Social France at the time of Philip Augustus

Front matter

AT THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

BY

ACHILLE LUCHAIRE

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Translator's Preface . . . . . iii

Preface vii

Preface

This study on French society at the time of Philip Augustus was the sole unpublished work found among the papers of M. Achille Luehaire. After having determined to write an exhaustive history of the reign of Philip Augustus, and after having for five years (1895-1900) made that reign the subject of his courses at the Sorbonne, Luehaire in 1901 turned his efforts in other directions and abandoned a project whicKliad seemed on the point of coming to fruition.

The appearance of the first parts of Alexander Cartellieri 's Philipp II. August, Eonig von Frankreich, no doubt largely influenced Luehaire to take this action. The book of Cartellieri, though perhaps too minute and somewhat lacking in perspective, proved to be conscientious and accurate in every respect. If a French history of Philip Augustus was to be given to the public, was it not sensible to await the completion of this German work?

Social history, however, remained outside of the domain appropriated by Cartellieri. This was a gap worth filling. Luehaire had carefully kept the manuscript of the lectures he had delivered on this particular subject, and after having, in 1899, extracted a chapter on the University of Paris,^ he, in 1900, entered upon a complete publication in the Seances et travaux de VAcademie des sciences morales et politiques. Two chapters appeared in succession in this collection entitled L'Etat materiel et moral de la population (1900), and Paroisses et les cures (1901)^; then, having claimed the field,

* L'Universite de Paris sous Philippe- Augusts. Paris, Chevalier- Marescq, 1899. 59 pp. (Forms a part of the Bibliotheque internationale de I'enseignement superieur published under the direction of M. F. Picavet.) Chapter III of this volume is a reproduction of this article with a new introduction.

2 These form Chapters I and II of this volume. The part on the cult of relics also appeared with a special introduction in La Revue de Paris, annee 1900, IV, pp. 189-198 {Le culte des reliques), and the part treating of the capuchonnes in La Grande Revue, annee 1900, XIII, pp. 317-328 [Un essai de revolution sociale sous Philippe- Auguste) .

viii PKEFACE

Luehaire postponed the publication of the other chapters. However, in January, 1908, he published an article on marriages and divorces in the feudal world ^ ; and he freely drew on his materials for the volume on the reigns of Louis VII, Philip Augustus, and Louis VIII, which he contributed to Lavisse's Histoire de France in 1901.*

In his caution to leave nothing to the accident of improvisation, Luehaire prepared his lectures with such care that the process of shaping them for the press would have been a simple matter for him: all that was required was to remove occasional prolixities, recast the lectures into a limited number of chapters, and now and then correct the form. This labor, which a sudden death prevented Luehaire from completing, was a delicate task for another to undertake, I have voluntarily restricted my alterations to such as were strictly necessary, and, when omissions appeared necessary, I have, as far as possible,^ adopted the method pursued by Luehaire himself in the pages which he had published. I have touched the style but slightly, and then with great caution : the author alone could retouch the work satisfactorily in this respect. Had he lived, he would undoubtedly have added several complementary chapters on the mendicant orders,^ on the king and his court, on commerce and corporations, etc. He would, perhaps, have added bibliographical information and notes. But, such as it is, I believe that the book may be useful to historians, and that, like the six volumes on Innocent III, it will charm and instruct the public interested in the past.

Louis Halphen.

• Au temps de la feodalite. Mariages et divorces. Revue hleue, 1908, ler semestre, pp. 39-44. This appears in Chapter XI of this volume.

* Some of the pages of that work are, in consequence, repeated in this. " During the academic year 1899-1900 Luehaire gave four lectures on

the mendicant orders; but the manuscript of these lectures was not in a state to justify publishing them. Besides, the substance of the lectures is incorporated in the pages devoted to this subject in Lavisse, Histoire de France, III, Ire partie, pp. 352-363.

AT THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

Chapter I The Material And Spieitual Condition Op The People

*' The world is ill; it grows so old that it relapses into infancy. Common report has it that Antichrist has been born at Babylon and that the day of judgment is at hand." In writing these lines, Rigord, the monk of Saint-Denis, was ignorant of the fact that other monks had expressed the same sentiment in all preceding centuries. Why this discouragement and these sinister predictions? Because the popes of his day were short-lived and succeeded each other with a strange rapidity; because Saladin had taken Jerusalem in 1188, that most fateful of all years, — " those born in it had only twenty-two, instead of thirty-two teeth "; finally, because natural calamities and scourges from heaven and earth, one after another, fell upon men and made them despair of their future.

