the Bold’s successor in the following words: “A certain King of France,
also named Philip, eaten up by the fever of avarice and cupidity.” And
that was not the only fever inherent in Philip IV., called The Handsome;
he was a prey also to that of ambition, and, above all, to that of power.
When he mounted the throne, at seventeen years of age, he was handsome,
as his nickname tells us, cold, taciturn, harsh, brave at need, but
without fire or dash, able in the formation of his designs, and obstinate
in prosecuting them by craft or violence, by means of bribery or cruelty,
with wit to choose and support his servants, passionately vindictive
against his enemies, and faithless and unsympathetic towards his
subjects, but from time to time taking care to conciliate them, either by
calling them to his aid in his difficulties or his dangers, or by giving
them protection against other oppressors. Never, perhaps, was king
better served by circumstances or more successful in his enterprises;
but he is the first of the Capetians who had a scandalous contempt for
rights, abused success, and thrust the king-ship, in France, upon the
high road of that arrogant and reckless egotism which is sometimes
compatible with ability and glory, but which carries with it in the germ,
and sooner or later brings out in full bloom, the native vices and fatal
consequences of arbitrary and absolute power.
Away from his own kingdom, in his dealings with foreign countries, Philip
the Handsome had a good fortune, which his predecessors had lacked, and
which his successors lacked still more. Through William the Conqueror’s
settlement in England and Henry II.’s marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine,
the Kings of England had, by reason of their possessions and their claims
in France, become the natural enemies of the Kings of France, and war was
almost incessant between the two kingdoms. But Edward I., King of
England, ever since his accession to the throne, in 1272, had his ideas
fixed upon, and his constant efforts directed towards, the conquests of
the countries of Wales and Scotland, so as to unite under his sway the
whole island of Great Britain. The Welsh and the Scotch, from prince to
peasant, offered an energetic resistance in defence of their
independence; and it was only after seven years’ warfare, from 1277 to
1284, that the conquest of Wales by the English was accomplished, and the
style of Prince of Wales became the title of the heir to the throne of
England. Scotland, in spite of dissensions at home, made a longer and a
more effectual resistance; and though it was reduced to submission, it
was not conquered by Edward I. Two national heroes, William Wallace and
Robert Bruce, excited against him insurrections which were often
triumphant and always being renewed; and after having, during eighteen
years of strife, maintained a precarious dominion in Scotland, Edward I.
died, in 1307, without having acquired the sovereignty of it. But his
persevering ardor in this two-fold enterprise kept him out of war with
France; he did all he could to avoid it, and when the pressure of
circumstances involved him in it for a time, he was anxious to escape
from it. Being summoned to Paris by Philip the Handsome, in 1286, to
swear fealty and homage on account of his domains in France, he repaired
thither with a good grace, and, on his knees before his souzerain,
repeated to him the solemn form of words, “I become your liegeman for the
lands I hold of you this side the sea, according to the fashion of the
peace which was made between our ancestors.” The conditions of this
peace were confirmed, and, by a new treaty between the two princes, the
annual payment of fifty thousand dollars to the King of England, in
exchange for his claims over Normandy, was guaranteed to him, and Edward
renounced his pretensions to Querey in consideration of a yearly sum of
three thousand livres of Tours. In 1292, a quarrel and some hostilities
at sea between the English and Norman commercial navies grew into a war
between the two kings; and it dragged its slow length along for four
years in the south-west of France. Edward made an alliance, in the
north, with the Flemish, who were engaged in a deadly struggle with
Philip the Handsome, and thereby lost Aquitaine for a season; but, in
1296, a truce was concluded between the belligerents, and though the
importance of England’s commercial relations with Flanders decided Edward
upon resuming his alliance with the Flemish, when, in 1300, war broke out
again between them and France, he withdrew from it three years
afterwards, and made a separate peace with Philip the Handsome, who gave
him back Aquitaine. In 1306, fresh differences arose between the two
kings; but before they had rekindled the torch of war, Edward I. died at
the opening of a new campaign in Scotland, and his successor, Edward II.,
repaired to Boulogne, where he, in his turn, did homage to Philip the
Handsome for the duchy of Aquitaine, and espoused Philip’s daughter
Isabel, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Europe. In spite,
then, of frequent interruptions, the reign of Edward I. was on the whole
a period of peace between England and France, being exempt, at any rate,
from premeditated and obstinate hostilities.
In Southern France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, Philip the Handsome,
just as his father, Philip the Bold, was, during the first years of his
reign, at war with the Kings of Aragon, Alphonso III. and Jayme II.; but
these campaigns, originating in purely local quarrels, or in the ties
between the descendants of St. Louis and of his brother, Charles of
Anjou, King of the Two Sicilies, rather than in furtherance of the
general interests of France, were terminated in 1291 by a treaty
concluded at Tarascon between the belligerents, and have remained without
historical importance.
The Flemish were the people with whom Philip the Handsome engaged in and
kept up, during the whole of his reign, with frequent alternations of
defeat and success, a really serious war. In the thirteenth century,
Flanders was the most populous and the richest country in Europe. She
owed the fact to the briskness of her manufacturing and commercial
undertakings, not only amongst her neighbors, but throughout Southern and
Eastern Europe, in Italy, in Spain, in Sweden, in Norway, in Hungary, in
Russia, and even as far as Constantinople, where, as we have seen,
Baldwin I., Count of Flanders, became, in 1204, Latin Emperor of the
East. Cloth, and all manner of woollen stuffs, were the principal
articles of Flemish production, and it was chiefly from England that
Flanders drew her supply of Wool, the raw material of her industry.
Thence arose between the two countries commercial relations which could
not fail to acquire political importance. As early as the middle of the
twelfth century, several Flemish towns formed a society for founding in
England a commercial exchange, which obtained great privileges, and,
under the name of the Flemish hanse of London, reached rapid development.
The merchants of Bruges had taken the initiative in it; but soon all the
towns of Flanders--and Flanders was covered with towns--Ghent, Lille,
Ypres, Courtrai, Furnes, Alost, St. Omer, and Douai, entered the
confederation, and made unity as well as extension of liberties in
respect of Flemish commerce the object of their joint efforts. Their
prosperity became celebrated; and its celebrity gave it increase. It was
a burgher of Bruges who was governor of the hanse of London, and he was
called the Count of the Hanse. The fair of Bruges, held in the month of
May, brought together traders from the whole world. “Thither came for
exchange,” says the most modern and most enlightened historian of
Flanders (Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, _Histoire de Flandre,_ t. ii.
p. 300), “the produce of the North and the South, the riches collected in
the pilgrimages to Novogorod, and those brought over by the caravans from
Samarcand and Bagdad, the pitch of Norway and the oils of Andalusia, the
furs of Russia and the dates from the Atlas, the metals of Hungary and
Bohemia, the figs of Granada, the honey of Portugal, the wax of Morocco,
and the spice of Egypt; whereby, says an ancient manuscript, no land is
to be compared in merchandise to the land of Flanders.” At Ypres, the
chief centre of cloth fabrics, the population increased so rapidly that,
in 1247, the sheriffs prayed Pope Innocent IV. to augment the number of
parishes in their city, which contained, according to their account,
about two hundred thousand persons. So much prosperity made the Counts
of Flanders very puissant lords. “Marguerite II., called the Black,
Countess of Flanders and Hainault, from 1244 to 1280, was extremely
rich,” says a chronicler, “not only in lands, but in furniture, jewels,
and money; and, as is not customary with women, she was right liberal and
right sumptuous, not only in her largesses, but in her entertainments,
and whole manner of living; insomuch that she kept up the state of queen
rather than countess.” Nearly all the Flemish towns were strongly
organized communes, in which prosperity had won liberty, and which became
before long small republics sufficiently powerful not only for the
defence of their municipal rights against the Counts of Flanders, their
lords, but for offering an armed resistance to such of the sovereigns
their neighbors as attempted to conquer them or to trammel them in their
commercial relations, or to draw upon their wealth by forced
contributions or by plunder. Philip Augustus had begun to have a taste
of their strength during his quarrels with Count Ferdinand of Portugal,
whom he had made Count of Flanders by marrying him to the Countess Joan,
heiress of the countship, and whom, after the battle of Bouvines, he had
confined for thirteen years in the tower of the Louvre. Philip the
Handsome laid himself open to and was subjected by the Flemings to still
rougher experiences.
At the time of the latter king’s accession to the throne, Guy de
Dampierre, of noble Champagnese origin, had been for five years Count of
Flanders, as heir to his mother, Marguerite II. He was a prince who did
not lack courage, or, on a great emergency, high-mindedness and honor;
but he was ambitious, covetous, as parsimonious as his mother had been
munificent, and above all concerned to get his children married in a
manner conducive to his own political importance. He had by his two
wives, Matilda of Bethune and Isabel of Luxembourg, nine sons and eight
daughters, offering free scope for combinations and connections, in
respect of which Guy de Dampierre was not at all scrupulous about the
means of success. He had a quarrel with his son-in-law, Florent V.,
Count of Holland, to whom he had given his daughter Beatrice in marriage;
and another of his sons-in-law, John I., Duke of Brabant, married to
another of his daughters, the Princess Marguerite, offered himself as
mediator in the difference. The two brothers-in-law went together to see
their father-in-law; but, on their arrival, Guy de Dampierre seized the
person of the Count of Holland, and would not release him until the Duke
of Brabant offered to become prisoner in his place, and found himself
obliged, in order to obtain his liberty, to pay his father-in-law a tough
ransom. It was not long before Guy himself suffered from the same sort
of iniquitous surprise that he had practised upon his sons-in-law. In
1293 he was secretly negotiating the marriage of Philippa, one of his
daughters, with Prince Edward, eldest son of the King of England. Philip
the Handsome, having received due warning, invited the Count of Flanders
to Paris, “to take counsel with him and the other barons touching the
state of the king-dom.” At first Guy hesitated; but he dared not refuse,
and he repaired to Paris, with his sons John and Guy. As soon as he
arrived he bashfully announced to the king the approaching union of his
daughter with the English prince, protesting, “that he would never cease,
for all that, to serve him loyally, as every good and true man should
serve his lord.” “In God’s name, Sir Count,” said the enraged king,
“this thing will never do; you have made alliance with my foe, without my
wit; wherefore you shall abide with me;” and he had him, together with
his sons, marched off at once to the tower of the Louvre, where Guy
remained for six months, and did not then get out save by leaving as
hostage to the King of France his daughter Philippa herself, who was
destined to pass in this prison her young and mournful life. On once
more entering Flanders, Count Guy oscillated for two years between the
King of France and the King of England, submitting to the exactions of
the former, at the same time that he was privily renewing his attempts to
form an intimate alliance with the latter. Driven to extremity by the
haughty severity of Philip, he at last came to a decision, concluded a
formal treaty with Edward I., affianced to the English crown-prince the
most youthful of his daughters, Isabel of Flanders, youngest sister of
Philippa, the prisoner in the tower of the Louvre, and charged two
ambassadors to go to Paris, as the bearers of the following declaration:
“Every one doth know in how many ways the King of France hath misbehaved
towards God and justice. Such is his might and his pride, that he doth
acknowledge nought above himself, and he hath brought us to the necessity
of seeking allies who may be able to defend and protect us. . . . By
reason whereof we do charge our ambassadors to declare and say, for us
and from us, to the above said king, that because of his misdeeds and
defaults of justice, we hold ourselves unbound, absolved, and delivered
from all bonds, all alliances, obligations, conventions, subjections,
services, and dues whereby we may have been bounden towards him.”
