Physical weakness has always been the vulnerable point of the sacred caste, for priests have rarely been warriors, and faith has seldom been so profound as to guarantee ecclesiastics against attack. This difficulty was marked in the early Middle Ages, when, although disintegration so far prevailed as to threaten the very tradition of centralized power, a strong leaven of the ancient materialism remained.
In the ninth century the trend toward decentralization was resistless. Although several of the descendants of Charlemagne were men of ability and energy, the defence was so superior to the attack that they could not coerce their vassals, and their domains melted away into independent sovereignties until the crown became elective, and the monarchy almost a tradition. During the tenth century it seems possible that the regal authority might have been obliterated, even to the last trace, had it not been for the Church, which was in sore need of a champion. The priesthood cared nothing for the legitimate line; what they sought was a protector, and accordingly they chose, not the descendant of Charlemagne, but him who, in the words of the Archbishop of Rheims, was “distinguished by his wisdom and who found support in the greatness of his soul.” Hugh Capet succeeded Louis V. because he was the best chief of police in France.
From such an alliance, between the priest and the soldier, has always sprung the dogma of the divine right of kings. In mediæval Europe, enchantment was a chief element of the royal power. The monarch was anointed with a magic oil, girt with a sacred sword, given a supernatural banner, and endowed with the gift of miracles. His touch healed disease. In return for these gifts, he fought the battles of the Church, whose property was the natural prey of a predatory baronage. Every diocese and every abbey was embroiled in endless local wars, which lasted from generation to generation, and sometimes from century to century. A good example was the interminable feud between the Abbey of Vézelay and the Counts of Nevers, and a letter of a papal legate named Conon, which described one of the countless raids, gives an idea of the ferocity of the attack.
“The men of the Count of Nevers have burst open the doors of the cloister, have thrown stones on the reliquaries which contain the bodies of Saint Lazarus, of Saint Martha, of Saint Andocious, and of Saint Pontianus; they have not even respected the crucifix in which was preserved a morsel of the true cross, they have beaten the monks, they have driven them out with stones, and having taken one of them, they have treated him in an infamous manner.”[144]
Until the stimulus given by the crusades was felt, subinfeudation went on uninterruptedly; the Capetians were as unable to stem the current as the Carlovingians before them, so that, under Philip I., the royal domain had become almost as much dismembered as the kingdom of Lothaire a century earlier. Consolidation began after the council of Clermont, and Suger’s Life of Louis the Fat is the story of the last years of the partisan warfare between the crown and the petty nobility which had been going on since the time of Hugh Capet.
During this long period the kings had fought a losing battle, and without the material resources of the Church would have been overpowered. Even as it was they failed to hold their own, and yet the wealth of the clergy was relatively enormous. The single abbey of Saint Denis was said to have controlled ten thousand men, and though this may be an exaggeration, the corporation was organized on a gigantic scale.
Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries it held in France alone three cities, upwards of seventy-four villages, twenty-nine manors attached to these possessions, over a hundred parishes, and a great many chapels bringing in valuable rentals, beside numerous vineyards, mills and fields, with fifteen forests of the first class.[145]
Suger’s description of the country at the beginning of the twelfth century is highly dramatic. Every strong position, like a hill or a forest, was a baron’s hold, from whence he rode to plunder and torment the people. One of the most terrible of these robbers was Hugh du Puiset, a man whom the Abbot of Saint Denis calls a ruffian, the issue of a long line of ruffians. To the churchman, Hugh was the incarnation of evil. He oppressed the clergy, and though hated by all, few dared oppose him. At last he attacked Adèle, Countess of Chartres, daughter of William the Conqueror, who went with her son Tybalt to seek redress from the king. Louis did not relish the campaign, and the monk described how the lady taunted him with the defeat his father had suffered from the father of Hugh, who pursued him to Orléans, captured a hundred of his knights, and cast his bishops into dungeons.
Afterward, an assembly was held at Melun to consider the situation, and there a concourse of prelates, clerks, and monks “threw themselves at the king’s feet and implored him, to his great embarrassment, to repress this most greedy robber Hugh, who, more rapacious than a wolf, devoured their lands.”[146]
Certainly the priests had cause for alarm, for the venerable Archbishop of Chartres, who was present, had been captured, loaded with irons, and long left to languish in prison.