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Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France
CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES Volume 34 General Editor Yitzhak Hen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Editorial Board Angelo di Berardino, Augustinianum, Rome Nora Berend, University of Cambridge Leslie Brubaker, University of Birmingham Christoph Cluse, Universität Trier Rob Meens, Universiteit Utrecht James Montgomery, University of Cambridge Alan V. Murray, University of Leeds Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Notre Dame Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this book.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown
Edited by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library © 2021, Brepols Publishers n. v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2021/0095/38 ISBN 978-2-503-59302-9 eISBN 978-2-503-59303-6 DOI 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122131 ISSN 1378-8779 eISSN 2294-8511 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Contributors
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Introduction M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein13 Suger An Abbot’s Fame Rolf Grosse23 Translated from the German by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin Suger, Orderic Vitalis, and the Vexin Some Observations on Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 2013 Elisabeth van Houts55 Countess Blanche, Philip Augustus, and the War of Succession in Champagne, 1201–1222 Theodore Evergates77 ‘Those Who Act More Strictly’ Monks, Jews, and Capetian Religious Politics in the Bibles moralisées Sara Lipton105 Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre Nicholas Vincent143 Philippe of Cahors Or, What’s in a Name? William Chester Jordan191 Jean d’Acre, Butler of France, Diplomat and High Servant of the Capetian Crown (d. 8 January 1296) Xavier Hélary211 Translated from the French by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin
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Louis IX, Heraclius, and the True Cross at the Sainte Chapelle M. Cecilia Gaposchkin265 Writing and Illustrating History in Thirteenth-Century France The Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune and Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale Alison Stones301 Jacob of Santa Sabina Warns Philip the Fair that Boniface VIII is Antichrist by Means of Scripture and the Oraculum Cyrilli Robert E. Lerner331 The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308 Sean L. Field351 The Capetians and the River Seine (Thirteenth–Fourteenth Century) Elisabeth Lalou383 Translated from the French by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin The Judicial Duel in Later Medieval France Procedure, Ceremony, and Status Justine Firnhaber-Baker399 A Bibliography of Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s Publications, through June 2021431 Index
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List of Illustrations
Introduction Map I.
The World of the Capetians.
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Elisabeth Van Houts Figure 2.1. The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, schematic development of text.
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Theodore Evergates Map 3.1. Map of the Champagne region. Genealogy 3.1. Genealogy 3.2.
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Sara Lipton Table 4.1. Figure 4.1. Figure 4.2. Figure 4.3. Figure 4.4. Figure 4.5.
Side-by-side comparison of the III Kings 19. 18 biblical and commentary texts in the four thirteenth-century exemplars. 134 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek [ÖNB], MS 2554, 54vAa.108 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek [ÖNB], MS 1179, 122Cc.109 Toledo, Cathedral of Toledo, Bible moralisée (Biblia de San Luis), vol. 1, 138Cc. 110 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 270b, 170Cc. 111 Side-by-side comparison of the III Kings 19. 18 biblical and commentary roundels in the four thirteenth-century exemplars.112
Nicholas Vincent Table 5.1. Outline Itinerary of Eudes of Châteauroux as Legate to France 1245–1248.
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Xavier Hélary Figure 7.1. Seal of Jean d’Acre. Genealogy 7.1.
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M. Cecilia Gaposchkin Figure 8.1. Louis IX adoring the Cross, from the Sainte-Chapelle.
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Alison Stones Figure 9.1. Figure 9.2. Figure 9.3. Figure 9.4. Figure 9.5. Figure 9.6. Figure 9.7. Figure 9.8. Figure 9.9. Figure 9.10. Figure 9.11. Figure 9.12. Figure 9.13. Figure 9.14. Figure 9.15. Figure 9.16. Figure 9.17. Figure 9.18.
Paris, BnF, naf 6259, fol. 2r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Troy.303 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal, 3340, fol. 1r, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie, Troy. 304 Paris, BnF, fr. 412, fol. 237v, Richard de Fournival, Réponse au bestiaire, The Tower of Memory. 306 Paris, BnF, naf 6259 fol. 8r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Charlemagne and Archbishop Turpin. 307 Paris, BnF, naf 6259, fol. 15r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Ferragut holding two victims. 308 Paris, BnF, naf 6259, fol. 24r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Roland blowing his horn. 309 Paris, BnF, naf 6259, fol. 25v, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Turpin’s vision. 310 Salamanca, Bibl. Univ. 2628, fol. 90v, Codex Calixtinus, Book IV, Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, Turpin’s vision. 311 Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laurenziana, Ash. 125, fol. 142v, Johannes, Chronicle, Three men empty money-bags into a chest.312 Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laurenziana, Ash. 125, fol. 146v, Johannes, Chronicle, Charlemagne imprisons two men in a church.313 Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laurenziana, Ash. 125, fol. 151v, Johannes, Chronicle, Baudouin holds his empty water-jug over the dying Roland. 314 Brussels, BR II 1396, fol. 1r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, the author instructing scribes. 316 Boulogne-sur-Mer, 131, fol. 77v, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, The Dream of Astiages. 318 Boulogne-sur-Mer, 130, vol. i, fol. 68r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book IV, The Dream of Astiages. 320 Boulogne-sur-Mer, 131, fol. 77v, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, Baby Cyrus fed by a she-dog. 320 Boulogne-sur-Mer ,131, fol. 77v, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, Baby Cyrus rescued. 321 Boulogne-sur-Mer, 130, vol. i, fol. 68r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, Baby Cyrus rescued. 321 Boulogne-sur-Mer, 131, fol. 202r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book x, Claudius on his deathbed designating his son Britannicus as his successor while Agrippina and her followers put forward Nero. 322
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Figure 9.19.
Figure 9.20. Figure 9.21.
Boulogne-sur-Mer, 130, fol. 183r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book x, Claudius on his deathbed designating his son Britannicus as his successor while Agrippina and her followers put forward Nero. Cleveland Museum of Art, acc. no. 1987–4, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book X, Claudius designating Nero as his successor. Boulogne-sur-Mer, 130, ii, fol. 149r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book xxv, Charlemagne giving orders to his soldiers.
Robert E. Lerner Figure 10.1. Image of Paris, AN, J491B, no. 79. Sean L. Field Figure 11.1. Figure 11.2. Figure 11.3.
Paris, AN, J 413, no. 14. Paris, AN, J 413, no. 19. Bottom portion of Paris, AN, J 413, no. 19, showing seals and Vitalis de Curreto’s seign manuel.
Elisabeth Lalou Map 12.1. The Seine Region from Paris to the Channel.
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Justine Firnhaber-Baker Figure 13.1. The parties brandish their cases in writing, Paris, BnF, MS français 2258, fol. 14v.418 Figure 13.2. The third oath taken before the fighting commences, Paris, BnF, MS français 2258, fol. 18v.419 Figure 13.3. The duel begins, Paris, BnF, MS français 2258, fol. 22r.420
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Contributors
Theodore Evergates is Professor Emeritus of History at McDaniel College. Sean L. Field is Professor of History at the University of Vermont. Justine Firnhaber-Baker is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin is Professor of History at Dartmouth College. Rolf Große is head of the medieval department at the German Historical Institute in Paris and Professor of Medieval History at the University of Heidelberg. Xavier Hélary is Professeur d’histoire at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3. Elisabeth van Houts is Honorary Professor of Medieval European History at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. William Chester Jordan is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. Elisabeth Lalou is Professure émérite of Medieval History at Rouen Normandy University. Robert E. Lerner is Professor Emeritus and the Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities Emeritus at Northwestern University. Sara Lipton is Professor of History at Stony Brook University. Jay Rubenstein is Professor of History and the Director of the Center for the PreModern World at the University of Southern California, Dornsife. Alison Stones is Professor Emerita of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Nicholas Vincent is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.
Map I. The World of the Capetians. Map by M. C. Gaposchkin.
M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein
Introduction
Elizabeth A. R. Brown — Peggy Brown, to her friends and colleagues — published her first article, on the Cistercians of the Latin Empire, in 1958.1 As we write this Introduction in the summer of 2020, Peggy is seeing to print no fewer than nine new articles and chapters, each of them a substantive contribution rooted in the meticulous study of manuscripts for which she is famous.2 In between she has authored by our count (and we are surely missing some) no fewer than five books3 and 115 articles or book chapters,4 co-authored another fifteen studies, and had eighteen of her studies gathered for republication in two further essay collections.5 Although she has ventured both backwards into the twelfth century and forwards into the sixteenth, and although she upturned the entire field in 1974 with her seminal AHR article calling
1 Brown, ‘The Cistercians in the Latin Empire’. All references are to work by Elizabeth A. R. Brown unless another author is noted. 2 Forthcoming are: ‘1314, l’annus terribilis des Capétiens’; ‘Lire et écrire l’histoire à Saint-Denis à l’époque de l’abbé Suger’; ‘Feudalism: Reflections on a Tyrannical Construct’s Fate, from Paradigm to Personae’; ‘Jesus Christ, Heavenly Bodies, and Catholic Imaginations: The Apostolic Church, the Vatican, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art’; ‘La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, ses appellations et son renom aux 13e et 14e siècles’; ‘Orderic Vitalis, André Duchesne, and Hugues of France’; ‘Philippe le Bel et les restes de Louis IX’; ‘Philippe le Bel s’est-il posé la question des frontières du royaume?’; ‘Taxation of the Realm and Philip the Fair’; ‘The Children of Louis VI and Adelaïde of Maurienne and the Date of a Historical Compendium of Saint-Denis’. 3 The Oxford Collection of the Drawings of Roger de Gaignières and the Royal Tombs of Saint-Denis; ‘Franks, burgundians, and aquitanians’ and the Royal Coronation Ceremony in France ; Customary Aids and Royal Finance in Capetian France: The Marriage Aid of Philip the Fair; Jean Du Tillet and the French Wars of Religion: Five Tracts, 1562–1569; Saint-Denis: La basilique. 4 Many of these in premier journals such as Speculum (6 articles), Traditio (7 articles), and Viator (5 articles), French Historical Studies (3 articles). 5 Politics and Institutions in Capetian France; The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin is Professor of History and Chair the Department of History at Dartmouth College. Jay Rubenstein is Professor of History and the Director of the Center for the PreModern World at the University of Southern California, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 13-22 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122616
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into question the idea of feudalism,6 her life’s work has been focused primarily on Capetians during the long thirteenth century, with particular focus on the life and reign of Philip the Fair (r. 1285–1314), and on the history and historiography of the royal abbey at Saint-Denis. In dozens of articles, many of them so substantial and so well-researched that others might have insisted on publishing them as books, all of them rooted in a meticulous study of the manuscript and archive base which constitutes the ground zero of our historical narrative and understanding, Brown has illuminated the politics, institutions, culture, ceremonies, religious traditions, and personalities of the Capetian kings, their families, and their courts. Brown was trained at Harvard and Radcliffe by Charles Holt Taylor as an institutional historian. Her dissertation was on the Leagues of 1314–1315,7 and her early publications addressed questions of taxation, representation, and royal finances.8 But her scholarship has evolved over decades which have witnessed the introduction of a whole series of trends, methods, turns, and new -isms (psychoanalysis, feminism, post-structuralism, material and linguistic turns…). Despite a healthy suspicion of any -ism, Brown’s work has over time foreseen and fostered many of the dominant scholarly ‘trends’ or ‘phases’ of our field — taking seriously the possibility of psychoanalytic approaches to history;9 embracing the study of royal ceremonies even before the ‘anthropological turn’ gripped the historical imagination;10 exploring issues of gender before they were in vogue as part of her interests in figures like Jeanne d’Evreux, Blanche of Artois, or Eleanor of Aquitaine (yes, Eleanor was a Capetian at one point);11 working on questions of death and the body before ‘embodiment’ became part of common scholarly parlance.12 And, although she read, incorporated, and was enriched by these different ‘turns’, and their perspectives surely informed her own scholarship,13 she has always been first and foremost devoted to what she would call, ‘getting it right’. Taking on any historiography that informed a problem she encountered, Brown has published on law, on royal finance, on institutions, on ritual and ceremony, on personality, on
6 ‘The Tyranny of a Construct’, pp. 163–88. 7 ‘Charters and Leagues in Early Fourteenth Century France: The Movement of 1314 and 1315’ (PhD Thesis, Radcliffe College, 1961). 8 ‘Assemblies of French Towns in 1316: Some New Texts’, pp. 282–301; ‘Gascon Subsidies and the Finances of the English Dominions, 1315–1324’, pp. 399–431; ‘Subsidy and Reform in 1321: The Accounts of Najac and the Policies of Philip V’, pp. 33–163; ‘Cessante Causa’, pp. 567–287; ‘Taxation and Morality’, pp. 1–28; ‘Customary Aids and Royal Fiscal Policy under Philip VI of Valois’, pp. 191–258. 9 Brown took the study of psychoanalysis so seriously, that she ultimately partnered with a Psychoanalyst, Arnold Richards, and ended up teaching with him at Downstate Medical School as a ‘Senior Clinical Lecturer’ in the Department of Psychiatry, from 1974 to 1980. Studies that came out of that period include ‘The Prince is the Father of the King’, pp. 282–334; ‘Persona et Gesta’, pp. 219–46. 10 ‘The Chapels and Cult of Saint Louis at Saint-Denis’ (1984), 279–331’; ‘The Ceremonial of Royal Succession in Capetian France’, pp. 266–93. 11 ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine Reconsidered’, pp. 1–54. ‘Blanche of Artois and Burgundy, Château-Gaillard, and the Baron de Joursanvault’, pp. 223–33. ‘Jeanne d’Évreux: ses testaments et leur exécution’, pp. 57–83. 12 ‘Death and the Human Body’, pp. 221–70. ‘The French Royal Funeral Ceremony and the King’s Two Bodies’, pp. 105–37. 13 See Brown’s own comments in: ‘Another perspective on alterity and the grotesque (1932-)’, (2005), pp. 915–32.
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historiography and hagiography, on art and images, on sculpture, on architecture, on liturgy, and on biography.14 In the end, Brown’s commitment to what might naively be called a positivist view of historical work, of a capacity and an obligation to pinning down what actually happened in the past, of solving both historical and historiographical problems, is what has made her work so important, and will ensure that her studies, because they are so often definitive, will continue to be read long into the future.15 In light of this focus on the particular, the individual, and the document, it is perhaps ironic that the essay of Brown most often read outside of Capetian circles was a historiographical challenge made to medieval studies in 1974. Entitled ‘Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe’, and published in the American Historical Review, the article questioned the validity of what had been the key organizing principle of survey courses and historical monographs alike.16 The article produced a reckoning, and a great deal of further scholarly debate.17 But even here Brown’s very broad, even paradigmatic, argument grew out of the archives — not so much what was in them, but what was not. It was not just that the word ‘feudalism’ was an early modern invention, and it is not just that historians have applied to it so many shifting meanings that it defies rational definition. It is additionally, and most importantly, that historians have used ‘feudalism’ as a category to organize ideas, laws, and principles that to medieval thinkers would not have at all fit together. To impose modern constructs onto premodern worlds is to do violence to our sources, to create distance between us and our subjects. It is a profound observation with historiographical implications beyond the imagined world of fiefs and vassals. And it is born of Brown’s basic, core, passionate commitment to the particular. Another characteristic of Brown’s career is her extraordinary generosity towards scholars, both her peers and junior scholars. Employed throughout her career at CUNY’s Brooklyn College, Brown did not train a swathe of graduate students who might directly carry on her legacy.18 But she has had untold influence on the field, through her engagement and through her unfailing (if sometimes unnerving) involvement and interest in the projects of junior and senior scholars. Examples of her willingness to engage in dialogue, to share with scholars her own, often unpublished work, including reams of painstakingly careful transcriptions (saving them untold hours of work and reserves of research funds), are legion. Although we have not undertaken a rigorous scientific study of the question, we suspect that Elizabeth A. R. Brown has been thanked more than any other individual in the prefaces of scholarly books on medieval French history. Collected here are essays of a subset of those grateful
14 See the bibliography of Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s publications through June 2021 at the end of this volume. 15 See her own comments on this question in: ‘Another Perspective on Alterity and the Grotesque (1932-)’, pp. 919–22. 16 ‘Tyranny of a Construct’, pp. 163–88. 17 Most notably, Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, which she dedicated to Brown. See the more recent historiographical overview by Richard P. Abels, ‘The Historiography of a Construct’, pp. 1008–31. 18 Strictly speaking, Brown only ever had one PhD student of her own. Dana Lynn Sample, ‘The Case of Robert of Artois (1309–1337)’ (unpublished PhD Thesis, City University of New York, 1996). Dr Sample died prematurely in 2007.
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scholars, researchers whose own work has been influenced by Brown’s scholarship, enriched by her personal engagement with our studies, and often indebted to Brown for her intellectual and institutional support. The editors offer these essays, with some trepidation (for she is fearsomely rigorous), in tribute to her career and to our individual gratitude for the role she, and her scholarship, have played in ours.
The Capetians The work of Elizabeth A. R. Brown has been primarily focused on the Capetian kings of France.19 The Capetians were the longest-reigning dynasty in the Middle Ages, ruling France continuously from 987 to 1328, owing to the extraordinary good fortune of an unbroken line of male succession. Over three and half centuries, the Capetians built a government, a kingdom, and an ideology. Their history touches on the techniques of medieval monarchy, the growth of the administrative state, and the development of mature forms of rule in the high Middle Ages, and all the many issues that formed around the exercise of power in society. Their rule did not begin propitiously. Rather, tenth- and eleventh-century France has often been viewed as the classic age of violent anarchy, when dukes, counts, and castellans undercut the authority of the king and then of one another, the prerogatives of royal government devolving ever further down the social hierarchy until, on the eve of the twelfth century, the exercise of authority was a matter of brute power imposed on a local level.20 Starting in the early twelfth century and especially with the partnership between King Louis VI (r. 1108–1137) and Abbot Suger of St-Denis (r. 1122–1151), the monarchy undertook a concerted military and ideological programme to reassert royal authority over the Île-de-France and eventually to assemble a collection of territories that roughly approximated modern France. Early on, the kings based their government increasingly in Paris, which became over the course of the twelfth century the kingdom’s de facto capital. Slowly, the Capetians extended ever more indirect and direct authority over increasing swathes of territory. At the same time, they were establishing new institutions of government and adopting new modes of accountability. In lockstep, an ideology and ceremony of Capetian rule evolved alongside administrative development. The Capetians understood themselves to be the ‘most Christian kings’ (reges christianisissimi). The Benedictine Abbey of St-Denis just to the north of Paris established itself as the royal mausoleum, a focal point for royal devotion, and ultimately the centre of royal historiography that first defined ‘France’. The cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, with its famed gallery of kings gracing its west front, similarly forecast an ideology of sacral rule. This statement 19 The standard book-length introductions to Capetian France remain Fawtier, The Capetian Kings; Hallam and West, Capetian France; Cassard and Biget, L’âge d’or capétien: 1180–1328. 20 The most thorough presentation of this historiographical model is Poly and Eric, The Feudal Transformation. More recently, with an accent on anarchy and violence, Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century. The validity of this model has not gone unchallenged, as demonstrated, for example, by Barthélemy, The Serf, the Knight, and the Historian.
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of Christian kingship reached its political apex with the crusader King Louis IX (r. 1226–1270, later, ‘Saint Louis’) and its most sublime articulation in Louis’s royal chapel, the Sainte-Chapelle, built upon his acquisition of the Crown of Thorns and other priceless relics in the middle of the thirteenth century. Louis’s most famous Capetian successor, Philip IV ‘the Fair’ (r. 1285–1314), governed with an efficiency born of bureaucratic genius emboldened by his conviction of the true sanctity of his office. Then, over a fourteen-year stretch of bad luck and princely deaths, the dynasty died out in 1328, opening a political fault line that laid the groundwork for the Hundred Years’ War. This is the standard story of the Capetians’ fortunes, and it is a history that, in its broad outlines, has held up well, giving shape to our understanding of the formation and history of France. The period, known through its royal personalities, oversaw the creation of institutions and ideologies that underpinned the development of monarchy and its society. Perhaps no scholar has done more than Elizabeth A. R. Brown both to affirm key aspects of this narrative and to challenge some of its basic assumptions. The purpose of this volume is to revisit our understanding of this terrain, particularly the twelfth, thirteenth, and early fourteenth centuries, in light of Brown’s scholarship; and, through engaged assessment with specific scholarly questions, to demonstrate the vitality of Capetian France to issues of current interest in the field of medieval history more broadly. In consort with a kindred volume published in this same series, The Capetian Century (edited by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Phillips), to which Brown contributed an essay,21 the central theme of this collection is the continued importance of the events and issues of Capetian history in a historiographical environment that is presently downplaying nationalistic frameworks.
These Essays The essays gathered here are not only in tribute to Brown, but inspired by her scholarship and method. As a group, they explore the people, institutions, and themes of the Capetian world that have been at the core of Brown’s oeuvre — including major figures, such as Suger, Louis IX, and Philip the Fair, and principal institutions, such as St-Denis, the royal court, and the mechanisms of Capetian government. Several of the essays here are rooted in the careful study of the manuscripts for which Brown is particularly famous, and a number include — ‘Peggy-style’ — editions of unedited archival material as part of their contributions. We have organized the essays chronologically, moving from the history and historiography of St-Denis in the twelfth century to the Capetians’ involvements in growing and diversifying society in the years after 1300. The volume opens with two essays dealing with the Abbey Church of St-Denis in the middle of the twelfth century. Rolfe Große’s ‘Suger: An Abbot’s Fame’ offers a new assessment of Suger’s motivations as abbot, and thus necessarily of his relationship 21 ‘Philip the Fair and his Ministers’, pp. 185–213.
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with the Capetian crown under Louis VI (r. 1108–1137) and Louis VII (r. 1137–1180). Elisabeth Van Houts also explores the world of St-Denis in the middle of the twelfth century with a new reading of Mazarine MS 2013, one of the abbey’s earliest historical collections and a crucial manuscript in the early stages of the historiographical tradition at St-Denis, compiled in the middle of the twelfth century. Theodore Evergates moves us, then, into the reign of Philip II ‘Augustus’ (r. 1180–1223). His essay on ‘Countess Blanche, Philip Augustus, and the War of Succession in Champagne, 1201–1222’ documents how the Countess of Champagne negotiated her position and secured her son’s during the second half of Philip’s reign. Sara Lipton’s essay engages the tradition of the early moralized bibles, produced in the second and third decades of the thirteenth century, which illuminates the relative prestige, status, and reputation of Cistercians, Augustinians, and Benedictines in their relationship to the Capetian court and in particular Queen Blanche of Castile (d. 1251), queen to Louis VIII (r. 1223–1226) and later regent to their son, Louis IX. The next three essays move into the reign of Louis IX (r. 1226–1270), with three separate studies of men in Louis’ court and government. Nicholas Vincent’s contribution is on Eudes of Châteauroux, papal legate, crusader, and one of Louis’ closest advisors and friends, and his gift of a relic of the Holy Blood to the church of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre in his native Berry. The gift was part of a broader culture of royal religion and ideology in Paris and St-Denis which Eudes thus disseminated beyond Paris and into the kingdom. William Chester Jordan examines the origins of another of Louis IX’s closest advisors, Philip of Cahors, who rose in Louis’s government to be Chancellor in all but name. Here, Jordan demonstrates the opposite — how subjects from throughout the widening kingdom were drawn to Paris, into royal circles and government. Xavier Hélary’s study of Jean d’Acre is the first comprehensive biographical treatment of this figure, a contemporary of Louis IX, who was the disenfranchised son of John of Brienne (King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople) and who, over a long life and career, ultimately made his fortunes at the Capetian court as the Butler of France. These three essays are followed by two that explore the construction of history and ideology at the Capetian court. Based in the surviving manuscript evidence, Cecilia Gaposchkin argues that the history of Heraclius and the True Cross was incorporated in the liturgy of the Sainte Chapelle’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross to model Louis IX as a new Heraclius. Alison Stones studies how illustrated historical manuscripts of the period structured and interpreted classical memory. The next two essays move us into the years around 1300 and the reign of Philip IV ‘the Fair’ (r. 1285–1314). Robert E. Lerner presents and interprets an extraordinary prophecy made at the very end of the thirteenth century, in a letter to Philip the Fair against Philip’s great nemesis, Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1296–1303). Lerner thus adds Jacob of Santa Sabina’s Oraculum Cyrillii to the dossier of evidence that informs the religious and political ideas that fuelled Philip’s aggressive reign. And in a careful study of the archival record resulting from Philip the Fair’s assault upon the Templars, Sean Field shows just how those aggressive royal directives were interpreted and acted upon on a local level far from Paris, thus demonstrating the growing reach and the exercise of royal authority around the year 1300.
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The final two essays straddle several centuries. Elisabeth Lalou evaluates the role that the River Seine played in the lives and growing power of the Capetians, and how it often structured relations with the Angevins, over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. To conclude, appropriately, Justine Firnhaber-Baker gives us a bridge from the Capetians to their Valois successors. She examines the ways in which, during the reigns of Louis IX, Philip the Fair, and the early Valois kings, the judicial duel was organized as a separate practice from private warfare, and how it constituted a practice of power and chivalry in the shadow of state power. Beyond this brief summary, we will let the essays speak for themselves, but we contend that these chapters demonstrate how vibrant the field of Capetian studies continues to be. Building on the work of giants, scholars continue to explore questions of sweeping historical significance, guided by evolving questions about society and the broad legacy of the Western tradition. Elizabeth A. R. Brown is certainly one of our field’s giants, without whose strong shoulders, infectious curiosity, and deep friendship, this work would not have been possible.
Works Cited Abels, Richard P., ‘The Historiography of a Construct: “Feudalism” and the Medieval Historian’, History Compass, 7 (2009), 1008–31 Barthélemy, Dominique, The Serf, the Knight, and the Historian, trans. by Graham Robert Edwards (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) Bisson, Thomas N., The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. xxviii, 677 p., 9 p. of plates Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘The Cistercians in the Latin Empire of Constantinople and Greece, 1204–1276’, Traditio, 14 (1958), 63–120 ———, ‘Charters and Leagues in Early Fourteenth Century France: The Movement of 1314 and 1315’ (PhD Thesis, Radcliffe College, 1961) ———, ‘Assemblies of French Towns in 1316: Some New Texts’, Speculum, 46 (1971), 282–301 ———, ‘Gascon Subsidies and the Finances of the English Dominions, 1315–1324’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, o.s. 8 (1971), 33–163 ———, ‘Subsidy and Reform in 1321: The Accounts of Najac and the Policies of Philip V’, Traditio, 27 (1971), 399–431 ———, ‘Cessante Causa and the Taxes of the Last Capetians: The Political Applications of a Philosophical Maxim’, Studia Gratiana, 15 (Post Scripta) (1972), 567–87 ———, ‘Representation and Agency Law in the later Middle Ages: The Theoretical Foundations and the Evolution of Practice in the Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Midi’, Viator, 3 (1972), 329–64 ———, ‘Taxation and Morality in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Conscience and Politicial Power and the Kings of France’, French Historical Studies, 8 (1973), 1–28 ———, ‘Customary Aids and Royal Fiscal Policy under Philip VI of Valois’, Traditio, 30 (1974), 191–258
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———, ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe’, The American Historical Review, 79 (1974), 163–88 ———, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine: Parent, Queen and Duchess’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician, ed. by William W. Kibler (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), pp. 9–34 ———, ‘The Ceremonial of Royal Succession in Capetian France: The Double Funeral of Louis X’, Traditio, 34 (1978), 227–71 ———, ‘The Chapel of St Louis at Saint-Denis’, Gesta, 17 (1978), 76 ———, ‘The Ceremonial of Royal Succession in Capetian France: The Double Funeral of Philip V’, Speculum, 55 (1980), 266–93 ———, ‘Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse’, Viator, 12 (1981), 221–70 ———, ‘Reform and Resistance to Royal Authority in Fourteenth-century France: The Leagues of 1314–1315’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 1 (1981), 109–37 ———, ‘The Chapels and Cult of Saint Louis at Saint-Denis’, Mediaevalia, 10 (1984), 279–331 ———, ‘The Prince is the Father of the King: The Character and Childhood of Philip the Fair of France’, Mediaeval Studies, 49 (1987), 282–334 ———, ‘Persona et Gesta: The Images and Deeds of the Thirteenth-Century Capetians: The Case of Philip the Fair’, Viator, 19 (1988), 219–46 ———, The Oxford Collection of the Drawings of Roger de Gaignières and the Royal Tombs of Saint-Denis, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988) ———, Politics and Institutions in Capetian France, 1 vol., Collected Studies Series (Brookfield: Gower, 1991) ———, The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Reprints (Burlington: Ashgate, 1991) ———, Customary Aids and Royal Finance in Capetian France: The Marriage Aid of Philip the Fair, Medieval Academy books (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1992) ———, ‘Franks, burgundians, and aquitanians’ and the Royal Coronation Ceremony in France, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 82, part 7 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992) ———, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, in The Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St James, ed. by John Williams and Alison Stones (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1992), pp. 51–88 ———, Jean Du Tillet and the French Wars of Religion: Five Tracts, 1562–1569, Medieval & Renaissance texts & studies (Binghamton: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1994) ———, ‘Myths Chasing Myths: The Legend of the Trojan Origin of the French and its Dismantling’, in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways…: Festschrift in Honour of János M. Bak, ed. by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 603–33 ———, ‘Royal Bodies, Effigies, Funeral Meals, and Office in Sixteenth-Century France’, Micrologus, 7 (1999), 437–508 ———, Saint-Denis: La basilique (Paris: Zodiaque, 2001)
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———, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine Reconsidered: The Woman and her Seasons’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. by John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 1–54 ———, ‘Another Perspective on Alterity and the Grotesque (1932-)’, in Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. by Jane Chance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), pp. 915–32 ———, ‘Blanche of Artois and Burgundy, Château-Gaillard, and the Baron de Joursanvault [essay]’, in Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom, ed. by Scott Wells and Katherine Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 223–33 ———, ‘Jeanne d’Évreux: ses testaments et leur exécution’, in Autour des testaments des Capétiens. Actes de la journée d’étude internationale organisée à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne 2009, ed. by Xavier Hélary and Alain Marchandisse (Paris: De Boeck, 2013), pp. 57–83 ———, ‘The French Royal Funeral Ceremony and the King’s Two Bodies: Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Ralph E. Giesey, and the Construction of a Paradigm’, Micrologus, 22 (Le Corps du Prince) (2014), 105–37 ———, ‘Le mécénat et la reine: Jeanne d’Evreux (1308?-1371), la liturgie et le puzzle d’un bréviaire’, in ‘La dame de cœur’. Patronage et mécénat religieux des femmes de pouvoir dans l’Europe des xive-xviie siècles, ed. by Murielle Gaude-Ferragu and Cécile Vincent-Cassy (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016), pp. 83–107 ———, ‘Philip the Fair and his Ministers: Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerran de Marigny’, in The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William C. Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 185–213 ———, ‘Suger and the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, 1144–1151’, Gesta, 59 (2020), 1–30 ———, ‘Lire et écrire l’histoire à Saint-Denis à l’époque de l’abbé Suger: les manuscrits Mazarine 2013 et BnF, latin 12710’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France (forthcoming) ———, ‘1314, l’annus terribilis des Capétiens’, in 1314, une Europe en crise? La conjoncture politique européenne à la mort de Philippe le Bel, ed. by Olivier Canteaut and Xavier Hélary (forthcoming) ———, ‘La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, ses appellations et son renom aux 13e et 14e siècles’, in Les Saintes-Chapelles du xiiie au xviiie siècle: Arts – Politique – Religion. Proceedings of the LVIe Colloque international d’Études Humanistes du CESR de Tours, 25–28 June 2013, ed. by David Fiala and Étienne Anheim (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming) ———, ‘Orderic Vitalis, André Duchesne, and Hugues of France, Putative Son of Louis VI and Adelaïde of Maurienne’, Francia (forthcoming) ———, ‘Philippe le Bel et les restes de Louis IX: une reconsidération des sources’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes (forthcoming) ———, ‘Philippe le Bel s’est-il posé la question des frontières du royaume?’, in Lyon, de l’empire au royaume: autour du rattachement de la ville de Lyon à la France, ed. by Aléxis Charansonnet, Jacques Chiffoleau, and Jean-Paul Gaulin (forthcoming) ———, ‘Feudalism: Reflections on a Tyrannical Construct’s Fate, from Paradigm to Personae’, in a collection of essays edited by Jackson Armstrong and Peter Crooks, based on papers delivered at a symposium on ‘Tyrannous Constructs’ held at Trinity College Dublin, 30–31 May 2016. (forthcoming)
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———, ‘Jesus Christ, Heavenly Bodies, and Catholic Imaginations: The Apostolic Church, the Vatican, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art’, forthcoming with other papers delivered in Rome in November 2018 at The Middle Ages in the Modern World (MAMO), in a volume to be published by the École française de Rome (forthcoming) ———, ‘Taxation of the Realm and Philip the Fair’, in a Festschrift Honoring Élisabeth Lalou, edited by Xavier Hélary (forthcoming) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., Grover Zinn, and Paul Lieber Gerson, ‘Suger, Salvation, and the West Central Portal of Saint-Denis’ (forthcoming) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., and Michael Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis: Praeteritorum enim Recordatio Futurorum est Exhibitio’, The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutues, 49 (1986), 1–40 and figures 1–12 Cassard, Jean-Christophe, and Jean-Louis Biget, L’âge d’or capétien: 1180–1328, Histoire de France (Paris: Belin, 2011), p. 776 Fawtier, Robert, The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation 987–1328, trans. by Lionel Butler and ed. by R. J. Adam (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1960) Hallam, Elizabeth M., and Charles West, Capetian France, 987–1328, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2020) Poly, Jean-Pierre, and Eric Bournazel, The Feudal Transformation: 900–1200, Europe Past and Present series (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991) Reynolds, Susan, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) Sample, Dana Lynn, ‘The Case of Robert of Artois (1309–1337)’ (unpublished PhD Thesis, City University of New York, 1996)
Rolf Grosse
Suger An Abbot’s Fame
Honour was important in the world of the twelfth century. It was not so much a moral quality as something that was awarded externally. Acquiring and preserving honour was an essential characteristic of the outlook of the nobility and chivalric class.1 Honour not only secured rank and recognition in society, but would also be celebrated by later generations. The cleric, on the other hand, did not strive for his own personal honour. He lived, rather, for the glory of God, the Church as a community of saints, and, of course, for his own church. This does not mean that the cleric was uninterested in his own memorialization. But it was memoria expressed not through epics which recounted his heroic deeds, but rather through the memorial of prayer. The fact that the cleric was not supposed to augment his own personal honour did not obviate a concern with his own reputation.2 This was certainly the case with Abbot Suger of St-Denis: the concern for the status of his church stood alongside provisions he made for his own memoria, supplemented by a clear desire for personal recognition and political influence. Anyone dealing with the history of medieval France is familiar with Suger.3 His parents entrusted him as a child to the Abbey of St-Denis. As a young monk he fulfilled important tasks for both the monastery and the king, and in 1122 he was elected abbot by the monks. He enjoyed good relations with both the papal curia and the royal court. He was a close advisor to Louis VI and Louis VII and, as regent during the Second Crusade, took up the reins of government. He can also be credited with the building of the west facade and the choir of the abbey church, which are regarded as foundational in the development of Gothic architecture. He was evidently a man of
1 Görich, Die Ehre Friedrich Barbarossas, pp. 3–4. I would like to thank Cecilia Gaposchkin for the translation of the text. 2 Guenée, Du Guesclin et Froissart, pp. 21–23. 3 Among the biographies dedicated to Abbot Suger the following should be mentioned: Cartellieri, Abt Suger von Saint-Denis; Bur, Suger, abbé de Saint-Denis; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis. The doctoral thesis of Glaser, ‘Beati Dionysii qualiscumque abbas’ unfortunately remained unpublished. Important are also the articles by Benton, ‘Introduction’, pp. 3–15; Annas, ‘Abt Suger von Saint-Denis’, pp. 67–111. Rolf Grosse is head of the medieval department at the German Historical Institute in Paris and Professor of Medieval History at the University of Heidelberg. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 23-54 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122617
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great historical importance. But this assessment rests primarily on his own writings, which were, in fact, not immune from his desire to celebrate — and thus perhaps overemphasize — his own influence.4 In the last twenty-five years, scholars have critically questioned this long-accepted image of Suger.5 He is, for instance, no longer considered the ‘Father of the Gothic’. Even if he arranged for the new construction at St-Denis, there is no real evidence that he consciously sought to create a new style influenced by the Pseudo-Dionysius’s theology of light, nor that he derived the ideology of the feudal pyramid from that same author’s Celestial Hierarchy.6 Nor was he the principal ideological architect of Capetian kingship, as was once argued.7 The economic success of the abbey should not be ascribed to him alone, and, finally, close ties between the crown and the abbey had been established already by his immediate predecessor, the Abbot Adam.8 Suger has left us countless references to himself. In addition to his own writings, we have charters that he had a hand in, the building inscriptions which he versified, and the windows in the abbey church. These sources invite us to broach anew the question of his personality and character. Scholars have done this before, but in the light of recent work on Suger it is time for a new assessment. This essay focuses on the role that personal fame played for Suger. Aware of how difficult it is to approach the personality of any medieval figure, Jacques Le Goff ’s question — ‘Saint Louis a-t-il existé?’ — applies equally to Suger.9 This study thus proceeds in three stages: first, it examines Suger’s efforts to secure his own memoria. Then it treats his building activity. Finally, it outlines his desire for political influence. To anticipate the conclusions, we shall see that Suger’s motivations, although he was not immune from the desire for fame, were ultimately more religious and devotional than they were secular or worldly.
Memory The start of this essay referred to the heroic epics which guaranteed the afterlife of eminent nobles. In contrast, the cleric or monk sought remembrance through prayer.
4 The relevant editions are: Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet (English translation: Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead); Suger, Œuvres, ed., trans., and ann. by Gasparri (English translation: Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, pp. 1–37; German translation: Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, Ausgewählte Schriften, pp. 171–397). On Suger’s works, see Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, pp. 316–87; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 32–49; Speer, ‘Abt Sugers Schriften’, pp. 13–66; Linscheid-Burdich, Suger von Saint-Denis; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 149–65. 5 Among them should be mentioned: Markschies, Gibt es eine ‘Theologie der gotischen Kathedrale’?; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis; Große, ed., Suger en question; Speer, ‘Abt Suger’s Schriften’, pp. 13–66. 6 It is the merit of the study by Markschies, Gibt es eine ‘Theologie der gotischen Kathedrale’? to have elaborated this. See also Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 28–31; Grant, ‘Qu’est-ce que l’architecture gothique?’, pp. 136–38; Speer, ‘Lux mirabilis et continua’, pp. 85–97; Speer, ‘Abt Sugers Schriften’, pp. 61–66. 7 This is denied by Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 10–21, 113–19. 8 Große, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König, pp. 234–36; Große, ‘L’abbé Adam’, pp. 31–43. 9 Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 311.
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The monk hoped that his abbey might remember him on the day of his death and pray for his salvation.10 Prayer would be all the more effective when performed in an especially solemn setting. It is in this vein that, in 1124, only two years after his elevation as abbot, Suger issued a charter.11 In general, monks were obliged to pray not only for other monks, but also for the laymen associated with the monastery. The liturgy at St-Denis, in particular, was marked by the duty of praying for the kings of France from an early date.12 King Dagobert (d. 639), following the example of the Abbey of St-Maurice d’Agaune, established the Laus perennis, which included named intercessions for Dagobert himself and his father Chlothar II (d. 629), a practice maintained through the early ninth century. Numerous memorial foundations by kings followed, most notably among them that of Charles the Bald. In later years, however, the Norman invasions and then the conflict between the Carolingians and Capetians disrupted the anniversaries at St-Denis, but Adam, Suger’s immediate predecessor as abbot, revived their practice. Adam restored the anniversary of Charles the Bald, although in a more modest way, and he further endowed an anniversary for Dagobert, the monastery’s presumed founder and the first king buried in the abbey church. The Anniversary of Louis VI
Suger would have learned of these liturgical traditions as a young monk, and how they served the abbey’s memorial practices. Once he had been elected abbot, he continued Adam’s policies. He founded an anniversary for Louis VI in 1124, and he renewed Charles the Bald’s anniversary in 1140.13 The 1124 foundation is of particular interest because it also concerns Suger’s own memoria.14 He lists the exact details in a charter. Its contents were agreed upon in a chapter meeting, but Suger’s own intentions clearly stand behind the document.15 In the Arenga, he states that he had attained the dignity of the abbacy despite his unworthiness. As abbot, he explained, he had the duty to exalt his church and to take care of his fellow monks. Fulfilling this duty would in turn benefit his own soul: ‘so that by this present example of divine and human worship, we might be pleasing in God’s sight, and that we might obtain in the future a certain small portion of divine recompense in the bosom of eternal happiness’.16 The first provision was that a service should be held in the Virgin’s honour every Saturday and on the last three days of Pentecost. He also established a Mass for Saint Denis and his companions on Thursdays. Further,
10 Schmid and Wollasch, ‘Die Gemeinschaft der Lebenden und Verstorbenen’, pp. 369–70. 11 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 1, pp. 156–67; Morelle, ‘Les chartes de Suger de SaintDenis’, no. 1, p. 246. 12 Große, ‘Saint-Denis. Die Gegenwart der toten Könige’, pp. 230–39. 13 Große, ‘Saint-Denis. Die Gegenwart der toten Könige’, pp. 240–41. 14 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 1, pp. 156–67. 15 Morelle, ‘Les chartes de Suger de Saint-Denis’, p. 237. 16 ‘[…] ut et divini et humani cultus exhibitione inpresentiarum divino conspectui placere valeamus, et in futuro aliquam divine retributionis portiunculam in aeternae felicitatis gremio obtineamus’. Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 1, p. 159.
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he elevated a number of feasts to duplex rank, increasing their solemnity. He then made provisions for his own salvation. Not only did he require that after his death the monks celebrate an anniversary for himself, but he also arranged that, during his lifetime, the monks would pray the Ad te levavi [Psalms 122] for him every Thursday and Saturday during the liturgy of the hours; after his death they were instructed to recite instead the De Profundis clamavi [Psalms 129]. In the charter’s final clause, he arranged for an anniversary to be celebrated for Louis VI after the latter’s death. That these provisions were adopted in the presence of two cardinal legates as well as the abbey’s most precious relics — a shard of Christ’s cross and of the Crown of Thorns, along with the arm of Saint Simeon — indicates that this chapter meeting was of particular importance.17 It is striking that the charter was not signed by members of the convent, but bears only the signature of the two cardinals in attendance.18 In the Arenga, Suger makes reference to his obligation to St-Denis and explains the subsequent liturgical prescriptions as a way of paying his debt of gratitude by elevating the monastery and looking after his fellow monks. But at the same time, he adds that he hopes that the work will please God and might secure for him eternal life. For Suger, the personal expectation of salvation and the well-being of his church were inseparably linked.19 These connections are also clear in the provisions for the liturgy. They concern the veneration of Mary, an especially powerful intercessor with immediate access to God,20 and of Saint Denis, in whose service Suger stands ready so that the saint might help him on Judgement Day. On the days when services are to be celebrated for the Virgin and for Denis — the Thursday and the Saturday — Psalms were to be sung for Suger as part of the Office. The liturgy thus establishes a link between the abbot of St-Denis, the monastery’s patron saint, and the Virgin as a symbol of faith. In contrast, Louis VI’s anniversary is almost an afterthought: ‘We order also and have decided that the anniversary of the very glorious Louis, King of the Franks, be celebrated yearly, after the end of his reign, and we prescribe that on this same day, our monks receive for their own refreshment 20 sous taken from the above mentioned tithes of the Vexin, which he has conferred upon us’.21 Details about the celebration’s organization are not given, but specifics are made for how to finance the meal for the monks. Nor are links made to other feasts. With the foundation of the Anniversary, Suger probably wanted to emphasize the role of his abbey as Louis’s future burial site. Once Philip I (d. 1108) had chosen to be buried at St-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury), such
17 ‘[…] clavo et corona Domini et sancti senis Simeonis brachio […]’. Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 1, p. 167. 18 Morelle, ‘Les chartes de Suger de Saint-Denis’, p. 228. 19 On this facet, characteristic of Suger, see Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, pp. 336, 344–45; Maines, ‘Good Works, Social Ties’, pp. 77–94. 20 Voss, ‘Marienverehrung’, cols 1378–79. 21 ‘Gloriosissimi quoque Ludovici regis Francorum, post strenuissimam regni ejus administrationem, anniversarium fieri singulis annis et mandamus et constituimus, et ut eadem die de prefatis Vilcassini decimis ab eo nobis collatis viginti solidos propriae refectioni habeant precipimus’. Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 1, p. 165.
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gestures were of no small importance. Of course, St-Denis’s role as the royal necropolis was important to the monks. But its self-image, and that of Suger, was not primarily based on this function as the resting place of kings. Its fame was derived mostly from the fact that it was the church where Saint Denis had been buried.22 And thus, there wasn’t really any place for Louis VI in the liturgical relationship established that linked Mary, Denis, and Suger. Suger was keeping his distance from the secular ruler. Suger’s Testament
Suger was still only at the beginning of his abbacy when he put these provisions in place. Thirteen years later, at the end of May 1137, a legation from Aquitaine arrived at Louis VI’s court in Béthisy, informing the king of the death of Duke William X and relaying his last will and testament.23 The king needed to act quickly in this situation. At his command, his heir, the future Louis VII, moved south with an army commanded by Count Theobald of Blois-Champagne and Seneschal Ralph of Vermandois. The churchmen who accompanied them were led by Geoffrey of Lèves, bishop of Chartres, and Abbot Suger himself.24 If the chronicle of Morigny, one of our chief sources for this delegation, does not mention Suger among the participants, it shows only that we must not overestimate his role at this stage.25 That said, it appears that the impending trip into Aquitaine motivated the abbot to draw up his own will.26 In 1124 Suger was looking to the future. Now, in 1137, he looked back. He recalled bygone years in front of the monks gathered for chapter. Everything, he said, was owed to God, who had elevated him out of the dung to sit next to the princes of the church and the kingdom (‘[…] quomodo valida Domini manus me pauperem de stercore erexit, quomodo et ante honorem hunc cum principibus Ecclesiae et regni consedere fecerit’).27 In view of such favour, how could he possibly repay this debt? (‘Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi?’)28 He begged the monks to help him attain salvation (‘[…] ut opem ferant suppliciter efflagito’).29
22 Große, ‘Saint-Denis. Die Gegenwart der toten Könige’, pp. 247–50. 23 Sassier, Louis vii, pp. 58–61; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 139–41; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 71–73. 24 Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, ch. 34, p. 280. (Translation: Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead, pp. 156–57). Laurent, ‘Un tour d’Aquitaine royal à l’été 1137’, p. 225. 25 La chronique de Morigny, ed. by Mirot, Book iii, 2, p. 68. Cf. Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 140; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 71–72. A Translation of the Chronicle of the Abbey of Morigny, trans. by Cusimano, Book iii, 2, pp. 126–27. 26 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, pp. 192–211; Morelle, ‘Les chartes de Suger de SaintDenis’, no. 10, pp. 250–51. Cf. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, pp. 334–39; Maines, ‘Good Works, Social Ties’, pp. 79–80. 27 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 195. A similar wording can be found in Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, ch. 27, p. 212 (Psalms 112. 7–8). (English translation: Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead, p. 124). 28 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 195 (Psalms 115. 3). 29 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 197.
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Notably, Suger did not believe his soul could be saved without assistance. He thus stipulated that during his lifetime, and then after his death, a daily mass in honour of the Holy Spirit be celebrated at chapter for the forgiveness of his sins: ‘[…] to celebrate each day the mass of the Holy Spirit, so that the Holy Spirit, the comforter, who is the remission of all sins, might remit sins for me’ ([…] omni die missam de Spiritu sancto celebrari, ut Spiritus sanctus paraclytus qui est remissio omnium peccatorum nobis peccata remittat).30 On the anniversary of Suger’s death, every ordained monk should celebrate a mass, while non-ordained monks should recite fifty Psalms; in recompense, they would receive a lavish meal. The remission of Suger’s sins was to be served by the convent’s decision to provide a sumptuous meal for the poor on his anniversary. The canons of the nearby church of St-Paul, as well as the chaplains, provided that they celebrated his anniversary, would enjoy a sumptuous repast. The abbey’s rich network of priories would also partake in the memorial and celebrate the anniversary of his death, so that Suger would be remembered throughout the land (ubique terrarum).31 The charter mentioned specifically the daughter houses of Argenteuil, St-Denis de l’Estrée, Corbeil, La Celle, and Lièpvre. While lay nobles secured their memory through glorious deeds that posterity would praise in heroic epics, Suger recognized that his memoria depended on the prayers of monks. Memoria for Suger had a different valence than it did for a nobleman. Its purpose was not to assure worldly glory, but rather to enable the resurrection that changed death into eternal life. The thought of his own death did not fill Suger with confidence born of unwavering faith, but rather with fear: The day he departed from life would be a ‘die[s] terroris, calamitatis et miseriae’ (day of terror, calamity, and wretchedness), for Suger’s salvation depended on God’s judgement alone.32 Prayers were meant to appease the Lord. Therefore he made every effort to remain alive in the memory of the monks. In the end, he even threatens that on Judgement Day the monks themselves will need to render account before God to show they had prayed for him.33 The Denigration of his Predecessor
In order to justify these instructions, Suger pointed to the many good works he had undertaken for the monastery. He specifically mentioned his building activity — including the ‘novi et magni aedificii aecclesiae augmentatio’, the construction of a new guest house, and the restoration of the dormitory and refectory. He concluded by saying: ‘These works, above all, that we leave behind us, [are] in the hopes of the blessing and devotion of future monks’ (Potissimum enim haec reponimus ut successorum fratrum et benivolentiam et devotionem acquiramus).34 The arrangement 30 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 197. 31 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 205. 32 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 199. 33 ‘[…] sicut responsuri in extremo districti judicii die […]’. Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 209. 34 Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 8, p. 201.
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is, thus, a do ut des. Suger can expect benevolent prayers because he has rendered outstanding services to the monks and his abbey. The preface to his account of his leadership, the De administratione, is also revealing.35 The monks had asked him to record his efforts for the monastery, ‘calamo et atramento posteritati memoriae reservare’ (to preserve, in pen and ink, for the memory of posterity). The preface continues: ‘For this one thing they promised us two in return: by such a record we would deserve the continual fervor of all succeeding brethren in their prayers for the salvation of our soul; and we would increase, through this example, their zealous solicitude for the good care of the church of God’ (Ex hoc uno nobis duo repromittentes: tali notitia fratrum succedentium omnium jugem orationum pro salute animae nostrae mereri instantiam, et circa ecclesiae Dei cultum hoc exemplo eorum excitare bene zelantem sollicitudinem).36 Suger acceded to his brethren’s requests. Again, he hoped the monks’ prayers for his salvation would be decisive, which is why Suger foregrounded himself repeatedly in his writings. The evidence for this tendency is too extensive to present fully here, but the examples provided confirm Georg Misch’s assessment: ‘You can see here that “blessed memory”, what is important to him […] had nothing to do with posthumous glory in itself ’.37 We see also this in his account of his building activities. Before turning to this, however, let us first explore how Suger was not above distorting facts to the advantage of his reputation. Suger’s claims about his own accomplishments were often not strictly accurate. On a number of occasions he took credit for the achievements of his predecessor, Abbot Adam.38 An example was the matter of the monastery’s properties in Berneval, Normandy. When Adam established the Anniversary for King Dagobert in 1108, he earmarked income from Berneval to finance it.39 The provost of Berneval, appointed from St-Denis, had collected the income but neglected to deliver the funds over to the monastery, so Adam was forced to bring him to trial. Suger does not appear to have played any role in these events. But when one reads his account of the Berneval matter, we learn not only that he, Suger, had initiated the action against the provost, but also that he had subsequently assigned the recovered income to Dagobert’s Anniversary.40 Abbot Adam’s intervention is not mentioned. The same thing can be said of Beaunela-Rolande in the Gâtinais. In 1113 Adam obtained a charter from Louis VI renouncing his consuetudo injusta in Beaune.41 The king referred to Beaune explicitly as villa Sancti Dyonisii, whereas the year before he had spoken of it as villa nostra.42 It was thus Adam
35 Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, p. 54. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 41. 36 Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, p. 54. 37 Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, p. 336: ‘Man sieht hier, daß das “selige Andenken”, um das es ihm […] zu tun war, an sich nichts mit Nachruhm zu tun hatte’. 38 For the following, see Große, ‘L’abbé Adam’, pp. 35–37, 42. 39 Barroux, ‘L’anniversaire de la mort de Dagobert’, pp. 149–50. See Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 90. 40 Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book i, 30, pp. 108–10. 41 Recueil des actes de Louis vi, ed. by Dufour, no. 91, p. 202. 42 Recueil des actes de Louis vi, ed. by Dufour, no. 66, p. 142.
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who had regained possessions alienated from the monastery by the king. But Suger described in detail how it was he, Suger, who reorganized the previously-alienated property in Beaune.43 Here too he neglects to credit Adam with the recovery of the property. Similarly, Suger claimed to have founded a priory, Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Essonnes, and to have had new buildings erected for the monks there.44 But as early as 1111, eleven years before Suger was made abbot, a charter from Count Odo of Corbeil speaks of the cella beati Dionysii of Essones, ‘in honore sanctae Mariae semper virginis noviter constructa’.45 The priory apparently existed during Adam’s abbacy, and it was apparently Adam, not Suger, who undertook the construction there. Adam also endowed the Anniversary for Dagobert, the first king buried at St-Denis, in response to Philip I’s decision to be buried not at St-Denis, but at St-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury). It was important for Adam to show the new King, Louis VI, that St-Denis was the proper necropolis of kings.46 His efforts succeeded, because in 1120 Louis donated the crown of his departed father to the monastery, saying that it was ‘jus et consuetudo’ (law and custom) to bequeath the regalia of the deceased kings to St-Denis.47 This had far-reaching consequences, since there is much evidence that the royal insignia went always to this very church, where the king was buried. And with this gift, Louis VI made it clear he considered St-Denis to be the burial church of the French kings. The charter with which Louis documented the transfer was probably drafted by Suger himself, so the abbot was certainly acquainted with its content. And despite this, in the Deeds of Louis the Fat Suger claimed that the crown was not given to St-Denis until the year 1124 — that is, during his own abbacy.48 In this way, Suger systematically suppressed Adam’s achievements, whom he himself calls his ‘pater spiritalis and nutritor’.49 The truth itself was not that important to Suger. What mattered to him was his place in the memoria of the monks.
The New Church The Doctrine of Saint Paul
Let us now turn to the building work to which Suger referred in his testament.50 Even in his youth, supposedly, he considered the work essential, since the old 43 Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book i, 21, pp. 90–92. 44 Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book i, 26, pp. 100–02. 45 Doublet, Histoire de l’abbaye de S. Denys, p. 845. 46 Große, ‘L’abbé Adam’, pp. 34–35, 42. 47 Recueil des actes de Louis vi, ed. by Dufour, no. 163, pp. 334–38. Cf. Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 104–05. 48 Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, ch. 28, pp. 226–28. Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead, p. 131. 49 Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, ch. 27, p. 208. 50 See above at n. 34. There is extensive literature on Suger’s building activities, among which we should mention the following: Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, pp. 105–289; Wyss, ed., Atlas historique de Saint-Denis, pp. 50–74; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 238–74; Brown, Saint-Denis. La basilique,
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church was too small for its many pilgrims. ‘When I was instructed by the brethren as a schoolboy, I used to hear of this; in my youth I deplored it from without; in my mature years I zealously strove to have it corrected’ (Quod cum scolaris puer inter fratres erudirer audiebam, extra juvenis dolebam, maturus corrigi affectuose appetebam).51 The start of the work on the west facade cannot be dated precisely, but occurred sometime between 1125 and 1137, probably around 1135.52 The west facade was consecrated on 9 June 1140, after which, on 14 July 1140, the foundation stone for the new construction of the east end, the choir, was laid. The choir, in turn, was consecrated a mere four years later, on 11 June 1144. King Louis VII and numerous spiritual and secular dignitaries attended both the laying of the foundation stone and the consecration.53 The west facade and the choir are generally considered the first examples of the early gothic style. Suger’s two treatises — De administratione and especially De consecratione — furnish a great deal of information about the construction of both the west facade and the east end of the church.54 In the prologue of De consecratione, he explains why he wrote this work: Therefore, being justified by faith, according to the Apostle, we have peace with God through our own inner peace ( Justificati igitur ex fide pace nostra interiori, secundum Apostolum, pacem apud Deum habentes); and in the manner of those who, out of gratitude, return of their own accord the gifts bestowed to those who have bestowed them, we make publicly known that one favor, singular among many, of Divine generosity: we have endeavored to commit to writing, for the attention of our successors (ad successorum notitiam stilo assignare elaboravimus), the glorious and worthy consecration of this church sacred to God and the most solemn translation of the most precious martyrs Denis, Rusticus and Eleutherius […]. We have put down why […] this was performed, in order to give thanks as worthy as we can to Divine grace for so great a gift, and to obtain, both the care expended on so great an enterprise and for the description of so great a celebration, the favorable intercession of our Holy Protectors with God (ut et divine propitiationi pro tanto munere condignas pro posse nostro gratiarum actiones referamus, et sanctorum protectorum nostrorum, tam pro impensa tanti operis cura quam pro tante solempnitatis adnotatione, opportunam apud Deum obtineamus intercessionem).55
pp. 77–260; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 124–48; Plagnieux and Wyss, ‘Les grands travaux de Suger’, pp. 51–65, 474. 51 Suger, Écrit sur la consécration, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, ch. 2, p. 10. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans. and ann. by Panofsky, p. 89. 52 Plagnieux and Wyss, ‘Les grands travaux de Suger’, p. 54; Plagnieux, ‘L’avant-nef de Suger’, p. 51. 53 On the consecration of the west facade and the laying of the foundation stone and consecration of the choir, see Plagnieux and Wyss, ‘Les grands travaux de Suger’, pp. 56, 60. 54 On these two writings, see Speer, ‘Abt Sugers Schriften’, pp. 23–38. 55 Suger, Écrit sur la consécration, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, ch. 1, p. 6. Translation: Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 85. The report De administratione is based on a similar motif: ‘by such a record we would deserve the continual fervor of all succeeding
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Suger was thus guided by three motives. First, it was important to record his deeds for his successors. Once again, he wanted to secure his posthumous fame. But he considered the completion of the building projects to be above all a gift from God, to whom he offers thanks through his account. He also hoped to secure the intercession of the monastery’s saints before God in recognition for his efforts in the construction of the new buildings and also for writing an account of the process. It is worth noting that he opened his explanation by quoting Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which constitutes the core statement of the Apostle’s doctrine of justification: Man is justified by his faith in Jesus Christ, not by merit, but by grace.56 Although Suger spoke of ‘inner peace’ (pax nostra interior), he was never able to find it. In fact, he was unable to embrace the Apostle’s statement of grace by faith alone. Rather, he effected works through which he hoped to be able to depend on the intercession of the saints at the Day of Judgement. Here, Suger reveals much of his religious sensibility. Plagued by doubts, he felt no real assurance of salvation. The Builder
Suger was the builder of the new abbey church.57 He both initiated the work and also articulated its significatio.58 For example, Suger himself identified the twelve columns of the choir with the twelve apostles and the twelve columns of the ambulatory with the prophets.59 That said, it was a master craftsman, the magister operis,60 who would have executed Suger’s plan. It is even possible that several master craftsmen worked on the west facade and the choir in succession. Suger mentioned none of them by name. Instead, God was the author and executor of the work. It was God who provided him, Suger, with the necessary means to construct the buildings. The identity of the author and the work provides a sufficiency for the worker.61 In the Middle Ages, church construction entailed complex building and engineering processes, far exceeding those of secular buildings.62 These not only served the glory of God, but made the rank of the builder apparent to everyone while
brethren in their prayers for the salvation of our soul’. Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, p. 54. Translation: Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 41. 56 ‘Iustificati igitur ex fide pacem habeamus ad Deum per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum’ (Romans 5. 1). On Paul’s doctrine of justification, see Kertelge, ‘Rechtfertigung’, pp. 288–97. 57 For the role of the builder, see Binding, Baubetrieb im Mittelalter, pp. 15–30; Binding, Der früh- und hochmittelalterliche Bauherr. 58 Binding, Was ist Gotik?, p. 54. 59 Suger, Écrit sur la consécration, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, ch. 9, p. 30. Cf. Reudenbach, ‘Säule und Apostel’, pp. 344–45; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 29–30; Plagnieux and Wyss, ‘Les grands travaux de Suger’, p. 62; Deremble, ‘Le programme iconographique de Suger’, p. 166. 60 Binding, Was ist Gotik?, pp. 54–60; Binding, Baubetrieb im Mittelalter, pp. 236–67. 61 ‘Identitas auctoris et operis sufficientiam facit operantis’. Suger, Écrit sur la consécration, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, ch. 3, p. 12. Translation: Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 85. 62 See Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 29.
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simultaneously working to secure his soul’s salvation. Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim had expressed this idea on the occasion of the foundation of the St-Michael’s Abbey in his episcopal city: In view of this I, Bernward […] have now thought for a long time about which building of merit, by which achievement I […] could earn heaven for myself. […] Now that I have ascended the throne of the Church of Hildesheim, I wanted to put into practice what I had long planned, that is, I wanted to give my name a posthumous memory under the title of having built churches, endowed services in them, and given all my possessions to the Lord.63 Haec ergo considerans Bernwardus […] et diuturna meditatione volvens, qua meritorum architectura, quove rerum precio possem mercari caelestia […]. Inthronizatus Bennopolitanae aecclesiae, quod diu conceperam animo, opere complere volebam, videlicet beatae memoriae tradere titulum nominis mei, aecclesias struxisse, ac officia Deo servientium inibi ordinasse, omnemque facultatulam meam Domino lucrasse. The building activity of bishops and abbots met approval by contemporaries.64 Hagiographies and biographies praised them, since construction was one of the duties of the office, legitimizing its holder and underlining his exemplary conduct. A bishop or abbot who built a new church or rebuilt an existing one served both the glory of God and benefited the faithful. Building churches was an act of love and charity. A prelate’s devotion to his church thus found expression in construction projects. And these projects provided the prelate with some reassurance, as he was erecting a memorial to himself, through which in turn he might hope to secure his soul’s salvation. In general, such buildings were completed rapidly. This was also true of the projects of Suger, who began work on the apse immediately after the consecration of the west facade.65 Not only did Suger ensure through his writings that his name would be associated with the new building, he also immortalized himself in the two singularly most prominent spaces of the church: the west facade and the choir. In the lower register of the tympanum of the central portal, he is depicted among the resurrected, kneeling and praying at the feet of Christ.66 And in the axial chapel at the east end, he kneels at the feet of the Virgin Mary, at the bottom of the window dedicated to the Annunciation: above his head is written the name Sugerius abbas.67 In this vein, we must also mention the verse inscriptions affixed on the church itself and on some
63 Thangmar, Vita Bernwardi, ed. by Pertz, ch. 51, pp. 779–80. Cf. Binding, Baubetrieb im Mittelalter, p. 16. 64 For the following, see Giese, ‘Zur Bautätigkeit von Bischöfen und Äbten’, pp. 388–438; Binding, Der früh- und hochmittelalterliche Bauherr, pp. 218–44. 65 Plagnieux and Wyss, ‘Les grands travaux de Suger’, pp. 56–60. 66 Crosby and Blum, ‘Le portail central de la façade occidentale’, pp. 220–21; Berné, ‘Le programme iconographique’, p. 56. For the following, see also Maines, ‘Good Works, Social Ties’, pp. 77–79. 67 Lautier, ‘Les vitraux du xiie siècle’, pp. 192–93.
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of its liturgical instruments.68 It can be assumed that Suger himself formulated them; their content does not, as Erwin Panofsky once argued, draw upon the philosophy of the Pseudo-Dionysius,69 but rather grows out of deeply rooted ecclesiastical and literary traditions.70 Suger refers to himself in two consecration inscriptions in the church. On the west facade, in gold-plated copper letters, he includes these lines: For the splendor of the church that has fostered and exalted him, / Suger has labored for the splendor of the church. / Giving thee a share of what is thine, O Martyr Denis, / He prays to thee to pray that he may obtain a share of Paradise. / The year was the One Thousand, One Hundred, and Fortieth / Year of the Word when this structure was consecrated.71 Ad decus ecclesiae, quae fouit et extulit illum, / Suggerius studuit ad decus ecclesiae. / Deque tuo tibi participans martyr Dyonisi, / Orat ut exores fore participem Paradisi. / Annus millenus et centenus quadragenus / Annus erat Verbi quando sacrata fuit. He mentions himself here as the building’s initiator and asks the monastery’s patron, Saint Denis, to intercede for him. Herewith we find entwined the two elements key to Suger’s thinking: the augmenting of fame twinned with the concern for intercession on the Day of Judgement. If the inscription refers to the consecration of the western complex, it also points out Suger’s role in the epitaph at the choir: ‘And bright is the noble edifice […] / Which stands enlarged in our time, / I, who was Suger, being the leader while it was being / accomplished’ ([…] claret opus / Nobile quod constat auctum sub tempore nostro; / Qui Sugerus eram, me duce dum fieret).72 William, monk of St-Denis and Suger’s personal secretary who wrote a biography of him after his death, later claimed that the abbot wanted to lead an inconspicuous life without false ambition.73 Since building work was expected of him, he felt justified, perhaps even obliged, to emphasize his achievements in this. Peter the Venerable,
68 Linscheid-Burdich, ‘Beobachtungen zu Sugers Versinschriften’, pp. 112–46. 69 Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, pp. 21–25. 70 Linscheid-Burdich, ‘Beobachtungen zu Sugers Versinschriften’, pp. 112–46. The argument that Suger had been strongly influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius has been convincingly rejected by Markschies, Gibt es eine ‘Theologie der gotischen Kathedrale’?, pp. 46–60. 71 Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book ii. 4, p. 116. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 47. Cf. Linscheid-Burdich, ‘Beobachtungen zu Sugers Versinschriften’, pp. 113–14. 72 Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book ii. 5, p. 120. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 51. Cf. Linscheid-Burdich, ‘Beobachtungen zu Sugers Versinschriften’, pp. 114–20. Further inscriptions: Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, Book ii. 4, p. 116, ii. 9, p. 124, ii. 12, p. 132, ii. 19, p. 152; cf. Linscheid-Burdich, ‘Beobachtungen zu Sugers Versinschriften’, pp. 124–26, 128–30, 144–46. 73 ‘Illud declinabat summopere ne quicquam agere videretur quod in habitu vel vite genere appareret notabile. Viro quippe bono simulationem judicabat indignam et ambitionem perversa, ut ait Stoïcus, sequi via, minus arbitrabatur honestum’. Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book ii, p. 323.
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the abbot of Cluny, would also say that Suger built not for himself but for God.74 And yet, Suger’s wish to associate his name with the new building in perpetuity was not at first fulfilled: When the nave was rebuilt in the thirteenth century, the monks claimed that the church had stood unchanged since the time of Dagobert. It was only in the seventeenth century that Jacques Doublet uncovered Suger’s instrumental role in the church’s construction and the history of architecture.75
The Political Role Let us reconsider Suger’s choir.76 The reliquary shrine containing the relics of Saint Denis and his companions was located within it. The altar of Saint Denis was situated directly in front of the reliquary, separated by a barrier. The area around the shrine was accessible to the laity so that pilgrims could process by it. In contrast, the function of the altar of Saint Denis is unclear. Suger himself says that ‘summi pontifices et persone auctentice’ could celebrate mass there.77 In the liturgy of the convent, the stalls of which were not moved into the choir but remained in the transept and nave of the older Abbey church, the Saint Denis altar played hardly any role, not even as a matutinal altar. It is possible that this separation of the choir (with the reliquary shrine and the altar of Saint Denis) from the convent resulted from Suger’s desire to reserve the choir for especially solemn acts and ceremonies.78 These would have included masses celebrated by the pope during visits to St-Denis, but also the ceremonial retrieval of the Oriflamme and the display of the shrine at the start of military campaigns. Saint Denis’s importance to the monarchy was further expressed by the fact that Louis VII himself carried the shrine containing the relics from the crypt into the new choir during its consecration ceremony in 1144.79 The Forged Diploma of Charlemagne
This brings us to the question of what political role Suger wanted to play. His own reputation was closely interwoven with that of his church. Any increase in St-Denis’s fame redounded to his own. And he used the French crown, which he sought to tie tightly to the abbey, to enhance St-Denis’s reputation, not the other way around. His obligation was always, first and foremost, to Saint Denis and his church.80 As evidence for this political orientation, let us first look at the diploma that Charlemagne
74 ‘Omnes, inquit, nos homo iste condemnat, qui non ipse sibi ut nos, sed Deo tantum edificat’. Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book ii, p. 329. Cf. Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 251. 75 Inglis, ‘Remembering and Forgetting Suger’, pp. 219–43. 76 For the following, see Jacobsen, ‘Liturgische Kollisionen im Kirchenbau’, pp. 201–03, 207–10. 77 Suger, Écrit sur la consécration, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, ch. 10, p. 34. 78 Jacobsen, ‘Liturgische Kollisionen im Kirchenbau’, pp. 209–10. See also below at n. 137. 79 Suger, Écrit sur la consécration, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, ch. 14, p. 48. 80 Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 21, 113.
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allegedly issued to St-Denis in 813. We refer to it as D 286, as it carries the number 286 in the edition of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.81 Since its content echoes the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, its meaning bears on a context broader than just St-Denis. In a seminal article, Elizabeth A. R. Brown explicated the role of the Pseudo-Turpin legend in the historiography of St-Denis, always mindful of the forged diploma of Charlemagne.82 It is known only through Doublet’s seventeenth-century edition and no manuscript copy survives,83 leading Brown to suggest that it is itself a modern counterfeit: ‘Doublet may possibly have invented the diploma himself. If he did not, when and why was it created? Whoever fabricated it was, as others have shown, intimately familiar with the abbey’s muniments and texts’.84 That said, it is my contention that the forger was actually Suger. But first, we must say a few words of the diploma’s content, which confers extensive privileges on the Abbey of St-Denis. To summarize, the document decrees that: 1. All French kings, archbishops, and bishops must show the Church of St-Denis (the ‘mater ecclesiae’ [mother church]) and her abbot the honour they deserve; all inhabitants of the kingdom of the Franks should revere it as the principal church of the kingdom; the abbot has primacy over all prelates: ‘Clearly that all the Frankish kings, all of the archbishops and bishops, both present and future, on account of the love of God and the honour and reverence of our savior Jesus Christ, should bear in veneration the mother church of our Lord Denis as our particular protector and also hold in reverence the venerable abbot of that same saint and sacred place and we wish and desire that she be venerated as the head of all the churches of our kingdom (caput omnium ecclesiarum regni nostri) by all of our worshipers of Christ of that same kingdom and that same abbot have and hold primacy over all prelates’ ([…] videlicet quod omnes Franciae reges, omnes archiepiscopi et episcopi tam praesentes quam et futuri ob amorem domini dei et nostri salvatoris Iesu Christi honorem ac reverentiam deferant venerandae matri ecclesiae domni Dionysii peculiaris protectoris nostri ac venerabili abbati eiusdem sancti et sacri loci eamque ut caput omnium ecclesiarum regni nostri ab omnibus eiusdem regni nostri christicolis venerari et eumdem abbatem super omnes praelatos primatem haberi et teneri volumus ac desideramus).85 2. The French king must be crowned at St-Denis. The abbot is responsible for confirming the promotion of archbishops and bishops, and only with his consent may the pope accept or reject their elections: ‘We also prohibit that our successor kings of France be crowned in a place other than the oft-mentioned church of Lord Denis, and we prohibit that nomination of archbishops or bishops be confirmed, or that they be received at the holy seat of blessed Peter, or that they be condemned without the assent and counsel of the abbot’ (Prohibemus insuper, ne 81 Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 286, pp. 428–30. 82 Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, pp. 51–88. 83 Doublet, Histoire de l’abbaye de S. Denys, pp. 725–27. 84 Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, pp. 70–71. In research, dating is quite controversial; cf. Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, pp. 53–54 n. 9. 85 Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 286, p. 429.
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successores nostri Franciae reges alibi quam in ecclesia saepe fati domni Dionysii sint coronati nec archiepiscopi et episcopi confirmati aut ad sacram beati Petri sedem recepti et damnati absque assensu et consilio abbatis).86 3. The emperor places the regalia of his power on the altar of the saints, transfers his kingdom to Saint Denis, and receives it from God and the saint as a fief. To signify this externally, he offers four gold Byzants: ‘But after the many good things donated to that same church, and after the many privileges conceded by us, I, Charles king of the Franks, removed my royal diadem from my own head and placed it upon the altar of the holy martyrs, and I said all these things to those who were present to hear it: “Oh most saintly Lord Denis, I gladly deprive myself of these royal insignia and ornaments of the Frankish kingdom, so that you may have, keep and possess the royal rule in the future. And as a sign of this I give you four gold Byzants, so that all present and future ones may know and recognize that I hold the Frankish kingdom solely from God and from you, and with your help and the help of your companions and supported by your merits I defend it with the double-edged sword […]”’ (Post vero multa eidem ecclesiae bona per nos oblata ac concessa privilegia ego Karolus Francorum rex deposito de capite meo regni diademate et sanctorum martyrum altari superposito talia cunctis qui aderant audientibus dixi: Sanctissime domine Dionysi hiis regni Franciae regiis insigniis et ornamentis libenter me spolio, ut deinceps eius regale habeas, teneas atque possideas dominium et in signum rei quatuor modo aureos tibi offero bizancios, ut omnes tam praesentes quam et futuri sciant et agnoscant, quod a deo solo et a te regnum Franciae teneo tuoque ac tuorum sociorum fretus auxilio et suffragantibus meritis illud ancipiti gladio defendo […]).87 It is clear that the Charlemagne of this diploma not only elevated the status of the abbey, but also that of its abbot. The fact that this is a forgery is beyond question, but the date of the forgery is still controversial.88 I am guided by the chronological approach advanced by Manfred Groten: He dates the forgery to the first years of Suger’s Abbacy, sometime before 1129.89 Groten both elucidates stylistic similarities with Suger’s writings, but also demonstrates conclusively that another forgery in Charlemagne’s name in favour of St-Denis (D 282), which — at least according to Co van de Kieft — was drawn up in 1156, depends on D 286.90 If van de Kieft’s dating is correct, then D 286 was forged before 1156. Significant provisions of the diploma also are echoed in the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, the fourth book of the Liber Sancti
Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 286, p. 429. Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 286, p. 429. Cf. Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, pp. 53–54 n. 9. Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, pp. 8–9. Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 120 dates the document to ‘soon after 1124’, Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, p. 64, to 1129. 90 Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 282, pp. 420–22. Van de Kieft, ‘Deux diplômes faux de Charlemagne’, pp. 401–36; cf. Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, pp. 9–16, 20–26. 86 87 88 89
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Jacobi (the Codex Calixtinus), which was written between 1139 and 1173 to promote the cult of Saint James the Elder at Santiago de Compostela.91 In Chapters 19 and 30 of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, Charlemagne grants both St-Denis and Compostela rights similar to those in the alleged diploma of 813.92 Here too Groten shows that D 286 served as a model for the Pseudo-Turpin legend.93 The clause that the king should only be crowned at St-Denis gives a further clue as to the date of the forgery.94 Although Charlemagne had been anointed by Pope Stephen II at St-Denis in 754 together with his father, Pippin the Younger, and his brother Carloman, St-Denis had not emerged as the traditional coronation church. Rather it was Reims that served this function,95 a claim supported by the papacy when, in 1089, Pope Urban II granted Archbishop Reynaud the right of consecrating the Frankish kings (Francorum reges consecrandi).96 But after Philip I’s death in 1108, this seemed to be open for debate.97 A disputed election for archbishop in Reims, in which the king’s preferred candidate failed to win, led the papacy to place the city under interdict. Louis VI, who had been elected to succeed his father during Philip I’s lifetime but had not yet been consecrated, chose to be anointed instead in Orléans by the archbishop of Sens.98 Then, at Louisʼ request, Ivo of Chartres furnished a treatise designed to establish the legitimacy of coronation somewhere other than Reims.99 For one, Ivo argued that the privilege granted to the archbishop of Reims by Urban II had not been promulgated by a General Council, and therefore lacked authority.100 In this context, the provision in the Charlemagne-diploma that the Frankish king should be crowned at St-Denis makes sense. After 1108, the question of where the king should be crowned was an open question. Apparently, the forger knew of Ivo’s tract. For, unlike Urban IIʼs privilege, Charlemagneʼs decree was proclaimed at a General Council: Therefore, let your greatness and your nobility know that after we have summoned archbishops, bishops, abbots, counts, princes and nobles of our realm to a General
91 For the Liber Sancti Jacobi, see Herbers, Liber Sancti Jacobi, col. 1948. 92 Liber Sancti Jacobi: Codex Calixtinus, ed. by Herbers and Santos Noia, book iv. 19, pp. 214–15, book iv. 30, p. 223. See the overview at Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, pp. 86–88. 93 Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, pp. 16–20. 94 For the following, see Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, pp. 1–3. 95 Demouy, Le Sacre du Roi, pp. 30, 58–65. On Saint-Denis’s claim to be the coronation church, see also Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 196–97. 96 Regesta pontificum Romanorum, ed. by Jaffé, no. 5415, p. 665. 97 Demouy, Le Sacre du Roi, pp. 60–62. 98 Bournazel, Louis vi le Gros, pp. 89–96. 99 Rolker and Schawe, ‘Das Gutachten Ivos von Chartres’, pp. 147–57. 100 ‘Si uero priuilegiis nititur Remensis ecclesia, illa priuilegia apud nos nulla sunt, quia nec in generalibus conciliis nobis audientibus sunt recitata, nec ad ecclesias nostras epistolari maturitate directa, et, ut manifestius dicamus, nulla nobis familiari uel publica relatione propalata’. Rolker and Schawe, ‘Das Gutachten Ivos von Chartres’, p. 155.
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Council, celebrated for many things and matters in the abbey of the thrice-blessed Denis, our venerable patron […].101 Quapropter cognoscat magnitudo seu nobilitas vestra, quod evocatis nobis archiepiscopis episcopis abbatibus comitibus principibus ac regni nostri proceribus in generali concilio in monasterio ter beati Dionysii peculiaris patroni nostri multis de causis et rationibus celebrato […]. And yet, the crown resumed the old tradition of favouring Reims when Philip, Louis VI’s eldest son, was consecrated there in 1129. And when Philip died prematurely in 1131, the coronation of the next son in line, Louis VII, again took place at Reims.102 The claims formulated in the forged Charlemagne-diploma therefore made sense only in the years before 1129.103 Coming to this conclusion, Manfred Groten has fulfilled the fundamental principle of diplomatics: always determine the purpose of a forgery when assessing whether a document is authentic.104 In determining the terminus post quem of the forgery D 286, we must account for two authentic charters granted by Louis VI to St-Denis.105 In the first, a diploma of 1120, the king offers his deceased father’s crown to the saint: […] since, according to the law and custom, at the death of the kings of France, the insignia of the kingdom are returned to the holy martyr, as to its guide and protector, so we have returned to him the crown of our father […].106 […] quoniam jure et consuetudine regum Francorum demigrantium insignia regni ipsi sancto martiri, tanquam duci et protectori suo, referuntur, coronam patris nostri ei reddidimus […]. The Pseudo-Charlemagne goes one step further in his alleged diploma by transferring his own regalia to the saint. The second of Louis VI’s documents of interest in this context dates from 1124. On the news of Emperor Henry V’s military campaign in France, the French king went to St-Denis to receive the banner of the Vexin (later known as the Oriflamme) from the altar. Louis declared that he held the county of the Vexin from the monastery’s saints as a fiefdom: ‘The county of the Vexin, which we hold in fief from them’ ([…] comitatus Vilcassini, quem nos ab ipsis in feodum habemus […]).107 Once again, the Charlemagne-diploma goes even further, declaring the entire kingdom to be a fief bestowed by God and Saint Denis.
101 Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 286, p. 429. Cf. Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, p. 26. 102 Sassier, Louis vii, pp. 15–23; Bournazel, Louis vi le Gros, pp. 94, 194–95. 103 Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, pp. 7–9. Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 136 also suspects that Suger wanted to make St-Denis the site of the royal consecration. 104 Cf. Schieffer, ‘Adnotationes zur Germania Pontificia’, p. 504. 105 Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, pp. 24–26. 106 Recueil des actes de Louis vi, ed. by Dufour, no. 163, p. 338. 107 Recueil des actes de Louis vi, ed. by Dufour, no. 220, pp. 458–66, at p. 465. Cf. Bur, Suger, abbé de Saint-Denis, pp. 115–16; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 111–21; Bournazel, Louis vi le Gros, p. 168; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 60–62.
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The Primacy of St-Denis and its Abbot
The precedence of the Abbey of St-Denis as mater ecclesia and caput omnium ecclesiarum of the Frankish kingdom, to which all due honour is owed, is also similarly formulated in a charter issued by Louis VI in 1113. According to that charter, the Church of St-Denis ‘is preeminent over the other churches in our kingdom and especially ought to be honoured by the French kings’ ([…] quę aliis ęcclesiis de regno nostro preminet et precipue debet a regibus Francorum honorari).108 The term preminere is also used in a decretal of Pope Leo I and (derived from it) an alleged letter of Pope Miltiades, which was transmitted by the Pseudo-Isidore to justify the primacy of the pope. Miltiades’ letter also reached the Canon Law Collection in Seventy-Four Titles of St-Denis, as it was known in the monastery. Since Louis VI’s charter was written by one of St-Denisʼs scribes, it is altogether possible that the monks, influenced by the content, used the term preminere deliberately. The forger of the Charlemagne-diploma may well have drawn from this material, describing St-Denis as the ‘mother church’ and ‘head of all the churches’ of the Frankish kingdom.109 This, then, should be understood as a response to Reims’s claims, articulated in an account of King Philip I’s coronation in 1059, where the archbishop of Reims associated his right to consecrate the king with his church’s ‘totius Galliae primatus’ (primacy over the whole of Gaul).110 In contrast to Louis VI’s diploma, the Charlemagne forgery makes not only the monastery and its patron saint, but also its abbot, a beneficiary: the abbot is owed honour because he is the primate of the French Church. It should also be pointed out that nobility would have to pay an annual tax ‘for its [i.e of the church] augmentum from the building of the most excellent king Dagobert up to the Crucifix’ ([…] pro illius augmento ab aedificio Dagoberti regis excellentissimi usque ad crucifixum).111 The augmentum here probably refers to the porch erected by Charlemagne at the West End over his father Pippin’s tomb.112 Perhaps this provision was inserted to justify a demand for taxes for the building projects that Suger had planned. We know that as of 1125 at the latest, Suger was collecting funds ‘consecrated to the expense for renovation and decoration of the entrance of the Monastery of St-Denis’.113 If we follow Groten’s argument that Suger forged the Charlemagne diploma before 1129, in the early years of his abbacy, then the diploma can be taken as evidence of the elevated claims Suger believed his monastery could make. St-Denis was not only the ‘first church’ in France, but also the rightful place of royal coronations. In order
108 Recueil des actes de Louis vi, ed. by Dufour, no. 89, pp. 196–98, at p. 198. On the following, see Große, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König, pp. 192–94. 109 For an overview of the vast meaning of the term mater ecclesia, see Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, ed. by Niermeyer, van de Kieft, and Burgers, p. 862. 110 Coronatio Philippi i, ed. by Bouquet, p. 32. Cf. Groten, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen’, pp. 30–31. 111 Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Mühlbacher, no. 286, p. 429. 112 On this augmentum, see Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, p. 72; Wyss, ed., Atlas historique de Saint-Denis, p. 33. 113 ‘[…] ad introitum monasterii Beati Dyonisii renovandum et decorandum’. Suger, Chartes, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 2, pp. 166–75, at p. 171. Cf. Plagnieux, ‘L’avant-nef de Suger’, p. 51.
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to articulate the status of his church, Suger drew on the diplomas of Louis VI. But he pushed those claims one step further, granting not only the Church of St-Denis, but also its abbot, a preeminent position within the French Church: the abbot was France’s primat; the abbot had the right to confirm the promotion of bishops and archbishops; and the abbot controlled their access to the papacy. In his fundamental study of Suger’s charters, Laurent Morelle makes the point that Suger often did not refer to himself as the abbot of the monastery of St-Denis, but rather the abbot of Saint Denis or of the saint and his two companions: ‘Suger, abbot of the blessed Denis’, of ‘Saint Denis the Areopagite’, and of ‘the thrice-blessed Denis’.114 Thus his role was not confined to just the monastery, but actually radiated out to the whole kingdom, according to the provision in the Charlemagne-diploma that made Saint Denis the lord over the entire Frankish kingdom. In this context, it was inevitable that Suger would overstate the stature of the abbot in the Charlemagne diploma. But this did not result from Suger’s own personal ambition, but rather from his self-image as abbot of Saint Denis. That said, Suger had gone too far. In 1129, King Louis had his eldest son Philip and, after his death two years later Louis, consecrated not at St-Denis, but at Reims. The Charlemagne diploma had lost its value. This probably explains why the document left no further trace in the tradition of charters at St-Denis, even if there seem to have been further attempts in the thirteenth century to claim the royal coronation for St-Denis.115 The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle
Just how, we ask, did the author of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle know any of this material, since there are two passages in his text that appear to be based directly on the forgery.116 The alleged author of the Chronicle was a certain Aimeri Picaud from Poitou.117 It was to this region, and specifically to the priory of St-Denis-en-Vaux, that Suger’s secretary William retired after the abbot’s death.118 As his confidant, William may well have known the Charlemagne-diploma. We find echoes of the forgery in William’s Life of Suger. For instance, he refers to the primacy which the abbot of St-Denis is supposed to have held within the French Church: ‘At his arrival, the prelates rose, and among them he took the first place’ (Huic advenienti assurgebant presules, et inter illos primus residebat).119 Further, the stipulation in the diploma that the abbot needed to confirm the nominations of archbishops and bishops, and that they needed to show him due honour, corresponds to William’s own statement: ‘By
114 Morelle, ‘Les chartes de Suger de Saint-Denis’, p. 235. 115 Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries, pp. 31–32; Jordan, ‘The Historical Afterlife of Two Capetian Co-Kings’, pp. 120–21. 116 See above at n. 92. 117 See Moisan, ‘Aimeri Picaud de Parthenay’, pp. 27–34; however, we do not agree with the dating of the reception of the codex at Compostela (1139/1140) argued by A. Moisan. 118 On Guillaume, see Glaser, ‘Wilhelm von Saint-Denis’, pp. 257–322 and, more recently, Morelle, ‘Les chartes de Suger de Saint-Denis’, p. 225 with n. 34. 119 Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book i, p. 299.
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his decree, ecclesiastical honours were given, or sometimes taken away: for elected bishops obtained consecration by his assent; by his assent, abbots were ordained. Without any envy or shame, bishops submitted to him, honoured him, obeyed him’ (Hujus decreto ecclesiastici vel dabantur honores vel detrahebantur singulis; quippe cujus assensu consecrationem obtinebant electi pontifices, cujus nutu ordinabantur abbates. Absque ulla invidia, sine rubore aliquo ei subdebantur episcopi, ei deferebant, ei parebant).120 We can thus not dismiss the idea that Aimeri Picaud was familiar with the forgery through William, and used it in turn when composing the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle.121 St-Denis, propria beati Petri sedes
The effort to supplant Reims as the coronation church had to have been considered a failure by the time that Philip and Louis were anointed in Reims in 1129 and 1131. The forged Charlemagne-diploma also specified that the king held the kingdom as a fief of Saint Denis. Although in 1124 Louis VI had declared that as Count of the Vexin he was a vassal of Saint Denis,122 he had not recognized feudal dependence for the entire realm. In order to maintain this exaggerated claim, Suger seems to have taken a different path.123 The account of Paschal II’s 1107 meeting with Philip I and the future Louis VI at St-Denis, as found in the Life of Louis the Fat, which Suger wrote around 1144, is relevant to this question: King Philip and his son the lord Louis came there with joy to meet him as they had promised. For the love of God they humbled their royal majesty before his feet, in the way that kings bow down with lowered diadem before the tomb of the fisherman Peter. The lord pope lifted them up and made them sit before him like devout sons of the apostles. […] he petitioned them to bring aid to the blessed Peter and to himself, his vicar, and to lend support to the church. […] They extended their right hands to him as a sign of alliance, aid, and counsel, and put the kingdom at his disposal.124 Occurrit itaque ei ibidem rex Phylippus et dominus Ludovicus filius ejus gratanter et votive, amore Dei majestatem regiam pedibus ejus incurvantes, quemadmodum consueverunt ad sepulchrum piscatoris Petri reges submisso diademate inclinari, quos dominus papa manu erigens, tanquam devotissimos apostolorum filios ante se residere fecit. […] Beato Petro sibique ejus vicario supplicat opem ferre […]. Qui amicicie, auxilii et consilii dextras dederunt, regnum exposuerunt […].
120 Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book iii, p. 337. See Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 197. 121 Cf. Große, ‘Quels réseaux pour gouverner une abbaye?’, pp. 96–99. 122 Cf. above at n. 107. 123 For the following, see Große, ‘Saint-Denis und das Papsttum’, pp. 236–37. On the role of the papacy, also see Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 193–96. 124 Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, ch. 10, pp. 54–56. Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead, pp. 48–49.
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The relationship of the French king to the successor of Saint Peter is described here as a feudal relationship: Philip and Louis kneel before Saint Peter, offer him their hands, and promise advice and help. Like Charlemagne in the forged diploma D 286, Philip and Louis lay aside their crowns. The feudal lord is no longer Saint Denis, but rather Saint Peter himself. This relationship does not eliminate the ties to the Abbey of St-Denis. Suger clarifies this point by underscoring the parallels between the Holy See and his own monastery at several points in the Life of Louis the Fat.125 Paschal II had gone to St-Denis to meet with Philip and Louis ‘tanquam ad propriam beati Petri sedem’. And a full quarter century later Innocent II celebrated Easter in ‘ecclesia beati Dyonisii tanquam speciali filia’. At the altar, which Suger had built in front of the shrine in the newly built east end, the summi pontifices were to celebrate mass.126 The reference to St-Denis being ‘as it were at his own see of Saint Peter’ and his ‘special daughter’ resonates with the legal terms that underline the monastery’s exemption, which had been enforced against the bishop of Paris successfully only at the beginning of the twelfth century.127 In this way, Suger emphasized the close relationship between St-Denis and the Holy See, one which borders on equality. In this context, we must consider Innocent II’s Festkrönung (that is, a festal but not inaugural coronation, a ceremonial crown-wearing) at St-Denis in 1131. Innocent had not been able to stay in Rome during the schism with Anacletus and fled to France. After Louis VI and the French Church had recognized him as pope, Innocent set off to Liège to meet the German King, Lothair III. Once Lothair had also pledged his support, Innocent returned to France to celebrate Easter at St-Denis. He went first to the church of St-Denis de l’Estrée, purportedly the site of Saint Denis’s first burial, where Innocent was crowned with the Phrygian mitre. He then proceeded towards the abbatial church on a white horse and celebrated Easter mass. Suger describes this in such great detail as to imply that Innocent was only now, by dint of Louis VI’s and Lothair III’s recognition, rightful pope, crowned not in Rome but in the town of St-Denis.128 Finally, we should mention Lindy Grant’s argument comparing the events of 1124, when Louis the Fat retrieved the banner of the Vexin from the altar at St-Denis, with the Triclinium Mosaic at the Lateran Palace, which Suger would have known from one of his trips to Rome. Just as Peter bestows the vexillum upon Charlemagne, so Louis VI receives the vexillum from Saint Denis.129 Again, Suger draws parallels between Rome and St-Denis.
125 Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, ch. 10, p. 54; ch. 32, p. 262. Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead, pp. 48, 148. 126 See above at n. 77. 127 Schreiber, Kurie und Kloster im 12. Jahrhundert, pp. 47–56; Große, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König, pp. 123–26. 128 Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, ch. 32, pp. 262–64. (Translation: Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead, pp. 148–49). Cf. Große, ‘Saint-Denis und das Papsttum’, pp. 227–28, 235. 129 Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 117. Cf. also Demouy, Le Sacre du Roi, p. 46. For the Triclinium Mosaic, see Classen, Karl der Große, das Papsttum und Byzanz, pp. 54–57.
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Regency and Death
By placing Philip I and Louis VI’s 1107 encounter with Paschal II within the framework of feudal relationships,130 and at the same time drawing parallels between Rome and St-Denis, Suger makes the French crown dependent not only on Saint Peter but also on Saint Denis. In this way Suger maintained one of the claims that he himself had probably laid out in the forged diploma of Charlemagne: the feudal dependence of the Frankish realm on the patron of the monastery of St-Denis.131 But, from this theoretical construct, he also derived claims for himself as abbot of Saint Denis and his monastery. Achieving these claims became possible between the time Louis VII left for the Second Crusade in June 1147 and his return in November 1149.132 Louis had announced his decision to take the cross at his Christmas court in Bourges in 1145. Although Suger was said to have been hostile to the plan, at the Étampes court in February 1147 he was appointed, along with Count William II of Nevers, regent for the duration of the king’s absence. William was replaced by Count Ralph of Vermandois and Archbishop Samson of Reims when he entered the Carthusian Order. Ultimately Ralph and Samson both receded into the background in the Regency council. It was Suger who would play the leading role.133 Pope Eugenius III was present at St-Denis when Louis left for the Crusade. Having come to France both to prepare for the Crusade, and to avoid the opposition to him brewing in Rome, the pope was at St-Denis in 1147 to celebrate Easter.134 A Festkrönung of the pope took place on the occasion. According to Odo of Deuil, Louis VII attended mass and then asked for the Oriflamme and permission from Saint Denis to depart on crusade (‘Dum igitur a beato Dionysio vexillum et abeundi licentiam petiit […]’).135 But he received the Oriflamme only on his second visit, just before his departure: Meanwhile his mother and his wife and countless others went ahead to St-Denis. When the king arrived there presently, he found the pope and the abbot and the monks of the church gathered together. Then he prostrated himself most humbly on the ground; he venerated his patron saint. Indeed, the pope and the abbot opened the small golden door and drew out the silver reliquary a little way, so that the king might be rendered the more eager for his task by seeing and kissing the relic of him whom his soul venerated. Then, when the banner had been taken
130 See above at n. 124. 131 See above at n. 87. 132 Sassier, Louis vii, pp. 137–211. 133 For the regency, see Bur, Suger, abbé de Saint-Denis, pp. 271–94; Sassier, Louis vii, pp. 201–11; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 156–78; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 85–92. 134 Sassier, Louis vii, p. 160; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 157–59. 135 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici vii, trans. by Berry, book i, p. 16; Eudes de Deuil, La croisade de Louis vii, ed. by Waquet, book i, p. 25.
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from above the altar, after he had received the pilgrim’s wallet and a blessing from the pope, he withdrew from the crowd to the monk’s dormitory.136 Interim mater eius et uxor et innumeri alii ad beatum Dionysium praecurrunt. Quo ipse postmodum veniens, papam et abbatem et ecclesiae monachos invenit congregatos. Tunc ipse humillime humi prosternitur; patronum suum adorat. Papa vero et abbas auream portulam reserant et argenteam thecam paululum extrahunt, ut osculato rex et viso quem diligit anima sua alacrior redderetur. Deinde sumpto vexillo desuper altari et pera et benedictione a summo pontífice, in dormitorium monachorum multitudini se subducit. We do not know at which altar Eugene III celebrated the Easter mass. But the king’s second visit took place at the altar of Saint Denis, which thus fulfilled its function as the focal point for solemn acts.137 The martyr-shrine was probably brought out and placed on the same altar for the duration of Louis’s absence on crusade. Next, the king received the Oriflamme from the altar. Thus the choir — consecrated only three years before — was already serving as the site for acts of particular political significance, not only underlining the singular importance of Saint Denis to the crown, but also publicly demonstrating the close relationship between pope and abbot. Just how close this relationship was became apparent when Suger took over the regency. For Suger had initially opposed the decision of the Étampes court to name him regent, accepting it only at the appeal of Eugenius III. In the Life of Suger, written by his secretary William, we read: And because he considered this dignity as a burden rather than an honour, he refused it, to the extent he was allowed, and in no way agreed to accept it until being constrained by Pope Eugenius, who was present at the king’s departure, and to whom it was neither permitted nor possible to disobey.138 Quam ille dignitatem, quia honus esse potius quam honorem judicabat, quantum fas fuit, recusavit nec ad suscipiendum omnino consensit, donec ab Eugenio papa, qui profectioni regie presens affuit, cui resistere nec fas fuit nec possibile, tandem coactus est. After Louis’s departure, when riots broke out, which Suger promptly quashed, William wrote: ‘To punish them, the new ruler girded himself immediately with a double sword, one material and royal, the other spiritual and ecclesiastical; both having been entrusted to him under divine inspiration by the Supreme Pontiff ’ (In quorum ultionem dux novus gemino statim accinctus est gladio, altero materiali et regio, altero spirituali et ecclesiastico, utroque autem a summo sibi Pontifice divinitus
136 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici vii, trans. by Berry, book i, pp. 17–19; Eudes de Deuil, La croisade de Louis vii, ed. by Waquet, book i, p. 25. 137 See above at n. 78. 138 Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book iii, p. 333.
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commisso).139 While William foregrounded the pope’s role, Suger himself, in a letter addressed to the cathedral chapter of Chartres in 1149, was more reserved: Your discretion knows that the glorious king of the Franks, Louis, our dearest Lord, in undertaking for the love of God his illustrious pilgrimage, entrusted to us the burden of the administration of the kingdom, upon the advice of the archbishops, the bishops, and the notables of the kingdom, and not without the consent of the Lord pope.140 Novit discretio vestra quod gloriosus rex Francorum Ludovicus, karissimus dominus noster, famosam peregrinationem amore Dei suscipiens, archiepi scoporum et episcoporum ac regni optimatum consilio, nec sine domini papae assensu, curam amministrationis regni sui nobis commiserit. Regardless of whether André Graboïs was correct in thinking that the entire realm was placed under the pope’s protection during the Crusade and that Suger was ‘the vicar of the pope de jure et de facto’,141 the decision to accept the regency only after having consulted the pope was entirely in keeping with the tenor of Louis VI’s vita, that the kingdom was a fief of Saint Peter.142 William, who was familiar with Suger’s thinking, may have been channelling Suger in suggesting that the pope had bestowed on him both the secular and the spiritual sword. However, the planctus, drafted by the convent after Suger’s death to be read on his anniversary, said only that ‘King Louis, leaving for Jerusalem, entrusted specifically, on the advice of bishops and notables, the administration of the kingdom to his proven loyalty and his wisdom’ ([…] rex Ludovicus, Iherosolimam proficiscens, consilio pontificum et procerum experte illius fidei et solertie regnum specialiter regendum commisit).143 After his death, Suger’s soaring ambitions no longer mattered. The position of power that Suger had attained with the regency made him unpopular in some circles.144 Complaints about the abbot reached Louis VII on his return from the Holy Land.145 Within the abbey, a number of monks remained loyal to him — apparently kinsmen upon whom he could rely during his frequent absences. For a time after Louis’s return, Suger maintained influence at court. He was, for instance, able to secure his nephew Simon’s appointment to the influential office of Chancellor. But he had become too powerful for the king. By 1150, the king replaced Simon with Hugh of Champfleury. According to John of Salisbury, this was
Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book iii, p. 335. Suger, Lettres, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, no. 12, pp. 51–53, at p. 51. Graboïs, ‘Le privilège de croisade’, p. 464. See above at n. 124. Lecture pour l’anniversaire de l’abbé Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, p. 363; for this text, cf. Recueil des rouleaux des morts, ed. by Dufour, no. 14, pp. 213–14. 144 For the following, cf. Große, ‘Quels réseaux pour gouverner une abbaye?’, pp. 92–94. 145 ‘Fama siquidem percurrente, que cotidie et de bonis mala et de malis bona sua facilitate confingit, quedam de illo regiis suggesta sunt auribus, que regis animum simplicem et aliorum affectus ex suo metientem aliquantisper turbaverunt’. Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book iii, pp. 341–43. Cf. Sassier, Louis vii, p. 200; Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, p. 177.
139 140 141 142 143
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done ‘ex suspicione nominis odiosi’.146 The extent of Suger’s unpopularity at the end of his abbacy must have become clear after his death. William’s vita of Suger has an overtly apologetic flavour. The biographer notes aggressively that his praise must affect Suger’s opponents: ‘I believe I have already written about this venerable man more, no doubt, than his rivals would like, and there is no shortage of people for whom these facts, although very true, are repellent’ (Plura fortasse quam emuli cuperent de viro venerabili scripsisse jam videor, nec desunt quibus ista, licet verissima, nauseam generent).147 When the convent elected Suger’s successor, Louis VII admonished the monks to choose a candidate acceptable to him. The command not to elect an abbot from among Suger’s family members probably also came from the king.148 Suger’s attempt to make St-Denis the coronation church had failed. Its role as a royal necropolis also appeared to be in jeopardy when Louis VII chose to be buried instead at the Cistercian monastery of Barbeaux, which he had founded.149 Suger’s power was in the end consigned to the past.
The Individual Suger’s effort to underscore his personal achievements to contemporaries and posterity cannot be overlooked. He was the architect of his own fame. Was he, as Erwin Panofsky thought, ‘enormously vain’?150 We need not judge Suger by our own standards. It was not vanity or glory that motivated him, but a concern for his salvation. When he enhanced the prestige of St-Denis and linked the kingdom to the saint and his monastery, when he rebuilt the church, furnished it lavishly and provided for the needs of the monks, what he hoped for was the intercession of the saint and his companions on the Day of Judgement. His own writings and decrees, and the church windows and inscriptions, were all designed to ensure that his efforts were not forgotten. Only in this way could he make sure that the monks would remember him in prayer. Faith alone could not provide him with the certainty of salvation. Suger was a driven man who could find no rest, believing that he had to earn his soul’s salvation through works.151 He does not seem to have relied on the words of the Apostle Paul, whose disciple Saint Denis was believed to be: ‘Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Romans 5. 1). Stronger for him was the admonition in the Rule of Saint Benedict: ‘Only for
146 John of Salisbury, The Historia Pontificalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, ch. 44, p. 87. 147 Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book ii, p. 315. See also Guillaume, Vie de Suger, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book i, pp. 297–99, 301, 309. For William as propagandist of Suger’s fame, see Guenée, Du Guesclin et Froissart, pp. 33–37, 45–46, 146–47. 148 Wilmart, ‘Le dialogue apologétique’, ch. 16, p. 110. For the difficult legacy Suger left to his successor Odo, see Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, pp. 288–93. 149 Sassier, Louis vii, p. 473. 150 Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 29. This assessment was already rejected by Maines, ‘Good Works, Social Ties’, pp. 78, 86 n. 3. 151 Maines, ‘Good Works, Social Ties’, p. 77.
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one reason are we preferred in His sight: if we be found better than others in good works and humility’.152 But if the Benedictine rule also prescribes that one should keep silent about good works,153 Suger did not abide by that command. And so, in his efforts to secure his own memoria, he did not even shy away from falsehoods. He was silent about some of Adam’s accomplishments, claiming credit for himself. At the opening of this essay we quoted Jacques Le Goff ’s question: ‘Saint-Louis a-t-il existé?’ Asked of Suger, the answer is yes: We can certainly identify characteristics of Suger that defined him as an individual. If Suger identified himself with his abbey, he never lost his own sense of self.154 Quite the contrary: Already in his youth he had formulated a plan to rebuild the Abbey Church. Now, he thanks God for having reserved this task for his time as abbot..155 In this way, he fulfilled the prescription of the Benedictine rule ‘[…] by the prayer in which we ask God that His will be done in us’.156 God had chosen him, Suger. The prayers for the dead, to which he obligates the monastery for the sake of his soul, also underline his individuality. For only the inclusion of his name in prayer would ensure his memoria. In the remembrance of the dead, Suger as a person, as an individual, is the focus.157 In addition to his building programme, Suger’s most important achievement was to have tied Capetian kingship so closely to his monastery and its patron saint. Erwin Panofsky goes too far when he writes that ‘He wanted to strengthen the power of the Crown of France, and he wanted to aggrandize the Abbey of St-Denis’.158 The crown served him above all as an instrument to strengthen and elevate the abbey. In doing so, Suger built on Adam’s work. The close relationship of the ruler to Saint Denis found its most visible expression when Louis VI declared himself vassal of the saint in 1124. Suger sought to strengthen the position of the monastery and to assert his extravagant claims with the forged diploma of Charlemagne. But the diploma was not only about the status of the monastery and its patron, but also about the role of its abbot. This was new. And in this, we need not accuse Suger of glory or vanity. If we take another look at the Rule of Saint Benedict, we find that the abbot
152 La règle de saint Benoît, ed. and trans. by de Vogüé and Neuville, ch. ii, 21, p. 446. Translation: St Benedict’s Rule, trans. by Doyle, p. 10. 153 La règle de saint Benoît, ed. and trans. by de Vogüé and Neuville, ch. vi, 1, p. 470. 154 This, on the other hand, presumes Erwin Panofsky: ‘Completely fusing his personal aspirations with the interests of the “mother church”, he may be said to have gratified his ego by renouncing his identity: he expanded himself until he had become identical with the Abbey’. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 31. 155 ‘[…] tanto Deo sanctisque martyribus obnoxii quanto nostris temporibus et laboribus tam diu differendo agenda reservavit’. Suger, L’Œuvre administrative, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, book ii, 5, p. 118. Translation: Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 49. See also above at n. 51. 156 La règle de saint Benoît, ed. and trans. by de Vogüé and Neuville, ch. vii, 20, p. 478. Translation: St Benedict’s Rule, trans. by Doyle, p. 23. See also La règle de saint Benoît, ed. and trans. by de Vogüé and Neuville, ch. vii, 32, p. 480. 157 Neiske, ‘“Bei deinem Namen habe ich dich gerufen”’, pp. 96–106. 158 Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis, ed., trans., and ann. by Panofsky, p. 2.
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is the representative of Christ.159 In documents Suger often refers to himself as the abbot of Saint Denis, underlining his view that he was also the representative of the monastery’s patron saint. And thus it follows that he should demand for himself the first rank within the French clergy. As the representative of Saint Denis, who was also feudal lord of the king of France for the Vexin, it was Suger’s obligation to enhance the status of his monastery. Louis VI may not have recognized the claims advanced in the forged Charlemagne diploma. At this point, Suger may have sought to achieve his goals through the papacy instead. He succeeded in this aim when, during the Second Crusade, he assumed the regency, and made it dependent on the approval of the successor of Peter. As the representative of Saint Denis he stood at the head of the kingdom. But Suger had gone too far. His death relieved the king of a burden.
Works Cited Primary Sources Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, ed., trans., and ann. by Erwin Panofsky, 2nd edn by Gerda Panofsky-Soergel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, Ausgewählte Schriften: Ordinatio, De consecratione, De administratione, ed. by Andreas Speer and Günther Binding with Gabriele Annas, Susanne Linscheid-Burdich, and Martin Pickavé, 3rd edn (Darmstadt: Wissen, 2008) Atlas historique de Saint-Denis. Des origines au xviiie siècle, ed. by Michaël Wyss, Documents d’archéologie française, 59 (Paris: Éd. de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1996) Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen, ed. by Engelbert Mühlbacher, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Diplomata Karolinorum, 4 vols (Hannover: Hahn, 1906–1994), i (1906) Eudes de Deuil, La croisade de Louis vii, roi de France, ed. by Henri Waquet, Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades, 3, I (Paris: Geuthner, 1949) John of Salisbury, The Historia Pontificalis, ed. and trans. by Marjorie Chibnall, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) La chronique de Morigny (1095–1152), ed. by Léon Mirot, 2nd edn, Collection de textes, 41 (Paris: Picard, 1912) La règle de saint Benoît, ed. and trans. by Adalbert de Vogüé and Jean Neuville, Sources chrétiennes, 181. i (Paris: Cerf, 1972) Liber Sancti Jacobi: Codex Calixtinus, ed. by Klaus Herbers and Manuel Santos Noia (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1998)
159 ‘For he is believed to hold the place of Christ in the monastery’ (La règle de saint Benoît, ed. and trans. by de Vogüé and Neuville, ch. ii, 2, p. 440. Translation: St Benedict’s Rule, trans. by Doyle, pp. 7–8). Cf. Linscheid-Burdich, Suger von Saint-Denis, p. 205.
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L’Œuvre administrative, in Suger, Œuvres, ed., trans., and ann. by Françoise Gasparri, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge, 37, vol. i (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996), pp. 54–155 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici vii in Orientem, trans. by Virginia Gingerick Berry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948) Recueil des actes de Louis VI, roi de France (1108–1137), ed. by Jean Dufour, Chartes et diplômes, vol. i (Paris: Boccard, 1992) Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Martin Bouquet, 2nd edn, vol. xi (Paris: Palmé, 1876) Recueil des rouleaux des morts (viiie siècle-vers 1536), ed. by Jean Dufour, Recueil des Historiens de la France. Obituaires, série in -4o, 8, vol. v (Paris: Boccard, 2013) Regesta pontificum Romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum mcxcviii, ed. by Philipp Jaffé, 2nd edn by Samuel Loewenfeld, Ferdinand Kaltenbrunner, and Paul Ewald, vol. i (Leipzig: Veit, 1885) St Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries, trans. by Leonard J. Doyle (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1948) Suger, Chartes, in Suger, Œuvres, ed., trans. and ann. by Françoise Gasparri, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge, 41, vol. ii (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001), pp. 155–267 Suger, Écrit sur la consécration, in Suger, Œuvres, ed., trans. and ann. by Françoise Gasparri, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge, 37, vol. i (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996), pp. 2–53 Suger, Œuvres, ed., trans. and ann. by Françoise Gasparri, 2 vols, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge, 37; 41 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996–2001) Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Richard Cusimano and John Moorhead (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992) Suger, Vie de Louis vi le Gros, ed. and trans. by Henri Waquet, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge, 11 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1964) Thangmar, Vita Bernwardi episcopi Hildesheimensis, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 39 vols to date (Hannover: Harrassowitz, 1826–), iv (1841), 754–82 A Translation of the Chronicle of the Abbey of Morigny, France, c. 1100–1500, trans. by Richard Cusimano, Medieval Studies, 22 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2003) Secondary Works Annas, Gabriele, ‘Abt Suger von Saint-Denis (um 1081–1151). Eine historisch-biographische Skizze’, in Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, Ausgewählte Schriften. Ordinatio, De consecratione, De administratione, ed. by Andreas Speer and Günther Binding with Gabriele Annas, Susanne Linscheid-Burdich, and Martin Pickavé (Darmstadt: Wissen, 2008), pp. 67–111 Barroux, Robert, ‘L’anniversaire de la mort de Dagobert à Saint-Denis au xiie siècle. Charte inédite de l’abbé Adam’, Bulletin philologique et historique (jusqu’à 1715) du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1942–1943), 131–51 Benton, John F., ‘Introduction: Suger’s Life and Personality’, in Abbot Suger and SaintDenis. A Symposium, ed. by Paula Lieber Gerson (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), pp. 3–15
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Berné, Damien, ‘Le programme iconographique ambitieux et novateur de Suger’, in Naissance de la sculpture gothique, ed. by Damien Berné and Phillipe Plagnieux (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2018), pp. 55–61 Binding, Günther, Baubetrieb im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissen, 1993) ———, Der früh- und hochmittelalterliche Bauherr als sapiens architectus (Darmstadt: Wissen, 1998) ———, Was ist Gotik? Eine Analyse der gotischen Kirchen in Frankreich, England und Deutschland, 1140–1350 (Darmstadt: Wissen, 2006) Bournazel, Éric, Louis vi le Gros (Paris: Fayard, 2007) Brown, Elisabeth A. R., Saint-Denis. La basilique, Le ciel et la terre, 6 (Saint-Léger Vauban: Zodiaque, 2001) ———, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, in The Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St James, ed. by John Williams and Alison Stones, Jakobus-Studien, 3 (Tübingen: Narr, 1992), pp. 51–88 Bur, Michel, Suger, abbé de Saint-Denis, régent de France (Paris: Perrin, 1991) Cartellieri, Otto, Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, 1081–1151, Historische Studien, 11 (Berlin: Ebering, 1898) Classen, Peter, Karl der Große, das Papsttum und Byzanz: Die Begründung des karolingischen Kaisertums, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, 9 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1985) Crosby, Sumner McKnight, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis from Its Beginnings to the Death of Suger, 475–1151, ed. and completed by Pamela Z. Blum (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) Crosby, Sumner McKnight, and Pamela Z. Blum, ‘Le portail central de la façade occidentale de Saint-Denis’, Bulletin monumental, 131.3 (1973), 209–66 Demouy, Patrick, Le Sacre du Roi (Strasbourg: La nuée bleue, 2016) Deremble, Jean-Paul, ‘Le programme iconographique de Suger’, in Saint-Denis dans l’éternité des rois et reines de France, ed. by Pascal Delannoy and Jean-Paul Deremble, La grâce d’une cathédrale, 13 (Strasbourg: La nuée bleue, 2015), pp. 164–73 Doublet, Jacques, Histoire de l’abbaye de S. Denys en France (Paris: Nicolas Buon, 1625) Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain, Le roi est mort: étude sur les funérailles, les sépultures et les tombeaux des rois de France jusqu’à la fin du xiiie siècle, Bibliothèque de la Société française d’archéologie, 7 (Genève: Droz, 1975) Gasparri, Françoise, Suger de Saint-Denis: abbé, soldat, homme d’État au xiie siècle (Paris: Picard, 2015) Giese, Wolfgang, ‘Zur Bautätigkeit von Bischöfen und Äbten des 10. bis 12. Jahrhunderts’, Deutsches Archiv, 38 (1982), 388–438 Glaser, Hubert, ‘Beati Dionysii qualiscumque abbas. Studien zu Selbstbewußtsein und Geschichtsbild des Abtes Suger von Saint-Denis’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of München, 1957) Glaser, Hubert, ‘Wilhelm von Saint-Denis. Ein Humanist aus der Umgebung des Abtes Suger und die Krise seiner Abtei von 1151 bis 1153’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 85 (1965), 257–322 Görich, Knut, Die Ehre Friedrich Barbarossas. Kommunikation, Konflikt und politisches Handeln im 12. Jahrhundert, Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormoderne (Darmstadt: Wissen, 2001)
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Graboïs, Aryeh, ‘Le privilège de croisade et la régence de Suger’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 42 (1964), 458–65. Reprinted in Civilisation et société dans l’Occident medieval, Collected Studies, 174 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1983), no. 4 Grant, Lindy, Abbot Suger of St-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France (London: Longman, 1998) ———, ‘Qu’est-ce que l’architecture gothique? La perspective des mécènes’, in Qu’est-ce que l’architecture gothique? Essais, ed. by Arnaud Timbert (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2018), pp. 129–38 Große, Rolf, ‘L’abbé Adam, prédécesseur de Suger’, in Suger en question, Regards croisés sur Saint-Denis, ed. by Rolf Große, Pariser Historische Studien, 68 (Munich: De Gruyter, 2004), pp. 31–43 ———, ‘Quels réseaux pour gouverner une abbaye? Saint-Denis au milieu du xiie siècle’, in Faire lien: aristocratie, réseaux et échanges compétitifs. Mélanges en l’honneur de Régine Le Jan, ed. by Laurent Jégou, Sylvie Joye, Thomas Lienhard, and Jens Schneider, Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 132 (Paris: Publ. de la Sorbonne, 2015), pp. 91–99 ———, ‘Saint-Denis. Die Gegenwart der toten Könige’, in Wider das Vergessen und für das Seelenheil. Memoria und Totengedenken im Hochmittelalter, ed. by Rainer Berndt, Erudiri Sapientia, 9 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013), pp. 227–50 ———, ‘Saint-Denis und das Papsttum zur Zeit des Abtes Suger’, in L’Église de France et la papauté (xe-xiiie siècle). Die französische Kirche und das Papsttum (10.-13. Jahrhundert), ed. by Rolf Große, Études et documents pour servir à une Gallia Pontificia, 1 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1993), pp. 219–38 ———, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König: die Zeit vor Suger (1053–1122), Beihefte der Francia, 57 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002) ———, ed., Suger en question: regards croisés sur Saint-Denis, Pariser Historische Studien, 68 (Munich: De Gruyter, 2004) Groten, Manfred, ‘Die Urkunde Karls des Großen für St.-Denis von 813 (D 286), eine Fälschung Abt Sugers?’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 108 (1988), 1–36 Guenée, Bernard, Du Guesclin et Froissart: la fabrication de la renommée (Paris: Tallandier, 2008) Herbers, Klaus, Liber Sancti Jacobi, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. v (Munich: Artemis and Lexma, 1991), col. 1948. Inglis, Erik, ‘Remembering and Forgetting Suger at Saint-Denis, 1151–1534: An Abbot’s Reputation between Memory and History’, Gesta, 54.2 (2015), 219–43 Jacobsen, Werner, ‘Liturgische Kollisionen im Kirchenbau: Sugers Neubau von SaintDenis. Voraussetzungen und Folgen’, in Art, Cérémonial et Liturgie au Moyen Âge, ed. by Nicolas Bock, Peter Kurmann, Serena Romano, and Jean-Michel Spieser (Rome: Viella, 2002), pp. 191–210 Jordan, William Chester, A Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press: 2009) ———, ‘The Historical Afterlife of Two Capetian Co-Kings Who Predeceased Their Fathers’, in Louis vii and His World, ed. by Michael L. Bardot and Laurence W. Marvin, Later Medieval Europe, 18 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 114–25
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Kertelge, Karl, ‘Rechtfertigung II’, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. xxviii (Berlin: Aschendorff, 1997), pp. 286–307 Laurent, Sébastien-Abel, ʽUn tour d’Aquitaine royal à l’été 1137. Les voyages de Louis VII et de sa suite à l’occasion de son mariage avec Aliénor’, Revue historique du Centre-Ouest, 17.2 (2018), 211‒52 Lautier, Claudine, ‘Les vitraux du xiie siècle’, in Saint-Denis dans l’éternité des rois et reines de France, ed. by Pascal Delannoy and Jean-Paul Deremble, La grâce d’une cathédrale, 13 (Strasbourg: La nuée bleue, 2015), pp. 192–205 Le Goff, Jaques, Saint Louis, Bibliothèque des histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) Linscheid-Burdich, Susanne, ‘Beobachtungen zu Sugers Versinschriften in De administratione’, in Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, Ausgewählte Schriften. Ordinatio, De consecratione, De administratione, ed. by Andreas Speer and Günther Binding with Gabriele Annas, Susanne Linscheid-Burdich, and Martin Pickavé (Darmstadt: Wissen, 2008), pp. 112–46 ———, Suger von Saint-Denis: Untersuchungen zu seinen Schriften Ordinatio – De consecratione – De administratione, Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 200 (Leipzig: Saur, 2004) Maines, Clark, ‘Good Works, Social Ties, and the Hope for Salvation: Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis’, in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis. A Symposium, ed. by Paula Lieber Gerson (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), pp. 77–94 Markschies, Christoph, Gibt es eine ‘Theologie der gotischen Kathedrale’? Nochmals: Suger von Saint-Denis und Sankt Dionys vom Areopag, Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 1995, 1 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1995) Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus. Lexique latin médiéval – Medieval Latin Dictionary – Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, ed. by Jan Frederik Niermeyer, Co van de Kieft, and Jan W. J Burgers, vol. ii, 2nd edn (Darmstadt: Beck, 2002) Misch, Georg, Geschichte der Autobiographie, vol. 3,2,1 (Frankfurt am Main: SchulteBulmke, 1959), pp. 316–87 Moisan, André, ‘Aimeri Picaud de Parthenay et le Liber sancti Jacobi’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 143 (1985), 5–52 Morelle, Laurent, ‘Les chartes de Suger de Saint-Denis. Approches d’un corpus de diplomatique abbatiale’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 172 (2014), 217–60 Neiske, Franz, ‘“Bei deinem Namen habe ich dich gerufen”. Individuum und Seelenheil in der frühmittelalterlichen Klostergemeinschaft’, in Das Eigene und das Ganze: zum Individuellen im mittelalterlichen Religiosentum, ed. by Gert Melville and Markus Schürer, Vita regularis, 16 (Münster: Lit, 2002), pp. 96–106 Oexle, Otto Gerhard, ‘Aspekte der Geschichte des Adels im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in Europäischer Adel 1750–1950, ed. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Sonderheft, 13 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), pp. 19–56 Plagnieux, Philippe, ‘L’avant-nef de Suger et le contexte architectural du premier art gothique d’Île-de-France’, in Naissance de la sculpture gothique: Saint-Denis, Paris, Chartres 1135–1150, ed. by Damien Berné and Philippe Plagnieux (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais, 2018), pp. 51–53
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Plagnieux, Philippe, and Michaël Wyss, ‘Les grands travaux de Suger’, in Saint-Denis dans l’éternité des rois et reines de France, ed. by Pascal Delannoy and Jean-Paul Deremble, La grâce d’une cathédrale, 13 (Strasbourg: La nuée bleue, 2015), pp. 51–69 Reudenbach, Bruno, ‘Säule und Apostel. Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Architektur und architekturexegetischer Literatur im Mittelalter’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 14 (1980), 310–51 Rolker, Christof, and Marcel Schawe, ‘Das Gutachten Ivos von Chartres zur Krönung König Ludwigs VI.: Quellenstudium und Edition von Epistola 189’, Francia, 34.1 (2007), 147–57 Sassier, Yves, Louis vii (Paris: Fayard, 1991) Schieffer, Theodor, ‘Adnotationes zur Germania Pontificia und zur Echtheitskritik überhaupt’, Archiv für Diplomatik, 32 (1986), 503–45 Schmid, Karl, and Joachim Wollasch, ‘Die Gemeinschaft der Lebenden und Verstorbenen in Zeugnissen des Mittelalters’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 1 (1967), 365–405 Schreiber, Georg, Kurie und Kloster im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zur Privilegierung, Verfassung und besonders zum Eigenkirchenwesen der vorfranziskanischen Orden vornehmlich auf Grund der Papsturkunden von Paschalis ii. bis auf Lucius iii. (1099–1181), i, Kirchenrechtliche Abhandlungen, 65 (Stuttgart: Enke, 1910) Speer, Andreas, ʽLux mirabilis et continua. Remarques sur les rapports entre la spéculation médiévale sur la lumière et l’art du vitrail’, Revue d’Auvergne, 570 (2004), 85–97 ———, ‘Abt Sugers Schriften zur fränkischen Königsabtei Saint-Denis’, in Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, Ausgewählte Schriften. Ordinatio, De consecratione, De administratione, ed. by Andreas Speer and Günther Binding with Gabriele Annas, Susanne Linscheid-Burdich, and Martin Pickavé (Darmstadt: Wissen, 2008), pp. 13–66 van de Kieft, Co, ‘Deux diplômes faux de Charlemagne pour Saint-Denis, du xiie siècle’, Le Moyen Âge, 64 (1958), 401–36 Voss, Gerhard, ‘Marienverehrung. I. Historisch-theologisch’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. vi (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), cols 1378–79 Wilmart, André, ‘Le dialogue apologétique du moine Guillaume, biographe de Suger’, Revue Mabillon, 32 (1942), 81–118
Elisabeth van Houts
Suger, Orderic Vitalis, and the Vexin Some Observations on Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 2013*
Introduction Representations of the relationship between the duchy of Normandy (c. 911–1204) and the Kingdom of France in the early twelfth century, especially with regard to the Vexin, lie at the heart of Paris, Bibiothèque Mazarine MS 2013.* The manuscript was compiled at St-Denis, probably c. 1117–1125/1126, under the supervision of Abbot Suger. It contains a collection of historical texts that aimed to strengthen Capetian kingship while advancing the claims of his monastery. All texts concern in one way or another the history of the kings of France, Merovingians, Carolingians, and Capetians, centred on their royal domains rather than on the provinces governed by dynastic princes. Curiously, given Suger’s historical programme on behalf of the kings of France, there is one text celebrating the Capetain archenemies, the dukes of Normandy, the Gesta Normannorum Ducum. Why? The answer is provided by the question of the Vexin, the border area straddling Normandy and the Ile-de-France, which functioned as a sort of buffer zone between the dukes of Normandy and the Capetian kings. The county of the Vexin was split by the River Epte with the two parts now known as the Norman and the French Vexin. The argument set out here is that in the mid-1120s Suger developed his ideas about the comitatus Vilcassini as a fief of Saint Denis, in this case not the church but the saint, who had bestowed it on King Louis VI by giving him the banner of the Vexin. This St-Denis tradition of the Vexin went diametrically against Norman ideas about the comitatus [county], developed between the mid 1110s and 1130s, as expressed by Orderic Vitalis in his version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum and in his Ecclesiastical History and by others. A reconstruction of the development of these ideas as expressed in the Latin historiography of the time allows us to understand two things about Mazarine
* I am most grateful to Professors David Bates and Lindy Grant for having cast a critical eye over this paper, and to the editors of this volume, Jay Rubenstein and Cecilia Gaposchkin, whose editorial advice and guidance have been invaluable. Elisabeth van Houts is Honorary Professor of Medieval European History at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Emmanuel College.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 55-76 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122618
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2013 and its historical background better than before. First I will make some new suggestions about the motivation behind the compilation of the manuscript and why it includes only a dynastic history about Normandy and no other principality, and secondly how this throws light on the historical reality of the tense relationship between Henry I Duke of Normandy, who was also King of England, and Louis VI King of France, which centred on the Vexin.
Latin Historiography in Normandy Early medieval Normandy was a newly created principality in France in c. 911, after the takeover of Rouen by Rollo, a Norwegian-born Viking. It became not only a significant example of the rise and fall of a French principality, but also a significant one for the writing of Latin dynastic history.1 Besides being masters of politics, the descendants of Rollo, as rulers of Normandy, were champions of propaganda in that they commissioned skilled authors to proclaim the greatness of their achievements in France, England, and southern Italy.2 The first dynastic history of a regional principality in the form of a gesta chronicle (a genre thus far used mainly for popes, bishops, and abbots) was written c. 1000 by Dudo of St-Quentin, a native of the Vermandois.3 According to Dudo, he was commissioned by Richard I (r. 943–996) himself, whose request was then reinstated by his sons, the half-brothers Richard II (r. 996–1026) and Count Rodulph of Ivry.4 It consists of four books, of which the first traces the story of Hasting, a semi-legendary pagan Viking leader who harassed France in the late ninth century. Book ii sets out Rollo’s adventures in the North Sea area and his arrival in France culminating in his baptism, a condition set by Charles the Simple before he granted the duchy to him. Books iii and iv treat the reigns of Rollo’s son William Longsword (c. 928–943) and grandson Richard I. Although, as already noted, Dudo wrote at Richard I’s behest, the historical narrative is sketchy for the later part of Richard I’s reign, with nothing on Richard II. A shameless apology for Rollo’s dynasty, Dudo’s chronicle paints the Normans as Christ’s Chosen People sent to populate the barren soil of Normandy, devastated by Viking attacks. He also argues that Charles the Simple definitively granted Normandy in perpetuity to Rollo and his heirs: ‘terramque determinatam in alodo et in fundo, a flumine Eptae usque ad mare, totamque Britanniam de qua posset vivere’ (And he [King Charles the Simple] gave the specified territory from the River Epte to the sea as an allod and
1 Bates, Normandy before 1066; Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Formation of Norman Power; Bauduin, La première Normandie; Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy. 2 Shopkow, History and Community. 3 Dudo, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, ed. by Lair; Dudo, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen. Figure 2.1 shows the schematic development of the early chronicles of the dukes of Normandy. 4 Dudo, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, ed. by Lair, pp. 119–20; Dudo, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen, p. 6.
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property: and the whole of Brittany to live off).5 This grant, so Dudo argued further on, was confirmed c. 945 to Richard I by King Louis IV: manibus super phylacteria reliquiarum positis, propriis verbis fecit securitatem regni Ricardo puero, quod suus avus Rollo vi ac potestate, armis et praeliis sibi acquisivit. Ipse omnes episcopi, comites et abbates reverendi, principesque Franciae regni Ricardo puero innocenti, ut teneat et possideat, et nullis nisi Deo servitium ipse et successio ejus reddat. (And he [King Louis] placed his hands over the casket with relics and he guaranteed to the boy Richard in his own words the realm which his grandfather Rollo had won for himself by might and power and by arms and battles. He himself and all the venerable bishops, counts, and abbots and the princes of Francia’s realm [give it] to render service to none but to God.6) Known as the Historia Normannorum, it was written in the form of a prosimetrum text — that is, a prose text interspersed with numerous poems in various verse forms, which remained popular throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries.7 Fourteen manuscripts have survived, of which the oldest one comes from the monastery of Jumièges on the Seine.8 Benjamin Pohl’s recent study of Dudo’s work has shown that the original version of Dudo’s chronicle may have been illustrated, since traces of pen drawings have been discovered in a mid to late eleventh-century copy from Jumièges.9
William of Jumièges and the Gesta Normannorum Ducum In the late 1050s the monk William had made a start with a revision and update of Dudo’s chronicle, now known as the Gesta Normannorum Ducum.10 He tells us in his dedicatory letter to William the Conqueror (r. 1035–1087), Duke of Normandy and since 1066 King of England, that he drastically abbreviated Dudo’s work by cutting out the stories about the pagan invaders in order to instead concentrate on Rollo’s activities after his baptism.11 As for the grant of the duchy to Rollo, William stuck to Dudo’s account by describing it as ‘terram maritimam ab Epte flumine usque ad Brittanos limites’ (the land between the coast and the River Epte as far as the frontier
5 Dudo, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, ed. by Lair, i. ch. 28, p. 169; Dudo, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen, p. 49; Bauduin, La première Normandie, p. 74. 6 Dudo, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, ed. by Lair, iv. ch. 90, p. 247; Dudo, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen, p. 121 (slightly revised). 7 Pohl, Dudo. 8 Pohl, Dudo, pp. 18–33. 9 Rouen, BM, MS 1173/Y3, Pohl, Dudo, pp. 32–33; Pohl, ‘Pictures, Poems and Purpose’, pp. 229–58; Pohl, ‘The Illustrated Archetype of the Historia Normannorum’, pp. 221–51. 10 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts. For further reflection on William of Jumièges’ early career, see van Houts, ‘A propos de l’article de B. M. Tock’, pp. 1–5. 11 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, Dedicatory Letter, i, pp. 6–7.
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with Brittany).12 As for the c. 945 confirmation, all William says in Book iv on Richard I is that ‘stabilitur pax inter eos federibus firmis, iuratisque sacramentis obsides redduntur’ (peace was firmly established between them [Louis VI and Richard I], confirmed by oaths and exchange of hostages).13 The work’s gesta structure was maintained; to Dudo’s four books William of Jumièges added three more: Book v on Richard II, Book vi on Richard III (r. 1026–1027) and his brother Robert the Magnificent (r. 1027–1035), and the final seventh book on Robert’s son, William the Conqueror. The historical narrative was brought up-to-date with the story of the Norman Conquest finishing in c. 1070. He also added a dedicatory letter to William the Conqueror and an epilogue, expressing the intention that in due course a sequel on William’s son Robert Curthose (duke 1087–1106, d. 1134) would follow, but that the history of England should be written by someone else.14 William’s Latin style is much simpler than Dudo’s, nor did he include poems, or indeed as far as we know any illustrations. What remains intriguing, of course, is the fact that the oldest manuscript of Dudo of St-Quentin’s work, the one with the traces of illustration, originates from Jumièges and dates from the very time that William of Jumièges himself embarked on a revised and much simplified version of Dudo’s work. Whatever the case may be, around 1070, the history of the dukes of Normandy now had a narrative that covered the duchy’s past from c. 900. And yet, whereas Dudo of St-Quentin and William of Jumièges had openly declared themselves as authors of two distinct histories of Normandy, their successors followed a different track. The structure of the gesta narrative as a serial biography of succeeding princes proved to be a form that made updating the chronicle easy enough from a compositional standpoint.15 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum was updated and revised five times in the next two generations, as we know from the approximately fifty manuscripts that have survived.16 William of Jumièges’s version of c. 1070 is known as version C. It survives in three manuscripts plus a very early abbreviation known as the Quedam Exceptiones composed around 1100 in Exeter.17 Around the turn of the twelfth century, several anonymous revisers made alterations to the text, which foreshadow similar changes made at St-Denis and other monasteries.18 The now lost α β version has a shortened epilogue, which removed William of Jumièges’s intention to write about Robert Curthose, who had been captured in 1106 at the Battle of Tinchebray and kept 12 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, Book ii. ch. 11 (16), pp. 64–65. 13 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, Book iv. ch. 9, I, pp. 114–15. Earlier in Book iv. ch. 2, I, pp. 100–01 [c. 943] William had written that ‘the king [Louis] on the advice of his own men, granted the boy Richard his paternal inheritance, and safeguarded Richard’s fealty to himself ’ (rex…suorum consultu puero Ricardo paternam hereditatem, pacta sibi inde fidelitate, concessit). 14 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, Epilogue, ii, pp. 182–85. 15 On the genre of gesta, see Sot, Gesta episcoporum gesta abbatum, and van Houts, Local and Regional Chronicles, pp. 33–41. 16 For what follows on the various versions of William of Jumièges’ text, see The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, xix–lx. 17 For an edition, see The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, ii, 290–304. 18 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, lx–lxvi.
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in captivity by his brother Henry I. Redactions A and B were based on α β. Redaction A is a combination of the full Dudo text and William of Jumièges‘s Books v–vii — it survives in three manuscripts. Redaction B’s main feature is an addition knowns as De obitu Willelmi, a narrative about the death of William the Conqueror (d. 1087), a confection of Einhard’s Vita Karoli and the so-called Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious — two manuscripts have survived of this tradition, of which the most interesting is the one (B1 Oxford Magdalene College MS 73) copied in part by the Durham chronicler Symeon of Durham.19 We can leave Redaction D with four manuscripts to one side as it does not show any great revisions.
Orderic Vitalis and the Gesta Normannorum Ducum The next in the sequence of writing about Norman history was Orderic Vitalis (1075–c. 1142), whose text Suger would use. A monk at St-Evroult of English-French origin, Orderic revised William of Jumièges’ C redaction mostly stylistically, in that he made the Latin more elegant, cut long sentences and introduced end rhyme on occasion.20 Importantly, he did so anonymously, taking on the persona of William of Jumièges, but since we have his autograph manuscript we know his identity. The references to grants of Normandy were left unchanged. He did not update the text by adding another book on William the Conqueror’s son Robert Curthose for the simple reason that at the time of writing, between c. 1108 and 1113, the succession to the duchy was very much a contested issue. With Henry I as recent duke and his older brother Robert Curthose alive but imprisoned, the future was not at all secure enough to proclaim Henry I as William’s successor in Normandy and give him his own narrative.21 Orderic hedged his bets and left the narrative ending at its original close shortly after the Norman conquest of England in c. 1070. That said, he substantially interpolated Books vi and vii with extra information and context for the reigns of Robert the Magnificent and William the Conqueror respectively, clearly writing for an audience that needed explanations for events that took place two or three generations earlier. Orderic also toned down the triumphant pro-Norman tone in the section on the Norman conquest, perhaps betraying his own half-English ancestry. Finally, Orderic’s interpolations
19 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, lxi–lxv, xcvii; for the identification of the hand of Symeon of Durham, see Michael Gullick, who dates the manuscript to after 1096–1100: ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham’, pp. 14–31 at 27. 20 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, lxvi–lxxvii; for Orderic Vitalis, see also The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall; Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis; Hingst, The Written World; Orderic Vitalis, ed. by Rozier, Roach, Gaspar, and van Houts. 21 Robert of Torigni, prior of Bec in c. 1139, using a manuscript of Orderic’s version, extended the The Gesta Normannorum Ducum with a Book viii on the sons of William the Conqueror (The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, lxxvii–xci). For Robert of Torigni, see The Chronographia of Robert of Torigna, ed. and trans. by Bisson; Pohl, ‘Abbas qui et Scriptor?’, pp. 45–86.
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are historically significant because he is the first Norman historian to expand the gesta of the dukes of Normandy with its focus on the duchy with an account of the Norman forays/conquests in southern Italy. In short, on the surface, Orderic kept William of Jumièges’s structure of a dedicatory letter, seven books, and epilogue, but on occasion, especially in Book vii on William the Conqueror, he shifted attention from the dukes to the exploits of their aristocracy and the Norman migration to Italy. Having finished the Gesta Normannorum Ducum without having revealed his identity, he embarked on the work for which he is best known, the Ecclesiastical History, a contemporary history of the Anglo-Norman realm framed as a chronicle from the birth of Christ until the time of his death in c. 1142.22 Since Orderic revealed himself as author of the Historia, which is partly preserved in his autograph, his handwriting was known and had enabled scholars such as Jules Lair and Leopold Delisle in the nineteenth century to identify him as the author of the E-version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum. Orderic’s E redaction of the GND survives in eleven manuscripts (including Robert of Torigni’s autograph manuscript (F1) which was based on Orderic’s version).23 Of these manuscripts we can leave six copies to one side as irrelevant for the present discussion.24 There are five remaining manuscripts, loosely termed the ‘St-Denis’ or ‘Northern French’ group, that pertain directly to our inquiry, and which I list here in the order of the sigla: E1 Rouen, BM, Y 14 (1174), Orderic’s autograph including some corrections by him, St-Evroult c. 1109–1113 E2 Paris, BnF, MS lat 17656, northern France after 1179 [probable copy of E4] E3 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 2013, St-Denis 1117–1125/1126 [copy of E1 after corrections] E4 Paris, BnF, MS lat 12710 northern France, 1140s or 1150s [copy of E3] E8 London, BL, Additional 39646, after 1179 Braine-sur-Vesle [copy of E2] From among these manuscripts Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 2013 (E3) stands out for being copied both within a decade or so of Orderic’s composition of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, and well within his lifetime (Orderic died c. 1142). This copy of Orderic’s first historical work is all the more remarkable because it was made at St-Denis itself, home of his fellow historian Suger who had become abbot in 1122.25
22 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall; and for his handwriting, see Weston, ‘Following the Master’s Lead’, pp. 37–60. 23 For the manuscripts of the E redaction, including F1 (Leiden, Universiteitsbibiotheek, MS BPL 20), Robert of Torigni’s autograph, see The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, ciii–cx. 24 E5 (Paris, BnF, lat 4861; Evreux, 1220–1226), E6 (London, BL, Cotton Nero A xi; late twelfth century), E7 (Copenhagen, KB, Thott 1333; thirteenth century) and E9 (Paris, BnF, lat 6001; France seventeenth century); E10 Paris, BnF, lat 6265; Paris 1515 is an excerpt. 25 For Suger of St-Denis, see Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis.
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Suger, Mazarine 2013, and the Gesta Normannorum Ducum Born around 1080, and from 1090 an oblate then monk at St-Denis, from an early age Suger showed great interest in writing, administration, archiving, and the past.26 He honed his administrative skills under the tutelage of Abbot Adam of St-Denis, who in 1108 appointed him as prévôt at the priory of St-Denis at Berneval, 8 km northeast of Dieppe in the Pays-de-Caux (Normandy).27 Berneval had formed part of the patrimony of the monastery since Merovingian times. Though lost during the Viking invasions, in 968 it was given back to St-Denis by Richard I of Normandy.28 In 1109 Suger was involved in litigation in the Norman ducal court to have some fish renders restored to the abbey, and he also pleaded in court against ducal officials (graffiones).29 As has been pointed out, Suger was not mentioned in any of the contemporary paperwork, but later in the 1140s when he wrote his De administratione he took credit for the restoration of the fish renders demanded by his predecessor Abbot Adam.30 Suger’s monastic administration of a priory in Normandy gave him first-hand experience of Norman ducal government, something that helped him as historian when, in his Deeds of King Louis, he chronicled the wars between Henry I (King of England 1100–1135, Duke of Normandy 1106–1135) and King Louis VI (r. 1108–1137). The wars ended with the disastrous defeat of the latter at Brémule in 1119 and a peace treaty between the kings in 1120.31 These events form the historical background to the period when Abbot Suger commissioned Paris, Bibiothèque Mazarine, MS 2013, fols 1r–231v, which is the historical compilation of the kings of France that incorporated the Gesta Normannorum Ducum into the broader narrative of French history centred on its kings.32 The chronicles and segments of historical texts amalgamated in this compilation begin with the birth of Christ and a copy of the Liber pontificalis, the standard history of the popes in Rome. Thereafter the focus is on the history of the kings of France and the collection ends with a list of the kings of France. Rolf Große has suggested that the
26 Suger, De administratione, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, i, 54–57; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, p. 80; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 38–39; Leturcq, ‘Suger expert’, pp. 525–41 at 544–45. 27 Suger, De administratione, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, i, 108–09; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, pp. 87, 89; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, p. 40. 28 Recueil des ducs de Normandie, ed. by Fauroux, pp. 70–72; Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy, pp. 62, 194, 257–58, 271 (on the charter using the term ‘marchio’), p. 460 (on the rights given including rights of justice). 29 Suger, De administratione, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, i, 108–11; Barroux, ‘L’anniversaire de Dagobert à Saint-Denis’, pp. 131–51 at 148–51; Grant, ‘Suger and the Anglo-Norman World’, pp. 51–68 at 52–55; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, pp. 90–91; Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy, p. 482. 30 Suger, De administratione, ed. and trans. Françoise Gasparri, i, 108–11; Leturcq, ‘Suger expert’, p. 53; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, p. 90. 31 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, vi, 290–91; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, pp. 90–91. 32 Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, p. 41; Gasparri, ‘L’Abbé Suger de Saint-Denis’, pp. 247–57 at 255–56; Führer, ‘Documentation et écriture de l’histoire chez l’abbe Suger’, pp. 149–60; Führer, ‘Französische Königreich und franzosische Königtum’, pp. 199–218.
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collection is a Gesta gentis Francorum (Deeds of the French people) commissioned during Abbot Adam’s administration and executed under the aegis of Suger.33 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum is sandwiched in the middle of these Latin chronicle texts on the kings of France, and thus stands out for being the only regional/dynastic history to have found a place in the royal St-Denis compilation.34 This may well be so because the historiography of the Norman dukes was well established since Dudo’s history dating to around 1000. There were plenty of genealogical texts for regional dynasties that the monks of St-Denis could have included. In Flanders, Lambert of St-Omer’s Liber Floridus was a rich source for them, while in Anjou, Fulk le Rechin’s own outline of his family’s history was available.35 But the monks did not seem to have been interested in them. Instead at St-Denis a deliberate choice was made of recent chronicles centering on the kings of France from St-Benoît-sur-Loire (see below) and of Normandy. The incorporation of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum can therefore be seen as evidence that at St-Denis, Normandy was viewed as special amongst its neighbours. Had not the area, in the Merovingian and Carolingian times, when admittedly it was somewhat larger and known as Neustria, been ruled as an integral part of the royal domain?36 In Carolingian times Neustria was never its own kingdom like that of Burgundy or Aquitaine or the Provence. Bearing in mind that the Gesta Normannorum Ducum fills a historical lacuna in the history of France that could not have been filled from scratch by the monks of St-Denis, it was adapted to slot in as neatly as possible within a compilation on the kings of France. The first thing to note is that the Gesta Normannorum Ducum appears without William of Jumièges’ dedicatory letter to William the Conqueror, which Orderic and other E manuscripts outside the St-Denis group had preserved. Presumably, it was deemed to be outdated. A rubric introduces the text with the words ‘Here begins the prologue of the book about the deeds of the Norman people’ (Incipit prologus in libro [de ]gestis gentis Normannorum).37 This may simply mean that the copyist considered Book i as a sort of prologue or introduction to the history of the dukes, which did not really start properly until Book ii, which was devoted to Rollo as first ruler of Rouen. On the other hand, at the start of the work, the rubric could be read as the main title of a ‘Book on the deeds of the Norman people’. If the latter is the case, and certainly Françoise Gasparri accepts it this way, the Dionysian compilator seems to have incorporated the gens Normannorum into MS Mazarine 2013, the compilation on the deeds of the gens Francorum. If the subjugation of the Normans by the French was indeed in reality an unrealistic hope on the part of its
33 Große, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König, pp. 137–40, a reference I owe to Lindy Grant; see also Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, p. 160. 34 Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, p. 41 suggests that probably Suger was responsible for the incorporation of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, and she links this to his use of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s prophecies of Merlin. 35 Dunbabin, ‘Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy’, pp. 1–14. 36 For Neustria, see La Neustrie, ed. by Atsma; Deniaux, Lorren, Bauduin, and Jarry, La Normandie avant les Normands, especially Part ii, pp. 199–412; Bauduin, La première Normandie, pp. 95–142. 37 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, cv.