[Illustration: THE TOWN AND FORTRESS OF LILLE----164]
This meant war. And it was prompt and sharp on the part of the King of
France, slow and dull on the part of the King of England, who was always
more bent upon the conquest of Scotland than upon defending, on the
Continent, his ally, the Count of Flanders. In June, 1297, Philip the
Handsome, in person, laid siege to Lille, and, on the 13th of August,
Robert, Count of Artois, at the head of the French chivalry, gained at
Furnes, over the Flemish army, a victory which decided the campaign.
Lille capitulated. The English re-enforcements arrived too late, and
served no other purpose but that of inducing Philip to grant the Flemings
a truce for two years. A fruitless attempt was made, with the help of
Pope Boniface VIII., to change the truce into a lasting peace. The very
day on which it expired, Charles, Count of Valois, and brother of Philip
the Handsome, entered Flanders with a powerful army, surprised Douai,
passed through Bruges, and, on arriving at Ghent, gave a reception to its
magistrates, who came and offered him the keys. “The burghers of the
towns of Flanders,” says a chronicler of the age, “were all bribed by
gifts or promises from the King of France, who would never have dared to
invade their frontiers, had they been faithful to their count.” Guy de
Dampierre, hopelessly beaten, repaired, with two of his sons, and fifty-
one of his faithful knights, to the camp of the Count of Valois, who gave
him a kind reception, and urged him to trust himself to the king’s
generosity, promising at the same time to support his suit. Guy set out
for Paris with all his retinue. On approaching the City-palace which was
the usual residence of the kings, he espied at one of the windows Queen
Joan of Navarre, who took a supercilious pleasure in gazing upon the
humiliation of the victim of defeat. Guy drooped his head, and gave no
greeting. When he was close to the steps of the palace, he dismounted
from his horse, and placed himself and all his following at the mercy of
the king. The Count of Valois said a few words in his favor, but Philip,
cutting his brother short, said, addressing himself to Guy, “I desire no
peace with you, and if my brother has made any engagements with you, he
had no right to do so.” And he had the Count of Flanders taken off
immediately to Compiegne, “to a strong tower, such that all could see
him,” and his comrades were distributed amongst several towns, where they
were strictly guarded. The whole of Flanders submitted; and its
principal towns, Ypres, Audenarde, Ter-monde, and Cassel, fell
successively into the hands of the French. Three of the sons of Count
Guy retired to Namur. The constable Raoul of Nesle “was lieutenant for
the King of France in his newly-won country of Flanders.” Next year, in
the month of May, 1301, Philip determined to pay his conquest a visit;
and the queen, his wife, accompanied him. There is never any lack of
galas for conquerors. After having passed in state through Tournai,
Courtrai, Audenarde, and Ghent, the King and Queen of France made their
entry into Bruges. All the houses were magnificently decorated; on
platforms covered with the richest tapestry thronged the ladies of
Bruges; there was nothing but haberdashery and precious stones. Such an
array of fine dresses, jewels, and riches, excited a woman’s jealousy in
the Queen of France: “There is none but queens,” quoth she, “to be seen
in Bruges; I had thought that there was none but I who had a right to
royal state.” But the people of Bruges remained dumb; and their silence
scared Philip the Handsome, who vainly attempted to attract a concourse
of people about him by the proclamation of brilliant jousts. “These
galas,” says the historian Villani, who was going through Flanders at
this very time, “were the last whereof the French knew aught in our time,
for Fortune, who till then had shown such favor to the King of France, on
a sudden turned her wheel, and the cause thereof lay in the unrighteous
captivity of the innocent maid of Flanders, and in the treason whereof
the Count of Flanders and his sons had been the victims.” There were
causes, however, for this new turn of events of a more general and more
profound character than the personal woes of Flemish princes. James de
Chiltillon, the governor assigned by Philip the Handsome to Flanders, was
a greedy oppressor of it; the municipal authorities whom the victories or
the gold of Philip had demoralized became the objects of popular hatred;
and there was an outburst of violent sedition. A simple weaver, obscure,
poor, undersized, and one-eyed, but valiant, and eloquent in his Flemish
tongue, one Peter Deconing, became the leader of revolt in Bruges;
accomplices flocked to him from nearly all the towns of Flanders; and he
found allies amongst their neighbors. In 1302 war again broke out; but
it was no longer a war between Philip the Handsome and Guy de Dampierre:
it was a war between the Flemish communes and their foreign oppressors.
Everywhere resounded the cry of insurrection: “Our bucklers and our
friends for the lion of Flanders! Death to all Walloons! “Philip the
Handsome precipitately levied an army of sixty thousand men, says
Villani, and gave the command of it to Count Robert of Artois, the hero
of Furnes. The forces of the Flemings amounted to no more than twenty
thousand fighting men. The two armies met near Courtrai. The French
chivalry were full of ardor and confidence; and the Italian archers in
their service began the attack with some success. My lord,” said one of
his knights to the Count of Artois, “these knaves will do so well that
they will gain the honor of the day; and, if they alone put an end to the
war, what will be left for the noblesse to do?” “Attack, then!”
answered the prince. Two grand attacks succeeded one another; the first
under the orders of the Constable Raoul of Nesle, the second under those
of the Count of Artois in person. After two hours’ fighting, both failed
against the fiery national passion of the Flemish communes, and the two
French leaders, the Constable and the Count of Artois, were left, both of
them, lying on the field of battle amidst twelve or fifteen thousand of
their dead. “I yield me! I yield me!” cried the Count of Artois; but,
“We understand not thy lingo,” ironically answered in their own tongue
the Flemings who surrounded him; and he was forthwith put to the sword.
Too late to save him galloped up a noble ally of the insurgents, Guy of
Namur. “From the top of the towers of our monastery,” says the Abbot of
St. Martin’s of Tournai, “we could see the French flying over the roads,
across fields and through hedges, in such numbers that the sight must
have been seen to be believed. There were in the outskirts of our town
and in the neighboring villages, so vast a multitude of knights and men-
at-arms tormented with hunger, that it was a matter horrible to see.
They gave their arms to get bread.”
[Illustration: The Battle of Courtrai----167]
A French knight, covered with wounds, whose name has remained unknown,
hastily scratched a few words upon a scrap of parchment dyed with blood;
and that was the first account Philip the Handsome received of the battle
of Courtrai, which was fought and lost on the 11th of July, 1302.
The news of this great defeat of the French spread rapidly throughout
Europe, and filled with joy all those who were hostile to or jealous of
Philip the Handsome. The Flemings celebrated their victory with
splendor, and rewarded with bounteous gifts their burgher heroes, Peter
Deconing amongst others, and those of their neighbors who had brought
them aid. Philip, greatly affected and a little alarmed, sent for his
prisoner, the aged Guy de Dampierre, and loaded him with reproaches, as
if he had to thank him for the calamity; and, forthwith levying a fresh
army, “as numerous,” say the chroniclers, “as the grains of sand on the
borders of the sea from Propontis to the Ocean,” he took up a position at
Arras, and even advanced quite close to Douai; but he was of those in
whom obstinacy does not extinguish prudence, and who, persevering all the
while in their purposes, have wit to understand the difficulties and
clangers of them. Instead of immediately resuming the war, he entered
into negotiations with the Flemings; and their envoys met him in a ruined
church beneath the walls of Douai. John of Chalons, one of Philip’s
envoys, demanded, in his name, that the king should be recognized as lord
of all Flanders, and authorized to punish the insurrection of Bruges,
with a promise, however, to spare the lives of all who had taken part in
it. “How!” said a Fleming, Baldwin de Paperode; “our lives would be left
us, but only after our goods had been pillaged and our limbs subjected to
every torture!” “Sir Castellan,” answered John of Chalons, “why speak
you so? A choice must needs be made; for the king is determined to lose
his crown rather than not be avenged.” Another Fleming, John de Renesse,
who, leaning on the broken altar, had hitherto kept silence, cried,
“Since so it is, let answer be made to the king that we be come hither to
fight him, and not to deliver up to him our fellow-citizens;” and the
Flemish envoys withdrew. Still Philip did not give up negotiating, for
the purpose of gaining time and of letting the edge wear off the
Flemings’ confidence. He returned to Paris, fetched Guy de Dampierre
from the tower of the Louvre, and charged him to go and negotiate peace
under a promise of returning to his prison if he were unsuccessful. Guy,
respected as he was throughout Flanders on account of his age and his
long misfortunes, failed in his attempt, and, faithful to his word, went
back and submitted himself to the power of Philip. “I am so old,” said
he to his friends, “that I am ready to die whensoever it shall please
God.” And he did die, on the 7th of March, 1304, in the prison of
Compiegne, to which he had been transferred. Philip, all the while
pushing forward his preparations for war, continued to make protestation
of pacific intentions. The Flemish communes desired the peace necessary
for the prosperity of their commerce; but patriotic anxieties wrestled
with material interests. A burgher of Ghent was quietly fishing on the
banks of the Scheldt, when an old man acosted him, saying sharply,
“Knowest thou not, then, that the king is assembling all his armies? It
is time the Ghentese shook off their sloth; the lion of Flanders must no
longer slumber.” In the spring of 1304, the cry of war resounded
everywhere. Philip had laid an impost extraordinary upon all real
property in his kingdom; regulars and reserves had been summoned to
Arras, to attack the Flemings by land and sea. He had taken into his pay
a Genoese fleet commanded by Regnier de Grimaldi, a celebrated Italian
admiral; and it arrived in the North Sea, and blockaded Zierikzee, a
maritime town of Zealand. On the 10th of August, 1304, the Flemish fleet
which was defending the place was beaten and dispersed. Philip hoped for
a moment that this reverse would discourage the Flemings; but it was not
so at all. A great battle took place on the 17th of August between the
two land armies at Mons-en-Puelle (or, Mont-en-Pevele, according to the
true local spelling), near Lille; the action was for some time
indecisive, and even after it was over both sides hesitated about
claiming the victory; but when the Flemings saw their camp swept off and
rifled, and when they no longer found in it, say the chroniclers, “their
fine stuffs of Bruges and Ypres, their wines of Rochelle, their beers of
Cambrai, and their cheeses of Bethune,” they declared that they would
return to their hearths; and their leaders, unable to restrain them, were
obliged to shut themselves up in Lille, whither Philip, who had himself
retired at first to Arras, came to besiege them. When the first days of
downheartedness were over, and at sight of the danger which threatened
Lille and the remains of the Flemish army assembled within its walls, all
Flanders rushed to arms. “The labors of the workshop and the field were
everywhere suspended,” say contemporary Historians: “the women kept guard
in the towns: you might traverse the country without meeting a single
man, for they were all in the camp at Courtrai, to the number of twelve
hundred thousand, according to popular exaggeration, swearing one to
another that they would rather die fighting than live in slavery.”
