Courting Sanctity: Holy Women and the Capetians 9781501736209

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COURTING SANCTITY

COURTING SANCTITY

HO LY ­W O M EN A ND T H E C A P E T I A N S

Sean   L. Field

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2019 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress​.­cornell​.­edu. First published 2019 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Field, Sean L. (Sean Linscott), 1970–­author. Title: Courting sanctity : holy ­women and the Capetians / Sean L. Field. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018042507 (print) | LCCN 2018044647 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501736209 (e-­book pdf ) | ISBN 9781501736216 (e-­book epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501736193 | ISBN 9781501736193 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Upper class ­women—­Religious life—­France—­History—­To 1500. | Catholic ­women—­France—­History—­To 1500. | Church and state—­France—­History—­To 1500. | France—­Kings and rulers—­Religious aspects. | France—­History—­Capetians, 987-1328. Classification: LCC HQ1147.F7 (ebook) | LCC HQ1147. F7 .F54 2019 (print) | DDC 944/.02409252—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2018042507 Cover image: Detail from Le Livre des faiz monseigneur saint Loys, fifteenth century. BnF ms. fr. 2829 fol. 64v. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Used by permission.

For Tamara Myers Field

Co nte nts

List of Maps  ix Preface xi List of Abbreviations  xiii

Introduction



Part One: Creation

1 15

Prologue: The Rise of Capetian Sanctity and the Reign of Louis IX

17

1. Isabelle of France: A Holy ­Woman at the Heart of the Capetian Court

23

2. Douceline of Digne: Co-­mother to the Capetians

54

Part Two: Interrogation

75

Prologue: A Crisis in the Reign of Philip III 77 3. Elizabeth of Spalbeek: A Prince’s Death, a Queen’s Crime, and a King’s Sin 4. Writing Holy ­Women, 1282–85

Part Three: Destruction

83 117

145

Prologue: The Culminating Reign of Philip IV

147

5. Paupertas of Metz: Peacemaker, Prophet, or Poisoner? 152 6. Marguerite Porete and Margueronne of Bellevillette: The Beguine and the Sorceress

182

vi i i Conte nts

Epilogue: Echoes and Afterlives Bibliography 235 Index 259

214

Maps

1. Thirteenth-­century France and the Île-­de-­France 2. Western Eu­rope in the thirteenth ­century 3. The Low Countries in the 1270s

28 57 84

ix

P r e fac e

This book would not exist if not for Sylvain Piron’s invitation to pres­ent a series of seminars in Paris at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in the spring of 2016. Given my interest in Isabelle of France and Marguerite Porete, Sylvain suggested the topic of Les femmes saintes et la cour capétienne, challenging me to think about ­whether a usable history could link a saintly princess to a condemned heretic. Jacques Dalarun, Xavier Hélary, Elizabeth A. R. Brown, and Sylvain himself graciously agreed to act as respondents for ­these seminars; each helped me see weaknesses in my initial arguments and perceive ave­nues for development. The discussions following t­hese pre­sen­ta­tions ­were likewise of enormous value. Among the participants, I particularly thank Nicole Bériou, Renate Blumenfeld-­Kosinski, Damien Boquet, Alain Boureau, Béatrice Delaurenti, Camille de Villeneuve, Fabien Guilloux, Anne-­Françoise Leurquin-­Labie, Constant Mews, Alain Provost, André Vauchez, and Xenia Von Tippelskirch. As I worked on the book over the following year while on sabbatical from the University of Vermont, an invitation from Jennifer Edwards to give the 2016 Costello Lecture at Manhattan College allowed me to develop parallels between Isabelle and Marguerite. Ian Wei’s invitation to come to Bristol in March 2017 as a Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol’s Institute for Advanced Studies gave me the opportunity to pres­ent work in pro­g ress at seminars with faculty and gradu­ate students, and at a colloquium on Capetian sanctity or­ ga­ nized with Cecilia Gaposchkin, Emily Guerry, and Lindy Grant. This trip to Eu­rope also included research time in Paris and Lille funded by a UVM College of Arts and Sciences Small Grant Research Award. Along the way Michael Bailey, Damien Boquet, Elizabeth  A.  R. Brown, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Madeleine Jeay, Robert E. Lerner, Alain Provost, and Walter Simons all read one or more chapter drafts, and Elizabeth Brown, Danielle Dubois, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Xavier Hélary, William Chester Jordan, Alain Provost, and Walter Simons graciously allowed me to consult not-­yet-­published work. Elizabeth Brown and Alain Provost provided invaluable transcriptions xi

xi i P re face

of unpublished documents. Once I had a complete draft of the book, Cecilia Gaposchkin, the most generous of scholars, or­ga­nized a seminar at Dartmouth College to review it. Charles Briggs, George Dameron, Christopher Mac­Evitt, Monika Otter, and Walter Simons went well beyond the call of scholarly duty with their critiques of the manuscript, for which their only recompense was the delicious dinner prepared afterward by Dr. Gaposchkin. ­After the manuscript had passed through peer review, in the spring of 2018 Miri Rubin gave the penultimate draft a meticulous reading (and then rereading), which not only improved the book but produced its title. Her enthusiasm truly infused the last phase of this proj­ect. My perspective on Isabelle of France has been greatly enriched in the course of collaborating with Jacques Dalarun. Work with Robert E. Lerner and Sylvain Piron on Marguerite Porete has ­shaped my understanding of that endlessly fascinating ­woman. Walter Simons generously lent his time and talents to an annotated translation of the sources for Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s interaction with the French court; my understanding of this episode was immeasurably enriched as a result of his unmatched expertise. Like every­one who works on Capetian history, I owe an enormous debt to Peggy Brown’s unfailing willingness to share photo­g raphs and transcriptions, offer bibliographic tips, wrangle invitations, and make introductions in the ser­vice of scholarship. Like all of his students, I think of e­ very proj­ect I undertake in terms of the intellectual ideals and scholarly standards upheld by Robert Lerner. Any merits this book may have are due to the help of this long list of stellar scholars. Only its weaknesses belong uniquely to me. At Cornell University Press I thank Mahinder Kingra for supporting this proj­ect from its inception, and the two anonymous readers for stimulating critiques. Jonathan Chipman and Walter Simons kindly allowed me to use map 3, while Cecilia Gaposchkin (cartographer to the Capetians) created maps 1 and 2. The Interlibrary Loan staff at UVM worked tirelessly to fulfill my obscure requests. Fi­nally, my ­family. Cecilia and Romare politely asked ­every now and then, “Is your book finished yet?” Yes, thank you, it is. Kristen Johanson deserves all the real credit for every­thing. And I am fortunate to be able to consult on fine points of erudition with my f­ather, Larry, and my ­brother, Nicholas. But I dedicate this book to my m ­ other, Tamara Myers Field, who comes from a long line of literate Linscotts. She has never aspired to sanctity, but she is the most discerning reader and the kindest person I know.

A b b r e v i at i o n s

ADN Lille, Archives départementales du Nord AN Paris, Archives nationales de France BAV Vatican City, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana BnF Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Field, Isabelle Sean L. Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth ­Century (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). Princesse mineure Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, Jean-­Baptiste Lebigue, and Anne-­Françoise Leurquin-­Labie, Isabelle de France, sœur de Saint Louis: Une princesse mineure (Paris: Éditions franciscaines, 2014). RHGF M. Bouquet et al., eds., Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, 24 vols. (Paris, 1738–1876). Rules of Isabelle Sean  L. Field, The Rules of Isabelle of France: An En­glish Translation with Introductory Study (St.  Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2013), additional documents translated by Larry F. Field. Writings of AH Sean L. Field, The Writings of Agnes of Harcourt: The Life of Isabelle of France and the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003).

xiii

COURTING SANCTITY

Introduction

Isabelle, the younger ­sister of King Louis IX of France, lay shivering with fever at Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye, just west of Paris, in late 1243 or early 1244. Her ­mother, the dowager queen of France Blanche of Castile, had to depart “for the affairs of the realm,” and left Isabelle in the care of Louis’s wife, Marguerite of Provence. When Isabelle’s illness worsened to the point that her life seemed in danger, the king and his ­mother rushed back to her bedside. Finding her only ­daughter “very ill and in peril of death,” Blanche, heartsick with worry, sent in all directions to ask for prayers for her recovery. She particularly sent to a “most religious and contemplative” w ­ oman in “Avauterre,” pouring out her anguish in hope that this ­woman would pray for Isabelle’s return to health. The holy ­woman wrote back to Blanche with a prophecy: Isabelle would survive her illness, but “her heart would nevermore be in the world, nor in the ­things of the world.” Indeed, upon her recovery Isabelle turned away from fine clothes and ornaments “to prayer and to works of perfection and to a religious life.”1 This story, recounted in Agnes of Harcourt’s Life of Isabelle (c. 1283), introduces several themes that shape this book. First, it hints at the way ­women of 1. ​ Writings of AH, 56–57. The dating of the episode is not certain, but see the reasoning in Field, Isabelle, 32–33. Cécile Léon, Le Château de Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye au Moyen Âge, XIIe–­XIVe siècles: Histoire et évolution architecturale d’une résidence royale (Paris: Les Presses Franciliennes, 2008), 211, confirms the court was at Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye in February 1244. 1

2 I ntrodu c t i on

and closely linked to the French royal ­family—­the Capetians—­helped create an aura of sanctity around that dynasty. Isabelle is the prime example of this dynamic. ­After recovering her health, she developed a reputation as a holy ­woman at court before ­going on to found the female Franciscan community of Longchamp. Second, this anecdote suggests the potential for holy w ­ omen outside the court to exercise influence with the royal ­family. Blanche of Castile could have hurried to any number of local saints’ shrines in her hour of need, or perhaps sought out a male figure within her favored Cistercian orbit.2 But she thought instead of a holy ­woman. At the same time, Blanche’s anxious wait highlights the fact that not even a queen could be sure what message might be conveyed through such a mouthpiece. Allowing a holy ­woman to speak for God provided a power­f ul means of demonstrating divine f­ avor— as long as she did not report unwelcome tidings. Fi­nally, Agnes of Harcourt’s text illustrates the way the roles of holy ­women tied to the court would be retrospectively reinterpreted in writings from the 1280s. In this example, the story of the princess’s illness helped Agnes explain how the royal f­amily had come to terms with Isabelle’s embrace of a semireligious existence as a bride of Christ, and with her rejections of the dynastic marriage that had been urged upon her. Unfortunately, Agnes of Harcourt did not give the name of the holy ­woman in question. The passage was long misread as indicating the ­woman’s location in ­either Angleterre (­England) or Nanterre. The former always appeared implausible, but the latter, just ten kilo­meters east of Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye, seemed an obvious place for Blanche to have sought help. ­There is now no doubt, however, about the correct reading of the passage.3 The word Avauterre (or Avalterre) in Old French was the literal equivalent of “Low Countries” in modern En­glish.4 In thirteenth-­century usage it most often indicated the south-­central, largely French-­speaking, part of the Low Countries centered around Nivelles, Namur, and Liège and stretching west ­toward Cambrai and Douai (see map 3).5 2. ​For example, in 1240 Louis IX and Marguerite of Provence had asked for prayers from Thibaut of Marly, abbot of the Cistercian ­house of Vaux-­de-­Cernay, in hopes of conceiving a child. See Lester, “Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited,” 23. On Blanche of Castile’s close relationship with a number of female Cistercian ­houses, see Berman, White Nuns, chap. 6; and Grant, Blanche of Castile, 174. 3. ​The correct reading is found in BnF, Duchesne ms 38, fol. 74r. See Field, “Agnes of Harcourt as Intellectual.” In Writings of AH, I read “en Ananterre,” from BnF ms. fr. 13753, fol. 129r. I am now certain that the correct reading in that manuscript is indeed “en Avauterre.” For further details see Field, “De la Vie française de Claire d’Assise à la Vie d’Isabelle de France.” 4. ​See the entry for “Avalterrae” in Du Cange’s Glossarium infimae et mediae latinitatis, at http://­ ducange​.­enc​.­sorbonne​.­fr​/­AVALTERRAE (Éditions en ligne de l’École des chartes). 5. ​See Simons, “Worlds Apart?” A particularly relevant example of this usage is found in the 1282 testament of Pierre of Alençon, son of Louis IX. Among his charitable bequests was one to the abbey

I n t r o d u c ti o n

3

The correct reading of this passage opens new perspectives on Blanche of Castile’s search for saintly intervention, and indeed on Capetian expectations about holiness in the 1240s. Where better to seek a direct link to divine aid than in the southern Low Countries, where holy ­women ­were a newly vis­i­ble and dynamic presence? The twelfth ­century had given rise to a “religious movement” in which increasingly literate laypeople in Eu­rope’s bustling towns ­adopted apostolic ideals of engagement in the world.6 While both sexes ­were caught up in this religious fervor, w ­ omen ­were a particularly power­f ul ele­ ment, as embodied in a figure such as Marie of Oignies (d. 1213), a young ­woman from Nivelles who persuaded her husband to live in chastity and devoted herself to serving lepers alongside an informal community of like-­ minded ­women.7 Sympathetic churchmen publicized this striking new model of ­women’s religiosity by writing vitae (saints’ lives) of Marie and of at least ten other holy ­women from the southern Low Countries in the first half of the thirteenth c­ entury.8 T ­ hese ­women led varied existences, some as recluses, ­others as part of Benedictine or Cistercian communities, and still o ­ thers spending part or all of their adult lives as beguines.9 Indeed, beguines ­were the most distinctive ele­ment of the “­women’s religious movement” as it emerged from the Low Countries. Beguines pursued lives of simplicity and charitable care for the sick and poor, living singly, in small groups, or in larger and more formal communities. They ­were chaste but not members of any formal order, and their vows w ­ ere not permanently or canonically binding. They came from across the social spectrum and could focus on prayer and contemplation or on a life of ser­vice tied to a parish church, hospital, or other charitable institution. By the second quarter of the ­century, some beguinages (beguine communities) took on more formal aspects as convents ­under a magistra (mistress) or as larger courts holding several hundred w ­ omen within complexes that often included gardens, chapels, and varied housing

of Longchamp, where, he noted, his “dear aunt” Isabelle of France was buried; one to the beguines of Paris; and one “to the poor beguines of Avauterre, at Cambrai, at Nivelles, at Douai, and at Liège.” See du Cange, Histoire de S. Lovys IX, 183. Du Cange did not understand the word he read as “Auaucerre” and suggested emending to “Auxerre.” Coincidentally, du Cange printed the first edition of Agnes of Harcourt’s Vie d’Isabelle and the testament of Pierre of Alençon back to back in this volume. On Pierre of Alençon’s testament see Hélary, “La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alencon.” I would like to thank Walter Simons for pointing me to Pierre’s testament and for suggesting the pos­si­ble identity of the holy ­woman from Avauterre. 6. ​Grundmann, Religious Movements in the ­Middle Ages. 7. ​Mulder-­Bakker, Mary of Oignies. 8. ​Simons, Cities of Ladies, 37; Van Engen, “The Religious W ­ omen of Liège at the Turn of the Thirteenth ­Century”; Ritchey, “Saints’ Lives as Efficacious Texts.” 9. ​Simons, Cities of Ladies.

4 I ntrodu c t i on

arrangements. Most of the ­women treated in this book ­were called beguines at one point or another; even Isabelle of France was linked to beguine piety.10 This, then, was the dynamic world of female holiness that drew the admiration of pious Christians, including the Capetians, in the first half of the thirteenth ­century. Certainly ­there was no shortage of contacts between Paris and the mulieres religiosae (religious ­women) of the Low Countries. Jacques of Vitry, who eventually wrote the Life of Marie of Oignies, was a student in Paris around 1207 when he first heard of and began to correspond with Marie. And in the 1220s Pa­ri­sian students carried letters back and forth between Theophania, the magistra of the Hotel-­Dieu in Paris, and Goswin of Bossut, cantor of the Cistercian community of Villers in Brabant and author of works celebrating the holy ­women of the Low Countries.11 By the 1240s, members of the Capetian f­ amily ­were already supporting beguines.12 Perhaps the earliest example, as Walter Simons points out, is Louis IX’s substantial monetary gift to the beguines of Cantimpré (Cambrai) in January 1240.13 Blanche of Castile, for her part, was prob­ably the queen who gave early support to the beguinage known as La royauté or Le reine in Nivelles by 1241.14 Blanche even owned a copy of the Life of Marie of Oignies.15 The Capetian court was well aware of the holy ­women of Avauterre by 1244. Who, then, was Blanche of Castile’s mysterious correspondent? Although ­there is no way to be certain, an educated guess might be that this was Lutgard of Aywières (1182–1246). Over a long c­ areer Lutgard had been variously a beguine, a Benedictine prioress, and a Cistercian nun. By the 1240s she was part of the Cistercian ­house of Aywières in Couture-­Saint-­Germain, south of Brussels and about twenty kilo­meters northeast of Nivelles. Lutgard was widely renowned for her prophetic gifts, as memorialized in the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré’s Life of Lutgard (1246–48).16 Among Thomas’s stories about Lutgard’s powers of prophecy, especially noteworthy is an episode involving Marie, Duchess of Brabant, at the time of her death in 1224. The duch10. ​For Thomas of Cantimpré’s linking of Isabelle to the beguines of Paris, see chapter 1. The point was first suggested by McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 229. 11. ​Both of ­these examples are drawn from Simons, “Beginnings,” 33–34. 12. ​See generally McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 224–33. 13. ​Simons, “Beginnings,” 39. 14. ​See Simons, “Worlds Apart?”; and de Louvet, “L’Origine nivelloise de l’institution béguinale,” 41–42. Farther south, Blanche had made a small donation to the beguines of Crépy-­en-­Valois as early as 1239. See McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 232; and Grant, Blanche of Castile, 206. 15. ​Simons, “Worlds Apart?” based on Anne Bondéelle-­Souchier, “Les moniales cisterciennes et leurs livres manuscrits dans la France d’Ancien Régime,” Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 45 (1994): 193–337 (at 221n122; see also 300–303). 16. ​See Thomas of Cantimpré, Collected Saints’ Lives, for text and introduction to Lutgard’s ­career.

I n t r o d u c ti o n

5

ess, who had “loved Lutgard for a long time,” fell ill and sent to Lutgard to ask for her prayers. Lutgard replied that Marie should confess and “wait for the Lord with a most trusting heart.” Sure enough, as Lutgard had predicted, the countess passed away, but then appeared to Lutgard in a vision to reveal that the Virgin Mary had rescued her from purgatory.17 Although in this case Lutgard’s revealed knowledge pointed to death rather than recovery, ­there are obvious similarities with Blanche of Castile’s exchange with the holy ­woman of Avauterre at the time of Isabelle’s illness. But what makes the example particularly relevant is that Marie, Duchess of Brabant, was the ­daughter of King Philip II of France (r. 1180–1223), half ­sister to the reigning king of France Louis VIII at the time of her death, and hence sister-­in-­law to Louis’s wife, Queen Blanche of Castile.18 Twenty years ­later, in her moment of need, Blanche’s mind might well have flown to the venerable Lutgard, who had so impressed her kinswoman. This book offers the first assessment of the shifting relationships between such holy ­women and the Capetian court, across the thirteenth ­century and into the first de­cades of the ­fourteenth. It argues that during the reign of Louis IX (r. 1226–70) holy w ­ omen ­were central to the rise of the Capetian self-­ presentation as uniquely favored by God, that their influence was questioned and reshaped ­under Philip III (r. 1270–85), and that would-be holy ­women ­were increasingly assumed to pose physical, spiritual, and po­liti­cal threats by the death of Philip IV (r. 1285–1314). History is never quite so neat, of course, and so this study also notes ways in which holy w ­ omen ­were sometimes problematic as vehicles for Capetian claims, and unconvincing as examples of spiritual danger. Still, the narrative thread of Courting Sanctity runs from creation, through interrogation, to destruction of the relationship between holy w ­ omen and the court.

Capetian Power, ­Women’s Religion This narrative takes shape at the intersection between two established perspectives on the long thirteenth c­ entury, the po­liti­cal and the religious. On the one hand, scholars of French po­liti­cal history have long argued that Capetian power grew exponentially in the ­century between the ­Battle of Bouvines (1214) and the death of Philip IV (1314). This growth in power was due not only to increased military might, rapid economic development, and emerging 17. ​Thomas of Cantimpré, Collected Saints’ Lives, 264–65. 18. ​Simons, “Worlds Apart?,” also draws attention to this familial link.

6 I ntrodu c t i on

administrative sophistication, but also, as Joseph Strayer put it in a classic essay, to a successful campaign to pres­ent the “Most Christian” (christianissimus) French king as uniquely favored by God, with France as a new “Holy Land” and the French as a new “chosen p­ eople.”19 The development of this Capetian self-­presentation has generally been demonstrated through a male-­dominated narrative, ­running from the piety of Louis IX, through efforts to promote his swift canonization, to Philip IV’s designs on all forms of sacred power within his kingdom, as seen in his attacks on pope Boniface VIII, on the Templars, and on bishops Bernard Saisset and Guichard of Troyes. On the other hand, scholars of w ­ omen’s religious experience have argued that enthusiasm for the early w ­ omen’s religious movement gave way to increasing suspicion of beguines, female mysticism, and other forms of un­regu­ la­ted female religiosity by the time of the Council of Vienne (1311–12). Dyan Elliott, for instance, has shown how ­women became testing grounds for questions around religious authority, as ­women’s bodies and voices could be made to “prove” truth through vari­ous kinds of interrogation. Nancy Caciola has similarly analyzed the way communities questioned ­women’s contact with the super­natural, assigning divine or demonic meanings to what they beheld. Both of t­ hese analyses move from early thirteenth-­century support for such ­women to increasing doubt and darker fears by the f­ ourteenth ­century.20 For beguines specifically, the early backing of men such as Jacques of Vitry and Thomas of Cantimpré gave way to increasing skepticism by the 1270s and harsh scrutiny by the 1320s.21 Courting Sanctity brings ­these two historiographic strands together. The 1250s saw the emergence not just of Isabelle of France but also Douceline of Digne, a beguine closely linked to the Capetian count of Provence. In the 1270s, at the very moment when increasing suspicions of beguines w ­ ere starting to be heard, the Capetian court faced a crisis in which both king and queen ­were subject to defamatory rumors. The outcome of this crisis centered on the testimony of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, a visionary holy ­woman from the Low Countries. Elizabeth’s decision to deny any claims to prophetic knowledge marks the moment when the rising power of the Capetians intersected with the declining status of beguines and other holy w ­ omen. ­After 1300, the arrests of Paupertas of Metz, Margueronne of Bellevillette, and Marguerite Porete formed key links in the chain of attacks Philip IV launched against supposed spiritual dangers threatening the kingdom of France. Thus a focus on 19. ​Strayer, “France: The Holy Land.” For a survey of historiography, see Field and Gaposchkin, “Questioning the Capetians.” 20. ​Elliott, Proving ­Woman; Caciola, Discerning Spirits. 21. ​Simons, Cities of Ladies, chap. 5.

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7

t­ hese ­women calls attention to new models of French royal holiness, exposes new turning points in the Capetians’ relationship to the holy, and offers new insights into how the court ­imagined itself as besieged by the forces of darkness in the early ­fourteenth ­century. At the same time, it highlights the explic­ itly po­liti­cal dimension of the rising suspicions directed against semiregulated religious ­women.

Par­ameters of the Book The importance of t­ hese thirteenth-­century interactions is clarified by looking back from the late medieval period. As scholars such as André Vauchez and Renate Blumenfeld-­Kosinski have shown, in the post-1348 age of plague, at the height of the Hundred Years’ War and during the upheaval of the G ­ reat Schism, holy w ­ omen found ways to make their voices heard amid the disarray of disease and disaster.22 Though male saints and visionaries expressed themselves as well, it was w ­ omen such as Constance of Rabastens, Marie Robine, Ermine of Reims, Jeanne-­Marie of Maillé, Colette of Corbie, and eventually Joan of Arc who came forward with the most power­f ul revelations instructing kings of France, French nobles, and popes as to what God wished them to do. Courting Sanctity shows that this direct engagement between holy ­women and kings and queens of France was not new in the l­ater ­fourteenth ­century. Only a brief interlude in the second quarter of the f­ourteenth ­century, following the death of the last direct Capetian king in 1328, separates figures such as Douceline of Digne, Elizabeth of Spalbeek, and Paupertas of Metz from the rise of the po­liti­cally engaged mystics of the ­Great Schism. Looking forward from the twelfth ­century, just as narratives about the rise of Capetian power often begin with the reign of Louis VII (r. 1137–80) but find their footing with the triumphs of his son Philip II, the earliest significant evidence for an encounter between the French court and a holy female figure seems to date from the 1180s, when the peasant visionary Alpais of Cudot (c. 1150/55–1211) received support from Louis VII’s ­widow Adèle of Champagne (d. 1205), Adèle’s ­brother the archbishop of Sens William “of the White Hands” (d. 1202), and her son Philip II.23 But sustained relationships 22. ​Blumenfeld-­Kosinski, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries; Vauchez, Laity in the M ­ iddle Ages, esp. chaps. 17–22. 23. ​Thus Blumenfeld-­Kosinski begins with Alpais in “Holy ­Women in France,” 242–43. For donations from Adèle and Philip in 1180 and 1184, see Blanchon, Vie de la Bienheureuse Alpais, 27–30; for William of the White Hands, see Blanchon, 25. For a new edition of the most impor­tant texts, see Stein, Leben und Visionem der Alpais von Cudot (1150–1211).

8 I ntrodu c t i on

between Capetians and holy ­women developed only in the thirteenth ­century. Courting Sanctity thus begins in the 1240s, at the moment when the w ­ omen’s religious movement was reaching its full flowering and the Capetian ­family was crystalizing its self-­conception as a lineage blessed by God. Within ­these chronological bound­aries, the book focuses on the Capetian case. Gábor Klaniczay has offered insightful comparison with royal saint-­ making in eastern Eu­rope,24 and no doubt more detailed comparisons with other Eu­ro­pean courts w ­ ill emerge. The pres­ent study, however, includes brief excursions beyond the French royal ­family only when they illuminate a specific point of analy­sis. Nor does Courting Sanctity attempt to study ­every facet of the Capetians’ conceptualization of female sanctity; for instance, the ways in which French kings and queens i­ magined patron saints such as St. Geneviève or venerated newly canonized figures such as St. Elizabeth of Hungary lie beyond its bounds. It centers instead on tangible interactions between living holy ­women and the Capetian court, including the kings, their wives, their ­children, and occasionally their royal cousins and close advisers. Even so, this book cannot claim to illuminate ­every such interaction. For one ­thing, tantalizing glimpses of fragmentary evidence sometimes remind us how much has been lost. When the royal accounts of 1239 reveal support from Blanche of Castile for an anchoress in Étampes, the many questions that spring to mind cannot be pursued for lack of evidence.25 More fundamentally, any attempt to cata­log ­every interaction between a Capetian and a “holy ­woman” immediately runs into the question of how to define the limits of the “holy.” The Capetians supported many ­houses of Benedictine, Cistercian, and eventually Franciscan, Dominican, and other nuns. Like other patrons, the royal ­family demonstrated deep re­spect for ­these communities—­for instance, by leaving bequests in exchange for prayers. Courting Sanctity, however, focuses on more dramatic examples of individual w ­ omen who developed reputations for extraordinary sanctity or direct contact with the divine. As in Peter Brown’s classic study of “the Holy Man” in Late Antiquity,26 ­here “holiness” is understood as the exceptional powers attributed to saintly, prophetic, or clairvoyant figures by ­those who observed, represented, and wrote about them. The shift from Brown’s focus on holy men to my analy­sis of holy w ­ omen reflects the real­ity of medieval ideas about gendered access to divine power. Thirteenth-­century Eu­rope produced mystically inclined male saints, but it was more often ­women whose spiritual gifts ­were seen as offering direct access to 24. ​Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses. 25. ​Grant, Blanche of Castile, 219. 26. ​Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity.”

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God. Much scholarship, often inspired by Caroline Walker Bynum’s seminal ­ omen as closely linked to Christ work,27 has argued that medieval culture saw w through somatic piety, visionary experiences, and love-­drenched mysticism.28 And as John Coakley has shown, well-­educated churchmen ­were often among the most ardent admirers of mulieres sanctae, frequently portraying ­these ­women’s charismatic, clairvoyant holiness as a complement to their own, more formal authority.29 Thus while such gendered expectations about sanctity and visionary power ­were never exclusive, at their productive peak in the thirteenth ­century they ­shaped a cultural expectation that holy ­women ­were most likely to be directly in touch with God and hence vehicles for the divine ­will. Isabelle of France, Douceline of Digne, Elizabeth of Spalbeek, and Paupertas of Metz all (in slightly dif­fer­ent ways) ­were “holy” in this sense; they ­were ­women who offered access to the divine ­will, whose prayers could move God, who could see the state of o ­ thers’ souls, who knew in advance the fate of ­others in the next world, who could offer hope of healing and other miracles, or who could foresee the ­f uture and perceive other­wise hidden events across space and time. But as suspicions about beguines and other semireligious ­women mounted by the turn of the f­ourteenth ­century, reputations for unambiguous holiness grew harder to find, at least in proximity to the French court. Thus the holiness of the two ­women considered in the final chapter, Margueronne of Bellevillette and Marguerite Porete, was more contested. Margueronne’s claims of super­natural knowledge ­were limited to modest clairvoyant abilities, while o ­ thers depicted her as wielding darker powers of sorcery and storm raising. Marguerite’s own book testifies to her conversations with God, but ­there is scant evidence for a wider reputation as a miracle worker. Concluding with ­these ­women illuminates the way the very notion of female holiness had been transformed into a site of danger and contestation by 1300. ­These holy w ­ omen varied widely in terms of status, coming from royalty, lower nobility, merchant, and lower-­class backgrounds. ­These differences in status profoundly impacted what was pos­si­ble for each ­woman. A princess enjoyed access to kinds of power that an obscure beguine could hardly imagine. Nevertheless, all of the w ­ omen studied h ­ ere ­shaped and w ­ ere ­shaped by Capetian claims to holy authority.

27. ​Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. 28. ​For example, the essays in Newman, From Virile ­Woman to WomanChrist, continue to inspire. 29. ​Coakley, ­Women, Men, and Spiritual Power. See also Mooney, Gendered Voices; and on the idea of ­women’s prayers as more efficacious than men’s, see Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales, esp. chap. 5.

10 I ntrodu c t i on

Chapter Outline Courting Sanctity follows a three-­part chronological organ­ization. Part one argues that holy ­women within and closely tied to the royal ­family of France ­were central to the projection of Capetian sanctity. Most impor­tant was Isabelle of France (chapter 1), the court’s spiritual star in the 1250s. Yet by refusing to become a nun at Longchamp, as popes and friars had assumed she would, and by fighting for her rule of the Sorores minores in the face of Franciscan opposition, the princess made herself an awkward model of female holiness. At the same time, in the south, Isabelle’s b­ rother Charles of Anjou forged a quasi-­familial relationship with his “co-­mother” Douceline of Digne (chapter 2). Douceline’s miraculous powers and ecstatic prophecies helped cement Charles’s status in Provence, and in return Charles put his weight ­behind Douceline’s own reputation. Most importantly, Douceline voiced divine approval when Charles contemplated his epoch-­making invasion of southern Italy. But Douceline too lost some of her appeal, as her message shifted from assurance to warning—­what God had given to the Capetians, he could take away if arrogance replaced gratitude. As the Capetian ­family courted its reputation as uniquely favored by God, ­these two holy ­women played essential roles, but at the same time insisted on voicing their own perspectives. Could such instruments be effectively controlled? Part two shows that the case of Elizabeth of Spalbeek (chapter 3) in the 1270s brought exactly this issue to a head. Elizabeth, a holy w ­ oman with an already established reputation for prophecy, was said to have broadcast a message from God that was not at all to the royal ­family’s liking. The scandal threatened first the public reputation of Philip III, said to have “sinned against nature”; then the safety of Queen Marie of Brabant, accused of poisoning her stepson. In the end, it was the king’s favorite Pierre de La Broce who lost his life, while Elizabeth retreated into silence. Consequently, the 1280s saw concerted, but not entirely successful, attempts to shape acceptable textual models of female sanctity tied to the court (chapter 4). Most impor­tant was Agnes of Harcourt’s Life of Isabelle, which shows that Isabelle continued to be remembered as a saint by the royal f­amily, the nuns of Longchamp, local Franciscans, and townspeople west of Paris. But its gaps and awkward omissions reinforce the sense that Isabelle’s was always a difficult sanctity. At the same time, her mode of holiness, based on charity and asceticism more than mysticism, presented a safer alternative to Elizabeth of Spalbeek and her unruly prophecies. This hagiographical current was particularly necessary ­because William of Nangis’s Deeds of Philip III highlighted t­ hose very controversies at almost the same moment. In narrating the scandals of 1276–78, he sought to

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make Elizabeth of Spalbeek, in the guise of a nameless “beguine of Nivelles,” the instrument through which divine revelation could dispel lingering suspicion of Queen Marie of Brabant. Meanwhile, the Italian Franciscan Salimbene wrote appreciatively of Douceline of Digne, while offering an unflattering view of Capetian fortunes at the end of Philip III’s reign, vouched for by the visions of an unnamed holy ­woman. Part three demonstrates that by the first years of the f­ourteenth ­century, Philip IV and his court turned against the influence of w ­ omen with reputations for holiness. Rather than silencing t­ hese ­women, in some cases the Capetians now used torture, threats, and incarceration to force them to speak the court’s “truth.” The real life of Paupertas of Metz (chapter 5) can be glimpsed ­behind only a single chronicler’s account. She seems to have worked for peace during Philip IV’s siege of Lille, before issuing a prophecy that warned Philip IV not to engage his enemies in ­battle. Philip’s subsequent retreat was an embarrassment. The king’s b­ rother arrested Paupertas and tortured her into stating that she had intended to harm the royal f­amily through poison. Her story was recorded by monks writing at Saint-­Denis, colored in satanic tones, and included in their ongoing narrative of events around the court. Similarly, Margueronne of Bellevillette (chapter 6) was taken into custody in a situation that virtually guaranteed her eventual confession to charges of abetting Bishop Guichard of Troyes in his murder of Queen Jeanne of Navarre through sorcery. As a divinatrix, Margueronne was presented as inherently dangerous and perhaps demonic. She was jailed, threatened, and made to confess that her link to the super­natural had been an essential part in the sorcery that had killed the queen. In a sense, the prob­lem with such ­women was thus solved. Worn down in prison, tortured or threatened with torture, they could be forced to admit that they ­were nefarious agents of the king’s enemies, satanically inspired poisoners, or sorceresses. Marguerite Porete’s execution is in a sense the culmination of this narrative. First censored for writing a book that the bishop of Cambrai had deemed heretical, Marguerite was ultimately declared a relapsed heretic and burned in Paris. Whereas Elizabeth of Spalbeek had been repeatedly questioned in 1276–78 but allowed to go ­free, Paupertas of Metz had been tortured in 1304 but at the last moment imprisoned rather than killed, and Margueronne of Bellevillette had been threatened but left to languish in prison in 1308, Marguerite Porete was relaxed to the secular authorities and executed in 1310. ­There could be no more emphatic end point for the long slide ­toward the destruction of holy w ­ omen’s authority. Yet at the same time, Marguerite’s inquisitor eschewed the torture that would have produced a public confession. Thus, unlike Paupertas or Margueronne, Marguerite resisted proclaiming the

12 I ntrodu c t i on

Capetian court’s “truth.” This mute anticlimax reflects the fact that Marguerite had not been charged with spectacular crimes against France and the royal ­family—­there is no sorcery or poison or even prophecy in her case. Sentenced for refusing to give up a book, Marguerite Porete, the only one of t­ hese ­women to meet her death at the stake, seems in some ways the least threatening. Marguerite’s silence also indicates the ambiguity inherent in ­these ­women’s legacies. Well into the post-­Capetian era, hagiographers and historians continued to reimagine the role of t­ hese ­women in Capetian history, finding ways to place them more firmly on the side of saint or the side of sinner. The book ends with an epilogue, rather than with a synthetic conclusion, precisely ­because ­these ­women’s after-­histories merge into the era of po­liti­cally power­ ful “saints and visionaries” sparked by late-­medieval war and schism.30 Fi­nally, a word on the nature of the evidence. The sources used for this study vary considerably, giving the analy­sis a shifting texture. Chapter 1 (Isabelle) is based on a range of con­temporary documents such as papal bulls and eyewitness accounts of life at court; chapter 2 (Douceline) rests largely on one hagiographic text; chapter 3 (Elizabeth) centers on rec­ords of detailed interrogations carried out by religious officials; chapter 4 (writing in the 1280s) analyzes biographical, hagiographic, and chronical accounts; chapter 5 (Paupertas) studies a single chronicler’s narrative; and chapter  6 (Margueronne and Marguerite) investigates rec­ords of ecclesiastical inquisitions. ­These varying sources, in Latin and French, allow analy­sis not only of holy ­women’s interactions with the court but also of the ways in which t­hose interactions ­were represented. In sum, I offer ­here a history of the initially productive, increasingly tenuous, and eventually destructive relationships formed between members of the French royal ­family and holy ­women across the long thirteenth ­century. It foregrounds ­women but also illuminates the obsessions, aspirations, and fears of men. It is, I hope, a true history in the (always imperfect) sense that it rests on the firmest verifiable evidence I am able to muster. But it is surely only one of a number of true histories that could be written based on this evidence. As the late Hayden White (trained as a medievalist) would put it, historical facts acquire meaning only when historians “emplot” them into narrative story ­ ntil the histypes.31 That is, past events have no intrinsic shape or significance u torian assigns it to them. I am thus well aware of the determining role my 30. ​Blumenfeld-­Kosinski, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries. 31. ​See the essays in Hayden White, The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Lit­er­a­ture, and Theory, 1957–2007, ed. Robert Doran (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

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own perspective has played in deciding which events are given a place in my plot, which moments are offered as starting, turning, or ending points in my story (which could, I suppose, in White’s terms, be called a tragedy), and what kinds of narrative connections are drawn between them. Another historian would tell a dif­fer­ent story, pres­ent a dif­fer­ent plot, and make dif­fer­ent choices about which facts to include and how to link them. This is as it should be. As Sarah Maza has written, “The past would surely die if we merely memorialized it, if we did not argue about it.” In that spirit, I too consider this book “an invitation to continue the conversation.”32

32. ​Sarah Maza, Thinking about History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 9.

Prologue The Rise of Capetian Sanctity and the Reign of Louis IX

By 1200, the Capetian kings had long claimed sacral status. That is, they presented themselves as God’s chosen instruments in France by virtue of their coronation and anointment with the holy oil of Reims. For the descendants of King Hugh “Capet” (r. 987–96), this sacral status was most visibly demonstrated by the ability to cure scrofula through the “royal touch.”1 Yet sacral kingship, as a quality inherent in the office, was not the same as personal holiness. It is true that certain kings left lasting reputations for piety. Robert II (r. 996–1031), for instance, has gone down in history as “the Pious,” and his biographer Helgaud of Fleury even credited him with a certain number of miracles. Even so, it would be difficult to argue that Robert (dogged by marital controversies and excommunication) or any of the early Capetian kings was ­really seen as “holy” by contemporaries.2 Abbot Suger of Saint-­Denis, for example, did every­thing pos­si­ble to portray Louis VI (r.1108–37) as a “representative of God” in France,3 but knew full well that Louis “the Fat” projected no air of personal holiness. Louis VII (r. 1137–80) was a more conventionally devout and introspective man, but Suger’s praise 1. ​Bloch, Royal Touch. 2. ​Helgaud de Fleury, Vie de Robert le Pieux, ed. Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette Laborie (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1965). 3. ​Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 1992), 86. 17

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never extended beyond calling him “glorious.”4 Odo of Deuil, writing of Louis as a (decidedly unsuccessful) crusader, could go only as far as to argue that he “secured God’s ­favor” through this piety.5 The same pattern holds for other members of the Capetian f­amily. Some wives of the early Capetians w ­ ere respected for their devout patronage of ec6 clesiastical institutions, but none became known as “holy.”7 Capetian d­ aughters ­were married in accordance with po­liti­cal objectives and found l­ittle opportunity to pursue more than a conventional piety. Among sons, the first legitimately born Capetian prince to be destined for the church was Henry (c. 1120–71), younger ­brother of Louis VII. But even this conscientious Cistercian archbishop of Reims failed to generate a notable reputation for holiness.8 In sum, the early Capetian kings, queens, princes, and princesses w ­ ere too involved in the messy realities of power politics to appear as saintly individuals. The idea that sanctity somehow coursed through Capetian veins made its first tentative appearance ­under Philip II “Augustus” (r. 1180–1223).9 For example, Rigord, the monk of Saint-­Denis who chronicled the first half of Philip’s reign, portrayed the king’s birth as a miraculous gift from God and depicted him as the beneficiary of several miracles.10 Rigord called both Philip and his ­father christianissimus (most Christian) and retrospectively labeled Louis VII ­ here was even an as sanctissimus and piissimus (most holy and most pious).11 T attempt by William le Breton (particularly in his verse Philippidos) to portray Philip II as a potential saint at the time of his death.12 In the short term, ­these efforts achieved scant success, prob­ably for the ­simple reason that no one regarded Philip as a holy man.13 He was, however, undeniably triumphant on 4. ​Suger, “De glorioso rege Ludovico, Ludovici filio,” in Suger, Oeuvres, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Françoise Gasparri (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996), 156–77. 5. ​Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem, ed. and trans. V ­ irginia Gingerick Berry (New York: Norton, 1948), 6–7, 142–43. 6. ​Nolan, Capetian ­Women. 7. ​Primat, writing around 1274 at Saint-­Denis, described Anne of Kiev, wife of Henry I (r. 1031– 1060), as “having lived a saintly life,” but this praise referred mainly to her foundation of several churches. See Guenée, Comment on écrit l’histoire, 208; and further Folz, Les saintes reines du moyen âge en occident; and Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, 70–78. 8. ​Demouy, “Henri de France et Louis VII,” 47–61. Philip II’s illegitimate son Pierre Charlot was named bishop of Noyon in 1243, before ­dying on Louis IX’s crusade in 1249. 9. ​Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian France, 122–33. 10. ​Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Auguste, ed. and trans. Élisabeth Carpentier, Georges Pon, and Yves Chauvin (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2006). 11. ​Cited by Lewis, Royal Succession, 270n41. 12. ​See Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 389–92; Le Goff, “Le dossier de sainteté de Philippe Auguste”; Lewis, Royal Succession, 112; and H.-­François Delaborde, ed., Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-­Auguste, vol. 2 (Paris: Renouard, 1885), 375–77. 13. ​Thus Primat called no French king “saint” before Louis IX. See Guenée, Comment on écrit l’histoire, 199; and further Folz, Les saints rois du moyen âge en occident.

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the battlefield. Philip had enjoyed some small, but well-­publicized, success on the third crusade.14 More concretely, he vastly expanded the area of real royal control by confiscating Normandy and most of the other “French” possessions of King John of ­England, and made good on ­these victories in 1214 at the decisive B ­ attle of Bouvines.15 Royal propagandists suddenly had ample evidence to demonstrate that God favored the Rex christianissimus and his kingdom. The birth of Philip’s heir was also evoked with the language of inherited sanctity. Around 1200, Giles of Paris in his Karolinus referred to the ­future Louis VIII (b. 1187) as the “holy offspring” (sancta soboles) born to his “holy” (sancta) ­mother, Isabelle of Hainaut.16 Similarly, William le Breton retrospectively called Isabelle’s unborn child the “sacred weight” (sacrum pondus) she had carried in her womb.17 In the event, Louis VIII’s brief reign (1223–26) was notable mainly for his late but decisive intervention in the Albigensian Crusade, whereby papally sanctioned forces from the north of France crushed the re­sis­tance of supposed heretics in the Languedoc and in the pro­cess further extended the reach of French royal power.18 Louis’s death returning from this crusade would ­later be portrayed as a martyr’s sacrifice, eventually even producing Vincent of Beauvais’s midcentury reference to his “remarkable sanctity.”19 Thus by the 1220s it seemed pos­si­ble to imagine the dynasty as a beata stirps, or saintly lineage.20 But even so, the idea that ­there was something holy about the Capetian bloodline, a uniquely sacred inheritance passed from parent to child, could take root only to a limited degree as long as in utero potential and crusading deaths, rather than saintly attributes in life, remained its sturdiest supports. That is, the dynasty might seem uniquely favored by God, and even “saintly” in an abstract sense, but none of its members had lived his or her life in a manner that struck contemporaries as holy. That would change in the next generation. Louis VIII’s wife, Blanche of Castile (1188–1252), did the most to impart to her ­children an uncompromising morality rooted in the idea that God would call the Capetians to account.21 Blanche herself was represented by ­later 14. ​Naus, Constructing Kingship, chap. 5. 15. ​Baldwin and Simons, “Consequences of Bouvines”; Barthélemy, La bataille de Bouvines. 16. ​Lewis, Royal Succession, 108, 122; Marvin L. Colker, ed., “The ‘Karolinus’ of Egidius Parisiensis,” Traditio 29 (1973): 244, 303. On Isabelle of Hainaut, see Hornaday, “A Capetian Queen as Street Demonstrator.” The use of sancta to describe her ­here is notable but isolated. 17. ​Delaborde, Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, 2:382. 18. ​Pegg, Most Holy War; Hanley, Louis: The French Prince. 19. ​See Grant, Blanche of Castile, 193, for Gregory IX’s referring to Louis VIII as a martyr to the faith; and Lewis, Royal Succession, 128–30, on Vincent of Beauvais. 20. ​Vauchez, “Beata stirps”; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses. 21. ​Grant, Blanche of Castile, esp. chap. 9.

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authors as a devout queen, devoted parent, and effective regent. But although one of her sons ­later portrayed her as the “holy root” from which the next generation had sprung, Blanche never managed to enjoy a substantial reputation as a saint.22 Thanks to her dominant influence, however, her ­children grew up understanding that God would judge ­every action of the kings, queens, princes, and princesses of France.23 Perhaps the best example of this stark perspective is Louis IX’s ­later recollection of how Blanche had made it clear that “she would sooner see him die than that he even once offend his Creator through mortal sin.”24 Blanche’s ardent Christian morality manifested itself differently in each of her five c­ hildren who lived to maturity.25 Robert of Artois (1216–50) became Count of Artois at the time of his knighting and marriage to Mathilda of Brabant in 1237. Bold but rash, his unrestrained martial fervor led to his bloody death on crusade at Mansurah.26 Alphonse of Poitiers (1220–71) was more methodical and administratively minded. Made Count of Poitiers in 1241, he was also Count of Toulouse by 1249 through the inheritance of his wife, Jeanne of Toulouse.27 Charles of Anjou (1227–85) was the most self-­assured and ambitious of the lot. Becoming Count of Provence through his marriage to Beatrice of Provence in 1246, he took up the papal banner to drive the heirs of the emperor Frederick II out of Sicily in the 1260s.28 His piety was once summed up as “in its way genuine,” but chiefly in “the form of a belief that he was the chosen instrument of God.”29 It is the eldest ­brother, King Louis IX (1214–70), who has gone down in French history as the epitome of royal religiosity.30 Louis was unshakably certain of the truth of the Christian religion and had ­little tolerance for ­those who did not share his faith.31 This stance produced the thirteenth ­century’s most devoted crusader, as Louis led meticulously prepared expeditions in 1248–54 and 1270.32 It also engendered in the king a deep hostility ­toward Jews. If Louis, 22. ​For Charles of Anjou in the 1280s, see chap. 4. 23. ​For evidence of moral teachings at court, see Gaposchkin, “Kingship and Crusade in the First Four Moralized Bibles.” 24. ​Field, Sanctity of Louis IX, 74. 25. ​Lewis, Royal Succession, 113 and 122, points to a verse from the 1230s that refers to Louis and his ­brothers as “De biaus enfans . . . ​de sainte gens venu.” See RHGF, vol. 23, 128, lines 130–31. 26. ​Lalou, “Le comté d’Artois.” 27. ​Chenard, L’Administration d’Alphonse de Poitiers. 28. ​Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, esp. chap. 18; Jehel, Charles d’Anjou, esp. 185–89. 29. ​Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, 72. 30. ​Le Goff, Saint Louis; Delmas, Saint Louis; Sardina, San Luigi dei Francesi; and Le Pogam, Saint Louis. 31. ​For the intolerant side of Louis’s reign, see Jordan, Men at the Center; and Jordan, “Etiam reges.” 32. ​Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade; Lower, The Tunis Crusade of 1270; Hélary, La dernière croisade; and Strayer, “Crusades of Louis IX.”

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unlike his grand­father Philip II and his grand­son Philip IV, did not expel all the Jews from his kingdom, he put enormous pressure on them and did every­ thing pos­si­ble to encourage conversion.33 Louis was equally intolerant of heresy, lending royal support to the campaigns of the first papally appointed inquisitors of heretical depravity.34 This uncompromising mentality was accompanied by Louis’s deep-­seated belief that God commanded the king to do justice for w ­ idows, orphans, the poor, and the powerless. Moreover, Louis extended this imperative beyond his personal comportment to include the machinery of royal government. It was not enough for him to give alms to the poor or to be just when judging cases pitting the weak against the strong. Rather, Louis insisted, to the best of his ability, that his entire administration act in accordance with the princi­ples of divine justice. Thus, before departing on crusade in 1248, Louis created new royal officials, known as enquêteurs, who toured the kingdom to hear complaints against royal tax-­gatherers, judges, and other officials and to make right any injustices that had been committed.35 In this way Louis sought both to benefit his own soul and to make France into something like a new holy land, with the French as God’s new chosen ­people.36 This emerging royal self-­image can best be perceived in the visual evidence of the Sainte-­Chapelle, constructed between 1239 and 1248 to ­house the recently purchased Crown of Thorns and make Paris “the beating heart of Christendom.”37 Located on the Île-­de-­la-­Cité as part of the royal palace complex, the Sainte-­Chapelle’s program of stained-­glass panels traced sacred history from the book of Genesis to the Old Testament kings, the incarnation of Christ, and right up through the arrival of his crown in Paris and the impending crusade against the infidel. Beyond this climax lay only the looming Apocalypse, the End Times when the righ­teous would ­battle Antichrist. In this conception, Louis stood as heir to the Old Testament rulers who had fought in the name of God to secure the Holy Land, now with an even more pressing mission on the cusp of the Second Coming.38

33. ​Sibon, Les juifs au temps de saint Louis; Sibon, Chasser les juifs pour régner; Salmona and Sibon, Saint Louis et les juifs; Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews. See also Jordan, The Apple of His Eye. 34. ​Field, “King/Confessor/Inquisitor.” 35. ​Dejoux, Les enquêtes de Saint Louis; Andrew J. Collings, “The King Cannot Be Everywhere: Royal Governance and Local Society in the Reign of Louis IX” (PhD diss., Prince­ton University, 2018). 36. ​Strayer, “France: The Holy Land.” 37. ​Anheim and Brunel, “La Sainte-­Chapelle,” 89. 38. ​Jordan, Visualizing Kingship in the Win­dows of the Sainte-­Chapelle; Cohen, Sainte-­Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy; Gaposchkin, “Louis IX, Crusade, and the Promise of Joshua in the Holy Land”; and Hediger, La Sainte-­Chapelle de Paris.

22 P RO LO GUE

The crusade of 1248, however, was a disaster. The king was defeated, captured, and ransomed, but remained in the Holy Land for several additional years while attempting to shore up remaining Christian outposts.39 ­After his return to France in 1254, Louis devoted himself to increasingly austere penance. He blamed the crusade’s collapse on his failure to cleanse sin from his kingdom. If God judged the French king’s ­every action, and if God had seen fit to deny him victory even as he sought to recover the Holy Land, then the fault must lie with the king. Thus Louis extended the role of the enquêteurs and also instituted a series of reform ordinances intended to purify the kingdom of blasphemy, gambling, prostitution, and immorality.40 Altogether, his reign became an experiment in what William Chester Jordan has called “redemptive governance.”41 To this end, the king took the cross again in 1267 and set off in March 1270 for a new crusade, this time with the surprising target of Tunis. All ­these efforts ­were for naught, however, since Louis fell ill and died in August.42 Given his abiding devotion to Christian holy war, the king’s first hagiographers quickly began to portray him as a martyr who had ruled and died in Christ’s name.43 Moves ­toward a formal canonization took shape as early as 1272, an inquiry into evidence for his sanctity was held at Saint-­Denis in 1282– 83, and in 1297 Louis was made a saint of the church.44 But if it was Louis IX who eventually received the honor of canonization, the most striking new images of Capetian holiness in the 1250s first coalesced not around the king but around his younger ­sister Isabelle.

39. ​Gaposchkin, “The Captivity of Louis IX”; el Merheb, “Louis IX in Medieval Arabic Sources.” 40. ​Jordan, “Anti-­corruption Campaigns in Thirteenth-­Century Eu­rope.” 41. ​Jordan, Men at the Center. 42. ​Hélary, La dernière croisade; Lower, The Tunis Crusade of 1270. 43. ​Field, Sanctity of Louis IX. 44. ​Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis; Carolus-­Barré, Le procès de canonisation.

Ch a p ter   1

Isabelle of France A Holy ­Woman at the Heart of the Capetian Court

Sometime during the 1270s, King Philip III’s young son, also named Philip, fell ill with a fever. Thirty years earlier, when Isabelle of France was similarly ill, Blanche of Castile looked to a holy ­woman in the Low Countries to intercede with God. But now the sick boy’s grand­ mother Marguerite of Provence sought miraculous aid within her own ­family. Marguerite, Louis IX’s ­widow, might have considered taking the prince to Louis’s tomb at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-­Denis, north of Paris. Instead, she and ­little Philip headed west, to Longchamp, the ­house for female Franciscans founded in 1260 by Louis’s younger ­sister Isabelle, who was buried t­here ­after her death in 1270. Once at Longchamp, Marguerite had Philip stretched out on the ground next to Isabelle’s tomb. Sure enough, the boy returned to health. Before 1283, and hence a few years before his coronation as Philip IV, the prince would assure the s­isters of Longchamp that he remembered his cure well, and that he attributed it to his g­ reat aunt’s miraculous intervention.1 This miracle tale illustrates this chapter’s central argument: that the very notion of “Capetian sanctity” first crystallized around Isabelle of France. At the high point of her reputation, Isabelle struck observers as something like a living saint, marked by her refusal to marry, her dedication to Christ, and the efficacy of her prayers. Around 1260, it was Isabelle’s lived holiness that most 1. ​ Writings of AH, 78–81; Princesse mineure, 303. 23

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firmly linked the Capetians to divine f­avor. Yet in the last de­cade of her life, Isabelle faded from public view, as her refusal to take formal vows and her insistence on a new rule for Franciscan ­women diminished papal and Franciscan enthusiasm for promoting her as a saint. Isabelle was thus an essential, yet problematic, figure in the creation of Capetian sanctity.

The ­Career of a Pious Princess ­ here was nothing predetermined about the path to holiness taken by Isabelle T of France. Blanche of Castile did not at first envision a life of saintly celibacy for her only ­daughter. In fact, Blanche attempted to arrange the two-­year-­old Isabelle’s f­uture marriage to the son of the Count of La Marche in 1227 as part of a peacemaking treaty following a round of baronial revolts. Although this early engagement was abandoned when the po­liti­cal winds shifted in the 1230s, Blanche i­magined that Isabelle would emulate her own life as a royal wife and ­mother. This still seems to have been the attitude of the royal ­family as late as 1243, when ­there ­were serious negotiations for a marriage between Isabelle and Conrad of Hohenstaufen, eldest son of Emperor Frederick II.2 This second engagement seems to have been agreed on by the two families, and was even briefly supported by Pope Innocent IV.3 But Isabelle insisted that she would not marry any earthly spouse, not even the heir apparent to the empire. Her chosen path was rather that of celibate dedication to Christ.4 The dramatic near-­death episode at Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye led Isabelle’s ­family to fi­nally treat her as irrevocably committed to a life of virgin piety. Blanche of Castile’s exchange with the holy w ­ omen from Avauterre may have taken place in early 1244, some ten months before Louis IX’s own near-­fatal illness and subsequent vow to go on crusade.5 If so, then both royal siblings made radical religious commitments in the course of 1244. In 1248, when the king set off for Outremer, Isabelle was twenty-­three years old, clearly past the age by which royal girls ­were expected to marry. Although no legitimate Capetian ­daughter had ever entered a nunnery rather than 2. ​Berman, White Nuns, 294n164, has unearthed a new piece of evidence for Isabelle in this era. On 2 May 1243 (by modern reckoning) Louis gave an annual gift of two sestiers of salt to the Cistercian ­sisters of Lieu-­Notre-­Dame, for his soul and for the souls of Isabelle and of their ­mother and ­father. See Plat, Cartulaire de l’abbaye royale de Lieu-­N.-­D.-­Les-­Romorantin, 58n81. 3. ​Field, Isabelle, 26–31. 4. ​See further Field, Isabelle; Princesse mineure; Allirot, Filles de roy de France, chap. 8; Allirot, “Isabelle de France, sœur de saint Louis”; Jordan, “Isabelle of France and Religious Devotion at the Court of Louis IX”; and Andenna, “ ‘Lo spazio della parola’ come luogo di incontro fra il chiostro e la corte.” 5. ​Field, Isabelle, 31–34.



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marry,6 this path could have been an acceptable option, one followed by numerous aristocratic girls. Isabelle, by contrast, was neither wife nor nun, and her unpre­ce­dented status as an unmarried Capetian laywoman only became more striking over time. By 1254, when Louis returned from the Holy Land, Isabelle was nearing thirty; by this point she was beginning to attract the notice of bishops, friars, and popes. But this unusual existence was not the end of Isabelle’s aspirations. She wanted to use the resources and prestige at her disposal to create an institution that could do good in the world. She considered sponsoring a hospital, which in the thirteenth c­ entury was an institution of charity as much as of medical care.7 But in the end she deci­ded to found a new monastery for Franciscan ­women.8 This decision itself was more controversial than it might at first seem. Francis of Assisi’s Order of Fratres minores, dedicated to the apostolic ideals of poverty, wandering, and preaching, was flourishing across Eu­ rope by the time of his death in 1226 and canonization in 1228.9 ­Women had embraced ­these ideals as well, but the institutional church did not allow them to preach or wander in poverty. How exactly w ­ omen could live a “Franciscan” life was thus an open question. Eventually the figure of Clare of Assisi (1193/94–1253) was used by the papacy as a normative model for Franciscan ­women. Clare had fought for a life of poverty within an enclosed setting, ultimately embodied in the Form of Life approved by Innocent IV for her community of San Damiano in 1253.10 But a­ fter her death and canonization (1255), Pope Urban IV created the Order of St. Clare in 1263, using Clare’s name and saintly reputation to rally Franciscan w ­ omen around a new rule that paradoxically guaranteed neither the poverty nor the close relations with the male order that Clare had sought.11 As Isabelle of France began planning her own Franciscan community in the early 1250s, the contours of female Franciscanism w ­ ere still uncertain. Isabelle was surely aware of Clare, but did not directly imitate her. Instead, Isabelle implemented her own vision for female Franciscan life at her new foundation 6. ​On Philip V’s ­daughter Blanche entering Longchamp in 1319, see the epilogue. 7. ​Davis, “Hospitals, Charity, and the Culture of Compassion”; on links between charitable hospitals and female monastic institutions, see Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns. 8. ​ Writings of AH, 64–65. 9. ​Vauchez, Francis of Assisi; Thompson, Francis of Assisi; and Dalarun, François d’Assise en questions. 10. ​Mueller, Privilege of Poverty. 11. ​Mooney, Clare of Assisi; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi; Alberzoni, Clare of Assisi and the Poor ­Sisters in the Thirteenth ­Century. See also Aleksander Horowski, “La legislazione per le Clarisse del 1263: La regola di Urbano IV, le lettere di Giovanni Gaetano Orsini e di San Bonaventura,” Collectanea Franciscana 87 (2017): 65–157.

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of The Humility of Our Lady (L’Humilité-­de-­Notre-­Dame). This ­house, which quickly became better known as Longchamp, was situated on the Seine west of Paris, in the modern Bois de Boulogne (see inset to map 1).12 Isabelle worked on the first rule for the abbey together with a team of Franciscan masters of theology from the University of Paris, including the order’s new minister general, Bonaventure. The original version of Isabelle’s rule was approved by Pope Alexander IV in February 1259, and the first nuns entered in June 1260. Isabelle, however, never became a nun at Longchamp. Instead, she built a residence on the abbey grounds and lived ­there ­until her death in 1270. Isabelle of France was thus pursuing a radically new path. No previous Capetian had ­adopted a life of celibate piety in the world.13 Of course, Isabelle did have other models of sanctity to emulate. The quin­tes­sen­tial example of a royal w ­ oman’s lay sanctity in the thirteenth ­century was Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–31), canonized in 1235.14 ­There is no doubt that Elizabeth was known and revered at the Capetian court,15 and her piety may well have inspired Isabelle (the names Elizabeth/Isabelle ­were interchangeable). But Elizabeth of Hungary had been a wife and m ­ other before adopting a self-­mortifying existence for the four years of her widowhood; this was not, in fact, the pattern for Isabelle’s spiritual path. Eastern and central Eu­ro­pean royal dynasties further produced a ­whole generation of mendicant-­influenced holy ­women. Generally, however, ­these ­were ­either ­widows, such as Hedwig of Silesia (d. 1243; canonized 1267), or nuns and abbesses, such as Agnes of Bohemia (d. 1282).16 The latter in many ways resembled Isabelle of France; but Agnes chose to enter the female Franciscan community she founded in Prague, serving for a time as abbess ­there. Similarly, Margaret of Hungary (d. 1270) became a Dominican nun. In Castile, several of Isabelle of France’s aunts and cousins entered the Cistercian monastery of Las Huelgas. ­There they exercised authority as royal patrons rather than as abbesses of the monastery, but t­ hese Castilian royal ­women ­were vowed nuns.17 So even among Eu­ro­pean royalty Isabelle’s model of holiness was, and remained, unusual. How and when did Isabelle’s reputation for holiness develop? If one follows the documentary rec­ord, nothing stands out u ­ ntil her saintly reputation seems to burst forth in a group of texts produced between about 1253 and 1259. Writ12. ​Duchesne, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Longchamp; Allirot, “Longchamp and Lourcine.” 13. ​Anne-­Hélène Allirot rightly begins with the Vie d’Isabelle in “Une beata stirps au féminin?” 14. ​See Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, chap. 5. 15. ​Field, Isabelle, 4–6; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, 236–38. On Elizabeth’s cult broadly, see Vauchez and Le Huërou, Élisabeth de Hongrie; Gecser, Feast and the Pulpit; and Wolf, Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. 16. ​Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses. 17. ​Shadis, Berenguela of Castile, 4–5; Gayoso, “Lady of Las Huelgas.”



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ten by an archbishop, two friars, and two popes, t­ hese texts demonstrate the way a new kind of saintly imagery began to coalesce around the princess in the years leading up to Longchamp’s foundation. At the same time, they also reveal an undercurrent of unease with the nature of Isabelle’s pledge of virginity.

Albert of Suerbeer and the Royal ­Family at Pontigny Prob­ably the earliest text in this dossier concerns the translation of the relics of the recently sainted Edmund of Abingdon. As archbishop of Canterbury (r. 1234–40), Edmund’s disputes with King Henry III of E ­ ngland led him to depart for Rome; he fell ill on the way, however, and died in France near the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny (see map 1).18 ­After vari­ous miracles ­were recorded at his tomb ­there, Innocent IV approved a formal inquiry into Edmund’s sanctity and canonized him in 1246. An elaborate translation of the new saint’s relics was then staged at Pontigny on 9 June 1247, in the presence of the entire royal ­family of France and a host of cardinals, bishops, and abbots. The relevant document h ­ ere is the eyewitness account of that day’s proceedings written by Albert of Suerbeer, archbishop of Armagh,19 a member of the papal commission inquiring into the merits of Edmund’s case for canonization.20 His account was prob­ably begun not long ­after 1247 but seems to have been completed or updated ­after November 1252.21 In describing the royal f­ amily, one might expect that Albert would have stressed the importance of the king, who had taken the cross well before 1247 and who was still away in the Holy Land as late as 1254. Or Albert might have focused on the presence of Blanche of Castile, the pious royal w ­ idow long known for her support of Cistercian h ­ ouses. But it is Isabelle who commands center stage as the shining example of the Capetians’ special relationship to God. Louis and Blanche appear first in the passage, with the king described as 18. ​Jordan, “En­glish Holy Men of Pontigny”; Carolus-­Barré, “Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints,” 1089–91; and Lawrence, St. Edmund of Abingdon, 7–30. 19. ​Auxerre, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 123 (a mid to late thirteenth-­century manuscript), fols. 83v–96r, ­here fol. 87v. Digital image at http://­bvmm​.­irht​.­cnrs​.­fr. Edited in Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, cols. 1751–1928; translation in Princesse mineure, 128–30. 20. ​Originally from Cologne, Albert was archbishop of Armagh at the time of the Council of Lyon, then bishop of Lübeck (1247–53) and archbishop of Riga (1253–73). 21. ​He refers to Blanche of Castile’s death, which occurred in November 1252. The author also refers to Charles “­later” becoming Count of Provence and Count of Anjou, though Charles had already assumed ­these titles by 1247. On the other hand, the author does not refer to the death of Robert of Artois, which occurred in 1250, well before Blanche’s demise. The passage in the manuscript is all in the original hand, with no ­later additions or corrections.

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Map 1.  Thirteenth-­ century France and the Île-­ de-­ France. ©M. Cecilia ­Gaposchkin.

“pious” and the queen ­mother as “venerable.” Albert reserves his glittering praise, however, for Isabelle, “­daughter of a king and ­sister of a king, no less than a queen, since she is united to Christ the King by the flower of virginity” (filia regis et soror regis, nec minor quam regina, quia Christo regi virginitatis flore conjuncta). The brief passage is rich with symbolism. The king and queen ­mother of France demonstrate royal re­spect for the new saint, but only Isabelle adds another, heavenly dimension of royalty, through her joining with Christ the



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King. The Capetians’ special relationship to God is h ­ ere incarnated in a princess who stands as the virgin “queen” of the royal court. Just below the surface of the text lurks a link between Isabelle and Mary, the virgin queen of heaven, with the “fleur/flower” of Isabelle’s virginity evoking the fleur-­de-­lis—­ symbol of both Mary and the Capetians. Through the king’s ­sister, the Capetians are not merely devoted to or imitating Christ; they are united to him by a kinship of sorts. H ­ ere, for the first time, we can confidently speak of a “holy” reputation for Isabelle. On a more concrete level, the text implies that by 1247 (certainly by 1253) Isabelle was widely known to have chosen a life of virginity. Her rejection of the proposed marriage to Conrad of Hohenstaufen in 1243 must have brought the question to a head, and her brush with near-­fatal illness in (prob­ably) early 1244 then seems to have caused her ­family to come to terms with her choice. But had t­ here been a specific moment when Isabelle “vowed” virginity, that is, made a promise to God, ­either in words or with an interior resolution, in public or in private? No surviving source describes such a transformative event. We have only Agnes of Harcourt’s l­ater description of Isabelle’s refusal of marriage to Conrad, which asserts that Isabelle “never” wanted to agree to marriage, b­ ecause she had “chosen the eternal spouse, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in perfect virginity.”22 The passage implies a conscious choice, but not a definitive moment at which a vow was made. Albert of Suerbeer, for his part, adds no precision; he knows only that Isabelle “is,” at the time of his writing, united to Christ by the “flower of virginity.”

A Papal Perspective Two letters from Pope Innocent IV in 1253 and 1254 demonstrate that Isabelle’s reputation extended to the highest levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, while also revealing the pope’s perspective on her promise of virginity. The opening words of Innocent’s letter Sanctae virginitatis propositum (Purpose of holy virginity) are drawn from liturgical passages relating to the consecration of virgins, thus offering a preview of the pope’s under­lying message to the princess.23 Back in 1243 Innocent had written to Isabelle to urge her to accept the proposed marriage to Conrad of Hohenstaufen.24 Did Innocent believe, at that point, that he was writing to a w ­ oman who had already promised herself 22. ​ Writings of AH, 54–55. 23. ​Field, “New Evidence,” 128–29; Rules of Isabelle, 45–47; Princesse mineure, 130–33. 24. ​According to Agnes of Harcourt. See Writings of AH, 54–55.

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to Christ? It is impossible to know, since that letter has not survived. In July 1253 he informed Isabelle of the joy that filled his heart upon hearing of the “purpose of holy virginity” with which she burned. Doubtless Innocent was responding to Isabelle’s own request for papal approbation, so in that sense he must have “heard” about her resolution through her own words. But ­there is also a clear sense that Isabelle’s wider reputation had come to the pope’s attention. Innocent had surely become aware of Isabelle’s rejection of marriage by 1244, and he had prob­ably encountered her when he met with the royal ­family at Cluny in 1245.25 His letter is filled with laudatory language, calling Isabelle “pure,” “steadfast,” “a ­temple to the all Highest,” and “an emulator of angelic purity.” But he also counsels that she “­ought to wisely pursue a vow of such honest integrity.” If Isabelle remains firm in her stated path, her destiny ­will be like that of the five prudent virgins (Matthew 25:1) ­going forth to meet their heavenly bridegroom. Thus Isabelle’s reputation, based on her choice of “holy” virginity, was spreading, reaching the papal court. And Isabelle’s “purpose” was laudable. But how would she persevere in her choice? This was the question on the pope’s mind. As Alain Boureau has shown, the thirteenth ­century was an era of “violent debates” over the nature and meaning of religious vows.26 Peter Lombard, in his Sentences (c. 1155), had already distinguished between a personal vow without witnesses and a solemn vow written down or pronounced before witnesses or the church.27 This distinction prob­ably accords with Pope Innocent’s uneasiness; particularly for a Capetian princess, such a weighty m ­ atter should be solemnized in a ritual bestowing public recognition on the private promise. But Innocent seems to make a more specific distinction in his wording. Isabelle has engaged herself with a propositum, a “purpose” (or proj­ect or resolution); Innocent expresses a strong desire that she take a further step with a votum (tante honestatis voto prudenter debeas insistere). The distinction echoes an explanation offered by the canonist Simon of Bisagnano around 1180. Gratian’s mid-­twelfth-­century Decretum had posed the question of ­whether it was licit to abandon a propositum formed in one’s heart. Simon, in his commentary, answered by splitting the vow into a three-­part pro­cess: deliberation (deliberatio), project/purpose (propositum), and vow proper (votum). Only the last seems, for Simon, to have been irrevocably binding with God.28 Just before Innocent IV wrote, the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure contributed his 25. ​Field, Isabelle, 43; Princesse mineure, 349–51. 26. ​Boureau, Le désir dicté, chap. 3. 27. ​Boureau, Le désir dicté, 47. 28. ​Boureau, Le désir dicté, 48–52. For other con­temporary uses of propositum in the sense of “proposed way of life,” see Mooney, Clare of Assisi, 101, 165.



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own definition of the vow in 1251–52. His formulation is particularly pertinent, since Bonaventure wrote at Paris just as Isabelle of France was beginning to gravitate ­toward the Franciscans, and just before he worked with her on her rule as minister general. Bonaventure distinguished between a s­imple vow based on interior deliberation and promise and a solemn vow based on exterior signs. The former created an obligation t­oward God, who considers the individual’s intention (quod obligat quantum ad Deum, qui intuetur cor). But only the latter formed an obligation to the church, which judges according to what can be seen (quod obligat quantum ad faciem ecclesie, que iudicat secundum ea que patent).29 Again, this is surely what Innocent wished—­Isabelle should engage herself not only t­ oward God but also to the church in a manner vis­i­ble to all. The uncertainty around Isabelle’s exact status is brought out by comparison with her ­brother’s con­temporary crusading vow made in December 1244. Recovering from an illness so serious that some onlookers believed he had breathed his last, the king asked for and received the cross, signaling his pledge. According to Louis’s friend and eventual biographer Jean of Joinville, Blanche of Castile was dismayed by this rash act.30 Thus (at least as reported by the En­glish chronicler Mathew Paris) Blanche and the bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne, tried to talk Louis out of his decision. The bishop pointed out that since Louis had made his vow while ill and not entirely of sound mind, the pope would dispense him from it, for the good of the kingdom. Louis’s response was to rip the crusader’s cross from his clothing and hand it to William of Auvergne. But ­after Blanche’s momentary sigh of relief, Louis demanded the cross back, pointed out that he could not now be said to be of unsound mind, and renewed his vow.31 Louis’s reiterated vow was without elaborate ritual, yet still offered publicly, in front of witnesses, and made vis­i­ble by the taking of the cloth cross to wear as an insignia. ­Sister and ­brother, Isabelle and Louis made similar choices in their respective resolutions to embrace virginity and to go on crusade. Both ­were personal statements of intention, understood as binding obligations to God. But Louis’s was made publicly, in the presence of a bishop. Moreover, as a crusader, Louis eventually passed through a liminal moment of departure, marked by formal rituals, when the papal legate Eudes of Cháteauroux bestowed the crusader’s scrip and staff on the king and his b­ rothers.32 Despite the crusade’s military failure, ­there could be no doubt that by the time the king returned to Paris in 29. ​Boureau, Le désir dicté, 112–14. 30. ​Jean of Joinville, “The Life of Saint Louis,” in Smith, Joinville and Villehardouin, 172, par. 106. 31. ​Vaughn, Chronicles of Matthew Paris, 131–32. Around Louis’s vow, see Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, chap. 1; and Richard, Saint Louis, 94–98. 32. ​On ­these rituals see Gaposchkin, “From Pilgrimage to Crusade,” esp. 53–54.

