JORDAN, William Chester; PHILIPPS, Jenna Rebecca. The Capetian century, 1214 to 1314

SAVE OFFLINE

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314

CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES General Editor Yitzhak Hen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Editorial Board Angelo di Berardino, Augustinianum, Rome Nora Berend, University of Cambridge Leslie Brubaker, University of Birmingham Christoph Cluse, Universität Trier Rob Meens, Universiteit Utrecht James Montgomery, University of Cambridge Alan V. Murray, University of Leeds Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Notre Dame Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 22

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314

Edited by

William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

© 2017, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2017/0095/29 ISBN: 978-2-503-56718-1 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-56719-8 DOI: 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.109362 Printed on acid-free paper

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Introduction William Chester Jordan

ix

Part I. Royal Patronage and Expressions of Kingship The Capetian Monarchy and the Uni­ver­sity of Paris, 1200–1314 William J. Courtenay

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited: Cistercian Commemoration and Devotion during the Capetian Century, 1214–1314 Anne E. Lester

King/Confessor/Inquisitor: A Capetian-Dominican Convergence Sean L. Field

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles M. C. Gaposchkin

3

17 43 71

Part II. Power and its Representation French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King (c. 1260– c. 1314) Xavier Hélary

115

Contents

vi

The Managerial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century Hagar Barak

The Ambiguity of Representation: Semiotic Roots of Political Consent in Capetian France Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

143

151

Part III. Philip the Fair and his Ministers Philip the Fair and his Ministers: Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerran de Marigny Elizabeth A. R. Brown

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy: Guillaume de Nogaret and the Conflicts between Philip the Fair and the Papacy Julien Théry-Astruc

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair Élisabeth Lalou

185

219 261

Part IV. Crusaders and Crusading Orders Travels, Troubles, and Trials: The Montaigu Family between Capetian France and Lusignan Cyprus Jochen Burgtorf

An Upstart without Prospects? The Familial Context of Renaud of Châtillon and its Implications Paul F. Crawford

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14? Helen J. Nicholson

Index

281

305 323 349

List of Illustrations Anne E. Lester Figure 2.1. ‘The Coffret of Saint Louis’. Wood, medallions of champlevé enamel. Provenance of Notre-Dame-du-Lys. Paris, Musée du Louvre; Département des Objets d’art: Moyen Âge. Limoges, c. 1234–36. . . . . . . . 34 Figure 2.2. ‘The Coffret of Blessed John of Montmirail or the Longpont Coffret’. Limoges. Copper, engraved, stippled, and gilt champlevé enamel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 M. C. Gaposchkin Plate I. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. I:73 B1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Plate II. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. III:120 B3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Plate III. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 36r Aa.  . 75 Plate IV. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 30v Aa. . 75 Plate V. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. III:178 B3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Figure 4.1. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.240, fol. 8r. . . . . . . . 81 Figure 4.2. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. I:166 B3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Figure 4.3. London, British Library, MS Harley 1527, fol. 86v B1–2. . . . . . . 84 Figure 4.4. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 37v Bb. 86 Figure 4.5. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. I:109v A4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Figure 4.6. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 67 Aa. . 90 Figure 4.7. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 221 Bb. . 91 Figure 4.8. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 217 Bb. . 93 Figure 4.9. Vienna, Öster­reichische National­bibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 40v Dd. . 94 Figure 4.10. Toledo, Tesoro del Cate­dral, MS s.n. I:111v. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Figure 4.11. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 270b, fol. 130r B3–4. . . . . . . . . . 97

viii

list of iLLUSTRATIONS

Figure 4.12. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. II:105v B1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Figure 4.13. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 131 Bb. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Figure 4.14. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 89 Dd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Figure 4.15. Vienna, Öster­reichische National­bibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 52 Cc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Figure 4.16. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. III:116 A1–2. . . . . . . . . . 103 Figure 4.17. Vienna, Öster­reichische National­bibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 128 Aa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Figure 4.18. Toledo, Tesoro del Cate­dral, MS s.n. III:6 A3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak Figure 7.1. Sealed charter of Philip Augustus, Paris, Archives Nationales, AE/II/205. 1209. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Figure 7.2. Plaster model of Louis IX seal of ‘Regency’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Figure 7.3. Matrix, imprint, and fingerprints. Seal-Matrix of the Collegial Chapter of Saint-Quiriace of Provins, and detached wax impressions issued from it, Paris, Archives Nationales, Early fourteenth century . . . . 170 Figure 7.4. ‘Legend of Theophilus, Lambeth Apocalypse’, London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 209, fol. 46 A. c. 1260. . . . . . . . . . 174 Jochen Burgtorf Figure 11.1. Montaigu Family Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Map 11.1. Map of Garin of Montaigu’s Travels (1222–25). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 Paul F. Crawford Figure 12.1. Offspring of Constance, Princess of Antioch, and Raymond of Poitiers; Ancestors of Constance, Princess of Antioch. . . . . 309 Figure 12.2. Simplified Family Trees for Renaud of Châtillon. . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Introduction William Chester Jordan

T

he year 2014 corresponded to two anniversaries that, among medieval historians and historians of the state, have long been at the very heart of understanding political developments, indeed, proto-nationalism in the West from the Middle Ages to modernity. The year 1214 saw the definitive confrontation between the rulers of England and France in terms of territorial demarcation. Before 1202 the English claimed huge parts of western France as part of the patrimony of the man who wore the English crown, but military reversals over the next dozen years fundamentally altered the territorial scene. From 1214 onward, the distinction French/English grew increasingly firmer. Not every contradiction was resolved, of course, but the trajectories of both medieval polities were largely ‘determined’ from that year. What happened in 1214? The English in trying to recoup some of their military losses to the French arranged an alliance with an array of German and Low Country princes for a massive two-front invasion of what scholars refer to as the French royal domain. In one decisive battle in the extreme north at Bouvines against the Germanic invaders, and in a show of overwhelming force in the south-west against the simultaneous English invaders, the French under King Philip II Augustus and his son swept their enemies away. Ever since, Bouvines has loomed large in French patriotic consciousness as ‘the battle that made France’. In recent books and at a major conference in Spain whose proceedings were published in 2012, Bouvines has been hyped indeed as one of the three military engagements that made Europe — Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212; Muret, 1213; and Bouvines itself, 1214.1 The first effectively destroyed Muslim 1 

Vaquero, 1212–1214; Baldwin and Simons, ‘The Consequences of Bouvines’; Contamine, ‘Le jeudi de Muret’. William Chester Jordan ([email protected]) Princeton Uni­ver­sity

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. ix–xvi 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112965 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

William Chester Jordan

x

power in the Iberian Peninsula; the second led to the atrophy of alleged antiCatholic heresies in southern Europe; and the third, Bouvines, helped create the European superpower of the High Middle Ages, Capetian France. The conference at Princeton for which the papers published here were prepared along with one or two others specifically commissioned after the conference interrogated this ideological and scholarly consensus. The Capetian Century serves as the title of this volume, but what did the conference organizers and participants mean by the phrase? The French under the so-called third dynasty, descended from King Hugh Capet (hence, Capetian), had struggled from its establishment by usurpation in 987 to assert its legitimacy and its authority. In doing so its admirers and publicists articulated a range of claims, emphasizing the royal dynasty’s specialness over powerful rival territorial princes and other royal lineages. Many of these claims are well known and have been extensively studied for generations by great scholars like Marc Bloch, Percy Ernst Schramm, Ernst Kantorowicz, and Joseph Strayer.2 French ideologues interpretatively turned the Capetian coronation ritual into an eighth sacrament. They claimed that their anointed kings could heal illness by touch — not mere touch, but touch carefully choreographed to imitate the most significant ritual practices of the Christian church. Their persuasive success is demonstrated by documents of practice, which establish that men and women from all over France and indeed from elsewhere in Catholic Europe sought out the Capetian monarchs for their thaumaturgic or wonderworking powers. The French far more than the English, despite the anomaly of King Richard the Lionheart’s enthusiasm and participation, claimed the Crusades as their enterprise (in concert with the church). Many scholars argue that the Crusades were essential in the foundation of a European identity. None would dispute that the role of the Capetians was fundamental in sustaining the movement. And none would dispute that the lineage had an equally fundamental role in promoting, through its patronage, the unifying pan-European style of artistic production which though now known as Gothic because its Renaissance detractors thought it barbarous, was known at its height everywhere on the continent in the thirteenth century as ‘the French style’.3 2 

Bloch, The Royal Touch; Schramm, Der König von Frankreich; Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies; Strayer, ‘France’. 3  For Crusades and French and European identity, see Oschema, ‘L’idée d’Europe et les croisades’. On contemporary referencing of the Gothic as French, see Bork, Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, s.v. ‘opus Francigenum’.

Introduction

xi

And finally the French in King Louis IX (r. 1226–70) had a ruler who was almost universally regarded by Christian elites in Europe as a new Charlemagne, a new David, and a new Solomon, which is to say, as the very embodiment of imperial authority, righteousness, and wisdom. Canonized as St Louis in 1297, he was understood as the model Christian king.4 All other monarchs, one papal enthusiast gushed in remembrance of the particular closeness between Capetian policies under Louis and those of the popes, were merely little kings, reguli.5 Besides being the anniversary of the Battle of Bouvines, the year 1214 was the anniversary of the birth of St Louis, who is remembered also as the architect of the first truly serious kingdom-wide administrative hierarchy.6 If the year 1214 was a good starting point, why fix on1314 for the end of the Capetian century? This date marks the death of King Philip IV the Fair, St Louis’s grandson. All the Capetian accomplishments and claims to paramountcy in Europe (Christendom) came to a culmination under Philip IV.7 The claims and attempts to realize them also became, it has long been argued, excessive. Arrogance and the will to dominate displaced St Louis’s desire to live peaceably with his Christian neighbours. Royal belief in the king and in France’s manifest destiny to exercise power in the Christian church alienated the papacy which had otherwise long enjoyed a strong and fruitful alliance with the monarchy under St Louis. Indeed, the brutality of Philip IV’s policy towards the papacy and other Christian institutions, like the Order of Knights Templar, is a byword. Earlier attempts to foster unity within the realm were harsh, such as Louis IX’s efforts to persuade the kingdom’s 150,000 Jews to convert, but they moved from harsh to terroristic under Philip IV who mandated the expulsion of all Jews from France in 1306. All of these thrusts in Capetian policy provoked animosity, so that international deference to French tastes and projects, never universal before, largely evaporated after 1314. Even Philip IV seemed to recognize the handwriting on the wall on his deathbed when he belatedly acknowledged that he had not lived up to the model of St Louis. His reign ended in a flurry of rebellion. This grand narrative of Capetian history has needed two things: (1) fleshing out where details are unclear and where apparent contradictions remain and 4 

The most comprehensive modern biography is Le Goff ’s Saint Louis. The preacher Remigio de’ Girolami made the claim at the turn of the thirteenth/ fourteenth century (quoted in D’Avray, Death and the Prince, p. 199). 6  Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade. 7  For comprehensive treatments of Philip IV’s reign, see Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, and Favier, Philippe le Bel. 5 

William Chester Jordan

xii

(2), as indicated, further interrogation more generally. The triumphant narrative (a recent book calls the era a golden age8) has privileged Capetian practices without probing or probing sufficiently into why other dynasties engaged in different practices. Why did the Spanish kings reject representing themselves as sacral, thaumaturgic persons? Why did the English kings fail to have their thaumaturgic claims resonate as effectively with the populations of other kingdoms? Why were the Germans, if not quite indifferent, certainly far from obsessed with the Crusades to the Holy Land, so unlike the French? What was the nature of the pushback on the inordinate assertions of paramountcy that the Capetian dynasty was making before 1314? As Charles Tilly wondered in his preface to the reissue of a famous book on medieval state-building, Strayer’s Medi­eval Origins, were there not other viable models besides the Capetian?9 It is not that these questions have failed to be raised; it is that no consensus has emerged about answers for them. The participants in this conference put a great deal of effort into exploring these various issues and many others related to them. And they benefited from the cross-fertilization that came from hearing and discussing what scholars in different fields and subfields were doing. Their scholarship was stimulated enormously by the encounter. That the venue of this encounter was Princeton Uni­ver­sity was particularly appropriate. Joseph Strayer who taught medieval history at Princeton for forty years was one of the most formidable scholars of medieval state-building and of the exemplary role of the Capetians in it, owing to his pathbreaking works The Administration of Normandy under Saint Louis (1936), On the Medi­eval Origins of the Modern State (1969), and The Reign of Philip the Fair (1980), to name a few. Strayer was my teacher, colleague, and friend, but to tell the truth he was not a man much given to the celebration of centuries, possibly because he loathed a certain kind of uncritical celebration, like that associated with the name of James J. Walsh, the author of what was a widely influential book when Strayer was receiving his own education. The book was all the rage in American Catholic schools at the beginning of the twentieth century, indeed throughout the first half of the twentieth century. It was published by the Catholic Summer School Press and carried the title The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries. It was dedicated to the rector of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. The author, Walsh, was a medical historian who, as Professor of the History 8  9 

Cassard, L’âge d’or capétien. Tilly, ‘Joseph Strayer Revisited’, p. xiv.

Introduction

xiii

of Nervous Diseases, taught at Fordham Uni­ver­sity Medical School. But he loved and was nostalgic for the Middle Ages. Like Henry Adams’s more serious Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, Walsh’s book was a lament for a bygone age.10 In Walsh’s case, he pined for an age of devotion, Gothic architecture, knightly gestes, and scholastic summae, as he told the tale of, in his words, ‘deeds and men of a marvellous period’.11 There are times when the titles or prefaces of even very good books nowadays have too much of this pining sentiment, intentional or not. Jean-Christophe Cassard’s L’âge d’or capétien has already been referred to, but even Jacques Le Goff ’s phrase, ‘the beautiful century’, to describe the thirteenth, which appears in his recently translated meditation on the Golden Legend, In Search of Sacred Time, is problematic and may be misapprehended by students.12 The papers in this volume, in line with many recent works, do not ignore the grimier and grimmer images of the Capetian century. Royal patronage and its relationship with ideological expressions of kingship, Part I of the book, addresses not only the beautiful artefacts produced under the influence of the rulers and their families, but explains how the close relationship between the Crown and many of the institutions it patronized could be marshalled in support of its aggressive or repressive policies, although these institutions were not mere creatures of the state. Part II takes on the question of power, its representation and its exercise, in war, in administration, and in discourse. It is in Part III that the career and impact of Philip the Fair become the focus. The enigmas of his personality remain — and we are witnesses in these essays to earlier historians’ struggles to dispel them. But we also see how it might be possible to move forward by a deeper appreciation of the sensibilities of some of Philip’s closest advisers. The closing essays of the book constituting Part IV focus on the Crusades. The authors invite us to take a wider view of French history and its implications for the diaspora French and for the universal institutions of the Catholic Church. All in all the stories told by the authors of the articles in this volume chronicle a monarchy at once triumphant and simultaneously suspicious, on edge. When it was a case of the latter, rulers indulged in dramatic and disruptive displays of power whose consequences are still chilling eight hundred years later: 10 

For the first edition of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, see Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. 11  Walsh, The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries, p. ix. 12  Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time, p. 6.

William Chester Jordan

xiv

the savagery of the war on heresy; the inquisitions of heretical depravity; the imposition of repressive moral codes; the expulsion of the Jews; the obliteration of the Order of Knights Templar. The hubris (it is perhaps not too strong a word) was expressed also, following the challenging recent work of Madeline Caviness, by an overweening privileging of Frenchness. As she has argued, this manifested itself in the elevation of whiteness as the unrivaled superior skin tone among the cultural brokers and culture makers of the Capetian court in the thirteenth century. In Caviness’s opinion, it should come as no surprise that the white-skinned patrons of ‘medieval modernist’ cathedrals, at the time the tallest buildings in the world, had a rather high opinion of themselves.13 Skyscraper hubris still shadows human culture. But sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly, the progressive or positive image of the century and of the Capetians perdures. Dr. Hagar Barak, one of the co-organizers of the Princeton conference, recently discovered the report of a speech written in the late 1990s by a lawyer working for the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board.14 The lawyer, by name David Schacher, wrote his speech for an international conference extolling the development and sophistication of conflict of interest rules which, as he began to prepare his remarks, he thought and frankly confessed only arose in the late twentieth century. Then, he found something in a book that quoted a very interesting piece of legislation. Judging by the abbreviated citation, it looked like the quotation in question might come from a French legal code. He concluded that what was going on in the United States in the 1990s had its parallel in contemporary France. And he was sufficiently fascinated by the parallel that he decided to track down the author or authors of the legislation and perhaps invite one of them to the conference in Philadelphia where he was planning to give his talk. He would also then have a chance to sit down with his guest over drinks and compare notes on the latest U.S. and French efforts to prevent or punish corruption. The problem with his plan, he soon discovered, was that the legislation did not originate with a Fifth Republic French bureaucrat, political scientist, sociologist, or lawyer. Its author was Louis IX, and neither the King nor any of his administrators were available to fly to Philadelphia to have a chat with Mr. Schacher over drinks. We are of the opinion, however, that the King was in Princeton in spirit for our conference. Whether he enjoyed everything he heard is another issue entirely. 13  14 

Caviness, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’. Schacher, ‘A “New Model” Conflicts of Interest Law’.

Introduction

xv

Works Cited Adams, Henry, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: A  Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904) Baldwin, John, and Walter Simons, ‘The Consequences of Bouvines’, French Historical Studies, 37 (2014), 243–69 Bloch, Marc, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, trans. by J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973) Bork, Robert, ed., Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, online version (2010) Cassard, Jean-Christophe, L’âge d’or capétien, 1180–1328 (Paris: Éditions Belin, 2011) Caviness, Madeline, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’, in Letonikas pirmais kongress: plenārsēžu materiāli, Rīga, 2005. gada 24.–25. oktobris, Proceedings of the First Con­ gress on the Humanities (Riga: Latvijas Zinātņu akadēmija, 2006), pp. 179–91 Contamine, Philippe, ‘Le jeudi de Muret (12 septembre 1213), le dimanche de Bouvines (27 juillet 1214): deux “journées” qui ont “fait la France”’, in La Croisade albigeoise: Actes du colloque du Centre d’études cathares, ed. by Michel Roquevert (Carcassonne: Centre d’études cathares, 2004), pp. 109–23 D’Avray, David, Death and the Prince: Memorial Preaching before 1350 (Oxford: Claren­ don Press, 1994) Favier, Jean, Philippe le Bel, rev. edn (Paris: Fayard, 1998) Jordan, William, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Prince­ ton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1979) Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Prince­ton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1957) Le Goff, Jacques, In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and the Golden Legend, trans. by Lydia Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014) —— , Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) Oschema, Klaus, ‘L’idée d’Europe et les croisades (xie–xve siècles)’, in Relations, échanges, transferts en Occident au cours des deniers siècles du moyen âge: hommage à Werner Paravicini, ed. by Bernard Guenée and Jean-Marie Moeglin (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles lettres, 2010), pp. 51–86 Schacher, David, ‘A “New Model” Conflicts of Interest Law’, Council on Government Ethics Laws (COGEL): Guardian, 5 (1997), 5–6 Schramm, Percy Ernst, Der König von Frankreich: das Wesen der Monarchie vom 9. zum 16. Jahrhundert. Ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte des abendländischen Staates (Weimar: H. Böhlaus, 1939) Strayer, Joseph, ‘France: The Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King’, in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe, ed. by T. K. Rabb and J. E. Seigel (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1969), pp. 3–16 —— , The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980) Tilly, Charles, ‘Joseph Strayer Revisited’, in Joseph Strayer, On the Medi­eval Origins of the Modern State, new edn (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005)

xvi

William Chester Jordan

Vaquero, Eloísa Ramírez, ed., 1212–1214, el trieno que hizo a Europa (Pamplona: Publica­ ciones del Gobierno de Navarra, 2012) Walsh, James, The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries (New York: Catholic Summer School Press, 1907)

Part I. Royal Patronage and Expressions of Kingship

The Capetian Monarchy and the ­ ity of Paris, 1200–1314 Univers William J. Courtenay

T

he document usually cited as the first official recognition of the Uni­ ver­sity of Paris as an institution is the charter of privileges issued by King Philip Augustus in 1200.1 Although most of the privileges in that charter, such as the clerical status of scholars, their protection from physical violence, from seizure of person or possessions, and from trial or imprisonment by secular authorities, were not new, the choice of that document by Heinrich Denifle and Émil Chatelain as the beginning point for the university enhanced the historiographical impression created by the encomium of William le Breton that the king was the principal patron and protector of students and masters at Paris, the one who first recognized the university community as a corporation and legal entity.2 And because Philip Augustus’s action in 1200 preceded Innocent III’s restructuring of the faculty of theology at Paris in 1207, the statutes of 1215 issued by the papal legate Robert Courçon, or the Parens scientiarum letter of Gregory IX in 1231, from a documentary perspective one could view the Uni­ver­sity of Paris as initially a royal creation and only later a papally protected institution as well. 1 

Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by Denifle and Chatelain [hereafter CUP], i, 59, no. 1. Denifle and Chatelain edited earlier documents, fifty-five of them, separately in an introductory section. 2  Even William le Breton, who is often credited with assigning the institutional foundation of the Uni­ver­sity of Paris to Philip Augustus, saw the royal initiative as a twin achievement of Philip and his father, Louis VII, in which the charter of 1200 was only one of several important acts. William J. Courtenay ([email protected]) Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin–Madison

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 3–16 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112966 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

William J. Courtenay

4

That perception has long been viewed as greatly overstated, a description that is at odds with the historical record. As John Baldwin noted many years ago, Philip had many reasons in 1200 to defend clerical privileges, most of those reasons having little to do with university scholars.3 If the privileges of 1200 left the prosecution and punishment of scholars accused of crimes exclusively in the hands of ecclesiastical courts — a Becket-type solution to the problem of criminous clerks — the Paris accords of 1205 and the modification or clarification of the 1200 statute in 1210 reintroduced the presence of royal officials into cases of serious wrongdoing, such as murder, rape, or simply the shedding of blood.4 Although there is nothing in the royal directive of May 1210 concerning the degrading of a cleric or the role of secular justice after conviction in an ecclesiastical court, the burning of heretical clerics six months later, many of them said to be theological scholars, suggests that Philip obtained what Henry II of England had sought in the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164 but failed to achieve.5 Alexander III in 1178 had prohibited handing over a degraded cleric to secular justice, even for a serious crime, but concerns over the spread of heresy led Lucius III in 1184 to permit clerics convicted of heresy to suffer the same fate as lay heretics, and Celestine III and Innocent III expanded the types of crime for which a convicted and degraded cleric could be punished by secular authority.6 The decree and events of 1210 did not change or reverse the scholarly privileges of 1200, but rather clarified procedures for serious offences. Royal protection of scholars was effectively limited to royal protection of clerical immunities and requiring the provost of Paris to swear not to violate those privileges. The building of a new wall on the Left Bank at royal expense, sometimes described as a protection to the university community, primarily protected lay citizens, the property owners who provided lodging and other services to scholars and fellow citizens. Those involved in physical attacks on students, with or without provocation, were more likely found within rather than outside the walls.

3 

Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 183–86; Baldwin, ‘Le contexte poli­ tique et institutionnel’. 4  CUP, i, 72, no. 13; Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 325–27. 5  Thijssen, ‘Master Amalric and the Amalricians’. 6  For Alexander III’s letter, At si clerici, see Decretales Gregorii IX, 2.1.4, Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, 240. For those of Lucius III (5.7.9: Ad abolendam), Celestine III (2.1.10: Quum non ab homine), and Innocent III (5.20.7: Ad falsariorum confundendam), see Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, 780–83, 242, 820–21.

The Capetian Monarchy and the Univer­sity of Paris, 1200–1314

5

But what of the king as patron of scholars? Essentially nothing! Philip Augustus did not found any college or hospice for scholars at Paris during his reign. Nor did he shower alms or stipends upon colleges or individual scholars, or leave similar bequests in his final testament of 1222. Although some university masters and graduates did find employment in royal administration, that was not because jobs were being created for them as a form of financial support.7 They simply had the skills and connections to be useful to the King. It should be noted, however, that individuals connected to the royal family or the royal court did act in support of the material needs of students or the teaching mission of the university, sometimes with the explicit agreement of the king. Philip’s uncle, Robert I, Count of Dreux, founded a house for Poor Scholars of Saint Thomas Martyr (Saint Thomas du Louvre) in or before 1186, with the approval of the King and Queen.8 In 1218 the dean of the collegiate church at Saint-Quentin, who was also a royal chaplain and regent master in theology, installed the Dominicans in a property at the southern gate of the Grande Rue, with buildings and a chapel dedicated to St Jacques, that he had been given in 1209 in order to establish a hospital for the poor.9 The official transfer of the property was made in 1221. He continued to hold his 7  Baldwin, ‘Studium et regnum’; Baldwin, ‘Masters at Paris’; Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 119–22. 8  The foundation consisted of several houses belonging to Robert, adjacent to the collegiate church of Saint Thomas, along with certain revenues. CUP, i, 11 (introductory section, no. 14): ‘Sicut autem in audientia nostra est propositum […] comes Robertus divine pietatis amore quasdam domus, quas habebat Parisius, provisioni pauperum clericorum cum quibusdam redditibus de uxoris et filiorum suorum conniventia deputavit […]. Quia igitur postulavit a nobis […] Philippus illustris Francorum rex et regina uxor ipsius, postulavit etiam et jam dictus comes, ut donationem ejus nostra deberemus auctoritate firmare’. This letter of Urban III, written in July 1286 or 1287 in response to a request for papal confirmation of the donation, was sent to a certain William, priest and provisor of the ‘domus Sancti Thome Martyris Parisius’, which means that the endowed hospice was already in operation. In 1210 Innocent III granted the provisor and brothers of the ‘domus pauperum scolarium S. Thome’ the right to build a chapel with cemetery; CUP, i, 69–70, no. 10. Although there was no direct connection between the college and the church of St Thomas, Robert, presumably in his will, funded positions for four canons in the church, confirmed by Pope Clement III in 1189, and Philip established others in 1192; CUP, i, 11n. 9  For the text of the 1209 gift of Simon de Pisciaco to ‘magistro Johanni regis clerico et amico meo’, see Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. by Quetif and Echard, i, 17. For the transfer to the Dominicans, see Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. by Quetif and Echard, i, 17–18; CUP, i, 100–101, no. 43; pp. 101–02, no. 44. The pre-Dominican history of SaintJacques is discussed in Courtenay, ‘The Donation of St. Jacques’.

6

William J. Courtenay

lectures there for the remainder of his regency, which served the needs of the Dominicans as well as his secular students. The fact that Saint-Jacques thus became the Paris convent of the Dominicans should not obscure the donor’s intention that it also serve the teaching mission of the faculty of theology, even if it did not provide housing for secular theological students. Subsequent monarchs did not significantly add to or modify the privileges laid forth in 1200 until the reign of Philip IV.10 The privileges of 1200 were repeated by subsequent monarchs, but always in an attempt to appease scholars in order to quell civil disorder. Occasionally the royal court took the side of civic authorities against Parisian scholars, as Blanche of Castile, as regent, initially did in 1229.11 Even though she modified her approach a few months later and reissued the privilege of 1200 in the name of her fifteen-year-old son, Louis,12 Parisian scholars went ahead with their strike, and lectures did not resume until the crisis was resolved through a papal letter to the King, the famous Parens scientiarum of 1231. The royal guarantee of scholarly privileges by Philip Augustus and its reaffirmation in 1229 should not be seen as a deeply felt desire by the monarchy to protect scholars and promote the university community as a favoured institution against all other social groups and concerns. By the accord of Paris in 1205 and as applied in 1210 by legislation and the secular punishment of heretical clerks, royal policy took a firmer approach to criminal acts of scholars, with the acquiescence of ecclesiastical authority, both papal and episcopal. Thus, when 10  The only possible exception to this is the procedure for setting rental prices on lodgings to scholars, which is mentioned in Parens scientiarum in 1231 and may have been negotiated with royal intervention. In any event, it does not seem to have been a point of contention between town and university. The privilege of exemption from legal suit or judicial trial outside Paris, which existed by the early fourteenth century, appears to be papal in origin, although it must also have had royal support when it concerned litigation outside ecclesiastical courts. The privilege of safe passage of scholars to and from Paris without payment of tolls or seizure of goods by royal officials may have been understood as implicit in the charter of 1200, but it was not spelled out until Philip IV did so in 1295 and 1297 (CUP, ii, 65, no. 589; p. 75, no. 601; p. 79, no. 606). 11  Since the letter of 1210 considered the shedding of blood an offence that royal officials should take seriously, and Blanche acted in concert with the dean of Saint-Marcel, who was an ecclesiastical dignitary, her actions may have been in keeping with the charter of 1200 as clarified in 1210. That she acted precipitously and encouraged townspeople to attack scholars comes from Matthew Paris, who may not be entirely trustworthy on this point. 12  It is worth noting that the text of the charter of privileges reissued in 1229 is that of 1200, almost word for word, without any language from the 1210 directive being added.

The Capetian Monarchy and the Univer­sity of Paris, 1200–1314

7

Blanche initially took a hard line against scholars involved in civil disorder in 1229, she may have been overstepping the letter of previous agreements but may not have been violating royal and civic sentiment under Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. Similarly, William of Auvergne’s failure as bishop to intervene in 1229 on behalf of his former fellow scholars may have been motivated by his understanding of the shifting opinion reflected in the accord of 1205 and the decree of 1210 as well as his own attitude towards disorderly students and a reluctance to make himself and his own judicial court responsible for cleaning up the situation. From the viewpoint of the university, its rights and privileges were largely papal in origin. This is reflected in the fact that the university’s compilation of privileges and statutes, namely the Book of the Rector, has as its first and longest section papal letters, followed by statutes of the university and faculty of arts. The royal privilege of 1200 as well as the other university victory of 1200, the required oath of the provost to university scholars at the beginning of his appointment to that office, appear later in the Book of the Rector along with documents from the mid-thirteenth century. In the Books of the Nations from the later fourteenth century a section on royal privileges was created, beginning with the privilege of 1200, but it still came after the long section of papal privileges. If subsequent Capetian monarchs did not shower new privileges and protections on university scholars, material support for the university did emerge during the reigns of Louis IX and Philip III. By gift and exchange Louis IX played a facilitating role in the ability of Robert of Sorbon, a royal chaplain and close associate, to acquire the houses on the Left Bank that became the Collège de Sorbonne.13 Louis also facilitated the expansion of revenues for the Collège du Trésorier.14 Moreover, in his will Louis left bequests to the houses of the older mendicant orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, and to the smaller and poorer colleges in Paris, such as that of Saint Thomas of the Louvre, the Bons-Enfants de Saint Honoré, and Bons-Enfants de Saint Victor.15 Philip III continued his father’s support of Parisian colleges. He granted property to the abbot and monastery of Cluny for the expansion of their house of study at Paris.16 In 1280 he made a similar grant of property for the expan13 

CUP, i, 349, no. 302; p. 377, no. 329; p. 396, no. 345a; and p. 434, no. 393. CUP, i, 482, no. 428. 15  CUP, i, 484, no. 430a. 16  CUP, i, 494, no. 438. 14 

William J. Courtenay

8

sion of the Collège du Trésorier and the Collège de Sorbonne.17 At a time of civil crisis in 1276, he also reaffirmed the royal privileges of 1200 and the requirement that the provost swear an oath to respect the privileges and rights of the university.18 And in 1285 Philip was said to have supported the university’s attempt to force members of the chapter of Notre-Dame who belonged to the studium by reason of degree or teaching activity to contribute to the university’s financial collection authorized by the Abbot of Sainte-Geneviève.19 All actions of French monarchs towards the university up to the accession of Philip IV had to do with maintaining public order and protecting an institution that brought prestige to Paris and the monarchy, and which had economic rewards for Paris. There was also under Louis IX and Philip III material support in the form of helping to establish or expand the resources of colleges for poor scholars and theologians. There was no attempt, however, to use the reputation of the university or any of its faculties in a propaganda campaign in support of royal policy, or to compete with the papacy as the principal patron and protector of the university. That change came about with Philip IV and was grounded in a desire for increased royal control over the church in France as well as an animosity for the papal legate in Paris in the early years of his reign, Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, the future Pope Boniface VIII. At the beginning of his reign, in a letter to those holding the office of provost, Philip IV reaffirmed the requirement that they take the oath to respect the clerical privileges of the masters and scholars of the Uni­ver­sity of Paris.20 This reassertion of royal protection for the university community came one month after Philip’s coronation at Reims. This is in marked contrast to his predecessors, who reaffirmed the privileges of the university only later in their reigns when trying 17 

CUP, i, 579, no. 494; p. 580, no. 495. CUP, i, 538, no. 466; p. 538, no. 467. 19  The collection was probably initiated at the beginning of 1285. In February the Abbot and Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève, executors acting on behalf of the university, threatened excommunication against those who did not pay (CUP, i, 628–29, no. 519). The cathedral chapter appealed to the papal legate, Benedetto Caetani, that they were exempt from such payments and mentioned that the King sided with the university in this matter (CUP, i, 631–33, no. 521). 20  Philip became king with the death of his father on 5 October 1285 and was crowned at Reims on 6 January 1286. In the following month he issued a reminder to the provost of Paris on the required oath before Parisian scholars to respect and abide by the charter of privileges of 1200 (CUP, ii, 3, no. 531). The failure of subsequent provosts to abide by their oath was a recurring problem; see Kibre, Scholarly Privileges in the Middle Ages, pp. 132–35. 18 

The Capetian Monarchy and the Univer­sity of Paris, 1200–1314

9

to resolve a specific crisis. There was no such crisis in February 1286 that created a need for royal intervention. By his action Philip was reminding the university community at the very beginning of his reign that the king was their protector and that they owed the security of their clerical privileges to royal enforcement. The royal action of 1286 was the first of many acts that benefited the university in the first decade of Philip’s reign. In July 1286 Philip reaffirmed his father’s resolution of the conflict between the university and the monastery of SaintGermain-des-Prés in 1278 that created two chaplaincies in atonement for the killing of two students.21 A similar solution was employed in 1289 when a chaplaincy was established as a result of the killing of students by members of the entourage of Cardinal Jean Cholet, and again in 1296 and 1298 over the murder of a Parisian master of arts, Simon de Messemy, at Saint-Quentin.22 In 1290 and 1292 Philip again intervened in favour of the university in its continuing conflict with the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés over the field and ditch outside the gate that led to the monastery and surrounding village.23 As France became engaged in war with England over Gascony, Philip exempted masters and students in 1295 from being forced by barons or royal officials to contribute financially or have their goods seized in lieu of payment.24 Twice in 1297 Philip instructed his provosts and bailiffs not to interfere with the free passage of masters and students as they moved to or from the universities of Paris and Orléans, not to charge them tolls or seize their possessions.25 To underscore the point that the French monarchy had always been the principal source and protector of scholarly privileges, Philip in May 1297 reaffirmed Philip Augustus’s charter of 1200.26 Pearl Kibre, in her book on Scholarly Privileges, considered Philip the Fair the most favourable of Capetian monarchs in support of the university, with no other motivation in mind.27 21 

For the events of 1278 that resulted in the creation of the chaplaincies, see CUP, i, 567–68, no. 482 and pp. 569–70, no. 484. For Philip IV’s reaffirmation of the agreement, see CUP, ii, 7, no. 537. 22  For the actions of Cholet’s familiars, see CUP, ii, 34–35, no. 560; pp. 37–38, no. 563. The Collège de Beauvais at Paris was established in 1295 by a bequest in Cholet’s will, which was composed in 1292, a year before his death. For the four chaplaincies in recompense for the death of Simon de Messemy, see CUP, ii, 71–72, no. 597; p. 82, no. 609. 23  CUP, ii, 42–43, no. 568; p. 60, no. 582. 24  CUP, ii, 65, no. 589. 25  CUP, ii, 75, no. 601; p. 79, no. 606. 26  CUP, ii, 77, no. 603. 27  Kibre, Scholarly Privileges, pp. 129–37.

William J. Courtenay

10

What brought about this sudden increase in royal support for the university community at the very beginning of a reign? In light of later events, it is tempting to view these early actions of Philip in favour of the university as part of a master plan, initiated within weeks of his coronation, to wean the university away from papal clientage, to make the university community beholden to him and to him alone. I think, however, that is reading too much of the future into the past, particularly since the conflict with the Pope had not yet arisen. Part of the answer might be that Philip, as dauphin, is said to have been tutored by Giles of Rome, the most prominent theologian in the order of Augustinian Hermits, who dedicated his De regimine principum to Prince Philip and reputedly gave the welcoming laudatio in the name of the university when the newly crowned King entered Paris.28 Philip subsequently rewarded Giles by giving to the Augustinian Friars the property along the Seine from which he had removed the Friars of the Sack.29 And royal support continued into the next decade as evidenced by Giles’s appointment as Archbishop of Bourges in 1295 through Boniface VIII. It is worth noting, however, that the royal actions mentioned above benefited the university as a whole, and especially the faculty of arts, as had been the case with his father. No issue emerged in which royal support was needed for the higher faculties, even theology, and Philip in the early years of his reign probably thought of the university in terms of the majority of its masters and students, under the leadership of its rector. He certainly would have known the names of prominent regent masters in theology, especially after several of them strongly disagreed with him in 1286 over his decision to divide his father’s body, giving the skeletal remains to Saint-Denis and the heart to the Dominicans at Paris.30 Philip’s personal contact with theologians was primarily with mendicants, such as Giles of Rome, and especially with the Dominicans. There was one dimension of Parisian theologians as a group that probably did not go unnoticed by Philip. Before becoming king Philip would have been aware of the growing importance of masters in the faculty of theology at Paris as 28 

Giles’s role as tutor may be an assumption based on the dedication of De regimine principum to the Dauphin. It is reported, along with the text of his laudatio, in Bibliotheca Augustiniana, ed. by Ossinger, pp. 237–40. 29  CUP, ii, 3, no. 531. 30  Brown, ‘Death and the Human Body’, especially pp. 235–46, 265, 269–70. The theo­ logians who devoted quodlibetal questions to this issue in 1286 were Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines, both secular theologians, and Gervase of Mont-Saint-Eloi, a canon regular. Later, in 1291, the Dominican Oliver of Tréguier defended Philip’s action.

The Capetian Monarchy and the Univer­sity of Paris, 1200–1314

11

an authoritative body whose opinions mattered throughout Europe. He would have witnessed the growing conflict between secular Parisian theologians and the papal Curia over mendicant privileges that later came to a head in 1290 when the papal legate, Benedetto Caetani, clipped the wings of Parisian theologians by suspending Henry of Ghent’s right to teach. The potential strength of the international reputation of the Uni­ver­sity of Paris and its faculty of theology, alongside Philip’s close association with Giles of Rome, no doubt influenced a positive attitude towards the university as well as its usefulness, if need be, in offsetting the power of the Roman Curia over the church in France. It was not until 1297 that Philip decided to collect on his generosity to the Parisian studium. In addition to cutting off the flow of gold and silver outside France in response to Boniface VIII’s bull Clericis laicos that forbade the clergy from paying any tax to a secular monarch without papal consent, Philip is rumoured to have sought from university masters, specifically masters of theology, a definitive judgement that Boniface was illegitimately elected Pope because the resignation of Celestine V was canonically illegal. Although the rumour was circulated that the faculty of theology had rendered such an opinion in 1297, there is no evidence that the masters ever did so. The few Parisian masters of theology who discussed the issue in 1295 and again in 1297 arrived at the conclusion that Celestine’s resignation was canonically legitimate because it was done with the consent of the College of Cardinals. Although documents in the posthumous trial of Boniface in 1311 claimed that Parisian theologians had judged Boniface’s election invalid, theological opinion in 1297 actually sided with Boniface.31 It must have been an unpleasant shock to Philip when his former tutor, whose appointment as Archbishop of Bourges he had supported and may even have initiated two years earlier, concluded in 1297 that Boniface’s election as Pope had been legitimate. The next attempt to draft or co-opt the Uni­ver­sity of Paris in support of royal policy came in 1303 in the second and final conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII.32 This time Philip took a more active role in shaping events as well as outcome. To ensure a more supportive response from the Uni­ ver­sity of Paris, he prepared the groundwork by a series of actions in favour of university scholars. In March 1302 he reaffirmed Philip Augustus’s privileges as 31  For a more detailed examination of this issue, see Courtenay, ‘Learned Opinion and Royal Justice’. 32  For more detail, see Courtenay, ‘Between Pope and King’; Courtenay, ‘The Parisian Franciscan Community’.

12

William J. Courtenay

well as made up a shortfall in the income for three university chaplaincies.33 In January 1303 he again reaffirmed the terms of the oath the provost of Paris was required to make to the university. And in the spring of 1303 he launched his campaign against Boniface, casting himself in the role of simply responding to the outcries of his people. Having initially been less than successful in gaining the support of French bishops in his call for a council to try Boniface for heresy and other crimes, he began with the mendicant orders in Paris in June 1303, requiring every friar in the Dominican, Franciscan, and Augustinian convents to declare their support for a council against Boniface or, if they refused, to leave France within a week. With one exception, only the names of those who agreed with the King became part of the record.34 Similarly, he called upon the leadership of the Uni­ ver­sity of Paris to declare their support for the royal campaign. Although the document in support of the King was not signed or sealed by anyone from the university and appears to have been prepared by the royal chancery, it was circulated in the name of the university and no master publically questioned its authenticity. By orchestrating events and creating a documentary ‘parchment’ trail that only told one side of the story, the royal side, the outcome of Philip’s campaign was successful. After his victory and the death of Boniface, Philip opened the borders of France to students and masters who had gone into exile rather than declare Boniface a heretic, and he reaffirmed toll-free passage to and from Paris.35 Similar reaffirmations continued throughout the remainder of Philip’s life.36 A subsequent conflict in which the King sought the support of the Uni­ver­ sity of Paris required a different approach. This was the arrest of the Templars in October 1307 and their subsequent trial for heresy and immoral practices.37 Philip again cast himself in the role of a Christian monarch acting on behalf of the faithful and the Church. The task was to convince church leaders, most especially Pope Clement V, that the Templars were guilty and that the secu33  CUP, ii, 94, no. 624; p. 95, no. 625. The property that generated the income for the chap­laincies was located in the parish of Epinay near Longjumeau south of Paris. 34  The exception was the Franciscan convent, from which the names of those who did not adhere to the royal request have survived. 35  CUP, ii, 105, no. 638; p. 114, no. 646; p. 115, no. 648; p. 120, no. 657; p. 122, no. 660. 36  CUP, ii, 147, no. 688 in 1311. CUP, ii, 159, no. 700; p. 159, no. 701; p. 160, no. 702; and p. 168, no. 707 in 1313. 37  Courtenay, ‘The Role of Uni­ver­sity Masters’; Courtenay and Ubl, Gelehrte Gutachten, pp. 9–65.

The Capetian Monarchy and the Univer­sity of Paris, 1200–1314

13

lar arm should be allowed to administer the appropriate punishment. To help convince Clement and the papal Curia, the Dominican inquisitor, William of Paris, staged two public confessions. The document recording those in attendance at the first show trial on 25 October arranged the names in order of ecclesiastical importance, starting with the Abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, followed by members of the cathedral chapter, the leadership of the mendicant and religious convents in Paris, and four persons with the title of master, all of whom were connected to the royal court. In the list of those in attendance at the second day of confessions on 26 October, much greater attention was given to making university masters, particularly theologians, more prominent, with the desired implication that by their presence they accepted the confessed guilt of the Templars. Although personal names were not supplied, the document claimed that the rector and all four procurators of the nations in the faculty of arts were present. As for the theologians, some of whom had been present the previous day in their capacity as members of the cathedral chapter and identified by ecclesiastical office, far more theologians appear in the second document, both doctors and bachelors of theology, and were identified by name and academic rank. The clear purpose of the listing of those on the second day was to show the Uni­ver­sity of Paris, particularly the theologians, to be in support of the royal action and confirming the guilt of the Templars. When the confessions and the names of university masters did not convince the Pope of the self-evident guilt of the Templars, particularly since several of those who confessed revoked their confessions, Philip asked the masters of theology to declare themselves on a series of specific questions. Was it permissible for a secular prince to seize, examine, and punish heretics? Were the Templars, as a military order, a secular group to whom clerical privileges and protections did not apply? Were the confessions already obtained sufficient to condemn the entire order? And what should be done with the possessions of the Templars? The answer of the regent masters who responded to those questions in March 1308, almost all of them belonging to religious orders, was essentially negative — not the answer Philip sought. Those theologians who did not agree with the majority of their colleagues, all secular theologians, chose not to sign the response. It was probably at the urging of Philip and his advisers, particularly the inquisitor William of Paris, that the masters of theology in the winter or spring of 1308 debated the question of whether revoking their confessions made those Templars relapsed heretics and therefore ipso facto liable to punishment by secular authority. Only three of the theologians, including Jean de Pouilly, gave an affirmative reply. The others said no on the grounds that, as the Templars

William J. Courtenay

14

claimed, their confessions were made under torture. Matters dragged on until 1310, when Philip authorized the burning of fifty-four Templars outside the walls of Paris. Despite the less than satisfactory response of university masters when called upon to support royal initiatives, Philip continued to issue declarations in support of scholarly privileges, immunities from tolls, taxes, and seizure of goods, and unhindered travel to and from Paris. In 1300 he added a new royal privilege: exemption from having to make a security deposit to a landlord.38 What Philip did not do was to found a college for students or to make contributions to the endowments of colleges already in existence. Joanne of Navarre, the Queen, did provide for the creation of the Collège de Navarre in her will in 1305, although that foundation did not become a reality until 1315 because Philip withheld the funds until, as Peggy Brown noted, his conscience got the better of him shortly before his death in 1314.39 Philip’s actions in support of the Uni­ver­sity of Paris were numerous, and although some of them reduced royal income that might otherwise have been available from taxing the possessions and travel of masters and students, or reduced the reach of royal justice by continuing to respect the clerical immunity of university members, his actions were almost entirely cost-free personally until, at the end of life, he made good on his wife’s endowment. * * * As important as Philip Augustus’s charter of privileges in 1200 was for the recognition and protection of the Uni­ver­sity of Paris, material support by the monarchy for the university did not begin until the reign of Louis IX and continued under Philip III. The most important change came with Philip IV, when he moved aggressively to use the university, especially the masters in the faculty of theology, as a tool of royal policy. If one were to conclude the story in 1314, it would have to be seen as a victory for the French monarchy, which is the way Pearl Kibre described it in her assessment of the relation of king and university in the fourteenth century. That may not, however, have been the end of the story. But what happened after 1314 must be left to another occasion.

38  39 

CUP, ii, 84, no. 612; p. 86, no. 614. Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’.

The Capetian Monarchy and the Univer­sity of Paris, 1200–1314

15

Works Cited Primary Sources Bibliotheca Augustiniana, ed. by Johann F. Ossinger (Ingolstadt, 1768) Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by Heinrich Denifle and Émil Chatelain, 4 vols (Paris: Delalain, 1889–94) Friedberg, Emil, Corpus iuris canonici, 2 vols (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879–81) Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. by J. Quetif and J. Echard (Paris, 1719)

Secondary Studies Baldwin, John W., ‘Le contexte politique et institutionnel’, in Les Débuts de l’enseignement universitaire à Paris (1200–1245 environ), ed. by Jacques Verger and Olga Weijers (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 17–26 —— , The Government of Philip Augustus (Berkeley: Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 1986) —— , ‘Masters at Paris from 1179 to 1215: A  Social Perspective’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1982), pp. 138–72 —— , ‘Studium et regnum: The Penetration of Uni­ver­sity Personnel into French and English Administration at the Turn of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Revue des études islamiques, 44 (1976), 199–215 Brown, Elizabeth A.  R., ‘Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse’, Viator, 12 (1981), 221–70 —— , ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 1–36 Courtenay, William J., ‘Between Pope and King: The Parisian Letters of Adhesion of 1303’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 577–605 —— , ‘The Donation of St.  Jacques at Paris to the Dominicans: Some Observations’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 83 (2013), 107–23 —— , ‘Learned Opinion and Royal Justice: The Role of Paris Masters of Theology during the Reign of Philip the Fair’, in Law and the Illicit in Medi­eval Europe, ed. by Ruth M. Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Anne Matter (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 149–63 —— , ‘The Parisian Franciscan Community in 1303’, Franciscan Studies, 53 (1993), 155–73 —— , ‘The Role of Uni­ver­sity Masters and Bachelors at Paris in the Templar Affair, 1307–1308’, in 1308: Eine Topographie historischer Gleichzeitigkeit, ed. by Andreas Speer and David Wirmer, Miscellanea Medi­evalia, 35 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 171–81 Courtenay, William J., and Karl Ubl, Gelehrte Gutachten und königliche Politik im Tem­ pler­prozess, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte, 51 (Hannover: Hahn, 2010)

16

William J. Courtenay

Kibre, Pearl, Scholarly Privileges in the Middle Ages (Cam­bridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1962) Thijssen, J. M. M. H., ‘Master Amalric and the Amalricians: Inquisitorial Procedure and the Suppression of Heresy at the Uni­ver­sity of Paris’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 43–65

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited: Cistercian Commemoration and Devotion during the Capetian Century, 1214–1314 Anne E. Lester

A

t the end of April 1214 Louis VIII made a gift to the Cistercian nunnery of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs outside of Paris, a gift of thanksgiving for the birth of his son, the future Louis IX. The new father endowed the convent with the plot on which the nuns’ chapel would be built, as well as nearly three hundred arpents of fields, pasture, and vineyards in the area between Paris and the woods of Vincennes.1 Louis VIII’s donation was not simply about his personal salvation: it was a gift focused on the royal family and their ties to the order of Cîteaux. From 1214 onward Capetian kings and queens, their siblings and children, and their wider family network would foster a connection with the Cistercian Order regularly and consistently over the course of the ensuing century. Although the Capetians would turn to other religious orders and holy men and women for different spiritual needs and practices, in the decades that followed, their relationship with the Cistercians was sustained over generations. This close connection contributed to the triumphant and adoring tone cultivated for, about, and by the monarchy and thus provides another dimension for considering the growth of royal ideology and the particular sanctity and chosen quality of the Capetians over the course of the century.2 1 

Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 155; Jacques du Breul, Le théâtre des antiquités de Paris, p. 1240; also Bonnardot, L’abbaye royale de Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, p. 22. 2  To this end, the kinds of devotional memory fostered by the Cistercians may go some way towards answering Charles Tilly’s question: ‘were there no other viable models?’ There Anne E. Lester ([email protected]) Uni­ver­sity of Colorado–Boulder

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 17–42 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112967 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

18

Anne E. Lester

This article revisits the relationship cultivated between the Capetians and the Cistercian Order in light of new trends in monastic and royal historiography and medieval scholarship in general, with a special emphasis on the meaning of space, memory, and materiality. I argue that throughout the long thirteenth century the royal family, like other northern French aristocratic families, came to see Cistercian houses as centres of prayer and commemoration, where they could find the comforts and consolation of institutionalized remembrance and a refuge from the outside world. This relationship is indicative of the role the Cistercians came to play in the lives of many laymen and laywomen by this time and demonstrates the ways in which Cistercian patronage was part of a broader intricate web of royal and aristocratic connections and devotional projects. The year 2014 and attention to the ‘Capetian Century’ provides a useful moment to revisit this relationship, as the year not only marks the eight hundredth anniversary of Louis IX’s birth and the seven hundredth anniversary of Philip the Fair’s death, but it is also the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Anselme Dimier’s book, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, published in 1954.3 In this slim text Dimier presented an image of Louis IX as a ‘saint in the world’, tracing the outlines of Louis’s life and reign through the King’s interactions with the houses of the order, giving special attention to Louis’s relationship with the abbey of Royaumont.4 Although Dimier relied almost exclusively on printed material and his study does not provide the insights of an argumentative monograph, it remains a careful homage to the saintly King and an important touchstone for work on Louis IX and the Cistercians in the thirteenth century. Moreover, with the Chronologie appended at the end of the text, Dimier created a kind of catalogue that renders an annalistic record of the Capetians’ — and principally Louis’s — involvement with the order, evoking Louis at work in his world, in Paris, in his royal residences, on Crusade, and all the while moving among, writing to, and praying in the Cistercian houses of the realm. For these reasons Dimier’s book is still useful. The cumulative picture presented in the book reaffirms the centrality of the Cistercian Order may have been; however, the Capetians cultivated a relationship with the Cistercians, among many other institutions and groups, that rendered their model dominant, setting the mode for royal devotional behaviour and its institutional sponsorship. See William Chester Jordan’s introduction to this volume. 3  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux. 4  Dimier’s text does not present an overt argument about the triumph or ‘golden age’ of the Capetians in explicit terms, although it was certainly written in a laudatory tone. See Jordan’s introduction to this volume.

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

19

in the royal family’s devotional life and administrative perambulations during the Capetian century. Yet much has changed in the sixty years since Dimier wrote.5 To begin with, it is now abundantly clear that we must set the dynamic of royal patronage of the Cistercians within the context of northern French aristocratic relationships with the order and the broader devotional practices and ideals that many of those families initiated during the first decades of the century. Attending to these dynamics allows us to reframe the role of Capetian familial burials in Cistercian abbeys. In this light, the royal cultivation of corporate prayers from the order’s monks and nuns emerges as part of a broader set of religious strategies common to the aristocracy during this period, which were meant to distinguish the Christian and sacred qualities of France. Finally, the objects that Louis IX and his family gave to the order during their lifetimes and especially at the time of their deaths supplements the documentary evidence and suggests more of the personal intentions and interests connecting the Capetians and Cistercians. Indeed, the Capetians created a specific kind of Cistercian-royal space in the abbeys they built and patronized. Those spaces and the objects that adorned them reflect the spiritual ideals of the royal family as they turned to the order for specific religious needs and strategies of commemoration. None of this is surprising, but since Dimier wrote, the enduring relationship between the Capetians and the Cistercians has been largely overshadowed by work on Louis as a crusader, a saint, an administrator, and an imitator of the friars. As a consequence, we have lost sight of the nature and nuance of institutional modes of devotion within the Capetian royal family and its extended aristocratic context. Building on Dimier’s work, scholars writing in the 1970s and 1980s drew new attention to Blanche of Castile, Louis’s mother, and her connections with the Cistercians. In articles and monographs Constance Berman, Terryl Kinder, James D’Emilio, and Alexandra Gajewski have built a persuasive case for Blanche’s powerful patronage and deep devotion to the order. 6 5  Under the influence of feminist scholarship, the literary turn, a new interest in royal ideology, and most recently following the ‘material turn’, our understanding of the relationship between the order and the royal family has expanded and deepened. 6  Kinder, ‘Blanche of Castile’; Berman, ‘Two Medi­eval Women’s Property’; Berman, ‘Cis­ tercian Nuns’; Berman, ‘Dowries, Private Income, and Anniversary Masses’; Gajewski, ‘The Patronage Question’; Gajewski-Kennedy, ‘Recherches sur l’architecture cistercienne’; D’Emilio, ‘The Royal Convent of Las Huelgas’. On the claims of female patronage and the affiliation of building styles, see the re-evaluation by Walker, ‘Leonor of England’.

Anne E. Lester

20

Blanche was established as the driving force behind the royal family’s foundation and building of Royaumont, Maubuisson, and Le Lys. An emphasis on Blanche’s agency stemmed from an attempt to seek the origins of the Capetian commitment to the Cistercian Order. A scholarly consensus emerged that Blanche favoured the Cistercians because her natal Castilian family had close ties with the order as demonstrated by the royal foundation, in 1187, of the Cistercian nunnery of Las Huelgas in Burgos, built to serve as the Castilian royal necropolis.7 Yet we must be attentive that these focused studies do not overshadow other enduring relationships that crossed the gendered lines of historiographical interests and methodologies. More often than not families — men and women, fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, brothers and sisters, and spouses — worked together to ensure each other’s salvation and remembrance. And the Cistercians, although reticent in their legislation, in practice could and did overlook or bypass gendered restrictions to burial and prayer within their walls. Louis IX’s relationship with and esteem for the friars has likewise influenced how scholars frame the Capetian–Cistercian connection, which in recent years has overemphasized the King’s support of the mendicants. The dominant narrative asserts that Blanche favoured the Cistercians during her lifetime, whereas Louis — especially once he attained his majority and returned from the Crusade and once Blanche faded from the picture — favoured the more avant-garde orders of the thirteenth century: the Franciscans and Dominicans, and later the Friars of the Sack and the Pied Friars, among others. This argument was proposed initially in Lester Little’s article ‘Saint Louis’ Involvement with the Friars’, published in Church History in 1964, another publication that celebrated an anniversary, its fiftieth, in 2014.8 Louis’s trust in the friars is clear from his decision to employ them as enquêteurs throughout his reign. He supported their houses in Paris and far outside the royal capital, and favoured them with relics of the Passion.9 He entrusted 7 

It was Blanche who apparently decided to overturn the last wishes of Louis VIII, who intended to found a community of canons associated with the Order of Saint-Victor, not a Cistercian house, as Royaumont would become. More work is needed on the connections between Saint-Victor and the royal family, particularly in light of the reform agenda forwarded by the canons of that order. 8  Little, ‘Saint Louis’ Involvement’. 9  Namely thorns from the Crown of Thorns, offering these to the Franciscans of Sées and Paris and to the Dominicans of Barcelona, Liège, and Paris, and to Dominican nuns in Rouen. See Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 35–64, on the friars’ roles within

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

21

them with the spiritual well-being of his realm to act as inquisitors into heretical depravity in France, and with the spiritual well-being of his soul and those of his family to act as their personal confessors and almoners.10 And Louis’s hagiographers all recounted anecdotes about the King’s desire to join the Franciscan and Dominican Orders himself, even relating the King’s regret that he could not ‘divide himself in two’ so as to profess to both orders at once.11 The idea that Louis’s interests in the friars overshadowed his commitment to the Cistercians has been aided by a more far-reaching trend in the historiography that favours sequential and progressive ideas of patronage and devotion. Herbert Grundmann and other scholars following him crafted a narrative of religious reform that argued for the friars’ eclipse of the Cistercians at the forefront of spiritual renewal, an argument which saw the Franciscans and Dominicans effectively displacing the monks within most spheres of influence. Such a model — while compelling as a narrative arc — cannot capture the multivalent motivations that guide devotion and inform religious patronage. The Capetian relationship with the Cistercians persisted throughout the long thirteenth century. It stemmed from and was fostered by local connections and admiration for the order rather than a Castilian-familial penchant for imitation or a desire to attain the most current form of pious association.

The Corporate Prayers of the Cistercian Order: Foundations, Burial, and Petitions The Capetians turned to the Cistercian Order for several things, but principally for the efficacy of the monks’ and nuns’ prayers and commemorations. The royal family’s commitment to the order stretched back before 1214, yet this date is useful for it coincides with the efflorescence of new Cistercian foundations in northern France during the thirteenth century, most of which were houses of nuns. Only eight years earlier, in 1206, the nunneries of SaintAntoine-des-Champs and Port-Royal were founded just outside Paris, both of Louis’s administration; for gifts of relics, see pp. 197–98. See also Dejoux, ‘Gouverner par l’enquête au xiiie siècle’. 10  For Dominicans as inquisitors, see Ames, Righteous Persecution. For the friars as confessors, see de La Selle, ‘La Confession et L’Aumône’, and more broadly, Aladjidi, Le roi, père des pauvres; and the chapter by Sean L. Field in this volume. 11  See The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, p. 80. On Louis’s spiritual ambitions and those achieved by his sister, see Jordan, ‘Isabelle of France and Religious Devotion’.

22

Anne E. Lester

which garnered the sustained attention of the royal family. In the following decades, over twenty Cistercian nunneries emerged in and around the royal domain: these included foundations for nuns at Willencourt, L’Abbaye-auxBois, Les Clairets, Voisins, La Barre-Dieu, Pentémont, Lieu Notre-Dame-lesEaux, Le Paraclet, Les Isles, Villiers, La Grâce-Notre-Dame, Pont-aux-Dames, La Cour Notre-Dame, L’Eau-les-Chartres, Saint-Dizier, La Joie-les-Nemours, L’Amour-Dieu, Saint-Jacques-de-Vitry, La Joie-Notre-Dame, Beauvoir, SaintLoup, Flines, Marquette, and Monchy-Humières.12 There were more, but I list here only those houses founded between 1206 and 1239 that were connected with members of the aristocracy close to the King.13 Indeed, the Capetian family supported all of these houses with gifts and donations and with advocacy in the Cistercian General Chapter.14 The royal family’s sustained support of Cistercian nunneries implies that these nunneries were at the vanguard of the new spiritual ideals prized by the aristocracy during the 1230s and 1240s. The location of these foundations and the commitment to active charity on the part of the nuns meant that the new nunneries paralleled the rise of mendicant communities in urban centres. Moreover, nearly all of these houses predated the royal foundations of Maubuisson (1236) and Le Lys (1244). So, when the Crown founded its own royal nunneries, it was acting in conformity, even solidarity, with the regional aristocracy. Although fewer Cistercian male houses were founded in the thirteenth century, many were rebuilt and rededicated with Capetian support during these decades. Indeed, in November 1227, Louis and Blanche were at Longpont for the consecration of the magnificent new abbey church, a visit that may have precipitated their decision to found Royaumont, built in a similar style, although on a grander scale.15 When Louis was at Longpont as an adolescent he no doubt encountered the relics of John of Montmirail (d. 29 September 1217), whose vita had just been completed by a monk of Longpont and whose miracles were recorded in an effort to put forward John’s canonization.16 John was from a 12  While studies of most of these houses have emerged since Dimier wrote, see especially the charter evidence addressed in Carolus-Barré, ‘L’Abbaye de La Joie-Notre-Dame à Berneuil-sur-Aisne’. 13  See Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns; Dimier, ‘Liste des abbayes Cisterciennes féminines’. On this circle of houses and connections to royal patronage, see Gajewski-Kennedy, ‘Recherches sur l’architecture cistercienne’, p. 246. 14  See for example, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii, throughout. 15  On Longpont and comparisons, especially with Royaumont, see Bruzelius, ‘Cistercian High Gothic’. 16  ‘De B. Joanne de Montemirabili’, cols 186–235. On adolescent conversions and impres­

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

23

noble family with close ties to the Capetians: he had served in the court of Philip Augustus and accompanied his King on the Third Crusade and fought alongside him in Normandy in the 1190s. Not long afterward John underwent a conversion and took to caring for lepers with his elder daughter. He soon took vows and entered the community of Longpont as a Cistercian monk.17 The example of John of Montmirail may have resonated with the young King and informed Louis’s spiritual development and religious pursuits. Louis too would go on Crusade, and later he would care for and feed lepers and the poor with his own hands.18 Other motivations for supporting the Cistercians may have been more personal in nature. In the 1230s the royal couple formed a close relationship to another awe-inspiring holy man of the order: Thibaut of Marly (d. 1247), Abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay (1235–47) near Paris. Vaux-de-Cernay was well connected with the royal family and the aristocracy of the Île-de-France. Successive abbots of the house had preached and taken part on the Fourth Crusade and the Albigensian crusade and helped articulate a Cistercian vision of the political ideology of the Capetians in the face of threats of heresy. In 1240, after six years of marriage without an heir, Marguerite and Louis consulted Thibaut and asked for his prayers.19 Months later, on 12 July 1240, the royal couple welcomed their first child, Blanche.20 When the young Blanche died a few years after this, Louis and Marguerite buried her at Royaumont. Later in life, after the death of her husband, the widowed Marguerite returned to Vaux-de-Cernay to visit the relics of the saintly Abbot.21 Cistercian houses were also places where the Capetians found spiritual refuge and experienced intensely charged devotional moments. On 9 June 1247, sionability, see Jordan, ‘Adolescence and Conversion’. 17  See Dimier, ‘Le bienheureux Jean de Montmirail’. See also the comments in Lester, Creat­ing Cistercian Nuns, pp. 159–60. 18  See The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, pp. 77–79, and pp. 90–93; Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medi­eval Paris; and Guest, ‘A Discourse on the Poor’. 19  This detail is reported in the life of St Thibaut of Vaux-de-Cernay, which was written in the thirteenth century, reprinted in Du Chesne, Historiae Francorum Scriptores, v, 406. See also Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, pp. 20–21. 20  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 20. 21  See Merlet and Moutié, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Notre Dame des Vaux-de-Cernay, ii, 190–91; and Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, no. 434 [hereafter nos. reference the event in his ‘Chronologie’, pp. 155–99]. Dimier dates the visit to 1272–73.

Anne E. Lester

24

the Sunday before the feast of St Barnabas, King Louis, his mother, Queen Blanche, and the King’s sister, Isabelle, were present at Pontigny to attend the translation of the body of St Edmund of Abingdon (Edmund Rich), former Archbishop of Canterbury from 1234 to 1240, when the holy corpse was placed into a new stone sarcophagus.22 Also in attendance for the occasion were the King’s three brothers, Count Robert of Artois, Count Alphonse of Poitiers, and Count Charles of Anjou, all three of whom had taken crusader vows and would depart in Louis’s company for the Holy Land within the year. Numerous prelates and abbots of the order also watched and prayed as the ceremony unfolded in the light of one thousand candles. William Chester Jordan has argued that the ‘sojourns in exile, deaths, burials and cults of various English clergy at Pontigny’ led to the perception among the French Crown and the monks of the order that ‘Pontigny [was] a house and France […] a land of refuge for English heroes standing against unjust English authority’.23 According to Richard of Chichester, who was witness to the translation, Queen Blanche noted as much when she prayed to the new saint during the ceremony, saying, ‘most holy confessor, who while you were alive, gave your blessing to my children as well as to me [and] who did us the good favour of seeking refuge in France, confirm the grace which you have already accorded us and strengthen the kingdom of France in its glorious and peace-making virtue’.24 Two years later on 9 June 1249, while acting as queen regent, Blanche returned to the abbey to witness a second translation of the Archbishop’s relics. In the decades that followed, Pontigny and St Edmund’s tomb would prove to be an important 22 

St Edmund’s relics were placed in the main altar, not far from the body of Louis IX’s great-grandmother, Adele of Champagne, the third wife of Louis  VII and the mother of Philip Augustus, who was buried in the monk’s choir at the time of her death in 1206. For a brief description of this event, see the Vita Sancti Edmundi, written by Bertrand, the Prior of Pontigny, and printed in Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iii, cols 1769–70; and William of Nagis, Gesta sancti Ludovici, p. 354E. In addition, see Matthew of Paris, The Life of St. Edmund, ed. and trans. by Lawrence. See also the descriptions in Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, pp. 115–18; Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1247), no. 2; Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, pp. 1089–91; and Jordan, ‘The English Holy Men of Pontigny’. 23  Jordan, ‘The English Holy Men of Pontigny’, p. 69. 24  See Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, p. 1089. Richard of Chichester composed a letter addressed to his friend the Abbot of Begham recounting the events of St Edmund’s translation. This undated letter then made its way into Matthew of Paris’s Additamenta and his Chronica majora. See also English Episcopal Acta, xxii, ed. by Hoskin, pp. 130–33, nos. 164–66.

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

25

meeting point and space of diplomacy between the French and the English, offering both political and devotional refuge.25 The examples of local Cistercian foundations and personal connections with holy men in the order helps to contextualize the decisions Blanche, Louis, and the royal family made to found the male community of Royaumont and the nunneries of Maubuisson and Le Lys between 1236 and 1248. Indeed, these three royal Cistercian houses dominated the attention of the family for decades. The foundations of Royaumont and Maubuisson coincided with the close personal relationships Louis and the royal family cultivated with Cistercian abbots, holy men, and saints described above, whereas Le Lys was under construction at precisely the same time as the Sainte-Chapelle and as Louis prepared for Crusade. Rather than see these spiritual efforts in competition, it may be more useful to consider the meaning and importance of their interconnection and to identify moments of intersection among the devotions of Cistercian nuns, the growth of royal ideology centred on the model of Christ’s Passion and Kingship, and the spiritual sacrifices associated with crusading.26 An indication of these connections emerges as Louis prepared for holy war in the early summer of 1248. As part of the King’s formal departure for the east, he undertook a ritual tournée or circuit of the city of Paris as his last formal royal act. He began at the Sainte-Chapelle, praying before the relics of the Passion, and proceeded to Notre-Dame where he accepted the pilgrim’s staff and purse, the markers of his penitential transformation as a pilgrim on Crusade. From there he travelled, barefoot, to Saint-Denis, where he accepted the Orniflame, the battle standard of Charlemagne, which he would carry with him. Next he walked on a great procession to the Cistercian nunnery of SaintAntoine, where he reconfirmed the nuns’ privileges. From there he processed to Porrais, the other Parisian Cistercian nunnery, and likewise confirmed their 25 

See Dimier, Saint Louis and Cîteaux, pp. 117–18; and Jordan, ‘The English Holy Men of Pontigny’. Louis also employed abbots of the order to act as diplomats for the royal cause. Abbot William of Clairvaux (1238–42) was one of several Cistercian abbots arrested and held prisoner during Frederick II’s dispute with the papacy. Louis ordered the abbots freed, but William died in captivity and was later recognized for his saintly qualities. See d’Arbois de Jubainville, Études sur l’etat intérieur des abbayes cisterciennes, pp. 180–81. For examples of other holy men in the order during this period, see the following articles by Dimier, ‘Trois évêques de Liège originaires de France’; Dimier, ‘Un grand évêque cistercien’; and Dimier, ‘Un découverte concernante le bienheureux Simon d’Aulne’. The role of Cistercian conversi in secular courts and acting in a diplomatic capacity, which is often briefly mentioned in the Statuta, is a topic in need of further work. 26  For this approach, see Lester, ‘A Shared Imitation’.

Anne E. Lester

26

privileges. In this way, in his rituals of leave-taking, Louis especially honoured the Parisian Cistercian convents and associated them with the Sainte-Chapelle and with his solemn departure on Crusade.27 Indeed, the Cistercians were profoundly invested in the Crusade movement during the thirteenth century and eagerly adopted the feast of the Crown of Thorns and spread devotion to the Passion relics housed in the Sainte-Chapelle.28 That the foundation of new Cistercian houses tapered off after 1248 is not surprising as almost all of Louis’s income at that point was directed to his Crusade expedition, itself a form of spiritual vow that complemented the prayerful labours of Cistercian monks and nuns.29 When Louis and Marguerite returned from the East in 1254 their support for the Cistercians did not end, nor had it ended with Blanche’s death in 1252. Quite the contrary, Louis continued to give alms to the many Cistercian communities surrounding the royal domain. His brother, Alphonse of Poitiers, did the same in his domains in the south and in support of the newly founded college of Saint Bernard in Paris; and as Caroline Bruzelius has shown, after 1266, Charles of Anjou followed suit in patronizing Cistercian houses in his newly won kingdom of Sicily.30 As I have argued elsewhere, Louis took a keen interest in supporting those houses that combined the kind of charity work he so esteemed.31 At this point in his life he especially favoured the small Cistercian nunneries that oversaw leper houses and hospitals. In 1269, as the King prepared for his last Crusade expedi27 

For the route of Louis’s tournée, see Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 107–10. 28  See Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1241), no. 9: ‘Petitio regis Franciae de festo Sanctae Coronae in regno suo faciendo cum duabus missis in crastino sancti Laurentii exauditur; conversi tamen laborbunt’; and (1242) no. 1: ‘Festum Sanctae Coronae pronuntiatur sic: Tretio idus augusti, civitate Parisius translatio sanctae spineae coronae Domini Iesu Christi; prima missa sit de sancto Tyrburtio, maior vero de festo cum Credo et absque praefatione speciali’. 29  Concerning the funding for Louis’s expeditions, see Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 65–104. 30  For alms Louis and Alphonse offered, see Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, pp. 192–99. In 1247 Alphonse established a rent of 400 lbs. from the prévôté of La Rochelle in support of the college, an act that rendered him the de facto and recognized founder of the institution. On Alphonse’s patronage of the College of Saint-Bernard, see Davis, ‘Cistercians in the City’, n. 17. For Charles of Anjou’s patronage in Sicily, see Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples. 31  On Louis’s ‘charitable turn’ following the failure of his first Crusade expedition, see the comments, which draw on Joinville’s assessment, in Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 127–33.

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

27

tion he offered the kind of sweeping gifts that only a great lord could bestow on such communities: generous alms and blanket amortissations of fiefs and other encumbered properties donated to Cistercian houses.32 To suggest that Capetian interest in the order waned during this time is, rather, to miss how routine and deeply engrained such support had become.

Burials As important as donations and royal gifts were, the Capetians also fostered within the order a deeper spatial and material connection to the spiritual life. Jacques Le Goff observed that Royaumont was Louis’s place of preference, ‘son lieu préféré, le lieu d’épanouissement de son coeur et de son âme’.33 There, as many scholars have remarked, Louis was at home in a very specific way. Royaumont, from the beginning of its construction, was planned as the necropolis for the royal family, in Dimier’s words, the ‘caveau de familie’, excepting Louis himself, whose burial was reserved for the royal abbey Saint-Denis.34 There was precedent for Capetian burials among Cistercian monks. Louis VII had elected to be buried in his foundation at Barbeaux, and Adele of Champagne, his wife, received dispensation from the order to be buried at Pontigny, where she was interred in the choir next to her father, Thibaut II (Le Grand) of Champagne, who was the abbey’s founder.35 After Royaumont was completed in 1235, however, it took precedence over any other house for Capetian familial burials.36 Louis was instrumental in its foundation. He would 32 

Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, pp. 192–99; also, Berman, ‘Two Medi­e val Women’s Property’. 33  Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 746. 34  See Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 76. 35  Nolan, Queens in Stone and Silver, p. 101. Adele’s original wish had been to be buried with her husband, but the monks did not accede to this; thus Pontigny was a second choice made possible because she was related to the founder. 36  The abbey church at Royaumont was dedicated on 19 October 1235, roughly the same time that Louis’s brother Philippe Dagobert died. He would soon be the first of the Capetian line interred at Royaumont; see Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, pp. 53–59, 76–81; Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, p. 36. Interestingly, as Dimier notes, the abbey was dedicated to the Holy Cross. The abbey possessed a significant cross relic that had been a gift to the monks from the cross relic kept at Notre-Dame as detailed in Louis VIII’s testament and in accordance with the general usages of Cîteaux. See Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 58; and Duclos, Histoire de Royaumont, i, 172.

Anne E. Lester

28

often stay in the royal residence at Asnières-sur-Oise nearby, and according to William of Saint-Pathus, after hearing Mass he helped the monks build the abbey, carrying and laying stones for its foundation with his own hands.37 As Dimier noted, Louis attained his official majority on 25 April 1235. His presence at the dedication of the abbey on 19  October 1235 would have been the inaugural act of his personal reign. Royaumont housed the tombs of Louis’s brother Philippe Dagobert (d. 1235), and his eldest daughter Blanche (d. 1243), his third son John (d. 1248), and his eldest son Louis (d. 1259/60). Their tombs encircled the main altar and displayed commemorative relief sculpture and opulent enamels.38 The General Chapter’s 1263 order to the abbey to suppress the elaborate decorations that had accrued around its main altar was perhaps a direct admonition against the kinds of royal memorials Louis and his family had sponsored.39 After his death on Crusade in 1270, Louis’s son JeanTristan, Count of Nevers, was also buried in Royaumont.40 Two sons of Peter of Alençon (therefore grandsons of Louis IX), Louis and Philip, who died within their first two years, as well as a son of Robert of Artois, joined their royal relatives around the main altar in the abbey church.41 Blanche of Castile had her body buried in Maubuisson and — setting a new precedent as Elizabeth A. R. Brown has shown — she gave her heart to the abbey of Le Lys.42 Although with the practice of burial and commemoration in Cistercian houses the Capetians reaffirmed their connection to the order, they also followed suit with their contemporaries like the Countess of Champagne, 37 

See William of Saint-Pathus, Vie de saint Louis, cols 87A–B and 103A; Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, pp. 56–59. 38  Philippe Dagobert’s tomb was a three-dimensional chest or sarcophagus and is briefly described in Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, pp. 35–36. The fragments of the tomb are still extant and held at Paris, Musée du Louvre and Musée national du Moyen Age-Thermes de Cluny. The others are on display in the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis. On the enamels of tombs of John and Blanche of France, see de Chancel-Bardelot, ‘Tomb Effigies of John and Blanche of France’, pp. 402–05. 39  Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, iii (1263), no. 11. See also Bruzelius, ‘Cistercian High Gothic’, pp. 93–97. On practices of royal burial more broadly, see Hallam, ‘Royal Burial and the Cult of Kingship’. 40  On his death and the legend surrounding him, see Beaune, ‘La legende de Jean Tristan’. 41  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 80. 42  Related to the division of Blanche’s body after death as a practice that would be repeated among the Capetians, see Brown, ‘Death and the Human Body’, and Brown, ‘Burying and Unburying the Kings of France’. Concerning Blanche’s tombs — one for her body and one for her heart — see Nolan, Queens in Stone and Silver, pp. 120–51.

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

29

the Counts of Flanders, Nemours, Chartres, and Saint-Pol, and the lords of Châtillon, Jaucourt, and many others who had founded Cistercian abbeys, and especially nunneries, to serve as familial necropolises during the first decades of the thirteenth century. Burial within the houses of the order, and clustered in particular within the abbey church of Royaumont, served to bind the Capetians and the Cistercians in an intimate, commemorative manner. The Cistercians became the custodians of Capetian familial — not just royal or individual — memory after death.

Petitions for Prayers Burial was, of course, closely related to forms of remembrance and commemoration. The Cistercian statutes offer strong indication of the connection that lay behind the royal family’s pattern of support for the order. The Capetians — both Blanche and Louis and at times the extended family — appear almost annually in the Cistercian sources during the century. They advocated for houses they supported or on behalf of local lords who were building nunneries that sought affiliation with the order. But more regularly they appealed to the order for prayers — specifically for the kinds of corporate prayers that were to be said by all monks, nuns, and priests throughout all of the houses of the order. This was a type of resonate corporate prayer that spanned political borders, local disputes, and even echoed in the attentive ears of Dominican and Franciscan confessors. It was a type of prayer, moreover, that the Capetians clearly believed to be profoundly efficacious. It is hard to know precisely when requests or petitions for the prayers of the order began. In 1222 the Abbot of Cîteaux extended to Blanche the benefits of ‘the full prayers and good works of the order’.43 In 1227 the General Chapter acceded to Louis’s request that the order as a whole offer prayers to commemorate the anniversary of his father, Louis VIII, on 20 November as well as Philip Augustus, and when his mother, Blanche, should die, they promised to include her in their prayers as well.44 A year later the order decreed that it would offer corporate prayers for the pope, for the peace of the church and the empire, for the legates of the holy see and the affairs of the Albigensians, for the King of 43  ‘ei plenariam participationem omnium orationum et bonorum, quae in universo ordine fiunt et de cetero fient, benigniter concedere’: Layette, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 556, no. 1557 (1222). It is possible this charter was sent in response to Blanche’s petition. 44  Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1227), no. 12.

Anne E. Lester

30

France, the Queen, and their children, and that every Friday they would say the seven penitential Psalms in the church, after which they would chant the response Aspice Domine and the antiphon Salve Regina and the verse Ora pro nobis. Each week each priest was instructed to all sing the Mass Salus populi, and the other monks who were not priests were to say the seven penitential Psalms again.45 Such rounds of careful prayers and special Masses would continue and amplify throughout the century.46 The royal family appealed to the order in times of special or acute need as well. In mid-September 1244, barely a month after falling ill at Maubuisson and taking the vow to go on Crusade, Louis and the entire royal family attended the General Chapter meeting at Cîteaux and welcomed Pope Innocent IV.47 While there, the order initiated elaborate arrangements for the commemoration of the royal family: Blanche and Louis were inscribed in the Memento — for special remembrance among all the houses of the order in France; from then on three Masses of the Holy Spirit and three Masses of the Virgin were said by all the priests of the order on their behalf in recognition of their support of the order. It was arranged that their deaths would be announced through the order and anniversary Masses solemnly intoned in perpetuity. Services would also be said in honour of the death of the King’s brothers and sisters and for his wife as well as for his grandfather Alphonse of Castile and grandmother Lenor. They accorded spiritual benefits as well to all of the counts, barons, and secular counselors attached to the King’s household and to Pierre, his chaplain. Thus, even the King’s non-biological familia were to be commemorated by the order.48 After 1245 prayers for the King were said daily by the order as a whole.49 Petitions like this continued throughout the century and took on 45 

See Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1228), no. 18. This kind of carefully prescribed prayer began in the 1190s, when Innocent III instituted rounds of prayers in support of the Crusade effort and for those in the Holy Land. On this and on petitions to the Cistercians for their prayers in times of need and Crusade, see Maier, ‘Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade’, and Lester, ‘A Shared Imitation’, pp. 365–67. 46  See, for example, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1229), no. 17; (1238) no. 11; (1240) no. 18; (1241) nos. 10, 12; (1242) no. 20; and (1243) nos. 9, 11. 47  On this meeting and the possible negotiation for Crusade support and tithes from the Cistercians, see Buczek, ‘Medi­eval Taxation’, at pp. 50–52. 48  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 169. See Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1244), nos. 4, 10, 11, 12, and 16. 49  Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1245), no. 1. These were prayers offered specifically for the Pope, the King of France, all of those who had taken the cross, and

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

31

specific urgency in 1251 following the death of the King’s brother Robert of Artois on Crusade; in 1252 after Blanche’s death; and at other moments when the Crown was afflicted or took up a new vow to Crusade and again with redoubled intensity, as Cecilia Gaposchkin has shown, in 1270 and 1271, following Louis’s death in Tunis.50

Objects in the Order I want to conclude by considering a final element that Dimier notes but does not address in full: gifts of objects.51 For in addition to material support and donations to the abbeys of the order, members of the Capetian family — and Louis IX especially — gave numerous material objects to the Cistercians. They were not alone in this. Here again other aristocratic families offered gifts to their Cistercian houses, often items like relics brought back from Greece and the Holy Land. Objects — things — can suggest more intimate and individual aspects of a gift-giving relationship, communicating personal bonds, status, and even ideas through their materials, presentation, rituals, and previous associations.52 Of particular significance in this regard were gifts of relics and reliquaries. As Louis Carolus-Barré noted some time ago, Louis IX — and indeed the Capetian family — harboured a profound interest in the development of relic cults.53 The King and his brothers, as well as his wife and mother, often attended ceremonies of relic translations. During the final decade of his reign, Louis initiated translations with some regularity, taking part in the rituals, touching the bones or sacred objects, bearing the caskets and reliquaries on his shoulders the Holy Land. Others were added for the afflicted and for captives and for Christian pilgrims, as well as additional special prayers and collects said in the kingdom of France specifically. 50  Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. by Canivez, ii (1246), no. 12; (1247) no. 4, which offers very specific details for how the monks were to pray, process, and engage in the liturgy; (1248) no. 9; (1251) no. 7; (1252) no. 5; (1253) nos. 6 and 32. On the Cistercian liturgy in honour of Louis, see Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, pp. 125–53. 51  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, pp. 135–40, where he refers to these objects as ‘souvenirs de Saint Louis dans l’ordre de Cîteaux’. 52  On the role of objects as aids to memory and commemoration, see Lester, ‘What Remains’, pp. 311–28; Hallam and Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture. 53  Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, pp. 1087–1112. For addi­ tional comments on Louis’s interest in these cults, see Lester, ‘Confessor King, Martyr Saint’, pp. 195–210. More work is needed concerning Blanche of Castile’s role in the cultivation of saints and their cults.

Anne E. Lester

32

in processions.54 The first holy body Louis may have encountered like this was that of John of Montmirail at that time the saint’s relics were first translated in 1227 when Louis was present for the consecration of Longpont’s high altar.55 Two decades later, in the midst of preparing for Crusade, in late May 1247, as noted above, Louis IX came to Pontigny to be present when Edmund of Abingdon’s tomb was first opened after he was confirmed among the saints. Two weeks later, on 9 June, Louis returned to Pontigny with Blanche of Castile and his three brothers and his sister, personally beheld the uncorrupted body, and translated Edmund’s relics to the high altar.56 It is possible that what the King had experienced in 1247 laid the groundwork for what would become a near obsession after this return from the East. In the 1260s, the King attended and directed numerous translation ceremonies. Carolus-Barré lists twelve, but I have counted others, and given Louis’s attendance at the dedication of new churches and chapels, he no doubt was present among the bodies of the saints at other, less well-documented moments. On 3 October 1260, he was with the monks of Royaumont, in the company of Eudes Rigaud and Raoul Grosparmi, Bishop of Evreux, and a crowd of nobles, leading the procession in the translatio of the body of St Berge, one of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, a relic the King had received from the Bishop of Cologne earlier that June.57 The following year, on 22 June — the feast of Mary Magdalene — Louis took part in the procession and translation of the relics of two other virgins from among the eleven thousand to the abbey church of Maubuisson, where they were deposited. Archbishop Eudes Rigaud and Bishop Raoul of Grosparmi joined him again, as did Queen Marguerite, as they carried the bones from the royal residence in Pontoise to the Cistercian nunnery.58 54 

See Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 190–95. See Dionnet, ‘La Cassette reliquaire’, p. 90. 56  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, nos. 174, 175, 218, and pp. 115–18; Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, pp. 1089–91. Blanche and Marguerite returned in 1249 for a second translation of the saint’s relics and gave the monks a reliquary made of gold and precious stones to hold the arm of the saint, which had been removed from the body. 57  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, nos. 311, 313, 314, 316; and Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, p. 1094. The Bishop of Cologne sent the body of St Berge (L: Barga) to the King on 18 June 1260. It was kept in the church of Asniéres-sur-Oise, where there was a royal residence, not far from Royaumont (see above, note 36), and processed from that church to Royaumont. 58  See Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, nos. 321–22; and Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, pp. 1098–1100. These relics appear to have been part of a group 55 

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

33

This seems to have been a decisive event, for several years thereafter the King returned regularly to Maubuisson and Royaumont in the fall and early summer.59 And Dimier suggests that Louis made a similar gift of one of the bodies of the eleven thousand virgins as well as relics from one of the companions of St Maurice to the monks of Châalis, taking part in the translation himself, carrying the relic châsse on his own shoulders.60 These translations further sanctified the spaces of these Cistercian abbeys — and it must be stressed here, it was only Cistercian houses that received such gifts of holy bones; no other monastic orders were so sanctified under the Capetians.61 At the time of his death, and in the years that followed, other personal objects that had belonged to Louis passed to various abbeys of the order and came to function as relics of the confessor-king. Louis had made provisions for much of the royal library to go to Royaumont after this death. Books, parchments, skins acted much like relics and had a spiritual resonance all their own.62 Gifts of objects associated with Louis’s use during his lifetime, like the King’s of relics sent from Cologne to the King in the fall of 1260, which Louis then gave to various favoured abbeys in France. In return, Louis may have given the Cathedral of Cologne a relic of the Passion; which one, however, as Carolus-Barré notes, is not clear. More work is needed on the overall programmatic effect of such relic translations. 59  See Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, pp. 186–95, for Louis’s itinerary during these years. 60  Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 109; Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, p. 1100. 61  To be sure, separate houses and individuals among the Franciscans and Dominicans received relics from Louis, especially relics of the Passion. On this, see Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 191–95. Likewise, Louis participated in the translation of relics to the hospital for the blind known as the Quinze-Vingts, which he founded in Paris, and to collegiate churches such as those in Péronne, Saint-Quentin in the Vermendois, Saint-Aignan in Orléans, and to the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Lucien near Beauvais, to the chapel in the royal residence in Senlis, and to the abbey church at Vézelay. But it was only the Cistercians, as an order, that received a series of relics from the King. See Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’. 62  This donation also underlines the cultivated intellectual bond Louis had with the abbey during his life: sending his children there to be educated and granting — quite unusually — the position of lector at Royaumont to the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais, whom the King much admired. Vincent’s texts — especially those On the Education of the Noble Girls and his Consolation on the Death of a Son — demonstrate that he had a close relationship with the King and that he understood his role as a spiritual confidant to be one of guidance and comfort. All of those activities took place at Royaumont. See Stones, The Minnesota Vincent of Beauvais. On liturgical books as corpses in the medieval context, see Palazzo, ‘‘Le “livre-corps” à l’époque carolingienne’.

Anne E. Lester

34

Figure 2.1. ‘The Coffret of Saint Louis’. Wood, medallions of champlevé enamel. Provenance of Notre-Dame-du-Lys. Paris, Musée du Louvre; Département des Objets d’art: Moyen Âge. Limoges, c. 1234–36. Acquisition, 1853. MS 253. Photo: 1995 RMN/Daniel Amaudet.

tunic and hair shirt, and perhaps even his coffret (Figure 2.1), took on greater significance and spiritual power after his death and canonization.63 According to William of Saint-Pathus, in 1278 sister Clemence of Sens made a pilgrimage to Le Lys where the nuns kept a coffret or strong-box that Louis had given them (William uses the term escrinet).64 By 1278 this box held relics of the King: his hair shirt as well as other items that Louis IX had used for his personal ‘discipline’. In 1306/08 after the opening of Louis’s tomb at Saint-Denis, Philip the Fair gave the nuns an arm bone and several finger bones of Louis’s, which were added to the coffret.65 As an object that was both a gift and a thing worthy of veneration the coffret of St Louis is particularly intriguing. On the basis of the enamel heraldry 63 

Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, p. 137. On the Coffret of St Louis, see the short article by Boehm and Pastoureau, ‘The Coffret of Saint Louis’; as well as Pinoteau, ‘La Date de la cassette de saint Louis’, and ‘La Date de la cassette de saint Louis: été 1236?’. The casket has most recently been the focus of a master’s thesis directed by Richard Leson: see Jacobs, ‘The Heraldic Casket of Saint Louis in the Louvre’, who proposes a slightly earlier date than Pinoteau. I am grateful to Prof. Leson and Audrey Jacobs for sharing this unpublished work with me. 64  See William of Saint-Pathus, Miracles de saint Louis, n. 21, in RHF, xx, 147. 65  See Boehm and Pastoureau, ‘The Coffret of Saint Louis’, p. 362, and Pinoteau, ‘La Date de la cassette de saint Louis: été 1236?’, p. 98; Brown, ‘Philippe le Bel and the Remains of Saint Louis’, and Lester, ‘The Casket of John of Montmirail’.

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

35

it has been dated to the region of Limoges, c. 1234/36. In a 1983 study, Hervé Pinoteau identified each of the forty-six coats of arms still extant on the object and argued that, given ‘the dates of death, of marriage, of conferrings of knighthood, of heraldic changes, and of changes in title or of function of each of the persons concerned […] each device was that of either a relative of Louis IX or a member of his court’.66 A box such as this may have been a gift to the King at the time of his marriage (1234), or at a later point, perhaps even as he prepared to depart on Crusade. Such boxes were often used to transport sealed documents or the ornaments that made up a portable chapel. When Louis bestowed it to the nuns of Le Lys is not clear, but it is possible they possessed it before his death in 1270.67 From our perspective, remaining attentive to the Cistercian Order, Louis’s coffret bears a striking resemblance to the coffret of John of Montmirail (Figure  2.2) that came — like Louis’s — to enshrine John’s relics at some point after his death.68 Nicholas Vincent has argued that the coffret of John of Montmirail may have been a gift to Louis IX from Isabelle of Angoulême in 1242 or 1246 for it displays the heraldry of vassals and relatives that she and the King had in common and was perhaps intended as a sign of her reconciliation with the King after a period of rebellion.69 Because Isabelle was a relative of John of Montmirail, it is possible that this coffret seemed a fitting case in which to enclose the holy man’s bones. These were translated again in 1253, a good potential date for Louis’s gift of the coffret to the monks, although he was at the abbey again 1261 at the height of his interest in translating saints.70 66 

Boehm and Pastoureau, ‘The Coffret of Saint Louis’, p. 360. See above, note 63. 68  The coffret has most recently been analysed in brief by Boehm, ‘The Coffret of Blessed John of Montmirail’, pp. 376–78. See also Dionnet, ‘La Cassette reliquaire’. Dionnet argues that it was commissioned sometime in the early to mid-1240s and suggests that it may have been used for Jean’s bones and thus given to Longpont either in 1253 or in 1271 when his relics may have been translated. Boehm argues for a later date than Dionnet. For additional heraldic associations with the family of Montmirail and Coucy and the Cistercian abbeys of Longpont and the female house of Saint-Savouir in Laon, see Leson, ‘Heraldry and Identity’, p. 183. 69  See Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, pp. 212–13. For the charters of reconciliation, see Layette, ed. by Teulet and others, ii, no. 3049 (March 1242–43), pp. 498–99; no. 3523 (2 June 1246), pp. 622–23; and no. 3526 ( June 1246 at Royaumont), pp. 623–24. This text stands out as an extraordinary document of supplication to the King. 70  Boehm, ‘The Coffret of Blessed John of Montmirail’, p. 378; Dionnet, ‘La Cassette reliquaire’, p. 90, and Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux, no. 330. For the more detailed argument suggested here, see also Lester, ‘The Casket of John of Montmirail’. 67 

Anne E. Lester

36

Figure 2.2. ‘The Coffret of Blessed John of Montmirail or the Longpont Coffret’. Limoges. Copper, engraved, stippled, and gilt champlevé enamel: sky blue, grey, green, dark red, and white, red and brown leather over wood core. 15 × 78.7 × 17.5 cm. Treasury of the Abbey of Longpont (Aisne), France. c. 1270 (or 1242?). Photo: Thierry Lefébure, Ministère de la culture, Inventaire général, Département de l’Aisne, AGIR-Picardie.

Although many questions still surround both objects, the coffrets — later enclosed in the high altars of Le Lys and Longpont — with their patterned aristocratic heraldry announced and reaffirmed the Capetian familial connection to Cistercian houses and did so through the medium of saintly familial bones. What was commemorated then within the altars and walls of Cistercian convents and monasteries was a certain kind of Capetian memory, one closely tied to the activities of the regional aristocracy and one that reaffirmed the royal family as a node within this much larger religious network.71 I have not catalogued all of the instances when Philip III or Philip the Fair stopped and stayed at Royaumont, Maubuisson, or other favoured Cistercian abbeys. After Louis’s death, both kings distinguished themselves by supporting the newer royal foundations of Poissy, the Dominican convent built to honour St Louis, and Moncel, its Franciscan equivalent. Both of Louis’s successors, however, had come to recognize the Cistercian houses of the realm as places of refuge from the cares of the world and as spaces resonant with familial memories and practices of commemoration. When forced to consider the end of his days, the division of his goods, and the disposition of his soul — when drawing up his testaments — Philip the Fair turned to the familiar comforts of Maubuisson and Royaumont, places in Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s words, where 71 

Added to this, over time, relics of Louis IX, whether bones or brandea, were given out and additional royal chapels were founded in Cistercian houses in his honour. In 1287, Louis’s widow founded a chapel in the abbey church at Saint-Antoine-des-Champs with the consent of the Abbess and the Abbot of Cîteaux. In 1301, Philip the Fair founded a chapel in honour of St Louis at Ourscamp. Such foundations parallel the expansion of Louis’s office and offered a specific space in which to venerate the royal saint.

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

37

he could indulge ‘his temperamental [inclination] to introspection and seriousness of purpose’.72 Thus in 1288 he was at Maubuisson when he composed his first will. Nine years later he drafted a new version while at Royaumont in 1297, which was then superseded by another written while again at Maubuisson in May of 1311.73 By 1314, at the close of our century, the Capetians recognized — what Jacques de Thérines would so clearly articulate in his defence of Cistercian exemption — that the Cistercians were different, distinguished through their performance of works of charity and their commitment to poverty and the austere life.74 This made the Cistercians an exemplary order, which in turn made their prayers, as an order, of singular distinction and worthy of the sustained petitions of kings. Through the enduring relationship the Capetians had with the order we can see not just personal proclivities for specific pieties, but a royal familial ideology of devotion and commemoration very much in line with the broader patterns of religious patronage that flourish during the Capetian century.

