Physical weakness has always been the vulnerable point of the sacred caste, for priests have rarely been warriors, and faith has seldom been so profound as to guarantee ecclesiastics against attack. This difficulty was marked in the early Middle Ages, when, although disintegration so far prevailed as to threaten the very tradition of centralized power, a strong leaven of the ancient materialism remained.
In the ninth century the trend toward decentralization was resistless. Although several of the descendants of Charlemagne were men of ability and energy, the defence was so superior to the attack that they could not coerce their vassals, and their domains melted away into independent sovereignties until the crown became elective, and the monarchy almost a tradition. During the tenth century it seems possible that the regal authority might have been obliterated, even to the last trace, had it not been for the Church, which was in sore need of a champion. The priesthood cared nothing for the legitimate line; what they sought was a protector, and accordingly they chose, not the descendant of Charlemagne, but him who, in the words of the Archbishop of Rheims, was "distinguished by his wisdom and who found support in the greatness of his soul." Hugh Capet succeeded Louis V. because he was the best chief of police in France.
From such an alliance, between the priest and the soldier, has always sprung the dogma of the divine right of kings. In mediaeval Europe, enchantment was a chief element of the royal power. The monarch was anointed with a magic oil, girt with a sacred sword, given a supernatural banner, and endowed with the gift of miracles. His touch healed disease. In return for these gifts, he fought the battles of the Church, whose property was the natural prey of a predatory baronage. Every diocese and every abbey was embroiled in endless local wars, which lasted from generation to generation, and sometimes from century to century. A good example was the interminable feud between the Abbey of Vézelay and the Counts of Nevers, and a letter of a papal legate named Conon, which described one of the countless raids, gives an idea of the ferocity of the attack.
- "The men of the Count of Nevers have burst open the doors of the cloister, have thrown stones on the reliquaries which contain the bodies of Saint Lazanis, of Saint Martha, of Saint Andocious, and of Saint Pontianus; they have not even respected the crucifix in which was preserved a morsel of the true cross, they have beaten the monks, they have driven them out with stones, and having taken one of them, they have treated him in an infamous manner." (1)
Until the stimulus given by the crusades was felt, subinfeudation went on uninterruptedly; the Capetians were as unable to stem the current as the Carlovingians before them, so that, under Philip I., the royal domain had become almost as much dismembered as the kingdom of Lothaire a century earlier. Consolidation began after the council of Clermont, and Suger's Life of Louis the Fat is the story of the last years of the partisan warfare between the crown and the petty nobility which had been going on since the time of Hugh Capet.
During this long period the kings had fought a losing battle, and without the material resources of the Church would have been overpowered. Even as it was they failed to hold their own, and yet the wealth of the clergy was relatively enormous. The single abbey of Saint Denis was said to have controlled ten thousand men, and though this may be an exaggeration, the corporation was organized on a gigantic scale.
Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries it held in France alone three cities, upwards of seventy-four villages, twenty-nine manors attached to these possessions, over a hundred parishes, and a great many chapels bringing in valuable rentals, beside numerous vineyards, mills and fields, with fifteen forests of the first class. (2)
Suger's description of the country at the beginning of the twelfth century is highly dramatic. Every strong position, like a hill or a forest, was a baron's hold, from whence he rode to plunder and torment the people. One of the most terrible of these robbers was Hugh du Puiset, a man whom the Abbot of Saint Denis calls a ruffian, the issue of a long line of ruffians. To the churchman, Hugh was the incarnation of evil. He oppressed the clergy, and though hated by all, few dared oppose him. At last he attacked Adèle, Countess of Chartres, daughter of William the Conqueror, who went with her son Tybalt to seek redress from the king. Louis did not relish the campaign, and the monk described how the lady taunted him with the defeat his father had suffered from the father of Hugh, who pursued him to Orleans, captured a hundred of his knights, and cast his bishops into dungeons.
Afterward, an assembly was held at Melun to consider the situation, and there a concourse of prelates, clerks, and monks "threw themselves at the king's feet and implored him, to his great embarrassment, to repress this most greedy robber Hugh, who, more rapacious than a wolf, devoured their lands." (3)
Certainly the priests had cause for alarm, for the venerable Archbishop of Chartres, who was present, had been captured, loaded with irons, and long left to languish in prison.
Three times this baron was defeated, but even when a prisoner, his family connection was so powerful he was permitted to escape. At last he died like a wolf, fighting to the last, having impaled the Seneschal of France on his spear.
Even singly, such men were almost a match for both Church and Crown; but when joined in a league, especially if allied to one of the great feudatories, such as the Duke of Normandy, they felt sure of victory. One day, when Eudes, Count of Corbeil, to join this very Hugh, he put aside his armour-bearer who was attending him, and said to his wife: "Pray, noble countess, bring the glittering sword to the noble count, since he who takes it from you as a count, shall to-day return it as a king." (4)
The immediate effect of the crusades was to carry numbers of these petty princes to Palestine, where they were often killed or ruined. As their power of resistance weakened, the crown gained, and Louis the Fat reconquered the domain. His active life began in 1097, the year of the invasion of Palestine, and his absorption of the lordship of Montlhéri is a good illustration of his success.