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kings, the book as a symbol of the French past protected by St-Denis suggests that the monks expected that this hope might one day turn into reality. The ambiguous place of the Normans as part of the gens Francorum may well have been intentional in a centre that was promoting the rulership of the kings of tota Franciae.38 Yet, although the copyist of MS Mazarine 2013 may have omitted William of Jumièges’ prologue, he preserved the Long Epilogue (as Orderic Vitalis had done before him) which sets out the intention to continue in due course the narrative after c. 1070 with a focus on William the Conqueror’s son Robert Curthose. From a St-Denis perspective this was absolutely right. After all, in the 1120s Robert Curthose, defeated by his brother Henry I at the Battle of Tinchebray and still incarcerated in England, was alive enjoying the full support from Louis VI not only for himself but crucially for his son William Clito (see below). The long Epilogue, in recognizing Robert’s claim to the duchy, thus implicitly advances the Capetian agenda of breaking up the Anglo-Norman realm. But even if Suger and his monks considered the Normans as a people at least nominally part of the gens Francorum, rather than as a group under the regional leadership of dukes who refused to do homage to the kings of France, this still does not adequately explain the prominent presence of the Gesta Normannorum ducum as the only regional dynastic history in Mazarine 2013.39 For me the most convincing reason for the presence of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum in Orderic’s version in the St-Denis compilation lies in the evidence it provides for the status of the Vexin. Nowhere in either William of Jumièges’ original version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (completed in c. 1070) nor in Orderic’s version (dating from c. 1113) is there any explicit reference to the county of the Vexin, either Norman or French. All that we find is the description of the grant of ‘Normandy’ from Charles the Simple to Rollo of the ‘terram maritimam ab Epte flumine usque Brittanicos limites’ (the land between the coast and the River Epte as far [south as] the frontier with Brittany), a reference to the Epte as the frontier between the Normans and the French.40 This very lack of any specificity on the Vexin was important for Suger.
Suger and the Vexin In order to understand Suger’s preoccupation with this lack of specificity on the Vexin in the Norman chronicle we have to trace briefly the history of the Vexin in the eleventh century. The county of the Vexin (the old pagus Vilcassini) stretched east and west across the River Epte, the nominal boundary between the duchy of Normandy and the royal domain of the Capetian kings of France. The Norman half of the Vexin fell under the authority of the counts of Rouen, who became the dukes
38 Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, pp. 113 and 118 where she points out that Guibert of Nogent had used the phrase a few years before Suger. 39 Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, p. 41. 40 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, ii, ch. 10 (16), pp. 64–65.
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of Normandy.41 The counts of Amiens also held Valois and the French Vexin of the kings of France as a single unit beginning with Walter I (d. 998) though the counties were split for a few decades in the middle of the century before being reunited again in 1063 under Ralph IV (r. 1038–1074).42 The dukes of Normandy and the counts of the Vexin were close. Count Drogo accompanied Duke Robert the Magnificent on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1035 and Duke William granted the border estate of Gisors on the Epte (as part of the lands of the cathedral of Rouen) as a life lease to Count Ralph shortly before 1066. Ralph’s son Simon (r. 1074–1077, d. 1080), educated at the Norman court, returned the life lease to the cathedral of Rouen in 1075.43 Two years later he decided to enter the monastic life and give up his countship. This was an opportunity for King Philip I of France to take over the county and hold it for himself.44 The French Vexin, crucial border territory with Normandy, was more or less annexed to the French royal domain,45 while the aristocracy living on both sides of the Epte struggled with cross border loyalties and in the words of Pierre Bauduin, were ‘une aristocratie franco-normande’.46 The French royal assertiveness in the Vexin was challenged immediately by William the Conqueror, who received mortal wounds at Mantes in 1087,47 and was continued under his sons William Rufus, who built a fortication at Gisors, and Henry I, who used English taxpayers’ money to bribe the local aristocracy to support him. The counts of the Vexin had always been the hereditary advocates of the monastery of St-Denis, so when King Philip I took control of the French Vexin he thereby gained, at least nominally, the advocacy of St-Denis, to which I shall return in a moment. Sometime in the 1090s and certainly by the middle of the decade Philip handed the French Vexin to his son Louis (later Louis VI),48 who had to fend off attacks by William Rufus, then caretaker duke of Normandy, while his brother Robert Curthose was in the Holy Land.49 After the death of Rufus in 1100, his younger brother Henry I (d. 1135) became king of England and from 1106 also duke of Normandy. And when in 1108 Louis VI succeeded his father, the stage was set for intermittent warfare in the Vexin between Henry I and Louis VI, wars that impacted on the monastery of St-Denis as it held land both in
41 Bauduin, La première Normandie, pp. 251–60. 42 Feuchère, ‘Une tentative’, pp. 1–37; Bates, ‘Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors’, pp. 34–48; Bauduin, La première Normandie, pp. 254–58; for the twelfth century, see Power, The Norman Frontier, pp. 12–13, 124–28, 377–78. 43 Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum, ed. by Bates, pp. 720–21. 44 Feuchère, ‘Une tentative’, pp. 13–15; Bates, ‘Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors’, pp. 44–45; Bauduin, La première Normandie, pp. 260–61. 45 Dunbabin, France in the Making, p. 205; Power, The Norman Frontier, pp. 102, 374. 46 Bauduin, La première Normandie, pp. 278–83 with quote on 278. 47 Bates, William the Conqueror, pp. 481–82. 48 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, iv, 264 n. 1 and vi, 54 n. 3; Dunbabin, France in the Making, p. 258. 49 Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 376–85 (based on the accounts by Orderic Vitalis in his Ecclesiastical History and Suger’s Deeds of Louis VI; Barlow notes the complete absence of any mention of these wars in the English chronicles of the early twelfth century); Green, ‘Lords of the Norman Vexin’, pp. 47–61 at p. 52.
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the Norman and French Vexin. The monastery of St-Denis held several churches in the Vexin: on the French side at Cergy, Ableiges, Bercagny, and Cormeilles-en-Vexin, while in the Norman Vexin the monks held Morgny, Lilly, Fleury-la-Foret in the Foret-de-Lyons, and Chateauneuf-sur-Epte.50 Ecclesiastically, the entire Vexin fell within the archdiocese of Rouen, which meant that the monks of St-Denis had to deal with the archbishop of Rouen in their administration of church properties. In times of political turmoil this created extra tension.51 And this brings us back to Suger. Already as second in command to Abbot Adam, Suger was involved in arranging for Louis VI to confirm the charters of St-Denis. The charters of St-Denis show clearly with regard to their lands in the French Vexin that its inhabitants were exempt from many tolls exacted by St-Denis on others.52 And here we return to the issue of who exactly held control over the French Vexin, which as we have heard was nominally in the hands of the king of France. Suger saw an opportunity to insinuate the monks of St-Denis in the chain of command. Two years after becoming abbot in 1124, Suger boldly arranged with King Louis VI of France for St-Denis to hold suzerainty over the French Vexin and for the king to hold it from the saint and the abbey. The evidence lies in a famous charter of Louis VI to St-Denis, drafted by Suger.53 The charter was issued at a time that he was preparing for an attack on Reims, threatened by Emperor Henry V of Germany, a threat instigated according to Suger by the Emperor’s son-in-law, King Henry I of England.54 Having gathered an impressive army drawn from all his neighbours (except crucially from Normandy), King Louis and his queen hastened to St-Denis to collect his banner. According to the charter, the King received his banner from the high altar as a sign that it belonged to the ‘comitatus Vilcassini, quem nos [King Louis] ab ipsis [saints Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius] in feodum habemus’.55 Cunningly, Suger had turned the banner of the Vexin, originally carried by the counts of Amiens, Valois, and the Vexin, into a banner of St-Denis (saint and monastery) as a symbol for the king of France who was deemed to hold the county of the Vexin as a fief of Saint Denis, the saint, and thus the abbey. Also crucially, at this stage in 1124, it was left to anyone’s imagination what were the boundaries of the comitatus Vilcassini. Not until the 1130s and 1140s, when he wrote the Deeds of Louis the Fat and his De administratione, did he detail the boundaries. In his biography of Louis VI, he described the fortified castle of Gisors on the Epte: 50 Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ch. 1, ed. and trans. by Waquet, pp. 4–15; Grant, ‘Suger and the AngloNorman World’, pp. 51–68 at p. 56. 51 For the anomalous situation and its consequences, see Bauduin, La première Normandie, pp. 266–72; Power, The Norman Frontier, pp. 124–29. 52 Recueil des actes de Louis VI, ed. by Dufour, i, no. 189, 392–97 (1122), p. 396: ‘exceptis hominibus Vilcassini’. 53 Recueil des actes de Louis VI, ed. by Dufour, i, no. 220, 458–66 at p. 465; Grant, ‘Suger and the AngloNorman World’, p. 57; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, pp. 111–19; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 60–61. 54 Suger, De administratione, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, i, 66–67; for the suggestion that Henry V had been cajoled into the attack by his father-in-law, see Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ch. 28, ed. and trans. by Waquet, pp. 218–19. 55 Recueil des actes de Louis VI, ed. by Dufour, i, no. 220, 465.
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castrum [Gisors] munitissimum, situ loci compendiosum quod ad utrumque terminum Francorum et Normannorum, fluvio grate piscium fecunditatis qui dicitur Etta interfluente, antiquo fune geometricali Francorum et Danorum concorditer metito collimitat, ad irruendum in Franciam gratum Normannis prebens accessum, Francis prohibens. (It was a strongly fortified castle conveniently sited at the common boundary between the French and the Normans where a river pleasantly full of fish, called the Epte, flows between them. The river conforms to the old rope of alignment agreed to by the French and the Danes and serves as border, but the castle itself offers easy entry for the Normans to rush into France while it hinders a French approach.56) This description of the agreement between the French and the Danes is based very loosely on that of Dudo of St-Quentin and William of Jumièges.57 However, with regard to the Vexin Suger is far more specific in his De administratione where he speaks of the French Vexin as ‘the noble county that lies between the Oise and the Epte’ (Vilcassini siquidem, quod est inter Isaram et Ettam, nobilem comitatum).58 And it is the reference to the rivers that is so interesting and invites us to return to what the Normans said of them.
Orderic Vitalis on the Vexin As I have argued above, Suger’s inclusion of the version of the Gesta Normannorum ducum by Orderic, available from c. 1113, was possible because its account of the relations between the Norman dukes and the kings of France does not record anything about the Vexin. Yet, after Orderic wrote his version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, Anglo-Norman sources written at the time of heightened political tension begin increasingly making references to the Vexin, including by Orderic himself in his Ecclesiastical History, written from 1114–1115 onwards.59 The earliest reference can be found in the Brevis Relatio, written anonymously between 1114 and 1120 at Battle Abbey. It reported how c. 945 the Danes came to an agreement with the French ‘to extend Normandy from the Andelle to the Epte, although some people say from the Andelle to the Oise’.60 This — as must be clear by now — is a description of the rivers Epte and Oise bordering the Norman and French Vexin respectively, even though there
56 Suger, Vie de Louis VI, ed. and trans. by Waquet, p. 102. Translation from Suger, Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Cusimano and Moorhead, p. 71. 57 See above pp. 000 and 000. 58 Suger, De administratione, ed. and trans. by Gasparri, i, 66–67. 59 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, ii, xiv–xv. 60 The Brevis Relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannorum written by a monk of Battle Abbey, ch. 16, ed. and trans. by van Houts, no. vii, 45–45a: ‘Tunc in illa concordia auxerunt et augendo creuerunt Northmanniam Dani ad aquam que uocature Andella usque ad aliam aquam que uocatur Etta. Alii tamen dicunt ab Etta usque ad Isaram’. The passage was copied by Robert of Torigni in his
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is no explicit reference to the comitatus Vilcassini.61 The circulation of this spurious Norman claim to the whole of the Vexin in the period 1114–1120 initially may have spurred on Suger at St-Denis to put the record straight in the charter of 1124, recording that King Louis VI holds the comitatus Vilcassini as a feodum from Saint Denis, whose banner, pertaining to the Vexin, he accepted from the main altar in the monastery’s church. Strikingly, a few years later in 1131–1132, Orderic Vitalis reported a different claim: not a French grant of the Vexin to Normandy in c. 945 but a much more recent grant in 1033. According to the Historia Ecclesiastica, in 1033, when the French King Henry I was in exile at the Norman court (a well-documented and undoubtedly historical event), he had given the then Duke of Normandy Robert (r. 1028–1035) ‘totum Vilcassimum a fluvio Isara usque ad Eptum’, i.e. the French Vexin, in return for the support Robert had given him while in exile.62 We do not know the origin of this story, which perhaps came from the French Vexin itself, where St-Evroult had a priory at Parnes, but after Orderic’s earlier work completed c. 1113, perhaps because Orderic learned of it later.63 Conceivably, this may represent a distorted memorial tradition of the close ties between Count Drogo and Duke Robert, which in turn may have been transformed into a story of a personal grant from Count Drogo/ King Henry to Duke Robert.64 But remember that the historical compilation of MS Mazarine 2013 executed between c. 1117–1125/1126 under the aegis of Abbots Adam and Suger included the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, presenting evidence that neither the c. 945 grant nor the 1033 grant was ever made, since no report of them is ever made in Book iv (on Richard I) or Book vi (on Duke Robert I).65 If I were to guess, the compilation probably dates from around 1124, dovetailing nicely with Suger’s elaborate claim that the French Vexin belonged to St-Denis and that it was held by the King from the saint. In the mid 1130s Orderic and Suger were again at loggerheads over historical grants of the Vexin. In 1136–1137, in Book xii of the Historia Ecclesiastica, Orderic is
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version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum c. 1139, see The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, Book viii Additamenta, ii, 286–87 — note in both cases my erroneous translation of Isara with Isère instead of Oise. For a discussion of the early twelfth-century Latin historiography on the Vexin, see Hollister, ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman Regnum’, pp. 202–42, where on pp. 229–31 he was the first to spot the use made of the Brevis Relatio by Robert of Torigni in his version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, but he dated the Brevis Relatio a decade too late. The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, iv, xxxii, 76–77: ‘Henricus autem in regnum confirmatus Roberto duci gratias egit, eique pro beneficio suo totum Vilcassinum a fluuio Isara usque ad Eptum donauit. Hoc nimirum Drogo eiusdem provinciae comes libentissime concessit, hominioque facto dum uixit prefato duci fideliter seruiuit’; The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, iv, xix (dates), xii (exclusively based on oral sources and his own memory), and xxxii (on the alleged grant); note that most recently David Bates (William the Conqueror, p. 481) sees the story as ‘feasible’. For Parnes, see Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis, pp. 18 and 27. I owe this suggestion to David Bates, oral communication. The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, iv, xxxii; The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, ii, 54–57. Nor is it mentioned by William of Poitiers in his biography of William the Conqueror.
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the sole authority for the information that in 1127, on the eve of his expedition to Flanders to install William Clito as count (after the murder of Count Charles the Good), King Louis VI had given him ‘all the Vexin’ (totumque Vilcassini), meaning the French Vexin.66 This grant has puzzled scholars, as it seemed so extraordinary that within three years of issuing the 1124 St-Denis charter Louis VI would so blatantly ignore Suger’s claim that the French Vexin belonged to St-Denis, and the king held it of the saint.67 No one has ever doubted Orderic’s testimony, but in view of the tit-for-tat stories about historical grants of the French Vexin, it is altogether possible that Orderic reported this as a false rumour.68 If it was, it had no consequences, as William Clito died in 1128, ending his comital control of the Vexin. I have already drawn attention to Suger’s own insistence, repeating the 1124 charter testimony in his Deeds of Louis the Fat, written c. 1137–1143, and in his De administratione, written 1143/1144–1148/1149.69 In the latter, his description of the territorial extent of the French Vexin reads the same as in the Brevis Relatio: ‘Vilcassini siquidem quod est inter Isaram et Ettam nobilem comitatus’.70 Apart from the issue of the Vexin raised by the inclusion of Orderic’s Gesta Normannorum ducum in MS Mazarine 2013, this manuscript is interesting for a number of other reasons to which we now turn.
Mazarine 2013, an Incredible Source of Recently Written Chronicles By the 1120s, when the compiler of Mazarine 2013 incorporated Orderic’s Gesta Normannorum into the French chronicle, the monks of St-Denis had access to and were aware of the most recent chronicles in the region. Several of them are demonstrably early copies from their authors’ autographs at St-Evroult and St-Benoît-sur-Loire, raising the question of Suger’s contacts with these centres of contemporary Latin historiography. I begin with Suger’s knowledge of Orderic’s Gesta Normannorum Ducum. Whether they met, or how Suger got hold of a copy of Orderic’s work, or even whether Suger knew that Orderic was its author, is unknown. One possibility for their meeting, during which Suger could have learned of Orderic’s authorship, may have been the council at Reims initiated and attended by Pope Calixtus II, in 1119, at which, it has been suggested, both men may have been present. Orderic’s account of the council of Reims is that of an eyewitness in the vividness, immediacy,
66 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, vi, xviii, 370–71 and above note 62 where the earlier Orderic text is quoted which also speaks of ‘all the Vexin’ and its rivers (Epte and Oise) specified that the French Vexin was meant; cf. Green, Henry I, p. 196. 67 Barroux, ‘L’abbé Suger et la vassalité du Vexin en 1124’, pp. 1–26 at pp. 8–9; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, p. 116. See also Naus, ‘Negotiating Kingship in France’, pp. 525–41 at pp. 532–33. 68 I note that Suger is silent about the grant of the Vexin to William Clito when he discusses Louis’s support for him in Flanders (Suger, Vie de Louis VI, ed. and trans. by Waquet, pp. 246–47). 69 For the dates, see Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, pp. 150–51 (the Deeds of Louis VI) and pp. 152–53 (De administratione). 70 See above pp. 000–000.
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and detail reported.71 As for Suger, as right-hand man of Abbot Adam of St-Denis and close adviser and friend of Louis VI, who was present at Reims, it is inconceivable that he might have missed this opportunity to mix with the distinguished gathering of aristocracy and clergy assembled for the occasion.72 If Marjorie Chibnall and Françoise Gasparri are respectively correct that Orderic and Suger were present, it would have been an ideal opportunity for both men to have exchanged notes on their respective interest in the past and perhaps for Suger to have learned of Orderic’s version of Gesta Normannorum Ducum. An alternative route for a copy to have reached St-Denis may have been via information obtained at the cathedral of Rouen, with whose officials the monks regularly did business. There too, aged thirty-two, Orderic was one of 120 priests (and 244 deacons) who on 21 December 1107 were ordained (or blessed) by Archbishop William.73 At that time he was well advanced with his work on the Gesta Normannorum ducum.74 And, of course, we should not forget that Suger was stationed in the Pays-de-Caux, Normandy, (though not necessarily close to St-Evroult) in the years 1108–1109, when he may have learned about Orderic’s updating of the Gesta Normannorum ducum. Ms Mazarine 2013 not only includes the earliest surviving copy of Orderic’s autograph of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, completed in c. 1113, but it also contains a very early copy of Hugh of Fleury’s Historia Ecclesiastica, in an early version of stage ii, written at the monastery of St-Benoît-sur-Loire in c. 1109–1110, before major revisions were made to Hugh’s autograph copy.75 It covers the period from the birth of Christ (version i) and Abraham and Ninus (version ii) to 814, and in version ii to 841.76 It is also a very early witness for the section from 998–1108 of Hugh of Fleury’s Historia regum modernorum written c. 1115.77 In its most expansive form, this work covers the period 841–1108 (that is, from the Battle of Fontenoy up to the death of Philip I).78 It seems very likely that Suger knew Hugh of Fleury,
71 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, vi, xix–xxi and 252–76; see also The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, i, 25–26. 72 Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, pp. 101–02 points out that Suger is completely silent about the council perhaps out of embarrassment. According to Françoise Gasparri (Suger de Saint-Denis, p. 52), alongside Louis VI both Suger and Abbot Adam were present; Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, p. 102 reserved her judgement in the matter. 73 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, vi, 554–57 and Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis, p. 33. 74 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, lxviii. 75 Hugo van Fleury, ed. by de Ruiter, p. lxxxi; this work now supercedes earlier studies of Hugh of Fleury’s Historia Ecclesiastica of which the most important are Vidier, L’Historiographie à Saint-Benoîtsur-Loire, pp. 76–79; Lettinck, ‘Pour une édition crique de l’Historia Ecclesiastica de Hugues de Fleury’, pp. 386–91; Bautier, ‘L’école historique de l’abbaye de Fleury d’Aimoin à Hugues de Fleury’, pp. 59–72. 76 Hugo van Fleur, ed. by de Ruiter, pp. xxxvi–vii (start of the chronicle) and xxix–x (end of the chronicle). 77 Hugo van Fleury, ed. by de Ruiter, p. xxxix. 78 Hugo van Fleury, ed. by de Ruiter, p. lxviii. For a discussion of the only two full manuscripts of Hugh’s Historia Modernorum regum, see Vidier, L’Historiographie, pp. 79–80 and most recently Bauduin, ‘Hugh de Fleury et l’histoire normande’, pp. 157–74 at pp. 173–74.
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perhaps from the time in his youth when he spent some time in a monastery on the Loire, or at some later stage, perhaps when he was provost at Toury (in the Chartraine).79 As for the reception of Orderic Vitalis’ s Gesta Normannorum ducum (as well as other texts), MS Mazarine 2013 (E3) was the first in a probable line of manuscripts, which I named the St-Denis or Northern French group.80 They were all historical compilations centering on the history of France, made in northern France: E4 Paris, BnF, MS lat 12710 northern France, 1140s or 1150s (E4 copy of E3); Paris, BnF, MS lat 17656, northern France after 1179 (E2 copy of E4); and London, BL, Additional 39646, after 1179 Braine-sur-Vesle (E8 copy of E2), the headquarters of the junior branch of the royal family since Robert of Dreux, younger son of Louis VI and his descendants.81 The earliest copy of MS Mazarine 2013 is E4 Paris, BnF, Lat 12710, a manuscript that has generated much discussion and is the subject of current research by Elizabeth A. R. Brown.82 The Long Epilogue of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum was maintained in E4, although by then Robert Curthose was dead (in 1134). Also in E4, just after the long Epilogue, a copyist wrote in the margin, ‘enough said about William king of the English and duke of the Normans’. Forty years later, in the 1170s, the scribe of E4’s descendant E2 finally ditched the Long Epilogue and replaced it with the same marginalium now in the body of the text. In this manuscript, too, something else happened that is even more interesting: the Gesta Normannorum Ducum not only follows excerpts from Suger’s Deeds of King Louis, it is also followed by excerpts from the royal biography. In other words, Suger’s biography of Louis VI has enveloped the Gesta Normannorum Ducum with all identification of its origin as a Norman chronicle having been removed. The Norman people were truly swallowed up by the French king made famous by Suger.
79 Grant, Abbot Suger of St Denis, pp. 81–83, though here a preference for St-Florent at Saumur rather than St-Benoît is expressed; Gasparri, Suger de Saint-Denis, p. 160 suggests that it is very likely that Suger and Hugh of Fleury knew each other and suggests that his time at Toury allowed proximity to St-Benoît or Chartres. 80 van Houts, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, pp. 40–42 and The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, cxxvi. 81 There is also a corrupt passage in the Mazarine manuscript, on the foundation of Battle Abbey on the site where the battle of 1066 was fought (ed. by van Houts, ii, 172). Originally Orderic had written that William the Conqueror had founded a monastery on ‘the site where, as we mentioned above, the combat took place is therefore called Battle to the present day’ (Locus vero ubi, sicut supra diximus, pugnatium est, exinde Bellum usque hodie vocatur). The Mazarine scribe missed out hodie and wrote Bellum usque vocatur, which he then corrected to Bellum usque bellum uocatur. The scribes of its descendant copies have all tried to correct it: the copyist of E4 has bellum usque ad bellum uocatur, whereas E6 and E7 simply have bellum uocatur. 82 It is frustrating that despite the recent research so much modern scholarship — though not by Elizabeth Brown — still relies heavily on Lair, ‘Mémoire sur deux chroniques latines composées au xiie siècle à l’abbaye de Saint-Denis’, pp. 543–80, which is outdated.
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Conclusion In conclusion, the compilation known as MS Mazarin 2013 was a product of the scriptorium and of the intellectual and political culture of St-Denis. Although its execution may have already been instigated by Abbot Adam, it shows all the hallmarks of the interests of his successor, Suger of Saint-Denis. He was interested in Orderic Vitalis’s version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum at several levels. From a practical perspective it was a narrative that neatly plugged a gaping hole in the chronology of western France, formerly Neustria. From an ideological perspective the history of the dukes of Normandy, without its dedicatory letter to William the Conqueror, served adequately as a supposed integral part of a much wider narrative of the rulers of tota Francia. Foremost, however, as is argued here, it served a very specific purpose uppermost in Suger’s mind, namely as evidence that nowhere in the Gesta Normannorum ducum was it claimed that any of the Norman dukes had ever laid claim to the French Vexin. Such claims by the Battle author of the Brevis Relatio and Orderic himself in his Ecclesiastiastical History postdate Orderic’s version of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum. Inspired by these contemporary Norman assertions, Suger pressed the claim of St-Denis over the territory most famously in the 1124 charter issued by King Louis VI for St-Denis. As a consummate historian, Suger used the Normans’ own historiography, written before c. 1113, to have it ready at hand to disprove their further claims to the French Vexin that emerged from the mid-1110s.
Appendix 1 Description of Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 201383 This manuscript consists of two parts. Part i (1r–231v) is a compilation of historical works, generally thought to have been executed under the guidance of Abbot Suger. Part i is written in one hand in c. 1117–1125/1126 though after 1129/1131 on fol. 222r a later hand updated the list of the kings of France with a passage recording the death of Louis VI’s eldest son Philip (1131); later yet, a copyist added the accession of Henry as Archbishop of Reims (1162) and Philip Augustus’s accession as rex famosissimus (1180). Part i contains the Liber pontificalis (1r–52v) followed by a list of popes (52v–54r), Hugh of Fleury’s Historia Ecclesiastica (55v–136r), the Gesta Francorum (136r–158v), the De maioribus domus regiae (158v–59v), several sections from existing works together
83 Substantial scholarship on this manuscript can be found in the following works listed in chronological order of publication: Lair, ‘Mémoire sur deux chroniques latines composées au xiie siècle à l’abbaye de Saint-Denis’, pp. 543–80; Molinier, Catalogues des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Mazarine, ii, 321–23; Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis, pp. 40–41; van Houts, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, pp. 217–19; Nebbiae-dalla Guarda, La Biblothèque de l’abbaye de Saint-Denis, pp. 47–51; Gasparri, ‘L’Abbé Suger de Saint-Denis’, pp. 247–57 at 255–56; Hugo van Fleury, ed. by de Ruiter, pp. lxviii–lxx. Brown, ‘The Children of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of Maurienne and the Date of a Historical Compendium of Saint-Denis’.
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forming a history of France from 727 to 1108, namely for the years 727–876 Ado of Vienne; for 876–998 Historia Francorum Senonensis; for 998–1108 Hugh of Fleury, Historia regum modernorum (159v–75v). Then follows the Gesta Normannorum Ducum Red. E (176r–213r), an unidentified history of France 814–1109 (213r–21v), a list of the kings of France (222r), the Visio Eucharii (222v–23r), another unidentified history of France 767–878 (230v–31r), and a list of Jewish kings (230v–31r). Part ii of the codex (232r–66v), written in the second half of the twelfth century, contains the oldest Fig. 1: TheofGesta Normannorum surviving copy Suger’s Vita LudoviciDucum, Grossi. schematic development of text Dudo of Saint-Quentin c. 1000 Historia Normannorum William of Jumièges c. 1050-70 Gesta Normannorum Ducum (C)
αβ Rouen c. 1096-100
A
B England 1100x25
D After 1106
Orderic Vitalis (E) Saint-Evroult c. 1109-1113
Robert of Torigni (F) Le Bec, c. 1139 Dudo of Saint-Quentin, Dedicatory Letter, four books I Vikings, II Rollo, IIII William Longsword, IV Richard I
Figure 2.1. The Gesta Normannorum Ducum, schematic development of text.
William of Jumièges, Dedicatory Letter, seven books I Vikings, II Rollo, III, William Longsword, IV Richard I, V Richard II, VI Richard III and Robert, VII William the Conqueror, Long Epilogue
Works Αβ: William ofCited Jumièges, Dedicatory Letter, books I,VII, Short Epilogue A: Dudo + William of Jumièges, books V-VII, Short epilogue
Manuscripts and Archival Sources
B: William of Jumièges, Dedicatory Letter, books I-VII, anecdotes, De Obitu Willelmi, Short Epilogue
Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek (KB), Thott 1333 Leiden, Universiteitsbibiotheek, MS BPL 20 British Library (BL), Cotton NeroofAJumièges, xi E:London, Orderic Vitalis revised and interpolated, William Dedicatory letter, books I, VII, Long Epilogue Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), lat 4861 F. Robert of Torigni interpolated Orderic’s E version: William of Jumièges, Dedicatory letter, books I-VII + ———, lat 6001 Book VIII on Henry I and Additamenta ———, lat 6265 Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1173/Y3
D: William of Jumièges, Dedicatory Letter, books I-VII
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Primary Sources Brevis Relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannorum, ed. and trans. by Elisabeth van Houts, in Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, History and Family Tradition in England and the Continent, 1000–1200 (Aldershot: Variorum Collected Studies Series, 1999) Dudo of St-Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum auctore Dudone sancti Quintini, ed. by Jules Lair (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1865) Dudo of St Quentin: History of the Normans, trans. by Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998) Hugo van Fleury, Historia Ecclesiastica, edition altera. Kritische editie, ed. by L. M. de Ruiter (Groningen: Rijksuniveristeit Groningen, 2016) Recueil des actes de Louis VI, roi de France (1108–1137), ed. by Jean Dufour, 4 vols (Paris, 1992–1994) Recueil des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. by Marie Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de Normandie, 36 (Caen: Caron, 1961) Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. by David Bates (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) Suger, De administratione, in Suger, Œuvres, ed. and trans. by Françoise Gasparri, 2 vols (Paris: Société d’éditions Les Belles Lettres, 1996–2001) ———, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, c. 1, ed. and trans. by Henri Waquet (Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles Lettres, 1929/1964) ———, Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992) The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Marjorie Chibnall, Oxford Medieval Texts, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968–1980) The Chronographia of Robert of Torigna, ed. and trans. by Thomas Bisson, Oxford Medieval Texts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2021 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. by Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992–1995) Secondary Works Barlow, Frank, William Rufus (London: Yale University Press, 1983) Barroux, Robert, ‘L’anniversaire de Dagobert à Saint-Denis au xiie siècle: charte inedite de l’abbé Adam’, Bulletin philologique et historiqu du comité des traveaux historiques et scientifiques, 1942–1943 (1945), 131–51 ———, ‘L’abbé Suger et la vassalité du Vexin en 1124’, Le Moyen Âge, 64 (1958), 1–26 Bates, David, Normandy before 1066 (London: Longmans, 1982) ———, ‘Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors: The Family of the Counts of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin in France and England during the Eleventh Century’, in The Sudeleys-Lords of Toddington (London: The Manorial Record Society of Great Britain, 1987), pp. 34–48 ———, William the Conqueror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016)
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Bauduin, Pierre, La première Normandie (xe-xie siècles). Sur le frontières de la Haute Normandie. Identité et construction d’une principauté (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2004) ———, ‘Hugh de Fleury et l’histoire normande’, in Normandy and its Neighbours 900–1250: Essays for David Bates, ed. by David Crouch and Kathleen Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 157–74 Bautier, R.-H., ‘L’école historique de l’abbaye de Fleury d’Aimoin à Hugues de Fleury’, in Histoire de France, Historiens de la France. Actes du Colloque international organisé par la Société d’Histoire de France, Reims 14 et 15 mai 1993, ed. by Yves-Marie Bercé and Philippe Contamine (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1994), pp. 59–72. Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘The Children of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of Maurienne and the Date of a Historical Compendium of Saint-Denis’ (forthcoming) Chibnall, Marjorie, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) Deniaux, Elisabeth, Claude Lorren, Pierre Bauduin, and Thomas Jarry, La Normandie avant les Normands. De la conquête Romaine à l’arrivée des vikings (Rennes: Editions OuestFrance, 2002) Dunbabin, Jean, ‘Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy’, in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. by Paul Magdalino (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), pp. 1–14 ———, France in the Making 843–1180, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) Feuchère, Pierra, ‘Une tentative manquée de concentration territoriale entre Somme et Seine: la principauté d’Amiens-Valois au xie siècle. Étude de géographie historique’, Le Moyen Âge, 4th series, 9 (1954), 1–37 Führer, Julian, ‘Französische Königreich und franzosische Königtum in der Wahrnehmung des zeitgenossischen historiographie: Suger und Guillaume de Nangis’, in Macht und Spiegel der Herrschaft im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert vor dem Hintergrund der Chronistik, ed. by Norbert Kersken and Grischa Vercramer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), pp. 199–218 ———, ‘Documentation et écriture de l’histoire chez l’abbe Suger’, in L’ écriture de l’histoire au moyen Âge, ed. by Étienne Anheim, Pierre Chastang, Francine Mora-Lebrun, and Anne Rochebouet, Rencontre 135 Série civilisation médiévale, 15 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015) pp. 149–60 Gasparri, Françoise, ‘L’Abbé Suger de Saint-Denis. Mémoire et perpétuations des œuvres humaines’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale xe-xiie siècles, 44 (2001), 247–57 ———, Suger de Saint-Denis. Abbé, soldat, homme d’état au xiie siècle (Paris: Picard, 2015) Grant, Lindy, ‘Suger and the Anglo-Norman World’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 19 (1996), 51–68 ———, Abbot Suger of St Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France (London: Longmans, 1998) Green, Judith, ‘Lords of the Norman Vexin’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. by John Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984) ———, Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Große, Rolf, Saint-Denis zwischen Adel und König. Die Zeit vor Suger (1053–1122) (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002)
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Gullick, Michael, ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further Observations on the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, in Symeon of Durham. Historian of Durham and the North, ed. by David Rollason (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 14–31 Hagger, Mark, Norman Rule in Normandy 911–1144 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017) Hingst, Amanda Jane, The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) Hollister, C. Warren, ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman regnum’, Speculum, 51 (1976), 202–42 Lair, Jules, ‘Mémoire sur deux chroniques latines composées au xiie siècle à l’abbaye de Saint-Denis’, Bibliothèque de École des Chartes, 35 (1874), 543–80 La Neustrie. Les pays au nord de la Loire de 650 à 850. Colloque historique international, ed. by Hartmut Atsma (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989) Lettinck, Nico, ‘Pour une édition critique de l’Historia Ecclesiastica de Hugues de Fleury’, Revue Bénédictine, 91 (1981), 386–91 Leturcq, Samuel, ‘Suger expert’, in Expertise et valeur des choses au Moyen Âge, II Savoirs, écritures, pratiques, ed. by Laurent Feller and Ana Rodriguez (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2016) Molinier, Auguste, Catalogues des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Mazarine (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et cie, 1886) Naus, James, ‘Negotating Kingship in France at the Time of the Early Crusades: Suger and the Gesta Ludovici Grossi’, French Historical Studies, 36 (2013), 525–41 Nebbiae-dalla Guarda, Donatella, La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Saint-Denis en France du ixe au xviiie siècle (Paris: CNRS, 1985) Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gaspar, and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016) Pohl, Benjamin, ‘Pictures, Poems and Purpose: New Perspectives on the Manuscripts of Dudo of St Quentin’s Historia Normannorum’, Scriptorium, 67 (2013), 229–58 ———, ‘Abbas qui et Scriptor? The Handwriting of Robert of Torigni and his Scribal Activity as Abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel’, Traditio, 69 (2014), 45–86 ———, ‘The Illustrated Archetype of the Historia Normannorum: Did Dudo of St Quentin Write a “chronicon pictum”?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 37 (2015), 221–51 ———, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (Woodbridge: Medieval Press, 2015) Power, Daniel, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Searle, Eleanor, Predatory Kinship and the Formation of Norman Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) Shopkow, Leah, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of Washington Press, 1997) Sot, Michel, Gesta episcoporum, gesta abbatum, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental, 37 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981) Spiegel, Gabriele, The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey (Brookline: Classical folia editions, 1987)
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van Houts, Elisabeth, ‘À propos de l’article de B. M. Tock, Les chartes originales de l’abbaye de Jumièges: Une hypothèse sur l’identification de Willelmus notarius comme l’historien Guillaume de Jumièges’, Tabularia … [www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/crahm/ revue/tabularia/] Études: Jumièges, Débat, 2, pp. 1–5. ———, Gesta Normannorum Ducum. Een studie over de handschriften, de tekst, het geschiedwerk en het genre (Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1982) ———, Local and Regional Chronicles, Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental, 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 33–41 ———, History and Family Tradition in England and the Continent, 1000–1200 (Aldershot: Variorum Collected Studies Series, 1999) Vidier, Alexandre, L’Historiographie à Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire et les miracles de Saint Benoît (Paris: Picard, 1965) Weston, Jenny, ‘Following the Master’s Lead: The Script of Orderic Vitalis and the Discovery of a New Manuscript (Rouen, BM, 540)’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gaspar, and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), pp. 37–60
Theodore Evergates
Countess Blanche, Philip Augustus, and the War of Succession in Champagne, 1201–1222*
The death of Thibaut III, Count of Champagne, on 24 May 1201 had major consequences for two interrelated events: the Fourth Crusade, then in its planning stage, and the succession in Champagne. We are fortunate in having two unique, contemporary dossiers that document the ramifications of his death. The better known are the memoirs dictated in 1207 and 1208 by Count Thibaut’s marshal, Geoffroy of Villehardouin, who in his spoken vernacular described the course of a crusade gone wrong and its aftermath.1 Less well known is the cartulary compiled by the comital chancery of Champagne for Countess Blanche (of Navarre), Thibaut’s twenty-two-year-old widow and regent (1201–1222) for his posthumous son, Thibaut IV. Now known as the ‘Cartulary of Countess Blanche’, it contains copies of letters patent dealing with the conflict over Thibaut’s succession provoked by Erard of Brienne, an ambitious local baron, that embroiled the king, two popes, the prelates and barons of Champagne, and Erard’s relatives, neighbours, and allies. The cartulary is a treasure trove of records produced during Blanche’s regency to assure her son’s succession: homages, court judgements, oaths, promises, warranties, declarations of loyalty, confirmations, truces, and peace treaties.2 They document how an astute and determined countess defeated a coalition of disaffected barons and left her son an enlarged, pacified principality. At Thibaut IV’s accession on 30 May 1222, Blanche retired to Argensolles, the Cistercian convent she founded and where she spent her last years.3 Her cartulary, copied directly from a reserve chancery cartulary, was presented to her in 1225 as a personal memorial to her singular achievement. It survives today in the same condition as when she held it before she died in 1229.
* I thank Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein for their most helpful comments on this paper. 1 Villehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople. 2 The Cartulary of Countess Blanche of Champagne, ed. by Evergates, [hereafter CB], edition, with an analysis of its contents, pp. 10–20. 3 See Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, pp. 28–33, 112–13. Theodore Evergates is Professor Emeritus of History at McDaniel College. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 77-104 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122619
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Map 3.1. Map of the Champagne region. Map by M. C. Gaposchkin.
Our understanding of Blanche’s regency, described in detail a century and a half ago by Henry d’Arbois de Jubainville in his history of the counts of Champagne, has been enriched by recent studies on Blanche’s leadership skills, the papal protection of crusaders, the canon law of legitimate birth and marriage, and the extended kinship of the Briennes at home and abroad.4 My interest here is in how Blanche manoeuvred over the course of two decades, pressing the king and the popes through shifting arguments and turning to advantage seemingly unfavourable circumstances. Although her relations with King Philip II (1180–1223) ultimately determined the outcome of the conflict, it was the foreign-born widow in her twenties and thirties who drove the events that led to her triumph over rebel barons who refused to accept either the king’s pronouncements at court or the findings of papal inquests. Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, the well-informed Cistercian chronicler writing shortly after Blanche’s death, described
4 Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, vol. 4. 1, pp. 101–97, a detailed account of Blanche’s regency, especially after 1213, based on his catalogue of sources. A summary of the main events is in CB, pp. 9–10. Recent studies are: Perry, ‘“Scandalia … tam oriente quam in occidente”’, Perry, John of Brienne, pp. 81–88, and Perry, The Briennes, pp. 56–64; Sjursen, ‘Weathering Thirteenth-Century Warfare’; McDougall, Royal Bastards, pp. 243–52; and Park, Papal Protection and the Crusader, pp. 196–203.
Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n
her as viriliter et strenue de adversariis triumphavit, an apt characterization of a young widow who forcefully continued her husband’s policies vis-à-vis the castle lords of Champagne.5 She displayed the same resolve in navigating her relations with Philip, in exacting homages and declarations of loyalty from her barons, and in intervening militarily at the critical moment to preserve the integrity of the county.6
Preliminaries, 1198–1208 The issue of succession arose because Thibaut III (1198–1201) had become Count by collateral succession after the death of his older brother, Count Henry II (1187–1197), who remained in Acre after the Third Crusade (Genealogy 3.1). Before leaving on crusade in 1190, the unmarried Henry took the precaution of having the barons of Champagne swear to accept his eleven-year-old brother Thibaut as his successor should he not return, in effect to confirm a collateral succession. When Thibaut did liege homage to the king in April 1198, he did it for ‘all the land that my father Count Henry [I] held from his father, King Louis [VII], and my brother [Henry II held] from King Philip’. Eleven prominent barons, including his marshal Geoffroy of Villehardouin, swore to the count’s good faith in the matter; the king’s reciprocal letters patent attesting to Thibaut’s homage certified Thibaut’s succession.7 No mention was made of the fact that Thibaut, at nineteen, was a minor with respect to the comital office in Champagne. As far as Philip was concerned, Thibaut was the legitimate heir of Count Henry I the Liberal (1152–1181) and Countess Marie, the king’s half-sister. The next year, on 1 July 1199, Thibaut married Blanche of Navarre, the youngest sister of King Sancho VII (the Strong), in Chartres cathedral. They were both twenty.8 Among the distinguished guests were Blanche’s older sister Berengaria, widow of Richard I of England, and Thibaut’s barons and officers, including his marshal, Geoffroy of Villehardouin.9 Four months later, on 28 November, Thibaut and a large contingent of barons and knights took the cross at Ḗcry for the Fourth Crusade. According to Villehardouin, Thibaut and his brother-in-law Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders (1195–1205), and his cousin Louis, Count of Blois (1195–1205), were the primary leaders of the crusade, which was expected to sail from Venice in June 1202. Thibaut’s death on 24 May 1201, just after final preparations had been made for the crusade, left Blanche in the last week of her second pregnancy. She immediately sent her
5 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, Chronicon, p. 878. 6 Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 34–42. 7 Thibaut’s sealed letters patent (Littere Baronum, ed. by Evergates, pp. 159–60, Appendix 1, April 1198) and Philip II’s reciprocal letters patent (CB, pp. 51–53, no. 23. April 1198, Melun = Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 195–96, no. 473 = Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 129–30, no. 581). 8 Thibaut III was born in May 1179, shortly before Henry I left on his personal crusade to Jerusalem. It is not clear whether Blanche was born in 1177 or 1179 (shortly before her mother died); I have accepted 1179 on the possibility that her mother died in childbirth. 9 Blanche’s dower letter names the most important witnesses to the wedding (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 204, no. 497, 1 July 1199; trans. Evergates, Documents, 58–59, no. 40).
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Geneaology 3.1.
Alice of Champagne
Louis VII, King 1160 of France 1137-1180
Hugh of Lusignan
Henry II, Count of Champagne 1187-97
Adele, Queen of France 1160-1180 d. 1206
1192
Philippa of Champagne
Isabelle, Queen of Jerusalem 1190-1205
William, Archbishop of Reims 1176-1202
1215
Champagne
Erard of Ramerupt, 1203-1243
Thibaut III, Count of Champagne 1198-1201 1199
Henry I the Liberal, Count of Champagne 1152-81
Thibaut IV, Count of Champagne 1222-1253; King of Navarre 12341253
Blanche, Countess of Champagne 1199-1222
1164
Sancho VII the Strong, King of Navarre 1194-1234
Marie, Countess of Champagne 1165-1198
Berengaria, Queen England, 1191-1199 d. 1234
Navarre
Philip II, King of France 1180-1223
France
1191
Remi, Chancellor of Champagne, 1211-1220; Bishop of Pamplona 1220-1228
Genealogy 1
Richard I, King of England, 1189-1199
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Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n
chancellor, Walter of Chappes (1190–1207), to meet King Philip at the royal residence in Sens to place herself and the county under royal protection (Map 3.1). The chancellor brought a draft of the terms (conventiones) she proposed as ‘palatine countess of Troyes’.10 In assuming her husband’s palatine title — the first time by a countess of Troyes, no doubt on the advice of her husband’s counsellors — Blanche claimed to hold his office in custody (de baillio) for his heir. She promised not to marry without Philip’s consent, and to place both her infant daughter and her child about to be born in Philip’s custody. She also promised to surrender two fortified towns, Bray-sur-Seine and Montereau-Fault-Yonne, and to obtain oaths vouching for her loyal conduct toward Philip from the residents and enfeoffed knights of those towns as well as of Provins, Lagny, and Meaux — all located in Brie, a royal fief.11 She reported that Archbishop William (‘of White Hands’) of Reims (1176–1202), Thibaut’s aged uncle who may have attended the count at his death, already had accepted her homage (me recepit in feminam) for her regency, as did the duke of Burgundy, the two most important overlords of Champagne after the king. Blanche offered to do liege homage (faciam hominagium ligium) to the king whenever he asked her to, as soon as she was able (quamcitus potero) to travel after her delivery, and to pay him 500 l. parisis annually for the maintenance of Bray and Montereau. She promised to have nine great barons of Champagne swear to the above terms.12 All that was a proffer to an assertive king increasingly intrusive in the principalities of northern France. Philip modified Blanche’s proffer in letters patent vetted in Sens.13 Ignoring her palatine title — he called her simply ‘countess of Troyes’ — he accepted her written act of liege homage for the fief that Thibaut had held from him and she held in custody (de bailio), and for her dower (de dotalicio) as described in her document (carta). For Philip, Blanche’s homage was more critical than her remarriage, which was not mentioned. At that point, Philip regarded Blanche’s infant daughter as Thibaut’s presumptive heiress, and he promised to take good care of her until she was twelve, when she would be married on the advice of a council consisting of himself, Blanche, the queen mother Adele (the girl’s great-aunt), Archbishop William of Reims (the
10 CB, pp. 405–06, no. 449, May, 120[1], Sens (= Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne, ed. by Longnon, i, 469, no. 6 = Les registres de Philippe Auguste, ed. by Baldwin and others, i, 487–88, no. 41). The letter is known only from a copy in the royal Register A, which omits the final clauses related to the sealing; it is not clear whether Blanche possessed a seal at this point. I deduce Blanche’s absence from Sens from the fact that the text states that she already had done homage to Archbishop William, who presumably was at Thibaut’s deathbed, and had received homages from Thibaut’s relatives, the duke of Burgundy and the count of Blois, whose good conduct toward Philip had been warranted by Thibaut on 1 September 1198 (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i 197, no. 478). The absence of a sealing clause suggests that the document was a proposal presented by Blanche’s chancellor. For the king’s reciprocal letters patent, see n. 13. 11 Provins, Lagny, and Meaux were the three most important towns in Brie. Not included here were the seven neighbouring castellanies in Blanche’s dower. 12 The counts of Grandpré, Joigny, Rethel, and Sancerre; the lords of Traînel and Marigny; Guy II of Dampierre, Walter of Châtillon, and the seneshal Geoffroy IV of Joinville. 13 Actes de Philippe Auguste, ii, 235–38, no. 678, 1201 (24–30 May). Philip states that he accepted the conventiones illas que scripte sunt in carta ista, that is, Blanche’s proffer, but in fact he modified it.
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girl’s great-uncle), and ten named barons of Champagne, including the marshal Geoffroy of Villehardouin.14 If Blanche delivered a boy, Philip promised to return Bray and Montereau to him at his majority (understood to be twenty-one) on payment of rachat, with both towns being renderable to him at his request. Philip also sealed a vidimus confirming Blanche’s dower letter, which her chancellor had brought to Sens.15 In 1201, then, the king was primarily interested in his custody over Champagne and its countess, and the future transfer of the county to Blanche’s daughter or son. Neither Blanche’s proffer nor Philip’s certifying letter makes the slightest suggestion that Thibaut’s succession was in doubt. Rigord, the monk at Saint-Denis who wrote a history of Philip’s rule, fails to mention the meeting in Sens; he notes only that, since Thibaut died without a male heir, Philip placed the count’s lands, widow, and daughter under his ‘tutelage and custody’.16 Behind the scenes in Champagne the view was more troubling. If Count Henry II did not return to Champagne, he nevertheless retained his comital title and continued to deal with local affairs for eight years (1190–1197) while his mother Marie acted as Countess of Champagne.17 The situation was further anomalous in that Henry married Isabelle, queen of Jerusalem, in 1192 and had two daughters who became his direct heirs at his death. Yet, as a dozen of his companions testified two decades later, the circumstances of Henry’s marriage were murky and the legitimacy of his daughters not entirely certain. The right of Thibaut’s son also was complicated by the fact that he was born on 30 May 1201, just six days after his father’s death. The question of succession was fairly posed: did Henry II’s daughters, born while he was still Count of Champagne, take precedence over his brother’s posthumous son? Thibaut had anticipated such a challenge while preparing for the crusade. In 1200 he did homage to his cousin Odo III, Duke of Burgundy (1192–1218), for the lands for which his father, Henry the Liberal, had done homage to Odo’s father; no mention was made of a collateral succession from Thibaut’s brother.18 And at his request, the duke sealed a second letter promising not to hear any suit regarding Thibaut’s fief, which he warranted against any man ‘or woman’ who might challenge it.19 Thibaut also requested papal protection from Innocent III, who on 15 May 1200 placed the count’s lands and possessions under apostolic protection.20 Shortly after Thibaut’s death, Blanche asked Innocent to place her and all her lands under papal protection, 14 The barons included the duke of Burgundy, Counts Louis of Blois and William of Joigny, Walter of Châtillon, Geoffroy of Joinville, Jean of Montmirail, and Clarembaud of Chappes. Philip promised to have ten of his barons swear swear that he would uphold the terms, which if he did not, they would place themselves in captivity in Troyes until he did so. 15 Actes de Philippe Auguste, ii, 238–39, no. 679, 1201 (24–30 May). 16 Rigord, Histoire, p. 368, § 141. 17 See Evergates, Marie of France, pp. 74–93. 18 Littere Baronum, p. 50, no. 6, 1200, letter of Odo, Duke of Burgundy (= CB, 95–96, no. 72 = Layettes, i, 224 no. 605 = Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne, ed. by Longnon, i, 468, no. 4). For Odo’s life, with a catalogue of his acts, see Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, iii. 19 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 224, no. 606, 1200, Provins, ad precum ejus instantiam […] contra omnem hominem vel feminan de feodo illo, ego […] in perpetuum portabimus garantiam. 20 Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum, fols 5v–6v, 15 May 1200.
Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n
which he did on 13 December 1201.21 By the spring of 1202, when the crusaders began to leave Champagne on crusade, the county was at peace, under the king’s custody and the pope’s protection. Henry II’s daughters were still very young — and distant. Countess Blanche first confronted the issue of succession three years later, in 1205, after the deaths of both Henry II’s widow, Queen Isabelle of Jerusalem, and her consort, Aimery of Lusignan (king, 1198–1205). Isabelle had arranged for her daughters by Henry to marry Aimery’s sons by an earlier marriage, and so it was expected that the oldest, Alice, would marry Aimery’s son Hugh.22 Informed of these events overseas, Blanche sent her knight Garnier of Lagny to offer the bailiff John of Ibelin (1205–1210), who had custody of the children, 150 marks of gold to expedite Alice’s marriage in order to keep her in the East. Archbishop Clarembaud of Tyre (1202–1213), former canon of the comital chapel of St-Étienne of Troyes, who had remained with Henry in Acre after the Third Crusade, brokered that arrangement.23 At the same time, Blanche had to face several disgruntled barons in Champagne. She insisted on retaining the castle of Chaumont in the Bassigny after its lord, Milo of Chaumont, died on the Fourth Crusade with his castle still mortgaged to Count Thibaut. Milo’s closest heirs regarded Blanche’s act as a breach of the custom allowing them to redeem the mortgage.24 That marked the first expansion of the comital domain east of the Marne. In 1208 Simon of Châteauvillain complained that Count Thibaut had forced him to hold his castle in direct liege homage rather than from his older brother.25 Blanche made financial settlements in both cases, but her intrusion in the southeastern region of the county threatened the powerful families that had long enjoyed virtual independence from comital authority. The prospect that she would continue Thibaut’s policies of requiring castle lords to hold their castles in liege homage and to render them at his need seeded the ground with a regional disaffection that soon merged with the issue of succession.26 Responding to these incipient challenges at home and abroad, Blanche commissioned a magnificent tomb for Thibaut that depicted her husband, and therefore his son, 21 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 227–28, no. 615, 13 December 1201. Innocent also confirmed by vidimus a copy of Blanche’s dower letter that was sent to him (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 228, no. 616, 18 December 1201). 22 Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus, pp. 41–46, and Edbury, John of Ibelin, pp. 30–32. 23 As reported from Acre by Archbishop Clarembaud (of Broyes) of Tyre (1202–1213), who had witnessed the pactiones between Garnier of Lagny and John and Philip of Ibelin (CB, pp. 316–17, no. 361, Acre, 5 December 1207). Clarembaud had been a canon of St-Étienne of Troyes and master of its school; he witnessed three acts of Count Henry I in the 1170s (Actes d’Henri le Libéral, pp. 422–23, no. 336, 1172; p. 432, no. 345, 1172; p. 569, no. 456, 1177 (‘canon of St-Étienne of Troyes’). He also was a canon of Meaux cathedral; see Mayer, Die Kanzlei, i, 300–02. 24 CB, pp. 309–10, no. 351, December 1205: Bishop Robert of Langres mediated a settlement by which Blanche paid 200 l. cash to retain possession in exchange for granting Milo’s closest heir, his halfbrother Josbert, the fief of Agevile, which owed one month of castleguard. See also Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 37–38, 123. 25 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 320, no. 848, May 1208. For Simon, see Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 220–21. 26 For Thibaut’s policies toward the barons, see Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 34–36.
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as the legitimate heir of Champagne. Details of the tomb, which was placed next to Henry I’s in the comital chapel in Troyes, are known through rough sketches made shortly before it was destroyed during the French Revolution.27 It was a metalwork tomb, of the same materials and dimensions as Henry the Liberal’s but with an entirely different iconographical programme. Thibaut’s effigy lay on top, with statuettes of his closest relatives in bronze and silver placed below in four closed arches — his father and mother, his brother and sisters, his son (Thibaut IV) and daughter, his mother’s brother (the king of Navarre) — and at the head and foot of the tomb, the kings of France (Philip II) and England (Richard I). As a ‘tomb of kinship’, it presented a compelling dynastic message.28 The upper fillet reads: Tanta palatino ne principe terra careret, Transit in haeredum vita paterna novum. Qui puer ut phenix de funere patris abortus, Continuet patros in sua jura dies. So that so great a land not lack a palatine prince, Let the father’s life pass to a new heir, A boy (puer) who, sprung phoenix-like from his father’s ashes, Might continue his father’s life in his own right.29 Blanche’s hand in the messaging is apparent in the placement of her own figure opposite the figure of Henry the Liberal. She holds a model of Thibaut’s tomb; Henry holds a model of the comital chapel in which both he and Thibaut were buried. Blanche had cast a powerful narrative of dynastic descent for her son, still a puer under her regency, to counter any claim by Henry II’s daughters born overseas, who were in effect out of the picture.
Blanche v. Philip, 1209–1215 The matter of Henry II’s daughters assumed new urgency in 1208, when John, Count of Brienne, from one of the most distinguished families in Champagne, was elected 27 Dectot, ‘Les tombeaux des comtes de Champagne’, pp. 32–41, dates Blanche’s commission to c. 1225, during her retirement at Argensolles, and the completion of the tomb to 1267, when a merchant of Limoges asked Count Thibaut V for payment for his father’s tomb. Dectot’s argument hinges on a reading of the word pater in 1267, which he takes to mean here grandfather, and on the dating of scattered enamel plaques that may have been on the tomb, which was destroyed in the French Revolution. Bur, ‘L’image de la parenté’, pp. 63–64, places the tomb’s date to between 1208 and 1215 on the basis of events in Champagne, and on the fact that the figure of Thibaut IV on the tomb refers to him as a puer, which he would have been until he did homage to the king in 1214. My reading is closer to Bur’s, but I think that events in the East between 1205 and 1210 (when Alice of Jerusalem and Hugh of Cyprus were married), also played a role in the construction of the tomb, precisely because it offered a powerful visual narrative of young Thibaut as his father’s legitimate successor. 28 Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, pp. 14–17. See also Bur, ‘L’image de la parenté’, pp. 60–74, and Dectot, ‘Les tombeaux des comtes’, pp. 32–39, 53–56. 29 Text in Dectot, ‘Les tombeaux des comtes de Champagne’, p. 55; translation, slightly modified, from Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, p. 14.
Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n
king of Jerusalem and consequently became guardian of Henry’s daughters: Alice, who was betrothed but still not married to Hugh of Lusignan, and Philippa, who was about twelve.30 The next year, after young Thibaut turned eight on 30 May 1209, Blanche sought a new agreement (conventiones) with King Philip II, in which she asked him to reaffirm his commitment made days before the boy’s birth in May 1201. On 2 July 1209 in Paris, in the presence of Blanche, Thibaut, Prince Louis, and John of Brienne, Philip announced that Thibaut would spend four years in his custody (2 February 1210–2 February 1214), joining his cousins Jeanne and Margaret of Flanders. The king promised to receive Thibaut’s liege homage when he turned twenty-one ‘for the land that his father [Thibaut III] held when he died’, and would ignore any challenge to Thibaut’s inheritance before that time because, according to the ‘practice and custom in France’ (usus et consuetudo Francie), no one before that age could be challenged at court as to the lands his father held at his death. Therefore, said the king, he would not hear any challenge by Count Henry II’s daughter or by anyone else before Thibaut turned twenty-one. For that promise, Blanche paid Philip 15,000 l., money of Paris.31 In 1201 Philip had promised to protect Blanche as regent and, if she delivered a son, to return Bray and Montereau to him when he came of age to inherit; no mention was made of homage. In 1209 Philip enlarged the scope of the inheritance to include all the land that Thibaut III had held, implicitly encompassing the fiefs held from other lords, primarily the duke of Burgundy and the prelates of Reims, Langres, and Sens. Philip effectively re-framed the issue of succession. By making homage the constitutive act for succession to Champagne, he vacated any challenge on the grounds of marriage and descent. The significance of the new terms is suggested by the fact that he had copies of his decision sent to Pope Innocent III and to the three important overlords of Champagne — the archbishop of Reims, the bishop of Langres, and the duke of Burgundy — requesting their letters of confirmation. Copies of those confirmations, with promises to take Thibaut’s homage at twenty-one — ‘or even earlier, if it pleases his mother’ — were sent to Blanche for deposit in her chancery archive.32 For Blanche, Philip’s new clauses were worth the money. She not only delayed any challenge in the king’s court for a decade, she obtained Philip’s formal
30 Philippa was Henry II’s third daughter, born between 1195 and 1198, and therefore approaching the age of a canonical marriage by 1208. 31 Littere Baronum, ed. by Evergates, pp. 161–62, Appendix no. 2, Paris, July 1209 (= Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 171–72, no. 1088). Blanche’s reciprocal letter, mutatis mutandis, was probably written by the royal chancery (Littere Baronum, ed. by Evergates, pp. 163–64, Appendix no. 3, Paris, July 1209 = Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 332–33, no. 878). Prince Louis, at his father’s order, swore to the new conditions and sealed a separate letter (CB, pp. 261–63, no. 292, Paris, August 1209). Blanche paid in six instalments, completing the entire sum in December 1210 (Paris, BnF, MS fonds Cinq cents de Colbert, Liber Principum, v. 56, fol. 6r). 32 The duke of Burgundy sealed two letters, in September 1209 (Littere Baronum, pp. 88–89, no. 48) and in January 1210 (CB, pp. 42–43, no. 13: sicut in carta ipsius regis inde habita plenius continentur). The archbishop of Reims confirmed sicut eam vidimus in suo [Philip’s] auctentico contineri in April 1210 (CB, p. 44, no. 14). The bishop of Langres approved in 1210 (CB, pp. 44–45, no. 15). The pope confirmed what was in autenticis exinde confectis plenius continetur (Littere Baronum, p. 99, no. 61, 22 November
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commitment, and the commitment of the count’s other overlords, ultimately to accept Thibaut’s homage, hence his succession. Philip’s support of his cousin Thibaut was not entirely opportunistic. Philip himself had been only fifteen in December 1180 when he received the boy’s grandfather, Henry the Liberal, ‘with great favor’ at his Christmas court in Sens and accepted the count’s sound advice about not going to war with Emperor Frederick.33 But Philip’s esteem for his uncle did not extend to the count’s oldest son, Henry II. In 1180 Philip stole Henry II’s betrothed, Isabelle of Hainaut; in 1189 he prevented Henry’s succession to the county of Namur; and in 1190, on the Third Crusade, he denied Henry’s request for a loan unless the county of Champagne were placed in collateral.34 Philip had formed a close relationship with Thibaut III, who was nineteen when he did homage to Philip in 1198 and who joined the royal army that summer against Henry II of England. Thibaut even warranted the loyalty of his cousin Louis, Count of Blois, who had allied with the king of England.35 In 1209, then, Philip signalled his firm support of Thibaut III’s son against the ‘daughter of Count Henry II’.36 Philip’s decision, confirmed by the pope and the major overlords of Champagne, appeared to have settled the question of young Thibaut’s right to succeed. Events took a turn after John of Brienne arrived in Acre with three hundred knights in the summer of 1210. On 4 September he married Marie of Montferrat, titular queen of Jerusalem, and in October, in Tyre, he was crowned king of Jerusalem.37 John’s success in acquiring a major polity through marriage was not lost on his cousin Erard of Brienne, lord of (one-half of) Ramerupt (1203–1243) (Genealogy 3.2). Little is known about Erard’s early life. He was about seven when his father died on the Third Crusade, about thirteen when his mother remarried, twenty-one when knighted in 1203, and married by his late twenties in 1211. He was of sufficient standing to be one of fifteen barons convened by Blanche in 1212 to draft guidelines for the succession to castles and fortifications in Champagne in the absence of male heirs, and he was among thirty-four barons who sealed Blanche’s formal document declaring that daughters would share inherited
1210). The duke of Burgundy promised to take Thibaut’s homage at twenty-one vel etiam ante si dicte Blanche comitisse matri ejus placuerit, as did the bishop of Langres (etiam ante si dicte matri ejus placuerit). 33 See Evergates, Henry the Liberal, p. 163. 34 See Evergates, Marie of France, pp. 67–73, 76–79. 35 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 197, no. 478, 1 September 1198. 36 It is likely that the queen mother Adele was involved in supporting Blanche and Thibaut before she died in June 1206, for in October 1209 Blanche established an anniversary Mass for Adele in the comital chapel in Troyes in commemoration of her ‘familiarity and affection’ (Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 17098, Cartulary of St-Étienne, fol. 61r, October 1209: 10 l. from the fairs at Troyes). 37 William, Count of Sancerre, did liege homage to Blanche at Nogent-sur-Seine in 1209 (CB, pp. 38–39, no. 9) in the presence of Counts John of Brienne and William of Joigny (CB, pp. 341–42, no. 386). For John of Brienne, see Perry, John of Brienne, pp. 40–55.
Genealogy 3.2.
Walter III, Count 1191-1205
1210 John of Brienne, Count 1205-1237 King of Jerusalem 1209-1229 Emperor of Constantinople 1229-1237
Erard II, Count 1161-1191
Brienne
Marie of Montferrat
Isabelle, Queen of Jerusalem 1190-1205
Henry II of Champagne Amalric of Lusignan
1192
1198
1210
Conrad of Montferrat
1190
Alice of Champagne
Humphrey of Toron
1183
Hugh of Lusignan
Philippa of Champagne
1215
Erard 1190-1243
Milo III of Noyers
Alice
Genealogy 2
Andre 1158-1189
Ramerupt Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n 87
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resources equally, save only that the castle or fortified residence, if there was only one, passed to the eldest.38 In late 1212 or early 1213, after the death of his wife, Erard declared his intention to marry Henry II’s younger daughter Philippa.39 It is not known what precipitated such an audacious challenge to Blanche and Thibaut, who were under the protection of the king and the major overlords of Champagne. In his later deposition before Cardinal Odo, Erard stated that his ‘discord’ with Countess Blanche began when he took the cross to go to the Holy Land and sought leave from the king of France, ‘as is the custom for barons’.40 He recalled his speech to Philip: ‘The king of Jerusalem [ John of Brienne] is my relative, and if he wishes to give me one of Count Henry of Champagne’s daughters [in John’s custody], I would want to marry her with your [Philip’s] consent (concilio)’. If Erard hoped to win over Philip, he was disappointed, for the king replied: ‘I will neither approve nor disapprove, but will do whatever is just’. When Blanche heard about that conversation, Erard continued, she tried to have his friends and her constable, Guy II of Dampierre, dissuade him from his plan because it was inimical to her and her son.41 Then, he said, she informed him by letter and by personal envoy that she renounced his homage and fidelity. The second reason for his dispute with Blanche, Erard continued, was that she ignored his status as a protected crusader and confiscated his lands on the false grounds that he owed money to the Jews. Erard did not mention that some of Blanche’s fiefholders were circumventing her courts, claiming that their status as crusaders allowed them to present purely secular matters in ecclesiastical courts. On Blanche’s complaint, Innocent prohibited that practice under pain of excommunication — the papal protection of crusaders did not exempt them from secular courts — and affirmed the jurisdiction of Blanche’s court over the secular cases of her fiefholders.42 Erard
38 CB, pp. 407–08, no. 450A, an undated draft of the ordinances later announced by Blanche and sealed by her and thirty-three barons (CB, pp. 409–10, no. 450B, 1212). Although the names of the barons are not included in the final document, a scribe later wrote their names next to their pendant seals. A photograph of the document is in Baudin, Les sceaux des comtes de Champagne, Illustration 8). See also Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, p. 122. 39 In 1211 Erard, his wife Helissendis, stepfather Walter of Joigny, and mother Alice reached an agreement with the monks of Pontigny over the use of certain woods (Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 328–31, no. 1217, 1 November 1211–24 March 1212, Philip II’s confirmation of Blanche’s [lost] letters patent describing the terms). That is the last mention of Erard’s wife. For a brief biography of Erard, see Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 241, and, in greater detail, Perry, The Briennes, pp. 56–64. 40 It is not clear when Erard spoke with Philip. It is generally assumed that he did so before leaving for Acre in 1213. Fragments of the stenographic record of Erard’s deposition survive on a roll (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, v, 84, no. 248); that text is described as being identical to the extant formal copy (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 526–28, no. 1474, undated). Erard’s deposition most likely occurred between 8 July 1218, at the end of hostilities, and 10 October 1219, when Pope Honorius III absolved Erard and Philippa. 41 Guy II of Dampierre (Aube), constable of Champagne (1171–1216); see Savitiez, ‘Maison de Dampierre-Saint-Dizier’, pp. 116–25. 42 CB, pp. 84–85, no. 56, 22 October 1213, letter of Cardinal Robert, reporting Innocent’s letter of 9 August (Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, col. 967, no. 185).
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concluded his deposition by recalling that when he left Champagne, Blanche had her knight Lambert of Châtillon follow him to Marseilles, where he was falsely accused of theft. ‘All that’, he said in justification, ‘was the principal cause of the subsequent war’. Erard left for Acre shortly after June 1213.43 The next month, July 1213, Blanche went to Paris, where twelve-year-old Thibaut was still in the king’s custody. She asked Philip to renew his promise made in 1209 to receive Thibaut’s homage at twenty-one, and not to entertain any suit before that time regarding Thibaut’s inheritance, that is, what his father held ‘in peace and without challenge’ at his death.44 Philip renewed his pledge but would go no further; anticipating war with the monarchs of England and Germany, he had more pressing matters on his mind. Unable to move the king, Blanche turned to the pope with a new brief, knowing perhaps that Innocent already had linked Henry II’s death to his incestuous marriage with Isabelle of Jerusalem, who was still married to her first husband when Henry married her.45 Blanche asked the papal legate, Robert of Courçon, who had just arrived in France to organize the Fifth Crusade, to determine by inquest whether Erard of Brienne was too closely related to Philippa for a valid marriage.46 In July and August 1213 the abbots of Montiéramey, Quincy, and Vauluisant heard three men who had been with Henry II on the Third Crusade testify that Philippa and Erard were parentela and therefore could not contract a legitimate marriage.47 The knight Girard Eventat of Égligny, who had joined the Cistercians, gave similar testimony to the abbot of Preuilly.48 All agreed that Erard and Philippa were descended in a parentelae lineam from King Louis VI and his brother Florius.49 Blanche then asked for another inquest to determine two questions: whether the county of Champagne had been legitimately transferred to Thibaut III (and therefore to his posthumous son), and whether Henry II’s marriage to Isabelle in 1192 was valid (and if not, his daughters were illegitimate). In October 1213 the papal legate and the bishops of Soissons and Meaux heard the testimony of nine important men who had remained with Henry II in Acre after the Third Crusade and were still
43 Erard left Champagne after June 1213, when he compensated Pontigny for the damages he had caused the abbey (Le premier cartulaire de Pontigny, ed. by Garrigues, p. 256, no. 216). 44 CB, pp. 254–55, no. 281, Paris, July 1213 (= Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 444–45, no. 1306). 45 Gesta Innocentii, ed. by Migne, p. civ (The Deeds of Innocent III, trans. by Powell, p. 72), § 58. Innocent’s letter of 22 May 1199 addressed to the archbishop of Compostella mentions Henry’s marriage to a still-married Isabelle (Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, i, cols 610–15, no. 75). On 31 October 1214 Innocent sent Blanche a copy of that letter, which he said was made from the papal chancery’s register of letters (Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum, fols 2r–3v). 46 On Robert of Courçon’s mission (1213–1215), see Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, pp. 38–39. 47 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, col. 979, no. 9, July 1213 (testimony of Simon of Courpalais, Peter of Beauvoir, and Guy Gastablé [of Traînel]). In August 1213 Cardinal Robert heard the testimony of ‘many nobles’ on the same question (Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, cols 979–80, no. 10). On the question of illegitimacy, see McDougall, Royal Bastards, pp. 243–52, especially p. 248, on the novelty of the issue here. 48 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, cols 981–82, no. 12, 15 August 1213, Preuilly. 49 It is not clear whether all those who testified actually knew the four generations of descent between Erard and Philippa, or whether they confirmed a genealogy presented to them.
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alive twenty-three years later. Guy II of Dampierre, Blanche’s constable, said that he was not present at Sézanne in 1190 when the barons swore to accept Thibaut (III) as Henry II’s successor, but he had heard about it. Asked about Henry’s marriage to Isabelle, Guy said that it was known within the army at Acre and Tyre that Conrad of Monferrat had abducted Isabelle while she was still married to Humphrey of Toron, and that Henry, too, had married her [after Conrad’s assassination] while she was still married to Humphrey — ‘And the count well knew that’. Oudard of Aulnay, Blanche’s current marshal, confirmed Guy’s testimony, as did the others in their own statements.50 The legate reminded all prelates that Blanche and her son were under special papal protection, and that anyone troubling them or their land would be excommunicated.51 He reiterated Innocent’s prohibition for crusaders to bring cases involving fiefs to ecclesiastical courts.52 In December 1213 Innocent accepted the findings of both inquests — undertaken at Blanche’s request, he said — and ordered the bishop of Soissons to certify the testimony of ‘trustworthy and old men’ confirming that Henry had transferred his county to his brother Thibaut, and that Henry’s own marriage to Isabelle was not legitimate.53 Innocent ordered the patriarch of Jerusalem and the archbishop of Tyre, under pain of excommunication, to prevent Erard of Brienne’s marriage to Henry II’s daughter because they were too closely related for a legitimate marriage.54 At the same time Blanche undertook a riskier venture to circumvent the king’s passivity: she asked the other overlords of Champagne to take Thibaut’s homage for the lands held from them by earlier counts. For that presumption, Philip called her to account on 21 November 1213 at Compiègne, where she had to swear on scriptures
50 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, cols 980–81, no. 11, October 1213. The others were Guy of Chappes, Peter of Touquin, Count William of Joigny, Hugh of St-Maurice, Robert of Milly, Roger of St-Chéron, and Lambert of Bar-sur-Aube. 51 CB, p. 118, no. 101, October 1213. 52 CB, pp. 84–85, no. 56, 22 October 1213, letter of Cardinal Robert, reporting Innocent’s letter of 9 August (Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, col. 967, no. 185). 53 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 395–96, no. 1056, 12 December 1213. Innocent stated that he had heard about the inquest testimony from Blanche and Thibaut. He ordered the bishop and dean of Soissons and abbot of Longpont to seal documents confirming the results of that inquest, and he appointed bishop Haimard (of Provins) of Soissons ( July 1208–20 May 1219), former chanter of Reims cathedral (Desportes, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, iii, 317), as the chief enforcer of papal mandates. 54 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, col. 941, no. 150, January 1214. In a letter dated July 1214, Compiègne, Philip II reminded William of Chartres, master of the Templars, that John of Brienne had been present in court (on 2 July 1209) when he announced his decision, according to ‘an ancient custom’ of the realm, not to hear any case against young Thibaut until he attained twenty-one. And, he added, the testimony of many noble and worthy men (from the papal inquest of October 1213) proved that Henry II had transferred all his land to Thibaut in the event that he did not return from overseas. The king also had heard that Henry’s daughter and Erard of Brienne were related within the prohibited degrees, and therefore could not unite in legitimate marriage (Littere Baronum, ed. by Evergates, pp. 122–23, no. 88, July 1214, Compiègne). The date of Philip’s letter is problematic, for in July he was either advancing toward Bouvines or returning from it. Since the text is known from a single cartulary copy, the date might be a copyist’s error.
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not to allow Thibaut to do homage to any other lord for any of his lands.55 She was prohibited from fortifying Meaux, Lagny, Provins, and Coulommiers (but not Troyes, located on a fief held from the duke of Burgundy), and ten great barons of Champagne were required to seal letters patent confirming her oath. Guy II of Dampierre, who accompanied Blanche, sealed his letter at Compiègne, while the others — the counts of Blois, Grandpré, Joigny, Rethel, Sancerre, and St-Pol, and the lords of Traînel and Marigny — sealed virtually identical letters elsewhere in December.56 Philip repeated that he would not hear any challenge to Thibaut’s inheritance before he reached twenty-one, and would not accept Thibaut’s homage before that time — ‘unless by my wish’ (nisi per voluntatem nostram) — which opened that very possibility. For that, Blanche paid the king 20,000 l.57 She would exploit the king’s proviso to good effect nine months later, after Philip’s stunning victory at Bouvines (14 July 1214), where thirteen-year-old Thibaut fought with the royal forces. In August 1214, less than one month after Bouvines, Blanche appeared at Philip’s court at Melun to ask that he accept Thibaut’s homage. That was a shrewd move. The king, basking in the glow of Bouvines and its long-term implications, acceded to ‘the request of my dear and faithful B. countess of Champagne’ and received Thibaut’s liege homage ‘for the entire county of Champagne and Brie (de toto comitatu Campanie et Brie), just as his predecessors held it from us and our predecessors’, save for Blanche’s dower and wardship (ballio) until he was twenty-one. Thibaut swore to remain in his mother’s custody until that time unless she, ‘by her wish’, released him from it.58 Blanche’s reciprocal letter states that Philip acted ‘at my request’ (ad precas meas).59 For Blanche, that crafted arrangement, by which Thibaut did homage but remained in her custody, preempted any court challenge to his succession; henceforth, failing his appearance at the king’s court, he could not be dispossessed. For Philip, it provided
55 Littere Baronum, ed. by Evergates, pp. 100–02, no. 62, November 1213, Compiègne (= Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 455–58, no. 1314). A draft of the agreement, begining Hee sunt conventiones, survives (Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 453–54, no. 1313). 56 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 395–96, no. 1055, November 1213 (Guy of Dampierre). Count Thibaut VI of Blois sealed his letter in Chartres (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 394–95, no. 1054, November 1213: given de voluntate et mandato domine mee B. comitisse Campanie). Of the other surviving confirmations from December 1213, William I of Joigny sealed in Provins, Henry IV of Grandpré sealed in Meaux, Hugh II of Rethel sealed in Troyes, and Ida of Traînel, regent for her minor son, sealed in Provins (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 396, nos 1057–60, December 1213). Since those letters were deposited in the royal archive, they were not copied in Blanche’s cartulary. Philip also required the ‘men and knights’ in the castellanies of Meaux, Lagny, Provins, and Coulommiers to swear to the king’s conditions, but no record of those survive. 57 Blanche sealed a letter of debt for 20,000 l. (not mentioned in Philip’s letter), with her constable Guy II of Dampierre and Walter of Châtillon, Count of St-Pol, as her sureties (Littere Baronum, ed. by Evergates, p. 156, no. 121, November 1213). 58 CB, pp. 410–11, no. 451, Melun, August 1214: ad preces dilecte et fidelis nostre B. comitisse Campanie, recepimus Theob[aldum]. Nortier, Actes de Philippe Auguste, v, 518, no. 1321, confirms that the heavily damaged letter (Paris, AN, J 198, no. 25) reads augusto rather than martio as printed in Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 463–64, no. 1321. Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne, ed. by Longnon, i, 471–72, no. 9, gives August, as do all the earlier copyists. Blanche’s letter, too, reads August (see n. 59). 59 CB, pp. 411–12, no. 452, August 1214.
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an opportunity to redefine the nature of Thibaut’s fief. In 1198 it was the land that Count Henry the Liberal had held from the king in 1181, that is, Brie; in 1209 it included ‘[all] the land that his father [Thibaut III] had held when he died’; and in 1214 it became ‘the entire county of Champagne and Brie’. Philip in effect subsumed all the component fiefs of Champagne into a single entity, making himself the sole overlord of the county, at least in principle. In his first letters patent, in November 1214, Thibaut confirmed that the king, ‘at the request of my mother’, accepted his liege homage for the county of Champagne. But ‘I, Thibaut, count palatine of Champagne’, promised to remain under her custody until he was twenty-one.60 His seal reads ‘Thibaut, count palatine of Champagne and Brie’, and his counterseal adopted his mother’s device, Passavant le meillor.61 He was not the first count to do homage while still a minor — his father did homage to Philip at nineteen — but he was the first to remain under his mother’s tutelage after having done homage. Blanche had shifted the king’s protection from his promises and the customs of the realm to homage for feudal tenure. Ignoring the king’s new claim to exclusive lordship over the entire county of ‘Champagne and Brie’, she took Thibaut to do homage to the other overlords of Champagne, just as she intended in 1213, thus warranting his succession through multiple homages. On returning from Melun in August 1214, she found the Joinville brothers in Troyes. Simon, her seneschal, did homage for his office and his fief of Joinville, and promised to aid Blanche and Thibaut against the daughters of Henry II until Thibaut attained twenty-one. But, added Simon, Blanche refused to grant him hereditary right to his office, leaving that to Thibaut, ‘if he wished’.62 Not trusting Simon, Blanche had his brother William, bishop of Langres (1208–1219), promise to excommunicate Simon and interdict his land if he failed to support her against the daughters of Henry II.63 The bishop at first declined to receive Thibaut’s homage, claiming that it was owed in Langres; but after ‘I asked him’, said Blanche, he did receive Thibaut’s homage in Troyes, saving of course Blanche’s right as guardian until his twenty-first year.64 In September and October 1214 Blanche accompanied Thibaut to five of his overlords — the duke of Burgundy, the archbishops of Reims and Sens, and the bishops of Châlons and Auxerre — to do homage and to obtain their sealed letters in attestation.65 The duke, gravely ill at the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay, accepted Thibaut’s homage there, even
60 CB, p. 412, no. 453, November 1214. 61 Baudin, Les sceaux des comtes de Champagne, CD Corpus, no. 10. 62 CB, pp. 160–61, no. 154, Troyes, August 1214. Lusse, ‘D’Étienne à Jean de Joinville’, p. 16 n. 27, notes that the office of seneschal had been in fact hereditary in the twelfth century. 63 CB, pp. 306–07, no. 347, August 1214. 64 Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne, ed. by Longnon, i, 472–73, no. 14, August 1214: rogavi eum. The bishop left his own letter in attestation (Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne, ed. by Longnon, i, 472, no. 13, August 1214). 65 It is not clear where Thibaut did homage to the archbishop of Sens, ad preces of Blanche (CB, pp. 202, no. 212, October 1214), to the bishop of Auxerre, ad preces of Blanche (CB, p. 206, no. 217, October 1214), and to the bishop of Autun (CB, pp. 206–07, no. 218, 26 January 1215).
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though it should have been done at Augustines at the border between Champagne and Burgundy.66 The bishop of Châlons, too, was ill, but accepted Thibaut’s homage in St-Memmie of Châlons, although it should have been done at Cherville or at the border between their two lands.67 The archbishop of Reims accepted Thibaut’s homage in Reims, again at Blanche’s request.68 The archbishop of Sens and the bishop of Auxerre received his homage in October, and the bishop of Autun in January 1215.69 Those letters certifying Thibaut’s homage, done ‘at the request of ’ his mother were deposited in the comital chancery archive. The first armed clashes erupted in those same autumn months of 1215 in anticipation of Erard’s return from overseas. Blanche complained to the pope that her lands and men, still under papal protection, were being attacked ‘without manifest and reasonable cause’. Innocent ordered the archbishop of Reims and the bishops of Châlons, and Soissons to interdict and excommunicate the perpetrators.70 Innocent’s mandate of about the same date to the patriarch of Jerusalem prohibited Erard’s marriage to Philippa because of consanguinity. That directive may not have arrived before the patriarch died, and so in February 1215 Innocent informed the new patriarch.71 But the marriage did take place, with the tacit consent of the local prelates and the ‘Champenois cluster’ of overseas barons and clerics.72 In March Philip asked the pope to confirm his decision regarding Thibaut’s inheritance reached ‘by the counsel of my barons’ according to ‘the custom of the kingdom of France’.73 Prince Louis reminded King John of Jerusalem that he had witnessed Philip’s decision at court (in 1209), that testimony (in 1213) had proved that Count Henry II transferred his land to Thibaut before going overseas, and that Henry’s daughter was too closely related to Erard for a legitimate marriage.74 About the same time Philip announced that, according to an inquest he had authorized, crusaders were exempted from taxes for only one year after taking the cross but, he added, echoing Innocent’s declaration, that exemption did not apply to fiefs in cases of litigation before their lords, which
66 CB, p. 97, no. 74, September 1214; CB, p. 98, no. 75, September 1214, ad preces of Blanche. 67 CB, p. 213, no. 227, and pp. 284–85, no. 320 (ad preces of Blanche), both September 1214. 68 CB, pp. 200–01, no. 210, September, 1214, ad preces of Blanche. 69 CB, pp. 202–03, no. 212 (the archbishop of Sens, ad preces of Blanche), and p. 206, no. 217 (the bishop of Auxerre, ad preces of Blanche), both October 1214. CB, pp. 206–07, no. 218, 26 January 1215 (the bishop of Autun). 70 Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum, fols 7r–8v, 10 December 1214. 71 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, cols 940–41, no. 149, 16 December 1214. Innocent’s letters to the new patriarch of Jesusalem (Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, col. 973, no. 1, 20 February 1215) and to the archbishop of Caesaria, the prior of Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, and the cantor of Acre (Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, col. 974, no. 2, 20 February 1215). 72 As Perry, John of Brienne, p. 43, puts it. 73 Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 508–09, no. 1361, March 1215. 74 CB, pp. 41–42, no. 12, March 1215.
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is to say that the fiefs held by Erard and his allies from the countess of Champagne were not protected by their crusader status.75
War, 1216–1218 In his later deposition Erard omitted any reference to his experiences in Acre, where he arrived in January 1214, but he did describe his return voyage to Champagne, most likely in June 1215.76 In Genoa he was imprisoned for five months on the basis of Blanche’s letter accusing him of murder — a costly experience, he said. He managed to escape, only to be arrested briefly in Le Puy, again at Blanche’s request. Arriving in Champagne, he found his lands despoiled and Blanche’s forces besieging his nephew’s castle of Noyers. Despite his omissions (he does not mention Philippa in these years), Erard was correct to say that Champagne in late 1215 and early 1216 was on a war footing. He blamed Blanche for forcing him and his allies to defend their lands, and he protested that she had no right to seize his lands, since he had accepted the king’s decision of 1209 regarding the custom of the realm that postponed any challenge to an heir’s inheritance before the age of twenty-one. He did not mention that he had married Philippa despite the pope’s prohibition, and that in July 1215 Innocent had authorized the prelates of France to excommunicate him if he claimed, against the king’s decision, any right to Champagne.77 While her agents were tracking Erard on his way back from Acre, Blanche prepared for a full-scale war. She granted money fiefs to firm up the loyalty of key barons and cash payments to repair their fortifications, while Thibaut, as ‘palatine count of Champagne’, received their homages.78 With Erard’s arrival in Champagne, what had been a low-intensity conflict of marauding and pillaging threatened to escalate into a wider regional conflict, as Duke Thibaut of Lorraine (1213–1220) joined Erard’s forces and Frederick II of Germany entered the fray in support of Blanche and Thibaut.79 Blanche circulated a model letter requesting her most prominent barons to declare their loyalty and promise aid against Henry II’s daughters and Erard of Brienne. Most declarations were copied from that model, which read: ‘I make known to all who see this letter that I promised to my dearest lord Thibaut, count of Champagne and Brie, that I will swear good faith against the daughters of Count Henry [II] and
75 Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, 504–07, no. 1360, Paris, March 1215. Philip said that the bishops and Paris and Soissons and the papal legate authorized the inquest. For the pope’s declaration regarding the secular jurisdiction of fiefs, see n. 42. 76 For the first part of his deposition to Cardinal Odo, see n. 40. For the sequence of events in Acre in January 1215, see Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire, iv. 1, 114–16. For a concise summary of events in Champagne after 1215, see Perry, The Briennes, pp. 56–64. 77 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, col. 978, no. 7, 31 July 1215, to all prelates. Innocent informed Blanche of his letter (Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum, fol. 166r, 31 July 1215). See also Perry, John of Brienne, pp. 81–88. 78 See Sjursen, ‘Weathering Thirteenth-Century Warfare’, pp. 218–20. 79 For Thibaut of Lorraine, see Poull, La maison ducale de Lorraine, pp. 38–41.
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against Erard of Brienne’. Sixteen of those sealed letters from the spring of 1216 were deposited in the comital chancery archive.80 At that point several of Erard’s prominent allies, including Blanche’s own seneschal Simon of Joinville, formally repudiated their homages.81 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines states that the ensuing war started at Joinville after Simon allowed Erard of Brienne to fortify and garrison Joinville; Aubri ascribed that act to their (distant) family relationship (parentela), but Simon himself later claimed that he renounced his homage to Blanche because she refused to grant him hereditary right to his office.82 With widespread destruction in the countryside threatening to destabilize the kingdom’s eastern frontier, Philip acted in April 1216 to prevent a regional conflict from spreading. He allowed Blanche to strengthen the walls (but not the towers) of Provins — despite earlier having prohibited the fortification of Provins, Lagny, Meaux, and Coulommiers before Thibaut’s majority — so that Blanche would have no fear of being captured by Erard.83 He imposed a truce on both sides and agreed to hear Erard’s case at court.84 He then summoned the important episcopal and lay lords of northern France to sit in an extraordinary court session in Melun in July 1216, exactly two years after Bouvines.85 Blanche and Thibaut were present, as were Erard and Philippa. If Erard expected a hearing on an inheritance, he was disappointed, for the question at issue turned on homage. The assembled barons and prelates decided that since Philip already had accepted Thibaut’s homage, he could not accept the homage of Erard or ‘his so-called wife’ Philippa, because ‘the practice and custom in France’ was that a lord of a fief (dominus feodi) could not disseize someone who had done homage for that fief as long as the latter appeared at the lord’s court. Since
80 Sixteen letters declaring loyalty survive from February through April 1216 (CB, pp. 173–81, nos 168, 170–72, 174–81, 183–84 (February 1216); pp. 235–36, no. 256 (10 April 1216); pp. 253–54, no. 280 (April 1216). For a list of barons who sealed letters in support of Blanche and Thibaut, see Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire, iv. 1, 126–27. 81 Simon of Sexfontaines sent a formal renunciation (Paris, BnF, MS fonds Cinq cents de Colbert, vol. 56, Liber Principum, vol. 56, fol. 132v, undated; translated Evergates, Documents, p. 75, no. 55A). Simon of Clefmont later stated that he ‘withdrew’ his fidelity and homage to Blanche and Thibaut because of bad counsel; but after the prudent advice of his friends — and in the aftermath of Blanche’s military success — he restored that homage and fidelity (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 480, no. 1345, April 1219, trans. Evergates, Documents, p. 75, no. 55B). Simon of Joinvile returned to his liege homage to Blanche and Thibaut on 7 June 1218; see n. 82. For a list of Erard’s allies, see Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire, iv. 1, 128–32. 82 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, Chronicon, pp. 903, 907. When Simon resumed his ‘fidelity and homage’ to Thibaut on 7 June 1218, he stated that his dispute (discordia) with Blanche began when she and Thibaut did not recognize (non recognoscebant) his hereditary right to the seneschalship (CB, pp. 161–62, no. 155). It is curious that Aubri has little to say about the war, despite the fact that TroisFontaines was located close to the battlefield. 83 CB, p. 258, no. 287, April 1216. 84 CB, pp. 258–59, no. 288, April 1216 = Actes de Philippe Auguste, iv, 30–31, no. 1423, Philip’s letter to Blanche asking her to agree to a truce, which Erard of Brienne already had accepted. 85 Actes de Philippe Auguste, iv, 44–47, no. 1436, July 1216. For the meaning of ‘peers’ of the realm, see CB, pp. 18–19.
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Count Thibaut (III) had done homage for the county of Champagne and Brie, just as his father Count Henry (I) had held it, and since Countess Blanche as regent and then her son Thibuat (IV) did homage for it, the king could not disseize Blanche or Thibaut as long as they appeared at court. Having affirmed that chain of homages without reference to Henry II, the court adjourned sine die. The king directed nine prominent barons — the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Alençon, Beaumont, Brittany, Dreux, Joigny, Ponthieu, and St-Pol, and Guillaume des Roches — and nine prelates — the archbishop of Reims and the bishops of Auxerre, Beauvais, Châlons, Chartres, Langres, Lisieux, Noyon, and Senlis — to seal letters confirming the court’s decision, and separate letters affirming the truce that Philip had imposed on Erard and Blanche.86 The court’s decision effectively ended any question of succession by Henry II’s heirs at the time of his death. They could not undo Thibaut III’s collateral succession confirmed by the oaths of the Champenois barons and knights in 1190 and recognized by his homage to the king in 1198; nor could Erard circumvent Thibaut IV’s own homage to the king in 1214. Blanche’s initiative, in having Philip accept Thibaut’s homage while she remained regent, had proved decisive. Those events on the ground in the spring of 1216 and the court decision in Melun in May coincided with Innocent III’s renewed interest in Champagne after the Fourth Lateran Council (11–30 November 1215). In February 1216 Innocent wrote to Bishop Haimard of Soissons (1208–1219) reminding him that Erard, like Conrad of Montferrat before him, had contracted a clandestine and illegitimate marriage despite the prohibition of Archbishop Albert of Jerusalem, causing a great scandal in France as well as in the Holy Land. The pope noted that Thibaut had received the county of Champagne ‘by the king’s privilege’, and therefore the bishop was to excommunicate Erard and anyone in the ecclesiastical province of Reims who aided Erard.87 On 16 May, in one of his last letters, Innocent notified Bishop Haimard that, in response to Countess Blanche’s complaint, he was to summon Erard and Philippa to determine whether she was in fact an illegitimate daughter of Henry II.88 Erard later protested that they did not receive the letters summoning them to Rome.89 In November, Pope Honorius III renewed Innocent’s mandate to Bishop Haimard to protect Blanche and her lands and to prohibit anyone from excommunicating her or interdicting her lands, which suggests that Erard had support among the regional prelates.90 In fact the bishops of Auxerre, Langres, and Troyes, for separate reasons, refused to excommunicate.91 Ignoring the truce of Melun and the threat of excommunication, Erard and his allies continued to pillage, burn down villages, and despoil merchants. In October,
86 See CB, p. 19, Table 7. 87 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 425–26, no. 1157, and p. 426, no. 1158, both of 4 February 1216. 88 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, cols 978–79, no. 7, 20 May 1216, to the bishop of Soissons. McDougall, Royal Bastards, p. 248, notes that illegitima filia was a novel term, based on the fact that Philippa’s mother Isabelle was still married at the time of her marriage to Henry I. 89 For Erard’s deposition, see n. 40. 90 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 437–38, no. 1195, 12 November 1216, letter to Blanche and Thibaut. 91 Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire, iv. 1, 146–47.
Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n
on Blanche’s complaint, Philip ordered the duke of Lorraine, representing Erard, and Count Henry of Bar-le-Duc (1214–1239), representing Blanche, to enforce the truce of Melun.92 But by March 1217 the situation had become so serious that Philip convened another court at Melun. With both Erard and Philippa present, Philip announced that since Erard had despoiled merchants and savaged the lands of Blanche and Thibaut, thus violating the truce, he would not consider any case against Blanche until Erard compensated the countess and the merchants for their losses.93 Members of the court sealed letters confirming the king’s decision. The bishop of Langres specifically mentioned that Erard had seized and despoiled merchants ‘coming and going to the fairs of Champagne’, in effect, waging economic warfare.94 But the king still refused to give Blanche any military assistance. One month later, at a provincial council on 25 April 1217, Archbishop Albert of Reims, the bishop of Senlis, and the abbot of Longpont, papal judges-delegate, excommunicated Erard of Brienne, his nephew Milo of Noyers, and their unnamed allies.95 On 13 May the bishop ordered the reading of the excommunications of Erard and twenty-five named allies every Sunday and on feast days.96 Honorius wrote to the prelates of France that he had heard from Duke Odo of Burgundy that the devastations caused by Erard and his allies jeopardized the formation of the new crusade.97 Yet the summer and fall of 1217 continued to witness ‘rapine, burning, and destruction’, reported Aubri of Trois-Fontaines.98 Conditions were so dire by September that Blanche sent Philip a gift of 200 cheeses in an appeal for aid, but to no avail.99 Even as the excommunications were beginning to bite, forcing Erard to accept a series of truces — until 15 October, then to 5 November, and again to 31 December 1217 — Blanche complained to Honorius that rebel forces continued to devastate the countryside.100 In January 1218 the pope reminded several French prelates to excommunicate Erard and his allies for failing to respond to papal directives, for ravaging Blanche’s lands, for destabilizing the realm, and for jeopardizing preparations for the crusade. He threatened the bishop of Langres, William of Joinville, with ecclesiastical sanction for failing to publish the excommunications, and ordered him to excommunicate Erard, Philippa, and five close allies every Sunday and feast day,
92 Actes de Philippe Auguste, iv, 66–67, no. 1454, October 1216. 93 Actes de Philippe Auguste, iv, 81–82, no. 1467, Melun, March 1217, decision of the king and ‘the barons of our realm’ in the presence of Erard and Philippa. 94 CB, pp. 47–48, no. 18, March 1217. 95 Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5992, Cartulary of de Thou, fol. 136r. 96 Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum, fols 152r–153r. 97 Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, cols 982–84, and 984, both of May 1217. 98 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, Chroncion, p. 907. 99 Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne, ed. by Longnon, iii, 2, payment made at the fair of St-Ayulph of Provins. 100 The truces of September (CB, pp. 122–23, no. 104, 1217); 16 October 1217 (CB, pp. 123–24, no. 106); and 5 December 1217 (CB, pp. 125–26, no. 109).
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in public, with candles extinguished.101 Bishop Hervé of Troyes also was threatened with ecclesiastical sanction for failing to publish the excommunications.102 Honorius extended the list of those to be publicly excommunicated to twenty-five of Erard’s supporters.103 And in separate bulls to ecclesiastics and to ‘nobles, dukes, counts, barons, and knights in France’, with copies to Blanche, he announced the excommunication of Erard and Philippa.104 By the spring of 1218 the excommunications weighed so heavily that Erard and his most important allies, including the duke of Lorraine and the seneschal Simon of Joinville, granted Blanche another truce, this one lasting through 22 April.105 But it, too, did not hold. Blanche finally launched a major offensive into the duke of Lorraine’s lands in order to detach Erard’s most powerful ally. In coordination with Frederick II, who invaded Lorraine and besieged the duke in his castle at Amance, a joint force led by Blanche, the duke of Burgundy, and the count of Bar-le-Duc proceeded to Nancy, where they burned down the fortress. On 1 June 1218 the duke of Lorraine surrendered Amance and accepted a formal peace treaty (pax et concordia).106 For meddling in Champagne’s internal affairs, he was severely penalized: renewing his fidelity to Blanche and Thibaut, he promised to render his own castle for five years as security for his good conduct, and he surrendered the mouvance of several important fiefs held from him.107 Immediately following the peace of Amance, Blanche led her forces to Joinville, which she besieged, forcing her seneschal Simon of Joinville to surrender his castle to his brother, Bishop William of Langres, and to deliver his son Geoffroy to Blanche as a hostage until all hostilities ended.108
Denouement Although the military phase of the conflict had concluded, Blanche still needed to make peace separately with each rebel baron. Here again, her political skills proved decisive. Except for exemplary penalties imposed on the leading rebels, she dissipated
101 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 456–58, no. 1275, 27 January 1218: excommunicated with Erard and Philippa were Milo of Noyers, Milo of St-Florentin, Simon of Clefmont, Simon of Sexfontaines, and Renaud of Choiseul. 102 Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum, fols 15v–16r, 2 February 1218. 103 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 458–60, no. 1276, 2 February 1218. The letter is edited (dated by error to 1217) with a translation in Nielen, ‘La succession de Champagne’, pp. 81–87. 104 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 460, nos 1277–78, 3 February 1218. 105 CB, pp. 126–27, no. 110, 24 February 1218. 106 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, Chronicon, p. 907, states that the rebellion collapsed after the death of Emperor Odo of Germany on 24 May 1218. 107 CB, pp. 388–89, no. 433, Amance, 1 June 1218. The duke of Lorraine surrendered the mouvance of the fiefs held from him by the count of Bar-le-Duc and the lord of LaFauche, and rendered his own castle of Châtenais for five years as security for his conduct. In his confirmation of that accord, Odo II of Burgundy included a ‘word for word’ copy of the text (CB, p. 390, no. 434, 1 June 1218, Amance). Frederick sealed a separate letter describing the armistice (CB, pp. 385–87, no. 431), as did Bishop Conrad of Metz and Speyer (CB, pp. 387–88, no. 432), both of 1 June 1218. 108 CB, pp, 161–63, no. 155, 7 June 1218.
Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n
any lingering animosity harboured by the others through cash payments and money fiefs in return for their liege homage.109 She was especially generous to Erard, no doubt to discourage any thought of renewing hostilities. In return for a four-year truce lasting to 9 July 1222, that is, after Thibaut’s succession, she granted him a large annual rent (3000 l.) and promised to ask Honorius to lift his excommunication. She further agreed to return Erard’s confiscated fiefs and those of his partisans at the expiration of the truce.110 Philippa had been sent out of harm’s way to the castle at Faucogney, held by Renaud II of Choiseul (1192–1239), Erard’s cousin and one of his staunchest supporters.111 She was required to swear her approval of the terms to Blanche’s emissaries within fifteen days and to seal a letter in attestation, which she did.112 Honorius accepted Blanche’s request to absolve Erard and Philippa from excommunication and lifted the interdict from their lands.113 The issue of Philippa’s legitimacy, however, was still outstanding, and the pope summoned the couple to Rome to be examined on that issue.114 Erard sent a personal representative in his place. The excommunication and interdict were lifted on the understanding that Erard quit all claim to the county and deposit 1000 marks at Clairvaux as security to that commitment.115 The duke of Lorraine’s death the next year (17 February 1220) provided Blanche with an extraordinary opportunity, of marrying Thibaut to the duke’s widow Gertrude, countess of Metz and Dagsburg, thus bringing her dower lands, the castellanies of Nancy and Gondrecourt, into the direct mouvance of Champagne.116 Mathieu, the duke’s brother and successor, surrendered the castellany of Gondrecourt and Neufchâteau, which he converted into a fief held from Blanche, thereby extending the county’s reach into the frontier zone beyond the Marne.117 Most interestingly, Blanche required Mathieu to surrender all the sealed letters of Emperors Odo and Frederick, the bishop of Metz, and all others pertaining to Gertrude’s inheritance of Metz and Dagsburg, another example of the importance that Blanche placed
109 For details of the final resolution of the conflict, see Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire, iv. 1, 158–87, and Sjursen, ‘Weathering Thirteenth-Century Warfare’. 110 CB, pp. 119–22, no. 103, 8 July 1218, letter drawn up in the names of Erard and Philippa (who was not present). The tone of the letter, which refers to ‘Blanche called (dictam) countess of Troyes and her son (natus) Thibaut’, reflects Erard’s recalcitrance. The parties agreed that any infraction of the truce would be arbitrated by Milo of Noyers (for Erard) and Robert of Milly (for Blanche). Fortifications destroyed in the course of the war were not to be repaired. Seven of Erard’s allies served as guarantors for his observance of the truce. 111 For Renard II of Choiseul, see Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 224–25. 112 CB, pp. 129–30, no. 115, July 1218. 113 Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum, fol. 21r, 29 December 1218. 114 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 474–75, no. 1330, 9 January 1219. Honorius raised the issue of legitimate birth of Queen Alice of Cyprus, warning her not to go in partis Gallicanis in pursuit of the Champagne succession (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 481–82, no. 1348, 23 June 1219). 115 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 502–03, no. 1407, 10 October 1220. 116 Duke Thibaut of Lorraine married Gertrude in late 1216. He was captured by Frederick and held captive for one year, until March 1219. Shortly after his death in February 1220, she married Thibaut (IV). See Poull, La maison ducale de Lorraine, pp. 38–41. 117 CB, p. 392, no. 436, 30 July 1220.
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on validated letters patent in the matter of feudal tenure.118 Within weeks, Thibaut married Gertrude and acquired Nancy, which the duke’s mother, Duchess Agnes of Lorraine, held in dower.119 On 2 November 1221 Erard and Philippa quitclaimed Champagne in return for a 4000 l. cash payment and a fief yielding 1200 l. annually.120 The last formality ending the conflict took place on 10 April 1222, seven weeks before Thibaut IV’s succession, at Molesme abbey. There, in the presence of Duchess Alix of Burgundy and the bishops of Langres and Auxerre, Erard and Philippa quitclaimed the county of Champagne and Brie to Blanche and Thibaut. Bishop Hugh of Langres (1219–1232) threatened excommunication and interdict if Erard failed to observe his commitment.121 Philippa sealed a separate letter with the ‘small seal’ she had long used for her ‘personal business’, as she said, confirming what she had sealed with her ‘large seal’, thereby precluding any duplicity on her part.122 On 30 May 1222 Thibaut inherited his father’s county, which his mother had extended beyond the Marne, with a firmly subordinated baronage. Blanche retired to Argensolles, where she founded a convent and made the last of her many requests. ‘At the request of the lady countess of Champagne’ (Petitio dominae comitissae Campanie), the Chapter General of Cistercian abbots recognized Argensolles as a Cistercian monastery, a daughter of Clairvaux authorized to receive up to ninety nuns, ten lay converts, and twenty clerics.123 Philip II died on 14 July 1223. It would be another hundred years before the barons of Champagne formed a league in revolt against their count, this time King Philip IV.124 Blanche emerged triumphant from an affair that had been thrust upon her as a young widow and consumed her entire regency. She pursued an unrelenting campaign to induce the active involvement of the king and the popes in her cause while she prepared for war by building and strengthening fortifications and by reinforcing her ties to her barons through fief rents and cash payments. Ultimately, she had to lead an army to suppress a rebellion by force. In victory she was astute enough to detach the lesser rebels from the duke of Lorraine through grants of fiefs and fief rents, thereby preventing any lingering resentment that could flare up in the future. She spared Erard of Brienne a harsh sentence for his acts and the physical damage that he and his allies had inflicted; in granting him lands and a generous revenue, she made Erard and Philippa, Thibaut IV’s cousin, the wealthiest family within the county.
118 CB, pp. 390–91, no. 435, May 1220, Duke Mathieu’s promise. 119 CB, p. 396, no. 441, June 1210: Duchess Agnes of Lorraine refers to Gertrude as Thibaut’s wife on the occasion that Agnes surrendered her dower of Nancy to Blanche and Thibaut. 120 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 529–32, no. 1476, 2 November 1221, Erard’s letter (= Regestum Innocentii III Papae, ed. by Migne, iii, cols 986–87, no. 14, a copy sent to the pope), and Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 532, no. 1477, 2 November 1221 (Philippa’s letter). Erard sealed a separate letter acknowledging the financial details (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 532–33, no. 1479). 121 CB, pp. 298–302, nos 337–40. It appears that Blanche and Thibaut were present. 122 Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, i, 545–46, no. 1536, May 1222. 123 Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. by Martène and Durant, iv, 1339–40, statute 21 of 1225. See also n. 3. 124 See Brown, ‘Reform and Resistance to Royal Authority in Fourteenth-Century-France’, and Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 61–62.
Co u n te s s Bl a n c h e , P h i l i p Au g u s t u s, an d t he War o f Su cce ssi o n
Blanche’s regency produced a number of firsts. She confronted the first serious threat to the legitimacy of the comital lineage in Champange and suppressed the first baronial uprising within the county. She constructed the first ‘tomb of kingship’ with its powerful visual narrative of legitimate familial descent. She made Thibaut’s policy of requiring the rendition of private fortifications the new norm for the entire county. She skillfully made common cause with the king to use liege homage as the cornerstone of Thibaut’s succession to the county, in effect shifting the basis of the count’s legitimacy from familial descent to feudal tenure for what was re-branded ‘the county of Champagne and Brie’. She invited the popes to immerse themselves in the internal affairs of her county, to excommunicate her political enemies, and to interdict their lands. She extended the comital domain beyond the Marne to Andelot, a new fortress constructed at Montéclair, which she acquired in 1219 from Renier II of Nogent and which became the centre of a comital castellany.125 And she capitalized on the transition ‘from oral to written’ already underway by collecting and preserving letters patent dealing exclusively with secular matters in order to hold their sealers to account. Under her nephew and chancellor, Remi of Navarre (1211–1220), her chancery archived and then copied those documents in the first of what would become the most extensive collection of princely cartularies in medieval France.126 The ‘Cartulary of Blanche’ was just as much a celebration of her deeds during her regency as the Memoirs of Geoffroy of Villehardouin were of his deeds on the Fourth Crusade.127
Works Cited Manuscripts Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), MS fonds latin 5993A, Liber Pontificum (= Chancery Cartulary 8) ———, MS fonds Cinq cents de Colbert, vol. 56, Liber Principum (= Chancery Cartulary 7) ———, MS fonds latin 17098, Cartulary of St-Étienne of Troyes ———, MS fonds latin 5992, ‘Cartulary of De Thou’ (= Chancery Cartulary 6) Primary Sources Aubri of Trois Fontaines, Chronicon, ed. by Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 39 vols to date (Hannover, 1826–), 23 (1874), 631–950 CB The Cartulary of Countess Blanche of Champagne, ed. by Theodore Evergates, Medieval Academy Book, no. 112 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010)
125 See Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 238, 298 n. 142. 126 For Remi of Navarre, who may have been the Remi, cathedral canon of St-Pierre of Troyes, known from the late 1170s; see Littere Baronum, ed. by Evergates, p. 31 n. 71. For the chancery cartularies, see Evergates, ‘The Chancery Archives of the Counts of Champagne’, pp. 163–68. 127 See Evergates, ‘The War Memoirs of Geoffroy of Villehardouin’.
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Documents relatifs au comté de Champagne et de Brie (1172–1361), ed. by Auguste Longnon, 3 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1901–1914) Documents Feudal Society in Medieval France: Documents from the County of Champagne, trans. and ed. by Theodore Evergates (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993) Gesta Innocentii, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1864), 214 (1855), cols 17–227 The Deeds of Innocent III, trans. by James M. Powell (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of American Press, 2004) Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. by Alexandre Teulet, Joseph de Laborde, Elie Berger, and Henri-François Delaborde, 5 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1863–1909) Littere Baronum: The Earliest Cartulary of the Counts of Champagne, ed. by Theodore Evergates, Medieval Academy Book, no. 107 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003) Le premier cartulaire de l’abbaye cistercienne de Pontigny (xiie-xiiie siècles), ed. by Martine Garrigues (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1981) Actes de Philippe Auguste Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, ed. by H.-F. Delaborde, Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Jacques Boussard, and Michel Nortier, 4 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1916–1979), vol. v: Supplément d’actes, actes perdus, additions et corrections aux précédent volumes, ed. by Michel Nortier (Paris: De Boccard, 2004) Actes d’Henri le Libéral Receuil des actes d’Henri le Libéral, comte de Champagne (1152–1181), ed. by John Benton and Michel Bur, with the collaboration of Dominique Devaux, Olivier Guyotjeannin, Xavier de la Selle, and Rosy Meiron and Michèle Courtois (Paris: Diffusion De Boccard, 2009) Regestum Innocentii III Papae, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by JacquesPaul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1864), 214 (1855), i; 216 (1855), iii Les registres de Philippe Auguste, vol. 1, ed. by John W. Baldwin, with Françoise Gasparri, Michel Nortier, and Elisabeth Lalou (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1992) Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Auguste, ed. and trans. by Élisabeth Carpentier, Georges Pon, and Yves Chauvin (Paris: CNRS, 2006) Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. by Edmund Martène and Ursin Durant, 5 vols (Paris: Delaulne, 1717) Villehardouin, La conquête de Constantinople, ed. and trans. by Edmond Faral, 2 vols, 2nd edn (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1961) Secondary Works Arbois de Jubainville, Henry d’, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, 7 vols (Paris: Durand, 1859–1869) Baudin, Arnaud, Les Sceaux des comtes de Champagne et de leur entourage (fin xie – début xive siècle) (Langres: Dominique Guéniot, 2012) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Reform and Resistance to Royal Authority in Fourteenth-Century France: The Leagues of 1314–1315’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 1 (1981), 109–37. Reprinted in Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Politics and Institutions in Capetian France (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991)
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Bur, Michel, ‘L’image de la parenté chez les comtes de Champagne’, in La Champagne médiévale: Recueil d’articles (Langres: Dominique Guéniot, 2005), pp. 59–89, reprint of Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 38 (1983), pp. 1016–39 Dectot, Xavier, ‘Les tombeaux des comtes de Champagne (1151–1284): Un manifeste politique’, Bulletin monumental, 162.1 (2004), 3–62 Desportes, Pierre, ed., Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, 3, Diocèse de Reims (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998) Edbury, Peter W., John of Ibelin and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1977) ———, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Evergates, Theodore, ‘The Chancery Archives of the Counts of Champagne: Codicology and History of the Cartulary-Registers’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 16 (1985), 159–79 ———, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) ———, Henry the Liberal, Count of Champagne, 1127–1181 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) ———, Marie of France: Countess of Champagne, 1145–1198 (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) ———, ‘The War Memoirs of Geoffroy of Villehardouin’, Journal of the Haskins Society, 31 (2019), 81–94 Lester, Anne E., Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011) Lusse, Jackie, ‘D’Étienne à Jean de Joinville: l’ascension d’une famille seigneuriale champenoise’, in Jean de Joinville: de la Champagne aux royaumes d’outre-mer, ed. by Danielle Quéruel (Langres: Dominique Guéniot, 1998), pp. 7–47 Mayer, Hans Eberhard, Die Kanzlei des lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, 2 vols (Hannover: Hahn, 1996) McDougall, Sara, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) Morganstern, Anne McGee, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Counties, and England (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) Nielen, Marie-Adéläide, ‘La succession de Champagne dans les chartes du royaume de Chypre’, in La présence latine en Orient au moyen Âge, ed. by Ghislain Brunel (Paris: C.H.A.N., 2000), pp. 77–99 Park, Danielle E. A., Papal Protection and the Crusader: Flanders, Champagne, and the Kingdom of France, 1095–1222 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018) Perry, Guy, ‘“Scandalia … tam in oriente quam in occidente”: The Briennes in East and West, 1213–1221’, Crusades, 10 (2011), 63–77 ———, John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175–1237 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) ———, The Briennes: The Rise and Fall of a Champenois Dynasty in the Age of the Crusades, c. 950–1356 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) Petit, Ernest, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, vol. 3 (Paris: Picard, 1889)
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Poull, Georges, La maison ducale de Lorraine (Rupt sur Moselle: Chez l’auteur, 1968) Powell, James M, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986) Queller, Donald E., and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) Savitiez, Ch., ‘Maison de Dampierre-Saint-Dizier’, Revue de Champagne et de Brie, 17 (1884), 113–25 Sjursen, Katrin E., ‘Weathering Thirteenth-Century Warfare: The Case of Blanche of Navarre’, Haskins Society Journal, 25 (2013), 205–22
Sara Lipton
‘Those Who Act More Strictly’ Monks, Jews, and Capetian Religious Politics in the Bibles moralisées*
Peggy Brown is widely admired (and occasionally feared, even by friends) for her insistence on rigorous textual scholarship. In this commitment, she does not emulate the makers of the Bibles moralisées, manuscripts remarkable equally for the beauty of their artwork and the surprising sloppiness, inaccuracy, and — occasionally — sheer incoherence of their texts.1 In this essay, in honour of stimulating exchanges I have had with Peggy regarding the text of the Bibles moralisées over the course of several years, I revisit a manuscript genre I first studied long ago — the Bible moralisée, luxury illuminated volumes consisting of eight text-image pairs per page, which match biblical paraphrases and illustrations with verbal and visual commentary. Specifically, I shall explore the permutations of a single text-image pair in the four thirteenth-century exemplars, whose rendering of a biblical episode is particularly idiosyncratic and whose moralizing commentaries, with shifting objects of censure and praise, hint at a lively contemporary contest for spiritual prestige.2 This focused examination further illuminates the sources and shaping of the
* This essay is dedicated with affection and gratitude to Peggy Brown, from whom I have learned more than I can possibly convey about being a scholar, teacher, colleague, and denizen of Paris. 1 As noted, for example, in Lipton, Images of Intolerance, pp. 10–12 and 208 n.74; Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, ii, 208; and Tachau, ‘God’s Compass’, pp. 7–33 (p. 30 n.45). 2 The manuscripts are, in the chronological order of creation proposed by Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, i, p. 8: 1) Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, a French-language exemplar tentatively dated by Lowden to c. 1220–1226, but by Tachau, ‘God’s Compass’ to c. 1208–1215; 2) Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, a Latin-language exemplar dating to either the same years as the French manuscript or slightly later (Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’ suggests c. 1208–1218). These two manuscripts were almost certainly commissioned by or for members of the Capetian court. The others are 3) a three-volume manuscript known as the Biblia de San Luis in the Treasury of the Cathedral of Toledo, MSS I–III (hereafter Toledo, though the last quire is now Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.240), probably commissioned by Blanche of Castile c. 1226 as a gift for her son the young Louis IX, but only completed c. 1234 after an interruption of some years; and 4) a three-volume manuscript divided between Oxford (Bodleian, 270b), Paris (BnF, MS latin. 11,560), and London (BL, Harley MS 1527), executed concurrently with the later stage of the Toledo manuscript. See Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, i, 8. On Louis VIII as the possible patron of Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, see Lipton, Sara Lipton is Professor of History at Stony Brook University.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 105-141 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122620
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commentary texts, the relationship between these four manuscripts, and religious politics at the early thirteenth-century Capetian court. It suggests, specifically, that the court was the site of an ongoing competition among Cistercians, Augustinians, and Benedictines for patronage and favour — a competition in which Jews were ultimately cast as the foil, and in which the manuscripts themselves may have played a very small role.
The Biblical Texts and Roundels The text-image pairs in question contain the (very loose) paraphrase and moralization of a somewhat enigmatic episode in the Books of Kings. III Kings 19 opens with the prophet Elijah fleeing to the wilderness to escape the wrath of wicked Queen Jezebel. After a sojourn in Beersheba, followed by a forty-day journey to Mount Horeb, Elijah explains to God that he is lingering in a cave in fear for his life, and laments that he is the last remaining faithful Israelite: ‘zelo zelatus sum pro Domino Deo exercituum quia dereliquerunt pactum tuum filii Israël altaria tua destruxerunt et prophetas tuos occiderunt gladio et derelictus sum ego solus et quaerunt animam meam ut auferant eam’ (With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant: they have destroyed thy altars, they have slain thy prophets with the sword, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away).3 God then instructs Elijah to return home and anoint a new Israelite king and a successor prophet, promises Elijah that his enemies will be slain, and affirms that some Israelites have remained faithful, and will be spared: ‘Et derelinquam mihi in Israël septem millia virorum, quorum genua non sunt incurvata ante Baal, et omne os quod non adoravit eum osculans manus’ (And I will leave me seven thousand men in Israel, whose knees have not been bent before Baal, and every mouth that has not worshipped him, kissing [his] hands).4 The Bible moralisée version of this exchange is distinctly odd. In all four thirteenth-century exemplars the biblical paraphrase adds a non-biblical phrase, which doesn’t merely shift, but downright upends the original import. (For a side-by-side comparison of the texts, see Table 4.1 in the appendix below) In the French-language manuscript, as is often the case, the relevant text is more a picture caption than a biblical paraphrase: ‘Ici vient Dex a Helye: “tu te glorefies en ta bontei et dis qe tuit li proudome sunt mort fors toi mes ancore ai ie mil homes qi unques ne me renoerent et n’aorent unques les ydles” et lor mostre a doi’. (Here God comes to Elijah: ‘You glorify yourself in your goodness and say that all the upright men [proudome] are dead except you, but still I have a thousand men who have never renounced me nor ever adored idols’, and he points to them).5 God’s characterization of Elijah as ‘glorifying himself’ appears nowhere in the Bible, and
Images of Intolerance, pp. 5–8. For exciting new evidence about Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, and a different suggestion regarding its dating and patronage, see now the recent article by Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’; I discuss this article and the question of patronage further below. 3 Vulgate III Kings 19. 14. 4 Vulgate III Kings 19. 18. 5 Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, fol. 54vA Note that the biblical seven thousand is here ‘a thousand’.
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considerably alters the sense of the passage. Whereas the thrust of the exchange in the Vulgate is to reassure Elijah that he is neither alone nor in danger, here God seems to be scolding Elijah for vaunting his own virtue. This reading is buttressed by the adjacent biblical illustration (Figure 4.1). On the left of the roundel, Elijah looks on with a distressed (or perhaps chastened) expression as the bust of God emerges from a cloud in the centre and points sternly downward at a squat seated demon-type figure, while gesturing favourably toward a group of men on the right. That these men — all dressed in lay clothing, two raising their hands as if in prayer — have ‘never adored idols’ is indicated by their erect stance: they are literally not bending their knees before the demon (hence my translation of proudome as ‘upright’), suggesting that though the Vulgate phrase ‘genua non sunt incurvata ante Baal’ does not appear in the manuscript’s biblical paraphrase, it was in the mind of either the artist or the iconographer. God’s reproof is made yet starker in ÖNB cod. 1179, the earliest of the three thirteenth-century Latin exemplars. Here God does more than reproach Elijah for assuming he is the sole faithful man left — he also suggests that Elijah has overestimated his own exceptionality: ‘Apparuit Deus Helye et dixit: “tu glorificatus es in bono tuo et dicis quod omnes probi mortui sunt praeter te, sed ego habeo adhuc mille homines qui me numquam negaverunt nec ydolis fiuerunt et tantam quantam habes possident bonitatem”’ (God appeared to Elias and said: ‘You have glorified yourself in your goodness and you say that all honourable men are dead besides you, but I still have a thousand men who never denied me, nor swore oaths to idols, and they possess as much goodness as you have’) (Figure 4.2).6 The biblical illustration alters the composition of the corresponding image in the French-language manuscript so as to underscore God’s dissatisfaction with Elijah. The positions of Elijah and the ‘remaining honorable men’ are reversed: the former is now on God’s left (sinister) side, while the latter are located on God’s right side, suggesting that God favours them over the prophet. To further emphasize their merit, these faithful Israelites are shown kneeling with their hands stretched towards heaven and their backs turned on the idol, which is now raised up on a tall pillar in the centre; this composition serves to contrast the humility of the faithful with the vainglory of the pagan demon. An eagle (a divine symbol) hovers above the good Israelites. The bust of God turns toward Elijah with a glowering expression and flourishes a speech banner proclaiming ‘tu glorificatus’, and the prophet presents a doleful aspect indeed, cowering in a cave with his hand over his face. The other two, ‘twinned’ three-volume manuscripts echo ÖNB cod. 1179 in presenting God as reproaching Elijah, but they omit the final phrase proclaiming the faithful Israelites equal to Elijah in goodness. Their biblical texts are very similar to each other and to the earlier Latin manuscript, with slight variations in wording — Toledo retains the (incorrect) count of a thousand remaining Israelites but calls
6 Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, fol. 122C.
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Figure 4.1. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB) MS 2554, 54vAa. Photo: © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
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Figure 4.2. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB) MS 1179, 122Cc. Photo: © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
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Figure 4.3. Toledo, Cathedral of Toledo, Bible moralisée (Biblia de San Luis), vol. 1, 138Cc. Photo: by permission of La Biblioteca de la Catedral, Toledo, after M. Moleiro.
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Figure 4.4. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 270b, 170Cc. Photo: © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
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Figure 4.5. Side-by-side comparison of the III Kings 19. 18 biblical and commentary roundels in the four thirteenth-century exemplars.
them boni; Oxford corrects the count to the biblical seven thousand but follows ÖNB cod. 1179 in calling them probi.7 The biblical illustrations in Toledo and Oxford are nearly identical (Figure 4.3 and Figure 4.4; see also Figure 4.5 for a comparison of the roundels). Both retain the basic layout of the ÖNB cod. 1179 illustration, with Elijah on God’s left and the good Israelites on God’s right. But the artists have streamlined the composition, making it considerably clearer.8 The idol is omitted entirely. In its place we see God, no longer a small bust emerging from heaven but a full-sized standing Christ, commanding the centre of the roundel as he directs Elijah’s attention toward the group of remaining faithful, who are standing rather than kneeling. Elijah is again seated, but he appears less distraught than in the earlier manuscript — rather than covering his face with his hand, he holds his hand with his palm facing outward in an ambiguous gesture, either resigned or defiant.9 The overall effect is to focus attention on the contrasting
7 Toledo, fol. 138C: ‘Apparuit Deus Helye et dixit ei: “tu in bono tuo gloriatus dixisti quod omnes boni mortui sunt praeter te, sed habeo adhuc mille homines qui me numquam negaverunt nec ydolis servierunt”’. Oxford, Bodleian, 270b, fol. 170C: ‘Apparuit Deus Helye et dixit ei: “tu glorificatus es in bono tuo et dicis quod omnes probi mortui sunt praeter te, sed ego habeo adhuc vii. m. homines qui me numquam negaverunt”’. Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, ii, 202 has noted that Oxford tends to correct errors in Toledo’s biblical text, though the reverse also happens. 8 They seem to be following the model of the commentary illustration in Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, which presumably struck them as more balanced and easier to read than the biblical roundel. 9 John Lowden notes (The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, i, 167–80) that the painters of both Toledo and Oxford often failed to understand the tracing of the under-drawing from which they were working, and consequently made errors. Usually Toledo is ‘better’, sometimes Oxford is better, and sometimes both manuscripts err. Here Oxford better realizes the under-drawing. In its biblical image, God (portrayed as Christ) carries a long scroll that unrolls to the ground just to the right of his left
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attitudes of the opposed parties: the faithful Israelites appear obedient toward and receptive of God, while Elijah appears isolated and disengaged.
Sources for the Biblical Texts Where does the Bible moralisée’s anomalous version of III Kings 19. 18, with its unflattering portrayal of one of Scripture’s most venerated prophets, come from? God’s accusation that Elijah was ‘glorifying himself’ is not found in the Vulgate text, or in any thirteenth-century Bible manuscript of which I am aware.10 The episode was best known to medieval Christians via Romans 11. 2–5, where Saint Paul cites God’s response to Elijah as proof that He had not forsaken the Jewish people. Paul never implies that Elijah was glorifying himself, or that God was reproaching him. However, the suggestion that Elijah lacked humility does appear in exegetical literature — several commentators on the passage saw a potential for vainglory in Elijah’s claim to be the only remaining faithful man. Augustine, for example, cited Elijah’s declaration in a sermon passage warning against pride.11 The most influential such interpretation appears in Book 31 of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job. Noting that God urged Saint Benedict to recognize others’ virtue and not just his own, Gregory cites and explicates God’s invocation of the 7000 remaining faithful Israelites: Scimus autem quod cordis sui oculum per elationis tenebras exstinguit, qui, cum recte agit, considerare meliorum merita neglegit. At contra magno humilitatis radio sua opera illustrat, qui aliorum bona subtiliter pensat, quia dum ea quae ipse fecerit facta foris et ab aliis conspicit, eum qui de singularitate intus erumpere nititur superbiae tumorem premit. Hinc est quod voce Dei ad Eliam solum se aestimantem dicitur: Reliqui mihi septem milia virorum qui non curvaverunt genua ante Baal, ut dum non solum se remansisse cognosceret, elationis gloriam, quae ei de singularitate surgere poterat, evitare potuisset.
leg. The artist of the Toledo manuscript, however, apparently misunderstood the tracing, and painted Elijah’s right leg and foot in place of the lower half of the scroll. This entirely obscures Christ’s left leg — which seems not to exist — and results in a very awkward anatomy for Elijah. 10 For example, no such phrase appears in the corresponding passages in a late twelfth-century manuscript of the Paris Bible: Paris, BnF, MS latin, 11,535, fol. 19v (‘Et relinquam michi in Israël septem milia virorum, quorum genua non sunt incurvata ante Baal, et omne os quod non adoraverit eum osculans manus’); in the early thirteenth-century Bible given by Blanche of Castile to the Abbey of St-Victor de Paris (Paris, BnF, MS latin 14,397, fol. 103v: ‘Et derelinquam michi in Israël vii. milia virorum, quorum genua non sunt incurvata a Baal, et omne os quod non adoraverit eum osculans manus’); or in a Bible made in Paris shortly before 1231 (Paris, BnF, MS 11,930, fols 137–137v: ‘Et derelinquam mihi in Israël septem milia virorum, quorum genua non sunt curvata Baal, et omne os quod non adoravit eum osculans manus’). 11 Augustine, Ennarrationes In Psalmos, ed. by Migne, In Psalmum 30, Sermo 2, col. 243: ‘Vide ne peior sit ista superbia, quam illa nequitia. Noli solum te dicere. Nam et Elias aliquando taedio multitudinis impiorum ait: Prophetas tuos occiderunt, altaria tua suffoderunt, et ego relictus sum solus, et quaerunt animam meam. Sed quid dicit illi responsum divinum? Reliqui mihi septem millia virorum, qui non curvaverunt genua ante Baal. Ergo, fratres, inter haec scandala unum est remedium, ne male sentias de fratre tuo. Humiliter esto quod vis eum esse, et non putabis cum esse quod non es. Sed tamen sit etiam timor notis, etiam expertis’.
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(We know moreover that he who, when he behaves rightly, neglects to consider the merits of better people, extinguishes the eye of his heart through the darkness of pride. On the other hand, he who carefully weighs the goodness of others, brightens his own deeds with a great ray of humility, because when he sees those things which he has done himself also done by others outside, he deflates that swelling of pride, which strives to erupt from singularity. Hence is it, that it is said by the voice of God to Elias, who was deeming himself the sole [good man], there remains to me seven thousand men, who have not bent their knees before Baal; so that by learning that he was not the only one to have remained, he could avoid the boasting of pride, which could arise in him, on account of his singularity.12) Gregory here is flagging the potential for pride only (‘could arise in him’); neither Gregory the Great, nor Peter Damian (who quoted this passage), nor any of the other medieval commentators influenced by the Moralia, went so far as to allege that Elijah had already committed the sin that God sought to warn against, or to cast doubt on Elijah’s specialness.13 To the contrary, most contemporary Christian invocations of Elijah held him up as a model of praiseworthy religious zeal.14 There is, however, at least one contemporary text that, like the Bible moralisée, reads God’s response to Elijah as a scolding rather than either reassurance or, at worst, warning. This is a sermon preached on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary by Garnier de Rochefort, Abbot of Clairvaux (d. after 1225).15 Noting the apparent
12 Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob, ed. by Adriaen, p. 1624 (Book 31, ch. 54, lines 27–29). Cusack, An Interpretation of the Second Dialogue of Gregory the Great, pp. 1–26, points out that the first eight chapters of Book ii (the Life of Benedict) regularly model Benedict’s asceticism on that of Elijah and Elisha. 13 For Peter Damian, see Sermones, ed. by Lucchesi, Sermon 17, p. 96. Medieval commentators include Rupert of Deutz (In Regum, ed. by Migne, Liber Quintus, ch. 11, col. 1246); Abelard (Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos, ed. by Migne, col. 659 and Sermones, ed. by Migne, Sermo 33, cols 600–01), Guillaume de Saint-Thierry (Opera Omnia. Pars I: Expositio Super Epistolam ad Romanos, ed. by Verdeyen, Book Six, xi. 7. lines 504–10, p. 150: ‘Reliqui, inquit, mihi. Quid est? Reliqui mihi? Ego eos elegi, quia vidi mentes eorum non praesumentes de se, non de Baal. Non sunt mutati; sic sunt, ut a me facti sunt. Sic et nunc reliquiae secundum electionem gratiae salvae factae sunt. Cave, Christiane, superbiam. Licet enim sanctorum imitator sis, totum semper gratiae fecit, non meritum tuum’); Anonymous of St-Victor (Allegoriae in Vetus Testamentum, ed. by Migne, Book Seven, ‘In III et IV Regum’, ch. 15 and ch. 16, cols 635–750). 14 See for example the sermon of Geoffrey of St Thierry quoted by Giles Constable in The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, p. 264, which praises Elijah’s actions in III Kings 19 as a move toward interior spirituality, and which according to Constable may have been heard by William of St Thierry, the proponent of the Cistercian Order; the sermon preached by Master Jean de St-Gilles in 1231 (Davy, Sermons universitaires parisiens, p. 292); the anonymous Victorine sermon for Annunciation Sunday (Paris, BnF, 14,932, fol. 16vb), or the crusade sermons quoted in Georgiou, Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean, pp. 245 and 260. 15 Garnier was also briefly, bishop of Langres, before being forced by Innocent III to step down in 1199, on account of a conflict with his chapter. On Garnier, see Didier, ‘Garnier de Rochefort’, pp. 145–58 and Hoste, ‘Garnier de Rochefort’, pp. 179–83. Garnier is the likely author of the Contra Amaurianos, a treatise against a group of heretics educated at the University of Paris; aspects of this treatise are echoed in the Bible moralisée commentary. See Lipton, Images of Intolerance, pp. 47, 95, 125 and Tachau, ‘God’s Compass’, p. 25.
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pointlessness of his theme text (Deuteronomy 22. 6: ‘If a bird’s nest happens to be before you in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they are young ones, or eggs, and the mother sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young’), Garnier argues for the aridity of the ‘superficial letter’ and the necessity of spiritual understanding. He then proceeds to craft a series of moralizing glosses on birds, trees, flight, and descent, each said to signify various virtues and sins. Garnier mentions III Kings 19. 18 in a passage likening Christ to a bird that finds a nesting place in repentant human hearts: ‘Unde et Eliae praesumptionem redarguit dicentis: “Domine, prophetas tuos occiderunt; altaria tua suffoderunt: et remansi ego solus”. Et dicit ei divinum responsum: “Reliqui mihi multa millia virorum, qui non curvaverunt genua ante Baal”’ (Whence also [God] refutes the presumption of Elijah in saying: ‘Lord, they killed your prophets; they undermined your altars; and I have remained behind alone’. And He spoke a divine response to him: ‘I have left to me many thousands of men, who have not bent their knees before Baal’).16 Garnier’s rendering of the exchange, then, implies that Elijah’s heart is rendered inhospitable to Christ by pride, and that He finds greater repose with the remaining Israelites. Though I have not been able to determine how well known or widely replicated this sermon may have been, Garnier’s remark seems the best explanation for the anomalous rendering of III Kings 19. 18 in the Bible moralisée. That is, the person or team overseeing the creation of the texts was familiar with Garnier’s sermon or a similar reading of III Kings 19. 18, and allowed it to seep into the biblical paraphrase. Such infiltrations of the moralization into the biblical text occur in more than one place in the manuscripts, sometimes by error, sometimes apparently by design.17 In this case, the infiltration seems to have been intentional, so as to allow for a distinctly polemical commentary text. That is, the reformist makers of the manuscripts saw in God’s sharpened response to Elijah a vehicle for reproaching the pride of traditionalists, and vaunting the virtue of reformed orders. But the objects of both rebuke and praise do not remain constant across the manuscripts. This shifting cast of characters provides tantalizing hints of religious rivalries playing out in the circles of the makers of the Bibles moralisées, of the manuscripts’ patrons/recipients or both.
The Commentary Texts and Roundels The French-language moralization to III Kings 19. 18 is the longest; it is also the most provocative (see Table 4.1).18 It reads: Ce qe Dex dist a Helye, ‘tu te glorefies en ta bontei et dis qe tuit li proudome sunt mort fors toi’, et Dex li mostra ausi boens senefie iesu crist qi dist as genz de noire religion, ‘vos vos glorefiez molt en vostre bontei et dites qe vos estes molt boen 16 Garnier de Rochfort, Sermones, ed. by Migne, Sermo 30, col. 762. 17 For examples, see Lipton, Images of Intolerance, pp. 129, 168, 174. 18 The length of the moralization is unusual: generally the texts in Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554 are shorter and simpler than those in the Latin manuscripts.
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et qe vos soffrez molt, mes ancore ai ie tel gent de blanc ordene qi sunt ausi boen ou millor qe vos n’estes, et qi plus soffrent de poine qe vos’. (That God said to Elijah, ‘You glorify yourself in your goodness and say that all the upright men [proudome] are dead except for you’ and God shows him some good men, signifies Jesus Christ who says to the people of the black religion, ‘You glorify yourselves greatly in your goodness and say that you are very good and that you endure much, but still I have such people of the white order who are just as good as or better than you are and who endure more pain than you’.19) The adjacent commentary roundel reproduces the composition of the biblical roundel directly above (with the exception of the idol, which has no analogue) (see Figure 4.1). On the left, in the place occupied by Elijah, stand three monks in wide-sleeved black habits, the first with his hood pulled over his head. Two of these monks lean their faces on their hands in echo of Elijah’s troubled gesture. In the top centre of the roundel, the bust of God emerges from a cloud. His orientation is the reverse of God’s in the biblical image; rather than scolding the self-glorifying party, he leans toward and blesses the favoured people, standing on the right. These are all portrayed as Cistercian monks, wearing their characteristic white habits and hoods.20 One white monk holds a book, symbolic of Christian learning and/or devotion, and two others, echoing the faithful Israelites just above, raise their hands, either in prayer or to signal their receptivity and obedience to God. This moralization, then, unfavourably contrasts black (traditional Benedictine) with white (Cistercian) monks, and so is a late and heretofore unnoticed chapter in what was by the early thirteenth century a hundred-year-old monastic dispute.21 It
19 Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, fol. 54va. 20 On Cistercian habits, see Peter the Venerable’s Letter 111, which discusses the whiteness of Cistercians’ robes (The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. by Constable, i, 274–99). For a history of the Cistercian order, see the essays in Bruun, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order; Lester, ‘The Cistercians’; and Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe. Note that though the motto of the Carmelite Order (‘Zelo zelatus sum pro Domino Deo exercituum’) is drawn from this biblical book and verse, Carmelites did not disperse beyond the eastern Mediterranean until c. 1240, Elijah was not cited as Carmelite model until 1281 (Edden, ‘The prophetycal lyf of an heremyte’, p. 150), and the Carmelites did not adopt the cappa alba until 1287, decades after these manuscripts were made. Until that date the Carmelites wore cloaks of various colors, meaning both striped and varying from institution to institution, or even friar to friar. On the Carmelite habit and self-identity, see Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity, p. 62. Though Dominicans also wore white tunics and hoods, their most characteristic clothing item was the black cappa: Lerner, ‘Philip the Chancellor Greets the Early Dominicans in Paris’, p. 7. 21 The literature on the Benedictine-Cistercian debate is considerable. van Engen, ‘The “Crisis of Cenobitism” Reconsidered’, p. 274, notes that ‘already in the late twelfth century […] observers classified as “Black Monks” or “traditional Benedictines” all those not sprung from one of the newer groups, such as the Cistercians (“the White Monks”)’. Bredero, Cluny et Cîteaux au douzième siècle considers the ‘debate’ less a confrontation between the orders than a correspondence carried on by certain individuals, prompted by specific circumstances. An important text in the debate is Idung of Prüfening’s Dialogus inter Cluniacensum monachum et Cisterciensem, c. 1154–1173, edited in Huygens,
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is more than a little surprising to find it here, in the Kings commentary of the Bible moralisée. Though there are some texts that carry on the debate between traditional Benedictines and Cistercians over proper observance of the Rule into the thirteenth century, the controversy had had largely subsided by c. 1210–1220, and has not been documented as preoccupying either Parisian clerics or members of the Capetian court.22 The puzzle is deepened by the fact that all three Latin manuscripts dispense entirely with this intra-Christian monastic rivalry (see Table 4.1). They still criticize traditionalists and praise the virtuous, but instead of disparaging Benedictines, they claim that Elijah signifies a very different group indeed: the Jews. In the Latin commentary texts God accuses Jews of glorifying themselves in ‘your religion and in your good works’ (ÖNB cod. 1179, where they are portrayed as thickly bearded men in pointed hats, seated and looking quite wretched, in a mirror image of Elijah above); ‘your religion and works of the law’ (Oxford, in whose commentary image two Jews resemble the less distressed Elijah above; one of the Jews plunges a knife into the breast of an animal cradled on his lap, representing the ‘works of the law’); or simply ‘your works of the law’ (Toledo, whose commentary image is nearly identical to that in Oxford, though the slaughtering Jew is aiming slightly more accurately into the animal’s throat, and the second Jew strikes a haughty pose, his hand on his knee).23 The people to whom the Jews are unfavourably compared are also modified in the Latin exemplars, with slight changes detectible in the texts and more substantive changes in the images (see Table 4.1 and Figure 4.5). In the ÖNB cod. 1179 commentary text the ‘better people’ are ‘white monks of deep [or: lofty] religion [monachos albos alte religionis], who for my sake act more strictly than you [do] [pro me arciora quam vos faciuntur]’ (see Figure 4.2).24 In the image, however, they are not white monks at all, but three tonsured clerics seated within
‘Le moine Idung et ses deux ouvrages’, pp. 291–470 (now to be preferred to the edition in Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, v, cols 1569–1654); translation in Idung of Prüfening, Cistercians and Cluniacs, trans. by O’Sullivan, Leahy, and Perrigo. Also of interest is the mid-twelfthcentury Libellus de diversis ordinibus et professionibus qui sunt in ecclesia, ed. and trans. by Constable and Smith. 22 Williams, ‘A Dialogue Between a Cluniac and a Cistercian’, p. 164 writes that the controversy faded away shortly after the deaths of Bernard of Clairvaux (1153) and Peter the Venerable (1158). The thirteenth-century texts are the Exordium Magnum, purportedly a document from the early decades of the twelfth century but actually written (or compiled) c. 1180–1215 by a monk of Clairvaux named Conrad, later Abbot of Eberbach, (see Exordium magnum Cisterciense, ed. by Griesser, and The Great Beginning of Cîteaux, ed. by Elder, trans. by Ward and Savage); several tales in Part One of the Vie des Pères, an Anglo-Norman vernacular text dating to c. 1230, which praise the Cistercians at the expense of black monks, though Paul Bretel notes that the polemic had lost intensity by the early thirteenth century (see Bretel, ‘Moines et Religieux dans les contes de la Vie des Pères’, p. 38); and some sermons by Humbert de Romans, studied by Jacques Dubois, ‘Ordres monastiques au xiiie siècle en France’, pp. 187–220. None of these texts cite III Kings 19. 18, though the sigh of Elijah in III Kings 19. 4 is positively referenced in the Exordium Magnum. 23 On Jews and the Old Law in the Bible moralisée, see Lipton, Images of Intolerance, pp. 54–81. 24 Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, fol. 122c: ‘Hoc significat iesum christum qui dixit iudeis: “vos estis in vestra religione et vestris operibus bonis glorificati, et dicitis quod vos estis multum boni, sed habeo tales, scilicet monachos albos alte religionis, qui pro me arciora quam vos faciuntur”’.
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a structure, the foremost of whom wears a black hooded cape or robe over a white tunic and reads a book resting on a desk or lectern. These figures are most likely Augustinian canons, who were represented by two important abbeys in Paris, both of which were major centres of scholarship and had close ties to the Capetian court.25 In the Toledo manuscript, the favoured people are expanded: ‘white monks and other faithful of deep [or: lofty] religion, [monachos albos et alios fideles alte religionis] who for my sake act more strictly [pro me artiora faciunt]’ (see Figure 4.3).26 In the roundel, ‘those who act more strictly’ are neither white monks nor regular canons. Instead, one barefoot black (Benedictine) monk, hands folded before him in humility, stands in front of five barefoot men dressed in brown monastic habits — these may also be Benedictines, or perhaps Carmelites.27 In Oxford, ‘white monks’ have been omitted entirely from the text, with God lauding simply ‘monks of deep [or: lofty] religion [monachos alte religionis], who act for my sake more strictly than you do [pro me artiora quam vos faciunt]’ (see Figure 4.4).28 The corresponding image, though based on the same under-drawing as the corresponding Toledo medallion, has coloured all the monks’ habits black; they are also not barefoot. How can we understand this surprising series of commentary texts and images, and account for the various changes and inconsistencies between and sometimes
25 The most prominent Augustinian house in thirteenth-century Paris was St-Victor de Paris. On relations between St-Victor and the Capetian court, see note 63 below. The other important Augustinian house was the Abbey of Ste-Geneviève, which in 1148 adopted the Augustinian Rule under the influence of St-Victor. The late twelfth-century Abbot of Ste-Geneviève, Étienne de Tournai, was Louis VIII’s godfather. On the habit of the Victorines, see Bonnard, Histoire de l’abbaye royale, p. 58: the habit consisted of a long linen tunic or surplice with wide sleeves falling almost to the feet, and covered by a black cape to which one attached a hood. See, too, a sermon by Abbot John of St-Victor, who noted that ‘we cover our nudity in white clothes’ (Paris, BnF, MS latin 14,932, fol. 85v), and Sermon 127 of Philip the Chancellor, (Philippi De Greve Cancellarii Parisiensis, fol. 203), which notes that regular canons wore black and white. Dominicans, who adopted a modified form of the Augustinian rule, also wore black robes over white tunics. But these figures, seated in a structure and holding books, are very unlikely to be Dominicans, who in the three-volume manuscripts are generally depicted preaching. In fact, there do not seem to be any mendicants portrayed in either Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179 or Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, suggesting that these first two manuscripts were completed before mendicants had gained influence in court circles or become prominent enough in Paris to enter its visual culture. Note that the ‘lazy divine’ [theologian] scolded for seeking advice from astronomers in Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, fol. 10vd sits in a similar structure and wears a very similar habit. 26 Toledo, fol. 138c: ‘Hoc significat quod Ihesus Christus dixit iudeis: “vos gloriamini in operibus legis sed habeo tales, scilicet monachos albos et alios fideles alte religionis qui pro me artiora faciunt”’. 27 On Carmelite habits, see Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity, pp. 74–76. I do not think these brown monks can be Franciscans, since elsewhere in this manuscript Franciscans are clearly identified by tell-tale knotted cords, and their robes have fitted sleeves. See for example Toledo, vol. 2, fol. 28b, where the knotted cord of the grey friar is clear, or Morgan Library, MS 240, fol. 7vb. Franciscans are also clearly identifiable in Oxford, Bodleian, 270b; see, for example, fols 14c, 136b, 146b. As mentioned above, there are no identifiable mendicants in either Vienna manuscript. 28 Oxford, Bodleian, MS 270b, fol. 170c: ‘Hoc significat quod Ihesus Christus dixit iudeis: “In vestra religione et operibus legis glorificatis sed habeo tales, scilicet monachos alte religionis, qui pro me artiora quam vos faciunt”’.
