Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

The most important political fruits of the Albigensian Crusade were gathered by Philip II of France, who had himself stood aloof from the struggle, although permitting and encouraging his nobles to take the Cross. By the deposition and fall of his powerful tenant-in-chief, the Count of Toulouse, the centre and south of France, hitherto so proudly independent, lost a formidable ally; and large tracts of Poitou and Aquitaine fell under royal influence and were incorporated amongst the crown lands.

This process continued under Philip’s son, Louis VIII, who himself joined in the Crusade and marched with an army down the valley of the Rhone, capturing Avignon, and arriving almost at the gates of Toulouse. His sudden illness and death brought the campaign to an end; but his widow, Blanche of Castile, acting as regent for her son the boy King Louis IX, concluded a treaty with the new Count of Toulouse, Raymond VII, that left that noble a chastened and submissive vassal of both king and pope. Amongst other things he was forced to acknowledge one of the French king’s younger brothers as his successor in the County of Provence.

St. Francis of Assisi

It is pleasant to turn from the Albigensian Crusade, one of the blackest pictures of the Middle Ages, to its best and brightest, the story of St. Francis of Assisi.

In 1182 there was born at Assisi, a little Umbrian village, a boy whom his mother named John, but whom his father, a rich merchant, who had lately travelled in France, nicknamed ‘Francis’, or ‘the Frenchman’. St. Dominic had developed his fiery faith in an austere and intensely religious home; but Francis shared the light-hearted sociable intercourse of an Italian town, and in boyhood was distinguished only from his fellows by his generosity, innate purity, and irrepressible joy in life.

When he grew up, Francis went to fight with the forces of Assisi against the neighbouring city of Perugia, and was taken prisoner with some others of his fellow townsmen and thrown into a dungeon. The grumbling and bitterness of the majority during that twelve months of captivity were very natural; but Francis, unlike the rest, met the general discomfort with serene good-humour, even merriment, so that not for the last time in his career he was denounced as crazy.

On his release and return home, the merchant Bernadone wished his son to cut some figure in the world; and when the young man dreamed of shining armour and military glory, he provided him with all he had asked in the way of clothes and accoutrements and sent him in the train of a wealthy noble who was going to fight in Naples.

Half-way on his journey Francis turned back to Assisi. God, he believed, had told him to do so—why he could not tell. He tried to follow the frivolous life he had led before, but now the laughter of his companions seemed to ring hollow in his ears. It was as if they found pleasure in a shadow, while he alone was conscious that somewhere close was a reality of joy that, if he could only discover it, would illumine the whole world.

Then his call came; but to the comfortable citizens of Assisi it seemed the voice of madness. The young Bernadone, it was rumoured, had been seen in the company of lepers and entertaining beggars at his table. Almost all the money and goods he possessed he had given away; nay, there came a final word that he had sold his horse and left his home to live in a cave outside the town. The people shook their heads at such folly and sympathized with the old Bernadone at this end to his fine ambitions for his son.

Pietro Bernadone in truth had developed such a furious anger that he appealed to the Bishop of Assisi, entreating him either to persuade Francis to give up his new way of life or else to compel him to surrender the few belongings he had still left. Francis was then summoned, and in the bishop’s presence handed back to his father his purse and even his very clothes. Penniless he stood before Assisi who had often ridden through the streets a rich man’s heir, and it was a beggar’s grey robe with a white cross roughly chalked upon it that he adopted as the uniform of his new career.