Philip was astounded. “I thought the Flemings,” said he, “were
destroyed; but they seem to rain from heaven; “and he resumed his
protestations and pacific overtures. Circumstances were favorable to
him: old Guy de Dampierre was dead; Robert of Bethune, his eldest son and
successor, was still the prisoner of Philip the Handsome, who set him at
liberty after having imposed conditions upon him. Robert, timid in
spirit and weak of heart, accepted them, in spite of the grumblings of
the Flemish populations, always eager to recommence war after a short
respite from its trials. The burghers of Bruges had made themselves a
new seal, whereon the old symbol of the bridge of their city on the Reye
was replaced by the lion of Flanders wearing the crown and armed with the
cross, with this inscription: “The lion hath roared and burst his fetters
“(_Rugiit leo, vincula fregit_). During ten years, from 1305 to 1314,
there was between France and Flanders a continual alternation of
reciprocal concessions and retractations, of treaties concluded and of
renewed insurrections, without decisive and ascertained results. It was
neither peace nor war; and, after the death of Philip the Handsome, his
successors were destined, for a long time to come, to find again and
again amongst the Flemish communes deadly enmities and grievous perils.
At the same time that he was prosecuting this interminable war against
the Flemings, Philip was engaged, in this case also beyond the boundaries
of his kingdom, in a struggle which was still more serious, owing to the
nature of the questions which gave rise to it and to the quality of his
adversary. In 1294 a new pope, Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani, had been
elected under the name of Boniface VIII. He had been for a long time
connected with the French party in Italy, and he owed his elevation to
the influence, especially, of Charles II., King of Naples and Sicily,
grandson of St. Louis and cousin-german of Philip the Handsome. Shortly
before his election, Benedetto Gaetani said to that prince, “Thy pope
(Celestine V.) was willing and able to serve thee, only he knew not how;
as for me, if thou make me pope, I shall be willing and able and know how
to be useful to thee.” The long quarrel between the popes and the
Emperors of Germany, who, as Kings of the Romans, aspired to invade or
dominate Italy, had made the Kings of France natural allies of the
papacy, and there had been a saying ever since, arising from a popular
instinct, which had already found its way into poetry,--
“‘Tis a goodly match as match can be,
To marry the Church and the fleurs-de-lis:
Should either mate a-straying go,
Then each--too late--will own ‘twas so.”
Boniface VIII. did not seem fated to withdraw from this policy; he was
old (sixty-six); his party-engagements were of long standing; his
personal fortune was made; three years before his election he possessed
twelve ecclesiastical benefices, of which seven were in France; by his
accession to the Holy See his ambition was satisfied; and as legate in
France in 1290 he had made the acquaintance there of the young king,
Philip the Handsome, and had conceived a liking for him. King Philip
must have considered that he had ground for seeing in him a faithful and
useful ally.
Neither of the two sovereigns took into account the changes that had
come, during two centuries past, over the character of their power, and
of the influence which these changes must exercise upon their posture and
their relations one towards the other. Louis the Fat in the first
instance, and then in a special manner Philip Augustus and St. Louis,
each with very different sentiments and by very different processes, had
disentangled the kingship in France from the feudal system, and had
acquired for it a sovereignty of its own, beyond and above the rights of
the suzerain over his vassals. The popes, for their part, Gregory VII.
and Innocent III. amongst others, had raised the papacy to a region of
intellectual and moral supremacy whence it looked down upon all the
terrestrial powers. Gregory VII., the most disinterested of all
ambitious men in high places, had dedicated his stormy life to
establishing the dominion of the Church over the world, kings as well as
people, and also to reforming internally the Church herself, her morals
and her discipline. “I have loved justice and hated iniquity; and that
is why I am dying in exile,” he had said on his death-bed: but his works
survived him, and a hundred years after him, in spite of the troubles
which had disturbed the Church under eighteen mediocre and transitory
popes, Innocent III., whilst maintaining, only with more moderation and
prudence, the same principles as Gregory VII. had maintained, exercised
peacefully, for a space of eighteen years, the powers of the right
divine, whilst Philip Augustus was extending and confirming the kingly
power in France. This parallel progress of the kingship and the papacy
had its critics and its supporters. Learned lawyers, on the authority of
the maxims and precedents of the Roman empire, proclaimed the king’s
sovereignty in the State; and profound theologians, on the authority of
the divine origin of Christianity, laid down as a principle the right
divine of the papacy in the Church and in the dealings of the Church with
the State.
Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century, there were found face to face
two systems, one laic and the other ecclesiastical, of absolute power.
But the teachers of the doctrine of the right divine do not expunge from
human affairs the passions, errors, and vices of the individuals who put
their systems in practice; and absolute power, which is the greatest of
all demoralizers, entails before long upon communities, whether civil or
religious, the disorders, abuses, faults, and evils which it is the
special province of governments to prevent or keep under. The French
kingship and the papacy, the representatives of which had but lately been
great and glorious princes, such as Philip Augustus and St. Louis,
Gregory VII. and Innocent III., were, at the end of the thirteenth
century, vested in the persons of men of far less moral worth and less
political wisdom, Philip the Handsome and Boniface VIII. We have already
had glimpses of Philip the Handsome’s greedy, ruggedly obstinate, haughty
and tyrannical character; and Boniface VIII. had the same defects, with
more hastiness and less ability. The two great poets of Italy in that
century, Dante and Petrarch, who were both very much opposed to Philip
the Handsome, paint Boniface VIII. in similar colors. “He was,” says
Petrarch (_Epistoloe Ramiliares,_ bk. ii. letter 3), “an inexorable
sovereign, whom it was very hard to break by force, and impossible to
bend by humility and caresses; “and Dante (_Inferno,_ canto xix.
v. 45 57) makes Pope Nicholas III. say, “Already art thou here and
proudly upstanding, O Boniface? Hast thou so soon been sated with that
wealth for which thou didst not fear to deceive that fair dame (the
Church) whom afterwards thou didst so disastrously govern? “Two men so
deeply imbued with evil and selfish passions could not possibly meet
without clashing; and it was not long before facts combined to produce
between them an outburst of hatred and strife which revealed the latent
vices and fatal results of the two systems of absolute power of which
they were the representatives.
Philip the Handsome had been nine years king when Boniface VIII. became
pope. On his accession to the throne he had testified an intention of
curtailing the privileges and power of the Church. He had removed the
clergy from judicial functions, in the domains of the lords as well as in
the domain of the king, and he had everywhere been putting into the hands
of laymen the administration of civil justice. He had considerably
increased the percentage to be paid on real property acquired by the
Church (called possessions in mortmain), by way of compensation for the
mutation-dues which their fixity caused the State to lose. At the time
of the crusades the property of the clergy had been subjected to a
special tax of a tenth of the revenues, and this tax had been several
times renewed for reasons other than the crusades. The Church recognized
her duty of contributing towards the defence of the kingdom, and the
chapter-general of the order of Citeaux wrote to Philip the Handsome
himself, “On all grounds of natural equity and rules of law we ought to
bear our share of such a burden out of the goods which God hath given
us.” In every instance, the question had been as to the necessity for
and the quota of the ecclesiastical contribution, which was at one time
granted by the bishops and local clergy, at another expressly authorized
by the papacy. There is nothing to show that Boniface VIII., at the time
of his elevation to the Holy See, was opposed to these augmentations and
demands on the part of the French crown; he was at that time too much
occupied by his struggle against his own enemies at Rome, the family of
the Colonnas, and he felt the necessity of remaining on good terms with
France; but in 1296, Philip the Handsome, at war with the King of England
and the Flemings, imposed upon the clergy two fresh tenths. The bishops
alone were called upon to vote them; and the order of Citeaux refused to
pay them, and addressed to the pope a protest, with a comparison between
Philip and Pharaoh. Boniface not only entertained the protest, but
addressed to the king a bull (called _Clericis laicos,_ from its first
two words), in which, led on by his zeal to set forth the generality and
absoluteness of his power, he laid down as a principle that churches and
ecclesiastics could not be taxed save with the permission of the
sovereign pontiff, and that “all emperors, kings, dukes, counts, barons,
or governors whatsoever, who should violate this principle, and all
prelates or other ecclesiastics who should through weakness lend
themselves to such violation, would by this mere fact incur
excommunication, and would be incapable of release therefrom, save in
_articulo mortis,_ unless by a special decision of the Holy See.” This
was going far beyond the traditions of the French Church, and, in the
very act of protecting it, to strike a blow at its independence in its
dealings with the French State. Philip was mighty wroth, but he did not
burst out; he confined himself to letting the pope perceive his
displeasure by means of divers administrative measures, amongst others by
forbidding the exportation from the kingdom of gold, silver, and valuable
articles, which found their way chiefly to Rome. Boniface, on his side,
was not slow to perceive that he had gone too far, and that his own
interests did not permit him to give so much offence to the King of
France. A year after the bull _Clericis laicos,_ he modified it by a new
bull, which not only authorized the collection of the two tenths voted by
the French bishops, but recognized the right of the King of France to tax
the French clergy with their consent and without authorization from the
Holy See, whenever there was a pressing necessity for it. Philip, on his
side, testified to the pope his satisfaction at this concession by
himself making one at the expense of the religious liberty of his
subjects. In 1292 he had ordered the seneschal of Carcassonne to place
limits to the power of the inquisitors in Languedoc by taking from them
the right of having their sentences against heretics executed without
appeal; and in 1298 he issued an ordinance to the effect that “to further
the proceedings of the Inquisition against heretics, for the glory of God
and for the augmentation of the faith, he laid his injunctions upon all
dukes, counts, barons, seneschals, bailiffs, and provosts of his kingdom,
to obey the diocesan bishops and the inquisitors deputed by the Holy See
in handing over to them, whenever they should be requested, all heretics
and their creed-fellows, favorers, and harborers, and to see to the
immediate execution of sentences passed by the judges of the Church,
notwithstanding any appeal and any complaint on the part of heretics and
their favorers.”