The family of Rochefort-Montlhéri owned several of the strongest donjons near Paris, and was divided into two branches, the one represented by Guy Trousseau, Lord of Montlhéri, the other by Guy the Red, Lord of Rochefort. Guy Trousseau's father was named Milo, and all three went to Syria, where Milo was killed, and his son disgraced himself. Suger spoke of him with extreme disdain:—
- "Guy Trousseau, son of Milo of Montlhéri, a restless man and a disturber of the kingdom, returned home from a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, broken down by the anxiety of a long journey and by the vexation of many troubles. And . . . [being] panic stricken at Antioch at the approach of Corboran, and escaping down from a wall [he] . . . abandoned the army of God and fled destitute of everything." (5)
Returning a ruined man, he married his daughter to the illegitimate son of Philip, a half-brother of Louis, a child of twelve; and as his guardians, the king and prince got possession of the castle. This castle was almost at the gates of Paris, and a standing menace to the communications of the kingdom: therefore their delight was great. "They rejoiced as though they had taken a straw from their eyes, or as though they had burst the barrier which imprisoned them." (6) And the old king said to his son: "Guard well the tower, Louis, which has aged me with chagrin, and through whose treachery and wicked fraud I have never known peace and quiet."(7)
Yet the destruction of the local nobility in Syria was the least important part of the social revolution wrought by the crusades, for though the power of the barons might have thus been temporarily broken, they could never have been reduced to impotence unless wealth had grown equal to organizing an overwhelming attack. The accumulation of wealth followed the opening of the Eastern trade, and its first effect was to cause the incorporation of the communes.
Prior to 1095 but one town is known to have been chartered, Saint Quentin, the capital of Vermandois, about 1080,(8) but after the opening of the Syrian ports the whole complexion of society changed. Noyon was chartered in 1108, Laon in 1111, Amiens in 1113, and then free boroughs sprang up on every side.
For want of the mariner's compass, commerce could not pass north by the Straits of Gibraltar. Merchandise had therefore to go by land, and exchanges between the north and south of Europe centred in the County of Champagne, whose fairs became the great market of the thirteenth century.
The earliest dated document relating to these fairs is a deed drawn in 1114 by Hugh, Count of Troyes, by which he conveyed certain revenues derived from them to the Abbey of Montier-en-Der. Fifty years later, such mentions had grown frequent, and by the year 1200 the fairs had attained their full development.(9)
Weaving had been an industry in Flanders under the Romans, and in the time of Charlemagne the cloth of the Low Countries had been famous; but in the twelfth century the manufacture spread into the adjoining provinces of France, and woollen became the most valuable European export. The fleeces were brought chiefly from England, the weaving was done on the Continent, and one of the sources of the Florentine wealth was the dressing and dyeing of these fabrics to prepare them for the Asiatic market.
For mutual defence, the industrial towns of the north formed a league called the Hanse of London, because London was the seat of the chief countinghouse. This league at first included only seventeen cities, with Ypres and Bruges at the head, but the association afterward increased to fifty or sixty, stretching as far west as Le Mans, as far south as the Burgundian frontier, and as far east as Liège. Exclusive of the royal domain, which was well consolidated under Philip Augustus, the French portion of this region substantially comprised the counties of Blois, Vermandois, Anjou, Champagne, and the Duchy of Normandy. This district, which has ever since formed the core of France, became centralized at Paris between the beginning of the reign of Philip Augustus in 1180 and the reign of Philip the Fair a century later, and there can be little doubt that this centralization was the effect of the accumulation of capital, which created a permanent police.
The merchants of all the cities of the league bound themselves to trade exclusively at the fairs of Champagne, and, to prosper, the first obstacle they had to overcome was the difficulty and cost of transportation. Not only were the roads unsafe, because of the strength of the castles in which the predatory nobility lived, but the multiplicity of jurisdictions added to taxes. As late as the end of the thirteenth century, a convention was made between fifteen of the more important Italian cities, such as Florence, Genoa, Venice, and Milan, and Otho of Burgundy, by which, in consideration of protection upon the roads, tolls were to be paid at Gevry, Dôlé, Augerans, Salins, Chalamont, and Pontarlier. When six imposts were levied for crossing a single duchy, the cost of importing the cheaper goods must have been prohibitory.
The Italian caravans reached Champagne ordinarily by two routes: one by some Alpine pass to Geneva, and then through Burgundy; the other by water to Marseilles or Aigues-Mortes, up the Rhone to Lyons, and north, substantially as before. The towns of Provins, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube, and Lagny-sur-Marne lie about midway between Bruges and Ypres on the one side, and Lyons and Geneva on the other, and it was at these cities that exchanges centralized, until the introduction of the mariner's compass caused traffic to go by the ocean, and made Antwerp the monied metropolis.
The market was, in reality, open continuously, for six fairs were held, each six weeks long, and the trade was so lucrative that places which, in 1100, had been petty villages, in 1200 had wealth enough to build those magnificent cathedrals which are still wonders of the world.
The communal movement had nothing about it necessarily either liberal or democratic. The incorporated borough was merely an instrument of trade, and at a certain moment became practically independent, because for a short period traders organized locally, before they could amalgamate into centralized communities with a revenue sufficient to pay a police capable of coercing individuals.
What the merchant wanted was protection for trade, and, provided he had it, the form in which it came was immaterial. Where the feudal government was strong, communes did not exist: Paris never had a charter. Conversely, where the government was weak, communes grew up, because traders combined for mutual protection, and therefore the communes reached perfection in ecclesiastical capitals.
