The marriages of Philip I. brought even more trouble and scandal than those of his father and grandfather. At nineteen years of age, in 1072, he had espoused Bertha, daughter of Florent I., count of Holland, and in 1078 he had by her the son who was destined to succeed him with the title of Louis the Fat. But twenty years later, 1092, Philip took a dislike to his wife, put her away and banished her to Montreuil-sur-Mer, on the ground of prohibited consanguinity. He had conceived, there is no knowing when, a violent passion for a woman celebrated for her beauty, Bertrade, the fourth wife, for three years past, of Foulques le Roehin (the brawler), count of Anjou. Philip, having thus packed off Bertha, set out for Tours, where Bertrade happened to be with her husband. There, in the church of St. John, during the benediction of the baptismal fonts, they entered into mutual engagements. Philip went away again; and, a few days afterwards, Bertrade was carried off by some people he had left in the neighborhood of Tours, and joined him at Orleans. Nearly all the bishops of France, and amongst others the most learned and respected of them, Yves, bishop of Chartres, refused their benediction to this shocking marriage; and the king had great difficulty in finding a priest to render him that service. Then commenced between Philip and the heads of the Catholic Church, Pope and bishops, a struggle which, with negotiation upon negotiation and excommunication upon excommunication, lasted twelve years, without the king’s being able to get his marriage canonically recognized; and, though he promised to send away Bertrade, he was not content with merely keeping her with him, but he openly jeered at excommunication and interdicts. “It was the custom,” says William of Malmesbury, “at the places where the king sojourned, for divine service to be stopped; and, as soon as he was moving away, all the bells began to peal. And then Philip would cry, as he laughed like one beside himself, ‘Dost hear, my love, how they are ringing us out?’” At last, in 1104, the Bishop of Chartres himself, wearied by the persistency of the king and by sight of the trouble in which the prolongation of the interdict was plunging the kingdom, wrote to the Pope, Pascal II., “I do not presume to offer you advice; I only desire to warn you that it were well to show for a while some condescension towards the weaknesses of the man, so far as consideration for his salvation may permit, and to rescue the country from the critical state to which it is reduced by the excommunication of this prince.” The Pope, consequently, sent instructions to the bishops of the realm; and they, at the king’s summons, met at Paris on the 1st of December, 1104. One of them, Lambert, bishop of Arras, wrote to the Pope, “We sent as a deputation to the king the bishops John of Orleans and Galon of Paris, charged to demand of him whether he would conform to the clauses and conditions set forth in your letters, and whether he were determined to give up the unlawful intercourse which had made him guilty before God. The king, having answered, without being disconcerted, that he was ready to make atonement to God and the holy Roman Church, was introduced to the assembly. He came barefooted, in a posture of devotion and humility, confessing his sin and promising to purge him of his excommunication by expiatory deeds. And thus, by your authority, he earned absolution. Then laying his hand on the book of the holy Gospels, he took an oath, in the following terms, to renounce his guilty and unlawful marriage: ‘Hearken, thou Lambert, bishop of Arras, who art here in place of the Apostolic Pontiff; and let the archbishops and bishops here present hearken unto me. I, Philip, king of the French, do promise not to go back to my sin, and to break off wholly the criminal intercourse I have heretofore kept up with Bertrade. I do promise that henceforth I will have with her no intercourse or companionship, save in the presence of persons beyond suspicion. I will observe, faithfully and without turning aside, these promises, in the sense set forth in the letters of the Pope, and as ye understand. So help me God and these holy Gospels!’ Bertrade, at the moment of her release from excommunication, took in person the same oath on the holy Gospels.”
According to the statement of the learned Benedictines who studiously examined into this incident, it is doubtful whether Philip I. broke off all intercourse with Bertrade. “Two years after his absolution, on the 10th of October, 1106, he arrived at Angers, on a Wednesday,” says a contemporary chronicler, “accompanied by the queen named Bertrade, and was there received by Count Foulques and by all the Angevines, cleric and laic, with great honors. The day after his arrival, on Thursday, the monks of St. Nicholas, introduced by the queen, presented themselves before the king, and humbly prayed him, in concert with the queen, to countenance, for the salvation of his soul and of the queen and his relatives and friends, all acquisitions made by them in his dominions, or that they might hereafter make, by gift or purchase, and to be pleased to place his seal on their titles to property. And the king granted their request.”