Thus the two absolute sovereigns changed their policy and made temporary
sacrifice of their mutual pretensions, according as it suited them to
fight or to agree. But there arose a question in respect of which this
continual alternation of pretensions and compromises, of quarrels and
accommodations, was no longer possible; in order to keep up their
position in the eyes of one another, they were obliged to come to a
deadly clash; and in this struggle, perilous for both, Boniface VIII.
was the aggressor, and with Philip the Handsome remained the victory.
On the 2d of February, 1300, Boniface VIII., who had much at heart the
lustre and popularity of the Holy See, published a bull which granted
indulgences to the pilgrims who should that year, and every centenary to
come, visit the church of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome.
At this first celebration of the centenarian Christian jubilee the
concourse was immense; the most moderate historians say that there were
never fewer than a hundred thousand pilgrims at Rome; others put the
numbers as high as two hundred thousand, and contemporary poetry as well
as history has celebrated this pious assemblage of Christians of every
nation, language, and age around the tomb of their fathers in the faith.
“The old man with white hair goeth far away,” says Petrarch (Sonnet
xiv.), “from the sweet haunts where his life hath been passed, and from
his little family astonished to find their dear father missing. As for
him, in the last days of his age, broken down by weight of years and
a-weary of the road, he draggeth along as best he may by force of willing
spirit his old and tottering limbs, and cometh to Rome to fulfil his
desire of seeing the image of Him whom he hopeth to see ere long up
yonder in the heavens.” The success of the measure and the solemn homage
of Christendom filled with joy and proud confidence the heart of the
septuagenarian pontiff. He had three years before decreed to Louis IX.,
the most Christian of the Kings of France, the honors of canonization and
the title of Saint. Being chosen as mediator, in 1298, by the Kings of
France and England in a war which pressed heavily on both, the decree of
arbitration which he pronounced, favorable rather to Philip than to
Edward I., had been accepted by both of them; and the pope, on laying his
injunctions upon them with some severity of language, had exhibited
authority in a manner salutary for both kingdoms. Everything seemed at
that time to smile on Boniface, and to invite him to believe himself the
real sovereign of Christendom.
An opportunity for a splendid confirmation of his universal supremacy in
the Christian world came to tempt him. A quarrel had arisen between
Philip and the Archbishop of Narbonne on the subject of certain dues
claimed by both in that great diocese. Boniface was loud in his advocacy
of the archbishop against the officers of the king: “If, my son, thou
tolerate such enterprises against the Churches of thy kingdom,” he wrote
to Philip (on the 18th of July, 1300), “thou mayest thereafter have
reasonable fear lest God, the author of judgments and the King of kings,
exact vengeance for it; and assuredly His vicar will not, in the long
run, keep silence. Though he wait a while patiently, in order not to
close the door to compassion, there will be full need at last that he
rouse himself for the punishment of the wicked and the glory of the
good.” Nor did Boniface content himself with writing: he sent to Paris,
to support his words, Bernard de Saisset, whom he, on his own authority,
had just appointed Bishop of Pamiers. The choice of bishops was not yet,
at that time, subject to any fixed and generally recognized rule: most
often it was the chapter of the diocese that elected its bishop, with a
subsequent application for the approbation of the king and the pope;
sometimes the king and also the pope made such appointments directly and
independently. Boniface VIII. had quite recently created a new bishopric
at Pamiers in order to immediately appoint to it Bernard de Saisset,
hitherto simple Abbot of St. Antonine in that city. Bernard, who was
devoted to his patron, was, further, a passionate Languedocian and a foe
to the dominion of the French kings of the North over Southern France;
and he gave himself out as a personal descendant of the last Counts of
Toulouse. On arriving in Paris as the pope’s legate, he made use there
of violent and inconsiderate language; he even affirmed, it was said,
that St. Louis had predicted the disappearance of his line in the third
generation, and that King Philip was only an illegitimate descendant of
Charlemagne. He was accused of having incessantly labored to excite
revolts against the king in the south, at one time for the advantage of
the local lords, at another in favor of foreign enemies of the kingdom.
Being summoned before the king and his council at Senlis (October 14,
1301), he denied, but with an air of arrogance and aggression, the
accusations against him. Philip had, at that time, as his chief
councillors, lay-lawyers, servants passionately attached to the kingship.
They were Peter Flotte his chancellor, William of Nogaret, judge-major at
Beaucaire, and William of Plasian, Lord of Vezenobre, the two latter
belonging, as Bernard de Saisset belonged, to Southern France, and
determined to withstand, in the south as well as the north, the
domination of ecclesiastics. They, in their turn, rose up against the
doctrine and language of the Bishop of Pamiers. He was arrested and
committed to the keeping of the Archbishop of Narbonne; and Philip sent
to Rome his chancellor Peter Flotte himself and William of Nogaret, with
orders to demand of the pope “that he should avenge the wrongs of God,
the king, and the whole kingdom, by depriving of his orders and every
clerical privilege that man whose longer life would taint the places he
inhabited; and this in order that the king might make of him a sacrifice
to God in the way of justice, for there could be no hope of his amendment
if he were suffered to live, seeing that, from his youth up, he had
always lived ill, and that baseness and abandonment only became more and
more confirmed in him by inveterate habit.”
To this violent and threatening language Boniface replied by changing the
venue to his own personal tribunal in the case of the Bishop of Pamiers.
“We do bid thy majesty,” he wrote to the king, “to give this bishop free
leave to depart and come to us, for we do desire his presence. We do
warn thee to have all his goods restored to him, not to stretch out for
the future thy rapacious hands towards the like things, and not to offend
the Divine Majesty or the dignity of the Apostolic See, lest we be forced
to employ some other remedy; for thou must know that, unless thou canst
allege some excuse founded on reason and truth, we do not see how thou
shouldest escape the sentence of the holy canons for having laid rash
hands on this bishop.”
“My power,--the spiritual power,”--said the pope to the Chancellor of
France, “embraces the temporal, and includes it.” “Be it so,” answered
Peter Flotte; “but your power is nominal, the king’s real.”
Here was a coarse challenge hurled by the crown at the tiara: and
Boniface VIII. unhesitatingly accepted it. But, instead of keeping the
advantage of a defensive position by claiming, in the name of lawful
right, the liberties and immunities of the Church, he assumed the
offensive against the kingship by proclaiming the supremacy of the Holy
See in things temporal as well as spiritual, and by calling upon Philip
the Handsome to acknowledge it. On the 5th of December, 1301, he
addressed to the king, commencing with the words, “Hearken, most dear
son” (_Ausculta, carissime fili_), a long bull, in which, with
circumlocutions and expositions full of obscurity and subtlety, he laid
down and affirmed, at bottom, the principle of the final sovereignty of
the spiritual power, being of divine origin, over every temporal power,
being of human creation. “In spite of the insufficiency of our deserts,”
said he, “God hath established us above kings and kingdoms by imposing
upon us, in virtue of the Apostolic office, the duty of plucking away,
destroying, dispersing, dissipating, building up and planting in His name
and according to His doctrine; to the end that, in tending the flock of
the Lord, we may strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken
limbs, raise the fallen, and pour wine and oil into all wounds. Let
none, then, most dear son, persuade thee that thou hast no superior, and
that thou art not subject to the sovereign head of the ecclesiastical
hierarchy; for he who so thinketh is beside himself; and if he
obstinately affirm any such thing, he is an infidel, and hath no place
any longer in the fold of the good Shepherd.” At the same time Boniface
summoned the bishops of France to a council at Rome, “in order to labor
for the preservation of the liberties of the Catholic Church, the
reformation of the kingdom, the amendment of the king, and the good
government of France.”