As a whole, the secular nobility rather favoured the incorporated towns, because they could sell to them their services as policemen, and could join with them in plundering the Church; (10) on their side the tradesmen were always ready to commute personal military service into a tax, and thus both sides benefited. To the Church, on the contrary, the rise of the mercantile class was pure loss, not only because it caused their vassals to seek better protection than ecclesiastics could give, but because the propagation of the materialistic mind bred heresy. The clergy had no police to sell, and the townsmen had, therefore, either to do the work themselves or hire a secular noble. In the one case they became substantially independent; in the other they transferred their allegiance to a stranger. In any event, a new fief was carved out of an ecclesiastical lordship, and such accessions steadily built up the royal domain.
From the outset, the sacred class seems to have been conscious of its danger, and some of the most ferocious wars of the Middle Ages were those waged upon ecclesiastical serfs who tried to organize for self-defence. In one of his books Luchaire has told, at length, the story of the massacre of the peasantry of the Laonnais by a soldier whom the chapter of Laon elected bishop for the purpose,(11) and this was but a single case out of hundreds. Hardly a bishop or an abbot lived at peace with his vassals, and, as the clergy were the natural prey of the secular nobility, the barons often sided with the populace, and used the burghers as an excuse for private war. A speech made by one of the Counts of Nevers, during a rising of the inhabitants of Vézelay, gives a good idea of the intrigues which kept the prelates in perpetual misery.
- "O very illustrious men, celebrated for great wisdom, valiant by your strength and rich by the riches you have acquired by your own merit, I am deeply afflicted at the miserable condition to which you are reduced. Apparently the possessors of much, in reality you are masters of nothing; and more than this, you do not enjoy any portion of your natural liberty. . . . If I think on these things I am greatly astonished, and ask myself what has become of, or rather to what depth of cowardice has fallen within you, that vigour formerly so renowned, when you put to death your Lord, the abbot Artaud."
The count then dwelt upon the harshness of the living abbot, and ended thus:—
- "Separate from this man, and bind yourselves to me by a mutual agreement: if you consent, I engage myself to free you from all exactions, from all illegal rentals, and to defend you from the evils which are ready to fall upon you." (12)
Wherever developed, the mercantile mind had always the same characteristic: it was unimaginative, and, being unimaginative, it doubted the utility of magic. Accordingly, all commercial communities have rebelled against paying for miracles, and it was the spread of a scepticism already well developed in the thirteenth century among the manufacturing towns, which caused the Reformation of the sixteenth. At Saint-Riquier the monks carried the relics of Saint Vigor each year in procession. In 1264 the burghers took a dead cat and put it in a shrine, while in another casket they placed a horse-bone, to do service as the arm of Saint Vigor. When the procession reached a certain spot, the reliquaries were set down, and a mock fight began between two mummers. Then the bearers cried out, "Old Saint Riquier, you shall go no further unless you reconcile these enemies," whereupon the combatants fell into each other's arms, and all cried out that Saint Riquier had wrought a miracle.
Afterward they built a chapel and oratory, with an altar draped with cloth of gold, and deposited the dead cat and the horse-bone; and simple pilgrims, ignorant of the sacrilege, stopped to worship the relics, the mayor and council aiding and abetting the crime, "to the detriment of the whole Church universal" (13)
The clergy retaliated with frightful ferocity. As heresy followed in the wake of trade, the Inquisition followed in the wake of heresy, and the beginning of the thirteenth century witnessed simultaneously the prosperity of the mercantile class and the organization of the Holy Office.
Jacques de Vitry breathed the ecclesiastical spirit. One of the most famous preachers of his age, he rose from a simple monk to be Cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, legate in France, and Patriarch of Jerusalem. He led a crusade against the Albigenses, was present at the siege of Damietta, and died at Rome in 1240. His sermons burn with his hatred of the bourgeoisie: "That detestable race of men . . . hurrying to meet its fate, which none or few could escape," all of whom "were making haste toward hell. . . . But above all other evils of these Babylonish cities, there is one which is the worst, for hardly is there a community to be found in which there are not abettors, receivers, defenders of, or believers in, heretics." (14)
The basis of the secular society of the early Middle Ages was individual physical force. Every layman, noble or serf, owed military service, and when a borough was incorporated, it took its place in the feudal hierarchy, like any other vassal. With the spread of the mercantile type, however, a change began—the transmutation of physical force into money—and this process went on until individual strength or courage ceased to have importance.
As soldiers the burgesses never excelled; citizen troops have seldom been formidable, and those of the communes rarely withstood the first onset of the enemy. The tradesmen themselves recognized their own limitations, and in 1317 the deputies of the cities met at Paris and requested the government to undertake the administration of the local militia.
Though unwarlike, the townsmen were wealthy, and, in the reign of Philip Augustus, the same cause which led to the consolidation of the kingdom, brought about, as Luchaire has pointed out, "a radical modification of the military and financial organization of the monarchy;" the substitution by the privileged corporations of money payments for personal service. (15)
Thus, from the time when the economic type had multiplied sufficiently to hire a police, the strength of the State came to depend on its revenue, and financiers grew to be the controlling element of civilization. Before the crusades, the high offices of the kingdom of France, such as the office of the seneschal, were not only held by nobles, but tended to become hereditary in certain warlike families. After the rise of the Eastern trade the royal council was captured by the bourgeoisie. Jacques Cœur is a striking specimen of the class which ruled in the fifteenth century. Of this class the lawyers were the spokesmen, and men like Flotte and Nogaret, the chancellors of Philip the Fair, expressed the notion of centralization as perfectly as the jurists of ancient Rome. No one has understood the movement better than Luchaire. He has pointed out, in his work on French institutions, that from the beginning of the reign of Saint Louis (1226) the Privy Council steadily gained in consequence.(16) The permanent civil service, of which it was the core, served as a school for judges, clerks, seneschals, and all judicial and executive officers. At first the administration retained a strong clerical tinge, probably because a generation elapsed before laymen could be equally well trained for the work, but after the accession of Philip the Fair, toward the end of the century, the laymen decisively predominated, and when they predominated, the plunder of the Church began.