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1254, his vow to God had been fulfilled. For Isabelle, u ­ nless she chose to proceed to a solemn monastic vow, no such moment of closure, short of death, could mark a fulfillment of her religious purpose. Would Isabelle in fact decide to become a nun? Innocent IV seems to have hoped she would. In a shorter letter of May 1254, Decens et debitum, the pope responded to her request for confessors from the Franciscan Order.33 This is the earliest evidence of the princess’s attraction to Franciscan spirituality, and it also offers insight into the pope’s perceptions. Innocent notes that Isabelle “is said” to live “at times” in nuns’ cloisters, “as a par­tic­u­lar imitator of honesty and sanctity.” In 1253 he had already commended her resolution for “holy” or “saintly” virginity (sancta virginitas) and her “emulation” of angelic purity. Now he filled in this picture by praising her striving for “sanctity” or “sacred purity” (sanctimonia). Isabelle was thus beginning to attract a vocabulary of sanctity, holiness, and angelic purity. At the same time, Innocent’s desire to see in her a nun-­in-­waiting is palpable. Following her ­mother’s death, and with her ­brother the king still away in the Holy Land, Isabelle may have been residing at monasteries such as Blanche of Castile’s favored Cistercian h ­ ouses of Maubuisson or Lys. Innocent seized on this report, seemingly reassured by the idea that Isabelle was living among and imitating nuns. Innocent had already made clear that Isabelle’s “purpose” should be transmuted into a “vow.” Now it seems clear that the ideal, for Innocent, would be not just a ritual vow of virginity but the ­triple vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience taken by all nuns.

Thomas of Cantimpré and the Beguine Model If Innocent IV seems to have been vexed by the question of Isabelle’s status, the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré suggested a pos­si­ble solution by linking Isabelle to the flourishing world of the beguines. Thomas praised Isabelle in his well-­known Bonum universale de apibus (Universal good of bees), in a passage likely penned in the mid-1250s.34 At the end of his chapter “On the Virtue of Chastity,” having discussed the Virgin Mary at length and given several examples of con­temporary noble girls who had rejected marriage, Thomas comes to a report on Isabelle of France. He describes her as the d­ aughter of 33. ​Field, Isabelle, 48; Princesse mineure, 161–63. 34. ​Colveneer, Thomae Cantimpratani bonum universale de apibus, 319. Scholarship often dates this work to 1256–63, but Thomas may have begun it as early as 1246 and added to it ­after 1267. The passage on Isabelle seems to reflect the mid-1250s or earlier, since Thomas shows no knowledge of Longchamp’s foundation. Field, Isabelle, 44–46; Princesse mineure, 127–28.



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King Louis VIII and ­sister of the “most devout King Louis [IX], who reigns most happily at pres­ent.” Thomas then turns to Isabelle’s choice of virginity: “Betrothed to Conrad, the son of Frederick [II] the Roman Emperor, she preferred to remain unwed in virginity. Devoting herself to God alone, she dedicated herself so much to contemplation and virtue that she seemed to have no care for any transitory ­things.” For Thomas, as for Albert of Suerbeer and Innocent IV, Isabelle stood apart, even in the devout atmosphere of the Capetian court, owing to her holy celibacy. Louis is devotissimus, but unlike his ­sister, the king can hardly withdraw his attention from secular affairs. Isabelle, in her decision to embrace a life of virginity, has given herself to God, and to God alone. But the rest of Thomas’s passage, as he continues to praise the Capetian court, is perhaps even more intriguing insofar as it ties Isabelle to larger religious trends. Moving on from his praise of the princess, Thomas immediately lauds King Louis for cherishing ­those seeking out the modesty of “virginal dignity.” For this reason, the king has “gathered together a g­ reat multitude of beguines at Paris, to cultivate the submission and salvation of humility.” In other words, Isabelle’s example, as a pious laywoman living in the world but having vowed herself to chastity, has called the word “beguine” to Thomas’s mind. By the mid-­thirteenth ­century, beguine communities had emerged all over the Low Countries and northern France. In Paris, small groups of beguines could already be found by the early 1250s, but, as Thomas notes, Louis IX sponsored the foundation of the ­grand béguinage just inside the city walls on the right bank, which ultimately ­housed several hundred beguines. Although the earliest stages of this planning are not well documented, they ­were certainly ­under way well before 1260.35 ­There is even evidence that Louis IX’s inspiration in founding the ­grand béguinage came from the Low Countries. We have already seen that Louis and Blanche of Castile w ­ ere supporting beguines in the north as early as the 1240s. An intriguing reference hints at a more direct encounter between King Louis and a holy w ­ oman of Lille a­ fter his return from crusade. Shortly a­ fter 1267, the Cistercian abbot Philip of Clairvaux wrote a description of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, the holy w ­ oman from the diocese of Liège.36 In the course of making his case for Elizabeth’s holiness, Philip of Clairvaux related that she was in miraculous contact with “a certain virgin named Marie, who lives in a town in Flanders called Lille.” Although the two ­women had never met in the flesh, 35. ​Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, 27–28. 36. ​Philip of Clairvaux, “Vita Elizabeth.”

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they communicated through a kind of rapturous telepathy. Philip of Clairvaux, perhaps aware that this claim strained credulity, reassured his readers that not only did he know Marie himself, but “the lord king of France frequently visited her, and caused a very worthy chapel to be built for her.”37 The king in question was certainly Louis IX. When and how might Louis have had occasion to encounter this ­woman? The Capetians w ­ ere deeply involved in the complicated politics of the counties of Flanders and Hainaut (see map 3). Flanders was in princi­ple subject to the king of France, though linguistically divided between a French-­speaking south and a Dutch-­speaking north. Hainaut by contrast was an imperial fief. But although Marguerite of Constantinople became countess of both Flanders and Hainaut in 1244, the region was wracked by rivalry between the sons produced by her two marriages, first to Bouchard of Avesnes and then to William of Dampierre.38 In 1246, before leaving on crusade, Louis IX had helped broker a compromise whereby the Dampierre line (favored by Marguerite) would receive Flanders, and the Avesnes line would inherit Hainaut. But fighting resumed in 1253, while the king was still in the Holy Land, with the Avesnes clan capturing the two Dampierre ­brothers. In desperation, Countess Marguerite offered Hainaut to Charles of Anjou (youn­gest ­brother of Louis IX) if he would come north and defend the interests of her Dampierre heirs. Charles occupied Valenciennes and styled himself Count of Hainaut by January 1254. He seemed to be in control of much of the county by April, but l­ ater in the summer he had to withdraw owing to sustained opposition and the arrival of the king of the Romans, William of Holland.39 When Louis IX returned from crusade he worked to resolve this messy situation. In November 1255 the king was in Ghent for negotiations, which ulti­ hole mately imposed a return to the 1246 arrangement.40 One result of the w affair was Dampierre gratitude ­toward the Capetians. But another may have been Louis’s and Charles’s familiarity with the religious atmosphere of the Low Countries, the heartland of the beguine movement. Since this was Louis IX’s only known trip to Flanders, it very likely provided the occasion on which he would have met the mysterious Marie of Lille and deci­ded to construct a

37. ​Philip of Clairvaux, “Vita Elizabeth,” 376, 24. 38. ​Jordan, ­Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the ­Middle Ages; de Cant, Jeanne et Marguerite de Constantinople. 39. ​Duvivier, La querelle des d’Avesnes et des Dampierre, 235–51; Sternfeld, Karl von Ajou als Graf der Provence, 94–111. 40. ​Richard, Saint Louis, 186–93; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, 37–39; Duvivier, La querelle des d’Avesnes et des Dampierre, 262–63.



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chapel for her.41 Marie of Lille is not called a beguine, and t­ here is no reason to think that she was associated with Lille’s flourishing beguinage (St. Elizabeth’s, founded c. 1244–45). But some direct contact with beguines prob­ably did result from the king’s trip north in 1255. Supporters of the beguines in Ghent would l­ater (in 1328) claim that Louis had visited their beguinage and been so impressed that he took it as a model for his foundation of the ­grand béguinage in Paris, and for other beguine ­houses in France upon his return.42 Thus, to return to Thomas of Cantimpré, his association of Isabelle with the beguines of Paris suggests one way in which Isabelle’s lay piety could be perceived, just at the moment when the beguine model was receiving royal endorsement. For churchmen who supported the beguine way of life, such a textual link between a royal w ­ oman and beguines must have seemed entirely positive. Thomas of Cantimpré himself, hailing from Brabant and having authored several lives of saintly beguines and other semireligious holy w ­ omen, stands as a prime example of this perspective. As the passage ­under consideration h ­ ere demonstrates, for Thomas, beguines ­were valuable precisely ­because they tied “virginal dignity” to humility and offered a path to salvation for ­women living in the world. In describing Isabelle, Thomas does not mention a votum or propositum. Rather, like Agnes of Harcourt, he refers simply to a choice. If the informal nature of this choice worried some churchmen, Thomas seems to give it context and meaning by linking Isabelle to the many pious beguines living religious lives ­under similarly informal vows. At the Capetian court, some ecclesiastics shared Thomas of Cantimpré’s estimation of the beguine life. For instance, the secular master of theology Robert of Sorbon, one of King Louis’s closest councillors and founder of the College of the Sorbonne, was among the most passionate promotors of beguines as models for clerics, schoolmen, and laywomen.43 But other churchmen ­were suspicious of the innovation represented by beguine communities. ­After all, beguines w ­ ere not nuns, nor ­were they members of any approved 41. ​The “Index mansionum” in RHGF, vol. 21, does not provide evidence of Louis ever having been in Lille (505), but confirms his only trip to Ghent in November 1255 (504). See further Moufflet, Sous le sceau du roi, 35–43. This Marie of Lille seems other­wise unattested in historical sources (I thank Walter Simons for consultation on this point), though see chapter 3 for a pos­si­ble reference connected with Elizabeth of Spalbeek and the circulation of relics. 42. ​Text in Duvivier, La querelle des d’Avesnes et des Dampierre, 263n1; see also Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, 26–27. Moreover, an early magistra of Louis’s ­grand béguinage in Paris was Agnes of Orchies (d. 1284). Orchies was in French Flanders just south of Lille, and Nicole Bériou has suggested that Louis IX may personally have recruited her to come to Paris. See Bériou, “La prédication au béguinage de Paris pendant l’année liturgique 1272–1273,” 193–94; as well as Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, 27, 120–25. 43. ​Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, chap. 4; Jordan, Men at the Center, chap. 1; Bériou, “Robert de Sorbon.”

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order. Some beguines, especially in cities such as Bruges, Ghent, and Lille (and now Paris), lived in large, well-­established “court” beguinages. ­These ­women took at least provisional vows and followed some kind of local rule. But even so, they did not give up personal property or sever ties with the world, and they could leave the beguine life or choose to marry if they wished. To skeptical churchmen, this informality and impermanence represented a distressing lack of stability. Worse, other beguines in t­ hose cities, including Paris, lived alone or in smaller groups, more or less on their own orga­nizational initiative.44 They claimed to be exceptionally pious, but might this supposed piety not be a facade? Well-­known critics in Paris such as the university master William of Saint-­ Amour and the poet Rutebeuf mocked beguines with just ­these kinds of charges in the 1250s and 1260s.45 ­There is no hint that Isabelle herself attracted any such criticism. But over time suspicion ­toward beguines grew stronger, seeming to gain the upper hand by the last quarter of the thirteenth c­ entury.46 In retrospect, Thomas of Cantimpré’s decision to contextualize the virgin princess by tying her to the world of the beguines foreshadows the challenge that ­later authors would face in memorializing Isabelle’s unusual spiritual path. In sum, ­these initial reports by Albert of Suerbeer, Innocent IV, and Thomas of Cantimpré raise two themes that run throughout descriptions of Isabelle in the 1250s. First, her increasing reputation and visibility ­were grounded in her choice of virginity. It was this sexual purity that set her apart from other members of the court and “united” her to Christ in a way that the king, his ­brothers, and their wives could not emulate. But second, that choice lacked the formal guarantees of permanence and regulation upon which monastic vows insisted. The fact that a princess had chosen a life of saintly celibacy was praiseworthy; that she had done it outside the walls of a nunnery was unsettling.

A Friar’s Advice A Franciscan view of Isabelle’s reputation and potential appears in a tract of spiritual advice written to the princess in the form of a letter by the master of theology Guibert of Tournai, prob­ably around 1255,47 just a few years before 44. ​For Paris, see Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, chap. 3. 45. ​Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, 17–19; William of Saint-­Amour, De periculis novissimorum temporum, ed. and trans. Guy Geltner (Paris: Peeters Press, 2008); Blumenfeld-­Kosinski, “Satirical Views of the Beguines in Northern French Lit­er­a­ture.” 46. ​Simons, Cities of Ladies, 118–32. 47. ​Field, “Gilbert of Tournai’s Letter to Isabelle of France”; Field, Isabelle, 49–53; Princesse mineure, 133–60; Lahav, “Ambitions of Faith.”



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he completed his better-­known mirror of princes for Louis IX (1259).48 In the greeting of his letter, Guibert notes the “renown” and “merits” of his “most illustrious” royal dedicatee, again acknowledging Isabelle’s growing reputation. In light of this renown, Guibert commends himself to Isabelle as a source of spiritual advice. Isabelle was a pos­si­ble patron for Franciscans seeking to enter court circles.49 Hence, this friar flattered her not only in his effusive praise but also in his implicit assumption that she would be ready to grapple with a theologically sophisticated treatise couched in challenging Latin.50 Guibert’s tract is divided into five parts, on the “celestial heritage,” the purity, the virginity, the humility, and the honest conduct of “the ­daughter of the king” (Psalms 44:14–15). As Anne-­Hélène Allirot has noted, the opening section implies a par­tic­u­lar spiritual “heritage” bestowed on Capetian princesses, who appear as ­daughters of God as well as ­daughters of the king. A princess, in this sense, could play a power­f ul, biblically sanctioned role in the emerging idea of a Capetian “holy bloodline.”51 Equally striking is the way Guibert, in his third section, lingers over the symbols of a vowed virgin. By describing the sacred mysteries of the ring and veil prescribed by ritual oaths of virginity, he seems to seek to entice Isabelle into taking such a step herself.52 Like Thomas of Cantimpré, Guibert of Tournai was very much aware of the informal nature of Isabelle’s choice of chastity. Unlike Thomas, Guibert would l­ ater emerge as one of the most vocal skeptics of un­regu­la­ted beguines. But for now, like Innocent IV, he seems to have wished to urge Isabelle to regularize her status by taking canonical vows. Guibert expressed this wish not through a blunt exhortation but by describing such vows in lustrous terms. Again, virginity is at the very heart of the spiritual renown that has drawn a churchman to Isabelle; again his praise is tinged with an anxious desire to see the princess’s personal choice of chastity give way to a formalized state as consecrated virgin or nun.

Pope Alexander IV and the Princess at Her Apex Two texts by Pope Alexander IV, of 1256 and 1259, bring Isabelle’s holy reputation to its apogee. By 1255, ­after Louis IX’s return from the Holy Land, Isabelle (with the king’s help) had begun purchasing land for what would become 48. ​De Poorter, Le traité “Eruditio regum et principum” de Guibert de Tournai. 49. ​Field, “Franciscan Ideals and the Royal ­Family of France.” 50. ​On Isabelle’s command of Latin, see Writings of AH, 60–61. 51. ​Allirot, Filles de roy de France, 239–47. 52. ​This observation was made by Jacques Dalarun in Princesse mineure, 157n1.

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the abbey of Longchamp.53 Isabelle must have written to the new pope Alexander (r. 1254–61) to inform him of her developing plans. Alexander responded in a remarkable letter, opening with the Latin phrase Benedicta filia tu a Domino—­“You, ­daughter, blessed by the Lord.”54 The greeting echoes the angel Gabriel’s words to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation (Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus), now developing the parallel between the virgin princess of France and the Virgin queen of heaven, at which Albert of Suerbeer had already hinted. Alexander picks up on other themes established in Innocent IV’s earlier letter, but soars far beyond them. Isabelle, taught by the Holy Spirit, is now lauded as a “wise virgin” who has listened to St. Paul’s advice that it is better for virgins and w ­ idows to remain unwed, and instead conceived the “illustrious progeny of a virginal purpose” (propositi virginali). But she is also now portrayed as having “regally judged it worthy of royal birth and distinguished conduct to spurn the servile worries of the world,” so that she, as a “devoted follower of the Queen of Virgins, may be more fully holy in both body and spirit” (Ut sis plenius tam corpore sancta quam spiritu, quoting 1 Corinthians 7:34). Having left the world to follow a dif­fer­ent kind of celestial royalty emulating the Virgin Mary, Isabelle now is recognized as “filled with holiness” as St. Paul had promised to ­those embracing virginity. Alexander boldly continues by addressing Isabelle with the phrase “Hail (Ave), royal virgin,” and asserts that the princess “strives a­ fter the blessing of virginal integrity with Mary, with whom you certainly share the Ave of angelic greeting.” It is evident that his opening evocation of the Annunciation was more than a passing compliment. Whereas the angel Gabriel had appeared to Mary with the words “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among ­women,” Alexander ­here assumes for himself the role of angelic messenger, greeting Isabelle first with “Blessed are you” and then insisting that she merits the same dramatic “Ave!” as the Virgin. By virtue of her own promise, Isabelle joins with Mary “in the purpose of spiritual and bodily sanctity.” ­Here again recurs Innocent’s “propositum sanctitatis” (purpose of sanctity). But now Isabelle’s virgin purpose is framed in terms of an effusive comparison with Mary. At the same time, and more explic­itly than Innocent IV or Guibert of Tournai before him, Alexander hastens to suggest that Isabelle’s spiritual journey is not yet complete since her “virginal purpose” remains personal rather than public. Alexander uses the term propositum to describe her current state, though 53. ​ Princesse mineure, 164–67. 54. ​Field, “New Evidence for the Life of Isabelle of France,” 129–31; Field, Isabelle, 53–56; Rules of Isabelle, 48–53; Princesse mineure, 167–74.



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fortifying it with reference to the m ­ other of God. Alexander seems confident that Isabelle ­will now proceed to “a vow” (votum) “of obligation” that “binds ­free ­will.” Further Alexander states that he has learned that Isabelle “aspires to that state of perfection where the choice of a greater good would take away permission for a licit t­hing, since when it was licit you did not ever want to marry, and now you would not be able to do so even if you wished.” It seems evident that the pope expects Isabelle to become a nun (and doubtless, eventually, abbess) at her planned monastic foundation; he certainly anticipates her at last making some kind of more formal, public vow. The reference to voluntarily choosing a “greater good” (boni electio melioris) evokes definitions of the vow formulated by Simon of Bisignano, as well as by Albert the G ­ reat in 1249.55 Moreover, the pope asserts, this advance ­will have far-­reaching benefits as other ­women begin to imitate Isabelle’s example. H ­ ere is another dramatic step forward in the way Isabelle’s spiritual status is portrayed. Whereas Innocent IV had twice described Isabelle as an “emulator,” now Alexander imagines ­others following her “in praiseworthy emulation to the ser­vice of the Lord.” Alexander appreciates Isabelle as a figure of ­g reat religious potential, as a spiritual model and leader for other ­women. Her followers, in fact, already include one ­woman mentioned by name, a certain Agnes, who is “following ­after your pro­g ress, through love of virginity, t­ oward the purpose (propositum) of a more saintly life.”56 Thus Isabelle’s status is again recognized by the pope as holy; if to imitate Isabelle is to strive for a saintly life, then her example already embodies a certain kind of sanctity. Fi­nally, Alexander promises practical support for Isabelle’s endeavors, remarks on how Franciscans at the papal curia praise her, and ends the letter with a nearly unpre­ce­dented full remission of her sins. Isabelle’s vow (voto) of purity, notes the pope, should secure for her a hundredfold reward in heaven. But in the meantime he grants to her “forgiveness of all sins, pursuing your vow of virginal continence (votum virginalis continentie) and purpose (propositum) of celestial ser­vice.” ­Here the distinction between “purpose” and “vow” is blurred, seemingly out of an e­ ager confidence that such a vow would come about. Nothing like this spiritual reward had ever been extended to Louis IX or any other member of the royal f­ amily. Isabelle’s bodily purity is now matched by papal insistence on her complete spiritual purity as well.

55. ​On Albert the ­Great, see Boureau, Le désir dicté, 107–11. Simon had conceptio and Albert had promissio where Pope Alexander uses electio. 56. ​It is tempting to imagine that this “Agnes, ­daughter of Heloise” could be Agnes of Harcourt, but impossible to be sure.

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Alexander developed ­these ideas further in the second of his two texts, the bull Sol ille verus (The true sun) that approved Longchamp’s rule in February  1259.57 Alexander was deeply invested in the development of female Franciscan institutions. As Rainaldo di Jenne, he had been cardinal protector of the Franciscans as early as 1228. He had been involved in debate around the 1247 rule for the Order of San Damiano promulgated by Innocent IV, and had been the first official to approve Clare of Assisi’s own form of life (in 1252). Cardinal Rainaldo had not seen the rule of 1247 as a satisfactory solution to the institutional position of Franciscan w ­ omen,58 and now prob­ably had high hopes that a new rule, backed by the prestige of the French royal ­family, could offer new possibilities. Thus his preamble in 1259 was laden with effusive praise. The “sun” in Sol ille verus stands for God, who illuminates the hearts of the faithful and allows “kings and princes” to “understand higher ­things more freely” in order to “lead ­others by their saving example.” The two royal figures in question “suffused with this light,” are “the Most Christian prince Louis, our dearest son in Christ, illustrious king of the Franks, and our beloved ­daughter in Christ the noble w ­ oman Isabelle his ­sister.” The siblings thus stand as a royal pair, bathed in the spiritual glow God bestows on pious princes. But although Louis receives his credit as “Most Christian” and “illustrious,” it is Isabelle whom the pope describes as “shining with the luster of virginal modesty and power­f ul with the brightness of other virtues.” It is she who drives the demand for a new rule, “spurning the spacious palace of the temporal kingdom” and seeking “with a fervent spirit the time for divine praises in the repose of sweet contemplation.” Isabelle is the spiritual star ­here, shining and power­f ul in God’s light. Yet even at this late date Alexander seems to have assumed that Isabelle would swear obedience to this rule herself, since he grants it to “Isabelle and to all the ­women wanting to flee the world to profess in the monastery of the Humility of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” For the pope saw Isabelle on the brink of fulfilling her spiritual destiny. All of her potential as a saving and saintly example to other ­women would come to fruition once she entered a life of formal religious profession. Just as with his personal letter to Isabelle (Benedicta filia tu), Alexander concludes this bull with a remission of sin.59 His words now have the potential to ­free an untold number of w ­ omen from all sin at the moment of their profes57. ​ Rules of Isabelle, 56–60; Princesse mineure, 177–79. 58. ​Mooney, Clare of Assisi, 156–61. 59. ​ Rules of Isabelle, 108–10; Princesse mineure, 201.



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sion. Thus, in an unpre­ce­dented move, Alexander granted “to all t­hose professing this most sacred rule a full indulgence of all sins that w ­ ill have been confessed with a contrite heart.” Alexander’s insistence on the spiritual purity of this new endeavor is startling; no such clause had appeared in any earlier rule for Franciscan men or w ­ omen. Indeed, Alexander concluded by commuting for all new nuns of this community “any minor vows which they have made at any time in the world into this solemn vow of perfection, so that thus, with sublime splendor, ­these illustrious ­women may advance ­until they arrive at the marriage bed of clear brightness.” It is pos­si­ble that with this passage Alexander was thinking at least in part of Isabelle’s “minor vow” or personal promise of chastity, which he wished to assure her could now be subsumed into a more “perfect vow” of obedience, chastity, and poverty, as specified in the text of the rule itself.

Isabelle, Louis, and Longchamp in 1260 This chapter has focused so far on texts written before 1260 in order to explore the way con­temporary observers portrayed Isabelle. But the memories gathered by Abbess Agnes of Harcourt and the nuns of Longchamp around 1282–83 undeniably provide a g­ reat deal of additional testimony concerning Isabelle’s youthful piety, her charity and care for the sick, her asceticism and fasting, and her silence, intense prayer, and frequent confession—­qualities that must have been central to the development of her reputation for holiness during her own lifetime. They also refer to ­people around Isabelle in her youth who saw her as a f­uture saint, such as the ladies-­in-­waiting who saved hairs from her head as potential relics.60 Thus, two telling anecdotes from Agnes of Harcourt’s Life of Isabelle (c. 1283) and her Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp (December 1282) reveal Isabelle’s standing with observers and her own f­ amily around 1260. The first of ­these anecdotes illuminates the way Isabelle was regarded while still living at court. It is the first miracle related by Agnes of Harcourt, and the only one that seems to be set before the foundation of Longchamp.61 In this episode, one of the king’s sergeants had a child who had fallen dangerously ill. This sergeant came to Isabelle and tearfully begged her to pray for the child’s recovery. She agreed to do so, and the child was duly cured. But when the man returned to Isabelle with thanks, she urged him not to believe 60. ​ Writings of AH, 56–57; Princesse mineure, 278. 61. ​ Writings of AH, 70–71; Princesse mineure, 293.

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that her merits had had anything to do with the child’s recovery. The royal sergeant refused to accept this interpretation, and the best Isabelle could achieve was to secure his promise that he would not tell the story as long as she was alive. Eventually he recounted the won­der to Marguerite of Provence, who in turn told Agnes and the nuns of Longchamp, who included it in the Life of Isabelle. As miracle stories go, this one is not particularly dramatic, yet it says a ­great deal about how Isabelle was viewed by common p­ eople in the orbit of the court. A worried parent in the king’s ser­vice sought a holy intercessor to beseech God on his behalf. In this quest he might have made a pilgrimage to any number of regional sites or prayed to any number of established saints. Instead he came to Isabelle. It is perhaps noteworthy that he did not go to Louis IX. Of course, it might have been more difficult to gain access to the king than to his ­sister, or Louis could have been absent at this moment. But it was to Isabelle that this man’s desperate mind flew. “United to Christ” as Albert of Suerbeer had written, “devoted to God” as Thomas of Cantimpré put it, “holy in body and spirit” according to Alexander IV, Isabelle was the court’s conduit to divine mercy for this royal servant. By contrast, the earliest hagiographic lives written about Louis make no claim for him ever having effected a cure during his lifetime through his prayers.62 Louis IX was the devoted crusader ready to give his life for Christ. He was the increasingly severe king governing in a spirit of penitence and attending to the plight of the poor and the sick.63 He was the guardian of the Crown of Thorns, and the anointed monarch able to touch for scrofula and to embody the French kings’ self-­image as heirs to the Old Testament rulers. Con­temporary chroniclers such as Matthew Paris could call him “most pious,” “most Christian,” and “magnanimous” (though also a­ fter his capture on crusade “inglorious and sad”).64 In papal letters he was “pious,” “most Christian,” “devout,” and “illustrious.” But nothing in t­hose labels or letters quite compares to the way observers referred to Isabelle using the vocabulary of sanctity, holiness, and sacred purity. A French king leading a crusade was admirable but not new; a reforming king was praiseworthy but not unique. In fact, when Louis veered too close to fully embracing mendicant spirituality, some of his subjects mocked him for it, precisely b­ ecause a too-­saintly demeanor would not ac62. ​Cf. the texts in Field, Sanctity of Louis IX. Geoffrey of Beaulieu’s vita refers to Louis’s touching for scrofula (Field, 112), but other­wise merely mentions in general that miracles occurred where Louis’s heart (Sicily) and bones (Saint-­Denis) ­were buried (Field, 124–25). William of Chartres was the first hagiographer to credit specific miracles to Louis, but all seventeen w ­ ere posthumous. 63. ​Aladjidi, Le roi, père des pauvres. 64. ​Le Goff, Saint Louis, 342–57; Vaughn, Chronicles of Matthew Paris.



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cord with the king’s majesty.65 When Louis mused about becoming a friar, his ­family and advisers hastened to bring him back to his duty.66 The king could only go so far down a radical path of lived holiness before the obligations of rule became stumbling blocks. No such structural restraints barred his s­ ister’s spiritual path. The princess could take the advice she received from a friar such as Guibert of Tournai and pursue it to its logical conclusion by devoting herself entirely to God, even outside a nunnery. Thus between the pious, penitent king and the ardent, virginal princess, it was around the latter that images of sanctity could most fruitfully develop before 1260. Yet at the same time, at a court marked by Louis’s penitential and reforming turn, the king and his s­ ister ­were surely moving in similar spiritual directions.67 Indeed, the entry of the first nuns to Longchamp in June 1260 was the culmination of a joint proj­ect supported and celebrated by the entire royal ­family. Thus the second anecdote comes from the 1282 Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp and concerns this dramatic moment.68 The Letter begins by recalling how the royal f­amily laid the foundation stones for Longchamp, prob­ably around 1256. It was the king who placed the first stone, followed by Queen Marguerite, their eldest son Louis, and fi­nally Isabelle. The appearance of three white doves caused Marguerite to remark to Isabelle that the Holy Trinity was smiling on their work. And indeed it was again that queen who would ­later report the story to Agnes of Harcourt and several other se­nior nuns. The Letter then immediately jumps to June 1260, when the first nuns entered the new abbey. Louis was “devoutly pres­ent,” and “soon a­ fter” he and Isabelle had entered into the nuns’ chapter together. Louis in fact sat right down with the s­ isters and gave them their “first sermon and teaching.” His words, if the nuns’ recollections recorded twenty-­two years ­later may be trusted, are remarkable: “He said that we ­ought to take as our example Monseigneur St. Francis and Madame St. Clare and other saints who lived with such sanctity and perfection, and that we should begin so high that the ­others who would come ­after us would not be able to equal us, and that we should be a mirror to all the other ­women of religion and lead such a life that the ­others could take it as a good example.” This was an extraordinary moment for the king. On his return from crusade, his program of reform included pouring resources into the foundation or expansion of numerous monastic and charitable establishments. ­These 65. ​Jordan, “Case of Saint Louis”; Le Goff, Saint Louis, 667–76. 66. ​Field, Sanctity of Louis IX, 80. 67. ​Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, 9–12. 68. ​ Writings of AH, 46–49; Princesse mineure, 267–71.

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included not only the beguines of Paris but also the vari­ous mendicant ­orders as well as semireligious female communities such as the Filles-­Dieu (reformed prostitutes).69 His contributions to Longchamp’s foundation ­were, in that sense, part of a larger pattern. But ­there is no evidence that the king undertook to give the inaugural “sermon and teaching” to the new inhabitants of any of ­these other institutions. Longchamp was dif­fer­ent, precisely ­because it was founded to be the new home of the Capetian f­ amily’s shining example of sanctity. Although Isabelle had not taken (and would not take) the veil herself, she transferred her residence to Longchamp, building her own private quarters at what observers referred to as “her” abbey.70 In this sense, Isabelle’s foundation was a more intensely emotional and spiritual investment for the king and his ­family. Louis was known for sometimes acting like “one of the ­brothers” when mingling with friars.71 But sitting “right down on our level” with the new ­sisters of Longchamp was a dramatic demonstration of royal humility. Louis also occasionally a­ dopted the daring role of lay preacher with Franciscan and Dominican audiences.72 To the extent that he urged the ­sisters to set an example that ­f uture nuns might try to follow, his exhortation might seem mundane. Louis, however, went an impor­tant step further, asking for such perfection that it could never be equaled. It is as though the king i­ magined this moment, and this group of ­women ­under his ­sister’s patronage, as representing an unmatchable spiritual pinnacle “so high” that only decline would henceforth be pos­si­ble. The months leading up to Longchamp’s inauguration had been emotionally wrenching for the king. His heir, the same Prince Louis who had been prominent when Longchamp’s first stones ­were laid around 1256, had suddenly died in January 1260 at the age of sixteen.73 As William Chester Jordan has argued, this loss caused more than just parental heartbreak. King Louis’s most fervent hope was that the purification of his realm would outlast his own reign; in turn t­ hese hopes “­were pinned on his eldest son.”74 Louis IX’s ruminations about abdicating to become a friar had been predicated on his heir reaching the age where he could rule on his own.75 Jordan has suggested the 69. ​Cohen, Sainte-­Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy, chap. 5; Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, 185–90. 70. ​ Princesse mineure, 218–20. 71. ​Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 216. See further L ­ ittle, “Saint Louis’ Involvement with the Friars.” 72. ​Jordan, “Louis IX: Preaching to Franciscan and Dominican ­Brothers and Nuns,” 219–35. 73. ​Le Goff, Saint Louis, 202–3. 74. ​Jordan, “Etiam Reges,” 628. 75. ​As reported by Geoffrey of Beaulieu. See Field, Sanctity of Louis IX, 80.



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king was even planning to revive the recently abandoned Capetian practice of associative kingship—­that is, of crowning the heir as co-­k ing during the ­father’s lifetime. The younger Louis was scheduled to be married (to Berengaria of Castile) and prob­ably knighted in 1260, and a coronation might have been envisioned for the same moment. But what­ever the king’s plans may have been, death brought them to naught, and Louis IX seemed inconsolable. His ­great friend Eudes Rigaud, the Franciscan archbishop of Rouen, hurried to his side,76 and his close associate the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais composed a work of consolation to try to draw the king out of his despondent state.77 Louis may have recovered some emotional equilibrium by June. Still, instead of a royal marriage and perhaps even a coronation, this season had become yet another moment for the king to wrestle with God’s inscrutable plan for the French kingdom. As Jacques Le Goff wrote concerning the loss of the heir, “Louis must have felt that this death was a divine warning. He must not yet have earned salvation for himself and his subjects. He concluded that he had to intensify the moral reform of the kingdom once again.”78 Longchamp’s founding could hardly have arrived at a more deeply reflective moment for the king. For Louis, the dream of purifying the kingdom and thus his own soul could be realized, at least for an instant, in the founding rituals of his ­sister’s community at Longchamp. Isabelle herself had been portrayed by the reigning pope as a latter-­day Capetian analogue to the Virgin ­mother of Christ; she was now taking on the role of “holy m ­ other” (notre sainte mère) for Longchamp. The pope had wiped away her sins, even while praising her bodily purity. The newly professed nuns of Longchamp had likewise just been forgiven of all their sins by virtue of having sworn obedience to the new abbey’s rule. Was ­there a purer place or a more spiritually perfect group of ­women in all of Louis’s kingdom? ­Here he could envision a shimmering image of something that might indeed never be equaled, in the foundation and followers of his saintly ­sister—­the holy ­woman at the heart of the Capetian court.

A Slow Fading Near this same time, around 1260, the chronicler known as the Minstrel of Reims looked back to the 1220s, when Blanche of Castile had been pregnant 76. ​Davis, Holy Bureaucrat, 161. 77. ​Vincent of Beauvais, Epístola consolatoria por la muerte de un amigo, ed. and trans. Javier Vergara Ciordia y Francisco Calero Calero (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2006). 78. ​Le Goff, Saint Louis, 203.

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“with a ­daughter named Ysabiaus, who never wanted to get married, and so remained in the state of virginity and did much good.”79 Yet in spite of this kind of praise for Isabelle’s life of virginal holiness, her model of female sanctity in the world proved difficult to sustain in the last years of her life. ­After 1260 she offered an increasingly uncomfortable image, following her refusal to heed papal advice to take the formal vows of a nun, and a showdown over a revision to Longchamp’s rule. The s­ isters of Longchamp continued to revere her long ­after her death, and the royal ­family kept precious memories of her holiness alive for several generations. But in the wider sphere, Isabelle’s sanctity seems to have largely slipped out of view by the time of her death in 1270. This trend appears most clearly in the way Isabelle was addressed by popes in the 1260s. Whereas Innocent IV and Alexander IV had used the language of sanctity to heap praise on her, Urban IV (r. 1261–64) and Clement IV (r. 1265–68) ­were less impressed. The contrast is even more marked in light of the fact that while Innocent (Sinibaldo Fieschi) and Alexander (Rainaldo di Jenne) ­were Italians, both Urban ( Jacques Pantaléon) and Clement (Gui Foucois) ­were Frenchmen. Urban IV is known to have issued only three bulls related to Longchamp or its rule, and Isabelle is not mentioned in any of them.80 At the time of Longchamp’s foundation in June 1260, several ­sisters had come from the female Franciscan community at Reims to help establish the new h ­ ouse. In November 1261, three months ­after his election, Urban wrote to the Franciscan guardian of Paris to absolve t­ hese ­sisters of their ties to Reims and allow them to remain at Longchamp. In so d­ oing, he referred only to Louis IX’s request for this action.81 The lack of any mention of Isabelle in this routine document may not be particularly notable, but it is followed by a clear example of the new pope preferring to pass over the princess in silence. Isabelle had not been satisfied by the rule that Alexander IV had approved for Longchamp in 1259. Among her most passionately held goals, according 79. ​De Wailly, Récits d’un Ménestrel de Reims, 161. I owe this reference to Thandiwe Parker, “A Mirror for Princesses: The Portrayal of Queenship in Three French Vernacular Chronicles, c. 1260–­c. 1310” (Master’s thesis, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, 2018). 80. ​As canon of Laon and archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Panteléon was familiar with local holy ­women, notably Juliana of Mont-­Cornillon and Eve of Saint-­Martin. See Rubin, Corpus Christi, 175– 77. But following the Council of Lyon he spent much time on diplomatic missions to Germany and then as patriarch of Jerusalem and thus may never have developed a personal relationship with Isabelle of France. 81. ​Preserved only in a seventeenth-­century French translation. See Princesse mineure, 215–17; Field, Isabelle, 217n8.



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to Agnes of Harcourt, was that the nuns of Longchamp be known as Sorores minores (Soeurs mineures in French; “­sisters minor” or “lesser s­ isters” in En­glish). “In no way could the rule be acceptable to her,” Agnes would l­ater recall, “if this name was not given.”82 The title was a direct analog to the male Fratres minores, but had been refused to Franciscan-­inspired ­women by the male Franciscans and the papacy for de­cades.83 For Isabelle, it prob­ably represented a vision of gendered inclusion—an insistence that her s­ isters be recognized as part of the Franciscan ­family.84 In her negotiations with Bonaventure and other Franciscan masters of theology for the 1259 rule, Isabelle had been forced to abandon this demand, but she soon reopened the question. A ­ fter Urban IV’s election, Isabelle must have negotiated over revisions to the first rule with the newly created French cardinal Simon of Brie.85 When Simon departed for Rome in March 1262, he was almost certainly carry­ing with him Isabelle’s requests for a revised rule. The moment was well chosen. By early 1263 Urban was concerned above all e­ lse with securing Charles of Anjou’s agreement to drive Frederick II’s illegitimate son Manfred out of southern Italy. No f­avor within the pope’s power would have been refused to the Capetian court at this juncture. Hence in July 1263, just as Charles accepted the crown of Sicily, Urban IV approved a new rule for Longchamp that created the Order of Sorores minores inclusae, or Enclosed ­Sisters Minor.86 Perhaps the most striking fact about the text of Urban’s bull of approval is that it does not so much as mention Isabelle of France. Whereas Alexander IV had exalted her power, purity, and saintly potential, Urban apparently saw no need to praise the princess. He not only described the new rule as having been requested by the king alone, but even when referring to Alexander’s original confirmation of 1259, Urban now retroactively framed it as having reflected only Louis’s desires. Isabelle simply dropped out of Longchamp’s story, as far as Urban IV was concerned.87 Why this silence? Urban was hardly uninformed or indifferent concerning recent developments around ­women and the Franciscan Order. In fact, he was si­mul­ta­neously working with Cardinal Giangaetano Orsini (cardinal protector of the Franciscans and the f­ uture Nicholas III) to create the new Order of 82. ​ Writings of AH, 66–67; Princesse mineure, 290. 83. ​Mooney, Clare of Assisi, 36–48, 150–51. 84. ​Field, Isabelle, 112–16; Rules of Isabelle, 33–35. 85. ​Urban IV’s preamble credits Simon of Brie with revising the rule. Though the driving force ­behind the revision was Isabelle, the inclusion of Simon’s name proves that he had a hand in negotiations, which must therefore have occurred before he left Paris. See Field, Isabelle, 99–100. 86. ​For wider analy­sis, see Field, Isabelle, 103–6. 87. ​For the text of Urban’s preface, see Rules of Isabelle, 57–59; Princesse mineure, 223–24.

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St. Clare, which would come into being with its own rule just a few months ­later in October 1263. Urban and Cardinal Orsini, negotiating with Bonaventure and the male Franciscans, used the recently canonized Clare’s name to legitimate their own vision of female Franciscan life.88 Thus Urban IV was demonstrably ­adept at turning the image of a holy ­woman to his own ends, in the context of Franciscan rules, when he wished to do so. Yet he made no such effort to capitalize on Isabelle of France’s reputation for holiness. Had he wished, he could have used his preamble to the new rule for the Sorores minores to put his own gloss on Isabelle’s role as patron of the abbey, or at least to have employed her royal prestige as a justification for his actions. Instead, he wrote her out of the story altogether. This silence must have been the result of discomfort with the way Isabelle’s image was evolving. Unlike Clare of Assisi, Isabelle was very much alive in 1263, and apparently as much an irritant as an asset in Urban’s mind. Specifically, her demands had complicated the unification he had hoped to achieve by creating his new Order of St. Clare, which was intended to pacify once and for all the fractious landscape of female Franciscanism. Urban had acquiesced to Isabelle’s wishes out of po­liti­cal calculation, but he evidently preferred not to give her any further visibility in ­doing so. It is true that Isabelle herself may have chosen to negotiate through her b­ rother the king (Agnes of Harcourt says as much). Still, it cannot simply be Isabelle’s humility that kept her out of Urban’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the new rule. She had been just as ­humble in 1259, yet Alexander IV had seen the value of placing Isabelle front and center as a model of holiness when approving her new rule and foundation. If papal annoyance at the princess’s meddling in female Franciscan institutions seems to have been one ­factor pushing Urban IV to distance himself from Isabelle, a second complicating f­ actor may have been just as power­ful. By 1263 it must have become clear that Isabelle would not in fact enter Longchamp as a nun. Alexander IV had hoped, indeed had prob­ably expected, that she would take this step. But in spite of the obvious pressure pushing her in this direction, she refused. Isabelle lived out the last de­cade of her life as Longchamp’s royal lay patron. Only at the time of her death in February 1270 was her body dressed and buried in the habit of a nun. It is impossible to know what was in Isabelle’s mind as she continued down her chosen path as a celibate laywoman bound only by a personal, ­simple vow to God. But t­here is a certain congruence between her actions and a strand of Franciscan thinking about the nature of vows. We have al88. ​Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 70–83.



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ready seen that around 1251–52 Bonaventure had emphasized the importance of individual intentionality (voluntas, or “­will”) in the creation of a ­simple vow. As Alain Boureau has argued, it was then precisely in the 1260s that an identifiable “Franciscan doctrine of the vow” developed, building on Bonaventure and “resting on a theology of f­ ree ­will.”89 Eventually, by the 1280s, in the course of virulent debate over the nature of the Franciscans’ evangelical vow of poverty, spiritual Franciscan thinking culminated in the position of Peter of John Olivi (1248–98), the greatest Franciscan mind of the last quarter of the c­ entury.90 For Peter of John, as Sylvain Piron puts it, “the vow . . . ​is defined entirely in a voluntary fashion, as a state into which one enters and perseveres, but from which one may always depart.”91 Or, as David Burr has summarized Olivi’s position, “the vow is less a promise to do a series of specific ­things than a promise to embark on a certain path ­toward an envisioned goal.”92 Thus Isabelle’s choice to limit herself to a ­simple vow, based on open-­ended perseverance and an intentionality requiring daily renewal, resonated with Franciscan thinking that was highly dynamic but ever more controversial. Small won­der, then, that popes in the 1260s chose not to publicize her position. The third and final bull from Urban IV continues this pattern, removing any remaining doubt about his attitude ­toward invoking Isabelle’s name. Prob­ ably the first ­house outside Longchamp to adopt the rule of the Sorores minores was Sainte-­Catherine in Provins, founded by Thibaut IV of Champagne and more recently patronized by Thibaut V and his wife, Isabelle, the d­ aughter of Louis IX (hence the niece of Isabelle of France). But following the creation of the Order of St. Clare, the nuns of Sainte-­Catherine ­were apparently unsure about w ­ hether they ­were still permitted to follow their rule. In response to their request for clarification, Urban wrote in June 1264 to assure them that they could choose ­either the rule of the Sorores minores or that of the Order of St. Clare. But in offering this response, Urban again omitted Isabelle’s name altogether, even as he traced the approval of the first rule for Longchamp in 1259 and the history of its revision.93 The pattern is clear: Isabelle, who had been so prominent in the hopes of Alexander IV, was reduced to textual invisibility by his successor. 89. ​Boureau, Le désir dicté, 138. 90. ​Boureau, Le désir dicté, chap. 6. 91. ​Piron, “Vœu et contrat chez Pierre de Jean Olivi” (online version, https://­ccrh​.­revues​.­org​ /­2645, quotation at par. 8). 92. ​Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 52–53. 93. ​ Princesse mineure, 246–48.

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Clement IV was not quite so mute concerning Isabelle. Yet in extant letters his few references to the princess are surprisingly tepid, particularly in light of his reputation as a “Capetian Pope.”94 As Gui Foucois he had served Blanche of Castile, Louis IX, and Alphonse of Poitiers. As pope, Clement was now closely allied with Charles of Anjou in his Italian affairs. Thus, given his French background, familiarity with the Capetian court, and strong personal ties to the royal ­family, he must have known Isabelle, at least by reputation. But the same f­ actors that pushed Urban IV away from promoting Isabelle’s image remained relevant for Clement. On the one hand, ­there is clear evidence for the new pope’s continuing exasperation at the way Isabelle’s insistence on a discrete rule for her Order of Sorores minores caused difficulties for the curia. Urban IV’s rule for the Order of St. Clare had met with substantial re­sis­tance among female Franciscan communities,95 and some ­women saw Isabelle’s order as a more attractive alternative. At the end of May 1266, Clement wrote to Cardinal Giangaetano Orsini, one of the principal authors of the rule for the Order of St. Clare, to complain about the actions of disgruntled Franciscan ­women. According to the pope, “­sisters of the Order of St. Clare came to Viterbo, in the name of ­sisters of many regions.”96 ­These unhappy ­sisters did not want to follow the new rule assigned to their order, but rather wished to return to their “pristine state” or to follow the form of life that “our beloved ­daughter in Christ, the ­sister of the king of France has.” The passage shows the appeal of Isabelle’s rule, and the fact that she and her rule ­were known to Franciscan ­women outside France. But it also shows the pope’s annoyance at having to sort through the challenging situation he had inherited. Moreover, the passage hints at the second continuing vexation concerning Isabelle—­her lack of formal religious status. The wording of the Latin text is less than clear, referring to the rule that Isabelle “has” (habet). This vague verb could be taken to imply that the curia believed that Isabelle was following her rule as a vowed nun. But this very ambiguity may represent a kind of textual shrug of the shoulders—is Isabelle a nun or is she not? She seems to pride herself on acting like one; if so, why has she not taken final, formal vows? This is not to say that Clement refused all respectful attention to Isabelle’s wishes. A few months l­ater, in November 1266 the pope allowed Longchamp 94. ​See Dossat, “Gui Foucois, enquêteur-­réformateur, archevêque et pape.” The “Capetian Pope” label was evoked by a seminar convened at Lyon in March 2013 by the research group “Les Capétiens et leur royaume”: Autour de Gui Foucois—­Clément IV: L’ascension d’un pape “capétien?” Gui’s ­career is central to Jones, Before Church and State. 95. ​Knox, “Audacious Nuns,” 56–58. 96. ​ Princesse mineure, 248–51; Field, Isabelle, 109–10; Knox, “Audacious Nuns.”



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to become a potential burial site for members of the royal f­ amily, responding to a request that must have originated (at least in part) with Isabelle.97 That bull made no mention of the princess, but the following year when Clement granted indulgences for ­those who would visit the newly consecrated church at Longchamp, he apparently referred to her personal petition.98 In September 1267, Clement then wrote to Isabelle to assure her that on the occasion of her own burial, members of the royal ­family would be permitted to enter the cloistered area of Longchamp.99 Clement did h ­ ere include notable praises for Isabelle, referring to the way she had “totally dedicated [her] body in sanctification” to God. This single reference to bodily “sanctification” is a faint echo of Alexander IV’s effusive praise of a de­cade earlier, a modest acknowl­edgment that Isabelle’s personal promise had in the end held firm. Clement’s last known letter to Isabelle adopts a chastising tone. The princess had sought to develop Longchamp as a pilgrimage site (as seen in her request for indulgences for visitors to the church). To this end, she had acquired what she believed to be the skull relic of St. Paul. Clement wrote to her in April 1268 to correct this mistaken claim—­the skull, he asserted, was in Rome, as every­one knew.100 He asked her to turn over what she had to Cardinal Simon of Brie, back in France as papal legate. And yet it is telling that, in spite of his evident annoyance, Clement was forced to frame his missive as a polite request. No m ­ atter how much Isabelle of France may have cultivated the virtue of humility, the fact remained that it was difficult to order her to do anything she did not wish to do at the monastery she had founded, as long as she had the support of her royal f­ amily. Living as a laywoman on Longchamp’s grounds, Isabelle was in some ways even less malleable than she had been at court. Although like e­ very good Latin Christian she was subject to the spiritual authority of the pope and the church, she had made no solemn vows of obedience. In fact, at Longchamp she towered over her abbess.101 Other power­f ul ­women with saintly reputations and strong religious ideas, such as Clare of Assisi and Agnes of Bohemia, had become vowed nuns and abbesses, and so even as they sought to find ways to achieve their goals, they ­were always subject to obedience. Isabelle’s lay

97. ​ Princesse mineure, 251–52. 98. ​ Princesse mineure, 253–54. The bull is known only from a fifteenth-­century summary. 99. ​ Princesse mineure, 254–55; Rules of Isabelle, 113–14. 100. ​ Princesse mineure, 256–57; Rules of Isabelle, 114–16; Field, Isabelle, 129–30. 101. ​For example, miracle 2 in Agnes of Harcourt’s Vie (Writings of AH, 70–71), where the abbess does not dare to approach Isabelle, out of “reverence.”

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status gave her greater in­de­pen­dence, and that fact did not always sit well with her papal correspondents. Isabelle’s reputation had reached its apex by 1260. Yet her saintly image already contained the seeds of its own dissipation. Churchmen who wrote about her in such glowing terms expected that once she had founded her new monastery she would take the vows of a nun t­ here, and become a more conventional model of monastic piety. When, against all the advice and hopes of popes and friars, Isabelle declined to take monastic vows, she preserved her in­de­pen­dence of action but placed herself in an ambiguous position that churchmen found troubling. Even more controversially, she chose to pour her spiritual credit into her ­battle to revise Longchamp’s first rule. ­After 1263 the existence of the Order of Sorores minores only complicated an institutional picture that popes and friars had hoped to simplify. ­Here, too, Isabelle’s victory had its costs for her reputation. She might have been a potential candidate for a speedy canonization, like the royal w ­ idow Hedwig of Silesia, canonized by Clement IV in March 1267. Instead, Isabelle’s saintly reputation seems to have lost much of its luster by the time of her death in 1270. Isabelle died at Longchamp during the night between 22 and 23 February 1270. Louis IX, in the midst of preparing for his departure on crusade, came to Longchamp to kneel before her body, laid out in Longchamp’s church and now, at last, dressed in a nun’s habit.102 Nine days a­ fter Isabelle’s initial burial, the nuns of Longchamp orchestrated a translation whereby her body was raised from its tomb, dressed in new burial garments so that the initial robe could be preserved as a relic, and exhibited to a privileged group inside the cloister and a larger crowd gathered at the win­dow to the public area of the church. The inner group included Marguerite, the same Countess of Flanders and Hainaut who had invited Charles of Anjou’s intervention in 1253, and her d­ aughter Marie, a Cistercian nun at Flines. The exterior group included prominent townspeople and Franciscans such as Isabelle’s confessor Eudes of Rosny, as well as another Marguerite, this one the grand­daughter of Countess Marguerite of Flanders and Hainaut.103 It was prob­ably in this same month of February 1270 that Louis IX’s ­daughter Marguerite would marry Duke John I of Brabant, so perhaps that wedding provided a reason for such an illustrious gathering.104 Or ­these noblewomen from the Low Countries might have been in Paris for business having to do with the imminent departure of Guy of 102. ​ Writings of AH, 48–49; Princesse mineure, 270. 103. ​ Writings of AH, 72–75; Princesse mineure, 296–98. 104. ​In 1273 the younger Marguerite of Dampierre would marry John I of Brabant, a­ fter Marguerite of France’s death in 1272.



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Dampierre (son of the elder Marguerite, ­brother of Marie, ­father of the younger Marguerite) on Louis IX’s crusade. If so, it would be fitting that this chapter ends with the Capetian army headed to the Mediterranean shore, where another holy w ­ oman had assumed a central role in proclaiming divine ­favor for Charles of Anjou and his ­family in Provence and southern Italy.

Ch a p ter   2

Douceline of Digne Co-­mother to the Capetians

Isabelle of France’s reputation for sanctity was part of a wider pattern whereby the words and deeds of holy ­women contributed to the Capetians’ claims of divine legitimation. In the north, already by around 1244 Blanche of Castile was soliciting the prayers of a holy w ­ oman in the Low Countries, and by 1255 Louis IX was visiting the mysterious Marie of Lille. The best evidence, however, for further ties between the Capetians and a holy w ­ oman around 1260 comes from the south, where the Provençal beguine Douceline of Digne (1214–74) acted as spiritual adviser and resident mystic for Charles of Anjou, his wife, Beatrice of Provence, and their f­ amily. Charles of Anjou has long been recognized as a power­f ul promoter of the idea that the Capetians ­were endowed with a distinctive sanctity,1 and as the most aggressive and ambitious member of the French royal f­ amily in the 1260s. ­After Louis IX’s military failure in Egypt, it was his youn­gest ­brother’s conquest of southern Italy and Sicily in 1266 that delivered the crusading victory the Capetians craved. Although Charles’s b­ attles against the heirs of Frederick II are among the most famous episodes in medieval history, Douceline of Digne’s legitimating role in ­those events has rarely been acknowledged.2 1. ​See Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, chap. 10; and chapter 4 of this book. 2. ​Brief mentions in Boyer, “De force ou de gré,” 42–43, 57–58; and Boyer, “La ‘Foi monarchique,’ ” 103. 54

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When Charles was weighing the wisdom of accepting the papal invitation to invade, it was Douceline to whom he turned to know God’s w ­ ill. The Count and Countess of Provence helped substantiate Douceline’s public reputation for holiness, and in turn her saintly status provided divine legitimacy for Charles’s contested rule in Provence and eventually for his audacious invasion of southern Italy.3 Moreover, Douceline’s reputation spread to the wider Capetian ­family, since Robert II of Artois (nephew of Louis IX, Isabelle of France, and Charles of Anjou) made a point of seeking her out when he came to Marseille. With Isabelle in Paris and Douceline in Marseille, it was holy w ­ omen—​ ­unenclosed, lacking formal ecclesiastical status, yet perceived as something like living saints—­who most visibly incarnated God’s ­favor for the Capetians.4 Douceline’s subsequent story was not exactly parallel to Isabelle’s, but in the broadest sense the moment around 1260 represented a high point for both ­women’s influence and reputation. ­After Charles of Anjou’s departure for Italy, Douceline of Digne continued to make her prophecies known to the new king of Sicily, now by letter. But her counsels grew increasingly grim, reminding Charles that God would take away his kingdom if he grew too prideful. Indeed, ­after Douceline’s death, her warnings w ­ ere proved only too true when Charles suffered the calamitous reverse of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282.

A Count’s ­Career, a Beguine’s Background The youn­gest sibling of Louis IX has gone down in history as Charles “of Anjou,” since he was invested with that county, along with Maine, as his inheritance in May 1246. In January of that year, however, Charles had already married Beatrice of Provence, the ­sister of Queen Marguerite of Provence, Louis IX’s wife. Marguerite and Beatrice w ­ ere the oldest and youn­gest of four remarkable ­daughters of Provence, with their m ­ iddle ­sisters Eleanor and Sanchia marrying Henry III of ­England and his ­brother Richard, respectively. Yet ­because Beatrice had been designated heir to the county by her ­father (Count Raimon Berenguer IV), it was Charles who became Count of Provence in 1246.

3. ​Scholarship on Douceline has usually mentioned her po­liti­cal influence only in passing, for instance in Brunel-­Lobrichon, “Existe-­t-il un christianisme meridional?” The exceptions are Jeay and Garay, “De l’usage politique”; and now Ruiz, “Louis d’Anjou et le milieu spirituel ‘Marseillais,’ ” 71–75. See also Kreiger, “Mystical Monarchy,” chap. 3; and Jean-­Pierre Attard, “Religion, sainteté et pouvoir en Provence angevine, première maison d’Anjou, modèle et miroir du monde angevin (1246–1382)” (PhD thesis, Université d’Aix-­Marseille, 2015), esp. 130–59. 4. ​Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country, 121–25 on Douceline.

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Charles’s high-­handed style of rule quickly encountered re­sis­tance, but it was several years before he could focus his attention on pacifying Provence.5 First, he sailed off on crusade with his b­ rothers in 1248 and was captured and ransomed along with King Louis and Alphonse of Poitiers (Robert of Artois was killed at Mansurah). When Louis IX deci­ded to stay on in the Holy Land, Charles and Alphonse w ­ ere sent back to France in late 1250. But ­after the death of Blanche of Castile in 1252, Charles allowed himself to be lured into the po­ liti­cal conflicts of Hainaut and Flanders. He marched north to Valenciennes at the end of 1253 before being forced to withdraw by mid-1254. Not long ­after this foray into the heartland of the beguine movement, Charles of Anjou developed an intense relationship with Provence’s first and most famous beguine, Douceline of Digne. Douceline and her better-­known ­brother Hugh of Digne (c. 1200–1255/56) came from a wealthy merchant f­ amily of Provence. Prob­ably born in Digne, they ­were living in Hyères by the 1230s, where Hugh had joined the Franciscan community (see map 2). ­After the deaths of their parents, Hugh went to Paris to study, arranging for Douceline to reside at the female Franciscan community of Genoa.6 But when Hugh returned, perhaps around 1240, Douceline was able to convince him that her spiritual path lay outside the monastery. In fact, Douceline was responsible for introducing the “beguine” label to Provence, insisting on applying this name to the community she founded near Hyères by around 1242. It is not impossible that Hugh of Digne had brought back reports of this name’s increasing use in the north.7 Certainly Hugh’s support was essential to the group’s success. He received Douceline’s vow of virginity, which she made publicly ­after a sermon he had delivered in Hyères. According to her ­later Vida, Douceline “gave herself entirely to God, irrevocably. With all her heart she vowed (vodet) virginity to Our Lord during a sermon given by the saint [Hugh of Digne] at Hyères, and she promised with ­g reat fervor before all the ­people, between her ­brother’s hands.”8 Thus 5. ​For the first half of Charles’s rule in Provence, see Jean-­Paul Boyer, “L’installation des Capétiens, 1245-­circa-­1265,” in La Provence au Moyen Âge, ed. Martin Aurell, Jean-­Paul Boyer, and Noël Coulet (Aix-­en-­Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2005), 147–80; for more detail, see Sternfeld, Karl von Anjou als Graf der Provence; and the resources of the Études angevines website at https://­angevine​-­europe​.­huma​-­num​.­fr​/­ea​/­fr. 6. ​Interestingly, the Occitan of the Life of the Blessed St.  Douceline (see below) uses the phrase Sorres menors, the equivalent of Isabelle of France’s Sorores minores/Soeurs mineures. 7. ​Suggested in Brunel-­Lobrichon, “Existe-­t-il un christianisme meridional?” For increasingly common use of the vernacular label “beguine” in the Low Countries in the 1230s, see Simons, “Beginnings: Naming Beguines,” 35–36; and for further analy­sis of Douceline’s use of the term, see Field, “On Being a Beguine in France.” 8. ​According to Felipa of Porcelet’s Life of the Blessed St.  Douceline, chap. 2:10, on which see references below.

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Western Eu­rope in the thirteenth ­century. ©M. Cecilia Gaposchkin.

Douceline, unlike Isabelle, did engage in a public ritual, enhanced by the presence of her famous ­brother, who may at this time have been Franciscan provincial minister and hence invested with a certain amount of institutional authority. In that sense, Douceline’s “vow” was solemnly ritualized in a way that Isabelle’s was not. Yet ­these ­were still not the vows of a nun. Hugh also

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helped her create a “form of life” for the like-­minded ­women who began to join Douceline’s community of “Roubaud” (named ­after a nearby stream).9 Building on this initial success, Douceline founded “a second Roubaud” in Marseille around 1250, and the two ­houses remained united ­under her leadership. Douceline’s model for a beguine life had much in common with the ideals of northern beguines—­informal vows of chastity and obedience, a communal life, and dedication to charitable work in the world rather than cloistered contemplation. She and her companions w ­ ere not nuns, and Douceline was never a member of any approved monastic order. Her inspiration, like Isabelle’s, was strongly Franciscan.10 But unlike Isabelle of France, Douceline of Digne sympathized with the more radical friars who believed that institutionalization was undermining Francis’s original conception of a poor life and who looked to the apocalyptic ideas of Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) concerning the coming “third age” of the Holy Spirit.11 For many of ­these Joachite Franciscans, Francis himself, bearing the stigmata, could be interpreted as the angel of the sixth seal in the book of Revelation, “with the sign of the living God” (Apoc. 7:2), and hence the key figure in the transition from the age of the Son to the age of the Holy Spirit, when peace and spiritual understanding would reign. Douceline’s ­brother Hugh was among the most famous Joachites of his day, and Douceline developed a close relationship with the Franciscan minister general John of Parma (r. 1247–57), who was equally well known for his Joachite views.12 The spiritual leanings of her confessor Jaucelin, the Franciscan provincial minister for Provence and ­later bishop of Orange, are not as clear, but they may have tended in the same direction.

Hugh of Digne and Louis IX ­ here is no doubt that Douceline’s ­family exerted impor­tant influence on the T Capetians, since a famous encounter between the king and Hugh of Digne was recorded by Jean of Joinville, a knight and longtime friend of Louis IX. Returning from his first crusade, Louis entered port at Hyères on 3 July 1254. ­There Louis heard of “a ­great Franciscan called ­Brother Hugh.” Indeed, Hugh of Digne’s reputation was at its height. The Franciscan chronicler Salimbene, who first encountered him around 1248, would l­ ater gush over Hugh’s preach9. ​The Life of the Blessed St. Douceline (see below) seems to suggest that this was a written “form of life.” But if so, the text does not survive. See Carozzi, “L’estamen de sainte Douceline.” 10. ​Field, “Douceline of Digne and Isabelle of France”; Carozzi, “Une beguine joachimite.” 11. ​For a summary of Joachim’s ideas, see Lerner, Feast of Saint Abraham, 43–48. 12. ​Troncarelli, “Magnus Joachita”; Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 29–32.

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ing, powers of disputation, eloquence, and fearlessness in the face of authority: “He told marvelous ­things of the kingdom of heaven, that is, the glories of paradise, and terrible t­ hings of the pains of hell.”13 By 1254, Hugh had just completed his influential Elucidation on the Rule of the Friars Minor,14 and his renown as an advocate of the apocalyptic predictions of Joachim of Fiore was widespread.15 Louis sent for this famous friar and asked him to preach. Hugh arrived with a crowd of male and female adherents, and ridiculed the monks and religious in the royal entourage. ­These monks, Hugh mocked, seemed confused about the difference between court and cloister. More importantly, at the end of his sermon Hugh warned the king that in all his reading in the Bible and other books, both ­those by believers and ­those by nonbelievers, he had never seen any evidence of a kingdom being lost except when a king failed in his duty to rule with justice. His message was clear: “Let the king take care, as he returns to France, to do such justice to his ­people that he may obtain in return the love of God, in such a manner that God ­will not take his life and the kingdom of France!” Joinville advised the king to keep this friar by his side, but Hugh, true to his own advice, refused the offer.16 All this took place in Provence, and yet Charles of Anjou was not pres­ent. While King Louis was landing in Hyères, the Count of Provence was in Hainaut attempting to make good his claims t­ here. Still, Charles and his wife Beatrice must eventually have heard reports of ­Brother Hugh’s dramatic appearance before the royal entourage. Not only would the king himself have informed Charles of what had happened in his county, but Queen Marguerite of Provence might also have spoken of it to her younger s­ister Beatrice. The four ­sisters of Provence and the royal families of France and ­England had ample opportunity to talk over recent events when Marguerite, Eleanor, Sanchia, Beatrice, and their husbands (Louis IX, Henry III, Richard of Cornwall, and Charles of Anjou) all spent Christmas 1254 together in Paris. Hugh of Digne’s stern warnings to the king provide the background for the rapid pro­cess by which Charles and Beatrice came to regard Douceline as a divine intercessor and holy adviser. Although Hugh’s brief meeting with King Louis is far more famous, Douceline’s relationship with Charles was prob­ably more influential.

13. ​Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 216–17 and following. On Douceline, see Baird, 561. 14. ​Ruiz, “­Hugues de Digne et la Regula non bullata.” 15. ​Ruiz, “Es tu infatuatus sicut alii qui istam doctrinam secuntur?” 16. ​Jean of Joinville, “The Life of Saint Louis,” in Smith, Joinville and Villehardouin, 657–60. The importance of the episode is stressed by Le Goff, Saint Louis, 152–55.

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Charles of Anjou and His “Co-­mother”: The Con­ temporary Evidence For Isabelle of France, a series of rich texts written during her lifetime provides evidence for the way her reputation developed during the 1250s and 1260s, even before Agnes of Harcourt wrote the Life of Isabelle around 1283. For Douceline, only one scrap of evidence written during her lifetime mentions her by name. Fortunately, this evidence bears directly on her relationship with Charles of Anjou. Although most of the archives from Angevin Sicily ­were destroyed by retreating German troops in 1943, many documents had already been edited or summarized in print (and scholars have been working to reconstruct ­these lost archives ever since). One such summary and partial transcription, published in 1926, concerns an order issued by Charles of Anjou in November 1272, long ­after he had conquered the Regno. This document appointed “Petrus Ayllardus” of Marseille as an official at the comital court t­ here. The transcribed portion of the (now-­lost) instrument states that Charles took this step “at the request of Douceline of Digne, [his] beloved commater, who has asked [him] most affectionately in her letter.”17 This document, devoid of hagiographic intent, proves several impor­tant points. First, Charles of Anjou considered Douceline of Digne as his “beloved commater,” indicating not only personal affection but a quasi-­familial relationship. The Latin commater means in the first instance “godmother” or “female sponsor.” Douceline certainly could not have been godmother to Charles, given their vast difference in status and the fact that Douceline was only about thirteen years old, in far off Provence, and unknown to the Capetians at the time of Charles’s birth. Rather, the word h ­ ere carries its more literal sense of “co-­parent.” That is, Charles regarded Douceline as a co-­or godparent to his own child or c­ hildren. Second, Douceline did exercise a real influence over Charles. She had asked him to take a concrete action regarding his government in Marseille, and he had granted her wish. This may have been a spiritual relationship at heart, but it had tangible implications in the real world of poli17. ​I noticed this document in­de­pen­dently of Damien Ruiz’s 2017 article “Louis d’Anjou et le milieu spirituel ‘Marseillais,’ ” which now seems to be the first piece of published scholarship on Douceline to mention it (at p. 73). The document is partially edited in de Boüard, Actes et lettres de Charles Ier, #582. Editor’s heading: “1272, 5–6 novembre.—­Aversas. De registrate et rupte. Reg. 15, fol. 73 vo.” Text: “I. Petro Ayllardo de Massilia, ‘ad preces Dulceline de Digna, commatris (regis Sicilie) dilecte, que per suas litteras affectuosissime (eum) rogavit,’ statuto ‘super exigendis et recipiendis pignoribus in curia . . . ​Massilie pro presenti anno, amoto inde quolibet alio,’ scribitur ut ofificio [sic] sibi commisso fideliter fungatur.—­Data (ut supra [=5 November]). II. Senescallo Provincie, ut ‘predictum Petrum officium exercere predictum. . patia(tur).’—­Data Averse, vjo novembris prime indictionis.”

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tics. Fi­nally, this was a lasting influence, since by 1272 Charles had been away from Provence for over six years and could not have seen Douceline in that time.

The Life of the Blessed St. Douceline To flesh out this very limited con­temporary evidence, we turn to the Vida de la benaurada sancta Doucelina (Life of the Blessed St. Douceline). This text was composed in Occitan by a member of Douceline’s beguine community, persuasively identified by scholarship as Felipa of Porcelet (c. 1250–­c. 1317). Felipa came from one of the leading noble families of Arles, and in her widowhood became Douceline’s close associate and then successor as leader of Roubaud.18 Tentative steps ­toward the creation of this Life may well have been taken before 1280,19 but it was completed only in 1297 and survives in a unique manuscript that dates to the 1310s.20 The Life of Douceline surely responded to l­ater po­liti­cal objectives and applies a retrospective lens. But it is an extraordinarily rich win­dow into Douceline’s c­ areer, detailing her charity, visions, miracles, institutional goals, and devotion to St. Francis. The Life of the Blessed St. Douceline relates in ­g reat detail the nature of the relationship that developed between the beguine of Marseille and the Count of Provence. Felipa of Porcelet was no otherworldly hagiographer, remote 18. ​Albanés, La vie de sainte Douceline, demonstrated that this life (hereafter Vida) must have been written by one of Douceline’s beguine followers, during the period when Felipa of Porcelet was prioress in Marseille. The argument that Felipa herself was the author is somewhat more speculative, but on the ­whole persuasive. On Felipa, see Albanés, xxxi–­xxxii; Aurell i Cardona, Une famille, 165–69; Field, “Agnes of Harcourt, Felipa of Porcelet, and Marguerite of Oingt”; and Jeay, “La Vie de sainte Douceline par Felipa Porcelet.” 19. ​ Vida, chap. 14: 6, refers to when the life was being written “for the first time” in a context that suggests the l­ater 1270s. It is pos­si­ble that this passage refers to an early attempt at liturgical commemoration, but even if that is the case the larger pro­cess of gathering testimony to Douceline’s life was evidently already ­under way. For the dating of the text’s completion to 1297, see Albanés, La vie de sainte Douceline, xx–­xxv. The reasoning ­there is persuasive, if not absolutely beyond doubt. 20. ​This life is preserved uniquely in BnF ms. fr. 13503 (digitized version on Gallica). The first edition, translation, and study by Albanés, La vie de sainte Douceline, remains invaluable. The text was edited and translated again in Gout, La Vie de sainte Douceline, and again, with En­glish translation, in Kathryn B. Wolkfiel, “The Life of the Blessed Saint Doucelina (d. 1274): An Edition and Translation with Commentary” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1993). The standard modern French translation is by Geneviève Brunel-­Lobrichon, in Voix de femmes au moyen âge: Savoir, mystique, poésie, amour, sorcellerie XIIe-­XVe siècle, ed. Danielle Régnier-­Bohler (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006), 283–370. The standard En­glish translation is Garay and Jeay, Life of Saint Douceline. My translations are based on ­those of Garay and Jeay but modified ­after comparison with the original text and other modern translations. My citations refer to the chapter and section numbers established by Albanés and followed by Garay and Jeay.

