From the time of Fulbert onwards, the canons, on one pretext or another, whether by buying houses, claiming jurisdiction, or openly demanding the right of enclosing their cloister by walls and gates, had begun to encroach—so at least it was regarded by Counts and townsmen—upon the domain of Chartres, and to set up by degrees a town within a town, the cloister which stretched from the Rue de Cheval Blanc on the north to the Rue au Lait on the south, and from the Percheronne on the west to the Rue Montonnière, a continuation of the Rue Muret, on the east. The rights claimed by the Chapter were at last acknowledged and established by parliamentary decree, 1470; but only, as we have said, after centuries of bickering with the Counts. They, feeling themselves assailed both as to their pockets and their powers of jurisdiction by the privileges extended by the Church to those who attached themselves to the cloister, expressed their feelings by frequent armed raids into the precincts, pillaging the shops[50] which had sprung up beneath the shade of Notre-Dame and carrying off unfortunate clerks as prisoners to be ransomed from the great Tower. The Church retaliated with its one all-powerful weapon—excommunication.
The cloister[51] was finally enclosed by thick walls and by nine gates—mostly destroyed in the eighteenth century; but of some of them traces may still be seen—the Porte Neuve and the Porte de l’Étroit-Degré, giving on the Rue du Cheval Blanc; the Porte des Changes (Rue des Changes), and Porte aux Herbes (Rue au Lait), Porte Évière, entrance of Rue Saint-Eman; Porte Percheronne (Rue du Soleil-d’Or), Porte des Carneaux (Rue Sainte-Même), Porte des Lices (Marché-a-la-Filasse), Porte de l’Évêque (Rue Muret).
One of the handsomest of the old houses of the canons that remains is that at the corner of the Rue des Changes, facing the south porch of the Cathedral. Utilitarian France has sadly restored this old thirteenth-century house, and turned it to account as the Post Office, just as she has planted some villainous cavalry barracks on the site of the old monastic buildings of S. Père, and converted into a military bakehouse the interesting old House of Loens.
Attached to the cloister was the Hospital or Hôtel-Dieu of Notre-Dame. It was founded about the tenth century; restored and spoilt in the eighteenth century. The hospital has recently been removed to a more suitable spot, and the old Hôtel-Dieu, with its thirteenth-century chapel, now serves for the École Mutuelle of the town. It stands in the south-west corner of the space which has been cleared in front of the Cathedral, between the Rue Fulbert and the Rue de la Cathédrale.
The departure and death of Etienne left Chartres and its bishop more than ever exposed to the brigandage of the Viscount Hugues, who was always in a state of excommunication, and whose bands of mercenary robbers held the roads, so that S. Ives could not attend the great Council at Sens or at Paris. With his violence, as with the greed and slackness of his own clergy, S. Ives carried on unceasing war, and it was not long before he found himself involved also in a bitter quarrel with the Countess Adèle, widow of Etienne. The Chapter had bound themselves by oath not to admit into their ranks any of those known as conditionarii—men, that is, freed from serfdom but still held under servile obligations to the Countess. The Countess exerted herself with extraordinary energy and persistence to advance the claims of certain clients of this description. S. Ives strove to calm her and to support his Chapter. The Countess retorted by violent reprisals and seized the wine of the precentor, Hilduin, in the street des Corroyeurs. S. Ives threatened her with excommunication, and she interdicted the canons from the use of the roads, and of bread and water throughout her domain. It was time to give way, and S. Ives, by a judicious compromise, obtained the Pope’s consent that the Lady Adèle’s men should be admitted to share in the revenues of the Cathedral.
In support of his suzerain the Viscount Hugues had been devastating the diocese. But a new Crusade saved S. Ives from his enemies. Bohémond of Tarentum, Prince of Antioch, came to Chartres to marry Constance, daughter of the King, and to receive the nuptial benediction from the hands of S. Ives, to whose efforts the marriage was due. The Countess Adèle displayed on this occasion a hospitality worthy in its magnificence of the daughter of William the Conqueror and of the noble House of Thibault the Trickster. The marriage ceremony was performed, and thereafter, before a vast assembly standing on the steps of the altar of the Vierge-aux-Miracles, the Prince of Antioch related his wonderful adventures, and bore witness to the miraculous protection afforded to him by God in the former Crusade. Men listened and wondered and waxed enthusiastic. When Bohémond concluded his discourse by inviting his listeners to follow the example of the first Crusaders, a crowd of knights rushed forward and then and there took the sign of the Cross. Foremost among them was the excommunicated brigand, Hugues, Viscomte de Chartres.