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within our manuscripts? It seems clear that some arise from error or misunderstanding (see Figures 4.2 and 4.5). For example, instead of maintaining the visual parallelism between biblical and commentary images so marked in the French manuscript, the commentary roundel in ÖNB cod. 1179 reverses the composition of the biblical roundel above. The Jews are not placed below Elijah, to whom in their vainglory they are compared and whom they outwardly resemble, but rather are situated below the ‘remaining Israelites’ kneeling in prayer. The designer (whether artist or iconographer) may have simply been following the model of the ÖNB cod. 2554 commentary image, where the scolded Benedictines are on the left and the commended Cistercians are on the right, and was unconcerned with visually echoing the biblical scene above. But because he replaced the small bust of God with a full-sized Jesus Christ in the centre, while retaining the original placement of the two groups of monks, the ‘good’ group is consequently located on Jesus’s left or sinister side (the viewer’s right), while the ‘bad’ group is to Jesus’s right — a decidedly unconventional configuration. Did the designer prefer the more complex and chiasmic composition that resulted from placing Elijah and the Jews in a diagonal relationship? Or did the artist simply misunderstand the biblical scene he himself had painted, assuming (understandably) that that the prophet Elijah was the favoured figure in the episode, and that the people kneeling next to the idol were sinners? In any case, the lack of visual parallelism, and/or the violation of moral hierarchies apparently displeased the redactors of the two later Latin manuscripts, in both of which the mismatch is corrected, so that the Jews are located immediately below Elijah and to Jesus’s left. Whatever the reason for the compositional variations, the different identities of the preferred and criticized groups seem unlikely to be the product of error. The morphing of Benedictines into Jews, and of white monks into regular canons, and then into black and brown monks, must have been intentional. Someone instructed the artists of ÖNB cod. 1179 and Toledo to create images that diverge from the text, and someone else adjusted the text of Oxford to suit the prescribed commentary image. They did so for reasons grounded partly in the exegetical background, but also, I will argue, in polemical history and Capetian religious politics.
The Exegetical Background There is nothing in the medieval exegetical tradition that accounts for the criticism of either black monks or Jews, or the exaltation of white monks, in the Bible moralisée III Kings 19. 18 commentaries. As we have seen, Gregory the Great cited the passage to warn against pride, but he did not use the verse to criticize Jews or any particular segment of society, and naturally said nothing about Cistercians. Indeed, I have not yet located any text that turns God’s remark against specific contemporaries. The Glossa ordinaria on III Kings closely paraphrases Gregory’s Moralia in Job (though it attributes the gloss to Rabanus Maurus): ‘Tanto prophete quid difficile fuit cognoscere in hoc mundo famulos remansisse Deo? Sed qui humilis etiam occulta Dei noverat, elatus et aperta nesciebat. Unde
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certum est quod humilitatis radio se illuminat, qui aliorum bona subtiliter pensat, quia dum ea que ipse fecerit facta foris et ab aliis conspicit, eum qui de singularitate intus erumpere nititur, superbie tumorem premit. Hinc est quod voce Dei ad Eliam solum se estimantem dicitur. Reliqui mihi septem millia virorum, ut dum non solum se remansisse cognosceret, elationis gloriam que ei de singularitate surgebat inclinaret’, This is what is said by the voice of God to Elias, who was believing himself to be alone. “I have left to me seven thousand men”, so that as long as he knew himself not to be the sole remaining, he would turn away from the glory of elation which rose in him from his singularity.29 William of St-Thierry echoes Gregory in using the verse to warn Christians against pride, but cites no one group or monastic order.30 Abelard criticized Elijah’s pride in order to urge monks toward humility, but likewise singled out no particular order for either censure or praise.31 Andrew of St-Victor, who wrote one of the relatively few extended high medieval commentaries on the Books of Kings, does not comment on God’s response to Elijah’s lament at all, and in fact affirms Elijah’s sense of specialness by noting that no other prophet or worshipper dared openly to profess faith in God.32 In the sermon quoted above that indicts Elijah’s presumption, Garnier de Rochefort also keeps his remarks about Christian pride entirely general.33 The massive commentary created by the studium of Hugh of St Cher, which long ago was (incorrectly) identified as the source for the commentary text of the Oxford-Paris-London exemplar, merely echoes Gregory the Great.34 29 EGO SOLUS. RAB. Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, ed. by Morard and Gibiino. On the Glossa ordinaria on Kings, see van Liere, ‘Andrew of St Victor’, pp. 249–63. 30 William of St-Thierry, Opera Omnia. Pars I: Expositio Super Epistolam ad Romanos, ed. by Verdeyen, Book Six, xi. 7. lines 504–10, p. 150: ‘Reliqui, inquit, mihi. Quid est? Reliqui mihi? Ego eos elegi, quia vidi mentes eorum non praesumentes de se, non de Baal. Non sunt mutati; sic sunt, ut a me facti sunt. Sic et nunc reliquiae secundum electionem gratiae salvae factae sunt. Cave, Christiane, superbiam. Licet enim sanctorum imitator sis, totum semper gratiae fecit, non meritum tuum’. See also Robson, ‘With the Spirit and Power of Elijah’. 31 See Abelard, Sermones, ed. by Migne, Sermo 33, col. 601 and Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos, ed. by Migne, col. 659: ‘Cave, Christianum, superbiam!’. 32 See Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 30, fol. 71v: ‘Derelictus sum ego solus. Solum se derelictum dicit, quod et non erat aliquis propheta domini et cultor in Israel, nemo erat qui palam ausus esset profiteri’ and Andrew of St-Victor, Opera II. Expositio hystorica in Librum Regum, ed. by van Liere. On Andrew’s Kings commentary, see van Liere, ‘Andrew of St Victor’ and van Liere, ‘The Literal Sense of the Books of Samuel and Kings’, pp. 59–82. 33 Garnier de Rochefort, Sermones, ed. by Migne, Sermo 30, col. 762: ‘Unde et Eliae praesumptionem redarguit dicentis: “Domine, prophetas tuos occiderunt; altaria tua suffoderunt: et remansi ego solus”. Et dicit ei divinum responsum: “Reliqui mihi multa millia virorum, qui non curvaverunt genua ante Baal”’. The verse is not cited in any other sermon I have examined, nor does it appear in any of the sermons discussed in Bériou, L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole. Schneyer, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters does not list a single sermon that takes III Kings 19. 18 as its theme, though of course this reference work does not list verses referred to in the body of sermons. 34 ‘Reliqui mihi, etc. Gloss: ut dum se solum non remansisse cognosceret, elationis gloriam, quae ei de singularitate surgebat inclinaret. Relictus sum ego solus, non mentitur, quia ita credebat. Sed falsum credebat, et dixit ex elatione, patet in Gloss. Gregorii, dicentis: Tanto prophetae quod difficile fuit
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One contemporary exegetical text comes somewhat close to the Bible moralisée commentary, in that it replicates some of the Latin vocabulary, but it too lacks any mention of Jews, or comparison of black monks with white monks. This is the commentary on the Books of Kings by Stephen Langton, whose influence on the Bible moralisée has been noted by several scholars.35 In relation to an earlier verse (III Kings 19. 12: ‘And after the fire, the whistle of a gentle breeze’), Langton, like the Latin Bible moralisée commentary texts, refers to the ‘stricter life’ of monks, explaining, ‘Ventus urens est gratia. Sicut sibilus aure quae ad bene operandum mentem hominis accendit, desolatur fortes et exterminat errorem mundi et desiccat venas Egypti, id est, peccata quae proveniunt ex amore mundi. Et nota quod qui sibilat os contrahit, qui loquitur, os dilatat. Sibilum igitur facit Deus clautralibus, quia artiora discipline consilia proponit. Nobis os dilatat, quia latioris vie licentiam concedit, dum tamen a rectitudine non deviet’ (Therefore God whistles for monks, because [for them] he sets forth plans for a stricter [artiora] discipline; for us [seculars], he opens his mouth, because he grants permission for a more lenient way of life, while nevertheless not straying from righteousness’)36 Langton does not extend his discussion of monks’ stricter way of life to verse 18, which he discusses just a few lines later. Instead he echoes Gregory and the Glossa Ordinaria in noting that God reminded Elijah of other good men as a caution against pride.37 But we again approach the wording of the Bible moralisée commentary when Langton subsequently comments, in regard to those good men who did not kiss the hand of Baal, that ‘Osculari manum: est glorari [sic] de operibus, et opera quae debet deo, sibi attribuere’ (to kiss the hand is to boast [gloriari] of [good] works and to grant to oneself, works that one owes to God).38 It may be that this or some similar text (or oral teaching) by Langton provided the original inspiration for the Bible moralisée III Kings 19. 18 moralization. Langton was the leading Parisian master of sacra pagina during the years when any cleric likely to have been involved in the making of the Vienna Bible moralisée manuscripts would have studied there.39 But if Langton’s gloss inspired the Bible moralisée commentary, it was a loose inspiration at best.
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agnoscere, in hoc mundo famulos remansisse Deo? Sed qui humilis occulta Dei noverat, elatus etiam aperta nesciebat. Unde certum est, quod humilitatis radio se illuminat, qui aliorum bona subtiliter pensat, quia dum ea, quae ipse fecerit, facta foris, et ab aliis conspicit, eum qui de singularite intus erumpere nititur, superbiae rumorem premit’. From Vgonis de S. Charo, pp. 282–83. I also consulted Paris, BnF, MS lat. 59, fol. 191v (Biblia sacra cum Hugonis de Sancto Caro glossa, fourteenth century). See especially Haussherr, ‘Petrus Cantor’, pp. 347–64; Heinlein, ‘The Ideology of Reform in the French Moralized Bible’; Stork, Die Wiener französische Bible moralisée. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 204, fol. 88v. This commentary dates to c. 1187–1193. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 204, fol. 88v; see also Paris, BnF, MS lat. 384, fol. 115v. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 204, fol. 88v and Paris, BnF, MS lat. 384, fol. 115v. Simon Langton, who was Stephen Langton’s brother, was a member of Louis VIII and Blanche’s pre-coronation entourage, which also included a Master Martin and William the Clerk. Lindy Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 48. Nicholas Vincent suggested Simon Langton as a possible redactor of Vienna, ÖNB cod. 1179 in his ‘Review of Lipton, Images of Intolerance’, pp. 937–38.
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Monastic Polemics: Artiora Pro Me Stephen Langton readily conceded the artiora discipline of cloistered monks; as a secular cleric, he acknowledged and was apparently not defensive about his own more lenient lifestyle. But within monastic circles, the terms artius, artior and altius, altior were deployed competitively. A claim to live ‘more strictly’ than traditional Benedictine monks characterized the Cistercian Order from the time of its founding: a letter dating to c. 1100 states that Robert of Molesme, the Order’s founder, announced that he left his home monastery out of a desire to live the Rule of Saint Benedict ‘artius […] atque perfectius’.40 Others preferred to describe the Cistercian way of life as ‘lofty’ rather than ‘strict’. Indeed, one historian has claimed that ‘the difference between the “official” and “unofficial” records [of the early Cistercians] can be epitomized in two adverbs, artius and altius: should the Rule of St Benedict be followed “more strictly”, or is the keynote “more highly”’?41 But the Cistercians did not have a monopoly on the term artius. Other orders also congratulated themselves on the strictness of their life, often at the expense of their perceived rivals. Such claims were particularly common among regular canons. The twelfth-century Premonstratensian Adam of Dryburgh (d. c. 1212) criticized black secular canons (ut cygnos nigros) by asserting that they didn’t live arctum, but rather grew their tonsures long, and wore fancy cloth. By contrast, he claimed, Premonstratensians wear simple and modest clothing, and never appear without our white superpelliciis.42 Bishop Étienne de Tournai, a former abbot of the Augustinian house of Ste-Geneviève and godfather to Louis VIII, was somewhat more modest about his own order, writing encouragingly to a canon of the Victorine abbey of St-Euvert (Orléans) who had retired to live in the forest as a hermit: ‘…non levem concepi fiduciam te et alciora ct arciora posse in heremo sustinere’ (I realized that you are not of light faith, and able to sustain the deeper/loftier and stricter things (alciora et arciora) of a hermitage).43 In a sermon to regular canons included in his massively popular ad status preaching collection, the Parisian-educated Jacques de Vitry (who himself was a member of the Priory of St Nicholas at Liège, which though unaffiliated followed the Augustinian rule) praised his audience for leaving the world for a stricter life (artiorem vitem) and adopting stricter statutes (arciora statuta).44 The terminology also appears in a text with close ties to the Capetian court: Guillaume le Breton notes in his continuation of the royal chronicle begun by Rigord that Bishop
40 Exordium Parvum 2.5, in Les plus anciens textes de Cîteaux, ed. by de la Croix Bouton and van Damme, p. 58. For a revised narrative of the founding, and reassessment of documents, see Newman, ‘Foundation and Twelfth Century’, pp. 27–30. 41 Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive; discussed in Cowdrey, ‘Quidam Frater Stephanus Nomine, anglicus natione’, p. 59. 42 Adam of Dryburgh, Liber de ordine, ed. by Migne, Sermo iii.3, cols 462–66. 43 Lettres d’Étienne de Tournai, ed. by Desilve, p. 231. The letter dates to sometime between 1184 and 1191. 44 Sermon 30, To Regular Canons, in Longère, ‘Quatre sermons ad canonicos de Jacques de Vitry’, pp. 180.
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Gaufridus of Meaux entered St-Victor de Paris because he wanted to subject himself more strictly (arctius) to divine contemplation.45 Though I have not yet located any monastic text that explicitly enlists God’s response to Elijah in order to criticize a rival order, it seems clear that monastic polemics underlie the III Kings 19. 18 commentary in the Bibles moralisée, either directly or via university scholarship.46
They Glorify Themselves in Their Law: Jews in the Monastic Debate Monastic texts also provide models for the polemical comparison of monks and Jews. When the Anglo-Norman Benedictine monk and chronicler Orderic Vitalis (d. c. 1142) described the founding of Cîteaux, he wrote that while the monks of Molesme were resisting Abbot Robert’s desire to make them live a stricter life, he ‘withdrew from them with twelve likeminded brothers who had decided to keep the Rule of Saint Benedict strictly to the letter, as the Jews keep the law of Moses…’.47 This passage is often cited as praise of the Cistercians on Orderic’s part, but surely we might ask whether a medieval Christian monk would truly find Judaic-style literal observance of the law praiseworthy.48 In other passages Orderic was clearly critical of the Cistercian Order, lamenting their penchant for keeping their services ‘secret’, their incorrect chant practices, and the general fad for novelty.49 William of Malmesbury, too, echoed supersessionist exegesis (of Matthew 5. 18; Luke 16. 17) and implied a similarity to the Pharisaic opponents of Christ when he wrote that Cistercians think they ‘nec iota unum nec apicem praetereundum putent’ (neglect not one iota or letter of the Benedictine Rule).50 In fact, in the mid-twelfth century Cluniac-Cistercian controversialists consistently accused each other of being ‘more Jewish’.51 Cluniacs called Cistercians ‘new 45 Guillaume le Breton, entry for 1214, in Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, ed. by Delaborde, i, 257, ch. 176. This is Geoffroi Tressy de Poissy, bishop from 1208 until his resignation in 1213. See Gallia Christiana, ed. by Congregation of St Maur, viii, 1620–22. 46 I have found only one text that specifically cites Cistercians in conjunction with this biblical verse, but the context and import are unrelated to our commentary text. It is a letter written by Bernard of Clairvaux, defending the Cistercians of York by saying the Roman curia (by which he meant Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester) should not compel men to ‘bend knee to Baal against their consciences’. Epistle 236, dated after 26 September 1143. S. Bernardi Opera, ed. by Leclercq, Talbot, and Rochais, viii, 112. 47 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, iv, 322 (Book 8. 25). On Orderic, see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://doi-org.proxy.library.stonybrook.edu/10.1093/ ref:odnb/20812. His Ecclesiastical History was written between c. 1114 and 1141. 48 For a more positive reading of Orderic’s attitude, see Jane Patricia Freeland’s introductory discussion to her translation of this text in ‘Robert and the Monks of Molesme Discuss Observances’, pp. 19–25. 49 Fassler, Gothic Song, pp. 96–97. 50 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. by Migne, 4. 336, col. 1288. 51 On this aspect of the dispute see Lipton, ‘Unfeigned Witness’, pp. 45–73 and Knight, The Correspondence Between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux, pp. 49–51; 56; 199; 279 (‘Cistercians and Cluniacs as Orthodox Jews and Gentiles respectively’). Peter the Venerable called
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Pharisees’: overly legalistic, exclusively attached to the letter of the Rule and incapable of understanding its spirit; Cistercians (most memorably Bernard of Clairvaux), echoed anti-Jewish polemics when they charged Cluniacs with materialism, luxury, and ostentation. Because I have written at some length about this discourse elsewhere, I will cite here just a few additional texts, written in the second half of the twelfth century, and so close in time to the making of the earliest Bible moralisée manuscripts. An anonymous, pro-Cistercian Dialogue between a Cluniac and a Cistercian dating to c. 1160–1170 likens the Cluniac approach to the Rule to the Jewish approach to the Law, and presents the Cluniac as a crafty interlocutor who sought (in the words of the editor) ‘to entangle the Cistercian in his talk’, just as the Pharisees had sought to ensnare Jesus.52 A little known text of c. 1160 detailing the decision of Lord Amedeus of Hauterives to leave the Cistercian house he had recently entered for a Cluniac house, describes Amedeus as having been corrupted by vices stereotypically associated with Jews: excessive love of learning, deep avarice, attachment to luxury and carnal indulgence.53 Abbot Nicholas of Clairvaux (d. c. 1178/1179) drew more explicitly from anti-Jewish rhetoric when he contrasted his own order with that of the Cluniacs: ‘Uno denique consensu reliquimus omnia, et de Veteri Testamento et umbra Cluniacensium, ad Cisterciensium evolvimus puritatem’ (And finally with common accord we leave all things, and from the Old Testament and the shadow of the Cluniacs we fly up into Cistercian purity).54 And the text that may be considered one of the last entries in the debate (Conrad of Eberbach’s Exordium Magnum of c. 1210) calls Cluny ‘degenerated because of foreign and adulterated customs’, and ‘darkened and veiled’ — terms more typically applied to Jews.55 In light of this discourse, it is not hard to see why, when the creator of the ÖNB cod. 1179 commentary saw fit to replace the black monks in the French-language Bible moralisée with another unsatisfactory group, Jews came to mind.
Religious Preferences at the Capetian Court Up to this point, I have attempted to trace the various textual traditions that shaped the treatment of III Kings 19. 18 in the Bible moralisée. It is a complex and confusing path. Faced with the task of verbally and visually glossing a somewhat baffling biblical dialogue, about which the Church Fathers and most major medieval biblical scholars said remarkably little and consequently one for which no readily available gloss lay at hand, the manuscripts’ makers stitched together and then reassembled fragments of late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century exegesis, preaching, and monastic polemic. Such effort could easily have been avoided: the Kings commentaries in the Vienna Bibles moralisées are far from comprehensive, leaving out many verses and episodes. It was hardly necessary
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Cistercians ‘a new type of Pharisee’, who can hardly claim to faithfully follow Benedict’s Rule when they eschew humility. Letter 28 in The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. by Constable, i, 57. Williams, ‘A Dialogue Between a Cluniac and a Cistercian’, p. 170. Dimier, ‘Un témoin tardif peu connu du conflit entre cisterciens et clunisiens’, pp. 81–94. Nicholas of Clairvaux, Epistolae, ed. by Migne, Epistola 8, col. 1603. The Great Beginning of Cîteaux, ed. by Elder, p. 68.
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for the manuscripts to include the exchange between Elijah and God. I suggested above that this particular biblical text may well have been selected (and modified) specifically because it allowed for the presentation of pointed spiritual comparisons, first between black and white monks, and then between monks/canons and Jews. But why would the creators of ÖNB cod. 2554 want to echo a fading monastic critique? The rivalry between black and white monks, even if perpetuated in a handful of early thirteenth-century texts, seems far removed from the courtly, urban, and scholastic concerns that generally preoccupy the commentary of the Bibles moralisées. This may, in fact, be why the creators of ÖNB cod. 1179, which otherwise shares so much of the wording of the French commentary, replaces black monks with Jews: perhaps it seemed either pointless or indecorous to replicate intra-monastic polemics. But if that were the case, the makers of ÖNB cod. 1179 could simply have decided not to include the verse at all — they dedicate only five text/roundel pairs to all of III Kings 19. 1–19, as opposed to eight such pairs in the companion French manuscript.56 So we need to consider why ÖNB cod. 1179 opted to retain the III Kings 19. 18 commentary but replace Cistercians with Augustinians in the commentary image, and why the later exemplars change the monks’ identities yet again. At this point, I move from the realm of text to that of the larger context; in the process I will indulge in a degree of speculation that may appall the rigorous scholar to whom this volume is dedicated; I can but beg for Peggy’s forbearance. My working hypothesis is that the manuscripts’ differing glosses on God’s response to Elijah were tailored to their respective recipients or reading/viewing audiences, and reflect the diverging religious preferences of various members of the Capetian court. Before pursuing this argument, I must concede that there is considerable uncertainty regarding the patronage and readership of both ÖNB cod. 2554 and ÖNB cod. 1179.57 While my own suggestion that Louis VIII was the probable recipient of ÖNB cod. 1179 has been widely (though not universally) accepted, and most scholars have agreed that Blanche of Castile is the likely patron and owner of the contemporary Frenchlanguage manuscript, two recent studies offer reasons to revisit those conclusions. In her forthcoming article, Katherine Tachau reports that with the aid of advanced imaging technology she has been able to decipher the previously (largely) illegible inscription adjacent to the dedication roundel depicting an enthroned king in ÖNB cod. 1179.58 The king named in the first line is, surprisingly, neither Louis VIII nor any other
56 Here is a full breakdown of III Kings 19. 1–19 in the manuscripts: Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, fols 122a–122va (5 pairs); Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, fols 54a–54vd (8 pairs); Oxford, Bodleian, MS 270b, fols 170a–171va (5 pairs); Toledo, fols 138Aa – 139vAa (5 pairs). 57 The patron/commissioner of each manuscript need not be the same as the recipient/reader: a person might commission a manuscript that they intended to read with or to others (children, relatives, friends, followers), or they might plan to give the manuscript to another person, who then might share its contents with other people still. For current scholarly thinking regarding the manuscripts’ patrons, see note 2 above. 58 Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’, as in note 2 above. I thank Prof. Tachau for her generous and collegial responses to my queries about this article before its publication, and eagerly await the publication of her forthcoming book.
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Capetian, but a ‘Waldemar’ — almost certainly Waldemar II of Denmark (r. 1202–1241), whose sister Ingeborg had married Philip II Augustus in 1193, only to be immediately (if unsuccessfully) repudiated.59 There is still much to work through regarding the implications of Tachau’s important discovery, but it undoubtedly complicates our understanding of the manuscript’s origins. And Lindy Grant has cast doubt on the assumption that Blanche of Castile owned the French-language manuscript (ÖNB cod. 2554), noting in her outstanding biography that the highly educated queen read Latin with facility, and would not have needed a vernacular translation.60 Nevertheless, I cannot help but be struck by the fact that the differing identities of those who ‘live more strictly’ for God in the two earliest Bibles moralisées III Kings 19. 18 commentary images dovetail perfectly with the known partialities of King Louis VIII and his wife, Blanche of Castile. Like his father before him, Louis VIII showed favour to Augustinian regular canons throughout his reign. When Louis was born, Philip II Augustus had asked Étienne de Tournai, abbot of the Augustinian house of Ste-Geneviève, to act as godfather to the new prince; Louis VIII seems to have remained close to Étienne for the rest of that prelate’s life.61 In 1222 Philip had expressed the intention of founding a monastery on the site of a chapel built the year before to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Bouvines; it was left to Louis to issue the monastery’s charter, richly endow it, and arrange for twelve canons to be sent from St-Victor de Paris to staff the abbey, which he continued to generously support throughout his reign.62 The Augustinian house of St-Victor de Paris was an even more regular beneficiary of Louis’s generosity and judicial favour.63 To be sure, Augustinians were not the only order to receive Louis’s largesse; he also endowed Cistercian and other houses.64 But though when Louis VIII made his will in June 1225 he left small bequests to every religious house in his realm (as well as individual gifts to sixty Premonstratensian abbots, forty Victorine abbots, sixty Cistercian abbots, and twenty Cistercian abbesses), it was the Victorines who were singled out for the highest honour: he ordered that a new Victorine monastery be founded in his memory, to be paid for by the sale of the gems and gold from his crown jewels.65
59 On Philip and Ingeborg’s marriage, see Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 82–87. 60 Grant, Blanche of Castile, pp. 240–41. 61 For a paternal and affectionate letter from Étienne to Louis dated to c. 1199, in which the prelate (by then Bishop of Tournai) thanks the young prince for his letter, promises to send him a horse, and encourages him to remain studious, see Lettres d’Étienne de Tournai, ed. by Desilve, p. 367. 62 Vattier, ‘L’Abbaye de la Victoire’, pp. 4–8. For Philip’s will, see Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. by Teulet, i, no. 1546, 550–51; for Louis’s munificence, see Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne, p. 410. 63 See Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne for various privileges accorded the abbey by Louis VIII. See also the remarks of Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, p. 59; and Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 215. 64 Lester, ‘Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited’, pp. 17–42. Lester notes, however, that Louis VIII’s 1214 gift to the Cistercian nunnery of St-Antoine, which is the first Capetian donation to the Cistercian Order, may have been designed to please Louis’s wife Blanche. 65 Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. by Teulet, ii, no. 1710, 54–55. Peggy Brown has written about Louis’s will in Brown, ‘Royal Testamentary Acts’, pp. 420–21. She does not discuss the fact that Louis’s request regarding the founding of a Victorine abbey was disregarded.
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Blanche, too, was on good terms with St-Victor, to which she gave a fine Bible and loaned large sums of money, and whose abbot John would become ‘practically a pensioner of her household’ after his retirement in c. 1234.66 But her own spiritual inclinations clearly lay elsewhere: she followed her Castilian family’s tradition in showing a particular fondness for the Cistercian Order.67 In 1222, the year before her husband ascended the throne, Blanche was granted ‘benefits of prayer’ by the abbot of Cîteaux; and in 1227 the young King Louis IX requested that the entire Cistercian Order pray for his father and grandfather, and for his mother after her death; given that Louis was thirteen at the time, the request most likely reflected Blanche’s own wishes.68 She continued to patronize the Cistercian Order for the remainder of her life, founding three Cistercian houses and bestowing gifts on many more.69 When Blanche died in 1252, she was buried at her request not beside her husband at the royal Abbey of St-Denis, but in the Cistercian nunnery of Maubuisson, one of the houses she had founded.70 But the most striking, even startling, demonstration of Blanche’s partiality for the Cistercian Order was her decision to disregard her husband’s directive that a Victorine monastery be founded in his memory, and to found a Cistercian monastery instead — the Abbey of Royaumont.71 As Lindy Grant has noted, ‘The foundation of Royaumont was a strange business’.72 Blanche and Louis were apparently a genuinely devoted couple, and she had been an active partner and helpmeet to her husband — not the sort of widow one would expect to openly contravene the terms of a beloved spouse’s will. In making this decision, she must have been convinced that it would be for the benefit of Louis’s soul not just to be prayed for by the Cistercian Order (as their son had already formally requested, presumably at her behest), but to have a Cistercian monastery dedicated to his memory.73
Suggestions (Rather than Conclusions) One possible explanation, then, for the variations in the III Kings 19. 18 commentaries in the two earliest Bible moralisée manuscripts is that they reflect different streams of piety, and perhaps accompanying and even competing reformist discourses, at
66 Grant, Blanche of Castile, pp. 206–08. 67 Grant, Blanche of Castile, pp. 186–87; 206–08; 223–25. 68 Lester, ‘Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited’, p. 29; Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 223. 69 Grant, Blanche of Castile, pp. 212–15; see also Berman, ‘Two Medieval Women’s Property’, pp. 151–82. 70 Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 225. 71 Branner, Saint Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture, pp. 32–33 assumes Blanche was responsible for making Royaumont Cistercian rather than Victorine. Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 211 agrees that the decision must have been Blanche’s. Grant notes that in 1227 Blanche obtained dispensation from the pope for overturning an unspecified vow, and speculates that the vow in question may have been her promise to Louis to found a Victorine house. For alternate suggestions, see Berman, ‘Two Medieval Women’s Property’, p. 154. 72 Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 211. 73 On Blanche’s closeness to Cistercian advisors (especially the former Cistercian monk Bishop Walter of Chartres), see Grant, ‘The Queen and the Abbots’, pp. 139–48.
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the court of Louis and Blanche, which mapped onto or shaped those royal figures’ respective proclivities. This does not necessarily entail that Louis was the patron and/ or intended recipient of ÖNB cod. 1179, or Blanche of ÖNB cod. 2554. Louis and Blanche were by no means the only courtly figures to cherish special ties to either the Cistercian or the Augustinian Orders. Many individuals must have shared Louis’s and Blanche’s respective preferences, and been influenced by the conversations and practices fostered in their courtly milieu.74 However, as scholars have long noted, the extreme luxury (and consequent cost) of the manuscripts strongly points to royal rather than noble patronage; this is now strengthened by the fact that at least one of the Vienna Bible moralisée manuscripts undoubtedly ended up in the possession of the Danish king.75 This narrows the possible list of patrons. Philip II Augustus, the other royal Capetian possibility, also patronized Augustinian, especially Victorine, houses.76 But since Philip could not read Latin, the language of ÖNB cod. 1179, he seems an unlikely candidate for owner, commissioner, or recipient of that manuscript. And given that he showed little interest in books, art, or scholarship, it is hard to imagine Philip wanting to own a luxurious illuminated moralized Bible.77 In her forthcoming article, Katherine Tachau has forwarded another possibility — that Philip (or more likely his ecclesiastical advisors) commissioned ÖNB cod. 1179 as a gift for King Waldemar II c. 1212–1213 in order to enlist the Danish king’s support for Philip’s projected invasion of England (and assuage his presumed anger at how poorly his sister Ingeborg had been treated).78 This is certainly a possibility, and in fact may gain some support from the manuscript’s III Kings 19. 18 commentary, since as Tachau documents there was a strong Augustinian presence in Denmark, and two important Danish prelates with close ties to both Ste-Geneviève and St-Victor de Paris served as diplomatic intermediaries between the Danish and French courts.79 But as Tachau notes, Philip’s interest in regenerating the Danish alliance was short-lived; his reluctant reception of Ingeborg back to court was not accompanied by any other conspicuous gestures of generosity or appeasement toward her or her relatives; and a costly illuminated manuscript, which must have taken well over a year to create, seems an awkward means with which to seal such an alliance, as well as out of character for Philip. Moreover, ascribing the Latin Vienna manuscript to Philip’s initiative leaves open the question of who commissioned the French-language manuscript.80 74 Louis and Blanche had their own establishment starting in 1209, the year of Louis’s knighting and the birth of their first child: Grant, Blanche of Castile, pp. 44–45. 75 Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’, offers persuasive evidence that the manuscript did in fact reach Waldemar, or at least one of his castles. On the assumption of a royal patron, see Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, i, 9; Tachau, ‘God’s Compass’; Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 240. 76 See note 62 above. 77 Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, p. 389. 78 Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’. 79 Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’; see also Münster-Swendsen, ‘Banking on — and with — the Victorines’, pp. 91–109. 80 It may be worth noting that Ingeborg herself seems to have been devoted to the Cistercians. If Philip had indeed decided, either on his own or at the recommendation of advisors, to commission a rich gift for Waldemar, he might also have commissioned a companion volume for Ingeborg at the same
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Another possibility is that Waldemar II commissioned the manuscripts for himself and his sister, either on his own initiative or at his sister’s request (Ingeborg herself had limited funds at her disposal). But this too raises questions. The majority of commentary texts in the two Vienna manuscripts speak to French and specifically Parisian concerns (the university curriculum, student vices, the Albigensian Crusade, princely involvement in Jewish moneylending, etc.). Even though the patron/recipient may have had little or no say in the commentary’s contents, it still would be strange for a book made at the command of a Danish king to omit any mention of Danish or northern concerns, and focus so overwhelmingly on local French and Parisian ones. The case for Waldemar or Ingeborg is also complicated by the existence of the two later three-volume manuscripts, one of which was almost certainly commissioned for the young Louis IX by his mother Blanche. In the end, the royal figures whose intellectual interests, cultural inclinations, and political concerns are most closely reflected in the content of the Vienna Bible moralisée manuscripts, and whose spiritual proclivities best match those expressed in their III Kings 19. 18 commentaries, are Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile. They, too, seem to be more likely candidates than Philip Augustus to present a luxury manuscript to Waldemar II. The invasion of England was a project of more immediate (and lasting) interest to Louis than to his father — Louis was the one who led the invasion in May 1216, claiming the throne by virtue of his wife’s descent from Henry II — so he and Blanche had at least as great a motivation as Philip to flatter and please Waldemar II.81 In fact, after King John’s death in January 1216 Philip seems to have distanced himself from the entire affair.82 Unlike Philip, Louis and Blanche were known to be patrons of scholars and collectors (and givers) of books.83 A final point in favour of attributing such a gift to Louis and Blanche is the fact that, in striking contrast to Philip’s coldness toward his wife, Blanche was apparently on good terms with Ingeborg: Lindy Grant has suggested that the Ingeborg Psalter, a luxury illuminated manuscript that was definitely in the possession of the Danish queen by 1214, may have been originally made for Blanche, who subsequently gave it to Ingeborg.84 Another sign of the women’s solidarity is the fact that on 2 August 1224 the two women processed together (along with Blanche’s niece Berengar of Leon, Queen of Jerusalem) from Notre-Dame to the Cistercian convent of St-Antoine-des-Champs to pray that Louis VIII might be victorious at the Battle of La Rochelle.85 time, and the volume’s makers may have sought to please the queen by praising Cistercians. But I find the scenario of a double gift from Philip to Waldemar and Ingeborg difficult to picture. Schowalter, ‘The Ingeborg Psalter’, pp. 105 notes that Ingeborg was not allowed back at court until after 1213 and was for most of her life living in straitened circumstances. 81 As mentioned above Grant, Blanche of Castile, pp. 44–45 notes that Lord Louis and Blanche had their own court and drew on their own resources beginning in 1209, the date of Louis’s knighting and of the birth of Louis’s first son. 82 Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, p. 335. 83 Grant, Blanche of Castile, pp. 235–49. Grant notes on p. 235 that no previous Capetian had paid such attention to acquiring books. 84 Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 239. 85 Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 72.
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An alternate possibility is that ÖNB cod. 1179 was not originally envisioned as a gift to Waldemar II, but rather was originally commissioned for the enjoyment and edification of members of Louis’s and Blanche’s own court, either immediately following or at the same time as the creation of ÖNB cod. 2554. The royal couple may have commissioned the manuscripts jointly, or Blanche may have commissioned both, one for her husband and one for non-Latin-reading members of their family and circle.86 In this scenario, ÖNB cod. 1179 was at some point re-purposed as a gift for Waldemar (the presentation inscription, written on the outside margin of the last folio, has to my mind the feel of an afterthought, and the dedication portrait is so generic as to apply to almost any king).87 Such an approach to Waldemar may have been made as Louis was gearing up for the invasion of England. Or it may have been a later gesture of goodwill toward Waldemar made at the behest of, or in honour of, Ingeborg sometime after Louis’s accession in 1223 and before Ingeborg’s death in 1237. One possible impetus
86 This group could include female relatives, less than scholarly male relatives, or children. Chapman, ‘The Female Audience for the Bible moralisée’, suggested that various gendered aspects of Vienna, ÖNB cod. 2554 imply a female readership. The exaltation of Cistercians in the III Kings 19. 28 commentary would fit such an idea, given the key role played by noble and royal women in supporting the Cistercian Order. See Lester, ‘The Cistercians’. I thank Prof. Lester for sharing a typescript of this chapter with me. 87 Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’ rightly argues that neither the crown nor the fleur-de-lys sceptre in the dedication portrait need necessarily indicate that the figure is a Capetian king. She further argues that the throne in the Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179 dedication roundel resembles the throne in Waldemar’s seal more than the thrones in Philip’s and Louis’s seals — a strong and intriguing observation. But it is hardly definitive. Philip Augustus is depicted sitting on a high-backed throne in a manuscript of the Grandes Chroniques de France made c. 1275 for King Philip III, (Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 782, fol. 280), suggesting that Capetians did not identify themselves with any one style of throne. (I thank Anne D. Hedeman for identifying the manuscript for me.) Moreover, to my mind the fact that the enthroned king from the 1213 St-Victor de Paris-produced manuscript of Ptolemy’s Almagest (reproduced by Tachau) looks very similar to the king in the Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179 roundel somewhat tells against seeing that latter figure as a schematic portrait of Waldemar II. There is no reason why the illuminator of a Parisian astronomical manuscript would gesture toward the Danish king, whereas one can easily imagine that he might model his mental image of an ancient king on Capetian representation. Tachau suggests, additionally, that Waldemar was from the very beginning the intended recipient because her paleographical analysis indicates that the inscription was penned by the same scribe who wrote many of the manuscript’s moralizations. I find this evidence again less than fully definitive; any scribe who had been employed in the making of the book could easily have been called back subsequently to add an inscription. As noted above, the inscription appears in the outside margin on the last folio — a somewhat strange location for a royal dedication. The dedication poems in that same c. 1275 copy of the Grandes chroniques manuscript, for example, are carefully aligned beneath the dedication image (fol. 326r). I might add here that I agree with Tachau’s dismissal of Haussherr’s assertion that all four manuscripts must necessarily have been made after Honorius’s 1219 bull Super Speculum banning the study of civil law in Paris, which is apparently echoed in their texts. As Tachau shows, several earlier texts anticipated the wording of the bull. But I do not understand why she then insists that the manuscript was made before 1219. The absence of mendicants does not seem definitive — just because they arrived in Paris in 1217 (Dominicans) and 1219 (Franciscans) does not mean that they would immediately appear in manuscript illumination. I find the most compelling temporal limits to be the references in the Vienna manuscripts to the Albigensian Crusade as ongoing, which would date them to between 1209 and 1229.
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for giving away the manuscript could be Louis VIII’s untimely death in 1226; another could be that the commissioning or completion of the three-volume manuscripts (made between c. 1226 and 1234) rendered the shorter Latin manuscript redundant.88 Here, then, is one hypothetical scenario for the creation of these commentary sequences. I think, in accord with the suggestions of other scholars regarding the chronology of the manuscripts, that the ÖNB cod. 2554 III Kings 19. 18 commentary text and roundel were the first to be realized. Whereas it is easy enough to understand why its criticism of black monks was changed to criticism of Jews in subsequent texts, it is almost impossible to imagine the reverse happening. When the cleric assigned to compose the French manuscript’s III Kings commentary found little inspiration regarding this verse in the Glossa ordinaria or other well-known texts, he consulted Stephen Langton’s Kings exegesis (perhaps in manuscript, perhaps in the form of university lecture notes). Either the reference there to monks’ artiora discipline made this compiler think of Cistercians, or he simultaneously remembered or came across a Cistercian text along the lines of Garnier’s sermon, describing Elijah as presumptuous. This Cistercian text may have explicitly likened the righteous Israelites to Cistercians and Elijah to black monks; alternately, the compiler may have fused his source texts to create the resulting comparison. Though ÖNB cod. 2554 was by no means consistently committed to promoting the Cistercian Order (Cistercians are rarely mentioned, and a roundel on fol. 1 includes a Cistercian among those who ‘hook’ or ‘pawn’ the Holy Church), identifying Elijah and the Israelites as, respectively, black and white monks would have the benefit of allowing for a clear and powerful visual contrast, while also appealing to Blanche’s (or her female relatives’) fondness for the Cistercians. Although the makers of the companion Latin manuscript (probably commissioned either simultaneously with or shortly after ÖNB cod. 2554) were presumably working from the same commentary compilation that inspired the French-language caption, they had slightly different priorities. This team evidently favoured complexity over clear, contrasting compositions; and with a different readership there was less reason to exalt Cistercians. They consequently decided (or were instructed) to portray the ‘monachos albos alte religionis’ as Augustinians (who wear white tunics under their black robes and who, like Cistercians, claim to live artius) in recognition of Louis’s partiality for that Order. Either because the Augustinians had no traditional monastic rivalry analogous to the Benedictine-Cistercian feud, or because the redactor preferred to avoid intra-monastic criticism, the commentary text was altered to censure the very people whom monks accused each other of emulating in either luxury or legalism:
88 Tachau, ‘The King in the Manuscript’ suggests two possible sieges in which Vienna, ÖNB cod. 1179 might have been taken from Waldemar by its subsequent owners — one in 1226, and one in 1249, arguing therefore that the manuscript came into the Danish king’s possession before one of those two dates. I confess I do not fully understand why she opts for the earlier date rather than the latter; both her own evidence and the apparent influence of the manuscript on Parisian artworks from the later 1220s and 1230s seem to me to point toward the latter date as the more likely terminus ante quem for Waldemar’s possession. All my suggestions regarding the patronage/readership of the two earliest manuscripts are naturally provisional, pending Tachau’s full study.
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the Jews.89 This had the added benefit of using Louis’s known spiritual preferences (for Augustinians) to inculcate or strengthen in him particular spiritual antipathies (toward Jews): I have argued elsewhere that the manuscript offers a pointed critique of Capetian Jewish policies in order to promote more anti-Jewish measures.90 In suggesting that the two Vienna Bible moralisée III Kings commentaries catered to the inclinations of Blanche and Louis, I am not claiming that the manuscripts embody or echo a fierce intra-monastic rivalry playing out at court. Though Blanche and Louis each has their preferred order, neither was hostile to the other order. At least during her husband’s life, Blanche accepted and promised to honour her husband’s favouring of the Victorines. Nor did any hostility between Victorines and Cistercians appear in royal circles after Louis’s death: the executors of his will, one of whom was the abbot of St-Victor, explicitly agreed to the foundation of the Cistercian Royaumont.91 The Victorines do not seem to have harboured any lasting resentment about Blanche for passing them over; as mentioned above, she remained close to Abbot John of St-Victor throughout his life, and was warmly remembered in the necrology of the Victorine Order.92 It could be that the makers of the two manuscripts simply wanted to be sure to cover both the Capetians’ preferred spiritual bases. It is also possible that the duelling orders in the Bible moralisée roundels could have been a kind of inside joke: I am very taken with Lindy Grant’s remark that the manuscripts display an earthy humour, and make fun of Louis and Blanche’s intellectual interests; a bit of banter about their spiritual favouritism does not seem out of character.93 But the fact remains that Augustinians were consciously and conspicuously substituted for Cistercians in ÖNB cod. 1179, and that Cistercians were consciously and conspicuously substituted for Augustinians in the execution of Louis VIII’s will. The conversation that led to the first of these substitutions may have been the precursor to other, more consequential conversations that happened elsewhere, even continuing at a king’s deathbed and over his bier, with real world effects. It is more difficult still to explain the visual renderings of the ‘monachos albos et alios fideles’ and the ‘monachos alte religionis’ in the two later, three-volume versions. Blanche’s son Louis IX, for whom the Toledo Biblia de San Luis was almost certainly made at Blanche’s behest, showed little favouritism toward either the Cistercians or the
89 John Lowden has suggested that the same person directed both 1179 and 2554: ‘Les rois et les reines de France en tant que “public” des Bibles moralisées’, p. 347. Comparison of the III Kings 19. 18 commentaries does not necessarily contradict this suggestion; the same redactor may have modified his text for different audiences. 90 Lipton, Images of Intolerance, where I suggest that the manuscripts present arguments to, rather solely reflecting preferences of, patrons. 91 The foundation charter for Royaumont is included in the Royaumont Cartulary, Archives Départementales du Val d’Oise, 43H3, ff. 1–5, cited in Grant, ‘Blanche and the Abbots’. 92 Where she is called ‘sororis nostre qui […] nostram ecclesiam mirabilis affectus sincere dilectionis complenctens, multa et magna ei benficia conferens […]. Quod in ecclesiae nostre negociis diligenter promovendis’. Obituaires de la Province de Sens, ed. by Molinier and Longnon, i, 603; see Grant, ‘Blanche and the Abbots’. 93 Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 242.
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Augustinians, turning instead to the mendicant orders.94 But although mendicants, particularly but not exclusively Franciscans, appear in dozens of roundels throughout both the Toledo and Oxford manuscripts, the righteous Israelites of III Kings 19. 18 are not visually glossed as mendicants, but as, respectively, black and brown monks, and black monks only. Why would this be? Perhaps the artists felt constrained by the words monachos and artiora — not epithets typically assigned to mendicants. Such a narrow, text-based explanation for two intriguing and perplexing examples of visual exegesis may be unexciting or unsatisfactory, but textual concision seems a fitting quality with which to close an otherwise highly (perhaps overly) speculative study inspired by and dedicated to Peggy Brown. I hope Peggy will forgive me, however, if I offer one final, impossible-to-substantiate suggestion. It also seems possible that by the time the third and fourth Bible moralisée manuscripts were created, whatever friendly rivalries, inside jokes, or gentle attempts at persuasion that underlay the duelling spiritual hierarchies enshrined in the two Vienna Bible moralisée III Kings 19. 18 commentaries had been long since forgotten, buried with Louis VIII or pushed aside by the urgencies of politics. Among the most urgent of the new King Louis IX’s concerns were the unifying of his Christian subjects and the combatting of non-Christians. It is fitting, then, that the Bible moralisée manuscripts made during his reign show us only indeterminate monks, but all too recognizable, knife-wielding Jews.
94 Little, ‘Saint Louis’s Involvement with the Friars’, pp. 125–48.
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Ici vient Dex a Helye: ‘tu te glorefies en ta bontei et dis qe tuit li proudome sunt mort fors toi mes ancore ai ie mil homes qi unques ne me renoerent et n’aorent unques les ydles’ et lor mostre a doi.
Here God comes to Elijah: ‘You glorify yourself in your goodness and say that all the upright men are dead except you, but still I have a thousand men who have never renounced me nor ever adored idols’, and he points to them.
Biblical text
Biblical text Translation
Commentary Ce qe Dex dist a Helye: ‘tu te text glorefies en ta bontei et dis qe tuit li proudome sunt mort fors toi’, et Dex li mostra ausi boens senefie iesu crist qi dist as genz de noire religion, ‘vos vos glorefiez molt en vostre bontei et dites qe vos estes molt boen et qe vos soffrez molt, mes ancore ai ie tel gent de blanc ordene qi sunt ausi boen ou millor qe vos n’estes, et qi plus soffrent de poine qe vos’.
Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, fol. 54vAa
Apparuit Deus Helye et dixit: ‘tu glorificatus es in bono tuo et dicis quod omnes probi mortui sunt praeter te, sed ego habeo adhuc mille homines qui me numquam negaverunt nec ydolis fiuerunt et tantam quantam habes possident bonitatem’. God appeared to Elias and said: ‘You have glorified yourself in your goodness and you say that all honorable men are dead besides you, but still I have a thousand men who have never denied me, nor sworn oaths to idols and as much goodness as you have, so much do they possess’. Hoc significat iesum christum qui dixit iudeis: ‘vos estis in vestra religione et vestris operibus bonis glorificati, et dicitis quod vos estis multum boni, sed habeo tales, scilicet monachos albos alte religionis, qui pro me arciora quam vos faciuntur [sic]’.
Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, fol. 122Cc
Hoc significat quod Ihesus Christus dixit iudeis: ‘vos gloriamini in operibus legis sed habeo tales, scilicet monachos albos et alios fideles alte religionis qui pro me artiora faciunt’.
God appeared to Elias and said to him: ‘You, having gloried in your own goodness, said that all good men are dead besides you, but still I have a thousand men who have never denied me, nor served idols’.
Apparuit Deus Helye et dixit ei: ‘tu in bono tuo gloriatus dixisti quod omnes boni mortui sunt praeter te, sed habeo adhuc mille homines qui me numquam negaverunt nec ydolis servierunt’.
Toledo, fol. 138Cc
Hoc significat quod Ihesus Christus dixit iudeis: ‘In vestra religione et operibus legis glorificatis sed habeo tales, scilicet monachos alte religionis, qui pro me artiora quam vos faciunt’.
God appeared to Elias and said to him: ‘You have glorified yourself in your goodness and you say that all honorable men are dead besides you, but still I have 7000 men who have never denied me’.
Apparuit Deus Helye et dixit ei: ‘tu glorificatus es in bono tuo et dicis quod omnes probi mortui sunt praeter te, sed ego habeo adhuc vii. m. homines qui me numquam negaverunt’.
Oxford, Bodleian, fol. 170Cc
Table 4.1. Side-by-side comparison of the III Kings 19. 18 biblical and commentary texts in the four thirteenth-century exmplars.
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Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554, fol. 54vAa
Commentary That God said to Elijah, text ‘You glorify yourself in your Translation goodness and say that all the upright men are dead except for you’ and God shows him some good men signifies Jesus Christ who says to the people of the black religion, ‘You glorify yourselves much in your goodness and say that you are very good and that you endure much, but still I have such people of the white order who are just as good as or better than you are and who endure more pain than you’.
This signifies Jesus Christ who said to the Jews: ‘You have glorified yourselves in your religion and in your good works, and you say that you are very good, but I have such ones, that is, white monks of deep [or: lofty] religion, who for me act more strictly than you’.
Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1179, fol. 122Cc This signifies that Jesus Christ said to the Jews: ‘you glorify yourselves in works of the law, but I have such ones, that is white monks and other faithful of deep [or: lofty] religion, who for me act more strictly’.
Toledo, fol. 138Cc This signifies that Jesus Christ said to the Jews: ‘you glorify yourselves in your religion and works of the law, but I have such ones, that is monks of deep [or: lofty] religion, who for me act more strictly than you’.
Oxford, Bodleian, fol. 170Cc
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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 30 ———, MS 204 London, British Library (BL), Harley MS 1527 New York, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.240 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 270b Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), MS latin 59 ———, MS latin 384 ———, MS latin 11,535 ———, MS latin 11,560 ———, MS latin 11,930 ———, MS latin 14,397 ———, MS latin 14,932 Toledo, Biblia de San Luis in the Treasury of the Cathedral of Toledo, MSS I–III Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), cod. 1179 ———, cod. 2554 Primary Sources Abelard, Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 187 (1855), cols 783– 978 ———, Sermones, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 187 (1855), cols 379–610 Adam of Dryburgh, Liber de ordine, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 198 (1855), cols 439–610 Andrew of St-Victor, Opera II. Expositio hystorica in Librum Regum, ed. by F. A. van Liere, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 53A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995) Anonymous of St-Victor (Ps.-Hugh of St Victor), Allegoriae in Vetus Testamentum, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 175 (1854), cols 635–750 Augustine, Ennarrationes in Psalmos, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 36 (1844), cols 63–1028 Exordium magnum Cisterciense, sive, Narratio de initio Cisterciensis ordinis, ed. by Bruno Griesser (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994) Garnier de Rochefort, Sermones, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by JacquesPaul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 205 (1855), cols 559–828 Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, ed. by Congregation of St Maur, vol. 8 (Paris: ex Typographia Regia, 1744) Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob, Libri XXIII–XXXV, ed. by Marci Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 143B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985)
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Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Opera Omnia. Pars I: Expositio Super Epistolam ad Romanos, ed. by Paul Verdeyen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 86 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989) Guillaume le Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti, in Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, ed. by H. François Delaborde (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1882) Idung of Prüfening, Cistercians and Cluniacs: The Case for Cîteaux. A Dialogue between Two Monks; An Argument on Four Questions, trans. by Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, Joseph Leahy, and Grace Perrigo (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977) ———, Dialogus inter Cluniacensum monachum et Cisterciensem, edited in R. B. C. Huygens, ‘Le moine Idung et ses deux ouvrages: “Argumentum super quatuor questionibus” et “Dialogus duorum monachorum”’, Studi Medievali, 3rd series, 13.1 (1972), 291–470 Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. by A. Teulet, vol. i (Paris: Plon, 1863) Les plus anciens textes de Cîteaux: sources, textes et notes historiques, ed. by Jean de la Croix Bouton and Jean-Baptiste van Damme (Achel: Abbaye Cistercienne, 1974) Lettres d’Étienne de Tournai, ed. by Jules Desilve (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1893) Libellus de diversis ordinibus et professionibus qui sunt in ecclesia, ed. and trans. by Giles Constable and Bernard Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) Nicholas of Clairvaux, Epistolae, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by JacquesPaul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 196 (1855), cols 1593–1654 Obituaires de la Province de Sens, ed. by Auguste Molinier and Auguste Longnon, vol. i (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1902) Peter Damian, Sermones, ed. by Ioannis Lucchesi, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 57 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983) Philippi De Greve Cancellarii Parisiensis Viri Doctissimi In Psalterium Dauidicum Tercentum ac Triginta Sermones verè aurei: Rerum diuinarum, ac humanarum non vulgarem doctrinam continentes… (Brescia: Marchetti, 1600), fol. 203 Rupert of Deutz, In Regum, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 167 (1854), cols 1059–1272 S. Bernardi Opera, ed. by J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais, 8 vols (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–1977) The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis. Volume IV: Books VII & VIII, ed. and trans. by Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) The Great Beginning of Cîteaux (A Narrative of the Beginning of the Cistercian Order): The Exordium Magnum of Conrad of Eberbach, ed. by E. Rozanne Elder, foreword by Brian Patrick McGuire, trans. by Benedicta Ward and Paul Savage, Cistercian Fathers Series, 72 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012) The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. by Giles Constable, 2 vols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. by Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, 5 vols (Paris, 1717) Vgonis de S. Charo, S. Romanae Ecclesiae Tit. S. Sabinae cardinalis primi Ordinis Praedicatorum Opera omnia in vniuersum Vetus & Nouum Testamentum tomi octo (Cologne: Sumptibus Ioannis Gymnici, 1621) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), 179 (1855), cols 959–1392
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Secondary Works Auberger, J. B., L’unanimité cistercienne primitive: mythe ou realité? (Achel: Administration de Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses, 1986) Baldwin, John W., The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) Bériou, Nicole, L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole. La prédication à Paris au xiiie siècle (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1998) Berman, Contance H., ‘Two Medieval Women’s Property and Religious Benefactions in France: Eleanor of Vermandois and Blanche of Castile’, Viator, 41 (2010), 151–82 Bonnard, Fourier, Histoire de l’abbaye royale et de l’ordre des chanoines réguliers de St-Victor de Paris: I. période (1113–1500) (Paris: Arthur Savaète, 1904) Bredero, Adriaan H., Cluny et Cîteaux au douzième siècle. L’histoire d’une controverse monastique (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1986) Branner, Robert, Saint Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture (London: Zwemmer, 1965) Bretel, Paul, ‘Moines et Religieux dans les contes de la Vie des Pères’, in ‘De Sens Rassis’: Essays in Honor of Rupert T. Pickens, ed. by Keith Busby, Logan E. Whalen, and Bernard Guidot (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), pp. 35–50 Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Royal Testamentary Acts from Philip Augustus to Philip of Valois: Executorial Dilemmas and Premonitions of Absolutism in Medieval France’, in Herrscher- und Fürstentestamente im westeuropäischen Mittelalter, ed. by Brigitte Kasten (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), pp. 415–30 Bruun, Mette Birkedal, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Chapman, Tracey Ann, ‘The Female Audience for the Bible moralisée: Blanche of Castille and the Example of Vienna 2554’ (MA Thesis, University of Texas, 1995) Constable, Giles, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Cowdrey, H. E. J., ‘Quidam Frater Stephanus Nomine, anglicus natione: The English Background of Stephen Harding’, in The New Monastery: Texts and Studies on the Earliest Cistercians, ed. by E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1998), pp. 57–77 Cusack, Pearse, An Interpretation of the Second Dialogue of Gregory the Great (Lewiston: Mellen Press, 1993) Davy, Marie-Madeleine, Sermons universitaires parisiens de 1230–1231 (Paris: Vrin, 1931) Didier, Jean-Charles, ‘Garnier de Rochefort. Sa Vie et ses Œuvres, État des questions’, Collectanea ordinis cicterciensium reformatorum, 17 (1955), 145–58 Dimier, Marie-Anselme, ‘Un témoin tardif peu connu du conflit entre cisterciens et clunisiens’, in Petrus Venerabilis, 1156–1956: Studies and Texts Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of his Death, ed. by Giles Constable and James Kritzeck, Studia Anselmiana, 40 (Rome: Herder, 1956), pp. 81–94 Dubois, Jacques, ‘Ordres monastiques au xiiie siècle en France d’après les sermons d’Humbert de Romans, maître général des Frères Prêcheurs’, Sacris erudiri, 20 (1983), 187–220
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Edden, Valerie, ‘The prophetycal lyf of an heremyte’: Elijah as the Model of the Contemplative Life in The Book of the First Monks’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium VII. Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2004, ed. by E. A. Jones (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004), pp. 149–61 Fassler, Margot, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Freeland, Jane Patricia, ‘Robert and the Monks of Molesme Discuss Observances: The Account of Orderic Vitalis, Benedictine Monk of Saint Evroul’, in The New Monastery: Texts and Studies on the Earliest Cistercians, ed. by E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1998), pp. 19–25 Georgiou, Constantinos, Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean: Propaganda, Liturgy and Diplomacy, 1305–1352 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018) Grant, Lindy, Blanche of Castile: Queen of France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016) ———, ‘The Queen and the Abbots: Blanche of Castile’, in Sur les pas de Lanfranc, du Bec à Caen: Recueil d’études en hommage à Véronique Gazeau, ed. by P. Bauduin, G. Combalbert, A. Dubois, B. Garnier, and C. Maneuvrier, Cahier des Annales de Normandie, 37 (Caen: Presses Universitaire de Caen, 2018), pp. 139–48 Haussherr, Reiner, ‘Petrus Cantor, Stephan Langton, Hugo von St Cher und der IsaiasProlog der Bible moralisée’, in Verbum et Signum: Festschrift Friedrich Ohly, ed. by Hans Fromm, W. Harms, and U. Ruberg, vol. ii (Munich: Fink, 1975), pp. 347–64 Heinlein, James Michael, ‘The Ideology of Reform in the French Moralized Bible’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1991) Hoste, Anselme, ‘Garnier de Rochefort’, in Spiritualité cistercienne: histoire et doctrine (Paris: Beauchesne, 1998), pp. 179–83 Jamroziak, Emilia, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe: 1090–1500 (London: Routledge, 2013) Jotischky, Andrew, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and their Pasts in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) Knight, Gillian R., The Correspondence Between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux: A Semantic and Structural Analysis (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002) Lerner, Robert E., ‘Philip the Chancellor Greets the Early Dominicans in Paris’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 77 (2007), 5–17 Lester, Anne E., ‘Saint Louis and Cîteaux Revisited: Cistercian Commemoration and Devotion during the Capetian Century, 1214–1314’, in The Capetian Century, 1214 to 1314, ed. by W. C. Jordan and J. R. Phillips (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 17–42 ———, ‘The Cistercians’, in The Oxford Handbook to Christian Monasticism, ed. by Bernice M. Kaczynski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 232–47 Lipton, Sara, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bibles Moralisées (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999) ———, ‘Unfeigned Witness: Jews, Matter, and Vision in Twelfth-Century Christian Art’, in Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, ed. by Herbert L. Kessler and David Nirenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), pp. 45–73 Little, Lester K., ‘Saint Louis’s Involvement with the Friars’, Church History, 33 (1964), 125–48
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Longère, Jean, ‘Quatre sermons ad canonicos de Jacques de Vitry’, Recherches Augustiniennes et Patristiques, 23 (1988), 151–212 Lowden, John, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000) ———, ‘Les rois et les reines de France en tant que “public” des Bibles moralisées: une approche tangentielle à la question des liens entre les Bibles moralisées et les vitraux de la Sainte-Chapelle’, in La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris. Royaume de France ou Jérusalem céleste?, ed. by Christine Hediger (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 345–62 Münster-Swendsen, Mia, ‘Banking on — and with — the Victorines: The Strange Case of Archbishop Eskil’s Lost Deposit’, in Denmark and Europe in the Middle Ages, c. 1000– 1525: Essays in Honour of Professor Michael H. Gelting, ed. by Kerstin Hundahl, Lars Kjær, and Niels Lund (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 91–109 Newman, Martha G., ‘Foundation and Twelfth Century’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. by Mette Birkedal Bruun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 25–37 Petit-Dutaillis, Charles, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII (1187–1226) (Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1894) Prestwich, J. O., ‘Orderic Vitalis (1075–c. 1142), Benedictine Monk and Historian’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn September 2006) https://www-oxforddnb-com.proxy.library.stonybrook. edu/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-20812 [accessed 2 April 2021] Robson, Stephen, ‘With the Spirit and Power of Elijah’ (Lk 1,17): The Prophetic-reforming Spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux as Evidenced Particularly in his Letters (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2004) Schneyer, J. B., Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150–1350 (Munich: Aschendorff, 1969) Schowalter, Kathleen S., ‘The Ingeborg Psalter: Queenship, Legitimacy, and the Appropriation of Byzantine Art in the West’, in Capetian Women, ed. by Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 99–135 Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941) Stork, Hans-Walter, Die Wiener französische Bible moralisée Codex 2554 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (St Ingbert: Röhrig, 1992) Tachau, Katherine H., ‘God’s Compass and Vana Curiositas: Scientific Study in the Old French Bible Moralisée’, Art Bulletin, 80.1 (1998), 7–33 ———, ‘The King in the Manuscript: The Presentation Inscription of the Vienna Latin Bible moralisée’, Gesta, 60.1 (2021), 1–30 van Engen, John, ‘The “Crisis of Cenobitism” Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150’, Speculum, 61.2 (1986), 269–304 van Liere, F. A., ‘Andrew of St Victor and the Gloss on Samuel and Kings’, in Media latinitas: A Collection of Essays to Mark the Occasion of the Retirement of L. J. Engels, ed. by R. I. A. Nip, H. van Dijk, E. M. C. van Houts, C. H. J. M. Kneepkens, and G. A. A. Kortekaas (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 249–63
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———, ‘The Literal Sense of the Books of Samuel and Kings: From Andrew of St Victor to Nicholas of Lyra’, in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, ed. by Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 59–82 Vattier, Amédée, ‘L’Abbaye de la Victoire’, Comité Archéologique de Senlis, Comptes rendus et Mémoires, 3rd series, 2 (1887), 3–32 Vincent, Nicholas, ‘Review of Lipton, Images of Intolerance’, English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 937–38 Williams, Watkin, ‘A Dialogue Between a Cluniac and a Cistercian’, Journal of Theological Studies, 31 (1930), 164–75
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Nicholas Vincent
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre*
Like many academics, Eudes (alias Odo) of Châteauroux, Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum (alias Frascati), almost certainly spent more time writing down his thoughts than anybody has since devoted to reading them. For nearly forty years Eudes served as a pivotal figure between the French and papal courts. Chancellor of Paris (from 1238), Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum (from 1244), and legate charged with preaching the crusade in France (1245–1248), he continued to serve as legate to Louis IX’s expedition to Egypt (1248–1254) and, on his return to Europe, as an indefatigable sermonizer at the papal court. He died in January 1273, one of the leading figures both in European politics and in Christian polemic. The intention of this present essay is first to contextualize Eudes’ career, and thereafter to explore a comparatively rich dossier of materials, still preserved in the Archives départementales de l’Indre at Châteauroux. First (inaccurately) noticed in 1847 by Louis Raynal, in 1865 this dossier was published in full by the Abbé Jean-François-Xavier Caillaud, vicar-general of the archbishop of Bourges, but in a volume that, despite the Internet, remains difficult to access.1 As I shall demonstrate, these documents are of considerable importance for the history of the cult of relics and more specifically for the history of relics of Christ’s blood. As I shall also demonstrate, our documents (republished as an Appendix below) have implications for the history of King Louis IX’s crusade, as more generally for our understanding of Capetian spirituality and the sacral aspirations of kingship. Certainly, they supply
* For their assistance with what follows, I am especially indebted to Alexis Charonsonnet, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Emilie Mineo, and Jean-François Nieus. The staff of the Archives départementales at Châteauroux have supplied help well beyond the call of duty, from the time of my first searches there in April 1994, through to my most recent visit in March 2020. 1 Châteauroux, Archives départementales de l’Indre, G165–6, 173, whence Raynal, Histoire du Berry, ii, 227–32; Caillaud, Notice sur le précieux sang de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre, to be distinguished from Caillaud’s much briefer Notice historique et archéologique sur l’église de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre, only this latter now easily accessible via the Gallica site https://gallica.bnf.fr. Nicholas Vincent is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 143-190 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122621
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new insight into the career and concerns of Eudes of Châteauroux, both before and after his time as papal legate to France. On the whole, although acknowledged as an important man, Eudes has suffered the neglect reserved to those who write at excessive length to improve the morals of their age. More than 1200 of his sermons still survive: testimony not just to his enthusiasm for preaching the word of God, but to his determination that such preaching be properly collected for future generations.2 Few modern readers have responded to this superabundance of exhortation. A handful have scaled the railings at the bottom of Eudes’ great tower of sanctimony, but only Alexis Charansonnet can claim to have climbed to the uppermost pinnacles.3 Timidity here would no doubt be even further pronounced were readers of the sermons obliged to consider Eudes’ other theological works, not least his Bible commentaries and occasional distinctiones, composed for the most part in his years as Chancellor of Paris, before his promotion as Cardinal.4 As a result, Eudes’ career is known only in parts. A few garishly-lit areas have attracted attention: his condemnation of the Talmud, his preaching of the crusade, his polemic against heretics, the Tartars, or the Moslem community of Lucera in southern Italy.5 But the bulk of this grandest of grand operas remains unpublished and for the most part ignored. In particular, although it has long been accepted that Eudes originated from (or within close distance of) Châteauroux in Berry, this bérichon connection has been only partially acknowledged, or integrated within the wider history of the preaching, conduct, and aftermath of Louis IX’s crusade. In particular, the role played by Eudes
2 There is an attempt at a listing, neither complete nor conveniently cross-referenced to manuscripts, in the heroic Schneyer, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit, (1972), iv, 394–483 nos 1–1077, with many additions inserted even in this far from definitive list. For an estimated total of 1200, and for Eudes’ deliberate oversight of the production of the manuscript exemplars, see Charansonnet, ‘L’évolution de la prédication du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux’, pp. 103–42; Bériou, L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole, i, 94, 107, 179. 3 See, in particular, Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, thanks to the author’s customary generosity, easily accessible online. More briefly, see Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 5–37. 4 Cf. Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi, iv, 113–21 nos 6064–6113, at 116 no. 6082 and 118–20 nos 6095–6108 noting a particularly wide circulation for his distinctiones on the Psalter and the Pauline Epistles, most of the other distinctiones surviving in a sole exemplar, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (henceforth BnF), MS Latin 15948. 5 Apart from the sixty-five sermons edited as an appendix to Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’ and other printings noted there or in the footnotes below, see, for example, Chazan, ‘The Condemnation of the Talmud Reconsidered (1239–1248)’, pp. 11–30; Dahan, Le Brûlement du Talmud à Paris, 1242–1244; Cole, d’Avray, and Riley-Smith, ‘Application of Theology to Current Affairs’, pp. 227–47; Bériou and Touati, Voluntate Dei leprosus, pp. 74–78, 95–100; Maier, ‘Crusade and Rhetoric against the Muslim Colony of Lucera’, pp. 343–85; Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, pp. 128–75 nos 1–5; Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols in the Middle of the Thirteenth Century, pp. 60–67, 156–61 (printing Eudes’ ‘Sermo in concilio pro negotio Tartarorum’, Schneyer no. 844, assumed by Ruotsala to date from the consistory of 1241–1243, but more likely from the Council of Lyons 1245, cf. Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, p. 29 n. 81); Morenzoni, ‘Les sermons “Contra haereticos”’, pp. 265–408; Belaen, Caby, and Charansonnet, ‘Prédication en chapitre général et réforme pontificale’, pp. 78–86.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
in fostering the cult of relics at the church of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre, 25 km to the south of Châteauroux, supplies not only significant evidence of his birth but of his personal devotion both to Berry and to the memory of Christ’s crucifixion. It is with these relics at Neuvy that we shall in due course be chiefly concerned. Before considering Eudes’ specific interventions at Neuvy, however, we must first establish their broader biographical context.
Origins and Career to 1245 There is no doubt that Eudes was a native of Berry, specifically identified in various contemporary reports as Eudes ‘de Castro Radulfi’.6 Now that Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Fortunato Iozelli have purged his biography of numerous mythical accretions, we no longer need imagine Eudes as Abbot of Déols or of Grandselve, nor confuse him with an earlier Odo who was Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum (c. 1170–1172), formerly abbot of Ourscamp.7 There is no evidence that he was ever a Cistercian, although his pleas to the Cistercian general chapter in 1245, including a request for post-mortem commemoration, supply our first certain proof that by September 1245 Eudes was already serving as papal legate to France.8 Likewise, although following his death in 1273 he was buried in the Dominican convent at Orvieto, having in the 1250s participated in the papal investigation of doctrinal errors associated with the Franciscans, he was never himself a professed Dominican. On the contrary, he preached sermons on St Francis, St Clare, and St Antony of Padua just as enthusiastically as he preached on St Dominic.9 As Alexis Charansonnet has suggested, and given his later well-attested connections to the cathedral church of Bourges where he may or may not have served as canon and chancellor in the 1220s, Eudes almost certainly gravitated from Châteauroux to Bourges and thence, perhaps via patronage from the family network of Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris (1197–1208), to the Paris schools.10 He is first certainly recorded either in 1225 or 1226, at the legatine council either of Paris or Bourges, thanks to a surviving sermon intended to recruit supporters for what was to become the crusade of the Emperor Frederick II. By 1229, he was undoubtedly teaching and preaching 6 As, for example, in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxiii, 568; Vincent of Beauvais, Bibliotheca Mundi Vincentii Burgundi Speculum quadruplex, i, 2474–75, and cf. Paravicini Bagliani, Cardinali, i, 198 n. 1; Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 11–14. 7 Paravicini Bagliani, Cardinali, i, 197–201; Iozzelli, Odo da Châteauroux, p. 23. 8 Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis, ed. by Canivez, pp. 289, 291–92. 9 Paravicini Bagliani, Cardinali, i, 201, 205–06; Iozzelli, Odo da Châteauroux, pp. 39–40, 42; Denifle, ‘Das Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni’, pp. 49–142, esp. p. 99; Denifle, Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, i, 297 n., and for his sermons, Gratien de Paris, ‘Sermons franciscains du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux’; Walz, ‘Odonis de Castro Radulphi’, pp. 174–233. 10 Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 14–19, and for his association with the chancellorship of Bourges, see also Paravicini Bagliani, Cardinali, i, 202. For a sermon preached by him at the end of his career, on the death of Henry de Sully (1268), see Iozelli, Odo da Châteauroux, pp. 189–94 (Schneyer no. 1039).
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in Paris.11 Following his promotion as Canon (by December 1234) and Chancellor (by August 1238) of Notre-Dame, in effect as chief officer presiding over the Paris schools, he enjoyed regular contacts with the papal curia.12 This, combined, we may suspect, with the patronage of King Louis IX, was sufficient to raise him to an even higher dignity as Cardinal Bishop of Frascati (alias Tusculum), in the first promotion made to the sacred college following the consecration of Pope Innocent IV. It was during the pope’s flight from Genoa to Lyons that Eudes was invested with his new office, in company with his fellow Parisian theologian, the Dominican Hugh of Saint-Cher, newly promoted Cardinal-Priest of S. Sabina. Their investiture occurred at Susa on or shortly after 12 November 1244, as the pope prepared to cross the Mont Cenis Pass into France.13 Eudes’ first surviving act as Cardinal was issued a month later and, appropriately enough, concerned the canons of Notre-Dame at Paris.14 He was certainly at Lyons by the following summer, at the time of Innocent’s great ecumenical Council intended to secure the disgrace of the Emperor Frederick II.15 It was there, almost certainly, that Eudes preached a surviving sermon on the theme of royal or imperial deposition.16
Cardinal Legate to France 1245–1248 At, or very shortly after, the Council of Lyons, Eudes was appointed legate a latere to France, again almost certainly at the request of Louis IX.17 His legatine commission is lost. Even so, upwards of thirty of his legatine letters survive from his time in France between c. September 1245 and June 1248, ten of them as single-sheet originals (marked with an asterisk*), listed below in tabular form (Table 5.1. in appendix below), largely from my own searches but also drawing upon the expertise of Jean-François Nieus, himself relying on various databases of the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes.
11 For the sermons of 1225/1226 and 1229, see Bériou, ‘La Prédication de croisade de Philippe le Chancelier’, pp. 85–109; Callebaut, ‘Le Sermon historique du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux’, pp. 81–109, as noted by Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 11, 17. 12 Paravicini Bagliani, Cardinali, i, 202, noting Les Registres de Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, nos 2318, 2817, 3412, 3666, 4499; Denifle, Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, i, 162 no. 115n., 170–72 no. 128. 13 Paravicini Bagliani, Cardinali, i, 202–03, citing Nicolao de Carbio, ‘Vita Innocentii IV’, p. 90. 14 Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, ii, 427–28 no. 29, as papal commissioner, absolving the dean and chapter of Notre-Dame from any sentence unwittingly incurred by the irregularity of their appeal against a judge-delegate sentence obtained by ‘a certain noble’ (quidam nobilis) who had demanded their release of a prisoner. 15 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 917, 1105, 1184, 1947; Sayers, Original Papal Documents in England and Wales, p. 125 no. 273, recording his presence at Lyons on 23 January, 7 and 14 March, 4 April, and 6 July 1245. 16 Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’église et l’état’, pp. 649–54 no. 1 (Schneyer no. 883). 17 Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, p. 20, citing Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, iv, 488: ‘eodem rege postulante, missus est a domino papa legatus quidam in Franciam, quo predicante negotium crucis efficacius promoueretur’.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
As with other papal legations to France, there is a strong likelihood that the details presented below are merely a fraction of a far greater evidential whole. Despite valiant efforts in one or two instances to collect legatine acta from thirteenth-century France, there is no equivalent to the surveys completed by Stefan Weiss and others for the period before 1198.18 As a result, legatine letters remain scattered willy-nilly across several hundred French and Belgian archives, many of these archives only partially catalogued. Those that are best surveyed tend to relate to northern France/Flanders, where the compilers of the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes’s ‘regestes’ and the Diplomatica Belgica have been most active. Hence perhaps the predominantly Picard or Parisian focus to so much of our evidence for Eudes. Nonetheless, even our provisional listing reveals certain themes. As legate, Eudes seems to have been commissioned to ‘Francia’. This we should interpret not as the whole of modern France, but as those parts directly or indirectly under the authority of the Capetian King, Louis IX.19 To the north and east, he was required by the pope to impose and collect crusader taxes from dioceses such as Cambrai, Verdun, and Metz, lying wholly or in part beyond the Capetian sphere of influence.20 In November 1246, he was papally commissioned to appoint agents to preach the crusade to England, Germany, ‘Scotia’, Denmark, and Brabant, apparently with a degree of authority over crusader taxes taken in those regions.21 This is further suggested in June 1247 by papal letters to the bishops of Lincoln and Worcester licensing them to dispose of legacies willed to the crusade as they saw fit, notwithstanding any previous command from Eudes.22 In the far south, he bore some degree of responsibility for taxes collected in Provence, and from the dioceses of Narbonne, Angoulême, and Saintes.23 Even so, beyond his oversight of taxation
18 Weiss, Die Urkunden der päpstlichen Legaten von Leo IX, building from earlier work by Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich, and Janssen, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich. For what work has been done for thirteenth-century France, see principally Neininger, Konrad von Urach, and Richard Kay, The Council of Bourges. 19 For the need for distinctions here, not always previously acknowledged, see my review of Kay, Council of Bourges, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, pp. 343–45. For earlier instances of a distinction between ‘Gallia’ and ‘Francia’, noting the potential fluidity of nominations to a legatine province defined as lying ‘in partibus Galliarum’ or in the ‘partibus’ of Toulouse or Limoges, see Rennie, ‘Uproot and Destroy, Build and Plant’, p. 168; Figueira, ‘The Medieval Papal Legate and his Province’, pp. 817–60, esp. p. 821. 20 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 2016 (affairs of the Duke of Lotharingia/Brabant), 3054 (forbidding commutation of vows made by crusaders in the dioceses of Cambrai, Liège, Toul, Utrecht, Metz, and Verdun), 3058 (Cambrai, beyond the Kingdom of France), 3065 (taxes from the realm of Navarre and the cities and dioceses of Metz, Toul, Verdun, and Arras/Artois, beyond the realm of France, to be assigned to the needs of the Count of Artois), 3383 (Cambrai). The inclusion of the realm of Navarre is to be explained by the joint rule exercised by King Theobald I over Navarre and Champagne. 21 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 2229, and cf. no. 2935, commanding Eudes that preachers previously sent into Germany cease to preach the Holy Land crusade but instead preach that against Frederick II. 22 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, no. 2843. 23 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 3055, 3719.
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and preaching as recorded in the papal registers, there is no proof, as yet brought to light, that he himself ventured further south than Parthenay and his own native homeland of Berry and Bourges, in parts of France in theory ruled by Louis IX and his brothers. Likewise, although he was specifically forbidden to seek promotion to the prebends of Bayeux for any of his clerks, and although the bishops of Evreux and Bayeux both attended his consecration of the Sainte-Chapelle in April 1248, as did the archbishops of Bourges, Sens, Rouen, Tours, and Toulouse, and the archbishop of Rheims (a day late), there is a striking absence from his itinerary of any activity by Eudes within the provinces of Rouen or Bordeaux, the first formerly, the second still partially under the secular rule of the Plantagenet kings of England.24 Eudes’ visit to Partheny (in the Capetian-ruled parts of the province of Bordeaux), and his consecration, apparently at the papal court, of the bishop of Agen, a suffragan of Bordeaux albeit within the political orbit of the counts of Toulouse, supply no real exceptions to his limited practical jurisdiction here. Throughout the period of his legation and unlike so many other legates appointed to the remoter parts of northern or eastern Europe, Eudes remained in close and relatively easy communication with the papal court, established throughout this period at Lyons on the Rhône. Eudes himself returned at least once from France to Lyons, in November 1245, and he was there again prior to his departure for crusade in 1248, with a great flurry of papal letters in his favour issued on 21 July 1248 almost certainly marking his departure from Lyons en route for Aigues-Mortes and the East.25 We know from his sermons and from surviving papal letters that his activities in France extended from the crusade to secular politics. Here he experienced resistance to his attempts to impose ecclesiastical taxation for the crusade, provoking a league against Louis IX by various of the greater French barons, headed by the duke of Burgundy and the counts of Angoulême, Brittany, and Saint-Pol.26 Not only was Eudes instructed to support Louis IX against this league, but we have three surviving sermons in which he actively preached the king’s cause.27 24 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 2075 (provision for Eudes’ clerks save in the churches of Sens, Paris, and Bayeux), and cf. Table 1 sub September 1247, 26 April and 15, 27 May 1248, including the condemnation of the Talmud in May 1248, witnessed by the archdeacons of Rouen and Bayeux (Denifle, Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, i, 210 no. 178). 25 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 4662–80. For other such flurries, see the papal letters to Eudes of 5–13 July (Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 3054–6, 3058, 3065) and 12–29 October 1247 (Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 3311, 3315–17, 3321, 3353, 3383). For Louis IX’s presence at Lyons in July 1248, see Moufflet, ‘Autour de l’Hôtel de Saint Louis’, iii (‘Itinéraire’), 134. 26 In general, see Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 14–25, esp. pp. 20–22; Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, pp. 117–31. The league’s leadership is recorded by Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, iv, 591–93; Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, ii, 645–46 no. 3569; Laon, AD Aisne, G1 (Cartulary of the bishopric of Laon) fols 4v–5r (misdated November 1247), this latter published by Varin, Archives de Reims, i part 2 (1839), 690–91 no. 210. 27 Laon, AD Aisne, G1 (Cartulary of the bishopric of Laon) fols 2v–4v, Innocent IV to Eudes as legate authorizing him to excommunicate barons hostile to the immunities and rights of the church, also in Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, no. 2952 (Potthast, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, no. 12385). For his sermons (Schneyer nos 871–73), see Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
The Legate Eudes as Legislator Besides the papal letters signalling his involvement in the collection of crusader taxes, our clearest insight into Eudes’ preoccupations as legate derives from his statutes, surviving or reported, for the cathedral churches of Sens, Paris, Orléans, Meaux, Tournai, Amiens, for the abbey of Prémontré, the Hôtel-Dieu at Beauvais, and for the collegiate churches of Saint-Quentin and Picquigny.28 A key theme here, apart from the standard emphasis upon residence and celibacy, was what we might best term ‘decency’. This both in the sense of a correct and uniform performance of the liturgical offices, and of an avoidance of behaviour likely to excite scandal or ridicule. Thus at Paris, Eudes not only insisted on the use of clean altar frontals and proper, newly-lit candles before the high altar, but forbade the keeping of exotic animals within the cathedral cloister, specifically forbidding bears, stags, crows, or monkeys.29 At Paris too, his dealings with the scholastic community and with the Jews (forbidden the use of the Talmud, despite attempts by the pope to moderate an earlier condemnation by the Paris schools) were governed by a desire to avoid what Eudes himself describes as ‘scandalum non minimum’.30 The sensitivities over Christian-Jewish relations here were no doubt heightened by the memory of earlier anti-Jewish rioting on the eve of the First, Second, and Third Crusades, with the papacy keen to advertise its protection and general benevolence towards a community fearful of Christian reprisals. Elsewhere, in his statutes for Notre-Dame, as for Meaux, Tournai, Sens, and Saint-Quentin, we find Eudes insisting that cathedral or secular canons should not be heard speaking loudly or unnecessarily in choir, nor be seen leaving their stalls to wander about during the liturgy.31 The more decrepit canons of Paris should be
et l’État’, pp. 662–68 nos 4–6; Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, p. 33. For a further nineteen sermons preached by Eudes in favour of the Capetian royal family, thirteen of them after 1256, see Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 33–35; Charansonnet, ‘L’évolution’, p. 136. 28 Table 1, and for mention of his (now lost) constitutions for the cathedral of Amiens, apparently regulating relations between the chapter and the cathedral chaplains, see Cartulaire du chapitre de la cathédrale d’Amiens, i, pp. 425–28 no. 374. 29 Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, ii, 404–06 no. 1, ending ‘animalia vero nociua, inutilia seu jocosa, veluti ursos, ceruos, coruos aut simias vel huiusmodi in claustro nutriri seu diucius conseruari ulterius inhibemus’. 30 Cf. Denifle, Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, i, 204 no. 173, and for the dispute more widely, see the bibliography to 2000 assembled by Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 25–26 n. 74. 31 Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, ii, 405 (‘Quia vero tumultus in choro garriencium, et de stallo ad stallum inordinatus et frequens transitus et seruire volentes impedit […] statuimus ut quicumque in choro officium ecclesie turbauerit aut aliud quam de necessariis loquens fuerit et hoc etiam voce submissa, aut causa garriendi de stallo ad stallum transierit […] beneficio illius hore careat’); Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 889 cc. 2, 6 (‘super loquela in choro […] qui ita vocem in loquendo extolleret ut de quarta sede posset audiri et intelligi […] intrantes et egredientes in animarum suarum periculum dominium irridentes’); Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 1079 c. 5 (‘Quicumque in choro officium ecclesie turbauerit aut aliud quam de necessariis locutus fuerit, et hoc etiam voce submissa aut causa garriendi de stallo in stallum transierit, beneficio illius hore careat’); Descamps, ‘Notice’, 275-76 (‘Item districtius
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allowed to rest from their labours, reassured that their prebendal stipends would be paid whether or not they themselves were present in choir.32 At Orléans, Meaux, and elsewhere, Eudes forbade the use of the cathedral space as any sort of market, specifically prohibiting the sale of candles within the cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris.33 At Saint-Quentin, he banished ‘ribaldi’ from the doors and porches of the church, especially those accustomed to play at dice.34 In several instances he specifically forbade the holding of what at Orléans he terms a ‘feast of fools’, at Meaux ‘a feast of the Innocents’, and at Sens merely as ‘ludibria’ associated with the period after Christmas and the feast days of St John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, and the Circumcision.35 At Meaux, on the feast of
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inhibemus ne quis in choro dum ibidem cantabitur scienter et morose loquatur, nisi de necessariis aut honestis et hoc tamen voce ita submissa quod usque ad quartum vocis non transeat intellectus […] et hoc idem obseruari volumus circa illos qui dum in choro cantabitur otiose per ecclesiam vagabuntur, aut de choro, incepta aliqua hora et non expleta, exierint’); Paris, Archives Nationales, L463 no. 51 (‘quicumque in choro scienter et morose aliud quam de neccesariis aut honestis loqutus fuerit et de hiis etiam nisi voce submissa, ita quod ad quartum vocis non transeat intellectus, aut de choro in chorum rasi ex causa rationabili et euidenti transierit, seu etiam absque causa rationabili de choro exierit officio non completo, aut dum in choro cantabitur per ecclesiam vagando incesserit aut steterit otiose, temporale beneficium si quod fuerit hore perdat’); Paris, AN, LL985B fol. 167r (‘Qui […] in choro aliud quam de necessariis aut honestis scienter et morose locutus fuerit aut de hiis etiam nisi voce submissa ita quod ad quartum vocis non transeat intellectus, aut per ecclesiam otiose vagando incesserit dum in choro cantabitur siue scienter in loco steterit vel sederit in quo ab hiis qui in choro fuerint cognosci velat vel videri, illius hore temporale beneficium se nouiter perdidisse’). Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, ii, 405 (‘Item, quia iuxta prophete testimonium, idem debet esse premium procedencium ad bellum, et ad sarcinas residencium […] ut quos euidens premit infirmitas aut debilitas senectutis manifeste excusat […] in choro Deo seruiencium exsortes esse non debeant’). Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, ii, 404 (‘Quia vero, Domino attestante, domus Domini domus oracionis est, ac per hoc indecens omnino dignoscitur ut aliud quam diuinum officium exerceatur in ea, vendicionem candelarum aut rerum etiam aliarum in ea fieri districtius inhibemus’); Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 889 c. 5 (‘omnia mercimonia ab ecclesia segregentur nec aliquorum strepitus aut alius tumultus exerceatur in ea’); Paris, AN, L463 no. 51 (‘quia domus Domini domus orationis est, ipso domino attestante, nec decet eam aliis usibus applicari, sub pena excommunicationis inhibemus ne in ecclesia vestra merces decetero aliquo die vel hora vendantur vel vendibiles exponantur’). Paris, AN, LL985B (Saint-Quentin cartulary) fol. 167v (‘Inhibemus etiam firmiter et districte ne ribaldi iuxta portas et perietes ecclesie iniugere vel ad decios ludere permittantur, quia preter indecentia ex hoc posset graue scandalum seu periculum euenire’), and cf. at Orléans, Paris, AN L463 no. 51 (‘Item ut clerici non tantum vita set etiam habitu a laicis distingantur, sub pena suspensionis iniungimus ne quis canonicus seu etiam clericus de choro saltem beneficiatus in claustro nisi ante hostium suum vel socii propinqui stare aut super cambia sedere dum in choro cantabitur seu per claustrum aut per villam incedere sine habitu chorali aut capa audeat vel mantello, nec serta laicalia vel cufas nisi sub caputio deportare seu etiam calciamenta clericis inhonesta’). Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 889 c. 4 (‘Ut autem omnis occasio scandali et ridiculi ab ecclesia abscinditur, volumus et mandamus ut festum Innocentium secundum modum et cultum aliarum festiuitatem […] celebrantur’); Paris, AN, L463 no. 51 (‘Illa vero ludibria que festa stultorum dicuntur sub interminatione anathematis in ecclesia vestra decetero fieri prohibemus’); Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 1078 c. 1 (‘illa festorum antiqua ludibria, que in contemtum Dei opprobrium cleri et derisum populi non est dubium exerceri, videlicet in festo
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
Holy Innocents, Eudes forbade boys from bringing garlands into the choir or from occupying the senior choirstalls.36 Such scenes of riot also explain Eudes’ provisions at Tournai, where he insisted that the feasts of St Stephen, John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, and Epiphany be conducted as devoutly as all other feasts of the year, and that the canons of the cathedral not visit the town wearing floral garlands.37 These same garlands were also condemned in Eudes’ statutes for Sens and Saint-Quentin.38 At Orléans we find him condemning the peculiar practice of burning wood during the Old Testament readings of the liturgy.39 A renowned sermonizer such as Eudes, regularly invited (or inviting himself) to preach in cathedral churches on the greater festivals of the Church, may have found the interruption of such services by riot, custom, or neglect particularly unseemly. And then there were the distractions of the choir itself, not only by wandering, gossiping, or decrepit canons, but by services conducted without proper attention to metre or chant. Thus at Tournai and Sens, Eudes specifically demanded proper metre, tone, and timing for psalmody and the hours of the Virgin. The Psalms should not be chanted so that one side of the choir responded to the other before the first had properly completed its verse.40 At Orléans he not only commanded that uniformity
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s(ancti) Iohannis Euangeliste, Innocentium et Circumcisionis Domini, iuxta modum pristinum nullatenus faciatis’). The Circumcision festivities at Beauvais, Sens and at Eudes’ own former cathedral church of Bourges, as is well known, included the singing of the so-called ‘Song of the Ass’, and at Beauvais certainly the procession of a young girl, impersonating the Virgin Mary, placed on an ass that may or may not have been permitted to enter the cathedral church: Green, ‘The Song of the Ass’, pp. 534–49. Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 889 c. 4 (‘ita quod nec pueri in choro serta portare audeant, nec stalla in choro superiora tenere’). Descamps, ‘Notice’, 276 (‘Volumus etiam et ordinamus t in crastina Natiuitatis Domini, scilicet in festiuitatibus protomartyrum Stephani, Iohannis Euangeliste et Innocentium et earum octauis et in Epiphania Domini et octaua eiusdem ita ordinate et deuote in choro cantando et legendo se habeant et cantores et lectores scribantur sicut in aliis maioribus solempnitatibus consueuerunt […] Prohibemus etiam ne canonici, seu clerici de choro saltem beneficia habentes per villam in cuffa nisi sub caputio, aut cum sertis de floribus, seu in habitu alias clerico indecenti, aut sine capa incedere audeant vel mantello’). Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 1078 c. 2 (‘ipso facto sententiam suspensionis incurrat quicumque in mutatione habitus aut in sertis de floribus seu aliis dissolutionibus iuxta precedentem ritum reprobatum adeo in predictis festiuitatibus seu aliis a modo presumserit se habere’); Paris, AN, LL985B fol. 167v (‘Inhibemus ne can(onici) seu capellani cum cuffa nisi sub caputio vel sine capa aut mantello per villam incedant, nec serta de floribus in capitibus deferant vel habitum alias inhonestum seu clericis indecenter’), and cf. at Orléans, Paris, AN L463 no. 51 (‘nec serta laicalia vel cufas nisi sub caputio deportare’). AN, L463, no. 51 (‘inhibentes ne dum in ecclesia vestra lex vetus legetur presumat aliquis ligna seu merramenta comburere aliena, quod si quis fecerit tanquam excommunicatus arcuis euitetur donec dampnum passo satisfecerit et ab eo qui absoluendi potestatem habuerit obtinuerit se absolui’). Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 1079 c. 8 (‘modus cantandi habeatur in choro ut in psalmodia in medio versus metrum cum pausa ab omnibus obseruetur, nec unus chorus aliquo modo incipiat quousque alter chorus plene finierit versum suum’); Descamps, ‘Notice’, 275 (‘Imprimis igitur quia sicut intelleximus in ecclesia vestra nimis cito transcurritur psalmodia ac etiam ultra quam deceat horae de Beata Virgine et anniuersaria transcurruntur […] vobis iniungimus ut in psalmodiis
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be established amongst the cathedral’s various service books, but complained against the canons’ abbreviated celebration of the feasts of certain saints whose psalmody and legends should now be properly restored.41 None of this should surprise us from a preacher whose sermons were themselves later edited both de tempore and de sanctis, in one recension according to the liturgical year, in another according to the fixed festivals of the saints, in both instances with very clear and precise attention to dating and the liturgical calendar.42
The Holy Sepulchre in Berry: The Church of Neuvy Eudes’ concern for the propriety of liturgical performance supplies essential background to his interventions at Neuvy. So at last, we come to Eudes’ return to his homeland in Berry, during the course of his legation of 1245–1248. We know of at least four interventions by Eudes as legate within the province of Bourges, the first, and the chief focus here, at Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre in June 1246, when he issued an indulgence recording his consecration of the high altar of Neuvy’s collegiate church; the second at Bourges, before January 1247, where he is recorded, according to papal letters, deposing the abbot of Saint-Sulpice; the third at Tulle (Corrèze) where he is said to have confirmed regulations issued by the archbishop of Bourges and Pope Gregory IX, tempering the monks’ obedience to the Rule of St Benedict; and the fourth at Déols, immediately adjacent to Châteauroux, where on 4 April 1247 he is said to have consecrated an altar in honour of Saints Peter and Paul.43 His decantandis deuotionem, quam humana fragilitas patietur, habentes pausationes et metra debita faciatis, nec incipiat unus chorus quoadusque alter finierit versum suum, et hoc similiter in anniuersariis volumus obseruari, horas etiam de Beata Virgine, que pro nobis precipua et quasi singularis est apud Deum aduocata, cum cantu et tono metris decentibus decantantes’); AN, L463, no. 51 (‘in psalmodiis decantandis pausaciones debitas faciatis, nec ab una parte chori incipiatur quousque altera finierit versum suum’). 41 AN, L463, no. 51 (‘Volumus etiam et iniungimus ut predicti tres gradualia et antiphonaria, missalia et collectaria et punctationes psalteriorum ecclesie vestre uniformiter ordinent prout honestati seruiturii viderint expedire. Item quia quasdam sollempnitates sanctorum de quibus legendam seu missam propriam aut noticiam aliquam non habetis de nouo etiam sine episcopi vestri assensu in ecclesia vestra sicut audiuimus statuistis non propter deuotionem seruicii vel sanctorum set ut omissa psalmodia seruicium breuius habeatis, quia non est sanctus ut est dom(u)m, volumus et iniungimus ut omissis huiusmodi sanctorum sollempnitatibus que a quindecim annis et citra auctoritate propria absque vestri assensu episcopi statuistis, psalmodie hylariter intendentes de dieta et feria prout tempus exiget seruicium faciatis, nec sollempnitates sanctorum nisi de domini pape mandato vel de communi tocius capituli episcopi quam vestri consensu decetero statuatis’). 42 For the various recensions here, see Charansonnet, ‘L’évolution de la prédication’, pp. 104–41, esp. 107–09, 114–22. 43 For details here, see Table 1 below, and papal letters of 25 January 1247 (appointing local delegates to ensure the former abbot of Saint-Sulpice a regular income from the abbey’s revenues pending the outcome of an appeal delegated to the Cardinal Bishop of Porto), and 17 April 1254 (revoking amendments to the rule at Tulle allowed by Eudes as legate): Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 2408, 7440.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
interventions at both Neuvy and Déols not only show that he returned more than once to his homeland in Berry, choosing spring and early summer for these visits, but reveal a particular concern for the consecration of altars, churches, and the cult of relics. This same preoccupation is apparent elsewhere, most famously in Eudes’ consecration of Louis IX’s Sainte-Chapelle on 26 April 1248, but also in his attendance at the translation of the relics of St Edmund of Canterbury at Pontigny, on 9 June 1247, and of St Eleuthère at Tournai, on 25 August that same year, this latter ceremony accompanied by the grant of an indulgence by Eudes and still commemorated by the great shrine-reliquary said to have been the focus of the translation ceremony.44 The domed church at Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre, where Eudes was to be found in June 1246, remains an impressive architectural monument, albeit that its earliest history is shrouded in mystery, due in part to the looting of the collegiate archive in June 1523 by an armed band known as ‘The Six Thousand Devils’.45 The most detailed chronicle report, dating from the twelfth century but perhaps drawing upon earlier charter evidence, assigns the foundation to the year 1042, claiming that the church was established in the presence of Eudes ‘le Roux’ lord of Déols, and Boso de Cluis ‘in whose lordship the aforesaid Neuvy was situated, having previously been the right of Gerard of Vienne’.46 Other twelfth-century chroniclers, although assigning the foundation alternatively to c. 1034, 1045, or 1046, make clear the prestige attached to what was intended to reproduce the form of the Anastasis of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, itself a domed rotunda, part of a larger structure supposedly incorporating the sites both of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.47 Since Eudes of Déols was undoubtedly a pilgrim to Jerusalem in the 1020s, in company with the 44 Details in Table 1 sub 9 June, 25 August 1247, 26 April 1248, and for the shrine of St Eleuthère, see also Le Maistre d’Anstaing, La Châsse de Saint Eleuthère; van den Bossche, ‘Châsse de Saint Eleuthère’. It was almost certainly on the occasion of the translation in August 1247 that Eudes issued an indulgence of 40 days for those contributing to the costs of the cathedral fabric, and perhaps of a further 100 days for those visiting the church on the anniversary of the dedication of the high altar: Tournai, Archives de la cathédrale, Registre 42 (Inventory of titles, 1533, copying an earlier, lost inventory of 1422) fol. 9r-v ‘Littera Odonis cardinalis sancte apostolice sedis legatus prout supra exortant et 40 dies relaxant […]. Item ex dono dic(ti) (?or dn) Odonis pro xv. dies post Pascha, videlicet in dedicatione maioris altaris ecclesie quolibet die centum dies indulgen(tie)’, following an indulgence from Innocent IV of one year and forty days to those contributing to the cathedral fabric), most of which references I owe to Jean-François Nieus and Emilie Mineo. 45 Misdated 22 June 1524 by Hubert, ‘Le Saint-Sépulcre de Neuvy et les pèlerinages de Terre-Saint’, pp. 91–100, at p. 91 noting Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, an inquest of 21 August 1549, itself the source for Caillaud, Notice historique et archéologique sur l’église de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre, pp. 7–11. 46 The chronicle of ‘pseudo-William Godel’, Paris, BnF, MS Latin 4893, fol. 52r, whence Hubert, ‘Le Saint-Sépulcre de Neuvy et les pèlerinages de Terre-Saint’, p. 92, also in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xi, 282, and for the chronicle itself, in reality an anonymous composition probably of the 1170s with strong connections both to Pontigny and to the diocese of Bourges in which the author, a monk, was consecrated priest at the church of Saint-Sylvain de Levroux, 20 km north of Châteauroux (fol. 58v), see Delisle, ‘Chroniques et annales diverses’, pp. 251–54. 47 Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xi, 169, 308, 347, and cf. Hubert, ‘Le Saint-Sépulcre de Neuvy et les pèlerinages de Terre-Saint’, pp. 92–93. For the Anastasis at Jerusalem, see Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West, pp. 33–38, 64–66, 70–71, 121, 123, 153–54, 160–63; Hamilton, ‘Rebuilding Zion’, pp. 105–16.
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duke of Aquitaine and the count of Anjou, and since Neuvy lay close to one of the main branches of the pilgrimage route to Compostela, it is entirely reasonable to associate the building at Neuvy with an upsurge in enthusiasm both for long-distance pilgrimage and for armed resistance to the powers of Islam, in due course contributing so significantly to the spirit of the First Crusade.48 In all likelihood, from its first foundation, it was intended to house secondary relics of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.49 The Crusade itself, it should be noticed, may first have been preached in Berry, and hence in the vicinity of Neuvy, by Peter the Hermit, some time before it was taken up by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in November 1095.50 Compared to other western imitations of the Holy Sepulchre, especially the most ancient and prestigious at Bologna, the building at Neuvy was neither especially grand nor architecturally accurate. Its rotunda, still preserved despite severe damage following the Revolution of 1789, has only eleven piers, compared to the original’s twelve, and opens to the north as opposed to the east-facing Anastasis in Jerusalem.51 Although its lower parts may date to the eleventh century, built on to the western extremity of a pre-existing church, the rotunda was not completed until the early twelfth century and was thereafter incorporated within a larger structure itself clearly of late twelfth-century date.52 By this time, Bourges and the province of Berry had been purchased for the Capetian kingdom, albeit with attempted incursions from the 1150s onwards by the Plantagenet rulers of Aquitaine and Anjou.53 Neuvy itself passed into the mouvance of the monks of Saint-Sulpice at Bourges from whom it was subsequently held by Andrew de Chauvigny and his successors. Andrew, promoted lord of Châteauroux in 1189, moved within the orbit of the Plantagenet court, not least as a cousin of Eleanor of Aquitaine by their joint descent from the lords of Châtellerault in Poitou. In due course, under the Plantagenet King Richard, Andrew was to serve as one of the more successful commanders on the Third Crusade.54 Although this connection to the Plantagenet court was severed early in the reign of 48 For the pilgrimage of Eudes of Déols, see Adhemar of Chabannes in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, x, 162, and more generally see Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West, esp. pp. 156, 160–61. 49 Hubert, ‘Le Saint-Sépulcre de Neuvy et les pèlerinages de Terre-Saint’, pp. 98–99. 50 Gardner, ‘The Capetian Presence in Berry’, pp. 71–81. Peter’s preaching in Berry features at the very beginning of the chronicle of Albert of Aachen. 51 Gardner, ‘The Capetian Presence in Berry’, pp. 73–74, and for the most detailed architectural description, see Favière, Berry Roman, pp. 117–42, with good photographic illustrations at pp. 123–38. For the fate of the church after 1789, rededicated as a Temple de Raison, suffering severe damage and remodelling in 1806, see Perrault-Desaix, Recherches sur Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre, pp. 32–33; Hubert, ‘Le Saint-Sépulcre de Neuvy et les pèlerinages de Terre-Saint’, p. 97 n. 52 Favière, Berry Roman, pp. 142–43; Bryant, ‘La Collégiale Saint-Étienne de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre’. 53 Devailly, ‘Comment les Capetiens sont devenus maîtres du Berry’, pp. 9–29. 54 For the dependence on Saint-Sulpice, see Buhot de Kersers, ‘Essai de reconstitution du Cartulaire A de Saint-Sulpice de Bourges’, p. 148 no. 71. For Andrew de Chauvigny (d. c. 1202–1203), descended from the lords of Châtellerault, married in 1189 to Denise (d. 1204), heiress to Châteauroux and widow of Baldwin earl of Devon (d. 1188), see Hubert and Hubert, ‘L’Origine de la parenté entre la famille de Chauvigny et les Plantagenêts’, pp. 38–40; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs, iii, 6–7.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
King John, like many of the greater families of Berry the Chauvignys either resisted, or were deliberately excluded, from the consequent extension of Capetian influence south of Bourges. It was in these circumstances, following the Capetian conquest of Anjou and Poitou in 1228, that the college at Neuvy obtained a major charter of liberties from Andrew’s son, William de Chauvigny, renewed in 1248 by the younger William, Andrew’s grandson.55 From this time onwards we read of no external attachment for what was apparently an independent college of secular canons.56 In its earliest years, however, the college may well have begun as one of several western possessions of the church of Jerusalem, organized in due course as members of an Augustinian order of the Holy Sepulchre. It is as such that it appears in June 1079 when Pope Gregory VII wrote to a certain Boso (almost certainly Boso of Cluis, son of the Count of La Marche) complaining against his ‘tyrannical invasion’ of church property, requesting that he comply with the appointment of the papal clerk, Simon, to rule the Holy Sepulchre at Neuvy as a possession of the church of Jerusalem (‘ecclesiam sancti Sepulcri de Nououico que iuris ecclesie Hierosolymitane et censualis eius esse dicitur’).57 In 1087, we find the archbishop of Bourges issuing a charter at Neuvy ‘before the altar of the Holy Sepulchre’.58 Thereafter, we lose sight of any institutional attachment to the church of Jerusalem. The patriarchs and canons of Jerusalem undoubtedly continued to possess land in France, confirmed to them in the 1160s. But the whereabouts of these estates is not recorded.59 In 1178, we find a Geoffrey ‘de Novo Vico’ (potentially ‘of Neuvy’) serving as canon of Jerusalem.60 Alternatively, like other western property, Neuvy may have drifted away from its obedience to Jerusalem, even before Saladin’s conquests of 1187 obliged the patriarch and his chapter to seek exile in Acre.61 What is not in question is that Neuvy remained a centre of pilgrimage, close to the Compostela route and not far from other such imitations of the Holy Sepulchre, enabling voyagers to St-Jacques figuratively to encompass Jerusalem
55 Cartulaire des seigneurs de Châteauroux, ed. by Hubert, pp. 74, 101–02 no. 82, 120 no. 10, from a sealed original of June 1248, today Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166. 56 Besides the papal indulgences noted below, see original letters of Innocent IV (‘Devotionis vestre precibus’), issued at Lyons, 21 March 1250, authorizing the canons to recover tithes missapropriated to the laity, and of Alexander IV (‘Cum a nobis’), issued at the Lateran, 12 February 1261, confirming letters of (Philip) archbishop of Bourges establishing that Neuvy be served by 14 canons, both these papal letters, although unregistered, still surviving as originals at Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, with the letters of Archbishop Philip (Friday after St Bartholomew, 27 August 1260) now G165. 57 Gregory VII ‘Registrum’ 6:10, whence The Register of Pope Gregory VII, ed. by Cowdrey, pp. 322–23, also in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xiv, 636–37 no. 114; Hubert, ‘Recueil général des chartes de l’Indre’, pp. 202–03 no. 43; Deshoulières, ‘La date de la construction de l’église de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre’, p. 193; Chénon, ‘Origines de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre’, pp. 223–24, and for Boso and the lordship of Cluis, pp. 225–29. 58 Hubert, ‘Recueil général des chartes de l’Indre’, p. 214 no. 47, from Châteauroux, AD Indre, H753. 59 Le Cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, ed. by Bresc-Bautier, pp. 295 no. 150, 299 no. 151 (bulls of Alexander III, merely confirming whatever the canons possessed ‘in toto regno Francie’). 60 Le Cartulaire du chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, ed. by Bresc-Bautier, pp. 355–56 no. 5. 61 For the general trend here, see Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 24–28.
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within their journey.62 The high altar of Neuvy was specifically dedicated by Eudes of Châteauroux in 1246 in honour of the Holy Trinity, ‘the most victorious Cross’ (itself with crusading overtones), the Holy Sepulchre, and St James the Apostle, this last presumably as a gesture towards Compostela pilgrims.63 Given previous success in recruiting crusaders from Berry and the vicinity of Bourges, Neuvy was not surprisingly used as a stage on Eudes’ great preaching tour of France, leading in the longer term to the crusading vows both of William de Chauvigny, lord of Neuvy and Châteauroux, and of Gaucher de Châtillon, lord of Saint-Aignan-surCher (Loir-et-Cher), whose last will and testament Eudes was to seal as legate on crusade.64 Having visited Neuvy in June 1246, and Déols just under a year later, Eudes was absent on crusade from the summer of 1248 for the following six years. He is next heard of in Europe in February 1255, at the papal curia, having almost certainly attended the conclave in which Pope Alexander IV was elected, at Naples, in December 1254.65 Although he continued to show an interest in French affairs at the papal curia, and to be charged with the resolution of disputes involving French litigants, there is no certain evidence that he ever again left Italy.66 Even so, his thoughts both on crusade and after seem to have turned frequently to his homeland in Berry. In the late 1250s, for example, he is to be found deputing investigation of the canonization dossier on the future St Richard of Chichester to two canons of Bourges, Master John de
62 Vincent, The Holy Blood, p. 75 n. 141, noting the churches of Aubeterre-sur-Dronne and Gurat (both Charente, cant. Tude-et-Lavalette), and Saint-Emilion (Gironde). 63 Below Appendix no. 1. The ‘victoriosissimus crux’ features also in Eudes’ indulgence for the relics of the Sainte-Chapelle, 27 May 1248: Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, iii, 30–31 no. 3666. 64 Cartulaire des seigneurs de Châteauroux, ed. by Hubert, pp. 110–11, 121 nos 16–17; Raynal, Histoire du Berry, ii, 226, 230–32. 65 Charansonnet, ‘L’évolution de la prédication’, pp. 117–19. 66 Apart from his involvement in the controversy over the mendicant orders at Paris and the teachings of Joachim (Denifle, ‘Das Evangelium aeternum’, p. 99, above n. 9), from which Alexis Charansonnet extrapolates an entirely hypothetical return by Eudes to preach to and discipline the schools of Paris c. October 1255 and again perhaps on various occasions thereafter (Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, pp. 317–22, 339–43, 714–24 no. 17 (Schneyer no. 513g), 746–59 no. 21 (Schneyer no. 652)), note his service as papal auditor in disputes involving an election at the abbey of Canigou (Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, no. 1017, c. December 1255); reform of the abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés at Paris (Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, no. 1404, 5 May 1256), perhaps related to his intervention in disputes concerning the property of the monks of SaintÉloi, a dependency of Saint-Maur (Paris, AN, LL75 (Cartulary of Saint-Éloi) fols 4r–5v, c. July 1256); the regulation of meat-eating by the canons of Arrouaise (Arras, AD Pas-de-Calais, 23H2, no. 49, original single-sheet letters of Eudes issued at Viterbo, 23 June 1257, also in Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, no. 2056, and cf. no. 2114); the absolution of the bishop of Amiens (Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, no. 2669, 25 September 1258); complaints over papal letters obtained against the royal bailli of Amiens (Paris, BnF, MS Picardie/Grenier 97, p. 35, letters of Eudes dated at Anagni, 15 December 1259); disputes between the abbot and monks of Vézelay (Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, no. 2845, before March 1259), and in disputes between the bishop and chapter of Coutances (Paris, BnF, MS français 4900, fols 132r–136v, before August 1263).
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
Neuvy and Master Bonin.67 In September 1256, Master Warin, Canon of Neuvy, and Master Peter ‘Bonadei’ (elsewhere identified as one of Eudes’ chaplains, Canon of Le Mans) are to be found witnessing a settlement at the curia confirming Eudes’ earlier legatine arrangements for the deanery of Acre, and in 1257, we find Eudes intervening on behalf of a Master Aimery de Déols promised papal provision to a canonry in Bourges cathedral.68
Neuvy’s Relics from the East The most obvious evidence of this continued attachment occurs in a pair of letters issued by Eudes from the papal court at Viterbo in 1257. The second of these, dated 8 November, records his gift to his brother Hugh, chancellor of Tours, of fragments of the Holy Sepulchre and other relics of the saints, acquired as legate in the east ‘from the prince of Antioch and other trustworthy persons’. Such relics, Eudes proclaims, might be especially honoured by those unable to visit the Holy Sepulchre in person ‘or to see those places stained with the most precious blood of Christ’.69 Apart from proclaiming his continued interest both in Christ’s Sepulchre and in the blood shed at Calvary, this letter is one of very few to refer to Eudes’ family, confirming the identity of his brother Hugh, later bishop of Poitiers, presumably like Eudes a native of Châteauroux.70 Above all it demonstrates not only that Eudes returned from crusade with a significant cache of relics, but that he continued thereafter to employ
67 Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 13–14 n. 36, citing Eudes’ sermon on St Richard (Schneyer no. 1024), edited by Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, pp. 775–83 no. 25, esp. p. 779, also partially printed by Pitra, Analecta novissima spicilegii Solesmensis altera continuatio, vol. 2 (‘Tusculana’), p. 321. 68 For Master Peter, alias ‘Bonediei’, Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, nos 970, 1494. For Master Aimery, whose provision was to be enforced by the abbot of Déols and Master Philip of Chartres, Canon of Saint-Aignan, see Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, no. 2204. 69 Below Appendix no. 3. 70 A relationship confirmed both by a charter of September 1259 in which, still chancellor of Tours, Hugh quitclaimed to the dean and chapter of Notre-Dame vineyards at Bagneux and La TombeIssoire, south of Paris, apparently held by gift of Eudes his brother (Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, ii, 125–26 no. 29), and by a letter issued by an unidentified pope (1259 X 1268), known only from a formulary of the papal chancery: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3976, fol. 134r-v, whence the abstract by Schillmann, Die Formularsammlumg des Marinus von Eboli, p. 187 no. 1026: ‘Episcopo Pictauen’. Obtentu ven(erabilis) f(ratris) n(ostri) O(donis) Tusculan’ episcopi cui germanus esse dinosceris, te prosequi volumus favoris gratia specialis. Cum itaque sicut accepimus se(dem) ap(ostolicam) tenearis singulis bienniis iuramento super hoc prestito visitare sicque tibi tempus immineat visitandi se(dem) ipsam pro biennio in proximo iam complendo. Nos eiusdem episcopi ac tuis supplicationibus incli(nantes), te a visitatione huius et iuramento predicto de ipsa facienda prestito tam pro biennio memorato quam etiam pro futuris temporibus imperpetuum maxime cum certum metropolit(anum) habeas, auctoritate p(resentium) de speciali gratia reddimus absolutum’. For Hugh Bishop of Poitiers from c. 1259, see Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, p. 15 n. 39.
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these as a means of fixing men’s minds upon the sufferings of Christ and hence of their obligation to defend the Holy Land. The other, even more remarkable letter that Eudes dispatched from Viterbo, dated July 1257, takes the form of a miniature sermon. Urging the veneration of relics in light of Old and New Testament precedents including Psalms, the stories of Samson and the ass’s jawbone, of the twelve prophets, and of the bones of Elisha, Eudes proclaims the even greater merits of relics of Christ himself, ‘the saint of saints’. Hoping thereby ‘to honour our homeland’ (‘solum natale ut possumus honorare’), Eudes declares that he is sending the prior and chapter of the church of Saint-Sépulcre at Neuvy ‘stone from the glorious sepulchre of our Lord […] and what is more precious than any other relic, some of the most precious blood of our saviour, by which we are redeemed and washed from our sins’. This treasure, ‘not to be compared even to gold or precious jewel’, said to have been acquired by Eudes whilst legate in the Holy Land, was to be displayed each year only on Good Friday and the Sunday before the feast of Saint Denis, as confirmed in an indulgence from the pope. Eudes requested that the canons of Neuvy remember him in their prayers, inserting a copy of these letters in their service books to be read in place of one or two of the standard lections each year on the Sunday before Saint Denis, with a post-obit anniversary for the repose of Eudes’ soul.71 Here then we have an explanation for the later fame of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre as a pilgrimage centre laying claim to one of the more prominent blood relics displayed anywhere in France. I have dealt with the history of such relics elsewhere, focusing in particular upon that offered to Westminster Abbey in October 1247 by King Henry III of England, supposedly as a gift to the king from the patriarch of Jerusalem. As with Eudes’ contemporary preaching in France, the intention of the patriarch’s gift to King Henry seems to have been to stir up enthusiasm for the forthcoming crusade whilst at the same time reminding the king and his subjects of the close connections that bound England to Jerusalem and hence to the estates of the order of the Holy Sepulchre in many cases detached from their mother house, both before and after 1187.72 The ceremonial delivery of the Holy Blood to Westminster was carefully timed to occur on 13 October 1247, the feast day of St Edward the Confessor, in Henry III’s estimation the chief patron saint both of England and of English kingship.73 The approach by the patriarch of Jerusalem to the English in 1247 coincided not only with Eudes’ legation to France but also with a mission on behalf of the bishop of Bethlehem, active both in France and in England in recovering and augmenting the western endowment of his church, not least as a potential place of refuge or more permanent exile.74 Claims to possess relics of Christ’s blood were relatively common even before the Fourth Crusade scattered further such relics far and wide amongst the great horde of sacred objects looted from Constantinople. Mantua, Reichenau, Fécamp, and the
71 Below Appendix no. 2. 72 Vincent, The Holy Blood, esp. pp. 7–30. 73 Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 1, 3, 10–11. 74 Vincent, ‘Goffredo de Prefetti’, pp. 213–35.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
Lateran Palace were amongst the dozen or so western churches claiming to possess portions of Christ’s blood before 1204, joined thereafter by Bruges, Venice, and many other locations sharing in the great bonanza distributed from Byzantium.75 One such prize was the blood said to have been amongst the passion relics purchased by Louis IX from the Latin Emperor of Constantinople after 1239, in April 1248 amongst the treasures of the Sainte-Chapelle newly consecrated by Eudes as papal legate.76 What is peculiar about the relics acquired first by Westminster in 1247, then by Neuvy a decade later, is the specific claim that they originated neither in Constantinople nor in the Jerusalem of New Testament times, but much more recently, from a store of such blood still preserved in the Holy Land. At Neuvy, Eudes refers only vaguely to relics of the Holy Sepulchre and Christ’s blood acquired ‘as a great gift (‘pro magno munere’) in the Holy Land when we discharged the office of legate there’.77 By contrast, the Westminster blood is specifically described as a gift from the patriarchs of Jerusalem and their church, now in exile in Acre, just as the relics of the Sepulchre and saints that Eudes sent to his brother are said to have been acquired ‘as a great gift’ (‘pro magno dono’) from ‘the prince of Antioch and various other trustworthy people’.78 What we find here, I would suggest, is a tendency for such relics to multiply, first in reports from Jerusalem that bloodstains were visible in the various places associated with Christ’s scourging and crucifixion, thereafter in claims that such stains were clearly preserved in fragments of stone detached from the Holy Sepulchre itself.79 Writing c. 1170 as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, John of Wurzburg had laid great emphasis upon the blood-sheddings at the site of Calvary, including an altar specifically dedicated to the Holy Blood at the place where blood had flowed from the Cross. As in many other accounts, John refers to the Holy Sepulchre collectively as a church consecrated by Christ’s own blood.80 Just as the Westminster blood relic was advertised in 1247 as a Plantagenet treasure as great or greater than the Passion relics acquired by the Capetian King Louis IX, so there is symmetry to the way in which the blood of Neuvy appears to have originated with fragments of the same church of the Holy Sepulchre from which the Westminster relic had been acquired a decade earlier.81 There are hints here of deliberate Anglo-French rivalry to which we shall in due course return.
75 Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 31–81 (ch. 4), esp. maps at pp. 52, 68. 76 Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 7–9, 47, 69. 77 Below Appendix no. 2. 78 Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 202–04; below Appendix no. 3, and for Eudes’ dealings as legate with the various claimants to the principality of Antioch, see Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, nos 3965, 4427, and esp. D’Achery, Spicilegium, sive collectio veterum aliquot scriptorum qui in Galliae bibliothecis delituerant, iii, 624–28 at 625, where (in March 1250) Eudes informs the pope of the taking of Damietta noting the arrival of envoys to Louis IX from the prince of Antioch and the king of Armenia bringing gifts (‘nuncii ad regem Francie principis Antiocheni […] exennia deferentes’) and requesting aid, to which Louis responded by sending 600 crossbowmen and attempting to arrange a truce. 79 Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 38–39, 51. 80 John of Wurzburg, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, cols 1078–79, 1081. 81 For Anglo-French rivalry in the delivery of the Westminster blood in 1247, see Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 7–12, 19, 21–23.
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In the meantime, we should note that relics such as those of Westminster or Neuvy need to be distinguished from those that originated not in the historic blood shed by Christ at Calvary but from flows of blood released much later by images or eucharistic miracles in which the bread and wine of the mass became literally rather than transubstantively the body and blood of Christ. Such miraculous relics are nevertheless relevant here, since Neuvy lay suggestively close to one of their major focal points, at Déols, a suburb of Châteauroux, after 1189 placed under the same lordship of the Chauvigny family as the church of Neuvy. On 30 May 1187, a Saturday (the Virgin’s special day), amidst the final stand-off between Henry II of England and the French King Philip Augustus, a mercenary in the pay of Richard, son of Henry II, had thrown a stone at the statue of the Virgin and Child in the north porch of the abbey church at Déols, knocking off the arm of the infant Jesus. The statue, which gave off a flow of miracle-working blood, was thereafter venerated as a relic, as was the bloodstained ground beneath it, as was the stone arm, carried off either by the vicomte of Limoges or the future King John of England.82 There is no doubt both that this story was known to Eudes of Châteauroux and that it was more generally employed as evidence of Plantagenet impiety, part of a wider tendency to exalt the Capetians at the expense of their English rivals, retold in this sense in Capetian panegyric from Rigord, via Primat of Saint-Denis, to the Grandes chroniques de France.83 From c. 1200 onwards, the Déols miracle was commemorated each year on 31 May as a feast day of the archdiocese of Bourges, with its own special office and lections.84 Not only did Eudes visit Déols in April 1247 to consecrate an altar there, but he composed at least five sermons on the miracle. These sermons are known only from a brief note in one of Eudes’ collections citing their presence in another volume, now lost.85 One or more of them might have been preached by Eudes during his visits to Berry in 1246 and 1247. Yet the manuscript in which they were preserved seems otherwise to have been composed very late in Eudes’ career, during the prolonged conclave that followed the death of Pope Clement IV in November 1268. This leads to the hypothesis advanced by Alexis Charansonnet that, like others of Eudes’ sermons, most notably those on St Thomas Becket, the Déols sermons
82 Besides the accounts of this miracle by Gerald of Wales, Gervase of Canterbury, and Vincent of Beauvais noted by Vincent, The Holy Blood, p. 48 n. 64, see also Labbe, Novae bibliothecae manuscriptorum librorum, i, 319–22; Hubert, ‘Le Miracle de Déols’, pp. 285–300, at pp. 296–300 printing an account by John Agnellus taken from Paris, BnF, MS Latin 12668, fols 303r–304v (dating the miracle to 30 May). 83 Hubert, ‘De l’événement’, pp. 435–47, esp. pp. 438–39. 84 Hubert, ‘De l’événement’, p. 444, citing the s.xv Bourges breviary, now Châteauroux, Médiathèque, MS 3, fols 280v–281v, and cf. Leroquais, Les breviaires manuscrits, i, 153 no. 104, 158 no. 105, 323–24 no. 188; ii, 14, 16 no. 212, 170 no. 312, showing diffusion as far as St-Cyan-en-Brenne (Indre, cant. Le Blanc) and Beaulieu-lès-Loches (Indre, cant. Loches). 85 Rome, Archivio generale dell’ordine dei Predicatori, MS XIV.35, fol. 32r, whence Pitra, Analecta novissima spicilegii Solesmensis altera continuati, ii, 324–25 nos 32–36 (not in Scheyer), listed between sermons for the feast of the translation of SS Andrew and Nicholas (9 May) and St Germanus/ Germain of Paris (28 May), whence, noting the untraced ‘volumen Iohannis de Nivella’, Charansonnet, ‘L’évolution’, pp. 114–16.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
were deliberately deployed as anti-Plantagenet propaganda, using the story of the wounded statue to denigrate the English party at the conclave of 1268–1271, itself divided over the question of succession to the Sicilian and imperial thrones between supporters of Henry III and the adherents of Charles of Anjou.86 There is no doubt that throughout his career Eudes remained a prominent supporter of Louis IX, as subsequently of Charles, preaching many sermons in praise of the Capetian royal family.87 As early as December 1247, by contrast, we find him preaching on the feast of St Thomas, describing Becket, ‘unable to bear the injuries that the King of England inflicted on the church’, as the ‘white rooster by whom the lion of England (i.e. Henry II) was defeated and put to flight’.88 Once again, we find ourselves returning to the theme of Anglo-French rivalry, already raised at Neuvy by Eudes’ attempts to endow his homeland with relics equivalent to or greater than those with which Henry III of England had recently endowed the monks of Westminster, itself a gift made in deliberate competition with Paris and the Sainte-Chapelle. As we shall see, there will be a further and final turn to this particular Anglo-French screw. Before that, however, let us return to Eudes’ letters of 1257 and their proclamation that the pope himself had issued indulgences for the church of Neuvy.
The Indulgences and the Feasts of Relics Besides the two letters issued by Eudes in 1246 and 1257 (below Appendix nos 1–2), the dossier now at Châteauroux contains a number of papal and other indulgences, preserved either as originals or within an inspeximus of 1380 by a vicar-general of Bertrand, archbishop of Bourges. Amongst these, the earliest, dated at Viterbo on 17 June 1257 (below no. 4), surviving as an original in the name of Pope Alexander IV, does indeed offer an unusually generous one year and forty days remission of enjoined penance to all visiting the church at Neuvy, here specifically referred to as a ‘secular church’, on the Sunday before the feast of Saint Denis (9 October) each year. On 6 March 1259 (below no. 5, known only from the inspeximus of 1380), Alexander proclaimed a further 40 days remission for those visiting Neuvy on Good Friday and the three following days, with Neuvy again described here as a ‘secular church’, built in honour of the Holy Sepulchre, housing the relics of many saints. Surviving in two
86 Charansonnet, ‘L’évolution’, pp. 121–22 n. 34, and for Eudes on Becket as martyr to Plantagenet brutality, see Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, p. 32 n. 92; Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, pp. 668–74 no. 7 (Schneyer no. 542), 802–08 no. 29 (Schneyer no. 987), this last partially printed by Pitra, Analecta novissima spicilegii Solesmensis altera continuati, ii, 307–08. 87 Charansonnet, ‘Du Berry en Curie’, pp. 33–35; Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, pp. 662–68 nos 4–6 (Schneyer nos 871–73), 699–709 nos 14–15 (Schneyer nos 887–88), 815–28 nos 31–33 (Schneyer nos 207, 212, 819), 869–75 no. 39 (Schneyer no. 889), 891–93 nos 44–45 (Schneyer nos 1035–36); 895–97 nos 47–48 (Schneyer nos 1040–41); Iozelli, Odo da Châteauroux. 88 Paris, BnF, MS Latin 15947, fol. 51r, whence Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, pp. 670–71 no. 7: ‘Non potuit enim sustinere iniurias quas rex Anglie ecclesie irrogabat […] Vere gallus albus a quo leo Anglie deuictus est et fugatus’, developing various animal metaphors from Proverbs 30. 30–31.
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inspeximuses, of 1296 and 1380, but also registered in the papal chancery, we then have an indulgence of Pope Nicholas IV, issued on 9 February 1291 (below no. 6). This, most generously, offers a year and forty days of remission to all who visit Neuvy each year on 15 June, said to be celebrated at Neuvy as a special feast day of the Holy Sepulchre, and/or on the feasts, or within the octaves of the Nativity, Purification, Annunciation, and Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Surviving in only mutilated form in the Latin inspeximus of 1380, but more fully recorded in a later French translation, we also have letters of Giles archbishop of Bourges, dated 17 April 1296 (‘anno domini millesimo cco. nonagesimo sexto, die martis ante festum sancti ’) advertising special annual blessings for the next three years to potential pilgrims to Neuvy and its relic of the most precious blood, offering 30 days’ indulgence to all bestowing alms upon the church there on days when the blood relic was displayed.89 A number of features stand out from these letters. Those of Eudes, issued in 1257, and of the archbishop of Bourges, forty years later, are the only two specifically to refer to Neuvy’s blood relic, unmentioned in any of the papal indulgences. This is noteworthy, but not in itself an indictment of Neuvy’s claim to possess such a relic. On the contrary, into the eighteenth century and beyond, controversy continued to rage at the papal court and elsewhere over the authenticity of any claim to possess historical relics of Christ’s blood. Whilst some (most notably the Franciscans) were prepared to accept such claims, others (most notably the Dominicans, including Thomas Aquinas) remained reluctant. If Christ had ascended into heaven, they argued, perfect in every part, then how could he have left any fragments of his body behind to decay on earth?90 Although great ingenuity was deployed by those arguing for the authenticity of such relics, popes in general maintained their neutrality. Blood-flows from the mass or from mistreated images attracted regular papal indulgence, as did the churches in which various of the greater historical blood relics were preserved. But it is rare indeed to find relics claiming to be the literal historic blood of Christ specifically honoured by papal indulgence. The only certain exception here, at least before the fifteenth century, seems to have been the Holy Blood of Bruges, indulgenced in 1310 by Pope Clement V.91 Not even in the inscription to the aedicule in which it was displayed in the rotunda at Neuvy was there any direct statement of the relic’s authenticity. Instead, according to what survived the destruction of 1806, this inscription, of the sixteenth century or later, but possibly repeating an earlier form, is said to have read ‘HIC SUNT RELIQUIE DE SEPULCRO DOMINI ET DE LOCO CALVARIE’.92
89 Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166 (Latin version, roughly a third illegible), quoted in Latin but at full length in French by Caillaud, Notice sur le précieux sang, pp. 18, 243–45, with a further French translation (s.xviii) in Châteauroux, AD Indre, G173. 90 Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 82–117, ch. 5. 91 Vincent, The Holy Blood, pp. 131 n. 43, 138 nn. 4–5, also noting a reference in papal letters of 1487 to what was said to have been an earlier licence by John XXI (1276) for the Holy Blood of Hailes, undoubtedly indulgenced by Eugenius IV in August 1438. 92 First reported by Raynal, Histoire du Berry, ii, 229, with further description and image, in PerraultDesaix, Recherches sur Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre, pp. 67–69, 97.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
Eudes’ indulgence of 1246 employs the precise same text, opening ‘Licet is de cuius munere venit’, later used in both of the indulgences of Pope Alexander IV, issued in 1257 and 1259 (below nos 1, 4, 5). A standard papal form, this may nonetheless have been considered peculiarly appropriate for the church at Neuvy, associated both with relics of Christ’s passion and with efforts to recruit for the crusade. ‘Licet is’ is first recorded (although almost certainly not first used) in March 1221, as the incipit to an indulgence of Pope Honorius III for Charlemagne’s church at Aachen.93 It was used again in 1230, in letters of Gregory IX extending to the crusading knights of northern Spain an indulgence equivalent to that they would otherwise have received for fighting in the Holy Land.94 It reappears regularly thereafter, both under Gregory IX and Innocent IV, in indulgences for the Dominicans of Viterbo (1236 and 1244), for the monks of Vézelay (1244), and in March 1245 for the Cistercian abbey of Heilegenkreuz near Vienna, to which the duke of Austria had gifted a spine from the Crown of Thorns sent to him by Louis IX of France.95 In November 1246, only a few months after Eudes employed it for his indulgence at Neuvy, it was used by Innocent IV for the indulgences granted to Louis IX’s Sainte-Chapelle.96 Thereafter it reappears regularly, not least in a series of indulgences issued by Innocent IV and Alexander IV for other religious of the city of Paris.97 As this suggests, besides a desire to associate Neuvy with relics of Christ and thence with the preaching of crusade, Eudes was sensitive to fashion in such things, perhaps hardly surprising given that his letters of 1246, like others of his legatine charters, seem to have been written by a scribe trained in the papal curia, with a neatly pen-decorated initial ‘O’ (for ‘Odo’) and other features more reminiscent of papal than French diplomatic.98 It may well have been Eudes who suggested the reuse of this particular incipit for the pope’s Sainte-Chapelle indulgences of November 1246. Certainly, by this time, the imminent completion of the Sainte-Chapelle would have been one of his more pressing concerns. Thus was Neuvy linked to an even greater monument to Christ’s Passion in the Capetian capital of Paris. When he himself came to consecrate the Sainte-Chapelle, in April 1248, Eudes issued an indulgence in a rather different literary form, opening ‘Deus omnipotens’,
93 Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. by Pressutti, i, 511 no. 3125, and cf. 567 no. 3490, for an unidentified provost and chapter of St Catherine ‘in Witgenstof ’, in the diocese of Passau. 94 Les Registres d’Grégoire IX, ed. by Auvray, i, 338–39 no. 515 (Potthast no. 8630). 95 Potthast, nos 10130, 10484, 11367, 11465, 11586, this later (11 March 1245), printed in full, Urkunden des Cistercienser-stiftes Heiligenkreuz im Wienerwalde, ed. by Weis, i, 109 no. 103 (addressed to the duke and referring to the ‘particula corone dominice quam tibi carissimus in Christo filius noster rex Francie illustris transmisisse dicitur’). 96 Paris, AN, L619 nos 8–9, whence Barbiche, Les Actes pontificaux, i, 227–28 nos 593–94 (Potthast no. 12347; Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, ii, 640 no. 3559). 97 Barbiche, Les Actes pontificaux, i, nos 620 (Saint-Germain, February 1248), 654 (Saint-Maur-desFossés, February 1250), 1006 (Saint-Honoré Paris, 29 March 1259), 1049 (Augustinian hermits of Paris, 6 June 1260). 98 In particular, there are similarities between the Italianite hand of Appendix no. 1 below and Eudes’ surviving originals for Sens (Auxerre, AD Yonne, G133, no. 1, 10 November 1246), Orléans (Paris, AN, L463, no. 51), and the Sainte-Chapelle (Paris, AN, L619, no. 10, 27 May 1248).
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crafted as a miniature sermon.99 Other sermons that he preached on the relics of the Sainte-Chapelle, on this and other occasions, have been noticed by Alexis Charansonnet and Franco Morenzoni, laying conventional but by no means exceptional emphasis on the redemptive capacity of the blood of Christ that flowed at Calvary.100 It was presumably after this ceremony that Eudes came into possession of a thorn from the crown of thorns, later granted as a deathbed bequest to the Dominican convent at Orvieto.101 Meanwhile, the dates both of the consecration of the Sainte-Chapelle and of Eudes’ indulgence for its anniversary seem to have been very carefully selected, the first (26 April 1248) being Quasimodo Sunday (the Sunday after Easter), the second (Wednesday 27 May 1248) the eve of the feast of the Ascension. Exactly a year later, according to one account, it was the feast of Christ’s Ascension (Thursday 13 May 1249) that was chosen for the sailing of Louis, Eudes, and their crusading fleet from Cyprus to Damietta.102 Here we should remember the concern exhibited by Eudes, throughout his legation, both for the feast days of the saints and for the proper observance of the liturgical calendar, so central also to his great sequences of sermons. Even on crusade, the organization of liturgical processions seems to have vied with sermonizing as one of his principal concerns.103
Saint-Denis in Berry: Neuvy’s Liturgical Calendar With this in mind, let us return to the various indulgences issued for Neuvy, here posing a question that seems never before to have been posed. Why do these indulgences show such concern for particular days of the year, including 15 June and the Sunday before the feast of Saint Denis in October, and why did Eudes himself choose Wednesday 13 June 1246 to consecrate Neuvy’s high altar? In his letters of July 1257 announcing his gift of the Holy Blood to Neuvy, Eudes specifies that his relics should henceforth be displayed only on Good Friday and the Sunday before 99 Paris, AN, L619, no. 10, whence the copy in Paris, AN, J155, no. 4, printed Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, iii, 30–31 no. 3666. 100 Charansonnet and Morenzoni, ‘Prêcher sur les reliques de la passion’, pp. 61–98, with various of these sermons themselves edited by Charansonnet, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État’, pp. 681–85 no. 9 (Schneyer no. 856), at p. 684 referring to the Crown of Thorns, True Cross, nails, garment, sepulchre, sponge and lance but not to the Holy Blood; pp. 692–96 no. 12 (Schneyer no. 857); pp. 709–14 no. 16 (Schneyer no. 858), at p. 711 referring to the Crown of Thorns, purple garment, cross, spear and sepulchre, comparing reactions to Christ’s sufferings to those experienced by listeners to the songs sung of Roland, and in a long metaphor derived from the physiology of the human heart, referring to the blood of the Passion specifically at p. 713. 101 Charansonnet and Morenzoni, ‘Prêcher sur les reliques de la passion’, p. 90. 102 Jean Sarrasin, Lettres françaises du xiiie siècle, p. 3 (c. 6 line 5, after 22 days at sea arriving off Damietta on Friday 4 June, c. 7 line 11), confirmed by contemporary letters of Robert Count of Artois (Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, vi, 153) much later contradicted by Joinville who suggests repeated attempts to sail from Limassol to Egypt after 21 May, eventually arriving off Damietta on Thursday 27 May, landing on Friday 28 May: Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, pp. 66–68 cc. 32–33. 103 Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, pp. 80–81, 273, cc. 38, 120.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
the feast of St Denis (9 October) each year. Good Friday, of course, was entirely appropriate for relics associated with Christ’s Passion. The feast day of Saint Denis, patron saint of France, long associated both with the Oriflamme, the battle standard of the Capetian kings, as with the French national battle cry ‘Montjoie Saint-Denis!’, was a suitable date from which to fix the Sunday on which Eudes’ crusading relics might be displayed. This particular Sunday, before the feast of Saint Denis, was also specified in Alexander IV’s indulgence of 17 June 1257 (itself issued on the second Sunday after Trinity, below no. 4), with further confirmation of the Good Friday display of Neuvy’s relics in the indulgence issued by Alexander on 6 March 1259 (the first Thursday in Lent, below no. 5). Even so, the Good Friday ceremony was indulgenced by Alexander with only forty days of remitted penance, as opposed either to the 100 days attached by Eudes to the anniversary of his consecration of Neuvy’s high altar, or the magnificent one year and forty days attached by Pope Alexander to the Sunday before Saint Denis: equivalent to the equally stupendous one year and forty days granted by Eudes and his fellow bishops to those attending the anniversary of the consecration of Louis IX’s Sainte-Chapelle, and only a little short of the indulgence granted by Innocent IV to visitors to Louis’s chapel on the anniversary of its dedication, with a further 100 days in addition, to all who returned there on each day of the following week.104 Finally, in 1291, the Franciscan Pope Nicholas IV offered a further year and forty days remission from penance for all visitors to Neuvy on 15 June, ‘solemnly celebrated as a feast of the Holy Sepulchre in that church named after the same Holy Sepulchre’, or on the feasts and within the octaves of the four principal feasts of the Virgin Mary, issued at Orvieto on Tuesday 9 February 1291 (below no. 6). The building of Orvieto cathedral, it should be noted, had been begun by Urban IV and continued by Nicholas IV, to house the corporal of Bolsena, one of the most famous eucharistic relics of thirteenth-century Europe, supposedly marked with blood during the celebration of a mass, reputed one of the causes of Urban IV’s institution of the feast of Corpus Christi celebrated from 1264 onwards on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.105 It is this indulgence by Nicholas IV that most obviously prompts questions about the dating, both of Neuvy’s feast days and of Eudes’ consecration of the high altar there. In particular, it raises questions over the choice of 15 June as a local feast day of the Holy Sepulchre. If 15 June has any resonance for a modern audience it derives not so much from the saints (feast day of a relatively obscure trio of martyrs, Vitus, Modestus, and Crescentia), but from its significance as an anniversary. It was on 15 June 1215 that King John sealed Magna Carta: a date widely celebrated in English history, albeit in various southeastern European minds eclipsed by the anniversary of
104 Barbiche, Les Actes pontificaux, i, 227–28 nos 593–94; Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, ii, 640 no. 3559; iii, 30–31 no. 3666. 105 Lazzarini, Il Miracolo di Bolsena, citing the later traditions at Orvieto, called into question by Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 176, who suggests that Urban’s feast developed from ideas first circulating at Liège, only in the fourteenth century associated with the supposed miracle of Bolsena. For more recent (and less sceptical) suggestions, see Räsänen, ‘The Memory of St Thomas Aquinas in Orvieto’, pp. 292–95.
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the Battle of Kosovo.106 Everywhere else in the Christian west, the feast of the Holy Sepulchre was celebrated not on 15 June but on 15 July, chosen as the anniversary of Friday 15 July 1099, the day on which the army of the First Crusade claimed to have liberated Jerusalem from its Islamic captors.107 Even within the province of Bourges, it was this date, 15 July, that appeared as the feast of the ‘Liberation of Jerusalem’ in service books and breviaries.108 As recently as 1228, it was presumably this date, 15 July, that was nominated by the lord of Châteauroux, William de Chauvigny, for the annual fair to be held at Neuvy.109 Spreading from the church of Jerusalem after 1149, a litany of readings and prayers was devised to mark this feast.110 Tempting as it might be to suppose that the Neuvy date is a simple error, transposing June for July, we have the irrefutable evidence not just of the copy of Pope Nicholas’s indulgence preserved at Neuvy, but of its official entry into the papal register, where 15 June is clearly specified (below no. 6). As I shall now attempt to demonstrate, there is good reason to trust this date, not least because it meshes so appropriately with that of the principal display and veneration of the Holy Blood at Neuvy, on the Sunday before the feast of Saint Denis. To prove this connection, however, we must travel some distance from Neuvy, both in geography and imagination. To begin with, we might note that by avoiding the more familiar feast of the Holy Sepulchre, on 15 July, the canons of Neuvy may have been striving to distance themselves from their own past, emphasizing their freedom from any dependence upon the mother church in Jerusalem for whose support and endowment they had originally been intended. Where others celebrated the feast of the Holy Sepulchre on 15 July, Neuvy had its own distinctive ceremonies a month earlier. Hence also, no doubt, the reiterated insistence in the address clause to both of the indulgences issued by Alexander IV, as in other papal letters of the 1250s, that these were letters directed ‘to the prior and chapter of the secular church of the Holy Sepulchre at Neuvy’: an address that surely implies deliberate distancing from the Augustinian canons of Jerusalem and their potential claim that Neuvy formed part of their property in the west.111 We might note also that the Neuvy relics were thus displayed on 15 June, almost exactly a fortnight after the blood relics of nearby Déols, with their own distinctive
106 For the liturgical significance of the date 15 June 1215, see Vincent, ‘The Twenty-Five Barons of Magna Carta’, pp. 231–51. 107 John of Wurzburg, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, col. 1081; Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons, pp. 165–91; Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England, p. 28. 108 Leroquais, Les breviaries manuscrits, i, 158 no. 105, 324 no. 188, as elsewhere at Laon and Chartres (ii, 156 no. 303, 307 no. 389), and again at Bourges (iii, 79 no. 527). Cf. Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons, p. 175. 109 Cartulaire des seigneurs de Châteauroux, ed. by Hubert, p. 102 no. 82 (‘in perpetuum annuatim dicte ecclesie nundinas in festo sancti Sepulcri et iura nundinarum illius diei secundum ius et consuetudinem aliarum nundinarum quas habet in crastino resurrectionis dominice’). 110 Ordinaire de l’ordre de Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel, ed. by Zimmerman, p. 368; Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons, pp. 167–79, and Linder, ‘The Liturgy of the Liberation of Jerusalem’, pp. 110–31, at p. 122 suggesting a date for the office 1149 X 1170. 111 Below Appendix nos 4–5; Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de La Roncière, nos 2658–59 (13 February 1257 and 4 July 1258); Châtearoux, AD, G166 (Alexander IV, 12 February 1261).