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from po­liti­cal and social realities. She had been married to Fouques de Pontevès, lord of Artignosc, with whom she had had three c­ hildren. ­After her husband’s death and her embrace of the beguine life, ample surviving documentation shows her to have used her resources to good effect in solidifying ­ ere Roubaud’s economic standing.21 She also had f­amily members who w impor­tant religious leaders, such as her aunt, ­sister, and several nieces, who served successively as Cistercian abbesses of Molégès, and her cousins Guilhem (a Franciscan, d. 1294) and Rainaud (d. 1318), both bishops of Digne.22 Most importantly, Felipa had direct ties to Charles of Anjou’s administration, since her f­ather, Guilhem of Porcelet, served him for two de­cades.23 Moreover, she evidently stayed in direct touch with her wider ­family, since a miracle story in the Life involves her cousin Rainaud of Porcelet, his wife, Constance, and their ­children.24

A Beguine and a Birth According to Felipa of Porcelet, the initial encounter between Charles of Anjou, Beatrice of Provence, and Douceline of Digne occurred ­under highly charged circumstances.25 Countess Beatrice was nearing the end of a difficult and dangerous pregnancy, “so heavy and so large” that her doctors and “every­ one” feared for her life and that of her child. But three nights in a row Beatrice experienced a vivid dream in which “a good lady wearing the modest habit of a beguine” came and spoke to her.26 When the frightened countess 21. ​Aurell i Cardona, Une famille, 167–68. Documentation in Albanés, pièces justificatives, nos. 10–13 and 20; and Aurell, Actes de la famille Porcelet d’Arles, nos. 464, 520, 536, 539–40, 548–50, 558–59, 567–68, 578, 591 (Felipa of Porcelet and Giraud de Simiane pledge homage to Count Robert of Provence as the guardians of Roger de Fos in 1309); 607, 617–18 (demonstrating that Felipa was still alive 9 December 1316); and 620 (seeming to refer to Felipa as though she w ­ ere still alive in March 1317). 22. ​For the abbesses of Molléges, see Aurell i Cardona, Une famille, 162–65; for the bishops of Digne, see Aurell i Cardona, 124–26. 23. ​Scholars since Albanés (La vie de sainte Douceline, xxxi) have often said that Felipa was Guilhem’s ­brother; Aurell’s work demonstrates that she was his ­daughter. 24. ​This is the first miracle in Vida, chap. 15. It occurred right a­ fter Douceline’s death. See Albanés, La vie de sainte Douceline, xxxviii; but clarified in Aurell i Cardona, Une famille, 128n59; and see also Aurell, “La substitution héraldique du testament de Guilhelm de Porcelet.” In another example of Felipa’s continuing contacts with her f­amily, her nephew Betrand de Porcelet de Fos acted as her procurator in 1292 (his two d­ aughters Felipa and Maragda entered Roubaud). See Albanés, pièces justificatives, no. 7. 25. ​ Vida, chap. 4: 10–14 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 36–37). 26. ​In Vida, chap. 10: 9, Felipa also tells the story of a “pious countess” who had a dream about Douceline and related it to her husband. In this dream, oil flowed like gold from Douceline’s breast and was burned in a lamp at an altar to the Virgin. It is not stated specifically that this count and countess are Charles and Beatrice, but it should be noted that many anecdotes in chapter 10 come

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told her husband about ­these dreams, he inquired throughout his lands and determined that this “holy lady” was “the ­sister of Hugh of Digne.” Thus it would appear that Charles was well aware of Hugh, and that he initially thought of Douceline in relation to the already-­established merits of her ­brother. When Charles now learned of “her virtues and her humility, he had ­g reat devotion for her, and ordered that she be sought out.” As soon as Douceline appeared at the comital residence, the countess confirmed that this was indeed the ­woman she had seen in her dreams. Since Beatrice was certain that only with Douceline’s prayers would she and her unborn child escape from the peril of death, the beguine duly stayed by the countess’s side and prayed for her safe delivery. When Beatrice successfully bore a d­ aughter, the count, countess, and all their court w ­ ere convinced that Douceline had brought about this happy outcome. In gratitude, Charles and Beatrice made Douceline the girl’s godmother (sa mairina). This, then, was the source of Charles’s l­ater reference to Douceline as his “co-­mother.” The very same term is then used in the Life of Douceline, with the count and countess referring to Douceline as the child’s comaire, the literal equivalent of the Latin commater. This step created a very real spiritual kinship between Douceline and Charles’s ­family. For instance, in canon law the bond between child and godparent was understood to impose the same barriers to marriage as that between child and biological parent.27 In this sense Douceline’s sanctity was incorporated into the Capetian f­ amily. Moreover, it was publicly broadcast by Charles, as shown by the way the document of 1272 makes certain to call Douceline his “beloved co-­mother.” When did ­these events occur, and can we identify the ­daughter to whom Beatrice gave birth? This pregnancy surely took place between 1250 (when the still childless Count and Countess of Provence returned from crusade) and 1265 (when Charles and then Beatrice left for Italy). Clues in Felipa’s text nar­ ere in Provence row the possibilities down to 1255–62.28 Charles and Beatrice w

from Douceline’s Franciscan confessor Jaucelin, and so it is pos­si­ble that this may be another perspective on the same series of events, remembered with a dif­fer­ent emphasis. 27. ​Joseph  H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Eu­rope (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1986). I thank Miri Rubin for this reference. 28. ​As Albanés noticed (La vie de sainte Douceline, xlvi), the birth in question cannot be that of one of Beatrice’s earliest ­children, ­because a reference in chap. 9: 34 (see below) suggests that she had multiple c­ hildren living and old enough to pay attention at this moment, which could not have been the case before about 1255. Without further justification, Albanés (liv) then said t­hese events must have happened “vers 1255,” which has generally been followed by other authors. This evidence can actually provide only a terminus post quem of roughly 1255; in fact, on that basis alone a date a few years ­later would make more sense, since in 1255 the f­uture Charles II was only one, hardly old enough to pay attention to such t­hings. On the other hand, Felipa ­later describes Charles of Anjou

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for only parts of 1257, 1259, 1260, and 1262,29 and several more subjective ­factors suggest the likelihood of 1260 or 1262.30 Although we lack precise evidence for the exact dates of birth for Beatrice and Charles’s three known ­daughters, the oldest, Blanche, was surely born in the early 1250s, and the second, Beatrice, also before 1255.31 It seems very likely, then, that the birth in question was that of Charles and Beatrice’s third ­daughter, Isabelle, born around 1260–62 and evidently named ­after her aunt.32 This infant was christened in honor of one holy w ­ oman and given a second as her godmother. The young Isabelle would eventually marry the ­f uture Ladislas IV of Hungary (r. 1272–90) in 1270, at the same time that her ­brother Charles (­f uture Charles II, c. 1254–1309) married Mary of Hungary, intertwining this Capetian cadet branch with the ­family of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.33 Although this Isabelle has been largely forgotten by history (her marriage was unhappy and her husband eventually assassinated), all the forces linking Capetians to holy ­women seem to have converged on her.

turning to Douceline for advice when offered the Crown of Sicily, which indicates a date for t­hese earlier events before the spring of 1263. 29. ​Charles’s movements for this period can be traced in Sternfeld, Karl von Anjou, chaps. 8–10. 30. ​Felipa relates ­these events right ­after discussing Douceline’s obedience to Jaucelin, the Franciscan provincial minister, and begins the story of the countess’s dream with the phrase “at that time.” The exact dates of Jaucelin’s tenure as minister are not known, but he is recorded as holding the office in 1262 and must have taken it up not too long before that date, since as late as 1255 he had been serving as guardian of the Franciscan h ­ ouse in Marseille. In addition, Felipa says that as a result of ­these events and out of re­spect for Douceline, Charles restored the Franciscans to his good graces. It is difficult to pin down such a subjective statement, but Holy Grieco demonstrates a strong working relationship between Charles of Anjou and Franciscan inquisitors in Marseille by 1262. See Grieco, “Franciscan Inquisition and Mendicant Rivalry in Mid-­Thirteenth-­Century Marseille,” esp. 286–87. 31. ​Blanche married Robert of Béthune, son of Guy of Dampierre, in 1266, and died in 1270. Beatrice was engaged to Philip of Courtenay, titular emperor of Greece, in 1267, married him in 1273, and died in 1275. 32. ​It is certain that this Isabelle (or Elizabeth) was born before 1266 (she is mentioned in her ­mother’s testament of that date). Some studies list her as the second, rather than third, of Charles of Anjou’s ­daughters, but since her ­sisters Blanche and Beatrice ­were affianced before she was, Isabelle’s status as youn­gest of the three seems more likely. Eight or ten years old might seem young for her marriage in 1270, but a l­egal ­union for po­liti­cal reasons at this age was not uncommon; Ladislas himself was only eight at the time of the marriage, another ­factor suggesting that Isabelle would have been not much older and hence born 1260–62. On King Ladislas, see Berand, At the Gate of Christendom, 171–83. This marriage was not a success, with Ladislas putting Isabelle away in the same convent where Margaret of Hungary (Ladislas’s saintly aunt) had once lived (Berand, 175). A ­ fter her husband’s assassination, Isabelle returned to her ­brother’s court in Naples and died c. 1303. Ruiz, “Louis d’Anjou et le milieu spirituel ‘Marseillais,’ ” 73, in­de­pen­dently arrived at the same conclusion that the ­daughter in question was likely Isabelle, born c. 1261. 33. ​Klaniczay, “The Cult of Dynastic Saints in Central Eu­rope.”

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Proving a Holy ­Woman By the early 1260s Douceline’s spiritual credit had been claimed and proclaimed at Charles’s court. Yet on closer examination, the pro­cess appears more complicated. Felipa of Porcelet returns to this episode several times in her work, and when all of the relevant passages in the Life of the Blessed St. Douceline are put together, it becomes clear that Charles and Beatrice did not accept Douceline’s holiness without putting it to further test. As Felipa explains at length, Douceline was famous for experiencing ecstatic trances and even miraculous levitations whenever she heard or read about God, the Eucharist, the Virgin, or St. Francis. This reputation apparently preceded Douceline at the Provençal court. According to Felipa, “when the count of Provence sent for her, ­because of the dream that his wife had,” Beatrice wanted to witness Douceline’s famous state of rapture, and thus asked Douceline to take communion with her.34 Although “the holy ­woman” demurred, “out of humility,” the countess would not be dissuaded. She had a friar preach “most ardently about the Lord,” and soon Douceline fell into a state of ecstasy, in spite of her best efforts to prevent it by torturing and bruising her own hands. Beatrice was so impressed by witnessing this per­for­mance of Douceline’s holiness that from this moment on she “held [Douceline] in g­ reat and special affection.” Moreover, the countess called “all her ­children” and had them kneel before “the saint” and kiss her hands.35 Beatrice sought to make sure that Douceline’s holiness was impressed on her progeny, including not only her ­daughters but also (presumably) the ­f uture Charles II (1254–1309). If this direct witnessing of Douceline’s rapture sufficed to convince Beatrice of Provence, o ­ thers required more tangible proof of her sanctity. As Felipa reports, t­ hese tests could be quite gruesome, with skeptical observers sticking ­needles ­under Douceline’s fingernails to verify that she was ­really rapt out of her body and into a state of divine ecstasy. Lost in her trance, Douceline passed ­these tests, feeling nothing at the time and showing no signs of distress. But ­after returning from a rapture during which she had been thus tortured, “she bore the marks of it and suffered g­ reat pain.” Still, thanks to both Beatrice’s reverence and ­these somatic ordeals, “the ­whole court . . . ​ regarded [Douceline] with extreme reverence.”36 The pro­cess, painful as it was, resulted in veneration radiating outward from the comital f­ amily to the court and beyond. 34. ​ Vida, chap. 9: 33–35 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 55–56). 35. ​It is this reference that suggests that Beatrice must have had multiple ­children by the time she met Douceline, and thus that the episode must be dated ­after at least 1255. 36. ​ Vida, chap. 9: 33–35 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 55–56).

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Even so, Charles of Anjou was not a man to be satisfied with second­hand reports. He wanted further “to test if the ecstasy was real.”37 So the first time Douceline experienced a rapture in his presence, he devised his own test, ordering that a large quantity of molten lead be poured onto her bare feet. Douceline passed the ordeal by remaining miraculously impervious, and Felipa states that the resulting affection Charles felt for Douceline contributed to his decision to make her his d­ aughter’s co-­mother. Thus this dramatic “proving” of Douceline’s ecstatic state must have formed part of her initial encounter with Charles, around the time of Beatrice’s difficult delivery.38 For Charles, trust in Douceline came only ­after a brutally physical verification of her status as a mystic. For Douceline, however, the episode again cost her dearly. ­After returning from her rapture, “she felt g­ reat pain in her feet and her anguish was unbearable. She was very ill from it and unable to walk.”39 The entire episode surrounding Beatrice’s difficult delivery has similarities to the moment around 1244 when Blanche of Castile sought the prayers of a holy w ­ oman in the Low Countries while her ­daughter’s life was in danger. But now, rather than having to correspond with the saintly figure in question, Charles of Anjou and Beatrice of Provence could call Douceline to them, test the real­ity of her raptures, and “prove” her holiness in public. The episode is also reminiscent of Isabelle of France’s own prayerful intervention to save the child of one of Louis IX’s sergeants. But the Capetian princess had not been required to prove her holy status by showing herself oblivious to torture. Douceline’s reputation had benefited initially from her association with her well-­known ­brother, and then from her status as the “first beguine” in Provence. It now reached a painfully won recognition at the court of the Capetian Charles of Anjou. From this point on, her claims to speak for and with God carried not only spiritual but po­liti­cal weight. Indeed, Charles of Anjou could use all the support he could muster, since the Capetian installation in Provence was far from universally welcomed. His heavy-­handed rule, resented by towns and nobles not accustomed to strong applications of state power, sparked several revolts in his county, including uprisings in Marseille in 1252, 1257, and 1262– ­ oman entering the orbit of Charles’s court, prob­ably 63.40 A Provençal holy w in the interval between the second and third of ­these revolts, offered power­ ful legitimation of his rule. Once she had been publicly “tested” and “proved”

37. ​ Vida, chap. 9: 16 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 51). 38. ​On the concept of “proving” female sanctity, see Elliott, Proving ­Woman, with reference to Douceline at p. 184. 39. ​ Vida, chap. 9: 16 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 51). 40. ​Chiffoleau, “Les mendiants, le prince, et l’hérésie à Marseille vers 1260.”

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as a true mystic, “saint” Douceline could stand as a link between Charles and God, another validation of the chosen status of the Capetians.

A Beguine and a King Felipa of Porcelet’s Vida enumerates several ways in which Douceline now enjoyed a position of spiritual authority with Charles. The count rewarded her “sanctity” by sending ten pounds each year in alms (according to Felipa, Douceline would not keep the money for herself but turned it over to her beguines).41 More importantly, Charles recognized that Douceline possessed the spirit of prophecy. As Felipa put it, “She saw ­things even when she was not pres­ent for them, and knew in advance what would happen.”42 So Charles turned to her above all o ­ thers when weighing the most impor­tant decision of his life. By the spring of 1263, not long ­after Douceline had first come to court at the time of Beatrice’s delivery, Pope Urban IV was trying to entice Charles to “take the crown of Sicily” (just as Urban was approving the revised rule for Longchamp). That is, the pope wished Charles to become his military champion in driving the descendants of the emperor Frederick II from Naples, southern Italy, and the island of Sicily, known collectively to contemporaries as the Regno.43 Thirteenth-­century popes had never accepted the idea of a German emperor who would also rule southern Italy and Sicily, and Frederick II had defied a string of popes and suffered excommunication as a result. A ­ fter a very brief rapprochement about the time of Isabelle of France’s proposed marriage to Frederick’s son Conrad in 1243, the papacy and the Hohenstaufen had returned to their mortal combat. Even a­ fter Frederick’s death in 1250 and Conrad’s in 1254, Frederick’s illegitimate son, Manfred, controlled the Regno.44 Charles of Anjou had been approached about becoming the papal champion once before, in the early 1250s, but at the time his b­ rother the king (still in the Holy Land) had quashed the idea. The papacy had then turned to Edmund, a younger son of Henry III of ­England, but in the end this effort had led nowhere except to financial ruin for Henry. Now the French pope Urban IV returned to Charles, who was at last able to obtain Louis IX’s support. For the 41. ​ Vida, chap. 5: 8 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 39). 42. ​ Vida, chap. 11: 3 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 77). 43. ​Tentative negotiations began in 1262, intensified by May 1263, and w ­ ere concluded by June/ July 1263. See Runcimann, Sicilian Vespers, 65–70; Herde, Karl I. von Anjou, 39–47; Jordan, Les origins de la domination angevine en Italie, 370–409. 44. ​Williams, “Like ­Father Like Son?”

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Capetians, this was a chance to once more appear as warriors of God in a crusading cause u ­ nder papal auspices.45 It was also a chance for the ever-­ambitious Charles of Anjou to win for himself a kingdom. The offer clearly tempted him. And yet, even a man as bold as the Count of Provence had to won­der ­whether such a high-­risk campaign was prudent.46 And so, according to Felipa, Charles turned to Douceline for advice at this crucial moment, “­because of the love and re­spect that he had for the saint.” The beguine’s response left no doubt: “He should not hesitate to accept this undertaking which had been offered to him by the ­will of God.” Charles would be “God’s champion” and would triumph with the help of the Virgin and St. Francis, “Christ’s standard-­bearer.”47 But even as she assured him of success, Douceline also delivered a warning to the would-be king: ­after the victories that God would grant, Charles must continue to fear God and must not give in to pride. Other­wise, God would take his kingdom from him, just as he had done to Saul, the first king of Israel (1 Kings 15). This prophetic warning was related to the admonition that Douceline’s b­ rother Hugh had given Louis IX in 1254, but its message was even more power­f ul. For one t­ hing, ­because the French royal f­ amily publicly portrayed itself as heirs to the Old Testament kings (as seen in the stained-­ glass program of the Sainte-­Chapelle), the best way to chastise a Capetian ruler was to remind him of divine punishments suffered by ­those very kings. God, through Douceline, was speaking to the Capetians in their favored idiom. More fundamentally, Douceline’s warning was based on a dif­fer­ent kind of authority than Hugh’s. While Hugh had grounded his admonition to Louis in his wide reading of sacred and other texts, his (supposedly) untutored s­ ister delivered her message directly from God. In the end Charles took Douceline’s advice. Making up his mind to invade southern Italy, he asked her to pray for him, “secure in the expectation of the victory that she had promised.”48 Charles was invested with the kingdom of Sicily in June 1263 and crowned in Rome in January 1266, before defeating and killing Manfred at the ­battle of Benevento in February. Douceline’s prophetic powers had been vindicated. Following Charles’s victory, “his devotion to [Douceline] and his re­spect for her only increased.”

45. ​On the formal designation of the campaign as a crusade, see Housley, Italian Crusades, 18. 46. ​For the real­ity of Charles’s reluctance to accept Urban IV’s terms, see Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, 130–32. Thus it would seem that Felipa was well informed. 47. ​ Vida, chap. 11: 4–6 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 77–78). 48. ​ Vida, chap. 11: 4–6 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 77–78).

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Beyond Beatrice and Charles Given this spiritual alliance between Charles and Douceline, it should not be surprising that her reputation spread to the wider Capetian ­family network. Word of Douceline’s role in ensuring Beatrice of Provence’s safe delivery would surely have reached Beatrice’s own ­family, which included Marguerite of Provence, and thus the court of Louis IX.49 It is an intriguing, if unanswerable, question as to w ­ hether Isabelle of France, already ensconced at Longchamp, might have heard reports of Douceline’s Franciscan-­inspired holiness (by the same token, Douceline could easily have heard of Isabelle’s similar spirituality through Charles of Anjou). Moreover, stories about Douceline could have reached Paris through Franciscan channels, since Felipa relates a long anecdote about the way Douceline had impressed a Franciscan lector from Paris. Such a friar might have reported his edifying conversation with the Provençal beguine on his return to the ­Grand couvent.50 Particularly in light of the fact that Hugh of Digne was already a revered figure among Louis’s entourage, Douceline’s reputation had ample opportunity to find fertile ground in the north. Textual proof of Douceline’s reputation reaching other Capetians comes from another episode related in the Life of the Blessed St. Douceline. In this extended story, Felipa of Porcelet describes how “the count of Artois” went out of his way to visit Douceline in Marseille. Her reference must be to Robert II of Artois (1250–1302), who could have been in Marseille e­ ither as he prepared to depart on Louis IX’s ill-­fated second crusade in June 1270 or perhaps on his voyage to Naples in 1274, the year of Douceline’s death.51 According to 49. ​Relations between Marguerite and Beatrice ­were frequently rocky, and Marguerite and Charles ­were often bitterly at odds, but the d­ aughters of Provence ­were po­liti­cally connected and ­eager for news concerning their native region. On mechanisms of contact between the courts of Charles of Anjou and Philip III, see Hélary, “Les relations entre les cours de France,” 33–46. 50. ​ Vida, chap. 9: 29–32 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 54–55). 51. ​Jeay and Garay, “De l’usage politique,” 478, assumed that this passage referred to Robert I. That assumption would put the episode in 1248, when Robert I was departing on his ­brother’s first crusade. But 1248 is too early for Douceline to have been in Marseille (she had not yet founded her second beguinage ­there). Of course, it is pos­si­ble that Felipa was confused, as was Salimbene when he mixed up Pierre of Alençon and Robert II of Artois (Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 525; confusion cleared up by Hélary, “La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alencon,” 16). But Salimbene was much further removed from the French nobility, and in any case the evidence as it stands points unambiguously to Robert II, “the count of Artois,” when Felipa was writing. I know of no specific corroborating evidence to place Robert in Marseille in 1270, but the royal entourage reached Nîmes by 12 May, Aigues-­ Mortes by early June, and then did not sail ­until 1 July 1270, so a detour to Marseille would have presented no difficulty. See Hélary, La dernière croisade, 55–56, on Robert II’s preparations for crusade. Alternatively, ­these events could have happened when Robert II was returning to Angevine Naples in 1274, if he passed through Marseille before Douceline’s death on 1 September (he was in Naples at least by October). On Robert II in the Regno, see Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, chap. 5; on

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Felipa, when the “very devout” count “came to Provence” and heard talk of Douceline’s “­g reat holiness” and raptures, he was “moved with ­g reat devotion” and wanted to witness one of her mystical trances himself. So “when he was in Marseille, he went to see her.” To evoke one of Douceline’s ecstatic states, he took with him on his visit several friars, who began to talk to her about St. Francis’s wounds and his encounter with the Seraphim. Douceline again tried to prevent herself from slipping into ecstasy by bruising her palms, but to no avail. When she fell into her usual rapturous state, the Count of Artois “felt a deep joy.” He was so impressed that he “­rose at once,” took off his hat, crept forward on his knees, and kissed her feet with g­ reat devotion.52 ­These w ­ ere the very feet, of course, that had suffered the agonizing heat of molten lead poured on them by Charles of Anjou. Robert II of Artois was one of the leading military men of his age. A ­ fter the crusade of 1270 and again ­after his 1274–76 stay in the Regno, he returned north, perhaps bringing with him stories of his encounter with the holy beguine of Provence. He would ­later spend an additional de­cade in southern Italy (1282–91) providing military aid to Charles of Anjou and then acting as regent for Charles II. Robert must have carried with him some memory of Douceline u ­ ntil meeting his end in Flanders at the ­battle of Courtrai in 1302.

Warnings from across the Alps The last phase of Douceline’s relationship to Charles of Anjou took on an ominous tone. Since Charles had left Provence in 1265 and would not return during Douceline’s lifetime, the holy beguine’s influence would seem to have been bound to wane. Beatrice of Provence followed her husband to the Regno, and her death in 1267 might have further lessened Douceline’s sway with the Angevins in Italy (Charles married Marguerite of Burgundy, Countess of Tonnerre, in 1268).53 Yet according to Felipa of Porcelet, Douceline continued to communicate with Charles, by letter, even ­after he had relocated to southern Italy. But now (at least in Felipa’s retrospective telling), Douceline’s missives grew grim. No longer guaranteeing God’s ­favor, she increasingly functioned as a voice of impending doom. The beguine had already warned Charles that ingratitude would cost him his kingdom. Douceline now wrote “more than the route through Marseille for the many men who traveled back and forth between northern France and the Regno in this era, see Dunbabin, 31. On Robert more generally, see Hélary, “Que’est-ce qu’un chef de guerre à la fin du XIIIe siècle?” 52. ​ Vida, chap. 9: 36–40 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 56–57). 53. ​On Marguerite, see Hélary, “La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alencon,” 12–14.

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once” to say that God was not happy with Charles and would soon chastise him. Nor did Charles completely ignore t­ hese warnings, since (according to Felipa) when Douceline “sent to him about many secret and hidden m ­ atters . . . ​ the king was amazed, marveling at how she could know ­these ­things.”54 “To the end of her life” in 1274, Douceline continued to remind Charles that he would prosper only as long as he feared God. In her letters, she expressed both her admiration for what “God was ­doing through him” and her fear that “he was not showing gratitude for it.” But all Douceline’s efforts proved in vain, and Charles’s reign ended just as she had foreseen, ­because ­after the death of “the saint,” Charles “forgot about fearing God.” In March 1282 the inhabitants of Sicily r­ ose up in the g­ reat revolt known as the Sicilian Vespers, slaughtering all the French soldiers they could find. In spite of Charles’s determination to retake the island, and in spite of the arrival of Robert II of Artois and other northern reinforcements, Peter of Aragon, who was married to Frederick II’s grand­daughter Constance, landed in Sicily and kept the island from Charles’s grasp.55 Charles went north in 1283 to try to raise further reinforcements in France. But just as he was returning to Italy, his son and heir Charles II was captured in 1284 and, as Felipa put it, “held in strict captivity” by Peter of Aragon. Charles (according to Felipa) was so devastated by this turn of his fortune that he lost heart and “died ruined and deprived of his kingdom.”56 It is surely true that this entire sequence, presented in hindsight, is constructed in such a way as to prove the author’s rhetorical point in the Life of the Blessed St. Douceline. Charles, for instance, actually retained Naples and southern Italy and so was not entirely “stripped of his kingdom.” One might well go further and won­der ­whether Felipa simply made up much of her story about Douceline’s continuing relations with Charles a­ fter 1265. But two f­ actors point to the overall reliability of her narrative. First, we have already seen evidence from Charles of Anjou’s registers that as late as 1272 he was still receiving letters from Douceline and responding to them with the actions the beguine requested of him. Not only are Felipa’s reports of a continuing correspondence verified, but the general tenor, in which Charles continued to see Douceline as his “beloved co-­mother,” also matches her claims. At the same time, it should be noted that Douceline’s letters ­were not entirely focused on dire prophecies; apparently she could ask for mundane ­favors as well. 54. ​ Vida, chap. 11: 7 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 78). 55. ​Runciman’s classic The Sicilian Vespers remains essential reading. See also Théry, “Les vêpres Siciliennes (30 ou 31 mars 1282).” 56. ​ Vida, chap. 11: 7–9 (Garay and Jeay, Life, 78–79).

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Second, Felipa of Porcelet may have had other channels through which to receive reports of Charles of Anjou’s state of mind, since her ­family connections afforded her access to events in the kingdom of Sicily. Among the many French and Provençal nobles who threw in their lot with Charles, Felipa’s ­father, Guilhem of Porcelet (1217–88), had followed the Count of Anjou to Italy in 1265, served him t­ here as justiciar and castellan,57 and been well rewarded with lands in the Regno. In fact, Guilhem was one of the very few “French” officials to survive the bloodshed on the island of Sicily in 1282, returning north of the Alps by 1283.58 Similarly, Felipa’s cousin Rainaud of Porcelet d’Arles (1244–1309) fought with Charles in Italy in the 1260s before returning as an administrator to Provence in 1275.59 In 1288 Rainaud then acted as ambassador from Charles II to Alphonso II of Aragon, negotiating the ransom and hostages to be provided following Charles’s release from captivity. By 1291 he was acting as the count’s official (viguier) in Marseille,60 where Felipa was also to be found. Felipa’s ­family connections would have continued to provide her with reports about the king of Sicily right up through the 1280s, and kept her in contact with his son’s administration for de­cades afterward.61 Felipa’s retrospective interpretation of Douceline’s ominous prophecies and their relationship to Charles’s ultimate fate is surely tendentious. But the under­ lying dynamic she describes, of the holy ­woman in Marseille continuing to warn the king of Sicily about the dangers of divine dis­plea­sure, rings true. Douceline of Digne bears several striking similarities to Isabelle of France. Like Isabelle, Douceline “gave herself entirely to God” with a promise of chastity, but never took the formal vows of a nun. Both ­women’s spirituality took the practical turn of a Franciscan-­inspired foundation, but outside the Order of St. Clare. Both w ­ omen worked with a minister general, a provincial minister, a better-­known ­brother, and leading Franciscan intellectuals to secure their foundations. Both ­women’s prayers ­were sought to sway God’s mercy. And both ­women’s holiness offered living proof of the divine approval enjoyed by 57. ​Morelli, “Officiers angevins,” 61; Morelli, Per conservare la pace, 198 (Guilhem of Porcelet among ­those recepti in milites de hospitio regio in 1273); Morelli, “I giustizieri nel regno di Napoli al tempo di Carlo I d’Angiò”; Durrieu, Les archives angevines de Naples, 212. 58. ​Aurell i Cardona, Une famille, 116–19. 59. ​Aurell i Cardona, Une famille, 119–22. 60. ​See Christian Maurel, “Le prince et la cité,” 92, for powers of the viguier. 61. ​Indeed, Felipa herself was even called on to pledge fealty to Robert (grand­son of Charles of Anjou) in 1309 when he became Count of Provence and king of Naples. See Aurell, Actes de la famille Porcelet d’Arles, #591; and on Robert, see Samantha Kelly, New Solomon. More broadly, see Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 68–73, on the connections between Provence and the Regno; and Pollastri, “La noblesse Provençale dans le royaume de Sicile” (with several references to Guilhem of Porcelet).

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the Capetians. Though Douceline was not born to the Capetian ­family herself, the bonds forged by her role as godmother to Charles and Beatrice’s ­daughter made her, in effect, part of their spiritual ­family. Douceline and Isabelle never met, but their ­careers moved in parallel to create conduits for demonstrating divine ­favor for the Capetians. Yet both Douceline and Isabelle found themselves increasingly isolated from the power­ful forces that had supported their saintly reputations up through the early 1260s, relegated instead to a more local role at their personal foundations. If Isabelle’s wider renown seemed to fade in the face of her refusal to take vows and her insistence on the rule of the Sorores minores, Douceline’s influence may have slowly waned a­ fter Charles’s departure from Provence and as her written warnings about his pride (according to her l­ater hagiographer) grew more strident. Still, at the time of their deaths, Isabelle’s and Douceline’s female followers continued to see them as “holy ­mothers,” local Franciscans continued to promote their images, and nearby laypeople continued to revere them. Douceline died at Marseille, surrounded by friars and her beguine ­sisters, on 1 September 1274. As with Isabelle, a crowd of ­people clambered to try to touch her body, threatening to strip her clothing and even tear apart her corpse in their relic-­seeking fervor. The press was so ­great that secular authorities had to be brought in to keep order. The body was carried to the Franciscan church of Marseille and buried next to that of her b­ rother Hugh.62 Like Isabelle, Douceline was not left to a tranquil repose. Her body was moved once, in 1275, to a new marble tomb constructed by a wealthy admirer.63 Then, when the new Franciscan church of Marseille was completed, in October 1278, the remains of both Hugh and Douceline w ­ ere transferred t­ here, again with large numbers of beguines, religious, and seculars pres­ent for the cele­bration.64 Just as ­these two reburials ­were taking place in Marseille, a holy ­woman far to the north was reported to be voicing warnings from God to the new king of France. Although ­these warnings echoed Douceline’s admonitions to Charles of Anjou, Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s more pointed message carried greater danger for Philip III.

62. ​ Vida, chap. 13. 63. ​ Vida, chap. 14: 3–5. 64. ​ Vida, chap. 14: 34–36.

Prologue A Crisis in the Reign of Philip III

When Louis IX succumbed to illness near Tunis on 25 August 1270, the kingdom passed to his son, Philip.1 Born in 1245, Philip had been heir to the throne since the death of his b­ rother Louis in 1260. The beginning of Philip III’s reign could hardly have been more difficult. Following the advice of Charles of Anjou, he arranged a treaty with the emir of Tunis and set sail for Sicily, intending to march up the Italian peninsula and back to France. But death continued to haunt the royal ­family. Philip’s ­brother Jean Tristan had died even before their f­ ather’s demise. Now, during the long return journey, the new king lost his ­sister Isabelle (April 1271) and her husband, Thibaut II of Navarre (December 1270). Alphonse of Poitiers and his wife, Jeanne of Toulouse, both expired in August 1271. Philip’s own wife, Isabelle of Aragon, died in Calabria ( January 1271) ­after falling from her ­horse and giving birth to a stillborn child.2 Thus upon his return to Paris in May 1271, the new king fulfilled the sad duty of burying both his ­father’s and his wife’s bones at Saint-­Denis. He was at least re­united with his four young 1. ​Neither Sivéry, Philippe III le Hardi, nor Gobry, Philippe III, supersedes Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi. Fortunately, Xavier Hélary is shedding new light on Philip’s reign in a series of studies, including “La cour de Philippe III” and “Les rois de France et la terre sainte.” This prologue draws on my section “The Court of Philip III and the Course of Events,” in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?” 2. ​Hélary, La dernière croisade, 199–200. 77

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sons. Only the eldest, Louis, born perhaps around 1263, would have been old enough to understand ­these events. The king’s younger sons, Philip, Charles, and Robert, born between 1268 and early 1270, had been mere infants when the crusade departed. Yet despite this very difficult start, the first five years of Philip III’s reign ­were successful. He was crowned at Reims on 15 August 1271. The following spring, the king called out the royal army and marched south to confront a revolt by the Count of Foix and to affirm his authority in the county of Toulouse, which at last passed to direct royal control since Alphonse of Poitiers and Jeanne of Toulouse had left no heirs.3 When the former archdeacon of Liège (Tedaldo Visconti) was consecrated as Pope Gregory X in March 1272, he immediately began planning for the second council of Lyon. Philip III, along with the ­future Edward I of ­England, Charles of Anjou, and numerous French barons, had already vowed to reassemble for a new crusade planned for 1274.4 Although it quickly became clear that the departure date would have to be put off, Philip and Gregory nevertheless met at Lyon at the end of 1273 to discuss the new venture to the Holy Land.5 To this end, Philip, at the urging of Charles of Anjou, even promoted himself as a pos­si­ble candidate for the vacant imperial crown, though in the end nothing came of this effort.6 Philip III did not remain unmarried for long. In August 1274 he took as his second wife Marie of Brabant (b. c. 1255), d­ aughter of Duke Henry III of Brabant (r. 1248–61) and Alice of Burgundy (d. 1273).7 Brabant, with its bustling cities of Brussels, Leuven, and Antwerp, lay outside the French kingdom as an imperial duchy east of Flanders and Hainaut, north of Namur and Liège, and northwest of the small county of Loon (see map 3). Its northern cities ­were overwhelmingly Dutch speaking, but the court itself was thoroughly conversant with French language and lit­er­a­ture. Ties between the Capetians and the h ­ ouse of Brabant w ­ ere already strong. Louis IX’s b­ rother Robert I of Artois had married Mahaut of Brabant (­sister of Duke Henry III) in 1237. Their son Robert II of Artois, whom we have just met as an admirer of Douceline of Digne, was thus cousin to both the new queen of France and the king. Moreover, the reigning duke of Brabant, Marie’s b­ rother John I (r. 1267–94), had married Marguerite, d­ aughter of Louis IX, in 1270, though a­ fter her early 3. ​Hélary, L’Armée du roi de France, 115. 4. ​Hélary, La dernière croisade, 198. 5. ​Baldwin, Pope Gregory X and the Crusades. Gregory X considered Philip and other crusaders from 1270 still u ­ nder their original vows since he did not recognize the attack on Tunis as having fulfilled them. See Hélary, “Les rois de France et la terre sainte,” 26. 6. ​Jones, “ ‘mais tot por le servise Deu?’ ” 7. ​Hamilton, Plea­sure and Politics at the Court of France; see also Hamilton, “Plea­sure, Politics, and Piety.”

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death (September 1272) he then married Marguerite of Dampierre, ­daughter of Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders (recall that she had been pres­ent at Isabelle of France’s translation in 1270). Moreover, the male heads of all t­ hese ­houses ­were linked by military adventure: Guy of Dampierre and Robert II of Artois joined Philip III on the crusade of 1270, and Duke John I of Brabant would shortly become one of the king’s most reliable military supporters.8 In June 1275, Marie was crowned as queen of France in a lavish ceremony at the Sainte-­Chapelle. The occasion had a double significance, since on that same day King Philip III took the cross, along with his two b­ rothers (Pierre of Alençon and Robert of Clermont) and his brothers-­in-­law the Duke of Burgundy (married to Philip’s youn­gest ­sister, Agnes) and the Duke of Brabant. Pres­ent also was Cardinal Simon of Brie, who was papal legate to France from 1264 to 1269, and who had now returned for a new legation to help prepare for the crusade, envisioned as a joint operation with Charles of Anjou.9 One jarring ele­ment disturbed many of the kingdom’s nobles—­the influence wielded by the royal chamberlain and administrator Pierre de La Broce.10 Pierre’s background was as royal physician (by 1255) and chamberlain (by 1266) ­under Louis IX. He grew close to the ­f uture Philip III during (if not before) the crusade of 1270. Although his f­ amily came only from the lower ranks of the French nobility, Pierre quickly emerged as Philip III’s most power­f ul adviser. Resentful members of the higher nobility saw him as a greedy upstart and grumbled that nothing happened at court without Pierre’s dearly bought support. But the arrival of Marie of Brabant and her retinue created a potential rival powerbase at court, with the queen and the chamberlain competing for the king’s confidence and affection.11 Still, ­these years seemed to unfold as a strong continuation of the successful reign of Louis IX, and Philip III could pres­ent himself as a “worthy heir” of his revered ­father.12 Indeed, in 1275 the monk Primat presented his just-­ completed Roman des roys to the king. This masterwork, the origins of what would l­ ater come to be known as the Grandes chroniques de France, marked the maturity of Saint-­Denis’s proj­ect to compile a vernacular history of the kings of France. Although the original version of the Roman des roys took this story 8. ​Boffa, “Les soutiens militaires de Jean Ier.” 9. ​Hélary, L’Armée du roi de France, 35; Hélary, “Les rois de France et la terre sainte,” 31–38. 10. ​Hélary’s 2013 habiliation, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” chaps. 8 and 9, is a major advance on Langlois, Philippe III, 22–30. While awaiting the publication of this habilitation, see Hélary, “La reine, le légat, et le chambellan”; Hélary, “Trahison et échec militaire,” quotation at p. 189; Hélary, “Pierre de La Broce, seigneur féodal”; Jordan, “Strug­gle for Influence at the Court of Philip III”; and Collard, “Grandeur et chute d’un conseiller du roi.” 11. ​Hélary, “La reine, le légat, et le chambellan.” 12. ​Guenée, Comment on écrit l’histoire, 15.

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up only u ­ ntil 1214 in the reign of Philip II, the famous image at the end of the pre­sen­ta­tion copy, with Abbot Matthew of Vendôme, Primat, and three other monks of Saint-­Denis offering the book to Philip III and his court, positioned Philip III as the heir to all the glories of the French kings from the saintly Louis IX back through the Capetians to the Carolingians and Merovingians and into the mythic Trojan past.13 Yet looking ahead, a tiny ray of doubt peeked through Primat’s praise. A ­ fter asserting the fundamental unity of the French royal line, Primat closed by referring to “King Philip who now reigns, and all the ­others who ­will descend from him, if the line does not fail, may God and my lord St. Denis preserve it.”14 What if the Capetians did not continue to merit God’s protection? What if a French king’s sins led God to bring the Capetian line to an end?

The Crisis of 1276–78 The years 1276–78 constituted a true crisis in the reign of Philip III, making Primat seem prescient. Instead of the planned crusade, the Capetian court saw embarrassing military failure compounded by competing claims of sin, murder, and treason. ­These scandalous events posed a fundamental challenge to the royal ­family’s efforts to foster an image of divine ­favor. Several unrelated events combined to create a backdrop of uncertainty in ­these years. First, the death of Gregory X on 10 January 1276 and the ephemeral pontificates of Innocent V ( January–­June 1276), Adrian V ( July–­August 1276), and John XXI (September  1276–­May  1277) helped derail papal planning for the crusade. In fact, Philip III was never again able to muster serious preparations for an expedition to the Holy Land. Second, the intellectual and ecclesiastical world of the University of Paris was thrown into turmoil by Bishop Stephen Tempier’s infamous attempt to close off debate on certain topics by condemning 219 controversial propositions in March 1277. The details need not be considered ­here, but (as Jacques Verger has pointed out) the papal legate Simon of Brie lurked in the background of this affair.15 At the royal court, Philip III’s oldest son and heir, Louis, died in the spring (before May) of 1276. ­After the death of one Prince Louis had shattered Louis IX in 1260, events now seemed to repeat themselves. The king’s youn­gest son, Robert, had recently died as well; the date is not entirely clear, but it was also 13. ​Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-­Geneviève, ms. 782, fol. 326v (digital image on Gallica). 14. ​Cited in Guenée, Comment on écrit l’histoire, 153–54 (my emphasis). 15. ​Verger, “Simon de Brie et l’université de Paris,” 185–88.

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by the spring of 1276. The Capetian succession was hardly in doubt, since from his first marriage Philip had two more sons, the f­ uture Philip IV and Charles of Valois. Moreover, Marie of Brabant gave him a third son, Louis of Evreux, born in May 1276.16 Still, the loss of two sons, in such rapid succession and not so very long ­after the wave of postcrusade mortality in 1270–71, must have marked the king’s mood. But the crisis of Capetian confidence was most directly brought on by military failure. In September  1276 Philip assembled the royal army at Tours, intending to march across the Pyrenees. The first goal was to restore order in Navarre, where Philip was administering this small kingdom on behalf of his cousin Blanche of Artois (­sister of Robert II of Artois and ­widow of Henry the Fat, king of Navarre and Count of Champagne) and her young d­ aughter Jeanne of Navarre (­f uture wife of Philip IV). The king then intended to attack Castile and make good the rights of his s­ister Blanche’s c­ hildren to that throne.17 The royal forces included Count Robert II of Artois, who was sent ahead to Navarre, and Duke John I of Brabant. The effort, however, ended in debacle. The army made it as far as Sauveterre (in Béarn), but the royal host was so poorly provisioned that by the end of the year Philip was forced to return to Paris without even crossing the Pyrenees. Rumors swirled (apparently promoted by Robert II of Artois ­after the fact) that treason of some kind had been committed, and eventually Pierre de La Broce’s enemies accused him of colluding with the king of Castile. ­After a swift fall from grace, Pierre de La Broce was arrested by January 1278 and executed in June.18 In a sense, the identification and execution of this “traitor,” on whom the blame for royal failure could be placed, brought the crisis to a close. Yet this two-­year period of crisis was more dangerous for the court than such a brief summary might suggest. The atmosphere of intrigue and treason was sparked by rumors around the death of Prince Louis in 1276, and at the center of attempts to determine the truth ­behind ­these rumors stood the holy ­woman Elizabeth of Spalbeek. Just as Philip III was assembling his army in September 1276, he received reports that Elizabeth and another w ­ oman ­were broadcasting revelations from God that laid the blame for Prince Louis’s death at Philip’s own feet. God had been angered by the king’s “sins against 16. ​For ­these births and deaths see Brown, “Prince Is the ­Father of the King.” 17. ​Blanche had married Fernando de la Cerda, oldest son of King Alphonso X of Castile. But when Fernando died, Alphonso passed over Fernando’s c­hildren and named Fernando’s younger ­brother Sancho as heir. On the dynastic contexts in Navarre and Castile, see Hélary, “La place des questions de succession dans la politique extérieure de Philippe III le Hardi.” On Blanche, see Allirot, “Blanche de la Cerda.” 18. ​Hélary, “Pierre de La Broce, seigneur féodal”; Hélary, “Trahison et échec militaire”; Hélary, L’Armée du roi de France, 20–22; Langlois, Philippe III, 96–116.

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nature.” T ­ hese reports set off a complicated series of inquiries, which the party of Pierre de La Broce tried to redirect into an attack on Queen Marie of Brabant, culminating in January 1278 at the moment of Pierre’s arrest.19 Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s prophetic voice was respected, even feared, by the Capetian court. But ­because her divinely revealed message threatened the sacred aura of the royal ­family, it could not be allowed to go unchallenged.

19. ​Impor­tant studies include Hélary, “La reine, le légat, et le chambellan”; Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir”; Njus, “Politics of Mysticism”; Jordan, “Strug­gle for Influence”; Sleiderink, “Een straf van God”; and Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux.” See also Elliott, Proving ­Woman, 186–89; Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 113–24; and Kreiger, “Mystical Monarchy,” chap. 4. Less reliable accounts appear in Sivéry, Philippe III le Hardi, 153–77; and Gobry, Philippe III, 65–71. Still useful is de Louvet, “L’origine nivelloise de l’institution béguinale.” A. J. Nameche, “Marie de Brabant et la béguine de Nivelles,” Revue catholique 12 (1855): 598–608, is outdated.

Ch a p ter   3

Elizabeth of Spalbeek A Prince’s Death, a Queen’s Crime, and a King’s Sin

By the time Isabelle of France died in 1270 and Douceline of Digne in 1274, Elizabeth of Spalbeek was already widely renowned as a holy w ­ oman with a gift for prophecy. She exhibited certain similarities to Isabelle, insofar as p­ eople approached her in search of divine aid. Her public persona was even closer to that of Douceline, as a mystic and prophet whose startling trances attracted onlookers from far and wide. Yet initially Elizabeth was a more obscure figure, certainly no princess, and residing far from centers of power such as Paris or Marseille. Scholarship has done a g­ reat deal to clarify the historical context of Elizabeth’s life.1 Spalbeek lay just west of the town of Hasselt and the Cistercian convent of Herkenrode, in the county of Loon. This small county (more or less equivalent to the modern Belgian province of Limburg) was dependent on the prince-­bishop of Liège to the south and southeast, but also subject to the encroaching power of the dukes of Brabant to the west (see map 3). Elizabeth was born around 1246–47, and by 1266–67 she was living at Spalbeek, in notably poor health, with her m ­ other and several ­sisters. Her native language was evidently the local Limburgish dialect of Dutch. Elizabeth was 1. ​See Njus, “Politics of Mysticism”; and the sections “Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s ­Career” and “The Landscape of Loon,” in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?” Both of ­these sections ­were written by Walter Simons, to whom I am indebted for sharing his detailed knowledge of Elizabeth’s ­career and historical setting. 83

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The Low Countries in the 1270s. Courtesy of Jonathan Chipman, Citrin GIS/Applied Spatial Analy­sis Lab, Dartmouth College, ­after a design by Walter Simons, Dartmouth College. ©Jonathan Chipman and Walter Simons. Map 3. 

not from a ­humble background; she is described as related by blood to her most impor­tant patron, William of Rijkel, abbot from 1248 to 1272 of the impor­tant Benedictine monastery of Sint-­Truiden just south of Spalbeek. Abbot William, in turn, was cousin to Duke Henry III of Brabant (­father of Duke John I and Marie of Brabant) and to Henry of Guelders, bishop of Liège from 1247 to 1274.2 Thus, as Jesse Njus has shown, Elizabeth was intimately con-

2. ​On Henry of Guelders, see Baldwin, Pope Gregory X and the Crusades, 27–32.

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nected to a network of power­ful religious and po­liti­cal figures, and could even count the new queen of France as a distant relative.3

A Prophet in the North Abundant evidence illuminates Elizabeth’s reputation as a holy w ­ oman. Most importantly, her renown had attracted the Cistercian abbot Philip of Clairvaux (d. 1273), who went out of his way to investigate rumors of her sanctity in 1266–67 during an official visit to Herkenrode. Shortly afterward (before 1270), he wrote an account of what he saw at Spalbeek.4 The work is not a saint’s life in the traditional sense, but what might be better labeled a probatio—­that is, a “proof ” or “proving” of the truth of Elizabeth’s holy comportment.5 Philip relates l­ittle about Elizabeth’s early life, simply introducing her around the age of twenty. The startling fact about the maiden (puella), according to Philip’s eyewitness report, was that she bore the marks of the stigmata on her hands, feet, and side.6 Moreover, each day, rapt as though in a trance, Elizabeth would reenact the Passion in a l­ittle room next to the chapel that Abbot William of Rijkel had built for her.7 Although this aspect of the probatio has received most of the scholarly attention,8 more impor­tant for the pres­ent analy­sis is Philip’s insistence on Elizabeth’s reputation for receiving divine knowledge. In perhaps the best example of this insistence, Philip described how some of his servants asked Elizabeth to pray for them. Evidently many of t­ hese 3. ​Njus, “Politics of Mysticism.” 4. ​Philip of Clairvaux, “Vita Elizabeth,” which is transcribed from Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms. 2864-71, fols. 94v–109. Walter Simons is preparing a critical edition, En­glish translation, and study of this text. The work also survives in a ­Middle En­glish version, known in a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 114). See Jennifer N. Brown, Three ­Women of Liège: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the M ­ iddle En­glish Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). Modern En­glish translations are available in Elizabeth Spearing, Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality (New York: Penguin, 2002), 107–19; Margot H. King, “The Life of Elisabeth of Spalbeek Translated from the ­Middle En­glish,” in A Leaf from the ­Great Tree of God: Essays in Honour of Ritamary Bradley, ed. Margot H. King (Toronto: Peregrina Press, 1994), 244– 75; and Lydia Peterson, “The Life of Elisabeth, Holy ­Woman of Herkenrode,” Connecticut Review 37 (2005): 18–44 (only the latter is made from the Latin, but it is incomplete; I thank Carolyn Meussig for the reference). 5. ​Njus justifiably insists on this designation, drawing on Elliott, Proving ­Woman. 6. ​Philip of Clairvaux, “Vita Elizabeth,” 363, #3. 7. ​See Simons and Ziegler, “Phenomenal Religion in the Thirteenth ­Century and Its Image.” 8. ​Njus, “What Did It Mean to Act in the M ­ iddle Ages?”; Ziegler, “On the Artistic Nature of Elisabeth of Spalbeek’s Ecstasy”; Brown, “Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s Body”; Zimdars-­Swartz, “The Stigmata of Elisabeth of Spalbeek”; Rod­gers and Ziegler, “Elisabeth of Spalbeek’s Trance Dance of Faith”; Simons, “Reading a Saint’s Body.”

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servants ­were French speakers. One, however, “a German or Brabantine who knew her language,” begged Elizabeth on bended knees to pray for him and for the rest of his associates. She consented, on the condition that the group confess and do penance. They agreed, but she singled out one of the younger servants and, through an interpreter, told him that he should become a lay b­ rother at Clairvaux. He promised to do so, and Philip of Clairvaux helped bring it about. When Abbot William of Rijkel asked Elizabeth, in Philip’s presence, why she had chosen this young man among all the o ­ thers, she replied that she knew that his soul was in a state of salvation. She therefore wanted him to preserve and strengthen this state by entering religion. Three days ­later, the Dutch-­ speaking servant who had asked Elizabeth for her prayers visited her again. In the presence of many p­ eople, Elizabeth accosted him, saying, “You still have not confessed! You are being stupid, ­because you refuse to confess! What are you waiting for?” The man turned red and left, and confessed the next day.9 In both cases, Elizabeth miraculously knew the states of t­ hese servants’ souls. Chapter 1 introduced another particularly relevant example. When William of Rijkel asked Elizabeth how she could stand all the physical torments she endured, she replied, “I suffer less than a certain virgin named Marie, who lives in a town in Flanders called Lille. She is tormented more sharply and vigorously than I,” and went on to describe Marie’s suffering in detail. The abbot, however, had never heard of this Marie. Elizabeth explained that she and Marie frequently saw each other “in raptures” and that Marie was a very wise maiden. Philip of Clairvaux himself vouched for Marie’s existence and her wisdom. Not only had he often encountered her in Lille during his own rounds of visitation, but the king of France had also frequently visited her and even had a “very worthy” chapel built for her.10 Thus, in addition to noting the intriguing tie between Louis IX and Marie of Lille, Philip’s report offered a further indication of Elizabeth’s reputation for divinely given knowledge. In stories such as ­these, Philip of Clairvaux underlined and publicized Elizabeth’s reputation as a ­woman able to see into other ­people’s souls. He described her as very much engaged with the question of who around her was saved, who was in a state of sin, and who needed to change their ways. She did not hesitate to speak out directly to the power­f ul about ­these ­matters. Nor was Philip of Clairvaux the only author to note and publicize Elizabeth’s holiness. None other than Thomas of Cantimpré marveled at her abilities. We have already met Thomas as a strong supporter of Low Country beguines, and his Bonum universale de apibus as the text in which he praised Isa9. ​Philip of Clairvaux, “Vita Elizabeth,” 375, #22. 10. ​Philip of Clairvaux, “Vita Elizabeth,” 376, #24.

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belle of France’s virginal existence. Elsewhere in this work he describes a maiden (puella) in Brabant whom he knew intimately (secretius) and who was renowned for her sanctity.11 According to trustworthy Dominicans, it was proved (probatum est) that a­ fter deep meditation on the Passion of Christ, wounds appeared in this w ­ oman’s side, from which g­ reat quantities of blood had flowed for years. This blood had even been collected in a vial “as evidence of such a miracle,” and Thomas had been able to inspect it, presumably back in his native region around Leuven, some fifty kilo­meters west of Spalbeek.12 As Walter Simons has affirmed, Thomas can be describing no one but Elizabeth.13 Moreover, a story at the end of an early fourteenth-­century Life of Conrad of Herlsheim further demonstrates the extent of Elizabeth’s reputation. This anonymous text related that two Cistercian abbots from Hesse ­were in the habit of visiting “a certain religious maiden (puella) named Elizabeth” in “a city in Brabant, which is called Sint-­Truiden,” each September. This virgin with “angelic aspect,” described as bearing the marks of the stigmata and possessing the spirit of prophecy, is certainly Elizabeth of Spalbeek. In September 1271, one of the abbots, Richolf of Arnsburg, arrived at Spalbeek and was surprised to find that the other, Henry of Haina, was not t­here. When Richolf asked Elizabeth ­whether Henry had yet arrived, Elizabeth was able to report miraculously not only that Henry had died but also the exact day of his death and the details of his glorious entry into heaven. Moreover, in response to Richolf ’s questioning, Elizabeth further pronounced upon the lives and deaths of two other Cistercians of the ­house in far-­off Haina.14 Fi­nally, as both Jesse Njus and Walter Simons have shown, at just this time (1270–72) Elizabeth and Abbot William of Rijkel stood at the center of a network that authenticated and distributed relics throughout the Low Countries and northern France.15 A nun named Hedwig of Soest from the Benedictine ­house of Saint-­Maccabees in Cologne supplied most of the relics, often through 11. ​Although Spalbeek was in Loon and Sint-­Truiden was ­under the po­liti­cal power of the bishop of Liège, it is apparent that contemporaries thought of the region as dominated by the Duke of Brabant. 12. ​Colveneer, Thomae Cantimpratani bonum universale de apibus, 105 (book I, chap. 25, no.  7). Thomas is usually thought to have written this text between 1256 and 1263, but clearly began earlier and then added text ­after 1267. This section could well have been added in 1267–70. 13. ​Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” n. 6, where Simons demonstrates that attempts to identify this w ­ oman as Marie d’Oignies cannot be correct. See also Vauchez, “Les stigmates de saint François,” 609, followed by Bernard Forthomme, “Le signe jaloux,” 268. 14. ​Nass, “Die Vita beati Conradi de Herlsheim,” 58–61. Walter Simons kindly brought this text to my attention. 15. ​Njus, “Politics of Mysticism,” 307–10; Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?” (in the section “Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s ­Career,” written by Walter Simons); see also George, “À Saint-­Trond, un import-­export de reliques des onze mille vierges au XIIIe siècle”; and Berlière, “Guillaume de Ryckel abbé de Saint-­Trond.”

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a beguine named Ermentrude. Many w ­ ere retained by William, but o ­ thers ­were sent on as gifts. To take several relevant examples, on 20 August 1271 one relic was sent to Marie of “Turri” in Lille—­possibly the same Marie of Lille who had been patronized by Louis IX. Another was given on the same day to Marie, the Cistercian nun at Flines who was a d­ aughter of Countess Marguerite of Flanders and who had been pres­ent at Longchamp for the translation of Isabelle of France’s remains the year before. A third was sent a few days l­ater by means of “the Duchess of Brabant” to the Dominicans of Dijon.16 This “duchess” might perhaps have been Louis IX’s ­daughter Marguerite, briefly married to Duke John I, though it seems more likely to have been John’s ­mother, Alice (d. 1273). All of t­hese sources testify to Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s widespread reputation as a holy w ­ oman and, more specifically, as a prophet whose link to God allowed her to see the spiritual state or fate of o ­ thers.17 Elizabeth, however, did have her detractors. ­After all, she was not a nun or even a member of a stable beguinage.18 Her existence was inherently controversial, a spectacle of sorts, as she drew attention to herself with her dramatic acting out of the Passion in her quasi-­domestic setting. Doubts about the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s stigmata ­were raised by the Franciscan master of theology Guibert of Tournai. Just as with Thomas of Cantimpré, we are again in the presence of a churchman who had been one of Isabelle of France’s strongest supporters. But Guibert’s attitude t­ oward Elizabeth was very dif­fer­ent from Thomas’s. Guibert (at least by this time) was a fierce critic of un­regu­la­ted beguines. Moreover, as a Franciscan he was unlikely to appreciate anything that seemed to detract from the unique status of St.  Francis, whose stigmata marked him as alter Christus (another Christ).19 Hence Guibert had several reasons for casting doubt on Elizabeth’s reputation. 16. ​Berlière, “Guillaume de Ryckel abbé de Saint-­Trond,” 275–76. Walter Simons (in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” n. 10) also points out, intriguingly, that this same Hedwig had helped transfer relics from Cologne to Royaumont at the request of Louis IX in 1261. 17. ​Hendrix, “Hadewijch benaderd vanuit de Tekst over de 22e Volmaakte,” 133–39, suggested that the beguine mystic Hadewijch referred to Elizabeth of Spalbeek (and the enigmatic Marie of Lille) in her “List of the Perfect.” Although the suggestion is in­ter­est­ing, I agree with Walter Simons that ultimately it is not convincing. See Simons, “Historical Hadewijch.” I thank Professor Simons for sharing this chapter before its publication. 18. ​It has been argued that Elizabeth was a nun at Herkenrode. See particularly Bussels, “Was Elisabeth van Spalbeek Cisterciënserin in Herkenrode?” But this assertion rests largely on a title added ­later to the best-­known manuscript of Philip of Clairvaux’s probatio (see note 4) and followed by a late fifteenth-­century author, as well as ­later “tradition” at Herkenrode. If Elizabeth ever did become a nun, it was not ­until ­after the events considered ­here had tran­spired. 19. ​Philip of Clairvaux’s text was explicit in making Elizabeth a female analogue to Francis, which would have given pause to any Franciscan. See comments in Simons, “Reading a Saint’s Body,” 11; and Forthomme, “Le signe jaloux,” 268.

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In preparation for the Second Council of Lyon, called by Gregory X for 1274, Guibert prepared a treatise that addressed con­temporary ills and treated prob­lems associated with vari­ous categories of laypeople and ecclesiastics.20 He concluded with a puzzling category, “­women who live among us who are called beguines.” According to Guibert, t­ hese ­women “rejoice in novelties” and raise danger by irreverently reading and discussing the mysteries of scripture, leading to heresy, error, and dubious interpretations. “Among t­hese ­little ­women (mulierculae),” wrote Guibert, “­there is one around whom a more or less public rumor has arisen, that she is signed by the stigmata of Christ.” Although Elizabeth was clearly not an inhabitant of the beguinage of Sint-­ Truiden (St. Agnes’s, founded by William of Rijkel), still, in a looser sense, she must have struck some observers as partaking in the beguine movement as a nonprofessed, unenclosed holy w ­ oman. Given the overwhelming evidence for the reach of Elizabeth’s reputation as a stigmatic by this point, ­there can be ­little doubt that it was she whom Guibert had in mind.21 And Guibert was evidently dubious about this rumor: “If this is true,” he cried, “it should not foster obscurity but be known more openly. If it is not true, then hy­poc­risy and deceit should be exposed!” Was Elizabeth of Spalbeek known, at least by reputation, at the Capetian court before 1276? The chances seem reasonable, given that Philip of Clairvaux and particularly Guibert of Tournai w ­ ere prominent figures with ties to the court, and that the writings of Thomas of Cantimpré had a wide circulation as well. If so, the court might have had two very dif­fer­ent images of Elizabeth of Spalbeek from which to choose: inspired prophetess or potential fraud. Fi­nally, as we return to the year 1276, it is notable that Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s main promoters dis­appeared from the scene at just this moment. Thomas of Cantimpré prob­ably died not long ­after 1270, William of Rijkel in 1272, and Philip of Clairvaux in 1273, while her distant relative Henry of Guelders was deposed as bishop of Liège by Gregory X in 1274.22 ­These deaths and deposition do not necessarily mean that Elizabeth’s network of supporters entirely collapsed. But it may be telling that only the highly critical Guibert of Tournai lived on (­until 1284). He had called for Elizabeth’s claims to be more openly and publicly examined. Though the ensuing events would not 20. ​Stroick, “Collectio de scandalis Ecclesiae nova editio,” 61–62. Guibert’s authorship is not absolutely certain but has been widely accepted by scholarship. 21. ​I agree with Simons on the near certainty of this identification. See also Stroick, “Wer ist die Stigmatisierte in einer Reformschrift für das zweite Lyoner Konzil?”; and Vauchez, “Les stigmates de saint François,” 610. 22. ​For their adversarial relationship, see Baldwin, Pope Gregory X and the Crusades, 27–32.

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involve the question of Elizabeth’s stigmata, in a larger sense Guibert would get his wish. The Capetian court was about to pour time and effort into establishing “more openly” just what Elizabeth was saying from her chapel in Spalbeek.

A Death and Two Rumors The best source for the events that followed the death of Prince Louis is a deposition given by the cardinal legate Simon of Brie. Simon had just arrived back in northern France in 1274 with a mandate to help prepare for a new crusade. His original French testimony is recorded in a clear scribal hand on four sheets of parchment sewn together into a roll.23 The last date mentioned in the testimony is 11 January 1278 (by modern reckoning), and it seems likely that this testimony was recorded shortly ­after that date (certainly before August). Nothing in the text specifies exactly why the deposition was recorded, or in exactly what context. But it is headed “The ­matter of the bishop of Bayeux’s ­doings, in so far as it concerns the legate.”24 The bishop of Bayeux was Pierre de Benais, a close associate of the royal favorite Pierre de La Broce. In January 1278 Pierre de La Broce was arrested and Pierre de Benais fled to Rome, so by the time Simon gave his testimony, “the bishop of Bayeux’s ­doings” ­were highly suspect. In other words, this deposition was given with the knowledge that in the end Pierre de Benais and Pierre de La Broce had emerged as the villains of the story. Simon of Brie’s testimony begins in July 1276, when Pierre de Benais, at that time dean of the cathedral chapter of Bayeux, came to see him at the church of Sainte-­Geneviève in Paris. ­These two men must have been well acquainted. They had, for instance, recently crossed paths as part of the negotiations around Philip III’s candidacy for the imperial throne in 1273.25 Now 23. ​AN J 429, no. 1. First edited in de Gaulle, “Documents historiques,” 88–96; again in Delisle, Cartulaire normand de Philippe-­Auguste, 227–30, no. 927; and in Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 3:58–62. An annotated En­glish translation can be found in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?” To date, the best reading of this evidence is Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” chap. 8. My interpretation differs from his in several particulars, but I have benefited greatly from his generosity in allowing me to consult this work before publication. 24. ​For this section of the chapter, as well as for the following sections on the first, second, and third inquiries, where not other­wise noted, quotations come from Simon of Brie’s testimony as recorded in AN J 429, no. 1, and translated in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” 52–69. 25. ​Hélary, “Les rois de France et la terre sainte,” 28; Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 466; Langlois, Philippe III, 419–20.

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Pierre de Benais wanted to inform the legate of a potentially explosive rumor. All over Paris, he said, p­ eople ­were asserting that Queen Marie of Brabant and her ­house­hold of foreigners had poisoned Prince Louis. Moreover, the Pa­ri­ sian populace feared that the queen intended to do away with the other ­children from the king’s first marriage so that her own son could inherit the kingdom. When Simon of Brie replied that he did not believe “that such t­ hings had been said in Paris about the queen and her w ­ omen,” Pierre de Benais assured him that the rumor had so riled up the ­people that the queen and her ladies ­were afraid to leave the Louvre, even just to make the short trip to the cathedral of Notre Dame, for fear of being attacked. Simon of Brie testified that he initiated an inquiry and found that t­ here ­were no such rumors. He thus reproached Pierre with this finding the next time he saw him, but Pierre insisted his statement was true and replied that “he thought the legate had not diligently inquired into the ­matter.” Given Simon’s explicit statement that he had found no evidence of t­ hese rumors against the queen, and the fact that the dean of Bayeux was evidently intending to stir up anger against her, it is tempting to conclude that ­these supposed rumors ­were entirely fabricated by the circle around Pierre de La Broce. Yet it may be that Pierre de Benais was fanning the flames of suspicion rather than lighting a fire himself. By the spring of 1276 not one but two of Philip III’s sons had died (his younger son Robert had passed away before May). Two deaths in quick succession could well have sparked fears of a plot against the sons of Isabelle of Aragon. Perhaps even more importantly, when Marie of Brabant had given birth to her first son in May, the boy had been named Louis, which could have suggested that the queen intended him to take the place of the recently deceased heir to the throne.26 At any rate, by July 1276 Simon of Brie was aware of Pierre de Benais’s claim that, according to public rumor, the queen or her retinue had poisoned the prince. But now the legate’s testimony introduces a second, competing rumor about why the young Louis had died. Simon reports that in September he visited Philip III at Tours, just as the king was departing for Navarre and the ill-­fated attempt to invade Castile. The legate apparently said nothing to the king about the supposed rumors concerning Marie of Brabant. Instead, it was Philip who took Simon aside, alone, and told him “that he had been notified from Flanders that a canon of Laon, who was called Vidame, was most villainously and outrageously defaming him concerning sinning against nature.” It is not specified how the king received this report, but Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders, had just arrived at Tours for the gathering of the royal 26. ​Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:212–13, admits the same possibility.

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army, as had John I of Brabant and his ­brother Godfrey.27 Perhaps along with their retinues came a report “from Flanders” about what this canon of Laon was saying. “Sinning against nature” indicates an accusation of what w ­ ere considered deviant sexual habits. Although homosexual acts are not the only ones that could be implied by such a term, they seem the most likely ­here.28 ­These accusations ­were potentially explosive for the king’s reputation. Indeed, it is remarkable that the papal legate chose to rec­ord this accusation at all, particularly in a document intended for the royal court. It seems implied, though not clearly stated, that this accusation was linked to resentment about the king’s close re­ hether or not Simon believed in the lationship with Pierre de La Broce.29 W real­ity of a sexual liaison between the king and his favorite, he seems to have been ­eager to rec­ord that something about the king’s comportment had given rise to rumor. What­ever Simon’s personal perspective, if this rumor involved suspicion that ­there was something immoral about the king’s relationship to his favorite, then it constituted a direct c­ ounter to the rumor already being spread by Pierre de Benais. That is, one rumor portrayed the queen as a sinister influence at court, while the other assigned a corrupting ele­ment to Pierre de La Broce’s position. On the one hand, the king was urged to punish or dismiss the queen; on the other, he was pressed to rid himself of his favorite. What was the source of ­these accusations from the north? “Vidame” of Pisa, or Vicedominus as his name was written in Italian and Latin, is a documented figure as canon of Laon and papal chaplain.30 But this man presented himself more as a messenger rather than the direct mouthpiece for God’s warnings. As Simon of Brie’s testimony continues, the king explained to him that Vicedominus was relying on statements by “two holy w ­ omen in the diocese of Liège, one named Alice, who is leprous, and the other named Isabel de Sparbeke.” It was ­these ­women who “had told him that the king was stained by this vice.” “Alice, who is leprous” remains a shadowy figure. It is tempting to identify her with Alice of Schaerbeek, sometimes called “Alice the Leper,” for whom a con­temporary vita survives. But since this ­woman seems to have died around 27. ​Pointed out by Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:214–15. 28. ​Chiffoleau, “Contra naturam.” 29. ​Sleiderink, “Een straf van God,” treats the accusation of homo­sexuality as central to the entire affair (48–50). Hélary, “La reine, le légat, et le chambellan,” 166, also considers the possibility of a sexual relationship between the king and his favorite. 30. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 467n30; Gay, Les Registres de Nicolas III, no. 681; and Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:215.

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1250, she cannot be referred to h ­ ere.31 A very late source of dubious reliability identifies the Alice in Simon’s testimony as “Aleidis of Loksbergen.” In spite of serious questions about this source’s authenticity, the identification may not be entirely imaginary, since Walter Simons has noted documentary evidence of a beguine of that very name in nearby Diest in 1275.32 In any case, this “Alice” dis­appears from Simon’s narrative in short order, leaving the stage to the other holy ­woman. And ­here we return to firmer historical ground. When all the evidence is considered, ­there is no question that Isabel de Sparbeke is the ­woman better known to history as Elizabeth of Spalbeek. If Philip III knew the extent of Elizabeth’s reputation, he would indeed have had good reason to worry that ­these accusations would be taken seriously. The king then asked Simon of Brie if the legate had heard any such rumors. Simon’s response is intriguing. He replied “that he had been told some time ago that a holy man had said that he knew, by a revelation from Our Lord, that the king was guilty of the just-­mentioned sin. And he had gone further, ­because he said that if the king did not repent immediately of this sin and confess, one of his c­ hildren would die within half a year.” The king quickly asked ­whether in fact the prince had died within that span of time. Simon replied that he had. It is again striking that Simon of Brie chose to include this information in his deposition at all. The papal legate, a firm ally of the Capetians, was adding his personal witness to the existence of rumors that God had been angered by the French king’s sins against nature. Simon seems determined to make sure that ­these accusations of sexual deviancy against the king ­were not forgotten, and he offered no reassuring words that might blunt their force. By contrast, when Pierre de Benais had informed him of the supposed rumors in Paris that called Marie of Brabant a poisoner, the legate (at least in retrospect) had indicated that he did not believe in their existence. His reaction to the rumors of sexual impropriety by the king was notably dif­fer­ent in tone. Moreover, Simon was not reporting exactly the same rumor that had come to Philip’s ears in September 1276. The story Simon had been told involved “a holy man,” not two holy w ­ omen. Was this “holy man” Vicedominus of Pisa? 31. ​See Martinus Cawley, trans., Alice the Leper: Life of St. Alice of Schaerbeek (Lafayette, OR: Guadalupe Translations, 2000); Simons, “Holy ­Women of the Low Countries,” 642. On the pos­si­ble relationship between this ­woman and the “Alice” in Simon of Brie’s testimony, see Njus, “The Politics of Mysticism,” 311n96. 32. ​See Walter Simons’s appendix to Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” assessing a dubious document claimed to be given in Dutch translation in Jean-­Baptiste De Grove, “Maria van Braband: Tafereel uit de vaederlandsche geschiedenis, XIII eeuw,” in Geschiedkundige verscheidenheden voorgelezen in het taelminnend genootschap: De Vlaemsche Broeders van Limburg, met zinspreuk: Concordia et Labore (Hasselt: H.-­J.Ceyssens, 1862), 71–112.

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It seems likely, though nowhere e­ lse is a reputation for holiness attributed to him. The impor­tant fact is that several dif­fer­ent, though related, rumors w ­ ere circulating. This one had reached the legate’s ears significantly earlier, within the six-­month period before the prince’s death, thus in late 1275 or early 1276. Yet apparently Simon had said nothing about the m ­ atter to the king at the time, and not even when the boy died. This chronology also implies that Simon was aware of this rumor well before Pierre de Benais approached him with his competing claim about the queen’s role in the boy’s death. For his part, the king’s reaction is now equally unexpected. Instead of suggesting that the supposed revelation was a fraud, the “very angry and extremely ill at ease” king “suspected that his son might have been poisoned, so that what had been said about him concerning the just-­mentioned sin would be believed.” In other words, the king’s immediate thought was that if this prophecy was widely known, then someone who wished him ill might have murdered the prince, precisely to make p­ eople believe that the revelation had been true, and hence that the king had indeed sinned against nature.33 Although the report has nothing to do with poison but rather with his own sins, the king himself jumped to the conclusion that his son could have been poisoned. As Simon reports it, the king then thought immediately about what Vicedominus had said “in a letter” sent to the king, “in which it was related that the two above-­mentioned ­women had said to this Vicedominus that God had revealed to them that the king was stained with and guilty of the said sin, and that if he did not change his ways immediately, nothing would remain of him on earth.” Although the wording of Simon’s deposition is frustratingly vague, it does not seem that this “letter” is the same as the initial report the king had received from Flanders. Most importantly, it now contained a further menace: if Philip did not reform, “nothing would remain of him on earth.” The two holy ­women, and Vicedominus writing in their name, ­were conveying God’s threat that further punishment might lie in store. Specifically, the king’s line, the Capetian dynasty, would die out. Simon of Brie ends his report of this ­whole exchange with his own emphatic assertion of the real­ity of the revelations coming from Vicedominus. The legate admitted that he had not heard them said by Vicedominus “in per33. ​Piron, “La parole prophétique,” 280–82. Sleiderink, “Een straf van God,” 48, suggests that this is exactly what did happen. That is, Vicedominus of Pisa put forth the prophecy that the boy would die within six months if the king did not end his contra naturam relationship with Pierre de La Broce; the Brabantine party then poisoned the prince to make it seem as though God had sent down this punishment; and Elizabeth of Spalbeek was enlisted to “reveal” that this had indeed been the work of God (but l­ater refused to play her part as instructed). This theory is also briefly summed up in Sleiderink, De stem van de meester, 76–77. I owe the latter reference to Walter Simons.

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son at that point” but rather from “Madame the queen, the king’s ­mother,” who had heard them said by Vicedominus, though Simon “­later also heard them said by him.” The sudden entrance of Marguerite of Provence, ­widow of Louis IX and ­mother of Philip III, is another surprise.34 The queen ­mother appears to have been in contact with Vicedominus of Pisa, though how, when, and where are not made clear. Perhaps this passage shows that Vicedominus was quickly hauled in to the royal court to clarify his story, and that Marguerite of Provence was privy to this initial questioning, passing on what she heard to the legate.35 But Walter Simons has also noted that Marguerite’s almoner was Galien of Pisa;36 perhaps the two Pisans had been in contact, and so allowed Marguerite to be better informed than other members of the court. Simon of Brie then seems to have had the chance to speak with Vicedominus, presumably ­after the latter’s arrest, which followed in short order. Once again, Simon of Brie in his own testimony goes out of his way to insist that ­these rumors and their implied threat to the entire Capetian line ­were very real.

The First Inquiry In light of ­these events, the king and the legate agreed to send someone to question the two ­women as to ­whether they had indeed told Vicedominus of Pisa “that the king was in such sin” or, more generally, ­whether they had said anything to him “about the death of the boy.” Philip III and Simon of Brie evidently wished to appoint a man whom both trusted, and they settled first on William of Mâcon (c. 1235–1308), who was archdeacon of Amiens but also canon of Laon, and so would likely have known Vicedominus of Pisa personally. William had long been close to the royal court—­for instance, acting as Philip III’s emissary to Gregory X in 1273 and even reporting one of Louis IX’s earliest posthumous miracles to the Dominican William of Chartres. He was also a papal chaplain (like Vicedominus of Pisa), acted as Simon of Brie’s secretary during his French legation, and shortly afterward was elected

34. ​Sivéry, Marguerite de Provence, 230–31, briefly notes Marguerite’s relationship to this affair. 35. ​Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:215–16, points out pos­si­ble confusion between Vidame/ Vicedominus of Pisa, canon of Laon, and the man who held the ­actual office of “Vidame” of Laon, Baldwin lord of Clacy; if it was the former (and not the latter as might seem more likely) who appeared in a list of members of the royal ­house­hold in 1275, then perhaps Vicedominus of Pisa was closer to the royal court than it might seem. Walter Simons, however, has noted countering evidence, in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” n. 46. 36. ​Though it is not clear how early Galien began to serve the queen ­mother. See Brunel, “Un italien en France au XIIIe siècle,” 249–76.