Earthquakes, especially, dismayed them. Anjou was shaken in 1207 ; Normandy, in 1214 ; Gascony, in 1223. The tremor of March 3, 1206, was felt at the same time in Burgundy and Limousin. According to the monk of Saint-Martial, the shocks came in the middle of the night. Monks, saying their offices in the choir, took to flight, and laymen leaped from their beds ; it was observed that even the birds trembled with fear and that water-courses were more boisterous than usual ; and, to appease an irate Heaven, an extraordinary procession was arranged at Limoges.

Within forty-three years (1180-1223) fourteen cyclones ran riot with frightful ravages. Harvests and vineyards were destroyed, houses demolished, roofs carried away, belfries and towers beaten down, and turrets overthrown. The storm of Dun-le-Roi, in 1206, crushed a noblewoman with her two children beneath its ruins. That of 1221 lasted eight days and killed forty persons in the vicinity of Paris and Beauvais. While mass was being celebrated in the chateau of Pierref onds, lightning struck it; the officiating priest and twenty-four assistants were grievously wounded; five were killed. The chalice containing the Host was reduced to powder; but, lo! the Host itself remained untouched.

One can imagine the damage done by floods. There were no means of forewarning those who dwelt by streams; reservoirs, dams, and dikes hardly existed ; the bridges, overloaded with houses and crowded with shops, were not built to resist the swelling of the waters. The inundations of 1185 at Metz, of 1195 at Auxerre, of 1205 at Caen, of 1213 at Limoges left doleful traces. In 1196 the two bridges of the Seine at Paris were carried away, and Philip Augustus found himself oblige^ to quit the Cite and take refuge on Mont Sainte- Genevieve. The flood of 1219 rendered the Petit pont unapproachable, and many burghers returned to their homes by boat. The monk of Sainte-Genevieve, who was an eye-witness, describes the enormous rising of the Seine in 1206, the year in which all the streams simultaneously overflowed their banks :

" In the month of December, 1206, God smote the kingdom of the French. Rains fell with extreme violence, streams became torrents, the largest trees were rooted up, and in certain cities buildings were utterly destroyed. But of all places, Paris, the capital and the soul of France, was most sorely tried. The city was entirely inundated, and was affected to its very foundations; one could go about the streets and squares only by boat. Most of the houses fell, and those which remained upright were so shaken by the unending pressure of the waters that they became a menace. The stone bridge, known as the Petit pont, could not resist the impact of the torrent; great cracks were already visible and its collapse was momentarily expected. Thus was the precious city, the queen of them all, plunged into sorrow. Priests moaned, virgins mourned, Paris succumbed under the weight of her grief, and no one could console her."

Science has not yet found the means of compelling overflowing streams to return to their beds, but our fathers knew one : they instituted processions in which they exhibited relics. The citizens of Paris, in 1206, had recourse to their favorite saint, Genevieve. A procession forms on the height on the left bank of the river, with the relics of tha saint in the lead. It reaches the Petit pont. " To cross it," relates the monk, " it is imperative to lean neither to left nor to right, but to keep exactly in the middle. The passage over the bridge, which threatens to crumble under the furious blows of the water, is exceedingly dangerous, — ^but Genevieve with her people crosses the raging Seine : the bridge supports her less than she supports the bridge." At last the cortege reaches Notre-Dame, and forthwith the waters begin to recede and the rain ceases. From the church comes the saint, still followed by the citizens; the bridge totters, but is crossed a second time, and the relics of Genevieve resume their place in the sanctuary. Half an hour later, at nightfall, after every one has returned home, the bridge falls. Three arches are carried away by the current.