72 

Brown, ‘Royal Salvation and the Needs of the State’, p. 369. On the testaments, see Brown, ‘Royal Salvation and Needs of the State’. It must be noted, however, that Philip III’s heart was buried with the Dominicans in Paris, and in 1298 Philip the Fair stipulated that his heart should also be buried with his father’s among the Preachers in Paris, separate from his body at Saint-Denis. 74  Buczek, ‘Medi­eval Taxation’, p. 96. On Jacques de Thérines, see Jordan, Unceasing Strife, Unending Fear. 73 

38

Anne E. Lester

Works Cited Primary Sources Bonnardot, Hippolyte, L’abbaye royale de Saint-Antoine-des-Champs de l’ordre de Cîteaux: Étude topographique et historique (Paris: Librairie de Féchoz et Letouzey, 1882) ‘De B. Joanne de Montemirabili ordinis Cisterciensis in monasterio Longi-Pontis in Gallia’, in Acta Sanctorum, September, 8 ed. by Johannes Bolland and others (Antwerpen, 1643–), pp. 186–235 Du Chesne, Andre, Historiae Francorum Scriptores, 5 vols (Paris: Sumptibus Sebastiani Cramoisy, 1636–49) English Episcopal Acta, xxii: Chichester 1215–1253, ed. by Philippa M. Hoskin (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001) Jacques du Breul, Le théâtre des antiquités de Paris, où est traité de la foundation des église et chapelles de la cite, université, ville et diocese de Paris (Paris: Societé des Imprimeurs, 1639) Martène, Edmond, and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, 5 vols (Paris: Sumpti­bus F. Delaulne, 1717; repr. Farnburough: Gregg, 1968) Matthew of Paris, The Life of St.  Edmund, ed. and trans. by C.  H. Lawrence (Oxford: A. Sutton, 1996) Merlet, Lucien, and Auguste Moutié, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Notre Dame des Vaux-deCernay, de l’ordre de Cîteaux, au diocese de Paris, 2 vols (Paris: H. Plon, 1857–58) The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres, trans. by Larry F. Field, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean L. Field (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014) Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, ed. by Joseph-Maria Canivez, 8 vols (Louvain: Bureaux de la Revue, 1933–41) Layette du Trésor des chartes, ed. by Alexandre Teulet and others, 5 vols (Paris: H. Plon, 1863–1909) William of Nagis, Gesta sancti Ludovici, in Recueil des historiens de Gaules et de la France, ed. by Martin Bouquet (Paris: Libraires Associés, 1840), xx, 309–465 William of Saint-Pathus, Miracles de saint Louis, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Martin Bouquet (Paris: Libraries Associés, 1840), xx, 121–89 —— , Vie de saint Louis, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Martin Bouquet (Paris: Libraires Associés, 1840), xx, 58–121

Secondary Studies Aladjidi, Priscille, Le roi, père des pauvres: France xiiie–xve siècle (Rennes: Presses Univer­ sitaires de Rennes, 2008) Ames, Christine Cadwell, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2009)

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

39

d’Arbois de Jubainville, Henry, Études sur l’etat intérieur des abbayes cisterciennes et principalement de Clairvaux, au xiie et au xiiie siècle (Paris: A. Durand, 1858) Beaune, Colette, ‘La legende de Jean Tristan fils de saint Louis’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, 98 (1986), 143–60 Berman, Constance, ‘Cistercian Nuns and the Development of the Order: The Abbey of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs Outside Paris’, in The Joy of Learning: Studies in Honor of Jean Leclercq, ed. by E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), pp. 121–56 —— , ‘Dowries, Private Income, and Anniversary Masses: The Nuns of Saint-Antoine-desChamps (Paris)’, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 20 (1993), 3–12 —— , ‘Two Medi­eval Women’s Property and Religious Benefactions in France: Eleanor of Vermendois and Blanche of Castile’, Viator, 41 (2010), 151–82 Boehm, Barbara Drake, ‘The Coffret of Blessed John of Montmirail’, in Enamels of Limoges 1100–1350, ed. by John Philip O’Neill (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), pp. 376–78 Boehm, Barbara Drake, and Michel Pastoureau, ‘The Coffret of Saint Louis’, in Enamels of Limoges 1100–1350, ed. by John Philip O’Neill (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), pp. 360–63 Brown, Elizabeth A.  R., ‘Burying and Unburying the Kings of France’, in Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medi­eval and Renaissance Europe, ed. by Richard Trexler, Medi­eval and Renaissance Text & Studies, 36 (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medi­eval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1985), pp. 241–66 —— , ‘Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse’, Viator, 12 (1981), 221–70 —— , ‘Philippe le Bel and the Remains of Saint Louis’, Gazette des beaux-Arts, 6th series, 95 (1980), 175–82 —— , ‘Royal Salvation and Needs of the State in Early Fourteenth-Century France’, in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages, ed. by William  C. Jordan, Bruce McNab, and Teofilo F. Ruiz (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1976), pp. 365–83; repr. in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 345 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991), no. IV, pp. 1–56 Bruzelius, Caroline Astrid, ‘Cistercian High Gothic: The Abbey Church of Longpont and the Architecture of the Cistercians in the Early Thirteenth Century’, Analecta Cisterciensia, 35 (1979), 3–204 —— , The Stones of Naples: Church Building in the Angevin Kingdom, 1266–1343 (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005) Buczek, Daniel S., ‘Medi­eval Taxation: The French Crown, the Papacy and the Cistercian Order, 1190–1320’, Analecta Cisterciensia, 25 (1969), 42–106 Carolus-Barré, Louis, ‘L’Abbaye de La Joie-Notre-Dame à Berneuil-sur-Aisne (1234– 1430)’, in Mélange à la mémoire du Père Anselme Dimier, ed. by Benoît Chauvin, 3 vols in 6 (Arbois: Pupillin, 1984), ii.4 pp. 487–504 —— , ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, in Études d’histoire du droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras, 2 vols (Paris: Sirey, 1965), ii, 1087–1112

40

Anne E. Lester

Chancel-Bardelot, Béatrice de, ‘Tomb Effigies of John and Blanche of France’, in Enamels of Limoges, 1100–1350, ed. by John Philip O’Neill (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), 402–05 Davis, Michael T., ‘Cistercians in the City: The Church of the Collége Saint Bernard in Paris’, in Perspectives for an Architecture of Solitude, ed. by Terryl Kinder (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 223–34 D’Emilio, James, ‘The Royal Convent of Las Huelgas: Dynastic Politics, Religious Reform and Artistic Change in Medi­eval Castile’, in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, vi, ed. by Meredith Parsons Lillich (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2004), pp. 191–282 Dejoux, Marie, ‘Gouverner par l’enquête au xiiie siècle: Les restitutions de Louis  IX (1247–1270)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Uni­ver­sity of Paris 1, 2012) Dimier, Anselme, ‘Le bienheureux Jean de Montmirail, moine de Longpont’, in Mémoires de la Fédération des societies savantes de l’Ainse, 7 (1960–61), 182–91 —— , ‘Liste des abbayes Cisterciennes féminines de France au Moyen-Age’, in Mélanges à la mémoire de père Anselme Dimier, ed. by Benoît Chauvin, 3 vols in 6 (Arbois: Pupillin, 1984), i.2, 591–94 —— , Saint Louis et Cîteaux (Paris: Letouzey & Ané, 1954) —— , ‘Trois évêques de Liège originaires de France, grands amis des cisterciens’, Cîteaux, 23 (1972), 316–23 —— , ‘Un découverte concernante le bienheureux Simon d’Aulne’, Cîteaux, 21 (1970), 302–05 —— , ‘Un grand évêque cistercien, ami de saint Louis, Gautier de Chartres’, Cîteaux, 22 (1971), 5–14 Dionnet, Alain-Charles, ‘La Cassette reliquaire de bienheureux Jean de Montmirail’, Revue français d’héraldique et de sigillographie, 65 (1995), 89–107 Duclos, Henri Louis, Histoire de Royaumont, sa foundation par saint Louis et son influence sure la France, 2 vols (Paris, 1867) Farmer, Sharon, Surviving Poverty in Medi­eval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002) Gajewski, Alexandra, ‘The Patronage Question under Review: Queen Blanche of Castile (1188–1252) and the Architecture of the Cistercian Abbeys at Royaumont, Maubuisson, and Le Lys’, in Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medi­eval Art and Architecture, ed. by Therese Martin, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2012), i, 197–244 —— , ‘Recherches sur l’architecture cistercienne et le pouvoir royal Blanche de Castille et la construction de l’Abbaye du Lys’, in Art et architecture à Melun au Moyen Age (Paris: Picard, 2000), pp. 223–54 Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) Geltner, Guy, Katherine L. Jansen, and Anne E. Lester, eds, Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medi­eval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan (Leiden: Brill, 2013) Guest, Gerald B., ‘A Discourse on the Poor: The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux’, Viator: Medi­ eval and Renaissance Studies, 26 (1995), 153–80

Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited

41

Hallam, Elizabeth M., ‘Royal Burial and the Cult of Kingship in France and England, 1060–1330’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 8 (1982), 359–80 Hallam, Elizabeth M., and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2001) Jacobs, Audrey L., ‘The Heraldic Casket of Saint Louis in the Louvre’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin–Madison, 2014) Jordan, William Chester, ‘Adolescence and Conversion in the Middle Ages: A Research Agenda’, in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. by Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN: Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame Press, 2001), pp. 77–93 —— , ‘The English Holy Men of Pontigny’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 43 (2008), 63–75 —— , ‘Isabelle of France and Religious Devotion at the Court of Louis IX’, in Capetian Women, ed. by Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 209–23 —— , Louis  IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A  Study in Rulership (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1979) —— , Unceasing Strife, Unending Fear: Jacques de Thérines and the Freedom of the Church in the Age of the Last Capetians (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005) Kinder, Terryl N., ‘Blanche of Castile and the Cistercians: An Architectural Re-Evaluation of Maubuisson Abbey’, Cîteaux, 27 (1976), 161–88 La Selle, Xavier de, ‘La Confession et l’aumône: Confesseurs et aumoniers des rois de France dur xiie au xve siècle’, Journal des Savants, no. 2 (1993), 255–86 Le Goff, Jacques, Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) Leson, Richard, ‘Heraldry and Identity in the Psalter-Hours of Jeanne of Flanders (Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Lat. 117)’, Studies in Iconography, 32 (2001), 155–98 Lester, Anne E., ‘The Casket of John of Montmirail: The Sacred Politics of Reuse in Thirteenth-Century France’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medi­eval Art & Architecture, 4 (2015), 50–86 —— , ‘Confessor King, Martyr Saint: Praying to Saint Maurice at Senlis’, in Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medi­eval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan, ed. by Guy Geltner, Katherine L. Jansen, and Anne E. Lester (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 195–210 —— , Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011) —— , ‘A Shared Imitation: Cistercian Convents and Crusader Families in ThirteenthCentury Champagne’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 35 (2009), 353–79 —— , ‘What Remains: Women, Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 40 (2014), 311–28 Little, Lester K., ‘Saint Louis’ Involvement with the Friars’, Church History, 33 (1964), 125–48 Maier, Christoph T., ‘Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 48 (1997), 628–57 Morganstern, Anne McGee, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries, and England (Uni­ver­sity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000)

42

Anne E. Lester

Nolan, Kathleen, Queens in Stone and Silver: The Creation of a Visual Imagery of Queenship in Capetian France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) O’Neill, John Philip, ed., Enamels of Limoges 1100–1350 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996) Palazzo, Eric, ‘Le “livre-corps” à l’époque carolingienne et son rôle dans la liturgie de la messe et sa théologie’, Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae, 15 (2010), 31–63 Pinoteau, Hervé, ‘La Date de la cassette de saint Louis’, Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France, 1978–79, 77–78 —— , ‘La Date de la cassette de saint Louis: été 1236?’, Cahiers d’Héraldique, 4 (1983), 97–130 Stones, Alison, The Minnesota Vincent of Beauvais Manu­script and Cistercian ThirteenthCentury Book Decoration, The James Ford Bell Lectures, 14 (Minneapolis: Uni­ver­sity of Minnesota Press, 1977) Vincent, Nicholas, ‘Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel’, in King John: New Inter­ pretations, ed. D. C. Church (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), pp. 165–219 Walker, Rose, ‘Leonor of England, Plantagenet Queen of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, and her Foundation of the Cistercian Abbey of Las Huelgas in Imitation of Fontevraud?’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 31 (2005), 346–68

King/Confessor/Inquisitor: A Capetian-Dominican Convergence Sean L. Field*

I

n 1200 the King of France controlled only a modest domain centred on the Île-de-France, the Dominican Order did not yet exist, no office of ‘confessor to the king’ had been conceptualized, and the papacy had not yet appointed the first inquisitors of heretical depravity. The crucial years around the Battle of Bouvines and the Fourth Lateran Council, however, spawned rapid transformations.1 Bouvines in 1214 confirmed Philip Augustus’s ascendancy over his Angevin and Imperial rivals and led to a century of burgeoning political power for the Capetians.2 Dominic’s meeting with Innocent III in Rome at the time of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 resulted in his band of preaching brothers receiving papal permission to follow the Rule of St  Augustine in 1216.3 That same council gave a new importance to oral confession with the canon Omnis utriusque sexus,4 and the Capetian kings in turn increasingly found it useful to have specifically designated confessors; by the second half of the century they   * I would like to thank the participants of the conference ‘The Capetian Century, 1214– 1314’ for their helpful comments on the first version of this paper, Cecilia Gaposchkin for critiquing a draft as it was revised for publication, and Jenna Phillips and William Jordan for their editorial direction. 1  On these formative years, see the essays in 1212–1214: El trienio que hizo a Europa. 2  Baldwin and Simons, ‘The Consequences of Bouvines’; Jordan, ‘The French Victory at Bouvines (1214)’. 3  Lawrence, The Friars, pp. 70–71. 4  Bériou, ‘Autour de Latran IV’; and the essays in Biller and Minnis, Handling Sin, esp. Baldwin, ‘From Ordeal to Confession’.

Sean L. Field ([email protected]) Uni­ver­sity of Vermont

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 43–69 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112968 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

Sean L. Field

44

had settled into a pattern of employing Dominicans in this new office.5 And it was the Albigensian crusade, with its crucial battle of Muret in 1213 coming just a year before Bouvines,6 that eventually led to the appearance of the first papally empowered inquisitors of heretical depravity by the 1230s. Dominic had originally focused on preaching against heresy in the diocese of Toulouse, and with the papacy’s festering suspicion that the ‘Albigensian’ heresy still tainted the Languedoc even after the crusade’s conclusion in 1229, Dominicans were the logical choice to staff the new office of inquisitors of heretical depravity.7 Although inquisition was never a uniquely Dominican affair, the Order of Preachers generally furnished the most important inquisitors in the Capetian kingdom. In the wake of these crucial developments, over the course of the thirteenth century the Capetian kings forged close relationships with Dominican friars as both confessors and inquisitors. The point of the present essay is not to suggest that these two Capetian/Dominican relationships were necessarily more important than those formed between the French kings and other churchmen, or that these were the only significant bonds forged between kings and Dominicans. Rather the aim is to trace the way these two relationships developed and tightened across the reigns of Louis IX (1226–70) and Philip III (1270–85) and ultimately converged at a crucial point in the reign of Philip IV (1285–1314).8 The fact that the same Dominican sacramentally responsible for the salvation of the king’s soul also assumed responsibility for preserving the kingdom from the spiritual stain of heresy was essential to the reconfiguring of royal power during the reign of Philip the Fair.

Louis IX, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and Simon du Val The offices of royal confessor and papal inquisitor both came into being during the reign of Louis IX. In his important 1995 study of royal confessors, Xavier de La Selle demonstrated that the first concrete step in crystalizing that office came in 1243, when Pope Innocent IV authorized the king to confess to a royal chaplain of his choosing. This confessor/chaplain was empowered to impose 5 

De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour. Cabrer, ‘Después de Las Navas de Tolosa’; more generally Pegg, A Most Holy War. 7  On the Dominican sense of inquisitorial mission, see Ames, Righteous Persecution; Hoyer, Praedicatores, Inquisitores, i; and Albaret, ‘Les Prêcheurs et l’Inquisition’. 8  For a related analysis of ways in which confessorial and inquisitorial approaches were conflated, see Elliott, Proving Woman. 6 

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

45

penances and even to absolve the king from excommunications (except those imposed by or reserved to the pope); the king’s sacramental life thus for the first time formally escaped the ordinary jurisdictions of parish and diocese.9 A second crucial step occurred in 1256 when Pope Alexander IV granted Louis IX permission to select any secular or regular priest to act as his confessor.10 Rather than merely authorizing an act (confession to a designated chaplain) as had been in the case in 1243, the Pope’s wording now assumed the existence of an office to which a specific priest could be appointed; that is, a single individual labelled and recognized as the king’s confessor (confessorem tuum).11 By virtue of Louis’s personal selection, this priest would enjoy papal authority to hear the king’s sins, assign him penance, and offer him absolution. As this new office developed, Louis IX clearly regarded his confessor as central to his spiritual life. For instance, in his Enseignments Louis famously counselled the future Philip III to confess often, and to choose confessors of such holy life and such learning that they would be able to instruct him in proper comportment.12 In a touching moment of paternal advice, Louis even suggested that ‘if you have any suffering in your heart, talk about it to your confessor […] so that you might bear it more easily’.13 Thus when attempting to pass on his own values, Louis stressed not only the necessity of confession as an act, but the importance of the confessor himself as spiritual guide and moral teacher. Who actually filled this emerging office under Louis IX? The only royal confessor for whom we have any significant evidence during Louis’s reign is the Dominican Geoffrey of Beaulieu. Although Geoffrey’s background is obscure 9 

De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 37; Tardif, Privilèges, p. 7, no. 9, edited from Paris, AN, J 685, no. 50: ‘Indulgemus ut liceat tibi alcui de capellanis tuis […] peccata omnia confiteri, quibus absolvendi te ab excommunicationibus […] nisi de speciali mandato Sedis Apostolice in te promulgate fuerint, vel essent adeo graves et enormes excessus quod foret merito Sedes Apostolica consulenda, injungendique tibi penitentiam, tam pro hiis quam aliis peccatis tuis, plenam, auctoritate apostolica, concedimus facultatem’. 10  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 40 (inadvertantly referring to Gregory IX rather than Alexander IV); Tardif, Privilèges, p. 14, no. 19, edited from Paris, AN, J 685, no. 41: ‘Concedimus ut […] aliquem discretum presibiterum secularem seu religiosum in confessorem tuum eligere valeas, qui, audita confessione tua, cum fuerit oportunum, injungat tibi pro commissis penitentaim salutarem, ac beneficium debite absolutionis impendat’. 11  A point made by de La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 41. 12  The Teachings of Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by O’Connell, p. 56. Indeed, Louis offered almost exactly the same advice in his less well-known spiritual instructions for his daughter Isabelle; see The Instructions of Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by O’Connell, p. 79. 13  The Teachings of Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by O’Connell, p. 56.

Sean L. Field

46

before he began to hear the King’s confessions around the time of the Crusade of 1248, we do know a great deal about his relationship to Louis from this point on. This knowledge of course comes overwhelmingly from the Life of Louis that Pope Gregory X asked Geoffrey to write in 1272.14 The recollections embedded in this text allow a more detailed view of Geoffrey’s interactions with Louis than is possible for any other king/confessor pair in the Capetian period. Moreover, with the benefit of hindsight we know that Louis’s choice of Geoffrey of Beaulieu set a lasting precedent, since Dominicans monopolized the office of the king’s confessor not only through the end of the Capetian period but up to 1389 (French queens, by contrast, tended to choose Franciscans as confessors). It should be noted, however, that Louis himself probably did employ other confessors at times, and that some of them were probably not Dominicans. Geoffrey of Beaulieu himself relates the famous anecdote about how, after Louis’s return from Crusade in 1254, the King always wanted to have two confessors, one Franciscan and one Dominican.15 Geoffrey also refers to the death of one of Louis’s confessors, thus obviously implying the existence of another besides himself.16 There is very little evidence for who these other confessors were, although Jean of Mons, Franciscan confessor to Louis’s daughter Isabelle (and/or perhaps to his wife Marguerite of Provence) was certainly part of Louis’s circle.17 Geoffrey also mentions that if Louis felt the urgent need 14 

For reconstruction of Geoffrey’s career, as well as English translation of the vita, see The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field. Geoffrey’s vita is hereafter referred to by chapter, in order to facilitate consultation of both the translation and the Latin edition by Daunou and Naudet in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, xx, 3–27. An earlier English translation of Geoffrey’s vita (of which my co-authors and I were not aware when preparing The Sanctity of Louis IX) also exists in Sherwood, ‘A Translation of Geoffrey of Beaulieu’s Vita’. A typescript copy of this 1940 master’s thesis is available at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Library. 15  Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Vita, ch. 16bis. 16  Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Vita, ch. 16bis. 17  William of Saint-Pathus referred to Jean of Mons in a context that implied he was confessor to Louis IX’s daughter Isabelle but might also be read as indicating he was confessor to Marguerite of Provence. See Vie de saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, ed. by Dela­ borde, p. 63. Jean is listed as confesseur to Marguerite of Provence in de La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 310, but with only a reference to William of Saint-Pathus. When Philip III wrote from north Africa to the prelates of France to announce the news of Louis IX’s death, he sent the letters back via Geoffrey of Beaulieu, William of Chartres, and Jean of Mons, described collectively as ‘dear members of our remembered lord father’s household’. See The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, p. 63.

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

47

to confess but did not have immediate access to his confessor — for instance in the middle of the night — he would confess to one of his chaplains.18 Thus although the office of the king’s confessor came into existence under Louis IX, and although Louis’s only firmly documented confessor was a Dominican, the tradition of a single Dominican acting as the unique royal confessor had not yet fully solidified. Nevertheless, it was Geoffrey of Beaulieu who heard the King’s confessions for two decades, ‘so often that I would hardly know how to count them’,19 and who describes how deeply the King respected his confessors. For example, if his confessor wanted a door shut or a window opened, Louis would leap up and do it himself; and if the confessor protested, Louis would humbly reply ‘Dear friend, you are the father and I am the son’.20 Although these passages refer to an abstract confessor or confessors, surely Geoffrey here is basing his remarks on his own interactions with the King. Geoffrey further details how Louis confessed every Friday or even more frequently; how he ordered his confessor to administer his disciplines (penitential whippings); and how he sought his confessor’s advice about wearing a hair shirt or abstaining from certain foods. 21 Moreover, this relationship brought King and confessor together at some of the most emotional moments of Louis’s life. For instance, on Louis’s first Crusade, it was Geoffrey who consoled and prayed with the King, alone, when the devastating news of Blanche of Castile’s death arrived. 22 And on Louis’s second Crusade, it was Geoffrey who finally told the dying King that his son Jean Tristan had already departed this world.23 But beyond its emotional component, this was at heart a sacramental relationship; it was Geoffrey who heard the King confess, assigned him penance, granted him absolution for his sins for two decades, and thus helped the King to assure the salvation of his soul. Geoffrey, however, was never an inquisitor of heretical depravity; indeed his Life of Louis IX evinces no interest whatsoever in heresy or inquisitors. It was in fact Louis’s other early Dominican biographer, William of Chartres, who stressed that Louis ‘welcomed with kind indulgence the inquisitors of heretics. 18 

Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Vita, ch. 16bis. Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Vita, ch. 5. 20  Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Vita, ch. 10. 21  Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Vita, chs 16–18. 22  Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Vita, ch. 28. 23  Reported in Peter of Condé’s letter to Matthew of Vendôme, 21 August 1270, edited in Delisle, Littérature latine et histoire du moyen âge, pp. 73–75. 19 

Sean L. Field

48

Whenever they came to him for help, he put aside all other business, no matter how grave, giving them his attentive ear, assisting them with all grateful support, and insisting that the work of the faith ought to be put ahead of everything else’.24 And indeed the success of the new office of inquisitor of heretical depravity in France owed a great deal to Louis’s ‘welcome’, since the first inquisitions in the Languedoc were carried out with his very explicit backing.25 To Louis (and his successors), the king’s obligations included protecting the kingdom from heresy.26 Thus Louis counselled his son to ‘have heretics and other evil-doers chased from your land’.27 The new inquisitors of heretical depravity were an essential instrument through which this obligation could be carried out.28 Nevertheless, it is important to recall that inquisitors of heretical depravity received their authority from the pope, not the king.29 This was an ecclesiastical office, even if it relied on royal support for practical purposes. 24 

In The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, p. 142. See the introduction to that volume for a summary of William’s career, and the argument that William probably composed his life of Louis by 1276. For the Latin text of William’s vita, see Daunou and Naudet in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, xx, 28–41. 25  See for instance Dossat, Les crises de l’inquisition, p. 285, for Louis’s order to his seneschal to put prisons at inquisitors’ disposal in Carcassone and Béziers in 1246; and Dondaine, ‘Le manuel de l’inquisiteur’, pp. 136–37, for Louis’s order to the seneschal of Carcassonne to aid inquisitors in 1258. For factors in Louis’s youth that would have inculcated an obligation to crush heresy, see the essay by Cecilia Gaposchkin in the present volume. 26  Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 643–46. 27  The Teachings of Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by O’Connell, p. 59. 28  Louis’s support for papally empowered inquisitors was conceptually related to his creation of the new office of enquêteurs-réperateurs. The latter were charged with specific missions to investigate abuses by royal officials or complaints against the king, and were often Dominicans or Franciscans (though, as Marie Dejoux has shown, not so often as Louis’s mendicant hagiographers tended to report; see Dejoux, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis, pp. 110–11). Both papal heresy inquisitors and the royal enquêteurs were charged with responding to reports of wrongdoing and determining truth, in accordance with the principles of inquisitorial (as opposed to adversarial) justice; in fact Dejoux (Les enquêtes de Saint Louis, p. 144) highlights at least one case of a Dominican heresy inquisitor who was then named a royal enquêteur. The Latin word used for both offices was inquisitores; it is a modern Anglophone convention to refer to heresy ‘inquisitors’ but to use the French term enquêteurs for the secular officials. In some ways this convention is unfortunate in that it obscures the underlying parallels between the two offices; yet distinguishing between the two is essential in order to avoid modern confusion and was equally important in the thirteenth century (Dejoux, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis, pp. 143–44). 29  For the legal foundations of inquisition, see the essays by Kelly collected in Inquisitions and Other Trial Procedures.

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

49

Louis certainly knew and interacted with multiple Dominican inquisitors, but it does not seem that any single one of them developed the kind of close personal relationship with the King enjoyed by Geoffrey of Beaulieu. In part, this fact is likely due to simple geography. The early inquisitors of heretical depravity were much more active in the Languedoc than in the north, while Louis never travelled to inquisitorial hot-spots such as Toulouse and Carcassonne (his only passages through the Languedoc were tied to his two Crusades).30 In the north, Louis supported and indeed took a personal interest in the infamous inquisitions (and resulting burnings) of the Dominican Robert le Bougre around 1236.31 But it seems a stretch to envision a sustained personal relationship between the two men, and for the rest of Louis’s reign there is very little surviving evidence for inquisitors of heretical depravity in the north or tied directly to the King.32 Perhaps the Dominican inquisitor who emerges from the extant sources as closest to Louis IX might be Simon du Val (or Simon of Troyes, b. c. 1226), who served as Dominican prior of Provins and was one of the signers of a Dominican letter in 1275 that urged the college of cardinals to take up the cause of Louis’s canonization.33 Although almost no independent evidence survives for Simon’s career before 1270, his subsequent testimony in Louis’s canonization hearings of 1282–83 reveals him to have been a close associate of the King. There Simon recalled having ‘many times had long conversations with 30 

For Louis’s travels, see Moufflet, Sous le sceau du roi, pp. 40–43. The relationship between Louis’s brother Alphonse of Poitiers and inquisitors in Toulouse is important but beyond the scope of this article. 31  For instance, Gregory IX had earlier written to Robert to ask him to help bring about peace between the kings of France and England, and Louis was reported as providing an escort for Robert at one point; see the classic study by Haskins, ‘Robert le Bougre’, which built on Frederichs, Robert le Bougre. More recently see Despy, ‘Les débuts de l’Inquisition’; Kolmer, ‘Ad Terrorem Multorum’; Lower, ‘The Burning at Mont-Aimée’; Tugwell, ‘The Downfall of Robert le Bougre’; Traill, ‘Philip the Chancellor’; and Sommerlechner, ‘Procellosa illa persecutio’. 32  Haskins, ‘Robert le Bougre’, p. 244, thought surviving records revealed ‘inquisitors supported by the king in a dozen different districts of Northern France’ in 1248; unfortunately this statement resulted from confusion between the king’s enquêteurs and papal inquisitors of heretical depravity, since both are labelled in Latin documents inquisitores. See note 28, above. 33  For the letter, see The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, p. 68; for general orientation, see Kaeppeli, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum medii aevi, iii, 348–50 (but mistakenly indicating that Simon was prior of Rouen); Daunou, ‘Simon du Val’; and the more extensive assessment in Carolus-Barré, Le Procès de canonisation de saint Louis, pp. 249–51.

Sean L. Field

50

the blessed king’ and described himself as ‘very familiar and an intimate friend with the holy king’.34 But Simon’s testimony does not relate specifically to his efforts as an inquisitor, which is only logical because there is no evidence of his exercising this office before 1276, well after Louis’s death.35 Simon remained close to the royal family during the reign of Philip III, since he was an executor of the testament of Philip’s brother Peter of Alençon in 1282,36 and he is known to have preached ‘in the presence of the king’s sons’ in 1281/82.37 Thus Louis IX developed an important relationship with his Dominican confessor, offered crucial institutional support for Dominican inquisitors, but did not apparently have a significant personal relationship with any individual Preacher holding the office of papally empowered inquisitor of heretical depravity. Only after Louis’s death did a Dominican who had been part of Louis’s circle of intimates become a heresy inquisitor in northern France.

Philip III and Lawrence of Orléans Papal privileges continued to clarify the framework of the relationship between the king and his confessor during Philip  III’s reign. For instance in 1281 Martin IV repeated the contents of the earlier privileges of 1243 and 1256, but now added the explicit note that Philip could not only name but also dismiss his personal confessor at will.38 Philip may never have used this new authority to remove his confessor from office, however, since again the extant records identify only one confessor during his reign — the Dominican Lawrence of Orléans.39 Lawrence’s career offers some important parallels with that of his 34 

The testimony is known only at second hand as it was incorporated by William of SaintPathus. See Vie de saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, ed. by Delaborde, pp. 124–25: ‘Il eust esté pluseurs foiz avecques le benoiet roy et en lons parlemenz […] il fust mout familiers et mout privé a cel saint roy’. 35  When he proceeded against Siger of Brabant and his associates. See Dondaine, ‘Manuel de l’inquisiteur’, p. 191; Lea, History of the Inquisition, ii, 120–21; and for more extensive printing of the sources Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, v, cols 1810–13. 36  See Hélary, ‘La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alençon’. 37  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 151; Bériou, L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole, p. 765. 38  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 41; Tardif, Privilèges, p. 64, no. 75, edited from Paris, AN, J 685, no. 44, dated 7 October 1281 (and noting vidimus of 14 October 1305 in Paris, AN, J 940). 39  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, pp. 261–62; Kaeppeli, Scriptores ordinis praedi­

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

51

pre­decessor Geoffrey of Beaulieu, but for the purposes of this essay one difference is crucial: unlike Geoffrey, Lawrence eventually seems to have become a heresy inquisitor. In his example we see the two offices of royal confessor and papal inquisitor held for the first time by the same man, but (apparently) not at the same time. If Geoffrey of Beaulieu is best known for composing his vita of Louis IX, frère Laurent is known primarily as the author of La somme le roi, a vernacular work of moral advice commissioned by Philip III for the future Philip IV, completed in 1279/80 and widely circulated in several languages throughout the later Middle Ages. A much-needed critical edition of this crucial text has at last appeared thanks to the efforts of Anne-Françoise Leurquin-Labie and the late Édith Brayer, and the introduction to this edition offers an excellent summary of what is known of Lawrence’s career.40 Lawrence was certainly from Orléans and served as Dominican prior of Paris at an unknown date, probably before 1270. He was likely part of the Crusade to Tunis in 1270, since ‘Lawrence of Orléans’ is mentioned in the testament that Philip III’s queen Isabelle of Aragon dictated in January 1271 as she laying dying at Cosenza on the crusaders’ return from North Africa. Lawrence is charged there with distributing charitable donations to the Dominicans of France, along with Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres,41 so clearly he was close to the royal family by this date. Although the document does not attribute to him the label of royal confessor, he may have assumed this role more or less immediately after the death of Louis IX; indeed it is possible that he had served as Prince Philip’s confessor before the latter’s ascension to the throne. But the earliest definitive mention of Lawrence as royal confessor appears only in a document (recently identified by Xavier Hélary) from 1278.42 Lawrence certainly occupied this office when catorum medii aevi, iii, 63–64; Mandonnet, ‘Laurent d’Orléans’; Panella, ‘Note di biografia domenicana’, pp. 250–55. 40  Frère Laurent, La Somme le roi, ed. by Brayer and Leurquin-Labie, biographical summary of the author at pp. 14–19. 41  See Carolus-Barré, ‘Le testament d’Isabelle d’Aragon’. Similarly Jean of Mons was among the Franciscans charged with distributing donations to his order. I regret that I was not aware of these references to Geoffrey and William when my co-authors and I were completing the introduction to The Sanctity of Louis IX. Geoffrey, William, and Jean must already have departed for France before Isabelle made out her testament, so the friars listed here cannot be assumed to have been actually present at Isabelle’s deathbed; hence Lawrence’s participation on the Crusade is not guaranteed by this reference, though it seems likely. 42  Hélary, ‘Une enquête sur les maîtres des forêts de l’Orléanais’.

Sean L. Field

52

he completed La somme le roi in 1279/80, and later evidence (discussed below) suggests he also acted as confessor to Philip III’s sons, presumably including the future Philip IV, for whom the treatise was intended. Lawrence was still the King’s confessor in 1282 when he (along with Simon du Val) was named an executor for Peter of Alençon’s testament. He took part in Philip III’s illfated crusade against Aragon, still appearing with the title of confessor in royal accounts throughout 1285.43 The date of Lawrence’s death is established as 16 November 1298. From the foregoing evidence, painstakingly assembled by scholars over the last century, it is clear that Lawrence must have known well both Geoffrey of Beaulieu and Simon du Val. Since Geoffrey probably lived until January of 1275 or 1276,44 and Simon was active as an inquisitor around 1276–78, Lawrence had Dominican models close at hand for both of these offices. Moreover, there is every reason to suspect that Lawrence’s long-term relationship with Philip III would have been as close as that between Geoffrey of Beaulieu and Louis IX; but unfortunately the Somme le roi does not reveal personal anecdotes in the manner of Geoffrey’s vita of Louis. The evidence for Lawrence’s own role as inquisitor of heretical depravity comes from a single line in his epitaph, which was composed by Remigio dei Girolami, a Florentine Dominican studying in Paris at the time of Lawrence’s death. Remigio in fact recorded two versions of his epitaph in an extant autograph manu­script. In one version he calls Lawrence ‘former prior of Paris / confessor and director of the king and his sons / inquisitor of heresy and lector at Tours’, and the second version also contains the same confessor / rector / inquestor / lector sequence.45 Thus if Remigio is to be trusted, Lawrence at some point served as inquisitor of heresy, apparently at Tours, where he also would have taken up the office of lector. Scholars have generally asserted that this list 43 

Lalou, Les comptes sur tablettes, pp. 35, 42, 50, 99, 108. The last reference has Lawrence referred to as ‘confessor’ on 11 December 1285 (well after Philip III’s death in October), but this may have been a retrospective designation, and other evidence indicates that Nicholas de Gorran was probably acting as royal confessor by that point. It is also worth noting that Lawrence appears often here with his Dominican socius Jean of Le Mans; Frère Laurent, La Somme le roi, ed. by Brayer and Leurquin-Labie, p. 18, and de La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 108, mistakenly label this man a Franciscan, perhaps out of some confusion with Jean of Mons. 44  For Geoffrey’s likely date of death, see The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, pp. 33–34. 45  Both versions are conveniently printed in Frère Laurent, La Somme le roi, ed. by Brayer and Leurquin-Labie, p. 15.

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

53

of offices should be read chronologically, so that Lawrence would only have moved to Tours and assumed the office of inquisitor after ceasing to be royal confessor with Philip III’s death in 1285. Caution is obviously necessary here; Remigio must have known Lawrence only at the very end of the latter’s life and reported merely what he had heard about Lawrence’s earlier career. Because there is no further evidence of any kind for Lawrence holding the office of inquisitor (at any time or in any place), the claim that he acted in this capacity at Tours after 1285 should be treated as a likelihood rather than a certainty. Nevertheless, if indeed Lawrence eventually became an inquisitor at Tours, he would represent the first example of one Dominican acting as both confessor to the king and inquisitor of heretical depravity. But, importantly, he seems to have held these offices sequentially, not simultaneously, and his tenure as an inquisitor would in fact have fallen during the reign of Philip IV. It should be noted that Philip III must have associated with other Dominican inquisitors as well. In the north, we have already seen that Simon du Val was active around 1276–78, and his campaigns surely enjoyed royal support. Not only was Simon demonstrably close to the royal family, but in at least one extant document he refers to acting as an inquisitor by virtue of papal authority but with the backing of regia potestate.46 In the south, Peter Biller has recently argued that Philip III was a more important supporter of inquisition than has generally been realized. Not only did one of the King’s first extant acts instruct royal officials to protect inquisitors throughout the kingdom, but he specifically renewed his father’s ordinance for Carcassonne, ordering the seneschal to support Dominican inquisitors there. Indeed, after the deaths of Alphonse of Poitiers and his wife Jeanne of Toulouse in 1271, quashing regional dissent and reinvigorating inquisition were twin facets of Philip’s campaign to make royal control of the county of Toulouse a reality.47 Thus Philip personally marched south to Toulouse at the head of a royal army in 1272,48 and in 1273 he supported Gregory X’s request that the Dominican prior of Paris appoint six of his brothers to act as inquisitors, primarily in Toulouse and Carcassonne. As Biller writes, ‘Inquisition had been relaunched in Toulouse, in a Toulouse that was now within the Kingdom of France’.49 Moreover, once it was clarified that 46 

Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, v, col. 1812. Inquisitors and Heretics in Thirteenth-Century Languedoc, ed. by Biller, Bruschi, and Sneddon, pp. 41–46 (this section of the introduction was actually written by Biller). 48  Hélary, L’armée du roi de France, pp. 18–20. 49  Inquisitors and Heretics in Thirteenth-Century Languedoc, ed. by Biller, Bruschi, and Sneddon, p. 46. See further the evidence in Dondaine, ‘Le manuel de l’inquisiteur’, pp. 137–38. 47 

54

Sean L. Field

French inquisitors would be appointed by the Dominican leadership in Paris, royal input into or influence over those appointments became more likely as a practical matter. Nevertheless, the two inquisitors immediately appointed for Toulouse (Ranulph of Plassac and Pons of Parnac) were southerners, and there is no reason to think they were well known personally to Philip III.50 When we return to the level of personal relationships, the striking development is that Lawrence of Orléans, the Dominican royal confessor with a long and presumably close relationship to the King, eventually became a heresy inquisitor, according to our slender evidence. A developing if tenuous link between the two offices may thus have been established, perhaps because the prestige inherent in the title of royal confessor suggested Lawrence as a suitable candidate for the role of inquisitor in Tours. But on the other hand, the only inquisitor known to have been active in the north with Philip III’s overt support was actually Simon du Val. Just as Simon had been close to Louis IX but then only became an inquisitor in the following reign, so too Lawrence of Orléans was personally close to Philip III as his confessor, but then apparently took on the role of inquisitor only under Philip IV. If Lawrence must also have had a relationship with the younger Philip as confessor to the princes and as the author of a work of advice intended for the heir’s edification, it is interesting that Philip IV turned elsewhere for his personal confessors upon his ascent to the throne.

Philip IV and William of Paris Over the course of Philip IV’s reign the status of royal confessor was more clearly regulated and codified, and the link between the royal court and French inquisitors tightened. Regarding the position of the confessor, beginning with the royal ordonnances of 1286, he was recognized as occupying one of the six chambers of the Hôtel du roi (along with the Keeper of the Seals, the Almoner, the Chaplains, the Maître de l’Hôtel, and the Maître de la Chambre aux Deniers), and his lodgings, meals, and wages were specified in new detail.51 As one might expect in the ever more bureaucratic and centralized environment of Philip’s court, the exact succession of the King’s Dominican confessors can be traced with a new level of precision.

50  Inquisitors and Heretics in Thirteenth-Century Languedoc, ed. by Biller, Bruschi, and Sneddon, pp. 48–51. 51  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, pp. 57–62.

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

55

Philip’s first two confessors are important figures but will only be treated briefly here.52 Nicholas of Gorran was Prior of Saint-Jacques (as Lawrence of Orléans had been) probably before 1280 and served as confessor to Philip IV from 1285 to 1295.53 He was still alive in 1297 but may not have lived much beyond that date. Like Geoffrey of Beaulieu and Lawrence of Orléans, he was an important author, but his specialty was the more scholarly genre of biblical commentary. Although he was never a master of theology, he was the most important scholar among the Dominicans treated here. Beryl Smalley, for instance, referred to him as ‘the only really prolific commentator on Scripture working in Paris towards the end of the thirteenth century’,54 and his Postillae and Distinctiones were widely diffused in university contexts. His successor, Nicholas of Fréauville, assumed office around 1296.55 He had earlier come from Rouen to study in Paris but was never prior of the community there; instead his background before becoming the King’s confessor had been as lector in Coutances, Orléans, and Poitiers (thus he may have been serving his order as a lector at the same time that Lawrence of Orléans was filling that office in Tours). In spite of these teaching positions, he is the first of the royal confessors not to leave behind substantial writings. His talents must have been more practical and political, since when he left the office of royal confessor at the end of 1305 it was to assume a cardinal’s hat. Thus until his death in 1324 he was the Capetian court’s man at the papal Curia; indeed after Clement V’s death Philip IV had mounted an intense if ultimately unsuccessful effort to get Nicholas elected pope. Nicholas of Fréauville’s career thus represents something of a path not taken; later in the fourteenth century it would become routine for royal confessors to go on to become bishops,56 but to this point no Dominican confessor to a Capetian king had enjoyed this sort of career trajectory. In terms of personal relationships, there is not much evidence for the nature of Nicholas of Gorran’s specific interactions with the King, while Nicholas of Fréauville obviously was one of the key men in Philip IV’s circle. But for the purposes of the present 52 

I treat them in detail in ‘Philippe le Bel et ses confesseurs dominicains’, forthcoming in a volume edited by Nicole Bériou and André Vauchez. 53  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 262; Kaeppeli, Scriptores ordinis praedi­ catorum medii aevi, iii, 165–68. 54  Smalley, ‘Some Latin Commentaries’, p. 106. 55  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, pp. 263–64. 56  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 132.

56

Sean L. Field

article, the significant point is that neither of Philip’s first two Dominican confessors was ever an inquisitor of heretical depravity. Philip’s third confessor, however, was William of Paris. He is the key and culminating figure in the narrative I am tracing here, because by early 1306 he was simultaneously royal confessor and inquisitor of heretical depravity. William’s profile was in some ways similar to that of the two Nicholases; he emerged from the community of Saint-Jacques in Paris (but was never prior there), and he was the author of minor works on canon law and pastoral theology (before 1298), though he was not as intellectually influential as Nicholas of Gorran and never a lector in his order like Nicholas of Fréauville.57 His career path was more resolutely tied to the royal court: Chaplain to the King by 1297; confessor to the royal princes by 1299; papally empowered inquisitor by 1303 or 1304; and finally confessor to the King from late 1305 or early 1306 until his death in 1313/14.58 In terms of institutional continuity and personal ties, William must have known Nicholas of Gorran, and indeed actually owned a copy of his Postillae super Lucam.59 He probably also knew Lawrence of Orléans (since the latter lived to 1297), and he was certainly associated with Nicholas of Fréauville. Not only was William confessor to the princes while Nicholas served as confessor to the King, but both men were named executors in Philip IV’s testament of March 1297.60 What explains the fact that twenty years into Philip  IV’s reign one Dominican was given the offices of both royal confessor and papal inquisitor? In part, larger forces and long-term trends were pushing these offices into intellectual and institutional proximity. The two offices were related intellectually as activities requiring a questioning search for ‘truth’, and institutionally as primary elements of Dominican competence. Moreover, by Philip IV’s reign Lawrence of Orléans’s career had suggested the possibility of a royal confessor

57  Like Nicholas of Fréauville, he left no extant sermons, in contrast to Geoffrey of Beau­ lieu and Lawrence of Orléans. On royal confessors as preachers, see remarks in Delmas, ‘La prédication aux souverains capétiens’. William of Paris was the author of a finding aid for canon law, the Tabua iuris, and very likely the author of the Dialogus de septem sacramentis. See Field, ‘The Dialogus de septem sacramentis’. 58  De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, pp. 264–65; Kaepelli, Scriptores ordinis prae­ dicatorum medii aevi, ii, 130–32; Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, ch. 3. 59  Paris, Bib. Maz., MS 248. 60  Paris, AN, J 403, no. 13; I thank Elizabeth A. R. Brown for sharing her transcription with me.

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

57

making a suitable inquisitor.61 On one level it might not have been such a difficult conceptual leap to imagine one man filling both offices. Yet a leap of sorts was still necessary, requiring a specific context that would suggest its utility to a specific king. Philip had shown a flash of support for inquisition in the north at the beginning of his reign. It was actually before his father’s death, in his capacity as Count of Champagne and Brie, that Prince Philip issued letters recommending the Dominican inquisitor William of Auxerre to secular officers in Champagne early in 1285; as King Philip then provided the same inquisitor with letters intended to aid his voyage to the papal Curia in 1287.62 But there is no real evidence for other inquisitorial activity in the north of France (with or without royal support) through the end of the century,63 and little evidence for direct royal attention to inquisitors operating in the south. The situation shifted dramatically, however, at the turn of the century. A new royal interest in the activities and loyalties of French inquisitors would likely have come about in any case, due to the heightened tensions around Philip’s struggles with Boniface VIII. But within that larger context a series of specific events fostered Philip IV’s conscious decision to link the offices of inquisitor and confessor by combining them in the person of a key Dominican advisor. It was the battle between the controversial Franciscan Bernard Délicieux and Dominican inquisitors of the Languedoc that seems to have given Philip a new incentive to more tightly control the office of inquisitor throughout his kingdom. The King’s attention had already been drawn to the south by the developing case against Bernard Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers, who was arrested in 1301, brought north to Senlis, and accused first of treason and then of heresy; and by a separate set of charges of disloyalty and debauchery against Bernard of Castanet, Bishop of Albi. At Senlis in October 1301, Bernard Délicieux took advantage of this context to convince Philip IV that the Dominican inquisitor for Toulouse, Foulques of Saint-Georges, was also working against the interests of the Crown, persecuting innocent men merely because they were too loyal to the King. Nicholas of Fréauville, at that time still the royal confessor, was in 61 

I thank William Jordan for suggesting the possible importance of this precedent in Philip IV’s mind. 62  Dondaine, ‘Manuel de l’inquisiteur’, pp. 138–39; Lea, History of the Inquisition, ii, appendix VII. 63  Of course it should be recalled that we know nothing of the exact dates or nature of Lawrence of Orléans’s possible inquisitorial activities after 1285.

Sean L. Field

58

fact among the Dominicans at Senlis who sought to defend the inquisitor. But Bernard (supported by a key royal enquêteur and by townspeople from Albi) was able to persuade the King, and Philip temporarily put limits on inquisitors’ powers in France and directed the leadership of the Dominican Order in Paris to relieve Foulques of his inquisitorial office.64 But when the Dominicans showed themselves reluctant to comply, Philip was outraged. And so he wrote in December to William of Paris, at that time still his chaplain and confessor to the princes, directing him to try to change the minds of his Dominican brethren: ‘Who would believe, Brother William’, the King wrote, ‘that by whatever daring the Dominican provincial of our kingdom and all the brothers of your order […] would presume to support a person so detestable and defamed in our eyes […] against our opinion and that of all the people?’65 The King’s spluttering indignation is evident. In the event, Foulques was finally removed from office in June 1302, though it is not clear whether William of Paris had a direct impact on that decision. In the course of this dispute Philip seems to have realized that problems could arise when the Dominican Order’s inquisitorial mission conflicted with royal objectives. Stronger royal control over more reliable inquisitors was an obvious response. And since Philip had turned to his trusted Dominican advisor William of Paris to help shift the situation in his favour, it seems extremely likely that Philip’s wishes must have been behind William’s own subsequent appointment as papally empowered inquisitor of heretical depravity for the kingdom of France. The exact date of this appointment in unknown, but it was almost certainly after the death of Boniface VIII (October 1303) and before the election of Clement V ( June 1305), and thus most likely during the short pontificate of the Dominican Benedict XI (October 1303 – July 1304). If so, the appointment may also have coincided with Philip IV’s journey in early 1304 to restore order in the south, during which he soured on the meddlesome Bernard Délicieux (among Bernard’s mistakes was a failed attempt to label Nicholas of Fréauville a traitor) and reaffirmed his support for Dominican inquisitors.66 64 

This is obviously a much simplified sketch of a complex affair. See further the fine study by Friedlander, The Hammer of the Inquisitors, ch. 3. For the evidence from Bernard’s own later process, see Friedlander, Processus Bernardi Delitiosi. A lively popularization is O’Shea, The Friar of Carcassonne. 65  Paris, AN, J 306, no. 90. See Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, p. 293 n. 45, and see n. 44 for detail of the correct identification of the letter’s recipient as William of Paris. 66  Friedlander, Hammer of the Inquisitors, ch. 5.

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

59

In sum, the crucial fact is that William of Paris was already acting as papally empowered inquisitor of heretical depravity before (at the latest) June 1305. Thus when he was named royal confessor following Nicholas of Fréauville’s appointment to the cardinalate in December 1305, he became the first man to hold both offices simultaneously. And it was very definitely Philip IV who personally brought about this convergence by naming a friar who was already serving as papal inquisitor of heresy to also act as his personal confessor.

The Consequences of a Convergence To recap, Louis IX and Philip III each developed a close relationship with a Dominican confessor, and with at least one Dominican who went on to become an inquisitor. In the case of Philip III, the confessor and inquisitor were one and the same person, as Lawrence of Orléans moved from one office to the other. Finally, two decades into the reign of Philip IV, the two offices at last converged, with the salvation of the King’s soul and the spiritual safety of the kingdom entrusted to the same Dominican within the King’s inner circle.67 The timing of this convergence is notable, to say the least. In the middle of the decade between 1301 and 1312 in which Philip IV and his men engaged in an extended campaign to co-opt powers previously reserved to the Church,68 this was a crucial milestone. Although an inquisitor’s power to pursue heresy still stemmed from the pope, the practical ability to direct that power had now been placed at the King’s disposal in the person of his loyal confessor William of Paris. Thus it is no coincidence that after 1306 inquisitorial proceedings assumed a new prominence in the north of France, where only the most fragmentary evidence indicates any inquisitorial activity at all in the preceding two decades. For instance, although the arrest and expulsion of the Jews in 1306 was not done in the name of the inquisitor,69 several processes against ‘relapsed’ 67 

Elizabeth  A.  R. Brown points out the importance of Clement  V’s bull Ferventis devotionis integritas, dated 23 December 1305 (just as Nicolas de Fréauville was leaving the office of royal confessor), which allowed Philippe le Bel’s confessor to release him from any sentences of excommunication or interdict he might have incurred for committing a list of enumerated acts. This let the confessor (now or soon to be William of Paris) assume a great deal of the Pope’s moral obligations. See Brown, “Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’. 68  Among recent studies, see Théry, ‘A Heresy of State’. 69  On these events, see Balasse, 1306, and Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, pp. 200–13.

Sean L. Field

60

Jews in 1307 or 1308 were indeed carried out by William of Paris,70 and the processes against Marguerite Porete, her book, and her supporter Guiard of Cressonessart took place under his authority between 1308 and 1310 as well.71 But the most important example was surely the stunningly audacious arrest of the Templars in 1307, placed beneath the covering cloak of William’s inquisitorial authority.72 It is not a new observation to point out that William of Paris was an essential instrument in this process; and yet even specialists on ‘The Trial of the Templars’ have not sufficiently underlined how novel his combination of powers was, or how necessary. For Philip IV to accuse an entire order of heresy, he needed unhesitating cooperation from an inquisitor who was absolutely his man and completely in his confidence. The convergence of royal confessor/papal inquisitor by early 1306 provided this possibility for the first time. Without this crucial element, it is hard to see how Philip could ever have hoped to put his plans for the Templars into effect. It is true that on some level the appointment as inquisitor of any Dominican personally loyal to Philip could have assured a high level of cooperation. But it was the office of royal confessor that had developed over half a century into the main institutional and personal tie between an individual Preacher and the king, affording the confessor access to the king’s thoughts, his fears, and indeed his sins. Moreover, William of Paris owed his career advancement to royal patronage more fully than had any previous Dominican; never a prior or lector (or holder of any higher office) in his order, William’s path to influence had led directly from royal chaplain, to confessor of Philip’s sons, to inquisitor. Capping his career with the office of confessor to the king brought the main heresy inquisitor for the north of France into a sacramental relationship with the King, necessarily linking the two men with intimate bonds of trust. William of Paris was indeed personally loyal to Philip, but it was his position as confessor that assured the deep unswerving nature of that loyalty. One bit of textual evidence helps to highlight the practical importance of the convergence of these two previously discrete offices. After Philip IV had 70 

Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, pp. 82–84. Most recently Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor; Field, Lerner, and Piron, Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes; and Kelly, ‘Inquisitorial Deviations and CoverUps’. 72  The standard narrative is Barber, Trial of the Templars. Two important recent collections are Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars; and Chevalier, La fin de l’ordre du Temple. A recent treatment by the French specialist Demurger is Jacques de Molay. 71 

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

61

sent out his infamous arrest orders for the Templars on 14 September 1307, William of Paris followed with a somewhat less well-known letter. Dated 22 September, it was addressed to the Dominican inquisitors of Toulouse and Carcassonne, and to all the priors, subpriors, and lectors of the Dominican Order in the kingdom of France, asking them to help record confessions once the King’s men brought the arrested Templars before them.73 William’s self-styling in the greeting to this letter is worthy of note; he signs himself ‘William of Paris of the same [Dominican] order, chaplain of the lord pope, confessor of the most serene prince the lord king of France, and inquisitor of heretical depravity in the aforesaid kingdom of France appointed by apostolic authority’. How would a Dominican inquisitor, prior, subprior, or lector receiving this letter have perceived the nature of the authority by which he was being asked for his compliance? Was it by virtue of William’s title as a papal chaplain (in this case largely an honorific designation William had enjoyed for several years)? Was it in his role as the King’s confessor? Or was it in recognition of his status as an inquisitor (interestingly that title here hardly receives pride of place)? Taken separately, none of these titles granted William the authority to enforce his request. There is no clear legal sense in which William as an ‘inquisitor appointed for the kingdom of France’ had any power to order other inquisitors to do anything. He was not ‘head’ or ‘grand’ inquisitor of France (no such position existed).74 The role of confessor did not of course come with any ability to command other Dominicans, and William held no other position in his order such as Provincial that would have given him the internal status to order Dominican priors or lectors about. William’s letter is indeed framed as a request, not a command. But it is a request carefully couched within reminders of William’s dual sources of authority. It is precisely the attempt to blend and combine his positions — royal confessor and papal inquisitor — that is so notable here. 73 

The best-known copy is in Paris, AN, J 413, no. 22, a digital image of which is available at . I re-edit the text in ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’. The Latin of William’s greeting reads: ‘Religiosis et venerabilibus fratribus inquisitoribus heretice pravitatis Tholose et Carcassone auctoritate apostolica deputatis, prioribus conventualibus supprioribus et lectoribus ordinis fratrum Predicatorum in regno Francie constitutis, eorum videlicet singulis, frater G. de Parisius eiusdem ordinis, capellanus domini pape, serenissimi principis domini regis Francie confessor, ac inquisitor heretice pravitatis in regno Francie predicto auctoritate apostolica deputatus, salutem in actore et consummatore fidei Jesu Christo’. 74  See Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, p. 73.

62

Sean L. Field

By contrast, in the documents recording the actual interrogations of Templars (only a month later) there is never any reference to William’s position of confessor;75 nor does he style himself confessor in the ensuing processes against Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart.76 In those legal documents his status as inquisitor clearly sufficed for his purposes. But when the highest stakes were in play at the moment of the Templars’ arrest, William attempted to present a kind of cumulative power, greater than the sum of its parts, to suggest that even though none of his formal titles granted him any legal authority to issue orders to his brethren, cooperating with a request from a man who was both royal confessor and papal inquisitor would be extremely wise. Six decades after Geoffrey of Beaulieu had first begun to hear Louis IX’s confessions, the positions of confessor and inquisitor had been united in one friar’s hands; the beneficiary was Louis’s grandson, Philip the Fair.

Epilogue: The View from 1328 By way of conclusion, it is worth continuing this analysis to the end of the Capetian period in order to put Philip  IV’s reign in perspective.77 After William of Paris’s death in 1313/14,78 the new royal confessor in the last year 75  Paris, AN, J 413, no. 18, edited in Michelet, Le procès des Templiers. Digital images of the recently restored roll are available at . 76  Verdeyen, ‘Le procès d’inquisition’; an English translation (with corrections to Verdeyen) is found in Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, appendix A. 77  This epilogue, except where otherwise noted, relies on the data assembled in de La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, pp. 265–67. 78  The exact date of William’s death is uncertain. In Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, p. 174, I indicated that I could find no documentary reference to him after 24 April 1313, though de La Selle suggested he was still alive in July 1313 (de La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p. 264, without a specific reference to his evidence). William surely died before Philip IV, because the codicil to the King’s testament (28 November 1314) referred to him as his ‘onetime’ confessor. More recently, however, Elizabeth A. R. Brown kindly brought to my attention a passage in the chronicle of Gilles le Muisit, which reads ‘Eodem anno [1314] quidam frater de ordine Predicatorum, confessor regis Francie, in die Animarum [2 November] casu cecidit de equo suo et confestim mortuus est; de quo facto murmur multus fuit in hospitio regis et in populo’. See Chronique et annales, ed. by Lemaître, p. 84. The reference cannot be to Imbert, William of Paris’s known Dominican successor, since he outlived Philip IV (see below), so it would seem that the royal confessor referred to must be William, unless perhaps another Dominican briefly filled this role after his death and before Imbert took it on. I am somewhat

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

63

of Philip IV’s life was the Dominican Renaud of Aubigny. A long-time royal supporter,79 Renaud had been William of Paris’s socius and present for at least one day of the Templar interrogations in Paris in October 1307.80 He also became prior of the new house of Dominican nuns at Poissy, but he was never appointed as an inquisitor of heresy. Then at Philip IV’s death in November 1314, the new king Louis X took as his personal confessor Imbert Louvel,81 a Dominican from Rouen who had been socius to Nicholas of Fréauville and confessor to the royal princes after William of Paris moved on from that position. Imbert — like William — did hold an appointment as inquisitor. An entry in the royal accounts for May 1323 suggests that he was both royal confessor and inquisitor of heretical depravity at that time, and that he had exercised the office of inquisitor since early 1315.82 His career path thus looks much like that of William of Paris, as a strong royal supporter moving from confessor to the princes, to confessor to the king, to inquisitor. He lived until at least 1334, but it is not clear how long after 1323 he continued to act as inquisitor. It is certain, however, that Imbert did not act as royal confessor through his entire tenure as sceptical of the details and date reported by Gilles. Although Gilles is often a reliable and precise chronicler, he is not always correct in his dates, and writing from far-off Tournai, somewhat after the fact, he might for instance have confused 1313 with 1314. Nevertheless, this passage should certainly be considered in attempting to establish the date of William’s death. 79  He took a leading role in whipping up support for Philip IV against Boniface VIII in 1303. See for example Courtenay, ‘Between Pope and King’. 80  Michelet, Le procès des Templiers, ii, 289 (confessions made 20 October 1307). 81  As de La Selle notes, the various representations of this man’s name (Imbert, Wibert, Vybert; Louvel/Bonnel) have created confusion. De La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, p.  266, suggests that Imbert may have briefly been royal confessor in 1305 (thus before William of Paris) following a note in Dondaine, ‘Documents pour servir à l’histoire’, p. 404 n. 5. Dondaine there suggested that the ‘Ymbertus’ referred to in Jean of Saint-Victor’s life of Clement V as royal confessor at the time of the Templar arrests must have been Imbert Louvel (see Baluze, Vitae paparum avenionensium, ed. by Mollat, p. 8). But Jean of Saint-Victor’s account of the arrests is not always reliable, and most likely this reference was confused, since William of Paris was demonstrably already occupying the office of royal confessor by September 1307. Interestingly, this reference is probably also behind the incorrect tradition of referring to William of Paris as ‘William Humbert’. 82  Viard, Les journaux du trésor de Charles IV le Bel, col. 655, no. 3810: ‘Confessor Regis Francie, frater Wibertus, inquisitor heretice pravitatis, pro vadis suis circa inquisitionem predictam, a Dominica prima quadragesime CCCXVo usque ad Annunciationem dominicam anno CCCXXIo per VI annos, 150 l. t. per annum, sicut consueverunt habere alii inquisitores, ut dicitur et continetur in litteris Regis; pro 900 l. t., 720 l. t., per ipsas litteras Regis datas XVe die Maii CCCXXIIo’.

Sean L. Field

64

inquisitor, because after Louis X’s death in 1316, the new king Philip V reappointed Renaud of Aubigny his personal confessor. But Renaud held the office of royal confessor only until his own death in 1317 or 1318, at which point Philip  V named the Dominican Nicholas of Clermont as his replacement. Nicholas, for his part, was Prior of Poissy as Renaud had been, but was never an inquisitor. Finally, when Philip V died in 1322, Charles IV returned to Imbert Louvel as his personal confessor. To sum up these rather confusing twists and turns, during the reigns of the last three Capetians, three Dominicans alternated in and out of the office of royal confessor. But only one of these men (Imbert Louvel) was an inquisitor of heresy, and he occupied that office across all three reigns. Thus during the short reigns of Louis X (1314–16) and Charles IV (1322–28), one man did combine the offices of confessor and inquisitor, but during the reign of Philip V (1316–22) the two offices were separate. Sometimes one has the impression that the death of the last Capetian in 1328 holds more significance for modern historians than it did for contemporaries. But the end of the direct Capetian line indeed marks a watershed from the perspective highlighted in the present essay. Although the Valois kings continued to employ Dominican confessors up until 1389, none of those confessors seems to have ever held the office of inquisitor.83 Thus the last Capetian was also the last French king to maintain this Capetian-Dominican convergence.

83 

For data on royal confessors 1328–89, see de La Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour, pp. 267–73. Nothing there indicates that any of these later confessors were ever inquisitors.

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

65

Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Sources Paris, Archives Nationales, J 306, no. 90 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 403, no. 13 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 413, no. 18 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 413, no. 22 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 685, no. 41 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 685, no. 44 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 685, no. 50 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 940 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 248

Primary Sources Baluze, Étienne, Vitae paparum avenionensium, ed. by G. Mollat, new edn, vol. i (Paris: Letouzey et ané, 1916) Carolus-Barré, Louis, Le Procès de canonisation de saint Louis (1272–1297), essai de reconstitution, ed. by Henri Platelle (Roma: École française de Rome, 1994) Chronique et annales de Gilles le Muisit, Abbé de Saint-Martin de Tournai (1272–1352), ed. by Henri Lemaître (Paris: Renouard, 1906) Daunou, Pierre, and Joseph Naudet, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. xx (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1840) Delisle, Léopold, Instructions adressés par le comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques aux correspondants du ministère de l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-arts, Littérature latine et histoire du moyen age (Paris: Leroux, 1890) Dondaine, Antoine, ‘Documents pour servir à l’histoire de la province de France, l’appel au concil (1303)’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, 22 (1952), 381–439 Frère Laurent, La Somme le roi, ed. by Édith Brayer and Anne-Françoise Leurquin-Labie (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2008) Friedlander, Alan, Processus Bernardi Delitiosi: The Trial of Fr.  Bernard Délicieux, 3 September – 8 December 1319 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1996) Hélary, Xavier, ‘Une enquête sur les maîtres des forêts de l’Orléanais [Archives nationales, J 742, no. 6]’, in Enquêtes menées sous les derniers Capétiens, ed. by Xavier Hélary and Benjamin Suc, Ædilis, Publications scientifiques, 4 (Orléans: Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, 2006) Inquisitors and Heretics in Thirteenth-Century Languedoc: Edition and Translation of Tou­ louse Inquisition Depositions, 1273–1282, ed. by Peter Biller, Caterina Bruschi, and Shelagh Sneddon (Boston: Brill, 2011) The Instructions of Saint Louis: A Critical Text, ed. and trans. by David O’Connell, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 216 (Chapel Hill: Uni­ ver­sity of North Carolina Press, 1979)

66

Sean L. Field

Lalou, Élisabeth, Les comptes sur tablettes de cire de la chambre aux deniers de Philippe III le Hardi et de Philippe IV le Bel (1282–1309) (Paris: Boccard, 1994) Martène, Edmond, and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, vol.  v (Paris: Sumptibus F. Delaulne, 1717) Michelet, Jules, Le procès des Templiers, new edn, 2 vols (Paris: Les Éditions du C.T.H.S., 1987) The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres, trans. by Larry F. Field, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean L. Field (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014) Sherwood, Clyde William, ‘A Translation of Geoffrey of Beaulieu’s Vita … [sic] Ludovici, with an Introduction and a Critical Investigation of the Reasons Given by Geoffrey and by Sabas Malaspina for the Diversion of St. Louis’ Second Crusade’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, 1940) Tardif, Jules, Privilèges accordés à la couronne de France par le Saint-Siège (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1855) The Teachings of Saint Louis: A Critical Text, ed. and trans. by David O’Connell, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 116 (Chapel Hill: Uni­ ver­sity of North Carolina Press, 1972) Verdeyen, Paul, ‘Le procès d’inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart (1309–1310)’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 81 (1986), 47–94 Viard, Jules, Les journaux du trésor de Charles IV le Bel (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1917) Vie de saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, confesseur de la reine Marguerite, ed. by Henri-François Delaborde, Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire (Paris: Picard, 1890)

Secondary Studies 1212–1214: El trienio que hizo a Europa (XXXVII Semana de Estudios Medi­evales, Estella, 19 a 23 de julio de 2010) (Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra, Departamento de Cultura y Turismo, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 2011) Albaret, Laurent, ‘Les Prêcheurs et l’Inquisition’, in L’ordre des Prêcheurs et son histoire en France méridionale (Toulouse: Privat, 2001), 319–41 Ames, Christine Caldwell, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) Balasse, Céline, 1306: L’expulsion des juifs du royaume de France (Paris: De Boeck, 2008) Baldwin, John W., ‘From Ordeal to Confession: In Search of Lay Religion in Early Thirteenth-Century France’, in Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, ed. by Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (York: York Medi­eval Press, 1998), pp. 191–209 Baldwin, John W., and Walter Simons, ‘The Consequences of Bouvines’, French Historical Studies, 37 (2014), 243–69 Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006)

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

67

Bériou, Nicole, ‘Autour de Latran IV (1215): La Naissance de la confession moderne et sa diffusion’, in Pratiques de la confession: des pères du désert à Vatican II (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1983), pp. 73–92 —— , L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole: La prédication à Paris au xiiie siècle (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1998) Biller, Peter, and A. J. Minnis, eds, Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages (York: York Medi­eval Press, 1998) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 1–36 Burgtorf, Jochen, Paul F. Crawford, Helen J. Nicholson, eds, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) Cabrer, Martin Alvira, ‘Después de Las Navas de Tolosa y antes de Bouvines: La batalla de Muret (1213) y sus consecuencias’, in 1212–1214: El trienio que hizo a Europa (XXXVII Semana de Estudios Medi­evales, Estella, 19 a 23 de julio de 2010) (Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra, Departamento de Cultura y Turismo, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 2011), pp. 85–112 Carolus-Barré, Louis, ‘Le testament d’Isabelle d’Aragon, reine de France, épouse de Philippe III le Hardi (Cosenza, 19 janiver 1271)’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1983–84), 131–37 Chevalier, Marie-Anna, ed., La fin de l’ordre du Temple (Paris: Geuthner, 2012) Courtenay, William J., ‘Between Pope and King: The Parisian Letters of Adhesion of 1303’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 577–605 Daunou, Pierre, ‘Simon du Val’, Histoire littéraire de la France, 19 (1838), 385–87 Dejoux, Marie, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis: Gouverner et sauver son âme (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2014) Delmas, Sophie, ‘La prédication aux souverains capétiens au xiiie siécle: Essai de mise au point’, Études franciscaines, n.s. 7 (2014), 123–37 Demurger, Alain, Jacques de Molay: Le crépuscule des Templiers (Paris: Payot et Rivages, 2014) Despy, G., ‘Les débuts de l’Inquisition dans les anciens Pays-Bas au xiiie siècle’, in Prob­ lèmes d’histoire du christianism. Hommages à Jean Hadot, ed. by Guy Cambier (Brux­ elles: Éditions du l’Université de Bruxelles, 1980), pp. 71–104 Dondaine, Antoine, ‘Le manuel de l’inquisiteur (1230–1330)’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, 17 (1947), 85–194 Dossat, Yves, Les crises de l’inquisition toulousaine au xiiie siècle (1233–1273) (Bordeaux: Imprimerie Bière, 1959) Elliott, Dyan, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2004) Field, Sean L., The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart (Notre Dame, IN: Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame Press, 2012) —— , ‘The Dialogus de septem sacramentis Attributed to William of Paris OP: One Text in Two Versions’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, 80 (2010), 133–46 —— , ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen’, French Historical Studies, 39 (2016), 35–71

68

Sean L. Field

Field, Sean L., Robert E. Lerner and Sylvain Piron, eds., Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes: Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires (Paris: Vrin, 2013) Frederichs, Jules, Robert le Bougre: premier inquisiteur général en France (Gent: Librairie Clemm, 1892) Friedlander, Alan, The Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Délicieux and the Struggle against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions: Medi­eval and Early Modern Peoples, 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2000) Haskins, Charles Homer, ‘Robert le Bougre and the Beginnings of the Inquisition in Northern France’, in Studies in Medi­eval Culture (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1929), pp. 193–244 Hélary, Xavier, L’armée du roi de France: La guerre de Saint Louis à Philippe le Bel (Paris: Perrin, 2012) —— , ‘La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alençon (1283), fils de saint Louis, dans la mémoire capétienne’, Revue d’histoire de l’Eglise de France, 94 (2008), 5–22 Hoyer, Wolfram, ed., Praedicatores, Inquisitores, i: The Dominicans and the Mediaeval Inquisition. Acts of the 1st International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, Rome, 23–25 February 2002 (Roma: Istituto storico domenicano, 2004) Jordan, William Chester, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1989) —— , ‘The French Victory at Bouvines (1214) and the Persistent Seduction of War’, in 1212–1214: El trienio que hizo a Europa (XXXVII Semana de Estudios Medi­evales, Estella, 19 a 23 de julio de 2010) (Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra, Departamento de Cultura y Turismo, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 2011), pp. 113–28 Kaeppeli, Thomas, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum medii aevi, 4 vols (Roma: S. Sabinae, 1970–93) Kelly, Henry Ansgar, ‘Inquisitorial Deviations and Cover-Ups: The Prosecutions of Mar­ garet Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart, 1308–1310’, Speculum, 89 (2014), 936–73 —— , Inquisitions and Other Trial Procedures in the Medi­eval West (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001) Kolmer, Lothar, ‘Ad Terrorem Multorum: Die Anfänge der Inquisition in Frankreich’, in Die Anfänge der Inquisition im Mittelalter: mit einem Ausblick auf das 20 Jahrhundert und einem Beitrag über religiöse Intoleranz im nichtchristlichen Bereich, ed. by P. Segl (Köln: Böhlau, 1993), pp. 77–102 La Selle, Xavier de, Le service des âmes à la cour: Confesseurs et aumôniers des rois de France du xiiie au xve siècle (Paris: École des chartes, 1995) Lawrence, C. H., The Friars: The Impact of the Mendicant Orders on Medi­eval Society, rev. edn (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013) Lea, Henry Charles, A  History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (repr. New York: Russell, 1955) Le Goff, Jacques, Saint Louis, trans. by Gareth Evan Gollrad (Notre Dame, IN: Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame Press, 2009) Lower, Michael, ‘The Burning at Mont-Aimée: Thibaut of Champagne’s Preparations for the Barons’ Crusade of 1239’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 29 (2003), 95–108

King/Confessor/Inquisitor

69

Mandonnet, P., ‘Laurent d’Orléans, auteur de la Somme-le-roi’, Revue des langues romanes, 66 (1913), 20–23 Moufflet, Jean-François, Sous le sceau du roi: Saint Louis, de Poissy à Tunis, 1214–1270 (Poissy: Mare et Martin, 2014) O’Shea, Stephen, The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars (New York: Walker, 2011) Panella, Émilio, ‘Note di biografia domenicana tra xiii e xiv secolo’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, 54 (1984), 231–80 Pegg, Mark Gregory, A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Chris­ ten­dom (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) Smalley, Beryl, ‘Some Latin Commentaries on the Sapiential Books in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyenâge,18 (1950–51), 103–28 Sommerlechner, Andrea, ‘Procellosa illa persecutio: Die Ketzerverfolgung Konrads von Marburg und Roberts le Bougre und die Geschichtsschreibung ihrer Zeit’, Mittei­ lungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 111 (2011), 14–43 Théry, Julien, ‘A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the “Perfidious Templars”, and the Pon­ tificalization of the French Monarchy’, Journal of Medi­eval Religious Cultures, 39 (2013), 117–48 Traill, David A., ‘Philip the Chancellor and the Heresy Inquisition in Northern France, 1235–1236’, Viator, 37 (2006), 241–56 Tugwell, Simon, ‘The Downfall of Robert le Bougre, OP’, in Praedicatores, Inquisitores, i: The Dominicans and the Mediaeval Inquisition. Acts of the 1st International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, Rome, 23–25 February 2002, ed. by Wolfram Hoyer (Roma: Istituto storico domenicano, 2004), i, 753–56

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles M. C. Gaposchkin

W

hat did Louis IX — the paradigmatic king of the Capetian century, future saint, and model for later kings — learn about the duties of kingship in his youth? The early hagiographers said only that Blanche raised Louis religiositer.1 The canonization bull said that Blanche of Castile entrusted his education to wise and learned men.2 Modern authors talking about his formation have been equally vague. For Le Goff, Louis was educated by Blanche and by the model of his grandfather, Philip Augustus.3 For Jean Richard, Louis ‘acquired an elevated idea of kingship’ through the basic education received from an (unnamed, unknown) tutor.4 As an adult, Louis himself commissioned writings on how to instruct princes when he was a father responsible for the education of kings who would succeed him.5 And he, near the end of his life, famously, wrote his own instructions to his son out1 

The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, pp. 73–74. For discussion of the hagiography of Louis’s education, see Blessed Louis, ed. and trans. by Gaposchkin with Katz, p. 15, n. 50, and pp. 34–35. 2  Boniface VIII, ‘Sermones et Bulla’, v. 23, p. 156; The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, pp. 162–63. 3  Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 7–10. 4  Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 3, 9–10. 5  Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione filiorum nobilium, ed. by Steiner; Vincent of Beavais, De morali principis institutione, ed. by Schneider; Guibert de Tournai, Le traité Eruditio regum et principum, ed. by de Poorter. M. C. Gaposchkin ([email protected]) Dartmouth College

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 71–112 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112969 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

M. C. Gaposchkin

72

lining what he believed were the core elements of good kingship.6 But what was he himself taught? What was the discourse about ideal rule that he himself imbibed as a child? We do not have a Capetian Mirror of Kingship for c. 1200 such as Louis himself revived in the 1250s.7 These had been popular in the Carolingian period. In England, by 1159, John of Salisbury had composed the Politicraticus for the sons of Henry II, and in the empire, by 1180 or so, Godfrey of Viterbo had written the Speculum regum which he dedicated to Frederick Barbarossa and his son Henry (the future Henry VI).8 But in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the tradition among the Capetians seems to have been more historical than theoretical.9 What we do have, for the period of Louis’s youth, are the moralized bibles, 10 the extraordinary image-text programmes that have at times been called a visual mirror for princes.11 The moralized bibles, made explicitly by and for the Capetian kings starting around 1215, are littered with images of kings and lessons for kings. The entire project was conceived as moral training for kings. And a number of excellent studies have examined the teachings for these kings of the image of Jews and heretics, the idea of reform, queenship, sodomy, crusading imagery, and the visual construction of authority and kingship (to name only a few examples). 12 All of these of course had serious implications for kingship, and the notion of kingship has been central to almost all the studies of the moralized bibles.

6 

The Teachings of Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by O’Connell. Berges, Die Fürstenspiegel; Anton, Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos. For the specifically French context, see Bell, L’idéal éthique de la royauté; Krynen, Idéal du prince et pouvoir royal; and Krynen, L’empire du roi. 8  Godfrey of Viterbo, Speculum Regum. 9  Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 355–93. 10  Bible, when capitalized, refers to scripture. When uncapitalized, ‘bible’ and ‘bibles’ refer to the art and text of the moralized bibles. 11  The most forceful articulation of this thesis is in Heinlen, ‘The Ideology of Reform in the French Moralized Bible’. The observation has been echoed frequently, for instance Lipton, Images of Intolerance; Hernández, ‘The Bible of Saint Louis’, p. 27; Raepple, ‘Setting the Word into Motion’; Jordan, Visualizing Kingship, p. 5. 12  Respectively, Lipton, Images of Intolerance; Heinlen, ‘The Ideology of Reform in the French Moralized Bible’; Hamilton, ‘Queenship and Kinship in the French Bible moralisee’; Mills, ‘Seeing Sodomy’; Maier, ‘The bible moralisée and the Crusades’, pp. 209–22; and Guest, ‘Queens, Kings, and Clergy’, and Büttner, ‘Bilder zum Betreten der Zeit’. 7 

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

Plate I. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. I:73 B1–2. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

73

74

M. C. Gaposchkin

Plate II. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. III:120 B3–4. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

Plate III. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 36r Aa. 

Plate IV. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 30v Aa.

Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

75

76

M. C. Gaposchkin

Plate V. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. III:178 B3–4. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

77

Yet the field has yet to ask a starkly simple question, which is what did the moralized bibles say specifically — directly — about the duties and functions of the king. The duties and the function of kingship in the moralized bibles are my subject here. And, as the title suggests, I look at the ways in which these shade into the injunction to fight heresy and disbelief on behalf of the church (=Crusade).13 Amongst the bewildering multiplicity of images and references to kings, this essay is based primarily on the commentary roundels that make explicit pronouncements about the nature of kingship. These constitute a small fraction of the overall moralizations, but still enough to get a sense of the general discourse on kingship they represent. To be sure, this has prioritized the texts over the images. Taken together, the teachings promoted an ideal of Augustinian kingship, specific to the challenges of the early part of the thirteenth century, and informed by ecclesiastical priorities.14 The king had to be personally just, pure, and good in order to stem the rapacity and human nature of the fallen world. He received his power from the church, and his power was to be used for the good of the church and at her request. Thus, the king is the sword arm of the church, and his function is to serve the church by enforcing the church’s priorities. In the first half of the thirteenth century, that meant mostly implementing through the power of the sword the church’s fight against heresy and infidels.

The First Four Moralized Bibles The genre of moralized bible was an exclusive project of the Capetian court. The moralized bibles were luxe productions, visual-textual programmes that juxtaposed episodes from scripture to moralizations designed to teach the lesson of scripture, often placed in a contemporary context. The moralizations often work allegorically, and sometimes typologically.15 Each chosen biblical episode was both depicted in a roundel and synopsized through a paraphrase or scriptural quotation. Each biblical roundel-synopsis (or image-text) pair was in turn paired with its moral allegory, another image-text doublet which gave the moral lesson. 13 

This is a subject previously treated by Maier, ‘The bible moralisée and the Crusades’. For a nice treatment of Augustinian kingship in a Capetian context, see Boutet, ‘Y a-t-il une idéologie royale’, and more broadly Krynen, L’empire du roi, pp. 31–51. 15  Haussherr, ‘Sensus litteralis und sensus spiritualis’; Hughes, ‘Typology and its Uses’. 14 

M. C. Gaposchkin

78

Seven programmes survive in total.16 Well before Louis left on Crusade in 1248, and probably by the time he was married in 1234, four of these had been completed. In introducing them, we follow the unsurpassable study of John Lowden.17 The four at issue, and the sigla by which I will refer to them, are the following:18 1. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554. Early 1220s. Text in Old French. (= ÖNB 2554)19 2. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179. Mid-1220s. Text in Latin. (= ÖNB 1179) 3. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. Ca. 1230. Text in Latin. (= Toledo)20

16 

The three not discussed here are London, BL, Add. MS 18719; Paris, BnF, f. fr. 167 (made for Jean le Bon); and Paris, BnF, f. fr. 166. For other relevant manu­scripts, see Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, i, 3–4; Guest, Bible moralisée, p. 3. 17  Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées. 18  Throughout this paper I cite the manu­scripts themselves, though I have worked largely from facsimiles (identified in the notes that follow) and digitized reproductions. In referring to individual roundels, pairings, and commentary, I cite the folio numbers and then follow the conventions established by respective editors. Thus the roundels and commentary in ÖNB 2554 and 1179 are identified as AaBbCcDd. In ÖNB 2554, the roundels are read in vertical pairs, first across the top, and then across the bottom. In ÖNB 1179 the images are read in columns, right column, and then left column. Toledo is identified as A1A2A3A4, B1B2B3B4, reading downward in column A (left), and then downward in column B (right). Paris-OxfordLondon is identified according to the practice for Toledo. Schematically, thus, the roundels are identified as follows:

19 

ÖNB 2554

ÖNB 1179

Toledo

Paris-Oxford-London

AB ab CD cd

AC ac BD bd

A1 B1 A2 B2 A3 B3 A4 B4

A1 B1 A2 B2 A3 B3 A4 B4

ÖNB 2554 has been published a number of times in facsimile. Guest, Bible Moralisée; Bible moralisée, ed. by Haussherr; Stork, Bible Moralisée. It is now available on the Öster­ reichische Nationalibibliothek website. Search through . Trans­ lations for ÖNB 2554 are taken from Guest. 20  Published in colour facsimile in Biblia de San Luis. The final quire was divided from the third volume and is now New York, Pierpont Morgan, MS M.240.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

79

4. The Paris-Oxford-London bible: c. 1230. Text in Latin. (= Paris-Oxford-London)21 Paris-Oxford-London is now divided between three library collections: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds latin 11560 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 270b (=Bodley) London, British Library, MSS Harley 1526 and 1527 (=Harley 1526 or Harley 1527) It appears that the first (ÖNB 2554) was commissioned by and made for Blanche of Castile around 1220, when Louis was five or six. It is the shortest of the programmes. The text was in French and covered only material from Genesis to iv Kings. Shortly thereafter, an expanded bible was made, Lowden posits, by Blanche’s staff for her husband (ÖNB 1179). This is the least known of the bibles because it has never been published in facsimile and has (as of this writing) not yet been digitized on the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek website. This volume covered, selectively, the Old Testament and the Book of Revelations. This, and thereafter, the texts were in Latin.22 Louis VIII of course died in 1226, and it is not unreasonable to imagine that this volume may well have been ‘used’, broadly speaking, by Louis IX in his minority or early years. The completion of ÖNB 1179 was immediately followed by the second-generation bibles — the Toledo Bible, made specifically for Louis IX between 1226 and 1235, perhaps for presentation to him for his coronation,23 and the ParisOxford-London Bible, made perhaps for Marguerite of Provence, perhaps for presentation on the occasion of their wedding in 1234. These were complete, in the sense that they moralized the entire bible, covering material from Genesis to Revelation. And we know they were used. Paris-Oxford-London, for instance, went with Louis and Marguerite to the East in 1248.24 21  Published in black-and-white facsimile in La Bible moralisée illustrée conservée à Oxford, Paris et Londres, ed. by de Laborde. As of this writing, many but not all of the folios of the Bodley fragment are available through . Harley 1526 and 1527 are available online (for 1526) at , and (for 1527) at . 22  Except for Paris, BnF, f. fr. 167 which provided the reader with both the Latin and French. The manu­script is available digitally through the gallica website . 23  For this suggestion, see Reinhardt, ‘The Texts of the Bible of Saint Louis’, p. 271, except that his father’s death was unexpected and his coronation was rushed. 24  Weiss, Art and Crusade, pp. 147–49.

M. C. Gaposchkin

80

What do I mean by used? Lowden, in his conclusion, offers I think the best way ‘in’ to this question. He writes: A book like a Bible moralisée (as those who teach manu­script courses today know well) is a perfect pedagogic device whose texts and images demand not only to be viewed and read, but to be discussed […]. The royal viewers of these books could certainly have studied them alone at times, but most probably, in my view they were made in the expectation that some royal chaplain, confessor, or favored religious would provide guidance and instruction, image by image, and text by text and quite likely according to the whim of the owner. It is figures like these who probably themselves assisted in the creation of the Bibles moralisees and may themselves have supervised the craftsmen who were brought together […] on the making of these books.25

This is precisely the dynamic depicted in the single most famous image from these masterpieces, that is, the dedication page from the Morgan Library, originally the final folio of the third volume of the Toledo bible (Figure 4.1).26 That is, the programmes belonged to a larger discourse that was at once both courtly and clerical about the duties and function of the king in Christian society. Previous attempts to uncover a unified, consistent ideological programme have been belied by Lowden’s careful study of the book of Ruth in all seven programmes.27 In spite of the extraordinary quality of the four earliest programmes and the clearly superlative level of artistic production, Lowden described a largely haphazard strategy of textual composition, in which the texts of both the synopses and the moralizations were often of mediocre quality and little intellectual or theological sophistication. It appears that the moralizations in ÖNB 1179 and 2554 were often invented on the fly. When the effort for the second-generation bible was undertaken, the creators made recourse frequently, but not always, to the Glossa Ordinaria, but again, never in a coordinated or intellectually unified way.28 The material on kingship accords with Lowden’s findings. There is no overall consistency of allegorization. Saul is both a good and a bad model of kingship. David is at once an image of the secular king and of Christ. None of the bibles — never mind ‘the moralized bible’ — represents a ‘school’ of thinking or a coordinated theology. Only a tiny frac25 

Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, ii, 209. On this image, see Guest, ‘Authorizing the Toledo Moralized Bible’; Grant, ‘Gold Bezants on the Altar’. On the issue of audience, see also Lowden, ‘Les rois et les reines de France’. 27  Heinlen, ‘The Ideology of Reform in the French Moralized Bible’; Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées. 28  Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, ii, 202. 26 

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

Figure 4.1. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.240, fol. 8r. Reproduced with permission of the Pierpont Morgan Library.

81

82

M. C. Gaposchkin

tion of the commentary roundels on kingship are rooted in (known) exegesis (that I have found). This means that most of the kingship lessons were probably devised by the vaguely identified ‘royal chaplain’ or ‘confessor’ or ‘court cleric’ that Lowden suggested had a finger in producing the cycles. This fact has the advantage, then, of giving us access to the broad, general discourse about the duties, authority, and obligation of kings operative at the court in these years, for the discursive priorities incumbent upon kingship.

The Basics of Good Kingship This discourse was not about sacral kingship. A few roundels deal explicitly with the nature of the temporal authority of the king. In the second-generation bibles, a pairing from the book of Judith (10. 18–20), in which Judith bows down before Holophernes, is moralized to say that everyone should obey terrestrial princes, and cited Romans 13. 1, ‘Let every soul be subject to higher powers’ (Figure 4.2).29 This verse was cited throughout the medieval period by ‘royalists’ to support the divine sanction of kingship,30 and is used in the Glossa Ordinaria for Judith.31 The commentary roundel shows prelates bowing before a seated king, with a courtier behind him holding a sword. (Note, for later, the sword.) Likewise, the Harley manu­script (from the Paris-Oxford-London programme) explains that prelates should preach the name of Christ and testify before kings and princes to what the Lord said in Jeremiah 1. 10: ‘Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations, and over kingdoms’ (Figure 4.3).32 This commentary was not found in the Glossa, but Jeremiah 1. 10 was cited frequently in the debates over relative jurisdictions of temporal and spiritual authority.33 29  Toledo, I:166 B3–4; Bodley, 198 B4: ‘Hoc significat quod obediendum est prinicpibus terrenis sicut iubet apostolus dicens: omni potestatibus anima subliminorum sit subdita’. The word ‘potestatibus’ is elided in Bodley. 30  Canning, A History of Medi­eval Political Thought, p. 18. Useful also is Kilcullen, ‘Medi­ eval Political Theory’. 31  This is from the Bibliorum Sacrorum cum Glossa Ordinaria, ii, 1588. This edition of the Glossa Ordinaria is available at . 32  Harley 1527, 86v B1–2, from Acts 23. 11: ‘Hoc significat quod prelati debent predicare nomen christi et testificari coram regibus & principbus secundum quod dicit dominus ieremie. Ecce dedi verba mea in ore tuo. Ecce constitui te super gentes & regna’. The relationship to the biblical episode and moralization has little logic, and is an example of the seeming sloppiness that Lowden described. 33  Canning, A History of Medi­eval Political Thought, p. 123. This proof text was also used in support of papal power.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

83

Figure 4.2. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. I:166 B3–4. Reproduced with per­ mission of the Biblio­teca de la Catedral de Toledo.

The moralized bibles, then, absorbed some of the rudimentary principles and textual exempla of political discourse. That said, within the visual polemics of the cycles, neither of these were particularly strong statements of royal prerogatives. In the first, the image is reluctant to have the prelates bow as deeply as Judith does in the roundel above, with the result that the king and prelate remain, hieratically, at the same level. The image in Harley, although ostensibly proclaiming the authority of the king, subordinates the king clearly to the teaching of the prelate — a theme repeated throughout the cycles. The commentary roundels exhort a whole series of traditional platitudes on good kingship. Various roundels explain that the king should listen to clerics and good counsellors for advice, and be wary and avoid gossips and

84

M. C. Gaposchkin

Figure 4.3. London, British Library, MS Harley 1527, fol. 86v B1–2. Reproduced with permission of the British Library Board.

flatterers.34 These counsellors should be good men.35 The king ought to be generous to the poor and to widows.36 He ought take particular care that none of his subjects are oppressed or injured by the agents of his crown.37 Tyrants are 34  ÖNB 2554, 41v Cc for i Kings 27. 2, 5–6; ÖNB 2554, 41v Dd, and Bodley, 144 A4, B4 for i Kings 28. 19 – 29. 4. 35  ÖNB 1179, 116 A: ‘Roboam postquam sublimatus fuit in regem consilium sapientum dereliquit et per consilium iuvenum insipientum populum suum conculcavit et confudit atque crudeliter tractavit’; a: ‘Roboam significat pravos principes terrenos qui populum suum maletractant et conculcant et nolentes credere bonorum virorum consilio per consilium malorum pauperes homines suos destruunt et confundunt sua eis que possident auferendo’ (cf. iii Kings 12. 20). See also Bodley, 166 A2–B4. 36  Toledo, I:190 A3–4; Harley 1527, 87 B3–4. 37  Toledo, III:122 A1–2; Bodley, 154 B2; Harley 1527, 91r A1–2.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

85

kings who allow subjects to be molested by his men. One moralization, which is one found in all four versions, exemplifies these larger themes.38 It depicts i Kings 15. 8–9, showing Saul sparing King Amalec ‘and the best of the flocks and sheep’ while slaying the common people with the ‘edge of his sword’. The synopsis explains that Saul went into the lands of the enemy, and cut to pieces the powerful and powerless, and then retained all the barons and plundered great treasure against the command of the Lord (Figure 4.4).39 The allegorization reads: Saul, who destroyed in war the poor and retained lofty and powerful and treasure against the order of the Lord, signifies depraved kings who make collections from amongst the poor and then destroy them, but spare the wealthy who offer to them gold and silver.40

Other commentary bemoans modern princes who pervert the law, pervert judgements, and allow evils to grow in the church. A passage from Lamentations 4. 13 ‘signifies that on account of the iniquities of modern priests and princes of the church evils grow, [evils which] subvert the law in public sphere, [and] corrupt legal judgements, oppressing just men’.41 In Harley, a commentary roundel bemoans iniquitous princes who collude with false prelates to institute new customs and iniquitous laws.42 38  ÖNB 2554, 37 v Bb; ÖNB 1179 90 Bb; Bodley, 270 v A1–2; Toledo,  I:104 A1–2. Toledo reads ‘Saul significat pravos reges qui collectas faciunt in pauperibus et eos destruunt et divitibus parcunt qui eius aurum et argentum tribuunt’. Bodley reads: ‘Saul qui contra mandatum domini regi agag pepercit et omnibus que pulcra[?] erant et pauperes et viliua destruxit; significat pravos principes qui per rapinas et tallias destruunt paupereres et parcunt divitibus qui aurum et argentum eis tribuunt’. 39  ÖNB 1179, 90 B: ‘Venit Saul circa inimicos & omnis pauperes & inpotentes detruncavit & retinuit omnes barones & predas & magnos thesaurus contra mandatum salvatoris’. ÖNB 2554 37v Bb: ‘Ici vient Saul et va en une bataille & detrancherez les pouvres, & toz les nonpoissans, & retienttes les haz barons & totes les bestes, & retint los contre le commandement Damedeu’. See also ÖNB 2554, 46 Aa, and ÖNB 1179, 106 Aa (cf. ii Kings 12. 1 – 13. 4); Toledo, III:116 B3–4 (Acts 23. 16–25). 40  ÖNB 1179 90 b: ‘Saul qui destruxit in bello pauperes & retinuit sublimos & potestes et thesaurus contra mandatum domini significant pravos reges qui collectas faciunt in pauperibus et eos destruunt & parcunt divitibus qui eis aurum tribuunt & argentum’. 41  Toledo, II:177v (on Lam. 4. 13) A4: ‘Hoc significat quod propter iniquitates sacerdotum et principum modernorum ecclesie mala crebrescunt qui legem in publico pervertunt, iudicia invertunt iustos opprimentes’. 42  Harley 1527, 48r B2: ‘Hoc siginificat quod iniqui principes et falsi prelati conveniunt

86

M. C. Gaposchkin

Figure 4.4. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 37v Bb. Reproduced with permission of the Öster­ reichische Nationalbibliothek.

The commentaries address the question of the king’s ideal relationship to the church. A roundel-pairing in the second-generation programmes takes on explicitly the question of the relationship between the two powers, explaining that royal authority was derived from the church (see Plate I).43 The pairing treats Numbers 17. 1–4, in which God tells Moses to take a rod from each of ad constituendas novas consuetudines et leges iniquis, ut opprimant in iudicio minores et bona eorum diripiant, et sic ihesum occidunt membra sua scandalizantes’. 43  Toledo, I:73 B1–2. B1: ‘Dixit Dominus ad Moyses: accipe a XII principibus duodecim uirgas et uniuscuiusque nomen superscribe uirge sue et pone eas in tabernaculo federis’; B2: ‘Hoc significat quod unusquisque princeps debet habere uirgam scilicet sceptrum regale qua populum regere debet et ab ecclesiasticis personis debent imperandi et regnandi accipere potestatem’. Bodley, 79v B2: ‘Hoc significat quod unusquinque princeps debet habere virgam scilicet sceptrum imperiale vel regale sine qua populum regere non potest. In ecclesia tamen et ab ecclesiasticis personis debent imperandi et regnandi accipere potestatem’.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

87

the twelve tribes of Israel and place them in the tabernacle. The gloss explains that ‘This signifies that the king ought to have a rod, that is the royal sceptre, by which he ought to rule people, and that he ought to receive the power of command and rule from ecclesiastical persons’.44 Royal authority, in the form of the rod/sceptre, is received from and derives from the church. The king’s duty is to serve the interest of the church. The king ought to promote preaching, which includes not allowing vernacular preaching.45 (Presumably, this links to his duty to wipe out heresy, discussed below.) Other roundels preach that the king ought not to tax the church and ought instead to give her money.46 The king should defend the church.47 In turn, the good king is the church’s patron. ÖNB 1179 includes a roundel that praises Dagobert and Charlemagne — two of the exemplars of good kingship in Capetian circles — for founding and building churches at their own expense.48 A number of images show evil kings directing thuggish agents to despoil the church of her moneybags.49 Finally, the king is enjoined throughout to respect ecclesiastical liberties, a phrase that refers to the Gregorian notion of freedom from secular interference.50 By the 44 

Toledo, I:73 v B1–2. B2: ‘Hoc significat quod unusquisque princeps debet habere uirgam scilicet sceptrum regale qua populum regere debet et ab ecclesiasticis personis debent imperandi et regnandi accipere potestatem’ (cf. Num. 17. 14). 45  On the king’s obligation to promote preaching, see Toledo, III:101v B2: ‘Hoc significat quod viri potentes non curant ut eius annuncietur verbum Dei sed bene permittunt vulgo sermonem verbi Dei annunciari’. The image shows a king overseeing a preacher. See also Toledo, I:182 A1–2; III:172 A3–4; III:101; III:56. Harley 1527 71r A1–2. 46  Toledo, I:149 A3–4; and III:116 B3–4; II:161 A3–4; I:182 A1–2. 47  Bodley, 91v B2: ‘Principes in ecclesia sunt milites et reges qui sunt manus ecclesiae ad defensendam eam’ (cf. commentary to Deut. 28. 65–66). 48  ÖNB 1179, 139 Bb. b: ‘Bonus rex qui precepit reparare muros, etc., significat karolum magnum & Daugobertum et alios bonos principes qui de proprio catallo ecclesias fundaverunt’ (cf. i Esdras 6. 1 or 13–17. 21). 49  Toledo, III:116 B3: ‘Biennio expleto accepit successorem Felix Festum; volens autem Festus placere iudeis reliquit Paulum vinctum et rogabant eum ut iuberet perduci eum in Ierusalem, Festus autem respondit servari Paulum in Ceserea’ (Acts 24. 27 – 25. 4); B4: ‘Per Festum significantur quidam principes qui nolunt ecclesiam omnino destruere sed eam clericos talliando ut laicos ad modum infidelium eam constituunt sub tributo’. 50  ÖNB 1179, 209v Aa. A: ‘Tunc exaltavit eum rex & statunt principatum sacerdocii; quecumque alia prius habuit preciosa sequestra reddidit tribute, remittebat arcem ierlin liberari precepit’; a: ‘Hoc significat quod principes terreni conversi ad peticionem prelatorum rebellas in ecclesia prosternunt & ecclesie pristinam restituunt libertatem, & ex actiones indebitas remittent’ (cf. i Macc. 11. 16–44).

M. C. Gaposchkin

88

Figure 4.5. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. I:109v A4. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

second-generation bibles, the trope for the violation of ecclesiastical liberties was Henry II’s murder of Thomas Becket. Toledo allegorized an episode from i Kings 22. 9–18 (where Saul orders his men to kill the priests of the Lord) to explain that a bad king is one who kills priests for their own profit simply because the priest wishes to defend the liberty of the church and to preserve good customs, just as the King of England had killed the saintly Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury (Figure 4.5).51 The image shows a crowned king 51 

Toledo, I:109v A4. ‘Hoc significat quod mali principes occidunt prelatos pro eo quod volunt libertatem eccesie defendere et bonas consuetudines servare sicut rex Anglie sanctum Thomas archiepicopum Cantuarie’. The moralization and images were repeated in Bodley, 141v B1–2, although the phrase ‘sicut rex Anglie sanctum Thomas’ has been expunged. For Becket, see also Toledo, I:17 A2; I:92 A2; I:109 A3–4. For ecclesiastical liberties, see also Harley 1527, 145r B1–2.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

89

directing his men (clearly knights), all holding swords, to threaten one priest (all the way on the right) and to cut down another (Becket) altogether.

The Power of the Sword Visually and sometimes textually, the power of the king rests upon the sword. Iconographically, the primary sign of the ‘king’ or ‘prince’ is the crown. Yet his temporal power is symbolized by his sword, which can, if need be, be delegated to his agents and is to be used for the defence of the church.52 This was made explicit at several points in ÖNB 1179 and Paris-Oxford-London.53 A roundel pair allegorizes a passage from Joshua 14. 2–5 in which Joshua divided up the Promised Land among the tribes of Israel (Figure 4.6). He is shown marking out plots of land for the Israelites, two of whom are shown holding wheat and a lamb. The biblical synopsis takes liberties with scripture, explaining that God prohibited Aaron, who was from the tribe of Nephtali, from holding any of the Promised Land, except for the ‘tithe of wheat and lambs’.54 (The priestly clan of the Levites held no lot, having been set aside for the service of God; the exception made here for the tithe is an interpolation.) The bottom roundel shows Christ himself, identified by his cruciform halo, handing two swords out to a king and other secular authorities (‘counts’), here for the purpose of protecting the goods of prelates — in this case a lamb and a sheath of wheat, identified in the synopsis roundel as the tithe. Moses becomes Christ. The kings and counts are leaders of the tribes of Israel. And the Levites are the churchmen. The commentary roundel explains that Joshua’s division signifies Jesus Christ who ordered that kings and counts should hold the secular sword for ruling the people, and maintained that priests and clerics should not have [anything] except the tithe and those things pertaining to the holy church rendered forth.55

52 

Sometimes, the king’s agents are shown wielding a club instead of a sword; the king is never shown with a club. 53  See for instance Bodley, 91v B2 (see note 47 above). 54  ÖNB 1179, 67 A: ‘Iosue divisit terram promissionis in ix partes & dimidiare mandato domini & prohibet neali quis de progenie aaron habeat in terra promissionis preter decimas segetum & agnorum’. 55  ÖNB 1179, 67 a: ‘S[ignificat] ihesum christum qui precepit quod reges & comites habeant secularem gladium pro populo domando & defendit quod presbyteri & clerici non habeant preter decimas et redditus ad sanctam ecclesiam pertinentes’.

M. C. Gaposchkin

90

Figure 4.6. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 67 Aa. Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

When the pairing was adapted to the Paris-Oxford-London bible, the image-text focused on the issue of secular justice: ‘This signifies that Jesus Christ ordered that emperors, kings, and princes should have the secular sword for executing secular judgements’.56 The image here has four crowned figures, each holding a sword, while God above them offers a gesture of blessing. Another allegorization (of ii Maccabees 12. 6 — he who escaped from the fire is killed by the sword) explains that the truly perverse are excommunicated and then handed over to the lay power and burned by fire (Figure 4.7).57 This was 56 

Bodley, 102 A4: ‘Hoc significat quod ihesus christus precepit quod imperatores, reges, & principes habeant glaium secularem ad iudicia secularia exercenda’. 57  ÖNB 1179, 221 B: ‘Et qui ab igne effugerunt gladio peremit’ (cf. ii Macc. 12. 6); b: ‘Hoc significat quod qui vero perversi sunt excommunicati, & laice potesti tradendi & igne comburrendi’.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

91

Figure 4.7. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 221 Bb. Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

standard judicial procedure, so that the church (who excommunicates) would not have the blood of execution on its hands. Here, the image shows not fire, but prelates handing over three poor souls to a king who brandishes his sword above his head. The argument of the king’s sword is further illustrated in the allegorization to ii Macchabees 3–4 (Figure 4.8). In this image-text pair, the episode compresses a complicated story involving control over the great wealth stored in the Temple. The synopsis explains that despite the fact that Simon, the Temple’s administrative officer, defames Onias, the high priest, Onias nevertheless intercedes with the king (Seleucus) on his behalf in order to restore peace.58 The commentary roundel gives this lesson: 58 

ÖNB 1179, 217 B: ‘Symon autem peciarum & patrie delator male loquebantur de Onia & dicebat eum regni insidiatorem considerans; Onias periculum contentionis, & Appolonium

92

M. C. Gaposchkin

This signifies that prelates of the church, when they are unable to compel the arrogant through ecclesiastical censure, have recourse to terrestrial princes, so that he can punish with the sword, which he gets from the church, for the vindication of bad men.59

Here, bad men with horns and moneybags are pushed off by a prelate, seeking the aid of the king, who lovingly strokes his sword, the means of his power, which is ultimately received from the church. The image and moralization were repeated in Paris-Oxford-London.60 None of the root biblical stories refer to the king’s use of force, but all three allegories — the moral lesson for the king — explain that the king’s legitimate use of force is to defend prelates and the church’s interests. Both commentaries begin with a premise to kings in the plural, and then shift to an injunction to a or the king in the singular. This is a very clear notion of the function of royal authority. It was also in line with medieval political thought. Gratian, quoting Isidore, said plainly that royal power exists ‘so that what priests are not strong enough to effect by word of teaching, [royal power] might command by the terror of discipline’.61 It is impossible, here, not to evoke high medieval uses of the Gelasian doctrine, wherein the king supports the spiritual authority precisely through his monopoly on the use of force.62 Yet the discursive programme was also in line with the political ideals embedded in the coronation rites, another ‘ecclesiastical’ view of ideal kingship. As the bishop handed the king the sword, he said ‘Accept this sword with God’s blessing, given to you for the punishing of evildoers’.63 By 1250, the king took an oath that he should preserve peace and justice, forbid rapine and iniquity, enforce equity and mercy in judgements, and ‘as best ad sature ad regem se contulit, non ut civium accusator; sed quia videbat sine regali preovidentia impossibilie esse pacem rebus dari’ (ii Macc 4. 1–6). 59  ÖNB 1179, 217 b: ‘Hoc significat quod prelati ecclesie cum non possint superbos per censuram ecclesiasticam compellere, ad principes terrarium recurrunt, ut & ipse gladio quam de ecclesia suscepit ad vindicatam malorum eos vindicerent’. See also Toledo, III:14 A2. 60  Harley 1526, 26v B3–4. Oddly, i and ii Macchabees were not included in Toledo. See Reinhardt, ‘The Texts of the Bible of Saint Louis’, p. 284. 61  Kilcullen, ‘Medi­eval Political Theory’, p. 340. 62  Kilcullen, ‘Medi­e val Political Theory’, pp. 339–40. On the exegesis of the Gelasian doctrine, see Caspary, Politics and Exegesis. 63  Ordines Coronationis Franciae, ed. by Jackson, ii, 148–49: ‘Accipe hunc gladium cum dei benedictione tibi collatum ad vindicatam malefactorum’. Later formularies including expanded versions of this same blessing. See for the Last Capetian Ordo Ordines Coronationis Franciae, ed. by Jackson, ii, 385–86.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

93

Figure 4.8. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 217 Bb. Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

I can, eradicate from my lands and the jurisdiction subject to me all people designated as heretics by the church’.64 Starting with ÖNB 2554 and increasingly amplified in the later volumes, the moralized bible programmes are preoccupied with this function of the king’s temporal authority in the control of heresy and unbelief. In one sense, this is simply an outgrowth of the traditional theme that the king’s duty is to defend the church — but it is one that is particularly emphasized, and ties in with other preoccupations of the moralized bibles. There is, in all four volumes, only a single explicit reference to the King of France (Rex Francie). This appears in the Toledo bible in a roundel depicting Acts 27. 30–32 (Plate II). Paul is shown on a 64 

Ordines Coronationis Franciae, ed. by Jackson, ii, 383–84: ‘Item, de terra mea ac iurdi­ citione michi subdita universos hereticos ab ecclesia denotatos pro viribbus bona fide exter­ minare studebo’ (the Last Capetian Ordo).

