[Illustration: LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES]
Life on a
Mediaeval Barony
A Picture of a Typical
Feudal Community in the
Thirteenth Century
By
William Stearns Davis, Ph.D.
_Professor of History in the
University of Minnesota_
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
MCMXXIII
LIFE ON A MEDIÆVAL BARONY
Copyright, 1922
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
_First Edition_
G-1
To Ephraim Emerton
Master Interpreter of Mediæval History
this book is dedicated by
an ever-grateful pupil.
Table of Contents
Chapter Page
I. The Fief of St. Aliquis; Its History and
Denizens 1
II. The Castle of St. Aliquis 16
III. How the Castle Wakes. Baronial Hospitality 41
IV. Games and Diversions. Falconry and
Hunting. The Baroness's Garden 51
V. The Family of the Baron. Life of the
Women 70
VI. The Matter of Clothes. A Feudal Wedding 88
VII. Cookery and Mealtimes 113
VIII. The Jongleurs and Secular Literature and
Poetry 132
IX. The Feudal Relationship. Doing Homage 146
X. Justice and Punishments 159
XI. The Education of a Feudal Nobleman 176
XII. Feudal Weapons and Horses. Dubbing a
Knight 189
XIII. The Tourney 208
XIV. A Baronial Feud. The Siege of a Castle 224
XV. A Great Feudal Battle--Bouvines 241
XVI. The Life of the Peasants 253
XVII. Charity. Care of the Sick. Funerals 275
XVIII. Popular Religion. Pilgrimages. Superstitions.
Relic Worship 286
XIX. The Monastery of St. Aliquis: Buildings,
Organization. An Ill-Ruled Abbey 312
XX. The Monastery of St. Aliquis: The Activities
of Its Inmates. Monastic Learning 330
XXI. The "Good Town" of Pontdebois: Aspect
and Organization 343
XXII. Industry and Trade in Pontdebois. The
Great Fair 357
XXIII. The Lord Bishop. The Canons. The Parish
Clergy 373
XXIV. The Cathedral and Its Builders 393
Illustrations
Life in the Middle Ages Frontispiece
The Castle of St. Aliquis Page xiv
Typical Castle of the Middle Ages " 17
View of the Court and the Donjon " 25
Upper Hall of the Donjon " 31
Interior of a Thirteenth-century Apartment Facing p. 36
A Thirteenth-century Bed Page 39
A Game of Chess " 54
A Game of Ball " 57
Lady with a Falcon on Her Wrist " 58
The Falcon Hunt " 59
Noble Holding a Falcon in Each Hand " 61
A Hunter " 63
The Stag Hunt " 66
Coiffure of a Noblewoman " 71
Cradle " 81
A King in the Twelfth Century Wearing Pellison " 90
Wreath Made of Metal Flowers Sewed on Braid " 91
Felt Shoe " 93
Winter Costume in the Twelfth Century " 94
Headdress of a Man " 95
Costume of a Nobleman " 96
Coiffure of a Woman " 97
A Royal Marriage in the Thirteenth Century " 99
Cooks " 114
Pork Butchers (Bourges) " 115
Servants Bringing the Food to the Table " 123
Young Girls of the Nobility Serving at the Table " 126
A Feast of Ceremony in the Twelfth Century Facing p. 128
Small Portable Organ of the Thirteenth Century Page 132
Acrobats Page 134
Dancer of the Twelfth Century " 137
Thirteenth-century Harp " 139
Listening to a Trouvère in a Château of the
Thirteenth Century Facing p. 140
Banner of the Thirteenth Century Page 147
The Coat of Arms of the Dukes of Bretagne
(Thirteenth Century) " 148
Seal of the Duke Jean of Bretagne (Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries) " 149
Homage in the Twelfth Century Facing p. 156
Costume of a Nobleman (Thirteenth Century) Page 177
Gothic Writing " 179
A Teacher Holding a Ferule in His Hand " 180
Maneuvering with a Lance in the Thirteenth Century " 185
A Knight at the End of the Thirteenth Century " 190
German Helmets of the Thirteenth Century " 192
A Thirteenth-century Shield " 193
Thirteenth-century Swords " 194
Horse Trappings " 196
A Knight of the Thirteenth Century " 198
A Thirteenth-century Knight " 199
A Thirteenth-century Knight " 200
A Beggar " 201
A Tournament in the Twelfth Century Facing p. 214
Knightly Combat on Foot Page 219
A Combat in the Twelfth Century " 221
A Catapult " 236
An Attack with the Aid of a Tower " 237
A Mantelet in Wood " 238
Attack on a Wall with the Aid of the Sap " 239
Group of Peasants and of Shepherds " 255
Peasants at Work " 260
A Laborer (Thirteenth Century) " 264
Peasant Shoes " 265
A Reaper " 265
A Marriage in the Thirteenth Century " 266
A Plow " 267
A Leper " 278