Next to wat^r, fire was the daily terror in medieval cities, with their narrow, winding streets lined with overcrowded, wooden houses. A stone house was uncommon. The authorities gave a bounty to citizens who built of stone : in the little village of Rue in Picardy, they were exempt from taxes. In these vast collections of inflammable materials, with only the most rudimentary means of fighting fire (we know of no text of this epoch which makes even the slightest allusion to the organization of a relief corps), a burning house menaced the whole quarter; often the entire city. Repeated fires became dreadful. From 1200 to 1225, Rouen burned six times. Not even the largest stone structures, churches, and the enormous fortresses were spared. The keep of Gisors burned in 1189, on the very day that Richard the Lion-Hearted made his entrance. When the chateau of Pompadour, in Limousin, burned, the keep collapsed and twenty persons perished in the burning pile. The flames reached the houses and streets so rapidly that it was impossible to escape. In 1223, two hundred persons were victims of fire in the village of Verlene, in the district of Nontron.

In years when drought prevailed, or streams, springs, and wells dried up, fires multiplied from one end of France to the other. In 1188, Rouen, Troyes, Beauvais, Provins, Arras, Poitiers, and Moissac were the prey of flames. Some of the details of the fire of Troyes have come down to us. The fire began at night on the fair-grounds and quickly spread to the residences. The abbey of Notre-Dame aux Nonnains, the collegiate church of Saint-]&tienne which had just been rebuilt, the palace of the counts of Champagne, and the cathedral, Saint-Pierre, all burned. The flames moved so rapidly that the monks of Notre-Dame had not time to escape and were burned alive.

These scourges of fire also occurred in years of storm and lightning. In 1194, a number of towns and villages were struck by lightning. This was the year of the great fire at Chartres, which destroyed so many unfortunates and almost obliterated the ancient cathedral. Struck by the frequency of the fires, popular imagination accepted the most sinister explanations. Rigord relates that ravens were seen flying from one place to another in the burning towns; in their beaks they carried burning coals and set fire to all houses which had escaped.

To these not infrequent catastrophes were added systematic fires set by men-at-arms. It is well known that war at that time meant ravage, and, especially, the burning of towns, chateaux, and cities belonging to the enemy. Arson was a military operation, well regulated and organized; in short, an institution. Besides its foragers, who pillaged the fields, every army had its houtefeux, charged especially with burning barns and houses. Nearly every page of the Chansons des Lorrains shows them at work. The hosts of Garin are getting under way to concentrate at Douai. " The incendiaries fall upon the villages, the surprised inhabitants are burned or led captive with manacled hands. The smoke thickens, the flames grow, and the terrified peasants and shepherds flee in every direction." Further on it is the great city of Lyon which is captured and sacked. " On the morrow [after the pillage] Duke Begon on arising, commands fire, which is prepared and set in a hundred places. No one will ever know the number of those who perished in this great conflagration. From the fields the retreating army could see the towers crumble, the monasteries burst open, and could hear the despairing cries of the women and the little folk."

The same scenes occurred at Verdun and Bordeaux, where " eighty citizens, not counting women and children, were reduced to ashes." Feudalism seemed to take a ferocious delight in seeing flames consume burghers' houses and the villeins who resided in them. One of the heroes of the Chanson des Lorrains, Bernard de Naisil, was among the defenders of Bordeaux. Resting his arms on the window of the chateau and holding in one hand the helmet he had just removed, he gazed upon the burning city. Said he to Fromont: " There, we are rid of a great care; Bordeaux is in flames. We are much stronger than we were this morning. ' '

History and fiction combine their testimony on this point. It is enough to enumerate the places burned in the wars of Philip Augustus : Chatillon-sur-Seine, Dreux, le Mans, Evreux, Dieppe, Tours, Angers, Lille. The fire of Lille, ordered by the king of France to punish the defection of its citizens, *' burned everything, even to the peaty soil of the place," says the historian, "William of Armorica. If one would know what such a campaign of arson, a regular part of all wars of the time, meant, he should read the accounts of the expedition of Louis of France, son of Philip Augustus, against Flanders in 1214, several months before the battle of Bouvines, when Nieuport, Steenvorde, Bailleul, Hazebrouck, Cassel, not to mention villages and hamlets, were systematically given over to the flames. At Bailleul the incendiaries barely escaped being victims of their own work. The chronicle of Bethune relates that the streets were so obstructed with fugitives and carts, and the night was so dark, that Louis and his knights had great difficulty in making their way to the gates.