Philip the Handsome and his councillors did not misconceive the tendency
of such language, however involved and full of specious reservations it
might be. The final supremacy of the pope in the body politic, and over
all sovereigns, meant the absorption of the laic community in the
religious, and the abolition of the State’s independence, not in favor of
the national Church, but to the advantage of the foreign head of the
universal Church. The defenders of the French kingship formed a better
estimate than was formed at Rome of the effect which would be produced by
such doctrine on France, in the existing condition of the French mind;
they entered upon no theological and abstract polemics; they confined
themselves entirely to setting in a vivid light the pope’s pretensions
and their consequences, feeling sure that, by confining themselves to
this question, they would enlist in their opposition not only all laymen,
nobles, and commoners, but the greater part of the French ecclesiastics
themselves, who were no strangers to the feeling of national patriotism,
and to whom the pope’s absolute power in the body politic was scarcely
more agreeable than the king’s. In order to make a strong impression
upon the public mind, there was published at Paris, as the actual text of
the pope’s bull, a very short summary of his long bull, “Hearken, most
dear Son,” in the following terms: “Boniface, bishop, servant of the
servants of God, to Philip, King of the French. Fear thou God, and keep
His commandments. We would have thee to know that thou art subject unto
us in things spiritual and temporal. The presentation to benefices and
prebends appertaineth to thee in no wise. If thou have the keeping of
certain vacancies, thou art bound to reserve the revenues of them for the
successors to them. If thou have made any presentations, we declare them
void, and revoke them. We consider as heretics all those who believe
otherwise.” Together with this document there was put in circulation the
king’s answer to the pope, in the following terms: “Philip, by the grace
of God, King of the French, to Boniface, who giveth himself out for
sovereign pontiff, little or no greeting. Let thy Extreme Fatuity know
that we be subject to none in things temporal, that the presentation to
churches and prebends that be vacant belongeth to us of kingly right,
that the revenues therefrom be ours, that presentations already made or
to be made be valid both now and hereafter, that we will firmly support
the possessors of them to thy face and in thy teeth, and that we do hold
as senseless and insolent those who think otherwise.” The pope
disavowed, as a falsification, the summary of his long bull; and there is
nothing to prove that the unseemly and insulting letter of Philip the
Handsome was sent to Rome. But, at bottom, the situation of affairs
remained the same; indeed, it did not stop where it was. On the 11th of
February, 1302, the bull, Hearken, most dear Son, was solemnly burned at
Paris in presence of the king and a numerous multitude. Philip convoked,
for the 8th of April following, an assembly of the barons, bishops, and
chief ecclesiastics, and of deputies from the communes to the number of
two or three for each city, all being summoned “to deliberate on certain
affairs which in the highest degree concern the king, the kingdom, the
churches, and all and sundry.” This assembly, which really met on the
10th of April, at Paris, in the church of Notre-Dame, is reckoned in
French history as the first “states-general.” The three estates wrote
separately to Rome; the clergy to the pope himself, the nobility and the
deputies of the communes to the cardinals, all, however, protesting
against the pope’s pretensions in matters temporal, the two laic orders
writing in a rough and threatening tone, the clergy making an appeal “to
the wisdom and paternal clemency of the Holy Father, with tearful
accents, and sobs mingled with their tears.” The king evidently had on
his side the general feeling of the nation: and the news from Rome was
not of a kind to pacify him. In spite of the king’s formal prohibition,
forty-five French bishops had repaired to the council summoned by the
pope for All Saints’ day, 1302, and, after this meeting, a papal decree
of November 18 had declared, “There be two swords, the temporal and the
spiritual; both are in the power of the Church, but one is held by the
Church herself, the other by kings only with the assent and by sufferance
of the sovereign pontiff. Every human being is subject to the Roman
pontiff; and to believe this is necessary to salvation.” Philip made a
seizure of the temporalities of such bishops as had been present at that
council, and renewed his prohibition forbidding them to leave the
kingdom. Boniface ordered those who had not been to Rome to attend there
within three months; and the cardinal of St. Marcellinus, legate of the
Holy See, called a fresh council in France itself, without the king’s
knowledge. On both sides, there were at one time words of conciliation
and attempts to keep up appearances of respect, at another new explosions
of complaints and threats; but, amidst all these changes of language, the
struggle was day by day becoming more violent, and preparations were
being made by both parties for something other than threats.
On the 12th of March and the 13th of June, 1303, at two assemblies of
barons, prelates, and legists held at the Louvre, in presence of the
king, which several historians have considered to have been states-
general, one of the crown’s most intimate advisers, William of Plasian,
proposed, against Boniface, a form of accusation which imputed to him,
beyond his ambition and his claims to absolutism, crimes as improbable as
they were hateful. It was demanded that the Church should be governed by
a lawful pope, and the king, as defender of the faith, was pressed to
appeal to the convocation of a general council. On the 24th of June, in
the palace-garden, a great crowd of people assembled; and, after a sermon
preached in French, the form of accusation against Boniface, and the
appeal to the future council, were solemnly made public. The pope
meanwhile did not remain idle; he protested against the imputations of
which he was the subject. “Forty years ago,” he said, “we were admitted
a doctor of laws, and learned that both powers, the temporal and the
spiritual, be ordained of God. Who can believe that such fatuity can
have entered into our mind? But who can also deny that the king is
subject unto us on the score of sin? . . . We be disposed to grant
unto him every grace. . . . So long as I was cardinal, I was French
in heart; since then, we have testified how we do love the king. . . .
Without us, he would not have even one foot on the throne. We do know
all the secrets of the kingdom. We do know how the Germans, the
Burgundians, and the folks who speak the Oc tongue do love the king. If
he mend not, we shall know how to chastise him, and treat him as a little
boy (_sicut unum garcionem_), though greatly against our will.” On the
13th of April, Boniface declared Philip excommunicate if he persisted in
preventing the prelates from attending at Rome. Philip, being warned,
effected the arrest at Troyes of the priest who was bringing the pope’s
letter to his legate in France. The legate took to flight. Boniface,
on his side, being warned that the king was appealing against him to an
approaching council, declared by a bull, on the 15th of August, that it
appertained to him alone to summon a council. After this bull, there was
full expectation that another would be launched, which would pronounce
the deposition of the king. And a new bull was actually prepared at Rome
on the 5th of September, and was to be published on the 8th. It did not
expressly depose the king; it merely announced that measures would be
taken more serious even than excommunication. Philip had taken his
precautions. He had demanded and obtained from the great towns,
churches, and universities more than seven hundred declarations of
support in his appeal to the future council, and an engagement to take no
notice of the decree which might be issued by the pope to release the
king’s subjects from their oath of allegiance. Only a few, and amongst
them the Abbot of Citeaux, gave him a refusal. The order of the Templars
gave only a qualified support. At the approaching advent of the new bull
which was being anticipated, the king resolved to act still more roughly
and speedily. Notification must be sent to the pope of the king’s appeal
to the future council. Philip could no longer confide this awkward
business to his chancellor, Peter Flotte; for he had fallen at Courtrai,
in the battle against the Flemings. William of Nogaret undertook it, at
the same time obtaining from the king a sort of blank commission
authorizing and ratifying in advance all that, under the circumstances,
he might consider it advisable to do. Notification of the appeal had to
be made to the pope at Anagni, his native town, whither he had gone for
refuge, and the people of which, being zealous in his favor, had already
dragged in the mud the lilies and the banner of France. Nogaret was
bold, ruffianly, and clever. He repaired in haste to Florence, to the
king’s banker, got a plentiful supply of money, established
communications in Anagni, and secured, above all, the co-operation of
Sciarra Colonna, who was passionately hostile to the pope, had been
formerly proscribed by him, and, having fallen into the hands of
corsairs, had worked at the oar for them during many a year rather than
reveal his name and be sold to Boniface Gaetani. On the 7th of
September, 1303, Colonna and his associates introduced Nogaret and his
following into Anagni, with shouts of “Death to Pope Boniface! Long live
the King of France!” The populace, dumbfounded, remained motionless.
The pope, deserted by all, even by his own nephew, tried to touch the
heart of Colonna himself, whose only answer was a summons to abdicate,
and to surrender at discretion. “Those be hard words,” said Boniface,
and burst into tears. But this old man, seventy-five years of age, had a
proud spirit, and a dignity worthy of his rank. “Betrayed, like Jesus,”
said he, “shall I die; but I will die pope.” He donned the cloak of St.
Peter, put the crown of Constantine upon his head, took in his hands the
keys and the cross, and, as his enemies drew nigh, he said to them, “Here
is my neck, and here is my head.” There is a tradition, of considerable
trustworthiness, that Sciarra Colonna would have killed him, and did with
his mailed hand strike him in the face. Nogaret, however, prevented the
murder, and confined himself to saying, “Thou caitiff pope, confess, and
behold the goodness of my lord, the King of France, who, though so far
away from thee in his own kingdom, both watcheth over and defendeth thee
by my hand.” “Thou art of heretic family,” answered the pope: “at thy
hands I look for martyrdom.”
[Illustration: Colonna striking the Pope----185]
The captivity of Boniface VIII., however, lasted only three days; for the
people of Anagni, having recovered themselves, and seeing the scanty
numbers of the foreigners, rose and delivered the pope. The old man was
conducted to the public square, crying like a child. “Good folks,” said
he to the crowd around him, “ye have seen that mine enemies have robbed
me of all my goods and those of the Church. Behold me here as poor as
Job. Nought have I either to eat or drink. If there be any good woman
who would give me an alms of wine and bread, I would bestow upon her
God’s blessing and mine.” All the people began to shout, “Long live the
Holy Father!” He was reconducted into his palace: “and women thronged
together thither, bringing him bread, wine, and water. Finding no proper
vessels, they poured them into a chest. . . . Any one who liked went
in, and talked with the pope, as with any other beggar.” So soon as the
agitation was somewhat abated, Boniface set out for Rome, with a great
crowd following him; but he was broken down in spirit and body. Scarcely
had he arrived when he fell into a burning fever, which traditions,
probably invented and spread by his enemies, have represented as a fit of
mad rage. He died on the 11th of October, 1303, without having recovered
his reason. It is reported that his predecessor, Celestine V., had said
of him, “Thou risest like a fox; thou wilt rule like a lion, and die like
a dog.” The last expression was unjustified. Boniface VIII. was a
fanatic, ambitious, proud, violent, and crafty, but with sincerity at the
bottom of his prejudiced ideas, and stubborn and blind in his fits of
temper: his death was that of an old lion at bay.
We were bound to get a good idea and understanding of this violent
struggle between the two sovereigns of France and Rome, not only because
of its dramatic interest, but because it marks an important period in the
history of the papacy and its relations with foreign governments. From
the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians the policy of the
Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative, often even
aggressive, and more often than not successful in the prosecution of its
designs. Under Innocent III. it had attained the apogee of its strength
and fortune. At that point its motion forward and upward came to a stop.