M. C. Gaposchkin

94

Figure 4.9. Vienna, Öster­reichische National­bibliothek, MS 2554, fol. 40v Dd. Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

boat being taken to Rome. The boat is in danger of sinking, and when a number of sailors seek to abandon ship, Paul warns the centurion to stay aboard or they will all be lost. The commentary explains that By the sailors who desire to flee are signified false prelates who seek to be in luxury and peace while the holy church is in great tribulation. By the centurion and the soldiers are signified good laymen who believe in the words of the gospel and succor the holy church in her troubles just as did the King of France, who invited others to the help of the holy church when her tribulations threatened her.65 65 

Toledo,  III:130, B4: ‘Per nautas que fugere volebant significantur falsi prelati qui

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

95

This is surely a reference to the Albigensian crusade, ultimately waged by Louis VIII during precisely the period that these volumes were undertaken. The commentary here refers to the fact that his father, Philip Augustus, had, in 1209, permitted the northern French nobility to take the cross against the heretics of southern France. The image shows two prelates (the ‘false’ prelates) engaging in a conversation while the church behind them is aflame. On the right, the king restrains two laymen who are responsible.66

Crusade Here, the king’s role in supporting the church is conceived of in terms of the (contemporary) Albigensian crusade.67 The Albigensians play a role throughout the bible’s discursive programme in articulating the duties of kingship, established in ÖNB 2554 and 1179. All four bibles gloss i Kings 25. 12–13 in which envoys come to King David to report that a Philistine Prince (called Nabal) is preparing to attack the Israelites, and David and his men then prepare themselves for battle (Figure 4.9). The commentary explains that this signifies that messengers of Jesus Christ who return from the Albigensian regions and say to princes and prelates and good Christians that in the Albigensian lands they are ignorant of the Lord; and good princes take up the cross and promise that they will kill all the Albigensians and all of their posterity.68

querunt esse in deliciis et pace dum sancta ecclesia est in magna tribulatione; per centurionem et milites significantur boni laici qui credunt verbis evangelii et succurrunt sancte ecclesie tribulate sicut fecit rex Francie qui alios invitabat ad succursum sancte ecclesie tributionae inminente’. Discussed in Reinhardt, ‘The Texts of the Bible of Saint Louis’, p. 308. 66  It should be said that it is an awkward moralization, with an unclear relationship to the image or its root biblical story, and was abandoned when the image was reworked in Harley 1527 (89r). 67  Treated previously by Maier, ‘The bible moralisée and the Crusades’. 68  ÖNB 2554, 40v d. ‘Ce qe li message conterent a david lotrage & la folie Nabal & david sarma & iura quil destruiroit, & lui, & sa ligine senefie les boens messages iesucrist qi repairet dabigeos & content as princes & as boens crestiens la mauvestie & la mescreandise des abygeos, & tuit li ami deu prennent la croiz, & dient que illes ocirroit & destruront toz’. ÖNB 1179, 96 c: ‘significat nuncios Ihesus Christi qui redeunt de terra albigensi. & dicunt principibus & prelatis et bonis chrisanis qui deum ignorant in terra albigensi et boni principes suas cruces accipientes promittunt quod interficient omnis cum tota sua posteritate alibigenses’. The image is discussed in Maier, ‘The bible moralisée and the Crusades’, p. 219.

M. C. Gaposchkin

96

Figure 4.10. Toledo, Tesoro del Cate­ dral, MS s.n. I:111v. Reproduced with per­ mission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

The commentary image in ÖNB 2554 is clearly military. The crusading king, modelled on David, bears a crown, wears chainmail, and carries a sword. Presumably he is imagined as Louis VIII, the king who in fact took up the cross against the Albigensians in the period when the first-generation bibles were being completed. The lesson was then repeated in both Toledo and Bodley, with a shift in visual argumentation, emphasizing heretics instead.69 Toledo 69 

Toledo, I:111v A2: ‘Nuncii redientes ad David significant nuncios Ihesu Christi qui redeunt de terra albigensium et dicunt principibus et prelatis et bonis christianis quod Deum ignorant in terra albigensi et boni principes suas cruces accipientes promittunt quod interficient omnes albigenses cum tota sua potestate’. Bodley, 143v A1. ‘Nuncii david redeuntes & dicentes stultum responsum nabal significat nuncios ihesu christi redeuntes de terra albigensium & dicunt principibus et prelatis quod domini ignorant, & boni principes suas cruces accipientes promittunt quod illos omnis interficiunt cum tota sua posteritate’. Note that in the Bodley

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

97

Figure 4.11. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 270b, fol. 130r B3–4. Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library.

shows two tonsured prelates reporting to the king about a group of heretics on the right (Figure 4.10). These are the good envoys. The secular king in the commentary roundel is typed on the figure of David, the monks on the envoys, and the Albigensian heretics, holding a strange leopard-looking cat, on the Philistine idolaters.70 Sarah Lipton has shown how, in the Vienna bibles, the cat is a symbol associated with Jews and heretics, and thus which associates Jews image, the Albigensians are shown wearing pointed hats and carrying moneybags — the iconography for Jews — making again Lipton’s point about the identification between Jews and heretics. 70  In Bodley, 143v A2, the ‘heretics’ on the right hold a money bag and wear the conical hats, the iconography, pace Lipton, of the Jews. Otherwise, the iconography is almost identical. The text is identical.

98

M. C. Gaposchkin

Figure 4.12. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. II:105v B1–2. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

99

and heretics with one another.71 The principal sign for the heretic in the Toledo programme is this hood and, although not in this image, often a book symbolizing the definition of the heretic as dependent upon doctrine, albeit false and incorrect doctrine. The typing of heretics onto the Philistine idolaters of the Old Testament also associated heretics with other infidel objects of the king’s legitimate force. A broader visual rhetoric was played out in the synopsis roundels, particularly in the books of Kings and Joshua, which touched on crusading in general. Starting with the first exemplar (ÖNB 2554), in the biblical summaries, the Philistines (i.e. idolaters) are identified as Saracens and allegorized as infidels, thus typing the Old Testament battles within the contemporary matrix of crusading rhetoric and ideology.72 The term ‘Saracens’ signified widely both the Arab Muslims, and a range of infidels who threatened the body of the church more broadly.73 An example, from ÖNB 2554, depicts i Kings 4 (10–11) and explains that Saracens come and take the ark that they had conquered and put it in their mosque (Plate III).74 In the Bodley fragment (also i Kings 4. 10–11), in an episode in which the Israelites and the Saracens do battle, it is ‘Saracens’ that carry off the Ark of the Covenant (Figure 4.11). The visual and rhetorical polemics might also conflate Saracens with heretics, as evidenced by the commentaries in the second-generation bibles, drawing on David’s battles against the Kings of Syria (Is. 7. 1–2). In both Toledo and the Paris bible, the commentary roundel explains that Saracens fight the church with swords and heretics fight with arguments of false doctrine (or from false documents) (Figure 4.12).75 Harley 1526 further identifies the ‘two types of enemies’ that the devil sent to the church as ‘savage pagans and infidel heretics’.76 Although the Albigensian 71 

Lipton, Images of Intolerance. ÖNB 2554, fol. 36, Aa, Bb, Cc. Later, see Toledo, I:100 B1, B3; I:101v, 102, 114, 115v; II:5v B4. Bodley, 130–33 includes a range of examples. On this issue, see Reinhardt, ‘The Texts of the Bible of Saint Louis’, p. 286; Saurma-Jeltsch, ‘Sarracens: Opponents to the Body of Christianity’, especially at pp. 86–87. 73  Saurma-Jeltsch, ‘Sarracens’; Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews. 74  ÖNB 2554, 36r aA. Cf. Bodley, 130r. 75  Toledo, II:105v B1–2: ‘Hoc significat quod sarraceni gladiis et heretici argumentis falsorum dogmatum inpugnant ecclesiam’. Paris, BnF, MS  lat. 11560 105 v B2: ‘Quod Sarraceni per enses et hereticis per falsorum documentorum pugnant circa ecclesiam’. See also Toledo, II:104 B2. On heresy as false doctrine, see Toledo, II:121v B2. 76  Harley 1526, 12v A3–4: ‘Hoc sigificat quod dyabolus post expugnationem suam per mortem christi mittit circa ecclesiam duo genera inimicorum: paganos crudeles et hereticos infideles’. 72 

M. C. Gaposchkin

100

Figure 4.13. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 131 Bb. Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

crusade seems to have been the dominant referent, ÖNB 1179 also nodded towards Jerusalem Crusade. An allegorization of iv Kings 10. 8–13 explained that Jesus Christ instructs preachers to ‘announce my word among the people, and you will acquire the city and the entire land of Jerusalem’ (Figure 4.13).77 The text, derived from the Glossa, is about preaching. But the image is about fighting — about crusading. Preachers on the left side announce the word of God. Incited by these preachers, a crusader army attacks a castle. One crusader lifts a cross atop the citadel on the left. Another, with his foot reaching out of the frame, shoots an arrow into the melée. The enemy falls to death at the lower 77 

ÖNB 1179, 131, iv Kings 10. 8–13, 13. 20.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

101

Figure 4.14. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 89 Dd. Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

right. Another roundel from ÖNB 1179 allegorizes Saul ‘who comes against and destroys the Saracens’ as kings who ‘destroy the enemies of Christ’ (Figure 4.14). The enemies of Christ are the cowering figures to the right bearing a scroll identifying them as inimici christi.78 On the left, a series of heretics are 78 

ÖNB 1179, 89, allegorizing i Kings 12–14; D: ‘Venit Saul contra sarasenos & eos et pugnavit sed ante quam bellum finiretur Ionathas inveniens virgam mellitam ponens eam in ore aliquantulum suggerebat’; d: ‘Saul qui venit contra sarasenos & eos destruxit significant bonos christianos qui venuerit contra infideles & contra inimicos ihu xpi. et eos destruent & detruncant. Jonathas qui comedes contra mandatum Saul s. pravos gentes qui intendunt mundanis deliens qui & transgrediuntur mandatum ihu xpi’.

102

M. C. Gaposchkin

Figure 4.15. Vienna, Öster­ reichische National­ bibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 52 Cc. Reproduced with permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

shown at table (a false altar) eating and drinking (false sacraments). The king attacks with a sword. A bishop attacks through preaching. The two — preaching and fighting — are frequently equated, with multiple references throughout to ‘the sword of the gospel’.79 It is the responsibility of kings to eradicate these inimici christi through the sword as prelates are to eradicate them through preaching. The treatment of 79 

ÖNB 1179, 68 c: ‘Delbora & berach qui expugnaverunt regem cum toto excercitu s[ignificant] sanctam ecclesiam & bonos prelates qui gladio evangelii infidelitatem superbiam & alia vicia repellunt & expugnant’.

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

103

Figure 4.16. Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. III: 116 A1–2. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

Leviticus 24. 14 is particularly evocative here. In both ÖNB 2554 (in French) and ÖNB 1179 (in Latin), the gloss explains: ‘God who ordered that they be stoned signifies that Jesus Christ orders kings and counts to kill all infidels and sinners (publicanos)’ (Plate IV, Figure 4.15).80 The image is violent, showing 80 

ÖNB 2554, 30v a: ‘Ce qu moyses commanda qucil qui se gaba de deu fust lapidez & il si su senefie qe dex comande as rois & as contes & as princes quil ocient toz les mescreanz & toz les populicanz & toz cels qi deu gabent’. ÖNB 1179, 52 c: ‘Deus qui precepit quod lapidaretur significant iesum xpm qui precipit regibus et comitatibus quod interficaciant omnes infideles et puplicanos’. On ‘publicans’ see Lipton, Images of Intolerance, pp. 110–11. Discussion of roundel

104

M. C. Gaposchkin

the king overseeing the execution of a group of infidels and sinners. The allegorization and image are abandoned in the second-generation bibles, replaced with a toned-down moral about unrepentant sinners being excluded from the church.81 In another reference to the Albigensians in the second generation, the allegorization to Acts 23. 16–25 praises ‘humble and faithful’ men (the two figures in the middle) who recognize heretics (sitting at a table wearing hoods) and point them out to the ‘earthly princes’ so that ‘through the power of the princes these [that is, “sects of heretics”] can be annihilated’ (Figure 4.16).82 The sequence was repeated in Harley (87r). Here again, the heretics are at table, eating and drinking, participating in their false sacraments. And it is the king’s responsibility to use his secular power to destroy — the words are ‘kill’ and ‘annihilate’ — the heretics. The opposite, of course, is also true. Numerous allegorizations, particularly in the second-generation bibles, describe bad kings (tyrants) in partnership with the devil to undermine the church. The good king promotes good preaching. The bad king undermines it, using the power of the sword to undermine the church. The spread of heresy and the destruction of the holy church is the result of the devil’s partnership with earthly princes and tyrants. There are dozens of references throughout the cycles to tyrants, and they almost always wield a sword that they misuse. An example from the Toledo bible is exemplary, the beast of the Apocalypse is compared with ‘heretics and hypocrites’ and ‘signifies that the devil has the partnership of earthly princes and through their help works to expunge the holy church’ (Plate V).83 A crowned king, holding a sword, in partnership with a hooded heretic, partners with the devil, also holding a sword, to push back the church.

in Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, i, 71, fig. 25. 81  In Bodley, 65v A4, the secular authority is depicted as a count, not a king, and the allegorization reads: ‘Hoc significat quod talis maledicus debet primo extra ecclesiam poni, et nisi res p[er]verit debet ab omnibus catholicis publice evitari vel etiam dampnari’. Likewise in Toledo, I:59 A3–4, ‘Hoc significat quod talis maledicus debet primo extra ecclesiam poni et nisi respuerit debet dampnari’. 82  Toledo, III:116 A1–2; Harley 1527, 87r A2: ‘Per iuvenem qui fuit nepos Pauli figuratur aliquis humiles et fideles percipiens hereticorum sectelam quam principi terre demonstrat ut per potestatem principis adnichilatur’. The text of the moralization is the same in both. 83  Toledo,  III:178 B4: ‘Hoc significat quod diabolous habet consortium principum mundi et per auxilium eorum sanctam nititur ecclesiam expugnare; pardo significat hereticos et ypocritas, pedes ursi raptores, os leonis mine superbe potentum’ (cf. Apoc. 13. 1–2).

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

105

Conclusion The king’s role, then, is to aid the interests of the Church, either through the promotion of the preaching of the gospel or through force.84 Either way, the king’s authority rests in his temporal power, received from the church and symbolized by the sword. As we said, the vision of kingship embedded in the moralized bibles is in line with a broader history of ideal kingship: serve the church, do not oppress subjects and in particular the poor, be concerned about corrupt agents of the Crown, follow the advice of clergy, and above all, enforce orthodoxy. It is certainly not difficult to see how these ideals were played out in later years, both in Louis’s own programme of education for his children and in the priorities of his own rule. William Chester Jordan, in his plenary address to the Medi­eval Academy in 2012, already showed how Louis followed the teachings of the moralized bibles when, following the lessons of Ruth 2. 1, Louis relaxed prohibitions on gleaning (the collection of stray harvest, usually by the poor, following formal collections), allowing ‘two days free access to the harvested meadows and fields’, in Normandy.85 In his own writing on ideal kingship to his son, the future Philip III, Louis himself repeated a number of these principles, including the injunction that the king should be good to the poor and suffering, that he should surround himself with good men, that he should keep peace and justice, especially for the sake of the church, that he should honour men of the church, and, in one rescension, that he should obey the pope.86 Yet, there are important shades of this traditional definition of kingship keyed to the historical moment, to how those ideals were being adapted to the particular context or challenges of the 1220s and 1230s — a duty to wipe out the heretics, infidels, and enemies of the church — that seem important if we are to connect the wider culture of the court, broadly defined, and its ideals to the development of kingship in the thirteenth century and to Louis’s own reign in particular. The emphasis on the king’s power over violence is striking, especially in ÖNB 1179, where references to the king’s sword to enforce the church’s will are strongest. It was a programme envisioned and executed during 84  On the king’s obligation to promote preaching (which includes not preaching in the vernacular!) see Toledo, I:182 A1–2; III:172 A3–4; III:101 B1–2; III:56 B3–4. 85  William Chester Jordan, ‘Gleaners’, Presidential Address to the Medi­e val Academy, which met in Saint Louis, MO, 24 March 2012 (see now under Jordan, ‘The Gleaners’, in the bibliography to this article). I am exceedingly grateful to Professor Jordan for sharing with me his yet unpublished talk. 86  The Teachings of Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by O’Connell, pp. 55–60.

106

M. C. Gaposchkin

Figure 4.17. Vienna, Öster­reichische National­bibliothek, MS 1179, fol. 128 Aa. Reproduced with permission of the Öster­reichische Nationalbibliothek.

the years of the Albigensian crusade while Louis VIII was still on the throne and leading the army south against the heretics; that is, well before Louis IX had committed himself to the recovery of Jerusalem and reconfigured the king’s martial commitment to religious purity. This explains the greater emphasis in the early programmes on heretics than on Saracens. And Louis also supported the anti-heretical goals of the church. In the earlier part of his reign, he aided the work of the inquisitor Robert le Bougre’s repression of heresy in Flanders.87 Matthew Paris said that the inquisitor’s work was ‘assisted by the secular power of the French king’.88 Later his biographer, William of Chartres O.P., praised 87 

Also see Sean L. Field’s discussion in this volume. Matthew Paris, Matthew Paris’s English History, ii, 452. See also Matthew’s comments on Robert le Bougre, in Matthew Paris’s English History, i, 28. 88 

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

107

Figure 4.18. Toledo, Tesoro del Cate­dral, MS s.n. III:6 A3–4. Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca de la Catedral de Toledo.

him specifically for his eradication of heresy, and in the bull of canonization Boniface VIII singled out his abhorrence ‘of those infected with the stain of heretical depravity’.89 Yet one imagines that if the programmes had been conceived and completed in the 1240s rather than the 1220s and 1230s, the commentary roundels may well have concerned themselves to a greater extent with what was considered the other idolatry, practiced by the Saracens (i.e. Islam). 89 

The Sanctity of Louis IX, trans. by L. Field, ed. by Gaposchkin and S. Field, p. 142 (for William of Chartres) and p. 169 (for Boniface VIII).

108

M. C. Gaposchkin

Either way, the symbol of the sword was important. When, according to Jean de Joinville, Louis said that disputation with unbelievers should be left to the cleric, and laymen should instead use the sword to defend the Christian law against the slander of the Jews, he was promoting a vision of secular authority and responsibility consonant with these teachings. And perhaps also consonant, for instance, with two final examples.90 In ÖNB 1179, a moralization to iv Kings shows two kings with a sword and an axe attacking a group of men. These, explain the moralizations, are Titus and Vespasian ‘who both in Rome and elsewhere destroyed the Jews who had mocked Jesus Christ’ (Figure 4.17).91 And again, in both Toledo and in Paris-Oxford-London, in the exposition of Psalm 16, where David beseeches for God’s justice, we find Titus and Vespasian, each with a sword, who, in response to the prayers of the Apostles and thus with the sanction of Christ who observes from the upper left-hand corner, are killing the Jews (Figure 4.18). In the moralized bibles — the bibles made for the Capetians at the court, for royal education and edification — we see envisualized the way in which ideals of militant Christianity bore on the obligations of Capetian kingship. Capetian kingship was not only about the personal sanctity of the king, but also about the use of royal power to advance the interests of the church. In its effort to ensure orthodoxy, promote the gospel, and eradicate heretics, Jews, and infidels, the king was the sword arm of the church.

90 

Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Monfrin, § 53. ÖNB 1179, 128 Aa (cf. iv Kings 2. 24 – 14. 11). A: ‘Venerunt duo ursi ad parvulos illudentes prophetam & eos devorarverunt’; a: ‘Hoc significant tytiim & vespasium qui intra romam & alibi iudeos qui illuderant ihu xpo destruxerunt’. See also Bodley, 176 A2. 91 

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

109

Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources London, British Library, Additional MS 18719 London, British Library, MS Harley 1526 London, British Library, MS Harley 1527 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.240 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 270b 4 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 166 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 167 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds latin 11560 Toledo, Tesoro del Catedral, MS s.n. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1179 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2554

Primary Sources Bible moralisée, ed. by Reiner Haussherr, in Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat des Codex Vindobonensis 2554 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1973) La Bible moralisée illustrée conservée à Oxford, Paris et Londres: Reproduction intégrale du manuscrit du xiiie siècle accompagnée de planches tirées de Bibles similaires et d’une notice, ed. by A. de Laborde, 5 vols (Paris: Pour les membres de la Société, 1911–27) Biblia de San Luis: Catedral Primada de Toledo, 2 vols (Barcelona: M. Moleiro, 2002) Blessed Louis, the Most Glorious of Kings: Texts Relating to the Cult of Saint Louis of France, ed. and trans. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin with Phyllis Katz, Notre Dame Texts in Medi­eval Culture (Notre Dame: Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame Press, 2012) Boniface VIII, ‘Sermones et Bulla’, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Léopold Delisle (Paris: Palme, 1855), xxiii, 148–60 Godfrey of Viterbo, Speculum Regum, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 21–93 Guibert de Tournai, Le traité Eruditio regum et principum de Guibert de Tournai, O. F. M. (étude et texte inédit), ed. by Alphonse de Poorter (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Université, 1914) Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Garnier, 1995) Matthew Paris, Matthew Paris’s English History, from the Year 1235 to 1273 (London: H. G. Bohn, 1852) Ordines Coronationis Franciae: Texts and Ordines for the Coronation of Frankish and French Kings and Queens in the Middle Ages, ed. by Richard Jackson, 2 vols (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1995–2000)

110

M. C. Gaposchkin

The Sanctity of Louis IX: The Early Lives of Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres, trans. by Larry Field, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean L. Field (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014) The Teachings of Saint Louis: A Critical Text, ed. and trans. by David O’Connell, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 116 (Chapel Hill: Uni­ ver­sity of North Carolina Press, 1972) Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione filiorum nobilium, ed. by Arpad Steiner (Cam­bridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1938) —— , De morali principis institutione, ed. by Robert J. Schneider (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995) William of Chartres, ‘On the Life and Deeds of Louis, King of the Franks of Famous Memory, and on the Miracles that Declare his Sanctity’, trans. by Larry Field, in The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres, ed. by M.  Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean Field (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014), pp. 129–59

Secondary Studies Anton, Hans H., Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos in der Karolingerzeit (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid, 1968) Baldwin, John W., The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 1986) Bell, Dora M., L’idéal éthique de la royauté en France au Moyen Age, d’après quelques moralistes de ce temps (Geneva: E. Droz, 1962) Berges, Wilhelm, Die Fürstenspiegel des hohen und späten Mittelalters, Schriften des Reichs­ instituts für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 2 (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1938) Boutet, Dominique, ‘Y a-t-il une idéologie royale dans la Vie de saint Louis de Joinville?’, in Le prince et son historien: la vie de Saint Louis de Joinville (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1997), pp. 71–99 Büttner, Philippe, ‘Bilder zum Betreten der Zeit: Bible moralisée und kapetingisches König­ tum’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Uni­ver­sity of Basel, 2002) Canning, Joseph, A History of Medi­eval Political Thought, 300–1450 (London: Routledge, 1996) Caspary, Gerard, Politics and Exegesis: Origen and the Two Swords (Berkeley: Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 1979) Geertsma, Meindert, ‘Helinand’s De bono regimine principis: A Mirror for Princes or an Exegesis of Deuteronomy 17, 14-20?’, Sacris Erudiri, 52 (2013), 385-414 Grant, Lindy, ‘Gold Bezants on the Altar: Coronation Imagery in the Bibles Moralisées’, in Image, Memory, and Devotion, ed. by Zoë Opačić and Achim Timmermann, Studies in Gothic Art (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 55–59 Guest, Gerald, ‘Authorizing the Toledo Moralized Bible: Exegesis and the Gothic Matrix’, Word & Image, 18 (2002), 231–51 —— , Bible Moralisée: Codex Vindobonensis 2554, Vienna, Österreichische National­biblio­ thek, Manu­scripts in Miniature, 2, English edn (London: H. Miller, 1995)

Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles

111

—— , ‘Queens, Kings, and Clergy: Figures of Authority in the 13th-Century Moralized Bibles’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York Uni­ver­sity, 1998) Hamilton, Tracy Chapman, ‘Queenship and Kinship in the French Bible moralisee: The Example of Blanche of Castile and Vienna’, in Capetian Women, ed. by Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 177–208 Haussherr, Reinhard, ‘Sensus litteralis und sensus spiritualis in der bible moralisée’, Früh­ mittelalterliche Studien, 6 (1972), 356–80 Heinlen, James Michael, ‘The Ideology of Reform in the French Moralized Bible’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northwestern Uni­ver­sity, 1991) Hernández, Francisco, ‘The Bible of Saint Louis in the Chapels Royal of France and Castille’, in Biblia de San Luis: Catedral Primada de Toledo. Commentary Volume (Bar­ celona: M. Moleiro, 2004), pp. 17–38 Hughes, Christopher, ‘Typology and its Uses in the Moralized Bible’, in The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Hamburger and AnneMarie Bouché (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006), pp. 133–50 Jordan, Alyce, Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, International Center of Medi­eval Art Monograph Series (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002) Jordan, William Chester, ‘The Gleaners’, in Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World. Essays in Honour of Paul Freedman, ed. by Thomas Barton, Susan McDonough, Sara McDougall, and Matthew Wranovix (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) Kilcullen, John, ‘Medi­eval Political Theory’, in Handbook of Political Theory, ed. by Gerald F. Gaus and Chandran Kukathas (London: Sage Publications, 2004), pp. 238–62; a draft version is available at Krynen, Jacques, L’empire du roi: Idées et croyances politiques en France xiiie–xve siècle (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1993) —— , Idéal du prince et pouvoir royal en France a la fin du Moyen Âge (1380–1440): Études de la litterature politique du temps (Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1981) Le Goff, Jacques, Saint Louis, trans. by Gareth Evan Gollrad (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009) Lipton, Sara, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisée, The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies (Berkeley: Uni­ ver­sity of California Press, 1999) Lowden, John, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols (Uni­ver­sity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000) —— , ‘Les rois et les reines de France en tant que “public” des Bibles moralisées: Une approche tangentielle à la question des liens entre les Bibles moralisées et les vitraux de la Saint-Chapelle’, in La Sainte-Chapelle: Royaume de France et Jérusalem céleste? Actes du Colloque (Paris, Collège de France, 2001), ed. by Peter Kurmann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 345–62 Maier, Christoph, ‘The bible moralisée and the Crusades’, in The Experience of Crusading, i: Western Approaches, ed. by Marcus Bull and Norman Housely (Cam­bridge: Cam­ bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2003), pp. 209–22

112

M. C. Gaposchkin

Mills, Robert, ‘Seeing Sodomy in the Bibles moralisées’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 413–68 Raepple, Eva Maria, ‘Setting the Word into Motion: Textual Visuality in the Bible Moralisée, Vienna Codex 2554’, Philosophy Scholarship, paper 20 (2010) Reinhardt, Klaus, ‘The Texts of the Bible of Saint Louis’, in Biblia de San Luis: Catedral Primada de Toledo. Commentary Volume (Barcelona: M. Moleiro, 2004), pp. 269–321 Richard, Jean, Saint Louis: Crusader King of France, trans. by Jean Birrell (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992) Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte E., ‘Sarracens: Opponents to the Body of Christianity’, Medi­ eval History Journal, 13 (2010), 55–95 Stork, Hans-Walter, Bible moralisée: Codex Vindobonensis 2554 at the Österreichische National­bibliothek. Transkription und Übersetzung, Saarbrücker Hochschulschriften, 9 (St Ingbert: W. J. Röhrig, 1988) Strickland, Debra Higgs, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medi­eval Art (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2003) Weiss, Daniel, Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1998)

Part II. Power and its Representation

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King (c. 1260– c. 1314) Xavier Hélary

W

e usually examine questions relating to the military service of the nobility from the king’s point of view. The sources are indeed inclined that way, and it is the strengthening of royal power (of which the military is perhaps the most important aspect, especially as taxation was closely related to it) that has, quite legitimately, most interested historians.1 However if this is our sole point of view, we risk seeing only part of the story because the documents produced by the royal government were generally prescriptive in nature, particularly in the two closely related fields that are taxation and raising an army.2 In this article I hope to provide some explanation as to how royal requests for military assistance were received by the French nobility — they being the foremost recipient of such requests — between the time of the Tunis Crusade and the end of the reign of Philip the Fair, a period known for many years to have been decisive in the evolution of army recruitment.3 1 

The main titles I rely on are these: Favier, Philippe le Bel; Jordan, Louis IX and the Chal­ lenge of the Crusade; Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi; Le Goff, Saint Louis; Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale; Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair; and Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s papers such as, among many others, ‘Kings like Semi-gods’ and ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’. 2  Strayer and Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation; Brown, Customary Aids and Royal Finances; Hélary, ‘Révolution militaire’. 3  This was the subject of my doctoral thesis, Hélary, ‘L’Ost de France’, defended in Xavier Hélary ([email protected]) Université Lyon III Jean Moulin

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 115–142 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112970 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

116 Xavier Hélary

I shall examine the motivations that drove knights and squires to serve in the royal armies. I shall also assess the pertinence of the stereotype readily advanced by the noble code of honour — to serve the king — and the role it may have played in constituting the armies of this era.4 One point must be made clear from the start: no French king in the period under scrutiny bemoaned the weakness of his forces. A chronicler of the time reported that Philip III, during the expedition against Foix (1272), ‘mena grant foison de bonne chevalerie aveques lui’ and that, during the host of Sauveterre in 1276, ‘Touz les chans estoient couvers de genz’.5 This observation could be applied to all the other expeditions undertaken by the royal army in this period. It is generally admitted that neither of St Louis’s two Crusades failed because of a lack of troops. Philip III was not confronted with a superior enemy force at either Sauveterre (1276) or in Catalonia (1285). As for Philip the Fair, once his run of easy successes in the 1290s had come to an end, he raised the largest army of his reign after the heavy defeat at Kortrijk in 1302. Even in the dreadful years of 1302–04 the royal army was always able to raise a force equivalent to that of the Flemish trades guilds, the latter fighting very close to their power base. Never did the chroniclers or the documents produced by the royal propaganda machine (the latter it must be said had a fertile imagination) claim a numerical disadvantage to explain the failure of Philip the Fair’s armies in this two-year period.6 One sole anecdote appears to contradict this observation. The chronicler Primat describes a disappointed St  Louis arriving at Aigues-Mortes in the spring of 1270, preparing to embark for Tunis: Et le courage du roy très crestien estoit si diligent et si très ardant el negoce de la croyz, que un jour que il chevauchoit avant que il venist au port, il regarda entour lui pour veoir sa gent, qui avec li estoient; et donc commença à souspirer, quer il li estoit avis que il estoient trop pou; et puis se retourna devers l’evesque de Paris, qui

December 2004 at the Paris Sorbonne Uni­ver­sity (Paris IV). I would like to take this oppor­ tunity to thank professors Philippe Contamine and Jacques Verger; a shorter version was published in 2012, Hélary, L’Armée du roi de France and Hélary, Courtrai, 11 juillet 1302. 4  Contamine, ‘Noblesse et service’, and, more generally, the classic article from Con­tamine, ‘Points de vue sur la chevalerie en France’; see also the insights into the long term by Corvisier, ‘Quelques réflexions’. The question of motivations of knights has been of little interest to historians, except in the particular case of the Crusades, such as Flori, Pierre l’Ermite. 5  ‘Chronique anonyme finissant en 1286’, pp. 92–93. 6  At the very most the sources highlighted the number of the enemies.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

117

chevauchoit le plus prochain de lui, et li dist: Las! Comme je voi pou de gens au jour d’ui qui aient a cuer le besoing de la croiz ne de la sainte Église.7

The anecdote sounds genuine and fits the descriptions other chroniclers wrote of St Louis. But of course St Louis’s reaction can be attributed to his extremely demanding character, and Primat goes on to say that the reality on the ground did not justify his disappointment. We know it to be fact that the size of the crusader army was judged to be satisfactory — undoubtedly around twenty thousand men had to be transported across the Mediterranean. A second preliminary remark is also necessary: the royal army never suffered a revolt. The only revolt in that half century of which we know (Arras, September 1303) was linked to pay and not to the obligation to serve,8 and therefore was not a mutiny in the proper sense of the word. As for desertions — or rather ‘unauthorized departures’ — there must have been some then as there have been in all armies throughout history. But as far as we know they were never of a sufficient number to compromise operations. Only one single episode, albeit at the beginning of the period and in a very particular context, elicited any real concern: after the capitulation of the crusading army in April 1250 most of the surviving barons and knights, including the King’s two brothers Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou, chose not to serve St Louis in Syria and returned to France. During the council called by the King so the barons could express their views, one of the few to advise him to remain was Joinville; the other men of high rank reproached him for this, sometimes violently.9 It seems, therefore, that, taking into account the logistical constraints (most notably provisioning) that limited the number of men that could actually be assembled, the king of France, even in the worst of moments, never had any difficulty in raising a suitably sized army — size, of course, not always being a prerequisite for success. In other words, we could say that, in general, the French chivalry responded favourably to the demands of the royal government in the restricted sense that the latter never lacked troops. With these premises in mind, we now have to determine why the knights and squires of the kingdom of France accepted risking their lives, in often faraway wars that would cost many lives, including when the kingdom itself was 7 

Primat translated by du Vignay, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxiii, 40. 8  For information on the soudoyers’ revolt, see Funck-Brentano, Les origines de la guerre de Cent, p. 455. 9  Jean de Joinville, La Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Monfrin, chs 426–27.

118 Xavier Hélary

generally not in any danger. We could say that this question is only pertinent for a European born in the latter part of the twentieth century, in a country such as France that has not seen a major war for decades and where conscripts have been replaced by a professional army whose declared aims are, today, humanitarian. As recently as fifty or sixty years ago things were completely different. A Frenchman would only have to look at his livret militaire issued to him at the end of his compulsory service, which to us today seems overly long (two years), for him to know where he should report in the few days following his call-up. And for the Frenchmen born in the 1920s war was a very possible, even probable, prospect. Mutatis mutandis, it was the same for a nobleman in the late thirteenth century. War was for him a natural activity, something for which his education had prepared him. It was in some ways his reason for living and, possibly, as a result, the reason for which he would die. In such a context the risks associated with participating in a military campaign were taken for granted; war was part of what it was to be noble. Philippe Contamine has shown that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries one of the fundamental ideas upon which nobility was based was indeed the notion of ‘service’, a notion hammered home by the royal government until it eventually became a cliché of official propaganda.10 For the late thirteenth century, however, we have various examples that challenge or, more precisely, qualify this idea that the nobility had an overwhelming vocation to serve the king. Even though the last of the Capetians never had any difficulty in raising an army, it does not mean that all the members of the nobility readily participated in the war effort. St Louis did, indeed, find it difficult to convince his barons to follow him on his two expeditions. Philip III, faced with a disappointing return on his call to arms prior to the campaign against the Count of Foix (1272), took severe measures against those who neglected to obey him. Several decades later Philip the Fair had to employ a particularly creative propaganda campaign to impose the principle of compulsory military service for all members of the nobility and later, with the arrival of the arrièreban, for all the subjects of the kingdom. While the royal chancellery justified the policies of Philip the Fair, both before and after Kortrijk, in a tone that was always appropriate to the circumstances (firm when the king was in a strong position, humble when he was not), on the ground, the baillis and sénéchaux were ordered to pursue those noblemen who had not obeyed the call to arms and to forfeit them. A veritable system of enforcement was set up to make the recalcitrants pay or join the army. 10 

Contamine, ‘Noblesse et service’.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

119

All in all, the king rarely had any difficulty in raising an army of sufficient size; but the pool from which he could draw did not include the whole of the nobility. There were those who opposed and those, undoubtedly in greater numbers, who were reluctant. If we are to understand what motivated those who served, we must also take into account those knights who preferred to stay at home, the latter inevitably putting the former into perspective. Of all the possible reasons why a nobleman, whether knight or squire, might serve in the royal army, special consideration has to be given to the obligation placed upon him. Indeed, the end of the thirteenth century saw king and nobility in a tussle that Philip the Fair would eventually win thanks, in the main, to the policies of his father, Philip III, who started the reform of the nobility’s military service. In 1272, to suppress the revolt of the Count of Foix, Philip III assembled his host by calling on the direct vassals that owed him service. These great vassals responded to the royal call to arms with the very limited forces they were obliged to produce; low- and middle-ranking vassals did the same. But at the city of Tours, where the vassals of the bailliages of the north of the kingdom were expected to assemble, and at Toulouse, where those of the sénéchaussées were to join them, the King’s clerks realized that, although not negligible, the result of the feudal levy was certainly average. Ferdinand Lot, in his commentary on the lists of the Foix host which he had studied summarily, ridiculed the limited resources of the King of France.11 In reality, the most plausible estimates of the number of warriors assembled by the King in 1272 amount to a thousand knights and thousands of squires and men-at-arms. The army that followed Philip III south was indeed large enough. However, at Pamiers, where operations against Foix castle began, the facts had to be faced: the forty-day limit that applied to compulsory unpaid military service would soon be reached. What could the King do thereafter? One option would have been to pay the men to continue operations, something the King already did with the large retinue which made up the core of his army. But nothing obliged mere vassals to prolong their service. The feudal levy was no longer suitable. The initial reaction of the royal government was to pursue the offenders. The Parlement held by the King in 1274 determined the fines that were to be levied on those who ignored the call to arms.12 But by the host of Sauveterre 11 

Lot, L’Art militaire et les armées au Moyen Âge, i, 237. The original seems to have been lost. The text comes to us through Pierre d’Étampes, keeper of the royal archives, in Paris, BnF, f. lat. 10932, fol. 30, and published numerous times thereafter, especially in Ordonnances des rois de France, xi, 351. See also the analysis by Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi, Appendices, ‘catalogue des mandements’, no. 33, p. 391. 12 

120 Xavier Hélary

in 1276, royal policy had already changed. Because the expedition would lead the army out of the kingdom (the objective was the Castile of Alfonso X), and the kingdom was not in danger, it was difficult for the King to demand the feudal levy. And yet, as far as we can tell, Philip III did do so albeit with a major modification: all the men taking part were paid, many of them from the very first day. Compulsory service, in theory limited, was in the process of being considerably extended. The royal government chose to retain only the principle, without the limitations, although wages were to be paid. From then on the king’s vassals were compelled to serve in wars, wherever they were and for unlimited durations, albeit in exchange for payment. In the sénéchaussées the reform went much further. In southern France, military obligations to the king were less restrictive than those experienced in the north where the baillis were more powerful. These obligations were also less well defined and more limited. Nevertheless, in times of trouble (the occupation of Navarre in 1275, the war with Castile the following year, and the war with Aragon in 1282) the sénéchaux of the south of France, and particularly those of Toulouse, developed the habit of regularly, almost annually, calling the nobles of their provinces to arms. Soon all the noblemen were considered to be under a duty to serve, a policy made easier to impose by the fact that the frontiers of the kingdom in that region were actually under threat. Thus the distinction between the direct vassals of the king, the latter then being the Count of Toulouse, and the indirect vassals began to blur: they were all under a duty to serve the king because they were nobles and he was their sovereign. So the reform of Philip III was twofold: the payment of wages had been accepted; the obligation to serve was in the process of being extended to all members of the nobility. It was down to Philip the Fair to complete the reform. He did this in two stages, which relied greatly on circumstances. During his wars with the king of England in Aquitaine (1294–97), Philip the Fair was able to generalize the reform that his father had imposed in the sénéchaussées of the south: the principle of military service for all nobles. In this mostly victorious and thus favourable context, the reform was extended to all the provinces of the territory. In 1297 the King began to prosecute a perilous policy in Flanders. Initially successful, he got bogged down after the disaster at Kortrijk, and two very difficult years (1302–04) saw the genesis of the concept of the arrière-ban. In the same way that the King was able to impose compulsory military service on all nobles after his victory in Aquitaine, the defeat in Flanders allowed him to extend military service to all the inhabitants of the kingdom through extremely inventive and deliberately dramatic propaganda.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

121

That is, very briefly, the form taken by the general reform of military service in the late thirteenth century. And it remained more or less the same until the start of the Hundred Years’ War.13 For the subject that concerns us here — the reasons why knights and squires served in the royal armies — it is certainly one of the central themes and needs to be taken into account: they served because they were obliged to do so. It could be claimed, however, that, of the tens of thousands of nobles in the kingdom, not all of them served, some not even once, and that certainly none of them showed a desire to do so. The answer to this claim involves two points. The first is that, as we stated at the beginning, the king had no difficulty in raising a sufficiently large army with just the willing nobles. The king had at his disposal a veritable pool of knights that were directly linked to him, not only because he was the lord of their fiefs but also because they enjoyed from him a fief-rent, that is to say, a sum of money for which they paid homage and in exchange for which they owed service.14 Moreover, the time it took to assemble an army was remarkably short. The army defeated at Kortrijk was assembled in just a few weeks by Robert of Artois who, given the job of avenging the revolt known as the ‘Matins of Brugge’ (18 May 1302), joined the campaign in late June, approximately one month after the operation had been decided. He could not have had a very large army under his command (probably several thousand men-at-arms); however, it must have been to the satisfaction of this very experienced military chief. The Count of Artois’s army was, in the operation envisaged by Philip the Fair, the spearhead of the royal host that was to assemble at the beginning of August. Several times previously a small army of this type had fought campaigns and, for example, had been sufficient under the command of Charles of Valois to subjugate the Count of Flanders in 1300. In the end, the general call to arms that had been made across the kingdom in the spring of 1300 was cancelled. In the spring of 1302 it was certainly Philip the Fair’s idea to repeat the exercise. The men-at-arms that constituted Charles of Valois’s small army of 1300 or that of Robert of Artois in 1302 were, in a way, the King’s ‘regular army’. In the autumn, despite having experienced his first major military defeat, Philip the Fair had no difficulty in drawing to him thousands of knights and squires from all over the kingdom, in a relatively short period of time (although much longer than the time it took to assemble the small army that failed at Kortrijk). If the 13  14 

Contamine, Guerre, état et société à la fin du Moyen Âge, pp. 3–131. For more information on fief-rent, see the classic work by Lyon, From Fief to Indenture.

122 Xavier Hélary

great host of the autumn was dismissed without seeing action, it was because many of the commanders and best warriors had fallen at Kortrijk. For the subject that interests us here, the most important point is that the king could count, in catastrophic circumstances, on the nobility. That knights and squires were unenthusiastic about or ill-prepared for the call to arms is another matter. Appealing to the goodwill of the nobility was, therefore, sufficient to raise a suitable army. So was it really necessary to implement a more coercive policy? There was no doubt in the minds of the kings, their advisers, and their agents that it was; and that is the second part of the answer to the claim made above. Part of the remit of the baillis and the sénéchaux was to conduct the contingent levied on their province to the assembly point fixed by the king. Quite often, especially in the south of France, they themselves had to lead military operations, sometimes of considerable scale.15 The baillis and sénéchaux were in fact military chiefs. Certain evidence leaves us in no doubt that they could exert great pressure. During preparations for the expedition against Foix, in May 1272, Barthélémy, seigneur of L’Île-Bouchard — whom Philip III had ordered to pay homage to his chamberlain Pierre de La Broce, but who, at that time, was still a direct vassal of the king — was summoned to join the army with a certain number of knights. Immobilized by an attack of gout, Barthélémy was unable to join the host. He therefore urged Pierre, in very pressing terms, to speak to the King in his favour so that a letter of respite could be sent to the bailli. Barthélémy’s request to the court favourite, his new lord, that he appeal to the King on his behalf illustrates the importance of the bailli in the procedure of calling the vassals to arms: clearly Barthélémy feared being branded an absentee.16 Two years later, in 1274, a private war broke out between two noblemen of Picardy, Raoul de Flavy and Jean de l’Essart. The latter, summoned by the King’s officials to the host of Montfaucon directed against Rudolf of Habsburg, asked the royal provost to obtain a truce from his adversary for the time he would be in the King’s service. The provost referred the matter to the seigneur of Nesle, of whom Raoul de Flavy was a vassal. ‘Et quant mesires Jehans vit che, il n’osa laissier por le doute le roi qu’il n’alast u serviche le roy a Montfaucon’.17 15 

The sénéchaux of Toulouse often found themselves on the front line. Charles-Victor Langlois, historian of Philip the Bold, saw in Eustache de Beaumarchais, seneschal of Toulouse and briefly governor of Navarre, the ‘Du Guesclin of the reign’. See Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi, p. 43. 16  For more on this matter, see Hélary, ‘Pierre de La Broce’. 17  Actes du Parlement de Paris, ed. by Boutaric, i, no. 1987 B (after Paris, AN, J 1028, no. 14).

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

123

‘Le doute le roi’: the king’s orders were not to be taken lightly, and the baillis seemed to be particularly feared. Their mandments, as a result, were respected. For the host of Foix in 1272, it is true that many vassals did not heed the royal call to arms, but the zeal with which others did heed it must be noted. Often the people who were called up did attempt to play down or, in certain cases, deny their obligations, but they made the journey all the same, rather than ignore the call to arms. That is because, for most of the time, they did not refuse to serve: they refused to serve for free. After the host of Foix, Gui de Lévis, lord of Mirepoix and Marshal of Albigeois, appealed to the Parlement. He claimed that he alone had a duty to serve the king, along with nine other knights, and that his vassals had no duty of the sort. He was nonsuited.18 But nothing states that this member of the belligerent Levis family was reluctant about serving in the royal army; simply, he did not want to be forced to do so, and even less for free, and he did not want his vassals, simple rear vassals of the king, to owe military service to anyone but him. The reform started with the host of Sauveterre dealt with this reluctance by universalizing the payment of wages. Some, however, rejected the prospect of serving the king in war, even in exchange for wages. They were more visible in the reign that followed. After the expedition against Foix, Philip III ordered that those who had not heeded his call to arms were to pay a fine; a lack of documentation prevents us from knowing what happened thereafter. Under Philip the Fair, the documentation is more plentiful. The accounts of the bailliages and the sénéchaussées show that the mandments by which the King ordered his representatives to pursue the recalcitrants and make them pay forfeit were carried out. They provide sufficient evidence to indicate that the practice persisted. In 1297 the King assembled an army for the purpose of invading the county of Flanders. The contingents of the bailliages were called to arms. Among the extracts of the bailliages rolls for Ascension Day 1298 figures this expense: ‘Pro parum computatis pro nobilibus compellendis ut irent in exercitum, 20 s.’19 Thus some pressure had to be applied to the nobles for them to join the host. In 1299, on the orders of the King, Gérard de Condé, one of the royal clerks, drafted a summary of all the various moneys levied in the bailliage of Caux. Only part of this summary has survived.20 Yet the subtitle of this work is wor18 

Actes du Parlement de Paris, ed. by Boutaric, i, no. 1869 (Toussaint 1272); cf. Dom Devic and Dom Vaissète, Histoire générale du Languedoc, ix, ed. by Molinier, p. 18. 19  Comptes royaux (1285–1314), i, ed. by Fawtier and Maillard, no. 345. 20  Comptes royaux (1285–1314), ii, ed. by Fawtier and Maillard, nos. 21231–38.

124 Xavier Hélary

thy of our attention.21 Among the many taxes born of the fiscal ingenuity of Philip the Fair’s advisers are the ‘financie nobilium pro excercitu [sic] Flandrensi et quorumdam grosseriorum 1000 libras habentium’. Gérard de Condé’s estimate of their yield has been lost, but the essential point remains: in 1297, if not earlier, nobles were required to redeem host service. So it was compulsory, and at this date, the system of financial compensation was already in place. It was in essence, of course, the system set up by Philip III after the host of Foix which saw a forfeit tariffed and imposed on those who did not join the host. The only difference being — and it is a major difference — that it no longer applied to just the vassals of the king but to all the nobles. Again, the accounts of the bailliage of Tours for All Saints’ Day 1299 mention some ‘Financie nobiliorum qui non fuerunt in exercitu Flandrie’.22 Note that it mentions the nobles: not the vassals or the knights, but the nobles. Moreover, the twelve offenders listed are knights (qualified as ‘dominus’) and squires (unqualified), but nothing indicates that they were the king’s vassals. The forfeit they had to pay was modest, and it varied (4 to 20 livres, with an average of 10 livres). This suggests that the size of their estate determined the size of their ‘contribution’. And yet even these modest charges were paid with reluctance: the same accounts of the bailliage of Tours record that 9 livres and 14 sous were spent on sending sergeants out to exact the ‘contributions’ owed by nobles who had not joined the host.23 After Kortrijk, the King’s authority was shaken. Philip the Fair understood the risk. He demonstrated a mixture of firmness and compromise that would come to characterize those difficult years. Like his father after the hosts of Foix and Navarre thirty years before, the King’s first action upon returning from the frontiers of Flanders was to levy forfeits on those, both nobles and nonnobles of sufficient wealth, who had not joined the host. The application of this measure was facilitated by the receipts delivered to each knight and squire who took part in the campaign as they showed from which bailliage they had 21 

Apprisia facta, de mandato domini regis, per dominum Gerardum de Condeto, presbiterum, et Droconem Perigrini super valore centesime, quinquagesime, secunde quinquagesime sive novissime et muttualis subventionis, necnon auxilii et obolorum pro facto maris, financiarumque nobilium pro excercitu Flandrensi et quorumdam grosseriorum 1000 libras habentium et assisie domini regis, que malatolta dicitur, in ballivia Caletensi et ressortis ejusdem, anno Domini 1299. 22  Comptes royaux (1285–1314), i, ed. by Fawtier and Maillard, nos. 2976–88. 23  Comptes royaux (1285–1314), i, ed. by Fawtier and Maillard, no. 3210: ‘Pro expensis quorumdam servientium ballivie, missorum huc et illuc per balliviam, pro compellendo nobiles dicte ballivie ad solvendum financias ab ipsis debitas pro eo quod non fuerunt in exercitu Flandrensi’.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

125

come. The King’s clerks then drew up lists for each province, and these enabled the King’s men to seek out the recalcitrants. On 18 October 1302 the King ordered Jean de Dijon and the bailli of Mâcon to levy forfeits on those nobles who had an income of at least 40 livres and on all nobles and non-nobles who had 300 livres’ worth of assets who had not served in the host.24 Pragmatism, however, was the order of the day. On 5 October 1302 Philip the Fair yielded to the entreaties of the Count of Rodez — a powerful vassal that he was wise not to upset especially as he had served in the host — and returned to all the feudaries under the Count’s authority the forfeits they had incurred for their failure to join the host of Flanders; and even the arrière-ban were allowed some respite.25 It was especially delicate for the King to be seen to deal too harshly with the recalcitrants as the nobles had answered in their masses the call to arms without, in the end, giving battle. He knew there would be more fighting against the Flemish, and future campaigns could not be compromised.26 One could cite other examples when the king’s representatives were effective conveyors of the royal order. Baillis and sénéchaux ensured that calls to arms were obeyed, in much the same way the modern military police does. They were certainly responsible, personally responsible, for ensuring call-up operations went smoothly, so it was in their interest to be enthusiastic about their job. In reality, if the nobles served the king, it was foremost because they had no other choice: it was one of the great advances of the reigns of Philip III and his son in terms of applying royal power. Nevertheless this obligation to serve only applied to certain campaigns prosecuted by the royal army. In the period under consideration the kings of France led three Crusades: St Louis did so twice, in 1248 and 1270, and Philip III once, in 1285. These crusading armies were assembled in exactly the same way as those we have looked at above. As far as we can ascertain they involved the same fighters, the same organization, and the same magnitude of participation. Nevertheless feudal obligation was not an option because a Crusade, which could only be embarked upon after making a conscious vow, fell outside the well-defined framework of vassalic obligations. Other expeditions led or 24  Paris, AN, JJ 36, fol. 9v, no. 28; La Roque, Traité du ban et de l’arrière-ban, p. 141; the measure was repealed a few days later on 9 November: see Ordonnances des rois de France, i, 350–51. 25  Montauban, Archives départementales de Tarn-et-Garonne, JJ 316, fol. 36v. 26  The King dealt brutally with the abuses of his agents: on 22 October 1302, Jean de Gonesse, canon of Chartres, and Guillaume de Nogaret, knight, were sent to the bailliage of Senlis to investigate and restore order (Paris, AN, JJ 36, fol. 12, nos. 38 and 39 ; cf. also no. 40).

126 Xavier Hélary

sponsored by kings fell into this category. In 1265 Charles of Anjou organized an expedition that was sanctioned by the church and supported, to what degree we do not know, by his brother St Louis. His victory the following year at Benevento secured for him the kingdom of Sicily. In 1282 Philip III sent, in the name of Pope Martin IV, a small army to the region of Romagna to quell a rebellion against papal authority. At the end of that same year an expedition led by the Counts of Alençon and Artois, nephews to Charles of Anjou, also set out for Italy to succour their uncle as he grappled with the Sicilian revolt known as the ‘Sicilian Vespers’.27 There were therefore cases, indeed many cases, where, despite the principle of compulsory military service not being applicable, a section of the nobility served willingly. A taste for war undoubtedly played a role. We would be hard pushed to explain the career of the Count of Artois without evoking a great attraction for life in the army camps.28 From 1270 until his death in 1302, Robert of Artois was on permanent campaign: the Crusade to Tunis (1270), a period in Tuscany in the service of Charles of Anjou (1274), an emergency expedition to Italy and the regency of the kingdom of Naples (1282–91), campaigns in Aquitaine (1296–97) and Flanders (1297), punctuated by two important victories (Bonnegarde and Veurne). In June and July 1302 a final campaign, during which he lost his life, was preceded by negotiations with the papacy over a new Italian expedition whose leader would turn out to be Charles of Valois. Between campaigns the Count of Artois spent much of his time in tournaments. Surviving accounts are full of entries relating to payments made to his knights in compensation for their losses incurred in tournaments he was attending. Robert of Artois was even the heroic subject of Le Roman du Hem, a precious account written in verse and based on a tournament held in the little seigneury of Le Hem in 1278.29 Tournaments were, of course, not war but did resemble it. In this respect we can subscribe to the idea defended by that great historian of the Angevin dynasty, Émile Léonard, who saw a desire to escape boredom as being a principal motivation for the knights who chose to follow Charles of Anjou.30 27 

Hélary, ‘La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alençon’. Hélary, ‘Robert II, comte d’Artois’. 29  Sarrasin, Le Roman du Hem, ed. by Henry. 30  Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples, p. 16: ‘So, when the supreme means of entertainment is lacking — that of war, that final resource to restore a man’s life, by risking it at every moment, a flavour that fades instantly — one must look for something else or leave for new horizons.’ 28 

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

127

There must have been quite a number of those who, like the Count of Artois, developed a passion for the military life and never balked at a new campaign or another tournament. One Pierre Pillart of Ménil, a knight of the lands of Beaumont who was in trouble with the local provost over the theft of a horse, pleaded his cause in terms that would have been well known to the King, probably Philip III.31 To sway the King in his favour, Pierre Pillart emphasized his record of service: ‘Je sui vous et vos anceseus en l’alé que en n’ala a Damieste, et que en ala en Sesile, et au siege a Marselles, et au siege de Tunes. En toz ces lius, trovarant chevaliers et bones gens qui m’aront veu et quonneu mes euvres.’ That a completely unknown knight, certainly of humble origin, and whose name is only known to us by pure chance, had taken part in the Crusade to Egypt (1248–50), Charles of Anjou’s siege of Marseilles (1262) and Crusade to Sicily (1265–66), and the expedition to Tunis (1270) allows us to suppose that he felt no particular reluctance to fight. It is legitimate to suppose too that he was not the only one of his kind. For all these expeditions the soldiers were paid either wages or ‘convenances’. The contract made prior to the start of the expedition between the king and his baron or knight detailed the commitments of both parties. Does this mean that it was pay which lured men-at-arms to the army? This is obviously a difficult question to answer, and one that could be asked for every expedition that paid wages, but it is a parameter that should not be neglected. Of course, we also need to be able to determine the relative importance of service pay compared to the resources of an average nobleman.32 Was it a much-hoped-for financial gain or, on the contrary, simply the means of covering expedition expenses (horses, weapons, equipment, food) — without compensation for personal risk? Very often, in reality, the financial benefits were minimal, which leads us to think that war was not in general an opportunity to get rich. In fact it seems to be quite the opposite because the army chiefs were high-ranking barons often related to the king and served at their own expense, with knights and squires waiting up to ten years to receive their wages.33 Only a few particularly It must be noted that, earlier in his piece, Léonard implies the knights of the thirteenth century belonged to the ‘primitive populations’. 31  There are two editions of this remarkable little dossier, published fifty years apart: Douët d’Arcq, ‘Supplique d’un chevalier’; Berger, ‘Requête adressée au roi de France’ (following quote at p. 349). 32  See the table of wages drawn up by Contamine, Guerre, état et société à la fin du Moyen Âge, Appendice 6, pp. 619–36. 33  In February 1309, Philip the Fair ordered Jean de Crépy, his clerk charged with collecting

128 Xavier Hélary

valorous soldiers could hope to benefit from the war which would have been for the most part indirect, in the form of rewards granted by the sovereign. Many a career flourished thanks to the wars of Philip the Fair. A simple bowman of the king’s retinue could rise to the position of knight and enjoy the wealth that accompanied it.34 As a general rule, however, one did not become rich on soldier wages, even in a successful war. Joinville lost so much during the Egyptian Crusade that when, twenty years later, asked to take up the cross again, he refused.35 And yet pay was not the only reward that an optimistic knight, or one who was lucky enough to survive the fighting, could expect. The lure of more substantial profits would have also played a role. A knight who gained the favour of the king could expect, in most cases, gifts that were generally of considerable worth. But, even better, war could change destinies. In this respect, examples come from afar. The First Crusade saw several great lords become kings of Jerusalem, princes of Antioch, and counts of Edessa. An example even more striking is that of the Hauteville, a little-known family from the Cotentin, who rose to the throne of Sicily and married into the family of the Capetians. But the episode that, in the second half of the thirteenth century, all ambitious nobles must have kept in mind was undoubtedly the taking of Constantinople in 1204 and the events that followed. Simple lords of Champagne and Burgundy were transformed overnight into princes of Morea and dukes of Athens, although they maintained close links with France. For example, Othon de La Roche, Duke of Athens, retired to his ancestral home in his twilight years. As for the Latin emperors, they retained their French titles of counts of Namur and sires of Courtenay. Even in the very last years of the thirteenth century and the beginning of next, French lords continued to seek a future in Greece or the Holy Land. Gautier, Count of Brienne, became Duke of Athens, and this allowed his son, the constable of France, to bear, even for the middle of the fourteenth century, an archaic-sounding title.36 The prospect of conquering vast lands was undoubtedly a familiar one to many nobles, in particular those who rallied to Charles of Anjou in 1265. décime and annates, to pay Humbert de Romans, a knight, his wages and those of his company during the Aquitanian War. Active operations in Aquitaine having ceased in 1297, it is probable that these wages had been outstanding for more than ten years (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 25697, no. 44). 34  An example being Ourri l’Allemand, whose career can be traced from 1285 to 1316. 35  Jean de Joinville, La Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Monfrin, see esp. ch. 735. 36  Longnon, L’Empire latin de Constantinople.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

129

They were well rewarded, the conqueror never reluctant with his favours, especially when Conradin’s expedition into Italy in 1268 revealed the fragility of his standing among the local nobility.37 In 1285 it is not impossible that the nobles who decided to accompany Philip III on his expedition against the king of Aragon entertained similar ulterior motives. In fact, the goal of the expedition was perfectly clear: to conquer the kingdom of Aragon that the Pope had granted to the second son of the king of France, Charles of Valois. According to Desclot, the contemporary Catalan chronicler (whose accounts should often be treated with caution when they involve the French), Charles of Valois had already chosen lords for his still-to-be-conquered lands in Aragon, and the division of fiefs had already begun before he had even crossed the Pyrenees.38 The failure of the expedition prevented Charles of Valois from repeating his successes of twenty years previous, but it is probable that that is what the crusaders of 1285 had in mind when they rallied to him. In addition to the prospect of gaining wealth, they undoubtedly entertained, of course, a desire for glory. During one of the difficult episodes of the Egyptian campaign in 1250 the Count of Soissons said to Joinville: ‘Seneschal, lessons huer cette chiennaille, que, par la quoife Dieu! — ainsi comme il juroit — encore en parlerons nous entre vous et moy de ceste journée ès chambres des dames’.39 This desire to be covered with glory was without doubt not unique to the Count of Soissons. Despite the efforts of the military leaders, discipline was very difficult to impose in the ranks of the French army so much was the desire for advancement, both in the literal and the figurative sense. Even if we treat with suspicion the themes that structure any account of defeat, there remains no doubt that the chivalresque individualism that one such as Joinville did not condemn, at least no more than certain ecclesiastical chroniclers did, was the cause of the failure that characterized in general the military enterprises of the French in this period.40 Whatever the case, we may draw the conclusion that the quest for glory was an important element in the nobility’s reasons for rallying the royal armies. This observation is not solely valid for expeditions to faraway lands. Just as much glory was to be had in Flanders and Aquitaine as in Egypt or Italy, 37  Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples, esp. pp.  80–82; and also, of course, Durrieu, Les archives angevines de Naples. 38  Petit, Charles de Valois, p. 8. 39  Jean de Joinville, La Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Monfrin, ch. 242. 40  Autrand, ‘La déconfiture’; Hélary, Courtrai, 11 juillet 1302.

130 Xavier Hélary

and without running the risks associated with hot countries whose climates rarely agreed with the French. For young men a military campaign, wherever it took place, was an opportunity to show their valour and to gain, if that had not already been done, their ‘military belt’ (Cingulum militiae). What dubbing could be more coveted than the one received in the morning prior to a battle or before the army moved out, or on returning from a campaign?41 Even more so in a period when dubbings had lost their attraction. So many noblemen clung to their title of squire that Philip the Fair, like his English counterpart Edward I, began to threaten punishment to those who refused to be knighted. For some, however, as far as we can tell, to be dubbed, especially in a proper military context, remained a prestigious honour for at least the upper ranks of the nobility. For example, in Joinville’s accounts only knights are mentioned by their names. That the Kings of France and England were obliged to take coercive measures in favour of dubbing leads us to believe that, by staying a squire, many hoped to avoid the military obligations and expenses that came with the position of knighthood. Unlike the noble elite who were unable to do without the title of knight, the more modest families in the country manors did not feel dishonoured if they no longer bore it. A lord from Burgundy by the name of Jean de Nesle — unrelated to the powerful Picard family of the same name — who had a cartulary compiled around 1270, had himself dubbed in his forties. We do not know if he ever took part in a military campaign.42 The willingness to serve could also be aroused by a charismatic leader. In 1265, the enterprise of Charles of Anjou appeared to involve great risk. Richard, Earl of Cornwall and brother of Henry III of England, to whom had been proposed the crown of Sicily, held back from embarking on the adventure. Even though it was a Crusade, and even if the pretender to the throne of Sicily had promised to pay those who followed him, it is probable that one of the determining factors was also the personality of Charles of Anjou whom contemporaries described as having great charisma.43 Gilles Li Muisis explains that Charles found himself at the head of a large army in Italy, thanks to the Pope’s indulgence, ‘et etiam quia princeps erat nominatissimus et curialis, in armis expertus et virtutum floribus pre ceteris perornatus’.44 The same can certainly be 41 

For more on this theme, see Contamine, ‘Points de vue sur la chevalerie en France’, p. 272. A transcription of the cartulary (Chantilly, Musée Condé, Archives du château de Chantilly, Série GB, XIV F 22) is available on line, ; see Hélary, ‘Un seigneur face à ses archives’. 43  Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou. 44  Chronique et annales, ed. by Lemaître, p. 7. 42 

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

131

said for the main military leader of the French armies at that time, the Count of Artois, nephew to St Louis. Chroniclers’ accounts of him lead us to suppose that he was a key figure. He had shown himself to be a tireless army commander in the wars of Philip III and Philip IV, and as regent of Sicily, and had acquired an aura that made him the greatest man of war of his time. In fact, until the disaster at Kortrijk, he had always been victorious. Warriors generally like serving under a commander upon whom victory smiles. It was the same for Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair. As for the kings of France themselves, the natural commanders of the army, they displayed varying levels of charisma. St Louis and Philip III took personal charge of their armies to the point of dying during a campaign, albeit from illness, the former at Tunis and the latter at Perpignan. Chronicles tell us that St Louis guarded jealously his role as army commander. Information is lacking on Philip III, but in 2001 William Jordan proposed that the son of St Louis enjoyed the ‘drama of war’.45 On the contrary, Philip the Fair was averse to personally commanding the army and generally delegated the role to his cousin Robert of Artois, his brother Charles of Valois, or even the constable, first Raoul de Clermont and later Gaucher de Châtillon. No less than the exceptional circumstances of the defeat and death of the Count of Artois at Kortrijk were necessary for the King to take his place at the head of the army and play a decisive role in the Battle of Mons-en-Pevèle. Despite this behaviour, his physical courage has never been denied. In 1285, during the campaign in Catalonia, at the age of about sixteen, he effectively seconded his father at the head of part of the army. It is possible that, mindful of the fate of his three predecessors who had all died during military campaigns, he preferred to stay well away from the front line. Nevertheless, after Kortrijk, at a time when he was demanding a particular effort from the nobility, he could do nothing else but set an example. The delicate situation in which he found himself during the Battle of Mons-en-Pevèle was widely reported in the chronicles, thus preserving the episode for posterity. The head of the army was not required to be victorious to arouse enthusiasm or maintain faithfulness; instead, all he had to do was to share and expose himself to the risks taken by all. A good example of this is the valorous John the Good who, several decades later, received little criticism for his actions whereas the faltering nobility was judged most unfavourably.46

45  46 

Jordan, ‘The Struggle for Influence’, p. 466. Autrand, ‘La déconfiture’; Carpentier, ‘L’historiographie de la bataille de Poitiers’.

132 Xavier Hélary

If his own charisma was insufficient to arouse the enthusiasm of the nobility, the king could turn to more convoluted methods. This was particularly the case with St Louis who displayed on occasions a ‘holy duplicity’. According to Matthew Paris, when faced with barons who were unenthusiastic about taking the cross, St Louis chose a very clever ploy: he had clothes sewn with crosses which were then distributed, quite casually, to the knights of his entourage during the Christmas festivities of 1245.47 He proceeded in a different manner for his second Crusade. On 25 March 1267, his announcement of taking the cross was not received with the success expected; indeed, St Louis only gained the support of his closest relatives. He had to wait until the following Whitsun, and the pomp and ceremony of the dubbing of his son Philip along with many dozens of young men, for his Crusade to finally take shape.48 In addition to the newly knighted men who, on such a solemn day, could not easily refuse to take the cross, many others undoubtedly got carried away in the general enthusiasm and rallied to the idea of a new Crusade. Later on, the dubbing of the heir to the throne was intimately linked to preparations for a Crusade: in 1284 the future Philip the Fair was knighted while his father was preparing the Crusade to Aragon; in 1313 the renewed enthusiasm for the East which characterized the final years of Philip the Fair’s reign was marked symbolically by the dubbing of his three sons and several dozen knights in a context dominated by the prospect of a new Crusade of great proportions. For a Crusade to go ahead, however, the king was now required to display great pomp and ceremony without the assurance of immediate success. Let us take, for example, Joinville who sought, undeniably, to justify his own refusal to accompany St Louis by highlighting the declining health of the King and a general lack of enthusiasm among the royal entourage. This decline of motivation for crusading among French knights at the end of the thirteenth century merits closer study since the French were certainly the most numerous participants in the history of the Crusades.49 Crusading 47 

Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, p. 179. Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, ed. by Géraud, i, 232: ‘Ludovicus, rex Francie, in festo Pentecostes, fecit Philippum primogenitum suum et Robertum comitem Attrebatensem, nepotem suum, novos milites, cum pluribus aliis apud Parisius. Ubi tanto fuit laetitiae solemnitas, quod populus civitatis Parisius ab omni opere vacans, solummodo laetitiae et exultationi intentus, per octo dies et amplius, civitate per totum cortinis pannorum varii coloris et ornamentis pretiosis mirabiliter palliata, solemnitatem protenderent’. 49  See a contrario, on the minimal impact of the crusading movement on English society, the illuminating conclusions in Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, pp. 244–47. 48 

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

133

was an ideal that remained very much alive in chivalresque literature, or in the works of a Rutebeuf, and was very present in the bulls of the papal chancellery. But in most minds the days of the Crusade were fading. In general, the lack of success at Tunis confirmed this decline. And yet, if we exclude the relative solitude of St Louis in Syria between 1250 and 1254, the Crusade was not an opportunity for the nobility to free themselves from the obligation of providing military service to the king. On the contrary, the king of France was the only European sovereign able to assemble twenty thousand men to succour the Holy Land. In one sense, the nobility’s participation in the Tunis expedition was proof of their attachment to serving the king in war despite the Crusade no longer being an inspiring ideal. In the 1260s and 1270s, very few went overseas of their own accord to defend the Holy Land. They had to be encouraged to do so by the king. In essence, when this encouragement was no longer forthcoming, the Crusades were finished. All in all, Philip III and Philip the Fair showed the same reluctance as the nobility when it came to crusading. This means that, after St Louis, king and nobles were no longer at odds: they enjoyed a tacit consensus.50 In the case of St Louis, his propaganda amounted to moral blackmail, but he also relied on the notion of ‘serving the king’. The King’s relatives, his close circle, and certainly many of his direct vassals were bound in their hearts to obey his commands, even when they were not strictly required to do so. This is what happened in the years leading up to the departure for Tunis. This was also, as we have seen, the sentiment that allowed for the system of strict feudal obligations to mutate into a system where all nobles and all subjects were obliged to take part in the war effort led by the king, in the name of all. When it came to the nobility proper, the king could play upon the bond that united him with his knights. The king of France was a knight himself, and St Louis, like Philip III and Philip the Fair, enjoyed much natural credit with them because of this. One of the criticisms levelled at Philip III after the fall of his favourite, Pierre de La Broce, was that he neglected the advice of his barons in favour of that of a man of low status.51 One brave woman criticized St Louis 50 

Hélary, ‘Le “dégoût” de la noblesse française’. ‘Chronique anonyme finissant en 1286’, p. 95; the author, aware of the hesitation of the King to arrest Pierre de La Broce and ‘tiex genz entour soi qui n’estoient pas preudommes ne loiaus’, explained: ‘Mès [Philippe III] ne moustra pas tantost sa volenté; ainz se souffri, pour ce qu’il les avoit trop creus aucunes fois. Car s’il eust dit a son conseil ne ses barons: “Tel honte m’a fait cil”, il eussent dit: “C’est a bon droit; vous aviez grigneur fiance en lui que vos frères”. Et por ce s’en souffri li rois.’ 51 

134 Xavier Hélary

for being more like a monk than a knight.52 It was better that an advocate like Pierre Dubois advised the king so as to limit his exposure.53 The king himself felt invested with an eminent responsibility not only towards his kingdom but also to the army. This was at least the case for St Louis whose feelings were better documented than those of his successors. In the spring of 1250, St Louis was intent on paying the totality of the ransom demanded by the Saracens for the army (500,000 livres tournois), plus the port of Damietta for his own deliverance.54 There was a kind of continuity in the ‘propaganda’ that was instigated during the reign of St Louis through to that of Philip the Fair. The former obtained from the nobility, sometimes by convoluted means, a promise to join his expeditions overseas. He did this by exploiting the idea of the Crusades, his subjects’ susceptibility to preaching, and the links that united the King and his nobility. The latter put forth, for the same reasons and just as successfully, other notions and most prominently that of ‘defence of the realm’.55 This leitmotiv of the royal propaganda allowed the King to extend compulsory military service initially to the nobility, thanks to the wars over Aquitaine, and later to the rest of his subjects with the appearance of the notion of arrière-ban. This notion of ‘defence of the realm’ was associated, more discreetly, with that of ‘honour of the king’, something the King could invoke in particular against his knights. These themes of the royal propaganda were used to mobilize opinion in order to attract recruits and, perhaps above all, donations of money. Indeed, during the reign of Philip the Fair the propaganda effort grew in size, rather than taking on radical new themes. But this might be misleading because efforts were not constant throughout the reign. In the victorious period, in the great decade of the 1290s, the King and the royal government seemed to pay little heed to obtaining troops by any other means than that of a brutal invocation of the need to defend the realm; a strange notion because, as Boniface VIII did not hesitate to point out, the King was obviously the instiga52  ‘Fi! Fi! Deusses du estre roi de France! Mout miex fust que un autre fust roi que tu; car tu es roy tant seulement des Freres meneurs et des Freres preecheurs et des prestres et des clers. Grant damage est que tu es roy de France, et c’est grant merveille que tu n’es bouté hors du roiaume’, said an unhappy complainant in Vie de saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, ed. by Delaborde, p. 118. For St Louis’s relationship with his brothers, see Little, ‘Saint Louis’ Involvement’. 53  Pierre Dubois, De Recuperatione Terre sancte, ed. by Langlois, ch. 118, p. 109. 54  Jean de Joinville, La Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Monfrin, ch. 343. 55  Strayer, ‘Defense of the Realm’; Spiegel, ‘“Defense of the Realm”’; Ménache, ‘A Propa­ ganda Campaign’.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

135

tor of the war. That said, Philip the Fair treated the great barons more gently because he needed their support but could not insist upon it. The commanders of the armies imitated the King’s approach. On 21 July 1296, while directing operations in Aquitaine, the Count of Artois asked the ‘haut et noble homme et sage son tres chier amé especial monseigneur Henri, comte de Rodés’ to be in Langon on 5 August with men-at-arms ‘a tout quanques vous pourrez avoir de gens d’armes garnis de chevals et d’armes convenables’ to succour his captain who was besieged in the city of Dax.56 The very prudent allocutions employed by Robert of Artois to convince the Count of Rodez are significant.57 The tone used in the mandments sent to the sénéchaux and baillis was much curter. But this changed radically after Kortrijk. Thereafter the priority was compromise and negotiation. The royal vocabulary abandoned the lexicon of command in favour of one of request, plea, and even supplication. At the same time, the notion of the arrière-ban arrived at just the right moment to relay that of ‘defence of the realm’, which was still being used — more pertinently than before — but whose ‘spectacular’ quality was on the wane through overuse. The expression ‘arrière-ban’ appeared for the very first time in orders published by the king on 5 August 1302. In reality, it was merely an artifice designed to justify, in legal terms, a general call to arms that the King had been ready to enforce, without explanation, two months before when the context was much more favourable to him. In other words, the appearance of the term ‘arrière-ban’, which completed the better-known notion of ‘ban’ (the text mentions ‘par ban et par arrière-ban’), gave a legal hue to what the King was ready to impose by fait accompli in June earlier that same year. Back then he gave little thought to finding a new and legitimatizing term for compulsory military service that could be applied to all his subjects, but it would turn out to be the culminating point of thirty years of reform. With this change of situation, the King’s counsellors had found the appropriate expression with which to reassure those concerned. It was not a new and unwarranted measure but one that was 56  Paris, BnF, coll. Doat, vol. 179, fols 33–34 (in French); pub. from MS Colbertino, in Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum moralium, ed. by Martène, i, col. 1430 (with false date of 1310). 57  Paris, BnF, coll. Doat, vol. 179, fols 33–34: ‘Nous qui de vostre loyauté et bonté avons moult grant fiance et a bon droit, especialement a aider et garder l’honneur monseigneur le roy et son royaume, ainsi comme vous avez fait tousjours bien et loyalement a grands travaux et a grands peines, vous mandons de par monseigneur le roy et prions et requerons de par nous comme nous poons plus comme a nostre chier ami que vous si chier comme vous avez l’honneur monseigneur le roy et le vostre’.

136 Xavier Hélary

founded on a recognized, and time-honoured practice, even though it had not been required for a long time. ‘Il n’est memoire de lonc temps que du temps de noz devanciers fust si grant besoing comme orendroit de semondre par voie d’arrere-ban, auquel toutes maniere de gent, si comme vous savez, sont tenuz a venir sanz nulle excusation’.58 ‘Si comme vous savez’ obviously refers to the fact that nobody really knew what the arrière-ban was; but no one seemed to take much interest in it at the time. Whatever the case, the message was clear: the call-to-arms included everyone. The nobility seems to have responded willingly to the King’s summons, just as the nation as a whole did to those of Louis XIV (12 June 1709) and the Convention (23 August 1793). The army assembled in the autumn of 1302 was, as a result, the largest of the reign. Its considerable mass and the lack of experienced officers to replace those who had fallen several weeks earlier are reasons enough to explain why the army remained on standby. Subsequently, despite the difficulties, the royal army was large enough. The tone employed by the royal communication obviously counted for something. Was this, however, the product of effective propaganda? Undoubtedly this aspect played a role, especially the spectacular change of tone. But, on another scale, we can suppose that, during the crisis that followed the military disaster, a veritable national consciousness had come into being, fuelled by the efforts of the royal government, but which was far more deeply rooted. Naturally, this question should be studied in greater detail. Upon closer inspection, the motivations that led the nobles of the kingdom to serve in the armies of St Louis, Philip III, and Philip the Fair appear to be varied. The quest for glory and the desire to escape from boredom; the taste for war and the prospect of plunder, an advantageous situation, or wages; and the service of the king and the menacing shadow of the baillis and the sénéchaux: all these feelings which are so difficult to probe must have played a part in an infinite number of permutations, with every knight or squire having their own reasons for serving. The influence of each element must also be compared to the timescale and the nature of the given expedition. In 1265 the knights and the squires who followed Charles of Anjou were motivated by their leader’s qualities, the spiritual advantages offered by the church to this new category of crusader, and the prospect of wages in the immediate future and of gaining an advantageous situation. In the autumn of 1302, they were probably motivated by faithfulness and loyalty to the King, concern for the honour of the kingdom, and something similar to the emergence of a national consciousness. 58 

Paris, AN, JJ 35, fol. 30, no. 86; for an enumeration of the uses of the term ‘arrière-ban’, see Contamine, Guerre, état et société à la fin du Moyen Âge, appendix 6, pp. 26–27.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

137

* * * This brief reflection on military service leads to three conclusions. The king and his advisers were not content with adopting a passive attitude. The army, like the church, attached great importance to ceremony. The parades, reviews, saluting the flag, and so on that reached their peak in the nineteenth century had their equivalents in the France of six centuries before. The theatricalization of military activities intensified in the period under consideration, at a moment when the king’s power over the nobility was at its greatest. Beginning in the reign of St Louis, the ceremony of dubbing the king’s eldest son, a deliberately lavish affair, was designed to revive interest in the Crusades (1267, 1284, 1313). The intervention of the royal host was always preceded by the raising of the oriflamme, the sacred banner of St Denis.59 The oriflamme was beginning to take on a significance similar to that of a veritable national flag. In his account of how the seneschal of Toulouse and his men, besieged in Pamplona, awaited the arrival of the Count of Artois, Primat noted with patriotic fervour: Mais puis que il congnurent la banière qui estoit en soie lingne, et estoit enoblie de fleurs de lis de couleurs d’or, et estoit differente des autres que le vent demenoit legièrement en deboutant par l’air, il aperçurent et sorent bien que secours leur estoit venu des parties de France.60

Nor was it a coincidence that, at Mons-en-Pevèle (1304), French soldiers all wore for the first time the same bright white sash to distinguish themselves from their Flemish enemies. The propaganda effort of the royal government under Philip the Fair, which was founded on the notion of ‘defence of the realm’, built upon a phenomenon that already existed in preceding reigns by accentuating its national dimension. There was no break in continuity. The presence of Philip the Fair at the head of the army, at Mons-en-Pevèle, is reminiscent of St Louis’s personal involvement in the fate of the army captured in Egypt or missing in Tunisia. The second conclusion is obvious: not all the nobles reacted in the same way to the demands of the king. Their closeness to the king conditioned their reactions. The direct vassals, both great and small, served, willingly or under duress, because they wanted to or were forced by the bailli to do so. Some of them were pensioned by the king who gave them fief-rents. The great barons also served the king because their honour was at stake, as was their position in politi59  60 

Contamine, L’oriflamme de Saint-Denis. Recueil des historiens de la Gaule et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxiii, 95.

138 Xavier Hélary

cal society. For those who were neither great barons nor direct vassals of the king, or when the obligation to serve was absent, for example in the case of the Crusades, things were more complicated as exemplified by the case of Joinville. He was not a vassal of the King, because he was sénéchal of Champagne, but he was a friend. He took part in the Egyptian Crusade but refused to follow the King a second time. So, was there a desire to serve? Yes, undoubtedly, as shown by the flash of veritable, and national, patriotism that followed Kortrijk. But the war had to come to a swift end once the shame of the defeat had been avenged at Monsen-Pevèle. And that is the third conclusion: until 1302, kings had enjoyed a favourable situation overall. In essence, a whole series of reasons explains why the king had no difficulty in recruiting. This is particularly true of Philip the Fair. His propaganda was effective while the military leaders and royal officers in the field endeavoured to be attractive, convincing, or persuasive. But above all, in the final decade of the thirteenth century, the campaigns were brief and victorious, and the sacrifices demanded of the king’s subjects, therefore, were much lighter. While the call to arms potentially affected many people, in reality very few were obliged to respond. And also, how many of the calls to arms were in the end rescinded? As the king paid his soldiers, and probably from the very first day of service, it may well have been profitable to respond to his summons without grumbling. When the great defeat at Kortrijk arrived, the situation that had been developing over the years finally revealed its fragile foundations. The king’s control over the nobility was quite limited, and founded on agreement and even compromise, especially among the lower echelons. As shown by the reform of the royal army after Crécy (1346), consensus and adhesion were indispensable to the establishment of a veritable national army.

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

139

Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Sources Chantilly, Musée Condé, Archives du château de Chantilly, Série GB, XIV F 22, available on line, Montauban, Archives départementales de Tarn-et-Garonne, JJ 316 Paris, Archives Nationales, J 1028, no. 14 Paris, Archives Nationales, JJ 35 and JJ 36 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, coll. Doat, vol. 179, fols 33–34 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 25697, no. 44 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds latin 10932

Primary Sources Actes du Parlement de Paris, i: De l’an 1254 à l’an 1328, 2 vols, ed. by Edgard Boutaric (Paris: Plon, 1863–67) Berger, Élie, ‘Requête adressée au roi de France par un vétéran des armées de Saint Louis et de Charles d’Anjou’, in Études d’histoire du Moyen âge offertes à Gabriel Monod (Paris: L. Cerf et F. Alcan, 1896), pp. 343–50 ‘Chronique anonyme finissant en 1286’, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol.  xxi, ed. by J.  Guigniaut and N.  de Wailly  (Paris: Imprimerie impériale,  1855), pp. 80–102 Chronique et annales de Gilles le Muisit, abbé de Saint-Martin de Tournai (1272–1352), ed. by Henri Lemaître (Paris: H. Laurens, 1906) Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 à 1300, ed. by Henri Géraud, 2 vols, Publications de la Société de l’Histoire de France, 33, 35 (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1843), i Comptes royaux (1285–1314), i: Comptes généraux, ed. by Robert Fawtier and François Maillard, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 3 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1953) Comptes royaux (1285–1314), ii: Comptes particuliers et comptes spéciaux ou extraordinaires, ed. by Robert Fawtier and François Maillard, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 3 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1954) Comptes royaux (1285–1314), iii: Introduction. Appendice. Suppléments. Indices, ed. by Robert Fawtier and François Maillard, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 3 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1956) Douët d’Arcq, Louis, ‘Supplique d’un chevalier contre un déni de justice: pièces du xiiie siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 9 (1848), 405–11 Dubois, Pierre, De Recuperatione Terre sancte, ed. by Charles-Victor Langlois, Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire (Paris: Picard, 1891) Durrieu, Paul, Les archives angevines de Naples: Étude sur les registres du roi Charles Ier, 2 vols (Paris: E. Thorin, 1886–87)

140 Xavier Hélary

Jean de Joinville, La Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by Jacques Monfrin, Classiques Garnier (Paris: Dunod, 1995) La Roque, Gilles-André de, Traité du ban et de l’arrière-ban: De son origine et de ses convocations anciennes et nouvelles (Paris: Le Petit, 1676) Ordonnances des rois de France (Paris: Imprimerie royale), i and xi Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Martin Bouquet and others, 24 vols (Paris: Victor Palmé, H. Welter, Imprimerie nationale, 1738–1904) Sarrasin, Le Roman du Hem, ed. by Albert Henry, Travaux de la Faculté de philosophie et lettres de l’université de Bruxelles (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1938) Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum moralium, historicorum, dogmaticorum, moralium, amplissima collectio, ed. by Edmond Martène, vol. i (Paris, 1724) Vie de saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, confesseur de la reine Marguerite, ed. by Henri-François Delaborde, Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire (Paris: Picard, 1890)

Secondary Studies Autrand, Françoise, ‘La déconfiture: La bataille de Poitiers (1356) à travers quelques textes français des xive et xve s.’, in Guerre et société en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne, xive et xve siècles, ed. by Philippe Contamine, Charles Giry-Diloison, and Maurice H. Keen (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Centre d’histoire de la région du Nord et de l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, 1991), pp. 93–121 Brown, Elizabeth A.  R., Customary Aids and Royal Finances in Capetian France: The Marriage Aid of Philip the Fair, Mediaeval Academy Books, 100 (Cam­bridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1992) —— , ‘Kings Like Semi-gods: The Case of Louis X of France’, Majestas, 1 (1993), 5–37 —— , ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 1–36 Carpentier, Élisabeth, ‘L’historiographie de la bataille de Poitiers au quatorzième siècle’, Revue historique, 253 (1980), 21–58 Contamine, Philippe, Guerre, état et société à la fin du Moyen Âge: Étude sur les armées des rois de France, 1337–1494, Civilisations et sociétés, 24 (Paris: Mouton, 1972) —— , ‘Noblesse et service: L’idée et la réalité dans la France de la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Nobilitas: Funktion und Repräsentation des Adels in Alteuropa, ed. by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Werner Paravicini, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 133 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), pp. 298–311 —— , L’oriflamme de Saint-Denis aux xive et xve siècles: Étude de symbolique religieuse et royale (Nancy: Université de Nancy II, 1975) —— , ‘Points de vue sur la chevalerie en France à la fin du Moyen Âge’, Francia, 4 (1976), 255–85 Corvisier, André, ‘Quelques réflexions sur devoir militaire et service militaire’, in Des étoiles et des croix: Mélanges offerts à Guy Pedroncini, ed. by J.-C. Allain (Paris: Economica, 1995), pp. 31–39

French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King

141

Devic, Claude, and Jean-Joseph Vaissète, Histoire générale du Languedoc, vol. ix, ed. by Auguste Molinier, new edn (Toulouse: Privat, 1885) Dunbabin, Jean, Charles  I of Anjou: Power, Kingship and State-Making in ThirteenthCentury Europe (London: Longman, 1998) Favier, Jean, Philippe le Bel (Paris: Fayard, 1978) Flori, Jean, Pierre l’Ermite et la première croisade (Paris: Fayard, 1999) Funck-Brentano, Frantz, Les origines de la guerre de Cent ans: Philippe le Bel en Flandre (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1896) Hélary, Xavier, L’Armée du roi de France: La guerre de Saint Louis à Philippe le Bel (Paris: Perrin, 2012) —— , Courtrai, 11 juillet 1302 (Paris: Tallandier, 2012) —— , ‘Le “dégoût” de la noblesse française à l’égard de la croisade’, in La Noblesse et la Croisade à la fin du Moyen Âge (France, Bourgogne, Bohême), ed. by Martin Nejedly and Jaroslav Svatek, Collection Méridiennes, série Croisades tardives (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi, 2009), pp. 17–30 —— , ‘La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alençon, fils de Saint Louis, dans la mémoire capétienne’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 94 (2008), 5–22 —— , ‘L’Ost de France: La guerre, les armées, la société politique au royaume de France (fin du règne de Saint Louis — fin du règne de Philippe le Bel)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Paris-Sorbonne Uni­ver­sity, 2004) —— , ‘Pierre de La Broce, seigneur féodal, et le service militaire sous Philippe III: L’ost de Sauveterre (1276)’, Journal des Savants, 2006, 275–305 —— , ‘Révolution militaire, révolution fiscale? Le poids de la guerre dans les finances royales sous le règne de Philippe le Bel’, in Monnaie, fiscalité et finances au temps de Philippe le Bel, ed. by Philippe Contamine, Jean Kerhervé, and Albert Rigaudière (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2007), pp. 229–54 —— , ‘Robert II, comte d’Artois: Qu’est-ce qu’un chef de guerre à la fin du xiiie siècle?’, Rivista di storia militare, 1 (2012), 71–84 —— , ‘Un seigneur face à ses archives: le cartulaire de Jean, seigneur de Nesle (Bourgogne, vers 1270)’, in Défendre ses droits, construire sa mémoire: Les chartriers seigneuriaux (xiiie–xxie siècle). Actes du colloque international de Thouars (8–10 juin 2006), ed. by Philippe Contamine and Laurent Vissière (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 2010), pp. 51–74 Jordan, William Chester, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1979) —— , ‘The Struggle for Influence at the Court of Philip III: Pierre de la Broce and the French Aristocracy’, French Historical Studies, 24 (2001), 439–68 Langlois, Charles-Victor, Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi (Paris: Hachette, 1887) Le Goff, Jacques, Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) Léonard, Émile G., Les Angevins de Naples (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954) Little, Lester K., ‘Saint Louis’ Involvement with the Friars’, Church History, 33 (1964), 125–48 Lloyd, Simon, English Society and the Crusade (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1988)

142 Xavier Hélary

Longnon, Jean, L’Empire latin de Constantinople et la principauté de Morée (Paris: Payot, 1949) Lot, Ferdinand, L’Art militaire et les armées au Moyen Âge, en Europe et dans le ProcheOrient, 2 vols (Paris: Payot, 1947) Lyon, Brice D., From Fief to Indenture (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1957) Ménache, Sophia, ‘A Propaganda Campaign in the Reign of Philip the Fair, 1302–1303’, French History, 4 (1990), 427–54 Petit, Joseph, Charles de Valois (1270–1325) (Paris: A. Picard, 1900) Richard, Jean, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, soutien de la Terre sainte (Paris: Fayard, 1983) Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘“Defense of the Realm”: Evolution of a Capetian Propaganda Slogan’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 3 (1977), 115–33 Strayer, Joseph Reese, ‘Defense of the Realm and Royal Power in France’, in Studi in onore di Gino Luzzato (Milano: A. Giuffre, 1949), iv, 289–96; repr in Medi­eval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History: Essays by Joseph Strayer, with a Foreword by Gaines Post (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1971), pp. 291–99 —— , The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980) Strayer, Joseph Reese, and Charles H. Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation, Harvard Historical Monographs, 12 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1939)

The Managerial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century Hagar Barak

I

n the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the amount of land under Capetian control increased dramatically. This was due in part to the conquests of Philip Augustus and in part to a general shift of power within the nobility, which benefited territorial princes at the expense of castellans.1 At the same time, the Capetian administration came to rely primarily on salaried professional managers for conducting its regular business. In this paper, I argue that these two developments created a separation between ownership and control in the government of the kingdom, and that this separation contributed to its transformation from an essentially private noble organization into a state.

Managerial Revolution The separation of ownership from control is an enduring problem in the field of corporate governance. It was first raised by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means in 1932, in The Modern Corporation and Private Property, a classic work in corporate governance. Despite its age, the problem raised in the book is still relevant. As William Bratton noted, ‘The Modern Corporation and Private Property has not gone away. […] Berle and Means retain an enviable place at the forefront of policy discussion in a field where even a highly successful academic contribution rarely has a shelf life exceeding ten years’.2 1  2 

Duby, France in the Middle Ages, p. 16. Bratton, ‘Berle and Means Reconsidered’, p. 738.

Hagar Barak ([email protected]) Institute for Medi­e val Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 143–150 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112971 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

144

Hagar Barak

As corporations grow and ownership is dispersed, daily control is gradually transmitted from owners to professional managers. Large stockholders rely on managers to exclude small owners from the decision-making process. Both those groups, namely major stockowners and professional managers, may conduct their business in a manner consistent with their personal interests, rather than in the interest of the majority of stockholders. The new prominence achieved by professional managers gave the phenomenon its name, the Managerial Revolution. A similar development is identifiable in thirteenth-century France.

A Managerial Revolution in High Medi­eval France At the beginning of Philip Augustus’s reign, the King’s close councilors belonged to the ranks of the greatest barons and prelates. Philip Augustus also inherited dynastic household officers from his father: a seneschal, a chancellor, a constable, and a chamberlain.3 These positions, traceable to Carolingian practices, belonged to great noble families. However, many of the King’s baronial counselors died on the Third Crusade, giving him an opportunity to weaken the hold their families had over the royal court.4 Philip kept the seneschalsy and chancellorship vacant and recruited the constable and chamberlain from the ranks of the lesser nobility of the royal domain. Barons continued to be present at important events but rarely provided him with administrative service.5 In their stead the King relied on a small group of knights and clerks, most of whom served him only on an ad hoc basis.6 A few of them became the King’s closest advisors, according to Guillaume le Breton: ‘car c’etait a eux seuls qu’il avait coutume, dans toutes les occasions, d’ouvrir son ame a confidence et de reveler ses secretes pensees’ (‘These were the only people to whom the King was accustomed on all occasions to open his soul and reveal his secret thoughts’).7 Their lesser status and negligible wealth made them more dependent on the King,8 but his trust in them gave them considerable power. These ‘new men’ had expertise related to their positions, whether military or administrative, but they seem to have been primarily selected for loyalty.9 3 

Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, p. 105. Duby, France in the Middle Ages, p. 213. 5  Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, p. 105. 6  Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, p. 113. 7  Guillame le Breton, La Philippide, ed. by Guizot, p. 275. 8  Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, p. 124. 9  Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 107–36. 4 

The Managerial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century

145

Authority based on expertise, in particular legal expertise, grew in importance during Louis IX’s reign. This was the result of the formalization and growing complexity of administration and legal procedure. Excluding members of his immediate family, Louis continued to govern with minimal participation from his barons.10 Although the council did not have a fixed roster, only one high ranking noble, Simon de Nesle, was a habitual participant.11 The pattern was replicated in the administration of the King’s brother and greatest vassal, Alphonse of Poitiers. According to the household accounts from 1258, twenty-six knights and fifteen clerks served on his council. A 1268 list of clerks working in the household gives twenty-six names, all of them secular clerks. Before embarking for Outremer in 1270 Alphonse left the administration of his estates in the hands of a regency council and the protection of his rights to a group of ‘general proctors’. Both governing bodies were comprised, with one exception, only of secular clergy. Similarly, the executors of the Count’s will numbered eight regular clerks, one knight, and three monks.12 The ascendant authority of these lesser men was most clearly demonstrated when they sat in justice over great barons, such as Enguerran de Coucy or the Archbishop of Reims. Enguerrand de Coucy, one of the greatest lords in France, was summoned in front of parliament to answer for the deaths of three young nobles who were executed by his forester for trespassing. Enguerrand claimed he had the right to be judged by his peers, who were present but not allowed to weigh in. He then demanded to prove his innocence in battle. The King replied that when dealing with ‘des povres, des eglises ne des persones (dont en doit avoir pitie), l’en ne devoit pas einsi aler avant par loy de bataille; car l’en ne troveroit pas de legier aucuns qui se vousissent combater pour teles manieres de persones contre les barons du roiaume’ (‘poor people, the church, and people on whom one ought to have pity, one ought not go based on the law of battle, because one cannot easily find someone who will fight against the barons of the realm for such people’).13 Enguerrand lost part of his lands, was fined six thousand pounds, and embarked on a three-year penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land.14 10 

Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, p. 308. Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, p. 308. For an excellent detailed discussion of some of Louis IX’s close councilors, see Jordan, Men at the Center. 12  Dossat, ‘Alfonse de Poitiers et les clercs’, p. 362. 13  Vie de Saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, ed. by Delaborde, p. 136. 14  Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, p. 375. 11 

146

Hagar Barak

When Louis prohibited the judicial duel in 1260, he formalized a reduction in the coercive power of the warrior class. Trial by battle, a mode of proof that favoured military proficiency, was being replaced by legal procedures that gave the advantage to experts of a different sort. 15 The barons had earlier articulated their resentment of the mounting number of changes in a 1246 complaint in which they rejected the allocation of influence based on legal knowledge rather than status and military prowess: ‘juridictionem secularium principum sic absorbent ut filii servorum secundum suas leges judicent liberos et filios liberorum’ (‘they encroach so much on the rights of the secular princes, that today the sons of serfs, according to their laws, sit in judgement of free men and the sons of free men’).16 Their resentment was not, however, a simple rejection of social mobility, but reflected a denial of the legitimacy of power based on knowledge rather than force: ‘regnum non per ius scriptum nec per clericorum arrogantiam, sed per sudores bellicose fuerit acquisitum’(‘the country was not won by the written law or the arrogance of clerks, but by the sweat of warriors’).17 It is interesting to note that the language used implies a sense of ownership of the land, which is felt to be a just reward, rather than a boon to be given or taken away at the discretion of one’s lord. The poem ‘Gens des France, moult est esbahie’ (‘Men of France, you are very amazed’),18 written from a knightly perspective, voiced the antipathy of the displaced: ‘Je dis a tous ceux qui sont nes des fiefs: Qu’ainsi Dieu m’aide! Vous n’etes plus de Francs. L’on vous a bien de franchise eloignes, puisque vous etes par enquête juges’ (‘I say to all those who were born of fiefs: May God help me! You are no longer Franks. Many rights have been taken away from you, since you are judged by enquête’).19 The poet explicitly attributed the diminished power of the nobility to their growing distance from the king: ‘vous auriez force, et pouvoir et assurance, car vous etes a notre roi amie; Mais les votres sont trop clairsemes autour de lui. Je n’en connais qu’un seul aupres de lui, et celui-là est si épris de clergie, qu’il ne peut pas vous apporter l’aide ’ (‘You would have power and confidence, because you are friends of our king; but your own are too sparse around him. I only 15 

Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, p. 310. Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, ed. by Huillard-Breholles, vi.1, 467–89. 17  Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, ed. by Huillard-Breholles, vi.1, 467–89. 18  Chansons historiques des xiiie, xive et xve siècles, ed. by le Roux de Lincy, pp. 359–88 On this poem, see also Jordan, Men at the Center, pp. 34–36. 19  Chansons historiques des xiiie, xive et xve siècles, ed. by le Roux de Lincy, pp. 372. 16 

The Managerial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century

147

know a single one around him, and he is so captivated by the clergy that he cannot give you any help’).20

Societal Effects of the Managerial Revolution To review, as corporations grow and ownership becomes dispersed, power tends to accumulate in the hands of the largest owners and an emerging class of professional managers. The concentration of power and resources in the hands of a minority is potentially harmful not only to the interests of shareholders, but also to society in general. In other words, the impact of the managerial revolution transcends the boundaries of the organization. Its result, Berle and Means warned, is the creation of a society in which production is carried on under the ultimate control of a handful of individuals. The economic power in the hands of the few persons who control a giant corporation is a tremendous force which can harm or benefit a multitude of individuals, affect whole districts, shift the currents of trade, bring ruin to one community and prosperity to another. The organizations which they control have passed far beyond the realm of private enterprise — they have become more nearly social institutions.21 Put another way, even if managers could be relied upon to serve the interests of the stockholders, the concentration of so much power in the hands of a few individuals may constitute a threat to society.22 Often managers are legally responsible to stockholders, and not to society in general. In fact, if they act in the benefit of society and to the detriment of stockholders, they face legal sanction. It is up to the owners, then, to effect the transformation. Berle and Means’s original view on this matter was pessimistic, and they believed external, social and legal, pressures could be required to insure that corporations serve the interests of a wider group than their owners.23 However, later scholars of corporate governance (and Berle himself in his later work) were more hopeful, suggesting corporations might develop a sense of public responsibility without such pressures, because their size forces them out of the purely private sphere.24 I believe the Capetian administration reached this turning point after the failure of the Seventh Crusade, and the developing sense of public responsibility is attested to by Louis IX’s administrative reforms. 20 

Chansons historiques des xiiie, xive et xve siècles, ed. by le Roux de Lincy, pp. 373. Berle and Means, The Modern Corporation, p. 46. 22  Berle and Means, The Modern Corporation, p. 46. 23  Berle and Means, The Modern Corporation, p. 293. 24  Katz, ‘Responsibility and the Modern Corporation’. 21 

148

Hagar Barak

According to Matthew Paris, the King was inconsolable following the failure of his Crusade, blaming his own moral failings for the sickness, captivity, and humiliation suffered by his knights; ‘If I were the only one to suffer opprobrium and adversity, and if my sins had not fallen on the entire church, I would be strong enough to endure my suffering’.25 Less than six months after his return, Louis launched a reform of government intended to benefit all his subjects.26 The King attributed the defeat to the moral injustices that accompanied the financial and military preparations for the undertaking. These included extorting monetary gifts from both laypeople and churchmen and the use of conscripted labour to build the new port in Aigues Mortes. Louis held himself responsible for sins committed by his administration even if he was ignorant of them at the time. In December 1254 Louis translated his moral ideals into the language of administrative reform, issuing the ordinance for the reform of the realm. The ordinance opens with the words ‘ex debito regie potestatis’: ‘On account of the duty of royal authority’;27 to be king meant acquiring not a possession, but a duty. The ordinance required officials to act justly towards the mighty and the powerless both. Officials were also to take a public oath to adhere to the ordinance, even if they had previously sworn an oath in the King’s presence: ‘non solum metu divine idignationis et nostre, sed etiam confusionis et erubescentie apud homines perjuriam manifestum incurrere vereantur’ (‘Let them fear not only God’s anger and ours, but also the shame and embarrassment that a false oath incurs among men’).28 It is not surprising, then, that the ordinance regulated the behaviour of employees. However, it also took steps to improve the moral standing of the King’s subjects, criminalizing prostitution and gambling and curbing attendance at taverns.29 As part of the same reform Louis sent out special new emissaries, the enquêteurs, to monitor the behaviour of royal officials.30 Alphonse followed suit. The enquêteurs travelled through a region, hearing complaints from locals. This allowed people to testify even if they could not afford to travel to Paris. Enquêteur hearings were informal and did not require a lawyer, 31 and the 25 

Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, p. 271. Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, pp. 380–83. 27  Ordonnances des rois des France, ed. by de Laurière and others, i, 65–75. 28  Ordonnances des rois des France, ed. by de Laurière and others, i, 70. 29  Ordonnances des rois des France, ed. by de Laurière and others, i, 74. 30  Glénisson, Les Enquêteurs-Réformateurs de 1270 à 1328, p. 45. 31  Glénisson, Les Enquêteurs-Réformateurs de 1270 à 1328, p. 8. 26 

The Managerial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century

149

enquêteurs were given wide berth of discretion in cases involving small sums of money. The limit on restitution and the ease of approach suggest that common people formed the main intended audience. The first enquêteurs were often recruited from the ranks of the new mendicant orders, which, it is worth noting, were arbiters of church reform.32 They specialized in preaching to urban publics and understood their audience well.33 The new vigour they introduced into European religious life won them many fans, not least King Louis.34 The King and the mendicants also shared an organizational strategy: offering the public, until then relegated to a passive role, a chance for active participation. The friars were already successfully encouraging greater religious devotion among common people, and they were just as useful in encouraging personal commitment to the kingdom and its welfare. In addition to the mendicants, Alphonse and Louis relied on the knights and clerks of their councils, many of whom had law degrees, to fill the ranks of regulators. While not quite as humble and unassuming as friars, these men were also not among the great and powerful by birth. In summary, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Capetian vassals were gradually excluded from the royal administration and replaced by salaried experts. This constituted a managerial revolution. Largely due to the moral convictions of St Louis this managerial revolution created the conditions for the emergence of the Capetian kingdom as a self-consciously public organization, a state, rather than an oligarchy. Moreover, this transformation, beginning with Philip Augustus, marks a point of divergence between the paths of England and France. In England the court continued to be staffed with barons, who maintained strong control over the governance of the realm. It is not for me to say whether this was to the benefit or detriment of English society as a whole; however, this does recall Berle and Means’s original argument: that corporations which represent the interests of stockholders can leave the interests of the rest of society without representation. Finally, given the enduring prominence of professional administrators in French politics, it would be interesting to explore whether and, if so, how these developments influenced the unique character of French political culture.