Abstract justice is, of course, impossible. Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation. When the imagination is vivid and police weak, emotional or ecclesiastical law prevails. As competition sharpens, and the movement of society accelerates, religious ritual is supplanted by civil codes for the enforcement of contracts and the protection of the creditor class.
The more society consolidates the more legislation is controlled by the wealthy, and at length the representatives of the monied class acquire that absolute power once wielded by the Roman proconsul, and now exercised by the modern magistrate.
- "The two great figures of Saint Louis and of Philip the Fair which dominate the third period are profoundly unlike. But considering the facts as a whole . . . [they] have but moderately influenced the direction of the communal development. With the bailiffs and Parliament the monarchical machine is in possession of its essential works; it operates and will stop no more. In vain the king shall essay to arrest its march, or to direct it in another course: the innumerable army of agents of the crown does not cease for a moment to destroy rival jurisdictions, to suppress embarrassing powers, to replace everywhere private jurisdictions by the single authority of the sovereign.
- "To the infinite diversity of local liberties its will is to substitute regularity of institutions; political and administrative centralization." (17)
As Luchaire has elsewhere observed, the current everwhere "substituted, in the paths of administration, justice, and finance, the lay and burgher for the ecclesiastical and noble element." In other words, the economic type steadily gained ground, and the process went on until the Revolution. Saint Simon never forgave Louis XIV. for surrounding himself with men of mean birth, dependent on his will.
- "The Duke of Beauvilliers was the single example in the whole course of his reign, as has been remarked in speaking of this duke, the only nobleman who was admitted into his council between the death of Cardinal Mazarin and his own; that is to say, during fifty-four years." (18)
From the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century was an interval of almost unparalleled commercial prosperity—a prosperity which is sufficiently proved by the sumptuous quality of the architecture of the time. Unquestionably the most magnificent buildings of modern Europe date from this period, and this prosperity was not limited to any country, but extended from Cairo to London. Such an expansion of trade would have been impossible without a corresponding expansion of the currency, and as no new mines were discovered, recourse was had to paper. By the year 1200 bills of exchange had been introduced,(19) and in order to give the bill of exchange its greatest circulating power, a system of banking was created which operated as a universal clearing house, and by means of which these bills were balanced against each other.
In the thirteenth century, Florence, Genoa, and Venice were the chief monied centres. In these cities the purchase and sale of commercial paper was, at the outset, monopolized by a body of money-changers, who, in Venice at least, seem to have been controlled by the council of merchants, and who probably were not always in the best credit. At all events, they were required in 1318 to make a deposit of £3,000 as security for their customers, and afterward the amount was increased.(20) Possibly some such system of deposits may have originally formed the capital of the Bank of Venice, but everything relating to the organization of the mediæval banks is obscure. All that seems certain is, that business was conducted by establishments of this character long before the date of any records which now remain. Amidst the multiplicity of mediæval jurisdictions, not only did the currency become involved in inextricable confusion, but it generally was debased through abrasion and clipping. Before clearings could be conveniently made, therefore, a coinage of recognized value had to be provided, and this the banks undertook to supply by their system of deposits. They received coin fresh from the mints, for which they gave credits, and these credits or notes were negotiable, and were always to be bought in the market. The deposits themselves were seldom withdrawn, as they bore a premium over common currency, which they lost when put in circulation, and they were accordingly only transferred on the books of the corporations, to correspond with the sales of the notes which represented them. Thus merchants from all parts of Europe and the Levant could draw on Venice or Genoa, and have their balances settled by transfers of deposits at the banks, without the intervention of coin. A calculation has been made that, by this means, the effective power of the currency was multiplied tenfold. Of all these institutions, the corporations of Genoa and Venice were the most famous. The Bank of Saint George, at Genoa, was formally organized in 1407, but it undoubtedly had conducted business from the beginning of the twelfth century;(21) next to nothing is known of the development at Venice. Probably, however, Florence was more purely a monied centre than either Venice or Genoa, and no money-lenders of the Middle Ages ever equalled the great Florentine banking families. Most of the important commercial centres came to have institutions of the kind.
The introduction of credit had the same effect as a large addition to the stock of bullion, and, as gold and silver grew more plentiful, their relative value fell, and a general reform of the currency took place. Venice began the movement with the grosso, it spread through Italy and into France, and the coin of Saint Louis was long considered as perfect money.
With the expansion of the currency went a rise in prices, all producers grew rich, and, for more than two generations, the strain of competition was so relaxed that the different classes of the population preyed upon each other less savagely than they are wont to do in less happy times.
Meanwhile no considerable additions were made to the volume of the precious metals, and, as the bulk of commerce swelled, the capacity of the new system of credit became exhausted, and contraction set in. The first symptom of disorder seems to have been a rise in the purchasing power of both the precious metals, but particularly of gold, which rose in its ratio to silver from about one to nine and a half, to one to twelve.(22) At the same time the value of commodities, even when measured in silver, appears to have fallen sharply.(23) The consequence of this fall was a corresponding addition to the burden of debt, and a very general insolvency. The communes had been large borrowers, and their straits were deplorable. Luchaire has described their condition as shown "in the municipal accounts addressed by the communes to the government." (24) Everywhere there was a deficit, almost everywhere ruin. Amiens, Soissons, Roye, Saint Quentin, and Rouen were all in difficulty with their loans, but Noyon was perhaps the worst of all. In 1278 Noyon owed 16,000 pounds which it was unable to pay. After a suspension for fourteen years the king issued an ordinance regulating liquidation; a part of the claims had to be cancelled, and the balance collected by a levy on private property. The bankruptcy was complete.