Boniface had not the wit to recognize the changes which had taken place
in European communities, and the decided progress which had been made by
laic influences and civil powers. He was a stubborn preacher of maxims
he could no longer practise. He was beaten in his enterprise; and the
papacy, even on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what
it had been before him. Starting from the fourteenth century we find no
second Gregory VII., or Innocent III. Without expressly abandoning their
principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and
conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandizement of
itself, and sometimes even more stationary and stagnant than was required
by necessity or recommended by foresight. The posture assumed and the
conduct adopted by the earliest successors of Boniface VIII. showed how
far the situation of the papacy was altered, and how deep had been the
penetration of the stab which, in this conflict between the two aspirants
to absolute power, Philip the Handsome had inflicted on his rival.
On the 22d of October, 1303, eleven days after the death of Boniface
VIII., Benedict XI., son of a simple shepherd, was elected at Rome to
succeed him. Philip the Handsome at once sent his congratulations, but
by William of Plasian, who had lately been the accuser of Boniface, and
who was charged to hand to the new pope, on the king’s behalf, a very
bitter memorandum touching his predecessor. Philip at the same time
caused an address to be presented to himself in his own kingdom and in
the vulgar tongue, called a supplication from the people of France to the
King against Boniface. Benedict XI. exerted himself to give satisfaction
to the conqueror; he declared the Colonnas absolved; he released the
barons and prelates of France from the excommunications pronounced
against them; and he himself wrote to the king to say that he would
behave towards him as the good shepherd in the parable, who leaves ninety
and nine sheep to go after one that is lost. Nogaret and the direct
authors of the assault at Anagni were alone excepted from this amnesty.
The pope reserved for a future occasion the announcement of their
absolution, when he should consider it expedient. But on the 7th of
June, 1304, instead of absolving them, he launched a fresh bull of
excommunication against “certain wicked men who had dared to commit a
hateful crime against a person of good memory, Pope Boniface.” A month
after this bull Benedict XI. was dead. It is related that a young woman
had put before him at table a basket of fresh figs, of which he had eaten
and which had poisoned him. The chroniclers of the time impute this
crime to William of Nogaret, to the Colonnas, and to their associates at
Anagni; a single one names King Philip. Popular credulity is great in
matters of poisoning; but one thing is certain, namely, that no
prosecution was ordered. There is no proof of Philip’s complicity; but,
full as he was of hatred and dissimulation, he was of those who do their
best to profit by crimes which they have not ordered. It is clear that
such a pope as Benedict XI. would not do either for his passions or his
purposes.
He found one, however, from whom he flattered himself, not without
reason, that he would get more complete and efficient co-operation. The
cardinals, after being assembled in conclave for six months at Perouse,
were unable to arrive at an agreement about a choice of pope. As a way
out of their embarrassment, they entered into a secret convention to the
effect that one of them, a confidant of Philip the Handsome, should make
known to him that the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Goth, was the
candidate in respect of whom they could agree. He was a subject of the
King of England and a late favorite of Boniface VIII., who had raised him
from the bishopric of Comminges to the archbishopric of Bordeaux. He was
regarded as an enemy of France; but Philip knew what may be done with an
ambitious man, whose fortune is only half made, by offering to advance
him to his highest point. He, therefore, appointed a meeting with the
archbishop. “Hearken,” said he: “I have in my grasp wherewithal to make
thee pope if I please; and provided that thou promise me to do six things
I demand of thee, I will confer upon thee that honor; and to prove to
thee that I have the power, here be letters and advices I have received
from Rome.” After having heard and read, “the Gascon, overcome with
joy,” says the contemporary historian Villani, “threw himself at the
king’s feet, saying, ‘My lord, now know I that thou art my best friend,
and that thou wouldest render me good for evil. It is for thee to
command and for me to obey: such will ever be my disposition.’” Philip
then set before him his six demands, amongst which there were only two
which could have caused the archbishop any uneasiness. The fourth
purported that he should condemn the memory of Pope Boniface. “The
sixth, which is important and secret, I keep to myself,” said Philip, “to
make known to thee in due time and place.” The archbishop bound himself
by oath taken on the sacred host to accomplish the wishes of the king, to
whom, furthermore, he gave as hostages his brother and his two nephews.
Six weeks after this interview, on the 5th of June, 1305, Bertrand de
Goth was elected pope, under the name of Clement V.
It was not long before he gave the king the most certain pledge of his
docility. After having held his pontifical court at Bordeaux and
Poitiers he declared that he would fix his residence in France, in the
county of Venaissin, at Avignon, a territory which Philip the Bold had
remitted to Pope Gregory X. in execution of a deed of gift from Raymond
VII., Count of Toulouse. It was renouncing, in fact, if not in law, the
practical independence of the papacy to thus place it in the midst of the
dominions and under the very thumb of the King of France. “I know the
Gaseous,” said the old Italian Cardinal Matthew Rosso, dean of the Sacred
College, when he heard of this resolution; “it will be long ere the
Church comes back to Italy.” And, indeed, it was not until sixty years
afterwards, under Pope Gregory XI., that Italy regained possession of the
Holy See; and historians called this long absence the Babylonish
captivity. Philip lost no time in profiting by his propinquity to make
the full weight of his power felt by Clement V. He claimed from him the
fulfilment of the fourth promise Bertrand de Goth had made in order to
become pope, which was the condemnation of Boniface VIII.; and he
revealed to him the sixth, that “important and secret one which he kept
to himself to make known to him in clue time and place;” and it was the
persecution and abolition of the order of the Templars. The pontificate
of Clement V. at Avignon was, for him, a nine years’ painful effort, at
one time to elude and at another to accomplish, against the grain, the
heavy engagements he had incurred towards the king.
He found the condemnation of Boniface VIII. rather an embarrassment than
a danger. He shrank, on becoming pope, from condemning the pope his
predecessor, who had appointed him archbishop and cardinal. Instead of
an official condemnation, he offered the king satisfaction in various
ways. It was only from headstrong pride and to cloak himself in the eyes
of his subjects that Philip clung to the condemnation of the memory of
Boniface; and, after a long period of mutual tergiversation, it was
agreed in the end to let bygones be bygones. The principal promoter of
the assault at Anagni, William of Nogaret, was the sole exception to the
amnesty; and the pope imposed upon him, by way of penance, merely the
obligation of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he never
fulfilled. On the contrary he remained, in great favor, about the person
of King Philip, who made him his chancellor, and gave him, in Languedoc,
some rich lands, amongst others those of Calvisson, Massillargues, and
Manduel. For Philip knew how to liberally reward and faithfully support
his servants.
And he knew still better how to persecute and ruin his foes. He had no
reason, of a public kind, to consider the Templars his enemies. It is
true that they had given him a merely qualified support on his appeal to
the council against Boniface VIII.; but, both before and after that
occurrence, Philip had shown them marks of the most friendly regard. He
had asked to be affiliated to their order; and he had borrowed their
money. During a violent outbreak of the populace at Paris, in 1306, on
the occasion of a fresh tax, he had sought and found a refuge in the very
palace of the Temple, where the chapters-general were held and where its
treasures were kept. It is said that the sight of these treasures
kindled the longings of Philip, and his ardent desire to get hold of
them. At the time of the formation of the order, in 1119, after the
first crusade, the Templars were far from being rich. Nine knights had
joined together to protect the arrival and sojourning of pilgrims in
Palestine; and Baldwin II., the third Christian King of Jerusalem, had
given them a lodging in his own palace, to the east of Solomon’s temple,
whence they had assumed the name of “Poor United Champions of Christ and
the Temple.” Their valor and pious devotion had soon rendered them
famous in the West as well as the East; and St. Bernard had commended
them to the Christian world. At the council of Troyes, in 1123, Pope
Honorius II. had recognized their order, and regulated their dress, a
white mantle, on which Pope Eugenius III. placed a red cross. In 1172
the rules of the order were drawn up in seventy-two articles, and the
Templars began to exempt themselves from the jurisdiction of the
patriarch of Jerusalem, recognizing that of the pope only. Their number
and their importance rapidly increased. In 1130 the Emperor Lothaire II.
gave them lands in the Duchy of Brunswick. They received other gifts in
the Low Countries, in Spain, and in Portugal. After a voyage to the
West, Hugh des Payens, the chief of the nine Templars, returned to the
East with three hundred knights enlisted in his order; and a hundred and
fifty years after its foundation the order of the Temple, divided into
fourteen or fifteen provinces,--four in the East and ten or eleven in the
West,--numbered, it is said, eighteen or twenty thousand knights, mostly
French, and nine thousand commanderies or territorial benefices, the
revenue of which is calculated at fifty-four millions of francs (about
ten and a half million dollars). It was an army of monks, once poor men
and hard-working soldiers, but now rich and idle, and abandoned to all
the temptations of riches and idleness. There was still some fine talk
about Jerusalem, pilgrims, and crusades. The popes still kept these
words prominent, either to distract the Western Christians from intestine
quarrels, or to really promote some new Christian effort in the East.
The Isle of Cyprus was still a small Christian kingdom, and the warrior-
monks, who were vowed to the defence of Christendom in the East, the
Templars and the Hospitallers, had still in Palestine, Syria, Armenia,
and the adjacent lands, certain battles to fight and certain services to
render to the Christian cause. But these were events too petty and too
transitory to give serious employment to the two great religious and
military orders, whose riches and fame were far beyond the proportions of
their public usefulness and their real strength; a position fraught with
perils for them, for it inspired the sovereign powers of the state with
the spirit rather of jealousy than fear of them.
In 1303 the king and the pope simultaneously summoned from Cyprus to
France the Grand Master of the Templars, James do Molay, a Burgundian
nobleman, who had entered the order when he was almost a child, had
valiantly fought the infidels in the East, and fourteen years ago had
been unanimously elected Grand Master. For several months he was well
treated, to all appearance, by the two monarchs. Philip said he wished
to discuss with him a new plan of crusade, and asked him to stand
godfather to one of his children; and Molay was pall-bearer at the burial
of the king’s sister-in-law. Meanwhile the most sinister reports, the
gravest imputations, were bruited abroad against the Templars; they were
accused “of things distasteful, deplorable, horrible to think on,
horrible to hear, of betraying Christendom for the profit of the
infidels, of secretly denying the faith, of spitting upon the cross, of
abandoning themselves to idolatrous practices and the most licentious
lives.” In 1307, in the month of October, Philip the Handsome and
Clement V. had met at Poitiers; and the king asked the pope to authorize
an inquiry touching the Templars and the accusations made against them.