A Thirteenth-century Doctor " 281
A Thirteenth-century Burial Scene Page 284
A Group of Priests (Thirteenth Century) " 287
A Shrine in the Form of an Altar
(Thirteenth Century) in the Cathedral at Rheims " 299
Richard Coeur de Lion Facing p. 302
View of an Abbey of the Thirteenth Century Page 313
The Galleries of the Cloister of the Abbey
of Mont-Saint-Michel (Thirteenth Century) " 316
The Refectory at the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel
(Thirteenth Century) " 318
A Benedictine Monk (Thirteenth Century) " 320
A Piece of Furniture Serving as a Seat and a
Reading Desk " 335
Cloth Merchants " 358
A Commoner (Thirteenth Century) " 362
Money-changers (Chartres) " 365
A Fair in Champagne in the Thirteenth
Century Facing p. 366
The Sale of Peltries (Bourges) Page 370
Episcopal Throne of the Thirteenth Century " 374
A Bishop of the Twelfth Century " 376
A Bishop of the Thirteenth Century " 379
A Deacon (Thirteenth Century) " 388
Notre Dame and the Bishop's Palace at the
Beginning of the Thirteenth Century " 395
Thirteenth-century Window in the Cathedral of Chartres,
Representing Saint Christopher Carrying Christ " 400
Preface
This book describes the life of the Feudal Ages in terms of the
concrete. The discussions center around a certain seigneury of St.
Aliquis. If no such barony is easily identifiable, at least there were
several hundred second-grade fiefs scattered over western Christendom
which were in essential particulars extremely like it, and its Baron
Conon and his associates were typical of many similar individuals, a
little worse or a little better, who abounded in the days of Philip
Augustus.
No custom is described which does not seem fairly characteristic of
the general period. To focus the picture a specific region, northern
France, and a specific year, A.D. 1220, have been selected. Not many
matters have been mentioned, however, which were not more or less
common to contemporaneous England and Germany; nor have many usages
been explained which would not frequently have been found as early as
A.D. 1100 or as late as 1300.
Northern France was _par excellence_ the homeland of Feudalism and
hardly less so of Chivalry, while by general consent the years around
1220 mark one of the great turning epochs of the Middle Ages. We are at
the time of the development of French kingship under Philip Augustus,
of the climax and the beginning of the waning of the crusading spirit,
of the highest development of Gothic architecture, of the full
blossoming of the popular Romance literature, and of the beginning of
the entirely dissimilar, but even more important, Friar movement.
To make the life of the Middle Ages live again in its pageantry and
its squalor, its superstition and its triumph of Christian art and
love, is the object of this study. Many times has the author been
reminded of the _intense contrasts_ between sublime good and extreme
evil everywhere apparent in the Feudal Epoch. With every effort at
impartiality, whether praising or condemning, it is dangerously easy to
write in superlatives.
Although the preparation of this book was not undertaken without that
knowledge and investigation of those mediæval authors, ecclesiastics,
and laymen upon which every significant study of this kind must
rest, every scholar will recognize the author's debt to many modern
specialists. To Th. Wright, Lacroix, Luchaire, Justin H. Smith,
Viollet-le-Duc, and Chéruel the acknowledgments are very specific. To
Leon Gautier they must be more specific still. It is a great misfortune
that his masterpiece, _Le Chivalrie_, is no longer current in a good
English translation. The words in quotation, sprinkled through the
text, are usually from pertinent mediæval writers, except where they
purport to be direct snatches of conversation.
To my colleague in this university, Prof. August C. Krey, who has read
and criticized the manuscript with friendly fidelity and professional
alertness and acumen, there are due many hearty thanks.
W. S. D.
The University of Minnesota.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Life on a
Mediaeval Barony
[Illustration]
Chapter I: The Fief of St. Aliquis: Its History and Denizens.