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bishop of Amiens in 1278. He would indeed have been an ideal candidate for this mission.37 But at this point, Pierre de La Broce enters Simon of Brie’s testimony directly. Again, ­these two men must have known each other well. Not only had both been part of Louis IX’s retinue, but William Chester Jordan has pointed out that they had just worked together in 1275 ­toward funding the planned crusade.38 When Pierre de La Broce found out about the upcoming inquiry, he moved quickly to control it by suggesting that the best man for the job would be none other than Pierre de Benais. Simon of Brie protested against entrusting the mission to Pierre de Benais, but not for the reasons one might suspect. Instead of exposing Pierre’s earlier attempts to defame the queen, Simon noted that the election of the bishopric of Bayeux was coming up and that Pierre de Benais was likely to be elected (thanks to the backing of Pierre de La Broce).39 In that case, Pierre de Benais would be too busy to undertake this mission. But Pierre de La Broce assured the legate that he would order Pierre de Benais to head north without delay, no ­matter what the results of the election. Indeed, when Pierre de Benais was duly elected to the see of Bayeux, Pierre de La Broce was able to ensure that the secular insignia of the office ­were delivered without the new bishop “having to come and ask for them from the king and without making the oath of fealty, contrary to the customs and usages of the kings of France” (as former Keeper of the Seal, Simon’s indignation is palpable). In the event, Simon of Brie returned to Paris while Pierre de Benais, now bishop-­elect of Bayeux, departed sometime between September and November 1276 to question the two saintes femmes. His charge was to make them “swear to tell the truth about what he would ask them, in the presence of the bishop of Liège.” Simon does not state where this questioning took place, but several indications point to Sint-­Truiden.40 In terms of po­liti­cal bound­aries, the king of France had no authority in the county of Loon or the duchy of Brabant. But this mission was carried out in an ecclesiastical context, entrusted to the bishop-­elect of Bayeux with the oversight of the bishop of Liège. In 37. ​Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:220; Field, Sanctity of Louis IX, 151; Baldwin, Pope Gregory X and the Crusades, 83, 86, 172; Jones, “ ‘mais tot por le servise Deu?,’ ” 222–23; Millet, Les chanoines du chapitre cathédral de Laon, 511–20; and Barthélemy Hauréau, “Guillaume de Mâcon, canoniste,” Histoire littéraire de la France 25 (1869): 380–403. 38. ​Jordan, “Strug­gle for Influence,” 450n67. 39. ​The previous bishop of Bayeux, Gregory of Naples, died in July 1276. 40. ​See the appendix to Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” for Walter Simons’s analy­sis of a dubious document that suggests the interview took place at Halen. In fact, not only was the second inquiry at Sint-­Truiden, but the monk who is l­ater shown (in evidence from the fourth inquiry) to have acted as translator at this first inquiry was John of Sint-­Truiden.

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1274, Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s relative Henry of Guelders had been deposed from the latter office. The new bishop was John of Enghien, who held the see of Tournai (r. 1267–74) before Gregory X transferred him to Liège (r. 1274– 81).41 John was related to the d’Avesnes counts of Hainaut (his ­father had been among the nobles who had resisted Charles of Anjou’s incursion into Hainaut in 1254), but his patron Gregory X had just died, his cathedral chapter was fractious, and a dispute with the Count of Flanders had just broken out. John of Enghien prob­ably had no wish to antagonize the king of France or the papal legate at this moment. The letter that Pierre de Benais carried (according to Simon of Brie) asked the bishop of Liège to accompany the bishop-­elect of Bayeux to the two ­women “and have them swear to tell the truth, and listen to what they responded to what the bishop-­elect would ask them.” As for Pierre de Benais, Simon of Brie gave him further instructions before his departure; he was “to ask each of ­these two ­women individually, ­after she had sworn on the saints in the presence of the said bishop [of Liège],” ­whether she had said to Vicedominus of Pisa or to anyone ­else “that the king was stained with the said sin, and if she had said anything about the death of the boy.” Pierre de Benais returned from his mission by December 1276, bringing Simon of Brie a sealed letter from the bishop of Liège.42 According to Simon’s recollection, the bishop’s letter stated that each w ­ oman had sworn on oath that she had never told Vicedominus of Pisa or anyone ­else that the king was “stained” with sins against nature, and that “she believed that the king was a good prince and loyal and honest, and that she had never spoken about the boy’s death to Vicedominus or anyone ­else, nor had she known anything about it u ­ ntil ­after the boy’s death.” It is worth noting that neither h ­ ere nor anywhere ­else in ­these documents did any of the returning questioners remark on Elizabeth of Spalbeek bearing the stigmata or reenacting the Passion. E ­ ither she had ceased to manifest ­these marks of holiness, or they seemed irrelevant to the ­matter at hand. What are we to make of this outright denial? Had t­ hese ­women ever told Vicedominus that King Philip III was guilty of sinning against nature and that God would punish him if he did not change his ways? Vicedominus of Pisa 41. ​Marchandisse, La fonction épiscopale à Liège aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles, 150–55; and Closon, “Jean d’Enghien.” 42. ​The sealed letter Simon refers to is not extant. Throughout his testimony we have only his reports of what was contained in the documents that w ­ ere provided to him, though the in­de­pen­dent fourth inquiry confirms that such documents ­were in fact prepared. See the appendix to Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” on the unreliable document that claims to be a translation of this lost letter.

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might have lied and invoked their names to give his own accusations legitimacy. It seems more likely, however, that Elizabeth (and presumably Alice) did in fact make statements about what she believed God had revealed to her concerning the king.43 For one t­hing, it is hard to see why Vicedominus would have named ­these two ­women specifically, in a letter to the king, ­unless he at least thought he was telling the truth. By contrast, it is easy enough to think of Elizabeth, far from Paris, speaking freely in her local circle where she enjoyed a glowing reputation, and then realizing how foolhardy her public statements had been once she was faced with ominous questioning by her new bishop and another churchman sent from the king of France. But the best reason to suspect that Elizabeth of Spalbeek ­really did make statements about the king in line with the ones Vicedominus attributed to her is the fact that she had already been well documented in Philip of Clairvaux’s probatio as repeatedly offering exactly ­these kinds of warnings on God’s behalf. Indeed, she had been lavishly praised for them.44 This new episode was entirely of a piece with her earlier recorded be­hav­ior. But now, having extended her revealed knowledge to the state of the king’s soul, and having applied her divine warnings to the ­f uture of the Capetian line, Elizabeth found that her revelations received a far less favorable response. In short, every­thing suggests the likelihood that Elizabeth had offered a bold prophecy in line with her earlier revelations, but quickly retreated when the real­ity of the situation dawned on her. This could have been the end of the affair. That would certainly have been a satisfactory result for the king. Pierre de Benais, however, evidently wished to see w ­ hether Elizabeth’s reputation could be used to cast suspicion on the queen. ­After delivering the bishop of Liège’s formal letter, Pierre told Simon of Brie that he had more to report. His further claim was that he had met secretly with Elizabeth of Spalbeek and that she had told him that “without doubt it had been revealed to her that the boy had been poisoned, and that the men or ­women who had poisoned him ­were from the young queen’s ­house­hold.” Pierre did not explain (or at least Simon did not relate) why he had felt justified in staging this secret meeting, outside the bounds of his royal commission. It is striking that Elizabeth of Spalbeek has suddenly taken center stage by herself. The leprous Alice dis­appears from the narrative at this point, never to return. More fundamentally, Pierre de Benais places new emphasis on Eliza43. ​On this point I agree with Njus, “Politics of Mysticism,” 314, though she thinks it pos­si­ble that Elizabeth was acting at the behest of the queen’s party. 44. ​It is true that someone familiar with her earlier prophecies could have purposely mimicked her prophetic mode while falsely attributing ­these claims to her.

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beth’s status as prophet. According to Pierre (as reported by Simon), Elizabeth knew of the poisoning “­because it ha[d] been revealed to her.” Whereas the ­women in their public responses had sought to distance themselves from any claims of divine knowledge, Pierre de Benais insisted on resurrecting ­those claims. Indeed, Pierre de Benais knew quite well he was returning to a thesis that Simon of Brie had already rejected. Pierre had tried a few months earlier to cast suspicion on Marie of Brabant and her ­house­hold by asserting that “every­one in Paris” believed the queen’s ­house­hold had poisoned the boy. Now he raised the stakes by appealing to a higher source of authority. Rather than relying on popu­lar rumor, Pierre now pointed to divine revelation, as received by Elizabeth of Spalbeek. In other words, whereas the two competing rumors had entirely dif­fer­ent origins, now not only the original accusations about the king’s sins but also Pierre’s accusations against the queen of France had come to hinge on the holy ­woman of Spalbeek. Interestingly, Pierre also claimed that Elizabeth had assured him that the queen and her ­house­hold would get no further with their evil plans. He said he had further asked Elizabeth ­whether the same ­thing (death by poisoning) might happen “to the other ­children of the king by his first wife, so that the ­children of the young queen would be heirs to the kingdom of France.” Elizabeth (still according to Simon of Brie’s report of Pierre de Benais’s words) assured him that this would not happen, and that “the king’s sons by his first wife ­will be heirs to the kingdom.” Thus, as Pierre tried to reshape the entire nature of Elizabeth’s prophecies, not only was God not threatening to bring the Capetian line to an end—as Vicedominus of Pisa had claimed that Elizabeth was saying—­but in fact God was reassuring the king, through Elizabeth, that his current heirs would inherit, and that his line would continue. Pierre was putting ever more weight on Elizabeth’s ability to speak for God. Still, he could not resist adding an insolent ending to his report, attributing to Elizabeth the statement that the king would nevertheless “be wise to guard his remaining ­children from his first wife better than he had the eldest.” Did Elizabeth of Spalbeek actually convey t­ hese secret accusations to Pierre de Benais? Based on the evidence surveyed so far, it seems unlikely she would have done so. If Elizabeth had just extricated herself from the very delicate position of being thought to have accused the king of sodomy, she would hardly then have taken the bishop-­elect of Bayeux aside to launch a contradictory, but equally inflammatory, accusation against the queen. This kind of accusation is also foreign to Elizabeth’s earlier warnings, which all had to do with divine revelations about the state of other ­people’s souls. ­There also seems no reason why Elizabeth, linked at least indirectly by blood to Marie of Brabant, should have taken the queen as a target. Yet perhaps Pierre de Benais

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had somehow convinced Elizabeth that the king expected her to state that the queen was guilty. That is, if the bishop of Bayeux had conveyed the impression that Elizabeth would face punishment if she did not comply with this demand, perhaps the already frightened ­woman might have made the statement that she believed was expected of her. This question would come up again in ­later testimony. According to his deposition, Simon of Brie reacted to Pierre’s report of his secret interview with Elizabeth by asking for more information: Who from the queen’s h ­ ouse­hold had carried out the poisoning? But Pierre de Benais would tell him only that it was ­people “closest to the queen.” His excuse was that he could not provide specific names ­because he had received this information in confidence, and he only had Elizabeth’s reluctant permission to give the information to the legate in general terms. At this evasion, Simon fi­nally exploded, furious that even though Pierre had been commissioned as his agent, he now claimed to be unable to share information with him. Pierre, however, replied that Elizabeth “would not have told me if I had not received it in secret . . . ​but think what you like, Sire. It seems to me that I am telling you enough when I tell you that they are the closest p­ eople to the queen. Surely you can think of who they are!” It does not seem that Simon of Brie now took the accusations against Marie of Brabant any more seriously than he had in July. ­There is no evidence that he or anyone ­else informed the king at this point about the accusations against his wife, and no external evidence suggests a rift between the king and queen. Philip and his army had just returned from Sauveterre in December 1276, ­after the abortive attempt to attack Castile. At this unhappy moment the king “heard the response” that Pierre de Benais had brought back “by the tenor” of the bishop of Liège’s letter. This formal response, of course, included only the fact that the two holy w ­ omen from the diocese of Liège had denied the statements attributed to them by Vicedominus of Pisa. This, then, was the issue still facing the king: someone was lying—­was it the ­women or the canon of Laon?

The Second Inquiry And so a second del­e­ga­tion was sent back to Elizabeth of Spalbeek in December 1276 or early in 1277. L ­ ater evidence (from the third inquiry) shows that this meeting took place at Sint-­Truiden. The text actually says, logically enough, that the intent was to question again “the said ­women” (plural), but Alice never reappears in Simon of Brie’s testimony. For this second inquiry Pierre de Be-

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nais, now consecrated as bishop of Bayeux, was joined by Matthew of Vendôme, the longtime abbot of Saint-­Denis (r. 1258–86), former regent, and trusted royal adviser.45 ­There is no specific indication in the documentation as to w ­ hether the bishop of Liège was pres­ent, though it seems likely he would have been. The goal was to confront Vicedominus of Pisa with the two w ­ omen directly, and Simon’s account says that Vicedominus was “to be led ­there.” ­Later evidence shows that the canon of Laon was placed ­under royal arrest at some point.46 Very likely he was already in custody. The idea was now to have him pres­ent when Elizabeth was questioned anew. But Simon’s initial account of this second inquiry is quite brief and does not reveal what role Vicedominus played once the new round of questioning was ­under way. This second del­e­ga­tion ultimately included one more member, since Pierre de La Broce suggested that Jacques of Dinant, a Benedictine monk from Vézelay, would be useful for its work. Perhaps the idea was that his linguistic skills would be of help. But Dinant, some one hundred kilo­meters south of Sint-­ Truiden, was in a largely French-­speaking area, and ­later events would prove that this monk’s grasp of Elizabeth’s Dutch dialect was shaky at best. Nevertheless, Pierre de Benais praised the idea of his participation, paid Jacques from his own purse, and even got William of Mâcon to lend the monk one hundred sous tournois. Once again Simon of Brie is clear about the lengths to which the two Pierres went in order to control ­these inquiries. Moreover, by stressing the way money changed hands, the legate hints at the possibility of bribery.47 Jacques of Dinant in turn suggested that he should go ahead and speak with an unnamed cleric who was familiar with Elizabeth of Spalbeek and Vicedominus of Pisa. Jacques did indeed precede the rest of the del­e­ga­tion, but Simon of Brie was unable to say w ­ hether he made contact with this mysterious cleric. The legate reports only that Jacques rushed to meet with Elizabeth before Pierre de Benais and Matthew of Vendôme could arrive at Sint-­Truiden. Simon cuts off his recollection of the second inquiry quite abruptly, saying that “more ­will be recorded further on.” For the moment, he cryptically states only that as far as what the bishop of Bayeux and the abbot of Saint-­Denis found on this occasion, “nothing pertains to the ­matter of the said bishop of Bayeux, which has been spoken of above, concerning the death of the boy.” Perhaps Elizabeth said something at this moment that the legate, in retrospect,

45. ​On Matthew of Vendôme, see Jordan, Tale of Two Monasteries, with discussion of this affair at 138–48. 46. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 470–73. 47. ​Sleiderlink, “Een straf van God,” stresses this point.

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preferred to pass over in silence.48 Perhaps Elizabeth became frightened and refused to say much of anything ­after the interview with Jacques of Dinant had put her on her guard. Neither h ­ ere nor at any l­ater point does any source give any description of what Elizabeth actually said during the formal portion of the second inquiry. If Elizabeth stuck to her claim that she knew nothing about the prince’s death, then Vicedominus of Pisa would seem to have been discredited. He in fact languished in confinement ­until at least 1279, ­after which point he dis­ appears from the historical rec­ord.49 One fact is clear: the question of the king’s supposed sins against nature is ­here brought to a close. From the king’s perspective, dispelling this rumor had been the goal of t­ hese inquiries all along. What­ever damage had been done to the king’s reputation might not have been fully repaired, but with Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s repeated denial of any knowledge of the ­matter, the Capetian court could feel that the prophetic claims of divine dis­plea­sure had at least been silenced. Or so it seemed, for the complex series of accusations and counteraccusations had not yet run its course.

The Third Inquiry Nearly a year l­ ater, at the end of November 1277, a third del­e­ga­tion set out to question Elizabeth of Spalbeek once more. Why was this further inquiry necessary if Elizabeth had already twice sworn that she had never claimed to receive prophetic knowledge about God’s anger at the French king? In fact, the objectives of this third inquiry ­were quite dif­fer­ent from ­those of the first two. An initial hint at how thoroughly the context had shifted is offered by the composition of this new del­e­ga­tion. The bishop of Liège, John of Enghien, was once again included, having just returned from Paris ­after conferring with the king in August.50 But Pierre de Benais was now nowhere to be found. Instead, the del­e­ga­tion was led by the Brabantine Templar Arnold of Wezemaal (d. 1291). Arnold, related by marriage to the ducal h ­ ouse of Brabant and onetime marshal of Brabant, had lost out in power strug­gles surrounding

48. ​One possibility could be that she did indeed refer in some way to the queen’s guilt, and that Simon did not want to include this fact in his ­later testimony. Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:225, suggests this possibility. But if Elizabeth had implicated the queen in her open testimony before not only Pierre de Benais but also Matthew of Vendôme, that fact would have been well known at court and ­there would have been no point in Simon attempting to cover it up. 49. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 473; further detail in Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:252–56. 50. ​Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:229.

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Duke John I’s ascension.51 He thus joined the Order of the T ­ emple in 1269 or 1270 and made his subsequent ­career at the courts of Philip III and Philip IV.52 Beyond the bishop and the Templar, Simon of Brie says only that “many ­others” ­were called on to partake in this del­e­ga­tion. ­Later evidence specifies that ­these “­others” included William of Pietersheim, canon of the cathedral of Saint-­Lambert and provost of Saint-­Martin of Liège,53 and the “prior of Wavre.” Walter Simons has shown that the latter was none other than William of Mechelen—­Benedictine monk of Affligem, half b­ rother of the Lord of Mechelen, relative of John of Enghien, subsequently abbot of Sint-­Truiden, and a well-­known (if disputed) figure in the history of medieval Dutch lit­er­a­ ture.54 For the first time in this series of events, interpreters would not be necessary, since the del­e­ga­tion was made up of Dutch speakers. This del­e­ga­tion traveled to Liège primarily on a po­liti­cal mission to help end the so-­called War of the Cow, in which a minor dispute had escalated by early 1276 into skirmishes between forces of the bishop of Liège and ­those of Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders and Namur.55 About the time Philip III called out his army to march on Navarre and Castile, the warring parties of the Low Countries had asked him to mediate. Now Arnold of Wezemaal traveled north to represent Philip III in this ­matter, as well as to re-­interrogate Elizabeth of Spalbeek. E ­ ither Pierre de La Broce and Pierre de Benais w ­ ere not aware that this diplomatic mission would include a third inquiry concerning Elizabeth, or the king was already suspicious enough of their motivations to prevent them from influencing this new round of questioning.56 The subject of the third inquiry was no longer what Elizabeth had or had not said to Vicedominus of Pisa concerning the original accusations of God’s anger ­toward the king. That set of rumors had effectively been quashed. Instead, the subject was now what Pierre de Benais and the other messengers had asked Elizabeth during the “secret” side interviews that had occurred during the first two inquiries, and what she had responded to them. Philip III had at last, by late 1277, become aware that Pierre de Benais had been trying to 51. ​John I and his ­mother, Alice (­widow of Henry III of Brabant), had deposed John’s mentally ill older ­brother Henry IV in 1266; Arnold had supported Henry IV. 52. ​For details and bibliography, see Walter Simons’s note 75 in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?” Arnold had been part of Robert II of Artois’s entourage when the latter was negotiating with Alphonso X of Castile in advance of the ill-­fated invasion force of the fall of 1276. 53. ​Marchandisse, L’obituaire de la cathédrale de Saint-­Lambert de Liège, 136n853. 54. ​See Walter Simons’s note 90 in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?” William of Nangis’s Latin life of Philip III (see chap. 4) claimed that Thibaut of Pouancé, ­later bishop of Dole, also went with this mission. 55. ​Coherently summarized by Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:227–30; and Closon, “Jean d’Enghien,” 62–68. 56. ​Hélary “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:231, prefers the former explanation.

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implicate the queen in the death of Prince Louis. It is not clear who told him, or when. Simon of Brie had (by his own admission) known for some time, but had apparently held his tongue as long as it seemed expedient. T ­ here is no credible evidence of the king accusing or incarcerating the queen (though such a scenario is depicted by some l­ater chroniclers). Marie, however, in a letter of August 1278 (discussed below), portrayed herself as having been in danger before her innocence was established. Perhaps, as Xavier Hélary has suggested, the queen’s h ­ ouse­hold was suspected, but without the queen herself being subject to any direct accusation by the king.57 One way or another, the fact that Pierre de Benais had made accusations against Marie of Brabant and her retinue was now known at court. Hence it was now Pierre de Benais’s claims that ­were being investigated, with his word pitted against Elizabeth’s: Had he been telling the truth when he reported to the legate at the end of 1276 that Elizabeth had told him in secret that her revelations placed blame on the queen and her ­house­hold? And what had occurred during the second inquiry, which Simon to this point had left largely unreported? ­After carry­ing out their questioning, the bishop of Liège and the Templar created another sealed report and rode south to pres­ent it to Simon of Brie and Jean of Acre at Reims, evidently in December 1277.58 Jean was a royal cousin, one of Philip III’s closest councillors and companions in arms, so ­there can be no doubt that the results of this inquiry became known at court. As usual, the original sealed document does not survive, and we have only Simon of Brie’s report of what it contained.59 According to Simon of Brie, when the bishop of Liège and ­Brother Arnold questioned Elizabeth as to what the bishop of Bayeux had asked her during the first inquiry, she stated that he “had asked her if she had ever said that the son of the king had been poisoned.” Right away it is apparent that this is a report only on what Pierre de Benais had asked Elizabeth in their supposed secret conversation. The formal questioning during the first inquiry, carried out in the presence of the bishop of Liège, had concerned the king’s supposed sins against nature and had resulted only in her statement that she knew noth57. ​Hélary, 1:226. 58. ​Evidence from the fourth inquiry shows that the report was also given to Jean of Acre and that Gautier of Chambly, archdeacon of Meaux, was able to make a copy that was used in the fourth inquiry. Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:232, points out that they may have been trying to pres­ ent their report far from Pierre de La Broce’s presence. Evidence for Jean of Acre’s c­ areer is compiled in Carolus-­Barré, Le procès de canonisation, 164–68. 59. ​Simon of Brie’s description actually relates what was asked and said about the second inquiry before moving backward to ask what was asked and said about the first inquiry. For the sake of clarity, that order is reversed in this analy­sis.

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ing at all about them or about the death of the prince. That questioning had been recorded and was not in dispute; moreover, all involved in this third inquiry prob­ably had a strong incentive not to reintroduce the question of the king’s supposed sins. But Elizabeth now confirmed that indeed a separate conversation had taken place between Pierre de Benais and herself involving the idea that the queen could have been b­ ehind the prince’s death. To this extent, Elizabeth was affirming what Pierre de Benais had reported orally to the legate ­after the first inquiry. She clarified that it had been Pierre who had initiated the further conversation, but did not deny that it had occurred. Pierre’s more specific claim to the legate had been that Elizabeth’s revelations confirmed the queen’s guilt. What would Elizabeth now report about the contents of that secret interview? According to Elizabeth, ­after raising the subject, Pierre had gone on in a leading way to say “that it was reported about her that she had said several times that the queen of France, the king’s wife, had procured this poisoning, and that for this reason without doubt [the queen] should be imprisoned.” He went further, naming “three or four” specific p­ eople and asking if they had been in on the plot. Of t­ hese names, Elizabeth could now remember only “the Lady of Perwez.” Félicie de Traynel, ­widow of Godefroy of Perwez, was indeed part of Marie of Brabant’s retinue.60 Pierre again asked Elizabeth “if she had said that the queen had poisoned the son of the king.” But Elizabeth answered “that she had never said this or anything like it.” Furthermore, according to Elizabeth, ­after Pierre de Benais had taken his initial leave, “he returned to her and implored her not to reveal the above mentioned t­ hings to anyone, ­because he intended to tell them all to the legate of France.” In sum, Elizabeth now confirmed that a conversation about the queen’s potential guilt had taken place during the first inquiry, but attributed all the impetus for this idea to Pierre and insisted (contrary to Pierre’s report to the legate) that she had denied ever believing or saying anything like this herself. As to the second inquiry, which had been entrusted to Pierre de Benais and Matthew of Vendôme, some of the mysteries raised by Simon’s initial silence are explained, while o ­ thers remain as murky as ever. Elizabeth now confirmed that the monk Jacques of Dinant had indeed hurried to meet with her at Sint-­ Truiden before Pierre or Matthew could arrive. He “admonished her that when the bishop [of Bayeux] and the abbot [of Saint-­Denis] should come to her, if they asked her about the poisoning of the son of the king, that she should say that the queen of France, the wife of the king, had had him poisoned, and that the Lady of Perwez and B ­ rother Henry, the Duke of Brabant’s almoner, 60. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 469, 476.

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had consented to this.”61 Pierre de Benais had already claimed to the legate that Elizabeth had put her prophetic authority b­ ehind his charges against the queen; now he needed her to confirm his story. The point would have been to raise ­these charges during the second official inquiry, in front of the highly respected abbot of Saint-­Denis. But if Elizabeth (according to her own testimony) had rejected Pierre de Benais’s first attempts to get her to support his charges, why should she go along now? Jacques of Dinant (she claimed) promised that “if she did this, she and t­ hose close to her would be well rewarded.” The idea of a bribe had already been suggested by Simon of Brie when he stressed that money had been given to Jacques before he set out. Now that idea is solidified, with Elizabeth insisting that she had been offered a corrupt bargain. But, testified Elizabeth, she answered the monk “that she knew nothing about this and did not believe that anything about it was true, b­ ecause it would be a horrible t­ hing to suspect the queen of such a t­hing.” Once more, Elizabeth’s response is a claim of ­simple ignorance, followed by a personal opinion. This account clarifies Elizabeth’s own stance about what had tran­spired during private interviews alongside the first and second inquiries. It has an internal coherence: Pierre de Benais had first tried to coax her into accusing the queen, and then his agent had tried to bribe her. But in both cases she had flatly refused. This scenario also seems to represent the legate’s final understanding of what had tran­spired. Every­thing about his pre­sen­ta­tion indicates that Simon of Brie doubted Pierre de Benais’s version of events and believed Elizabeth’s—or at least that was the impression he wished to convey to the court. But Elizabeth’s testimony (as reported by Simon) still leaves a ­g reat deal unexplained. The second inquiry was supposed to have allowed Vicedominus of Pisa, in the presence of not only Pierre de Benais but also Matthew of Vendôme, to confront the ­women whom he claimed had assured him of God’s anger at the French king. It was that set of rumors, not the supposed guilt of the queen, that had been the official charge of the mission. But neither in his earlier laconic description nor now in this longer version does Simon of Brie ever say what tran­spired during that “official” portion of the second investigation. Was ­there ever a confrontation between Vicedominus and Elizabeth? Did Pierre de Benais ever get to ask Elizabeth in front of Matthew of Vendôme ­whether the prince had been poisoned? Simon tells us nothing, limiting himself to what happened during the hurried conference that had taken place be61. ​Walter Simons points out that Henry, John I of Brabant’s almoner, was sent to the En­glish court on a diplomatic mission in January 1278, and so may have been used in this way on missions to the French court as well. See his note 81 in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?”

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tween Jacques and Elizabeth before the arrival of Pierre de Benais and Matthew of Vendôme. Simon of Brie’s deposition ends in January 1278. According to his account, the legate had been riding back from Reims to Saint-­Denis when Pierre de Benais caught up with him at Meaux on Sunday, 9 January. The next day (Monday), Pierre de Benais tried to plead his case as they rode t­ oward Saint-­Denis, where the king was waiting. Pierre now claimed that back in 1276 he had informed the legate (­after the first inquiry) that Elizabeth of Spalbeek had told him that she had said to Vicedominus of Pisa “that Monsieur Louis, the king’s son, had been poisoned, and that the queen, the king’s wife, and the Lady of Perwez had procured and seen to it that he was poisoned.” Simon corrected him, pointing out that while Pierre had indeed reported that Elizabeth had said that the poisoner had come from the queen’s ­house­hold, he had not named the queen or the Lady of Perwez at that time.62 Simon sharply reminded the bishop of Bayeux that he had refused to name names. All day, as they rode, Pierre continued to maintain that he had from the start reported that Elizabeth had identified the queen and the Lady of Perwez. Pierre even tried to return to his original rumor-­based claims, reminding Simon that he had also reported the “good information” that “it was being said all over Paris that the queen and the ­women of her ­house­hold had poisoned the boy.” And, he insisted, “you know well, Sire, that it is true that this was being said in Paris.” Simon retorted that Pierre had made this claim “four months or more” before he had returned from the first inquiry, and that, in any case, the legate had inquired into the m ­ atter himself and found that it was not true and had told Pierre this at the time. In fact, Simon emphasized, he had never heard any such rumors except from Pierre. The next day (Tuesday, 11 January 1278), presumably ­after meeting with the king, Simon rode off t­ oward Paris, and Pierre de Benais again caught up with him. He now admitted that the legate had been right; having thought it over, he now recalled that a­ fter returning from the first inquiry he had said only that the poisoner had come from the queen’s h ­ ouse­hold, and that he had refused to name any specific names. Pierre pleaded with the legate not to take his confusion amiss, since it had been a long time ago “and in the meantime I have been thinking about many other m ­ atters.” Simon responded in pique—­ even if you w ­ ere confused yesterday, he demanded, “why did you tell me, when you returned from the said Elizabeth the first time, that you could not say any more to me?” In the end, Pierre’s initial refusal to divulge information seems 62. ​In fact, Simon’s earlier testimony had not said that Pierre reported Elizabeth as making her claims through Vicedominus of Pisa.

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to have galled the legate more than anything. But Pierre’s answer is surprising: “I said that I could not say more to you ­because I did not believe that it was true, what this Elizabeth had said about the queen and the Lady of Perwez about the poisoning of the boy.” The legate told him “that the answer was neither good nor satisfying.” At the end of the line, Pierre de Benais tried to claim that he had never believed the story that Elizabeth (supposedly) had told him, a story that he had done every­thing pos­si­ble to get her to support. The man who had done the most to insist on Elizabeth’s prophetic powers had, at the last moment, tried to portray her as unreliable. The bishop of Bayeux must, by this time, have known which way the wind was blowing. Pierre de La Broce had prob­ably just been arrested,63 and Pierre de Benais himself would shortly flee to Rome.

The Fourth Inquiry Even now, the dossier was still not closed. We have followed the first three inquiries through Simon of Brie’s detailed deposition. Though the legate states that sealed reports w ­ ere produced following the first and third inquiries, and it seems virtually certain that the same would have been true for the second, none of ­those in­de­pen­dent documents survive, and so we have been dependent at ­every turn on the legate’s testimony. For the fourth inquiry, by contrast, we have the original report, dated 31 January 1278, which the bishop of Liège, John of Enghien, sent directly to King Philip III (not to the legate). Written in a northern (Picard) dialect of French, this letter was drafted on a single sheet of parchment and sealed.64 It relates that Philip III had sent two men back to the bishop of Liège. One was the Templar Arnold of Wezemaal, who was part of the third inquiry. The other was the archdeacon of Meaux, Gautier of Chambly. Gautier was a trusted member of the royal ­house­hold and of the mission to arbitrate in the aftermath of the War of the Cow (he would be elected bishop of Senlis in 1287).65 Now ­these two men ­were dispatched once again to John of Enghien for one last round of inquiries. The location or locations of the interviews are not noted, though presumably 63. ​See Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:237–39, for the evidence on this date. One chronicler reported 30 December 1277, and another reported 6 January 1278. Hélary also raises the possibility that Pierre de Benais’s change of heart between his conversation of 10 January and that of 11 January could have been caused by learning of his patron’s arrest. 64. ​AN J 429, no. 2. Edited in de Gaulle, “Documents historiques,” 96–98; and in Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 3:63–64. 65. ​Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:233.

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Elizabeth was found at Spalbeek or Sint-­Truiden. Besides the bishop of Liège, the Templar ­brother, and the archdeacon of Meaux, also pres­ent ­were the dean of Liège, the Dominican prior of Liège, and the guardian of the Franciscans of Liège. The exact dates on which the several interviews took place are not indicated, but they clearly come a­ fter the point at which Simon of Brie’s re­ collections had ended (11 January 1278) and before 31 January (the letter’s date). The final inquiry remained focused on the “secret” parts of the first and second inquiries. Simon of Brie’s testimony had given the impression that it had been Elizabeth’s word against Pierre de Benais’s and Jacques of Dinant’s as to what had tran­spired at ­those private meetings, beyond the bounds of the formal questionings for which John of Enghien and Matthew of Vendôme had been pres­ent. But now someone seems to have remembered that another class of witnesses was available: the men who had acted as translators.66 The questioners first swore in John, monk of Sint-­Truiden, who had acted as translator for Pierre de Benais during the first inquiry. John “was asked, on the oath that he had made, to tell what words the bishop of Bayeux had charged him with, and what he had said and asked Lizebeth de Spalbeke67 on behalf of the bishop of Bayeux or at his request.”68 John confirmed that he had indeed been told to ask Elizabeth if the prince had been poisoned, and if so, by whom. Once again, all parties agreed that Pierre de Benais had been the one to raise this scenario, in spite of having been charged only with investigating reports of the king’s own sins. That much seems certain. But when asked what answer Elizabeth had given, John replied, on oath, “that she answered that the king’s eldest son was poisoned, and with the knowledge of the queen, the king’s wife.” This answer, following so many resolute denials from Elizabeth, comes as a shock. This local monk, who prob­ably knew Elizabeth personally, contradicts all of her previous testimony and confirms what had seemed the highly dubious claims of the bishop of Bayeux. John of Enghien, Arnold of Wezemaal, and Gautier of Chambly now took the monk to confront Elizabeth of Spalbeek with his testimony, asking for her own version of what John of Saint-­Trond had said on behalf of Pierre de Benais. Elizabeth was evasive. Instead of answering, she asked why they ­were wasting their time, and hers too, with this new inquiry. ­After all, she reminded 66. ​No translator was asked to verify what had been said during the “official” parts of ­either the first or the second inquiry—­that is, the questioning that (in both cases) had concerned the reported revelation of God’s anger at the king’s sins. Translators w ­ ere surely involved t­ here as well, but again ­those portions of the story are discreetly set aside. 67. ​This local rendering of her name leaves no doubt that throughout the inquiries the w ­ oman Simon of Brie had referred to as Ysabel is indeed Elizabeth of Spalbeek. 68. ​In this section of the chapter, ­unless other­wise noted, all quotations come from AN J 429, no. 2, translated in Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” 69–75.

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them, the very same bishop of Liège and Templar b­ rother had already questioned her about this exchange, in the presence of the prior of Wavre and William of Pietersheim, canon of Liège, during the third inquiry. She had answered them, they had recorded her testimony, and she did not know anything now beyond what she had known then. One might expect that the interrogators would have insisted that she just answer the question. But in fact the dean of Liège was told to read Elizabeth’s earlier testimony (from the third inquiry) back to her. The copy the questioners had in their possession had been made by Gautier of Chambly from the original that John of Enghien and Arnold of Wezemal had given to Simon of Brie and Jean of Acre at Reims.69 That testimony, as given in Simon’s report, indicated that Elizabeth had rebuffed Pierre de Benais’s attempts during the first inquiry to get her to implicate the queen. Now Elizabeth confirmed, point by point, that the written testimony (from the third inquiry) was indeed an accurate rec­ord of what she had said (during the first inquiry). And she again swore, “in the hearing and sight of dom John the above-­mentioned monk,” that “she had never said anything but good about the above-­named queen, and now believed nothing but good about her, nor ever would believe anything but good.” John of Saint-­Trond was then allowed to defend himself, asking, “Lizebeth, ­don’t you remember that when I asked you on behalf of the bishop of Bayeux if the king of France’s eldest son, who was dead, was poisoned, and by whom, that you answered me that it had been done with the knowledge of the queen, the king’s wife?” But Elizabeth maintained her stout denial. Within every­one’s hearing, she asserted that she had never said anything like this and had always believed the queen to be good and would never say anything evil about her. She swore on her soul that although the question had indeed been put to her by the monk on behalf of Pierre de Benais, “she had answered as she had said above. And thus she seemed quite angered and amazed at the words that the monk attributed to her.” The entire exchange scrambles any sense of certainty about how to interpret all of the previous testimony. All of the evidence to this point has suggested that Elizabeth never made the accusations against the queen. Now, in the fourth inquiry, she maintains her denials. She at first seems to squirm and avoid the question, but ultimately conveys the impression of being “amazed” at what the monk John was saying. Yet John, for his part, seems shocked and even hurt when she refuses to corroborate his story. What are we to make of 69. ​It is h ­ ere that the letter specifies that the sealed testimony from the third inquiry had also been given to Jean of Acre.

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this? Possibly John of Sint-­Truiden felt he had no choice but to stick to a story that he had already told, even if he knew it was false. Or perhaps Pierre de Benais ­really had succeeded in getting Elizabeth to offer some kind of endorsement for his claims during the secret interview ­after the first inquiry, but she ­later thought better of it and changed her story. One t­ hing, however, is clear: Elizabeth continued to insist publicly that she had no super­natural knowledge about the prince’s death. Next, the team of interrogators questioned the mayor of Hoeselt (some twenty kilo­meters from Spalbeek), who had acted as translator for the monk from Vézelay, Jacques of Dinant, during the second inquiry. It is not stated where this questioning took place, nor how much time had gone by since John of Saint-­Trond had testified. Nor does the rec­ord say that in this case Elizabeth of Spalbeek was pres­ent or that she was confronted with the mayor’s testimony or asked to respond to it. According to the mayor, Jacques of Dinant had been confident enough in the local dialect to try to speak to Elizabeth directly. And so “Master Jacques said in Dutch to Isabel that if she was asked about what she had already said, that she should boldly affirm it and not worry at all.” This statement would seem to imply that Jacques of Dinant, acting as Pierre de Benais’s agent, believed that during the first inquiry Elizabeth had indeed confirmed the accusations against the queen. Hence, Pierre de Benais simply wanted to be sure that she would stick to t­ hese accusations when she was called on to do so in public. Recall that during the third inquiry Elizabeth had sworn that Jacques had tried to bribe her to accuse the queen, not that he had come to ask her to stick to an earlier story. Already their two versions of events are diverging. Interestingly, the current account does not specify how Elizabeth at first responded to Jacques. Instead, the mayor reports that Jacques was not sure ­whether Elizabeth had understood his Dutch. So Jacques had asked the mayor to repeat his words. When the mayor complied, Elizabeth now seems to have understood. But (still according to the mayor’s testimony) she “was quite amazed at ­these words, and began to laugh.” The mayor quoted her response directly: “What is he trying to say? I ­will never deny what I said!” The phrase is maddeningly ambiguous. It might seem to affirm that Elizabeth was complying with Jacques’s request; he wanted her to remain true to what (he believed) she had already said, and she laughingly reassures him that she ­will not deny what she had already said. But during the public portion of the first inquiry, in the presence of not only Pierre de Benais but also the bishop of Liège (now again pres­ent), Elizabeth’s only recorded statement had been that she knew nothing about the boy’s death or any sins of the king. It may be that this was the statement from which Elizabeth (according to the mayor)

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would not budge. Nothing suggests that during the second inquiry, in the presence of Pierre de Benais and Matthew of Vendôme, Elizabeth had in fact been willing to accuse the queen. If she was sticking to testimony given publicly, it was the well-­attested statement that she knew nothing whatsoever about the boy’s death. ­There does not seem to have been a thorough effort to further establish a clear version of the truth. Perhaps the bishop, who several times at the close of the letter pleads that no one should be injured by the words he recorded ­there, preferred to leave some ambiguity. In sum, we could wish for clearer evidence to resolve the question of who ­really said what to whom. On balance, though, it seems pos­si­ble that Elizabeth could have been momentarily frightened into complying with Pierre de Benais’s insistence during the secret portion of the first inquiry that she implicate the queen and her retinue in the death of the prince. But aside from that (pos­si­ble) moment, she was resolute in stating publicly and repeatedly that she knew nothing at all about the boy’s demise, and that she believed both the king and the queen to be good and just. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth remained anxious ­after ­these interviews. The bishop of Liège’s letter to the king ends by adding that “the next morning” Elizabeth “called back” the team of questioners. “Of her own ­free ­will” she swore once more “that all t­hese ­things that are written above are true, and just as they are written, and . . . ​that they are just as she said above.” This insistence on her own truthfulness is the last surviving statement from the holy ­woman Elizabeth of Spalbeek. In August 1278, the vindicated Queen Marie of Brabant wrote to Pope Nicholas III to press for Pierre de Benais’s arrest and punishment.70 The draft that remains in the royal archives was first written up not only in her name but in that of fifteen noble supporters, including her ­brother the Duke of Brabant and Count Robert II of Artois.71 For unexplained reasons the draft was revised to pres­ent the letter as the queen’s petition alone. This letter (carried to Nicholas III by Arnold of Wezemaal, presumably in its revised version) explained to the pope how Pierre de La Broce and Pierre de Benais had together tried to turn the king against her, with the former approaching Philip while the latter tried to work through the legate Simon of Brie. Pierre de La Broce had already been executed. It remained for the pope to punish Pierre de Benais, who had fled to Rome. It is notable, how70. ​AN J 429, no. 3, with revisions written on no. 3bis. Edited in de Gaulle, “Documents historiques,” 98–100; and Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 3:65–66. En­glish translation in Field and ­Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” 75–78. 71. ​Hamilton, “Plea­sure, Politics, and Piety,” 62, notes that in August  1278, Marie, with the French royal court, was at Nieppe with the Duke of Brabant, the Count of Artois, and the Count and Countess of Flanders.

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ever, that in this narrative nothing is said about Elizabeth of Spalbeek and her role in the entire affair. Nor does the papal correspondence that deals with the fates of Pierre de Benais and Vicedominus of Pisa ever mention her. Elizabeth had been silenced, and the king and queen of France w ­ ere prob­ably ­eager to leave it that way. Indeed, Nicholas III’s advice was to let the w ­ hole ­matter, including the fate of Pierre de Benais, fade away to avoid any further scandal.72 The main con­temporary recorder of ­these events, the papal legate and Capetian supporter Simon of Brie, consistently referred to Elizabeth with re­spect. He employed phrases such as saintes femmes to refer to Elizabeth and the leprous Alice, and even when applying less laudatory language he never hinted at seeing Elizabeth as a fraud. Indeed, he strongly implied that he took her word over that of Pierre de Benais. John of Enghien, who (unlike Simon) actually interacted repeatedly with Elizabeth, was dispassionate in his language, not offering any evaluation of Elizabeth’s claims and in the end most fervently wishing “that no harm should come to anyone through the words that we have written to your excellence.” The men who created the narratives studied ­here took Elizabeth’s holiness as proven, never veering in the direction of detractors like the Franciscan Guibert of Tournai. Yet in Elizabeth of Spalbeek, we have seen for the first time that a holy ­woman’s authority could represent an overt danger for the Capetian court. When Elizabeth came to the attention of Philip III, it was as the supposed source of a revelation from God that directly cast the Capetian king’s moral status in doubt. In this report Philip’s “sins” ­were not meta­phorical; they carried the very real threat that divine anger would bring the Capetian line to an end. The king thus had to ensure that such prophecies ceased. Still, a­ fter four grueling inquiries, Elizabeth’s personal safety remained intact. Elizabeth had quickly deci­ded to silence her own prophetic voice, and this auto-­censure proved effective in protecting her from further sanction.73 That is, what­ever Elizabeth may or may not have said in secret to Pierre de Benais, she repeatedly testified in public that she had received no revelations from God concerning the death of the prince, and that she knew nothing about it. In the end, it

72. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 475–79; Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 1:258–60. See most directly the letters (2–3 December) from Nicholas III to Queen Marie, to King Philip, and to Simon of Brie; and also a letter to John I of Brabant, Robert II of Artois, and Robert of Burgundy (9 June 1279) and another of the same date to Simon of Brie. Gay, Registres de Nicolas III, #388–91, #755–57. 73. ​Thus in the main I agree with Njus’s description of Elizabeth as “resolutely refusing the prophetic role that ­others attempted to thrust upon her.” “Politics of Mysticism,” 286.

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was Pierre de Le Broce who became the scapegoat for the crisis of 1276–78, and Elizabeth was allowed to fade into obscurity. That physical force was not used against Elizabeth may simply reflect her location outside the kingdom of France. She could not easily be brought to Paris, and in her local context she may still have benefited from a network of local supporters. Yet she was subject to her ordinary bishop ( John of Enghien), who was surely e­ ager to please Philip III and could have applied vari­ous kinds of pressure had he deemed such mea­sures useful. Instead, Elizabeth was allowed to deny her reputation for divine knowledge. It was in fact t­ hose who sought to attack the king and queen of France who insisted on Elizabeth’s status as God’s mouthpiece. Vicedominus of Pisa had first pointed to her revelatory power as the evidence of God’s anger at the king. Then Pierre de Benais repeatedly insinuated that God had granted Elizabeth knowledge about the queen’s plot to destroy the sons of Isabelle of Aragon. Elizabeth herself was forced into the position of denying over and over again that she had ever had any super­natural insights into ­either of ­these scenarios. In the end, her self-­censorship discredited the report sent by Vicedominus of Pisa, and her refusal to endorse the rumors spread by Pierre de Benais helped dispel suspicion of the queen. Thus it was ultimately Elizabeth’s silence, not her prophetic power, that was necessary for the Capetian court’s continuing claims to act as God’s favored rulers in France. The crisis of 1276–78 marks a turning point in the attitude t­ oward holy ­women at the Capetian court. This affair was a marker in another, more ­human way as well. Many of its participants, both major and minor, would live on for de­cades, carry­ing memories of the crisis with them. The new heir to the throne, who would be crowned as Philip IV in 1285, was too young to have played a direct role in the events of 1276–78. But they can hardly have failed to affect him. He was about six years old when his ­father remarried, eight when his ­brother Louis died, and ten when Pierre de La Broce was executed. It is unclear how much he would have heard at the time about holy w ­ omen in the Low Countries, rumors of his ­father’s sins, or accusations against his stepmother. Certainly some version of ­these events would have been known to him, if only ­because they ­were recorded by chroniclers such as William of Nangis.74 Philip, in fact, links the cult of Isabelle of France—at whose tomb he was cured as a boy—to the affair surrounding Elizabeth of Spalbeek and to the episodes of Paupertas of Metz, Margueronne of Bellevillette, and Marguerite Porete. By the same token, Philip’s younger b­ rother Charles of Valois must also have been marked by t­ hese events. L ­ ater in life, Charles exhibited a 74. ​For related analy­sis, see Brown, “Prince Is the ­Father of the King.”

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recurring fear of poison and a suspicion of ­women’s contact with the super­ natural. Similar links are embodied by Marguerite of Provence, who lived u ­ ntil 1295. One of the strongest supporters of Isabelle of France’s reputation, Marguerite had brought the f­ uture Philip IV to Isabelle’s tomb and also helped pass along Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s prophecies to the papal legate. Simon of Brie has also been central to many ele­ments of our story to this point. He had helped negotiate Isabelle of France’s revised rule of 1263, then participated in the arrangements for Charles of Anjou’s invasion of the Regno before becoming the key source for the events of 1276–78. He returned to Rome in the fall of 1279, and ­after Nicholas III’s death in August 1280, Simon was elected as Pope Martin IV in February 1281, inheriting the question of Pierre de Benais, the “fugitive bishop of Bayeux.” Philip III had been agitating for Pierre to be returned to France and tried, and may have expected that the new pope would comply. But once on the throne of St. Peter, Pope Martin (Simon of Brie) followed his pre­de­ces­sor’s policy of protecting Pierre de Benais. In fact, ­after Martin IV and Philip III died in 1285, Philip IV allowed Pierre de Benais to return to his see in 1286, where he remained for another two de­cades ­until ­dying in January 1306.75 Thus some of the actors in the drama of 1276–78 remained on the scene well into the early ­fourteenth ­century. William of Mâcon, for example, held his see of Amiens ­until 1308. But Marie of Brabant outlived all of them, with a widowhood that stretched u ­ ntil 1321. One won­ders how many times she may have encountered Pierre de Benais in ­those years, and what ­those meetings must have been like. And what of Elizabeth of Spalbeek herself ? Nothing reliable is known of her ­after January 1278. Claims in older scholarship that Marie of Brabant founded a beguinage in Nivelles to honor and thank Elizabeth are without merit.76 Similarly, the oft-­repeated statement that Elizabeth lived ­until 1304 and ended her life as a nun at Herkenrode rests on late and uncertain evidence.77 Elizabeth was only about thirty in 1276, and she could well have lived into the ­fourteenth ­century. But if so, her ­career faded into obscurity, as though the silence she imposed on her prophetic voice had become permanent. Chronicle accounts written and translated a few years ­later suppressed her name and 75. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 479–82. 76. ​The queen who helped found La royauté around 1241 was prob­ably Blanche of Castile. Marie of Brabant did contribute around 1282–83 t­ oward a hospital for beguines in Nivelles, but since Elizabeth of Spalbeek had no association with Nivelles (such a link appears only in the confused ­later account by William of Nangis, as discussed in chapter 4) ­there is no connection. 77. ​Cf. Bussels, “Was Elisabeth van Spalbeek Cisterciënserin in Herkenrode?” On the question of ­whether she ever became a nun, see note 18. The statement that she “floruit anno 1304” comes only from Johan Gielemans (d. 1487).

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wrestled with representing her role.78 In the ­later ­Middle Ages a local cult devoted to Elizabeth reemerged,79 and through Philip of Clairvaux’s widely copied and translated probatio her earlier c­ areer remained known. But as far as the evidence for her life goes, January 1278 marks her exit from the historical stage.

78. ​In a work finished in 1317, the Brabantine chronicler Lodewijk van Velthem recalled Elizabeth’s controversial reputation as a stigmatic, but without providing any historical information about her ­later life. Lodewijk van Velthem, Spiegel historiael, 401–2 (v. 4330–57). I owe this reference to Walter Simons. 79. ​Simons and Ziegler, “Phenomenal Religion”; George, “Le trésor de reliques du Neufmoustier près de Huy,” 35. Walter Simons kindly supplied this reference.

Ch a p ter   4

Writing Holy ­Women, 1282–85

Claims that divine ­favor embraced the Capetians ­ ere weakened by the scandals of 1276–78, when Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s w prophecies ­were used to portray the king of France as a sodomite and the queen of France as a murderess. Capetian prestige was further diminished by the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, when popu­lar revolt seemed to confirm Douceline of Digne’s dire warnings about Charles of Anjou’s ingratitude t­ oward God. As a result, several authors writing in the last years of Philip III’s reign tried to recast the relationship of holy ­women to the Capetian court. Writings about the Capetian kings during the 1270s tended to ignore figures of female holiness. But a group of texts composed between 1282 and about 1285 focused new attention on Isabelle of France, Elizabeth of Spalbeek, and Douceline of Digne. At least in part, ­these texts responded to the setbacks suffered by the Capetians in Paris and Palermo. One spur to new writings about the Capetians and holiness at this moment was the preparatory inquiry for Louis IX’s canonization that took place at Saint-­Denis in 1282–83. ­These hearings w ­ ere themselves partly a response to the scandals of 1276–78, and they then played into Charles of Anjou’s efforts to claim divine ­favor as he sought to retake Sicily. Charles, in turn, commissioned Agnes of Harcourt’s Life of Isabelle at just this moment. Following ­these hearings, William of Nangis’s narrative of Philip III’s reign, prob­ably completed in 1285, attempted to put a new spin on Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s role in the accusations against Marie of 117

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Brabant and the downfall of Pierre de La Broce. Further south, the Franciscan Salimbene wrote the first substantial report on Douceline’s sanctity and capped his recounting of Charles of Anjou’s c­ areer with the prophetic dreams of an anonymous Italian “holy lady.” T ­ hese new portrayals of Isabelle, Elizabeth, and (to a lesser extent) Douceline, in related though distinct ways, aimed to forge narratives that linked female holiness to Capetian aims. They succeeded, however, only in part.

Invisible ­Women, 1270–82 The 1270s witnessed a flurry of writing about the Capetians. We have already seen that Primat’s Roman des roys, finished at Saint-­Denis by 1275, narrated the history of the French kings up to the reign of Philip II. T ­ hese years also saw the first vitae of the would-be St. Louis; the Dominican Geoffrey of Beaulieu’s Life of Louis IX, written between 1272 and about 1275, and William of Chartres’s Life, prob­ably completed by 1276 as a complement to his fellow Dominican’s efforts.1 In addition, Primat also composed a Chronicle that narrated the second half of Louis IX’s reign and the first half of Philip III’s, covering the years from about 1250 to 1277.2 Primat prob­ably finished this chronicle around 1280. The original Latin text is lost, but the work survives (perhaps only in part) in a French translation made by Jean de Vignay in the 1340s.3 Female holiness is nearly absent in t­ hese works. Primat’s Roman des roys occasionally applied saintly adjectives to earlier queens,4 but left off too early to comment on Isabelle of France or Elizabeth of Spalbeek. Geoffrey of Beaulieu lauded Blanche of Castile’s formative role in Louis IX’s youth and described Louis urging his ­daughters Isabelle and Blanche to enter religious life,5 but claimed no holiness for any of ­these ­women. Neither Geoffrey nor William 1. ​Field, Sanctity of Louis IX. 2. ​Scholarship generally asserts that Primat wrote this chronicle before 1282, but ­because his original Latin text is lost, disagreement exists about its extent and ­whether it covered the first half of Louis’s reign (that section would be lost b­ ecause it was not used by Jean de Vignay). The argument that his chronicle left off in 1277/78 is based on the fact that William of Nangis’s text, which used Primat’s, diverges at this point. 3. ​Jean de Vignay was close to the court of Philip VI and made this translation for Queen Jeanne of Burgundy. See the entry in Les Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge, at http://­www​.­arlima​.­net​/­il​ /­jean​_­de​_­vignay​.­html, most recently updated August 5, 2018. Aside from a fourteenth-­century fragment (Angers, Archives départementales de Maine-­et-­Loire, III F 6), the text survives only in London, British Library, MS Royal 19 D I, fols. 192v–251v, edited by Natalis de Wailly in RHGF, vol. 23, 1–106 (digital image available through http://­www​.­bl​.­uk​/­manuscripts). 4. ​Guenée, Comment on écrit l’histoire, 200–213. 5. ​Field, Sanctity of Louis IX, 73–74, 82.



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of Chartres mentioned Isabelle of France even in passing. Primat’s Chronicle does, however, offer a small suggestion of how sanctity might be i­magined among Capetian princesses. Primat was not writing hagiography; he never called Louis IX “saint” while recounting the events of his reign.6 He was most interested in military affairs, and in fact seems to have been more impressed by the victories of Charles of Anjou than by the deeds of the “gentle, peaceful” King Louis.7 Like Geoffrey of Beaulieu, Primat ignored Isabelle of France, praised Blanche of Castile, and briefly referred to Louis IX’s d­ aughters Isabelle and Blanche. But Primat also lent a faint glow of saintliness to the latter two w ­ omen. ­These two princesses had not entered religious life as their ­father had once wished. Isabelle married Thibaut, Count of Champagne and king of Navarre, but died shortly ­after her husband during their return from Tunis in 1271. Blanche married Fernando de la Cerda, heir to the Castilian throne, and spent a long widowhood in France ­after his death in 1275 (it was in the name of Blanche’s ­children that Philip III had sought to attack Castile in 1276). Primat’s praise for ­these two princesses focused not on their married lives, however, but on their chaste widowhoods. He described Isabelle as living, however briefly, “deguerpie en sainte veuvée” (widowed in holy widowhood), and he lauded her desire to hold for the rest of her life to “le veu de sainte continence” (the vow of holy continence).8 He similarly praised Blanche de la Cerda, still alive as he wrote, “en sa sainte veuveté et en sa continence” (in her holy widowhood and in her continence).9 Although it is r­ eally chaste widowhood itself that is described as holy, t­hese passages are the strongest invocation of sanctity as a concept anywhere in Primat’s text, suggesting that widowed Capetian princesses might take on an aura of sanctity as long as they declined to remarry.10

6. ​A chapter title does refer to Philip III as “filz du bon roy saint Loys,” RHGF, vol. 23, 61. But it is not clear that this chapter heading (in Jean de Vignay’s l­ater French translation) can be attributed to Primat’s original text; even when recording events ­after Louis’s death, Primat declines to refer to him as “saint.” His lack of reverence for Louis was so evident that Jean de Vignay remarked on it and interpolated ­later material on Louis’s sanctity in chaps. 44–48. See Trotter, “Jean de Vignay.” 7. ​ RHGF, vol. 23, 44–45, is particularly clear in its contrast between the firm Charles and the “debonnaire, paisible” Louis. 8. ​ RHGF, vol. 23, 84. 9. ​ RHGF, vol. 23, 92. 10. ​On the larger concept of princesses embodying Capetian piety, see Allirot, Filles de roy de France; and remarks in the epilogue. When Primat’s narrative comes to the “fall of Pierre de La Broce,” Elizabeth of Spalbeek plays no role in its recounting. RHGF, vol. 23, 99–100. But it seems less than certain that Jean de Vignay was still translating from Primat’s Latin text at this point. Generally scholars have asserted that this is where Primat left off, and Jean de Vignay’s French version reports only rumors, including the unlikely claim that Marie of Brabant had been condemned to death or exile.

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If such texts, written for and about the Capetians between 1270 and 1282, offer only a faint hint at how female sanctity might enter narratives about the French royal court, the scandals of 1276–78 and the canonization hearings of 1282–83 converged to propose a model of Capetian sanctity that contained a more pronounced female component.

Louis IX’s Canonization Hearings, 1282–83 Although moves ­toward Louis IX’s canonization had begun as early as 1272, it was only in 1282–83 that full-­scale, formal hearings into his merits and miracles fi­nally took place. The drive for ­these new hearings responded at least in part to the crisis of 1276–78. This fact has been generally overlooked but emerges clearly from the evidence. Recall that Simon of Brie had given his deposition on the “­doings of the bishop of Bayeux” in (or not long ­after) January 1278, when Pierre de La Broce was arrested and Pierre de Benais fled to Rome; that Pierre de La Broce was executed at the end of June; and that Queen Marie of Brabant wrote to Pope Nicholas III in August to urge him to punish Pierre de Benais. At about the same time, Philip III complained to the pope about the church’s failure to punish Vicedominus of Pisa, who was being held, at least nominally, in Simon of Brie’s custody.11 Queen Marie’s letter had been delivered to the pope in early September by a del­e­ga­tion headed by the Templar Arnold of Wezemaal, and Nicholas III answered with several letters urging that the ­matter be dropped. In November a second royal del­e­ga­tion, this time headed by William of Mâcon, Simon of Brie’s former secretary and now bishop of Amiens, pressed the Capetian perspective on ­these ­matters at the papal court, while also raising the question of Louis IX’s canonization.12 In response, on 30 November 1278 Nicholas III sent two letters to Simon of Brie. One insisted that he attend to the m ­ atter of Vicedominus of Pisa, while the other ordered that he begin a full-­scale public inquiry into Louis IX’s life and miracles.13 It was no coincidence that on the same day the pope dealt with an instigator of the rumors about Philip III’s “sins against nature” and with Louis IX’s claims to sanctity. Philip III was pushing for new hearings into Louis IX’s sanctity, and Nicholas was agreeing, as a way of responding to the scandals lingering from 1276 to 1278. For Philip, new publicity for miracles occurring at King Louis’s tomb was an effective c­ ounter to any remaining rumors 11. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 471. 12. ​Gay, Registres de Nicholas III, no. 393, which is undated but clearly written at the end of November 1278, reports the new pressure for canonization hearings. 13. ​Gay, nos. 395 and 394.



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that might have tarnished the Capetian image as favored agents of God. For Nicholas, granting the king of France’s request softened the blow as he refused to punish the fugitive bishop of Bayeux. He immediately followed on 2 and 3 December with letters to the king, the queen, and the legate, trying to defuse tensions around that issue.14 Moreover, men who had been involved in the events of 1276–78, including William of Mâcon and Arnold of Wezemaal, now led the embassies that produced Nicholas’s new directive. And no one had been more central to ­those events than Simon of Brie himself. In his testimony of January 1278 Simon had recorded the rumors of Philip III’s sexual sins; immediately afterward he was charged with the new investigation into the sanctity of Philip’s ­father. ­After Nicholas III’s death (August 1280) and the election (February 1281) of Simon of Brie as Pope Martin IV, this effort reached fruition. In December 1281 the new pope wrote to the prelates of France recalling the long sequence of events that had led to this point. As papal legate he had first been charged with gathering evidence for Louis’s miracles by Gregory X (this must have been between 1274 and 1276). He had tried to submit a report then, but had been thwarted by the deaths of Gregory ( January  1276), Innocent V ( June  1276), and Adrian V (August  1276). Nicholas III fi­nally requested in November 1278 that Simon carry out a new investigation, which he did, before Nicholas’s own untimely death. Now, as Martin IV, Simon was responding to a new request for Louis’s canonization from the archbishops and bishops of France, carried to him once again by William of Mâcon, and at long last opening formal hearings into the case for Louis’s sanctity.15 ­These hearings took place at Saint-­Denis, where Louis was buried, between May 1282 and March 1283. Thirty-­eight known witnesses testified to the holiness of Louis’s life, including a number of men who had been involved in the events of 1276–78: first and foremost Philip III himself, but also Mathew of Vendôme (the abbot of Saint-­Denis who had been part of the second del­e­ga­ tion to Elizabeth of Spalbeek) and Jean of Acre (who had received the sealed report of the third inquiry at Reims along with Simon of Brie).16 Well over three hundred ­others testified to Louis’s posthumous miracles.17 Unfortunately, only a few copied fragments of this testimony survive.18 But ­because 14. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 472, 476; Gay, Registres de Nicolas III, nos. 388–91. 15. ​Olivier-­Martin, Les Registres de Martin IV, nos. 84 and 85. 16. ​For the known witnesses to the “life” portion of the hearings, see the biographies compiled in Carolus-­Barré, Le procès de canonisation. 17. ​See generally Carolus-­Barré, 18–23; Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, 36–37; Field, Sanctity of Louis IX, 38–39. 18. ​Riant, “Déposition de Charles d’Anjou”; Henri-­François Delaborde, “Fragments de l’enquête faite à Saint-­Denis en 1282 en vue de la canonisation de saint Louis,” Mémoires de la Société d l’histoire

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the Franciscan William of Saint-­Pathus used ­those original proceedings when he wrote (for Blanche de la Cerda) his French Life of Louis, finished in 1302–3,19 a good deal of the testimony that was given in 1282–83 can be reconstructed.20 If t­ hese hearings represented a response to the scandal that had centered on Elizabeth of Spalbeek, they also opened the way for a fuller repre­sen­ta­tion of Isabelle of France’s place in the developing discourse of Capetian sanctity. The impetus was provided by the testimony of Charles of Anjou, which was apparently given to Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani (­f uture Boniface VIII) in Italy in February 1282, just before the eruption of the Sicilian Vespers (March/April) and the formal opening of hearings at Saint-­Denis (May). Part of Charles’s testimony survives as one of the few fragments copied from the original Latin, in this case jotted down in the margins of a fourteenth-­century manuscript.21 His full testimony was incorporated by William of Saint-­Pathus into his Life. Charles’s statements, more clearly than anything we have previously encountered, made the case that Louis’s entire ­family should be seen as holy, with Blanche of Castile as the “holy root” from which sprang not only Louis but also his ­brothers and ­sister. Particularly as this testimony was ­later presented by William of Saint-­Pathus, it emphasized that Blanche made sure all her ­children, including Isabelle, ­were well educated, and that all of ­these siblings turned out to be p­ eople of g­ reat purity and chastity. Charles even swore that he had never heard anyone attribute a mortal sin to Louis, Robert, Alphonse, or Isabelle.22 Mindful of how easily its aura could be tarnished and its power challenged, Charles in 1282–83 focused new attention on the idea of Capetian sanctity, with par­tic­u­lar attention to his ­sister, Isabelle of France.

From Charles of Anjou to Agnes of Harcourt Charles of Anjou’s po­liti­cal goals encouraged Agnes of Harcourt (c. 1240–­c. 1291) to bring female sanctity into the textual history of Capetian saint

de Paris et de l’Ile-­de-­France 23 (1896): 1–71; Louis Carolus-­Barré, “Consultation du cardinal Pietro Colonna sur le IIe miracle de saint Louis (Arch. du Vatican, A.A. Arm. C, 493),” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 117 (1959): 57–72. 19. ​William of Saint-­Pathus, Vie de Saint Louis; Fay, Guillaume de Saint-­Pathus. On the social and gendered content of ­these miracle stories, see Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris. 20. ​Carolus-­Barré, Le procès de canonisation, is largely an effort at presenting this testimony. 21. ​Riant, “Déposition de Charles d’Anjou.” 22. ​William of Saint-­Pathus, Vie de Saint Louis, 132.



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making.23 Agnes had been part of Isabelle of France’s retinue in the 1250s, before the foundation of Longchamp.24 She came from a leading Norman noble ­family. Her ­father, Jean I of Harcourt (d. 1288), had been a military companion and adviser to Louis IX and Philip III,25 a mantle inherited by Jean II (d. 1302). Agnes’s younger b­ rothers Raoul (d. 1307), Robert (d. 1315), and Guy (d. 1336) w ­ ere archdeacon of Rouen, bishop of Coutance, and bishop of Lisieux, respectively. Agnes herself was part of the first group of ­women to enter Longchamp in 1260, and quickly became its third abbess, serving a first term from approximately 1264 to 1275 and then a second from 1281 to 1287.26 Agnes’s first text, the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp, concentrated on Louis IX and treated his relationship with Isabelle only as a secondary subject. Dated 4 December 1282, this Letter was evidently written as a contribution to the hearings ­going on at Saint-­Denis and included information gleaned from se­ nior ­sisters based on their recollections of Louis’s relationship to the abbey. Agnes’s authorial c­ areer was sparked by the hearings into Louis’s life and miracles. As for the Life of Isabelle, it is pos­si­ble that memories of the princess ­were collected in an informal manner much earlier. But the immediate impetus for compiling a saint’s life for Isabelle came from Charles of Anjou, since Agnes of Harcourt notes that she (and her s­ isters) began the work at his request. Why did Charles commission this text? Why at this moment? And why did he choose Agnes as its author? One ­factor was surely Charles’s developing commitment to the idea of his ­family as a beata stirps, or holy lineage. By 1282 Charles of Anjou had emerged as the single most insistent proponent of this position. This conceptualization, however, had taken a de­cade or more to crystallize. Building on the work of Gábor Klaniczay, Jean Dunbabin has argued that Charles learned to think in ­these terms as a result of marrying two of his ­children into the royal ­family of Hungary, where a vision of dynastic sanctity had already taken shape based on descent from the saint-­k ing Stephen I (d. 1038) and more recently on the canonization of Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231).27 In 1269 23. ​ Writings of AH. The most up-­to-­date annotation of the texts is in Princesse mineure. New evidence on Agnes’s texts and her work as author is presented in Field, “Precious Evidence”; Field, “Agnes of Harcourt as Intellectual”; Field, “Reassessing the Links”; and Field, “De la Vie française de Claire d’Assise à la Vie d’Isabelle de France.” 24. ​On Agnes, the fullest treatment is still Sean L. Field, “The Princess, the Abbess, and the Friars: Isabelle of France and the Course of Thirteenth-­Century Religious History” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2002), chap. 7. A complete study of her ­career is much to be desired. 25. ​Powicke, “Archbishop of Rouen.” 26. ​Field, “Abbesses of Longchamp up to the Black Death.” Agnes’s aunt Jeanne (­sister of Jean I) was also among the first group of nuns at Longchamp, and Agnes’s younger ­sister, also named Jeanne, entered around 1277, served as abbess from 1294 to 1299, and died in 1315. 27. ​Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, chap. 10.

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Charles had negotiated with Stephen V of Hungary for the marriage of Charles II to Stephen’s ­daughter Marie, and for the marriage of Charles’s ­daughter Isabelle to Stephen’s eventual heir Ladislas IV. In concluding ­these negotiations Charles described Stephen as “descended from a line of saints and ­g reat kings,” demonstrating his appreciation for the rhetorical power of this position.28 The ­daughter in question was (in all likelihood) the same Isabelle who had been named ­after Charles’s ­sister and whose safe birth had been credited to the merits of the holy ­woman Douceline of Digne. Eventually Charles realized that he and his ­children also sprang from a genus sanctorum, a “line of saints.” An emerging vision of his “ancestors” as transmitting a crusading heritage in the “ser­vice of God” is apparent in his arguments for Philip III’s imperial candidacy in 1273,29 and this line of thought can only have intensified when he purchased a claim to the crown of Jerusalem in March 1277.30 This tendency reached its logical conclusion in his testimony of February 1282, when at e­ very available opportunity Charles moved from discussing Louis IX alone to portraying his wider ­family as partaking in shared saintly qualities. And within this overt agenda of widening the idea of Capetian sanctity, Isabelle—­the virgin princess praised by popes—­was evidently the strongest candidate to stand alongside Louis IX. Moreover, Charles was attuned to the potential benefits of promoting the reputation of holy w ­ omen, since his relationship with Douceline of Digne had been so effective in demonstrating divine approval for his reign in Provence and the Regno. In some sense, Charles may have come to see his ­sister as analogous to the holy beguine of Provence. While Dunbabin notes that Agnes’s portrayal of Isabelle “provided for France an almost exact parallel to St. Elizabeth of Hungary,” into whose f­amily Charles’s descendants had now married,31 it can be added that Isabelle also paralleled Douceline of Digne, the holy ­woman whom Charles knew best. The king of Sicily thus had several incentives for commissioning a hagiographical life of his ­sister. The immediate context of his return to northern France could only have strengthened them. In 1281, a­ fter the election of Simon of Brie as Martin IV, Charles had been preparing to attack Constantinople. But his ambitions came to a crashing halt with the Sicilian Vespers in March and April 1282. A ­ fter he proved unable to quell the revolt, Charles traveled to 28. ​Klaniczay, “Cult of Dynastic Saints in Central Eu­rope,” 111, citing G. Fejér, Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus et civilis (Buda, 1829–1844), 4/1, p. 510. 29. ​AN J 318, no. 79, a report from a “Master Nicholas” to Philip III, analyzed in Jones, “ ‘mais tot por le servise Deu’?,” and cited by Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 191. 30. ​See Baldwin, Pope Gregory X and the Crusades, chap. 4. 31. ​Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 195.



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Paris in the spring of 1283 seeking support for a counterattack against Peter of Aragon, who had been welcomed to Sicily as heir to the Hohenstaufen claim through his marriage to Constance, grand­daughter of Frederick II. In fact, Charles of Anjou and Peter of Aragon agreed to meet on 1 June 1283 in Bordeaux, each with a small retinue of warriors, to s­ ettle their dispute in hand-­ to-­hand combat. In the event, the anachronistic duel proved inconclusive; King Peter arrived on the field of ­battle in the morning and then departed, while King Charles (with Philip III) showed up in the after­noon. Both monarchs claimed victory in the face of their opponent’s supposed cowardice.32 It was during his stay in Paris in April and May 1283, as he prepared for this coming ­battle, that Charles must have encountered Agnes of Harcourt and urged her to write a life of Isabelle.33 Charles used this time in Paris to visit the tombs of his b­ rother, ­father, and grand­father at Saint-­Denis and to ask the monks to pray for their souls.34 Almost certainly he would have paid his re­ spects at Isabelle’s tomb at Longchamp in a similar fashion. Charles and Isabelle w ­ ere born only a few years apart and had grown up together at court in the 1230s when their much older b­ rother the king was already married. Charles would not have seen Isabelle again a­ fter the early 1260s; two de­cades ­later on his return to Paris the short trip to Longchamp would surely have been a priority. If so, he would have met Agnes of Harcourt, who was serving her second term as abbess, and would have spoken with her about his saintly s­ ister. Charles thus made his request of Agnes at a time when he needed e­ very scrap of support for the idea that the Capetian lineage was holy, virtuous, and uniquely sanctioned by God.35 But why did he commission Agnes of Harcourt specifically? Why would he not have sought out, for example, a Franciscan friar 32. ​Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, chap. 14; Anna Laura Trombetti Budresi, “La sfida di Bordeaux: Divagazioni sul tema di un duello mancato,” in La società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro. 11. Congresso di Storia della Corona d’Aragona, Palermo, Trapani, Erice, 23 -­30 aprile 1982, 4 vols. (Palermo: Accademia di scienze lettere e arti, 1983–84, 4:409–19; Ludwig Vones, “Un mode de résolution des conflits au bas Moyen Âge: Le duel des princes,” in La guerre, la vio­lence et les gens au Moyen Âge, ed. Philippe Contamine and Olivier Guyotjeannin, vol. 1, Guerre et Vio­lence (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1996), 321–32. 33. ​Given that internal evidence dates the writing (or at least completion) of the Vie d’Isabelle to 1281–85, and that Agnes states that she was asked by Charles to write, ­there can be ­little doubt that his appearance in Paris in 1283 was the occasion on which this request was made. It is true that he was also back in Paris briefly in 1283, around September, before heading south through Provence and back to Italy by May 1284 (see Durrieu, Les archives angevines de Naples, 188–89). But it seems likely Charles would have visited his ­sister’s tomb soon ­after his arrival in Paris, and so early rather than late 1283 is more probable for him to have been at Longchamp. 34. ​Hélary, “Un problème d’équilibre européen?,” 330. 35. ​For instance, just at this moment in 1283 the Angevins made maximum propaganda value out of the (supposed) discovery of Mary Magadelene’s relics in Provence in 1279. See Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 308–15. Salimbene, in fact, linked this propaganda to Charles’s coming duel with Peter of Aragon. Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 530.

