dicted. The list of them would be interminable: it would contain very nearly all the seigniors of France, not excepting the king, the dukes, or the sovereign counts. This proves, in the first place, that the misdeeds and aggressions of feudalism were innumerable ; it also proves that the church punished too readily and too lightly. The popes themselves were obliged to recognize this and to urge ecclesiastics to exercise^ greater moderation. 284 SOCIAL FRANCE We will illustrate this by a single example. There is no doubt that the counts of Champagne, at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, were among the great barons who maintained the best order in their seigniory and showed the greatest respect for the church, its officers, and its goods. Blanche, countess of Navarre, and her son, Thibaud IV, who was for a long time held in tute- lage, were neither persecutors nor pillagers. But we know of at least seven sentences of excommunication or interdict laid on them by the bishops of Champagne. If the seigniorial officers so much as seized the goods of a subject of an abbey or of a chapter, a censure was sure to fall on the countess. Things went so far that Innocent III had to ask several bish- ops of Champagne to be more restrained in pronouncing anathemas against the sovereigns of the fief and their sub- jects, and in laying interdicts on their cities and towns. Once Honorius III even cancelled a sentence of excommunication laid on Countess Blanche by the abbot of Saint-Denis. It is clear that there were abuses, but these abuses are well explained by the irritation and the exasperation of the clerics at the incessant attacks of the nobility. When a count and a bishop — that is, two great barons — were involved, the contestants could be considered equals. But what could one do, and what other weapon besides excommunication could one employ, when the aggressor, in a coat of mail, surrounded by his band, and inaccessible in his tower, attacked an isolated monastery? And this was what occurred every day. It was the monk who was the ordinary victim of the small as well as of the great feudal captains. War on the monk was one of the principal occupations of feudal lords. To obtain an inkling of the persistence with which a family of castellans, even of the lesser nobility, attacked a neighbor- ing monastery, one has only to open a cartulary, such as that of the abbey of Saint- Avit, near Orleans. In it one finds that the seigniorial house of Boelli, or Boyau (the name is not aristocratic), is at variance for several generations with the monks of the abbey. In 1183, the monks complained that Joscelin Boyau imposed arbitrary taxes on their village of Seris and overwhelmed it with outrages. They appealed to the bishop of Orleans. The latter could not do much, and he THE NOBLE AT WAE 285 sent them to the lord of the region, Thibaud V, count of Blois, who took the people of Seris under his protection — not, alas! for nothing, but in consideration of an annual rental of two setiers of hay for each house, payable at Blois. In the middle ages the miserable peasants had no choice: to escape destruction at the hands of the petty lords, they were compelled to suffer encroachment at the hands of the great. And even then the guarantee was very often illusory. One is led to believe that Thibaud 's promise of protection did not have much effect, for, in 1198, the tenants of Seris once more complained that Foucher and Philip Boyau tried to compel them to turn and haul the hay on the seigniorial meadows. In 1217, the conflict became more bitter. Hamelin, the head of the Boyau family, was then a canon of Mans; despite that, he remained a proprietor and a seignior, and was as much as ever an enemy of the monks. He claimed that the men of Seris were bound to turn the hay on his fields, carry it to his granary of Beaugency, convey the trellis for his vines to the same place, bring him fuel at Christmas, send him annually a goose or three chickens, and pay the taille twice a year (an arbitrary procedure already enforced by his an- cestor Joseelin), Finally, he claimed the right of high and low justice over the village. Unable to defend his men, the abbot of Saint- Avit again appealed to the bishop of Orleans, who made an agreement with Hamelin Boyau to end hostili- ties. Hamelin agreed to abandon all his claims, in considera^- tion of the sum of twenty livres in cash. But all the members of this terrible family had not subscribed to the agreement. There was one, named Renaud, who had laid hands on certain properties of the men of Saint- Avit and of the abbey itself, and who refused to surrender them. In 1219, he was ex- communicated. After five years it became necessary to ag- gravate the sentence ; and we still have a letter to this effect, sent by the bishop of Orleans to the cures of all the parishes of his diocese. '' Every Sunday and feast day," he wrote, '' after having rung the bells and lighted the candles, you shall denounce the aforementioned Renaud as excom- municate and you shall consider as interdicted all those who have anything to do with him." Of this long strife between the monks of Saint- Avit and the Boyau family we have only 286 SOCIAL FRANCE given the incidents falling within the reign of Philip Augus- tus; but it had begun before, and it did not end until long after. In the middle ages, trials, conflicts, and wars lasted for centuries, and were transmitted, like an inheritance, from generation to generation; for, in spite of treaties and truces, every one reasserted his claims and no one renounced what he considered a right. What was happening in this little comer of Beauce in Orleans was taking place wherever a seignior and an abbot were rivals, and often the misdeeds were more serious. In 1187, Raoul, seignior of Chateauroux, assembled a strong army, burned the villages of the abbey of Deols, mas- sacred the inhabitants, and expelled the monks of Deols from several of their priories. Ten years later, Andrew of Chauvigny, his successor, was excommunicated for outrages against the same abbey. In Bourbonnais, Gui of Dampierre, the new lord of Bourbon, persecuted the priory of Saint- Pourgain, seized its fiefs and domains, ravaged its leased farms, and even went so far as to do violence to the persons of the prior and the monks. After him, Archambaud, his son, continued to treat the monks as enemies. The abbot of Tournus, superior of Saint-Pourgain, found it necessary to ask Philip Augustus to intervene. In the region of Reims and of Laon the abbeys, such as those of Saint-Martin of Laon and of Signy, were literally devoured by a host of barons — ^the seigniors of Coucy, Pierrepont, Rozoy, Rumigny, Chateau-Porcien, and Rethel. In a document of 1203, Roger of Rozoy confesses his mistakes and admits that he had often stolen the grain and the cattle of the monks. Sometimes the monks resisted, and one day there was a bloody battle in the woods between the men of the count of Chateau- Porcien and the lay brothers of the abbey of Signy. In Champagne, the seigniors of Joinville were at open war with the abbeys of Montier-en-Der and of Saint-Urbain ; in Provence, the seigniors of Castellane, with the monks of Saint- Victor of Marseilles. It was the same in Vendome, where the abbots of Trinite had, since the foundation of their abbey in the middle of the eleventh century, suffered the daily persecutions of the counts of Vendome. Jean I, count of Vendome, had forced the monks of Trinite to leave the THE NOBLE AT WAR 287 abbey and to take refuge in one of their priories for fourteen months. He was excommunicated. Three years later, one fine day in 1180 he was seen entering the monastery bare- footed, to beg pardon of the abbot. This was an exact repe- tion of a scene which had been enacted a little less than a hundred years before, when the grandfather of this very Jean, Geoffroi-Jourdain, who also had forced an abbot of Vendome into exile, made his peace with the whole chapter. And Bouchard, the son and associate of Jean I, count of Vendome, rivaled his father in violence, and burdened the subjects of the abbey with exactions and unlawful tithes to such a degree that Henry II, king of England, believed it necessary to compel him to release his victims. Covetous- ness of monastic goods was a strong passion among the feudal lords, an irrepressible tendency transmitted with the blood. It is seldom that we possess the details of these conflicts or wars between the donjon and the abbey. However, one monk, Hugh of Poitiers, was thoughtful enough to relate the incidents of the interminable struggle which the celebrated abbey of Vezelay carried on against the counts of Nevers, its hereditary and indefatigable persecutors: a typical strug- gle, which lasted through the whole of the twelfth century, and caused the popes, the French bishops, and the kings of France to interfere almost every year, without ever com- pletely succeeding in disarming the seignior and protecting the abbot. Unfortunately, this exceedingly instructive and often dramatic history of Hugh of Poitiers ends long before the death of Louis VII. For the period of Philip Augustus we have only the letters of Innocent III, which are, to be sure, detailed enough. One of them describes the relations between Herve of Donzy, count of Nevers, and Gautier, abbot of Vezelay, in 1211 and 1212; and from it we can obtain a good idea of the persistence of feudal enmities and the vexations of all kinds to which clerics were exposed. The underlying cause of this long conflict was that the abbot of Vezelay claimed to be a vassal of the pope, to belong solely to the domain of Saint Peter, and to owe no service, pecuniary or other, to the count of Nevers. The counts, on the other hand, claimed that they were the legal guardians 288 SOCIAL FRANCE and the natural patrons of the abbey, and that, therefore, the monks owed them many services, especially that of enter- taining them and their knights when they appeared at the abbey — in other words, what the people of the middle ages called " food and lodging." As soon as Gautier was elected abbot in 1207, he had to endure the same exactions and in- dignities as his predecessors at the hand of Count Herve of Donzy. First, Herve claimed that every newly installed abbot of Vezelay was in duty bound to pay him an accession fee; Gautier refused to recognize this claim but, to appease the enemy, like one appeases a dog by tossing him a bone, he gave the count a gift of five hundred livres. This did not satisfy the count, who found other means of extortion. He forced the abbot to pay nine hundred livres to a citizen of Bourges, although the monastery was in no wise indebted to this individual, under pretext that he, the count, was guar- antor of the debt. A Jew, who had been converted and bap- tised, had given one hundred livres to the abbey; but later he returned to Judaism, as the pope said, " like a dog to his vomiting." Herve of Donzy forced the abbot to turn the hundred livres of this renegade Jew into the count 's treasury. He often sent his officers to seize the beasts of burden, the carts, or the subjects of the abbey, and used them to trans- port the supplies of his castles. Then, instead of returning them without delay, he kept them for three or four weeks. He let his agents cut down the forests of the abbot as they pleased; he received and protected malefactors who pilfered the goods of the monks; he summoned the abbot and the monks before his tribunal, although, according to their privi- leges, they were not liable to judgment before any lay court. Several times he blockaded the roads and paths which led to thei abbey, so that the monks could not obtain the water and the wood which they needed. At harvest time, he pre- vented the servants of the abbey from gathering their grapes and selling their crops; and he laid violent hands on the carts which carried food, wine, and other necessities to the abbey. The abbot finally complained to Philip Augustus, who commanded Herve to cease these persecutions. The baron was thereafter apparently quiet ; but in fact hostilities THE NOBLE AT WAR 289 continued: for, if the count himself did not attack them, he left the field free for all their other enemies. Evidence of this is found in the fact that the land of the count was open to the coming and going of a band of rob- bers, who were one day surprised in one of his villas with booty taken from the monks. For some little time these male- factors established a sort of blockade around Vezelay, so effective that the monks and the servants of the monastery could not go out without peril. A vassal of Count Herve, named Joscelin, overwhelmed the monks with outrages, and seized their horses and everything else that he found worth taking; he even went so far as to invade a priory of the abbey and appropriate its appurtenances. The abbot com- plained to the count; the latter, who with one word could have stopped the misdeeds of Joscelin and the other ag- gressors, did not see fit to restrain them. On the contrary, he himself seized the priory of Dornecy, took the revenues for six months, and prevented the monks from collecting the tithes. The monks of the priory, having no means of subsist- ence, would have abandoned the monastery in a body had not the count, yielding to better councils, restored their property. On the domain of Ascon, another property of the abbey, John, son of the provost, in spite of the opposition of the monks, succeeded in acquiring the provostship after his father, thus making the office hereditary. Instead of opposing this in- justice, the count, in defiance of the prerogatives of the church, sanctioned it and commanded the abbot to appear before lay judges with the new provost. These are the deeds of the count of Nevers which provoked the abbot of Vezelay to clamor for justice and reparation. The count lent a deaf ear. One day, when the demands especially annoyed him, he threatened to throw the prior of the monastery and his colleagues into a fish-pond. It was finally necessary for half of the monks of the abbey to go to Nevers for a definitive interview with the count. They pros- trated themselves before him and humbly proffered their request. He refused to grant it. Then they begged his coun- cilors to urge him to come to some permanent understanding. After long negotiations, these replied that the abbey could obtain the good-will of the count only on the condition that 290 SOCIAL FRANCE the monks and the citizens of Vezelay pay him the sum of a thousand Provins livres (more than one hundred and fifty thousand francs). " It will ruin our community! " cried the monks. The citizens of Vezelay, overcome at hav- ing to pay so great a sum, declared to the abbot that, if he did not immediately go to Rome to beg the protection of the pope, they would all leave Vezelay and take refuge in the towns of the king of France. An urgent appeal was made to the bishops, to the archbishops, to the great barons of the realm, to the duke of Burgundy, and to Philip Augustus him- self. All these persons, by prayer or by menace, insisted that the count of Nevers stop persecuting the abbey, make repara- tion for the damage inflicted upon it, and take the monks and citizens under his protection as he ought. Herve of Donzy listened to none of this. No longer able to enduro it, the abbot decided to go to Rome to appeal to Innocent III. As soon as he was gone, the outrages multiplied. It was about vintage-time of 1211. The citizens and the monks of Vezelay thought that they could finish gathering their grapes in plenty of time. Sud- denly the soldiers of the count rushed in, chased the pickers from the vineyards, overturned the grapes already picked, wounded the servants of the abbey, and took or killed their horses. The monastery lost five hundred livres; the citizens more than three thousand marks; besides which, the officers of Herve wrecked the mill of the provost of the abbey and carried away the millstone and the ironwork. Philip Augustus, notified anew, seriously threatened the count if he went on in this fashion. The count for some time thereafter heeded his warning. In passing, we should note that the king of France had a price for his intervention : all the profit the monks made from their wine went to the royal treasury. Finally, Innocent III, too, became active. In a letter of November 13, 1211, he commanded the bishop of Paris and Robert of Courcon, his legate, to excommunicate the count of Nevers and, if need be, lay his dominions under an interdict, if the king of France could not, within two months, compel the count to sign a treaty of peace with the abbey. All these details sufficiently show the persistence of the THE NOBLE AT WAR 291 seigniors, their hatred for their victims, and the difficulty of inducing them to surrender their prize. Nobody could really do anything. The king of France himself only ob- tained an ephemeral satisfaction, obedience for a few days. The pope entered the lists with his thunders; would he have any better fortune? An excommunication coming from the head of the church had a particular gravity ; however, it did not have any important effect; for Herve of Donzy allowed himself to be excommunicated, and he remained excommuni- cated to the end of the year 1213. And then it was not the excommunication which obliged him to submit and to make peace with his enemy, the monastery. To subdue this recalci- trant, recourse to another weapon was necessary. The papacy had at its command a variety of resources. Herve of Donzy, seignior of Gien, had in 1190 become count of Nevers by his marriage to Mathilda, heiress of the ancient counts. This marriage had been arranged by Philip Augustus, who took the castle and city of Gien as his com- mission (the word is vulgar, but is very appropriate in this instance). Like all barons, Herve had rivals and enemies. They discovered that the heiress whom he had married was his relative in the fourth degree, and at that time the church did not sanction such marriages, unless she had some particu- lar reason for tolerating them. In 1205, in consequence of a formal protest by the duke of Burgundy, Innocent III or- dered an inquiry into the relationship of Herve and Mathilda : a pure formality, no doubt, which was without result, for, until 1212, no steps were taken toward the dissolution of the marriage. But in June, 1212, after the crisis of Vezelay and the excommunication of the count of Nevers, Innocent III, at just the right time, recollected that he had begun the inquiry and ordered it to be resumed. That touched the count in a sensitive spot, for, if the marriage was dissolved, the heiress would claim her inheritance, the county of Nevers, and Herve of Donzy would fall back into the rank of petty seigniors. What the pope had foreseen happened: as soon as the count's agent in Rome learned that the order of in- quiry had been despatched to France, he presented himself before Innocent, " troubled by a great grief," says the letter of the pope, " and humbly prayed us, giving us all possible 292 SOCIAL FRANCE assurances, that the business of the inquiry be counter- manded; and promised, on the part of the count, that the abbey of Vezelay should suffer no more persecution." Inno- cent III commanded his agent to suspend the inquiry as soon as the count of Nevers made peace and gave reasonable satis- faction to the monks and to the church. The terms of peace were dictated by the pope himself on April 12, 1213. He determined that the count of Nevers might appear in the monastery of Vezelay only twice a year, at Easter and at the feast of Mary Magdalene, and that the monks should at those times give him a hundred livres, his procuration. The abbot, on his part, was required to re- nounce all claims for damages, except for the tithes of Dornecy; for these the count was expected to give compensa- tion. The sanction of the king of France was also necessary to this arrangement. On these conditions only was the count of Nevers to be absolved from excommunication. Herve of Donzy submitted. But there still remained the question which he had most at heart — the validity of his marriage. Innocent III kept this sword of Damocles sus- pended over Herve 's head for some time. The count wrote the pope an urgent letter, in which he protested that his marriage had lasted for thirteen years {in conspectu ecclesiae) ; that Mathilda had borne him a daughter; and that, finally, the pope ought to do him a favor, because he had taken a vow to go on a crusade. On December 20, 1213, he secured the papal dispensation which declared his marriage forever un- assailable. All this was necessary to compel a feudal lord to respect an abbey. Yet one cannot positively assert that, once the peace was signed and the dispensation obtained, the count of Nevers did not again resume his former attitude to- ward the monks of Vezelay. The temptation was too great and the prey too easy. On the whole, the feudal barons did not have much trouble in terrorizing and plundering monasteries located in the country or surrounded only by an ordinary market-town. It would appear more difficult to attack clerics in the cities, but in these the barons had the cooperation of the citizens, who were also hostile to monks and canons. The cathedral chapters, those rich and powerful communities of clerics which lived THE NOBLE AT WAR 293 in closed and fortified cloisters as well as the abbeys, excited the cupidity of the laymen. There was, then, a permanent and often a lively conflict in cities, because the populace took part in it. In Chartres, for instance, the chapter of Notre-Dame and the count of Chartres were in a perpetual conflict throughout the middle ages. The officers of the seignior, backed by the citizens, incessantly harassed the canons, and grave incidents often occurred. In 1194, the countess of Chartres had one of the servants of the chapter seized and imprisoned, and all his goods confiscated. In 1207, her agents wanted to take a woman and two men from the chapter, and the excesses which were committed in this connection were so extreme that the quarrel was carried to the king's court. In 1210, a chorister of Notre-Dame was arrested and thrown into prison by the officers of the count; in retaliation, the chapter laid an interdict on the city. A few months later a formidable riot broke out; the cathedral was threatened, and the house of the dean was much damaged with stones and axes. Philip Augustus was compelled to reestablish order and to punish the guilty, among whom were seigniorial officers. In most of the cities with chapters there were similar occurrences: lawsuits and battles between barons and clerics, violations of cloisters, plunder and destruction of canon's houses; for- tunate, indeed, were those canons who suffered no bodily injury ! In 1217, the chapter of Laon, victim of the persecutions and the depredations of the count of Rethel, denounced him at Rome. The pope excommunicated him. The count braved the anathema for two years; finally, Honorius III decided to take more vigorous measures against him: he ordered an interdict laid on all his lands, and on all parts through which he should travel, and absolved his vassals from the oath of fealty as long as he remained under sentence of interdict. " And, if the culprit still persists in his error," wrote the ^ope, " let him take care that he is not condemned as a heretic." The same chapter had, the year before, been the victim of a more serious attack — one that scandalized the whole of France. Enguerran of Coucy seized Adam of Cour- landon, dean of the church of Laon, and kept him in prison 294 SOCIAL FEANCE for more than a year. Exeommunieation, interdict, prayers, threats, the intervention of the archbishop of Reims and the king of France — all were tried to obtain the deliverance of the captive. It was not until 1218 that this Enguerran of Couey decided to seek absolution and to give satisfaction to the chapter. Attacks on the canons then complete the story. We do not mention aggressions against cures, because the sources of our epoch say nothing about them. But, perhaps, attacks on cures were less frequent, for the simple reason that the baron, being patron or even proprietor of the whole or a part of the parish church, could select a parson that suited him and could lay hands on the tithes without much hin- drance. How could a plain cure have prevented this, even if he had not been nominated by the seignior? In any case, the cure was not in a position to resist, and the church con- demned the exploitation of the inferior clergy only under compulsion. Monasteries, and chapters sometimes, succeeded in defending themselves ; they were assisted by bishops, kings, and popes. We have already given examples of the inter- vention of the supreme head of the church, and must recog- nize the full importance of the role which Rome assumed in defending monks and canons against the excesses and depre- dations of feudalism. But the pope could not act every- where at once or under all circumstances: he was far away, and usually he had only a moral authority to oppose to the assailants. The king of France also fulfilled his traditional duty of protector of churches; but he rarely did it gratui- tously, and his police operations were very intermittent. The barons whom he warned to surrender some monastery might have objected that he himself did not always set the best example. " One day," relates Rigord, the historian of Philip Augustus, " the king, passing by Saint-Denis on affairs of the realm, installed himself in the abbey as though he were entering his own room (sicut in propriam cameram suam). The abbot of Saint-Denis, William of Gap, was overcome with fright (nimio timore perculsus), for the king required of him a thousand marks in silver. The abbot, having assembled the brethren of the chapter, tendered his resignation. ' ' That is how the king of France protected the monks of the most THE NOBLE AT WAR 295 regal of his abbeys! In all stages of the feudal hierarchy, brigandage, violence, and extortion were employed in the systematic fleecing of monastic and capitular churches. For the few cases where seigniors were intimidated or repressed by royal soldiers and papal excommunications, how many murders, arsons, and robberies committed against the church remained unnoticed and unpunished? On this subject there is a significant document which tells much about the acts of the feudal barons. It is a record of the statutes of the synod of Toul held May 8, 1192, by Eudes of Vaudemont, bishop of Toul. Here are a few of these statutes: "It is forbidden under pain of anathema to celebrate religious services at any place, in which objects taken from churches or clerics are kept even for a single night. — The robbers and the re- ceivers are excommunicated. — These interdicts and anathemas are appMoable to princes and great barons who commit robberies. — The excommunication of the guilty shall be renewed every Sunday in the churches of the diocese. — Those who give them shelter are also excommunicate. — The anathema shall fall upon all men who abuse their rank and power by taking horses or wagons from monasteries. — If in spite of his excommunication a prince or baron has divine services performed the priest who officiates shall also be excom- municated and forever deprived of his prebend." It is impossible to make a better statement showing the extent to which feudalism lived on pillage; or the power of excommunication to hold it in cheek. The bishops had to shift for themselves. Everywhere they were at war with the feudal barons: the count of Auxerre fought against the bishop of Auxerre; the duke of Nor- mandy, against the archbishop of Rouen; the duke of Brit- tany, against the bishop of Nantes; the count of Auvergne, against the bishop of Clermont; the viscount of Beam, against the bishop of Oloron ; the count of Rodez against the bishop of Rodez; the count of Forez, against the archbishop of Lyons ; the count of Armagnac, against the archbishop of Auch; the count of Foix, against the bishop of Urgel; the count of Soissons, against the bishop of Soissons ; the viscount 296 SOCIAL FRANCE of Polignac, against the bishop of Puy; the nobility of Ver- dun, against the bishop of Verdun. All regions of France were victims of the same evil. This enumeration, which could easily be lengthened, shows that conflicts between the two powers were part of the regu- lar order of things. To be sure, they did not everywhere have the same causes and the same character: here they were simple acts of brigandage, there combats for sovereignty; here a listless and intermittent conflict, there a violent and merciless war. But everywhere the results were identical: depredation in the country, fights and brawls in the city, innumerable excommunications and interdicts on the part of the church, exasperation and vengeance on the part of the feudal lords, who did not halt even at assassination. Let us glance into Beam between 1212 and 1215, the time when Philip Augustus was engaged in the struggle against the great coalition which culminated at Bouvines. The viscount of Beam, Gaston VI, was at war with the bishop of Oloron, Bernard of Morlaas. He was accused of sympathiz- ing with the Albigenses. Bandits in his pay had entered the cathedral church of Sainte-Marie of Oloron and had committed all kinds of excesses — such as dashing the sacred utensils on the floor, amusing themselves by wearing the pontifical vestments, preaching, and even singing a mock mass. Gaston VI let this sacrilege go unpunished; he at- tacked the clergy; and was publicly considered a persecutor of the church. In 1213, the council of Vabres declared him excommunicated, and absolved his subjects from the oath of fealty. This excommunication , lasted two years. Finally, Gaston submitted and made an apology to the bishop. There follows the proof of his defeat, written by himself. " Know all ye, present and future, that I, Gaston, viscount of Beam, at the suggestion of Satan have been guilty of many mis- deeds against the church of Sainte-Marie of Oloron. I have caused much damage, both to this cathedral church and to the subjects of the bishop. For this reason and for many other excesses com- mitted by me, I have been smitten by several excommunications. I have persevered for a long time in my obstinate resistance. Finally, the grace of God inspiring me, I decided to obey, and I earnestly prayed Bernard of Morlaas, bishop of the said church, THE NOBLE AT WAE 297 to deliver me from the curse which bound me and to impose on me the penitence which I had merited. H^ has removed all the sen- tences of excommunication laid upon me. Although my crimes were without number and the objects taken by me from the church incalculable, still to indenmify the church for her losses, I have given her all the men and all the rights which I possessed in the town of Sainte-Marie of Oloron." Here the bishop easily triumphed over the feudal power, because he was favored by exceptional circumstances. The Albigenses and their partizans had just been defeated in the battle of Muret. The south was in the hands of Simon de Montfort and the catholic bishops. The southern seigniors, who, like Gaston of Beam, were at the same time the perse- cutors of the church and the supporters of heresy, had to yield to force and repent or have their lands confiscated by the leaders of the crusade. * In the north and in the middle part of France it was less dangerous to fight against the bishops. Let us glance into Auvergne, a savage country, where a pillaging feudalism had the habit not only of putting monasteries to ransom, but of fighting with the bishops of Clermont and of Puy. We shall later speak of the bloody drama which stained the bishopric of Puy. Clermont was the center of a long-standing war be- tween the bishops and the counts of Auvergne, which had endured from the beginning of the twelfth century. The bishop, relentlessly despoiled and maltreated by his rival, escaped from prison and even worse dangers by calling the king of Prance to his aid. Louis VI and later Louis VII invaded Auvergne, forced the count to submit, and reestab- lished the bishop in his see and in his domains; but the king had hardly turned his back, before the prelate and the baron were again at odds. The war was all the more bloody and furious because the bishop and the count often belonged to the same family. It happened that in this house of Auvergne the older brother inherited the county and the younger brother the bishopric. What feuds between broth- ers are, is well known. There was a similar case during the reign of Philip Augustus : Robert I, bishop of Clermont, and his brother, Gui II, count of Auvergne, were at open war for eighteen years, from 1197 to 1215, during which time 298 SOCIAL FRANCE the count was perpetually exeommuiiicated and the bishop continually imprisoned. It goes without saying that, if the count of Auvergne was a brigand, the bishop of Clermont was not exactly a sweet and angelic minister of peace. Intrenched in his strong castles of Lezoux and of Mau2:un, he was a robber chieftain. "Which of these brothers committed the first oif ense ? Accord- ing to the count of Auvergne, it was the bishop who began it ; and, indeed, there is some question as to which of the two was the more irritating and belligerent. The count, in 1198, wrote to Pope Innocent III to implore his protection against the bishop (it was usually the reverse), and this protection he paid for in advance, by giving the Roman church the castle of Usson, which he had just constructed. "I beg you to defend me against my brother Robert, bishop of Clermont. With his bands of free-booters and of Basques and in violation of all law, he devastates my land and subjects it to arson, murdjer, and brigandage. I east myself at the feet of Your Holi- ness and beg you to stop these outrages and to annul the sentence of excommunication which he has pronounced agaiast my land." The count of Auvergne sought the support of the pope, because the bishop, as was usual in such cases, had appealed to the king of France. The question was still more compli- cated by the conflicting claims of England and of France to the sovereignty of Auvergne ; the bishop was for the Cape- tians, and the count for the Plantagenets. This was what prolonged and embittered the hostilities. Between the two brothers, periods of peace were not long. After a semblance of reconciliation in 1201, the war began afresh in 1206, more violent and more murderous than ever. The bishop was thrown into prison by the count for the third time; the latter was again excommunicated; but he revenged himself by stealing the goods of the church. He stormed the abbey of Mozac, which the abbot took pleasure in enriching ; maltreated and dispersed the monks, demolished their buildings, appropriated their treasure, and, to cap the climax, carried away the famous relic of Saint Austremoine and placed it in one of his castles. An enormous scandal! THE NOBLE AT WAR 299 A bishop imprisoned; an abbey, under the protection of the king of France, violated and destroyed! From all the reli- gious centers of Auvergne a loud cry of indignation rose to Philip Augustus, who finally decided to intervene effect- ively between the irreconcilable brothers. But he did not, as his father, Louis VII, and his grandfather, Louis VI, intervene as a distinterested arbitrator. He interfered to award himself the object of litigation — to appropriate the county of Auvergne, which he had coveted for a long time. The chief of his retainers, Cadoc, and his vassal, Gui of Dampierre, arrived, in 1210, with a great army. They be- sieged the castles of Riom and of Tournoel, took one after another the one hundred and twenty donjons of Count Grui, captured innumerable prisoners, among them the son of the count, and in three years finished the difficult conquest. "When the French entered the famous fortress of Tournoel, perched on its volcanic rock and reputed inaccessible, they found in it a quantity of missals, of reliquaries, of sacerdotal vestments, and of other precious objects taken from Mozac and various other abbeys of the region. The church had the last word : the bishop of Clermont suc- ceeded, but to the detriment of his family and his political power. The county of Auvergne was dismembered forever: the king of France, installed at Riom, occupied the greater part of it; and Gui II, despoiled of his patrimony and obliged to take refuge in a neighboring province, could medi- tate at leisure on the inconvenience which results when civil power is out of harmony with religious power. Other barons at the same time gave proof of this. War on the episcopacy had also broken out in Brittany with espe- cial violence. There was the same difference between Gui II, count of Auvergne, and Peter of Dreux, count of Brittany, that there is between a needy and covetous mountain king and the suzerain and sovereign of a great province, inde- pendent by its traditions and its position. Peter of Dreux was a self-willed, determined man, with a definite political policy. He wanted to be master of Brittany, just as the king of France was of the Capetian domain, and to suppress all local powers, feudal as well as ecclesiastical. On account of this aim he deserved his surname of Mauclerc (mauvais clerc) : 300 SOCIAL FRANCE he passed his life in fighting the church, which was stronger in Brittany than in any other place. In this country the parish clergy collected, besides the tithe, the galling taxes of tiercage (a tax levied on the inheritance of personal prop- erty) and of past nuptial (a tax on marriages). The bishops enjoyed regal rights, and pretended not to rec- ognize the sovereignty of the count. Therefore, after 1217, Peter of Dreux made aggressive war on the bishop of Nantes. He let his agents pillage and burn episcopal houses ; take their lands and their revenues; imprison, maim, and even torture the clerics. The bishop and his chapter, forced to leave Brittany, tried to find a refuge in the neighboring dioceses. Several times excommunicated by his victim, Peter of Dreux even braved the pope. Honorius III, in 1218, re- proached him for all his misdeeds and ordered him to abstain " from these works of death, which would lead to eternal damnation if he did not repent "; let him beware lest his resistance to excommunication expose him to the suspicion of heresy. In any case, if he persists in his conduct, the apos- tolic authority will punish him and will, if it is necessary, absolve his subjects and his vassals from their oath of fealty. *' Open your eyes," said the pope in closing, '* and take care not to put your foot into such a dangerous net that you can- not withdraw it." The excommunication and the interdict were not removed before the full submission of the count, January 28, 1220. The conditions which were imposed on him were severe: he had to restore all that he had taken, disavow and punish his agents, indemnify all ecclesiastical subjects who had suffered violence in the war, renounce their homage, and finally promise to restore the bishop of Nantea. and his church to the condition in which they were at the beginning of hostilities. The men of the middle ages resigned themselves all the more easily to the humiliation of defeat and of reparation, because at that time no one was ashamed to yield to the church; and, besides, they did not long observe the treaties by which they abandoned their rights. A few years later, Peter of Dreux renewed the war, this time much more skil- fully, for he united all the lay seigniors of his duchy in a THE NOBLE AT WAE 301 persistent campaign against the privileges and the jurisdic- tion of the bishops. But it was in another part of feudal France that the war between the count and the bishop reached its maximum of violence and of savagery. The count of Auxerre and of Tonnerre, Peter of Courtenay, a relative of Philip Augustus, was a passionate, brutal noble, absolutely lacking moderation and prudence. Opposed to him was the bishop of Auxerre, Hugh of Noyers, also a noble of rude disposition, very much attached to his temporal interests, and fully determined to bend neither before the feudal barons nor even before the king: in brief, an incorrigible and bellicose minister of God, a fighting bishop. These two men were destined to collide and to engage in continuous and bitter conflict. Because of their quarrels, the city of Auxerre was under interdict for nearly fifteen years. One must imagine to what a convulsive and revolutionary condition a city under in- terdict was reduced, how consciences and social life were upset, to grasp the gravity of such a thing as the closing of the churches and the denial of the sacraments for so long a time. At most it was permitted to baptize children and give Extreme Unction to the dying. This critical situation, in the long run, became dangerous, for heresy appeared in the region, especially at Nevers and at La Charite, where certain miscreants had been burned, and the people could not be allowed to go without the sacraments and the mass. Hugh of Noyers and his chapter, knowing the obduracy of the count, finally adopted the following system: every time that the excommunicated count decided to enter the city, the bells of the great church of Auxerre were rung with all their force, to notify the inhabitants and the clerics. At that signal churches were closed, religious services were inter- rupted, and the city went into mourning. When the count left, the bells rang again, the sanctuaries reopened (except for the men and officers of Peter of Courtenay), and normal life was resumed. One can well understand how painful and irritating this procedure was for the count of Auxerre. ' ' He could not," said the chronicler, ** enter or leave the city without causing great confusion; and, above all, he did not dare stay long, because of the clamor of the people." The 302 SOCIAL FRANCE bishop had found an excellent means of dispossessing the count of his capital. The anger of such an irascible man as Peter of Courtenay broke out from time to time in acts of vengeance. One day he entirely destroyed a church belonging to the bishop, the church of Saint- Adrien. Another time he had the eyes of one of the bishop's vassals plucked out. He plundered the do- mains of the church. In 1203, he was living in his city, which was, as a result, under interdict. The clergy had refused to give a little child ecclesiastical burial. The mother, weeping and wailing, sought Peter of Courtenay to lodge her complaint. With singular nicety, he ordered his officers to take the little body, to force the episcopal palace, and to inter the child in the sleeping-chamber of the bishop, before his bed. Hugh of Noyers hurled a new anathema against his enemy. Peter replied by expelling the bishop and his canons from Auxerre, saying that he did so at the command of Philip Augustus, who was also hostile to Hugh of Noyers. And in fact the king, who also had cause to complain of this troublesome prelate, sustained his rela- tive, the count of Auxerre. The situation became grave, and the scandal intolerable. Innocent III wrote menacing letters to Peter of Courtenay and to Philip Augustus, The count laughed at them and continued his persecutions. One day he amused himself by pretending that he wanted to make peace with the church and end the affair honorably. He invited the bishop, the dean, the archdeacon, the cantor, and the other dignitaries of the chapter to come to Auxerre to receive his submission. The clerics, overjoyed, left their country homes, where they had taken refuge, to come back to the city; but they learned on the way that the count of Auxerre, far from thinking of a reconciliation, was sending his troops out after them. They immediately turned back, and, instead of stopping at a certain priory as they had intended, took another route. And it was well they did, for soon the soldiers of the count fell on this priory, broke down its gates with their axes, and searched all the cells like madmen, without finding those for whom they were looking. The bishop realized that even the episcopal houses of the THE NOBLE AT WAE 303 country were no longer safe for him, and took refuge in the monastery of Pontigny. Peter ordered the abbot of Pontigny to expel his guest, and threatened to plunder the abbey in case he was refused. Hugh of Noyers then decided to go into exile. This time Innocent III lost patience: he wrote to Philip Augustus that, if lie did not force the count of Auxerre to submit and allow the bishop to return to his city, the king himself should be held responsible and should suffer for the crime of his vassal. " Do not force me," said he, ** to lay the hand of correction on you, and take care that, in persecuting a bishop noted as this one is for the rude vigor with which he suppresses heretics, you do not gain the reputation of being a fomentor of heresy." Philip Augustus could not endure such a reproach. He was then in the very midst of his wars with John Lackland and his preparations for the conquest of Normandy: it was no time for him to be embarrassed by a conflict with the church. Peter of Courtenay, reduced to his own resources, had to capitulate, and in 1204 he promised, seriously this time, to humiliate himself before^ the bishop of Auxerre and the archbishops of Bourges and of Sens. The demands of the bishop surpass imagination. The chronicler of Auxerre tells us that the ceremony of submission brought many clerics into the city, and it is no wonder : the spectacle was certainly novel. The count of Auxerre, barefooted, clad only in a shirt, went into the bedroom of the bishop ; with his own hands he disinterred the body of the child buried there for some months, * ' already putrid and emitting a sickening odor, ' ' and carried the corpse on his own shoulders to the cemetery, where he gave it final burial. " It was for his own safety," added the chronicler, * ' that he humiliated himself thus before God ; God who knows how to bow the head and the neck of kings. ' ' The vengeance of the bishop did not stop there. Peter of Courtenay had as prime minister and executor a noble of Auxerre, named Peter of CourQon, who was detested by the clergy, because they knew it was he who had advised and incited the count in the war he had waged against the church. For a long time Hugh of Noyers could not injure this man, because he was protected by the favor of his master. But there came a day when Peter of Courgon fell into disgrace. 