In the duchy of Quelqueparte there lay, in the later days of the great
King Philip Augustus, the barony of St. Aliquis. Perhaps you may have
trouble in finding any such places upon the maps of Mediæval France. In
that case, I must tell you that they did not lie so far from Burgundy,
Champagne, and Blois that the duke and his vassal, the baron, could not
have many brave feuds with the seigneurs of those principalities, nor
so far from Paris that peddlers and pilgrims could not come hence or go
thither pretty often, nor the baron of St. Aliquis sometimes journey to
the king's court, to do his loyal devoir to his high suzerain, or to
divert himself with many lordly pleasures.
About A.D. 1220, when King Philip Augustus was near his end, there was
exceptional peace in northern France, and conditions around St. Aliquis
were entirely normal. We purpose, therefore (with the help of Our Lady,
of holy St. Aliquis himself, and perhaps also of that very discreet
_fée_ Queen Morgue, "the wife of Julius Cæsar and the mother of King
Oberon"), to visit the aforesaid barony as it existed at that time. We
shall look around us unseen by the inhabitants, but able to ask many
questions and to get pertinent answers. Thereby shall we gather much
knowledge, and that, too, not about St. Aliquis only; for this little
world by itself is a cross-section, as it were, of a great part of
France; nay, of all feudal Europe.
It is fortunate that we are suffered, when we make this return journey
to the Middle Ages, to arrive not long after the year 1200. A century
or two earlier one might have found conditions decidedly more crude,
semi-barbarous, disgusting; one would have indeed been tempted to
doubt whether from so lawless and uncultivated a world any progressive
civilization could really develop. On the other hand, had we postponed
the excursion until, say, A.D. 1400, we would have found a society
already becoming sophisticated and to no slight extent modernized. The
true mediæval flavor would have been partially lost. But A.D. 1220
represents the epoch when the spirit of the Middle Ages had reached
its full development. The world was still full of ignorance, squalor,
and violence, yet there were now plenty of signs of a nobler day.
France was still scattered with feudal castles and tales of baronial
ruthlessness abounded, but the rise of the royal power and the growth
of the chartered communal towns were promising a new political era.
The bulk of the people were still illiterate peasants, and many of
the nobility even felt very awkward when fumbling over books; but the
monasteries had never been so full of worthy activities and of very
genuine learning. Thousands of scholars were trudging to the University
of Paris; and meantime, even in the more starving towns were rising
Gothic churches and cathedrals, combining in their soaring fabrics
not merely the results of supreme architectural genius, but a wealth
of masterpieces of sculpture and of colored glass which were to draw
visitors of later days from the very ends of the earth.
The crusading fervor had somewhat waned, but around the castles there
were still elderly knights who had once followed Richard the Lion
Hearted or Philip Augustus upon the great Third Crusade to Palestine,
likewise a good many younger cavaliers who had shared the military
glory and moral disgrace of the Fourth Crusade, which had ended not
with the recovery of Jerusalem, but the sack and seizure of Christian
Constantinople. At Rome the great and magnanimous Pope Innocent III had
hardly ceased to reign (1216); while the founders of the remarkable
Friar movement--that new style of monasticism which was to carry the
message of the Church closer to the people--St. Francis, the apostle of
love, and St. Dominic, the apostle of learning, were still alive and
active. The world, therefore, was looking forward. The Middle Ages were
close to apogee.
[Sidenote: The Fief of St. Aliquis]
We purpose to tell what may be found on the barony of St. Aliquis,
first at the castle itself and in the household of Messire the
Seigneur, then in the villages of peasants round about; next in the
abbey slightly removed; and lastly in the chartered town and cathedral
seat of the bishop a few miles further off. But first one must ask
about the origin of the principality and how there came to be any
such barony at all, for St. Aliquis would have been an exceptional
seigneury if it had not had considerable history behind it, and had not
represented the growth of several different elements.
The castle of St. Aliquis lies at the junction of two rivers. The
smaller of these, the Rapide, tumbles down from some hills, cutting a
gorge through the dense beech forest until it runs under a precipitous
slope, then dashes into the greater, more placid current of the Claire.
The Claire is an affluent, perhaps of the Seine, perhaps of the Loire.