The most complete amongst the chroniclers of the time, Orderic Vital, says, touching this meeting at Angers of Bertrade’s two husbands, “This clever woman had, by her skilful management, so perfectly reconciled these two rivals, that she made them a splendid feast, got them both to sit at the same table, had their beds prepared, the ensuing night, in the same chamber, and ministered to them according to their pleasure.” The most judicious of the historians and statesmen of the twelfth century, the Abby Suger, that faithful minister of Louis the Fat, who cannot be suspected of favoring Bertrade, expresses himself about her in these terms: “This sprightly and rarely accomplished woman, well versed in the art, familiar to her sex, of holding captive the husbands they have outraged, had acquired such an empire over her first husband, the count of Anjou, in spite of the affront she had put upon him by deserting him, that he treated her with homage as his sovereign, often sat upon a stool at her feet, and obeyed her wishes by a sort of enchantment.”
These details are textually given as the best representation of the place occupied, in the history of that time, by the morals and private life of the kings. It would not be right, however, to draw therefrom conclusions as to the abasement of Capetian royalty in the eleventh century, with too great severity. There are irregularities and scandals which the great qualities and the personal glory of princes may cause to be not only excused but even forgotten, though certainly the three Capetians who immediately succeeded the founder of the dynasty offered their people no such compensation; but it must not be supposed that they had fallen into the plight of the sluggard Merovingians or the last Carlovingians, wandering almost without a refuge. A profound change had come over society and royalty in France. In spite of their political mediocrity and their indolent licentiousness, Robert, Henry I., and Philip I., were not, in the eleventh century, insignificant personages, without authority or practical influence, whom their contemporaries could leave out of the account; they were great lords, proprietors of vast domains wherein they exercised over the population an almost absolute power; they had, it is true, about them, rivals, large proprietors and almost absolute sovereigns, like themselves, sometimes stronger even, materially, than themselves and more energetic or more intellectually able, whose superiors, however, they remained on two grounds—as suzerains and as kings: their court was always the most honored and their alliance always very much sought after. They occupied the first rank in feudal society and a rank unique in the body politic such as it was slowly becoming in the midst of reminiscences and traditions of the Jewish monarchy, of barbaric kingship, and of the Roman empire for a while resuscitated by Charlemagne. French kingship in the eleventh century was sole power invested with a triple character—Germanic, Roman, and religious; its possessors were at the same time the chieftains of the conquerors of the soil, the successors of the Roman emperors and of Charlemagne, and the laic delegates and representatives of the God of the Christians. Whatever were their weaknesses and their personal short-comings, they were not the mere titularies of a power in decay, and the kingly post was strong and full of blossoms, as events were not slow to demonstrate.