304 SOCIAL FEANCE and the bishop of Auxerre hastened to profit by it. He had him arrested, put him on a cart with four wheels, and had him conveyed chained and bareheaded (he was absolutely bald) through all the streets and squares of Auxerre; he was followed by a hooting crowd. To such a pass came the strife between the count and the bishop of Auxerre. Even after the death of Hugh of Noyers the strife continued. Peter of Courtenay was not on the best of terms with the bishop's successor, William of Seigne- lay, who also had a stubborn disposition, as was proved by his many conflicts with Philip Augustus. What would have hap- pened one cannot tell, had not the count of Auxerre, one fine day, left the country to validate his rights to the Latin throne of Constantinople. Later, one finds in the Chronique des eveques d' Auxerre a very curious page, which shows to what degree the nobles of the region had been excited by their covetousness of ecclesiastical goods and their hatred of episcopal power. When, in 1220, Bishop William of Seigne- lay left Auxerre to take possession of the see of Paris, to which he had been transferred, his departure was a signal for an immense pillage by the great and petty barons of Auxerre. Barons and lords pounced upon the prey. Herve of Donzy, count of Nevers, that persecutor of monks, — ^whose struggle with the abbey of Vezelay we already know, — en- tered Auxerre with an armed band, and most of the citizens, knowing of his cruelties and his exactions, fled. Seigniors of the lowest standing invaded the episcopal domains, sacked the villas of the bishop, ransomed and massacred his peasants. Even at Auxerre the chapter of the cathedral was not safe. The dean was seized by a noble and carried to a castle on the banks of the Saone, where he remained imprisoned a long time. One morning, as the monks were going to serv- ices, a troop of horsemen attacked them with naked swords, pursued them as far as the church, wounded one of them seriously, and crushed another under the hoofs of their horses. Such incidents were happening almost everywhere; they gave a highly dramatic character to the war between the nobles and the clerics. But the fury of war and the exas- peration of feelings could go still farther. The assassination THE NOBLE AT WAR 305 of abbots and even of bishops by excommunicated nobles was fairly frequent. In 1181, and in 1207, two successive bishops of Verdun died violent deaths at the hands of seigniors with whom they were at war. In 1211, Geoffroi Belvant, abbot of Saint-Pierre of Couture, in Maine, was assassinated by Hamelin of Faigne, who contested with him the ownership of the fief of Semur. In reparation for this crime, Hamelin gave the monks an income of ten Mans sous, the fuel for one oven, and released the abbey from all homage. His sentence was light. In 1219, Gilles, lord of Saint-Michel in Laon, rid himself in the same way of the abbot of Saint-Michel, with whom he was at war. The murder was committed in the very cloister, and he who had planned it was barely fif- teen years old. He promised, first, to go and fight the Albigenses; then to make a pilgrimage to Rome, where the pope would inflict penance upon him; every Friday, for fourteen years, he was to eat nothing but bread and water; he was to support three paupers, if he could not fast; three times a year, on a day of solemn procession, he was to dis- cipline himself publicly ; and he was to establish in perpetuity in the abbey of Saint-Michel a priest to pray for the soul of his victim. In 1222, the son of the viscount of Aubusson assassinated the prior of Felletin, a priory dependent on Saint-Martial of Limoges. But it was in 1220 that the great scandal of the epoch occurred. That would be a strange bit of history, an animated and tragic story, which would nar- rate the life and the strife of the bishops of Puy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries against the unreasonable barons who surrounded them — the viscounts of Polignac, the seigniors of Montlaur, of Mercceur, of Rochbaron: a group of brigands who wanted a share of the proceeds of the pil- grimages to Notre-Dame of Puy; and who without truce quarreled with the prelate, intrenched in his cathedral church on the summit of Puy, about the sovereignty of Velay and the income from its taxes. In 1220, Bishop Robert of Meung, after having sustained a sanguinary war which poisoned his whole life, was assassinated by a knight whom he had excom- municated. Decidedly, it was a terrible epoch, and one in which it was not good to have enemies ! CHAPTER IX THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE While he was waging war on his own account or on that of the suzerain, in his own struggles or those of others, the noble was, as has been seen, by taste, habit, and necessity, a soldier whose service did not often cease. There were, how- ever, in the interminable series of wars some intervals of peace and inactivity, especially during the winter season. When he had ceased pillaging, burning, and killing the enemy of the soil, how was he to employ his time? In those days he had one favorite occupation, which was anything but peaceful. In order to keep his hand in train- ing while resting, he battled in tournaments.^ In the historical ballad Guillaume le Marechal, the re- cital of tournaments occupies almost three thousand of the twenty thousand verses. The author describes fifteen tourna- ments, which followed one another within a few years in the regions of Normandy, Chartres, and Perche. Moreover, he speaks only of the most celebrated and of those in which his hero took part. He says himself that he has not men- tioned them aU, and for this reason: " I cannot keep up with all the tournaments that take place; it would take great trouble to do that, for almost every fortnight there is a tournament in some place or other." A tournament every fortnight! The frequence of this exercise is vouched for by other contemporary historians; by Lambert of Ardres, who shows us the counts of Guines and the lords of Ardres frequenting tournaments and spend- ing money foolishly; by Gilbert of Mons, who informs so * The tournament waa called torneamentum, gyrum, or hastilvdium in the Latin of contemporaries of Philip Augustus ; torneamentum or gyrum because this military game, this practice at war, took place within fences or lists formed by palings placed in a circle or a square; hastiludium because the blows of the lance (hasta) play the important rOle, the lance being the noble's weapon par excellence. 306 THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 307 well of the life of the lords of Lorraine and Belgium. Ac- cording to him, every creation of new knights, every great marriage, had almost necessarily to be accompanied by a tournament, in which the young barons could exhibit their strength and bear their first arms. And this fact is fully confirmed by the ballad Garin le Lorrain: ** Sire," said the messenger of Count Fromont to King Pepin, " the count has sent me to request a tournament for to-morrow morning. His son Fromondin is a new knight ; the father wishes to see how he will bear his arms." The two tournaments which, in this lay, took place under the walls of Bordeaux were the immediate result of a gathering of knighthood. But why this superabundance of tourneys? Because the tournament was a veritable military school; by these volun- tary and regulated combats, one exercised and trained him- self for that offensive and defensive strife which entirely filled the life of the noble. Thus it was, at least, that contem- poraries justified the tournament. It will be sufficient to cite the well-known passage from the English chronicler, Roger of Hoveden: " A knight eamiot shine in war if he has not been prepared for it in the tournaments. He must have seen his own blood flow, have had his teeth crackle under the blow of his adversary, have been dashed to the earth with such force as to feel the weight of his foe, and, disarmed twenty times, he must twenty times have retrieved his failures, more set than ever upon the combat. Thus, will he be able to confront actual war with the hope of being victorious." But was this a common institution throughout the whole of feudal Europe? No. It was thought, and indeed stated, in the time of Philip Augustus that the tournament was es- sentially a French custom, a fashion of our own, which spread quickly, it is true, into the neighboring provinces. With this opinion the English chroniclers agree; they call tourna- ments, French struggles (conflictus gallici) ; and the poem Chiillaume le Marechal, indeed, shows us Englishmen and Flemings constantly coming to France to frequent tourna- ments. It is for this, without doubt, that William Marshal, although a combatant of the first rank, proclaims the superi- 308 SOCIAL FRANCE ority of the French: " I speak of the French first. There is good reason why they ought to stand first: because of their pride, their valor, and the glory of their country." This confession from an English mouth is to be noted. According to several authors of the time, Richard the Lion-Hearted was the first to introduce into England the custom of tourna- ments, his object being to take away from the French just that incontestable superiority which their training had given them. The English took it up with such passion that Rich- ard, a very practical financier in spite of his knightly tastes, saw a way of getting revenue by imposing a tax upon the knights who entered the lists. Of French origin or not, be that as it may, the institution of the tournament was more flourishing in France than any- where else; and, to get a clear impression of this fact, one should read the descriptions of scenes upon which the biog- rapher of William Marshal dwells with an evident delight. First of all, one notices that the tournament did not dif- fer much from war properly so-called; that they were prac- tically alike, except for the systematic pillage of fields and the massacres of peasants. The nobles armed themselves for the tournament exactly as for real battle; if they usually strove to capture each other for the sake of taking profit from ransoming their prisoners, it still happened that they wounded and killed each other. In 1208, when Philip Augus- tus decided to knight his son, Louis — ^that is, to emanci- pate him, — for the sake of precaution he caused him to sub- scribe to certain promises, among others never to take part in a tournament. Prince Louis, the future Louis VIII, had to content himself with attending the tournaments, which took place near his residence, as a simple spectator, wearing a helmet only: that is, in undress uniform, so that he might not be impelled to descend into the lists and use his lance. Why this precaution? Because Prince Louis was the only male heir to the crown, and the life of an heir-presumptive must not be subjected to any risk. One of the reasons for the church's prohibition of the tournaments was simply that they were dangerous and even fatal to the nobility. But not the whole of the tournament depended on the battle. There were districts and circum- THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 309 stances in which the tournament was no more than a parade, a military procession in the lists where the nobles rode, richly clad and followed by servants, who bore their arms. Such was the tournament of 1184, which was given at Mainz in connection with the knighting of the son of Fred- erick Barbarossa. Gilbert of Mons states that this tourna- ment was a peaceful one (gyrum sine armis). The knights, he adds, were pleased with these festivities, at which they carried their shields, lances, and banners with great pomp, and coursed their horses, but without delivering any blows. It may be that this was the German custom ; it was certainly not the French custom; indeed, all the tourneys described in the poem Guillaume le Marechal were serious combats, in which they fought in earnest, even to the shedding of blood. In these encounters it was not, indeed, a question of indi- vidual tilts between picked knights. The knighthood of sev- eral provinces appointed a rendezvous, and entire armies entered the lists, to charge with eagerness upon one another. In the tournament at Lagny-sur-Marne more than three thou- sand knights were engaged, and the biographer of "William Marshal relates in detail the composition of the force: Frenchmen, Englishmen, Flemings, Normans, Angevins, and Burgundians came to blows. It was on these occasions, espe- cially, that rivalries, or rather those provincial hatreds which played such a great part in the wars of the times, were given free rein. Considering the number of combatants, a tourney like that of Lagny, which was fought in the open field, ex- actly resembled a decisive action of real war. On the other hand, let one compare the account of this historical tourna- ment with the imaginary tourney described by the author of Garin le Lorrain, and he will admit that, in this instance, poetry has only borrowed its facts from history. " The plain seemed to be nothing less than a forest of glittering helmets, above which floated brilliant pennons. . . . The two armies having come face to face, slowly approached each other until they were not further separated than the range of a bow. Who would make the first attack, who would be the first to make a sortie from the lines? It was the young Fromondin. His shield hard against his breast, he encountered a knight and unhorsed him, hurled him- self on another whom he likewise overthrew. His lance was shat- 310 SOCIAL FRANCE tered, but with a fragment he still thrust and threatened. . . . Already order in the two armies was gone ; the melee became general. Each lanee crossed another, and the earth was covered with their debris; the vassals were thrown and their terrified horses fled; the wounded uttered horrible cries; and it was not in one place, but in twenty or forty different places that they thrust at each other to give or take death. Led by William of Montclin, Fromont, and Bernard of Naisil, the men of Bordeaux steadily advanced and at length reached the battle of Garin/ The hero resisted their efforts for a long while; five times he fell and remounted another horse; woe to the man who did not escape the edge of his sword! With one blow he cut down the Fleming, Baldwin; with a second, Ber- nard of Naisil; finally covered with sweat, he went to a place apart where no one dared to follow him. There he was able to unfasten his helmet and refresh himself for an instant. The French, over- whelmed by numbers, were about to abandon the field to the Bordelais when the Angevins, Normans, and Bretons came to their aid; all that they could do was to collect them again under the standard." The only difference between this tournament and that of Lagny is that the latter was less bloody. In any ease, ac- cording to the biographer of William Marshal, the knights who were taken prisoners mattered more than those who were killed or grievously wounded. " Banners were unfurled ; the field was so full of them that the sun was concealed. There was great noise and din. All strove to strike well. Then, you would have heard such a crash of lances that the earth was strewn with fragments and that the horses could not advance further. Great was the tumult upon the field. Each corps of the army cheered its ensign. The knights seized each other's bridles and went to each other's aid.''* < Soon the young king of England, the eldest son of Henry II, gave the signal for the grand melee. Then began a des- perate strife in the vineyards, the ditches, across the thick forests of vine-stocks. One could see the horses falling, and men sinking, trampled under foot, wounded and beaten to death. As always, William Marshal distinguished himself; everything he struck vrith his sword was cloven and cut to pieces; he pierced bucklers and dented helmets. In the epic of the Lorrains, the tournament finished, the ^ That is, the body of the army of Garin. THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 311 heroes are seen returning to camp witli their spoils: that is to say, with the prisoners for whom they will take ransom. This was the gain of the day, the utilitarian and practical side of the tournament. This is particularly brought out in the biography of William Marshal. The knights went to tournaments for the sake of getting money ; William Marshal engaged in tourneys in order to get a supply of horses and harness, and prisoners to ransom. In a certain joust, ** he won at least twelve horses." He was associated with a dar- ing companion, named Koger of Gaugi, and the two made innumerable captures, of which their clerks kept track. * ' The clerks proved positively, in writing, that, between Pentecost and Lent, they took three hundred knights prisoners, with- out counting horses and harness." And what curious incidents are further related in the poem Guillaume le Marechal! — the exchange of visits by knights on the eve of the tournament, at the inns, where they chatted gayly over two jugs of wine; Marshal running through the crowded streets of a little village at night in pursuit of a thief who had taken his horse. This same Marshal had had his helmet so dented in the tournament that he could not take it off after the battle, and was obliged to seek a black- smith and put his head on the anvil so as to free himself from this unlucky casque by hammer-blows. In these bloody jousts, in which the nobility delighted, everybody found profit : the ** joy women " who rushed to them, the common people who loved these exhibitions, and the merchants who held a market in the neighborhood of the lists. " Only the church did not approve of tournaments, and used all her power to prevent them. She condemned them as she did war, and for the same reasons. At the end of the twelfth century, especially, she had a very powerful motive in op- posing this useless nonsense, in which the nobility spent money and blood, instead of devoting both of them to religion, in expeditions to the Holy Land. The tourneys harmed the crusade, and that was enough to make the church seek to suppress them. From the beginning of the twelfth century religious prohibitions were multiplied. At the Lateran coun- cil, in 1179, Pope Alexander III had renewed the prohibitions of his predecessors and threatened the organizers and com- 312 SOCIAL FRANCE batants with anathema. A decree of this council calls tour- naments " those detestable festivals or fairs at which knights have the habit of meeting in order to show their valor and come to blows, those fetes from which issues death to the body and damnation to the soul." The council decided that those who should be killed in them should be deprived of ecclesiastical burial. Innocent III renewed the same prohibi- tions at the Lateran council in 1215; ecclesiastical writers were urged to wage a campaign against this deplorable in- stitution. A contemporary of Philip Augustus, the historian and monk, Cgesar of Heisterbach, says in his Dialogues: *' Will those who perish in the tournaments by that same blow go to hell ? That is a question which need not be asked, unless, indeed, they be saved by contrition." And he tells the story of a Spanish priest, to whom appeared certain knights killed in tournaments, begging that some one pray for them to deliver them from the eternal flames. Another legend, of a later time it is true, shows us demons in the form of crows and vultures fluttering over lists where about sixty jousters lay dead, most of them asphyxiated by dust. Ever since St. Bernard, churchmen had only words of repro- bation with which to designate tourneys, " those execrable and accursed festivals." In their turn, preachers thundered from the pulpit. Jacques of Vitry expressed himself at length on this subject : " I remember that on one tournament day I chatted with a knight who frequented them a great deal and invited many heralds-at-arms and players. In other respects he was religious enough and did not believe he was doing wrong in giving himself up to this sort of sport. I attempted to demonstrate to him, how in the tourneys one committed the seven capital sins: the sin of pride which comes from self, since these reprobate soldiers come to joust in order to dazzle the spectators, to vaunt their exploits and to carry off the prize of vain-glory; the sin of envy, for each one is jealous of his companions to see that they are reputed braver under arms, and exhausts himself in trying to surpass them; hate and passion have there also a splendid field for exercise, since striking one another is a feature, and generally men come away wounded unto death." As for the sin of sloth or melancholy, as Jacques of Vitry calls it, one can see that the preacher is a trifle embar- THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 313 rassed, but he extricates himself from the difficulty by this phrase : " The lovers of the tourney are so absorbed in their vain pleasures that they no longer show any activity in acquiring the spiritual goods necessary for their salvation; and as for the melancholy, it often comes to them from the fact that, not having been able to triumph over their adversaries, and even having been obliged to flee ignominiously, they return home in a very melancholy state." Quite a subtile explanation; but the preacher takes his revenge with the sin of avarice or plunder. First the jousters, he says, were brigands, since they seize the person of an adversary or at least take his horse away from him; but, further, tournaments always give place to detestable pillage : nobles despoil their subjects without mercy ; wherever they ride they injure the crops and cause incalculable harm to the poor peasants. Then comes the sixth mortal sin, glut- tony; one could not deny that it appeared in tourneys, since on this occasion the knights invited each other to banquets and spent their substance and even that of the poor in use- less drinking. Ah ! certainly, ' ' they are exceedingly gener- ous with another's goods." Quidquid delirant reges plectun- tur Achivi! Finally comes lust. Do not the jousters first of all seek to please immodest women, to parade before them their strength and their exploits? They even go so far as to wear their colors, or objects which these women have given them. It is, then, because of the disorders and cruelty com- mitted in tournaments, because of the homicides and spilling of blood, that the church has determined to refuse Christian burial to those finding death in that manner. Neither sermons of this sort, nor terrifying legends, nor thundering anathemas by clerics influenced the nobility or succeeded in abolishing tournaments. Habit, the passion for fighting, the fashion, against which all legislation is power- less, continued stronger than the papacy and councils. The church was herself obliged to recognize that she had not suc- ceeded in imposing her will, and had constantly to relax her rigors, to temporize, and come to terms with the evil which she wished to destroy. Of this we have very clear proof 314 SOCIAL FRANCE in one of the letters of Innocent III. Here is what hap- pened, in 1207, in the diocese of Soissons. Nivelon of Cherizy, bishop of Soissons, one of the heroes of the fourth crusade, and an energetic man, under pressure from the papacy sought to organize a new expedition for a crusade or at least for the Latin Empire. He found that the tourneys, as always, did his project harm, so, with the pope 's copsent, he excommunicated all the jousters in a body. Murmurs, protests, and revolt from a majority of the knights who had taken part in the tournament of Laon resulted. They declared that, as the measure was directed against them, they would refuse to take the cross and would not give a sou to- wards the needs of the Holy Land. Nivelon, perplexed, asked permission of Pope Innocent III to soften the rigor of his own anathema for a time. Innocent III accorded it to him and felt himself obliged to explain his conduct to the archbishops and bishops of the province of Tours, and probably also to the prelates of the other provinces. He man- aged it by means of a circular: " It is not our intention to authorize tourneys, which are forbidden by our holy canons. But since the measures we have taken have seemed to us momentarily to offer grave inconvenience we have permitted the bishop to relax the sentence of excommunication, both of those whom he himself has sentenced, or of any others." This was opportunism in the highest degree ; but in the mid- dle ages the popes reputed to be the most inflexible, as Greg- ory VII himself, knew infinitely better than the local clergy how to accommodate principles to the necessities of the prac- tical and present. "When the nobles who were banned by the bishop of Soissons learned that they had been absolved, they manifested joy and determined that each one of them should send a certain sum of money to the Holy Land. But to prom- ise and to fulfil are two different things. Innocent III com- missioned the archbishop of Tours to see to it that the knights, having once returned to their province, should pay, according to their promises. If they should fail in their pledges and refuse to pay, then they should be made to understand, by a new excommunication, that the decree THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 315 of the Lateran council relating to tournaments had lost none of its validity. Feudalism might conclude from this incident that, though tournaments were theoretically forbidden, it was easy in fact to make ecclesiastical authority shut its eyes, As with very many of the things of this world, it was a matter of money. One must not forget that the participation of the French nobility in the fourth crusade in 1200 was decided in a tour- nament at Ecry-sur-Aisne. The church could only approach the nobles with ease when they happened to be assembled in great numbers ; in order, then, for the tournament to be sanc- tified and legitimate, it was sufficient for the knights present to take the cross. * * The hunt in the great forests filled with deer was also a battle, a school of war. The idea of peace in the minds of men of the middle ages associated itself naturally with that of the chase. For proof of this we want nothing but this passage from Girart de Boussillon: ** Now the knights enter upon a long rest; this will be a propitious time for dogs, vultures, falcons, falconers, and huntsmen." On another page of the same poem we have King Charles Martel, when he had ceased making war on his vassals or on the Saracens, saying to his barons : ' ' Let us hunt by the river and in the woods; that is much better than staying at home." Along with the tournament, the chase was the pastime par excel- lence. And all the inhabitants of the chateau were hunters; the noble lady accompanied her husband and rode with a sparrow-hawk on her wrist. She was very well skilled in flinging the bird and in recalling it, and the success of the chase was often her work. As to the son of the castellan or baron, he hunted with his father and mother from the age of seven years; this was an important part of the physical education which was given him. The chase was not merely a way for knights and barons to escape inactivity ; it was a passion, an immoderate passion, often even such a mania that the church was obliged to con- demn it, and for many reasons : first, because the noble, pre- occupied with roving the forest, forgot even religious serv- 316 SOCIAL FRANCE ices; and then, because the harshness of the law, which regu- lated the exercise of the chase and made seigniorial forests and game things sacred and inviolable, had in many respects become an intolerable scourge. The peasant did not have the right to defend himself or to protect his crops against the deer. In 1199, the inhabitants of the lie de Ee resolved to abandon their island, because of the tribulations which the rapidly multiplying deer caused them. Matters had come about to the point where they could neither reap their har- vests nor gather their grapes. The lord of the island was Raoul of Mauleon. The abbot of the monastery of Notre- Dame of Re, accompanied by the imploring inhabitants, went to him and begged him to renounce his right of the chase. Raoul consented not to leave any other game in the island, save hares and rabbits. But feudalism did not give some- thing for nothing ; the peasants were forced to pay the lord ten sous for each plot of vineyard and for each setter of land. For one noble who relaxed his hunting-law, how many others maintained it with fierce greediness? It cannot be said that, in this respect, the legislation of Philip Augustus was as hard as that of his contemporary, Henry II, the king of England; the latter, by his assize of 1184, had restored the forest ordinances of his predecessors, which provided that any man found guilty of hunting in the royal forests should have his eyes put out and his limbs mutilated. This made "William of Newburgh, an English chronicler, say that Henry II punished the killing of a deer as severely as the murder of a man. Still, the French baron no longer consid- ered the matter lightly, when, several years after the death of Philip Augustus, Enguerran of Coucy hanged three un- fortunate young nobles from Flanders, who had hunted upon his domains. Angered at this, the king committed the high baron to prison and did not release him until he had promised to pay a fine of ten thousand livres and make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It must be said, to be just to feudalism, that the chase was not merely a pleasure, a school of horsemanship, and of train- ing for war ; it was also an indispensable source of food sup- plies. These soldiers, hereditary hunters and great eaters, despised meat from the market. Generally they ate venison, THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 317 served in quarters or in pies of plentiful width. If we are to believe our old poems (for the chronicles relate but little on this score), the favorite repasts of our feudal ancestors were those in which morsels of wild boar and bear alternated with roasts of swan and peacock, and with fish from the seigniorial fish-ponds, the whole basted with large bumpers of wine flavored with honey and spices. The chansons de geste of the period contain passages which show in a concrete manner what the chase was at that time and how strong was the passion with which the nobles de- voted themselves to it. The entire beginning of the poem Guillaume de Dole is filled with a description of a hunting party which lasted several days and of the meals on the grass, which were a necessary feature. But it is in Garin le Lorrain that the chase is described with the greatest wealth of detail. First of all, a seigniorial interior in time of peace : "Duke Begon was in the chateau of Belin with his wife, the beautiful Beatrix, daughter of Duke Milon of Blaye. He kissed her lips and face; the lady smiled at him sweetly. In the room before them played their two children; the older was named Garin and was twelve years old, while the second, Emaudin, was only ten. Six noble pages were playing games, running, skipping, laughing, and playing in competition with one another. The duke looked at them. He heaved a sigh. The beautiful Beatrix noticed it. * What are you troubled about, my Lord Begon,' said she, ' you so high, noble, and brave a knight? Are you not a rich man in the world? Gold and silver fill your coffers, the vair and the gray your wardrobes; you have goshawks and falcons on their perches; in your stables are coursers, palfreys, mules, and prize horses. You have prevailed over your enemies. Within a six days' journey from Belin, there is not a knight who would fail to come at your request. For what can you sigh ? ' " What ailed Duke Begon? He was not fighting any more; therefore, he was bored. There being no war to wage, he went hunting afar, under the pretext of paying a visit to his brother Garin: " * I have received news of the forest of Pevele and Vicogne in the freeholdings of Saint-Bertin. In that forest there is a wild boar, the strongest of which any one has ever heard tell ; I shall hunt him, and if it please God and I live, I shall carry his head to Duke Garin in order to give him a surprise.' " 318 SOCIAL FRANCE No sooner said than done. "Begon loaded ten beasts with gold and silver, in order to be assured of good service and lodging everywhere. With him he took thirty-six knights, some good, skilled huntsmen, ten pairs of dogs, and fifteen servants to arrange the relay." We pass over the incidents of the journey. Begon was entertained at the chateau of Valentin by Berenger the Gray, * ' the richest commoner of the country. ' ' To him he disclosed his intention: "*I have been told of the forest of Pevele and of the great wild boar that hides there. I have resolved to go and hunt him and bring back his head to my dear brother, Duke Garin.' ' Sire,' answered his host, ' I know where the animal stays, and the covert where it takes shelter. To-morrow I can guide you to its home.' Transported with joy at these words, Begon took off the newly furred sable mantle which had come to him from Slavonia, saying, * Take it, my noble host, you shall come with me.' Berenger took the gift with a bow, and returning to his wife said to her: * See^ this beautiful present; there is a great advantage in serving a noble man.' " When the day broke, the chamberlains came to serve the duke, presenting him with a hunting-coat and tight boots. His gold spurs were fastened on ; he mounted his racing steed, hung his horn about his neck, seized his strong boar-spear in his hand, and set out with Rigaud and the thirty-six knights who were followed by the hunters, and ten trace of dogs. Thus, they crossed the Sehelt and entered the forest of Vicogne, led by Berenger the Gray. Soon they approached the spot where dwelt the boar. " At once began the baying and yelping of the dogs. They were unleashed; they bounded through the thicket and found the tracks where the boar had dug and rooted for worms. One of the dog- keepers unloosed Blanchart, the good blood-hound, and led him to the duke, who stroked him on his flanks, gently patted his head and ears, and then set him on the track. Blanchart disappeared and rapidly approached the animal's lair. It was a narrow place between the trunks of two uprooted oaks, sheltered by a rock and moistened by a thread of water running from a nearby spring. When the boar heard the baying of the blood-hound, he stood erect, spread his enormous feet, and, disdaining flight, wheeled around until, judging himself within reaching distance of the good hound, he seized it and felled it dead by his side. Begon would not have given Blanchart for one hundred marks of deniers. Not hearing hig barking any longer, he ran up with sword in hand ; but he was too late, the boar had gone. The knights dismounted from their horses THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 319 and measured his hoof-prints, which were a good hand's breadth in length and width. * What an infernal demon ! ' said they. * There is no danger of our taking another for him.' They re- mounted and began the chase; soon the great forest re-echoed with the sound of their horns and the baying of the dogs. " The boar foresaw that he could not strive against so many ene- mies. He then sought refuge toward Gaudemont — this was the comer of the forest which served him as covert. Pressed here by the pack, he did what, perchance, no other boar would have dared attempt; he abandoned the covert, came into the open fields, crossed the country of Pevele, sprinkled with forests and isolated farms, and made thus a good fifteen leagues straight ahead, without mak- ing an instant's stop, and without a single detour." A boar making fifteen leagues in plain view is an exag- geration of the minstrel, one of those fanciful stories which find a place in even the truest of narratives. " The horses did not have strength enough to follow him ; the wearier ones were stopped by ponds, marshes, and water-courses; the good horse of Rigaut himself fell with weariness into the midst of a bog. Then, as the day began to wane, and the rain to fall, they begged the party to return to Valentin with their host. Food awaited them there. They sat down to the table, all deeply re- gretting the absence of Begon, whom they had left in the forest. " We have said that the duke rode an Arab steed presented by the king. There was not a more indefatigable courser in the world; when all the dogs refused to advance, Baucent seemed as fresh as in the morning when he left the chateau. So he followed the boar in his rapid flight. Perceiving that his three grayhounds were wearied, Begon lifted them up before him and took them in his arms until he saw them gather new strength, and, therefore, new ardor. Little by little, the other dogs overtook him, so that pres- ently he could collect them at the entrance of a clearing which showed them the boar's tracks. In an instant the forest resounded with their loud incessant baying. " Chased thus from Vicogne to Pevele, and from Pevele to Gohiere, the boar had finally come to bay in front of a thicket to await his enemies there. He began by refreshing himself in a pool; then raising his brows, rolling his eyes, and snorting, he bared his tusks, dashed upon the dogs, and ripped them open or ground them to pieces one after the other, with the exception of the three grayhounds that Begon had carried, which, more active than the others, could guard themselves against his terrible teeth. Begon arrived, and first of all saw his dogs stretched out dead, one near the other. * Oh, son of a sow,' he cried, ' it is you who have disemboweled my dogs, have separated me from my men, and have brought me I know not where. You shall die by my hand.' He dismounted 320 SOCIAL FEANCE from his steed. At the outcry which he made, the boar, in spite of bushes and ditches, leaped upon him with the rapidity of a barbed aixow- Begon let him come on without stirring, and struck at his breast with the boar-spear which he was holding straight before him. The point pierced the heart and went out at the shoulder-joint. Mortally wounded, the boar swerved to one side, weakened and fell, never to rise again. Begon at once withdrew the spear from the wound whence issued rivers of black blood which the dogs lapped up before lying down side by side about the boar." This is a complete picture of a seigniorial chase in the time of Philip Augustus. The adventure, alas! turned out badly for the hunter. Isolated and lost in the woods, he was killed by the foresters in the service of one of his enemies. This kind of occurrence was not rare, in fact. The chase, as it was then practised, always held its dangers, though they were less, perhaps, than those one faced in tournaments. But one cannot always hunt. Tired out, the noble has returned to the donjon. To-morrow, if peace still lasts, what are to be his diversions ? There are at least two which again are violent exercises and are, as always, preparations for war. These are the " quintain " and the '' behourd." The quintain is a manikin covered with a hauberk and a shield and fastened to the top of a post. The play consists in the knight's dashing on the post, his horse at a gallop and his lance couched, and piercing the hauberk and buckler with a single lance-thrust. Sometimes, to increase the diffi- culty of the play, several armed manikins are arranged in a row, and the point is to run them through and overturn them all. This is the test which is ordinarily imposed upon new cavaliers and which takes place before the witnesses of dub- bing, the ladies. As to the behourd, it is simply a form of training for tour- naments and is a sort of fencing or tilt on horseback. The knights arrange themselves two by two, and one of them turns upon his partner, trying to pierce his shield with a lance. This sometimes becomes dangerous play, for one grows ex- cited in it, and in the heat of the strife forgets that it is an amusement. This very thing happened more than once, as the first verses of Oirart de Boussillon prove: THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 321 " It was Pentecost, in the gay springtime. There was many a man with a brave heart. The pope came and preached. When the mass had been said the king repaired to his hall which was strewed with flowers. Below Girart and his fellows tilted at quintain and indulged in many an exercise. The king learned of it and forbade them to do it. He feared that from such games disputes might arise." A more complete description of quintains is that borrowed from the same poem, in the recital of the marriage of Fule. " On that day he dubbed a hundred knights, giving horses and arms to each one. Then in the meadow which bordered on Arsen he arranged for them a quintain equipped with a new shield and a strong and glittering hauberk. The young men ran their courses and other people came to watch them. . . . Girart saw that they were beginning to quarrel with each other, and in his heart he was much troubled. The crowd pushed toward the quintain. The hun- dred young men had made their trial ; some had succeeded, others had failed, but no one had more than indented the mail of the hauberk. The count called for his boar-spear. Droon brought it to him. It was the spear which Arthur of Cornwall had carried when formerly fighting in a battle in Burgundy. The count spurred his horse into the lists; he struck the target and made a hole of such a size that a quail could have flown through it. Then he broke and cut the shield under the ventail. There was no knight who equaled him or who could ever have sustained a struggle against him. " The count struck out with such force that, with a blow, he split one of the straps and tore off the other, all the while holding his weapon so firmly in hand that he again drew it out. And his men said, * What strength. When he makes war, it is not to take sheep or cattle; he is intent against his enemies; he has drawn much blood from their bodies.' " Still, the nobles of this time knew more peaceful pastimes. In the inclosures and pits they had animals, especially boars and bears, with which they amused themselves by making them fight. If it was warm, they sought the orchard — to drink, to play dice, chess, or even a sort of game of back- gammon. Or, perchance, they received strolling players, to whose songs and music they listened. Sometimes they had veritable orchestras, and the musical instruments of this period were not so rudimentary as one .might believe. They had violins or hurdy-gurdies, harps, double-basses or mono- chords, horns, trumpets, blowpipes, a kind of clarionet, tam- 322 SOCIAL-* FRANCE bourines, and kettledrums. In the bad weather of winter, the castellan warmed himself under the hood of the immense fire- place or profited by his enforced inaction by having himself cupped and bled near the fire. For these rough tempera- ments were in need of frequent bleedings. Almost every month, the women as well as the men proceeded to the minutio — that is, the bleeding. When the unfortunate Queen Ingeborg of Denmark had been imprisoned in the chateau of Etampes by the order of Philip Augustus, one of the griev- ances against her husband, to which she referred with the most bitterness in her letters to Pope Innocent III, was that she was not any longer allowed to have a physician to bleed her regularly. As to the playthings of the children of