Epidemics, another sign of divine wrath, ran an unobstructed course among the anemic and squalid people in the undrained and unpaved cities, where houses were nothing more than leaky hovels, and streets, veritable sewers. At Paris, ' ' the most beautiful of cities, ' ' the citizens buried their dead in the meadow of Champeaux, the site of the present market. The cemetery was not closed. Pedestrians crossed it and markets were held there. In rainy seasons this charnel-house became a nauseous bog. It was only in 1187 that Philip Augustus built a stone wall around it, and then out of respect for the dead, rather than for the public health.

Two years later the king and the Parisians determined to make an attempt at paving, but only on the main streets which led to the city gates. The rest remained a slough, a choice breeding-place for those contagious diseases against which the middle ages knew no preventive or curative measures. Men submitted to them as to a chastisement from on high, a divine fire, ignis sacer, ignis infernalis. For the sick, those who burned, ardentes, the remedies always remained the same: processions, public prayers, expositions [of relics] in the churches, and supplications to some healing saint, Saint Firman or Saint Antony. At Paris, persons ill of the plague were brought to Sainte-Genevieve or to Notre-Dame, without fear of aggravating the epidemic. Besides contagions, there was leprosy, the perennial scourge of all France, a respecter of neither rich nor poor. And often, in addition to all these ills, as though to complete the work of war and pest, famine, most destructive of all, held sway.

It takes some effort of imagination to picture the economic condition of medieval France, especially the agricultural conditions, so different from those of to-day. The extensive forests and moors, the limited arable land, the rudimentary agricultural methods, the incessant compromising and annihilating of the peasants' efforts by war, or by the hard feudal laws of the chase, all explain why land yielded small returns, and why the necessary balance between production and population did not exist, except in years of abundance. The inadequacy of traffic increased that of production. Since each district was isolated, and currency was scarce, nobles and clerics depended very largely upon incomes in kind from their tenants; and these incomes, by way of caution, they stored in their granaries and cellars. The subjects, the agriculturists, lived on what remained after the deduction of the seigniors' portion. In good years the surplus of grain and wine might be sold, but the poor and insecure roads, and the enormous tolls and duties laid on goods by the seigniors, shackled trade. Markets were poorly provisioned; produce, half of which nowadays enters into trade, was then almost entirely consumed at home, and towns were correspondingly less populous and trade less active. And thus it came about that in normal years the absence of a demand and the infrequency of transactions depreciated prices; whereas, in years of want, the supply found itself suddenly far beneath the demand and prices rose to frightful figures. There was some improvement over the eleventh century, in which forty-eight famine years are recorded; yet, in the reign of Philip Augustus, eleven famines occurred. Men died of hunger, on an average, one year in every four. The famine of 1195, following in the wake of the hurricane which had destroyed the crops of 1194, was heartrending, because it lasted four years. Grain, wine, oil, and salt reached extraordinary prices. People ate grape-skins in place of bread and even dead animals and roots.

On Easter-day, 1195, Alix, the lady of Rumilly (a seigniory of the diocese of Troyes), was surprised to see the parochial mass very poorly attended. The cure informed her that most of the parishioners were busy hunting roots in the fields to appease their hunger. Touched by pity, Alix caused provisions to be distributed, and commanded that forever after one-third of the tithes, which belonged to her, should be remitted to the parishioners on Easter-day; and, besides, each of them was to be given a five-pound loaf of bread. But what could charity accomplish in the face of so enormous a disaster! " In 1197 a countless throng of persons died of hunger " (innumeri fame perempti sunt), says the chronicle of Reims. Such expressions as multi fame perierunt, moriuntur fame millia millium, appear again and again in the histories, and they must be taken literally.

Hunger in this period meant not only privation, misery, and suffering ; it meant death. To understand to what extent it decimated whole provinces of France, one should consider what happens even nowadays in certain districts of South Africa, Australia, and Hindustan. Even the rich and powerful suffered; the chronicler of Liege states that they were reduced to eating carrion. And he adds: " As for the poor, they died of hunger (multitudo pauperum moritur). They fell dead in the streets. We could see them lying at our church doors at early morning, moaning, dying, and begging for the alms which were distributed at the first hour." But the monks themselves were in want. " In that year [1197] the wheat gave out. From Epiphany to August we had to spend more than a hundred marks for bread. We had neither wine nor beer. Fifteen days before harvest we were still eating rye bread."