And as with the kingship, so with the community of France in the eleventh century. In spite of its dislocation into petty incoherent and turbulent associations, it was by no means in decay. Irregularities of ambition, hatreds and quarrels amongst neighbors and relatives, outrages on the part of princes and peoples were incessantly renewed; but energy of character, activity of mind, indomitable will and zeal for the liberty of the individual were not wanting, and they exhibited themselves passionately and at any risk, at one time by brutal and cynical outbursts which were followed occasionally by fervent repentance and expiation, at another by acts of courageous wisdom and disinterested piety. At the commencement of the eleventh century, William III., count of Poitiers and duke of Aquitaine, was one of the most honored and most potent princes of his time; all the sovereigns of Europe sent embassies to him as to their peer; he every year made, by way of devotion, a trip to Rome, and was received there with the same honors as the emperor. He was fond of literature, and gave up to reading the early hours of the night; and scholars called him another Maecenas. Unaffected by these worldly successes intermingled with so much toil and so many miscalculations, he refused the crown of Italy, when it was offered him at the death of the Emperor Henry II., and he finished, like Charles V. some centuries later, by going and seeking in a monastery isolation from the world and repose. But, in the same domains and at the end of the same century, his grandson William VII. was the most vagabondish, dissolute, and violent of princes; and his morals were so scandalous that the bishop of Poitiers, after having warned him to no purpose, considered himself forced to excommunicate him. The duke suddenly burst into the church, made his way through the congregation, sword in hand, and seized the prelate by the hair, saying, “Thou shalt give me absolution or die.” The bishop demanded a moment for reflection, profited by it to pronounce the form of excommunication, and forthwith bowing his head before the duke, said, “And now strike!” “I love thee not well enough to send thee to paradise,” answered the duke; and he confined himself to depriving him of his see. For fury the duke of Aquitaine sometimes substituted insolent mockery. Another bishop, of Angouleme, who was quite bald, likewise exhorted him to mend his ways. “I will mend,” quoth the duke, “when thou shalt comb back thy hair to thy pate.” Another great lord of the same century, Foulques the Black, count of Anjou, at the close of an able and glorious lifetime, had resigned to his son Geoffrey Martel the administration of his countship. The son, as haughty and harsh towards his father as towards his subjects, took up arms against him, and bade him lay aside the outward signs, which he still maintained, of power. The old man in his wrath recovered the vigor and ability of his youth, and strove so energetically and successfully against his son that he reduced him to such subjection as to make him do several miles “crawling on the ground,” says the chronicle, with a saddle on his back, and to come and prostrate himself at his feet. When Foulques had his son thus humbled before him, he spurned him with his foot, repeating over and over again nothing but “Thou’rt beaten, thou’rt beaten!” “Ay, beaten,” said Geoffrey, “but by thee only, because thou art my father; to any other I am invincible.” The anger of the old man vanished at once: he now thought only how he might console his son for the affront put upon him, and he gave him back his power, exhorting him only to conduct himself with more moderation and gentleness towards his subjects. All was inconsistency and contrast with these robust, rough, hasty souls; they cared little for belying themselves when they had satisfied the passion of the moment.
The relations existing between the two great powers of the period, the laic lords and the monks, were not less bitter or less unstable than amongst the laics themselves; and when artifice, as often happened, was employed, it was by no means to the exclusion of violence. About the middle of the twelfth century, the abbey of Tournus, in Burgundy, had, at Louhans, a little port where it collected salt-tax, whereof it every year distributed the receipts to the poor during the first week in Lent. Girard, count of Macon, established a like toll a little distance off. The monks of Tournus complained; but he took no notice. A long while afterwards he came to Tournus with a splendid following, and entered the church of St. Philibert. He had stopped all alone before the altar to say his prayers, when a monk, cross in hand, issued suddenly from behind the altar, and, placing himself before the count, “How hast thou the audacity,” said he, “to enter my monastery and mine house, thou that dost not hesitate to rob me of my dues?” and, taking Girard by the hair, he threw him on the ground and belabored him heavily. The count, stupefied and contrite, acknowledged his injustice, took off the toll that he had wrongfully put on, and, not content with this reparation, sent to the church of Tournus a rich carpet of golden and silken tissue. In the middle of the eleventh century, Adhemar II., viscount of Limoges, had in his city a quarrel of quite a different sort with the monks of the abbey of St. Martial. The abbey had fallen into great looseness of discipline and morals; and the viscount had at heart its reformation. To this end he entered into concert, at a distance, with Hugh, abbot of Cluni, at that time the most celebrated and most respected of the monasteries. The abbot of St. Martial died. Adhemar sent for some monks from Cluni to come to Limoges, lodged them secretly near his palace, repaired to the abbey of St. Martial after having had the chapter convoked, and called upon the monks to proceed at once to the election of a new abbot. A lively discussion, upon this point, arose between the viscount and the monks. “We are not ignorant,” said one of them to him, “that you have sent for brethren from Cluni, in order to drive us out and put them in our places; but you will not succeed.” The viscount was furious, seized by the sleeve the monk who was inveighing, and dragged him by force out of the monastery. His fellows were frightened, and took to flight; and Adhemar immediately had the monks from Cluni sent for, and put them in possession of the abbey. It was a ruffianly proceeding; but the reform was popular in Limoges and was effected.