The royal government, equally hardly pressed, was unable to meet its obligations in the standard coin, and resorted to debasement. Under Saint Louis the mark of silver yielded but 2 pounds 15 sous 6 pence; in 1306 the same weight of metal was cut into 8 pounds 10 sous. The pressure upon the population was terrible, and led to terrible results—the beginning of the spoliation of the emotionalists.
Perhaps the combination of the two great forces of the age, of the soldier and the monk, was the supreme effort of the emotional mind. What a hold the dazzling dream of omnipotence, through the possession of the Sepulchre, had upon the twelfth century, can be measured by the gifts showered upon the crusading orders, for they represented a prodigious sacrifice.
At Paris the Temple had a capital city over against the capital of the king. Within a walled enclosure of sixty thousand square metres, stood the conventual buildings and a gigantic donjon of such perfect masonry that it never needed other repairs than the patching of its roof. Beyond the walls the domain extended to the Seine, a property which, even in 1300, had an almost incalculable value.
On every Eastern battle-field, and at every assault and siege, the knights had fought with that fiery courage which has made their name a proverb down to the present day. In 1265, at Safed, three hundred had been butchered upon the ramparts in cold blood, rather than renounce their faith. At Acre, whose loss sealed the fate of Palestine, they held the keep at all odds until the donjon fell, burying Christians and Moslems in a common grave. But skill and valour avail nothing against nature. Step by step the Templars had been driven back, until Tortosa surrendered in 1291. Then the Holy Land was closed, the enthusiasm which had generated the order had passed away, and, meanwhile, economic competition had bred a new race at home, to which monks were a predestined prey.
In 1285, as the Latin kingdom in Syria was tottering towards its fall, Philip the Fair was crowned. Subtle, sceptical, treacherous, and cruel, few kings have left behind them a more sombre memory, yet he was the incarnation of the economic spirit in its conflict with the Church. Nine years later Benedetto Gaetani was elected pope: a man as completely the creation of the social revolution of the thirteenth century as Philip himself. Trained at Bologna and Paris, a jurist rather than a priest, his faith in dogma was so scanty that his belief in the immortality of the soul has been questioned. A thorough worldling, greedy, ambitious, and unscrupulous, he was suspected of having murdered his predecessor, Celestin V.
When Boniface came to the throne, the Church is supposed to have owned about one-third of the soil of Europe, and on this property the governments had no means of enforcing regular taxation. Toward the close of the thirteenth century the fall of prices increased the weight of debt, while it diminished the power of the population to pay. On the other hand, as the system of administration became more complex, the cost of government augmented, and at last the burden became more than the laity could endure. Both England and France had a permanent deficit, and Edward and Philip alike turned toward the clergy as the only source of supply. Both kings met with opposition, but the explosion came in France, where Clairvaux, the most intractable of convents, appealed to Rome.
Boniface had been elected by a coalition ' between the Colonna and the Orsini factions, but after his coronation he turned upon the Colonnas, who, in revenge, plundered his treasure. A struggle followed, which ended fatally to the pope; but at first he had the advantage, sacked their city of Praeneste, and forced them to fly to France. On the brink of this war, Boniface was in no condition to rouse so dangerous an adversary as Philip, and, in answer to Clairvaux's appeal, he confined himself to excommunicating the prince who should tax the priest and the priest who should pay the impost.
Nevertheless, the issue had to be met. The Church had weakened as terror of the unknown had waned, and could no longer defend its wealth, which was destined to pass more and more completely into the hands of the laity.
Philip continued his aggressions, and, when peace had been established in Italy, the rupture came. Not realizing his impotence, and exasperated at the royal policy, Boniface sent Bernard de Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers, to Paris as his ambassador. Bernard had recently been consecrated in defiance of Philip, and they were bitter enemies. He was soon dismissed from court, but he continued his provocations, calling the king a false coiner and a blockhead, and when he returned to Pamiers he plotted an insurrection. He was arrested and prosecuted by the Chancellor Flotte, but when delivered to the Archbishop of Narbonne for degradation, action was suspended to await the sanction of Rome. Then Flotte was sent to Italy to demand the surrender "of the child of perdition," that Philip might make of him "an excellent sacrifice to God." The mission necessarily failed, for it was a struggle for supremacy, and the issue was well summed up in the final words of the stormy interview which brought it to a close. "My power, the spiritual power," cried Boniface, "embraces and encloses the temporal." "True," retorted Flotte, "but yours is verbal, the king's is real."
An ecclesiastical council was convoked for October, 1302, and Philip was summoned to appear before the greatest prelates of Christendom. But, not waiting the meeting of this august assembly, Boniface, on December 5, 1301, launched his famous bull, "Ausculta, fili," which was his declaration of war. (25)
Listen, my son: do not persuade yourself that you have no superior, and are not in subjection to the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy: he who says this is mad, he who sustains it is an infidel. You devour the revenues of the vacant bishoprics, you pillage churches. I do not speak now of the alterations in the coinage, and of the other complaints which arise on all sides, and which cry to us against you, but not to make myself accountable to God for your soul, I summon you to appear before me, and in case of your refusal shall render judgment in your absence. (26)
A century before, the barons of France had abandoned Philip Augustus, through fear of the incantations of Innocent, but, in the third generation of the commercial type, such fears had been discarded. In April, 1302, the estates of the realm sustained the "little one-eyed heretic," as Boniface called Flotte, in burning the papal bull, and in answering the admonitions of the pope with mockery.