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at Longchamp who might have taken on the task of memorializing Isabelle? Part of the answer may lie in personal ties between Charles and Jean II of Harcourt. Standard biographical sources describe the latter as one of the French nobles who fought in Italy from Charles’s conquest of 1266 to the Sicilian Vespers in 1282.36 Although evidence for such a long relationship is lacking, some kind of tie did exist between the Harcourt ­family and Charles of Anjou, since a document of 1271 refers to a “certain fief ” conceded to Jean of Harcourt, knight, by the king of Sicily.37 If this was Jean II, as seems likely (rather than his f­ ather), then he must have been in Charles’s ser­vice at some point before 1271, possibly in the Regno. But Jean evidently did not continue to serve Charles in Italy throughout the 1270s. Both Jean I and Jean II appear on several versions of a list numbering ­house­hold knights contracted for Philip III’s projected crusade in the early 1270s.38 Thus Jean II was not in Sicily at this point, and no con­temporary evidence proves that he was ­there at the time of the Vespers in 1282.39 Still, while the full extent of Jean II’s ser­vice to Charles of Anjou remains unclear, Charles was sufficiently linked to the Harcourt ­family to recognize in Agnes the ­daughter of a well-­connected noble clan, one who had served him in the past; she could be trusted to pres­ent a perspective loyal, even flattering, to the Capetians. Beyond ­these ­family connections, more concrete evidence demonstrated Agnes’s capabilities as an author. Charles likely learned that Agnes and her ­sisters had already contributed their Letter to the ongoing canonization hear36. ​Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 85–86, repeats this claim, citing Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. 17, cols 627–28 (“Harcourt [Jean II D’]” by M. Digne, 1989); and de la Roque, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Harcourt, 1:12 and 332–33. But the biographical entry is unreliable, and while de la Roque’s work remains an impor­tant source of evidence, it cannot be used with confidence ­because, as David Crouch remarked some time ago, “it tries to reconcile the documentary evidence with the genealogical myths of the sixteenth c­ entury.” The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth C ­ entury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 120–27 on the early history of the Harcourt ­family. 37. ​De Boüard, Actes et lettres de Charles Ier, 90, no. 340, summarizing from the (now destroyed) register 10, fol. 151, dated 23 March  1271 at Viterbo: “Ballivo Andegavie et Guillelmo, decano Sancti Martini, ut Johanni de Haricuria, militi, quoddam feudum ei a rege Siciliiae concessum singulis annis persolvant.” 38. ​Printed first as appendixes to the seventeenth-­century editions of Joinville by Ménard and Du Cange, and ­later in RHGF, vol. 20, 305–8, and vol. 23, 732–34, all with the claim that the lists related to Louis IX’s crusade of 1270. But Hélary, Armée du roi, 91–95, has shown that the lists pertain to the early 1270s. 39. ​Durrieu, Les archives angevines de Naples, part 4, “Les français dans le royaume de Sicile sous le règne de Charles Ier,” reveals no trace of Jean II. And when one turns to the “preuves” for Jean II in de la Roque, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Harcourt, 3:208–33, the only “proof ” one finds for Jean II Harcourt in Sicily is an extract from Jean LeFéron’s unpublished 1593 “Histoire de la Maison d’Harcourt” (now BnF ms. fr. 5473) on pp. 227–29, which is clearly fantastic and includes the claim that it was Jean II who killed Manfred of Hohenstaufen.



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ings for Louis IX at Saint-­Denis, demonstrating that they could compile effective testimony on Capetian sanctity. More intriguingly, Martine Pagan has shown that the first French translation of Thomas of Celano’s Latin Legenda of Clare of Assisi was produced at Longchamp around 1275–80, and has suggested that Agnes of Harcourt may have been involved in the production of that translation.40 Engagement with the Vie de Claire would have given Agnes the confidence to undertake her own hagiographic writing. Thus by 1283 Agnes was a proven author, and Longchamp an established site of hagiographic production. Nothing could have been more fitting, from Charles’s perspective, than the commission of a new life of his saintly ­sister from Agnes of Harcourt and the ­women of Longchamp.

The Abbess’s Isabelle Agnes of Harcourt’s writings make a forceful case for Isabelle of France’s claim to sanctity, documenting her reputation for ­humble charity, ardent asceticism, intense penitence, and quasi-­monastic discipline. Yet, at the same time, her portrayal of Isabelle contains obvious gaps and silences. As discussed in chapter 1, several ele­ments of Isabelle’s c­ areer left the institutional church uncomfortable with her status. ­These very same ele­ments now presented challenges to her hagiographer. Consider first the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp, composed by Agnes of Harcourt and other se­nior nuns of Longchamp during December 1282 in conjunction with the Saint-­Denis hearings. The Letter opens with Marguerite of Provence’s recollections about the laying of the first stones for Longchamp, and then the nuns’ own memories of how Louis and Isabelle had come among them when the first ­sisters entered in June 1260. The rest of the letter relates how Louis visited the abbey and provided for sick s­ isters, how he had donated a piece of the True Cross and a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, and how he had provided the abbey with rents, firewood, and funds for building proj­ects. The other main set piece has Louis arriving at Longchamp just a­ fter Isabelle’s death, in late February 1270. He guarded the door of the enclosure to keep out intruders, he knelt and bowed before Isabelle’s body, he comforted the nuns in their distress, and then before departing on crusade in March he asked for their prayers. And as Agnes and her s­isters remarked without 40. ​Pagan, “Les légendes françaises de Claire d’Assise”; Pagan, “Les légendes françaises de Claire d’Assise (XIIIe–­XVIe siècle): II. Édition du plus ancien manuscrit de la version longue (BnF, fr. 2096),” Études franciscaines, n.s. 7, no. 2 (2014): 221–72.

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elaboration, “Many of us firmly believe that he cured us of fevers and other ­g reat maladies.”41 What picture of Isabelle did this text convey? T ­ here is a notable lack of clarity regarding her status at Longchamp. When Agnes described the princess entering the cloister, with Louis, for the nuns’ first chapter meeting in 1260, an attentive reader could infer that Isabelle was not a professed nun at this moment (she enters from outside, just as does the king). And yet Agnes offers no comment on this, choosing not to explain w ­ hether Isabelle had or had not made a monastic profession. The letter then seems to skip over Isabelle’s entire de­cade at Longchamp, with the princess reentering the text only as her body, at last dressed in a nun’s habit, is prepared for burial. It is as though Isabelle functioned best in the text when the details of her life at Longchamp w ­ ere suppressed. Agnes seems e­ ager to arrive as quickly as pos­si­ble at the narrative moment when Isabelle, in death, could be safely presented wearing the garb of the ­sisters. This sense of purposely skipping over the difficult details of Isabelle’s ­career, including her decision not to take monastic vows, might be seen as merely a by-­product of Agnes’s rhetorical goals in the 1282 Letter. This text was, a­ fter all, intended to vaunt Louis’s claims to sanctity, not Isabelle’s. But Agnes’s much more substantial Life of Isabelle follows a similar strategy, using silences to avoid the very ele­ments of Isabelle’s c­ areer that had made her an awkward example of royal sanctity during her life. Agnes and her s­ isters compiled the Life of Isabelle as a roughly chronological series of anecdotes, from the princess’s youth to her maturity and death. They drew on memories supplied by members of the royal ­family, first and foremost Marguerite of Provence (who would live a dozen years past 1283). Other testimony comes, directly or second­hand, from Isabelle’s childhood nurse and attendants, from Franciscans such as her confessor Eudes of Rosny, and from the ­sisters themselves. Episodes from her childhood include her rejection of the marriage to Conrad of Hohenstaufen, her near-­fatal illness, and the desire of her serving girls to save hairs from her head “so that when you are a saint we ­will keep them as relics.”42 In one charming tale that Agnes of Harcourt heard from King Louis (and another ­sister heard in­de­pen­dently from Isabelle’s nurse), the young Isabelle had been so ardently praying u ­ nder her covers one morning that she was almost wrapped up and carried away when a servant came to strip the beds.43 According to this same nurse, Helen of 41. ​ Writings of AH, 49; Princesse mineure, 270. 42. ​ Writings of AH, 56–57; Princesse mineure, 278. 43. ​ Writings of AH, 58–59; Princesse mineure, 280–81.



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Buisemont, Isabelle would fast, maintain strict silence, and punish her body with penitential whippings. And numerous reports indicated that she would follow a quasi-­monastic routine of reciting the divine office, that she would confess with g­ reat frequency, and that she cared personally for the poor, the hungry, and the sick.44 Agnes concluded her section on Isabelle’s youth with a story that rewards careful unpacking.45 The princess sewed a cap with her own hands, just as any common young w ­ oman might have done. Taking note of the fact, her admiring older ­brother the king asked if he might have the cap to keep his head warm at night. Agnes of Harcourt was t­ here to hear Isabelle’s response—­ she preferred “that it should be given to the Lord,” b­ ecause it was the first cap she had ever sewn. Louis patiently, perhaps laughingly, asked if he then might have the next cap Isabelle would make. Isabelle responded that she would happily comply—­“if I sew more.” Agnes’s peek into the dynamics of the royal ­family shows Louis encouraging his l­ittle ­sister in her pious works, with the princess exhibiting no deference at all to the wishes of the king. But what did Isabelle mean by giving the cap “to God”? In fact (writes Agnes), Isabelle gave it “to a poor w ­ oman who lay in g­ reat distress, whom she visited with ­g reat care each day with ­g reat benefits from her ­table and special dishes.” This was the essence of Isabelle’s religiosity, a charity and personal attention to the poor and the sick. But ­there is a last twist to the story: two nuns of the Cistercian abbey of Saint-­Antoine, located just outside the eastern walls of Paris on the right bank (not far from the ­grand béguinage), “heard of this affair of the cap and went to the poor ­woman secretly and bought it and gave her as much as she would take for it.” And now, as Agnes was writing around 1283, the nuns of Saint-­Antoine trea­sured the cap as a relic. One of the two nuns is referred to only as “Jeanne,” but the other was “Lady Perronelle of Montfort.”46 A ­whole web of connections radiates outward from this ­humble anecdote. Why would Saint-­Antoine have been so interested in the potential sanctity of a Capetian princess? Personal ties between this ­house and the Capetians lead back to the circle around Blanche of Castile. Although Saint-­Antoine had its origins as a refuge for reformed prostitutes, by the 1230s it was affiliated with the Cistercian Order and central to Blanche’s patronage network. As Lindy Grant has shown, the abbess of Saint-­Antoine was “so frequently at court that she became almost a member of the ­house­hold” in the 1230s, at about the 44. ​ Writings of AH, 58–63; Princesse mineure, 279–86. 45. ​ Writings of AH, 62–65; Princesse mineure, 286. 46. ​ Writings of AH, 65; Princesse mineure, 286–87.

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time when the cap in question must have been sewn, donated, purchased, and stored away.47 In such an atmosphere, the nuns of Saint-­Antoine would have been attuned to the budding sanctity of Blanche’s only ­daughter.48 Another set of connections is manifest in the role of Perronelle of Montfort. ­Daughter of Simon I of Montfort, hero of the Albigensian Crusade (and ­sister of Simon II, the g­ reat adversary of Henry III of E ­ ngland), Perronelle entered Saint-­Antoine in the 1220s and served as abbess herself in the 1250s. Perronelle’s active engagement in searching out the cap places this relic in the context of her wider ­family networks. In one direction ­these included her ­sister Amicie, founder of the Dominican ­house of Montargis south of Paris, as well as a cousin who was abbess of the Cistercian ­house of Port-­Royal southwest of Paris. It must have been through such ties between pious noblewomen that Isabelle’s reputation spread.49 In another direction, the Montforts and the Harcourts ­were closely linked, explaining how Agnes of Harcourt came to be able to relate ­these events with such confident precision.50 And fi­nally ­there is the fact that Perronelle’s cousin Jean of Monfort (d. ­after 1300) and several of his ­brothers ­were among Charles of Anjou’s closest companions.51 Thus this single episode ties several of the greatest families of France to the Capetians in the cause of documenting Isabelle’s holiness. Agnes then proceeded through a detailed recounting of how Isabelle founded Longchamp and agonized over its rule, and concluded the first half of the Life with a brief description of the princess’s last illness and death. If Isabelle asked to be given the ­sisters’ habit on her deathbed, then Agnes passed over an obvious chance to highlight this moment. Quite possibly she again preferred not to go into any details that drew attention to Isabelle’s nonprofessed status.52 The second half of the text then recounted forty miracles credited to Isabelle’s merits. Only one (discussed in chapter 1) seems to predate 1260, and two ­others are from the 1260s at Longchamp. At least eight relate to Isabelle’s death and translation in February/March 1270, and the rest occurred over the next twelve or thirteen years. Witnesses to ­these miracles included Margue47. ​Grant, Blanche of Castile, 174. 48. ​Grant assumes that this was Agnes of Cressonessart (née Mauvoisin), but Constant Berman has offered strong evidence that Agnes of Cressonessart, an impor­tant patron of Saint-­Antoine, was prob­ably dead by 1225, may never have been abbess, and was not the same ­woman as the Agnes who was abbess in the 1230s. See Berman, White Nuns, 159–62; as well as Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 270–72, notes 71–76. 49. ​See references in Princesse mineure, 42; and on Port-­Royal, see Berman, White Nuns, 60–69. 50. ​Powicke, “Archbishop of Rouen.” 51. ​Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 144–46. 52. ​The lack of any real death narrative is notable. A 1699 description of Agnes’s (now lost) autograph manuscript suggests the possibility that the short section on Isabelle’s death could have been added on ­after the rest of the life was written. See Field, “Precious Evidence.”



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rite of Provence and the f­ uture Philip IV, several Franciscans, numerous nearby townspeople, and many nuns of Longchamp. One noteworthy ele­ment that emerges from ­these miracles is the path beaten from the Low Countries to Isabelle’s tomb. For example, a surprising moment in the sequence of miracles is the arrival of two condemned criminals from Tournai, to whom a miraculous voice had announced that they would be saved from execution if they visited Isabelle’s tomb. In spite of Guibert of Tournai’s earlier correspondence with the princess, it would be difficult to imagine how ­these men came to hear of Isabelle, ­were it not for evidence demonstrating that reverence for the princess flourished among noblewomen of the north. As we have already seen, pres­ent for Isabelle’s translation in early March 1270 had been Countess Marguerite of Flanders, her ­daughter Marie (a Cistercian nun), Alice of Rosoit “the Lady of Audenarde,” and Marguerite, the grand­daughter of the just-­mentioned Countess Marguerite, who would marry Duke John I of Brabant in 1273. This younger Marguerite was thus sister-­in-­law to the queen of France, Marie of Brabant, at the time of Agnes’s writing. In fact, the presence in the text of the reigning Duchess of Brabant connects to an easily overlooked miracle that occurs near the end of Agnes’s list (thus prob­ably occurring not long before 1283). According to this brief report, “when Madame the queen” was staying at Longchamp, the valet of her chaplain fell ill and was cured only ­after a candle was offered for him at Isabelle’s tomb.53 The “queen” in question was surely Marie of Brabant, whose ­later ties to Longchamp in her widowhood are well documented.54 The Life of Isabelle was evidently written in the expectation that further inquiries would be forthcoming. If formal hearings w ­ ere happening across Paris for Louis IX in 1283, was it unreasonable to hope that such a pro­cess might soon be opened for his s­ ister? Canonizations in the thirteenth c­ entury required power­f ul patrons.55 But Charles of Anjou, perhaps the strongest influence on the reigning pope Martin IV, clearly ­imagined Isabelle as a saint; the heir to the Capetian throne had indicated that he remembered his childhood cure at her tomb; the queen ­mother, Marguerite of Provence, was among the most prolific sources of testimony to Agnes and her s­ isters; and the reigning queen had good reason to re­spect Isabelle’s healing powers a­ fter one of her servants had benefited from them. Yet this cause found l­ ittle success (Isabelle’s local cult received papal approval only in 1521). One reason must be that Louis’s canonization effort became the 53. ​ Writings of AH, 90–91; Princesse mineure, 313. 54. ​See Chapman, Plea­sure and Politics; Princesse mineure, 313n1; and the epilogue. 55. ​Vauchez, Sainthood in the ­Later ­Middle Ages.

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focus of any literary, artistic, or other energy directed t­ oward the realization of Capetian sanctity. Another may be that although individual Franciscans credited Isabelle with miracles, the order itself was not supporting new female candidates for sanctity at this moment.56 More specifically, Agnes’s texts reveal the difficulties in crafting a convincing case for Isabelle’s sanctity. Her portrayal of Isabelle betrays uncomfortable silences precisely at ­those points where her ­actual life had been hardest to reconcile with accepted models of sanctity—­that is, her lack of a permanent monastic vow and her ­battle for a new rule for an order of Sorores minores. On the first of t­ hese two points, Agnes never identified a specific moment when Isabelle made a vow of virginity. She introduced the theme of virginity early in her narrative of Isabelle’s youth, remarking that Isabelle “never” wanted to agree to a corporal marriage b­ ecause she had chosen Jesus Christ as her eternal spouse, in perfect virginity. The rejection of marriage to Conrad of Hohenstaufen is certainly an impor­tant moment in Agnes’s narrative. Indeed, when viewed in hindsight from 1283 at the time of Charles of Anjou’s commission, it takes on added significance in light of the fact that Charles had defeated and killed Frederick II’s heirs in the 1260s. Had Isabelle married Conrad IV, Frederick’s grandchildren might have been Charles of Anjou’s nephews. But more directly, Agnes’s wording suggests an ongoing, open-­ ended pro­cess of ever-­renewed determination, which is left hanging for the rest of the text. That is, the narrative never offers a satisfying guarantee for the permanence of Isabelle’s choice. The story of Isabelle’s near-­fatal illness explains how her own f­amily was reconciled to her choice of chastity. But from this point on, the reader is left to assume that Isabelle’s personal ­will is enough to guarantee her state of virginity. Closely related is Agnes’s continuing refusal to discuss Isabelle’s precise status at Longchamp. The Life makes no mention of the dramatic moment in 1260 when the first nuns entered Longchamp, nor does it offer a word about how or where Isabelle lived over the next de­cade. If a few hints indicate that she dwelled apart from the common nuns, Agnes never explains Isabelle’s choice to forgo a monastic profession. A brief comparison with the Life of Isabel of Portugal (or of Aragon, 1270– 1336) highlights the striking nature of this omission.57 This Isabel was the ­daughter of Peter III of Aragon and Constance Hohenstaufen, and she eventually married King Dinis of Portugal.58 ­After Dinis died in 1325, Isabel moved 56. ​See analy­sis in Field, Visions of Sainthood in Medieval Rome, 51–52. 57. ​I thank André Vauchez for suggesting the usefulness of this comparison. 58. ​Isabel of Portugal was not only a niece of the Conrad whom Isabelle of France had rejected in marriage, but also the d­ aughter of Peter of Aragon, the same king who would b­ attle Charles of



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to the Franciscan foundation of Coimbra, which she had heavi­ly patronized. Within a few years of her death, a Latin vita was written, perhaps by the Franciscan bishop of Lamego, which survives in a sixteenth-­century Portuguese translation.59 As a wife, ­mother, and reigning queen, Isabel of Portugal had a ­career dif­fer­ent from that of the virgin princess Isabelle of France. Nevertheless, both royal ­women had retired for the last de­cade of their lives to a Franciscan nunnery of which they w ­ ere the primary patron. It is noteworthy that unlike Agnes of Harcourt, Isabel of Portugal’s hagiographer judged it useful to explain why the royal w ­ idow had not become a nun. According to this account, Isabel of Portugal had considered taking monastic vows and discussed the idea with her spiritual councillors. But t­ hese men persuaded her that it would be of greater merit to sustain the poor outside the cloister; if the widowed queen w ­ ere to enter the monastery and renounce all of her resources, then the multitude of poor p­ eople who counted on her largess would be left destitute. Isabel heeded this advice, built a private residence near the convent gate, but remained a laywoman.60 This hagiographic portrayal chose to confront the potentially difficult question of why a power­ful royal w ­ oman had declined to swear obedience and enter the church; Agnes of Harcourt’s strategy of silence is thus placed in sharp relief. The same sort of obvious omission is apparent when Agnes turned to Isabelle’s role in writing the rule for Longchamp.61 Agnes went out of her way to portray Isabelle as the active agent in this pro­cess, describing Isabelle as writing and revising the rule and consulting with her team of Franciscan masters of theology in her own chambers. Indeed, Isabelle was so concerned (writes Agnes) about the outcome of this pro­cess that she could hardly sleep and was sick with worry u ­ ntil word fi­nally arrived that the rule had been approved by the pope. The princess’s two primary demands ­were that the ­house be called L’Humilité-­de-­Notre-­Dame and that the s­ isters be known as Soeurs mineures (­Sisters Minor/Sorores minores). But out of humility, Isabelle did not want to put t­ hese demands to the pope herself, preferring to leave t­ hings in the hands of her ­brother the king. The glaring hole in Agnes’s account is obvious; she avoids mentioning that a first version of the rule was approved in 1259 and a second in 1263. The rule Anjou for Sicily starting in 1282, and a niece of Isabelle of Aragon, wife of Philip III and m ­ other of Philip IV. Through Peter of Aragon, Isabel was also a g­ reat niece of Elizabeth of Hungary. See McCleery, “Isabel of Aragon.” 59. ​Though McCleery suggests that the author could have been Isabel of Cardona, abbess of Santa Clara. For the text, I have relied on Boissellier, “La ‘Vie de sainte Isabelle de Portugal’ en langue vulgaire.” 60. ​Boissellier, “La ‘Vie de sainte Isabelle de Portugal’ en langue vulgaire,” 238–39. 61. ​ Writings of AH, 64–67; Princesse mineure, 289–91.

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of 1259 had granted the ­house’s title of L’Humilité-­de-­Notre-­Dame but not the label Soeurs mineures. Moreover, Pope Alexander IV issued it explic­itly at Isabelle’s request, not at her ­brother’s demand. Only in 1263 did Isabelle fi­ nally achieve the creation of the Order of Sorores minores, and only in his preface to the rule of 1263 did Urban IV efface Isabelle’s role and refer to the king alone. Securing the revised rule was perhaps the most controversial moment of Isabelle’s c­ areer, and in a sense her greatest triumph. Yet Agnes leaves the pro­cess of revision in darkest obscurity, preferring to conflate the two rules and suppress any sense that the first had required revision. Agnes can hardly have forgotten or grown confused about this history. She was almost certainly part of Isabelle’s ­house­hold when the first rule was being negotiated, and she would have sworn to obey it in 1260. The changes to the new rule would then have had a major impact on her daily life. Indeed, Agnes prob­ably became abbess for the first time in 1264 and would have helped implement the practical changes imposed by the new text. Yet rather than celebrate Isabelle’s ­battles with male ecclesiastical authorities, Agnes preferred to pretend they never happened. A comparison is again useful h ­ ere. When Thomas of Celano wrote his Latin Legenda of Clare of Assisi shortly a­ fter her 1255 canonization, he said not a word about Clare’s b­ attle to have her own “Form of Life” approved.62 Since Thomas’s Legenda was translated into French at Longchamp before 1280,63 perhaps Agnes noted how it could sometimes be useful to skirt a po­liti­cally dangerous topic (though it is not clear how much would have been known in­de­pen­dently at Longchamp about Clare’s “Form of Life”). Direct textual borrowings from the French Life of Clare are minimal in the Life of Isabelle, prob­ ably at least in part ­because Clare’s ­career as an Umbrian noblewoman, nun, abbess, and direct disciple of Francis of Assisi was so dif­fer­ent from Isabelle’s royal existence.64 But Agnes’s treatment of this subject is actually more complex than Thomas’s had been. For Agnes, Longchamp’s rule si­mul­ta­neously takes center stage and dis­appears from sight. That is, Agnes’s description of Isabelle’s passionate work on the rule is among the most vivid passages of the entire Life, punctuated by Agnes’s personal questioning of Isabelle on her intentions. It is only the rule’s revision that is obscured. As abbess of Longchamp, Agnes wanted to emphasize that the title Sorores minores had been essential to Isabelle. She insisted that it had been approved by the pope ­after negotiation 62. ​On Thomas’s authorship, see Guida, Una leggenda in cerca d’autore. En­glish translation of the Legenda in Regis J. Armstrong, trans., The Lady. Clare of Assisi: Early Documents (New York: New City, 2006), 272–329. 63. ​Pagan, “Les légendes françaises de Claire d’Assise,” I and II. 64. ​For examples of borrowings, see Appendix A to Field, “Reassessing the Links.”



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with the general and provincial masters of the Franciscan Order and other Franciscan masters of theology. Some version of the rule’s genesis thus needed to find a place in the Life of Isabelle. But Agnes also wanted to avoid placing Isabelle in the ­middle of po­liti­cal controversy, and so her attempt to smooth over a moment of confrontation erased a crucial part of Isabelle’s story. A gap once again appears in Agnes’s text exactly where Isabelle’s be­hav­ior had been least h ­ umble, and most difficult to reconcile with expectations about a saintly ­woman’s conduct. In sum, Agnes told the story of Isabelle’s saintly life with lively anecdotes, personal testimonies, and numerous miracles. But, writing more than a de­ cade ­after Isabelle’s death, Agnes was s­ ilent or vague on the issues of Isabelle’s refusal to take a formal vow and her strug­gle for a revised rule. Agnes was an unabashed promoter of Isabelle’s cult, yet even she was unable to frame ­these issues in ways that would work for a would-be saint. In a certain sense Agnes silenced Isabelle even as she sought to proclaim her sanctity. Fi­nally, Agnes of Harcourt’s Life of Isabelle can be read in light of the scandals of 1276–78, with Marie of Brabant and Elizabeth of Spalbeek at their center. ­There are links between Elizabeth and Isabelle. Textually, Thomas of Cantimpré had praised them both, while Guibert of Tournai had lauded Isabelle and castigated Elizabeth. Marguerite of Provence had provided information to Simon of Brie about Vicedominus of Pisa’s report on Elizabeth, and now handed on numerous stories about Isabelle to Agnes of Harcourt. Marie of Brabant had been placed u ­ nder suspicion by the machinations around Elizabeth, and now appears in the Life of Isabelle when a servant from her ­house­hold is cured. The death of Philip III’s son Louis instigated all the inquiries surrounding Elizabeth; the cure of his son Philip ­factors into testimony surrounding Isabelle. Although the Life of Isabelle may not have been Agnes of Harcourt’s conscious response to Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s controversial model of prophetic holiness, given all of t­ hese textual and ­human connections it is notable that Isabelle’s brand of holiness, as described by Agnes, worked as a reassuring c­ ounter to Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth’s reputation was based on her highly idiosyncratic reenactments of the Passion and on her claims to prophetic powers. Isabelle, by contrast, was not a mystic, visionary, or prophet. Her model of Capetian holiness rested primarily on virginity, charity, asceticism, and ardent piety. In this sense, the discreet invocation of Marie of Brabant in Agnes’s Life associates the queen with this safer image of royal saintliness, bringing Marie back into the reassuring circle of miracles demonstrating Capetian holiness, rather than prophecies alleging Capetian sinfulness. Agnes of Harcourt put the finishing touches on the Life of Isabelle by adding a prologue that, as Levente Seláf has shown, was adapted from the earliest

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French prose life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.65 Although Elizabeth of Hungary was not mentioned by name, Agnes was reaching for a legitimating model, subtly making Isabelle into something like a “new St. Elizabeth.” This would have been a particularly effective strategy for appealing to the royal court, where devotion to Elizabeth was well established by midcentury: Joinville famously reported an example of such devotion expressed by Blanche of Castile;66 Elizabeth was given proper readings in the liturgy of the newly consecrated Sainte-­Chapelle by the 1250s;67 Vincent of Beauvais included a brief biography of Elizabeth in his Speculum historiale written for Louis IX and revised several times between 1244 and 1254;68 and a rhyming poem was composed by the poet Rutebeuf for Isabelle, the d­ aughter of Louis IX, between 1255 and 1270.69 Elizabeth of Hungary was the new female saint of the thirteenth ­century for the Capetians. And following the marriage of Charles II of Anjou to Marie of Hungary (1270), Elizabeth was in a retrospective sense brought into the ­family. Agnes’s use of the prose Vie d’Elizabeth as a model was a final attempt to find an acceptable framework for Isabelle’s difficult sanctity.

William of Nangis and the Metamorphosis of Elizabeth of Spalbeek If Agnes of Harcourt’s writings left an ambivalent legacy, presenting Isabelle as a Capetian saint but offering that pre­sen­ta­tion with gaps and silences, a similar ambiguity is apparent in William of Nangis’s treatment of Elizabeth of Spalbeek in his Latin Deeds of Philip [III], King of France, Son of King Louis of

65. ​Seláf, “Párhuzamos Életrajzok” (with French résumé). I thank the author for corresponding with me and summarizing his findings in 2009, and for further updating me in 2015 and 2016 on his critical edition of the text, which is in pro­g ress. His preparatory article, “Le Modèle absolu de la princesse charitable. La première légende vernaculaire de sainte Élisabeth de Hongrie et sa réception. Prolégomènes à une édition critique,” is forthcoming in Le Moyen Àge. For now, extracts of the text can be consulted in modern French translation in Vauchez and Huërou, Élisabeth de Hongrie, 391–96. 66. ​Monfrin, Joinville, Vie de saint Louis, 96. 67. ​In a forthcoming article (tentatively entitled “Early Evidence for the Liturgy at the Sainte Chapelle”), Cecilia Gaposchkin shows that the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris a­ dopted Elizabeth’s feast in the 1250s but only with the common for the non-­virgin confessor, whereas at the new Sainte-­ Chapelle she received her own proper lections. I thank Dr. Gaposchkin for sharing this point with me. 68. ​Gecser, “Lives of St. Elizabeth,” 69–71; and see insightful remarks on the pos­si­ble relationship between Guibert of Tournai’s early sermon on Elizabeth and the Capetian court in Gecser, Feast and the Pulpit, 95–98. 69. ​Gecser, “Lives of St. Elizabeth,” 97–98. An En­glish translation is found in Brigitte Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth ­Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 152–69.



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Holy Memory.70 William effaced Elizabeth’s identity by suppressing her name, distorting her status, and altering her location, thus transforming her into a nameless “beguine of Nivelles.” More significantly, William seems to have been unsure w ­ hether to portray her as a charlatan or a prophet. Though this kind of conflicted interpretation had clung to Elizabeth in earlier portrayals as e­ ither a fraud (Guibert of Tournai) or a holy ­woman (Philip of Clairvaux and Thomas of Cantimpré), William now shifted from one to the other within just a few paragraphs.71 William was a monk of Saint-­Denis who completed his Deeds of Philip III by 1285, around the time of Philip’s death.72 For much of his treatment of the first part of Philip’s reign, he relied on Primat’s Latin Chronicle. But when William arrived at the events around the scandal of 1276–78, he presented his own perspective, textually in­de­pen­dent of Primat’s. Most con­temporary chroniclers recounted “the fall of Pierre de La Broce” without mentioning Elizabeth of Spalbeek at all. But William of Nangis a­ dopted a subtler approach. He placed female prophecy at the center of his account, but rewrote history to suit his aims. William of Nangis’s distortions must have been carried out with intent. Given Saint-­Denis’s close ties to the Capetians, William had ­every opportunity to become well informed about events related to the court. Concerning the inquiries into Elizabeth of Spalbeek in par­tic­u­lar, he had a direct source of eyewitness information, since his abbot, Matthew of Vendôme, had taken part in the second inquiry. Yet William’s account suppressed or conflated some parts of the story while blatantly distorting o ­ thers. This was a delicate strategy to adopt, ­because key players in the events, including Marie of Brabant and Pierre de Benais, as well as many figures on the edges of the story (Marguerite of Provence, William of Mâcon, Jean of Acre, Arnold of Wezemaal) ­were still alive and active at the time of his writing. Thus William must have believed that he was shaping a narrative that would be acceptable to the king, the queen, and the court. Like Simon of Brie before him, William began by noting that the death of the royal heir in 1276 had given rise to rumors of poison. William accused his main villain, Pierre de La Broce, of working to make the king believe that the 70. ​BnF ms. lat. 5925, fols. 350vb–371vb (thirteenth ­century, made at Saint-­Denis) is the manuscript of reference (digital image on Gallica). The passage considered ­here is found on fols. 361rb– 361vb. This manuscript served as the base for the edition in RHGF, vol. 20, 466–538 (even-­numbered pages only, p. 502 for the pres­ent passage). 71. ​For a full review of the con­temporary chronicle and literary sources that deal with the “affaire Pierre de La Broce,” see Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” chap. 10. 72. ​Delisle, Mémoire sur les ouvrages de Guillaume de Nangis; and Spiegel, Chronicle Tradition of Saint-­Denis, 98–108.

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queen had instigated the poisoning. But, wrote William, ­there ­were three “pseudo-­prophets” in France at this time. The term “pseudo-­prophet” indicates the light in which William would like his readers to have viewed ­these figures. But just to be safe, he clarified that although they appeared to possess the “spirit of prophecy,” they “­were lying to God,” and the “lying spirit of their voices deceived many.”73 Two of t­hese pseudo-­prophets ­were men: “Vicedominus of the church of Laon” and “a certain man, the very worst monk without a rule.” The third was a ­woman, “a certain beguine of Nivelles.” Without stating exactly what t­hese three ­were supposed to have prophesied, William asserted that some ­people had suspected that Pierre de La Broce had enticed them to “say something about the queen through which she could be separated somewhat from the king’s love or ­favor.” Already in this brief opening passage William has introduced a number of glaring distortions. Most fundamentally, t­ here is no hint of the rumor that Vicedominus of Pisa had brought to the king’s attention in the fall of 1276, concerning God’s anger at Philip III’s sins against nature. In William’s retelling, right from the start the only rumors in question w ­ ere ­those about Marie of Brabant as a potential poisoner. Divine anger against the Capetians is scrubbed from the narrative. Moreover, Pierre de Benais, who (according to Simon of Brie) had been the main actor in trying to foster t­ hose rumors about the queen, is not part of William of Nangis’s narrative yet. Instead, Pierre de La Broce, whose status as traitor had been cemented by his execution in 1278, plays the initial role of villain alone. Likewise, the leprous Alice never makes an appearance in William’s story. Vicedominus of Pisa, however, is pres­ent, along with a mysterious Sarabita—­that is, a “monk without a rule.” This man’s exact role in ­these events is not clear, but since he seems to be referred to in one of Nicholas III’s letters, he was not entirely William of Nangis’s invention.74 Most importantly for the pres­ent analy­sis, Elizabeth of Spalbeek has become a “beguine of Nivelles.” Calling Elizabeth a “beguine” was not strictly accurate, but may not have been an intentional distortion. Authors such as Guibert of Tournai had already made this link, which may have seemed natu­ ral enough given Elizabeth’s life as an unenclosed laywoman. But why move her to Nivelles? Perhaps William was genuinely confused, or perhaps “Nivelles” simply represented the far northern edges of the lands with which a reader in

73. ​All translations in this section, ­unless other­wise noted, are from Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” 79–82. 74. ​Kay, “Fugitive Bishop of Bayeux,” 471–72.



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the Île-­de-­France might have been familiar.75 In any case, this opening passage paints Elizabeth as a liar and a fraud. She might have appeared pious to unwary observers, and she might have enjoyed a reputation as a prophet, but the “beguine of Nivelles” was not what she seemed. Moreover, she was apparently willing to be bought, if Pierre de La Broce (in this retelling) could entice her with promises to say what he wished her to say. The king, “moved by such mysteries,” sent Matthew of Vendôme to investigate, along with Pierre de Benais, who at last enters the narrative. William described Matthew as the king’s “faithful councilor above all o ­ thers,” appropriately enough in a text written at Saint-­Denis, while he hints at Pierre de Benais’s sinister character by describing him as kinsman of Pierre de La Broce. It is apparent that William of Nangis chose to omit any reference to the entire first inquiry, when Pierre de Benais and John of Enghien had been charged with asking the two holy w ­ omen ­whether they had told Vicedominus that God was angered at the king’s sins. Furthermore, William left aside Vicedominus of Pisa and the “monk without a rule” at this point, not bothering to explain why they dis­appear from his narrative. According to William, it was only “to the beguine named above” that the king sent his two agents, with the charge “to know the truth about his son.” Recall that Simon of Brie’s testimony had been frustratingly vague about this second inquiry. Testimony from the fourth inquiry confirmed that the monk Jacques of Dinant had run ahead and spoken to Elizabeth alone, but what had happened when Matthew of Vendôme and Pierre de Benais arrived had never been explained in any of the original documentation. ­Here William of Nangis cuts Jacques of Dinant out of the story. Instead, it is Pierre de Benais who arrives before Mathew of Vendôme. William claimed not to know what the beguine (Elizabeth) had communicated to Pierre, but reported that by the time Matthew reached her she would say only that “I spoke with your companion the bishop, and I have told well what was asked of me.” Matthew was annoyed, concluding “that some treason had been committed.” When the bishop and the abbot returned to the king, Pierre de Benais refused to say what the beguine had told him, claiming that it had been said to him in confession (this is a twisted version of how Simon of Brie had reported Pierre’s insinuations ­after the first inquiry). The king was furious. Fi­nally Philip III sent another inquiry (which we know as the third), this time headed by the Templar Arnold of Wezemaal. William claimed that Arnold was accompanied 75. ​As Hélary speculates, if a female prophet came from the northeast of the kingdom, Nivelles would spring to mind; and if she was from Nivelles, then that town’s reputation as a beguine center with long ties to the Capetians might color assumptions. “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 271.

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by Thibaut of Pouancé, bishop of Dol at the time William was writing (whereas Simon of Brie had mentioned only John of Enghien, bishop of Liège). When ­these men arrived, the beguine “received them with a grateful heart.” In response to their questions, she now gave an unambiguous response: “Tell the king that if anyone has said any evil about [the king’s] wife, he should not believe such t­hings, ­because she is good and faithful, let him understand, and most true t­oward him and his, fully, with all her heart.” When the messengers returned and reported t­ hese words to the king, he at last began to understand that Pierre de La Broce and Pierre de Benais ­were “neither good nor loyal to him.” ­Here Elizabeth’s involvement in William of Nangis’s narrative ends, with no report on the fourth inquiry. In this retelling of events, Elizabeth—in the guise of a beguine of Nivelles— is first presented as a lying fraud who is possibly in the pay of Pierre de La Broce. When questioned, she initially seems willing to cooperate only with Pierre de Benais, though it is not revealed what she was meant to have said to him. But fi­nally, when her words come out, they serve not only to vindicate the queen but also to show the king who the true traitors are. The rest of William’s narrative then proceeds logically to Pierre de La Broce’s arrest and execution. In sum, even more than in Simon of Brie’s testimony, William of Nangis pres­ents Elizabeth as the central figure around whom the ­whole affair turns. Her statement resolves the controversy and saves the court from treachery. Yet in the pro­cess of creating this narrative, her very identity is erased. Elizabeth of Spalbeek, the holy ­woman well known from numerous sources, dis­ appears, replaced by an anonymous “beguine of Nivelles.” Moreover, William of Nangis’s portrayal of Elizabeth, like Agnes of Harcourt’s treatment of Isabelle, uses gaps and silences to skip over moments that ­were difficult to fit into his narrative—­most importantly the accusation that Philip III had “sinned against nature.” And in spite of the centrality of Elizabeth’s pronouncement to the narrative’s outcome, her overall image remains paradoxical. She first appears as an untrustworthy pseudo-­prophet and then—­without any transformative moment or explanation—as the source of legitimate prophetic speech.76 76. ​Queen Marie of Brabant was also an impor­tant literary patron, and some scholars have seen reflection of the scandal of 1276–78 in works she commissioned. See Hamilton, Plea­sure and Politics; and Sleiderink, De stem van de meester, 77–80. More broadly, it is worth suggesting that the Somme le roi by Philip III’s Dominican confessor ­Brother Laurent (1280); and Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum (1279–80, quickly translated into French by Henri de Gauchy) can be read in part as reactions to the chaos of 1276–78. Édith Brayer and Anne-­Françoise Leurquin-­Labie, eds., La “Somme le roi” par frère Laurent (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2008); Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s “De regi-



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This tension may have been apparent to an anonymous chronicler writing in French ­after 1286 (apparently before 1297).77 The Chronique anonyme de 1286 simplified the story that it borrows from William of Nangis by making Elizabeth the only prophetic figure. She remains nameless, but ­here she is not referred to as a beguine from Nivelles. Instead, Matthew of Vendôme and Pierre de Benais are sent to “Alemaigne” to interview “une sage femme et devine.” The rest of the narrative follows William, with Elizabeth always simply referred ­ oman” but also midto as “la dame.” “Sage femme” implies not only “wise w wife (certainly not a profession exercised by Elizabeth), and “devine” indicates a prophetess but with a hint of “divination,” normally not a positive label in the thirteenth c­ entury.78 Still, the statements that the w ­ oman in question was a lying fraud dis­appear, and thus for this chronicler the paradox introduced by William of Nangis’s ambiguous treatment of Elizabeth is diminished, allowing her to reemerge, from far-­off German-­/Dutch-­speaking lands, as an oracle of God’s truth.

Salimbene, Douceline of Digne, and Charles of Anjou In July 1283, just as Agnes of Harcourt was accepting Charles of Anjou’s commission to write the Life of Isabelle of France, the Franciscan chronicler Salimbene de Adam (1221–­c. 1289) began to compile memories from his nearly half ­century as a friar. Although by 1283 he had settled in the northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia, Salimbene had traveled widely in his youth, including several trips across France and Provence between 1247 and 1249. Hence he was able to report as an eyewitness on the devotions displayed by Louis IX and Charles of Anjou when they passed through Vézelay on the way to the crusade of 1248.79 Nowhere in his reminiscences does he mention Isabelle of France, perhaps in part b­ ecause she had not yet made much of a public reputation at the time of his stay in Paris around 1247. And he would hardly have had occasion to hear of Elizabeth of Spalbeek.

mine principum”: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275–­c. 1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 77. ​Also known as the Continuation de l’Abrégé de l’Histoire de France du Ménestrel d’Alphonse de Poitiers, the text is preserved in BnF ms. fr. 2815, with the relevant passage at fols. 184vb–185ra (digital image on Gallica), edited in RHGF, vol. 21 pp. 95–96. Analy­sis in Hélary, “Recherches sur le pouvoir,” 276–79. 78. ​See discussion in chapter 6. 79. ​Baird et al., Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 216.

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Salimbene did, however, write long admiring passages on Hugh of Digne, one of his heroes. The last of t­hese passages was added as something of an afterthought at the end of 1284 or early in 1285, just as William of Nangis was completing his Deeds of Philip III. Unlike his numerous earlier invocations of Hugh’s learning and Joachite prophecies,80 this retrospective reference caused Salimbene to add the earliest known narrative description of Hugh’s ­sister Douceline (recall that only one document from 1272 mentions Douceline by name, and that the Life of the Blessed St. Douceline was not completed ­until 1297). Salimbene could well have met Douceline some thirty-­five years earlier, but now was also relying on reports coming to him through his Franciscan networks. He stressed the fact that Douceline had never entered an order, but “chose the Son of God as husband” and took “the blessed Francis as special spiritual ­father.” Salimbene emphasized Douceline’s firm Franciscan identity and her widespread reputation for ecstatic holiness. Secular and religious alike revered her, he claimed, “­because of her ­great holiness,” and her raptures “became known throughout the city of Marseille to all of the citizens.” ­Because of this impressive reputation, eighty “noble ladies” of Marseille followed her “as their mistress and teacher (domina et magistra).”81 Thus ten years ­after her death, Salimbene confirmed the spread of Douceline’s saintly fame. Salimbene did not link Douceline explic­itly to Charles of Anjou, but his chronicle does place the two in textual proximity. For an Italian writing between 1283 and 1285, nothing could have been more relevant than Charles’s strug­gles to hold onto his kingdom against Peter of Aragon, and Salimbene placed this story in the foreground of his chronicle.82 The sequence of events was indeed dramatic and ultimately carried repercussions for the king of France as much as for the king of Sicily. As early as January 1283 Martin IV (Simon of Brie) had announced the efforts to defeat Peter of Aragon and retake Sicily as a crusade. In March 1283, just as Charles of Anjou left Italy for Paris, Martin formally deprived Peter of his crown. In his desire to find a new king of Aragon, the pope turned to Philip III. He urged the king of France to take up a formal crusade against Peter, and in August he suggested that Philip’s second-­oldest surviving son, Charles of Valois, was the best candidate for the crown of Aragon—­after all, Charles was the son of Isabelle of Aragon, ­sister of Peter of Aragon. Although some veteran councillors such as Mathew of Vendôme ­were not enchanted with the idea,83 by February  1284 Philip was ready to accept Aragon for 80. ​Powell, “Writing Polemic as History.” 81. ​Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 561; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, 2:832–33. 82. ​Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 519–30. 83. ​Strayer, “Crusade against Aragon,” 105–6.



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Charles of Valois. In May  1284 the pope invested the fourteen-­year-­old Charles with the crown.84 Even before the army could march south, however, death began to alter the po­liti­cal situation. First Charles of Anjou died on 7 January 1285. Then on 29 March, Martin IV himself passed away. Philip III had lost his two stoutest supporters—­indeed, the two men who had led him to take up his crusade in the first place. But ­there was no turning back now. The army Philip raised (including Jean I and Jean II of Harcourt) set out in May, crossed the Pyrenees, and reached Gerona near the end of June. The siege ­there stretched on through the summer, and Peter of Aragon’s forces ­were able to cut off French supplies with a decisive sea victory. Although Gerona capitulated in early September, the hungry and sick French army was forced to beat a hasty retreat. Philip III fell ill and died at Perpignan on 5 October 1285. Peter of Aragon, for his part, had l­ ittle time to gloat, since his own death followed on 10 November. Charles of Anjou, Martin IV (Simon of Brie), Philip III, and Peter of Aragon—in the course of eleven months ­every leading figure in this drama had met his end. This string of deaths returns us to the visions of a “holy lady.” Salimbene reported that a sancta domina from Barletta (on the eastern coast of Italy, north of Bari) “saw a dream shown to her by God,” which she reported to local Franciscans. The dream would have come to her in late 1284, b­ ecause it told her that Charles, Martin, Philip, and Peter would all die, in that order, within a year. Then, just before this sequence of deaths commenced, she reported to the same friars another dream, in which a dragon chased her through a garden. As she fled, the dragon called out to her, saying, “I am King Charles, who was living in this beautiful garden, but King Peter of Aragon has now expelled me with a piece of flesh!” The latter phrase was interpreted as referring to Peter’s wife, Constance of Hohenstaufen, and when the friars then heard of Charles’s death, they knew the holy ­woman’s vision had been true.85 Whoever this unnamed holy domina may have been, in her visions Charles’s defeat and his death ­were clearly part of God’s plan. ­These prophecies echoed ­those of Douceline of Digne, who had predicted that Charles would lose his kingdom if he grew too prideful, and—in a looser sense—­those of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, who had warned that God could punish even the Capetian king if he w ­ ere angered by royal sins. T ­ hese prophetic female voices haunted Capetian claims to divine f­ avor, reflecting doubts about ­whether kings who suffered setbacks and military defeats continued to enjoy God’s approval. When Salimbene himself reported Philip III’s death, he 84. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 4–7. 85. ​Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 571–72; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, 2:847–48.

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remarked that the French king’s troops had been “not struck down by their enemies, but by the divine ­will.”86 If Louis IX’s reign had seen the emergence of holy ­women whose reputations sparked the Capetian ­family’s ability to portray itself as uniquely favored by God, the reign of Philip III questioned the relationship of such holy w ­ omen to the court. The questioning was literal in the case of Elizabeth of Spalbeek. Again and again she was interrogated as to what she had said, to whom, and with what claims to divine sanction. Several bishops, an abbot, and numerous royal envoys invested substantial time and effort in t­ hese interrogations, which ­were followed closely by the king and the papal legate. In the years immediately afterward, a dif­fer­ent, textual, kind of interrogation and refashioning took place, as several authors, each with his or her own aims, but all linked to royal circles, strug­gled to find acceptable ways to talk about female holiness in relation to the court. Even in far-­off Italy the Franciscan Salimbene recorded a holy ­woman commenting on the fate of the Capetians. In a sense, ­these authors succeeded in constructing successful narratives. Agnes of Harcourt presented a glowing portrait of Isabelle of France; William of Nangis, in his own way, managed to write Elizabeth of Spalbeek into his story of Capetian triumph over adversity; and Salimbene lauded Douceline’s sanctity. Yet this image of female holiness rested on unstable foundations. Elizabeth of Spalbeek had been one of the most famous living saints of the 1270s, but William of Nangis reduced her to anonymity and could not entirely hide the fact that her initial prophecy had threatened the court. Isabelle of France’s holiness was likewise flattened out as Agnes of Harcourt avoided her most combative and controversial moments. Salimbene’s story of an Italian holy w ­ oman’s prophecy concerned divine dis­plea­sure. In the reign of Philip IV, ­these weakened foundations would collapse, bringing the delicately constructed edifice of female holiness crashing down around the court.

86. ​Baird, Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 599.

Prologue The Culminating Reign of Philip IV

Capetian power reached its peak in the reign of Philip IV (r. 1285–1314).1 The king’s judicial and administrative reach extended across his kingdom to an extent his pre­de­ces­sors would have envied. At the same time, the claims of unique divine approval that had emerged at the beginning of the thirteenth c­ entury took on a strident new tone at the turn of the ­fourteenth. Philip “the Fair” ruled in the knowledge that he was God’s chosen agent, and that God’s enemies w ­ ere the king’s enemies. By this logic, heresy was an affront to the king as much as to God. At the same time, Philip IV was also certain that his personal enemies ­were God’s enemies. To oppose the Capetian king was to oppose Christ. This equation held true not only for po­liti­cal and military opponents but also for bishops, popes, or an entire order perceived as undermining the king’s power to speak for God in France.2

1. ​Classic studies of Philip IV’s reign are Favier, Philippe le Bel; and Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair. Also see Brown, “Réflexions sur Philippe le Bel”; Brown, “Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience”; Théry, “A Heresy of State”; and Lalou, “Robert Fawtier’s Philip the Fair.” 2. ​Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 13.

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Philip IV’s Marriage, ­Family, and Advisers A number of crucial events from Philip IV’s youth have already been noted. He was eight years old when his b­ rother Louis died in 1276, sparking the crisis analyzed in chapter 3 and leaving Philip as heir to the throne. Sometime in ­these years his grand­mother Marguerite of Provence brought him to the tomb of Isabelle of France to be cured of a dangerous illness, a miraculous event that he himself recalled to the s­ isters of Longchamp.3 Philip must have been marked by such moments that emphasized the powers and possibilities of holy ­women in relation to the royal ­family. In August  1284 the sixteen-­year-­old Philip married the eleven-­year-­old Jeanne of Navarre (1273–1305), ­daughter of Henry III of Navarre and Champagne and Blanche of Artois (­sister of Robert II of Artois).4 ­After Henry’s death, Blanche of Artois had fled north to Philip III’s court, and the marriage of the infant Jeanne, heir to Navarre and Champagne, to one of the king’s sons was agreed on as early as 1275.5 Jeanne grew up at court with her ­future husband, and so she too lived through the scandals of 1276–78, though she was surely too young at the time to remember much about them. Elizabeth A. R. Brown has suggested that Philip and Jeanne formed a “complicated” c­ ouple, but notes the “re­spect” that the king had for his wife and the “esteem and affection” that linked them. Even if “the atmosphere at court nourished distrust and encouraged suspicions of all kinds,” Philip trusted his queen, as evidenced by his testament of 1294, which named her as regent should he die before his heir reached majority.6 Moreover, it is striking that (unlike his f­ather) Philip never remarried ­after Jeanne’s death in 1305. Philip and Jeanne’s marriage produced four ­children who lived to maturity: Louis (1289–1316), Philip (c. 1292–1322), Charles (c. 1294–1328), and Isabella (c. 1295–1358). The three boys would ultimately reign as the last direct Capetian kings; their s­ ister would marry Edward II of ­England. Meanwhile, in addition to his ­brother Charles of Valois and his half ­brother Louis of Evreux (1276–1319), Philip IV also had two half ­sisters, Blanche (1278–1305) and Marguerite (1282–1318).

3. ​On Philip IV’s youth, see Brown, “Prince Is the ­Father of the King.” 4. ​­After both Thibaut II of Navarre (Thibaut V of Champagne) and his wife, Isabelle, ­daughter of Louis IX, died returning from the crusade of 1270, Navarre and Champagne passed to Thibaut’s younger ­brother Henry “the Fat,” who lived only ­until July 1274. Henry’s ­widow, Blanche of Artois, then married Edmund of Lancaster, ­brother of Edward I of ­England. 5. ​Lalou, “Le gouvernement de la reine Jeanne,” 17–18. 6. ​Brown, “La mort, les testaments et les fondations,” 126.

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Philip IV relied on Charles of Valois and Robert II of Artois as two of his main generals; unlike his f­ ather and grand­father, Philip rarely led armies into the field himself.7 But Philip’s reign also saw the emergence of strong central administrators at the royal court. Pierre de La Broce had been a personal favorite of Philip III’s, with his meteoric rise based on the king’s friendship. By contrast, although Philip IV displayed ­g reat loyalty to his key advisers, he promoted his ministers based on their ­legal and financial capabilities. Pierre Flote was the king’s right-­hand man u ­ ntil his death at Courtrai in 1302.8 William of Nogaret (d. 1313), like Flote a legist from the south, moved to the fore at that point. But Nogaret was also driven by a fervent, almost mystical streak in his zeal to promote the king as “pope in his kingdom.”9 Late in the reign, Enguerran of Marigny (d. 1315) gained the king’s confidence owing to his administrative and economic competence.10 ­These men directed an ever more sophisticated bureaucratic apparatus, but also a propaganda machine a­ dept at creating enemies only to defame and defeat them and thus increase the glory of God’s defender in France, the Capetian king.

Foreign Affairs and War, to 1304 Philip III’s reign ended in 1285 with his unsuccessful attempt to invade Aragon and install his younger son Charles of Valois on that throne. Prince Philip had gone on the crusade, though prob­ably with no ­g reat enthusiasm.11 In the Regno, Charles of Anjou had just died, with his son Charles II still held prisoner in Aragon and Robert II of Artois acting as regent in his absence. Charles II was liberated in 1288, but several of his sons, including the f­ uture St. Louis of Toulouse, w ­ ere forced to take his place as hostages. As part of a bargain for (eventually) renouncing his claims on Aragon, in 1290 Charles of Valois married Marguerite, d­ aughter of Charles II of Anjou, and thus inherited Anjou and Maine. Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303) at last brokered the release of Charles II’s sons and the renunciation of Charles of Valois’s

7. ​Hélary, “French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King.” 8. ​Pegues, ­Lawyers of the Last Capetians, 87–88 (and 98–102 on Nogaret). 9. ​Théry, “Negocium Christi”; Brown, “Faith of Guillaume de Nogaret”; Théry, “Pioneer of Royal Theocracy”; Moreau and Théry, La royauté capétienne et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret; and Moreau, Guillaume de Nogaret. For the quotation, Théry, “Philippe le Bel, pape en son royaume.” 10. ​Brown, “Philip the Fair and His Ministers”; Favier, Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel. 11. ​Brown, “La mort, les testaments et les fondations,” 127.

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claims to Aragon in 1295. The h ­ ouse of Aragon kept the island of Sicily, while the Angevins held onto the mainland kingdom of Naples.12 In 1291 the last Christian outpost in the Holy Land fell, and ­there was much talk of a new crusade. But the significant military development of the 1290s turned out to be a fresh conflict between France and ­England. Tension had grown between Philip IV and Edward I over l­ egal jurisdiction in Gascony and small-­scale naval skirmishes. In 1294 Edward sent his son Edmund (now the second husband of Blanche of Artois, m ­ other of Jeanne of Navarre) to France to negotiate issues relating to Gascony. A bargain was worked out between Edmund, Queen Jeanne of Navarre, and the dowager Queen Marie of Brabant, whereby Edward I would marry Philip IV’s half s­ ister Marguerite.13 But the marriage was put off when Philip IV reneged on the deal and attacked Gascony with a force that included Charles of Valois and Robert II of Artois.14 Edward attempted to defend Gascony, and also opened a northern front against Philip by enticing the Count of Flanders, Guy of Dampierre, into an alliance. Over the next de­cade, Flanders was the more impor­tant theater for the Capetians. Hostilities with Edward wound down in 1297, with a more lasting peace fi­nally reached in 1303. Yet Philip IV would be caught up in Flemish conflict for the rest of his reign. French forces w ­ ere routed at the ­Battle of Courtrai in 1302, but Philip regained the upper hand with the ­ Battle of Mons-­en-­Pévèle in 1304. Although peace was imposed on Flanders in 1305, attempts to enforce its harsh terms caused prob­lems for the king right up to the end of his life.

The ­Battle with Boniface VIII More immediately, the king’s conflict with Boniface VIII mirrored the chronology of his wars in Flanders. A first dispute began in 1296, when Boniface attempted to forbid Philip from taxing the French church to pay for the crown’s war aims. Boniface, facing a major military challenge from the Colonna f­amily in Italy ­after May 1297, was forced to retreat, issuing his conciliatory bull Etsi de statu in July  1297 and canonizing Louis IX in August.15 But a­ fter Philip’s 1301 arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, a second, more desperate 12. ​Hélary, “Un problème d’équilibre européen?” For Charles of Valois in this period, see Petit, Charles de Valois, 18–23. 13. ​Brown, “Philip the Fair of France,” 242–43; Brown, “La mort, les testaments et les fondations,” 129; Prestwich, Edward I, 377–78. 14. ​Hélary, Courtrai, 36–38; Petit, Charles de Valois, 28–31. 15. ​Gaposchkin, “Boniface VIII.”

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contest between pope and king broke out. Boniface reached his rhetorical peak in November 1302 with his famous claims of papal supremacy in Unam sanctam, but William of Nogaret, with a small force supplied by the Colonna, countered in September 1303 by confronting Boniface at Agnani, intending to convoke a church council that would judge him.16 Although Boniface was freed by the townspeople of Agnani, he died the next month. T ­ here was ­little doubt as to who had triumphed in this contest. The next pope, Benedict XI, reigned for only a few months in 1304, and by the time Clement V (r. 1305–14) was elected, it was clear that all other papal challenges paled before that of placating the Capetian king. Clement was in France at the time of his election and never crossed the Alps, initiating the papacy’s seven-­decade stay in Avignon. In this ideologically charged atmosphere, the second half of Philip’s reign witnessed a long string of attacks in which the king and his advisers denounced, tried, forced to confess, and ultimately incarcerated, expelled, or executed the supposed enemies of God and France. From 1301 onward this string of “affairs” can be seen as a concerted campaign in which the French crown sought to overcome competing sources of religious power, bending bishops, popes, and entire ­orders to its ­will through defamation, demonization, and rhetorical usurpation of the language of ecclesiastical authority.17 ­After the trial of Bernard Saisset (1301) and the confrontation with Boniface VIII (1303), ­these attacks escalated to the expulsion of the Jews (1306), the arrest of the Templars (1307), the pro­cess against Bishop Guichard of Troyes (1308), and the continuing attempt to have Boniface VIII posthumously declared a heretic. In the midst of this series of ever more outrageous affairs, in 1304 a wouldbe holy ­woman was tortured, tied to a stake, and set to be burned alive on the ­orders of Charles of Valois, ­brother of King Philip IV of France. At the last moment, according to a chronicler close to the court, Charles changed his mind and the ­woman was imprisoned rather than burned. The story of Paupertas of Metz signals a move t­ oward the destruction of female figures claiming privileged access to God in the orbit of the king of France.

16. ​Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, 172–92. For more detail, see Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-­Siège. 17. ​Théry, “Pioneer of Royal Theocracy.”

Ch a p ter   5

Paupertas of Metz Peacemaker, Prophet, or Poisoner?

A brief passage about a ­woman called Paupertas has long been available in printed editions of William of Nangis’s Latin Universal Chronicle as an entry u ­ nder the year 1304. This is the same William of Nangis, monk of Saint-­Denis, whose Deeds of Philip III included a distorted version of Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s role in the scandals of 1276–78. Among William’s most impor­tant writings was his Universal Chronicle, the concluding section of which recorded events at and around the Capetian court in the last quarter of the thirteenth ­century.1 A ­ fter William’s death in 1300, his ­brother monks at Saint-­Denis continued this work. For the first years of the ­fourteenth ­century, however, it would be misleading to refer to a single “Continuation” of William of Nangis’s Universal Chronicle. Instead, several monks, or teams of monks, produced at least four continuations.2 Although the interrelationship 1. ​William of Nangis’s Latin Universal Chronicle itself exists in a first recension, made before 1297, and a second recension, prepared ­after 1297 (both versions may have been collaborative efforts, the latter may or may not have been created a­ fter William’s death). See Delisle, Mémoire sur les ouvrages de Guillaume de Nangis, 10–55. 2. ​The following tentative overview relies on the work of Léopold Delisle as well as the research of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, who has generously shared her conclusions with me where they have not yet appeared in print: one continuation, attached to the surviving manuscripts of the first recension (BnF ms. fr. 5703 and BAV Reg. lat. 544), covers 1301 to spring 1303. A second continuation, in two manuscripts once owned by Saint-­Germain-­des-­Près, covers 1301 to 1302; ­these same two manu-

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among t­ hese texts awaits a full study, by the 1320s or 1330s one of them had come to be treated at Saint-­Denis as the “official” or preferred continuation for the de­cade ­after William’s death. It was this version that would be printed and reprinted from the seventeenth ­century on, and that includes the short (about 120-­word) report on Paupertas.3 A few modern historians noted this tantalizing passage, but its brevity limited its interest.4 In 2013, however, Elizabeth A. R. Brown published a previously unedited portion of one of the other early continuations of William of Nangis’s Latin Universal Chronicle, which contained a much longer and more detailed version of the “Story of Paupertas” (over one thousand words).5 Known in two manuscripts,6 this continuation recounts events ­until January 1308. For that reason it ­will be referred to ­here as the 1308 Continuation, and its anonymous author (or authors) ­will be called the 1308 Continuator. Following Elizabeth Brown’s discovery, it is now clear that the report on Paupertas found in the “official” version was condensed from the 1308 Continuation. In other words, scripts also contain a third continuation that covers 1301 to 1368 (BnF ms. lat. 11729, fol. 266 for 1301–2; fols. 266–330 for 1301–68; then copied in BnF lat. 13704). The latter continuation is the one that came to be seen as “official” and was used as the base for early modern and modern printed editions. Although it ultimately extended to 1368, the section for the early years of the c­ entury seems to have been compiled by the 1320s or 1330s, drawing on the several existing continuations as well as other sources. The fourth continuation, which is used extensively in this chapter and referred to as the Continuation of 1308, extends in one manuscript (BAV lat. 4598) to late 1307 and in another (Bern, Burgerbibliothek ms. 70) to 10 January 1308. The continuations that have just been numbered “second,” “third,” and “fourth” share some material up through at least 1302 (indicating ­either an initial phase of common work or copying one from the other) but then diverge. See further Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” 310n10; Brown, “Les assemblées de Philippe le Bel,” 63n5; and Géraud, Chronique latine, xlv–­lij (referring to the manuscripts by the shelf numbers then in use). 3. ​First edited by Luc d’Achery in the seventeenth ­century, then in RHGF, vol. 20, 590, and fi­ nally in Géraud, Chronique latine, vol. 1, 340–41, based on BnF ms. lat. 11729. Elizabeth A. R. Brown kindly sent me her own working edition of the passage, from that manuscript, fols. 269–70, compared with lat. 13704, fol. 162v, which reveals several small errors and omissions in Géraud’s work. 4. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 100; Lerner, Heresy of the F­ ree Spirit in the L­ ater ­Middle Ages, 70–71; Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 124n92; Collard, Crime of Poison in the ­Middle Ages, 99–100; Kreiger, “Mystical Monarchy,” 107–10; Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 17; Field, “On Being a Beguine,” 131; Simons, “In Praise of Faithful ­Women,” 345. 5. ​Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” 325 and Appendix 2. 6. ​The passage is BAV Vat. lat. 4598, fols. 201v–202r, and Bern, Burgerbibliothek ms. 70, fols. 187v–188v (the latter folio was misnumbered in the manuscript as 189v, and given with that designation in Brown’s edition). Elizabeth A. R. Brown generously shared with me her photo­g raphs of the passage in both manuscripts. On the relationship between this and the other early continuations, see note 2, and for further precision, see Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” n. 10; Delisle, “Documents parisiens de la bibliothèque de Berne,” 248–65 (Delisle published the entries for 1303 as found in this manuscript, and then selected entries for 1304–1308. He gave only one short entry for 1304, however, and did not print or mention the entry on Paupertas); and Delisle, “Notice sur vingt manuscrits du Vatican,” 510–11.

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the newly published text is both earlier and more substantial than the previously known version. According to this account of her story, Paupertas had lived as a recluse in Metz before moving to Flanders, where she forged a new existence among beguines. At the time of Philip IV’s siege of Lille (1297), she acted as a peacemaker. L ­ ater, when Philip again came north to avenge the French defeat at Courtrai (1302), she warned that if the king attacked the Flemings, he would die or be betrayed by his own men. Philip retreated. But soon (1303) the Flemings bribed Paupertas to poison Charles of Valois, the king’s b­ rother. She sent to Charles a young man bearing poisoned feathers and a golden letter purporting to be from Jesus Christ. Charles arrested and tortured the young man ­until he confessed. A year l­ater (1304), Paupertas herself traveled to France, where she was in turn arrested and tortured u ­ ntil she confessed her crimes. Charles was on the verge of having her burned at the stake at his c­ astle in Crépy-­en-­Valois, when at the last moment he ordered that she instead be imprisoned.

Chronicles and Controls The recovery of this original recounting of the interaction between Paupertas and the royal ­family of France offers an exciting opportunity for new analy­sis. Yet it also pres­ents substantial challenges, for at least three reasons. First, even if it is the earliest and most detailed account of t­ hese events, it still represents the perspective of a single, anonymous chronicler. No corroborating con­ temporary evidence mentioning Paupertas is known. Second, the 1308 Continuator was entirely hostile to the w ­ oman he was describing. For him, Paupertas was a satanic agent bent on destroying the king and his ­family. This hostile rhe­toric is in­ter­est­ing for its own sake, but it hardly facilitates interpretation of the events ­behind the account. Fi­nally, at certain points the Continuator’s tale descends into obvious flights of fancy. Given that some ele­ments of his history are evidently embellished, it has to be asked ­whether any truth at all lies ­behind his tale. The example of Elizabeth of Spalbeek highlights the pitfalls and the possibilities of relying on a single chronicle account. Recall that William of Nangis’s Deeds of Philip III offered a distorted version of Elizabeth’s role in the scandals of 1276–78. Imagine, therefore, a hy­po­thet­i­cal scenario: What if the Deeds of Philip III ­were all that scholars had to go on in trying to reconstruct ­these events? Certainly the result would be an incomplete recounting of Eliz-



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abeth of Spalbeek’s actions. Indeed, ­because William of Nangis omitted Elizabeth’s name, t­ here would be no way for scholars to know that his “beguine of Nivelles” was ­really Elizabeth of Spalbeek. But even if that connection ­were somehow established, it would still be impossible to arrive at anything other than a partial account of her story. Yet, continuing on with this hy­po­thet­i­cal scenario, what if one ­were to won­ der ­whether the “beguine of Nivelles” was simply the chronicler’s fictional creation? Plausible justifications could be offered for such doubt, given the apparently bizarre sequence of events William of Nangis recounts. In fact, in Elizabeth’s case abundant evidence demonstrates that b­ ehind William of Nangis’s distortions lay the real actions of a real ­woman. ­Those actions ­were distorted by William, but they ­were not in­ven­ted. Thus, in this case rejecting the entire episode as fantasy would result in a clear error. In a similar fashion, the ­woman referred to as Paupertas or Pauperies in the Continuation of 1308 almost certainly did exist, even if we may now be able to perceive only a distant reflection of her c­ areer. When all e­ lse is stripped away, the under­lying narrative about a beguine known for peacemaking and prophecy, who was eventually arrested and imprisoned, is unlikely to have been the product of pure imagination. In the other sections of his text that have been published,7 the 1308 Continuator shows no par­tic­u­lar propensity for inventing stories out of thin air. In this case he evidently understood himself to be writing about a real w ­ oman, whom he went to g­ reat lengths to discredit with hostile rhe­toric and fabulous details. In and of themselves, such flights of fancy are not surprising. For medieval writers, “a history could be true and at the same time subject to amplification by way of rhetorical invention,”8 and chroniclers could relate verifiably correct historical information side by side with “all sorts of anecdotes and stories flavoured with vari­ous doses of prejudices, fantasies, and ste­reo­types.”9 The difficulty, of course, lies in separating fact from fantastic flavoring.

7. ​In the excerpts Delisle printed (“Documents parisiens de la bibliothèque de Berne”) for 1303, specific details may be suspect, but ­there is no hint of wild fabrication in the Continuator’s treatment of this material (which was subsequently used for the Grandes chroniques de France). Indeed, Brown, “Les assemblées de Philippe le Bel,” 76, judges the 1308 Continuator’s account of the assemblies of 13–14 June 1303 (though slightly misdated) “assez juste” and contrasts it favorably with the elaborations found in the somewhat ­later “official” Continuation. 8. ​Lake, “Truth, Plausibility, and the Virtues of Narrative at the Millennium,” 236; Lake, “Current Approaches to Medieval Historiography”; Courroux, L’Écriture de l’histoire dans les chroniques françaises, part 3. 9. ​Menache, “Chronicles and Historiography.”

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The Prefatory Perspective The 1308 Continuator relates Paupertas’s entire c­ areer as the third entry for 1304, the year in which she was arrested by Charles of Valois. He begins with a revealing prefatory sentence: “A certain false w ­ oman (pseudo mulier) named Paupertas or Pauperies, having the appearance but not the real­ity of holiness, having dressed in the habit of the beguines in order to deceive, was arrested by Charles, count of Valois and Anjou, b­ rother of the king of France. She had deceitfully tried to poison him, as ­will be revealed below.”10 The Continuator’s perspective is instantly made clear—­this ­woman had been a charlatan from the start. She might have seemed holy, but that appearance was a ruse; and if she dressed like a beguine it was only to further the fraud. The Continuator also stresses her ultimate downfall; a true holy ­woman would hardly have been arrested for attempting to poison the king’s ­brother. The author also seems to highlight the w ­ oman’s bizarre name(s), in order to heap even more suspicion on her—­could anyone trustworthy r­ eally be named “Paupertas”? Indeed (the Continuator seems to suggest), is her “real” name even known? Is it Paupertas or Pauperies? The two Latin words are largely equivalent, meaning “poverty.” Presumably she went by some version of the modern French Pauvreté, and the Continuator was providing two pos­si­ble translations into Latin. But more specifically the word pauperies had the technical meaning in Roman law of “damage done by an animal.”11 Any reader learned enough to catch the allusion would won­der about such a ­woman. This brief preface also gives advance notice that a key figure in the story’s outcome ­will be Charles of Valois, ­brother of Philip IV and thwarted candidate for the crown of Aragon. Following his 1290 marriage to Marguerite, ­daughter of Charles II of Anjou, Charles of Valois was also Count of Anjou and Maine and one of the most power­ful barons of France.12 Even more importantly for Charles’s status and influence, the king trusted and relied on him, as his only surviving full ­brother. If the 1308 Continuator’s preface leaves no doubt about his hostility ­toward this pseudo mulier, he is nonetheless compelled to acknowledge the existence of a competing perspective. That is, to make his point about duplicity, the Continuator must first admit that t­hose around Paupertas perceived her as holy. The text ­will repeatedly run into this paradox; her reputation for holiness must 10. ​For the Latin text, see Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” Appendix 2. En­glish translations given h ­ ere are my own, but owe a g­ reat deal to t­ hose provided by Brown in the same appendix. 11. ​Watson, “The Original Meaning of Pauperies.” 12. ​Verry, “Charles de Valois et les seigneurs d’Anjou.”



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be acknowledged before it can be presented as deceptive.13 Moreover, even as he mocks her, the Continuator offers a clue as to how this ­woman saw herself. Presumably “Paupertas” was not her given name, but a Latin version of an unusual auto-­designation,14 strongly suggesting that she wished to be seen as devoted to poverty. This in turn may indicate an affinity for Franciscan spirituality. Not only was Francis of Assisi the most famous thirteenth-­century advocate of apostolic poverty, but a well-­known text, “The Holy Exchange between the Blessed Francis and Lady Poverty (Domina Paupertas),” written by an anonymous friar in the mid-­thirteenth ­century, might be the most obvious inspiration for a ­woman to have presented herself as a personification of poverty.15

Metz, before 1290 Having started from the perspective of 1304, the Continuator doubles back to tell Paupertas’s story from the beginning, while reinforcing his tendentious tone: “The miserable, much-­to-be detested ­woman was born in the city of Metz, where many ­people said that she had earlier been a recluse for seven years.” In terms of chronology, the 1308 Continuator ­will shortly place Paupertas in Lille by 1297. Although the wording refers to mere rumor (plurimi affirmabant), and the span of “seven years” can hardly be taken literally, the internal logic of the text would have Paupertas living as a recluse in Metz from the mid or late 1280s into the mid-1290s. In terms of geography, it might seem surprising that this ­woman’s saga would lead back through Lille to the imperial city of Metz, some 360 kilo­meters to the east (see map 2).16 But both Metz and Lille ­were largely francophone cities, and t­ here ­were direct ties between 13. ​This kind of rhe­toric indicates that the Continuator did not believe himself to be writing about a fictional creation. That is, his insistence that Paupertas’s local reputation was based on deception is not compatible with the idea he had in­ven­ted her out of ­whole cloth. 14. ​As a nickname, the designation may not have been entirely unpre­ce­dented. For instance, a document from Cambrai in 1304 refers to a chaplain t­ here, Gillon Du Fayt, as “dit Povre ame.” ADN, 4 G 843 no. 6. Discussed in Piron, “Marguerite in Champagne,” and first noted in Kocher, Allegories of Love, 30. 15. ​Brufani, Sacrum commercium sancti Francisci cum domina Paupertate; Campion Murray, trans., The Holy Agreement between Saint Francis and Lady Poverty, 2nd ed. (Orewa, NZ: Catholic Publications Centre, 2001); discussion in Newman, God and the Goddesses, 3–9. I thank Ed Sutcliffe for reminding me of this text’s relevance. 16. ​I thank Nicole Bériou for pointing out in personal correspondence that Douai contained a béguinage called “des Wetz.” The possibility that Paupertas’s true origins could have been in Douai (much closer to Lille, with “Wetz” misremembered or misreported as “Metz”) should be kept in mind.