32 

For an in-depth look at Louis IX’s enquêtes, see Dejoux, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis. Lawrence, Medi­eval Monasticism, pp. 238–69. 34  Lawrence, The Friars, pp. 166–81. 33 

150

Hagar Barak

Works Cited Primary Sources Chansons historiques des xiiie, xive et xve siècles, ed. by Antoine le Roux de Lincy (Paris: Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, 1840), 359–88 Guillame le Breton, La Philippide, ed. by M. Guizot (Paris: J.-L.-J. Brière, 1825) Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, ed. by J. L. A. Huillard-Breholles, 6 vols (Paris, 1860) Ordonnances des rois des France de la troisieme race, ed. by Eusèbe de Laurière and others, vol. i (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1723) Vie de saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, confesseur de la reine Marguerite, ed. by Henri-François Delaborde, Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire (Paris: Picard, 1890)

Secondary Studies Baldwin, John W., The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 1986) Berle, Adolf A., and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1991) Bratton, William W., ‘Berle and Means Reconsidered at the Century’s Turn’, Journal of Corporation Law, 26, no. 3 (2001), 737–70 Dejoux, Marie, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis: Gouverner et sauver son âme (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2014) Dossat, Yves, ‘Alfonse de Poitiers et les clercs’, in Les évêques les clercs et le roi, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 7 (Toulouse: Privat, 1972), pp. 361–91 Duby, George, France in the Middle Ages 987–1460: From Hugh Capet to Joan of Arc, trans. by Juliet Vale (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1993) Glénisson, Jean, Les Enquêteurs-Réformateurs de 1270 à 1328: Contribution à l’étude de commissaires royaux (Paris: École des chartes, 1946) Jordan, William Chester, Men at the Center: Redemptive Governance Under Louis  IX (Budapest: Central European Uni­ver­sity Press, 2012) Katz, Wilber G., ‘Responsibility and the Modern Corporation’, Journal of Law and Economics, 3 (1960), 75–85 Lawrence, C. H., The Friars: The Impact of the Mendicant Orders on Medi­eval Society, rev. edn (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013) —— , Medi­eval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 2000) Richard, Jean, Saint Louis: roi d’une France féodale, soutien de la terre sainte (Paris: Fayard, 1983)

The Ambiguity of Representation: Semiotic Roots of Political Consent in Capetian France Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak Introduction The representative principles affiliated with medieval consent theory, enshrined as they are as the very premise of our liberal democratic regimes, constitute precious relics of political thought, inspiring veneration and hagiography as well as a historiography of oceanic proportions. The emergence, in the thirteenth century, of representative instrumentalities capable of eliciting forms of community consent has received its lion share of attention. Institutional explanations of such innovations range from the desacralization of the political in the aftermath of the Gregorian Reform, the communitarian nature of ecclesiastical life, the contractual ties binding rulers to their elite subjects, and the growing presence of self-governing corporate bodies.1 Analyses rooted in the history of ideas consider the influence of elective and accountable Germanic kingship, the recovery of Roman law, and the theoretical teachings of prominent lawyers and scholastic masters. In this large body of scholarship, one would be hard put to find the name of William of Auvergne (c. 1180–1249) associated with the emergence of a political theory of consent.2 My purpose in this essay is to show 1  Given the size and scope of the bibliography dealing with political consent, I will limit my citations to studies that were consulted for this essay and that review and build upon past historiography. Oakley, The Mortgage of the Past, p. 146. 2  Murphy, ‘William of Auvergne’ gives a useful bibliography that privileges, however, William’s treatment of Islam. The only biography of William, by Valois, Guillaume d’Auvergne,

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak ([email protected]) New York Uni­ver­sity

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 151–182 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112972 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

152

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

that William, advisor to Blanche of Castile and the young Louis IX, master of theology at the Uni­ver­sity of Paris, and canon of Notre Dame before becoming Bishop of Paris, did in fact have things to say about consent, and that the oblivion in which his admittedly modest forays into political thought have remained consigned has resulted from specific modern epistemological choices.3 In the current historiography of emerging political consent, representation is primarily considered as a delegation of authority by a community to persons charged with representing it,4 while attention given to the recorded thoughts is only slightly outdated and still useful. William’s intellectual scope receives full attention in Thorndike, A History of Magic, ii, 338–71; Smalley, ‘William of Auvergne’; Marrone, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste; Teske, Studies in the Philosophy; Morenzoni and Tilliette, Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne; Morenzoni, ‘Signes, mots, et images’. Recently, in parallel with scholarly interest in medieval magic, William has begun to attract some further attention: Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace , pp. 54–55, 115–24; Rosier-Catach, ‘Signes sacramentels’; Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge; Veronèse and Grévin, ‘‘Les “caractères” magiques au Moyen Âge’; Delaurenti, La puissance des mots; Marrone, ‘William of Auvergne on Magic’; Marrone, ‘Magic and the Physical World’; Long, ‘Between Idolatry and Science’; Boudet, Entre science et nigromancie; De Mayo, The Demonology of William of Auvergne; Boudet, Caiozzo, and Weill-Parot, Images et magie. There are thirty-five extant manu­scripts of William’s writings: Ottmann, ‘List of Manu­scripts and Editions’. The chronology of his opus remains far from being established (William of Auvergne, The Universe of Creatures, trans. by Teske, pp. 14–15), while most of his theological treatises are available only in seventeenthcentury editions: ‘Postface’, in Morenzoni and Tilliette, Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne, pp. 369–70. Teske has provided partial English translations of some of William’s theological work, including but not limited to William of Auvergne, On the Virtues, trans. by Teske (Summa de virtutibus et de vitiis, part 1); William of Auvergne, On Morals, trans. by Teske (Summa de virtutibus et de vitiis, part 2); William of Auvergne, The Soul, trans. by Teske (De Anima); William of Auvergne, The Trinity, trans. by Wade and Teske (De Trinitate); William of Auvergne, The Universe of Creatures, trans. by Teske (De Universo); William of Auvergne, Providence of God, trans. by Teske (De Universo). Williams’s sermons have recently been edited in Guilelmi Alverni. Opera Homelitica, ed. by Morenzoni. Unless otherwise noted, William’s treatises have been consulted in Guilielmi Alverni. Opera Omnia. 3 

This essay offers preliminary remarks derived from a larger project devoted to (mostly French) thirteenth-century discussions of the royal seal, and more generally to the impact that the medieval perception of artefactual mediation in governance has had on the development of the political theory of representation and consent. Only relevant excerpts from William of Auvergne’s De Legibus are presented here, although William’s discussion of the royal seal or of seals in general is not limited to the De Legibus. Scholars working on medieval magic and sacramental theology have commented on the royal seal metaphor; see above at note 2. William’s extensive reliance upon contemporary situations and material environments is characteristic of his treatises, discussed below. 4  Oakley, The Mortgage of the Past, p. 151.

The Ambiguity of Representation

Figure 7.1. Sealed charter of Philip Augustus, Paris, Archives Nationales, AE/II/205. 1209. Made available by the Archives Nationales, France.

153

154

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

and actions of rulers, administrators, and theoreticians inevitably designate them as the exclusive historical agents of governmental practices and as the central actors on the political stage. In his writings, however, William of Auvergne deals with a world in which representation was composite, a combination of humans and materials, of organic and mechanical parts. The representation that interested William was not representative but representational and referential. By the midtwelfth century, the governance of the Capetian kingdom had greatly accelerated artefactual mediation of its procedures. Through the technological work of the royal chancery, which will be my main focus here, the recurring writing of formulae, preambles, and titles in royal charters and diplomas, and the durable monumentality achieved by their inscription on wax seals and animal skins (parchment) steadily actualized the permanence of kingship and the authority of the king himself. As multimedial artefacts encompassing texts, graphic signs, and imprinted images royally sealed (Figure 7.1), charters wrote themselves into daily practices, entering into mutually supportive conversations with law, literature, pedagogy, the natural sciences, and theology. Since the twelfth century, schoolmen had explicitly aligned the process of political representation at work in documentary practice, and in sealing in particular, with the incarnational logic of divine mediation.5 Treatises of anthropological theology frequently deployed the figure of the seal, which, whether royal, Christological, or physiological, was described as an image of substance with the capacity to reproduce itself through touch and contact. It was a technology, imprinting, that enabled the social operations of twelfth-century seals by endowing them with a haptic ability to reference origins and to contain the traces of their causation. As imprints, seals acted through the very mediality of their materials, and through their haptic, mechanical, and replicating process. From a functional perspective, seals, therefore, had a signifying mode that was intrinsic and independent of symbolic and linguistic codes. This is not to say that this was the only mode seals had, but the fact is that in the twelfth century there seems to have been an exploitation of signification that was not limited to symbolism, that is, to a meaning located beyond material experience.6 At this point in my preliminary study of William’s writings, it is apparent that he was certainly heir to the tradition of invoking seals and the imprinting process for a wide range of explanatory purposes. In fact, William displays 5  Christian Kiening devoted a suggestive essay on Christ as medium and mediator, Kiening, ‘Mediologie-Christologie’. 6  The full argument is made in Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago.

The Ambiguity of Representation

155

a sustained concern for matter, materials, and artefacts, for their ability to be effective, and for the source of their effectiveness. In his multiple allusions to kings, courts and courtiers, and governance, he repeatedly presents the kingdom as a sociotechnical collective, in which there existed a mutual connectivity between persons, human and divine, objects, and technology. Yet, when in sections dealing with the king and his bureaucracy William raised the issue of artefactual agency in relationship to royal seals, his approach to seals and sealing shifted from earlier stances and from his own discussions of seals elsewhere. Dealing here exclusively with William’s De Legibus, written between 1228 and 1230, I hope to show that his revised interpretation, in challenging the embodied logic of the imprint and the representational practices associated with it, played a role in inflecting the purview of royal authority. In the second part of this essay, therefore, I will locate William’s reaction to royal sealing practice and mediated governance within his broader consideration of those relationships that bind together objects, actions, and ideas in effective and significant networks. It will then become clear that William’s sigillographic reasoning was integral to his rebuttal of beliefs in astral seals and animated statues. William’s discussion of seals and charters, I will argue, suggests that mediated governance could become a liability when some of its media merged with the landscape of new explanatory models of natural science. In conclusion, I will sketch two further lines of inquiry which, I believe, William’s treatment of royal seals suggests. One follows William’s association of royal bureaucracy with the supernatural and will examine possible reasons for such an association. The other is of a methodological nature. I will propose that a medieval political history that takes seriously evidence of the lack of fit between political concepts and political props may gain perspective on the relational impact of objects and their technology upon ideology. This impact originated from the artefacts’ processes of production and mode of being, which exceeded artefacts’ interaction with human subjectivity and thus disrupted their human use and expectation. For William, seals and their imprinted images had a force that obliged him to retool some of his own thought processes.

Mediation In analysing William of Auvergne’s discursive treatment of seals, bureaucratic writing, regalia, insignia, and other markers of identity, I  found the term ‘mediation’ useful in a variety of ways, several of which, as Gabrielle Spiegel has pointed out to me, were hardly consonant with traditional definitions of

156

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

the word.7 A survey of English dictionaries shows considerable consistency in defining ‘mediation’ as an intervention intended to resolve disputes, or as an intercession in any process or relationship. Both meanings, which tend to emphasize arbitration and conciliation, are certainly current in the domains of law, diplomacy, and theology, but they do not address the semantic range of the word as presently employed in the literature of the humanities and the social sciences. I am thus far from alone in lexically extending the meaning of the term ‘mediation’. However, rather than attempt a profile of the term’s developing polysemy, I prefer to take the opportunity offered by Professor Spiegel’s comment to reflect upon my own utilization of the term, as nurtured by uses recently mobilized within the academic fields of semiotics,8 media and communication, mediology,9 material culture studies, and art history.10 At the most basic level, given my own current interest in objects pertinent to rule and governance, I think of ‘mediation’ as referring to the interposition of processes that occur within and as a result of social interactions involving artefacts and human beings. In considering such relational processes, I particularly focus on the operations of artefacts while recognizing that the act of mediation is not specific to objects. The Oxford English Dictionary states that as early as c. 1425 the noun ‘mediation’ could carry the meanings of agency as an intermediary, the state or fact of serving as an intermediate agent. Within such a semantic range, mediation would be a means of action, a medium of transmission, and as such would connote instrumentality without limiting the intermediaries to particular usages.11

7  Both at the conference, ‘The Capetian Century’ (Princeton Uni­ver­sity, 28–29 March 2014), where an earlier version of this essay was read, and in private conversations, Professor Gabrielle Spiegel ( Johns Hopkins Uni­ver­sity) discussed the extent to which a loose use of the term ‘mediation’ might confuse the argument. It gives me pleasure to acknowledge with gratitude the fruitfulness of her intervention, and to thank my husband, Dr Ira Rezak, for all he too had to say on the subject. 8  Parmentier, ‘Peirce’s Concept of Mediation’. 9  The term and field of mediology were created by Debray, Cours de médiologie générale; Debray, Manifestes médiologiques (Media Manifestos, trans. by Rauth); Debray, Transmettre (Transmitting Culture, trans. by Rauth). 10  Since I am mostly familiar with the literature in these fields, my terminology owes much to their vocabulary, which is not to say that the use of the term ‘mediation’ is restricted to these fields. 11  ‘Mediation, n.’ in OED Online.

The Ambiguity of Representation

157

Building upon this connotation of intermediary instrumentality, I use the term ‘mediation’ to consider two distinct processes of artefactual interposition, one in which the artefact acts within the fields of signification, representation, and communication, and thus is meaningful by virtue of its situation within particular semiotic and cognitive patterns; and the other in which the artefact engages physically as well as pragmatically with other entities, either human or non-human, in the production and diffusion of social behaviour.12 Such a distinction between the generally significative and the physically pragmatic is a heuristic manoeuvre whose deployment is necessary to avoid the dematerialization that is the fate of artefacts when they are perceived abstractly as symbols, standing and acting as mental ideas, rather than what they actually are, concrete entities. Furthermore, this distinction between cognitive meaning and functional effect implies not so much a polarized but a relative difference. It thus suspends the modern binaries of mind and body, object and subject, sign and object, and thought and action in order to look both at what happens between them and at the intermediates at work in this in-between; and it helps recognize these binaries for what they are, anthropocentric constructions whose wide-ranging explanatory power was especially promoted by Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1857–1913) linguistics. Saussure posited a dyadic, reflexive, coded sequence between sign and object. The semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), on the other hand, challenged this binary system in several ways.13 Peirce’s accounts of signification are complex and evolved over time since sign theory was a recurrent focus of speculation for him throughout his life. Here, again, I do not propose to elaborate the Peirceian theory of signs but rather to explain how some of its logic has helped me to develop working definitions of mediation. Mediation, a term Peirce himself employs, permeates his basic understanding of signification. For Peirce, anything might function as a sign upon achieving a mediate 12 

Warnier, Construire la culture matérielle, p. 28. Warnier’s distinction between signi­ fication and pragmatics is taken up by Knappet, Thinking through Material Culture, pp. 6–12, 85–106, 169–70, who introduces a further distinction between communication and signification. A thorough discussion of the ways to understand the meaning of material objects, when they have traditionally been seen as the means of realizing practical goals, can be found in Parmentier, The Pragmatic Semiotics of Culture, pp. 43–63. 13  For the following discussion of Peirceian semiotics and concept of mediation, I am endebted to Keane, ‘Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning’; Knappet, Thinking through Material Culture, ch. 5; Parmentier, ‘Peirce’s Concept of Mediation’; Watts, ‘On Mediation and Material Agency’.

158

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

realization, that is, upon representing an object known as the referent. For such representation to occur, the sign must be specified by its object, in the sense that the object requires of the sign properties adequate to convey that object’s effective representation. In this aspect of the signifying process, certain properties of the object determine the sign, while characteristics of the sign that fulfil the object’s requirement to be signified enable representation of that object. Mediation is the action which, performed by the encounter between consonant properties of sign and object, permits representation. For Peirce, however, signification is not solely a matter of representation. For, by means of its particular signifying properties, and in the course of its signifying function, the sign also activates an interpretive or behavioural effect (called the interpretant in Peirce’s slightly confusing terminology). This effect too is mediately determined by the object, since the object has engaged a thing’s features to activate that thing’s signifying element. Thus, the object engages the sign within a triadic relation: (1) the sign stands for, represents the object; (2) as a representation of the object, the sign facilitates an interpretation or an action on the part of that object; this interpretation or action becomes a new sign (3) that enables a new understanding of the original object. The sign’s ability to produce this further elaborated representation of the original object stems from its property as an approximation of the object, the essential condition for establishing the signifying relationship between sign and object in the first place. Thus ice on the road is a sign indicating coldness (object) and also articulates the physical connection between cold and ice (further representation). This example may be further parsed. First of all, other material features of the sign (the road itself, wetness, slipperiness, colour, traffic) and of its object (local weather, season, geographic situation) have been left untouched by the signifying relation described above. Secondly, the connection between cold and ice occurs regardless of whether or not it is cognitively interpreted by a person who perceives its expression. In such a triadic semiotic scheme, mediation distributes the signifying function among the sign, the object, and the effect of their relationship, and thus detaches meaning from any inherence in language or dependency upon human consciousness. Thirdly, the mediating function generates a new perspective on the original object, a perspective that becomes a new sign of that object. The work of mediation thus entails a modification of the elements it brings together; it is deeply transformative. As I now consider mediated action, the emphasis will shift to the process that brings together several social actors, such as the environment, objects, individuals, so that functional relevance and effectiveness accrues to objects through practical usage. While there need be no necessary correlation between

The Ambiguity of Representation

159

a particular object’s features and its use, manufactured objects do impose possibilities (affordances) and constraints and lend themselves only to a limited, finite range of manipulations. In an act of mediation, therefore, artefacts may limit social modelling and resist cultural impositions upon their functionality by virtue of the technical and material characteristics that frame and may constrain the manner and circumstances of their uses and the outcome of their mediation. Furthermore, artefacts as concrete objects often survive their immediate utilization in any given process of mediation and thus remain available for interaction whether interpreted or not. Thus, praxis shares with signification operative modes, which may be independent of cognition. Mediation offers a category of analysis that may help identify ways in which medieval royal documents, to return to this essay’s topic, had meaning and agency. Documents, as assemblages of tattooed skin and imprinted wax had an impact that informed (even as it went beyond) their explicit recognition and use as meaningful assemblages of letters, words, graphic signs, and images. The medieval understanding of documents as particular cultural tools, however, involved a re-cognition mediated by categories of knowledge. Such categories indeed mediated the cultural determinants that acted upon written artefacts, repeatedly forming them as documents (rather than poems, for instance) via a contemporary logic of mediation then particular to the field of documentation.14 Though conditioned by historically transmitted knowledge, recognition operates via recurring associations between objects and contexts, each association serving as a potential prototype of social action for subsequent instances. Thus, recognition is a potent force that serves to coordinate the relation between individuals and documents; although a matter of cognition, recognition works within a material world of actions and consequences.15 The ideas and processes discussed here demonstrate that mediation is central to both sense and action; indeed the notion of mediation helps configure the relation between the causal and logical dimensions of material things in society as a co-performance of materiality and sociability.16 14  The expression ‘mediation by categorization’ is found in Palmer, Vision Science, p. 412, and discussed in Knappet, Thinking through Material Culture, pp.  45–52, with a useful conclusion on pp. 62–63. See also Keane, ‘Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning’, pp. 190–91. 15  Parmentier, ‘Peirce Divested for Nonintimates’, pp. 21–22; Keane, ‘Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning’, pp. 184, 186. 16  In the felicitous expression of Pels, Hetherington, and Vandenberghe, ‘The Status of the Object’, p. 2.

160

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

The concept of mediation thus invites a consideration of the ways that cultural categories, actions, contexts, objects, and bodies variously assemble in specific relations that need to be identified rather than assumed. Mediation is the term that subordinates being to relation.17 Paraphrasing Peirce, ‘[Mediation] is what it is owing to things between which it mediates and which it brings into relation to each other’.18 I therefore study artefacts from a perspective offered by encounters between their material condition and their cultural context, and by the continuing interplay between their practical use and the theoretical discourses to which they give rise. The concept of mediation facilitates the understanding that neither meaning, use, nor effect stand in a symmetrical relationship to their vehicles of conveyance. Rather, meaning and effect are products ever vulnerable to causation and contingency even as they build upon each other to produce a new awareness of the world.19 William of Auvergne was faced with new conceptions of matter, materials, and artefacts that emphasized a greater sense of their performativity, wherein they were understood to participate in spheres of actions formerly reserved to divine and human persons. William’s overall response was epistemologically fuzzy, alternatively based on reason and on patristic authority. With respect to royal seals and documentary practices, his reaction was to deny that mediation occurred in the process of signification, to define signification as arbitrary, consensual symbolism. Nevertheless, the evidence reviewed in this essay suggests that William’s theories neither directly considered nor affected the actual treatment and agency of documents in Capetian France.

William of Auvergne and the Royal Seal William of Auvergne was,20 to repeat, Bishop of Paris and a master at the Parisian faculty of theology, deeply enmeshed in the bureaucratic and pastoral requirements of his station, which necessitated the use of his own seal.21 17 

Debray, Media Manifestos, trans. by Rauth, pp. 6, 12. Peirce, Collected Papers, ed. by Hartshorne, Weiss, and Burks, i, 356; the original text is cited and discussed by Parmentier, ‘Peirce’s Concept of Mediation’, p. 38. 19  Thrift, ‘Beyond Mediation’, pp. 232–33. 20  The bibliography dealing with William of Auvergne is given above at note 2. 21  William of Auvergne owned a seal as Bishop of Paris (Douët d’Arcq, Collection de sceaux, ii, 534, no. 6788 (appended to a charter of 1236)) and issued many charters in his own name and sealed with his seal; Valois calendars William’s charters in Valois, ‘Pièces justificatives’. 18 

The Ambiguity of Representation

161

William was also a political personality of some importance, a respected familiar and advisor of Queen Blanche of Castile (d. 1252) and of the young Louis IX (r. 1226–70) — the future saint Louis. His situation as courtier and bishop led him to participate in many important missions as representative of the king or of the pope. William thus had many opportunities to experience material mediation in governance and in spiritual affairs. His involvement with the world of business also left its marks on William’s opus. He did not organize his treatises according to the model of the sententiae, which, invented by Peter Lombard (d. 1164), had become the traditional mode of scholastic writing.22 Rather, he indulged in flowery narrative, sometimes a dialogue, replete with numerous anecdotes snatched from daily life.23 For instance, at the very beginning of his treatise De Sacramento in generali, William repeatedly stated that the purpose of a city is to be a sacred space of peace and happiness under the law of the most perfect monarch, the one true king, God.24 William’s urban reference stands at the opening of a long argument designed to explicate the nature and necessity of the sacraments of the church. At this early point in his reasoning, William considers the construction of a city, an operation which he describes as mutually involving aedificatio, building, and aggregatio, the social act of coming together to form a community.25 He posited that those who entered the urban community had to shed their imperfections, in the same way that rough and weak stones, knotty and bent wood had to be discarded or evened out if they were to be used in construction.26 Building upon his equiva22 

Smalley, ‘William of Auvergne’, p. 27; Valois, Guillaume d’Auvergne, p. 208. Valois, Guillaume d’Auvergne, p. 208, and p. 226 for his use of similes that drew heavily from material aspects of daily life. 24  William of Auvergne, De Sacramento in generali, in Opera Omnia, i, 409. 25  ‘Et quia aedificatio ista est aggregatio, et associatio hominum ad Dei cultum atque servitium, aggregatio et associatio non potest fieri nisi communione visibilium’: William of Auvergne, De Sacramento in generali, in Opera Omnia, i, 409. William tends to range under the term aedificatio those moral behaviours and social institutions most likely to foster a city’s sanctity. However, in his insistence that a community needs to have a visible structure, William then involves building materials and physical constructions; see below at note 26. In her summary of this passage, Rosier-Catach, La parole efficace, pp. 54–55, and Rosier-Catach, ‘Signes sacramentels’, pp. 107–08, seems to interpret aedificatio primarily in a moral sense. In his discussion of the materiality and performance of images, Bartholeyns follows Rosier-Catach’s reading of William: Bartholeyns, ‘Les objets contre les symboles’, p. 152. 26  Le Goff, ‘An Urban Metaphor of William of Auvergne’, pp. 177–78. William of Auvergne, De Sacramento in generali, in Opera Omnia, i, 409: ‘Quod enim sunt tumor, et tortitudo, sive curvitas, et putriditas in lignis, hoc superbia, avaritia, et luxuria in animabus, et quod rectutido, 23 

162

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

lence between aedificatio and aggregatio, William suggested that both good men and proper stones were adequate building materials, that societies of men and cities of stones co-produced each other. William’s equivalence of aedificatio and aggregatio rhetorically points him towards an inference which is of greater importance to him, namely that there cannot be a human community without a visible sign of that community. Without such a sign, William asked, how would the members of a community recognize themselves as such and their own, how would they in fact form and constitute a community?27 For William, here, material signs were both meaningful, for they signified a distinctive status, and performative, for they had the ability to structure society and to shape behaviour. He pursued this train of thought by drawing from various contemporary situations examples of artefacts which permitted recognition of that which they accomplished: ‘The strapping on of a sword marked a knight’s military status; the possession of keys actualized a treasurer’s office; coronation and installation on the throne identified a king, and the king acknowledges his functions by wearing a crown and sitting on a throne’ (Figure 7.2).28 Sword, keys, crown, and throne realized et planities, et firmitas in lignis, seu lapidibus, hoc Justitia, aequitas, et fortitude in animibus. Et quod cementum, et clavi, caeteraeque ligaturae lapides, et ligna, hoc mutua dilectio, et spirituals necessitudines inter animas hominum, seu inter homines’; p. 410: ‘Apparet […] quia ingressus in hanc civitatem sanctificatio est, ingressus, qualem descripsimus, qua sanctificatione omnis execratio exuitur, et deponitur, quemadmodum in ingressu in structuram omnis timorositas, et omnis inaequalitas lapidum deponitur, alioquin in illam non admittuntur’. The latter part of this passage concludes a long metaphor urging citizens to be as magnificent and perfect as the stone and wood used in urban architecture. 27  ‘Qualiter enim se invicem socios habebunt, si se non noverint esse socios, qualiter hoc autem cognoscent, nisi communione visibili a signo aliquo, quod non potest esse, nisi visibile’: William of Auvergne, De Sacramento in generali, in Opera Omnia, i, 409. 28  ‘Omnis militia, id est dignitas militaris similiter aliquo signo visibili, sicut accinctione gladii. Item omnis administratio, et omne officium, sicut thesaurorum custodia traditione clavium. Item omnis honor, omnis dignitas, sicut honor regius, aut impositione coronae visibili, aut collatione in throno visibili’: William of Auvergne, De Sacramento in generali, in Opera Omnia, i, 410. Rosier-Catach, ‘Signes sacramentels’, pp. 107–08, whose analysis is driven by William’s argument on sacramental signs. Le Goff, ‘An Urban Metaphor of William of Auvergne’, on the other hand, while acknowledging that William’s city owes much to Augustine’s City of God, nevertheless attempts a reading that probes the relationships between William’s theology, his references to the materiality of urban life, and the growth of cities in the early thirteenth century, especially that of Paris as capital of the French kingdom. William commented extensively on the social performativity of signs in his sermons as well: Morenzoni, ‘Signes, mots, et images dans la predication de Guillaume d’Auvergne’.

The Ambiguity of Representation

163

Figure 7.2. Plaster model of Louis IX seal of ‘Regency’: +S LUDOVICI DEI GR(acia)A FRANCOR(um) REG(is) IN PARTIBUS TRANSMARINIS AGENTIS. 1270. Author’s private collection.

the actions of both identification and recognition. Without speculating about these artefacts’ modes and means of operation, William nevertheless assumed that through their particular design, these objects co-implicated ideas (such as kingship) in such a way as to channel action and reaction along certain paths. William, in these and other examples, seems to have implied two related things, though he did not explicitly state them: first, that mind can inhere in objects, in the sense that within the manufactured object there endures the prior human and material mutualism of its production; and thus, consequently, that objects have a capacity to act that derived from certain of their physical properties. In his discussion of royal seals, however, William displayed a great deal of hostility towards the notion that material signs could operate by means of

164

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

inherent properties. In the De Legibus, he wrote: ‘the royal seal protects and makes safe those in its receipt from any who are subjects of the king, not by its own virtue but by the royal will and power’.29 In this particular statement, agency derives exclusively from the king’s will and intentionality, a human trait that for William has no counterpart in the material realm, which means that artefacts cannot in themselves be agentive. This particular take on artefactual inefficacy contrasts with William’s treatment of emblems, signs of identity, and social markers in De Sacramento.30 In fact, William was well aware that agency and intentionality are not necessarily as coterminous as he would wish them to be. In the same treatise De Legibus, he accepts the influence of stones and stars on human beings, the ability of fire to produce heat and of a magnet to attract metal, however dismissing such causal effects as natural, as the result of unthinking deterministic processes occurring through contact, a point to which I shall return.31 In De Legibus as in De Sacramento, William acknowledged the phenomena of material influence by recognizing that artefacts, such as devotional images, have the power to attract and misdirect the adoration of the faithful, who should be directing their prayers to God and the saints, not to objects.32 In a sermon, he states that images painted at the time of a religious ceremony should not become cultic objects, as they obviously had become in his time.33 He even denounced those who believed that the pope sealed his deeds with lead bullae in recognition of Saturn and his cosmic living energies, since lead’s parent planet was Saturn, with which lead was believed to 29 

William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 27, in Opera Omnia, i, 87: ‘Sicut ergo regale sigillum […] tuetur deferentes, et securos efficit, ne eis noceatur ab his, qui regi subsunt, et hoc non sua virtute, sed potestate regia, et voluntate’. Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, p. 201. 30  See above at notes 26–28. 31  Chs 20 (magnet, fire), 23 (stars), and 27(stones), William of Auvergne, De Legibus, in Opera Omnia, i, 66, 87; Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, pp. 184–88, wrote important comments on these passages of De Legibus, where William seeks to distinguish the natural from the demoniac, the proper image from the idol. In De Legibus, William is open to the notion of natural magic, defending the notion that nature had the power, granted by the Creator, to operate marvels; see below at note 41. 32  William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 23, in Opera Omnia, i, 66: ‘Sicut et forsitan multi simplices hodie sunt, qui inter imagines sanctorum, et ipsos sanctos in suis orationibus non distinguunt, immo operationes quas ad sanctos facere deberent, ad ipsas imagines faciunt’. William mentions this aspect of popular piety in his denunciation of idolatry. Morenzini, ‘Predicatio est rei predicate’, p. 308. 33  Morenzini, ‘Predicatio est rei predicate’, p. 309.

The Ambiguity of Representation

165

have inherent affinities.34 William himself thus described a cultural environment in which artefacts and their materials were acknowledged and expected to cause action and provoke reactions by means of their particular technologies of production and physical properties. Two conclusions may be drawn at this point. William was concerned with the location of agency, conceived as the power to act in the world. In this early part of the De Legibus, his ability to separate material agency from intentionality by invoking natural causation did not quite extend to manufactured objects. Indeed, when discussing the effect royal seals had on the kingdom’s subjects, William explicitly denied the possibility of material agency, subsuming it to human will. In so completely rejecting artefactual performance, William points to a signifying system that operates independently of any physical characteristic. In the next passage of the De Legibus devoted to the royal seal, William revisited the nature of the seal’s actions: ‘Signs cannot accomplish anything unless they are instituted by mutual consent. An example of the operations of signs is provided by the king and his subjects. Royal letters impressed with the seal or the image of the king circulate among the king’s subjects. It is by virtue of a pact of obedience that the subjects comply with the king’s letters. Similarly, by virtue of this pact, the king owes to truth and justice the duty of expressing his will by such signs with utter sincerity. […] Similar signs exist whereby individuals (friends, officials, corporations) commit themselves one to the other, for instance sealed charters, contracts, and chirographs’.35 One could argue that, in this text, the king is deprived of his claim to sovereign authority and is placed 34 

‘Propter hoc etiam dicunt Pontificem Romanum in confirmationibus et testificationibus suis uti sigillo plumbeo, quia plumbum est proprium metallum Saturni, sicut et ipsa lex cui praeest, et Pontifex confirmationibus et testificationibus utitur legis Saturni’: William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 20, in Opera Omnia, i, 55. 35  William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 27, in Opera Omnia, i, 89: ‘Exempla autem operationum, quae per signa videntur fieri, manifesta sunt in regibus, et subditis eorum, inter quos discurrunt literae regiae cum impressione anuli, vel imaginis suae, quibus credunt et obediunt subditi, velut ex pacto obedientiae, qua regibus suis tenentur, et ipsi reges, velut ex pacto quo tenentur veritati, et justitiae debent absque falsitate, per hujus modi signa, suam exprimere voluntatem. Similia signa currunt inter amicos, similiter inter personas publicas, et universas, et hujusmodi signis se consueverunt obligare homines invicem […] fiunt signa pactorum et quorumlibet contractuum, quae vugariter dicitur chirographia, et generaliter ad omnia, quae volunt indicare homines, signis utuntur, prout inter ipsos convenit’. RosierCatach, La parole efficace, pp. 116–17; Rosier-Catach, ‘Signes sacramentels’, pp. 106–07; Véronèse and Grévin, ‘Les “caractères” magiques au Moyen Âge’, pp. 359–60; Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, p. 205.

166

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

on a par with his subjects, friends, officials, and corporations, with whom he is linked by a contractual pact and with whom he shares similar modes for contracting engagements. William’s theory, however, did not so much target the king as his representational devices: the seal and sealed charters. He acknowledged that these artefacts have the power of ensuring the compliance of the king’s subjects and of the king’s behaviour. However, having noted the causal relationship between royal letters and subjects’ obedience, he stressed that the efficacy of these causal relationships depended exclusively upon a pact, an agreement that is accepted by all concerned. In effect, he emptied seals and documents of any intermediary power, of any causal action. Furthermore, in this formulation, the locus of mediatic value and performance is no longer situated in the king’s will, but in a social contract. William argues, in truly Augustinian fashion, for signs with conventionally ascribed value, involving an arbitrary determination created by consent.36 He affirms, once again, that the material aspect of representational signs could only be insignificant. To my knowledge, he was the first university master of theology to discuss royal seals in such a fashion.37 An immediate reason for William’s exotic positions is offered by the very nature of the passages in which he brought up the case of the seals.

William, Astral Seals, and Royal Seals Both references to the royal seal occur in Chapter 27 of De Legibus, whose title makes clear that William will pursue three goals in it: the refutation of the stupid notion that statues are gods and act accordingly; the condemnation of the position advocated by Hermes Trismegistus in Asclepius that substances akin to souls can enter statues; and the demonstration that inscriptions, images, and imprints are but signs by means of which demons recognize their worshippers.38 Chapter 27 also concludes the discussion of the ten 36 

Scholarly analyses of this passage, and of William’s theory of the pact, have appropriately emphasized his dependency upon Augustine’s theory of intentional, or conventional signs; see above at note 35. I am currently exploring the possibility that William’s theory of consent may also derive from the newly discussed status of the sigillum authenticum in canon law: BedosRezak, ‘Efficacy of Signs’, p. 224. 37  It gives me pleasure here to acknowledge my debt to Professor Courtenay, whose substantial body of work on covenant and causality has been very helpful in directing me through the complicated debates that, in the central Middle Ages, dealt with the efficacy of signs: Courtenay, ‘The King and the Leaden Coin’; Courtenay, ‘Sacrament, Symbol, and Causality’. 38  William of Auvergne, De Legibus, in Opera Omnia, i, 86: ‘caput xxvii. Confutat alium

The Ambiguity of Representation

167

sorts of idols that William had enumerated at the end of Chapter 23.39 The third category of idols, however, received more than a mere mention within a list. William described at some length this particular type of idol, a fictitious god in the shape of an image that credulous old women believe to have been imprinted and infused with divine and auratic splendour by celestial spirits, stars, and luminaries or even the heavens themselves.40 William returned to the questions of sentient images and of astral influence in Chapter 27. As he considered godlike, animated, and active figures at the very beginning of the chapter, he reviewed the argument that such figures could be like the sapphire, which healed by virtue of its natural properties. William thus acknowledged the possibility of virtues inherent in natural entities, though he attributed such virtues not to their structures, shapes, or materials but to their full nature as it had been ordered by God.41 Thus, for him, materials, metal, bronze, wood were incapable in themselves of being animate or of mediating influence, and therefore if an image had an occult property of dynamic efficacy, such power had to come from outside its material shape and components, that is, from God or the

errorem veteris idolatriae, scilicet de statuis, quae stultis visae sunt esse dii factitii; ostenditque subtiliter quod cum hujusmodi statuae non sint vitae capaces, ac susceptibiles, scientia quoque, et intellectus susceptibiles esse non possunt: docet igitur Mercurium Trismegistum turpiter errase, qui crediderit animas, seu substantias aliquas animabus similes, statuis advenire posse: deinde transit ad destructionem characterum, seu figurarum, ac impressionum, dicens tales figures nihil aliud esse, quam signa quadam quibus daemones suos cultores agnoscunt’. Chapter 26 (Opera Omnia, i, 81) had been devoted in its final part to the refutation that statues could host spirits and be endowed with divine, animate, powers, a statement found in Hermes’s Asclepius (37). 39  William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 23, in Opera Omnia, i, 67. William’s numbered categorization is not systematic. Apparently only categories 8 through 10 are specifically identified as William denounces idolatry in Chapters 24 through 27. His indictment of idolatry had begun before Chapter 23, and much of his arguments are overlapping and repetitive, as if he is in fact concerned with fundamental aspects of idolatry. They recur whether he is discussing animated statues, astral seals, or incantations. It seems to me that his main concern focuses on the refutation of idolatry as a belief in the animate power of nature and artefacts. 40  William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 23, in Opera Omnia, i, 66; Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, p. 188, for a French translation of this passage. 41  ‘Quemadmodum saphirus juxta opinionem quorundam virtutem habet naturaliter curandi infirmatitem […] quae virtus caelestis et divina […] esse videtur. Non enim a parte compositionis tantum, nec ullo modorum a parte materiae suae vel formae, sed secundum totam naturam suam desuper infuso splendore, et desuper imposita irradiatione’: William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 27, in Opera Omnia, i, 87; Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, p. 184, for a French translation of this passage.

168

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

demons.42 Throughout Chapter 27, William extends this argument to inscriptions, figures, marks, imprints,43 and to the four specific instruments of astral idolatry: seals, rings, characters, and images, where he once again takes up the question of the modalities of astral influence.44 Astral seals were imprints of the figures of constellations or planets, whose power they thus concentrated so that it might be used to affect one’s destiny.45 Thus, the concept of the consensual royal seal emerges as William plumbed the intersections of worldly and revealed knowledge, after they had been confounded by his acquaintance with the views of ancient, Muslim, and Jewish philosophers.46 William was among the first Western theologians to quote Aristotle’s Libri Naturales in his De Legibus, which interests us here.47 He was among the first witnesses of the arrival of Arabo-Latin translations of magical texts in the West,48 and he was possibly the first to have articulated the notion of a natural magic, whereby the occult power of nature could produce won42  ‘Manifestum est tibi, quia nec metallum, nec aes, nec lignum, nec lutum receptibile est intellectus, aut scientiae ullo modorum […]. Quod si [virtus, intellectus, scientia] fuerit in statua secundum formam suam, hoc est long magis inconveniens, cum forma statuae, qua scilicet statua est, sit tantum accidens alicujus ex materiis, quas nominavimus, hoc est metallic, vel aeris, vel ligni, vel luti […]. Intellectus et scientia, si sint in hujusmodi statuis, essent in eis secundum aliud, quam secundum totum, vel partem corporeitatis suae, et quam sit earum materia, vel forma’: William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 27, in Opera Omnia, i, 87. 43  ‘Dicemus igitur, quia ea fuit stultitia quorundam hominum, eaque imbecillitas, ut eas, sive sculptas, sive scriptas, aut pictas, sive impressas, crederent virtutem habere divinam ad operanda mirifica, quae manifestum est impossibilia esse, praeterquam soli omnipotens creatoris virtuti’: William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 27, in Opera Omnia, i, 88. 44  ‘Debes autem scire, quia quatuor genera figurarum posuerunt idolatrae stellarum in planetis, videlicet sigilla, anulos, characters, et imagines’: William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 27, in Opera Omnia, i, 89. 45  Weill-Parot’s learned monograph, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, offers numerous and excellent discussions of the theoretical debates and ontological issues raised by astral seals in the West during the central Middle Ages. Since the publication of this major study, Weill-Parot has pursued the question of astral seals in several essays, among which are Weill-Parot, ‘Astral Magic and Intellectual Changes’; Weill-Parot, ‘Causalité astrale et “science des images” au Moyen Age’; Weill-Parot, ‘Astrology, Astral Influences and Occult Properties’. 46  I follow here Stephen  P. Marrone’s felicitous expression in Marrone, ‘William of Auvergne on Magic’, pp. 741–42. 47  William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 25, in Opera Omnia, i, 79; Dahan, ‘L’exégèse de la Bible’, p. 246. 48  Marrone, ‘William of Auvergne on Magic’; Jean-Patrice Boudet, Entre science et nigro­ mance, pp. 125–28, 131; Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, pp. 176–77.

The Ambiguity of Representation

169

ders.49 He was able to achieve this conception by embracing the Aristotelian understanding of nature as a physical system resulting from a series of causes that operated and were mediated and performed by contact.50 William’s position on causal contacts, however, contradicted another aspect of his reflection, that in which he upheld the traditional view that nature and the nature of things, as in the case of the sapphire mentioned earlier, had been directly created by God’s will.51 A systematic inspection of William’s works reveals that he saw the natural and the divine as linked; yet a great deal of his epistemological reasoning makes his reliance on either of these conceptions, nature as a result of causes or nature as divine creation, seem arbitrary and capricious. A case in point is his treatment of astrological seals. In considering these, William recognized astral influence but generally rejected the notion that astrological images involved contact and therefore declared them to be unnatural; since they were not natural, they could not have a divine origin and therefore were powered by diabolical will and through agreement between magicians and the devil.52 Such is the narrative context in which William chose to invoke the royal seal, in support of the notion that concrete signs operated at human will or by consensus. Quite possibly, of course, simple lexical affinity might account for his concurrent discussion of astral and royal seals. I would submit, however, that it was the process of seal production, imprinting, which brought astral and royal seals together in William’s mind, thus immensely complicating his argument. For imprinting is the result of contact between materials, in the case of seals, human fingers, wax, and metal (Figure 7.3). Seal imprinting emphasizes the necessity of both immediate local contiguity and the primary materiality of causation; it produces marks that insert the seal’s impact into an etiological 49 

William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 24, in Opera Omnia, i, 69; Thorndike, A History of Magic, ii, 346–47, and above, note 41. 50  Gregory, ‘La Nouvelle idée de nature et de savoir scientifique au xiie siècle’, pp. 193–218; Maronne, ‘Magic and the Physical World’, pp.  159–60. Delaurenti, La puissance des mots, pp. 123–29, distinguishes between the De Legibus, Chapter 20, in which William mainly considers nature as divine creation, and De Universo (written slightly later, c. 1231–36), where William defines natural action by predicating it upon contact. In fact, already in De Legibus, Chapter 20, William not only embraced the notion that natural operations work through contact but emphasized that he has made this point previously: ‘Jam alibi didicisti, qui corporales virtutes non agunt, nisi per contactum agentis et patientis, aut medii, quod necesse est, ut sit contingens ad utrumque, et deferens passionem ab altero in alterum’ (Opera Omnia, i, 55). 51  See above at note 41. 52  Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge, pp. 175–77; Delaurenti, La puis­ sance des mots, p. 127.

170

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

Figure 7.3. Matrix, imprint, and fingerprints. Seal-Matrix of the Collegial Chapter of Saint-Quiriace of Provins, and detached wax impressions issued from it, Paris, Archives Nationales, Service des sceaux, Mat.18; Inset: Reverse of seal with fingerprints, Paris, Archives Nationales, J 414B no. 108. Early fourteenth century. Photos by author.

The Ambiguity of Representation

171

chain originating from the physical gesture of the sealer; it re-produces images, thereby configuring them as born and not made, imbuing them with the potency of their originator. Thus, the imprint embodies the concept of natural action and exemplifies the fact that materiality is a necessary factor in causality, signification, and agency.53 William was well aware of the powers of the imprint, of the fact that it was animated by a series of causes and effects, and that even before the influx of new scientific treatises, the imprint had served as explanatory paradigm of God’s incarnation and of man’s creation;54 he himself continued to use the image of the seal for such exegetical purposes.55 However, when contemplating a new learning that blurred the disciplinary boundaries between natural sciences and astral magic, William experienced the imprint as the epitome of these disciplines’ shared epistemic qualities. Since the adoption of an explanatory framework of natural causality to explain the power of matter and the efficacy of artefacts could condone magical practices, William backtracked. His take on the imprint in De Legibus, developed as the very part of his joint discussion of idols and of astral seals, explicitly states that a seal can be said to be a natural phenomenon and have inherent virtue, but only as heat produces heat and cold, cold; that is, like all natural bodies, including stars, seals merely have the ability to impress their form and nothing else.56 Significantly, here, William is willing 53 

Such a perspective had been pervasive since the twelfth century in the natural philosophy and anthropological theology of the Latin West and was concomitant with the spread of sealing practices during that period. For the constitutive relationship between new attitudes towards nature and the diffusion of seals and representational devices, see Bedos-Rezak, ‘Semiotic Anthropology’. 54  Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago, pp. 171–205. 55  For instance in De Baptismo, ch. 1, written before De Legibus: ‘Septima operatio est mollitio; quemadmodum enim terra siccitate indurate super infusione aquae vivae mollitur, sic cor et apertum efficitur, ut scripturam salutaris veritatis facile recipiat, et impressionem ejus facile induat […] imago verae divinae bonitatis imprimatur affectui, sui voluntati […] sic divinae bonitatis similitudine ejus insignitur, et sigillatur affectus; juxta quod legitur in 8 canticorum: “Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum”’: William of Auvergne, Opera Omnia, i, 418. See also below at note 57. 56  ‘Quod coelestia corpora dant formas et figuras hominibus, et caeteris animalibus, aut hoc est per virtutem corporalem, aut per virtutem subliorem, atque nobiliorem: quod si fuerit per virtutem corporalem, tunc non debet hoc esse, nisi per formas, et figuras ipsorum, quemadmodum si calidum imprimit calorem per virtutem suam corporalem, ex necessitate hoc est per calorem proprium, et si frigidum frigiditatem, et ita de aliis; quare coelestia corpora, hoc est stellae, et luminaria, et coeli ipsi si imprimunt formas eas, et figuras animalium, ut discunt, non imprimat

172

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

to consider that astral seals were natural and imprinted, but only because of his assumption that natural signs were trivial. For with natural signs, he argued, signification was confined to a mechanical referencing of that which had caused the sign; such signification was limited to the systematic indication and figuration of the object that enabled the sign to achieve mediate realization; natural signification was a mindless matter of automated and reproducible phenomena. William thus, in an ironic paradox, recognized that in a natural process of signification, objects could exist and act independently of mental operations. When, as Joinville reported in his Life of Louis IX, the King returned the county of Dammartin to Renaud of Trie, he based his decision on the fact that the broken seal on the royal charter gifting the county to Renaud could be shown to correspond exactly to the whole seal Louis had requested for comparison. The sameness of the images verified their truth, itself predicated upon a common originating cause. The process of verification was material and mechanistic.57 King Louis returned the county of Dammartin late in his reign; William of Auvergne could not have been a witness to the episode. It is therefore particularly interesting that in one of his sermons, William encouraged the faithful to keep intact the seal that, according to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (4), had imprinted human beings in the image of God. 58 William eas, nisi per formas, et figuras suas. Corpus autem generaliter, quod per formam, aut figuram suam format, aut figurat aliud, non dat ei nisi formam, aut figuram qualem habet, sicut vas aquam continet et sigillum cerae cui imprimatur’. William of Auvergne, De Legibus, ch. 24, in Opera Omnia, i, 80. William recapitulated this reasoning in De Universo: William of Auvergne, Opera Omnia, i, 616, and William of Auvergne, The Universe of Creatures, trans. by Teske, p. 77. 57  Jean de Joinville, Life of St Louis, trans. by Shaw, pp. 178–79. 58  ‘Amor quippe signaculum est quo Spiritus Sanctus imprimit. Ipso enim Spiritu Sancto uelud sigillo signati sumus, sicut dicit Apostolus. Debet autem respondere signaculum, id est impressio, sigillo imprimenti, quia Spiritus Sanctus est amor Patris in Filium, et deinde in omne diligendum. Hoc est sigillum quo regnum celorum uel prebenda illius ecclesie triumphantis donatur. Caue igitur a fractione uel fractura sigilli huiusmodi. Integritas requiritur in sigillo. Non igitur fractione uel portione sigilli debes esse contentus. Qui non amat nisi amantes se, modicam habet sigilli fractionem. | Non speres igitur per illam optinere dictam prebendam. Qui discordiam seminat discordantium, sigilla confringit. Ve illi. Qui autem discordes ad concordiam reducit, sigilla eorum huiusmodi reintegrat et quodammodo ipsas celestes prebendas eis restituit’. Guilelmi Alverni. Opera Homelitica, ed. by Morenzoni, iv, 291. The image of the broken seal, devoid, however, of William’s legal connotation, is found in such twelfth-century schoolmen as Abelard, Achard of St Victor, Thomas of Citeaux, and Bernard of Clairvaux: Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago, p. 149. On the currency, throughout the twelfth century, of sigillographic commentaries on Paul’s text in Epistola ad Ephesios, 4: ‘et nolite contristare Spiritum Sanctum Dei in quo signati estis in die redemptionis’, see Bedos-

The Ambiguity of Representation

173

buttressed his encouragement with the remark that for a seal to be valid, it had to be intact, a statement based upon canon law. The discussion of seals entered canon law in the late twelfth century, with the goal of establishing criteria for a physical investigation of spurious seals and documents. Introduced in a decretal of Pope Alexander III (d. 1181), the critical examination of seals was expanded by Hugoccio (d. 1210) in his Summa Decretorum. Alexander’s and Hugoccio’s principles were integrated by Pope Innocent III (d. 1216) within his comprehensive statement on the subject of seal forgery. This material became part of the Decretales, compiled in 1234 during the papacy of Pope Gregory IX.59 Innocent had stressed the importance of the intactness of the seal in verifying its authenticity, but had also himself, when required to assess the authenticity of papal bulls for the English abbey of Evesham (in 1205), proceeded to a comparison of bulls issued by the same papal authority.60 In privileging the notion of intactness, William told only half of the story, as Louis IX, apparently also aware of canon legal requirements, showed in his handling of the grant sealed with a broken seal of his. Thus, in contemplating seals, whether astral or royal, William denied that the materiality of mediatic objects was co-significant. He did so at the risk of empowering the will of the demons, and of promoting a consensual theory of kingship that, though allowing for the king’s will, nevertheless insisted on the necessity of consent by his subjects. William’s desire to vest all power of action in ensouled intentionality was the solution he brought to what he saw as the dangers associated with empowering things. William extended his theory that signs were significant and efficacious by virtue of a pact both to magical objects and to sacraments; his theory in these fields remained powerful though contested until the end of the medieval period and has been the object of superb scholarship.61 There is, however, little if any work on the extent to which this semiotically devised theory of consensus might have filtered and supported the theory and practice of medieval kingship.62 Rezak, When Ego Was Imago, p. 188. 59  Bedos-Rezak, ‘Efficacy of Signs’, pp. 216–21. 60  Bedos-Rezak, ‘Efficacy of Signs’, p. 219, with full bibliography on the Evesham case. 61  See the studies by Courtenay, Rosier-Catach, and Weill-Parot, mentioned throughout this essay and in the Works Cited. 62  There is no shortage of contemporary prescriptive texts challenging William’s notion that the efficacy of royal seals rests upon the king’s will and/or consensus. See for instance Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, trans. by Akehurst, no. 1213, p. 438: ‘It should be known that if the king or some of his lords who hold directly from him testify by their

174

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

Figure 7.4. ‘Legend of Theophilus, Lambeth Apocalypse’, London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 209, fol. 46 A. c. 1260. Reproduced with permission of Lambeth Palace Library.

The Ambiguity of Representation

175

The King’s Power: Mediated and Supernatural As I embark on the concluding section of this essay, I wish to probe a little further William’s linkage of a royal mode of bureaucratic mediation to demonology and the supernatural. So far the argument has been that imprinting was a major lynchpin for this association. Two examples will illustrate my tentative contention that bureaucratic governance relayed, via its representational mediums, a presence that was defined, not in opposition to absence but in juxtaposition to transcendence, which is after all a form of absence.63 The association of representational governance with transcendence mobilized a topos in which God himself engaged in documentary practices. In a corpus of metaphors which appeared towards the end of the twelfth century, Christ was said to have departed for heaven carrying letters of recommendation on behalf of humankind to be presented to the Father.64 These letters ascended on high with the surest sign of validation, for they were written in the very flesh of the crucified Christ, in his own blood. There was specific praise for these documents’ seals, for they were the wound applied on Christ’s side, which are forever exhibited before the Father through his Son’s presence.65 The incarnate seal fused presence and representation, thus affording the royal chancery a divine parallel, a mimesis that reached its pinnacle when Louis IX had the Sainte-Chapelle built to house relics of the Passion. These were not, however, the only treasures to be held in the Sainte-Chapelle, for the King also brought his engraved gems, his charters, and his cartularies there.66 Precious stones, relics, and bureaucratic writing shared the same sacred space, demonstrating the extent to which docuwriting to some contract or deal which has been made between his subjects, and afterwards there is a suit about what was in the contract, the writing of the king or the writing of their lord who holds directly from the king is a full proof which cannot be contested by the subjects’. Beaumanoir makes many similar statements throughout his Coutumes. 63  Peter Haidu argued that political representation and religious transcendence are identical processes: Haidu, The Subject Medi­eval/Modern, pp. 161–62. Haidu’s argument overlaps with but differs from Ernst Kantorowicz’s notion of the king as being human by nature and divine by grace: Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, p. 87. 64  Bedos-Rezak, ‘Cutting Edge’, pp. 151–52. 65  William himself, in his sermons, used the image of letters sealed by Christ and written in his blood: ‘Item hodie proprio sanguine scripsit nobis litteras de prebenda celesti habenda, et ipse pro sigillo appensus est litteris euuangelicis. Item hodie proprio sanguine deleuit litteras diaboli quas habebat contra nos’: Guilelmi Alverni. Opera Homelitica, ed. by Morenzoni, ii, 127; Morenzoni, ‘Signes, mots et images’, p. 246. 66  Guyotjeannin and Potin, ‘Fabrique de la perpétuité’, pp. 28–29.

176

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

ments and governance hovered between the worldly and the divine, assembling the two spheres into a single system of material exchange and communication. However, from the early thirteenth century, this singular system had become even more comprehensive as it came to include the devil himself (Figure 7.4).67 Gautier de Coinci (1177–1236), writing a French version of the story of Theophilus in early thirteenth-century Picardy, staged and clinched the implacable role of a written and sealed instrument in the pact Theophilus made with the Devil: And he [Theophilus] must without delay \ give me [the Devil] a valid charter. \ Many Christians have deceived me […]. \ I will never believe a Christian unless \ I have his sealed charter […]. \ Theophilus, the rogue, […] \ to damn himself more thoroughly \ gave the Devil a valid charter, \ duly sealed with his seal […]. [The Virgin Mary speaks to Theophilus:] Promptly the devils \ will seize you swiftly. \ Promptly they will throw you \ into their jail and prison. \ They have an authentic writing and a valid charter \ so that, dead or alive, you belong to them […]. [Theophilus agrees:] As long as I have not recovered the writing \ which orders and dictates my death. \ Alas, this is what affects me most. \ Alas, the devils still have it […]. \ Sweet Lady, if it is no bother, \ I pray you, I implore you \ that you deploy your misericord \ so as to recover this charter […]. \ I know that God will not see \ my soul until I have recovered it […]. \ The merciful Mother of God \ came back to him [Theophilus] with the writing \ which made him so fearful.68

Such imagery shows the harnessing of writing as an instrument of domination, and it does so at a time when the technology of writing and sealing and the bureaucratic hold on the kingdom and on its subjects were undergoing a distinct strengthening. Such imagery also makes it clear that the very existence of the documentary record materializes the existence of the agreement. Contrary to William of Auvergne’s scenario, even when the pact between the parties lapses, the material artefact prevails over convention; only its erasure or miraculous return to its author can dissolve the intentional agreement. The story of Theophilus in particular epitomizes eloquently a medieval understanding that seals and sealed charters created social relationships; that they functioned within a world of sacred and supernatural economies; and that willingness, intention, and verbal declaration were not enough to do or undo a written and sealed com67 

A number of recent studies point to the growing relationship between bureaucratic kingship and diabolical sovereignty: Camille, ‘The Devil’s Writing’; Baschet, ‘Satan ou la majesté maléfique’; Jennings, Tutivillus. 68  Gautier de Coinci, Le Miracle de Théophile, ed. and trans. by Garnier, pp. 97, 131, 151–53; English translations are mine.

The Ambiguity of Representation

177

mitment. The sealed charter was an extension of Theophilus’s self, in metonymic relationship to his person. That it took a miracle to make Theophilus whole again, to reunite him with that part of himself which had originally given life to the contract and continued to animate its written record, indicates the fact that seals and sealing negotiated a fluid existence, crossing different registers as if these did not belong to fundamentally different ontological categories. William refused to see seals, and mediated governance in general, as anything but conventional signs devoid of any inherent powers of agency. He did so in an actual situation where such a form of mediation was routinely and explicitly experienced as performative, as blurring the natural and supernatural. William, however, would have none of it, possibly because he understood that the boundaries between the transcendental, the supernatural, and the demoniac were porous. His insistence upon a need for the actual will of the king, and of the subjects of the kingdom, stemmed not from an inability to abstract from persons to signs, but rather from a quest for abstraction. For William’s theory of signs demanded that only the individual’s physical being could be the natural instruments of his will. From this perspective, unless convention made objects something more, the only reality consisted of living persons entering into pacts. It was, in fact, by virtue of the progressive empowerment of artefactual mediation that the world of politics entered what passes for modern bureaucracy. As medieval individuals empowered matter, they also became able to use it as extensions of themselves, as prostheses to act upon the world and upon matter. I submit that, in the early thirteenth century, abstraction, that is, the distancing of signs from objects, was irreversibly challenged by a growing contrary practice, which depended upon coherence between the instrument of action and the action it would have to accomplish. Clearly, the material of the instrument was understood to participate in any action its instrumentality was capable of performing. My final point, at least for now, concerns a plea for a new history of royal governance, in which greater attention is given to the role of material animation, a feature still too often associated with primitive cultures. The case of William of Auvergne we have just reviewed shows that even as such an understanding of matter could be philosophically unacceptable to some it remained crucial to the development of the medieval state.

178

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

Works Cited Primary Sources Douët d’Arcq, Louis, Collection de sceaux, 3 vols (Paris: Plon, 1863–68) Gautier de Coinci, Le Miracle de Théophile, ou, Comment Théophile vint à la penitence, ed. and trans. by Annette Garnier (Paris: Champion, 1998) Guilelmi Alverni. Opera Homelitica I–IV, ed. by Franco Morenzoni, Corpus Christianorum continuation mediaevalis, 230, 230A-C (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010–2013) Guilielmi Alverni. Opera Omnia: Quae hactenus reperiri potuerunt, reconditissimam rerum humanarum, ac divinarum doctrinam abundè complectentia, ac proinde bonarum artium ac scientiarum studiosis, maximè vero Theologis, ac divini verbi Concionatoribus apprimè necessaria, 2 vols (Paris, 1674) Jean de Joinville, Life of St Louis, in Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. by Margaret R. B. Shaw (New York: Dorset Press; 1985) Peirce, Charles, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur Burks, 8 vols (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1931–58) Philippe de Beaumanoir, The Coutumes de Beauvaisis de Philippe de Beaumanoir, trans. by F. R. P. Akehurst (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1992) Valois, Noel, ‘Pièces justificatives’, in Guillaume d’Auvergne, évêque de Paris (1228–1249): Sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris: A. Picard, 1880), pp. 333–83 William of Auvergne, On Morals, trans. by Roland J. Teske (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013) —— , On the Virtues: Part One of ‘On the Virtues and Vices’, trans. by Roland  J. Teske, Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation, 45 (Milwaukee: Marquette Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009) —— , Providence of God Regarding the Universe: Part Three of the First Principal Part of ‘The Universe of Creatures’, trans. by Roland J. Teske, Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation, 43 (Milwaukee: Marquette Uni­ver­sity Press, 2007) —— , The Soul, trans. by Roland J. Teske, Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation, 37 (Milwaukee: Marquette Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000) —— , The Trinity, or, the First Principle, trans. by Francis C. Wade and Roland J. Teske (Milwaukee: Marquette Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989) —— , The Universe of Creatures, trans. by Roland J. Teske, Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation, 35 (Milwaukee: Marquette Uni­ver­sity Press, 1998)

Secondary Studies Bartholeyns, Gil, ‘Les objets contre les symboles: Une sociologie chrétienne et médiévale du signe’, in La performance des images, ed. by Alain Dierkens, Gil Bartholeyns, and Thomas Golsenne, Problèmes d’histoire des religions, 19 (Bruxelles: Ed. de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2010), pp. 137–56

The Ambiguity of Representation

179

Baschet, Jérôme, ‘Satan ou la Majesté maléfique dans les miniatures de la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Figures du Mal aux xive et xve siècles, ed. by Nathalie Nabert (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996), pp. 187–210 Bedos-Rezak, Brigitte, ‘Cutting Edge: The Economy of Mediality in Twelfth-Century Chiro­graphic writing’, in Modelle des Medialen im Mittelalter, ed. by Christian Kiening and Martina Stercken, special issue of Das Mittelalter, 15.2 (2010), 134–61 —— , ‘The Efficacy of Signs and the Matter of Authenticity in Canon Law (800–1250)’, in Zwischen Pragmatik und Performanz: Dimensionen mittelalterlicher Schrifkultur, ed. by Christoph Dartmann, Thomas Scharff, and Christoph Friedrich Weber, Utrecht Studies in Medi­eval Literacy, 18 (Turnhout, Brepols 2011), pp. 199–236 —— , ‘Semiotic Anthropology: The Twelfth-century Approach’, in European Trans­for­ ma­tions: The Long Twelfth Century, ed. by Thomas F. X. Noble and John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN: Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame Press, 2012), pp. 426–67 —— , When Ego was Imago. Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2011) Boudet, Jean-Patrice, Entre science et nigromance: Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’occident médiéval, xiie-xve siècle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006) Boudet, Jean-Patrice, Anna Caiozzo, and Nicolas Weill-Parot, eds, Images et magie: Picatrix entre Orient et Occident, Sciences, techniques et civilisations du Moyen âge à l’aube des Lumières, 13 (Paris: Champion, 2011) Camille, Michael, ‘The Devil’s Writing: Diabolic Literacy in Medi­eval Art’, in World Art: Themes of Unity in Diversity, ed. by Irving Lavin, Acts of the 26th International Congress of the History of Art (Uni­ver­sity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989), ii, 355–60 Courtenay, William, ‘The King and the Leaden Coin: The Economic Background of Sine Qua Non Causality’, Traditio, 28 (1972), 185–209; repr. in Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medi­eval Thought: Studies in Philosophy, Theology, and Economic Practice (London: Variorum, 1984), chapter vi —— , ‘Sacrament, Symbol, and Causality in Bernard of Clairvaux’, in Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Presented to Jean Leclercq (Washington, DC: Cistercian Publications, 1973), pp. 111–22; repr. in Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medi­eval Thought: Studies in Philosophy, Theology, and Economic Practice (London: Variorum, 1984), chapter ii Dahan, Gilbert, ‘L’exégèse de la Bible chez Guillaume d’Auvergne’, in Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne (†1249), ed. by Franco Morenzoni and Jean-Yves Tilliette, Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du moyen âge, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 237–70 Debray, Régis, Cours de médiologie générale (Paris: Gallimard, 1991) —— , Manifestes médiologiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1994) —— , Media Manifestos, trans. by Eric Rauth (London: Verso) —— , Transmettre (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997) —— , Transmitting Culture, trans. by Eric Rauth (New York: Columbia Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000) Delaurenti, Béatrice, La puissance des mots, ‘Virtus Verborum’: Débats doctrinaux sur le pouvoir des incantations au Moyen Age (Paris: Cerf, 2007) De Mayo, Thomas, The Demonology of William of Auvergne: By Fire and Sword (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007)

180

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

Gregory, Tullio, ‘La Nouvelle idée de nature et de savoir scientifique au xiie Siècle’, in The Cultural Context of Medi­eval Learning, ed. by John Emery Murdoch, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 26 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975), pp. 193–218 Guyotjeannin, Olivier, and Yann Potin, ‘Fabrique de la perpétuité: Le trésor des chartes et les archives du royaume, xiiie–xixe siècle’, Revue de synthèse, 125.1 (2004), 15–44 Haidu, Peter, The Subject Medi­eval/Modern: Text and Governance in the Middle Ages (Stanford: Stanford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2004) Jennings, Margaret, Tutivillus: The Literary Career of the Recording Demon, Studies in Philology, 74.5 (Chapel Hill: Uni­ver­sity of North Carolina Press, 1977) Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King’s Two Bodies: A  Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Prince­ton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press; 1997) Keane, Webb, ‘Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things’, in Materiality, ed. by Daniel Miller (Durham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005), pp. 182–205 Kiening, Christian, ‘Mediologie-Christologie: Konturen einer Grundfigur mittelalterlicher Medialität’, in Modelle des Medialen im Mittelalter, ed. by C. Kiening and Martina Sterchen, special issue of Das Mittelalter, 15.2 (2010), 16–32 Knappet, Carl, Thinking through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Philadelphia: Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) Le Goff, Jacques, ‘An Urban Metaphor of William of Auvergne’, in The Medi­eval Imag­ ination, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 177–180, 267–68 Long, James, ‘Between Idolatry and Science: The Magical Arts in the Grosseteste School’, in Robert Grosseteste: His Thought and Its Impact, ed. by Jack P. Cunningham, Papers in Mediaeval Studies, 21 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies), pp. 167–97 Marrone, S. P., ‘Magic and the Physical World in Thirteenth-Century Scholasticism’, Early Science and Medicine, 14 (2009), 158–85 —— , William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste: New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1983) —— , ‘William of Auvergne on Magic in Natural Philosophy and Theology’, in Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter, ed. by Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, Akten des X. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie, Miscellanea Medi­aevalia, 26 (Berlin: Arthur Collignon, 1998), pp. 741–48 Morenzoni, Franco, ‘Predicatio est rei predicate humanis mentibus presentatio: Les sermons pour la dédicace de l’église de Guillaume d’Auvergne’, in Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne (†1249), ed. by Franco Morenzoni and Jean-Yves Tilliette, Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du moyen âge, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 293–322 —— , ‘Signes, mots, et images dans la predication de Guillaume d’Auvergne’, in Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne (†1249), ed. by Franco Morenzoni and Jean-Yves Tilliette, Biblio­ thèque d’histoire culturelle du moyen âge, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 239–53 Morenzoni, Franco, and Jean-Yves Tilliette, eds, Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne (†1249), Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du moyen âge, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005)

The Ambiguity of Representation

181

Murphy, Sean, ‘William of Auvergne’, in Christian–Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, iv: (1200–1350), ed. by Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala, Alexander Mallett, and David Thomas, History of  Christian–Muslim  Relations, 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 288–94 Oakley, Francis, The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050–1300) (New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2012) OED Online, Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, [accessed August 2014] Ottmann, Jennifer  R., ‘List of Manu­scripts and Editions [of the Works of William of Auvergne]’, in Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne (†1249), ed. by Franco Morenzoni and Jean-Yves Tilliette, Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du moyen âge, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 375–99 Palmer, Stephen, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology (Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999) Parmentier, Richard, ‘Peirce Divested for Nonintimates’, in Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology (Bloomington: Indiana Uni­ver­sity Press), pp. 3–22 —— , ‘Peirce’s Concept of Mediation’, in Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology (Bloomington: Indiana Uni­ver­sity Press), pp. 23–44 —— , The Pragmatic Semiotics of Culture, Semiotica, 116.1 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997) Pels, Dick, Kevin Hetherington, and Frédéric Vandenberghe, ‘The Status of the Object: Performances, Mediations, and Techniques’, Theory, Culture & Society, 19 (2002), 1–21 Rosier-Catach, Irène, La parole efficace: Signe, ritual, sacré (Paris: Seuil, 2004) —— , ‘Signes sacramentels et signes magiques: Guillaume d’Auvergne et la théorie du pacte’, in Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne (†1249), ed. by Franco Morenzoni and JeanYves Tilliette, Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du moyen âge, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 93–116 Smalley, Beryl, ‘William of Auvergne, John of La Rochelle and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Old Law’, in St Thomas Aquinas, 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, ed. by B. Smalley, 2 vols (Toronto: XX), ii, 11–711; repr. in Smalley, Studies in Medi­eval Thought and Learning from Abelard to Wyclif, History Series, 6 (London: Hambledon Press, 1981), pp. 121–81 Teske, Roland J., Studies in the Philosophy of William of Auvergne (Milwaukee: Marquette Uni­ver­sity, 2006) Thorndike, Lynn, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols, History of Science Society, 4 (New York: Macmillan, 1923–58) Thrift, Nigel, ‘Beyond Mediation: Three New Material Registers and their Consequences’, in Materiality, ed. by Daniel Miller (Durham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005), pp. 231–55 Valois, Noel, Guillaume d’Auvergne, évêque de Paris (1228–1249): Sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris: A. Picard, 1880) Véronèse, Julien, and Benoît Grévin, ‘Les “caractères” magiques au Moyen Âge (xiie–xive siècle)’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, 162, no. 2 (2004), 305–79

182

Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

Warnier, Construire la culture matérielle: L’homme qui pensait avec ses doigts (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999) Watts, Christopher M., ‘On Mediation and Material Agency in the Perceian Semeiotic’, in Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach, ed. by Carl Knappett and Lambros Manfouris (New York: Springer, 2008), pp. 187–208 Weill-Parot, Nicolas, ‘Astral Magic and Intellectual Changes (Twelfth–Fifteenth Cen­ turies)’, in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. by Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), pp. 167–88 —— , ‘Astrology, Astral Influences and Occult Properties in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, Traditio, 65 (2010), 201–30 —— , ‘Causalité astrale et “science des images” au Moyen Age: Éléments de réflexion / Astral Causality and the “Science of Images” during the Middle Ages: Some Lines of Thought’, Revue d’Histoire des Sciences, 52, no. 2 (1999), 207–40 —— , Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance: Spéculations intellectuelles et pratiques magiques (xiie–xve siècle) (Paris: Champion, 2002)

Part III. Philip the Fair and his Ministers

Philip the Fair and his Ministers: Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerran de Marigny Elizabeth A. R. Brown

T

he setting where the papers in this volume were given — at Princeton, in Dickinson Hall — linked all who were present to the grand tradition of Capetian studies that Joseph Reese Strayer (1904–87) fostered there for thirty-three years, from 1940 until his retirement in 1973, and that since then has been signally advanced by William Chester Jordan and his students. Our surroundings made us acutely aware of the debt we owe to the masters of Capetian history who preceded us. They taught us. They wrote the works that shape the questions we investigate and that structure the dimensions and nature of the quest in which we are engaged. My own debt is particularly great, since I have had the temerity to devote a good part of my career to working on a monarch whom Joe Strayer (and doubtless Robert Fawtier as well) considered his own: Philip the Fair of France, whom Strayer often referred to emphatically as ‘my Philip the Fair’. I never studied under Professor Strayer, since when I applied to college in 1950 and then to graduate school in 1954, women had no place at Princeton. Rather, in 1954, having left Swarthmore College determined to be an English medievalist, I became, faute de mieux, the student of Joe’s older scholar-brother at Harvard, Charles Holt Taylor (1899–1984), since Helen Maud Cam had just retired. Still, over the years Joe became a mentor, and also a staunch friend and supporter (even in my crusade against the feudal construct), even if we did not see eye to eye on such topics as Philip the Fair’s childhood and his conscience. I was deeply Elizabeth A. R. Brown ([email protected]) The City Uni­ver­sity of New York (Brooklyn College and the Graduate School)

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 185–218 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112973 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

186

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

touched when at Joe’s retirement party in 1973 Lois, Joe’s wife, dubbed me ‘the other woman’ in Joe’s life. In 1985 Joe and I travelled together to Cam­bridge to attend Charles Taylor’s memorial service in Harvard’s Memorial Chapel. As I did at the gathering in Princeton, I would like to reflect briefly on the ways in which the masters of Capetian history have affected our investigation of the past, devoting particular attention to Joseph Strayer, Charles Taylor, and Robert Fawtier, who took me under his wings when I began to work in France in 1958. These reflections have particular pertinence to the subject of this essay, Philip the Fair and his two chief ministers, Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerran de Marigny. The work I and my colleagues have done on Philip and his ministers would have been impossible without the fundamental research of Strayer, Taylor, and Fawtier, and particularly the monumental project known as the Corpus philippicum, which Fawtier directed and implemented with the assistance of many scholars, most notably François Maillard. The reflections I present here on the King and his servants rest and depend on the foundations these scholars constructed. Joe Strayer was five years younger than Charles Taylor, but both remembered each other warmly as fellow graduate students at Harvard in the late 1920s.1 There they worked with the fabled Charles Homer Haskins (1870–1937), himself a product of Johns Hopkins, where Sidney Painter (1902–60), a Yale PhD, would later preside over medieval studies and become John Baldwin’s Doktorvater. At Harvard, Haskins was known as ‘The Iron Duke’ and was respected but not very much liked; he was notorious for sweeping through Widener Library on the eve of most holidays, including Christmas, to take note of those who were at work. In contrast Charles Howard McIlwain (1871–1968) was universally adored, and he inspired his students with a love of and admiration for things constitutional, institutional, representative, and English.2 From the outset, Charles Taylor was a ponderer, puzzling over and 1 

They were there at the same time as Gaines Post (1902–87) and Samuel E. Thorne (1907–94). Strayer graduated from Princeton in 1925 and was awarded his doctorate at Harvard in 1930; Taylor had earned his PhD in 1927, and an article on him in the Harvard Crimson of 8 November 1956 states that he began to teach at Harvard in 1921. Gaines Post received his doctorate in 1931, and Sam Thorne studied at Harvard’s Graduate School in 1930 and 1931; he may have received an LLB from Harvard Law School at about this time. I am grateful to Caroline Harvey of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Registrar’s Office at Harvard for this information, and to Daniel Smail for his help. 2  Cf. Strayer’s interpretation of Philip the Fair, in Strayer, ‘Philip the Fair’; and see also Keen’s review of his book, Keen, ‘review of Joseph R. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair’, p. 354.

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

187

savouring the minute details that can reveal human actions and motivations, posing questions that led one to another, into infinity. In contrast, Joe Strayer was enormously gifted, quick-witted, a generalizer. After Joe and Charles received their doctorates, Joe returned to Princeton, where he had been an undergraduate, and Charles stayed on at Harvard. In 1939 their friendship and mutual interest in the Capetians led them to collaborate in publishing two studies of the taxes of the last direct Capetians, with Strayer focusing on Philip the Fair’s levies and Taylor on the assemblies of 1318–19.3 In France Studies in Early French Taxation was reviewed approvingly in the Annales d’histoire sociale in 1942 by ‘M. F.’, ‘Marc Fougères’ — Marc Bloch, then in hiding from the Nazis.4 The Second World War brought increased governmental involvement for Strayer, who long worked with the CIA. Charles Taylor joined the army and became involved recording the history of the war, and particularly the invasion of Normandy and the Battle of SaintLô.5 In 1942, during the war, Charles was named Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medi­e val History, the same chair that Joe held at Princeton. Returning to Cam­bridge, Charles yearned to devote himself to military history, but it was our (and my particular) good fortune that the Harvard administration insisted that he continue to teach medieval history. Robert Fawtier (1885–1966), fourteen years older than Charles, almost twenty years older than Joe, was a pupil of Ferdinand Lot (1866–1952), and very much influenced by Lot’s predecessor at the Sorbonne, Charles-Victor Langlois (1863–1929). The war brought Fawtier to Paris from Bordeaux. In 1940 and 1941 he lectured at the Sorbonne on the Capetian rulers’ special contributions to the nation’s creation, and in 1942 he published the fine book on the Capetians that emerged from his courses.6 He played an important role in the Resistance movement centred on the Musée de l’Homme and was twice 3 

Strayer, ‘Consent to Taxation’, and Taylor, ‘Assemblies of Towns’. Bloch, ‘review of Joseph  R. Strayer and Charles  H. Taylor, Studies’. See also Favier, ‘L’histoire administrative’, p. 454. 5  Taylor, St-Lô. 6  Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France. The preface is dated in Paris in July 1941. There Fawtier called the book ‘durant deux années, le fidèle compagnon qui vous soutient dans l’épreuve, le bon Samaritain qui vous désaltère quand votre âme a soif d’espoir’ and expressed the hope that the book might ‘ramener l’attention de quelques historiens de la jeune génération sur une période où il reste encore tant à faire’ (Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, pp. 1–3 (The Capetian Kings of France, pp. vii–viii)). The paper cover of the original edition is adorned with blue fleurs-de-lis. 4 

188

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

arrested by the Nazis before being sent in 1943 to Mauthausen, the slave-labour concentration camp in Austria. Ferdinand Lot’s thirty-four-year-old son-in-law Boris Vildé, another member of the group, had been executed at Mont-Valérien on 23 February 1942.7 After the war Fawtier continued and expanded the systematic work on the reign of Philip the Fair that he had launched in 1937 — and envisioned as early as 1934.8 This led to the publication of the fiscal accounts of Philip the Fair and his sons (beginning in 1953)9 and inventories of their chancery registers (commencing five years later).10 In all of this Fawtier was assisted by Jean Glénisson and Jean Guerout — as well as the ever-faithful Maillard (1914–2006).11 They worked together on Fawtier’s Corpus philippicum, a treasure trove of indices of every known act of Philip the Fair and transcriptions of numerous lengthy items, in large part recorded by Maillard on used metro tickets and other scraps of paper, including the backs of page proofs of the books they had published.12 Thanks to the late Robert-Henri Bautier (1922–2010) and to Élisabeth Lalou and Xavier Hélary, this precious Corpus, including its prosopographical component, the Gallia regia philippica, is far more rationally organized than it was 7  For Fawtier’s work in the Resistance, see Blanc, Au commencement de la Résistance, s.v. in index, and also Blanc’s remarks in his introduction to Humbert, Notre guerre, p. 46; Fawtier and Lot were colleagues and joint authors of Fawtier and Lot, Histoire des institutions françaises, which, as Lot’s literary executor, Fawtier completed after Lot’s death: Fawtier Stone, in her preface to Fawtier, Autour de la France capétienne, p. x. Fawtier’s number at Mauthausen was no. 40392: Monument III, . 8  Fawtier was surely influenced by the plans of Charles-Victor Langlois, never realized, to create a similar collection of acts for Philip’s reign: see Hélary, ‘Charles-Victor Langlois’, esp. pp. 338, 340, 346–50, which Xavier Hélary graciously permitted me to read in advance of publication; see also Lalou, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel, i, 15–23, esp. p. 22. Hélary pointed out that Langlois encouraged his students to work on the reign of Philip the Fair, citing Rigault, Le procès de Guichard, p. xi (‘un ensemble de travaux relatifs à l’époque de Philippe le Bel dont [Langlois] a conçu le plan et dont il dirige l’exécution dans ses conférences de la Faculté des Lettres’). 9  Comptes royaux (1285–1314), ed. by Fawtier and Maillard, and Comptes royaux (1314–1328), ed. by Maillard and Fawtier. Fawtier himself had already published Philip the Fair’s Comptes du Trésor, and he was involved at the École française de Rome in the publication of Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others. 10  See the volumes of Registres du Trésor des Chartes, whose edition by François Maillard and Jean Guerout was supervised by Fawtier. 11  In her superb notice, ‘François Maillard’, Lalou noted the poetic names Maillard and his wife bestowed on their many children. 12  See Lalou, ‘François Maillard’.

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

189

in 1958,13 when, thanks to Charles Taylor’s warm relationship with Robert Fawtier,14 I first encountered and delved into the Corpus as I worked beside François Maillard in Fawtier’s small office at the Archives Nationales. All this lay in the future in the spring of 1954, when at Harvard I took not only Charles Taylor’s graduate seminar (dedicated to the marriage aid of Philip the Fair) but also his lecture course on medieval France. There it was that Charles asked his students to write an essay assessing the merits of the contradictory views of Philip the Fair and his ministers propounded by Langlois in his volume in the Lavisse Histoire de France illustrée (published in 1901),15 and by Fawtier in Les Capétiens et la France (published in 1942), and the volume on western Europe from 1270 to 1328 that appeared in 1940 in Gustave Glotz’s Histoire générale: Histoire du Moyen Âge.16 The essays were to be written without consulting primary sources. In the Lavisse volume, Langlois had declared Philip the Fair and his ministers ‘des énigmes’ and essentially unknowable. Because of his writings, Langlois thought Guillaume de Nogaret a bit more approachable. However, although he proclaimed Nogaret ‘l’âme damnée du roi, et sa “hache”’, and attributed to him ‘imaginations baroques’, ‘affreuse rhétorique’, and ‘brutalités hypocrites’, Langlois declined to offer a ‘portrait de cet homme’, preferring to describe him 13  The Corpus is now housed, provisionally, in rather cramped quarters at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes in Paris. Various plans to make it more easily and readily available to scholars were discussed at a round table on the Corpus and its future, held at the Institut on 7 October 2016. For Fawtier’s connections with Bautier as early as 1948, see Fawtier, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’, p. 156 n. 1. 14  Strayer and his students at Princeton created an impressive collection of files on Philip the Fair’s officers, relations, and nobles, which, after Joe’s death, Bill Jordan entrusted to me, and which in due course will join the Corpus philippicum in Paris. It is not clear to me how much interchange there was between Strayer and Maillard, particularly in view of Maillard’s review of Strayer, Les gens de justice du Languedoc sous Philippe le Bel; see François Maillard, ‘À propos d’un ouvrage récent’. 15  Langlois, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, les derniers Capétiens directs. Although some copies of the book are dated 1911, when Hachette renewed its copyright, the book was originally published in 1901: see Merlin, ‘Notice’, p. 398, and also the review of the book that appeared in Annales de Bretagne, 1 (1902), 148. 16  Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, and Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale. The second book was published in Fontenay-aux-Roses, apparently before Nazi permission for publication was required. It seems unlikely to have been by chance that in his introduction Fawtier quoted Ferdinand III of Castile, ‘Il ne manque pas de Sarrasins dans mon royaume’ (Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 3).

190

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

‘au travail’.17 Less reticent in a review article he published seven years later, he passionately denounced the tactics Philip the Fair and his ministers employed against their adversaries — sudden arrest, torture, deceitful propaganda, ­auto-da-fés.18 Fawtier was more sanguine than Langlois about the possibility of gaining access to the characters of the King and his ministers, and his assessments of the men were more sympathetic and tolerant than Langlois’s. Fawtier considered particularly valuable a document that Langlois had published in 1917, sixteen years after the appearance of the Lavisse volume.19 The letter that Langlois edited was one Nogaret addressed to his friend and colleague Étienne de Suzy in the summer of 1303 as he was travelling to Italy to confront Boniface VIII (as he would on 7 September at Anagni). In it, Nogaret, who was indisposed, called on God for support and asked Suzy, his friend and colleague, to pray God to direct him on his way and otherwise to stop him, by death or whatever other means he chose.20 Langlois expressed the view that these phrases revealed ‘the movements of a conscience that was troubled — perhaps by the illness [Nogaret] was suffering’.21 Fawtier interpreted the phrases differently, 17 

Langlois, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, les derniers Capétiens directs, pp. 119, 125–26. In his obituary of Langlois, written for the English Historical Review, Fawtier wrote that ‘To understand the reign of this king was indeed the real object to which all his energies were applied’, but that in the end Langlois ‘had to own that Philip the Fair’s personality remained an enigma’: Fawtier, ‘Charles Victor Langlois’, p. 87; see also Pegues, The Lawyers of the Last Capetians, pp. 30–34. 18  See Langlois’s review of Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, in Langlois, ‘L’affaire des Templiers’, pp. 432–33, quoted in Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, pp. 2–3. 19  Langlois, ‘Autographes nouveaux’. Fawtier did not mention this important publication in his obituary of Langlois. See my commentary on and analysis of Nogaret’s letter, in Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, pp. 18–20, 32–33. In my edition of the letter I misread uros’ [uestros] as meos, which led me to write that Nogaret was calling on God to direct his own steps, rather than those of Étienne de Suzy: cf. Langlois, ‘Autographes nouveaux’, p. 323; and Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp. 709–10, who demonstrated the letter’s close relationship to documents concerning Saulx and Figeac that Nogaret prepared and either edited or copied himself (see Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp. 710–19). I am grateful to Sébastien Nadiras for sharing his unpublished work with me and for his support and assistance. 20  ‘domine mj orate ad dominum ut in uia mea deo placeat me in ea diriguat. alias me per mortem uel ut sibj placebit impediat’: Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p. 33. 21  Langlois, ‘Autographes nouveaux’, p. 323 (‘[les] mouvements d’une conscience troublée — peut-être par le malaise physique — à la veille de ce grand acte’). For Étienne’s name, see

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

191

believing that they revealed Nogaret as a man of ‘ardent faith’.22 In his view, ‘Nogaret could well have been a fervent Christian and acted as he did’, and indeed he judged that for Nogaret to have done the things he did, he must have been ‘a passionately convinced Christian’. ‘Only profound conviction and true fanaticism’, Fawtier declared, ‘could have underlain’ the prolonged campaign against Boniface VIII (among other things).23 Extrapolating from Nogaret to Philip the Fair, Fawtier declared that ‘the mainspring of Philip the Fair’s actions in both the secular and the religious fields was probably his faith, faith in the Capetian dynasty, faith in his kingly office, and religious faith too, deeply rooted, and affronted by the lack of spirituality of [the Templars and Boniface VIII]’.24 In the volume he contributed to Glotz’s Histoire universelle, Fawtier wrote that Philip the Fair ‘considered himself the guardian of the purity of the faith […]. He believed himself invested with a divine mission, inspired by God [and was] a fanatic believer in the dogma of the supreme authority of the kings of France’.25 Fawtier held Philip the Fair responsible for the events of his reign, choosing his advisers and supporting the policies he and they Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p. 18 n. 57, where, thanking Sébastien Nadiras, I associated him with the village of Suzy near Laon. 22  Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, pp. 44–45 (The Capetian Kings of France, pp. 42–43), discussing Robert Holtzmann’s depiction of Nogaret, in Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, which Fawtier declared similar to that of Langlois in the Lavisse volume. 23  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, pp. 403–04: ‘Nogaret a fort bien pu être un chrétien fervent et agir comme il l’a fait. Nous serions même disposés à penser qu’il n’eût pas agi comme il l’a fait, s’il n’avait été un chrétien passionnément convaincu. Seule une conviction profonde, un véritable fanatisme ont pu soutenir une action aussi impitoyable et aussi prolongée’; here he again cited Langlois’s article of 1917. On p. 423, Fawtier argued that Philip’s pursuit of the Templars could not have been financially motivated because of the ease with which the King accepted the final disposition of the order’s property; he thought that Philip, ‘qui était fort pieux, désirait ardemment la croisade’, and believed that this would be facilitated by uniting the military crusading orders, a move the Templars opposed. 24  Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, p. 38 (The Capetian Kings of France, p. 41): ‘Nous estimons que le principal mobile de Philippe IV, tant dans sa politique laïque que dans sa politique religieuse, a été, comme saint Louis, une foi profonde, foi en sa mission royale, foi en la dynastie qu’il représente, foi aussi d’ordre purement religieux que choque l’absence de spiritualité chez le pape Boniface VIII ou chez les Templiers. Mais ce n’est pas la foi de saint Louis. Elle semble, à en juger par ses manifestations, avoir quelque chose de plus dur, se teinter d’une nuance d’orgueil’. 25  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 301: ‘Il se considère comme le gardien de la pureté de la foi […]. Philipe a cru ses légistes comme il a cru ses théologiens. Plutôt qu’un fantoche, ce roi apparaît comme un fanatique du dogme de l’autorité suprême des rois de France’.

192

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

devised.26 Acknowledging that Philip and his ministers employed procedures (such as torture) that seemed odious, he excused them by emphasizing that such practices were generally accepted and tolerated by contemporaries. The King, he said, ‘used them in the service of the royal cause, in which he believed in the same way as he believed in his religion, and which he indeed confused with his religion’.27 How to resolve the problem Charles Taylor had posed to us?28 I quickly realized that Fawtier’s depiction of Philip the Fair rested in part on Langlois’s essay and thus turned to the article on the grounds that although it contained an edited primary source, this source was, after all, published. Contrarian that I was, rather than thinking that Nogaret’s statement revealed ‘ardent faith’, I took a more cynical view and decided that Langlois’s negative appraisal of Philip and his ministers was preferable to Fawtier’s. I received an A. My friend Alfred Soman, influenced by Lucien Febvre’s Le problème de l’incroyance au xvie siècle: La religion de Rabelais, decided that Fawtier must be correct, that Philip the Fair and Nogaret must have been fervent believers, and received a B. I have 26 

Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 299; Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, p. 38 (‘[il] a soutenu ses conseillers, [il] n’en a disgrâcié aucun, quand ce geste eut pourtant singulièrement diminué ses difficultés, et […] par conséquent, ou [il] les a compris, s’ils avaient eu l’initiative de sa politique, ou [il] a estimé qu’ils avaient bien exécuté ses ordres, si l’initiative venait de lui’). 27  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 303: ‘Ces procédés il les a mis au service de la cause royale dans laquelle il croyait, comme il croyait à sa religion, qu’il confondait même avec sa religion’. Writing in 1963, in a book he dedicated to Fawtier, ‘en témoignage de reconnaissance’, Jean Favier declared it ‘certain que Philippe le Bel fut foncièrement religieux’: Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 16. Fifteen years later, in 1978, Favier wrote in his biography of Philip the Fair (Favier, Philippe le Bel, pp. 7–8) that he was a man of ‘profound faith’ (‘La foi de Philippe le Bel est profonde’) and endorsed Fawtier’s assessment: ‘Philippe le Bel apparaît donc, pour reprendre la formule de Robert Fawtier, comme un dévôt de la religion monarchiqe, comme “un fanatique du dogme de l’autorité suprême des rois de France”’. 28  It is difficult to comprehend how Jean Favier could have concluded that Fawtier believed with Langlois that Philip the Fair remained an enigma or that Fawtier’s account in the Glotz survey ‘reflét[ait] étroitement la pensée de Langlois’: Favier, ‘Les légistes’, p. 94. It is true, as Favier said, that after the war Fawtier dedicated himself to the edition of texts and publication of inventories, but I do not believe this was because he despaired of grasping Philip the Fair’s character, which, in my view, he believed he had successfully described in the 1940s. I remember his telling me in 1958 that the books he was working on then were volumes ‘that would live forever’. According to Fawtier’s daughter, Fawtier abandoned work on a book on Philip the Fair when, after Ferdinand Lot’s death in 1952, he dedicated himself to completing Lot’s work on French institutional history: Fawtier, Autour de la France capétienne, ed. by Fawtier Stone, p. x. See also the article of Élisabeth Lalou in this volume.

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

193

often said that in some sense I have spent the rest of my life proving that I was wrong and Al — and Fawtier — were right. Over the years I have continued to wrestle with the question of Philip the Fair’s character and personality, which have been for me subjects of perduring interest. I have delved into the writings of developmental psychologists and psychoanalysts, not because I think any of their theories can provide direct insights into the character of Philip the Fair, but in hopes of gaining greater sensitivity to the varieties of human development and motivations. Convinced of the importance of fully comprehending the acts and manu­scripts and other material remains that provide our only access to those who lived in the past, I have tried to master skills possessed by colleagues trained in the fine arts and at the École des chartes. And I have profited enormously from the revolutions in the transmission and analysis of texts and books and in speedy communication with colleagues around the globe that have occurred in recent years, which would have delighted Langlois, Fawtier, Taylor, and Strayer — and also Robert-Henri Bautier, who had mixed feelings about computers but in the end acknowledged their revolutionary utility. Bautier’s novel assessment of Philip the Fair’s personality and his court, published in 1978, served as stimulus and challenge, not only because of his hypotheses concerning the King’s personality but also because of his probing analysis of the acts the King warranted by his secret seal.29 Pursuing Philip the Fair, I  have sought out royal pronouncements and actions for which no minister could have been fully responsible: major acts of restitution (the Val d’Aran, the proceeds of the war tax of 1313),30 cancellation 29 

Bautier, ‘Diplomatique et histoire politique’, which I heard him deliver at a conference on Philip the Fair. In the essay Bautier magisterially surveyed earlier interpretations of Philip the Fair and also called attention to Philip the Fair’s childhood, a subject that also interested me, and that I studied for years before publishing, in 1987, ‘The Prince Is Father’. In my article I discussed Philip’s wills, which I had treated earlier (in 1976), in ‘Royal Salvation and Needs of State in Late Capetian France’, an essay that I thoroughly revised in an article similarly entitled (‘Royal Salvation and Needs of State in Early Fourteenth-Century France’), published in 1991 in my collected essays; see also Brown, ‘Royal Testamentary Acts’ and Brown, ‘La mort, les testaments et les fondations de Jeanne de Navarre’. 30  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, pp. 8 (esp. n. 27), 25–26; for the Val d’Aran, see also Strayer, ‘Philip the Fair’, p. 28; Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp. 133, 419, 774–76; and my forthcoming article, ‘Philippe le Bel s’est-il posé la question des frontières du royaume?’ As Strayer pointed out long ago, Philip the Fair’s decision to restore the Val d’Aran to Aragon was announced on 26 April 1313, just two weeks after the death on 11 April of Guillaume de Nogaret, who vigorously opposed restitution. Favier, who argued that

194

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

of taxes (in 1313 and 1314), extraordinary and unprecedented grants of privilege (the gift of his father Philip III’s heart to the Dominicans of Paris after his father’s death on 5 October 1285, the grace concerning Gascon appeals Philip granted to Edward I in July 1286),31 the imprisonment of the King’s three daughters-in-law on suspicion of adultery and the brutal execution of their two supposed lovers in the spring of 1314, and, particularly, testamentary acts, both Philip’s and those of his wife Jeanne and their children.32 My search for Philip the Fair’s character and conscience has naturally involved studying Philip’s relations with his ministers. It is, however, only recently that, encouraged by the work of Sébastien Nadiras and Julien ThéryAstruc, I have focused on Guillaume de Nogaret33 and reassessed my views of Enguerran de Marigny.34 the influence of Enguerran de Marigny began to eclipse that of Guillaume de Nogaret from the end of 1311, acknowledged that Marigny ‘ne s’occupa jamais des affaires transpyrénéennes’ and especially with the question of the Val d’Aran: Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 186. Marie Dejoux has demonstrated the importance of restitution as a principle of Capetian governance in Dejoux, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis, esp. pp. 286–92; see also Dejoux, ‘Gouverner par l’enquête’. 31  The paper William  J. Courtenay contributed to this volume calls attention to the unprecedentedly speedy affirmation of privileges of the Uni­ver­sity of Paris that Philip the Fair issued in February 1286, not long after his coronation on 6 January in Reims. Courtenay pointed out that no special crisis necessitated this act, which I believe linked with a desire on Philip’s part to pacify the theologians of the university, who vigorously opposed his decision to give the Dominicans of Paris his father’s heart for burial, rather than have it interred with his body at Saint-Denis: Brown, ‘Death and the Human Body’, esp. pp. 235–46, 265, 269–70. Alan Friedlander has noted the sympathetic reception Philip accorded to complaints from Carcassonne against the Inquisition and his issuance in 1291 of an ordonnance curbing inquisitorial power: Friedlander, Hammer of the Inquisitors, pp. 17–22. 32  See note 29, above. 33  Nadiras has amply disproven the opinion voiced by Franklin Pegues in 1962 (Pegues, The Lawyers of the Last Capetians, p. 98), ‘There is good reason to believe that little or nothing new will be found on Guillaume de Nogaret’. In demonstrating Nogaret’s often ruthless conduct as a landed lord, Pegues put to good use Louis Thomas’s article ‘La vie privée de Guillaume de Nogaret’. Pegues apparently did not know the important article by Yves Dossat, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret, petit-fils d’hérétique’, which establishes beyond reasonable doubt that Nogaret’s grandfather was a Cathar heretic named Raymond de Nogaret from the region of Laurac, who died around 1240. See Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp. 161–68; and Nadiras, ‘Itinéraire de Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp. 169–73. For the work of Théry-Astruc, see note 40, below, and also his article ‘“Les Écritures ne peuvent mentir”’. 34  Favier’s work on Enguerran de Marigny remains fundamentally important, and particularly his book Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel. See as well Favier, Cartulaire et actes d’Enguerran de

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

195

Rereading several years ago Nogaret’s letter to Étienne de Suzy (the letter I pondered over in 1955),35 I was struck by Nogaret’s energy and his command of detail, aspects of his character that recent work by Sébastien Nadiras illuminates. On the other hand, rather than sensing the ‘ardent faith’ or ‘troubled conscience’ that Langlois and Fawtier had perceived, I was impressed by Nogaret’s evident desire to demonstrate to Suzy his piety and humility, as well as his impeccable orthodoxy. Even more than this, the words he chose seemed to me to express the remarkable confidence he apparently felt in his own righteousness and in divine endorsement of his beliefs and his actions: if God did not strike him dead or otherwise prevent him, his actions were divinely approved. At the commencement of his memoranda Nogaret routinely invoked Jesus Christ, prefacing what he wrote with the phrase ‘In nomine dominj nostri Ihesu christi’. Thus what he set down was written in the name of Christ Jesus and with divine inspiration. A memorandum in the form of a letter directed to the King that Nogaret composed in the summer of 1305 demonstrates how firmly he believed in his own privileged access to Christ’s truth, and how determined he was to force others — and especially the King — to acknowledge the truth he perceived and implement the policies he advocated, in this case his attack on the memory of Boniface VIII.36 This brash assurance of knowing the truth likewise pervades the campaign to destroy the Order of the Temple, which Nogaret largely directed.37 The initial mandate to those charged with questioning the captured Templars instructed the agents ‘diligently to examine the truth, if necessary by torture, and if [the brothers] confess the truth, to record their depositions’.38

Marigny and Favier, ‘Les portraits d’Enguerran de Marigny’. Also useful are Gillerman, Enguerran de Marigny and the Church of Notre-Dame at Écouis, and Lautier, ‘Le vitrail de la Crucifixion de la collégiale d’Écouis’, where Lautier showed that Enguerran de Marigny employed leading Parisian artists for the sculpture and stained glass of the church at Écouis that he founded. 35  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, pp. 18–20, 32–33. 36  Brown, ‘Veritas à la cour de Philippe le Bel’. 37  Brown, ‘Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar’. Nogaret himself corrected a pitiless memorandum concerning the treatment to be accorded to the Templars who had been seized, which in my view he very likely composed: see Brown, ‘review of Courtenay and Ubl, Gelehrte Gutachten’. 38  ‘et examineront diligemment la verite par gehine, se mestier est, et se il confessent la verite ils escrivront leur deposicions, tesmoings apeles’: Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Lizerand, p. 26. Sean L. Field has reedited the text (Paris, AN, J 413, no. 22) and re-evaluated its significance in a forthcoming article, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’, which he was kind enough to permit me to read in advance of publication.