- "Philip, by the grace of God king of the French, to Boniface, who calls himself sovereign pontiff, little greeting or none. Let your very great foolishness know that we are subject to no one for the temporalty; that the collation to the vacant churches and prebends belongs to us by royal right; that their fruits are ours; that collations which have been made, or are to be made by us, are valid for the past and for the future, and that we will manfully protect their possessors against all comers. Those who think otherwise we hold fools or madmen." (27)
The accepted theory long was that the bourgeoisie were neutral in this quarrel; that they were an insignificant factor in the state, and obeyed passively because they were without the power to oppose. In reality, consolidation had already gone so far that money had become the prevailing form of force in the kingdom of France; therefore the monied class was on the whole the strongest class, and Flotte was their mouthpiece. They accepted the papers drawn by the chancellor, because the chancellor was their representative. (28)
In July, 1302, Philip met with the defeat of Courtray, and the tone of the ecclesiastical council, convened in October, shows that the clergy thought his power broken. A priest relies upon the miracle, and, if defied, he must either conquer by supernatural aid, or submit to secular coercion. Boniface boldly faced the issue, and planted himself by Hildebrand. In his bull, Unam Sanctam, he defined his claim to the implicit obedience of laymen.
- "We are provided, under his authority, with two swords, the temporal and the spiritual; . . . both, therefore, are in the power of the Church; to wit, the spiritual and the material sword: . . . the one is to be used by the priest, the other by kings and soldiers; sed ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis." (29)
A sentence of excommunication had also been prepared and sent to France, which was to have been followed by deposition; but when it arrived, Philip convened an assembly of prelates and barons at the Louvre, and presented an indictment against Boniface, probably without a parallel in modern history. The pope was accused of every crime. He was an infidel, a denier of the immortality of the soul, a scoffer at the eucharist, a murderer, and a sorcerer. He was guilty of unnatural crimes and of robbery. (30)
The bearer of the bull was arrested, the property of the bishops who had attended the council sequestered, and Philip prepared to seize Boniface in his own palace. Boniface, too, felt the decisive hour at hand. He tried to reconcile himself with his enemies, drew the bull of deposition, and prepared to affix it to the church door at Anagni on September 8, 1303. Before the day came he was a prisoner, and face to face with death.
Flotte had been killed at Courtray, and had been succeeded by the redoubtable Nogaret, whose grandfather was believed to have been burned as a heretic. With Nogaret Philip joined Sciarra Colonna, the bloodiest of the Italian nobles, and sent them together to Italy to deal with his foe. Boniface had made war upon the Colonnas, and Sciarra had been hunted like a wild beast. Flying disguised, he had been taken by pirates, and had preferred to toil four years as a galley-slave, rather than run the risk of ecclesiastical mercy by surrendering himself to the vicar of Christ. At last Philip heard of his misfortunes, bought him, and, at the crisis, let him slip like a mad dog at the old man's throat. Nogaret and Colonna succeeded in corrupting the governor of Anagni, and entered the town at dead of night; but the pope's nephews had time to barricade the streets, and it was not until the church, which communicated with the papal apartments, had been fired, that the palace was forced. There, it was said, they found the proud old priest sitting upon his throne, with his crown upon his head, and men whispered that, as he sat there, Colonna struck him in the face with his gauntlet.
Probably the story was false, but it reflected truly enough the spirit of the pope's captors. He himself believed them capable of poisoning him, for from Saturday night till Monday morning he lay without food or drink, and when liberated was exhausted. Boniface was eighty-six, and the shock killed him. He was taken to Rome, and died there of fever, according to the rumour, blaspheming, and gnawing his hands in frenzy. (31)
The death of Boniface was decisive. Benedict XI., who succeeded him, did not attempt to prolong the contest; but peace without surrender was impossible. The economic classes held the emotionalists by the throat, and strangled them till they disgorged.
Vainly Benedict revoked the acts of his predecessor. Philip demanded that Boniface should be branded as a heretic, and sent Nogaret to Rome as his ambassador. The insult was more than the priesthood could yet endure. Summoning his courage, Benedict excommunicated Nogaret, Colonna, and thirteen others, whom he had seen break into the palace at Anagni. Within a month he was dead. Poison was whispered, and, for the first time since the monks captured the papacy, the hierarchy was paralyzed by fear. No complaint was made, or pursuit of the criminal attempted; the consistory met, but failed to unite on a successor.
According to the legend, when the cardinals were unable to agree, the faction opposed to Philip consented to name three candidates, from whom the king should select the pope. The prelate he chose was Bertrand de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux. Boniface had been his patron, but Philip, who knew men, knew that this man had his price. The tale goes that the king visited the bishop at an abbey near Saint-Jean-d'Angély, and began the conversation as follows: "My lord Archbishop, I have that in my hand will make you pope if I like, and it is for that I am come." Bertrand fell on his knees, and the king imposed five conditions, reserving a sixth, to exact thereafter. The last condition was the condemnation of the Templars. (32)
Doubtless the picturesque old tale is as false in detail as it is true in spirit. Probably no such interview took place, and yet there seems little doubt that Clement owed his election to Philip, and gave pledges which bound him from the day of his coronation. Certainly he surrendered all liberty of action, for he established himself at Avignon, whence the battlements of Ville-Neuve can still be seen, built by Philip to overawe the town. Within an hour he could have filled the streets with his mercenaries. The victory was complete. The Church was prostrate, and spoliation began.