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
litany on 31 May each year. In a world of pilgrimage and processions, there was sound sense here in devising a sequence of such events. Then there is the peculiar conjunction of a display of relics associated with the feast of Saint Denis (9 October), Eudes’ consecration of the high altar of Neuvy, indulgenced by him on Wednesday 13 June 1246, and the subsequent celebration of 15 June each year as the canons’ patronal feast of the Holy Sepulchre. What link can possibly be discerned? Saint Denis supplies the requisite key to unlock this mystery. The thirteenth of the month was the second Wednesday in June 1246. Three hundred miles north of Neuvy, this same second Wednesday in June had a special significance to the Benedictine monks most closely associated with the cult and legacy of Saint Denis. For those monks, the guardians of Denis’s relics, of the oriflamme, and of the great necropolis of the kings of France, the second Wednesday in June marked the opening of their fair, the Lendit. From time out of mind, this had been held in the fields between Paris and St-Denis, opening on the second Wednesday in June and closing on the eve, some argued the feast itself, of St John the Baptist (24 June), between eleven and sixteen days later.112 We are fortunate here in that we do not need to enter too closely into the controversy over the Lendit and its origins into which so many previous investigators have been drawn. So deeply and darkly have such investigators delved that various of them have claimed to uncover mysteries far greater than any dealt with here. The Lendit, it has been suggested, was a prehistoric affair, older even than Caesar’s conquest of Gaul; a reminder that a tumulus, supposedly known as ‘Montjoie’, lying between Paris and St-Denis, marked one of the sacred sites of the Gallic race: a place of safety and Druidic assembly, hence ‘Montjoie’ from ‘mund-gau’ (protected-land).113 To others, more plausibly but perhaps just as erroneously, the Lendit originated no earlier than 1109 and the reign of Louis VI, its jurisdiction in its earliest years hotly contested between the king, the bishop of Paris, and the abbots of St-Denis.114 As a commercial fair it merely complemented a more local celebration, reported by Abbot Suger from the time of his boyhood, held within the precincts of the abbey, perhaps as an ‘Indictum’ (whence ‘Lendit’) or public display of the abbey’s greater relics. I myself prefer here to defer to the judgement of Rolf Große, the most reliable of recent investigators, who dates this ‘internal’ Lendit no earlier than the 1050s, and who anchors it firmly within the history of display for the passion relics — the Crown of Thorns, and a nail from the cross — that the monks of St-Denis claimed to have received as gifts from Charles the Bald.115 Charles, it was claimed, had himself obtained
112 Levillain, ‘Essai sur les origines du Lendit’, p. 265 n. 1; Lombard-Jourdan, ‘Les Foires de l’abbaye de Saint-Denis’, pp. 325–28, reprinted in Lombard-Jourdan, Saint-Denis: Lieu de mémoire, pp. 144–47. 113 A thesis pursued tirelessly by Anne Lombard-Jourdan, in a series of essays reprinted in her SaintDenis: Lieu de mémoire, esp. pp. 11–12, 20–21, 35–39, 41, 100–01, and at even greater length in her ‘Montjoie et Saint Denis!’. 114 Levillain, ‘Essai sur les origines du Lendit’, pp. 241–76; Levillain, ‘Études sur l’abbaye de Saint-Denis à l’époque mérovingienne’, pp. 5–65, 264–300. 115 Here following the claims of the so-called ‘Descriptio clavi et corone Domini’ (BHL 1587), for the various editions of which, see Große, ‘Reliques du Christ et foire de Saint-Denis’, pp. 357–75 esp. pp. 358– 59 n. 7, and for the ‘internal Lendit’, Große, ‘Reliques du Christ et foire de Saint-Denis’, pp. 368–71.
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them from Aachen where they had been deposited by his grandfather, Charlemagne, as spoils from Charlemagne’s visits to Constantinople and Jerusalem.116 No matter that Charlemagne’s proto-crusade to the East was pure invention, or that there there is no reason to believe much else that the monks of St-Denis claimed about their connections to Charlemagne, to Charles the Bald, or indeed to the Passion relics of Christ.117 It remains very likely that in the 1050s, quite possibly on the second Wednesday of June 1053 (9 June), the monks of St-Denis first publicly displayed their relics, including the nail and the Crown of Thorns, and that this internal ‘Lendit’ was subsequently associated with an external fair, also opening on the second Wednesday in June, not certainly recorded until the 1120s, but undoubtedly in existence by 1124 when jurisdiction over it was conferred upon the monks of St-Denis by King Louis VI.118 Both the display of relics and the fair thereafter achieved fame as high-holidays in the vicinity of Paris. The Abbey Church of Saint-Denis was meanwhile all the more deeply embedded in Capetian self-perception not only as a royal necropolis but as a result of the associations between the supposedly Greek-speaking Saint Denis and the affairs of the eastern church into which Capetian kings were drawn by their crusading ventures from the 1090s onwards. It was thus from the Abbey Church of St-Denis that Louis VII departed for the Second Crusade on 8 June 1147 (the feast of Pentecost), three days before the opening of the Lendit fair whose fame is reported already to have drawn large crowds, and following a ceremony conducted in the presence of the pope, Eugenius III.119 From the monks of St-Denis, on 8 June, Louis acquired not only the oriflamme or sacred banner of the Franks, but a series of companions, including Eudes or Odo of Deuil, chief chronicler of the Second Crusade and quite possibly a Greek-speaker himself, using the cult of Saint Denis as a common ground on which to deal in the East with the often tricky diplomatic relations between Louis and Byzantium.120 In 1190, likewise before setting out for crusade, Philip Augustus participated in an elaborate ceremonial at St-Denis on the feast day of Saint John the Baptist (24 June) marking the closure of the Lendit. Formally requesting licence to set out for his adventure, he received the pilgrim’s scrip and staff from his uncle, the papal legate William Archbishop of Reims, together with two great banners ‘decently marked with golden crosses’ and blessing from the abbey’s relics, most notably the nail, the Crown of Thorns, and the arm of Saint Simeon.121 By the time that Eudes of Châteauroux first visited Paris in the 1220s, the Lendit fair of St-Denis was at least a century old, its origins already shrouded in myth, but
116 Große, ‘Reliques du Christ et foire de Saint-Denis’, pp. 359–60. 117 For recent investigation of the myths of Charlemagne’s ‘crusade’ and its influence over later crusading ventures from the 1090s onwards, see Gabriele, An Empire of Memory. 118 Große, ‘Reliques du Christ et foire de Saint-Denis’, pp. 364, 366–75. 119 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem, ed. by Berry, pp. 14–19; Luchaire, Études sur les actes de Louis VII, pp. 169–70 nos 218–19, noting visits to St-Denis on both Easter Sunday (20 April) and Whit Sunday (8 June) 1147. 120 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem, ed. by Berry, pp. 66–69. 121 Rigord, in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xvii, 29–30.
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long associated with Saint Denis of France, with the idea of Charlemagne’s crusade to the East, with the display of Passion relics, said to have been acquired by Charlemagne in person, and thereafter with the crusading ventures of Charlemagne’s successors, Louis VII and Philip Augustus. Eudes, who preached many times on the theme of Saint Denis, with at least a dozen such sermons surviving from his collection ‘de sanctis’ assembled before 1256, would have been entirely familiar with this chain of associations.122 His Saint Denis sermons are for the most part conventional affairs, albeit placing special emphasis upon the martyr’s bloodshedding. In one such sermon, however, glossing 2 Samuel 23.16 (‘The three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate …’), Eudes interprets Bethlehem, once known as Ephrath (alias Effrata), as Gaul, and its well or cistern as the city of Paris. Eprath itself, meaning ‘wisdom’, ‘strength’, or ‘religion’, he accepts as a suitable figure for Gaul, itself a ‘bakehouse’ (domus panis) in which the bread of doctrine is formed and cooked, by which the whole world is fed. A ‘place of refreshment’, it is defined by the probity of its knighthood and people: ‘for when ruin threatens any part of the church, from Gaul are sent those who may bring refreshment’, supplying means to oppose ‘pagans and heretics’. Paris itself, the gateway to Gaul, consecrated by the martyrdom of Denis and his companions, is a suitable place in which Christ might draw from a well.123 Here we find an intriguing conjunction between the cult of Denis, the idea of Paris as a centre from which
122 Schneyer, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit, iv, 453–54 nos 727–38, preached on a variety of scriptural texts including no. 731 (‘Fortis in bello’) and no. 732 (‘Effuderunt sanguinem eorum’), all twelve surviving only in the version of this collection now Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale/Médiathèque MS 203, fols 128–48, missing from the truncated versions of this same collection now Paris, BnF, MS Latin 15947 (St Andrew to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, 30 November to 15 August, from Eudes’ own scriptorium) and its longer s.xiv copy, now Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Palatina Latina 452 (St Andrew to Cosmas and Damianus, 30 November to 27 September). For the mss. and the date of this, the first recension of Eudes’ sermons, see Charansonnet, ‘L’évolution de la prédication’, pp. 113–14, 117–19. 123 Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale/Médiathèque, MS 203, fols 131r–133v (Schneyer no. 729), esp. fols 132v–133v: ‘Bethleem, que quondam appellabatur Effrata, Galliam designat. Bethleem domus panis vel refectionis, Effrata speculum vel fertilis vel videns furorem. Per cisternam, Parisius que undecumque homines venientes recipit. Gallia dicitur Bethleem vel Effrata propter tria que habundant in Gallia: scientia, strenuitas, religio. Gallia est domus panis quia in ipsa quasi in pistorio formatur panis doctrine et decoquitur quo pascitur uniuersus orbis […]. Item dicitur domus refectionis propter probitatem milicie et populi. Quando enim imminet ruinam in ecclesia ex aliqua parte, mittuntur ex Gallia qui reficiant, unde milicie Gallie pot(est) dici illud Ys(i)a LVIIIo. Vocabulis edificator sepium auertens semitas iniquitatum obstruunt enim viam hereticis et paganis. Bene ergo per Bethleem Gallia designatur: predicta tria plantauerunt in pat(ri)a ista beatus Dyonisius et socii eius predicando religiose viuendo pro veritate usque ad mortem decertando. Per cisternam Parisius cuius salutem sitiebat Cristus preuidens Deus quanta utilitas ex h(oc) uniuersali ecclesie proueniret ex illo, enim tempore concursus erat ad ciuitatem istam undique populorum. H(ec) cisterna iuxta portam, quia per Parisius habunt ingressum ad totam regionem illam, ea enim conuersa cum ibi esset caput erroris apparuit ingressus ad omnes alios […] et specialiter ciuitatis Parisien(sis) domino offerret et afferret […] quia beatus Dyonisius ciuitati Parisien’ transitum diluuii et pacem cum D(e) o denunciauit per doctrinam suam, per miraculorum operacionem et passionem saluarat enim regionem illam’.
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doctrinal truth might be disseminated, and of France itself as the source of those knights dispatched to oppose heretics and pagans, here clearly thinking of crusaders such as those recruited by Eudes to the army of Louis IX. And so we return to Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre. What better combination of symbols and ideas could Eudes have deployed in advertising the cult of relics there than to link his preaching to themes associated with the Abbey of St-Denis, so closely woven into the fabric of Capetian court culture? Dedicating Neuvy’s high altar on the second Wednesday of June 1246, he would have been able to anchor his celebrations in the cult of Saint Denis, in the sacral connections between Denis, relics of Christ’s Passion, the continuities between Charlemagne and Capetian crusading, and the wider concept of ‘Francia’ and the French themselves as a most Christian nation. He did so amidst preaching for the crusade, and with other even greater or more abundant Passion relics awaiting display in Paris, with deliberate intent to link Neuvy, the crusading plans of Louis IX, and the fate of the Holy Land. As early as September 1245, at Eudes’ bidding, the Cistercian order had agreed that special prayers be said for the success of Louis and his crusade, with the entire congregation at mass prostrating themselves after the Lord’s Prayer and reciting in low voices Psalm 78 (‘Deus venerunt gentes’), with its lament against the occupation and pollution of Jerusalem, the shedding of blood like water around the city, this blood of the Lord’s servants crying out for judgement.124 In June 1246, the consecration of Neuvy’s high altar supplied a foretaste of what Eudes was to accomplish on an even grander scale, two years later, with his consecration of the Sainte-Chapelle, linking crusade, relics, and the destiny of the Franks as God’s chosen people to a far more ancient history grounded in Jerusalem and the bloodshedding of Christ’s Passion. Thereafter, once again seeking to enhance the reputation of the church of Neuvy in 1257, Eudes endowed it with its own precious collection of relics brought back from crusade, including Christ’s blood, in future to be commemorated both on the Sunday before the feast day of Saint Denis, and on 15 June. This latter date was perhaps chosen as a means of fixing what would otherwise have been an inconveniently moveable feast, calculated originally from the opening day of the St-Denis Lendit on which Eudes had first chosen to indulgence Neuvy’s high altar, eleven years before. The date of Easter, we should note, was the same in both 1246 and 1257, so that the liturgical calendars for these two years, so crucial in Eudes’ patronage at Neuvy, were exactly aligned. In both years, the Sunday before the feast of Saint Denis fell on the same date, 7 October, the 18th Sunday in Trinity. Both 15 June and 7 October, it should be noted, fell within the season when roads were still passable and large numbers of pilgrims might be expected to be travelling both to and from the shrine of Saint James at Compostela (principal feast day 25 July). In a similar way, the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris advertised its own series of new feasts from the 1240s onwards as a means of enhancing its appeal to pilgrims, including 11 August (the Feast of the Crown of Thorns), 14 and 21 September (the Feast and
124 Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis, ed. by Canivez, ii, 289.
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Octave of the Exaltation of the Cross), 30 September (its own feast of relics), and 26 April (the anniversary of the chapel’s dedication).125 I have argued elsewhere that no one seeking to explore events of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries should do so without a liturgical calendar close to hand.126 Only thus can we detect the connection between Louis IX’s crusade, the Passion relics of the Sainte-Chapelle, and the cult of Saint Denis at St-Denis. It had been on or near to the feast of Saint Denis in 1245 that Eudes had first appeared as papal legate to France, before a council specially summoned by Louis IX.127 On 12 June 1248, the Friday after Pentecost, and two days after the opening of the Lendit, following the tradition of both his grandfather and great-grandfather, Louis rode out to St-Denis from Paris, there to collect the oriflamme and blessing from the legate Eudes as a prelude to their departure via the valleys of the Seine, Yonne, and Rhône, for Aigues-Mortes and the East.128 Without accepting a word of what has has been written about ‘Montjoie’ as an ancient location outside St-Denis, let alone as a prehistoric Gallic refuge, there is no doubt that the battle cry ‘Montjoie’ was already in existence by the time of the Chanson de Roland, and that long before Eudes of Châteauroux first came to Paris it had been extended to ‘Montjoie St-Denis!’129 Sailing from Aigues-Mortes in August 1248, King Louis and Eudes as legate would have boarded the king’s own ship, itself named the ‘Montjoie’.130 It was from this same ‘Montjoie’ that the king disembarked first at Cyprus then at Damietta in June 1249, in the latter case with the king and legate descending into a smaller landing craft (a Norman cog) from which Louis himself leaped into the waves in pursuit of ‘the banner of Saint Denis’ (presumably the oriflamme), with Eudes immediately behind him carrying Christ’s Cross (presumably that same relic so recently acquired for the Sainte-Chapelle). No doubt in their excitement both Louis and Eudes might have been heard to shout
125 Charansonnet and Morenzoni, ‘Prêcher sur les reliques de la passion’, p. 82 n. 81 (where there is confusion over a feast attributed to 3 August, itself, as pointed out to me by Cecilia Gaposchkin, the outcome of misreading by Antoine Frolow of Gérard de Saint-Quentin’s account of the institution of the 11 August feast); Leroquais, Les Bréviaires manuscrits, iii, 244 no. 617; Leroquais, Les Psautiers manuscits latins des bibliothèques publiques de France, ii, 102–03 no. 333; Gaposchkin, ‘Louis IX, Heraclius, and the True Cross at the Sainte-Chapelle’, in the present volume. For the anniversary of the dedication, see Eudes’ letters of 27 May 1248 (Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, iii, 30–31 no. 3666), and those of the other clergy attending in April 1248: Paris, AN, L619, no. 11. For the office of 11 August, see Gaposchkin, ‘Between Historical Narration and Liturgical Celebrations’, pp. 91–145. 126 Vincent, ‘An Inventory of Gifts to King Henry III’, p. 131, and for the wider implications here, beginning with the classic study by Schaller, ‘Der heilige Tag als Termin mittelalterlicher Staatsakte’, pp. 1–24, see Dale, Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship, and literature there cited. 127 Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xx, 352, and Table 1 below. 128 Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxiii, 144, and cf. Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 109–10; Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxi, 113–14, 165, 696, 766; xxii, 311–12, 331–32; Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, v, 22–25. 129 Lombard-Jourdan, ‘Montjoie et Saint Denis!’, pp. 57–63; Lombard-Jourdan, Saint-Denis lieu de mémoire, pp. 50–51, citing as the first appearance of ‘Montjoie et Saint-Denis!’ the Couronnement de Louis (c. 1130s), perhaps reflecting the influence of Abbot Suger. 130 Jean Sarrasin, Lettres françaises du xiiie siècle, p. 1 c. 2 line 10.
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out what by this time was assumed to be Charlemagne’s own battle cry: ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’131 The story I have sought to tell here has proved both long and twisting. I hope nonetheless that it may be deemed appropriate for a dear friend who has done so much to improve understanding of relics and bodily fragmentation, of the history and myths of St-Denis, as of Capetian monarchy more generally. The relics of Neuvy were never to rival the fame to those either of St-Denis or the Sainte-Chapelle. Visiting Neuvy in 1639, on the feast day of St Mary Magdalene (22 July), the abbé Michel de Marolles considered himself honoured to be present at one of the solemn expositions of the Holy Blood. The relic itself he describes as resembling three small droplets, joining and separating from one another as red liquid within their glass reliquary. Later that day, twice invited to handle the relic, the sceptic Marolles observed that it was no longer liquified but ‘d’un tanné obscur et dur’. Rather than three equal droplets, it now took the form of four small and unevenly shaped lumps (‘grains mal polis de grosseurs differentes’).132 Unappealing as this description may seem, following the Revolution of 1789, it perhaps explains the relic’s survival, allowing the sacristan and vicar of Neuvy to substitute what are described variously as three pips from a pear (‘pépins de poire’), or as three small lumps of cooked fruit rolled in ashes (‘boules […] de pelures de fruits cuits et roulées ensuite dans la cendre’).133 The relic itself, described as resembling greyish-brown tear-drops a little smaller than rose-hips (‘baies d’eglantier […] brungrisâtre’), is said thus to have been saved from destruction. It remains an object of devotion, with special processions still celebrated each year on Easter Monday, and into the 1920s on the feast day of Saint Denis. As late as 1918, it was reportedly still working miracles.134 This more recent history lies beyond our concern. Even so, it serves as an ongoing reminder of themes and liturgical practices that Eudes of Châteauroux first sought to introduce both at Neuvy and more widely throughout Francia, as long ago as the 1240s. Above all, it should remind us that larger stories can sprout from humble beginnings, sometimes allowing us to view the world, if not in a grain of sand, then in what to others can appear as insignificant as a few rose-hips or pips from a pear.
131 Jean Sarrasin, Lettres françaises du xiiie siècle, pp. 4–5, and cf. Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, p. 72 c. 35; Robert of Artois, in Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, vi, 152–54. 132 Michel de Marolles, Memoires, pp. 122–23. 133 Piétu, Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, pp. 155, 159, 164–73; Berducat, Mémoire et images, p. 10. 134 Piétu, Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, esp. pp. 143–45, 197, 207–10, and at pp. 225–30 Piétu’s own song in 20 verses, with music, ‘Salut Neuvy, Jérusalem de France’, to be sung on Easter Monday and the feast of Saint Denis. More recently still, see the periodical publication promoted from Neuvy, La Voix du Sang, of which there is an incomplete run in the BnF.
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Appendix 1. Indulgence of 100 days offered by Eudes bishop of Tusculum, papal legate, to those who are truly penitent and confessed and who attend with due devotion each year during the eight days around the anniversary of the consecration of the high altar of the church of Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, consecrated by Eudes in honour of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Cross, the Holy Sepulchre and St James the Apostle. Neuvy, 13 June 1246 A = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166. Endorsed: Littera cardinalis super indulgencia in festo beati Bar… (s.xiii/xiv); long abstract in French (s.xviii); 43 (s.xviii). Approx. 250 X 214 + 23 mm. Sealed sur double queue, four holes, cords and seal now missing. Finely decorated initial O, with abundant use of the tittle. Written throughout in a practised, Italianite hand. B = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, in an inspeximus by the vicar-general of the archbishop of Bourges, 25 October 1380. C = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G173, French translation, s.xviii. Printed (from A) Caillaud, Notice sur le précieux sang, p. 267, whence (French translation) A. Piétu, Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, pp. 94–95.
Odo miseratione divin(a) Tusculanus episcopus apostolice sedis legatus dilectis in Cristo .. priori et capitulo sancti Sepulcri de Novovico Bituricen(sis) dioc(esis) salutem in domino. Licet is de cuius munere venit ut sibi a fidelibus suis digne ac laudabiliter serviatur de habundantia pietatis sue que merita supplicum excedit et vota bene servientibus multo maiora retribuat quam valeant promereri, nichilominus tamen desiderantes reddere Domino populum acceptabilem, fideles Cristi ad complacendum ei quasi quibusdam illectivis muneribus, indulgentiis scilicet et remissionibus invitamus, ut ex inde reddantur divine gratie aptiores. Cupientes igitur ut ecclesia vestra congruis honoribus frequentetur, omnibus vere penitentibus et confessis qui ecclesiam ipsam in anniversario consecrationis maioris altaris eiusdem quod nos in honore sancte et individue Trinitatis, patris et filii et spiritus sancti, victoriosissime crucis, sepulcri dominici et sancti Iacobi apostoli consecravim(us), per tres dies ante diem consecrationis et usque ad quatuor dies inmediate sequentes devote ac venerabiliter visitabunt, de omnipotentis Dei misericordia et beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolorum eius et qua fungimur auctoritate confisi, centum dies de iniunctis sibi penitentiis misericorditer relaxamus, quam indulgentiam Cristi fidelibus per regnum Francie constitutis dumtaxat volumus profuturam. Dat’ apud Novumvicum, Id(us) Iunii, anno domini moccoxlo sexto. 2. Notification by Eudes bishop of Tusculum of his award of relics to the church of Neuvy-St-Sépulcre. Urging the veneration of holy relics in light of the examples set out in the Old Testament, in the Psalms, in the stories of Samson, of the twelve prophets and of the bones of Elisha, and urging especially the merits of relics of Christ, the saint of saints; hoping to honour his homeland, and to reward the devotion of those faithful men who founded the church of Neuvy as a permanent memorial to Christ’s passion and death, Bishop Eudes
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has sent the church a relic of the Holy Sepulchre, and, most precious of all, a portion of the blood of Christ. He urges the prior and chapter of Neuvy to honour this treasure, asking that it be displayed only on Good Friday and the Sunday before the feast of St Denis (9 October), for which last day Eudes has obtained an indulgence from the pope. The relics were acquired by Eudes in the Holy Land as a great favour, whilst he was serving as papal legate there. He asks that the prior and chapter remember him in their prayers; that they have a copy of these present letters inscribed in their books to be read out each year on the Sunday before St Denis (9 October), and that, after his death, they celebrate his obit. Viterbo, July 1257 B = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, in an inspeximus by the vicar-general of the archbishop of Bourges, 25 October 1380. Now much mutilated with portions missing on the left hand side. C = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G173, French translation, s.xviii. Printed (from B) Caillaud, Notice sur le précieux sang, pp. 265–66, whence (French translation) Piétu, Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, pp. 121–25; La Voix du sang, pp. 4–6. Readings from the damaged portions supplied below from Caillaud within brackets .
Odo miseratione divina Tusculan(us) episcopus dilectis in Cristo priori et capitulo sancti Sepulcri de Novo Vico Bocesis salutem. Eta Divino inherere quanto honori haberi debeant et quanta reverentia venerari loca Domino consecrata que templa vel basilice nuncupa(n)tssime demonstratur ex serie Novi ti et ex sacrorum canonum institutis. Nulli (er) go tenenti fid(em) catholicam venire debet in dubium quin animata templa Dei b quibus dicit apostolus: Templum Dei us Dei habitat in vobis1, quanto sunt templis mortuis sanctiora, tanto debent amplius venerari, et si enim mortui c corporaliter, morte in conspectu domini preciosa p(et)ua Deo, qui est vita et lux, inseperabiliter asistentis, fontes nob(is) salutis effecti et promptuaria, quod probant multiformia beneficia que de ipsorum iugiter et etiam miracula que ad eorum memorias coruscare noscuntur. Si enim de pet(ra) aquarum habunda(n)cia nutu divino in heremo data fuit2, et ex maxilla aquam Sampsoni prebuit sitienti3, nequaquam debet esse incredibile quin ossa et sanctorum reliquie de locis suis pululentd, ut dicitur de ossibus duodecim prophetarum4, l(ur)ima beneficia largiunture, ut iam non reputentur mortui set viventes. Si enim cadaver hominis mortui ossa Helisei contingens vivificatum est5, multo veniunt per sanctorum reliquias tactuf fidei mediante. Si (er)go sanctorum reliquie tantam h(abe)nt virtute(m) ut ipsa miracula protestantg, et ideo debeth eis cultus honorificiusj mo sine omni comparatione, reliquie sancti sanctorum, ksine quo nullus sanctus est et a quo omnes sancti accipiunt sanctitatemk, debent pre omnibus aliis reliquiis venerari. natale ut possumus honorare et contra hostes visibiles et invisibiles presidium inestimabile ministrare, attendentes etiam devocionem fidelium qui, ut dominicam passionem et mortem, ecclesiam vestram in honore sepulcri dominici fundaverunt, pro re similitudinem amplectentes affectionem quam habebant ad
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
sepulcrum mittimus vob(is) de lapide sepulcri domini gloriosi ut veritas ymagini societur et, quod omnibus reliquiis preciosius est, mittimus vobis de precio(si)ssimol sanguine sumus a peccatis nostris atque loti. Honoretis ergo tantum thesaur(um) et servetis sollicite, quia incomparabilis est omni mauro et lapidi preciosom, et adiuramus vos ut nisi in sancto die Parescevesn et Dominica proxima ante festum beati Dyonisii in qua obp reverentiam sanctarum reliquiarum nos a domino nostro summoq pontifice prout in litteris papalibus pleniusr continetur. Has ergo sanctas reliquias pro magno munere accepimus in Terra Sancta dum ibidem legat(ionis) officio funge vestris, et exemplar huius littere in libris vestris faciatis conscribi et in Dominica antedicta loco unius lectionis vel duarum faciatis legi ut discant uem iste sanctissime reliquie ad vestram ecclesiam pervenerunt, et rogamus quatinuss intuitu pietatist post mortem nostram unum anniversarium celebretis. Datum LmoVIIo, mense Iulio. 1
1. Corin. 3. 16
2 Ps. 77. 15–16
3 Judges 15. 19
4 Ecclesiasticus 49. 12 5 4 Reg. 13. 20–1
a Et B, not in Caillaud b de not in B/Caillaud, supplied c sunt not in B, supplied by Caillaud d pullulent Caillaud e largiantur Caillaud f actu Caillaud g testantur Caillaud h debetur Caillaud j honorificus Caillaud k-k not in Caillaud l preciossimo B, pretiosissimo supplied by Caillaud m–m auro et lapide precioso B, auro argento et lapidi pretioso Caillaud, auro et lapidi precioso supplied n Parasceves Caillaud p ab Caillaud q summo B, sanctissimo Caillaud r plenius followed by a long erasure B s q(ua)t(inus) B, quanto Caillaud t pietatis inserted over the line B
3. Notification by Eudes bishop of Tusculum that, whilst legate in the Holy Land, he acquired portions of the Holy Sepulchre and relics of the saints from the prince of Antioch and other worthy persons, at considerable expense. Afterwards he granted these relics to his brother, Hugh chancellor of Tours. He asks that these relics be duly venerated, recommending them to those of the faithful who are unable to visit the Holy Sepulchre or to see with their own eyes those places stained with the blood of Christ or those other places where the saints lie buried. Viterbo, 8 November 1257 B = Paris, AN, LL46 (Cartulary of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés), fol. 141r, in an undated inspeximus by the official of the court of Tours, s.xiii ex. C = Paris, BnF, MS Latin 5416, p. 99, copy from B by Roger Gaignières, s.xvii/xviii. D = Paris, BnF, MS Baluze 74, fol. 144r-v, copy from B by Étienne Baluze, s.xvii. Printed (from B) Duchesne, Histoire de tous les cardinaux françois de naissance, ii, 183.
Odo miseratione diuina Tuscul(anus) episcopus omnibus present(es) litteras inspectur(is) salutem in domino sempit(ernam) et sincere vinculum caritatis. Ne
17 5
176
n icho l a s v i n c e n t
certitudo rerum lapsu temporis a memoria hominum deleatur sed po(tius) transmittatur ad posteros litterarum apicibus commendatur, hinc est quod nos tenore presentium notum fieri volumus tam present(ibus) quam futur(is) quod cum nos in terra sancta legationis officio fungeremur, a principe Antiochie et a quibusdam aliis personis fidedignis quasdam particulas dominici sepulcri et etiam reliquias sanctorum, litteris annotatas, pro magno dono recepimus, et eas postmodum dedimus karissimo fratri nostro magistro Hug(on)i cancellario Tur’, vos rogantes et hortantes in domino ut reliquias antedictas in honore condigno et reverentia habeatis, et si vobis desuper non est datum sepulchrum dominicum visitare et visere loca sanctissimo Cristi sanguine madefacta necnon et alia loca in quibus sanctorum corpora sunt sepulta eorumdem nominibus insignata, saltem has particulas immo magnas reliquias honorare ut decet studeatis ut virtute passionis dominice et meritis sanctorum quorum reliquias pro amore amplectimini ad sanctorum consortia mereamini peruenire. Dat’ Viterbii anno domini M.CC.Lmo.VIIo, vi. Id(us) Nouembris, pontificatus domini Alexandri iiii. anno iiio. 4. Indulgence of Pope Alexander IV, issued at the petition of the prior and chapter of Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, offering one year and forty days’ remission from enjoined penance to those who are penitent and confessed and who visit the church of Neuvy each year on the Sunday before the feast of St Denis. Viterbo, 17 June 1257 A = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, original papal letters. Endorsed: Mandragoro (s.xiii, papal chancery endorsement, placed at the top centre of the document, signifying the impetrator or ‘procurator’ of the letters, here as Neuvy’s agent at the papal court, not recorded as ‘procurator’ elsewhere, although cf. Barbiche, Actes pontificaux originaux, i, 188 no. 488, 458, for ‘Ma d(e) Ar’, proctor for the Templars in April 1244); littera indulgent(ie) ius anni et cent(um) dies (sic) ……… Beati Dion(isii) (s.xiii/xiv); Indulgences accordees par le pape Alexandre quatre 33 liasse (s.xvii). Approx. 293 × 218 + 35 mm. Sealed sur double queue, lead bulla of Alexander IV on red and gold cords through two holes. Badly damp damaged with loss of the far right-hand side and other lettering throughout. On the outside left of the fold: annus et quadraginta dies indulgent(ie) in dominica precedenti festum sancti Dyonisii (s.xiv/xv). B = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, in an inspeximus by the vicar-general of the archbishop of Bourges, 25 October 1380. C = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G173, French translation here dated July 1257, s.xviii. Printed (from A) Caillaud, Notice sur le précieux sang, p. 268, and cf. pp. 97–98 for evidence of the survival of the original as late as 21 April 1621 and 15 October 1734. Here printed from A, with damaged portions supplied in brackets from B, noting variants from Caillaud.
Alexander episcopus servus servorum Dei dilectis filiis .. priori et capitulo secularis ecclesie sancti Sepulc de Novovico Bituricen’a dioc(esis) salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Licet is de cuius munere venit ut sibi a fidelibus suis digne ac abiliter serviatur, de habundantiab pietatis sue que merita supplicum excedit et vota bene servientibus multo maiora tribuat quam valeant promereri, nich(il)ominus desantes reddere Domino populum acceptabilem, fideles Cristi ad complacendum ei quasi quibusdam illectivis prs indulgeicet et remissionibus,
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
invitamus ut exinde reddantur divine gratie apt. Ccu continebat, ad ecclesiam vestram proxima Donica precedenti fes sancti Dioi om habpc ecclesiam accedat populid multitudo, noientes ut bus fretet fidel Cristi eo libentius veniant ad eandem quo saluno celtos, omnibus vere penitentibus et confessis qui prefatam ecclesiam eadem die Dominica venerabiliter annis singulis isitav(erint) h, de omn misericordia et beatorumj Petri et Pauli apostolorum auctoritat quadraginta dies sibi penitentiis misercorditer relaxamus. Dat’ Viterbii xv. k(a)l’ ii pontificatus nostri anno tercio. a Bituricensis Caillaud
b abundantia Caillaud c ipsam AB, predictam Caillaud e nos AB, not in Caillaud f salubriter AB, salutari Caillaud g senserint Caillaud h visitarint B j beatorum repeated B k unum B, not in Caillaud d populus B
5. Indulgence of Pope Alexander IV for the church Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, built in honour of the Holy Sepulchre and supplied with the relics of many saints, offering forty days’ remission from enjoined penance to those who are penitent and confessed and who visit the church of Neuvy each year on Good Friday or the three following days. Anagni, 6 March 1259 B = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, in an inspeximus by the vicar-general of the archbishop of Bourges, 25 October 1380. Damaged and partly illegible. Printed (from B) Caillaud, Notice sur le précieux sang, p. 269. Here pd from B, supplying passages now illegible from Caillaud within brackets .
Alexander episcopus servus servorum Dei dilectis filiis priori et capitulo secularis ecclesie sancti Sepulcri de Novo Vico salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Licet is de cuius munere venit ut sibi a fidelibus suis digne ac laudabiliter serviatur, de habundantiaa pietatis sue que merita supplicum excedit et vota bene servientibus multo maiora retribuat quam valeant promereri, nichilominus tamen cupientes Domino reddere populum acceptabilem, Cristib fideles ad complacendum eic quasi quibusdam illectivis premiis indulgentiis scilicet et remissionibus, vitamus ut exinde reddantur divine gratie aptiores. Cupientes igitur ecclesia vestra in honored sancti Sepulcri dominicie constructa ob reverentiam Ihesu Cristi et multorum nctorum quorum in eadem ecclesia reliquie sicut accepimus requiescunt congruis honoribus frequentetur, omnibus vere penitentibus et confessis qui ecclesiam ipsam in dieescevesf et in tribus diebus sequentibus venerabiliter visitaverint annuatim, de omnipotentis Dei misericordia et beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolorum eius auctoritate confisi, quadraginta dies de iniuncta eis penitentia misericorditer relaxamus. Datum Anagnie ii. Non’ Marcii pontificatus nostri anno quinto. d
a abundantia Caillaud b Cristi not in Caillaud c et B, ei supplied by Caillaud honorem Caillaud e dominici not in Caillaud f Parasceves Caillaud
17 7
1 78
n icho l a s v i n c e n t
6. Indulgence of Pope Nicholas IV, offering one year and forty days’ remission from enjoined penance to those who are penitent and confessed and who visit the church of Neuvy-St-Sépulcre each year on 15 June, the feast of the Holy Sepulchre, and at the feasts of the Nativity, Purification, Annunciation and Assumption of the Virgin Mary or on the eight days following these feasts. Orvieto, 9 February 1291 B = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G165, in an inspeximus by the official of the court of Bourges, 4 July 1296 (seen in 1994 and again in 2000, but not found when I visited the AD most recently in March 2020). C = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166, in an inspeximus by the vicar-general of the archbishop of Bourges, 25 October 1380. Damaged and partly illegible. D = Rome, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, MS Reg. Vat. 45 (Register of Nicholas IV year 3), fol. 147v c. 730, registered 1291. E = Châteauroux, AD Indre, G173, French translation, s.xviii. Pd (from B) Caillaud, Notice sur le précieux sang, p. 270, whence (French translation) A. Piétu, Neuvy-St-Sépulcre, pp. 180–82; (from D) Les Registres de Nicolas IV, ed. by Langlois, i, 613b no. 4198.
Nicholaus episcopus servus servorum Dei universis Cristi fidelibus presentes litteras inspecturis salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Vite perennisa gloria qua mira benignitas conditoris omnium beatam coronat aciem civium supernorum a redemptis precio sanguinis fusi de precioso corpore redemptoris meritorum debetb acquiric virtute dinter que esse pregranded dignoscitur quode ubique sed precipue in sanctorum ecclesiis maiestas altissimi collaudetur. Cupientes igitur ut ecclesia sancti Sepulcrif de Novo Vico Bitur’g dyoc(esis) congruis honoribus frequentetur, omnibus vere penitentibus et confessis qui ecclesiam ipsam in die xvii. kal’ Iulii qua festum sancti Sepulcri in dicta ecclesia eiusdem sancti Sepulcri vocabulo insignita solenniter celebratur, necnon et nativitatis, purificationis, annunciationis et assumptionis beate Marie virginis festivitatibus et per octo dies festivitates ipsas immediate sequentes hannis singulis venerabiliter visitaverintj, de omnipotentis Dei misericordia etk beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolorum eius auctoritate confisi unum annum et quadraginta dies de iniunctis eis penitentiis misericorditer relaxamus. Datum apud Urbemveteremh v. Id(us) Februar(ii) pontificatus nostri anno tercio. a perhennis C b B inserts acquil’ cancelled c acquiri BC, acquiriri Caillaud d–d inter que esse pregrainde B, nostre quo illud esse pregrande C, interna que esse Caillaud e quod BC, per Caillaud f Sepulceri B, Sepulcri C/Caillaud g Bituricen’ C, Bituricensis Caillaud h-h not in C j visitarint B, visitaverint supplied by Caillaud k et not in Caillaud.
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre Table 5.1. An Outline Itinerary of Eudes of Châteauroux as Legate to France 1245–1248. With the assistance of Jean-François Nieus and Emilie Mineo.
1245 August
Lyons-France
October 9 × 16 Paris October 23
Paris
November 2
Pontoise
November 10
Sens
November 30
Cluny
December 8
?Mâcon
January
Paris
January 26
Prémontré
February 16
Meaux
March 17
Paris
Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xx, 352 (sent as legate) Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xx, 352 (attends royal council at Paris within the octaves of the feast of St Denis) Paris, AN, L463 nos 50A*, 50B*; Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, iii, 228–29 no. 306 (commands residence by chanter and succentor) Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. by Guérard, ii, 404–06 no. 1 (statutes for Notre-Dame following visitation) Auxerre, AD Yonne, G133*, whence Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 1078–80, also in Quantin, Recueil de pièces pour faire suite au cartulaire général de l’Yonne, pp. 234–36 no. 504, with a s.xv copy now Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 17095, no. 6 (statutes for the cathedral of Sens) Marrier and Du Chesne, Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, col. 1666, whence Lorrain, Essai historique sur l’abbaye de Cluny, pp. 187–89 (attendance with the pope and many bishops, including the bishop-elect of Agen, subsequently consecrated by Eudes) Gallia Christiana, ed. by de Sainte-Marthe and others, iv (1728), col. 1080 (perhaps one of the 12 cardinals said to have attended the pope’s consecration of the church of Saint-Pierre at Mâcon) 1246 Paris, AN, J538*, Flandres no. 10, whence Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, ii, 592 no. 3407 (intervenes with Louis IX over the inheritance rights of the children of Margaret, Countess of Flanders) Le Paige, Bibliotheca Praemonstratensis ordinis, pp. 668–69; Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, no. 1753 (Potthast no. 12027) (mediation over implementation of papal rulings on visitation and the powers of the general chapter of Prémontré) Meaux, BM, MS 63, pp. 53–54, whence Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iv, 889–90 (statutes for the cathedral of Meaux) Paris, BnF, MS Moreau 165, fols 166r–167v (statutes on residence and the keeping of the seal of the royal college of Saint-Frambourg Senlis)
17 9
1 80
n icho l a s v i n c e n t
June 13 July
Neuvy-SaintSépulchre Paris
July 9
Paris
July 20
‘Boscum de Ageto’
July/August
Péronne
September
?
September 15
‘Sessanam’
October 7
Picquigny
October 14
Roye
October 17
Compiègne
October 19
Compiègne
Châteauroux, AD Indre, G166* (above Appendix no. 1) Paris, AN, J540, no. 15/2*, whence Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, i, 1092–94; Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, ii, 630–31 no. 630 (sentence jointly with Louis IX over the Flanders inheritance dispute) Paris, AN, L245, no. 126 (recites Innocent IV on exemptions for Templars and Hospitallers from crusader taxes, cf. Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, no. 2053) Paris, AN, LL985B, fols 168v–69r (161v–62r), whence (misdated 30 July) Claude Héméré, Augusta Viromanduorum, p. 231 (settles disputes between the chapter of Saint-Quentin and the Dominicans over burial rights) Claude Héméré, Augusta Viromanduorum, p. 231 (dedication of the Franciscan church, mention only) Cartulaire de l’Hotel-Dieu de Beauvais, ed. by Leblond, pp. 241–49 no. 216 (detailed rule for the Hospital) Paris, AN, L463, no. 51* (detailed statutes for the cathedral church of Orléans) Paris, AN, R135 (Livre Rouge de Picquigny), fols 55v–56r, also in Paris, BnF, MS Moreau 166, fols 165r–66r (transfers the site of the canons’ church from the castle to the body of the town, with the assistance of the archdeacon of Amiens and the college’s patron) Paris, BnF, MS Moreau 166, fol. 171r (Indulgence of forty days to those contributing to the building of the abbey church of the nuns at Notre-Dame du Verger, with drawing of upper portion of Eudes’ seal and counterseal) AN, R135 (Livre Rouge de Picquigny), fol. 56r-v, also in Paris, BnF, MS Moreau 166, fol. 173r-v (statutes on residence and government following visitation) Varin, Archives de Reims, i part 2, 688–90 no. 209 (attends abritration of disputes between the archbishop of Reims and his suffragan bishops of Soissons, Amiens, Laon, Tournai, Noyon and Arras, and the proctor of the bishop of Thérouanne, now submitted to arbitration at the papal court by the cardinal bishop of Albano) Paris, AN, LL985B (St-Quentin cartulary), fols 166v–68v (159v–61v) (statutes for the collegiate church of Saint-Quentin, for which (abstract only), see also Claude Héméré, Augusta Viromanduorum, p. 231)
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
December 13
?
December 18
Paris
March 10
Paris
April 4
Déols
April
?
April
?
June 9
Pontigny
August 25
Tournai
August 28
Wazemmes (Lille)
September 13
Saint-Omer
Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Corneille de Compiègne, ed. by Morel, ii, 318–19 no. 548 (settlement disputes between the abbey and the Franciscans of Compiègne) Paris, AN, LL1025 (Cartulary of St- Germain) fo.32v, also AN LL1026 (Ibid.) fo.49r (restoring procurations taken from dependent priories of SaintGermain in the dioceses of Sens and Paris) 1247 Paris, AN, L616, no. 4* (inspects M(aurice) bishop Paris 1170 confirming grants to the chapter of SaintMarcel Paris) ‘Chronicon Dolensis coenobii’, in Grillon des Chapelles, Notice sur l’abbaye de Déols, p. 293, whence Hubert, Cartulaire des seigneurs de Châteauroux, p. 111 (dedication of altar SS Peter and Paul) Denifle, Chartularium, i, 201 no. 171 (recites and approves letters of John abbot of Fleury decreeing that of the ten monks of Fleury studying theology in the priory of Saint-Gervais at Orléans, the more suitable for higher study are to receive support in studying at Paris), and cf. Denifle, Chartularium, i, 198–201 no. 170, 218 no. 190, with copies Orléans, AD Loiret, H22, no. 125; Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 489 (394), fol. 186v Le Mans, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 100, fols 28r–29r (recites Pope Victor III privileges of 1088, for Marmoutier) Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, iii, 1864; Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, vi, 128–29 (translation of St Edmund) Cousin, Histoire de Tournay, iv, 57 (translation of the relics of St Eleuthère), and cf. Tournai, Archives de la cathédrale, Registre 42 (Inventory of Titles, 1533), fol. 9r-v, for what may have been indulgences issued by Eudes on this occasion Descamps, ‘Notice sur Walter de Marvis, évêque de Tournai’, pp. 275–77 no. 42, and cf. Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, no. 439 (statutes for the cathedral church of Tournai) Laon, AD Aisne, H 1508 (Soissons cartulary), fol. 628v (appointment of John de Perthes canon of Sens as delegate in a suit over tithes)
181
1 82
n icho l a s v i n c e n t
c. September
?
September 30
Douai
October 1
Douai
October 5
Arras
October 27
Paris
December 21
Paris
February 8
Parthenay
Denifle, Chartularium, i, 202–05 no. 173 (Letters to Pope Innocent IV reciting earlier letters of Gregory IX, countering Innocent’s command that the Jews be restored to limited use of those parts of the Talmud acceptable to Christian doctrine, such a restoration threatening scandal given the earlier burning of the Talmud by authority of the University of Paris) Paris, BnF, MS Moreau 167, fol. 248r (inspects a charter of Godfrey bp Cambrai, October 1233, apparently for Saint-Saulve de Valenciennes) Paris, BnF, MS Moreau 168, fol. 4r (inspects a charter of D. prior and convent of Saint-Saulve de Valenciennes, October 1233) ‘Le Cartulaire de l’évêche d’Arras’, ed. by Guesnon, p. 200 no. 149 (reassurances to the chapter and bishop of Arras following his consecration of the parish church of La Madeleine) Les Chartes de Saint-Bertin, ed. by Dewitte and Haigneré, ii, 27 no. 924 (confirms a charter of the bishop of Thérouanne relating to the jurisdiction of Saint-Omer) Denifle, Chartularium, i, 206–07 no. 176 (Letters to the masters and scholars of Paris condemning the errors in logic of John deBrescain who has persisted in error despite earlier condemnation before the chancellor and masters of theology, and who is hereby expelled from Paris in perpetuity, also commanding the recapture and imprisonment of Master Raymond previously imprisoned by the bishop of Paris, condemning more generally the fruitless pursuit of novelties) 1248
Angers, AD Maine-et-Loire 253H10*, also in Bnf ms. Latin 12671 fo.35r-v (recites and confirms a settlement devised by Otto cardinal bishop of Porto and S. Rufino as papal auditor, in jurisdictional disputes between Michael bishop Angers and the monks of Saint-Florent-lès-Saumur). [February 28, already named legate to the Holy Land: Reg. Inn. IV, no.3661] April 26 Paris, SainteLayettes, ed. by Teulet and others, iii, 30–31 no. 3666 Chapelle (consecration of the Sainte-Chapelle) April 30 Paris Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Corneille de Compiègne, ed. by Morel, ii, 342–43 no. 565 (indulgence of 30 days for those visiting the abbey of Compiègne on or during the octave of its dedication)
Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
May 15
(Paris)
May 27
Paris
June 12
Saint-Denis
Denifle, Chartularium, i, 209–11 no. 178 (condemnation of the Talmud, that is not to be restored to the Jews either in whole or in part) Paris, AN, L619, no. 10*, whence the copy Paris, AN, J155, no. 4 printed Layettes, ed. by Teulet and others, iii, 30–31 no. 3666 (indulgence for the Sainte-Chapelle) Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxiii, p. 144 (delivers banner, scrip and staff to Louis IX and other crusaders)
Departure for Holy Land via Sens, Chablis, Cîteaux, Lyons (Salimbene, Cronica, ed. by Bernini, i, 317–21; Moufflet, ‘Autor de l’Hôtel de Saint Louis’, iii (‘Itinéraire’), 132–36. Cf. also Auxerre, AD Yonne, G109, an appeal to Eudes as legate by the dean and chapter of Sens, 8 July 1247, to confirm the decision of the archbishop of Sens to endow four new prebends in his cathedral from the revenues of parish churches. Of the originals listed above, only two (Angers, AD Maine-et-Loire, 253H10, 8 February 1248, and Paris, AN, J538 no. 10, January 1246) retain portions of Eudes’ seal impression, to be compared with a drawing of another example of an upper portion of this same seal (Paris, BnF, MS Moreau 166, fol. 171r, 14 October 1246, from the archives of NotreDame du Verger), in the original at Angers in green wax, vessica shaped, a standing figure with mitre, crook in left hand, right hand raised in blessing, legend: S’ ODONIS MISERCULANI EPI+, counterseal, smaller round, the Virgin Mary and child, legend effaced from the Angers original, but preserved in AN J538 no. 10 (whence Douët d’Arcq, Collection de Sceaux, ii, 431 no. 6134) as AVE MARIA GRA PLENA+135
Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Sources Angers, Archives départementales de Maine-et-Loire, 253H10 Arras, Archives départementales (AD) du Pas-de-Calais, 23H2 no. 49 Auxerre, Archives départementales (AD) de l’Yonne, G109; G133 no. 1 Châteauroux, Archives départementales (AD) de l’Indre, G165; G166; G173; H753 Châteauroux, Médiathèque, MS 3 (Breviary) Laon, Archives départementales (AD) de l’Aisne, G1 (Cartulary of the bishopric of Laon)
135 [The typescript catalogue to Le Mans, AD Sarthe, 111 AC 827 promises a ‘Lettre d’Odon legat apostolique au sujet d’un différend élevé entre le chapitre et le couvent de La Couture, 1246’. Visiting to consult this early in March 2020, I was disappointed to find merely jejune copies of a letter of Octavian Cardinal Bishop of Ostia c. 1200. Disappointment was dispelled, however, when the same liasse, so poorly catalogued, turned out to contain a previously unknown original of King Henry II of England. Such are the rewards of serendipity (and of course, of acquaintance with Peggy Brown!)].
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Eudes of Châteauroux and the Holy Blood of Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre
Bryant, Simon, ‘La collégiale Saint-Étienne de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre (Indre)’, Revue archéologique du Centre de la France, 43 (2004), 171–207, available online at Caillaud, Jean-François-Xavier, Notice sur le précieux sang de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre (Bourges: Pigelet, 1865) ———, Notice historique et archéologique sur l’église de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre (Indre) (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1866) Callebaut, A., ‘Le Sermon historique du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 28 (1935), 81–109 Charansonnet, Alexis, ‘L’évolution de la prédication du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux (1190?–1273): une approche statistique’, in De l’homélie au sermon. Histoire de le prédication médiévale, ed. by Jacqueline Hamesse and Xavier Hermand (Louvain: Brepols, 1993), pp. 103–42 ———, ‘Du Berry en Curie: La carrière du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux (1190?–1273) et son reflet dans sa prédication’, Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 86 (2000), 5–37 ———, ‘L’Université, l’Église et l’État dans les sermons du cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux’ (unpublished PhD Thesis, Université de Lyon 2–Louis Lumière, 2001) Charansonnet, Alexis, and Franco Morenzoni, ‘Prêcher sur les reliques de la passion à l’époque de Saint-Louis’, La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris: Royaume de France ou Jérusalem céleste?, ed. by Christophe Hediger (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 61–98 Chazan, Robert, ‘The Condemnation of the Talmud Reconsidered (1239–1248)’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 55 (1988), 11–30 Chénon, Émile, ‘Origines de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre’, Bulletin de la Société Nationales des Antiquaires de France (1916), 214–29 Cole, Penny, David d’Avray, and Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Application of Theology to Current Affairs: Memorial Sermons on the Dead of Mansourah and on Innocent IV’, Historical Research, 63 (1990), 227–47 Cousin, Jean, Histoire de Tournay ou quatre livres des chroniques (Douai: Wyon, 1619–1620) Dahan, Gilbert, ed., Le Brûlement du Talmud à Paris, 1242–1244 (Paris: Cerf, 1999) Dale, Johanna, Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2019), Delisle, Léopold, ‘Chroniques et annales diverses’, Histoire Littéraire de la France, 32 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1898), pp. 182–264 Denifle, Heinrich, ‘Das Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni’, Archiv für Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, 1 (1885), 49–142 Descamps, André Philippe Valentin, ‘Notice sur Walter de Marvis, évêque de Tournai’, Mémoires de la Société Historique et Littéraire de Tournai, 1 (1853), 133–300 Deshoulières, François, ‘La date de la construction de l’église de Neuvy-Saint-Sépulcre’, Bulletin de la Société Nationales des Antiquaires de France (1916), 190–96 Devailly, Guy, ‘Comment les Capetiens sont devenus maîtres du Berry’, Cahiers d’Archéologie et d’Histoire du Berry, 5 (1966), 9–29 Douët d’Arcq, Louis, Collection de sceaux, Archives de l’Empire Inventaires et documents, 3 vols (Paris: Plon, 1863–1868)
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William Chester Jordan
Philippe of Cahors Or, What’s in a Name?
The aim of this study is to attain a proper identification of Philippus de Caturco, an exemplary administrator in France in the thirteenth century. Philippe, to use the vernacular form of his Christian name, was a judicial official in the archidiaconal court of Reims early in his career in the mid-1250s, and subsequently a junior clerk in the Parlement of Paris, an enquêteur delegated to carry out special investigations for the crown, a Master of the King’s Court (the highest judicial office in Parlement), the Keeper of the Royal Seal (effectively, Chancellor), provisional (back-up) co-regent of the kingdom in 1270, and the bishop of Évreux from that date until his death in 1281.1 Although many scholars have understood the appellation de Caturco as signifying his place of origin or childhood as the town of Cahors, others have preferred the village of Chaource. The brilliant late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholar, Léopold Delisle, favoured the former. In volume 23 of the Recueil des historiens des gaules et de la France, which Delisle helped edit, he dismissed the idea that de Caturco should be translated de Chaource.2 In his ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéchaux royaux’ in volume 24 of the same collection, he reiterated his view and made it clear once again that he could not fathom why several other prominent historians, in particular the intellectually dyspeptic Colonel Léon-Louis Borrelli de Serres, whose views I discuss below, would opt for the latter.3 Louis Carolus-Barré, the great expert on the acta of Louis IX, the king (1226–1270) for whom the administrator worked for almost fifteen years, preferred Philippe de Cahors as well.4 Even Carolus-Barré’s great authority has not persuaded several adherents of Borrelli’s opinion. Until recently, and under the spell of the declamatory influence of the learned colonel, I too referred to Philippe
1 For a comprehensive treatment of his life and work, see Jordan, Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church. 2 Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxiii, 482 n. 5. 3 Delisle, ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéchaux royaux’, p. 26* n. 17. Those sharing Delisle’s view have included Boutaric, ‘Review of Martin Bertrandy[-Lacabane]’, p. 61, and Grandmottet, ‘Les officialités de Reims’, p. 103. 4 Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation de saint Louis, pp. 146, 211, 214, 228, and 263.
William Chester Jordan is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 191-210 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122622
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as a native of Chaource.5 After further research, however, I have realigned my views with Delisle’s and Carolus-Barré’s.6 A first question immediately arises: what explains scholars’ frequent and, indeed, more typical recourse to Chaource than to Cahors as Philippe’s birthplace? One factor in complicating the definitive establishment of the administrator’s roots is that in the thirteenth century Latin Caturcum could refer to locations other than Cahors.8 As a result, and in particular under the spell of the learned writers who compiled the multi-tome ecclesiastical history known as Gallia christiana,9 a number of scholars over the centuries have been seduced into equivocating or, as already mentioned, outright rejecting Cahors as Philippe’s native town. These scholars include l’abbé Adolphe-André Porée, the distinguished Norman diocesan archivist of Évreux, and the aforementioned autodidact Colonel Léon-Louis Borrelli de Serres.10 The group also includes the much-admired biographer of Louis IX, Jean Richard; the administrative historian, Marie Dejoux; and the legal-institutional scholar, Pierre-Anne Forcadet, who made a point of contrasting his usage with that of Carolus-Barré.11 They have preferred one of two northern French villages now known as Chaource or, alternatively, as Chaourse. In French the toponym has been unstable over the last two centuries, and either form can also be spelled with a final ‘s’.12 For those scholars who favour one of the two Chaources as Philippe’s birthplace, another question arises: for which of these two villages might a better case be made? One would think the preference would be for Chaource-en-Champagne in the département of the Aube rather than for the Chaource in the Aisne. This is because the Medieval Latin spellings most frequently in harmony with those for medieval Caturcum appear in documents relating to the former.13 Nevertheless, the scholarly claims (below) tend in the other direction. Of course, whichever Chaource is the more favoured candidate among scholars, for the last two centuries local partisans
5 Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries, p. 131. 6 Jordan, Men at the Center, pp. 68–69, 106. 8 Dictionnaire topographique du département de l’Aube, ed. by Boutiot and Socard, p. 36; Dictionnaire topographique du département de l’Aisne, ed. by Matton, p. 57; Albe, ‘Les marchands de Cahors à Londres au xiiie siècle’, p. 33 n. 2; Diehl, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Esslingen, i, 292 no. 596. (I have not seen Lafitte-Houssat, Origines des noms de localités dans l’Aube, which is cited on French local history websites and appears to provide some additional examples). 9 Gallia christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, xi, col. 590. 10 On the careers of Abbé Porée and Colonel Borrelli de Serres, see their obituaries: Picard, ‘Éloge funèbre de M. le Chanoine Porée’, pp. 152–56, and ‘Nécrologie de Borrelli de Serres’, pp. 445–46. The works in which they reject Cahors include Porée, Sépultures des évêques d’Évreux, p. 8, and Borrelli de Serres, Recherches sur divers services publics du xiiie au xviie siècle, i, 387. 11 Jean Richard, Saint Louis, p. 554; Dejoux, Les enquêtes de saint Louis, pp. 21, 102, 118, 121–23, 125, 127, 143 n. 2, 345, 407; Dejoux, ‘Gouverner par l’enquête en France de Philippe Auguste aux derniers Capétiens’, p. 301; Forcadet, ‘Les premiers juges de la Cour du roi au xiii siècle’, pp. 253–54, especially p. 254 n. 789. 12 Dictionnaire topographique du département de l’Aube, ed. by Boutiot and Socard, p. 36; Dictionnaire topographique du département de l’Aisne, ed. by Matton, p. 57. 13 Dictionnaire topographique du département de l’Aube, ed. by Boutiot and Socard, p. 36; Dictionnaire topographique du département de l’Aisne, ed. by Matton, p. 57.
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cognizant of the debate have claimed Philippe for their own particular patrie.14 Something as simple as the excavation of a thirteenth-century tomb in either village, one that bears an inscription naming the inhumed simply as Philippe, can be a catalyst for the claim.15 So, what explains the preference for Chaource in the Aisne usually shown by disinterested scholars (those untainted by local patriotism) for Philippe’s place of origin? The answer takes us to the work of Honoré Fisquet and his nineteenth-century re-edition of Gallia christiana. The savant compilers of the original did suggest Chaource as the translation of Caturcum, but they almost certainly were thinking of Chaource-en-Champagne, as I shall attempt to prove later. Fisquet, however, supplemented the unreferenced marginal suggestion of the savants and, without citing any evidence, rejected their Chaource in the Aube for the Chaource in the historic diocese of Laon, that is to say, in the modern département of the Aisne.16 Gallia christiana has a venerable and general claim to respect, but Fisquet’s supplemental re-edition has perhaps achieved even greater authority. As recently as 2014, Marie Dejoux accepted Fisquet’s identification without comment in her book on Louis IX’s government ‘by inquest’.17 To be sure, not everyone was convinced in Fisquet’s time or has been since. As far back as 1846, even before Fisquet made Chaource in the Aisne the more canonical choice, his idea or the idea of someone whose views he adopted was already in the air, but Alphonse Chassant and G.-E. Sauvage seem to have been sceptical of it. At least, this is how I interpret their note raising the possibility of the alternate village in the Aube.18 Victor Verlaque, one of the biographers of Pope John XXII, followed in their wake and dismissed the village in the Aisne out of hand in 1883, and this was after Fisquet published.19 Were occasional challenges like these to Fisquet’s opinion responsible for the raising of still other possibilities? In his influential book on the medieval French administration, Borrelli de Serres, like l’abbé Porée before him, actually provided an alternative French rendering (or was it a mere slip of his pen?) of the village’s
14 Baget and Lecointe, Dictionnaire des communes du département de l’Aisne, p. 55; Melleville, Dictionnaire historique, généalogique et géographique du département de l’Aisne, i, 141; La grande encyclopédie, x, 542, s.v. ‘Chaourse’; Mien-Péon, Le canton de Rozoy-sur-Serre, p. 155. 15 See, for example, Regnault de Beaucaron, Souvenirs anecdotiques et historiques d’anciennes familles, p. 38. 16 Fisquet, La France pontificale, viii, 29. 17 Assumed in her book, Les enquêtes de saint Louis, throughout, but the dependence on Fisquet is specified in her “Catalogue prosopographique des enquêteurs-réparateurs de Louis IX,” p. 89. This supplementary documentation is downloadable from the publisher’s website at https://www.puf. com/content/Les_enqu%C3%AAtes_de_saint_Louis_Gouverner_et_sauver_son_%C3%A2me [accessed 17 March 2021], and directly from https://www.puf.com/sites/default/files/Les%20 enqu%C3%AAtes%20de%20saint%20Louis.%20Gouverner%20et%20sauver%20son%20%C3%A2me. pdf [accessed 17 March 2021]. 18 Chassant and Sauvage, Histoire des évêques d’Évreux, p. 75 n. 1. 19 Verlaque, Jean XXII, p. 15 n. 1.
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name.20 Chaours, to which I refer, however, corresponds to no known locality. Porée himself, though he equivocated among Cahors, Chaource and Chaourse,21 appears to have preferred any one of them to Chaours. He merely mentioned in passing that it was an alternative he had encountered.22 I have verified that a number of other scholars also suggested this possibility, once again even absent any knowledge that such a locality existed.23 What informed their choice? Possibly, it was the existence of the surname Chaours (without the preposition de), which, though rare, was not and is not unknown in France.24 The same familiarity with medieval and modern surnames — like Chours and Chourses25 — may inform the choice made by other scholars (Armand-Narcisse Masson-de-Saint-Amand, Alexandre-Auguste Guilmeth, and Robert Avril, vicomte de Burey, to name three) to translate thirteenth-century de Caturco with similar forms.26 Of course, there is no certainty that this was the stimulus. It remains puzzling as to why Fisquet preferred Chaource in the Aisne, let alone why other scholars have sometimes opted for other locations that have no independent evidence of even existing. Yet, it is fairly easy to explain the preference of the compilers of the original Gallia christiana for the village or château-fort of Chaource in the Aube for Philippe’s place of origin. Most important, they were familiar with the fact, which Jean de Joinville related in his Vie de saint Louis, that at Chaource in the Aube the young ruler, in 1228, at the age of fourteen and for the first time in his life, found himself taking up arms in defence of his mother Blanche of Castile’s policies as regent. He did so in a tense encounter with a coalition of barons hostile to one of the crown’s allies at the time, the count of Champagne. As part of their military strategy, the anti-Champagne coalition launched a three-pronged invasion of the county and laid siege to the small redoubt at Chaource at the start of their campaign. However,
20 Borrelli de Serres, Recherches sur divers services publics du xiiie au xviie siècle, i, 387; Porée, Sépultures des évêques d’Évreux, p. 8. 21 Porée, Les anciens livres liturgiques du diocèse d’Évreux, p. 19 no. 65; Porée, Histoire de l’abbaye du Bec, i, 619 and 624–25; Porée, Histoire des évêques d’ Évreux, pp. 76–77. 22 Porée, Histoire des évêques d’ Évreux, p. 75 n. 1. 23 Opuscules et mélanges historiques sur la ville d’Évreux, p. 61; Chassant and Sauvage, Histoire des évêques d’Évreux, p. 75 n. 1; Goetzmann de Thune, Essais historiques sur le sacre et couronnement des rois de France, pp. 61 and 79–80; Lecanu, Histoire du diocèse de Coutances et Avranches, i, 314; Fossey, Monographie de la cathédrale d’ Évreux, p. 43; and most importantly, Le Brasseur, Histoire civile et écclésiastique du comté d’Évreux, pp. 199–203. 24 Geneanet online at 25 Geneanet online at https://en.geneanet.org/search/?name=chours&ressource=arbre. Also at https://en.geneanet.org/fonds/individus/?nom=chourse&u=km&prenom_ operateur=or&go=1. And also at https://en.geneanet.org/fonds/ individus/?nom=chourses&u=km&prenom_operateur=or&go=1. 26 Armand-Narcisse Masson-de-Saint-Amand, the early nineteenth-century prefect of the département of the Eure and a local antiquarian (on whom, see the data bank of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, online at data.bnf.fr, under his name), used Philippe de Chours; see his Suite des essais historiques et anecdotiques, pp. 46 and 48–49. Alexandre-Auguste Guilmeth and Robert Avril, vicomte de Burey, opted for Philippe de Chourse: see Guilmeth, Notice historique sur la ville et les environs d’Évreux, p. 26; Avril, vicomte de Burey, Les archives héraldiques d’Évreux, p. 73.
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they withdrew when the adolescent king intervened at the head of his army.27 Could an impressionable village youth, a Philippe de Caturco, of similar age as the king, have been inspired there and then to serve the victorious young warrior someday, if not in battle, then in some other capacity, when he (Philippe) reached manhood? This sort of providential scenario might well have swayed Gallia christiana’s clerical writers to conjure a Philippe of Chaource from Philippe de Caturco. Captivating — almost sentimental — as this scenario is, it is not persuasive. Philippe was, I shall argue, born into a family residing in Cahors, the cathedral city located in the present-day département of the Lot and indeed the sole Cahors in France. The settlement, situated on ground at an enormous bend in the Lot River that almost makes the terrain a peninsula, was the historic capital of the province of Quercy.28 So lovely is the venue that aficionados of medieval sites have created an amazing and stunning virtual tour of the landscape and its built environment.29 Yet, splendid as the cityscape is, the wider world knows of Cahors and its region nowadays mainly through its recently fashionable dark (popularly, black) and robust Malbec wine marketed under the municipality’s name.30 The thirteenth century was different. Then, the reputation of Cahors emanated from its aggressive moneylenders, impugned alarmingly as usurers, although not all men serving the credit market and denigrated as Cahorsins were born in the city or region, or even worked there.31 The language of the native inhabitants of medieval Cahors was the Limousin dialect of Occitan, although literati of the region also wrote in the troubadour vernacular, Provençal. Spoken Limousin would have been difficult for a northerner from, say, Paris to comprehend without spending considerable time in the region or with a tutor, and it is hard to believe that there was much purchase in such a person learning it. Limousin long persisted as the object of derision in elite circles. The classic clash between Parisian French and school Latin, on the one hand, and this vernacular dialect and Limousin constructions of Latin, on the other, is that described by Rabelais in Pantagruel, Book ii, Chapter six, ‘How Pantagruel met a Limousin who murdered the French language’, a satirical vignette that has piqued specialists’s curiosities.32 However, there were deeper currents of linguistic and literary concern about the Occitan vernaculars and literary Provençal and their relation with French and Latin
27 Jean de Joinville, Vie de saint Louis, p. 198, paragraph 86. Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de saint Louis, roi de France, ii, 37–41. 28 Prou, ‘Cahors’, 768. 29 Accessible, at the time of writing, by following the prompts for ‘The Houses of Cahors in the Middle Ages’, online at http://patrimoines.laregion.fr/no_cache/en/items-globaux/detail-article/index. html?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=763&cHash=a0a496616498235404e2a3df8567ee99 [accessed 17 March 2021]. 30 See, for example, ‘Malbec, the Resurrection of France’s Forgotten Wine’, The Guardian, 22 May 2010, and ‘Black Wine is Back’, Chicago Tribune, 21 June 2017. 31 Grunwald, ‘Lombards, Cahorsins and Jews’, pp. 393–94. 32 MacPhail, ‘Ecolier Limousin (Limousin Schoolboy)’, pp. 61–62.
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that it would be necessary to explore to comprehend in-depth the scene in Pantagruel.33 This exercise is not relevant here. Rather, my point is that most northerners, even travellers, had no incentive to familiarize themselves with vernacular Limousin. Yet, natives of the region, especially businessmen wishing to enrich their commercial networks northward toward Paris, the largest city in the West, did have an incentive to acquire considerable skill in the northerners’ language. There was an additional impulse to do so, if natives were to interact effectively with the many ecclesiastics, nobles, and pilgrims traversing Cahors and its region. The business of catering to pilgrims in particular was of great significance in Cahors since the town was on a pilgrimage road leading northward to the shrine of the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, about sixty-five kilometres distant, and on a major thoroughfare southwest, via Moissac, to the better known but more distant shrine at Compostela.34 Rocamadour was extremely popular in its own right, not just as a waystation on the route through Cahors to Compostela. King Louis IX, his mother, and his brothers visited it in 1245.35 Subsequent to his canonization in 1297 — probably soon after, even though it is not attested until 1343 — a chapel was dedicated there in the royal saint’s honour that would also have recalled his veneration of the Black Madonna.36 In other words, Cahors needed a polyglot population in order to flourish and serve as a stopover for pilgrims. Visitors to Cahors, using different languages and French dialects and telling of the lands from which they came, had the capacity to excite the imaginations of locals and perhaps make them dream of travel someday to distant parts. While I think this might be a useful observation for understanding some aspects of the career of Philippe de Caturco, this kind of wanderlust almost certainly informed the career of the most famous Cahorsin born in the thirteenth century, in 1244 to be precise, Jacques Duèse. He was of burgher stock. His French, even though he studied in Paris, was never more than modest at best. His university Latin was good, but his francien did not achieve the ‘pure and authentic langue’ the Parisians claimed to speak, although recent scholars, like Carolyn Collette and Thelma Fenster, have pointedly challenged the privileged claims medieval residents of the capital made for their dialect.37 Jacques Duèse would rise to become a professor, a noted jurisprudent and a controversial pope as John XXII (1316–1334). His heterodox view on the impossibility of the beatific vision before the last days, a view that he clung to until his alleged near-death renunciation of it, was one of many opinions he expressed that disturbed the peace of the church.
33 Davis, ‘“Chascus en lor lati”: Guilhem IX, Birdsong, and the Language of Poetry’, pp. 2–24. I owe this reference to Dr Jenna Phillips. 34 Conant, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, p. 20 (map). 35 ‘Majus chronicon lemovicense a Petro Coral et aliis conscriptum’, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Bouquet and others, xxi, 766 (under the year 1244, but referring to 1245); Rupin, Roc-Amadour, p. 197. 36 Rupin, Roc-Amadour, p. 237. 37 Collette and Fenster, ‘Introduction: Recognizing the French of Medieval England’, p. 5. For Parisian claims, see Vincent, ‘English Kingship: The View from Paris’, pp. 1 and 11; Lodge, French: From Dialect to Standard, p. 101; MacPhail, ‘Ecolier Limousin (Limousin Schoolboy)’, pp. 61–62.
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His strong antagonism to the so-called Spiritual Franciscans, radical — some would say heterodox — followers of the teachings of Saint Francis, was another.38 Despite offhand conjectures (Des relations s’étaient établis) found in some earlier scholarly work, Jacques Duèse was not a confidant of the Philippe de Caturco, whose identity is the focus of this essay.39 Early modern genealogical researchers, influenced by the érudit Étienne Baluze, who regarded Philippe de Caturco as Cahorsin, erred in surmising that his immediate ancestors moved to the city from Montpellier.40 They made this mistake by conflating, as no scholar in the last hundred years has dared to do, a canon, the sacristan (ML, capicerius; OF chefcier) of Saint-Médard of Paris, also named Philippe de Caturco, with our Philippe. The canon was a shareholder in two castles or towers, a mere five kilometres apart, at Pézenas and Tourbes, both in the modern-day southern département of the Hérault. The document that reveals the co-ownership of the property registers the sale of the two edifices to the king, Louis IX, in 1262. Besides involving the king and the canon of Saint-Médard, the transfer affected the sacristan’s brothers, Raymond and Hélie (the latter another Paris canon, in the cathedral chapter of Notre-Dame, no less), and alludes to the Montpellieran origins of their father, also Raymond, let us call him Senior to distinguish him from his son of the same name.41 Montpellier, similarly located in the Hérault, indeed now the capital of the département, was not far distant from the two castles at a little more than forty kilometres. Since Raymond was a predominantly Occitan name at the time,42 this may have inspired the identification of the two Cahorsin Philippes of the mid-thirteenth century. In fact, the Philippe who was canon-sacristan of Saint-Médard was, as we shall discover, of the same lineage as ours, but they were from different branches of the genealogical tree.43 That they shared the name Philippe, however, is significant in and of itself, as we shall also see. The most industrious local historian of Quercy was Guillaume Lacoste (1755–1831). He accepted the identity of the two Philippes, asserting also that the canon’s family was ‘de la maison de De Jean’ (of the house of De Jean). The locative surname de Cahors served, he believed, as a secondary appellation.44 He further associated the family with another lineage known as Salvanhic, a proposition that Édmond Albe, writing in 1908, challenged after identifying a Salvanhac lineage long residing in Quercy as a likelier possibility.45 (Even more confusing, the Salvanhac name occasionally
38 Valois, ‘Jacques Duèse, pape sous le nom de Jean XXII’, pp. 394–630; Heft, John XXII and Papal Teaching Authority. 39 Verlaque, Jean XXII, p. 15. 40 Baluze, Vitae paparum avenionensium, i, col. 768; Lacoste, Histoire générale de la province de Quercy, ii, 304; Vaissète and Devic, eds, Histoire générale du Languedoc, iii, 496. 41 Teulet, ed., Layettes du Trésor des chartes, iv, 35 no. 4750. This is the same document cited and quoted by Baluze, Vitae paparum avenionensium, i, col. 768. 42 Dauzat, Les noms de personnes, pp. 63 and 127. 43 Contra Delisle in ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéchaux royaux’, p. 26* n. 18. 44 Lacoste, Histoire générale de la province de Quercy, ii, 350 n. 2. See also Verlaque, Jean XXII, pp. 14–15. 45 Albe, ‘Les marchands de Cahors’, p. 32.
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appeared in the sources to which Albe had access with the spelling Salvanhic.) Albe conceded that Canon Philippe of Saint-Médard might have belonged to the De Jean lineage as well.46 The concession rested on the fact that the house of De Jean had several offshoots in a large number of prominent Quercinois families.47 According to Albe, Canon Philippe’s two brothers, Hélie and Raymond Junior, were merchants with commercial contacts in England, despite the explicit evidence of the document, already cited, testifying to the transfer of their castles and specifying Hélie as a canon of the cathedral chapter of Paris.48 Nevertheless, the error with regard to Hélie’s vocation aside, Albe was correct about Raymond junior. Given the dates, it had to be Raymond Senior, the three brothers’ father, who was a major financial backer of the Albigensian Crusade through the loans he made to Simon, the Count of Montfort, the principal French commander in the earliest phases of the war, from 1209 until his death in the siege of Toulouse in 1218.49 The count rewarded his bankroller, who made his money in England, with the concession of rights in the town of Pézenas.50 Raymond Junior, one of the three brothers, maintained commercial interests in England, despite inheriting a third part of the holdings that Simon had bestowed on his father. Simon’s overall claim to the county of Toulouse survived him, but his own son and heir, Amaury, found it impossible to secure the conquest. In January 1226, he ceded his claim to the French crown in the person of Louis VIII (1223–1226), an act of enormous long-term consequence for the political history of France.51 What all of this means for the narrative of our Philippe de Caturco’s life is that he was born into a cadet wing of a bourgeois lineage that was loyal to the counts of Montfort rather than to their erstwhile English (AngloAngevin) overlords, who had been overthrown in the wars of the early thirteenth century. Even those of this lineage who made their money in England threw in their lot with the French. The parents of our Philippe de Caturco signalled their devotion to the French cause by the baptismal name they bestowed on their son. The name, in wider use in Christian lands in the East, had been introduced into the stock of French royal names through Anne of Kiev, the wife of King Henry I (r. 1027/1031–1060, the double date for the commencement of his reign reflecting the Capetian practice of associative kingship before the thirteenth century). It was Henry I and Anne of Kiev’s son whom royal genealogists know as King Philip I (r. 1059/1060–1108). Many other boys, including a son of Louis VI as well as King Philip II Augustus, and one of King Louis IX’s brothers, who died young, would also bear the name. However, in a border province like Quercy, the number of Philippes was very small at the time, as any search of the
46 47 48 49
Albe, ‘Autour de Jean XXII’, p. 149; Albe, ‘Prélats originaires du Quercy’, p. 183. Albe, ‘Les marchands de Cahors’, p. 32. Albe, ‘Les marchands de Cahors’, p. 32. Chassel, ‘De l’amour du prince au culte de saint Louis’, pp. 67–68; Molinier, ed., Correspondance administrative d’Alfonse de Poitiers, ii, 171 no. 1467, n. 2. 50 Chassel, ‘De l’amour du prince au culte de saint Louis’, pp. 67–68; Vaissète and Devic, eds, Histoire générale du Languedoc, iii, 496. 51 Further on the context of the transfer, see Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries, pp. 12–13.
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major sources reveals.52 Thus, the decision on the part of a Cahorsin family to adopt the name testifies, I infer, to its loyalty to the Capetian dynasty. Indeed, one of the few other Quercinois to bear the name was our Philippe’s kinsman, who became the aforementioned canon-sacristan of Saint-Médard of Paris. The occasion of the naming is also relevant. If the man at the centre of this essay was born around 1220 or a little before, which is the consensus of the few scholars who have worked on him, his christening would have taken place in the luminescent aftermath of Philip II Augustus’s victory at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, celebrated by later writers as the ‘battle that made France’.53 Whether or not in reality the battle made France, it was an important encounter and understood by many as critical in temporarily checking the pretensions of the Capetians’ Anglo-Angevin enemies and their allies. Gestures like imitating the dynasty’s naming practices, constituted, as Lindy Grant has argued and for which she has provided a number of aristocratic examples, a familiar practice among lineages that wanted to align themselves with the Capetians in the first decades of the thirteenth century.54 Similar practices, Helmut Reimitz notes, were centuries old.55 That a young Philippe, our man, born into such a family, would be drawn to the north rather than to the south and, like his kinsmen, Hélie and the other Philippe, canons of Parisian churches, come to prominence in the French capital upon relocating from the territorial margins of the medieval kingdom was also a familiar scenario. It mirrors the migration to the capital in the time of Louis IX of a number, though not all, of that king’s most trusted councillors — his innermost circle. This included Geoffroy of Bar, Guillaume of Bray, Robert of Sorbon, and Gui Foucois.56 The last mentioned of these men, Gui, would rise to become Pope Clement IV (1265–1268). The pope’s confessor, Martin of Opava, who was also a noted chronicler, remarked how Gui, a renowned laywer and advisor of the king of France (‘famosus advocatus et regis Francie consiliarius’), had emigrated from Sainte-Gilles on the Mediterranean coast of Provence (‘nacione Provincialis de villa Sancti Egidii’).57 It is true that outside of Louis IX’s inner circle, the majority of royal administrators in Paris were born in the Ile-de-France and Normandy.58 Nonetheless, wherever they were from — and this includes the most intimate of his councillors, like Robert of Sorbon — Louis IX also had a preference (a few exceptions aside) for advisers ‘of humble origin’, men who would have amounted to little or nothing without his patronage, men whose
52 Dufour, La commune de Cahors au moyen-âge; Limayrac, Étude sur le moyen âge; de la Croix, Histoire des évêques de Cahors. 53 1212–1214: et trieno que hizo a Europa; Baldwin and Simons, ‘The Consequences of Bouvines’, pp. 243–69; Contamine, ‘Le jeudi de Muret’, pp. 109–23; See also Barthélémy, La Bataille de Bouvines. 54 Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 154. 55 Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, pp. 122–23 and 211. 56 Jordan, Men at the Center, pp. 1–3, 5–6 and 20; Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, p. 163; Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 63, 139–40, 204–05. 57 Martini oppaviensis Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, ed. by Weiland, p. 441. 58 Menes, ‘Les premiers acteurs de la vie parlementaire en France’, p. 165.
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personal loyalty on this account was focused on him.59 A bourgeois Cahorsin who entered the priesthood and aspired to high governmental office in Paris would have faced many hurdles as a stereotypical outsider without the king’s special beneficence. His marginality would have been even greater if Philippe were a converted Jew (conversus) or the child of a converted Jew or couple, as Professor Anne Lester has reminded me. For although Philippe was not a common name in early thirteenth-century Quercy or among ordinary people anywhere in France at the time, it became ‘popular’ among one group after it entered the royal family’s name pool, namely, Jewish conversi, whose godparents or sponsors were often members of the extended royal family. The situation was similar for other royal names, like Louis and Blanche.60 I have found no evidence, however, of a contemporary Jewish community in Cahors from which a convert would have come, and as far as I can discover, there has never been a ‘juiverie, rue des juifs, place des juifs’ ( Jewry or a street or place of the Jews) in the city.61 To my knowledge, no Jews departed Cahors in their general expulsion from the kingdom in 1306.62 It seems, then, that Philippe de Caturco, if he was from Cahors, must have been born into a typical Christian family of bourgeois status.63 None may be necessary, but another argument, tentative though it is, can be offered in support of Cahors as Philippe’s place of origin. The work of André Borel d’Hauterive, one of the many noms-de-plumes of André-François-Joseph Borel, has proved useful here. Borel trained as an archivist at the École des chartes in Paris in the early nineteenth century where he developed considerable expertise in paleography, an expertise that served him well later in his career as a professor at the École and as a curator of manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and the Bibliothèque nationale. His interest in noble lineages was manifested in numerous historical and genealogical works as well as in his editing of the Revue historique de la noblesse and his founding in 1842 of the still ongoing periodical, Annuaire de la Pairie et de la Noblesse de France et des maisons souveraines de l’Europe. He may have chosen the elite sounding d’Hauterive for his nom de plume in these and similar publications to suit his name to his aristocratic subject. His other pen names were not aristocratic in form: Carl Egger, Mattéphile Lerob, Adrien Moreau, A. Mure, Hippolyte Raineval, and Ernest Valéry.64
59 Menes, ‘Les premiers acteurs de la vie parlementaire en France’, p. 165. See also Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries. Gabriel, La maison des pauvres maîtres de Robert de Sorbon, pp. 38–43, suggests, although it is unconvincing to my mind, that Robert of Sorbon was less marginal in his origins than scholars maintain. He claims that Jean de Joinville was slurring him with a lie. 60 Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, p. 139. 61 de Boisjoslin, À travers les rue de Cahors. 62 See Balasse, 1306: L’expulsion des juifs du royaume de France and the collection edited by Danièle IancuAgou, Philippe le Bel et les juifs du royaume de France (1306). 63 For completeness sake, one should add that there is no evidence of medieval Jewish settlement in the Aisne village of Chaource. The village of the same name in the Aube did have a few Jewish inhabitants before the expulsion of 1306, a fact attestable from Hebrew sources. Scholars know nothing about this tiny community. See Gallia judaica, comp. by Gross, p. 535. 64 d’Heylli, Dictionnaire des pseudonymes, s.v. ‘Mure’.
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Collection of the vast number of works on French personal, familial and urban heraldry has been taking place under the direction of the ‘Euraldic’ project. This is helpful because of what one can recover on the heraldic devices of Cahors in these hitherto obscure works. Since 1715 and until recently the most common arms for the town have been a shield of blue background with the representation of a gilt bear passant (walking, body profiled, right foot raised). Three little red crosses on an argent (silver or white) background surmount the image.65 The image is a rebus, one of the most common naming conceits, the visual counterpart to heraldry’s ubiquitous puns.66 Écu (the French word for shield) and ours (the word for a bear) are meant to be sounded out as a near homonym of Cahors, écu’ours (the ‘s’ is pronounced both for ours and for the Occitan pronunciation of Cahors); it can also be understood as a syncopation of Qu’un ours, ‘Like a bear’. Cute, but this device was only a representational metaphor of Cahorsins’ supposedly fierce collective pride in their city. Any fearsome animal would have done if a wit had confected a suitable visual pun. The Cahorsins chose the bear, and in doing so they were wholly indifferent, it would seem, to the fact that bears were long gone from Quercy by the time (1715) they devised these arms.67 Of course, as Michel Pastoureau has observed, ‘Even though the bear may have disappeared from one area or another, that did not mean that it stopped playing a role in imagination, ritual, or social symbolism’.68 Yet, the city’s medieval arms and their present-day reworking of them evidence no such role.69 Rather, the medieval arms depicted at least from the middle of the thirteenth century five argent upright bars, denoting towers, on a red background, situated atop a five-arched argent bridge over the Lot River.70 A modification a half-century later, Borel noted, and maintained for tourists’ admiration on the current arms, had the bars surmounted, each one, by a fleur-de-lis, an innovation originally symbolizing the conjoining of the French king’s co-lordship, represented by the lily, with the bishop’s. The establishment of this co-lordship postdated the death in 1281 of Philippe de Caturco, so the fleurs-de-lis on the city’s arms are irrelevant to the present investigation. As bishop of Évreux in the last decade of his career, Philippe had himself adopted arms, a continuing but controversial tradition. Bishop of Évreux Jacques Gaillot, a critic of Pope John Paul II, refused to adopt personal arms, because of the supposed aristocratic pretentiousness of it all.71 His thirteenth-century predecessor did not find the practice off-putting. 65 Jougla de Morenas and others, Grand armorial de France, ii, no. 7416. 66 Boutell, Heraldry: Historical and Popular, pp. 88, 117–20; Friar and Ferguson, Basic Heraldry, pp. 14, 24, 58, 68; International Heraldry and Heralds, s.v. ‘pun’. 67 On the shrinkage over time in the geographical distribution of the bear population in France, see Pastoureau, The Bear, pp. 91–92. 68 Pastoureau, The Bear, p. 92. 69 Nor did or does the region’s folklore prominently feature the bear, to judge from the following: Les contes populaires du Périgord, du Quercy et du Rouergue (Romorantin: CPE, 2015), and Garrouste, Modes de vie et traditions populaires. 70 André Borel d’Hauterive [= André-François-Joseph Borel]. Histoire des armoiries des villes de France, s.v. ‘Cahors’. 71 Gaillot, Voice from the Desert, pp. 25–26.
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According to the report of the early modern antiquary, Roger de Gaignières, who knew and sketched Philippe’s arms, the bishop selected ‘argent à cinq burelles de gueules’, five horizontal red bars on a silver or white background.72 In his notes, Gaignières named the bishop ‘Philippe de Cahors’, but publications incorporating the antiquary’s notes, influenced directly by Gallia christiana or indirectly by it, but through Fisquet, instructed readers to substitute Chaource (lisez Chaource).73 The truth is that the arms themselves are a giveaway. They were a colour-reversed rotation of the arms of the city of Cahors, five argent upright bars on a red background, but shorn of the towers’ martial imagery. That the design evokes Cahors’ arms and thus alludes to the bishop’s origins seems an unobjectionable inference, considering the general ‘playfulness’ of medieval heraldry. More directly, it testifies to the execution of symbolic re-adjustments in design to differentiate from yet at the same time to ally one set of arms with another, seen especially in but not limited to family heraldry and the establishment of arms for cadet branches.74 Nicolas Daumet, a local history enthusiast and amateur historian in Évreux, where Philippe de Caturco ultimately became bishop, solved the problem of the prelate’s origins by using the various toponyms affixed to his Christian name with indifference in his online annals of Évrecin life.75 His refreshing humility obliged him in the préambule to his site to acknowledge that there might be errors or other shortcomings in the presentation, presumably including his unwillingness to make a choice here or elsewhere on the site on the proper translation of de Caturco.76 However, I see no reason for further hesitation, and I shall refer to the man — the administrator and prelate who enjoyed Louis IX’s patronage — as Philippe of Cahors. If arguments over proper translation have plagued attempts to establish Philippe’s place of birth, similar controversies have surrounded claims about his status at birth. Besides perpetuating the identification of Caturcum with Chaource in the Aisne, Marie Dejoux, for example, has suggested that Philippe was a local noble of the region in which the village is located, which is to say, that he was the scion of an otherwise undocumented minor aristocratic family.77 Why, absent any direct evidence, would a few other scholars also believe like Dejoux that Philippe was the descendant of a noble lineage? A possible influence is the existence of a noble house of Chaources (variously spelled) based in the county of Maine, with a branch, Chaworth, in England, whose Latin 72 Inventaire des dessins exécutés, i, 285 no. 2366. The online catalogue of the Gaignières collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France incorporates the information of the Inventaire, but the entry for Philippe’s tomb is one of the minority of which the originals have disappeared; Roger de Gaignières (1642–1715) — Collectionneur, p. 144. Dr Randall Pippenger tracked down a copy in the Bodleian Library, accessible through https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb40556528k [accessed 17 March 2021]. A black-and-white sketch appears in Avril, Les archives héraldiques d’Évreux, p. 73. 73 Fisquet, La France pontificale, viii, 30; ‘Catalogue Gaignières, etc.’, pp. 487–88. 74 Boutell, Heraldry, p. 437; International Heraldry and Heralds, s.v. ‘family’; Bartlett, Blood Royal, pp. 177–78 and 321–26. 75 Daumet, ‘Histoire d’Évreux’. 76 Daumet, ‘Histoire d’Évreux’. 77 Dejoux, Enquêtes de saint Louis, p. 127.
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spellings overlap with those of the two northern French villages and that of Cahors.78 This explanation of where the idea comes from draws strength from the well-documented fact that antiquaries and early historians had a pronounced tendency to imagine all the councillors of Louis IX as aristocrats.79 A few also deduced Philippe’s alleged nobiliary status through their misidentification of him with his kinsman of the same name, whom we have already met, the canon-sacristan of Saint-Médard of Paris. This other Philippe, to recall, was a party with his two brothers in the sale of rights in two castles, the possession of which these scholars believed implied nobiliary status. The brothers sold their rights to the crown in 1262. Early scholars who believed in Philippe’s noble status were still divided as to whether he came from Cahors or Chaource, but more favoured the former than the latter, since the castles (in Pézenas and Tourbes), like the cathedral city, were located in Occitan-speaking lands, not in the north. Dejoux did not invoke the sale document as evidence of Philippe’s legal status, however, and, indeed, she has acknowledged that her conjecture was no more than a guess.80 In other words, there is absolutely no compelling evidence or any evidence at all that our Philippe was a noble. Despite differing with the compilers of Gallia christiana on which Chaource Caturcum referred to, Fisquet, by reprinting a part of their biographical notice on Philippe, can be regarded as affirming the overall accuracy of the savants’ research. He accepted, for instance, that Philippe’s father and mother were a couple named Benoît-Jean and Pétronille.81 Yet, then and significantly, he abbreviated the compilers’ notice, omitting the fact that they had also listed a brother of Philippe, one Pierre, who served the royal government, and three cousins named Benoît, Raymond, and Gaucelin-Jean. Fisquet’s failure to mention the brother, Pierre, is especially telling. It must owe something to the document registering the sale of the two castles that named Philippe de Caturco’s brothers as Raymond and Hélie, not Pierre. This was clear evidence that the two Philippes were different men. In another possible scenario, one might suppose that Fisquet was perplexed that the purchase deed named Philippe de Caturco’s father Raymond, whereas Gallia christiana named him Benoît-Jean. Let us recall that Gallia christiana also reported that Philippe had a cousin named Raymond. Had its authors erred and mixed up the cousin with the man, Benoît-Jean, whom they named as Philippe’s father? For Fisquet it must all have appeared too tangled to deal with, except by ignoring it, by silence. Despite Fisquet’s continued adherence to Chaource as Philippe’s place of origin, it is improbable on the face of it that a northerner would have had relatives with personal names like those whom Gallia christiana identified as his cousins, Raymond and Gaucelin (Gaucelm), names so favoured rather in Occitan-speaking lands.82 What it does
78 Petrovitch, ‘La reine de Serbie Hélène d’Anjou et la maison de Chaources’, pp. 167–81. 79 Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries, p. 25; Jordan, Men at the Center, pp. 6 and 37–38. 80 Email communication dated 20 July 2015. 81 Fisquet, La France pontificale, viii, 29. 82 On Raymond, Dauzat, Les noms de personnes, pp. 63 and 127. On Gaucelin/Gaucelm, compare the frequency of appearance in the partial prosopography of Toulouse provided by the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, online at http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/TOULOUSE%20 NOBILITY.htm#_Toc152730378, with that for Champagne, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ CHAMPAGNE%20NOBILITY.htm.
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suggest, however, if the compilers of Gallia christiana had conclusive evidence of the kinship relations, which there is no reason to doubt, is something else. That is to say, in their eagerness to associate Philippe with the young king’s exploits at the Champenois village of Chaource, they undervalued or failed to recognize the onomastic evidence in favour of the case for Cahors. Early modern antiquaries are indispensable in doing research on the French Middle Ages, because they had access to many documents no longer available or no longer thought to be extant.83 Present-day scholars should overcome knee-jerk scepticism when antiquaries have reported something that the scholars do not wish to believe.84 The antiquaries possessed extraordinary erudition. Sometimes, however, they had too much. Excessive knowledge, just like too little, can be a dangerous thing. One can observe the pattern, in which erudition actually impairs rather than enables excellent scholars, early modern and modern alike, in many contexts. Here, I am drawing on Roger Dahood’s brilliant demonstration that one of the great editors and translators of Anglo-Norman texts, Francisque Michel, in a lapse of critical acumen, imputed cannibalism to the Jewish protagonists of a vernacular verse retelling of a historical incident that took place in thirteenth-century England. Michel knew such stories of cannibalism were circulating on the continent in the thirteenth century. Consequently, a scribal error that produced a nonsense word in a text he was editing and that should have been corrected by him to the Anglo-Norman word for ‘smiled’ came out as ‘tasted’, and a cannibalism falsehood was born that for almost two centuries thereafter every scholar accepted.85 To conclude, I identify Philippe de Caturco as Philippe of Cahors. I believe he came from a family that produced, in his brother Pierre, at least one other royal administrator. This leads me to believe further that we may possibly classify his as an administrative family, one whose members or some of whose members found or sought to find regular employment in government. I believe that the family was of burgher stock, middling rather than poor, and that the family and the lineage of which it was a part, including Raymond Senior’s three sons, Raymond Junior, Hélie, and Philippe, were loyal to the Capetian kings. Nevertheless, traditional elites in Paris would still have regarded Cahorsin immigrants of this sort as geographical and social marginals. As far as Louis IX was concerned, however, other characteristics, not least his being in holy orders, trumped the disabilities that many northerners would have imputed to a Cahorsin of bourgeois stock. Philippe’s career in the words of Léopold Delisle, ‘mériterait d’être l’objet d’une note biographique plus développée que l’article de la Gallia christiana’.86 In recent work I hope I have demonstrated the truth of his insight.87
83 See Jordan, Men at the Center, pp. 59–61. 84 Cf. Grant, Blanche of Castile, p. 387 n. 159. 85 Dahood, ‘Alleged Jewish Cannibalism’, pp. 229–39. Dahood is far less enthusiastic about Michel’s ‘great’ editorial abilities in a slightly earlier article, ‘The Anglo-Norman “Hugo de Lincolnia”’, pp. 2–3. 86 Delisle, ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéchaux royaux’, p. 26*. 87 Above n. 1. See also Jordan, ‘Rustics Petitioning to Parlement in the Thirteenth Century: A Case Study’.
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Works Cited Primary Sources Avril, Robert, Les archives héraldiques d’Évreux (Évreux: Charles Hérissey, 1890) Baluze, Étienne, Vitae paparum avenionensium, 4 vols (Paris: Muguet, 1693) ‘Catalogue Gaignières, etc.’ Recueil des travaux de la Société libre d’agriculture, sciences, arts et belles lettres de l’Eure, 4th series, 9 (1891), 485–90 Diehl, Adolf, ed., Urkundenbuch der Stadt Esslingen, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1899–1905) Inventaire des dessins exécutés pour Roger de Gaignières et conservés aux Départements des estampes et des manuscripts, comp. by Henri Bouchot, 2 vols (Paris: Plon, 1891) Jougla de Morenas, Henri, Raoul de Warren, and André Franzen, Grand armorial de France, 6 vols and a separate supplement (Paris: Société du Grand armorial de France, 1934–1952) Les contes populaires du Périgord, du Quercy et du Rouergue, ed. by Pierre-Étienne Mareuse (Romorantin: CPE, 2015) Martini oppaviensis Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, ed. by Ludwig Weiland, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 39 vols to date (Hannover: Hahn, 1826–), 22 (1872), pp. 377–475 Molinier, Auguste, ed., Correspondance administrative d’Alfonse de Poitiers, 2 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1894–1900) Roger de Gaignières (1642–1715) — Collectionneur, online at https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/cb40556528k [accessed 17 March 2021] Teulet, Alexandre, ed., Layettes du Trésor des chartes, 5 vols (Paris: Plon, 1863–1909) Secondary Works 1212–1214: et trieno que hizo a Europa (Pamplona: Publicaciones del Gobierno de Navarra, 2012) Albe, Édmond, ‘Autour de Jean XXII: Jean XXII et les familles du Quercy (suite)’, Annales de Saint-Louis des Français, 7 (1902–1903), 141–234 ———, ‘Prélats originaires du Quercy: diocèses de France’, Annales de Saint-Louis des Français, 10 (1905–1906), 143–211 ———, ‘Les marchands de Cahors à Londres au xiiie siècle’, Bulletin de la Société des études littéraires, scientifiques et artistiques du Lot, 33 (1908), 31–55 Baget, Jean-Jacques, and Alexandre Lecointe, Dictionnaire des communes du département de l’Aisne (Laon: Lecointe, 1837) Balasse, Céline, 1306: L’expulsion des juifs du royaume de France (Brussels: Boek, 2008) Baldwin, John, and Walter Simons, ‘The Consequences of Bouvines’, French Historical Studies, 37 (2014), 243–69 Barthélémy, Dominique La Bataille de Bouvines: histoire et légendes (Paris: Perrin, 2018) Bartlett, Robert, Blood Royal: Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)
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‘Black Wine is Back’, Chicago Tribune, 21 June 2017, online at https://www.chicagotribune. com/dining/drink/wine/sc-cahors-wine-food-1202-20161130-column.html [accessed 17 March 2021] Boisjoslin, Jean de, À travers les rue de Cahors: répertoire historique et alphabétique des voies de cette ville (Bayac: Éditions du Roc de Bourzac, 1993) Borrelli de Serres, Léon-Louis, Recherches sur divers services publics du xiiie au xviie siècle, 3 vols (Paris: Picard, 1895–1909) Boutaric, Edgar, ‘Review of Martin Bertrandy[-Lacabane]’, Recherches historiques sur l’origine, l’élection at le couronnement du pape Jean XXII, in Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 16 (1855), 61–62 Boutell, Charles, Heraldry: Historical and Popular, 2nd edn (London: Winsor and Newton, 1863) Carolus-Barré, Louis, Le procès de canonisation de saint Louis (1272–1297): essai de reconstitution (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994) Chassant, Alphonse, and G.-E. Sauvage, Histoire des évêques d’Évreux avec des notes et des armoires (Évreux: Louis Tavernier, 1846) Chassel, Jean-Luc, ‘De l’amour du prince au culte de saint Louis: le sceau des consuls de Pézenas (1298 ou 1303?)’, in Amour et desamour du prince du haut moyen âge à la Revolution française, ed. by Josiane Barbier, Monique Cottret, and Lydwine Scordia (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2011), pp. 63–80 Collette, Carolyn, and Thelma Fenster, ‘Introduction: Recognizing the French of Medieval England’, in The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ed. by Thelma Fenster and Carolyn Collette (Cambridge: Brewer, 2017), pp. 1–11 Conant, Kenneth, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture 800–1200, 4th edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978) Contamine, Philippe, ‘Le jeudi de Muret (12 septembre 1213), le dimanche de Bouvines (27 juillet 1214): deux “journées” qui ont “fait la France”’, in La Croisade albigeoise: actes du colloque du Centre d’études cathares, ed. by Michel Roquevert (Carcassonne: Centre d’études cathares, 2004), pp. 109–23 Dahood, Roger, ‘The Anglo-Norman “Hugo de Lincolnia”: A Critical Edition and Translation from the Unique Text in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS fr. 902’, Chaucer Review, 49 (2014), 2–3 ———, ‘Alleged Jewish Cannibalism in the Thirteenth-Century Anglo-Norman “Hugo de Lincolnia”, with Notice of the Allegation in Twelfth-Century England’, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 25 (2015), 229–39 Daumet, Nicolas, ‘Histoire d’Évreux’, online at http://www.evreux-histoire.com/ [accessed 16 March 2021] Dauzat, Albert, Les noms de personnes: origine et évolution; prénoms, noms de famille, surnoms, pseudonymes (Paris: Delagrave, 1925) Davis, Christopher, ‘“Chascus en lor lati”: Guilhem IX, Birdsong, and the Language of Poetry’, Tenso, 30 (2015), 2–24 Dejoux, Marie, ‘Catalogue prosopographique des enquêteurs-réparateurs de Louis IX’. This supplementary documentation is downloadable from the publisher’s website at https://www.puf.com/content/Les_enqu%C3%AAtes_de_saint_Louis_Gouverner_ et_sauver_son_%C3%A2me [accessed 17 March 2021], and directly from https://www. puf.com/sites/default/files/Les%20enqu%C3%AAtes%20de%20saint%20Louis.%20 Gouverner%20et%20sauver%20son%20%C3%A2me.pdf [accessed 17 March 2021]
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Xavier Hélary
Jean d’Acre, Butler of France, Diplomat and High Servant of the Capetian Crown (d. 8 January 1296)
Almost any historian of medieval France who studies the second half of the thirteenth century will have encountered the figure of Jean d’Acre (c. 1227/1230–1296) at one time or another.1 Involved in most of the important affairs of his day, even if only in the background, Jean d’Acre rubbed shoulders with the most significant rulers of his era, all of whom were, to one degree or another, his relatives or allies: the kings of France and Castile, the kings of England and Scotland, the emperors of Constantinople, and the kings of Jerusalem. Although his name, his origins, and his long and extraordinary career make him a superb example of the cosmopolitanism of the high aristocracy in the thirteenth century, the studies of his life which do exist treat particular aspects of his character while leaving others unstudied.2
1 ‘Cousins du roi, les deux Brienne [Alphonse et Jean] figurent souvent auprès de lui et doivent être comptés parmi les plus écoutés de ses conseillers’, Richard, Saint Louis, p. 445. 2 This is the case, for example, of the robust entry on Jean d’Acre by Louis Carolus-Barré in his study of the canonization process of Saint Louis: only the French part of Jean d’Acre’s career is considered there. Moreover, the book was published posthumously and, as a result, without footnotes or full sourcing (Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis, pp. 164–68). The same thing can be said of C. Segura Graino and A. Torreblanca Lopez, curiously titled ‘Personajes bizantinos en la corte de Alfonso X’, pp. 179–87. The ‘personnages byzantins’ mentioned in the article are in fact members of the family of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which Jean d’Acre held to through his sister. Useful information can be found in Pinoteau and Le Gallo, L’Héraldique de Saint Louis et de ses compagnons, pp. 30–32; I am grateful to Jérôme Limorté, PhD candidate in the Sorbonne-Université for having given to me this study, hard to find except in the Parisian libraries. Many elements are already given by Élie Berger, ‘Requête adressée au roi de France’, pp. 343–50. For a long time Jean d’Acre has not attracted much attention, but a few historians have encountered him in their research, notably Guy Perry, who dedicated his first book, John of Brienne, to the father of Jean d’Acre. G. Perry then wrote a comprehensive book about the Brienne family: The Briennes (see ‘John, count of Montfort and butler of France’ in the index); very interesting too is the paper by Thomas Lacomme, ‘Un cartulaire sous influence?’, pp. 87–110. Finally, Filip van Tricht’s The Horoscope of Emperor Baldwin II contains a long Xavier Hélary is Professeur d’histoire du Moyen Âge at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon III.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 211-264 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122623
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The purpose of this essay is thus to restore Jean d’Acre to his rightful position among the important figures of his time, especially at the Capetian court in the half century between Louis IX and Philip the Fair. Transcending the details of his own life, this focus on Jean d’Acre also illuminates the practices of Capetian power and rule, as is appropriate for a study in honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, whose work has made such important contributions to this topic.4
Jean de Brienne, King of Jerusalem Jean d’Acre, through both his father and his mother, was born to the highest European aristocracy. His father’s career was nothing less than extraordinary.5 Born around 1175, Jean de Brienne hailed from one of the oldest and most powerful lineages of the aristocracy of Champagne.6 He was the third son of Erard II, Count of Brienne, and Agnes of Montbeliard.7 In 1199, his older brother, Gautier III, who became Count of Brienne in 1190, married Elvira, daughter of the deceased King of Sicily, Tancred (r. 1189–1194); the marriage’s architect might well have been the King himself, Philip Augustus, eager to be rid of such a troublesome lord. Once Count of Lecce, and on
discussion on Jean d’Acre and his relations with his brother-in-law, the Emperor Baldwin II, pp. 63–73. Still useful is Pierre de Guibours, dit le P. Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison de France, p. 518. 4 Conducted over a long period of time, the research presented here is based foremost on the records on Jean d’Acre in the Corpus philippicum, created by Robert Fawtier and held in the Institut de Recherche et d’histoire des textes (CNRS, Paris). Since 2006, I have had a few occasions to present the figure of Jean d’Acre, most recently in March 2019, when Cecilia Gaposchkin came to Lyons for a conference about Saint Louis’s reign. I am very grateful to her for her help and for having translated the present chapter into English. My thanks are due also to Hélène Loyau (Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, section d’héraldique), and to Arnaud Baudin, directeur adjoint des Archives départementales et du Patrimoine de l’Aube, for their help in understanding the strange imperial eagle which figures on the seal of Jean d’Acre; and to Keith Stringer, emeritus professor at the University of Lancaster (United Kingdom), for having given me so much information about the Scottish sojourn of Jean d’Acre and his relations with his second wife, Marie de Coucy; and to Boris Bore, assistant professor at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, for information about the Parisian topography and the locations of the aristocratic hôtels at the end of the thirteenth century. 5 Perry, John of Brienne; for memory, Bréhier, ‘Jean de Brienne’, x, cols 698–709, and Böhm, Johann von Brienne; on the seals of Jean de Brienne (wax seals then leaden bulls) as King of Jerusalem) see Nielen, ‘Du comté de Champagne aux royaumes d’Orient’, pp. 589–606, 595–98; Fedorenko, ‘The Crusading Career of John of Brienne’, pp. 43–79. 6 The date of John of Brienne’s birth has long been established as 1148, based on the testimony of a Greek historian, George Acropolitès, who stated that when he himself saw John of Brienne in Constantinople in 1231, he was eighty years old. Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville, ‘Recherches sur les premières années de Jean de Brienne’, pp. 235–47; Buckley, ‘The Problematical Octogenarianism of John of Brienne’, pp. 315–22, shows that Jean was probably born around 1170 (between 1169 and 1174); Perry, John of Brienne, p. 26, settles for the mid-1170s. 7 See the genealogy compiled by Evergates, Feudal Society in the Bailliage of Troyes under the Counts of Champagne, p. 164; For the origins of the county of Brienne, Bur, La formation du comté de Champagne; Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne.
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the cusp of conquering all of southern Italy with the endorsement of Innocent III (r. 1198–1216), Gautier III was killed in 1205. In his brother’s absence, Jean took control of the county of Brienne in 1201; between 1205 and the start of the 1220s, he held the title of Count of Brienne in the name of his nephew, Gauthier IV. In 1210, at the request of the Frankish elite of the Holy Land and with the approval of both the French king and the pope, Jean of Brienne undertook a journey to the kingdom of Jerusalem. Before leaving, Philip Augustus made him a hefty loan of 40,000 livres tournois. It had been decided that Jean would marry Marie, the daughter of Conrad of Montferrat and Isabella, the Queen of Jerusalem (r. 1192–1205, herself the daughter of Amaury I, whose reign lasted from 1163–1174).8 Jean de Brienne, through his wife, thus became the King of Jerusalem. Marie died in 1212, shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Isabella. It is in this latter’s name that, once widowed, Jean remained King of Jerusalem. And in 1214, he married Rita, the daughter of Leo II, the King of Armenia. Perhaps he dreamed of retaking, in the name of his new wife, his father-in-law’s throne, after Leo’s death in 1220. But Rita’s own death shortly after, along with her son, closed off that possibility. Yet, before that, in 1217, Jean had taken command of the army of the Fifth Crusade, which had targeted Egypt and captured the port city of Damietta (November 1219). The episode is famous for Jean’s rivalry with Pelagius, the papal legate, in directing operations. In the end having been defeated, Jean de Brienne returned Damietta to the Egyptians (September 1221).9 Jean de Brienne lived in the West from 1222 on. After the defeat of the Fifth Crusade, he sought primarily to work for the defence of the Holy Land. He also took pains to find a suitable husband for his daughter Isabella, the young heir to the throne of Jerusalem. The matter was settled in the spring of 1223, when Isabella was betrothed to the Emperor Frederick II. The two were married on 9 November 1225 in Brindisi. The agreement between King and Emperor held that Jean would remain King of Jerusalem. But the two fell out, almost immediately after the wedding, becoming mortal enemies. Indeed, when in 1227 Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick, Jean himself assumed the leadership of the papal army in the ‘war of the keys’ against the Emperor, backed by his nephew Gautier IV, who sought to restore Gautier’s mother’s claim to the principality of Taranto, the county of Lecce, and also, if needed, to the crown of Sicily itself. The Emperor left in June 1228 for the Holy Land. During his stay there he was crowned King of Jerusalem at the Holy Sepulchre, the holy city having been restored to Christian rule by the Sultan. Shortly before, in April 1228, Isabelle, aged fifteen or sixteen, died giving birth to a son, Conrad (d. 1254), in whose name Frederick continued his claim to the kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick returned to Italy in June 1229 and defeated Jean de Brienne, who had sought to take advantage of Frederick’s absence to occupy his lands. But by this point, Jean had other plans. In April 1229, he accepted a proposition made by the noblemen of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The Emperor Robert
8 Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis roi de France, 1, p. 264. 9 Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221.
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of Courtenay had died in 1228. He was succeeded by his brother, Baldwin II. But Baldwin, having been born only in 1217, was hardly old enough to take on the burden of defending Constantinople, which was under constant threat from the Bulgarians and the exiled Greeks, who had withdrawn to Nicaea. An experienced man was needed, and the barons of the Latin Empire of Constantinople alighted on the figure of Jean de Brienne. An agreement was quickly reached. And Jean de Brienne left for France to gather the support he would need for his new ventures.10 Indeed, Jean travelled a great deal after his arrival in the West in 1222. In May 1224, as he was approaching his fifties, he contracted a new marriage, at Burgos, with Berengaria, the sister of King Ferdinand III of Castile (1217–1252), and the niece of Blanche of Castile, Louis IX’s mother.11 Apart from undertaking a pilgrimage to Compostela, Jean did not linger in Castile. Berengaria gave him a daughter, Marie, born probably in Capua at the start of 1225;12 another daughter, Blanche, died after only a few months, in Bologna in October of 1226.13 Jean d’Acre appears to have been Jean de Brienne’s third son, after the birth of Alphonse and Louis, which means Jean was born sometime around 1228/1230.14 In the West, Jean de Brienne spent time at the Capetian court.15 He attended Philip Augustus’s funeral in July 1223,16 and the coronation of Louis VIII on August 6 of the same year.17 In his will, Philip Augustus left a substantial bequest to Jean de Brienne, who was himself associated with the Templars and the Hospitallers, to support 300 knights serving in the Holy Land for three years. His new bride Berengaria, along with her aunt, Blanche of Castile, then participated in the procession on 2 August 1224, intended to beseech God’s help in taking La Rochelle.18 Jean de Brienne further participated in the campaign led by Louis VIII in an expedition against the Plantagenets.19 Jean apparently then led an embassy on behalf of the French king to Rome, to Pope Honorius III.20 He no doubt was also representing his own interests in
10 Longnon, L’Empire latin de Constantinople et la principauté de Morée; van Tricht, The Latin Renovatio of Byzantium. 11 The marriage is accounted for in the Grandes chroniques, ed. by Viard, vii, 8–9, which insists on the family ties between Berengaria and Blanche of Castile. Berengaria lived for some time in Paris: Grandes chroniques, ed. by Viard, vii, 11. See Ballesteros Beretta, Alfonso X el Sabio, p. 138, the act in which the archbishop of Toledo records having given the blessing to the two spouses, Jean de Brienne and Bérengère de Léon, in the Cathedral of Burgos; cf. Wolff, ‘Mortgage and Redemption of an Emperor’s Son’, pp. 45–84, at p. 47; and Martin, ‘Négociation et diplomatie dans la vie de Bérengère de Castille’. 12 Bony, ‘Le gisant en marbre noir de Saint-Denis’, p. 98; Perry, John of Brienne, p. 125. 13 Perry, John of Brienne, p. 141. 14 Perry, John of Brienne, p. 164. 15 On Jean de Brienne’s relations with the royal family, Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 163–64. 16 Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis roi de France, i, 71. 17 Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII, p. 222; Berger, Histoire de Blanche de Castille, p. 32; Sivéry, Blanche de Castille, p. 81. 18 Berger, Histoire de Blanche de Castille, p. 33; Sivéry, Blanche de Castille, p. 94. 19 Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII, pp. 239 and 443; Sivéry, Blanche de Castille, p. 113. 20 Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII, p. 271.
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raising support for the Holy Land; this was, after all, the reason for his trip to England in September 1223. According to English sources, it was Jean de Brienne who had pressured Louis VIII to deny the request of the Cardinal of Sant’Angelo, the papal legate, to restore to the English king those lands conquered from King John by Philip Augustus.21 Upon his return to France following the break with Frederick II, toward the end of 1225, Jean of Brienne and Berengaria were the only relatives with Blanche of Castile when she learned of the premature death of Louis VIII (8 November 1226). Blanche’s plight — just as Joinville said — was to have neither family nor friends in the Kingdom of France.22 Jean of Brienne was subsequently present for the coronation of Louis IX (29 November 1226).23 At this point, Jean returned to Italy, to take up the fight against Frederick II. His defeat, and the promise of a new career in Constantinople, brought him back to France, in the hopes of gathering men and resources for a new expedition to the Latin Empire. In May 1230 he joined Louis IX and his mother in an expedition against Peter Mauclerc, the Count of Brittany, who had sided with Henry III of England. Jean was a witness to the ‘Treaty of Clisson’ through which Blanche of Castile and Louis IX came to terms with the Count of La Marche, who had also sided with Henry III.24 In the challenging early years of Louis’s reign, Jean de Brienne was undoubtably a valuable ally. The aim of this alliance, however, was always to recruit new men to his return to Constantinople.25 At the end of 1230, he left France once and for all. At Perugia, he met one last time with the pope. At Venice, he obtained the support of the Doge in the form of fourteen Venetian ships, which would transport a small army of 500 knights, 1200 horses, and 5000 men to Constantinople. The accord he had reached with the barons of the Latin Empire was advantageous to Jean. It specified that he would be, for the duration of his lifetime, the sole emperor, while the young Baldwin of Courtenay (1217–1273) would remain under his guardianship and would marry his eldest daughter, Marie.26 Jean arrived in Constantinople at the end of 1231 and was crowned Emperor at the Hagia Sophia. But he ruled for less than six years, dying on 23 March 1237. Nearing the end of his life, he took the Franciscan habit from the hands of Friar Benedict of Arezzo.27 Berengaria seems, in turn, to have died just a few days after him, on 12 April 1237. The children of Jean de Brienne — Marie and her three brothers — resided in Constantinople between 1231 and 1236. The capital was impoverished and under
21 Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII, p. 272; Berger, Histoire de Blanche de Castille, p. 37; Annales de Dunstaple, ed. by Luard, p. 100, Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII, pp. 272–73. 22 Sivéry, Louis VIII, p. 124. 23 Berger, Histoire de Blanche de Castille, p. 66 and n. 1; Richard, Saint Louis, p. 38. 24 Berger, Histoire de Blanche de Castille, pp. 173–75. 25 Perry, John of Brienne, pp. 152–53. 26 On the role of Jean de Brienne in the history of the Latin Empire, Longnon, L’Empire latin de Constantinople, pp. 169–74. 27 Wolff, ‘The Latin Empire of Constantinople and the Franciscans’, pp. 213–37, at pp. 215–21.
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constant threat. Did they learn Greek during this time? Or Italian? or Latin? What memories would they have retained of these impressionable years, spent in what was necessarily a multicultural and cosmopolitan environment? We are ill-informed about much of this, but it does seem that Jean de Brienne’s sons were encouraged to take part in their father’s larger war efforts. In 1241, according to the English chronicler Matthew Paris, the True Cross was brought to Paris. Presumably, after capturing Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin might well have left the True Cross at Damietta. If so, Jean de Brienne, who was in Damietta during the Fifth Crusade, could have acquired the relic during the Crusader occupation of the city. The two sons of Jean de Brienne, King of Jerusalem and — more importantly — Emperor of Constantinople, could then have put the cross relic in hock with the Venetians in exchange for financial support for his fight against the Greeks in exile. And Baldwin II could then have obtained a new loan, also guaranteed by the cross. It was, after all, Louis IX who redeemed the precious relics, for no less than 25,000 pounds.28 Matthew Paris mentions only ‘two sons of Jean, King of Jerusalem’ as involved in this transaction. Was Jean d’Acre one of them? Since the cross arrived in France in 1241, it would have to have been handed over to the Venetians a few years earlier. Jean d’Acre, born sometimes around 1228 or so, would have been only about ten years old at this time. We also know from a charter that Baldwin II issued in 1247 that a large piece of the True Cross was ceded to Louis as part of the larger relic transfers of 1241 and 1242, and that the relic had been handed over not to the Venetians but rather the Templars.29 We can combine Matthew’s account with another piece of evidence, brought to light by Filip van Tricht. In a letter that Frederic II sent to the Master of the Teutonic order, Brother Hermann of Salza, the Emperor announced the death of Jean de Brienne (March 1237), before declaring that it had been his intention to invite his former father-in-law to court. Above all, Frederic asked Hermann of Salza to fetch Jean de Brienne’s two sons, whom he would find, he believed, in Venice.30 Since the boys were in Venice, they were not with Louis IX. Why Venice? Surely as a pledge for a loan given to Jean as Emperor of Constantinople by some wealthy Venetians. Later, Philip of Courtenay, their nephew (Marie of Constantinople and Baldwin’s son), spent time in Venice in security of a loan, being freed only by the efforts of his mother and her cousin, Alfonso X of Castile. One last piece of evidence. At the end of the fourteenth century Jean d’Ypres (d. 1383), the author of the Chronique de Saint-Bertin, reports that Jean de Brienne, pressed for funds, was forced to hand over his two sons Jean and Louis (Alfonse is not mentioned) as hostages to the Pisans in exchange for 10,000 livres, before eventually handing over the Crown of Thorns (again to the Pisans). Something is not quite right, since we know that Baldwin pawned the Crown to the Venetians.31
28 Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, p. 90. 29 Frolow, La relique de la Vraie Croix, pp. 427–30. 30 van Tricht, The Horoscope of Emperor Baldwin II, pp. 63–64; the Emperor’s letter is in HuillardBréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, v. 1, 109. 31 Martène and Durant, eds, Jean d’Ypres. Chronicon Sythiense Sancti Bertini, pp. 720–21.
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But, at the very least, these three sources, when taken together, suggest that two sons of Jean de Brienne may have been used as surety for a substantial loan in the war effort, as were both the relic of the Crown of Thorns and of the True Cross.
Jean de Brienne’s Sons at the Court of France If this is the case, then the sons of Jean de Brienne must not have stayed long in Venice. The Latin chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis says that in 1244, with Innocent IV having called the Council of Lyon for the following year, the Emperor Jean of Constantinople — threatened by his enemies ‘Vastachius et Azanus’ (i.e., Jean Vatatzès, the Emperor of Nicaea, and Jean Asen, the Tsar of Bulgaria) who had allied against him — sent his son-in-law, the young Baldwin, to France. Baldwin had two goals: to secure military aid for the Latin Empire and to claim investiture in the margravate of Namur, which was in the Empire, as well as the Lordship of Courtenay, his ancestral lands, all through the help of his cousin, the king of France. The chronicler specifies that Jean of Brienne had his own three sons — Alfonse, Jean, and Louis (in that order), all still ‘aetatis parvulos’ (young boys) — accompany Baldwin in order to beseech the king of France and his pious mother, the Queen Blanche, ‘ut eos in clientes habere et recipere dignarentur’ (to receive them as their protégés, that is to say, their clients). ‘The saintly king’, Guillaume de Nangis adds, ‘received them with much honor and joy, loved them very much, and praised them very much’.32 This passage presents an obvious problem: Jean de Brienne had been dead a full seven years in 1244. It is impossible that he could have sent his sons to Louis’s court in that year. But we need not doubt the information it otherwise provides us, if — following the guidance of other sources — we re-date the year to 1236.33 Despite the dating error, the information provided by Guillaume de Nangis is precious. Whether Jean of Brienne was anxious to protect his young sons, or whether he simply entrusted their upbringing to their cousin, the king of France, what is clear is that Louis and Blanche welcomed them warmly to France. As far as we can tell, the three boys were welcomed as part of the royal household; their presence is recorded in the surviving accounts, in both May and September of 1239, under the collective names of ‘pueri Aconis’ or ‘pueri Aconenses’ (the children of Acre).34 In September 1239, robes were made for Charles (the future King of Sicily) and for the ‘children of Acre’, who must have been about the same age as Charles of Anjou, born in 1227, after his father’s death.35
32 ‘Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis’, p. 550. 33 Du Cange had already noted the error of Guillaume de Nangis (Histoire de l’empereur de Constantinople, p. 227 and n. 2; nor did the error escape the notice of Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis, ii, 307–08; cf. also Berger, Blanche de Castille, pp. 326–27 and 334, and Perry, The Briennes, p. 164. 34 ‘Itinera, dona et hernesia anno Domini M. CC. XXXIX inter Ascensionem et Omnes Sanctos’, p. 591 and n. 1; Louis d’Acre (Loois de Acon) received a palefroi [palfrey] that same year, worth 13 l. (‘Itinera, dona et hernesia anno Domini M. CC. XXXIX inter Ascensionem et Omnes Sanctos’, p. 612). 35 ‘Itinera, dona et hernesia anno Domini M. CC. XXXIX inter Ascensionem et Omnes Sanctos’, p. 604.
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The Christian names given to the three brothers are revealing. The first was named after his grandfather, the King of León, Alphonse IX (1188–1230), and after his great-grandfather, the King of Castile, Alphonse VIII (1158–1214). The first name of the second son, Louis, was borrowed from the Capetian lineage and probably witness to the fact that Louis IX (more likely than his father, Louis VIII) was asked to be his godfather. The third, Jean, was given the name of his father. We might note here that the traditional names used in the Brienne family — Gautier and Érard — were passed over. The deaths of both their mother and father in 1237 left ‘the children of Acre’ as orphans. Now adolescents, did they leave for Constantinople, or did they stay in France? We cannot say, because, above all, the household accounts do not survive for the 1240s. What we can say is that the mediocre state of their own fortune pushed them to seek lucrative marriages, as their father had done. Louis and Blanche naturally played a role in negotiations.36 At some point — we don’t know the date, but probably at the end of the 1240s — Alphonse, the oldest, married Marie, the only daughter and the heiress of Raoul II, the Count of Eu.37 Their descendants succeeded them for over four generations.38 Jean I (d. 1294), Jean II (d. 1302), Raoul I (d. 1344) and Raoul II (d. 1350). All four distinguished themselves by their service to the kings of France, particularly in the army. Jean II was killed at Courtrai (11 July 1302), whereas Raoul I and Raoul II each became, one after the other, the Constable of France. Notwithstanding the execution of Raoul II in 1350 (on Jean the Good’s orders, and for unclear reasons), service to the French kings was a firm tradition of the lineage. For his part, Louis also married a rich heiress, Agnes, who brought with her several lordships, including the Viscounty of Beaumont in Maine.39 According to Father Anselm, the marriage took place before February 1253, which means that Louis would not have accompanied Louis IX on crusade or, at least, would have returned as soon as possible, like the King’s brothers Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou, as indeed most of the barons who had survived the defeat of the crusade army in the spring of 1250. Several children issued from this marriage. Jean, the eldest, became viscount of Beaumont after his father’s death, around 1285;40 as was the case with the son Alphonse of Brienne, he served regularly in the wars of his cousins, the French
36 In 1221, the county of Brienne had passed to a nephew of Jean de Brienne, Gautier IV, who had come of age. 37 This Raoul II was the son of a Raoul I, who, by his marriage in c. 1191 to Alice, the sister of the previous count, had become the Comte d’Eu; Raoul I, who died on 1 May 1219, was succeeded by his son Raoul II, who in turn died around 1243; these three marriages produced a single daughter, Marie, who married Alphonse de Brienne (see the genealogical chart drawn up by Deck, Une commune normande au Moyen Âge. La ville d’Eu, p. 310, following Legris, Eu, ses comtes, appendix). 38 See the genealogical table drawn up by Deck, Une commune normande au Moyen Âge. La ville d’Eu, p. 310. 39 Today this is Beaumont-sur-Sarthe, Sarthe, arrondissement Mamers, chef-lieu de canton. 40 The tombs of the Eu family, known from the drawings in the Gaignières collection, were in the Benedictine abbey of Notre-Dame d’Etival-en-Charnie (arrondissement La Flèche, canton Loué, commune Chemiré-en-Charnie): Adhémar, ‘Les tombeaux de la collection Gaignières’, pp. 1–192, no. 225 (Agnès de Beaumont) and no. 297 (Louis de Beaumont); the dates of their deaths are
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kings. His brother Louis would become Bishop of Durham, in England, an office he held from 1317 to 1333. Two of his three sisters would marry nobility from Western France: Marie wed Henri d’Avagour, while Jeanne became the wife of Guy de Laval, Count of Caserte following Charles’ conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily. Marguerite in contrast was destined to make a more exotic marriage, with Bohemond, Prince of Antioch and Count of Tripoli.41 Jean d’Acre was not forgotten. At the start of 1249, as Louis IX was passing the winter on Cyprus and preparing his attack against Egypt, Marie de Brienne, the Empress of Constantinople, came to him to request aid for the defence of Constantinople, just as her husband Baldwin II of Courtenay, as we saw, had made two long trips to Europe for this same reason (1236–1240 and 1244–1248). Baldwin approached Louis IX again right after Louis captured Damietta in June 1249. In recounting this episode, Joinville insists that Marie de Brienne, upon arriving at Paphos (on the Cypriot coast), asked the Seneschal ( Joinville) himself and Erard of Brienne to come get her and bring her to the king of France. Their blood relationship explains why the Empress sent for Erard de Brienne, but what about Joinville? Is it simple vanity on the part of a chronicler drawn to what can enhance his reputation, or is it evidence of a longstanding connection between the two families? Whatever the case, the Empress obtained nothing from the king during her stint in Cyprus, and also very little from the lords who had accompanied her. At most, she left with letters in which a hundred knights pledged to come to Constantinople after Louis’s crusade was over, on condition that the king or the legate should decide to send the troops. When he left for France in April 1254, Joinville would ask the king about this, but Louis replied simply that he had no more money for a detour to Constantinople.42 Joinville finishes his account of Marie’s stay in Cyprus by reporting that, after the departure of the Crusader army for Egypt, she left for France with her brother Jean. Before leaving, she had arranged for her brother’s marriage with Jeanne de Châteaudun, the widow of Jean, the Count of Montfort, who had just died on Cyprus. In all likelihood, although Joinville did not discuss it, Louis almost certainly had a say in the match.43 Joinville was not very forthcoming about Jean d’Acre, whom he was certain to have known quite well. They were of the same generation ( Joinville unknown. Cf. likewise no. 529, Jean I, Viscount of Beaumont, died after 1205, and was buried in the abbey of Etival, and no. 828, Louis de Beaumont, died in 1364, and buried in the charterhouse of the Parc-au-Maine. 41 Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison de France, vii, 137. 42 Jean de Joinville. Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by Monfrin, § 137–40; on this episode, Hendrickx, ‘Marie of Brienne’s Visit to Cyprus’, pp. 59–68. 43 Jean de Joinville. Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by Monfrin, § 140; The death of Jean, Count de Montfort, is reported by the chroniclers, including Guillaume de Nangis, in Géraud, ed., Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, p. 203; on Jean, who died in the odour of sanctity, Rhein, ‘La seigneurie de Montfort en Iveline’, pp. 1–363; Carolus-Barré, in the entry he devoted to Jean d’Acre thinks that in ‘l’empereris’ indicates the half-sister of John, Yolande or Isabelle, who had married Emperor Frederick II in 1223; Joinville’s account leaves no doubt, however, about this woman’s identity. This is certainly Marie.
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was born around 1225, Jean d’Acre around 1228/1230), both from the Champagne nobility, and they would have had many occasions to meet as part of Louis IX’s larger entourage after the return from the crusade, and then later, as part of that of Philip III and Philip IV. The two men both served as the governors of the county of Champagne, Joinville succeeding the Butler in 1281. Joinville’s coolness toward Jean d’Acre is in striking contrast with the warmth he expresses for Jean’s brother, the Comte d’Eu, whom he quotes at several points and always with much admiration.44 During his stay in the Holy Land, Alphonse de Brienne was knighted by his cousin, Louis IX, and, according to Joinville, he played an important role in Louis’s entourage, especially on military operations.45 Joinville does not provide a precise date for when Marie de Brienne and her brother arrived in Cyprus, but it was probably in the spring of 1249. Several known acta can be triangulated with Joinville’s story. For several weeks between the end of January and the month of February, when she was still in Negreponte (i.e., on the Island of Euboea), Marie de Brienne asked her aunt, Blanche of Castile, to settle several debts that she had contracted with Italian merchants in Constantinople.46 For reimbursement, Blanche might have recourse to what she had ‘dou nostre et dou Jahan, mon frere’ — that is to say, Marie and Jean’s patrimony, lands and rights in the kingdom. The Empress and her brother took an oath to together ‘paier ou fere paier en France’ their debts; Jean was thus at Negrepont with his sister, where he affixed a seal to one of Marie’s letters to Blanche.47 It seems that Blanche carried
44 Jean de Joinville. Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by Monfrin, § 140 and especially at § 582: upon his arrival at the camp near Tyre, the king, in designating where everyone would be housed, put Joinville close to the count of Eu: ‘La moy place il prist de lez la place le conte d’Eu, pour ce que il savoit que le conte d’Eu amoit ma compaignie’. See also, § 583, the Comte d’Eu played some tricks on Joinville: When Joinville was at dinner, Alphonse de Brienne threw small projectiles that damaged the dishes; and finally, § 596, the time that the Comte d’Eu took from Joinville a young boy that the latter had just taken into his service. In his classic edition of Joinville’s text, Jacques Monfrin repeats an error found already in xx of Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, p. 269 n. 2, and identified the Comte d’Eu (about whom Joinville never gives the first name) with Jean de Brienne, the son of Alphonse and Marie, Countess d’Eu; Monfrin corrected his own error in a later clarificatory note, ‘Jean de Brienne, comte d’Eu, et la traduction des Météorologiques d’Aristote par Mathieu le Vilain’, pp. 27–36; Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis, ii, 447, had already identified this mistake, showing that the error was deeply rooted. Incidentally, the French version of the Vie de Saint Louis, xx, 411, mentions ‘li cuens d’Eu Amfours’. 45 Jean de Joinville. Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by Monfrin, § 569–74. 46 Several acts are preserved: Paris, AN, J 509, no. 3 bis (30 January 1249 n. st.: 550 l. t. borrowed from ‘sire Escot Toscan, citien de Costantinoble’; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, p. 54); J 509, no. 3 (31 January 1249 n. st., 245 l. p. borrowed from Pierre de Rosni, knight of the Empress; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, pp. 54–55, no. 3740); Paris, AN, J 473, no. 10 ( January 1249 n. st., Nègrepont; 680 l. t. borrowed from ‘Bon de Monz, Toscan, citeien de Costantinoble, porteor de ces lettres’); and the item cited in the next note. 47 ‘Et je Jahans de Briene, li freres de madame l’Empereriz, en tesmoing de ce que je voil qui soit paiez dou mien, ausinques com de celi de ma dame, por ce que je i sui tenuz par mon serement de la dette paier, ai mis mon seal en ces lettres’ (Paris, AN, J 473, no. 10; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, p. 56, no. 3745; 1800 l. t. borrowed from ‘sire Ernaut de Nioles’); this act is particularly poignant because of the utter distress it expresses: ‘dont vos prions, douce dame, tant com nos
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this out willingly the following May, without it being specified whether she settled these debts with funds from their property or possibly those deposited by Marie de Brienne and Jean d’Acre before their departure.48 This dossier provides a further piece of information: at this point, Jean was still calling himself ‘Jean de Brienne’ (je Jahans de Briene, li freres de madame l’emperiz). At what point did he start calling himself Jean d’Acre? If Jean was with his sister in Negrepont at the start of 1249, and then in Cyprus, it is likely that they came from Constantinople. If so, when did Jean d’Acre leave the Capetian court? According to Filip van Tricht, Jean d’Acre did not leave with his brothers for the French court, but stayed in Constantinople throughout the 1240s. Yet, Guillaume de Nangis signals the presence there of Baldwin and the three sons of Jean de Brienne, whose names he provides. That said, it is still possible that after a longish stay with Louis IX, Jean d’Acre returned to Constantinople. But here, we lack definitive information, at least prior to 1248. Assuming that Jean d’Acre had remained in Constantinople, van Tricht suggested that he would be one of the enemies mentioned in the strange horoscope of Baldwin II (which was written in a very obscure language), and even specifically the very one that the Emperor should keep as close as possible in his entourage. Since Jean d’Acre was himself the son of Jean de Brienne, the former Emperor of Constantinople, is it possible that Jean d’Acre might have had ambitions for the crown, which he could achieve by ousting his young brother-in-law? We have no evidence for Jean’s presence by Baldwin’s side in these years, but we might still wonder whether Jean might have made a play for the crown, by bypassing his older brothers Alphonse and Louis.49 Whatever the case about a possible claim to the throne of Constantinople, in the 1240s the future was still wide open.
Jean d’Acre’s First Marriage Although Jean d’Acre spent time in Constantinople, he ultimately chose to return to France. We do not have enough evidence to speculate on his motives, but surely the question of a marriage would have been a significant concern for him. Whatever he envisioned for himself at the time, only an advantageous marriage would have provided the means, which he otherwise lacked. Surely, when Marie de Brienne
povons, que vos nos fetes quiter de ceste dette en tele maniere que nos n’i aiens honte, ne domage, ne que nos ne seins parjure et que nos puissiens autre foiz, se besoin nos estoit, recoverer a aus et a lor amis’. The seal of John d’Acre is lost on this act, but a seal, whether or not from the same stamp, is known from an act of 1288; Louis Douët d’Arcq, Inventaire de la collection des sceaux des Archives de l’Empire, no. 275. 48 Paris, AN, J 473, no. 10 and 11 (Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, pp. 69–70, no. 3772– 3775): four acts in favour of Ernaud de Nioles (1800 l. t.); Escot, Touscam, civis Constantinopolitanus (550 l. t.); Bon de Monz, Touscan, civis Constantinopolitanus (680 l.); and Pierre de Rosny, knight (245 l. t.). 49 Filip van Tricht, The Horoscope of Emperor Baldwin II, pp. 63–73.
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brought Jean with her to Cyprus, she had in mind to arrange for a good match for her brother, no doubt with Louis IX’s support. And indeed, Jeanne de Châteaudun was a great catch. She was the widow of Jean, grandson of the illustrious Simon de Montfort, and the daughter of Geoffroy, Viscount of Châteaudun, and Clémence des Roches, herself the daughter of Guillaume des Roches, the famous Seneschal of Anjou, and Marguerite de Sablé.50 The latter had brought to her marriage Sablé, Louplande, La Suze, Précigné, Briollay, and Brion.51 Portions of these lordships passed to Clémence and her husband, Geoffroy de Châteaudun. But Geoffroy had died during the crusade to Egypt, perhaps at the Battle of Mansourah (8 February 1250), thus leaving to his daughter, Jeanne, the seigneury of Château-du-Loir. The other properties went to a second daughter, named, like her mother, Clémence. Jeanne had, thus, lost both her father and her husband during Louis’s crusade. Jean d’Acre’s first marriage, however, did not turn out as he had hoped. Jeanne de Châteaudun died soon after, sometime between 1254 and 1257. Further, Jeanne already had a daughter, Beatrice, from her first marriage with Jean de Montfort. In 1260, Beatrice married Robert IV, Count of Dreux, bringing to him the seigneury of Château-du-Loir and the county of Montfort. Jean d’Acre could thus no longer use the title of ‘Count of Montfort’, under which he had appeared, as we shall see, in both pontifical letters and in the diplomas of the King of Castile Alfonso X. Jean’s only consolation was that before her death Jeanne de Châteaudun gave birth to a daughter, Blanche. She was almost certainly named for Jean d’Acre’s great-aunt, Blanche of Castile. A few years later, Jean arranged for her to inherit her share from her maternal grandparents, Geoffrey of Châteaudun and Clémence des Roches. On 18 January 1266, Jean d’Acre and the Comte de Dreux concluded an agreement in Paris, according to which the latter gave Jean 150 Mans livres in rents, apparently corresponding to the value of the manor at Louplande, ‘in the name of the lady Blanche, his daughter, for the rights of rent’.52 The next year, Blanche married Guillaume, the son of Enguerrand, Lord of Fiennes, an important aristocratic family from the counties of Artois and Boulogne. Blanche’s dowry was apparently an annuity of 300 livres tournois, which her father sought to pay from the Louplande territories.53 The details escape us, but it seems that not only this substantial annuity, but also the lands of Louplande, were ultimately passed to
50 Dubois, ‘Recherches sur la vie de Guillaume des Roches’, 30, 1869, pp. 377–424; 32, 1871, pp. 88–145; 34, pp. 502–44. 51 Sablé, Sarthe, arrondissement La Flèche, chef-lieu de canton; Louplande, arrondissement La Flèche, canton La Suze-sur-Sarthe; La Suze, arrondissement La Flèche; Précigné, arrondissement La Flèche, canton Sablé-sur-Sarthe; Briollay, Maine-et-Loire, arrondissement Angers, canton Angers-5; Brion, Maine-et-Loire, arrondissement Angers, canton Beaufort-en-Vallée, commune Les Bois-d’Anjou. 52 Vallée, ed., Cartulaire de Château-du-Loir, no. 185 (after Paris, BnF, fr. 20691, p. 569, an incomplete copy of the original, done around 1650). 53 The reconstruction of family and matrimonial ties was carried out by E. Vallée in the introduction to Cartulaire de Château-du-Loir. See especially pp. xi–xiii.
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Guillaume de Fiennes. Indeed, in 1272, Guillaume would sell Louplande to Pierre de La Broce, Chamberlain of Philip III.54
A Possible Stay at the Curia (1254) In the summer of 1254, Pope Innocent IV addressed Jean as ‘Jean, Comte de Monfort, born of the late Jean, King of Jerusalem’ in a series of privileges sent to him. There is no question that this is our Jean. But the pope’s provisions are curious. It is stipulated that neither Jean, nor his wife, nor their representatives could be called to trial outside the diocese of Chartres, and that no appointed judge could promulgate any ecclesiastical sentence against him.55 Further, the pope specifies that favours he has been given cannot be annulled at some later point by the Apostolic See.56 Even more interesting is that Jean, who is described as crucesignatus, had obtained a subsidy of 6000 livres tournois, which the Abbot of Neuphle-le-Vieux (diocese of Chartres) and the Dean of Rouen were to pay him from the proceeds of crusader vow redemptions and from other income collected in the ecclesiastical provinces of Sens and Reims.57 At about the same time, Jean’s brother Alphonse received about the same sum, which the Abbot of Neauphle-le-Vieux and the Abbot of Eu had to hand over. And yet, there was one key difference.58 Alphonse got these funds in compensation for expenses that he had incurred in the Holy Land. This does not seem to have been the case with Jean d’Acre. The priviledges, dated in Anagni, were issued between 5 July and 27 August 1254 (September, in the case of Alphonse). We can ask ourselves whether, during this period, Jean d’Acre was not actually at Anagni, with the pope. Louis IX returned home from the Holy Land during the summer of 1254, disembarking at Hyères on 10 July and returning to Paris by the end of the year. Jean d’Acre could have been sent to the curia by the government that was formed in November 1252, after the death of Blanche of Castile, around Prince Louis, at the orders of King Louis himself. And we might imagine that Jean d’Acre, approaching thirty, married and endowed with important revenues, had also entertained the possibility of going East, either for
54 Paris, AN, JJ 30 A, no. 606. 55 Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, Paris, no. 7978, Anagni, 27 August 1254; no. 8006, Anagni, 1 August 1254; Alphonse de Brienne receives privileges of the same kind (Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, iii, no. 8005 and 8007, 11 September 1254); the ‘conservateur’, i.e. the ecclesiastical dignitary responsible for enforcing the privileges granted by the pope, was, in the case of Jean d’Acre, the abbot of Neauphle-le-Vieux, and, in the case of his brother, the abbot of Saint-Denis. 56 Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, iii, no. 7977, Anagni, 27 August 1254. 57 Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, iii, no. 7815, Anagni, 5 July 1254. The abbaye Saint-Pierre de Neauphle-le-Vieux was a Benedictine foundation. 58 Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, iii, no. 7991, Anagni, 3 September 1254; the abbey of Eu was an abbey of canons regular of the order of Saint Victor; as this sum had not been paid, Alfonso de Brienne obtained from Alexander IV the renewal of the order, this time addressed to the prior of Saint Eloi of Paris and the dean of Saint Martin of Tours. (Les registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by de Loye and de Cenival, ii, no. 1621: 17 January 1257).
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the Holy Land or for Constantinople, and that he had wanted to secure the pope’s support in person. Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest that after his marriage to Jeanne de Châteaudun, Jean d’Acre had to remain in France. Another possibility, based on a letter from Innocent IV of 4 February 1254 from the Lateran Palace, suggests that Jean d’Acre may have followed Innocent to Rome. Innocent authorized Conrad, son of Frederick II, whom he had summoned to the curia, to send him duly appointed ambassadors; he added that, at the request of Jean, Comte de Montfort, and Thomas of Savoy, he consented to a delay until the middle of Lent.59 Why did Jean d’Acre and Thomas of Savoy intervene on Conrad’s behalf? We don’t know, but it should be remembered that Conrad IV was the son of Isabella of Brienne, Jean d’Acre’s own half-sister. Although we don’t find it documented elsewhere, this appears to be an uncle’s support for a nephew he had surely never met. Shortly after, in May 1254, Conrad IV died. It is possible that Jean d’Acre was already in Rome in February 1254, in the entourage of the pope. Quite possibly, he followed the papal curia for several months, into the summer.
A Brief Soujourn in Scotland (1257–1258) It was unlikely, after the death of his first wife, that Jean d’Acre would remain a widower. He was, as we will see, assured royal support. But again, now in his thirties, his future was wide open, and Jean apparently had ambitions. So, once again, he set his sights on a widow, this one higher in status than the first. By 1257, Jean d’Acre had married Marie, the daughter of Enguerrand III, Lord of Coucy (d. 1242). In 1239 Marie de Coucy had married Alexander II of Scotland (d. 1249), to whom she bore a son in 1241 (named after his father).60 The marriage was surely intended to counterbalance English influence. Alexander’s first wife had been Joan, a daughter of King John of England, who had died in 1238. Alexander II may also have had ties to Enguerrand de Coucy at the time of Prince Louis (the future Louis VIII)’s expedition to conquer England in 1216–1217. Enguerrand was an important figure in Louis’s army, which was welcomed and supported by the Scottish king.61 The English, however,
59 Les registres d’Innocent IV, ed. by Berger, iii, 458, no. 7758; Thomas of Savoy, who became Count of Flanders in 1247 through his marriage to Jeanne, widow of Ferrand of Portugal, became Lord of Piedmont on the death of his wife; from 1253, he governed the county of Savoy in the name of his nephew Boniface, a minor; in 1252, he made a second marriage, this time to Beatrice Fieschi, the niece of Pope Innocent IV. 60 Stringer, ‘Marie de Coucy’; I thank Keith Stringer for the extremely valuable information about Marie de Coucy and her unhappy union with Jean d’Acre. (Dickinson and Pryde, A New History of Scotland; Barrow, Kingship and Unity, p. 151; Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, pp. 123, 151 n. 153, 154; Watt, ‘The Minority of Alexander III of Scotland’, pp. 1–23); on the de Coucy family, Barthélémy, Les deux âges de la seigneurie banale, p. 435; cf. also Tardif, ‘Le procès d’Enguerran de Coucy’, pp. 5–44 and pp. 414–54, at p. 411. 61 If we follow the Flores historiarum (ed. by Luard, pp. 279–80), Alexander II called on his brother-inlaw Jean de Coucy in 1244 to repel an attack from the king of England; the aid sent by the Lord of Coucy was however intercepted on Henry III’s order by the guards of the Cinque-Ports. The case
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remained vigilant. In 1244, Alexander’s son had been promised to a daughter of King Henry III (r. 1216–1272) named Margaret, and they were married in December 1251. In turn, Henry III took advantage of his future son-in-law’s minority to exercise a quasi-guardianship over Scotland. In 1255, Henry came to the young man’s aid when a revolt was brewing; and in 1258, he approved the powerful Comyn family’s guardianship over Alexander III, still in his minority. It was in this unsettled context that Jean d’Acre married the mother of Alexander III. It was a gamble. According to Matthew Paris, Marie de Coucy had been allocated a third of the income of the kingdom of Scotland, that is, somewhere between four thousand to seven thousand ‘merks’ (the local currency) annually.62 After Alexander II’s death, it appears that Marie lived mostly in France, although without ever formally breaking ties with Scotland. In June 1250 she attended the translation of the relics of Saint Margaret at Dunfermline Abbey. And in October she went to France. She returned for her son’s wedding to Margaret, Henry III’s daughter, in York in June 1251. The title of the seigneury of Coucy was inherited by the cadet brother Enguerrand IV, since the eldest brother Raoul had been killed at the Battle of Mansurah (February 1250). It was this Enguerrand who is known for his involvement in a famous incident: having hanged three young men who were hunting on his lands, Enguerrand was arrested at the order of the King, Louis IX, who imposed an extremely heavy fine on him. It has been suggested that Jean d’Acre’s marriage to Marie de Coucy occurred precisely because of strained relations between the Coucy family and the crown. But that can’t be correct since the marriage took place at least two years before the summer 1259, when the events relating to Enguerrand IV occurred. If we set aside the possibility of a true love match (which is nonetheless possible), what were the advantages of this marriage? For Marie, she may have wanted the possibility of returning to the Scottish ‘game’. Jean’s situation was evident. Following the example of his own father, he sought to escape relative poverty to build a new future, through marriage. One way or another, the two seemed agreed to return to Scotland. And on 6 June 1257 Henry III gave Jean, son of the King of Jerusalem and Butler of France (as were the titles accorded to him) and his wife, the queen of Scotland, a
of Enguerran IV is also known from Flores historiarum, ed. by Luard, ii, 430–31, which describes the Lord of Coucy as a ‘vir magnus et quasi nobilium Francie primus’ (Flores historiarum, ed. by Luard, ii, 430); In contrast, Marie’s father, Enguerran III, is described as a ‘quidam excellens baro Francie’ (Flores historiarum, ed. by Luard, ii, 234) and then ‘quidam potens baro et crudelis de regno Francorum’ (Flores historiarum, ed. by Luard, ii, 253) and finally as ‘quidam baro de regno Francorum iniquissimus et regi et regno Anglie inimicissimus’ (Flores historiarum, ed. by Luard, ii, 278); the conditions of his death (an accidental drowning) are recounted on p. 279. Matthew Paris is from the outset more reserved, saying for the year 1244, that, ‘comme tous les Francs, il était un ennemi capital, ou un des ennemis capitaux, du roi d’Angleterre’ (Flores historiarum, ed. by Luard, iv, 359); He points out the request for aid by Alexander II to Jean, and interprets Enguerran III’s death as the punishment of a persecutor of the Church, particularly of Clairvaux. (Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, pp. 360–61). 62 According to Matthew Paris, Marie de Coucy was to received 7000 marcs annuity before her son’s coronation; and after her dower would have been constituted of an annuity of 4000 marcs. (Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. by Luard, p. 265).