It is navigable for flat barges a good many miles above its junction
with the Rapide, and the tolls upon this commerce swell the baron's
revenue.
At the triangle formed by the converging streams rises an abrupt rocky
plateau practically inaccessible from the banks of either river and
which can be approached only from the third side, where the land slopes
gently away from the apex of the triangle. Here rise some jagged crags
marking out the place as a natural fortress. Most castles which dot
feudal Europe are thus located in the most advantageous spot in their
respective regions.
Possibly human habitations have existed upon this promontory ever since
God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden. If we consult Brother Boniface,
the librarian at the local monastery, the best-read person in the
district, the good old man will tell us that long before the Romans
came, the ancient Druids ("now in hell") had their pagan altars here,
and sacrificed human victims under a great oak. Some chiseled masonry
found on the spot also indicates an extensive settlement in Roman days,
when Gaul was a province of the Cæsars. Of course, all the pious people
know that under the persecuting Emperor Diocletian, the holy Aliquis
himself, a centurion in the Legions, was shot to death with burning
arrows because he preferred Christ to Jupiter, and that the place
of his martyrdom is at the new abbey church about a league from the
castle.
[Sidenote: Founding of the Castle]
Nevertheless, secular history is not precise until after the time of
the mighty Charlemagne. Under his feeble successor, Charles the Bald,
tradition affirms that the vikings, Scandinavian barbarians, came up
the greater river, ascended the Claire in their long dragon ships; then
on the site of the present castle they established a stockaded camp,
whence they issued to ravage the country. This was about A.D. 870, but
after a year they departed, leaving desolation behind them. About A.D.
880 another band of vikings came with similar foul intent, but they met
a different reception. The saints had raised up a brave protector for
the Christian folk of those lands.
Very uncertain is the ancestry of the redoubtable warrior Heribert, who
about A.D. 875 seized the rocky triangle at the mouth of the Rapide,
and built the first castle of St. Aliquis. Perhaps he was descended
from one of Charlemagne's famous Frankish "counts." He did, indeed,
only what was then being done everywhere to check the Scandinavian
hordes: he built a castle and organized the levies of the region,
hitherto footmen, into an effective cavalry force. This castle was
anything save the later majestic fortress. It was merely a great square
tower of rough masonry, perched on the crag above the streams. Around
it was a palisade of heavy timbers, strengthened on the landward side
by a ditch. Inside this compound were huts for refugees, storehouses
for fodder, and rude stalls for the cattle. To stop passage up the
Claire a heavy chain of iron was stretched across the river and stone
piers were sunk at shallow places, thus forcing boats to pass close
under the fortress in range of descending missiles. Where the chain was
landed there was built another smaller stone tower. All the crossing
then had to be by skiffs, although somewhat later an unsteady bridge
was thrown over the stream.
The second expedition of vikings found that these precautions had
ruined their adventure. They lost many men and a dragon ship when
they tried to force the iron chain. Heribert's new cavalry cut off
their raiding parties. Finally they departed with thinned numbers and
scant spoils. Heribert was hailed as savior of the region, just as
other champions, notably the great Count Odo at the siege of Paris,
won similar successes elsewhere on a larger scale. The vikings had
departed, but Heribert's tower remained. So began the castle of St.
Aliquis.
Heribert had taken possession ostensibly as the king's "man," claiming
some royal commission, but as the power of Charlemagne's feeble
rulers dwindled, Heribert's heirs presently forgot almost all their
allegiance to their distant royal "master." This was merely as seemed
the case about A.D. 900 all through the region then coming to be called
"France." Castles were rising everywhere, sometimes to repel the
vikings, sometimes merely to strengthen the power of some local chief.
Once erected, the lords of those castles were really little princes,
able to defy the very weak central authority. To capture a considerably
less formidable fortalice than St. Aliquis implied a tedious siege,
such as few kings would undertake save in an emergency.
The result was that ere A.D. 1000 Heribert's great-grandsons had almost
ceased to trouble about the king. The person they genuinely feared
was the local Duke of Quelqueparte, another feudal seigneur with more
followers and more castles than they. Partly from prudence, partly from
necessity, they had "done homage" to him, become "his men," and as
his vassals rode to his wars. The dukes, in turn, full of their own
problems, and realizing the strength of St. Aliquis, seldom interfered
in the fief, save on very serious occasions. The barons of St. Aliquis
therefore acted very nearly like sovereign princes. They, of course,
had their own gallows with power of life and death, waged their own
personal wars, made treaties of peace, and even coined a little
ill-shapen money with their own superscription.[1] "Barons by the Grace
of God," they boasted themselves, which meant that they obeyed the duke
and _his_ suzerain, the king, very little, and, we fear, God not a
great deal.