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the two regions. For instance, from 1280 to 1282 the bishop of Metz was Jean II of Dampierre, son of Count Guy of Dampierre of Flanders and grand­son of Marguerite of Constantinople. Then from 1282 to 1296 Jean was succeeded by Bouchard of Avesnes, another grand­son of Marguerite of Constantinople. The two cousins had been rivals for the see of Liège in 1282; when Jean won out, Bouchard was given Metz. Thus even in Metz the rivalry between Marguerite of Constantinople’s two sets of descendants defined ecclesiastical politics.17 If Paupertas spent part of her life as an urban recluse, she participated in a flourishing form of religious life.18 By the f­ ourteenth ­century, “female solitaries had become a common sight in many cities and towns, primarily t­ hose of the Low Countries, E ­ ngland, France, and Germany.”19 ­Women who chose such an existence generally lived in cells associated with churches, hospitals, or leprosaria. This life in and of itself implied a commitment to religious perfection, which in turn made many urban reclusae into manifestations of holiness in city centers. In­de­pen­dent evidence for such reclusae in Metz at this moment is slim, but a female recluse living before the church of Saint-­ Gengoul at the southern edge of the old city is documented for 1293. It would be a stretch to assert that this unnamed “rancluse” was Paupertas, but this evidence demonstrates that t­here is nothing implausible about a ­woman living in the time, place, and manner described by the 1308 Continuator.20 The most relevant regional pre­ce­dent for Paupertas was a w ­ oman named Sibylla who gained a reputation for sanctity in the 1240s by imitating the beguines of Marsal, a village about sixty kilo­meters southeast of Metz. Her story, apparently well known in the region, was recorded between 1254 and 1267 by Richer, a monk of the Benedictine monastery of Senones (some 130 kilo­meters south of Metz). According to Richer, a townswoman gave Sibylla a room, where she refused all nourishment but claimed to see angels and be rapt into heaven. As demons began to appear and complain of how Sibylla’s sanctity pained them, she attracted the admiration of Franciscans and Dominicans, 17. ​See also Jean Schneider, La ville de Metz aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Nancy: George Thomas, 1950), 183–90. 18. ​Mulder-­Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses; L’Hermite-­ Leclercq, “Anchoritism in Medieval France.” 19. ​Simons, “On the Margins of Religious Life,” 315. 20. ​McCurry, Urban Society and the Church, 217, pointed to a “rancluse” (feminine) living in Metz “davant S. Gengoult” in 1293, as noted in Karl Wichmann, Die Metzer Bannrollen des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Verlag von Quelle & Meyer, 1910), 529. On beguines and similar semireligious ­women in Metz, see McCurry, “Religious C ­ areers and Religious Devotion in Thirteenth-­Century Metz.”



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counts and knights. Even the bishop of Metz, Jacques of Lorraine, was so convinced of her sanctity that he considered building a church for her in which she could live as a kind of recluse herself. In the end, a local Dominican exposed Sibylla as a fraud who had been dressing up as a demon and faking her raptures.21 “Some” cried that she should be burned for her deception, and Bishop Jacques himself wanted her killed. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and Sibylla was instead put in prison, where she soon died. Although Richer’s chronicle does not seem to have had a wide circulation, if his report on Sibylla was known at Saint-­Denis, it might have influenced the 1308 Continuator’s perception of Paupertas and her roots in Metz. Unlike Sibylla, Paupertas left the region of Metz unharmed. But how and why did she do so?22 The 1308 Continuator’s only concrete statement is that Paupertas’s dwelling place in Metz collapsed. Perhaps this bit of adversity offers a partial explanation for why she would have picked up and started over elsewhere. It is also pos­si­ble that some dramatic disgrace forced her departure—­ though if the Continuator had known of any such scandal he would surely have reported it. In fact, ­there is no credible evidence on which to base any concrete analy­sis of Paupertas’s motivations for departing Metz. The 1308 Continuator, however, does have a point to make. According to his recounting, Paupertas’s ­house toppled over ­because it was “pushed by the devil.” Although being besieged by Satan could be proof of sanctity (Sibylla had supposedly made this very claim), h ­ ere the Continuator offers a less positive lesson. He gives no real narrative of events; rather, he explains Paupertas’s actions within a misogynistic and satanic logic, asserting only that the devil habitually uses ­women “as his old familiar weapons” in order “to strike to the ground the Cedars of Lebanon and the rams of the flocks, and indeed to deceive the ­whole world.” The phrase cedros libani et gregum arietes echoes biblical passages (Psalms 28:5; Genesis 31:38) but comes more directly from the Regula novitiorum (Rule for novices) written by the Franciscan minister general Bonaventure around 1259 (just a­ fter collaborating on the first rule for Longchamp).23 Bonaventure’s 21. ​Waitz, Richeri Gesta Senoniensis Ecclesiae, 308–10, based on BnF ms. lat. 10016, fols. 62–65. On the text, see Dantand, “La chronique de Richer, moine à Senones au XIIIème siècle.” For analy­sis, see Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 87–98; Elliott, Proving ­Woman, 194–97; and Martin Roch, “La beguine, l’ange et l’odeur de sainteté: le cas de Sybille de Marsel, ‘garce qui fit de la sainte’,” Cahiers d’histoire 34, no spécial (2018): 91–118. Courtney Smith’s University of Vermont Master’s thesis, in pro­g ress, also focuses on this case. 22. ​Recluses could forgo permanent enclosure and thus could sometimes move on to other forms of life. Mulder-­Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses, 15. 23. ​Cf. Bonaventure’s “Regula novitiorum,” chap. 13 (“de modo conversandi cum saecularibus”), in Doctoris seraphici Bonaventurae . . . ​Opera omnia, vol. 8 (Quaracchi: Ex Typograhia Collegii S. Bonaventurae,

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advice to novices had been to flee w ­ omen as one would flee a serpent. He cited St. Augustine to the effect that speech with ­women, even if they are sanctae (saintly/holy), should be carefully limited. For the holier w ­ omen are, the more they may lure the unwary. In other words, this caution has been transformed by the 1308 Continuator into a statement about the dev­il’s preference for using ­women to carry out his nefarious schemes. In this rhetorical context, it mattered ­little what Paupertas might have been thinking when she deci­ded to leave her native city; it was enough to know that she acted at the dev­il’s behest. T ­ here may even be a subtle antimendicant mocking of Franciscan pretentions, turning Bonaventure’s own words against (Lady) Paupertas. Just as the Benedictine Richer of Senones evidently used his tale of Sibylla’s unmasking as a way to stress the credulity of local mendicants, so the Benedictine Continuator of Saint-­Denis may have presented Paupertas as a proxy for Franciscan ideals.24 And yet (“alas!” says the Continuator) Paupertas “escaped unharmed, leaving the place, through the protection of the devil.” Paupertas left ­because the devil “foresaw a use for her in carry­ing out his evil work.” In sum, the 1308 Continuator uses the entire backstory in Metz as a way to demonstrate that the rest of this w ­ oman’s ­career should be understood as diabolically inspired. Though the devil makes no further direct appearance in the text, he lurks ­behind all of Paupertas’s subsequent actions.

The Move to Flanders, before 1297 “A ­little ­later,” our Continuator reports, Paupertas was living “among the crowds of beguines [found] throughout Flanders.” The internal logic of the text dates her arrival in Flanders to before 1297. Even if she had been forced to leave her hometown, t­ here is no indication of why she chose this specific destination, though the Continuator perhaps insinuates that she sought a location where beguines flourished. What the 1308 Continuator does stress is Paupertas’s developing reputation in her new home. ­Because of the simplicity of her life, “she acquired a name for sanctity” (nomen sanctimonie vivendo frugaliter acquisivit). In fact, owing to her vis­i­ble abstinence and piety, ­those around her treated her “like a holy w ­ oman and worthy of God” (quasi sancta 1898), 487, claiming to quote Augustine, on fleeing ­women, even if they seem sanctae: “Cedros Libani et gregum arietes sub hac specie corruisse reperi” where the Continuator of 1308 reads “cedros libani et gregum arietes ad terram prosternere immo totum mundum decipere consuevit, domus in qua reclusa mulier degebat corruit.” 24. ​On antimendicant rhe­toric, see Geltner, Making of Medieval Antifraternalism.



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et Deo digna mulier). The Continuator, of course, pres­ents this as only a misleading facade. Nevertheless, the text unequivocally states that by around 1295 Paupertas had gained a reputation in Flanders as a holy w ­ oman, sancta et Deo digna.

At the Siege of Lille, June–­September 1297 As the 1308 Continuator moves into the heart of his story, the time, place, and historical actors come into sharper focus: “­After some time had passed, when the king of France first took up arms against the count of Flanders and was besieging Lille, this Paupertas, a sly fox (vulpes subdola), remained in the town while it was ­under siege.” The next episode in Paupertas’s story is thus set during Philip IV’s siege of Lille, which lasted from 23 June to 1 September 1297. Lille was one of the most impor­tant cities in Flanders, with between twenty and thirty thousand inhabitants, the majority of whom ­were French speakers. Presumably the Continuator intended to imply that Paupertas was still dwelling “among the beguines” at this point (he again calls her a beguine when relating events of 1302). Lille had only one formal beguinage, St. Elizabeth’s, which had been given a firm foundation by Countess Marguerite (of Constantinople) of Flanders in 1245.25 Originally centered on a hospital, by the last quarter of the thirteenth ­century it had grown into a large court beguinage with substantial grounds and gardens, ­under the spiritual care of the Dominicans, the protection of the bishop of Tournai, and the patronage of Countess Marguerite and her son Guy of Dampierre. St. Elizabeth’s may occasionally have experienced disciplinary challenges, given that Countess Marguerite in October 1276 allowed the community’s leadership to banish any beguine who proved disobedient.26 But the countess was also explicit in praising the “grant saintée” (­g reat sanctity) in which the beguines lived.27 The inhabitants of St. Elizabeth’s came from across the social spectrum, including well-­off townswomen and eventually even aristocrats,28 but at least some of the beguines ­were always truly poor. One of Countess Marguerite’s original donations in 25. ​Galloway, “Origins.” See also Simons, Cities of Ladies, 285–86; Delmaire, “Les béguines dans le Nord de la France au premier siècle de leur histoire,” 158–59; Galloway, “Neither Miraculous nor Astonishing”; and Galloway, “ ‘Discreet and Devout Maidens.’ ” 26. ​Du Péage, Documents, 22–23. But note that Galloway, “Origins,” 201, finds no evidence of any beguine of Lille being accused of heresy before 1501, and the several other cases she cites of beguines behaving badly in Lille are all from the ­later fifteenth ­century. 27. ​Du Péage, Documents, 23–24. Du Péage edits only four documents from the 1290s, none of which sheds any direct light on Paupertas. 28. ​Galloway, “Origins,” chap. 5.

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1245 referred to supporting “the work of the poor w ­ omen (pauperem mulierum) who are called beguines,”29 and a thorough study has shown that about a third of the documents left by the comital ­family concerning the beguines of Lille over the next c­ entury mentioned their poverty.30 In that sense, a beguine who called herself Paupertas could surely have found a place ­here.31 Paupertas, however, picked an inauspicious moment to arrive in Lille, just as Philip IV was launching a full-­scale attack on southern Flanders. Although Flanders had long been a trou­ble spot for French kings, Countess Marguerite and her son Guy of Dampierre had largely remained loyal to the Capetians through the end of Philip III’s reign.32 But Philip IV’s heavy-­handed overlordship eventually persuaded Guy of Dampierre to throw in his lot with Edward I of E ­ ngland. As hostilities between E ­ ngland and France broke out in 1294, Guy deci­ded to marry his d­ aughter to King Edward’s son. Philip IV, however, took custody of the girl (and briefly her ­father as well) and refused to allow the marriage. Although Philip and Guy ­were temporarily reconciled in 1296, by 1297 further disputes broke out over tax gathering in major Flemish towns including Lille. Pushed to the edge of humiliation, the seventy-­two-­year-­old Guy renounced his allegiance to Philip and allied himself with Edward.33 This was the context as Philip IV and his army, including Charles of Valois, Robert II of Artois, and Jean II of Harcourt,34 marched north to attack Flanders in the summer of 1297. They approached Lille by 17 June, and by 23 June settled in to besiege the city. With Count Guy in Ghent, his son Robert of Béthune was left to defend Lille.35 He had ample supplies, a solid garrison, and strong walls on which to rely. But Philip IV laid a ruthless siege, setting fire to the suburbs and pillaging surrounding farms.36 At the same time, vari­ous French detachments broke off to attack other cities farther west. Most notably,

29. ​Du Péage, Documents, 10–14. 30. ​This was demonstrated by Galloway, “Origins,” 253. 31. ​Her origins in Metz would have set her apart, since almost all identifiable beguines of St. Elizabeth’s came from Lille or surrounding villages. Yet several did have their origins as far away as Ghent, so it was not impossible for a w ­ oman from outside the region to s­ ettle as a beguine in Lille. See Galloway, “Origins,” 106, 269; see also Delmaire, “Les béguines dans le nord de la France,” 138. 32. ​Indeed, the two families ­were joined when Guy of Dampierre’s son Robert married Charles of Anjou’s ­daughter Blanche in 1265, an alliance cemented when Robert went south with Charles to conquer the Regno and Guy and Robert both joined the crusade of 1270. Although Blanche died that same year, Guy of Dampierre’s fifth son Philip then also fought for Charles of Anjou. On ­these ties between Charles of Anjou and the f­ amily of Guy of Dampierre, see Dunbabin, French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 120–32. 33. ​Hélary, Courtrai, 38–41. 34. ​For Jean II of Harcourt, see Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:136. 35. ​Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 239. 36. ​Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 240.



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Charles of Valois attacked Ypres and Warneton in July37 and, with Robert II of Artois, won the key ­Battle of Furnes on 20 August.38 Once news from Furnes arrived at Lille, negotiations for the city’s surrender began. On 25 August the garrison agreed that u ­ nless the Count of Flanders, the king of ­England, or the king of Germany relieved the city by 1 September, Lille would be turned over to the king of France.39 Although Edward I of ­England had just landed in Flanders and on 1 September was actually meeting with Guy of Dampierre at Bruges,40 his arrival was too late, and the town was duly surrendered. St. Elizabeth’s lay outside the city walls, beyond the Porte Saint-­Pierre in the suburban parish of Saint-­André. It would therefore have been in grave danger as royal forces plundered the outskirts of Lille. Presumably the beguines retreated into the city (in opidum, as the Continuator writes). But even within the city walls loyalties came into sharp conflict. Across Flanders at this moment, nonnoble urban elites who controlled city governments tended to see the French king as the protector of their interests, while common townspeople more often allied with the count.41 In Lille the royal party (leliaerts) may have outweighed the count’s supporters (klauwaards), particularly ­after Boniface VIII excommunicated Guy of Dampierre for his rebellion against the king of France.42 Where might St. Elizabeth’s generally and Paupertas specifically have fit into this po­liti­cal landscape? On the one hand, the beguines might have been grateful to Guy of Dampierre. Not only was the comital ­family the most impor­tant source of patronage for St. Elizabeth’s, but as recently as 1296 Guy had reconfirmed the rents and privileges given by his ­mother.43 Moreover, a ­woman calling herself “Paupertas” might seem more likely to have found f­ avor with the common ­people, and hence to have leaned ­toward the klauwaards.44 Certainly the 1308 Continuator would eventually depict her as an unrestrained ­enemy of Philip IV. On the other hand, some beguines must have come from families dedicated to the king’s cause; quite likely opinions ­were as divided at St. Elizabeth as throughout the rest of the city. But what­ever mixed loyalties may have swirled around St. Elizabeth’s, its inhabitants had good reason to hope for a speedy end to hostilities so that they could return to their beguinage. 37. ​Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 241–42; Petit, Charles de Valois, 34–35. 38. ​Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 250–54; Petit, Charles de Valois, 35. 39. ​Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 257–58. 40. ​Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 256. 41. ​Boone, “Une société urbanisée sous tension.” 42. ​Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 224 and 244 on sentiment in Lille; 232–37 on excommunication. 43. ​ADN, B 1528 pièce 3810 (not noted by du Péage). 44. ​I thank Walter Simons for discussion of this issue.

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Paupertas seems to have sought a position above the fray in order to work for peace. As an immigrant, she stood outside entrenched po­liti­cal divisions and could pres­ent herself as a neutral party of sorts. As the Continuator of 1308 writes, “In hope of peace (sub spe pacis), ­going back and forth to the royal camp according to her own f­ ree ­will, with her deceitful words she kept the king and his barons idle ­there for a long time.”45 On one level, the Continuator continues to press his overall point in this passage; Paupertas was duplicitous as always, a “sly fox” tricking the king into idleness when (by implication) he should have been more actively prosecuting his war. But if the negative embellishment is stripped away, the basic assertion is that this beguine sought to act as some kind of go-­between during the siege. The Continuator’s language implies that this shut­tle diplomacy was extended in time and undertaken on her own initiative. It was successful insofar as Paupertas was able to speak to the king, or at least make her words known to him. And, most importantly, she took ­these actions “sub spe pacis.” Some part of the forces defending Lille must have thought it worth allowing Paupertas to go out and speak to the king’s men, and the king or his representatives must have perceived her as worth receiving. She could hardly have passed back and forth through the siege lines while the suburbs went up in flames u ­ nless she ­were somehow authorized to do so. This is not to suggest that Paupertas was empowered to negotiate on behalf of Robert of Béthune or the townspeople of Lille, or that she acted as a formal agent of the king. But if this account rests on any truth whatsoever, it must be that Paupertas enjoyed a level of trust from both sides. This assumption in turn matches the Continuator’s admission that Paupertas had a local reputation for holiness based on her ­simple and pious life; her renown as sancta et digna Deo would have lent her a legitimacy based on divine approval. Such peacemaking characterized many medieval holy men and w ­ omen.46 Francis of Assisi and his early companions had wandered war-­torn Italy with the greeting “May the Lord give you peace” and “Peace to this h ­ ouse.” As André Vauchez notes, the poverello established a “connection . . . ​between poverty and peace,”47 a connection perhaps echoed in Paupertas’s name and actions. Similarly Douceline of Digne, herself dedicated to Franciscan poverty, had used her standing with Charles of Anjou to reestablish concord between 45. ​It is pos­si­ble that the phrase sub spe pacis should not be considered as directly describing Paupertas’s personal hope for peace, but rather the more general atmosphere in which she operated. Even in that case, however, the 1308 Continuator was putting her efforts in the context of peacemaking. 46. ​Jansen, Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy, chap. 1. 47. ​Vauchez, Francis of Assisi, 177; Jansen, Peace and Penance, 29–36.



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the count and the local Franciscans. The Franciscan-­inspired penitent Margherita of Cortona (d. 1297) received a vision calling her a clamatrix pacis. More famously, a few de­cades ­later the Dominican penitent Catherine of Siena (d. 1370) would undertake even more explicit peacemaking embassies in Italy founded on her holy reputation.48 It is true that no other con­temporary sources report Paupertas’s efforts to make peace during the siege of Lille.49 And not even the 1308 Continuator suggests that her intervention was decisive. Yet on the w ­ hole, the picture drawn by the Continuator is plausible. As a beguine whose community was u ­ nder physical threat, a ­woman with a local reputation for holiness, an outsider to entrenched po­liti­cal disputes, and a ­woman linking poverty to peace, Paupertas was a perfect figure to act as go-­between as the two parties neared a truce. How might Philip IV himself have perceived Paupertas at this point? The 1308 Continuator insinuates that her effect was pernicious, deviously tricking the king into inactivity. It seems doubtful, however, that the king would have shared this assessment. For one t­hing, the Continuator’s suggestion of idleness is not consistent with the facts. Although Philip remained outside Lille to lead the siege, his “barons” such as Charles of Valois and Robert II of Artois ­were successfully launching attacks farther west. More importantly, ­there are several indications that Philip would have developed a high regard for Paupertas by the time Lille capitulated. The Continuator’s own text implies that a few years l­ater Paupertas enjoyed the trust of Philip IV and Jeanne of Navarre. If so, such a relationship prob­ably stemmed from the royal interaction with Paupertas in 1297. Moreover, if Paupertas had anything to do with the outcome of the siege of Lille, the king would have associated her with the most successful moment of his reign to date. Not only was the siege of Lille a dramatic victory for the king, but the period between 23 June and 1 September saw nothing but a string of glorious triumphs for Philip IV. It was in August, outside Lille, that Philip received two very welcome pieces of news. First, in the contest with Boniface VIII over taxing the French church, the pope yielded, issuing the bull Etsi de statu on 31 July. Second, Boniface followed up this concession by at last canonizing Louis IX. Pierre Flote, pres­ent 48. ​Jansen, Peace and Penance, 36–37; Luongo, Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena, esp. 148, 171– 72; and Vauchez, Catherine de Sienne, 45–46. I thank Professor Vauchez for suggesting Catherine’s relevance. 49. ​Walter Simons pointed out to me that Lille’s unpublished municipal accounts for 1303–4 (ADN, B 7580, fol. 17v) note a payment “a boine Ysebiel le beghine, pour ais . . . ​7 lb 10s” in a context suggesting that this beguine contributed wood (“ais” means “board” or “plank”) for the defense of the city. Though this is a few years ­after 1297, it indicates that beguines in Lille could be actively involved in questions of war and peace.

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as the king’s representative at the papal curia, was informed of the pope’s intentions as early as 4 August, Boniface preached sermons on Louis on 6 and 11 August, and the formal bull of canonization was issued on the latter date.50 ­There is no doubt that by the time the siege of Lille was lifted, Philip IV knew that he was now the grand­son of a saint.51 The first feast day of St. Louis was 25 August, the date on which the garrison of Lille agreed to surrender if it did not receive help. Boniface VIII dated his bull empowering two cardinals to help make peace on that day as well. The inhabitants of Lille may not have been aware of the date’s significance, but the pope surely was. August 1297 was sweetly triumphant for Philip IV, and the moment of victory was shared by the wider Capetian ­family. Both Charles of Valois and Robert II of Artois w ­ ere raised to the peerage in September in recognition of their military successes.52 Jeanne of Navarre even had her own battlefield success. When Count Henry III of Bar attacked Champagne in an attempt to lift the pressure on Flanders, several chroniclers indicate that Jeanne rushed south to defend her county. Her forces defeated and captured the Count of Bar, and the queen returned to Lille as a successful general in her own right.53 Fi­nally, Philip was the big winner of the truce arranged on 9 October (the feast day of St. Denis).54 Philip kept Lille along with Courtrai, Bruges, and other captured towns, giving him a dominant position over Guy of Dampierre and a clear victory over Edward I and even the German king Adolf of Nassau, who had favored the En­glish/Flemish alliance. Philip IV had for the moment gained the upper hand on all of his rivals, in large part due to his successful siege of Lille. In sum, if Paupertas played any role in the outcome of the siege, then the French king had e­ very reason to regard her efforts favorably. For t­ hese reasons the 1308 Continuator’s attempt to paint Paupertas’s involvement in the siege of Lille in a negative light fell flat. Con­temporary readers would have been aware of Philip IV’s success, and so the Continuator’s complaint that Paupertas’s pleas for peace kept the king inactive would have rung hollow.55

50. ​Vauchez, “La canonisation de saint Louis,” 40; Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, 50–51; ­Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-­Siège, 1:336–45. 51. ​Brown, “Nemesis,” 254. 52. ​Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:139. 53. ​Lalou, “Le gouvernement de la reine Jeanne,” 27. 54. ​Prestwich, Edward I, 393–97. 55. ​This failed rhe­toric offers an additional reason to think that Paupertas did play a role at Lille. If the Continuator had wished to invent an episode introducing an evil ­woman into ­these events, he could easily have constructed a far more compelling narrative.



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Connecting Capetian Sanctity in 1297 Philip IV’s climactic moment at the capitulation of Lille further connects to developments in Provence at that very moment.56 At the end of December 1296, Louis, the oldest surviving son of Charles II of Anjou, dramatically renounced his inheritance, joined the Franciscan Order, and was consecrated bishop of Toulouse by Boniface VIII. Louis visited Philip IV in Paris around Easter 1297. But on 19 August, just as the siege of Lille neared its end, the twenty-­three-­year-­old Louis died suddenly while traveling through Provence.57 Louis was buried at the Franciscan church in Marseille, near Douceline and Hugh of Digne. The site was his own choice, prob­ably determined by networks that connected his ­family to Spiritual Franciscan circles ­there, includ­ ntil ing Douceline’s surviving community.58 Although he was not canonized u 1317, Louis was immediately treated as a saint in Marseille, with a “Book of Miracles” (including a deposition by Bertrand of Porcelet) being compiled ­there even before the end of 1297.59 Pious Provençals had already been visiting Douceline’s tomb; now her burial site was linked to that of Charles of Anjou’s grand­son as a destination of pilgrimage. Moreover, on 1 September 1297, the very day Lille capitulated far to the north, Felipa of Porcelet’s Life of the Blessed Douceline was “read for the first time in the convent [of Roubaud in Marseille].”60 At this moment, the relationship between Douceline and Charles of Anjou, so firmly underlined by Felipa, took on additional, though paradoxical, importance. In 1297, Charles of Anjou had posthumously become the b­ rother of a saint and the grand­father of a soon-­to-be second saint, so emphasizing Douceline’s links to Charles helped “sanctify” her.61 That is, by insisting on Charles’s endorsement of Douceline’s reputation, Felipa’s text allowed Douceline to share in the emerging aura of Capetian sanctity.62 The familial language used by Felipa only heightened this effect. For Felipa, Douceline was the “­sister” of Hugh of Digne but also the Franciscans of Marseille; she was the “­daughter” of St. Francis and meta­phor­ically of Hugh; she was the “­mother” of Felipa 56. ​I thank Damien Boquet for suggestions and bibliography on this section. 57. ​The classic study is Toynbee, S. Louis of Toulouse and the Pro­cess of Canonisation in the F­ ourteenth ­Century, 110–32. See also Teresa D’Urso, Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese, and Danielle Solvi, Da Ludovico d’Angiò a san Ludovico di Tolosa. 58. ​Ruiz, “Louis d’Anjou et le milieu spirituel ‘Marseillais.’ ” 59. ​Paul, “Le ‘liber miraculorum’ de saint Louis d’Anjou,” 213 for reference to Bertrand of Porcelet. 60. ​Garay and Jeay, Life, 107. On dating this event to 1297, see Albanés, La vie de sainte Douceline, xx–­xxv. 61. ​See the perceptive observations by Jeay, “Les mobiles,” 27–30. 62. ​Jeay, “Les mobiles,” 23, 31.

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and the other beguines; but she was also “co-­mother” with Charles of Anjou and Beatrice of Provence. Thus the text brings the beguine and Franciscan circles around Douceline into an extended f­ amily relationship with the Capetians.63 The effect was mutually beneficial. The more Douceline’s reputation flourished, the more her holiness told of Capetian sanctity; and the more the Capetians basked in such an aura of sanctity, the more it shone also on Douceline. Yet at the same time, Felipa needed to disassociate Douceline from the setbacks suffered by Charles of Anjou late in his life—­hence her emphasis on Douceline’s apparent foreknowledge of the Sicilian Vespers. In this sense, promoting Douceline’s prophetic brand of sanctity required castigating Charles for his lack of humility in the face of God. T ­ hose who read or heard the Life of the Blessed St. Douceline at its unveiling in 1297 would have perceived a delicate authorial balancing act. Felipa stressed Charles of Anjou’s success as a warrior of God insofar as this emphasis tied Douceline to the Capetian aura of sanctity; she also underlined Charles’s l­ater failures as a way of permitting Douceline to act as God’s warning voice against Capetian arrogance. As with writing about Isabelle of France and Elizabeth of Spalbeek a de­cade earlier, representing this holy ­woman’s relationship to the royal ­family was not without its difficulties.

From the Canonization of Louis IX to the ­Battle of Courtrai The summer of 1297, when Paupertas first came to the attention of King Philip IV, was heavy with significance for the development and dissemination of Capetian ideology. One bit of intriguing evidence from 1299 might hint at Philip’s gratitude. On 16 May, at Maffliers (north of Paris), Philip conceded to “the beguines of our town of Lille” that they could follow the same approved, reasonable, and just customs by which they had been governed when Guy of Dampierre had held the city.64 He did this so that the beguines of Lille would “no longer have reason to wander, and so that the scent of their name w ­ ill be 63. ​Noted by Mazel, “Une sainteté féminine,” 307. 64. ​ADN, B 1528, pièce 4211. Edited by du Péage, Documents, 31; and Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandres, 313n4. The small scrap of parchment (222 × 67–70 mm) now has no seal but is certainly au­then­tic. Not only (not noted by du Péage or Funck-­Brentano) is another copy found at the top of pièce 4211bis, but du Péage indicates that Philip V confirmed the privilege 26 September 1319. Philip similarly confirmed the privileges of the beguines of Douai in 1301, according to Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:185.



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more widely spread by preserving a praiseworthy life.”65 Philip was evidently acting to reassure institutions in Lille and other Flemish towns that their privileges would be respected ­under the new royal regime. Still, it is at least pos­ si­ble that Paupertas’s interaction with the king had given the beguines of Lille a par­tic­u­lar claim on royal ­favor. The 1308 Continuator mentions none of this. In fact, his narrative jumps from September 1297 to September 1302. To follow him in this leap, the relevant facts must be laid out concerning the twists and turns of the intervening years. In terms of France’s relationship with E ­ ngland, a more lasting peace was 66 not reached ­until May 1303. In the interval, however, the two kingdoms maintained an uneasy coexistence, and Edward I fi­nally married Philip IV’s half ­sister Marguerite on 12 September 1299. Charles of Valois, who is central to the rest of Paupertas’s story, suffered the loss of his wife, Marguerite of Anjou, on 31 December 1299. Keeping the counties of Anjou and Maine, he now entered into the most triumphant phase of his ­career. Charles first led a new force (including Jean II of Harcourt) to attack Flanders again,67 the truce ­there having expired 6 January 1300. Passing through Lille in January, Charles defeated and captured Guy of Dampierre and Robert of Béthune at Ghent in May.68 Philip IV was now effectively master of Flanders, thanks to Charles of Valois’s success. In January 1301 Charles then took as his second wife Catherine of Courtenay, claimant to the imperial throne of Constantinople through her f­ ather but also another grand­ daughter of Charles of Anjou through her ­mother.69 In May, Charles departed with a small force (again including Jean II of Harcourt) for Italy,70 as part of the deal by which Boniface VIII approved Charles’s marriage to Catherine. The Count of Valois’s charge was to defeat Boniface’s enemies in Tuscany, help Charles II wrest Sicily from Frederick III of Aragon (third son of Peter of Aragon), and then proceed east to make good his own claims-­through-­ marriage to Constantinople.71 Meanwhile, in May and June 1301, Philip IV and Jeanne of Navarre toured Flanders, including a stay at Lille, “where they w ­ ere most honorably received” 65. ​My translation is based on the one found in Simons, Cities of Ladies, 114. 66. ​Prestwich, Edward I, 397. 67. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 45. 68. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 44–48; Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 333; Hélary, Courtrai, 47. 69. ​Catherine was the ­daughter of Philip of Courtenay (oldest son of Baldwin II, the last Latin emperor of Constantinople) and Beatrice, ­daughter of Charles of Anjou and Beatrice of Provence. 70. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 58. 71. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 52–56; Hélary, “Un problème d’équilibre européen?,” 344–47.

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on 16 and 17 May.72 But that same year a new dispute with Pope Boniface VIII broke out when Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, was arrested and charged with treason and then heresy. Boniface VIII insisted the bishop be turned over to him, Philip refused, and the entire affair quickly escalated to a shrill war of words. In October, Bernard Saisset faced a royal council at Senlis. At just this moment, events intersected with another controversy, as the fiery southern Franciscan Bernard Délicieux brought a set of complaints to Senlis concerning alleged injustices by Dominican inquisitors in Toulouse.73 For the moment Bernard was successful in swaying the king to his perspective, at least in part owing to the influence of Queen Jeanne of Navarre.74 Jeanne’s confessor was the Franciscan Durand of Champagne,75 she clearly associated herself with a Franciscan spirituality, and Franciscans like Bernard saw her as sympathetic to their cause. Events, however, quickly took a more challenging turn for the king. In December 1301, Boniface issued Ausculta fili, warning Philip IV against imagining that he was “not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.”76 Deriding the king as rex inutilis (an incapable king), the pope called for a council that would reform the kingdom.77 The royal court offered an aggressive response, forging documents in Boniface VIII’s name and gathering a large assembly in Paris in April 1302 to whip up public fervor, but for the moment Philip IV was locked in a ­bitter strug­gle with the pope. To make m ­ atters much worse, just as the war of words with Boniface was heating up, simmering resentments in Flanders boiled over into renewed vio­ lence. On 18 May, townspeople of Bruges attacked the French garrison in the early hours of the morning (the “Matins of Bruges”).78 Philip IV raised an army to respond, entrusting command to Robert II of Artois. But at the ­Battle of Courtrai on 11 July 1302 the French knights w ­ ere defeated by Flemish forces. Robert II of Artois was killed, bringing to a close the ­career of this Capetian cousin who had once venerated Douceline of Digne. Many other knights in the French army met their end at Courtrai as well, including Pierre Flote, whose death smacked of divine vengeance a­ fter Boniface VIII had earlier 72. ​See Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 357; Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:185 (for quotation); Hélary, Courtrai, 48. 73. ​See Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-­Siège, 2:49–82. 74. ​Friedlander, Hammer, 100–103. 75. ​On Durand of Champagne, see A. Flottes-­Dubrulle, with C. Mews, R. Lahav, and T. Zahora, eds., Durand de Champagne, Speculum dominarum (Paris: École des Chartes, forthcoming); and Mews and Lahay, “Wisdom and Justice in the Court of Jeanne of Navarre and Philip IV.” 76. ​Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, 186. 77. ​Details in Brown, “Unctus ad executionem justitie,” 150–51. 78. ​Hélary, Courtrai, 55–57.



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declared his hope that Pierre would be punished by God for his part in the forgeries.79 The defeat was as decisive as it was humiliating. One by one Flemish towns slipped from the king’s grasp. The ­tables ­were turned in Lille, now besieged by Flemish forces. Philip reinforced the town,80 but in mid-­August the royal defenders had to capitulate.81 Presumably Paupertas was still to be found in the city, but the Continuator says nothing of her at this moment.

The Abortive Attack on Flanders, September 1302 In the immediate wake of Courtrai, Philip IV assembled a new army and vowed revenge. With Robert II of Artois dead and Charles of Valois still in Italy, Philip took command of the army into his own hands, an unusual move for a king who preferred to delegate military leadership to o ­ thers. The royal host was the largest of the entire reign, and the first French army ever called out through the arrière-­ban.82 Philip IV had thus invested extraordinarily personal prestige in the army that arrived at Arras by 1 September and prepared to march into Flanders. Yet the attack never materialized. Instead, by 29 September Philip abruptly dissolved the army and returned south.83 This surprising retreat cast a highly unflattering light on the king, and was duly remarked on by contemporaries.84 It is ­here that the story of Paupertas picks back up in the 1308 Continuator’s telling. It is essential to note that the same Continuator had already described this moment once, in his entry for the year 1302 (recall that the entire story of Paupertas is given as a “flashback” ­under the year 1304).85 ­There our Continuator had already relayed what “some p­ eople” ­were saying as to why the king had so unexpectedly dismissed his army and gone home, making him appear “in­effec­tive and inglorious.” In this version of events, Philip was rumored to have been tricked by Edward I of E ­ ngland: “Some, however, say that the king 79. ​Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, 187. 80. ​Richebé, Compte de recettes et dépenses de la ville de Lille, 27. I thank Walter Simons for alerting me to this publication of the earliest surviving accounts for Lille. 81. ​Hélary, Courtrai, 135–36. 82. ​Hélary, “French Nobility and the Military Requirements of the King,” 131, 135–36. 83. ​Schotte, “Fighting the King of France,” 51. 84. ​Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:206n16; Hélary, Courtrai, 142; Funck-­Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 432–37. 85. ​A dif­fer­ent account of t­ hese events was given by the continuation for 1301–3 attached to the first recension of William of Nangis’s Chronicle, and also by the “official” continuation (see note 2). But basically the same story given by the 1308 Continuator was also provided by the continuation covering 1301–2  in BnF ms. lat. 11729 (fol. 267r-­v) and lat. 13704 (fol. 156v–157r). I thank Elizabeth A. R. Brown for confirming folio numbers. See Géraud, Chronique latine, 1:321–22.

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of France departed due to the guile and trickery of the king of E ­ ngland, who favored the side of the Flemish. For previously the sly En­glish fox had pretended to be greatly suffering and sick at heart, b­ ecause, as he had heard, his kinsman the king of France would be betrayed by his own men into the hands of his enemies, if it w ­ ere to happen that he would clash with [the Flemish]. When he related this to his wife, as though as a warning, she believed it to be quite true and reported it to her ­brother the king of France.”86 In this report for 1302, the “sly fox” is King Edward I, ally of the Flemish and ­enemy of Philip IV. The wording does not specify how Edward was thought to have heard this prediction, but the Continuator does not imply that the king in­ven­ted it himself. Edward pretended to worry for the safety of his French kinsman. Such concern might have seemed more plausible at this point than it would have at the height of hostilities in 1297, since Edward I and Philip IV w ­ ere now brothers-­in-­law. According to the Continuator, Queen Marguerite of ­England believed her husband’s good intentions, and so passed the warning on to her half b­ rother, Philip IV. In sum, this story offers a rationale for Philip IV’s other­wise inexplicable decision. What is left unclear in this initial telling, however, is why the king of France would have taken such a warning so seriously. In the 1304 entry for Paupertas, the Continuator added to his explanation for what had tran­spired back in the autumn of 1302. T ­ here is no doubt about the setting, “when the king had come in force to avenge the deaths of the count of Artois and his men.” Nor is t­here any doubt about Paupertas’s villainous role. Having tried to distract the king at Lille in 1297, now five years l­ ater “this ­woman did not fear to mislead him even more grievously.” Paupertas claimed to have received a revelation from the Lord (revelatum a Domino) that “if the king should meet the Flemings in b­ attle, he would ­either die right away in the fight, or be betrayed into the hands of the ­enemy by his own men.” Evidently this is a version of what Edward I (according to the Continuator’s earlier account) would hear in ­England. Suddenly, instead of just a vague rumor, it seems that the threat to Philip’s safety was based on a revelation made known through Paupertas. 86. ​I thank Elizabeth A. R. Brown for providing a transcription of the passage as found in BAV lat. 4598, fol. 200r-­v, and Bern ms 70, fol. 183v (I have consulted only the Bern manuscript, on microfilm at the IRHT in Paris): “Dixerunt tamen aliqui quod astu et dolo regis Anglie qui partes fovebat Flandrenses deceptus rex Francie sic recessit. Nam fixerat antea vulpes illa subdola anglicana se nimio dolore cordis intrinsecus infirmari, eo quod, sicut intellexerat, suus consanguineus rex Francie esset a gente sua in manus hostium traditurus, si congressum haberi contingeret cum eisdem. Quod dum sue quasi consilium enarrasset coniugi, illa, credens illud esse verissimum, fratri suo regi Francie demandavit.” This version would eventually be widely known, in large part ­because it was translated and included in the Grandes chroniques de France.



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In this version of events Paupertas is not said to have given God’s warning directly to the king. Instead she “entrusted” (mandavit) it to Jeanne of Navarre, Philip IV’s queen, presumably by letter or messenger. The queen’s sudden entry into the story is unexpected. But since Franciscans such as Bernard Délicieux had previously been able to use Queen Jeanne as a conduit to the king, perhaps it made sense for Paupertas, whose a­ dopted name hints at Franciscan leanings, to have used the queen in her attempts to approach the court.87 According to the Continuator, Queen Jeanne then told her husband about the revelation, presumably in a manner that indicated her belief in its legitimacy and her desire that the king yield to God’s w ­ ill. The Continuator does not supply Philip’s immediate reaction; instead he moves to integrate his two narratives about 1302. According to this new account, it was only now that “the queen of ­England, [Philip IV’s] ­sister, related that she had heard the same ­thing from her husband [Edward I].” For a reader who has been following the Continuator’s text, the events of September 1302 fall into place. It was the beguine Paupertas, with her local reputation for sanctity, who had received and reported a divine revelation that betrayal or death awaited the king in Flanders. Directly or indirectly, this prophecy had reached the ears of two queens and thence of the king. Philip IV’s reasons for heeding this warning now come into focus. If Philip indeed saw Paupertas as saintly in the eyes of God, this fact in itself might have been enough to make him take her prophecy seriously. It may also have been amplified by Jeanne of Navarre’s authority, if she put her weight ­behind it. Fi­ nally, Philip also heard from his half ­sister that more or less the same report was current in ­England. In this context, it must have begun to seem that something nefarious was afoot and that God might indeed be warning the king of France to beware. But according to the Continuator, the king had been deceived, first by the diabolical Paupertas, and then by the two credulous queens. The devil, as the Continuator has already warned his readers, so often choses ­women as his instruments. Thus the king was “misled by their roundabout tales” and returned to France “inefficax.” The moral, for the Continuator, was clear: “And thus the beguine, a w ­ oman well versed in perverse tricks (beguina mulier pravis artibus edocta), sowed the seeds of confusion in the royal ­house­hold.”

87. ​The inclusion of Jeanne of Navarre at this point in the narrative, unnecessary for any rhetorical purpose, is another indication that the Continuator was offering an account that he believed to be based on real events.

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The Continuator succeeded in connecting the king’s embarrassment of 1302 to Paupertas’s satanic plot. The “sly fox” label has been shifted from Edward I to Paupertas, and she is revealed as responsible for Philip’s in­effec­ tive return to France (the phrase inefficax remeavit used in 1302 is redeployed). The first version of the story had served only to make Edward I seem cleverer than Philip IV; now the French king’s retreat could be blamed on the dev­il’s larger plot against France. The credulous queens of E ­ ngland and France had played their unwitting parts, but the master villain was the pseudo mulier Paupertas, the dev­il’s deceitful tool. Philip could and should have proved God’s ­favor on the field of ­battle in September 1302; only a devious ­woman’s false prophecy had stood in his way. Moreover, only now is Paupertas described as relating a revelation. ­There had been no indication of messages from God at the siege of Lille, only of the beguine’s attempts to make peace. In 1302, by contrast, she is portrayed as claiming mystical access to the divine ­will and conveying that message to the queen of France, just at the moment when her message could be portrayed as contributing to the catastrophic failure of the royal cause. In fact, Paupertas ­here forms part of a wider current of prophecies around the French king’s military fortunes. Most directly, the portion of the Franciscan-­ inspired “Columbinus Prophecy” that warned Philip IV to change his ways or face defeat and divine vengeance prob­ably dates to just ­after the ­Battle of Courtrai.88 Similarly, the Ve mundo in centum annis prophecy, prob­ably datable to around 1300–1301, predicted the king of France would “lose his throne b­ ecause of the hatred of his neighbors.”89 Paupertas likewise insisted that God was prepared to punish the king. Her revelation amounted to a promise that God would withhold his support for Philip IV if he ventured into ­battle. The Continuator is more successful in putting Paupertas in a negative light ­here than he was in connecting her with the siege of Lille. Not only had the French been devastated at Courtrai, but now Philip IV had been embarrassed by raising an army, threatening revenge, and then retreating. To make ­matters worse, November 1302 saw Boniface VIII issue Unam sanctam, his most strident insistence on papal supremacy over kings and the low point of Philip IV’s ­battles with the papacy. Placing Paupertas and her revelation at the center of the events of fall 1302 thus painted her in dark colors, as a ­woman bent on deceiving the king in the midst of a string of calamities.

88. ​Brown and Lerner, “Columbinus Prophecy,” 233–35, 242–45. I thank Walter Simons for pointing out the relevance of ­these wider currents of prophecy. 89. ​Brown and Lerner, “Columbinus Prophecy,” 245.



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The Plot to Poison Charles of Anjou, 1303 According to the 1308 Continuator, Paupertas at last revealed her true character by conspiring to murder Charles of Valois, who had returned from Italy to Paris in February 1303.90 Charles was pres­ent on 12 March at the Louvre when William of Nogaret denounced Boniface VIII as a false pope and a blasphemer, and again on 13 June when William of Plaisians (Nogaret’s right-­hand man) charged Boniface with atheism, sodomy, and keeping a private demon.91 In this highly charged atmosphere, Charles was ordered to muster a new army at Amiens and reinforce the royal troops in Flanders. A ­ fter notable delays, Charles arrived in Amiens by 9 August. He then went north to Arras, led a brief sortie into Flanders by 11 September, but quickly returned south to join Philip IV at Péronne and then Château-­Thierry.92 Charles of Valois’s arrival from Italy had alarmed the Flemings and caused them to plot his assassination, or so the Continuator claimed: “Afterward, the Flemings heard that Charles, the b­ rother of the king of France, count of Valois and Anjou, had returned from Rome and Sicily to France. Fearing greatly lest he take up arms against them, they consulted this ­woman Pauperies regarding his destruction.” On one level, the 1308 Continuator’s claim is perfectly coherent. With Charles of Valois back in France and charged with leading a new army northward, “the Flemings” would have seen him as a threat. And the chronology is plausible; any contact between an agent of the Flemings and Charles of Valois would most likely have occurred in the first two weeks of September 1303, when Charles’s foray into Flanders reached Bailleul, only twenty-­five kilo­meters northeast of Lille. But the Continuator’s tale now turns less credible. The French and their sympathizers did not hesitate to accuse the Flemings of employing dark arts. For instance, Gilles Aycelin, archbishop of Narbonne, wrote on 14 August 1302 that the Flemings used “certain auguries and acts of sorcery.”93 A l­ittle ­later (c. 1308–10) the author of the Annales gandenses (a Franciscan usually antagonistic t­ oward the French) asserted that in 1303 William of Jülich (jr.) “had adjured and consulted demons” during the siege of St. Omer in April 1303.94 90. ​Jean II of Harcourt died on this expedition, 21 December 1302. Petit, Charles de Valois, 86. 91. ​On ­these assemblies, see Brown, “Les assemblées de Philippe le Bel”; Brown, “Unctus ad executionem justitie.” 92. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 92–94; Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:225–28. 93. ​Cited by Brown and Lerner, “Columbinus Prophecy,” 245. 94. ​Johnstone, Annales gandenses/Annals of Ghent, 41. When William died at the ­Battle of Mons-­ en-­Pévèle in 1304, the Annales gandenses said he was “spirited away by the magic art to which he was devoted,” and that the enchanter he had employed was ­later executed by Duke John of Brabant. Johnstone, 74. Again I thank Walter Simons for pointing me ­toward this passage.

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A well-­known sermon of 1315 ­later amplified ­these charges while emphasizing the holiness of the French cause from Clovis through St. Louis.95 The accusation of attempted poisoning h ­ ere is less spectacular, yet part of the same smear campaign. It seems doubtful that Flemish leaders ­were so fearful of Charles as to resort to bizarre poisoning plots. The Continuator also grows vague at this point, not bothering to specify which “Flemings” allegedly spearheaded the conspiracy. The aged Guy of Dampierre had been temporarily released from prison ­after promising Philip IV that he would work for peace, but several of his sons and grand­sons ­were leading the re­sis­tance to the king. The reference could be to one of t­ hese Flemish leaders, such as William of Jülich, or to the Klauwaards in Lille more generally; the Continuator does not quite seem to know whom he is accusing. From h ­ ere, the story only becomes less plausible. According to the Continuator, the “Flemings” bribed Paupertas into conspiring to poison Charles of Valois: “Having received a large sum of money from them, she instructed a young man how and in what way, searching out Charles, he might hand him over to death through poison, which she effectively prepared and placed on feathery plumes and handed over to him to be delivered. This was such a power­f ul poison, as they say, that if it was placed on a ­rose, anyone sniffing its odor into his nostrils would die immediately, since once the dust got inside him, it would suffocate him.”96 Nothing in the account had suggested that Paupertas had any expertise with poisons or had given her a motive to participate in such an assassination. Portraying her as willing to take a bribe reinforces the mendacious nature of her claims to poverty for the Continuator, but the account h ­ ere enters the realm of the unreal. The “youth” is never identified, while the sudden interruption of a superfluous passage describing the power of the poison, rather than adding realistic detail, seems to underscore the move into literary fantasy. Immediately the story becomes even stranger: “And so that the young man would more easily gain access to Charles, she sent to Charles, by means of the youth, a letter, written in golden script, which was in the following form: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one, to his beloved son Charles, ­brother of the king of France. I send to you this young man, to be kept always near you like an angel sent to you, knowing that as long as he ­will be near you, you ­will 95. ​Leclercq, “Un sermon prononcé pendant la guerre de Flandre sous Philippe le Bel.” Leclercq dated the sermon to just ­after the ­Battle of Courtrai, which would make it highly relevant to the pres­ ent discussion. However, Brown, “Kings Like Semi-­Gods,” 10n15, persuasively redates it to the summer of 1315, as Louis X marched against Flanders. 96. ​Collard, Crime of Poison, 50–54, discusses powdered poisons that could be inhaled, but makes no mention of feathers or flowers as delivery devices.



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not be able to be overcome in any ­battle, and through him you w ­ ill be a very ­g reat man of your age.’ ” Could Paupertas have sent such a letter? If she continued to seek peace, perhaps she might have had reason to write to Charles of Valois. If she believed herself to be in possession of a new revelation from God, she might have phrased a letter as coming from Christ. Yet the w ­ hole episode of the poisoned feathers and the golden letter smacks of pure imagination, and the account is loaded with implausible details and literary invention. Fabricated letters attributed to Jesus circulated throughout the ­Middle Ages (and beyond), from the supposed correspondence with King Abgar V of Edessa to the “Sunday Letter” and the “Letter from Jesus Christ to the Soul that ­Really Loves him.”97 This one adds a unique touch by claiming to be written in gold, befitting an epistle from the Messiah. Yet this sudden turn of events is a sharp departure from the Continuator’s own narrative to this point. That is, nothing ­here fits with the previous portrait of a beguine dedicated to poverty and peace. In any event, the supposed attempt to poison the Count of Valois did not succeed. According to the Continuator, “When this letter was received from the young man, the b­ earer of such crime, he was incarcerated by [Charles]. And punishment was inflicted u ­ ntil he betrayed the author of the crime.” Why Charles of Valois instantly jailed the “youth” is not stated, but presumably the Count of Valois was not to be taken in by young men bearing golden letters from Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, according to the text, the “truth” became known b­ ecause the nameless youth confessed it. The fact that this arrest followed the escalating charges against Boniface VIII is prob­ably not a coincidence, as the French court plied the public with feverish accusations of demonic dangers to the kingdom. But confessions extracted ­under torture reveal only the “truth” the torturer has selected in advance. ­Either the anonymous young man r­ eally gave this confession, in which case it proves nothing, or the young man was in­ven­ted by Charles or the Continuator, in which case a story attributed to him is meaningless. The two possibilities merge into one.

97. ​Mark Guscin, The Tradition of the Image of Edessa (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 79–106; Alain Desreumaux, Histoire du roi Abgar et de Jésus: Présentation et traduction du texte syriaque intégral de “La Doctrine d’Addaï” (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993); Dorothy Haines, ed., Sunday Observance and the Sunday Letter in Anglo-­Saxon ­England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), 36– 62; John Griffiths, trans., A Letter from Jesus Christ: The Mystical Work of John of Landsberg (New York: Crossroad, 1990). Such letters hardly stopped ­there; see, for example, A Copy of a Letter Written by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and Found ­under a ­Great Stone Sixty-­Five Years ­after His Crucifixion (London: Evans, 1795). I thank Barbara Newman and Miri Rubin for suggestions on the tradition of letters from Jesus.

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Arrest, Torture, and Confession, 1304 The denouement comes “­after a year had gone by,” as the narrative at last circles back to 1304 and reaches the personal encounter between Paupertas and Charles of Valois. Charles’s movements can again be tracked with some precision. Philip IV and Charles of Valois headed south to quell discontent in the Midi in December 1303 and did not arrive back in Paris u ­ ntil April 1304.98 Among the issues the king had to deal with in the south ­were Bernard Délicieux’s continuing complaints about Dominican inquisitors. Jeanne of Navarre apparently urged Philip to respond to Bernard’s requests for royal attention,99 but Philip disregarded his wife’s wishes, turning against Bernard and his audacious rabble-­ rousing. Upon his return north, Philip was determined to retake the cities he had lost in Flanders. On 22 July 1304 Philip and Charles w ­ ere in Arras, the usual staging point for campaigns in the north. They bypassed Lille but entered Tournai on 10 August.100 Fi­nally, at the ­Battle of Mons-­en-­Pévèle, on 18 August 1304, Philip and Charles at last avenged Courtrai ( Jeanne of Navarre did not accompany this campaign). Almost immediately the royal army laid siege to Lille on 23 August, and the city surrendered by 25 September. Philip, and presumably Charles, returned south in triumph by October. According to the Continuator, Paupertas followed up her failed poisoning attempt by coming to “France” herself sometime in 1304: “Knowing nothing about what had happened to the young man, this Paupertas, hateful to God and the world, believed him to be dead, and for this reason she hastened to come to France. When her arrival was announced to Charles, he had her captured right away, and led into the presence of the young man, who was being held in prison. Since she had denied every­thing, the ­soles of her feet ­were scorched, and she revealed the crime that she had carried out. Then she was led to Crépy, Charles’s ­castle.” The exact timing of this encounter is not stated,101 but the 1308 Continuator gives the entire story of Paupertas as his third entry for 1304 (with the Pa­ ri­sian year beginning on Easter, 29 March in 1304), just before events that he dates to June and July of that year. This placement suggests that the Continuator 98. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 95–97; Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:230, 240. 99. ​Friedlander, Hammer, 155. 100. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 98; Lalou et al., Itinéraire, 2:246–47. 101. ​Petit, Charles de Valois, 100, assumed that Paupertas must have come into Charles’s power during the 1304 siege of Lille—­that is, between 23 August and 25 September—­but he had only the shorter, ­later version of the story to go on, which did not include the statement that Paupertas “hastened to come to France.” He also could not know that the 1308 Continuator placed the story of Paupertas early in his recording of events for 1304.



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thought that Paupertas came to “France” around May.102 The place of this initial encounter was not Crépy-­en-­Valois, where Paupertas was “then” led, but perhaps it was in the general region (see inset to map 1). This last segment of the narrative contains no wild stories about poisoned feathers or golden letters but still leaves obvious questions unanswered. What, according to the Continuator, was Paupertas intending to do? Presumably, following the Continuator’s logic, if she believed that her agent (the young man) had died, she came to France intending to poison or other­wise murder Charles of Valois herself. But a­ fter describing such an elaborate plot entrusted to her minion, now the Continuator gives no explanation of Paupertas’s specific intentions. Perhaps Paupertas traveled to France for some purpose more in keeping with her previous actions, such as a peace initiative. The Continuator contents himself with again reminding the reader that Paupertas is “hateful to God.” As such, her dev­ilish, deceitful desire to harm the royal f­amily offers all the explanation needed for her movements. Having already tortured a confession out of the young man, Charles did not hesitate to arrest and imprison Paupertas. Like the youth, she would confess nothing u ­ ntil tortured. ­Here the Continuator conveys the gruesome detail that the torture took the form of searing the ­soles of her feet. ­After confessing, Paupertas was taken to Crépy-­en-­Valois,103 where Charles intended to burn her alive. The Continuator does not explain what the ­legal rationale for such an execution would have been, but ­there is no accusation ­here of sorcery or heresy; presumably Charles intended to execute the beguine simply for conspiring to poison him.104 Paupertas, however, was not destined to meet her end at the stake: “­After the fires ­were lit and she was bound to the stake so that she might be burned, at Charles’s order she was drawn back unharmed.” Why? The Continuator gives no clue. Perhaps Charles deci­ded that she could be valuable as a hostage or as a source of knowledge. Or perhaps, as in the case of Sibylla, more sensible advisers suggested that a rush to execution was unwise. Perhaps it was even Jeanne of Navarre herself who intervened on behalf of Paupertas, since 102. ​­After he returned from the south in early April, Charles was briefly sent to Normandy, which would seem to push the pos­si­ble date for his encounter with Paupertas back t­ oward May. Petit, Charles de Valois, 96. 103. ​Jean Mesquis, “Le château de Crépy-­en-­Valois, palais comtal, palais royal, palais féodal,” Bulletin Monumental 152 (1994): 257–312. Crépy had come to Charles in his f­ ather’s testament, along with the title of Count of Valois. Petit, Charles de Valois, 11. The c­ astle, including its basement prisons (sadly with no vis­i­ble messages carved into the walls by incarcerated beguines), ­today ­houses the charming Musée de l’archerie et du Valois. 104. ​On the question of ­legal jurisdictions empowered to deal with poisoners, see Collard, Crime of Poison, 173–79. Burning was one common punishment for ­those convicted. Collard, 202–3.

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the queen had proved herself willing and able to shelter controversial Franciscan figures, such as Bernard Délicieux. Bernard, in fact, had flirted with open rebellion ­after losing the king’s f­ avor during the royal tour of the south in early 1304. When denunciations of his plotting reached the king, Bernard hastened north (October 1304 or ­later) and appealed to Jeanne of Navarre to plead his case. Although the details are less than clear, it seems that Jeanne successfully protected Bernard while she lived.105 Paupertas also seems to have earlier enjoyed the queen’s f­ avor, and her spiritual identity was linked to Franciscan ideals of simplicity and poverty. Perhaps she, like Bernard, was able to call on the queen’s sympathetic influence in her hour of need in 1304. In any case, it is striking that ­these two figures associated with the queen, from the far north and the far south of the kingdom, ­were denounced at about the same time as dangers to the royal ­family, and yet both escaped the flames.106 This is where the account leaves Paupertas. According to the 1308 Continuator, she remained at Crépy, “transferred to prison t­ here for another time.” The story ends with her having confessed to her crimes, still alive, but u ­ nder Charles of Valois’s control. From the perspective of 1304, it seems that a g­ reat deal of the backstory could well have been supplied to the Continuator by Charles of Valois or someone in his circle.107 Eventually, the monks of Saint-­ Denis must have deci­ded the story was too long, and some parts implausible or embarrassing. Thus the somewhat l­ ater “official” version of the Continuation shortened it considerably. But that second version specified that Paupertas was eventually released. Perhaps this “happy ending” was in­ven­ted, but it is also pos­si­ble that Paupertas’s ultimate fate was known by the time the “official” version was made, and that she ­really was set ­free. The arrest of Paupertas marks the hardening of attitudes t­ oward holy ­women whose reputations and revelations orbited the Capetian center of gravity. In the early 1260s, Charles of Anjou had benefited from prophetic access to God’s ­will through the beguine Douceline of Digne. This relationship had solidified only ­after Charles of Anjou had “proven” the truth of Douceline’s raptures by pouring molten lead on her feet. Now a new Charles, also Count of Anjou and husband successively to two of Charles of Anjou’s grand­daughters, burned 105. ​Friedlander, Hammer, 222–24. 106. ​Bernard Délicieux was eventually arrested in 1319 and died in prison in Carcassonne shortly thereafter. 107. ​For the possibility of Charles of Valois encouraging the inclusion of specific ele­ments in chronicle writing at Saint-­Denis, see Brown, “Les assemblées de Philippe le Bel,” 91–92, and Brown’s judgment ­there that it is “improbable” that this material (regarding Enguerran de Maringy and an assembly of 1314) was entirely in­ven­ted.



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another holy ­woman’s feet. But this time the goal was to elicit a confession that would “prove” that her prophecy had been false and her supposed holiness a fraud. For Charles of Anjou, proving the truth of a beguine’s revelations had been impor­tant to his own quest to demonstrate divine approval; for Charles of Valois, it was proving the falsity of a beguine’s revelations that served a similar end.108 Paupertas had come to Capetian attention when she offered herself as a peacemaker at Lille in 1297. Her intervention in 1302 had also been pacific, advising the king of France not to attack, based on her revelation that such an attack would lead to his betrayal or death. As Elizabeth of Spalbeek was claimed to have done, Paupertas was issuing a prophecy concerning a divine threat to the Capetian f­ uture. And as with Douceline of Digne, once again a holy w ­ oman revealed whom God would ­favor in ­battle. But whereas Douceline had assured Charles of Anjou that God would grant him victory in Sicily, now Paupertas gave the opposite message to Philip IV; God did not wish the king to fight and would not aid him if he did. Philip IV listened to Paupertas’s prophetic warning (according to the Continuator) but paid a price in terms of his reputation. When Paupertas (supposedly) wrote to promise Charles of Valois invincibility, her words ­were represented as taking the form of a fraudulent letter from Jesus; it was an attempt to destroy the prince, not to deliver the “real” word of God. In the end, a young man was ultimately tortured into implicating Paupertas in the plot to poison the king’s ­brother, and she herself was then tortured into confirming that “truth.” Paupertas’s confession was made to reveal how a deceitful ­woman, acting as the dev­il’s tool, could use a false reputation for sanctity to threaten the king of France and his f­ amily. All of the ups and downs of the Flemish wars could be explained by the active opposition of the devil working through his agent, a fraudulent beguine who had come to Flanders to trick the king of France and torment his f­ amily. In this light, was it not wise to suspect the intentions of other “holy” ­women?

108. ​This parallel was noted in Kreiger, “Mystical Monarchy,” 109.

Ch a p ter   6

Marguerite Porete and Margueronne of Bellevillette The Beguine and the Sorceress

The Continuator who recorded the story of Paupertas left off his narrative by January 1308. Only a few months l­ater, two ­women with similar sounding names but quite dif­fer­ent backgrounds faced ecclesiastical questioning in Paris. The first w ­ oman, Marguerite “called Porete,” was from Hainaut, but it may have been in Champagne that she was taken into custody between 1306 and 1308 before being brought to Paris around October 1308. Her offense was possessing or recopying her book, which had been condemned once already in her home diocese of Cambrai sometime between 1297 and 1305. She remained imprisoned in Paris for a year and a half, refusing to swear an oath and respond to questions posed by her inquisitor. The other ­woman, Margueronne of Bellevillette “called la Matrausse,” was arrested in Champagne on 15 August 1308 as part of the group around Bishop Guichard of Troyes accused of having used sorcery to murder Queen Jeanne of Navarre. Margueronne’s contacts with Guichard ­were claimed to go back as far as 1301, when he had been embroiled in an earlier scandal that included accusations of having caused the death of Blanche of Artois, Jeanne’s ­mother. Margueronne gave a detailed deposition on 14 October  1308. ­These two ­women ­were caught up in larger ecclesiastical pro­cesses against the Order of the ­Temple and Bishop Guichard, entangled in the Capetian king’s relentless drive to consolidate po­liti­cal and religious power. Marguerite Porete was ultimately burned at the stake in the heart of Paris, while Margueronne of Bel18 2



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levillette was locked away and seemingly forgotten once her usefulness as a witness against Guichard of Troyes had expired.

The Context: Escalating Attacks ­after 1305 ­ fter Queen Jeanne of Navarre’s death in April 1305, Philip IV’s attacks on perA ceived enemies grew ever less restrained. In June 1306, all Jews w ­ ere arrested and then expelled from France (barring a few who chose to convert and stay).1 Then on 13 October 1307, all the Templars in the kingdom w ­ ere arrested and charged with what amounted to apostasy. Only a day before, the Templar ­g rand master Jacques de Molay had unsuspectingly attended the funeral of Charles of Valois’s second wife, Catherine of Courtenay.2 According to charges concocted by William of Nogaret and other royal advisers, Templars engaged in a secret initiation ritual that involved renouncing Christ, spitting on the Cross, and agreeing to engage in sodomy.3 To enter the Order of the ­Temple was to conspire against the Christian faith. Hundreds of French Templars ­were forced to confess through torture or threats. The affair began to go wrong from the king’s perspective when Pope Clement V refused to endorse the fiction that Philip and the Dominican inquisitor William of Paris had acted with papal approval. In an attempt to gain control of the proceedings, Clement ordered in November 1307 that all Templars outside France be taken into custody. Then, by January or February 1308, the pope brought m ­ atters to a halt by forbidding French inquisitors to proceed further in the Templar affair. Philip IV put pressure on Clement at Poitiers between late May and early July, by which time the pope relented and allowed French bishops to once again investigate individual Templars. But on 12 August he also set up a wider papal commission to inquire into the larger question of the order’s guilt or innocence as a ­whole, and that same day called for a new general council.4 At the same moment, on 9 August 1308, Clement V appointed Étienne Bécart (archbishop of Sens), Raoul Grosparmi (bishop of Orléans), and Pierre de Grès (bishop of Auxerre) to inquire into charges that Bishop Guichard of Troyes had killed Jeanne of Navarre through sorcery and then had attempted 1. ​Sibon, Chasser les juifs pour régner; Iancu-­Agou and Nicolas, Philippe le Bel; Balasse, 1306; Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews. 2. ​Barber, Trial of the Templars, 61. Charles of Valois married his third wife, Mahaut of Châtillon, in 1308. 3. ​To my mind, historians have established the falsity of the charges against the Templars. See, for instance, Forey, “­Were the Templars Guilty?” 4. ​See Barber, Trial of the Templars; and Demurger, La persécution des Templiers. For events at Poitiers, see Brown, “The Faith of Guillaume de Nogaret.”

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to poison Charles of Valois and the f­ uture Louis X.5 Guichard and his accused coconspirators, including Margueronne of Bellevillette, w ­ ere arrested on 15 August and taken to Paris within a few weeks. The formal hearings that constituted Guichard’s pro­cess lasted from October  1308 to December  1309, mostly unfolding at the church of Sainte-­Geneviève in Paris. Just as Guichard’s trial ended, the papal commission inquiring into the guilt of the Order of the ­Temple began its work in Paris, eventually holding many sessions at the same church of Sainte-­Geneviève, u ­ nder the presidency of Gilles Aycelin, archbishop of Narbonne. Nearly six hundred Templars ­were transported to Paris by early 1310 to give testimony. The inquisitor William of Paris moved forward with his case against Marguerite Porete and her book in the same months.6 And in March 1310, Clement V at last agreed to open posthumous heresy proceedings against Boniface VIII in Avignon.7 ­These interlocking pro­cesses against the Templars, Guichard of Troyes, Marguerite Porete, and Boniface VIII ­were directed by the small circle of loyal churchmen and secular advisers who saw Philip IV as “placed by the Lord on the watchtower of regal eminence to defend the liberty of the faith of the Church.”8

Marguerite Porete, to 1308 Most of what can be said about Marguerite Porete’s life comes from the handful of extant documents generated by her inquisitorial pro­cess in the spring of 1310.9 T ­ hese documents w ­ ere intended to serve specific l­egal purposes, not to give a coherent account of her c­ areer. They ­were produced by an inquisitor, his notaries, and his l­egal and theological advisers, and they hardly represent an impartial view. Moreover, Marguerite herself gave no testimony during her pro­cess, and so no document purports to provide her own perspective. But according to the story the inquisitorial documents recount, Marguerite “called Porete” was a beguine from the county of Hainaut. She had first 5. ​On the ties between the pro­cesses against the Templars and ­those against Guichard, see Provost, “On the Margins of the Templars’ Trial.” 6. ​On links between the pro­cesses against the Templars and ­those against Marguerite, see Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor; Courtenay, “Marguerite’s Judges”; and Crawford, “Involvement of the University of Paris in the ­Trials of Marguerite Porete and of the Templars.” 7. ​Coste, Boniface. 8. ​From Philip IV’s arrest order against the Templars, 14 September 1307. Translation from Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, The Templars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 246. 9. ​AN J 428, nos. 15 to 19bis, edited in Verdeyen, “Le procès d’inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart.” I have treated Marguerite’s ­career in The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor and more briefly in “Debating the Historical Marguerite Porete.” In this chapter, references to secondary sources on Marguerite Porete are largely confined to ­those published since 2012.



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run afoul of ecclesiastical authority when the bishop of Cambrai, Guido of Collemezzo, condemned a book she had written, ordering it to be burned publicly at Valenciennes in her presence. This initial condemnation must have occurred between 1297 and 1305, but Sylvain Piron’s analy­sis suggests the likelihood of a date t­oward the end of that range, perhaps 1303–5.10 That the bishop had the book burned at Valenciennes indicates that Marguerite was living in or near this city (at the same time that Paupertas would have been in Lille, only fifty kilo­meters to the northwest). Given her status as an author, Marguerite was evidently literate and educated. Scholarship has identified her book as the Mirror of S­ imple Souls, a fascinatingly complex vernacular work written as a dialogue between numerous personified characters that traces the soul’s path to annihilation and hence nondifference from God.11 If the exact nature of Marguerite’s education is unclear, the author of the Mirror was versed in both secular poetry and theological debate.12 Zan Kocher has drawn attention to a highly literate bourgeois “Porete” clan in Tournai; though this is unlikely to be Marguerite’s immediate ­family (Tournai was not in Hainaut), it may well provide a general idea of her social milieu.13 Marguerite was repeatedly referred to as a beguina in the inquisitorial documents, but ­whether she lived as a solitary beguine or as part of a larger community, where she could have received some of her education, remains uncertain. The Mirror hints at rejection by other beguines and at criticism by certain readers or listeners more generally. But at some point (perhaps around 1301–3) the book had received cautious praise from three churchmen: Godfrey of Fontaines (the well-­known secular master of theology at the University of Paris), a local Franciscan, and the cantor of the abbey of Villers.14 ­There is no evidence that anyone saw Marguerite Porete as a source of miraculous cures or prophecies. Yet the documents from her pro­cess suggest a 10. ​Piron, “Marguerite in Champagne.” 11. ​For Marguerite’s authorship, see Field, Lerner, and Piron, “Return to the Evidence for Marguerite Porete’s Authorship of the Mirror of ­Simple Souls.” The standard edition of the Mirror is Guarnieri and Verdeyen, Marguerite Porete, Le mirouer des s­imples ames (but see impor­tant corrections in Hasenohr, “Retour sur les caractères linguistiques du manuscript de Chantilly et de ses ancêtres”); for En­glish translation, see Edmund Colledge, J. C. Marler, and Judith Grant, trans. and intro., Margaret Porete, The Mirror of ­Simple Souls (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999). 12. ​Newman, Medieval Crossover; Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris, 374–92; Piron, “Marguerite, entre les béguines et les maîtres”; Dubois, “Natu­ral and Super­natural Virtues in the Thirteenth ­Century”; Tice, “Containing Heresy and Errors.” 13. ​Kocher, “Literary Sources of The Mirror of ­Simple Souls,” 98, 104. 14. ​Field, “The Master and Marguerite”; differing perspectives in Van Engen, “Marguerite (Porete) of Hainaut and the Medieval Low Countries”; Quero-­Sánchez, “Der mittelalterliche Disput zwischen Realismus und Idealismus”; and Piron, “Marguerite in Champagne.”

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­ oman who believed herself possessed of unique insights into the nature of w God and of a rarified path to unity with him. The Mirror of ­Simple Souls reveals an author who understood herself to converse with God, even if most of the text consists of philosophical and theological teachings, not mystical revelations.15 Furthermore, Marguerite did have one very vis­i­ble supporter, the apocalyptic agitator Guiard of Cressonessart.16 This self-­styled “Angel of Philadelphia” came forward in Paris to try, most unsuccessfully, to defend Marguerite. ­After his arrest, he referred to her as a noteworthy “adherent of the Lord.” Godefroy of Fontaines, for his part, referred to the author of the Mirror as “a spirit so strong and perceptive that ­there are but few such, or none.” Marguerite Porete was an unusual kind of holy ­woman, but a holy ­woman nonetheless. The condemnation of her book by Guido of Collemezzo would have left Marguerite in a difficult position in the diocese of Cambrai. Not only was the book burned, but Marguerite was warned that if she ever attempted to re-­ create it or reanimate its teachings she would be condemned as a heretic. Although this warning implies that for the moment Marguerite was allowed to go ­free, Sylvain Piron has argued that she prob­ably left the diocese of Cambrai as a result.17 She may have been banished; t­ here is evidence for at least one beguine of this diocese suffering this fate in 1304.18 Or she may simply have found her position untenable a­ fter public rebuke and humiliation. So Marguerite prob­ably left the Low Countries, headed south (perhaps not long a­ fter Paupertas likewise came to France), and was to be found in Champagne, home territory for Margueronne of Bellevillette, by around 1306–8. T ­ here she again ran afoul of ecclesiastical authority a­ fter she “communicated” her book to Jean of Châteauvillain, bishop of Châlons-­sur-­Marne, whose diocese in Champagne was adjacent to Guichard of Troyes’s. The inquisitor Ralph of Ligny and the new bishop of Cambrai, Philip of Marigny (r. 1306–9), then questioned her before turning her over to the inquisitor William of Paris.19 Marguerite remained uncooperative in prison for the next year and a half.

15. ​See in par­tic­u­lar chapter 131 of the Mirror. 16. ​Lerner, “Addenda on an Angel”; and Lerner, “ ‘Angel of Philadelphia’ in the Reign of Philip the Fair.” 17. ​Piron, “Marguerite in Champagne.” 18. ​For the case of Marion Du Fayt, banished in 1304, see Piron, “Marguerite in Champagne,” 145; and Kocher, Allegories of Love, 30. 19. ​Field, “Ralph of Ligny.”



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Margueronne of Bellevillette and Guichard of Troyes, to 1308 The challenge in reconstructing Marguerite Porete’s c­ areer is the paucity of evidence; the seven laconic documents at the bottom of carton J 428 of the Archives nationales give only highly selective bits of data, and the Mirror of ­Simple Souls reveals few hard facts about its author. With Margueronne of Bellevillette, the prob­lem is rather the opposite. The massive inquiry into the supposed crimes of Guichard of Troyes generated an enormous amount of testimony, h ­ oused ­today in the same Archives nationales, just a few cartons away in J 438. But although Guichard of Troyes’s pro­cess was treated in Abel Rigault’s classic study of 1896 and in Alain Provost’s impor­tant book of 2010,20 most of the depositions themselves have not yet been published.21 A team of French scholars is working t­ oward an edition, but since the central document ( J 438, no. 6) is a roll fifty-­three meters long consisting of seventy-­six sheets of parchment sewn together end to end and containing the statements of nearly three hundred witnesses,22 the proj­ect ­will take time to complete.23 The pres­ ent analy­sis focuses on the initial charges formulated against Guichard, on Margueronne’s own testimony, and on the testimony of the hermit Regnaud of Langres, whose confession sparked the entire pro­cess. Margueronne’s testimony is quite precise concerning some ele­ments of her background. In response to specific questioning, she stated that she believed herself to be about thirty-­two years old (hence born around 1276, the year in which Marie of Brabant had been accused of poisoning her stepson). Margueronne was of unfree status, a serf of the church of Sainte-­Columbe of Sens. And she was very poor, not even owning the shirt on her back.24 But if ­these details about age and social status are satisfyingly precise, every­thing ­else in her deposition must be assessed with caution, since it was given ­under intense pressure in the context of the larger pro­cess against Guichard of Troyes.

20. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard; Provost, Domus Diaboli. See also Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 300–313; and Provost, “Trial of Guichard, Bishop of Troyes,” 147–53. 21. ​The documents are AN J 438, nos. 1–12. For an inventory see Provost, Domus Diaboli, 337–38. 22. ​Images can be found in Provost, Domus Diaboli, color plates following p. 224; and in L’affaire des Templiers, 49. 23. ​Alain Provost is spearheading this editorial proj­ect, with Xavier Hélary and Julien Théry. 24. ​AN J 438, no. 6. Her testimony is on sheets 3 and 4 (­here sheet 4). I thank Alain Provost for sharing a transcription, which I have checked against microfilm of the original: “Ipsa que loquitur dixit quod etatis triginta duorum annorum vel circiter, ut credit . . . ​dixit quod est femina ecclesie sancte Columbe Senonensis, de corpore abonata ad quatuor denarios et de manu mortua. Item requisita utrum sit pauper, dixit quod sic . . . ​quod tunica qua induta est non est sua.”

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Before turning to the depositions, it is necessary to trace Guichard’s rise and fall. Born in Champagne at midcentury, Guichard r­ ose from prior of Saint-­Ayoul of Provins by 1272 to abbot of Montier-­la-­Celle (outside Troyes) by 1284, and fi­nally to bishop of Troyes in 1298. This impressive ascent was evidently due to ­favor shown by Blanche of Artois (dowager queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne), her d­ aughter Jeanne of Navarre, and eventually Jeanne’s husband, Philip IV. Around 1298–99 Guichard was moving closer to the center of royal power, sitting in Parlement and attending the king’s council.25 But Guichard fell as quickly as he had risen. In a tangled web of accusations and counteraccusations, Jean of Calais, canon of Saint-­Étienne of Troyes and an administrator for the Countess of Champagne, had been charged with corruption and incarcerated ­under Guichard’s responsibility. When Jean escaped to Italy, supposedly with Guichard’s connivance, Blanche of Artois and Jeanne of Navarre ­were furious, and Guichard was investigated by the archbishop of Sens, Étienne Bécart, starting in 1301.26 A series of additional charges was mounted against Guichard, and then when Blanche of Artois died suddenly on 2 May 1302, he was accused of having caused her death.27 This initial pro­cess dragged on ­until April 1304, when Jean of Calais wrote to the king and queen from Viterbo, where he lay d­ ying, to swear that Guichard was innocent—­unless ­these letters ­were forged, as witnesses against Guichard ­later claimed.28 Guichard was cited to appear before the short-­lived Pope Benedict XI, but by August 1304, without any of the virulent accusations against him ever ­really having been resolved, Guichard reached a settlement with Jeanne of Navarre, apparently paying her 40,000 livres. They thus seem to have reconciled before Jeanne’s death on 2 April 1305. Guichard kept a lower profile for the next few years. One of his chief accusers, the Italian Noffo Dei, supposedly gave a notarized statement in August 1306 attesting that his accusations had been false,29 and Clement V in June 1307 freed Guichard from the earlier papal citation.30

25. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 16–24; Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 1–21. 26. ​On the “affaire Jean de Calais,” see Provost, Domus Diaboli, 165–81; and Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 21–44. 27. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 182–92. 28. ​Copies of the letters are preserved as AN J 438, nos. 1 and 2 (in French), ed. Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 37–39. Their text is also included in the l­ater testimony of Jean de Traînel (according to Provost, Domus Diaboli, 180). 29. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 49. 30. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 45–53; Clement V’s document of June 1307 is edited in Rigault, 268–69.



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But new charges against Guichard emerged in early 1308. The king and his f­ amily now claimed that Guichard had conspired to kill Jeanne of Navarre and had tried to poison Charles of Valois and his nephew Louis of Navarre. Once Clement V had empowered his three-­person commission of inquiry in August,31 Guichard and the key figures around him ­were arrested by the bailli (chief royal official) of Sens, William of Hangest. The royal impetus for the inquiry is shown by the fact that the first list of twenty-­eight articles against Guichard was put forward to the ecclesiastical commissioners by the bailli himself, acting as “promoter” of the inquiry.32 ­These initial articles went all the way back to the Jean of Calais scandal, charging that a­ fter Guichard had lost Jeanne of Navarre’s ­favor, he had come to see her as an obstacle to his power and deci­ded to do away with her. To this end (article no. 7), Guichard was said to have conspired with “a certain ­woman, who was called a divinatrix.”33 Together with other accomplices versed in conjuring demons, they made a wax image of Jeanne, baptized it, stuck it with ­needles, and eventually cast it into a fire.34 The queen duly sickened and died. Then when Charles of Valois had come to Champagne, the conspirators concocted a poison out of scorpions, toads, and spiders; Charles and the ­f uture Louis X ­were the intended targets, but another knight instead drank the poison and died. The continuing plot to poison the princes went wrong when one of the supposed conspirators, the priest and hermit Regnaud of Langres, got cold feet in early 1308, fled, and confessed to the bailli. ­These crimes came to the king’s ears, and so the pro­cess against Guichard was set in motion. As far as the king was concerned, the crimes ­were “against the divine majesty and that of the lord king and against the catholic faith.”35 William of Hangest’s articles of accusation w ­ ere presented from the perspective of the royal court, with the king insisting that he would himself deal with the affair if the church did not. Indeed, the surviving copy of the initial list of charges is prob­ably in the hand of none other than William of Nogaret,36 Philip IV’s Keeper of the Seal, whose mystic streak, fervent devotion to the 31. ​AN J 438, no. 3bis (vidimus of 1308), ed. Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 269–70; summarized in Provost, Domus Diaboli, 274. Clement’s letter makes no mention of a divinatrix. 32. ​AN J 438, no. 8, ed. Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 270–75; commentary in Rigault, 60–65; and Provost, Domus Diaboli, 266–69. This was William of Hangest “the younger.” He was pres­ent (along with William of Hangest se­nior) for some of the initial confessions given by Templars at Paris on 19 October 1307. See Michelet, Procès, 2:282. 33. ​“dictus episcopus . . . ​vocavit ad se secrete quondam mulierem, que divinatrix dicebatur.” Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 271. 34. ​On medieval Eu­rope’s new fascination with such wax images as vehicles for sorcery, see Ihnat and Mesler, “From Christian Devotion to Jewish Sorcery,” reference to Guichard of Troyes at 154. 35. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 274. 36. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 303, citing Sébastien Nadiras. Also Provost, 306.

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“religion of monarchy,” and personal drive to receive papal absolution for his role in the Agnani affair made him the chief architect of the ever more strenuous attempts to bring Clement V to heel.37 From the very first formulation of the accusations, a divinatrix was central to the plot. The word indicates a ­woman able to prophesy, tell the ­f uture, or know the truth about hidden m ­ atters. For thirteenth-­century churchmen, however, the connotations of “divination” suggested illicit rather than divine sources of knowledge.38 Still, at least in an inverted fashion, the under­lying reputation for knowing or seeing what ­others could not links this divinatrix to ­women such as Douceline of Digne, Elizabeth of Spalbeek, or Paupertas of Metz, all reputed to be able to foresee the ­f uture. Indeed, the Chronique anonyme de 1286 referred to Elizabeth of Spalbeek as “une sage femme et devine,” the latter term related to the Latin divinatrix.39 Thus, while Guichard’s most impor­tant female accomplice was certainly not portrayed as holy, her accusers insisted that she was indeed a w ­ oman in touch with super­natural knowledge. But neither her name nor her precise role in the plot was given in this initial list of charges. It was rather a “certain religious b­ rother” who possessed the arcane knowledge necessary to invoke demons.40 Margueronne must have been among ­those interrogated by the bailli in order to develop the first list of accusations, since she had been in his power since 15 August.41 She had been arrested as part of a group of five that included Lorin, Guichard’s chamberlain. Lorin’s testimony is the most explicit about what occurred between 15 August and 14 October. ­After being moved from Troyes to Sens, he was kept in chains. When he at first denied knowing anything about Guichard’s misdeeds, he was stripped and tortured, in the presence of Regnaud of Langres “and o ­ thers.” He fi­nally gave in and informed the bailli that he would tell him what he wanted to hear.42 Margueronne’s trek from Troyes to Sens to Paris must have been similar (see map 1). She would ­later say she had not been tortured herself, but that “the king’s men” had darkly hinted that they would get “the truth” out of her by force if necessary. On Sunday 6 October, Pa­ri­sians ­were gathered in the royal gardens ­behind the palace on the Île-­de-­la-­Cité in Paris to whip up popu­lar fury against Guichard.43 37. ​Brown, “The Faith of Guillaume de Nogaret.” 38. ​Boudet, Entre science et nigromance, chap. 2. 39. ​See chapter 4; see also the epilogue for the same term “devine” being applied to Elizabeth of Spalbeek in the French translation of William of Nangis. 40. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 271. 41. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 281, makes this suggestion. 42. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 283–84; Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 92–94. 43. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 303–4; Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 65. The only evidence for this gathering is Jean of Saint-­Victor’s Memoriale historiarum, ed. RHGF, vol. 21, 652.



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The next day the ecclesiastical inquiry began at the church of Sainte-­ Geneviève, with the commissioners presenting their credentials and Guichard denying all the charges against him. Then on 8 October a modified list of twenty-­three charges was read in Guichard’s presence. Further precision on the divinatrix appears in article no. 4. She was now described as a certain ­woman filled with an evil spirit, said to be a divinatrix or sortilega. “Having been consulted by [Guichard] as to how he could avenge himself with the said queen [Jeanne of Navarre], she advised that a demon be invoked.”44 The core phrasing from William of Hangest’s initial charges is preserved but also expanded. The w ­ oman is now said to be not only a divinatrix but also a sortilega. The latter word’s origins imply an “oracle” or “prophetess,” but its medieval usage developed into something closer to “sorceress” (modern French sortilège) or “enchantress,” as shown by the fact that Margueronne is now credited with the idea of calling forth a demon. Still, as the next article specifies, it was the “religious ­brother,” now identified as the Dominican Jean de Fay, who actually knew how to summon demons. Jean had presumably been a respected member of his order, since he is listed as prior of Provins in a document of 1301.45 He had apparently died before August 1308, however, and never appears in the pro­cess. But in ­these accusations, Margueronne and Jean form a diabolical duo. As Béatrice Delaurenti has argued for the vetula/magician pair, Margueronne is characterized by “the privileged contact she maintains with diabolical forces,” while Jean understands the incantations or other pro­cesses involved.46 The developing description of the supposed attack on Jeanne of Navarre suggests a shift in how malignant designs against the royal f­amily ­were ­imagined to manifest themselves. As Alain Boureau has shown, the half ­century between 1280 and 1330 saw a “demonological turning point” and a striking “obsession with the Dev­il.”47 The progression traced in the current study falls in line with that chronology. Marie of Brabant had been accused of poisoning her stepson, but nothing like accusations of sorcery appeared anywhere in the scandal of 1276–78. When Paupertas was portrayed as a poisoner, the Continuator of 1308 brought the devil into the narrative but left him in

44. ​AN J 438, no. 6, ed. Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 275–78, quotation at 276 (compare with note 33): “idem episcopus . . . ​vocavit ad se secrete quondam mulierem maligno repletam spiritu, que divinatrix seu sortilega dicebatur, que consulta per ipsum quomodo posset se de dicta regina vindicare, consuluit quod faceret demonem invocari.” Discussion in Rigault, 65–69; and Provost, Domus Diaboli, 54–57. 45. ​Chapotin, Les dominicains d’Auxerre, 47–48. 46. ​Delaurenti, “Femmes enchanteresses,” 220. 47. ​Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 5, 3.

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the background. Now sorcery and necromancy (the learned conjuring of demons) are at the heart of the charges against Guichard and Margueronne. The role attributed to Margueronne, however, is carefully delimited. According to con­temporary thinking, necromancy was a learned, clerical art that required textual knowledge and deep study.48 Only a ­century ­later, in the age of the first witch ­trials, would the idea take hold that unlearned ­women might bypass this textual route by making a direct pact with the devil. For the early fourteenth-­century imagination, a friar like Jean de Fay, rather than a ­simple ­woman like Margueronne (a seer but not yet a witch), was a more probable conjurer of demons.49 Yet at the same time, the turn ­toward the demonic meant that ­women claiming contact with the super­natural ­were increasingly likely to be seen as demonically possessed rather than divinely inspired.50 If learned clerics ­were believed to invoke demons, ­women (porous of body and malleable of mind) ­were more likely to be invaded by them.51 Thus Margueronne is now described as filled by an “evil spirit” (spiritus malignus). With the twenty-­three articles in hand, the first eight depositions against Guichard ­were taken on 14 October. The source of the original charges, the thirty-­seven-­year-­old priest and hermit Regnaud of Langres, gave the first and longest testimony. Of course, this testimony as it survives is not a word-­for-­ word rec­ord of what was said that day. The two notaries working for the commissioners would have summarized, changed to the third person, and translated into Latin what was said in first-­person French.52 The commissioners asked for clarification or additional information at points, but t­ hose questions w ­ ere rarely recorded. Fi­nally, the clean copy as it exists was put together sometime ­later.53 No m ­ atter how detailed the depositions seem, they are several steps away from a ­simple “recording” of the words uttered by Regnaud, Margueronne, and the other witnesses. Still, according to the testimony we possess, on 10 May 1304 (just as Charles of Valois was said to be arresting Paupertas), Regnaud of Langres participated

48. ​Kieckhefer, Magic in the ­Middle Ages, 151–75. 49. ​Though the growing obsession with necromancy resulted from a convergence of vari­ous intellectual currents rather than from an epidemic of evil magic, ­there is no doubt that some clerics attempted to invoke demons. See Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites; and Page, Magic in the Cloister. But for an early fourteenth-­century example of a “devil-­worshipping witch” see Maeve Brigid Callan, The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish: Vengeance and Heresy in Medieval Ireland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), chap. 2. 50. ​Caciola, Discerning Spirits; Boureau, Satan the Heretic, chaps. 6 and 7; and Newman, “Possessed by the Spirit.” 51. ​Caciola, Discerning Spirits, chaps. 3 and 4. 52. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 196. 53. ​See discussion in Provost, Domus Diaboli, 196–210.



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in a pro­cession of relics to his hermitage of Saint-­Flavy.54 ­There, among the many p­ eople gathered, “it was commonly said” that ­there was a certain ­woman at Bellevillette (only a few kilo­meters away) who told the ­future (divinebat). Many ­people believed that she had caused a storm as well.55 Regnaud claims that he preached against this divinatrix so that p­ eople would not believe in her and her “divinations” (divinatoribus suis). But two or three days ­later, the divinatrix came to Regnaud and warned him to desist, ­because she enjoyed a close relationship with the bishop of Troyes. When the hermit asked her to explain, she replied that the bishop had inquired how he could have the queen’s love; she had answered that she did not know how to achieve this but that she knew well how to bring about the queen’s death. Regnaud, shocked, rebuked her and urged her to flee. But fifteen days ­later Guichard secretly ordered Regnaud to stop preaching against Margueronne. Regnaud adds several new claims about the divinatrix. She was from Bellevillette (­today part of Bourdenay, forty kilo­meters west of Troyes). Her reputation included not only prophetic abilities but also the power to control the weather, and she was so well known that the hermit felt compelled to c­ ounter her publicly. If locals “believed in her” and credited her powers as a seer, but also feared that she might bring about storms, perhaps her reputation in Champagne was somewhat ambiguous, straddling the holy and the unholy.56 According to Regnaud’s hostile testimony, however, the w ­ oman’s powers ran more to murder than to love potions. Yet still her name is not given; throughout Regnaud’s long testimony she is simply the divinatrix. Most importantly, as his testimony continues, the hermit details her role in the ensuing events of 1304 and early 1305. For Regnaud, this w ­ oman played an equal part along with the Dominican Jean de Fay, a midwife (obstetrix), and Guichard himself in crafting the waxen image of the queen, baptizing it, sticking it with pins, and using it to kill the queen. Regnaud participated in ­these deeds too (they largely took place at his hermitage), but he claimed that at the time he had not understood the significance of what he was ­doing. Margueronne was central to Regnaud’s portrayal of the plot against the queen. Yet as his testimony moves to the extended attempt to poison Charles of Valois and the f­ uture Louis X between 1305 and 1308, ­there are no further references to the divinatrix. According to Regnaud, this second conspiracy was the work of Guichard and the Dominican Jean; Margueronne drops out of the 54. ​On the hermitage (a real place), see Provost, Domus Diaboli, 84–85. 55. ​Regnaud’s testimony from AN J 438, no. 6, sheets 1–3, is summarized and analyzed in Provost, Domus Diaboli, 45–54, 75–80; and in Provost, “Déposer, c’est faire croire?” Again, a transcription was generously made available to me by Alain Provost. 56. ​Kieckhefer, “The Holy and the Unholy.”

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story. Regnaud reports that Guichard tried repeatedly to get him to carry out the poisoning of Prince Louis, even showing him how to hide the poison in his shoe. The hermit, however, fi­nally fled and made his confession by February 1308.57 Thus in this account, it is Guichard of Troyes who takes on the role of attempted poisoner of the royal ­family that had been ascribed to Paupertas in the Continuation of William of Nangis, with Regnaud himself in the role of the nameless youth charged with transporting the poison to its victim. Like that boy, Regnaud confessed, though he stated in his deposition that he had not been tortured. Charles of Valois, who had just thwarted one alleged attempt to poison him in 1304, would now have found that another diabolical plot involving poison had been ongoing ­until 1308.

Margueronne’s Deposition, 14 October 1308 The second deponent was “Margueronne of Bellevilette, called la Matrausse.”58 Margueronne’s testimony begins by returning to 1301, much earlier than the starting point of Regnaud’s recollections. This was the period when Guichard had been u ­ nder investigation for the Jean of Calais scandal (just before the death of Blanche of Artois). Margueronne relates that a­ fter lunch one day in November 1301 she was called to Guichard of Troyes’s ­house and chapel at Aix-­en-­Othe. The bishop told her it was said that she was a divinatrix. At last the dots are connected, and the nameless divinatrix of Bellevillette is given an identity. Guichard asked her if she knew anything that was contrary to God (si ipsa aliquid sciebat quod esset contra Deum). But Margueronne replied that she did not; she involved herself only in finding lost animals. The passage not only confirms Margueronne’s reputation as able to access hidden knowledge but also hints at how she viewed herself. In her own mind, she had no gifts contra Deum, just a kind of clairvoyant talent for locating stray beasts. Margueronne then jumps to August 1303. Isabelle de Bucy, a nun at the Paraclete and niece of Guichard of Troyes, sent her lame (clauda) servant to summon Margueronne and then arranged for her to go with the servant to 57. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 65–75, summarizes, analyzes, and partly translates this testimony. 58. ​AN J 438, no. 6, sheets 3–4. Summarized in Provost, Domus Diaboli, 57–60, 81, 88, with substantial translation into French. Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 74–76, gives a looser account of her deposition. Margueronne’s testimony begins with the statement that she was questioned about the first article. She must have spoken at length ­under that heading, ­because only at the end of her testimony does the text say that she was also questioned about all the other articles and that she had nothing to add. The meaning of the nickname “la Matrausse” is obscure, but in ­later documents (see epilogue) Margueronne was referred to as “la sage femme,” and “Matrausse” may imply something related to the idea of a midwife.



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meet Guichard at his ­house in Troyes in the presence of his chamberlain Lorin. Though Margueronne never names the servant, Lorin in his ­later testimony referred to her as Odeonne and reported that she was said to be a caoeta, a “sorceress” or “enchantress.”59 Guichard asked Margueronne if she “knew any art” (si tu scis aliquam artem) through which she could cause the bishop to be at peace with the queen. Again she replied that she would not know how to involve herself in such m ­ atters. Guichard then called forth the Dominican Jean de Fay. Jean consulted “le gramaire” (in French in the text),60 and suddenly a figure like a black monk, with horns, seemed to fly in through a high win­ dow. Margueronne believed it was the devil and refers to it as such in her testimony. When B ­ rother Jean told the devil the bishop wanted to make peace with the queen, the devil demanded of the bishop “one of his members” in exchange.61 Guichard said he would have to take counsel, and the devil flew out the win­dow. In sum, according to her own testimony, Margueronne knew nothing about causing harm or making peace through any super­natural arts. It was the friar Jean who used learned, text-­based magic to summon the devil. Regnaud of Langres, by contrast, had related no such scenes involving a vis­i­ble appearance of the devil, contenting himself with long descriptions of forming and abusing a waxen image. Thus Margueronne at once insists on her own ignorance, but also raises the stakes by accusing her alleged collaborators of traffic with the devil. As her testimony continues, Margueronne states that at the end of December 1304 she was again summoned to a meeting with Guichard, ­after which she agreed to appear at Regnaud’s hermitage a week ­later. The subsequent account in many ways mirrors Regnaud’s narrative about how she, Guichard, Regnaud, ­Brother Jean, and the obstetrix, named now as Perotte of Pouy, crafted, baptized, and abused a waxen figure.62 Yet Margueronne’s story also departs from Regnaud’s in impor­tant ways. For one ­thing, she gives no corroboration of Regnaud’s report that he had already once encountered and preached against her. More subtly, Margueronne stresses her ignorance and inexperience at e­ very turn. For instance, she states that she had started to form an image out of wax at the request of Jean de Fay, but since she had never done such a t­ hing before, she did not know how to carry it out, and so Jean had to take over (Regnaud of Langres’s testimony had indicated that the Dominican 59. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 61. Lorin’s testimony is summarized in Provost, 61–64. 60. ​Modern French grimoire, or “textbook of magic.” 61. ​On the idea of a “pact” lying at the heart of demonic magic (eventually crucial to conflating magic with heresy), see Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 63–92 (p. 71 on Guichard of Troyes). 62. ​Perotte gave testimony directly ­after Margueronne on 14 October 1308.

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had indeed finished the pro­cess, but without stating that this was b­ ecause Margueronne was unable to do so).63 Throughout her testimony Margueronne plays down her own involvement and refers to herself whenever pos­si­ble as only reluctantly following o ­ rders. For example, she admitted to poking the waxen image with a pin, though only once, but she claimed that she had refused to say the incantation the o ­ thers said. And l­ater, when the bishop asked her to return and prick the image again, Margueronne stated, contrary to Regnaud’s testimony, that she had merely rolled it near the fire but then rewrapped it and replaced it without having pricked it. Margueronne’s testimony says nothing about the l­ater plot to poison Charles of Valois and Prince Louis. She may never have been asked about t­ hese points, since Regnaud of Langres had already given the impression that she was not part of the poisoning attempts. Her deposition concludes with her information about age and social status, and her statement that she had been imprisoned “by the king’s men” (per gentes regis) since 15 August but had not been tortured. She had, however, been informed numerous times by the king’s men that she was t­ here to tell what she knew about the bishop of Troyes, that she must tell “the truth” about his deeds, and that “­unless she told the truth spontaneously, she would tell it having been compelled or enticed” (coacta vel invita).64 She hastened to add that she had told the unvarnished truth, that she would have told her story even if she had not been arrested, and that she had previously made a confession to a certain Franciscan. What are we to make of such testimony? Even if she had not been tortured, before being turned over to the ecclesiastical questioners, Margueronne had been warned that one way or another she would end up telling the (predetermined royal) truth the king’s men wished to establish. Such techniques had been used effectively on recalcitrant Templars in 1307 and generally had the desired effect.65 Once the original list of articles offered by the royal bailli William of Hangest indicated that Guichard of Troyes had conspired with a divinatrix, the ­woman’s confession and her incrimination by other witnesses ­were necessary. Of the other participants, Regnaud of Langres had presented himself as chief in­for­mant (and was described as other­wise of “holy comportment”), and the Dominican Jean de Fay was prob­ably dead. The divinatrix Margueronne was the key remaining figure. The Dominican had possessed the knowledge necessary to read necromantic texts and to concoct poisons, but Margueronne embodied the intrinsic link to the super­natural. Her 63. ​Noted by Provost, Domus Diaboli, 81. 64. ​Brief analy­sis in Provost, Domus Diaboli, 281–82; Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 92. 65. ​See, for instance, Field, “Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen.”



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confession was required to demonstrate that this link had been used to nefarious ends by the bishop of Troyes. Yet Margueronne’s wild story about the dev­il’s appearance cast the Dominican Jean de Fay as the most diabolical of the conspirators. Whereas Regnaud of Langres had often referred to Margueronne and Jean interchangeably, or remarked that he could not remember which of the two had said or done something, Margueronne sought to make Jean the focus of her narrative. Margueronne’s testimony, even more than that of Regnaud of Langres, placed the Dominican Order itself in a difficult position, with the late prior of Provins subject to such defamation. In fact, a document prepared for William of Nogaret (discussed below) further suggested that Jean of Isle, the current Dominican prior of Troyes, might also have known more than he should have about Guichard’s activities.66 Jean of Isle subsequently had to testify in a somewhat defensive fashion,67 which was a rather notable turnabout given that he had just been involved in questioning the Templars arrested and held in Troyes in October 1307.68 The accusations of necromancy against one of their brethren cannot have pleased Dominicans such as William of Paris, the royal confessor and inquisitor who had launched the pro­cess against the Templars in 1307 and was now concerned with Marguerite Porete’s case in 1308. Nicolas of Fréauville, William’s pre­de­ces­sor as royal confessor and now a cardinal, might have been even less comfortable. His name came up in vari­ous depositions,69 and he may have been ­eager to bring the ­whole proceedings to a quiet end when he was l­ ater asked by Clement V to try to finalize the pro­cess as it dragged on in 1310.70 By contrast, Margueronne of Bellevillette preferred a Franciscan confessor, just as Jeanne of Navarre did. Indeed, the queen’s former confessor, the Franciscan Durand of Champagne, would also testify ­later in the pro­ cess.71 ­There is a hint of intramendicant rivalry ­behind the affair. Margueronne’s confession was thus essential to the full construction of the case around Guichard of Troyes in October 1308. But did any of this ever happen? Did Guichard of Troyes and his accomplices use sorcery against the queen, and did they then try to poison other members of the royal ­family? Guichard may have been a venal and unsavory character, but it seems no more likely that he killed Jeanne of Navarre than that Marie of Brabant poisoned 66. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 98. 67. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 172–73. 68. ​AN J 413, no. 16, edited in Audin and Brunel, “Les templiers en Champagne.” Jean of Isle also came to Paris to participate in follow-up questioning of Templars in November 1307. See Audin and Brunel, 67n3. 69. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 171. 70. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 302–3. 71. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 200.

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her stepson or that Paupertas sent a boy with poisoned feathers and a golden letter to poison Charles of Valois. Yet the vast and tangled pro­cess against Guichard of Troyes, with its mass of still unedited testimony, has far from given up all of its secrets.

The Eclipse of Margueronne at the Close of Guichard’s Pro­cess ­ fter the initial eight testimonies w A ­ ere given on 14 October 1308, t­ here was a pause in the pro­cess, during which secular agents of the king apparently carried out a “parallel inquiry” and drew up two further lists of accusations in French.72 The overall direction given to the pro­cess at this point moved Margueronne of Bellevillette away from the center of interest; t­ hese two French lists of accusations do not mention a divinatrix. One, however, does bear a note indicating it should be sent to William of Nogaret. The other, dated 1 December 1308, includes charges of sodomy and host desecration, strongly resembling the accusations used so effectively by Nogaret against the Templars and Boniface VIII.73 Based at least in part on this work done by royal agents, the formal ecclesiastical commissions now developed two new lists of accusations (twenty-­six articles and ten articles). ­These new articles against Guichard did not pick up on the suggested charges of sodomy and host desecration, but did include fornication, simony, usury, other murders and violent acts, making false accusations of blasphemy and heresy, and the claims that Guichard’s ­mother had conceived him a­ fter intercourse with a demon, that Guichard had conspired to poison Blanche of Artois, and that he had called forth a private demon.74 Thus in the next phase of questioning, where the accusations made Guichard the son of one demon and master of another, the roles first attributed to Margueronne (link to the super­natural) and Jean de Fay (possessor of learned diabolical knowledge) ­were folded into the charges against Guichard himself. By 9 February 1309 Archbishop Étienne Bécart of Sens fell ill and withdrew from the proceedings (he died on 29 March).75 Guichard appeared at Sainte-­ 72. ​One is AN J 438, no. 5 (another copy in no. 9); the other is no. 4. The first is fully edited, and the second is partially edited, in Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 93–101. No. 4, with testimony from forty-­ one deponents, has not been edited. A reproduction of no. 5 can be found in Provost, “The Trial of Guichard,” 152. 73. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, chap. 6. 74. ​Both in AN J 438, no. 6 (copy in no. 7), ed. in Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 282–90, translated 109–115, 120–21. 75. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 30.



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Geneviève on 13 February and through his procurator entered new protests of innocence.76 Testimony was now taken from some 290 more witnesses and recorded article by article (rather than witness by witness) over the following months.77 Among the impressive cast who appeared on 3 March ­were Durand of Champagne (Franciscan confessor to Jeanne of Navarre), Enguerran of Marigny (the king’s power­ful chamberlain), William of Plaisians (Nogaret’s right-­hand man), and Evens Phili (apostolic notary who worked on the Templar, Guichard of Troyes, and Marguerite Porete pro­cesses).78 In April 1309 the commissioners went to Troyes and Provins to gather testimony. Back in Paris, the final witnesses ­were interviewed on 2 October.79 On 13 December 1309 Guichard made a brief ­legal plea, and the inquiry came to a close. So far as is known, Margueronne of Bellevillette remained imprisoned in Paris through t­ hese months and beyond. In the most technical sense, she had never been charged with a crime, merely detained as a witness in the inquiry against Guichard. Unlike Marguerite Porete, she was not accused of heresy, and was not facing inquisitors of heretical depravity. Although Guichard’s case brought together all the ele­ments that would go into equating evil magic with heresy—­baptizing images, making a pact with the devil, invoking demons—it was not ­until John XXII’s bull Super illius specula of 1326/1327 that this link was firmly established.80 As the commissioners wrapped up their work, no clear judgment had been reached regarding Guichard of Troyes, and nothing was said about the fate of ­those arrested with him. Margueronne was left to sit in­def­initely ­behind prison walls. She had momentarily been essential to the court’s larger goal of demonizing the bishop of Troyes, but as that pro­cess moved to the back burner, Margueronne languished in the Châtelet.81 Margueronne of Bellevillette had been thought of as possessing super­ natural powers in her home region west of Troyes. That reputation was given a sinister twist in the charges drawn up by the royal bailli William of Hangest, accusations that ultimately followed her to Paris in 1308. But as she 76. ​AN J 438, no. 7, ed. Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 278–82. 77. ​Given in compiled French form by Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 127–213; discussed in Provost, Domus Diaboli, 107–62. 78. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 122, states that AN J 438, no. 7, a chronological summary of the pro­cess, bore the seal of (among ­others) William of Plaisians and carried the notarial sign of Evens Phili (and that of Jean Leroux). Evens Phili was apparently sworn in as a witness himself (see Rigault’s list of witnesses, p. 298). As far as can be told in the current state of scholarship, it seems his testimony (along with that of Marigny and Plaisians) may not have been preserved. 79. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 213. 80. ​Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 44–45, notes the way this pro­cess foreshadows the direction of the 1320s. 81. ​Her location in the Châtelet is known from ­later documents, discussed in the epilogue.

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sat in a Pa­ri­sian prison, how much of this would have been known outside a narrow circle of ecclesiastical judges? The initial batch of witnesses, including Regnaud of Langres and ­those accused of conspiring alongside Guichard of Troyes, mentioned Margueronne in their testimony. But in the l­ ater phases of the inquiry, ­after she had dropped out of the lists of additional accusations, it is not clear that the nearly three hundred witnesses knew or said anything about her. Thus while t­ here may have been some awareness that a sinister divinatrix or sortilega stood accused of acting alongside the bishop of Troyes, ­there is no concrete evidence for Margueronne leaving a mark on public opinion around 1310, as the case against Guichard ground to a halt.

Marguerite Porete’s Pro­cess While Margueronne of Bellevillette expressed her mix of confession and self-­ exculpation in October 1308, Marguerite Porete had deci­ded to stay ­silent. This had not always been her attitude. The inquisitorial documents produced in the spring of 1310 suggest that she must have exhibited penitence at the time of her book’s first condemnation by Guido of Collemezzo (by 1305), and that she subsequently admitted to the bishop of Châlons-­sur-­Marne ( Jean of Châteauvillain), the inquisitor of Lorraine (Ralph of Ligny), and the new bishop of Cambrai (Philip of Marigny) that she had once again possessed that book or one very much like it (1306–8). But once her case was entrusted in 1308 to William of Paris, the Dominican inquisitor and personal confessor to Philip IV, Marguerite became uncooperative. According to the inquisitor’s several (slightly dif­fer­ent) accounts, Marguerite refused to take an oath and give formal testimony.82 She recognized William as a duly appointed inquisitor but would offer no further cooperation. In the face of this contumacious be­hav­ior, William (he says) offered her “many sound exhortations,” but when t­ hese proved in vain, he excommunicated her. He continued to urge her “many times” to swear and respond to his questions, but she would not comply. This standoff continued for a year and a half. But Marguerite could delay the pro­cess against her for only so long. In March 1310 William of Paris called together masters of canon law and theology from the University of Paris and asked for counsel on how to ­handle this 82. ​AN J 428, nos. 19 and 15. Editions of all documents cited from J 428 are in Verdeyen, “Procès”; En­glish translations (and corrections to Verdeyen) can be found in Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, Appendix A. On William of Paris’s inconsistent statements about exactly what oath Marguerite was asked to swear, see Kelly, “Inquisitorial Deviations.”



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recalcitrant detainee.83 At least in part his timing was designed to ­counter the mounting Templar defense as hundreds of Templars came forth to proclaim their innocence in the spring of 1310; he was doubtless aware as well that Clement V in March  1310 also agreed to open posthumous heresy proceedings against Boniface VIII. By acting now to bring Marguerite’s case to closure, William was preparing a public demonstration that stubborn heresy would be dealt with in an exemplary fashion in Paris. As far as the extant documents show, William did not yet lay out all the facts of Marguerite’s previous ­career, but simply asked “what was to be done” with this beguine who was suspected of heresy but refused to cooperate even ­after enduring incarceration and excommunication for a year and a half. The terms in which she was described by the inquisitor all center on the idea of contumacy. Marguerite is not portrayed as a moral danger, and t­ here are no hints of perilous prophecies, attempted poisonings, or suspected sorcery.84 In the event, the theologians deferred to the canonists, a select group of whom issued a terse judgment dated 3 April. This consilium (­legal opinion) advised that since ­there was vehement and even violent presumption of heresy, in light of Marguerite’s stubborn rebellion, the “unfortunate” w ­ oman must be considered a heretic and handed over to the secular authorities for punishment u ­ nless she repented and abjured her errors.85 A parallel judgment was issued for Guiard of Cressonessart on the same day,86 which was enough to cause him to take an oath and to answer the inquisitor’s questions. It was in this fascinating testimony that he claimed to be the “Angel of Philadelphia” mentioned in the book of Revelation, with a divine mission to defend “the true adherents of the Lord,” including Marguerite. William of Paris submitted this testimony to his team of canon ­lawyers, who on 9 April gave a formal opinion that Guiard’s testimony marked him as a true heretic.87 Two days ­later, on 11 April, William of Paris asked twenty-­one masters of theology from the University of Paris, gathered at the church of Saint-­Mathurin, 83. ​AN J 428, no. 16, details this meeting. This document concerns Guiard of Cressonessart, but the nature of the documentation makes it virtually certain that Marguerite’s case was discussed in the same way at the same meeting. 84. ​The notary Evens Phili, who had also been a witness in the Guichard of Troyes pro­cess, must have documented the March meeting; the canonists then submitted their sealed opinion dated 3 April, and Evens produced a notarized document incorporating the two together. What survives is actually a slightly ­later notarized copy of that document, dated 4 October 1310, prepared by the notary Jacques of Vertus. 85. ​AN J 428, no. 19. 86. ​AN J 428, nos. 16 and 17. 87. ​AN J 428, no. 18.

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for their opinion on at least fifteen articles that had been extracted from a certain book. Although Marguerite is not named in the document, t­ here is no doubt that the book in question was hers. The extant documentation lists only two of the extracted propositions: (1) That the annihilated soul gives license to the virtues and is no longer in servitude to them. (15) That such a soul does not care about the consolations of God or his gifts, and ­ought not to care and cannot, ­because [such a soul] has been completely focused on God, and its focus on God would then be ­impeded. The dean of the cathedral chapter, Simon of Guiberville, delivered the masters’ unan­i­mous counsel that a book containing such propositions should be considered heretical and erroneous and should be “exterminated.” Evens Phili was pres­ent, but the notarized document recording this oral opinion was recorded by another notary, Jacques of Vertus.88 It is again a terse rec­ord of a ­legal finding. William then returned to the canon l­ awyers and provided them at last with a fuller version of Marguerite’s “backstory.” The inquisitor (he said) had conducted an inquiry that revealed that Marguerite’s book had once been burned in Valenciennes by Guido of Collemezzo. William implied that he had seen the letter in which Guido warned Marguerite that if she ever again taught or wrote anything like what had been contained in the condemned book, she would be turned over to the secular authorities as a stubborn heretic. William also now reported that she had subsequently admitted twice, to the inquisitor of Lorraine and to the new bishop of Cambrai Philip of Marigny, that she had once again possessed the said book. It seems likely that t­hese two men had provided testimony to the inquisitor on that point. And fi­nally William indicated that Marguerite had “communicated the said book, or one similar to it containing the same errors, to the reverend f­ ather Lord Jean, by the grace of God bishop of Châlons-­sur-­Marne,” and also “to many other ­simple ­people, beghards and ­others, as though it ­were a good book.” ­Here it would seem that Jean of Châteauvillain and ­others from his diocese must have given testimony to the inquisitor or his deputies. Based on the results of this inquiry, William of Paris now asked the experts in canon law ­whether Marguerite should be considered not just lapsed into heresy b­ ecause of her contumacy (already established on 3 April) but relapsed ­because of her flouting of the earlier episcopal order not to recirculate her book. On 9 May the canon ­lawyers replied 88. ​AN J 428, no. 15, top portion.



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that she should.89 A sentence of relapse into heresy implied certain execution through burning, to be carried out by the secular authorities. On 31 May 1310, in the Place de Grève (modern Place de l’Hôtel de Ville) in Paris, William sentenced Marguerite to be handed over to the secular arm. He ordered her book to be burned, and commanded that anyone possessing a copy turn it in to the Dominicans of Paris. Guiard of Cressonessart must have repented and been reconciled to the church before this date, since he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment a­ fter being degraded from clerical status. The following day, the provost of Paris arranged Marguerite’s death by fire. She went to the stake in the Place de Grève having refused to the last to give testimony in her own defense. Marguerite Porete stands out in several ways from the other holy ­women studied ­here. Aside from Isabelle of France (coauthor of two rules), Marguerite was the only author, with a strong, original religious message to communicate in her writing. Like Isabelle, she grounded that message largely in her own intellectual authority. That is, although the Mirror contains passages in which the author claims to speak with God, by and large it is not rooted in mystical raptures (as with Douceline of Digne) or messages received from God (as with Elizabeth of Spalbeek or Paupertas of Metz). Yet her authorship opened Marguerite up to greater danger; she was the only one of ­these ­women tried for heresy by an inquisitor. Moreover, unlike Elizabeth, Paupertas, or Margueronne of Bellevillette, Marguerite refused to respond to questions, even ­after long imprisonment. We have no formal rec­ords concerning Paupertas, so it is impossible to know what she might have said, or ­under what exact circumstances, when tortured and questioned by Charles of Valois’s men. Elizabeth of Spalbeek in a sense silenced her prophetic voice in response to a perilous situation, but not to the point of refusing to answer the churchmen and royal agents who interrogated her. On the contrary, she went to a ­great deal of trou­ ble to insist that she had told the full truth. Margueronne of Bellevillette had chosen to speak at length, perhaps in the hope that she might find leniency if she testified against Guichard of Troyes. Marguerite Porete, however, faced a dif­fer­ent ­legal situation. She herself was the subject of the inquisition, and she must have realized that having once been warned not to recopy or possess again her book, and having already admitted to d­ oing just that, she was in ­g reat danger when William of Paris began to move against her. It is also pos­si­ble, as Henry Ansgar Kelly has suggested, that Marguerite may have known that she was not obligated to testify against herself u ­ ntil she had been presented with a properly developed list 89. ​AN J 428, no. 19bis.

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of accusations and was sworn in appropriately.90 Thus, her silence may have been both stalling tactic and ­legal protest. Marguerite also stands out insofar as her pro­cess was handled entirely by churchmen. Although we do not know where in Paris or ­under what conditions she was held, all of her known questioning was carried out by bishops and inquisitors. Elizabeth of Spalbeek had been questioned by a mix of churchmen and secular agents; Paupertas of Metz seems to have been interrogated by Charles of Valois’s men; Margueronne of Bellevillette was ultimately questioned by an ecclesiastical commission, but only ­after having been initially handled and threatened by the bailli of Sens and ­others she called “the king’s men.”

Marguerite Porete and the Capetian Court If Marguerite Porete’s pro­cess was an entirely ecclesiastical affair, what did “the king’s men” have to do with it? Marguerite was not part of the court itself, like Isabelle of France; she did not have personal ties to the royal f­ amily, like Douceline of Digne (or Marie of Lille); she did not report revelations concerning the court, like Elizabeth of Spalbeek or Paupertas of Metz; and she was not accused of attacking the royal f­amily, like Paupertas or Margueronne of Bellevillette. In fact, her first encounter with authority initially had nothing to do with the court, b­ ecause the bishop of Cambrai from 1296 to 1306, Guido of Collemezzo, was an Italian protégé of Boniface VIII who did not look to Paris for guidance.91 Moreover, although the Capetians had meddled in the affairs of Valenciennes and Hainaut all the way back to Charles of Anjou’s intervention of 1254, in the early ­fourteenth ­century it was still an Imperial county ruled by the d’Avesnes descendants of Marguerite of Constantinople. Yet, in several ways, Marguerite’s first brush with heresy set the stage for ­later royal involvement. For one ­thing, due to the enduring Dampierre versus d’Avesnes feud, war in Flanders pushed the king of France and the Count of Hainaut into alliance, cemented when William I of Hainaut (r. 1304–37) married Jeanne of Valois, d­ aughter of Charles of Valois and his first wife, Marguerite of Anjou, in 1305. More specifically, Sylvain Piron has pointed out that in 1304 the bishop of Cambrai’s official (chief administrator) was Simon de Bucy, a doctor of law closely connected to the French court. He was the nephew of Simon Matifas de Bucy, bishop of Paris (r. 1290–1304), and the

90. ​Kelly, “Inquisitorial Deviations,” 948. 91. ​Montaubin, “ ‘Avec de l’Italie qui descendrait l’Escault.’ ”



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younger Simon was in Paris at least by 1311.92 Once Marguerite ended up in Paris, a man such as this could have been an instrumental witness to the earlier part of her ­career. Still, it was Marguerite’s second encounter with ecclesiastical authority, unfolding between 1306 and 1308, that drew her inexorably into Capetian circles. The bishop of Châlons-­sur-­Marne, Jean of Châteauvillain, of whom she ran afoul, was doubtless loyal to the Capetian court. The inquisitor for Lorraine, Ralph of Ligny, was almost certainly a Dominican appointed from Paris. It was prob­ably just before dealing with Marguerite that he had been engaged in the delicate task of explaining to the king why he had not secured confessions from two German Templars entrusted to his custody in late 1307.93 Most importantly, the new bishop of Cambrai in 1306, Philip of Marigny, was the ­brother of the increasingly power­ful royal chamberlain Enguerran of Marigny and owed his rise to royal ­favor. Each of ­these men looked to the French court as the center of po­liti­cal gravity. In terms of geography, when Marguerite was moved from (prob­ably) Champagne into the presence of Philip of Marigny, in all likelihood this interview occurred in Paris, rather than back in the diocese of Cambrai. Philip of Marigny spent considerable time at the bishop of Cambrai’s residence near the Louvre in Paris, particularly as he was embroiled in a ­legal squabble with Countess Mahaut of Artois (­daughter of Robert II of Artois) from late 1307 through the spring of 1308. A key document in this dispute was notarized for Philip at Paris in December 1307 by the seemingly ubiquitous Evens Phili.94 Thus by the time Marguerite had been passed from Jean of Châteauvillain to Ralph of Ligny to Philip of Marigny, she had prob­ably already arrived in Paris and found herself encircled by Capetian po­liti­cal power. This dynamic only intensified as she was turned over to William of Paris, who had been forced to distance himself from the ongoing Templar affair ­after incurring Pope Clement V’s strong dis­plea­sure.95 William was part of Philip IV’s inner circle and the first man to serve as royal confessor and papal inquisitor at the same time.96 An inquisition pursued by this man, parallel to the Guichard of Troyes and Templar cases and involving an overlapping set of

92. ​Piron, “Marguerite in Champagne.” I am unable to say ­whether ­there is any ­family connection to Isabelle de Bucy, nun of the Paraclete. 93. ​Field, “Ralph of Ligny.” 94. ​On the dispute with Mahaut, see Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 88; and Balouzat-­Loubet, Le gouvernement de la comtesse Mahaut en Artois, 110–11. 95. ​Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 79–82. 96. ​Field, “King/Confessor/Inquisitor”; Field, “Philippe le Bel et ses confesseurs dominicains.”

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notaries for all three inquiries, was necessarily a royal as well as an ecclesiastical affair. Moreover, William of Paris must have acted in consultation with Philip of Marigny. As bishop of Cambrai, Philip had helped place Marguerite Porete in William’s custody. But by 1309, ­after the death of Étienne Bécart in March, the king had managed to have Philip named archbishop of Sens. In that role Philip of Marigny would have overseen the last phase of the pro­cess against Guichard of Troyes, although he never appears in ­those documents. But the new bishop of Sens also inherited the charge of dealing with Templars pertaining to his province. In May 1310 Philip of Marigny was in Paris to head a provincial inquiry into individual Templars subject to his ordinary authority, even as t­ hese Templars ­were supposed to be testifying before the papal commission that was investigating the order’s guilt or innocence. On 9 May William of Paris received the formal concilium from his five canon ­lawyers stating that Marguerite Porete could be considered a relapsed heretic. The very next day Philip of Marigny’s council opened and moved ­toward labeling a substantial number of Templars as relapsed heretics, ­under the theory that they had once confessed and been reconciled, and now w ­ ere abandoning ­those confessions. On 12 May, fifty-­four of ­these Templars ­were burned outside the eastern walls of the city, near the abbey of Saint-­Antoine. The papal commission was forced to abandon its inquiry, ­because the remaining Templars ­were too frightened to testify. Hearings thus came to a close on 30 May. Again, it was the very next day that Marguerite Porete was sentenced and her book burned. The way t­hese two pro­cesses played out in tandem was no coincidence.97 If any further proof is needed to establish the royal court’s interest in Marguerite Porete, ­there is the fact that by April 1313 the documents produced by her pro­cess ­were in the possession of Philip IV’s closest advisers, William of Nogaret and William of Plaisians.98 Thus the inquisition against Marguerite Porete was also a royal affair and must be understood within the series of broader attacks on the king’s long list of enemies. In such a context, Marguerite Porete might seem of only modest importance. The roundup of tens of thousands of Jews has far more significance, as does the arrest of hundreds of Templars, and ultimately the execution of dozens of them. Yet the outcome of the pro­cess against Marguerite was more conclusive than that of the grander inquiries. Although Philip 97. ​Traced in more detail in Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 148–53. 98. ​Langlois, “Les papiers de Guillaume de Nogaret et de Guillaume de Plaisians au Trésor des chartes.”



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IV is generally seen as having humbled the papacy, virtually all of ­these inquiries ended in a stalemate, quagmire, or retreat. The 1301 charges against Bernard Saisset fizzled out quickly, as Bernard was allowed to depart for Rome in 1302 and even return to his see of Pamiers by 1308 (he died in 1314). As dramatic as the confrontation with Boniface VIII at Agnani in 1303 had been, the pope did manage to escape and return to Rome, even if he died a few weeks ­later. The attempt to get Clement V to convict him posthumously for heresy achieved much of what Nogaret and Philip IV wanted, but not a conviction. The expulsion of the Jews in 1306 was stunningly successful as an exercise in mass arrest, but the attempt to collect debts owed to the Jews proved long and arduous (Nogaret and Plaisians had their hands in it),99 and the conversion-­ under-­duress of the few remaining Jews only raised new fears and suspicions.100 Similarly, the roundup of French Templars was dramatically efficient, but the affair dragged on and never did lead to final conviction of the order. Its ultimate suppression was justified as much by the overwhelming weight of scandal as by proof of heresy. When dozens of Templars ­were burned outside Paris in 1310, it was a hastily arranged affair without elaborate staging. Even the ­later execution of the two Templar leaders Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney in March 1314 was the result of a debacle; the public ceremony in front of Notre-­Dame de Paris, in the presence of Philip of Marigny, was supposed to have been for their sentencing to perpetual imprisonment. Only when the two men unexpectedly proclaimed their innocence ­were they hustled off and burned that same night.101 As a result, nothing could have been less clear than their supposed guilt. And we have already seen that Guichard of Troyes’s trial had arrived at an anticlimactic lull by 1310. Marguerite’s pro­cess, by contrast, was a complete “success,” insofar as the public spectacle of 31 May–1 June in Paris produced a clear resolution. This unpre­ce­dented moment surely would have impressed ­those pres­ent. The notarized rec­ord of the event describes a ­grand scene:102 the bishop of Paris, William Baufet, was t­here, along with his official, the provost of Paris, vari­ous royal servants, a Franciscan bachelor of theology, a Dominican lieutenant of the inquisitor, “many ­others” specifically invited, and “a ­g reat multitude of ­people.” In a sense, the gathering was like t­ hose occasions in 1303 when townspeople and clerics had been brought together to hear harangues against Boniface VIII, or the staged events in October 1307 when Templar leaders w ­ ere 99. ​Balasse, 1306, 125. 100. ​See, for example, William of Paris’s prosecution of two other “relapsed” Jews, discussed in Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, 82–83. 101. ​Brown, “Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar.” 102. ​The sentences of Marguerite and Guiard are found on the lower portion of AN J 428, no. 15.

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paraded out to confess in public. But this was something new; never before in Paris had an inquisitor sentenced heretics in a public ritual. The proceedings included the degradation and sentencing to perpetual imprisonment of Guiard of Cressonessart, and almost certainly the sentencing of a “relapsed” Jew who would be burned the next day along with Marguerite. In front of t­ hese impor­ tant dignitaries and the wider crowd, Marguerite Porete was sentenced as a relapsed heretic, her book was once again condemned, and she was handed over to the secular authorities. ­There ­were apparently many onlookers as she went to her execution. According to chronicle accounts (see the epilogue), some ­were moved to tears by her signs of penitence.103 All of the royal claims to enforce God’s justice in France came together on 1 June 1310 with the death of a single ­woman. What­ever questions may remain for modern historians about the details of Marguerite Porete’s inquisitorial pro­cess, in the big picture her conviction was straightforward. Although it had been the content of her book that initiated her trou­bles, in the end she was not burned for the nature of her writings. Her “heresy” was ­simple refusal to obey ecclesiastical authority at a time when the king of France and his men insisted that all such authority in the kingdom of France was ultimately royal. Her heresy was a “fact,” or act or deed, rather than an opinion.104 In this case, it could be established with concrete certainty and its punishment presented as a necessary upholding of sacred power in the realm of the Capetian king.

An Imperfect Heretic? But at the same time, this coin had its flip side. What impressions, we must ask, might average p­ eople in Paris have taken away from Marguerite Porete’s sentencing and execution? She had earlier caused a stir in the diocese of Cambrai, and then prob­ably in the diocese of Châlons-­sur-­Marne. She evidently sought readers and praise for her book at vari­ous points, and the Mirror of ­Simple Souls repeatedly laments the way its author has had to explain and reexplain the path to annihilation for forlorn souls still too stuck in the world to grasp ­these points. Her ideas and her first encounters with ecclesiastical authority ­were hardly secret. Her arrival in Paris must have been noted as well, since Guiard of Cressonessart made a public spectacle of stepping forth in her 103. ​See the epilogue for the early chronicle accounts of Marguerite’s trial and death; ­here I refer to the “official” or accepted Continuation of the Latin Universal Chronicle of William of Nangis. 104. ​See Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 33, for the move ­toward heresy as “fact.”



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defense. But presumably up u ­ ntil May 1310 only a small circle of men around the inquisitor and the university ­were privy to any concrete information about the inquisition against her. That changed on 31 May 1310, when William of Paris unveiled her sentence in the Place de Grève. We cannot be certain that the Latin text of the sentence as it survives is exactly what the inquisitor read that day. William may have given the sentences once in Latin and then again in French, and he may or may not have adhered to the wording of the Latin document. But if that surviving document is any indication, t­ hose in attendance might have found the case against Marguerite Porete somewhat less than satisfying. William began by stating that “evident proofs” had established to him, as a duly appointed papal inquisitor of heresy for the kingdom of France, that Marguerite from Hainaut and “called Porete” had been “vehemently” suspected of heresy. On what grounds? The inquisitor did not at first inform his listeners as to how or why the w ­ oman had come u ­ nder suspicion. Instead, he described her repeated refusal to take a judicial oath and testify, and how, a­ fter taking counsel with “many experts,” he had thus sentenced her in writing to excommunication. For a year and a half, in spite of his many efforts, Marguerite had maintained her uncooperative stance. For this reason, according to “canonical sanction” William was forced to consider her “as convicted and confessed and as lapsed into heresy, or as a heretic.” What would a crowd of listeners have made of this? The ­legal reasoning might have seemed persuasive, and they might well have agreed with William’s depiction of Marguerite as “rebellious and contumacious.” But to this point what her real offenses had been was still a mystery. What had she done in the first place? Indeed, what was a ­woman from Hainaut ­doing in Paris? William then backtracked to explain Marguerite’s earlier history. He related how, based on his inquiries, he had found that she had once composed a “pestilential book containing heresies and errors,” which the bishop of Cambrai, Guido of Collemezzo, had condemned and ordered burned in the author’s presence in Valenciennes. T ­ here is, however, no hint h ­ ere as to what ­those heresies had been. William continued, in more precise language, to explain that at that time Marguerite had been warned, on pain of excommunication, never again to construct or possess such a book or one like it. William took pains to stress how Bishop Guido, in a sealed letter, had warned her that if she transgressed this order, she would be condemned as a heretic and handed over to secular justice. But, according to William, Marguerite herself had ­later admitted, in the presence of the inquisitor of Lorraine and “the revered ­father and lord Philip [of Marigny], then bishop of Cambrai and now archbishop of Sens,” that she had “many times” broken this prohibition. A ­ fter its condemnation and

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burning, she had still imparted her book, as though it w ­ ere “good and lawful,” to the bishop of Châlons-­sur-­Marne and to “certain other p­ eople,” according to the testimony of many trustworthy witnesses. William certainly built up a consistent picture of a rebel. In this telling, Marguerite had refused from the very beginning to listen to warnings, to obey clear o ­ rders, and to re­spect the authority of churchmen. She must have seemed shockingly audacious. Still, what ­were ­those original heresies and errors? William says not one word. What had made her ideas a destructive pestilence? William does not explain. Instead, he concludes by stating that he had taken careful counsel from experts “in both laws” on this entire history, and now with the counsel and assent of the bishop of Paris, he was sentencing Marguerite not only as lapsed into heresy but as relapsed. He thus relinquished her to secular justice. The inquisitor then proceeded to condemn her book once more, ordering it “exterminated and burned,” since the masters of theology at Paris had judged it to be heretical and erroneous. H ­ ere William had a last chance to make a case against Marguerite as a source of dangerous heresy—­just what w ­ ere ­those heresies and errors hidden away in her book? But he says nothing, only demanding that anyone possessing a copy turn it over to the Dominican Prior of Paris. In the end, listeners ­were given no idea what was contained in Marguerite’s book, or on what grounds the Pa­ri­sian theologians had ­condemned it. In terms of public perception, this was in many ways an unsatisfactory case for a w ­ oman’s execution. French subjects had grown accustomed to long lists of lurid accusations against supposed enemies: Bernard Saisset, Boniface VIII, and Guichard de Troyes had been accused of direct plotting against the king of France and the French ­people, and the latter two had also been accused of sorcery (as had Margueronne of Bellevillette). The Templars had been accused of renouncing Christ and of a vast conspiracy against the Christian faith; Paupertas of Metz and Guichard of Troyes had been accused of using poison to try to murder members of the Capetian f­ amily. Even the “relapsed” Jew burned the same day as Marguerite had been accused of spitting on images of the Virgin Mary. While not e­ very one of ­these charges would have been known to a wide public, at least for Boniface VIII, the Templars, and Guichard of Troyes, crowds ­were gathered in Paris to publicize the accusations in lurid detail. By contrast, what had Marguerite Porete done? She had recopied a book that had once been burned by a bishop in Valenciennes, and she had refused to cooperate with an inquisitor. But nothing was reported to the public about the content of her book. The masters of theology had been given at least fifteen extracts, and the notarial rec­ord of their judgment had listed two. That



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judgment was recorded on the top of the sheet of parchment that contained Marguerite’s subsequent sentence, but ­there is no reason to think that that judgment was read publicly on 31 May 1310. Moreover, the inquisitor did not go out of his way to tar Marguerite with a long list of derogatory labels. He did not even refer to her as a beguine (unlike in documents provided to his team of canon l­awyers), a term that some by this time might have taken to have negative connotations. And unlike Paupertas or Margueronne (or Guiard), Marguerite had never confessed. Onlookers might have regarded her as convicted based on l­egal technicalities more than on evidence of some horrific crime. Was this novelty, the burning alive of a w ­ oman who refused to confess to anything, justified by the fact that she had remained uncooperative ­after writing and recopying a book? In his pre­sen­ta­tion of Marguerite Porete, William of Paris had offered only a very imperfect heretic.

At the Council of Vienne and Beyond At the time of Marguerite Porete’s execution, Margueronne of Bellevillette was still imprisoned, as was Guichard of Troyes. Although the last witnesses in that inquiry had been called the previous December, Clement V complained in July 1310 that he had still not received the commissioners’ final report.105 In April 1311 Clement brought the posthumous heresy trial against Boniface VIII to a close by absolving William of Nogaret and giving the royal court most of the concessions it wanted but not finding Boniface guilty of heresy. That same month the two surviving commissioners for the Guichard of Troyes pro­ cess, Raoul Grosparmi and Pierre de Grès, fi­nally had their notaries prepare documentation that was sent to Clement V in time for the opening of the Council of Vienne, which lasted from October 1311 to May 1312. Although ­there is no evidence that Guichard’s case was discussed at the council, it must have lain ­behind negotiations over larger issues. Most famously, at the close of the council, Clement dissolved the Order of the ­Temple, without having ruled on its guilt or innocence. The council also produced two decrees that w ­ ere fundamental to the way beguines ­were perceived over the following de­cades. The “Clementine” decrees ­were not published ­until 1317, ­after Clement V’s death on 20 April 1314 and the long interregnum before the election of John XXII on 7 August 1316. One of t­ hese decrees, Cum de quibusdam mulieribus, attacked beguines for meddling in questions of the faith u ­ nder the “veil of sanctity,” and their status was 105. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 216–17.

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“prohibited” and “completely abolished.” But a last clause stating that this prohibition did not apply to “faithful w ­ omen” left a ­g reat deal of ambiguity. A second decree, Ad nostrum, equated beguines, and their male counter­parts, beghards, with a list of eight antinomian errors, including (1) that a person can attain such a degree of perfection in this life that he w ­ ill be sinless, and (2) that a man in such a state of perfection need not fast or pray and “can freely grant to the body what­ever it pleases.” It is likely that Marguerite Porete’s execution and the condemnation of her book had at least some effect on the formulation of t­ hese two decrees, given that numerous prelates and theologians who had been involved in her pro­cess attended the Council of Vienne.106 By the close of the Council of Vienne, with the dissolution of the Knights Templar and the resolution of the posthumous heresy pro­cess against Boniface VIII, the spectacular charges against Guichard of Troyes had lost their relevance. He was allowed to depart for the papal court at Avignon by early 1313 without having been judged one way or the other. This outcome was an anticlimax for a man accused of having murdered Blanche of Artois and Jeanne of Navarre, and of having tried to murder Charles of Valois and Louis X. One has to won­der ­whether the royal court ever believed in its own accusations. The charges had served a purpose, which was to keep continuing pressure on the pope in the Templar affair (in turn intended to force Clement V’s hand regarding the posthumous pro­cess against Boniface VIII). That purpose had run its course, and so determining the “truth” of the charges no longer had any relevance. They thus seemingly stand revealed as po­liti­cally expedient fabrications. Most con­temporary chronicles saw them that way,107 and one of Guichard’s chief accusers, the Italian Noffo Dei, was hung in Paris in 1313 “for his crimes,” supposedly having confessed at the last that Guichard had been innocent.108 Guichard appears to have been detained at Avignon as late as April 1313,109 but by early 1314 he was rehabilitated to the extent that he was named as bishop of Diakovar in Bosnia. He never took up his charge. One way or another Guichard returned to Champagne, where he died on 22 January 1317.110 If the 1250s and 1260s had seen ­women’s holiness used to promote Capetian claims to divine f­avor, and the 1270s and 1280s had proved to be a testing 106. ​For more detail, see Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor, Epilogue III; for the two bulls, with En­glish translations, see Makowski, “When Is a Beguine not a Beguine?” 107. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 227–37; Provost, Domus Diaboli, 272–80. 108. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 219. 109. ​Rigault, Procès de Guichard, 219–20. 110. ​Provost, Domus Diaboli, 261.



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ground for holy ­women’s utility to the royal ­family, by the first de­cade of the ­fourteenth ­century ­there was ­little room for anyone but the king to speak for God. The beguina Marguerite and the divinatrix Margueronne represent two related endpoints to this arc.111 Marguerite deviated from the prophetic model of Douceline of Digne, Elizabeth of Spalbeek, and Paupertas of Metz. She offered no revelations about the royal ­family and formed no relationship with any of the Capetians. She was first and foremost an author. And although her writings contain claims of direct contact with God, they convey primarily confidence in her own religious teachings. She is in some ways more similar to Isabelle of France than to any other w ­ oman studied ­here. Both ­were highly literate, both pursued their writings (in Isabelle’s case, her rules) with determination, and both declined to back down when challenged. But Marguerite was not, of course, a princess, and her refusal to accept her book’s rejection was portrayed as recalcitrant heresy rather than determined sanctity. Her execution capped the attempt to silence would-be holy ­women, increasingly portrayed as enemies of Christ and his defender in France, the Capetian king. Margueronne, for her part, represents the increasing tendency to see w ­ omen in contact with the super­natural as sorceresses rather than saints. ­Behind the hostile accusations framed against her, her local reputation might once have been less explic­itly diabolic. But within the case against Guichard of Troyes, her standing as a ­woman able to see ­things hidden from ­others was placed in a nefarious light. This trend extended far beyond the Capetian court but was felt intensely t­ here. Rather than having her voice silenced, Margueronne was forced to speak. Like Paupertas of Metz, Margueronne was made to confess to an attack on the royal ­family, ­after being portrayed as in league with satanic forces. If ­women ­were more likely than men to embody contact with the demonic super­natural, then ­women’s confessions ­were the best evidence of how Satan was working to attack the Capetian king and his f­amily, Christ’s special defenders in France. An admission of demonic guilt such as Margueronne’s served the Capetian cause as surely as had statements of divine support from a figure such as Douceline of Digne.

111. ​For links between the kinds of dangers posed by t­ hese two w ­ omen, see Bailey, “Magic, Mysticism, and Heresy in the Early ­Fourteenth ­Century.”

Epilogue Echoes and Afterlives

The thirteenth c­ entury began with a burst of religious energy, vis­i­ble in the emergence of the mendicant ­orders, in the popularity of the beguine movement, and in reforming churchmen’s support for ­these initiatives. It also began with a breakthrough in Capetian power, demonstrated by victory at the ­Battle of Bouvines and in the Albigensian Crusade. By the 1270s, ecclesiastical enthusiasm for innovation by uncloistered religious ­women declined, but the power of the French monarchy continued its inexorable ascent. As ­these two lines of force crossed, by the end of the ­century the Capetian court increasingly drew such ­women into its orbit, labeled them as spiritual dangers, and took credit for crushing the threat they posed. One way to visualize the court’s centralizing control is in terms of its rec­ ord keeping. By the turn of the ­fourteenth ­century, more and more royal agents, with broad powers and detailed instructions, traveled across ever-­wider areas to impose closer royal control.1 A crown now accustomed to using inquests as tools of government gradually placed more emphasis on archiving the results.2 For example, when William of Nogaret and William of Plaisians died in 1313/1314, they had in their possession numerous dossiers concern1. ​Dejoux, “Gouverner par l’enquête en France.” 2. ​Élisabeth Lalou, Xavier Hélary, Romain Telliez, and Julien Théry, Enquêtes menées sous les derniers capétiens, 2nd ed. (Paris: IRHT, 2009), at http://­www​.­cn​-­telma​.­fr//­enquetes​/­index​/­. 21 4

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ing the ­g reat affairs of state stretching back to the 1270s.3 ­These included not only the rec­ords of the conflicts with Boniface VIII and the Templars but also the interrogations of Elizabeth of Spalbeek and the inquisitorial trial of Marguerite Porete. T ­ hese documents ­were deposited in the developing royal archive, the Trésor des Chartes, whose location in a room connected to the Sainte-­Chapelle signaled its importance to the sacred claims of the Capetians. Although the Trésor des Chartes has been several times inventoried and arranged in the intervening centuries, its fourteenth-­century shape is still apparent in the cartons forming series J of the modern Archives nationales in Paris. Hence, chapter  6 noted that the inquisitorial documents concerning Marguerite Porete are found in carton J 428, while Margueronne of Bellevillette’s testimony is in J 438. The rec­ords of Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s interrogations are nestled snugly in between, in J 429. Twenty-­first-­century historians still work within categories created by Capetian officials. On another level, the court’s gravitational force was more tangible. Paris as a center of royal power increasingly pulled t­ hese holy ­women in and held them fast. Whereas in 1244 Blanche of Castile had written to a holy ­woman in the Low Countries to beg for help, and in 1276–78 it had been royal agents who traveled to the same area to question Elizabeth of Spalbeek, by 1308 Marguerite Porete and Margueronne of Bellevillette ­were transported from Hainaut and Champagne to Paris, where they ­were imprisoned and, in Marguerite’s case, executed at the very heart of the city. The Châtelet, where Margueronne was incarcerated, and the Place de Grève, where Marguerite was burned, lay a mere five hundred meters apart on the Right Bank of the Seine, just across the river from the cathedral of Notre-­Dame, the royal palace, and the Sainte-­Chapelle on the Île-­de-­la-­Cité. No new holy ­woman emerged from or around the Capetian f­ amily during the reigns of the last direct Capetians, Louis X (r. 1314–16), Philip V (r. 1316– 22), and Charles IV (r. 1322–28). Although princesses and royal w ­ idows could 4 be viewed as embodiments of Capetian piety, the court increasingly saw ­women, sometimes even ­those close to the court, as potential poisoners or sorceresses. A ­ fter the death of the last Capetian king in 1328, royal history writing at Saint-­Denis worked to reimagine earlier female figures ­either as holy voices that had upheld the monarchy or as dark forces that had threatened France and its most Christian king.

3. ​Langlois, “Les papiers de Guillaume de Nogaret et de Guillaume de Plaisians.” 4. ​Allirot, Filles de roy de France.

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Echoes of Isabelle Isabelle of France’s foundation of Longchamp functioned as a focal point for female royal devotion. Most dramatically, in February 1319 Blanche, d­ aughter of Philip V and Jeanne of Burgundy, became the first child of a French king to enter one of the mendicant o ­ rders when she took preliminary vows at Longchamp at the age of about eight. T ­ here she joined two nieces of Marie of Brabant (Marguerite and Jeanne of Brabant, d­ aughters of Godefroy of Brabant) who had already professed in 1301 and 1302.5 In 1319 the king and queen, along with Charles of Valois, Mahaut of Artois, the f­ uture Charles IV, and a host of nobles, ­were pres­ent for Blanche’s entrance, with the archbishop of Reims overseeing this investment of royal prestige in a princess’s religious status. Sixty years a­ fter Isabelle of France had declined this role, the Capetians at last had a royal nun at Longchamp.6 Members of the royal ­family obtained special permission to visit her ­there.7 Philip V, in fact, spent the last several months of his life at Longchamp before his death in January 1322, prob­ably to be near his ­daughter but perhaps also hoping to find a miraculous cure at the tomb of Isabelle of France, as his ­father had once done.8 Jeanne of Burgundy, for her part, asked in her testament of 1319 that her heart be buried at Longchamp.9 A second royal h ­ ouse of Sorores minores, the abbey of Saint-­Marcel (or Lourcines) in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, largely refounded by Marguerite of Provence in the 1280s, offered another religious home for Capetian w ­ omen, 10 particularly ­widows. Primat’s hint around 1280 that royal sanctity might best be embodied by royal ­daughters who had married, lost their husbands, and then deci­ded to remain celibate was picked up in the way chroniclers in the early ­fourteenth ­century wrote about Blanche de la Cerda (d. 1320), d­ aughter of Louis IX, as a “tres noble dame et de grant sainteté,” who lived in “holy comportment at Saint-­Marcel.”11 Blanche was sometimes paired with widowed wives of Capetians in such laudatory accounts—­for instance, with Margue-

5. ​For ties between ­these nieces of Marie of Brabant and the Harcourt ­family, see Duchesne, L’abbaye royale de Longchamp, 137. 6. ​Allirot, Filles de roy de France, 307–8, 315–18. 7. ​Conrad Eubel, ed., Bullarium Franciscanum (hereafter, BF), nos. 349–53, 359–64a, 376 (all for the year 1319), 414–16 (1320), 635 (1327); Allirot, Filles de roy de France, 326. 8. ​Brown, “Ceremonial of Royal Succession in Capetian France,” n. 16 on Blanche and Longchamp. 9. ​Field, Isabelle, 151. 10. ​Allirot, “Longchamp and Lourcine.” 11. ​For citations see Allirot, “Blanche de la Cerda,” 239.

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rite of Burgundy (d. 1308), second wife of Charles of Anjou,12 or with Marie of Brabant (d. 1321).13 Indeed, Blanche and Marie each frequently stayed at one or the other of the two abbeys of Sorores minores.14 Blanche inherited the residence that her ­mother, Marguerite of Provence (d. 1295), had built at Saint-­ Marcel,15 while Marie paid for a new entrance to Longchamp’s grounds.16 ­These Capetian princesses and ­widows prob­ably helped keep the cult of Isabelle of France alive at Longchamp. For instance, when Blanche of France died in 1358, her tomb depicted Isabelle and Louis together. Royal w ­ omen ­were also increasingly regarded as keepers of St. Louis’s memory. The Franciscan William of Saint-Pathus dedicated his life of Louis (1302–3) to Blanche de la Cerda, a famous but now lost fresco cycle on Louis’s life was created at Saint-­Marcel,17 and Capetian ­women ­were among the most impor­tant commissioners and o ­ wners of vari­ous Hours of St. Louis and related books of 18 devotion.

A Climate of Suspicion Yet in spite of the way ­these princesses and ­widows coalesced into a kind of Capetian “celestial court,”19 no new Douceline of Digne came on the scene— no new saintly ­woman who gave voice to Capetian claims of divine approval. To the contrary, the last Capetians i­ magined themselves ­under constant threat by ­women more in the mold of Paupertas of Metz or Margueronne of Bellevillette—­supposed poisoners and sorceresses, the mirror image of the pious princesses surrounding the court. Several larger f­actors help explain this trend. In the period around 1314–28, religious ­women living outside formal nunneries faced increasing suspicion. Whereas most of the w ­ omen studied in this book ­were referred to at one time or another (more or less accurately) as 12. ​Hélary, “La mort de Pierre, comte d’Alencon,” 13, citing the Grandes chroniques de France. 13. ​For instance, Adenet le Roi dedicated his Cléomadès to the two ­women. 14. ​Marie had papal permission to enter Longchamp as early as 1306, as did another ­daughter of Godefroy of Brabant. BF, vol. 5, nos. 45 and 46. 15. ​Blanche also stayed at Longchamp at times; see Prou, Les registres d’Honorius IV, col. 453 no. 637 (1286); BF, vol. 5, nos. 93 (1307), 198 and 206 (1312); and Allirot, Filles de roy de France, 325–26. 16. ​ BF, vol. 5, no. 78. This analy­sis could be widened to include the Dominican ­house of Poissy, which Philip IV founded in honor of Louis IX, the ­house of Sorores minores he founded at Moncel, and other ­houses of that same order founded by ­women such as Blanche of Artois (­mother of Jeanne of Navarre). 17. ​Allirot, Filles de roy de France, 99–106. 18. ​Allirot, Filles de roy de France, 111–33; Gaposchkin, Making of Saint Louis, chap. 8. 19. ​Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses.