196

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

What, then, was the truth? The accusations that the brothers were to be brought to confirm, whose veracity was clear before those who were presumed guilty were interrogated. Pace Robert-Henri Bautier, Nogaret does not seem to me to have been anything like Rasputin. In my view, he was far more practical-minded and intelligent than that possessed Russian mystic. Again pace M. Bautier, I would not describe him as devoid of scruples. Rather, he was so persuaded that what he believed, what he planned, and what he did were divinely sanctioned that he considered justified and proper any and every means used to implement his policies.39 A master rhetorician and propagandist, he seems to have had no difficulty convincing himself as well as the King, his fellow royal servants, and many of his contemporaries of the rightness of his causes. Nogaret was close to Pierre Flote, a fellow southerner and Philip the Fair’s chief minister for almost a decade before Flote died at Courtrai on 11 July 1302. Langlois correctly suspected that Flote and Nogaret worked closely together during the crisis in Philip the Fair’s relations with Boniface VIII provoked by the arrest of Bernard Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers, in 1301, which led to the convocation of a large assembly at Notre-Dame on 10 April 1302 where Flote gave a speech denouncing the Pope’s pretensions to authority and proclaiming that the kingdom of France was held only from God.40 It was Nogaret himself who, in his own hand, drew up and then revised and heavily corrected the dramatically exaggerated accusations against Saisset (including heresy as well as treason, ‘manifest simony’, and blasphemy) prepared late in 1301 for ambassadors to Boniface VIII in Rome.41 As was customary for Nogaret, his 39 

Cf. Bautier, ‘Diplomatique et histoire politique’, p. 27, describing Nogaret as ‘discoureur prolixe et ratiocineur, sans scrupule, vrai Raspoutine, qui pouvait exciter à volonté la passion mystique du roi au nom de la foi, de la morale, de la pureté de l’Église et de ses chefs’, and Marigny as ‘orateur habile, diplomate, d’une ambition démesurée’. 40  Beginning in 1998 Julien Théry-Astruc has often discussed and analysed the Saisset affair, which he treats in his essay in this volume, where his earlier publications are cited: see his fundamental study, Théry, ‘Pouvoir royal et procès politico-religieux’; see also Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, pp. 393–401; and Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’. 41  Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp. 111–12, 790–95, a complex and exemplary edition of the charges, demonstrating the care with which Nogaret revised his text. The speech Flote delivered on 14 April 1302 does not survive, but Nogaret in all likelihood helped prepare it. Nadiras brought to Théry-Astruc’s attention the fact that the act was written by Nogaret rather than Pierre Flote, who Théry-Astruc originally believed responsible for the memorandum. Théry-Astruc and Nadiras plan to publish shortly Nogaret’s draft and the fine copy of the act preserved in the same carton in Paris, AN, J 336, nos. 91–2.

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

197

draft of the charges commences with the invocation, ‘In nomine dominj nostri Ihesuchristi amen’ — although the fine copy of the draft that was made omits the talismanic phrase.42 The authorship of the florid bill of particulars against Saisset was long discussed and debated, with Georges Digard (who worked from the edition by Pierre Dupuy) ascribing it without hesitation to Pierre Flote, and Jeffrey Denton wavering but in the end associating it with ‘the royal court’, if not with Flote himself.43 Digard seems never to have consulted the original acts, and Dupuy, who must have been working with the fine copy of the act, regularized its lapses in spelling, substituting suffraganeorum for suffraguaneorum, magnorum for mangnorum, and agatur for aguatur, thus suppressing usages that were blatant idiosyncrasies.44 Such usages are blatant southernisms, characteristic of the Languedoc. In themselves they would not have led to the identification of the author as Guillaume de Nogaret, since they could also support the authorship of Guillaume de Plaisians or Pierre Flote. Still, editorial suppression of the curious orthography has deprived readers of the challenge of accounting 42  Paris, AN, J 336, nos. 91–2. In his edition of the act, Denton omitted the invocation of Jesus Christ found in no. 91; the same is true of Pierre Dupuy, who gave as his source ‘Layette Pamiers num. 9’, and mistakenly rendered the first word Mane rather than Sane; the initial letter of no. 92 indeed resembles M and could easily be misinterpreted as such: Dupuy, Histoire du differend, preuves, pp. 627–31. Denton thought that the draft of the act (Paris, AN, J 336, no. 91) was written in two different hands, which is not the case (Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp.  404, 420); Théry-Astruc informed Denton before Denton published his article that Sébastien Nadiras had identified the hand of Paris, AN, J 336, no. 91 as that of Nogaret. 43  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 405, 408–09; Digard, Philippe le Bel, ii, 81–82. 44  Dupuy, Histoire du differend, preuves, p. 630; cf. Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 424, who did not note that in the draft negotii is spelled neguotii. Like Dupuy, in his edition Denton (p. 426) corrected the act’s mitatur to mittatur, and aguatur to agatur, although he noted the document’s variant readings. Nogaret generally spelled the different forms of the verb mittere with a single t: see Brown, ‘review of Courtenay and Ubl, Gelehrte Gutachten’. Although Holtzmann recognized Nogaret’s distinctive orthography, he nonetheless regularized it in editing Nogaret’s writings: see, e.g., Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, pp. 253–55, no. II, and note particularly p. 246 (‘Bei den folgenden Beilagen ist im allgemeinen die gebräuchliche Orthographie gewählt worden ohne Rücksicht auf die Eigenheiten der einzelnen Manuskripte. Nogaret selbst, von dessen Hand wir verschiedene Konzepte haben, schreibt u.a. immer: eguo […]. Die Schreiber der Reinschriften haben hingegen meist eine korrektere Schreibart’). On the possibility (in my view, likelihood) that Nogaret’s orthography reflects idiosyncracies of pronunciation, see Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp.  75–76, and Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p. 21 n. 64, where I cite similar examples from a contemporary register in Montpellier. Langlois commented on Nogaret’s spelling, in Langlois, ‘Autographes nouveaux’, p. 323 n. 1.

198

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

for them. In the end, however, only someone who recognized Nogaret’s handwriting could know that Nogaret had copied out the charges and heavily corrected them. The scribe of the fair copy of the charges may have come from Languedoc, but the number of idiosyncratic guo’s and gua’s in his transcription is dwarfed by the quantity found in the draft Nogaret himself wrote.45 Again, Nogaret’s script and spelling reveal the extent of his close personal involvement with the trial of Guichard of Troyes in 1308, an affair that involved many of the King’s councilors, including Guillaume de Plaisians, and Enguerran de Marigny and his brother Philippe, in 1309 named Archbishop of Sens.46 Likewise, Nogaret himself composed and carefully edited the charges against Bishop Guichard of Troyes that Guillaume de Hangest, bailli of Troyes — not he, Nogaret — was allegedly presenting to ecclesiastical commissioners receiving accusations against Guichard in the fall of 1308.47 Not only does the indictment contain the distinctive spellings used by Nogaret, but also, like many of Nogaret’s other writings, it begins by invoking Christ Jesus.48 Nogaret also used his talents to preserve and expand royal lands and property rights. Between 1308 and 1310, aided and abetted by Enguerran de Marigny,49 he masterminded the Crown’s acquisition of the county of La Marche, a project that necessitated lying and forgery to demonstrate that before he died in 1308 Guy, Count of La Marche, had concluded a treasonous alliance with the King of England, and hence forfeited his lands. It is my suspicion that Nogaret himself forged the act that served as proof, which is dated 29 June 1305, three years before Guy’s death, and is adorned with an authentic seal of Count Guy, produced from the matrix seized with his possessions after he had died.50 Nogaret’s 45 

While noting the variants, Denton (‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 416–24) did not comment on their significance. 46  Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, pp. 131–33; Rigault, Le procès de Guichard, pp. 122–23, 222–23, 298, 299; Provost, Domus diaboli, pp. 279, 302–03. 47  Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp.  25–26, 795–99 (an exemplary edition of the draft); Rigault, Le procès de Guichard, pp. 95–99, 270–75; Provost, Domus diaboli, pp. 266–69, 303, 305–07. In his edition, Rigault faithfully transcribed most of Nogaret’s orthographical idiosyncracies, although he rendered the document’s agreguari as agregari; see Rigault, Le procès de Guichard, pp. 270–75, esp. 271. 48  Sic in Paris, AN, J 438, no. 8, where the phrase is inserted at the very top of the page and is abraded; cf. Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, p. 796. 49  Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 95. 50  Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp.  397–422, esp. 397–414, with an excellent picture of the forged act, Paris, AN, J 374, no. 3, on the page facing 412; Guy died between

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

199

vivid imagination and limitless capacity for deceit also inform the memoranda and justifications that were used in Philip the Fair’s successful pursuit of Lyon, and in the campaign to retain the Val d’Aran that was abandoned when Nogaret’s death left the King to face his conscience alone, unsupported by the minister who believed the territory rightly France’s.51 Nogaret’s devious creativity was nowhere better demonstrated than in the struggle he waged between 1303 and 1311 to obtain absolution from the sentence of excommunication imposed on him for his part in the attack on Boniface VIII at Anagni in September 1303.52 The memorandum that Nogaret addressed to the King in the summer of 1305 reveals his determination to establish the truth of the charges he had made against Boniface VIII in 1303, and to prove beyond doubt that the Pope had been a heretic — and thus to demonstrate that he himself did not merit the sentence of excommunication which bound him.53 Nogaret’s preoccupation with his excommunication was doubtless increased by memories of the fate of Pierre Flote, against whom Boniface VIII issued on 5 November 1302 (in the bull Ad malefactorum vindictam) a terrifying condemnation of Flote and all his descendants to the fourth generation.54 24 September and 24 November (Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, p. 399 n. 7). In a will dated 22 September 1304 when he was with the royal army near Lille (which Nadiras did not publish and which merits further study), Guy gave extensive powers and revenue to the King in hopes of guaranteeing its execution: Paris, AN, J 407, no. 10. 51  Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, pp. 720–73, 774–76; see also Brown, ‘Philippe le Bel s’est-il posé la question des frontières du royaume?’. 52  See Fawtier, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’, pp. 176–77, for Philip the Fair’s success in persuading Benedict  XI to annul Boniface  VIII’s sentences against him and his servants (between 25 March and 13 May 1304), and the summons issued on 7 June 1304 to Guillaume de Nogaret and fifteen others to appear before the Pope on 29 June to answer for their part in the attack on Boniface VIII. 53  This aim figures prominently in a memorandum written in May 1307 detailing the concessions to be sought from Clement V at an approaching meeting: Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, pp. 256–60 (esp. 258); see Hillgarth, Ramon Lull, p. 112, who thought that the extravagant terms in the memorandum referred to Philip the Fair rather than the Pope. Holtzmann believed that the style of the memorandum showed that Nogaret did not compose it (Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, p. 256), but I find striking the similarity between the draft of the preface the Pope was to be asked to use in introducing the privileges he would grant (Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, p. 258) and the royal order to arrest the Templars dated 14 September 1307, which Nogaret surely crafted; cf. Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Lizerand, pp. 16–24 (esp. p. 20). 54  Schmidt, ‘La condamnation de Pierre Flote’, p. 116; the bull is no. 4847 in the edition of Boniface’s letters, and on the Brepols site Ut per litteras apostolicas. Benedict XI revoked the sentence against Flote in the bull Illum ad regalem, dated at Perugia (no. 1260).

200

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Nogaret later declared that he had appealed against Boniface soon after the encounter at Anagni since he feared that Boniface would ‘rage against him as he had against the Colonnas and Pierre Flote, whose memory he had condemned post mortem for similar reasons’.55 But Boniface’s bull against Flote and his descendants had been revoked on 13 May 1304, whereas Nogaret still suffered. In attacking the memory of Boniface, Nogaret was not only defending himself and his own fama, but he was also making amends for the wrongs he believed Boniface had inflicted on Flote — and on the Colonnas. He cared most, however, about his own excommunication.56 Nogaret’s excommunication was a critical mainspring of the campaigns he launched and led, against Boniface’s memory and the Templars, until on 27 April 1311 Clement V finally granted him absolution (however conditional), at the same time as he affirmed Philip the Fair’s good intentions in pursuing the charges against Boniface.57 Nogaret’s absolution cost Philip the Fair dearly, in money as well as time and energy. In 1312 Rinaldo de Supino acknowledged having received 10,000 florins in payment for the assistance he and his supporters had given Nogaret in 1303,58 and a contemporary continuator of the chronicle of Tolomeo of Lucca reported payment of 100,000 florins to the papal treasury in 1311, when the absolution was granted.59 55 

Dupuy, Histoire du differend, preuves, pp. 362–581 (esp. 518): ‘Et ne nos seuiret, vt in dictos Columnensis, & in dominum Petrum Flote seuierat, cuius memoriam post mortem damnauerat ex simili causa, ad appellationis remedium confugimus’ (from a register of proceedings against Boniface, Paris, AN, J 493, on which see Schmidt, Der Bonifaz-Prozess, pp. 181–82, 193). 56  Philip the Fair shared Nogaret’s horror of excommunication, which may explain the inclusion of the provisions for excommunication and interdict as automatic penalties for infractions of the treaty of Athis-sur-Orge, concluded with the Flemings on 23 June 1305: Brown, ‘The Prince Is Father’, pp. 294–95. 57  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p.  21; Schmidt, Der Bonifaz-Prozess, pp. 428–32. 58  In an act of 29 October 1312 (dated in Paris) (Paris, AN, J 491A, no. 781), Raynaud de Supino acknowledged receiving in Carcassonne from the King’s bankers, the Peruzzi, the sum of 10,000 florins, which Guillaume de Nogaret promised him when he visited Boniface VIII in Anagni in 1303, in return for the aid Supino, his associates, and the citizens of Ferentino (10 km from Anagni) had given Nogaret; the act was witnessed by Guillaume de Plaisians, Jacopo da Peruzzi, Filippo Villani (son of Giovanni), prior of Saint-Martin de Sérignan (near Montpellier), and Jean de l’Hopital. Nogaret’s pledge to Supino is recorded in Paris, AN, 491A, no. 782bis, dated 17 October 1303 (six days after the death of Boniface VIII on 11 October 1303); this act was exemplified on 12 February 1308/09 (Paris, AN, J 491A, no. 782). 59  A continuation of the Tholomeus Lucensis, Historia ecclesiastica nova, ed. by Clavuot,

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

201

The resolution of Nogaret’s excommunication in the spring of 1311 in my view explains the changes in royal policy that occurred then, and particularly the King’s willingness to abandon the attack on Boniface’s memory and to compromise over the fate of the Templars.60 Once his standing as a good Christian was assured, Nogaret’s enthusiasm for the causes he had used to threaten the Pope dissipated and he became more pragmatic, accepting if not crafting policies that were surely approved by the arch-realist Enguerran de Marigny, described by Jean Favier as a man ‘who cared nothing for principles or doctrine and who was ready to sacrifice continuity for efficacy’.61 Let me return now to Nogaret and his orthography, which I believe casts important light on him and his personality.62 Nogaret habitually wrote Eguo, Noguareto, Eguo Guillelmus de Noguareto — not Ego, Nogareto, Ego Guillelmus de Nogareto. Why? Nogaret was a brilliant, eminently intelligent man, an orator, a rhetorician. He could certainly have spelled ego and Nogareto like the scribes of the royal chancery that he headed. He could easily have pronounced the words like his colleagues from the Languedoil. That he did not was in all likelihood by choice, and, I suggest, for the same reason that he confined to the p. 674, of Tolomeo (or Tholomeus) of Lucca (d. 1327) refers to the concordiam reached in or around (circa) the month of April 1311 between French envoys and the defenders of Boniface, which involved the absolution of Guillaume de Nogaret, and the envoys’ offer to the papal camera of 100,000 florins ‘quasi pro quadam recompensatione laborum circa dictam causam’, causa apparently referring to the absolution. On Tolomeo’s history, see the introduction by the editor Ottavio Clavuot (continuing the work of Ludwig Schmugge) in Tholomeus Lucensis, Historia ecclesiastica nova, pp. viii–xxvii; and Blythe, The Life and Works, pp. 107–34; Tolomeo was ninety or ninety-one when he died. 60  The Order of the Temple was dissolved by the bull Vox in excelso, issued on 22 March 1312, on which see Brown and Forey, ‘Vox in excelso’, and Gilmour-Bryson, ‘“Vox in excelso” Deconstructed’. 61  Favier, ‘Les légistes’, p. 104 (‘C’est la politique réaliste, souvent proche du maquignonnage, d’un Marigny qui n’a cure des principes doctrinaux et qui sacrifie la continuité à l’efficacité’). Although I agree with Favier’s description of Enguerran’s views, I do not think that at this time Enguerran’s influence suddenly eclipsed that of Philip the Fair’s other counselors: Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 187, where he referred to Marigny’s ‘remplacement de Nogaret, de Louis d’Évreux et, dans une moindre mesure, de Plaisians’; and also Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, pp. 144–48, on Marigny’s role at the Council of Vienne in determining the fate of the Templars. 62  Additional light, I hope, will be shed on Nogaret’s character through close study of the contents of two impressive chancery registers, JJ 28 and JJ 29 (now Paris, BnF, f. lat. 10919), which contain an array of diverse texts, and which I believe were made for and with the participation of Nogaret himself: Brown, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et les textes’.

202

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

south, his homeland, the acquisition and exploitation of landed property that left him and his heirs blessed with riches. By remaining a man from the south, without northern pretensions, he insulated himself and his family from the jealousies and rivalries of the royal court. Believing himself inspired by divine guidance and privy to God’s truth, he was wise enough to present himself as a man of humble origins from the Languedoc, ambitious not for himself but for the causes of Christ. So it was that he ‘died in his bed’ on 11 April 1313, eighteen months before the death of his master Philip the Fair on 29 November 1314. The will Nogaret drew up in February 1310 reflects these aspects of his character. It is impressive both for the grandiose pretentiousness of its form and the modest restraint of its provisions. Issued not in Nogaret’s own name or as a notarial act, but by Philip the Fair himself, it is a royal act, the only such will I have ever seen. Forsaking all other ‘solemnity’, Philip the Fair announced, Nogaret had humbly supplicated him to permit him to draw up his will in the King’s presence — which, because of the minister’s merits, the King had graciously granted. The permission the King gave demonstrates not only his gratitude to Nogaret, but also the personal interest he seems to have taken in Nogaret’s soul and spiritual well-being, witnessed by the lengths to which he went in supporting Nogaret’s efforts to obtain absolution from excommunication.63 Why had Nogaret made his request? Because, the act asserted (evidently echoing Nogaret’s petition), ‘what is established in the King’s presence, with him as witness, and given shape by royal authority surpasses the solemnity of all testaments’.64 The will apparently survives only in the partial form in which 63 

Similarly, if less dramatically, Philip the Fair took personal interest in securing for Nogaret special papal authorization to have a portable altar and hear daily Mass, which Clement V granted to Nogaret on 11 May 1312 (despite Nogaret’s failure to perform the penances required of him in the conditional absolution of 27 April 1311): Fawtier, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’, pp. 177–78; Berger, ‘Bulle de Clément V’, pp. 268–70. 64  ‘Quoniam solenitatem exsuperat testamentorum omnium, quod nobis testibus conditur & auctoritate nostra formatur […] Guillelmus de Nogareto […] testamentum, omni alia solemnitate explosa […] Nos igitur, propter eius merita supplicationem […] concedimus. Sub nostro igitur testimonio […]’: de Vic and Vaissete, Histoire générale du Languedoc, ed. by Dulaurier and others, x, preuves, cols 512–13, no. 167. (‘De Vic’ is the name recorded at the end of the preface to the first volume of the Histoire generale de Languedoc that Claude de Vic (1670–1734) published in 1730 with his fellow Maurist, Jean-Joseph Vaissete (1685–1756), available on Gallica; the BnF catalogue and now render their names as Devic and Vaissette) — LXVII (‘Archives du domaine, à la Chambre des comptes de Montpellier, titres de Cauvisson’). Nogaret apparently did not have the will registered or recorded in a royal register; the will seems to have disappeared. Ernest Renan commented on its

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

203

it was published in the eighteenth century, and hence it is not clear whether or not Nogaret appointed executors. Since the act was royal, its validity warranted by the King himself, it is difficult to imagine who would have been bold enough to hinder its execution.65 Nogaret’s will served both minister and King, elevating and endorsing the King’s supreme authority, and providing for Nogaret as sure a guarantee as any human could devise that his testamentary provisions would be carried out. The provisions themselves illuminate different facets of Nogaret’s personality, showing as they do that the younger of Nogaret’s two sons and also his daughter were both named after him, and that his wife Beatrice, an exceedingly shadowy figure, was left simply her dowry (of 1500 livres tournois, half the size of the sum Nogaret provided for his daughter) and ‘food and clothing appropriate to Nogaret’s status as a knight’.66 As to his own body and soul, Nogaret commended them not to God and an array of saints, but simply to Jesus Christ, whose name he invoked so often in his acts. He chose burial in the church of the Dominicans, in Paris should he die ‘in Francia’, or in Nîmes should he die closer to that city.67 Thus he asserted solidarity with the order of inquisitors at whose hands his own grandfather had suffered, belying the rumours that linked him to heretics, just as he intrepidly named his oldest son Raymond, the name borne by his grandfather, a Cathar.68 Doubtless because of his background, exceptional nature in ‘Guillaume de Nogaret, légiste’, pp. 313–14; see also Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, pp. 173–75, who erroneously described the letter as a vidimus or exemplification. 65  In attempting to guarantee execution, testators employed a wide variety of measures, none of them foolproof: Brown, ‘The Parlement de Paris’. 66  ‘Item reliquit eidem coniugi victum & vestitum iuxta statum ipsius militis’: de Vic and Vaissete, Histoire générale du Languedoc, ed. by Dulaurier and others, x, preuves, col. 513. Nogaret’s daughter Guillelma married Beranger de Guilhem, son of the lord of Clermont-enLodève, which is some 40 km from Montpellier. Her dowry was to be paid with money the King owed Nogaret: Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, p. 174. 67  Reflecting the low social profile Nogaret maintained during his lifetime, the site of his actual burial is unknown. 68  Dossat, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret, petit-fils d’hérétique’, p. 401. Nogaret oversaw Philip the Fair’s renewal in June 1302 of Louis IX’s ordonnance against heretics known as Cupientes, which omitted the harsh temporal penalty instituted by Louis: Paris, AN, J 1020A, no. 17 ( June 1302), warranted by Nogaret (‘Capitulo uno dicte constitutionis dum taxat excepto, quo dictus auus noster propter temporis illius aduersitatem et communem contemptum clauium ecclesie qui tunc in illis partibus inolebat, statuit excommunicatos qui per annum in excommunicatione perstiterint temporaliter cohercendos’); see Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, p. 111 n. 74, referring to Langlois, ‘Les papiers de Guillaume de Nogaret’, no. 226; the act is edited from

204

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Nogaret appears to have had deeply mixed feelings about those attacked as heretics, ranging from sympathy for those who suffered from the Inquisition, to fear that he himself might be branded as and considered a heretic, to identification with the persecutors, as he charged others, with abandon, with deviancy from the faith.69 Contrast Nogaret, the ostensibly unpretentious and diffident southerner, with Enguerran de Marigny, the Norman noble who became Philip the Fair’s ‘éminence grise’ at the end of his reign. Marigny enjoyed to excess the trappings as well as the reality of power. He entered the King’s service after first working for Queen Jeanne of Navarre, who died at the age of only thirty-two in 1305. The favour she bestowed on him gave him special standing in the eyes of the King and his eldest son, Louis, who succeeded his mother as King of Navarre and Count of Champagne. Enguerran’s wife Jeanne de Saint-Martin was Queen Jeanne’s goddaughter (and namesake) and also served her. The Queen indeed arranged her goddaughter’s marriage to Enguerran, and the Queen’s and Philip’s eldest son, Louis, became the godfather of Louis de Marigny, the first son born to Enguerran and his wife, whom they named after the prince (as well as the prince’s great-grandfather, St Louis).70 a copy in the archives of the bishopric of Albi, in de Vic and Vaissete, Histoire générale du Languedoc, ed. by Dulaurier and others, x, preuves, cols. 383–84, no. VIII. Nogaret played a complicated balancing act in dealing with the Franciscan Bernard Délicieux, particularly during the royal tour of Languedoc in the winter of 1303–04, when Nogaret rejoined the court after his mission to Boniface VIII in Italy; there seems to me no question that Nogaret was with the court in Béziers by at least 12 February, and that he travelled with the royal entourage to Montpellier (15–18  February) and then to Nîmes (22  February); see, inter alia, Acta Aragonensia, ed. by Finke, i, 162–63, no. 111; republished in extenso in the same work, iii, 114–19, no. 51; Boutaric, ‘Notices et extraits’, pp. 153–54, no. XIX; Ménard, Histoire civile, i, 149, no. CXXVI; Dupuy, Histoire du differend, preuves, pp. 224–25; cf. Nadiras, ‘Itinéraire de Guillaume de Nogaret’, p. 170. The support that Queen Jeanne gave to Bernard as long as she lived was critical to his survival, and Nogaret seems to have supported Bernard and his allies: Friedlander, Hammer of the Inquisitors, esp. pp. 171–76, 198–99, 223–25. 69  Nogaret’s conflicted attitudes towards heresy may be relevant to his apparent attitude to the prosecution in 1310 of Marguerite Porete and Guiard de Cressonessart by the inquisitor Guillaume de Paris, who was Philip the Fair’s confessor; the six surviving documents concerning the affair were preserved among his papers and those of Guillaume de Plaisians. See Brown, ‘Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe’, pp. 309–10. 70  Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, pp. 13, 57–59; Jeanne made Enguerran an executor of her testament of 25 March 1305 (Paris, AN, J 403, no. 16) and left him the large sum of 500 livres; she bequeathed the same sum to Marie, daughter of Enguerran de Marigny and his first wife, for Marie’s marriage; since Marie became a nun at Maubuisson, the money may have been

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

205

Marigny and his family prospered mightily from their connections with the royal court — far more dramatically and extravagantly than Pierre Flote or Guillaume de Nogaret, who had both, needless to say, used their positions to enrich themselves and their families. But if Flote acquired simple benefices for his sons, Marigny obtained bishoprics and in 1309 an archbishopric for his brothers.71 He also secured a host of papal privileges, worthy of a royal household, including the extraordinary privilege of having his body divided after death, bestowed not only on him but also on his second wife and their children, and on his son Louis.72 As to earthly goods, Marigny acquired property in Normandy, near Lyons-la-Forêt, where Philip the Fair loved to hunt, and also in Paris, near Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and the Louvre, where he built an impressive hôtel, acquired after his fall (and retained) by Philippe de Valois, the future king Philip VI.73 For one of his foundations Marigny commissioned a statue of St Louis, life-sized, crowned, and decked in royal robes, which is now in the church of Mainneville.74 In the impressive collegiate church he estabdonated to the convent: Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, pp. 13, 58–59. Neither Enguerran nor his daughter appear in the will Jeanne had drawn up on 1 April 1304 (Paris, AN, J 403, no. 15). In her testament of 1305, Enguerran’s name is spelled ‘Engerrant’ (Eng’rant), which confirms the pronunciation of his name with a soft ‘g’ that his contemporaries used. His name appears as ‘Ing’rannus’ in Philip the Fair’s will of 17 May 1311 (Paris, AN, J 403, nos. 17–17ter). In most MSS of the continuation of the short French Chronique des roys of Guillaume de Nangis, Enguerran’s name is spelled ‘engerran’ ou ‘eniorran’: see, e.g., Paris, BnF, f. fr. 10132. On this MS, made for Pierre Honoré, a servant of Charles of Valois, see Guyot-Bachy, ‘La diffusion du Roman des roys avant la Guerre de Cent Ans’. See also the rhymed chronicle for the years 1300 to 1316 preserved in Paris, BnF, f. fr. 146, the manu­script of c. 1318 containing the Livres de Fauvel, where his fall is treated at length, and where he is called ‘Engerrant’ and ‘Angerran’: La chronique métrique, ed. by Diverrès, e.g., p. 209, l. 6239, and p. 226, l. 7196. See as well the Memoriale historiarum of Jean de Saint-Victor, where his name appears as ‘Enjorranus’: Recueil des historiens, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxi, pp. 659C, 660JK. Favier noted (Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 215) that his name is given as ‘Anjorrans’ in Renard le Contrefait. 71  Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 28, for Philippe de Marigny, Bishop of Cambrai in 1306 and three years later Archbishop of Sens, and his and Enguerran’s half brother Jean, named Bishop of Beauvais in 1313. For Flote, see Schmidt, ‘La condamnation de Pierre Flote’. Letters concerning the appointment of Philippe de Marigny as Archbishop of Sens on 6 May 1309 were copied into the register that I believe was made for Nogaret: see note 62, above, and Brown, ‘Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar’, n. 10. 72  Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 23 (‘c’était, avant tout, les éléments d’un train presque princier’); see also pp. 13 and 25–26. 73  Petit, Charles de Valois, p. 237. 74  Bruno Nardeux is currently writing an extensive study of this statue.

206

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

lished at Écouis, Marigny installed statues of himself and his second wife, Alips de Mons, as well as eight patron saints, including again St Louis. Confirming popular belief in his chief responsibility for the creation of the King’s enormous new palace on the Île de la Cité, his portrait adorned a wall of the palace, and a standing statue of him was placed in a niche at the top of the great staircase of the palace, opposite one containing an image of the King himself.75 Unlike Nogaret, Marigny did not cloak his ambitions, and he attracted the envy and ire of people low and high.76 Mocked and feared as ‘the king’s principal councilor and the chief governor of the kingdom of France’, he was linked with the unpopular acts and policies of the last years of Philip the Fair’s reign: the war taxes that were imposed, the fruitless campaigns against the Flemings, and the truces that were made. Little wonder that after he was tried and then hanged on 30 April 1315, he became the butt of mordant criticism in the Livres de Fauvel, a work that was satirically attributed to his own chaplain Gervès du Bus.77 The most powerful and persistent of Marigny’s foes was Philip the Fair’s brother Charles of Valois, who hounded Marigny to his death and had his memory tarnished by sponsoring an ‘interlude maringnesque’ in a continuation of the short French Chronique des roys written by Guillaume de Nangis. Incorporated later into the Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denis, this semifanciful account of the last years of the reign of Philip the Fair has long been accepted, and Marigny thus credited with a litany of shameworthy deeds, some fictitious, that included presiding over an assembly on 1 August 1314 which was said to have resulted in Marigny’s imposing a hateful war tax.78 Despite the differences between them, Marigny and Nogaret worked closely together — just as they worked with the legist Pierre Flote until he died at Courtrai in 1302. Nogaret’s and Marigny’s names are often found together on 75 

Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, pp.  15, 47–53. Plans for building the new palace had been made well before 1298, and although the building played a ceremonial role of some importance during the Pentecost festivities of 1313, work on it still continued in 1324: Davis, ‘Desespoir, Esperance, and Douce France’, pp. 188–89, using the fundamental study by Guérout, ‘Palais de la Cité à Paris’. 76  As Abbot of Saint-Martin of Tournai, Gilles li Muisit (1272–1353) had encountered Enguerran, and he described in detail Enguerran’s pretentiousness and love of pomp and display, in Chronique et Annales, ed. by Maître, pp. 79–80, 85. 77  Brown, ‘Rex ioians, ionnes, iolis’, pp. 54–55; see also Bent and Wathey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 9–10, 12–13. 78  See Brown, ‘Assemblées de Philippe le Bel’. Like other scholars, I long accepted the authenticity of the account of the assembly of 1 August 1314 contained in the Chronique des roys and the Grandes Chroniques: see Brown, ‘Persona et Gesta’, p. 228.

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

207

acts connected with the grand affairs of the end of Philip’s reign, and each was named a testamentary executor in the last will the King drew up, on 17 May 1311.79 The skills of Nogaret and Marigny were complementary. Marigny was no intellectual or lawyer, but he was intelligent and shrewd.80 He must have recognized Nogaret’s strengths, as Nogaret must have recognized his. Neither Nogaret nor Marigny was popular, but Nogaret survived, whereas Marigny did not. Their different fates were in large part their own doing, although it was Nogaret’s good fortune to die before Philip the Fair. The two men’s heirs reaped the fruits of their fathers’ fates. In June 1315 the new king Louis X took both of Nogaret’s sons, his vallets, into his special protection.81 The fate of Marigny’s heirs was far more complex. In his will, drawn up just shortly before his premature death at twenty-seven on 5 June 1316, Louis X made provision for Enguerran’s eldest son, his own godson, Louis de Marigny, as well as for the other children. But he mentioned Enguerran only as his godson’s father, whose marriage ‘his own dear mother’ had arranged to her own goddaughter, who, Louis said, had served his mother well and been loved by her.82 As time passed feelings of guilt increased, and there seems no question that someone close to Charles of Valois (and probably Charles himself ) came to rue the part Charles had played in Marigny’s fall. A chronicle composed in the orbit of the Valois declared of Charles, Et fu dit que a sa mort il ot grant repentance de la mort enioirrant de marigni Et pource len le pout savoir car en vne donnee qui fu faite pour mon seigneur Karle de

79  Paris, AN, J 403, no. 17–17ter. In an appeal that Louis, Count of Nevers, made to Pope Clement V on 14 April 1313, he described Nogaret and Marigny (both of whom he denounced) as working closely together: Codex Diplomaticus Flandriae, ed. by Joseph, ii, 217–27, no. 290 (at 223). 80  In Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, pp. 16–17, Favier hypothesized that Enguerran de Marigny very likely did not read or understand Latin. 81  Paris, AN, JJ 52, fol. 91v, no. 183: ‘nos grata nobis sincere deuocionis obsequia, et labores continuos in agendis [sic], que defunctus Guillelmus de Nogareto, Miles et Cancellarius carissimi dominj et genitoris nostri dum viueret incessanter exhibuit et voluit gratantius sustinere pro ipso specialiter inter cetera nos inducunt ut dilectos & fideles Raymundum et Guillelmum de Nogareto, ipsius defuncti filios et heredes, valletos nostros, fauore beniuolo prosequamur et gracia speciali. Hinc est quod ipsos fratres & eorum quemlibet, cum eorum familia, rebus, bonis, castris, villis, iurisdictionibus, patrimonie, terris, et quibuscumque possessionibus et tenementis eorum, in nostra protectione regia et gardia speciali recipimus per presentes’. 82  Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 221 (and also p. 13); Paris, AN, J 404A, no. 22.

208

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Valois li donnans disoient aus pourez priiez pour mon seigneur enioirrant et pour mon seigneur karle & metoient enioirrant deuant mon seigneur Karle. [And it was said that at his death Charles repented greatly the death of Enguerran de Marigny. And there is good evidence that this was so, since when alms were distributed for Charles, those who disbursed the money said to the poor, ‘Pray for my lord Enguerran and for my lord Charles’, putting Enguerran before Charles.]83

Still, repentance is one thing and restitution another. As Joseph Petit long ago pointed out, Enguerran’s heirs never fully recovered their father’s property, and it was Philip VI and Louis XI who rehabilitated his reputation.84 To conclude, let me return to the question Charles Taylor posed to us in 1954, sixty years ago. What do I think now about Langlois’s and Fawtier’s views of the consciences, characters, beliefs, ambitions, and goals of Philip the Fair and his ministers, especially Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerran de Marigny? Let me begin by saying how I envision the King now, after many years spent studying him and his reign. I see him as a man deeply impressed by the majesty and the responsibilities of the office he held, a man who relished the power he wielded, a man dedicated to preserving and extending royal authority, who also wished to rule justly and maintain the traditions established by his predecessors, especially his grandfather Louis IX. A man of great ambitions, he cared greatly for his fama and his reputation. Loyal to those who served him, he relied on their judgement and encouraged, and doubtless insisted on, their collaboration with one another. Yet he lacked determination and vision. Desperately eager for salvation, he was unable and unwilling to conform consistently to the standards the theologians declared necessary for redemption. Similarly eager to be seen as a great ruler and a worthy heir of St Louis, he found it difficult 83  Paris, BnF, f. fr. 10132, fols 408v–409r, with modernized spelling and punctuation in Recueil des historiens, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxi, 668; on this chronicle, see Guyot-Bachy, ‘La diffusion du Roman des roys avant la Guerre de Cent Ans’. The story was differently related in the other principal chronicles that are more or less contemporary, but the version in Paris, BnF, f. fr. 10132 is particularly valuable because of its provenance and because its author seems to have been more convinced than others of the story’s truth and significance. Favier (Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel, p. 222 n. 4) simply cited the continuation of the chronicle of Geraud de Frachet written later in the century (after 1329) by Richard Lescot, which (like the Grandes Chroniques de France) here depends on the quite different account in the Latin continuation of the Universal Chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis, Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, ed. by Géraud, ii, 64–65. Petit provided a useful analysis of the sources, in Charles de Valois, pp. 218–20. 84  Petit, Charles de Valois, pp. 153–54, 218–20.

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

209

to initiate and promote policies and standards of good government without being forced by circumstances and adversaries to do so. Judging himself and his acts by unrealistic and excessively high and rigid standards, measuring himself against individuals, living and dead, whose virtues and achievements he exaggerated, he was in essence immature. Lacking confidence in himself, his abilities, and his worthiness, he was vulnerable to the domination and threats of others. Needing reassurance and support, relishing the attention and service of those who catered to his insecurities, he never fully trusted those around him, and particularly the women nearest to him. Dreading condemnation divine and human, he was himself quick to suspect, to denounce, and to punish. His conflicting emotions and ambitions led him from time to time, especially in moments of crisis, to act on impulse and then to regret what on impulse he had done.85 With all his foibles and weaknesses, however, he was a man who, when the occasion demanded it, exhibited great strength and resolve, who inspired respect, awe, and sometimes fear among his subjects and his contemporaries, friends and foes alike. As regards Langlois and Fawtier, my views of Philip the Fair and his ministers may be closer to Fawtier’s than to Langlois’s, yet I concur with many of Langlois’s observations. Robert Fawtier’s belief in the possibility of knowing and understanding these men, long dead, has been a comfort and an inspiration, whereas the fundamental inventories, catalogues, and editions he and his colleagues published, and the Corpus philippicum he left behind, have enormously facilitated the work I have done. Equally important to me has been Charles Taylor’s dedication to probing and reprobing the sources. So too have been all that Joe Strayer wrote about Philip and the notes and memoranda that he and his students gathered and composed about the King and his court. My assessments of Philip the Fair and his ministers depend on those of Strayer, Taylor, and Fawtier. Still, they are different from theirs. I see the characters of Philip and his advisers as more conflicted and complicated than they did. Following the example of Bautier (although differing from him in many of the conclusions I draw), I am convinced of the necessity of exploring the trajectories of their lives from birth to death, of searching out changes in their characters as they aged, and of examining their affective relationships with their wives and children — questions that I do not think Strayer, Taylor, or Fawtier would have thought worth pursuing. 85 

Here I think of the privileges Philip granted soon after his accession to the throne, but also of later actions, such as his restoration of the Val d’Aran to Aragon after Nogaret’s death, and his reaction to the charges of adultery against his daughters-in-law.

210

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Turning to Langlois, sceptical as I am of his ascription of a ‘troubled conscience’ to Nogaret in 1303, I fully sympathize with the indignation and revulsion he expressed in 1908 at the methods Philip’s ministers used in the service of the state.86 Over the years I have come to think of Philip the Fair’s government as in many ways the harbinger — the unfortunate precursor — of the future, our own present. I also sympathize with Langlois’s conviction that the King’s and his ministers’ characters, the real essences of their beings, are and always will be beyond our grasp. The longer I study with these men, the more I realize that the nearer I approach them, the more determinedly they retreat into the shadows. Langlois found this aspect of the historian’s craft profoundly discouraging and turned from trying to understand kings and their ministers to describing and editing a staggering range of sources, reviewing the books and articles that others wrote, and treating aspects of medieval life he believed he could illuminate by describing the writings that contemporary poets, novelists, scientists, moralists, and philosophers left behind.87 But even though, with him, I recognize the impossibility of the quest, I still cannot abandon it, captivated as I am by what Marc Bloch called the pursuit of human flesh — living, not imagined, human beings, creatures of flesh and bone, in all their infinite complexity.88

86 

Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p.  2, citing Langlois, ‘L’affaire des Templiers’ (see note 18, above), pp. 432–33. 87  Langlois seems to have become increasingly sceptical of the historical enterprise and the possibiliy of discerning what Bloch called the ‘grands courants cachés de la vie humaine’, although Bloch’s judgement (‘Nouvelles personnelles’) that Langlois came to see the writing of history as ‘un jeu esthétique’ seems to me extreme; see the comments of Hélary in his essay on Langlois (note 8, above). Langlois generally did not offer detailed analyses of the sources he edited, leaving close study of them to others. Consider, for example, his treatment of the formulary of Jean de Caux and the registers JJ 28 and JJ 29 (Paris, BnF, f. lat. 10919), in Langlois, ‘Formulaires de lettres’, pp. 793–816, esp. 812–26. 88  Cf. Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire, p. 83 (‘Là où [l’historien] flaire la chair humaine, il sait que là est son gibier’) and p. 164 (‘Le seul être de chair et d’os est l’homme’) (The Capetian Kings of France, pp. 26, 151).

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

211

Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Sources Paris, Archives Nationales, J 336, nos 91–2 (memorandum concerning Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, written by Guillaume de Nangis, and a fine copy of the text) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 374, no. 3 (sealed act of Guy, count of La Marche, dated 29 June 1305, forged) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 403, no.  15 (testament of Queen Jeanne of France and Navarre, countess of Champagne, 1 April 1304) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 403, no.  16 (testament of Queen Jeanne of France and Navarre, countess of Champagne, 25 March 1305) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 403, no. 17–17ter (testament of Philip the Fair, 17 May 1311; three copies) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 404A, no. 22 (testament of Louis X, June 1316) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 407, no.  10 (testament of Guy, count of La Marche, 22 September 1304) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 413, no. 22 (mandate of Philip the Fair, 14 September 1307, ordering the seizure of the Knights Templar) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 438, no. 8 (charges against Guichard, bishop of Troyes, 1308, written by Guillaume de Nogaret) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 491A, nos 781–782bis (acts of Raynaud de Supino and of Guillaume de Nogaret concerning aid given to Nogaret when he appeared before Boniface VIII in Anagni in 1303; the acts are dated, respectively, 17 October 1303, 12 February 1308/1309, and 29 October 1312) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 493 (notarial register of proceedings against Boniface VIII, compiled by order of Clement V, early fourteenth century) Paris, Archives Nationales, J 1020A, no.  17 (royal act of June 1302 concerning heresy, warranted by Guillaume de Nogaret) Paris, Archives Nationales, JJ 28 (chancery register, early fourteenth century) Paris, Archives Nationales, JJ 52 (chancery register, acts of the reign of Louis X, December 1314–5 July 1316) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fond français 146 (manu­script of c. 1318 containing the Livres de Fauvel, dits and a rhymed chronicle attributed to Geoffroi de Paris, and loves songs attributed to Jehannot de Lescurel) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 10132 (Chroniques de France, ordered by Pierre Honoré fromThomas de Maubeuge of Paris, second and third decades of the fourteenth century) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds latin 10919 (formerly register JJ 29 of the Trésor des chartes, early fourteenth century)

212

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Primary Sources Acta Aragonensia: Quellen zur deutschen, italienischen, französischen, spanischen, zur Kirchen und Kulturgeschichte aus der diplomatischen Korrespondenz Jaymes II. (1291–1327), ed. by Heinrich Finke, 3 vols (Berlin: Rothschild, 1908–22) Berger, Élie, ‘Bulle de Clément V en faveur de Guillaume de Nogaret’, in Mélanges offerts à M.  Émile Chatelain, membre de l’Institut, directeur-adjoint à l’École pratique des Hautes Études, conservateur de la Bibliothèque de l’Université de Paris, par ses élèves et ses amis, 15 avril 1910 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1910), pp. 268–70 Boutaric, Edgard, ‘Notices et extraits de documents inédits relatifs à l’histoire de France sous Philippe le Bel’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impériale et autres bibliothèques, 20.2 (1862), 83–237 Chronique et Annales de Gilles Le Muisit, abbé de Saint-Martin de Tournai (1272–1362), ed. by Henri Lemaître (Paris: Renouard, 1906) Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 à 1300, ed. by Hercule Géraud, 2 vols, Publications de la Société de l’Histoire de France, 33, 35 (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1843) La chronique métrique attribuée à Geffroy de Paris: Texte publié avec introduction et glossaire, ed. by Armel Diverrès, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Strasbourg, 129 (Paris: ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1956) Codex Diplomaticus Flandriae inde ab anno 1296 ad usque 1327, ou Recueil de documents relatifs aux guerres et dissensions suscitées par Philippe-le-Bel, roi de France, contre Gui de Dampierre, comte de Flandre, ed. by Thierry Marie Joseph, comte de Limburg Stirum, 2 vols (Brugge: De Plancke, 1879–89) Comptes royaux (1285–1314), ed. by Robert Fawtier and François Maillard, 3 vols, Re­ cueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 3 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1953–56) Comptes royaux (1314–1328), ed. by François Maillard and Robert Fawtier, 2 vols, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 4 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1961) Comptes du Trésor (1296, 1316, 1384, 1477), ed. by Robert Fawtier, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 2 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1930) Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Georges Lizerand, 2nd edn, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Age, 2 (Paris: ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1964) Langlois, Charles Victor, ‘Les papiers de Guillaume de Nogaret et de Guillaume de Plaisians au Trésor des chartes’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et d’autres bibliothèques, 39.1 (1909), 211–54 Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Martin Bouquet and others, 24 vols (Paris: Victor Palmé, H. Welter, Imprimerie nationale, 1738–1904) Les registres de Boniface VIII: Recueil des bulles de ce pape publiées ou analysées d’après les manuscrits originaux des Archives du Vatican, ed. by Georges Digard, Maurice Faucon, Antoine Thomas, and Robert Fawtier, 4 vols, Bibliothèques des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 4 (Paris: E. Thorin, 1921–39) Registres du Trésor des Chartes: Inventaire analytique, i: Règne de Philippe le Bel, ed. by Robert Fawtier, with Jean Glénisson and Jean Guerout (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1958)

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

213

Registres du Trésor des Chartes: Inventaire analytique, ii: Règnes des fils de Philippe le Bel, part 1: Règnes de Louis X le Hutin et de Philippe V le Long, ed. by Robert Fawtier, with Jean Guerout (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1966) Registres du Trésor des Chartes: Inventaire analytique, ii: Règnes des fils de Philippe le Bel, part 2: Règne de Charles IV le Bel, ed. by Jean Guerout, completing the work of Henri Jassemin and Aline Vallée (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1999) Tholomeus Lucensis [Tholomeus von Lucca], Historia ecclesiastica nova nebst Fortsetzungen bis 1329, ed. by Ottavio Clavuot, completing the work of Ludwig Schmugge, Monumenta Germanie Historica, Scriptores (in folio), 39 (Hannover: Hahn, 2009)

Secondary Studies Bautier, Robert-Henri, ‘Diplomatique et histoire politique: Ce que la critique diplomatique nous apprend sur la personnalité de Philippe le Bel’, Revue historique, 259 (1978), 3–27; repr. in Robert-Henri Bautier, Études sur la France capétienne: De Louis VI aux fils de Philippe le Bel, Variorum Collected Studies, 359 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993) Bent, Margaret, and Andrew Wathey, ‘Introduction’, in Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146, ed. by Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 1–24 Blanc, Julien, Au commencement de la Résistance: Du côté du musée de l’Homme. 1940– 1941, La librairie du xxie siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2010) Bloch, Marc, Apologie pour l’histoire ou Métier d’historien, ed. by Étienne Bloch, with an introduction by Jacques Le Goff (Paris: Armand Colin, 1993); trans. as The Historian’s Craft, trans. by Peter Putnam, with an introduction by Joseph R. Strayer (Manchester: Manchester Uni­ver­sity Press, 1954) —— , ‘Nouvelles personnelles’, Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, 1 (1929), 583–84 —— , (as M.  F. [Marc Fougères]), ‘review of Joseph  R. Strayer and Charles  H. Taylor, Studies’, Annales d’histoire social, 2 (1942), 107 Blythe, James M., The Life and Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca), Disputatio, 16 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009) Brown, Elizabeth A.  R., ‘Les assemblées de Philippe le Bel: La promotion d’une image d’un gouvernement consultatif et consensuel’, Proceedings of a Conference ‘Consensus et représentation’, held in Dijon, 14–16 March 2013, ed. by Jean-Philippe Genet (forthcoming) —— , ‘Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boni­ face VIII on the Division of the Corpse’, Viator, 12 (1981), 1–70; repr. in The Mon­ archy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 345 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991) —— , ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et les textes: Les registres JJ 28 et JJ 29 (BnF, lat. 10919)’, in La royauté capétienne et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret: Actes du colloque des 29 et 30 novembre 2013, ed. by Bernard Moreau and Julien Théry-Astruc (Nîmes: La Fenestrelle, 2015), pp. 209–42

214

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

—— , ‘Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe, and the Chroniclers of Saint-Denis’, Medi­ aeval Studies, 75 (2013), pp. 307–44 —— , ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 1–36 —— , ‘La mort, les testaments et les fondations de Jeanne de Navarre, reine de France (1273–1305)’, in Une histoire pour un royaume (xiie-xve siècle): Actes du colloque Corpus Regni organisé en hommage à Colette Beaune, ed. by Anne-Hélène Allirot, Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, Gilles Lecuppre, Elodie Lequain, Lydwine Scordia and Julien Véronèse, with Mary Leroy (Paris: Perrin, 2010), pp. 124–41, and 508–10 —— , ‘The Parlement de Paris and the Welfare of the Dead’, in Le Parlement en sa cour: Études en l’honneur du Professeur Jean Hilaire, ed. by Olivier Descamps, Françoise Hildes­heimer, and Monique Morgat-Bonnet, Histoire et archives, 11 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012), pp. 47–73 —— , ‘Persona et Gesta: The Image and Deeds of the Thirteenth-Century Capetians, 3. The Case of Philip the Fair’, Viator, 19 (1988), 219–46; repr. in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 345 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991) —— , ‘Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar: The Execution of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny in March 1314’, Viator, 47 (2016), 229–92 —— , ‘Philippe le Bel s’est-il posé la question des frontières du royaume?’, in Lyon, de l’empire au royaume: Autour du rattachement de la ville de Lyon à la France, ed.  by Aléxis Charansonnet, Jacques Chiffoleau, and Jean-Paul Gaulin, The Proceedings of a Con­ference in Lyon on 27–29 September 2012 (forthcoming) —— , ‘The Prince Is Father of the King: The Character and Childhood of Philip IV of France’, Mediaeval Studies, 49 (1987), 282–334; repr. in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 345 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991) —— , ‘Rex ioians, ionnes, iolis: Louis X, Philip V, and the Livres de Fauvel’, in Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146, ed. by Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 53–72 —— , ‘review of Courtenay and Ubl, Gelehrte Gutachten’, in TMR 12.02.13, with a stable URL of —— , ‘Royal Salvation and Needs of State in Early Fourteenth-Century France’, in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 345 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991), no. IV —— , ‘Royal Salvation and Needs of State in Late Capetian France’, in Order and Innovation in the Medi­eval West: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer, ed. by William C. Jordan, Bruce McNab, and Teofilo F. Ruiz (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1976), pp. 365–83, 541–46 —— , ‘Royal Testamentary Acts from Philip Augustus to Philip of Valois: Executorial Dilemmas and Premonitions of Absolutism in Medi­eval France’, in Herrscher- und Fürsten­testamente im westeuropäischen Mittelalter, ed. by Brigitte Kasten, Norm und

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

215

Struktur, Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, 29 (Köln: Böhlau, 2008), pp. 415–30 —— , ‘Veritas à la cour de Philippe le Bel de France: Pierre Du Bois, Guillaume de Nogaret et Marguerite Porete’, in La vérité. Vérité et crédibilité: la construction de la vérité dans le système de communication de la société occidentale (xiiie–xviie siècle), ed. by JeanPhilippe Genet, Les Vecteurs de l’Idéel, 2 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., and Alan Forey, ‘Vox in Excelso and the Suppression of the Knights Templar: The History of the Text and a New Edition’ (forthcoming) Courtenay, William J., and Karl Ubl, Gelehrte Gutachten und königliche Politik im Templerprozess, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte, 51 (Hannover: Hahn, 2010) Davis, Michael T., ‘Desespoir, Esperance, and Douce France: The New Palace, Paris, and the Royal State’, in Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146, ed. by Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 187–213 Dejoux, Marie, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis: Gouverner et sauver son âme, Le nœud gordien (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2014) —— , ‘Gouverner par l’enquête en France, de Philippe Auguste aux derniers Capétiens’, French Historical Studies, 37 (2014), 271–302 Denton, Jeffrey H., ‘Bernard Saisset and the Franco-Papal Rift of December 1301’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 102 (2007), 399–426 Digard, Georges, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège de 1285 à 1304, ed. by Françoise Lehoux, 2 vols (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1936) Dossat, Yves, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret, petit-fils d’hérétique’, Annales du Midi, 212 (1941), 391–402 Dupuy, Pierre, Histoire du differend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII. et Philippes le Bel roy de France (Paris: Chez Cramoisy, 1655) Favier, Jean, Cartulaire et actes d’Enguerran de Marigny, Ministère de l’éducation nationale, Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, Section de philologie et d’histoire, jusqu’à 1610; Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Série in-8o, 2 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1965) —— , Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel: Enguerran de Marigny, Mémoires et documents publiés par la Société de l’École des Chartes, 16 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1963) —— , ‘L’histoire administrative et financière du Moyen Âge depuis dix ans’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 126 (1968), 427–503 —— , ‘Les légistes et le gouvernement de Philippe le Bel’, Journal des savants, no. 2 (1969), 92–108 —— , Philippe le Bel (Paris: Fayard, 1978) —— , ‘Les portraits d’Enguerran de Marigny’, Annales de Normandie, 15 (1965), 517–24 Fawtier, Robert, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, 60 (1948 [1949]), 153–79; repr. in Autour de la France capétienne: personnages et institutions, ed. by Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, Collected Studies Series, 267 (London: Variorum, 1987), pp. 153–79

216

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

—— , Autour de la France capétienne: personnages et institutions, ed. by Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, Collected Studies Series, 267 (London: Variorum, 1987) —— , Les Capétiens et la France: leur rôle dans sa construction (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1942); translated as The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation (987–1328), trans. by Lionel Butler and R. J. Adam (London: Macmillan, 1960) —— , ‘Charles Victor Langlois’, English Historical Review, 45 (1930), 85–91 —— , L’Europe occidentale de 1270 à 1380, part 1: De 1270 à 1328, vol.  vi of Histoire générale, Histoire du Moyen Âge, ed. by Gustave Glotz (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1940) Fawtier, Robert, and Ferdinand Lot, Histoire des institutions françaises au Moyen Âge, 3 vols (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1957–1962) Febvre, Lucien, Le problème de l’incroyance au xvie siècle: La religion de Rabelais (Paris: Albin Michel, 1947) Field, Sean L., ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen’, French Historical Studies, 39 (2016), 35–71 Finke, Heinrich, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols, Vorreformations­ geschichtliche Forschungen, 4–5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1907) Friedlander, Alan, The Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Délicieux and the Struggle Against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France, Cultures, Beliefs and Tradi­tions: Medi­eval and Early Modern Peoples, 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2000) Gillerman, Dorothy W., Enguerran de Marigny and the Church of Notre-Dame at Écouis: Art and Patronage in the Age of Philip the Fair (Uni­ver­sity Park: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994) Gilmour-Bryson, Anne, ‘“Vox in excelso” Deconstructed: Exactly What Did Clement V Say?’, in On the Margins of Crusading: The Military Orders, the Papacy and the Christian World, ed. by Helen J. Nicholson, Crusades Subsidia, 4 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 75–87 Guérout, Jean, ‘Le Palais de la Cité à Paris des origines à 1417: Essai topographique et archéologique’, Paris et Île-de-France: Mémoires, 1 (1949), 57–212; 2 (1950), 21–204; 3 (1951), 7–101 Guyot-Bachy, Isabelle, ‘La diffusion du Roman des roys avant la Guerre de Cent Ans: Le manuscrit de Pierre Honoré, serviteur de Charles de Valois’, in The Medi­eval Chronicle  II. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Medi­eval Chronicle, Driebergen/Utrecht 16–21 July 1999, ed. by Erik Kooper, Costerus, 144 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 90–102 Hélary, Xavier, ‘Charles-Victor Langlois, le maître désabusé de l’école méthodique’, in La naissance de la médiévistique: Les historiens et leurs sources en Europe (xixe–début du xxe siècle). Actes du colloque de Nancy, 8–10 novembre 2012, ed. by Isabelle GuyotBachy and Jean-Marie Moeglin, École pratique des Hautes Études, Sciences historiques et philologiques, 5; Hautes Études médiévales et modernes, 107 (Geneva: Droz, 2015), pp. 335–65 Hillgarth, Jocelyn N., Ramon Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth Century France (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1971)

Philip the Fair and his Ministers

217

Holtzmann, Robert, Wilhelm von Nogaret, Rat und Großsiegelbewahrer Philipps des Schönen von Frankreich (Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1898) Humbert, Agnès, Notre guerre: Souvenirs de résistance (Paris: Tallandier, 2004) Keen, Maurice H., ‘review of Joseph R. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980)’, English Historical Review, 97 (1982), 352–54 Lalou, Élisabeth, ‘François Maillard (1914–2006)’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 164 (2006), 685–87 Lalou, Élisabeth, with Robert Fawtier, Jean Maillard, and Robert-Henri Bautier, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel (1285–1314), 2 vols, Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 37 (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 2007) Langlois, Charles-Victor, ‘L’affaire des Templiers’, Journal des savants, n.s. 6 (1908), 417–35 —— , ‘Autographes nouveaux de Guillaume de Nogaret’, Journal des savants, n.s. 15 (1917), 321–27 —— , ‘Formulaires de lettres du xiie, du xiiie et du xive siècle (6e lettre): Les plus anciens formulaires de la chancellerie de France’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Biblio­ thèque nationale et autres bibliothèques, 35.2 (1897), 793–830 —— , Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, les derniers Capétiens directs (1226–1328), iii, part 2 of Histoire de France illustrée, ed. by Ernest Lavisse (Paris: Hachette, 1901–11); repr. in the series Monumenta Historiae (Paris: Jules Tallandier, 1978) Lautier, Claudine, ‘Le vitrail de la Crucifixion de la collégiale d’Écouis’, in Pierre, lumière, couleur: Études d’histoire de l’art du Moyen Âge en l’honneur d’Anne Prache, ed. by Fabienne Joubert and Dany Sandron, Cultures et civilisations médiévales, 20 (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris – Sorbonne, 1999), pp. 277–85 Maillard, François, ‘À propos d’un ouvrage récent: Notes sur quelques officiers royaux du Languedoc vers 1280–1335’, Actes du 96e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes. Toulouse, 1971. Section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610, i: France du Nord et France du Midi: contacts et influences réciproques (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1978), pp. 325–58 Ménard, Léon, Histoire civile, ecclésiastique et littéraire de la Ville de Nismes…, 7 vols (Paris: Hugues-Daniel Chaubert, 1744–58) Merlin, Alfred, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Charles-Victor Langlois, membre de l’Académie’, Comptes-rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 95 (1949), 394–409 Nadiras, Sébastien, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret en ses dossiers: Méthodes de travail et de gouvernement d’un conseiller royal au début du xive siècle’ (thèse de doctorat d’histoire, Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne UFR 09-Histoire, 2012) —— , ‘Itinéraire de Guillaume de Nogaret: Les déplacements du légiste’, in Guillaume de Nogaret: Un Languedocien au service de la monarchie capétienne. Actes du colloque de Nîmes 20 janvier 2012, ed. by Bernard Moreau, Patrimoine des régions (Nîmes: Lucie Éditions [Association Guillaume de Nogaret; Histoire médiévale en Bas-Languedoc], 2012), pp. 169–73 Pegues, Franklin J., The Lawyers of the Last Capetians (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1962) Petit, Joseph, Charles de Valois (1270–1325) (Paris: A. Picard, 1900)

218

Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Provost, Alain, Domus diaboli: Un évêque en procès au temps de Philippe le Bel (Paris: Belin, 2010) Renan, Ernest, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret, légiste’, in Histoire littéraire de la France, 27 (1879), 233–371 Rigault, Abel, Le procès de Guichard, évêque de Troyes (1308–1313), Mémoires et documents publiés par la Société de l’École des chartes, 1 (Paris: A. Picard, 1896) Schmidt, Tillmann, Der Bonifaz-Prozess: Verfahren der Papstanklage in der Zeit Bonifaz’ VIII. und Clemens’ V., Forschungen zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht, 19 (Köln: Böhlau, 1989) —— , ‘La condamnation de Pierre Flote par le pape Boniface  VIII’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 118.1 (2006), 109–21 Strayer, Joseph R., ‘Consent to Taxation under Philip the Fair’, in Joseph R. Strayer and Charles H. Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation, Harvard Historical Monographs, 12 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1939), pp. 1–105 —— , Les gens de justice du Languedoc sous Philippe le Bel, Cahiers de l’Association Marc Bloch de Toulouse. Études d’histoire méridionale, 5 (Toulouse: Association Marc Bloch, 1970) —— , ‘Philip the Fair A “Constitutional” King’, American Historical Review, 62 (1956), 18–32 —— , The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980) Strayer, Joseph R., and Charles  H. Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation, Harvard Historical Monographs, 12 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1939) Taylor, Charles Holt, ‘Assemblies of Towns and War Subsidy, 1318–1319’, in Joseph R. Strayer and Charles H. Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation, Harvard Historical Monographs, 12 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1939), pp. 107–200 —— , St-Lô (7 July – 19 July 1944) (originally published in 1947 as part of the series American Forces in Action), repr. by the Historical Division of the War Department, and available online through HathiTrust () and also the United States Army Center of Military History Théry, Julien, ‘Pouvoir royal et procès politico-religieux sous le règne de Philippe le Bel: Directions de recherche’ (unpublished mémoire pour le Diplôme d’études approfondies, Université Lumière – Lyon 2, 1998) Théry-Astruc, Julien, ‘“Les Écritures ne peuvent mentir”: Note liminaire pour l’étude des références aux autorités religieuses dans les textes de Guillaume de Nogaret’, in La royauté française et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret: Actes du colloque des 29 et 30 novembre 2013, ed. by Bernard Moreau and Julien Théry-Astruc (Nîmes: La Fenestrelle, 2015), pp. 243–48 Thomas, Louis, ‘La vie privée de Guillaume de Nogaret’, Annales du Midi, 16 (1904), 161–207 Vic, Claude de, and Jean-Joseph Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, avec des notes et les pièces justificatives, ed. by Édouard Dulaurier and others, 15 vols (Toulouse: Édouard Privat, 1872–93); originally published as Histoire generale de Languedoc, Avec des Notes & les Piéces justificatives: Composée sur les Auteurs & les Titres originaux, & enrichie de divers Monumens. Par deux Religieux Benedictins de la Congregation de S. Maur, 5 vols (Paris: Jacques Vincent, 1730–45)

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy: Guillaume de Nogaret and the Conflicts between Philip the Fair and the Papacy Julien Théry-Astruc* Il est sans doute de certaines fonctions où, tenant pour ainsi dire la place de Dieu, nous semblons être participans de sa connaissance aussi bien que de son autorité. Louis XIV, Instructions pour le Dauphin (1668)

‘R

ex Francie venit ad annunciandum vobis gaudium magnum’ (‘The King of France has come to announce to you a great joy’), Guillaume de Plaisians declared to Pope Clement V at a consistory in Poitiers on 29 May 1308, in the presence of King Philip IV, the Fair, of France. According to Plaisians, Philip the Fair’s adviser,1 this ‘great joy’ (Luke 2. 10), which ‘all creatures felt’, was the result of the recent victory in what had been the greatest battle ever fought for the faith, for the church, and for the redemption of humanity since the death of Christ on the Cross — that is, the battle waged by Philip the  

* I am most grateful to Chad Córdova and Elizabeth A. R. Brown for translating this article. My thanks also go to Sean Field, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Sara McDougall, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and especially to Jenna Phillips. A first version of this article was published as ‘Le pionnier de la théocratie pontificale: Guillaume de Nogaret et les conflits de Philippe le Bel avec la papauté’, in Guillaume de Nogaret, un Languedocien au service de la monarchie capétienne, ed. by Bernard Moreau (Nîmes: Lucie Éditions, 2012), pp.  101–28. I  would like to thank Lucie Éditions for their kind permission to publish this revised and much augmented English version. 1  See Henry, ‘Guillaume de Plaisians’; Verdier, ‘Guillaume de Plaisians, une succession médiévale’; Verdier, ‘Guillaume de Plaisians, itinéraire d’un légiste’. Julien Théry-Astruc ([email protected]) Université Lyon II, Louis Lumière

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 219–259 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112974 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

220

Julien Théry-Astruc

Fair against the heresy of the ‘perfidious Templars’.2 ‘God’s Providence’, Plaisians insisted, had ‘elected’ the King of France as his ‘minister’ to win this battle in his name in order to save humanity.3 In using the phrase ‘ad annunciandum vobis gaudium magnum’, Plaisians equated Philip the Fair with the angel of God who, in the words of the Gospel of Luke, had announced to the shepherds that Jesus Christ was born.4 Better still: he also implicitly suggested to Clement V that through the miraculous victory over the Templars, Christ had designated the Capetian king as his new representative on earth — thus virtually challenging the Pope’s exclusive right, as ‘vicar of Christ’, to fulfill this function.5 The Roman ordo XIV, which described the rituals for papal election at the end of the thirteenth century, specified that the oldest of the cardinal deacons could (si placet) announce the election to the populus with the formula ‘Ecce annun-

2 

Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, ii, 141: ‘Dixit qualiter dominus noster Jhesus Christus magnam victoriam obtinuerat temporibus istis de inimicis suis, qualis non fuerat a tempore Passionis sue citra. Et post aliqua circa hec dicta subjunxit sic: “Pater sanctissime! Rex Francie non venit pro negotio isto ad vos sicut accusator nec sicut delator nec sicut denunciator nec sicut instructor nec sicut partem faciens, sed venit ad annunciandum vobis gaudium magnum quod est omni creature de victoria ista”’. See also a draft version of the speech edited by Finke at p. 135, and in Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Lizerand, at pp. 110–12: ‘Post illam universalem victoriam quam ipse dominus Jhesus Christi fecit in ligno Crucis contra ostem antiquum pro defensione Ecclesie sue et umani generis redempcione, […] non fecit aliquam particularem victoriam contra inimicos sue ecclesie et fidei orthodoxe ita miram et magnam et strenuam, ita utilem et necessariam, sicut fecit novissime hiis diebus per ministros delegatos ad  hoc in perfidorum templariorum negocio, miraculose detegendo eorum pravitatem hereticam in animorum ipsorum periculum et subversionem fidei et destructionem Ecclesie diutius occultatam’. 3  Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, ii, 142: ‘Et postquam de hiis locutus est, idem dominus Guillelmus seriose prosecutus est qualiter victoria illa de qua predixit fuit jocunda et mirabilis in progressu propter tria, videlicet propter Dei providentiam eligentem ministrum, propter Dei clementiam providentem magistrum et propter Dei sapientiam ordinantem processum. Dei providentia elegit ad hoc negocium ministrum scilicet regem Francie, qui in regno suo est Dei vicarius in temporalibus, et certo nullus ad hoc magis idoneus inveniri potuisset’. See also Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Lizerand, p. 126: ‘Rex Francorum […] ut minister Dei, pugil fidei catholice, legis divine zelator, ad deffensionem Ecclesie, juxta traditiones patrum sanctorum, de qua tenetur Deo reddere rationem’. 4  Luke 2. 10: ‘Ecce evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum quod erit omni populo, quia natus est vobis hodie salvator, qui est Christus Dominus, in civitate David’. 5  See Maccarone, Vicarius Christi; Paravicini Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, pp. 58–59, 80, 86–87; Paravicini Bagliani, Le chiavi e la tiara, pp. 43–59; Paravicini Bagliani, Il papato nel secolo xiii, p. 175; Paravicini Bagliani, Morte ed elezione, pp. 116–17; Théry-Astruc, ‘Introduction’.

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

221

cio vobis gaudium magnum’.6 As Agostino Paravicini Bagliani has emphasized, this suggested that the newly elected pope took over the function, on earth, of Christ himself. The passage from Luke is echoed in Paul’s declaration (Acts 17. 3), ‘Hic est Christus Jesus quem ego annuncio vobis’.7 Philip the Fair and his advisers certainly knew about the ritual use and meaning of this passage. Later in his speech to Clement, Plaisians explicitly asserted that the King of France was ‘God’s vicar in his kingdom for temporal matters’.8 The claim to a religious, Christic leadership had lain at the heart of royal policy towards the papacy since the outbreak of the great conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair in 1301. The chief architect of this campaign was Plaisians’s master, Guillaume de Nogaret. At Poitiers Plaisians spoke in Nogaret’s place, since Nogaret was not permitted to appear before Clement V, having been placed under a sentence of excommunication after the attack on Boniface VIII at Anagni in 1303. But the words Plaisians spoke were surely those of Nogaret. Nogaret is the most famous of the legists who advised Philip the Fair9 — those jurists whom Michelet called the ‘cruel demolishers of the Middle Ages’ because they single-mindedly sought to insure the triumph of the French royal state over all rival powers, and especially over the church and the great secular

6  Dykmans, Le cérémonial, ii, 268–9, no. 11 (cited by Paravicini Bagliani, Morte ed elezione, p. 115 and n. 227): ‘Cum autem predicte Romane ecclesie fuerit de pastore provisum, prior diaconorum dictam electionem populo annuntiat dicens si placet: “Ecce annuntio vobis gaudium magnum”, vel aliud thema sicut placebit’. For the date of ordo XIV, see Schimmelpfennig, Die Zeremonialbücher, pp. 62–100. 7  Paravicini Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, pp. 66 and 277; Paravicini Bagliani, Morte ed elezione, pp. 115–17. The first French chronicler to mention the formula Ecce annuncio is Amalric Augier (c. 1320), Actus Romanorum pontificum in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, iii.2, c. 9 (indicated by Paravicini Bagliani, Morte ed elezione, p. 115 and n. 228): ‘Item quod cum deinde ipse Dei Filius ex Maria Virgine gloriosa natus fuisset, statim in die Nativitatis suam promotionem et coronationem a Deo Patre sibi factas, universo mundo et maxime in partibus orientalibus per suos sanctos angelos denuntiare fecit et publicari, juxta testimonium dicti evangeliste Luce, qui sic ait: “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum et cetera”. […] Cujus auctoritate pariter et exemplo in cujuslibet Romani pontificis assumtione prior diaconorum cardinalium promotionem cujuslibet Romani pontificis et ejusdem nomen populo ex officio suo denuntiare debet’. 8  Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, ii, 142 (see above, at note 3). 9  Renan, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret, légiste’; Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret; Melville, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et Philippe le Bel’; Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et la pratique du pouvoir’; Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’; Moreau, Guillaume de Nogaret; Moreau and ThéryAstruc, La royauté capétienne et le Midi; Pegues, The Lawyers of the Last Capetians. See also Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s contribution in the present volume.

222

Julien Théry-Astruc

lords.10 Enguerran de Marigny, who, with Nogaret, was a leading strategist and royal adviser during the second half of Philip’s reign, oversaw royal financial operations and orchestrated the King’s dealings with secular lords.11 Nogaret’s domain comprised relations with the church and the papacy.12 His notoriety stems chiefly from two notorius events: the indictment of Pope Boniface VIII for heresy (1303)13 and the attack on the Templars (1307–14).14 Some years earlier, however, he had already played a dominant role in another ecclesiastical affair: the arrest and prosecution in 1301 of Bernard Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers. This incident is less well known, but its consequences were momentous.15 In examining the prosecution of Saisset, I hope to show the importance of Nogaret’s intervention and the decisive effect of this campaign on subsequent royal policy. Nogaret’s initiatives were, I will argue, extraordinarily bold, and they would prove critically important for the future. At a time when the growth of the state was challenging papal claims to universal jurisdiction, these initiatives not only affirmed the superiority of the French king, but also infused the power he exercised with religious and absolutist elements that made the French monarchy a virtual theocracy. By 1295 or 1296, when Nogaret joined the central royal administration and began to serve Philip the Fair directly, the Capetian dynasty had long since acquired a singular aura of sacredness. Robert the Pious (996–1031), son and successor of the dynasty’s founder, Hugues Capet, had gained the reputation of being an occasional miracle worker. Beginning with Louis VI (1106–37), the French kings were believed to heal scrofula by touching the afflicted, who flocked to them from throughout the West in hopes of being cured. Consecration at Reims was thought to provide French kings with this supernatural ability. This ceremony produced a dynasty that was quasi-sacerdotal.16 10 

Michelet, Histoire de France, iii (1840), 272. Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel; and see Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s comparison between Nogaret and Marigny in her contribution to the present volume. 12  Digard, Philippe le Bel. 13  Schmidt, Der Bonifaz-Prozess; Boniface VIII en procès, ed. by Coste. 14  Barber, The Trial of the Templars; Théry-Astruc, ‘Procès du Temple’; Théry, ‘A Heresy of State’; Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars; Demurger, La persécution des templiers. 15  Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’; Digard, Philippe le Bel, ii, 51–62 and 70–81; McNamara, Gilles Aycelin, pp. 98–112; Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’; Théry, ‘Allo scoppio del conflitto’. See also Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 260–67; Lewis, Royal Succession, pp. 138–39. 16  Bloch, The Royal Touch. 11 

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

223

Above all, it gave rise to a particular affinity between the Capetian king and God, for it recalled the baptism of Clovis by St Remy, which had made the Franks the first of the Germanic people to accept the Catholic Church. The holy chrism used by Remy’s successors, the archbishops of Reims, was taken from a vessel known as the Holy Ampulla, believed to have been brought by the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, for Clovis’s anointing, and treasured at Reims as the church’s holiest relic.17 Other monarchies, especially the English, attempted to acquire similar sacredness.18 None, however, had the success of the Capetians, who in the twelfth century begun to present themselves as the special defenders, supporters, and partners of the apostolic see. The theocratic papacy was then in process of expanding and consolidating its own prerogatives. The church was transformed into a papal monarchy, and the popes demanded plenitudo potestatis, ‘plenitude of power’, a power that was superior to that held by all princes, because it was dedicated to universal salvation. This led to prolonged conflict with the emperors, dubbed by French historians the ‘Querelle du Sacerdoce et de l’Empire’, during which the popes regularly took refuge in France. As early as 1107, Pascal II’s visit to Saint-Denis inaugurated an alliance between the Capetian kings and Rome.19 A half century later, in return for the warm welcome that Louis VII offered to Pope Alexander III, the Capetian King was accorded in 1161 the title rex christianissimus, and two years later Alexander presented him with a special gift, a golden rose, ‘the symbol of Christ-King’ — distinctions which other princes occasionaly enjoyed too, it should be noted.20 Louis VII was the first king to take the Cross and participate in a Crusade, a move that challenged other rulers to imitate his act. The support Louis VII gave to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, during his struggle with Henry II of England also redounded to the French King’s reputation after Thomas was martyred and canonized. 17 

Beaune, Birth of an Ideology; Isaïa, ‘Objet du sacre, objet sacré?’; Isaïa, Remi de Reims. Vincent, The Holy Blood. 19  See, for instance, Barthélemy, Nouvelle histoire des Capétiens, pp. 150–51. 20  Patrologia Latina, ed. by Migne, cc, col. 100 (see also Patrologia Latina, ed. by Migne, cc, cols  158, 165, 181, 268; King Henry  II of England, for instance, was also called rex christianissimus by Alexander III: Patrologia Latina, ed. by Migne, cc, cols 375, 426, 467, etc; so was King William of Sicily: Patrologia Latina, ed. by Migne, cc, col. 1000); Patrologia Latina, ed. by Migne, cc, cols 198–99, and Recueil des historiens , ed. by Bouquet and others, xv, 794 (‘Flos iste Christum regem exprimit ac designat’). On the golden rose, which Eugene III had sent to King Alfons of Castilla in 1148 (Patrologia Latina, ed. by Migne, clxxx, col. 1346), see Paravicini Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, pp. 82–83. 18 

224

Julien Théry-Astruc

During the thirteenth century, Louis VII’s successors cultivated the close relationship with the Roman Church and worked with the popes in such solidarity that they appeared to be its special military defenders. Louis VIII took up the Cross against the ‘Albigensian heretics’ and, fighting for the faith, prepared the way for the French Crown’s annexation of the county of Toulouse. Although he had simply fallen ill and died, his death on his return to northern France in 1226 was later interpreted as a crusader’s martyrdom. Louis IX gave a particular Christic dimension to the monarchy when he acquired the relics of the Passion, and most notably the Crown of Thorns, and by transferring them ceremoniously from Constantinople to Paris. There they were finally installed at the very centre of Capetian power, in the jewel-like Sainte-Chapelle that Louis had built to house them, in the royal palace on the Île de la Cité.21 Louis also made himself the champion of the papal theocracy’s largest venture, the Crusade against the infidels. Despite the disastrous outcomes of his two expeditions to reconquer the Holy Land (1248–54 and 1270), those campaigns, together with his celebrated piety and wisdom, earned him a saintly reputation during his lifetime and added lustre to the religious aura already surrounding his line.22 Very shortly after Louis died near Tunis, his son, Philip III, wrote a letter to the people of France comparing his death to Christ’s. Louis, Philip wrote, had lain with his arms extended as if he were on a cross, and he had died ‘hora illa qua dominus Jhesu Christus Dei filius in cruce pro mundi vita moriens expiravit’ (‘at the very hour when Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, dying for the life of the world, expired on the Cross’).23 In the letter Philip represented himself as Louis’s ‘lieutenant on earth’, which implicitly equated Louis with Jesus Christ, since the popes used the phrase locum tenens in terris to describe their function of the representatives of Christ on earth.24 Louis’s confessor, Geoffroy de Beaulieu, drew no such bold analogies, but he described the King’s death as ‘a perfect sacrifice’ (holocaustum integrum) and called Louis ‘Christ’s host’.25 21  Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 94–101; Mercuri, Corona di Cristo; Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis; Gaposchkin, ‘Louis IX and Liturgical Memory’; Charansonnet, Morenzoni, ‘Prêcher sur les reliques de la Passion’. 22  See in particular Gaposchkin, ‘The Place of the Crusades’; Hélary, La dernière croisade. 23  Cartulaire, ed. by Guérard, i, 189–92, at p. 190. See Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, pp. 25–30. 24  Cartulaire, ed. by Guérard, i, 191: ‘O quis nobis daret, tenentibus locum ejus in terris, talis ac tam laudabilis progenitoris sequi vestigia et imitari exempla’. 25  See Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 723.

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

225

A few years before Louis’s edifying and Christ-like death, his brother Charles of Anjou had gone to the aid of the papacy in Italy. Through his military victories in 1266 and 1268, Charles had rid the popes of the last of the Hohenstaufens, the imperial dynasty that, since the 1230s, had again attacked the Roman Church. Clement IV, as a reward for this intervention, which he deemed a crusade, awarded Charles the Kingdom of Sicily. Thus, a collateral branch of the Capetian dynasty found itself at the head of an Italian monarchy subordinated to the apostolic see. When, in 1282, following the Sicilian revolt against the Angevins, King Peter III of Aragon conquered Sicily, the church called for a crusade against him. It was only natural that Louis’s son Philip, nephew of the King of Sicily, should assume leadership of the campaign, when his youngest son, Charles de Valois, was awarded the crown of Aragon to punish Peter III. Philip III’s death on his return from the so-called crusade against Aragon in 1285 again fortified the image of the French rulers as zealous servants of the Catholic faith. Philip, just like Louis VIII, Louis IX, and Robert d’Artois (Louis IX’s younger brother, who died fighting in Egypt, at the Battle of Mansurah, in 1250), could be said to be a martyr of the Crusade. In 1285, at the accession of Philip III’s son and namesake Philip the Fair, the royal attitude towards the papacy was profoundly transformed. To be sure, French solidarity with the papacy was, for the moment, assumed. Just as before — and even more — the King publicized and profited from the honours the papacy had bestowed on the Capetian house because of its services to the Roman Church. Indeed, the King and his advisers sought even greater honours, succeeding in 1297 in obtaining the canonization of Louis IX, which, in their view, dramatically demonstrated the superiority and supremacy of the Capetians.26 A radical change occurred, however, in the relationship between the King and the ecclesiastical powers within the kingdom. Before 1285 ecclesiastical and royal jurisdictions had operated in relative harmony. Tensions naturally existed, because of conflicting claims to administer justice and collect revenue.27 But the situation set in place at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century by the Gregorian Reform, which put ecclesiastical possessions out of reach of secular intrusion, remained fully operative. Around 1285, however, the 26 

Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation; Gaposchkin, ‘Boniface VIII, Philip the Fair’; Gaposchkin, ‘Louis IX and Liturgical Memory’. 27  Berger, Saint Louis et Innocent IV; Congar, ‘L’Église et l’État’; Campbell, ‘The Protest of Saint Louis’; Campbell, ‘The Attitude of the Monarchy’; Campbell, ‘Clerical Immunities in France’; Campbell, ‘Temporal and Spiritual Regalia’; Le Goff, Saint Louis, at pp. 118–21 and 781–85.

226

Julien Théry-Astruc

royal administration began systematically attacking and restricting rights and powers claimed by the church. Indeed, the saintly Louis IX had firmly defended royal rights against encroachment by the church, but he also controlled overzealous royal officials. Under Philip the Fair, in contrast, the King’s agents began to move against episcopal and monastic property and jurisdiction throughout the whole kingdom. The pace of their attacks seems to have quickened from year to year. Tensions increased particularly after 1294, with the election of Pope Boniface VIII, a stubborn man, committed to theocratic principles.28 Still, before the Saisset affair and Nogaret’s intervention, the situation in France was similar to that in other countries, like England, where monarchical power was growing.29 The bull Clericis laicos, for example, which reiterated the traditional ban on taxing the clergy without papal consent and imposed heavy penalties for infringing it, was aimed at Edward I as much as at Philip the Fair. The conflict between the Pope and the King of France escalated dramatically when Philip’s advisors, Nogaret foremost among them, shifted the dispute from practical cases to questions of principle. As we shall see, Nogaret took it upon himself to use both the Capetian dynasty’s accumulated spiritual capital and its traditional ties to the Roman Church in an attempt to bring about a major reversal: namely, to claim on behalf of the King the politicoreligious attributes of papal theocracy. If Nogaret did not compose it himself, he certainly had a hand in writing the short polemical tract known from its first words as Antequam essent clerici, ‘Before There Were Clerics’.30 This text challenged the legitimacy of privileges the clergy had claimed since the time of Pope Gregory VII. Questioning particularly clerical claims to fiscal immunity, the tract asserted that the institution of kingship preceded that of the church and its clergy and derived its universal and superior authority from the protection it afforded to the faith and the faithful. Antequam essent clerici is one of a long series of tracts devoted to the respective prerogatives of the Pope and of the King of France that appeared during the conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair.31 The text dates to 1296, the first year that Nogaret was active in 28 

Dupré-Theseider, ‘Bonifacio VIII’; Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface VIII. Denton, Robert Winchelsey. 30  Dupuy, Histoire du différend, pp. 21–23, also in Recueil général, ed. by Jourdan, Decrusy, and Isambert, ii, 706–09, and, with an English translation, Three Royalist Tracts, ed. by Dyson, pp. 2–11. The only extant copy of the tract is found in the register Paris, BnF, f. lat. 10919, which, as E.  A.  R. Brown has recently shown, was most probably made under Nogaret’s supervision and for his personal use (see Brown, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et les textes’). 31  See ‘A Dispute Between a Priest and a Knight’, ed. and trans. by Erickson; Three Royalist 29 

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

227

the royal court. It contains a quotation from St Augustine, ‘turpis enim est pars que suo non congruit universo’ (‘for any part that is not in harmony with the whole is corrupt’), which is also found in the draft of another treatise, this one dealing with the French annexation of Lyon, which was unquestionably written by Nogaret.32 Using these words in the Confessions (iii, 8), Augustine was concerned with the individual Christian and the church. In Antequam essent clerici, the phrase was applied to the relationship between the kingdom’s inhabitants, both clerical and lay, and the kingdom itself as a collective entity, the cohesion of which was secured by royal authority. Deploying the biblical, patristic, and canonical principles in contexts of royal and national politics became a hallmark of Nogaret’s writings.33 But Antequam essent clerici might be the work of Pierre Flotte, another ‘legist’, who exercised considerable power before his death in 1302, who oversaw royal policies towards the church when Nogaret arrived at court, and who probably influenced Nogaret’s attitudes, strategies, and modes of argumentation.34 Whatever the case, beginning in 1301 Nogaret played a crucial role in an affair that led directly to the outbreak of the great conflict with Boniface VIII: the Saisset affair. Among the numerous areas throughout France where an increasingly active royal administration had attacked ecclesiastical jurisdiction, two places were particularly critical: the first is Lyon, an imperial city where the archbishop exercised temporal power, and over which the King of France claimed lordship;35 the second is Pamiers,36 a small town at the foot of the Pyrénées, some 60 km north of what is now the Spanish border (in the département of the Ariège). There, as in many places in the southern half of France, the church and a temporal lord were locked in interminable disputes over jurisdictional rights. The conflict pitted the canons of Saint-Antonin of Pamiers against the Count of Foix. In 1269, the canons had chosen to offer Louis IX a share in their powers of lordship over Tracts, ed. by Dyson; Briguglia, Fiocchi, and Simonetta, Filippo il Bello e Bonifacio  VIII; Briguglia, La questione del potere. 32  Paris, AN, J 263/21G. This text is edited in Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, ii, 746. 33  See Théry-Astruc, ‘“Les Écritures ne peuvent mentir”’; Théry-Astruc, ‘Les “États généraux” de Lyon’. 34  Pegues, The Lawyers of the Last Capetians, pp. 87–91. 35  Bonnassieux, De la réunion de Lyon à la France; Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, i, 427–552; Théry, ‘1312: Lyon devient française’; Galland, ‘La “réunion” de Lyon’; Charansonnet and others, Lyon, entre Empire, pp. 265–412 (section III, ‘De l’évêché d’Empire à l’annexion capétienne (1226–1306)’); Nadiras, ‘Le tournant décisif ’. 36  See the references given above, at note 15.

228

Julien Théry-Astruc

the town, so as to keep the count at bay. But in 1285, Count Roger-Bernard III obtained from the young Philip the Fair surrender of this share. Bernard Saisset, the Abbot of Saint-Antonin, immediately challenged this decision before the royal court, and lengthy litigation followed.37 The King finally ruled in favour of the Count. Philip’s decision doubtless aimed to maintain good relations with Roger-Bernard III de Foix (and to dissuade him from allying with the King of England, who was also Duke of Gascony), but it also very clearly challenged the papacy, which had invested this local affair with significant importance by strongly supporting the aggressive and combative Bernard Saisset. In March 1292 Pope Nicholas IV had gone so far as to put Saint-Antonin under the direct protection of the apostolic see — and he had appointed Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, the future Boniface VIII, as its special protector.38 With the King’s backing, the Count of Foix seized rights of lordship over Pamiers in March 1295. Saisset fled and took refuge at the papal court in Rome. Cardinal Benedetto Caetani had been elected Pope as Boniface VIII on 25 December 1294. On 17 June 1295, he sent a letter of scathing rebuke to Philip the Fair.39 On the same day, he also issued a sentence of excommunication against Count Roger-Bernard and put the town of Pamiers under interdict.40 Then, between July and December of 1295, he took a variety of radical steps concerning Pamiers that were meant to demonstrate the independence with which ecclesiastical jurisdiction could and should be exercised within the kingdom of France — free of accountability to the king and without any consultation with him. First — and certainly most important in understanding the royal measures that came next — without consulting or notifying Philip the Fair, Boniface transformed Pamiers into an episcopal see, thus modifying France’s ecclesiastical geography to create a new diocese (the territory of which was taken from that of Toulouse). The abbey church of the canons of SaintAntonin thus became a cathedral.41 Its property was transformed into the temporalities of a bishop — all without raising the question of the rendition of 37 

Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 570–90; Digard, Philippe le Bel, i, 225–27. The papal bull is only known from a seventeenth century copy (Paris, BnF, coll. Doat, t. 94, fol. 108); see Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 571. 39  The arenga of the bull is edited in Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 162, and the rest of the text in Dupuy, Histoire du différend, p. 625. 40  Summary of the bull in Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 161. 41  Summaries of the bulls (dated 23 July 1295) in Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, nos. 411–12; editions in Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, cols 98–99. 38 

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

229

homage, which French bishops usually owed to the king. Abbot Bernard Saisset, who was known as a champion of ecclesiastical independence and as a personal friend of Boniface VIII, was named first Bishop of Pamiers on 23 July 1295.42 A few years later, the new bishop founded a chapel dedicated to St Boniface in the new cathedral — a highly significant step (and probably a consciously provocative one). Unsurprisingly, Pope Boniface granted Saisset official confirmation of what appeared to be an indirect but unmistakable tribute to himself through the eponymous saint (who, incidentally, had been the first prelate to consecrate a Frankish king in 751). In a bull dated 20 February 1298, the Pope ‘heard out with magnanimity’ the Bishop’s ‘supplication’ and approved the foundation.43 At the end of 1295, Boniface also created in Pamiers a tribunal of the Inquisition for the prosecution of heresy, whose judges, by definition, reported solely and directly to the pope.44 He also instituted at Pamiers nothing less than a studium generale, a university. There was absolutely no need and no demand for an institution of this kind in Pamiers, and in fact none ever existed except on the parchment of the bull decreeing its foundation.45 But such an act, rare and solemn, was a papal prerogative that was not subject to royal intervention or scrutiny. Little attention seems to have been paid to Pamiers during the next three or four years, when relations between Philip the Fair and Boniface were strained 42 

Summary of the bull in Les registres de Boniface  VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 412bis; edition in Vidal, Documents, pp. 16–20. In the bull, Boniface mentioned the fact that he had personaly known Saisset and particularly appreciated him during his stay at the papal curia: ‘Merita […] que tua diutina et laudabilis apud Sedem apostolicam conversatio nostris sensibus nota fecit’ (cited by Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 581, n. 1, and 59). The name of Saisset appears as early as 1286 among the witnesses of a ruling by Cardinal Benedetto Caetani (Les registres d’Honorius IV, ed. by Prou, no. 666; see Digard, Philippe le Bel, i, 227, n. 2). In 1269, Saisset already bore the title of papal chaplain: see Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 581. 43  Summary of the bull in Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 2465; see Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 59–60. 44  Summary of the bull (dated 21 December 1295) in Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 606; edition in Vidal, Documents, pp. 24–25; see Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 63, and Vidal, Le tribunal d’inquisition de Pamiers. This tribunal was later presided over by Jacques Fournier, the future Benedict XII (1334–42), who brought a copy of the inquisitorial proceedings to Avignon. It was from these records that Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie wrote Montaillou, the Promised Land of Error. 45  Summary of the bull (dated 18 December 1295) in Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 658; edition in Vidal, Documents, pp. 23–24.

230

Julien Théry-Astruc

by conflict over royal taxation of ecclesiastical property.46 This ‘premier différend’, as historians have called it, commenced when Boniface issued the bull Clericis laicos (24 February 1296). It was quickly resolved. A phase of détente followed, which Robert-Henri Bautier has seen as a period of ‘Franco-pontifical alliance’.47 The rapprochement between the Pope and the King was marked by the canonization of Louis IX, which Boniface decreed on 11 August 1297 — a move for which Philip the Fair and his advisers had been pressing since his accession.48 In Pamiers, Bishop Saisset and Count Roger-Bernard reached a compromise over lordship rights at the end of 1297.49 Boniface waited more than a year before confirming the agreement in a bull dated 17 February 1299.50 He still demanded a full and solemn submission from the citizens of Pamiers before lifting the interdict that had been imposed for more than three years. The people of Pamiers seem not to have been particularly eager for reconciliation, and in a letter issued on 28 November 1299, Boniface put them under major excommunication, threatening prosecution for heresy by the local inquisitors if they did not submit within the year. Then, when this time expired, in the first months of 1301, Bishop Saisset proceeded to depose the city’s consuls on the Pope’s behalf. In April 1301, the citizens of Pamiers appealed to the Archbishop of Narbonne, to the Pope, and to the King of France.51 Who initiated the events that occurred shortly thereafter — Philip the Fair himself, Pierre Flotte, Nogaret, or other royal advisers — is unknown. At the end of May 1301, royal ‘investigators-reformers’ (enquêteurs-réformateurs) sent on a special mission to the south began secretly investigating accusations of high treason (proditio) against Bernard Saisset. On the basis of ‘common report’ (fama communis), the Bishop was accused of having made insulting remarks about the King’s person and, most important, of having incited a popular uprising in Languedoc to install as the region’s ruler the Infante of Majorca. The tes46 

See Digard, Philippe le Bel, i, 246–97; Denton, ‘Taxation and the Conflict’; Barbero, ‘Bonifacio VIII’, pp. 282–84; Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface VIII, pp. 139–55. 47  Bautier, ‘Le jubilé romain’. 48  See Digard, Philippe le Bel, i, 218; Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation; Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis. 49  Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp.  581–86. The text of the agreement is edited in Gallia christiana, xiii, instrumenta, cols 100–103. 50  Edition of the bull in Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 2907. 51  Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 589–90.

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

231

timony of twenty-three witnesses was secretly heard and recorded.52 Saisset was quickly arrested. His servants were tortured.53 He was taken north, to the Îlede-France, to appear before the King. All these actions blatantly and unprecedentedly violated ecclesiastical immunity, and particularly the pope’s absolute and exclusive jurisdiction over bishops. To all appearances, the problems Saisset confronted now had no connection with the earlier clash between the monarchy and papacy over jurisdictional rights in Pamiers. But only those events can explain and account for the attack on him. On 24 October 1301, Saisset appeared before the royal council in Senlis. Two accounts of this occasion exist, both produced by prelates who participated in the council. The first account was written at the end of the day by the Bishops of Béziers and Maguelonne;54 the second one was issued by the Archbishop of Narbonne or his entourage a few days later.55 The session was heated. After Pierre Flotte read aloud the accusations against Saisset, the indignant barons rose up to attack the Bishop. One of the most prestigious, Robert of Artois, threatened to kill the traitor immediately. These intimidations were designed to place Gilles Aycelin, Archbishop of Narbonne, in an awkward position.56 Present at the council, he was the metropolitan of Pamiers and hence the only authority legally empowered to act against Saisset. Because of the obedience he owed the Pope, Aycelin refused to support and endorse the King’s arrest of his suffragan. Under intense pressure because of the alleged ‘enormity’ of Saisset’s crimes and the urgency of the situation, Aycelin tried to protect himself by arguing that since Senlis was located outside of his province and jurisdiction, it was impossible for him to act there and formally order Saisset’s arrest. Philip the Fair’s advisers were so eager to secure Archbishop Aycelin’s recognition of royal authority in this exceptional ecclesiastical case that, to dissipate his qualms, they proposed the creation of an enclave of the province of 52 

The proceedings, including a list of ten articles of accusation, are edited in Dupuy, Histoire du différend, pp. 631–51, and in Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, cols 120–21. See Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 180–81, 372, 380–84. 53  So Saisset later claimed in a text of gravamina (complaints in the form of an appeal) against the royal procedure (ed. in Dupuy, Histoire du différend, pp. 651–53, and in Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, cols 131–34, at cols 132–33). 54  This text is edited in Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, i, cols 1334–36, and (better) in Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, cols 118–20. 55  This text is edited in Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, i, cols 1319–30, and (better) in Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, cols 107–15. 56  See McNamara, Gilles Aycelin.

232

Julien Théry-Astruc

Narbonne in that of Reims, where Senlis lay!57 All this in vain: Aycelin refused to budge. Clearly, neither the Bishop of Senlis and the Archbishop of Reims — both of whom apparently agreed to the political manoeuvre — nor the King had the power to modify ecclesiastical districts in this way. Such a prerogative was the pope’s alone — as Boniface had demonstrated in creating the diocese of Pamiers. A few days after the council’s meeting at Senlis, a memorandum was composed to summarize and justify the measures the King had taken against Saisset, in preparation for an embassy that would present the affair to the Pope and ask for his approval.58 When I first examined this crucial document, using Pierre Dupuy’s edition, I believed it most likely the work of Pierre Flotte, who appeared to be the person chiefly responsible for royal policies towards the church.59 However, Sébastien Nadiras later demonstrated conclusively that the two extant versions of the text were written by Nogaret. Sane ad audientiam — the document’s opening words — begins with a list of the crimes attributed to Saisset.60 The Bishop is a ‘traitor to his nation, to his lord the King, and to the kingdom of France’; he is ‘disobedient and a rebel against the King’s jurisdiction and power over the temporalities of his church’; 57 

Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, cols 107–15; see also in Sane ad audientiam, ed. by Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 424–25. 58  Two versions of this text are kept at Paris, AN, J 336, 91 and 92 (the first clearly is a draft). The editions in Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 415–26 (with an English translation), and Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, ii, 790–95, have made obsolete the edition in Dupuy, Histoire du différend, pp. 627–31, which does not refer to the existence of two copies of the act; but these recent editions do not identify the quotations that I discuss here. See also Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, i, 111–12; and Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s contribution in the present volume, at notes 42–44. 59  Théry, ‘Pouvoir royal et procès politico-religieux’. Digard, Philippe le Bel, ii, 81, attributed the text to Flotte. 60  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 416: ‘Sane [pervenit] ad audientiam excellentis principis domini Philippi Dei gratia Francorum regis, pluries a fide dignis personis quod B., Appamiensis episcopus, proditor patrie sue, domini regis et regni Francie, contra fidelitatem ad quam domino regi tenetur proditiones, conspirationes ac factiones facinorosas contra ipsum dominum regem et ejus honorem concepit, tractavit et multis modis inhivit  ; quodque idem episcopus ex proditionis hujus conceptu, jurisdictioni et potestati regie super temporalitate ecclesie sue erat inobediens et rebellis honorique regio verbis et factis existens, ad blasphemias, contumelias ipsius domini regis et injurias prorumpebat, et curiam suam coram diversis personis quantum poterat gravissime diffamabat, domino regi auferendo corda et bonam voluntatem eorum, hominesque nobiles et plebeyos terrarum ipsarum, quantum poterat, provocabat ad rebellandum contra dominum regem predictum, ita quod dictus dominus rex terram perderet Tholosanam’.