Clement was crowned in 1305, and after two years of slavery he began to find his compact heavy upon him. He yielded up the patronage, he consented to the taxation of the clergy, and he ordered the grandmasters of the crusading orders to return to Europe, all at Philip's bidding. But when he was commanded to condemn Boniface as a heretic, he recoiled in terror. Indeed, to have rejected Boniface as an impostor, and a false pope, would have precipitated chaos. His bishops and cardinals would have been set aside, Clement's own election would have been invalidated; none could foresee where the disorganization would end. To gain time, Clement pleaded for a general council, which the king morosely conceded, but only on the condition that the excommunications against his agents, even against Nogaret, should be withdrawn. Clement assented, for he was practically a prisoner at Poitiers, a council at Vienne was agreed to, and the Crown seized the Templars without opposition from the Church.
Criticism has long ago dispelled the mystery which once shrouded this bloody process. No historian now suggests that the knights were really guilty of the fantastic enormities charged against them, and which they confessed under torture. Scepticism doubtless was rife among them, as it was among the cardinals, but there is nothing to show that the worst differed materially from the population about them, and the superb fortitude with which they perished, demonstrates that lack of religious enthusiasm was not the crime for which they died.
When Philip conceived the idea of first murdering and then plundering the crusaders, is uncertain. Some have thought it was in 1306, while sheltered in the Temple, when, he having suddenly raised his debased money to the standard of Saint Louis, the mob destroyed the house of his master of the mint.
Probably it was much earlier, and was but the necessary result of the sharpening of economic competition, which began with the accelerated movement accompanying the crusades.
After Clement's election, several years elapsed before the scheme ripened. Nothing could be done until one or both of the grand-masters had been enticed to France with their treasure. Under pretence of preparing for a new crusade this was finally accomplished, and, in 1306, Jacques de Molay, a chivalrous Burgundian gentleman, journeyed unsuspectingly to Paris, taking with him his chief officers and one hundred and fifty thousand florins in gold, beside silver "enough to load ten mules."
Philip first borrowed all the money de Molay would lend, and then, at one sudden swoop, arrested in a single night all the Templars in France. On October 13, 1307, the seizure was made, and Philip's organization was so perfect, and his agents so reliable, that the plan was executed with precision.
The object of the government was plunder, but before the goods of the order could be confiscated, legal conviction of some crime was necessary, which would entail forfeiture. Heresy was the only accusation adapted to the purpose; accordingly Philip determined to convict the knights of heresy, and the best evidence was confession. To extort confession the Inquisition had to be set in motion by the pope, and thus it came to pass that, in order to convey to the laymen the property of ecclesiastics, Christ's soldiers were tormented to death by his own vicar.
In vain, in the midst of the work, Clement, in agonies of remorse, revoked the commissions of the inquisitors. Philip jeered when the cardinals delivered the message, saying "that God hated the luke-warm" and the torture went on as before. When he had extorted what he needed, he set out for Poitiers; Clement fled, but was arrested and brought back a prisoner. Then his resolution gave way, and he abandoned the knights to their fate, reserving only the grandmaster and a few high officials for himself. Still, though he forsook the individuals, he could not be terrified into condemning the order in its corporate capacity, and the final process was referred to the approaching council. Meanwhile, a commission, presided over by the Archbishop of Narbonne, proceeded with the trial of the knights.
For three years these miserable wretches languished in their dungeons, and the imagination recoils from picturing their torments. Finally Philip felt that an end must be made, and in March, 1310, 546 of the survivors were taken from their prisons and made to choose delegates, for their exasperation was so deep that the government feared to let them appear before the court in a body.
The precaution availed little, for the knights who conducted the common defence proved themselves as proud and bold in this last extremity of human misery, as they had ever been upon the day of battle. They denied the charges brought against them, they taunted their judges with the lies told them to induce them to confess, and they showed how life and liberty had been promised them, under the royal seal, if they would admit the allegations of the government. Then they told the story of those who had been steadfast to the end.
- "It is not astonishing that some have bore false witness, but that any have told the truth, considering the sorrows and suffering, the threats and insults, they daily endure. . . . What is surprising is that faith should be given to those who have testified untruly to save their bodies, rather than to those who have died in their tortures in such numbers, like martyrs of Christ, in defence of the truth, or who solely for conscience sake, have suffered and still daily suffer in their prisons, so many torments, trials, calamities, and miseries, for this cause." (33)
The witnesses called confirmed their statements. Bernard Peleti, when examined, was asked if he had been put to the torture. He replied that for three months previous to his confession to the Bishop of Paris, he had lain with his hands so tightly bound behind his back that the blood started from his finger nails. He had beside been put in a pit. Then he broke out: "If I am tortured I shall deny all I have said now, and shall say all they want me to say. If the time be short, I can bear to be beheaded, or to die by boiling water, or by fire, for the honour of the order; but I can no longer withstand the torments which, for more than two years, I have endured in prison." (34)
"I have been tortured three times," said Humbert de Podio. "I was confined thirty-six weeks in a tower, on bread and water, quia non confitebatur quae volebant." (35) Bernard de Vado showed two bones which had dropped from his heels after roasting his feet. (36)
Such testimony was disregarded, for condemnation was necessary as a preliminary to confiscation. The suppression of the Temple was the first step in that long spoliation of the Church which has continued to the present day, and which has been agonizing to the victims in proportion to their power of resistance. The fourteenth century was still an age of faith, and the monks died hard. Philip grasped the situation with the intuition of genius, and provided himself with an instrument fit for the task before him. He forced Clement to raise Philip de Marigni to the See of Sens, and Marigni was a man who shrank from nothing.