nobility, they re- flected the bellicose spirit of the times: such as bows and crossbows, with which they amused themselves at killing birds. A manuscript, written at the end of the thirteenth century, has preserved for us a picture of one of their fa- vorite toys. It strangely resembles one which still serves the children of to-day — the jumping-jack, which is operated by means of two crossed cords. But these feudal jumping- jacks are naturally soldiers, which are armed from top to toe and fight each other with the great swords and shields in their hands. Pinally, the noble had one other diversion; a very costly one, it is true. This was to entertain guests at the chateau, such as pilgrims and wandering knights, and to give feasts in their honor. He was hospitable not only to the point of virtue, but even to the point of self-denial. Here we could again invoke the testimony of the chansons de geste; but we have too many of them. A historical document by Lambert, the cure of Ardres, outlines the life of Baldwin II, count of Guines and lord of Ardres. This count of Guines reigned from 1165 to 1205. He possessed to a great degree the most important of feudal qualities, that of liberality. He took pleasure in giving magnificent entertainment to all noted personages who crossed his territory — such as counts, knights, townsmen, archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, abbots, priors, provosts, archpriests, priests, canons, and clerics of every sort; and every entertainment was accompanied by sumptu- THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 323 ous banquets. The cure of Ardres, who, in his desire to laud his master, makes the above enumeration, describes at length the solemn reception he tendered William of Champagne, archbishop of Reims and uncle of Philip Augustus, when that worthy in 1178 passed through Ardres on his way to Eng- land, to visit the tomb of Saint Thomas a Beeket. The feast was especially striking: there were innumerable dishes; wines from Cypress and Greece, flowing in floods, and flavored, as usual, with spices. With a shade of disdain, the chronicler adds that the French requested pure water, with which to weaken the drinks served them. But the count of Guines, ever faithful to his habits of good living, had secretly given an order to refill the jugs with an excellent white wine of Auxerre, which the clerics of the archbishop's suite took to be water and drank without distrust. But the deception was discovered. The archbishop was dangerously near being of- fended; he summoned the count and demanded a ewerful of water. Baldwin went out smiling, as if he would make reparation; but he amused himself before the servants by upsetting and trampling under foot all the water receptacles he could find. He then returned to the banquet-hall, to do honor to the archbishop, and, says the chronicler, appeared with a foolish sportiveness, pretending drunkenness before the young men and guests, who themselves had drunk more than was within reason. Disarmed by this good-humor, Wil- liam of Champagne promised the count to conform to all his wishes. We can take this merry personage as the comparatively peaceful type of lord with a domestic temperament. His bel- licose tastes appeared to be limited to the construction of chateaux. • It does not seem that he fought too much, or that he ever quitted his fief to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He was content to remain in the midst of his vassals and serfs, to whom he rendered fair justice. Ordinarily, he possessed a more sensible spirit than did his peers. When his wife, Christiana of Ardres, died in childbirth, he was so filled with grief that he was on the verge of going insane. For several days, says the cure of Ardres, he recognized no one and scarcely knew what he was doing. His doctors would not permit any one to approach him. Nevertheless, he recov- 324 SOCIAL FEANCE ered his reason, and consoled himself quickly enough; for his historian affirms that he became the father of several children in the year following his mourning. The cure of Ardres, indeed, presents him to us as he was, with his good qualities and his faults. For example, he reproaches him for his immoderate passion for the chase: " This lord," he says, " heard the hunter's horn more read- ily than the bell of the chaplain, and took more pleasure in throwing the falcon and applauding the exploits of his bird than in listening to a priest's sermon." Moreover, he did not hide the fact that his master was the greatest woman- hunter that he had seen *' since David and Solomon," and that " Jupiter himself could not be compared to him in this respect." After having given the names of several of his natural children, he adds: " Since I do not know the exact number, and since their father himself does not know them all by name, I will refrain from saying more about them. By trying to enumerate them, I fear I should weary the reader." The chronicle of a neighboring country, that of the abbey of Ardres, is more instructive. It tells us that thirty- three children of Baldwin II, legitimate or natural, were present at his funeral. CHAPTER X FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY War, toTimaments, hunting, and receptions, open to all- comers, cost very dearly. In order to keep up this style of life, it was necessary to oppress subjects cruelly and take much booty from the enemy. Even so, one could not make both ends meet. And it is one of the striking and charac- teristic traits of feudal life that the noble, great and small, appears to be constantly in need of money, poor, on the watch for financial expedients, always indebted, and a prey of usurers of all kinds. This explains his rapacity and brig- andage, as the fruit of the instincts which impelled him. It was a deplorable reasoning in a circle: the barons robbed, pillaged, and killed because they needed money to pay for military expeditions, which cost a great deal and did not bring in enough. Unless one were a Philip Augustus or a Henry Plantagenet, able to operate on a large scale and to make vast conquests, one got nothing out of it. A seigniorial budget of this time is ordinarily a budget with a deficit. Nearly all important acts of the internal politics of Hugh III of Burgundy explain themselves by this penury, by the need of making money. He gives the county of Langres to the bishop of Langres, to the detriment of the ducal power, because he owed the latter an enormous sum. For five hun- dred francs he gave up the right of military service from the inhabitants of Dijon; his liberalities toward the Burgundian villages had the same cause. And his son, Eudes III, fol- lowed his example: he sold and pledged the rights and do- mains of the duchy to monasteries and burghers to secure money. One sees him, for example, in 1203 borrowing sixty livres from the canons of Beaune for a quarter of a year only; it was in December, and he promised to repay the sum on the first day of Shrove-tide. The lesser lords of Burgundy, the viscounts and castellans, 335 326 SOCIAL FRANCE were involved like their dukes. Money was necessary, espe- cially when they left for the crusades, and they placed their revenues and even their fiefs as security with the monks or the Jews. For, if the Christian would not or could not lend, the Jew was always ready to do so. In 1189, at the close of the third crusade, Andrew of Molesme pledged his fief for sixty livres to the abbey of Molesme; Robert of Ricey pledged his land of Gigny for ten livres; Girard, lord of Asnieres, ceded his land to the abbey of Jully for ten livres and a cow. In 1203, at the time of the fourth crusade, the lord of Nully was obliged to mortgage his land : he died, and his widow and his son were compelled to sell their patrimony to pay what he owed to the Jews. The viscount of Dijon, "William of Champlitte, borrowed three hundred livres from an Italian banker, — a Lombard, as they then called them, — Peter Capituli, on the revenues of his land of Champlitte. But he could no more pay the interest than he could repay the principal. The creditors demanded that the countess of Champagne seize his domains. The duke of Burgundy, Eudes III, had to intervene and redeem the lands of his vassal, by himself borrowing the amount of the debt from the Jews. All the great lords of France were in the same condition; even the counts of Champagne, for whom the fairs of Cham- pagne were a veritable gold mine. When Count Henry II left for Palestine, he borrowed money from ten bankers : they were not paid until after his death, by Thibaud III, his suc- cessor. Yet, after his arrival in the Holy Land, Henry II found himself in such straits " that it often happened," says his historian, Arbois de Jubainville, " that he got up in the morning not knowing how the people in his household and himself would be fed that day." Several times he was obliged to pledge his personal belongings to the tradesmen, who even in Champagne had refused to give him anything on credit. The Countess Blanche of Champagne, and even more her son, Thibaud IV, the writer of lays, were also in the hands of Christian or Jewish usurers. The Christians lent for two months, and the Jews for a week. The latter, after having demanded three deniers per week, were forced to content themselves with two, by virtue of an ordinance of 1206, published jointly by the countess of Champagne and FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 327 Philip Augustus. It was then decided that the Jews could lend at no higher rate than forty-three per cent, a year, not counting compound interest. With transactions of this na- ture it is intelligible how the financial difficulties of the counts of Champagne had merely become aggravated, and how in the month of May, 1223, Count Thibaud IV was reduced to tak- ing the gold table and the gold cross of Saint Stephen's church at Troyes to pledge them to the abbey of Saint-Denis. The monks of Saint-Denis lent him two thousand Parisan livres, nearly two hundred and fifty thousand francs in our money. Twenty-seven years after, in 1252, they were not yet paid. These are not isolated facts. In the other French regions the situation of the nobles was the same. Always without money, the legal means which they employed to acquire it only augmented their needs. A count of Saint-Pol, Hugh Candavene, leaving for the fourth crusade, wrote to one of his friends, in 1204, to tell him of the taking of Constanti- nople ; but first he told him of his personal affairs, which he had confided to his friend's care. " I am greatly obliged to you for having been so careful about my land. I tell you that since my departure I have received nothing from any one whatever, and I have only been able to live by what I myself can get, so that up to the day of the fall of Constantinople, we were all reduced to the most extreme want. I was obliged to sell my mantle for bread, but for all that I kept my horses and my arms. Since the conquest, I am enjoying good health, and am honored of every one. However, I am not without worry over the products of my land, for if God permits me to return home, I shall find myself much involved, and it will be necessary for me to pay my debts from the resources of my seigniory." Here is one lord who is careful about paying his creditors. But it is an error to think that all of his fellows took the same care. Most of them transmitted the task of paying their debts to their heirs and successors. Others merely refused to pay, or even essayed to get rid of their creditors conform- ably to aristocratic tradition — by violence, blows, or the prison. But this method did not always succeed. It is interesting to note that the church, which filled all the divers missions of medieval society, was still charged with 328 SOCIAL FRANCE securing the execution of contracts of loans. She launched her thunder against the disloyal or reluctant debtor. Ex- communication then had the effect of arrest or imprisonment for debt. We will mention only two examples. The count of Champagne, Thibaud IV, having refused to pay three bankers, one of whom was a Jew, was excommunicated, and Champagne put under the interdict. The same baron, in a pressing need of money, borrowed an important sum from three Roman bankers, the Ilperni family. He was obstinate and would not pay, in spite of the repeated demands of the creditors and in spite of the repeated exhortations of the pope, who often came to the rescue of the Italian bankers. Thibaud found their insistence annoying. Not only did he not pay, but, profiting by the sojourn of one of the three Ilperni brothers in Champagne, he caused him to be seized, thrown into prison, put in irons, and threatened him with the gallows. The unfortunate man was obliged to give his debtor twelve hundred livres, which the count divided with his councilors, taking one thousand livres himself and giving them the balance. Upon complaint of the Roman bankers, the pope ordered Thibaud to restore the twelve hundred livres and to pay the previous debt; and declared that, in case of resistance, he would cause an excommunication, with lighted candles and sounding bells, to be published every Sunday and feast-day in all the churches of the county. Thibaud pre- tended to submit, acknowledged his debt by letters patent, and asked a delay. The time expired and he still refused to pay. The pope announced that, if the debt was not paid in full, he would put two of the most important cities of the county, Provins and Bar-sur-Aube, under interdict. We do not know how the affair ended. The count of Champagne had the bright idea of taking the cross, and a crusader became doubly holy. The pope relented and, instead of dealing rigorously with Thibaud, wrote him again, making an appeal to his good faith, a poor guarantee for the creditors. It did not always happen that pope or bishops intervened in their favor. When the creditor was a Jew^ things went very simply. A great baron did not trouble himself about the Jews. When their complaints became embarrassing, he issued a decree of expulsion against - them, according them FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 329 permission to return upon making a payment of money. Or, if his iU-humor was more enduring, he decreed, with a stroke of the pen, that no interest should be paid them. The lesser lords understood this proceeding very well. Did the Jewish creditor press ,them too strongly? — they addressed themselves to the suzerain of the province, to the count or the duke, with a present, and obtained a letter of the kind which the duke of Normandy, king of England, in 1199 gave to the wife of the lord of Conches, Roger IV of Tosny. Here is the letter, the conciseness of which is admirable : " The king of England, duke of Normandy, to Henry of Grayen. We command you, that you cause Constance, Lady of Conches, to be quit of the debt of twenty-one silver marks, which she owes Benoit the Jew of VerneuU, upon the payment of the principal; this is why we desire that she do not pay interest on the debt. I, myself, witness, at Laigle, June the twentieth." It was difficult to deal in this fashion with Christians, especially when the Christians were monks of great abbeys or the citizens of a powerful commune, and especially when they belonged to the order of knights. At the time of Philip Augustus ' death, in 1223, Amauri, son and successor of Simon de Montfort, the hero of the Albigensian war, found himself reduced to a very critical situation by his poverty. , In order to keep up the struggle against the count of Toulouse, he had promised a wage to the knights of northern France. But this he had no means of paying, and the knights in question had no other way of securing the money owing them than locking up their debtor, their military chief, in a safe place and extorting five sous per day, more than the promised wage, from him. This same Amauri was so involved that he was forced to mortgage his own relatives : his uncle, Guy of Mont- fort, and several other nobles, were detained as prisoners at Amiens as security for a sum of four thousand livres, which the conquerors of Languedoc owed the merchants of that city. Here are the details, which explain why the house of Mont- fort, on the verge of bankruptcy, decided to transfer its rights over the conquered country to the king of France. It is not necessary to go to the lesser nobility for the type of prodigal noble who is indebted and reduced to the worst 330 SOCIAL FRANCE expedients. One finds them even in royal families. The chronicler Geoffroi of Limousin, prior of Vigeois, says that the eldest son of the powerful Plantagenet King Henry II, whom contemporaries caU Henry the Young or the " young king of England," daily received a sum of fifteen hundred sous (fifteen thousand francs in our money) from his father as spending-money ; and his wife Margaret drew a daily in- come of five hundred sous (five thousand francs) from the treasury of England. A good revenue, egregius reditus, says the chronicler; but it was not sufficient for the young king, whose prodigality knew no bounds. His creditors were legion, and when in 1183, jealous of his brother, Richard the Lion- Hearted, he fell to quarreling with his father and fighting against him with the aid of highwaymen, this son of a king was by his wants obliged to become a chief of brigands. To pay his soldiers, he first levied a forced loan of twenty thou- sand sous on the burghers of Limoges; then he presented himself at the abbey of Saint-Martial and demanded the loan of the treasure of the monks. He forced his way into the cloister, drove out the majority of the monks, and opened the sanctuary. There he found a gold table from the altar of the Holy Sepulchre, and five statues of gold; the gold table of the high altar with its dozen golden statues of the apostles, a chalice of gold, and a silver vase of the most mar- velous workmanship ; some crosses and relics, etc., having alto- gether a value of fifty-two marks in gold and a hundred and three marks in silver. All these precious objects were val- ued, says the indignant prior of Vigeois who was an eye- witness, at twenty-two thousand sous, which was far below their value; for they did not take into account either the workmanship or the gold used in gilding the silver objects. Henry the Young carried the treasure away, after having given the monks a document, sealed with his seal, recognizing the debt. It is needless to say that he never paid it. Some months after, mortally wounded at the chateau of Martel, he died in the most abject poverty. The abbot of Uzerches was obliged to pay his funeral expenses. The people of his household died of hunger; they mortgaged even their mas- ter's horse to get food. Those who carried the body fainted from hunger, so that the monks of Uzerches had to revive FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 331 them. One of the familiars of the young king said that he had even sold his hose for bread. The debts and the embarrassing condition of this heir- presumptive of the Plantagenet empire are recorded in Guillaume le Mareehal, which gives some curious details on this point: "In the chateaux, in the city, everywhere that he went, Henry the Young had such heavy expenses that when he began to think of leaving he did not know what to do. He had distributed horses, clothing, and food so freely that his creditors wept: three hundred livres to this person, one hundred to another, and two hundred to a third. * That comes to six hundred,' said the scribes ; * who will become surety ? ' ' My lords, here no one has money,' answered the men of the prince ; * but you will be paid within a month.' * By our faith,' said the burghers, ' if Marshal takes the debt in hand just as it is, we will not worry, and we will consider ourselves paid.' " This was perhaps too much confidence, for the earl of Pembroke, William Marshal, the intimate friend and devoted councilor of the young king, was himself not very rich. We know that he was obliged to take booty in tournaments; he even occasionally robbed travelers on the highways. In one of the previous chapters we read how he fell in with a monk, who was eloping with a woman, and appropriated all the money which the fugitives had about them, an act of brig- andage which his biographer considers as a legitimate windfall and a proper pleasantry. Marshal then set out to take the body of the unhappy prince to his father. King Henry II. One of the creditors of the young king, Sancho, probably a Basque or Navarrese, was the chief of his retainers. He was creditor for a con- siderable sum. " He knew that he would not be paid unless he used some artifice. He knew that the young king loved William Marshal well, and placed more faith in him than in all others. He spurred his horse before Marshal, and seized his horse by the bridle. * I have seized you and I lead you away; come with me, Marshal.' Marshal asked why. 'Why? You know very well. I want you to pay me the money which your lord owes me.' Marshal then understood that he was not being forced, and he did not try to resist. Sancho said to him : ' I do not want to lose what is due me ; that is why 332 SOCIAL FRANCE I do not let you go. But I intend to give you the advantage. You shall be free for a hundred marks.' ' Seignior/ answered Marshal, 'what are you saying? This game would be too bitter for me. I am only a poor squire, who scarcely possesses a furrow of earth; truly I do not know where to find so much money. But do you know what I will do? I give you my word of honor that I will return to you as a prisoner, and will come to your prison on the day you assign.' And Saneho said : ' Certainly, that is your right ; and I willingly grant it to you, for you are a loyal knight.' " After having signed the agreement, Marshal continued his journey and finally came to the presence of the king of England, Henry II, to whom he delivered the body of his son. Here the scene has a certain grandeur: , " The sad truth was bitter to the old king, for this was the son he had loved most. But he was of so courageous a heart that he sought to appear unmoved by the most troublesome news. Marshal, angry at this affected indifference, began to recount how his son had fallen ill, how he had suffered martyrdom, how he was truly repentant, how he had borne his great sorrow and great misfortunes with admirable patience. ' 0, that God had saved him/ said his father very simply, for his sorrow oppressed his heart more than he wished to show, but his great grief kept him silent. ' What shall I do, Sire?' asked Marshal. 'Marshal, I have only one thing to say. You will go with your lord and take his body to Rouen, as you had intended.' ' Sire,' said Marshal, ' that is impossible. I have given my word to become a prisoner in Sancho's prison. You know him well, he to whom your son owed so much money. It is the truth, but for one hundred marks he will release me.' " The king then called one of his familiars, Joubert of Pressigny. * Go find Saneho for me. Tell him to grant Marshal time for the payment of the hundred marks.' Joubert went with Marshal; the latter rode pensively. ' Marshal,' said Joubert, ' what makes you so downcast ? ' Marshal answered : ' Truly, I have enough to think of, if thinking of one's troubles is of any use in relieving them. The death of my lord, then this debt with which I am charged, trouble me, for I have not the means to pay it. I have indeed the right to be troubled.' ' Marshal,' returned Joubert, ' would you be thank- ful to the person who managed things so as to relieve you of this worry? Well, I assure you that you will be rid of your debt.' * Dear Sire,' said Marshal, * I would be very grateful to whoever would render me this service, if such good luck could come to me.' ' Then let me arrange the matter. You have never had the money ; it is not just that you should pay it. Do not worry, I will undertake this affair and try to bring it to a good end.' " Our two companions arrived at the home of Saneho, and greeted FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 333 him in behalf of the king. Joubert told him at once that the king had assumed the payment of the debt resting on Marshal. * You promise it ? ' said the rfetainer. * Yes, truly.' ' Then it is done.' The two knights took leave without delay. Presently Sancho went to the king and demanded his hundred marks. The king thought that the retainer had made a mistake. ' What hundred marks, my good friend ? ' said he. * The debt, Sire, which you took upon your- self to liberate Marshal.' ' Some one has misinformed you,' said the king. * I never undertook anything of the kind, and I am bound in no way. I only asked a delay of you.' Sancho, greatly worried, took an oath upon the glory of God : ' Joubert, speaking for you, told me that you would assume the debt.' They at once sent for Joubert. * How is it,' said the king to him, * that this man claims this money from me ? ' ' Sire, I will willingly tell you. In short, I told him on your behalf, that you would assume the debt. You said as much here; even here I heard it. I have proof of what I say.' Then the king said : * 0, well, so be it ! Let the debt be charged to me. My son has cost much more than that and would to God that I could still pay for him.' His eyes closed with grief and the tears flowed from them ; but it was not for long." The young king of England, in short, with his foolish prodigality realized the ideal of the knights of his time. In the class of barons and castellans a deficit and debts were not a disgrace. On the contrary, it was the sign of nobility ; and the prodigality, which in the eighteenth century brought down lettres de cachet and imprisonment on the sons of a family, and to-day subjects them to a guardian, was in the time of Philip Augustus more than an elegance: it was a virtue. It was the current conception of feudalism, and especially of the poets and minstrels, who lived at its cost. This virtue was called ** largess." It is celebrated in a thou- sand passages of the minstrels' lays. ** Be generous to all; for the more you give the greater honor you shall obtain, and the richer you shall be. He is not a true knight who is too covetous," says the author of Doon de Mayence. ** An avaricious king is not worth a farthing," we read in Ogier le Danois. There is the same sentiment in the chanson of Garin, ** No avaricious prince can keep his land; there is injury and grief while he lives." It is a kind of commonplace among the troubadours and trouveres to com- plain that the lords of their time were no longer so liberal as in former centuries. The author of the Chanson de la 334 SOCIAL FRANCE croisade des Albigeois, William of Tudela, says of himself at the beginning of his work: " Master William composed this song at Montauban, where he was. Truly, if he had good luck, if he were rewarded as are so many of the common players, so many of the cheap fellows, surely no talented man of courtesy would fail to give him a horse or a Breton palfrey, to carry him easily over the sand, or raiment of silk or velvet; but we see the world going so decidedly to the bad that rich men — a worthless lot, — who should be gracious will not give the value of a button. As for me, I do not ask them for the value of a coal, or for the sorriest cinder they have in the hearth. May God and the Holy Mother Mary Who made the sky and air, confound them ! " We need not accept everything the poets of the middle ages say: they all say the same thing at all times. Their theme vras that feudal lords vrere never generous enough ; they were insatiable. In fact, all the nobles of this time were lavish. Public opinion did not permit them to live meanly, and they practised the virtue of largess with the utmost non- chalance. To them war was the occasion of immense expense, and we have seen that war never ceased. But peace was no less costly, for it involved receptions, religious and military fetes, marriages, and knightings. But there were no fetes in the middle ages without prolonged feasting, without the distribution of clothing, furs, money, and horses. The higher his rank, the more a man gave to friends, vassals, players, and all-comers : so that money slipped from the hands of our knights and never remained in them. To get a good idea of what war then cost a baron, one should read the minute biography of Baldwin V, count of Hainault, father-in-law of Philip Augustus, written by Gil- bert of Mons. There was not a year when this lord did not make several military expeditions, usually at his own ex- pense, whether on his own account, as a feudal duty, or to fulfil the obligation of vassalage. In this chronicle, so im- portant for its accuracy of detail, each page contains such phrases as these : * ' The count of Hainault, in order to go to war, to remain there, and to return, was under arms five weeks ; his expenses were one thousand eight hundred and fifty silver marks, full weight." The allusion is to the campaign which took place in December of the year 1181, but the war FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 335 burst out anew after Epiphany of 1182. There had been only a short truce for Christmas, the first of the year, and Twelfth Day. The new campaign lasted almost until Lent. It took six weeks, says Gilbert of Mons, and, when the count of Hainault returned home, he had a new debt of one. thou- sand six hundred marks of silver. The summer of 1182 passed without war, an extraordinary thing for Baldwin V. But in the autumn he went to a tournament, and there he had bad luck. While he was engaged in the joust, some men of Louvain, subjects of the duke of Brabant, stole all his baggage, clothes, wagons, beasts of burden, and saddle- horses. Baldwin in his rage declared war on the duke of Brabant. A campaign ensued in October and November of 1182. It was interrupted by a peace, valid until Epiphany, 1183. During the peace the count of Hainault attended an- other tournament held between Braine and Soissons. He did not participate, but contented himself with recruiting knights and mercenaries. In March, 1183, he made war in France against Philip Augustus on behalf of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, his brother-in-law. In the spring of 1184, he was obliged to appear at the grand court at Mainz, where Frederick Barbarossa assembled all the princes of the empire and nearly seventy thousand knights. As usual, the barons vied with each other in splendor and prodigality: who could collect the largest number of knights under his banner, pitch the most and richest tents in the plain, and throw the great- est amount of money and gifts to the common soldiers and the minstrels? After this ruinous fete in July and August of 1184, the count of Hainault again found himself at war. He carried on a bloody struggle against the count of Flan- ders and the duke of Brabant, who had joined to crush him. And so it continued to the year 1195, in which he died. Baldwin ceased warring, attacking, and being attacked only because death took his weapons out of his hands. One wonders how these men could endure the perpetual traveling, the enormous fatigue, and the interminable strug- gles; and wonders, especially, how they could support them- selves in pecuniary matters. Their endurance seems to have had no limits, but their treasure was not inexhaustible. The military resources of their own fiefs were not sufficient for 336 SOCIAL FEANCE them to lead armies into campaigns so often as they did. They had recourse to mercenaries, whom they recruited from all sides. There is a curious page in the chronicle of Gilbert of Mons which tells us what the Count Baldwin paid certain of his auxiliaries; to one, six hundred livres, assigned on a village near Valenciennes; to another, four hundred livres, on a village of Brabant; to another, land in fief and twenty livres. The latter became lord of Belaing near ValencienneSj with a revenue of seven hundred livres; the others had fiefs of less importance yielding thirty and twenty livres. Still the count of Hainault did not satisfy them with this assign- ment of fiefs. He had from time to time to make presents of horses, clothing, and cash in order to preserve the zeal and devotion of this paid soldiery. Compare with this page of history certain passages from Girart de Boussillon, and we will see that it deals with the same time, the same customs, and the same men. In the following passage the poet seems to be merely a commentator on the historian; " Girart seated himself under a laurel, and having sent for his councilor, Fule, had gold and deniers brought to him, likewise mules, palfreys, and coursers with which to pay the soldiers. He wrote a hundred letters, sealed them, and summoned the knights throughout the land. To those who desired money Girart gave it. There were shortly four thousand of them who directed their way toward Dijon. He sent his messengers for the Burgundians as far as the mountains, for the Bavarians and Germans, even to Saxony. Wherever he knew of a good warrior he sent for him, making him promises of rich gifts." Further on we find the theory of obligatory prodigality, especially toward poor knights, set forth. The seignior must maintain them in peace as well as in war. "The young warriors said: 'The war is over; there will be no more skirmishes, no more wounded knights, no more broken shields.' ' That none be discouraged at it,' said FuIc [one of the heroes of the poem] , ' I shall willingly give them a living and clothing if I cannot give them more.' Fulc spoke to Girart and to King Charles Martel. * Now,' said he, ' see to it that each of you counts and rich barons gives the poor knights enough to assure their sub- sistence. Summon them to be enrolled for the defense of the land, FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 337 as has become the custom. And if there is an avaricious rich man, a felon at heart whom the maintenance and gifts cost too much he shall be deprived of his fief, and it shall be given to the valiant. For hoarded treasure is not worth a coal.' " Count Baldwin (to, return to history) was not one of the stingy rich, for reading Gilbert of Mons we see what happened : " At Easter, 1186, he assembled the council of his secretaries and his familiars in his chateau at Mons. There the condition of his finances was made known; it was disquieting enough. His personal expenses, the cost of maintenance, and the pay of the soldiers amounted to a considerable sum. The deficit was forty thousand Valenciennes livres. The count of Hainault then, in spite of himself and with regret, decided to resort to an extreme measure: he bur- dened the inhabitants of his county with extraordinary taxes. In seven month he collected enough to pay almost all his debts." What a time this was when the rulers could employ such a convenient method of almost instantly balancing their budgets ! It was enough to squeeze the sponge: that is, the exploitable subject, the peasant, and the burgher. But all feudal barons, especially the lesser ones, did not have this resource. They remained in debt and accumulated deficits until finally they had to sell their fiefs. Thereafter they vanished by going on the crusade: it was a method of liquidation then in com- mon use. • * We would, however, like more precise and accurate in- formation about the financial situation of the noble class. We lack contemporary accounts and budgets: it would be especially interesting to have the book of receipts and ex- penditures of one of these barons who maintained their splendor and threw their money out of the window. Un- fortunately, for the time which we are studying, this kind of document scarcely exists. We have the accounts of the household of Philip Augustus for the year 1202 and 1203, and they are far from being prodigal; and, of seigniorial budgets, we possess only a fragment of the accounts of Blanche of Navarre, countess of Champagne, covering the years 1217, 1218, and 1219. However, the study of these ac- 338 SOCIAL FRANCE counts, incomplete and mutilated as they are, is instructive and one can draw certain general conclusions from them, for, except in proportion, the life of a king or a high baron of this time was not different from that of an ordinary seignior. In all the grades of the hierarchy the nobles had the same instincts, the same passions, the same needs to satisfy. They drew their money from practically the same sources, and spent it in about the same fashion. But the accounts of Blanche of Champagne, in the first place, reveal that this noble dame, frequently short of money, contracted many debts, for they contain abundant reference to the payment of interest. The bankers lent to her for a rather short time, generally for two months, at most for six, and at a rate of twenty-five per cent, interest, the relatively moderate rate of Christian bankers. We have seen that the Jews ordinarily lent at forty-three per cent. But as usury was officially in- terdicted and prohibited, especially to members of the church, the keeper of accounts was careful to represent the payment of the enormous interest as a reimbursement for expenses which the lender had had. The county of Champagne was, like all fiefs, in a state of war, because the countess, in the name of her minor son, young Thibaud IV, had to defend herself against the dan- gerous and implacable rival, Erard of Brienne. The ex- penses of war, therefore, have a very important place in the accounts: putting the fortifications of Champagne and Brie into a state of defense ; cleaning the moats, repairing of walls of villages; money to distribute among the paid soldiers; food to send to the troops at Vassy; sums to transport pris- oners into a safe place, for lost arms, for spies, for horses, for the oxen which were sent to the army at Clermont and were led astray, etc. It was not only war which cost money ; it was necessary to negotiate, to maintain solicitors and am- bassadors, to sustain numerous processes at Rome or at Paris. And then there were the expenses of traveling allowed to agents and lawyers and to ordinary messengers who were sent to Italy, to Spain, to Philip Augustus, there to repre- sent the countess and her son and to defend their interests. And then there is the chapter of presents, of gifts, of alms, and all the expenses of " largess." Political presents: first. FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 339 two hundred cheeses of Brie sent to Philip Augustus, a quantity of armor sent to the Emperor Frederick II, bales of materials and clothing sent to Rome to wheedle the pope or his cardinals ; in Champagne itself, eternal gifts of money, furs, and robes to clerics, women, and nobles ; alms for widows and sick servants, and, finally, clothing for newly created knights. The more detailed accounts of Philip Augustus are stiU more deservedly a mine of interesting information. The ex- penses of war naturally predominate: it is the budget of a conqueror. Every line deals with the payment of knights, retainers, mounted and afoot, of crossbowmen, with buying and transportation of munitions and of rations for armies and garrisons ; with the construction or repairing of towers, of chateaux, and of walls. Then come the expenses relating to hunting, to falconry, and to the equipment of the chase; alms given to religious establishments and the emoluments granted to royal officers ; gifts of clothing and of furs to the queen, the prince royal, and the children of the latter; the maintenance of the wardrobe of the king himself; pensions given to noble lords and ladies; and innumerable presents of money and horses to persons of all classes. It was espe- cially at the great fetes of the year — Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost — that clothing, " robes " as they then called them, were distributed to the royal family and the members of the entourage. After this partial account, which touches only two years, it is difficult to determine whether the budget of Philip Augustus was better balanced than that of the ma- jority of greater and lesser lords. We may, probably, safely answer in the negative as far as the period before the great conquests — that is, before 1204, the year in which Normandy was taken — ^is concerned; for it was exactly during this first half of the reign that the historians mentioned the vio- lent exactions practised by Philip Augustus to the detri- ment of a certain number of bishops and abbots. They all, like the monk Rigord, considered his acts a series of religious persecutions. It was simply the effect of a deficient budget. The king met it as he could by forced loans from the treas- ure of churchmen, who showed themselves more or less re- fractory. During all the ancien regime this remained an 340 SOCIAL FEANCE essential of monarchical tradition: when the king had no more money, he seized it with consent or by force wherever he found it in the pocket of the cleric ; which never prevented him from being considered the eldest son of the church, and never diverted the church from being the best supporter of monarchy. So far as he could, the baron followed the king's example. As in the budget of the countess of Champagne, some articles of the royal accounts for 1202 and 1203 relate to the gifts which were bestowed on new knights. This is a feature of the times, a consecrated usage to which we must now give our attention. The fetes of chivahy were, perhaps, the oc- casion of the greatest expense of French nobility. They voluntarily ruined themselves to make a display of gener- osity and luxury, and here poetry and history again agree perfectly in the information they give us. Let us consider history first. The cure Lambert, chronicler of the county of Guines and the seigniory of Ardres, de- scribes the solemnities connected with the knighting of the young Arnoul, son of Count Baldwin II, in 1181. The cere- mony was to take place on Pentecost. Baldwin had convoked his sons, his natural children, and all his friends to his court. He himself dubbed his eldest son knight by dealing him the light blow, or rather striking him with his fist on the nape of the neck, which was the principal sign of knighting. There was no participation by the church in this important cere- mony. If she had had a part, the cure Lambert would have spoken of it. Here we have the purely feudal chivalry, mili- tary and secular, of ancient tradition. The solemnity was joyously celebrated by a feast, at which the most delicate foods and the choicest wines were served. And the cure of Ardres, in recollection of the sumptuous love-feast, at which he no doubt had done his whole duty, naively exclaims that the guests endeavored to give themselves a foretaste of the eternal joys of paradise. He describes the knight, newly clothed in his armor, advancing into the midst of the as- semblage and distributing handfuls of gold and precious objects to the crowd of domestics, clowns, players, buffoons. FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 341 minstrels, men, and women, who were not lacking at this feast. " He gave to all who asked in such a way that the memory of his generosity must remain forever engraved upon their memories. He gave all that he possessed and could acquire. He gave even to the point of folly, making gifts, great and small; he gave not only what he possessed, but also what he did not own, what he had borrowed from others. He kept scarcely anything for himself." The next day the procession threaded the streets of Ardres to the sound of bells. Monks and clerics chanted hymns to the Trinity, sang the praises of the newly invested knight, and, in the presence of the people who shouted and leaped for joy, the knight made his way into the principal church. " For two years from that day," adds the chronicler, * ' Arnoul traveled about the country and frequented all tour- naments, not without the aid of his father," which, without a doubt, means that the treasure of the count of Guines ex- perienced a considerable drain. The consequence of this chivalrous extravagance was that the young Arnoul, a little later, reached the end of his resources. He then no longer felt any scruples on the choice of financial expedients. Some years after his knighting the kings of France and England decided to take decisive steps to succor the Holy Land. All of the nobles took the cross, and the general tax, known as the Saladin Tithe, was im- posed on all persons who did not. Arnoul, like all the other lords, took the cross and made a vow of pilgrimage; but he carefully avoided setting out for Jerusalem. He was a prac- tical man : he preferred to remain in his fief and lead a life of ease. He collected the tithe, but, instead of devoting it to the purpose of the crusade, instead of even employing it to aid the poor, he used it for his own satisfaction. He was the pauper: the money for the crusades enabled him to figure brilliantly at all tournaments, at banquets, and to buy expensive clothing. And what remained of it, says the chronicler indignantly, he gave