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

233

he insulted the king and uttered ‘blasphemies’ against him;61 he ‘took from the King both the hearts and the good will’ of the inhabitants of Toulouse and its region in order to ‘push them to rebel’. The text quickly becomes a semi-pastiche of phrases from mandates commonly issued by the popes since the beginning of the thirteenth century to launch judicial proceedings against delinquent prelates.62 Employing a range of papal strategies and arguments, Nogaret cites as the sources that led to discovery of the crimes certain ‘credible persons’ (fide digne persone) and clamosa insinuatio as well as fama (both meaning public opinion or common knowledge).63 Fama and clamosa insinuatio, it should be noted, were key categories in the eighth canon of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Qualiter et quando, a critically important text that stipulated the rules of inquisitorial procedure,64 and also in the decretal Inquisitionis negocium, another important text issued by Innocent III65 — and they were thus commonly men61 

The notion of ‘blasphemy’ against the King — which was rare for the time, the term having been since Late Antiquity almost always reserved for offences against God — was dear to Nogaret, it seems. Indeed, one comes across it in another text positively attributed to him by Sébastien Nadiras: a draft of a charter of franchise for the inhabitants of Figeac (Nadiras, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret’, ii, 671). This is yet another example, one to add to the host of others presented below, of the transposition of a principally religious notion into the royal sphere. On this aspect in general, see Théry-Astruc, ‘“Les Écritures ne peuvent mentir”’. 62  Théry, ‘Fama: L’opinion publique comme preuve juidiciaire’; Théry-Astruc, ‘“Excès”, “affaires d’enquête”’; Théry-Astruc, ‘Judicial Inquiry’. 63  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp.  418–9: ‘Crebro sermone ac clamosa insinuatione fidelium suorum rumor premissorum aures domini regis ipsius intonuit. […] Prefatis igitur inquisitoribus propter hoc in Tholosanis partibus constitutis, fama referente, et nichilominus a fide dignis personis premissa omnia et singula que ad dominum regem clamosa insinuatione pervenerant dictis inquisitoribus significata fuerunt’. 64  X, 5, 1, 24; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, col. 745: ‘Non solum quum subditus, verum etiam quum prelatus excedit, si per clamorem et famam ad aures superioris pervenerit, non quidem a malevolis et maledicis, sed a providis et honestis, nec semel tantum, sed sepe, quod clamor innuit et diffamatio manifestat, debet coram ecclesie senioribus veritatem diligentius perscrutari, ut, si rei poposcerit qualitas, canonica districtio culpam feriat delinquentis, non tanquam idem sit accusator et judex, sed quasi denunciante fama vel deferente clamore officii sui debitum exsequatur. […] Sicut accusationem legitima debet precedere inscriptio, sic et denunciationem caritativa monitio, et inquisitionem clamosa insinuatio prevenire’. On Qualiter et quando, the setting up of inquisitorial procedure and the role of fama, see Trusen, ‘Der Inquisitionsprozeß’; Fraher, ‘IV Lateran’s Revolution’, pp. 107–09; Théry, ‘Fama: L’opinion publique comme preuve judiciaire’, pp. 127–30; Fiori, ‘Quasi fama denunciante’. 65  X, 5, 1, 21; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, col. 742: ‘Respondemus nullum esse pro crimine, super quo aliqua non laborat infamia, seu clamosa insinuatio non processerit. […] Quesivisti etiam, quid statui debeat, si nihil per certam scientiam, sed tantum per famam, et

234

Julien Théry-Astruc

tioned in papal letters of inquiry against prelates.66 The King, Nogaret explains, at first refused to believe the Bishop could have committed such terrible crimes and wanted to ‘cover them up’ (potius dissimulavit predicta). But the rumours took on such proportions that he ultimately concluded he would be blamed for ‘negligence’ if he tried to hide them any longer (si amplius premissa dissimularet) and did not act67 — and this was, again, a very ecclesiastical way of putting things.68 Thus Philip the Fair determined ‘to go down and see’ in order to ‘inform his conscience’,69 that is to say, he sent investigators out in order to discover the eorum, qui fuerint inquisiti, credulitatem juratam contigerit inveniri’. The fide digne persone mentioned by Nogaret in Sane ad audientiam (see also further in the text, Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 420: ‘Item a plerisque personis fide dignis et gravibus ad dictum dominum pervenit’) correspond to the providi et honesti mentioned in Qualiter et quando and to the boni et graves mentioned in Inquisitionis negocium. 66  Among many occurrences, see Les registres d’Innocent  IV, ed. by Berger, no.  584 (‘deferente siquidem ad aures nostras clamosa insinuatione per fidedignos sepius inculcata quod quondam Vigintimiliensis episcopus symonia, incontinentia et aliis criminibus irre­ titus’); Les registres d’Urbain IV, ed. by Guiraud and Clémencet, no. 743 (‘nuper, fama immo verius infamia clamante publica et clamore diffamante, ad nostrum pervenit auditum quod’); Les registres de Nicolas III, ed. by Gay and Vitte-Clémencet, no. 310 (‘ad audientiam vestram insinuatio clamosa perduxit quod venerabilis frater noster O. episcopus Narniensis luride dissolutionis dilapsus’). 67  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p.  418: ‘Nolens etiam idem dominus rex esse facilis ad credendum, nullo modo cor suum movere poterat ad credendum quod dictus episcopus, sic patrie dignitatem et ecclesie sue ac salutis proprie et beneficiorum susceptorum immemor, tanta ingratitudine teneretur, ut aliquatenus acceptasset etiam cogitare aliquid predictorum ; sed potius idem dominus rex magno tempore dissimulavit predicta, donec sibi crebro sermone ac clamosa insinuatione fidelium suorum rumor premissorum aures domini regis ipsius intonuit, quod notabiliter ad ejus culpam et honoris regii gravem negligentiam notabiliter posset et deberet ascribi si amplius premissa dissimulasset’. 68  See the canon Qualiter et quando (X, 5, 1, 24; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, col. 746: ‘Cum super excessibus suis quisquam fuerit infamatus, ita ut iam clamor ascendat, qui diutius sine scandalo dissimulari non possit vel sine periculo tolerari, absque dubitationis scrupulo ad inquirendum et puniendum ejus excessus, non ex odii fomite, sed caritatis procedatur affectu’), and, among many occurrences, Die Register Innocenz’III, ii, ed. by Hageneder and others, no. 227, pp. 434–36 (‘ad corrigendos ergo subditorum excessus tanto diligentius debet prela­tus assurgere, quanto damnabilius correctionem eorum negligeret’); Théry, ‘L’Église, les Capétiens et le Languedoc’, p. 237 (in a letter issued by Pope Alexander IV: ‘Nolentes [ista] sub dissimulatione transire, ne incorrecta præstent audaciam committendi pejora’); Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 3610 (‘nolentes illa, prout etiam nec debemus, sub dissimulatione transire’). See also the letter of inquiry of Urban IV cited below, at note 69. 69  The ‘conscience’ of the pope and of his judge delegates was a key concept in the decretals and other papal letters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. See for instance the decretal

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

235

truth.70 Here Nogaret appropriated, word for word, a formula well known to clerics and often used by popes and ecclesiastical judges since Innocent III cited a passage of Genesis at the centre of the canon Qualiter et quando.71 In Genesis, the formula is attributed to God himself. Using these words, he declared that he was sending two angels to ascertain the guilt of Sodom before proceeding to punish the Sodomites for their crimes: ‘I will go down and see whether they have done according to the cry that is come to me, or whether it be not so, that I may know’ (Genesis 18. 21; ‘Descendam et videbo utrum clamorem qui venit ad me, opere compleverint; an non est ita, ut sciam’).72 Qualiter et quando issued by Innocent III in 1206, the text of which was partly included in the eponymous canon of the Fourth Lateran Council (X, 5, 1, 17; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, col. 739: ‘Mandamus quatenus, ad conscientie vestre judicium recurrentes’) and a letter of inquiry issued by Urban IV against the Bishop of Fermo in 1263 (Les registres d’Urbain IV, ed. by Guiraud and Clémencet, no. 733: ‘Actus nepharios venerabilis fratris nostri Gerardi, episcopi Firmani, fidedignorum nobis assertione relatos, nos compellit referre conscientia, licet invitos’). In the legal and judicial sphere, ‘conscience’ was still a typically ecclesiastical notion at the beginning of the fourteenth century. See Padoa Schioppa, ‘Sur la conscience du juge’; Helmholz, ‘Conscience in the Ecclesiastical Courts’; Murray, Conscience and Authority. 70  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 418: ‘Descendere voluit igitur et videre primo familiariter ad informandum suam conscientiam dominus rex predictus, propter honorem Ecclesie, et insuper iis secrete perquirere veritatem cum fide dignis personis, ne quousque dictorum facinorum veritas magis ipsi domino regi nota esset, et posset sequi aliqua diffamatio episcopi memorati’. 71  X, 5, 1, 24; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, cols 745–47: ‘Qualiter et quando debeat prelatus procedere ad inquirendum et puniendum subditorum excessus, ex auctoritatibus Veteris et Novi Testamenti colligitur evidenter […]. Et in Genesi Dominus ait: “Descendam et videbo, utrum clamorem, qui venit ad me, opere compleverint”. Ex quibus auctoritabibus manifeste probatur quod non solum cum subditus, verum etiam cum prelatus excedit, si per clamorem et famam ad aures superioris pervenerit […], debet coram ecclesie senioribus veritatem diligentius perscrutari ut, si rei poposcerit qualitas, canonica districtio culpam feriat deliquentis’. In 1199 and 1206, Innocent III had already cited this passage of Genesis in two decretals, Licet Heli and Qualiter et quando (X, 5, 1, 17, and 5, 3, 31; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, cols 738 and 760), the text of which were later partly included in the eighth canon of the council of Lateran. See also Die Register Innocenz’III, ii, ed. by Hageneder and others, no. 227, pp. 434–36. For examples of the use of the formula in papal letters of inquiry, see, among many occurrences, Die Register Innocenz’III, ix, ed. by Hageneder and Sommerlechner, no. 268, pp. 455–56 (‘super speculam Domini constitutos, cum ea de personis ecclesiasticis nostris auribus referuntur per que nostrum ministerium blasphematur, nos oportet descendere ac videre, Illius exemplo qui’); Les registres de Nicolas III, ed. by Gay and Vitte-Clémencet, no. 310 (‘volentes igitur descendere et videre utrum dictus episcopus hec impleverit actione’). 72 

These words of Genesis were cited and commented upon by Gregory the Great (Pope from 590 to 604) in his well-known and often copied Moralia in Job (19, 25). Through a forged letter attributed to Pope Evaristus, they were cited in the False Decretals (XIX, 25, 45, mid-

236

Julien Théry-Astruc

In the introduction to Sane ad audientiam, the King is thus accorded the position of the pope, to whom the curial formulas accorded the place of God. Then Nogaret introduced a novel idea. This idea, significant and fundamental, informed the remainder of the text, just as it would inform the royal policies that unfolded in the following years. He wrote: ‘Hic ponantur articuli nedum super quibus testes recepti sunt, sed etiam alii et maxime articuli contra fidem et dominum papam attemptati’ (‘Here must be copied not only the articles on which witnesses were heard, but also others, and, most important, those [dealing with crimes] against the faith and against the Lord Pope’).73 The ‘articles on which witnesses were heard’ were the ones that had been secretly confirmed before the royal deputies sent in the region of Toulouse in the spring of 1301 (these articles were included in the speech read by Flotte at the opening of the council in Senlis).74 On the other hand, the articles ‘against the faith and against the Lord Pope’ were new. Such accusations had not been mentioned in any of the documents concerning the Saisset affair prepared before the council at Senlis. The text of the articles Flotte read at the meeting, preserved in two slightly different versions, contains no trace of them.75 But the two accounts of the council by ecclesiastics who were present do mention that the charge of heresy had been voiced there during the heated oral exchanges. One texts refers to certain ‘outrageous comments made against God’, the other to ‘crimes of a heretical nature’ imputed to Saisset.76 It thus seems clear that the accusation of heresy ninth century) and then in Regino of Prüm’s Libri synodales (II, c. 311 – beginning of the tenth century) as well as in Ivo of Chartres’s Decretum (XIV, 79a – end of the eleventh century) and in Gratian’s Decretum (C.2 q.1 c. 20; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, i, col. 448 – mid-twelfth century), which made them particularly familiar to ecclesiastical judges and jurists much before the time of Innocent III. But the use of the citation in the eighth canon of the Fourth Lateran Council gave it a new life and importance in the rhetoric of canon law and ecclesiastical justice. 73  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 419. In the second version of the text (Paris, AN, J 336, no. 92), the last part of the sentence, from ‘et maxime articuli’, is absent. In the draft, this last part was crossed out. 74  A copy of the articles is kept at the Archives Nationales de France ( J 336, no. 1) and is edited in Dupuy, Histoire du différend, pp. 653–56. Another one, from the archives of the archbishopric of Narbonne, is edited in Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, i, cols 1330–34, and in Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, cols 116–18 (this second copy was probably destroyed during the French Revolution). 75  See above, at note 74. 76  Gallia christiana, xiii, Instrumenta, col. 110: ‘Fecit proponi rex ipse contra dictum episcopum presentem crimina hereseos in genere et proditionis ac seditionis et alia quamplura quam dicebat dictum episcopum commisisse contra regem ac suam regiam majestatem et

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

237

had suddenly been made, orally, during the meeting in Senlis — doubtless by the dedicated defenders of the King who were trying to intimidate Gilles Aycelin. In Sane ad audientiam, Nogaret proceeded then by enumerating three specific additional charges. First, he accused Saisset of being a ‘patent simoniac’ and, most important, of having ‘disseminated numerous false statements, bordering on heresy, against the Catholic faith’. Thus, Saisset allegedly questioned the value of the sacrament of penance and the prohibition of fornication issued to the clergy.77 Up to this point, Nogaret contented himself with appropriating contemporary clichés concerning supposed heretical beliefs. He then accused Saisset of having called Boniface VIII ‘the devil incarnate’.78 Given the history of the relations between Saisset and Boniface VIII, this accusation is so absurd that it looks like a trial balloon, launched with the intent of finding the best provocations with which to harrass the Pope. Nogaret’s third article was the most promising in this respect. Here Saisset was accused of having questioned the grounds for the canonization of St Louis, which, as has been seen, Boniface had proclaimed in 1297. Among other ‘blasphemies against God, against the supreme pontiff, and against the entire church’, the Bishop of Pamiers had dared to assert that Philip the Fair’s grandfather had been consigned to hell.79 The traitor to the King thus showed himself to be a heretic as well. His treason was partly heretical and his heresy partly treacherous, for the attack on the sanctity of Louis IX was an attack on both the honour of the Capetian family and the Christian faith. Unhesitatingly, Nogaret proceeded to reap rempublicam regni sui, necnon quamplura alia enormia, turpia et contumeliosa, que dicebat episcopum dixisse de persona regia et parentibus ejus’; and at col. 119: ‘Rex […] proponi fecit contra venerabilem patrem dominum B. […] crimina proditionis, seditionis et alia quamplurima enormia et gravissima crimina et delicta, que dicebat ipsum dominum Apamiensem episcopum commisisse contra Deum et suam regiam majestatem et rempublicam regni sui’. 77  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 420: ‘Item a plerisque personis fide dignis et gravibus ad dictum dominum pervenit dictum episcopum, simonacum manifestum, pleraque verba erronea ac heretica contra fidem catholicam seminasse, et specialiter contra penitentie sacramentum, et fornicationem etiam in personis ad sacros ordines promotis non esse peccatum, et multa alia erronea asserendo’. 78  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 420: ‘Item quod dictus episcopus in blasphemiam Dei et hominum pluries dixit sanctissimum patrem dominum Bonifacium summum pontificem esse diabolum incarnatum’. 79  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 420–21: ‘Item quod dictus dominus papa contra Deum et veritatem et justitiam canonizaverat beatum Ludovicum sancte memorie regem Francie, qui erat in inferno, ut dixit; quodque multa alia erronea dictus episcopus seminavit et dixit contra fidem, in blasphemiam Dei et summi pontificis et totius Ecclesie’.

238

Julien Théry-Astruc

the fruits of this convergence. To do so, he again appropriated for the King a papal formula, this one found in a fundamental text of papal theocracy, the famous letter Vergentis in senium, which Innocent III issued in 1199 and which was included in 1234 in the Liber Extra, the official collection of decretals. In Vergentis in senium, Innocent III equated the crime of heresy with the crime of imperial lèse-majesté as defined by Roman law, declaring that ‘it is even more serious to damage the eternal majesty than the temporal majesty’.80 As a result, the majesty of the popes was elevated above the emperors’, whose attributes the papacy had appropriated and Christianized. The ultimate necessity of repressing heresy thus provided a juridical and institutional foundation for theocratic absolutism.81 In Bernard Saisset and his crimes, as Nogaret depicted them, the Capetians had found the heretic whose offences could bring about their dynasty’s transfiguration — by appropriating to the monarchy the functions of the pope. Indeed, the crimes the Bishop of Pamiers committed against the faith, according to Nogaret, had been considered by the King more serious than those crimes, presented above, committed against the royal majesty; which should come as no surprise, since ‘it is even more serious to damage the eternal majesty than the temporal majesty’. Furthermore, any crime committed against God, the faith, or the church of Rome, the lord King considers a crime committed against himself, who has always been, like his ancestors before him, the special defender of the faith and the honour of the church of Rome.82

The comments Nogaret inserted after the quotation from Vergentis in senium reoriented it to favour the Capetian ruler.83 Since ‘any crime committed against 80 

X, 5, 7, 10; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, cols 782–83: ‘Cum secundum legitimas sanctiones reis lese majestatis punitis capite bona confiscentur eorum […], quanto magis qui aberrantes in fide Domini filium offendunt, a capite nostro […] ecclesiastica debent districtione precidi […], cum longe sit gravius eternam quam temporalem ledere majestatem’. 81  See Hageneder, ‘Studien zur Dekretale “Vergentis”; Ullmann, ‘The Significance of Inno­cent III’s Decretal Vergentis’; Capitani, ‘Legislazione antiereticale’; Kolmer, ‘Christus als beleidigte Majestät’; Walther, ‘Innocenz III. und die Bekämpfung’; Meschini, ‘Validità, novità e carattere della decretale Vergentis’; Chiffoleau, ‘Note sur la bulle Vergentis’. 82  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 421: ‘Que gravius longe dictus dominus rex recipit quam superius expressata que contra regiam majestatem commisit dictus episcopus, nec mirum, cum gravius eternam quam temporalem ledere majestatem; quod insuper in Deum vel fidem vel Romanam Ecclesiam committitur contra se commissum recipit dominus rex predictus, qui et sui progenitores defensores speciales fidei et honoris Romane Ecclesie semper fuerunt’. 83  We here find a striking confirmation of theses proposed by Mario Sbriccoli and Jacques

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

239

God’ was now also ‘committed against the king’,84 the monarch was implicitly placed in a position logically identical to God’s,85 and somewhat comparable to that of the pope since the time of Gregory VII — a position central to papal theocracy. The theocratic popes suggested that the voice of Christ was speaking through them, that it was their duty to punish any offence against him, and also that any offence against them was an offence against him.86 The remainder of Nogaret’s memorandum Sane ad audientiam confirms this analysis. Papal syle is imitated and canonical ideas are employed with redoubled intensity, and the very nature of royal power implicitly acquires a religious dimension. According to Nogaret, the doctors and other wise advisers consulted by the King at Senlis judged Saisset’s misdeeds ‘so overt […] that they could not be covered up without serious scandal and peril’ — a formula typical of the Roman chancery, which Nogaret, again, took directly from the canon Qualiter et quando.87 Philip the Fair had accordingly ‘intended to prosecute the aforementioned crimes, as it would seem God and justice required’.88 Chiffoleau concerning the role played by the decretal Vergentis in senium in the later development of secular majesties. See Sbriccoli, Crimen Laesae Maiestatis, pp. 346–47; Chiffoleau, ‘Sur le crime de majesté’, pp. 196–98; Chiffoleau, ‘Note sur la bulle Vergentis’. See also the intuitions of Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, ch. 2. 84  Nogaret’s formula echoes a famous passage of Justinian’s constitution Manicheos (C, 1, 5, 4), ‘quod in religionem divinam committitur in omnium fertur injuriam’. This constitution, it should be noted, was cited by  Nogaret a bit later, in March 1303, when he accused Boniface VIII himself of heresy (Boniface VIII en procès, ed. by Coste, pp. 111–22, § 10). See also below, at note 97. 85  On the homology between God and the king, see Kantorowicz, ‘Deus per naturam’; Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 42–86; Guéry, ‘Le roi est Dieu’. 86  See for instance Ullmann, ‘The Significance of Innocent  III’s Decretal Vergentis’, pp. 734–39; Théry, ‘Introduction’, pp. 19–20; and Die Register Innocenz’III, i, ed. by Hageneder and others, no. 88, pp. 126–28: ‘Qui, cum sit Dominus omnium, habens in vestimento et in femore suo scriptum “Rex regum et Dominus dominantium” [Revelation 16. 19], in nobis honoratur cum honoramur et contemnitur cum contemnimur, ipso testante, qui ait: “Qui vos spernit me spernit et qui me spernit spernit eum qui misit me” [Luke 10. 16]’. 87  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 421–22: ‘Dictus ergo dominus rex [adfuit] cum majoribus regni sui apud Silvanectum ad hoc specialiter vocatis. Deliberatione habita diligenti, petito consilio clericorum et laicorum, doctorum et aliorum proborum virorum, fuit ipsi domino regi responsum et constanter consultum, cum predicta sint adeo manifesta, ac etiam per diversas partes regni Francie divulguata, [quod] sine gravi scandalo et periculo non poterant sub dissimulatione pertransiri.’ See above, at note 68. 88  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 422: ‘Igitur dominus rex predictus, premissa prosequi intendens, prout secundum Deum et justitiam viderit faciendum’. Compare, for instance, with

240

Julien Théry-Astruc

Respectful of ecclesiastical immunity (which is an outright lie), yet compelled to take exceptional measures by the danger and the ‘enormity’ (enormitas) of the crime (a concept derived from papal law, as I have shown),89 the King had called on the Archbishop of Narbonne to arrest the criminal Bishop. The ambassadors sent to Boniface VIII should emphasize that the Capetian king ‘could and should have had eradicated from his kingdom by having him executed such a traitor convicted before him, like a rotten member, to prevent him from corrupting the other parts of the body’.90 This statement of Nogaret’s echoes an old formula for excommunication, which was already common in the early Middle Ages,91 and which draws on the even older Christian figure of the body politic, which must be protected against corruption (thus recalling St Augustine’s invocation of ‘the vile part that is not in harmony with its whole’, which Nogaret cited in at least one extant text, as I showed above). The kingdom of France is thus identified as a church in the literal sense of the term, a society of believers. The image of Christendom as a mystical body, which theocratic popes had revived to bolster their power, was here transferred to a national entity.92 The text then becomes biblical and apocalyptic in tone. Saisset is termed a vir mortis, a ‘man of death’, the phrase King Salomon used to describe the priest Abiathar, according to the Bible, when he stripped him of his religious functions (i Kings 2. 26). References to the religious powers exercised by the kings of the Old Testament before Christ had founded his church would reappear often in texts written by Nogaret or other royal advisers during the years Les registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, no. 686 (‘ut […] procedamus pro­ut secundum Deum viderimus procedendum’) and with Les registres de Grégoire X, ed. by Guiraud, no. 418 (‘prout secundum Deum expedire videbitis procedatis’). 89  Théry, ‘Atrocitas/enormitas’. 90  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 424–25: ‘Adiciens quod licet dominus rex de magnorum consilio conveniret quod tantum et talem proditorem suum, coram se convictum, posset et deberet statim supplicio ipsum tradendo de medio tollere regni sui, sicut membrum putridum, ne ceteras corporis partes corrumpat, cum tantus reatus omne privilegium, omnem dignitatem excludat’. 91  We find it for example in Regino of Prüm (Reginonis abbatis, ed. by Wasserschleben, pp.  371, 373–74: ‘Membrum putridum et insanabile quod medicinam non recipit ferro excommunicationis a corpore ecclesie abscidamus, ne tam pestifero morbo reliqua membra corporis veluti venono inficiantur’). 92  See de Lubac, Corpus mysticum; Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 194–232 (but, as I have suggested, Kantorowicz dates too early the phenomenon of the sacralization of the body politic, which didn’t occur in France before Nogaret: see Théry, ‘A Heresy of State’, pp. 136 and 146, nn. 85–86); Krynen, L’empire du roi, pp. 242–51.

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

241

to come, particularly in connection with the Templar affair,93 to justify the role assumed by Philip the Fair in the religious arena. Here Nogaret drew above all on the rhetoric the church deployed against heresy in order to decry the threat the Bishop of Pamiers posed to the entire kingdom: Saisset’s mere existence is ‘a horrible outrage’ (enormitas horribilis) which ‘corrupts the place where he lives’. He is a being ‘so vile that to him all elements should default by death, for he is an offence to God and every creature alike’.94 The same vocabulary and themes appear in the preamble to Vergentis in senium,95 and also in at least two other major papal pronouncements against heretics from the beginning of the thirteenth century, the bulls Si adversus nos (1205)96 and Vox in rama (1233).97 The appropriation of papal language ultimately led, in Sane in audientiam, to a redefinition of the relations between the papacy and the Capetian monarchy, to the distinct benefit of the King. To be sure, in his concluding remarks Nogaret conceded that the Pope was ‘God’s lieutenant on earth’. But this resulted in no limitation on the King’s sphere of action. To the contrary, 93 

Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Lizerand, pp. 58, 64, 98, 100. Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 425–26: ‘Requiritque dictus dominus rex ipsum summum pontificem ut super premissis sic celere remedium adhibeat, sic debitum officii sui exerceat, ut dictus vir mortis, ex cujus vita locus etiam quem inhabitat per ipsius enormitatem horribilem corrumpitur, omni ordine suo privet[ur], omni privilegio suo exuat[ur] clericali, quod suum est tollat[ur], ita quod dominus rex de illo proditore Dei et hominum in profundo malorum posito, de quo aliqua correctio vel vite emendatio sperari non potest, cum a juventute sua semper male vixerit et ad inveteratam consuetudinem, turpitudinem et perditionem suam deduxisse noscatur, possit Deo facere per viam justicie sacrificium optimum ; tantum enim nequam est quod omnia debent sibi elementa deficere in morte, qui Deum omnemque creaturam offendit’. 95  X, 5, 7, 10; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, col. 782: ‘Vergentis in senium seculi corruptelam non solum sapiunt elementa corrupta, sed etiam dignissima creaturarum, prelata privilegio dignitatis volucribus celi et bestii universe terre testatur, nec tantum eo quasi deficiente jam deficit, sed et inficit et inficitur scabra rubigine vetustatis’. 96  X, 5, 7, 11; Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii, cols 783–84: ‘Si adversus nos terra consurgeret et iniquitates vestras celi sidera revelarent et manifestarent vestra scelera toti mundo, ut non solum homines, sed ipsa etiam elementa conjurarent in vestrum excidium et ruinam et a terre facie vos delerent […], ultio de vobis sumi non posset sufficiens sive digna’. 97  Epistolae saeculi xiii, ed. by Rodenberg, i, no. 537, pp. 433–34: ‘Contra quam [speciem heresis] ipsa etiam elementa debent insurgere et armari’. The phrase ‘in profundo malorum positus’ found in the passage of Sane ad audientiam cited above, at note 94, appears in Lapis abscissus, a letter issued by Pope Boniface VIII against the Colonna in 1297 (Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 2389). The end of the same passage echoes Justinian’s constitution Manicheos (C, 1, 5, 4: ‘Quod in religionem divinam committitur in omnium fertur injuriam’) — see above, at note 84. 94 

242

Julien Théry-Astruc

the King gained rights as regarded the Pope, and the Pope now incurred obligations as regarded the King. Papal jurisdiction could not limit the King’s actions against Saisset because of the Bishop’s treason and heresy, crimes of such enormity that they ‘annulled all privilege or dignity’, and thus every claim to ecclesiastical immunity.98 That the Capetian King had not had the criminal executed was out of deference to the church. According to Nogaret, Philip the Fair was not, in any case, asking Boniface VIII to judge Saisset. Rather, the King was ‘notifying’ the Pope of the facts (‘premissa significat ipsi summo pontifici’), as if they had already been established by a royal judgement (Saisset had been ‘convicted before him’, ‘coram se convictum’), and was ‘demanding that the Pope execute his office’ by degrading the Bishop so that he could be put to death. In this emergency situation, the Pope was indeed ‘bound to punish not only the offence against God, but also that against the lord King, his son, and the entire kingdom’.99 In this imperious tone, Nogaret implicitly claimed for the Capetian king supreme responsibility in a matter of faith: since his entire kingdom was exposed to the contagion of heresy, the King had the right to demand that the Pope degrade the criminal, and the Pope had the obligation to permit the administration of salutary punishment. The protection of the Christian community against any blow to the unity of the faith, on which the popes founded their theocratic claims, could now be the foundation of a theocratic monarchy. In short, turning a traitor into a heretic, Nogaret also turned the King into God’s representative. This was the breakthrough brought about by Sane ad audientiam. The conflict between Philip the Fair and the papacy that was initiated by the Saisset affair soon continued and escalated in the form of two other causes célè98  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, p. 425: ‘Cum tantus reatus omne privilegium, omnem digni­ tatem excludat’. 99  Denton, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 424–25: ‘Licet dominus rex de magnorum consilio con­ veniret quod tantum et talem proditorem suum, coram se convictum, posset et deberet statim supplicio ipsum tradendo [cf. C, 1, 5, 5] de medio tollere regni sui sicut membrum putridum, ne ceteras corporis partes corrumpat, cum tantus reatus omne privilegium, omnem dignitatem excludat [cf. C, 9, 8, 4], licet insuper contra dictum episcopum dictus dominus rex aliis viis potuisset procedere ad finem privationis temporalitatis, quam idem episcopus tam ex se quam ratione ecclesie Appamiarum noscitur possidere; ipse tamen dominus rex, progenitorum suorum sequens vestigia, qui privilegia et libertates ecclesie sue voluerunt servare, honoremque Romane ecclesie matri, de cujus uberibus sunt lactati, usquequaque servare, premissa significat ipsi summo pontifici patri suo, qui nedum Dei injuriam, cujus locum tenet in terris, sed etiam dicti domini regis, filii sui, et totius regni sui, vindicare tenetur; requiritque dictus dominus rex ipsum summum pontificem ut super premissis sic celere remedium adhibeat, sic debitum officii sui exerceat’.

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

243

bres — the attack on Boniface VIII, and then the trial of the Templars. These subsequent affairs played out the programme that Nogaret had principally initiated, a programme which the memorandum Sane ad audientiam traces out in broad outline: the Capetian King was to be substituted for the Pope as Christ’s deputy and as supreme defender of the faith. Predictably, Boniface VIII reacted harshly to Philip the Fair’s prosecution of Saisset.100 In a series of bulls issued on 4, 5, and 6 December 1301, he urged the King to release Saisset from custody (otherwise Philip would ‘offend the divine majesty’);101 he announced the suspension of the privileges granted to the King in recent years,102 and he summoned the French bishops to a synod to be held in Rome in the fall of 1302 to pass judgement on Philip’s actions and to discuss the good governance of the realm,103 which amounted to gross interference in the monarchy’s internal affairs.104 In the bull Ausculta fili — the beginning of which imitated the Rule of St Benedict, suggesting provocatively, as Tilmann Schmidt has shown, that the Pope exercised over the King the same absolute power as that of an abbot over one of his monks105 — Boniface also reminded Philip that the Pope was his superior and went so far as to threaten his deposition. He invited him to appear personally at the Curia, or to send delegates, to defend his case and to ultimately hear ‘what our Lord God says through us’, that is, the Pope’s judicial sentence regarding the King’s misdeeds, to be pronounced at the end of synod of the French bishops. He concluded by recommanding Philip to do penance and to reform himself, ‘so that you will 100 

See Digard, Philippe le Bel, ii, 82–92; Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface VIII, pp. 303–07, Brown, ‘Unctus ad executionem justitie’, pp. 150–51; Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 4422–24, 4426, 4432. 101  Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 4432: ‘Habiturus te taliter in premissis quod majestatem non offendas divinam nec Sedis apostolice dignitatem’. 102  Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, nos. 4422–23. 103  Les registres de Boniface  VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no.  4426: ‘Universitatem verstram […] rogamus et hortamur attente […] quatinus […] vos […] nostro vos conspectui presentetis ut super premissis […] possimus […] tractare, dirigere, statuere, procedere, facere et ordinare que ad honorem Dei et apostolice Sedis, augmentum catholice fidei, conservationem ecclesiastice libertatis ac reformationem regis et regni, correctionem preteritorum excessuum et bonum regimen regni ejusdem viderimus expedire’. On this bull, see Kay, ‘Ad Nostram Presentiam Evocamus’. 104  As Eugenio Dupré-Theiseder has emphasized; see Dupré-Theseider, ‘Bonifacio VIII’, p. 159. 105  Schmidt, ‘La condamnation de Pierre Flote’, pp. 112–13.

244

Julien Théry-Astruc

not appear to God’s judgement and ours, which depends on it, in such a state that you should be condemned’.106 At this stage, the Saisset affair was no longer, in itself, a major issue. On 13  January 1302, Boniface  VIII launched an inquiry into Saisset’s alleged crimes and appointed Archbishop Gilles Aycelin, the Bishop of Béziers, and the Bishop of Maguelonne as investigators. The papal mandate only mentioned the charges that Flotte had presented at the council of Senlis; no reference whatsoever was made to crimes against the faith.107 We cannot be sure that Nogaret’s additional articles of accusation in Sane ad audientiam were actually presented to the Pope. If they were — as is probable, since Sane ad audientiam was a note of instruction for the royal envoys to the Pope — Boniface chose to ignore them. In opening a traditional ecclesiastical procedure of inquiry against Saisset, the Pope’s aim was only to give the King minimum satisfaction, so as to obtain Saisset’s release from custody.108 We know that the Bishop was on his way to Rome in February 1302.109 Unsurprisingly, it seems that no other step was ever taken in this papal procedure. The inquiry was most probably dropped shortly after Saisset reached the Curia. Saisset came back to Pamiers and started to govern his diocese normally again at the end of 1305. He then had normal 106 

Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 4424: ‘Fili carissime, nemo tibi suadeat quod superiorem non habeas et non subsis summo ierarche ecclesiastiche ierarchie. […] Si tuam itaque rem agi putaveris, eodem tempore per te vel fideles viros et providos tue conscios voluntatis ac diligenter instructos, de quibus plene valeas habere fiduciam, hiis poteris interesse, alioquin, tuam vel ipsorum absentiam divina replente presentia, in premissis et ea contingentibus  […] procedemus. Tu autem audies quid loquetur in nobis Dominus Deus noster. […] Sic te prepares in premissis et aliis, sic reformes, quod ad judicium Dei et nostrum, ab illo dependens, non damnandus accedas’. 107  Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 4269. 108  Schmidt, ‘La condamnation de Pierre Flote’, p. 112, misinterprets Boniface’s mandate of inquiry against Saisset and the Pope’s general attitude in the whole Saisset case. In his mandate of inquiry, the Pope doesn’t criticize Saisset’s attitude, as Schmidt has it, but simply uses the ordinary formulas (on the traditional papal investigations into the excessus of the prelates, which never included charges of heresy, see Théry-Astruc, ‘“Excès”, “affaires d’enquête”’; Théry-Astruc, ‘Judicial Inquiry’). In the bull Super Petri solio, which solemnly pronounced Philip the Fair’s excommunication and should have been published on 8 September 1303, Boniface mentioned the King’s wrong actions against Saisset, which clearly shows that the Pope never was taken in by the royal accusations against the Bishop of Pamiers (Dupuy, Histoire du différend, pp. 182 and 185: ‘Ad hec, ut omittamus de […] eo quod quondam in persona venerabilis fratris nostri B., Appamiarum episcopi, temerarie actum extitit’; ‘ut taceamus ad presens de […] temerariis actibus in jamdictum commissis episcopum’). 109  Digard, Philippe le Bel, ii, 96.

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

245

relations with Philip the Fair — which confirms that the accusations of treason (let alone those of heresy) in 1301 were only instrumental.110 After Boniface issued Ausculta fili and the other bulls of 4–6 December 1301, the conflict developed at a higher level. On 10 April 1302, Pierre Flotte responded to Boniface with a new provocation: he read a false and outrageous version of Ausculta fili before a large assembly at Notre-Dame in Paris (which is traditionally seen as the first ‘États généraux’), and proclaimed that the King of France, who held his kingdom only from God, had no superior in temporal affairs. Two and a half months later, in a consistory held on 25 June, Boniface VIII warned the envoys sent by Philip the Fair that he would not hesitate to depose their master if necessary, just as three kings of France had already been deposed by past popes. Only half of the French bishops dared to come to the Roman synod, given a prohibition issued by Philip. The meeting was not followed by any specific declaration, but on 18 November, Boniface VIII issued the bull Unam Sanctam, which reaffirmed the general principles of papal theocracy to an extreme degree: ‘Secular authority should be submitted to the spiritual one’; ‘if a secular power deviated’, it should be ‘judged by the spiritual power’; anyone who resisted the spiritual power set by God ‘resisted God’s order’; therefore ‘all human creatures must be submitted to the Roman pontiff by necessity of Salvation’.111 Six days later, on 24 November, Boniface sent 110 

Saisset had to accept a significant reduction of the temporalities of his cathedral and, on 23 July 1308, at Poitiers, he signed with Guillaume de Nogaret an agreement that gave to the King a large share of the cathedral’s lordship on lands outside Pamiers. On this occasion Philip the Fair took ‘his dear and faithful subject Bernard’ under his protection (de Vic and Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. by Dulaurier and others, x, cols  476–78; see Casimir Barrière-Flavy, Le paréage de Pamiers; Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 51–55). On 8 January 1309, the King even wrote to Pope Clement V to dissuade him from launching an inquiry into Saisset’s alleged embezzlement (‘dilapidatio et alienatio bonorum ecclesie sue’). In his letter, Philip mentioned that in Lyons, in November 1305, Clement had urged him to reconcile with Saisset: ‘Meminimus quod Lugduni pia vestra paternitas in Domino exortavit ut B., episcopum Appamiensem, nobis reconciliare necnon ipsum et ejus ecclesiam recommendatos habere vellemus. Exortacionis obtentu, paternis beneplacitis satisfacere cupientes, ipsum, licet nobis immeritum, utpote qui nos offenderat sicut vos credimus non latere, ad gratiam et misericordiam recepimus favorabiliter, gratiose et extunc tanquam devotum, dilectum et fidelem nostrum, illius amore, cujus misericordia superexaltat judicium, et vestri, qui suus estis vicarius, hactenus tractavimus et tractamus, ipsum, ejus ecclesiam et bona recommendatos habentes’ (de Vic and Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. by Dulaurier and others, x, cols 481–82; see Vidal, ‘Bernard Saisset’, pp. 54–55, 197–98). 111 

Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 5382: ‘Oportet autem gladium esse sub gladio et temporalem auctoritatem spirituali subici potestati. […] Si deviat

246

Julien Théry-Astruc

Cardinal Jean Lemoine to Philip with a list of claims and a mandate to absolve the King of an excommunication which weighed upon him, ‘according to what the pope had understood from credible persons’, but Philip would have to ask for this absolution, and thus acknowledge his guilt.112 Soon, on 12 March 1303, Nogaret raised the stakes by charging Boniface himself with heresy. With unprecedented audacity, the legist thus declared the see of Christ’s vicar empty. Nogaret called upon Philip the Fair to save the church by summoning an ecumenical council to judge the heretical Pope. In the list of accusations he read before an assembly at the Louvre, Nogaret presented the King as an ‘angel of God’, divinely appointed to punish the lapses from the faith of the person who should have been its supreme guardian: I beseech you, excellent prince, lord Philip, king of the French by the grace of God, that — just as long ago the angel of the Lord, ‘with his sword drawn, placed himself in the road’ [Num. 22. 31] before the prophet Balaam, when Balaam stepped forward to curse the Lord’s people — you, who have been anointed to execute justice, as an angel of the Lord, minister of power and of your office, oppose yourself, with sword drawn, to this bearer of an impious plague who is worse than Balaam, and prevent him from committing the crimes against the people that he intends to carry out.113 terrena potestas, judicabitur a potestate spirituali, sed si deviat spiritualis minor, a suo superiori. Si vero supprema a solo Deo, non ab homine poterit judicari, testante Apostolo: “Spiritualis homo judicat omnia, ipse autem a nemine judicatur”. Est autem hec auctoritas, etsi data sit homini et exerceatur per hominem, non humana, sed potius divina potestas, ore divino Petro data, sibique suisque successoribus in ipso Christo, quem confessus fuit petra firmata, dicente Domino ipsi Petro: “Quodcumque ligaveris” et cetera. Quicumque igitur huic potestati a Deo sic ordinate resistit Dei ordinationi resistit, nisi duo sicut Maniceus fingat esse principia, quod falsum et hereticum judicamus. Quia testante Moyse, non in principiis, sed in principio, celum Deus creavit et terram. Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humane creature declaramus, dicimus, et diffinimus omnino esse de necessitate salutis’. On the events of 1302, see Digard, Philippe le Bel, ii, 93–142; Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface  VIII, pp.  307–36; Schmidt, ‘La condamnation de Pierre Flote’; Brown, ‘Unctus ad executionem justitie’, pp. 152–58. 112  Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others, no. 5382: ‘Cum te ad partes Francie, certis tibi commissis negotiis, fiducialiter destinemus et intellexerimus, referentibus fidedignis, quod princeps magnificus Phylippus, rex Francorum illustris, excommunicationis est vinculo innodatus, absolvendi regem ipsum, cum ab eo fueris requisitus, juxta formam Ecclesie, a quibuscumque excommunicationum sententiis a canone seu alias, nostra vel predecessorum nostrorum Romanorum Pontificum auctoritate prolatis, quas idem rex incurrisse dinoscitur, plenam et liberam, presentium auctoritate, concedimus facultatem’. See in particular Brown, ‘Unctus ad executionem justitie’, p. 154. 113  Boniface VIII en procès, ed. by Coste, p. 115: ‘Vobis excellentissimo principi domino Philippo, Dei gratia Francorum regi, supplico ut, sicut angelus Domini prophete Balaam, antiquitus qui ad maledicendum populo Domini procedebat, occurit “gladio evaginato in via”,

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

247

At first Philip the Fair hesitated to join such an unprecedented attack. Without responding, he dispatched an embassy that included Nogaret to meet with the Pope.114 When this proved fruitless, the King decided to commit himself to Nogaret’s plan. In June 1303 he responded positively to an appeal resembling the one Nogaret had made in March, drawn up this time by Guillaume de Plaisians — Nogaret’s ‘shadow’. Nogaret, who had remained near Rome, could then take action in the name of the King of France, and with military aid from the Pope’s Italian enemies. Boniface planned to solemnly declare Philip’s excommunication on 8  September with the publication of the bull Super Petri solio, which also annulled all oaths to the King.115 But Nogaret and his ally Sciarra Colonna confronted the Pope on 7 September at his residence at Anagni and announced to him that he had been summoned before a general council of the church to answer for his crimes against the faith.116 After Boniface’s death on 12 October 1303, when Philip the Fair was considering retracting the accusations of heresy against Boniface to normalize relations with his successors, Nogaret deployed his entire arsenal of arguments to convince the King not to abandon his position. In an extraordinary text, to which Elizabeth A. R. Brown has recently drawn attention, the legist summarized the arguments he planned to present to the King,117 all supported by quotations from Holy Scripture or the writings of the fathers of the church. Nogaret had been excommunicated by Boniface’s successor, Benedict XI, for attacking Boniface at Anagni, which added fire to the reasoning he devised to instruct and even threaten the King. Citing the Gospel of Luke (9. 62), for example, Nogaret asserted that ‘he who puts his hand to the plow in the service of Christ [in context, to defend the faith against a heretical pope] is not fit for the kingdom of God if he turns back of his own will’.118 ‘He who feigns the relisic dicto pestifero, qui longe pejor est dicto Balaam, vos, qui unctus estis ad executionem justicie et ideo angelus Dei, minister potestatis et officii vestri, gladio evaginato occurrere velitis, ne possit malum populi perficere quod intendit’. 114  Coste, ‘Les deux missions de Guillaume de Nogaret’. 115  Dupuy, Histoire du différend, pp. 182–86. 116  Fawtier, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’; Fedele, ‘Per la storia dell’attentato’; Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface VIII, pp. 373–88. 117  This text is edited in Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret, pp. 253–55, and in Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, pp. 33–36. 118  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p. 34: ‘Tertio, quod qui ponit manum ad aratrum, hoc est ad Christi neguocium, non est aptus Regno Dei, si sponte retro revertitur’.

248

Julien Théry-Astruc

gion and the zeal of God where, in fact, there is neither’, Nogaret emphasized, ‘makes a mockery of God, and is a hypocrite and liar’.119 The impertinence of the legist’s statements is striking. He obviously was thinking of addressing these remarks to the King if Philip seemed to be about to abandon his attack against Boniface’s memory — which would also have involved abandoning Nogaret’s campaign for absolution from the sentence of excommunication that had been imposed on him. Nogaret warned Philip that ‘God, according to the Old and New Testaments, destroyed numerous kings and princes for sins like those that have been mentioned’, including a king of the Franks, thus alluding to the deposition of Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious.120 Finally, he reminded the King that his decision must be made ‘before God and all men’, that he ‘has no other temporal judge’ but only ‘God, who cannot be deceived’ and ‘is bound by the plain truth alone, pure of all deceit’. Since Philip had ‘publically taken up Christ’s cause and the defence of the church against Boniface’, he must ‘be careful not to act against the truth and not to render himself a liar in God’s eyes’.121 As if rehearsing a speech he intended to make to the King himself, Nogaret addressed him directly: Take care not to neglect your reputation [fama] and your honour, and not to scandalize the world by shamefully abandoning your cause, lest you become cruel and sin before all and bring forth scandal and commit mortal sin; and, if you continue, you will always remain in sin and will be unfit for the kingdom of God. No prayers offered on your behalf, nor adverse circumstances, nor any tribulation, will excuse you for abandoning the truth of the Lord, for Holy Scripture cannot lie.122 119  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p. 34: ‘Quarto, quod qui fingit religionem et Dei zelum ubi non est Deum derridet, ipocrita est, prevaricator est, et oportet quod talis a Domino neccessario confundatur’. 120  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p. 34: ‘Septimo advertat regia celsitudo quod Deus in Veteri Testamento et Novo multos reges et principes propter premissa pecata destruxit, sic principes Juda, sic reges gentiles, sic imperatores Romanos, si[c] quendam regem Francorum Ludovicum, sicut imperatorem Fredelicum de suis sedibus exulavit’. 121  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, pp. 34–35: ‘Vobiscum ergo est judicium, O domine rex, coram Deo et hominibus. Non habetis judicem temporalem. Habetis Deum, qui adest et falli non potest, nec flecti muneribus, nec teneri nisi per veritatem simplicem sine duplicitate, palam et publice Christi fidei catolice et defencionis eclesie contra Bonifacium ut dicebatis neguocium assumpsitis. Caveatis ne contra veritatem faciatis nec Deo vos mendacem reddatis, alias veritas vos condempnat. Coram hominibus neguocium assumpsistis, rex estis et tantus’. 122  Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’, p. 35: ‘Cavete ne fama vestram et honorem negliguatis, nec scandalizetis homines vituperiose neguocium dimitendo;

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

249

In this admonition, presented as a sermon, the legist assumed the office of Philip’s spiritual advisor. Nogaret achieved what he wanted. Philip the Fair decided to force the new pope Clement V to launch a posthumous trial of Boniface, which would imply an acknowledgement of the defunct Pope’s heresy (that is, of the failure of a ‘vicar of Christ’) and of the providentiality of Philip the Fair’s intervention. Nogaret conducted this operation, although as an excommunicate he had to rely on his colleague Guillaume de Plaisians when the Pope or his representatives had to be contacted directly. And it was Nogaret once again who, when Clement V balked at pursuing the attack against Boniface’s memory, launched another assault on the prerogatives of the papacy by impugning the Order of the Knights Templar.123 Philip the Fair’s ‘discovery’ of a ‘Templar heresy’ that threatened Christen­ dom was aimed at decisively demonstrating the King’s superiority over the papacy. The attack also provided an occasion to affirm the Capetian king’s calling to defend the French kingdom against the alleged subversive strategies of a so-called heretical sect.124 The anti-Templar texts produced by the King’s advisers, often by Nogaret himself, are filled with biblical references and rhapsodic celebration of Capetian sacrality and the King’s direct relation to God. In his memoranda, Nogaret penned a new chapter of sacred history, featuring as hero the King of France. As Nogaret presented it, the Templars’ disavowal of Christ, like their spitting on the crucifix and other sacrilegious acts, were tantamount to renewing Christ’s Passion and subjecting him to offences that were ‘more serious still than those suffered on the Cross’. This was the message of the royal mandate for seizing the Templars, which Nogaret composed after having been made keeper of the seals, on 14 September 1307,125 and I showed at the beginning of this essay how Plaisians, in a speech (surely prepared by Nogaret) before alias crudelis et coram hominibus pecaretis, scandalum generaretis, pecaretis mortaliter et perseverando semper remaneretis in pecato, nec aptus essetis regno Dei; preces presidentis cujusquam vel temporis adversitas vel quevis tribulatio vos excusare non possunt, ut a veritate Domini recedatis; Scripture namque mentire non possunt’. 123  See above, at note 14. 124  Théry, ‘A Heresy of State’, pp. 128–37. 125  Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Lizerand, p. 18: ‘Dominum nostrum Jhesum Christum novissimis temporibus pro humani generis redemptione crucifixum gravioribus quam in cruce pertulit illatis injuriis iterum crucifigunt’. On this mandate and on the way it was executed, see now Field, ‘Torture and Confession’; Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’.

250

Julien Théry-Astruc

the Pope at the consistory of Poitiers, in May 1308, exalted Philip the Fair’s victory over the new enemies of Christ, making the King his elected ‘minister’ and new ‘vicar’.126 In fact, the crimes imputed to the Knights Templar constituted a heresy of state.127 Just as the repression of heretical deviance had allowed the papacy to position itself as a new Christianized imperial power, the persecution of the ‘perfidious Templars’ provided the Capetian kings with a foundation for their theocratic claims. It is well known that emancipation from the bonds of ecclesiastical tutelage was generally reached through the sacralization of secular authority.128 The intense sacralization of the French monarchy under the reign of Philip the Fair has long been noted,129 but its specific form — that of pontificalization — has gone unrecognized. The genius of Guillaume de Nogaret was to create an osmosis of papal theocracy and Capetian monarchy. This was made possible by the traditional alliance between the two powers but was triggered by the new and violent confrontations pitting them against each other in affairs at once judicial, political, and religious. By appropriating the postures, the rhetorical formulae, and the procedures of the papal monarchy, Nogaret turned this traditional alliance into a deadly embrace and transformed the King of France into a pope in his own realm.130 Thus, Nogaret was the pioneering architect of the French ‘religion royale’ — and therefore of Capetian absolutism.

126 

See above, at note 3. The expression ‘heresy of State’ was proposed by Jacques Chiffoleau to qualify sorcery and rebellion considered as lèse-majesté. See Chiffoleau, ‘L’hérésie de Jeanne’, p. 17 and n. 13. 128  See for instance Schmitt, ‘Problèmes religieux de la genèse de l’État’. 129  See in particular Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 249–59; Strayer, ‘France’; Lewis, Royal Succession, pp. 133–49; Le Goff, Histoire de la France, pp. 141–46; Krynen, ‘Rex christianissimus’, p. 92. 130  See Théry, ‘Philippe le Bel’; Théry-Astruc, ‘“Les Écritures ne peuvent mentir”’. A massive appropriation of papal rhetorics by the French royal chancery (such as the one we saw in Sane ad audientiam) can be observed in the very last years of the thirteenth century and in the first years of the fourteenth (see Krynen, ‘“De nostre certaine science”’; Guyotjeannin, ‘Traces d’influence pontificale’; Schmidt, ‘Der Einfluß der päpstlichen Justizbriefe’). Nogaret clearly played an important part in this phenomenon (which still needs further study), although he officially took the function of chancelor only in 1307. See also Théry, ‘A Heresy of State’, pp. 34–35, 148. 127 

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

251

Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Sources Paris, Archives Nationale, J 336, nos. 91–2 (memorandum concerning Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, written by Guillaume de Nangis, and a fine copy of the text) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Doat, t. 94, fol. 108 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds latin 10919

Primary Sources Amalric Augier, Actus Romanorum pontificum, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, iii.2 (Milano: Ex typographia Societatis Palatinae, 1734), cols 7–44 Barrière-Flavy, Casimir, Le paréage de Pamiers entre le roi Philippe-le-Bel et l’évêque Bernard Saisset, le 23 juillet 1308 (document publié pour la première fois) (Toulouse: Privat, 1891) Boniface VIII en procès: Articles d’accusation et dépositions des témoins (1303–1311), ed. by Jean Coste (Roma: L’‘Erma’ di Bretschneider, 1995) Cartulaire de l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris,  ed.  by Benjamin Guérard, 4  vols (Paris: Crapelet, 1850) ‘A Dispute Between a Priest and a Knight’,  ed. and trans. by Norma  N. Erickson, Pro­ ceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 111 (1967), 288–309 Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, ed. by Georges Lizerand, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Age, 2 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1923) Epistolae saeculi xiii a regestis pontificum romanorum, ed. by Carolus Rodenberg, MGH, Epistolae saeculi XIII e regestis pontificum romanorum selectae, 3 vols (Berlin: Weid­ mann, 1883–94) Martène, Edmond, and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, 5 vols (Paris: Sumptibus F. Delaulne, 1717; repr. Farnburough: Gregg, 1968) Patrologia latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–55) Recueil des historiens de la Gaule et de la France, ed. by Martin Bouquet and others, 24 vols (Paris: Victor Palmé, H. Welter, Imprimerie nationale, 1738–1904), xv (1808) Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, ed. by Jourdan, Decrusy, Isambert, 29  vols (Paris: Belin-le-Prieur, Verdière, 1822–33) Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis Libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis, ed. by L. W. H. Wasserschleben (Leipzig: G. Engelmann, 1840) Die Register Innocenz’III, i: Pontifikatsjahr, 1198/99, ed. by Othmar Hageneder and others (Graz, Cologne, 1964) Die Register Innocenz’III, ii: Pontifikatsjahr, 1199/1200, ed. by Othmar Hageneder and others (Roma: Vienne, 1979–83) Die Register Innocenz’III, ix: Pontifikatsjahr, 1206/1207, ed. by Othmar Hageneder and Andrea Sommerlechner (Roma: Vienne, 2004) Les registres d’Honorius IV (1285–1287), ed. by Maurice Prou (Paris, 1886–88)

252

Julien Théry-Astruc

Les registres d’Innocent IV (1243–1254): Recueil des bulles de ce pape, ed. by Élie Berger (Paris: De Boccard, 1884–1921) Les registres d’Urbain IV (1261–1264), ed. by Jean Guiraud and Suzanne Clémencet, Biblio­ thèques des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 13 (Paris, 1899–1958) Les registres de Boniface VIII: Recueil des bulles de ce pape publiées ou analysées d’après les manuscrits originaux des Archives du Vatican, ed. by Georges Digard, Maurice Faucon, Antoine Thomas, and Robert Fawtier, 4 vols, Bibliothèques des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 4 (Paris: E. Thorin, 1921–39) Les registres de Grégoire  IX, ed. by Lucien Auvray, Bibliothèques des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 9 (Paris, 1890–1955) Les registres de Grégoire X (1272–1276): Recueil des bulles de ce pape, ed. by Jean Guiraud (Paris, 1892–1960) Les registres de Nicolas III (1277–1280): Recueil des bulles de ce pape, ed. by Jules Gay and Suzanne Vitte-Clémencet, Bibliothèques des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 14 (Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1898–1938) Three Royalist Tracts, 1296–1302, ed. by Robert W. Dyson, Sources in Political Thought (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999)

Secondary Studies Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006) Barbero, Alessandro, ‘Bonifacio VIII e la casa di Francia’, in Bonifacio VIII: Atti del XXXIX Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 13–16 ottobre 2002 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2003), pp. 273–327 Barthélemy, Dominique, Nouvelle histoire des Capétiens, 987–1214 (Paris: Le Seuil, 2012) Bautier, Robert-Henri, ‘Le jubilé romain de 1300 et l’alliance franco-pontificale au temps de Philippe le Bel et Boniface VIII’, Le Moyen Âge, 86 (1980), 189–216 Beaune, Colette, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medi­eval France, trans. by S. R. Huston (Berkeley: Uni­ver­sity of California Press, 1991) Berger, Élie, Saint Louis et Innocent IV: Etude sur les rapports de la France et du Saint-Siège (Paris: Thorin, 1893) Bloch, Marc, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, trans. by J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge, 1973) Bonnassieux, Pierre, De la réunion de Lyon à la France: Étude historique d’après les documents originaux (Lyon: A. de Vingtrinier, 1874) Briguglia, Gianluca, La questione del potere: Teologi e teoria politica nella disputa tra Bonifacio VIII e Filippo il Bello (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2010) Briguglia, Gianluca, Claudio Fiocchi, and Stefano Simonetta, Filippo il Bello e Bonifacio VIII: scritti di una diputa (Bergamo: Lubrina, 2002) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et les textes: Les registres JJ 28 et JJ 29 (BnF, lat. 10919)’, in La royauté capétienne et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret: Actes du colloque des 29 et 30 novembre 2013, ed. by Bernard Moreau and Julien ThéryAstruc (Nîmes: La Fenestrelle, 2015), pp. 209–42

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

253

——— , ‘Kings Like Semi-Gods: The Case of Louis X of France’, Majestas, 1 (1993), 5–37 —— , ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 1–36 —— , ‘Unctus ad executionem justitie: Philippe le Bel, Boniface VIII et la Grande Ordon­ nance pour la réforme du royaume (du 18 mars 1303)’, in Le roi fontaine de justice: Pouvoir justicier et pouvoir royal au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. by Silvère Menegaldo and Bernard Ribémont (Paris: Klincksieck, 2012), pp. 145–68 Burgtorf, Jochen, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen Nicholson, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars, 1307–1314 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010) Campbell, Gerard J., ‘The Attitude of the Monarchy Towards the Use of Ecclesiastical Censures in the Reign of Saint Louis’, Speculum, 35 (1960), 535–55 —— , ‘Clerical Immunities in France During the Reign of Philip III’, Speculum, 39 (1964), 404–24 —— , ‘The Protest of Saint Louis’, Traditio, 15 (1959), 404–18 —— , ‘Temporal and Spiritual Regalia During the Reigns of Saint Louis and Philip III’, Traditio, 20 (1964), 351–83 Capitani, Ovidio, ‘Legislazione antiereticale e strumento di costruzione politica nelle decisioni normative di Innocenzo  III’, Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi, 140 (1976), 31–53 Carolus-Barré, Louis, Le procès de canonisation de saint Louis (1272–1297), essai de reconstitution (Roma: École Française de Rome, 1994) Charansonnet, Alexis, and Francesco Morenzoni, ‘Prêcher sur les reliques de la Passion sous saint Louis’, in La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris: Royaume de France ou Jérusalem céleste? (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 261–76 Charansonnet, Alexis, Jean-Louis Gaulin, Pascale Mounier, and Susanne Rau, eds, Lyon, entre Empire et royaume (843–1601): Textes et documents (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015) Chiffoleau, Jacques, ‘L’hérésie de Jeanne: Note sur les qualifications dans le procès de Rouen’, in Jeanne d’Arc: Histoire et mythes. Actes du colloque d’Orléans (9–10 mai 2012), ed. by Jean-Patrice Boudet and Xavier Hélary (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014), pp. 13–56 —— , ‘Note sur la bulle Vergentis, la lutte contre les hérétiques et la construction des majestés temporelles’, in Innocent  III et le Midi, ed. by Daniel Le Blévec, Michelle Fournié, and Julien Théry-Astruc, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 50 (Toulouse: Privat, 2015), pp. 89–144 —— , ‘Sur le crime de majesté médiéval’, in Genèse de l’État moderne en Méditerranée (Roma: École Française de Rome, 1993), pp. 183–213 Congar, Yves M., ‘L’Église et l’État sous le règne de saint Louis’, in Septième centenaire de la mort de saint Louis: Actes des colloques de Royaumont et de Paris (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976), pp. 257–71 Coste, Jean, ‘Les deux missions de Guillaume de Nogaret en 1303’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge, 105 (1993), 299–326 Demurger, Alain, La persécution des templiers: Journal (1307–1314) (Paris: Payot, 2015)

254

Julien Théry-Astruc

Denton, Jeffrey H., ‘Bernard Saisset and the Franco-Papal Rift of December 1301’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 102 (2007), 399–426 —— , Robert Winchelsey and the Crown, 1284–1313: A Study in the Defense of Ecclesiastical Liberty (London: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980) —— , ‘Taxation and the Conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface  VIII’, French History, 11 (1997), 241–64 Digard, Georges, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège de 1285 à 1304, ed. by Françoise Lehoux, 2 vols (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1936) Dupré-Theseider, Eugenio, ‘Bonifacio VIII’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana), pp. 146–70 Dupuy, Pierre, Histoire du differend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII. et Philippes le Bel roy de France (Paris: Chez Cramoisy, 1655) Dykmans, Marc, Le cérémonial papal de la fin du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, ii (Bruxelles: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1981) Favier, Jean, Un conseiller de Philip le Bel: Enguerran de Marigny, Mémoires et documents publiés par la Société de l’École des chartes, 16 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1963); repr. in Jean Favier, Un roi de marbre, Quarto (Paris: Fayard, 2005) Fawtier, Robert, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, 60 (1948 [1949]), 153–79; repr. in Autour de la France capétienne: personnages et institutions, ed. by Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, Collected Studies Series, 267 (London: Variorum, 1987) Fedele, Pietro, ‘Per la storia dell’attentato di Anagni’, Bulletino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 41 (1921), 195–232 Field, Sean L., ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen’, French Historical Studies, 39 (2016), 35–71 —— , ‘Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen, 28–29 October 1307’, Speculum, 91 (2016), 297–327 Finke, Heinrich, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols, Vorreformations­ geschichtliche Forschungen, 4–5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1907) Fiori, Antonia, ‘Quasi fama denunciante: note sull’introduzione del processo tra rito accusatorio e inquisitorio’, in Der Einfluss der Kanonistik auf die europäische Rechtskultur, iii, Straf- und Strafprozessrecht, ed. by Orazio Condorelli, Franck Roumy, and Mathias Schmoeckel (Köln: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 351–67 Fraher, Richard M., ‘IV Lateran’s Revolution in Criminal Procedure: The Birth of inquisitio, the End of Ordeals and Innocent III’s Vision of Ecclesiastical Politics’, in Studia in honorem eminentissimi cardinalis Alphonsi M. Stickler, ed. by Rosalius J. Castillo Lara (Roma: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano,1992), pp. 97–111 Friedberg, Emil, Corpus iuris canonici, 2 vols (Leipzig: Tauchniz, 1879–81) Galland, Bruno, ‘La “réunion” de Lyon à la France: Quarante années pour un rattachement pacifique’, in Se donner à la France? Les rattachements pacifiques de territoires à la France, xive–xixe s., ed. by Jacques Berlioz and Olivier Poncet (Paris: École des chartes, 2013), pp. 9–29 Gallia christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, vol. xiii (Paris, 1785)

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

255

Gaposchkin, M.  Cecilia, ‘Boniface  VIII, Philip the Fair and the Sanctity of Louis  IX’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 28 (2003), 1–26 —— , ‘Louis  IX and Liturgical Memory’, in Memory and Commemoration in Medi­eval Culture, ed. by Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen, and Mary Franklin-Brown (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 261–78 —— , The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Late Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008) —— , ‘The Place of the Crusades in the Sanctification of Saint Louis’, in Crusades: Medi­ eval Worlds in Conflict, ed. by Thomas F. Madden, James L. Naus, and Vincent Ryan (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 195–209 Guéry, Alain, ‘Le roi est Dieu; le roi et Dieu’, in L’État ou le roi: Les fondations de la mo­der­nité monarchique en France (xive–xviie siècle), ed. by Neithard Bulst, Robert Descimon, and Alain Guerreau (Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1996), pp. 27–47 Guyotjeannin, Olivier, ‘Traces d’influence pontificale dans les actes épiscopaux et royaux français (xiiie–xive siècle)’, in Papsturkunde und europäisches Urkundenwesen: Studien zu Ihrer formalen und rechtlichen Kohärenz vom 11. bis 15. Jahrhundert, ed. by Peter Herde and Hermann Jakobs (Köln: Böhlau, 1999), pp. 337–64 Hageneder, Othmar, ‘Studien zur Dekretale “Vergentis” (X.V,7,10): Ein Beitrag zur Häre­ tiker­g esetzgebung Innocenz’ III.’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechts­geschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung, 49 (1963), 138–73; revised italian translation ‘La decretale Vergentis (X. V, 7,  10): Un contributo sulla legislazione antiereticale di Innocenzo III’, in Othmar Hageneder, Il sole e la luna: Papato, impero e regni nella teorie e nell prassi dei secoli xii e xiii, ed. by Maria Pia Alberzoni (Milano: Vita & Pensiero, 2000), pp. 131–63 Hélary, La dernière croisade (Paris: Perrin, 2016) Helmholz, Richard. H., ‘Conscience in the Ecclesiastical Courts’, in Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Medi­eval Canon Law: Esztergom, 3–8 August 2008, ed. by Peter Erdö and Sabolcs Anzelm Szuromi (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2010), pp. 71–84 Henry, Abel, ‘Guillaume de Plaisians, ministre de Philippe le Bel’, Le Moyen Âge, 5 (1892), 32–38 Holtzmann, Robert, Wilhelm von Nogaret, Rat und Großsiegelbewahrer Philipps des Schönen von Frankreich (Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1898) Isaïa, Marie-Cécile, ‘Objet du sacre, objet sacré? L’exemple de la sainte ampoule’, in Objets sacrés, objets magiques de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, ed. by Charles Delattre (Paris: Picard, 2007), pp. 151–67 —— , Remi de Reims: Mémoire d’un saint, histoire d’une église (Paris: Le Cerf, 2010) Kantorowicz, Ernst, ‘Deus per naturam, Deus per gratiam’, Harvard Theological Review, 45 (1952), 121–37; repr. in Selected Studies (Locust Valley: Augustin, 1965) —— , Frederick the Second, 1194–1250 (New York: F. Ungar, 1957) —— , The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medi­eval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1997)

256

Julien Théry-Astruc

Kay, Richard, ‘Ad Nostram Presentiam Evocamus: Boniface  VIII and the Roman Con­ vocation of 1302’, in Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Medi­eval Canon Law, Strasbourg, 3–6 September 1968, ed. by Stefan Kuttner (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1971), pp. 165–89 Kolmer, Lothar, ‘Christus als beleidigte Majestät: Von der Lex Quisquis (397) bis zur Dekretale Vergentis (1199)’, in Papsttum, Kirche une Recht im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Horst Fuhrmann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Hubert Mordek (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991), pp. 1–13 Krynen, Jacques, ‘“De nostre certaine science …”: Remarques sur l’absolutisme législatif de la monarchie médiévale française’, in Renaissance du pouvoir législatif et genèse de l’État, ed. by André Gouron and Albert Rigaudière (Montpellier: Société d’histoire du droit et des institutions des anciens pays de droit écrit, 1988), pp. 131–44 —— , L’Empire du roi: Idées et croyances politiques en France, xiiie–xve s. (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) —— , ‘Rex christianissimus: A Medi­eval Theme at the Root of French Absolutism’, History and Anthropology, 4 (1989), 79–96 Le Goff, Jacques, Histoire de la France: La longue durée de l’État (Paris: Le Seuil, 1989) —— , Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, Montaillou, the Promised Land of Error, trans. by Barbara Bray (New York: Vintage, 1979) Lewis, Andrew W., Royal Succession in Capetian France: Studies on Familial Order and the State (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1981) Lubac, Henri de, Corpus mysticum: L’eucharistie et l’Église au Moyen Âge, 2nd edn (Paris: Aubier, 1949) Maccarone, Michele, Vicarius Christi: Storia del titolo papale (Roma: Lateranum, 1952) McNamara, Jo Ann, Gilles Aycelin: The Servant of Two Masters (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1973) Melville, Marion, ‘Guillaume de nogaret et Philip le Bel’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 36 (1950), 56–66 Mercuri, Chiara, Corona di Cristo corona di re: la monarchia francese e la corona di spine nel Medioevo (Roma: Edizioni storia e letteratura, 2004) Meschini, Marco, ‘Validità, novità e carattere della decretale Vergentis in senium (Reg. II, 1) di Innocenzo  III (25 marzo 1199)’, Bulletin of the Medi­eval Canon Law, 25 (2002–03), 94–113 Michelet, Jules, Histoire de France, vol. iii (Bruxelles, 1840) Moreau, Bernard, ed., Guillaume de Nogaret, un Languedocien au service de la monarchie capétienne (Nîmes: Lucie Éditions, 2012) Moreau, Bernard, and Julien Théry-Astruc, eds, La royauté capétienne et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret (Nîmes: Éditions de la Fenestrelle, 2015) Murray, Alexander, Conscience and Authority in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ ver­sity Press, 2015) Nadiras, Sébastien, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret en ses dossiers: Méthodes de travail et de gouvernement d’un conseiller royal au début du xive siècle’ (thèse de doctorat d’histoire, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne UFR 09-Histoire, 2012)

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

257

—— , ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et la pratique du pouvoir’ (unpublished thèse de l’École des chartes, 2003); summary in École nationale des Chartes: Positions des thèses (2003), pp. 161–68 —— , ‘Le tournant décisif (1307–1312): Essai de relecture critique’, in Lyon de l’Empire au royaume: Autour du rattachement de Lyon à la France, ed. by Alexis Charansonnet, Jean-Louis Gaulin, and Xavier Hélary (Paris: École des chartes, forthcoming) Padoa Schioppa, Antonio, ‘Sur la conscience du juge dans le ius commune européen’, in La conscience du juge dans la tradition juridique européenne, ed. by Jean-Marie Carbasse and Laurence Depambour-Tarride (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999), pp. 95–129 Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino, Boniface VIII: Un pape hérétique?, Biographies Payot (Paris: Payot and Rivages, 2003) —— , Le chiavi e la tiara: Immagini e simboli del papato medievale, La corte dei papi, 3, 2nd edn (Roma: Viella, 2005) —— , Morte et elezione del papa: Norme, riti e conflitti. Il Medioevo (Roma: Viella, 2013) —— , Il papato nel secolo XIII: Cent’anni di bibliografia (1875–2009), Millenio medievale, 78, Strumenti e testi, 83 (Firenze: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galuzzo, 2009) —— , The Pope’s Body (Chicago: Londres, 2000) Pegues, Franklin J., The Lawyers of the Last Capetians (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1962) Renan, Ernest, ‘Guillaume de Nogaret, légiste’, in Histoire littéraire de la France, 27 (1879), 233–371; repr. in Études sur la politique religieuse du règne de Philippe le Bel (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1899), pp. 1–250 Sbriccoli, Mario, Crimen Laesae Maiestatis: Il problema del reato politico alle soglie della scienza penalistica moderna (Milano: Giuffrè, 1974) Schimmelpfennig, Bernhard, Die Zeremonialbücher der römischen Kirche im Mittelalter (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1973) Schmidt, Hans-Gunther, ‘Der Einfluß der päpstlichen Justizbriefe auf die Justizbriefe der französischen königskanzlei um 1300’, in Papsturkunde und europäisches Urkunden­ wesen: Studien zu Ihrer formalen und rechtlichen Kohärenz vom 11. bis 15. Jahrhundert, ed. by Peter Herde and Hermann Jakobs (Köln: Böhlau, 1999), pp. 365–91 Schmidt, Tillmann, Der Bonifaz-Prozess: Verfahren der Papstanklage in der Zeit Bonifaz’ VIII. und Clemens’ V., Forschungen zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchen­ recht, 19 (Köln: Böhlau, 1989) —— , ‘La condamnation de Pierre Flote par le pape Boniface  VIII’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Âge. MEFRM, 118.1 (2006), 109–21 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, ‘Problèmes religieux de la genèse de l’État moderne’, in État et Église dans la genèse de l’État moderne: Actes du colloque organisé par le CNRS et la Casa de Velàsquez, ed. by Jean-Philippe Genet and Bernard Vincent (Madrid: Casa de Velàsquez, 1986), pp. 55–62 Strayer, Joseph R., ‘France: The Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King’, in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe, ed. by T. K. Rabb and J. E. Seigel (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1969), pp.  3–16; repr. in Medi­

258

Julien Théry-Astruc

eval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1969), pp. 300–14 —— , The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980) Théry, Julien, ‘1312: Lyon devient française’, L’histoire, 379 (2012), 68–73 —— , ‘Allo scoppio del conflitto tra Filippo il Bello di Francia e Bonifacio VIII: L’affare Saisset (1301). Primi spunti per una rilettura’, in I poteri universali e la fondazione dello Studium Urbis: Il pontefice Bonifacio VIII dalla Unam sanctam allo schiaffo di Anagni, ed. by Giovanni Minucci, Archivio per la storia del diritto medioevale e moderno, 1 (Roma: Monduzzi, 2008), pp. 21–68 —— , ‘Atrocitas/enormitas: Pour une histoire de la catégorie de “crime énorme” du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne’, Clio@Themis. Revue électronique d’histoire du droit, 4 (2011), —— , ‘L’Église, les Capétiens et le Languedoc au temps d’Alphonse de Poitiers: Autour des enquêtes pontificales sur les crimes imputés à Vézian (OFM), évêque de Rodez (1261–1267)’, Annales du Midi, 282 (2013), 217–38 —— , ‘Fama: L’opinion publique comme preuve judiciaire. Aperçu sur la révolution médiévale de l’inquisitoire (xiie–xive siècles)’, in La preuve en justice de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. by Bruno Lemesle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires, 2003), pp. 119–47 —— , ‘A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the “Perfidious Templars”, and the Pontificalization of the French Monarchy’, Journal of Medi­eval Religious Culture, 39 (2012), 117–48 —— , ‘Philippe le Bel, pape en son royaume’, L’histoire, 289 (2004), 14–17 —— , ‘Pouvoir royal et procès politico-religieux sous le règne de Philippe le Bel: directions de recherche’ (unpublished mémoire pour le Diplôme d’études approfondies, Université Lumière – Lyon 2, 1998) —— , ‘Procès du Temple’, in Prier et combattre: Dictionnaire européen des ordres militaires au Moyen Âge, ed. by Nicole Bériou and Philippe Josserand (Paris: Fayard, 2009), pp. 743–50 Théry-Astruc, Julien, ‘“Les Écritures ne peuvent mentir”: Note liminaire pour l’étude des références aux autorités religieuses dans les textes de Guillaume de Nogaret’, in La royauté française et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret: Actes du colloque des 29 et 30 novembre 2013, ed. by Bernard Moreau and Julien Théry-Astruc (Nîmes: La Fenestrelle, 2015), pp. 243–48 —— , ‘Les “États généraux” de Lyon en 1312: Philippe le Bel convoque les consuls de Périgueux’, in Lyon, entre Empire et royaume (843–1601): Textes et documents, ed. by Alexis Charansonnet, Jean-Louis Gaulin, Pascale Mounier, and Susanne Rau (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015), pp. 375–79 —— , ‘“Excès”, “affaires d’enquête” et gouvernement de l’Église (v. 1150–v . 1350): Les procédures de la papauté contre les prélats “criminels”. Première approche’, in La patho­ logie du pouvoir: crimes, vices et délits des gouvernants: antiquité, moyen âge, époque moderne, ed. by Patrick Gilli (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 164–236 —— , ‘Introduction’, in Innocent III et le Midi, ed. by Daniel Le Blévec, Michelle Fournié, and Julien Théry-Astruc, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 50 (Toulouse: Privat, 2015), pp. 11–35

The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy

259

—— , ‘Judicial Inquiry as an Instrument of Centralized Government: The Papacy’s Criminal Proceedings against Prelates in the Age of Theocracy (mid-12th to mid-14th Century)’, in Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Medi­eval Canon Law (Toronto, 5–11 August 2012) (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2016), pp. 875–89 Trusen, Winfried, ‘Der Inquisitionsprozeß: seine historischen Grundlagen und frühen Formen’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 74 (1988), 171–215 Ullmann, Walter, ‘The Significance of Innocent III’s Decretal Vergentis’, in Études de droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras, 2 vols (Paris: Sirey, 1965), i, 729–41 Verdier, René, ‘Guillaume de Plaisians, une succession médiévale (1314)’, Revue d’histoire et du patrimoine en Dauphiné, 11 (2000), 99–110 —— , ‘Guillaume de Plaisians, itinéraire d’un légiste’, in Vienne au crépuscule des templiers, ed. by Roger Lauxerois (Grenoble: Presses universitaries de Grenoble, 2014), pp. 83–92 Vic, Claude de, and Jean-Joseph Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, avec des notes et les pièces justificatives, ed. by Édouard Dulaurier and others, 15 vols (Toulouse: Édouard Privat, 1872–93) Vidal, Jean-Marie, ‘Bernard Saisset’, Revue des Sciences religieuses, 5 (1925), 417–38, 565–90; 6 (1926), 50–77, 177–98, 371–93 —— , Documents sur les origines de la province ecclésiastique de Toulouse, 1295–1318 (Roma: P. Cuggiani, 1901) —— , Le tribunal d’inquisition de Pamiers (Toulouse: Privat, 1906) Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001) Walther, Helmut G., ‘Innocenz III. und die Bekämpfung der Ketzer im Kirchenstaat: ein Beitrag zur Wirkungsgeschichte von Vergentis in senium’, in Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Matthias Werner, ed. by Enno Bünz, Stefan Tebruck, and Helmut G. Walther (Köln: Bölhau, 2007), pp. 723–35

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair Élisabeth Lalou*

I

n the long thirteenth century, from the accession of Philip Augustus in 1180 until the death of Charles IV in 1328 — ‘The Capetian Century’ — it was the reign of Philip IV ‘the Fair’ (1285–1314) that speeded the pace of the period’s advances and innovations, which resulted in a changed economy and society at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The changes were even greater fifteen years after the King’s death as a result of the crises of climate and food production that struck Europe. In the political sphere, the key elements of France’s governmental structure had taken form. Philip the Fair is known for having had the Order of the Temple judged and suppressed and for expelling Jews and Lombards from France. It was his new and novel administration that made these operations possible, an administration whose structure is reflected in the growing importance of governmental documents. The King and his officals had witnessed and contributed to the transformation of the governmental apparatus. They had developed means of understanding economic change, and particularly the role and importance of money; they had fostered the development of such political notions as lèse-majesté, which subsequent centuries would elaborate. The significance of the reign of Philip the Fair explains why, in the twentieth century, a number of great medievalist historians turned their attention to him and his ministers. In 1980 Joseph R. Strayer, professor at Princeton Uni­ver­ sity, published his Reign of Philip the Fair, on which he had laboured for many years.1 In France, Robert Fawtier, professor at the Sorbonne, worked for more  

* Translated by Hartley Miller and Elizabeth A. R. Brown. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair.

1 

Élisabeth Lalou ([email protected]) Normandie Université, Rouen

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 261–277 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112975 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

262

Élisabeth Lalou

than thirty years on the reign of Philip the Fair. Although he never wrote a book devoted to the King and his reign, he left us his Corpus philippicum, which was entrusted to me in 1980. The work on Philip that I have done since 1980 continues Fawtier’s, most notably the itinerary of Philip the Fair throughout his reign, which was published in 2007. The Itinéraire contains a short biography of Fawtier and a brief description of the genesis of the Corpus.2 Here I would like to reflect on Robert Fawtier and on his conception of Philip the Fair. Who was the medievalist Robert Fawtier?3 Born in 1885, he was agrégé d’histoire and a student at the École Française de Rome, where he began writing his dissertation on St Catherine of Sienna. He fought for four years in the First World War. After the war, in 1919, he became a lecturer at the Uni­ver­sity of Manchester and curator of Western manu­scripts at the John Rylands Library. Beginning in 1926, he taught for two years in Cairo before being appointed to the Uni­ver­sity of Bordeaux, where he was a professor from 1928 to 1940. Successor to Louis Halphen at the Sorbonne in 1941, he was arrested by the Nazis for his participation in the resistance and deported to Mauthausen. After the war he returned to his post as Professor of Medi­eval History at the Sorbonne and participated actively in the work of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, to which he had been elected in 1946. He died on 21 January 1966. These are the bare facts of his ‘public’ academic life. But what concerns me here is the more ‘private’ part of his academic life: the Corpus philippicum and Philip the Fair. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of books on the reign of Philip the Fair appeared — most notably those of Edgar Boutaric (1861) and Charles-Victor Langlois (1901) in Lavisse’s Histoire de France.4 In the 1930s, American scholars, particularly Joseph R. Strayer and Charles H. Taylor, worked on Philip.5 Fawtier himself noted that between 1940 and 1960 2 

Lalou, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel, Biography-bibliography, vol. i. Xavier Hélary and I have digitized part of the Corpus philippicum, beginning with the inquests carried out during Philip’s reign. Analyses of Philip’s acts can be found online, . The Corpus is currently housed in Paris at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT). 3  A useful guide is found on the website . 4  Boutaric, La France sous Philippe le Bel; Boutaric, ‘Notices et extraits’; Langlois, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, les derniers Capétiens directs. 5  Strayer, ‘Consent to Taxation’, and Taylor, ‘Assemblies of Towns’. Ten years earlier, Strayer had published ‘Knight Service in Normandy’. Strayer, ‘The Crusade against Aragon’, appeared in Speculum. In 1964 he brought out ‘Pierre de Chalon and the Origins of the French Customs

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

263

no general history of the reign appeared.6 Subsequently, Jean Favier (1978) and Joseph Strayer (1980) published broad surveys, and Elizabeth Brown (1987 and later) published a number of studies of the King.7 Fawtier deserves a major place among the historians who have studied the reign of Philip IV. To the general public Fawtier is known primarily as the author of the three volumes often referred to as ‘Lot and Fawtier’: L’histoire des institutions françaises au Moyen Âge.8 Specialist historians value his editions of royal fiscal accounts: the so-called ‘first budget’, the Comptes du trésor, and the Comptes royaux.9 Although he never published a true biography of the King, in 1940 Fawtier wrote the volume devoted to the period Philip dominated for the Histoire générale de l’Occident, directed by Gustave Glotz,10 and he devoted much space to Philip the Fair in his book Les Capétiens et la France: Leur rôle dans sa construcService’. His article ‘Philip the Fair: A “Constitutional” King’, appeared in the American Historical Review, reprinted in Medi­eval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History. Many of Strayer’s essays were published in Medi­eval Statecraft. In 1970, he published Les gens de justice du Languedoc sous Philippe le Bel. During these years, Charles Taylor published numerous articles on French assemblies: ‘Some New Texts on the Assembly of 1302’; ‘The Assembly of 1312 at Lyons-Vienne’; ‘An Assembly of French Towns in March, 1318’; ‘Assemblies of French Towns in 1316’; ‘The Composition of Baronial Assemblies in France, 1315–1320’. On 27 December 1936, Taylor delivered a paper at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, ‘Some Aspects of Early Representative Institutions in France’. He returned to the subject in ‘French Assemblies and Subsidy in 1321’. 6  In the foreword to the English translation of Les Capétiens et la France Fawtier wrote, ‘it may be pointed out that very little historical work on the period has been published since Les Capétiens et la France first appeared (id est 1940) and certainly none which has rendered its general conclusions invalid’. Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France, trans. by Butler and Adam, p. 5. 7  Favier, Philippe le Bel; Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair; Brown, ‘The Prince Is Father’; Brown, ‘Persona et Gesta’; Brown, ‘Philip the Fair and the Remains of Saint Louis’. All of Brown’s articles were reprinted in The Monarchy of Capetian France. 8  Fawtier and Lot, Histoire des institutions françaises. In the preface to Fawtier’s collected essays, Jeanne Fawtier Stone described the circumstances that led Fawtier to abandon work on his own book on Philip IV after Lot’s death in 1952 in order to complete, as Lot’s literary executor, the study of French institutional history Lot was writing: Fawtier, Autour de la France capétienne, ed. by Fawtier Stone, p. x. 9  Lot and Fawtier, Le premier budget de la monarchie française; Comptes du Trésor, ed. by Fawtier; Comptes royaux (1285–1314), ed. by Fawtier and Maillard; and Comptes royaux (1314–1328), ed. by Maillard and Fawtier. In addition, ‘Un compte de menues’, ed. by Fawtier, and ‘Un fragment de compte de l’Hôtel’, ed. by Fawtier. 10  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale.

264

Élisabeth Lalou

tion, which appeared two years later, in 1942. In the preface Fawtier declared that ‘In a time of national tragedy [he] found a source of strength’ in writing the book, which offered ‘an escape from the horrors of contemporary reality’ and also hope for the future.11 The book was translated into English in 1960 under the title The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation (987–1328). The dates of the publication and translation of this book are notable: between those two dates, Fawtier had spent two years in a Nazi concentration camp and had also begun to assemble the Corpus philippicum. The monumental Corpus philippicum consists of numerous files based on all the acts of Philip the Fair and his government, from the King’s accession to the throne on 5 October 1285 (the day his father died) to his death on 29 November 1314. To collect the acts Fawtier and his co-workers visited archives and libraries throughout Europe. Fawtier described the collection in a note he added to The Capetian Kings, the translation of his book Les Capétiens et la France: I undertook in 1938, with the support of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, to make a calendar of all documents issued by the royal authorities or received by them during the reign of Philip the Fair […]. The work is still in progress but I have been able to publish three volumes of accounts […] and a calendar of the early registers of the royal Chancery (Archives Nationales, JJ 37–50), to be issued in 1958. The considerable materials collected are deposited in the Archives Nationales in Paris, where scholars interested in the period may consult them before publication. They include more than 15,000 royal letters and a far greater number of letters and papers from royal officials. The collection is known under the name of ‘Corpus philippicum’.12

The calendar of the early registers to which Fawtier here referred is the first volume of the Registres du trésor des chartes, dedicated to the Règne de Philippe le Bel, which Jean Guérout and Jean Glénisson published in 1958 under Fawtier’s direction.13 The ‘three volumes of accounts’ are the Comptes royaux, which François Maillard prepared with Fawtier. Three volumes, published between 1953 and 1956, are devoted to the reign of Philip the Fair, and two volumes, published in 1961, to those of his sons. In addition, Fawtier collected summaries of all the King’s acts, published and unpublished, which can now be consulted in Paris at the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT). 11 

Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France, trans. by Butler and Adam, p. vii. Whether Fawtier wrote the note himself or whether Butler and Adam translated it from the French is unknown. 12  Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France, trans. by Butler and Adam, p. 9, n. 1. 13  Fawtier, Glénisson, and Guerout, Registres du trésor des chartes.

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

265

In his obituary of Fawtier, Edouard Perroy wrote, Dès avant 1939, et c’était à l’époque une grande nouveauté, Robert Fawtier avait compris que, pour une période où la documentation devient abondante, l’enquête historique devait être un travail d’équipe, une œuvre collective dont il acceptait de se faire l’animateur. La tâche la plus importante fut sans doute la constitution de ce qu’il aimait à appeler son ‘Corpus philippicum’ réunissant en un vaste fichier toute la correspondance de Philippe le Bel et tous les actes de son administration. Fichier demeuré certes manuscrit mais dont la consultation est aisée aux Archives Nationales.14 [Even before 1939 — and it was a novel idea at the time — Robert Fawtier understood that for a period when records were abundant, historical inquiry should be the work of a team, a collective endeavour, which he agreed to lead. Without a doubt, the most important task was the creation of what he liked to call his ‘Corpus philippicum’, which brought together all the correspondence of Philip the Fair and all the acts of his administration in a huge compendium, one that remains in manu­ script, but whose consultation is easy at the Archives Nationales.]

Several young paleographer-archivists worked with Fawtier on the Corpus philip­picum: Jean Glénisson (who later became director of the IRHT);15 Jean Guérout, Monique Langlois, and Yvonne Lanhers (who worked at the Archives Nationales); 16 and François Maillard. 17 Elizabeth Brown knew François Maillard well, since he worked his entire life for Robert Fawtier and the Corpus philippicum. He was an excellent paleographer and a congenial person, capable of working under difficult conditions, for some years without light or heat. At the time of Fawtier’s death in 1966, the Corpus philippicum included a calendar of the acts of the King and his agents,18 the edited accounts,19 and the 14 

Perroy, ‘Robert Fawtier’. Jean Glénisson (1921–2012), director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études and director of the IRHT (1964–86): Livret de l’École des chartes. 16  Jean Guérout (1928–), Monique Langlois (1921–92), Yvonne Lanhers (1915–2009): Livret de l’École des chartes. 17  Lalou, ‘Nécrologie de François Maillard’. François Maillard, class year 1948. 18  Data collection surveys took account of all the archives in France as well as abroad (Pierre Chaplais was responsible for Great Britain). Paris, IRHT, Corpus philippicum, ‘dossier de correspondances’ 19  On 15 January 1938, Fawtier sent a circular letter to all French archival repositories, asking their cooperation. He received forty-five responses, some of which were quite long, and M. Lemoine, archivist of the Seine-et-Oise remarked that ‘le sujet est énorme et qu’il nous est impossible de l’entreprendre nous-même sans renoncer à toutes autres formes de notre activité’ 15 

266

Élisabeth Lalou

Gallia regia philippica,20 which Fawtier called an ‘Annuaire des fonctionnaires royaux’ (‘Directory of royal administrators’), and whose aims were more comparable to those of H. Stein’s Fonctionnaires de Gâtinais than to those of the Gallia regia of Dupont-Ferrier.21 In his later years, Fawtier envisaged writing a book about Philip the Fair, as his daughter indicates in the preface to the Variorum reprint of his articles, but he passed away before he could find the time to do this.22 From the 1940s to the 1960s, Fawtier wrote several significant articles about the reign, which demonstrated his interest in a subject that was far from being admired by members of the fledgling ‘École des Annales’. Marc Bloch, for example, a contemporary of Fawtier, was not very kind to him; for his part, Fawtier wrote a scathing review of Bloch’s Rois thaumaturges.23 Still, Marc Bloch taught a course at the Sorbonne from 1937 to 1938 on ‘France under the late Capetians, 1223–1328’, notes from which were published in 1964, twenty years after his death. As these notes show, Marc Bloch was more interested in the economy than in kings.24 (‘The subject is enormous, and it is impossible for us to undertake it by ourselves without giving up all the rest of our work’). Paris, IRHT, Corpus philippicum, ‘Dossier d’archives sur le Corpus’. 20  Fawtier also established what he called the ‘Annuaire des fonctionnaires royaux pendant le règne de Philippe le Bel’, which was to be a Gallia regia according to the model of DupontFerrier for the period 1285 to 1314 or 1328. In contrast, the Gallia regia philippica also includes members of the central administration. 21  Stein, Recherches sur quelques fonctionnaires royaux; Dupont-Ferrier, Gallia regia. 22  Fawtier, Autour de la France capétienne, ed. by Fawtier Stone. 23  Dumoulin, Marc Bloch, p. 58, 73. Bloch (1886–1944) was a contemporary of Fawtier. Fawtier’s negative reaction at the release of Rois thaumaturges appeared in Le Moyen Age in 1926. Bloch’s response, ‘La popularité du toucher des écrouelles’, appeared the following year. 24  Bloch, La France sous les derniers Capétiens. On Philip the Fair and his sons, Bloch writes: ‘Nous n’avons sur eux que peu de documents personnels, guère que des on-dit de contemporains plus ou moins mal informés. Aussi les connaissons-nous fort mal. Nous savons qu’ils parurent à leurs contemporains d’une belle prestance mais aussi qu’ils étaient probablement d’une santé délicate, car ils moururent tous, ou, comme Philippe le Bel, avant la cinquantaine, ou fort jeunes; qu’ils étaient bons chevaliers, amateurs de tournois et de chasses; très pieux par ailleurs, tous, uniformément, même Philippe le Bel qui fit ou laissa souffleter un pape. Nous voyons surtout que, dépourvus tout à fait de la forte personnalité d’un Philippe Auguste et d’un Saint Louis, ils ont été dominés très étroitement par leur entourage’ (p. 38) (‘We have only a few personal documents concerning them, hardly anything except the hearsay of more or less well-informed contemporaries; therefore we do not know them at all well. We know that they seemed imposing to their contemporaries but also that they were probably of fragile health, since they all died either, like Philip the Fair, before turning fifty, or extremely young; that they were good knights, lovers of tournaments and hunts; and that they were all very pious,

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

267

After Fawtier died, Robert-Henri Bautier directed the Corpus philippicum until the late 1980s, when I succeeded him. Having worked on the Corpus philippicum for thirty years, I feel in a privileged position to describe Robert Fawtier’s image of Philip the Fair. His notions about the King can be divided neatly into two periods: before and after the Corpus philippicum. In 1942, in the section he devoted to Philip in Les Capétiens et la France, Fawtier stated: Opinions vary on Philip IV, but they all agree on the outstanding importance of the reign. Philip the Fair was tall and handsome, like his father and the sons who were to succeed him. Though quiet and cold in demeanor, he was a good-hearted brave man of impeccable manners and considerable education. These qualities have led some historians to regard him as a great king. Others, going by the evidence of more or less well-informed chroniclers, see him as a weakling in the hands of unscrupulous counsellors. A prolonged study of the reign has led the present writer to conclude that Philip was a great king who gave his counsellors his full support and made no move to disgrace on any of them — even when such a gesture would have markedly lessened his difficulties. If they were the initiators of Philip’s policies, then they had his confidence. If the initiative came from the king himself, he was presumably happy that his counsellors were carrying out his instructions effectively.25

He later added, ‘Like Philip Augustus, and even more like his grandfather St. Louis […] Philip IV wanted there to be “only one king in France”’.26 even Philip the Fair who had the pope attacked, or at last let him be attacked. We see above all that, lacking the strong personality of a Philip Augustus and of a St Louis, they were closely controlled by their entourage’). He ended by saying: ‘Les règnes des derniers Capétiens ont été le règne d’un état-major’ (‘The last Capetians’ reigns were the reigns of their chiefs of staff ’). 25  Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France, trans. by Butler and Adam, p. 35; Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, p. 38 (‘Philippe le Bel est un prince sur lequel les avis diffèrent, mais tous s’accordent pour reconnaître l’importance capitale des trente années de son règne. Grand et beau, comme son père et comme les fils qui lui succédèrent, de moeurs irréprochables, froid, silencieux, lettré, brave, bienveillant, les uns voient en lui un grand roi ; les autres, se basant sur des assertions de chroniqueurs plus ou moins bien informés, un homme mou mené par des conseillers malhonnêtes. Une longue étude de son règne nous amène à penser que ce fut un grand roi, qui a soutenu ses conseillers, qui n’en a disgrâcié aucun, quand ce geste eut pourtant singulièrement diminué ses difficultés, et qui, par conséquent, ou les a compris, s’ils avaient eu l’initiative de sa politique, ou a estimé qu’ils avaient bien exécuté ses ordres, si l’initiative venait de lui’). 26  Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France, trans. by Butler and Adam, p. 36; Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, pp.  38–39, with the same sentence in L’Europe occidentale, p.  299 (‘Comme Philippe Auguse, plus encore comme son grand-père saint Louis qu’il vénérait et dont sa diplomatie obtiendra du Saint Siège la canonisation, il a voulu qu’il n’y ait “qu’un roi en France”’).

268

Élisabeth Lalou

The beginning of the chapter set out the essential details: the ideas are not new. Fawtier’s ‘good-hearted (bienveillant) brave man (brave)’ are curious words to use in describing the King, and were doubtless taken from the chroniclers. For Fawtier the central question was the part the King played in shaping the policies of his reign. Fawtier attached capital importance to institutions, writing of ‘the machinery of the government’, ‘l’armature administrative’ in the French text of Les Capétiens et la France.27 Similarly, the book he wrote for Glotz’s Histoire générale includes the heading ‘Les gouvernements et leurs organes’ (‘Governments and their organs’).28 Although the three-volume study of French institutions he wrote with Ferdinand Lot had not yet been published in 1940, Fawtier had met Thomas Frederic Tout (1855–1929) in Manchester, and he was evidently influenced by the importance Tout accorded to administrative rather than constitutional history, as is apparent from the title of his seven-volume work, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediæval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber, and the Small Seals, published between 1920 and 1933.29 Fawtier’s contribution to Glotz’s Histoire générale is of great interest. While The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation (987–1328) focuses on the history of the Capetians beginning with Hugh Capet, in his volume for the Histoire générale Fawtier offered a comparative history of France, England, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. He divided his study into three parts: the social milieu, governments and their administrative components, and political affairs from 1270 to 1328.30 27  The chapter headings in the original book are: ‘Les souverains et leurs conseillers’; ‘L’armature politique: La dynastie, le roi, le souverain’; ‘L’armature territoriale: Le patrimoine capétien, les grands fiefs, les terres de la maison d’Anjou, les acquisitions de détail, aliénations’; ‘L’armature administrative’; ‘Les transformations sociales et la réussite capétienne’; ‘L’armature intellectuelle et sociale’. Those in the English translation are different: ‘The Kings and their Counsellors’; ‘The Dynasty’; ‘The King of France’ ‘Emperor in his Own Kingdom’; ‘The Capetian Patrimony’; ‘The Great Fiefs’; ‘The Lands of the House of Anjou’: ‘Territorial Gains and Losses’; ‘The Machinery of Government’; ‘The Impact of Social Change’; ‘The Intellectual and Moral Climate’. 28  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 59. 29  Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History. 30  Fawtier treated the French, the English, the Spanish, and then, in four short chapters, Jews, aliens, and vagabonds, which seems a strange way to approach society. He then examined the King, the central government, local government, justice and legislation, the army and navy, finances, and the national councils. Curiously, the editors of the Histoire générale did not include the reign of St Louis in this volume, but assigned it to the volume written by Petit-

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

269

Fawtier enjoyed writing comparative history, especially that of France and England. In this he was again perhaps influenced by Tout, who in 1905 had published The Political History of England, 1216–1377, which Fawtier consulted and which may have inspired the chapters he devoted to England.31 Fawtier’s thinking about Philip the Fair and his reign is revealed just as clearly in this volume as in Les Capétiens et la France. Following his sections on society, governmental administration, and political affairs, Fawtier devoted a fourth section to ‘Le temps de Philippe le Bel’.32 In little more than a hundred pages, Fawtier discussed the history of France, England, the Holy Roman Empire, and Spain from the end of the thirteenth century to 1328. Four pages are dedicated to Philip the Fair. These contain a description of Philip that resembles the one Fawtier gave in Les Capétiens et la France: Personnalité assez mystérieuse, que l’on hésite à définir avec quelque précision, Philippe le Bel ne nous a laissé ni une ligne, ni une parole, dont on puisse dire avec certitude qu’elle soit de lui et de lui seul. On sait qu’il était grand et beau, habile aux exercices du corps, bon chevalier et grand chasseur, qu’il parlait peu, regardait fixement les gens; avec cela doux et pieux, bon époux et bon père. Certains de ses contemporains l’accusent d’avoir été faible, négligent, de s’être laissé mener par des conseillers malhonnêtes, d’avoir eu une politique qui n’était que désordre et hésitation. En somme un brave homme, médiocre, mou, mené par des coquins.33 [A quite mysterious personality, which one hesitates to describe precisely, Philip the Fair left not a single line or word that can be said with certainty to be his and his alone. We know that he was tall and handsome, physically fit, a good knight and a great hunter, that he spoke little and stared at people, and that in addition he was gentle and pious, a good husband and a good father. Some of his contemporaries accused him of being weak and negligent, of letting himself be controlled by dishonest counsellors, and of implementing a policy that was disordered and hesitant. In sum, a good man, mediocre, weak, controlled by a group of rogues.]

But, Fawtier declared: On peut donc laisser à Philippe le Bel la responsabilité des événements de son règne. Il est vraisemblable qu’il n’a pas eu l’initiative de toutes les mesures qui ont

Dutaillis, Guinard, and Glotz, L’essor des États d’Occident, covering the period from c. 1125 to c. 1270. 31  Tout, The Political History of England. 32  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, pp. 298–425. 33  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 298.

270

Élisabeth Lalou

été prises en son Conseil, mais ces mesures ont été prises par des hommes qu’il avait choisis. Il ne leur a fait aucune opposition; rien n’autorise à croire qu’il n’en ait pas compris l’esprit ou la portée.34 [Philip the Fair can be accorded responsibility for the events of his reign. In all probability, he did not initiate all the measures adopted by his Council, but these measures were determined by men he had chosen. He did not oppose them; there is no reason to think that he did not understand their motivations or the meaning of what they did.]