[Sidenote: Turbulent Barons]
In the recent centuries, however, the barony had changed hands several
times. About 1070 the lord had the folly to refuse his ordinary
feudal duty to the Duke of Quelqueparte. The latter roused himself,
enlisted outside aid, and blockaded and starved out the castle of St.
Aliquis. The unfortunate baron--duly adjudged "traitor and felon" by
his "peers," his fellow vassals--was beheaded. The duke then bestowed
the fief, with the hand of the late owner's niece, upon Sire Rainulf,
a younger son of a south-country viscount, who had visited the duke's
court, bringing with him an effective battle-ax and fifty sturdy
followers. Sire Rainulf, however, died while in the First Crusade.
The reigning duke next tried to give the barony to another favorite
warrior, but the son of the late baron proved himself of sturdy stuff.
He fought off his suzerain and enlisted allies from Burgundy. The duke
was forced, therefore, to leave him in peace.
Presently, about 1140, another baron died, survived only by a
daughter. Her uncles and cousins did their best to expel this poor lady
and induced the suzerain duke to close his eyes to their deeds, but,
fortunately, the new baroness had been very pious. The influence of the
great St. Bernard of Clairvaux was exerted, thereby persuading King
Louis VII to warn the duke that if he could not protect his vassals
"the king would do justice." So the Lady Bertrada was given in marriage
to a respectable Flemish cavalier Gui, who ruled the barony with only
the usual wars. He left two sons, Garnier and Henri. Sire Henri, the
younger, lived at the inferior castle of Petitmur, went on the Fourth
Crusade (1203-04), and perished in the fighting around Constantinople
ere the French and Venetians sacked the city. Garnier, the elder,
received, of course, the great castle. He was the uncle of the Baron
Conon III, the son of Henri, and the present lord of St. Aliquis.
It is well said by the monks that the blessed feel joys in paradise all
the keener because a little earlier they have escaped from the pangs
and fires of purgatory. Certes, for all laymen and clerics on the St.
Aliquis fiefs, there was purgatory enough in Baron Garnier's day to
make the present "sage" rule of Baron Conon seem tenfold happy.
The late seigneur ruled about twenty years, filled up with one round of
local wars, oppression of the small, and contentions with the great.
Baron Garnier was assuredly a mighty warrior. Never was he unhorsed in
jousting or in mêlée. His face was one mass of scars and he had lost an
ear. Plenty of landless knights and wolfish men at arms rioted around
his donjon. His provosts and foresters knew how to squeeze the poor
of the seigneury, and by this income and by the ransoms from numerous
captives he was able to rebuild the castle of St. Aliquis according to
the first military art of the day.
[Sidenote: Crimes of Baron Garnier]
But his sins were more than the hairs of his grizzled head. Having
taken dislike to his wife, and the bishop refusing an annulment,
he kept the poor Lady Ada mewed up in one chamber for years, and,
according to many stories, loaded her with chains and spared not
tortures, until in mercy she died. However, he had plenty of less
regular consorts. The castle courts had swarmed with loud women,
the favorites of himself and his familiars, and with their coarse,
unacknowledged brats. No pretty peasant girl's honor was safe in those
parts. As for the prisoners--after Messire Conon came into power it
was a marvel the quantity of human bones, gnawed by the rats, which
they took out of the lower dungeons, as well as how they released four
wretches who had been incarcerated in the dark so long that they were
blinded. Needless to say, the compartments of the gallows never lacked
their swinging skeletons. Women still hush their squalling children
with, "Be silent--or Baron Garnier will get you!"