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beguines, a­ fter the Council of Vienne, that label became more problematic.20 The Clementine decrees Cum de quibusdam and Ad nostrum subjected many beguine communities to close scrutiny. For instance, in the dioceses of Cambrai, Tournai, and Liège, where Marguerite Porete, Paupertas, and Elizabeth of Spalbeek, respectively, had once lived, inquiries took place across the 1320s, with ­women ­there often temporarily preferring not to call themselves ­beguines.21 But a­ fter a difficult de­cade, at least the larger and better regulated beguinages recovered. In Flanders, Count Robert of Béthune protested to the pope as early as 1319,22 and by 1328 most beguine communities in his county had been exonerated.23 In Paris itself, the ­grand béguinage may have been in some danger of suppression around 1318, but King Charles IV issued new statutes in 1327 that invoked the memory of the founder “St.  Louis” and ­insisted on the beguines’ orthodox standing.24 The uncertain last de­cade of Capetian rule, when beguine life was u ­ nder the greatest suspicion, was not an auspicious moment for w ­ omen following the kind of life that had produced Douceline of Digne, Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Paupertas of Metz, or Marguerite Porete. Second, during this same de­cade, the policies of Pope John XXII sparked new prob­lems for laypeople associated with the Franciscan Order. From 1316 onward John’s reign saw the ­great crackdown on “Spiritual” Franciscans, whose ardent belief in the apocalyptic importance of absolute poverty led them to resist calls for moderation and obedience. With the burning of four Spirituals at Marseille in 1318, and the subsequent persecution of many of their lay followers through the 1320s, association with ideals of Franciscan poverty became suspect.25 Most of the holy ­women in this study had embraced or at least leaned in the direction of Franciscan spirituality. This is abundantly clear for Isabelle of France and Douceline of Digne, and Paupertas of Metz’s odd nickname suggests Franciscan affinity. Evidence is less compelling for Margueronne of Bellevillette and Marguerite Porete, but the former did mention confessing to a Franciscan and the latter first sought out a local Franciscan when soliciting praises for the Mirror of ­Simple Souls. The Sorores minores, never associated with strict poverty, offered a safe harbor in this regard for royal ­women; but, again, trends that had favored par­tic­u­lar kinds of

20. ​Böhringer, Deane, and van Engen, Labels and Libels. 21. ​Simons, Cities of Ladies, 133–34. 22. ​Simons, “In Praise of Faithful ­Women.” 23. ​Simons, Cities of Ladies, 135. 24. ​Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, 158–64. 25. ​Burnham, So ­Great a Light; Burr, Spiritual Franciscans.

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ardent female piety w ­ ere called into question in the last de­cade of the Capetian period. Douceline of Digne’s cult, for instance, faced a nearly impossible paradox in navigating ­these shifting attitudes ­toward beguines and radical Franciscans. Felipa of Porcellet’s Life of the Blessed St. Douceline was first read at Douceline’s community in Marseille on 1 September 1297, but the unique surviving manuscript was copied a l­ittle ­later, perhaps around 1316 and certainly between 1312 and 1320.26 It is not clear what textual modifications, if any, ­were made to the Life at this point, but prob­ably the new copy was intended to emphasize the orthodoxy of Douceline’s foundations in the uncertain atmosphere for beguines a­ fter the Council of Vienne. Felipa (still alive as late as 1316) had gone to g­ reat lengths to explain why Douceline had embraced the beguine label, what that term had meant to her, and how she had collaborated with impor­tant Franciscans to create her communities. But this text might have appeared in a dif­fer­ent light once the four Spiritual Franciscans ­were burned in the cemetery of the church of Notre-­Dame-­des-­Accoules in central Marseille on 7 May 1318. The care Felipa had taken to validate Douceline’s Franciscan identity through her ties to John of Parma and Hugh of Digne now flirted with danger—if the beguines of Roubaud ­were associated with ­these proto-­ Spiritual leaders, could their orthodoxy be taken for granted? Moreover, the word “beguine” itself, chosen by Douceline in imitation of the northern communities de­cades earlier, in the south by this time largely took on the meaning of “lay p­ eople associated with the Spiritual Franciscans.”27 As such, it was for the moment a dubious label indeed. In the event, the bishop of Marseille carried out a “diligent inquisition” into Roubaud, and ­after 1322 he reported that the beguines led a blameless life.28 But such challenges may help explain why Douceline’s cult slipped into semiobscurity. Third, John XXII initiated the learned consultations in 1320 that led to his bull Super illius specula in 1326 or 1327, which conflated demonic magic with heresy and accelerated the long-­term move ­toward suspicion of ­women claiming prophetic powers or super­natural experiences. Demons occupied more and more space in the minds of many thinkers in the early ­fourteenth ­century, “liberated” by certain directions in scholastic argument.29 But it was John XXII’s proclamation that turned academic argument into church policy.

26. ​BnF ms. fr. 13503. 27. ​Kerby-­Fulton, Books ­under Suspicion, 404–6. 28. ​Field, “On Being a Beguine,” 127. 29. ​Boureau, Satan the Heretic, chap. 4.

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Threatening ­Women ­ hese larger f­ actors combined to create a deteriorating atmosphere for female T sanctity by the 1320s. But a further ele­ment was more specific to the Capetian court, where controversy a­ fter controversy involved claims of treachery, poison, and sorcery by ­women. The string of scandals began before Philip IV’s death, with his attack on his own daughters-­in-­law. The ­future Louis X had married Marguerite of Burgundy (­daughter of Duke Robert II of Burgundy and Agnes, youn­gest ­daughter of Louis IX), while his younger ­brothers had married the ­sisters Jeanne of Burgundy and Blanche of Burgundy, both ­daughters of Mahaut of Artois and Count Otto IV of Burgundy.30 Marguerite and Blanche ­were alleged to have had affairs with two ­brothers (Walter d’Aunay and Philip d’Aunay), and Jeanne had known about their adultery. When Philip IV found out, the d’Aunay ­brothers ­were brutally executed and all three ­women ­were imprisoned. Jeanne was returned to her husband Philip, but Marguerite died mysteriously in 1315 and Blanche eventually became a nun at Maubuisson ­after the annulment of her marriage to Charles. What­ever Philip IV’s motives in unleashing this scandal and casting doubt on the legitimacy of his sons’ ­children, its effect was to identify wanton ­women as the source of a dif­fer­ent kind of attack on the royal ­family. ­After his f­ ather’s death, Louis X had to decide the fate of Enguerran of Marigny, accused of fiscal fraud by Charles of Valois and ­others. When it became clear that the royal books ­were in order, Enguerran’s enemies turned to accusations of sorcery. While Enguerran was imprisoned in the T ­ emple, supposedly his wife and ­sisters gathered accomplices, including a man named Jacques de Lor and his wife, to make waxen images for the purposes of evil magic (ad maleficium) to enchant the king and Charles of Valois. It should come as no surprise that it was Charles of Valois who discovered the supposed plot; Charles never ceased to imagine himself surrounded by nefarious poisoners and sorcerers, more often than not w ­ omen. In the event, Jacques de Lor and his wife ­were arrested, Jacques hanged himself in prison, and his wife was burned.31 Enguerran of Marigny himself was hanged 30 April 1315, with the son of the supposed sorceress hanged alongside him. Philip of Marigny survived his ­brother’s disgrace and lived ­until 1316. But another key figure in the case of Marguerite Porete, Jean of Châteauvillain, bishop of Chalons-­sur-­Marne, allegedly met a mysterious end. According to 30. ​On the marriages and subsequent scandal, see Brown, “Philip the Fair and His F ­ amily”; also Adams, “Between History and Fiction.” 31. ​For analy­sis and sources, see Favier, Enguerran de Marigny, reprinted in Un roi de marbre, 726–27.

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the “official” Continuation of William of Nangis’s Latin Universal Chronicle, six weeks ­after Enguerran of Marigny’s execution, on 21 June 1315, “three ­women, who had made potions by which the bishop of Châlons-­sur-­Marne had died, w ­ ere burned on a certain l­ittle island in the Seine facing the church of the Hermit ­Brothers of St. Augustine.”32 With Louis X’s death on 5 June 1316, suspicions, accusations, and attacks only intensified. A ­ fter the con­ve­nient death of his first wife, Marguerite, Louis had married Clemence of Hungary, yet another grand­daughter of Charles of Anjou. Clemence was pregnant at the time of Louis’s death, but the son to whom she gave birth in November lived only a few days. During the jostling for power in the summer of 1315, Charles of Valois vied for influence with his half b­ rother Louis d’Evreux. It has been suggested that this strug­gle reflected tensions ­going all the way back to 1276 and Marie of Brabant’s supposed plot to get Louis d’Evreux on the throne by d­ oing away with his half ­brothers.33 If so, aftershocks from the scandals that had centered on Elizabeth of Spalbeek w ­ ere still being felt four de­cades ­later. But now, with the death of the infant King Jean, would Louis X’s d­ aughter Jeanne inherit the throne? Her ­mother had been suspected of adultery, and ­there was no pre­ce­dent for a ­daughter, let alone one who was five years old, inheriting the French throne. In the end Philip V, b­ rother of the deceased Louis X, seized the crown, which over time led to the exclusion of w ­ omen from accession to the throne of France.34 The new king was still married to Mahaut of Artois’s d­ aughter Jeanne. Mahaut was prob­ably the most power­ful ­woman in the kingdom, the only female peer of France, but she faced a popu­lar revolt and a contest with her nephew Robert for control of Artois. It was prob­ably Robert who now stirred up rumors that Mahaut had poisoned Louis X in order to make her ­daughter queen of France. As early as 10 July 1316 Mahaut had to refute ­these rumors, ­after her two supposed accomplices, a poor ­woman named Isabelle de Feriennes and her son Jean, described Mahaut as a devotee of magic and sorcery who had used potions to bring about Philip’s reconciliation with Jeanne before d­ oing away with Louis X.35 Twenty-­one articles ­were developed against the countess, but Mahaut vigorously defended herself, pointing out among other ­things that Isabelle had several times been imprisoned by bishops and 32. ​Géraud, Chronique latine, 421. Elizabeth A. R. Brown kindly brought this entry to my attention. 33. ​Lewis, Royal Succession, 187. 34. ​Lewis, 149–55. See also Delogu, Allegorical Bodies. 35. ​Document of 10 July 1316 edited in Leibnitz, Codex juris gentium diplomaticus, 98–100. The depositions and charges are reported in the king’s decree of 9 October 1317, edited in Godefroy de Ménilglaise, “Mahaud comtesse d’Artois,” 195–218. Christelle Balouzat-­Loubet identifies the document as BnF ms. n.a.fr. 20025, pièce 76.

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baillis “for her incantations, damnable deeds, sorceries, and crimes.”36 Isabelle and Jean eventually admitted that they had been induced to give false testimony against the countess, and on 9 October 1317 the king issued a decision in Parlement that absolved his mother-­in-­law of any wrongdoing. The decision did not name ­those who had bribed or threatened Isabelle and Jean into lying, and it is not clear what became of ­those two individuals.37

Divinatrix Redux In the midst of this string of supposed sorceresses, Margueronne of Bellevillette, the divinatrix who had been portrayed as central to Guichard of Troyes’s plot against Jeanne of Navarre, emerged from the shadows.38 On 18 July 1319, ­after more than a de­cade of incarceration, Margueronne gave a disjointed confession, prob­ably within the walls of the Châtelet. As a result, she was brought before the Parlement of Paris on 29 September to clarify her statements. Two versions of her testimony survive. One, in French, was taken on 18 July and 29 September, and then transcribed by or for the greffier criminel (clerk of criminal court) of the Parlement of Paris, Étienne de Gien, who kept a rec­ord from 1319 to 1338 of confessions given by “several prisoners taken and led to Paris e­ ither by order of the king or by order of Parlement.”39 The other, in Latin, was drawn up by a notary on 29 September, using the French versions and Margueronne’s oral testimony on that date to create a smooth story out of what had been a j­umble of semicoherent statements. The second entry in Étienne de Gien’s register is “the confession of the old ­woman who is in the Châtelet, captured for the poisoning of the queen Jeanne, who is called Marguerite the Sage Femme.” Although the original charges against Guichard of Troyes had been for sorcery (not poisoning), and although the ­woman ­here is first called “Marguerite,” the witness list at the end of the confession indicates that eleven men ­were pres­ent for the confession of Marguerite de Bellevillette, la Sage Feme. In spite of the shift from Margueronne to Marguerite, ­there can be no doubt about her identity. The label sage femme, or

36. ​Godefroy de Ménilglaise, “Mahaud comtesse d’Artois,” 202. Mahaut had already made a similar statement in the document of 10 July 1316. 37. ​On this affair see Balouzat-­Loubet, Le gouvernement de la comtesse Mahaut, 186–90; and Balouzat-­Loubet, Mahaut d’Artois, 137–41. 38. ​Her 1319 testimony is discussed in Provost, Domus Diaboli, 288–91. 39. ​The French 18 July and 29 September confessions are printed in Langlois and Lanhers, Confessions et jugements, 29–32, edited from AN X2a 4, fol. 175r-­v.

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“wise ­woman” (a term for midwife), gives a further dimension to her reputation, at least at this late date.40 The first part of this rec­ord concerns Margueronne’s statements of 18 July. The three initial items offer a confused story about how Margueronne had helped an unnamed damoiselle rid herself of her first husband and attempt to do the same with her second, through poison and sorcery, with the complicity of a priest of Marcilly-­le-­Hayer. ­There is no sense of Margueronne having been asked specific or leading questions—­the confession reads rather as though she had leapt into the m ­ iddle of a story that made sense only in her own mind: “First she says that the damoiselle asked her to bring it about that her husband would soon die.” What damoiselle? When? Why? The witnesses to this confession may have been somewhat perplexed, b­ ecause none of ­these questions are answered. But in the last item of her statement, Margueronne abruptly relates that she, a hermit, and Perotte of Pouy had made an image of Queen Jeanne, at the request of Bishop Guichard. Along with the Dominican b­ rother Jean de Fay of the convent of Troyes, they baptized it and named it Jeanne. But, Margueronne concluded, she had not known that this referred to Queen Jeanne ­until fifteen days ­after the image was made, when the hermit told her. ­Here the confession ends. It is not clear why Margueronne made this new confession. Given the way it begins with and focuses on the damoiselle and her two husbands, it may have been this case that was on Margueronne’s mind. Perhaps ­there had been some new accusation against her in this regard, or perhaps she feared t­ here would be (she was described as in the Châtelet for “the poisoning of queen Jeanne,” so she could not have been released and then re-­arrested). Or perhaps conditions in prison ­were simply so awful that any chance for momentary release seemed worth pursuing.41 Although it is impossible to be sure, ­there is a strong sense that Margueronne came forth to confess on her own, ­either as a preemptive mea­sure or ­because she felt she had something on her conscience. The same document then summarizes the testimony Margueronne gave “in the Chamber of Parlement” on 29 September, in the presence of Hugh 40. ​Nothing in her 1308 testimony had indicated that Margueronne exercised the profession of midwife; it was rather the supposed accomplice Perotte of Pouy who was called an obstetrix. Indeed, when Marguerite herself was already in the room, another of the conspirators was sent to find Perotte b­ ecause a midwife was said to be needed as part of the sorcery. Note that the Chronique anonyme de 1286 had already called Elizabeth of Spalbeek a sage femme, though t­here is no evidence that she ever had anything to do with midwifery (see chapter 4). 41. ​See William Chester Jordan, “The King’s City: The Disciplinary ‘Sense-­Scape’ of Paris in the Thirteenth ­Century” (paper presented at the British Archaeological Association annual conference, Paris, 16–20 July 2016). I thank Professor Jordan for allowing me access to this paper before its publication.

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de la Celle, a well-­known royal councilor and official, and “other lords of the Chamber” (five are named at the bottom of the document).42 “The said Margueron[ne]” (her proper name has been restored to her) verified “freely and without constraint” that her testimony of 19 July had been true. It would seem that she had not been tortured, especially b­ ecause some of the other confessions in this register are clear about the fact that the subject had indeed been put to the question.43 Still, we cannot be sure, and in any case a de­cade of confinement with or without additional force can hardly be called sanz contrainte. The “Lords of the Chamber” asked a string of questions necessary to clarify some of the hazy statements Margueronne had made in July: What was the name of the damoiselle? ([E]meline la Henrionne, wife of Thevenin de la Letiere); What was her first husband’s name? (Henrion le Tartarin); What was the priest’s name? (Thomas, but Margueronne did not know his surname); What was the name of the hermit? (­Brother Regnaud, who lived in the hermitage of Saint-­Flavy, but Margueronne did not know where he was now). Then the questions cease, or cease to be recorded, and the testimony ends in a string of brief statements. The first three are phrased as Margueronne’s own words: Item, she says that the said Perotte is dead. Item, she says that she and the said Perotte w ­ ere god-­mothers of the image which was made of Queen Jeanne. Item, she says that when anyone had lost their animals, she would reveal them to them. Whereas Douceline of Digne had been celebrated as godmother to Charles of Anjou’s ­daughter, Margueronne was godmother only to the diabolical waxen image of Queen Jeanne. Apparently Margueronne continued beyond this point, but her questioners had lost interest: “And she said ­things which are too long to rec­ord.” But the scribe did note two more items, not prefaced with “she says” (dit). They are quite blunt: Item, she is a sorceress (charmeresse). Item, she knows well how to bewitch ­people with images (avouter).

42. ​Hugh de la Celle had been involved in the Templar arrests, and at least one Templar accused him directly of having tortured him. Michelet, Procès, 1:275–77. 43. ​Langlois and Lanhers, Confessions et jugements, 15–16.

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A notarized Latin summary of this confession was drawn up the same day by the longtime royal notary Jacques de Jasseines,44 on the ­orders of Jean d’Arrablay (jr.), sénéchaux of Périgord, in the residence of Guy of Laon, canon of Paris and trea­surer of the royal chapel.45 Both Jacques and Jean had been listed at the bottom of the French document as pres­ent for Margueronne’s confession in Parlement. This Latin version, however, conflated the two rounds of confession to create a narrative more coherent than anything she had actually said. The notary states that “Margareta dicta la saige fame de Bourdenayo” confessed “spontaneously and without coercion or compulsion.” It is h ­ ere specified that Margueronne believed that the episodes with the damoiselle (Emeline) took place eight years ago or more (logically it would have had to have been at least eleven years earlier, before her arrest in 1308). This chronological indication had not been given in the French rec­ord, suggesting that the notary may have taken notes separately from what was written in the French account. The notary rec­ords the death of the first husband and the aborted attempt on the life of the second, and then states that Margueronne believed it had been “ten years or more ago” that she had been involved in the conspiracy with Guichard of Troyes. The chronology is obviously not very accurate, but Margueronne recalled ­these events as having happened before the episodes with the damoiselle Emeline and her husbands. This final part of Margueronne’s confession is faithfully translated from the French, with the addition of some precision about the image being taken by the hermit to the bishop fifteen days ­after the baptism. The notary concludes by again stating that Margueronne confessed without compulsion and “only in order to clear her conscience, as she said.” Four witnesses to the notarized document are listed. Three had been pres­ent earlier in the day in Parlement, the fourth was the greffier Étienne de Gien, who was in turn responsible for copying the surviving French testimony. This notarized Latin document was then sent by King Philip V to Pope John XXII, who acknowledged receipt on 6 February 1320.46 Nothing in any of ­these documents, however, specifies the subsequent fate of Margueronne de Bellevillette. What does this unexpected confession tell us about Margueronne? The new story about Emeline and her husbands confirms that she had a reputation for access to secret and harmful knowledge. According to this new testimony, it 44. ​Jacques had been part of Nogaret’s mission to Italy in 1303. See Coste, Boniface, 78. 45. ​Edited in Mollat, “Guichard de Troyes.” See also Mollat, Jean XXII, 170, no.  12245. Jean d’Arrablay had also been involved in the Templar arrests in 1307. 46. ​For John XXII’s letter of 6 February 1320, see Coulon, Lettres secrètes, cols. 791–92, editing AN J 705, no. 209.

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was Emeline who approached Margueronne to ask if she could give her something that would lead to her husband’s death. And the new testimony continues Margueronne’s attempt, evident in 1308, to confess to certain misdeeds while limiting her guilt. She readily admits having given Emeline “something” with the apparent belief that it would have the desired effect; and she admits that the husband then died. Still, Margueronne is careful to say that she does not know ­whether Emeline actually gave the “­thing” to her husband. A year ­later it was again Emeline who approached Margueronne, and Margueronne again admits to having promised to give her something that would get rid of her second husband. When the plan ran into difficulty, it was Emeline who brought the priest Thomas to Margueronne’s home, and together they made an image and the priest anointed it. But in the end Emeline deci­ded not to go through with the attack on her husband, so (Margueronne implies) no harm was done. In her brief return to the plot against Queen Jeanne, Margueronne does not say anything that contradicts her testimony from 1308, but she leaves out a g­ reat deal. She admits to having helped make an image, “at the request of Lord Guichard, former bishop of Troyes,” but does not say that Guichard was pres­ent. It was Jean de Fay who baptized it and named it Jeanne. Not only does Margueronne claim she did not know that this name referred to the queen, but ­there is no report ­here of sticking the image with pins, t­ here are no incantations, and no real “sorcery” has been done. Margueronne may have been a confused ­woman by 1319, with misdeeds from her past—­real or i­magined—­jumbled in her head a­ fter eleven years in prison. Her questioners and notary made a coherent story out of her disjointed statements. But her narrative about the conspiracy around Guichard remained consistent with what she had said in 1308, boiled down to its essence. Yes, she had been pres­ent and participated in something sinister, but she did not carry out sorcery. She had been forced to tell this story in 1308, and it still seems seared in her brain. But she had now outlived Jean de Fay, Perotte of Pouy, and Guichard of Troyes, to say nothing of William of Nogaret, Philip the Fair, and Clement V. Who was left to even remember that an “old ­woman” was still locked in the Châtelet, long ­after the supposed conspiracy against Jeanne of Navarre had ceased to ­matter? Margueronne at least ensured that power­ ful men—if not the king then members of Parlement, royal advisers, notaries, and administrators—­had to once again take note of her story. We are left with what seem to be her last words. According to her 1308 testimony, when Guichard had first asked her if she knew anything contra Deum, she had insisted that she only involved herself in finding lost animals. Now, in 1319, her last recorded statement was “that when anyone had lost their animals she revealed them to them.” This had always been her self-­

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understanding, as a ­woman who possessed certain super­natural powers but employed them only in modestly helpful ways. Yet she had long been sought out in the belief that she could do far more, and the men who recorded her testimony in 1319 continued to see her this way, as witnessed by the last two “facts” tacked on to the end of the testimony: “She is a sorceress. She knows well how to bewitch ­people with images.”

Afterlives Margueronne of Bellevillette is never mentioned in chronicle accounts of the pro­cess against Guichard of Troyes. Nor does Douceline of Digne ever figure in northern French chronicles. But the other holy w ­ omen who had interacted with the Capetian court continued to appear in the chronicles compiled at Saint-­Denis up through the 1330s. In distinct but related ways, each w ­ oman was refashioned to give her a clear role in the long story of the French royal ­family’s triumph over the forces of darkness. Isabelle of France had made ecclesiastical commentators uncomfortable during her life b­ ecause of her refusal to become a nun. This tension, wrestled with by Agnes of Harcourt in the 1280s, was ultimately resolved by reimagining Isabelle as what she “should” have been all along. Though at Longchamp itself the ­sisters always knew that their foundress had remained a laywoman, other writers tended to turn the “­sister” of Louis IX into a “­sister” of Longchamp. William of Nangis’s Latin Universal Chronicle, ­under the year 1259, had noted that the ­house of Sorores minores near Saint-­Cloud had been founded “by the religious and illustrious Lady Isabelle, ­sister of Louis the king of the Franks.” But in the second redaction of this chronicle, completed ­after 1297, not only did Isabelle become “the virgin ­sister” of “saint” Louis, but the entry describes her as “taking the habit of the s­ isters ­there” and says that “living religiously,” she “made a praiseworthy end to her life.” The added description may have referred only to her deathbed donning of the habit, but nevertheless created the impression that she had been a nun.47 A now-­lost book in the royal library in 1373 was labeled “The Life of ­Sister Isabelle of Longchamp, who was the s­ ister of St. Louis, and her Miracles.”48 This insistence on smoothing away the most problematic aspect of Isabelle’s saintly c­ areer reached its culmination in a late fifteenth-­century manuscript of Le livre des faiz Monseigneur saint Louis, in which an illumination depicts Louis IX pres­ent as Isabelle 47. ​See Field, Isabelle, 123–25. 48. ​Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits, 158.

22 8 Epilog ue

takes her (­imagined) vows as a nun of Longchamp.49 In this depiction, Isabelle at last became the obedient nun that churchmen had always wished her to be. Not coincidentally, it was only in the early sixteenth ­century that Longchamp was permitted to celebrate a local office for their found­er; even then Pope Leo X’s correspondence with Longchamp revealed that he believed Isabelle to have been a nun.50 For Elizabeth of Spalbeek, we have seen that William of Nangis, in his Latin Deeds of Philip III (c. 1285), had already transformed her into a nameless “beguine of Nivelles.” That account, however, had left an awkward tension between an initial description of the “beguine” as a lying pseudoprophet and a concluding insistence that her words provided divine assurance of Queen Marie of Brabant’s innocence. This Latin text was translated into French sometime between roughly 1305 and 1325, and eventually in that form incorporated into the Grandes chroniques de France at Saint-­Denis.51 But in fact that “translation” was one more transformation for Elizabeth. Now the “beguine” at Nivelle was no longer presented as a pseudoprophet but rather a “devine.” Though the French term was related to divinatrix (the negative Latin label used for Margueronne of Bellevillette), h ­ ere it seems to acquire a more neutral connotation, indicating a usage more along the lines of “prophetess” who (in this translation) “spoke marvels about ­things past and to come.” Specifically, “she was in the habit of a beguine and comported herself as a holy w ­ oman and of good life (se contenoit comme sainte fame et de bonne vie).” By contrast, the “other devin, who was Vidame of the church of Laon” knew many secret t­ hings “by the art of necromancy,” and the third “pseudo-­prophet” is now portrayed as a Saracen convert, “a g­ reat master and sage . . . ​who said much about t­ hings to come.” While the other two prophetic figures have been further damned by reference to black arts and suspect Saracen learning, the “beguine” has become a holy ­woman. Moreover, this French version now includes a brief episode in which the king’s messenger first inquires as to which of ­these figures “is held to be the wisest and would best and most certainly tell the truth.” He 49. ​BnF ms. Fr. 2829, fol. 64v. See Hoover, “Gender and Dynastic Sanctity in Late Fifteenth-­ Century France.” 50. ​Field, “Paris to Rome and Back Again.” 51. ​ RHGF, vol. 20, 503. This French translation is found in an early continuation of Primat’s Roman des roys, created at Saint-­Denis in the pro­cess of compiling the Grandes chroniques de France. The earliest-­known example is BnF ms. fr. 2615, fols. 254vb–255rb, copied (this section of the manuscript) by the 1320s and available on Gallica. See Guyot-­Bachy and Moeglin, “Comment ont été continuées les Grandes chroniques de France dans la première moitié du XIVe siècle.” I am grateful to Elizabeth A. R. Brown for sharing her research on this manuscript with me, and for her tentative conclusion that the translation must have been done between about 1305 and 1325. For En­glish translation, see Field and Simons, “A Prophecy Fulfilled?,” 82–85.

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found that “the beguine was more renowned than the o ­ thers, and more believed than the ­others in what she said.” Thus, this narrative proposes a reason why Pierre de Benais and Matthew of Vendôme went only to her. More importantly, when the beguine’s prophetic words ultimately absolve the queen of blame, they can be accepted as genuine revelations from God, ­because she has been endowed with a positive reputation.52 The tension that bedev­iled the Latin version has been released, with “the beguine” comfortably entering the category of the holy. Yet, still, Elizabeth of Spalbeek’s own name does not appear anywhere in the account. The price of her textual rehabilitation was anonymity. A related, though inverted, fate befell Paupertas of Metz. It has already been noted that the original, longer version of her story as recorded by the Continuator of 1308 was subsequently boiled down to a much shorter account in the “official” Continuation. This version may have been developed in the 1310s,53 but in its surviving form was solidified at least by the end of the 1320s. It is short enough to quote in full: A certain false w ­ oman (pseudo mulier) called Paupertas or Pauperies, from Metz it is said, was feigning holiness in the habit of the beguines, living in Flanders among the crowds of them t­here. Through certain in­ven­ted, counterfeit revelations and lies, it was said that with her deceptive words she had deluded the king and queen of France and their leading nobles, especially when the king was preparing to attack the Flemings, with whom she was living at the time. Moreover, as it is said, at the urging of the Flemings she planned to kill the king’s b­ rother Charles, on his return from Sicily, with her sorceries (maleficiis) and most wicked poison, by means of a certain young man she had sent to him. Fi­nally, arrested on Charles’s o ­ rders, and tortured and broken by having the ­soles of both feet seared, it is said that she admitted to the said sorceries (maleficia). And though afterward she was imprisoned in Charles’s ­castle at Crépy and held t­ here for some time, fi­nally she was freed and allowed to leave.54 52. ​McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 450–52, pres­ents the Latin and French in parallel columns with analy­sis but no knowledge that the “beguine” in question is Elizabeth of Spalbeek. 53. ​In the current state of scholarship it is difficult to say how and when vari­ous monks of Saint-­ Denis may have worked on this continuation between 1308 and the 1320s. But by the 1330s the several dif­fer­ent continuations of William of Nangis’s French and Latin chronicles ­were used to put together what became the “official” Continuation of William of Nangis’s Latin Chronicle, the Continuation of Geraud of Frachet’s (Latin) Chronicle, and ultimately the (French) Grandes chroniques de France. See Brown, “Les assemblées de Philippe le Bel,” 63–64. Isabelle Guyot-­Bachy’s study of Jean of Saint-­Victor and his team prob­ably gives a good sense of how similar work proceeded at Saint-­Denis. See Le memoriale historiarum de Jean de Saint-­Victor. 54. ​My translation is indebted to that given by Brown in “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” 343–44.

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The heart of the story is still the same, but some editorial choices are notable. For one t­ hing, this continuation distances itself from t­ hese events with four separate uses of ut dicitur, or a similar phrase indicating second­hand knowledge. More importantly, the portion of the narrative associating Paupertas with the devil in Metz has been cut, as have the fantastic details about poisoned feathers and a golden letter from Christ. The specific descriptions of her acting for peace at the siege of Lille and her prophecy urging Philip IV not to attack the Flemings in 1302 have also been suppressed. Neither one had placed the king in a flattering light, and so prob­ably did not seem useful in retrospect. Instead, t­ here are only vague references to her false revelations, lies, and deceptions. The narrative suspense created by having Paupertas pulled back from the flames just before her scheduled execution also dis­appears. But not all the changes are omissions. Particularly notable is the way poison is now joined by maleficia to describe Paupertas’s crimes. Maleficia (singular maleficium) could mean “misdeeds” or “crimes,” but it strongly implied sorcery or evil magic, as when the supporters of Enguerran of Marigny w ­ ere accused of making waxen images ad maleficium.55 The scaled-­down version of Paupertas’s story claims that she had confessed to this charge, whereas the 1308 account had contained not even a hint of magic. Even with the suppression of the overt reference to the devil, Paupertas has been turned into a more diabolical threat, in keeping with the trends of the 1320s. In sum, whereas the narrative tensions around Elizabeth of Spalbeek as “the beguine of Nivelles” had been resolved by restoring her to a fully holy status, similar tensions around Paupertas, the onetime beguine of Lille, ­were resolved by moving her more firmly into the category of the diabolical. The textual fate of Paupertas has a telling coda. In the 1330s and 1340s, the monks of Saint-­Denis ­were continuing not only the Latin Universal Chronicle of William of Nangis but also the (Latin) Chronicle of Geraud of Frachet.56 In the latter Continuation they included nearly the same shorter version of the story, with only a few words changed or omitted (the first reference to maleficia drops out) and a phrase rearranged ­here and ­there. Only one of ­these changes is ­really significant: the ­woman’s name is suppressed, leaving her as just “a certain false ­woman from Metz.” Perhaps the name “Paupertas” seemed too strange to believe, or perhaps it was deemed to give her an unwanted air of saintly austerity. In any case, this change in and of itself might not have been of ­g reat import, but for the fact that this passage from the Continuation of 55. ​See Bailey, Battling Demons, 29. 56. ​ RHGF, vol. 21, 23E-­F, con­ve­niently given in Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” n. 111 (citing BnF ms. lat. 5005C, fol. 106v).

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Geraud of Frachet was then translated into French for the Grandes chroniques de France.57 The translation continues to make a few subtle shifts, but the most significant is again the way the w ­ oman is initially described. Not only is her name not given, but h ­ ere the detail about her being from Metz dis­appears as well. Again this detail may have seemed far-­fetched. Thus, in the final medieval iteration of her deeds, in the influential Grandes chroniques, Paupertas has become simply an anonymous femme fausse prophete.58 Fi­nally, we come to Marguerite Porete. Chapter 6 argued that she may not have made a very satisfying heretic at the time of her execution in 1310, insofar as her inquisitorial sentence limited itself to insisting that she had refused to give in to church authority. No specific errors w ­ ere attributed to her book, and the Pa­ri­sian public may have wondered just what made this w ­ oman dangerous enough to justify death at the stake. Two chronicle accounts composed at Saint-­Denis within the next years attempted to fill this gap. One is again the “official” version of the Continuation of William of Nangis’s Latin Universal Chronicle.59 In its pres­ent form it may date from as late as the 1320s, but more likely it was first composed in the 1310s. The account shows evidence of familiarity with the trial documents (­either directly or second­ hand),60 and so its recasting of Marguerite’s story must have been done consciously. This version of events gives the condemnation of Marguerite’s book by the masters of theology par­tic­u­lar prominence. According to this Continuator, “It happened at Paris that a certain false ­woman from Hainaut, named Marguerite ‘called Porete,’ published [ediderat] a certain book, which, in the judgement of all the theologians who diligently examined it, contained many errors and heresies.” As with the Continuator’s depiction of Paupertas, ­ oman the label pseudo mulier immediately lets the reader know what kind of w is being described, and the focus on the theologians justifies the sense that she is a purveyor of dangerous heresies. The passage also gives the impression that Marguerite “published” her book in Paris, since the backstory of a book condemned and burned once before in the diocese of Cambrai is absent. Marguerite’s story has been rearranged to make her offense more immediate: she published a book in Paris, and theologians examined it and found it to contain errors and heresy. And now for the first time in what might be 57. ​Viard, Grandes chroniques, 235–36, available in Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” n. 111. 58. ​Thus, incredibly, Elizabeth A. R. Brown in 2013 was the first scholar to refer in print to Paupertas by name. 59. ​This version was then used, with only minimal changes, for the Continuation of Geraud of Frachet. 60. ​Demonstrated by Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe.”

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considered the “public rec­ord,” one of ­these heretical errors is given: “That the soul annihilated in love of its creator can and should grant to nature, without blame of conscience or remorse, what­ever nature seeks and desires.” This idea, as the Continuator puts it, “manifestly resounds with heresy,” and one hardly needed to be a master of theology to shudder at the abhorrent idea of self-­appointed “annihilated souls” imagining themselves beyond the reach of received Christian morality. Only ­after offering this proof of Marguerite’s threat to public morals did the Continuator briefly recount how she would not abjure her book or its errors and so was excommunicated by the inquisitor. This is a subtle but telling difference from the a­ ctual course of her inquisitorial trial and from the way Marguerite was described in her public sentence—­her excommunication had resulted not from a refusal to abjure her book or its errors but from a refusal to swear an oath and testify. The Pa­ri­sian theologians in real­ity had not yet offered judgment on her book when she had been excommunicated by William of Paris for stubborn refusal to cooperate. Fi­nally the Continuator recounts how Marguerite had remained stubborn for a year and a half, “hardened in her wickedness (malicia),” ­until she was at last handed over to secular justice in the Place de Grève, on the advice of experts, and the next day burned on the authority of the provost of Paris. Marguerite’s noncooperation ­here is only an afterthought, following the more satisfying account of an immoral book condemned by the masters of theology and a refusal to abjure.61 The other known con­temporary account is a continuation of yet one more text by William of Nangis, this being his short French chronicle. This French continuation was compiled before 1316, and the passage concerning Marguerite was published by Elizabeth A. R. Brown in 2013.62 It is much briefer than the Latin account. In this version, Marguerite’s death comes first: “A beguine clergesse named Marguerite Poree was burned at Paris.” This is also the first place in the “public” rec­ord that the word “beguine” is used to describe Marguerite, prob­ably reflecting the heightened suspicion of beguines a­ fter the Council of Vienne.63 The (extant) documents passed back and forth between the inquisitor and his ­legal experts in the spring of 1310 had three times labeled Marguerite a beguine, but in his public sentence William of Paris had omitted the term—­perhaps at least in part ­because Philip IV had entrusted care of the ­g rand beguinage to William’s Dominican brethren. In this context, be61. ​Géraud, Chronique latine, 1:379–80; given also in Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” 318–19. En­glish translation in Appendix B to Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor. 62. ​Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe,” 328, from BnF ms. fr. 10132, fols. 392va. 63. ​An observation already made by Brown, “Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe.”

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guine clergesse, which could be translated as “learned beguine,” was likely intended to convey a more mocking tone, closer to “beguine who thought herself learned.” But what had she done? According to the French Continuator, Marguerite had offended against and overstepped the bounds of divine scripture, had erred in the articles of the faith, and had said words prejudicial to the sacrament of the altar. For ­these reasons she had been condemned by expert masters of theology. Surprisingly, it is not mentioned ­here that Marguerite had written a book (though clergesse implies literacy), much less is ­there any hint of an earlier encounter with the bishop of Cambrai. Moreover, now even the recounting of her stubborn refusal to cooperate with the inquisitor and her excommunication is swept away. In this shortened version, Marguerite’s crime is an arrogant intellectual offense. No doctrine is cited, but her ideas are summarized in such a way as to cast her in a dangerous light, specifically in suggesting that she had uttered slurs against the Eucharist (a charge not found in the trial rec­ ords). Again the authority of the masters of theology is stressed, now so much so that the inquisitor himself does not appear at all. The Latin Continuator had realized that it was more satisfying to use the authority of the masters of theology to demonstrate why Marguerite Porete deserved her fate; the French Continuator went farther down the same path by removing every­thing ­else from the story. Interestingly, however, both accounts grant Marguerite a pious death. The Latin Continuator stated that she “showed many signs of penitence at her end, both noble and devout, by which the hearts of many ­were piously and tearfully turned to compassion.” The French Continuator more briefly said that “God, who is the true medicine of sinners, held her as she died in good faith, complete and repentant.” When the Grandes chroniques de France ­were compiled for this period in the 1330–40s, they followed the French continuation for the passage on Marguerite, but omitted the final clause about God holding her in repentant good faith.64 Marguerite’s danger as a transgressive beguine was more satisfying without a hint of last-­minute penance.65 By 1330, none of the impor­tant figures in this book ­were still alive. Among ­those who lived the longest, the aging queen Marie of Brabant may have watched the sordid scandals that befell the l­ater Capetians with a certain horror. She had, a­ fter all, largely raised Mahaut of Artois at court a­ fter the death 64. ​Viard, Grandes chroniques, 8:273. 65. ​For early modern uses of Marguerite’s example, see Dubois, “Transmitting the Memory of a Medieval Heretic.”

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of Mahaut’s m ­ other in 1275.66 Four de­cades ­after Marie herself had been suspected of poisoning the heir to the throne, Mahaut was accused of murdering another royal Louis. At least Marie lived ­until 1321, long enough to see Mahaut exonerated. Mahaut herself lived just long enough to know that a­ fter the death of the last direct Capetian, Charles IV, on 1 February 1328, with his young d­ aughters passed over in the pre­ce­dent set a de­cade earlier by Philip V, it was Philip of Valois who became Philip VI. The new king was the son of none other than Charles of Valois, who had died in 1325 ­after surviving the supposed plots against him by Marie of Brabant in 1276, Paupertas of Metz in 1304, Guichard of Troyes before 1308, and Enguerran of Marigny in 1315. But Philip VI was also the great-­g randson of Charles of Anjou, the po­liti­cal patron of Douceline of Digne and commissioner of the Life of Isabelle. Each of the holy w ­ omen studied h ­ ere had played her part in the history that led up to the establishment of the Valois dynasty. Even ­after Mahaut of Artois’s death in 1329, her nephew Robert continued to ­battle for the county of Artois, at one point offering obviously forged documents to support his claim. In a fitting outcome, it was not Robert but a female forger who was burned for this crime on 6 October 1331.67 Robert fled to ­England, with his case ultimately becoming one of the sparks that set off the Hundred Years’ War. This conflict turned in France’s ­favor only a ­century ­later when a holy ­woman, responding to saintly voices, persuaded the uncrowned king of France to allow her to lead an army in the name of God. Isabelle of France and Douceline of Digne would doubtless have been pleased at the renewed royal ritual as the holy ­woman led the king to his coronation in Reims. But perhaps Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Paupertas of Metz, Margueronne of Bellevillette, and Marguerite Porete would not have been surprised to learn that in 1431 events turned out better for Charles VII than for Joan of Arc.

66. ​Balouzat-­Loubet, Mahaut d’Artois, 34. 67. ​Balouzat-­Loubet, Mahaut d’Artois, 177.

Bibliography

The bibliography omits items listed in the abbreviations, manuscripts referred to in the footnotes but not consulted directly, and some primary and secondary sources mentioned in passing in the footnotes and given full bibliographic references ­there. Manuscripts

Auxerre, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 123 (Albert of Suerbeer; digital reproduction, IRHT). Bern, Burgerbibliothek, ms. 70 (Continuation of William of Nangis; microfilm, IRHT; and photo­g raphs courtesy of Elizabeth A. R. Brown). Lille, ADN, B 1528, pièce 3810. Lille, ADN, B 1528, pièce 4211. Lille, ADN, 4 G 843, no. 6. London, British Library, MS Royal 19 D I ( Jean de Vignay; digital reproduction, British Library). Paris, AN, J 428, nos. 15–19bis (Inquisitorial pro­cess against Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart). Paris, AN, J 429, nos. 1–3 (Interrogations of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, letter of Marie of Brabant). Paris, AN, J 438, nos. 1–12 (Pro­cess against Guichard of Troyes; microfilm). Paris, BnF, Duchesne, ms 38 (Agnes of Harcourt). Paris, BnF, ms. fr. 2615 (William Nangis; digital reproduction, Gallica). Paris, BnF, ms. fr. 2815 (Chronique anonyme de 1286; digital reproduction, Gallica). Paris, BnF, ms. fr. 5473 ( Jean LeFéron). Paris, BnF, ms. fr. 13503 (Felipa of Porcelet; digital reproduction, Gallica). Paris, BnF, ms. fr. 13753 (Agnes of Harcourt). Paris, BnF, ms. lat. 5925 (William of Nangis; digital reproduction, Gallica). Paris, BnF, ms. lat. 10016 (Richer of Senones; digital reproduction, Gallica). Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-­Geneviève, ms. 782 (Primat; digital reproduction, Gallica). Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 4598 (Continuation of William of Nangis, photo­g raphs courtesy of Elizabeth A. R. Brown).

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Index

Abgar V of Edessa, 177 Adèle of Champagne, 7 Adenet le Roi, 217n13 Adrian V, pope, 80; death of, 121 Agnes, “­daughter of Heloise,” 39 Agnes, ­daughter of Louis IX, 220 Agnes of Bohemia, 26, 51 Agnes of Cressonessart, 130n48 Agnes of Harcourt, 1–2, 10, 29, 35, 41, 47–48, 125–26, 140, 144, 227; ­career of, 123; Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp of, 43, 60, 123, 126–28; Life of Isabelle of, 41–42, 117, 123, 128–36, 141, 234; and life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 136; and Vie de Claire, 127, 134 Agnes of Orchies, 35n42 Albert of Suerbeer, 33, 36, 38, 42; praises Isabelle of France, 27–29 Albert the ­Great, 39 Albigensian Crusade, 19, 130, 214 Aleidis of Loksbergen, 93 Alexander IV, pope, 26, 46–49, 51, 134; praises Isabelle of France, 37–42, 46 Alice of Burgundy, 78, 88, 103n51 Alice of Rosoit, 131 Alice of Schaerbeek, 92–93 Alice “who is leprous,” 92–93, 98, 100, 113, 138 Allirot, Anne-­Hélène, 37 Alpais of Cudot, 7 Alphonse of Poitiers, 20, 50, 56, 78, 122; death of, 77 Alphonso II of Aragon, 72 Alphonso X of Castile, 81n17, 103n52 Amicie of Montfort, 130 Annales gandenses, 175 Anne of Kiev, 18n7 Arnold of Wezemaal, 102–4, 108–9, 112, 120–21, 137, 139 Augustine, st., 160 Avauterre, 1–2, 4–5, 24

Baldwin of Clancy, 95n35 beata stirps, 19, 123 Beatrice, ­daughter of Charles of Anjou, 64, 169n69 Beatrice of Provence, 20, 70, 73, 168; and Douceline of Digne, 54–55, 59, 62–67, 69, 168; marriage to Charles of Anjou, 20, 55 beguines: criticism of, 36, 88, 211, 218; definition of, 3–4; in Douai, 157n16; in Ghent, 35; in Lille, 35, 161–63, 168–69; in Paris, 33, 218, 232; in Sint-­Truiden, 89 Benedetto Gaetani, 122. See also Boniface VIII, pope Benedict XI, pope, 151, 188 Berengaria of Castile, 45 Bernard Délicieux, 170, 173, 178, 180 Bernard Saisset, 6, 150–51, 170, 207, 210 Bertrand of Porcelet, 167 Blanche, ­daughter of Charles of Anjou, 64, 162n32 Blanche, ­daughter of Philip V, 216–17 Blanche, half-­sister of Philip IV, 148 Blanche de la Cerda, 81, 118–19, 122, 216–17; widowhood of, 119 Blanche of Artois, 81, 148, 150, 182, 188, 194, 198, 212, 217; death of, 182, 194; and Guichard of Troyes, 188, 198 Blanche of Burgundy, 220 Blanche of Castile, 2, 27, 31–33, 45, 50, 115n76, 119, 129; and anchoress in Étampes, 8; Charles of Anjou’s recollection of, 122; death of, 56; devotion to Elizabeth of Hungary, 136; and holy ­woman of Avauterre, 1–5, 23–24, 54, 66, 215; influence on her ­children, 19–20, 118; Louis IX’s recollection of, 20 Blumenfeld-­Kosinski, Renate, 7 Bonaventure, 26, 30, 47–49, 159–60

259

26 0 I NDE X

Boniface VIII, pope, 6, 122, 149, 163, 169, 177, 198, 204, 210; conflict with Philip IV, 150–51, 156, 170, 174–75, 207; heresy proceedings against, 184, 207, 211–12. See also Benedetto Gaetani Bouchard of Avesnes, 34 Bouchard of Avesnes, bishop of Metz, 158 Boureau, Alain, 30, 49, 191 Bouvines, ­battle of, 5, 19, 214 Brown, Elizabeth A. R., 148, 231n58, 232 Brown, Peter, 8 Burr, David, 49 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 9 Caciola, Nancy, 6 Cantimpré, beguinage of, 4. See also Thomas of Cantimpré Catherine of Courtenay, 169; funeral of, 183 Catherine of Siena, 165 Charles I of Anjou, 20, 50, 52, 54–56, 63, 119, 130–31, 162n52, 234; commissioner of Life of Isabelle, 123–27, 132, 141; conquest of the Regno, 47, 67–68; death of, 71, 143, 149; and Douceline of Digne, 10, 54–55, 117, 167–68, 180–81; in Hainaut, 34, 52, 56, 60, 97, 204; and Louis IX’s canonization hearings, 122–27; marriage to Beatrice of Provence, 20, 55; and Philip III, 77–79; request from Douceline of Digne, 60, 71; tests Douceline of Digne, 66–67; ties to Harcourt ­family, 126; warned by Douceline of Digne, 68, 70–71 Charles II of Anjou, 63n28, 64–65, 70, 72, 136, 149 Charles IV, king of France, 148, 215, 216, 218; death of, 234 Charles VII, king of France, 234 Charles of Valois, 78, 81, 114, 148–50, 175, 194, 196, 216, 220–21, 229; accuses Enguerran of Marigny, 220; arrests and tortures Paupertas, 178–80, 192, 204; ­battles in Flanders, 162–63, 165–66; claimant to the crown of Aragon, 142–43, 149–50; compared to Charles of Anjou, 181; death of, 234; and Guichard of Troyes, 184, 189, 193, 234; in Italy, 169–70; marries Catherine of Courtenay, 169; marries Marguerite of Anjou, 149, 156; and Paupertas of Metz, 151, 154, 156, 175–77, 234 Chronique anonyme de 1286, 141, 190

Clare of Assisi, 25, 40, 43, 48, 51, 134; Legenda of, 127, 134 Clemence of Hungary, 221 Clement IV, pope, 46, 52; and Isabelle of France, 50–52 Clement V, pope, 151, 183–84, 189–90, 201, 207, 211, 226; death of, 211 Clovis, king of the Franks, 176 Coakley, John, 9 Colette of Corbie, 7 Columbinus prophecy, 174 Conrad IV of Hohenstaufen, 24, 29, 33, 67, 128, 132 Constance, wife of Rainaud of Porcelet, 62 Constance of Hohensatufen, 71, 125, 132, 143 Constance of Rabastens, 7 Continuator of 1308, 153, 154–55, 169, 182; on arrest and torture of Paupertas, 178; on Paupertas in Lille, 161–67; on Paupertas in Metz, 157–60; on Philip IV’s abortive attack on Flanders, 171–74; on plot to poison Charles of Valois, 175–77; preface to “story of Paupertas,” 156–57 Council of Vienne, 6, 211–12, 218–19, 232 Courtrai, ­battle of, 70, 150, 170–71, 174, 176n95, 178 Crépy-­en-­Valois, 4n14, 154, 178–80, 229 Delaurenti, Béatrice, 191 Dinis, king of Portugal, 132 Douceline of Digne, 6, 9–10, 54, 78, 117, 124, 190, 217–18, 227, 234; and Beatrice of Provence, 62–67; co-­mother to Charles of Anjou, 60–61, 63; compared to Isabelle of France, 58, 72–73; compared to Marguerite Porete, 203–4, 213; compared to Margueronne of Bellevillette, 224; compared to Paupertas of Metz, 180–81; cult of, 219; death of, 73, 83; early c­ areer of, 56–58; and peace, 164; prophesies success of Charles of Anjou, 67–68; request to Charles of Anjou, 60, 71; in Salimbene’s chronicle, 11, 142; tests of her holiness, 65–67; tomb of, 167; translations of, 73; warnings to Charles of Anjou, 68, 70–71 Dunbabin, Jean, 123–24 Durand of Champagne, 170, 197, 199

I NDEX 261 Edmund of Abingdon, 27–29 Edmund of Lancaster, 67, 148n4, 150 Edward I, king of ­England, 78, 169; reports rumors to Philip IV, 171–74; wars with Philip IV, 150, 162 Edward II, king of ­England, 148, 162 Eleanor of Provence, 55, 59 Elizabeth of Hungary, 8, 26, 64, 123–24, 133n58, 136 Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 9–11, 73, 122, 135, 143–44, 215, 218, 221, 234; authenticates relics, 87–88; background of, 83–85; in Chronique anonyme de 1286, 141; compared to Marguerite Porete, 203–4; compared to Paupertas of Metz, 181, 230; in Deeds of Philip III, 136–41, 152–55, 228–29; described by Guibert of Tournai, 88–89; described by Thomas of Cantimpré, 86–87; early ­career of, 85–90; first inquiry into, 95–100; fourth inquiry into, 108–13; ­later life of, 115–16; in Life of Conrad of Herlsheim, 87; and Marie of Lille, 33, 86; in Philip of Clairvaux’s probatio, 33, 85–86; Pierre de Benais revised claims about, 107–8; second inquiry into, 100–102; source of rumors against Philip III, 6, 81–82, 92–95, 117; third inquiry into, 102–7 Elliott, Dyan, 6 Emeline la Henrionne, 224–26 Enguerran of Marigny, 149, 180n107, 199, 205, 234; execution of, 220–21 Ermentrude, beguine, 88 Ermine of Reims, 7 Étienne Bécart, 183, 188; death of, 198, 206 Étienne de Gien, 222, 225 Eudes of Châteauroux, 31 Eudes of Rosny, 52, 128 Eudes Rigaud, 45 Evens Phili, 199, 201n84, 202, 205 Félicie de Traynel, 105, 107 Felipa of Porcelet, 72, 167–68, 219; ­career of, 61–62; Life of the Blessed St. Douceline of, 61–62, 65–67, 69–71, 167–68, 219 Fernando de la Cerda, 81n17, 119 Filles-­Dieu, 44 Foix, count of, 78 Fouques de Pontevès, 62 Francis of Assisi, 25, 43, 58, 61, 65, 68, 88, 142, 157; and peace, 164 Frederick II, emperor, 20, 24, 54, 67, 132 Furnes, ­battle of, 163

Galien of Pisa, 95 Gautier of Chambly, 105n58, 108–10 Geneviève, st., 8 Geoffrey of Beaulieu, 42n62, 118 Geoffroi de Charney, 207 Geraud of Frachet, 230–31 Ghent, 34–36, 162, 169 Giangaetano Orsinsi, 47–48, 50. See also Nicholas III, pope Giles of Paris, 19 Giles of Rome, 140n76 Gilles Aycelin, 175, 184 Gillon du Fayt, 157n14 Godefroy of Brabant, 92, 216 Godefroy of Perwez, 105 Godfrey of Fontaines, 185–86 Goswin of Bossut, 4 Grandes chroniques de France, 79, 155n7, 172n89, 228, 229n53, 231, 233 Gratian, 30 Gregory X, pope, 78, 89, 95, 97, 121; death of, 80, 121 Guiard of Cressonessart, 186, 200, 202, 208, 211 Guibert of Tournai, 38, 43, 113, 131, 135, 136n68, 137–38; advice for Isabelle of France, 36–37; describes Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 88–89; mirror of princes for Louis IX, 37 Guichard of Troyes, 6, 11, 151, 182–83, 186, 205, 207, 210–11, 222–23, 226, 234; accused of attempted poisoning, 184, 189, 193, 212; accused of murdering Blanche of Artois, 188, 198, 212; accused of murdering Jeanne of Navarre, 183, 189, 212; charges against, 189, 191, 198; death of, 212; early ­career of, 188; rehabilitation of, 212; in testimony of Margueronne of Bellevillette, 194; in testimony of Regnaud of Langres, 193–94 Guido of Collemezzo, 185–86, 200, 202, 204, 209 Gui Foucois, 50. See also Clement IV, pope Guilhem, bishop of Digne, 62 Guilhem of Porcelet, 62, 72 Guy of Dampierre, 52–53, 79, 91, 103, 150, 161–63, 168–69, 176 Guy of Harcourt, 123 Guy of Laon, 225 Hadewijch, 88n17 Hedwig of Silesia, 26, 52 Hedwig of Soest, 87

26 2 I NDE X

Hélary, Xavier, 104 Helene of Buisemont, 128–29 Helgaud of Fleury, 17 Henri de Gauchy, 140n76 Henrion le Tartarin, 224 Henry, almoner to the Duke of Brabant, 105 Henry, ­brother of Louis VII, 18 Henry I, king of France, 18n7 Henry III, king of ­England, 27, 55, 59, 130 Henry III of Brabant, 78, 84 Henry III of Navarre, 81, 148 Henry IV of Brabant, 103n51 Henry of Guelders, 84; deposition of, 89, 97 Henry of Haina, 87 Herkenrode, monastery of, 83, 85, 88n18, 115 Hoeselt, mayor of, 111 Hugh Capet, king of France, 17 Hugh de la Celle, 223–24 Hugh of Digne, 56–58, 69, 73, 167, 219; and Louis IX, 58–59, 68; in Salimbene, 142 Hundred Years War, 7, 234 Innocent IV, pope, 24–25, 27, 37–40; praises Isabelle of France, 29–33, 36, 46 Innocent V, pope, 80, 121; death of, 121 Isabella, ­daughter of Philip IV, 148 Isabelle, ­daughter of Charles of Anjou, 64, 124 Isabelle, d­ aughter of Louis IX, 49, 118, 136; death of, 77, 148n4; widowhood of, 119 Isabelle de Bucy, 194, 205n92 Isabelle de Feriennes, 221–22 Isabelle of Aragon, 77, 114, 133n58 Isabelle of France, 2, 9–10, 54, 114, 118, 122, 144, 217–18, 234; absent in bulls of Urban IV, 46–49; in bulls of Clement IV, 50–52; in chronicle of Minstrel of Reims, 45–46; compared to Douceline of Digne, 58, 72–73; compared to Isabel of Portugal, 132–33; compared to Marguerite Porete, 203–4, 213; compared to Virgin Mary, 29, 38, 45; death of, 48, 52, 83, 130; founds Longchamp, 25–26; illness of, 1, 23–24; ­later reputation of, 227–28; miracles of, 23, 41–42; office for, 228; portrayed by Agnes of Harcourt, 41–43, 127–36; praised by Albert of Suerbeer, 27–29; praised by Alexander IV, 37–42, 46; praised by Innocent IV, 29–33; praised by Thomas of Cantimpré, 32–33, 35–36; relationship with Charles of Anjou, 125; translation of, 52, 79

Isabelle of Hainaut, 19 Isabel of Cardona, 133n59 Isabel of Portugal, 132–33 Jacques de Jasseines, 225 Jacques de Lor, 220 Jacques de Molay, 183; execution of, 207 Jacques of Dinant, 101–2, 105–6, 109, 111, 139 Jacques of Lorraine, 159 Jacques of Vertus, 201n84, 202 Jacques of Vitry, 4, 6 Jacques Pantaléon. See Urban IV, pope Jaucelin of Orange, 58, 62n26, 64n30 Jean I, king of France, 221 Jean I of Harcourt, 123, 143 Jean II of Dampierre, 158 Jean II of Harcourt, 123, 125, 143, 162, 169 Jean d’Arrablay, jr., 225 Jean de Fay, 191–93, 195–98, 223, 226 Jean de Feriennes, 221–22 Jean de Traînel, 188n28 Jean de Vignay, 118, 119n6 Jean Leroux, 199n78 Jeanne I of Navarre, 11, 81, 150, 169–70, 178–80, 182, 197, 223, 226; on battlefield, 166; death of, 183, 188; and Guichard of Troyes, 188–89, 191; marriage to Philip IV, 148; and Paupertas of Metz, 165, 173; reports revelation of Paupertas, 173 Jeanne II of Navarre, 221 Jeanne-­Marie of Maillé, 7 Jeanne of Brabant, 216 Jeanne of Burgundy, 216, 220–21 Jeanne of Harcourt, aunt of Agnes of Harcourt, 123n26 Jeanne of Harcourt, ­sister of Agnes of Harcourt, 123n26 Jeanne of Toulouse, 20, 78; death of, 77 Jeanne of Valois, 204 Jean of Acre, 104, 110, 121, 137 Jean of Calais, 188–89, 194 Jean of Châteauvillain, 186, 200, 202, 205, 210; death of, 220–21 Jean of Isle, 197 Jean of Joinville, 31, 58–59 Jean of Montfort, 130 Jean of Saint-­Victor, 229n53 Jean Tristan, 77 Joachim of Fiore, 58–59 Joan of Arc, 7, 234 John, king of ­England, 19 John I of Brabant, 52, 78–79, 81, 84, 88, 92, 103, 112, 131, 175n94

I NDEX 263 John XXI, pope, 80 John XXII, pope, 199, 211, 225; attacks spiritual Franciscans, 218; and demonic magic, 219 John of Enghien, 97, 102–3, 108–14, 139, 140 John of Parma, 58, 219 John of Sint-­Truiden, 109–11 Jordan, William Chester, 22, 44, 96 Kelly, Henry Ansgar, 203 Klaniczay, Gábor, 8 Kocher, Zan, 185 Ladislas IV of Hungary, 64, 124 La Marche, count of, 24 La royauté, beguinage of, 4 Las Huelgas, monastery of, 26 Laurent, ­Brother, 140n76 Le Goff, Jacques, 45 Leo X, pope, 228 letters from Jesus Christ, 177 Lille, 11, 154, 157, 161–67, 169, 171, 178, 181, 184, 230 Lodewijk van Velthem, 116n78 Longchamp, monastery of, 2, 10, 23, 38, 41–43, 46–47, 216–17, 227; church of, 51; foundation of, 43–44, 127, 130; rules for, 40, 47, 52, 130, 133–34, 159 Lorin, chamberlain, 190, 195 Louis, son of Louis IX, 43; death of, 44, 77 Louis, son of Philip III, 78; death of, 80–81, 91, 104, 107, 114, 135, 148 Louis VI, king of France, 17 Louis VII, king of France, 7, 17–18 Louis VIII, king of France, 5, 19, 33 Louis IX, king of France, 5–6, 20–22, 37, 40, 42–44, 46, 80, 176, 227; and beguines, 33–34; canonization hearings of, 117, 120–22, 131; canonization of, 22, 150, 165–66; death of, 77; and death of Isabelle of France, 52, 127; enquêteurs of, 21–22; and Hugh of Digne, 58–59; illness of, 24, 31; at Longchamp, 43–45, 127–28; and Marie of Lille, 33–34, 54, 86, 88; memory of, 217–18; in writings by Agnes of Harcourt, 127–29; in writings by Primat, 119 Louis X, king of France, 148, 184, 189, 193–94, 196, 215, 220, 234; death of, 221 Louis of Evreux, 81, 148, 221 Louis of Toulouse, 149, 167 Lutgard of Ayvières, 4–5 Lys, monastery of, 32

Mahaut of Artois, 205, 216, 220, 233; accused of poisoning Louis X, 221–22, 234; death of, 234; declared innocent by Philip V, 222 Mahaut of Brabant, 78 Manfred, son of Frederick II, 47, 67–68 Margaret of Hungary, 26, 64 Margherita of Cortona, 165 Marguerite, ­daughter of Louis IX, 52, 78, 88 Marguerite, half-­sister of Philip IV, 148, 150, 169; reports rumors to Philip IV, 172–73 Marguerite of Anjou, 149, 156, 204; death of, 169 Marguerite of Brabant, 216 Marguerite of Burgundy, countess of Tonnerre, 70, 216–17 Marguerite of Burgundy, wife of Louis X, 220; death of, 221 Marguerite of Constantinople, countess of Flanders, 34, 158, 162, 204; founder of beguinage of Lille, 161; at translation of Isabelle of France, 52, 131 Marguerite of Dampierre, 52, 79, 131 Marguerite of Provence, 1, 23, 43, 55, 59, 69, 115, 135, 137, 148, 217; source for Agnes of Harcourt, 42, 127–28, 130–31, 135; and Vicedominus of Pisa, 95 Marguerite Porete, 6, 9, 11–12, 114, 182, 184, 218, 234; called a beguine, 232; ­career of, 184–86; chronicle accounts of, 231–33; compared to Douceline of Digne, 203–4, 213; compared to Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 203–4, 213; compared to Isabelle of France, 203–4, 213; compared to Margueronne of Bellevillette, 203–4; compared to Paupertas of Metz, 203–4, 213, 231; and court of Philip IV, 204–8; execution of, 208, 212, 233; as heretic, 208–11; inquisition against, 200–204, 215 Margueronne of Bellevillette, 9, 114, 182, 186, 213, 215, 218, 228, 234; arrest of, 6, 11, 184; background of, 187–88; called divinatrix, 189–91, 193–94; called sortilega, 191; compared to Douceline of Digne, 224; compared to Marguerite Porete, 203–4, 210–11; compared to Paupertas of Metz, 213; and last phase of Guichard of Troyes’s pro­cess, 198–200; ­later confessions of, 222–27; testimony of, 194–98, 203; in testimony of Regnaud of Langres, 193–94 Marie, ­daughter of Philip II, 4–5

26 4 I NDE X

Marie, nun of Flines, 52, 88, 131 Marie of Brabant, 81–82, 115, 117–18, 150, 217, 228; accused of poisoning, 10–11, 91–95, 98–100, 104, 107, 138, 191, 197, 221, 234; death of, 233; in Life of Isabelle, 131, 135; as literary patron, 140n76; marries Philip III, 78–79; widowhood of, 115, 137, 233–34; writes to Nicholas III, 112, 120 Marie of Hungary, 64, 124, 136 Marie of Lille, 33–35, 54, 86, 88, 204 Marie of Oignies, 3–4 Marie Robine, 7 Marion du Fayt, 186n18 Marseille, 55, 58, 60, 66, 69–70, 72–73, 83, 142, 167, 218–19 Martin IV, pope, 115, 121, 124, 131, 142; death of, 115, 143. See also Simon of Brie Mathilda of Brabant, 20 Matthew of Vendôme, 80, 105–7, 109, 112, 121, 141–42, 229; and second inquiry against Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 101, 137, 139 Matthew Paris, 31, 42 Maubuisson, monastery of, 32, 220 Maza, Sara, 13 Meline la Henrionne. See Emeline la Henrionne Metz, 154, 157–59, 229–30 Minstrel of Reims, 45–46 Mirror of ­Simple Souls, 185–87, 203, 208, 218. See also Marguerite Porete Moncel, sorores minores of, 217n16 Mons-­en-­Pévèle, ­battle of, 150, 178 Nicholas III, pope, 47, 112–13, 113n72, 120–21, 138; death of, 115, 121 Nicolas of Fréauville, 197 Nivelles, 2–4, 115, 138–41 Njus, Jesse, 84, 87 Noffo Dei, 188; execution of, 212 Odeonne, servant of Isabelle de Bucy, 194–95 Odo of Deuil, 18 Otto IV of Burgundy, 220 Pagan, Martine, 127 Paupertas of Metz, 6, 9, 11, 114, 151, 181, 185, 190, 194, 218, 234; accused of plot to poison Charles of Valois, 154, 175–77, 191; arrest of, 178, 192; compared to Douceline of Digne, 180–81; compared

to Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 181; compared to Marguerite Porete, 203–4, 210–11, 213, 231; compared to Margueronne of Bellevillette, 213; escapes execution, 180; ­later versions of her story, 229–31; in Lille, 161, 181; in Metz, 157–60; moves to Flanders, 160; pos­si­ble Franciscan spirituality of, 157; in preface of Continuator of 1308, 156–57; previous scholarship on, 152–54; prophecy about Philip IV and Flanders, 172–74, 181, 230; as recluse, 158; torture and confession of, 178, 181 Perotte of Pouy, 195, 223, 226 Perronelle of Montfort, 129–30 Peter III of Aragon, 71, 125, 132, 142, 143; death of, 143 Peter Lombard, 30 Peter of John Olivi, 49 Petrus Ayllardus, 60 Philip II, king of France, 7, 18–19 Philip III, king of France, 10, 23, 73, 102, 113n, 120–21, 124, 142; attempted invasion of Navarre, 81, 100, 103; on crusade, 77, 79; death of, 115, 143; early reign of, 78; reacts of rumors from Flanders, 94; reports rumors from Flanders, 91–94 Philip IV, king of France, 5–6, 11, 78, 81, 114–15, 144, 167, 178, 226, 232; abortive attack on Flanders, 171–74, 181, 230; arrests Templars, 151, 183, 206–7; attacks daughters-­in-­law, 220; and beguines of Lille, 168; conflict with Boniface VIII, 150–51, 165; cured at tomb of Isabelle of France, 23, 131, 135, 148; early reign of, 147–51; expels Jews, 151, 183, 206–7; ­family of, 148–49; and Guichard of Troyes, 188; marriage to Jeanne of Navarre, 148; at siege of Lille, 154, 161–67; wars of, 149–50, 169–71 Philip V, king of France, 148, 168n64, 215–16, 221, 225, 234; death at Longchamp, 216 Philip VI, king of France, 234 Philip d’Aunay, 220 Philip of Clairvaux, 33–34, 85–86, 89, 98, 116, 137; death of, 89 Philip of Courtenay, 64n31 Philip of Dampierre, 162n32 Philip of Marigny, 186, 200, 202, 205–7, 209, 220 Pierre Charlot, son of Philip II, 18n8

I NDEX 265 Pierre de Benais, 90, 102–13, 115, 120, 137–41, 229; claims against Marie of Brabant, 90–95, 104, 107; and first inquiry against Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 96–100; and second inquiry against Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 100–102 Pierre de Grès, 183, 211 Pierre de La Broce, 10, 90–91, 96, 101, 103, 108, 114, 118, 137–40, 149; execution of, 81, 112, 114, 120; relationship to Philip III, 79, 92 Pierre Flote, 149, 165, 171; death of, 170 Pierre of Alençon, 2n2, 69n51, 79 Piron, Sylvain, 49, 185–86, 204 Poissy, monastery of, 217n16 Pontigny, monastery of, 27 Primat, 18n7, 18n13, 79–80, 137, 228n51; female holiness in works of, 118–20, 216 Provost, Alain, 187 Raimon Berenguer IV of Provence, 55 Rainaldo di Jenne. See Alexander IV, pope Rainaud, bishop of Digne, 62 Rainaud of Porcelet, 62, 72 Ralph of Ligny, 186, 200, 205, 209 Raoul Grosparmi, 183, 211 Raoul of Harcourt, 123 Regnaud of Langres, 187, 189, 190, 195–97, 200, 223–24; testimony of, 192–94, 196 Reims, female Franciscans of, 46 Richard of Cornwall, 55, 59 Richer of Senones, 158–60 Richold of Arnsburg, 87 Rigault, Abel, 187 Rigord, 18 Robert, son of Philip III, 78; death of, 80, 91 Robert I of Artois, 20, 56, 69n51, 78, 122, 150 Robert II, king of France, 17 Robert II of Artois, 55, 69n51, 78–79, 81, 103n52, 112, 148–49, 162–63, 165–66; death of, 170–71; and Douceline of Digne, 69–70, 170 Robert II of Burgundy, 220 Robert III of Artois, 221–22, 234 Robert of Béthune, 64n31, 162–63, 169, 218 Robert of Clermont, 79 Robert of Dampierre, 162n32 Robert of Harcourt, 123 Robert of Naples, 62n21, 72n61 Robert of Sorbon, 35 Roubaud, beguinage of, 58, 61–62, 167, 219 Ruteboeuf, 36, 136

Saint-­Antoine, monastery of, 129–30 Saint-­Denis, monastery of, 22–23, 77, 107, 117–18, 121–23, 125, 127; historical writing at, 11, 79–80, 137, 139, 152–53, 159–60, 180, 215, 227–28, 230–31 Sainte-­Catherine, monastery of (Provins), 49 Sainte-­Chapelle (Paris), 21, 68, 79, 215 Saint-­Germaine-­en-­Laye, 1–2, 24 Saint-­Marcel, monastery of, 216–17 Salimbene, 11, 58, 69n51, 141–44; on Charles of Anjou, 141–43; on Douceline of Digne, 118, 142, 144; on holy lady of Barletta, 143–44; on Hugh of Digne, 142; on Louis IX, 141 Sanchia of Provence, 55, 59 Second Council of Lyon, 89 Seláf, Levente, 135 Sibylla of Marsal, 158–59 Sicilian Vespers, 55, 71, 117, 122, 124, 126, 168 Simon I of Montfort, 130 Simon II of Montfort, 130 Simon de Bucy, 204–5 Simon Matifas de Bucy, 204 Simon of Bisagnano, 30, 39 Simon of Brie, 47, 51, 79–80, 110, 115, 120–21, 124, 137; conversation with Pierre de Benais, 107–8; report on first inquiry into Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 95–100; report on rumors against Marie of Brabant, 90–91; report on rumors against Philip III, 91–95; report on second inquiry into Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 100–102, 139; report on third inquiry into Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 102–7, 140; re­spect for Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 113. See also Martin IV, pope Simon of Guiberville, 202 Simons, Walter, 4, 87, 93, 95 Sinibaldo Fieschi. See Innocent IV, pope Sorores minores, 10, 47–50, 52, 73, 133–34, 216–17, 227 Stephen I, king of Hungary, 123 Stephen V, king of Hungary, 124 Stephen Tempier, 80 Strayer, Joseph, 6 Suger of Saint-­Denis, 17 Tedaldo Visconti, 78. See also Gregory X, pope Theophania, 4 Thevenin de la Letiere, 224

26 6 I NDE X

Thibaut II of Navarre. See Thibaut V of Champagne Thibaut IV of Champagne, 49 Thibaut V of Champagne, 49, 77, 148n4 Thibaut of Marly, 2n2 Thibaut of Pouancé, 103n54, 140 Thomas, priest of Marcilly-­le-­Hayer, 223–24, 226 Thomas of Cantimpré, 6, 37, 42, 88–89, 135; Bonum universale de apibus of, 32–33, 35–36, 86–87; death of, 89; and Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 86–87, 137; Life of Lutgard of, 4; praises Isabelle of France, 32–33, 35–36 Thomas of Celano, 127, 134–35 Trésor des Chartes, 215 Urban IV, pope, 25, 46–50, 67, 134 Valenciennes, 34, 56, 185, 202, 204, 210 Vauchez, André, 7 Ve mundo in centum annis prophecy, 174 Verger, Jacques, 80 Vicedominus of Pisa, 91–95, 97–98, 101–3, 106–7, 113–14, 120, 135, 138–39, 228 Vidame. See Vicedominus of Pisa Vincent of Beauvais, 19, 45, 136 Walter d’Aunay, 220 War of the Cow, 103, 108 White, Hayden, 12 William I of Hainaut, 204

William Baufet, 207 William le Breton, 18–19 William of Auvergne, 31 William of Chartres, 42n62, 95, 118 William of Dampierre, 34 William of Hangest, 189, 191, 196, 199 William of Holland, 34 William of Jülich, jr., 175–76 William of Mâcon, 95, 101, 115, 120–21, 137 William of Mechelen, 103 William of Nangis, 10–11, 114, 117, 144, 152, 227, 229n53; continuation of his short French chronicle, 232–33; “official” continuation of his Latin Chronicle, 153, 180, 221, 229–33; portrayal of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, 136–41, 152–55, 228–29 William of Nogaret, 149, 175, 183, 189, 197, 198, 206–7, 214, 226; absolution of, 211; attack on Boniface VIII, 151 William of Paris, 197; inquisition against Marguerite Porete, 184, 186, 200–206, 209–10, 232; inquisition against Templars, 182, 205 William of Pietersheim, 103, 110 William of Plaisians, 175, 199, 206–7, 214 William of Rijkel, 84–87, 89; death of, 89 William of Saint-­Amour, 36 William of Saint-­Pathus, 122, 217 William of the White Hands, 7 Ysebiel le beghine, 165n49