Philip’s policies were driven, Fawtier said, by his desire that there be ‘only one king in France’.35 Fawtier added, ‘pénétré de la sainteté de sa dynastie, […] le petit fils de Saint Louis a réagi avec violence [à Boniface VIII] parce qu’il croyait au droit de la royauté, parce qu’il était un dévot de cette religion de la monarchie que saint Louis avait fondée’ (‘Fervently convinced of the sanctity of his dynasty, […] the grandson of St Louis reacted violently [to Boniface VIII] because he believed in the rights of royalty, and because he was a disciple of the religion of monarchy that St Louis had founded’).36 Fawtier’s Philip the Fair was ‘un dévot de la religion monarchique, dévot de la religion chrétienne’ (‘a believer in the religion of monarchy, a believer in the Christian faith’).37 ‘Le dogme de la première lui est fourni par ses conseillers, légistes, nourris des maximes du droit romain, pour qui la volonté du prince est la loi, une loi quasi divine’ (‘The dogma [of the religion of monarchy] was given to him by his counsellors, jurists, nourished by the maxims of Roman law, for whom the will of prince was law, a law virtually divine’).38 Philip the Fair ‘a employé les procédés de son époque qui étaient ceux d’une époque de brutalité allié à un formalisme légal assez déplaisant […]. Il les a mis au service de la cause royale dans laquelle il croyait, comme il croyait à sa religion, qu’il confondait même avec sa religion’ (‘employed the tactics and procedures of his time, an era of brutality informed by repellent legal formalism; he used them in the service of the royal cause, in which he believed just as he believed in his religion and even confused with his religion’).39 34 

Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 299. Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 299. 36  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 300. 37  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 301. 38  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 301. 39  Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 302. 35 

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

271

The final sentence of the chapter reveals Fawtier’s conception of history: ‘Qu’il ait eu tort ou raison d’avoir cette foi, d’agir comme il l’a fait, c’est là une question qui n’interesse pas l’histoire. Celle-ci se borne à étudier son activité, à la comprendre’ (‘Whether or not he was right to have these beliefs and to act as he did is a question that does not concern the historian. Rather, history limits itself to studying his acts and understanding them’).40 This, then, was Fawtier’s conception of Philip the Fair before the Corpus philippicum. How then did the creation of the Corpus philippicum change his views? While creating the Corpus philippicum, Fawtier was teaching at the Sorbonne. As a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, he was also involved in a variety of editorial projects. He supervised Yves Renouard’s edition of the fourth volume of the Rôles gascons (for the years 1307 to 1317).41 Fittingly, in light of his experience in editing accounts of the reign of Philip the Fair, he oversaw the publication of the Comptes généraux de l’état bourguignon entre 1416 et 1420, edited by Michel Mollat and Robert Favreau, which appeared in 1969.42 After the Second World War, Fawtier wrote five articles that touched or focused on Philip the Fair.43 In two he dealt with representative institutions, in the first discussing the English Parliament and the French Estates General, and in the second instigation an Anglo-French meeting in 1308.44 In another one he offered a novel interpretation of the confrontation between Guillaume de Nogaret and Boniface VIII in Anagni.45 Yet another was devoted to a pseudo– Jean de Vierzon who died at Courtrai but who returned from the dead.46 Perhaps contemplating writing a biography of Philip, in 1961 Fawtier published ‘Comment le roi de France au début du xive siècle pouvait-il se représenter son royaume?’.47 Had he chosen and had the time to write such a book, what would it have been? 40 

Fawtier, L’Europe occidentale, p. 302. Les rôles gascons, 1307–1317, ed. by Renouard. 42  Comptes généraux de l’état bourguignon, ed. by Mollat and Favreau. The work of Cazelles, Catalogue des Comptes, published in 1984 under the direction of Mollet is, in the end, a part of Fawtier’s legacy. 43  Fawtier, ‘Ce qu’il advenait’ appeared before the war began. 44  Fawtier, ‘Parlement d’Angleterre’; Fawtier, ‘Un parlement franco-anglais en 1308’. 45  Fawtier, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’. 46  Fawtier, ‘L’aventure de la dame de Mortagne’. 47  Fawtier, ‘Comment le roi de France’; Fawtier also wrote ‘Saint Louis et Frédéric II’. 41 

272

Élisabeth Lalou

Fawtier might have written an administrative history, similar to the three volumes he published with Ferdinand Lot, but, drawing on the Gallia regis philippica, emphasizing the individual people involved in the government of France. This book could have resembled the works of Raymond Cazelles on Philip VI or John II,48 and would have resembled Strayer’s study of the reign.49 It is interesting that in 1987 Elizabeth Brown dedicated an article to the three historians: Raymond Cazelles, Joseph Strayer, and Robert Fawtier. Fawtier might also have explored aspects of France’s economy, illuminated by the accounts that were included in the volumes of Comptes royaux he published with Maillard. He would certainly have dwelled on the dramatic encounter between Nogaret and Boniface VIII at Anagni. As a young man, while at the École Française de Rome, he had worked on the registers of Boniface VIII,50 and Fawtier considered the publication of these registers ‘Un grand achèvement de l’École Française de Rome’.51 Fawtier might well have given short shrift to Philip’s relations with the German Empire. Although the Corpus philippicum contains the letters that Philip addressed to the emperors, it does not include the emperors’ responses.52 Neither Fawtier nor Maillard seems to have consulted the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. To conclude, I would like to touch on Fawtier’s library, for the light it sheds on him and his work. The books connected with the Corpus philippicum are today located with the Corpus at the IRHT. The other volumes were divided between three repositories. Some are preserved in the library of the Uni­ver­sity of Rouen, which purchased them while Jean Favier was teaching there. A few, including many offprints, are in the library of the École des Chartes.53 Lastly, I own a dozen or so of his books, among them a volume on Fouquet, a farewell gift from his students at the Uni­ver­sity of Bordeaux,54 and a study of the legend of St Ursula, which recalls Fawtier’s interest in hagiography.55 The ties that 48 

Cazelles, La société politique et la crise, and Cazelles, Société politique. Strayer, ‘Philip the Fair’. 50  Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Digard and others. 51  Fawtier, ‘Un grand achèvement’. 52  This fact may account for Jean Favier’s relative lack of attention to the empire in his book on Philip. 53  The catalogues of the Bibliothèque universitaire de Rouen and of the École des Chartes mention Fawtier’s ex libris. 54  Perls, Jean Fouquet. 55  De Tervarent, La légende de Sainte Ursule. Fawtier wrote his dissertation at the École française de Rome on the life of St Samson, and his thesis on St Catherine of Sienna. Fawtier, 49 

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

273

Fawtier maintained with American colleagues are witnessed by the presence of a dedicated copy of Charles T. Wood’s book on the apanages, and the copy of Gens de justice du Languedoc that Joseph Strayer sent to Mme Fawtier in 1970.56 Another of Fawtier’s important contributions to the understanding of Philip the Fair, which would undoubtedly have influenced any full study of Philip, is the King’s itinerary. Fawtier and Maillard had worked on the itinerary for years, and it was in proof when Fawtier died in 1966.57 Robert-Henri Bautier, assuming the direction of the Corpus philippicum, reviewed the itinerary and added numerous elements, including diplomatic descriptions and the names of those who authorized royal letters and of the royal notaries. This work encouraged Bautier to offer his own interpretation of Philip the Fair, which diverged from Fawtier’s in many ways. His study appeared in 1978, with the intriguing title, ‘Diplomatique et histoire politique: Ce que la critique diplomatique nous apprend sur la personnalité de Philippe le Bel’.58 Shortly after Jean Favier and then Joseph Strayer published their biographies, the fine exhibition ‘L’art au temps des rois maudits’, organized by Danielle Gaborit-Chopin in 1998, shed new light on the reign.59 The work of Elizabeth Brown has explored many aspects of the reign of Philip the Fair, especially the King’s character.60 The ‘Capetian Group’, meeting on Saturdays throughout the spring, has for a decade brought together historians interested in Philip the Fair and his sons.61 Inspired by Robert Fawtier’s research and his Corpus philippicum, this group and its members consider themselves Fawtier’s heirs and aim to carry on the work to which he dedicated his life. The group’s existence responds to the hope he expressed in 1941 that ‘quelques historiens de la jeune génération’ would devote themselves to ‘une période où il reste encore tant à faire’, words that are today as true as they were when he wrote them many years ago.62 La vie de saint Sanson; Fawtier, Sainte Catherine de Sienne; and Fawtier, La double expérience de Catherine Benincasa. 56  Wood, The French Apanages; Strayer, Les gens de justice du Languedoc sous Philippe le Bel. 57  Lalou, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel, i, 14–17. 58  Bautier, ‘Diplomatique et histoire politique’. 59  L’art au temps des rois maudits; see also Gaborit-Chopin and Avril with Bardoz, 1300. 60  Most recently, Brown, ‘Réflexions sur Philippe le Bel’, at the Société d’Histoire de France, Paris, 5 June 2014, to be published in the Annuaire-Bulletin of the Société. 61  This group began when Xavier Hélary received a Jeune Chercheur fellowship from the Agence nationale de la recherche in 2005; until 2014 it functioned as a Groupe de Recherche of the CNRS. The group has organized several conferences. 62  Fawtier, Les Capétiens et la France, p. 3.

274

Élisabeth Lalou

Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Sources Paris, Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, Corpus Philippicum

Primary Sources Comptes généraux de l’état bourguignon entre 1416 et 1420, ed. by Michel Mollat and Robert Favreau (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1969) Comptes royaux (1285–1314), ed. by Robert Fawtier and François Maillard, 3 vols, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 3 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1953–56) Comptes royaux (1314–1328), ed. by François Maillard and Robert Fawtier, 2 vols, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 4 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1961) Comptes du Trésor (1296, 1316, 1384, 1477), ed. by Robert Fawtier, Recueil des historiens de la France, Documents financiers, 2 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1930) Les registres de Boniface VIII: Recueil des bulles de ce pape, iv: Introduction, livre caméral, appendices, indices, ed. by Robert Fawtier, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2nd ser., 4 (Paris: de Boccard, 1931–39) Les rôles gascons, 1307–1317, iv, ed. by Yves Renouard, dir. by Robert Fawtier (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1961) ‘Un compte de menues dépenses de l’Hôtel de Philippe de Valois’, ed. by Robert Fawtier, Bulletin du Comité des travaux historiques, 1926–29, 183–239 ‘Un fragment de compte de l’Hôtel du prince Louis de France pour le terme de la purification 1213’, ed. by Robert Fawtier, Le Moyen Age, 34 (1933), 225–50

Secondary Studies Bautier, Robert-Henri, ‘Diplomatique et histoire politique: Ce que la critique diplomatique nous apprend sur la personnalité de Philippe le Bel’, Revue historique, 259 (1978), 3–27 Bloch, Marc, La France sous les derniers Capétiens 1223–1328 (Paris: Colin, 1958) —— , ‘La popularité du toucher des écrouelles’, Le Moyen Age, 28 (1927), 34–41 —— , Les Rois thaumaturges: Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Strasbourg: Librairie Istra, 1924) Boutaric, Edgard-Paul, La France sous Philippe le Bel: Étude sur les institutions politiques et administratives du Moyen Âge (Paris: Henri Plon, 1861) —— , ‘Notices et extraits de documents inédits relatifs à l’histoire de France sous Philippe le Bel’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impériale et autres bibliothèques, 20.2 (1862), 83–237

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

275

Brown, Elizabeth A. R., The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 345 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991) —— , ‘Persona et Gesta: The Image and Deeds of the Thirteenth-Century Capetians. The Case of Philip the Fair’, Viator, 19 (1988), 219–46 —— , ‘Philip the Fair and the Remains of Saint Louis’, Gazette des beaux-arts, 115 (1980), 175–82 —— , ‘The Prince Is Father of the King: The Character and Childhood of Philip the Fair of France’, Mediaeval Studies, 49 (1987), 282–334 Cazelles, Raymond, Catalogue des Comptes royaux des règnes de Philippe IV et de Jean II, 1328–1364, in Recueil des historiens de la France. Documents financiers, vi.1 (Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1984) —— , Société politique et la crise de la royauté sous Philippe de Valois (Paris: Librairie d’Argences, 1958) —— , Société politique, noblesse et couronne sous Jean le Bon et Charles V (Geneva: Droz, 1982) Dumoulin, Olivier, Marc Bloch (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2000) Dupont-Ferrier, Gustave, Gallia regia ou État des officiers royaux des bailliages et des sénéchaussées de 1328 à 1515 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1942) Dupuy, Pierre, Histoire du différend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII. et Philippes le Bel roy de France (Paris: Chez Cramoisy, 1655) Favier, Jean, Philippe le Bel (Paris: Fayard, 1978) Fawtier, Robert, ‘L’attentat d’Anagni’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, 60 (1948), 153–79 —— , Autour de la France capétienne: Personnages et institutions, ed. by Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, Collected Studies Series, 267 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1987) —— , ‘L’aventure de la dame de Mortagne’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 94 (1950), 387–92 —— , The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation (987–1328), trans. by Lionel Butler and R. J. Adam (London: MacMillan, 1960) —— , Les Capétiens et la France: Leur role dans sa construction (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1942) —— , ‘Ce qu’il advenait des sceaux de la Couronne à la mort du roi de France’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 82 (1938), 522–30 —— , ‘Comment le roi de France au début du xive siècle pouvait-il se représenter son royaume?’ in Mélanges offerts à Paul Martin (Geneva: [n.pub.], 1961), pp. 65–77 —— , La double expérience de Catherine Benincasa (Sainte Catherine de Sienne) (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque des idées, 1948) —— , L’Europe occidentale de 1270 à 1380, vol. vi of Histoire générale, Histoire du Moyen Âge, ed. by Gustave Glotz (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1940) —— , ‘Parlement d’Angleterre et Etats généraux de France au Moyen Age’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 97 (1953), 275–84 —— , ‘Saint Louis et Frédéric II’, in Atti del convegno Internazionale di Studi Federeciani (dicembre 1950) (Palermo, 1952), pp. 97–101

276

Élisabeth Lalou

—— , Sainte Catherine de Sienne: Essai de critique des sources, 2 vols (Paris: de Boccard, 1921–30), i: Sources hagiographiques; ii: Les oeuvres de Sainte Catherine de Sienne —— , ‘Un grand achèvement de l’École française de Rome: La publication des registres de papes du xiiie siècle’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, École française de Rome, 72 (1960), 1–13 —— , ‘Un parlement franco-anglais en 1308’, in Recueil de travaux offerts à M.  Clovis Brunel (Paris: Société de l’École des Chartes, 1955), pp. 422–24 —— , La vie de saint Sanson: Essai de critique hagiographique, Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études, sciences historiques et philologiques, 197 (Paris: Champion, 1912) Fawtier, Robert, Jean Glénisson, and Jean Guerout, Registres du trésor des chartes, inventaire analytique, i: Règne de Philippe le Bel (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1958) Fawtier, Robert, and Ferdinand Lot, Histoire des institutions françaises au Moyen Âge, 3 vols (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1957–62) Gaborit-Chopin, Danielle, and François Avril, with Marie-Cécile Bardoz, 1300… L’art au temps de Philippe le Bel: Actes du colloque international, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 24 et 25 juin 1998, XVIes Rencontres de l’École du Louvre (Paris: École du Louvre, 2001) Lalou, Élisabeth, ‘Nécrologie de François Maillard (1914–2005)’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 164.2 (2006), 685–87 Lalou, Élisabeth, with Robert Fawtier, Jean Maillard, and Robert-Henri Bautier, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel (1285–1314), 2 vols, Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 37 (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 2007) Langlois, Charles-Victor, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, les derniers Capétiens directs (1226– 1328), vol. iii, part 2 of Histoire de France illustrée, ed. by Ernest Lavisse (Paris: Hachette, 1901–11); repr. in the series Monumenta Historiae (Paris: Jules Tallandier, 1978) L’art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils, 1285–1328, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 17 March to 29 June 1998 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998) Livret de l’École des chartes, 1967–2007 (Paris: École des chartes, 2010) Lot, Ferdinand, and Robert Fawtier, Le premier budget de la monarchie française: Le compte général de 1202–1203, Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études, sciences historiques et philologiques, 259 (Paris: Champion, 1932) Perls, Klaus G., Jean Fouquet (Paris: Éditions Hypérion, 1940) Perroy, Edouard, ‘Robert Fawtier’, Le Moyen Age, 72 (1966), 183–86; repr. in Robert Fawtier, Autour de la France capétienne: personnages et institutions, ed. by Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, Collected Studies Series, 267 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1987) Petit-Dutaillis, Charles, Paul Guinard, and Gustave Glotz, L’essor des États d’Occident (France, Angleterre, Péninsure ibérique), vol. iv, part 2 of Histoire générale, ed. by Gustave Glotz (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1937) ‘Robert Fawtier’, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Stein, Henri, Recherches sur quelques fonctionnaires royaux des treizième et quatorzième siècles originaires du Gâtinais (Paris: Picard, 1919)

Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair

277

Strayer, Joseph R., ‘Consent to Taxation under Philip the Fair’, in Joseph R. Strayer and Charles H. Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation, Harvard Historical Monographs, 12 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1939), pp. 1–105 —— , ‘The Crusade Against Aragon’, Speculum, 28 (1953), 102–13 —— , Les gens de justice du Languedoc sous Philippe le Bel, Cahiers de l’Association Marc Bloch de Toulouse. Études d’histoire méridionale, 5 (Toulouse: Association Marc Bloch, 1970) —— , Medi­eval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History: Essays by Joseph R. Strayer, ed. by John F. Benton and Thomas N. Bisson (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1971) —— , ‘Philip the Fair: A “Constitutional” King’, American Historical Review, 62 (1956), 18–32 —— , ‘Pierre de Chalon and the Origins of the French Customs Service’, in Festschrift Percy Ernst Schramm zu seinem Siebzigsten Geburtstag von Schülern und Freunden zugeeignet, vol. i (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1964), pp. 334–39 —— , The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980) Taylor, Charles Holt, ‘Assemblies of French Towns in 1316’, Speculum, 14 (1939), 275–99 —— , ‘Assemblies of Towns and War Subsidy, 1318–1319’, in Joseph R. Strayer and Charles H. Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation, Harvard Historical Monographs, 12 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1939), pp. 107–200 —— , ‘The Assembly of 1312’, in Etudes d’histoire dédiées à la mémoire de Henri Pirenne par ses élèves (Bruxelles: Nouvelle société d’éditions, 1937), pp. 341–49 —— , ‘An Assembly of the French Towns in March 1318’, Speculum, 13 (1938), 295–301 —— , ‘The Composition of Baronial Assemblies in France, 1315–20’, Speculum, 29 (1954), 433–59 —— , ‘French Assemblies and Subsidy in 1321’, Speculum, 43 (1968), 217–44 —— , ‘Some New Texts on the Assembly of 1302’, Speculum, 11 (1936), 38–42 Strayer, Joseph R., ‘Knight Service in Normandy’, in Anniversary Essays in Mediaeval History, by Students of Charles Homer Haskins, ed. by Charles H. Taylor and John L. La Monte (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), pp. 313–27 Tervarent, Guy de, La légende de Sainte Ursule dans la littérature du Moyen Age (Paris: Les Éditions G. van Oest, 1931) Tout, Thomas F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediæval England: The Ward­ robe, the Chamber, and the Small Seals, 6 vols (Manchester: Manchester Uni­ver­sity Press, 1920–33) —— , The Political History of England, vi: History of England, ed. by William Hunt and Reginald L. Poole (London: Longmans, 1905) Wood, Charles T., The French Apanages and the Capetian Monarchy, 1224–1328 (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1966)

Part IV. Crusaders and Crusading Orders

Travels, Troubles, and Trials: The Montaigu Family between Capetian France and Lusignan Cyprus Jochen Burgtorf*

T

he Crusades of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, the states founded in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean as a result of these expeditions, and the military orders established to care for and protect the pilgrims travelling to the holy places in the East provided a wide range of new opportunities for western Europe’s noble families, so much so that Joshua Prawer (1917–90), the great historian of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, has referred to them as ‘instruments of social mobility’.1 Modern research on the families of Outremer, the crusaders’ lands on the other side of the sea as seen from the perspective of France, can be traced back to Charles du Fresne, seigneur du Cange (1610–88), whose notes, primarily based on the Lignages d’Outremer, the genealogies of the families of the Latin East, dating, in their most important redactions, to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were eventually augmented, updated, and published by Emmanuel-Guillaume Rey (1837–1916).2 In recent years, historians have focused on the intricate connections between the nobility of the early kingdom of Jerusalem and specific European noble families, such as the Montlhéry family from northern France  

* I would like to thank Kelly Donovan (California State Uni­ver­sity, Fullerton) for producing the figures that accompany this article. 1  Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, pp. 278–79. 2  Rey, Les familles d’Outre-mer, pp. i–iv. Jochen Burgtorf ([email protected]) California State Uni­ver­sity, Fullerton

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 281–303 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112976 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

282

Jochen Burgtorf

and the Bouillon-Boulogne family from Lorraine.3 As scholars are viewing the often very separate findings of prosopographical research pertaining to the crusader states and western Europe side by side, it becomes clear that, by the thirteenth century, noble families from Auvergne were also rather well connected with the clergy and the nobility of the crusader states, as well as the military orders. In fact, Pierre-Vincent Claverie has coined the term ‘Alvernocracy’, the rule of those from Auvergne, to characterize this phenomenon, particularly on Cyprus.4 Stephen of Mezel from Auvergne, who served as Bishop of Famagusta between 1244 and 1259, has recently been identified as a possible uncle of the Hospitaller Stephen of Meses, grand preceptor in his order’s central convent between 1264 and 1266.5 Another one of Stephen of Mezel’s nephews, one Hugh, eventually married Alice of Montaigu who was a member of yet another noble house from Auvergne that participated in the thirteenth-century exchange between Capetian France and Lusignan Cyprus, namely the Montaigu family. 6 It is perhaps best known for one of its later relatives, Gilles I Aycelin of Montaigu, Archbishop of Narbonne and Rouen, who played a key part in the proceedings against the Templars (1307–14) and who, by 1314, would found the ‘Collège de Montaigu’ at the Uni­ver­sity of Paris.7 The Montaigu family has failed to attract the attention it deserves because, for the longest time, historians have rejected an entry for the year 1219 in the contemporary chronicle of the Cistercian Alberic of Troisfontaines which states: ‘After Bishop Robert of Le Puy had been murdered, Bernard of Montaigu succeeded him, [being] the nephew of Brother Eustorg of Auvergne, Archbishop of Nicosia, and of the Bishop of Limassol [named] Fulk, and of Brother Fulk, and of Brother Peter, master of the Templars, and of Brother Garin, master of the Hospitallers’.8 3 

Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders; Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Claverie, ‘Stephen of Mezel’, pp. 41–42. 5  Claverie, ‘Stephen of Mezel’, pp. 50–51; cf. Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, p. 661. 6  Claverie, ‘Stephen of Mezel’, p. 47. 7  McNamara, Gilles Aycelin, pp. 155–69, 187; cf. Courtenay, ‘The Collège de Montaigu’, pp. 54–55, 59. I would like to thank William J. Courtenay (Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin–Madison) for drawing my attention to this foundation. 8  ‘Chronica Albrici’, ed. by Scheffer-Boichorst, p. 909: ‘Episcopo Roberto de Podio occiso, succedit Bernardus de Monteacuto, nepos ex fratre Eustorgii de Alvernia, Nichosiensis archiepiscopi, et episcopi Limiconiensis Fulconis et fratris Fulconis et fratris Petri magistri Templariorum et fratris Garini magistri Hospitaliorum’; cf. Burgtorf, ‘Das Netzwerk der Montaigus’. 4 

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

283

Scholars have given at least seven reasons for their rejection of Alberic’s miniature genealogy. Firstly, some argue that the cognomen Mons Acutus (‘Montaigu’) is not restricted to Auvergne; it also appears in Spain as the toponym ‘Monteagudo’.9 Yet in various vernacular adaptations Mons Acutus can be found practically everywhere.10 In Auvergne, the variant ‘Montaigu(t)’ shows up rather frequently.11 One of the great names in the region’s early modern historiography, Pierre Audigier, has identified ‘Montaigut-le-Blanc’ near Clermont as the Montaigu family’s place of origin.12 Secondly, some argue that it is unlikely that siblings who were alive at the same time bore the same first name.13 Yet a study by Hans Eberhard Mayer has shown that this did, in fact, occur much more frequently than one might think.14 Thirdly, some argue that such an accumulation of ecclesiastical offices in one generation of one family is unusual.15 Yet around 1300, the Aycelin family, a noble house from Auvergne and related to the Montaigu family, featured three brothers who served as Archbishop of Narbonne, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, and Bishop of Clermont respectively.16 Fourthly, some argue that members of one family usually belonged to the same religious order.17 Yet the famous Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux was the nephew of the Templar Master Andrew of Montbard, and membership in different religious communities may well have been a conscious strategy to curtail competition among members of the same family.18 9 

Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, p. 171. Cf. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Aragón, pp. 327, 342 (n. 169), 420; Carraz, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, pp. 111 (nn. 150–51), 318–19 (n. 177), 445 (n. 134). 10  The place or family name Mons acutus (sharp or steep mountain) appears as ‘Montacute’ or ‘Montague’ in England; as ‘Montaigu’, ‘Montaigut’, or ‘Montagut’ in France; as ‘Montagut’ or ‘Monteagudo’ on the Iberian Peninsula; and as ‘Monteacuto’ in Italy. Translated into the vernacular it also appears as ‘Scherpenheuvel’ in modern-day Belgium and as ‘Scharfenberg’ in German-speaking areas. 11  Based on a search for ‘Montaigut’ with Google Earth. Montaigut and Montaigut-leBlanc/Montaigu(t)-sur-Champeix are in Département Puy-de-Dôme; Montaigu-le-Blin is in Département Allier; and a further place named Montaigut-le-Blanc is in Département Creuse. 12  Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, 395; cf. pp. 69, 396, 445. 13  Delaville Le Roulx, Les Hospitaliers en Terre Sainte et à Chypre, pp. 137–38 (n. 3). 14  Mayer, ‘Gleichnamige Geschwister im Mittelalter’, pp. 1–17. 15  Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, p. 171. 16  Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, 424–25. 17  Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, p. 171. 18  Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, p. 519. I would like to thank

284

Jochen Burgtorf

Fifthly, some argue that there is no further evidence that the Templar Master Peter and the Hospitaller Master Garin were related.19 Yet there is, as we will see below. Sixthly, some argue that, due to his earlier tenure as master of Provence and parts of Spain, the Templar Master Peter must have been Aragonese.20 Yet the Hospitaller Garnier of Nablus served, in the course of his career, in leadership positions in England, France, and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, but he cannot possibly have hailed from all three of these regions.21 Furthermore, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were several Templar masters of Aragon and Provence whose French origin is clearly proven.22 And according to the Templars’ normative texts, there was to be no causal connection between a brother’s geographical mobility and his place of origin.23 Seventhly, some argue that, when push comes to shove, Alberic’s miniature genealogy is just ‘a little too perfect’ (‘un peu trop parfait’).24 Yet Jan Prelog, an expert on chroniclewriting, assures us that Alberic of Troisfontaines’s chronicle is a significant work for the events contemporary to its time of writing and due to its carefully assembled genealogical material.25 It appears therefore safe to assume that the Montaigu family mentioned by Alberic of Troisfontaines did, in fact, exist. Its members constituted a family network whose travels, troubles, and trials, in the course of the ‘Capetian century’, encompassed a remarkable geographical space between France and Lusignan Cyprus, that is to say, between ‘la France’ and ‘la France d’Outremer’. According to the sociologist Jan Fuhse, the first studies in the 1950s utilizing ‘network’ terminology pertained to family networks.26 There is, therefore, no further need to justify a study of the Montaigu family network. The main challenge, as another sociologist, Rainer Schützeichel, has pointed out, is the linkJenna Phillips (Princeton) whose respective comment has led me to emphasize this possible interpretation. 19  Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, p. 171 (n. 8). 20  Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, pp. 171–72. Cf. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Aragón, pp. 327, 342 (n. 169), 420; Carraz, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, pp. 111 (nn. 150–51), 318–19 (n. 177), 445 (n. 134). 21  Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, p. 519. 22  Claverie, L’ordre du Temple en Terre Sainte et à Chypre, i, 49. 23  La règle du Temple, ed. by Curzon, p. 339 (no. 661). 24  Claverie, L’ordre du Temple en Terre Sainte et à Chypre, i, 49. 25  Prelog, ‘A[lberich]. v[on]. Troisfontaines’, col. 282. 26  Fuhse, ‘Gruppe und Netzwerk’, p. 252.

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

285

age between synchronous networks and diachronous processes.27 This paper seeks to show such a linkage for the Montaigu family by first recreating its genealogy, secondly by discussing its history between 1200 and 1250, and lastly by commenting on the particular features of this family network over time. Despite the above attempt to restore some credibility to Alberic of Troisfontaines’s miniature genealogy of the Montaigu family, one should not simply trust him or, for that matter, any medieval chronicler. In his entry for 1219, Alberic mentions two ‘Fulks’, and one of these has indeed found his way into the scholarly literature on the bishopric of Limassol.28 However, he has yet to be found in a charter.29 Naturally, this does not mean that Alberic invented him, but further corroborating evidence for this Bishop of Limassol would be most welcome. Concerning Alberic’s record of the 1219 murder of Bishop Robert of Le Puy, it must be noted that Robert’s first successor was Stephen (V) of Chalençon (1220–31), his second successor was Bernard (I) of Rochefortd’Ally (1231–36), and only his third successor was Bernard (II) of Montaigu (1236–48); thus, Bernard of Montaigu did not become Bishop of Le Puy until 1236, namely seventeen years later than Alberic wants us to believe.30 Elsewhere, Alberic records the death of Eustorg of Montaigu, Archbishop of Nicosia, as an event of the year 1239.31 However, Eustorg did not pass until 1250 when he was a participant of the crusading expedition that brought Louis IX of France into Egypt.32 It seems, therefore, that Alberic had some trouble with numbers. With that, however, he is not alone, neither in historiography, nor in the history of mankind. Fortunately, Alberic of Troisfontaines is not our only source. The existence of the Templar Master Peter and the Hospitaller Master Garin is con27 

Schützeichel, ‘Ties, Stories, and Events’, p. 341; cf. p. 353. Fedalto, La Chiesa latina in Oriente, ii, 177. 29  Christopher David Schabel, the editor of the Bullarium Cyprium, assumes the existence of a Bishop ‘[Fulk] of Limassol’ who was in office between 1211 und 1217, yet the actual name does not appear in any of the Latin texts: Bullarium Cyprium, ed. by Schabel, i, 155–58 (no. b-32, 18 May 1211), 187–88 (no. c-7, 27 July 1217). 30  Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, 73–74; Cubizolles, Le diocèse du Puy-en-Velay, pp. 208–09. 31  ‘Chronica Albrici’, ed. by Scheffer-Boichorst, p. 947 (for the year 1239): ‘Mortuus est archiepiscopus in Cypro Eustorgius, qui fratrem habuit Fulconem Limiconiensem episcopum’. Cf. Rey, Les familles d’Outre-mer, p. 846. 32  ‘Chronique d’Amadi’, ed. by de Mas Latrie, p. 200 (for the year 1250): ‘A di 28 april, morite a Damiata Eustorgio, arcivescovo de Nicossia’. 28 

286

Jochen Burgtorf

firmed by ample charter evidence.33 That they were, in fact, the siblings of Archbishop Eustorg of Nicosia is mentioned by Philip of Novara, an eyewitness of the conflict between the prominent Ibelin family and those supporting the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II on Cyprus. Summarizing the events pertaining to the Battle of Nicosia in 1229, Philip states: ‘In this battle was killed […] my lord, Gerald of Montaigu, who was the nephew of the two masters of the Temple and the Hospital and of the Archbishop of Cyprus, Eustorg, since his horse laid upon his body for too long’.34 In 1229, Peter of Montaigu was still master of the Temple, but his brother, the Hospitaller Master Garin, had died during the previous year.35 Adding into the equation the Estoire de Eracles, an anonymous Old French continuation of William of Tyre’s history, it turns out that this nephew, Gerald of Montaigu, had been married to Eschiva of Montbéliard.36 Eschiva, for her part, was a granddaughter of King Aimery of Cyprus from the house of Lusignan and, hence, of royal blood.37 The connection between the Montaigu family and the high nobility of the crusader states is also confirmed by the Lignages d’Outremer.38 One of this text’s redactions informs us that John of Caesarea, a member of the Grenier-Brisebarre family, had married one Alice, the niece of the Templar Master Peter of Montaigu, of the Archbishop Eustorg, and of Gerald, and that this Gerald was the husband of that Eschiva who would later marry the lord of Beirut.39 However, a differ33 

Charters featuring the Templar Master Peter of Montaigu are listed in Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, pp.  186–88; those featuring the Hospitaller Master Garin of Montaigu are listed in Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, pp. 518–23. 34  Filippo da Novara, Guerra di Federico II in Oriente, ed. and trans. by Melani, p. 116 (no. 49 [145]): ‘En celle bataille fu occis […] messire Giraut de Montagu, qui fu nevou des .ij. maistres dou Temple et de l’Ospitau et de l’archevesque de Chipre Estorgue, car son chevau li gist grant piece sur le cors’. On Philip of Novara, see Minervini, ‘Philip of Novara’, p. 955. 35  For Peter’s tenure as master, see the charters listed in Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, pp. 186–88; on Garin’s death, see Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, p. 523. 36  ‘L’estoire de Eracles empereur’, p. 376 (bk 33, ch. 10): ‘Et i furent ocis Gautier le seignor de Cesaire, Geraut de Mont Agu, qui avoit esposée Eschive, la fille de Gautier de Mombliart’. On the Estoire de Eracles, see Nicholson, ‘Eracles’, p. 405. 37  Rey, Les familles d’Outre-mer, pp. 233–34, 379, 846. 38  On this complex genealogical series of texts, see Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Nielen, pp. 11, 14, 24–25, 32–33, 42, 44. 39  Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Nielen, p. 64: ‘Le fiz ot nom Johan et ot a feme Aalis qui esteit niece dou maistre dou Temple, frere Pierre de Montagu, et de l’arcevesque Estorgue, et

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

287

Figure 11.1. Montaigu Family Network

ent redaction of the Lignages confirms what we already know, thanks to Philip of Novara, namely, that this Gerald was not another brother but, rather, the nephew of Archbishop Eustorg.40 Thus, the Lignages illustrate that the nobility of the Latin East was ‘not a closed-off society; it was continually enriched and renewed by new additions from the West’.41 It is only from compilations of the early modern period that we can discern the various branches of the medieval Montaigu family in somewhat greater detail. Much of what we know comes from the notes of the already mentioned Pierre Audigier, a canon of the cathedral of Clermont, who lived in d’Engerant, qui fu baron d’Eschive qui puis fu feme dou seignor de Baruth’. The family names added above (for example, ‘Grenier-Brisebarre’) follow the edition’s annotations. According to Wipertus Rüdt de Collenberg, the abovementioned Alice (of Montaigu) who married John of Caesarea was a daughter of Gerald of Montaigu and Eschiva of Montbéliard: Rüdt de Collenberg, ‘Les Ibelins aux xiiie et xive siècles’, p. 131. 40  Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Nielen, pp.  89–90: ‘Borgoigne fu feme de Gautier de Montbeliart et orent une fille qui ot nom Eschive qui esposa Girart, le nevou de l’arcevesque Estorgue. Et puis espousa Balian de Ybelin, seignor de Baruth’. 41  Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Nielen, p. 30 (editor’s commentary; here translated into English).

288

Jochen Burgtorf

Clermont from his birth in 1659 until his death in 1744.42 Restricting ourselves here merely to the tip of the proverbial iceberg, we learn from Audigier that Eustorg I was the grandfather of Alberic’s brotherly line-up. Eustorg’s heir and, thus, the father of Alberic’s brotherly line-up was Peter I.43 Peter I’s heir, missing in Alberic’s brotherly line-up, was Peter II. Audigier’s notes suggest that certain names dominated the family’s history, among them Eustorg, Peter, Garin, Stephen, and Alice.44 What becomes clear is that, in the first half of the thirteenth century, synchronously speaking, the Montaigu family from Auvergne was successfully networking with the two major military orders, the clergy of Cyprus, and the high nobility of the crusader states (Figure 11.1). We now turn, diachronously speaking, to the history of the Montaigu family between 1200 and 1250. The Hospitaller Brother Garin of Montaigu, of whom nothing is known until 1204, had a stunning career in his order’s central convent: within three years, he became preceptor, then marshal, and in 1207 master.45 Within a decade, namely by 1217, his brother Eustorg was Archbishop of Nicosia.46 That same year, both Eustorg and Garin participated in an assembly, a parlement, at Acre that dealt with preparations for the Fifth Crusade.47 Meanwhile, their brother, the Templar Peter, had been serving his order since 1207 as provincial master in southern France and on the Iberian Peninsula, and he apparently fought in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.48 In 1219, he surfaced near Damietta, just in time to become the successor of the recently deceased Templar Master William of Chartres.49 Shortly 42 

Pierre Audigier’s Histoire d‘Auvergne was published in 1894, 150 years after his death, on the basis of his manu­scripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 11477–84); cf. Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, pp. v–vi. 43  Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, 69. 44  Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, 69, 395–96, 445. 45  Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, pp. 519–20. 46  Fedalto, La Chiesa latina in Oriente, ii, 173. On Eustorg, see Coureas, The Latin Church in Cyprus, passim. 47  ‘L’estoire de Eracles empereur’, pp. 322–23 (bk 31, ch. 10): ‘et fu en lor compaignie Estorgue, arcevesque de Nicossie […] A ce parlement fu […] Estorgue, arcevesque de Nicossie […] et i fu Garin de Mont Agu, maistre de l’Ospitau de Saint Johan’. 48  Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, p. 172; Barber, The New Knighthood, p. 128; Carraz, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, pp. 111 (nn. 150–51), 318–19 (n. 177), 445 (n. 134). 49  He appears as master in a charter issued at Damietta in 1219: Charles Lalore, Les sires et les barons de Chacenay, p. 222 (n. 3, with a reference to Paris, BnF, f. fr. 5998, fol. 127v): ‘Notum

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

289

thereafter, the crusaders took Damietta, and the Templars played a major part in this campaign.50 The three brothers, Eustorg, Garin, and Peter, then joined the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the King of Jerusalem, the papal legate (Pelagius), and a throng of other dignitaries in co-authoring a letter to Pope Honorius III, informing the pontiff of their successful military endeavours.51 Two examples may serve to illustrate the functionality of this brotherly network. In October 1220, the Ayyubid Sultan of Damascus, al-Mu’azzam, launched an attack against the still rather new Templar castle at Atlit (Château Pèlerin), whereupon the Templar Master Peter rushed from Egypt into the kingdom of Jerusalem and successfully provided relief to his order’s fortress. Oliver of Paderborn informs us that Peter did not have to act alone: he was joined by troops from Cyprus, Tripoli, and Beirut, and it is noteworthy that Oliver mentions the Cypriote contingent in the first place.52 One may assume that Archbishop Eustorg of Nicosia was advocating in favour of Cypriote military aid for his brother, the Templar master. And it was not even family advantage that was at stake here, at least not primarily. The relief expedition to Atlit was to the advantage of Latin Christendom. Also in October 1220, we encounter Archbishop Eustorg as a petitioner in one of the charters issued by Queen Alice of Cyprus. Alice assured Eustorg of the full tithe in the kingdom of Cyprus and mentioned Pelagius, the papal legate, as the driving force behind this royal concession.53 But does Pelagius really deserve all the credit here? The bigger picture emerges from a confirmation document, issued in 1222 by Eustorg himsit omnibus quod ego Milo, comes Barri, dedi Deo et Beate Marie et Fratri Petro de Monte Acuto, magistro, et aliis Fratribus militie Templi XXX libratas redditus de meo dominio in castellania Barri. Actum in obsidione Damiete, anno Incarnationis Dominice M.CC.XIX, mense Augusti’. Cf. Röhricht, Studien zur Geschichte des fünften Kreuzzuges, p. 66 (no. 33). 50  Barber, The New Knighthood, pp. 128–29. 51  Röhricht, Studien zur Geschichte des fünften Kreuzzuges, pp. 43–46 (no. 6): ‘Sanctissimo patri ac Domino Honorio, Dei gracia summo pontifici Romano, R. patriarcha, J(ohannes) rex Hierosolymitanus, Burdegalensis, Nicosiensis, archiepiscopi, P(elagius), Albanensis, J(acobus) Acconensis, Lucanensis, episcopi, hospitalis Sancti Johannis, Templi, hospitalis Alemannorum, magistri’ (and five additional names of co-authors). 52  Oliver of Paderborn, Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, ed. by Hoogeweg, p. 255: ‘Magister Templi cum probata militia Templariorum licentiatus a legato pro tanta necessitate reversus ad castrum cum Coradino pugnare disposuit. Cyprenses vero militum ac sumptuum magnam adduxerunt copiam; Tripolitanus similiter et dominus Berythi, Guido de Gibellulo cum aliis polanis alacriter se preparabant ad succursum’. Cf. Barber, The New Knighthood, pp. 129, 161. 53  The Synodicum Nicosiense, ed. and trans. by Schabel, pp. 286–88 (no. 6).

290

Jochen Burgtorf

self, which explains that Pelagius’s mediation efforts had been supported by the masters of the Temple and the Hospital.54 It is conceivable that Queen Alice had not mentioned the two masters in 1220 because they were travelling in the papal legate’s entourage. At any rate, Eustorg’s brothers, the masters of the two major military orders, had intervened on his behalf, and, once again, one could argue that they had done so not, at least not primarily, for the sake of family advantage but, rather, for the sake of Latin Christendom. However, at other times, the brothers found themselves confronting each other, not for personal reasons but, rather, because of their respective assigned roles in the society of Outremer. In 1221, Pelagius, the papal legate, divided the city of Jabala in northern Syria between Templars and Hospitallers. Both orders were laying claim to the city and had presented different donation charters to that effect. The arbitration document settling the dispute (or causa) explicitly mentions the Templar Master Peter and the Hospitaller Master Garin.55 The papal legate’s Solomonic judgement in this case created the so-called terra partitionis to the north of the important Hospitaller castle of Margat in the principality of Antioch, and both orders would continue to quarrel over their particular claims in this region for decades to come.56 Thus, even when it came to disputes, it was not about family advantage but, rather, about the advantage of one’s ecclesiastical community. Anna Wallette, a historian of medieval Scandinavia, has argued that ‘asking questions about what people accepted as a good way of regulating their relationships, and in what way they described these relations, allows us to explore the structure and dynamics of social networks’.57 If this is true then, in the Montaigu family, the factor ‘Latin Church’ routinely trumped the ‘family’ factor. What is more, there is, perhaps, reason to believe that the causa ‘Jabala’ had a long-term negative affect on the relationship between the brothers Garin and Peter, the Hospitaller and the Templar. In the almost-century between the Battle of Hattin (1187) and the fall of Acre (1291), and in contrast to the twelfth-century practices of both major military orders, no Hospitaller master and no Templar master travelled from the 54 

The Synodicum Nicosiense, ed. and trans. by Schabel, pp. 293–96 (no. 11). Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers, ii, 305 (no. 1754): ‘causam, que vertebatur inter P[etrum] de Monte Acuto, magistrum, et fratres domus militie Templi, ex una parte, et G[arinum] de Monte Acuto, magistrum, et fratres Hospitalis sancti Johannis Hierosolimitani, ex altera, super civitate Gibel et ejus districtu’. 56  Burgtorf, ‘The Hospitaller Lordship of Margat’, p. 28. 57  Wallette, ‘Social Networks and Community’, p. 135. 55 

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

291

East to the West.58 The sole exception is the Hospitaller Master Garin who, in September 1222, one year after the ‘Jabala’ trial, set sail for Italy in the company of the King of Jerusalem, the papal legate (Pelagius), the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the lieutenant master of the Templars, but not the actual master of the Templars, namely his brother Peter, which is rather surprising given the delegation’s overall high profile. Garin’s and Peter’s presumed falling-out over Jabala is, of course, only one potential reason for the latter’s failure to join the delegation. Given the perils of sea travel, Garin and Peter might have reasoned that it was sufficient for one of them to travel to the West. Furthermore, in 1222, Peter had only been serving as Templar master for three years, as opposed to his brother Garin’s fifteen-year tenure as Hospitaller master at that point in time; thus, perhaps it seemed prudent to send William Cadel, the Templars’ lieutenant master, who had already had a long and distinguished career in the order.59 Garin’s travels took him to the papal Curia, to the court of Frederick II, to Campania, England, France, Sicily, and perhaps Spain, then back to France, and, finally, in late 1225, back to the East (see Map 11.1).60 Apart from the fact that Garin’s travels underscore his family’s spatial reach, they also provide information on the family’s local network back home in Auvergne. According to a charter issued in June 1225 by Archembald VI of Bourbon at Mayet d’Ecole, near Clermont, the Hospitaller Master Garin had ceded to Archembald his house in Buys, in the forest of Tronçais in Auvergne; after Archembald’s death, this house was to be transferred to Garin’s order, namely the Hospitallers.61 Thus, in the course of his journey, Garin apparently took the opportunity to link his order’s business with that of his family, visited the area where he had grown up, and settled a matter pertaining to his legacy. Following his return to the East, Garin died, just before spring 1228, during the refortification of Sidon.62

58 

Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, pp. 241–42. Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, pp. 672–75. 60  Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, pp. 522–23 (with detailed references concerning these travels). 61  Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers, ii, 340 (no. 1818): ‘frater Guarinus de Monte Acuto, Dei gratia sancte domus Hospitalis Jerosolimitani magister humilis […], dedit et concessit michi domum suam de Buxo […] Post decessum vero meum, dicta domus de Buxo […] ad domum Hospitalis […] revertatur’. 62  ‘L’estoire de Eracles empereur’, p. 365 (bk 32, ch. 25; for the year 1227/28): ‘Dedens ce que l’ost esteit a Saete, fu morz li maistres de l’Ospital Garin de Mont Agu’. Cf. Burgtorf, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, p. 523. 59 

Jochen Burgtorf

292

Map 11.1. Map of Garin of Montaigu’s Travels (1222–25).

The following year, back home in Auvergne, Peter II, the oldest brother and presumably primary heir to the Montaigu estates, surfaced in a charter issued by Count Dauphin of Clermont, according to which the Count vowed fealty and gave the homagium to Louis IX of France. The document informs us that, should the Count violate the peace during the following seven years, five named noblemen and their estates would fall to the King, and the first of these five named noblemen is Lord Peter of Montaigu.63 Considering the French monarchy’s growing encroachment into the affairs of Auvergne, it is perhaps not so surprising that members of the Montaigu family were seeking their fortune elsewhere, such as the Latin East. With regard to Auvergne, Pierre Charbonnier has labelled the era between 1200 and 1350 as ‘the return of the king’,64 a phenomenon which clearly affected the Montaigu family network. 63  Baluze, Histoire généalogique de la maison d’Auvergne, ii, 250: ‘Pro dicta vero pace tenenda & firmiter observanda Domino Regi plegios dedimus Dominum P. de Monteacuto’ (and four additional local nobles). 64  Charbonnier, Histoire de l’Auvergne, p. 211.

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

293

But even in the East, there were storm clouds on the horizon. The so-called ‘crusade’ of Frederick II brought the rule of the five baillis to the kingdom of Cyprus and established a precarious truce between the kingdom of Jerusalem and al-Kamil, the Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt.65 The Templar Master Peter stood against the Emperor, pointing out that the Pope had prohibited him from showing Frederick any obedience.66 One should note that Frederick’s and al-Kamil’s truce, while it included the return of Jerusalem to the Christians, precluded the return of the Templars to their former headquarters on Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif which, for the time being, was to remain under Muslim control. According to a letter of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, inserted in the chronicle of Matthew Paris, things came to a head during a public assembly in Acre in the spring of 1229. The Emperor thundered against the Templar master in a speech intended to publicly ruin the latter’s reputation by means of, in the patriarch’s words, ‘many and vain pronouncements’ (‘variis et vanis sermocinationibus’).67 Unsubstantiated rumours that the Emperor was planning to abduct or murder the Templar master, or that the Templar master was planning to murder the Emperor, were apparently running rampant.68 These were tough times for the Templar master: not only had he lost his, albeit possibly estranged, brother, the Hospitaller Master Garin, in 1228; in 1229, he also lost his nephew Gerald who, as we have already seen, suffocated to death under his horse during the Battle of Nicosia.69 When, in 1230, the Emperor made his peace with the Pope, the Templar master promptly received an irritated papal letter stating that the pontiff had heard complaints 65 

Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, pp. 51, 57–61, 66, 70–71. ‘L’estoire de Eracles empereur’, p. 372 (bk 33, ch. 7): ‘Dont il respondirent tuit que volentiers, fors le maistre dou Temple, Pierre de Mont Agu, et celui del Ospital de Saint Johan, Bertran le Lorne. Ices .ii. li distrent por eauz et por lor freres: “Sires, il est bien seu que nos somes establi par l’Iglise de Rome, et a l’Iglise somes obedient; por quoi ne porriens faire vos comandemens ne vos sivre; car nostre sires li Apostoiles le nos a defendu”’. 67  Matthaei Parisiensis, ed. by Luard, iii, 182. Cf. Barber, The New Knighthood, pp. 133–34. 68  Filippo da Novara, Guerra di Federico II in Oriente, ed. and trans. by Melani, p. 102 (no. 41 [137]): ‘Et au jor avoit mout vaillans freres au Temple, frere Piere de Montagu, quy mout estoit vaillant et noble […] Et mout de gens disoyent que il [namely the emperor] voloit prendre […] le maistre dou Temple et autres gens, et les voloit mander en Puille. Et autre [fois] disoit l’on que il les voloit ocirre a .i. conseil ou il les avoit mandés et semons; et il s’en apersurent et il y alerent si esforceement que il ne l’osa faire’. On the counter-propaganda, see Barber, The New Knighthood, p. 134; but see also the critical annotations in Filippo da Novara, Guerra di Federico II in Oriente, ed. and trans. by Melani, pp. 276–27 (no. 147). 69  Filippo da Novara, Guerra di Federico II in Oriente, ed. and trans. by Melani, p. 116 (no. 49 [145]). 66 

294

Jochen Burgtorf

from his ‘much beloved son’, the Emperor, that the Templar master was disturbing the peace.70 Peter died shortly thereafter, in 1232.71 One of the surviving brothers, Archbishop Eustorg, was now also headed for trouble. Following the death of his nephew Gerald, Gerald’s widow, Eschiva of Montbéliard, decided to remarry, namely Balian of Ibelin, the lord of Beirut. What was apparently at stake, at least according to the Estoire de Eracles, was considerable real estate on Cyprus. 72 Thus, Eustorg’s intervention against this new marriage may actually, for once, have had to do with the advantage of his family. Officially, however, he opposed the union on the grounds of impermissible consanguinity between bride and groom. 73 It appears, though, that the couple was not impressed. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX confirmed Eustorg’s prohibition of the marriage since it had been in agreement with an earlier ruling of a papal legate, but then proceeded to summarize the couple’s reaction to this prohibition: ‘And so that this mule would be able to continue with no hindrance to rot in its own excrement, they forced you [Eustorg] under threats to leave the kingdom of Cyprus and flee to Acre’.74 And yet, the Pope eventually relented and granted a dispensation. Frederick II who, in the meantime, had, once again, lost the papal favour, indicated in one of his letters, inserted into the chronicle of Matthew Paris, that the Pope had not even received a considerable sum of money, as a bribe, to grant this dispensation; rather, Frederick mused, it was sufficient for the Pope to know that ‘the quality of the ensuing imperial wrath would

70 

Huillard-Bréholles and d’Albert de Luynes, Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi, iii, 266–67: ‘Gregorius, etc., magistro domus Templi Hierosolymitani […] Sane carissimus in Christo filius noster Fridericus Romanorum imperator illustris semper augustus et rex Sicilie gravem ad nos querimoniam destinavit quod tu non attendens varia discrimina que de guerra inevitabiliter imminent Terre Sancte, treugas violare contendis contra formam pacis’. 71  Città del Vaticano, BAV, MS Barb. Lat. 659, fols 1r–6v (Templar calendarium): ‘Eadem die (V kal. febr.) obiit frater Petrus de Monteacuto XV magister milicie Templi cuius anima requiescat in pace’; quoted in Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, p. 186 (n. 72). Malcolm Barber appears to assume that Peter of Montaigu passed in 1231; see Barber, The New Knighthood, p. 136. 72  ‘L’estoire de Eracles empereur’, p. 376 (bk 33, ch. 10): ‘Geraut de Mont Agu, qui avoit esposée Eschive, la fille de Gautier de Mombliart, de par cui il tenoit grant terre en Chypre’. 73  Rey, Les familles d’Outre-mer, pp. 233–34, 379, 846. 74  Bullarium Cyprium, ed. by Schabel, i, 292–93 (no. d-6): ‘et ut iumenta in stercore suo liberius computrescat, te minis et terroribus regnum Cipri exire, ac in Accon […] fugere compulerunt’. Cf. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, iii, 629–30.

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

295

outweigh the lacking quantity of the bribe’.75 Overall, when it comes to the Montaigu family, Gregory IX does not appear in a flattering light: after his reconciliation with the Emperor, he had turned against the Templar Master Peter, and after his subsequent break with the Emperor, he abandoned Peter’s brother, Archbishop Eustorg. At least Eustorg was able to make good use of his exile. While in Acre, in 1238, in his capacity as vicar of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, he wrote to Theobald of Navarre and Champagne with some concrete suggestions for the forthcoming ‘Crusade of the Barons’.76 This was not the first and, as we shall see, also not the last time that Eustorg was directly involved with a crusading enterprise. This makes sense, given his role as the Archbishop of Nicosia on the strategically important island of Cyprus, and shows his family’s ongoing connection to the military expeditions intended to preserve Outremer for Latin Christendom. This connection also manifested itself back home in France. In 1236, Eustorg’s nephew, Bernard, became Bishop of Le Puy, the see of the famous papal legate of the First Crusade.77 When, in 1239, Louis IX of France solemnly received one of the most venerated relics of the Passion, the Crown of Thorns, at Villeneuve-L’Archevêque near Sens, Bishop Bernard of Le Puy, according to an eyewitness account, had travelled from Auvergne to attend this pivotal event which has been so superbly analysed by William Chester Jordan.78 That it was the episcopus Aniciensis and not Altissiodorensis, namely the Bishop of Le Puy and not Auxerre, even though Auxerre is much closer to Sens and its bishop, at the time, was also a Bernard, is evident from the sixteenth-century liturgy of the Feast of the Reception of the Holy Crown (11 August) which clearly speaks 75  Matthaei Parisiensis, ed. by Luard, iii, 86: ‘veruntamen quod quantitati vel numero defuit, odii nostri qualitas compensavit’. Cf. Rüdt de Collenberg, ‘Les dispenses matrimoniales’, pp. 58–59 (no. 2), 88 (no. 2); Rüdt de Collenberg, ‘Les Ibelins aux xiiie et xive siècles’, p. 130. 76  Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, i, cols 1012–13, here 1012: ‘E. miseratione divina Nicosiensis domini patriarchae Jerosolymitani vicarius […] archiepiscopi’. Cf. Rey, Les familles d’Outre-mer, p. 846. 77  Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, 73–74; Cubizolles, Le diocèse du Puy-en-Velay, pp. 208–09. 78  ‘Opusculum Galterii Cornuti’, ed. by Delisle and De Wailly, p.  30: ‘Exhilaratus rex plurimum cum matre sua et fratribus, assumptis secum […] Bernardo Aniciensi episcopo, et aliis baronibus et militibus quos habere subito potuit, festivus occurrit; in villa quae per quinque leucas distat a Senonis, et Villa Nova Archiepiscopi dicitur, thesaurum quem desideraverat cum nunciis invenit’; the text is also edited in Riant, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, i, 45–56, and in the same work, ii, 246–47 (excerpt from the Chronicle of St Catherine of the Mountain in Rouen). Cf. also Gallia christiana, ed. by De Sainte-Marthe, ii, col. 714; Cubizolles, Le diocèse du Puy-enVelay, pp. 208–09. Cf. Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, p. 108 and passim.

296

Jochen Burgtorf

of ‘Le Puy’.79 What is more, Louis IX took this opportunity to confer single thorns from the Holy Crown on those institutions represented at the occasion, among them the cathedral of Le Puy, and the respective translation charter has survived.80 For Bernard of Montaigu, whose family had such close ties to the Holy Land, this thorn from the Holy Crown must have held considerable personal significance. At home in Le Puy, Bernard’s diocese was not without troubles: in 1248, when the inhabitants of the city rose in opposition against him, Bernard did not hesitate to place them under the interdict, showing a resolve that was similar to that of his uncle, Archbishop Eustorg of Nicosia.81 Bernard died in 1248, shortly before Louis IX departed for his Crusade.82 He was buried in the church of Saint-Laurent. A description of his tomb can be found in a manu­script history, edited in the nineteenth century, of the early modern local chronicler Etienne Médicis (c. 1475–1565), which is based on a multitude of sources, including those apparently lost today.83 Bernard’s tomb was destroyed 79 

‘Opusculum Galterii Cornuti’, ed. by Delisle and De Wailly, p. 30 (n. 2); cf. Gams, Series episcoporum ecclesiae catholicae, p. 502. For the abovementioned sixteenth-entury liturgy, see Riant, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, ii, 39–40. 80  Riant, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, ii, 125 (no. LXVIII): ‘Ludovicus, Dei gratia Francie rex, dilectis suis decano & capitulo Aniciensi, salutem & dileccionem. Presentium tenore vobis significamus, quod die, qua suscepimus sacrosanctam Coronam spineam, que reverendo capiti Ihesu Christi Domini nostri fuit imposita tempore passionis, de Constantinopoli nobis allatam, nos dilecto & fideli nostro beato episcopo vestro, de eadem sancta Corona concessimus spinam unam, ob reverentiam beate Virginis, & honorem vestre ecclesie conferendam. Actum Senone, anno Domini Mo CCo tricesimo nono, mense augusto’; cf. Riant, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, i, p. clxxvii: in the nineteenth century, another medieval copy of this text was found in the reliquary of the Holy Thorn which, at the time of Paul Riant’s edition (in the 1870s), was kept at Saint-Etienne. Cf. Gallia christiana, ed. by De Sainte-Marthe, ii, col. 714, which transcribes Bernardo episcopo vestro (your bishop, Bernard) instead of beato episcopo vestro (your blessed bishop). Cf. also Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, p. 192 (dating this to 12 August 1239); Cubizolles, Le diocèse du Puy-en-Velay, p. 209. 81  Gallia christiana, ed. by De Sainte-Marthe, ii, col. 715: ‘His episcopus, recrudescentibus dissidiis cum Aniciensibus, eos debitum sibi obsequium exhibere negantes interdicto ecclesiastico illigavit’. 82  Gallia christiana, ed. by De Sainte-Marthe, ii, col. 714: ‘1245 […] Hoc ipso anno [sic; he died in 1248, not 1245] vivere desiit episcopus, ex Gallia Christiana fratrum Sammarthanorum. Attamen Bernardus Aniciensis episcopus adfuit anno 1248’. 83  Le livre ‘De Podio’, ed. by Chassaing, i, 89: ‘Bertrandus [sic, but in all other editions simply ‘B.’], vir discretus, affabilis atque facetus, | Sobrius & castus, pius & sine crimine fastus | Largus in expensis, presul jacet Aniciensis, | Hoc in sarcophago presens, ut monstrat imago, | Cui de peccatis veniam det fons pietatis’; cf. Gallia christiana, ed. by De Sainte-Marthe, ii, col. 715.

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

297

during the French Wars of Religion (1562–98), but the niche where the tomb had been located was discovered during restoration work in the choir area of the church.84 When Louis IX arrived on Cyprus for his Crusade, he was joined by Bernard’s uncle, Eustorg, the old Archbishop of Nicosia.85 Eustorg died in 1250 outside of Damietta, a place he had first laid eyes on decades earlier during the Fifth Crusade.86 It must be noted that, in addition to his voluntary and involuntary travels, Eustorg’s tenure as Archbishop of Nicosia, like that of his nephew, Bishop Bernard of Le Puy, was not without its trials and troubles. In 1231, Eustorg relinquished the heresy trial against the Greek Orthodox monks of the monastery of Kantara in the Keryneia Mountains of Cyprus to Andrew, a Dominican friar, who persuaded King Henry I of Cyprus to have thirteen of them burned at the stake, arguably one of the darker chapters in the history of medieval Christendom. Apparently shocked by this drastic action, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Nicaea consented to have his coreligionists on Cyprus subordinated to Latin ecclesiastical rule.87 And towards the end of his life, Eustorg found himself in the crosshairs of an investigation led by Odo of Châteauroux, the papal legate, who, in 1249, was performing an official visitation of the Latin Church on Cyprus. According to Odo’s assessment, Eustorg had completely neglected his church; he and his fellow bishops had employed the penalty of excommunication too liberally (an interesting parallel to the actions of Eustorg’s nephew, Bishop Bernard of Le Puy); they had promoted illiterate clerics to positions in their province; and they were giving precedence to secular affairs over spiritual matters.88 However, Odo appears to have underestimated Eustorg. From Pope 84  Audigier, Histoire d’Auvergne, i, 73–74; Cubizolles, Le diocèse du Puy-en-Velay, pp. 208–09. 85  ‘Chronique d’Amadi’, ed. by De Mas Latrie, p. 199 (for the year 1249): ‘A di 30 mazo, si partite el re di Franza per andar a Damiata et con lui el re del Cypro, ditto el grasso, et Eustorgio, arcivescovo de Nicosia’. 86  ‘Chronique d’Amadi’, ed. by De Mas Latrie, p. 200 (for the year 1250): ‘A di 28 april, morite a Damiata Eustorgio, arcivescovo de Nicossia’. 87  Coureas, The Latin Church in Cyprus, pp. 281–87. 88  The Synodicum Nicosiense, ed. and trans. by Schabel, pp. 160–73 (text E): ‘[§ 1] in tota Cypri ecclesia, non sine culpa maxima, invenimus omnino neglectum […] [§ 3] districtissime prohibemus ne ad excommunicandum sint faciles  […] [§  4] praecipimus  […] ut in suis ecclesiis magistros capellanos […] non sicut hactenus omnino illiteratos instituant […] [§ 8] Adjicimus […] ut tam archiepiscopi quam episcopi […] spiritualia temporalibus praeponentes, et non e converso’; for the dating, see Kedar, ‘Ecclesiastical Legislation’, p. 226.

298

Jochen Burgtorf

Innocent IV’s letter of 26 February 1249, one gathers that Eustorg had already complained to the pontiff about the behaviour of certain papal envoys, which is why the Pope assured him that, without explicit papal orders, no legate or envoy would have the authority to punish him with excommunication, interdict, or suspension.89 Thus, the support that Gregory IX had ultimately failed to provide to Eustorg was finally granted to him by Innocent IV. The history of the Montaigu family does, of course, not end with Eustorg. During the early fourteenth century, Odo of Montaigu served as Hospitaller prior of Auvergne for over twenty years, and he, too, was involved with making plans for a future Crusade. After 1314, he also took over the Templar goods in Auvergne, and it is perhaps noteworthy that there were apparently no members of the Montaigu family among the Templars arrested or deposed during the proceedings against the order in Auvergne.90 According to an eighteenthcentury text, Odo’s brother, a fellow by the typically Montaigu name of ‘Peter’, served as Abbot of Saint-Amable in Riom, another location in Auvergne.91 The Montaigu family thus continued to reach into various religious institutions. Some of these were closer to home, but others, like the Hospitallers, were only just beginning to take off as truly international organizations. What then were the particular characteristics of the Montaigu family network? It was extensive, at times closely knit, and not always discernible at first glance. It encompassed the nobility and the clergy of Auvergne, the nobility and clergy of the crusader states, and the two major international military orders, the Templars and the Hospitallers. Mobility, strategic marriages, as well as the correspondence of family members with associates from the Pyrenees to England, and throughout the Mediterranean world, ensured its functionality. At least with regard to three of its main characters, the Hospitaller Master Garin, the Templar Master Peter, and Archbishop Eustorg of Nicosia, family matters usually took a back seat to the interests of their respective religious institutions. These they defended, if need be, even against the emperor and the pope, assisting each other in the process whenever possible. 89 

Bullarium Cyprium, ed. by Schabel, i, 380–81 (no. e-41): ‘nullus a Sede Apostolica delegatus, vel subdelegatus ab eo, executor aut conservator datus ab eadem sede, seu a legatis ipsius, possit in te excommunicationis vel interdicti aut suspensionis sententiam promulgare, absque speciali sedis predicte mandato’. 90  Vaivre, ‘Odon de Montaigu’, pp. 577–614. 91  Gallia christiana, ed. by De Sainte-Marthe, ii, col. 389 (list of the abbots of SaintAmable in Riom): ‘XXI. Petrus II. de Monte-acuto frater Odonis de Monte-acuto majoris Arverniae prioris, an[no]. 1317’. Cf. Vaivre, ‘Odon de Montaigu’, p. 587.

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

299

Undoubtedly, the family’s roots in Auvergne were of particular importance. It was there that, in 1095, the First Crusade had been launched, and both Templars and Hospitallers had established themselves there rather early on.92 In the East, much of the family’s attention appears to have been focused on Cyprus, which comes as no surprise, given the island’s strategic importance for the Crusades. Beyond all this, the Montaigu family has not just left its traces in written sources. Eustorg of Montaigu’s Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Nicosia may today be known as the ‘Selimiye Mosque’, but it nonetheless remains one of the most outstanding examples of ‘French-style’ architecture in the former crusader states.93 And to this day, Odo of Montaigu’s Madonna in the Church of La Sauvetat-Rossille in Auvergne bears an inscription with his name.94 And that one thorn from the Crown of Thorns, as well as the charter that Louis IX of France had entrusted to Bernard of Montaigu in 1239, was rescued from Clermont to Saint-Etienne in 1793, during the French Revolution, by the Abbé Borie. Since 2012, one can admire it there, in a nineteenth-century reliquary made by the firm of Armand-Calliat in Lyon, in a new glass case which is set up in the Church of Sainte-Marie, a building designed by Etienne Boisson (1809–80) that is architecturally reminiscent of the Basilica of Saint Marc in Venice and, thus, of a place where the Crown of Thorns had stopped over on its way from Constantinople to Paris, a place that, much like the Montaigu family network, belongs in the space between Capetian France and Lusignan Cyprus.95

92 

Anglade, Histoire de l’Auvergne, pp. 110–15. Boas, Crusader Archaeology, p. 137; Folda, Crusader Art, p. 94. 94  Vaivre, ‘Odon de Montaigu’, pp. 578 (description), 584–85 (inscription): ‘+DOMINUS // HODO : DE MO / NTE : ACVTO // HOSPITALAR / IVS PRIOR A // LVERNHIE : F / ECIT : FIER // I HANC YMAG / INEM : AD H // ONOREM B / EATE : VI // RGINIS : GL / ORIOSE : A // NNO DOMINI / MILLESIM // O TRIENTE / SIMO DEC // IMO NONO : / DOMINVS // DEVS : IESVS / XPS : PER SV // AM SA[N]C[TA]M MI / SERICORDIAM CVSTODIAT : / EVM : IN : VITAM ETERNAM : AMEN’. In the transcription (Vaivre, ‘Odon de Montaigu’, p. 585), the preposition in before vitam eternam is missing; it is, however, clearly legible in the photo of the inscription. 95  Chambeyron, ‘La Sainte Epine à Notre-Dame’, pp. 38–57; Thiollière, Eglise Notre Dame, passim; ‘L’épine du Christ du Puy-en-Velay’; ‘La sainte épine du Christ retrouve la lumière’. 93 

300

Jochen Burgtorf

Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Sources Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Vaticana, MS Barberini Lat. 659 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 5998 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 11477–11484

Primary Sources Baluze, Etienne, Histoire généalogique de la maison d’Auvergne: Justifiée par chartres, titres, histoires anciennes, & autres preuves authentiques, vol. ii (Paris: Dezallier, 1708) Bullarium Cyprium, i: Papal Letters concerning Cyprus, 1196–1261, ed. by Christopher David Schabel, with an introduction by Jean Richard (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 2010) ‘Chronica Albrici monachi Trium Fontium a monacho Novi Monasterii Hoiensis interpolata’, ed. by Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, xxiii (Hannover: Hahn, 1874), pp. 631–950 ‘Chronique d’Amadi’, ed. by René Marie Louis de Mas Latrie, vol. i of Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1891) Delaville Le Roulx, Joseph, Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de S.  Jean de Jérusalem (1100–1300), vol. ii (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1897) ‘L’estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer’, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux, vol. ii (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1859), pp. 1–481 Filippo da Novara, Guerra di Federico II in Oriente (1223–1242), ed. and trans. by Silvio Melani (Napoli: Liguori, 1994) Gallia christiana, in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, qua series et historia archiepiscoporum, episcoporum et abbatum Franciae vicinarumque ditionum ab origine ecclesiarum ad nostra tempora deducitur, & probatur ex authenticis instrumentis ad calcem appositis, ed. by Denis de Sainte-Marthe, vol. ii (Paris: Ex Typographia Regia, 1720) Huillard-Bréholles, Jean-Louis-Alphonse, and Honoré Théodoric Paul Joseph d’Albert de Luynes, Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi sive constitutiones, privilegia, mandata, instrumenta quae supersunt istius imperatoris et filiorum eius: Accedunt epistolae paparum et documenta varia, vol. iii (Paris: Plon, 1852) Lalore, Charles, Les sires et les barons de Chacenay (Troyes: Lacroix, 1885) Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Marie-Adélaïde Nielen, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades, 18 (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 2003) Le livre ‘De Podio’, ou Chroniques d’Etienne Médicis, bourgeois du Puy, vol. i, ed. by Augus­ tin Chassaing (Le Puy-en-Velay: Imprimerie de M.-P. Marchessov, 1869) Martène, Edmond, and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, vol. i (Paris: Sumpti­ bus F. Delaulne, 1717)

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

301

Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica majora, ed. by Henry Richards Luard, vol. iii (1216–39), Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, 57.3 (London: Longman, 1876) Oliver of Paderborn, Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Pader­born und Kardinalbischofs von S. Sabina, Oliverus, ed. by Hermann Hoogeweg (Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1894) ‘Opusculum Galterii Cornuti, archiepiscopi Senonensis, de susceptione coronae spineae Jesu Christi’, in Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum Scriptores: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. xxii, ed. by Léopold Victor Delisle and Natalis de Wailly (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1860), pp. 26–32 La règle du Temple, ed. by Henri de Curzon (Paris: Renouard, 1886) Riant, Paul Edouard Didier, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae: Fasciculus documentorum minorum, ad Byzantina lipsana in Occidentem saecula XIIIa translata, spectantium, & historiam quarti belli sacri imperiique, gallo-graeci illustrantium, 2 vols (Geneva: Ernest Leroux, 1877–78) Röhricht, Reinhold, Studien zur Geschichte des fünften Kreuzzuges (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1891) The Synodicum Nicosiense and Other Documents of the Latin Church of Cyprus, 1196–1373, ed. and trans. by Christopher David Schabel (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 2001)

Secondary Studies Anglade, Jean, Histoire de l’Auvergne (Paris: Hachette, 1974) Audigier, Pierre, Histoire d’Auvergne, i: Projet de l’histoire d’Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand: Bellet, 1894) Barber, Malcolm, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994) Boas, Adrian J., Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East (London: Routledge, 1999) Bulst-Thiele, Marie Luise, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri: Unter­ suchungen zur Geschichte des Templerordens, 1118/19–1314, Abhandlungen der Akade­mie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Folge 3, 86 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974) Burgtorf, Jochen, The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars: History, Organization, and Personnel (1099/1120–1310), History of Warfare, 50 (Leiden: Brill, 2008) —— , ‘The Hospitaller Lordship of Margat’, in East and West in the Medi­eval Eastern Mediterranean II: Antioch from the Byzantine Reconquest until the End of the Crusader Principality, ed. by Krijnie N. Ciggaar and Victoria van Aalst, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 199 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 11–50 —— , ‘Das Netzwerk der Montaigus zwischen Okzident und Orient’, Ordines Militares: Yearbook for the Study of the Military Orders, 19 (2014 [2015]), 9–25 Carraz, Damien, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, 1124–1312: Ordres militaires, croisades et sociétés méridionales (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2005)

302

Jochen Burgtorf

Chambeyron, L’Abbé A., ‘La Sainte Epine à Notre-Dame de Saint-Etienne et une lettre du roi Saint Louis’, Revue du Lyonnais, 5th ser., 13–14 (1892), 38–57 Charbonnier, Pierre, Histoire de l’Auvergne des origins à nos jours: Haute et Basse-Auvergne, Bourbonnais et Velay (Clermont-Ferrand: De Borée, 1999) Claverie, Pierre-Vincent, L’ordre du Temple en Terre Sainte et à Chypre au xiiie siècle, 3  vols, Sources et études de l’histoire de Chypre, 53 (Nicosia: Centre de recherche scientifique, 2005) —— , ‘Stephen of Mezel, Bishop of Famagusta, and his Age (1244–1259)’, in The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm: Crusader to Venetian Famagusta, ed. by Michael Walsh, Tamás Kiss, and Nicholas Coureas (Budapest: Central European Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014), pp. 41–52 Coureas, Nicholas, The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997) Courtenay, William J., ‘The Collège de Montaigu before Standonck’, History of Universities, 22.2 (2008), 54–75 Cubizolles, Pierre, Le diocèse du Puy-en-Velay des origines à nos jours (Nonette: Créer, 2005) Delaville Le Roulx, Joseph, Les Hospitaliers en Terre Sainte et à Chypre (1100–1300) (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904) Edbury, Peter W., The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991) ‘L’épine du Christ du Puy-en-Velay va retrouver la lumière — à Saint-Etienne’, L’Eveil: Le journal quotidien de la Haute-Loire, 26 February 2012, unpaginated Fedalto, Giorgio, La Chiesa latina in Oriente, ii: Hierarchia latina orientis (Verona: Mazziana, 1976) Folda, Jaroslav, Crusader Art: The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1099–1291 (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2008) Forey, Alan, The Templars in the Corona de Aragón (London: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1973) Fuhse, Jan A., ‘Gruppe und Netzwerk: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Rekonstruktion’, Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 16 (2006), 245–63 Gams, Pius Bonifacius, Series episcoporum ecclesiae catholicae (Regensburg: Josef Manz, 1886) Jordan, William Chester, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton: Princeton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1979) Kedar, Benjamin Z., ‘Ecclesiastical Legislation in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: The Statutes of Jaffa (1253) and Acre (1254)’, in Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R. C. Smail, ed. by Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff: Uni­ver­sity College Cardiff Press, 1985), pp. 225–30 Mas Latrie, Louis de, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, vol. iii (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1855) Mayer, Hans Eberhard, ‘Gleichnamige Geschwister im Mittelalter’, Archiv für Kultur­ geschichte, 89 (2007), 1–17 McNamara, Jo Ann, Gilles Aycelin: The Servant of Two Masters (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Uni­ver­sity Press, 1973)

Travels, Troubles, and Trials

303

Minervini, Laura, ‘Philip of Novara’, in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Alan V. Murray, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), iii, 955 Murray, Alan V., The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A  Dynastic History, 1099–1125 (Oxford: Prosopographica et Genealogica, 2000) Nicholson, Helen J., ‘Eracles’, in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Alan V. Murray, 4 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2006), ii, 405 Prawer, Joshua, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972) Prelog, Jan, ‘A[lberich]. v[on]. Troisfontaines’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols (München: Artemis Verlag, 1977–99), i, col. 282 Rey, Emmanuel-Guillaume, Les familles d’Outre-mer de Du Cange (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1869) Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­ sity Press, 1997) Rüdt de Collenberg, Wipertus-Hugo, ‘Les dispenses matrimoniales accordées à l’Orient Latin selon les Registres du Vatican d’Honorius III à Clément VII (1283–1385)’, Mé­ langes de l’Ecole française de Rome: Moyen-Age, Temps modernes, 89.1 (1977), 11–93 —— , ‘Les Ibelins aux xiiie et xive siècles: Généalogie compilée principalement selon les registres du Vatican’, Epeteris tou Kentrou Epistemonikon Ereunon, 9 (1977–79), 117–265 ‘La sainte épine du Christ retrouve la lumière’, La Gazette de la Loire, 654 (2013), unpaginated Schützeichel, Rainer, ‘Ties, Stories, and Events: Plädoyer für eine prozessuale Netz­werk­ theorie’, Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 22 (2012), 341–57 Thiollière, Eloi, Eglise Notre Dame, Saint-Etienne (Lyon: Imprimerie Lescuyer, 1969) Vaivre, Jean-Bernard de, ‘Odon de Montaigu, prieur d’Auvergne de l’ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem au xive siècle’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 136.3 (1992), 577–614 Wallette, Anna, ‘Social Networks and Community in the Viking Age’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 158 (2010), 135–52

An Upstart without Prospects? The Familial Context of Renaud of Châtillon and its Implications Paul F. Crawford

R

enaud of Châtillon has been a rather despised figure in the twentiethand twenty-first-century historiography of the Crusades.1 The general view of him, in academic and popular literature alike, is best summed up by this passage from a well-known mid-twentieth-century Crusade history: In 1153, while Nur ed-Din’s attention was fixed upon Damascus and while King Baldwin and his army lay before Ascalon, the Princess of Antioch decided her own destiny. Amongst the knights that followed King Louis of France to the Second Crusade was the younger son of Geoffrey, Count of Gien and Lord of Châtillonsur-Loing. Reynald of Châtillon had no prospects in his own country; so he stayed behind in Palestine when the Crusaders returned home. There he took service under the young King Baldwin, whom he accompanied to Antioch in 1151. The widowed princess soon took notice of him. He seems to have remained in her principality, no doubt in possession of some small fief; and it may have been his presence that induced her to refuse the husbands suggested for her by the king and the emperor. In the spring of 1153 she decided to marry him. Before she announced her intention she asked permission of the king; for he was official guardian of her  

* This study builds on work done by Bernard Hamilton and the present author in the course of a joint project to re-examine the life and importance of Renaud of Châtillon. 1  The toponymic refers to Châtillon-sur-Loing (modern Châtillon-Coligny), not Châtillon-sur-Marne as was once thought. See for example Richard, ‘Aux origines d’un grand lignage’, p. 416. Paul F. Crawford ([email protected]) California Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 305–322 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112977 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

306

Paul F. Crawford

state and the overlord of her bridegroom. Reynald hastened to Ascalon, where the king’s camp had just been established, and delivered Constance’s message. Baldwin, knowing Reynald to be a brave soldier, and, above all, thankful to be relieved of the responsibility for Antioch, made no difficulty. As soon as Reynald arrived back in Antioch the marriage took place and Reynald was installed as prince. It was not a popular match. Not only the great families of Antioch but also the humbler subjects of the princess thought that she was degraded by giving herself to this upstart.2

If we are to accept this account, then, Renaud of Châtillon was an ‘upstart’, with ‘no prospects in his own country’, a petty vassal of a wilful princess who married for — it is hinted — nothing more significant than sexual attraction. Thus Sir Steven Runciman introduced his readers to Renaud of Châtillon in the second volume of his magnificently written, but deeply flawed History of the Crusades, in 1952. Renaud was someone whom a reader might expect to fail, someone who could be expected to blunder through the delicate networks of political and military power in the Levant and to bring down clumsy disaster on its inhabitants. Runciman was certainly preparing his readers to accept this narrative, and he did a very good job of instilling it not just in the popular consciousness (as epitomized by the regrettable film Kingdom of Heaven), but into the mainsteam of Crusade scholarship as well, where it continues to reside.3 Serious Crusade historians have recently described Renaud as an ‘adventurer’4 and merely ‘a young French knight’ whose career ‘displayed quite special brutality’.5 Semi-popular historians are even less complimentary: ‘As Lord of Kerak’, says one, ‘Reginald […] came to personify all that was bad in the

2  Runciman, A History of the Crusades, ii, 281. There is no particular evidence for assuming that Renaud stayed in Antioch merely because he had been given ‘some small fief ’. 3  Time and space do not permit more than a near-random sampling of recent negative attitudes towards Renaud (or Reginald or Reynald, as his name is sometimes rendered). It should be noted that some of the most recent scholarly historians have begun to take a more judicious attitude towards Renaud; for example, Thomas Asbridge characterizes Renaud as ‘a handsome young French knight and crusader of aristocratic birth but limited material means’ who, although ‘often criticized by contemporaries and historians alike for his reckless ambition, lack of diplomacy and tempestuous brutality […] proved to be a formidable warrior who […] would offer staunch opposition to Islam’: Asbridge, The Crusades, p. 252. 4  Tyerman, God’s War, p. 195; Tyerman does acknowledge Renaud’s success as a military and geopolitical leader elsewhere. 5  Phillips, Holy Warriors, p. 108. In an earlier book, however, Phillips had recognized that ‘con­trary to William of Tyre’s asides, Reynald was from a noble French family, rather than the lowly stock that the writer (who disliked him strongly) suggested’: Phillips, The Crusades, p. 202.

An Upstart without Prospects?

307

Christian kingdom’;6 he was a man who ‘had none of the burning religious zeal of the knights who had traveled to the Holy Land with the First Crusade but was a young opportunist seeking an opening in a new land that offered opportunities unavailable at home in France’.7 Popular attempts at history are often even more negative, particularly if their authors have a self-assumed debunking mission. In one popular history of the Templars, one finds the following, typical description of Renaud: De Ridefort’s closest ally was a murderous and dishonorable liar named Reynald of Chatillon. Reynald of Chatillon (confusingly referred to as Reginald in some books) was something of a maniac, and he screwed up everything he touched. He was no fit company for the king or de Ridefort. On a lighter note, he’d been imprisoned for ransom once by the Muslims, a common practice with a captured lord. After 16 years, no one liked him well enough to put together the ransom money, and so the exasperated Muslims let him go. Afterward, he ran around from then until his death, starting wars everywhere he went, breaking treaties, killing Muslim pilgrims, pillaging caravans that were traveling under a pass from both Saladin and the king of Jerusalem, and in general single-handedly making an all-out war with Saladin inevitable.8

That certainly does not describe a very admirable or impressive person. But is all this fair, or even accurate? Particularly, to focus on the original passage from Runciman, was Renaud really just ‘an ordinary knight’, an ‘upstart’ with ‘no prospects’? In Sir Steven’s defence, he seems to have been relying, a bit uncritically, on William of Tyre here. William had in fact described Princess Constance’s choice of new husband as rather shocking: ‘Many […] marvelled that a woman so eminent, so distinguished and powerful, who had been the wife of a very illustrious man, should stoop to marry an ordinary knight’ (Figure 12.1).9 This followed 6 

Regan, Lionhearts, p. 42. Regan, Lionhearts, p. 54. It should be noted that Regan also acknowledges that Renaud did possess unusual strategic vision, p. 56. 8  Hodapp and von Kannon, The Templar Code for Dummies, pp. 122–23. It might be objected that books such as this (or films such as Kingdom of Heaven) are beneath the serious historian’s notice, but such media possess a powerful ability to shape discourse, even the discourse of professional historians in other specialties, and need to be addressed. 9  William of Tyre, A History of Deeds, trans. by Babcock and Krey, ii, XVII.26, p. 224; William of Tyre, Willelmi Tyrensis archiepiscopi, Chronicon, ed. by Huygens, p. 796: ‘[N]on sine multorum admiratione quod tam preclara, potens et illustris femina et tam excellentis uxor 7 

308

Paul F. Crawford

a prior slur on the Princess’s judgement and, perhaps, lack of sexual restraint: ‘the Lady Constance […] after the fashion of women, had refused many distinguished nobles, [and] secretly chose as her husband Renaud de Châtillon, a knight in the pay of the king’.10 William of Tyre was a usually meticulous historian, but he was nonetheless not above slighting subjects he disliked through silence or by otherwise playing down their achievements. Here he is going rather further, though, and plainly accusing Renaud of Châtillon of lacking adequate standing to be a princess’s consort.11 Runciman, whose work has been characterized as literature rather than history by some critics (and who probably would himself have agreed with that assessment, at least to some degree),12 was building not just on William of Tyre’s verdict, but also on the scholarship of Marshall Baldwin, who (probably also relying on William) had characterized Princess Constance’s choice of Renaud as ‘unfortunate’, since he was a man with a ‘lack of standing’ and ‘of a turbulent viri militi quasi gregario nubere dignaretur’. It should be noted that there is a ‘weasel word’ there — quasi — which Babcock and Krey did not translate. Perhaps William was hedging himself a bit against criticism of this characterization. 10  William of Tyre, A History of Deeds, trans. by Babcock and Krey, ii, 224; William of Tyre, Willelmi Tyrensis archiepiscopi, Chronicon, ed. by Huygens, XVII.26, pp. 795–96: ‘[D]omina Constantia […] more femineo repulisset, Rainaldum de Castellione, quendam / stipendarium militem, sibi occulte in matirum elegit’. 11  On William of Tyre’s propensity to misrepresent people he dislikes by omission, see Hamilton, The Leper King, p. 7; Pryor, ‘The Eracles and William of Tyre’, p. 279; and Handyside, ‘Differing Views of Renaud de Châtillon’, p. 51. 12  Runciman himself said that ‘I was drawn [to history] by romantic imaginings. I’ve always liked stories’ — an admirable enough motivation to become a historian, though he confessed to a ‘wicked temptation’ to ‘put down what you’re quite sure did happen but you can’t prove did’; justifiably, he said that the Crusades were ‘one of the big stories of history’ and bemoaned the fact that ‘historians are now terrified of telling a story […]. They forget that the word “history” means “story”. […] I rather like the idea of writing a story’. Plante, ‘Profiles: Historian: Sir Steven Runciman’, pp. 67, 77–78. Valuable and legitimate as this approach may be (and it certainly is), it has its dangers. Krey, ‘Review of A History of the Crusades, iii’, pp. 591–93, said that the set ‘deserves all the encomiums it has received in literary circles’, but then remarked that ‘when the author leaves his political-ecclesiastical narrative and ventures into the analytical summary of effects […] he loses the admiration of this reviewer. […] [Runciman’s verdict on the Crusades] may be appropriate in rounding out a literary tragedy, but is it history?’. Others have expressed similar reservations about Runciman’s work as a historian. ‘It is not difficult to read Runciman’s artfully structured and stylish historical trilogy as a novel’, wrote Irwin, ‘Saladin and the Third Crusade’ p. 146. Perhaps Bernard Hamilton puts it best when he says, referring to Runciman’s treatment of Baldwin IV’s reign, that ‘though I now disagree with his account […], I still think that his History is one of the great literary works of English historical writing’. Hamilton, Leper King, p. 2.

Figure 12.1. Offspring of Constance, Princess of Antioch, and Raymond of Poitiers (above); Ancestors of Constance, Princess of Antioch (below).

An Upstart without Prospects? 309

Paul F. Crawford

310

and unruly disposition’, someone ‘destined to waste his good qualities and to bring disaster to the Latin east’. Like Runciman, Baldwin accepted William’s critique of Constance’s wisdom, agreeing that she fell prey to womanly weaknesses in choosing Renaud, who ‘was a brave and dashing warrior and a handsome man. It is not difficult to understand why the young widow preferred him to less attractive men of higher estate’.13 But are Runciman’s and Baldwin’s characterizations, as closely as they echo William of Tyre, defensible? If not, what are the implications — both for our understanding of Renaud himself and also of the wider Latin East — of Renaud’s familial context? Let us explore that context to find out, focusing for the sake of time and space on just one aspect of their characterization of him — that he was a landless upstart, an adventurer without useful connections or prospects — and then using the results of the investigation to examine a net of marital relationships amongst French, Hungarian, Byzantine, and other dynasties by the crusader states of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We may also note the implications of these relationships in ways encouraged by Jonathan Riley-Smith, in his magisterial The First Crusaders, 1095–1131, and by John W. Barker in a fascinating but as-yetunpublished study of the Montferrat family and its marriage alliances.14 * * * First, let us turn to Renaud’s own family, the lords of Donzy, a noble family from Burgundy, the ‘heart of western Europe in the Middle Ages’ and ‘the spiritual heart […] of medieval France’, as Constance Bouchard has called it (Figure 12.2).15 Jonathan Riley-Smith has shown that crusaders were principally recruited from amongst certain families, especially in northern France.16 The lords of Donzy were one such family, and not at all a minor one, as Jean Richard has demonstrated at length — they claimed descent from a Gallo-Roman senatorial family, the Paladii.17 The anonymous author of the Gesta Ambaziensium dominorum even considered that to qualify as ‘royal blood’, when he was discussing a marriage made by Renaud’s sister Agnes.18 Though those distant honours might 13 

Baldwin, ‘The Latin States’, p. 540. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders; Barker, ‘Crusading and Matrimony’. 15  Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, pp. 31, 11. 16  Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders; see especially Conclusion and Postscript, pp. 189–95. 17  Richard, ‘Aux origines d’un grand lignage’, pp. 409–17. 18  Richard, ‘Aux origines d’un grand lignage’, p. 411; Gesta Ambaziensium dominorum, ed. 14 

An Upstart without Prospects?

311

Figure 12.2. Simplified Family Trees for Renaud of Châtillon.

easily have been dissipated half a millennium later, and we need not assume that the claim of royalty was necessarily more than a legend, still, as Richard shows, the Donzy line continued to do very well.19 Constance Bouchard has noted that ‘social position was naturally the clearest for those families who had held positions of high rank for the longest time’, and the House of Donzy had done so.20 In Richard’s words, ‘Les Donzy […] s’étaient approchés de bien près de la couronne’.21 Renaud’s great-great-grandmother, Matilda of Chalon, was probby Marchegay and Salmon, p. 203 (the reference in Richard to the Marchegay and Salmon edition is mistakenly given as p. 199). 19  Richard, ‘Aux origines d’un grand lignage’, passim. 20  Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, p. 27. 21  Richard, ‘Aux origines d’un grand lignage’ p. 417 (‘The Donzys […] had approached very near the crown’).

312

Paul F. Crawford

ably sister-in-law to Duke Henry I of Burgundy (the younger brother of Hugh I Capet),22 before marrying Count Geoffrey I of Semur (modern Semur-enBrionnais), from whom Renaud was descended. Renaud was a first cousin twice removed to Count Hugh II of Chalon, who married Constance of Burgundy, daughter of Duke Robert I of Burgundy and granddaughter of King Robert II of France; after Count Hugh II died, Constance married King Alfonso VI of Castile. Renaud was also a first cousin twice removed to St Hugh of Cluny, one of the most prominent eleventh-century churchmen and a scion of the highest Burgundian nobility, an Abbot of Cluny, an advisor to Pope Gregory VII and his circle, a mediator in the Investiture Controversy, a mentor to Pope Urban II,23 and a thoroughly powerful and influential figure of wide popularity. Renaud’s paternal grandfather, Geoffrey II, was both Count of Chalon-surSaône and Lord of Donzy, and was on the First Crusade, apparently in the later wave usually referred to as the ‘Crusade of 1101’.24 Renaud himself was apparently born sometime between 1120 and 1125.25 Peter of Blois, in his hagiographic treatment of Renaud, the Passio Reginaldis, wroted that Renaud, as a youth, was betrothed to the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, though that betrothal did not result in marriage (Peter indicated, whether accurately or not, that this was because Renaud himself had rejected the liaison).26 Peter named neither duke nor daughter, but presumably the Duke would have been Duke Hugh II of Burgundy, who lived from 1084 to 1143 and had at least ten surviving children.27 Among these were numbered the future Count Odo II of Burgundy (who married Marie of Blois/Champagne, a daughter of one of the great aristocratic houses of northern France,), two 22 

Apparently because Duke Henry married Lambert of Dijon/Chalon and Adelaide’s daughter Gerberge, who seems to have been Matilda’s sister. This is pre-1000 and not easy to determine. 23  Urban II, as Otto de Lagery, had served at one time as Prior of Cluny under St Hugh. In this context, it is unsurprising that Peter of Blois, writing in the late twelfth century, speaks of Renaud of Châtillon as if he were living out the ideals of Bernard’s military orders — Renaud came from the very milieu where those ideas had incubated. 24  See Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, pp. 44, 125, 134, 207; see also Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, pp. 313 and 327, where Geoffrey II is discussed. 25  For this and a number of other biographical details of Renaud’s life, I am in debt to Bernard Hamilton, whose yet-unpublished biography of Renaud forms one part of a book project with which I am associated. 26  Peter of Blois, Passio Raginaldi principis Antiochie, ed. by Huygens, p. 42. 27  Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, pp. 259–60; he reigned as Duke from 1103.

An Upstart without Prospects?

313

bishops, an archbishop, several counts and their wives, and Queen Sibyl of Sicily, wife of Roger of Sicily. At least four of Hugh II’s daughters — Mathilda, Aremburge, Ducissa, and Sybil — would have been about the right age to have been betrothed at one time or another to a young Renaud. Moreover, Duke Hugh II of Burgundy apparently did marry another of his daughters to a member of the Donzy family: Clemence of Burgundy seems to have been the wife of Geoffrey III of Donzy, Renaud’s brother.28 So a liaison between Burgundy and Donzy was by no means out of the question. And the suggestion that a Duke of Burgundy would deliberately have arranged a childhood betrothal of his daughter to a mere upstart hired knight with ‘no prospects’ might charitably be called far-fetched. Renaud’s nieces, nephews, and other junior relatives made similarly high marriage alliances. His sister (possibly named Alice) married Count Stephen I of Sancerre, who was the brother of Count Henry II of Champagne and who had been under consideration as a husband for Baldwin IV of Jerusalem’s daughter Sybil until he declined; Stephen returned to the Holy Land a second time to die on the Third Crusade. His nephew Hervé III, lord of Gien and Donzy, also went on the Third Crusade and may also have married a Champagnois heiress.29 Hervé III’s son Hervé IV (Renaud’s great-nephew) married Matilda of Courtenay, daughter of Peter II of Courtenay, emperor (in name only) of the Latin Empire of Constantinople and half-sister to Yolanda of Courtenay, wife of King Andrew II of Hungary. Their daughter Agnes — Renaud’s great-greatniece — would marry Philip, dauphin of France and eldest son of the man who would become King Louis VIII of France. Although it was chronologically impossible for these liaisons to have been considered when someone evaluated Renaud’s status in the middle of the twelfth century, still they show the sorts of marriages members of his family did in fact make. Renaud’s own marriages are not out of place amongst them. The greatest lineages in Burgundy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were, more or less in order, the dukes of Burgundy, the counts of Burgundy (a different title30), the counts of Chalon, and the counts of Nevers.31 The Donzy line was associated with the counts of Chalon. If perhaps the Donzy line was cadet — as Jean Richard and Constance Brittain Bouchard have noted that 28 

Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, p. 327. Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, pp. 327–28. 30  Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, p. 33. 31  Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, p. 33. 29 

314

Paul F. Crawford

it was32 — it was, all the same, cadet to a dynasty of great power and prestige, neither ‘upstart’ nor ‘without prospects’.33 It was hardly surprising that Renaud should go East with Louis VII and the Second Crusade about 1147; far from idly wandering off to seek his fortune, he was acting as he was expected to do, within the context of the great families of Burgundy, who were already establishing traditions of support for crusading and the crusader states, and to which he belonged.34 Upon arrival, Renaud naturally took his place at once amongst the foremost secular commanders of the forces of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as one would expect to be the case with a member of a family as noble and connected as his; William of Tyre, who as we have seen was no friend of Renaud’s, nonetheless notes that he was one of the main lay commanders at the siege of Ascalon in 1153. As Bernard Hamilton has pointed out, of the nine lay commanders mentioned here by William, seven were tenants-in-chief of the Crown; only Renaud and Walter of Saint-Omer were not, and they appear in the list because they were considered of a similar status and ability — ‘judged worthy to receive salaries from the lord king’,35 in William’s words, apparently for their proven abilities. Another token of their similar esteem is the fact that both men went on to marry princesses of the Latin East, Walter the Princess of Galilee and Tiberias, and Renaud the Princess of Antioch.36 If Renaud thereafter went to serve in the Principality of Antioch, that is more likely an indication of his dedication to the cause and of his perceived competence and usefulness than 32 

Richard, ‘Aux origines d’un grand lignage’, p. 412; Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, p. 327. 33  It was also squarely situated in a region which incubated the concept of the militaryreligious order — the birthplaces of Bernard of Clairvaux and, apparently, Hugh of Payens were nearby, as was Cîteaux, the central abbey of the Cistercian Order. The region also supplied very many of the great families and individuals who supported crusading over the centuries, including Thibaut of Champagne, at whose court the Fourth Crusade was born, according to Geoffrey of Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. by Smith, i.3. 34  There was even a tradition in Burgundy that the very first Crusade vows had been taken not at Clermont but at Autun, in Burgundy, see Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, p. 55; whether that is true or not, crusading certainly was deeply rooted in the region. 35  William of Tyre, Chronicle, trans. by Hamilton and Mallett, XVII:21. Babcock and Krey render this as ‘served the king for pay’ (p. 218); the Latin is ‘stipendia apud dominum regem merebant’. Much depends on the precise meaning intended by William for merere, which is a bit ambivalent, including both the possible senses of simply ‘serving for pay’ and also of ‘deserving’ or ‘being worthy of ’. 36  On Walter of Saint-Omer, see du Cange, Taranne, and Rey, Les familles d’Outre-mer, p. 444.

An Upstart without Prospects?

315

of his supposedly low status. That the young but widowed Princess Constance of Antioch, previously married to Raymond of Poitiers, was then drawn to him might well be partly because he possessed charm and charisma or some other qualities that made him attractive to women, but it cannot reasonably be said that the Princess was merely indulging herself, or marrying beneath herself, in wishing to wed such a man as Renaud. Charisma and good looks can coexist easily enough with family connections, power, and ability, after all, and indeed the two sets of qualifications may enhance one another. * * * So much for Renaud’s own ancestry and personal status, which were clearly and unimpeachably high, notwithstanding aspersions cast on them from the twelfth century on. What was the station of his children? How were they received by their peers? Into what level of society were they integrated, and where? The answers to these questions are in some ways even more interesting than the answer to the question about Renaud’s own background and standing, for they reveal much not just about Renaud and whether or not he was an ‘upstart with no prospects’; they also sketch a picture of a thoroughly interconnected noble society, from France to Hungary to Constantinople to Jerusalem, and show a northern French crusader nobility successfully integrating itself into the dynasties of eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. In addition, they challenge our assumptions about events like the Fourth Crusade, which is all too often painted as a collision of two entirely separate societies, with the Western one often depicted — both popularly and all too often in scholarly writing too — as preying on the Eastern. Yet that latter view does not represent reality as it was experienced by the men and women involved in the leadership of crusading in the thirteenth century. So let us examine Renaud’s children and more distant descendants. With Princess Constance of Antioch, Renaud is usually thought to have had two children, Agnes and Joan ( Jeanne), though as we shall see, that is not the whole story. Joan is a little difficult to trace, but apparently in 1186 or early 118737 she became the second wife of Boniface I of Montferrat, the same Boniface who was 37  Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Nielen, p. 172. The reference is found in just one of the manu­script Nielen edited, Città del Vaticano, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 7806, and is in a somewhat defective context — ‘Maria’ and Joanna are listed as daughters of Renaud’s, but ‘Maria’ is apparently an error for Agnes, as Maria of Antioch was Renaud’s stepdaughter, not full daughter. Nielen speculates in a footnote that the author was perhaps confused and intending

316

Paul F. Crawford

the candidate-apparent for the throne of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, but who was thwarted after the Fourth Crusade by the Venetians and who became King of Thessalonika instead. Not a bad match for the daughter of an ‘upstart’, even by a princess-wife: an almost-emperor who became a king in his own right, whose family included two Byzantine co-emperors (Renier and Conrad, the later also an elected if uncrowned King of Jerusalem) and a consort of the Queen of Jerusalem (William Longsword), to name just three prestigious members. This marriage linked Prince Renaud to the powerful Montferrat family,38 the Byzantine imperial family, and the royal family of Jerusalem. Renaud’s and Constance’s other daughter, Agnes, is easier to trace, and even more spectacularly successful in her marriage and descendants. She married a Hungarian prince at the Byzantine court in 1170, a man the Byzantines called Alexius but who later became King Bela III of Hungary, one of Hungary’s greatest rulers and a wealthy and powerful figure in twelfth-century Europe, a man who at one time Manuel I envisioned as succeeding him to the imperial throne.39 The marriage appears to have been facilitated by Agnes’s stepsister (and Renaud’s stepdaughter with Constance), the Empress Maria of Antioch,40 who had been married to Manuel I on Christmas 1161 in a union that, given Bernard Hamilton’s correction of the date of Renaud’s capture to 23 November 1161,41 must have been negotiated by Renaud himself just before his capture. Agnes (called Anna by the Byzantines) and Bela had several children — Renaud’s grandchildren. The first was King Emeric of Hungary (whose own son was child-king Ladislas III). The second was Margaret (called Maria by the Byzantines), who first married the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos, and after that Boniface I of Montferrat, King of Thessalonika and her aunt Joan’s former husband; Margaret became the mother of King Demetrius of Thessalonika. The third was King Andrew II of Hungary, another powerful European monarch who was a major participant in the first wave of the Fifth Crusade,42 one to describe Maria’s sister Philippa, but the course of their lives, and the information given in the Lignages, is not comparable. Andronicus Comnenus, Philippa’s seducer, did not become King of Thessalonika; Boniface of Montferrat did, and Joanna/Jeanne is listed as having married the ‘re de Salonichio’. 38  Barker, ‘Crusading and Matrimony’. 39  Nicetas Choniates, O City of Byzantium, trans. by Magoulias, p. 96. 40  Apparently born Margaret-Constance. 41  Hamilton, ‘Reynald of Châtillon’, pp. 98–99, n. 13. 42  And who brought the Teutonic Knights into Hungary, imitating his grandfather’s use

An Upstart without Prospects?