When made archbishop, he convoked a provincial council at Paris, and condemned, as relapsed heretics, the knights who had repudiated their confessions. Fifty-nine of these knights belonged to his own diocese. He had them brought to a fenced enclosure in a field near the Abbey of Saint Antoine, and there offered them pardon if they would recant. Then they were chained to stakes, and slowly burned to ashes from the feet upward. Not one flinched, but amidst shrieks of anguish, when half consumed, they protested their innocence, and died imploring mercy of Christ and of the Virgin.(37)
Devotion so superb might have fired the imagination of even such a craven as Clement, but Philip was equal to the emergency. He had caused scores of witnesses to be examined to prove that Boniface was a murderer, a sorcerer, a debauchee, and a heretic. Suddenly he offered to drop the prosecution, and to restore the Temple lands to the Church, if the order might be abolished and the process closed. Clement yielded. In October, 1311, the council met at Vienne. The winter was spent in intimidation and bribery; the second meeting was not held until the following April, and then the decree of suppression was published. By this decree the corporation was dissolved, but certain of the higher officers still lived, and in an evil moment Clement bethought him of their fate. In December, 1313, he appointed a commission to try them. They were brought before a lofty scaffold at the portal of the Cathedral of Paris, and there made to reiterate the avowals which had been wrung from them in their dungeons. Then they were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. But at this supreme moment, when it seemed that all was over, de Molay, the grand-master, and the Master of Normandy, broke into a furious defence. The commissioners adjourned in a panic, but Philip, thirsting for blood, sprang upon his prey.
He gave his orders to his own officers, without consulting any prelate. On March 18, 1314, as night fell, the two crusaders were taken from the provost, who acted as their gaoler, and carried to a little island in the Seine, on which a statue of Henry of Navarre now stands. There they were burned together, without a trial and without a sentence. They watched the building of their funeral pile with "hearts so firm and resolute, and persisted with such constancy in their denials to the end, and suffered death with such composure, that they left the witnesses of their execution in admiration and stupor." (38)
An ancient legend told how de Molay, as he stood upon his blazing fagots, summoned Clement to meet him before God's judgment-seat in forty days, and Philip within a year. Neither survived the interval. Philip had promised to restore the goods of the Temple to the Church, but the plunder, for which this tremendous deed was done, was not surrendered tamely to the vanquished after their defeat. The gold and silver, and all that could be stolen, disappeared. The land was in the end ceded to the Hospital, but so wasted that, for a century, no revenue whatever accrued from what had been one of the finest conventual estates in Europe. (39)
Such was the opening of that social revolution which, when it reached its height, was called the Reformation.
Footnotes edit
(1) Bibl. de l'École des Chartes, 3d series, ii. 353.
(2) Histoire del'Abbaye de Saint Denis, D'Ayzac, i. 361-9.
(3) Vie de Louis le Gros, Suger, ed. Molinier, 61, 62.
(4) Vie de Louis le Gros, Suger, ed. Molinier, 70.
(5) Ibid., 18.
(6) Suger, ed. Molinier, 18.
(7) Ibid.
(8) Études sur les origines de la commune de Saint Quentin, Giry, 9.
(9) See Études sur les Faires de Champagne, Bourquelot, 72, 74; and generally on this subject.
(10) Les Communes Françaises, Luchaire, 221-225.
(11) Les Communes Françaises, Luchaire, 85.
(12) Les Communes Françaises, Luchaire, 233-234.
(13) Les Communes Françaises, Luchaire, 260.
(14) Documents sur les Relations de la Royauté avec les Villes de France, Giry, 59, 61.
(15) Les Communes Françaises, Luchaire, 189.
(16) Manuel des Institutions Françaises, Luchaire, 535.
(17) Les Communes Françaises, Luchaire, 283.
(18) Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon, ed. 1874, xii. 19.
(19) Le Commerce de Marseille au Moyen Age, Blancard, 3.
(20) La Libertà delle Banche a Venezia, Lattes, 26.
(21) Les Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, Bonnassieux, 23.
(22) La Rapport entre l'or et l'argent au Temps de Saint Louis, Marchéville, 22, 33.
(23) Ibid., 42.
(24) Les Communes Françaises, 200, 201.
(25) The documents relating to the controversy are printed in the Histoire du Différend, Dupuy.
(26) Dupuy, 48.
(27) Ibid., 44.
(28) See letters of Beauvais and Laon, of 1303, Documents, Giry, 160.
(29) Dupuy, 55.
(30) Dupuy, 351. Articles presented June, 1303.
(31) See Cronica di Villani, viii. 63.
(32) Cronica di Villani, viii. 80. Also Ann. Eccl., Baronius, year 1305.
(33) Documents Inédits sur l'Histoire de France, Procès des Templiers, Michelet, i. 166.
(34) Procès des Templiers, Michelet, i. 37.
(35) Ibid., 264.
(36) Ibid., 75.
(37) Cronica di Villani, viii. 92.
(38) Continuatio Chronici Guilelmi de Nangiaco, mcccxiii.
(39) La Maison du Temple, Curzon, 200, 204.