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safe conduct to return, overland through England, to Scotland. The safe conduct was granted at the request of Pierre de Savoie, in spite of the ‘perniciosum […] exemplum’ (inimical example) provided by the king of France, who had refused certain people from England the safe conduct to cross France to visit the king of Germany, none other than Richard of Cornwall, elected King of the Romans in 1256 by four of the seven electors. Before leaving for Scotland, however, Jean d’Acre and his wife had to take an oath to do no harm to the Kingdom of England, against the king or queen of Scotland (i.e., Alexander III and his wife Margaret, herself Henry III’s daughter), or against the council that the king of England had established with them (eorum consilio quod cum eis posuimus), which had already been riven by discord. The oath was to be given at Dover on the day that Jean d’Acre and his wife were to disembark there.63 On 18 June, Henry III published the notice of safe conduct he had issued to Jean and Marie and ordered that his officers not disturb them during their journey. The safe conduct was valid until the feast of Saint Michael (September 29). The letter was entrusted to Master Gilbert de Milliers, who was responsible for delivering it to Jean and Marie once they had taken the oath to attempt nothing against the king of England or his son-in-law, the king of Scotland.64 A further point to note: it was Pierre de Savoie who advocated on behalf of Jean d’Acre and Marie de Coucy. Close to Henry III, his nephew by marriage, Pierre spent much time in England before, in 1267, becoming Earl of Savoy; which one — Marie de Coucy or Jean d’Acre — asked him for help? Is there a link with the joint intervention, in favour of Conrad IV, of Jean d’Acre and Thomas de Savoie, one of Peter’s brothers, in February 1254? This said, the queen of Scotland and her new husband did not take advantage of the safe conduct that had been so carefully procured for them. On 6 November 1258, Henry addressed those who made up the council of the king of Scotland (cum … regimen regni Scotie in se plenius assumpserint): among these were Gamelin Bishop of St Andrews; Jean d’Acre; Queen Marie (wife of this said Jean); Walter Comyn, Earl of Meneth; Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan; William, Earl of Mar; Alexander, Seneschal of Scotland; Alan Durward; Robert Menzies; and Gilbert Hay. The king of England promised that so long as the affairs of the realm were managed ‘secundum Deum et justitiam’ (according to God and justice), for the honour of the king and queen of Scotland, and according to the laws and good customs of the Scottish kingdom, he would provide assistance. If, on the other hand, the council or any of its members should waver, he would be subject to no constraint.65 The oath made by the council has survived. Jean d’Acre appears in both acts, just after the bishop of St Andrews, ‘cum inter manus nostras curam regni Scocie jam habeamus’ (among the other members of the Scottish royal council).
63 Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, i, 625; Stamp, ed., Calendar of Close Rolls, p. 134; cf. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, p. 247. 64 Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, i, 627. 65 Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, i, 670; Stamp, ed., Calendar of Close Rolls, pp. 461–62; slightly different version in Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, pp. 35 and 36.
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It seems likely that Jean, following his father’s example in Constantinople with the young Baldwin II, had hoped to govern the Scottish kingdom in the name of a minor king, and to be rewarded with rich estates upon which he could later settle. If this was his plan, he was disappointed.
The County of Namur and the End of the Scottish Adventure In this same year, while Jean d’Acre was still in Scotland, his sister, the Empress Marie, asked for help. It appears that Marie had not returned to Constantinople after 1250; she had remained with her great-aunt, Blanche of Castile, until her death in November 1252.66 It is possible that, at this point, Marie settled in Namur. The county of Namur had passed to the Courtenay family in 1212. The children of Peter II of Courtenay, Philippe, Henri, and Marguerite, all in turn held the title, up until the point that their brother, the Emperor Baldwin, came West. Baldwin was mostly interested in using the county as a guarantee for the loans he sought for the defence of Constantinople, but his absence, together with his political weakness, made Namur ripe for prey. And then, in the 1250s, the entire region was torn apart by the famous feud between the Avesnes and the Dampierre families, two two sets of siblings born from the marriages of Marguerite of Constantinople. Marguerite sided with the Dampierre family. The Avesnes in turn invested Henry V, Count of Luxembourg, with the county of Namur. Marie then supported Charles of Anjou, allied with the Dampierre, in his attempt to conquer the county of Hainaut. At Christmas in 1256, Namur rebelled against Marie. Her men were besieged in the town fortress. On 24 September 1256, Saint Louis may well have obtained from the Avesnes brothers the promise that they would renounce the county of Namur and annul the grant they had made to Henry of Luxembourg. But Marie de Brienne was not, it seems, able to regain control of the town. Guillaume de Nangis recounts an expedition in spring 1258, which failed despite the support of her three brothers and the powerful Countess of Flanders, Marguerite of Constantinople, along with a good many French knights. According to Guillaume de Nangis, Marie was forced ‘unde oportuit illam recedere usque ad tempus magis postea opportunum’ (to retreat and await a more opportune moment).67 In fact, Marie had announced to her officers in Namur as early as 17 June that she had placed the county under the protection of the king of France, who asked her to hand it over to Marguerite of Constantinople. Only in 1263 did Philippe de Courtenay, the son of Baldwin II and Marie, receive a directive from his father to sell the county of Namur. It was none other than Gui de Dampierre, 66 At least that’s what the sometimes somewhat fanciful chronicler, known as the ‘Ménestrel de Reims’ said; de Wailly, ed., Récits d’un ménestrel de Reims, § 439–42, pp. 225–27, esp. At § 441: ‘Quant la roïne la vit [Marie de Brienne], si ne fu onques joie faite se là non; et demoura avec li tant comme elle vesqui’. 67 ‘Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis’, p. 557; on these events, Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis, iv, 101–06; de Wailly, ed., Récits d’un ménestrel de Reims, § 450, where is cited ‘li cuens de Monfort’, which is to say, Jean d’Acre.
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the son of Marguerite of Flanders, who bought it. In order to satisfy Henry V, the Count of Luxembourg, Gui married Henry’s daughter, Isabelle. It should be noted that Richard of Cornwall, in his capacity as King of Germany, confirmed the county of Namur to Henry of Luxemburg in 1257. It could not have been otherwise, since, as we shall see below, Marie de Brienne was so closely linked to his rival, Alphonse of Castile, who was himself also elected as King of Germany.68 If we accept that Jean d’Acre participated in the expedition against Namur, he would have had to have departed Scotland and returned by November 1258, when he was due back, if we trust that he honored his commitment to Henry III and the rest of Alexander III’s council. Certainly, there is nothing impossible about frequent comings and goings between the continent and the British Isles. For reasons that escape us, Jean d’Acre and Marie de Coucy’s marriage was ultimately a failure. We know of no children born to the union, and it seems that some disharmony emerged, leading to a formal separation. This is, in any event, what the Scottish chronicler Walter Bower claimed, writing in the 1440s, working from sources now lost. He is generally recognized by historians as reliable. He says that in 1268 Marie de Coucy fled from Jean d’Acre back to Scotland. At the request of Marie’s son, the king of Scotland, the bishop of Glasgow brought about an accord between the two, and Alexander III agreed to pay Jean d’Acre an annuity of 500 marcs annually, which was drawn from Marie’s dower; and Marie could henceforth live in Scotland. We do not know if this substantial annuity was ever actually paid out to Jean d’Acre.69 All we know is that in 1292, the Royal Archives of Scotland contained a letter, date unknown, by which Jean d’Acre acknowledged having received 700 marcs from his wife.70 Marie de Coucy seems to have died in 1284 or 1285, probably in France.71 The episode is curious. There are not many examples of women from the high aristocracy fleeing their husbands, and subsequently being made to pay alimony! One final item belongs to the Scottish phase of Jean d’Acre’s career. In 1285 Alexander III took for his second wife Yoland, the daughter of Robert, Count of Dreux and Beatrice, the daughter of Jeanne de Châteaudun with her first husband, Jean Count of Montfort. We might well wonder whether Jean d’Acre was not involved in the match, one way or another, since he was closely tied to both parties.
68 Marie de Brienne seems to have settled in France; she received from the king a modest pension of 300 pounds tournois on the Temple, which she asked to be paid in advance, on 20 July 1272, from her castle of Piffonds: (Paris, AN, J 474, no. 35: a charter simple in form, but endowed with the seal where Mary appears as Empress; photograph of the charter and the seal and discussion by MarieAdélaïde Nielen in Villèla-Petit, ed., 1204. La Quatrième croisade, vols 73–75, 2003–2005, pp. 240–42 (the catalogue of artefacts which were shown in this exhibition)) (Piffonds, Yonne, arr. Sens, cant. Villeneuve-sur-Yonne). 69 Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. and trans. by Watt, v, 368–67; the income of the kings of Scotland is estimated at about 2500 pounds sterling in the thirteenth century, or about 3750 marks (Taylor, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, p. 379); I owe all this information to Keith Stringer. 70 In an inventory published in: The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. by Thomson and Innes, i, 115, which also refers to a letter from Alexander III to Jean about the Dower of Mary, but the entry in the inventory adds that this letter has been cancelled (a été annulée). 71 Stringer, ‘Marie [née Marie de Coucy]’.
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At the Court of Castile His two marriages brought Jean d’Acre neither fortune nor heirs, apart from his daughter Blanche. Having sons would have changed things. Unquestionably, his brothers were better off than he was: Alphonse, the Comte d’Eu, and Louis, the Viscount of Beaumont, counted among the most important vassals of the king of France. Of course, their status was always fragile, since both owed everything to their marriages, having little or no wealth of their own. On 5 October 1256, in Poitiers, Marie d’Issoudun, the Countess of Eu, even asked her lord, Alphonse de Poitiers, to receive in homage her husband Alphonse, son of King John of Jerusalem, to whom she had given the castle of Chizé, because ‘non habentis bona hereditaria unde juxta nobilitatem suam possit congrue et honorifice sustentari’ (he did not have the hereditary estate that would have enabled him to support the nobility [of his rank] appropriately and honourably).72 We can see the care with which all the Brienne brothers systematically evoked their illustrious ancestry, another indication of the tenuousness of their fortunes. Indeed, they never failed to recall that they were the sons of ‘Jean, King of Jerusalem’. Notably, they did not mention his title as Emperor of Constantinople.73The modesty of their French holdings perhaps explains the bond that the three brothers had with their first cousin, Alfonso X of Castile, nephew of their mother Berengaria. In October 1254, Prince Edward of England married the infanta Leonor, Alfonso X’s sister.74 ‘Because of his glory, many nobles and illustrious men came from all over the world to receive the belt of knighthood from him’, the contemporary chronicler Jofré de Loaisa wrote of Alfonso X. Among the Castilian king’s newly dubbed knights were the ‘egregii viri Alfonsus et Johannes filii quondam incliti regis Johannis de Accon’ (distinguished men Alfonse and Jean, sons of the illustrious late King Jean d’Acre [i.e. Jean de Brienne]). Their brother, Louis, Viscount of Beaumont, was not at their side; but their nephew, Philippe de Courtenay, son of their sister Mary, was, and was also knighted by the king. Among the other barons noted were Ferdinand, son of Ferdinand III and Jeanne de Pontient, once Count of Ponthieu; Guillaume, the marquis of Montferrat; Gaston, Viscount of Béarn; and also Rodolf of Habsburg, the future Emperor.75 We do not know whether all these high ranking figures were knighted at the same time, on the
72 Paris, AN, J 190, no. 95; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iii, 326–27, no. 4295; Chizé, Deux-Sèvres, arr. Melle, cant. Brioux; see the agreement concluded between Alphonse, Comte d’Eu, Lord of Chizé, and the Abbey of the Trinity of Poitiers, concerning the rights of both parties in the parish of Secondigny (19 January 1269) (Paris, BnF, coll. Fonteneau, t. 27, p. 193); see a similar agreement between Alphonse, as lord of Civray, and the Abbot of Noaillé, concerning rights in several fiefdoms dependent on the abbey in the châtellenie de Civray (11 April 1270; Paris, BnF, coll. Fonteneau, t. 22, p. 305) (Tables des manuscrits de D. Fonteneau conservés à la bibliothèque de Poitiers, vol. i, Table chronologique des chartes transcrites dans les vingt-sept premiers volumes de la collection, pp. 250 and 251). 73 For example, the confirmation of the commune of Eu by Alphonse and his wife: ‘filius regis Jerusalem, comes Augi, totius regni Francie camerarius’ (Deck, Une commune normande au Moyen Âge. La ville d’Eu, pièce justificative no. 2, p. 245). 74 It was through his marriage to Eleanor, daughter of Alfonso X and Jeanne de Ponthieu, that Edward I was able to reclaim the Ponthieu, on the death of his mother-in-law. 75 Morel-Fatio, ‘Chronique des rois de Castille’, pp. 325–78, § 8, pp. 337–39.
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occasion of Edwards’s marriage. But, according to Joinville, Alphonse de Brienne had been knighted by Saint Louis in Syria, and this is not the kind of high-profile event about which Joinville would have made a mistake.76 The three Brienne brothers, using their French titles, appeared regularly among the witnesses in diplomas issued by Alfonso X of Castille, and in the following order: Alphonse, Comte d’Eu; Louis, Viscount de Beaumont; and Jean, Comte de Montfort. The arrangement perhaps reflects the years of their birth. In spite of their French titles, all three are presented explicitly as vassals of the king of Castile; this means that they held fiefdoms, in land or in rents, in the Kingdom of Castile.77 Contrary to what others have argued, it is unlikely the Brienne brothers were actually present to sign to Alfonso’s diplomas.78 In the publication of the Marquis de Mondejar alone, they are listed as witnesses to twenty-six diplomas between 1257 and 1274. They first appear in the first act of the series, dated 23 March 1257: ‘Don Alfonso, fijo del rey Juan Dacre, Emperador de Constantinopla e de la Emperadriz Dona Berenguela, conde Do, vassallo del Rey; D. Lois, fijo del Emperador e de la Emperadriz sobre dichos, conde de Belmont, vassallo del Rey; D. Johan, fijo del Emperador e de la Emperadriz sobredichos, conde de Monfort, vassallo del Rey’. Among other witnesses listed are two Muslim kings (the king of Murcia and the King of Granada) along with two lords in the Kingdom of France (Gaston, Viscount of Béarn, and Gui, Viscount of Limoges).79 From 1259 onwards, three more figures of high status are listed, all before the Brienne brothers: Hugh, the Duke of Burgundy; Gui, Count of Flanders; and Henry, Duke of Lorraine. All three are described as ‘vassals of the king’.80 Alphonse de Brienne died in 1270 and disappears from the witness list.81 The
76 Jean de Joinville. Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. by Monfrin, § 521. 77 In 1255, we find the brothers Brienne confirming diplomas of Alfonso X; their presence also surprised Antonio Ballesteros Beretta, the historian of Alfonso X: see his Alfonso X el Sabio, pp. 137–40; he seems to think that the three brothers lived permanently at the court of Toledo (p. 235). 78 Wolff, ‘Mortgage and Redemption of an Emperor’s Son’, p. 76. 79 Memorial Historico Españo, no. liii, pp. 111–12; the same was true on 10 April 1258. (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxiii, pp. 135–38) and on 13 September of the same year (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxvi, pp. 144–47). 80 23 July 1259 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxviii, pp. 149–51); 2 October 1259 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxx, pp. 152–54); 23 November 1260 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxxxi, pp. 166–69); 24 March 1261 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxxxiv, pp. 181–83); 30 May 1261 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxxxv, pp. 184–86); 23 June 1261 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxxxvi, pp. 187–91); 19 June 1262 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxxxviii, pp. 193–95); 11 September 1262 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. lxxxix, pp. 195–99); 26 February 1263 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. xci, pp. 202–04); 3 November 1264 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. xcviii, pp. 214–17); 12 March 1265 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. c, pp. 218–20); 11 December 1265 (Memorial Historico Españo, no. cvi, pp. 233–35), only the duke of Burgundy and the three Brienne brothers are mentioned; from 1268, the duke of Lorraine joined them again (Memorial Historico Españo, no. cix, pp. 240–42), 30 July 1268 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxi, pp. 244–46); on the other hand, the duke of Burgundy is absent from the diploma of 21 March 1270 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxix, pp. 259–62), but appears again in the 10 May issue following (Memorial Historico Españo, no. cxx, pp. 263–65). 81 5 November 1271 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxxiv, pp. 268–71); 12 April 1272 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxxvi, pp. 273–76); 28 April 1272 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxxviii, pp. 278–86).
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duke of Burgundy, on the other hand, continued to be listed even after his death in October 1272. And from this date onwards, the marquis of Monteferrat and the duke of Lorraine are regularly listed.82 Indeed, since a dead man is there, it is difficult to suggest that these high barons always remained in the king’s proximity. As for the duke of Burgundy, the duke of Lorraine, the count of Flanders, and the marquis of Montferrat, their names are mentioned because they all recognized Alfonso X as the legitimate king of the Romans, against Richard of Cornwall, the brother of King Henry III of England. The reason the Brienne brothers are listed is probably a little more complicated, since it is entirely possible that they frequently visited the Castilian court. In 1265, for example, Alphonse, Comte d’Eu, fought the Moors in battle alongside Alfonso X.83 In any event, even if they did not actually sign to all the diplomas on which their names appear, we may think that the three brothers stayed at the Castilian court from time to time. Perhaps unidentified sources in the Castilian archives will shed more light on the question. On the other hand, there is little doubt of the bond between the children of Jean de Brienne and their cousin, Alphonse X of Castile. At the end of the 1250s, the Empress Marie asked Alphonse for help when she needed to free her son, Philippe, who had been handed over as a hostage to the citizens of Constantinople, who had sent the child to Venice. A marriage had been planned between Philippe, heir to the throne of Constantinople, and one of Alphonse’s daughters, but sometime later, he instead married Beatrice of Sicily, daughter of Charles of Anjou, and thus came, with his father Baldwin II, under Charles’ guardianship.84 In November of 1269, Marie attended the marriage of Louis IX’s daughter Blanche and Fernando de la Cerda, Alfonso X’s eldest son. Alphonse, Comte d’Eu, and Jean d’Acre had accompanied the Capetian bride down to Burgos.85 These details all point to the Brienne brothers’ enduring connection to the Castilian court, even if for both Marie and her brothers, their principal home was always the Kingdom of France.86
A Friend of the Capetians Lacking a solid territorial foundation, Jean d’Acre still enjoyed a place of renown at the French court. Louis IX appointed him as Butler of France, shortly after making
82 28 December 1272 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxxx, pp. 289–91); 3 June 1273 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxxxii, pp. 292–94); 3 August 1274 (Memorial Historico Españo, cxxxxv, pp. 297–303). 83 Clement IV congratulated him in a letter in which he informed him of Manfred’s defeat. (Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis, iv, 397); Thumser, ed., Die Briefe Papst Clemens’ IV, p. 109. 84 Wolff, ‘Mortgage and Redemption of an Emperor’s Son’. 85 Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis, v, 98; Ballesteros Beretta, Alfonso X el Sabio, pp. 484–85; the author, p. 485, considered Llibre des Feyts, inexact but he was actually mistaken, confusing Jean d’Acre with his father Jean de Brienne: ‘vench ab ello lo compte Dodo [le comte d’Eu], germa de don Ioan Datre, e un bisbta, e daltres richs homens qui vinguerren ab ella’. 86 Marie thus resided at Chantecoq not far from Courtenay, one of the few possessions still held by the Emperor of Constantinople. (Chantecoq, Loiret, arr. Montargis, cant. Courtenay).
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his brother, Alphonse, Comte d’Eu, Chambrier de France (1255).87 Although it has been said that Jean d’Acre was made Butler in 1258, the safe conduct issued with such pettiness by Henry III, which dates to June 1257, already attributed that rank to him. As with the crown’s other high officers, his signum was mentioned in diplomas, the most important charters issued by the French king.88 At least it is supposed that he did, since his presence was in fact not required.89 As far as we know, Jean d’Acre was a regular of the royal household. The accounts of Jean Sarrazin preserved on the wax tablets, which exist for the period of 1256–1257, list his name often.90 At Pentecost 1256 he received a ‘double coat (double manteau)’, as did his brother the Comte d’Eu and the constable Gilles le Brun de Trasignies.91 During the reign of Philip III, Jean d’Acre is listed among the members of the household for Purification 1275.92 Probably dated 1276, a list names the ‘knights of the King’s household’ who took the cross. Jean’s name is among them.93 He appears also on the wax tablets preserved for 1284–1286: 12 May 1284 (Melun), 2 January 1286 (Soissons, for his wages and a surcoat for Christmas) and 28 January (Paris, for his wages on Epiphany).94 His name appears second in the list of members of the household for Pentecost 1287 and in the list for Christmas 1288.95 His nephew Jean, Comte d’Eu, son of Alphonse, was also often present at the royal household, including in the list for Pentecost 1287.96 When he stayed at the Hôtel, Jean d’Acre, in his capacity as a butler, earned twenty-five sous parisis daily.97 He was still being mentioned in the royal household’s documentation as late as 1295, very shortly before his death.98 87 Alphonse was Chamberlain by April 1255 at the latest, when his brother was not yet Butler. (Paris, AN, J 460, no. 13; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iii, 281–82, no. 4225; with the following subscriptions: ‘Dapifero nullo. Buticulario nullo. Signum Alfonsi camerarii. Signum Egidii constabularii. Data vacante cancellaria’). 88 Many examples in the Cartulaire normand: no. 540 (February 1256 n. st.), 605 (November 1258), 685 ( July 1262), 759 (August 1269), 1198 ( June 1257), 1204 (February 1259 n. st.), 1208 (11 August 1259), 1233 ( June 1280) (Delisle, ed., Cartulaire normand de Philippe Auguste). Other examples: Guérard, ed., Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, i, 232–33, no. xxiv (December 1262); Paris, AN, J 396, no. 6; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iii, 447–48, no. 4470 (February 1259); Paris, AN, JJ 30a, no. 407, fol. 138; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iii, in note on 535–36; a translation of the thirteenth century into French, Paris, AN, J 408, no2.1; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, pp. 535–36, no. 4617 ( June 1260); Paris, AN, J 365, no. 7; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iii, 551–52, no. 4639 (September 1260); Paris, AN, J 341, no. 6v, pièce no2; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by Berger, iv, 51, no. 4802 (December 1262). 89 Delisle, Catalogue des actes de Philippe Auguste, p. lxxx. 90 Lalou, ed., Les comptes sur tablettes de cire de Jean Sarrazin, § 110, 127, 134, 302, 343, 353. 91 Lalou, ed., Les comptes sur tablettes de cire de Jean Sarrazin, § 213. 92 Petri de Ludewig, Reliquiae Manuscriptorum, xii, 6. 93 ‘Liste des chevaliers croisés avec Saint Louis en 1269’, ed. by Daunou and Naudet, pp. 307–08. 94 On this date Jean d’Acre, simply called Dominus buticularius, receives 80 l. on loan (ad mutuum), Lalou, ed., Les Comptes sur tablettes de cire de la chambre aux deniers, J 10, p. 21, J 56, p. 115 and J 61, p. 121. 95 Lalou, ed., Les Comptes sur tablettes de cire de la chambre aux deniers, pp. 844 and 850. 96 Lalou, ed., Les Comptes sur tablettes de cire de la chambre aux deniers, p. 844. 97 Also in 1289, Lalou, ed., Les Comptes sur tablettes de cire de la chambre aux deniers, ‘Extraits de tablettes perdues’, pp. 763 and 764. 98 He thus receives two barrels of wine (‘Vins despendus en l’ostel le roy…’, Fawtier, ed., Comptes royaux, no. 25013).
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Scattered like this over several decades, these mentions appear somewhat random. But in fact, their disparate character reflects more the state of the documents, preserved in a random and incomplete manner. More telling is that Jean d’Acre’s name appears in every single period for which documentation survives. This suggests strongly that he spent most of his time at the royal household. Other sources point in the same direction. Jean d’Acre often performed the important function of hearing the pleas made to the king. For instance, under Philip III an impoverished knight named Pierre Pillart was arrested for having attacked a cleric and stolen his two horses. He was held in prison by the provost of Beaumont-sur-Oise, and soon appeared before the bailiff of Senlis. In his defence, ‘li amis au chevalier adressiez a la cour’, that is to say that the knights’ friends transmitted a request to the Parlement, which had yet to coalesce into the institution that it would become a few years later. The request was heard by Jean d’Acre, ‘qui estoit en liu des mestres’; the Butler in turn ordered the bailiff to have Pierre Pillart judged by a panel of four other knights.99 Elsewhere Jean d’Acre was also listed among a number of the king’s men who were responsible for collecting the accounts in Creil in 1289.100 Jean d’Acre is often mentioned in ceremonies attended by the king. He was with Louis IX on 1 May 1261, for the translation of the relics of Saint Lucien, along with the bishops of Beauvais and Senlis; the king of Navarre and count of Champagne, Thibaud V; the primogenitus Philip [the future king]; and Philippe de Courtenay, son of Emperor Baldwin II and Marie de Brienne, thus the nephew of Jean d’Acre.101 At the start of July 1262 the King of Aragon, James the Conqueror, came to Clermont with his daughter Isabella, who was to marry the future Philip III. On this occasion, King James promised not to help Manfred, King of Sicily and natural son of Frederick II, against the Roman Church. Among the witnesses, in addition to the heir to the throne Philip, we find, listed one after the other, Philippe of Courtenay; Alphonse Comte d’Eu, Chamberlain of France; and Jean, Butler of France — the nephew and two of his uncles.102 On 2 June 1269, when Bernard Saisset, Abbot of
99 Berger, ‘Requête adressée au roi de France par un vétéran des armées de saint Louis et de Charles d’Anjou’; Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 318. 100 Delisle, Mémoire sur les opérations financières des Templiers, p. 121. 101 Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation’, pp. 1087–1112, at p. 1096; Wolff, ‘Mortgage and Redemption of an Emperor’s Son’, p. 55; we do not know the names of the 46 barons and knights who carried the relics of Saint Maurice and his companions given to the king by the Abbot d’Agaune when these were received in Senlis in February 1262, but we can imagine that Jean d’Acre was present. (Carolus-Barré, ‘Saint Louis et la translation’, pp. 1100–04); his brother Alphonse de Brienne attended translation of the relics of the Madeleine, in April 1267 (p. 1105). 102 Paris, AN, J 587, no. 11; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iv, 42–43, no. 4775; Wolff, ‘Mortgage and Redemption of an Emperor’s Son’, pp. 55–56; the other witnesses are, in the order in which they are listed: the Archbishop of Rouen, Eudes Rigaud; othe Archbishop of Narbonne, Gui Foucois; the Archbishop of Tyre, Gilles de Saumur; the Bishops of Barcelona, Auxerre and Clermont; Sanche, son of the King of Aragon; the Abbot of Olivet; Simon de Clermont, lord of Nesle; Jean, Count of Ponthieu; Gilles, Constable of France; Pierre le Chambellan; Olivier de Termes; Raimond Josselin, lord of Lunel; Raoul, archdeacon of Paris; master Eudes de Lorris, master of Jean de Villiaco, chancellor of Beauvais; Guillaume de Chartres, treasurer of Saint-Frambaud de Senlis.
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Saint-Antonin de Pamiers, delivered the castle of Pamiers to Louis IX, the witnesses listed were, in the following order, Raoul Grosparmi, Cardinal Bishop of Albano and Apostolic Legate; Jean, son of the King of Jerusalem (as he was called); Pierre, Chamberlain of France (better known as ‘Pierre the Chamberlain’); Master Geoffroy de Beaumont, Chancellor of the Kingdom of Sicily and Chancellor of the Church of Bayeux; Master Philippe de Chaource, Treasurer of Saint-Frambaud de Senlis; Master Lanfranc, Canon de Thérouanne; Master Henri de Vézelay, Archdeacon of Bayeux; and Master G. de Châtellerault, canon of the church of Reims.103 Jean d’Acre was present at Parlement for important ceremonial occasions. He attended the homage Henri le Gros the King of Navarre gave in June 1271, in Paris, in pleno parlamento, to Philip III for the county of Champagne.104 He was also on hand on 1 March 1284 when Charles of Anjou’s request for his part in the inheritance of Alphonse de Poitiers was rejected.105 Jean d’Acre was particularly fond of the ceremony in which homage was given to the king. This was the occasion when a new vassal offered a payment of money to several officers of the king. When, on 25 March 1282, the new abbot of SainteGeneviève paid homage, he paid 25 livres parisis to two of the king’s clerics (Master Geoffroy du Temple and Master Pierre de Condé), 100 sous (or five livres) to Jean d’Acre as Butler, and ten livres parisis to Jean Poucin on behalf of the chamberlains (who are normally three or four), ‘pro droituris curie regis’ (for the righteousness of the king’s court). It should be noted that the king was paid a further ten livres parisis as part of the office of Seneschal of France, which had not been filled since the end of the twelfth century.106 If the king replaced the Seneschal, might we conclude that the payments attested in the second half of the thirteenth century date back to the end of the twelfth? Did Jean d’Acre go digging through the archives to secure lost privileges? It is not that surprising that Jean d’Acre would have put such great effort into his position as Butler of France. For one thing, the title itself must have pleasing to the ears. For another, the position was a source of income, which he could then, in turn, find ways to augment. For a long time that office had been passed down through an eminent Senlis family, whose members had become known as ‘the Butlers of Senlis’. In 1223 Robert de Courtenay, grandson of Louis VI, was given the office, which he probably held until his death in 1239; in 1248, the Butler was Étienne de Sancerre. Both were cadets, themselves from cadet branches, Robert of Courtenay from the Capetian family; Étienne de Sancerre from the Blois-Champagne. And Jean d’Acre was also a cadet — from the cadet family of Brienne.
103 Paris, AN, J 336, no. 5; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iv, 357–58, no. 5534. 104 Paris, AN, JJ 30, no. 414 (cf. Philippi Tertii Mansiones et Itinera, ed. by Joseph-Daniel Guigniaut and Natalis de Wailly, p. 424 n. 1); reported by Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 319 n. 105 Delisle, ed., ‘Essai de restitution d’un volume des Olim perdu’, no. 537; Langlois, Textes relatifs à l’histoire du Parlement, pp. 118–19, no. lxxxvi. 106 Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 438, pièce justificative no. xviii.
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Without knowing much about the situation he inherited, it is clear that Jean d’Acre did much to clarify the responsibilities and function of his office. Distinguishing between the broader institutionalization of the Hôtel over the course of the thirteenth century and Jean d’Acre’s actions more specifically can be tricky. But by the start of the fourteenth century, the Chambre des Comptes kept a roll listing the rights attached to the office of Butler of France under Jean d’Acre.107 To the extent we can reconstruct it, the roll included the following rights associated with the office of Butler of France in Jean d’Acre’s day: – The list of prelates required to pay the Butler 100 sous when they were promoted: six archbishops (Reims, Sens, Bourges, Tours, Lyon and Rouen); twenty-three bishops (Langres, Laon, Beauvais, Châlons, Noyon, Paris, Soissons, Tournai, Senlis, Thérouanne, Meaux, Chartres, Orléans, Auxerre, Troyes, Nevers, Mâcon, Chalon, Autun, Arras, Clermont, Limoges, Amiens); and twenty-five abbots and abbesses. – Jean d’Acre levied a tax on wine cellars where wine was sold ‘on a spit’. – He exercised justice in and around his residence, without any further clarification, as well as in the dwellings that belonged to the bouteillerie — it isn’t clear what this means. – He was entitled to utilize the bowl and the goblet used at a ‘solemn feast’ celebrated by the king. – He was entitled to a certain number of victuals used at the king’s coronation. – He had the permanent right at the Hôtel to take his wine from the same barrel as the king, without having to go through the échansonnerie. Also, he could take whatever he needed, ‘whether it was torches or candles’. – At crown-wearing feasts or when the king was out in the country, Jean d’Acre received the barrels or the queue [a unit of measurement] of wine collected; and likewise for meat, cooked or uncooked, as for fruit. – Each year, from the chambre aux deniers, he was permitted two coats, or twenty pounds. It makes sense that Jean d’Acre, lacking personal means, showed such diligence at the Hôtel, certainly to his benefit. His successors as butlers would assert their rights; but a lord as rich as Gui de Châtillon had less need of them than did Jean d’Acre. Such dedication led him to compile a register that noted all the rights attached to the 107 The scroll would have been compiled in 1288, but it was finished afterwards, because it is specified that the count of Saint-Pol did the same thing as Jean d’Acre. Gui de Châtillon succeeded the latter as Butler de France, from 1296 until his own death in 1317. The scroll was copied in the oldest memorials of the Chambre des Comptes, as the concern was to establish the largely customary practices that had prevailed in the royal household and in the rudimentary Capetian administration. The scroll and the memorials disappeared in the fire of the Chambre des Comptes in 1737, but the numerous copies made by scholars have made it possible to reconstruct their contents to a large extent, notably on the initiative of the team assembled by Charles-Victor Langlois; Du Cange, further, had published excerpts from it in his dictionary, under the entry buticularius (look under this word in Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis). A different version of the roll was known by Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, vii, 597–601; the text had been provided by Vyon d’Hérouval, auditor at the Chambre des Comptes and a well-known scholar.
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office of Butler. In particular, the register included a list of the cellarers who had to pay a tax on the wine sold there; this register later passed to Jean d’Acre’s successor as Butler, Gui de Châtillon, Count of Saint-Pol; Jean probably employed servants who collected and confirmed the monies owed to his office; the count of Saint-Pol, in any event, had an ‘agent’; that is to say, we can see he had an officer who could assert his rights on his behalf.108 Jean was assiduous in having his rights recognized. The long list of prelates, each forced to pay five pounds at their promotion, was the result of an extended fight in Parlement led by the Butler: the bishop of Amiens and the abbot of Saint-Denis, in February 1264; the archbishop of Bourges, the bishop of Tournai, and the abbot of Saint-Sulpice de Bourges, at Pentecost 1265; the abbot of Massay, on All Saints’ Day 1266; the abbot of Bonneval, at Pentecost 1275; the abbot of Saint-Gilles at Pentecost 1280. All were obliged on the occasion of their promotion, to pay the Butler of France, the buticularia, a sum of 100 sous.109 In some cases, money was also due to other officers of the Hôtel, as we saw above for the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève in 1282. In the same way, the abbot of Bonneval thus had to pay twenty-five livres to the officers of the Hôtel, ten livres to the Seneschal, 100 sous to the Butler, 100 sous to the Chamberlain (of France), 100 sous to other chamberlains;110 the abbot of Saint-Gilles, twenty-five livres to the officers of the Hôtel du roi.111 The succession of these judgements indicates that it was not a foregone conclusion that the newly promoted prelates would pay a charge to the Butler and others in the king’s entourage. But the custom almost certainly existed before Jean d’Acre. In 1264, before the final judgement against him, the abbot of Saint-Denis, Mathieu de Vendôme, advanced the privileges of his abbey and the fact that his predecessors had not paid these monies; examination of the royal archives showed the opposite (per regia scripta). When he came before Parlement, the Butler showed himself meticulous. In 1269, he obtained from the king the right to produce witnesses to prove the existence of disputed customs. Two commissioners questioned these witnesses; and, if these two agreed, the customs would be affirmed; if they did not, the king had an ex officio suo investigation carried out.112 Jean d’Acre often succeeded in the disputes with prelates, but not always. On 18 March 1283, Philip III declared that the inhabitants of Lorris were exempt from paying the ‘forage tax’ to the Butler of France on wines sold in town. Here, Jean is
108 In 1321, the count of Saint-Pol had his rights as Butler recognized; the letter from the Provost of Paris can be found in Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique, vii, 601–02: ‘Que feu mons. Jehan d’Acre ou temps que il vivoit et que il estoit bouteiller de France, estoit en saisine pesible et avoit droit, pour cause de ladite bouteillerie de avoir la moitié des lies de tous les vins que l’on vendoit à broche en plusieurs celliers assis en la ville de Paris, desquiex la plus grant partie estoient contenus en un registre ancien, lequel ledit bouteiller a son vivant avoit par devers soy, et lequel ledit conte de Saint Pol ou l’agent ont a present’. 109 Actes du Parlement de Paris, ed. by Boutaric, no. 829, 833, 978, 1069, 2014, and 2296. 110 Actes du Parlement de Paris, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2014. 111 Actes du Parlement de Paris, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2296. 112 Delisle, ‘Reconstitution d’un livre des Olim’, p. 118.
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called ‘dilectus consanguineus et fidelis noster Johannes, filius regis Hierusalem, Francie buticularius’ (our dear cousin and faithful Jean, son of the King of Jerusalem, Butler of France).113 Jean d’Acre was thus known for his vigilance. At one point in the Olim (the record of the Parlement de Paris’s decisions), the scribe, Nicolas de Chartres, specifies that the king, the queen, and their children had the right to buy food according to a fixed rate in Paris; the bishop had the same privilege for a basket or a load of fish; the Hôtel-Dieu, the chamberlain, the constable, the butler, the chancellor, and the seneschal also enjoyed their own rate. The notice ends as follows: ‘This right does not extend to any other person, as Sir Jean d’Acre, Butler de France, has taught me’.114 A last point of interest. In March 1262, Jean d’Acre, ‘motivated by divine love, with the agreement and good will and at the request of our most excellent lord Louis, by the grace of God the illustrious King of France’, gave as alms to the Maison-Dieu of Pontoise the rights that he held in the city over the buffetiers (a category of wine merchants). To be on the safe side, the king immediately confirmed this surrender of rights, which was probably not in Jean d’Acre’s nature.115
Jean d’Acre’s Place in the Royal Entourage His experience in Scotland having turned sour even before his marriage to Marie de Coucy failed, Jean d’Acre seems to have surrendered the idea of personal advancement and decided instead to become an exemplary royal servant to the Capetians. His role is in the shadows during the reign of Louis IX, but comes into full focus under Phillip III. Although scattered, the evidence leaves little doubt on the matter. In December 1271, after Louis IX’s death and Philip III’s accession, the new king made arrangements in the event of his death. He designated his brother, Pierre d’Alençon, as both the tutor to his children and the guardian of the realm; among his counsellors were mentioned, among churchmen, the bishops of Langres and of Bayeux, the archdeacon of Dunois in the Church of Chartres, and the archdeacon of Bayeux. Among laymen, Jean d’Acre was listed in first place, followed by Érard de Vallery, Chamberlain of France and Constable of Champaigne; Humbert of Beaujeu, Constable of France; Simon de Nesle, Julien de Péronne, and Geoffroi de Vilette, knights; and Jean Sarrazin and Pierre de La Broce, the two principal chamberlains. Although he did not shine in the crusade of 1270, in which he had participated (on which, more later), Jean d’Acre was nevertheless part of the panel responsible for overseeing the ‘money of Tunis’, the returns from the enormous indemnity with which the Caliph, in November, had bought the departure of the Crusader army.
113 Delisle, ‘Essai de restitution d’un volume des Olim’, pp. 297–464, at no. 492; the ‘forage’ is the tax levied by the lord on the retail sale of wine. 114 Actes du Parlement de Paris, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2816. 115 Depoin, ed., Cartulaire de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Pontoise, pp. 33–34, no. lii ( Jean d’Acre) and liii (Saint Louis).
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Two other members of Philip III’s entourage, Constable Humbert de Beaujeu and Chamberlain Érard de Vallery, sat with him on this commission.116 In 1277, Jean d’Acre is listed among the nobles who asked Nicholas III to grant the king a fifteenth on the goods of those who had not taken the cross.117 On 30 September 1278, Pope Nicholas III reminded Jean d’Acre of his illustrious ancestry and said that he rejoiced to see that he had inherited his father’s talents. Since Jean had the ear of Philip III, and was himself, ‘vir fidelis et prudens, Deum timens, et ad servandam tui nominis integritatem intendens’ (according to the testimony of persons worthy of faith, a faithful and prudent man, fearing God and intending to preserve the integrity of [his] name),118 he must, said Nicholas, urge the king toward moderation in the charges against the Bishop of Bayeux, Pierre de Benais. Pierre had been involved in the fall of his patron, Pierre de La Broce, the longtime and extremely powerful Chamberlain and favourite of Philip III, who had taken refuge with the pope. Jean d’Acre had played a role in the fall of Pierre de La Broce. It was to him and to the legate Simon de Brie that the bishop of Liège submitted the final report on the statements of the pseudo-beguine Elisabeth of Spalbeek, which sealed the fate of Pierre de La Broce.119 Nicholas III’s commendation and Jean d’Acre’s discreet role in the downfall of the royal favourite confirms the tie between Jean d’Acre and Philip III, which another event further illustrates. A few years later, in 1282, in the affair of the conspiracy hatched by Aimeri of Narbonne with the court of Castile, Brother Bernard de Baziège, an Augustinian canon, went to Paris and delivered a package containing evidence of the treason to Philip III; Jean d’Acre was present.120 Given this situation, it is hardly surprising that the Butler was listed among the testamentary executors of Philip III (in 1285, but not in the first case of 1270)121 and then of Philip IV.122 And in 1282 (sometime between May and August), he was, as one of Louis IX’s inner circle, one of thirty-eight witnesses who testified at Saint-Denis on the sanctity of Saint Louis;123 his testimony, unfortunately, is lost.
116 Hélary, ‘Les rois de France et la Terre sainte de la croisade de Tunis à la chute d’Acre’, pp. 21–104. 117 Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, pp. 289–90; the pope replied in a letter dated December 1277. 118 Registres de Nicolas III, ed. by Gay. 119 See my book L’ascension et la chute de Pierre de La Broce, chambellan du roi († 1278). Étude sur le pouvoir royal au temps de Saint Louis et de Philippe III (v. 1250-v. 1280), Études d’histoire médiévale, 16 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2021). Recent work includes Field and Simons, ‘A Prophecy Fulfilled?’, pp. 35–91. 120 Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 193. 121 First Testament, Thursday, 2 October 1285: original, Paris, AN, J 403, no. 8; second Testament, March 1285: original, Paris, AN, J 403, no. 11; edition Videsott, Les plus anciens documents en français de la chancellerie royale capétienne, pp. 154–58. 122 First Testament of Philip IV (Abbaye de Maubuisson, August 1288; Paris, AN, J 403, no. 12 and 12²); In the Second Testament (Abbaye de Royaumont, March 1297; Paris, AN, J 403, no. 13, Testament I), Jean d’Acre, who died a little over a year before, is replaced by his successor as Butler, Gui de Châtillon. 123 Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis, pp. 164–68.
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Because of the state of the evidence, it is hard to know whether there were factions at the court of Philip III, a small community where the relationships and loyalties seem to have been fairly fluid. One enmity is infamous — the one that pitted Marguerite of Provence, Philip’s mother, against Charles of Anjou, his uncle. Marguerite believed Charles had despoiled her of the county of Provence. As far as we can tell, Jean d’Acre sided with neither.124 Everything points to Jean d’Acre’s loyalties resting firmly, and only, with the king. Without his own lands and probably with few sources of income unconnected to his presence in the royal household, how could it have been otherwise? Jean had to behave prudently, unlike, for example, Robert II of Artois, whose brash personality is clear from the record and who clearly sided with the king of Sicily. In this situation, it is likely that Jean d’Acre was amenable towards Pierre de La Broce when he was at the heights of his power. But then, along with the legate Simon of Brie, Jean precipitated his downfall, when he accepted the reports that documented the schemes of the Chamberlain with his willing accomplice Pierre de Benais. Finally, doubtless not without having given it much thought, Jean and Simon delivered the fatal blow — one that Robert of Artois, the duke of Burgundy, and other friends of the Queen Marie de Brabant had not been able to serve up, because their positions were too exposed.
The Man for All Tasks The reason for his service in the king’s entourage is clear enough. Jean d’Acre did not have his own estates to administer; and in the 1260s, he gave up a personal career. He was thus entirely free, both inside and outside the court. After his brother Alphonse’s death on the Crusade to Tunis in September 1270, he assumed guardianship of his young nephew (at least through January 1276). Naturally, he also served as his brother’s testamentary executor.125 Various missions were entrusted to him. Between 1278 and 1281, he governed the county of Champagne in the name of Edmund of Lancaster and his wife, Blanche
124 Searching in the reconstituted ‘Angevin registers’ has been fruitless. (I registri della Cancelleria angioina, ed. by Filangieri ); on the other hand, Jean’s brother, Louis, Viscount de Beaumont, in dispute with the Baillis of Anjou David de Ses Maisons, requested the intervention of Charles II, still Count of Maine and Anjou on that date; 8 May 1290, then in Dax, reports letters of ‘our dearest cousin, the illustious Louis, Viscount de Beaumont’ (egregius vir Lodoycus, vicecomes Bellimontis, carissimus consanguineus noster) and orders the Baillis of Anjou to suspend all proceedings against Louis pending his arrival. (I registri della Cancelleria angioina, ed. by Filangieri, xxxv, 117–18, no. 304). 125 The Collection Dom Fonteneau preserves the text of the sentence by which the seneschal of Poitou and two other arbitrators awarded high justice in the priory of Mairé to Jean d’Acre, Butler of France, son of the King of Jerusalem and lord of Civray, on behalf of Jean, son of the Comte d’Eu, of whom he was guardian. (Paris, BnF, coll. Fonteneau, t. 22, p. 327; Tables des manuscrits de D. Fonteneau, i, 258); Civray, Vienne, arr. Montmorillon, ch.-l. de cant. We can add this entry in the register of Nicolas de Chartres, for Parlement for All Saints 1273 (Delisle, ‘Restitution d’un volume des Olim’, p. 349, no. 320: ‘Les enffans du comte d’Eu ne payent rachapt de leurs terres de Poictou, et en est absous leur oncle Jehan d’Acon, bouteiller ou grand eschançon de France’; cf., Delisle, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale, p. 147).
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d’Artois. Blanche, a niece of Saint Louis, was the widow of Henri le Gros, the Count of Champagne and King of Navarre. Until the majority of her daughter Jeanne, born to her first husband and promised to the future King Philip the Fair, Blanche bore the title of Countess of Champagne, from which she allowed her second husband, Edmund, the brother of the English king Edward I, to profit, until Jeanne came of age.126 Jean d’Acre’s appointment as governor of Champagne was probably intended to allay the fears that some at the French court might have had at the appearance of an English prince as Count of Champagne, one of the great fiefs of the French Kingdom. Since Jean d’Acre also had ties with the English court, he was acceptable to both sides. The most significant event of his governorship of Champagne occurred when Jean d’Acre brutally suppressed a rebellion in Provins.127 The workday in the city had been extended by an hour, so the workers of the city rose up. The Mayor, Guillame Pentecoste, was killed in the rioting (30 January 1281).128 Jean d’Acre established order at the expense of mercy. The rioters sought refuge with the Franciscans and the Dominicans (the latter’s convent was where Thibault V’s heart was interred). The rioters were forcibly removed, and several were banished or executed. Jean d’Acre further suspended all the privileges of the city. The Butler, however, intervened not only in his capacity as the representative of the count and countess of Champagne. Provins and its châtellenie had been handed over to the king in the ‘Treaty of Orleans’ of 1275, which also had given Philip III the administration of the kingdom of Navarre during the minority of the heiress, Jeanne. The income from Provins was to cover expenses incurred by the king of France for this task. It has elsewhere been argued that the revolt of Provins was provoked by the financial demands of Philip III following the troubles in Navarre.129 In any event, the episode resonated. The ‘chronique rimée de Saint-Magloire’ which Auguste Molinier thought comes out of the ‘bourgeois world of Paris’, explained ‘Un an après, ce m’est avis / fu la grant douleur a Prouvins, / Que de penduz, que d’afolés, / Que d’ocis, que de décolés, / Mesire Jehan d’Acre fist / Grand péchié, quant s’en entremist’.130 Jean d’Acre seized the documents of the Mayor and jurors (jurés) of Provins, and at the 1281 Pentecost court of Parlement, held
126 d’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, vi, 449–50, 463 and 563–64; the government of Jean d’Acre in Champagne is not well documented; d’Arbois de Jubainville in all discovered only two judgements, both from 1278, by Jean d’Acre in his capacity as governor of Champagne, see: no. 3849 and 3850 of his catalogue, vi, 100; The question was taken up by Lacomme, ‘Un cartulaire sous influence?’. 127 d’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire des ducs et comtes de Champagne, vi, 451; Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 249. 128 On the disturbances in Provins, see: Terrasse, Provins, pp. 173–87; where it is established that the date of the revolt was 1281, whereas historians had hitherto been vague (1279, 1280, 1281); Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 249. 129 Terrasse, Provins, pp. 174–76, who is reluctant to do so. 130 de Wailly, ed., Chronique de Saint-Magloire, p. 84; see also the ‘chronique anonyme finissant en 1356’, no doubt inspired by the chronicle of Saint-Magloire: ‘l’an ensuivant après [1279], fut la grant douleur a Prouvins; car il y eut moult de gens penduz et mutillez et mis a mort. Et disoit l’en que monsieur Jehan d’Acre fist grant péchié de soy en mesler’ (‘Chronique anonyme finissant en M. CCC. LVI’, ed. by Guigniaut and de Wailly, p. 138).
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on 1 July, he handed over three of these letters and two sealed documents.131 Then, in June 1284, on the order of Pope Martin IV, Jean d’Acre assigned a rent of twenty livres tournois for the foundation of a chapel in the church of Saint Quiriace, for the soul of the Mayor, Guillaume Pentecoste.132 Jean d’Acre’s tenure as governor left other less bloody traces. On 13 March 1280, for example, ‘Jehans, fuiz du roy de Jerusalem, bouteillier de France, tenant le leu du conte de Champaigne, en Champaigne et en Brye’, brought notice of the agreement that ended the conflict between the Count of Champagne, Edmund, and the Count of Burgundy, Otto IV, whom Jean d’Acre could call ‘his very dear cousin’. The object of the dispute was rather banal: both parties accused each other of incursions and looting. At the request of the count of Burgundy, Jean d’Acre went to Langres. ‘After many treaties and much discussion’, he and the count of Burgundy reached an agreement. Two knights were charged with investigating the complaints of each party: Jean d’Acre appointed Thibaut, Sire de Broyes; Otto IV, Jacques de Baon, Sire de La Fauche. Further disagreements between these two judges would then be brought before the duke of Burgundy.133 Jean d’Acre was given another mission in 1285: to collect loans in the bailliages of Sens and Senlis for the king as well as the subvention of the knighting of his eldest son.134 This was part of the preparations of the ‘Crusade against Aragon’, the attempt made by Philip III, with the support of Pope Martin IV (formerly the legate Simon de Brie), to put Charles of Valois, Philip’s younger son, on the throne of Peter III of Aragon. A few years later, around 1292, Jean d’Acre was again entrusted with a mission, somewhat like the one he fulfilled in Champagne. He was given charge over the county of Clermont, in the name of Robert, the last surviving son of Saint Louis, who had been hobbled following a tournament accident.135
Career Diplomat? Appointed Butler of France, and having henceforth abandoned personal ambition, Jean d’Acre seems to have made diplomacy his specialty. Of all the men in the second 131 Actes du Parlement de Paris, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2335. 132 Bourquelot, Histoire de Provins, p. 241. 133 Gauthier, de Sainte-Agathe, and de Lurion, ed., Cartulaire des comtes de Bourgogne (1135–1321), pp. 310–12, no. cccxxxix; this is the register B 1 of the Archives départementales du Doubs. The original can be found in box B 38; the Lords of Broyes and Baon handed down their sentence on 7 November 1281. (Gauthier, de Sainte-Agathe, and de Lurion, ed., Cartulaire des comtes de Bourgogne, pp. 352–53, no. ccclxxxiv). 134 ‘Account of the Bailliages of France’, p. 657: ‘Pro expensis domini Johannis de Acon factis querendo mutua facienda regi et subventionem militiae primogeniti regis per balliviam’, 64 l (livres); see also ‘Account of the Bailliages of France’, p. 667, ‘Compotus domini Johannis de Accon, buticularii Francie, pro mutuis procurandis in balliviis Silvanectensi et Senonensi’; cf. Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 356 and n. 5. 135 Carolus-Barré, ‘Robert de France’, pp. 42–63, at p. 53.
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half of the thirteenth century who held positions of authority and who led some sort of embassy or diplomatic mission in the king’s name, Jean is certainly the one who directed the greatest number.136 For comparison, Alphonse de Brienne is known to have led only one embassy. Jean d’Acre, by contrast, carried out several missions to England. Jean d’Acre was related to the king of England — admittedly, a distant relative. It was necessary to go all the way back to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Edward’s great-grandmother and also the grandmother of Blanche of Castile, thus making Eleanor Jean’s great-aunt. The two had met previously — perhaps even at the occasion of Prince Edward’s marriage to Eleanor of Castile ( Jean d’Acre’s first cousin) if that is indeed where Alfonso X knighted Jean. Prince Edward is said to have taken Jean d’Acre with him to England a few years later, in 1263, at a point when Edward was jockeying between his father and Simon de Montfort.137 Edward had returned to England by the end of February 1263.138 Jean d’Acre does not seem to have played much of a role at this point.139 But since both sides had requested Saint Louis to act as arbitrator of the situation, it is entirely possible that Jean d’Acre had been sent as an agent of Louis.140 Jean d’Acre fulfilled at least three other missions to the English king. In the spring of 1267, he probably acted as a spokesperson for Saint Louis. Two years after the death of Simon of Montfort at the Battle of Evesham, the king of France urged Henry III to show clemency to Simon’s sons and to effect a reconciliation between the two factions. It appears that at this point Jean d’Acre also obtained concessions from the English king, but that these were deemed insufficient. In this mission, Jean d’Acre was accompanied by Enguerrand de Fiennes, whose son, Guillaume, married his daughter, Blanche.141 At the end of 1285, he returned to England, probably to confer with Edward I about the Crusade against Aragon undertaken by Philip III.142 According to an English chronicler, Jean presented himself at the Candlemas Parliament held at
136 His brother Alphonse also led embassies: on 28 May 1258, Simon de Clermont, Lord of Nesle, swore an oath in the name of Saint Louis to respect the treaty concluded with the king of England. (Paris, AN, J 629, no. 7; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iii, 413–14, no. 4417). 137 Le Nain de Tillemont, Vie de Saint Louis, iv, 286; d’Arbois de Jubainville, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, iv, 451. 138 Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, p. 223; Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III, p. 271. 139 The historians of Henry III and Edward I do not mention it. (Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III, especially Article 14, ‘King Henry III’s “Statute” against Aliens: July 1263’, pp. 260–80; Prestwich, Edward I), any more than Bémont, Simon de Montfort. 140 Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 361–69, gives a good summary of the disturbances of 1263–1265; if he does not quote Jean d’Acre, he evokes the missions carried out in England by several men close to the king of France, without one always knowing if they were mandated by him: the count of Saint-Pol (1263), Jean de Valenciennes (early 1264), Simon de Nesle and Pierre de Villebéon (summer or autumn 1264), Érard de Valéry (1265); Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, and Jean d’Harcourt had also met in 1260. (Powicke, ‘The Archbishop of Rouen’, pp. 108–13). 141 Lyte, ed., Calendar of Patent Rolls, pp. 140–41; Powicke, ‘Guy of Montfort’, pp. 1–24, also pp. 6–7; Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, ii, 535–36. 142 Jean d’Acre made an account of the expenses occasioned by this mission, mentioned in the account of the Baillages of France and Normandy — for Candlemas 1286. ‘Account of the Baillages of France and Normandy — for Candlemas 1286’, p. 759.
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Westminster in 1286; he was in the company of Maurice de Craon, a regular visitor to the English court, and the Earl of Burgundy, Otto IV.143 The following year, at the end of 1287, he went to Bordeaux, almost certainly to meet again with Edward, who was at that point back on the continent.144 His ties to the English royal family were sufficiently well known that, a few years earlier, in 1278, the new archbishop of Rouen, Guillaume de Flavacourt, not wanting to cross the English Channel to pay homage to the king of England, sought the intervention of figures he thought would have sufficient credit with Edward I: Marguerite of Provence (Philip III’s mother), Pierre d’Alençon (the king’s brother), and his wife, Jeanne de Châtillion, Jeanne Countess of Ponthieu (the English king’s mother-in-law), and Jean d’Acre.145 Jean d’Acre also headed up several missions to the Holy See. As we recall, in 1254, during the pontificate of Innocent IV, Jean was probably at the curia for a fairly long stretch of time and thus would have been familiar with its customs. In 1272, he was charged with reassuring Gregory X about Philip III’s commitment to the Holy Land.146 And at the end of 1289, he was again sent to the pope — by that point Nicholas IV. With him went Gérard de Maumont, Brother Arnould de Wisemale (a Templar known at court and related to the Dukes of Brabant), and Guillaume de Grancey, a knight of the king.147 On 18 February, a new pope, Boniface VIII, urged Jean to aid the legates he sent to France and England to negotiate peace between the two crowns. Philip the Fair had confiscated Aquitaine from Edward a year earlier.148 Even if Jean d’Acre was not the only person to whom the pope made this request, the fact is still noteworthy.149 In the weeks that followed, Jean led an embassy to the pope which also included the bishop of Le Puy and the abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Jean received four privileges from the pope, dated 23 May at Velletri, on the occasion of this mission, which was probably his last.150 A few months later, on 4 August 1295, Jean
143 The chronicler is J. de Taxster, cited by Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, i, 33, in the footnote. 144 He was paid at Candlemas 1288 for the rest of his expenses for this trip. (Delisle, ‘Mémoire sur les opérations financières des Templiers’, no. 151, p. 145). 145 Kew, National Archives, SC 1 / 18 / 159 ‘Jehan, fuiz du roi de Jherusalem, boutillier de France’; cf. Hélary, ‘Les liens personnels entre les cours de France et d’Angleterre’, pp. 75–89, at pp. 75–76. 146 Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 64; Guiraud, ed., Registres de Grégoire X, no. 788 (sans date). 147 Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, i, p. 101; Favier, Philippe le Bel, p. 260; Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 244–45. 148 Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Thomas, Faucon, and Digard, i, 242, no. 700; his status as ‘fils de Jean, roi de Jérusalem’ is specified. 149 He also asked the bishops of Paris, Tournai, and Orleans, the duke of Burgundy, the count of Artois, the Constable of France, the lord of Montmorency; on 20 February, Charles de Valois, King of Aragon; Marguerite of Provence, Queen of France; Jeanne, Queen of France; Marie, Queen of France; the count of Savoy. (Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Thomas, Faucon, and Digard, i, 249, no. 732). 150 Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, i, pp. 212, 218–19 and 225; four of his clerics may be allowed to enjoy the income from their benefices in spite of their absence; the religious who accompany him are allowed to eat meat; he himself may not be excommunicated without an order from the Apostolic See; when he attends a preaching, all those who attend will benefit from the indulgence; he will have a portable altar (Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Thomas, Faucon, and Digard, i, 54, no. 140–44); his
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d’Acre was once again called upon, this time to push forward the marital arrangements between Catherine, titular Empress of Constantinople, and Frederick, son of the late Peter III of Aragon.151 Family ties remained important. Catherine was the daughter of Philippe de Courtenay, son of Emperor Baldwin II and Marie de Brienne; she was therefore the great-niece of Jean d’Acre. Jean d’Acre also played a role — although exactly what remains unclear — in Philip the Fair’s quarrel with Gui de Dampierre, the Count of Flanders. We know from the Chronique artésienne, which preserves letters of Robert of Béthune, that Jean d’Acre was present (and even the first mentioned) on 5 February 1295 when Gui and three of his sons, including Robert himself, appeared before the king of France and promised him fidelity and loyalty. We can not know whether Jean d’Acre truly approved of Philip the Fair’s political tactics. Indeed, Philip’s aggressive policies were characteristic of his entire reign. The king of England (as duke of Aquitaine), the count of Flanders, Pope Boniface VIII, the Templars, the Lombards, and the Jews would all become his victims.152 Presumably, Jean d’Acre, as a diplomat, and as a cousin of Saint Louis, distrusted Philip’s approach. But he could have doing nothing about it. The most famous of his missions — widely reported in the chronicles — was also the most perilous. In the autumn of 1275 Jean d’Acre was entrusted with the task of retrieving Blanche, the sister of Philip III and the widow of the Infante Fernando de la Cerda, who had died in July of that same year, at the court of Castile. In 1269 Jean d’Acre and his brother Alphonse had taken Blanche to her wedding in Burgos, along with their sister Marie. Six years later, Jean was charged with extricating Blanche from the dangerous situation in which she now found herself. At the Castilian court, Alfonso’s second son, Sancho, was agitating to be recognized as the legitimate heir to the throne. Philip III was in turn pushing forward his nephews, the two sons Blanche had borne to her late husband. The negotiations were heated. Words were exchanged. Alfonso X was ultimately swayed. Reluctantly, the Castilian king permitted Blanche to leave, but then changed his mind and tried to stop her. This escape, incredibly, right under the very nose of the king of Castile, would not be out of place in an adventure novel.153 Blanche arrived safely — but not to France. Rather, she went to Navarre, where she was placed under the authority of Philip III, thanks to the ingenuity of our very own Jean d’Acre, Butler of France, who seems to have little trusted his cousin from Castile. They were shortly followed by a group of nobles who had been dispossessed by Don Sancho. Suddenly France and Castile were on the brink of war. The following year, in November 1276, Philip III raised his army and attempted to cross the Pyrenees, but the venture failed. This was the ‘ost de Sauveterre’. The army, in a pitiable state, stopped at the foot of the Pyrenees. The poet Guilhem Anelier recounted these events in detail, confessor will be able to commute the vows he would have pronounced until now, except for vows of the cross, religion, and chastity. (Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Thomas, Faucon, and Digard, i, 57, no. 150); he may also celebrate mass at sites where it is forbidden to do so. (no. 151); Jean d’Acre will be free to choose his confessor (no. 152). 151 Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. by Thomas, Faucon, and Digard, i, no. 809. 152 Brown, ‘Philip the Fair, Nemesis of Edward I of England’, pp. 237–64. 153 Cf. Saly, ‘Girart d’Amiens romancier’, pp. 177–88.
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emphasizing the troubles of Navarre; he described a council held there by the king and reports a speech attributed to Jean d’Acre, ‘sire Johan d’Acre’. Jean was the only one who offered an opinion; he advised the army to retreat, as it did not have the necessary supplies for the ambitious expedition. If, he explained, the king of Castile should continue to misbehave, it would be necessary to seek the judgement of the Church, and eventually to return to Spain . The king and all the nobles present came around to his position.154 This war-time episode ended with the ‘Treaty of Vittoria’, negotiated by Robert d’Artois and not Jean d’Acre, the man of war having taken over from the diplomat, especially since the latter was persona non grata at the Castilian court.155 Sancho IV, who became King of Castile in 1284, seems not to have held a grudge against Jean d’Acre. In 1288, Jean was, with Hughes de Bouville, one of the French ambassadors who participated in the negotiations with envoys from Castile that occurred in Lyon under the mediation of the papal legate, Jean Cholet.156 The Butler of France affixed his seal to the ‘Treaty of Lyon’ on 13 or 15 July 1288.157 It appears thus that Jean d’Acre was, first and foremost, a diplomat. Interestingly, his name is not found in the Roman du Hem, the Who’s Who of the military nobility at the end of the reign of Philip III.158 Although he participated in the Tunis crusade, he was not mentioned as one of its valiant knights, in contrast, for example, to the count of Artois, who, despite his youth, distinguished himself in battle against the Tunisians. Quite the contrary, the one episode on the Tunis crusade that includes Jean d’Acre’s participation highlights his penchant rather for negotiation.159 By mid July 1270, the Crusaders had established a foothold near Tunis and set up camp near the ruins of Carthage. At Charles of Anjou’s request, Louis IX put off an offensive in order to await the arrival of his brother’s contingent. At the start of a period of inactivity for the crusader army, on 27 July, three leading men from Tunis approached the crusader camp, which was on that day guarded by the battle corps of two of the Brienne brothers, Alphonse, Comte d’Eu and Jean d’Acre. Jean brought them to his own tent before seeking out the king. As he returned to his watch, a further 100 Tunisians arrived, crying out to be baptized. It was in fact a diversion. For at that moment, the Saracens attacked and, having the element of surprise, routed the crusaders, killing sixty infantry. The Tunisians turned and fled and were not pursued. But the three original Tunisians remained, still in Jean d’Acre’s tent. Jean, whom everyone blamed for the attack, accused them of setting a trap. A Dominican was brought in to translate. The highest ranking of the three insisted that they had nothing to do with the incident. Rather it was his rival, the Sultan, who attacked the crusader camp while he was in it. The Tunisian then promised that if he and his two companions were freed, they would return the next day with 2000 men and supplies. 154 Michel, ed., Histoire de la guerre de Navarre, pp. 310–13, v. 4838–4847. 155 Langlois, Le règne de Philippe III, p. 100. 156 Morel-Fatio, ‘Chronique des rois de Castille’, p. 352 n. 4. 157 Paris, AN, J 601, no. 22; Digard, ed., Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, ii, 237–45. 158 Henry, ed., Sarrasin. Le Roman du Hem. 159 Primat, ‘Chronique de Primat traduite par Jean du Vignay’, pp. 48–49. This episode has been discussed by Jordan, An Apple of His Eye, p. 142.
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Jean naturally consulted the king, who ordered the three men expelled from camp but with no further punishment. The incident is hard to interpret. It is difficult, on reading Primat’s account, to understand what the three Tunisians were up to when they threw themselves into the lion’s den. Did they intend to sacrifice themselves to facilitate the attack of the Caliph’s men? Or did they really want to submit to Louis IX? When it comes to Jean d’Acre, the situation is clear. His first instinct was to take the Tunisians at their word; probably because his temperament pushed him, always, to diplomacy rather than war.
His Income and Assets Without his own proper inheritance or landed wealth, Jean d’Acre — the point has already been made — had to make himself useful. His diligence at the Hôtel, the vigilance with which he exercised his rights as Butler, and the various missions he undertook throughout a very active career ensured that he was regularly and constantly employed. As Butler, he drew twenty-five sous parisis every day he served the Hôtel (that is, 31,25 sous tournois, a little more than 1.5 livres tournois). His diplomatic missions, his embassies, and the guardianship of the counties of Eu, Champagne, and Clermont provided some further income. Such a trustworthy retainer also found in the royal generosity a valuable asset. In June 1272, Philip III gave to ‘his dear cousin and his faithful follower, Jean, Butler of France’, for services rendered, an annuity of one thousand pounds, to be collected from the Temple each year in three instalments (at All Saints’ Day, Purification of the Virgin, and Ascension).160 This gift was made during the ‘ost de Foix’, when Philip III was in Carcassonne preparing to punish the Count of Foix, Roger-Bernard III. Negotiations had begun with the King of Aragon, James the Conqueror, who was protective of the interests of the count of Foix. Was Jean d’Acre entrusted with these negotiations? Nothing says so, but the hypothesis would explain the date and the choice of place to honour the loyalty of the Butler. There is no trace of any annuity from Louis IX. And if Louis had granted one, Philip’s letters would probably have mentioned it. An annuity of 1000 pounds a year certainly represented a handsome sum, but it is less than 3 pounds a day, where his daily wages as a Butler amount to about 1.5 pounds, and did not make him a rich man. It is also possible, as noted above, that Jean d’Acre received income from his wife, Marie de Coucy, at least until her death around 1285. If this was the case, Jean d’Acre would have been safe from want. But more broadly, the Butler of France, even as influential as he was, could never compete with the great princes, if only because he did not have behind him the cohort of vassals and men of war. Jean d’Acre, as we saw, participated in the Tunis crusade. Was it to maintain his rank that he was forced to borrow 500 livres tournois from the count of Poitiers, a debt recorded in a roll dating to November 1269? The count of Poitiers’ other debtors included Jean’s
160 Paris, AN, JJ 30 A, no. 621.
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brothers, Alphonse and Louis, who respectively owed 400 and 600 pounds.161 It is, sadly, impossible to draw a conclusion from this single reference. Were the brothers Brienne in a state of fleeting need, or were they, as one might imagine, impecunious in general? Jean d’Acre’s testamentary bequests are known, but only in part. We know that he gave a thousand livres tournois to the abbey of Maubuisson. A single other bequest is known — the gift he made to the Cistercian Abbey of Vaux-de-Cernay of a house and lands in Charantonneau, southwest of Paris, not far from Vincennes.162 In both cases, the link is easily explained. Jean d’Acre chose to be buried at Maubuisson. And Vaux-de-Cernay was linked to both the counts of Montfort; Abbey Gui became Bishop of Carcassone in 1214 and his nephew Pierre was the author of the lively chronicle of the Albigensian Crusade. And Jean d’Acre had, for a time, between 1250 and 1260, held the title of count de Montfort. Clearly, he had taken this to heart.163 We can identify some members of Jean d’Acre’s entourage. On 4 August 1257 Pope Alexander IV ordered the bishop, the dean, and the chapter of Avranches to receive as canon Robert de Pacy, a cleric of the diocese of Evreux, an acquaintance of the noble Jean, son of the King of Jerusalem.164 In August 1275, Philip III noted the sale by Guillaume dit le Maçon of ‘Fontaine-Cadoc’, servant of Jean [d’Acre], Butler of France, cousin of the king, to Pierre de La Broce, Lord of Langeais, of a wine cellar located near the manor that Pierre had acquired there. The document states that the wine cellar had previously belonged to Jean d’Acre himself — no more is known.165 On 11 November 1276, Pope John XXI provided Pierre dit Bouvier, canon of Soissons
161 Paris, AN, J 320, no. 68; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iv, 401–02, no. 5601; dated before February 1270, a record of the sums owed to Alphonse de Poitiers shows that the Comte d’Eu owed 400 livres tournois; if the Comte did not pay, the seneschal of Poitou would seize the Comte’s property up to the sum due (Paris, AN, J 190 b, no. 65; Layettes du Trésor des chartes, ed. by de Laborde, iv, 415–16, at 415, no. 5631). 162 Charantonneau, Val-de-Marne, arr. Créteil, cant. Maisons-Alfort; In 1283 Jean d’Acre exchanged two arpents located in Charantonneau with lady Alix de Charantonneau, wife of Guillaume de Morin, knight; these two arpents were delimited by the door of Alix’s house and that of Jean d’Acre; they were exchanged against three arpents that Jean himself held from Nicolas du Gastel, canon of Saint-Aignan d’Orléans, his clerk, who was similarly located in Charentonneau in the fief of Ferri Pasté, knight (Chenal, Histoire de Maisons-Alfort et d’Alfortville); the legacy was executed 1296: Merlet and Moutié, eds, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame des Vaux-de-Cernay, ii, 72–74: in May 1288, Jean d’Acre received from Nicolas du Gastel his manor; Nicolas kept his manor in usufruct for his lifetime; an extract from Jean d’Acre’s testament is given on p. 74; the monks of Les Vaux-de-Cernay had to celebrate, three times a year, a mass for Jean’s soul, as well as a mass for his father and another for his mother; it is specified that in March 1296 the Bishop of Dol, Thibaud de Pouancé, one of the executors of Jean d’Acre’s testament, vested the Abbot of Les Caux-de-Cernay with the manor. 163 Two examples can be given: in February 1256, Jean d’Acre received 10 livres ‘de homagiis Montis Fortis’ (Lalou, ed., Les comptes sur tablettes de cire de Jean Sarrazin, § 110); the Parlement held on the octave of All Saints’ Day 1266 suggests Jean d’Acre, Butler of France, against Philippe and Michel, bourgeois of Neauphle; Neauphle-le-Vieux or Neauphle-le-Château are both located in the Yvelines, arr. Rambouillet, cant. Aubergenville, a few kilometres from Montfort, in the Yvelines, Rambouillet cant. (Olim, I, fol. 152r). Did Jean d’Acre retain any assets or interests around Montfort-L’Amaury? 164 Les Registres d’Alexandre IV, ed. by La Roncière, de Loye, de Cenival, and Coulon, ii. 165 Paris, AN, J 726, no. 160 (‘Fontaine-Cadoc’, today called Fontaine-Heudebourg, Eure, arr. Les Andelys, cant. Gaillon-Campagne; I owed this identification to Bruno Nardeux, and I thank him for it).
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and a familiar of Jean d’Acre, Butler de France, with a prebend to the cathedral chapter of Arras.166 Simon de Bailleul, cleric of Jean d’Acre, is mentioned in an act of 15 June 1292. Guillaume, his concierge, paid 36 sous in tax in 1296.167 On the same date, his barber was a certain Jean de la Touche.168 Before 1288, Nicolas du Gastel, a canon of Saint-Aignan d’Orléans, was his clerk.169 We also know that Jean d’Acre lived in the Saint-Paul district of Paris, close to other aristocratic homes, such as that of his nephew, Jean de Brienne, Comte d’Eu.170 In October 1294, he granted the church of Saint-Paul, whose parishioner he was, a land of one arpent ½ and ½ quartier [a unit of land], located, ‘next to the ditches of the King, behind the convent of Barrés (the Carmelite friars), in the censive of the Chamberlain of France’. This donation is made for an anniversary mass for himself and for his parents, ‘King John of Jerusalem and Emperor of Constantinople and Lady Berengaria, his wife’ — to be celebrated for Jean de Brienne on 21 March, St Benedict’s Day, for Berengaria of Castile on 12 April. For himself, Jean d’Acre asked for a mass on the day of his death, and, before that, during this lifetime, an annual mass at the fortnight of the Trinity (the Trinity being celebrated on the eighth Sunday after Easter, that is, between mid-May and mid-June). This donation is amortized by the king on 22 September at the cost of un denier de cens.171
Death Jean d’Acre died on 8 January 1296. This is the date of the anniversary celebrated in several abbeys, including that of Maubuisson, the site where Jean chose to be buried.172 The choice of Notre-Dame-la-Royale is easily explained. On the one hand, this abbey of Cistercian nuns had been founded by Blanche of Castile, who had welcomed
166 Les Registres de Jean XXI, ed. by Cadier, no. 29; by a letter of 24 April 1273, Gregory X requested that the first prebend which would become vacant at the cathedral chapter of Arras be given to Pierre Bouvier, a priest and canon of Noyon; no link is made with Jean d’Acre (Guérard, ed., Registres de Grégoire X, no. 230; no. 231, same date, is the letter addressed by the Pope to the Bishop of Evreux and the Chancellor of Paris.). 167 Michaelsson, ed., Le Livre de la taille de Paris, p. 194. 168 Michaelsson, ed., Le Livre de la taille de Paris, p. 183. 169 Merlet and Moutié, eds, Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame des Vaux-de-Cernay, ii, 73, in the footnote. 170 I am very grateful to Boris Bove for information on the location of Jean d’Acre’s house. (Bove, Brault, and Ruault, ‘Spatialisation des censives urbaines au xviiie siècle avec essai de restitution médiévale’, pp. 167–96, particularly figures 19 and 20; and, in the same volume, Bove, ‘Typologie spatiale des hôtels aristocratiques à Paris’, pp. 257–92, esp. pp. 265 and 280); the publication of Bove’s work on aristocratic hotels in Paris will bring much to the knowledge of the capital; for the record, Sellier, Anciens Hôtels de Paris, pp. 261–65. 171 Paris, AN, S 3743, no. 5; de Mas-Latrie, ed., ‘Nouvelles preuves de l’histoire de Chypre’, pp. 47–87, at p. 49. 172 Molinier, ed., Obituaires de la province de Sens, i, p. 356 (Saint-Victor de Paris); ii, p. 649 (SainteCatherine de la Couture), p. 655 (Maubuisson). In the obituary of Sainte-Catherine de la Couture, Jean de Brienne and Berengaria, his wife and their son Jean d’Acre, one after the other; the monks had received 30 litres, 10 litres each; On the date of the deaths of Jean de Brienne (23 March) and
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her grand nephews, the ‘children of Acre’, during the difficult years of their youth. Returning to France in the summer of 1249 to marry, Jean had probably been in the service of Blanche, who was governing the kingdom in the absence of her son, King Louis IX. Elsewhere, Jean d’Acre explicitly proclaimed his Castilian ancestry. On his counterseal, in fact, the lion of Brienne was surrounded by an eagle and a castle, the emblem of Castile (Figure 7.1).173 No doubt the Artois, Count Robert II (d. 1302) and Countess Mahaut (d. 1329) were buried in Maubuisson for the same reason. Their arms bore the Castilian castles on the red shield that was crossed with the fleurs-delis, (‘azure semy de lis’ or a label gules charged with three castles or on each point). Indeed, Maubuisson, along with Royaumont, was an alternative necropolis, intended for the burial of princes and princesses linked to the Capetian family, since burial at Saint-Denis was reserved for kings and queens alone, although, in truth, this segregation was never strictly maintained. While she could have been laid to rest in Saint-Denis, near her husband Louis VIII, Blanche of Castile chose Maubuisson for her body, and Le Lys, near Melun, for her heart — two abbeys she had founded. In Saint-Denis, on the other hand, Pierre le Chambellan was entombed in a simple grave, in the immediate vicinity of the tomb of Saint Louis. And the remains of Alphonse de Brienne, Jean d’Acre’s brother, were also buried at Saint-Denis, in a chapel in the nave dedicated to Saint Martin; as noted, Jean was his brother’s executor and ordered masses for his brother’s soul.174 Finally, Maubuisson Abbey was linked to the Brienne. As early as the thirteenth century, the nuns kept there a relic of the True Cross, which was given to them by Jean de Brienne, the King of Jerusalem.175 From 1275 until her death in 1309, the Abbess of Maubuisson was Blanche, one of Alphonse de Brienne’s daughters (and therefore Jean d’Acre’s niece). In March 1283, as executor of his brother Alphonse’s will,
Berengaria of Castile (13 April), their relationship to Jean d’Acre is mentioned, which leads us to believe that it was the latter who took care of celebrating their memory (pp. 649 and 650); in Maubuisson, too, the obituary bore the names of Jean de Brienne and Berengaria of Castile (p. 655). 173 This was also the case for his brother Alphonse: Nielen, ‘Du comté de Champagne aux royaumes d’Orient’, pp. 600–01, where it is speculated that the molds of the seals of the two brothers were engraved at the same time. 174 ‘Pour le corps de l’illustre chevalier Pierre chambellan de Saint Louis, comme sa charge luy avoit donné droit de coucher dans la chambre de son maistre, lorsqu’il estoit en vie, on l’enterra à ses pieds sous une tombe plate sans ornement. Il y avoit encore le corps du comte d’Eu, que l’on inhuma hors du chœur dans une chapelle de la nef du titre de saint Martin, où se lit son épitaphe. Jean d’Acre son frère exécuteur de son testament, fonda des messes qui se disent dans la même chapelle’ (Dom Michel Félibien, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France; The epitaph of Alphonse de Brienne is at p. 561). On 7 June 1277, the provost of Paris authenticated the sale made before him by Gautier Giffart, bourgeois of Paris, and by Geneviève, his wife, to Jean d’Acre, Butler de France, an annuity of 3 muids of wheat on the King’s barn in Gonesse, for 300 livres parisis, the said sum to be devoted to the upkeep of the chapel of Saint-Martin, founded at Saint-Denis by the late Comte d’Eu, brother of Jean d’Acre (Paris, AN, K 34, no. 16); the sale was immediately confirmed by the King (Paris, AN, K 34, no. 162); both charters are modern copies; Tardif, Monuments historiques, p. 353, no. 896 and 897. 175 Beaune, ‘La légende de Jean Tristan, fils de Saint Louis’, pp. 143–60, at p. 145; Bony, ‘Le gisant en marbre noir de Saint-Denis’, p. 96 and note 17, p. 106, who cites a charter by which John of Brienne, as Emperor of Constantinople, notifies the gift of a fragment of the True Cross by Anselm of Norhaut (Arch. dép. Val-d’Oise, 72 H 83, pièce no. 2).
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Figure 7.1. Seal of Jean d’Acre. 1288. Paris, Archives Nationales, AN J 601 and S 3743. Image from Sigilla.org.
Jean d’Acre made it known that his brother had bequeathed his daughter, Sister Blanche, a nun at Maubuisson (her title of Abbess is not specified at this point), an annuity of one hundred livres tournois, and further gave ten livres to the abbey itself.176 It was the Abbess Blanche de Brienne who founded in 1297 one of the very first chapels in honour of the cult of the new saint, her relative, Louis IX, who was canonized by Boniface VIII on 11 August 1297. Discovered in 1959, Blanche’s tomb was identified by Françoise Baron.177 A widower without descendants, bereft of a county or a sprawling lordship, Jean could not count on a wife or children to see to his soul, unlike his brother, Louis, Viscount of Beaumont, who was buried with his wife at the abbey of Etival-en-Charnie. In these circumstances, Jean d’Acre was surely pleased to know that his niece would see to the organization of his funeral and his tomb. Maubuisson was an extremely prestigious sanctuary, boasting the tomb of Blanche of Castile and the heart and entrails of Alphonse de Poitiers (d. 1271). Jean d’Acre’s sister, Marie, Empress of Constantinople, who died around 1277, was also buried there. Pierre Bony has shown that the black marble tomb saved by Alexander Lenoir from the abbey’s ruins was hers. As far as we can tell, Jean d’Acre’s tomb was placed right next to his sister’s.178 And finally, in 1329 when she died, their niece, their brother Louis’s daughter, Marguerite de Beaumont, Princess of Antioch, also joined them in the abbey choir. Jean d’Acre’s tomb was destroyed in the French Revolution. Before that, the seventeenth-century scholar, l’abbé Milhet, described the tomb, when one could still read the inscription on it: ‘[…] Joh’is de Achon filii regis Ierusal. buticular. qui dedit 176 Dutilleux and Depoin, L’abbaye de Maubuisson, p. 129, no. 317; in March 1285, Jean, Count of Eu, stated that the 10 pounds bequeathed by his father to the abbey of Maubuisson after the death of his sister Blanche, who was a nun there, would be placed on the viscountcy of Creil. (p. 129, no. 318). 177 Baron, ‘La gisante en pierre de Tournai de la cathédrale de Saint-Denis’, pp. 211–28. 178 Bony, ‘Le gisant en marbre noir de Saint-Denis’, pp. 97 and 102.
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nobis mille libras turon […]’ (The tomb of Jean d’Acre, son of the King of Jerusalem, and Butler, who gave us one thousand livres tournois). Presumably, it was the nuns who were responsible for the tomb. The workmanship was of fine quality. It was ‘a large tomb, covered with copper plating with many designs’ (un grand tombeau couvert de plaques de cuivre fort historiées) and on which ‘his coat of arms’ was also displayed. Jean d’Acre’s name was also included in the abbey’s necrology, again with the indication that he had given a thousand livres tournois.179 What might the representations ‘fort historiées’ have been? Most likely they bore the arms of Jean d’Acre’s family: the Brienne lion, the castles of Castile, the ‘cross potent’ of Jerusalem, the arms of the Latin emperors of Constantinople, and probably also the Capetian fleurs-de-lis. Were the arms of the Montfort and the Coucy included? Were those of the county of Eu or the viscounty of Beaumont — his brothers’ titles — included? In the Cistercian Abbey of Fourcarmont, where the counts of Eu were buried, the tomb of Jean d’Acre’s nephew (his brother Alphonse’s son), showed the ‘images’ of the princes of the family along with their coats of arms: Included were Jean de Brienne, King of Jerusalem and Emperor of Constantinople; Saint Louis; Charles of Anjou; Philip III; ‘the King of Acre, his uncle’ ( Jean d’Acre himself); Alfonse of Poitiers; the King of Castile; Robert, Count of Artois; Pierre, Count of Alençon; the viscount of Beaumont; and ‘the Count of Orange’ (unidentified). Did Jean d’Acre’s tomb represent them too? In one of Maubuisson’s chapels the genealogy of the count of Eu was also represented, including his parents ‘Messire Jehan d’Acon’ and the Count of Saint-Pol.180 One thing is certain: on Jean d’Acre’s tomb at Maubuisson, his coat of arms (‘l’écusson de ses armes’) bore the imperial eagle, ‘d’or à l’aigle de sable’.181 His seal also bore the imperial eagle, as it is appended to the ‘Treaty of Lyon’ (1288), in the negotiation of which Jean d’Acre had participated. Recognizing that this was an ‘exception non expliquée’ (unexplained exception) Pierre Bony nevertheless suggested that the eagle had been given to Jean d’Acre by his cousin, Alfonso X, the King of Castile and, at one time, the elected King of the Romans.182 The eagle also appears on Jean d’Acre’s counterseal as well as that of his brother Alphonse, flanking the Brienne lion, with a castle on the reverse. The brothers Brienne, we know, were linked to the court of Castile and the eagle and the castle may well have been included in order to evoke the Castilian royal family. Jean d’Acre’s counterseal showed the lion of Brienne (‘d’azur au lion billeté d’or’), surmounted by a fleur-de-lis; the image was also used on the counter-seals of his brother Alphonse as well as on that of the Viscounts of Beaumont.183 Marie-Adélaïde Nielen, however, argued that the matrix of the seal of Alphonse de Brienne dates from 1255, two years before the election of the King of Castile as King of Germania.184 Given these circumstances, is it not better to imagine 179 Dutilleux and Depoin, L’abbaye de Maubuisson, p. 107. 180 ‘Chronique des comtes d’Eu, depuis 1130 jusqu’en 1390’, pp. 439–48, at pp. 445 and 446. 181 Pinoteau and Le Gallo, L’Héraldique de Saint Louis et de ses compagnons, p. 30. 182 Bony, Sceau d’Isabelle, p. 124; several examples were studied by Jean-Bernard de Vaivre, ‘Échanges et adoption d’armoiries au xiiie siècle’, pp. 371–83. 183 Pinoteau and Le Gallo, L’Héraldique de Saint Louis et de ses compagnons, p. 32. 184 Nielen, ‘Du comté de Champagne aux royaumes d’Orient’, pp. 600–01.
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Genealogy 7.1.
Alphonse of Brienne Comte d’Eu m. Marie, heriress to the Comte d’Eu
Louis of Brienne, Viscount of Beaumont m. Agnes
m. Isabella, Queen of Jerusalem
m. Marie de Coucy (Heiress to the King of Scotland)
Jean de Brienne (ca. 1175-1237) m. Rita of Armenia
Jeanne de Chateaudun, widow of Jean de Monfort
Blanche. Born before 1257
Ca. 1227-1296
Jean d’Acre, Butler of France
m. Baldwin II of Constantinople 1217-1273
Alphonse of Poitiers 1220-1271
Marie, Empress of Constantinople 1224-1275
Blanche of Castile 1188-1252
Louis IX of France 1214-1270
Berengaria of Castile (d. 1246)
Berengaria of Castile (d. 1237)
Alphonso IX of Leon
Alphonso VIII of Castile
Blanche (died 1226)
Charles of Anjou 1226-1285
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that the eagle was intended to evoke their father, Jean de Brienne, who had been Emperor of Constantinople from 1231 and 1237, and their sister, who bore the title of Empress of Constantinople until her death? We do not have a clear sense of the emblems used by the Latin emperors, but the eagle, since antiquity, has always been associated with the idea of Empire.185 Jean d’Acre’s seal included the following: on the obverse was his name, perhaps associated with his place of birth, his status as son of the King of Jerusalem and his office as Butler of France; the reverse bore symbols linked to the families of his parents, the lion of Brienne, the castle of Castile, and the eagle. The eagle, which he shared with his brother on the counterseal, probably evoked their father’s imperial dignity. Perhaps it was in order to distinguish himself from his two brothers that Jean adopted the eagle, whose prestige also made it possible to compensate for his own comparatively modest status; his brother Alphonse had bound together the lion of Brienne with the traditional arms of the county of Eu, which he had acquired through his wife. One last point regarding Jean d’Acre’s eagle: it has been suggested that, in the Saint Louis Psalter (BnF, lat. 10525), the eagle that appears in the lozenges that fill the empty space at the end of a line, in combination with the fleurs-de-lis, the castles of Castile, and the pales, evokes the Butler.186 It is possible, but in fact, there is no proof.
Posterity After Jean d’Acre’s death, the office of Butler remained vacant until 15 May 1296, when it was granted to Gui de Châtillon, Count of Saint-Pol. In this commission, we might note that Gui’s sister had married Jean d’Acre’s nephew ( Jean de Brienne, Comte d’Eu, d. 1294). Whether this was a factor in the appointment is unknown, given how intertwined was the high nobility. We have no idea of what happened to Jean d’Acre’s property and papers. Presumably, everything must have passed to his daughter Blanche, who died around 1302, about the same time as her husband, Guillaume de Fiennes, who died at the Battle of Courtrai. Jean d’Acre’s grandchildren all settled in either France or England. Blanche of Brienne and Guillaume de Fiennes’ daughter, Jeanne, was mother of Roger Mortimer, Baron of Wigmore and leader of the revolt against Edward II. She was also the great-grandmother of King Richard II of England (1377–1399), who was thus a descendant of Jean d’Acre.187 Jean de Fiennes, the son of Guillaume de Fiennes and Blanche of Brienne, led the protests against Mahaut the Countess of Artois in 1315 and 1320. He also had a son, Robert de Fiennes, known as ‘Moreau de Fiennes’, Constable of France between 1356 and 1370. 185 This possibility is categorically rejected by Pinoteau and Le Gallo, L’Héraldique de Saint Louis et de ses compagnons, p. 32, who claim to be unable to solve the mystery of the Eagle of Jean d’Acre. 186 Stahl, Picturing Kingship, pp. 47–48. 187 William of Fiennes was linked, or rather felt linked, to the English royal family: his grandfather, William, had married Agnes of Dammartin, aunt of Jeanne de Dammartin, wife of King Ferdinand of Castile and mother of Eleanor of Castile, herself the wife of Edward I.
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Memory of Jean d’Acre, however, quickly faded. There was little reason to commemorate someone — even someone as important as Jean d’Acre — who had left neither a male heir nor a great fiefdom. A large bequest at Maubuisson, where his niece was Abbess, and where he, with Blanche of Castille, was among the first to be buried, assured his commemoration. The care with which he carried out his duties as Butler must have kept his memory alive for some time in the royal household and administration. His successors were probably, at least for a time, mindful of and grateful to him for having so carefully defined the rights of the office. Jean d’Acre was represented on his nephew’s tomb in Foucarmont, as well as his nephew’s genealogy. For the rest, we have no idea whether in the Fiennes family much care was devoted to this grandfather, whose own father had been King of Jerusalem and Emperor of Constantinople. It seems, however, that somehow, through twists that escape us, the memory of Jean d’Acre endured. In fact, over the course of the fourteenth century, as part of what some refer to as ‘the second cycle of the crusade’, Jean Tristan, the son of Saint Louis (born in Damietta in 1250; died in Tunis in 1270), became the hero of extraordinary adventures in later romances. At the end of one of these stories, Jean Tristan finally conquers the kingdom of Acre and entrusted it to a son, named like him Jean, while his daughter marries the lord of ‘Frennes’. It has long been accepted that this is a muddled but unquestionable evocation of Jean d’Acre and his daughter Blanche, married to the lord of Fiennes.188
Jean d’Acre and his Destiny When, in October 1294, Jean d’Acre donated a piece of land to the church of Saint-Paul, he quoted his father twice in a few lines: ‘Jehan, fiuz le roy Jehan de Jherusalem, bouteillier de France, salut en nostre Seigneur. Nous faison a savoir que nous, a l’enneur de Dieu, et a l’accroissement de son saint servise, et pour le proufit des ames de nostre pere, le roy Jehan de Jherusalem et empereur de Costantinoble desus dit, et de madame Berangiere, sa famme, jadis nostre mere …’. At the end of his life, thus, Jean d’Acre identified himself in two ways: he was the son of his father and mother, dead now for fifty-seven years; and he was Butler of France. What he lacked was not so much wealth as a title, and the land and vassals that went with it. At one time, through his marriage to the widow of the count of Monfort, he could boast the name ‘Comte de Montfort’; and it may well be that he continued to call himself ‘Comte de Montfort’ when he was abroad, for example at the court of Castile, even long after he had lost all right to do so. Neither of his two marriages provided him with the land base that his brothers enjoyed. And the chroniclers — few in the thirteenth century — were above all attracted to titles. They mention that the Comte
188 Beaune, ‘La légende de Jean Tristan’, p. 145; a recent edition gives an idea of the adventures of Jean Tristan, without reference, however, to the children born of his marriage to the beautiful Helen of Tarsus — daughter of a Saracen king. Pinto-Mathieu, ed. and trans., Baudouin de Flandre.
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d’Eu was among those to take the cross when Louis IX did so for a second time in 1267. His brother, Jean d’Acre, certainly did so at the same time, but no one says so.189 Did Jean d’Acre use the name by which we know him? As a general rule, he was ‘Jean, son of the King of Jerusalem, Butler of France’; but the Treaty of Lyon, issued 13 July 1288 by the legate Jean Cholet, bears the seal of the King of Castile’s representatives and of ‘domini Johannis de Acon, buticularii Francie’ (the lord Jean d’Acre, Butler of France). We should probably conclude that Jean did adopt this name, which points toward a search for identity. Jean d’Acre, not because he was born in Acre, but rather because his father had been called the ‘King of Acre’, as, for example, by the Minstrel of Rheims, who referred to Jean de Brienne as ‘le roi Jehan d’Acre’.190 At the end of the fourteenth century, a ‘chronique des comtes d’Eu’, written at the Abbey of Foucarmont, the necropolis of the counts of Eu, stated that ‘le dit Jehan [that is, Jean de Brienne] fut depuis marié a la fille au roy d’Acre, dont yssit ung filz qui fut puis roy d’Acre et fut moult grant’ (The said Jean [of Brienne] was since married to the daughter of the King of Acre; a son was born of this marriage who was then the King of Acre and was very important). This is clearly our hero, whose life here is singularly disguised.191 In his youth, Jean d’Acre wanted to chart his own path. But he soon learned that he did not have the soul of an adventurer. After all, he could have sought out a career in what remained of Frankish Outremer, and to make claims on rights he had from his father — but these were not assured and he would have had to fight for them. His cousins, the Counts of Brienne, were certainly tempted to have theirs recognized, in the county of Lecce and in the duchy of Athens. It is possible that in 1254, when in his early thirties, having married well and being supported by the courts of France and Castile, he contemplated an expedition east, perhaps in support of the Latin Empire, which would explain the substantial subsidy from Innocent IV. If that was indeed his plan, it was, for reasons we can never know, never realized. Indeed, Jean d’Acre was never very enthusiastic about coming to his brother-in-law Baldwin II’s aid, either before or after the fall of the city to the Greeks in 1261. Nor did he seem to want to go to the Holy Land, except as part of the broader project of Louis IX, whom he accompanied to Tunis. Although the time when great lords might take up the cross at their own expense was in the past — the last example was the Crusade of 1239 — some important figures did make an effort. Eudes, the count of Nevers and son of the duke of Burgundy, for instance, died in Acre in 1266. Were his means greater than those of Jean d’Acre? As noted, Jean d’Acre also appears to have distanced himself from Charles of Anjou, his contemporary with whom he had probably been raised at the Capetian court in the 1230s. He did not, however, join Charles in 1265 in his
189 Richard, Saint Louis, p. 533. 190 I accept the suggestion that Jean d’Acre took his name from the ‘royaume d’Acre’. Pinoteau and Le Gallo, L’Héraldique de Saint Louis et de ses compagnons, p. 30; ‘le roi Jehan d’Acre’, de Wailly, Récits d’un ménestrel de Reims, § 243 and 244, p. 128, § 436, p. 224. 191 ‘Chronique des comtes d’Eu, depuis 1130 jusqu’en 1390’, pp. 439–48, at p. 443.
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conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily, and afterward he always seems to have kept his distance. They may simply have not gotten along very well. But he may also have had misgivings about committing to a prince with unbridled ambitions. Certainly, if he had wanted, Jean d’Acre could have offered his services in support of the many ventures of the king of Sicily. Rather, it appears that Jean d’Acre did not want to play a principal role. He knew himself to be a poor man of war, as confirmed in the episode of 1270 in the camp in Tunis. On the other hand, this great noble lord, ever proud of his ancestry but aware of his own limitations, showed himself to be a valuable adviser and an efficient lieutenant, available for the missions entrusted to him, especially in diplomatic affairs. The prestige of his kinship ties, his own personal skills, and his flexibility as a diplomat made him the ideal envoy. A man of trust: this is what three kings of France — Saint Louis, Philip III and Philip IV — had in their cousin Jean d’Acre, son of the King of Jerusalem, who was Butler of France.
Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Besançon, Archives départementales du Doubs, B 1 ———, B 38 Cergy-Pontoise, Archives départementales du Val-d’Oise, 72 H 83, pièce no. 2 Kew, National Archives, SC 1 / 18 / 159 Paris, Archives nationales, J 190, no. 65, 95 ———, J 320, no. 68 ———, J 336, no. 5 ———, J 341, no. 6v ———, J 365, no. 7 ———, J 396, no. 6 ———, J 408, no. 2, 3, 11, 12, 122, 13 ———, J 460, no. 13 ———, J 473, no. 10; 11 ———, J 474, no. 35 ———, J 509, no. 3, 3 bis ———, J 587, no. 11 ———, J 601, no. 22 ———, J 629, no. 7 ———, J 726, no. 160 ———, JJ 30, no. 407, 414, 606, 621 ———, K 34, no. 16, 162 ———, S 3743, no. 5 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), coll. Fonteneau, t. 22, pp. 305, 327 ———, coll. Fonteneau, t. 27, p. 193
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Wailly, Natalis de, ed., Chronique de Saint-Magloire, in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. xxii (Paris: Palmé, 1860), 82–86 ———, Récits d’un ménestrel de Reims au xiiie siècle (Paris: Renouard, 1876) Watt, D. E. R., ed., Walter Bower: Scotichronicon, vol. v (Aberdeen: Mercat, 1987–1998) Secondary Works Adhémar, Jean, with Gertrude Dordor, ‘Les tombeaux de la collection Gaignières. Dessins d’archéologie du xviie siècle’, Gazette des Beaux-arts, 84 (1974), 1–192 Arbois de Jubainville, Henri d’, ‘Recherches sur les premières années de Jean de Brienne’, in Mémoires lus à la Sorbonne dans les séances extraordinaires du Comité impérial des travaux historiques et des sociétés savantes. Histoire, philologie et sciences morales (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1867), pp. 235–47 ———, Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, vol. iv (Paris: Durand, 1865) Ballesteros Beretta, Antonio, Alfonso X el Sabio, 2nd edn (Barcelona: El Albir, 1984) Baron, Françoise, ‘La gisante en pierre de Tournai de la cathédrale de Saint-Denis’, Bulletin Monumental, 128 (1970), 211–28 Barrow, G. W. S., Kingship and Unity 1000–1306 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981; 2nd edn, 1998) Barthélémy, Dominique, Les deux âges de la seigneurie banale. Coucy (xie-xiiie siècle), Université de Paris IV. Série d’histoire ancienne et médiévale, 12 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1984; 2nd edn, with a postscript, 2000) Beaune, Colette, ‘La légende de Jean Tristan, fils de Saint Louis’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 98 (1996), 143–60 Bémont, Charles, Simon de Montfort, comte de Leicester (Paris: Picard, 1884) Berger, Élie, Histoire de Blanche de Castille reine de France, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 64 (Paris: Thorin, 1895) ———, ‘Requête adressée au roi de France par un vétéran des armées de saint Louis et de Charles d’Anjou’, in Études d’histoire du Moyen Âge offertes à Gabriel Monod (Paris: Cerf, 1896), pp. 343–50 Böhm, Ludwig, Johann von Brienne, König von Jerusalem, Kaiser von Konstantinopel (Heidelberg: Lippl, 1938) Bony, Pierre, ‘Le gisant en marbre noir de Saint-Denis: les signes symboliques de l’impératrice Marie de Brienne?’, Revue française d’héraldique et de sigillographie, 54–59 (1984–1989), 91–110 ———, ‘À propos du sceau d’Isabelle de Flandre, dame de Fiennes (début du XIVe siècle)’, Revue française d’héraldique et de sigillographie, 54–59 (1984–1989), 121-24 Bourquelot, Félix, Histoire de Provins (Provins: Lebeau, 1840) Bove, Boris, ‘Typologie spatiale des hôtels aristocratiques à Paris’, in Paris de pixels en parcelles. Analyse géomatique de l’espace parisien médiéval et moderne, ed. by Hélène Noizet, Boris Bove, and Laurent Costa (Paris: PUV-CHVP, 2013), pp. 257–92 Bove, Boris, Yoann Brault, and Antoine Ruault, ‘Spatialisation des censives urbaines au xviiie siècle avec essai de restitution médiévale’, in Paris de pixels en parcelles. Analyse géomatique de l’espace parisien médiéval et moderne, ed. by Hélène Noizet, Boris Bove, and Laurent Costa (Paris: PUV-CHVP, 2013), pp. 167–96
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Bréhier, Louis, ‘Jean de Brienne’, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. by A. de Meyer and Et. Van Cauwenbergh, vol. x (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1938), cols 698–709 Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Philip the Fair, Nemesis of Edward I of England’, in Prowess, Piety and Public Order in Medieval Society: Studies in Honor of Richard W. Kaeuper, ed. by Craig M. Nakashian and Daniel P. Franke (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 237–64 Buckley, James M., ‘The Problematical Octogenarianism of John of Brienne’, Speculum, 32, (1957), 315–22 Bur, Michel, La formation du comté de Champagne, v. 950-v. 1150, Mémoires des Annales de l’Est, 54 (Nancy: Publications de l’université de Nancy II, 1977) Carolus-Barré, Louis, ‘Saint Louis et la translation des corps saints’, Études d’histoire du droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras, vol. ii (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1965), 1087–1112 ———, ‘Robert de France, sixième fils de Saint Louis, comte de Clermont en Beauvaisis et sire de Bourbonnais, 1256–1318’, in Autour du donjon de Clermont, témoin de l’histoire. Actes du colloque de Clermont, organisé les 10–11 octobre 1987 (Beauvais: Groupe d’étude des monuments et œuvres d’art du Beauvaisis, 1989), pp. 42–63 ———, Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis (1272–1297). Essai de reconstitution (manuscrit préparé pour l’édition par Henri Platelle), Collection de l’École française de Rome, 195 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994) Carpenter, David A., The Reign of Henry III (London: Hambledon, 1996) Chenal, Amédée, Histoire de Maisons-Alfort et d’Alfortville: Depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Asselin et Houzeau, 1898) Dickinson, William Croft, and George S. Pryde, A New History of Scotland, vol. I, Scotland From the Earliest Times to 1603 (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1961) Deck, Suzanne, Une commune normande au Moyen Âge. La ville d’Eu. Son histoire, ses institutions (1151–1474), Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes études, 243 (Paris: Champion, 1924) Delisle, Léopold, ‘Mémoire sur les opérations financières des Templiers’, Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, 33.2 (1889), 1–94 Digard, Georges, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège de 1285 à 1304. Ouvrage posthume publié par Françoise Lehoux, 2 vols (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1936) Douët d’Arcq, Louis, Inventaire de la collection des sceaux des Archives de l’Empire, Ministère d’État, Archives de l’Empire, Inventaires et documents, vol. i (Paris: Plon, 1863) Dubois, Gaston, ‘Recherches sur la vie de Guillaume des Roches, sénéchal d’Anjou, du Maine et de Touraine’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 30 (1869), 377–424; 32 (1871), 88–145; 34 (1873), 502–44 Du Cange, Charles du Fresne, Histoire de l’empereur de Constantinople sous les empereurs français jusqu’à la conquête des Turcs, par Du Fresne du Cange, new edition issued by J. A. Buchon, vol. i (Paris: Verdière and Carez, 1826) ———, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort: Favre, 1883–1887) Duncan, Archie A. M., The Kingship of the Scots, 842–1292: Succession and Independence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002) Dutilleux, Adolphe, and Joseph Depoin, L’abbaye de Maubuisson (Notre-Dame-la-Royale). Histoire et cartulaire. Première partie. Histoire de l’abbaye et des abbesses (1236–1789) (Pontoise: Typographie de Amédée Paris, 1882)
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Evergates, Theodore, Feudal Society in the Bailliage of Troyes under the Counts of Champagne, 1152–1284 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) ———, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) Favier, Jean, Philippe le Bel (Paris: Fayard, 1978) Fedorenko, Gregory, ‘The Crusading Career of John of Brienne’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 52 (2008), 43–79 Félibien, Dom Michel, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France (Paris: chez Frédéric Léonard, 1706; reprint, Paris: Éditions du Palais-Royal, 1973) Field, Sean, and Walter Simons, ‘A Prophecy Fulfilled? An Annotated Translation of the Sources on the Death of Crown Prince Louis of France (1276) and the Interrogations of Elizabeth of Spalbeek (1276–1278)’, The Medieval Low Countries: An Annual Review, 5 (2018), 35–91 Frolow, Anatole, La relique de la Vraie Croix. Recherches sur le développement d’un culte (Paris: Institut français d’études byzantines, 1961) Guibours, Pierre de (le P. Anselme), Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison de France, vol. vii (Paris: Compagnie des Libraires, 1737) Hélary, Xavier, ‘Les rois de France et la Terre sainte de la croisade de Tunis à la chute d’Acre (1270–1291)’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France. Année 2005 (2007), 21–104 ———, ‘Les liens personnels entre les cours de France et d’Angleterre sous le règne de Philippe III, 1270–1285’, in Thirteenth Century England: Proceedings of the Gregynog Conference, vol. 12, ed. by Janet Burton, Philip Schofield, and Bjorn Weiler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009), pp. 75–89 ———, L’ascension et la chute de Pierre de La Broce, chambellan du roi († 1278). Étude sur le pouvoir royal au temps de Saint Louis et de Philippe III (v. 1250-v. 1280), Études d’histoire médiévale, 16 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2021) Hendrickx, Benjamin, ‘Marie of Brienne’s Visit to Cyprus in the Context of her Quest for Assistance to the Latin Empire of Constantinople’, in Cyprus and the Crusades: Papers given at the international conference ‘Cyprus and the Crusades’, 6–9 September 1994, ed. by Nicholas Coureas and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Center and Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, 1995), pp. 59–68 Jordan, William Chester, An Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019) Lacomme, Thomas, ‘Un cartulaire sous influence? Edmond de Lancastre, Jean d’Acre, Renier Acorre et le cartulaire de la collégiale séculière Saint-Étienne de Troyes’, in Aux sources du pouvoir. Voir, approcher, comprendre le pouvoir politique au Moyen Âge, ed. by Sylvain Gouguenheim (Paris: Indes Savantes, 2017), pp. 87–110 Langlois, Charles-Victor, Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi (Paris: Hachette, 1887) Legris, Albert, Eu, ses comtes (Eu: Cacheux, 1909) Le Nain de Tillemont, Louis-Sébastien, Vie de Saint Louis roi de France (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1847–1851) Longnon, Jean, L’Empire latin de Constantinople et la principauté de Morée (Paris: Payot, 1949) Maddicott, J. R., Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
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Martin, Georges, ‘Négociation et diplomatie dans la vie de Bérengère de Castille (1214–1246). La part du facteur générique’, in E-Spania. Revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques médiévales et modernes, 2007, online https://journals.openedition.org/espania/562 (accessed 6 April 2021) Monfrin, Jacques, ‘Jean de Brienne, comte d’Eu, et la traduction des Météorologiques d’Aristote par Mathieu le Vilain (v. 1290)’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (1996), 27–36 Nielen, Marie-Adélaïde, ‘Du comté de Champagne aux royaumes d’Orient: sceaux et armoiries des comtes de Brienne’, in Chemins d’Outre-mer. Études d’histoire sur la Méditerranée offertes à Michel Balard, ed. by Damien Coulon, Catherine Otten-Froux, Paule Pagès, and Dominique Valérian, vol. ii (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004), pp. 589–606 Perry, Guy, John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c. 1175–1237 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) ———, The Briennes: The Rise and Fall of a Champenois Dynasty in the Age of the Crusades, c. 950–1356 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) Petit-Dutaillis, Charles, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII (1187–1226), Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études, Sciences philologiques et historiques, 101 (Paris: Bouillon, 1894) Pinoteau, Hervé, and Claude Le Gallo, L’Héraldique de Saint Louis et de ses compagnons, Les Cahiers nobles, 27 (Paris: Les Cahiers nobles, 1966) Powell, James M., Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986) Powicke, Frederick Maurice, ‘Guy of Montfort’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 18 (1935), 1–24 ———, ‘The Archbishop of Rouen, John of Harcourt and Simon de Montfort in 1260’, English Historical Review, 51 (1936), 108–13 ———, King Henry III and the Lord Edward: The Community of the Realm in the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947) Prestwich, Michael, Edward I, The English Monarchs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) Rhein, André, ‘La seigneurie de Montfort en Iveline, depuis son origine jusqu’à son union avec le duché de Bretagne’, Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Rambouillet, 21 (1910), 1–363 Richard, Jean, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, soutien de la Terre sainte (Paris: Fayard, 1983) Saly, Antoinette, ‘Girart d’Amiens romancier’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales, 14 (2007), 177–88 Segura Graino, Cristina, and Agustin Torreblanca Lopez, ‘Personajes bizantinos en la corte de Alfonso X’, Anuarios de Estudios Medievales, 15 (1985), 179–87 Sellier, Charles, Anciens Hôtels de Paris. Nouvelles recherches historiques, topographiques et artistiques (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1910) Sivéry, Gérard, Blanche de Castille (Paris: Fayard, 1990) ———, Louis VIII le Lion (Paris: Fayard, 1995)
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Stahl, Harvey, Picturing Kingship: History and Painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008) Stones, E. L. G., Anglo-Scottish Relations. 1174–1328 (London: Nelson, 1965) Strayer, Joseph, The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) Stringer, Keith, ‘Marie [née Marie de Coucy]’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online: https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/ odnb-9780198614128-e-49369 [accessed 7 April 2021] Tardif, Jules, ‘Le procès d’Enguerran de Coucy’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 79 (1918), 5–44 and 414–54 Taylor, Alice, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124–1290 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) Terrasse, Véronique, Provins. Une commune du comté de Champagne and de Brie (1152–1355) (Paris: Harmattan, 2005) Vaivre, Jean-Bernard de, ‘Échanges et adoption d’armoiries au xiiie siècle’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, (1982), 371–83 Van Tricht, Filip, The Latin Renovatio of Byzantium: The Empire of Constantinople (1204– 1228), The Medieval Mediterranean, 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) ———, The Horoscope of Emperor Baldwin II: Political and Sociocultural Dynamics in LatinByzantine Constantinople, The Medieval Mediterranean, Peoples, Economies and Culture, 400–1500, 114 (Leiden: Brill, 2019) Villèla-Petit, Inès, ed., 1204. La Quatrième croisade. De Blois à Constantinople et éclats d’empires. Catalogue de l’exposition Musée-Château de Blois et Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musée du Cabinet des Médailles octobre 2005-janvier 2006, in Revue française d’héraldique et de sigillographie, 73–75 (2003–2005) Watt, D. E. R., ‘The Minority of Alexander III of Scotland’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 21 (1971), 1–23 Wolff, Robert Lee, ‘The Latin Empire of Constantinople and the Franciscans’, Traditio, 2 (1944), 213–37 ———, ‘Mortgage and Redemption of an Emperor’s Son: Castile and the Latin Empire of Constantinople’, Speculum, 29 (1954), 45–84
M. Cecilia Gaposchkin
Louis IX, Heraclius, and the True Cross at the Sainte Chapelle
Introduction The Sainte Chapelle was (is) the extraordinary and sublime chapel built by Louis IX (r. 1226–1270) in the 1240s to house the Crown of Thorns, the True Cross, and other Holy Land relics he received from Baldwin II of Constantinople in 1239, 1241, and 1242 in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Consecrated in 1248, the chapel became the cult centre for the most important collection of Christic relics in Christendom. Now nestled within the royal palace on the Île-de-la-Cité at the heart of Paris, the relics of Christ, the universal king, accrued to the prestige of the Capetian kings who repeatedly compared Christ’s thorny crown to their royal one. Following Louis’s own canonization in 1297, the Sainte Chapelle became ever more focused on the cult of Capetian kingship, particularly in 1306 when, as Elizabeth A. R. Brown has elucidated in a number of crucial articles, Louis’s grandson, Philip IV ‘the Fair’ (r. 1285–1314) acquired the head of Louis, and made Saint Louis a key symbol of the religion of royalty. The caput Ludovici joined the Crown of Thorns, the three relics of the True Cross, the head relics of Saints John the Baptist, Blaise, Simeon, and Clement, along with a host of other Christic and Marian relics, as a principal relic and source of sacral prestige of the palace chapel. By the early part of the fourteenth century, and possibly before, the canons of the Sainte Chapelle performed a special Octave celebration of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross which styled Louis IX (r. 1226–1270) as a new Heraclius, and the bringing of the relic(s) of the True Cross to Paris as evidence of the translatio imperii, the continuation of the westward movement of God’s favour. Our principal evidence for this is a fifteenth-century summer breviary from the Sainte Chapelle, the only surviving breviary from the institution to provide a full complement of chant-texts and readings (lectiones, or ‘lections’) for liturgical feasts from the Feast of Saint Germain (28 May) to that of Saint Thomas the Apostle (21 December). These lections for the Octave are provided in the Appendix to this article. The breviary thus gives us robust information for the Sainte Chapelle’s liturgy for the Feast of the M. Cecilia Gaposchkin is Professor of History at Dartmouth College.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 265-299 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122624
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Exaltation of the Cross (14 September), which, as throughout Latin Christendom, recounted the story of the Emperor Heraclius’s recovery of the True Cross from the Persian King Chosroes (Khosrow II Aparwēz) in 629 and its restoration to the Holy Sepulchre. But what is notable — and forms the centre of this essay — is that the Sainte Chapelle canons also, unusually, celebrated the Octave of the Exaltation feast, and moreover did so with a special series of readings that told the story specifically of Louis IX’s reception of the relics of the True Cross and their transfer to Paris. These lections were confected from two pre-existing sources which narrated Louis IX’s reception in 1241 of the relic of the True Cross sent from Constantinople to Paris, and the extraordinary power and virtue (virtus) of the relic of the True Cross that now was in Capetian custody. In this way, the ritual styled Louis as the new Heraclius, suggested that the transfer of the relics to Paris in the 1240s was the continuation of divine history moving West, and contributed to the argument about Louis’s own sacrality and, more broadly, the Capetians’s place in salvific history.1
The Sainte Chapelle Between 1239 and 1242 Louis IX, King of France, acquired twenty-three prestige relics from the imperial palace in Constantinople.2 The transfer of this large part of the imperial relic collection was a consequence of the Fourth Crusade’s capture of Byzantine Constantinople in 1204, and the subsequent establishment of the Latin Empire.3 Immediately upon capturing the imperial city, Baldwin IV of Flanders, a leader of the crusade and himself connected by blood and marriage to the Capetians, was elected Baldwin I, Emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. His imperial successors in Constantinople, finding themselves strapped for defence funds and hemmed in by enemies looking to recapture the Byzantine capital, resorted to pawning the imperial relic collection in the 1230s to raise money. Among the relics hocked were, most famously, the Crown of Thorns, but also several important pieces of the True Cross, and a host of other Christic, Marian, and apostolic relics.4 In 1238, Baldwin II of Constantinople, a collateral descendant of Baldwin I through the latter’s sister, Yolande of Flanders, arranged for Louis IX, a second cousin, to redeem the Crown of Thorns, which was then duly, if circuitously, transferred from Constantinople, to Venice, to Paris. Louis personally received the relic in a grand ceremony on 11 August
1 Much has been written over the years of the Capetians’s claims to sacrality and to being ‘the new chosen people’ (or some variation of the idea of special sacrality). The classic articles are Strayer, ‘France: The Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King’, pp. 300–15 and Brown, ‘Kings Like Semi-Gods’, pp. 5–37. 2 On the relic collection: Magdalino, ‘L’Église du Phare et les reliques de la passion à Constantinople’. See also de Mély, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae. 3 For context in Byzantium at the time: Longnon, L’Empire Latin de Constantinople et la principauté de Morée. And now John Giebfried, The Imagined Empire of Baldwin II, ch. 2. 4 For the broad history of the transfer of relics after 1204, see Riant, Exuviae sacrae.
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1239.5 Two years later, Louis again paid off Baldwin’s debtors in order to redeem, and take possession of, another set of relics, including two important pieces of the True Cross, which arrived in Paris in 1241. Following the devasting loss of the Holy Sepulchre’s relic of the True Cross to Saladin in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, these were the two most important surviving cross relics in Christendom. Their reception was carefully choreographed to arrive in Paris on 14 September, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. A little more than a year later, on 30 September 1242, a third set of relics was transferred, this time through the agency of two Franciscan envoys who had gone to Constantinople. This transfer comprised another set of Holy Land relics, and included the famed ‘cross of victory’ — the relic that the emperors of Constantinople had traditionally carried out into battle. That ‘cross of victory’ was small, but mighty, and it arrived in Paris with the special reputation it had acquired in Byzantine military culture.6 Louis had thus, in three years, acquired the most prestigious collection of relics in all Christendom. Next to the Crown of Thorns, these cross relics were paramount within the otherwise unparalleled collection of Christic (and Marian) relics. The young king then had built the Sainte Chapelle within the confines of the royal palace on the Île-de-la-Cité in the heart of Paris, the kingdom’s capital city.7 There is some debate about whether the new chapel was planned as of 1239 (or even 1237 or 1238) for the Crown of Thorns alone, or whether it was the arrival of the larger collection of relics that necessitated a newer building and cult centre.8 Either way, the chapel was consecrated by Eudes of Châteauroux, Louis’s friend and the papal legate, on 26 April 1248, in the months just before the king’s departure on Crusade. The entire building was a monument to both the Christic relics and Capetian kingship.9 The interior glass cycle proffers a sweeping vision of Providential history, starting with Genesis, moving through Old Testament time to the Incarnation, foretold by the prophets, and forward to the Apocalypse, the End of Time.10 The last double-lancet window in the narrative cycle (‘Bay A’), depicts Louis himself, along with Blanche of Castile and Robert Artois, bearing the Crown of Thorns in procession. The window also shows Louis, his arms and hands covered with a cloth, holding up the True Cross in adoration [Figure 8.1].11 These images spoke to the translatio imperii theme that inhered upon the relics. History was moving westward, and specifically to France. As one near-contemporary text noted,
5 Guerry, ‘Crowning Paris: King Louis IX, Archbishop Cornut, and the translation of the Crown of Thorns’; Pysiak, The King and the Crown of Thorns. 6 On these cross relics, see: Durand, ‘La relique et les reliquaires de la Vraie Croix du trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle de Paris’, pp. 341–68. For the relics in Byzantine military culture see Klein, ‘Sacred Relics and Imperial Ceremonies at the Great Palace of Constantinople’, pp. 94–96. Klein, ‘Constantine, Helena, and the Cult of the True Cross in Constantinople’. 7 Cohen, The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy. 8 Cohen, The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy, favours the view of at 1238/1239 date, or even 1237. For another view see Lützelschwab, ‘Ludwig der Heilige und der Erwerb der Dornenkrone’, pp. 12–23, and Gasser, ‘L’architecture de la Sainte-Chapelle’, pp. 157–80. 9 Brenk, ‘The Ste.-Chapelle as a Capetian Political Program’, pp. 195–213. 10 Grodecki, Sainte-Chapelle; Jordan, Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle. 11 Riant, Exuviae sacrae, ii, 133–35.
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Figure 8.1. Louis IX adoring the Cross, from the Sainte-Chapelle. Reproduced with permission from the Centre des monuments nationaux.
France would guard the Crown of Thorns until the Day of Judgement, when Christ would return to the Sainte Chapelle to retrieve it before fulfilling his role as Universal Judge.12 Another claimed Paris had replaced Jerusalem as Ezekial’s visio pacis (that is, the heavenly Jerusalem) and explicitly compared Parisius to Paradisius.13 In the main, the canons of the Sainte Chapelle followed the regular Paris rite celebrated at Notre Dame and throughout secular churches in the diocese. A new liturgical feast was established, probably in 1239 or 1240, to celebrate the arrival of the Crown of Thorns on 11 August, the anniversary of the day on which Louis took possession of the first relic. The feast was promulgated throughout the city of Paris, and, a little later, through the archdiocese of Sens. Another feast in honour of the Reception of the Relics was set for 30 September, the date of the third relic transfer in 1242, but was celebrated almost exclusively at the royal palace. After the consecration of the Sainte Chapelle in 1248, the Feast of the Dedication of the Chapel was set for 26 August; this feast too was celebrated only at the Sainte Chapelle. And the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross — the feast on which the second set of relics was received 12 Translatio sancte corone domini § 21, in M. C. Gaposchkin, ‘Between Historical Narrative and Liturgical Celebrations’, p. 42. 13 Townsend, ‘The “Versus de Corona Spinea” of Henry of Avranches’, p. 159.
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in Paris in 1241 — was turned from a universal feast into, for all intents and purposes, the fourth of the chapel’s local feasts. It is clear that the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross was, from the outset, identified as one of chapel’s special local feasts. Before even the chapel’s consecration Pope Innocent IV established indulgences for pilgrims who visited the chapel on the feasts of the Reception of the Crown of Thorns (11 August) and its Octave, the Reception of the Relics (30 September) and its Octave, the Dedication of the Chapel (26 April) and its Octave, Good Friday (another Cross Feast), and the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September) and its Octave.14 Recall that the text that concerns us here is precisely the text specially written for recitation at the Sainte Chapelle for the Octave of the Exaltation feast. Louis himself singled out the feasts of the Crown, the Relics, and the Exaltation, and their Octaves, for liturgical and ceremonial details in the revised foundation charter he sent from Aigues-Mortes on the eve of his departure for crusade.15 And the liturgy was also adapted for these feasts in particular. The earliest surviving manuscript for the new chapel is an Evangeliary dating to c. 1230 (BnF, Latin 8892) that was modified in the 1240s to accommodate the liturgical changes needed for the chapel by adding four folios (fols 29–32) that furnished the Gospel readings for the feasts of the Crown of Thorns, the Dedication of the Church, the Reception of the Relics, All Saints, and the Exaltation of the Cross.16 Further, four new liturgical sequences (special prayers written to be sung after the Alleluia during the mass), known from no other source, were apparently composed for the Sainte Chapelle in the 1240s and then copied into and preserved in Bari Bibliotheca San Nicola ms. 5 (olim 81), the so-called ‘Sainte Chapelle Sequentiary’.17 It is evident that from the very outset, the Feast of the Exaltation was singled out as one of the special local feasts at the chapel, feasts focused on its special and particular collection of relics.
The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross at the Sainte Chapelle In general, in northern France in the thirteenth century, there were three principal feasts focused on the cross: Good Friday, the Invention of the Cross (3 May), and the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September).18 All three were focused in some measure not only on the idea of the cross, but also cross relics. The liturgy for Good Friday, the day commemorating Christ’s Crucifixion on the Cross, involved the adoration of
14 Cohen, The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy, pp. 211–12, 219–21. 15 Cohen, The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy, p. 224. 16 Durand and Laffitte, eds, Le Trésor, pp. 149–54. 17 Bari, BSN, MS 5 was edited and published by René Hesbert, Le Prosaire de la Sainte-Chapelle. The Sequentiary included five sequences for the Exaltation of the Cross. Only one, Salva Crux arbor vite, is known from other sources. Dreves and Blume, eds, Analecta hymnica, liv, 192. The others are edited in Hesbert, Le Prosaire de la Sainte-Chapelle, pp. 61–65. 18 A superb overview which digests a great deal of early scholarship is van Tongeren, ‘Crux mihi certa salus’, pp. 349–70.
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the cross, often, if available, in the form of a cross relic.19 One of Louis’s biographers would later describe at great length how Louis himself participated in the Good Friday liturgy, prostrating himself before the cross.20 And, in a ritual practice that would later be attributed to Saint Louis (and may well have been established by him), the king would himself make a public display of the relic.21 The Feast of the Invention of the Cross celebrated in May with traditional readings that recounted Constantine’s vision of the cross in the sky, and the story of Helen’s discovery of the True Cross in Jerusalem in the fourth century.22 And at the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in September recounted the story of the Emperor Heraclius recovering the True Cross from Khosroes and returning it to Jerusalem in 629.23 We will return to these stories. But we can note here that the liturgical year structured a larger story of the cross, starting with its initial sacralization at the Crucifixion during the Easter Cycle (usually in March or April), its discovery in the fourth century (celebrated in May), and then its loss and recovery in the seventh (in September).24
19 Van Tongeren, ‘Imagining the Cross on Good Friday’, pp. 34–51. 20 Guillaume of Saint-Pathus, Vie de Saint Louis, pp. 39–41. 21 I have not been able to locate any piece of evidence for Louis himself participating in this ritual, but it is clear that many, both medieval and modern, thought that he established the practice of displaying the relic in full regalia to the populace on Good Friday. This may well be true. Bozóky, ‘Saint Louis, ordonnateur et acteur des rituels autour des reliques de la passion’, p. 22. 22 There was some variety in Paris use for the Invention lections in the early thirteenth century, although the lections were all taken from the same basic text. Paris, Bibliothèque Saint Geneviève, MS 2618, 272v, and Charleville, BM, MS 86, 202r, give the early thirteenth-century Parisian practice for the Inventio Crucis. ‘Anno ducentesimo tricesimo tercio regnante dei cultore magno viro constantino imperatore’. Paris, Mazarine, MS 343, fol. 340v, begins at ‘Regnante venerabili viro et dei cultore constantino imperatore’. This is BHL no. 4169. Source text (which it mostly follows) was printed in Mombritius, Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, i, 376–79. And now: Borgehammar, How the Holy Cross was Found, pp. 255–71. For an account of the legend, see Borgehammar, How the Holy Cross was Found; Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood, pp. 42–53. Note that Bourges, BM, MS 35, 155r–156v included a variant set of lections related to the ones in the early Paris tradition, numbering only three. It does not seem likely that these reflect the practice of the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, since the fifteenth-century calendar in Paris, BnF, MS lat. 13238 lists the Inventio sancte crucis as a feast celebrated at the rank of annuale, which would indicate nine readings. Paris, BnF, MS lat. 13238, covering only summer months, does not give the Paris chapel’s liturgy. 23 Paris, Bibliothèque Saint Geneviève, MS 2618, fol. 343r, Charleville, BM, MS 86, fol. 262r, and Bari, BSN, MS 3, fol. 200r, give the early thirteenth-century Parisian practice for the Exaltatio Crucis. This is BHL no. 4178. Source text printed in Mombritius, Sanctuarium, i, 379–81. Note that Bari 3 includes only the end of the service, since folios are missing between 199 and 200. For the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in the West, particularly as it bears on the material in this article, see above all van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross, and Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’, pp. 145–202. 24 Note that in Paris a fourth feast for the cross was celebrated by the time the Sainte Chapelle was consecrated. Starting shortly after 1120, the year when Notre Dame received a relic of the True Cross from a former canon who, participating in the First Crusade, had sent home the gift of a fragment, a feast was established for the reception of the Cross to Paris to be celebrated on the first Sunday of August. See Bautier, ‘L’envoi de la relique de Vraie Croix à Notre-Dame de Paris en 1120’, pp. 387–97. The special lections for the feast, composed in the thirteenth century, were copied into Brussels, KBR, IV.472, fols 127v–132v, the Sainte Chapelle miscellany which gives us the original liturgy for the Crown of Thorns and the Reception of Relics.
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Each of these cross feasts was celebrated according to the Parisian rite at the Sainte Chapelle. As above, the best evidence we have for the full liturgy of the summer office at the chapel is BnF, Latin 13238, the only surviving breviary — summer only — from the Sainte Chapelle. Its calendar lists the three feasts particular to the Sainte Chapelle (Crown, Relics, Dedication). It also further lists the Exaltation of the Holy Cross for 14 September as an Annuale (along with Christmas, Easter, and the other highest-ranking feasts of the year), and further lists its Octave, as a duplum. The liturgy for the Exaltation runs from folio 326r to folio 337 and includes, starting at folio 333v, the ‘readings for the octave of the Exaltation of the holy cross’.25 The breviary further indicates that the office should be celebrated at the holy chapel by brothers from the Trinitarian abbey of Saint-Mathurin and canons from the house of Sainte-Catherine, the Parisian branch of the Val des Écoliers.26 BnF, Latin 13238 itself dates only to the second half of the fifteenth century.27 But much of the information about the Exaltation liturgy can be confirmed in particular details in earlier material. For instance, the fact that the celebration of the feast was entrusted to monks from Saint Mathurin and Sainte-Catherine is confirmed by a document from 1344, which means the practice itself had been established even earlier.28 More important, the liturgical readings for the Exaltation feast are confirmed by the readings included in a lectionary made for the Sainte Chapelle of Bourges around the year 1400, which was evidently copied from an exemplar from the Sainte Chapelle of Paris. Founded by Jean, Duc de Berry, the brother of Charles V (himself a devotee of Saint Louis), in explicit imitation of the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, the Sainte Chapelle of Bourges was consecrated in 1399.29 At this stage, a series of liturgical books were commissioned for the Bourges chapel. Although most no longer survive, the Bibliothèque Municipal of Bourges still possesses a gorgeous four-volume lectionary set, Bourges BM MSS 34–37 — four large-scale choir books that reproduce readings for all the feasts of the year. They include complete copies of a series of feasts specific to the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, including readings for the Feast of the Crown of Thorns (11 August), as well as the Sainte Chapelle’s feast of the Reception of the Relics (30 September). These two feasts were celebrated there with a series of texts otherwise unique to celebration at the royal chapel, indicating that the Bourges copyist based his text on a lost set of fair copies from the Parisian chapel, probably the ‘duo libri in quibus sunt legende’ mentioned in the Inventory of 1341,
25 Paris, BnF, MS lat. 13238, fol. 333v: ‘Sequitur legenda per oct. exaltationis sancte crucis’. 26 Paris, BnF, MS lat. 13238, fol. 326r, ‘In festo exaltationis sancte crucis quod habet octabas solennes. Et faciunt officium in sacra capella fratres sancti Maturini et sancte Katherine valliscolarium parisiensis’. On the Trinitarians of Paris (Le Mathurins), see: Moreau-Rendu, Les captifs libérés. On Sainte Catherine, see Guyon, Les écoliers du Christ. 27 Leroquais, Les bréviaires manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, iii, 244–45, dating it to ‘after 1459’. 28 Morand, Histoire de la Sainte-Chapelle royale du Palais. 29 Raynaud, ‘“Ad instar capelle regie parisiensis”’, pp. 289–302.
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and again in that of the 1363.30 Although there is no way of knowing whether the 1341 reference was to a contemporary fourteenth-century lectionary or one from Louis’s era, this is useful evidence because the Bourges lectionaries provide evidence for the liturgical readings of several important feasts at the Paris Sainte Chapelle dating to before 1399, and probably (if we accept the sources as being the ones referred to in 1341) at latest the second quarter of the fourteenth century. MS 34 also includes the full set of readings representing the texts celebrated at the royal chapel in Paris for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and its Octave. That text, with the addition of two sentences that were omitted in the later copy, is entirely consistent with the evidence from BnF, Latin 13238. (See edition below) The liturgy for the Exaltation of the Cross celebrated at the Sainte Chapelle was the standard one, by the thirteenth century long used throughout Latin Christendom.31 The lections — in the Middle Ages often referred to as historia, precisely because they told stories — were taken from a text apparently composed in seventh- or eighth-century Rome (though once attributed to Rabanaus Maurus32), which its most recent editor has titled the Reversio sanctae crucis.33 It recounts the story of Heraclius, the seventh-century Byzantine Emperor who, in his war against the Sassanians, recovered the True Cross from Chosroes.34 Having won the battle and retrieved the cross, Heraclius offered baptism to Chosroes’ followers. When Heraclius got back to Jerusalem, the Emperor ‘removed the tokens of imperial rank, proceeded without shoes, girded only with a linen belt, took the Cross of the Lord in his hands, and hastened forward’.35 Heraclius then rescued captives, strengthened the defences of Jerusalem, and returned home to Constantinople. The readings called Heraclius ‘the most Christian prince’ (christianissimus princeps) who, having dispatched the tyrant Chosroes, ‘took charge of the wood of the most glorious Cross… and hurried to Jerusalem’. By the 1240s, especially at a court preparing to send its king on crusade, the legend would certainly have had all sorts of contemporary resonances. Heraclius had long been discussed as a model and a precursor for crusaders.36 Especially after the loss of the True Cross to Saladin in 1179, the story of the recovery of the relic was particularly forceful.
30 Vidier, Le Trésor de La Sainte-Chapelle: Inventaires et Documents, 12/210, no. 17, 259/61, no. 276, which reads: ‘ii legendaires’. 31 For the liturgy, see above, at notes, notes 23 and 24. For the legend more broadly, see Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood. 32 And as such, published as part of his works in the Patrologia Latina. See: Rabanus Maurus, Homilia LXX: Reversio sanctae atque gloriosissime crucis Domini nostri Jesus Christi, cols 131–34. 33 Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’, p. 146. See also note 24 above. 34 Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’, pp. 180–91. 35 I have taken the translation from Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’, pp. 185–91 (facing page translation). 36 Work needs to be done on this topic, since one of the major pieces of evidence for this claim is the appearance of Heraclius in the Sainte Chapelle window which, as discussed below, is in fact in doubt. But for this view, see: Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood, pp. 185–93; Kühnel, ‘Heracles and the Crusaders’, pp. 63–76 and de Souza, ‘Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium’, pp. 27–38.
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Historically, Heraclius’s retrieval and return of the True Cross was a celebrated event in its own time, and was in due course commemorated during the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Celebrated in Jerusalem since probably the fourth century, the Exaltation feast was transferred to Rome in the seventh century upon the news of the relic’s return, and then spread from there throughout the Latin West.37 The feast itself was thus intimately tied to the story of Heraclius and the cross fragment that he recovered. Although the lections for the Exaltation do not themselves relate the fact, shortly afterwards, and in the context of the Muslim conquests of greater Syria that soon followed, this relic — Heraclius’s relic — was transferred from Jerusalem to the imperial city, where it was housed, first at the Hagia Sophia (‘the Great Church’), and then ultimately at the Pharos chapel,38 the source of the relic collection that would make its way to Louis in the 1240s. The contemporary scholar and royal intimate, Vincent of Beauvais OP (d. 1264), knew this fact. In the Speculum historiale that he was composing in the 1240s, he included both the story of Heraclius’s recovery of the cross from Chosroes in 629, and the transfer of the cross from Jerusalem to Constantinople in 651.39 Assuming this detail was known at court, it would mean that Louis believed the relic of the True Cross (or one of them) that he had acquired in 1241 to be the very relic that Heraclius himself had retrieved from the Persians. That is, not only was it a fragment of the Cross, but it was a fragment with direct associations of Christian rulership. In turn, Louis took the small fragment of the cross that Byzantine emperors had carried into battle with him East when, in 1248, he left on crusade.40
The Octave Readings The cross relic thus carried with it not only its primary association with Christ’s sacrifice, but also the stories of its later history which cleaved to it, the commemoration of which was precisely the focus of the Feast of the Exaltation. And so, every year on 14 September, the canons at the Sainte Chapelle recited the story of Heraclius’s rescue of the True Cross in 629, with the very relic displayed before them on the altar. And
37 Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’; van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross; Klein, ‘Constantine, Helena, and the Cult of the True Cross’, pp. 31–59. 38 Wortley, ‘The Wood of the True Cross’, p. 14. Magdalino, ‘L’Église du Phare et les reliques de la passion à Constantinople’, pp. 15–30. The relic was probably transferred to Constantinople in 634. When it was moved to the Pharos chapel is unknown. 39 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, 396v (Book 24, ch. 68): ‘Anno eiusdem xxiii saracenis Syriam infestantibus Heraclius crucem sancta domini de Hierusalem Constantinopolim transulit’. 40 Several separate sources speak of how Eudes of Châteauroux blessed Louis and the army with the crux triumphalis, which is the name used for the smallest of the three relics, received in 1242, and the one that was believed to have been carried by Byzantine emperors into battle. Guillaume of Nangis, ‘Gestorum sanctae memoriae Ludovici’, p. 370. Matthew Paris, ed., Chronica majora, ed. by Luard, vi, 153 (in additamenta). See also: Beer, ‘The Letter of Jean Sarrasin, Crusader’, pp. 135–55, although Jean Sarasin speaks just of a cross relic here, not identifying it specifically as the triumphal or victorious cross.
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further, at the Sainte Chapelle, as we have said, the canons also celebrated a proper Octave, with a special series of lections to be read over the eight days following composed specifically for the space.41 These special lections comprised two sets of nine readings, presumably one set to be read over the course of the octave week, and the second set to be read on the Octave itself. These told of Louis IX’s reception of the True Cross from Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople and its transfer to Paris in 1241 and 1242. That is, the Octave presented Louis as the new Heraclius, and the story of Louis’s acquisition of the cross relics as the continuation of the Heraclius legend. The liturgy thus told the story of the cross, going from Persia, to Jerusalem, to Constantinople, to Paris. And of the relics, landing in Paris, at the royal palace, as the confirmation of God’s love of the French and the movement of history to the West. The first fourteen of these eighteen octave lections were drawn, and lightly adapted, from Gérard of Saint Quentin’s account of the reception of the relics in 1241 that featured Louis IX himself, the story of the negotiations and ultimately the translation of the relics to Paris.42 Gerard of Saint Quentin, a monk from the monastery of Saint-Quentin-en-Ile (diocese of Noyon), recounted both the reception of the Crown of Thorns of 1239 and then of the two further instalments of relics in 1241 and 1242. Gerard’s text is not as widely known as the account of the reception of the Crown of Thorns attributed to Gautier Cornut, the archbishop of Sens involved in the reception itself, which he wrote before his death in 1241, and was known to antiquarians by the sixteenth century.43 In contrast, Gerard of Saint Quentin’s text has been known only since its discovery and publication by Edouard Miller in 1878 in a review of Paul Riant’s Exuviae sacra constantopolitanae.44 Later that year, Natalis de Wailly republished the text,45 but it was the incomparable Léopold Delisle who a few years later made the attribution to Gerard of Saint Quentin,46 based on a reference to his authorship of ‘the translation from Constantinople to Paris of the venerated relics of the cross and the crown of the Lord, which were acquired by our lord himself, Louis king of the French of Blessed memory, from the Emperor of Constantinople’, in Henri Gand’s Illustious men of Brabant.47 This attribution has more recently been called into question.48 (Lacking decisive evidence one way or the other, I will continue to refer to Gerard as the text’s author.)
41 Paris, BnF, MS lat. 13238, fol. 333v. 42 Paris, BnF, MS lat. 13238, fol. 333r. The text was edited twice in quick successions: Miller, ‘Review of Exuviae Sacrae Constantinopolitanae’, pp. 292–309, 389–403. Miller, ‘Review of Exuviae Sacrae Constantinopolitanae’, pp. 401–15. 43 Gaposchkin, ‘Between Historical Narrative and Liturgical Celebrations’. Guerry, ‘Crowning Paris’. 44 Miller, ‘Review of Exuviae Sacrae Constantinopolitanae’, pp. 292–309, 389–403. 45 de Wailly, ‘Récit du treizième siècle sur les translations faites en 1239 et en 1241 des saintes reliques de la passion’, pp. 401–15. It was then published again by Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliotrafica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente franciscano, ii, 306–11. And by Mély, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, iii, 102–12. 46 Delisle, Manuscrits Latins et Français ajoutés aux fonds des nouvelles acquisitions pendant les années 1875–1891, i, 207–08. 47 Haggh, Two Offices for St Elizabeth of Hungary, p. xiv. 48 Krafft, ‘Gerhard von St-Quentin und die h. Elisabeth’, pp. 449–70.
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Gerard’s translation account is known from two thirteenth-century compilations of historical tracts. These are BnF, nal 1423 and Charleville, BM 275. Charleville, BM 275 was compiled in Belval, a monastery of north-eastern France,49 and BnF, nal 1423 was apparently copied from it. The compilation starts with the De excidio Troiae of Dares the Phyrigian (about Aeneas leaving Troy and founding Rome); includes the account of the translation of Stephen’s relics from Constantinople to Rome; and ends with Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Hierosolimitana Abbreviata. As a whole, the manuscript is interested in the material relationships between East and West, and the movement of peoples, and relics westward. That is, the compilation itself makes the argument for a translatio imperii.50 In these two manuscripts, the text is rubricated ‘Incipit translatio sancte corone domini nostri Ihesu Christi a Constantinopolitana urbe ad civitatem parisiensm, facta anno domini M.CC.XLI, regnante Ludovico, filio Ludovici regis Francorum’.51 The rubric is misleading because the account in fact describes the acquisition of the Crown in 1239 (not 1241), and then another twenty-two relics in two instalments in 1241 and 1242, and the text’s two editors have both assumed that the rubric was the inexact work of a later scribe.52 Gerard probably wrote his account after the consecration of the chapel in 1248 because he mentions ‘the basilica that was soon after built by the same king’.53 The composition or transmission of Gerard’s text has never yet been associated with royal patronage or even royal knowledge. But he was drawing on extremely good information. For one, the list of relics he discusses matches (with one exception) precisely the list Baldwin provided in the charter ceding the relics to Louis IX, composed and signed at Saint Germain-en-Laye in June of 1247. With the exception of moving the list of saints’ heads to the end, Gerard presents the relics in identical order, suggesting he had access to a copy of the charter held in the Trésor des Chartes, itself located in a room just off the north flank of the Sainte Chapelle.54 In any event, someone at the Sainte Chapelle certainly subsequently had access to Gerard’s text. The Octave readings drawn from his text were carefully structured to focus specifically on the Sainte Chapelle’s cross relics. In drawing from Gerard’s text, the compiler skipped the early section about the Crown of Thorns, starting only at the point in Gerard’s text treating the Cross. It opens thus: When that illustrious Baldwin, the emperor of Constantinople, and a relative of the Lord King of France, carefully moving forward and attending to the work of business of his empire, was staying on in France, and staying close to the king [Louis]; on account of the donation [collatione] of the crown that he had made
49 Abbaye Notre Dame de Belval. They now make cheese. 50 Paris, BnF, MS nal 1423, Charleville, BM, MS 275. 51 Miller, ‘Review of Exuviae Sacrae Constantinopolitanae’, p. 275. Charleville, BM, MS 275, fol. 172r; Paris, BnF, MS nal 1423, fol. 172r. (Yes, both begin on the same folio). 52 Miller or Wailly did not think the rubric was the work of the text’s author. 53 ‘ubi in edificata non multo post per eundem regem basilica’. Miller, ‘Review of Exuviae Sacrae Constantinopolitanae’, p. 297. This was a point Miller made at 308. 54 Riant, Exuviae sacrae, ii, 133–35.
