yet it is a significant anecdote: evidently the Duke of Burgundy was looked upon as a common bandit.
Anjou. The county of Anjou presents us with a case intermediary between Flanders which was strong, and already partly centralised, and that of Burgundy which was split up and in a state of disintegration.
It has already been related in detail how, from the middle of the eleventh century onwards, the Count was engaged in the interior of his state in combating a crowd of turbulent barons strongly ensconced in their castles[1]. But in spite of this temporary weakening of the count's authority, the Angevin lands form even in the second half of the eleventh century a coherent whole of which the count is the effective head. Controlling the episcopal see of Angers which could not be filled up without his consent, and finding commonly in the Bishop a devoted and active helper ready to brave Archbishops, Legates, Councils and Popes at his side, secure of the loyalty the greater number of the secular clergy, master of the chief abbeys also, besides being, as it would seem, rich in lands and revenues, the count, in spite of everything, remains an imposing figure. Under Fulk Rechin (1067-1109), when the spirit of independence among the lesser Angevin fief holders was at its height, the great lords of the county, such as those of Thouarcé or Trèves, were to be found contending for the offices about the count's court which was organised, apparently, on the model of the royal court, in a regular fashion, with a seneschal, a constable and a chaplain (who was also charged with the work of the chancery), chamberlains, cellarers, etc.
Nothing, however, more plainly shews the space which the Counts of Anjou filled in the minds of contemporaries than the considerable body of literature which, throughout the eleventh century and up to the middle of the twelfth gathered round them, by means of which we have come to know them better, perhaps, than even most of their contemporaries did. Few figures, for instance, are stranger or more characteristic of the time than that of Fulk Nerra, whose long reign (987-1040) corresponds with the most glorious part of the formative period of the county. He appears before us as a man ardent and fierce of mood, giving free course to his ambition and cupidity, and governed by a passion for war, then suddenly checking himself at the thought of eternal retribution, and trying by some gift or some penance to obtain pardon from God or the Saints whom his violence must needs have offended. One charter shews him to us too much engrossed in warfare to give a thought to ecclesiastical affairs; in another there is an allusion to his fierce, hasty temper incapable of bearing any contradiction. Does he find himself hampered by a rival? He will not shew himself scrupulous in the choice of means of getting rid of him. In 1025 he lured the Count of Maine, Herbert Wake-dog
- ↑ See supra, p. 118 sq.