The cries of the starving made themselves heard far beyond the boundaries, in Italy, and even in Rome. Pope Innocent III, in a letter to the bishop of Paris, naturally attributes this scourge to the wrath of God, flagellum Dei. It is a punishment for the sin which Philip Augustus, king of France, committed in putting aside his legitimate wife, Ingeborg of Denmark.

It is the misfortune of the times that each of these calamities engendered others. Famine produced brigandage. " To escape death by starvation, many persons became robbers and were hanged," says the chronicler of Anchin. He misstates the facts: the greater part of the brigands lived on their thefts with impunity.

Imagine a social state in which security for property and person does not exist; no police, and little justice, especially outside of the larger cities; each one defends his purse and his life as best he can.

Robbers operate in broad day and on all roads, by preference attacking sanctuaries where gold and precious objects abound. The chronicler of Saint-Martial of Limoges, Bernard Itier, notes the frequent disappearance of silver vases, golden chalices, and manuscripts ornamented with jewels. A sneak-thief carried away the famous gold reliquary given by Charlemagne to the chapter of Saint-Julien de Brioude ; he was never again seen, and the canons could do nothing but launch a terrible litany of anathemas against him :

" May he be accursed living and dying, eating and drinking, standing and sitting! Be he accursed in the fields, the forests, the meadows, the pastures, the mountains, the valleys, the villages, the cities! May his life be short, and his goods pillaged by strangers! May an incurable palsy fall upon his eyes, his brow, his beard, his throat, his tongue, his lips, his neck, his breast, his lungs, his ears, his nostrils, his shoulders, his arms, etc.! May he be like a thirsty hind, tracked by his enemies! May his children be orphaned and his wife widowed and crazed ! "

A poor defence this excommunication of malefactors! As though. France had not enough of her own, England sent her audacious thieves in addition. In 1218, an islander from heyond the Channel attempted to appropriate the silver vessels and candelabra of Notre-Dame in Paris. After having remained concealed for several days in the top of the nave, then filled with timber-work, he came down at night by means of a rope with loops to seize the objects he coveted. Unhappily for him, the lighted candles set fire to the silk hangings arranged for the feast of the Assumption ; a blaze flared up, people gathered, and the thief was taken.

Some of the more dangerous brigands moved about in armed bands, plundering travelers and merchants, burning farmsteads, and even attacking small villages. In 1206, a group of crusaders, returning from Constantinople, were traveling toward Picardy, their native land. They had escaped the Lombards, and the Alpine mountaineers; but at Saint-Rambert, near Belley, they were assailed by a band of brigands. Their baggage was plundered; and, as they carried with them precious relics, they were eager to redeem themselves. Some leagues further on, at Ambrenay, there came another band and another ransom. And, without doubt, it was the same for a great part of the journey.

These parasites of the highway were, for the most part, mercenary soldiers, Aragonese, Navarrese, Basques, Brabanters, and Germans — desperadoes come to enter the service of kings and princes. When their pay stopped, they robbed and murdered on their own account. These routiers or cottereaux of Philip Augustus, who reappear in the " grand companies " of Charles V, and the ecorcheurs of Charles ^ VII, are an open sore of society, a necessary evil, an instrument of war which all the world decries, yet which no one can do without. In vain the church excommunicates these brigands and fulminates against those who employ them. They supply the lack of feudal forces, therefore are they seen in all campaigns and in all wars. Their chiefs rendered such important services that kings made them great personages, well paid and provided with titles and fiefs. Three of the bandits thus honored remain celebrated: Mercadier, the friend and general-in-ehief of Richard the Lion-Hearted ; Cadoc, the ally of Philip Augustus ; and Fulc de Breaute, the agent of John Lackland.