James de Molay was forthwith arrested at Paris with a hundred and forty
of his knights; sixty met the same fate at Beaucaire; many others all
over France; and their property was put in the king’s keeping for the
service of the Holy Land. On the 12th of August, 1308, a papal bull
appointed a grand commission of inquiry charged to conduct, at Paris, an
examination of the matter “according as the law requires.” The
Archbishops of Canterbury in England and of Mayence, Cologne, and Troves
in Germany, were also named commissioners, and the pope announced that he
would deliver his judgment within two years, at a general council held at
Vienne, in Dauphiny, territory of the Empire. Twenty-six princes and
laic lords, the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, the Counts of Flanders,
Nevers, and Auxerre, and the Count of Talleyrand de Perigord, offered
themselves as the Templars’ accusers, and gave powers of attorney to act
in their names. On the 22d of November, 1309, the Grand Master, Molay,
was, called before the commission. At first he firmly denied all that
his order had been accused of; afterwards he became confused and
embarrassed, said that he had not the ability to undertake the defence of
his order, that he was but a poor, unlettered knight, that the pope had
reserved to himself the decision in the case, and that, for his part,
he only wished the pope would summon him as soon as possible before him.
On the 28th of March, 1310, five hundred and forty-six knights, who had
declared their readiness to defend their order, appeared before the
commission; and they were called upon to choose proctors to speak in
their name. We ought also, then,” said they, “to have been tortured by
proxy only.” The prisoners were treated with the uttermost rigor and
reduced to the most wretched plight: “out of their poor pay of twelve
deniers per diem they were obliged to pay for their passage by water to
go and submit to their examination in the city, and to give money besides
to the man who undid and riveted their fetters.” In October, 1310, at a
council held at Paris, a large number of Templars were examined, several
acquitted, some subjected to special penances, and fifty-four condemned
as heretics to the stake, and burned the same day in a field close to the
abbey of St. Anthony; and nine others met the same fate at the hands of a
council held at Senlis the same year: “They confessed under their
tortures,” says Bossuet, “but they denied at their execution.” The
business dragged slowly on; different decisions were pronounced,
according to the place of decision; the Templars were pronounced
innocent, on the 17th of June, 1310, at Ravenna, on the 1st of July at
Mayence, and on the 21st of October at Salamanca; and in Aragon they made
a successful resistance. Europe began to be wearied at the uncertainty
of such judgments and at the sight of such horrible spectacles; and
Clement V. felt some shame at thus persecuting monks who, on more than
one occasion, had shown devotion to the Holy See.
But Philip the Handsome had attained his end: he was in possession of the
Templars’ riches. On the 11th of June, 1311, the commission of inquiry
terminated its sittings, and the report of its labors concluded as
follows: “For further precaution, we have deposited the said procedure,
drawn up by notaries in authentic form, in the treasury of Notre-Dame, at
Paris, to be shown to none without special letters from Your Holiness.”
The council-general, announced in 1308 by the pope, to decide
definitively upon this great case, was actually opened at Vienne, in
October, 1311; more than three hundred bishops assembled; and nine
Templars presented themselves for the defence of their order, saying that
there were at Lyons, or in the neighborhood, fifteen hundred or two
thousand of their brethren, ready to support them. The pope had the nine
defenders arrested, adjourned the decision once more, and, on the 22d of
March in the following year, at a mere secret consistory, made up of the
most docile bishops and a few cardinals, pronounced, solely on his
pontifical authority, the abolition of the order of the Temple: and it
was subsequently proclaimed officially, on the 3d of April, 1312, in
presence of the king and the council. And not a soul protested.
The Grand Master, James de Molay, in confinement at Gisors, survived his
order. The pope had reserved to himself the task of trying him; but,
disgusted with the work, he committed the trial to ecclesiastical
commissioners assembled at Paris, before whom Molay was brought, together
with three of the principal leaders of the Temple, survivors like
himself. They had read over to them, from a scaffold erected in the
forecourt of Notre-Dame, the confessions they had made, but lately, under
torture, and it was announced to them that they were sentenced to
perpetual imprisonment. Remorse had restored to the Grand Master all his
courage; he interrupted the reading, and disavowed his avowals,
protesting that torture alone had made him speak so falsely, and
maintaining that
“Of his grand order nought he wist
‘Gainst honor and the laws of Christ.”
One of his three comrades in misfortune, the commander of Normandy, made
aloud a similar disavowal. The embarrassed judges sent the two Templars
back to the provost of Paris, and put off their decision to the following
day; but Philip the Handsome, without waiting for the morrow, and without
consulting the judges, ordered the two Templars to be burned the same
evening, March 11, 1314, at the hour of vespers, in Ile-de-la-Cite, on
the site of the present Place Dauphine. A poet-chronicler, Godfrey of
Paris, who was a witness of the scene, thus describes it: “The Grand
Master, seeing the fire prepared, stripped himself briskly; I tell just
as I saw; he bared himself to his shirt, light-heartedly and with a good
grace, without a whit of trembling, though he was dragged and shaken
mightily. They took hold of him to tie him to the stake, and they were
binding his hands with a cord, but he said to them, ‘Sirs, suffer me to
fold my hands a while, and make my prayer to God, for verily it is time.
I am presently to die; but wrongfully, God wot. Wherefore woe will come,
ere long, to those who condemn us without a cause. God will avenge our
death.’”
It was probably owing to these last words that there arose a popular
rumor, soon spread abroad, that James de Molay, at his death, had cited
the pope and the king to appear with him, the former at the end of forty
days, and the latter within a year, before the judgment-seat of God.
Events gave a sanction to the legend: for Clement V. actually died on the
20th of April, 1314, and Philip the Handsome on the 29th of November,
1314, the pope, undoubtedly, uneasy at the servile acquiescence he had
shown towards the king, and the king expressing some sorrow for his greed
and for the imposts (_maltote, maletolta,_ or _black mail_) with which he
had burdened his people.
In excessive and arbitrary imposts, indeed, consisted the chief grievance
for which France, in the fourteenth century, had to complain of Philip
the Handsome; and, probably, it was the only wrong for which he upbraided
himself. Being badly wounded, out hunting, by a wild boar, and
perceiving himself to be in bad case, he gave orders for his removal to
Fontainebleau, and there, says Godfrey of Paris, the poet-chronicler just
quoted in reference to the execution of the Templars, “he said and
commanded that his children, his brothers, and his other friends should
be sent for. They were no long time in coming; they entered
Fontainebleau, into the chamber where the king was, and where there was
very little light. So soon as they were there, they asked him how he
was, and he answered, ‘Ill in body and in soul; if our Lady the Virgin
save me not by her prayers, I see that death will seize me here; I have
put on so many talliages, and laid hands on so much riches, that I shall
never be absolved. Sirs, I know that I am in such estate that I shall
die, methinks, to-night, for I suffer grievous hurt from the curses which
pursue me: there will be no fine tales to be told of me.’” Philip’s
anxiety about his memory was not without foundation; his greed is the
vice which has clung to his name; not only did he load his subjects with
poll taxes and other taxes unauthorized by law and the traditions of the
feudal system; not only was he unjust and cruel towards the Templars in
order to appropriate their riches; but he committed, over and over again,
that kind of spoliation which imports most trouble into the general life
of a people; he debased the coinage so often and to such an extent, that
he was everywhere called “the base coiner.” This was a financial process
of which none of his predecessors, neither St. Louis nor Philip Augustus,
had set him an example, though they had quite as many costly wars and
expeditions to keep up as he had. Some chroniclers of the fourteenth
century say that Philip the Handsome was particularly munificent and
lavish towards his family and his servants; but it is difficult to meet
with any precise proof of this allegation, and we must impute the
financial difficulties of Philip the Hand-some to his natural greed, and
to the secret expenses entailed upon him by his policy of dissimulation
and hatred, rather than to his lavish generosity. As he was no stranger
to the spirit of order in his own affairs, he tried, towards the end of
his reign, to obtain an exact account of his finances. His chief
adviser, Enguerrand de Marigny, became his superintendent-general, and
on the 19th of January, 1311, at the close of a grand council held at
Poissy, Philip passed an ordinance which established, under the headings
of expenses and receipts, two distinct tables and treasuries, one for
ordinary expenses, the civil list, and the payment of the great bodies of
the state, incomes, pensions, &c., and the other for extraordinary
expenses. The ordinary expenses were estimated at one hundred and
seventy-seven thousand five hunded livres of Tours, that is, according to
M. Boutaric, who published this ordinance, fifteen million nine hundred
thousand francs (about three million eighty-four thousand dollars).
Numerous articles regulated the execution of the measure; and the royal
treasurers took an oath not to reveal, within two years, the state of
their receipts, save to Enguerrand de Marigny, or by order of the king
himself. This first budget of the French monarchy dropped out of sight
after the death of Philip the Handsome, in the reaction which took place
against his government. “God forgive him his sins,” says Godfrey of
Paris, “for in the time of his reign great loss came to France, and there
was small regret for him.” The general history of France has been more
indulgent towards Philip the Handsome than his contemporaries were; it
has expressed its acknowledgments to him for the progress made, under his
sway, by the particular and permanent characteristics of civilization in
France. The kingly domain received in the Pyrenees, in Aquitaine, in
Franche-Comte, and in Flanders territorial increments which extended
national unity. The legislative power of the king penetrated into and
secured footing in the lands of his vassals. The scattered
semi-sovereigns of feudal society bowed down before the incontestable
pre-eminence of the kingship, which gained the victory in its struggle
against the papacy. Far be it from us to attach no importance to the
intervention of the deputies of the communes in the states-general of
1302, on the occasion of that struggle: it was certainly homage paid to
the nascent existence of the third estate; but it is puerile to consider
that homage as a real step towards public liberties and constitutional
government. The burghers of 1302 did not dream of such a thing; Philip,
knowing that their feelings were, in this instance, in accordance with
his own, summoned them in order to use their co-operation as a useful
appendage for himself, and absolute kingship gained more strength by the
co-operation than the third estate acquired influence. The general
constitution of the judiciary power, as delegated from the kingship, the
creation of several classes of magistrates devoted to this great social
function, and, especially, the strong organization and the permanence of
the parliament of Paris, were far more important progressions in the
development of civil order and society in France. But it was to the
advantage of absolute power that all these facts were turned, and the
perverted ability of Philip the Handsome consisted in working them for
that single end. He was a profound egotist; he mingled with his
imperiousness the leaven of craft and patience, but he was quite a
stranger to the two principles which constitute the morality of
governments, respect for rights and patriotic sympathy with public
sentiment; he concerned himself about nothing but his own position, his
own passions, his own wishes, or his own fancies. And this is the
radical vice of absolute power. Philip the Handsome is one of the kings
of France who have most contributed to stamp upon the kingship in France
this lamentable characteristic, from which France has suffered so much,
even in the midst of her glories, and which, in our time, was so
grievously atoned for by the kingship itself when it no longer deserved
the reproach.