These trifling matters are faithful samples of the dominant and fundamental characteristic of French society during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the true epoch of the middle ages. It was chaos, and fermentation within the chaos the slow and rough but powerful and productive fermentation of unruly life. In ideas, events, and persons there was a blending of the strongest contrasts: manners were rude and even savage, yet souls were filled with lofty and tender aspirations; the authority of religious creeds at one time was on the point of extinction, yet at another shone forth gloriously in opposition to the arrogance and brutality of mundane passions; ignorance was profound, and yet here and there, in the very heart of the mental darkness, gleamed bright centres of movement and intellectual labor. It was the period when Abelard, anticipating freedom of thought and of instruction, drew together upon Mount St. Genevieve thousands of hearers anxious to follow him in the study of the great problems of Nature and of the destiny of man and the world. And far away from this throng, in the solitude of the abbey of Bee, St. Anselm was offering to his monks a Christian and philosophical demonstration of the existence of God—“faith seeking understanding” (fides quoerens intellectuan), as he himself used to say. It was the period, too, when, distressed at the licentiousness which was spreading throughout the Church as well as lay society, two illustrious monks, St. Bernard and St. Norbert, not only went preaching everywhere reformation of morals, but labored at and succeeded in establishing for monastic life a system of strict discipline and severe austerity. Lastly, it was the period when, in the laic world, was created and developed the most splendid fact of the middle ages, knighthood, that noble soaring of imaginations and souls towards the ideal of Christian virtue and soldierly honor. It is impossible to trace in detail the origin and history of that grand fact which was so prominent in the days to which it belonged, and which is so prominent still in the memories of men; but a clear notion ought to be obtained of its moral character and its practical worth. To this end a few pages shall be borrowed from Guizot’s History of Civilization in France. Let us first look on at the admission of a knight, such as took place in the twelfth century. We will afterwards see what rules of conduct were imposed upon him, not only according to the oaths which he had to take on becoming knight, but according to the idea formed of knighthood by the poets of the day, those interpreters not only of actual life, but of men’s sentiments also. We shall then understand, without difficulty, what influence must have been exercised, in the souls and lives of men, by such sentiments and such rules, however great may have been the discrepancy between the knightly ideal and the general actions and passions of contemporaries.
“The young man, the esquire who aspired to the title of knight, was first stripped of his clothes and placed in a bath, which was symbolical of purification. On leaving the bath, he was clothed in a white tunic, which was symbolical of purity, and a red robe, which was symbolical of the blood he was bound to shed in the service of the faith, and a black sagum or close-fitting coat, which was symbolical of the death which awaited him as well as all men.
“Thus purified and clothed, the candidate observed for four and twenty hours a strict fast. When evening came, he entered church, and there passed the night in prayer, sometimes alone, sometimes with a priest and sponsors, who prayed with him. Next day, his first act was confession; after confession the priest gave him the communion; after the communion he attended a mass of the Holy Spirit; and, generally, a sermon touching the duties of knights and of the new life he was about to enter on. The sermon over, the candidate advanced to the altar with the knight’s sword hanging from his neck. This the priest took off, blessed, and replaced upon his neck. The candidate then went and knelt before the lord who was to arm him knight. ‘To what purpose,’ the lord asked him, ‘do you desire to enter the order? If to be rich, to take your ease and be held in honor without doing honor to knighthood, you are unworthy of it, and would be, to the order of knighthood you received, what the simoniacal clerk is to the prelacy.’ On the young man’s reply, promising to acquit himself well of the duties of knight, the lord granted his request.
“Then drew near knights and sometimes ladies to reclothe the candidate in all his new array; and they put on him, 1, the spurs; 2, the hauberk or coat of mail; 3, the cuirass; 4, the armlets and gauntlets; 5, the sword.