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possible, and because of the fervour of his intimate devotion for God, and also because of the plenitude of his special love, he himself [Baldwin] imparted, insofar as he was worthy of regal magnificence, to honor him [Louis] more splendidly with gifts, conferring upon him [Louis] that most sacred standard of the Lord’s cross.55 The Octave begins about a quarter way through Gerard’s original text, at the point in Gerard’s story where the relics of the True Cross come into focus. Although the liturgical compiler has made a few adjustments to the text, the dependence on Gerard’s narrative is absolute (see edition). The readings continue: Baldwin II imparted honour and regal magnificence upon Louis, ‘conferring on Louis the most sacred standard of the Lord’s cross, should Louis wish to redeem it with a massive amount of money’ [Lection A1]. Louis was eager to procure the ‘sign of the eternal king’ and the ‘invincible shield of Christ’ [Lection B1]. The lections detailed the negotiations and acquisition of the cross and its retrieval, from Templars in the Holy Land, by two Franciscans and a knight named Guy who brought the cross back to France. The lections then list all the relics that arrived in 1241, including portions of Christ’s blood and his swaddling clothes, a piece of the Holy Sepulchre, milk of the Virgin, the heads of four saints, and two pieces of the Holy Cross: ‘a large piece of the Lord’s cross, not rendered in the shape of the cross, from which the emperors of Constantinople had been in the habit of giving to their friends and familiars’, and also a ‘precious standard of the cross’ [Lection 6–7(A)].56 These were all received ‘by the same king with the same and even greater solemnity than for the most sacred crown, and a day was appointed on which people would come together from all over this place prepared outside the city of Paris for their solemn display’. Louis himself, coming on foot, ‘carried the cross in his own hands, and entered the city, walking all the way to the royal palace, [where] he honorably placed [the cross] and the other relics we just spoke about, with the Lord’s crown, in the year of the incarnate word 1241, on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in the fifteenth year of the reign of the king’ [Lection A9]. The lections then detail the third instalment of relics, which included yet another cross fragment. Here, the compiler of the octave texts skips various details Gérard provided in the original account about a series of non-cross relics, going directly to the information about the third cross relic. This fragment, explained the lections (through Gerard), was the ‘crux mediocris’, smaller in size but not more moderate in its power (virtus), and on account of this is called the triumphal cross (triumphalis).57 The lections (again, through Gerard) rehearse the victory that Constantine, ‘the soldier of Christ’ won against the ‘unbelieving’ (incredulos), after being shown ‘the sign of that most victorious cross’ (victoriorissime crucis signum) in the sky. Constantine’s
55 See edition below. 56 Lection 7. ‘frustum quoddam magnum crucis dominice non tamen ad formam crucis redactum de quo imperatores constantinopolitam amicis et familiaribus suis dare consueveran…cum preciosissimo crucis vexillo’. 57 Lection B3.
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mother, Helena, wanted to find the ‘standard of the Lord’s cross’ (dominice crucis vexillum), which she then discovered on the very spot where ‘that most holy shoulder of the Savior had been placed’. The text here thus hearkens back to the story told during the Feast of the Invention in May. Here, this cross was called ‘triumphal’ and ‘victorious’, and afterward, ‘Emperors going to war used to take it with them in a continuous succession in the hope of obtaining victory’.58 The Octave ceased to draw on Gerard’s text at the point in his narrative where he turns to the other relics obtained in 1241, such as the scarlet robe, the reed, the sponge, and the linen wrapping (among others). The last four readings draw instead from relevant passages from the relics’ liturgy that praised the power and virtue of the cross, expounding in particular its military and spiritual might. The text was excerpted from the lections composed for the Feast of the Reception of Relics used for the Sainte Chapelle and celebrated on 30 September, and was probably compiled by 1248.59 The original compilers of the Relics liturgy put together a massive set of readings comprising five sets of nine readings (which account for the bulk of the one hundred folios of material dedicated to the relics liturgy in the early manuscript), that treat individually each and every of the twenty-three relics received between 1239 and 1242. The Exaltation Octave pulled material from the readings for the fourth day, which itself apparently originated as a sermon on the relics preached on an early 30 September anniversary that was then incorporated into the liturgical rite as the readings for the Octave celebration of the relics.60 The readings thus speak of the spiritual and temporal power of the cross. They relate that the Egyptians fled before the cross (in the shape of the rod of Moses, one of the other relics), as did the Assyrians. ‘And because of this this, I adore the cross of the Lord in that part which emperors carried into battle, and which on account of its power, which has been proven multiple times in expunging the enemy, is called the triumphal cross’.61 The lections finish by praising the magnificent efficacy of the cross against tribulation and against sin. The relic itself is a divine gift. And for this, we give thanks to the ‘granter of all grace’ who, through his willingness to be hung on the cross, expiated the guilt of original sin. The Octave celebration not only compared Louis to Heraclius, but extended the translatio imperii argument of western movement liturgically. In May, the Invention of the Cross commemorated Helena’s discovery of the Cross in fourth-century Jerusalem. In September, the Exaltation feast celebrated its recovery by Heraclius in the seventh century and then its acquisition by Louis in the thirteenth. And most of all, the Exaltation celebration confirmed the notion of both translatio crucis, from Persia, to Jerusalem, to Constantinople, to Paris; and with it, indeed, the Translation of Empire. Providential history was moving westwards. And it was centred, not only in France, but at the royal palace.
58 Lection B5. 59 For the liturgy of the Reception of the Relics, see Gaposchkin, Vexilla Regis Glorie, 103–24. 60 Gaposchkin, Vexilla Regis Glorie, 300–02. 61 Lection B8.
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The Glazing Cycle The octave readings elegantly continued the story of Heraclius’s recovered cross relic into the present time, knitting Capetian history and the history of the chapel itself into sacred history. As any student of the chapel will know, this was the very same strategy employed in the glass cycle itself. Thus, we have two more issues to deal with. The first is the issue of when these special lections were adopted. And the second is the question of the iconography in the glazing cycle in Bay ‘A’, which depicts Louis and Blanche processing the Crown of Thorns and adoring the Cross. Both present problems. One of the reasons the Sainte Chapelle remains so compelling is the extraordinary claim of its iconographic programme, and in particular the glazing cycle. Starting with the creation story of Genesis and ending with the Apocalypse, the glass depicts the entire story of Christian Salvation as told in Scripture. And into that story, it places Louis himself, and his family, in the last window (Bay A) before the End of Time (depicted in the Western Rose62). It is an enormously bold statement, and one that remains central to of our understanding of Capetian ideology.63 Today the final window of the chapel’s narrative glazing cycle before the Apocalypse Rose shows Louis himself, together with his mother and brothers, carrying the relic of the Crown of Thorns and adoring the relic of the True Cross. These are original and thus legitimate elements of the iconographic cycle. The narrative as currently displayed also includes what are identified as images of Helena’s finding of the True Cross and Heraclius’s restoration of the Cross to Jerusalem. The window is usually described as the ‘relics window’ and as showing ‘the history of the relics of the Passion, from the moment of their discovery by Sainte Helena to their translation to Paris’.64 The Heraclius theme, when paired with the theme of Helena’s discovery of the cross, was an attractive element. It pointed directly to the translatio imperii theme articulated elsewhere in Capetian propaganda. Unfortunately, during the nineteenth-century restorations, this bay was the one whose original iconographic scheme was most uncertain and which has therefore been most heavily restored. When François de Guillhermy oversaw the restorations in the 1850s, he decided, despite personal reservations, to follow the ‘relics’ theme, and drew on James of Voragine’s Golden Legend entry on the Exaltation of the Cross.65 In Guillhermy’s reconstruction, the bottom half was devoted to Heraclius’s legendary recovery of the True Cross, and the top half to the story of the Capetian acquisition of that same cross, and the Crown of Thorns.
62 Note that the glass in the current Rose Window dates from the fifteenth century, but it has always been assumed, for obvious and good reason, that the iconography of the original window too was surely that of the Apocalypse. 63 For identification of panels, see Aubert and others, Les vitraux de Notre-Dame et de la Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, pp. 296–309. Which has been updated by Jordan, Visualizing Kingship. 64 Grodecki, Sainte-Chapelle, p. 92. 65 This is documented in Jordan, Visualizing Kingship, pp. 58–60.
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The current scheme is misleading.66 Louis Grodecki had already identified the windows showing Helena’s discovery of the True Cross as being entirely invented, but indicated, incorrectly this time, that the windows identified as showing images from the Heraclius legend were original.67 Alyce Jordan has since argued that all of these panels are in fact generic battle scenes that could represent any number of biblical, mythic, or historical incidents. No visually unimpeachable reference to the Heraclius legend exists at all in the original glass, and there is no evidence that it ever did. Jordan has instead argued that the window was devoted to Capetian history — a royal chronicle in glass, comparable to cycles found in the Grandes Chroniques — and has advocated relabeling the bay ‘the Royal window’. The only original visual reference to the cross itself shows Louis and Blanche, not Heraclius or Helena. Given the liturgical scheme, this is disappointing, especially considering how elegantly a visual scheme depicting Helena, Heraclius, and Louis would echo the liturgical claim that Louis continued Heraclius’s (and Helena’s before that) work to secure, preserve, and honour the cross. This is partly why Guillhermy chose the theme to begin with. We have absolutely no affirmative evidence that the Heraclius story was evoked anywhere in the glass cycle. That said, we need not entirely abandon the idea that Louis was understood as a new Heraclius in his time. In his account of Louis’s reception of the cross relics, written in fairly close proximity to the events themselves (probably in the 1250s), Matthew Paris compared Louis to Heraclius, not once, but twice, stating that Louis, in collecting the cross, followed the example of the august and victorious emperor Heraclius: ‘the king himself, barefoot, ungirt, and with his head bare, after a fast of three days, following the example of the noble triumpher, the august Heraclius, carried it in wool to the church of the Blessed Virgin in Paris’, and then later again, saying that Louis followed ‘the example of Heraclius’ (ad instar Eraclii).68 Here, Matthew was evoking the legend recounted in the Exaltation Octave that Heraclius, after attempting but failing to enter Jerusalem because he was dressed as Emperor, lay down his cloak, shed his shoes, and prostrated himself before being allowed entrance. Indeed, it may have been precisely this type of contemporary discourse that led the canons to the adoption of special octave readings.
When was the Practice Adopted? This question intersects with that of timing. When, exactly, did the Sainte Chapelle establish the practice of the Exaltation Octave readings relating to Louis IX? Was it 66 Aubert and others, Les vitraux de Notre-Dame et de la Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, pp. 296, 303. Jordan, Visualizing Kingship. 67 Aubert and others, Les vitraux de Notre-Dame et de la Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, pp. 296, 303. 68 Paris, Chronica majora, ed. by Luard, iv, 91. Translation taken from Paris, Matthew Paris’s English History, i, 324. Since Matthew mentions the building of the “beautiful chapel in Paris”, its building must have been well underway or completed. On the dating of Matthew’s chronicle, see Vaughan, Matthew Paris, pp. 49–77.
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during Louis’s reign, as one of the liturgical innovations undertaken to accommodate the Sainte Chapelle? Or was the practice adopted later, perhaps around the time of his canonization, when the Sainte Chapelle liturgy was elsewhere being revised with Louis in mind, when new liturgical materials were added for the feast celebrating Louis himself (25 August), and the feast to celebrate the transfer of his head-relic to the chapel (celebrated on the Tuesday after Ascension)?69 Or was it sometime altogether different? There is no way to answer this definitively. The terminus a quo would seem to be Gerard’s composition of his historia sometime around 1250 and the composition of the relics liturgy around the same date; that is, at about the time of the consecration of the chapel itself. The terminus ad quem is the copying of the Bourges lectionaries in c. 1400, or even its mention in a Sainte Chapelle source, the 1341 inventory. This leaves about a century during which the Octave could have been adopted. Despite the lack of evidence of Heraclius in the glass, there is, as we have seen, other evidence from the mid-thirteenth century of Louis being compared to Heraclius specifically for his transfer of the cross relic.70 And the new Exaltation sequences written in the 1240s for the newly constructed chapel’s celebration of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross made explicit reference to the Heraclius legend.71 So too did the one pre-existing sequence also adopted for the Sainte Chapelle liturgy.72 On the other hand, the octave text is not included in Brussels KBR IV.472, the Sainte Chapelle miscellany that gathered together the new texts needed at the Sainte Chapelle in 1248, suggesting the practice had not been adopted as part of the earliest adjustments to the liturgy occasioned by the arrival of the relics and the chapel’s consecration. Alternatively, the practice could well have been inaugurated in the last decades of the thirteenth century. The fact that Louis is not referred to as sanctus may indicate that the practice was adopted prior to his canonization in 1297. But there is also no echo of the practice of an Octave in any of the volumes that derive not from the Sainte-Chapelle but from the use of the capella regis more generally, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.73 Although not strictly representing the chapel’s use, elements of the Sainte Chapelle liturgy did find their way into books made for members of the royal family, or clerics staffing the intinerant chapel that travelled with the king when he was outside Paris.
69 On the celebration of the feast of Louis at the Sainte Chapelle, see Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, pp. 72–77, 100–24. On the feast of the Translation of Louis’s head, see Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, pp. 198–206; Brown, ‘Philippe le Bel and the Remains of Saint Louis’, pp. 175–82; Brown, ‘Philippe le Bel et les restes de Louis IX’. 70 See below. 71 Gaude Syon, Bari, BSN, MS 5, fol. 261v, Hesbert, Le Prosaire de la Sainte-Chapelle, p. 62 (XIV 1a). On the Sainte-Chapelle sequences (although not dealing with these ones), see Maurey, ‘Glorified and Crowned by God’. 72 Salve crux, Bari, BSN, MS 5, fol. 260r. 73 On the distinction, see: Branner, ‘The Sainte-Chapelle and the Capella Regis in the Thirteenth Century’, pp. 19–22.
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My own instinct — and it is only that — is that the practice was probably adopted in the early years of the fourteenth century as the Sainte Chapelle began embellishing its liturgy with Louis-related materials. Louis was canonized in 1297 by Boniface VIII, during the reign of Louis’s grandson Philip IV ‘the Fair’ (1285–1314). Although Louis was initially buried at Saint Denis, Philip, as Elizabeth A. R. Brown has elucidated in a number of masterful and influential articles, worked for a number of years and ultimately succeeded in having the all-important ‘head relic’ of Louis transferred to the Sainte Chapelle.74 This was the occasion for a series of refurbishments to the royal chapel, in part to reorient the chapel around the all-important Capetian saint.75 The king paid for new liturgical offices, both for the feast day of Saint Louis, 25 August, celebrated from 1298 onwards on the anniversary of Louis’s death, and then after 1306, the feast day of the Translation of Louis’s head, celebrated on the Tuesday after Ascension. By 1313, the king and his sons had taken the cross and the imperative of crusade was newly alive at the court.76 This may well have been the occasion for the adoption of the Octave Lections for the Exaltation. If this were the case, it nonetheless remains surprising that Louis was not explicitly identified as sanctus in the lections. There are other moments when this might have been appropriate. After 1328, when the Valois sought to smooth their transition to the crown by recourse to their direct descent from Saint Louis. This too was a period when the king and court were alive to crusading, since Philip VI had also taken the cross.77 Or during the reign of Charles V (d. 1380), who had a particular devotion to Louis and who made following the model of Louis a hallmark of his self presentation. But we might also entertain the idea that the liturgical innovation may not have been occasioned by any single historical moment, or any individual political agenda, but instead formed part of the general development of the larger ideological discourse at the palace, being deemed a good idea at some point by one of the canons, who pulled together a series of readings that were then incorporated into new copies of the chapel’s liturgy. Not every innovation needs to be tied to the interests of a particular king. For whatever it is worth, the practice lingered and shifted. It was (obviously) in place in the later fifteenth century when the small portable Latin MS 13238 was copied. More intriguingly, it is a practice that ultimately was incorporated into the broader liturgy of Paris. Although the printed breviaries of 1714, 1736, and 1778 do not prescribe an Octave celebration for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the lections for the feast itself have been rewritten to incorporate the story of Louis’s acquisition of the Cross relics. The first five lections give a compressed version of the story of Heraclius, but in the sixth lection, they turn to Louis’s reception in 1241.78
74 Citations as above. 75 Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis, pp. 72–77. 76 Brown and Regalado, ‘La grant feste. Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of his Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313’, pp. 56–86. 77 Tyerman, ‘Philip VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, pp. 25–52. 78 Riant, Exuviae sacrae.
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Taking materials derived ultimately from Gerard’s account, clearly redacted from the Sainte Chapelle practice, the sixth lection reads: On this very same day [i.e., the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, 14 September], Saint Louis, the king of the French, in the year 1241, having accepted from Baldwin, Emperor in the East, a part of the Lord’s cross which had remained with the Templars in Syria for a token of a pledge, along with another not modest (sized) piece, from which the emperors used to give fragments to churches and to friends, and many other instruments of the Lord’s passion, solemnly translated these to Paris, with the clergy leading the procession. Then, the very pious king exhibited a great increase of Christian piety when he bore the instruments by which the world’s price was redeemed, into the city, having lain aside his royal vestments and in bare feet. And then he constructed in the royal palace a magnificent chapel, where he wished to guard the sacrosanct insignia of our redemption.79 The practice, then, had legs. The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, originally a universal feast itself imported from the East, became a feast of great local importance and specific meaning, centred on the cross relics held at the royal palace. Both historically and liturgically, it placed Louis, the Capetians, and Paris into a long history of the cross that started with Christ’s salvific sacrifice at Golgotha, encompassed the cross’ discovery in the fourth century, recovery in the seventh century, long (victorious) history in Byzantium helping Byzantine emperors in battle, and then its translation in the thirteenth century to Paris. It was an argument for Paris’, and the French kingdom’s, special place in providence. The argument wove together both biblical and historical narratives that pointed the way towards the Capetians and their king; towards the French, as Joseph Strayer classically said, as the Chosen people, and Capetians as the most Christian kings.80 It was in turn one of the pegs in the construction of the cult of royalty in France in succeeding centuries. And, as Elizabeth A. R. Brown has herself commented, ‘of all the influences that affected French culture from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, this religion, this religion of royalty, was the most potent’.81
79 Breviarium Parisiense – Pars Autumnalis (1778), pp. 401–02). ‘Lectio vi: Hac eadem die sanctus Ludovicus, Francorum rex, anno millesimo ducentesimo quadragesimo primo, partem Dominicae crucis, quae in Syria titulo pignoris apud Templarios milites remanserat, a Balduino Orientis Imperatore, acceptam cum alia non modica portione, ex qua Imperatores ecclesiis & amicis particulas dare consueverant, item alia multa dominicae passionis instrumenta, Parisios, praecedente clero, solemniter transtulit. Tunc rex piissimus magnum exhibuit christianae pietatis argumentum, cum abjectis vestibus regiis, & pedes nudatus, in urbem intulit instrumentum, quo mundi pretium persolutum est. Demum constructa in regio Palatio magnifica capella, sacrosancta redemptionis nostrae insignis religiose in ea asservari voluit’. The edition of 1714, p. 316. The edition of 1736, p. 379. The edition of 1745, p. 404. The edition on 1778, pp. 401–02.The edition of 1778, pp. 401–02. 80 Strayer, ‘France: The Holy Land, the Chosen People’, pp. 300–15. 81 Brown, ‘The Religion of Royalty’, p. 133.
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Edition, Comparison, Translation The following presents the text for the Octave of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross as it was celebrated at the Sainte Chapelle, (column 1), compared to its source texts (column 2), and with a translation of the text in column 1. The text in column one is preserved in Bourges, BM, 34, fol. 57v–61v (Sigla A) and Paris, BnF, Latin 13238, fols 333v–337r (Sigla B). I have mostly followed A’s sentence punctuation, and have imposed some capitalization. A often favours ‘c’ over ‘t’ (magnificencie rather than magnificentie), which I have mostly rendered, for the ease of the modern reader, as ‘t’. I have also not noted variations in c/t, j/i, or i/y when discrepancy exists between the two witnesses. The text in column two is taken from the appropriate sections of Miller’s edition of Gerard of Saint Quentin’s text as published in the Journal des Savants (1878), and the liturgical texts for September 30 relics liturgy. Textual discrepancies between the lections and its textual source are identified in bold font. I’ve included some explanatory notes. A translation is provided in the third column. Lections for the Octave of Comparison to the textual the Feast of the Exaltation of sources the Cross
English translation of Lections for the Octave (in column 1)
Sources: Bourges, BM, 34 (A) Paris, BnF, Latin 13238 (B)
Lectiones per octabas de sancta cruce. (A) Sequitur legenda per oct. exaltationis sancte crucis. (B) Lectio i: Cum vir illustris Balduinus imperator Constantinopolitanus, domini regis Francie consanguineus,i imperii sui negocia sollicite promovens
i consanguineus] cum sanguineus A.
Gerard of Saint-Quentin (attributed)
Lections for the Feast of the Reception of Relics (edited in Gaposchkin, Vexilla regis)
Igitur cum prefatus vir illustris Balduinus, de quo superius tactum est, dicti regis consanguineus, imperii sui negocia sollicite promovens et procurans,
When that distinguished man Baldwin, the emperor of Constantinople and a relative of the king of France — assiduously promoting and nurturing the affairs of
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Lections for the Octave of Comparison to the textual the Feast of the Exaltation of sources the Cross et procurans adhuc in Francia moram faceret, attendens eumdemii regem ex collatione corone quam ei fecerat, et erga Deumiii devotionis intime fervorem, et erga se dilectionis precipueiv plenitudinem concepisse; addidit ipsum prout magnificentie regie dignum erat amplius muneribus honorare, conferens ei sacratissime crucis dominice vexillum; et si illud redimere vellet de immensa peccunie quantitate, pro quav urgentibus dicti imperii necessitatibus,vi apud magistrum et fratres militie templi erat in Syria obligatum.
Lectio secunda: Sed quid dictus rex in comparatione tanti muneris peccuniam estimaret. Sciebat enim quia iuxta quod scriptumvii est, ‘omne aurum in comparatione eius harena est exigua, et tanquam lutum estimabitur argentum’ [Wisdom 7. 9]. Et ideo non comparavit et lapidem preciosum, et divitias nichil esse dicit in comparatione illius, sed oblatum sibi munus cum cordis alacritate et
ii iii iv v vi vii
adhuc in Francia moram faceret, attendens eundem regem, ex collatione corone quam ei fecerat, et erga Deum devotionis intime fervorem et erga se dilectionis precipiue plenitudinem concepisse, addidit ipsum, prout magnificentie regie dignum erat, amplius muneribus honorare, conferens ei sacratissimum crucis dominice vexillum, si illud redimere vellet de immensa pecunie quantitate, pro qua urgentibus dicti imperii necessitatibus, apud magistrum et fratres militie templi erat in Syria obligatum.
English translation of Lections for the Octave (in column 1)
his empire — was prolonging his time in France, he realized that, because of the conferral of the crown which he [Baldwin] had arranged to make over to him [Louis], the same king had conceived a deep fervor of devotion toward God and a full love toward him [Baldwin] in particular. As it was proper to honor royal magnificence with further gifts, [Baldwin] therefore added the standard of the Lord’s most sacred cross, which he [Baldwin] had himself obligated to make over to the master and brothers of the army of the Temple in Syria, should [Louis] be willing to redeem it through the payment of an enormous sum of money. But how much money would Sed quid dictus rex in the aforesaid king think comparatione tanti muneris necessary to procure such quantamcumque pecuniam a gift? He knew that, as it is estimare? Sciebat enim quod, written, ‘all gold in purchase juxta quod scriptum est, of it is worth as little as sand, ‘omne aurum in comparatione and silver in respect to it is illius area est exigua et like mud’. [Wisdom 7. 9] tamquam lutum estimabitur And so he did not compare argentum’. [Wisdom 7. 9]: it to precious stones, and he Et ideo non comparavit said that riches were nothing illi lapidem preciosum, et in comparison to it, but divitias nichil esse dixit in considering with an eager comparatione illius, sed heart and signs of gratitude oblatum sibi munus
eumdem] eundem B. Deum] eum B. B: 334r. qua] quam B. necessitatibus] neccessitatibus B. A 58r.
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Lections for the Octave of Comparison to the textual the Feast of the Exaltation of sources the Cross
English translation of Lections for the Octave (in column 1)
gratiarum actione suscipiens, fervet ad procurandum illud regis eterni venerabileviii signum, per quod humani generis reparatorix gloriosum obtinuit de tyranno triumphum estuat ad acquirendum inexpugnabilex Christi clipeum, per quem de regno militantis ecclesie humane nature expulit inimicum. Lectio tertia: Et non multo post cum iam prefatus Balduinus expeditis in Francia pro quibus venerat, vale dicto regi et licentiato rege ad Constantinopolitanum imperium remeasset; accidit ut dictus rex duos fratres minores quos ad hoc ydoneos et fideles estimavit, cum procuratioriisxi negociorum ipsius litteris eundem Balduinum iam imperatorem coronatum Constantinopolim destinaret, qui acceptis ab ipso prodictis sacri ligni assignationexii eis facienda ad magistrum et fratres militie templi imperialibus litteris inde ad partes Syrie transfretarent, et amoto ex parte regis obligationis obstaculo illud ad ipsum in Franciam deportarent.
cum cordis alacritate et graciarum actione suscipiens, fervet ad procurandum illud eterni regis venerabili signum, per quod humani generis reparator gloriosum optinuit de tyranno triumphum, estuat ad acquirendum inexpugnabilem Christi clypeum, per quem de regno ecclesie militantis humane nature expulit inimicum.
that the gift offered to him through which the Renewer of the human race achieved a glorious victory over the tyrant, he yearned to obtain that venerable sign of the eternal king, he burned to acquire Christ’s invincible shield through which he drove the enemy of human nature from the kingdom of the church militant.
Et non multo post, cum jam prefatus Balduinus, expeditis in Francia negociis pro quibus venerat, et licentiato rege, ad Constantinopolitanum imperium remeasset, accidit ut dictus rex duos fratres Minores, quos ad hoc ydoneos et fideles estimavit, cum procuratoriis negociorum ipsius litteris, ad eundem Balduinum jam imperatorem coronatum, Constantinopolim destinaret, qui, acceptis ab ipso pro sacri ligni assignatione facienda ad magistrum et fratres Templi imperialibus litteris, inde ad partes Syrie transfretarent, et amoto ex parte regis obligationis obstaculo, crucem sanctam in Franciam deportarent.
And not long after, when Baldwin had completed the business for which he had come to France, and, with the king’s permission, had returned to the Empire of Constantinople, it happened that the said king sent two Franciscan friars, whom he deemed suitable and faithful, with letters authorizing them to carry out the king’s business, to that same Baldwin in Constantinople, who had by then been crowned emperor. The friars took up from [the king the task of] the transfer of the aforesaid holy wood. They were to cross over to Syrian parts with imperial letters made out to the master and the brother of the Knights Templar, and,
venerabile] mirabile B. humani generis reparator] reparator humani generis B. inexpugnabile] expugnabile A. B 334v. assignatione] assinacione A.
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Lections for the Octave of Comparison to the textual the Feast of the Exaltation of sources the Cross
English translation of Lections for the Octave (in column 1) the obstacle of debt having been thus removed by the king’s intervention, they [the Franciscan friars] were to bring it back to him in France.
Lectio quarta. O mira circa nos divine pietatis miseratio, cuius dispensationis moderamine id agitur, ut humani plerumque dispositio consilii permitteretur, quatinus ex inoppinato [inopiniato]pro sui beneplaciti largitate que homo non previdet, sicut ex sequentibus manifestexiii videbitur, superaddat, et que bene previderat eidem nichilominus illibata custodiat. Tu autem.xiv lectio quinta: Nam cum dicti fratres iniunctum sibi a rege sollempnexv negocium, sollicite peragere cupientes ad prefatum imperium festinarent, accidit ut eisdem adhuc in via existentibus quidam miles Guido nomine de regno Francie oriundus et predicti doni quod imperator regi fecerat conscius tunc temporis cum eodem imperatore moram faciens, acceptis ab ipso litteris cum eis in Syriam transfretaret et sublato inde auctoritate
xiii A 58v. xiv Tu autem] om. A. xv Sollempne] solenne B.
O mira circa nos divine pietatis miseratio, cujus dispensationis moderamine id agitur, ut humani plerumque dispositio consilii permitteretur, quatinus ex inopinato pro sui beneplaciti largitate que homo non providet, sicut ex sequentibus manifeste videbitur, superaddat et que bene providerat eidem nichilominus illibata custodiat!
O wondrous mercy of divine piety, at the direction of whose guidance it happens that human counsel is permitted to attain its ends in such a way that, unexpectedly, by His [God’s] pleasing bounty, what man does not foresee is increased (as will be clearly seen from what follows), and what he had foreseen is not at all denied him. You, Lord [have mercy upon us!]
Nam cum dicti fratres injunctum sibi a rege sollempne negotium sollicite peragere cupientes ad prefatum imperium festinarent, accidit ut eisdem adhuc in via existentibus, quidam miles, Guido nomine, de regno Francie oriundus, et predicti doni quod imperator regi fecerat conscius tunc temporis cum eodem imperatore moram faciens, acceptis ab eo litteris, cum eis in Syriam transfretaret, et sublato inde auctoritate bulle
These [two] brothers earnestly desired to carry out the solemn business that the king had enjoined upon them. As they hastened towards the previously mentioned empire, it happened that, while they were already on their journey, a certain knight, by the name of Guy, born in the kingdom of France, learned of the gift which the Emperor had made to the King, since he was staying with the Emperor at that time. He [Guy] received a letter from him [Baldwin]
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imperialis ligno dominico, facta creditoribus sufficienti cautione, illud cum quibus Francie nobilibus de Syria revertentibus in Franciam deferret, idque regi cum aliis preciosissimis reliquiis honorifice presentaret. De quarum singulis, etsi prolixiorem sermonem fieri condeceret, brevitatis tamen causa cui insistimus, eorum tantum nomina scribere libet, quae sunt hec:
and crossed over into Syria with it, and, by the authority of an imperial bull, he made sufficient satisfaction for the holy wood to the creditors, he [Guy] carried it [the cross] with several French nobles who were returning from Syria into France, and he [Guy] presented it honorably to the King along with many other precious relics. About each of them it is proper to write, even if only their names. They are: The most sacrosanct blood Sacrosanctus sanguis of our Lord and savior Jesus Domini et salvatoris nostri Christ, his swaddling clothes, Ihesu Christi, vestimenta a large piece of the Lord’s infancie ipsius, frustum cross, not however rendered magnum crucis dominice, in the shape of the cross, non tamen ad formam crucis from which the Emperors of redactum, de quo imperatores Constantinople had been in Constantinopolitani amicis the habit of giving to their et familiaribus suis dare friends and familiars. Also the consueverant, sanguis etiam blood which by a wonderful qui mirabili prodigio de miracle had flowed from an ymagine Domini percussa image of the Lord after it had effluxit, cathena qua idem been struck. A chain with salvator ligatus fuit, tabula which the Savior had been quaedam quam, cum bound. A certain tabula which, deponeretur Dominus de when the Lord was taken cruce, ejus facies tetigit, lapis down from the cross, touched quidam magnus de his face. A great stone
xvi Bulle] buelle A. xvii B 335r. xviii De quarum singulis et si tantum nomina subscribere libet. Que sunt hec] moved to start of lection 6 in B. Tu autem add. B. xix tegit] tetigit B. xx quidam] quidem B. xxi sepulchro] sepulcro B.
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quoque gloriosissime virginis matris eius, superior pars capitis Baptiste et precursoris Christi, xxii caput beati Blasii, caput etiam sancti Clementis, cum capite beatissimi Symeonis.
sepulcro ipsius, de lacte quoque gloriosissime virginis matris ejus, superior pars capitis Baptiste et precursoris Christi, capud sancti Blasii, caput sancti Clementis, cum capitexxiii beatissimi Symeonis.
from the tomb itself. Some of the milk of his most glorious virgin mother. The upper part of the head of the Baptist and precursor of Christ, the head of Saint Blaise, the head of Saint Clement, and the head of the most blessed Simeon.
Hec omnia de Constantinopoli per mandatum et auctoritatem predicti imperatoris sublata, dictus Guido in Syriam detulit, atque inde, ut dictum est, una cum preciosissimo crucis vexillo ad prefatum regem Francie deportavit.
Guy removed all of these from Constantinople to Syria, by the order and authority of the aforesaid emperor, and from there, as was said, he carried them together with the most precious standard of the cross, to the aforesaid king of France.
Quibus humiliter et eadem et majori qua de sanctissima corona dictum est reverentia et sollempnitate ab eodem rege receptis, et constituta die confluentibus undique et accurrentibus populis in loco ad hoc extra civitatem Parisiensem parato sollempniter ostensis, facta verbi predicatione et consignato populo signaculo sancte crucis, dataque ab astantibus episcopis indulgentia, cum applausu nimio tam cleri quam populi laudes undique acclamantis
These were humbly received by that same king with the same and even greater reverence and solemnity than which was said of the most sacred crown. Then, on an appointed day on which people would come together from all over to a place prepared outside the city of Paris for their solemn display, the word was preached; people were signed with the sign of the holy cross; and the attending bishops granted indulgences. Amidst great applause, clergy and people alike everywhere shouted praises to God.
Lectio septima: Hec omnia de Constantinopoli per mandatum et auctoritatem prefati imperatoris sublata, dictus Guido in Syriam detulit, atque inde, ut dictum est una cum preciosissimo crucis vexillo ad prefatum regem Francie deportavit. Lectio octava: Quibus humiliter et eadem vel maiori qua de sanctissima corona dictum est reverentia ac sollempnitatexxiv ab eodem rege receptis, xxv et constituta die confluentibus undique et currentibusxxvi populis in loco ad hoc extra civitatem Parisiensem parato sollempniter xxvii ostensis; facta verbi predicatione et consignato populo signaculo sancte crucis, dataque ab astantibus episcopis indulgentia, cum applausu nimio tam cleri quam populi laudes deo undique acclamantis.
xxii xxiii xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii
Christi] eius B. A 59r. sollempnitate] sollenitate B. B 335v. currentibus] accurentibus B. sollempniter] sollemniter B.
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Lectio nona: Igitur idem rex discalciatis pedibus incedens nudamque crucem inxxviii manibus suisxxix gestans civitatem introivit, et sic dominus rex usque ad regale palacium veniens, ipsam ceterasque quas prediximus reliquias cum corona dominica honorifice collocavit. Anno verbi incarnati millesimo ducentissimo quadragentisimo primo in die exaltationis sancta crucis, regni verodicti regis anno quinto decimo.
Then the king removed his shoes and barefoot approached the uncovered cross, and carrying it in his hands, he entered the city. Thus the lord king went all the way to the royal palace and honorably collected the cross and all the other relics I described together with the Lord’s crown, in the year of our Lord 1241, on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of that oft mentioned king.
In die octave sancte crucis [A] In octavus eius die [B] Lectio prima: Ecce quod fieri ut dictum est per predictos fratres minores rex consulte proposuit, Dominus per alios consultius procuravit quasi per hec occasionem quereret, ut eisdem fratribus mediantibus largitatis sue magnalibus dictum regem amplius sublimaret, ita tamen ut nec per hocxxx a spe muneris preconcessisxxxi eum in aliquo defraudaret.xxxii
xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii
idem rex pedes incedens, nudamque crucem in manibus suis gestans, civitatem introivit, et sic usque ad regale palatium veniens, ipsam ceterasque quas prediximus reliquias cum corona dominica honorifice collocavit anno incarnati Verbi M.cc. xli.
Ecce quod fieri, ut dictum est, per predictos fratres minores rex consulte proposuit, Dominus per alios consultius procuravit, quasi per hoc occasionem quereret ut eisdem fratribus mediantibus largitatis sue magnalibus dictum regem amplius exaltaret, ita tamen ut nec per hoc a spe muneris preconcessi eum in aliquo defraudaret.
in] om. B. suis] om. B. A 59v. preconcessi] preconcessis add. right margin B. Tu autem add B.
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For the Octave of the Holy Cross Behold, this is what happened, as was said: the king proposed prudently through the aforesaid friar minors what the Lord procured even more prudently in other ways, as if He sought on this occasion that by those same friars mediating such great things He might more fully elevate the king, such that He would not deprive him [the king] through this, by the hope of the gift, of something already given to him.
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Lectio secunda: Nam cum iidem fratres adhuc per quingenta miliaria et eo amplius a Constantinopolitana urbe distantes, cuncta quexxxiii circa dicte crucis pro qua destinati erant negocium certa relatione plenius didicissent; invocata humiliter xxxiv divine dispensationis gratia deliberato inter se quod agerent nequaquam accepto itinere destiterunt, sed annuente eo qui ‘in consiliis habitat et eruditis interestxxxv cogitationibus’, [Proverbs 8. 12] ad procuranda alia que adhuc Constantinopolixxxvi esse audierant, sese viriliter incitaverunt, et sicxxxvii confisi in domino ipso duce ad eamdemxxxviii urbem non multo post pervenerunt.
For when these brothers found themselves still more than five hundred miles from the city of Constantinople, they learned more fully by reliable report everything about the work of the aforesaid cross for which they had been sent. Humbly, they invoked the grace of divine dispensation, they discussed between themselves what they ought to do, that once they had begun they journey, they ought not to stop, but with the assent of Him who ‘dwells in counsel, and is present in learned thoughts’ [Proverbs 8. 12], they encouraged each other to obtain other [relics] which they heard were still in Constantinople. And thus, trusting in the Lord as their leader, they not long afterward arrived at that city.
Nam cum dicti fratres adhuc per quingenta miliaria et eo amplius adhuc a Constantinopolitana urbe distantes, cuncta que circa dicte crucis pro qua destinati erant negocium gesta erant, certa relatione plenius didicissent, invocata humiliter divine dispensationis gracia, deliberato inter se quid agerent, nequaquam a cepto itinere destiterunt, sed annuente eo qui ‘in consiliis habitat et eruditis interest cogitantionibus’, [Proverbs 8. 12], ad procuranda alia que adhuc constantinopoli esse audierant sese viriliter incitaverunt, et sic in Domino confisi, ipso duce, ad eandem urbem non multo interjecto tempore pervenerunt. Erant autem ibi tunc temporis sub dicti imperatoris dominio specialia passionis Christi insignia, omni auro et argento preciosiora, pro argenti tum immenso precio quod pro imperii defensione expensum fuerat obligata. Que etsi pro
xxxiii B 336r. x xxiv humiliter] humiter A. xxxv interest] inter se A. x xxvi Constantinopoli] Constantinopolim B. xxxvii sic] si B. xxxviii eamdem] eandem B.
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ipsorum reverentia pollutis labiis indigni simus, ad ipsorum tamen reverendam memoriam posteris exhibendam, ea singillatim et breviter perstringemus. Erat ibi gloriosissimum lancee ferrum omnibus tremendum,omnibus reverendum, in Christi latere consecratum, immaculati agni sanguine rubricatum, quo ipsius in cruce pendentis latere perforato, redemptions humane exivit precium Indeed, there was [another] Lectio tercia: Erat cum hoc quedam crux cross, made from the most Erat autem insuper de sacred wood of the Lord’s sacratissimo ligno dominice mediocris, sed non modice virtutis, que propter causas cross. [This] cross was of crucis quedam crux inferius annotatas dicitur middling size but wondrous mediocris sed mire virtutis, triumphalis. Cum enim in power, by whose power cuius virtute imperatores olim invictissimus et Deo emperors rejoiced at the many multas se adeptos esse acceptissimus imperator, victories they had obtained, gavisi sunt victorias, Constantinus se quadam their enemies laid low and superatis ac perterritis ad vice ad preliandum contra terrified by their presence, eius presentiam inimicis. incredulos prepararet, et whose effect was also Cuius rei effectus, et aliter de progressu suo sollicitus demonstrated in other ways to mortalibus ostensus est. mortals. When Constantine, Cumxxxix olim invictissimus et procuraret, datum est ei a deo acceptissimus imperator Domino certum et omnino that emperor invincible and Constantinus, se quadam infallibile victorie ac future most pleasing to God, was vice ad preliandumxl contra salutis indicium, quia once preparing himself to incredulos prepararet, et manifestissime ostensum est ei do battle against unbelievers de progressu suo sollicitus in celo victoriorissime crucis and was carefully thinking cogitaret, datum est ei a signum, et statim vox celitus about how his armies would domino certum et omnino emissa subsecuta est dicens: advance, the Lord gave to him infallibile obtinende victorie ‘In hoc signo vinces’. the sure and unmistakable sign ac future salutis indicium quia in heaven of the victorious manifeste ostensum est eixli cross, showing that he would
x xxix Scribe of A began and crossed out ‘lectio quarta’ at this point. B begins Lectio quarta here. xl preliandum] preliendum A. xli ei] om. A.
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in celo victoriosissime crucis signum, quam ostensionem vox statim celitus minimissa subsecuta cum dicens: ‘In hoc vinces’. Lectio quarta:xlii Ad cuius rei ostensionem etxliii stupendixliv oraculi visionem effectus, hylarior miles Christi, hostium cuneos securus aggreditur ac superatis eis victor in pace regreditur. Unde factum est, ut cum multo post sanctissima mater eius Helena ad habendum dominice crucis vexillum anhelans Ierosolimamxlv pergeret, et in hoc perseverans proposito, divina causa revelatione reperisset, in signum et memoriam dicte visionis et concesse a deo victorie de loco cui sacratissimi humeri salvatoris in ligno pendentis impressi sunt, crux predicta fieret, quam in dicto vocabulo quasi per quemdamxlvi anthonomasiam triumphalem atque victricem crucem vocaverunt, ac deinde procedentes ad bella imperatores, eam successione perpetua sub spe obtinende victorie secum ferre consueverunt.
attain victory and achieve salvation. A voice sent from heaven immediately followed this revelation, and it said, ‘In this sign you will conquer’.
xlii xliii xliv xlv xlvi
Ad cujus rei ostensionem et stupendi oraculi visionem effectus hylarior miles Christi, hostium cuneos securus aggreditur, ac superatis eis victor in pace revertitur. Unde factum est ut, cum multo post sanctissima mater ejus Helena ad habendum dominice crucis vexillum hanelans Iherosolimam pergeret, et in hoc perseverans proposito divina eam revelatione repperisset, in signum et memoriam dicte visionis et concesse a Deo victorie, de loco cui sanctissimi humeri Salvatoris in cruce pendentis impressi sunt crux predicta fieret, quam indito vocabulo, quasi per quandam anthonomasiam triumphalem atque victricem vocaverunt, ac deinceps procedentes ad bella imperatores eam successione perpetua sub spe optinende victorie secum ferre consueverunt.
Lectio quarta] lectio quinta B. B 336v. A 60r. Ierosolimam] Iherolimam B. quemdam] quamdam B.
Gladdened by the revelation of this object and the vision of this wondrous portent, the knight of Christ securely approached the enemy lines, conquered them, and returned victorious in peace. Thus it happened that afterward his most holy mother Helena, yearning to have the standard of the Lord’s Cross, went to Jerusalem, and when — holding steadfast to her plan — as a testimony and memorial of the divine vision and of the victory granted by God, she discovered it in the place, where were affixed the arms of the most holy Savior as he hung on the wood, the cross was proclaimed, and they named it (as if in antonomasia) ‘the triumphant and victorious cross’. Afterwards, when the emperors, in regular succession, marched out to war, they customarily bore it with them in hopes of attaining victory.
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Lectioxlvii quinta:xlviii Intelligimus trium virtutum mirabilia nobis mirabiliter per crucem dominicam exhiberi. Crux enim domini prebet adiutorium contra temptationem;xlix solacium contra tribulationem subsidium ad conpunctionis gratiam obtinendam. Naml si opprimar malignorum spirituum temtationibus velut egyptiacis et tenebrarum principibus ad vexillum dominice crucis confugiens intrepidus acclamabo: ‘ecce crucem domini fugite partes adverse’.li Et in huius virtute velut immodum virge mosaicelii plagis afficientur et prosternentur omnes egyptiace: id est, dyabolice et contrarie potestates. Lectio sexta:liii Hinc per prophetam dicitur: ‘A facie domini pavebit assur virga percussus’ liv [Isaiah 30. 31] quia virtute crucis dominicelv percussus, terretur et procul expellitur inimicus.
We have learned of the three wonderful powers that the Lord’s Cross has wonderfully demonstrated. The Lord’s cross provides aid against temptation; solace in the face of tribulation; and assistance toward gaining the grace of compunction.
[From the relics liturgy] In predictis intelligimus trium virtutum mirabilia nobis mirabiliter per crucem dominicam exhiberi. Crux enim domini prebet adiutorium contra temptationem solatium contra tribulationem, subsidium ad compunctionis gratiam optinendam. Nam si opprimar malignorum spirituum temptationibus velut egyptiacis et tenebrarum principibus, ad vexillum dominice crucis confugiens, intrepidus acclamabo. “Ecce crucem domini fugite partes adverse.” Et in huius virtute velut in modum virge mosayce plagis afficientur, et prosternentur omnes egyptiace id est diabolice et contrarie potestates Hinc per prophetam dicitur: “A facie domini pavebit assur virga percussus” [Isaiah. 30.31], quia virtute crucis dominice percussus terretur et procul expellitur inimicus.
For if temptations from evil spirits, like Egyptian shadow princes, weigh down upon me, undaunted, taking succor from the standard of the Lord’s Cross, I will call to it: ‘Behold the Cross of the Lord! Be gone, evil powers!’ And through its strength, as if by the rod of Moses, all Egyptians — that is, all devilish and contrary powers — are struck with plagues and laid low. Hence it is said through the prophet: ‘For from the face of the Lord the Assyrian shall quake, struck by the rod’. For struck by the power of the Lord’s Cross, the enemy is terrified and driven far away. For this reason, I adore the
xlvii From this point forward, the lections stop using Gérard of Saint-Quentin’s text. The last four lections are drawn from the fourth lection of the fourth day of readings [(D)4], of the Octave of the feast of the Reception of Relics at the Sainte Chapelle. An edition of the entire set of Relics liturgy is included as Appendix 4 of Gaposchkin, Vexilla Regis, D4-D6, p. 300–02 xlviii lectio quinta] lectio sexta B. xlix temptationem] tentationem B. l Nam] Lectio semptima. Nam B. That is, B starts lectio 7 here. li Standard antiphon from feast of the Invention of the Cross and the Exaltation of the Cross. lii Mosaice] mosayce B. B 337r. liii Lectio sexta] lectio octava B. liv A 60v. lv crucis dominici] dominici crucis B.
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Ex hac consideratione crucem adoro domini in illa parte quam imperatores deferebant in bellis, et que pro sui virtute quam multipliciter in hostium expugnationibus experti fuerant nominata est triumphalis. Lectio septima:lvi Si vero afflictio et angustia quarumlibet tribulationum velut amaritudo inundantium aquarum me gravet, ad crucem iterum domini securus accedo, cuius mirabili virtute quasi ‘per medium sicci maris’ [cf: Exodus 14. 22, 29] transiens tribulationum fluctus evado, aut in modum ligni dulcorantis aquam cuiuslibet afflictionis amaritudinem mitigari sentio. Hinc est quod huius beneficii consideratione lignum crucis dominice in illa parte devotus adoro; que in ligni non figurati particula mihi divino munere presentatur.lvii Lectio octava: Si iterum me gravet obdurata in modum lapidis consciencia peccatorum, que nec malleo divini timoris valeat conteri, nec compuntionis dolore molliri, ad crucem domini non desperatus accedo, et eius virtute in modum percussi per virgam lapidis obdurati cordis mei et lapidei malicia confringetur, et in compunctionis lacrimas resolutum sicut aqua in conspectu domini dei mei effundetur.
Ex hac consideration crucem adoro domini in illa parte quam imperatores deferebant in bellis, et que pro sui virtute quam multipliciter in hostium expugnationibus experti fuerant nominata est triumphalis. Si vero afflictio et angustia quarumlibet tribulationum velut amaritudo inundantium aquarum gravet, ad crucem iterum domini securus accedo cuius mirabili virtute quasi per medium sicci maris [cf.: Ex. 14.22, 29] transiens, tribulationum fluctus evado aut in modum ligni dulcorantis aquam cuiuslibet afflictionis amaritudinem mitigari sentio. Hinc est quod in huius beneficii consideration lignum crucis dominice in illa parte devotus adoro, que in ligni non figurati particula, mihi divino munere presentatur
Lord’s Cross, because of how emperors carry it in their battles and how they have experienced its power, which is called ‘triumphal’, countless times in their conquests of enemies. If affliction and distress from any tribulations or the bitterness of flood waters weighs me down, again I go confident to the cross of the Lord, by whose wondrous power, as if crossing through ‘the midst of dry sea’ I escape the waves of tribulation, or I sense the bitterness of every affliction to be assuaged in the manner of wood sweetening water. Hence it is that in consideration of this gift, devoted, I adore the wood of the Lord’s Cross, which is made present to me in an unfashioned particle of wood.
Si iterum me gravet obdurata in modum lapidis conscientia peccatorum, que nec malleo divini timoris valeat conteri, nec compunctionis dolore molliri, ad crucem domini non desperatus accedo, et eius virtute in modum percussi per virgam lapidis obdurati cordis mei, et lapidei malicia confringetur, et in compunctionis lacrimas resolutum, sicut aqua in conspectu domini dei mei effundetur.
Again if the heavy thought of sin weighs me down like a stone that the hammer of divine fear cannot break or the sadness of compunction cannot soften, then not despairing I go to the Lord’s Cross, and by its power the wickedness of my stony heart is broken, as if struck by a hard rock; and dissolved into tears of compunction it flows like water in the sight of my Lord God.
lvi Lectio septimal] nona B. lvii Lections in B end here.
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lectio nona: Et ideo in consideratione tanti muneris lignum dominicum in maioris crucis signaculo figuratum adoro, propter maioris et mirabilis virtutis efficaciem, que in compunctione obstinati cordislviii mirabiliter demonstratur. Sic igitur in virtute crucis dominice per virgam mosaicam tripliciter ut dictum est figurate, tam multipiciter consolati, laudes et gratias largitori totius gratie referamus, qui ad expiandum prime prevaricationis peccatum reatum scilicet elationis; confusione contempta crucis patibulo affigi voluit, quod erat extremum et ignominiosissimum genus mortis.lix
Thus, in contemplation of such a great gift, I adore the Lord’s wood shaped into the figure of the greater cross on account of its greater, wonderful potency, which is wondrously proven in the compunction felt by a hardened heart. So in the power of the Lord’s Cross, one finds triply prefigured the rod of Moses: comforted on countless occasions, we offer praises and thanks to the dispenser of all grace, who wished, all doubt cast aside, to be affixed to the cross’s crucifixion, the most severe and shameful kind of death, so that the fault of the first sin of disobedience might be expiated.
Et ideo in consideratione tanti muneris lignum dominicum in maioris crucis signaculo figuratum, devotus adoro, propter maioris et mirabilioris virtutis efficaciam que in compunctionec obstinati cordis mirabiliter demonstratur. Sic igitur in virtute crucis dominice per virgam mosaycam, tripliciter ut dictum est figurate tam multipliciter consolati, laudes et gratias largitori tocius gratie referamus, qui ad expiandum prime prevaricationis peccatum reatum scilicet elationis, confusione contempta crucis patibulo affigi voluit quod erat extremum et ignominiosissimum genus mortis.
Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Bari, Bibliotheca San Nicola [BSN], MS 3 ———, MS 5 Bourges, Bibliothèque Municipale [BM], MS 34 ———, MS 35 Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België [KBR], MS IV.472 Charleville, Bibliothèque Municipale [BM], MS 86 ———, MS 275 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 343
lviii A 61r. lix Si iterum me gravet obdurate…ignominiosissimum genus mortis] om. B; checked against other witnesses of this portion of the text.
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Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS fonds latin 13238 ———, MS fonds n.a.l. 1423 Paris, Bibliothèque Saint Geneviève, MS 2618 Primary Sources BHL Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae Aetatis, Subsidia Hagiographica, 9, 2 vols (Brussels: Socii Bollandiani, 1898, reprinted 1992) Breviarium Parisiense – Pars Autumnalis (Paris: Franciscum Hubertum Muguet, 1714) Guillaume of Nangis, ‘Gestorum sanctae memoriae Ludovici’, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by J. Naudet and P. C. F. Daunou, vol. xx (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1840), pp. 309–465 Guillaume of Saint-Pathus, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. by H. François Delaborde, Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire, 27 (Paris: Picard, 1899) Haggh, Barbara, Two Offices for St Elizabeth of Hungary: Gaudeat Hungaria and Letare Germania. Introduction and Edition, ed. by László Dobszay, Barbara Haggh, and Ruth Steiner, Musicological Studies, 65 (Ottowa: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1995) Hesbert, René, Le Prosaire de la Sainte-Chapelle: Manuscrits du chapitre de Saint-Nicolas de Bari (vers 1250), Monumenta musicae sacrae (Mâcon: Protat frères, 1952) Matthew Paris, ed., Matthæi Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica majora, ed. by Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 57, 7 vols (London: Longman, 1872) ———, Matthew Paris’s English History: From the Year 1235 to 1273, trans. by Rev. J. A. Giles, 3 vols (London: Bohn, 1852) Mombritius, Boninus, Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum (Milan: 1477; reprinted Paris: Fontemoing, 1910) Miller, Edouard, ‘Review of Exuviae Sacrae Constantinopolitanae’, Journal des Savants (1878), 292–309, 389–403 Rabanus Maurus, Homilia LXX: Reversio sanctae atque gloriosissime crucis Domini nostri Jesus Christi, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1864), 60 (1864), cols 131–34 Riant, Paul Edouard Didier, Exuviae sacrae constantinopolitanae fasciculus documentorum minorum, ad exuvias sacras constantinopolitanas in occidentem saeculo XIII translatas, spectantium, & historiam quarti belli sacri imperiique gallo-graeci illustrantium (Geneva: s.n., 1877–1878; reprinted Paris: CTHS, 2004) Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale (Venice: Hermannus Liechtenstein, 1494) Wailly, Natalis de, ‘Récit du treizième siècle sur les translations faites en 1239 et en 1241 des saintes reliques de la passion’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 39 (1878), 401–15 Secondary Works Aubert, Marcel, Louis Grodecki, Jean LaFond, and Jean Verrier, Les vitraux de Notre-Dame et de la Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, 1 (Paris: Caisse national des monuments historique, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1959)
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Baert, Barbara, A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions, Medieval and Early Modern Peoples, 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2004) Bautier, Geneviève, ‘L’envoi de la relique de Vraie Croix à Notre-Dame de Paris en 1120’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartres, 129 (1971), 387–97 Beer, Jeanette M. A, ‘The Letter of Jean Sarrasin, Crusader’, in Journeys Toward God: Pilgrimage and Crusade, ed. by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 135–55 Borgehammar, Stephan, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility: Two Early Latin Accounts Composed for the Celebration of Exaltatio Crucis’, Millennium - Jahrbuch, 6 (2009), 145–202 ———, How the Holy Cross was Found: From Event to Medieval Legend (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, 1991) Bozóky, Edina, ‘Saint Louis, ordonnateur et acteur des rituels autour des reliques de la passion’, in La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris: Royaume de France ou Jérusalem Céleste. Actes du Colloque (Paris, Collège de France, 2001), ed. by Christine Hediger (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 19–34 Branner, Robert, ‘The Sainte-Chapelle and the Capella Regis in the Thirteenth Century’, Gesta, 10 (1971), 19–22 Brenk, Beat, ‘The Ste.-Chapelle as a Capetian Political Program’, in Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings, ed. by Virginia Raguin, Kathryn Brush, and Peter Draper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 195–213 Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Kings Like Semi-Gods: The Case of Louis X of France’, Majestas, 1 (1993), 5–37 ———, ‘Philippe le Bel et les restes de Louis IX: une reconsidération des sources’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes (forthcoming) ———, ‘Philippe le Bel and the Remains of Saint Louis’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 97 (1980), 175–82 ———, ‘The Religion of Royalty: From Saint Louis to Henry IV, 1226–1589’, in Creating French Culture: Treasures from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, ed. by Marie-Hélène Tesnière and Prosser Gifford (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 131–48 Brown, Elizabeth A. R., and Nancy Freeman Regalado, ‘La grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of his Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313’, in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed. by Barbara Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson, Medieval Studies at Minnesota, 6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994) pp. 56–86 Cohen, Meredith, The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy: Royal Architecture in Thirteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) Delisle, Léopold, Manuscrits Latins et Français ajoutés aux fonds des nouvelles acquisitions pendant les années 1875–1891, 2 vols (Paris: Champion, 1894) Dreves, Guido Maria, and Clemens Blume, eds, Analecta hymnica medii aevi, 55 vols (Leipzig: Fue’s, 1886–1922; reprinted New York: Johnson, 1961) Durand, Jannic, ‘La relique et les reliquaires de la Vraie Croix du trésor de la SainteChapelle de Paris’, in La croce: iconografia e interpretazione: secoli I-inizio XVI: atti del
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convegno internazionale di studi, Napoli, 6–11 dicembre 1999, ed. by Ulderico Parente, vol. iii (Naples: Boris Ulianich, 2007), pp. 341–68 Durand, Jannic, and Marie-Pierre Laffitte, eds, Le Trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2001) Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia, ‘Between Historical Narrative and Liturgical Celebrations: Gautier Cornut and the Reception of the Crown of Thorns in France’, Revue Mabillon, n.s. 30 (= 91) (2019), 91–145 ———, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008) ———, Vexilla Regis Glorie: Liturgy and Relics at the Sainte Chapelle in the Thirteenth Century, Sources d’histoire médiévale (Paris: CNRS, 2021) Gasser, Stephen, ‘L’architecture de la Sainte-Chapelle. État de la question concernant sa datation, son maître d’œuvre et sa place dans l’histoire de l’architecture’, in La SainteChapelle de Paris: Royaume de France ou Jérusalem céleste, ed. by Christine Hediger (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 157–80 Giebfried, John, The Imagined Empire of Baldwin II: Last Crusader Emperor of Constantinople (New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming) Golubovich, Girolamo, Biblioteca bio-bibliotrafica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente franciscano, vol. ii (Quaracchi Presso Firenze: Collegio di s. Bonaventura, 1913) Grodecki, Louis, Sainte-Chapelle, 2nd edn (Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites, 1975) Guerry, Emily, ‘Crowning Paris: King Louis IX, Archbishop Cornut, and the Translation of the Crown of Thorns’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (forthcoming) Guyon, Catherine, Les écoliers du Christ ‐ l’ordre canonial du Val des Ecoliers, 1201–1539 (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 1998) Jordan, Alyce, Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, International Center of Medieval Art Monograph Series (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002) Klein, Holger, ‘Sacred Relics and Imperial Ceremonies at the Great Palace of Constantinople’, in Visualisierungen von Herrschaft. Frühmittelalterliche Residenzen, Gestalt und Zeremoniell, ed. by Franz Alto Bauer (Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2006), pp. 79–100 Klein, Holger A., ‘Constantine, Helena, and the Cult of the True Cross in Constantinople’, in Byzance et les reliques du Christ, ed. by Jannic Durand and Bernard Flusin (Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civisisation de Byzance, 2004), pp. 31–59 Krafft, Otfried, ‘Gerhard von St-Quentin und die h. Elisabeth. Eine hagiographische Spurensuche zwischen Marburg, Cambrai und Helfta’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 44.3 (2009), 449–70 Kühnel, Gustav, ‘Heracles and the Crusaders: Tracing the Path of a Royal Motif ’, in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, ed. by Daniel Weiss and Lisa Mahoney (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 63–76 Leroquais, Victor, Les bréviaires manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 5 vols (Paris: Macon, 1932–1934) Longnon, Jean, L’Empire Latin de Constantinople et la principauté de Morée (Paris: Payot, 1949)
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Lützelschwab, Ralf, ‘Ludwig der Heilige und der Erwerb der Dornenkrone. Zum Verhältnis von Frömmigkeit und Politik’, Das Mittelalter, 9 (2004), 12–23 Magdalino, Paul, ‘L’Église du Phare et les reliques de la passion à Constantinople (viie/ viiie-xiiie siècles)’, in Byzance et les Reliques du Christ, ed. by Jannic Durand and Bernard Flusin (Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire de Civilisation de Byzance, 2004), pp. 15–30 Maurey, Yossi, ‘Glorified and Crowned by God’: The Sequences of the Sainte-Chapelle (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming) Mély, Ferdinand de, Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae: La Croix des premiers croisés, la sainte lance, la sainte couronne (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904) Morand, Sauveur-Jérôme, Histoire de la Sainte-Chapelle royale du Palais (Paris: Clousier et Prault, 1790) Moreau-Rendu, Suzanne, Les captifs libérés – les Trinitaires et Saint-Mathurin de Paris (Paris: Nouvelles éditions latines, 1974) Pysiak, Jerzy, The King and the Crown of Thorns: Kingship and the Cult of Relics in Capetian France (Pieterlen: Peter Lang, forthcoming in 2020) Raynaud, Clémence, ‘“Ad instar capelle regie parisiensis”: la Sainte-Chapelle de Bourges, le grand dessein du duc de Berry’, Bulletin monumental, 1962, no. 4 (2004), 289–302 Souza, Guilherme Queiroz de, ‘Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium – Iconographic Study’, Revista Digital de Iconografía Medieval, 7, no. 14 (2015), 27–38 Strayer, Joseph, ‘France: The Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King’, in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison, ed. by Theodore K. Rabb and Jerrold E. Seigel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) Reprint, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History, pp. 300–15 Townsend, David, ‘The “Versus De Corona Spinea” of Henry of Avranches’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 38.2 (1988), 154–70 Tyerman, Christopher, ‘Philip VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, English Historical Review, 100 (1985), 25–52 Van Tongeren, Louis, ‘Crux mihi certa salus: The Cult and the Veneration of the Cross in Early Medieval Europe’, Territorio, Sociedad y Poder, 2 (2009), 349–70 ———, Exaltation of the Cross: Toward the Origins of the feast of the Cross and the Meaning of the Cross in Early Medieval Liturgy, Liturgia Condenda, 11 (Leuven: Peeters, 2000) ———, ‘Imagining the Cross on Good Friday: Rubric, Ritual and Relic in Early Medieval Roman, Gallican and Hispanic Liturgical Traditions’, in Envisioning Christ on the Cross, Ireland and the Early Medieval West, ed. by Juliet Mullins, Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, and Richard Hawtree (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013), pp. 34–51 Vaughan, Richard A. Matthew Paris, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, ns. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958) Vidier, Alexandre, Le Trésor de La Sainte-Chapelle: Inventaires et Documents, Extrait des Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France, vols 34–37 (1907–1910) Wortley, John, ‘The Wood of the True Cross’, in John Wortley, Studies on the Cult of Relics in Byzantium up to 1204, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1–19
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Writing and Illustrating History in ThirteenthCentury France The Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune and Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale*
The Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais1 and the Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune2 (hereafter Chronique) are two historical works composed in the thirteenth century, each shaped by different interests in historical writing and illustrating. Vincent’s Speculum historiale is part of his Speculum maius, taking its place alongside his Speculum naturale, Speculum morale, and Speculum doctrinale. The Speculum historiale represents a scholarly distillation in Latin, drawn from a range of venerable sources like Gregory of Tours and Siger of Brabant (neither of whose works gave rise to illustrative traditions), a scholarly effort supported by Louis IX and composed in the 1260s. It was immensely popular, hundreds of copies survive, but the majority of them lack illustration. Yet Vincent’s Speculum historiale continued to be copied in Latin, and illustrated, during the centuries following its composition, even after a French translation had been produced by Jean de Vignay for Jeanne de Bourgogne
* A version of this paper was presented at the unpublished symposium held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting, 1250–1500 (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010). I thank Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman for inviting me there. Peggy Brown was also a presenter at that symposium and as always it was a pleasure to interact with her there and to offer this essay as a token of my appreciation and gratitude for years of congenial and instructive discussion and debate. 1 Speculum quadruplex; Lector et compilator; Intentions et réceptions. For images, see Stones, ‘Prolegomena’ and Lee, ‘Les images de l’histoire’ and ‘Images, culture et mémoire d’histoire’. 2 See ARLIMA sub nomine and particularly Labory, ‘Anonyme de Béthune’ and most recently Raquetta, ‘From Saint-Denis to Béthune’. For the St-Denis connection see particularly Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’. I discussed the illustrations of naf 6295 in ‘Las ilustraciones’ and in my Gothic Manuscripts, Part I, vol. 2, cat. no. III-128. Regretfully the manuscript is still (8 October 2019) not on Gallica or Mandragore, and only a few images are available on the BnF’s Banque d’images site. Alison Stones is Professor Emerita of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 301-330 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122625
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(d. 1348), wife of Philippe VI in 1333 or 1334 (BnF, fr. 316 fol. 1r).3 The French translation gave rise to a voluminous illustrative tradition in manuscripts made for venerable patrons, but I concentrate here on the illustrated manuscripts of Vincent’s Latin text, particularly those similar in date and provenance to the Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune. The images chosen to illustrate both documents are rich with allusions that would have been familiar to medieval audiences, a few of which we will trace here. The Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, composed in French by an anonymous author for an unknown patron, survives as a unicum, Paris, BnF, naf 6295 (hereafter naf 6295) fols 1r–63r. It starts with Troy but then moves swiftly to Charlemagne’s campaign in Spain, followed by more recent events. The Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre (hereafter Histoire) follows on fols 63r–104v,4 and the volume is rounded off with a small selection of the prayers and miracles of Gautier de Coinci (fols 104v–167r).5 Both the Chronique and the Histoire end with the fall of King John in 1216 following the defeat of the imperial coalition at the Battle of Bouvines, in which the bravery of the Artesians and especially of Robert de Béthune, fighting for the imperial side, is given special emphasis. That emphasis suggested to Delisle that the Chronique was put together by someone in Robert’s entourage and that an appropriate title for it would be the Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune.6 The manuscript that survives is not the archetype, which would no doubt have been made soon after 1216, but a later copy datable towards the end of the thirteenth century. What the Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune and the Speculum historiale allow me to do here is to use their selections of illustrations as pointers to more expansive treatments of the same or similar subjects in other contexts and to suggest some conclusions about what the makers and patrons wanted to emphasize through the selection of pictures they chose. What antecedents did the pictures in the Chronique and in Vincent’s Speculum historiale depend on, and how were they built upon in later texts and pictures? To what extent do the subjects and their images vary between a unicum in French and a widespread tradition in Latin?7 To start with, a brief description of naf 6295. It is undistinguished in many ways, hardly a glorious celebration of the painted page. It is written in a fairly formal book hand, what Julian Brown called ‘media’ script, with some nice pen-flourishing of a
3 Editions: Jean de Vignay, Le miroir historial, ed. by Brun; Jean de Vignay, Le miroir historial, volume I, tome I (livres I–IV), ed. by Cavagna; Brun and Cavagna, ‘Das Speculum historiale’; Lee, ‘Les images de l’histoire’ and ‘Images, culture et mémoire d’histoire’. Further bibliographical references on ARLIMA. For images in Jean de Vignay, see Chavannes-Mazel, ‘The Miroir historial of Jean le Bon’, i, 211–15. 4 See ARLIMA, under Histoire des ducs de Normandie. The Histoire is also transmitted in eight other manuscripts. 5 See Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, ed. by Krause and Stones, pp. 22, 91, 347, 352, 354, 367, 369, 374, 415, 419, 428. 6 Delisle, ‘Notice sur la chronique d’un Anonyme de Béthune’. 7 Other comtemporary historical chronicles would eventually be worth comparing with these, notably the translation of Peter of Poitiers and other sources contained in New York, Morgan Library and Museum M.751, illustrated with one large and 227 small miniatures in a style not unrelated to that of naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125; a detailed description and illusrtations are available on Corsair. Work on the illustrations is still needed.
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Figure 9.1. Paris, BnF, naf 6259, fol. 2r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Troy. Reproduced with permission.
fairly standard nature in red and blue and blue and red, and the illustration takes the form of historiated initials. Its most distinctive aspect is these illustrations, fifteen for the Chronique and another fourteen for the Histoire, plus one for Gautier de Coinci. I return below to their subjects. Two artists participated in the illustrations of naf 6295. As I have shown elsewhere, they can both be traced in other manuscripts and both were active in north-eastern France, with associations in Thérouanne, Saint-Omer, Bruges, and Ghent — the fringes of the County of Artois and the County of Flanders.8 Hand 1 is close to, if not the same as, the major artist of the Florence literary miscellany, Bibl. Medicea-
8 See n. 3, and Spiegel, Romancing the Past, and the review by Short, ‘Review of Spiegel, Romancing the Past’.
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Figure 9.2. Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal, 3340, fol. 1r, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie, Troy. Reproduced with permission.
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Laurenziana Ashburnham 125 (hereafter Ashburnham 125), the painter responsible for illustrating the translation of Pseudo-Turpin’s Chronicle known as Johannes.9 The illustrations in the Johannes section of Ashburnham 125 complement those in naf 6295, as I show below. A large cluster of literary and devotional manuscripts is also related, including the Lancelot-Grail manuscript, Yale University, Beinecke Library 229 and its associates.10 Hand 2 in naf 6295 is a rather unskilled and repetitious painter — what Lilian Randall would call a ‘real dog’. But his work does crop up elsewhere, in a psalter in Philadelphia, Free Library, J. R. Lewis Collection, MS E 181,11 and in another that went through Sotheby’s in 1991.12 The iconography of naf 6295 closely follows the text while resonating with analogies drawn from earlier sources. The opening initial ‘T’ depicting two knights looking out over the gates of Troy (Figure 9.1) is reminiscent of the opening initial ‘S’ in the earliest illustrated copy of Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie, written in 1237 (Figure 9.2), where the lower part of the initial also shows the city of Troy (without figures) and Solomon teaching in the upper part, as in the opening words of Benoît’s text.13 There are resonances too of Richard de Fournival’s Tower of Memory with its Trojan associations (Figure 9.3), represented as a building with and ear and an eye on its doors in the famous images in Paris, BnF, fr. 412, illustrated in 1285 by Maître Henri.14 The image of Troy associates the Chronique with ancient history and distinguishes naf 6295’s approach from that of the other chronicles to be discussed below. Especially remarkable in naf 6295 are the illustrations accompanying the account of Charlemagne’s Spanish campaign, which, together with the sequence of illustrations in the Johannes section of Ashburnham 125, of the last decades of the
9 For the Johannes text, see The Old French Johannes Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, ed. by Walpole. Ashburnham 125 is not yet (7 August 2019) digitized on the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana site, with the exception of a few author portraits illustrating other components of the manuscript. 10 The illustrated pages are reproduced on https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/ arthurian-romances-ms-229. It contains Agravain, Queste and Mort Artu. For the related manuscript, Paris, BnF, fr. 95, containing Estoire, Merlin and Suite Vulgate, see most recently Stones, ‘L’Estoire del saint Graal’. Paris, BnF, fr. 95 is fully reproduced on Gallica. 11 It was included (without attribution) in the exhibition catalogue Leaves of Gold, ed. by Tanis, p. 57, no. 12. The treatment of Psalm 26 with its emphasis on the veneration of the eucharist is unusual in the context of the psalter, and might reflect an earlier model such as the Christ in Majesty page of the Missal of Mont-Saint-Eloi, Arras, probably of the second quarter of the thirteenth century, where Christ is enthroned between the Tablets of the Law and the eucharistic wafer and chalice (fully reproduced on BVMM), or the miracle of Saint Bernard as depicted in the dismembered Cistercian antiphoner made for the abbey of Cambron (O. Cist., dioc. Cambrai), parts of which are at the J. Paul Getty, Museum, MS 44 (reproduced on the site of the J. Paul Getty Museum). See also the related volume of cuttings in Collegeville, St John’s University, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, MS Bean 3, and other cuttings in the Acta Artium collection at HMML. The remaining illustrations are tabulated in Stones, Gothic Manuscripts, Part I, vol. 2, no. III-48, pp. 269–76. 12 Sotheby and Co., 17.xii. 91, lot 54, again without attribution. 13 Not at present (14 August 2019) online. 14 Digitized on Archives et manuscrits.
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Figure 9.3. Paris, BnF, fr. 412, fol. 237v, Richard de Fournival, Réponse au bestiaire, The Tower of Memory. Reproduced with permission.
thirteenth century, rival the Charlemagne window at Chartres as the fullest extant set of illustrations of Charlemagne’s Spanish campaign.15 No fewer than nine of the fifteen illustrations of the Chronique are devoted to Charlemagne, including scenes hard to parallel elsewhere: Archbishop Turpin 15 For Chartres see http://www.medart.pitt.edu/image/France/Chartres/Chartres-Cathedral/ Windows/Choir-windows/007A-Charlemagne, with full bibliography. There are twenty-four panels in the window, but 1 shows the donors, 2–7 are about Charlemagne and Constantine, and only panels 8–21 depict the Spanish campaign. For the St-Denis crusading window that includes Charlemagne’s legendary crusade in the East and the participation of Robert of Normandy (the latter featured in the Histoire in naf 6295), reconstructed with 14 medallions, see Brown and Cothren, ‘The TwelfthCentury Crusading Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis’, pp. 1–40.
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Figure 9.4. Paris, BnF, naf 6259, fol. 8r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Charlemagne and Archbishop Turpin. Reproduced with permission.
before Charlemagne (Figure 9.4, fol. 8r), the Saracens conquering Spain (fol. 10r), an initial excised (fol. 15r), the giant Ferragut holding two victims (Figure 9.5, fol. 15v), a messenger before Charlemagne (fol. 18r), Charlemagne holding a scroll, with a messenger (fol. 20v), an initial excised (fol. 22), Roland standing with his horse, blowing his horn (Figure 9.6, fol. 24r), the soul of Roland in a napkin raised to heaven while the traitors are carted to hell by demons (Figure 9.7, fol. 25v). Or is it Charlemagne whose soul is saved? And who are the two figures raising up the soul? I have suggested they are angels, but a closer look shows that wings are not readily discernable. The figures are unlikely to be Saint Denis and Saint James, as in the text, since there are no halos — so the purported St-Denis origins of the Charlemagne section of the text are not emphasized in the image. I suggest it is rather a model from Santiago that may be reflected here, as the only parallel, though different in detail, is the Turpin
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Figure 9.5. Paris, BnF, naf 6259 fol. 15r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Ferragut holding two victims. Reproduced with permission.
initial in the Salamanca copy of the Codex Calixtinus, UB, MS 2631 (Figure 9.8),16 where Turpin witnesses the blessed dead of Roncevaux in heaven with Christ and the Virgin, while the evildoers are carted off to hell. The Salamanca manuscript dates 16 See the facsimile, Codex Calixtinus. The commentary volume has not so far (8 August 2019) materialized.
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Figure 9.6. Paris, BnF, naf 6259 fol. 24r, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Roland blowing his horn. Reproduced with permission.
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Figure 9.7. Paris, BnF, naf 6259 fol. 25v, Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune, Turpin’s vision. Reproduced with permission.
to the early fourteenth century in the time of Archbishop Berenguel de Landoria (r. 1317–1330) but I have argued that it most likely reflects a lost twelfth-century model.17 The Johannes section in Ashburnham 125 has a total of fifteen miniatures and a blank space for a sixteenth that was never executed: Charlemagne receiving the key of Jerusalem (fol. 121r), Charlemagne and a follower (Roland?) kneeling before the cross (fol. 121v), Charlemagne and his followers (unarmed) riding to Spain (fol. 122v),
17 Stones, ‘The Codex Calixtinus and the Iconography of Charlemagne’, pp. 195–96.
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Figure 9.8. Salamanca, Bibl. Univ., 2631, fol. 90v, Codex Calixtinus, Book IV, Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, Turpin’s vision. Reproduced with permission.
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Figure 9.9. Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laurenziana, Ash. 125, fol. 142v, Johannes, Chronicle, Three men empty money-bags into a chest. Reproduced with permission.
three men put money-bags in a chest (fol. 123v) (Figure 9.9),18 Charlemagne debating with Agolant (fol. 124v), Charlemagne and his men riding to Pamplona (fol. 125r), Charlemagne debating with Agolant again (fol. 126r), Agolant fleeing before Ernaut de Beaulande who stabs him from behind with his sword (fol. 127r), Charlemagne thrusting two men into a chapel, in the hopes they will be saved from death in battle (Figure 9.10) — but in the morning he finds them dead anyway (fol. 127v), Roland and Ferragut in mounted combat (fol. 129v), Roland about to kill Marsille (fol. 131r), 18 The text says the money was given by the princes of Spain, but another analogy evoked by this image of the collection of funds is the indulgence granted by St-Denis to those donating four coins a year, found in the Pseudo-Turpin section, Book iv, of the Codex Calixtinus and copied ‘from a Santiago manuscript’ into the Turpin made at St-Denis in the early fourteenth century, preserved in Città del Vaticano, BAV, Reg. lat. 550, fol. 153r, discussed by Brown, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, p. 61. I note that the relevant passage, ‘Rursum post plurima dona eidem ecclesie in predio dedit precipiens ut uniusquisque possessor uniusquisque donius totius gallie quattuor nummos libenter dabant liberos fecit. Tunc beatum dionisium iuxta’, is present in the Compostela manuscript on fol. 185v, copied by scribe 2 (c. 1178), continuing on fol. 186r by scribe 3 (thirteenth century) ‘eius corpus stans implorauit ut pro salute illorum qui libenter illos nummos dabant domino precem fundere et pro christianis similiter qui propria sua pro diuino amore dimiserant et in hyspania in bellis sarracenorum martiri coronam acceperenat[…]’. Thus the passage in Reg. lat. 550 could have been copied directly from the Santiago manuscipt, as the text says.
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Figure 9.10. Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laurenziana, Ash. 125, fol. 146v, Johannes, Chronicle, Charlemagne imprisons two men in a church. Reproduced with permission.
Baudouin holding a jug before the dying Roland, having failed to find water for him (fol. 132v) (Figure 9.11), Charlemagne and his men riding (fol. 133r–1), Charlemagne and a cleric at Roland’s bier (fol. 133r–2),19 space for a miniature, the death of Turpin? 19 The scene showing Charlemagne accompanied by a cleric at a bier was interpreted by Lejeune and Stiennon as Charlemagne with Turpin (despite the absence of mitre), making donations to the clergy at Blaye, symbolized by the facing cleric holding a branch; but I think what he holds is an aspergillum and that the scene shows Charlemagne and a generic cleric ordering an honourable funeral for Roland, as in the text (The Old French Johannes Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle,
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Figure 9.11. Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laurenziana, Ash. 125, fol. 151v, Johannes, Chronicle, Baudouin holds his empty water-jug over the dying Roland. Reproduced with permission.
ed. by Walpole, pp. 172–73). A touch of humour is provided by the adjacent hybrid figure wearing a mitre on the left border, who in a sense displaces Turpin — and a possible anti-clerical agenda may be detected, because Turpin, purported eyewitness of the account, is never depicted in these images. See Lejeune and Stiennon, La Légende de Roland, i, 271–74.
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or of Charlemagne? or could it have been Charlemagne’s or Roland’s soul raised to heaven? (fol. 135r). What both naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125 leave out is the Dream of Charlemagne, so popular from its Latin beginnings in the Santiago Codex Calixtinus, to its transposition in the Grandes chroniques and other chronicles, not to mention its parallel in other media — the Chartres window and the Aachen shrine. It is especially notable that the illustrations in naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125 are entirely complementary, without repetition, as though the two manuscripts were deliberately constructed as counterparts one to the other. And in general, the pictures in both naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125 depend on prior knowledge of the lead-in and follow-on events of the story. Since they most likely emanated from the same artistic circle, though different artists were at work in each, it is not impossible to imagine that their patrons may have known each other and discussed together which scenes would go in which manuscript. In naf 6295 the Charlemagne sequence is followed by a further five illustrations for the period between Louis the Pious and the Battle of Bouvines. Curiously, that Battle is not depicted, nor is Robert de Béthune himelf: one must look to the Grandes chroniques and other historical works for pictures of Bouvines and its protagonists.20 But as far as Charlemagne iconography is concerned, naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125 go far beyond the thirteenth-century Grandes chroniques manuscripts in their pictorial emphasis on Charlemagne. The presentation copy offered to Philippe le Hardi by Matthieu de Vendôme, Abbot of St-Denis, and the author Primat of St-Denis soon after 1274 has only six images pertaining to the rule of Charlemagne, but among them is one showing Saint James pointing out the Milky Way to the Emperor — the subject surprisingly absent in naf 6295 and Ashburham 125, as noted above. It is not until the fourteenth century, with the copy made for Charles V, BnF, fr. 2813, that another copy singles out the Charlemagne episode as worthy of multiple illustrations. Charles V’s copy has no fewer than seventeen Charlemagne miniatures, from his coronation to the death of Ganelon, with ten devoted to the Spanish campaign. Depsite their anonymity, it is reasonable to suppose that the patrons of naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125 would appear to have been the guiding forces in the choice and range of their Charlemagne subjects. A different picture emerges from the illustrations of the Speculum historiale.21 Composed in the mid thirteenth century by Vincent of Beauvais (O. P.) for King Louis IX, whose 20 Bibliography online through ARLIMA; see especially Hedeman, The Royal Image. Not every copy illustrates the Battle of Bouvines: it was particularly favoured in fourteenth-century copies such as Baltimore, Walters Art Museum W. 139 (Hedeman, The Royal Image, p. 194), Besançon, BM, 863 (Hedeman, The Royal Image, p. 197), Castres, BM, 3 (recte, Hedeman, The Royal Image, p. 206), London, BL, Add. 15269 (Hedeman, The Royal Image, p. 10), Royal 16 G.VI (Hedeman, The Royal Image, p. 220), Sloane 2433 (Hedeman, The Royal Image, p. 227). 21 This too is a field to which Peggy Brown has made significant contributions: see particularly Brown, ‘Vincent de Beauvais and the reditus’. For the five versions of the Speculum historiale and a partial list of manuscripts in each category see http://www.vincentiusbelvacensis.eu/. See also Duchenne, Guzman, and Voorbij, ‘Une liste des manuscrits du Seculum historiale’. A recent contextual analysis is Brown M.F., Reading the World. For a comparative table of Vincent illustrations to c. 1330, see Stones, ‘Prolegomena’ and Stones, Gothic Manuscripts, Part ii, vol. 2, pp. 262–67.
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Figure 9.12. Bruxelles, BR, MS II 1396, fol. 1r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, the author instructing scribes. Reproduced with permission.
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portrait opens the Prologue in the Dijon copy from Cîteaux (O. Cist.), BM, MSS 568–69 (Books i–vii and xvi–xxiii), attributed to the third quarter or end of the thirteenth century.22 Vincent’s history begins with Creation and extends to the time of writing in the mid thirteenth century, ending with Emperor Frederick II. It is composed in Books and Chapters, with one illustration for each Book in the illustrated copies, rather like what was typical for the illustration of the Bible. The earliest copies were made in monastic circles and several of them, like those made for Cambron (O. Cist.), are decorated with pen-flourishing only, though of very high quality.23 Other early copies have limited historiation and pen-flourished or foliate decoration for each book.24 For instance, in the copy owned by St-Martin de Tournai (OSB), perhaps made in Vincent’s lifetime,25 there is a single opening image depicting the author, robed as a Dominican, at a desk with several books or quires open before him, instructing two clerics, one writing, the other holding an open book (Figure 9.12, Bruxelles, BR, MS II 1396, fol. 1r).26 Most interesting in comparison with naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125 are the two fully illustrated copies of the Speculum historiale made in the same period and region. This time a monastic patron is known: Boulogne, BM, 131 (Books i–xix) was made in 1297 for Eustache Gomer de Lille, Abbot of St-Bertin. The patron of its direct copy, Boulogne, BM, 130 (Books i–xxxii in two vols) remains unknown; it is likely that he too was a member of the local clergy of St-Omer or neighbouring Thérouanne. These manuscripts were most likely made in St-Omer or Thérouanne, and indeed there are stylistic resonances between Boulogne, BM, MS 131, naf 6295, and Ashburnham 125, despite differences in the format of the illustrations.27 22 Its surviving illustration reveals little that is narrative: MS 568 (Books i–vii): foliate initials for Books i (Q, fol. 10r) and iv (G, with a climbing male figure and a cat, fol. 224v), the Crucifixion for Book ii (fol. 15r); MS 569 (Books xvi–xxiii): foliate initial for Book xix (T, fol. 77v), reproduced on BVMM. The same Prologue, illustrated with a foliate initial, is also found in Chalon-sur-Saône, BM, 5 (fol. Fr), of about the same date (I disagree with BVMM’s date of fourteenth century), owned by La-Ferté-sur-Grosne (O. Cist.). Chalon Book vii has an initial R with a portrait of Julius Caesar crowned and holding a sceptre (fol. 232r). The other Books have foliate or decorative initials. In my Gothic Manuscripts 1260–1320, Part ii, vol. 2, p. 259, I accepted Załuska’s attribution of Dijon, BM, 569 to Paris, whereas it clearly belongs with Dijon 568, perhaps from Royaumont and owned by Cîteaux (Załuska, Damongeot, Saulnier, Lanoé, no. 174, 191–92, pl. lxxvi). 23 See especially the Cambron copies (Stones, The Minnesota Vincent). Douai, BM, 797, owned by Marchiennes (OSB) also has pen-flourished decoration (reproduced on BVMM). 24 Such as Boulogne, BM, 132 and 133, by different artists working at the end of the thirteenth century. 25 The fourteenth-century date given on http://www.vincentiusbelvacensis.eu/ is for me too late: I think it is related to the Epistolary and Evangeliary of Cambrai, Cambrai, BM 189–90, written in 1266 by Johannes Phylomena. Vincent visited St-Martin de Tournai and commented on the excellence of its library; it is not impossible that this copy marks that visit. 26 Boulogne, BM, 130 and 131 are online at BVMM. Variant in the illustrative choices for Book i are whether Vincent wrote alone, as in Boulogne, BM, 131 (fol. 7v) and 130 (fol. 6v), Oxford, Merton College, 123 (fol. 5r), or whether he instructed scribes, as in BR II 1396 and Rouen, BM, 1133 (c. 1340, circle of Mahiet). Troyes, BM, 170, fol. 1r, gives the Temptation of Adam and Eve (from Arras or Amiens, c. 1300). 27 In addition to stylistic links to naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125, the artist of Boulogne 131 is closely related to the Cycle de Guillaume d’Orange manuscript, Boulogne, BM, 192, written in 1295 (omitted from my list of parallels in Gothic Manuscripts, Part ii, vol. 2, p. 258); but see Stones, Gothic
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Figure 9.13. Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 131, fol. 77v, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, The Dream of Astiages. Reproduced with permission.
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The subjects in Boulogne 131 and 130 are identical for those books included in both copies.28 Books ii and iii cover biblical history, with Christ in majesty29 and Pharaoh’s daughter holding baby Moses.30 Ancient history begins in Book iv not with Troy, as in naf 6295, but with Cyrus, depicting the vision of Astiages, last king of the Medes, of his daughter’s prodigious offspring who would become Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire. His story is similar to that of Oedipus or Romulus and Remus, abandoned in babyhood to destroy the outcome of the dream, then nurtured by a she-dog and rescued to fulfil his destiny. The historiated initials depict the dream (Figure 9.13), with Astiages’ daughter in bed, with a tree rising from her loins (Figure 9.14); Cyrus’s abandonment and rescue are shown as a border illustration below (Figures 9.15, 9.16, 9.17). It is highly likely that Eustache Gomer de Lille and his artists knew the similar image of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar from Daniel 4 in the Liber floridus by Lambert of St-Omer, where a rare depiction of the subject was included on fol. 232v of the autograph manuscript now in the University Library of Ghent, MS 92, and in several of the later copies.31 At all events the choice of Astiages’ Dream for Book iv in Boulogne 131 and 130 was only occasionally repeated again, suggesting the importance of local tradition in the choice of the subject. Parisian copies of the early fourteenth century simply depict Cyrus leading his army.32 Books v and vi of the Speculum historiale concern Alexander the Great, absent in the Chronique de l’Anonyme, but figuring in the Liber floridus with an equestrian portrait prefacing the letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and, as extensive narratives, in the four copies of the Roman d’Alexandre en prose made most likely in the region of Reims in the last decade or so of the thirteenth century, not far from Thérouanne and St-Omer, which both
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Manuscripts, Part i, vol. 2, Cat. III-123. It is most likely the ‘livre de gestes’ made for Guillaume de Hainaut, Bishop of Cambrai (1286–1296) by a monk of Saint-Sépulcre de Cambrai to whom it was to be returned, according to Guillaume’s will of 1296. Boulogne 131 has Books i–xix (missing the illustration to Book vii, now in a private collection in London), illustrated by the same painter; Boulogne 130 has Books i–xxxii (missing the illustrations to Books xi, xix, xx, xxvi, xxvii, xxxii, and was illustrated by two painters, one responsible for Books i–xxvi (close stylistically to the Sellers Hours, Dallas, Southern Methodist University, Bridwell Library, MS 13); the second artist, responsible for Books xxvii–xxxii, reappears in parts of the Lancelot-Grail manuscript London, BL, Add. 10292–4 and was the artist of the psalter-hours divided between New York, The Morgan Museum and Library, MS M.754 and London, BL, Add. 36684. As noted above, Dijon, BM, 568 fol. 15r gives the Crucifixion; Oxford, Merton College, 123 (a Paris production soon after 1300) also has Christ in Majesty, on fol. 37r. Variants: Baby Moses handed to Pharaoh’s daughter who lies in bed (Rouen, BM, 1133 fol. 40v). See also Lisbon, BN, il. 126, an exceptional fifteenth c. copy whose illustrations are attributed to the Master of the Geneva Boccaccio, working in Angers c. 1460. Its 10 surviving illustrated pages are now scattered, see König in Splendeur de l’enluminure, no. 36, pp. 327, 329. Online at https://lib.ugent.be. Elements of the standard Jesse Tree might also be alluded to in the structure of this image. For the Liber floridus, see particularly Derolez, The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus and Vorholt, Shaping Knowledge. A leaf now in a private collection, formerly in the Lisbon copy, BN, MS il 126 also depicts the dream of Astiages, see König in Splendeur de l’enluminure, cit. n. 30.
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Figure 9.14. Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 130, vol. i, fol. 68r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, The Dream of Astiages. Reproduced with permission.
Figure 9.15. Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 131, fol. 77v, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, Baby Cyrus fed by a she-dog. Reproduced with permission.
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Figure 9.16. Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 131, fol. 77v, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, Baby Cyrus rescued. Reproduced with permission.
Figure 9.17. Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 130, vol. i, fol. 68r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book iv, Baby Cyrus rescued. Reproduced with permission.
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Figure 9.18. Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 131, fol. 202r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book x, Claudius on his deathbed designating his son Britannicus as his successor while Agrippina and her followers put forward Nero. Reproduced with permission.
fall in the ecclesiastical arch-province of Reims.33 In Boulogne 131 and 130 the focus is on Alexander’s conquests in battle, followed by his death foretold by the caladrius, 33 Ross and Stones, ‘The Roman d’Alexandre in French prose’; Pérez-Simon, Mise en roman et mise en image. The geographical diffusion of the Roman d’Alexandre en vers is less concentrated in the region, although one copy, Paris, BnF, fr. 786, is prefaced by a calendar in French for Tournai use; see Ross, Illustrated Medieval Alexander-Books in French Verse, pp. 58–63, 183–88.
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Figure 9.19. Boulogne-sur-Mer, 130, fol. 183r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book x, Claudius on his deathbed designating his son Britannicus as his successor while Agrippina and her followers put forward Nero. Reproduced with permission.
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Figure 9.20. Cleveland, Museum of Art, acc. no. 1987–4, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book x, Claudius designating Nero as his successor. Reproduced with permission.
and the subsequent division of his empire.34 These are meagre illustrations compared with Alexander’s military prowess, or the exciting encounters with strange peoples,
34 Variants are Alexander receiving the keys of Jerusalem in Rouen, BM, 1133 fol. 83v and the conception of Alexander with Philip of Macedonia contemplating the heavens in Lisbon, see König in Splendeur de l’enluminure.
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Figure 9.21. Boulogne-sur-Mer, 130, vol. ii, fol. 149r, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, Book xxv, Charlemagne giving orders to his soldiers. Reproduced with permission.
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and the voyages to the depths of the sea and the heavens, such as characterize the illustrations in the Roman d’Alexandre in prose and verse.35 A run-down of the Roman emperors follows for the Speculum historiale Books vii–ix, mostly shown as ruler-portraits in the Boulogne manuscripts. More interesting is Book x, where Boulogne 131 gives a subtle rendering of Claudius on his deathbed designating his son Britannicus as his successor while Agrippina and her followers put forward Nero (Figures 9.18, 9.19, 9.20) — of course Nero does succeed and has Britannicus murdered. Compare the very striking image in Lisbon, BN, il.126, a rare copy of the Latin Speculum made in the mid fifteenth century. There the dramatic tension has disappeared and Nero is simply selected without Britannicus so much as making an appearance and Agrippina is a shadowy background figure, making it look as though the choice of Nero as his successor was Claudius’s own.36 After this comes Charlemagne in Book xxv.37 Boulogne 130 depicts the Emperor and soldiers (Figure 9.21), emblematic of his campaigns, but lacking the narrative interest manifested in naf 6295 and Ashburnham 125 and limiting the illustration to a single historiated initial of a rather generic type. This was also the illustrative choice made in at least one of the Parisian copies made in the early decade of the fourteenth century.38 What do the illustrative strategies of the Chronique and Vincent tell us? Despite their differences of language and historical focus, both use images as markers in a lengthy narrative whose detail is depicted only occasionally. Someone, in each case, liked particular subjects and chose to highlight them — the succession of Astiages and Claudius in the Boulogne copies of Vincent; Troy, the anticipated death of Roland, and the fates of the souls in the Chronique. The strategy in Vincent’s Speculum historiale is similar to that of the thirteenth-century bible, whether in Latin or in French — one picture per book, sometimes a portrait, sometimes an episode from a narrative. In either case, these illustrations and those in the Chronique call forth allusions — whether to the words of the story in the text, or to similar themes or episodes in other texts and other pictures. No doubt medieval audiences enjoyed tracing the sources, parallels, and possible influences of these images as I hope we do today.
35 Again the Lisbon copy il.126 stands out for depicting the conception of Alexander, with Nectanebus as dragon approaching Olympias in bed, while outside, Philip of Macedonia consults the heavens (König, in Splendeur de l’enluminure). 36 König in Splendeur de l’enluminure, pp. 327, 329. This leaf is now Cleveland Museum of Art acc. no. 1987–4. 37 Boulogne, 131 ends with Book xix. 38 Cf. Toulouse, BM, 449, fol. 3v. In Paris, BnF, lat. 4900, fol. 29v, Charlemagne addresses four standing men. In Oxford, Merton College, 126. fol. 4r Charlemagne receives a royal emissary.
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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W. 139 Besançon Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 863 Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, MSS 130, 131, 132, 133, 192 Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale, MS II 1396 Cambrai, Médiathèque municipale, 189–90 Castres, BM, 3 Chalon-sur-Saône, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 5 Cleveland, Museum of Art, acc.no. 1987–4 Collegeville, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, Bean 3 and Acta Artium Collection cuttings Dallas, Southern Methodist University, Bridwell Library, MS 13 Dijon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MSS 568–69 Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 797 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Ashburnham 125 Ghent, University Library, MS 92 Lisbon, Biblioteca Nazional, MS il. 126 London, British Library, MSS Add. 10292–4, Add. 15269, 36684, Royal 16 G.vi, Sloane 2433 London, Sotheby and Co., 17.xii. 91, lot 54 Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, MS 44 Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, James Ford Bell Library, MS B1280f Vi New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 229 New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MSS M.751, M.754 Oxford, Merton College, MSS 123–26 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MSS français 95, 786 ———, MS latin 4900 ———, MS nouvelle acquisition française 6295 ———, fr. 316 Philadelphia, Free Library, MS J. R. Lewis Collection E 181 Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1133 Salamanca, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 2631 Santiago de Compostela, Archivo de la Catedral, Jacobus: Codex Calixtinus, sn Toulouse, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 449 Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 170 Primary Sources Bibliotheca mundi Vincentii Burgundi, ex ordine Praedicatorum venerabilis episcopi Bellovacensis, Speculum quadruplex, naturale, doctrinale, morale, historiale (Douai: ex officina typographica Baltazaris Belleri, 1624, repr. Graz, 1964–1965) Codex Calixtinus de la Universidad de Salamanca (facsimile, Burgos: Siloé, 2011)
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Jacobus: Codex Calixtinus de la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela (facsimile, Madrid: Kaydeda, 1993) Jean de Vignay, Le miroir historial. Édition critique du livre I (Prologue) et du livre V (Histoire d’Alexandre le Grand), ed. and trans. by Laurent Brun, Forksningsrapporter / Cahiers de la recherche, 44 (Stockholm: Department of French, Italian and Classical Languages, Stockholm University,2010) Jean de Vignay, Le miroir historial, volume I, tome I (livres I–IV), ed. by Mattia Cavagna (Paris: Société des anciens textes français and Abbeville, 2017) Johannes, The Old French Johannes Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle: A Critical Edition, ed. by Ronald N. Walpole (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976) Liber sancti Jacobi: Codex Calixtinus, ed. and trans. by Klaus Herbers and Manuel Santos Noya (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1998) Secondary Works ARLIMA: Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge Brown, Elizabeth A. R., and Michael W. Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49 (1986), 1–40 Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Vincent de Beauvais and the reditus regni francorum ad stirpem Caroli imperatoris’, in Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une œuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Âge. Actes du XIVe Colloque de l’Institut d’études médiévales, organisé conjointement par l’Atelier Vincent de Beauvais et l’Institut d’études médiévales. 27–30 avril 1988, ed. by Monique Paulmier-Foucart, Serge Lusignan, and Alain Nadeau, Cahiers d’études médiévales. Cahier spécial, 4 (Saint-Laurent: Bellarmin, 1990), pp. 167–96 ———, ‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, in The Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St James, ed. by John Williams and Alison Stones, Jakobus-Studien, 3 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1992), pp. 51–88 Brown, Mary Franklin, Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012) BVMM-cnrs: Bibliothèque virtuelle de manuscrits médiévaux https://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/ recherche/rechercheParVille.php# Brun, Laurent, and Mattia Cavagna, ‘Das Speculum historiale und seine französische Übersetzung durch Jean de Vignay’, in Übertragungen: Formen und Konzepte von Reproduktion in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. by Britta Bußmann, Albrecht Hausmann, Annelie Kreft, and Cornelia Logemann, Trends in Medieval Philology, 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), pp. 279–302 Chavannes-Mazel, Claudine, ‘The Miroir historial of Jean le Bon. The Leiden Manuscript and its Related Copies’ (PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1988) Delisle, Léopold, ‘Notice sur la chronique d’un Anonyme de Béthune du temps de Philippe-Auguste’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et autres bibliothèques, 34.1 (1891), 365–97 Derolez, Albert, The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus: A Study of the Original Manuscript, Ghent, University Library MS 92 (London: Harvey Miller, 2015)
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Duchenne, Marie-Christine, Gregory G. Guzman, and J. B. Voorbij, ‘Une liste des manuscrits du Speculum historiale de Vincent de Beauvais’, Scriptorium, 41 (1987), 286–94 Fastes du Gothique: le siècle de Charles V, ed. by Francoise Baron, Francois Avril, Philippe Chapu, Francoise Perot, and Danielle Gaborit-Chopin (Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, 1981) Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) Hedeman, Anne D., The Royal Image: Illustrations of the ‘Grandes Chroniques de France’ (1274–1422), California Studies in the History of Art, 28 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) Labory, Gillette T., ‘Anonyme de Béthune’, in Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: le Moyen Âge, ed. by Geneviève Hasenohr and Michel Zink (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 68–69 Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections, ed. by James R. Tanis (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001) Lector et compilator. Vincent de Beauvais, frère et precheur. Un intellectuel et son milieu au xiiie siècle, ed. by Serge Lusignan and Monique Paulmier, Rencontres à Royaumont (Grâne: Créaphis, 1997) Lee, Hye-Min, ‘Les images de l’histoire: du Speculum historiale au Miroir historial: culture historique et iconographie dans les manuscrits enluminés de Vincent de Beauvais’ (PhD thesis, École des Hautes Études en Siences sociales, 2006) ———, ‘Images, culture et mémoire d’histoire: l’iconographie dans l’encyclopédie historique de Vincent de Beauvais’, Vincent of Beauvais Newsletter, 33 (2008), 3–6 Lejeune, Rita, and Jacques Stiennon, La Légende de Roland dans l’art du Moyen Âge, 2 vols (Brussels: Éditions Arcade, 1966) Pérez-Simon, Maud, Mise en roman et mise en image: les manuscrits du Roman d’Alexandre en prose (Paris: Champion, 2015) Raquetta, Maria Teresa, ‘From Saint-Denis to Béthune: The Chronique française des rois de France by the Anonymous of Béthune and its Textual Background’, Medium Ævum, 86.1 (2017), 299–322 Ross, D. J. A., and Alison Stones, ‘The Roman d’Alexandre in French Prose: Another Illustrated Manuscript from Champagne or Flanders c. 1300’, Scriptorium, 56 (2002), 151–62 Ross, D. J. A., Illustrated Medieval Alexander-Books in French Verse, ed. by Maud PérezSimon and Alison Stones, Manuscripta Illuminata, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) Short, Ian, ‘Review of Spiegel, Romancing the Past’, Romance Philology, 51 (1997), 97–99 Spiegel, Gabrielle, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) Sotheby and Co., Catalogue, 17.xii. 91, lot 54 Splendeur de l’enluminure: Le roi René et ses livres, ed. by Marc-Édouard Gautier, with François Avril (Angers: Ville d’Angers and Actes Sud, 2009) Stones, Alison, The Minnesota Vincent of Beauvais Volumes and Cistercian Thirteenth-Century Manuscripts (Minneapolis: The James Ford Bell Library, 1977)
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———, ‘Prolegomena to a Corpus of Illustrated Vincent of Beauvais Manuscripts’, in Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une œuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Âge. (Actes du XIVe Colloque de l’Institut d’études médiévales, organisé conjointement par l’Atelier Vincent de Beauvais et l’Institut d’études médiévales. 27–30 avril 1988), ed. by Monique Paulmier-Foucart, Serge Lusignan, and Alain Nadeau, Cahiers d’études médiévales. Cahier spécial, 4 (Saint-Laurent: Bellarmin, 1990), pp. 301–44 ———, ‘The Codex Calixtinus and the Iconography of Charlemagne’, in Roland and Charlemagne in Europe: Essays on the Reception and Transformation of a Legend, ed. by Karen Pratt, King’s College London Medieval Studies, XII (London: Kings College, 1996), pp. 169–203 ———, ‘Las ilustraciones del Pseudo-Turpín de Johannes y la Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune’, in El Pseudo-Turpín lazo entre el culto Jacobeo y el culto de Carlomagno. Actas del VI congreso internacional de Estudios Jacobeos, ed. by Klaus Herbers, Colección científica (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2003), pp. 317–30 ———, Gothic Manuscripts 1260–1320, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, 4 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 2013–2014) ———, ‘L’Estoire del saint Graal, Paris, BnF fr. 95’, Art de l’Enluminure, 68 (2019), 4–59 Vincentius Belvacensis, (online Newsletter), ed. by Eva Albrecht and Hans Voorbij Vorholt, Hannah, Shaping Knowledge: The Transmission of the Liber Floridus, Warburg Institute Studies and Texts, 6 (London: The Warburg Institute, 2017) Załuska, Yolanda, with Marie-Françoise Damongeot, France Saulnier, Guy Lanoé, Manuscrits enluminés de Dijon, Corpus des manuscrits enluminés des collections publiques des départements (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1991)
Robert E. Lerner
Jacob of Santa Sabina Warns Philip the Fair that Boniface VIII is Antichrist by Means of Scripture and the Oraculum Cyrilli
A document addressed by a certain ‘illiterate Jacob’ to the King of France (Philip IV, known as Philip the Fair) has lain unnoticed among the Nogaret papers in the Parisian Archives nationales (AN J 491B, no. 79; see Figure 10.1)1 until it recently was called to my attention by Elizabeth A. R. Brown. It is a stunning piece of propaganda that warns Philip against Pope Boniface VIII by means of scripture and an eschatological prophecy, the Oraculum Cyrilli. As I intend to show, it is a noteworthy addition to the dossier of evidence concerning the contest that broke out in May 1297 between the party led by two cardinals of the Colonna family ( James and Peter) and the pope. In addition, it adds to knowledge concerning prophetic thought at the turn of the fourteenth century.
‘Antibonus’ The document is labelled in a fourteenth-century hand on the dorse: ‘Allegationes illiterati Jacob contra Bonifacium’. It is copied in an elegant cursiva libraria bearing chancery traits, and was most likely made in France.2 ‘Allegations’ is mild, for it is a diatribe consisting of a succession of dire prophetic imprecations. The name of the
1 Apparently no one has seen fit to look at it since its listing in Langlois, ‘Les papiers de Guillaume de Nogaret et Guillaume de Plaisians au trésor des chartes’, p. 234. Peggy Brown not only called my attention to the document but provided a physical description and a photocopy. This paper therefore depends on her alertness and generosity. I am deeply indebted as well to Professor Gian Luca Potestà, who read an earlier draft with extraordinary care and not only caught some mistakes in transcription but identified a weak spot that led to a substantial revision. Professor Stephen Jaeger also read an earlier draft with great care and helped me to some better Latinity. 2 See its resemblance to plates 87 and 88 in Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: manuscripts copied in France in 1265 and 1298 respectively. Alexander Patschovsky kindly helped me with paleographical matters. Robert E. Lerner is Professor Emeritus and the Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities Emeritus at Northwestern University. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 331-350 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122626
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Figure 10.1. Image of AN J491B, no. 79. Photo by Nicholas Vincent. Used by permission of the Archives nationales de France.
author and identity of the addressee appear in the invocation: ‘For the honor of the highest God and the illumination of the Catholic faith, to the illustrious King of the Franks, [from] Jacob illiteratus the following’. Although the author calls himself
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‘illiteratus’, it can be seen immediately that he is employing a modesty topos that verges on the preposterous, for his address consists primarily of a succession of well-chosen authoritative quotations that display deep learning. From the start, Jacob’s diatribe assumes a mode of prophecy and is scorching: The wisdom of God the Father vanquishes the evil of all iniquity. It reaches, therefore, from the end of the old law to the end of the ages mightily and orders all prophecy sweetly (Wisdom 8. 1). But all human thoughts are vain in which there is no knowledge of God, and that cannot understand the things that are good (Wisdom 13. 1). Listen to this [you] divine fruits, and bud forth as the rose planted by the brooks of waters. (Ecclesiasticus 39. 17). For the Lord is the God of revenge. The God of revenge acts freely (Psalms 93. 1) when He has compelled Antibonus, thief and robber ( John 10. 1), to submit himself to death by means of his faithful servant. What leaps out from this invocation is the strange reference to ‘Antibonus, thief and robber’. Capitalization to indicate a proper name seems unavoidable, for an adjective ‘antibonus’ would be a hapax legomenon, and at any rate would hardly make sense in the context. (An ‘antigood thief and robber’?) But we do know that Jacob is writing to Philip the Fair and we know as well that the hand on the dorse takes his writing to be ‘against Boniface’. Moreover, another passage in the text confirms the reading of ‘Antibonus’ as Boniface by referring to Boniface VIII’s treatment of Celestine V. Although the author prefers the dark manner of a prophet in avoiding specific names, in this instance he violates his rule: while quoting from Matthew 24. 36 he assumes the voice of Christ in writing: ‘but know ye this, that if the paterfamilias, Celestinus, knew at what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch and would not suffer his house to be broken open’. As for the Lord’s ‘faithful servant’ in the imprecation concerning ‘Antibonus’, this must be the King of France. The term ‘faithful servant’ appears a second time towards the end of Jacob’s diatribe. There, referring to Daniel’s prophecy, ‘the sanctuary will be cleansed’ (Daniel 8. 14), Jacob pronounces that ‘God will cleanse his sanctuary from that dung by means of his faithful servant’ (Deus suum sanctuarium per suum fidelem famulum ab illo fetore mundavit). As with ‘the faithful servant’ compelling ‘Antibonus to submit himself to death’, this is as much adjuration as it is prophecy. Jacob addresses the King of France in the hope that he will move against ‘Antibonus, thief and robber’, who fouls the sanctuary with dung.
Main Contents The central and largest part of Jacob’s diatribe consists of verbatim or largely verbatim citations of six authoritative prophetic texts for the purpose of warning against Boniface. These are John 10. 1 and 10; Matthew 24. 43 and 15; Daniel 8. 13–14; II Thessalonians 2. 3–4; the Oraculum Cyrilli; and Ezekiel 28. 12 and 16–19. The passages from John are spoken by Christ himself (‘ipsa veritas’) and warn against the fox who breaks into the sheepfold. The subsequent words from Matthew are also spoken by Christ and come from the so-called ‘little apocalypse’. Given that Christ mentions Daniel
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(‘When you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel’), Jacob then moves to that prophet: ‘How long shall the daily sacrifice by the sin of the desolation, and the sanctuary and the strength be trodden down’? To which the answer in the passage is: ‘Until evening and morning two thousand three hundred days and the sanctuary shall be cleansed’. At this point Jacob interrupts his skein of citations by drawing out the text in order to make a prediction of his own: ‘Therefore from the evening of the false pope and morning of the true pope two thousand and three hundred days and the sanctuary of God will be cleansed of the trampling of the false pope’ (Usque ergo ad vesperam falsi pontificis et mane veri pontificis dies duo milia trecenti et munditum est sanctuarium Dei a conculcatione falsi pontificis). This prediction is of crucial importance for interpreting Jacob’s work and I will return to it. Jacob’s next citation is his boldest. On the basis of a charge that the ‘false pontiff’ has made a ‘falling away [division] in the Church of God’, he adduces St Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians that when there is ‘falling away’ then ‘the man of sin will be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God […] sitting in the temple of God he shows himself as if God’ (II Thessalonians 2. 3–4). Here Jacob implicitly proclaims that Boniface VIII is Antichrist, because the phrase ‘son of perdition’ (filius perditionis) in his day was the best-known biblical epithet to that effect. Among countless other examples, it appears as a designation for Antichrist in the standard accounts of Haimo of Auxerre, Adso, and Pseudo-Methodius.3 Jacob’s subsequent resort to passages from the Oraculum Cyrilli is his most unexpected. Up to this point, he was citing words from canonical scripture, but now he turns to an obscure extra-scriptural prophetic writing. Like his prediction concerning ‘two thousand and three hundred days’, this is an aspect of his text that deserves further comment. Lastly, Jacob returns to the Bible by citing extracts from a long passage in Ezekiel that excoriates ‘the Prince of Tyre’ (Ezekiel 28. 1–19). While eschatological passages from John, Matthew, Daniel, and Paul provided conventional material for apocalyptic prophecy, Jacob’s appropriation of Ezekiel’s address to the Prince of Tyre stands out as unusual for the genre. The apparent reason for the choice is that the citations offered possibilities for specific applications to Boniface VIII. The first was implicit. Ezekiel indicts the Prince of Tyre for blasphemous grandiosity: ‘your heart is lifted up and you say “I am God and sit in the seat of God”, yet you are a man and not God’ (Ezekiel 28. 2). In the immediately following line, where Ezekiel says to the Prince of Tyre ‘behold you are wiser than Daniel: no secret is hidden from you’ (Ezekiel 28. 3), Jacob lodged an interjection of his own: ‘as if he openly said that Daniel foretold the work of your trampling and fixed the number of your ejection’. Here he was referring to a prediction regarding Daniel’s ‘number’ that he had made himself on the basis of
3 Haymo Halberstatensis [recte: Haimo of Auxerre], Expositio in D. Pauli epistolas, col. 779: ‘Fuerit homo peccati, Antichristus videlicet, qui licet homo sit, fons tamen erit omnium peccatorum. Et filius perditionis, id est filius diaboli, non per naturam, sed per imitationem. Qui ideo appellatur perditio, quia per illum venit perditio, et ipse perdidit humanum genus’. Adso of Montier-en-Der, De ortu et tempore antichristi. ed. by Verhelst, p. 23, ll. 38–39: ‘Unde et ille homo filius perditionis appellatur’; Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius, ed. by Aerts and Kortekaas, p. 195, ll. 1–2: ‘Ingredietur enim hic filius perditionis in Hierosolimam et sedebit in templo Dei sicut Deus’.
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his earlier quotation from Daniel. Then, at the point where Ezekiel says obscurely ‘you, signet of the similitude of God’, Jacob explains in his own voice: ‘as if he openly said “the highest pontiff holds the similitude of God on earth”; you indeed false pope, signet of similitude, how much you are able to seize’. In conclusion, Jacob quotes a long sequence of lines running from: ‘in the multitude of your trade you were filled with iniquity in your inner parts, and you sinned, and I cast you from the mountain of God’ (Ezekiel 18. 16) to the withering end of the passage: ‘all who have seen you among the nations are appalled by you; you are brought to nothing, and you will be no more forever’ (Ezekiel 28. 19). Jacob’s solemnly rhetorical peroration addresses the French King in the third person with a string of anaphora. ‘He should regard’ (Consideret) how holy mother Church is assaulted by the thief and robber who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate ( John 10. 1, 10). ‘He should regard’ how the daily sacrifice, and the sanctuary and the strength is trodden down by the sin of the desolation, and how by the time appointed by Daniel God cleanses his sanctuary from dung by means of his faithful servant (Daniel 8. 13–14). ‘He should regard’ how the son of perdition sows dissension and exalts himself above all that is called God according to what Paul predicted’ (II Thessalonians 2. 3–4). ‘He should regard the seduction of the true pastor […] according to what is had in Cyril’. ‘He should regard’ how Ezekiel calls him signet of similitude but not similitude of God, and how he is sentenced to burning and being reduced to ashes and cast from the holy mountain of God so that he be nothing forever (Ezekiel 28. 12, 18, 16, 19). With the malediction of ‘nothing forever’, Jacob ends his missive.
The Passages from the Oraculum Cyrilli Jacob’s citations from the Oraculum Cyrilli seem out of place because they appear in the midst of citations from canonical scripture. But inasmuch as Jacob called the work the ‘angelic writing given to Saint Cyril’, it is clear that he knew an accompanying work that travelled in the medieval manuscripts with the ‘writing’ itself. This, supposedly written by ‘Cyril’, a ‘hermit of Mount Carmel’, explained that while he was saying Mass an angel appeared from a little cloud and handed him two tablets with Greek writing containing the message that Cyril then set down.4 Evidently, then, for Jacob the work was heavenly. The Oraculum Cyrilli was a designedly cryptic prophetic text that became widely circulated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Today some thirty-three manuscript copies are known, as well as citations by Arnald of Villanova, Angelo Clareno, and Cola di Rienzo, and a lengthy commentary by John of Rupescissa.5
4 The pseudonymous letter of ‘Cyril’ to ‘Joachim’ is part of a conglomerate of texts centering on the oracle itself. They are all edited by Paul Piur in Burdach and Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, iv, 251–327, with the letter of ‘Cyril’ at pp. 243–45. 5 A list of fifteen manuscripts is given by Francesco Santi, ‘Felip Ribot, i Carmelitani e l’Apocalisse nello specchio dell’Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, pp. 505–06. I know of three more, whereas Gian Luca Potestà informs me that he knows a total of thirty-three copies (Email message of 14 September 2019). There is also at least one fifteenth-century Italian translation. For Arnald of Villanova, see
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Although the prophecy customarily was accompanied in the manuscripts by several shorter texts, here the prophecy alone (the ‘angelic oracle’) concerns us because it is all that Jacob draws from. There is no doubt about the obscurity. Paul Piur, the early twentieth-century editor of the text, believed that the Oraculum Cyrilli was first written in Greek, although he acknowledged that a Greek version does not survive.6 Surely the Latin text contains many transliterated Greek words — from ‘anthropos’ to ‘uranoscopus’. Another difficulty is that some putatively Latin words are otherwise unknown and further challenge lies in the frequent appearance of emblematic creatures that need decoding: ‘freezing serpent’, ‘dry dragon’, ‘wild lion wagging its tail’. Yet if one persists it is possible to discern overall meaning, for the author did not go to the trouble of writing merely to be perverse. The oracle ranges over past, present, and future in eleven chapters, with past and present events being presented as prophecy to offer credibility. The first five chapters taken together offer veiled accounts primarily of the struggle between Charles I and Charles II of Anjou with the house of Aragon, the next two deal primarily with Boniface VIII’s treatment of Celestine V, and the last three move to what evidently is real prophecy.7 Given that the Oraculum Cyrilli alludes with sufficient clarity to the reign of Boniface VIII and a war between France and England, a terminus post quem for the date of composition is 1294. Piur’s edition allows certainty that the passages Jacob quotes from what he terms ‘the angelic writing given to Saint Cyril’ are actually taken from the received Oraculum Cyrilli as known from its late medieval circulation, albeit with occasional variants. Here are a few samples: Jacob Tunc seducet Ieroboham per sacum aste lacerum, ut unicus in Syon speculetur.
Piur, Oraculum Cyrilli, ch. vii (p. 296, ll. 1–3) Hunc confestim seducet Ieroboam cum avis filio sagum lacerum aste pretendens, quo aurum effunditer, ut in Syon unicus speculetur.
Jacob
Piur, Oraculum Cyrilli, ch. vii (p. 296, ll. 5–6) Et hoc fiet non cauma pneumatis sed algore ut ostendat non cauma pneumatis florem eruginis. apparuisse sed algorem eruginis insperate.
Mensa i Valls, ‘Les obres espirituals d’Arnau de Vilanova i la “Revelació de Sent Ciril” (Oraculum angelicum Cyrilli)’, pp. 211–63; for Angelo, see Ehrle, ‘Die “historia septem tribulationum ordinis minorum” des fr. Angelus de Clarino’, pp. 289, 290; for Cola, see Burdach and Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, v, 386–89. Rupescissa’s Commentary on the Oraculum Cyrilli is treated in BignamiOdier, Études sur Jean de Roquetaillade, pp. 53–112. 6 Burdach and Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, pp. 223, 225. 7 See further, Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens, pp. 238–45, and Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist, pp. 282–89.
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Jacob Gallus cum vulpe soliti dimicabunt.
Piur, Oraculum Cyrilli, ch. vii (p. 296, l. 9) Gallus cum vulpe soliti dimicabunt.
Jacob
Piur, Oraculum Cyrilli, ch. vii (pp. 296–97, ll. 10–11) Epicurus subsannabit orthodoxas [sic] suis Orthodoxos subsannabit ritibus Epicurus, ritibus, inferens nil esse post organum. inferens nichil esse post organum. Jacob Rapuisti siquidem dyadema floresque multicolores, ut sertum tibi conficeris delicatum.
Piur, Oraculum Cyrilli, ch. vii (pp. 296–97, ll. 20–21) Rapuisti siquidem dyadema floresque multicolores, ut sertum tibi conficeris delicatum.
At the start of his string of quotations from the Oraculum Cyrilli Jacob equates ‘the false pope’, Saint Paul’s ‘man of sin [and] son of perdition’, with ‘the false seducer in the angelic writing given to Saint Cyril’. This seducer is ‘Jeroboam’: ‘Jeroboam will seduce by the cleverly torn purse as to be the sole watchman in Syon’ (Seducet Ieroboham per sacum aste lacerum, ut unicus in Syon speculetur). The allusion to ‘Jeroboam’ is clarified if we understand that the name comes from 1 Kings (11–12). There Jeroboam rebels against Solomon’s son Rehoboam, the just inheritor of the entire Hebrew kingdom. This revolt results in the creation of a northern kingdom, Israel, ruled by Jeroboam, and a southern one, Judah, ruled by Rehoboam. In Israel Jeroboam institutes worship of golden calves. It is well to note that Jacob quotes exclusively from Chapter vii of the oracle, the chapter that treats the awfulness of Jeroboam. Thus there is a convergence: the ‘false pope’ and ‘false seducer’ who is ‘Jeroboam’ are all different terms for Boniface VIII.
Jacob’s Interventions ‘Jacob illiteratus’ was surely no illiterate. His biblical mastery was profound. He drew from the Book of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Psalms, and adduced a skein of mutually confirmatory proof texts from John, Matthew, Daniel, Paul, and Ezekiel. He knew the rare Oraculum Cyrilli well enough to adduce an apposite chapter and he displayed comfort with its obscurities. He was a self-conscious literary stylist. In his peroration he distilled the purport of the Oraculum Cyrilli in phrases marked by periodic rhymes: ‘of the true shepherd’ (veri pastoris); ‘of the victorious cock’; (galli victoris); ‘and of the derider’ (et derisoris); ‘works of manifest error’ (manifesti erroris); ‘of his labour and grief ’ (laboris et doloris). Moreover, his choice of Ezekiel’s excoriations lent him enormous power, especially when he paraphrased them in his ringing conclusion: ‘he sentences him to burning, to returning to ashes, to ejection from the mountain of God so that he be nothing forever’. Particularly important for the purpose of the present analysis are passages where Jacob speaks in his own voice. One is where he draws out the meaning of Daniel 8. 13–14.
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He introduces his citation with the words: ‘Give mind to and see Daniel predicting this sin of desolation and numbering the cleansing of the sanctuary’ (Animavertite et videte Danielem hoc peccatum desolationis predicentem et mundationem sancturarii numerantem). Then he offers the text: ‘“How long shall the continual sacrifice, and the sin of the desolation that is made, and the sanctuary and the strength be trodden under foot?” And [the angel said] “from evening until morning, two thousand three hundred days and the sanctuary will be cleansed”’ (Usque ad vesperam et mane, dies duo milia trecenti et mundabitur sanctuarium). Then Jacob explains: ‘therefore from the evening of the false pope and the morning of the true pope [there will be] two thousand three hundred days, and the sanctuary of God will be cleansed of the trampling of the false pope’ (Usque ergo ad vesperam falsi pontificis et mane veri pontificis dies duo milia trecenti et mundatum est sanctuarium Dei a conculcatione falsi pontificis). (We have noted that Jacob emphasized the ‘numbering’ when he commented on Ezekiel in saying that ‘Daniel foretold the work of your trampling and fixed the number of your ejection’.) There is a prophecy here, and with a little application one can figure it out. A medieval exegetical commonplace was that when Scripture referred in mysterious ways to numbers of days, these could be translated into years. (Ezekiel 4. 6: ‘I have appointed you each day for a year’.) Thus if we convert 2,300 days into years, the result is 6.3 years. And then we note that Boniface VIII ascended to the papacy at the end of 1294. So if he is the ‘false pope’ whose trampling of the sanctuary of God will be eliminated on the morning of a ‘true pope’, the year of the cleansing will be 1300. But when was Jacob writing? His text allows three dating indexes. One depends on a remark he made in introducing a citation from the Oraculum Cyrilli that he believed ‘foretold’ the abominations of Boniface VIII. He states: ‘it says openly that there will be plunder finally’ (dicit aperte quod novissime rapietur), and then quotes: ‘Plunder many, luxurious virgin, for even you finally (novissime) will be plundered’ (Rape plurima, virgo deliciosa, quia novissime rapieris et tu). It is sufficiently clear that the ‘virgin’ in the Oraculum Cyrilli is the Church,8 and that here the ‘luxurious virgin’ is the corrupted Church under Boniface VIII. Thus the words ‘even you finally will be plundered’ that Jacob views as saying something ‘openly’ must refer to the plundering of Boniface VIII’s treasury by the Colonna faction in May 1297. The second index depends on a cryptic line in the Oraculum Cyrilli: ‘the cock will struggle with the fox as usual’ (gallus cum vulpe soliti dimicabunt), about which Jacob remarks: ‘[this] tells an old fable, [which is] not a fable but true history’ (narrat antiquam fabulam non fabulam sed rem in veritate gestam). In Jacob’s day a fable about a cock that gains victory over a fox was widely known. It appears in the Fables of Marie de France and comprised ‘branch II’ of the popular Roman de Renart.9 As 8 Thus Chapter III’s ‘virgin’ in ‘sponsus virginem’ (Burdach and Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, iv, 262, l. 5) is the Church whose bridegroom is Christ, a reading confirmed in the commentary of Pseudo-Joachim that customarily accompanied the text and seems to have been written shortly after it: ‘Ecclesiam vocat “virginem” quoad incorrumptionem virtutum et “sponsam” quoad coniunctionem cum Christo’ (Burdach and Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, iv, 265, ll. 34–35). 9 Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval England, pp. 243–51.
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for ‘true history’, the ‘cock’ surely stands for France (gallus/Gallia), and fortunately the author of the Oraculum Cyrilli himself did us a favour by referring in chapter iv to the ‘bloody fox of England’.10 Thus for Jacob the oracle’s prediction of a struggle between cock and fox had become ‘true history’ because he knew a contemporary war between France and England.11 This was the war that transpired between 1294 and 1297. Jacob writes as if the war were over (rem in veritate gestam). For his sense of when it ended, we can turn to the third index. In his peroration he alludes to the oracle’s ‘prophecy’ of the war as referring to the ‘audacity of the victorious cock’ (audacia galli victoris). The one clear French victory in this war occurred on 20 August 1297, when Robert of Artois defeated the Flemish (allied with the English) at the Battle of Furnes. This victory was followed up five days later by the surrender of the city of Lille to Philip the Fair himself, after a ten week’s siege, and the actual entry into Lille occurred on 1 September. These events must have led Jacob to highlight the ‘audacity of the victorious cock’. Probably for him the war was then over and hence, since he seems to have been writing when the French victories were of clear imprint, we might date his diatribe to late August or early September of 1297. To be safe, however, the date could have been somewhat later, after a formal truce between representatives of the kings of France and England was signed on 9 October.12
The Mission of Jacob OP, Prior of the Roman Dominican Convent of Santa Sabina It is gratifying now to report that the internal evidence of the diatribe by ‘Jacobus illiteratus’ matches independent external evidence. I refer to testimony given in Avignon in April 1311 in the course of Pope Clement V’s inquisition into the ‘good zeal’ of the king of France regarding his actions against Boniface VIII. The depositions of two men refer to an attempt of the Colonna cardinals to gain support from the King of France in 1297 by sending him manifestos against Boniface they had just issued.13 The first was by Nicholas of Fréauville OP, a cardinal in 1311 but Philip the Fair’s confessor in 1297.14 Nicholas testified that at the time when King 10 Burdach and Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, p. 269, ll. 4–5: ‘propter quod sicco Draconi confederabitur et sanguinee Vulpi de Anglia’. 11 The commentary of Pseudo-Joachim that appears in most manuscripts of the Oraculum Cyrilli specifies independently that the conflict between cock and fox refers to war between France and England: ‘Tunc Gallus: hic tangit conflictum non insolitum inter reges Francorum Anglorumque’ (Burdach and Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, p. 300, ll. 35–36). 12 On the events of August 1297 and the subsequent conclusion of the war, see Favier, Philippe le Bel, pp. 223–28. 13 The manifestos are edited by Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, pp. 32–63. The deposition of a third witness, James Colonna, referred to the same event but lacked the specific information offered by the other two: Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, pp. 848–49. 14 For details of his career, Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 772 n. 1. See also Field, ‘King/Confessor/ Inquisitor: A Capetian-Dominican Convergence’, p. 55.
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Philip was laying siege to Lille two Dominicans who were sent by the Colonna cardinals came to bring ‘letters and instruments which contained much about the illegitimate entry into the papacy of Lord Boniface and even of the heresy of the same and that petitioned the Lord King to convoke a general council’. Philip the Fair’s siege of Lille lasted from 23 June until the end of August 1297, making it reasonably clear that the Dominicans brought the three manifestos against Boniface calling for a council, the last of which was issued on 15 June. Nicholas went on to say that in receiving the presentation ‘the king responded, verbally but not in writing, that he would deliberate and in due time would do whatever he had decided’.15 That one of the two Dominicans sent to the French King by the Colonna cardinals was merely a socius (Dominicans were required to travel in twos, but one was customarily an ‘associate’ of the other) becomes clear from a more detailed account made in April 1311 by Cardinal Peter Colonna that refers to an emissary named Jacob.16 Peter testified that letters he and his uncle James had directed against Boniface petitioning for the calling of a general council were sent to ‘kings and princes and metropolitans’ throughout the world; ‘especially, however, they were delivered to the said King of France by the religious and man of great learning, brother Jacob of the Order of Preachers, prior of Santa Sabina de Urbe, who reached the King just as was declared to us, and who was graciously received by him, although secretly as it was said’. Surely this was our ‘Jacobus illiteratus’, since it is impossible to imagine that there could have been two different Jacobs (alternatively they might be called ‘James’), both of great learning, who addressed the King of France about the illegitimacy of Boniface VIII. Jacob of Santa Sabina evidently had a driving desire to oppose Boniface VIII and further the Colonna cause. Thus after he delivered his documents from the Colonna to Philip the Fair, he evidently addressed his own diatribe against Boniface to the King, probably after the latter had returned to Paris. (The formal copying of his polemic and its preservation among the papers of Guillaume de Nogaret would argue for this.) Since it seems that Jacob brought the Colonna manifestos to the King in Lille in the early summer,17 the question of why he lingered for two months or more is a matter for speculation. All we know is that he met a grievous end on his way home. Peter Colonna’s account reports that Jacob was captured by the snares of Boniface VIII in Lyons and imprisoned with iron fetters and tight chains. Dying in imprisonment, he was buried outside of a cemetery with his chains and fetters.
15 Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, pp. 782–83. Coste wryly observes that Philip’s response was ‘in the best diplomatic tradition’. 16 Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, pp. 799–800. 17 Peter Colonna reported that after Jacob’s mission the same Colonna manifestos were brought to King Philip in his tent in Flanders by another emissary, Thomas of Montenigro: Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, pp. 800–05. Nothing here, however, provides grounds for assuming that Jacob left for home before Thomas set out.
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Evaluation The hitherto unexplored document offers much new knowledge. For one, it opens a new vista on the history of the Oraculum Cyrilli. Whereas previously it had been thought that the earliest evidence of the existence of the text is a manuscript copy dating from 1302 and a mention by Arnald of Villanova dating from late 1302 or early 1303,18 we now know that it was available five years earlier when it was in the possession of Jacob of Santa Sabina. Regarding Jacob’s religious affiliation, it does seem strange that a Dominican rather than a Franciscan was an exponent of apocalyptic eschatological prophecy. But Jacob was not entirely an anomaly, given the case of the Provençal Dominican visionary Robert d’Uzès. Nelly Ficzel has remarked ‘if [Robert’s] visions had been communicated anonymously […] there probably would be no doubt of their Franciscan provenance’.19 Robert composed two short works between Boniface VIII’s accession to the papacy in 1294 and his own death in 1296 in which he vilified the ascent of an intruder pope in terms of dark prophetic visions. In figurative language he portrayed Celestine V and Boniface VIII as Cain and Abel, Celestine as ‘lamb of the Church’ and Boniface as ‘idol of the Church’.20 In one vision Robert saw a ‘head of wood’ which a spirit told him ‘signifies the state of the Roman Church’; in another a spirit told him: ‘it will come to pass that one will arise who will not follow the Lord Jesus Christ’; in another he was led to the Lateran Palace where he saw a serpent and was told by a voice that this was Antichrist.21 Much closer to Jacob’s immediate context, moreover, we find that the government of the Dominican Order was concerned about brothers who resisted Boniface. Meeting in Venice for the Pentecost General Chapter of 1297 in the week of 2 June, the attendees issued an encyclical that inveighed against brothers who stirred up opposition against Pope Boniface. Dominicans instead were ‘to preach, teach and constantly assert that the Lord Boniface is the true pope, successor to Peter, and vicar of Jesus Christ’.22 Apparently, then, Jacob of Santa Sabina was just one of a number of Dominican malcontents.
18 For the manuscript copy, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Borgh. 205, see Maier, ‘Handschriftliches zu Arnaldus de Villanova und Petrus Johannis Olivi’, pp. 53–66. (Maier’s dating of 1302 is challenged by Scavizzi, ‘Abbiamo un autografo di Arnaldo de Vilanova?’, pp. 436–37, but provisionally I am unconvinced). For Arnald’s mention, see Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens, p. 238, and Mensa i Valls, ‘Les obres espirituals d’Arnau de Vilanova i la “Revelació de Sent Ciril” (Oraculum angelicum Cyrilli)’, pp. 223–24. 19 Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist, p. 221. 20 Bignami-Odier, ‘Les Visions de Robert d’Uzès O. P. († 1296)’, pp. 288, 290. 21 Bignami-Odier, ‘Les Visions de Robert d’Uzès O. P. († 1296)’, pp. 285, 274. 22 Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist, p. 350, with n. 619, quoting B. M. Reichert, Acta capitulorum generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, i, 284: ‘Districte praecipimus fratribus universis in virtute obedience, ne quis illis qui contra dominum nostrum summum pontificem dominum Bonifacium et sanctam Romanam ecclesiam se erexerunt. […] Mandantes nichilominus et districte iniungentes, quod in predicationibus publicis et alias, cum fuerit oportunum, predicent, doceant et constanter asserant, Dominum Bonifacium esse verum papam, successorem Petri, et vicarium Ihesu Christi’.
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Since his purpose was to portray the crimes and villainies of the pope by means of citing imprecatory passages from Scripture and the Oraculum Cyrilli, it is fitting to ask where his view of Boniface’s crimes fits into a larger picture. Jean Coste, the editor of the dossier of articles of accusation and depositions of witnesses against Boniface, has summarized the main purport of the accusations lodged by the Colonna cardinals in their three manifestos of May and June 1297. These were: the invalidity of Boniface’s election; his cupidinous and tyrannical manner of governing the Church; and his role in encompassing the death of Celestine V.23 Quite appropriately, Jacob’s diatribe emphasizes the same charges in its own fashion. ‘Antibonus’ became ‘false pontiff ’ as a result of his ‘theft and robbery’. Now he was ‘fouling the sanctuary with dung’. He had ‘violently seized’ the ‘Supreme Pontiff ’ and ‘afflicted, imprisoned, and did away’ with him (summum pontificem violenter rapuit, et mactavit, incarceravit, ac perdidit). At one point in their third manifesto the Colonna cardinals charged Boniface with being a schismatic (ipse potius scismaticus et Dei ecclesie violentus et illicitus detemptator24) and this was reiterated by Jacob when he wrote ‘this false pope made division in the Church of God’ (Iste enim falsus pontifex discessionem fecit in ecclesia Dei). Coste adduces a poetic invective of Jacopone da Todi as complementing the charges of the Colonna manifestos since this Franciscan Spiritual was a signatory of the first manifesto and wrote a poem of imprecation, ‘O papa Bonifazio’, between May 1297 and October 1298.25 To the number of the Colonna charges Jacopone adds ‘vainglory’ (l. 80), a charge in which Jacob in effect preceded him by citing Ezekiel to say that Boniface ‘called himself God’. Hitherto it has also been thought that Jacopone was the first opponent of Boniface to charge that he was a heretic, albeit in a single phrase (par che e’temore de Deo dereto aggi gettato; segno è de desperation o de falso sentire – ll. 68–69) that lacks specifics. But now it can be shown that Jacob of Santa Sabina preceded him. Within the body of his quotations against Boniface from the Oraculum Cyrilli he adduced the line: ‘Epicurus will mutter his rites to the orthodox, concluding there is nothing after the bodily organ’ (Ille Epicurus subsannabit orthodoxas [sic] suis ritibus, inferens nil esse post organum).26 This was a reference to the heresy of Epicureanism that denied the immortality of the soul and held that there was nothing after death.27 And then in his peroration he returned to the same charge, deeming Boniface as Epicurean, and now in his own words as perpetrator of ‘manifest error’ (subsannationem Epicuri et derisoris et opera ipsius manifesti erroris). We must wait six more years until Philip the Fair was fully
23 Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 888. 24 Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 62. 25 Coste reproduces the poem at pp. 63–69. I cite lines from Coste. 26 A meaning of ‘organum’ as ‘(bodily) organ’ is offered, among other sources, in the encyclopedia of Bartholomeus Anglicus. See Howlett, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, fasc. VIII: O, s.v. 27 Dante’s heretics in Inferno, Canto X are Epicureans: ‘con Epicuro tutti suoi seguaci,/ che l’anima col corpo morta fanno’ (ll. 14–15). See further e.g. Murray, ‘The Epicureans’, pp. 138–63.
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at war with Boniface VIII to hear Guillaume de Nogaret asserting the same in 1303: ‘I propose that the said Boniface is a manifest heretic’.28 All three of the contemporary denouncers, the Colonna, Jacopone da Todi, and Jacob charged Boniface with stealing, to the point of common vocabulary. The Colonna moved beyond their more formal charges in their second manifesto when they charged Boniface with having illicitly acquired the wealth of the poor and of prelates and clergy: ‘indeed more truly by seizing’ (illicite acquisitam, immo verius raptam).29 The Italian for the same word for seizing or stealing, rapire, occurs in Jacopone’s invective: ‘or non ce basto ‘l leceto alla tua fame dura/ messo t’èi e robbatura como ascaran rapire’.30 And Jacob used the word or its variants six times: thrice in quoting from the Oraculum Cyrilli: ‘Rape plurima Virgo deliciosa, quia novissime rapieris et tu. Rapuisti siquidem dyadema floresque multicolores’; and thrice in his own voice: ‘summus pontifex violenter rapuit; dicit aperte quod novissime rapietur’; and ‘tu vero false pontifex, signaculum similitudinis, tantum rapere potuisti’. Hence the united criticism of the Colonna party here becomes particularly clear, with Jacob of Santa Sabina being the most extensively vituperative voice. Of course he also impugned Boniface VIII’s morals when he wrote that he ‘softens and beautifies his false seat’ (falsem sedem suam mollit et decorat) and ‘gulps down chewed delicacies’ (deliciose trita vel masticata glutinit). Most dramatically, Jacob alone went so far as to brand Boniface VIII as ‘the son of perdition’, in other words, Antichrist. In this regard he was looking forward. In the spring of 1302, when the French crown was reacting to Boniface’s hostile bull Ausculta fili, the legist Pierre Dubois drew up a list of charges that included the assertion that Boniface was ‘worse than Antichrist’ (ultra Antichristum […] se malum ostendens),31 and concurrently the French nobility protested to the cardinals that Boniface’s abuses had ‘never been found in the hearts of men […] nor can be expected in the future unless with Antichrist’.32 It may be noted that in neither case do the authors state outright that Boniface is Antichrist, and even subsequent writers who took up the theme most explicitly, Ubertino da Casale and Arnald of Villanova, never tarred Boniface VIII as Antichrist directly.33 If it is true then that ‘the papal Antichrist
28 Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 116: ‘Item propono quod dictus Bonifacius est hereticus manifestus’. On p. 116 n. 5: ‘Pour la première fois, est accusé ici formellement d’hèresiè’ although he reviews ‘rumors’ to that sense at pp. 18–23 and 91–103. 29 Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 45. 30 Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 66. 31 Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist, p. 354; Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 92, both drawing on Dupuy, Histoire du differend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel roy de France, pp. 44–47. 32 Dupuy, Histoire du differend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel roy de France, p. 62: ‘ce ne sont choses qui plaisient à Dieu, ne doivent plaire à nul homme de bonne volenté, ne oncques mes telles choses ne descendirent en cuer d’homme, ne ores en furent, ne attendues advenir, fors avecques Antechrist’. For the circumstances, Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège de 1285 à 1304, pp. 99–103. (Two of the signatories were brothers-in-law of a member of the Colonna family). 33 For the Antichrist theme in Ubertino’s Arbor vitae (1305), see Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist, pp. 319–38; for Arnald (author of the commentary on Horoscopus, c. 1305/c. 1307), see Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist, pp. 304–18.
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was a creature chiefly of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries’34 the newly discovered diatribe of Jacob of Santa Sabina would be the most important witness. Jacob stood out too when he assumed the role of seer. In calculating that the passage of ‘two thousand three hundred days’ would bring about ‘the evening of the false pope and the morning of the true pope’ and ‘the cleansing of the sanctuary of God’, he not only was predicting the demise of Boniface VIII for the year 1300 but also the advent of a holy pope and reformation of the Church. Jacob was not to know that the year 1300 actually marked Boniface VIII’s zenith, but Boniface’s demise did come soon enough and with it ascendance in ecclesiastical affairs of the French crown represented by Jacob’s addressee, Philip the Fair.
34 Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist, p. 218. Ficzel reviews a number of related writings to make this point (136–338), with Ubertino and Arnald being the most specific.
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Edition Very thick parchment: 330/33 mm × 512/07 mm. (Information from Elizabeth A. R. Brown.) On the dorse in a fourteenth-century hand: ‘Allegationes illiterati Iacob contra Bonifacium’. The edition adheres to the orthography of the manuscript except in supplying ‘v’ for consonantal ‘u’ and in providing ‘ii’ for ‘ij’. Punctuation and capitalization have been modernized. Ad honorem summi Dei et illuminationem Catholice fidei illustri regi Francorum, illiteratus Iacob, que secuntur. Sapientia Dei Patris vincit maliciam totius iniquitatis. Attingit ergo a fine legis veteris usque ad finem seculorum fortiter, et disponit omnia prophetica suaviter.i Vani sunt autem sensus hominum quibus non subest sciencia Dei, et de his que bona sunt non potuerunt intelligere.ii Audite hec divini fructus, et quasi rosa plantata super rivos aquarum fructificate.iii Quoniam Deus ultionum dominus. Deus ultionum libere egitiv cum Antibonum, furem et latronem,v per fidelem famulum morti servire coegit. Luce etenim clarius manifestatur quod opere et testimonio Spiritus sancti in ecclesia Dei comprobatur. Ait enim ipsa veritas in Iohanne: Qui non intrat per hostium in ovile, sed ascendit aliunde, ille fur est et latro.vi Sequitur, fur non venit nisi ut foretur et perdat.vii Qui igitur in ovile Dei vulpine intravit et principatum domus Dei sibi dolavit, summum pontificem violenter rapuit et mactavit, incarceravit, ac perdidit, qualem se esse manifestat et ostendit. Illud autem quoniam si sciret Celestinus paterfamilias qua hora fur venturus esset, vigilaret utique, et non sineret perfodi domum suam.viii De hac igitur perfosione ipsa veritas clamat in Matheo dicens: Cum videritis abhominationem desolationis, que dicta est a Daniele propheta, stantem in loco sancto, qui legit, intelligat.ix Nunquid ecclesia desolata a vero pastore sequitur vulpem cum sua abhominatione. Animavertite et videte Danielem hoc peccatum desolationis predicentem, et mundationem sanctuarii numerantem. Ait enim: usquequo iuge sacrificium per peccatum desolationis et sanctuarium et fortitudo conculcabitur?x Respondens dixit angelus: dies duo milia trecenti et mundabitur sanctuarium. xi Usque ergo ad vesperam falsi pontificis
i Cf. Wisdom 8. 1: Attingit ergo a fine usque ad finem fortiter, et disponit omnia suaviter. ii Wisdom 13.1: Vani autem sunt omnes homines in quibus non subest scientia Dei; et de his que videntur bona, non potuerunt intelligere. iii Ecclesiasticus 39. 17: Obaudite me, divini fructus, et quasi rosa plantata super rivos aquarum fructificate. iv Psalms 93. 1: Deus ultionum Dominus; Deus ultionum libere egit. v Cf. John 10. 1: ille fur est et latro. vi John 10. 1. vii John 10. 10. viii Matthew 24. 43. ix Matthew 24. 15. x Daniel 8. 13. xi Daniel 8. 14.