Philip the Handsome left three sons, Louis X., called _le Hutin_ (_the
Quarreller_), Philip V., called the _Long,_ and Charles IV., called _the
Handsome,_ who, between them, occupied the throne only thirteen years and
ten months. Not one of them distinguished himself by his personal
merits; and the events of the three reigns hold scarcely a higher place
in history than the actions of the three kings do. Shortly before the
death of Philip the Handsome, his greedy despotism had already excited
amongst the people such lively discontent that several leagues were
formed in Champagne, Burgundy, Artois, and Beauvaisis, to resist him; and
the members of these leagues, “nobles and commoners,” say the accounts,
engaged to give one another mutual support in their resistance, “at their
own cost and charges.” After the death of Philip the Handsome, the
opposition made head more extensively and effectually; and it produced
two results: ten ordinances of Louis the Quarreller for redressing the
grievances of the feudal aristocracy, for one; and, for the other, the
trial and condemnation of Enguerrand de Marigny “coadjutor and rector of
the kingdom” under Philip the Hand-some. Marigny, at the death of the
king his master, had against him, rightly or wrongly, popular clamor and
feudal hostility, especially that of Charles of Valois, Philip the
Handsome’s brother, who acted as leader of the barons. “What has become
of all those subsidies, and all those sums produced by so much tampering
with the coinage? “asked the new king one day in council. “Sir,” said
Prince Charles, “it was Marigny who had the administration of everything;
and it is for him to render an account.” “I am quite ready,” said
Marigny. “This moment, then,” said the prince. “Most willingly, my
lord: I gave a great portion to you.” “You lie!” cried Charles. “Nay,
you, by God!” replied Marigny. The prince drew his sword, and Marigny
was on the point of doing the same. The quarrel was, however, stifled
for the moment; but, shortly afterwards, Marigny was accused, condemned
by a commission assembled at Vincennes, and hanged on the gibbet of
Montfaucon which he himself, it is said, had set up. He walked to
execution with head erect, saying to the crowd, “Good folks, pray for
me.” Some months afterwards, the young king, who had indorsed the
sentence reluctantly, since he did not well know, between his father’s
brother and minister, which of the two was guilty, left by will a
handsome legacy to Marigny’s widow “in consideration of the great
misfortune which had befallen her and hers;” and Charles of Valois
himself, falling into a decline, and considering himself stricken by the
hand of God “as a punishment for the trial of Enguerrand de Marigny,” had
liberal alms distributed to the poor with this injunction: “Pray God for
Euguerrand de Marigny and for the Count of Valois.” None can tell, after
this lapse of time, whether this remorse proceeded from weakness of mind
or sincerity of heart, and which of the two personages was really guilty;
but, ages afterwards, such is the effect of blind, popular clamor and
unrighteous judicial proceedings, that the condemned lives in history as
a victim and all but a guileless being.
[Illustration: The Hanging of Marigny----200]
Whilst the feudal aristocracy was thus avenging itself of kingly tyranny,
the spirit of Christianity was noiselessly pursuing its work, the general
enfranchisement of men. Louis the Quarreller had to keep up the war with
Flanders, which was continually being renewed; and in order to find,
without hateful exactions, the necessary funds, he was advised to offer
freedom to the serfs of his domains. Accordingly he issued, on the 3d of
July, 1315, an edict to the following effect: “Whereas, according to
natural right, every one should be born free, and whereas, by certain
customs which, from long age, have been introduced into and preserved to
this day in our kingdom . . . many persons amongst our common people
have fallen into the bonds of slavery, which much displeaseth us; we,
considering that our kingdom is called and named the kingdom of the Free
(Franks), and willing that the matter should in verity accord with the
name . . . have by our grand council decreed and do decree that
generally throughout our whole kingdom . . . such serfdoms be redeemed
to freedom, on fair and suitable conditions . . . and we will,
likewise, that all other lords who have body-men (or serfs) do take
example by us to bring them to freedom.” Great credit has very properly
been given to Louis the Quarreller for this edict; but it has not been
sufficiently noticed that Philip the Handsome had himself set his sons
the example, for, on confirming the enfranchisement granted by his
brother Charles to the serfs in the countship of Valois, he had based his
decree on the following grounds: “Seeing that every human being, which is
made in the image of Our Lord, should generally be free by natural
right.” The history of Christian communities is full of these happy
inconsistencies; when a moral and just principle is implanted in the
soul, absolute power itself does not completely escape from its healthy
influence, and the good makes its way athwart the evil, just as a source
of fresh and pure water ceases not to flow through and spread over a land
wasted by the crimes or follies of men.
It is desirable to give an idea and an example of the conduct which was
already beginning to be adopted and of the authority which was already
beginning to be exercised in France, amidst the feudal reaction that set
in against Philip the Handsome and amidst the feeble government of his
sons, by that magistracy, of such recent and petty origin, which was
called upon to defend, in the king’s name, order and justice against the
count-less anarchical tyrannies scattered over the national territory.
During the early years of the fifteenth century, a lord of Gascony,
Jordan de Lisle, “of most noble origin, but most ignoble deeds,” says a
contemporary chronicler, “abandoned himself to all manner of
irregularities and crimes.” Confident in his strength and his
connections,--for Pope John XXII. had given his niece to him in
marriage,--“he committed homicides, entertained evil-doers and murderers,
countenanced robbers, and rose against the king. He killed, with the
man’s own truncheon, one of the king’s servants who was wearing the royal
livery according to the custom of the royal servants. When his misdeeds
were known, he was summoned for trial to Paris; and he went thither
surrounded by a stately retinue of counts, nobles, and barons of
Aquitaine. He was confined, at first, in the prison of Chatelet; and
when a hearing had been accorded to his reply and to what he alleged in
his defence against the crimes of which he was accused, he was finally
pronounced worthy of death by the doctors of the parliament, and on
Trinity-eve he was dragged at the tail of horses and hanged, as he
deserved, on the public gallows at Paris.” It was, assuredly, a
difficult and a dangerous task for the obscure members of this
parliament, scarcely organized as it was and quite lately established
for a permanence in Paris, to put down such disorders and such men.
In the course of its long career the French magistracy has committed many
faults; it has more than once either aspired to overstep its proper
limits or failed to fulfil all its duties; but history would be
ungrateful and untruthful not to bring into the light the virtues this
body has displayed from its humble cradle, and the services it has
rendered to France, to her security at home, to her moral dignity, to her
intellectual glory, and to the progress of her civilization with all its
brilliancy and productiveness, though it is still so imperfect and so
thwarted.
Another fact which has held an important place in the history of France,
and exercised a great influence over her destinies, likewise dates from
this period; and that is the exclusion of women from the succession to
the throne, by virtue of an article, ill understood, of the Salic law.
The ancient law of the Salian Franks, drawn up, probably, in the seventh
century, had no statute at all touching this grave question; the article
relied upon was merely a regulation of civil law prescribing that “no
portion of really Salic land (that is to say, in the full territorial
ownership of the head of the family) should pass into the possession of
women, but it should belong altogether to the virile sex.” From the time
of Hugh Capet heirs male had never been wanting to the crown, and the
succession in the male line had been a fact uninterrupted indeed, but not
due to prescription or law. Louis the Quarreller, at his death, on the
5th of June, 1316, left only a daughter, but his second wife, Queen
Clemence, was pregnant. As soon as Philip the Long, then Count of
Poitiers, heard of his brother’s death, he hurried to Paris, assembled a
certain number of barons, and got them to decide that he, if the queen
should be delivered of a son, should be regent of the kingdom for
eighteen years; but that if she should bear a daughter he should
immediately take possession of the crown. On the 15th of November, 1316,
the queen gave birth to a son, who was named John, and who figures as
John I. in the series of French kings; but the child died at the end of
five days, and on the 6th of January, 1317, Philip the Long was crowned
king at Rheims. He forthwith summoned--there is no knowing exactly where
and in what numbers--the clergy, barons, and third estate, who declared,
on the 2d of February, that “the laws and customs, inviolably observed
among the Franks, excluded daughters from the crown.” There was no doubt
about the fact; but the law was not established, nor even in conformity
with the entire feudal system or with general opinion. And “thus the
kingdom went,” says Froissart, “as seemeth to many folks, out of the
right line.” But the measure was evidently wise and salutary for France
as well as for the king-ship; and it was renewed, after Philip the Long
died on the 3d of January, 1322, and left daughters only, in favor of his
brother Charles the Handsome, who died, in his turn, on the 1st of
January, 1328, and likewise left daughters only. The question as to the
succession to the throne then lay between the male line represented by
Philip, Count of Valois, grandson of Philip the Bold through Charles of
Valois, his father, and the female line represented by Edward III., King
of England, grandson, through his mother, Isabel, sister of the late King
Charles the Handsome, of Philip the Handsome. A war of more than a
century’s duration between France and England was the result of this
lamentable rivalry, which all but put the kingdom of France under an
English king; but France was saved by the stubborn resistance of the
national spirit and by Joan of Arc, inspired by God. One hundred and
twenty-eight years after the triumph of the national cause, and four
years after the accession of Henry IV., which was still disputed by the
League, a decree of the parliament of Paris, dated the 28th of June,
1593, maintained, against the pretensions of Spain, the authority of the
Salic law, and on the 1st of October, 1789, a decree of the National
Assembly, in conformity with the formal and unanimous wish of the
memorials drawn up by the states-general, gave a fresh sanction to that
principle, which, confining the heredity of the crown to the male line,
had been salvation to the unity and nationality of the monarchy in
France.