Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

The struggle with Flanders lasted even beyond Philip’s reign. On the whole the results—direct and indirect—of the contest were in Philip’s favor. In England he was able to exert a more or less open influence through his daughter, Isabelle, to whom the often-betrothed English prince (who came to the throne as Edward II) was at last united. Probably the bridegroom’s pride in having married the handsomest woman of her country was somewhat neutralized by developments of her character which won for her the nickname of “the she-wolf of France.”

Meanwhile Philip became involved in a quarrel with the pope that lasted for many years and set its mark for all time on the relations and possible relations between France and Rome. In the course of one of his attempts to replenish his treasury Philip insisted that imposts should be levied on the clergy. They had previously been free, and they turned to the pope to support their refusal. This action precipitated an immediate quarrel which was patched up but broke out again under pressure of the king’s behavior. What with his wars and what with his natural acquisitiveness Philip was always needing and always obtaining money in ways deserving of sternest censure. Beside debasing the coinage, he had used infamous methods with the Jews, he had sold patents of nobility to men considered unsuitable to enjoy the honor of belonging to the aristocracy, and he had given their freedom to all serfs who were able to pay for it.

The king rebuked Philip in a bull. Philip personally superintended its burning by the Paris hangman. When the pope sent another the king summarized it for the popular understanding into “Boniface the Pope to Philip the Fair, greeting. Know, O Supreme Prince, that thou art subject to us in all things.” This document Philip caused to be read aloud in many public places together with what purported to be his answer; “Philip to Boniface, little or no greeting. Be it known to thy Supreme Idiocy that we are subject to no man in political matters. Those who think otherwise we count to be fools and madmen.”

This was all very dashing but Philip was shrewd enough to see that it was necessary when contending with a power that proclaimed itself accountable only to God to have the support of his people. He summoned to meet in Notre Dame (April 10, 1302) the first National Assembly. It was called the States General because it was made up of representatives of the three upper classes or estates—the clergy, the nobility and the burgesses of the free cities. It may well have been a satisfied body that gathered under the Gothic arches of the great church. Its members did not realize that their powers were only advisory and that they would be expected to advise the king to do what he wanted to. All that they were yet to learn. For the moment they felt that this meeting was a concession from a king who had curbed the power of the nobles, who was trying to prevent the clergy from even entering the hall where was sitting the Parliament of Paris, increasingly made up of lawyers, and who made it clear that he tolerated the burgesses only because they were occasionally useful.

To the burgesses this was in truth a proud moment, for it was their first admission to any body of the kind on even terms with the other two estates. They were to find out that, because the voting always was done by classes, they were to be outnumbered two to one on almost every question with a unanimity that betrayed the fear that their presence excited in the lords and clergy.

It was not until the fifteenth century that deputies from the peasantry sat with the Third Estate. In the five centuries between the calling of the first States General and the Revolution the Assembly was summoned only thirteen times. When Louis XVI ordered an election in the futile hope that something might be suggested that would help France in her trouble it had been one hundred and seventy-five years since a sitting had been held.

The first States General found itself in something of a predicament. It was clear that it was expected to endorse Philip’s attitude toward the pope, yet such a course would place the clergy at variance with the head of the church. Of course they yielded. Boniface was a long way off; Philip was near at hand, and the dungeons of the Grand Châtelet and of the Louvre were always able to hold a few more prisoners. The pope was notified that the affairs of France were the concern of France and not of an outsider. The pope replied with excommunication. Philip retaliated with charges for which, he said, the pontiff should be tried. Boniface, justly enraged, threatened to depose Philip and make the German emperor king of France. Philip once more laid his case before his subjects, this time in the palace garden. Hot and heavy raged the quarrel after this. It resulted in the popes becoming for seventy years no more than dependents upon the will of the French crown, and practically its prisoners at Avignon on French soil.

Having negotiated the election of a pope of French birth, Philip used him as a tool for the accomplishment of his mercenary and cruel plans against the Order of Knights Templar. This order, at once religious and military, had been founded to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher. Its duties over with the ending of the Crusades, idleness may, perhaps, have done its proverbial work. No one believes, however, that Philip’s charges of corruption in both religious practices and in manner of living were other than shamefully exaggerated excuses for seizing rich possessions which he had coveted ever since the time when, during a Paris riot caused by an unjust tax, he had taken refuge in the Temple to the north of the city. There he had seen the gathered treasures, and the fact that he owed his life to the Templars did not deter him from devising elaborate plans to rob them.

Early in the morning of October 13, 1307, all the Templars in France were seized in their beds and thrown into ecclesiastical prisons. There were one hundred and forty arrests in Paris. The knights listened, astounded, to what purported to be a confession by the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, of the truth of the abominable charges brought against the Order. They were promised liberty if they confirmed the confession. To the lasting credit of the Order only a few bought their freedom by perjury. The rest were “put to the question” with a wealth of hideous ingenuity which has seldom been approached in the grisly history of the torture chamber. In Paris alone thirty-six died as a result of their rending on the rack, and the others said anything that would put an end to suffering worse than death.

The methods employed by Philip became known to the pope, and although he had sworn to do the king’s behest in regard to some unknown deed, and this proved to be the deed, yet he had the courage to send a commission to Paris to search into the truth of the rumors that had reached him. It sat in the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève. Under shelter of the commission’s protection scores of witnesses from all over France told what they had endured, and denied their extorted confessions. Jacques de Molay himself was tortured physically and tormented mentally, but he persisted in a denial. His courage gave strength to over two hundred other knights who came before the commission to show the wounds by which they had been forced into saying what was not true.