The ravages of these paid or unpaid hordes in hostile, and even in friendly territory, were simply frightful. In northern France the Capetians, the Plantagenets, and certain counts of Flanders and Champagne were able to restrain the scourge and combat it with success, — but what could be done beyond the Loire in Berry, Auvergne, Poitou, Gascony, Languedoc, and Provence, regions more'diflficult of defense and surveillance ? There the highwayman flourished ; fires, murders, and rape everywhere marked his passage; especially did he prey on religious houses and churches ; he seemed to hate the priest and to feel an obligation to outrage everything which pertained to religion and to worship. This was because the clerics had more that was worth taking, and because by excommunication they aroused the people against him. The brigands of Berry burned churches at pleasure and took captive whole troops of priests and monks. " They called them chantres in derision, ' ' says Rigord, ' ' and said to them, ' Come, chanters, intone your^ psalms, ' and at the same instant they showered on them blows with their fists and with rods. Beaten thus, some died ; others escaped the torment of a long imprisonment only by paying ransom. These demons trampled the sacred Host under foot, and made garments for their concubines out of the altar-cloths." The prior of Vigeois tells us that a chief of one of these bands sold monks at eighteen sous a head. Must we think that the chroniclers exaggerate? In 1204, a letter of Innocent III formally accuses an archbishop of Bordeaux of living surrounded by brigands, and^ of governing his province through terror of them ; he told his retainers what blows to strike and participated in the profits.

Some years later the Albigensian war broke out. Naturally leaning toward heresy, the brigands rushed to Languedoc; without their aid the counts of Toulouse and Foix would never have been able to resist the chevaliers of Simon de Montfort for so long a time. Masters of the abbey at Moissac, some brigands amused themselves the whole day by ringing the bells. In the cathedral of Sainte-Marie at Oloron, in Beam, they profaned the Host, decked themselves in priestly fineries, and pretended to sing the mass. These pleasantries were accompanied by their usual misdeeds ; burning churches, and ransoming or tormenting priests. The catholic chronicler, Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, is indignant at the extent of this sacrilege. Yet the crusaders had no right to reproach their foes : Simon de Montfort also hired brigands, among others the Spaniard, Martin Algais, who, to be sure, deserted him and went over to the count of Toulouse. The catholics having captured Algais in 1212, first dragged him at a horse's tail, and then hanged him. In a letter directed to the king of Aragon, the inhabitants of Toulouse complained of the extreme severity of the bishops :

" They exeommunieate us because we use brigands ; yet they themselves employ them. Do they not admit to their friendship and board those who killed the abbot of Eaunes, and mutilated the religious of Bolbonne?"

It is instructive to hear the frightened accents in which an abbot of Sainte-Genevieve recounts to his monks the vicissitudes of a journey from Paris to Toulouse — *' the length of the way, the danger in crossing streams, the danger from thieves, the danger from bandits, Aragonese and Basque." He made his way across ruined and deserted plains, having before his eyes only the signs of desolation, most mournful sights; villages in ashes, houses in ruins, church walls halfcrumbled, everything destroyed to the very ground, and human habitations become the lairs of wild beasts. " I conjure you, my brethren, ' ' says the traveler in closing, ' ' to pray to God and the Blessed Virgin for me. If They judge me capable of further service to our church, may They show me the grace of helping me back, safe and sound, to Paris."

Beyond the Rhone, in the unhappy province of Aries, nominally governed by the emperor of Germany, brigandage and feudal anarchy were endemic. Pope Celestine III enumerated for Archbishop Imbert the various categories of malefactors whom he ought to punish:

" Deal rigorously with those who despoil the shipwrecked or annoy travelers and merchants; excommunicate those who dare to establish new tolls. I know that your province is the prey of Aragonese, Brabanters, and other bands of strangers; smite thevp., but smite also those who hire these brigands and receive them into their chateaux and villages."

The church exerted herself but, limited to spiritual arms, accomplished nothing. Sometimes, when the deeds of the brigands became altogether intolerable, seigniors and kings permitted a few executions. One day Richard the Lion-Hearted surrounded a band of Gascons near Aixe, in Limousin, and inflicted various kinds of punishments on them: he drowned some in the Vienne, cut the throats of others, and put out the eyes of eighty of them. The brigands of Berry, being poorly paid by Philip Augustus, revolted and devastated the country. The king induced them to come to Bourges under the pretext of giving them their pay. But, once in the city, the gates were closed, and the king's men-at-arms attacked, disarmed, and deprived them of all the money they had stolen. But generally the crimes of highwaymen went unpunished, the nobles being their accomplices, or not daring to act against them. The evil steadily grew. Bands of plunderers on the march were augmented by the addition of all disreputable and outlawed characters: vagabonds, fugitive monks, unfrocked priests, and nuns escaping from the cloister.