317

of whose daughters (Yolanda) married King James I of Aragon, and the other of whom was St Elizabeth of Hungary, briefly wife of Landgrave Ludwig IV of Bavaria until he died on the Sixth Crusade. The fourth was Constance, who married King Ottokar I of Bohemia; one of their daughters was St Agnes of Bohemia, for a time betrothed to Henry, son of Emperor Frederick II (who himself also intended at one point to marry her). There was, in addition, a third child of Renaud’s and Constance’s, whose very existence is usually overlooked and who is attested to (in passing and not quite accurately) by Niketas Choniates: a son named Baldwin, who served his half-brother-in-law Manuel I as a Byzantine commander and who was killed at the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176.43 Given that a contingent from his sister’s Hungarian kingdom was serving in the Byzantine army on this campaign, it was perhaps not surprising that Baldwin would have been present, but it is another interesting indication of the interpenetration of these families, and the acceptability of Renaud’s offspring to the Byzantine court, and it suggests that our understanding of Renaud’s relationship with Manuel I and the Byzantines needs careful re-evaluation. So much for Renaud’s children with Princess Constance. It is an illustrious roll call. What about his children with his second wife, Stephanie de Milly, Lady of Oultrejourdain? Stephanie was one of the greatest and most desirable of the heiresses of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. She had been married first to Humphrey III of Toron, by whom she had Humphrey IV of Toron, later to marry King Baldwin IV’s sister Isabella. When he died, she married Miles de Plancy, seneschal of Jerusalem; they seem to have had no children, and after his murder, she was ‘on the market’ again. She had high-level connections with the Order of the Temple; her father, Philip of Milly (or ‘of Nablus’), had joined the Templars in 1166, after the death of his wife, and had briefly (1169–71) served as Grand Master before resigning to lead a mission to the Byzantines to negotiate a joint campaign against the Egyptians (on which mission he died).44

of the Templars on the north-western march of Antioch; one is tempted to wonder whether Andrew was influenced by Renaud’s earlier attempts to employ a military order. Certainly the idea was not original to Andrew. 43  See Nicetas Choniates, O City of Byzantium, trans. by Magoulias, pp.  96 and 102 (Choniates says that Baldwin was Maria’s brother, but he was surely her half brother); I am indebted to Bernard Hamilton for pointing this out to me. 44  Barber, The New Knighthood, pp. 106–07.

Paul F. Crawford

318

Baldwin IV, looking for a man of skill and proven reliability, settled on Renaud, who since the death of Constance in about 1167 had been a widower, to marry Stephanie. The marriage took place in or before June 1177, 45 and made Renaud the Lord of Oultrejourdain (Transjordan), a large and critically important holding that bisected the Muslim world and most especially placed Renaud as an obstacle squarely in the path of Saladin as the latter sought to unite the Near Eastern Muslim world under his own leadership. This was not an appointment to be made lightly by a King of Jerusalem as intelligent and perceptively aware of diplomatic and military necessities as Baldwin IV was. Whatever faults of judgement William of Tyre seemed to think Renaud bore, Baldwin must not have agreed. In 1181 or 1182, Rupen III of Armenia married Renaud’s stepdaughter Isabella, Stephanie’s daughter by Humphrey III.46 Given the familiarity Renaud had with the Armenians from his tenure as prince of Antioch, it seems highly unlikely that Renaud was not involved in negotiating this marriage, which linked his family, and with it the Kingdom of Jerusalem, more tightly to the nascent Armenian kingdom. Renaud and Stephanie themselves had at least two children: Renaud of Châtillon, named for his father but who apparently died young, and Alice, who was married in 1204, some seventeen years after Renaud’s death at the hands of Saladin, to Azzo VI of Este, the Guelph Lord of Ferrara, Italy. * * * Two sets of conclusions may be drawn from this investigation. First, these would be strange marriage alliances to be arranged for the children of an ‘upstart’ with ‘no prospects’. They are, however, much less surprising if one simply accepts that Renaud of Châtillon, despite those who were jealous of him or disliked him for reasons of their own, was highly born and well-connected by birth. Although one has to concede that occasionally royalty and nobility did make less-than-lofty marriages, it was not the norm (to put it mildly), and the record of Renaud’s children’s marriage alliances, even without any other evidence, would cast significant doubt on the notion that Renaud was an ‘upstart’ or a lowborn ‘adventurer’. Coupled with other evidence, they render that characterization of Renaud as indefensible and incredible. Let us put the idea permanently to rest. Renaud was neither an ‘ordinary knight’ nor 45  46 

Hamilton and Mallett, as-yet-unpublished biography of Renaud. See Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Nielen, p. 66.

An Upstart without Prospects?

319

an ‘upstart’ with ‘no prospects’, but was rather an aristocrat whose connections, if not of the highest rank, were still quite suitably high. Second, there are other implications of Renaud’s familial connections that are worth bearing in mind. The marriages made by Renaud’s family show the degree to which the crusader states of the Latin East were thoroughly integrating themselves into Byzantium and eastern Europe, as well as western Europe.47 Artificial oppositions between East and West, as depicted by Sir Steven Runciman in A History of the Crusades or by certain modern national or religious chauvinists, are misguided and do violence to the historical record. This is particularly true in the case of the Fourth Crusade, which was not a shocking and unprovoked attack by a predatory, barbarous West on a defenceless and civilized East, but rather more in the nature of a family quarrel gone really bad. The rather tight interconnections between the families of leaders on all sides of the Fourth Crusade should likewise clarify that question. Scholars should place the crusader states, twelfth- and thirteenth-century alike, in their proper context — firmly situated in the political and familial relationships of an integrated Mediterranean and European world. In light of the marriage networks being built up around the eastern Mediterranean by the crusader aristocracy, perhaps even Richard the Lionheart’s suggestion about marrying his sister Joan(na) to Saladin’s brother Al-Adil — an attempt to solve military and political difficulties by marriage — is not as astonishing as some historians have suggested.48 Had the Christian civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean — Latin, Greek, and Armenian — not been steadily overrun by Muslim invaders in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries, this aristocratic intermingling would likely have fused them all into a much more unified culture, perhaps one without the eventual modern Catholic-Orthodox divide. Despite sometimes deepseated hostility by ordinary people, especially in the Greek East, and despite Byzantine practices which implied a rejection of each others’ sacraments, or explicitly rejected them (such as the common Byzantine habit of requiring Latin consorts to be rebaptized), the two sides, if sides they were, had so much in common that they really constituted an extended, if frequently dysfunctional, family. And if we are to understand them, they must be viewed as such. 47  Indeed, they posed, as they ought to have done given their position at the centre of Christianity’s history, a living opportunity for fusion and unity, and this point should not be overlooked in any book-length treatment of the subject. 48  For the marriage proposal, see The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir, trans. by Richards, p. 392.

320

Paul F. Crawford

Such a complete fusion was not to be, for a variety of reasons, and there is a temptation for modern historians, with our inheritance of national, ethnic, confessional, and other differences, to overlook this eager melding of dynasties in the High Middle Ages49 — a temptation to lock crusaders, Byzantines, and others into separate categories that fit the modern world better than the medieval. But (to point out something obvious that historians should nonetheless periodically remind themselves of ) our subjects did not live in the modern world. Theirs was a world of much more porous boundaries than ours. In short: as well as showing that we should be more careful in accepting the claims of twelfth-century archbishops and twentieth-century writers and historians about social status, Renaud’s familial context, especially in his children’s marriages, underscores the ways in which the crusader states really were living out Fulcher of Chartres’s claim that ‘we who were Occidentals have now become Orientals’;50 that by a century after 1099, the western European crusaders were well on their way to becoming comfortably integrated into the social and cultural milieu of the eastern Mediterranean. That process was aborted by the Muslim conquest of their states in 1291. But that did not mean it was not occurring.

49 

It should be noted that Byzantines had already been marrying Western princesses long before 1195; such intermarriage was not new even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Crusades merely accelerated the process. 50  Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, trans. by Ryan, ed. by Fink, III:xxxvii, p. 271.

An Upstart without Prospects?

321

Works Cited Primary Sources Choniates, Nicetas, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. by Harry Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1984) Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period, Part 2, the Years 541–89/1146–1193: The Age of Nur al-Din and Saladin, trans. by D. S. Richards, Crusade Texts in Trans­ lation, 15 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, trans. by Frances Rita Ryan, ed. by Harold Fink (New York: Norton, 1973) Geoffrey of Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople, in Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. by Caroline Smith (London: Penguin, 2008) Gesta Ambaziensium dominorum, in Chroniques d’Anjou, ed. by Paul Marchegay and André Salmon (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1856), i, 158–226. Lignages d’Outremer, ed. by Marie-Adélaïde Nielen, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades, 18 (Paris: L’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 2003) Peter of Blois, Passio Raginaldi principis Antiochie, ed. by R.  B.  C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 194 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002) William of Tyre, Chronicle, trans. by Bernard Hamilton and Alex Mallett (forthcoming) —— , Willelmi Tyrensis archiepiscopi, Chronicon, ed. by R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus Chris­ tianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 63 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986) —— , A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. by Emily Atwater Babcock and August Krey, 2 vols (New York: Columbia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1943)

Secondary Studies Asbridge, Thomas, The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (New York: Ecco Press, 2010) Baldwin, Marshall, ‘The Latin States under Baldwin III and Amalric I, 1143–1174’, in A History of the Crusades, ed. by Kenneth Setton (Madison: Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin Press, 1969), i: The First Hundred Years, ed. by Marshall Baldwin, pp. 528–61. Barber, Malcolm, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994) Barker, John W., ‘Crusading and Matrimony in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Dynastic Policies of Montferrat and Savoy’ (unpublished paper delivered at the Sixth Quadrennial Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, Istanbul, Turkey, 2004) Bouchard, Constance Brittain, Sword, Miter, and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980–1198 (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1987) Cange, Charles Du Fresne du, N. R. Taranne, and E. G. Rey, Les familles d’Outre-mer (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1869)

322

Paul F. Crawford

Hamilton, Bernard, ‘The Elephant of Christ: Reynald of Châtillon’, Studies in Church History, 15 (1978), 97–108 —— , The Leper King and his Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000) Handyside, Philip K., ‘Differing Views of Renaud de Châtillon: William of Tyre and L’Estoire d’Eracles’, in Deeds Done Beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Military Orders presented to Peter Edbury, ed. by Susan Edgington and Helen Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 43–52 Hodapp, Christopher, and Alice von Kannon, The Templar Code for Dummies (Hoboken: Wiley, 2007) Irwin, Robert, ‘Saladin and the Third Crusade: A Case Study in Historiography and the Historical Novel’, in Companion to Historiography, ed. by Michael Bentley (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 139–52 Krey, August C., ‘Review of A History of the Crusades, iii: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, by Steven Runciman’, American Historical Review, 60 (1955), 591–93 Phillips, Jonathan, The Crusades: 1095–1197 (Harlow: Longman, 2002) —— , Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades (New York: Random House, 2009) Plante, David, ‘Profiles: Historian: Sir Steven Runciman’, The New Yorker, 3 November 1986, 53–80 Pryor, John, ‘The Eracles and William of Tyre: An Interim Report’, in The Horns of Hattïn: Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, Jerusalem and Haifa, 2–6 July 1987, ed. by B. Z. Kedar ( Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, Israel Exploration Society; London: Variorum 1992), pp. 270–93 Regan, Geoffrey, Lionhearts: Richard I, Saladin, and the Era of the Third Crusade (New York: Walker, 1998) Richard, Jean, ‘Aux origines d’un grand lignage: Des Palladii à Renaud de Châtillon’, in Media in Francia…: Recueil de mélanges offert à Karl Ferdinand Werner (Maulévrier: Hérault-Éditions, 1989), pp. 409–18 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­ sity Press, 1997) Runciman, Sir Steven, A History of the Crusades, ii: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100–1187 (London: Folio Society, 1994) Tyerman, Christopher, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Cam­bridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006)

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14? Helen J. Nicholson

B

etween the years 1307 and 1312 the military-religious Order of the Temple was investigated on charges of heresy and dissolved by papal provision. The reasons for the trial and dissolution of the order are still debated among scholars. Many argue that the underlying cause of the order’s demise was the government of King Philip IV of France and his ministers’ policies, rather than faults within the order itself.1 The purpose of this article is not to consider the origins of the proceedings against the Templars but their aftermath: what became of the surviving Templars after the dissolution of their order? In 1307–08, Templars were arrested in France, Cyprus, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, the Low Countries, England, Scotland, and Ireland and interrogated on charges of heresy. There were apparently no Templars in Greece, Sicily, or eastern Europe, and no Templars were arrested in Germany. As there was no complete list of Templar membership in 1307, we cannot know what happened to every individual after the arrests; but in Britain and Ireland — where there were 144 Templars at the time of the arrests — many Templars died during the trial, a very few disappeared, and the majority were sent to 1 

Barber, ‘The Trial of the Templars Revisited’; Given, ‘Chasing Phantoms’; papers by Barber (‘Introduction’), Forey (‘Could Alleged Templar Malpractices have Remained Undetected for Decades?’), de la Torre (‘The Monetary Fluctuations in Philip IV’s Kingdom of France’), Krämer (‘Terror, Torture and the Truth’), Streeter (‘The Templars Face the Inquisition’), and Provost (‘On the Margins of the Templars’ Trial’) in Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars; Théry, ‘Une hérésie d’État’; Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience’. Helen J. Nicholson ([email protected]) Cardiff Uni­ver­sity

The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips CElama 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 323–347 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.112978 BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

324

Helen J. Nicholson

monasteries to do penance, for (in Alan Forey’s words) ‘offences which almost all of them had consistently denied’.2 Perhaps the most evocative image of the Templars’ fate is that with which Malcolm Barber opened his history of the Order of the Temple: Ludolph of Sudheim’s (or Suchem’s) account of his encounter with two former Templars on the shores of the Dead Sea in around 1340. These two had been captured when the city of Acre fell to the Mamluks in 1291, had been living in the mountains, worked for the sultan cutting timber, and had wives and children: ‘they had no idea that the Order of the Temple had been suppressed in 1312 and that the Grand Master had been burned to death as a relapsed heretic two years later’. The sultan released them and their wives and children, and they were repatriated.3 As with most aspects of Templar history, former Templars are difficult to trace because the evidence is extremely scattered. Scholars have tended to examine the subject on a local or regional basis. In 1987 Rosalind Hill published a short article on the former Templars in Yorkshire, England, suggesting that their final fate, on 4d. a day for their subsistence, was not so bad: ‘in England they were living as privileged, and not unpopular, country gentlemen, and they died as rather unhappy fourpenny pensioners’.4 Alan Forey has considered the fate of the former Templars in Aragon in his study on the end of the order in that kingdom, and has also considered the evidence for the former Templars in England.5 Elena Bellomo has examined the evidence for north-west Italy in her study of the Templars in that region.6 Few scholars have attempted a wider synthesis, but a recent article by Alan Forey has drawn together evidence on the former Templars’ fate from across the whole of Europe.7 Pope Clement V set out clear instructions on how the Templars should be dealt with, but these were not enforced consistently throughout Catholic Christendom. Some Templars escaped, some were in Mamluk prisons, while in some regions the papal order for the arrests was not implemented. In December 1318 Pope John XXII issued new regulations, but again these were not fully implemented in every area. 2 

Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, p. 27. Barber, The New Knighthood, p. 1. 4  Hill, ‘Fourpenny Retirement’, pp. 123–28. 5  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, ch. 6; Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’. 6  Bellomo, The Templar Order, pp. 202–08. 7  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’. 3 

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

325

Papal Instructions Pope Clement V’s instructions in August 1308 in the bull Faciens misericordiam had been that provincial church councils were to make decisions on individual Templars, but the cases of the provincial commanders, the Grand Master, and the order itself were reserved to the Pope.8 On 6  May 1312 Pope Clement declared by papal bull, Considerantes dudum, that the brothers of the Temple who had been acknowledged to be innocent or who had confessed and been reconciled to the church would receive a pension and could live in the order’s former houses or in a monastery. As their monastic vows were still valid, they could not return to secular life. Those Templars who were known to be guilty but who had not confessed, or those who had relapsed, would be tried.9 In December 1318 Pope John XXII revised his predecessor’s instructions regarding the Templars. Excessive pensions were to be reduced, because the Hospitallers — who were now responsible for paying the former Templars’ pensions — could not pay these and also support the Holy Land. Archbishops and bishops were to summon former Templars and ensure that all were transferred to approved religious houses: indicating that some previously had not done so. The Templars were to become brothers of these houses: clerics should be clerics, laymen should be conversi. If the religious house did not want them as brothers, they should be lodgers. All former Templars should follow a religious life, and any who had married should give up their wives — indicating that some had married. Their pensions would be paid to the house where they were living; if they refused to move to a religious house, they would lose their pension and accommodation. No more than two former Templars could live in the same house.10

Implementation France, Britain, and Ireland The Pope had reserved the cases of the provincial commanders and the Grand Master to himself. In late December 1313 he set up a commission to judge the Grand Master Jacques de Molay and three of the four provincial commanders of 8 

See, for example, the versions of the bull sent to England: The Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 5–6, 11. 9  Considerantes dudum: see Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 278–79. 10  Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, pp. 31–32.

326

Helen J. Nicholson

the order in France: the grand commander of Normandy, Geoffrey de Charney; the grand commander of Aquitaine and Poitou, Geoffrey of Goneville; and the visitor and grand commander of the Île de la France, Hugh Peraud. Jacques de Molay tried to defend the order and was apparently taken aback at the final judgement on 18 March 1314: the four were condemned to eternal imprisonment. When Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charney protested, they were condemned to burn as obdurate heretics that evening.11 In May 1310 the Council of Sens had decided that, depending on the seriousness of their deeds, some Templars should simply be absolved from their order; some should do penance and then be allowed to depart free and unharmed (liberos et illæsos); some should be detained in close confinement and others imprisoned for life; finally, those who were relapsed heretics should be handed over to the secular arm for punishment. Any of these who were clergy should be degraded from the priesthood. Fifty-nine Templars who had revoked their confessions were then burned at the stake outside Paris as relapsed heretics.12 The French trial documents published by Jules Michelet in 1841–51 mention eight brothers who had been condemned at councils in this way. These sentences were issued following each Templar’s confession, after he had been absolved and reconciled to the church: hence, long before a final decision was made about the order as a whole. When Brother Guillaume d’Arreblay, who had been the King of France’s almoner, gave testimony before the papal commissioners on Friday 5 February 1311, the commissioners recorded that he had previously been condemned at the Council of Sens to eternal imprisonment: Et est sciendum quod ipse testis fuit in dicto concilio Senonensi condempnatus ad carcerem perpetuum, reservata potestate mitigandi, secundum portamentum ejusdem, ut dixit.13 [And it should be known that the witness was condemned in the said Council of Sens to perpetual prison, power of mitigation being reserved, following the conduct of the same, as he said.]

And on Friday 5 March 1311 the papal commissioners recorded that at the Council of Sens three priest-brothers (Rainald de Provins, John de Mortuo Fonte, and Guillaume de Hoymont) had been degraded from the priesthood 11 

Barber, Trial of the Templars, pp. 281–82. ‘Continuatio Chronici Guillelmi de Nangiaco’, ed. by Géraud, pp. 377–78. 13  Procès des Templiers, ed. by Michelet, i, 503; cited in Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 94; Barber, Trial of the Templars, p. 134 for dates. 12 

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

327

and condemned to eternal imprisonment with a knight-brother (Rainald de Cunheriis) and two sergeant-brothers (Pierre de Claremont and Bernard de Sarnay): Raynandus de Pruino Senonensis, olim preceptor domus Templi Aurelianensis, Johannes de Mortuo Fonte Suessionensis, et Guillelmus de .Hoymônt Parisiensis diocessum, presbiteri degradati in concilio Senonensi ab omnibus minoribus et majoribus ordinibus, exuti tamen privilegio clericali et privati habitu Templi, et ad murum perpetuum sub certa forma per dictum concilium condempnati; necnon Raynaudus de Cunheriis miles Belvacensis, Petrus de Claromonte Belvacensis et Bernardus de Sarnayo Parisiensis diocessum, servientes, per dictum concilium sub certa forma condempnati ad murum perpetuum.14 [Rainald de Provins of Sens, formerly commander of the Templar house of Orléans, John de Mortuo Fonte of Soissons, and Guillaume de Hoymont of Paris diocese, priests degraded at the Council of Sens from all lesser and greater orders, stripped of clerical privilege and deprived of the Templar habit, and condemned by the said council to perpetual imprisonment under a certain form; and Rainald de Cunheriis, knight of Beauvais, Peter de Claremont of Beauvais, and Bernard de Sarnay of the diocese of Paris, sergeant-brothers, condemned by the said Council under a certain form to perpetual imprisonment.]

On 28 January 1311, Brother Giles de Rotangis gave evidence before the papal commissioners. He stated that at the church Council of Reims he had been absolved, reconciled to the church, and condemned to prison, but not degraded from the priesthood: Frater Egidius de Rotangi presbiter curatus ecclesie d’Oysemont Ambianensis diocesis, testis suprajuratus, ut deponeret dictum suum, et fuit protestatus quod non intendebat recedere a deposicione et confessione per ipsum factis in concilio Remensi, ubi fuit absolutus et reconciliatus a sentencia excommunicacionis et condempnatus ad carcerem, sed non degradatus.15 [Brother Giles de Rotangis, priest, curate of the church of Oisemont in Amiens diocese, witness who took the oath above in order to give his statement, and he protested that he did not intend to retract the deposition and confession made by him at the Council of Reims, where he was absolved and reconciled from the sentence of excommunication and condemned to prison, but not degraded [from the priesthood].]

14  15 

Procès des Templiers, ed. by Michelet, ii, 3–4, cited in Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 94. Procès des Templiers, ed. by Michelet, i, 463, cited in Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 94.

328

Helen J. Nicholson

Alan Forey notes that all of these French Templars who were condemned to imprisonment had confessed to at least some of the charges against them. Some of those condemned to life imprisonment had earlier retracted their confessions and tried to defend the order, but some had not. Rainald de Provins had taken back his original confession and acted as the Templars’ representative before the papal commissioners in Paris, and he had tried to appeal against the Council of Sens’s decision in May 1310 against the Templars who had retracted their confessions.16 The priest-brother John de Mortuo Fonte and the knightbrother Rainald de Cunheriis had agreed to defend the order, but Guillaume d’Arreblay had not.17 So although we might assume that these brothers were singled out for harsh punishments because of their obduracy, this is not clear for all of them. However, Alain Demurger has argued that the sentence of perpetual imprisonment was extremely rare. Some Templars who remained in prison after 1312 were simply awaiting the final decision of the relevant provincial council: for example, in 1313 eight former Templars were still imprisoned at Toulouse awaiting the decision of the provincial council of Narbonne.18 Other Templars in France were dealt with less severely. Damian Carraz, in his study of the Templars in the lower Rhône Valley, notes that on 28 October 1312 Guilhem de Saint-Laurent, the inquisitor who had led the episcopal commission conducting the proceedings in this region, made the twenty-two Templars imprisoned at Alès confirm their depositions of August 1311 and abjure all errors, and then absolved them.19 What happened to them then? We may assume they were released from prison and sent to religious houses, following Pope Clement V’s instructions, and received a pension. So, for example, in February 1318 Albert de Blacas, former commander of Aix and of Saint-Maurice de Régusse, was still receiving the usufruct of the latter house.20 Likewise, in 1319 the royal baillie of the former Templar house of Bertaignemnot and its dependancies in the diocese of Beauvais was still paying pensions to three former Templars and four Templar sisters — regrettably, nothing more is known of the latter.21 16 

Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 94, citing Barber, Trial of the Templars, pp. 152–57, 162–63, 180–83. 17  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, pp. 94–95. 18  Demurger, La Persécution des Templiers, p. 275. 19  Carraz, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, p. 531; see also pp. 528–30. 20  Carraz, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, pp. 532–33. 21  Demurger, La Persécution des Templiers, pp. 274–75.

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

329

The Templars imprisoned at Toulouse in 1313 also received pensions: two former knight-brothers were paid a pension of eighteen deniers a day while six sergeant-brothers received half that amount.22 In England in summer 1311 the majority of the Templars abjured all heresy and the order was effectively dissolved. The Templars were assigned penance except for William de la More and Imbert Blanc, respectively grand commanders of England and the Auvergne, who had refused to abjure and were condemned to prison.23 Each brother was sent to a different monastery to do penance for the sins which he had abjured.24 The fate of the Templars in Ireland is less clear because of the destruction of many of the records when the Irish Public Record Office was blown up in 1922. The surviving government records show that the provincial commander was released on bail in Michaelmas term 1312 and that the Irish Templars, including the provincial commander and his predecessor, were paid pensions.25 The harshest penance assigned to the Templars from the Province of Canterbury was to be confined to their room at all times except to attend church. They were allowed out into the monastery enclosure for fresh air for only four hours once a week. Food included cheap meat twice a week, fish on four days, and fasting on bread and water on Fridays. A large number of prayers had to be recited daily. John of Moun, John of Ecle or Eagle, and Robert of Hameldon were among those who were given this harsh penance. John of Moun had been in the order for around thirty-eight years at the time he was first questioned, while John of Eagle and Robert of Hameldon had both been in the order for around twenty years, so it appears that the reason for these harsh penances was their long period of service.26 John of Stoke, former treasurer of the Temple in London, was also assigned a harsh penance.27 He had been in the order for only seventeen years, but his testimonies had been persistently unreliable, mentioning Templars whose existence cannot be verified, stating that Brother Johannes de Sancto Georgio was present in England as a Templar in 1293 (he did not 22 

Demurger, La Persécution des Templiers, p. 275. Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 370. 24  Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 370. 25  Irish Exchequer Payments, 1270–1446, ed. by Connolly, p. 217; Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, ii, 341 n. 63. 26  Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, pp.  24–26; Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, ed. by Flower and Dawes, i, 404. 27  Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, p. 25. 23 

330

Helen J. Nicholson

join the order until 1300) and that the priest-brother Richard of Grafton was in England and heard Brother Walter le Bachelor’s dying confession in 1301 although the evidence given by Brother Richard in Cyprus indicates he did not enter the order until 1303.28 John was one of the three Templars in England who confessed to the charges, and it is probable that the church council judged him likely to be guilty of more than he confessed to. At the other end of the scale, Templars with the least severe penance could take exercise in the monastery gardens twice a week, could eat meat three days a week and fish on three days a week, and had no additional prayers to say. This level of penance was given to Templars who had been in the order for less than four years, such as Robert of Sautre, who had joined the order just over a year before the arrests.29 Alan Forey points out that while the restrictions on eating meat would have been familiar, the forced enclosure and lack of purpose would have been the most punishing part of the penance. The Templars were not used to being kept enclosed in one house; they had joined an active order and expected to work.30 In England, the Templars who survived their interrogation and went to religious houses hardly appeared in later records except when they did not settle down. The English bishops’ registers record that a few Templars caused trouble in the monasteries where they were housed. Henry Craven, who had been sent to Pontefract Abbey, was excommunicated for continuing to wear his Templar habit in violation of the Pope’s prohibition; in September 1312 the Archbishop of York absolved him and sent him back to Pontefract with instructions to the prior and monks to keep him and look after him until the Pope sent further instructions.31 Roger of Sheffield escaped from Kirkstall Abbey and had to be tracked down and sent back, while Thomas of Staunford was accused of insulting the abbot and monks of Fountains Abbey. Some abbey communities simply did not want the responsibility of looking after these alleged heretics — even though the Templars had nearly all denied the charges and had all abjured all heresy.32 They also resented the expenses imposed on them — the Templars’ 28 

Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, ii, pp. lv–lvi. Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, pp.  24–26; Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, ed. by Flower and Dawes, i, 404; for Robert of Sautre, see Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 68 (MS A, fol 40r). 30  Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, p. 25. 31  The Register of William Greenfield, ed. by Brown and Thompson, part 5, p. 8. 32  Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, pp. 23–24, 27, 28. 29 

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

331

pensions did not always arrive promptly, and even when they did, some Templars refused to pay for their upkeep.33 Iberian Peninsula Alan Forey’s research shows that the brothers in Aragon were not sent to monasteries but to live in their order’s former houses, where they received their pensions and other benefits.34 The decisions relating to the Templars in Aragon were taken at a provincial council at Tarragona in November 1312, and the bishops were responsible for enforcing the council’s decrees, but — as in England until the end of 1313 — because the properties remained in royal hands, royal officials were responsible for paying the pensions. Unlike England, where Templars were initially housed in separate monasteries, the Aragonese Templars were housed in groups: eleven at Barbará, six each in Alfambra, Zaragoza, and Huesca, and two each in Selma and Pina. Forey comments that these were similar sized communities to those before the arrests, and in some cases Templars remained in their old houses.35 Others remained in the houses where they had been imprisoned during the trial; others were moved to new houses. Forey speculates over why certain houses were chosen, suggesting that the King did not want to house Templars in major castles such as Peñíscola, but that the Templars themselves may also have had a choice. They did not necessarily have sole control of the houses where they lived: if the King had assigned the property to another owner, the Templars lived in part of the building.36 Unlike England, where all brothers except for William de la More and Imbert Blanc received four pence a day, the Aragonese Templars’ pensions depended on their status in the order. Some Templars had control of property which they bequeathed in their wills, and Raymond of Guardia, ‘who had been commander of Mas-Déu and had led the resistance to James II of Aragon after the Aragonese provincial master had been arrested’, received a pension of 7000 solidi of Barcelona a year (five times the standard rate for a Templar knight) from the revenues of Mas-Déu, ‘where he was allowed to reside’, and was in the service of the Queen Mother of Mallorca.37 As they were not under ecclesiasti33 

Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, pp. 28–30. Forey, The Fall of the Templars, p. 210. 35  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 210, 212. 36  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 212–13. 37  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, pp. 96, 99, 100; Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, p. 32. 34 

332

Helen J. Nicholson

cal jurisdiction, the Templars’ vows were not enforced: they were allowed to own property, have servants, and from December 1312 the King allowed them to have their arms and armour.38 Information on the brothers in Castile and Portugal is less clear. Forey sets out evidence that the brothers in Portugal were receiving pensions.39 Cyprus Some Templars who were on Cyprus in 1307 were later repatriated to western Europe.40 One English brother, Richard of Grafton, mentioned by brothers in England as being in Cyprus, and probably the brother referred to as ‘Richard Anglicus’ during the trial in Cyprus, was receiving a pension in Winchester diocese in England in 1313.41 Peter Edbury identified the French Templar William Valdreys or Vadres, who was in Cyprus during the trial but was in Burgundy in the 1330s.42 Alan Forey has noted three Templars who were interrogated on Cyprus but who were later receiving pensions in Aragon.43 Damien Carraz noted that the Templar brother Raybaud, ‘who was originally assigned a pension in Cyprus, was in 1314 given a supplement on the revenues of Aix in Provence’.44 Not many such cases have been identified. Most members of the military orders were not internationally mobile; it was relatively unusual for them to move outside their own country.45 Hence, only those Templars who were sent to headquarters in the eastern Mediterranean would have needed to be repatriated. Not all of the Templars on Cyprus were repatriated. Some, including the marshal of the Order, were imprisoned after the trial for their involvement in a plot against King Henry II of Cyprus.46 38 

Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 214–16. Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 104. 40  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 98. 41  Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, ii, pp. lv–lvi, 538–39; Forey, ‘ExTemplars in England’, p. 36 n. 101. 42  Edbury, ‘The Arrest of the Templars in Cyprus’, p. 256 n. 31. 43  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 216–17. 44  Carraz, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, p. 532; cited by Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 98 and n. 57. 45  Burgtorf, Forey, and Nicholson, ‘Conclusion’, p. 203. 46  Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, pp. 125, 129–30, 136; ‘Chronique d’Amadi’, ed. by de Mas Latrie, i, 360, 392, 395, 397–98; Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 100. 39 

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

333

Prisoners of the Mamluks The two Templar prisoners discovered by the pilgrim Ludolph of Sudheim (or Suchem) in around 1340 were repatriated to the West with their wives and children and were not tried.47 There were other Templars in prison at the time of the trial in the West, and presumably some were never released, but Forey noted four Aragonese Templars who were released from Egypt with other Aragonese through the King’s diplomatic efforts and repatriated.48 Forey notes that ‘there is no evidence that any Templars freed from Muslim prisons were subjected to formal interrogations on returning to the West’.49 Perhaps their period in prison was regarded as sufficient penance for their alleged sins. Fugitives Throughout the proceedings in France and England reports of missing Templars were issued, with instructions to find them and bring them in for trial. Some of those so listed returned to their home base after the trial: Richard Engayn, a fugitive during the trial in England, was in a monastery doing penance by the end of 1311, while Thomas of Lindsey, who had been in Ireland during the trial proceedings, returned to England in spring 1312 and presented himself at the church council in London. He was sent away to a monastery to perform penance.50 Of the Templars reported as missing during the proceedings in Britain and Ireland, only four cannot be certainly accounted for: John of Usflete or Husflete, Edmund Latimer or Barville, John of Poynton, and Ralph of Bulford. All the rest who were reported missing either were men known by more than one surname (such as Thomas of Thoroldby, Frouby, or Totty) or turned up again later, during or after the trial.51 Brother John of Usflete may have returned to his home in the East Riding of Yorkshire. This Templar had been commander of Scotland, but on 3 July 1310 47 

Barber, New Knighthood, p. 1; Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 93. Forey, The Fall of the Templars, p. 217. 49  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 93. 50  Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, ii, 536–37, 556–57; Councils and Synods,  ed.  by Powicke and Cheney, ii.2, 1369–70; Annales Londonienses, ed. by Stubbs, pp. 176–79; London, BL, MS Cotton Otho B iii, fol. 28r; Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, p. 36. 51  Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial, pp. 50–52. Thomas Frouby, listed on p. 51 as missing, was almost certainly identical with Brother Thomas Totty. 48 

334

Helen J. Nicholson

Archbishop William Greenfield of York reported him as a fugitive.52 Usflete or Usflet was not a common name; it derived from the town of Ousefleet, to the south of the River Ouse. In the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries the Usflet family were knightly landowners in the area around North Ferriby and Swanland, west of Kingston-upon-Hull. On 10 October 1316 at York King Edward II instructed Robert Hastanges, Alexander de Cave, and Robert de Hedon to investigate a report that Loretta, widow of John de Usflet, John his son, Gerard de Usflet, ten more named, and other unnamed persons ‘broke by night the walls and dykes made for the preservation of the king’s manor of Miton [Myton] in Kingston-upon-Hull and of his lands there, so that his corn and meadows were submerged’.53 An unpublished late thirteenth-century document in the East Riding Archives at Beverley identifies Loretta, wife of John of Useflet, as the daughter of Gerard de Furnivall of Swanford.54 On 15 November 1313 Edward II had written to his treasurer and barons of the Exchequer telling them to pay money due to Loretta, widow of John of Usflete, because due to ‘her ownership of the inheritance which belonged to Gerard de Furnivall father of the aforesaid Loretta’, until the time of the Templars’ arrest she used to receive five solidi and four pence of revenue annually from the mill of Bekingham iuxta Sutton, which belonged to the Templars, and which was now in the King’s hands. However, since the Templars’ arrest, Loretta had not received the money, ‘to her no little cost and manifest danger of disinheritance’.55 This connection between Loretta and the Templars, and the rarity of the ‘Usflet’ name outside this locality, may lead us to suspect that John son of the late John of Usflet who took part in the breaking of walls and dykes at Myton in 1316 was the same as the missing Templar Brother John of Usflete, who had left the order in 1307/08 and returned home to his widowed mother.56 However, as the John of 1316 was not identified as a former Templar, this remains uncertain. 52 

Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, i, 341 (MS A fol. 156v); Register of William Greenfield, ed. by Brown and Thompson, part 4, p. 337. 53  Calendar of the Patent Rolls, p. 595. 54  Beverley, East Riding Archives, DDCS/5/1 (Mrs Christian Smith’s Documents 5/1): Gift relating to property in Swanland, late thirteenth century. Parties: (1) Gerard son of Sir Gerard de Furnivall; (2) John son of Sir Walter de Useflet, wife Loretta (daughter of Gerard son of Sir Gerard de Furnivall), and heirs of their bodies. Property: manor of Swanneslund. 55  ‘Corrodia petita de domibus Templariorum’, in Documents Illustrative, ed. by Cole, pp. 229–30 (edition of TNA E 142/9 mem 28v). 56  This is the suggestion of local historian Raymond E. O. Ella, set out in personal corres­ pondence to the author.

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

335

A French document from the end of 1307, possibly compiled for or by Philip IV’s minister Guillaume de Nogaret, records the names of French Templars who had fled: I. Ce sunt les nons des frères, qui sen sunt fouy. Frere Richart de Montecler fiuz a la suer monseigneur Foque de Rigni et repaire en la marche Dalemaigne et en la conte de Monbeliart. Item Charembaut de Comflanz reperant avec le dit frere Richart. Item frere Renaut de la Foillie: touz Borgoignons. Frere Guillame de Lins (?) Frere Hugue de Chalon. Frere Hugue Daray. Frere Baraus comandeur du Pay. Frere Geraudon fiuz monseigneur Geraut de Chatiauneuf reperant a Grisignau vers le conte de Veneci. Frere Girart de Villers, qui est armez li XL de frères. Frere Ymbert Blanc, qui est en Angleterre. Frere Adam de Wallaincourt. Frere Pierre de Bouch en la marche Dalemaigne. II. Frater Hugo de Cabilone nepos visitatoris et frater Girardus de Monte claro, milites ordinis seu secte Templi, una cum quibusdam suis complicibus eiusdem secte conceperant occidere regem.57 [I. These are the names of the brothers who have fled: Brother Richard de Montcler, son of the sister of my lord Fulk de Rigni — he is staying in the borderlands of Germany and in the county of Montbéliard; Charembald de Comflanz, staying with the said Brother Richard; Brother Renaut de la Foillie — all Burgundians. Brother Guillaume de Lins; Brother Hugh de Chalons; Brother Hugh Daray; Brother Baraus, commander of Pay. Brother Geraudon, son of my lord Geraut de Chateauneuf, staying at Grisignano towards the county of Veneto [in Italy]. 57  Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, ii, 74–77, no. 50 (edition of Paris, BnF, f. lat. 10919, fols 84v, 236v). Elizabeth A. R. Brown has suggested that the documents in BnF, f. lat. 10919 ‘au contraire que ces deux registres furent confectionnés pour et sous la direction de Guillaume de Nogaret, principal ministre de Philippe le Bel et garde des sceaux (quoique sporadiquement) entre 1306/1307 et sa mort le 11 avril 1313’, p. 212).

Helen J. Nicholson

336

Brother Gerard de Villiers, who is armed with forty brothers. Brother Imbert Blanc, who is in England. Brother Adam de Wallaincourt or Vallencourt. Brother Peter of Boucle in the borderlands of Germany. II. Brother Hugh de Châlons, nephew of the Visitor and Brother Girard de Monte Claro, knights of the Order or Sect of the Temple, together with certain of their accomplices of the same sect, had plotted to kill the king.]

In addition to the twelve listed above, Alain Demurger would add another twenty-two fugitives.58 Of those on the list, Renaud de la Follie, Adam of Wallaincourt or Vallencourt, and Peter of Boucle were later arrested; as were four others not listed.59 Imbert or Himbert Blanc was arrested in England.60 The alleged plot to kill King Philip IV remains unexplained: Barber suggests that it was an attempt to smear Brother Hugh Pairaud, Visitor of the Temple, ‘by association’, but suggests that there may have been a plot by Brother Hugh de Châlons and his associates to flee before the arrests.61 When seventy-two Templars testified at Poitiers before Pope Clement V (29 June – 2 July 1308), one, a Brother John of Châlons, stated that he had met Brother Gerard de Villiers (who was Grand Commander of France) leading fifty horses and he had heard tell that he had embarked on the sea with eighteen galleys.62 This may have been a confused recollection of Imbert Blanc’s naval expedition of 1306–07.63 It is interesting that the forty brothers of the official memorandum in late 1307 had become fifty horse in John’s account. John of Châlons also stated that Hugo de Cabilone (Hugh of Châlons) had fled with all Brother Hugh Pairaud’s treasure; no other witnesses endorsed this. It was true that some of the money held by the Visitor had gone missing, but soon after the Templars’ arrests it came into the hands of the royal bailli Guillaume de Hangest and was accounted for in the King’s chambre des comptes for 31 August 1321.64 What little evidence we have, then, suggests that Brother John de Châlons’s evidence was unreliable. 58 

Demurger, La Persécution des Templiers, pp.  54–56, developing his discussion in Demurger, Les Templiers, p. 437; Barber, The Trial of the Templars, p. 60. 59  Demurger, La Persécution des Templiers, p. 55; Barber, The Trial of the Templars, p. 60. 60  Proceedings against the Templars, ed. by Nicholson, ii, pp. xvii–xviii. 61  Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp.  61, 323 n.  8; Demurger, La Persécution des Templiers, pp. 55, 57. 62  Barber, The Trial of the Templars, p. 119; Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, ii, 339. 63  Demurger, Jacques de Molay, pp. 210–11. 64  Demurger, Les Templiers, pp. 324–25; Demurger, La Persécution des Templiers, pp. 281–82.

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

337

There is no record that the remaining French escapees were ever caught. On 4 November 1311 Pope Clement V wrote from the Council of Vienne to King Philip IV informing him that nine Templars had appeared before the council offering to defend their order and claiming that there were 1500–2000 Templars in the Lyon region ready to support them. The Pope had the nine detained but did not give the King their names; the others were never found.65 Two of the Templar escapees identified by Elena Bellomo returned to their home base: Giacomo da Montecucco and Pietro da Bologna. Bellomo explains that when the Templars were being arrested Giacomo was papal cubicularius and Templar master of Lombardy, and was with the papal court at Poitiers. He was imprisoned but escaped on 13 February 1308, and on 6 April 1308 he issued a letter of attorney to the Templar commander of Milan. His name appears in documents from the diocese of Ivrea in north-west Italy dated 30 October 1311, 5 March 1314, and 1316. Although there was a price on his head following his escape, he does not appear to have been arrested; Bellomo suggests he waited in Ivrea until the trial was over and then ‘carried on serving the church in the diocese’.66 Pietro da Bologna, better known to English-speaking readers as Peter of Bologna, was a procurator-general of the Templars who was arrested in France, confessed, and then retracted his confession and undertook to defend the order. He was reported to have escaped from prison, but Templar historians have generally assumed that his disappearance was so providential for the prosecution, leading to the collapse of the Templars’ defence, that he was probably murdered by his gaolers. However, Bellomo points out that he returned to Bologna, and there is no surviving evidence that he was ever tried.67 Bellomo points out that both Giacomo and Pietro had close links with the papal court: Giacomo was papal cubicularius and was part of the papal entourage at the time of the arrests; Pietro had been the order’s procurator at the papal Curia under Pope Boniface VIII. She points to the large number of Lombards in the papal entourage and ‘the fact that both these Lombard dignitaries were given the chance to escape could have had something to do with their origins and their contacts with papal circles’. It seems that once they were back on home territory they had little to fear from the ecclesiastical authorities.68 It is 65  Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 262–63, citing Lizerand, Clément V et Philippe le Bel, appendix, no. 30, pp. 472–73. 66  Bellomo, The Templar Order, pp. 204–06. 67  Bellomo, The Templar Order, pp. 206–07. 68  Bellomo, The Templar Order, p. 207.

338

Helen J. Nicholson

likely that the Templars recorded in France at the end of 1307 as being in the German borderlands or in Italy remained there and did not return to France. Some Aragonese fugitives returned to Aragon after the trial. In 1313 King James II of Aragon wrote to Bishop Pons of Lérida (Lleida) that the former Templar Brother Bernard des Fons (or Bernardo de Fuentes), now ambassador for the Alcalde of Tunis, had come to Aragon on an embassy. While in Aragon he received absolution and was given a lodging and a pension. He returned to Tunis to complete his embassy, came back to Aragon early in 1315, and then went back to serve the ruler of Tunis again.69 Templars Who Returned to Secular Life Giacomo da Montecucco, Pietro da Bologna, and possibly John of Usflete escaped to their homes and resumed secular life, but for some former Templars life continued as normal. In some parts of Germany, Templars apparently continued to live in their own houses.70 In Brunswick in what is now northwestern Germany, Otto of Brunswick, commander of the Templars’ house at Supplingenberg and a member of the high nobility, remained as secular lord of Supplingenberg after the dissolution of the order; only on his death did the commandery pass to the Hospital.71 At Mühlen, a nunnery near Frankfurt which belonged to the Order of the Temple, the nuns resented being transferred to the Order of the Hospital and wished to remain as Templars.72 Other Templars took up secular careers. In Aragon, a few Templars entered Aragonese royal service.73 Bellomo sets out two examples of former Templars in north-west Italy who became involved in local political disputes after the dissolution of the order. One was a former Templar commander who was killed by order of Galeazzo Visconti in 1314, apparently because he had been a political ally of the former lord of Piacenza, deposed by the Viscontis. Again, in 1322 a former Templar knight was summoned to appear before a tribunal investigating

69 

Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, ii, 226–27, no. 121; Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 216, 223. 70  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 99. 71  Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri, p. 377. 72  Schüpferling, Der Tempelherren-Orden in Deutschland, pp. 33–34, n. 4; Luttrell and Nicholson, ‘Introduction’, p. 26; Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 106. 73  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 222–23.

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

339

heresy, apparently because he was an ally of Matteo Visconti, an opponent of Pope John XXII.74 In December 1318 Pope John XXII complained about Templars who had abandoned the vow of chastity and had contracted marriages. These would have included a certain Berengarius de Pulcronisu (Berenguer de Bellvís), ‘quondam ordinis Templi’ (‘formerly of the Order of the Temple’), who was living on his order’s former estates in Aragon after the dissolution of the order. In October 1314 the Aragonese king informed the Archbishop of Tarragona that Berenguer ‘tenet publice concubinam ut quis teneret uxorem suam’ (‘openly keeps a concubine, as if she were his wife’).75 Another record suggesting that Templars reverted to secular life comes from a trial for necromancy in the south of France.76 One Evrart de Bar sur Aube, clerk, son of Bonretour and Agnes de Bar, brought an accusation against Cardinal Francesco Caetani in April 1316 that the Cardinal had engaged him at Valence (at Evrart’s own suggestion) to find a clerk, Master Jehen du Pré, who ‘parle au diable quant il veut, et l’enclot la ou il veut, et li fait ce que il li demande, et s’entremeit de faire or et argent’ (‘speaks to the devil when he wishes, and encloses him where he wishes, and he does what he tells him, and engages himself in making gold and silver’).77 According to Evrart, the Cardinal wanted to discover the intentions of the King and the Count of Poitiers towards the cardinals (presumably, during the papal election). Having persuaded the Cardinal to consult Jehan du Pré, he talked him into giving him a letter to take to the supposed devil-conjurer. Evrart then set out and met a friend: Or avoit adonc a Valence un vallet qui avoit esté templier et estoit la venu pour procurer les gages desquieuz il ne pooit estre paié, et a non en son droit non Girart, et fu né a Ourges, a cinc lieues de Bar. Et connoissoit bien Evrart, quar Evrart avoit esté du conseill du Temple en ces parties. Il l’apela en la grant yglise et li fist jurer que il tendroit segré tout ce que il li diroit, et, le serement receu de lui, il li dist: ‘Chiers amiz, je sui tout esbahiz et tout pensif de ce que monseigneur François le cardinal m’envoie querre a Saint Mihel un clerc qui y est, et a non Jehan, et euvre des ars du deable. Que ce est que il veut faire? Je ai peur que il ne veulle faire aucunz mauvaiz fait encontre monseigneur le roi ou contre monseigneur de Poitiers ou 74 

Bellomo, The Templar Order, pp. 203–04. Vogel, ‘Templar Runaways’, p. 324, citing Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang, p. 316, no. 9 (Urkundliche Beilagen IV); also discussed by Forey, The Fall of the Templars, p. 223. 76  ‘Ci est la deposition’, ed. by Langlois; cited by Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, p. xxx; also see Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 100. 77  ‘Ci est la deposition’, ed. by Langlois, p. 59. 75 

340

Helen J. Nicholson

contre aucuns autres. Se tu vouloies, nous sarion tout son courage et que il veut faire, et, se il veut maufaire, nous le reveleron.’78 [Now there was then at Valence a lad who had been a Templar and had come there to get the wages he had not been able to get paid, and his proper name was Girart, and he was born at Ourches (Meuse), five leagues from Bar. He knew Evrart well, because Evrart had been in the Templars’ confidence in those parts. He called to him in the big church and made him swear that he would keep secret everything that he told him, and having received his oath, he said to him: ‘Dear friend, I am dismayed and don’t know what to think because Lord Francesco the cardinal is sending me to seek at Saint Michel a clerk who is there, and his name is Jehan, and he works the devil’s arts. What does he intend to do? I’m afraid that he intends to do some evil deed against my lord the king or against my lord of Poitiers or against some other person. If you’re willing, we will find out all his intentions and what he intends to do, and if he wishes to do something evil, we’ll make it public.’]

Evrart then persuaded Girart to pretend to be Jehan du Pré, the clerk who worked the devil’s arts, and Girart agreed ‘mout joieusement pour le bien nostre sire le roi et des siens’ (‘most joyously for the good of our lord the king and his relatives’). This scheming pair did not, in fact, perform any necromancy for the Cardinal; and probably the court saw this as a case of entrapment, as the case was not pursued. By his own admission, Evrart was a poor man, and Girart was in Valence because he was trying to get paid — so it appears that it was their need for money that led to their attempting a confidence trick of this sort. We may wonder how many other Templars resorted to crime following the collapse of their order. Alan Forey notes that in Aragon some Templars became involved in military activity against the Muslims and against other Christians, and one became a pirate, until he was arrested in 1316; in 1327 another was arrested as a highwayman.79 At the end of 1316, the Hospitallers complained to the Count of Flanders that Brother Mille dou Sac and some other former Templars were wandering around Flanders and had not yet been reconciled to the church. They asked the Count to deal with the issue.80 This suggests that these former Templars were a threat to the peace of the country.

78 

‘Ci est la deposition’, ed. by Langlois, pp. 59–60. Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 222–23, 237. 80  Hooghe, ‘The Trial of the Templars’, p. 299. 79 

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

341

After 1318 Pope John XXII’s instructions of December 1318 led to some Templars moving to new locations. In England, a few Templars moved to a different religious house; two moved to the Hospitallers, but one subsequently moved back; there were two Templars at Bridlington, and two at Spalding.81 Alan Forey has noted the Templar Berenguer of Olms, who in 1317 was receiving a pension in southern Aragon, where he had been commander in 1307, but was then moved to Roussillon, where he was receiving a pension in 1319.82 Perhaps Berenguer of Olms requested a transfer in line with the new papal instructions. However, Forey has also identified examples of Templars who were living in their own homes, owning property, and bequeathing property after 1318.83 It is clear that the Pope’s instructions were not implemented quickly in Aragon in particular, where former Templars did not want to enter religious houses even at the cost of losing their pensions. Where former Templars’ pensions were reduced some took legal action to try to get them restored.84 The establishment of the Order of Christ in Portugal in 1319 incorporated former Templar lands, but — so far as can be ascertained — not former Templars. Alan Forey cites a papal instruction to the master of the new order to admit a former Templar as evidence that the new order was reluctant to accept Templars.85 Likewise, he found that although the Order of Montesa received former Templar lands, no former Templars entered that new order.86 Philippe Josserand, studying the Templars in Castile, noted that their fate after the dissolution of the order is largely unknown: brothers entered Hospitaller houses and Benedictine abbeys and some returned to the world; some became involved in military activity or lawlessness.87 The Hospitaller surveys of 1338 show that at that time the Hospitallers were still supporting a number of Templars. There were two former Templars at Nice, two at the Hospitaller commandery at Ruou (dép.: Var, commune: Villecroze, 81 

Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, pp.  31–32, 33; Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, pp. 101–02. 82  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 98. 83  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, pp. 106–07. 84  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 225–37. 85  Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, pp. 103–04. 86  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, p. 228. 87  Josserand, Église et pouvoir, p. 59.

342

Helen J. Nicholson

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur) and twelve in England, plus one, Roger of Dalton, who was employed by the Hospitallers at Ashley in Cam­bridgeshire.88 The last Templar in Aragon seems to have died in or soon after 1350.89

Conclusion After the lengthy proceedings against the Templars of 1307–12 many Templars were dead, having died in prison or (in France) burned at the stake as relapsed heretics. Many more in France were condemned to prison for a long period or for life. However, outside France, those who survived the trial generally avoided prison. The former Templars received pensions which were paid from the former Templar properties, although some encountered problems getting paid. Some entered religious houses, as Pope Clement V had instructed, but in Aragon, Italy, and Germany, former Templars remained in their order’s former houses or returned to their family homes. Their fate was obviously linked to the ruling authority’s attitude towards the trial: in Aragon, the King had always regarded the order as useful to him, and the order was not harshly persecuted; in Germany and Italy there was no strong central secular authority to enforce papal demands if the local ecclesiastical authority was not inclined to do so. In England, however, the embattled government of King Edward II did not defend the Templars after 1310, and the provincial church councils enforced papal instructions. Some Templars in Cyprus were repatriated to western Europe, but a number of Templars on Cyprus were imprisoned after their involvement in a plot against King Henry II. Some Templars took to crime. The Templars’ lot changed a little after the Hospitallers received their properties and became responsible for paying their pensions. This process took many years and was never complete. In England, the Hospitallers became officially responsible for the Templars from the end of December 1313, although many of the estates did not come to them until the 1320s and many never did. In Aragon the Hospitallers did not receive the Templar estates until 1317, when they complained about the generous pensions the Templars had been receiving

88  Carraz, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, p. 533; Forey, ‘Templars after the Trial’, p. 105; Forey, ‘Ex-Templars in England’, pp. 34, 35; The Knights Hospitallers in England, ed. by Larking and Kemble, pp. 121, 209. 89  Forey, The Fall of the Templars, p. 240.

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

343

and which they were now expected to pay.90 It was the Hospitallers’ complaints which led to Pope John XXII’s amended instructions regarding the Templars, issued in December 1318. Many questions remain to be answered. Templars who returned to their homes are difficult to identify in the records unless their former status is given. The cases of Giacomo da Montecucco and Pietro da Bologna in north-west Italy and possibly of John of Usflete in the East Riding of Yorkshire suggest that former Templars could simply return to their families and effectively disappear from the records, unless they wished to draw attention to themselves. Personal records such as wills might record a legatee’s former status, but if contemporaries wished to hide a former Templar from outsiders we have no certain means of identifying them. Finally, what became of the Templars’ dependents after the arrests? Jochen Schenk has described very extensive links between the Templars and the families which supported them.91 In England, holders of corrodies were successful in forcing the royal government to maintain payment of corrodies due (albeit commuted to cash),92 but what happened to those in other countries? We assume that associate members and dependents of the order who had not taken the three vows were exempted from the trial, although in England there are hints that they were pressed to give evidence against the order. Were they allowed to become associates of the Hospitallers? As is so often the case in Templar history, these questions may be answered only through careful archival research.

90 

Forey, The Fall of the Templars, pp. 224–25, 232–40. Schenk, Templar Families. 92  ‘Corrodia petita de domibus Templariorum’, ed. by Cole, pp. 139–230. 91 

344

Helen J. Nicholson

Works Cited Manu­script and Archival Sources Beverley, East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service, DDCS/5/1 (Mrs Christian Smith’s Documents 5/1): Gift relating to property in Swanland Kew, The National Archives of the UK, E 142/9 London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho B iii

Primary Sources Annales Londonienses and Annales Paulini, ed. by William Stubbs, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward  I and Edward  II, ed. by William Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series 76 (London: Longman, 1882) Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward II, ad 1313–1317, Prepared under the Superintendence of the Deputy Keeper of the Records (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1898) ‘Chronique d’Amadi’, ed. by René Marie Louis de Mas Latrie, in Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi, vol. i (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1891) ‘Ci est la deposition quant a aucunes choses qui touchent me sire François le cardinal’, ed. by Charles-Victor Langlois, in ‘L’affaire du Cardinal Francesco Caetani (Avril 1316)’, Revue historique, 63 (1897), 56–71 ‘Continuatio Chronici Guillelmi de Nangiaco’, in Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 à 1300 avec les continuations de cette chronique de 1300 à 1368, ed. by H. Géraud, new edn, i (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1843) ‘Corrodia petita de domibus Templariorum, annis Io & IIo Edwardi  II’, in Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, Selected from the Records of the Department of the Queen’s Remembrancer of the Exchequer, ed. by Henry Cole (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1844), pp. 139–230 Councils and Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church, ii: ad 1205–1313, part 2: 1265–1313, ed. by F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­ sity Press, 1964) Finke, Heinrich, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols, Vorreformations­ geschichtliche Forschungen, 4–5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1907) Irish Exchequer Payments, 1270–1446, ed. by Philomena Connolly (Dublin: Irish Manu­ scripts Commission, 1998) The Knights Hospitallers in England: Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for ad 1338, ed. by Lambert B. Larking, introduction by John Mitchell Kemble, Camden Society First Series, 65 (London: Camden Society, 1867) The Proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles, ed. by Helen J. Nicholson, 2 vols (Ashgate: Farnham, 2011)

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

345

Procès des Templiers, ed. by Jules Michelet, 2 vols (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1841–51; repr. 1987) The Register of William Greenfield, Lord Archbishop of York, 1306–1315, ed. by William Brown and A.  Hamilton Thompson, Surtees Society 145, 149, 151–53 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1931–40) Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, diocesis Saresbiriensis, ad 1297–1315, ed. by C. T. Flower and M. C. B. Dawes, Canterbury and York Society, 40–41 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­ sity Press, 1934)

Secondary Studies Barber, Malcolm, ‘Introduction’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 11–19 —— , The New Knighthood: a History of the Order of the Temple (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994) —— , The Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006) —— , ‘The Trial of the Templars Revisited’, in The Military Orders, ii: Welfare and Warfare, ed. by Helen J. Nicholson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 329–42 Bellomo, Elena, The Templar Order in North-West Italy (1142–c. 1330) (Leiden: Brill, 2008) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Guillaume de Nogaret et les textes: Les registres JJ 28 et JJ 29 (BnF, lat. 10919)’, in La royauté française et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret: Actes du colloque des 29 et 30 novembre 2013, ed. by Bernard Moreau and Julien ThéryAstruc (Nîmes: La Fenestrelle, 2015), pp. 209–42 —— , ‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 1–36 Bulst-Thiele, Marie Luise, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri: Unter­ suchungen zur Geschichte des Templerordens, 1118/19–1314, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Folge 3, 86 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974) Burgtorf, Jochen, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson, eds, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) Burgtorf, Jochen, Alan Forey, and Helen Nicholson, ‘Conclusion’, in International Mobility in the Military Orders: Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries: Travelling on Christ’s Business, ed. by Jochen Burgtorf and Helen Nicholson (Cardiff: Uni­ver­sity of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 202–06 Carraz, Damien, L’ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône (1124–1312): Ordres militaires, croisades et sociétés méridionales (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2005) Demurger, Alain, Jacques de Molay: Le crépuscule des templiers (Paris: Payot, 2002) —— , La Persécution des Templiers: Journal (1307–1314) (Paris: Payot, 2015) —— , Les Templiers: Une Chevalerie Chrétienne au moyen âge (Paris: Seuil, 2005) Edbury, Peter W., ‘The Arrest of the Templars in Cyprus’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 249–58

346

Helen J. Nicholson

—— , The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1991) Forey, Alan, ‘Could Alleged Templar Malpractices Have Remained Undetected for Decades?’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 11–19 —— , ‘Ex-Templars in England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 53.1 (2002), 18–37 —— , The Fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001) —— , ‘Templars after the Trial: Further Evidence’, Revue Mabillon, 23 (2012), 89–110 Given, James, ‘Chasing Phantoms: Philip  IV and the Fantastic’, in Heresy and the Per­ secuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R. I. Moore, ed. by Michael Frassetto (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 271–89 Hill, Rosalind, ‘Fourpenny Retirement: The Yorkshire Templars in the Fourteenth Cen­ tury’, in The Church and Wealth: Papers read at the 1986 Summer Meeting [Lincoln] and the 1987 Winter Meeting [London] of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. by William J. Sheils and Diana Wood, Studies in Church History, 24 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 123–28 Hooghe, Filip, ‘The Trial of the Templars in the County of Flanders (1307–12)’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul  F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 285–99 Josserand, Philippe, Église et pouvoir dans la péninsule Ibérique: Les ordres militaires dans le royaume de Castille (1252–1369) (Madrid: Casa de Velásquez, 2004) Kieckhefer, Richard, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State Uni­ver­sity Press, 1998) Krämer, Thomas, ‘Terror, Torture and the Truth: The Testimonies of the Templars Re­visited’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burg­ torf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 71–85 Lizerand, Georges, Clément V et Philippe le Bel (Paris: Librarie Hachette, 1910) Luttrell, Anthony, and Helen  J. Nicholson, ‘Introduction’ in Hospitaller Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by Anthony Luttrell and Helen J. Nicholson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 1–42 Nicholson, Helen J., The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308–1311 (Stroud: The History Press, 2009) Provost, Alain, ‘On the Margins of the Templars’ Trial: The Case of Bishop Guichard of Troyes’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 117–27 Prutz, Hans, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens (Berlin: G. Grote’sche, 1888) Schenk, Jochen, Templar Families: Landowning Families and the Order of the Temple in France, c. 1120–1307 (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2012) Schüpferling, Michael, Der Tempelherren-Orden in Deutschland. Dissertation zur Erlang­ ung der Doktorwürde (Bamberg: Dr J. Kirsch, 1915)

What Became of the Templars after the Trial of 1307–14?

347

Streeter, Dale, ‘The Templars Face the Inquisition: The Papal Commissioners and the Diocesan Tribunals in France, 1308–11’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 87–95 Théry, Julien, ‘Une hérésie d’État: Philippe le Bel, le procès des “perfides templiers” et la pontificalisation de la royauté française’, Médiévales, 60 (2011), 157–85 Torre, Ignacio de la, ‘The Monetary Fluctuations in Philip IV’s Kingdom of France and their Relevance to the Arrest of the Templars’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 57–68 Vogel, Christian, ‘Templar Runaways and Renegades Before, During and After the Trial’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 317–26

Index Numbers in italics refer to illustrations and tables.

Adam de Wallaincourt (also Vallencourt): 336 Adam, R. J.: 264 n. 11 Adams, Henry: xiii Adelaide of Dijon and Chalon: 312 n. 22 Adele, queen of Champagne: 24 n. 22, 27 Agnes of Bohemia, saint: 317 Agnes of Donzy, daughter of Hervé IV and Matilda of Courtenay: 313 Agnes of Donzy, sister of Renaud of Châtillon: 310 Agnes, queen of Hungary (also Anna): 315, 316 Aimery, king of Cyprus: 286 Al-Adil: 319 Alberic of Troisfontaines: 282–85, 288 Albert de Blacas: 328 Albigensian crusade: 44, 94, 95–99, 96, 104, 224 see also heresy Alexander III, pope: 4, 172, 223 Alexander IV, pope: 45 Alfons or Alfonso, king of Castile see Alphonse VI, VII, VIII, X, king of Castile Alice, daughter of Renaud of Châtillon: 318 Alice of Montaigu, niece of Stephen of Mezel: 282 Alice of Montaigu, wife of John of Caesarea: 286, 287 n. 39 Alice, queen of Cyprus: 289–90 Alice, sister of Renaud of Châtillon: 313 Alips de Mons: 206 al-Kamil, sultan: 293 al-Mu’azzamj, sultan: 289

Alphonse, count of Poitiers: 24, 26, 49 n. 30, 53, 117, 145, 148, 149 Alphonse VI, king of Castile (also Alfonso): 312 Alphonse VII, king of Castile (also Alfons): 223 n. 20 Alphonse VIII, king of Castile: 30 Alphonse X, king of Castile (also Alfonso): 120 Andrew of Montbard: 283 Andrew II, king of Hungary: 313, 316–17 Andronicus Comnenus: 316 n. 37 Anna, queen of Hungary see Agnes, queen of Hungary Archembald II of Bourbon: 291 Aristotle: 168 arrière-ban see military: conscription Asbridge, Thomas: 306 n. 3 Audigier, Pierre: 283, 287–88 Augustine of Hippo, saint: 162 n. 28, 166 n. 36, 227, 240 Augustinian order: 10, 12 authority, church vs. royal: 8, 59, 86–89, 73, 196, 219–50 Aycelin family: 283 Azzo VI of Este: 318 Babcock, Emily Atwater: 308 n. 9, 314 n. 35 Baldwin, John: 4, 186 Baldwin, Marshall: 308, 310 Baldwin, son of Renaud of Châtillon: 317–18 Baldwin IV, king of Jerusalem: 305–06, 313, 317

350

Balian of Ibelin, lord of Beirut: 286, 294 Barak, Hagar: xiv, 143–50 Baraus (Templar): 335 Barber, Malcolm: 294 n. 71, 324, 336 Barker, John W.: 310 Barthélémy de L’Île Bouchard: 122 Bautier, Robert-Henri: 188, 189 n. 13, 193, 196, 209, 230, 267, 273 Bedos-Rezak, Brigitte Miriam: 151–82 Bela III, king of Hungary: 316 Bellomo, Elena: 324, 337, 338 Benedetto Caetani see Boniface VIII, pope Benedict XI, pope: 58, 199 n. 52, 199 n. 54, 247 Benedict XII, pope (also Jacques Fournier): 229 n. 44 Berenguer de Bellvis: 339 Berenguer of Olms: 341 Berle, Adolf: 143, 147, 149 Berman, Constance: 19 Bernard Délicieux: 57, 58, 204 n. 68 Bernard de Sarnay: 327 Bernard des Fons (also Bernardo de Fuentes): 338 Bernardo de Fuentes see Bernard des Fons Bernard of Castanet, bishop: 57 Bernard of Clairvaux: 172 n. 58, 314 n. 33, 283 Bernard of Le Puy, bishop see Bernard of Montaigu, bishop Bernard of Montaigu, bishop: 282, 285, 295–97, 299 Bernard of Rochefort-d’Ally: 285 Bernard Saisset, bishop: 57, 196–97, 222, 227–45 bibles, moralized: 72–108, 73–76, 81, 83–84, 86, 88, 90–91, 93–94, 96–98, 100–03, 106–07 Biller, Peter: 53 Blanche, daughter of Louis IX: 23, 26, 28 Blanche of Castile, queen: 19, 22, 24, 30, 31 n. 53, 32, 47, 71, 79, 152, 161 opposition to scholars’ strike, 6, 7 support for Cistercians, 19–20, 25, 28, 29 Bloch, Marc (also Fougères, Marc): 187, 210, 266 Boisson, Etienne: 299 Boniface, saint: 229 Boniface I of Montferrat: 315–16

INDEX Boniface VIII, pope (also Benedetto Caetani): 10, 58, 190, 337 conflicts with Philip IV: 8, 11–12, 63 n. 79, 134–35, 191, 195, 196, 199–201, 221, 226, 228–49, 270 heresy charges against, 12, 199, 222, 239 n. 84, 246–48 legislation by: 11, 226, 229–30, 245 as subject of Fawtier’s study: 272 support of Louis IX, 107, 230 Bouchard, Constance Brittain: 310–11, 313–14 Bouvines, battle of: ix–x, xi, 43 Bratton, William: 143 Brayer, Edith: 51, 52 n. 43 Brown, Elizabeth A. R. (also Peggy): 14, 28, 36–37, 59 n. 67, 62 n. 78, 185–218, 226 n. 30, 247, 263, 265, 272, 273, 335 n. Bruzelius, Caroline: 26 Burgtorf, Jochen: 281–303 Butler, Lionel: 264 n. 11 call to arms see military: conscription Capetian rulers see Charles IV, king of France; Hugh I Capet, king of France; Louis VI, king of France; Louis VII, king of France; Louis VIII, king of France; Louis IX the Saint, king of France; Louis X, king of France; Philip II Augustus, king of France; Philip III the Bold, king of France; Philip IV the Fair, king of France; Philip V, king of France; Robert II the Pious, king of France Carolus-Barré, Louis: 31, 32, 33 n. 58 Carraz, Damian: 328, 332 Cassard, Jean-Christophe: xiii Caviness, Madeline: xiv Cazelles, Raymond: 271 n. 42, 272 Celestine III, pope: 4 Celestine V, pope: 11 Charbonnier, Pierre: 292 Charembald de Comflanz: 335 Charlemagne: 25, 87 Charles du Fresne: 281 Charles of Anjou, count: 24, 26, 117, 126, 127, 128, 130, 136, 225 Charles of Valois: 121, 126, 129, 131, 206, 207–08, 225

INDEX Charles IV, king of France: 64, 261 Chatelain, Émil: 3 Chiffoleau, Jacques: 239 n. 83, 250 n. 127 Cistercian order (also Cîteaux order): 21–22 Capetians’ support of: 17–37 as political representatives: 25 n. 25 prayers by: 29–31 Cîteaux order see Cistercian order Claverie, Pierre-Vincent: 282 Clemence of Burgundy: 313 Clement III, pope: 5 n. 8 Clement IV, pope: 225 Clement V, pope: 58, 199 n. 53, 200, 207 n. 79 legislation and decisions of: 59 n. 67, 202 n. 63 power struggle with Louis IV: 219–21, 249 role in Saisset case: 245 n. 110 and the Templar trials: 12–13, 324–25, 328, 336–37, 342 Collège de Beauvais: 9 n. 22 Collège de Navarre: 14 Collège de Sorbonne: 7, 8 Collège de Trèsorier: 7, 8 communities: 161–62, 227 confessors, royal: 21, 43–64, 80, 82, 224 conflicts of interest see legislation: conflict of interest Conradin (Conrad V, king of Jerusalem): 129, 316 Conrad V, king of Jerusalem see Conradin consent: theory of: 165–66, 173, 177 Constance of Antioch, princess: 305–06, 307–08, 309, 310, 315, 316, 317, 318 Constance of Burgundy: 312 Constance of Hungary: 317 Contamine, Philippe: 118 Corpus philippicum: 186, 188–89, 209, 262, 264–66, 267, 271, 272–73 Courtenay, William J.: 3–16, 166 n. 37, 194 n. 31, 282 n. 7 Crawford, Paul F.: 305–22 Crusades, the: x, 23, 30 n. 45, 44, 94, 95, 222, 281 preparations for: 25–26, 132 troop strength: 116–17, 125 waning interest in: 132–33 see also Albigensian crusade

351

Dagobert: 87 Dauphin of Clermont, count: 292 De Legibus (William of Auvergne): 155, 163–65, 171 Demetrius, king of Thessalonika: 316 D’Emilio, James: 19 Demurger, Alain: 328, 336 Denifle, Heinrich: 3 Denton, Jeffrey: 197, 198 n. 45 De Sacramento (William of Auvergne): 164 Desclot: 129 De Vic, Claude: 202 n. 64 Digard, Georges: 197 Dimier, Anselme: 18–19, 23 n. 21, 27–28, 31, 33 documents: 153, 173, 175, 202–03 false or forged: 198–99, 235 n. 72, 245 symbolic value of: 159, 175–76, 202–03 Dominican order: 5–6, 7, 10, 12, 43, 203 as inquisitors, 13, 44, 47–54, 56–64 Louis IX’s support of: 20–21, 33 n. 61, 31 n. 62 Philip III’s support of: 36, 37 n. 73 Philip IV’s support of, 36, 37 n. 73, 194 as royal confessors: 43–47, 50–58, 59–64 Dominic of Caleruega, saint: 43, 44 Donzy family: 310–11 Dupont-Ferrier, Gustave: 266 n. 20 Dupuy, Pierre: 197, 232 Edbury, Peter: 332 Edmund Barville see Edmund Latimer Edmund Latimer: 333 Edmund of Abingdon, saint (Edmund Rich): 24–25 Edmund Rich see Edmund of Abingdon, saint Edward I, king of England: 130, 194, 226 Edward II, king of England: 334, 342 Elizabeth of Hungary, saint: 317 Emeric, king of Hungary: 316 Enguarrand de Coucy: 145 Enguarran de Marigny: 194 n. 30, 194 n. 34, 196 n. 39, 198, 201, 207 n. 80 death of: 207–08 duties of: 222 and Guillaume de Nogaret: 206–07 and Philip IV: 204–08 and the Templar trials: 201 n. 61

352

enquêteurs see inquisitors: of nonheretical crimes Eschiva of Montbéliard: 286, 287 n. 39, 294 Étienne de Suzy: 190–91, 195 Etienne Médicis: 296 Eustache de Beaumarchais: 122 n. 15 Eustorg of Auvergne see Eustorg of Montaigu, archbishop Eustorg of Montaigu, archbishop: 282, 285–87, 288–90, 294–99 Eustorg of Montaigu, family patriarch: 288 Evaristus, pope: 235 n. 72 Evrart de Bar sur Aube: 339–40 Favier, Jean: 192 n. 27, 192 n. 28, 193 n. 30, 194 n. 34, 201, 205 n. 70, 207 n. 80, 208 n. 83, 263, 272 n. 52 Favreau, Robert: 271 Fawtier, Robert: 185–86, 187–93, 195, 209, 261–73 Fawtier Stone, Jeanne: 192 n. 28, 263 n. 8 Field, Sean L.: 43–69, 195 n. 38 Flote, Pierre (also Flotte): 196–97, 205, 206, 227, 230–32, 236, 244–45 papal condemnation of: 199–200 Forey, Alan: 324, 328, 330, 331–33, 340–41 Fougères, Marc see Bloch, Marc Foulques of Saint-Georges: 57–58 Francesco Caetani, cardinal: 339–40 Franciscan order: 7, 12 as inquisitors: 48, 57 Louis IX’s support for, 20–21, 33 n. 61 Philip III’s support of, 36 Philip IV’s support of, 36 as royal confessors, 46 Frederick Barbarossa: 72 Frederick II, emperor: 25 n. 25, 286, 291, 293, 294–95, 317 French style see Gothic style Friars of the Sack, the: 10, 20 Friedlander, Alan: 58 n. 64, 194 n. 31 Fuhse, Jan: 284 Fulcher of Chartres: 320 Fulk of Montaigu, bishop: 282, 285 Fulk of Montaigu, brother: 282, 285 Gajewski, Alexandra: 19 Galeazzo Visconti: 338 Gaposchkin, M. C. (Cecilia): 31, 71–112

INDEX Garin of Montaigu: 282, 284, 285–86, 288–89, 290–91, 292, 298 Garnier of Nablus: 284 Gaucher de Châtillon: 131 Gautier de Coinci: 175–76 Gautier of Brienne: 128 Geoffrey de Charney: 326 Geoffrey of Beaulieu (also Geoffroy): 45–47, 49, 51–52, 224 Geoffrey of Goneville: 326 Geoffrey I of Semur: 312 Geoffrey II of Donzy: 312 Geoffrey III of Donzy: 313 Geoffroy of Beaulieu see Geoffrey of Beaulieu Gerald of Montaigu: 286–87, 294 Gérard de Condé: 123–24 Gerard de Villiers: 335–36 Geraud de Frachet: 208 n. 83 Geraudon (Templar): 335 Gerberge of Dijon and Chalon: 312 n. 22 Gervase of Mont-Saint-Eloi: 10 n. 30 Giacomo da Montecucco: 337–38, 343 Gil Bartholeyns: 161 n. 25 Giles de Rotangis, Brother: 327 Giles of Rome: 10, 11 Gilles Aycelin of Montaigu, archbishop: 231–32, 237, 244, 282, 283 Gilles le Muisit (also li Muisis and li Muisit): 62 n. 78, 130, 206 n. 76 Girard de Monte Claro: 335–36 Girart (Templar): 339–40 Glénisson, Jean: 188, 264, 265 Glotz, Gustave: 189, 191, 263, 268 Godfrey of Fontaines: 10 n. 30 Godfrey of Viterbo: 72 Gothic style: x, 299 Gratian, emperor of Rome: 92, 236 n. 72 Gregory I the Great, pope: 235 n. 72 Gregory VII, pope: 226, 239 Gregory IX, pope: 3, 49 n. 31, 173, 294–95, 298, 312 Gregory X, pope: 46, 53 Grundmann, Herbert: 21 Guerout, Jean: 188, 206 n. 75, 264, 265 Guiard of Cressonessart: 60, 62, 204 n. 69 Guichard of Troyes, bishop: 198 Gui de Lévis: 123 Guilhem de Saint-Laurent: 328

INDEX Guillaume d’Arreblay: 326, 328 Guillaume de Hangest: 198, 336 Guillaume de Hoymont: 326–27 Guillaume de Lins: 335 Gillaume de Nangis: 206, 208 n. 83 Guillaume de Nogaret: 125 n. 26, 194 n. 30, 205, 210, 230 accusation of Bishop Saisset: 196–97, 222, 232–44 accusation of Pope Boniface VIII: 199–201, 222, 246–49 anticlerical publications: 226–27 death and burial of: 193 n. 30, 202–03, 206 and Enguerran de Marigny: 206–07 excommunication reversal attempts: 199–201, 202, 221 faith of, 190–91, 195, 202 n. 63 and heretics: 203–04, 238 idiosyncrasies: 196–98, 201–02 personality of, 189–90, 195, 196 and Philip IV: 195, 198–201, 202–03, 207, 245 n. 110 relation to heretic: 194 n. 33 as subject of Fawtier’s studies: 271 and the Templar trials: 195–96, 221–22, 249–50, 335 will of: 202–03 Guillaume de Paris see William of Paris Guillaume de Plaisians: 197, 198, 200 n. 58, 204 n. 69, 219–21, 247, 249–50 Guillaume le Breton (also William le Breton): 3, 144 Guy, count of La Marche: 198–99 Haidu, Peter: 175 n. 63 Hamilton, Bernard: 305, 308 n. 12, 312 n. 25, 314, 316 Haskins, Charles Homer: 49 n. 32, 186 Hélary, Xavier: 51, 115–42, 188–89, 262 n. 2, 273 n. 61 Henry Craven: 330 Henry of Ghent: 10 n. 30, 11 Henry I, duke: 312 Henry I, king of Cyprus: 297 Henry II, king of Cyprus: 332, 342 Henry II, king of England: 4, 72, 88–89, 223 Henry II of Champagne, count: 313 Henry III, king of England: 130

353

Henry IV, emperor: 72 Henry VII, king of Germany: 317 heresy: 87, 238, 241 churchmen accused of, 4, 57, 196–97, 199, 236–38, 246–48, 297 imagery of: 74–76, 94, 95–104, 96–98, 100–03 investigations of, 44, 47–49, 229, 323–29 king as eradicator of see kings: and heresy heretical depravity see heresy Hervé III of Gien and Donzy: 313 Hervé IV of Gien and Donzy: 313 Hillgarth, Jocelyn: 199 n. 53 Hill, Rosalind: 324 Himbert Blanc see Imbert Blanc Holtzmann, Robert: 191 n. 22, 199 n. 53, 203 n. 64 Honorius III, pope: 289 Hugh Daray: 335 Hugh de Chalons (also Châlons): 335–36 Hugh of Cluny, saint: 312 Hugh of Payens: 314 n. 34 Hugh Pairaud see Hugh Peraud Hugh Peraud (also Pairaud): 326, 336 Hugh I Capet, king of France (also Hugues): 222, 268, 312 Hugh II of Burgundy, duke: 312 Hugh II of Chalon, count: 312 Hugoccio: 172 Hugues I Capet, king of France see Hugh I Capet, king of France Humbert de Romans: 128 n. 33 Humphrey III of Toron: 317, 318 Humphrey IV of Toron: 317 iconography see signs idolatry: 97, 99, 107, 164, 166–68 Imbert Blanc (also Himbert): 329, 331, 335–36 Imbert Louvel: 62 n. 78, 63–64 Innocent III, pope: 3, 4, 5 n. 8, 30 n. 45, 43, 172–73, 233, 235, 238 Innocent IV, pope: 30, 44, 298 inquisitors: 21, 44, 47–51, 52, 53–54, 57–58, 63–64, 106 of nonheretical crimes (enquêteurs): 48 n. 28, 49 n. 32, 146, 148–49, 230

354

see also heresy: investigations of; Lawrence of Orléans; Simon du Val; William of Paris Irwin, Robert: 308 n. 12 Isaac II Angelos, Byzantine emperor: 316 Isabella of Toron: 318 Isabella I of Jerusalem: 317 Isabelle of Angoulême: 35 Isabelle of Aragon, queen of France: 51 Isabelle, sister of Louis IX: 24, 45 n. 12, 46 Jacques de Molay: 325–26 Jacques Fournier see Benedict XII, pope Jean Cholet, cardinal: 9 Jean de Crépy, 127 n. 33 Jean de Gonesse: 125 n. 26 Jean de Joinville: 108, 117, 128, 129, 130, 132, 138, 172 Jean de l’Essart: 122 Jean de Marigny, bishop: 205 Jean de Nesle: 130 Jean de Pouilly: 13 Jean de Vierzon: 271 Jean Lemoine, cardinal: 246 Jeanne de Navarre see Joanne of Navarre Jeanne de Saint-Martin: 204 Jeanne of Toulouse: 53 Jean of Le Mans: 52 n. 43 Jean of Mons: 46, 51 n. 41, 52 n. 43 Jean of Saint-Victor: 63 n. 81 Jean-Tristan (son of Louis IX): 28, 47 Jehen du Pré: 339–40 Jews: xi, 59–60, 97–98, 261, 268 n. 30 imagery of, 94, 96–97, 96, 106–07, 108, 174 Joanne of Navarre, queen of France (also Jeanne): 14, 194, 204, 205 n. 70 Joan, queen of Thessalonika: 315–16 Johannes de Sancto Georgio: 329–30 John de Mortuo Fonte: 326–27, 328 John, infant son of Louis IX: 28 John of Caesarea: 286, 287 n. 39 John of Châlons, Brother: 336 John of Ecle (also Eagle): 329 John of Husflete see John of Usflete (Templar) John of Montmirail: 22–23, 32, 35, 36 John of Moun: 329 John of Poynton: 333 John of Salisbury: 72

INDEX John of Stoke: 329–30 John of Usflete (Templar): 333–34, 338, 343 John of Usflete (vandal): 334 John II the Good, king of France: 131 John XXII, pope: 324, 325, 339, 341 Jordan, William Chester: ix–xvi, 24, 57 n. 61, 105, 131, 185, 189 n. 14, 295 Josserand, Philippe: 341 Kantorowicz, Ernst: 175 n. 63, 240 n. 92 Kibre, Pearl: 9, 14 Kinder, Terryl: 19 Kingdom of Heaven (film): 306, 307 n. 8 kings: beliefs about: x, 77, 175 n. 63, 222 and the Church: 73, 86–108, 90 coronation of: x, 92–93, 162, 163 and the courts: 145–46 duties of, 83–89, 134, 165 and heresy: 74–75, 93–108, 94, 96–98 relationship with subjects: 138, 165–66, 173, 177 training materials for, 71–72, 77, 80, 82–108 Knights Templar, Order of see Templars Krey, August: 308 n. 9, 308 n. 12, 314 n. 35 Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy: 229 n. 44 Lalou, Élisabeth: 188–89, 261–77 Lambert of Dijon and Chalon: 312 n. 22 Langlois, Charles-Victor: 122 n. 15, 187, 188 n. 8, 189–90, 191 n. 22, 191 n. 23, 192, 195–96, 197 n. 44, 208, 209–10, 262 Langlois, Monique: 265 Lanhers, Yvonne: 265 Lawrence of Orléans: 50–53, 54 legislation: xiv and the Church, 4, 20, 172–73 conflict of interest: xiv royal: 135 scholastic, 3, 6–7, 8–9 see also heresy Le Goff, Jacques: xiii, 27, 71, 162 n. 28 Le Lys, abbey of: 20, 22, 25, 28, 34–36 Lemoine, M.: 265 n. 19 Lester, Anne E.: 17–42 Leurquin-Labie, Anne-Françoise: 51, 52 n. 43 Little, Lester: 20

INDEX Loretta, widow of John of Useflet: 334 Lot, Ferdinand: 119, 187–88, 192 n. 28, 268 Louis, count of Nevers: 207 n. 79 Louis de Marigny: 205, 207 Louis, son of Louis IX: 28 Louis the Pious, king of the Franks: 248 Louis VI, king of France: 222 Louis VII, king of France: 3 n. 2, 223, 305, 314 Louis VIII, king of France: 7, 79, 95, 96, 105–08, 224, 313 Louis IX, king of France (also St Louis): 27, 28, 34, 51, 79, 161, 163, 173, 204, 205–6, 208, 227–28, 267, 268 n. 30, 270, 285, 292, 297, 299 canonization of: xi, 49, 225, 230, 237 and confessors: 44–47 death and burial of: 224 early training: 71–72 influence on his children: 105 and inquisitors: 47–50 legislation and decisions by: xi, xiv, 6, 145–49, 172, 226 military exploits of: 116–17, 118, 125–26, 131, 133–34 preparation for Crusades: 25–27, 132, 148 pursuit of heretics: 106–08, 203 n. 68 self-blame: 148 support of charities and churches, 7, 8, 14, 18, 19, 20–37, 224, 175, 295–96 Louis X, king of France: 63–64, 204, 207 Louis XI, king of France: 208 Louis XIV, king of France: 136 Lowden, John: 78, 79–80, 82 Lucius III, pope: 4 Ludolph of Sudheim (also Suchem): 324, 333 Ludwig IV, Prince of Bavaria: 317 magic, natural: 164 n. 31, 168–69, 171–72 Maillard, François: 186, 188–89, 264, 265, 272, 273 Manuel I, Byzantine emperor: 316, 317 Margaret, queen of Thessalonika (also Maria): 316 Marguerite of Provence, queen of France: 23, 26, 32, 46, 79 Marguerite Porete: 60, 62, 204 n. 69 Maria of Antioch, Byzantine empress: 315 n., 316, 317 n. 43

355

Marie, daughter of Enguerran de Marigny: 204 n. 70 Marie of Blois and Champagne: 312 Marrone, Stephen P.: 168 n. 46 Martin IV, pope: 126 Matilda of Chalon: 311–12 Matilda of Courtenay: 313 Matteo Visconti: 339 Matthew Paris (also Matthew of Paris): 6 n. 11, 24 n. 24, 106, 132, 148, 293 Mayer, Hans Eberhard: 283 McIlwain, Charles Howard: 186 Means, Gardiner: 143, 147, 149 mediation: 155–77 Michelet, Jules: 221, 326 Miles de Plancy: 317 military: conscription: 118–20, 135–36 fines for nonparticipation: 118, 119–20, 123–25 pay: 117, 119–20, 123, 127–28 troop strength: 119–21 see also nobles: military service by Mille dou Sac, brother (Templar): 340 Mollat, Michel: 271 Montaigu family: 282–99, 287 Montferrat family: 310, 316 Muret, battle of: ix–x, 44 Nadiras, Sébastien: 190 n. 19, 194 n. 33, 195, 196 n. 41, 197 n. 42, 232, 233 n. 61 Nardeux, Bruno: 205 n. 74 Navas de Tolosa, battle of, Las: ix–x Nicholas de Gorran: 52 n. 43, 55–56 Nicholas of Clermont: 64 Nicholas of Fréauville: 55–56, 57–59, 63 Nicholas IV, pope: 228 Nicholson, Helen J.: 323–47 Nielen, Marie-Adélaïde: 315 n. 37 nobles: administrative service by: 144–49 and the courts: 145–46 military service by: 118–38 Odo of Châteauroux: 297–98 Odo of Montaigu: 298, 299 Odo II of Burgundy, count: 312 Oliver of Paderborn: 289

356

Oliver of Tréguier: 10 n. 30 Order of Knights Templar see Templars Order of Preachers see Dominican order Order of the Temple see Templars Othon de la Roche: 128 Otto de Lagery see Urban II, pope Ottokar I, king (Bohemia): 317 Otto of Brunswick: 338 Ourri l’Allemand: 128 n. 34 Painter, Sidney: 186 Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino: 221 Pascal II, pope: 223 Pegues, Franklin: 194 n. 33 Peirce, Charles Sanders: 157–58, 160 Pelagius: 289–91 Perroy, Edouard: 265 Peter Lombard: 161 Peter of Alençon: 28, 50, 52 Peter of Blois: 312 Peter of Bologna (Pietro da Bologna): 337, 338, 343 Peter of Boucle: 336 Peter of Montaigu, abbot: 298 Peter of Montaigu, family patriarch: 288 Peter of Montaigu, Templar master: 282, 284, 285–86, 288–94, 295, 298 Peter II of Courtenay, emperor of Constantinople: 313 Peter III of Aragon, king of Sicily: 225 Petit, Joseph: 208 Philip of Milly (or Nablus): 317 Philip of Novara: 286–87 Philippa of Antioch: 316 n. 37 Philippe Dagobert: 27 n. 36, 28 Philippe de Marigny, archbishop: 198, 205 n. 71 Philippe de Valois see Philip VI, king of France Philippe le Bel see Philip IV the Fair, king of France Philip, son of Louis VIII: 313 Philip II Augustus, king of France: 5, 24 n. 22, 29, 95, 153 advisors of: 144, 149 influence on descendants: 71, 267 military exploits of: ix, 23, 43, 143 scholars’ rights charter, 3–4, 6–7, 14

INDEX Philip III the Bold, king of France: 44, 45, 46 n. 17, 127, 133 and confessors: 45, 50–54, 59 death of: 52 n. 43, 131, 194, 225 influence of father on: 105, 132, 224 and inquisitors: 51–54, 59 legislation and decisions of: 8, 119–20 military exploits of: 52, 116, 125–26, 129, 131 military rules under: 119–20, 122–23, 125 support of charities and churches: 7–8, 14, 36, 37 n. 73 Philip IV the Fair, king of France (Philippe le Bel): xi, 8–14, 36–37, 132, 134–35, 204, 219–22 assassination plot against: 336 and confessors: 51–52, 54–57, 59–64, 204 n. 69 conflicts with Pope Boniface VIII: 8, 11–12, 63 n. 79, 134–35, 191, 195, 196, 199–201, 221, 225–26, 228–49, 267 n. 24, 270 faith of: 191–92, 270 influence of father on: 51 and inquisitors: 53, 54, 56–64, 204 n. 69 legislation and decisions of: 6 n. 10, 8–9, 14, 119, 120–21, 123–25, 127 n. 33, 130, 193–94, 209 n., 206, 228 military exploits of: 116, 121–22, 131, 133, 137, 199 persecution of Bishop Saisset: 228, 230–45 personality of: 189–90, 193–94, 208–10, 267–68, 269 planned excommunication of: 244 n. 108, 247 support of charities and churches: 34, 36–37, 194 as subject of Fawtier’s study: 188–89, 209, 261–73 as subject of Strayer’s study: 185, 186, 189 n. 14, 209, 261, 262 n. 5, 263 as subject of Taylor’s study: 186–87, 189, 209 Templar persecutions by, 12–14, 191 n. 23, 219–20, 323, 337 Philip V, king of France: 64 Philip VI, king of France (Philippe de Valois): 205, 208

INDEX Phillips, Jenna Rebecca: 284 n. 18 Phillips, Jonathan: 306 n. 5 Pierre de Claremont: 327 Pierre de la Broce: 122, 133 Pierre d’Étampes: 119 n. 12 Pierre Dubois: 134 Pierre Pillart: 127 Pietro da Bologna see Peter of Bologna Pinoteau, Hervé: 35 Pons of Lérida (Lleida), bishop: 338 Pons of Parnac: 54 Pontigny: 24–25, 27, 32 Post, Gaines: 186 n. 1 power see authority, church vs. royal Prelog, Jan: 284 Primat: 116–17, 137 racism: xiv Rainald de Cunheriis: 327m 327 Rainald de Provins: 326–27, 328 Ralph of Bulford: 333 Ranulph of Plassac: 54 Raoul de Clermont: 131 Raoul de Flavy: 122 Raybaud, templar: 332 Raymond de Nogaret: 194 n. 33 Raymond of Guardia: 331 Raymond of Poitiers: 309, 315 Regan, Geoffrey: 307 n. 7 Reginald of Châtillon see Renaud of Châtillon Regino of Prüm: 236 n. 72, 240 n. 91 relics: 20, 22, 23–24, 25–26, 27 n. 36, 31–35, 36 n., 224, 299 royal: 10, 28, 33–35, 36 n. 71, 37 n. 73, 194 Remigio dei Girolami: xi, 52–53 Renan, Ernest: 202 n. 64 Renaud de la Follie (also Renaut): 335–36 Renaud of Aubigny: 63–64 Renaud of Châtillon (also Reginald or Reynald): 305–20, 311 Renaud of Trie: 172 Renaud, son of Renaud of Châtillon: 318 Renier, Byzantine emperor: 316 Renouard, Yves: 271 representation see signs Rey, Emmanuel-Guillaume: 281 Reynald of Châtillon see Renaud of Châtillon Rezak, Ira: 156 n. 7

357

Riant, Paul: 296 n. 80 Richard Anglicus see Richard of Grafton Richard, brother of Henry III: 130 Richard de Montcler: 335 Richard Engayn: 333 Richard, Jean: 71, 310–11, 313–14 Richard of Chichester: 24 Richard of Grafton: 330, 332 Richard I the Lionheart, king: x, 319 Rigault, Abel: 198 n. 47 Riley-Smith, Jonathan: 310 Rinaldo de Supino (also Reynaud): 200 Robert Courçon: 3 Robert de Hedon: 334 Robert le Bougre: 49, 106 Robert of Artois, count: 24, 28, 31, 121, 126, 131, 135, 137, 225, 231 Robert of Hameldon: 329 Robert of Le Puy, bishop: 282, 285 Robert of Sautre: 330 Robert of Sorbon: 7 Robert I, count of Dreux: 5 Robert II the Pious, king of France: 222, 312 Roger-Bernard III of Foix, count: 119, 227–28, 230 Roger of Dalton: 342 Roger of Sheffield: 330 Roger of Sicily, king: 313 Rosier-Catach, Irène: 161 n. 25, 162 n. 28 Royaumont Abbey: 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27–29, 32–33, 36–37 Runciman, Steven: 306–08, 310, 319 Rupen III, Prince of Armenia: 318 Saint Louis see Louis IX, king Saint-Victor, Order of: 20 n. 7 Saladin: 307, 318, 319 Saracens: 75, 99, 101, 101, 106–07, 134 Saussure, Ferdinand de: 157 Sbriccoli, Mario: 238 n. 83 Schacher, David: xiv Schmidt, Tilmann: 243, 244 n. 108 scholars, medieval: crimes by, 6 patrons of, 5 protection of, 3–4, 11–12 uprising by, 6, 7 Schützeichel, Rainer: 284–85 Sciarra Colonna: 200, 241 n. 97, 247

INDEX

358

seals: 154, 169, 170 astral: 167 n. 39, 168–69, 171 royal: 153, 154–55, 163, 163–64, 168–69, 172–73, 175 validity of: 172–73 Sibyl, queen of Sicily: 313 Siger of Brabant: 50 n. 35 signs (also iconography, representation, symbols): actions as: 132, 152, 154, 165 in artworks, 80, 87, 89, 96–97, 99 demonic: 166, 169, 175–76 divine: 169, 171, 175 natural: 171–72 objects as: 154–55, 157–58, 159, 160, 162–66, 172–73, 175, 177, 223 Simon de Nesle: 145 Simon du Val (Simon of Troyes): 49–50, 52–54 Simon of Troyes see Simon du Val Smalley, Beryl: 55 Soman, Alfred: 192–93 Spiegel, Gabrielle: 155–56 Stephanie de Milly, lady of Oultrejourdain: 317–18 Stephen of Chalençon: 285 Stephen of Meses: 282 Stephen of Mezel: 282 Stephen I of Sancerre, count: 313 St Louis see Louis IX, king of France Strayer, Joseph Reese: xii, 185–87, 189 n. 14, 193 n. 30, 209, 261, 262, 263, 272, 273 sword: as symbol of power: 89–95, 102, 104, 107–08, 162 symbols see signs Taylor, Charles Holt: 185–87, 189, 192, 209, 262, 263 n. 5 The Templar Code for Dummies: 307 n. 8 Templars (also Order of Knights Templar and Order of the Temple): 299, 323 heresy trials of: xi, 12–14, 60, 61, 62–63, 191 n. 23, 195–96, 200–01, 220, 222, 241, 249–50, 298, 323–29 military exploits of: 288–91, 317, 340 post-trial lives of: 323–43 Theobald of Navarre and Champagne: 295 Theophilus: 174, 176

Théry-Astruc, Julien: 194, 196 n. 40, 196 n. 41, 197 n. 42, 219–59 Thibaut of Marly: 23 Thibaut II le Grand of Champagne: 27, 314 n. 33 Tholomeus of Lucca see Tolomeo of Lucca Thomas Becket: 4, 88–89, 88, 223 Thomas, Louis: 194 n. 33 Thomas of Citeaux: 172 n. 58 Thomas of Frouby see Thomas of Thoroldby Thomas of Lindsey: 333 Thomas of Staunford: 330 Thomas of Thoroldby (also Frouby or Totty): 333 Thomas of Totty see Thomas of Thoroldby Thorne, Samuel E.: 186 n. 1 Tilly, Charles: xii, 17 n. 2 Tolomeo of Lucca (also Tholomeus): 200, 201 n. 59 tournaments: 126 Tout, Thomas Frederic: 268–69 Tyerman, Christopher: 306 n. 4 University of Pamiers: 229 University of Paris: 3–14, 152, 194 n. 31, 282 and the Church, 3–4, 10, 11–13 and the king: 3–4, 8–14, 194 n. 31 legislation affecting, 3–4, 8–9, 11–12, 14, 194 n. 31 and the Templar trials, 13–14 Urban II, pope (Otto de Lagery): 312 Urban III, pope: 5 n. 8 Urban IV, pope: 235 n. 69 Vaissete, Jean-Joseph: 202 n. 64 Vildé, Boris: 188 Vincent, Nicholas: 35 Vincent of Beauvais: 33 n. 62 Wallette, Anna: 290 Walsh, James J.: xii–xiii Walter le Bachelor: 330 Walter of Saint-Omer: 314 Weill-Parot, Nicolas: 164 n. 31, 168 n. 45 William Cadel: 291 William de la More: 329, 331 William Humbert see William of Paris William, king of Sicily: 223 n. 20

INDEX William le Breton see Guillaume le Breton William Longsword: 316 William of Auvergne: 7, 151–52, 154–55, 160–69, 171–73, 175 n. 65, 176–77 William of Auxerre: 57 William of Chartres: 46 n. 17, 47–48, 51, 106–07, 288 William of Clairvaux, Abbot: 25 n. 25 William of Paris (Guillaume de Paris): 13, 56, 58–63, 204 n. 69 William of Saint-Pathus: 28, 34, 46 n. 17, 50 n. 34 William of Tyre: 286, 306 n. 5, 307–09, 310, 314, 318 William Valdreys (also Vadres): 332 Wood, Charles T.: 273 Xavier de la Selle: 44, 46 n. 17, 52 n. 43, 62 n. 78, 63 n. 81 Yolanda of Courtenay, queen of Hungary: 313 Yolanda, queen of Aragon: 317

359

Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. by Yitzhak Hen (2001) Amnon Linder, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (2003) Thomas Deswarte, De la destruction à la restauration: L’idéologie dans le royaume d’OviedoLéon (VIIIe-XIe siècles) (2004) The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the Inter­national Symposium held at Speyer, 20-25 October 2002, ed. by Christoph Cluse (2004) Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, ed. by Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (2006) Carine van Rijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (2007)

Avicenna and his Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. by Y. Tzvi Langermann (2010) Writing ‘True Stories’: Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East, ed. by Arietta Papaconstantinou, Muriel Debié, and Hugh Kennedy (2010) Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-Century Commentary Traditions on ‘De nuptiis’ in Context, ed. by Mariken Teeuwen and Sinéad O’Sullivan (2011) John-Henry Clay, In the Shadow of Death: Saint Boniface and the Conversion of Hessia, 721–54 (2011) Ehud Krinis, God’s Chosen People: Judah Halevi’s ‘Kuzari’ and the Shī‘ī Imām Doctrine (2013) Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013) Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013) D’Orient en Occident: Les recueils de fables enchâssées avant les Mille et une Nuits de Galland (Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept Sages), ed. by Marion Uhlig and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens (2014) Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honour of Ora Limor, ed. by Israel Jacob Yuval and Ram Ben-Shalom (2014) Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. by Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (2014) The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World: Converting the Isles I, ed. by Roy Flechner and Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (2016) Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honour of Peter Brown, ed. by Jamie Kreiner and Helmut Reimitz (2016) The Prague Sacramentary: Culture, Religion, and Politics in Late Eighth-Century Bavaria, ed. by Maximilian Diesenberger, Rob Meens, and Els Rose (2016)

In Preparation Transforming Landscapes of Belief in the Early Medieval Insular World and Beyond: Con­ verting the Isles II, ed. by Nancy Edwards, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Roy Flechner