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et mane veri pontificis dies duo milia trecenti et mundatum est sanctuarium Dei a conculcatione falsi pontificis. Iste est enim ille falsus pontifex de quo Paulus dicit, quod non instabit dies Dominixii nisi primum venerit discessio et revelatus fuerit homo peccati, filius perditionis, qui adversatur et extollitur supra omne quod dicitur Deus.xiii Iste enim falsus pontifex discessionem fecit in ecclesia Dei. Cum fideles discedere a vero pastore dolose cohortavit et sedens in templo Dei tamquam Deumxiv se ostendit. Iste est enim ille falsus seductor de quo scriptum angelicum beato Cirillo traditum. Ait tunc seducet Ieroboham per sacum aste lacerum, ut unicus in Syon speculetur.xv Et hoc fiet non cauma pneumatis sed algore eruginis.xvi Item narrat antiquam fabulam non fabulam sed rem in veritate gestam, dicens quod gallus cum vulpe soliti dimicabunt.xvii Item dicit quod ille Epicurus subsannabit orthodoxas [sic] suis ritibus, inferens nil esse post organum.xviii Item dicit quomodo Deus sustinet omnium sanctorumxix derisorum qui arbore decisa subsistit, xx addens quod flagra fine noxe subsistunt. xxi Item querit cur divina metiturxxii qui non credit, dicens, qui minus credit magis eloquitur.xxiii Multa grafizas ut libet, ne molesteris temate, quia per angelicum non formidas. xxiv Item dicit quod falsam sedem suam mollit et decorat. dicens: Bene agis essedam tuam molliens et decorans.xxv Item dicit aperte quod novissime rapietur, dicens: Rape plurima virgo deliciosa, quia novissime rapieris et tu.xxvi Rapuisti siquidem dyadema floresque multicolores, ut sertum tibi conficeris delicatum.xxvii Item ostendit qua infirmitate affligetur, dicens Verumptamen granum volarum ac paraclitus penes portam cartulum senciet obturans meatum.xxviii Item dicit quod que deliciose trita vel masticata glutinit, luet, dicens Evomes que glutisti trita.xxix
xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx xxi xxii xxiii xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix
Cf. II Thessalonians 2. 2: quasi instet dies Domini. II Thessalonians 2. 3. Cf. Wisdom 14. 15: nunc tamquam Deum colere coepit. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 1–3: Tunc confestim seducet Ieroboam cum suis filio sagum lacerum aste pretendens, quo aurum effunditer, ut in Syon unicus speculetur. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 5–6: ut ostendat non cauma pneumatis florem apparuisse, sed algorem eruginis insperate. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 9. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 11. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 13: ne ipsum feras mironem omnium sanctorum. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 14: Achari falcem adigens arbore decisa subsistit. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 14–15. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 16: Quid anthropos divina metititur? Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 16–17. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 17–18: Multa grafizas utlibet, ne molesteris theoremate, quia pargolitum non formidas. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 18–19. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 19–20. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 20–21. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 21–22: Verumptamen cum rethe granumque volarum ac paraclytus penes portam calculum senserint obtimatum. Cf. Piur, ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, vii. 23: Evomes que glutisti non trita.
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Item Ezechieli precipitur: Dic principi Tyri eo quod elevatum est cor tuum, et dixisti Deus ego sum, et in cathedra Dei sedeo, cum sis homo, et non deus, et dedisti cor tuum quasi cor Dei. Ecce sapientior es tu Daniele, omne secretum nunc [recte: non] est absconditum a te, xxx acsi aperte sibi diceret Daniel: predixit opera tue concultationis et prefixit numerum tue eiectionis. Et sequitur: Eo quod elevatum est cor tuum quasi cor Dei, ideo ego adducam super te alienos, robustissimos gentium, et nudabunt gladios suos super pulchritudinem sapientie tue et polluent decorem tuum.xxxi Item Ezechias describit eum, sic dicens: Tu signaculum similitudinis Dei, plenus sapientia, perfectus decore in deliciis paradisi Dei fuisti, xxxii acsi aperte sibi diceret: summus pontifex similitudinem Dei tenet in terra. Tu vero, false pontifex, signaculum similitudinis, tantum rapere potuisti. Sequitur: In multitudine negotiationis tue repleta sunt interiora tua iniquitate, et peccasti, et eieci te de monte Dei, et perdidi te de medio lapidum ignitorum.xxxiii In terram proieci te, ante faciem regum dedi te ut cernerent te. xxxiv In multitudine iniquitatum tuarum, et iniquitate negotiationis tue, polluisti sanctificationem tuam; producam ergo ignem de medio tui, qui comedat te, et dabo te in cinerem super terram in conspectu omnium videntium te.xxxv Omnes qui viderunt te in gentibus, obstupescent super te. Nihil factus es, et non eris in perpetuum.xxxvi Consideret ergo sancta mater Romana ecclesia furem et latronem qui per ostium non intravit in ovile ovium quomodo summum pontificem mactavit et perdidit, secundum quod ipsa veritas in ewangelio predixit. Item consideret quomodo per peccatum desolationis iuge sacrificium et sanctuarium et fortitudinem conculcavit et quomodo tempore prefixo a Daniele Deus suum sanctuarium per suum fidelem famulum ab illo fetore mundavit. Item consideret quomodo filius perditionis discessionem a vero pastore in ecclesia Dei seminavit et seipsum extulit supra omne quod dicitur Deus, secundum quod predixit Paulus. Item consideret seductionem veri pastoris et audaciam galli victoris et subsannationem Epicuri et derisoris et opera ipsius manifesti erroris et descriptionem sue infirmitatis et sui laboris, secundum quod habetur in Cirillo. Item consideret quomodo Ezechias describit ipsum allegans Danielem in testimonium veritatis et quomodo vocat eum signaculum similitudinis non autem similitudinem Dei, et quomodo sentenciat ipsum ad comburendum et in cinerem redigendum et de monte sancto Dei eieciendum ita ut nichil sit in perpetuum.
xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi
Ezekiel 28. 2–3. The ‘nunc’ for ‘non’ in the manuscript was most likely a scribal error. Ezekiel 28. 6–7. Ezekiel 28. 12–13. Ezekiel 28. 16. Ezekiel 28. 17. Ezekiel 28. 18. Ezekiel 28. 19.
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Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Sources Paris, Archives nationales, Nogaret papers, AN J 491B, no. 79 Primary Sources Adso of Montier-en-Der, De ortu et tempore antichristi, ed. by Daniel Verhelst, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 45 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976) Coste, Jean, Boniface VIII en procès. Articles d’accusation et dépositions des témoins (1303–1311) (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1995) Dante, Inferno, canto X (ll. 14–15) Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius: Die ältesten griechischen und lateinischen Übersetzungen, ed. by W. J. Aerts and G. A. A. Kortekaas (Louvain: Peeters, 1998) Dupuy, Pierre, Histoire du differend d’entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel roy de France (Paris: Cramoisy, 1655; reprinted Tucson: Audax, 1963) Ehrle, Franz, ‘Die “historia septem tribulationum ordinis minorum” des fr. Angelus de Clarino’, Archiv für Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, 2 (1886), 249–336 Haymo Halberstatensis [recte: Haimo of Auxerre], Expositio in D. Pauli epistolas, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1864), 117 (1852), cols. 361–938 ‘Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli nebst dem Kommentar des Pseudojoachim’, ed. by Paul Piur, in Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation, ed. by Konrad Burdach, vol. II, part 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912) pp. 223–327 Reichert, B. M., Acta capitulorum generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, 1 (Rome: In domo generalitia, 1898) Secondary Works Bignami-Odier, Jeanne, Études sur Jean de Roquetaillade (Johannes de Rupescissa) (Paris: Vrin, 1952) ———, ‘Les Visions de Robert d’Uzès O. P. († 1296)’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, 25 (1955), 258–310 Burdach, Konrad, and Paul Piur, Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo (Berlin: Weidmann, 1929) Derolez, Albert, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Digard, Georges, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège de 1285 à 1304 (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1936) Favier, Jean, Philippe le Bel (Paris: Fayard, 1978) Ficzel, Nelly, Der Papst als Antichrist: Kirchenkritik und Apokalyptik im 13. und frühen 14. Jahrhundert (Leiden: Brill, 2019)
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Field, Sean L., ‘King/Confessor/Inquisitor: A Capetian-Dominican Convergence’, in The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William C. Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Philipps (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 43–69 Howlett, D. R., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, fasc. VIII: O (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Langlois, Charles-Victor, ‘Les papiers de Guillaume de Nogaret et Guillaume de Plaisians au trésor des chartes’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale, 39.1 (1908), pp. 211–54, #274 Maier, Annaliese, ‘Handschriftliches zu Arnaldus de Villanova und Petrus Johannis Olivi’, Analecta sacra Tarraconensia, 21 (1948), 53–74 Mann, Jill, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) Mensa i Valls, Jaume, ‘Les obres espirituals d’Arnau de Vilanova i la “Revelació de Sent Ciril” (Oraculum angelicum Cyrilli)’, Arxiu de textos catalans antics, 28 (2009), 211–63 Murray, Alexander, ‘The Epicureans’, in Intellectuals and Writers in Fourteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Tübingen: Boydell, 1986), pp. 138–63 Santi, Francesco, ‘Felip Ribot, i Carmelitani e l’Apocalisse nello specchio dell’Oraculum Angelicum Cyrilli’, in L’Apocalisse nel medioevo, ed. by Rossana E. Guglielmetti (Florence: SISMEL, 2011), pp. 489–506 Scavizzi, Barbara, ‘Abbiamo un autografo di Arnaldo de Vilanova?’, Arxiu de textos catalans antics, 30 (2011–2013), 413–38 Töpfer, Bernhard, Das kommende Reich des Friedens (Berlin: Akademie, 1964)
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The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308*
For six decades Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s work has shown the many ways in which close study of surviving manuscripts can produce new understandings of pivotal moments in medieval history. For the reign of Philip IV of France (1285–1314), one of those pivotal moments was surely the arrest of hundreds of French Templars on 13 October 1307. As with so many aspects of Philip the Fair’s France, Peggy Brown has here pointed the way to assessing what the manuscripts can tell us about the subsequent ‘trial of the Templars’.1 But although many of the surviving documents detailing Templar confessions across the French kingdom in late 1307 and early 1308 have recently received full modern editions, some remain little studied and only partially edited. Such is the case for the two documents that record confessions given by Templars in the far southern sénéschalsy of Bigorre in December 1307 and March 1308. The present article offers (in the appendices) the first full editions of these two sets of confessions, which permit new analysis of the relationship between royal and inquisitorial power in this early phase of the Templar affair. After the arrests of 13 October, royal officials across France had to interpret their orders as best they could, particularly in terms of whether and when to involve ecclesiastical agents in the process of obtaining and recording confessions. In some cases, secular and inquisitorial agents cooperated smoothly, but in Bigorre, royal agents began in
* I thank Elizabeth A. R. Brown for her generous help over many years, and specifically with the early stages of research for this essay. Thanks also to Alain Demurger for his expertise in identifying place names; Jean-François Moufflet for facilitating access to original documents at the Archives nationales de France (hereafter AN); Larry F. Field for reviewing the Latin texts; and the editors of this volume for their helpful suggestions. Throughout this article I preserve the Latin forms of personal names as they appear in AN, J 413, nos 14 and 19, to avoid the problem of whether to use French, Occitan, or English forms. 1 For example, Brown and Forey, ‘Vox in excelso and the Suppression of the Knights Templar’ and Brown, ‘Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar’. Sean Field is Professor of History at the University of Vermont.
Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 351-382 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122627
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December 1307 by brazenly foregoing ecclesiastical involvement altogether. At a certain point it must have become clear that this approach had been a mistake, since a second round of questioning in March 1308 seems to have been intended to rectify the original lack of Church involvement. But this second set of interrogations now ran into its own problems due to a rapidly evolving legal context. Two years later, in spring 1310, the surviving Templars from Bigorre may have thought back to these legal irregularities when they took their chances on rallying to the defence of the order. This close study of events in Bigorre, and the manuscripts which record them, thus sheds new light on how provincial officials interpreted and implemented the directives they received from the Capetian court in the midst of a rapidly evolving political and legal landscape.
A Confused Historiography The two surviving documents for the sénéschalsy of Bigorre have been largely overlooked in the evidence for the French trial of the Templars.2 One might be tempted to attribute this neglect to the remote and mountainous location of Bigorre (see Map I. The World of the Capetians, p. 12), seemingly far from the centres of Capetian power. If the area is today connected to Paris by high-speed rail to accommodate modern pilgrimages to Lourdes, at the turn of the fourteenth century Bigorre had only just come under royal control through the claims of Philip IV’s wife, Jeanne of Navarre.3 But several excellent studies have been devoted to the Templar affair in the Midi, and they too have passed over Bigorre in silence.4 In fact, historians have been unable to closely consider the fate of these Templars for the simple reason that the two extant documents detailing Templar confessions in Bigorre have until now not been properly edited.
2 Recent works on the trial of the Templars make only perfunctory mention of Bigorre: Castignani, Persecuzione e martirio dei Templari, p. 30; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, p. 61 (table); Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, eds, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars, p. 146 (in Jochen G. Schenk’s list of evidence considered for his chapter); Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 73, 324 n. 48. Neither the essays in Chevalier, ed., La fin de l’Ordre du Temple nor Cerrini’s La passione dei Templari mentions Bigorre. I provided a draft of the current essay and appendices to Alain Demurger, which he was able to incorporate into his extremely useful new reference work Le peuple Templier; in return he was kind enough to save me from several errors concerning place names. 3 For a summary of the progression of royal claims between 1292 and 1313, see Berthe, Le comté de Bigorre, pp. 15–16. For evidence from the period leading up to the 1290s see Balencie, ‘Procès de Bigorre, pièces justificatives’; for the crucial period of the 1290s see the editions of AN, J 294, no. 13 (inquiry into rightful claim to Bigorre, beginning 1294) and no. 151 (inquiry into royal rights in Bigorre, 1300), in Lalou and Jacobs, eds, Enquêtes menées sous les derniers capétiens. Philip IV clearly considered his wife Jeanne de Navarre to hold the county by 1300. After Jeanne’s death in 1305 the future Louis X was ostensibly heir to her claims, but in reality the king kept tight control. 4 Carraz, L’Ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône; Challet, ‘Entre expansionnisme capétien et relents d’hérésie’; Krämer, ‘Terror, Torture and the Truth’; Favreau, ‘Le procès des Templiers’. One of the documents recording confessions in Bigorre (Paris, AN, J 413, no. 14) is noted in Frale, ‘Du catharisme à la sorcellerie’, n. 19.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
The existence of these confessions, however, has long been known. In the earliest serious work on the Templar process, Pierre Dupuy in 1654 correctly indicated that the two surviving documents from Bigorre were nos 14 and 19 in (what is now) carton J 413 of the Archives nationales de France. Dated only ‘1307’, Dupuy’s summary of no. 14 is brief but largely accurate. It lists the knight ‘Bertrand de Agassa’ and the sénéschal of Bigorre as the interrogators of six Templars; summarizes some of the points to which these six confessed; indicates the document was notarized;5 and finally gives the name of one Templar, ‘Bernard de Montepesato’. Dupuy’s summary of no. 19, dated just ‘1308’, is more laconic. It states that this time five Templars were interrogated by ‘Bertrand de Agassa’ and ‘autres Commissaires’, and that all confessed to the same crimes described in no. 14. Dupuy does not specify that the second document was notarized, but he accurately indicates the presence of six seals.6 A century and a half after Dupuy’s pioneering work, the short summary by François-Just-Marie Raynouard in 1813 gave no dates or indications about these documents’ whereabouts, but did say that two separate sets of confessions were made by six Templars in Bigorre (not stating the second set contained only five). Raynouard gave four of the Templars’ names (listed as ‘Guillaume de Noer, Bertrand de Montpellier, Armand Guillermi, Drago de Cartada’) as those who would later come forth to defend the order in Paris in 1310.7 These early descriptions provided a solid foundation for future scholarship. Unfortunately, Hanz Prutz in 1888 introduced significant confusion.8 Since Prutz arranged his list of sources alphabetically by location, Bigorre was prominently featured at the head of his section ‘Prozesse des Templerordens’. Prutz first summarized no. 14, giving only the opening Latin passage from the document. He parenthetically indicated that the initial date was 21 December 1307 (off by one day, the correct date is 20 December), gave the names of ‘Guillelmus de Rabastenet’ (sénéschal of Bigorre) and ‘Bertrandus Agassa’ (royal knight), and included enough of the opening text to indicate that a notary created the document in front of witnesses (though he did not name the notary or witnesses). Prutz listed the names of all six Templars (though not entirely accurately) and gave a few phrases from several of their Latin confessions, followed by brief synopses. An attentive reader of his summary would note that the third through sixth confessions were actually recorded on a second day of questioning, given as 22 December (in reality 21 December). Prutz then indicated that a second set of confessions existed. He stated that they were given on 25 March 1308 (he was again off by one day) at the castle of Lourdes, in the presence of the same ‘Bertrandus Agassa’ and another knight (‘Ganzbertus Bernardi’) representing the sénéschal. According to Prutz, only four of the original six Templars gave confessions recorded in this second instrument (and he jumbled
5 He also suggested it bore two seals, which is certainly not the case today. 6 Dupuy, Traittez concernant l’histoire de France, pp. 81, 88–89. 7 Raynouard, Monumens historiques, p. 244. 8 Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens, pp. 324–25. Prutz referred to the short treatment by Raynouard and the even shorter paragraph (itself drawn from Raynouard) in Schottmüller, Der Untergang des Templer-Ordens, i, 255–56. For a scathing assessment of Schottmüller and Prutz as editors, see the multi-book review by Langlois in Revue historique at 470 n. 2.
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several of the names). Unfortunately, he concluded by indicating that the shelf mark for this second set of confessions was also ‘no. 14’, suggesting that somehow confessions from December 1307 and March 1308 were recorded in the same document.9 Heinrich Finke in 1907 pointed out several of Prutz’s misstatements. Since Finke had consulted the original documents, he knew perfectly well they were nos 14 and 19. He could correct Prutz’s dating of the second document to 26 March, and he was able to fill in one of Prutz’s many lacunae by indicating that a Dominican representative of the inquisitor had been present on this date.10 Finke did not, however, edit or fully describe the two documents, and Prutz’s systematic listing of sources has remained the standard reference.
The Chronological Context A brief summary of the chronology of the trial of the Templars in France provides essential context for the Bigorre confessions of December 1307 and March 1308.11 Philip IV issued secret arrest orders, written in Latin but accompanied by more explicit directions in French, to royal baillis, sénéchaux, and selected knights across the kingdom on 14 September 1307. The accusation was that all Templars, during a secret portion of their initiation rite, thrice denied Christ and spat on a cross; that they kissed the brother conducting the initiation on the base of the spine, on the navel, and on the mouth; that they promised to be available for sexual intercourse if other brothers demanded it; and that they worshipped idols. On 22 September the Dominican inquisitor and royal confessor William of Paris sent his own letter to the inquisitors of Carcassonne and Toulouse and to the Dominican priors, sub-priors, and lectors of the kingdom, asking these brethren to stand ready to hear confessions when Templars were brought before them.12 Both king and inquisitor were careful to insist that ecclesiastical involvement was essential to the creation of valid, notarized, and duly witnessed legal instruments recording the statements of Templars who would confess to the ‘truth’. Although the 14 September written instructions had not named a date, in fact coordinated arrests took place all across the kingdom on 13 October. Confessions began to be recorded as early as 15–18 October in the bailliages of Troyes (Isle and Troyes) and Rouen (Pont-de-l’Arche and Roche d’Orival),13 and in Paris from 19 October to 24
9 It seems particularly odd that Prutz could make this error, and that he could suggest that four (not five) Templars confessed in March 1308, since at the end of this summary he referred the reader to Dupuy, who had given the correct indication of no. 19 as well as the correct number of confessions. 10 Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, i, 156–57. 11 For the larger context of Philip IV’s political imperatives, see Théry, ‘A Heresy of State’. 12 The arrest orders, accompanying French directions, and William of Paris’s letter are all re-edited from Paris, AN, J 413, no. 22 in Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’. See also nos 5, 7, 8 in the helpful new printing of relevant documents in Castignani, Persecuzione. 13 For Troyes (Paris, AN, J 413, no. 16), see Baudin and Brunel, ‘Les Templiers en Champagne’. For Rouen (Paris, AN, J 413, no. 23), Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’, as well as Miguet, Templiers et hospitaliers en Normandie, p. 138.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
November.14 By the end of November extant confessions were gathered at Caen (28–29 October),15 Cahors (30 October—27 November; additional confessions 2–3 January 1308),16 Carcassonne (8–13 November),17 and in the bailliage of Nîmes-Beaucaire at Aigues-Mortes (8–11 November) and Nîmes (16–17 November);18 a report with no confessions was also sent to Paris by an inquisitor in Chaumont (23 November).19 But on 22 November an indignant Pope Clement V ordered Templars all across Europe taken into custody, in an attempt to gain control of the proceedings.20 On 1 December he wrote to Philip IV expressing his deep displeasure at the king’s misleading claim that the original arrests had been made with papal authorization.21 Finally, in late January or early February 1308, Clement suspended the authority of all French inquisitors and prelates to act in the Templar matter.22 Events thus ground to a halt until Philip IV was able to pressure the pope into restarting inquiries. In August 1308 French bishops and inquisitors were once again allowed to investigate the orthodoxy of individual Templars, and a larger papal commission was set up to address the overall question of the order’s guilt or innocence.23 In the spring of 1310, in Paris, the commission heard many Templar brothers defend their order, until, on 12 May 1310, just outside the city walls, fifty-four Templars were burned after being found guilty by the archbishop of Sens (as individuals, irrespective of the larger question of the order’s guilt or innocence entrusted to the papal commission).24 Many intimidated Templars abandoned their claims of innocence and returned to their original confessions at regional councils over
14 For the Paris confessions (Paris, AN, J 413, no. 18) see Michelet, Le procès des templiers, ii, 275–420. Castignani, Persecuzione, pp. 276–77, notes the often-overlooked existence of a second copy in Barcelona. 15 Paris, AN, J 413, no. 17 (Latin) and no. 20 (French) edited in Field, ‘Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen’; no. 20 also edited in Gilbert-Dony, ‘Les derniers Templiers du bailliage de Caen’. 16 The case of Cahors remains to be fully investigated. One document containing confessions of some forty-four Templars recorded from 30 October to 27 November 1307, is preserved in Barcelona, ACA, Pergamenos, no. 2486, as referred to and partially edited by Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, ii, 316–21. A second document, Paris, AN, J 413, no. 21, is a notarized roll (three sheets of parchment sewn together) containing the confessions of seven Templars, given 2–3 January 1308. It is partially (not very accurately) edited in Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens, p. 326. The latter seven Templars were not among those who had confessed in October-November; the likely conclusion seems to be that they managed to hold out longer. 17 Paris, Musée de l’Histoire de France, AE/II/311 (formerly AN, J 413, no. 25), see Nicolotti, ‘L’interrogatorio dei Templari imprigionati a Carcassonne’. 18 Ménard, Histoire civile, i, preuves, no. cxxxvi, pp. 195–208. 19 Paris, AN, J 413, no. 15, in Field, ‘The Inquisitor Ralph of Ligny’ (note small corrections to this edition given in Field, ‘Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen’, p. 318 n. 39). On this period of early interrogations, see Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 44–58; Field, ‘The Heresy of the Templars’; and Castignani, Persecuzione, chapters 2 and 3. 20 In the bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae. See Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 89–91; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 63–64. 21 Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, p. 64. 22 Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 94–95; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, p. 75. 23 Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 124–27; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 87–103. 24 Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 141–82; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 121–90.
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the next several months.25 The order was eventually suppressed (rather than declared guilty) by Clement V at the close of the Council of Vienne in 1312.26 In sum, by the time the first set of confessions were recorded in Bigorre on 20–21 December 1307, almost all the other French Templars had already confessed. In fact, these six Templars of Bigorre had held out so long that the overall situation may have appeared rather different than it had back in mid-October. Whether or not the incarcerated Templars of Bigorre were aware of the fact, by this time it was evident that the king and pope were at loggerheads, and it was becoming increasingly clear that Clement V would not go along with the fiction that the arrests had been planned and carried out with papal approval. Indeed, at the moment of the second set of confessions, on 26 March, the entire affair had ground to a halt as king and pope vied to control the process.
Arrests and Detention in Bigorre The Templars who confessed in the county of Bigorre were from the commandery of Borderès (just northwest of Tarbes, today the commune of Borderès-sur-l’Echez),27 ‘and other houses pertaining to the said house’.28 Borderès, the central commandary in Bigorre, had other dependencies in the county (and a few more outside it), but the confessions do not clarify whether all six Templars in question were arrested at Borderès or were scattered throughout its holdings.29 In any case, these six must have been arrested on 13 October. It is not certain where they were then held between October and March, or exactly where their December confessions were given. But in March they confessed in the royal castle at Lourdes, and the phrasing then (ubi… erant testati seu capti) suggests that they had ‘testified’ there in December and been ‘held’ there since the October arrests. There is little evidence for what befell these men between October and December, but according to one of the 20–21 December confessions, they had ‘previously’ (alias)30 been interrogated during these months.31 If evidence from other areas offers 25 Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 191–201. 26 Brown and Forey, ‘Vox in excelso and the Suppression of the Knights Templar’; Cerrini, La passione dei Templari, pp. 23–30. 27 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, 502. 28 This information is given only in the notary’s preliminary text in no. 19 (the March confessions). Of the six Templars interrogated, only Guillelmus de Noerio has his home commandery (Bordères) specifically listed. See Vidal, Hospitaliers et Templiers en France Méridionale, pp. 101–11; Du Bourg, Ordre de Malte, pp. 369–76, 380, and pièces justificatives 62–66. 29 By a similar token, neighbouring commanderies, such as Morlaàs and Boudrac, may have had several dependencies inside the county of Bigorre. See the colour-coded fold-out map that accompanies Vidal, Hospitaliers et Templiers en France Méridionale, but note that it is intended to facilitate study of these commanderies in the later era when Templar properties had been transferred to the Hospitalers. A simpler map based on dioceses may be found in Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. xxxix. 30 Translating alias as ‘elsewhere’ (rather than ‘previously’) would indicate that they had been held at some location other than the royal castle in Lourdes. 31 From the first confession, by Guillelmus de Noerio. It seems unlikely that only he would have been interrogated in the intervening weeks, though the fact is not noted for the brothers that followed. As Finke perceptively remarked: ‘Vielleicht musste erst längere Haft sie mürbe machen; jedenfalls war
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
any indication, these preliminary interrogations probably involved threats, promises, and violence. Although in some places less formal confessions were recorded by royal agents before notaries were called in,32 in Bigorre there is no indication that any earlier confessions were ever written down. Only now, after having ‘previously’ been questioned, were these six at last ready to confess.
The First Confessions, 20–21 December 1307 On Wednesday, 20 December 1307, Vitalis de Curreto,33 notary public ‘of the greater court of Bigorre’, took down the confessions of Guillelmus de Noerio, cambrarius of the Templar house of Borderès,34 and of Bernardus de Jer.35 These confessions were given in the presence of Lord Guillelmus de Rabastenchis, knight and sénéschal of Bigorre,36 and of Lord Bertrandus Agasse, royal knight.37 These were the two secular agents deputed by the king ‘in the matter of the Templars’ for Bigorre. Three further witnesses were called to hear the confessions: Petrus
es nicht das erste Verhor. Denn der erst befragte Wilhelm de Noerio war bereits früher gefragt und erklärt sich jetzt bereit: gratis confiteri’. Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, i, 157. 32 For instance in the bailliage of Rouen. See Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’. 33 Vitalis de Curreto appears as early as 1283–1285 (unless there was another ‘Vitalis de Curred, notary of Tarbes’), during the period when Edward I of England claimed Bigorre. See Balencie, ‘Le Procès de Bigorre’, pièces justificatives 61, 71, 74, 78, 91, 94, 96, 101, 107, 114, 116, 119, 120. More recently, Vitalis had been central in recording the 1300 inquiry into French royal rights in the county of Bigorre, recorded in Paris, AN, J 294, no. 151. See note 4 above. He never indicates a papal or imperial commission, calling himself ‘notary public of the lord king’s great court of Bigorre’ and ‘notary of the court of Bigorre’ in our two documents. 34 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 318. ‘Noerio’ is probably modern Noguères (canton Le Coeur du Béarn, Pyrénées-Atlantique, diocese of Tarbes). In March 1310 Guillelmus de Noerio was described as from the diocese of Tarbes. See Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 99. It seems very likely that the ‘G. de Maxenix ejusdem Tarvensis’ referred to in Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 107, is the same man, because he is listed in the same place among his three brothers from Bordères as on pp. 99 and 164. Examination of the digital facsimile (black and white, from microfilm) of the manuscript on which Michelet’s edition was based, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF), lat. 11796 (made available on Gallica.fr in February 2018), shows that Michelet’s reading ‘Maxenix’ on fol. 27vb is accurate. If this place name is modern Mourenx, it is only a few kilometres from Noguères. I thank Alain Demurger for the latter information. 35 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 229. Unknown apart from the two documents considered here. The place name could be modern Ger (canton de Lourdes 2) but also Gez (canton de la Vallée des Gave) or Gez-ez-Angles (canton de Lourdes 2), all in the diocese of Tarbes and the modern HautesPyrénées. Again I thank Alain Demurger for sharing his conclusions on this point with me. 36 Rabestans, thirty-five kilometres north-east of Toulouse. Guillelmus was a royal knight and sénéschal of Bigorre from at least 1303 to 1308. See Delisle, ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéschaux royaux’, p. 224. See also note 61 below. 37 Substantial evidence of Bertrand Agasse’s royal service survives. See Coste, Boniface VIII en procès, p. 213 (acting on behalf of Guillaume de Nogaret in 1304), pp. 547, 720 (both relating to 1310); Langlois, ed., Inventaire d’anciens comptes royaux, p. 243 (1306) and n. 2 (1308); and Paris, BnF, Doat ms. 108, fols 184–188v ( July 1307, indicating he was from Combs and with mention of son and brother-in-law).
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Figure 11.1. AN, J 413, no. 14. Photo by the author. Used by permission of the Archives nationales de France.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
de Peira, royal sergeant-at-arms and castellan of Lourdes;38 Johannes de Subvilla, castellan of Barège;39 and Regaldus Dasser, styled only domicellus. The specific location where these confessions were taken down is not given by the notary, though (as noted above) the castle at Lourdes seems possible. The confessions were recorded in Latin, with the notary presumably translating and editing the brothers’ vernacular statements. Such translation into Latin was standard notarial practice, but particularly necessary if this testimony from the far south was to be understood by the royal court in Paris (Figure 11.1). According to the notary’s record, Brother Guillelmus de Noerio said that he now wanted to confess freely about those things which were being asked of him. Specifically, when Lord Guigo Ademarii, who had been at the time Templar master of Provence,40 had received him into the order, Guillelmus had kissed him on the base of the spine, and Guigo had ordered that if Guillelmus experienced the desire to ‘lie with a woman’, that he should lie instead with one of the brothers of the Order, and that he should permit other brothers to do the same with him. This is the sum total of Guillelmus de Noerio’s recorded confession. ‘Asked about other things’, he said nothing. The second confession, by Brother Bernardus de Jer, is somewhat more expansive. Questioned ‘in the same way’, before the same group of men, he confessed similarly that when he had been admitted to the order by Raimundus Guillelmi de Benca,41 who was then the preceptor of Boudrac,42 he had not only kissed him on the base of the spine, but had been made to stamp on the cross. Bernardus then gave a variant of the confession regarding sexual impropriety: if one of his elders (majoribus) wanted to lie with him, he was to allow this. And, he admitted, he had done this often with the (unnamed) preceptor of Gimbrède.43 He also stated that another
38 Paris, AN, J 413, no. 19 (the second set of confessions dealt with here) calls him Petrus de Speriis. It seems likely that he is identical with the man by that name who appears as a royal bailli in the Auvergne in records from 1325–27 (also there called ‘serviens armorum regis’). See Delisle, ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéschaux royaux’, p. 210. 39 Barège is approximately thirty-five kilometres south of Lourdes. 40 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 4. ‘Ademarii’ indicates ‘of Montélimar’, on the Rhône halfway between Lyon and Avignon. Guigo is referred to in numerous Templar depositions as receiving brothers into the order from the 1290s onward. See Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 184, 379; 2:154, 155, 161, 165, 167, 291; Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, ii, 343–44, 349; Ménard, Histoire civile, i, preuves, 176, 177, 181, 185, 189, 190; possible references in Gilmour-Bryson, The Trial of the Templars in Cyprus, pp. 123, 142. See also Guigo’s appearance in a royal enquête completed by 1299 (Paris, AN, JJ 38, no. 10), and remarks in Carraz, L’Ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône, pp. 291, 299, 320, 322, 404, 485. 41 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 41. See Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 105 (‘Raymundus Guillelmi de Bencha Convenarum’ [i.e. ‘of the diocese of Comminges’]). A Raymundus Guillelmi, knight of Toulouse or Comminges appears, pp. 73 and 75; but since he also is found on p. 105 in the same list with Raymundus Guillelmus de Benca, apparently this cannot be the same man. 42 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 502. Boudrac is about fifty kilometres east of Tarbes, outside the sénéschalsy of Bigorre. See Vidal, Hospitaliers et Templiers en France Méridionale, pp. 113–20. 43 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 505. Gimbrède is about 125 kilometres northeast of Tarbes. See Vidal, Hospitaliers et Templiers en France Méridionale, pp. 190–92.
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brother, Arnaldus de Bainheriis,44 had been admitted at the same time and in the same manner. But, Bernardus stressed, during his reception an unsheathed sword had been held above his head, as if ‘they had wanted to kill him’ if he did not do what was ordered. And so he did these things, he said, only out of fear. He was asked if he had confessed his sins to chaplains, and he replied that he had, except about the brothers lying together. These two brief confessions were all that the notary recorded on 20 December. The next day (Thursday, 21 December), four more Templars gave their confessions, in the presence of exactly the same group of men. Brother Dominicus de Jer45 first confessed that when brother Petrus de Meliana (‘Meliano’ in the second set of confessions), preceptor of Borderès,46 had received him into the order, he had been led to a secret place and there had kissed Petrus on the base of the spine. He had then also stepped on and spit on the cross. And ‘he was made to swear chastity’, but ‘in such a manner that he would not lie with any woman, but if he wanted to do this that he would lie with another of the brothers of the said order’. And he admitted that he in fact had done this, as had other brothers of the order. Brother Bernardus de Montepesato47 next said that when the knight Lord Poncius de Broheto48 had admitted him to the order, an unsheathed sword had been held over his head. He had been led behind the altar, where he kissed Poncius first on the mouth and then on the base of the spine. He had been ordered to step on and spit on the cross. He did so, but unwillingly. And Poncius told him that he must ‘believe in what they believed’. Asked what this was, Bernardus replied that he knew nothing about anything else in which to believe, except God. Finally he repeated the admission of being made to swear chastity but only regarding women, adding that he had promised he would allow other brothers to lie with him. He clarified, though, that he himself had never done this.
44 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, pp. 30–31. Apparently otherwise unknown. The place name is presumably a variant of ‘Banheriis’, which can refer to Bannières, thirty kilometres east of Toulouse, but here seems more likely to be modern Bagnères-de-Bigorre, twenty kilometres east of Lourdes. 45 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 229. Apparently otherwise unknown. 46 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 294 (Petrus de Moditia). Apparently otherwise unknown. Presumably no longer alive in 1307, since he is not among the brothers interrogated here. 47 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 304. Probably Montpezat (canton de Terres des Luys et côteaux du Vic-Bilh, Hautes-Pyrénées, diocese of Comminges). Later listed as from the diocese of Comminges (his original diocese) and Tarbes (where his commandery was found). See Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 99, 107, 164. 48 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 78 (Poncius de Broeto). Died before 1307, referred to in many depositions as preceptor of Provence. See Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 403; 2:163, 165, 167, 169; Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, ii, 318, 322, 354, 357; Gilmour-Bryson, The Trial of the Templars in Cyprus, pp. 103, 118, 150; Sève, Le procès des Templiers d’Auvergne, p. 195.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
The penultimate confession was given by Brother Arnaudus Guillelmi Dauleo.49 He had been admitted to the Temple at Villedieu,50 by Guigo Ademarii, whom he kissed on the mouth, and then, after swearing obedience, on the base of the spine. He was ordered to renounce God, to believe in ‘their God’, and to step on, strike, and spit on the cross, which (he said) he did not want to do. Like the other brothers, he swore chastity regarding women but was told he could lie with other brothers if he wished to; he said, however, that he had never done so. Finally, Diego de Cortada confessed.51 Since he was the only knight among these Templars, and the only one called ‘Lord’ rather than ‘Brother’, it may not be a coincidence that he was held back for last. He also had been received by Guigo Ademarii, at Toulouse, and confessed that he had kissed him on the mouth and then on the belly button and then ‘on the buttock and in the rear part’. He had been ordered to step on the cross, to renounce God, and to believe in ‘their God’. He had not wanted to do these things, but had no choice since he had promised to uphold the order. The confession concludes with the now standardized statement about seeking sexual release with brothers. What noteworthy points emerge from this summary of J 413, no. 14? Most striking is the complete absence of any mention of churchmen in the proceedings. Not only does the notarized record list no Dominican representative of the inquisitor as taking part in the questioning, but it does not even suggest that any ecclesiastics were there as witnesses. Aside from the notary and the Templars themselves, only the sénéschal, the other royal knight, the two castellans and one damoiseau were present, laymen all. In spite of Clement V’s public statements of displeasure about the way Philip IV had usurped Church prerogatives, as late as 20–21 December these royally-appointed officials acted as de facto secular inquisitors, without even the pretence of Church involvement. Royal officials had elsewhere secured preliminary confessions, for instance the vernacular record of confessions produced in the bailliage of Rouen.52 But in that case the resulting document was not a formal, notarized instrument. The path taken by the sénéschal and royal knight in Bigorre was perhaps most like that of their counterparts in Nîmes, where the notary explicitly stated that initial confessions were made without any representative of the inquisitor being present.53 But there Dominicans were duly called in a few days later to hear the confessions repeated. The two royal agents in Bigorre were pursuing a dangerous course of action; the royal instructions had been clear about the need to have churchmen receive confessions to the charges of heresy, and William of Paris 49 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 255 (Arnaudus Guillelmi de Lon). In later documents listed as from the diocese of Comminges and the diocese of Tarbes. Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 99, 107. Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 99, 164 ‘Arnaudus Guillelmi de Lon’ (Paris, BnF, lat. 11796, fol. 42v) is surely the same man. I thank Alain Demurger for suggesting that the place name refers to modern Aulon (canton de Neste, Aure et Louron, Hautes-Pyrénées). 50 Modern La-Ville-Dieu-du-Temple, 150 kilometres north-east of Tarbes. See Vidal, Hospitaliers et Templiers en France Méridionale, pp. 197–98. 51 Demurger, Le peuple Templier, p. 142. In later documents he is listed as from the diocese of Auch and the diocese of Tarbes, with indication that he had joined the Order in 1302 or 1303. Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 99, 107, 164. 52 Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’. 53 Ménard, Histoire civile, i, preuves, 195.
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had pointedly instructed Dominicans to be ready to fulfil this role. The sénéschal and the royal knight in Bigorre had failed to follow these instructions, and so the resulting confessions, even if duly notarized, were of dubious legality. Indeed, a certain lack of care permeates the entire document. For a notarized instrument, it is simple in the extreme. In contrast to more carefully-crafted notarized confessions recorded in Paris, Troyes, or Caen, this instrument contains no preamble explaining the charges and the setting, and no clauses detailing the royal agents’ commissions or verifying that such commissions had been exhibited. The location of writing is not indicated. The document is not sealed, and the un-ruled parchment is of mediocre quality. There is a sense that either the notary was rushed, or the whole exercise seemed like a formality that did not necessitate diplomatic care (as we shall see, comparison with the way the second set of confessions was recorded in March reinforces this impression).54 Concerning the actual content of the confessions, it is striking that for this group of secular questioners the charge of sexual deviancy seems to have been most important. In other regional confessions, questioners often focused on affronts to the cross as the essential point to be recorded (the royal instructions had suggested as much); in other parts of the south the charge of idol worship was emphasized.55 Yet this group, perhaps more than any other in France, ensured that each brother admitted that indecent kisses and a ritual promise to commit or at least allow sodomy were part and parcel of entering the order. The first confession in fact admits to nothing else. As other elements such as abusing the cross begin to enter, they seem to become gradually more elaborate as the six confessions progress; even so the most substantial and eventually most standardized portion of the confessions continues to concern the accusations of sexual deviancy. Read carefully, these confessions clearly do not demonstrate that some Templars in certain French commanderies actually swore to engage in homosexual acts as part of their initiation into the order.56 Rather they show how powerfully the interrogators’ preoccupations could shape the list of crimes to which Templars confessed. In fact, tracing the way the six confessions develop concerning the accusation of sodomy is instructive: Guillelmus de osculatus fuit ipsum magistrum tunc in fine spina dorsi sui, et quod idem Noerio magister mandavit eidem et licenciam dedit quod si haberet voluntatem jacendi cum muliere quod jaceret seu commisseret cum aliquo fratrum sui ordinis […] et quod si esset aliquis fratrum suorum qui secum jacere vellet seu commissere, quod hoc pateretur. osculatus fuit ipsum in fine spine dorsi sui […] quod si erat aliquis de Bernardus majoribus suis qui secum jacere vellet seu commissere, mandavit ei quod de Jer hoc pateretur.
54 Alternatively, one might hypothesize that the notary purposely downplayed the solemnity of the occasion, knowing that the confessions lacking ecclesiastical sanction would be of limited legal worth. 55 A point made effectively in Frale, ‘Du catharisme à la sorcellerie’. 56 As Jonathan Riley-Smith’s controversial interpretation would have it. See ‘Were the Templars Guilty?’, effectively rebutted by (among others) Alan Forey, ‘Were the Templars Guilty, Even if They Were Not Heretics or Apostates?’; Field, ‘La fin de l’ordre du Temple à Paris’; and Théry, ‘A Heresy of State’.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
Dominicus de Jer Bernardus de Montepesato Arnaudus Guillielmi Dauleo Diego de Cortada
osculatus fuit dictum preceptorem in fine spine dorsi sui […] quod postea fecit sibi jurare casitatem, ita quod non jaceret cum aliqua muliere, set si vellet hoc facere quod jaceret cum altero de fratribus dicti ordinis. osculatus fuit eum primo in ore et postea retro in fine spine dorsi sui […] quod fecit sibi jurare castitatem nec jaceret cum mulieribus, set si vellet hoc facere quod jaceret cum aliquo fratrum, et quod hoc ab aliis pateretur. osculatus fuit eum in ore, et fecit sibi jurare obedienciam, et postea osculatus fuit eum in fine spine dorsi sui […] quod mandavit ei tenere castitatem de mulieribus, set si vellet jacere cum muliere quod jaceret cum aliquo fratrum, et hoc pateretur aliis. oscultus fuit eum in ore et postea in umbilico et in nadge et posteriore parte […] quod mandaverunt sibi tenere castitatem de mulieribus, set si volebat jacere cum muliere quod jaceret cum aliquo fratrum, et si fratres sui ordinis hoc facere vellent, quod pateretur.
The Latin phrasing of the royal arrest orders had referred to kisses ‘in posteriori parte spine dorsi primo, secondo in umbilico, et demum in ore’.57 It was only the secret French instructions that added the charge that the newly initatied brothers were told ‘que se aucun freres de l’ordre veut charnelment gesir a lui, qu’il le soeffre, quare il le doit et est tenuz soffrir seloc l’estatut de l’ordre, et que pluseurs de eus pour ce par maniere de sodomie gisent l’un ovec l’autre charnelment’.58 The interrogators in Bigorre worked from the Latin and the French texts at their disposal and carried out questioning in (presumably) the local version of Occitan. The resulting testimony was then written in Latin by the notary. It was apparently the third deponent, Dominicus de Jer, who offered the specific wording about swearing chastity regarding women but not other brothers. This must have struck a chord with the questioners, because it was then imposed on the succeeding brothers as the wording becomes a nearly verbatim repetition from one confession to the next. Only the knight Diego seems to have been aware that the charges were supposed to include a third kiss on the lower stomach (he or the notary also used the vernacular nadge, meaning ‘buttock’). In other words, after a small amount of initial variation, the brothers did not really make their own statements from scratch, but largely acquiesced to the suggestion that what others had previously confessed was accurate.59 The wording of these confessions can therefore have little value as evidence for anything that did or did not take place during Templar initiations.60
57 Edited in Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’, p. 61. 58 Edited in Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’, p. 63. 59 On such ‘chains’ of testimony see Krämer, ‘Terror, Torture and the Truth’; Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’; and Field, ‘Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen’. 60 In addition to the scholars cited in the previous four notes, Alain Demurger has recently added his voice to the chorus of historians adopting this perspective and rejecting Riley-Smith’s provocative thesis. See Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 7–10.
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Figure 11.2. AN, J 413, no. 19. Photograph by the author. Used by permission of the Archives nationales de France.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
The Second Confessions, 26 March 1308 Three months later, five of the six Templars who had testified in December found themselves once again in front of the same notary. It is immediately evident that this time the interrogators and their notary took the legal requirements of the situation more seriously (Figure 11.2). The new act is authenticated not only by notarial sign but also by six seals. Further, the notary appended a substantial conclusion emphasizing the free nature of the confessions, as well as his own presence, his credentials, and the role he was playing in formally recording the act. The parchment used for the act was ruled, and the text written with more care. Even the opening syntax reveals greater solemnity. Whereas the first document had begun Noverint universi and was phrased in a passive formation to relate events that took place ‘in the presence of ’ the interrogators, notary, and witnesses, the second has Bertrandus Agasse actively and personally addressing Regie majestati (the royal majesty). This was a document intended to set matters right with the king. The place of writing is specified as the castle of Lourdes, where Bertrandus Agasse and Gauzbertus Bernardi, another royal knight who now took the place of the sénéshal of Bigorre, had proceeded to question Templars ‘of the house of Borderès of the aforesaid sénéschalsy of Bigorre and of other houses pertaining to the said house of Borderès’. But the most striking difference between the two acts is in the lists of witnesses. In December the notary had listed three laymen as witnesses, with their names given only at the end of the first day’s questioning. Now in March he provides the names of eight witnesses at the beginning of the document. In sharp contrast to December, seven of these witnesses are now churchmen. Someone in the intervening months must have realized that the first confessions, with no ecclesiastical involvement, would not pass legal muster and, perhaps more importantly, would not satisfy the royal court. No mistake was being made on that point now; monastic, inquisitorial, episcopal, intellectual, and additional notarial authority are all called to witness on this second attempt (Figure 11.3). The ecclesiastics who witnessed that act are impressive. The first witness listed is Fortanerius, abbot of the venerable Benedictine monastery of Saint-Savin-enLavendan (fifteen kilometres south of Lourdes),61 and the fourth is Bernardus de Cauderasa, monk of the same abbey.62 Even more importantly, sandwiched between the abbot and his monk were two Dominicans, Brother Johannes de Borderiis (Borderès), the subprior of Morlaàs (thirty-five kilometres west of Tarbes), and Brother Johannes de Vallenca. Lest there be any doubt about the reason the Preachers had been called in, Johannes de Borderiis is labelled ‘inquisitor or 61 Fortanier d’Arcizans. Arcizans-Avant is two kilometres west of the abbey of Saint-Savin. According to Gallia christiana, i, cols 1250–51, Fortanerius was abbot in 1292, resigned in 1293, and was reelected to a second term in 1299. In 1306 the abbey was taken into the ‘tutelage’ of Philip IV, according to letters shown to Fortanerius by Guillelmus de Rabastens, sénéschal of Bigorre. Fortanerius was still abbot in 1311, but had died or at least left office by 1314. 62 The place name may refer to Coaraze, north of Nice.
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Figure 11.3. Bottom portion of AN, J 413, no. 19, showing seals and Vitalis de Curreto’s seign manuel. Photo by the author. Use by permission of the Archives nationales de France.
commissioner of heretical depravity’. Though there is no reason to think that this friar held a general commission as an inquisitor, he was now acting in accordance with William of Paris’s 22 September letter, which had asked all Dominican priors, sub-priors, and lectors to be ready to serve as his deputies. The notary indicated that the see of Tarbes was currently vacant,63 but episcopal authority was represented by ‘master’Dominicus de Livrone,64 acting for the bishops’s official. The castellan of Lourdes was again present (this time called Petrus de Speriis), along with the king’s procurator, ‘master’ Garcia de Serris,65 another notary, ‘master’ Arnaldus Dede, and ‘many others’. In front of this impressive gathering, five of the same six Templars had their confessions recorded a second time. They appear in the same order as in December:
63 Bishop Raimundus Arnaldi de Caudarasa had died in 1307; his successor was apparently named by Clement V on 20 February 1308, but not consecrated until April. See Balencie, ‘Chronologie des évêques de Tarbes’, pp. 193–208. 64 The place name could be Livron-sur-Drôme, thirty kilometres north of Montélimar, or LacapelleLivron (where a Templar commandery existed), about 100 kilometres north of Toulouse. 65 In the 1300 inquest he had stood in as ‘substitute’ for the king’s procurator, and there he is labelled ‘clericus’ as well as ‘magister’.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
Guillelmus de Noerio (written ‘de Noer’ this time), Bernardus de Jer, Dominicus de Jer, Bernardus de Montepesato, and Arnaudus Guillemi Dauleo. The sixth Templar, the knight Diego de Cortada, is missing from this second set of confessions. A comparison between the two sets of confessions shows that in March the brothers did not give ‘new’ confessions at all. These were virtually the same statements, as written in the notary’s Latin, with only a few noteworthy changes. Consider the example of Bernardus de Montepesato (changes to his March confession are in bold): December: dixit quod ipse fuit indutus et receptus per dominum Poncium de Broheto militem, qui cum induisset sibi mantellum quod tenebatur supra eum enssis evaginatus, et quod duxit retro altare, et osculatus fuit eum primo in ore et postea retro in fine spine dorsi sui.
March: dixit […] quod cum ipse fuisset indutus et receptus per dominum Poncium de Broeto, militem Templi, et sibi induisset mantelum, tenebatur supra eum ensis evaginatus, et duxit eum retro altare et osculatus fuit eum dictus receptus, primo in ore, postea retro in fine spine dorsi sui. Hoc facto posuit crucem in terra dictus miles, et mandavit ei quod percuteret Et hoc facto posuit crucem in terra, et crucem cum pede et spueret supra crucem. mandavit ei quod percuteret crucem cum Nec hoc facere voluit, ut dixit. pede et quod spueret supra crucem. Nec Item, dixit quod dictus dominus Poncius de facere voluit, ut dixit. Item, dixit quod dictus dominus Poncius de Broheto dixit sibi quod crederet illud quod Broheto dixit sibi quod crederet in eo quod ipsi credebant. Item, interrogatus in quo dicebant quod credebant, dixit quod ipse ipsi credunt. Interrogatus in quo dicebant nescit, nisi de Deo. quod crederet, dixit quod ipse de alio Item, dixit quod fecit sibi jurare castitatem nescit, nisi de Deo. Item, dixit quod fecit sibi jurare castitatem et quod non jaceret cum mulieribus, nec jaceret cum mulieribus, set si vellet hoc set si hoc facere vellet quod jaceret cum facere quod jaceret cum aliquo fratrum, et aliquo fatrum Templi, et quod hoc alii sustinerent. Tamen dixit quod nunquam quod hoc ab aliis pateretur. Tamen dixit hoc fecit. quod nunquam fecit.
In this case, nothing meaningful has been added to or subtracted from Bernardus’s original confession; the minor variations in the Latin wording seem to be little more than scribal whims. Poncius of Broheto is specified as ‘knight of the Temple’ rather than just ‘knight’; in the statement about sodomy it is specified that the other ‘brothers’ he might lie with were ‘brothers of the Temple’. Clearly Bernard did not make a new statement in March: he merely agreed that what had been written down in December was accurate. Several of the other brothers did make small but noteworthy changes to their earlier statements. Guillelmus de Noerio’s second confession added that Guigo Ademarii had kissed him on the mouth before Guillelmus in turn kissed him on the base of the spine. Guillelmus reaffirmed that he had been told that if he had the desire to lie with a woman, he should lie with a brother from the order instead. But then, instead of the clause saying that he was told he should also be prepared to submit to similar
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demands from other brothers, there is instead a statement that in fact the brothers did not engage in such a practice. Dominicus de Jer more dramatically reversed himself. His original confession stated that he himself and all the brothers did in fact practice sodomy as described in the entrance ritual. The second version puts the clause in the negative. Either he had been misrepresented the first time (deliberately or through scribal error), or he had managed to get a change of statement into the record. Some changes were smaller clarifications, such as when Bernardus de Jer had admitted to committing sodomy with the preceptor of Gimbrède pluries, now amended to per duas vices. Dominicus de Jer added that when he was taken to a secret place, this was ‘according to the custom of the Templars’. In the testimony of Arnaudus Guillelmi Dauleo, the statement that he was to believe in ‘their God’ becomes ‘in the gods in which they believed’. But even when these changes are taken into consideration, it is evident that the March confessions overwhelmingly recycled the same Latin wording from December. The brothers were not really giving confessions at all in March; they were merely repeating, in the presence of churchmen, what had already been recorded by the king’s men. Those original confessions, in turn, had been largely formulaic, derived from the charges sent from Paris. And what of Diego de Cortada’s disappearance? One might immediately suspect that he had died during the intervening three months of confinement. In fact, however, later evidence (to which we shall return) shows that he was very much alive. Diego was the only knight among this group, evidently of noble background, and may perhaps have been better able to withstand threats and various kinds of pressure. It is even possible that he understood that in March of 1308 the exact legal status of French inquiries against Templars had been thrown into doubt.
Interpreting Events of March 1308 Just a few days after the initial confessions were recorded in Bigorre, the political context had begun to shift. The Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay had made a dramatic public confession in Paris in October, but now, a few days before or after Christmas 1308, he revoked that earlier confession in the presence of cardinals Beranger Frédol and Étienne de Suissy.66 In response, presumably to prevent a coordinated attempt to follow the Grand Master’s example, King Philip moved most of the Templars who had been held in the Temple at Paris into various other locations around Paris, the Île-de-France, and neighbouring regions, between 25 January and 11 February.67
66 The nature of the sources reporting this event leave room for argument, but it seems likely that the revocation really did happen. See Josserand, Jacques de Molay, pp. 142–43; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 64–69; Barber, The Trial of the Templars, p. 93; Demurger, The Last Templar: The Tragedy of Jacques de Molay, pp. 181–82; Fried, ‘Wille, Freiwilligkeit und Geständnis um 1300’, pp. 226–27. 67 Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 70–73.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
At about the same moment, in late January or early February,68 Clement V played his strongest card by suspending the power of inquisitors and bishops in France to investigate Templars. No papal order to this effect survives, but Clement recalled and explained his decision a few months later, in several bulls issued on 5 July 1308.69 The exact date of this action is unclear, but it is generally assumed to have been before 13 February, when Clement’s position was weakened by the flight of Giacomo of Montecucco, Templar commander of Lombardy and papal cubicularius, from the papal court at Poitiers.70 Thus in March the battle between king and pope over control of the Templar affair had been joined anew. Philip attempted to pressure Clement by putting a series of leading questions to the faculty of theology at Paris, though their response on 25 March was a disappointment.71 More directly, between 24 and 29 March he sent out letters to the nobility, clergy, and towns, calling for a ‘general council’ of the French people to meet at Tours in May.72 This council was in turn used to whip up support for the royal position. In other words, between February and July 1308 the fate of the Templars hung in the balance. In retrospect we know that King Philip’s pressure campaign succeeded in forcing the pope to restart investigations. But in the spring of 1308 that outcome was not yet clear, and no one could have been quite certain which way the political winds might blow. This, then, was the moment of the Bigorre Templars’ second confessions (26 March 1308). Alain Demurger has recently called attention to the way the bishop of Nîmes, Bertrand de Languissel, reacted to this uncertain setting as the Tours council approached.73 On 22 April Bertrand called before him the Templars of his diocese who had confessed to royal agents and Dominican representatives of William of Paris the previous November. With these royal and inquisitorial agents again present, a Templar confession was now read aloud and confirmed for the bishop by the confessing brother. In other words, Bertrand de Languissel wanted to be sure of the Templars’ intention to stick to their confessions, before he allowed the archbishop of Narbonne (Gilles Aycelin) to represent him at the king’s assembly in Tours. Based on similar bits of evidence from later statements, Demurger reasonably suggests that there may have been other appearances by Templars before their ordinaries at about the same time, for similar reasons; as a new showdown between king and pope loomed, local figures wanted to be sure that confessions recorded a few months earlier would not be withdrawn. The largely ignored evidence from Bigorre broadly substantiates Demurger’s suggestion. Here, however, it was not the bishop who called for a new verification of
68 Philip IV was occupied with the marriages of his son Charles and his daughter Isabella, as noted by Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, p. 74. 69 See discussion in Field, ‘The Heresy of the Templars’, pp. 31–32. 70 Théry-Astruc, ‘The Flight of the Master of Lombardy’, pp. 35–44; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 75–76. 71 Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 98–101; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 76–78. 72 Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 101–05; Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 80–82. 73 Demurger, The Persecution of the Templars, pp. 82–84, analyzing Ménard, Histoire civile, i, preuves, 181–82; similar analysis in Challet, ‘Entre expansionnisme capétien et relents d’hérésie’, pp. 144–45.
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earlier confessions; the see of Tarbes was vacant.74 Instead, it must have been either royal officials or representatives of local Church authority who realized that the rather shoddily recorded confessions of December would need to be re-recorded with more attention to legal form. Most important, new confessions required the involvement of reliable local churchmen. Thus the abbot of Saint-Savin, the Dominican subprior of Morlaàs (bearing an inquisitorial commission), and a representative of episcopal authority were summoned. Although the royal officials continued to drive the questioning, churchmen were at least present this time. And yet, for all their efforts to live up to their legal obligations, the men overseeing this inquiry had blundered into a new error, since in March 1308 French inquisitors and bishops had just been stripped of all power in regard to the Templar matter. Perhaps this fact was not yet known in Lourdes. But bringing forth a Dominican inquisitorial commissioner at this moment was too little too late. When inquisitorial involvement would have been wise, in December, royal agents had neglected to enlist it. Now, when inquisitorial involvement was legally invalid, they made the misstep of calling for a deputized inquisitor. From beginning to end, the men in charge of the Templar affair in Bigorre had failed to master the legal context of their charge.
The Fate of the Six Templars from Bigorre After 26 March 1308, nothing more is known about Bernardus de Jer or Dominicus de Jer. Presumably it is only a coincidence that it was the two men from Jer who disappeared from the historical record at this point. Perhaps they died in 1308 or 1309. It is also possible that they remained imprisoned in Bigorre, if they were unwilling to defend the order. In any case, the other four brothers resurfaced in Paris in spring 1310, when the king allowed Templars from all over the kingdom to be brought there to testify to the papal commissioners investigating the question of the order’s overall guilt or innocence. On 27 March 1310, two years and a day after their second confessions, these four brothers from Bigorre were among the hundreds who now expressed their determination to defend their order. On that date Diego de Cortada appeared in the bishop of Paris’s residence, in front of the papal commissioners, to affirm that he wished to defend the order, which had been ‘good and legal’ during the whole time that he had been a Templar (though adding that he had only joined the order seven or eight years ago). Brothers Bertrandus de Montepesato, Arnaudus Guillelmi, and Guillelmus de Noerio likewise stated that they wanted to defend the order (with Arnaudus adding ‘as far as he was able’).75 The next day these four made up part of the group of nearly 600 brothers who gathered in the garden behind the bishop’s residence to affirm the order’s innocence.76 Notaries then travelled around Paris to the Templars’ various places of incarceration to verify that each really did wish
74 Vitalis de Curreto is clear that he wrote his 26 March document with the bishopric sede vacante. 75 Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 99. 76 Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 107.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
to hold to his defence of the order. On 7 April they came to the home of Guillelmus de Latingi,77 where our four brothers were being held. When these four were questioned as to their intentions, they took counsel among themselves and then affirmed once more that they did indeed intend to defend the order.78 This is the last known trace of the Templars of Bigorre.79 What happened to these four after 7 April 1310? No evidence tells us. But once fifty-four Templars were hauled outside of Paris on 12 May 1310 and burned at the stake, the Templar resistance quickly collapsed. Very likely the four Templars from Bigorre submitted, returned to their earlier confessions, and did penance, even if no evidence to this effect survives — unless, that is, they were unlucky enough to have been among those burned in May. If they lived past the order’s dissolution in 1312, they would have been assigned to another order or allowed to live out their days with a small pension.
Conclusion The two appendices which follow this article make the complete Latin texts of the two sets of Templar confessions from Bigorre available for the first time. Beyond correcting Hans Prutz’s unfortunate errors and providing accurate data on the Templars, royal agents, witnesses, and notary involved, the present analysis has sought to underline three points about the implications of these confessions. First, the initial confessions of 20–21 December were given entirely in the absence of ecclesiastical or inquisitorial authority. The sénéschal of Bigorre and the royal knight assisting him had these confessions recorded by an experienced local notary, but with only a handful of secular witnesses present. This document was certainly sent to the royal court, where it may not have been well received. The king and his men had wanted their agents to act aggressively in securing confessions, but they had wished those confessions to be made to, or at least in the presence of, churchmen empowered to deal with the ecclesiastical crime of heresy. On 26 March 1308, the local royal officials at Lourdes did their best to remedy their earlier error, making sure that the re-stated confessions from five of the original six Templars were made in the presence of a Dominican commissioner of the inquisitor William of Paris, as well as before a local abbot and a representative of the bishop of Tarbes. But the luckless royal knights had again misunderstood the political and legal context; French inquisitors and bishops had been stripped of their authority to deal with the Templar matter by mid-February, so these attempted remedies were in vain. The case
77 One of the guards of the Templars. In Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 128, he is listed as guarding the Templars held at Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Here it is apparently a question of his personal residence, ‘in quadrivio Guilhore’. 78 Michelet, Le procès des templiers, i, 164. 79 Some details about the fate of the Order’s holdings in Bigorre can be found in De Gaulejac, ‘La liquidation des biens de l’ordre du Temple dans le Sud-Ouest de la France’, pièce justificative no. 12.
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of Bigorre shows the challenges royal agents faced in navigating the difficult legal waters presented by the Templar affair. Second, these confessions centred on the charge of sexual impropriety. The secret (vernacular) royal orders of 14 September 1307 had suggested that the most important charge was the denial of Christ. Elsewhere, particularly in Paris, Templars were allowed to indignantly deny the charges of sodomy and idol worship, as long as they confessed that they had been made to spit on or otherwise desecrate the cross. In some localities the interrogators seemed to find idolatry the essential aspect of the charges. But in Bigorre royal officials assumed that confessions to sexual deviancy were at the heart of the affair. Thus the first Templar to confess, Guillelmus de Noerio, never conceded that he had committed any other fault except engaging in indecent kisses at the time of his admission to the order. He admitted he had been told that he should relieve sexual urges with other brothers, but never agreed that he had actually done this. Indeed, in his second confession, he explicitly stated that he had not. His actual confession, then, was to no more than kissing the Templar master of Provence on the base of the spine at the time of his entry to the order. Third, even these confessions — largely to sexual impropriety rather than apostasy or heresy — are highly formulaic. Once the interrogators had arrived at satisfactory wording for the sins being confessed, that wording was largely repeated from one confession to the next on 20–21 December 1307. To a significant degree that wording had in turn been adapted from the original charges written up at the royal court. Finally the December confessions were then re-copied with only minor variations on 26 March. The Templars were simply made to swear, now in the presence of churchmen, that their earlier confessions had been accurate. As a number of recent studies have shown,80 Templar confessions frequently exhibit the ‘pre-packaged’ quality inherent in testimony based on pre-existing error lists used to interrogate suspected heretics.81 That is, their wording came ready made from the royal court, and agreement to that wording was then obtained by threats, promises, and often torture. These confessions therefore cannot shed light on what Templars did or did not do in initiation rituals; they show only what the royal agents insisted on eliciting. Four of the six Templars from Bigorre were among those in Paris in March and April 1310 who sought to renounce their earlier confessions and prove that the order had been falsely accused. These four were housed together in Paris, able to consult each other, and would have had ample opportunity to discuss what they had undergone. They may well have understood that their original confessions had not been well-handled, and that even so they had confessed to very little. This knowledge may have given them reason to hope as they challenged the king’s accusations. In the end, however, legal technicalities paled in the face of the pyre.
80 Including Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions’ and Field, ‘Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen’. 81 Grundmann, ‘Heresy Interrogations in the Late Middle Ages as a Source-Critical Problem’.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
Appendix A: Archives Nationales, J 413A, no. 14 AN, J 413A, no. 14, is an act produced by the notary Vitalis de Curreto, bearing his seign manuel. It records the confessions of six Templars from the sénéschalsy of Bigorre on 20 and 21 December 1307. Written on medium quality, un-ruled parchment, the document measures 255 mm wide at the top, 264 mm wide at the bottom, and 433 mm long. It was originally folded three times vertically and three times horizontally. The oldest endorsement, on the section that would have been exposed, is an address to the king, reading ‘Serenissimo principi domino Philippo Regi francorum / Dentur / Iste confessiones quas fecerunt templarii Bigorre’. It appears that the middle line, the word ‘Dentur’, was added slightly later, in different ink, after the first and third lines had already been written. The document was subsequently stored folded only once vertically and once horizontally. More modern hands have added on that exposed surface ‘1307 / 14 / J 413’ and ‘J. 413. n.o 14’. Fourteen small holes in the left margin and the same number in the right margin may indicate once having been sewn shut. The document is listed in Pierre Dupuy, Traittez concernant l’histoire de France: Sçauoir la condamnation des Templiers, auec quelques Actes: l’histoire dv schisme, les Papes tenans le siege en Auignon: et qvelqves procez criminels (Paris: Chez la veuue Mathvrin dv Pves, et Edme Martin, 1654), p. 81 (suggested the document bore two seals at that time), and François-Just-Marie Raynouard, Monumens historiques, relatifs à la condamnation des chevaliers du Temple, et à l’abolition de leur ordre (Paris: Adrien Égron, 1813), p. 244, and referred to in Konrad Schottmüller, Der Untergang des Templer-Ordens (Berlin: Ernest Siegfried Mittler & Sohn, 1887), i, 255–56. It was partially edited in Hanz Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1888), pp. 324–25. See also Heinrich Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols (Munster: Aschendorffschen Buchhandlung, 1907), i, 156–57. My transcription preserves the notary’s orthography, except that it distinguishes u from v and i from j. Capitalization and punctuation have been modernized. People and places are identified in the body of this article. Text
Noverint universi quod anno domini m.o ccc.o vii.o die mercurii ante festum beati Thome apostoli, in presencia nobilium virorum domini Guillelmi de Rabastenchis, senescalli Bigorre, et domini Bertrandi Agasse, militum domini regis, ab eodem deputatorum super facto Templariorum in senescallia prefata, ac mei notarii, et testium subscriptorum, frater Guillelmus de Noerio, cambrarius domus Templi de Borderiis, qui alias super ingressu et receptione sui ordinis fuerat interrogatus, ad presens dicens se velle gratis confiteri super illis que querebantur ab ispo, inter cetera gratis dixit et confessus fuit ad presens, videlicet quod quando dominus Guigo Ademarii, magister tunc Provincie dicti ordinis, induit et recepit ipsum in fratrem, quod ipse receptus osculatus fuit ipsum magistrum tunc in fine spina dorsi sui, et quod idem magister mandavit eidem et licenciam dedit quod si haberet voluntatem
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jacendi cum muliere quod jaceret seu commisseret cum aliquo fratrum sui ordinis. Item, et quod si esset aliquis fratrum suorum qui secum jacere vellet seu commissere, quod hoc pateretur. Super aliis interogatus nil aliud dixit. ¶ Item, frater Bernardus de Jer, eodem modo interrogatus, gratis dixit in presencia dictorum militum et mei notarii et testium subscriptorum, quod quando dominus Raimundus Guillelmi de Benca, tunc preceptor domus de Boudraco, induit ipsum et recepit in fratrem, quod ipse receptus osculatus fuit ipsum in fine spine dorsi sui. Item, quod fecit sibi poni crucem subtus pedem suum. Item, quod si erat aliquis de majoribus suis qui secum jacere vellet seu commissere, mandavit ei quod hoc pateretur, quod et fecit, ut dixit, de preceptore de Gembrede pluries. Item, dixit quod quando ipse fuit indutus et receptus, eodem modo fuit indutus et receptus frater Arnaldus de Bainheriis. Item, dixit quod tunc tempore receptionis tenebatur supra eum enssis [sic] evaginatus ac si vellent eum interficere nisi vellet facere quod sibi mandabatur, et quod tunc fecit, ut dixit, fecit propter timorem. Item, interrogatus si confitebatur peccata sua capellanis, dixit quod sic, capellanis suis omnia peccata, exceptis illis quando jacebant unus cum alio. Acta fuerunt hec in testimonio Petri de Peira, servientis armorum domini regis castellani de Lorda; Johannis de Subvilla, castellani de Baredge domini regis; Regaldi Dasser, domicelli. ¶ Item, die Jovis sequenti, frater Dominicus de Jer dixit, in presencia dictorum militum ac mei notarii et testium predictorum, quod frater Petrus de Melia[n] a, preceptor tunc domus de Borderiis, induit ipsum et recepit in fratrem, et cum posuisset seu induisset mantellum quod duxit eum in quodam loco scuro [sic] ubi, cum fuit ille receptus, osculatus fuit dictum preceptorem in fine spine dorsi sui. Et postea posuit crucem in terra et fecit sibi crucem percutere cum pede, et postea spuere supra crucem. Item, dixit quod postea fecit sibi jurare castitatem, ita quod non jaceret cum aliqua muliere, set si vellet hoc facere quod jaceret cum altero de fratribus dicti ordinis. Item, dixit quod ita sunt usi ipse et alii fratres ipsius ordinis. ¶ Item, eadem die, frater Bernardus de Montepesato dixit quod ipse fuit indutus et recep[tus]i per dominum Poncium de Broheto militem, qui cum induisset sibi mantellum quod tenebatur supra eum enssis [sic] evaginatus, et quod duxit retro altare, et osculatus fuit eum primo in ore et postea retro in fine spine dorsi sui. Et hoc facto posuit crucem in terra, et mandavit ei quod percuteret crucem cum pede et quod spueret supra crucem. Nec facere voluit, ut dixit. Item, dixit quod dictus dominus Poncius de Broheto dixit sibi quod crederet in eo quod ipsi credunt. Interrogatus in quo dicebant quod crederet, dixit quod ipse de alio nescit, nisi de Deo. Item, dixit quod fecit sibi jurare castitatem nec jaceret cum mulieribus, set si vellet hoc facere quod jaceret cum aliquo fratrum, et quod hoc ab aliis pateretur. Tamen dixit quod nunquam fecit. ¶ Item, eadem die, frater Arnaudus Guillielmi Dauleo dixit quod dominus Guigo Ademarii, magister Provincie tunc, induit ipsum fratrem, ubi dicitur ad Villam Dei. Et osculatus fuit eum in ore, et fecit sibi jurare obedienciam, et postea osculatus fuit
i A small hole has worn through the parchment here.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
eum in fine spine dorsi sui. Et quod mandavit sibi renegare Deum, et quod crederet in eorum deum, et quod posuit crucem in terra et mandavit quod percuteret crucem cum pede et spueret supra. Nec facere voluit, ut dixit. Item, dixit quod mandavit ei tenere castitatem de mulieribus, set si vellet jacere cum muliere quod jaceret cum aliquo fratrum, et hoc pateretur aliis. Neque facit, ut dixit. ¶ Item, dominus Diego de Cortada, miles, dixit quod dominus Guigo Ademarii induit ipsum fratrem apud Tholosam, et fecit sibi jurare hobedienciam, et oscultus fuit eum in ore et postea in umbilico et in nadgeii et posteriore parte, et quod posuerunt crucem in terra et quod mandatum fuit sibi quod percuteret cruce cum pede, et quod renegaret Deum et crederet in eorum deum. Nec ipse facere voluit, ut dixit, set promisit tenere ordinem. Postea quod mandaverunt sibi tenere castitatem de mulieribus, set si volebat jacere cum muliere quod jaceret cum aliquo fratrum, et si fratres sui ordinis hoc facere vellent, quod pateretur. Necque fecit, ut dixit. Acta fuerunt hec in presencia dominorum militum, et testimonio testium superius nunciatorum, et mei, Vitalis de Curreto, notarii publici majoris curie Bigorre dicti domini regis, qui premissis omnibus interfui, et, requisitus per dictos milites, presentes confessiones scripsi et signo meo signavi.
Appendix B: Archives Nationales, J 413B, no. 19 AN, J 413B, no. 19 is a second act produced by the notary Vitalis de Curreto, on 26 March 1308, with his seign manuel. It contains restatements of the confessions of five of the same six Templars whose confessions were recorded on 20–21 December. Medium quality parchment, ruled in lead (right margin not ruled), 216 mm wide by 402 mm long, plus parchment strips for seals approximately 100 mm long. There are two significant tears in the bottom third of the parchment; the bottom right corner has been cut off as well. There are no contemporary endorsements but only later shelf marks: (on left) J. 413. N.o 19 (on right) 1308 / 19 / J 413. Six seals, in alternating red and black wax in various states of preservation, are still attached, on parchment strips. From left to right: 1. Seal of Bertrandus Agasse, in red wax, ‘ertrand’ still legible in the legend. On the parchment strip can be read the inscription ‘sigillum bertrandi agasse militis’. 2. Seal of Gauzbertus Bernardi (?), in black wax, ‘ber’ legible in the legend. The inscription on the parchment strip is too faded to read. 3. Seal of Johannes de Borderiis, O. P. (?). Only a fragment of red wax remains. The inscription of the parchment strip is too faded to read. 4. Seal of Fortanerius, abbot of Saint-Savinus, in black wax. The legend is too faded to read. The inscription on the parchment strip reads ‘sigillum abbatis sci. savini tarvien. dyoc’.
ii Vernacular term meaning ‘buttock’, related to Old and Middle French ‘nache’ and modern Catalan ‘natja’.
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5. Seal of Vitalis Curreto, notary, in red wax. Well-preserved with fleur de lys in the centre, but legend illegible. The inscription on the parchment strip reads ‘sigillum vital. de curreto notarii bigorr’. 6. Seal of Garcia de Serris (?), in black wax. Legend is illegible. From the inscription on the parchment strip only ‘sigillum’ can be read. See Pierre Dupuy, Traittez concernant l’histoire de France, pp. 88–89 for earliest indication of the document, and Appendix A for further bibliography as well as the editorial conventions employed here. Text
Regie majestati significat Bertrandus Agasse miles, comissarius deputatus super delictis Templariorum existencium in Bigorra, quod die martis proxima post festum annunciationis beate Marie virginis, accedentes apud castrum de Lurde una cum domino Gauzberto Bernardi milite, locum tenente senescalli Bigorre, ubi Templarii domus de Borderiis predicte senescallie Bigorre et aliarum domorum pertinencium ad dictam domum de Borderiis erant testati seu capti, qui vocato secum dicto loco tenente, et vocatis religiosis viris et nobilibus et discretis domino Fortanerio, Dei gratia abbate Sancti Savini, Tarviensis dyocesis; fratre Johanne de Borderiis, ordinis Predicatorum, subpriore conventus de Morlanis, inquisitore seu comissario heretice pravitatis; fratre Johanne de Vallenca, ordinis Predicatorum; fratre Bernardo de Cauderasa, monacho Sancti Savini; magistro Dominico de Livrone, gerente vices officialis Tarviensis sede vacante; Petro de Speriis, castellano dicti castri Lurde et serviente armorum; magistro Garcia de Serris, procuratore domini nostri regis in Bigorra; magistro Arnaldo Dede notario; et in presentia predictorum et plurium aliorum, dictus Bertrandus Agasse miles requisiv[i]t ¶ Fratrem Guillemum de Noer, Templarium, quod diceret veritatem de his que in ordine Templariorum comiserat. Qui gratis et libera voluntate dixit et confessus fuit quod dominus Guigo Ademarii, tunc magister Templariorum Provincie, induit ipsum et Templarium ipsum fecit. Et incontinenti dictus magister ipsum osculatus fuit in ore, et ipse frater Guillelmus incontinenti osculatus fuit dictum magistrum in fine spine dorsi sui. Et dictus magister mandavit et licentiam dedit dicto fratri Guillelmo quod si haberet voluntatem jacendi cum muliere vel comiscendi cum muliere, quod jaceret seu comisseret se cum aliquo fratrum dicti ordinis. Tamen dixit quod non fuit usus se comissere cum aliquo fratre, nec aliquis cum eodem. Super aliis interrogatus nichil aliud dixit. ¶ Item, frater Bernardus de Jer, ordinis Templarioum, gratis dixit et confessus fuit ibidem, in presencia dictorum militum et omnium supra scriptorum, quod dominus Raimundus Guillelmi de Benca, tunc preceptor domus de Boudraco induit ipsum et recepit ipsum in fratrem et ipse receptus fuit osculatus dictum dominum Raimundum Guillelmi in fine spine dorsi sui. Item, quod fecit sibi poneret crucem subtus pedem suum. Item, mandavit et dixit quod si aliquis de majoribus suis secum jacere vellet vel comisseri, quod hoc sustineret et faceret, quod et fecit, ut dixit, et quod preceptor de
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
Gembrede jacuit cum eoiii carnaliter per duas vices. Item, dixit quod quando ipse fuit indutus et receptus, eodem modo fuit indutus et receptus frater Arnaldus de Bainheriis. Item, dixit quod tunc temporis receptionis tenebatur supra eum ensis evaginatus, ac si vellent eum interficere nisi vellet facere seu sustinere illud quod sibi mandabatur. Et tunc fecit, ut dixit, ea que fecit propter timorem Templariorum. Item, interrogatus si ipse et alii confitebantur capellanis peccata sua, dixit quod sic, capellanis suis omnia peccata, excepto illo quando unus comissebatur cum alio carnaliter. ¶ Item, frater Dominicus de Jer, ordinis Templariorum, gratis dixit et confessus fuit in presencia supra dictorum testium, quod Petrus de Meliano, tunc preceptor domus de Borderiis, induit ipsum et in fratrem recepit. Et cum eundem induisset, sicut moris est Templariorum, duxit eum in quodam loco obscuro, et ibi osculatus fuit dictum preceptorem in fine spine dorsi sui. Et postea posuit crucem in terra, et fecit sibi crucem percutere cum pede, et postea spuere supra crucem. Item, dixit quod postea fecit sibi jurare castitatem, ita quod non jaceret cum aliqua muliere, set si vellet hoc facere quod jaceret cum altero de fratribus dicti ordinis. Dixit tamen quod non fuit usus se comisseri cum aliquo dictorum fratrum nec aliquis cum eodem. ¶ Item, frater Bernardus de Montepesato, ordinis Templariorum, gratis et libere dixit et confessus fuit in presencia supradictorum testium, quod cum ipse fuisset indutus et receptus per dominum Poncium de Broeto, militem Templi, et sibi induisset mantelum, tenebatur supra eum ensis evaginatus, et duxit eum retro altare et osculatus fuit eum dictus receptus, primo in ore, postea retro in fine spine dorsi sui. Hoc facto posuit crucem in terra dictus miles, et mandavit ei quod percuteret crucem cum pede et spueret supra crucem. Nec hoc facere voluit, ut dixit. Item, dixit quod dictus dominus Poncius de Broheto dixit sibi quod crederet illud quod ipsi credebant. Item, interrogatus in quo dicebant quod credebant, dixit quod ipse nescit, nisi de Deo. Item, dixit quod fecit sibi jurare castitatem et quod non jaceret cum mulieribus, set si hoc facere vellet quod jaceret cum aliquo fatrum Templi, et quod hoc alii sustinerent. Tamen dixit quod nunquam hoc fecit. ¶ Item, frater Arnaudus Guillelmi Dauleo, ordinis Templariorum, gratis et libere dixit et confessus fuit in presencia supradictorum testium, quod dominus Guigo Ademarii, tunc magister Provincie, induit et recepit ipsum in fratrem, in loco ubi dicitur Villa Dei. Et osculatus fuit eum in ore, et fecit sibi jurare obedienciam, et postea osculatus fuit eum in fine spine dorsi sui. Et mandavit sibi quod renegaret Deum et crederet in deos quos ipsi credebant. Et ibidem posuit crucem in terra, et mandavit sibi ut ipse percuteret crucem cum pede et spueret supra crucem. Nec facere voluit, ut dixit. Item, dixit et mandavit ei tenere castitatem de mulieribus, set si vellet jacere cum muliere quod jacere cum aliquo fratrum Templi, et quod idem ipse pateretur aliis. Neque facit, ut dixit. ¶ Et predicti fratres, factis suis confessionibus ibidem, coram predicto domino Bertrando Agasse, et ad requisitionem ipsius in presencia predicti domini Gauzberti Bernardi et aliorum supradictorum et mei notarii infrascripti, juraverunt ad sancta Dei euvangelia corporaliter manu tacta, se velle subicere correctioni et misericordie iii The notary added this word above the line.
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Romane ecclesie et sancte fidei et correctioni ac emendationi ejusdem, et tenere de cetero illam fidem quam veri christiani et sancta chatolica [sic] Romana ecclesia confitentur, et quod nunquam ad predictos errores per eos superius confessatos redibunt, et quod omnia et singula per eos confessata superius confitentur et dicunt per eos confessata, et quod nolunt contra predicta aliquid negare vel dicere de cetero. Et ad requisitionem predictorum dominorum Bertrandi Agasse et Gauzberti Bernardi locum tenenti senescalli Bigorre, ego Vitalis de Curreto, notarius majoris curie Bigorre, predictas confessiones dictorum fratrum scripsi et in publicam formam redigi, et predictis omnibus interfui, in testimonium predictorum ad hoc vocatis et rogatis et per me requisitis, et signum meum in predictis apposui consuetum. Actum fuit hoc in dicto castro de Lurda, presentibus supradictis, et die quo supra, anno Domini m.o ccc.o viii.o regnante Philippo rege Francie et dominante in comitatu Bigorre, et sede Tarviensis vacante. In cujus rei testimonium et ad majoram roboris firmitatem, nos predicti Bertrandus Agasse, Gauzbertus Bernardi milites; frater Johannes de Borderiis, subprior domus Predicatorum de Morlanis; frater Fortanerius, abbas Sancti Savini; Garcias de Serris, procurator domini regis in Bigorra; Vitalis de Curreto, notarius curie Bigorre, sigilla nostra presenti inst[rumento]iv impendenti[a] duximus apponenda.
Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Paris, Archives nationales (AN), J 413A, no. 14 ———, J 413B, no. 19 Primary Sources Barcelona, ACA, Pergamenos, no. 2486, in Finke, Heinrich, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols (Munster: Aschendorffschen Buchhandlung, 1907), ii, 316–21 Paris, AN, J 294, no. 13, published by Élisabeth Lalou and Xavier Hélary in Enquêtes menées sous les derniers capétiens, ed. by Élisabeth Lalou and Christophe Jacobs (Paris: Centre de ressources numériques TELMA, 2007), at http://telma.irht.cnrs.fr//outils/enquetes/ enquete15/index/ ———, J 294, no. 151, published by Élisabeth Lalou and Xavier Hélary in Enquêtes menées sous les derniers capétiens, ed. by Élisabeth Lalou and Christophe Jacobs (Paris: Centre de ressources numériques TELMA, 2007), at http://telma.irht.cnrs.fr//outils/ enquetes/enquete16/index/ ———, J 413, no. 15, in Sean L. Field, ‘The Inquisitor Ralph of Ligny, Two German Templars, and Marguerite Porete’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 39 (2013), pp. 1–22
iv The bottom right corner of the document has been damaged, obscuring the end of this word.
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
———, J 413, no. 16, in Arnaud Baudin and Ghislain Brunel, ‘Les Templiers en Champagne. Archives inédites, patrimoines et destins des hommes’, in Les Templiers dans l’Aube, Textes réunis et édités par ‘La Vie en Champagne’ (Troyes: Vie en Champagne, 2013), pp. 62–69 ———, J 413, no. 18, in Jules Michelet, Le procès des templiers, 2 vols (Paris, 1841–1851; re-ed. CTHS, 1987), ii, 275–420. Digital images available at http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/ documentation/archim/proces-templiers.html ———, J 413, no. 17 (Latin) and no. 20 (French), in Sean L. Field, ‘Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen, 28–29 October 1307’, Speculum, 91 (2016), 297– 327. Digital image of no. 20 available at http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/ archim/proces-templiers.html ———, J 413, no. 21, in Hanz Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1888), p. 326 ———, J 413, no. 22, in Sean L. Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen’, French Historical Studies, 39 (2016), 35–71. Digital image available at http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/archim/proces-templiers.html ———, J 413, no. 23, in Sean L. Field, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen’, French Historical Studies, 39 (2016), 35–71 and Michel Miguet, Templiers et hospitaliers en Normandie (Paris: CTHS, 1995), p. 138. Digital image available at http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/archim/proces-templiers. html ———, JJ 38, no. 10, published by Élisabeth Lalou and Xavier Hélary in Enquêtes menées sous les derniers capétiens, ed. by Élisabeth Lalou and Christophe Jacobs (Paris: Centre de ressources numériques TELMA, 2007), at http://telma.irht.cnrs.fr/outils/ enquetes/enquete101/enquete101/ Paris, BnF, Doat ms. 108, fols 184–188v, at http://ideal.irht.cnrs.fr/document/14390 (summary from the Corpus Philippicum) Paris, Musée de l’Histoire de France, AE/II/311 (formerly AN, J 413, no. 25), in Andrea Nicolotti, ‘L’interrogatorio dei Templari imprigionati a Carcassonne’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 52 (2011), 697–729. Digital image available at http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/ Wave/image/archim/Pages/03818.htm Secondary Works Bailey, Michael D., and Sean L. Field, eds, Late Medieval Heresy: New Perspectives. Essays in Honor of Robert E. Lerner (York: York Medieval Press, 2018) Balencie, Gaston, ‘Procès de Bigorre, pièces justificatives’, Bulletin de la Société académique des Hautes-Pyrénées, 77 (1930), 1–128 ———, ‘Chronologie des évêques de Tarbes’, Revue de Gascone, n.s., 4 (1904), 193–208 Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Baudin, Arnaud, and Ghislain Brunel, ‘Les Templiers en Champagne. Archives inédites, patrimoines et destins des hommes’, in Les Templiers dans l’Aube, Textes réunis et édités par ‘La Vie en Champagne’ (Troyes: Vie en Champagne, 2013), pp. 62–69
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Berthe, Maurice, Le comté de Bigorre: un milieu rural au bas Moyen Âge (Paris: SEVPEN, 1976) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., ‘Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar: The Execution of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny in March 1314’, Viator, 47 (2015), 229–92 Brown, Elizabeth A. R. and Alan Forey, ‘Vox in excelso and the Suppression of the Knights Templar: The Bull, its History, and a New Edition’, Mediaeval Studies, 80 (2018), 1–58 Burgtorf, Jochen, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson, eds, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314) (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010) Carraz, Damien, L’Ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône (1124–1312). Ordres militaires, croisades et sociétés méridionales (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2005) Castignani, Carlo, Persecuzione e martirio dei Templari (1307–1314) (Nonantola: Centro Studi Storici Nonantolani, 2019) Cerrini, Simonetta, La passione dei Templari: la Via Crucis dell’ordine cavalleresco più potente del Medioevo (Milan: Mondadori, 2016) Challet, Vincent, ‘Entre expansionnisme capétien et relents d’hérésie: Le procès des templiers du Midi’, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 41 (2006), 139–68 Chevalier, Marie-Anne, ed., La fin de l’Ordre du Temple (Paris: Geuthner, 2012) Coste, Jean, Boniface VIII en procès. Articles d’accusation et dépositions des témoins (1303–1311) (Rome: ‘L’erma’ di Bretschneider, 1995) De Gaulejac, Bernard, ‘La liquidation des biens de l’ordre du Temple dans le Sud-Ouest de la France’ (Thèse pour l’École nationale des chartes, 1925), (online at the web site of ‘Les Amis des Archives de la Haute-Garonne’, at https://www.2a31.net/) Delisle, Léopold, ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéschaux royaux, depuis les origines jusqu’à l’avènement de Philippe de Valois’, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. by Léopold Delisle, vol. 24 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1904), pp. 1–385 Demurger, Alain, The Last Templar: The Tragedy of Jacques de Molay, trans. by Antonia Nevill (London: Profile, 2009) ———, The Persecution of the Templars: Scandal, Torture, Trial, trans. by Teresa Lavender Fagan (London: Profile, 2018) ———, Le peuple Templier, 1307/1312 (Paris: CNRS, 2019) Du Bourg, Antoine, Ordre de Malte. Histoire du grand prieuré de Toulouse et diverses possessions de l’ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem dans le Sud-Ouest de la France (Toulouse: Sistac et Boubée, 1883) Dupuy, Pierre, Traittez concernant l’histoire de France: Sçauoir la condamnation des Templiers, auec quelques Actes: l’histoire dv schisme, les Papes tenans le siege en Auignon: et qvelqves procez criminels (Paris: Chez la veuue Mathvrin dv Pves, et Edme Martin, 1654) Favreau, Robert, ‘Le procès des Templiers de la province d’Aquitaine’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest et des musées de Poitiers, 5th ser., 4 (1990), 273–96 Field, Sean L., ‘The Heresy of the Templars and the Dream of a French Inquisition’, in Late Medieval Heresy: New Perspectives. Essays in Honor of Robert E. Lerner, ed. by Michael D. Bailey and Sean L. Field (York: York Medieval Press, 2018), pp. 14–34 ———, ‘Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen’, French Historical Studies, 39 (2016), 35–71
The Templar Confessions in Bigorre, December 1307 and March 1308
———, ‘Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen, 28–29 October 1307’, Speculum, 91 (2016), 297–327 ———, ‘The Inquisitor Ralph of Ligny, Two German Templars, and Marguerite Porete’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 39 (2013), 1–22 ———, ‘La fin de l’ordre du Temple à Paris: le cas de Mathieu de Cressonessart’, in La fin de l’Ordre du Temple, ed. by Marie-Anne Chevalier (Paris: Geuthner, 2012), pp. 101–32 Finke, Heinrich, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols (Munster: Aschendorff, 1907) Forey, Alan, ‘Were the Templars Guilty, Even if They Were Not Heretics or Apostates?’, Viator, 42 (2011), 115–41 Frale, Barbara, ‘Du catharisme à la sorcellerie: les inquisiteurs du Midi dans le procès des templiers’, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 41 (2006), 169–86 Fried, Johannes, ‘Wille, Freiwilligkeit und Geständnis um 1300. Zu Beurteilung des letzten Templergrossmeisters Jacques de Molay’, in Johannes Fried, Zu Gast im Mittelalter (Munich: Beck, 2007), pp. 208–38 Gallia christiana, ed. by Denis de Sainte-Marthe and others, 16 vols (Paris: Coignard, 1715–1865) Gilbert-Dony, Anne, ‘Les derniers Templiers du bailliage de Caen: Étude des documents relatant leurs tribulations (1307–1311)’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de Normandie, 62 (1994–1997), 175–96 Gilmour-Bryson, Anne, The Trial of the Templars in Cyprus: A Complete English Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1998) Grundmann, Herbert, ‘Heresy Interrogations in the Late Middle Ages as a Source-Critical Problem’, in Essays on Heresy, Inquisition and Literacy, ed. by Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, trans. by Steven Rowan (York: York Medieval Press, 2019), pp. 126–79 Josserand, Philippe, Jacques de Molay. Le dernier grand-maître des Templiers (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2019) Krämer, Thomas, ‘Terror, Torture and the Truth: The Testimonies of the Templars Revisited’, in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 71–85 Lalou, Élisabeth, and Christophe Jacobs, eds, Enquêtes menées sous les derniers capétiens (Paris: Centre de ressources numériques TELMA, 2007) Langlois, Charles-Victor, ‘Review of Schottmüller and Prutz’, Revue historique, 40 (1889), 168–79 ———, ed., Inventaire d’anciens comptes royaux dressé par Robert Mignon, sous le règne de Philippe de Valois (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1899) Ménard, Léon, Histoire civile, ecclésiastique et littéraire de la ville de Nismes, 7 vols (Paris: Chaubert, 1744–1758) Michelet, Jules, Le procès des templiers, 2 vols (Paris, 1841–1851; re-ed. CTHS, 1987) Miguet, Michel, Templiers et hospitaliers en Normandie (Paris: CTHS, 1995) Nicolotti, Andrea, ‘L’interrogatorio dei Templari imprigionati a Carcassonne’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 52 (2011), 697–729 Prutz, Hanz, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1888)
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Raynouard, François-Just-Marie, Monumens historiques, relatifs à la condamnation des chevaliers du Temple, et à l’abolition de leur ordre (Paris: Adrien Égron, 1813) Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ‘Were the Templars Guilty?’, in The Medieval Crusade, ed. by Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), pp. 107–24 Schottmüller, Konrad, Der Untergang des Templer-Ordens (Berlin: Ernest Siegfried Mittler, 1887) Sève, Roger, and Anne-Marie Chagny-Sève, eds, Le procès des Templiers d’Auvergne (1309–1311). Édition de l’interrogatoire de juin 1309 (Paris: CTHS, 1986) Théry, Julien, ‘A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the “Perfidious Templars”, and the Pontificalization of the French Monarchy’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 39 (2013), 117–48 Théry-Astruc, Julien, ‘The Flight of the Master of Lombardy (13 February 1308) and Clement V’s Strategy in the Templar Affair: A Slap in the Pope’s Face’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 70 (2016), 35–44 Vidal, Pierre, Hospitaliers et Templiers en France Méridionale. Le Grand Prieuré de Toulouse de l’Ordre de Malte: guide de recherches historiques, archivistiques et patrimoniales (Toulouse: CNRS, 2002)
Elisabeth Lalou
The Capetians and the River Seine (Thirteenth– Fourteenth Century)
When, in 1204, Philippe Auguste captured Normandy, he simultaneously added the Seine valley to the royal domain. This was a major event of the thirteenth century and marked, for a time, an abatement of the ongoing conflicts between the Plantagenets and the Capetians.1 But scholars have not paid enough attention to the river itself. A young Norman geographer has just published an atlas of the Seine valley (the Atlas de la vallée de la Seine), which gives a full account of the magnificent river that runs from Paris out to the sea.2 Indeed, the small section of river that runs between the two capital cities, Paris and Rouen, still the site of much activity, was an area of much importance and activity in the Middle Ages, especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The questions this essay takes up concern the relationship of the Capetians to the River Seine: to what extent was the Seine central to the concerns of the Capetian kings?3 In what respect did they seek to control the river ‘in its entirety’ all the way to the sea? To what extent did the Capetians seek to gain control of the Seine valley prior to 1204, and then how, after ‘the loss of Normandy’ (from the English point of view), did the Capetians appropriate the river, the valley, and the castles and settlements of the dukes of Normandy on her banks, all the way to the sea?4
1 Flambard Héricher and Gazeau, eds, 1204. La Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens. Neveux, La Normandie des ducs aux rois. 2 Brennetot, Atlas de la vallée de la Seine. 3 This article is in honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown who has worked on the Capetians and Saint-Denis, I thank C. Gaposchkin for translating this article from the French for this volume. 4 Powicke, The Loss of Normandy.
Elisabeth Lalou is Professeure émérite of Medieval History at Rouen Normandy University. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 383-398 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122628
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The Seine, a River at the Heart of the Royal Domain The authority of sovereigns or dynasties were often defined by the rivers or waterways that marked the edges of their territories.5 The lands of the Carolingians were thus often described as the territory lying between the Meuse and the Rhine rivers. The early Capetians controlled the territory between the Oise and the Seine on the one hand, and the Seine and the Loire on the other, Paris and Orleans being their first two capital cities. On the other hand, it was rare to name rivers if they ran directly through a region under political control. With respect to the Capetians and the Seine, only after 1204 did the importance of the Seine to royal interests become evident. We might assume that even before 1204 the Capetians dreamed of controlling the entire Seine valley. That this aspiration became an active ambition underlies many of the disputes between the Plantagenets and the Capetians in the twelfth century. The source of the Seine is found in the plateau of Langres. It then runs for 776 kilometres [482 miles] before reaching its estuary.6 Its principal tributaries upstream of Paris are the Aube, the Yonne, and the Marne, and those downstream from Paris — the ones of particular interest to us — are the Oise, the Eure, the Epte, the Andelle, and the Risle. Today we divide the Seine into five parts: the ‘Petite Seine’, from the headwaters to Montereau-Fault-l’Yonne; the ‘Upper Seine’, from Montereau-Fault-Yonne to Paris; then after the ‘Parisian Seine’ (that is, the crossing of Paris); the ‘Lower Seine’, from Paris to Rouen, and the ‘Maritime Seine’, from Rouen to the English Channel. This contemporary geographical categorization may be useful for us in understanding the way that the Capetian kings understood the river. Before 1204, the Capetians were masters of the Upper Seine and of Paris, but only about half of today’s Lower Seine. The towns of Argenteuil, Saint-Germain, Poissy, Meulan, Mantes — all towns where, at least by the eighteenth century, bridges existed — were all Capetian possessions.7 From the Epte all the way out to the ocean, the Seine valley belonged to the Norman Plantagenets.8 Bridges existed early on at Vernon, Pont-de-l’Arche, and Rouen. No bridges existed at any point between Rouen and the ocean. It was only in the twelfth century that a bridge was built in Rouen.9 Ferries were used to cross the river from
5 On this topic, Dauphant, Le royaume des quatre rivières and Géographies. Ce qu’ils savaient de la France. 6 Brennetot, Atlas de la vallée de la Seine. Guittoneau, ‘”Entour Paris”, une capitale et ses petites villes sur l’eau au xve siècle’. Doctoral Thesis, Paris IV Sorbonne, 2014. Published under the title Dans l’ombre de la capitale – Les petites villes sur l’eau et Paris au xve siècle. 7 On bridges, Brennetot, Atlas de la vallée de la Seine, p. 22; see Guittonneau, Dans l’ombre de la capitale gives the list of bridges, ferries and fords ‘entour Paris’ pp. 55–64. Guittoneau, ‘La brève histoire d’un bac aux portes de Paris’, pp. 5–24. 8 The marriage of Louis VIII and Blanche de Castille took place at Port-Mort (Eure, arr. and canton Les Andelys), opposite Gaillon on the left bank, outside the kingdom then under excommunication of Philip Augustus, on 23 May 1200. 9 The Rouen bridge was built in 1160 as a gift from Mathilde the Emperess. Mollat, ed., Histoire de Rouen, p. 56.
the capetians and the river seine (thirteenth–fourteenth century)
Petit Andely downstream to Caudebec.10 But the bridge in Rouen was needed to cross the Seine because, as one went downstream towards the estuary, the river was increasingly strong and it was difficult for a large group of carts and horses to make the crossing.11 This account of the points of crossing of the Seine is necessary to explain many historical events, as, for instance, the later itinerary of Edward III during his chevauchée to Crécy in 1346. As is still true today, the Seine was subject to periods of both low water and flooding, which would affect the cities it ran through. The floods of medieval Paris are famous, such as the flood of 1296, which washed away the Petit Pont.12 The Chronique Anonyme reported that in Paris, on 20 December 1296, the Seine broke its bridges and flooded: ‘on passait a batel par dessus les murs du vergier le roy’.13 We also have the testimony of someone at the Collège des Bernardins.14 The waters remained high from 21 December 1296 to 25 March 1297. The Petit Pont was rebuilt within a month, but it took six or seven months to rebuild the Grand Pont. The chronicles also mention the appearance of a comet. The tidal bore (the ‘mascaret’, called the barre in Normandy) today reaches all the way up to Poses, which is 175 km (108 miles) from the sea.15 Formerly, it reached as far as Caudebec. A Carolingian description describes this phenomenon. The Seine was thus a river shaped by the sea in the region of its estuary. These characteristics of the Seine river are provided here to explain the following: she is not an easy river. At various points in the year, navigation was arduous; at other points, it was nearly impossible to cross. The river’s meanderings, and its many and shifting islets, made navigation still more hazardous.16 Why, then, did the Capetians want to control the Norman Seine? The answer is fairly straightforward: it was a major trade route despite its many dangers, and the income that could be drawn from its control was enormously attractive.17
10 Chaïb, La Seine, Vie et patrimoine. Tome 1. Seine sauvage. Also by Chaib, La Seine, Vie et patrimoine. Tome 2. Seine agricole. In Seine agricole, pp. 115–18, these are described as ‘passages d’eau’, sometimes simple boats that existed at a number of points until the twentieth century. 11 Flow rate of the Seine: 600 M3 on average in Poses. Poses arr. Les Andelys, canton Val-de-Reuil. Caudebec: Seine-Maritime, arr. Rouen, canton Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon. (nouvelle commune: Rives-de-Seine). 12 Lalou, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel. 13 Chronique Anonyme, p. 134. 14 Bibliothèque municipale de Troyes MS 1739. 15 Brennetot, Atlas de la vallée de la Seine, p. 13. 16 Leroux, ‘L’anthropisation médiévale des rives de la Seine entre Rouen et le Havre et ses conséquences’. Guittonneau, Dans l’ombre de la capitale,p. 73 also describes the particular landscape created by the meanders: islands, banks (the javials) and secondary arms (the gullies). 17 In the Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge of Claude Gauvard, the article on the Seine is attributed to Jean Favier: he writes: ‘la première voie commerciale de la France du Nord’, navigable as far as Nogent and, for the tributaries the Oise, as far as Compiègne, the Marne as far as Meaux, the Loing as far as Montargis, the Yonne as far as Auxerre. There are as many ‘relais avec le trafic routier’. The ‘ports de Paris’ are ‘un exceptionnel centre de redistribution des pondéreux (blé, sel, vin, bois…) entre la Normandie, l’Artois, la Champagne occidentale et le Gâtinais’.
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A Major Trade Route and an Important Source of Revenue In spite of these floods and low waters, the river was a major trade route. The access it provided upriver was clear from when the Vikings used it to travel as far as Paris. In 885–886 they lay siege to Paris itself; on other occasions they were able to get through as far as Burgundy. Later, provisions and firewood were brought to Rouen, and then Paris, on boat. Goods being brought to Paris also arrived by river. From early on this river underwent significant development. Ports with docks were built to serve the great Norman Abbeys.18 Later, the king himself undertook to facilitate movement on it. For instance, Philip the Fair, by an act of 26 May 1301, ordered William of Nogaret, Simon de Marchais, and William of Mussy to look into the possibility of making the Seine more navigable upstream from Nogent in order to better serve Troyes and Burgundy. The act specified that this was ‘for much public utility’.19 The king thus took charge of this ‘public utility’.20 His rights over the public domain fell into two categories. On the one hand, there were ‘common things of use to all’, which included sea shores, public highways, navigable rivers assigned to the public, and common use of subjects and their banks. On the other were ‘public matters’ in the strict sense, such as income or taxes collected from ports. These regalia constitute an eminent domain. Sea shores and rivers were not technically part of the royal domain, but their defence and protection were still the king’s responsibility.21 The Livre de jostice et de plet said also that the king needed to protect the roadways and common rivers.22 The Garonne, for instance, was considered as a ‘common byway’ in the Middle Ages.23 It is not at all unlikely that the Seine held the same status. The Seine, this ‘common byway’, allowed boats to travel from outside Paris all the way to the English Channel. It permitted the transport of all types of goods, to which we will return below, but also travellers, including the king himself, who sometimes journeyed by boat up and down the Seine.24 The king also had the droit de gîte in a number of the smaller cities along the river.25 But this right, the right of hospitality, was redeemed in short order by the cities. And of course the smaller towns along the Seine also benefited from its proximity.26
18 Brennetot, Lucchini, and Maingon, eds, La Seine, une vallée, des imaginaires. Vincent, ‘Regard sur le paysage monastique de la vallée de la Seine’, pp. 19–35. Mouchard, ‘Les sites portuaires gallo-romains et médiévaux de l’estuaire de la Seine’. 19 Bautier, ‘Guillaume de Mussy, bailli, enquêteur royal, panetier de France sous Philippe le Bel’, pp. 64–98. 20 Leyte, Domaine et domanialité publique dans la F médiévale xiie-xve siècle. 21 Leyte, Domaine et domanialité publique dans la F médiévale xiie-xve siècle, pp. 88–89. 22 Leyte, Domaine et domanialité publique dans la F médiévale xiie-xve siècle, p. 169. 23 Leyte, Domaine et domanialité publique dans la F médiévale xiie-xve siècle, p. 420, who quotes Sicard, Les moulins de Toulouse, p. 60. 24 Lalou, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel, p. 70. 25 Moufflet, ‘Autour de l’hôtel de saint Louis’, pp. 34–36 (annexes) (latin 9016 fol. 1vo) and pp. 203–04. Brühl, Fodrum, gistum, servitium régis. 26 Guittonneau, Dans l’ombre de la capitale.
the capetians and the river seine (thirteenth–fourteenth century)
River traffic was a source of significant income to the king, to a number of lords, and to certain riverside towns. The right to fish in rivers often belonged to certain towns, making it free by law to fish.27 But by law fishing in public rivers was allowed. Fishermen in the Seine could catch sturgeons, salmon, and some eels, which were eaten by local communities and also sold for profit. Numerous laws about navigation hindered passage along the Seine, providing further revenue for the king or lords.28 The most famous of the Seine tolls is probably the one from Mantes.29 The accounts studied by Annette Philippe show how great was the trade facilitated by the river here. It is not surprising that the king was fond of this toll. The sheer range of goods transported by the Seine is demonstrated by the accounts of the fifteenth-century companies studied by Jean Favier.30 Large quantities of wine and herrings were transported, as well as wood and metals. The abundance of fruit produced in Normandy should not be forgotten either. The transport of these goods generated substantial income for merchants in Rouen and in Paris. Markets were located at a number of crossing points. A cattle market was located at the bridge at Poissy.31
Mastering the River Very early on, the kings understood the importance of the river and sought to exert control over it. From ancient times, a series of fortifications had been built along its banks. These were there to prevent ships from using the waterway to attack abbeys and towns along the river.32 The Viking invasions, of course, come readily to mind,33 but in a later period they served to protect against the French and the English too. Since the Carolingian era troops had been stationed at Pont Audemer, villa supra mare, which was a Carolingian property, a domain of Saint-Denis from which the
27 Leyte, Domaine et domanialité publique dans la F médiévale xiie-xve siècle, p. 241, gives the example of Beaune en Bourgogne. Some barons sometimes forbade fishing in certain rivers. Also see p. 83. Leroux, ‘Réflexions sur les pêcheries fluvio-maritimes médiévales dans la basse vallée de la Seine’, pp. 129–41. 28 Guilmoto, Étude sur les droits de navigation de la Seine de Paris à la Roche-Guyon du xie au xviiie siècle. 29 Guittonneau, ‘La hanse de Mantes, témoin et acteur des réseaux d’une petite ville au xve siècle’, pp. 595–615, who cites the following references: Philippe, ‘Le Péage par eau de la ville de Mantes dans la première moitié du xve siècle’, pp. 67–76; Cahen, ‘Ce qu’enseigne un péage du xviiie siècle’, pp. 487–581; Conchon, Le péage en France au xviiie siècle. Les privilèges à l’épreuve de la réforme. 30 Favier, Le registre des compagnies françaises; Mollat, Le commerce maritime normand à la fin du Moyen Âge. 31 Guittonneau, Dans l’ombre de la capitale, p. 166 identifies a few markets: Mantes existed as early as 1140; Meulan was created by Philippe Auguste. Arnoux and Theillier, ‘Les marchés comme lieux et enjeux de pouvoir en Normandie’, pp. 53–70, in particular on p. 65 the market of La Mailleraye and Caudebec-en-Caux. 32 Guyot, ‘Les sites fortifiés de la basse vallée de la Seine: essai d’inventaire d’après une approche historique, topographique et archéologique’, which relies on the works of Jacques Le Maho. 33 Bauduin, Histoire des Vikings.
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Orival
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Moulineaux
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n
Meulan SaintGermain
Pontoise
Marly
Versailles
Marly
Poissy Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Mantes
Gisors
Map 12.1. The Seine Region from Paris to the Channel Source: original map by François Delisle, GRHIS, Rouen.
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the capetians and the river seine (thirteenth–fourteenth century)
Seine estuary could be guarded.34 Later, Richard the Lionheart would build Château Gaillard in Les Andelys.35 In ducal Normandy and then after the river came under Capetian control, the locations of power were not merely defensive or offensive. The castles on the banks of the Seine undoubtedly were attractive residences. The dukes of Normandy and then the Capetian kings found these residences between the river and the forest amenable places for hunting. Large game forests were located all along the Seine, from the left bank Laye Forest, Saint-Germain en Laye, and on the right bank, the forest of Vernon, in Andelys and in Longboël (along the Andelle). Further along on the left bank was the forest near Pont-de-l’Arche, in Rouvray and La Londe, near Rouen and La Bouille. On the right bank was found Roumare (in the loop of the Seine) [See Map 12.1]. Closer to the Channel was the forest of Brotonne (in the last loop, near Caudebec), and directly opposite the Trait-Maulévrier forest, which is now state-owned.36 These forests across the Seine valley thus provided resources while serving at the same time as ducal and royal residences.
Living by the River Indeed, the Seine harboured on its banks the major power centres both of the dukes and of Capetian kings, and above all, their two capital cities. Paris
Paris, capital city of the Capetians since at least 1200, is situated on the Seine. This was an element in its success and growth.37 Boris Bove has studied the relationship of the Capetian king to his capital, and in particular its bourgeoisie and tradesmen. The kings of France had long maintained a residence in Paris. First the king lived on the Île-de-la-Cité and then at the Louvre (built by Philip Augustus), before a clear residential strategy was established at the close of the thirteenth century, when Philip the Fair undertook to rebuild the Palais de la Cité. The Palais then became the place where Parlement and the Chambre des comptes sat. Louis IX had founded the Sainte Chapelle there as well. Later, in the fourteenth century, further royal residences were built in Paris: the Hôtel Saint Paul and then, later still, the Hôtel des Tournelles.
34 Lohrmann, ‘Le moulin à eau dans le cadre de l’économie rurale de la Neustrie’, pp. 367–404. 35 Flambard Héricher and Gazeau, eds, 1204. La Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens. 36 Lake-Giguère, ‘Administrer les forêts du roi au Moyen Âge. Le ‘negotium forestarum’ en Normandie capétienne (1204–1328)’, p. 22. 37 Baldwin, Paris 1200; Hayot, Paris en 1200; Bove, ‘Alliance ou défiance? Les ambiguïtés de la politique des Capétiens envers leur capitale’; Vincent, ‘English Kingship’; Bove, ‘Les rois médiévaux sont-ils Parisiens?’, pp. 25–50.
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The city of Paris was thus a residential space like any other city,38 containing several castles — several ‘sites of power’ — that the sovereign could choose to inhabit.39 The king might live there, but so would the court. A capital city was the site where an emergent administration took root. The nearby forest of Vincennes is difficult to separate from these Parisian residences.40 Less a forest than a wood, the king nonetheless found enough animals there to amuse himself. Together with the city of Paris, the combination offered the king and his court under Philip the Fair a place to spend their winters. Paris was also the place where foreign kings and delegations were received. Edward II was greeted here in 1313 during the Grant feste (studied by Elizabeth A. R. Brown),41 and later, in 1378, Charles IV of Bohemia was welcomed there.42 In Paris, the River Seine is at the centre of the city. The river runs beneath the windows of the Palais, beneath the windows of the Louvre. It also functions sometimes as a kind of fortified trench. The Roman de Fauvel describes the Palais overlooking the Seine and her boats. The importance of the Seine to the city, commerce, and social life in Paris is at the forefront of the illuminations that illustrate the Vita et passio Sancti Dionysii (BnF, Fr 2092).43 In the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, she flows along the Louvre of Charles V.44 The Seine was also used to water the horses, in particular at “Les Carrières” where the royal stage-posts were located.45 During periods of flooding, the Seine’s water would wash away bridges, as in 1296, and overrun the royal gardens on the Ile de la Cité. Its islets were used as places of execution, as with the Templars in 1314.46 The multiple bridges in Paris defined the urban landscape. The Seine’s very presence defined the three basic neighbourhoods of the city. It separated the cité from the university on the left bank, and from the bourgeois neighbourhood on the right bank, with its market (les Halles) and its sandy shore (la grève). Rouen
Until 1204, and probably starting in the tenth century, the city of Rouen could be considered the capital of Normandy.47 Its function was duplicated by Fécamp in the eleventh century, which was the place of residence for Duke Richard I and Richard II, and then by Caen, founded by William the Conqueror, who built up the city around its
38 Lalou, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel, i, 108. 39 Bove, ‘Les rois médiévaux sont-ils Parisiens?’, pp. 25–50. 40 Vincennes aux origines de l’État moderne. 41 The ‘Grant feste’ has been studied by Elizabeth A. R. Brown. Brown and Regalado, ‘La grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of his Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313’, pp. 56–88. 42 Monnet, Charles IV. 43 Egbert, On the Bridges of Mediaeval Paris. 44 Fleurier and Favier, Paris Enluminures. 45 Les Carrières (à Charenton, Val-de-Marne), see Lalou, Itinéraire de IV Philippe le Bel, i, 84. 46 Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnay, Grand Prior of Normandy, were burned on the Ile des Javiaux, a small island in the Seine just upstream from Notre Dame. 47 Levieux, ‘Le rôle des communautés religieuses dans la fabrique urbaine de Rouen Xème et XVème siècle’; Mollat, ed., Histoire de Rouen; Hicks and Brenner, eds, Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen 911–1300. On the castle of Philippe Auguste, see Hayot, ‘L’architecture fortifiée capétienne au xiiième siècle’.
the capetians and the river seine (thirteenth–fourteenth century)
two abbeys — the women’s abbey of La Trinité and the men’s abbey of Saint-Etienne. Rouen, like Paris — even more precociously than Paris ‑ was a great cosmopolitan port that welcomed ships to its shores equally from both the north and Portugal.48 It has been a ‘site of power’ since the age of the Dukes of Normandy. The first dukes lived in the ‘tower’ near the confluence of the Robec with the Seine,49 the same tower from which Conon, the leader of the urban rebellion, was thrown to his death in 1090.50 Philip Augustus, upon taking the city, built the impressive Château du Bouvreuil, the largest of his castles.51 Rouen’s identity was shaped in part by the Seine and her shores. It received boats that sailed up from the sea to the bridge whose crossing from the left gave access to the rest of Normandy. At the end of the thirteenth century, the clos des galées, the royal arsenal where Genoese sailors built warships, was erected by Philip the Fair on its banks.52 Paris and Rouen each played a special rôle in their relationship to ducal and royal authority. The Capetian kings conquered Rouen in 1204, as the jewel of Normandy, when the duchy fell to them. But the river also provided, along its banks, places where the exercise of power mixed with the more pleasant aspects of everyday life. Residences Along the River: Those of the Capetians
The Capetian residences along the banks of the Seine, like the ones at Poissy or Saint-Germain-en-Laye, were quite old.53 They were strategically situated, so that the Seine provided easy access to them by land or water. A bridge at Poissy allowed for river crossings, and the river facilitated the delivery of food and other necessities for the court. Fish could be caught either in the river itself, in reservoirs, or in nearby ponds. Jean-François Moufflet noted, for the reign of Louis IX, just how the palaces and the river network were complementary.54 In a royal residence, water from the Seine fulfilled a number of functions. Drinking water, however, came from springs and fountains and not from the river, for human activity had contaminated it. But the river was essential for watering horses and refreshing those exhausted by travel. Let us take the example of Poissy, where the Capetians kept a residence from the earliest time. Robert the Pious lived there, and the residence is mentioned by Helgaud de Fleury: ‘Sedes regalis Pissiaci dicta, supra Sequanam posita, Francorum regibus satis est oportuna’ (The royal seat, called Poissy, found on the river Seine, was
48 Mollat, Le commerce maritime normand à la fin du Moyen Âge. Étude d’histoire économique et sociale. 49 Renoux, ‘Châteaux et résidences fortifiées des Ducs de Normandie aux xe et xie siècles’, pp. 113–24. 50 Neveux, La Normandie des ducs aux rois; Billoré, De gré ou de force. 51 Hayot, ‘L’architecture fortifiée capétienne au xiiième siècle’. 52 Merlin-Chazelas, Documents relatifs au Clos des galées de Rouen et aux armées de mer du roi de France de 1293 à 1418; Lalou, ‘La flotte normande à la fin du xiiie siècle’, pp. 73–82. 53 Léon, Le château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. 54 The ‘complémentarité des palais avec le réseau fluvial’, Moufflet, ‘Autour de l’hôtel de saint Louis’, ii, 37. He places the main royal palaces on a map: Vincennes, Paris, Saint-Germain, Mantes, Vernon and Château-Gaillard.
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auspicious enough for the kings of France).55 Helgaud himself escaped drowning on the nearby Charlevanne bridge (Karolivenna) in February 1022, when he was on his way to Poissy to observe Lent with the king. A collegiate church had existed there since at least the twelfth century.56 Philip the Fair, after obtaining Louis IX’s canonization in 1297, founded a convent for Dominican nuns dedicated to the new saint king at Poissy. A large space was reserved inside the abbatial enclosure to house the king and his court. The magnificent abbey church held a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, displayed in a case to celebrate the family of the saint king.57 The Poissy residence was built right on the banks of the Seine, such that the lower chapels were sometimes flooded. The residence benefited from Poissy’s proximity to Paris, on the road to Normandy, which itself crossed the Poissy bridge. The abbey, erected upon the site of Louis’s birth, was built there in order to permit the development of pilgrimage. We must not ignore the role of devotion in the choices made for royal and ducal residences. From the eleventh century, thus, Poissy functioned with Saint-Germain-en-Laye as a single residential space.58 In 1185–1186, Philip Augustus gave the nuns of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Cyr a tithe on the bread and wine that the royal family consumed during their stays in Saint-Germain and Poissy. In 1203 the concierge of Poissy was also the custodian of the cellars of Poissy and Saint-Germain. The banks of the Seine — Le Pecq, Poissy, and Triel — all boasted vineyards whose harvests were stored in the cellars of Poissy and Saint-Germain. These two residences, linked by only a few kilometres of forest, were also each in close proximity to the Seine.
Conquering Normandy Ducal Residences
The dukes of Normandy also owned a good number of castles.59 We know of their stays at Orival and Molineaux, in Quevilly on the left bank, near Rouen; and in Le Vaudreuil. And of course, there was also Château Gaillard, built by Richard Lionheart, and the residence built on the Island of Les Andelys, more pleasant than the castle. During the struggles between Henry II, his sons, and Louis VII and Philip Augustus, a number of treaties were negotiated at castles that were more defensive than they were residential. This was the case at Le Goulet (1200) as well as at Gaillon (1195),60 and a whole series of diplomatic meetings held at Gisors.61
55 Helgaud de Fleury, Vie de Robert le pieux, pp. 122–24. 56 Plagnieux, L’art du Moyen Âge en France; Erlande-Brandenburg, ‘La Priorale Saint-Louis de Poissy’, pp. 85–112. 57 Lalou, ‘Les abbayes fondées par Philippe le Bel’, pp. 143–65. 58 Léon, Le château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, pp. 13–27. 59 Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur Empire. 60 Neveux, La Normandie des ducs aux rois. 61 Some of these castles later fell to the Archbishops of Rouen. Casset, Les évêques aux champs.
the capetians and the river seine (thirteenth–fourteenth century)
Many of these ducal residences were located on the banks of the Seine, and almost all of them were near one of the large riverside forests discussed above. Proximity to Rouen was also of importance when deciding between this or that residence. The Capetians in the Ducal Residences
All of these ducal residences fell to Philip Augustus after 1204. He invested many of them and made his mark on some by adding the characteristic Philippine tower — for instance at Vernon. At Rouen, he built a castle from scratch to his own liking. Philip or his successors abandoned others: Moulineaux and Orival were forgotten.62 On the other hand, the Capetians decided to adopt a number of these, most notably the ones on the banks of the Seine. Let us take, for example, the ducal residence at Le Vaudreuil. This castle was much valued by, in particular, Philip the Fair. He went there often.63 This castle,64 located on the territory of the former parish of Notre-Dame of Le Vaudreuil, was situated on the left bank of the Seine,65 close to the forest of Bord near the confluence of the Eure and the Seine. It had been occupied by the dukes of Normandy as early as the twelfth century. William the Conqueror would have resided there. Henri Beauclerc (I) had work done on it. Among the Capetians, the royal accounts of Philip IV indicate certain works were carried out there.66 Later on still, John the Good commissioned paintings from some of the best artists of the day: Jean Coste in 1349 and Girard d’Orléans in 1356. ‘In the hall the life of Caesar was painted above a frieze of animals, while scenes of hunting graced the entrance gallery’. According to the terms of the contract, the paintings were to have been executed ‘in oil, on a field of fine, raised gold, and the clothing of the Virgin should be well and faithfully done in fine azure, and all of this should be varnished’.67 Certainly, the setting of the Château du Vaudreuil in the loop of the Seine must have given the place an undeniable charm. Additionally, in 1198, King John of England had a bridge built at Portejoie, a town on the right bank slightly upstream of Le Vaudreuil.68 Before the bridge was built, the duke maintained four boats there — ‘the ferries of the king’ — that were guarded and manned by men financed from central government. The bridge was a ‘swing bridge’ to allow boats to pass. That is, the site
62 Madeline, Les Plantagenêts et leur Empire, pp. 298–99. 63 Lalou, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel. We know of travels in October 1286, November 1287, April and September 1288 as well as on 25 April 1310. Le Vaudreuil, Eure, arr. Evreux, cant. Louviers, comm. Saint-Étienne-du-Vauvray. 64 https://www.inrap.fr/l-ile-l-homme-4527. Excavation site INRAP 2010; Operations manager: Nicolas Roudié; article published 10 september 2012 and updated 26 septembre 2016; also http:// maintenance-et-batiment.blogspot.com/2017/03/fiche-historique-les-chateaux-forts-le.html. 65 Today the forest of Bord-Louviers. 66 Comptes royaux (1285–1314), ed. by Fawtier and Maillard. Thibaut de Corbeil inventories the supplies of oats (£96), hay (£32), and firewood (£26) stored at Le Vaudreuil. 67 Juhel, ‘Le château médiéval du Vaudreuil (Eure) et ses peintures murales’, pp. 135–41. 68 Bidegaray, Le site de Portejoie et la boucle du Vaudreuil au Moyen Âge.
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was highly strategic during Philip Augustus’s reign. He kept a reserve of weapons in the castles of Vaudreil and Pont-de-l’Arche. The Norman Seine, Indispensable to Capetian Policy
After 1204, the Capetians moved into these Norman quarters. In the end, though, they were not satisfied with bank-side residences. Philip the Fair in particular, who loved to hunt, built an enormous residential complex in the Lyons forest, which included four luxurious castles, and this was where he set up a horse farm.69 He built another residential complex on the same model in the forest near Orleans, known in the Middle Ages as les Loges, which consolidated several castles and manor houses that were scattered throughout the forest.70 The residences on the banks of the Seine were likewise situated close to a forest where the sovereign could hunt.71 The care taken for the residential complex at Lyons, along with Philip the Fair’s eagerness to appropriate certain residences on the banks of the Seine, are evidence of his fondness for Normandy as well as for the Seine. We might search for the reason for this in the extraordinary Norman countryside, which existed at that time: the beech woods of Lyons as well as the bends of the river. But we must not forget that the Seine provided access to the sea, and that beyond the Channel lay the Kingdom of England.72 Immediately after 1204, Philip Augustus sent his son, the future Louis VIII, to England. Even after the conquest of Normandy, the desire to conquer English territories was not, in my estimation, a dead letter, especially for Philip the Fair. The events of 1296–1298 and his presence in Normandy together strongly suggest further ambitions. The Seine was thus a major reason why the Capetians wished to conquer Normandy. Certainly, the preference for royal residences located near the river was a constant. We have spoken briefly of the residence at Poissy; it is located a short way from Saint-Germain en Laye, just through the forest. Versailles is only a little farther removed, located in the Cruye Marly forest. Louis XIV designed ‘the Marly machine’ that drew water from the Seine and delivered it to the fountains of the park at Versailles.73 This complex, ingenious engineering project points to the enduring importance of the relationship of the French kings, their palaces, and the River Seine.
69 Nardeux, “Une ‘forêt” royale au Moyen Âge’. 70 Mesqui, ‘Châteaux et chasses royales dans les forêts de l’Orléanais au Moyen Âge’, pp. 284–315. 71 On itinerancy, see: Destephen, Barbier, and Chausson, eds, Le gouvernement en déplacement Pouvoir et mobilité de l’Antiquité à nos jours. 72 Lalou, ‘La flotte normande à la fin du xiiie siècle’, pp. 73–82. 73 Soullard, ‘Les eaux de Versailles, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles’; Lobgeois and de Givry, Versailles, les Grandes eaux.
the capetians and the river seine (thirteenth–fourteenth century)
Works Cited Manuscript Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1739 Primary Sources Chronique anonyme, in Recueil des historiens des Gaulle et de la France, ed. by M. M. Guigniaut and Natalis de Wailly, vol. xxi (Paris: imprimerie nationale, 1855), p. 134 Comptes royaux (1285-1314), ed. by Robert Fawtier and François Maillard (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1953–1956) Favier, Jean, Le registre des compagnies françaises, (1449–1467), Commission des travaux historiques de la ville de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1975) Helgaud de Fleury, Vie de Robert le Pieux, ed. and trans. by Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette Labory (Paris: CNRS, 1965) Secondary Works Archéomed Le Vaudreuil https://journals.openedition.org/archeomed/7455 (accessed 25 March 2021) Arnoux, Mathieu, and Isabelle Theillier, ‘Les marchés comme lieux et enjeux de pouvoir en Normandie (xie-xve siècle)’, in Les lieux de pouvoir au Moyen Âge en Normandie et sur ses marges, ed. by Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher, Tables rondes du CRAHM, 2 (Caen: CRAHM, 2006), pp. 53–70 Baldwin, John, Paris 1200 (Paris: Aubier, 2006) Bauduin, Pierre, Histoire des Vikings (Paris: Tallandier, 2019) Bautier, Robert-Henri, ‘Guillaume de Mussy, bailli, enquêteur royal, panetier de France sous Philippe le Bel’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 105 (1944), 64–98 Bidegaray, Philippe, Le site de Portejoie et la boucle du Vaudreuil au Moyen Âge (du viie au xive siècle) (Caen: Maîtrise, 1994) Billoré, Maïté, De gré ou de force: L’aristocratie normande et ses ducs (1150–1259) (Rennes: PUR, 2014) Bove, Boris, ‘Alliance ou défiance? Les ambiguïtés de la politique des Capétiens envers leur capitale entre le xiie et le xviie siècle’, in Les villes capitales au Moyen Âge, SHMESP 36e congrès, Istanbul, 1–6 June 2005, (Paris: Sorbonne, 2006), pp. 131–54 ———, ‘Les rois médiévaux sont-ils Parisiens? Essai de synthèse des itinéraires royaux médiévaux de Philippe Auguste à Louis XI (1180–1483)’, in Paris, ville de cour (xiiiexviiie siècle), ed. by Boris Bove, Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, and Cédric Michon (Rennes: PUR, 2017), pp. 25–50 ———, ‘Une capitale et ses élites (xiiie–xve siècle)’, (Habilitation thesis, Université de Paris 1, 2018) Brennetot, Arnaud, Atlas de la vallée de la Seine. De Paris à la mer (Paris: Autrement, 2019)
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Brennetot, Arnaud, Françoise Lucchini, and Claire Maingon, eds, La Seine, une vallée, des imaginaires. Perceptions et représentations de la Seine du Moyen Âge à nos jours (Rouen: PURH, 2015) Brown, Elizabeth A. R., and Nancy Freeman Regalado, ‘La grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of his Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313’, in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed. by Barbara Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson, Medieval Studies at Minnesota, 6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 56–88 Brühl, Carlrichard, Fodrum, gistum, servitium regis. Grundlagen des Königtums im Frankreich und in den Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Graz, 1968) Cahen, Léon, ‘Ce qu’enseigne un péage du xviiie siècle: la Seine, entre Rouen et Paris, et les caractères de l’économie parisienne’, Annales d’Histoire économique et sociale, 3.12 (1931), 487–581 Casset, Marie, Les évêques aux champs. Châteaux et manoirs des évêques normands au Moyen Âge (xie-xve siècles) (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2007) Chaïb, Jérôme, La Seine, Vie et patrimoine. Tome 1. Seine sauvage, Seine domestiquée (Rouen: Editions des falaises, 2017) ———, La Seine, Vie et patrimoine. Tome 2. Seine agricole, Seine industrieuse (Rouen: Editions des falaises, 2018) Chapelot, Jean, ‘Les résidences royales à l’époque de Philippe le Bel: ce que leur étude nous apprend sur ce règne’, in Actes du colloque 1300, L’art au temps de Philippe le Bel (24 juin 1998), ed. by Danielle Gaborit-Chopin and François Avril (Paris: Rencontres de l’École du Louvre, 2002), pp. 33–74 Conchon, Anne, Le péage en France au xviiie siècle. Les privilèges à l’épreuve de la réforme (Paris: CHEFF, 2002) Dauphant, Léonard, Géographies. Ce qu’ils savaient de la France (1100–1600) (Ceyzérieu: Champ Vallon, 2018) ———, Le royaume des quatre rivières. L’espace politique français (1380–1515) (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2012) Destephen, Sylvain, Josiane Barbier, and François Chausson, eds, Le gouvernement en déplacement Pouvoir et mobilité de l’Antiquité à nos jours (Rennes: PUR, 2019) Dictionnaire du Moyen Age, ed. by C. Gauvard, A. de Libera, and M. Zink (Paris: PUF, 2002) Egbert, Virginia Wylie, On the Bridges of Mediaeval Paris: A Record of Early FourteenthCentury Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974) Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain, ‘La Priorale Saint-Louis de Poissy’, Bulletin Monumental, 129 (1971), 85–112 Flambard Héricher, Anne-Marie, and Veronique Gazeau, eds, 1204. La Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens (Caen: Craham, 2007) Fleurier, Nicole, and Jean Favier, Paris Enluminures (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2009) Guilmoto, Gustave, Étude sur les droits de navigation de la Seine de Paris à la Roche-Guyon du xie au xviiie siècle (Paris: Picard, 1889) Guittoneau, Pierre-Henri, ‘La brève histoire d’un bac aux portes de Paris. Une enquête du Chatelet à l’été 1490’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France, (2018), 5–24
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———, ‘La hanse de Mantes, témoin et acteur des réseaux d’une petite ville au xve siècle’, Le Moyen Âge, 118 (2012/2013–2014), 595–615 ———, Dans l’ombre de la capitale – Les petites villes sur l’eau et Paris au xve siècle (Paris: Garnier, 2017) ———, ‘”Entour Paris”, une capitale et ses petites villes sur l’eau au xve siècle’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Sorbonne, 2014) Guyot, Mathieu, ‘Les sites fortifiés de la basse vallée de la Seine: essai d’inventaire d’après une approche historique, topographique et archéologique’ (Unpublished MA thesis, Université de Rouen, 2016) Hayot, Denis, ‘L’architecture fortifiée capétienne au xiiie siècle’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis, Paris IV Sorbonne, 2015) ———, Paris en 1200. Histoire et archéologie d’une capitale fortifiée par Philippe Auguste (Paris: CNRS, 2018) Hicks, Leonie, and Elma Brenner, eds, Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen 911–1300, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 39 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) Michel Mollat du Jourdin, ed., Histoire de Rouen (Toulouse: Privat, 1979) INRAP Le Vaudreuil https://www.inrap.fr/l-ile-l-homme-4527 Chantier de fouilles INRAP 2010 (accessed 25 March 2021) Juhel, Vincent, ‘Le château médiéval du Vaudreuil (Eure) et ses peintures murales du 14e siècle’, in Vivre dans le donjon au Moyen Âge, proceedings of the Vendôme conference, 12–13 May 2001 (Vendôme: Editions du Cherche-Lune, 2005), pp. 135–41 Lake-Giguère, Danny, ‘Administrer les forêts du roi au Moyen Âge. Le ‘negotium forestarum’ en Normandie capétienne (1204–1328)’ (thesis, Université de Montréal et Rouen Normandie, 2020) Lalou, Elisabeth, ‘La flotte normande à la fin du xiiie siècle’, in La guerre en Normandie (xiexve siècle), ed. by A. Curry and V. Gazeau (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2018), pp. 73–82 ———, ‘Les abbayes fondées par Philippe le Bel’, Revue Mabillon, 63.2 (1991), 143–65 ———, Itinéraire de Philippe IV le Bel (1285–1314), Mémoires de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 37, 2 vols (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 2007) Léon, Cécile, Le château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye au Moyen Âge. Histoire et évolution architecturale d’une résidence royale, xiie-xive siècle (Les Presses franciliennes: Les amis du Vieux Saint-Germain, 2008) Leroux, Nicolas, ‘L’anthropisation médiévale des rives de la Seine entre Rouen et le Havre et ses conséquences’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Rouen, 2012) ———, ‘Réflexions sur les pêcheries fluvio-maritimes médiévales dans la basse vallée de la Seine’, in Des châteaux et des sources. Archéologie et histoire dans la Normandie médiévale. Mélanges en l’honneur d’Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher, ed. by É. Lalou, J.-L. Roch, and B. Lepeuple (Rouen: PURH, 2008), pp. 129–41 Levieux, Lise, ‘Le rôle des communautés religieuses dans la fabrique urbaine de Rouen Xème et xvème siècle’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis,Université de Rouen, 2018) Leyte, Guillaume, Domaine et domanialité publique dans la F médiévale xiie-xve siècle (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires, 1996) Lobgeois, Pascal, Jacques de Givry, and Michel Tournier, Versailles, les Grandes eaux (Les Loges-en-Josas: JDG, 2000)
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Lohrmann Dietrich, ‘Le moulin à eau dans le cadre de l’économie rurale de la Neustrie (viie-ixe siècles)’, in La Neustrie. Les pays du nord de la Loire de 650 à 850. Colloque international, ed. by H. Atsma (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989), pp. 367–404 Madeline, Fanny, Les Plantagenêts et leur Empire. Construire un territoire politique (Rennes: PUR, 2014) Merlin-Chazelas, Anne, Documents relatifs au Clos des galées de Rouen et aux armées de mer du roi de France de 1293 à 1418 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1977) Mesqui, Jean, ‘Châteaux et chasses royales dans les forêts de l’Orléanais au Moyen Âge. Le nomadisme résidentiel et ses effets sur l’activité castrale’, in Le nomadisme châtelain, ixexviie siècle, 6th international conference Château de Bellecroix, October 2016, ed. by Hervé Mouillebouche, Delphine Gautier, and Nicolas Faucherre (Chagny: centre de castellologie de Bourgogne, 2017), pp. 284–315 Mollat, Michel, Le commerce maritime normand à la fin du Moyen Âge. Étude d’histoire économique et sociale (Paris: Plon, 1952) Monnet, Pierre, Charles IV, un Empereur en Europe (Paris: Fayard, 2020) Mouchard, Jimmy, ‘Les sites portuaires gallo-romains et médiévaux de l’estuaire de la Seine’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Rouen, 2008) Moufflet, Jean-François, ‘Autour de l’hôtel de saint Louis. Le cadre, les hommes, les itinéraires d’un pouvoir’ (Unpublished MA thesis, Paris, École des chartes, 2007) Nardeux, Bruno, ‘Une “forêt” royale au Moyen Âge: le pays de Lyons en Normandie (vers 1100-vers 1450)’ (thesis, Université de Rouen, 2017) Neveux, François, La Normandie des ducs aux rois (Rennes: Ouest France, 1998) Philippe, Annette, ‘Le Péage par eau de la ville de Mantes dans la première moitié du xve siècle, Positions de thèses de l’École nationale des chartes’ (Unpublished MA thesis, Paris, École des chartes, 1968) Plagnieux, Philippe, L’art du Moyen Âge en France (Paris: Citadelles Mazenot, 2010) Powicke, Sir Frederick Maurice, The Loss of Normandy, (1189–1204): Studies in the History of the Angevin Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961; 1st edn 1913) Renoux, Annie, ‘Châteaux et résidences fortifiées des Ducs de Normandie aux xe et xie siècles’, in Les Mondes normands (viiie-xiie siècles). Actes du deuxième congrès international d’archéologie médiévale (Caen, 2–4 octobre 1987), ed. by Henri Galinié (Caen: Société d’archéologie médiévale, 1989), pp. 113–24 Sicard, Germain, Les moulins de Toulouse au Moyen Âge. Aux origines des sociétés anonymes (Paris: Colin, 1953) Soullard, Eric, ‘Les eaux de Versailles, xviie-xviiie siècles’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis, Paris, Université de Grenoble II, 2011) Vincennes aux origines de l’État moderne. Actes du Colloque scientifique Les Capétiens et Vincennes au Moyen Âge ed. by Jean Chapelot and Elisabeth Lalou, 8–10 June 1994 (Paris: PENS, 1996) Vincent, Jean-Baptiste, ‘Le paysage monastique de la vallée de la Seine. Regard sur l’abbaye cistercienne de Notre-Dame de Bonport’, in La Seine, une vallée, des imaginaires. Perceptions et représentations de la Seine du Moyen Âge à nos jours, ed. by Arnaud Brennetot, Françoise Lucchini, and Claire Maingon (Rouen: PURH, 2015), pp. 19–35 Vincent, Nicholas, ‘English Kingship: The View from Paris, 1066–1204’, in AngloNorman Studies: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, ed. by Elisabeth van Houts, 40 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018), pp. 1–24
Justine Firnhaber-Baker
The Judicial Duel in Later Medieval France Procedure, Ceremony, and Status
The word ‘duel’ may conjure up images of secretive single combats fought with pistols or rapiers at the break of some seventeenth-century dawn. But in the Middle Ages, duellum, also called monomachia or gaiges de bataille, was a judicial practice. It entailed a staged combat before authorities between the two parties to a dispute or their representatives, the result of which determined the case’s outcome. A ‘bilateral’ practice requiring the participation of both disputants, judicial duel bore some similarities to ‘unilateral’ ordeals like carrying a hot iron or being ducked in cold water.1 Like unilateral ordeals, duel was often employed in cases where proof was lacking. Like them, a duel’s result could be considered as revealing God’s judgement (iudicium Dei). Both duel and unilateral ordeals were restricted in 1215 by Canon 18 of the Fourth Lateran Council’s decree prohibiting clerical involvement in bloodshed.2 Most unilateral ordeals are thought to have speedily disappeared, replaced, as Robert Bartlett argued in his pan-European study of these practices, by new forms of proof like jury trial and torture.3 Duel, on the other hand, remained in use through the end of the Middle Ages. Even in the sixteenth century, some such matches might take place or at least be threatened.4 If duel’s history diverged from that of the unilateral ordeals after 1215, it continued to run parallel for a while to that of another, somewhat similar practice, that of ‘private’
1 On the ‘family resemblance’ between duel and unilateral ordeals, see Bartlett, Trial by Fire, ch. 6; Gaudemet, ‘Les ordalies au Moyen Âge’; Barthélemy, ‘Diversité des ordalies médiévales’, pp. 7–9. 2 ‘… Nec quisquam purgationi aque feruentis uel frigide seu ferri candentis ritum cuiuslibet benedictionis aut consecrationis impendat, saluis nichilominus prohibitionibus de monomachiis siue duellis antea promulgatis’ (Constitutiones concilii quarti Lateranensis, ed. by García y García, canon 18, p. 66; Nottarp, Gottesurteilstudien; Baldwin, ‘The Intellectual Preparation’; McAuley, ‘Canon Law and the End’. 3 Bartlett, Trial by Fire, ch. 7. See also Barthélemy, ‘Diversité des ordalies médiévales’, pp. 11–15; Lemesle, ‘La pratique du duel’. Instances of unilateral ordeal in late medieval and early France can be found, but they were rare and mostly used in cases of sorcery: Gaudemet, ‘Les ordalies au Moyen Âge’, pp. 133–35; Gauvard, ‘Ordalie et sorcellerie’. 4 Vale, ‘Aristocratic Violence’; Brown ‘Honneur, passions, prudence et politique’.
Justine Firnhaber-Baker is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ed. by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein, celama 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021) pp. 399-430 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.122629
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or seigneurial warfare. These were wars undertaken between non-royal parties, such as lay or ecclesiastical lords and towns.5 Like duel, war’s outcome could also be considered a iudicium Dei, and both practices were avenues for pursuing redress through the personally-enacted violence of the interested parties.6 In fact, some wars provoked challenges to duel.7 The nineteenth-century legal historian Paul Viollet characterized judicial duel as ‘la guerre privée en miniature’, while Monique Chabas’s more recent monograph on judicial duel asserted that, ‘Le lien entre le duel judiciaire et le phénomène de la guerre dite privée est indubitable’.8 Historiographically, both seigneurial war and judicial duel have been understood as manifestations of the late medieval nobility’s violent tendencies. The crown’s attempted suppression of both war and duel has thus been characterized as one of the ways that the French crown reasserted its regalian monopolies over violence and justice and its sovereignty over the nobility. As Dominique Barthélemy writes, the history of the judicial duel was ‘davantage liée à celles de la guerre privée et de l’affirmation, puis du déclin, du pouvoir noble face à la royauté’.9 Approaching judicial duel in late medieval France from the standpoint of royal prerogatives and violent seigneurial practices has a strong basis in the sources. As I will discuss in this article, the link between war and duel can be traced through royal legislation and judicial decisions from the thirteenth to the early fourteenth century. King Louis IX and his successors sometimes outlawed duel around the same time as or even in the same promulgations that that they issued to prohibit or limit warfare. Yet, midway through Philip IV’s reign, duel began to be decoupled from war in royal legislation and judicial practice. While French kings frequently legislated
5 ‘Seigneurial’ is a better adjective than ‘private’, for their authors usually had claims to political authority, claims that were frequently the sources of the dispute in the first place. They were not ‘private’ in either modern or medieval senses of the word, nor were they so termed in the sources, which use the word guerra/guerre indifferently for royal war or seigneurial wars. See Firnhaber-Baker, ‘Seigneurial War’, pp. 37–38 n. 4; Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State, pp. 2–3, 17–20. 6 Cram, Iudicium Belli, esp. pp. 8–16, 21–25, 105–09; Duby, The Legend of Bouvines, pp. 110–21. 7 See the cases of Armagnac and Foix and Harcourt and Tancarville discussed below and Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 5655, concerning a personal attack leading to a request for duel around 1318. This, too, was the case in the dispute between Jourdain de l’Isle-Jourdain and Alexander de Caumont, which had already resulted in ‘guerras orribiles’ in 1317 (Paris, AN, X2a 1, fol. 58v), a year before it was decided that the matter be judged by duel (Vale, ‘Aristocratic Violence’, p. 166; Vale, The Origins, pp. 132–39). I do not know of any case in which a challenge to duel preceded a war. Notably, the jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir, writing in the late thirteenth century, saw judicial duel as a possible way to end a war, but not to begin one: Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lix, § 1682, ch. lxiii, § 1811 (ii, 361, 417). Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lix, § 1670 (ii, 355–56), speaking of how wars begin, does not list duel among the possible incitements. Some confusion is caused by the word bellum, which meant a battle rather than a war in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century usage, but is sometimes mistranslated with its classical meaning (e.g. Morel, ‘fin du duel’, pp. 617, 618). See n. 44, below. 8 Les établissements de Saint Louis, ed. by Viollet, i, 183; Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, p. 16. See also, Vale, ‘Aristocratic Violence’, pp. 166–71. 9 Barthélemy, ‘Diversité des ordalies médiévales’, p. 8. See also Morel, ‘La fin du duel’, esp. p. 589; Gauvard, De grâce especial, i, 174–76; Rigaudière, Penser et construire l’État, pp. 65, 242.
t h e j u d i c i al d u e l i n lat e r me d i e val f rance
against warfare throughout the fourteenth century, duel became integrated into royal judicial procedure, appearing in both prescriptive legal sources and in court decisions. Tracing duel’s changing relationship with war through the legal and judicial sources suggests how the specific violence involved in each practice intersected with the prerogatives of royal justice and the culture of nobility in different ways. While duel was similar to warfare in being a means of resolving conflict, it was quite unlike it in terms of the ease with which it could be assimilated to the court’s procedural practices. The formal, even ceremonial, aspects of duel meant that it had aesthetic and cultural value, as well as procedural utility, though, as I will show, it was never an exclusively aristocratic practice.
Saint Louis and his Legacy The history of duel in medieval France begins with Louis IX (r. 1226–1270), whose measures date to the strongly reformist period of his reign following his return from his first crusade.10 Sometime between November 1257 and the autumn of 1258, he forbade judicial duel (batailles) throughout the royal domain.11 Around this time, in January 1258, he also forbade all wars (guerras omnes) in the realm.12 Since the seventeenth century, historians have pointed to these measures as the beginning of a royal programme against seigneurial violence.13 The idea of a ‘programme’ is mostly a historiographical illusion. The royal promulgations against seigneurial warfare were largely ad hoc measures that often (though not always) applied only in limited circumstances.14 It is true, however, that the duel and the war measures were connected and that these connections reveal royal concerns about violence. The close timing of the measures obviously suggests that they were linked. So, too, do their manuscript contexts. The earliest extant copies of these measures are both contained in the same late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century manuscript from the court of the Échiquier de Normandie, where they appear within a folio of one another.15 A relationship is also suggested by ecclesiastical influence on both measures.