to any one who happened along. He renewed his prodigality : to one he gave a present of a hundred marks, to another a hundred livres; to one he gave the silver chalice of his chapel, to another the silver 342 SOCIAL FRANCE pyxes, and to yet another the silver plate. He gave every- thing away — clothing, hangings, tapestries: he gave even the horses provided for the expedition to the Holy Land. To give largess at the expense of the crusade was over- stepping all bounds, and the good cure of Ardres, in spite of his respect for his masters, dared to qualify the proceeding as "irreverent " and " impudent." In the chronicle of Gilbert of Mons chivalry also appears as an occasion of boundless expense. In 1184, the grand court held at Mainz by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was the scene of many military investitures. The new knights, their friends, and all the lords of high rank rivaled each other in prodigality. " It was not only," says Gilbert of Mons, "to do honor to the emperor and his sons that the princes and the other nobles ruined themselves in largess: it was also for the glory of their own names." Five years later, Count Baldwin V of Hainault celebrated the knighting of his own son at Speyer. The knights, clerics, and domestics of his court received a goodly number of saddle-horses, pal- freys, and coursers from him. Minstrels of both sexes were impartially showered with gifts. At the court of France, under similar circumstances, money flowed in streams. In 1209, Prince Louis, the eldest son of Philip Augustus, was invested with knighthood in the great assembly of Compiegne. " On the holy day of Pentecost," says the chronicler, Wil- liam of Armoriea, " Louis received the baldric of knight- hood from the hand of his father with such solemnity, in the presence of such a concourse of grandees and royalty, before such a multitude of men, and with such an abundance of provisions and gifts, that to this day nothing to equal it has been seen. ' ' On the same day one hundred other young men were knighted, says an English chronicler. It is to be re- gretted that the middle ages have not transmitted to us an account of the expenses of the knighting of the son of Philip Augustus, as they have left us an account of the expenses of the dubbing of a brother of Saint Louis and a son of Philip the Hardy in 1237 and 1267, respectively: in them one would already have seen the evidence of royal prodigality, money given to the minstrels, horses, armor, and robes lined with ermine and sable lavished on new knights; FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 343 gilded girdles, silver cups, and jewels offered to the ladies; the heavy expenses which the pitching of tents and the sump- tuous preparations for the banquet entailed. If historical texts of this period do not give us all de- sirable details about the ceremony of investiture and the fetes of chivalry, we may look for them in contemporary chansons de geste. These often speak of the ceremonies of knighting and of the largess which accompanied them. The material which we find in them agrees perfectly with that found in the chronicles. Without doubt, the feudal poets in this in- stance simply described the facts which they had before their eyes. In the ballad Garin le Lorrain there is a brief but ex- pressive notice on the knighting of Begon. Begon presented himself to King Pepin : " * Sire,' said he, ' we are of an age to carry arms : make four knights of my brother Garin, Fromont, William, and me. We greatly desire it.' ' I consent,' responded the king. And immedi- ately requesting arms and rich clothing he commenced by dubbing Garin, then Begon, then Fromont and William. Rich was the dis- tribution of the vair and gray, and grand was the feast. After the 'banquet they emerged from the palace. The new knights mounted their coursers, took their shields, and tilted for a long time. Begon, whose shield was ornamented with fine gold, rode his course with the rapid certainty of a winged falcon." Further on the description becomes more detailed, and at the same time more complete. The story concerns the knight- ing of Fromondin, son of Fromont, at the very height of the war, fought under the walls of Bordeaux, between the two great factions of the song, the men of Bordeaux and Lorraine. The uncles of the young man, Bernard of Naisil and Baldwin of Flanders, admired his deportment. " * Just see,' said they, * what a bold nephew we have ! Why do we not ask the mighty Fromont to knight him.' ' We could not do better,' replied the Fleming. On rising from the table they went to find Count Fromont. ' Your son,' said Bernard to him, * has become large, strong of arm, and deep of chest; is it not time to make him a knight? It is certain that he will know how to cross a lance and fight our mortal enemies better than any one else; and if you wait until judgment-day, you will never see him more fit 344 SOCIAL FRANCE to be knighted.' ' These are strange words,' answered Fromont ; * Fromondin is still too young to support the weight of arms.' ' 0, do not say that,' said Bernard; 'reflect that you are getting old, that your hair is becoming white, that the time for your ease is coming; rest you then, and leave to yoiir son the burden of war.' Fromont could not hear these words without reddening with anger. * You provoke me, Su-e Bernard,' said he, ' To hear you talk, I am an old man in my dotage. I can still mount my horse well enough, however, and I have no need of any one to defend my rights. To- morrow we shall have a pitched battle, and I will meet you; and these are my conditions : that he of us who shall be worsted shall have his spur cut off next the heel with a sharp sword.' * Good nephew,' said Bernard, ' many thanks ; I had rather not. And, please God, I did not intend to provoke you. I spoke to you thus with good intention, and because your friends asked me to do so.' * You wish it ? ' said Fromont. ' Ah, well ! So be it ; I give my consent.' " This first scene, in which the resistance of the father is so vividly pictured, is not pure fancy. There is something de- cidedly human in this reluctance of the knight who does not wish to abdicate and retards the knighting of his son as much as he can, because to him it is the sign of advancing age and of the physical decadence which threatens him. And, furthermore, it must not be forgotten that for the young lord knighting meant his majority, emancipation, and part- nership in the paternal sovereignty; his entry into a partial possession of the future heritage. It is not surprising that the father hesitated and put off this maturity as long as he could. Historical fact here confirms what poetry relates. It will be enough to mention the case of Philip Augustus, a very suspicious father, who for the longest time possible de- ferred the admission of his heir, Prince Louis, to knighthood. Louis of Prance was not knighted until he was over twenty- two years of age, and yet the king, before consenting to the knighting, took all sorts of precautions and exacted rigorous promises from his son, in the form of a treaty, which has come down to us in the registers of the chancellery : to employ in his service only knights and retainers sworn to the. king, never to borrow money from the communes and burghers without paternal consent, and even to hold certain seigniories, from which he was to have the revenues as feudal vassal and under a perpetually revocable lien. FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 345 The Fromont of the poem did not resist so long, and he did not impose heavy conditions on his son. We return to the poem. The knighting of Fromondin is decided upon. The young man has returned to his lodgings. Fifty vessels are filled with water; it is the knightly bath, an ordinary hygienic measure which the church later converted into a symbolic purification. " The first is for the young noble, the others for the young varlets who are to be armed with him. The chamberlains bring in robes and garments of velvet. The squires lead the mules, coursers, palfreys, and prize horses. Fromont had sent his son Baueent his own steed, the one he loved best, with a saddle which came from Toulouse. Fromondin in mounting leaped from solid earth (that is to say, without stirrups) with such energy that he went too far and jostled Bernard of Naisil. ' Oh, Sire,' he said laughingly to his uncle, * You shall Uve with me; I pray you.' 'Gladly,' answered Bernard, ' but on condition that you do what I wish : you shall delight in spurring the horse, in distributing your honors to noble knights, and in giving the vair and gray to the poor. I cannot repeat it too often: a true prince exalts himself by giving largess; and if he is avaricious every day of his life is detrimental to others ! ' *I will do your pleasure,' answered Fromondin." It was also decided that he was to bear his first arms in a tournament : that is, in a real battle, more bloody in Garin than in reality. The day of the tournament arrived. Although the poet does not expressly say so, Fromondin doubtless passed the night in the church, in the vigil of arms, for he is described as returning to his lodgings after having heard the morning mass, taking light refreshment, and then going to bed to sleep. " The day dawned beautifully and the sun beamed. Count Fro- mont was the first to leave his bed. He opened his window, and the fresh brilliance struck him full in the face. In a moment he was dressed and shod. He went completely armed from his room, ordered his horse, and rode through all the quarters of the town waking the knights. He came to his son's lodgings and found the young man asleep in his bed. Fromont called Bernard : ' Come,* said he, * see my son. He should have been given a chance to get bigger and stronger, but he must be clothed in the white hauberk ! ' And then in a loud voice, ' Come, Fromondin, get up. You must 346 SOCIAL FRANCE not sleep too long, good sire. The great tournament ought already to be forming/ The young man leaped from his bed on hearing the voice, and the squires entered to serve him. They quickly booted and clothed him. In the presence of all, Count William of Montclin girded the sword on him with a golden belt. ' Dear nephew,' he said, ' I enjoin thee not to trust false and dissolute men; given a long life thou shalt be a mighty prince. Always be strong, victorious, and redoubtable to all thy enemies. Give the vair and gray to many deserving men. It is the way to attain honor.' * Everything is in God's hands,' answered Fromondin. Then they led to him a costly horse. He mounted him with an easy bound, and they handed him a shield emblazoned with a lion." This is the ceremony of knighting and the words of the patron which comprise almost the whole of knightly ethics. Farther on another knighting is described. But this one is of a comic character. It is the knighting of the son of a villein, Rigaut, son of Hervis, and in the eyes of our feudal bard a villein could not be anything but ridiculous. This Rigaut was, however, very brave and strong, and he was descended from high nobility: this was why, as an exception to the rule, he was to be knighted. But he was an ill-bred rustic and did not know the forms. "Begon said to him, 'You shall be a knight; only go and bathe a little, and then some one will give you the vair and gray,' * To the devil with your vair and gray, if I must take a bath for it,' he answered ; ' I have not fallen into a moor or a marsh; I have nothing to do with vair and gray. At the home of my father, Hervis, there is enough fustian for my use.' * I have charged myself with clothing you,' said Begon. They gave Rigaut the rich mantle and piece of ermine which covered him and trailed on the earth more than a foot. Rigaut found this very inconvenient. A squire carrying a knife to serve the knights passed by. Rigaut asked for the knife, and cut off a foot and a half of the pelisse. ' What are you doing, my good son,' said his father. * It is the custom for new knights to wear the trailing robe of vair and gray.' * It is a foolish custom,' said Rigaut ; ' how could I run and jump with this pelisse trailing? ' ' By my head,' said the king, * he is not far wrong.' Then Begon asked for the sword, Froberge, seized the gold hilt, and himself attached it to Rigaut's belt, who allowed him to do it. Then he raised the palm of his hand and let it descend so sharply on his cousin's neck that he well-nigh stretched him upon the ground. Angrily Rigaut drew his new sword a foot and a half as if to strike the good knight Begon. Hervis, his father, stopped him: 'What are you doing, madman? FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 347 It is the eustpm; it is thus that one makes knights.' 'It is a bad custom/ said Rigaut; 'bad luck to him who first established it.' The bystanders began to laugh, but his father went on : ' Listen to me; if you are not a brave and hardy knight I pray God Who died on the cross, not to let you live a day longer.' ' If he is not a brave man,' said Begon, * I hope to lose the chateau of Belin.' " Here ends the description of a grotesque knighting, but instructive, because it contains all the details of the ceremony in use, including the dubbing with a stroke of the fist. The last case of this kind v^^hich our poem presents is the knighting of Gerbert, son of Garin. It is the most complete, if not the most poetic, of all. The investor of Gerbert must have been Pepin the emperor himself. " The king said to the Burgundian, Aubri : * You will give the young man his bath ; then we will give him the vair and gray.' They heated the bath. Gerbert, having returned to his lodgings, got into his bath and remained a little while. The other vessels accommo- dated eighty pages. The emperor for love of Garin made them all, knights. They all shared in the vair and gray, a present of the radiant queen. As for Gerbert he received a precious velvet robe, enriched with flowers of gold and richly bordered and seamed with ermine. The embroidery alone had cost four gold marks. The emperor took a hauberk from the treasure of Saint-Denis which he himself had formerly taken from a king he had killed. The links were small, strong, light, and white as the hawthorn-flower. A burnished helmet was placed on the young man's head, and it was the king himself who belted the sword which contained a tooth of Saint Firmin in its hilt to his side. When he raised the palm of his hand to strike the nape of the neck the king said : ' Knight, be brave and hardy ; shun all bad deeds ! ' * I pledge myself,' an- swered Gerbert. A valuable horse had been led in; the bridle and the saddle, enriched with gold, were valued at a thousand Paris livres. Gerbert mounted him easily. They gave him a curved shield, blazoned with a golden lioneel. He seized the lance with its gilt banner, spurred his horse with both heels, stopped short, and re- turned to the emperor. How he was then admired and applauded by matrons and maidens, burghers and servants ! ' He knows how to ride a horse,' said one, ' how to lead an army, and defy his enemies.' After that they knighted twenty other knights. Gerbert gave them burnished helmets, white hauberks, and mighty steeds. You may imagine that there was plenty of gold for the jongleurs and minstrels assembled to make the feast more beautiful. " Thus clothed and mounted, Gerbert and his knights returned to the palace. The king took him in his arms and kissed his cheeks 348 SOCIAL FRANCE and lips. Water was sent for. All sat down at the table, and when they had eaten and drunk at leisure, they went with the queen to hear vespers in the royal chapel. Then they returned to Notre-Dame, where the new knights were to keep vigil. Gerbert remained there all night, and when day came he heard mass and presented a rich offering. And then the new knight hastened to his inn." The fete ended with a sumptuous banquet at the palace. " The king took Gerbert by the hand and seated him at the table near himself. As one might suppose, there was not lacking goose, gosling, and roast peacock. On rising from the table the horses were ordered and they left Paris for the tilt. The queen, of beautiful and noble figure, proposed to follow them accompanied by ten maidens. Gerbert on a large, fiery courser, lance in hand, his arm covered by a rich shield, was regarded by all. It was said that his horse, his arms, and he were all a single being. The tilt was accomplished without diftculty or quarrel." Thus historians and bards agree in picturing the chivalry of the end of the twelfth century. It was an imposing, sump- tuous display, in which the foolish extravagance of the noblps knew no bounds. It was the triumph of " largess." The knightly investiture, given by a father or a suzerain, had a wholly military and secular character; the sign of investi- ture was made as simple as possible, and the moral con- tained in the sermon of investiture quite rudimentary, in- deed: the young man is simply required to be brave, terrible to his enemies, and generous to his friends. The religious element was limited to the vigil of arms in the church and the mass heard in the morning, but there is no investiture by the priest, or the bishop, nor even the benediction of the sword placed on the altar; this came later, during and pri- marily at the end of the thirteenth century. Could one, then, say that the religious or sacerdotal in- vestiture did not exist at the time of Philip Augustus as well as the pure lay investiture, and in certain cases even predominate? Such a statement would be imprudent; for here is a famous example of ecclesiastical knighting recorded by a historian. In 1213, the conqueror of Languedoc — the devout Catholic, Simon de Montfort — wished to knight his son Amauri. He FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 349 was at Castelaaudaiy, at the time of the feast of Saint John, with the two bishops of Orleans and Auxerre. He asked the bishop of Orleans to consent to confer knighthood upon his son by putting the baldric on him. The bishop for a long time refused, says the chronicler Peter of Vaux-de- Cemay: he knew that it was contrary to custom, and that ordinarily only a knight could create a knight. However, at the insistence of the count and his friends, he finally decided to do it. It was in summertime. Simon de Montfort pitched large tents in the plain outside the city, which was much too small to contain the multitude of onlookers. On the day fixed the bishop of Orleans celebrated mass in a tent. The young Amauri, his father on one hand and his mother on the other, approached the altar. His parents offered him to the Lord and asked the bishop to consecrate him knight in the service of Christ. Immediately the two prelates knelt before the altar, belted the sword on him, and sang the Veni Creator with profound devotion. And the chronicler adds these significant words: '* "What a new and unusual way of conferring knighthood. Who could restrain his tears? " This mode of knighting was, perhaps, not so extraordinary as Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay thought, for in a ritual of the Roman church, drawn up at the beginning of the eleventh century, there already is the formula of prayer to be used by bishops in conferring knighthood. However, the very words of the chronicler prove that in France knighting by bishops was not common. Simon de Montfort introduced it: he inaugurated the ecclesiastical tradition; he invited the church to take chivalry and make a kind of sacrament of it, and it is very possible that such an example set by the hero of the crusade against the Albigenses induced a large number of devout Catholic families to proceed in the same manner. CHAPTER XI THE NOBLE DAME When the French noble was in possession of knighthood — that is to say, when he was a full warrior and qualified to govern his fief — he married. The woman whom he married brought him lands, castles, and at the very least revenues. It was the only way for him to meet the demands on his budget and to rank among the proprietors and sovereigns, unless he was associated with his father while awaiting his inheritance. This brings us to the interesting question of marriages and the more general question of the noblewoman and of the lady of the manor in the middle ages. At the end of the twelfth century the feudal regime fully and definitely recognized the woman's right to succeed to the fief and to possess the seigniory. She inherited the land and the power, thus emerging from the semi-domestic state to which French society had so long confined her. Christianity struggled laboriously against the customs of the time, in order to secure her emancipation, and feudalism decidedly advanced her. On the other hand, as head of a religious house, as abbess, or dignitary of an abbey, the noblewoman was considered ever more capable of curing souls. There was, then, an evident progress in feminine destiny — progress closely interwoven with that of general civilization. It will be seen, when we speak of the literary nobility and of the development of courtesy in the time of Philip Augustus, that that culture tended to raise woman to a superior con- dition in certain parts of seigniorial France. But it must be admitted that the life led by the nobles did not usually have the important consequences that certain historians have been pleased to point out. When, for example, one reads in a lecture of Guizot on the History of French Civilization that the life of the chateau created the family spirit, en- couraged domestic virtues, brought out the noble sentiments 350 THE NOBLE DAME 351 of gallantry, and refined the mind, he must not accept the statement without reserve. What, after all, was the chateau? A military post, a barracks; and it has never appeared that barracks were a very suitable place for the creation and development of delicate morals, and of sentiments of cour- tesy founded on the respect for woman. In the majority of ca^es the lady of the manor, in the time of Philip Augustus, was still what she had been in the cen- turies preceding feudalism : a virago of violent temperament, of strong passions, trained from infancy in all physical ex- ercises, sharing the dangers and pleasures of the knights of her circle. The feudal life, full of surprises and dangers, demanded of her a healthy mind and body, a masculine car- riage, and habits all but masculine. She accompanied her father in the chase ; in time of war, if she were a widow or if her husband were on the crusade, she conducted the defense of the seigniory; and, in time of peace, she did not recoil before the longest and most dangerous pilgrimages. She even went on the crusade on her own account. It was in this way that Margaret of France, the sister of Philip Augus- tus, — twice a widow, first of the young King Henry of Eng- land, the eldest of the sons of Henry II; then of King Bela III of Hungary, — sought to aid the crusaders who were fight- ing in the Holy Land in 1197. She sold her dowry, and took the money thus realized to the Orient. She disembarked at Tyre, where her brother-in-law. Count Henry of Champagne, met her ; and she died eight days after her arrival. In 1218, in France, one sees ^n interesting spectacle in the county of Champagne: a war between the countess of Champagne, Blanche of Navarre, guardian of her minor son, Thibaud IV, and their rival Erard of Brienne, was fought to the death. And Blanche conducted this war in person, as leader of her troops. She invaded Lorraine, burned Nancy in passing, and joined the camp of the Emperor Frederick II. Later, in the neighborhood of Joinville or of the Chateau- Villain, she led her knights in person, waging a real pitched battle against her principal enemies ; and she won the victory. How were these young noblewomen, destined to become so energetic, brought up? Strictly historical documents do not inform us. The chronicles only mention the women of the 352 SOCIAL FRANCE military aristocracy in connection with marriages, divorces, or genealogy; in informing us of their children and their lineage. Women did not have a place in general or local history, except when they held or transmitted fiefs, thus actively aiding in the circulation of lands and seigniories by entering or dissolving marriages. On the other hand, they were rarely mentioned in letters: at most, one finds in the works of certain ecclesiastical authors letters like those which the theologian Adam of Perseigne wrote to a noblewoman, Mathilda of Blois, countess of Perche. She had asked him for a rule of conduct by which to live as a Christian in the world. Th€ abbot of Perseigne gave her excellent precepts of religion and morals. He counseled her, above all, to abstain from games of chance, from wasting her time at chess, and from taking pleasure at the indecent farces of the play- ers. He also advised her to be moderate in matters of dress, and he ridiculed the gown with the long train, comparing the women who wore them to foxes, with whom the tail was the most beautiful ornament. One conclusion appears from the letter — ^that the ladies of the manor were gamesters. We know this from the chansons de geste, which often present them as engaged in interminable games of dice and chess. If we may believe the preachers and monks who wrote the more or less satirical treatises on morals, women must also have had other faults. The least of these were being co- quettes, spendthrifts, ruining their husbands, wearing false hair, rouging, and proudly displaying their gowns with trains. The authors of the sermons incessantly stormed against the extreme length of the gowns; a diabolical in- vention, they said. But all this is commonplace and not at all characteristic : there is nothing in it that is entirely pecu- liar to the middle ages. As to the more serious reproaches, there is a question of how far one can rely on the allegations of the preachers. By profession they saw the dark side of everything, unduly exaggerated human infirmities, and struck hard rather than justly. Can one rely any more on the satires of the monks? The monks were often pessimists, disposed to slander everything of their age, and accustomed especially to consider woman as a perverse and infernal be- ing, who had ruined and always would ruin the human race. THE NOBLE DAME 353 In every case we find only vague generalities in ecclesiastical literature. In it woman, as a whole, without distinction as to social condition is attacked, and it would be very difficult to obtain precise information from it relating to the life of women who were born and bred in the chateau. In the poems of a martial nature, where the soldier occu- pies the whole stage and plays the principal role, the femi- nine side is sacrificed. The young girl does not appear, except to perform the duties of hospitality, and hospitality understood in the broadest sense, toward the knight who is the guest of her father. It was she who was charged with greeting him, with disarming him, with making ready his chamber and his bed, with preparing his bath, and even (we have on this point many unquestionable texts, especially in Girart de Boussillon) with massaging him in order to help him go to sleep. We must accept the middle ages as they were, with all the simplicity of their customs. That society was much freer than ours in words and in action: honi soit qui mal y pense. One gathers from the chansons de geste that it was the young women who made all the advances in love to knights entertained at the paternal mansion. The latter resembled Hippolytus of Greek legend: they dreamed only of war and the chase. Maidens thought them handsome, and they told them so without the least embarrassment: it was they who made the declaration of love. And, more remarkable still, their advances were sometimes very coldly received. To be sure, the authors of these martial poems, the minstrels who sang to amuse the barons after drinking, had a clumsy hand for treating such delicate matters. Their observations on the position and customs of the woman of high rank could not be very profound or drawn from the better sources. Have not writers at all times been inclined to give as the expression of general truth the various scandalous deeds or the pathological eases which they from preference study? What idea of the French bourgeoisie would a foreigner ob- tain to-day if he knew it only from the books of our modem novelists ? One cannot, then, judge the woman of the epoch in gen- eral from the chansons de geste. What can be most clearly 354 SOCIAL FRANCE inferred from these recitals is that their authors had a very limited and very inadequate respect for woman, and this was simply because she was still considered by feudal society as an inferior being, whom one could slander and treat rudely. To tell the truth, married women in the chansons appear in a more favorable light than young women, which is singular. In the poem Garin le Lorrain, in Girart de Boussillon, the noble lady, the lawful wife of the baron, was usually a vir- tuous person, who loved her husband and was devoted and faithful to him. We are, for example, told of Beatrice, wife of Duke Begon, who, carried away by a traitor, desperately resisted and said to the ravisher, " I will allow myself to be broiled and roasted before I will permit you to approach me. ' ' The wife of Girart of Roussillon, the Countess Bertha, is a model of conjugal devotion. But, on the other hand, the minstrels have no scruples in presenting women of the high- est nobility, even queens, as exposed to the insults and bru- tality of knights. In the lay Garin the wife of King Pepin, Blanchefleur, was one day obliged to snatch from the hands of a Bordeaux chief, Bernard of Naisil, an unfortunate messenger sent to the king by the opposite side, whom Bernard was about to murder in the open court before the eyes of his sovereign. " Tour place should be in the forests," she cried indig- nantly, " robbing pilgrims and infesting the highways." — * ' Silence, foolish and immodest woman, ' ' responded the furi- ous Bernard. " The king must have been out of his senses when he burdened himself with you. A violent death to him who brought about your marriage! Only reproach and dishonor can come of it. ' ' — ' ' You lie ! " responded the queen ; ' ' thief, murderer, traitor, perjurer ! The king of France should not have permitted you to appear in his court." Then, after that avalanche of insults, she fled in tears to her chamber. Instead of interposing and defending his wife, the king remained silent. The poet evidently intended to make him play an unimportant, even a ridiculous, role. It was the hero of the lay, the Duke Garin, who avenged the honor of the queen. He arrived at the palace just at the moment when the queen came out of her room. Lorrain looked at her and saw her beautiful eyes bathed with tears. " Beautiful THE NOBLE DAME 355 queen," he said, '' who could give you any cause for annoy- ance? By the living God, there is no one under heaven — I except my lord, the king — who, if he dared as much as to contradict you, would not become my mortal enemy. Who has insulted you? " — " Sire," said Blanchefleur, " that traitor, that brigand, Bernard of Naisil, has disgraced me before the king." Garin immediately went to Bernard, vio- lently pushing aside the ranks before him, seized him by the hair, threw him to the ground under his feet, broke four of his teeth, and, after ripping up his chest with his spurs, left him. If the minstrels, the authors or composers of poems, can always be believed, the husbands themselves did not refrain from ill-treating their wives. A word or a request which displeased them was enough. In Garin, the Queen Blanche- fleur asked the king to declare himself in favor of the party of Lorrain, " The king heard it and anger showed in his face: he raised his fist and struck her on the nose, so hard that he drew four drops of blood." And the lady said, " Many thanks; when it pleases you, you may do it again." One could cite other scenes of the same sort in which there is always a blow on the nose with the fist: it almost became a habit. Feudal poets also energetically reproved the knight who took counsel with his wife, and they were pleased to- attribute speeches such as these to their heroes: '' Woman, go within and eat and drink with your attendants in your gilded and painted rooms; busy yourself with dyeing silks: that is your business. Mine is to strike with the sword of steel." It must be remembered that this way of treating women as though they were beings of a secondary order, of abusing them, and of roughly sending them to the women's quarters, was the result of a fancy which at the least singularly ex- aggerated actual fact. Without speaking of the romances of the courteous type which belonged to the cycle of the Round Table, and of which we will speak later, there were other lays almost contemporaneous with Philip Augustus, as that of Guillaume de Dole, in which the woman, even the young girl, played a role which was all to her credit. In this last poem the action consists almost entirely in bringing to view 356 SOCIAL FEANCE the courage and ability of the young lady, Lienor, the sister of William of Dole, who victoriously struggled against a calumny of which she was the victim, and found a reward for her virtue in a marriage with the emperor. It is true that the lay Guillaume de Dole, though it is foreign to the British cycle and celebrates chivalrous bravery and the tour- nament, is not precisely inspired by the feudal and martial spirit which animates the epics. It represents an intermedi- ate type between the purely military type and the romances of adventure — a romance of love according to the customs in certain seigniorial courts, which were more polished and more courteous than others. One can conclude that, even in the time of Philip Augus- tus, the courteous spirit favorable to women was very rare in feudal society ; and that, in a great majority of the feudal seigniories and manors, there persisted the old tendency, the disrespectful and brutal attitude toward women, de- scribed and, if you please, exaggerated in the greater part of the chansons de geste. The amorous fancies of the trouba- dours of the south and of some trouveres of Flanders and Champagne should not delude us. The sentiments which they expressed were simply, we must believe, those of a select few, of a very small minority of knights and barons, who were in advance of their century. The greater part of feudal society understood the statements concerning women otherwise: woman was considered to be of an inferior sub- stance, and treated accordingly by fathers and husbands. History proves this. It shows us the sovereign and smaller lords acting with the same violence, the same absolute lack of deference and courtesy. Henry of Anjou, king of Eng- land and ruler of the Plantagenet empire, was troubled by his wife, the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, in his pleasures as also in his policies regarding his sons: he kept her im- prisoned for many years. We know, on the other hand, with what brutality Philip Augustus conducted himself toward \ the unfortunate Ingeborg of Denmark, whom he abandoned the day after the marriage. We know how he kept her pris- oner, first in a certain convent; then shut up in the tower of Etampes, where she remained for a very long time. If the complaints of the victim herself can be believed, her . THE NOBLE DAME 357 husband, not content with submitting her to a regime of rigorous seclusion, would not even give her enough to eat or to wear. Must it be assumed, in order to explain this con- temptible harshness, that Philip Augustus and Henry II were men of a particularly inhuman temperament and rulers without mercy? Ordinary barons acted in the same way. In 1191, we see a seignior of the county of Burgundy, Gautier of Salins, maltreating his wife, Mathilda of Bour- bon, and throwing her into prison. She, fortunately for her, succeeded in escaping and sought refuge with her parents. Such instances were, without doubt, not excep- tional: they simply prove that, in spite of all the theoretical gallantries of the poets, the middle ages, even at the end of the twelfth century, were still in practice very hard for the woman, noble though she was, and that the precepts of chiv- alry, which enjoined deference to the weaker sex, were far from being realized. This will appear still more clearly if we consider feudal marriages. On this subject poetical and historical sources are in remarkable accord. Long ago it was said: In the manners and customs of that epoch marriage was, before all else, a union of two seigniories. The seignior married in order to extend his fief, as well as to raise sons capable of defending it; in his eyes a wife represented, above all, an estate and a castle. The first consequence of this peculiar conception was that the husband was chosen by the father or suzerain, and the feeling of the young girl to be married was not consulted in any way. The feudal heiress passively received the knight or baron who was destined for her. She was, in a sense, absorbed in the estate or the castle: she formed a part of the real estate ; she passed with the land to the one who was to possess it, and her consent mattered little. As a young girl, orphan, or widow she could not resist her father, who held the seigniory, or the suzerain, who in certain cases had acquired the disposal of it. On this point, as always, feudal usage appears in the chansons de geste in striking relief. The kings are to be seen distributing fiefs, and the women who 358 SOCIAL FRANCE represent them, to their faithful vassals as if it were purely a question of material interests. It will do here to recall a few very curious pages from the poem, Lorrains. King Thierri of Maurienne said to Duke Garin: " * Free and noble page, I cannot love you too much, for you have defended this fief for me. Before dying I wish to repay you: here is my little girl, Blanchefleur, fair of face; I give her to you.' The maiden was only eight and a half years old; she was already the most beautiful person to be found in a hundred countries. * Take her. Seignior Garia, and with her you shall have my fief.' — ■ ' Sire,' responded Garin, * I take her on the condition that the Emperor Pepin will not oppose it.' " Garin then went to find the Emperor Pepin: " * Before leaving the world,' he said to him, ' King Thierri sent for me and gave me his daughter, and with her the fief of Maurienne; I have received the gift, Sire Emperor, on the condition that it would be agreeable to you.' ' I willingly grant it,' responded Pepin." But then Fromont, another vassal, rose up and cried out, with anger in his eyes: " ' I, I oppose the gift. Sire, you hunted one day near Senlis, in the forest of Montmelian. It then pleased you to give to the brother of Garin the duchy of Gascony. At the same time you promised to give me the first vacant estate which I should demand. There were more than a hundred witnesses to it. Maurienne is to my liking and I lay claim to it.' — ' You are mistaken,' said the king. * What a father at the hour of his death gives his child with the consent of his vassals no one has the right to take away. When another fief reverts to me, however large it be, I shall invest you with it.' — * No,' said Fromont, ' the fief of Maurienne has reverted to you ; I demand it and I will have it.' " There was a dispute between the two barons: they began by heaping each other with abuses, then they came to blows, and Garin dealt Fromont a heavy blow with his fist, " which stunned him and stretched him out on the floor." This rivalry and the blow with the fist were the cause of a savage war which fills the whole poem, the war between the Lor- rains and the Bordelais. In the preceding passage the question at issue was the fief THE NOBLE DAME 359 of Maurietine, and not at all the young girl whose destiny- was attached to it. She had no importance; she fell to the grantee of the fief — that was all. But to return to Fromont. King Pepin refused him the heiress and the fief of Maurienne. But he wished to marry: he sought his cousin, the Count Dreux, and related to him what had happened at the court of the king; how Grarin had " given him his fist on the teeth ": " * You are wrong/ said the Count Dreux, * to insist on having Blanchefleur. Were you then afraid of getting no wife? When- ever you wish, instead of one, you may have ten. I have just re- turned from seeking a noble and advantageous marriage for you: it is with the lady of Ponthieu, Hehssent, a sister of the Count Baldwin of Flanders. Her husband recently died; she has only one small child: once in the heritage you will no more have to fear a single enemy.'" Fromont accepted the expected heritage. Dreux proceeded to Baldwin and requested the hand of his sister for Fromont : " ' I gladly grant it,' responded Baldwin. ' To be sure, my sister is a beautiful and rich woman : from the ocean to the border of the Rhine, there is none who can compare with her; but Count Fromont is rich in possessions and friends.' — ' Now,' added Dreux, ' we must not lose time; long delays are rarely profitable; for if the emperor knew that the land of Ponthieu were vacant, he would give your sister to the first fellow from his kitchen, who would roast a pea- cock for him.' — * You speak the truth,' responded Baldwia." Here, with the natural exaggeration of poetry, we have indeed an historical fact: the omnipotence of the suzerain, especially of the king, who could give the heiress of a vacant fief to whom he chose. See how the marriage in question was announced to the interested person. Dreux and Fromont arrived at the palace of the count of Flanders : "Baldwin called his sister. On seeing her appear, all arose, and each admired the noble grace of her figure and the beauty of her face. The Fleming took her by the hand : ' My beautiful and dear sister, let us speak a httle apart. How are you? ' — ' Very well, God 360 SOCIAL FRANCE be thanked.' — ' Well, then, to-morrow you shall have a husband/ — ' What did you say, my brother? I have just lost my lord : it is only a month since he was laid in the grave. I have by him a beautiful little child, which by the grace of God shall some day be a rich man ; I should think of protecting him, of adding wealth to his inheritance. And what would the world say if I should so quickly take another baron ? ' — ' You will do it, however, my sister. He whom I give you is richer than was your first husband; he is young and hand- some : he is the son of Hardre, the Count Palatine ; he is the valiant Fromont. Hardre dying, the estate of Amiens and many others will revert to him.' When the lady heard the name Fromont, her feelings suddenly changed : ' Sire Brother,' she said, * I will do so since you desire it.' " We admit that there was on her part a timid attempt at resistance, and that probably she was not indifferent toward the proposed husband. But, even if she had been, she would have had to submit; the wish of the head of the family or of the suzerain could not be opposed. And just as curious as the brutality with which the marriage was imposed, was the rapidity with which it was concluded: " Immediately the Fleming called Fromont : * Come, come free and noble knight ; come also Dreux and all our other friends ' ; and seizing the right hand of the lady he placed it in that of Fromont before them all. They did not wait a day, they did not wait an hour : on the spot they proceeded to the church. Clerics and priests were notified. There they were blessed and married. The nuptials were celebrated in the palace with magnificence; they jested, they laughed, they were entertained in a hundred ways; then if any one had a desire to complain it was not Count Fromont." The poem continues with an account of a battle; and it would seem that the author had entirely forgotten the young Blanchefleur and her fiance, Duke Garin. It is true that she was only eight and a half years old and could wait. It returns to her, however, and relates how the archbishop of Reims advised the Emperor Pepin not to keep the promise which he had made to give Blanchefleur to Garin, because, if Garin married her, Fromont, enraged, would cease to be the king's man and great peril would ensue: " ' What would you have me do ? ' said the king. — ' Keep the maiden for yourself. You are both young; she has no less land THE NOBLE DAME 361 than you yourself: you could not wish a more honorable union.' — *Ah, indeed/ responded the king, 'marvelous words! What, Sire Archbishop, do you wish me to perjure my honor, to deceive those who have served me best? ' — ' No,' said the archbishop, * I was not thinking of that. But everything could be arranged with honor : I know two monks ready to swear to-morrow that Blanchefleur is a relative of Garin; act on their testimony, and by noon they will be separated.' — ' If it is thus,' said the king, ' I shall go to see the maiden, and if she suits me I shall become her husband.' " We must assume