Yet with all these deeds this baron affected great hospitality. He kept
a roaring hall, with ready welcome for any cavalier who enjoyed deep
drinking and talking of horses, women, falcons, and forays; and a good
many seigneurs found his alliance useful. So he continued his evil ways
until (praised be Our Lady of Mercies) he came to a fit end. Thrice he
had been excommunicated by the bishop. Thrice he had been readmitted
to ghostly favor, thanks to large gifts toward the new cathedral at
Pontdebois. Then he let his men murder a priest who was traveling with
a precious chalice. So he was excommunicated a fourth time. While in
this perilous state (though boasting that he would soon make his new
terms with the Church) his companion in sin, Suger of the Iron Arm,
quarreled with him over their cups and ran him through with a boar
spear. The baron lived just long enough to see Suger hewn in pieces
by his comrades. Then he died (priestless, of course, and unabsolved)
cursing God and crying piteously for help from the devil. Christians
cross themselves when they think of his fate hereafter.
Garnier left no legitimate children. He was on very cold terms with his
brother's widow, the Lady Odelina, who was rearing her two sons and
daughter at Petitmur; but Odelina had faced her brother-in-law down
and clung tightly to her own little fief. She had given her children
a "courteous" and pious education, and induced a neighboring seigneur
to take her eldest son, Conon, to "nourish" as his squire, and rear to
be a knight. At length came her reward. The youth was knighted by the
Count of Champagne three weeks before his evil uncle perished. Then
the suzerain duke was glad to have St. Aliquis pass to so competent a
vassal as young Sire Conon.
This is a bare suggestion of the contentions, feuds, and downright
wars of which the barony has been the scene, and yet St. Aliquis has
probably been freer from such troubles than most of its neighbors.
[Sidenote: Baronial Fiefs and Vassals]
Although this castle is the center of Baron Conon's power, it is by
no means his only strong place. He has three other smaller castles
(besides Petitmur, which will go to his brother) that he sometimes
inhabits, but which he ordinarily rules through castellans. In the
twenty-odd villages upon the fief there are some ten thousand peasants
whom he governs through his provosts.[2] Also, there depend on him
his own "noble" vassals--about twelve "sires," petty nobles each
with his own small castle or tower, hamlet of peasants, and right
to "low justice." These vassals follow the St. Aliquis banner and
otherwise contribute to the baron's glory. That seigneur himself is
likewise "advocate" (secular guardian) of the neighboring Abbey of St.
Aliquis--an honorable post involving delicate dealings with the lord
abbot. Also, a few leagues away lies the "good town" of Pontdebois. The
baron, as will be explained, has very important relations with that
city. In addition he "holds" of the bishop there resident some farms
with hunting and fishing rights. For this inferior fief he does homage,
of course, not to the Duke of Quelqueparte, but to the Bishop of
Pontdebois. Some years previous, when the duke and bishop were at war,
the baron was obligated to send twenty knights to fight for the duke,
but also six to fight for the bishop. The Scriptures warn us against
trying "to serve two masters"; but the baron happily made shift to keep
the two contingents of his little array from engaging with one another
until his two overlords had made peace!
In addition to all the above, Conon holds still another small castle at
quite a distance, for which he does homage to the Duke of Burgundy--a
fact promising more complications when Quelqueparte and Burgundy (as
is most likely) go to war. Finally, he holds a large farm from his
otherwise equal, the Baron of Harcourt. Here he is sure to cut his
feudal devoir to a minimum, and leave the Lord of Harcourt to consider
whether to pocket his pride, risk a "private war," or attempt a lawsuit
before their mutual suzerain, the Duke of Quelqueparte.[3]
The Baron Conon would gladly be the direct vassal of the king. The
higher your suzerain the higher, on the whole, your own glory in the
feudal firmament; but the duke would resent bitterly any attempt to get
his vassals away and all the other first-class nobles would support
him. Baron Conon must wait, therefore, perhaps until the present
elderly duke is dead and the duchy falls under feeble heirs. Then he
will find the astute king, if Philip Augustus is still reigning, only
too willing and able to meet him halfway. At present, however, Conon
is on good terms with the duke, although he is just as jealous himself
to prevent his own sires from "holding" directly from the duke as the
latter is to check the baron's going over to the king. Everywhere there
is this friction over "subinfeudation." "The vassal of my vassal is
_not_ my vassal": that is the angry comment daily.
