It was to the Abbey of Josaphat that, up to the days of the Revolution, the musicians and choristers of Notre-Dame made yearly, in the vintage season, a strange kind of equestrian promenade, known as the Chevauchée. This probably represented the survival of some feudal obligation. The chevaucheurs in a dignified Latin speech obtained leave from the Chapter to perform their functions, and then, before leaving the Cathedral, they used to sing the office of the day. But once en route the cavalcade became as noisy and riotous a scene of carnival as the Feast of Fools. Riding on horses and donkeys, clad in outrageous garments of all colours, armed with swords, wearing absurd hats, and making a deplorable noise with all kinds of instruments, the cacophonous cavalcade made its way through the laughing, boisterous throng, to déjeûner at the Abbey of Josaphat. The Feast of Fools, to which I have referred, like this amazing excursion, was celebrated in the odour of scandal down to the end of the eighteenth century. It was a feast widely popular in France, but much more licentious than religious. It was held at Chartres on the 1st of January. An admirable picture of the Feast of Fools as observed at Notre-Dame-de-Paris five days later is drawn by Victor Hugo in the first chapters of his novel of that name.
Clerks of the choir dressed up in grotesque costumes, elected a Pape des Fous and a college of ridiculous cardinals, and then performed an indecent parody of the sacred offices. They danced in an abandoned fashion in the sanctuary, and ran about the city committing a thousand extravagances and bandying jests with the ribald crowd. There was another Feast of Fools in carnival time, which was authorised in 1300 on the condition that it was celebrated dévotement. That condition was not observed, and the feast was abolished in the following year. But that of January 1st continued till the ‘scandals, insolences, turpitudes and abuses’ which attended it led to its being forbidden in 1479 by the Church authorities. But the people preferred their Saturnalia to the danger of ecclesiastical anathemas, and the feast maintained its indecent existence for many years to come.
S. Ives had accompanied Urban preaching the Crusade through France. He returned now to Chartres and preached it there. Numerous were the Crusaders who went from the Chartrain country. It was fitting that, as in Foucher (historien un peu trop conteur), Chartres was to boast one of the chief chroniclers of the Crusades, so among her sons there should be many, like Gautier-Sans-Avoir, Raoul de Beaugency, and Gérard de Cherisy, to do knightly deeds worthy to be chronicled. The Battle of Gorgoni was won by the valour of the Count of Chartres and his followers, and Raimbaud Croton, a Chartrain, it was who first scaled the ramparts of Jerusalem. But none among the Chartrain Crusaders exceeded in bravery and brilliant daring Évrard, Viscomte of Chartres and Seigneur du Puiset. It was he who at the passage of the Orontes (El far) stood at the head of the bridge and, like another Horatius Cocles, held it against the enemy. It was he again who, when Jerusalem had just fallen into the hands of the Crusaders, won the admiration of the whole army by a bold feat of arms. A party of Christian soldiers were put to flight by the desperate resistance of a troop of the enemy. Their flight was barred by Évrard, whose anger found vent in a scathing volley of reproaches.
‘Vile troop of cowards,’ he cried, ‘is it to fight you have come here, or to figure in a ballet? Are you children playing at soldiers, or little girls footing it in the chorus of a dance?... Away with fear, take courage, and remember you are Francs and born of brave sires. My ensign,’ he nobly added, ‘shall guide you—follow you me.’ Thus speaking, he rushed into the fray, and, inspired by his example, the Crusaders succeeded in overwhelming the infidels.
The part played by Count Étienne was at first less noble. He had married Adèle, daughter of William the Conqueror, and, like his wife, he was distinguished in this age of the sword by a love of art and letters. He wrote poetry, and Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans, rashly compared him to Vergil. ‘Gentiz homme, noble barun,’ so Robert Wace describes him.
Summoned from more congenial pursuits, he sailed with Robert, Duke of Normandy, to join the army which was then encamped before Nicæa. In a letter to his wife he described the hospitality with which the Emperor Alexis received him at Constantinople. ‘He treated me with so much distinction,’ he says, ‘that I could only tear myself away from him with tears.’ He proceeded to amass booty both before and after the taking of Nicæa, and his letters acquaint his wife with his increasing wealth and his military preferment, but he grows anxious to return to France with his enormous loot. His cowardly retreat from Antioch and the treacherous representations by which he dissuaded the Emperor Alexis from relieving the Crusaders, who were now pressed by the army of Kerbogha, gained him a poor welcome in France when he returned. The subsequent taking of Jerusalem exposed the deserting Crusaders to unlimited contumely, and filled them with remorse. French irony expressed itself in biting sirvente, short satirical poems by fighting troubadours like Bertram de Born, the Provençal nobleman, who gave to Richard Coeur-de-Lion his nickname of Yea-and-Nay. Those faint-hearted knights who had stolen back to their baronial halls were denounced with cutting invective.
‘Marques, li monges de Clunhie
Veuilh que fasson de vos capadel
O siatz abbas de Cystilh,
Pus le cor avetz tan mendic
Que mais amatz dos buous et un araire
A Montferrat qu’alors estr’ emperuieur.’[49]
Stung by such taunts, Count Étienne seized an opportunity which was given him of making a fresh expedition against the Turks. On this occasion he amply redeemed his reputation, and after many deeds of heroism he laid down his life for the cause whose sign he bore. Before setting out he had secured the blessing of the bishop by two interesting concessions.
It was a long-established custom of the town and a right by usage of the Counts of Chartres that, on the death of a bishop, his palace should be sacked. To S. Ives, when his new palace was finished, Count Étienne now granted a charter renouncing this barbarous practice. But none the less Thibault, his son, sacked the bishop’s palace upon the death of S. Ives. The other concession made by the Count was with regard to the liberty of the cloister, which, the canons maintained, was outside all secular jurisdiction. The quarrel which sprang from this question of the rights of the cloister was destined to last for three centuries. For the present it was forgotten in the more absorbing interest of the Crusades.