that Blancliefleur had grown in the in- terval, for the king found her to his liking, The plan was carried out as the archbishop had arranged it : the two monks swore that the fiances were relatives within the prohibited degrees; Garin and Blanchefleur were separated. The king then bluntly announced to the young girl that he wished to marry her: " ' I intend to marry you myself.' — * Good Sire,' she responded, * I thank you : you do me great honor ; but I call God, Who never Kes, to witness, that I would not give Garin the Lorrain for the honor of being queen. Garin is the one man in the world whom I could love most. However, since my desires and those of my father cannot be followed, I am ready to obey you.' " Garin was then tempted to express his displeasure by in- juring the king, but his brother threw himself before him : " What ! Senseless Lorrain, what would you say ? Relinquish Blanchefleur; if you wish a wife you can find ten for one, all of a lineage equal to hers. Take her, Sire, may it be for your happi- It was thus that Pepin married Blanchefleur. The nuptials were *' grand and rich." At the formal feast Garin served as cupbearer: "He was beautiful of form and face: one could not find a better built man in the world, or one of more courteous appearance. And the new queen took great pleasure in looking at him; her eyes went constantly from him to Pepin, and the king seemed ever smaller and more insignificant. Ah, why did she have to come to the court! Why had she not sent for Garin in Maurienne? He would have become her husband. . . . Alas! it was too late, and after all she could only accuse herself ! " 362 SOCIAL FRANCE In the preceding passages we find all the elements of feudal marriage, and all the customs which attach to it : the identi- fication of the heiress, the noblewoman, with the fief; a betrothal while one of the parties was still in infancy; the absolute right of the father over his daughter, and of the suzerain, especially of the king, over his vassal ; the unsenti- mental character of the marriage, which is considered solely as the union of two rich and powerful feudal landholders; the practically complete effacement and passive submission on the part of the woman, who was consulted neither as to her wishes nor as to her heart : these are the things which clearly appear in the narrative of the poet. One dare not say that these elements were invariable and that one may not find cer- tain passages in the epic in which, when marriage was the question, women revolted against the power which held them down and refused suitors who were imposed on them; but these are the exceptions which confirm the rule. And this rule, these customs and manners, actually existed in the society of that time ; allowing for the exaggerations of detail inherent in poetic works, they are true historical facts, ele- ments of real life. It is not necessary to have thoroughly studied the chronicles contemporaneous with Philip Augustus to ascer- tain that betrothals between infants who were still in the nursery, and that marriages actually contracted between girls of twelve and boys of fourteen (for example, the marriage of Baldwin VI of Hainault and of Marie of Champagne in 1185), were very common facts in the history of the seigniory. It is also proved by innumerable examples that the seigniorial marriages were usually the result of agree- ments made long before between the possessors of the fief, when the children were still under age, and that these matri- monial agreements were made and unmade to fit the changes and necessities in the general policy of the heads of the seigniories. For girls and boys were then only the figures on a chessboard, so that individual tastes or the particular wishes of the children of the noble family were unknown or were constantly sacrificed to the political and material inter- ests of the house. History, as well as poetry, shows us that fathers and suzerains were autocrats, who imposed decisions. THE NOBLE DAME 363 It is sufficient in this regard to allude to the numerous cases in which Philip Augustus made use of his absolute right in marrying his vassals, or in preventing them from marrying against his will. In history, as in the epics, the girls were all married young, willingly or unwillingly, and widows were not left time to weep for their husbands, inasmuch as it was imperative that the fief should be managed by a man; so that in those feudal amours sentiment had no part. "Why be astonished, then, at the extreme easiness of divorces and at the strange vicissitudes in the careers of many of the noble dames? From the natural trend of things they themselves acquired the habit of changing masters. To have three or four hus- bands was a minimum. The slightest motive, the least physical defect, a simple illness, might cause a man to repu- diate a woman ; but the documents justify the assertion that many of the separations were divorces by mutual consent. The church vainly attempted to impose its veto ; it was over- ruled, obliged to close its eyes. And yet the principle of the indissolubility of marriage is said to have had the force of law in that catholic society! Plain deception! Another very rigorous ecclesiastical rule, that which forbade the mar- riage of blood relations even in the most distant degree of blood relationship, gave all the facilities that these change- able temperaments required. And, thanks to the complicity of the clerics, marriages were broken as easily as they were entered. The great circulation of the women and fiefs through noble society and, because France was then fecund, the many chil- dren of these marriages had as their result the inextricable entangling of rights or claims to seigniorial domains. Each husband bore the feudal titles of his wife, and kept them after a divorce. On the other hand, the joint heirs of the paternal power were named like their father. The complica- tion turned to chaos, even for contemporaries. One of the heroes of the fourth crusade, "William of Champlitte, had in 1196 married Alix, lady of Marche. She died, and before the year passed William was married to Elizabeth of Mont-Saint-Jean, widow of Aimon of Marigny, by whom she had four sons. In 1200, William and Elizabeth 364 , SOCIAL FRANCE were divorced, and each married for the third time — William, an Eustachia of Courtenay, another widow, and Elizabeth, Bertrand of Saudon. The latter was also a widower and brought to his wife six sons, not counting the daughters, negligible quantities. William of Champlitte died in 1210, and his widow Eustachia, in her third marriage, became the wife of William, Count of Sancerre. She lost her third husband. Did she marry a fourth? The documents do not say; but such a case was common enough. From what took place in a. single family during a period of fifteen years, one can imag- ine the infinite confusion which entire France presented. The condition of woman and of marriage may best be seen from the details of certain episodes in which the fiction of reality sometimes surpasses the imagination of romance. The count of Boulogne, Matthew of Alsace, married three times; and died in 1172, leaving only two daughters, Ida and Mathilda. Ida, the elder, was only twelve years old, and until her marriage her uncle, Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, was legally vested with the administration of her fief. A noble heiress was not only under the power of her guardian; she was dependent on the high sovereign of the seigniory, whose consent was necessary to her marriage. But the county of Boulogne depended on three suzerainties — Flanders, England, and France. Louis VII and Henry Plantagenet demanded that Philip of Alsace consult them regarding the choice of a husband. It was a difficult situa- tion. To please one of the kings was the surest way of dis- pleasing the other. The guardian escaped the dilemma by keeping the fief and the heiress. At twenty, Ida was not ^ yet married, which was an unusual situation. But this sys- tem of delay could not last very long : the vassals and subjects of the county of Boulogne would not consent to remain without a chief. Philip of Alsace gave his niece to Gerard III, count of Gueldre, a well-chosen personage, because he was neither the vassal of France nor of England; he did not owe homage to either of the two kings (1181). But he did not possess the heiress or her dowry long, as he died within a year. His widow immediately left Gueldre and THE NOBLE DAME 365 returned to Boulogne, being obliged to employ main force in carrying away the jewels and other objects of value which Gerard had given her. Everything had to begin over, Ida, with her inheritance, was much wooed. In 1183, when she was twenty-two, Philip of Alsace married her to a German, Berthold VI, duke of Zahringen, who was sixty. She followed him to his estates in Suabia, leaving Boulogne under the administration of the count of Flanders. For three years her subjects did not hear of her. In 1186, she returned to them, a widow for a second time; but, contrary to the rule, she retained her free- dom for four years. The historian, Lambert of Ardres, main- tains that she used it indiscreetly.^ The cure perhaps had an evil tongue, but, as he is the only one who tells us of the matrimonial adventures of the countess of Boulogne, we are forced to follow his account, which is not lacking in interest. The county of Boulogne bordered on the county of Guines ; and the son of the count of Guines, Arnoul, — a noble of good appearance, a great frequenter of the tournaments, a friend of minstrels and scholars, whom he showered with gold, — made an impression on the young widow. He was, too, the preferred candidate of Philip of Alsace, who held the county of Guines in strict dependence on the Flemish seigniory. For the same reason he was unsuitable to the king of France, who was an enemy of the count of Flanders: Philip Augus- tus brought forward Renaud of Dammartin, a brilliant knight, as rival. It is true that Renaud was married, but in that epoch that sort of obstacle did not hinder any one. He hastened to renounce his wife, Marie of Chatillon; and, be- coming free, he entered the lists a little late, without doubt, for Ida had already conferred with Arnoul, who pleased her, and was almost engaged. Nevertheless, she yielded to the entreaties of her eousin-german, Isabella of Hainault, queen of France, and consented to enter into a conference with Renaud of Dammartin. She presently agreed that she would marry him, if he obtained the consent of her guardian. But Philip of Alsace absolutely refused to give his niece to one connected with the king of France. In consequence of this opposition, Ida returned to the side of Arnoul of ' " Giving herself over to all the delights of the secular world." 366 SOCIAL FRANCE Guines. She had many secret interviews with him, and even went with him to Ardres to attend the funeral services of a messenger whom she had sent to him. Arnoul wished, by all means, to keep her and to marry her at once. She con- vinced him that this was impossible, and formally promised to return to him. But Renaud, who had renounced his wife for a better, would not resign himself to losing everything. He kept a close watch on the countess of Boulogne and his rival, and saw that he must take fortune by the forelock. With a few confederates he carried Ida away from the castle where she was staying; carried her in one dash to Lorraine and shut her up in the castle of Rista. How vigorously did the victim of the abduction resist? The cure of Ardres does not satisfy our curiosity. In any case, Ida sent Arnoul a secret message from her place of captivity, complaining of the violence which she had suffered and promising to be hi8 wife, if he would come and free her. Arnoul did not hesi- tate. He set out with two knights. His preparations, how- ever, had taken some time. In the interval Renaud succeeded in winning back the heart of the prisoner and obtaining her pardon, so that she revealed the whole plot to him. When Arnoul and his friends arrived at Verdun, the bishop of the town, whom Renaud and Philip Augustus had attached to their cause, had them seized, chained, and thrown into prison. Renaud married the heiress without further trouble, and returned to France with her to take possession of the county of Boulogne. The protection of Philip Augustus was never gratuitous. In 1192, the new husband had to sign an agree- ment by which he declared himself the liegeman of the king for the people of Boulogne, agreed to surrender Lens and its surroundings, and to pay a relief of seven thousand livres. Thus the noblewoman was a prize over whom suitors dis- puted; whom they carried away from father, guardian, even from husband ! A contemporary of Ida of Boulogne, Stephen, count of Sancerre, carried away an heiress, whom the lord of Trainel had married only a few days before, and made her his first wife. This was the application to marriage of the law that might makes right, which, with all respect to jurists, was the fundamental principle of feudalism. Need one say that in southern France the matrimonial THE NOBLE DAME 367 bond was no stronger and no more respected ? The marriage of Montpellier is a parallel to the marriage of Boulogne. The king of Aragon, Alfonso II, sought the hand of Eudoxia, daughter of the Greek emperor, Manuel Comnenus. His suit was granted, and the princess set out for Spain. But the Aragonese found that his fiancee was very tardy and he had little faith in the Byzantine promises. Eudoxia and the Greeks of her suite arrived at Montpellier, and there, to their surprise, learned that the king of Aragon, losing pa- tience, had married Sancia, a daughter of the king of Castile ! During this time the Emperor Manuel died. What was go- ing to become of his daughter, stranded at the other end of the Mediterranean? William VIII, lord of Montpellier, pro- posed marriage to her: an alliance with the imperial family, eventual rights to the throne of Constantinople, was a beauti- ful dream for a petty baron ! Eudoxia, little flattered, hesi- tated at first ; then, at the entreaties of the kings of Aragon and Castile, she yielded. The marriage was solemnized in 1181, on the express condition that the first child, whether boy or girl, should inherit the seigniory of Montpellier. Five years later William VIII and Eudoxia had had enough of each other. It appeared that the Grecian princess was disagreeable, haughty, capricious, and extravagant; she had only one daughter; and her brother, Alexis II, was de- throned, which defeated the ambitions of the seignior of Montpellier. The latter then thought of repudiating his wife, and all the more, as on a visit to Alfonso II, at Barcelona, he had fallen in love with a relative of the queen of Aragon, Agnes of Castile. In 1187, William VIII left Eudoxia and married Agnes, " in order to have sons," he declared in the preamble to his marriage contract. The church held the proceeding improper and the reason insuflQcient. The bishop of Maguelonne, John of Montlaur, addressed a complaint to the pope, who ordered the seignior of Montpellier to take back Eudoxia, under pain of excom- munication. William, however, brought Agnes to Mont- pellier, and Eudoxia resignedly shut herself up in the mon- astery of Aniane. In spite of the pontifical prohibition, seven years passed and Agnes continued to reign, while William, having become the father of several sons, persistently sought, 368 SOCIAL PRANCE with the dissolution of the first marriage, the approbation of the second from Rome. In 1194, Pope Celestine III finally- issued the canonical sentence which annulled the marriage of Agnes. It was labor lost! Celestine III passed away; and his successor. Innocent III, better disposed toward the lord of Montpellier, who was an enemy of the Albigenses and of heresy, took him under his protection. In making a show of orthodoxy, William VIII without doubt hoped to induce the pope to close his eyes to the irregularity of his marriage with Agnes, and to legitimatize his son. Innocent III de- layed until 1202 in condemning what the church could not tolerate. William died a short time afterwards, leaving the seigniory to the eldest of the six sons of Agnes, William IX, and making monks or canons of the others : Marie, the daugh- ter of Eudoxia, found herself disinherited in favor of the male children of the second marriage, even though she was, by virtue of the agreement, the legal heir to the fief. Sad destiny, that of Marie! Her father and stepmother, Agnes, in order to get rid of her, married her at twelve years of age (1194) to the viscount of Marseilles, Barral of Baux. Shortly afterward the viscount died, leaving his wife an in- heritance, of which William and Agnes shamelessly appropri- ated a large share. In 1197, they again married the widow, now fifteen years of age, to the count of Commignes, Bernard IV, a notorious debauchee, who had already gotten rid of two legal wives. He was not long in repudiating her, as the preceding wives, and marrying a fourth, despite the opposi- tion of Innocent III. And, sadder stiU, the deserted Marie found herself robbed of her inheritance by the son of the very Agnes who had supplanted her mother! Touched by this succession of misfortunes, the citizens of Montpellier, who were good Catholics and unwilling to remain under the domination of a bastard condemned by the pope, decided to recognize the right of the daughter of Eudoxia. They also hoped to obtain from a new master the full and complete recognition of their commune. They aimed, then, to give Marie a third husband, capable of defending her, and they proposed her to the king of Aragon, Peter II, whose wife had died. Marie was, it appears, decidedly unattract- ive ; but the king eagerly accepted the unique opportunity of THE NOBLE DAME 369 adding to Catalonia a neighboring fief which brought in a large revenue. He married the heiress of Montpellier on the fifteenth of June, 1204, without first taking the precaution of annulling her marriage with the count of Comminges, and he swore " on the Holy Gospel of God that he would never separate from Marie, that he would never have another wife as long as she lived, and that he would always be faithful to her." The immediate consequence was the downfall of the son of Agnes — the bastard "William IX, whom Peter of Aragon succeeded, agreeable to the general wish of the in- habitants of Montpellier, When he was in possession of the seigniory his attitude changed. Never was an oath of matrimonial fidelity more outrageously violated. Soon he thought of nothing but a divorce, and treated the poor Marie as Philip Augustus had treated Ingeborg. The correspondence of Innocent III shows how persistently the king of Aragon sought the dissolution of his marriage. Persecutions and humiliations of every sort obliged Marie to leave Montpellier and seek refuge at Rome with her one protector. There she died in 1213, venerated as a saint. Rumor said that her husband poisoned her. It is certain that the news of her death left him very indifferent. "Whether the barons of France lived at home or in the distant colonies, which the crusades created in the Orient, their habits did not change; the feudal regime, which they transplanted by conquest, produced the same results every- where. In 1190, during the siege of Acre, Sibyl, the queen of Jerusalem, and her two daughters, died. Guy of Lusignan, her husband, thereby legally lost the royalty which he had held from her, and the eighteen-year-old sister of Sibyl, Isabella, became the rightful heiress. But she was married to a noble of ordinary lineage, Onfroi of Toron. Could this petty seignior, who had neither men nor money, be allowed to wear the crown of Jerusalem? The great vassals of the kingdom and the dowager queen, Marie Comnenus, simply decided that Isabella must be parted from her husband and marry one 370 SOCIAL FRANCE of the heroes of the crusade, Conrad, marquis of Montferrat. This was the reverse of the usual situation: here it was not the wife, but the husband, who was to be sacrificed to po- litical interests. Marie Comnenus ordered Albert, archbishop of Pisa, legate of the Holy See in the Orient, to nullify the marriage, giving as the reason the fact that Isabella was only eight years old when she married Onfroi. Called before the tribunal of the legate, the latter declared that in reality Isabella had been betrothed to him at eight years of age, but that on her ma- jority she had ratified the engagement and that the marriage had become effective three years since. How could this reply be met? In canon law the argument was unassailable. One of the barons who was present at the investigation rose up: " The truth is," he cried, " that Queen Isabella never gave her consent to this marriage. ' ' This contradiction, according to feudal custom, should have resulted in a judicial duel, but Onfroi alienated the sympathies of everybody by refusing to fight with his contradictor: he must be in the wrong, since he did not dare to face the judgment of God. If, however, the church was to annul the marriage, it was imperative for Isabella to declare that she had never con- sented to it. But the young woman, who loved her husband, at first refused to make the declaration. During the siege of Acre she occupied a tent near that of Onfroi. Many barons, among others the count of Champagne, visited her, to persuade her to make the necessary sacrifice; in case of resistance they would have to use force. Hearing the noise which was going on in the tent of his wife, Onfroi said to his companion, a noble of Champagne, Hugh of Saint- Maurice, " Sire Hugh, I fear that those who are with the queen will compel her to say something diabolical." At that moment a knight entered and cried, " They are carrying away your wife." Onfroi instantly rushed out and ran after her: " Madame," he said, " you are not on the road which leads home; return with me." Isabella did not reply, and with bowed head continued on her way. This was the sepa- ration in fact, in anticipation of the legal separation. By force of entreaty Isabella came to accept the idea of a new union. Before the legate of the pope she deposed THE NOBLE DAME 371 that she had never willingly lived with Onfroi since reaching her majority. Immediately the nullification of the marriage was pronounced. When the barons of the kingdom of Jerusa- lem came to swear the oath of fidelity, she said to them : ' ' You have separated me from my husband by force ; but I do not wish him to lose the property he possessed before marrying me. I will give him Toron, Chateaimeuf, and the other properties of his ancestors. ' ' Indeed, that was little enough. The marriage of Conrad of Montferrat and Isabella was performed by a relative of Philip Augustus — ^the martial bishop of Beauvais, Philip of Dreux. But Onfroi was not resigned: he complained to all-comers, demanding that they give him back his wife. He had many adherents in the lower ranks of the Christian army. "It is a crime/' they said, *' thus to separate a couple by force." And certain prel- ates of an independent mind, like the archbishop of Canter- bury, shared this point of view. The barons were obliged to justify themselves, so one of them said to Onfroi: " Seignior, do you wish us all to die of hunger for your sake? It is much better to give the queen a courageous hus- band, who knows how to direct the army and enables us to live cheaply." History does not tell us whether the *' divorcee " submitted to this argument. Two years later, April 28, 1192, Conrad of Montferrat fell under the blow of an assassin, and Isabella found her- self the widow of a second husband, during the life of the first. The barons of Jerusalem did not for a moment think of asking whether she would take back Onfroi. Their choice had fallen on the count of Champagne, Henry I; and, after eight days of widowhood (three days, according to certain reports), Isabella was married to the new suitor. The chroniclers, accordingly as they upheld the cause of Philip Augustus or that of Richard the Lion-Hearted, relate the story in different ways, but they agree on the point that it was necessary to impose the third marriage on Isabella by force. In September, 1197, Henry of Champagne, king of Jeru- salem, was in his turn the victim of a tragic destiny. One evening he fell, how is not known, from a window of the castle of Acre and was killed. It appears that Isabella had 372 SOCIAIj FRANCE grown fond of him, for, when she learned of the accident, " she left the castle in distraction, uttering cries, lacerating her face and her nails, tearing her hair and her clothing, which fell about her in shreds to her waist. A few steps and she met the men who were carrying the corpse : she threw herself on the remains of her husband and covered them with kisses." In the name of church and of morals. Innocent III at- tributed the death of Henry of Champagne to the just anger of Grod. " In the Orient," he wrote, " a woman has been twice in succession delivered from an impure union; and those illicit marriages have obtained the assent and even pub- lic approbation of the clergy of Syria. But God, in order to frighten those who might seek to imitate such a detestable example, has promptly and in a glorious manner avenged his violated laws! " What power had the anathemas of bishops and of popes against the habits and covetousness of the mighty? Never did they exempt woman from being a victim of the brutal whims of a master or of the cool calcu- lations of political or personal interest, which prevented her from being independent. If, then, love was excluded from marriage, it was obliged to seek compensation elsewhere. Was it found in conjugal unfaithfulness? The chansons de geste generally present the married woman as virtuous, very attached, and devoted to her husband: from which it must be concluded that adultery was uncommon in the feudal world. But we must not make too much of the statements of writers. Do we believe them to-day when they assert that there is adultery everywhere? The authors of our old epics who did not give it any place were perhaps no nearer the truth. Let us only say that, in regard to the virtue of the ladies of the manors, the informa- tion furnished by chroniclers, moralists, and satirists does not absolutely agree with that of poets, entertainers, and the flat- terers of the barons upon whom they depended. And, as if to make up for the absence of love in the legal associations of the two sexes, the middle ages worked out a very fine solu- tion: outside of marriage knights and ladies contracted mystical unions, where the heart and spirit were, in theory, alone concerned. History proves, it is true, that in many THE NOBLE DAME 373 cases they did not hold to the ideal and that practice vio- lated the theory, A passionate admirer of the middle ages, Leon Gautier, himself had to admit that feudalism had " a deplorable in- fluence " on marriage and domestic ties. One may judge the soundness of his conclusions from the preceding pages. CHAPTER XII COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY If it is true that, in the time of Philip Augustus, the largest part of the French nobility presents itself to us in the same guise as in the epoch of the first crusade, an elite class does appear imbued with new ideals and sentiments. " Courtesy " appeared. Courtesy is taste for the things of the spirit, respect for woman and for love. Courtesy was born in southern France. The troubadours of this country taught to a nobility occupied with wars and piUage the refinements of chivalrous love and the worship of woman. The epic of northern France knew only three powerful motives for human actions: religious sentiment, with a hate of everything not Christian; feudal loyalty, or devotion to a suzerain or the chief of a band; and, finally, love for battle and booty. The lyric poetry of the first troubadours sang entirely of war, with those savage accents which one still finds in Bertran de Born. In the decline of the twelfth century there appeared in the poems of the south the chivalrous lord, whose first desire was to please the lady whom he chose to be the sole inspiration of his thought and his action. He tried to merit her love by rendering himself illustrious at war or in a crusade, and by showing all the qualities and virtues of nobility. This " courteous " love was incompatible with the feudal marriage, which was an affair of personal interests and of politics. The chosen lady was the suzerain of the knight who, on bended knees with his hands joined in hers, swore to devote himself to her, to protect her, and to serve her faithfully till death. As a sym- bol of investiture she gave him a ring and a kiss. It seems that this idealistic marriage was sometimes blessed by a priest. History shows that in the seigniorial courts of the south, at least in the most polished and lettered ones, the courteous marriage was practised in fact and public opinion encouraged it. 374 COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY 375 The epoeh of Louis VII and Philip Augustus was justly marked by a magnificent efflorescence of this lyric poetry of the troubadours, so interesting in the variety of its forms, its rather limited but very live inspiration, and its delicate and subtile analysis of moral sentiments. There is a great contrast between the brutal heroism of the son of Garin and the wholly psychological poetry of a Bernard of Ventadour. To quote from this latter: " To sing is worth hardly anything if the song does not come from the heart, and the song cannot come from the heart if there is no delicate profound love there. It is not in the least marvelous that I sing more than all other singers, for my heart turns more toward love; body and soul, knowledge and sense, force and power, I have put them all into love. In good faith and without deceit I love the best and most beautiful; the heart sighs, the eye weeps, for I love too much; and I have done myself harm by it. What can I do since love holds me ? Love has placed me in a prison which no other key than mercy can open. And I have found no mercy. When I see her I tremble with fear as fire in the wind; I have no more reason than a child, so much am I troubled by love. And may a woman have pity on a man who is thus conquered." This poetry enchanted the court of Raymond Y, count of Toulouse; of William VIII, lord of Montpellier, of the Countess Ermengarde and the Viscount Aimeri at Narbonne, of the counts of Rodez, the lords of Baux in Provence. Not all the poets were sons of serfs, like Bernard of Ventadour, or simple professional players, like Peyre Vidal. There were also noble castellans like Bertran de Born, high barons like Raimbaud of Orange, sons of kings like Alfonso of Aragon and Richard of Aquitaine. Of five hundred troubadours whose names we know half at least, it seems, belonged to the noble class. Courteous customs spread quickly in northern Spain and northern Italy — countries which practised the same ethics as Languedoc, Aquitaine, and Provence. Little by little they gained the French regions to the north of the Loire, France properly so-called, the residence of the Capetians, Normandy and the British Isles, the domain of the Plantagenets, and finally Champagne and Flanders. The epic itself gains from the sweetness of the new senti- 376 SOCIAL FRANCE ments. At the beginning of a martial song, like Girart de Boussillon, a mystic marriage is celebrated between Girart and the young princess, destined for King Charles Martel. The poem Guillaume de Dole replaces the recitals of battles for the descriptions of chases, tournaments, and pleasures of the court, and puts in the first place the love of an emperor of Germany for a beautiful Frenchwoman. The romances of adventure of the ' ' Arthurian ' ' cycle, or the cycle of the Round Table, supplanted in the favor of the Plantage- nets, the Capetians, and the courts of Flanders and Cham- pagne, the war-song of the type af Garin. Christian of Troyes of the reign of Louis VII and Raoul of Houdenc under Philip Augustus employed the fashionable love epic where chosen knights realized the ideal of prowess and gal- lantry. In Tristan et Iseult, Erec, Cliges, Lancelot, I vain, Perceval, and MSraugis the hero sought the hand of a young girl with that exalted constancy which triumphs over all obstacles. The analysis of sentiment was sometimes as re- fined as in the poems of less subtile troubadours. The noble auditors of these romances (quite as long as the chansons de geste) had indeed a much keener spirit and a more delicate sentiment than their fathers. They understood ideal love and became interested in the intimate conflicts of the heart. Imitation of the troubadours then brought about a French poetic enthusiasm; the minstrels of the north adopted most of the forms of southern poetry: the chansons, properly so- called, the tengon^s or argumentative dialogues, and the jeu parti, another form of poetic contest. This borrowed lit- erature, in which so many of the contemporaries of Philip Augustus distinguished themselves, — as the castellan of Coucy, Audefroi of Arras, Conon of Bethune, Gace-Brule, Hugh of Berze, Hugh of Oisy, and John of Brienne, — dis- placed a more original and more savory lyric style which sprang from the soil of northern France: the motets, ron- deaux, lays, and pastoral poems of the twelfth century. Many of these imitators of poetry belonged to the nobility. In this seigniorial society, which now began to polish and define itself, history uncovers new elements. First, the educated woman, herself a patron of letters, was no longer an exception in the chateaux. The great COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY 377 ladies of the north seemed ambitious to rival the famous countess of Die (Beatrice of Valentinois), the hardy, pas- sionate poetess of Provence. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine; her daughter, Marie of France, countess of Champagne and the inspiration of Christian of Troyes; Blanche of Navarre, mother of Thibaud le Chansonnier; and lolande of Flanders, to whom was dedicated the romance Guillaume de Palerne, attracted and pensioned poets. At Troyes, at Provins, and at Bar brilliant gatherings of knights and ladies were held, where questions of gallantry and the casuistry of love were discussed. Toward 1220, there came out a code of courteous love, turned into Latin by Andre le Chapelain. The judg- ments of the " courts of love ^' which he cites to the number of about twenty, although not resting upon actual fact, were yet not purely imaginary. They exhibit a singular state of mind, judging from the medley one finds in them of immoral theories and right precepts for the softening of customs and social intercourse. In the high places of feudalism men themselves showed taste for intellectual pleasures, appreciated books and those who made them, and set themselves to write in prose and verse. The counts of Flanders — Philip of Alsace, Baldwin VIII, and Baldwin IX, the first Latin emperor — formed a dynasty of well-lettered men. Philip of Alsace imparted to Christian of Troyes an Anglo-Norman poem, from which the latter drew his famous tale Perceval. Baldwin VIII had Nicolas of Senlis translate into French a beautiful Latin manuscript which he possessed, the Chronique de Turpin. Baldwin IX exhibited a particular taste for history and his- torians. He had collected summaries of all the Latin chronicles relative to the Occident, a sort of historical corpus, and had them put into French. Surrounded by players, both male and female, whom he paid generously, he himself culti- vated poetry, even Provencal poetry. In Auvergne the dauphin, Robert I, collected books which constituted a library entirely composed of writings relating to the heretical sects, which caused doubt about his orthodoxy. The petty lords imitated the great. One of the first trou- veres who introduced southern lyric poetry into the north was a noble of Cambrai, Hugh of Oisy. Conon of Bethune, 378 SOCIAL FRANCE in the lay which he dedicated to the third crusade, curiously jumbled the lover 's regrets with the religious sentiments which impelled him to the Holy Land. Indeed, the crusader sang less to God than to his lady: " Alas, Love ! What a cruel leave I must take from the best one who was ever loved and served! May the good God restore me to her, as surely as I leave her with sorrow. Alas, what have I said? I am not leaving her. If the body goes to serve our Lord the heart remains entirely in her power. On to Syria, sighing for her." It is, indeed, a long cry from the chanson de Boland to this; the wild enthusiasm of the barons of the first crusade is well calmed. The noble warriors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries left to their chaplains or the monks who followed the army the task of relating the exploits of Christian chivalry, and this is how the crusaders of the time of Philip Augustus wrote in good prose and in brief, picturesque language the description of the great events in which they had taken part. A baron of Champagne, Lord Geoffrey of Villehardouin ; a petty knight of Picardy, Robert of Clary; and a prince of Flanders, Henry of Valenciennes, who became emperor of Constantinople, described the fourth crusade for us. The type of this noble, civilized and softened by the be- ginning of a literary culture, is Baldwin II, count of Guines, of whom Lambert of Ardres has left us in his chronicle the curious portrait which we have before had occasion to men- tion.^ This baron was not only occupied with his dogs, his falcons, and his concubines, but, like his suzerains, the counts of Flanders, he had intellectual tastes. He lived surrounded by clerks, savants, and theologians, of whom he was very fond and with whom he was ever in argument: " The clerics had taught him more things than were necessary, and he passed his time questioning them, in making them talk, and in puzzHng them with his objections. He coped with masters of arts, as well as with doctors of theology; so well, indeed, that his interlocutors listened with enthusiasm, crying : * What a man ! We ^Chapter IX. ^ COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY 379 cannot but overwhelm him with praises, for he says wonderful things. But how can he, being neither a cleric, nor an educated man, under- stand literature in this way ? ' " He attracted to his court one of the great scholars of the land, Landri of Waben ; had him translate the Canticles into the vernacular, and often made him read passages from it, ** in order to comprehend its mystic virtue." Another scholar, Onfroi, translated for him fragments of the Gospels and the life of Saint Anthony ; these texts were explained to him and he grasped them. Master Godfrey put into French for him a Latin work treating of physics. The Latin gram- marian, Solin, author of the Polyhistor, a sort of potpourri of science, history, and geography, was translated and read in his presence by one of the celebrities of Flanders, the cleric Simon of Boulogne, one of the authors of the romance Alexandre. The biographer of Baldwin of Guines was astonished at the number of manuscripts which the count had collected in his library: " He had so many and he knew them so well, that he would have been able to compete with Augustine in theology, with Denis the Areopagite in philosophy, with Thales of Milet * in the art of telling droll stories. He could have demonstrated to the most celebrated players his knowledge of chansons de geste and tales. For his libra- rian he had a layman, Hasard of Audrehem, whom he himself trained." Finally, a work, the nature of which the chronicler forgot to explain, was composed at the chateau of Ardres, at the instigation and under the eyes of the count, by a cleric, Mas- ter Walter Silens: "After his name, the book was called the Livre du silence, and it gained for its author the recognition of the master, who over- whelmed him with horses and vestments." Though hyperbolic, this praise is not immaterial to history. Feudalism here appears in a new aspect. We shall not con- elude that all the nobles of this time became protectors of * Thales for Aristides; an error of the good cur6 of Ardres. 