All in all, the seigneury of St. Aliquis thus covers three hundred
square miles, whereof about one-third is controlled by the baron as his
personal domain and the remainder by his vassals. Perhaps there are two
hundred similar baronies and countships dotting France, some larger,
some smaller, but in their histories, feudal relationships, and general
problems much alike. This fief, however, is especially fortunate in
that the baron possesses an old charter, wrung from some tottering
Carolingian king, giving him the right to collect a sack of grain, a
large truss of hay, or a similar quota in kind from every loaded barge
traversing down the navigable Claire; also to levy a copper obol for
every Christian foot passenger, and three obols for every mounted
traveler or Jew (mounted or walking) crossing the very important bridge
by the castle. These tolls give messire many fine suits of armor, buy
silk gowns for the baroness, and make all the local seigneurs anxious
to marry their daughters to the baron's sons as soon as the boys can be
knighted.
[Sidenote: A Superior Type of Baron]
St. Aliquis, we have said, is happy in its present seigneur. Monks,
villeins, and petty nobles agree in praising Baron Conon. When a
seigneur is practically a sovereign, everything depends upon his
character. If the saints desire to punish certain Christians for their
sins, let them merely send them an evil, or only an inefficient,
quarrelsome baron! Like the unlamented Garnier, he can soon make their
lives into a perfect Gehenna.
Conon III has now ruled for more than ten years. He has kept out of
all private wars but one, a feat almost exceptional; but in that
one war he struck so hard and so skillfully that his opponent, the
Viscount of Foretvert, swore on the relics to a peace which cost him
a village of peasants and the transfer of two petty sires to the St.
Aliquis fealty. Conon fought also in the great battle of Beauvais so
as to win the personal praise of the king himself. He compounded with
the abbey over the division of the income of a farm in a manner which
left him and the abbot firm friends--a singular piece of diplomacy.
Better still, he held to his point about some hunting rights with the
Bishop of Pontdebois, and finally won most of his claims without being
even temporarily subjected to excommunication. His peasants pay their
imposts loyally, for the baron not merely protects them from the raids
of brigands and rival feudatories; he also represses worse pillagers
still, his own seigneurial officers, who were ravaging harpies in all
the little thatched villages through Baron Garnier's day. Therefore,
Conon is called "a very gentle seigneur," which means that he is every
inch a lord and which term does not prevent him from swinging a heavy
sword, and from knocking down a villein with his own fist when there is
need of teaching a lesson.
[Sidenote: A Baronial Family]
As for Conon's family, his good mother, Lady Odelina, is now resting
under the stones of the abbey church; but she lived to see her
first-born wedded to Adela, the daughter of a rich Picard sire, a dame
of many virtues. The marriage has been blessed with two healthy sons,
François and Anseau--the pampered tyrants of all the castle folk.
The baron's household also includes his younger brother Aimery, who
has just reached the age for knighthood, and his marriageable sister
Alienor. So far the family had been marvelously harmonious. There has
been none of those passages at arms between elder and younger brothers
which often make a castle the antechamber to hell. Adela is "the very
_gentle_ dame"--beloved of husband and revered by vassals and villeins,
but whose "gentleness," like her husband's, by no means keeps her from
flogging her maids when their sins deserve it. Alienor is already going
to tourneys and has presented at least three young knights with her
stockings to tie to their lances; but she knows that it is a brother's
duty to find a husband for one's sister, and Conon has promised that
whoever he selects will be young, brave, and kindly. Therefore Alienor
is not borrowing trouble. As for Aimery, he is proud of being almost
as good a hawker and jouster as his brother. He will soon be knighted
and rule over Petitmur, but his head is full of a visit to the king's
court, of winning vast favor, and finally of being given the only
daughter and heiress of a great count--in short, of possessing a fief
bigger than St. Aliquis.
There, then, is the little world, ruled by persons perhaps a little
more honorable and kindly than the run of North French barons, but by
no means of impossible virtue.
It is June, A.D. 1220. The sun is just rising. Let us enter St. Aliquis
as the warders unbar the gates; for the castle is the heart of the
feudal civilization.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Long before the assigned date of this narrative, some king
or other potentate had assuredly given the lords of St. Aliquis
_immunity_--_i.e._, exemption from ordinary jurisdiction, taxation,
etc., by outside powers, with corresponding privileges for the local
seigneurs themselves.
[2] On some fiefs, as on the royal domain at this time, there would be
a higher seigneurial officer, the _bailli_, set over the provosts.
[3] The Baron of St. Aliquis was fortunate if his feudal relationships,
conflicting overlords, etc., were not even more complicated than here
indicated. There was nothing "simple" about the composition of a feudal
barony!