CHAPTER III
Theobald-the-Trickster and Fulbert the Bishop
‘Thiebaut li quenz de Chartres fu fel é engignous
Mult out chastels é viles, é mult fu averous;
Chevalier fu mult prous é mult chevalerous
Mez mult part fu cruel é mult envious.’
Robert Wace—Roman de Rou.
ROLO, on his conversion, gave his domain of Malmaison, near Épernon, to Notre-Dame de Chartres. The deed of gift was long preserved, and ran in these terms:—
‘I, Rollo, Duke of Normandy, give to the Brethren of the Church Notre-Dame de Chartres my Castle of Malmaison, which I have won with my sword, and with my sword I will guarantee it to them, as let this knife be witness.’
A knife in the Middle Ages was a symbol of putting in possession. It was a fitting symbol for the siècle de fer, that century of moral and material disorder and disaster in which the country was now involved.
For France was now falling into the iron grip of feudalism. It is the age of castles. As the power of the central authority weakens, the power of the great vassals, dukes, counts, bishops and abbots becomes established as absolute in their fiefs. But during the period of disorder, from which the feudal régime emerged triumphant, the serf had waged with his master the same struggle that the vassal was waging with his lords and the lord with the King. The result was similar in all cases. Usurpation of servile tenures accompanied that of liberal tenures, and, territorial appropriation having taken place in every rank of society, it was as difficult to dispossess a serf of his manse as a seigneur of his benefice. The serf, therefore, emerged from the condition of almost absolute slavery in which he was at the time of the fall of the Western Empire, and from the condition of servitude that had been his up to the end of the reign of Charles-le-Chauve. From this time servitude was transformed into serfage. The serf having withdrawn his person and his field from his master’s hands, owes to him no longer his body and goods, but only a portion of his labour and his income. He ceases to be a slave and becomes a tributary.
With the advent of feudalism the map of the country underwent a change. The Roman arrangement, by which Gaul had been divided into eighteen provinces and 127 dioceses, had been little altered by the Francs, and lasted on under the Carlovingians, but it gradually disappeared in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was preserved only by the Church, the dioceses of which, up to the time of the Revolution, represented very nearly the ancient divisions of Gaul under the Romans. Before the days of Cæsar it was into pagi that Gaul had been divided. The pagus or pays persisted now; more numerous than the cities, they continued to split up and multiply. But from 800 onwards most of these pays having set up comtés of the same name and same extent began to be known as such—as, for instance, the Comté of Chartres.
When in 987 Hugues Capet, Duke of France, decided to assume the title of King, the political unity of the Chartrains had long been broken by the territorial usurpations of the great officers of the Crown. The government of the country under Charlemagne had been shared by seven counts—Chartres, Dreux, Châteaudun, Blois, Vendôme, Poissy and Mantes. But by Hugh Capet’s time these had been reduced to three—Chartres, Blois and Dreux—and in the person of Thibault-le-Vieux or le Tricheur, who was of Capetan stock, the counties of Blois and Chartres were united. They remained in his family till the death of Thibaut VI., 1218. They were then divided between the two collateral branches of the house, but reunited again in 1269.
Philippe-le-Bel acquired the county of Chartres in 1289, and gave it to his brother, Charles de Valois, whose son, Philippe de Valois, united it to the Crown (1346).
It is convenient to explain this matter of the Comté here, for the present period of the history of Chartres is connected with the dread name of Thibault-le-Tricheur, Theobald the Trickster, Count of Chartres, the chevalier fel et engignous, whom Robert Wace describes.