380 SOCIAL FRANCE art, literature, and science. While the elite, partly through conviction, partly through snobbishness, protected literature, became educated and showed to woman — at least, in litera- ture — a respect to which she had not been accustomed, the majority of lords loved only war and pillage. The cultured noble class and the brutal violent herd were to live side by side for a long time to come, but it is already a curious sight to see a part of the feudal world trying to break away from its traditions of barbarism and making an effort to trans- form itself. CHAPTER XIII PEASANTS AND BURGHERS At the time of Philip Augustus and during the greater part of the middle ages properly so-called — ^that is, to the end of the thirteenth century — the social question did not exist, in the sense that it was not raised by any one and that it did not affect public opinion. How could it be other- wise? The opinion of the laboring classes, of those who would gain by a change, could not make itself felt ; they had no spokesman. Besides that, it must be remembered that the middle ages were essentially conservative, and that, as a matter of principle, they did not seek to progress. Its most general and persistent belief was that all innovation was dangerous, bad in itself, and that one must hold to old things, to that which had always existed. The middle age had the cult of tradition: it distrusted everything derogatory to cus- toms and established rights; it was altogether hostile to changes. To be sure, we see some serfs and some burghers working for their emancipation and especially for the im- provement of their lot by pacific or forceful means; but this change, this evolution, or this revolution, was uncon- scious or instinctive on the part of the inferior classes, and was produced by necessity, not by virtue of a principle, a rational conception of the needs of society and the rights of the disinherited. They were not working to realize a theory, a social ideal, but to give satisfaction to their personal desires, whether those of one man or those of a group. Each worked for himself and cared little for his neighbor: this it is which, among other things, explains why the French vil- lages which established the communal regime were not united in vast urban confederations as were the villages of Germany and Italy at certain times. The single theory recognized by all, the single social con- ception in force in the France of the middle ages, was not 381 382 SOCIAL FRANCE a theory of progress or of movement, but quite the contrary: it was the status quo. Men approved the state of things which had existed for a time, which every one believed to be immemorial, and they firmly adhered to it. This social theory, consecrated by tradition, which had been set forth by the publicists of the church from Bishop Adalberon of Laon, contemporary of Hugh Capet, to the preacher Jacques of Vitry, a contemporary of Philip Augustus, could be sum- marized as follows: Society is divided by Divine Will into three classes or castes, each of which has its proper function and which is necessary to the existence and life of the social bodies: the priests, who are charged with prayer and con- ducting mankind to salvation; the nobles, on whom devolves the mission of defending the nation by arms against its ene- mies and causing justice and order to reign; the people, the peasants and burghers, who by their labor nourish the two upper classes and satisfy all their desires for luxuries as well as necessities. It was extremely simple. Sometimes, how- ever, the clergy varied the formula and gave it a meta- morphical turn— such, for example, as that we find in John of Salisbury and Jacques of Vitry. Society was like the human body: the priests were the head and eyes, because they were the spiritual guides of humanity; the nobles were the hands and arms, charged with protecting the others ; the people of the country and the towns formed the legs and feet — that is to say, the base upon which all the rest stood. This is the order of things instituted by Providence, con- sequently necessary and immutable. There is nothing to change. It is entirely exceptional that from time to time some hardy spirit dares to conceive of other things. Recall the preacher of the beginning of the thirteenth century, whom we mentioned above (Chapter VIII). He wished that the nobles and wealthy burghers could be eliminated from society, — the nobles in so far as they were brigands, the bourgeoisie in so far as they were usurers, — since both did nothing and were detrimental to the rest ; so that only priests and laborers, those who worked spiritually and manually, remained. This is an individual fancy, and these fancies were very rare. General sentiment knew only the theory of the three castes; those who prayed, those who fought, and PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 383 those who nourished and clothed the other two. All was thus harmoniously ordained, and the middle age condemned those who would derange this harmony. It did not comprehend them and considered them enemies of society. Only a few preachers and satirists from time to time took the liberty of saying that practice did not correspond very closely to the theory ; that the three bodies did not accommodate themselves to their tasks as they should : that the priests left the domain of prayer too freely, neglected the services, and preached too little by their example ; that the nobles, the soldiers, in- stead of confining themselves to repelling the enemy and policing the land, thought only of fighting amongst them- selves and of trampling the feeble under foot; that, finally, the people of the country paid too many tithes to the clergy, and that the people of the towns were too much inclined to seek emancipation from the seigniorial yoke and to en- croach on the rights and properties of churchmen. Evi- dently, all the wheels of this social mechanism did not revolve as they should and as the theory intended, and all was not perfect in this world of feudalism and the church. But the middle ages had no thought that these fundamentals could be changed, that this hierarchy could be injured, or that the lower classes for instance had not been made ex- clusively to work for the benefit of the other two. Every- thing was well regulated, because it was ruled by God. The vices and disorders in the operation of society came solely from the feebleness or the pride of men: all would be well if each one conscientiously fulfilled his duty, confined himself to his task, and did not seek to leave his class. Here is the first reason, a general reason, why the true middle age — the period which preceded the fourteenth cen- tury — did not know of the social question: it was not on principle occupied with improving the moral and material conditions of the common people. It held to the universally accepted dogma of the necessary and divine immutability of society. Another reason, which we have already tacitly indicated above, was that the only opinions which were declared and known were those of the privileged classes. But these classes did not only not comprehend the utility of a change, but 384 SOCIAL FEANCE were even indifferent to the miserable lot of the wretched third class. They were more than indifferent: they despised the peasants and burghers while they exploited them, and their contempt often turned into hostility. Disdain, even disgust, on the part of the proprietor and seignior for the cultivator and artisan whose work supported him is one of the most characteristic features of the middle age. To the knight or baron the peasant, serf or free, was only a source of revenue, of income: in time of peace they op- pressed him at home as much as they could with imposts and corvees; in time of war in foreign territories they pil- laged, murdered, burnt, trampled upon him, in order to inflict the greatest possible destruction upon the adversary. It was of this that war consisted. The peasant was a creature to exploit at home, and to destroy abroad, and nothing more. The burgher was also regarded as a source of revenue. He was spared a little more because he stood together with many others behind walls. He was less of a prize and succeeded better in defending himself. On their side, the nobles had need of the products of his industry and trade. They com- menced also to understand that there was a profit for the seignior in facilitating the development of towns. When the burgher was rich, and they could not extract money from him by imposts or brutal force, they borrowed from him; they used him as a banker, whom they repaid partially or not at all. All of which did not prevent the noble from despising the burgher and from pillaging and burning the towns, if war furnished an occasion for it. This is how feudalism looked upon and treated the villein ; this is the bald truth. It is reflected very accurately in lit- erature. If one opens no matter what chanson de geste of the time of Philip Augustus, more than anything else one observes the peasant and burgher playing the role of victim. Descriptions of pillaging and burning of country and town abound. And there is not a word of pity for the peasants whose houses and crops are burned and who are massacred by hundreds or carried away with feet and wrists in bonds; for the women tortured by the soldiers, for burning cities, for despoiled merchants, or for the common people of the feudal armies, the worthless prisoners who were mutilated PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 385 or murdered in cold blood after the battle : all this is normal, is right; it is the natural course of things. The inferior classes are not only victimized; they are dis- graced. It is clear that in the eyes of the noble the villein is a kind of inferior being, wholly despicable, whose life does not count. In our oldest feudal epics, in the Chanson de Eoland, men and things of the lower order do not find a place. This submerged humanity is not worth the trouble of being described: it does not exist. Beginning with the middle of the twelfth century, when the lords willingly or by force granted the people the first franchises and when the first communes were founded, feudal poets were forced to note that the villein existed and lived, but they made an insignificant place for him and mentioned him only to ridi- cule him. But this was hardly true at the time of Philip Augustus; even at the beginning of the thirteenth century, when franchises multiplied and the burghers became more important, their manner of writing and speaking tended to change. In the great majority of minstrels' lays which date from this period contempt for the ' ' villein ' ' is the prevailing sentiment: it expresses itself by means of commonplaces and stereotyped phrases, which are found in abundance. It would be easy to cite some hundreds of passages in all kinds of literature in which the spirit of feudalism exhibits itself in the most brutal form. It was the tradition that the villein could not, even in physique, be anything else than disagreeable to the eyes and different from others. One can- not conceive of him otherwise. He is ugly, repugnant, and grotesque. See how the chanson, Garin le Lorrain, the typical war poem, represents the villein Rigaut: " He had enormous arms and massive limbs, his eyes were sepa- rated from each other a hand's breadth, his shoulders were large, his chest deep, his hair bristling, and his face black as coal. He went for six months without bathing; none but rain water ever touched his face." This villein is, however, a rugged warrior; it is apparent to all the nobles, and for this reason the poet condescends to allow him to play a certain role in battles. He even per- formed so many feats that, as an exception to the rule, it 386 SOCIAL FRANCE was decided to dub him knight. But he is not a knight like others, and we have previously noted the violent and ridicu- lous scene which took place at his knighting and which evoked the laughter of all the nobility. Another description of a villein uses almost the same lan- guage: this is the charming idyl of Aucassiti et Nicollete. Aucassin, lost in the midst of a forest, all at once finds himself in the presence of a peasant: " He was large and marvelously ugly and hideous. He had a huge head, blacker than coal, the space of a palm between his eyes, large cheeks, a great flat nose, large lips redder than Hve coals, long, hideous, and yellow teeth. His clothing and shoes were of cow-hide, and a large cape enveloped him. He leaned on a great club." The morals of the , villein corresponded to his physique. He was both stupid and vicious. He uttered the most enor- mous follies. The author of Miracles de Notre-Dame, Gau- tier of Coincy, a contemporary of Philip Augustus and a holy man, said of the villeins, " They have such hard heads and stupid brains that nothing can penetrate them. " " How could the villein be gentle and free? " we read in Escoufle, a romance of adventure composed before 1214. In the chanson Girart de Boussillon the traitor who delivers the chateau of Roussillon to King Charles Martel is necessarily a villein by birth, and on this occasion the author does not spare a remark to the effect that it is always dangerous to rely on this breed. This, too, is a commonplace in the ehanson de geste. In the poem Girart de Viane, as in most others, villein is synonymous with coward: " Cursed be he who was the first archer; he was a coward and did not dare to come to close range." This contempt of the nobles for the foot-soldiers who were used in the van of all feudal armies shows itself on all occasions. For example, in the poem Gaufrey: " There were sixty thousand knights, not counting the foot-soldiers, of whom no count was taken." These foot-soldiers, these archers, these common soldiers, of whom the poets so willingly make fun, formed the base and value- less element of the army; they were relegated to the out- PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 387 skirts of the camp on the waste lands ; and in action, if they were in the way, the knights unhesitatingly rode over their bodies. Throughout the middle ages the nobles had this habit. They did not wait for the great battles of the Hun- dred Years' War to disgrace and abuse the unhappy foot- soldiers. It would seem that in the romances of adventure of the Breton cycle, in which the nobility appears less ferocious and less gross and talks the language of courtesy, the senti- ment of scornful hostility toward the villein would be milder and more reserved. But here the tone is not sensibly dif- ferent, and, in the poems of Christian of Troyes and of his imitators at the beginning of the thirteenth century, masses of villeins are seen giving way before knights like flocks of frightened beasts. We read in Erec: " The count came to the place. He came to the villeins and threatened them. He held a rod in his hand, and the villeins fell back." And in CUges a noble says to his man: " You are my serf, I am your lord, and I can give and sell you and your body and take your belongings like things which are mine." In ro- mances of the courteous class, the conception of the social order is almost as hard on the peasant as in the martial poems. The burghers or townsmen were no better treated than countrymen. In the eyes of the lords a burgher could only be a drunkard, a thief, and a usurer. So it is that in the lay, Aiol, they represent the butcher Hagenel and his wife Hersent as malicious slanderers. They were feared and detested. " Dame Hersent, wife of a butcher of Orleans, a woman with a large paunch, was a slanderer. Both were natives of Burgundy. When they came to the great city of Orleans they did not have five sous. They were wretched, begging, weeping, dying of hunger; but by their thrift, they profited so much through usury that in five years they had amassed a fortune. They had two-thirds of the town under mortgage; everywhere they purchased ovens and miUs, and displaced honest men." But Dame Hersent, seeing Knight Aiol pass, insulted him on a crowded street, and the knight angrily answered her 388 SOCIAL FBANCE in the same language, " You are hideous and ugly and im- pudent," a whole litany of insults. This is how the feudal bard, who wished to please the nobles, describes the rich burgher, the man who advanced himself by his thrift and who was to constitute a great power in the third estate. If, in place of a villein by birth, he describes a degenerate noble, degraded and transformed into a villein by contact with the lower class, the portrait is no- more flattering. Everything that touches this infamous class is contaminated. One of the comic elements of the song Garin is the courier or messenger Maumel, surnamed Galopin or Tranchebise — the type of the degenerate, naturally a very- bad character, though coming from a good family. This frequenter of taverns loved only gaming and drinking and he lived among the ribalds. Some one went to rouse him in his hovel, to tell him that Duke Begon, his first cousin, needed him and had sent for him, ' ' He my cousin ! ' ' answered the young truant. " I disown him, I do not need so rich a relative. I like the tavern, the joy of wine, and the license which surrounds me better than all the duchies on earth." By paying his expenses at the tavern, however, they per- suaded him to come away. Duke Begon, his cousin, said to him, ' * Where are you from, good friend ? " " From Cler- mont, seignior. I am called Galopin. My brother is Count Joscelin; I am his senior, and one would scarcely doubt it upon seeing me." " I am on bad terms with him," answered Begon. " I, however, recognize that you are my cousin and, if you are willing to stop your follies, I will make you a knight and give you your part of Auvergne." Galopin at these words burst into laughter and said : ' * I would infinitely rather drink and listen to courtesans than have a county; but say what you want of me or I will return to wine." They charged him with a message for the king of France at Orleans. As soon as the mission was fulfilled he went straight to the tavern, where he spent the whole night. Dame Heloise sent for him and said, '' Where do you come from, my friend? " " From the tavern, dame." " God, what a sight! But I have five hundred casks of wine, of which you shall have all you want." '' By the Heart of Saint- Denis," answered Manuel, " I love wine, but I also love PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 389 good company." The lady heard him and laughed " indulgently." We are now informed on the sentiments and actions of the nobles. It remains to learn the feelings of the other privileged class, the churchmen. Two currents must be dis- tinguished here: the ecclesiastical and the feudal. The Christian current is that collection of ideas on the family, the state, and humanity which flowed from the same source as Christianity and which the clergy of the middle ages still professed and could not disavow, in spite of the change which primitive religion had undergone in the ten centuries which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. There always was an ecclesiastical theory on the original equality of men, on their fraternal duties, on the evil of wealth and of power, on the necessity of succoring the poor and the unfortunate, and of protecting the weak against the strong. Clerics of the time of Philip Augustus could not altogether forget that the Founder of their religion had preached the respect of the weak and humble, had exalted poverty, and given the church an essentially democratic basis. Whatever was the depth of the gulf, well-nigh an abyss, which separated the church of the twelfth from that of the first three centuries of our era, the evangelical spirit had not completely disappeared from the mass of Catholic priesthood. In short, however aristocratic certain of its parts had be- come, the clergy of the middle ages was still recruited from all levels of society; it was not closed to the lower classes. By alms and hospitality it continued to fulfil one of its high- est missions, that of relieving human misery: for it bore the whole burden of public charity. The evangelical spirit also found a way of making itself felt in an important part of the monastic clergy: it inspired religious reform. Did it not at the very time of Philip Augustus raise up Francis of Assisi, the apostle of poverty and renunciation, the man who wished to found a new church on charity, on love, on human cooperation, in short on a kind of Christian communism di- rectly inspired by the Gospels and Christ? On the other hand, it must be remembered that the 390 SOCIAL FRANCE church often identified her cause with that of the exploited classes; for it was especially her peasants and her lands which were victims of the brutality and eovetousness of the nobles. In defending them, in excommunicating the nobles, in creating institutions of peace, it is true that she was de- fending herself and that she was moved by her own interests ; still, by the fact that she fought to diminish oppression and violence, she rendered a service to the unfortunates. Out of this came the indignant Philippics of the preachers against the nobles who lived by brigandage, and their eloquent ap- peals in favor of the peasants and the artisans. But one must also consider another side of the ecclesias- tical life and feeling, for there are other things and other facts which prove that in reality the clerics of the middle ages showed almost as much cruelty to the peasants and burghers as did the men of the sword. In fact, the feudal conception prevailed in the church, which consisted of the priesthood. The sentiments and the acts of the privileged religious aristocracy dominated. This aristocracy, proprietor of considerable lands and enormous numbers of serfs, both male and female, was an integral part of the feudal system. It sought to preserve its rights and revenues; it defended them with jealous harshness, and succeeded all the better be- cause the lands were inalienable. It also harshly exploited the inferior classes: no one has as yet been able to demon- strate that the serfs of the church were better off than those of the lay lords, and it is absolutely certain that the bondage of the church endured for a much longer time than that of the nobles and the king. There were even found some clerics who upheld serfdom, not only as a necessary and legitimate, but as a divine institution. Finally, the famous theory of the three classes had been drawn up by churchmen, repeated century after century in their writings, and maintained by them as though it were the expression of the will of God and of the social law. It is enough to give a page from one of the most intelligent and educated prelates France had known up to the end of the twelfth century — ^the historian, bishop, and philosopher, John of Salisbury, In it we find this metaphor on the social body and its members: PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 391 " I call the feet of the state those who, exercising the humble professions, contribute to the terrestrial progress of the state and its members. These are the laborers, constantly attached to the soil, the artisans who work in wool or wood, iron or brass, those who are charged with the care of maintaining us, those who make the thousands of objects necessary to life. It is the duty of the inferiors to respect their superiors, but these in their turn must come to the aid of those who are below them and devise means of caring for their needs. Plutarch rightly gives the advice to be thoughtful of the humble, that is to say, of that part of the nation which is most numerous, the smaller number always yielding to the greater. Out of this has come the institution of magistrates whose duty it is to protect the lowest of subjects against injustice so that the work of the artisans may procure good shoes for the state. The commonwealth is in some sort unshod when the laborers and artisans are a prey to injustice. There is nothing more shameful for those who conduct the magistracy. When the mass of people are afflicted it is as if the prince suffered from the gout." These are the terms in which clerics speak of social prob- lems when they speak of them at all. This is all that a bishop finds to say in teaching the privileged classes their duty and in advising them not to trample too ruthlessly on the people. Finally, it is well established that, in theory as in fact, the church continued to be hostile to the emancipation of burghers; church lords who freed their burghers were even less numerous than lay lords. They were equally opposed to the liberation of industry and to the erection of bodies of independent handicrafts: observe, for example, what a prolonged resistance an ecclesiastical seigniory like the abbey of Saint-Maixent was compelled to make to secure the sup- pression of the fiscal rights which ground down the artisans of their domain. In fact, churchmen did not have a political economy which was higher or more generous than that of the laity: not only did the bishops and abbots always hinder the communal move- ment — which need not surprise us, since it was almost al- ways directed against the property and the jurisdiction of the church, — but the most authoritative organs of the church, in speaking of the burghers and the communes, used the same insulting and spiteful terms as the feudal poets. To Jacques 392 SOCIAL FRANCE of Vitry they are all usurers, robbers, and, worse still, heretics. " This detestable race of men go directly to their ruin ; none among them, or at least very few, will be saved : they all march with great strides toward hell. How, indeed, could they ever expiate the iniquities and villainies of which they are guilty? We see them all, already singed by hell-fire, seeking the destruction of their neighbors, destroying the cities and other communes which they persecute, and rejoicing at the death of others. Most of the com- munes make desperate war: all of them, men and women, are happy over the ruin of their enemies. . . . The commune is like the lion of which the Scriptures speak, which brutally devours, and also like the dragon which hides itself in the sea and seeks to devour you. It is an animal whose tail ends in a point capable of hurting its neighbor and the stranger, but the multiple heads rear themselves against each other: for in the same commune they envy, slander, supplant, deceive, harass, and destroy each other. Without they have war; within, terror. But what is detestable above every- thing else in these modern Babyions is that there is not a commune where heresy does not find her adherents, her followers, her de- fenders, her believers." We abridge this passage: it is a mixture of the true and the false; but it gives us the spirit of the church and her feeling toward the most evident progress which the popular masses had realized. It is, then, entirely true that the privi- leged classes were hostile to social changes and that the lower classes could count only on their own labor and energies for an improvement of their condition. The peasants led the hardest and most miserable existence. We see them defenseless against the calamities of nature, the victims of brigandage and feudal wars, succumbing under the exploitation of the nobles and the lords of the church: a threefold or fourfold exploitation, because they had at the same time to pay and serve their direct lord, the high suzerain of the province, the cure of the parish and his supe- riors, and in addition suffered the unreasonable demands of the seigniorial officials, the provost and forester, more an- noying and rapacious than the master of the fief. Finally, if the peasant was a serf — and he usually was in most of PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 393 the French provinces at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- tury, — to all this there must be added the shame of servitude, which is an hereditary blemish; the odious and humiliating exactions, the legal disability of marrying, of moving about, and of making wills; and even then we have an inadequate idea of the complexity of the misfortunes and the miseries in which the peasants struggled. This lamentable situation historians and chroniclers con- vey to us indirectly and unconsciously, by implication in the ordinary narration of episodes of brigandage or deeds of war. In reading them one soon divines that they did not clearly see the evil and the sufferings caused by the quarrels and conquests of lords and kings. Clerics who wrote history did not stop at these details, and they have not a word of pity for the victims. It is exceptional for the trouvere, Benedict of Sainte-More, writing the history of the dukes of Normandy in French verse, to state the sad condition of the class of men who labored and suffered to minister to the needs of the clergy and nobility. " It is certain that the preachers and knights have greater abun- dance to eat, and to clothe and shoe themselves, that they Uve more tranquilly and more securely than the laborers who have so much misfortune and sorrow. It is the latter who enable the others to live, who nourish and sustain them; and yet, they endure the severest tempests, snows, rains, tornadoes; they till the earth with their hands, with great pain and hunger. They lead a thoroughly wretched life, poor, suffering, and beggarly. Without this race of men I truly do not know how the others could exist." The preachers in their sermons give us more of the facts. They often forcefully denounced all cruelty, not so much out of compassion and charity, out of pity for the social misery of their auditors, as out of the satisfaction it gave them to condemn the nobility, the military class, the enemies of the church and ravishers of her lands. The clerics, them- selves victims of the brigandage of the knights, defended their property and their cause by speaking boldly of the sufferings of the country people. It is difficult to go further than the preacher Jacques of Vitry, for instance, in a ser- mon addressed to the mighty and the nobles, in which he 394 SOCIAL FRANCE says: " You are ravening wolves, and that is why you shall howl in hell, . . . Everything the peasant has in a year gained by hard labor, the lord wastes in an hour." He did not spare the pilferers of the peasant, " those men who, by their iniquitous exactions and rapaeiousness, despoil and oppress their subjects, who live on the blood and the sweat of the poor." He flayed the masters who took mortmain, those ** robbers of the goods of the dead," with particular vehe- mence. Taking mortmain is nothing less than taking the livelihood of the widow and the orphan! It is homicide; nay, more than that, it is sacrilege. These men outrage the souls of the dead, " Like vultures they feed upon corpses," According to the preacher, the lords did not content them- selves with fleecing the peasant: they jested and practised harsh pleasantries at his expense. "Many say to us when we reproaeh them with taking the poor laborer's eow : ' What is he complaining of, seeing that I left him his calf, and his life has been spared. I have not done him the evil I could have done had I wished. I have taken the bird and have left him the feathers.' Take care, my brethren, that you mock not the Lord God. These peasants have indeed to be your men; you must not oppress them nor cruelly abuse their servitude. The great must be friendly to the small and not make themselves hated. They must not despise the humble, for if these can render service they can also be dangerous." Sage words these, but they moved no one. These invec- tives of the preacher at least prove how profound was the evil. " Everywhere," says he, " one sees the strong op- pressing the weak, and the great devouring the small. ' ' This, briefly, is a description of medieval society. The peasant was the scapegoat of that society. It was chiefly on him that the iniquities and violence, the disorder and general anarchy fell. It seems, then, that the priest when addressing himself to this unfortunate class should, above everything else, have brought them words of sym- pathy, of encouragement, and of consolation. With this in mind, it is illuminating to read an unpublished sermon which Jacques of Vitry wrote for the peasants and laborers, ad agricolas et operarios.^ One is thoroughly imdeceived on ^ Bibl. nat., ms. latin 17509, fol. 124. PEASANTS AND BUKGHERS 395 reading it. There is no evidence of compassionate sympathy in it; not the slightest allusion to the sufferings of country- folk. The preacher begins by telling them that manual la- bor is a good thing, because it is recommended by Holy Writ, and because, without it, the state could not exist. He re- minds them that, as a consequence of Adam's sin, labor was imposed on his descendants as an expiation, and that the Lord said, " Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow." He no doubt thinks that he is paying them a great compliment when he adds : ' ' "When the peasant works the soil with the intention of performing this penitence enjoined on man by the Lord, he deserves as much merit as the cleric who chants all day in church or who keeps the matins at night. ' ' And he closes his preface with the declaration : " I have seen many poor laborers who by their work supported their wives and children; they took greater pains than the monks in their cloisters or the clerics in their churches." After all, this comparison of the wretches who tilled the soil with churchmen was a bold step, for which we have Jacques of Yitry to thank. He thus raised the peasant in his own eyes. Only, one will notice that he does not pity them, that he does not encourage them in enduring their misery. This guide of souls especially sought the correction of their faults ; his sermon is a satire and in it he puts his finger directly on the evil. The principal vice of the peasants is cupidity and avarice: this is what makes them commit so many acts of injustice. He pictures them as losing their souls in order to gain a patch of land. This one encroaches on the field of his neighbor, with the object of taking a few feet from him; another moves the boundaries to his own advantage ; a third allows his animals to graze on a pasture which does not belong to him. He blames them all for not having charitable hearts. Why not permit the beggar to glean after the har- vest in the fields and vineyards? Why not give the poor a small part of their harvests, God's portion? In place of giving their old clothes to the needy they would rather let them rot. And when they hire workmen they treat them badly, pay them poorly or not at all. As for the day la- borers, they likewise have no conscience: when the farmer 396 SOCIAL FRANCE is there they make haste and take care, but when he turns his back they do nothing at all, segnes sunt et otiosi. These reproaches are not those which in reality come clos- est to the heart of churchmen. They had two other much more serious grievances against the peasant: the first was that he was loth to pay his tithe, and that he did not acquit himself as he should of his religious duties. For example, he had not enough respect for the law of Sunday observ- ance. Jacques of Vitry was compelled to speak of it. " Take care that avarice does not lead you into working on Sundays and holidays. You must do no menial work on these days: you must work only for your soul's salvation. You shall neither buy nor sell unless it be necessary for your subsistence on that day; even then you will do better by conducting your business the eve before. There should be no marketing, no business, no sessions of the court on holidays. Even animals should rest. Cart- ing on Sundays is forbidden." But the preacher adds a reservation, which is typical of the time. " Unless you are obliged to labor or harvest, unless the enemy captures and kills the laborers of the fields on week-days and leaves you only Sundays to work in safety; for necessity makes law." But how could any one tell what were holidays? There were so many of them ! The means, answers Jacques of Vitry, is to go regularly to church on Sundays: the priest will tell you of the holidays and which of them are to be celebrated. Unfortunately, there are those among you who are so negli- gent, so barbarous that they rarely set foot inside of a church. These do not know what days are holidays. At most, they discover it when they no longer see the carts in the field or hear the sound of wood-chopping. There are some peasants who not only work on holidays, but, seeing others go to mass, profit by their absence to steal: as there is no one in the fields and vineyards, these marauders plunder the vines and orchards at the expense of their neighbors. These are interesting sidelights on the ethics of the peas- ants of the beginning of the thirteenth century. But why PEASANTS AND BURGHEKS 397 be astonished that these beings, degraded by servitude, daily- oppression, and by perpetual terror, had low morals? One very liberal cleric, who composed the famous Latin poem Eelene et Ganymede, about this time said that peasants were only a species of cattle (rustici, qui pecudes possunt appel- lari). He confesses that, in certain cases, the manner of living and the habits of these wretches were not of a quality to raise them in the estimation of the dominant classes. There is an interesting passage in the treatise of the abbot of Aumone, Philip of Harvengt, on the continence of clerics, in which he states the following fact: " Last year several of our brothers were sent to certain parts of Flanders to attend to some of the business of our church. It was in summer. They saw most of the peasants walking about in the streets and on the squares of villages without a bit of clothing, not even trousers, in order to keep cool; thus naked they attended to their business not in the least disturbed at the glances of passers- by nor by the prohibitions of their mayors. When our brothers indignantly asked them why they went thus naked like animals they answered : * What business is it of yours ? You do not make laws for us.' " And the abbot adds by way of moral : ' * What astonishes me is not the bestial impudence of these peasants ; it is the abso- lutely reprehensible tolerance of those who see them and do not prevent their going about in this way." But the masters of the soil and the seigniory little cared about the fashion in which this human herd lived. The only things which interested them were the services and the money they drew from them. The population, liable to forced labor and taxation, could live just as bestially as it pleased : it suf- ficed if it fulfilled its obligations. No more was demanded. The class of literature which is comic and often indecent, but always full of fact, is, next to sermons, the only his- torical source which informs us with any precision on the material and moral conditions of the peasant. All that one can say is that it is not favorable to him, because it is espe- cially a bourgeois literature, and the burgher of the time 398 SOCIAL FRANCE had the same contempt for the rustic as had the feudal lord. Besides, the narrators generally emphasized only the physical and moral deformities of country-folk. They pictured them as ridiculous and badly formed. See how the author of Aloul treats them: " They have one squint eye and the other is blind. They have a shifty look. They have one good foot and the other twisted. ' ' Their filth was repulsive. A villein, leading some donkeys in Montpellier through the street of the Epiciers, passed before a shop where some varlets were pounding odoriferous herbs and spices in a mortar; he im- mediately fainted, suffocated by the odors to which he was unaccustomed. To bring him back to consciousness nothing more was necessary than to put a shovelful of manure under his nose : at once he recovered, thinking himself in his ele- ment. The moral of the story is that " no one should leave his place." Later, Rutebeuf says, in one of his fables, that the devil did not want the villeins in hell because they smelled too badly. The railleries concerning him are often malicious. They do not even admit that he ate good food. " They were obliged to eat thistles, briars, thorns, and ordinary straw; on Sundays they had hay. One should see them grazing on the fields with the horned cattle, on all fours and wholly naked. ' ' They are disagreeable, always discontented and critical. " Everything displeases them, everything tires them. They cry for good times, but hate the rain. They hate God if He does not do everything they want just as they want it." Their stupidity passes all bounds: for example, that of the villein of Bailleul, whose wife made him believe that he was dead. They were gross and brutal, treating their wives like beasts of burden. One of them, without being angry, dragged his wife by her hair and showered her with blows, on the principle: she must have some occupation while I work in the field; unoccupied she would think of evil things. If I beat her, she will weep the whole day long, which will make the time pass; and, on my return in the evening, she will be the more tender. This agrees perfectly with the theory about women of the authors of fables; she was considered an inferior creature, whom one could beat without giving food. One story literally says: '* God took woman from PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 399 Adam's side; but one bone does not feel blows and has no need of food." However, these savage natures are sometimes interesting. The peasant of literature is not always stupid; he is some- times represented as a jovial, good fellow; clever, insolent even to the mighty, and knowing how to get his revenge. One of the stories tells of a lord who held a full court and free table which caused his avaricious and grumbling seneschal, furious at such liberality, to receive those who presented themselves in a very ill-humor. He addressed an ugly, filthy peasant, who did not know where to seat himself, with gross invective and concluded his remarks by giving him a " buffet " — that is, a slap on the face — and said to him, " Seat yourself at that buffet yonder," the word buffet hav- ing two meanings. Now, the lord had agreed to give a scar- let robe to the person adjudged to be the author of the best farce. Minstrels and storytellers all took their turn. Finally, the peasant, who had succeeded in getting his meal, came up and administered a resounding slap to the seneschal 's cheek. There was great excitement ; the lord ques- tioned the assailant. " My lord," said he, '' listen to me. Just now, when I entered the house, your steward met me. He gave me a hard buffet and spitefully told me to seat my- self at the buffet, adding that he would give it to me. Now that I have eaten and drunk, Sire Count, what would you have me do if not return him his buffet? And here I am ready to give him still another if he is not content with the first." The lord laughed and bestowed the prize on him. Another villein, to whom Saint Peter refused to open Para- dise, under the pretext that it was not made for men of his sort, shows that he had a glib tongue. He earnestly apostro- phized the apostle, reproached him with being harder than stone and with having thrice denied his Master. Saint Paul, who was sent to bring the intruder to reason, was no better received: the peasant called him a horrible tyrant and re- minded him that he had stoned Saint Stephen. Finally, God the Father Himself intervened, and the rustic, without be- ing disturbed, pleaded his cause: " As long as my body lived in the world it led a clean and pure life. I gave of my bread to the poor; I warmed them at my fire ; I let them want neither 400 SOCIAL FRANCE trousers nor shirts. I confessed according to the rule and received your body properly. To him who died under these conditions, they told us from the pulpit, God pardons his sins. You will not lie to me." " Villein," said God, " I submit; your pleading has gained you Paradise. You have been to a good school ; you know how to talk well. ' ' Here the peasant has a fine role. He is also the hero of another story, entitled Constant du Hamel, where he set his head at once against all the authorities of the village and triumphed over those who wished to scoff at him. Our story- tellers have presented no facts more vividly than the two- and three-fold tyranny from which the population of the country everywhere suffered. A villager, Constant du Hamel, had a wife, as beautiful as wise, who was desired by the three petty tyrants of the locality — ^the cure, the provost, and the forester. One day the three suitors met at a tavern and, while drinking, plotted the downfall of the woman who re- sisted them; they combined to destroy her husband. This ingenious plan was the invention of the cure. He commenced the persecution by accusing Constant, in a sermon before the whole congregation, of having married his " commere, " who had been his godmother. He excommunicated him, drove him from the church, and only removed the anathema upon the payment of a sum of seven livres.^ The provost, in his turn, made the unfortunate villager appear before his tribunal, and there a scene was enacted which must often have occurred in actual fact. He com- menced by putting him in chains, and threatened him with something still worse. " You shall be put on the gallows." Then he said to Clugnart, his servant, " Go quickly and say to my seignior that I have my hands on the traitor who stole his wheat." — " Ah! sire provost," cried Constant, " may God help me : I am not guilty. ' ' The provost replied : ' ' That is the stuffing with which you wish to fill me ; the tracks of 1 More than eight hundred francs in our money. One might remark by way of historical comment, that an article of the council of Rouen of 1189 accused the cur6s of scandalously abusing the right which they had of excluding jiarishioners who displeased them, or from whom they wished to make some profit, from the church and the sacraments. The methods employed by the cur6 of the fable were, then, in accordance with well established tradition. PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 401 the grain-thief were traced to your garden." " Seignior," said the villager, " it is my enemies who have charged this crime to me; but, while the truth is being discovered, take my property in order that I may have peace." " And what will you give to my seignior if I set you free? " " Sire, I will give twenty livres."^ " Very well; you may return to your home," In the stories all the provosts are alike: they taxed their subordinates with the same impudence. They are represented as snobbish, avaricious, greedy, harsh towards poor people : one of them, invited to the table of his seignior, secretly made provision for his luncheon on the following day; another replied to a poor woman from whom he had taken two cows: " By my faith, old woman, I will return them to you when you have paid me your share of the many pence hidden in your pot." They were simply brigands. Finally came the forester, ' ' the one who guards the woods of the lord," " very handsome and of a fine carriage and well armed with bow and sword." The forester accused Constant du Hamel of having that night cut three oaks and a beech tree in the forest of the seignior. The innocent man was in- dignant, but the forester menaced him with his naked sword, seized his oxen, and Constant was obliged to pay a hundred sous for the pretended offense. Many historical texts of this period show that the forester was one of the most formidable of seigniorial agents and the most abhorred by the rural people, whom he oppressed with fines. In a letter addressed to one of his friends, Peter of Blois strongly censured him for permitting himself to be associated as clerk of the ac- counts, as secretary to the royal foresters, and for being proud of that position : ' ' You are, then, going to labor at putting into writing the tyrannical exactions of which the poor people are the victims. Know that you will cause the unfortunates, who shall be entered on the list of fines in the circuit of the foresters, to be inscribed on the book of the dead by our Lord." Provosts and foresters, all the agents, functionaries, or tenants of the seignior who oppressed the villagers, were per- haps the most direct cause of their suffering, their most in- tolerable scourge. The preacher, Jacques of Vitry, in his ^ About twenty-four hundred francs in our money. 