10 Jordan, Louis IX, esp. pp. 200–06. 11 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 86–93, quote at i, 88. Tardif, ‘Études sur les ordonnances’, pp. 163–67; Chabas, duel judiciaire, p. 37. This promulgation, which also circulated on its own (n. 15, below), was also incorporated into the procedural rules for the Châtelet redacted sometime in the second half of Louis’s reign (Akehurst, ‘Introduction’; Les établissements de Saint Louis, ed. by Viollet, i, 422–25). 12 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 84. 13 du Cange, ‘Des guerres privées’; de Laurière, ‘Preface’, pp. xxv–xxxviii, esp. p. xxxvi; Kaeuper, War, Justice, pp. 230–35. 14 Bongert, Recherches sur les cours laïques, pp. 48–56; Cazelles, ‘La réglementation royale de la guerre privée’; Firnhaber-Baker, ‘From God’s Peace’; Firnhaber-Baker, ‘Seigneurial War’. 15 Paris, BnF, MS lat. 4651, fol. 73r-v (duel), 74v (war). Tardif, ‘Études sur les ordonnances’, p. 171 noted that the archbishop of Rouen, Eudes Rigaud, attended the Parlement at which he thought the duel measure was most likely promulgated and that Rigaud left to preside at a meeting of the Échiquier de Normandie at Caen soon after. This may explain the Norman manuscript context. De Laurière
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The 1258 promulgation against warfare was made at the behest the bishop-elect of le Puy-en-Velay. Referred to as ‘G. electus’ in the measure, this was Gui Foucois, the future Pope Clement IV. A close councillor of Louis IX, he played an influential role in shaping the king’s peace-keeping measures.16 Ecclesiastical influence is also suggested by the fact that the prohibition on duel was made closely in time to a letter sent by Alexander IV to the bishop of Auxerre in February 1258. This letter noted that ‘monomachia sacris sit canonibus interdicta’ (duel was prohibited by the sacred canons) and authorized him to prove his possession of some serfs by witnesses, charters, and other legitimate proofs (‘testibus, instrumentis et aliis probationibus legitimis’).17 This language has close parallels in Louis’s duel prohibition, which orders proof by ‘témoins, ou par chartre, ou par autres preuves bons & loyaux’ in conflicts over the possession of serfs.18 In general, canon law expressed strong reservations about both duel and seigneurial war, even if in practice ecclesiastical lords went to war and approved challenges to duel made in their own courts.19 Nevertheless, Louis’s promulgations against duel and warfare were rather different instruments that were provoked by rather different concerns. Diplomatically they differ in that the prohibition on war and arson is a concise, formal letter in Latin while that against duel is a somewhat long-winded series of instructions in French, probably intended for Louis’s provincial officers (his baillis).20 In terms of content, the 1258 measure against guerra is framed as a measure to reduce violence. It shows particular concern for the protection of non-combatant peasants (agricolae and aratores), a feature which harks back to earlier royal and ecclesiastical promulgations associated with the Peace and Truce of God.21 The measure does not, however, have anything to say about channelling the disputes behind this violence into courts. Rather, it makes the vague promise that anyone who did engage in such violence was to be punished. The measure on duel, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the duel’s role in legal procedure rather than the violence it entailed. In place of the bataille there found the duel measure he edited in ordonnances des rois in the Saint-Just register of the Chambre des comptes, which burned in the fire of 1737. In its partial reconstruction, Paris, AN, P 2288, the duel measure appears on p. 512. On the Saint-Just register, see Bruel, Répertoire numérique, p. vii; Langlois, Registres perdus. 16 Histoire générale de Languedoc, new edn by Molinier, vi, 857–58; Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State, pp. 28, 31–33, 185. Philip III cited Foucouis’s advice about what counted as ‘peace-breaking’ in a letter to one of his sénéchaux in 1274 (Histoire générale de Languedoc, new edn by Molinier, x, 131–32; Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 344–45, n. b). 17 Lebeuf, Mémoires, iv, 112, no. 193. That bishop, however, continued to hold duels in his own courts, as noted below. 18 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 91. 19 Baldwin, ‘The Intellectual Preparation’; Gaudemet, ‘Les ordalies au Moyen Âge’, pp. 123–29. For duels approved by or taking place in ecclesiastical courts, see Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 24, catalogued in Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 142, i, 12; Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 18*, i, CCCVI–CCCVII; Tanon, Histoire des justices, pp. 16–27; and the Saint-Pierre case discussed below, nn. 36, 39. 20 On the dating of the duel measure, erroneously given as 1260 in many older works, see Tardif, ‘Études sur les ordonnances’. 21 Graboïs, ‘De la trêve de Dieu’; Firnhaber-Baker, ‘From God’s Peace’.
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was to be testimony by witnesses and written evidence, such as charters. The reason for the substitution is not specified in the text. Certainly, Louis did not like judicial duel. Parlement seems to be reporting his own words when it noted in 1261 that the king ‘non vult habere aliquid in duello’ (wanted nothing to do with duel).22But his distaste might have been as much due to a better quality of proof as to disapprobation of the violence involved. While the chronicler Guillaume de Chartres reported, albeit well after the fact, that Louis objected to duel because it could not be engaged in without committing mortal sin (i.e. violence), he also noted that the mechanism of proof disturbed the king: duel involved ‘tempting God’ by asking Him to intervene in human affairs.23 This was an objection to trial by ordeal, including duel, that had been raised by canon lawyers and theologians since the eleventh century.24 Another noteworthy difference between Louis’s war and duel measures is their jurisdictional coverage and enforcement. The prohibition against guerra is said to be applicable to the whole realm (in regno) and is rubricked as ‘La defense des guerres […] el reaume’ (the prohibition against wars in the kingdom) in the only known manuscript copy.25 However, that rather thin manuscript trail reflects that the measure’s reach was more limited than its language implies. The first judicial citations of royal ordonnances against warfare do not appear until late in the reign of Philip IV, and there is little evidence of judicial interference in seigneurial wars before that point.26 On the other hand, while proscription of duel was explicitly restricted ‘to the royal domain’ (par tout nostre demengne), it seems to have been more consistently applied or at least better known than the proscription of warfare. Although the jurist and former royal bailli Philippe de Beaumanoir showed no knowledge of Louis’s prohibition on warfare in his legal treatise on the customs of the County of Clermont, written at the end of the thirteenth century, he did know about the prohibition of judicial duel and its limits.27 Beaumanoir reported that ‘quant li rois Loueïs les osta de sa court, il ne les osta pas de la court a ses barons’ (when King Louis excluded [duels] from his court, he did not exclude them from the courts of his barons).28 Beaumanoir’s knowledge of the duel measure may reflect that Louis and his officers took a more active approach to its enforcement. Here, it must be recognized
22 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 494, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 523, i, 46. 23 Recueil des historiens des Gaules, XX, 34c. 24 Baldwin, ‘The Intellectual Preparation’; Bartlett, Trial by Fire, pp. 87–90. 25 Paris, BnF, MS lat. 4651, fol. 74v, a Norman compilation from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. 26 Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State, pp. 44–48, 72–81. 27 Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, esp. ch. lix (ii, 354–65) and see ch. xxxiii, § 996 (i, 504–05): ‘li gentil homme, par nostre coustume, puissent guerroier […] li uns l’autre’ (gentlemen, by our custom, can make war against one another). All translations from this work are my own unless otherwise noted. Beaumanoir does seem to have known of royal legislation from Louis and Philip Augustus on truces and delays related to seigneurial war: ch. lx, § §1701–02 (ii, 371–72). 28 Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lxi, § 1722 (ii, 379). Guilhiermoz, ‘Saint Louis, les gages de bataille’ argues that Beaumanoir was here referring to the procedure for the Châtelet, but as Viollet’s descriptions of the MSS show, these were not distinct texts (Les établissements de Saint Louis, ed. by Viollet, i, 422–25).
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that with duel they were deciding a question of prospective procedure rather than reacting to the ongoing violence of warfare. Logistically speaking, duels were simply easier to get a handle on than wars were. Where the crown had direct jurisdiction, its courts and officers usually refused to grant the use of duel.29 In 1258, Louis’s Parlement found that the king’s Chamberlain Pierre de Laon did not have the right to judge duels between the inhabitants of his lands (hospitum suorum), but only because he did not prove it, not because it was ipso facto illegal.30 The next year, Louis prohibited a duel requested by the great Picard lord Enguerran de Coucy. His decision angered many nobles, who smarted under the rebuke for decades.31 The Enguerran de Coucy case, as Edmund Faral noted, implies that the duel ordonnance applied not only to cases originating within the royal domain but also to any cases that came before the royal courts through appeal from a lower court.32 Appeals from lower courts, however, were rare relative to the vast number of seigneurial jurisdictions throughout the later Middle Ages, especially in the thirteenth century, when the idea of an ‘appellate hierarchy’ was still developing.33 Louis’s relatives may have taken a hard line in their own appanages: Beaumanoir’s treatise suggests that Louis’s son Robert de Clermont may have outlawed duel in the comital court, and Louis’s brother Alphonse de Poitiers acted against duels in his Languedocian domain by allowing the inhabitants of Montclar to refuse a duel if they preferred their accuser to prove the accusation by witnesses.34 But outside of Capetian family lands, seigneur-justiciars’ discretion to allow duel in their own courts meant that duels continued to be legal in most French jurisdictions. Beaumanoir’s treatise articulates this seigneurial discretion with clarity. Even if the count did not countenance duel in his courts, his vassals had free rein to allow duels in their own if they preferred the ‘old custom’ to the ‘king’s edict’: ‘Il est en la volenté des hommes de la conteé de Clermont de tenir leur court s’il leur plest de cel cas selonc l’ancienne coustume ou selonc l’establissement le roi’.35
29 Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lxiv, § 1845 (ii, 434) recalls a judicial duel that took place ‘en la court le roi a Paris’ (in the king’s court at Paris). As Beaumanoir composed his treaty in the late thirteenth century, it is likely that this took place during the reign of Philip III or early in that of Philip IV. 30 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 30, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 188, i, 16. 31 Faral, ‘Le procès d’Enguerran IV’, esp. pp. 227–31, 246–54; Ribémont, ‘Feme mariée’, pp. 84–87. An example of their anger about Louis’s legal reforms may be found at ‘Chanson sur les établissements’, ed. by Leroux de Lincy, reprinted in Faral, ‘Le procès d’Enguerran IV’, pp. 248–49. 32 Faral, ‘Le procès d’Enguerran IV’. 33 On the relationship between royal and seigneurial jurisdiction and Parlement’s appellate jurisdiction, see Ducoudray, Les origines du Parlement, i, 304–15; Lot and Fawtier, Histoire des institutions, ii, 152–56; Guenée, Tribunaux et gens de justice, pp. 64–67. 34 Beaumanoir noted that the restriction to the royal domain allowed the count to ‘re-establish’ (remetre) the duel at will, suggesting that the count had outlawed the practice: Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lxi, § 1722 (ii, 379); Beaumanoir, The Coutumes, trans. by Akehurst, p. 630. On Alphonse, see Carbasse, ‘Le duel judiciare’, pp. 389–90. 35 Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lxi, § 1723 (ii, 379–80).
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Royal judicial officers were well aware of the distinction between duel’s status in royal lands and those of other lords. In 1261, Parlement noted that ‘the king had removed duels from his lands (terra sua)’, but that in the lands he held jointly with the abbot of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, the abbot could still use the practice, so long as he did not employ one of their joint officials to oversee them.36 The same year the crown also recognized a count’s jurisdiction over ‘duelli, et tocius alte justicie’ (duel and all high justice) in his own lands.37 Other such cases came in 1263 from Auxerre, where Parlement recognized the bishop’s jurisdiction over duel (usus est […] tenere duellum), perhaps surprisingly given the papal instructions to that bishop in 1258, and in 1264, where the court recognized the procedure’s existence in the Artois.38 In 1267, the court ruled that although it was true that the crown had no interests (nichil ponit) in the duels held by the abbot of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier in the village held jointly with the king, half the receipts were nevertheless to be remitted to the crown.39 In 1270, the year of Louis’s death, the court recognized that the lady of Hérouville’s very limited rights of justice nevertheless extended to jurisdiction over duels in which no blood was to be spilled or serious injury threatened, a helpful reminder that not all duels were epic battles to the death.40
Duel under Philip the Fair The Ludovician prohibitions against duel and against war were thus born of some similar concerns and circumstances, but as we have seen, they were not associated with one another either textually or in practice. Royal legislation first brought duel and war together in the reign of Philip IV the Fair (r. 1285–1314), who promulgated four measures regarding duel. During the reign of his father Philip III and early in his own, duel had returned to use in royal courts, as well as remaining in use elsewhere,41 but his wars in Gascony against the English and in Flanders prompted a change of tack. In late 1296 or early 1297, Philip legislated (statuit) that for the common good
36 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 494, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 523, i, 46. 37 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 141–44, seemingly uncatalogued in Actes, ed. by Boutaric. ‘High justice’ usually meant jurisdiction over capital crimes. 38 Auxerre: Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 185, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 818, i, 74. Artois: Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 567–68, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 823, i, 75–76. 39 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 667–68, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 1119, i, 103. 40 ‘usque ad duellum et cogniciones mesleiarum, sine sanguine et sine discerevra, eciam si ibidem fuerit aliqua percussio, de qua mehaneium vel mors minime teneatur’ (Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 333–34, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 45*, i, 318). 41 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 85–86, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2051, i, 188–89 (1277, duello quod fieri debebat in curia domini Regis); duelli habiti in castro nostro Turonensis (1286, edited in Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 595A*, i, 401); Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lxiv, § 1845 (ii, 434). Judicial duels outside the royal domain are mentioned at Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 145, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2236, i, 214 (1279/1280 Normandy); Paris, AN, J 1030, no. 35, edited in Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2269A, i, 217 and discussed below (1280 County of Chartres); Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 824*, i, 446 (1292 chapter of Soissons).
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and necessity of his realm, challenges to duel (gagia duelli) were utterly prohibited during the king’s war.42 Rather, everyone was to pursue their rights through ordinary procedures, and this was to apply not only in the king’s courts, but also in those of his subjects: ‘Quod durante guerra Regis, inter aliquos gagia duelli nullatenus admittantur, sed quilibet in curiis Regis, & subditorum suorum jus suum via ordonaria prosequatur’. This measure is the second clause of a four-clause ordonnance. The first clause forbids any wars (guerrae) other than the king’s own and orders anyone intending to begin such a war instead to agree a truce with their opponents until the king’s own war had finished (donec guerra Regis fuerit finita). Following the second clause on duels, the measure prohibits holding war horses and arms as security debts, before moving on to the final prohibition, which is against tournaments, jousts, and riding expeditions. In 1304, Philip made another, stronger pronouncement against these kinds of activities. In a measure promulgated in Toulouse during a tour of his southern provinces, Philip spoke as God’s officer for the meting out of justice on earth. Following the example of Louis IX (ad instar sancti Ludovici) and so that ‘no one might dare take the law into his own hands’ he outlawed ‘Provocationes etiam ad duellum & gagia duellorum recipi, vel admitti’ (provocations to duel and the receiving or allowing of challenges to duel).43 Even more emphatically (expressius), he also prohibited such duels from going forward and ordered that conflicts behind such would-be duels or wars to be handled through ‘semitas aequitatis, rationis & juris’ (the paths of equity, reason, and law). Like the previous promulgation of 1296/1297, the prohibition against duella again appeared after a prohibition of guerra. Military battles (bella), homicide, arson, and attacks on peasants (agricolae vel aratores) were also proscribed.44 While Philip did not take this opportunity to proscribe tournaments or the seizure of horses and arms, their prohibition was reiterated in separate measures later that year.45 The prohibition on duel was once again restricted to the duration of royal warfare (durantibus guerris nostris) as it had been seven years prior, but it is unclear whether this also applied to the prohibition on guerra and related violence. Both of these measures were promulgated at a time when Philip was trying to settle particular seigneurial conflicts. In 1296/1297, a dispute over a mill had led the
42 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 328–29; Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 405, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2923, i, 291. The text, preserved in the second extant volume of the compilation of Parlement business known as the Olim (Paris, AN, X1a 2, fol. 114v), is undated, though it is associated with business undertaken at the Parlement session that opened on 1 November 1296. A terminus ante quem is provided by a letter of vidimus from the Lieutenant of Languedoc issued on 15 May 1297 regarding this prohibition (Montauban, AD Tarn-et-Garonne, A 297, fol. 931). 43 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 390. On the circumstances of this measure’s promulgation, see Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State, pp. 60–63. 44 While some medieval jurists distinguished between bellum, meaning a war fought by sovereign authority, and guerra, a war fought by bandits or others without legitimate authority (Russell, The Just War, p. 49), in late medieval French usage, guerra was used for royal and non-royal wars alike, as in the phrase ‘donec guerra Regis fuerit finita’ in the 1296/1297 ordonnance quoted above. Bellum meant a pitched battle and was also used indiscriminately for royal and non-royal confrontations (e.g. Histoire générale de Languedoc, new edn by Molinier, viii, 1455–63; Paris, AN, X2a 8, fol. 24v–29r). 45 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 421–22, 425–26, 434–35, etc.
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lord of Harcourt and the chamberlain of Tancarville to acts of war and possibly to a duel, though the witness for the duel is late and confused.46 In 1304, the king was negotiating a peace between the counts of Foix and Armagnac.47 But if these measures were associated with specific conflicts, they also had broader aims. First of all, they were meant to preserve men and horses for Philip’s own wars. This is explicit in the 1296/1297 measure, thus the clauses on tournaments and warhorses and arms. Obviously, it would not be in Philip’s interests to have men and material wasted in intramural conflicts or squandered in violent amusements. In the 1304 prohibition, war is not mentioned, but when it was issued in January in Toulouse, Philip was in the middle of a long tour of southern France meant to drum up support for a planned invasion of Flanders. War could not have been far from mind. Indeed, eleven days later while still in Toulouse, he issued a mandate levying troops for the campaign.48 In addition to this pragmatic concern, there are also elements that suggest a moral or ideological opposition to violent self-help. In the first measure, as I noted, the clause on duel does not just prohibit them, but requires that such conflicts be handed by the via ordinaria, that is through a civil case brought by the injured party.49 Essentially, it reiterates Louis’s instructions to the same effect, but Philip’s prohibition also expanded the jurisdictional applicability of the prohibition. Duel was prohibited not only in royal courts but in all of his subjects’ courts (in curiis Regis, & subditorum suorum). The ordonnance promulgated in 1304 goes far beyond earlier measures in terms of ideological content. In 1304, duel and warfare were prohibited because of Philip’s divinely-ordained duty to provide justice to his subjects — the measure refers to kings as divinitus deputati for this purpose — which has been instituted lest anyone try to provide their own justice or undertake vengeance (sibi jus dicere, aut vindictam assumere audeat). Philip’s insistence that such cases be tried in court evinces an overarching preference for settling conflict by institutional justice rather than through violence. Philip coupled war and duel together here not only because he wanted to shepherd military resources, but also because these practices were methods for handling dispute through violence and outside of royal, legal authority. How such intentions were to work in action, though, was less clear, and problems immediately arose. Philip IV’s efforts to prosecute seigneurial warfare do not seem to have stopped people from engaging in guerra; it was too necessary to the defence 46 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 404–05, where Philip’s judgement appears just prior to the prohibition, and just after a judgement prohibiting duel in a case of alleged poisoning (Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 403–04, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2921, i, 291). The Harcourt/Tancarville incident is discussed in Morel, ‘La fin du duel’, pp. 608–09. For the duel incident, which is not in the Parlement document, Morel drew on a story from the incunabulum Croniques de Normandie, ch. ccx, unpaginated, which he found excerpted in one of the savant Gagnière’s collections of duel materials (Paris, BnF, MS franç. 21810, fol. 20r–22v). The account in the Croniques de Normandie says that this duel was attended not only by Philip the Fair, and the king of England, who had last visited France ten years earlier and who was at war with Philip, but also the king of Navarre, who at that time was none other than Philip IV himself by right of his wife. 47 Cazelles, ‘La réglementation royale’, pp. 539–40. 48 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 391–92. 49 Carbasse, ‘Ordinaire, extraordinaire’.
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of their rights and the exercise of their prerogatives.50 Duel, too, proved simply too useful to give up. But while guerra was subject to numerous further prohibitions, the restriction on duel was almost immediately loosened.51 In 1306, Philip commanded his officers to allow its use in certain circumstances. He observed that his earlier prohibition on ‘toutes menieres de guerres & tous gages de bataille’ (all kinds of wars and judicial battles) had allowed some people to escape conviction for homicide and other ‘gr[i]es malefices’ (grave misdeeds) done in secret.52 He therefore attenuated (atempree) the prohibition, licensing judicial duel in cases where it appeared obvious that homicide or other capital crimes had been committed in secret and whose authors therefore could not be convicted by witnesses: ‘la ou il appera evidenment homicide ou autre grief malefice, larrecin excepte, de quoy peine de mort se deust ensuir estre faiz en traison ou en Repost si que cil qui l’auroit fait nan poist estre convaincuz par tesmoinz’.53 This relaxation of the duel prohibition came during a period of peace between France and its neighbours, so the military exigencies that underlay Philip’s previous prohibitions of judicial duel were not then operative. In the context of peace, what remained of the rationales for prohibition was the ‘common profit’ to be had from limiting violence. But when it became clear that the general welfare was actually being harmed by this limitation on violence, the measure was repealed to a limited extent. Chabas was probably wrong to highlight civic unrest in Paris as a contributor to Philip’s reconsideration, for the duel attenuation, which was issued in late May or
50 Firnhaber-Baker, ‘Seigneurial War’; Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State. 51 All quotations from this measure are from Philip V’s 1318 reissuance of this measure at Paris, AN, X2a 2, fol. 7rbis (‘bis’ here indicates the register’s second numeration, following the insertion of 12 folios of business from the reign of Philip VI ending with a folio numbered 29). No contemporary manuscript references are given for either the edition published in Textes relatifs à l’histoire du Parlement, ed. by Langlois, no. cxxii, pp. 174–75 or the rather different one at Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 435–41. Langlois’s edition is close to the fourteenth-century manuscripts at Paris, AN, X2a 2, fol. 7rbis, Paris, AN, U 446, fol. 4r, Toulouse, Archives municipales de Toulouse, AA 4, no. 41, fol. 48r (French) and 42[A], 51v–52v (Latin), and the version given in du Breuil, Stilus curie parlamenti, ed. by Aubert, ch. xvi.1 (pp. 101–02), written in the early 1330s. The version edited in Les ordonnances des rois is almost identical to the text of the ordonnance as it appears in a fifteenth-century manuscript Paris, BnF, MS franç. 2258, from which were also taken the instructions for how to propose and fight a duel that appear in the notes to the edition, as discussed below. A now lost registry copy of Philip IV’s measure must have been made for Parlement’s criminal chamber, for Philip V’s 1318 reissuances noted that the king ‘a registris causarum criminalium curie nostre Parisis extrahi fecimus’ (had had it extracted it from the registers of the criminal cases of our court at Paris). 52 Grave misdeeds probably included rape, a crime sometimes judged by duel (Porteau-Bitker, ‘La justice laïque et le viol’, p. 513; see Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. xxx, § 926 (i, 467–77). Sexual delicts and rumours thereof, including rape as well as sodomy and adultery, also caused many early modern duels (see the works cited in n. 96, below). 53 The exception of larrecin was probably made because although it was a capital crime, it pertained to low justice (bas justice) and the crown was loath for those petty lords with only low justice to oversee such a procedure. Cf. the case noted above of the Lady of Hérouville, who had only justice foncière (justiciam de fundo terre), the lowest category of justice, which only covered fines from unpaid rents and taxes.
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early June, predated the December riots considerably.54 But if Philip’s subjects did object to the prohibiting of duel, their misgivings were probably similar to Philip’s own: suppressing the practice led to miscarriages of justice. The problem of cases in which suspicion was vehement but proof hard to come by had justified the use of ordeals for centuries.55 Indeed, it was this same recognition of the pragmatic utility in otherwise insoluble cases that convinced northern Italian city governments to retain the procedure.56 The justification behind the 1306 attenuation suggests that Philip’s regime privileged social cohesion above other considerations. Allowing judicial duel in these cases increased the chances that the deceased’s relatives would consider the matter closed, whatever the result. In this sense, the measure is in line with the 1304 prohibition in seeking to minimize conflict and ‘self-help’. That Philip presented the problem as arising from his interdiction of war, as well as duel, indicates the importance of addressing those concerns. But viewing it only from this functionalist standpoint underestimates Philip and his counsellors’ commitment to justice and neglects the extent to which they believed that God might intervene in human affairs. These were not men without religion or (some) scruples.57 In allowing the duel, they were not abandoning their duty to justice, but entrusting the decision to God. They understood trial by battle as a possible, if messy, method for establishing truth in instances when human proofs had failed. In other words, they understood it as an investigative procedure. The operative distinction here is between the judicial duel as an expression of the conflict that brought the parties into court in the first place, on the one hand, and as a method for discerning the rights of that conflict, on the other. In his earlier measures prohibiting judicial duels, Philip addressed them as avenues for the expression of conflict and therefore prohibited them. In the 1306 attenuation, he addressed them as a matter of procedure and therefore allowed them. Indeed, by allowing duel as a judicial procedure in specific circumstances, Philip made a clear, if implicit, distinction between the judicial duel and any other effort to settle a conflict mano a mano. Notably, while he presented the difficulties as arising from the prohibition on war as well as duel, it was only duel — a staged contest fought under official supervision in approved cases — that he reinstated. The logistical manageability of duel, which had made it possible for Louis’s regime to prohibit the practice, was ironically the aspect of it that enabled Philip’s regime to allow it. The 1306 attenuation was the moment that the history of duel and warfare began to diverge in royal legislation, and it is generally supposed by modern historians
54 Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, p. 116. Toulouse, AM Toulouse, AA 4, no. 41 gives the date as ‘mardi apres la trinite’ (Tuesday after the Feast of the Trinity) 1306 (31 May), but other MSS and editions give ‘mercredi’ (Wednesday). 55 Bartlett, Trial by Fire, pp. 24–27. On the ‘rationalism’ of duel in English legal practice, see Hyams, ‘Trial by Ordeal’. Cf. McAuley, ‘Canon Law’, esp. pp. 495–500, 509–12 on Innocent III’s nova doctrina and the problem of circumstantial evidence. 56 Israel, ‘Questioni di confini’. 57 Brown, ‘Moral Imperatives’.
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that duel was henceforth legal in France.58 Philip IV was enshrined as the author of duel’s legality very early on. In the early 1330s, when the lawyer Guillaume du Breuil wrote the Stilus curie Parlementi, a handbook for those practicing before the court, he began his chapter de materia duelli by quoting the 1306 attenuation in full, before expounding the four criteria implied in the measure: 1) that the crime was punishable by death; 2) that it could not be proved by witnesses; 3) that there was circumstantial evidence or strong suspicion against the person being challenged; 4) that the crime actually had happened.59 Later commentators on duel often referred to these criteria throughout the fourteenth and into the fifteenth century.60 Jean le Coq, who practised law in Parlement at the end of the fourteenth century, also attributed duel’s (limited) legality to Philip IV’s measure (consuetudinem et ordinationem regis Philippi Pulchri) in his discussion of cases of judicial duel that he had seen come before the court.61 In fact, Philip prohibited duel again in 1314. Opening with the observation that he had previously forbidden wars and duels during his wars in Flanders and Gascony, the 1314 prohibition goes on to say that because the Flemings had broken their peace with France, duels were again forbidden and any current challenges were to be suspended.62 As in 1296/1297 and 1304, this prohibition follows one against war (guerra), but after the duel clause there are instructions to facilitate the movement of supplies to Philip’s supporters and to prohibit their export to the Flemish rebels. The grounds for outlawing duel and war here appear to be those of provisional military necessity rather than ideological opposition. Moreover, the measure lacks the ideological justifications that had been advanced to justify the outlawing of war in 1304, the tenor of which had been repeated in an ordonnance of 1311 that had again outlawed guerra.63 Yet, while the 1314 prohibition on warfare was only to last for the duration of the Flemish war (guerra nostra durante), the prohibition of duel was extended indefinitely ‘as long as it please the king’ (quandiu nobis placuerit). Only those challenges already in motion might be taken up after the war finished. The 1314 prohibition on duel thus reflected not only the current military circumstances, but also demonstrates the crown’s enduring unease with the procedure. Even in the eight years between the 1306 attenuation and the 1314 prohibition when duel
58 Tardif, La procédure civile et criminelle, p. 92; Morel, ‘La fin du duel’, pp. 604, 610; Vale, The Origins, p. 132. 59 du Breuil, Stilus curie parlamenti, ed. by Aubert, ch. xvi (pp. 101–03). 60 In addition to du Breuil, the criteria also appear in AN U 446, fol. 4r-v; Paris, BnF, MS franç. 2258, fol. 3v–4r; de Villiers-l’Isle-Adam, ‘Livre pour gaige’, ed. by Prost, pp. 29–30; and de la Jaille, ‘Formulaire des gaiges’, ed. by Prost, pp. 136–37. 61 le Coq, Quaestiones, ed. by Boulet, p. 118. 62 ‘Et nunc Comes flandrie, & alie gentes, & populus Flandrie, contra formam pacis inter nos & ipsos novissime facte, temere veniendo, contra nos apertam guerram faciant, & propter guerram predictam, & ex aliis justis causis, omnes guerras in regno nostro, inter personas quascumque sub pena commissionis corporum & bonorum, guerra nostra durante inhibeamus fieri, & duellorum vadia quecumque quandiu nobis placuerit, precipiamus in suspenso teneri’ (Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 538–39). 63 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 492–93, xi, 426–27.
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was supposedly legal, Philip and his courts had retained close supervision over duel. Rarely, perhaps never, had they allowed a challenge to duel raised in royal courts to take place. In January 1307, the Parlement ‘totally annulled’ the duel asked for by the lord of Uzès against a knight and his son.64 The following May, the king wrote to the seneschal of Toulouse, demanding that any duels between barons (barones) be handled in the Parlement of Paris, rather than in the seneschal’s court.65 Although that mandate left room for the seneschal to oversee duels at lower social levels, when that seneschal allowed a duel between two gentlemen (damoiseaux) in 1309, Parlement reversed his decision.66 Also in 1309 and in the same jurisdiction, the court again took up the matter of duels, this time regarding a case that included several duels proposed between the counts of Foix and Armagnac and their adherents. The court prohibited all of the duels, observing with some acerbity that the facts were clear enough and ‘so, according to the ordonnance we made about duels, a duel ought not be allowed for cases plainly proved’.67 The south, especially Toulouse, seems to have been the epicentre of the crown’s interest in controlling the duel. All of the Parlement cases involving duel between 1306 and 1309 originated in Languedoc: one in the sénéchaussée of Beaucaire and two in the sénéchaussée of Toulouse. The same Toulouse manuscript, probably the product of one of the seneschal’s officers, contains the royal promulgations of 1304 and 1306, as well as the mandate of 1307.68 The city and its hinterland were receptive ground for the crown’s ambitions, for unlike in many parts of the realm, local customary law did not endorse the practice.69 The 1306 attenuation had specified that the rule only applied in those areas where duel has been legal prior to the prohibition: ‘nous attemprons nostre defensse devant dite es lieux & es terres es quels li gage de bataille avoyent lieu davant ceste deffense’ (we modify our foresaid prohibition in the places and in the
64 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 485, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 3406, ii, 40. 65 Mandate: Lettres inédites, ed. by Baudouin, no. 181 and Recueil général des anciennes lois, ed. by Isambert, ii, 850. Baudoin’s edition is dated die lune ante Ascensionem Domini, anno ejusdem M CCC sexto (9 May 1306), but the entry at Toulouse, AM Toulouse, AA 4, no. 40, fol. 47v is dated die lune ante Ascensionem Domini MCCC VII (1 May 1307), as is Isambert’s edition. Isambert gives no manuscript reference. Baudouin identifies his MS as Toulouse, AM Toulouse, AA 147 (provisional cote), p. 124, corresponding neither to the modern AA 147 nor to any copy listed in the calendared acts in Roschach, Ville de Toulouse: Inventaire. The 1307 date makes most sense, given that for all or almost all of May 1306, the 1296/1297 prohibition was still in force. On the dating of Philip’s 1306 measure, see above, n. 54. 66 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 496–97, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 3570, ii, 55. 67 ‘sic, secundum ordinacionem per nos factam super duellis, non debet duellum recipi pro casibus plene probatis’ (Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, iii.1, 382–87, quote at p. 385, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 3618, ii, 59). 68 The contents of the MS AM Toulouse, AA 4 suggest it was made by or for a seneschal of Toulouse or his staff. The latest text in the MS (no. 50, fol. 58r-v) dates from 1321, a measure reiterating that the Jews must wear a sign on their clothing. Notably, the orthography of the 1306 ordonnance suggests the entry was written by an Occitan speaker, for it substitutes ‘o’ for ‘ou’ and transcribes some words phonetically, rendering them incomprehensible, such as ‘ceu la mant’ in place of ‘seulement’. 69 Carbasse, ‘Le duel judiciare’, pp. 395–96.
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lands in which duels took place prior to this prohibition).70 The Toulousain was not one of those areas. Philip chose carefully when laying down his marker against duel. If Toulouse served as the crown’s laboratory for testing its competence over duel, Parlement demonstrated its power in less favourable jurisdictions in the following years. In 1312, the court heard a case from the temporal court of the bishop of Brieuc in Brittany, where customary law endorsed the use of duel permissively.71 The court refrained from commenting on the claimants’ allegation that the king’s ordonnance against duel was valid ‘despite any [contrary] custom’ (quacumque consuetudine non obstante), but it did annul the duel, judging the episcopal court to have ‘expresse fecit contra ordinacionem nostrum predictam super gagiis duellorum notorie et solenniter publicatam’ (acted expressly against our widely and solemnly publicized ordonnance on duels).72 The next year, the court ordered an investigation into whether a duel should be fought in the Quercy-Agennais region of Languedoc, an area where customs on duel fell in the middle of the spectrum between Toulousain rigour and Breton laxity.73 In that case, it sanctioned the contest only if the matter could not be determined by witnesses, one of the basic criteria for allowing duel specified in the 1306 attenuation.74 In its preference for witnesses over battle, Parlement’s decision conforms to Philip’s measure, but it is notable that the court was apparently untroubled that the dispute was one of inheritance, a matter for which Philip’s measure did not permit duel.75 In 1314, the court heard a case from the sénéchaussée of Poitiers involving poisoning, a circumstance more condign to the application of Philip’s attenuation, but there it nevertheless annulled the duel without comment, simply ordering that the case proceed by way of proofs (per viam probacionum procedi).76
70 Paris, AN, X2a 2, fol. 7rbis. 71 Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, p. 123. 72 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, iii.1, 679–80, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 3965, ii, 92. However, this case was probably not admissible to duel by customary law because the matter was verbal injuries, which even the Breton custom did not consider worthy of duel, and the claimants against the bishop were the parties whom his court had tried to subject to duel, a procedure one could rarely impose without the assent of the parties. On the requirement that parties consent, see Carbasse, ‘Le duel judiciaire’. 73 Carbasse, ‘Le duel judiciaire’, pp. 397–98. 74 1313: Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 4085, ii, 104, Paris, AN, X2a 1, fol. 4r: Arrêt to make an inquest into the complaint of Bertrand de Montagu, knight, against his uncle, about his father’s will, which had been deposited in the monastery of Duravel. 75 The matter might arguably have been subject to duel because of the alleged theft and destruction of the will. This would also explain why the case is in the criminal register, rather than a civil one. But property crimes do not seem congruent with ‘serious misdeeds’. Almost all matters involving duel after 1310 were entered into Parlement’s criminal registers, whose existence as a separate series begins at this time (Bloch and Carbasse, ‘Aux origines de la série criminelle’, pp. 8–12). Nevertheless, fourteenth-century duels did sometimes have to do with property, e.g. Paris, AN, X1c 12, no. 81–82 and there are a number of entries in the civil registers from Philip VI’s reign catalogued in Actes, ed. by Furgeot. 76 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, ii, 592–94, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 4233, ii, 119. The case was brought by Aimeri Senglier against the alleged poisoner of his mother.
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Duel after Philip the Fair Only after Philip’s death did duel emerge from the shadow of his disapprobation. Clauses permitting duel feature in a number of the charters granted by Louis X (r. 1314–1316) to the provincial leagues of 1314–1316 that had formed to protest royal overreach.77 The watershed moment came in April 1318, when Philip V reissued his father’s 1306 attenuation of the duel, quoting Philip IV’s attenuation ‘de verbo ad verbum’ (word for word).78 At this moment, the large-scale violence of war as a method for pursuing conflicts and the closely-delimited violence of duel as a means of ending them were clearly and permanently distinguished in royal legislation and practice. While there were at least ten further promulgations prohibiting warfare in the fourteenth century, never again did a medieval French king legislate against duel.79 The courts took notice. From Philip V’s accession in 1316 to the death of his brother, Charles IV in 1328, Parlement heard nineteen cases involving judicial duel from regions ranging from the county of Flanders to the sénéchaussée of Carcassonne.80 Again, it does not seem that many of these proposed duels actually ever took place. Almost all of the judicial sources relate to delays, defaults, jurisdictional questions, and investigations of whether a duel was warranted. Over the fourteenth century as a whole, Chabas counted about fifty requests to decide a case by duel, of which twenty-seven were denied and twelve ended in settlements before the duel took place.81 Louis de Carbonnière’s study of criminal procedure in Parlement during the later fourteenth century found only two judicial duels that actually took place from 1360 to 1400.82 One of these was the famous match of 1386 between Jacques Le Gris and Jean de Carrouges over the rape of the latter’s wife, a duel immortalized by the chronicles of Jean Froissart and Michel Pintoin and now the subject of a Hollywood
77 Grant to Burgundy, Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 557–60, at art. 1; to Champagne, Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 576–80, at art. 8; to Amiens and Vermandois, Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 561–67, at art. 25. While the leagues did not outline their reasons for wishing duel’s return, a concern to confirm the truth of a matter vehemently suspected similar to that expressed in the 1306 attenuation is evident in their charters’ stipulations regarding torture: no noble was to be put to the question unless the presumption of his guilt was so overwhelming and there was a significant chance that he would remain unpunished (Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 576, 579, 587). On the leagues, see Brown, ‘Reform and Resistance’. 78 Paris, AN, X2a 2, fol. 7rbis. This measure immediately follows two mandates to the Seneschal of Périgord, instructing him (with no apparent awareness of contradiction) not to interfere in the temporal jurisdiction of the bishop of Agen in the matter of a duel and to observe Philip IV’s ordonnance on duel in the same case being heard in the royal castellany of Lauserte (Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 5366–67, ii, 237–38). Two folios later there is a further reminder of the same ordonnance in a different case to the same seneschal (Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 5500, ii, 251). 79 See Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State, pp. 187–90 for a list of anti-war promulgations. 80 Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 4665, 6391, ii, 164, 364. Other cases came from the sénéchaussées of Toulouse, Périgord, and Saintonge, the bailliages of Cotentin, Caen, and Rouen, as well as those of Bourges, Tours, Amiens, and Senlis. See Ducoudray, Les origines du Parlement, i, 397–99. 81 Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, p. 184. See also Ducoudray, Les origines du Parlement, i, 403–05. 82 de Carbonnières, La procédure devant la chambre criminelle, p. 512.
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movie.83 Still, many other, less celebrated matches were proposed, to the point that in 1387 an exasperated court prohibited parties from challenging each other to multiple duels pertaining to the same case.84 On one hand, it might be argued that the small number of duels actually fought demonstrates that the procedure was unimportant. On the other hand, the relative frequency with which it was proposed shows that the threat of duel remained useful. As Chabas stressed, these matches were ideally meant to end with agreements to compromise, not with absolute victories or defeats; settlement was possible and encouraged at any moment in the process, even when the combatants were already engaged on the field.85 No doubt proposing and avoiding the duel served fourteenth-century litigants as an instrument with which to pursue their claims strategically, much as Stephen White has shown for the ordeals of various types in the eleventh century and much as procedural manoeuvres do in the law courts of any period.86 Indeed, delaying the duel and remaining in a liminal state between laying the challenge and meeting it (pendente gagio duelli) prolonged the legal status of enmity between parties.87 This might be advantageous in other ways, such as delaying the payment of debts one party had allegedly incurred toward the other. The duel to which a Morel Audouin had challenged one Guillaume Gargoillau, for example, had allowed the former to put off paying rent to the latter for at least a couple of years.88 Nor should we underestimate medieval people’s respect for the iudicium Dei to which they exposed themselves in a judicial duel, not only during the combat itself but also in swearing the oath or oaths that preceded the battle.89 Perjury was a sure route to damnation, fear of which demonstrably encouraged some disputants to tell the truth.90 One of the oaths undertaken by the parties before the duel promised that no magical or diabolical aid had been sought by the parties or used to prepare their weapons. The appearance of this oath in all versions of the pre-duel ceremony, discussed below, testifies to its importance. For good or for ill, the possibility of supernatural intervention was central to the practice of duel. This was a primary reason for which it had been condemned in earlier centuries — either because it
83 Froissart, Œuvres, ed. by Kervyn de Lettenhove, xii, 29–39; [Pintoin], Chronique du religieux, ed. by Bellaguet, i, 462–67; Guenée, ‘Comment le Religieux’; Jager, The Last Duel. The Parlement documents related to this case have been edited in de Carbonnières, La procédure devant la chambre criminelle, annexe J, pp. 723–47. 84 Paris, AN, X2a 10, fol. 245r-v; de Carbonnières, La procédure devant la chambre criminelle, p. 510. 85 Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, pp. 91–95, 197. Chabas considered this more common in the thirteenth century than the fourteenth, but there are numerous fourteenth-century examples of accords that intervened before a proposed judicial duel took place: e.g. Actes, ed. by Furgeot, no. 7082; Actes, ed. by Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, nos 3096A, 3109B, 4123vD; Paris, AN, X2a 5, fol. 1v; Paris, AN, X2a 6, fol. 399r; Paris, AN, X1c 12, nos 81–83; Paris, AN, X1c 17, no. 88. 86 White, ‘Proposing the Ordeal’. 87 Smail, ‘Hatred as a Social Institution’; Bartlett, ‘“Mortal Enmities”’. 88 Paris, AN, X2a 5, fol. 95v, catalogued in Actes, ed. by Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, no. 5095vB. Another example at Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 6333, ii, 351. 89 On oaths and other preparations for the combat, see discussion below. 90 Karras, ‘Telling the Truth’.
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‘tempted’ God or because it was demonstrably not the case that He intervened to vindicate the just in every duel.91 The appeal to the supernatural remained odious to many later medieval thinkers, including Michel Pintoin and Christine de Pisan.92 There were others, like the fifteenth-century duel apologist Olivier de la Marche, who felt differently.93 For those would-be combatants who believed themselves justified and who, like Jean de Carrogues, could get no satisfaction from the courts, the prospect of battle with God on one’s side must have exerted a powerful attraction. A few years before the Carrouges/Le Gris match, an Englishman who accused a local knight of participation in the Peasants’ Revolt swore that he would: prove it by his body according to the law of arms […] but not by the verdict of jurors. For he said that sir William Coggan was a rich man and he was poor; and therefore he would not be able to prevail by inquest although his cause was as true as there is God in heaven above.94 Sometimes, there were good reasons for thinking God’s justice superior to that of men.
An Aristocratic Practice? Neither duel’s functionalist nor its supernatural aspects have been considered key to explaining why it endured as a practice not only after the Fourth Lateran Council but right through the end of the Middle Ages. Rather, its survival has been generally laid at the feet of its association with the chivalric aesthetics of the nobility and aristocrats’ growing attachment to the defence of honour and reputation.95 Medieval judicial duel, understood as already an aristocratic preserve, is thus believed to have gradually given way to the unauthorized single combats over aristocratic honour between young noblemen that comprised duel in the seventeenth century.96 This fits in neatly with the narrative of the late medieval nobility’s development from a violent class whose raison d’être was the waging of war to a mannered aristocracy sidelined from its age-old military pursuits by new technologies and tactics.97 The medieval evidence indicates, however, that duel was not understood as a primarily
91 See nn. 19 and 24, above. 92 [Pintoin], Chronique du religieux, ed. by Bellaguet, i, 391–98; Christine de Pisan, The Book of Deeds, ed. by Cannon Willard, trans. by Willard, pp. 197–99. 93 de la Marche, ‘Livre de l’advis’, pp. 10–19. See also Gauvard, De grâce especial, i, 176. 94 ‘According to the Accusations against Sir William Coggan’, ed. and trans. by Dobson, p. 283. 95 Faral, ‘Le procès d’Enguerran IV’, esp. pp. 609–20; Bartlett, Trial by Fire, pp. 123–26; Vale, ‘Aristocratic Violence’, pp. 162–64; Gauvard, De grâce especial, i, 177–79. 96 Morel, ‘Le fin du duel’; Carroll, Blood and Violence; Hiltmann and Israel, ‘“Laissez-les aller”’; Prietzel, ‘Schauspiele von Ehre’; Berbouche, ‘Duel’; On duel’s early modern legal evolution in France, see Cazals, ‘Les arrêtistes et le duel’, pp. 34–43. 97 Rogers, ‘The Military Revolutions’; Contamine, La noblesse au royaume.
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noble practice until much later. For much of the late Middle Ages, non-noble quarrels were as likely to lead to a challenge to duel as those between nobles. Duel was certainly as much a practice of the common-born as of the nobility in the century after Fourth Lateran. Louis IX’s prohibition on duel indicates that in the mid thirteenth century it was used outside of aristocratic milieux for disputes over forgery and servile status, and townspeople, as well as nobles, are said to have objected to the prohibition.98 The suits that came before Louis’s court and those of his successors included cases of duels fought between non-nobles, including peasants.99 Indeed, in the reign of Philip III, a servile woman challenged a lord and his son to a duel over alleged acts of arson and went so far as to have her champion, a knight, appear on the appointed day.100 Beaumanoir’s coutumes gives examples of duels fought between non-nobles, including peasants (hôtes and païsans), and between mixed pairs of nobles and non-nobles. Clearly, the procedure was not restricted to the nobility in the late thirteenth-century Beauvaisis.101 Judicial duel does not seem to have become an exclusively noble practice in the fourteenth century, either. Bartlett rightly points out that at least two of the grants made to the provincial leagues in 1315 had clauses dealing with duel that were applicable to the nobility alone, but another of the grants made at the time omits any mention of status in connection with duel.102 If we look at the background of those involved in the fifteen duels proposed before Parlement between 1316 and 1328 in which the parties’ status is known, seven involved nobles exclusively, but another seven were matches between non-nobles and one was a mixed noble/non-noble pairing. Some of the non-nobles involved were quite humble indeed, such as Jean, dit li Burgoys and Guillaume le Chandelier.103 During the reign of Philip VI (1328–1350), nine noble duels were proposed as against only two challenges between non-nobles, but another four were mixed matches, including one between Jean Bisot, who proclaimed himself ‘ready with his staff [the traditional arm of a non-noble dualist] and all that was necessary’, and Clément La Hure of Château-Renard, who countered that he himself would fight with the ‘arms of a gentleman’.104 Evidence for the second half of the century is more difficult to assess because we rely upon keyword databases rather than catalogues to navigate Parlement’s records, and these have some gaps in coverage.105 Nevertheless, as Louis de Carbonnières noted, it is clear that there 98 Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, pp. 41–44. 99 Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 24, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 142, i, 12; Les Olim, ed. by Beugnot, i, 50, Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 188, i, 16. 100 Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 2269A, i, 217. See also Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 824*, i, 446 from Philip IV’s early reign. 101 Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. vi, § 233–34, ch. lxiv, § 1829 (i, 118–19, ii, 427–28). 102 Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 567, a 1315 grant to those of the bailliages of Amiens and Vermandois, here allowing gage de bateille in case of larrecin, rapt and roberie, as well as murder and trahison, if the crime cannot be proved by witnesses. 103 Actes, ed. by Boutaric, no. 5320, ii, 233. 104 Actes, ed. by Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, no. 4055v D, 4056 A. 105 Centre d’étude et d’histoire juridique, bases de données (last accessed 11 March 2020).
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remained wide variety in the social background of those coming before Parlement to request a duel. These included a mixed pair in the 1370s, a match of ‘poor and simple people’ in the 1380s, and a pair of ‘poor labourers’ in the 1390s.106 That historians have overemphasized the aristocratic associations of medieval judicial duel owes much to the ornate protocols for undertaking a duel between two noblemen that are printed in the notes to the supposed text of Philip IV’s 1306 attenuation in the seventeenth-century ordonnances des rois de la troisième race. These protocols, strongly chivalric in tone, follow the match’s progress, from proposing the duel before a judge and the specific claims that the parties must make ‘according to their nobility and condition’, to the pairs’ departures for the lists, armed and on horseback, ‘their visors lowered, shields hanging from their necks, swords in hand’, to the herald’s instructions to the crowd, to the three oaths of increasing intensity that the parties must swear before a priest or monk (who canonically departs before the bloodshed begins), to the parties’ entry onto the field as the herald thrice cries ‘Faite vos devoirs!’ (Do what you must!). And then, concludes the writer, ‘fasse chacun le mieux qu’il pourra’. The ordonnance des rois de la troisième race gives the impression that this elaborate and exciting description for organizing a judicial duel originated with Philip IV at the time of the 1306 attenuation. A widely-consulted nineteenth-century edition of français 2258 was entitled Cérémonies des gages de bataille selon les constitutions du bon roi Philippe de France, and its preface explicitly claims that these protocols ‘were the usual ceremonies in duels at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and which were observed in all the judicial duels authorized since [the reign of] Philp the Fair’.107 A number of historians have thus naturally assumed that the 1306 ordonnance and the ceremony were tightly linked and always travelled together.108 In fact, this complex ceremony has no fourteenth-century attestation. The text printed in the ordonnance des rois is derived from BnF, MS français 2258, a deluxe manuscript produced in Burgundy in the early 1460s for the Duke of Brittany.109 Lavishly decorated with half-page illuminations, français 2258 epitomizes the chivalric aesthetics of the princely nobility in mid fifteenth-century northern Europe. The composition makes an explicit connection with Philip IV, describing itself as ‘les ceremonies et ordonnances qui se appartiennent a gaige de Bataille fait par querelle selon les Constitutions faites par le bon Roy Phelippe de France’ and opening with a version of the 1306 attenuation, though there are considerable differences between the language of the ordonnance in this manuscript and that found in early
106 AN X2a 10, fol. 5v, noted by Gauvard, De grâce especial, i, 177; de Carbonnières, La procédure devant la chambre criminelle, p. 510; Ducoudray, Les origines du Parlement, i, 405. 107 Cérémonies des gages de bataille, p. vi. 108 e.g. Chabas, Le duel judiciare, pp. 18, 120, despite recognizing that the protocols were from Paris, BnF, MS franç. 2258 (next note); Vale, ‘Aristocratic Violence’, p. 165; Jager, The Last Duel, pp. 156–62, 224; Jager, ‘Le dernier duel’, p. 174. 109 Creating French Culture, ed. by Tesnière and Gifford, no. 43, p. 112; Booton, Manuscripts, Markets, p. 279. There are a few differences between the printed and the MS texts, but they are very minor.
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Figure 13.1. The parties brandish their cases in writing, BnF, MS français 2258, fol. 14v. Reproduced with permission from the BnF.
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Figure 13.2. The third oath taken before the fighting commences, BnF, MS français 2258, fol. 18v. Reproduced with permission from the BnF.
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Figure 13.3. The duel begins, BnF, MS français 2258, fol. 22r. Reproduced with permission from the BnF.
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fourteenth-century copies.110 The ordonnance, written on fol. 2r–3v, is followed on fol. 3v–4r by the list of the four criteria for allowing a duel that are implicit in the attenuation (the criteria first outlined by du Breuil in the 1330s). The description of the ceremony then takes up the next twenty folios, far surpassing the space given to Philip’s measure. In the text and accompanying eleven illuminations of this manuscript, the duel is presented as a judicial procedure, consonant with Philip’s instructions and judicial usage in the first half of the fourteenth century. It must be granted and overseen by a judge, if not the king himself, and the protocol includes a step in which the parties enter the field brandishing their cases in written form (Figure 13.1). Yet, français 2258 also presents the duel as a chivalric spectacle. It not only provides elaborate speeches and intricate stage directions for the battle’s participants, but also assumes the presence of a large and enthusiastic audience, who must be admonished to be quiet and to sit down ‘afin que chascun puisse veoir’ (so that everyone can see).111 The large and richly coloured illuminations, possibly painted by the Master of Jean Rolin, depict the duel’s progression from its proposal through to the preparation of the field, to the parties’ oaths (Figure 13.2), to the deadly battle itself (Figure 13.3), to the combat’s fatal end with the vanquished party shown bloody and prone outside the lices’ broken frame, as spectators gesture excitedly from the stand.112 These beautiful images make it easy to imagine duel as an expression of the late medieval nobility’s increasingly mannered though still violent chivalric ethos. These gorgeous pictures should not, however, be understood as ‘l’ordonnance même mise en action’, as the nineteenth-century edition instructs us to do.113 Earlier prescriptions for the staging of duels in France suggest a much less spectacular ceremony. In the late thirteenth century, the procedure as outlined in chapter 64 of Beaumanoir’s coutumes contains some of the elements found in français 2258, including a presentation speech by the appellant, oaths taken by the parties before the contest, and admonitions to the audience, but it is much sparser and shorter, involving only two oaths and a limited audience. It is also rather more threatening. In capital cases, the parties are to be shown the rope by which the loser will be hanged or, in the case of a female party, the shovel that will bury her alive.114 The ceremony given in du Breuil’s Stilus curie, written a half century after Beaumanoir’s coutumes, is even less elaborate than that of the coutumes. The two oaths prescribed by Beaumanoir are
110 This is the text of the ordonnance printed at Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 435–41, see n. 51, above. 111 Paris, BnF, MS franç. 2258, fol. 10r. 112 Monks, ‘The Master of Jean Rolin II’. 113 Cérémonies des gages de bataille, p. vi. 114 Beaumanoir, Coutumes, ed. by Salmon, ch. lxiv (ii, 427–35). A symbolic hanging of the vanquished party’s corpse was part of later fourteenth-century duels, as was done to Jacques Le Gris’s body, and Froissart relates that Marguerite de Carrouges was to be burned alive if her husband lost his duel (Froissart, Œuvres, ed. by Kervyn de Lettenhove, xii, 37–38). Instructions to this end are not, however, included in Paris, BnF, MS franç. 2258/ Les ordonnances des rois, ed. by de Laurière, i, 435–41.
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reduced to one and no admonitions are given.115 Notably, neither text envisages duel as exclusively noble. Beaumanoir’s ceremony applied to matches involving nobles, non-nobles, including peasants (païsans), and mixed pairs. Du Breuil envisaged the parties as gentilshommes, but in one passage he spoke not only of those who arrived on horseback, which was the noble manner, but also of those who came on foot, as commoners customarily did, and instructed that parties bear the arms befitting their status (armis que ipsum decent secundum ejus statum).116 A close predecessor of the ceremony in français 2258 only appears in the mid fourteenth century and was related to very specific circumstances. Sketched out over two folios of AN U 446, a compilation of ordonnances and other measures related to the Parlement de Paris, the ceremony and language correspond fairly closely to those found in français 2258. The words and form of the three oaths taken by the parties are more or less the same, as are the cries of the herald and the three admonitions given to the audience. The ceremony text in U 446 is preceded by the 1306 ordonnance and the four criteria for allowing a duel, in the same order as they appear in français 2258.117 Although the protocols in U 446 incorporated some of the earlier practices attested to by Beaumanoir and du Breuil, they are not only more elaborate but were also formulated for a much more socially elite context. The manuscript gives the names of the parties taking the three oaths as Duke Otto of Brunswick and Duke Henry of Lancaster, demonstrating that this was the ceremony used for a famous match held before King Jean II in 1352.118 This match was not, in fact, a judicial duel. Neither party was subject to Jean’s jurisdiction nor was the quarrel criminal or even legal in nature. It was a dispute about chivalric honour. Duke Henry had accused Duke Otto of planning to kidnap him, a plot unworthy of a knight. Otto had replied that Henry was a liar and that he would prove it with his body in combat before the king of France. Great preparations were made for the match, but Jean called it off as soon as the parties entered the field. He said he preferred to settle the matter himself rather than to see these valiant knights risk their lives.119 The ceremony in U 446 thus fused the practice of aristocratic single combat related to honour with the criminal procedure of judicial duel. While Philip’s ordonnance and four criteria were cited, possibly because the text’s redactor drew some of his material from du Breuil’s Stilus, the matter at hand was not one for which Philip IV or Philip V had permitted duel. Nevertheless, the U 446 protocols seem to have provided a form followed by many later aristocratic duels. While single combat between noblemen could take a variety of forms, following prescribed rules was
115 du Breuil, Stilus curie parlamenti, ed. by Aubert, ch. XVIter and XVIquater (pp. 106–16). See also Gauvard, De grâce especial, i, 178 n. 119. 116 du Breuil, Stilus curie parlamenti, ed. by Aubert, ch. XVIbis.9bis (p. 106). 117 Paris, AN U 446, fol. 4r-v, 13r–14v. The two quires separating these elements, fol. 5r–12v, are intrustive. 118 Je Othes duc en Brunzevviche appellant Jure … Et Je henry duc de lenclastre appelle Jure… (Paris, AN U 446, fol. 13v). 119 Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant, pp. 106–09. In addition to the account in the chronicle of Henry Knighton, cited by Fowler, see Chronique des règnes, ed. by Delachenal, i, 35–37.
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important.120 The description of the duel fought between the lord of Cavriness and the lord of Chin and Busignies before the duke of Lorraine in 1386 follows the U 446 ceremony closely, as do the instructions for duelling in Jean de Villiers-l’Adam’s influential treatise from the early fifteenth century.121 This ceremony exerted considerable fascination for contemporaries. Legal professions — civilians, canonists, and customal experts alike — wrote commentaries that sometimes included the text of the 1306 attenuation and/or instructions similar to those of U 466 and français 2258.122 Elite aristocrats were similarly interested. This was true even for the king himself: Charles VI was so keen to watch the match between Jacques Le Gris and Jean de Carrouges that he delayed it a month so that he could get back to Paris from his failed attempt to invade England.123 In this vein, judicial duel may have come to seem more like tournament, another practice that kings and popes had tried to legislate away in the thirteenth century, but which became a jealously-guarded aristocratic monopoly in the fifteenth century.124 That conclusion can, however, only be speculative. We do not know how often duels took place in the fifteenth century, let alone the social background of their participants. In her Livre des faits d’armes et de chevalerie, written around 1410, Christine de Pisan noted that the crown had outlawed judicial battle four years previously, but because Parlement’s fifteenth-century registers are uncatalogued and some registers are lost, it is impossible to say whether the proscription had significant and lasting effect.125 There is evidence that judicial duels continued to be proposed, at least through the first half of the century. Charles VI intervened personally to stop two such matches in the century’s first decade, and in 1423, the Parlement-in-exile at Poitiers heard a case involving judicial duel from the Mâconais.126 These were duels between nobles, but there are fifteenth-century examples of non-noble duels in the Burgundian lands of Picardy and Flanders. At Valenciennes, the townsmen had the right to engage in judicial battles with ‘grans cérémonies’ until the mid-fifteenth century, an instance of which the chivalric poet and soldier Olivier de la Marche reported having seen
120 Prietzel, ‘Schauspiel von Ehre’. 121 The Cavriness and Chin-Busignies match is described in Vale, ‘Aristocratic Violence’, pp. 171–74; de Villiers-l’Isle-Adam, ‘Livre pour gaige’, pp. 28–41. It is unknown what if any ceremony preceded the Carrouges/Le Gris duel, as neither Froissart nor Pintoin described this stage, nor did Jean le Coq, who was Le Gris’s lawyer, mention it (Quaestiones, ed. by Boulet, p. 110–13). 122 Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, p. 118 nn. 25–28 lists inclusion in twelve treatises, including those of Baldus, Jean de Legnano, Jean Boutillier, and Jacques d’Ableiges. Chabas, Le duel judiciaire, p. 120 notes that the edition of Ableiges (Ablieges, Le grand coutumier, ed. by Laboulaye and Dareste) omits the ceremony for undertaking duel that appears in the manuscript (London, BL, MS Harley 4426). 123 Jager, The Last Duel, pp. 138–39. Froissart, Œuvres, ed. by Kervyn de Lettenhove, xii, 36 relates that the dukes of Berry, Burgundy, and Bourbon were similarly enthused and that ‘les grans seigneurs se trairent vers Paris pour veoir le champ’. 124 Morel, ‘La fin du duel’, p. 619. On the abortive history of tournament prohibitions in France, which also had connections to legislation against duel and warfare, see Kaeuper, War, Justice, pp. 208–11. 125 Christine de Pisan, The Book of Deeds, ed. by Cannon Willard, trans. by Willard, p. 199. 126 Morel, ‘La fin du duel’, p. 624; Paris, AN X1a 9190, fol. 253, indexed by the Centre d’étude et d’histoire juridique.
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in his treatise on duel, though, as he confessed, he had never in his whole life seen one between noblemen.127 Other towns in Flanders and Hainaut possessed similar privileges, demonstrating, as Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardins has underlined, that the defence of honour was as dear to the hearts of townsmen as it was to those of nobles. They, too, had claims that could be settled no other way, and they, too, enjoyed its ceremonial and festive trappings.128
Conclusion In the judicial duel, procedure, and ceremony collapsed into one another in a way that had powerful resonances. We can thus easily imagine why the later Capetians wished to retain control of it. What bothered Louis IX and his grandson Philip IV about duel was its violent and vengeful aspects. What allowed Philip IV and his son Philip V to reconsider was duel’s discrete and formal practice. It was this that allowed their governments to decouple judicial duel from seigneurial war. Although war was similar to duel in being an avenue for the violent pursuit of one’s rights, it differed in its wider scope and therefore essentially uncontrollable nature. Duel’s dual nature as ritual and procedure thus ensured its survival in the courts of later medieval France. Duel’s formalism also meant that it could serve to express chivalric values like honour, bravery, and luxury. These aspects may help to explain duel’s renewed efflorescence in the early modern period, in which duelling became an avenue for the vindication of aristocratic honour. The development of an elaborate, aristocratic ceremonial practice, however, happened relatively late. Chivalric spectacle is only one aspect of the later medieval history of duel, a subject that would repay fuller study.
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Cazals, Géraldine, ‘Les arrêtistes et le duel’, in Le duel entre justice des hommes et justice de Dieu du Moyen Âge au xviie siècle, ed. by Denis Bjaï and Myriam White-LeGoff, Esprit des lois, Esprit des lettres, 3 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), pp. 31–45 Cazelles, Raymond, ‘La réglementation royale de la guerre privée de Saint Louis à Charles V et la précarité des ordonnances’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 38 (1960), 530–48 Chabas, Monique, Le duel judiciaire en France (xiiie-xvie siècles) (Saint-Sulpice de Favières: Éditions Jean-Favard, 1978) Contamine, Philippe, La noblesse au royaume de France de Philippe le Bel à Louis XII: Essai de synthèse, 2nd edn (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998) Cram, Kurt-Georg, Iudicium Belli: Zum Rechtscharakter des Krieges im Deutschen Mittelalter, Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 5 (Münster: Böhlau, 1955) de Carbonnières, Louis, La procédure devant la chambre criminelle du Parlement de Paris au xive siècle, Histoire et archives, hors-série (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004) de Laurière, Eusèbe, ‘Preface’, in Les ordonnances des rois de France de la troisième race…, ed. by Eusèbe de Laurière, Denis-François Secousse, and others, 21 vols and supplément (Paris: Imprimerie royale and others, 1723–1849), i, i–xl du Cange, Charles du Fresne, ‘Des guerres privées, et du droit de guerre par coutume’, in Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, new edn by Léopold Favre, 10 vols (Niort: Léopold Favre, 1883–1887), x, 100–08 Duby, Georges, The Legend of Bouvines: War, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. by Catherine Tihanyi (Polity: Cambridge, 1990 [Paris: Gallimard, 1973]) Ducoudray, Gustave, Les origines du Parlement de Paris et la justice aux xiiie et xive siècles, 2 vols (Paris: Hachette, 1902 [repr. New York: Burt Franklin, 1970]) Faral, Edmond, ‘Le procès d’Enguerran IV de Couci’, Revue historique du droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 26 (1948), 213–58 Firnhaber-Baker, Justine, ‘From God’s Peace to the King’s Order: Late Medieval Limitations on Non-Royal Warfare’, Essays in Medieval Studies, 23 (2006), 19–30 ———, ‘Seigneurial War and Royal Power in Late Medieval Southern France’, Past & Present, 208 (2010), 37–76 ———, Violence and the State in Languedoc, 1250–1400, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th ser., 95 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) Fowler, Kenneth, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London: Elek, 1969) Gaudemet, Jean, ‘Les ordalies au Moyen Âge: Doctrine, legislation et pratique canonique’, La preuve, Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 17 (1965), 99–135 Gauvard, Claude, De grâce especial: crime, État, et société à la fin du Moyen Âge, Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 24, 2 vols (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991 [repr. in 1 vol., 2010]) ———, ‘Ordalie et sorcellerie jugées par le Parlement à Paris et à Bordeaux au milieu du xve siècle’, in Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 2009 (Paris: Boccard, 2012), pp. 43–54 Graboïs, Aryeh, ‘De la trêve de Dieu à la paix du roi: Étude sur les transformations du mouvement de la paix au xiie siècle’, in Mélanges offerts à René Crozet à l’occasion de son 70e anniversaire, par ses amis, ses collèques, ses élèves, ed. by Pierre Gallais et Yves-Jean Riou, 2 vols (Poitiers: Société d’études médiévales 1966), i, 585–96
t h e j u d i c i al d u e l i n lat e r me d i e val f rance
Guenée, Bernard, Tribunaux et gens de justice dans le bailliage de Senlis à la fin du Moyen Âge (vers 1380 – vers 1550), Publications de la Faculté des lettres de l’Université de Strasbourg, 144 (Paris: Société d’éditions Les Belles Lettres, 1963) ———, ‘Comment le Religieux de Saint-Denis a-t-il écrit l’histoire? L’exemple du duel de Jean de Carrouges et Jacques Le Gris (1386)’, in Pratiques de la culture écrite en France au xve siècle: Actes du colloque international du CNRS, Paris, 16–18 mai 1992, ed. by Monique Ornato and Nicole Pons, Textes et études du Moyen Âge, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 331–43 Guilhiermoz, Paul, ‘Saint Louis, les gages de bataille et la procédure civile’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 48 (1881), 111–20 Hiltmann, Tortsten, and Uwe Israel, ‘“Laissez-les aller”: Die Herolde und das Ende des Gerichtskampf in Frankreich’, Francia: Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte, 34 (2007), 65–84 Hyams, Paul R., ‘Trial by Ordeal: The Key to Proof in the Early Common Law’, in On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne, ed. by Morris S. Arnold, Thomas A. Green, Sally A. Scully, and Stephen D. White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), pp. 90–126 Israel, Uwe, ‘Questioni di confini e crisi del duello giudiziario nella’Italia dei comuni’, in Il duello fra medioevo ed età moderna: Prospettive storico-culturali, ed. by Uwe Israel and Gherardo Ortalli (Rome: Viella, 2009), pp. 35–61 Jager, Eric, The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France (New York: Broadway Books, 2004) ———, ‘Le dernier duel judiciaire: Carrouges/Le Gris (1386)’, in Le Duel entre justice des hommes et justice de Dieu du Moyen Âge au xviie siècle, ed. by Denis Bjaï and Myriam White-LeGoff, Esprit des lois, esprit des lettres, 3 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), pp. 171–79 Jordan, William Chester, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) Kaeuper, Richard W., War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) Karras, Ruth Mazo, ‘Telling the Truth about Sex in Late Medieval Paris’, Reading Medieval Studies, 40 (2014), 65–81 Langlois, Charles-Victor, Registres perdus des archives de la Chambre de comptes de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1917) Lecuppre-Desjardin, Élodie, ‘Le duel judiciaire dans les villes des anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons: privilège urbain ou acte de rébellion?’, in Agon und Distinktion. Soziale Räume des Zweikampfs zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. by Uwe Israel and Christian Jaser, Forschung und Wissenschaft, 47 (Münster: Lit, 2016), pp. 181–97 Lemesle, Bruno, ‘La pratique du duel judiciaire au xie siècle, à partir de quelques notices de l’abbaye Saint-Aubin d’Angers’, in Le règlement des conflits au Moyen Âge: Actes des congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, 31e congrès, Angers, 2000 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001), pp. 149–68 Lot, Ferdinand, and Robert Fawtier, Histoire des institutions françaises au Moyen Âge, 3 vols (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1957–1962)
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McAuley, Finbarr, ‘Canon Law and the End of the Ordeal’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 26 (2006), 473–513 Monks, P. R., ‘The Master of Jean Rolin II as the Illuminator of the Gages de bataille in Paris, Bibl. Nat. Fr. 2258’, Scriptorium, 46 (1992), 50–60 Morel, Henri, ‘La fin du duel judiciaire et la naissance du point d’honneur’, Revue historique du droit français et étranger, 674/39 (1964), 574–639 Nottarp, Hermann, Gottesurteilstudien, Bamberger Abhandlungen und Forschungen, 2 (Munich: Kösel, 1956) Porteau-Bitker, Annick, ‘La justice laïque et le viol au Moyen Âge’, Revue de l’histoire de droit, 66 (1988), 491–526 Prietzel, Malte, ‘Schauspiele von Ehre und Tapferkeit. Zweikämpfe in Frankreich und Burgund im späten Mittelalter’, in Das Duell. Ehrenkämpfe vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne, ed. by Ulrike Ludwig, Barbara Krug-Richter, and Gerd Schwerhoff (Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2012), pp. 105–23 Ribémont, Bernard, ‘Feme mariée ne peut home apeler de bataille sans son seignor: Les femmes et le duel judiciaire’, in Le duel entre justice des hommes et justice de Dieu du Moyen Âge au xviie siècle, ed. by Denis Bjaï and Myriam White-LeGoff, Esprit des lois, Esprit des lettres, 3 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), pp. 81–101 Rigaudière, Albert, Penser et construire l’État dans la France du Moyen Âge (xiiie–xve siècle) (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière, Ministère de l’économie, des finances et de l’industrie, 2003) Rogers, Clifford J., ‘The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War’, Journal of Military History, 57 (1993), 241–78 Russell, Frederick H., The Just War in the Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 3rd ser., 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) Smail, Daniel Lord, ‘Hatred as a Social Institution in Late Medieval Society’, Speculum, 76 (2001), 90–126 Tardif, Adolphe, La procédure civile et criminelle aux xiie et xive siècles, ou Procèdure du transition (Paris: Picard, 1885) Tardif, Joseph, ‘Études sur les ordonnances des rois de France: La date et le caractère de l’ordonnance de Saint Louis sur le duel judiciaire’, Nouvelle revue historique du droit francais et étranger, 11 (1887), 163–74 Vale, Malcolm, ‘Aristocratic Violence: Trial by Battle in the Later Middle Ages’, in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. by Richard Kaeuper (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), pp. 159–81 ———, The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The Angevin Legacy, 1250–1340, new edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) White, Stephen D., ‘Proposing the Ordeal and Avoiding It: Strategy and Power in Western French Litigation, 1050–1110’, in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. by Thomas N. Bisson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 89–123
A Bibliography of Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s Publications, through June 2021
The following list does not include book reviews. 1958
‘The Cistercians in the Latin Empire of Constantinople and Greece, 1204–1276’, Traditio, 14 (1958), 63–120
1970
‘Philip the Fair, Plena Potestas, and the Aide pur fille marier’, in Representative Institutions in Theory and Practice: Historical Papers Read at Bryn Mawr College, April 1968, Studies Presented to the International Commission for Representative and Parliamentary Institutions 39 (Brussels: Éditions de la Librairie encyclopédique, 1970), pp. 1–27
1971
‘Gascon Subsidies and the Finances of the English Dominions, 1315–1324’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, o.s. 8 (1971), 33–163 ‘Assemblies of French Towns in 1316: Some New Texts’, Speculum, 46 (1971), 282–301. (Reprinted as no. VI in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991) ‘Subsidy and Reform in 1321: The Accounts of Najac and the Policies of Philip V’, Traditio, 27 (1971), 399–431. (Reprinted as no. VIII in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991)
1972
‘Cessante Causa and the Taxes of the Last Capetians: The Political Applications of a Philosophical Maxim’, Studia Gratiana, 15 (Post Scripta) (1972), 567–87. (Reprinted as no. II in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991) ‘Representation and Agency Law in the Later Middle Ages: The Theoretical Foundations and the Evolution of Practice in the Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Midi’, Viator, 3 (1972), 329–64. (Reprinted as no. I in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991)
1973
‘Taxation and Morality in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Conscience and Political Power and the Kings of France’, French Historical Studies, 8 (1973), 1–28. (Reprinted as no. III in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991) ‘Philip IV the Fair, of France’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition (Chicago: 1973). Macropaedia. Vol. 14, 223–25
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a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
‘Politics, Taxation, and Discontent: Philip the Fair’s Legacy to his Sons’, and ‘Conscience, Politics, and Taxation under Philip the Fair’, in The Medieval French Monarchy, ed. by John B. Henneman. European Problems Studies Series (Hinsdale IL: Dryden Press, 1973), pp. 111–19
1974
‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe’, The American Historical Review, 79 (1974), 163–88 ‘Customary Aids and Royal Fiscal Policy under Philip VI of Valois’, Traditio, 30 (1974), 191–258. (Reprinted as no. IX in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991)
1975
‘Eleanor of Aquitaine: Parent, Queen and Duchess’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician, ed. by William W. Kibler (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1976), pp. 9–34
1976
Review Essay of Bryce Lyon, Henri Pirenne: A Biographical and Intellectual Study (Ghent, 1974), in History and Theory, 15 (1976), 66–76 ‘Royal Salvation and the Needs of State in Late Capetian France’, in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer, ed. by William C. Jordan, Bruce McNab and Teofilo F. Ruiz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 365–79 ‘Royal Necessity and Noble Service and Subsidy in Early Fourteenth Century France: The Assembly of Bourges of November 1318’, in Paradosis: Studies in Memory of Edwin A. Quain, ed. by H. G. Fletcher III and M. B. Schulte (New York: Fordham University Press, 1976), p. 135 68. (Reprinted as no. VII in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991)
1978
‘The Chapel of St Louis at Saint-Denis’, Gesta, 17 (1978), 76 ‘The Ceremonial of Royal Succession in Capetian France: The Double Funeral of Louis X’, Traditio, 34 (1978), 227–71. (Reprinted as no. VII, in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial 1991)
1980
‘The Ceremonial of Royal Succession in Capetian France: The Double Funeral of Philip V’, Speculum, 55 (1980), 266–93. (Reprinted as no. VIII in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial 1991) ‘Philippe Le Bel and the Remains of Saint Louis’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 97 (1980), 175–82. (Reprinted as no. III in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial 1991) Review Essay of R. Howard Bloch, Medieval French Literature and Law (Los Angeles and London, 1977), in History and Theory, 19 (1980), 319–38
1981
‘Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse’, Viator, 12 (1981), 221–70. (Reprinted as no. VI in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial 1991)
a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
‘Reform and Resistance to Royal Authority in Fourteenth-Century France: The Leagues of 1314–1315’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 1 (1981), 109–37. (Reprinted as no. V in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991)
1982
Royal marriage, royal property, and the patrimony of the crown: inalienability and the prerogative in fourteenth-century France, Humanities Working Paper 70 (Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Technology, 1982) ‘La notion de la légitimité et la prophétie à la cour de Philippe Auguste’, in La France de Philippe Auguste: le temps de mutations. Actes du Colloque international organisé par le C.N.R.S. (Paris, 29 septembre – 4 octobre 1980), ed. by Robert-Henri Bautier (Paris: Éditions du Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982), pp. 77–111, with an appendix by Guy Lobrichon (‘Notice du ms. Düsseldorf, Universitätsbibliothek, ms. B 26’), pp. 107–08, and discussion, pp. 111–12
1984
‘Le testament chez les grands de ce monde: … Royal Lineage’, Le Médiéviste et l’ordinateur, 11 (1984), 9–12, 24
1985
‘Burying and Unburying the Kings of France’, in Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Papers of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, ed. by Richard Trexler (Binghamton, NY: 1985), pp. 241–66. (Reprinted as no. IX in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial 1991) ‘Royal Commissioners and Grants of Privilege in Philip the Fair’s France: Pierre De Latilli, Raoul De Breuilli, and the Ordonnances for Teh Seneschaisy of Toulouse and Albi of 1299’, Francia, 13 (1985), 151–90. (Reprinted as no. IV in Politics and Institutions in Capetian France 1991)
1986
‘George Duby and the Three Orders’, Viator, 17 (1986), 51–64 With Michael Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window of the Abbey of SaintDenis: Praeteritorum Enim Recordatio Futurorum Est Exhibitio’, The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49 (1986), 1–40
1987
‘The Prince Is the Father of the King: The Character and Childhood of Philip the Fair of France’, Mediaeval Studies, 49 (1987), 282–334. (Reprinted as no. II in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial 1991) ‘The Political Repercussions of Family Ties in the Early Fourteenth Century: The Marriage of Edward II of England and Isabelle of France’, Speculum, 63 (1988), 573–95 ‘Persona Et Gesta: The Images and Deeds of the Thirteenth-Century Capetians. The Case of Philip the Fair’, Viator, 19 (1988), 219–46. (Reprinted as no. V in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial 1991)
433
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a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
The Oxford collection of the drawings of Roger de Gaignières and the royal tombs of Saint-Denis, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 7, part 5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988) ‘Falsitas Pia sive Reprehensibilis: Medieval Forgers and their Intentions’, in Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16.-19. September 1986 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1988), v. 1: Kongressdaten und Festvorträge, Literatur und Fälschung, 101–19 ‘The Library of Congress microfilm collection of unpublished inventories of the Archives Nationales, Paris’, French Historical Studies, 15 (1988), 759–77 ‘The Chapels and Cult of Saint Louis at Saint-Denis’, Mediaevalia: A Journal of Medieval Studies, 10 (1984), 279–331
1989
‘Diplomacy, Adultery, and domestic politics at the court of Phillip the Fair: Queen Isabelle’s mission to France in 1314’, in Documenting the Past: Essays in Medieval History Presented to George Peddy Cuttino, ed. by J. S. Hamilton and Patricia J. Bradley (London: The Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 53–83 ‘The Marriage of Edward II of England and Isabelle of France: A Postscript’, Speculum, 64 (1989), 373–79 ‘Microforms and Medievalists: A Response’, Microform Review, 18 (1989), 137–39 With Marie-Noëlle Baudouin-Matuszek, ‘Un scandale étouffé à la Bibliothèque royale à la veille de la Révolution: l’afffaire Gevigney-Beaumarchais (1784–1792)’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris et l’Ile de France, 116 (1989), 239–307
1990
‘La généalogie capétienne dans l’historiographie du Moyen Âge: Philippe le Bel, le reniement du reditus et la création d’une ascendance carolingienne pour Hugues Capet’, in Religion et culture autour de l’an Mil: royaume capétien et Lotharingie. Actes du colloque Hugues Capet 987–1987. La France de l’an Mil. Auxerre, 26 et 27 juin 1987 – Metz, 11 et 23 septembre 1987, ed. by Dominique Iogna-Prat and Jean Charles Picard (Paris: Éditions Picard, 1990), pp. 199–214 ‘Authority, the Family, and the Dead in Late Medieval France’, French Historical Studies, 16 (1990), 803–32 With Robert E Lerner, ‘On the Origins and Import of the Columbinus Prophecy’, Traditio, 45 (1989–1990), 219–56 ‘Vincent de Beauvais and the Reditus Regni Francorum ad Stirpem Caroli Imperatoris’, in Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d’une œuvre encyclopédique au MoyenÂge. Actes du XIVe Colloque de l’Institut d’études médiévales, organisé conjointement par l’Atelier Vincent de Beauvais (A.R.Te.M., Université de Nancy II) et l’Institute d’études médiévales (Université de Montréal) 27–30 avril 1988, ed. by Serge Lusignan, Monique Paulmier-Foucar and Alain Nadeau, Cahiers d’études médiévales, Cahiers spécial 4 (Paris: Vrin, 1990), pp. 167–96
a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
1991
Politics and Institutions in Capetian France, Variorum Collected Studies Series 350 (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 1991) The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, Variorum Collected Studies Series 345 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 1991) ‘Royal Salvation and Needs of State in Early-Fourteenth-Century France’, in The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial, no. IV, pp. 1–56 ‘Philip V, Charles IV, and the Jews of France: The Alleged Expulsion of 1322’, Speculum, 66 (1991), 294–329
1992
‘Saint-Denis and the Turpin Legend’, in The Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St James, ed. by John Williams and Alison Stones (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1992), pp. 51–88 Customary Aids and Royal Finance in Capetian France: The Marriage Aid of Philip the Fair, Medieval Academy Books, no. 100 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1992) “Franks, burgundians, and aquitanians” and the royal coronation ceremony in France, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society v. 82, pt. 7 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992) ‘Kings Like Semi-Gods: The Case of Louis X of France’, Majestas, 1 (1993), 5–37 With Richard C. Famiglietti, The Lit de Justice: Semantics, Ceremonial, and the Parlement of Paris (1300–1600), Beihefte zu Francia 31 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994) With Nancy Freeman Regalado, ‘La grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of his Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313’, in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed. by Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 56–86 Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Jean Du Tillet and the French wars of religion: five tracts, 1562–1569, Medieval & Renaissance texts & studies 108 (Binghamton, N.Y.: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1994)
1995
‘The Religion of Royalty: from Saint Louis to Henry IV, 1226–1589’, in Creating French culture: treasures from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, ed. by Marie-Hélène Tesnière and Prosser Gifford (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 130–49 ‘Représentations de la royauté dans les Livres de Fauvel’, in Représentation, pouvoir et royauté à la fin du Moyen Age: actes du colloque organisé par l’Université du Maine les 25 et 26 mars 1994 (Paris: Picard, 1995), pp. 215–36 ‘A sixteenth-century defense of Saint Louis’ Crusades: Étienne le Blanc and the legacy of Louis IX’, in Cross cultural convergences in the Crusader period: essays presented to Aryeh Grabois on his sixty-fifth birthday, ed. by Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache and Sylvia Schein (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), pp. 21–48 ‘Le greffe civil du Parlement de Paris au xvie siècle: Jean du Tillet et les registres des plaidoiries’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, 153 (1995), 325–72
435
436
a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
1996
‘Sodomy, Honor, Treason, and Exile: Four Documents Concerning the Dinteville Affair (1538–1539)’, in Sociétés et idéologies des temps modernes. Hommage à Arlette Jouanna, ed. by J. Fouilheron, Guy Le Thiec and H. Michel (Montpellier: Université Montpellier III, Paul Valéry, Centre d’histoire moderne et contemporaine de l’Europe méditerranéenne et de ses périphéries, 1996), pp. 511–32 ‘La Renaudie se venge: l’autre face de la conjuration d’Amboise’, in Complots et conjurations dans l’Europe moderne. Actes du colloque international organisé par l’École française de Rome, l’Institut de recherches sur les civilisations de l’Occident moderne de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne et le Dipartimento di storia moderna e contemporanea dell’Università degli studi di Pisa. Rome, 30 septembre – 2 octobre 1993, ed. by Yves-Marie Bercé and Elena Fasano Guarini, Collection de l’École française de Rome 220 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), pp. 451–74
1997
‘Jean du Tillet, François Ier, and the Trésor des chartes’, in Histoires d’archives. Recueil d’articles offert à Lucie Favier par ses collègues et amis (Paris: Société des amis des Archives de France, 1997), pp. 237–47 With Myra Dickman Orth, ‘Jean du Tillet et les illustrations du grand Recueil des Roys’, Revue de l’Art, 115 (1995), 8–24 With Claudia Rapp and Brent Shaw, ‘Ritual Brotherhood in Ancient and Medieval Europe: A Symposium’, Traditio, 52 (1997), 260–83 ‘Introduction’ and ‘Ritual Brotherhood in Western Medieval Europe’, Traditio, 52 (1997), 261–83, 357–81 ‘Jean du Tillet et les archives de France’, Histoire et Archives, 2 (1997), 29–63
1998
‘The Trojan Origins of the French: The Commencement of a Myth’s Demise, 1450–1520’, in Medieval Europeans. Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Europe, ed. by Alfred P. Smyth (Houndmills and New York: Macmillan and St Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 135–79 ‘Rex ioians, ionnes, iolis: Louis X, Philip V and the Livres de Fauvel’, in Fauvels studies: Allegory, chronicle, music and images in Paris, BNF fr. 146, ed. by Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 53–72 ‘The Trojan Origins of the French and the Brothers Jean du Tillet’, in After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays presented to Walter Goffart, ed. by Alexander Calladar Murray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 348–84
1999
‘Myths chasing myths: the legend of the Trojan origin of the French and its dismantling’, in … The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways …: Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, ed. by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebök (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 613–33 ‘Royal Bodies, Effigies, Funeral Meals, and Office in Sixteenth-Century France’, Micrologus, 7 (1999), 437–508
a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
‘The Dinteville Family and the Allegory of Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 34 (1999), 73–100
2000
‘The king’s conundrum: endowing queens and loyal servants, ensuring salvation, and protecting the patrimony in fourteenth-century France’, in Medieval futures: attitudes to the future in the Middle Ages, ed. by John A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 115–65 With Sanford Zale, ‘Louis Le Blanc, Estienne Le Blanc, and the Defense of Louis IX’s Crusades, 1498–1522’, Traditio, 55 (2000), 235–92
2001
Saint-Denis: La basilique. trans. Divina Cabo, with photography by Claude Sauvageot (Paris: Zodiaque, 2001) ‘Laity, laicisation and Philip the Fair of France’, in Law, laity, and solidarities: essays in honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. by Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson and Jane Martindale (Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 200–17 With Nancy Freeman Regalado, ‘Universitas et communitas: The Parade of the Parisians at the Pentecost Feast of 1313’, in Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken, “Ludus”: Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama 5 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 117–54 ‘On 1500’, in The Medieval World, first edition, ed. by Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 691–710. Second edition (2018), pp. 811–30 Edited with Marie-Madeleine Fontaine. Jean Lemaire de Belges, Anciennes pompes funeralles (Ms. BnF fr. 5447 et BnF fr. 22326). Œuvres de Jean Lemaire de Belges (Paris: Société des textes français modernes, 2001)
2002
‘Refreshment of the Dead: post mortem meals, Anne de Bretagne, Jean Lemaire de Belges, and the influence of antiquity on Royal Ceremonial’, in Les funérailles à la Renaissance: XIIe colloque international de la Société française d’étude du seizième siècle, Bar-le-Duc, 2–5 décembre 1999, ed. by Jean Balsamo (Geneva: Droz, 2002), pp. 113–30 ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine reconsidered: the woman and her seasons’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: lord and lady, ed. by Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 1–54
2003
Les Heures dites de Henri II et les Heures de Dinteville’, in Henri II et les arts. Actes du colloque international École du Louvre et musée national de la Renaissance -- Écouen. 25, 26 et 27 septembre 1997, ed. by Hervé Oursel and Julia Fritsch, XVe Rencontres de l’École du Louvre (Paris: École du Louvre, 2003), pp. 261–92
2005
‘Another Perspective on Alterity and the Grotesque (1932-)’, in Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. by Jane Chance (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), pp. 915–32
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‘Gloriosae, Hilduin, and the Early Liturgical Celebration of St Denis’, in Medieval Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Jeremy du Quesnay Adams, 2 volumes, ed. by Stephanie Hayes-Healy (New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 2: 39–82
2006
‘Jacques Doublet, Jean de Luc, and the Head of Saint Denis’, in Auctoritas. Mélanges offerts à Olivier Guillot, ed. by Giles Constable and Michel Rouche, Cultures et civilisations médiévales 33 (Paris: PUPS [Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne], 2006), pp. 711– 19
2007
‘“Laver de ses pechies une pecheresse royale”: Psalm Collects in an Early FourteenthCentury Devotional Book’, in Cultural performances in Medieval France: essays in honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, ed. by Eglal Doss-Quinby and Roberta Krueger (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), pp. 163–77 ‘Paris and Paradise: The View from Saint-Denis’, in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. by Lane Evelyn Staudinger, Paston Elizabeth Carson and Ellen M. Shortell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 419–61
2008
‘Royal Testamentary Acts from Philip Augustus to Philip of Valois. Executorial Dilemmas and Premonitions of Absolutism in Medieval France’, in Herrscher- und Fürstentestamente im westeuropäischen Mittelalter, ed. by Brigitte Kasten, Norm und Struktur: Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 29 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), pp. 415–30
2009
‘Blanche of Artois and Burgundy, Château-Gaillard, and the Baron de Joursanvault’, in Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe. Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom, ed. by Katherine Allen Smith and Scott Wells, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 142 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), pp. 223–33 ‘Livre de recettes de Claude Gouffier’, in Le Bain et le Miroir. Soins du corps et cosmétiques de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, Exhibition Catalogue, Musée de Cluny – musée national du Moyen Âge, Musée national de la Renaissance – château d’Écouen et la Réunion des musées nationaux, du 20 mai 2009 au 21 septembre 2009. Paris: Gallimard, 2009
2010
‘La mort, les testaments et les fondations de Jeanne de Navarre, reine de France (1273– 1305)’, in Une histoire pour un royaume (xiie-xve siècle). Actes du colloque Corpus Regni organisé en hommage à Colette Beaune, ed. by Anne-Hélène Allirot, Murielle GaudeFerragu, Gilles Lecuppre, Elodie Lequain, Lydwine Scordia, Julien Véronèse and with Mary Leroy (Paris: Perrin, 2010), pp. 124–41, 508–10
a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
‘Order and Disorder in the Life and Death of Anne de Bretagne’, in The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne: Negotiating Convention in Books and Documents, ed. by Cynthia J. Brown (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2010), pp. 177–92 ‘Reflections on feudalism: Thomas Madox and the origins of the feudal system in England’, in Feud, Violence and Practice: Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor of Stephen D. White, ed. by Belle S. Tuten and Tracey L. Billado (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 135–55 With Mary Beth Winn. ‘Jeanne de France et de Valois (1464–1505)’, in Dictionnaire des femmes de l’ancienne France, on the site of SIEFAR (Société Internationale pour l’Étude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime), 2010). http://siefar.org/dictionnaire/fr/Jeanne_ de_France_(1464–1505)
2011
‘Jürgen Habermas, Philippe le Bel, et l’espace public’, in L’espace public au Moyen Âge. Débats autour de Jürgen Habermas, ed. by Patrick Boucheron and Nicolas Offenstadt (Le Nœud Gordien: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011), pp. 193–203 With Thierry Claerr, ‘Fraude, fiction et “faulseté” à la fin du Moyen Âge: les sombres affaires de Jean de Chabannes, comte de Dammartin, et le curieux cas du testament de sa fille, Anne de Chabannes (1500–1502)’, in Juger le faux (Moyen Âge – Temps modernes), ed. by Olivier Poncet, Études et rencontres de l’École des chartes 35 (Paris: École nationale des chartes, 2011), pp. 89–115
2012
‘Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 1–36 ‘Unctus ad executionem justitie: Philippe le Bel, Boniface VIII, et la Grande Ordonnance pour la réforme du royaume (du 18 mars 1303)’, in Le roi fontaine de justice. Pouvoir justicier et pouvoir royal au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. by Silvère Menegaldo and Bernard Ribémont, Jus & Litterae 3 (Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 2012), pp. 145–68 ‘The Parlement de Paris and the Welfare of the Dead’, in Le Parlement en sa cour. Études en l’honneur du Professeur Jean Hilaire, ed. by Olivier Descamps, Françoise Hildesheimer and Monique Morgat-Bonnet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012), pp. 47–73
2013
‘The Testamentary Strategies of Jeanne d’Évreux: The Endowment of Saint-Denis in 1343’, in Magistra Doctissima: Essays in Honor of Bonnie Wheeler, ed. by Dorsey Armstrong, Ann W. Astell and Howell Chickering (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013), pp. 217–47 ‘Jeanne d’Évreux: ses testaments et leur exécution’, in Autour des testaments des Capétiens. Actes de la journée d’étude internationale organisée à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne 2009, ed. by Xavier Hélary and Alain Marchandisse, Le Moyen Âge 119 (Paris: De Boeck, 2013), pp. 57–83 ‘Honneur, passion, prudence et politique. Le duel manqué de Gaucher de Dinteville (1538–1539)’, in Le duel entre justice des hommes et justice de Dieu du Moyen Âge au xviie siècle, ed. by Denis Bjaï and Myriam White-Le Goff, Esprit des lois, esprit des lettres 3 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), pp. 181–214
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‘Madeleine de Savoie and the Chantilly Hours of Anne de Montmorency’, in Books of Hours reconsidered, ed. by Sandra L. Hindman and James H. Marrow, Studies in medieval and early Renaissance art history 72 (London/Turnhout: Harvey Miller/ Brepols, 2013), pp. 431–68 ‘Jean Gerson, Marguerite Porete and Romana Guarnieri: The Evidence Reconsidered’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (2013), 693–734 ‘Marguerite Porete, John Baconthorpe, and the Chroniclers of Saint-Denis’, Mediaeval Studies, 75 (2013), 307–44 With Cynthia J. Brown, ‘Le trespas de l’hermine regrettee: A Critical Edition’, in “Qu’il mecte ma povre ame en celeste lumiere”. Les funérailles d’une reine Anne de Bretagne (1514). Textes, images et manuscrits, Pecia 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 191–253 With Cynthia J. Brown, ‘L’ordre qui fut tenue a l’obseque et funeraille de feue tresexcellente & tresdebonnaire princesse Anne par la grace de Dieu Royne de France, duchesse de Bretaigne, tant aux églises que au chemin depuis Bloyz iusques a l’abbaye de Sainct Denis en France: A Critical Edition’, in “Qu’il mecte ma povre ame en celeste lumiere”. Les funérailles d’une reine Anne de Bretagne (1514). Textes, images et manuscrits, Pecia 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 255–71 Edited with Cynthia J Brown, Jean-Luc Deuffic, and Michael Jones, “Qu’il mecte ma povre ame en celeste lumiere”. Les funérailles d’une reine Anne de Bretagne (1514). Textes, images et manuscrits, Pecia 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)
2014
‘The French Royal Funeral Ceremony and the King’s Two Bodies: Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Ralph E. Giesey, and the Construction of a Paradigm’, Micrologus, 22 (Le Corps du Prince) (2014), 105–37 ‘Saint Carpus, Saint Denis and Benign Jesus: The Economy of Salvation at Saint-Denis’, in “Per una severa maestra”: dono a Daniela Romagnoli (Fidenza: Mattioli 1885, 2014), pp. 83–120
2015
‘Guillaume de Nogaret et les textes: les registres JJ 28 et JJ 29 (BnF, lat. 10919)’, in La royauté capétienne et le Midi au temps de Guillaume de Nogaret. Actes du colloque de Montpellier et Nîmes 29 et 30 novembre 2013, ed. by Bernard Moreau and Julien ThéryAstruc (Montpellier: Les Éditions de la Fenestrellle, 2015), pp. 209–42 ‘Veritas à la cour de Philippe le Bel de France: Pierre Dubois, Guillaume de Nogaret et Marguerite Porete’, in La vérité. Vérité et crédibilité: construire la vérité dans le système de communication de l’Occident (xiiie-xviie siècle). Actes de la conférence organisée à Rome en 2012 par SAS en collaboration avec l’École française de Rome, ed. by Jean-Philippe Genet, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 485/2; Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 128/2; Le pouvoir symbolique en Occident (1300–1640), 2 (Paris/Rome: Publications de la Sorbonne/École Française de Rome, 2015), pp. 425–45 ‘Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014)’, Francia, 42 (2015), 397–400
2016
‘Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar: The Execution of Jacques De Molay and Geoffroi De Charny in March 1314’, Viator, 2016 (2016), 229–92
a bibliography of elizabeth a. r. brown’s publications, through june 2021
‘Le mécénat et la reine: Jeanne d’Evreux (1308?-1371), la liturgie et le puzzle d’un bréviaire’, in La dame de cœur”. Patronage et mécénat religieux des femmes de pouvoir dans l’Europe des xive-xviie siècles, ed. by Murielle Gaude-Ferragu and Cécile Vincent-Cassy (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016), pp. 83–107 ‘Parlements / Parliaments / États généraux’, in Autour des États généraux de 1614, ed. by Françoise Hildesheimer and Louis de Carbonnières, Histoire et archives (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2016), pp. 35–64
2017
‘Les assemblées de Philippe le Bel: la promotion d’une image d’un gouvernement consultatif et consensuel’, in Consensus et représentation. Actes du colloque organisé en 2013 à Dijon par SAS avec la collaboration du centre Georges-Chevrier de l’université de Dijon, ed. by Jean-Philippe Genet, Dominique Le Page and Olivier Mattéoni (Paris Publications de la Sorbonne/École française de Rome, 2017), pp. 61–94 ‘Philip the Fair and his Ministers: Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerran de Marigny’, in The Capetian century, 1214–1314, ed. by William C. Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 185–213 ‘Philip the Fair of France, Nemesis of Edward I of England’, in Prowess, piety, and public order in medieval society: studies in honor of Richard W. Kaeuper, ed. by Craig M. Nakashian and Daniel P. Franke, Later medieval Europe 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 237–64 ‘The Faith of Guillaume de Nogaret, His Excommunication, and the Fall of the Knights Templar’, in Cristo e il potere: teologia, antropologia e politica, ed. by Laura Andreani and Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, MediEVI 18 (Florence: SISMEL: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2017), pp. 157–82 ‘Philip the Fair and His Family: His Sons, Their Marriages, and Their Wives’, Medieval Prosopography: History and Collective Biography, 32 (2017), 125–85 ‘Philip the Fair’s Sons, Their Statuses, and Their Landed Endowments’, Medieval Prosopography: History and Collective Biography, 32 (2017), 186–227
2018
‘Réflexions sur Philippe le Bel’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de France (2018), 7–24 With Alan Forey, ‘Vox in Excelso and the Suppression of the Knights Templar: The Bull, its History, and a New Edition’, Mediaeval Studies, 80 (2908), 1–58.
2019
‘The Children of Charles of La Marche and Blanche of Artois and Burgundy’, Medieval Prosopography, 34 (2019), 151–74 With Jacques Paviot, ‘Discours de Jean Germain devant Charles VII, Bourges, 24 mai 1447’, in Jean Germain (v. 1396–1461), évêque de Chalon, chancelier de l’ordre de la Toison d’or. Actes de la journée d’étude, Chalon-sur-Saône, ed. by Delphine Lannaud and Jacques Paviot (Chalon-sur-Saône: Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Chalon-sur-Saône, 2019), pp. 143–49, 157–61 ‘Philip the Fair of France and His Family’s Disgrace: The Adultery Scandal of 1314 Revealed, Recounted, Reimagined, and Redated’, Mediaevistik: Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung, 32 (2019), 71–103
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2020
‘Suger and the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, 1144–1151’, Gesta, 59 (2020), 1–30 ‘Philippe le Bel s’est-il posé la question des frontières du royaume?’, in Lyon 1312. Rattacher la ville au Royaume?, ed. by Aléxis Charansonnet, Jacques Chiffoleau and Jean-Paul Gaulin (Lyon/Avignon: CIHAM Éditions, 2020), pp. 33–55 ‘Orderic Vitalis and Hugues of France, Putative Son of Louis VI and Adelaïde of Maurienne’, Francia, 47 (2020), 205–27
Forthcoming as of time of publication:
‘Lire et écrire l’histoire à Saint-Denis à l’époque de l’abbé Suger: les manuscrits Mazarine 2013 et BnF, latin 12710’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France (2018) ‘Philippe le Bel et les restes de Louis IX: nouvel examen des sources’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 175 (2020) ‘1314, l’annus terribilis des Capétiens’, in 1314, une Europe en crise? La conjoncture politique européenne à la mort de Philippe le Bel, ed. by Olivier Canteaut and Xavier Hélary ‘La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, ses appellations et son renom aux xiiie et xive siècles’, in Les Saintes-Chapelles du xiiie au xviiie siècle: Arts – Politique – Religion. Proceedings of the LVIe Colloque international d’Études Humanistes du CESR de Tours, 25–28 June 2013, ed. by David Fiala and Étienne Anheim (Turnhout: Brepols) ‘The Children of Louis VI and Adelaïde of Maurienne and the Date of a Historical Compendium of Saint-Denis’, Medieval People (2021) ‘Feudalism: Reflections on a Tyrannical Construct’s Fate’, in Tyrannous Constructs, ed. by Jackson Armstrong and Peter Crooks (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) ‘Jesus Christ, Heavenly Bodies, and Catholic Imaginations: The Apostolic Church, the Vatican, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art’, in (tentative titled) The Middle Ages in the Modern World (MAMO) (Rome: École française de Rome)
Index
Adam (abbot) 24, 29–30, 48, 61–62, 65, 69, 71 Adam of Dryburgh 122 Adele (queen of France) 81, 86 n. 36 Aimeri Picaud (chronicler) 41–42 Aimery of Lusignan 83 Albe, Édmond 197–98 Albert of Jerusalem (archbishop) 96 Albert of Reims (archbishop) 97 Albigensian Crusade 129, 130 n. 87, 198, 247 Alexander II (king of Scots) 224–25 Alexander III (king of Scots) 176, 225–26, 228 Alexander IV (pope) 156, 161, 163, 165–66, 176–78, 223, 247, 402 Alfonso X (king of Castile) 216, 222, 229–31, 242, 244, 251 Allegationes illiterati Jacob contra Bonifacium Antibonus in 331–33 author of 331–33, 337–38, 340–41 creation of 331–32, 338, 339–40 editions of 345–47 importance of 337, 342 Jesus in 333–34 main contents of 333–35 Oraculum Cyrilli in 331, 334–39, 341–42 prophecy in 333–34, 338 rediscovery of 344 scriptural references in 333–38 writing style of 333, 338–39 Alphonse IX (king of León) 218 Alphonse de Brienne 214, 218, 220, 230, 242, 249, 251
Alphonse de Poitiers 218, 229, 234, 250, 404 Alphonse of Castile 228 Andrew de Chauvigny 154 Andrew of St-Victor 120 Anniversary for King Dagobert (1108) 29–30 Arnald of Villanova 335, 341, 343 Arnaudus Guillelmi Dauleo 360–61, 363, 367–68, 370, 374, 377 artiora 121–23, 131, 133 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines 78–79, 95, 97 Augustine of Hippo 113 Augustinian Order Capetian court’s relation to 126, 128, 131 monastic rivalry and 106, 116 n. 21, 131 representation of 118, 125, 131–32 reputation of 18 Baldwin II (Latin emperor) accession of 214 Jean d’Acre and 221 Louis IX and 283–85 papal relation of 216 relics and 216, 265–66, 274–76, 285–89 son of 227, 231, 233 Baluze, Étienne 197 Barthélemy, Dominique 400 Bartlett, Robert 399, 416 battles: See specific battle by name, e.g. Bouvines, battle of Bauduin, Pierre 64 Beaumanoir, Philippe de 400 n. 7, 403–04, 416, 421–22
444
in d e x
Benedictine Order Capetian court’s relation to 131 monastic rivalry and 106, 116–19, 116 n. 21, 122, 131 representation of 116–19 Benedict of Nursia 113 Berenguel de Landoria (archbishop) 310 Bernard of Clairvaux 117 n. 22, 123 n. 46, 124 Bernardus de Jer 357, 359, 362, 367–68, 370, 374, 376 Bernardus de Montepesato 360, 363, 367, 374, 377 Bernward of Hildesheim (bishop) 33 Bertrand de Languissel 369 Bertrandus de Montepesato 370 Béthune, Robert de 244, 302, 315 Bibles moralisées Capetian court’s relation to 124–32, 130 n. 87 commentary within 115–16 creation of 115, 121, 124–31 exegetical background to 119–21 illustrations from 107fig, 112fig, 116fig importance of 105–06, 125 inconsistencies within 118–19 inspiration for 121 interpretation of 106, 113–15 Jews in 119–24, 132–33 Kings in 115–16, 115t monastic orders criticized in 116–17, 120–25, 131–32 non-biblical phrases in 106 overview of 105 ownership of 125–31 side-by-side comparisons of 106t, 134–35 symbolism in 118–20 translation in 107 variations in 127–28 Black Madonna of Rocamadour 196 Blanche (countess of Champagne) birth of 79 n. 8 burial site of 249
cartulary compiled by 77 death of 77–79, 127, 223 diplomacy of 98–101 Erard and 88, 94 genealogy of 80, 87 homage and 81, 92–93, 95–96 importance of 18, 77–78, 101 Jean d’Acre and 220–21, 248–49 leadership of 78 legitimacy of 96 Louis VIII and 18 military campaigns of 94–95, 97–98, 100 monastic orders and 127, 127 n. 71, 131–33 papal relationship of 82–83, 89, 96, 99 Philip II and 78, 81 retirement of 77 scholarship on 77–78 succession through 78, 81–86, 89–96, 100–101 Thibaut III and 79–91, 94, 99 Blanche of Brienne 253 Boniface VIII (pope) Capetian court’s relation to 250, 281, 339 Celestine V and 336 criticism of 18, 244, 331, 334, 342–43 as Epicurean 342 legitimacy of 340–42 representation of 334, 341, 343 Bony, Pierre 250–51 Borel, André-François-Joseph 200–201 Borrelli de Serres, Léon-Louis 191–93 Boso of Cluis 155 Bouvines, battle of (1214) 91, 126, 199, 315 Bove, Boris 389 Bower, Walter 228 Brevis Relatio 66, 68, 71 Brown, Elizabeth A. R. Bibliothèque MS Mazarine 2013 and 70 education of 14 importance of 13–16, 19, 105, 212, 351
i nd e x
overview of 13–15, 14 n. 9 Peggy-style of 17 Philip IV and 351 on power of royal religion 282 scholarly work of 13–16, 17 St-Denis and 36 Brown, Julian 302 Caillaud, Jean-François-Xavier, abbé 143 Calixtus II (pope) 68 The Capetian Century ( Jordan and Phillips) 17 the Capetians: See also specific figures, texts, and churches agenda of 63, 212 Augustinian Order and 126, 128, 131 beginnings of 16–17 Benedictine Order and 131 Bibles moralisées and 124–32, 130 n. 87 Boniface VIII and 250, 281, 339 burial sites associated with 249 Carolingians and 25 Cistercian Order and 18, 126–28, 132–33, 170 conquests of 155 crowning of kings and 18, 38–42, 47 dueling and 400–414, 416–17, 422, 424 English rivalry of 160 Eudes and 144–48, 161, 170 genealogy of 80, 87, 252 historical development of 16–17, 278, 384 influence of 17, 155 Jean d’Acre and 214–21, 225, 228, 231–39, 246, 256 Jews and 132 legitimacy of 282 military campaigns of 383, 391 as most Christian kings 16, 272, 282 Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre and 170 Normandy and 55, 62–63 ÖNB cod. 1179 and 128
overview of 16 propaganda of 278 residencies of 391–92 St-Denis and 25, 168 Sainte-Chapelle and 17–18, 163, 269, 278–81 scholarship on 13–19 Seine and 383–85, 389 self-conception of 266 social development under 16–17 spirituality of 143 Suger and 16, 18, 23, 25–27 n. 41, 46–47, 49, 65, 67 Thibaut III and 85–86, 89, 91–92 Carbonnières, Louis de 413, 416–17 Carmelite Order 116 n. 20, 118 Carolingians 25, 55, 62, 384 Carolus-Barré, Louis 191–92, 211 n. 2 Celestine V (pope) 333, 336, 341–42 Chabas, Monique 400, 409, 413–14, 414 n. 85 Champagne genealogy of counts 80fig, 87fig map of region 78fig Charansonnet, Alexis 144–45, 160, 164 Charlemagne appointment of 38 forged diploma of 37–42, 44, 48–49 representation of 306–07, 307fig, 310, 312, 313 n. 19, 315, 326, 326fig St-Denis and 36–37, 168–69, 172 Spanish campaign of 302, 305–06 Speculum historiale and 326 Suger and 36–37, 40–41, 48–49 Charles II the Bald (king of West Francia) 25, 167–68 Charles IV (Holy Roman Emperor) 390, 413 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 281, 315 Charles VI (Holy Roman Emperor) 422–23 Charles I (count of Anjou) 161, 217–18, 227, 234, 239, 245, 251–52, 255
445
446
in d e x
Charles the Good (count of Flanders) 68 Charles the Simple 56, 63 Chassant, Alphonse 193 Chibnall, Marjorie 69 Chlothar II (Frankish ruler) 25 Christine de Pisan 415, 423 Chronique de l’anonyme de Béthune Alexander the Great missing in 319 Charlemagne in 306–07 composition of 301–02 illustrations in 302–17, 326 importance of 302, 326 overview of 302 reception of 301 Seine and 385 Church Fathers 124 Cistercian Order Capetian court’s relation to 18, 126–28, 132–33, 170 Crusades and 170 discipline of 122, 131 Jews and 123–24 monastic rivalry and 117, 122–24, 131–32 representation of 116–17, 119 robes of 118 n. 25 Clarembaud of Tyre (archbishop) 83 Clement IV (pope) 160, 199, 231 n. 83, 402 Clement V (pope) 162, 339, 355–56, 361, 369 Cluniac movement 123–24 Collection in Seventy-Four Titles (Canon Law, St-Denis) 40 Collette, Carolyn 196 Colonna cardinals 339–40, 342–43 Colonna family 331 comitatus Vilcassini 55, 65, 67 Conrad of Monferrat 90 Constantine the Great 270, 276–77 Coste, Jean 342, 393 Councils of the Church: See specific councils by name, e.g. Lyon, Council of Coutumes (Beaumanoir) 421
Crown of Thorns (relic) importance of 17, 26 representation of 278, 392 royal acquisition of 17, 163, 167, 216–17, 265–68, 275 Crusades causes of 154 Cistercian Order and 170 Erard and 93–94 Eudes and 149, 154, 156–57, 163, 168, 170 First Crusade 154, 166, 270 n. 25 Second Crusade 23, 44, 49, 168 Third Crusade 79, 83, 86, 89, 149, 154 Fourth Crusade 77, 79, 83, 101, 158, 265–66 Fifth Crusade 89, 213, 216 Jean d’Acre and 213, 216, 237, 245–46, 255 Jews and 149 Louis VII and 44, 168 Louis IX and 143, 171, 245–46, 273 relics and 158, 163, 170, 265–67 St-Denis and 168 Dagobert (Frankish ruler) 25, 29–30, 35, 40 Dahood, Roger 204 Daumet, Nicolas 202 De administratione (Suger) 29, 31, 61, 65–66, 68 De consecratione (Suger) 31 Deeds of King Louis (Suger) 61, 70 Deeds of Louis the Fat (Suger) 30, 65, 68 De excidio Troiae (Dares the Phrygian) 275 Dejoux, Marie 192–93, 202–03 Delisle, Léopold 60, 191–92, 204 Demurger, Alain 369 Dialogue (Anonymous) 124 Diego de Cortada 361, 363, 367–68, 375 Dominican Order 116 n. 20, 118 n. 25, 162, 341
i nd e x
Dominicus de Jer 360, 363, 367–68, 370, 374, 377 Doublet, Jacques 35–36 Drogo (count) 64, 67 Dudo of St-Quentin 56–58, 66 dueling aristocratic status of 415–24 Capetian court’s relation to 400– 414, 416–17, 422, 424 ceremony for 417, 424 church role in 399, 402 cultural context of 400–401, 409 definition of 399 God’s will and 399–400, 409, 414–15 under later regimes 413–15 military campaigns and 400–410, 413 overview of 399, 424 scholarship on 400, 409, 413–14 sovereignty and 400, 407 threat posed by 402 Dupuy, Pierre 353, 373 Ecclesiastical History (Orderic Vitalis) 55, 60, 66, 71 Edward II (king of England) 253, 390 Edward III (king of England) 385 Eleanor of Aquitaine 14, 154, 242 Elijah 106–07, 107fig, 112–15, 117, 119–20, 131, 134–35 Enguerrand de Fiennes 222, 242 Enguerrand III (lord of Coucy) 224, 404 Enguerrand IV (lord of Coucy) 225 Epicureanism 342 Erard of Brienne Blanche and 88, 94 Crusades and 93–94 excommunication of 96–98, 99 fiefs of 94 illegitimate marriage of 89, 96 imprisonment of 94 marriage of 89–90, 93–94 military campaigns of 96–98
papal relationship of 90, 96 royal succession provoked by 77, 88, 95–96 Étienne de Tournai (bishop) 122, 126 Eudes of Châteauroux Capetian court’s relation to 144–48, 161, 170 career of 143–48 consecration by 166–67, 170, 267 Crusades and 149, 154, 156–57, 163, 168, 170 death of 143 importance of 143–44 indulgences and 161–64 itinerary of 179–82 Jews and 149 legatine commission of 146–48, 171, 179–82 legislator role of 149–52 letters of 146t liturgical calendar and 170–71 neglect of writings by 144 overview of 18, 143–44 papal relationship of 146 proper liturgy emphasized by 150–52 recruitment efforts of 170 relics and 143–45, 157–64, 170–72, 273 n. 41 scholarship on 147 sermons of 160–61 St-Denis and 169 upbringing of 145–46 writings of 143–44 Eugenius III (pope) 44–45, 168 Evergates, Theodore 18, 77 Evesham, battle of 242 Exaltation Octave 277, 279 Exaltation of the Cross, feast of 18, 265–73, 278, 280–95 Faral, Edmund 404 Favier, Jean 387 feasts: See specific feasts by name, e.g. Exaltation of the Cross) Fenster, Thelma 196
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Ficzel, Nelly 341 Field, Sean 18, 383 Finke, Heinrich 354 Firnhaber-Baker, Justine 19, 399 Fisquet, Honoré 193–94, 202–03 Forcadet, Pierre-Anne 192 Franciscan Order 118 n. 27, 130 n. 87, 145, 162, 181, 197 Francisque, Michel 204 François de Guillhermy 278–79 Frederick II (Holy Roman Emperor) 94, 98, 145–46, 213, 215–16, 219 n. 43, 224, 317 French Revolution 84, 172, 250 Froissart, Jean 413 Fulk IV (le Rechin) 62 Gaillon (castle) 384 n. 8, 392 Gaillot, Évreux Jacques 201 Gallia christiana 192–95, 202–04 Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia 13, 18, 212 n. 4, 265 Gargoillau, Guillaume 414 Garnier de Rochefort, abbot 114–15, 120 Garnier of Lagny 83 Gasparri, Françoise 69 Gautier de Coinci 302–03 gens Francorum 62–63 Geoffrey de Novo Vico 155 Geoffroy of Villehardouin 77, 79, 82, 101 Gérard of Saint Quentin 274–77, 280, 282–83 Gesta Francorum 71 Gesta gentis Francorum 62 Gesta Normannorum Ducum Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 2013 and 61–62, 67–68, 70 creation of 62 importance of 62–63 opening of 62 Orderic Vitalis and 59–60 overview of 55, 71 reception of 70 Suger and 61, 66, 68–71 versions of 58, 63, 66
Vexin and 63, 66 William of Jumièges and 57–62 Girard Eventat of Égligny 89 Gisors (castle) 64–65, 392 Glossa Ordinaria 119–21, 131 God’s will 399–400, 409, 414–15 Graboïs, André 46 Grandes chroniques 160, 315 Grant, Lindy 43, 126–27, 129, 132, 199 Gregory I the Great (pope) 114, 119–21 Gregory VII (pope) 155 Gregory IX (pope) 152, 163, 213 Gregory X (pope) 243, 248 n. 166 Gregory of Tours 301 Grodecki, Louis 279 Große, Rolf 17, 23, 61–62, 167 Groten, Manfred 37, 39–40 Gui de Châtillon 235, 253 Gui de Dampierre 244 Guigo Ademarii, lord 359, 361, 367 Guilhem Anelier 245 Guillame Pentecoste 240–41 Guillaume of Bray 199 Guillaume le Breton 122–23 Guillaume de Fiennes 223, 253 Guillaume de Nangis 217, 221, 227 Guillelmus de Noerio 356 n. 31, 357, 359, 362, 367, 370, 372–73 Guy de Châtillon 236 Guy II of Dampierre 88, 90–91 Haimard of Soissons (bishop) 96 Hattin, battle of (1187) 267 Hauterive, André-FrançoisJoseph d’ 200 Hélary, Xavier 18, 211 Helena (Constantine’s mother) 277–79 Helgaud de Fleury 391–92 Henry of Bar-le-Duc (count) 97 Henry I the Liberal (count of Champagne) 79–80, 82, 84, 86, 92 Henry II, Count of Champagne 79, 80, 82, 84–85, 87, 89–90, 93–94, 96, 160 Henry I (duke of Normandy and king of England) 56, 59, 61, 63–65, 67–68, 96, 198
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Henry III (king of England) 158, 161, 215, 225–26, 228, 231–32, 242 Henry V (Holy Roman Emperor) 39, 65 Henri le Gros (king of Navarre) 234, 240 Heraclius 18, 265–66, 272–73, 277–81 Hervé of Troyes (bishop) 98 Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre 302 Historia Ecclesiastica (Hugh of Fleury) 67–71 Historia Normannorum 57 Historia regum modernorum (Hugh of Fleury) 69, 72 Holy Blood (relic) 18, 158–59, 162, 166, 172 Holy Innocents, Feast of 150–51 Holy See 43, 243 Holy Spirit 28 Honorius III (pope) 88 n. 40, 96, 98–99, 163, 214 Hughes de Bouville 245 Hugh of Champfleury 46 Hugh of Langres 100 Hugh of Lusignan 80, 85, 87 Hugh of St Cher 120 Humphrey of Toron 87, 90 Hundred Years’ War 17 Innocent II (pope) 43 Innocent III (pope) 82, 85, 93, 96, 213 Innocent IV (pope) 146, 163, 165, 217, 223–24, 243, 255 Invention, feast of 269–70, 277 Iozelli, Fortunato 145 Isabella (queen of Jerusalem) 83, 89, 213, 252 Isabella of Brienne 224 Isabelle of Hainaut 86 Ivo of Chartres 38 Jacob of Santa Sabina 341–45 Jacopone da Todi 342–43 Jacques Duèse 196–97
Jacques Le Gris 413, 415, 423 Jacques de Molay 368 Jacques de Vitry 122 James the Elder (saint) 38 Jean d’Acre appointment of 212–17, 229–31, 240–41 Baldwin II and 221 Blanche and 220–21, 248–49 burial site of 248–51 Butler assignment of 232–37, 246 Capetian court’s relation to 214–21, 225, 228, 231–39, 246, 256 children of 229 counterseal of 249fig crown ambitions of 221 Crusades and 213, 216, 237, 245–46, 255 Curia stay of 223–24 death of 216–17, 248–53 defeat of 213 descendants of 218–19 diplomacy of 241–46 entourage of 247 family seal of 250fig, 251, 253 first marriage of 221–23 importance of 211 income and assets of 246–48 military campaigns of 214–15 name of 255 overview of 18, 254–56 papal relationship of 255 popularity of 232–34 posterity of 253–54 relics and 216 rights of 235–37, 235 n. 107, 246 scholarship on 211–12, 211 n. 2 second marriage of 224–25, 228 sons of 215–18 travels of 213–14, 224–28, 255 upbringing of 212 vigilance of 237, 246 Jean de Carrouges 413, 415, 423 Jean Cholet 245, 255 Jean de Brienne (comte d’Eu) 232–33, 248, 253
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Jean de Brienne (king of Jerusalem) 18, 84–85, 212–17, 212 n. 6, 221, 231, 249 Jean de Joinville 194, 219–20, 230 Jeanne de Châteaudun 219, 222, 224, 228, 252 Jeanne d’Evreux 14 Jeanne of Navarre 352 Jean Richard 192 Jean Tristan 254 Jean d’Ypres 216 Jesus Christ 119, 124, 158–59, 268, 333–34 Jews and Judaism anti-Jewish policies and 124, 132 Bibles moralisées and 119–24, 132–33 biblical references to 117 Capetian court’s relation to 132 Cistercian Order and 123–24 converts and 200 Crusades and 149 Eudes and 149 as foil to Christians 106 ÖNB cod. 1179 and 117, 119, 124–25 representation of 113, 117t, 119, 121, 123–25 Johannes de Borderiis 365–66 John XXI (pope) 247–48 John XXII (pope) 193, 196 John (king of England) 302, 393 John the Baptist 167–68, 265 John of Ibelin 83 John of Salisbury 46 John of St-Victor 118 n. 25, 132 John of Wurzburg 159 Jordan, Alyce 279 Jordan, William Chester 17–18, 191 Kings, commentaries on. See Bibles moralisées, Vienna, ÖNB cod. 1179, and under manuscripts, Vienna, ÖNB cod. 2554, Oxford manuscript, and Toledo manuscript Kosovo, battle of 166
Lacoste, Guillaume 197 Lair, Jules 60 Lalou, Elisabeth 19, 383 Lambert of Châtillon 89 Langton, Stephen 121–22, 131 La Rochelle, battle of 129, 214 Lateran Council IV (1215) 96, 399, 415–16 Laus perennis 25 Le Goff, Jacques 24, 48 Le Goulet (castle) 392 Lendit 167–68, 170–71 Leo I (pope) 40 Lerner, Robert E. 18, 331 Lester, Anne 200 Le Vaudreuil (castle) 393 Liber Floridus (Lambert of StOmer) 62 Liber pontificalis (Anonymous) 61, 71 Liber Sancti Jacobi (the Codex Calixtinus) 37–38 Life of Louis the Fat (Suger) 42–43 Life of Louis the Pious (Astronomer) 59 Life of Suger (William) 41–42, 45–47 Lipton, Sara 18, 105 Lothair III (Holy Roman Emperor) 43 Louis (count) 79, 86 Louis IV (king of France) 57 Louis VI (king of France) Abbot Adam and 29–30 anniversary founded for 25–27 anointment of 38 biography of 70 feudal dependence and 42 military campaigns of 64–65 royal authority reasserted by 16 St-Denis and 39–40, 43, 48, 68, 168 Vexin and 55–56, 64, 68 Louis VII (king of France) coronation of 39 Crusades and 44, 168 military campaigns of 27
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St-Denis and 35, 44 time spent away by 44 Louis VIII (king of France) accession of 130 Blanche and 18 crown ceded to 198 death of 131 monastic orders and 126, 128, 131–32 Louis IX (saint and king of France) advisors of 199–200 Baldwin II and 283–85 canonization of 265, 280–81 coronation of 215 Crusades and 143, 171, 245–46, 273 Holy Land travels of 223 military campaigns of 19, 401–03 as new Heraclius 18, 265–66, 277–80 Philip IV and 392 Philippe of Caturco and 204 relics and 159, 216, 266–67, 273–82 religious focus of 17 Sainte-Chapelle and 389 Seine and 391 Speculum historiale and 301, 315–16 Louis X (king of France) 352 n. 3, 413 Louis XIV (king of France) 394 Lyons, Council of 144 n. 5, 146, 217 Lyon, Treaty of (1288) 251 Magna Carta 165 Mahaut (countess) 249, 253 Mansourah, battle of (1250) 222, 225 manuscripts: See also Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 2013; Vienna, ÖNB cod. 1179 Boulogne-sur-Mer MS 130 320–21fig, 323fig MS 131 318fig, 320–22fig, 325fig Bourges, BM MSS 34–37 271 Brussels BR MS II 1396 316fig, 317 KBR IV.472 270 n. 25, 280 Charleville, BM 275 275
Florence, Biblioteca MediceaLaurenziana, Ashburnham 125 302 n. 7, 305, 310, 312–14fig, 315, 317, 326 Lancelot-Grail 305 Oxford, Bodleian 270b 105 n. 2, 111fig, 112, 112fig, 117–20, 133–34 Paris, AN J413 351n, 352 n. 4, 353, 354– 55 nn. 12–14, 355 n. 19, 355 nn. 16– 17, 358fig, 359 n. 38, 361 n. 364fig, 366fig, 377–78 J491B 332fig U 446 408 n. 51, 410 n. 60, 422–23 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 3340 304fig Paris, BnF fr. 412 305, 306fig fr. 2258 417–23, 418–20fig fr. 2813 315 lat. 10525 (St Louis Psalter) 253 lat. 13238 271–72, 281, 283 naf 6295 302, 303fig, 305, 307–10fig, 315, 317–19, 326 nal 1423 275 Salamanca, Bibl. Univ. 2631 308, 311fig Toledo Cathedral, MSS I–III (Biblia de San Luis) 105 n. 2, 107–08, 110fig, 112, 112fig, 117–19, 132–35 Vienna, ÖNB cod. 2554 108fig, 118 n. 25, 119, 125, 128, 130–31, 134–35 Marche, Olivier de la 415, 423 Marguerite of Constantinople 227 Marguerite of Provence 239, 243 Marie de Brienne 219–22, 228, 233, 244 Marie de Coucy 212 n. 4, 224–26, 225 n. 62, 228, 246 Marie of Montferrat 86–87 Martin IV (pope) 241 Martin of Opava 199 Mathieu de Vendôme 236, 315 Matthew Paris 216, 225, 279 Maubuisson Abbey 249–51 Melun truce 96
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Memoirs (Geoffroy of Villehardouin) 101 Merovingians 55, 61–62 Michel de Marolles (abbé) 172 military campaigns. See also Crusades Blanche and 94–95, 97–98, 100 Capetian court and 383, 391 church role in 402 dueling and 400–410, 413 Erard and 96–98 Hundred Years’ War 17 Jean d’Acre and 214–15 Louis VI and 64–65 Louis VII and 27 Louis IX and 19, 401–03 Philip II and 92, 160, 199 Philip IV and 18–19, 339–40, 403, 406–08 private wars 403 royal stances toward 401–02, 406 n. 44 St-Denis and 35 sovereignty and 407 Vexin and 64–65 War of Succession 94–95, 97–98, 100 Milo of Chaumont 83 Milo of Noyers 97, 98 n. 101, 99 n. 110 Miltiades (pope) 40 Misch, Georg 29 monastic orders: See also specific orders artiora of 121–23, 131, 133 Bibles moralisées and 116–17, 120–25, 131–32 Blanche and 127, 127 n. 71, 131–33 competition among 106, 116–19, 116 n. 21, 122, 131 Louis VIII and 126, 128, 131–32 Monumenta Germaniae Historica 36 Moralia in Job (Gregory the Great) 113–14, 119–20 moralized bibles. See Bibles moralisées Morelle, Laurent 41 Morenzoni, Franco 164 Morigny chronicle 27 Moufflet, Jean-François 391
Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre altar of 156, 164 Capetian court’s relation to 170 consecration of 164, 165, 170 indulgences issued for 164–67, 172–78 liturgical calendar of 164 overview of 18, 145, 152–54 pilgrimage status of 155–56 relics and 157–61, 163, 166–67, 170, 172–78 St-Denis and 170 Nicholas III (pope) 238 Nicholas IV (pope) 162, 165–66, 243 Nicholas of Clairvaux 124 Nicholas of Fréauville 339–40 Nielen, Marie-Adélaïde 251 Nieus, Jean-François 146t Normandy Capetian court’s relation to 55, 62–63 conquest of 58–59, 394 creation of principality of 56–57 ducal residencies in 392–94 historical writing on 57–62, 71 Latin historiography in 56–57 propaganda in 56 St-Denis and 62–63 Seine and 392–94 Suger and 63 Notre-Dame cathedral, Paris 16, 129, 270 n. 25 Octave of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross 283–95 Odo III (duke of Burgundy) 82, 97 Odo (bishop) 172–73, 175 Odo (cardinal) 86, 88 Odo (count) 30 Odo of Deuil. See Eudes of Châteauroux Oraculum Cyrillii ( Jacob of Santa Sabina) 18, 331, 334–39, 341 Orderic Vitalis Gesta Normannorum Ducum and 59–60 influence of 59
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St-Denis and 63 Suger and 59, 68–69 Vexin and 63, 66–68 writing approach of 55, 59–60, 71 Oriflamme 35, 39, 44–45, 165, 171 Otto IV (earl of Burgundy) 241, 243 Oudard of Aulnay 90 Panofsky, Erwin 34, 47–48, 48 n. 154 Pantagruel (Rabelais) 195–96 papal authorities: See also specific popes Blanche and 82–83, 89, 96, 99 Erard and 90, 96 Eudes and 146 Jean d’Acre and 255 Philip IV and 340, 343, 355, 369 St-Denis and 44–46 Suger and 44–46, 49 Thibaut III and 82, 86, 96 Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino 145 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 2013 compilation of 55, 60, 62, 67, 68, 70 contents of 55, 71–72 Gesta Normannorum Ducum and 61–62, 67–68, 70 importance of 55, 60–61, 68–69 opening of 63 overview of 55–56, 61–63 Paris described in 71–72 purpose of 55, 61 scholarship on 18, 55–56 social context of 61, 67, 70–71 structure of 63, 70–72 Suger and 60–61, 67–70 Paschal II (pope) 42–44 Passion relics of Christ. See relics Paul (saint) 47, 113, 337 Peter (saint and apostle) 42–46 Peter Abelard 120 Peter Damian 114 Peter the Hermit 154 Peter Mauclerc (count) 215 Peter the Venerable 34–35 Petit Pont 385 Pharisees 124
Philip I (king of the Franks) burial of 26–27, 30 consecration of 39 coronation of 40, 42 death of 38 Vexin and 64 Philip II Augustus (king of France) accession of 71 Blanche and 78, 81 death of 100, 214 ducal residencies and 392–94 military campaigns of 92, 160, 199 overview of 18 Paris and 391 royal succession and 85 Seine and 393 truce imposed by 95–96 Philip III (king of France) 220, 233, 236, 238–47, 405–06, 416 Philip IV the Fair, (king of France) aggressive rule of 17–18 Louis IX and 392 military campaigns of 18–19, 339–40, 403, 406–08 overview of 17–18 papal relationship of 340, 343, 355, 369 Paris and 389–90 propaganda warning by 331–33 residencies of 393–94 revolt against 100 Sainte-Chapelle and 265 scholarship on 14 seigneurial conflicts and 407–08 Seine and 386, 394 sovereignty and 407 Philip V (king of France) 413, 422, 424 Philip VI (king of France) 281, 408 n. 51, 416 Philippa 88–89, 93–100 Philippe, Annette 387 Philippe de Beaumanoir 403–04 Philippe de Courtenay (Latin Emperor) 227, 229, 233, 244
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Philippe of Caturco arms of 201–02 birthplace of 191–92, 200 death of 201 family of 203–04 identity of 191–204 Jewish conversion potential of 200 lineage of 203 Louis IX and 204 loyalty of 204 overview of 191 scholarship on 191–204 translation of 191–92, 202 upbringing of 196–97 Pierre le Chambellan 249 Pierre de La Broce 223, 237–39, 247 Pierre de Savoie 226 Pintoin, Michel 413, 415 Pippin the Younger 38 Piur, Paul 336 Pohl, Benjamin 57 popes: See papal authorities; specific popes Porée, Adolphe-André, l’abbé 192, 194 Prutz, Hanz 353–54, 371 Pseudo-Charlemagne 39 Pseudo-Dionysius 24, 34 Pseudo-Isidore 40 Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle 36–38, 41–42 Quedam Exceptiones 58 Rabanus Maurus 119, 272 Ralph of Vermandois (count) 27, 44 Randall, Lilian 303 Raynal, Louis 143 Raynouard, François-Just-Marie 353, 373 Reception of Relics, feast of 269, 271, 277, 283 le Rechin (Fulk IV) 62 Reimitz, Helmut 199 relics: See also specific relics Baldwin II and 216, 265–66, 274–76, 285–89
Crusades and 158, 163, 170, 265–67 Eudes and 143–45, 157–64, 170–72, 273 n. 41 Jean d’Acre and 216 liturgy based on 277 Louis IX and 159, 216, 266–67, 273–82 Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre and 157–61, 163, 166–67, 170, 172–78 reception of 279 St-Denis and 168 Sainte-Chapelle and 171, 265–75, 281 translatio imperii and 265, 267, 275, 277–78 Remi of Navarre 101 Renaud II of Choiseul 99 Renier II of Nogent 101 Richard I Lionheart (king of England) 389 Richard of Chichester (saint) 156–57 Richard of Cornwall 226, 228, 231 Richard I of Normandy 56–58, 67, 79–80, 84 Richard II of Normandy 56, 58, 253, 390 Robert II the Pious (king of France) 391 Robert II of Artois 239, 249 Robert de Béthune 244, 302, 315 Robert de Clermont 404 Robert of Courçon 89 Robert de Courtenay (grandson of Louis VI) 234 Robert of Courtenay (Latin Emperor) 213–14 Robert Curthose 58–59, 63, 64, 70 Robert the Magnificent (duke of Normandy) 58–59, 64, 67 Robert of Molesme 122 Robert de Pacy 247 Robert of Sorbon 199 Robert of Torigni 60, 66 n. 60, 72 Rodulph of Ivry (count) 56 Roger de Gaignières 202 Rollo 56–57, 62–63
i nd e x
Roman d’Alexandre 319, 326 Roman de Troie (Benoît de SainteMaure) 305fig Roman du Hem 245 Royaumont (Abbey) 127, 132, 249 Rubenstein, Jay 13 Rufus, William 64 Rule of St Benedict 47–49, 122, 152 St-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury) 26–27, 30 St-Denis altar of 35 Capetian court’s relation to 25, 168 Charlemagne and 36–37, 168–69, 172 charter of 65 coronations at 38–42, 47 Crusades and 168 Eudes and 169 importance of 27, 35–47 layout of 34–35 Lendit and 168–69 liturgy of 25 Louis VI and 39–40, 43, 48, 68, 168 Louis VII and 35, 44 military campaigns and 35 Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre and 170 new construction at 23–24, 30–35 Normandy and 62–63 Orderic and 63 papal relationship of 44–46 relics and 168 royal burials at 26–27, 30, 281 Vexin and 55, 64–68 Sainte-Chapelle Capetian court’s relation to 17–18, 163, 269, 278–81 consecration of 148, 165, 170, 267, 269, 270 n. 25 construction of 265, 267 feasts of 18, 265–66, 268–82 glazing cycle in 278–79 importance of 265 liturgy of 280–81
Louis IX and 258fig, 389 octave readings and 273–77, 279–82 overview of 266–69 Philip IV and 265 relics and 171, 265–75, 281 royal representations in 267, 267fig Saint Germain, feast of 265 St Louis Psalter (BnF, lat. 10525) 253 Saladin 155, 216, 267, 272 Samson of Reims (archbishop) 44 Sancho IV (king of Castile) 245 Sancho VII the Strong (king of Navarre) 79–80 Sarrazin, Jean 232, 237 Sauvage, G.-E. 193 Seine (river) Capetian court’s relation to 391–94 the Capetians and 383–85, 389 importance of 383, 385–87, 390, 394 Louis IX and 391 map of 389m mastering of 387–89 Normandy and 392–94 overview of 19, 384–85 Paris and 389–90 Philip II and 393 Philip IV and 386, 394 as public utility 386 residencies along 389–94 Rouen and 390–91 scholarship on 383 source of 384 sovereignty and 384 trade and 385–87 Siger of Brabant 301 Simeon, saint 26, 168 Simon de Bailleul 248 Simon de Brie 238, 241 Simon of Châteauvillain 83 Simon of Joinville 95, 98 Speculum historiale (Vincent of Beauvais) Charlemagne and 326 composition of 301, 315–16 content of 319, 322–23, 326
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illustrations within 315–26, 324–25fig importance of 302, 326 Louis IX and 301, 315–16 reception of 301 translation of 301–02 versions of 317–18, 326 Stilus curie (du Breuil) 422 Stones, Alison 18, 301 Strayer, Joseph 282 Suger of (abbot of St-Denis) anniversary established by 25–27 Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 2013 and 60–61, 67–70 Capetian court’s relation to 16, 18, 23, 25–27 n. 41, 46–47, 49, 65, 67 character of 47–49 Charlemagne and 36–37, 40–41, 48–49 construction efforts of 28, 30–35, 48 death of 28, 46 diploma counterfeiting by 36–37, 40–41, 48 education of 23, 61 Gesta Normannorum Ducum and 61, 66, 68–71 importance of 23–24, 35–47 leadership of 25–26, 65 liturgy of 25–27 memoria of 23–25, 28, 30, 48 motivations of 17–18, 31–32, 47 Normandy and 63 Orderic and 59, 68–69 overview of 23–24, 47–49 papal relationship of 44–46, 49 personal fame emphasized by 23– 24, 28–34, 47 predecessor of 28–30 representation of 23–24 royal coronation and 38–42, 47, 48 salvation emphasized by 25–28, 32, 47 unpopularity of 46–47 Vexin and 63–68, 71 Symeon of Durham 59
Tachau, Katherine 125–26, 128, 130–31 nn. 87–88 Taylor, Charles Holt 14 Templars: See Trial of the Templars Theobald of Blois-Champagne (count) 27 Thibaut III (count of Champagne) birth of 79 n. 8 Blanche and 79–91, 94, 99 Capetian court’s relation to 85–86, 89, 91–92 death of 77, 79–80, 82 genealogy of 80, 87 homages and 92–93, 96 marriage of 100 overview of 77 papal relationship of 82, 86, 96 rule of 89 succession issue of 79–82, 85–90, 99 tomb of 83–84 Thibaut IV (count of Champagne, king of Navarre) 77, 80, 84, 96, 100, 240 Thomas Becket 160–61 Thomas the Apostle, feast of 265 Tinchebray, battle of 58, 63 Tower of Memory (Richard de Fournival) 305fig translatio imperii 265, 267, 275, 277–78 Treaties: See specific treaties by name, e.g. Lyon, Treaty of Trial of the Templars accusations in 354–55, 359–61, 372 arrests and detention begin in 356– 57 Capetian court’s relation to 351, 354–55, 368 chronological context of 354–56 church involvement in 351–52, 354–56, 361, 365, 369–70 coercion in 363 confused historiography of 352–54 documentation in 359fig, 365fig fate of templars following 370–71 first confessions in 357–64, 371 full text of 373–78
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interpretation of 368–70 overview of 351–52, 371–73 scholarship on 351–53, 362–63 second confessions in 365–68, 372 sodomy in 362–63, 368, 372 Templars named in 353 True Cross (relic) importance of 18, 277, 282 overview of 18 representation of 267fig, 278 retrieval of 216, 266, 270, 272–73, 275–79, 281, 289–95 translatio imperii and 265–67, 270, 272–76
God in 107, 112 illustrations within 109fig, 119, 124 influence of 112 Jews represented in 117, 119, 124–25 monastic orders and 124–25, 132 overview of 107 patronage of 125, 128, 130 Vincent, Nicholas 18, 143 Vincent of Beauvais 273, 301, 315–16, 324fig Viollet, Paul 400 Vita Karoli (Einhard) 59 Vita Ludovici Grossi (Suger) 72 Vittoria, Treaty of 245
Urban II (pope) 38, 154 Urban IV, (pope) 165
Waldemar II (king of Denmark) 126, 128–30 Walter I (count) 64 Walter of Chappes 81 War of Succession 94–95, 97–98, 100 wars. See Crusades; military campaigns Weiss, Stefan 147 White, Stephen 414 William (monk and secretary to Suger) 34, 41–42 William I the Conqueror (duke of Normandy and king of England) 57–60, 62–64, 70 n. 81, 71, 390–91, 393 William X of Aquitaine (duke) 27 William de Chauvigny 155–56, 166 William Clito 63, 68 William of Joinville 97 William of Jumièges 57–60, 62–63, 66, 72 William of Langres (bishop) 92, 98 William Longsword 56 William of Malmesbury 123 William of Paris 354, 361–62, 366, 371 William of Reims (archbishop) 69, 81–82, 168 William of St-Thierry 120
van de Kieft, Co 37 Van Houts, Elizabeth 18 Van Tricht, Filip 216, 221 Verlaque, Victor 193 Vexin as boundary between powers 55, 63–64 French rule in 64–67, 71 Gesta Normannorum Ducum and 63, 66 Louis VI and 55–56, 64, 68 military campaigns in 64–65 Norman rule in 63–65, 66–67, 71 Orderic and 63, 66–68 Philip I and 64 rightful rule in 63–68, 71 rivers bordering 66–67 St-Denis and 55, 64–68, 71 Suger and 63–68, 71 Victorine Order 122, 126–28, 132 Vienna, ÖNB cod. 1179 Capetian court’s relation to 128 composition of 107, 112, 119 Elijah in 107, 112, 119
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Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.
Titles in Series De Sion exibit lex et verbum domini de Hierusalem: Essays on Medieval Law, Liturgy, and Literature in Honour of Amnon Linder, ed. by Yitzhak Hen (2001) Amnon Linder, Raising Arms: Liturgy in the Struggle to Liberate Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (2003) Thomas Deswarte, De la destruction a la restauration: L’ideologie dans le royaume d’OviedoLeon (VIIIe-XIe siecles) (2004) The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Speyer, 20–25 October 2002, ed. by Christoph Cluse (2004) Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, ed. by Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (2006) Carine van Rijn, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period (2007) Avicenna and his Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. by Y. Tzvi Langermann (2010) Writing ‘True Stories’: Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East, ed. by Arietta Papaconstantinou, Muriel Debié, and Hugh Kennedy (2010) Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-Century Commentary Traditions on ‘De nuptiis’ in Context, ed. by Mariken Teeuwen and Sinéad O’Sullivan (2011) John-Henry Clay, In the Shadow of Death: Saint Boniface and the Conversion of Hessia, 721–54 (2011) Ehud Krinis, God’s Chosen People: Judah Halevi’s ‘Kuzari’ and the Shī ‘ī Imām Doctrine (2013) Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013) Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (2013)
Between Personal and Institutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity, ed. by Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Lorenzo Perrone (2013) D’ Orient en Occident: Les recueils de fables enchassees avant les Mille et une Nuits de Galland (Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept Sages), ed. by Marion Uhlig and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens (2014) Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honour of Ora Limor, ed. by Israel Jacob Yuval and Ram Ben-Shalom (2014) Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. by Bianca kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (2014) The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World: Converting the Isles I, ed. by Roy Flechner and Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (2016) Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honour of Peter Brown, ed. by Jamie kreiner and Helmut Reimitz (2016) The Prague Sacramentary: Culture, Religion, and Politics in Late Eighth-Century Bavaria, ed. by Maximilian Diesenberger, Rob Meens, and Els Rose (2016) The Capetian Century, 1214–1314, ed. by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips (2017) Transforming Landscapes of Belief in the Early Medieval Insular World and Beyond: Converting the Isles II, ed. by Nancy Edwards, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Roy Flechner (2017) Historiography and Identity I: Ancient and Early Christian Narratives of Community, ed. by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser (2019) Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400–800, ed. by Yaniv Fox and Erica Buchberger (2019) Leadership and Community in Late Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Raymond Van Dam, ed. by Young Richard Kim and A. E. T. McLaughlin (2020) Pnina Arad, Christian Maps of the Holy Land: Images and Meanings (2020) Historiography and Identity, II: Post-Roman Multiplicity and New Political Identities, ed. by Helmut Reimitz and Gerda Heydemann (2020) Historiography and Identity, III: Carolingian Approaches, ed. by Helmut Reimitz, Rutger Kramer, and Graeme Ward (2021) Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. by Clara Almagro Vidal, Jessica Tearney-Pearce, and Luke Yarbrough (2021) Historiography and Identity IV: Writing History Across Medieval Eurasia, edited by Walter Pohl and Daniel Mahoney (2021)
In Preparation Yossi Maurey, Liturgy and Sequences of the Sainte-Chapelle: Music, Relics, and Sacral Kingship in Thirteenth-Century France Les transferts culturels dans les mondes normands médiévaux (viiie–xiie siècle): objets, acteurs et passeurs, ed. by Pierre Bauduin, Simon Lebouteiller, and Luc Bourgeois Civic Identity and Civic Participation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Cédric Brélaz and Els Rose Zsuzsanna Papp Reed, Matthew Paris on the Mongol Invasion in Europe