402 SOCIAL FRANCE sermon ' ' to the nobles, ' ' compared them sometimes to leeches, whom the seignior in his turn pressed to make them disgorge ; sometimes to crows, which circle croaking around a cadaver which the master has plundered, to feed on the remains. And yet that was historical fact. We do not, for a good reason, relate how the wife of Con- stant du Hamel and her servant managed to bring the three persons who had wished to ruin her together in the home of the villager; how they all three found themselves, in a rather light costume, in a cask filled with feathers; and how the peasant, after being completely revenged on his enemies, let them out and set all the dogs in the village on them. What interests us here is not entirely the rare victory of a villein over his persecutors, but the details of the method of op- pression and the portrayal of seigniorial exactions. Let us look at another very much more detailed account, which very probably dates from the beginning of the thir- teenth century: a document entitled Le conte des vilains de Verson. To tell the truth, the tale, if it is not one of them, has some resemblance to the fabliaux, being like very many of them written in lines of eight syllables. It is a poem of two hundred and thirty-five lines, which was found in a register of quit-rents in the Archives of Calvados. It tells us of an insurrection in the village of Verson, which strove to free itself from the corvees and rents by which it was subjected to the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel. The author, hostile to the popular cause, gives only obscure and insignifi- cant details of the revolt, but he gives an interminable list of obligations with which the villeins were burdened. There is no tirade on the sufferings of the rural population which speaks so eloquently as this simple enumeration. At Saint-Jean the vjlleins of Verson had to reap the meadows of the seignior and carry the hay to the manor. Then they had to clean the trenches. In the month of August there was the great corvee, the grain harvest, which had to be carried to the barn. Their own fields were subjected to field-rent: they had to summon the bailiff, who carried their sheaves away in his cart. In September came the swine- tax : if there were eight hogs, they carried the two finest to the lord, who did not choose the poorer, and for each of the PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 403 seven others they paid a denier. At Saint-Denis they paid quit-rent; then the pourpreture — that is, the right of inclos- ing their fields. If they sold a piece of land, the seignior had a right to a thirteenth. At the beginning of winter came a new corvee : they had to prepare the seigniorial land, bring the seed from the barns, and each sow and harrow a piece of land. At Saint- Andre, three weeks before Christmas, they paid the oubUe, a kind of cake, ' ' for the private room. ' ' At Christmas they carried hens to their lord, and, if they did not bring ' ' good and fine ones, ' ' the provost would seize their deposit — for each peasant deposited with the provost a se- curity, which could be seized in case he attempted to evade his obligations. Then the villeins owed the hresage, a tax of two setiers of barley and of nine quarters of wheat. The enumeration continues mercilessly. If the villein of Verson married his daughter outside of the seigniory, he paid three sous; and the author of the list remarks that formerly the villein " took his daughter by the hand and gave her over to his lord." But here, as in most texts, the famous " right of the seignior " is mentioned only as belonging to the customs of a former time. On Palm Sunday they owed the sheep-tithe, and, if the peasants were not able to pay it on that very day, they were at the mercy of the seignior. At Easter they owed a new grain corvee: the seed had to be secured, sown, and harrowed. Then the peasants were obliged to go to the smithy to shoe their horses, for it was the time to go into the woods and cut trees; but in this instance they received pay, a ' ' rich wage, ' ' says the writer : two deniers a day. Finally, they owed the corvee of cartage, the sommage. The last page of the selection is devoted to reminding the peasants that they are subject to the hanalite of the mill and of the oven. The miller may take from them a bushel of grain and a palette of flour, plus a full handful, plus the right of valetage " for the service of portage." Finally, we see the wife of the villein carrying her bread and pies to the common oven. But the baker's wife, often in a bad humor, " is haughty and proud," and the baker himself, sullen. He says that he is not paid a proper amount; swears by the teeth of God that the furnace will be badly heated, that it 404 SOCIAL PEANCE will not make good bread, and that the bread will be poorly- baked and " sour." It would seem that this enumeration of imposts, of eorvees, and the suffering which they brought, should have moved him who described them. On the contrary, he is bitter and hostile. " Go and make them pay," he says. '' They ought to pay well. Go, take their horses ; take both cows and calves, for the villeins are felons. ' ' And his last word is this, ' ' Sire, know that under heaven I do not know of a meaner people than the villeins of Verson." Feudalism was not content with oppressing the peasant: it boasted of its own excesses, and did not realize that its victims would attempt to throw off the yoke. The peasant, however, was everywhere obliged to resign himself to his r- miserable condition, like the beast which lives and dies where it is fastened. He often attempted to escape, to change his lot, and he went at it in three different ways: he fled from the seigniory and took refuge in a neighboring fief; he resisted the impost, rebelled, and by force won his partial or total emancipation; or, finally, he bought exemp- tions and privileges from his seignior, he peacefully obtained a charter of rights. Let us follow him in the three different ways and see what comes of him. First, the abandonment of the seigniory by flight, the exodus of individuals and even of whole populations in a body, was a more frequent fact in France of the middle ages than one is disposed to believe. It is supposed that the peasant of that time did not move, that he was riveted to the soil. But, on the contrary, a close study of the docu- ments reveals a very real and intense movement of rural people. They were much less settled then, far more nomadic, than they are to-day. Not only was there, beside the class of farmers fixed to the soil, a class of wandering pioneers, the " woodmen," who made a business of going from forest to forest; but it is certain that this class of woodmen was always reenforced by fugitive villeins escaping from serfdom. These desertions, these individual or collective emigrations, these movements from one seigniory to another, were such PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 405 frequent facts that in the twelfth century certain local laws, especially in Burgundy and in Franche-Comte, went so far as to allow the peasant to leave the fief to which he belonged on two conditions : that he renounce all his movable and im- movable property — he was supposed to be destitute on leav- ing the seigniory ; and, second, that, by an act called the dis- avowal, he informed his lord of his intention of becoming the subject of another. But we must consider that this cus- tom was not general and that the legal sanction ac- corded to emigration was distasteful to the majority of feudal proprietors. In general, then, there was not any other way of escaping, except deserting the fief — that is, flight. But the condition of the fugitive serf, over whom the master and his agent could always exercise their right of pursuit and claim, was still unhappy enough. The lords, in fact, combined to prevent their serfs from escaping: they concluded agreements by which they gave each other the right of pursuing deserting peasants in one another's territories, and pledged themselves not to harbor a neighbor's serf. Thus it was that Philip Augustus signed an agreement with the seignior of Sully-sur- Loire in 1187, and with the countess of Champagne in 1205, by which the contracting parties swore not to keep each other's serfs, but to mutually surrender them. In 1220, the royal officers residing at Chartres and in the adjoining region received a circular from the king, running thus: " Philip, by the grace of God, King of France to all bailiffs and provosts to whom these presents shall come, greeting. We com- mand you by this decree to proceed to the arrest of the serfs of Abonville, Boisville, and of Germignonville who refuse to obey our dear and faithful abbot of Saint-Pere of Chartres. You may seize them wherever you find them outside of the cemetery, the church, or other sacred place. You shall keep them closely im- prisoned, and shall not give them their liberty until the abbot of Saint-Pere demands it of you." In spite of the leagues of proprietors, desertions and emi- grations constantly multiplied; it was so difficult to prevent the peasant from leaving the fief that the lords, instead of preventing the flight of the serf and imprisoning him, came 406 SOCIAL FRANCE to accept his departure and even his settlement upon the land of another. But, among themselves, they signed conven- tions of parcours or entrecours (percursus or inter- cur sus) ; it was more liberal and certain: the contracting parties mutually granted the right of retaining each other's serfs. They were indemnified by the exchange. Treaties of " intercourse " were numerous in the epoch of Philip Augus- tus. Let it suffice here to mention the one concluded in 1204 between the duke of Burgundy and the countess of Cham- pagne, and the one concluded between the countess of Champagne and the count of Nevers, Peter of Courtenay, in 1205. But it was sometimes a dupes' agreement, especially when the king of France was one of the signers : as they were more peaceful and less exposed to brigandage on royal terri- tory — ^the serfs of lay and ecclesiastrcal lords flocked thither; a void was created in the fiefs bordering upon the Capetian domains, to the profit of the king. In reality, despite treaties and oaths, the lords did all they could to steal serfs, to attract and retain the peasants of others, and to prevent their own from going away. And King Philip Augustus distinguished himself more than any one in this dishonest game. What he did in this line in the royal domain, every baron did in his own: it was a game at getting the most and losing the least possible. When Philip, in 1205, signed a treaty of " intercourse " with the countess of Champagne, the latter complained that the serfs of Cham- pagne had left in great numbers and taken refuge in the king's free city, Dixmont (Yonne) : the king, however, de- clared that he should keep all the serfs who had gone there before the present contract. In 1212, when the bishop of Nevers also complained to him of seeing his land deserted by the serfs for those of the king, Philip did accept this clause: "If an episcopal serf settles in our domain, we will have him seized and, if after an investigation of his condition it is proved that he belonged to the bishopric, we will return him to the bishop. ' ' But he left the serf the right of buying himself off and thus to remain free on the royal land, and stipulated that the bishop should have only half of the ran- som money; the other half should go to the king. Thus, Philip Augustus not only benefited by the presence in his PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 407 town of a man who did not belong to him, but he found the means of getting money, in addition to having another sub- ject. And this curious convention of 1212 contains still another clause most favorable to royalty. Many of the serfs of the bishop of Nevers had formerly sought refuge in the royal towns of Bourges and Aubigny-sur-Cher. The bishop had given up reclaiming them, but he maintained that they should at least be compelled to ransom themselves and that, by the terms of the treaty, he should receive one-half of the sum paid by them. Not in the least, replied Philip; the convention does not apply to them; they are covered by pre- scription. This was how the king of France understood business. Again it waB often the lords who favored the emigration of the country people, in order to enrich themselves at the expense of a neighbor. And it was not necessary for the peasant to go far to escape from his proprietor ; it was enough for him to go to a neighboring locality, into a city of the commune or into one of the new cities, one of those places of refuge where residence brought freedom immediately or at the expiration of a year and a day. It was possible, to be sure, to prevent individual deser- tions to a slight degree and to bring back the deserter; but, when the whole population of a canton wished to emigrate en masse, it was not easy to detain it. 'In 1199, the in- habitants of lie de Re, exasperated by the severity with which the lord of Mauleon exercised his hunting right, and troubled by deer in their crops and vineyards, prepared to emigrate in a body. To keep them, Ralph of Mauleon, in return for a payment of ten sous for each quarter of vineyard and setier of land, '' graciously " promised thereafter not to allow any other game in the island than hares and rabbits. When the lord remained inflexible his land was deserted: it meant the exodus of a whole village, or even of a whole canton. In 1204, the serfs of the bishopric of Laon moved in great numbers to the domain of a neighboring lord, Enguerran of Coucy. The refugees were well received. But the bishop protested. He proved before the royal justice that he had never signed a treaty of " intercourse " with the seignior of Coucy, and that consequently the latter had not 408 SOCIAL FRANCE the right to retain his serfs. The peasants of Laon had to return to the episcopal domain. He did not always flee who wished to ; but, in spite of everything, desertions were numerous, continuous, so that many of the lords of the time came to realize that the only effective means of preventing them was to soften the severity of the exploitation of their subjects. When they were not of a mind to leave the country, and when the lord refused to yield, country-people resorted to a refusal of the impost and to open revolt. The documents of the time of Philip Augustus prove that the peasant showed himself ever more averse to the payment of feudal dues. The collection of tithes, especially, was accomplished with diffi- culty, because the church which collected them was not so well armed as the Tay seignior and had not the same ef- fective means of overcoming the taxpayers. The council of Rouen, in 1189, recalled the faithful to their duty: " Since many people refuse to pay the tithe, three notices will be given to warn them to pay fully the tithe collected on wheat, wine, fruits, animals, hay, flax, hemp, and cheese; in a word, on all the products which are annual. If the third summons is futile they will be excommunicated.'* ' ' People must pay the tithes, ' ' said the council of Avignon (1209), and " should pay it before any other impost," added the council of the Lateran (1215). A letter of Pope Celestine III to the bishop of Beziers denounced the procedure of cer- tain peasants who, obliged to carry the products constituting the tithe to the dwelling of the cure, took it into their heads to subtract the cost of transportation. The pope ordered the bishop to excommunicate them if they persisted. In 1217, Honorius III allowed the canons of Maguelonne to censure those under their jurisdiction who did not pay the whole of their customary tithes or retained a portion of it under the pretense of covering the expenses of planting, of culti- vation, or of harvesting. These are significant facts. It is not without reason that the preacher thundered from the pulpit against the peasants PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 409 who did not pay their tithes. Witness Jacques of Vitry in a sermon addressed to the peasants and laborers: "There are some among you who, at the peril of their souls, through avarice retain the tithe due to the church. But they are guilty not only of theft, but of sacrilege: the tithe is the property of God and His ministers; the duty to pay it is inscribed in the New Testament as in the Old; the tithe is the tax which you owe God, the sign of His universal dominion. Those who pay it are indeed the enemies of the devil and the friends of God; those who withhold it not only compromise their eternal salvation, but they are liable to lose all they have in this world: God sends them drouth and famine, though years of abundance are never lacking to those who pay." Feudal collectors, like those of the church, complained that receipts were diminishing, and in order to facilitate their task the bishop of Paris, Maurice of Sully, in one of his ser- mons, urged his diocesans to be more exact : " Good people, render unto your earthly lord what you owe him. It must be remembered and accepted that you owe your earthly lord the cense, the tallage, forfeit, services, cartage, and purveyance. Pay it all in full at the time and place required." But it was often in vain that the church urged the peas- ants to submit. When the lord refused all concessions, when he acted cruelly toward the poor payers, their exasperation often terminated in acts of vengeance and in riots. Jacques of Vitry attempted to put feudalism on its guard against the possible consequences of its violence and oppression. ' ' It is a dangerous thing, that despair," he said to them: " one sees the serfs kill their lords and set fire to their castles." Benedict of Sainte-More, the historian of the dukes of Nor- mandy, writing at the end of the twelfth century, thought as much of the present as of the past when he recalled the riot of the Norman peasants in the eleventh century, letting them utter this angry cry: "We have been weak and insane to have bent our necks for so long a time. For we are strong and hard men, more used to war and soldier, and stouter-limbed and larger than they are or ever were. For every one of them there are a hundred of us." 410 SOCIAL FRANCE It was by the same reasoning, without doubt, that at the beginning of the thirteenth century the Norman peasants of the village of Verson, whose miserable condition we have clearly seen, attempted to revolt against their lord, the abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel. We do not know whether they suc- ceeded, but attempts of the same sort occurred everywhere. Between 1207 and 1221, the peasants in an archdeaconry of Orleans refused to pay the tithe on wool. The bishop of Orleans, Manasses of Seignelay, tried to compel them by means of excommunication. The furious peasants formed a plot against the bishop, arose one night as one man, — quasi vir unus, says the historian of the bishops of Auxerre, — and besieged him in the castle where he lay. They would have killed him, but he succeeded in escaping, and he forced them to atone for their rebellion. In 1216, the villagers of Nieuport, near Dunkerque, were in dispute with the canons of Sainte-Walburge of Fumes over the fish tithe. The deputies of the chapter appeared to receive it, and the peasants fell upon them, killing two priests and grievously wounding a cleric. Excommunicated by the church authorities, they finally regained the grace of the church, but at what price shall be seen: " The chief offenders, to the number of twenty-five, whether sheriffs of the village or simple residents, had within a year to make a pilgrimage beyond the seas, and could not return before a year had elapsed, and they had taken part in processions in twenty-six different churches at their own expense, without other clothing than their trousers^ going barefoot, and carrying the rods with which they were disciplined. One hundred other persons among the notables were also obliged to take part in these processions. The community of Nieuport had to build three chapels, give fifty livres to a convent of nuns, indemnify the parents of the dead priests who had belonged to the nobility, indemnify the wounded priests, construct a fortress costing one thousand livres for the count of Flanders in order to prevent new troubles; finally give the count of Flanders forty livres a year on the day commemorating the assassination." In certain regions of France these insurrections of vil- lagers ^bad a particular object. They attempted to imitate the inhabitants of larger towns and cities and organize them- selves into communes. That was why Pope Celestine III, PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 411 in 1195, forbade the serfs of the church of Notre-Dame of Paris to form a ' ' commune " or conspire against the chapter. At the end of the reign of Philip Augustus the village of Maisnieres, situated near Gamaches and dependent on the abbey of Corbie, assumed a communal constitution without having asked the authorization of the abbot, who probably would have refused it.') The abbot, informed thereof, pro- ceeded to the new commune, which refused to receive him; the citizens even violently expelled him. The freed peasants annexed a neighboring hamlet to their commune, subjected it to the taille, then seized a priest who was found on their territory, and maltreated him. The abbot of Corbie sum- moned them before an arbitral tribunal composed of church- men, who decided against the villagers ; the dissolution of the commune was ordered and the rebels were sentenced to a fine of one hundred marks (1219). In the same year the inhabitants in Chablis, subjects of the chapter of Saint-Martin of Tours, also attempted to found a commune. They had organized under oath and had levied taxes. The canon of Tours caused the bailijffs of Philip Augustus and those of the count of Champagne to intervene promptly, and the commune of Chablis disappeared. Neither the insurrection of Verson, that of Maisnieres, nor that of Chablis is known to us through chronicles. Chance preserved knowledge of them to us in a few char- ters which escaped the destruction that befell thousands of others, and these in a few lines relate the futile efforts of the peasants. If it were not for this accident, history would know absolutely nothing of them. We cannot help believing that many other revolts of the same sort completely failed, and that those which to-day attest success belong to the exceptions. There was one, however, of which the chroniclers have spoken with some care; it was the insurrection of the serfs of the bishopric of Laon, composing seventeen villages, the center of which was Anizy-le-Chateau, and which embraced a territory twenty-four kilometers square. This insurrection lasted eighty years: it began during the reign of Louis VII and did not end until the middle of the reign of Saint Louis ; furthermore, these villagers struggled vigorously, and at 412 SOCIAL FRANCE times successfully, against the combined forces of feudalism and of the church, and from time to time they had the kings of France as allies. It is from this circumstance that we should consider their attempt. Their history is the most instructive instance of the persistent and energetic efforts of the country people to gain their liberty. In 1174, Louis VII had given the serfs of Laon a com- munal charter, very like that which governed the burghers of Laon., Three years later the bishop of Laon, Roger of Rozoy, assisted by the seigniors of the region, took his re- venge : he surrounded the serfs in the neighborhood of Com- porte and executed a frightful butchery. When, in 1180, Philip Augustus became king the wretches had again fallen under the yoke of their bishop. In 1185, the oppression and exactions had advanced to such an intolerable point that they decided to carry their protests to the king. Philip Augustus, who had a grudge against the bishop of Laon, made himself mediator; he fixed the amount of taxes which the bishop was authorized to collect from his subjects, and the service assessments which the serfs owed the two officers of the bishop, the vidame and the provost. Further, he created twelve sheriffs taken from their midst, charged with allotting the taxes and settling differences which might arise between them and the bishop. No appeal, except to royal justice, was allowed from the decisions of these magistrates appointed by the king. The villagers of Laon demanded more : they desired to have a commune. Between 1185 and 1190, under circumstances of which we know practically nothing, Philip Augustus gave them this privilege. He revoked it in 1190, when he was leaving for the crusade, and desired to please the clergy. But the tenacity of the peasant who wished to free himself was at least equal to that of the clergy which intended to remain master. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the seventeen villages, still cruelly oppressed, made an at- tempt to emigrate en masse to the land of a neighboring seignior, Enguerran of Coucy. This did not succeed. Two years later, in 1206, the serfs of Laon took advantage of a disagreement between the bishop and the chapter of Laon. They succeeded in getting the canons on their side. The PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 413 latter, becoming the advocates of the popular cause against the bishop, accused Roger of Rozoy in the courts of justice of mistreating his subjects and of crushing them with illegal taxes. The case was argued before the metropolitan chap- ter of Reims, acting as a court of arbitration. The judges gave a decision adverse to the bishop. They sided with the villagers and restored things to the status in which they had been in 1185. They revived the decree of Philip Augustus, fixing a maximum of taxes to be collected by the bishop and determined that, in case of a misunderstanding between the bishop and his peasants, the settlement of the difference should belong to the chapter of Laon. This was subjecting the bishop to the guardianship of his canons. Roger of Rozoy was so deeply humiliated by it that he fell ill and died shortly afterwards. But insurrectionary movements of rural peoples rarely had a successful issue, and on the whole the peasants suffered more than the seigniors. The residents of cities, protected by their numbers and by their walls, could gain freedom by force ; the villagers, who had no means of resistance, simply drew upon themselves judicial condemnation or massacres, without any gain to themselves. The great mass o:^ serfs, the free farmers and tenants, preferred to obtain the liberties which they desired by peaceful means, especially by purchase. The epoch of Philip Augustus witnessed an extraordinary increase of charters of liberties granted by the seigniors, not only to cities and burghers, but also to villages and ordinary hamlets — that is, to peasants. Undoubtedly, the motive of the seignior who gave the franchise, thus limiting his own power, was in a majority of cases personal gain: the peasants gave him a rent or a cash payment. It also happened that a seignior recognized the urgent necessity of repeopling his fief, which had become deserted in consequence of his own exactions, or that he feared his serfs might abandon his land and go to that of a neigh- bor, where free cities abounded. In that case he himself freed his villagers. It was rarely that he acted solely under the sway of humanitarian or religious principles, to make sure of his spiritual salvation, pro salute animae, pietatis intuitu. He was usually liberal out of personal motives. 414 SOCIAL FEANCE In certain regions feudalism, desirous of avoiding a strug- gle with the peasantry, tolerated the federation of villages, such as that of the serfs of Laon, and permitted them to erect communes. Philip Augustus had favored the rural confed- eration of Cerny-en-Laonnais (1184), and the abbot of Saint- Jean of Laon, following his example, sanctioned that of Cran- delain (1196). At the end of the twelfth century the counts of Ponthieu permitted the erection, or voluntarily established those of Crecy, of Crotoy, and of Marquenterre. This curi- ous application of the principle of association had already been put into practice in the time of Louis the Fat, but it was the epoch of Philip Augustus which witnessed its full development. The residents of the village formed an asso- ciation; and many rustic communities, taking a similar oath, formed a permanent body, which had its mayor, its juris- diction, its militia, its treasury, and its seal. The members of these confederations varied in quality as well as in numbers. Certain rural communes consisted of villages, all unimportant; others were composed of a fairly well popu- lated city, or even of a country town with a certain number of hamlets under its headship. In one case, the association consisted of three or four members; in the other, it included about fifteen localities. The constitutions of these rural groups were modeled on those of the large urban communes of the neighborhood, whose protectors without doubt knew of their creation. Still, this kind of emancipation of rural peoples was ex- ceptional and prevailed only in a few provinces. The greater number of villages bought or obtained individual franchises from their seigniors, who, without entirely freeing them, soft- ened their domination by freeing them from the heaviest and most odious duties. At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth the charter of Lorris reached the maximum of its dispersion. "While Louis VII and Philip Augustus liber- ally distributed it in the royal domain and as far as Nivernais and Auvergne, the lords of Courtenay and Sancerre spread it in their estates (Montargis, Mailly, Selle in Berry, Chapelle-Dam-Gilon, Marchenoir, etc.), and the counts of Champagne themselves introduced it into Chaumont-en- PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 415 Bassigny and into Ervy. Its influence, especially toward the reduction of the scale of judicial fines, made itself felt in the majority of the contracts which were then being made in ever greater numbers between the seigniors and peasants. In 1182, the archbishop of Reims, William of Champagne, granted the little district of Beaumont in Argonne a charter, which served as the model for the majority of charters of enfranchisement granted to the rural districts of the coun- ties of Luxembourg, Chiny, Bar, Rethel, and of the duchy of Lorraine. In Champagne it was in competition with the charter of Soissons and the fundamental law of Verviers. It gave the villagers not only considerable liberties, but also practical autonomy — the privilege of freely electing repre- sentatives, sheriffs, mayors, and the free use of the forests and rivers. But the seigniors who adopted and spread the law of Beaumont did not prove themselves as generous as the founder: sometimes they reserved the right of naming the mayor, sometimes they sought to exercise that right in opposition to the inhabitants; everywhere, if the villagers had not agreed in choosing their magistrates on the day fixed for the election, the seignior named them. Other constitutions, less dispersed than those of Lorris and Beaumont, little by little transformed the civil and economic conditions of rural districts. " Rural sheriffdoms " were created in the domains of the countess of Champagne and of the churches of Reims. The village did not form a unity, but it was represented by a mayor. The sheriffs, who exer- cised all the local functions of the administration of justice (for example, at Attigny, the charter of which dates from 1208), were not elected. The peasants remained in subjec- tion ; but in the matter of imposts and corvees they were guar- anteed against the caprice of their masters. If the chroniclers contemporary with Philip Augustus in- frequently speak of the peasants, and mention only a few of the revolts which shook society, they could not conceal the considerable role which citizens and cities began to play. The work of William of Armorica abounds in descriptions of cities. In Flanders it was Ghent, " proud of its houses or- 416 SOCIAL FRANCE namented with towers, of its treasures, and of its large popu- lation ; Ypres, famous for its wool dyeing ; Arras, an ancient city filled with riches and eager for prosperity; Lille, which boasts of its excellent merchants and displays the cloth which she has dyed, and the fortune which is hers, in foreign lands. ' ' In Normandy it was Rouen, or it was Caen, the opulent city, " so full of churches, houses, and inhabitants that she found herself scarcely inferior to Paris " ; in the valley of the Loire it was Tours, " situated between two rivers, pleasant because of the waters which surround it, rich in fruit-trees and in grain, proud of its citizens, powerful through its clergy, and adorned by the presence of the most holy body of the illus- trious Saint Martin ; Angers, a rich city, around which lie fields of vineyards which furnish drink for Normans and Bretons; Nantes, enriched by the fish-filled Loire and carrying on a trade in salmon and' lamprey with distant countries. ' ' The monk of Marmoutier, who about 1209 wrote a brief account of the ecclesiastical history of Touraine, complacently depicted the city of Tours overflowing with riches. He went into ecstasies over the beautiful fur-trimmed clothing of the inhabitants, over their battlemented and turreted houses, over the sumptuousness of their tables, the luxury of their gold and silver dishes. Generous to saints and churches, charitable to the poor, they had all the virtues: modesty, loyalty, edu- cation, martial courage. As to the women of Tours, " they are all so beautiful and charming that the truth here passes all belief and the women of other countries are ugly in com- parison. The elegance and richness of their dress enhances their beauty, which is perilous for all who see them; but their firm virtue protects them, and these roses are as pure as the lilies." Rigord and the Armorican often mention Paris — its streets, bridges, churches, walks, and halls. They speak of its walls, of the tower of the Louvre, and its two chatelets. And one remembers the enthusiastic description of Paris written by Guy of Bazoches between 1175 and 1190: " I am in Paris, in that royal city where the abundance of natural gifts not only captivates those who dwell therein, but invites and attracts those who are afar. Just as the moon sur- PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 417 passes the stars in brightness, so this city, the seat of royalty, raises its proud head above all others. It is situated in the midst of a delightful valley surrounded by a crown of hills which adorn it in emulation of Ceres and Bacchus. The Seine, that superb river which comes fi-om the east, here flows level with its banks and with its two branches forms an island which is the head, the heart, and the marrow of the entii-e city. Two suburbs extend to the right and left, the smaller of which would be the envy of many cities. Each of the faubourgs is joined with the island by a bridge : the Grand pont facing the north in the direction of the English Channel, and the Petit pont which looks toward the Loire. The former, large, rich, and bustling with trade is the scene of busy activity; innumerable boats filled with merchandise and riches sur- round it. The Petit pont belongs to the dialecticians, who walk there while debating. On the island, on the side of the king's palace, which dominates the whole city, there is seen the hall of philosophy, a citadel of light and immortality where study alone reigns supreme." Even in the chansons de geste, though feudal in character, the cities began to be the object of detailed and accurate descriptions. In Auhri le Bourgnignon the rich Flemish cities of Arras, Courtrai, and Lille appeared ; in Aiol, Poitiers and Orleans with their jeering inhabitants; in les Narion- nais, Narbonne with its port full of vessels, and Paris, ' ' that admirable city where stands many a church with its bell, and which is traversed by the Seine in two deep channels, which teem with vessels full of wine, salt, and great riches." The romances of the Round Table or the Arthurian Cycle, inspired by the spirit of courtesy, are not to the same degree as the chansons de geste the expression of military passion. As a typical work of this character one can mention the Qraal, of Christian of Troyes. The hero of this romance, Gauvain, came to a thickly populated city, which was very rich and very prosperous. The poet gives us a detailed de- scription of it; in a long passage he mentions most of the trades which flourish there. This practice of describing a city almost became a compulsory commonplace for his imi- tators, notably Ralph of Houdenc, who at the time of Philip Augustus wrote the Vengeance de Eaguidel. Not only does Christian of Troyes take considerable pains to describe the city and its artisans, but he seems to desire the citizens to take part in the plot. An enemy of Gauvain incited the com- mune against him; the citizens besieged him, and they were 418 SOCIAL FRANCE led by the mayor and their sheriffs. Even municipal magis- trates came to play a role in feudal literature. And we meet the same thing in other poems. The lay Parise la duchesse, which comes from the beginning of the thirteenth century, portrays the citizens of an imaginary city called Vauvenice. They revolt against their seignior, Raymond, because he sub- stituted a bad woman for the real and lawful duchess, Parise. Under the leadership of their mayor they enter the city, find the false duchess, cut off her hair, cut off the bottom of her dress, and expel her thus disgraced from the city. The residents of the new cities, which feudalism and the church founded merely to people their seigniories, also be- gan to appear in the poems of the time of Philip Augustus. The lay Benaud de Montauhan, which has as its heroes the four sons of Aimon, contains in legendary form a true his- torical fact: the erection of the new city of Montauban, in 1144, by Alphonse-Jourdain, count of Toulouse. By this creation he aimed to oppose to the consular republics of the south — the old cities which had escaped from his power — a new type of modern bourgeoisie, privileged but directly sub- ject to the seignior and exploited by his agents. This event caused a sensation in the bourgeois world of the middle of the twelfth century. The fancy of the minstrels enveloped it with romantic details. They fancied that the four sons of Aimon one day perceived a high hill at the confluence of the Garonne and the Dordogne : there, with the permission of King Yon, they erected a fortress, which received the name of Montalban; about its walls eight hundred families came to live, recognizing the four heroes as their lords, and pledg- ing themselves to pay an annual tax. And, according to the poet, these families divided themselves according to their trades : " One hundred of the citizens became tavern keepers, another hundred bakers, another hundred tradesmen, and another hundred fishermen; there were a hundred who carried on commerce, going even as far as India; finally, the three hundred who remained shared the balance of the work among themselves. Gardens and vineyards began to be put under good cultivation." This is imaginary, but interesting. PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 419 Scenes from city-life, especially market scenes, began to be introduced into feudal epics. They are found in Aiol, and especially in Moniage Guillaume, which have depicted this life in a very lively manner. William, for example, goes to the market to buy a fish: " The mariners press around him. One takes him by the cope, others pull him, others push him. Each cries loudly in his own lang-uage. ' Here ! ' cry some ; ' Here ! ' cry others ; ' good fish, at your own figure ! ' ' Seigniors,' says William, ' for God's sake don't jostle me so, you will hurt me.' " The poem Hervis de Metz belongs to the terrible Lorrains group. It is the story of a noble of Metz who sent his son to make a fortune at the Champagne fairs. But the young knight understood fancying horses, dogs, and falcons better than dealing in furs, cloths, or precious metals ; he contented himself with spending the money which his father had given him in merry company. The bard seizes this occasion to give a lively description of the activity in the markets of Troyes, of Provins, and of Laigny. It is a singular mixture of heroic episodes and scenes from urban life. It is evident, then, that even feudal circles began to notice what people did in cities. The minstrel spoke of the shop- keepers and the merchants in other roles than as victims of the pillage and the cruelties of nobles. Cities and citizens became subjects of description. It is unfortunate that, in forming an idea of what the mate- rial conditions of cities at the time of Philip Augustus were, we have no other documents than the narratives of historians, letters, and the works of fiction. What authentic monument? do as a matter of fact remain? A few fragments of some wall, like those we see in Paris, and of churches : all the rest have disappeared. There are no longer any burghers' homes of that epoch. The greater number of them were wooden: it goes without saying that they have long since been de- stroyed. As to the stone houses, they were then very rare, and the only positive fact about them is that they date from the end of the twelfth or the first twenty years of the thir- teenth century. Certainly the oldest do not go back beyond the time of Saint Louis. There is not even a town hall, an 420 SOCIAL FRANCE assembly hall of the citizens, a city hall, which can posi- tively be attributed to an earlier time, save perhaps the city hall of Saint-Antonin, in Tarn-et-Garonne. At the same time that the historical and literary documents of the reign of Philip Augustus for the first time in the middle ages give us adequate and specific details about cities, about their external appearance, and about the material con- ditions of urban life, they also (and this is likewise new) inform us of the social importance of the bourgeoisie who inhabited them. Previous to this epoch history scarcely spoke of the bourgeoisie, except as anonymous groups, which ob- tained charters of privilege or communal liberties from their seignior with his consent or by compulsion. From the end of the twelfth century they are described in a more specific and concrete form : in each important center the great burgher families began to be known by their names, their affiliations, and their pedigrees ; frequently they deal with the seigniorial power; they hold the city magistracies, possess lands, and even noble fiefs; they exercise high functions in the courts of feudal lords. This participation of the urban class in political life dates from the reign of Philip Augustus. Let us first imagine ourselves at the center of the Capetian dominions, in Paris. In 1190, an absolutely unprecedented thing occurred there. The king of France was about to leave on the crusade, and before this great journey he made a political will, in which he arranged for the regency and regulated the exercise of public powers. Personages of the blood-royal, officially charged with this regency, were desig- nated in it: they were the queen-mother, Adele of Cham- pagne, and William of Champagne, the uncle of Philip Augustus and archbishop of Reims. But it appears, from the very terms of the act of 1190, that the king had very- little confidence in these regents, for he designated a council of associates, one might even call them overseers, consisting of officials of the palace, monks, and six Paris burghers. The part played by the burghers was considerable : the guardian- ship of the treasure and even of the royal seal was confided to them during the king's absence; each of them was to have PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 421 a key to the coffers located in the Temple. In case the king died during his pilgrimage, a certain sum was to be set aside for the use of the heir, Prince Louis, and the guarding of that sum was confided not only to the six burghers, but also ' ' to all the people of Paris. ' ' Thus Philip Augustus gave the representatives of the Parisian bourgeoisie a high hand in the finances and general administration of the realm. We know the names of these burghers, the first in the his- tory of France, who took a part in government. The names were indeed plebeian : Thiboud the Rich, Othon of the Greve, Ebrouin the Money-changer, Robert of Chartres, Baldwin Bruneau, Nicolas Boisseau. During the eighteen months that Philip Augustus remained in the Orient, a certain num- ber of royal diplomas were despatched in the name of the council of regency ; they were sealed with a special seal, hav- ing forms of this kind : " In the presence of our bourgeois ' ' ; " under the witness of our bourgeois." And these bourgeois were then designated: there were, besides the six preceding, other notables, or members of their families — such as John, son of Ebrouin; Matthew the Small; Ebrouin, son of Raim- baud. It is, then, a fact that the wish of Philip Augustus in this matter was carried out and that the Parisian bour- geoisie actually took a part in the regency, a thing which had never before occurred. And, yet more remarkable, Philip Augustus desired that during his absence representatives of the bourgeoisie should be associated with the agents who ex- ercised his functions, not only in Paris, but in all villages of the dominion: for another clause in the testament of 1190 decrees that in all cities the royal provost should carry on the affairs of his city, the seat of his jurisdiction, with the assistance of four burghers, of whom two at least should be chosen by him from the locality itself. However, the participation of the bourgeoisie in the cen- tral government and the local administration was only tem- porary; when Philip Augustus returned he took back his full and complete authority. But such a mark of confidence shown the inhabitants of the cities left a grateful memory with them, and not all traces of their experience at govern- ment disappeared: new relations and habits were created; the alliance established between royalty and the cities out- 422 , SOCIAL FRANCE lived the particular circumstance which brought it to life. After 1190, the bourgeoisie still appeared among the asso- ciates of the sovereign, and one of the leaders of the Parisian bourgeoisie, Eude Arrode, held the position of pantler in his court. His name figures many times in royal diplomas: in 1211, Philip gave him two houses in Paris; and, 1217, he gave him several fishing-places in the Seine near the Grand and Petit pont. He was evidently a man in the king's confi- dence. In 1219, a member of his family, Nicolas Arrode, and another burgher, Philip Hamelin, enjoyed the provostship of Paris. The same condition was found in all seigniories. The counts of Champagne, at the end of the twelfth century, used the bourgeoisie of their fiefs as sergeants, provosts, and bailiffs, and admitted them to the council and to court — that is, to the administration of the central power., It is enough to mention Lambert Bouchut of Bar-sur-Aube. This Lam- bert Bouchut, from 1220 to 1225, occupied one of the high offices of the county of Champagne: he was treasurer of the county. He was already in the court of Champagne in 1195, employed in many capacities — such as judge, arbiter, expert, and agent on many diplomatic missions; and, in 1224, when the count of Champagne joined King Louis VIII on the ex- pedition to Saintogne, this burgher of Bar-sur-Aube appears to have exercised the functions of administrative chief in Champagne during the sovereign's absence, under the title of " bailiff of the court." If the aristocratic bourgeoisie began to hold a considerable place in the councils of the realm and of the high suzerains, it exercised a much greater power in its own society, in the cities. There it possessed municipal powers, and in the north as in the south we see magistracies handed down as an inheritance within single families. We begin to become ac- quainted with dynasties of burghers. At Rouen it was the family of Fergaut which, in 1177, occupied the mayoralty, the chief position of the commune. The mayor was already a great personage. In many char- ters of the Plantagenet kings his name figures with that of the chancellor and the royal judge, and with the names of his equals, the municipal counselors numbering one hundred: PEASANTS AND BURGHEES 423 Nicolas Groignet, William Cavalier, Luce of Donjon, William Petit, Nicolas of Dieppe, etc. Several of the bourgeoisie of Rouen succeeded Fergaut as mayor in the first twenty years of the thirteenth century, and in the list of mayors other plebeian names appeared — such as John Fessart (1186), Matthew the Fat (1195-1200), Sylvester the Money-changer (1208-09), Nicolas Pigache (1219-1220). At La Rochelle the rich bourgeois families, Auffrei and Foucher, stood in the front rank. Alexander Auffrei, in 1203, founded the celebrated almonry of La Rochelle, and Peter Foucher, in his will drawn up before 1215, like a great seignior bequeathed considerable property to the abbey of Fontevrault. He was a friend of Queen Eleanor of Aqui- taine; in 1209, she gave this Peter Foucher, her burgher whom she called '' dilectum et fidelem hominem nostrum," to the monks of Fontevrault : that is, she transferred the rev- enues which she drew from Foucher to the abbey. At Bordeaux the great families of Colomb, Calhau, Mone- deir, and Beguer contended for the high offices of the com- mune throughout the thirteenth century. Already, in 1220, Guilhem Aramon Colomb was mayor; the documents, indeed, tell of still earlier ones: Peter Audron in 1218 and Peter Lambert in 1208. This Peter Lambert is known to us through a single interesting charter. In 1208, the king of Castile, the enemy of John Lackland and an ally of Philip Augus- tus, besieged Bordeaux. The Bordelais, in order to defend themselves, had to destroy a few churches and hospitals be- longing to the priory of Saint-Jacques of Bordeaux. To indemnify the monks the mayor, Peter Lambert, granted them a charter, drawn up in his name and in that of the commune, by which he permitted them to build as many houses as they wished on a certain part of the moat, provided they did not entail, sell, or rent them to any one. The char- ter began thus: " Peter Lambert, mayor of Bordeaux; the jurors, and the whole commune of Bordeaux; to all those who shall see this present charter, greeting." At the same time the great shipowners of Bayonne, the Dardir, and those of Marseilles, the Manduel, whose name appeared in so many acts relating to commerce or public works of the region of Provence, were, because of their wealth, 424 SOCIAL FRANCE men of power, who treated with high barons and prelates almost as equals. When these families of rich burghers were at the head of a free town, of a commune, or of a wholly independent consular city, their pride passed all bounds. In their collectivity they formed a veritable seigniory; they entered the feudal hierarchy and considered themselves upon the same level as the sovereign barons. And, in fact, having become masters of the municipal soil, they possessed all the prerogatives attached to sovereignty. They had legislative power, the right of proclamation or ordinance, judicial power, both civil and criminal, and the right of levying taxes upon the town. Like the lords, they possessed a shield, a watch- tower which was their donjon, ramparts which protected them, a gibbet, and a pillory in token of high justice. A republic like Avignon, in its treaty concluded with Saint- Giles in 1208, proudly declared that " it obeyed no one but God." It claimed complete autonomy, the right of peace and war, and it was not wise to provoke the wrath of its bourgeoisie ; having surprised their enemy. Baron William of Baux, in an ambuscade, the inhabitants of Avignon burned him alive and cut his body to pieces. For it was not only in the administrative and judicial or- ganisms and in political sovereignty that the bourgeoisie of this time came to take its place. It also began to appear as a military force, as an element in the royal and seigniorial armies. For the first time, historians tell us of bourgeois militia with some detail, and to a certain degree even praise it, which is indeed a novelty. William of Armorica relates how King Henry II of England, invading Vexin in 1188, tried to take the town of Mantes. To the great astonishment of the English, the bourgeoisie came out from their walls completely armed and advanced in good order against the enemy; so well that he, thinking it was a trap, retreated. And the historian makes Henry II say: "What is this French foolishness and whence comes this pre- sumption? The common people of Mantes, which numbers hardly five thousand souls,- dares to think of measuring itself against the innumerable army of my knights! These folk who ought rather to burrow into their caves and barricade themselves behind their gates, march upon our naked swords ! " PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 425 The feudal world was so little accustomed to this boldness on the part of the villein that William of Armorica felt him- self obliged to devote a passage of fifteen verses to celebrate the exploits of the men of the commune of Mantes in lyric fashion : "0 Commune, who can worthily praise thee? What a triumph for thee to have forced the King of England to retire even a pace, not daring to look thee in the face! If my poetic genius were equal to the subject, thy valor should become known through- out the entire world. For however little credit my verses may obtain, thy name shall always be in the mouths of our descendants and thy glory shall be sung by remotest posterity." The same historian shows that the communes served not only as fortresses, capable of arresting the march of an invading army, but also sent their militia afar and united with the knights of Philip Augustus: for example, at the battle of Bouvines. For a long time we have been in doubt about the meaning of this passage from William of Armorica, though it seems quite clear. One opinion, which it is very difficult to root out, is that the militia of Corbie, Amiens, Beauvais, Compiegne, and Arras aided in deciding the vic- tory, whereas in reality the men of the commune appeared in the battle only to be repulsed and overthrown by the Ger- man knights. The communal militia never rendered great service in the army, even to kings or lords who employed it. Chivalry, as we have said before, did not take account of this foot-soldiery and rode over it, to come to blows with the enemy the more quickly. It was the communes themselves, considered as places of safety and as a means of defense, which were truly useful to the sovereigns on whom they depended. The advancement of the villein into public functions, his entry into politics and affairs, and even into the military world, brought upon him imprecations and cries of anger from the feudal poets. They did not pardon him for coming out of his caste: all these parvenus could do nothing but 426 SOCIAL FRANCE deceive ; bad luck to those employing them ! * ' Ah, God ! how badly has he rewarded the good warrior, ' ' one reads in Girart de Boussillon, " who out of the son of a villein made first a knight, then his seneschal and councilor, as did Count Girart of that Richier to whom he gave a wife and vast lands ; that fellow then sold Roussillon to Charles the Bold," Count Richard, hero of the lay Escoufle (a romance of adventure, written before 1204), received the confidences of the emperor, relative to the villeins. He avowed that he was no longer master of his empire and that he could not go fear-free from one town to another. He had made a mistake in trusting him- self to his serfs and in letting them rise in dignity ; now they possessed his chateaux, his cities, and his forests. Finally, he begged Richard to take the office of constable and to come to his aid. The count searched France for the bravest knights, and at the end of a year and a half he had rid the imperial lands of all the villeins who occupied chateaux. Moral: * * Never let a serf come to your court as your bailiff. For the nobleman is ashamed and abashed to have a villein for a master. How could it be possible for the villein to be either gentle or free? " Such was the opinion of feudalism with regard to the newly arisen bourgeoisie. This feeling was neatly expressed in another poem composed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Roman de la Rose or Guillaume de Dole. The great personage of the poem was an emperor of Germany named Conrad. Now this emperor was greatly loved by all his nobility, " because he was not one of those kings or barons who were these days giving their servants (that is, to their villeins) rents and provostships, " at the risk of see- ing their lands " destroyed," all the world " depreciated," and themselves shamed. This Emperor Conrad, this wise man, chose his bailiffs from among the vavasors : that is, from the nobles of inferior class, who fear God and despise shame. As to the villeins and bourgeoisie, instead of placing them in office, he let them amass wealth, well knowing that their money would be his and that when he wished he could levy upon their treasure. And this was an excellent system. There was never a fair where the merchants did not buy a horse for the emperor. Their presents were worth more than PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 427 a tax. So perfect was the policing of his realm *' that mer- chants could travel with as much security as monks." This is the society of which the feudal poets dreamed: the nobles remaining in possession of all the offices, and the bourgeoisie confined in their towns, where they were permit- ted to make a fortune for their lord's profit. Otherwise, what do those two curious pages, chosen from many others of the same nature, prove? In the epoch of which they deal, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the utilization of burghers in all social functions began to seriously disquiet the nobles and soldiers, who were obliged to bow before these villeins when they were invested with public power. But the lords had a difficult problem; they opposed the rising tide in vain. They were outflanked, and the minstrels, willy-nilly, introduced into their lays the bourgeois element, which they so detested and despised. Let one, for example, read that part of the lay of the Lorrains which has Anseis, the son of Gerbert, as its hero. The author of the selection pictures a certain Count Hernaut, who, finding himself at the point of death and wishing to avenge himself upon his sons for betraying him, caused the mayor of Bordeaux to come before him. " He caused Oudin, the mayor, to come before him and the judges of the village to be assembled. * Oudin, dear Sire,' he said to him, ' you have jurisdiction over all the crimes of Bordeaux upon the sea. You are charged with punishing malefactors. Those who do evil must be killed. But for love's sake I pray you to cause me ' to be avenged upon my sons.' Oudin replied : * Leave us in peace. Sire. From you we have nothing to fear, and you cannot command any one.' " And he explained this proud reply by reminding the count that he was the king's man and not his. The tone which this burgher mayor of Bordeaux employed in speaking to a great lord is significant; and it is noteworthy that the^ author of the poem, who probably wrote in the first half of the thirteenth century, states that the commune of Bordeaux was dependent upon royal and not upon seigniorial authority. In these feudal lays even the bourgeois militia appeared and held a certain place. It is true that it was often intro- 428 SOCIAL FRANCE duced to be scoffed at; it was represented as consisting of poltroons. At the beginning of the chanson, Girart de Boussillon, the poet introduces the bourgeoisie of Roussillon charged by Count Girart with protecting the ramparts of the town which King Charles was besieging. When night arrived, each of the members of this civil guard found it pleasanter to go to bed and abandon his post. And imme- diately a traitor profited by this baseness of the villeins to deliver the place to the besiegers. At the end of the poem the citizens are presented in a more favorable light: They merit much praise for their devotion to their lord ; they weep with joy on learning that Girart has returned from exile, and they valiantly join in the struggle which he is obliged to undertake to reconquer his heritage. In spite of himself, the feudal bard has been induced to present to us a type of villein not altogether repugnant or ridiculous. There were some of these villeins who became knights, like Rigaud of Garin, one of the heroes of that epic, who fought like a lion and could cope even with the king of France, Yet, as has been seen, in certain respects Rigaud remains grotesque. In the case of others — for instance, Simon in Berthe aux grands pieds or David in Enfances Charlemagne — the comic disappears. Finally, it occurred to poets to give a good role to folk of the lowest rank. The lay Daurel et Beton glorified a simple player, and in that of Amis et Amiles two serfs gave proof of admirable devo- tion to their master. The bourgeoisie advanced, and daily made a larger place for itself in society. INDEX Abbot, 243; mitred, 150 Abelard, 34, 64 Abraham, 30 Absalon, abbot of Saint- Victor, 76, 191 Absenteeism, 50, 108, 185 Absolution, 59, 294 Absolutism, 176 Abstinence. See Morals Accession fee, 288 Acrostics, 200 Actors. See Players Adam of Perseigne, 174, 191 Ad&le of Champagne, 30 Admiral, 160 Adultery, 174, 199. See also Morals Adventurers, 187 Advowson, 41, 44. See also Pat- ronage Age qualifications, 92 Agricultural enterprise, 130 Aiol, 387 Alain of Lille, 76, 185, 191 Albert of Stade, 27 Albigenses, 10, 19, 50, 75, 154, 155, 160, 195, 199, 215, 271, 296, 305, 329, 349 Alda, 77 Alexander III, 65, 152, 165, 167, 311 Allegory, 74, 190, 191, 197, 230 Almonry, 227, 233 Alms, 214, 217, 234, 338. See Charity, Mendicancy, and Pov- erty Aloul, 398 Altars, 116 Ambassadors, 159, 160, 181, 182, 183, 278, 281. See also Mes- sengers Amice, 105 Amos, the prophet, 30 Anarchism, 16 Anathema, sentence of, 8 Anchin, chronicler of, 8, 22, 178 Angers, 67 Anna, 218 Antichrist, 1, 199 Appeals to Rome, 46, 48, 96, 122, 149, 151 Apsis, of churches, 116 Arbalisters, 258 Arbitration, 49, 73, 90, 216, 241, 264, 299 Archbishop, 151 Archdeacon, 41, 111, 149 Archers, 258, 386 Architect. See Builders Archives, 39 Archpresbyter, 39 Arithmetic, 196 Armies, 184, 270, 386, 424 Armor, 253 Arnaud-Amauri, 153, 154 Arnoul II, 365 Arras, 417 Arson. See Fires Art, 224 Arthur of Brittany, 181 Arthur, King, 321, 376. See Round Table Ascension, 107 Asceticism, 170, 223, 243 Assassination, 157, 240, 296, 304 Association of peace, 13; of peas- ants, 414; of priests, 40 Astrology, 21, 193 Astronomy, 196 Athens, 74 Aubri of Humbert, 154 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, 27 Aucassin et Nicollete, 386 Augustus, 192 Autobiography, 189 Auxerre, 160, 302 Avarice, 51, 55, 57, 132, 173, 174, 176, 187, 256, 313, 390, 395. See also Rapacity Averroes, 89 Babylon, 1, 194 Backgammon, 321 Baggage-train, 261 Baldwin of Flanders, 74 Baldwin IX of Flanders, 377 Baldwin II of Guinea, 378 Baldwin III, 265 429 430 INDEX Baldwin V of Hainault, 334 Ballads, 273, 278 Banalite, 403 Bandits. See Brigandage Banking, 276, 328. See also In- terest, Usury Bankruptcy, 131, 230, 232, 237 Banners, 310 Banquets, 93, 116, 313, 323. See Feasts, Meals Baptism, 301 Bards. See Minstrels Barons, 270, 275. See also No- bles Baths, 353 Baucent, 345 Bayonne, 423 Beadles, 124 Bede, 61 Beggars, 80, 233. See Mendi- cants, Poverty Begon, Duke, 4, 183, 258, 317, 343, 354, 388 "Behourd," 320 Bells, 59, 225 Benedicite, 112 Benedictines, 105, 205, 212, 223, 229 Benediction of tlie marriage-bed, 60 Benefices, 64, 78, 104, 208 Benefit of clergy. See Clerical privilege Bequests. See Endowments, Gifts Berenger II, 176 Bernard of Coudray, 181 Bernard Itier, 8, 195, 231, 234 Bernard de Naisil, 5, 343, 354 Bernard of Ventadour, 375 Bertran de Born, 256, 266, 375 Bertran of Lamanon, 253 Betrothal, 362 Beziers, 199 Bible, 200, 210 Biographies, 189 Bishop, 142, 173, 176; fighting, 160, 175, 301; life of, 154. See Episcopal Blanche of Castile, 159 Blanche of Champagne, 267, 284 Blanche of Navarre, 377 Blanchefleur, 183, 354 Blasphemy, 76 Bleeding, 322 Blindness, 180, 211 Blood-relationship. See Consan- guinity Boar, 317 Boileau, 106 Bologna, 80, 93 Booty. See Brigandage, Pillage Bordeaux, 423 Boucher d' Abbeville, 56 Bourgeoisie, 83, 156, 161, 173, 271, 381, 384, 387, 420. See Com- munes Bouvines, 5, 74, 160, 182, 251, 263, 296 Brain, 196 Bravery. See Courage Bread and water, 305 Bredeene, 239 Bribery, 173, 241, 245. See Sim- ony Bridges, 2. See also Grand pont. Petit pont Brigandage, 8, 9, 16, 18, 143, 170, 174, 176, 177, 187, 218, 249, 253, 268, 276, 277, 289, 296, 298, 305, 313, 330, 382, 390. See also Ravage Brotherhood of peace, 13 Brutality, 258, 269, 270, 272, 278. See also Cruelty, Massacres, Punishments Budgets. See Money Buffoons, 53. See Minstrels, Play- Builders, 160, 161, 163, 225 Building associations, 167; condi- tions, 120; funds, 165 Buoncompagno, 79, 93 Burghers. See Bourgeoisie Burials, 51, 184, 185, 216; eccle- siastical, 302, 312. See Funer- als Business, 50 Butchery. See Brutality Cadoe, 10, 299 Csesar of Heisterbach, 166, 222, 230, 233, 312 Calatrava, 154 Calendars, 107 Caliph, 27 Calixtus II, 119 Camp-following, 15, 184 Canons, 38, 104, 105, 120, 129, 176 Canonical hours, 106 Canticles, 190, 379 INDEX 431 Cantor, 64, 123 Capitalists, 276. See also Money Capital sins, 197 Capitular elections, 121 Cardinals, 151, 206 Carthusians, 201. See Clairvaux Cartularies, 114, 219 Carving, 169 Cassock, 105 Castles, 156, 249, 261, 265, 351 Casuistry, 218 Catechism, 196 Cathedrals, 117, 118, 148, 224 Aiixerre, 162 Bayonne ( Sainte^Marie ) , 164 Bourges ( Saint-Etienne ) , 164 Chaions-s-M. (Notre-Dame), 163 Chartres (Notre-Dame), 29,164 Embrun, 164 Evreux (Notre-Dame), 163 Laon (Notre-Dame), 163 Lisieux ( Saint- Pierre ) , 163 Lyon, 164 Mans ( Saint- Julien), 164 Meaux, 163 Noyon, 163 Paris (Notre-Dame), 3, 9, 64, 87, 99, 101, 112, 113, 119, 120, 130, 161, 165 Poitiers (Saint-Pierre), 164 Puy (Notre-Dame), 29 Quimper, 164 Reims, 163 Rouen (Notre-Dame), 163 Roye, 163 Soissons, 164 Toulouse ( Saint-ifitienne ) , 164 Troyes (Saint-Pierre), 163 V#zelay (Notre-Dame), 29 Cato, 81 Celestine III, 11, 84, 86, 131, 139, 186, 236 Cemeteries, 5, 53, 216, 225 Censures, 157, 176, 283, 284. See Excommunication, Interdict Centralization of the Church, 151. See Papacy Chablis, 130 Chamberlain, 111, 123 Champagne, 267, 284, 422; fairs, 419 Champeaux, 5 Chance, 20 Chancellor, 64, 65, 70, 72, 87, 89, 99, 102, 124, 182 Chanson de la croisade des Al- Ugeois, 20, 333 Chansons de geste, 54, 171, 182, 184, 258, 273, 278, 279, 317, 374 Chansons des Lorrains, 4, 5, 258, 310, 358 Chanson de Roland, 385 Chaplains, 107, 116, 136 Chapter, 104, 105, 107, 117, 138, 235 Chapter-general, 224, 233, 234, 239 Charity, 7, 79, 80, 94, 146, 198, 203, 205, 233. See Alms, Beg- ging, Poverty Charles Martel, 172, 259, 278, 315, 336 Charms, 20 Char spirituel, 191 Charters, 412, 414 Chase, 175, 315, 317, 324 Chastity, 243. See Morals Chateau. See Castles Chess, 53, 321 Chivalry, 273. See Knighthood Choir, 117 Choir-boys, 64 Choir-stalls, 168 Christ, 174, 190 Christmas, 111, 115, 197 Chronique des ^veques d'Auxerre, 304 Churches, 37; abbatial churches, 226; cathedral and collegiate churches, 104; church courts, 38, 85; fortified churches, 40; church treasure, 131; church revenues, 47, 139 Churchwardens, 124 Circumcision, 113 Cistercians, 190, 204, 213, 223, 233. See also Citeaux Cite, 2, 29, 64, 73, 75, 79, 101, 119, 144 Citeaux, 132, 166, 213, 215, 219, 239. See Cistercians Cities, 3, 5, 293, 416 Citizens, 253, 271, 292, 422 Clairvaux, 105, 200, 204, 215 Classes, social, 275, 382 Clement III, 193, 245 Clergy, 48, 272, 275; auxiliary, 116; in business, 50, 51, 176; erudite, 60; fighting, 133, 160; illiteracy of, 52; immorality of, 48, 49, 173, 176, 177, 239; itin- 432 INDEX erant, 79; regular, 150, 180; revenues of, 111; secular, 150; wealth of, 55, 130, 146, 223, 225 Clerical privilege, 48, 119 Clerk. See Secretary Cliges, 376 Cloisters, 116, 118, 181, 187 Clothing, 339. See Costume, Vest- ment Cluny, 105, 172, 200, 223 Coal, 215 Collections, 57, 166, 167, 205 Colleges, 80 Comets, 22 Common people, 276, 311 Commune, 143, 156, 229, 385, 392, 411. See Cities, Bourgeoisie Communal militia, 425 Compline, 107 Concubinage, 53, 55, 149, 175, 176, 205. See Morals Confession, 97, 217 Confiteor, 111 Conrad of Porto, 70 Consanguinity, 183, 291, 363. See Blood-relationship Constant du Eamel, 400 Constantine, 207 Constantinople, 281, 304 Contemplation, 223 Contracts, 328 Corvee, 115, 253, 402 Cosmetics, 210 Cosmopolitanism, 67 Costume, 50, 56, 94, 105, 125, 129, 132, 352. See Vestment Councils, 80, 152, 185, 337 Council of Avignon (1209), ,40, 49; of the Lateran (1179), 65, 66, 152, 311, 315; Lateran (1215), 65, 408; Lateran (1218), 154; Montpellier, (1214), 129, 175; Paris (1208), 51; Paris (1212), 52, 129, 174; Paris (1243), 235; Rouen (1189), 47, 51; Sens (1216), 236; Tours (1163), 186, 187. See also Synods Courage, 196, 202, 257, 259, 275, 278, 386 Courbaran, 16 Courtesan, 168, 176 Courtesy, 351, 374 Courtier, 143 Courtrai, 417 Courts, 78; church courts, 85 Coward, 278. See also Courage Credo, 89 Credulity, 23, 31, 52, 193, 198. See Superstition Cripples, 222. See Mutilation Critical sense, 61 Crops, 316 Cross, 26, 29, 30, 52 Cross-bowman, 258. See Arbalis- ter Crovra of Thorns, 29 Cruelty, 5, 11, 12, 141, 176, 177, 195, 228, 256, 258, 302. See Brutality, Punishment Crusades, 9. 26, 27, 29, 36, 154, 184, 199, 215, 234, 246, 272, 311, 326, 341; third crusade, 154; fourth, 24, 36, 155, 314; chil- dren's, 25 Cupidity. See Avarice Cures, 38, 45 Curing the sick, 6, 24, 29, 186, 193. See Medicine Currency, 6 Curriculum, 67 Cyclones, 1 Dagon, 132 Dance, 53, 175 Deans, 39, 70, 121, 144 Death, 278, 301 De continentia clericorum, 134. See Morals Debt, 131, 147, 205, 230, 231, 237, 325, 337 Delisle, Leopold, 81 Demons, 312. See also Satan Denifle, 69, 70 Denis the Areopagite, 34 Denmark, 181 Deposition, 121 Depredation. See Ravage Devil, 23. See Satan Dialectic, 67, 75 Dice, 53, 58, 174, 321 Diplomacy, 160, 181 Discipline, 149 Dispensations, 110, 292 Distributions, 94, 111, 114, 139 Diversion, 322. See Games Divination, 20 Divine intervention, 28; divine protection, 23; divine visita- tions, 1, 6, 12, 19. See Miracles INDEX 433 Divorces, 352, 363, 365, 370 Doctors, 50, 184, 208, 322. See Medicine Dogmas, 75, 89 Dogs, 80, 315, 318 Dominicans, 71, 98, 212, 268 Doon de Mayence, 333 Dowry, 220 Dragons, 22, 392 Drawbridges, 175 Dress. See Costume Dreux, Count, 359 Drinking, 53, 82, 233, 274, See Morals Drought, 3 Duels, 20 Durand Dujardin, 12, 13, 205 Earth, shape of, 77 Earthquakes, 1 Easter, 112, 115 Eating. See Meals Eclipses, 22 Economic conditions, 6 Ecstasy, 24, 27 Educated classes, 77, 143, 178, 180, 374 Education, 63, 78, 143, 180, 277, 374; expense of, 81, 95 Egypt, 74 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 356, 377 Elections, 121, 130, 136, 240 Eloquence, 24. See Sermons Emancipation, 112, 404 Embassy. See Ambassador Emigration of peasants, 405 Endowments, 42, 43, 44, 127, 147, 212; for the repose of souls, 113 Enguerran of Coucy, 293 Enigmas, 200 Ennui, 210 Envoys. See Ambassador Envy, 312 Epic. See Literature Epidemics, 5, 6 Episcopal budgets, 146; incomes, 144; insignia, 150; jurisdiction, 142; residences, 145; visits, 39, 47, 148, 175; wealth, 144 Equality of men, 389 Erec, 376, 387 Erudition, 77, 178, 241. See Edu- cated classes Escoufle, 386 Ethics, 196, 218 Etymology, 192 Eudes Rigaud, 54 Eudes of Sully, 20, 47, 48, 96, 113, 124, 165 Eudes of Vaud^mont, 295 Eudoxia (daughter of Greek Em- peror), 367 Eusebius, 61 Eustache of Saint-Germer-de-Flai, 24 Exactions, 17, 40, 288; of Rome, 198, 206 Exaggeration, 199, 260 Examinations, 93, 124 Excommunications, 9, 11, 37, 59, 87, 88, 96, 139, 175, 177, 239, 252, 273, 283, 284, 285, 290, 293, 294, 295, 296, 300, 328, 410; personal, 283 Exhiimation, 88 Exorcisms, 23, 58 Expenses, 334; of war, 339 Extortion. See Exactions Extreme Unction, 301 Fabliaux, 54, 79, 173, 402 Faculties, 69, 70 Fair, 180, 419. See Markets Falcons, 50, 315 False testimony, 183. See Per- jury Famine, 6, 7 Fashions, 50 Fasting, 21, 24, 203 Fealty, 126 Feasts, 45, 94, 107, 111, 322, 334 Ferocity. See Brutality Festivals. See Feasts Feudalism, 126, 149, 253, 258, 262; feudal finance, 325 Finances. See Money Fines, 110 Fires, 3, 4, 5, 163, 167, 260, 261, 384 Fish, 214, 317; fish-days, 215, 234 Flaying, 272 Floods, 2 Fool's holiday, 175 Foot-soldiers. See Infantry Foragers, 261 Forced loans, 339 Foreign aflfairs, 182 Foresters, 401 Forgery, 242 Fortresses, 147, 175 434 INDEX Franchises, 385. See Charters Francis of Assisi, 389 Franciscans, 212 Fraud, 13 Frederick Barbarossa, 28, 200, 309, 335, 342 Freedom of teaching, 65 Freehold, 221 Free towns, 143 Fromondin, 307, 309 Fromont, 5, 270, 307, 343, 358 Fulc, 321; de Breaute, 10; of Neuilly, 24 Funerals, 71, 87, 94, 184. See Burials Furniture, 120 Galopin of Tranchebise, 388 Games, 129, 321; of chance, 175, 352 Gardens, 214 Garin le Lorrain, 171, 172, 182, 183, 184, 258, 270, 278, 307, 309, 317, 333, 343, 354, 358, 375, 385 Gaston of Beam, 297 Genealogy, 193, 352 Geoffrey of Troyes, 53, 76, 173; of Vigeois, 14, 19, 22, 23, 227, 228, 330 Geometry, 196 Gerbert (son of Garin), 347 Gervase of Canterbury, 13 Ghosts, 23. See Superstition Gifts, 127, 146, 167, 212, 215, 217, 218, 223, 339. See Bequests, Endowments Gilbert of Mons, 306, 309, 335, 337, 342 Girart de Roussillon, 171, 258, 260, 278, 281, 315, 336, 353, 354, 386 Girart de Viane, 386 Giraud of Borneil, 253 Gluttony, 55, 313. See Meals Godfrey, 379 Goliards, 79, 80 Gomerfontaine, 213 Good deeds, 217 Good Friday, 114 Gothic architecture, 39, 160, 226 Gowns, 352. See also Costumes Graduating banquets, 93 Graft, 90 Grammar, 191 Grandmont, 179, 181, 204, 228, 243 Grand pont, 73 Greeks, 196; Greek church, 75; Greek Empire, 155 Gregory VII, 247, 314; VIII, 193 Gualo, Cardinal, 86, 198, 206 Guillaume de Dole, 317, 355, 376 Gui of Dampierre, 286, 299 Guillaume le Marechal. See Wil- liam Marshal Guy of Basoches, 73, 416 Guy of Lusignan, 369 Guyot of Provins, 200, 201, 207, 210, 234, 244 Habeas corpus, 101 Hardre, 270 Haskins, 82 Hate, 312 Haureau, 276 Healing. See Curing the sick Helene et Ganymede, 397 Hell, 221, 312 Henry II, 73, 265, 273, 310, 316, 332, 364 Henry the Young, 228, 265, 330 Heresy, 16, 17, 52, 75, 87, 88, 199, 271, 278, 293, 300, 301, 303 Hermitages, 212 Hernais of Orleans, 270 Herring, 215 Hervis de Metz, 182, 185, 278, 280, 281 Highwaymen. See Brigandage History, 74, 189, 194, 198; nat- ural history, 196; universal, 62, 197; writing of, 33, 35, 60, 61, 171, 194 Holidays, 396. See Feasts Holy Ghost, 88, 197 Holy Innocents, 31 Holy Land, 29, 311. See Cru- sades Holy Scriptures, 190 Holy Sepulcher, 25, 26, 29, 30 Homage, 264, 267, 279 Homer, 61 Honorius III, 51, 69, 75, 96, 99, 102, 121, 187, 284, 300 Horace, 192 Horoscope, 197 Hospitaler, 111, 182, 205 Hospitality, 146 Host, 2 INDEX 435 Houses, 3 Hugh of Noyers, 18, 147, 156, 175, 301 Humanities, 77 Hunting and fishing rights, 138, 407. See Chase Hurricane, 7 Idleness, 276 Ignorance. See Illiteracy Illiteracy, 53, 277, 278 Illumination, 39 Imagination, 22, 260, 270 Immorality, 187, 243, 311. See Morals Immunity, 119 Incendiaries, 4, 5, 261. See Fires Incomes, 45, 146 Incontinence, 53. See Morals Independence, 14; of thought, 72 Indevotion, 275 Indulgences, 166, 167 Industry, 384 Infantry, 386 Infidel, 199. See Heresy Ingeborg of Denmark, 8, 157, 182, 194, 322, 356 Inheritance, 267 Ink, Ink-stands, 81 Innocent III, 8, 10, 20, 26, 27, 31, 34, 43, 65, 69, 74, 86, 87, 90, 96, 119, 143, 153, 167, 176, 239,246, 247, 276, 284, 287, 290, 292, 298, 314, 322 Innocent IV, 102 Inns, 180, 188, 311 Insanity, 57 Installation, 112, 144 Intemperance. See Drinking Interdict, 37, 140, 238, 283, 284, 285, 290, 293, 294, 295, 300, 301 Interest, 50, 130, 329, 338; rate of, 338. See Usury Intolerance, 72, 89 Intoxication. See Drinking Investiture, 41, 212; 343; lay, 348; religious, 348 Iron, 215 Italian bankers, 326, 328 Itier. See Bernard Itinerant judge, 149 Jacobins, 98 Jacques de Vitry, 254, 269, 275, 283, 312, 382, 392, 393, 409 Jean des Chandelles, 90 Jerusalem, 1, 29, 194, 200 Jews, 49, 119, 190, 195, 207, 224, 230, 231, 232, 236, 288, 326, 328 John the Baptist, 31 John Lackland, 10, 158, 181, 303 John of Salisbury, 67, 68, 95, 147, 382, 390 Journals of visitation, 54 Journeys. See Travel Joust. See Tournaments Jubainville, 326 Judges, 144, 149 Judgments of God, 175 Judicial duels, 175 Kiss, 111, 190, 191; of peace, 49 Knighthood, 125, 172, 176, 180, 182, 261, 263, 264, 271, 273, 275, 307, 308, 321, 322, 340, 342, 345, 346, 347, 386 La Charite, 239, 301 Ladies, 253, 258, 350 Lady love, 374 Lambert of Ardres, 59, 264, 306, 322, 340, 378 Lancelot, 376 Laon, chronicler of, 13, 14, 17, 18, 24 Largess, 333, 338, 340, 342. See Liberality La Rochelle, 423 Latin, 77, 79, 273; Latin Empire, 314; Latin Verse, 196, 199 Lauds, 107 Law, canon, 67, 78, 276; civil, 67, 78, 102, 108, 208. See Super speculam; study of, 187 Lawsuits, 216 Lawyers, 50, 208 Lay brothers, 204, 205, 244 Lay spirit, 282 Lays. See Chansons de geste Legacies, 113, 114. See Endow- ments, Inheritance Legal combat, 175 Lent, 114 Leprosy, 6 Lettered nobility, 176 Liberal arts, 67, 73, 76, 77 Libraries, 124, 147, 379 Licentia docendi, 63, 65, 72, 93 Liege homage, 126 436 INDEX Lightning, 2, 4 Literature, 54, 61, 171, 208, 278, 374, 419; coarse, 77; comic, 397; profane, 77, 108, 192, 274; ver- nacular, 173, 273. See Latin verse Lodgings, 95 Logic, 196 Lombards, 326 Lord's Prayer, 89, 197 Louis VI, 297, 299 Louis VII, 31, 68, 153, 167, 287, 297, 299, 364 Louis VIII, 29, 74, 226, 265, 308 Love, 374, 375; love-making, 353 Lucius III, 46, 48, 119, 129 Lust, 313. See Morals Lutetia, 193 Luxury, 175, 224 Lyric poetry, 374. See Literature Magi, 31 Maguelonne, 70, 131, 141 Mainz, 309, 335 Majorities (in elections), 136 Malo, 251 Man (definition of), 196 Manasses of Troyes, 124, 216 Manners, 38; depravity of, 82 Manual labor, 179 Manuals, 76 Manuscripts, 147 March, of an army, 260 Markets, 5, 6, 251, 292; market- place, 180. See Fairs Marriage, 60, 174, 175, 182, 1^3, 217, 268, 291, 300, 307, 350, 357 Marseilles, 27, 423 Marvels. See Miracles, Credulity Martin, Henri, 37 Mary. See Virgin Mary Magdalene, 23, 31 Mass, 107, 116, 278 Massacres, 15, 16, 18, 258,-270, 272, 304, 384. See Brutality Master, Degree of, 63, 101 Matins, 107, 112 Matthew of Alsace, 364 Mauclerc, 299 Maundy Thursday, 112 Maurice of Sully, 29, 48, 52, 53, 113, 147, 149, 152, 161, 165, 168, 177 i^ors, 144 Meals, 55, 82, 111, 112, 115, 186, 225. See Banquets, Feasts Meat, 202, 316 Medicine, 29, 66, 67, 70, 74, 78, 186, 187, 208. See Curing the sick. Doctors Meditation, 191 Melancholy, 312, 313 Memorial services, 115 Memory, 196 Mendicants, 98, 205, 212 Men of letters, 143. See Educated classes Mercenaries, 9, 228, 239, 329, 335, 336 Merchants, 9, 311, 419. See Cities Merveille, 226 Messengers, 181, 278, 279. See also Ambassadors Military service, 38, 142, 158,185, 273 Mills, 214, 225, 269, 281, 290 Minstrels, 79, 119, 200, 209, 273, 280, 309, 335, 341, 375. See Chansons de geste, Players Miracles, 2, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 162, 179, 193, 197, 198, 231, 232, 234 Miracles de 'Notre-Dame, 386 Mitred abbots, 150 Monasteries, 142, 201, 220, 221 Monastic garb, 220; life, 201, 212; revenues, 29; wealth, 179; rules, 187; spirit, 173; vows, 219 Money, 131, 136, 188, 229; influ- ence of, 110, 185, 206, 315; lend- ing of, 38, 130, 230 Monks, 45, 150, 179, 187, 189, 213, 223, 281 Montauban, 418 Montaudon, Monk of, 208 Montpellier, 66, 67, 92, 184 Mont Saint-Michel, 29, 226 Morals, 42, 53, 74, 202, 243, 324, 351, 352, 354, 386, 400; of cler- ics, 49, 54, 78, 79 Mortification, 186, 201, 204, 221, 243 Mortmain, 254, 394 Murder, 177, 240 Musee de Cluny, 53 Music, 112, 175, 196, 321 INDEX 437 Mutilation, 11, 12, 256, 258, 259, 260, 270, 384. See Brutality, Cruelty- Mutual assurance societies, 40 Narbonne, 417 'Nations, 69 Natural children, 324 Nave (of churches), 116 Nervous contagions, 27 Nobility, 125, 170, 249, 254; illit- erate, 172; lettered, 176, 177, 374 Nones, 107 Notre-Dame. See Cathedrals Novice, 222 Nuptials. See Marriage Oaths, 28, 172, 175, 184, 188, 240. 264, 279, 280 Octavian, Cardinal, 84, 96 Offerings, 166, 226. See Collec- tions Offices, 106 Ogier le Danois, 333 Oil, 30 Omens. See Portents Opportunism, 314 Ordeals, 20 Ordinaries, 106 Ordination, 46, 129, 148 Originality of the middle ages, 170, 197 Orleans, 67, 81, 140, 417 Orthodoxy, 89 Outlaws, 12. See Brigandage Ovens, 281, 305 Ovid, 61, 77 Pantheism, 87 Papacy, 123, 142, 206, 234 Paraclet, Abbey of, 216 Paradise, 199, 210, 213 Paralysis, 231 Parchment, 81 Paris, 2, 5, 64, 67, 73, 74, 94, 165, 193, 416, 421 Parishes, 37 Parsifal. See Perceval Pasts, 114 Pater Noster. See Lord's Prayer Patron saints. See Saints Patronage, 41, 42, 198, 294; of letters, 376, 377 Paving, 5, 6, 192 Pawning, 51, 173, 189, 228 Peace, 184, 246, 257, 261, 273, 281, 292; of God, 13; of Mary, 13 Peacemaking, 184 Peasants, 229, 253, 254, 260, 271, 285, 313, 316, 381, 392, 398; as- sociations of, 414; emigration of, 405; stupidity of, 398 Penances, 28, 277, 305 Pentecost, 115 Pepin, King, 183, 307, 343, 347, 354, 358, 361 Perceval, 376 Perjury, 40, 183, 211, 280 Peter of Blois, 67, 77, 82, 174, 180, 273 Peter Cantor, 166, 169 Peter of Capua, 34, 122 Peter Comestor, 186 Peter of Courtenay, 156, 301 Peter of Dreux, 299, 300 Peter of Nemours, 49, 91, 95, 114, 146 Peter of Poitiers, 82 Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, 11, 20, 256, 349 Petit pont, 2, 3, 64, 73, 75, 101 Pevele, 318 Philip Augustus, 22, 192, 265, et passim Philip of Dreux, 125, 156 Philip of Grfeve, 95 Philip of Harvengt, 73, 134, 180, 184, 397 Philosophy, 189, 196 Physical strength, 259 Physicians. See Doctors Physics, 196 Physiology, 196 Piety, 169 Pilgrimages, 155, 196, 226, 233, 268, 278, 305, 316, 322, 323, 341 Pillage, 133, 143, 156, 229, 249, 253, 256, 260, 262, 272, 274, 277, 282, 288, 297, 304, 384. See Plimder Plagues, 5, 6 Plato, 77 Players, 53, 119, 175, 321, 375. See also Minstrels Plunder, 15, 176. 177, 251, 253, 268, 313. See Pillage Pluralities, 123, 125, 129 Poets, 189, 200; errant, 200 Poisons, 240 438 INDEX Policing, 8, 10, 13, 37, 84, 86, 123, 133, 139, 143, 144, 294 Pope, 280, 290. See Papacy Popular movements, 14 Portents, 19, 22, 24, 26, 180, 211. See Superstition Poverty, 7, 79, 94, 149, 218, 222, 224, 225, 226, 233, 254, 330, 389. See Alms, Charity Povre clerc, 79 Prayers, 19, 105, 179, 223, 229 Preachers, 52, 98, 143, 173, 191, 254, 312, 352, 393; companies of, 52; itinerant, 52; manuals, 53. See Sermons Prebends, 78, 104, 108, 123, 125, 128, 131, 176 Premontre, 105, 205 Prevostin of Cremona, 78, 82, 90, 132 Prices, 7 Pride, 174, 197, 312 Priests, 37; conduct of, 51; un- frocked, 12 Prime, 107 Prime ministers, 159 Primogeniture, 266 Prisoners of war, 10, 299 Prisons, 48, 85, 90, 97, 101, 139, 177, 269, 298, 308, 311, 316, 328, 329, 338, 357, 384 Privileges, 110, 272 Processions, 1, 3, 28, 29, 53, 74, 139, 305 Procurations, 123, 288, 292 Prodigality, 335, 336 Prodigies. See Miracles Professional studies, 67 Property, four kinds of, 218 Prophecy, 21 Proprietors, landed, 272 Provins. See Guyot Provosts, 107, 121, 122, 137, 144, 254 Prudence, 196 Public women, 83. See also Morals Punishments, 18, 85, 240, 304, 305, 316, 410. See Brutality, Cruelty Puy-en-Velay, 12 Quadrivium, 67, 74, 77, 78 Quarrels of clerics, 33, 42, 121, 133, 134, 140, 157, 171, 216, 229, 239, 295 Quintain, 320 Ransom, 9, 10, 11, 228, 256, 258, 261, 274, 282, 297, 304, 308, 311 Rapacity, 234, 254, 255. See Avarice Ravage, 4, 11, 218, 227, 260, 261, 264, 266, 288. See Brigandage Raymond VI of Toulouse, 19 Reason, 77 Rebellions, 47 Rector, 86 ' Refectory, 203, 227 Reforms, 127, 149, 229 Regular clergy, 150, 180 Relies, 3, 6, 9, 24, 28, 30, 32, 107, 147, 155, 164, 166, 167, 184, 193, 198, 227, -231, 264, 278, 330; anonymous, 30; exposition of, 33, 35; verification of, 32, 33,36 Religious authority, 282 Religious services, 107 Reliquary, 30, 299 Remedies. See Curing the sick Remorse, 278 Rents, 100; in kind, 285 Residence, 50, 108, 109, 116, 123, 128 Respect for women, 354. See Women Resurrections, 23 Retainers, 156, 331 Revenues, 108, 146. See also Church revenues. Money Revolts, 149, 408, 410, 415 Rhetoric, 67 Richard the Lion-Hearted, 3, 10, 22, 153, 158, 252, 258, 265, 266, 308, 330 Rigaut, 346, 385 Rigord of Saint-Denis. 1, 4, 13, 23, 29, 192, 194, 234, 294, 339 Riots, 409 Rituals, 106 Roads, 6 Robbers. See Brigandage Robert of Courgon, 69, 92, 94, 95, 121, 247, 276 Robert of Saint-Marien (Aux- erre), 16, 17, 21, 100, 176 Roger of Hoveden, 25, 307 Roman architecture, 161, 226 Rome, summons to, 152; journeys to, 153. See Appeals Round Table, 376. See Arthur Rusticus, 29, 34 INDEX 439 Sacraments, 51 Sacrilege, 10, 11, 229, 275, 296 Sacristans, 124 Saints, 23, 24, 107, 210, 213; pa- tron saints, 213, 219, 231 Saint Alpinien, 225 Amand, 31 Ancildus, 33, 227 Andrew, 33 Anthony, 205 Augustine, 203 Ausonne, 30 Austremoine, 35, 298 Austriclinian, 19 Basil, 30 Benedict, 235, 281 Benignus, 31 Bernard, 30, 114, 169, 179, 215, 223, 312 Csesar, 31 ■ Denis, 33, 172, 280 Eustache, 30 Eustelle, 30 r6r6ol, 30 Flavian, 30 Front, 30 Genesius, 30 Sainte Genevidve, 3, 31 Saint Germain, 30, 232 Gervais, 115 Gregory, 30 Hilary, 30 Jerome, 61, 218 John, 20, 30, 39 Lawrence, 30 Leocadia, 33 Leonard, 30 Louis, 236 Martial, 30 Martin, 19, 30 Maurice, 31 Nicolas, 30 Paul, 30, 31 Peter, 30 Potentin, 35 Priscus, 30 Protais, 115 Radegonda, 31 Satumin, 30 Sebastian, 30 Simeon, 29 Sixtus, 30 Stephen, 30, 31, 113 Thomas, 30 Saint Vedast, 30 Vincent, 30 Saint- Amand, 241 Saint-Denis, 1, 29, 234, 294 Saint-:fitienne-du-Mont, 117 Saint- :fitienne-le-Vieux, 165 Saint-Foi, 29 Sainte-Genevifeve, 2, 11, 29, 31, 64, 101, 122, 181, 191 Saint-Germain-des-Pr€s, 64, 83 Saint-Honore, 80 Saint- Jean-d' Arc, 154 Saint-Lazare, 29 Saint-Martial, 1, 29, 33, 195, 225 Saint-Martin, 29 Saint-Pierre, 39 Saint-Sernin, 29 Saint- Thomas du Louvre, 81 Saint-Victor, 64, 105, 186, 227, 232, 236 Saint- Yriex, 30 Saladin, 1 Saladin tithe, 173, 341 Salerno, 184 Sanctuaries, 8, 29, 30, 31, 223, 228, 278 Saracens, 154, 280, 315 Satan, 23. See Demons Satirists, 173, 189, 199, 204, 209, 253, 257, 274, 383 Scholars, 63. See Students Scholasticism, 189, 192, 199 Schools, 63, 186; advanced, 64; capitular, 64; elementary, 64; episcopal, 63; free, 65; monas- tic, 63, 64; parochial, 63; pri- vate, 64; of medicine, 66 Science, 2, 77 Sculpture, 224, 227 Seals, 46, 71, 100, 124, 125, 242 Seasons, 77 Secretaries, 181, 182, 278, 311 Sects, 17. See Heresies Secular clergy, 150 Securitv, 329. See Policing, Travel Seminaries, 64, 75 Seniority, 117 Separations, 363 Serf. See Peasants Sergeants, 144 Sermons. 52, 78, 83, 175, 189, 190, 275. See Preaching Services, religious, 107 440 INDEX Seven, 197; seven beatitudes, gifts, petitions,- virtues, 197; seven capital sins, 197, 312 Sext, 107 Shrines, 28, 225, 226, 232. See Sanctuaries Sickness, 29, 202, 222. See Cur- ing the sick Sign language, 241 Silence, 185, 186, 187, 203, 204 Simon de Montfort, 10, 11, 20, 153, 256, 297, 329, 348 Simony, 143, 175, 204, 218. See Bribery Sins, seven capital, 197 Sirvente, 209, 257 Sloth, 312 Slovenliness, 53 Social distinctions, 271 Socialistic theory, 276 Social reform, 16 Social theory, 275, 382, 390 Society, 176, 382; classes of, 382 Sorcery, 20, 21 Spiritual chariot, 191 Spiritual V7orks and benefits, 71, 221 Stained-glass windows, 168, 223, 224 Stalls, choir, 117 Starvation, 176. See Poverty Stations, 114 Stephen of Bourbon, 81, 268 Stephen of Tournai, 75, 76, 77, 83, 152, 156, 158, 182, 191, 238, 241 Stewards, 50 Students, 29, 54, 63, 68, 84, 85, 86; life of, 68, 79, 82, 186 . Studia generalia, 66 Sufltragan bishops, 151 Sumptuary laws, 50 Sunday, 24, 107, 396 Super speculam, 102, 187 Superstition, 1, 4, 13, 19, 20, 21, 25, 180, 197, 211, 278. See Credulity, Portents Symbolism, 190, 191, 197 Synods, 149, 151, 175, 185; of Paris, 47; of Toul (1192), 295. See Councils Tapestries, 147 Taverns, 14, 53, 79, 388 Taxes, 3, 38, 144, 173, 234, 236, 253, 254, 269, 300, 305, 337, 402 Temperance, 196. See Drinking Templars, 202, 205, 232 Tengon, 253 Terce, 107 Testaments, Old and New, 192 Theban Legion, 30 Theology, 65, 67, 74, 78, 189, 207 Thieves, 311. See Robbery Thomas a Becket, 73, 323 Tithes, 7, 43, 130, 173, 217, 238, 275, 408 Tobit, 218 Tolls, 6 Tonsure, 50, 53, 71, 175 Torture, 384. See Cruelty Tournaments, 180, 184, 185, 209, 249, 253, 261. 263, 306, 308,311, 320, 335, 341, 345 Towns and townsmen. See Bour- geoisie Toys, 322 Trade, 130, 384 Translations, 89 Transubstantiation, 22 Travel, 9, 11, 55, 152, 155, 159, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 188, 196, 200, 207, 209, 233, 253 Treasures, 140, 228, 330 Treaties, 28, 300 Trinity, 44, 76, 191 Tristan et Iseult, 376 Trivium, 67, 74, 77 Troubadours, 189, 209, 253, 266, 356, 374, 376. See Minstrels Trouveres, 132, 200, 207, 356 Troy, 193 Twins [Siamese], 197 Universities, 67; charters of, 92, 99; courts, 84; life at, 76; papacy and, 72, 87, 94; of Montpellier, 70; of Paris, 69, 73, 187 Usury, 50, 130, 143, 166, 188, 205, 218, 230, 276, 326, 382. See Interest, Money-lending Utilitarianism, 78 Vacancies, 153, 176; in curia, 153 Vair and gray, 317, 343, 346 Valets, 81, 82 Vanity, 352 Vassalage, 267 Vegfece, 274 INDEX 441 Venality, 72. See Bribery, Money, influence of Vendetta, 269 Venison, 316 Le Verbe qui se conjugue, 191 Verses, 253 Vespers, 107 Vestments, 50, 147, 175. See Cos- tume V6zelay, 287 Vicars, 45, 150 Villein, 271, 346, 385. See also Peasants Violence, 275, 287. See Brutality Viollet-le-Duc, 117, 118, 161 Virgil, 61, 192 Virgin Mary, 13, 22, 30, 33, et passim Visions, 24, 25 Visitation, Journal of, 54 Waldenses, 50 War, 4, 9, 140, 171, 184, 227, 229, 243, 256, 259, 261, 262, 268, 281, 287, 308, 334, 338, 384, 424; love of, 257; cost of, 339 Washing of feet, 114 Wealth of abbeys, 216; of cities, 416 Weddings, 361 Whitehoods, 14, 17, 18, 205 William of Armoriea, 5, 23, 74, 99, 164, 167, 342, 425 William Marshal, 181, 188, 306, 311, 331 William of Seignelay, 99, 156, 304 Wills, 146, 175 Windows, 225. See Stained-glass Wiser party (at elections), 136 Woman, 199, 207, 210, 217, 223, 293, 313, 350, 354, 356, 374, 384 Word, The, 75, 191 Wounded, in battle, 184, 278 BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS The Renaissance in Italy. 8vo. Age of Despots. $2.00. The Revival of Learning. $2.00. The Fine Arts. $2.00. Italian Literature. 2 vols. $4.00. The Catholic Re- ACTION. 2 vols. $4.00. Short History of the Renaissance, izmo. $1.75. Italian Byways. i2mo. $1.25. 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