Download PDF | William Chester Jordan - Louis IX And The Challenge Of The Crusade_ A Study In Rulership-Princeton University Press (1979).
320 Pages
PREFACE
For serious students of French social and administrative history the reign of Louis IX remains "le plus malconnu" of all the major kings of medieval France.* Partly, this problem is one of sources—not too few, but too many. There are so many excellent sources concerning Louis IX's reign and such a great number of them are unpublished that it will probably be a very long time before a comprehensive inventory of even the king's own acts can be prepared.
The heroic individual ef- forts over the past several generations (one thinks immediately of Delisle, Delaborde, Strayer, and Carolus-Barre) to publish as many useful records as possible have paid off in literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of specialized studies of aspects of the saint-king's reign. But, unfortunately, the results of this research have not been fully in- tegrated into contemporary discussions of French medieval history. The problem is that the best scholarly treatment of the king's rule remains the massive six-volume study by the seventeenth century monastic savant, Le Nain de Tillemont. It has been justly praised, among other reasons, for its accumulation of data in a recent article by Neveu.
Nonetheless, it has fundamental weaknesses, at least from a modern point of view: its style is not suited to contemporary sensibilities; it has no fundamental theme other than an absorbing interest in the details of the king's life; it has a profoundly clerical tone which leaves one dubious about its objectivity; and it, of course, predates the explosion of scholarly literature of the last century. The largest of modern biographies is Wallon's two-volume. Saint Louis etson temps, which went through several editions in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. While admirable in its own right and bearing the stamp of most of what was best in nineteenth century French historiography, it too was written before the major part of the serious collection and publication of sources was completed. To cite but one example, Wallon did not have access to Delisle's monumental survey of Louis's provincial administration in volume twenty-four of the Recueil des historiens ( 1 904).
Since 1900 many biographies of the king have been published. They fall largely into two classes. There are those which are scholarly, but which tend to be very short, more like interpretative essays than sustained analyses of Louis's reign. Many of these have been carefully done and their authors have added important and suggestive conclu- sions to the body of Saint Louis scholarship, but no one in this centuryhas undertaken to write a synthetic treatment of the reign based onthe range of existing scholarship.
The other large class of studies hasbeen popular biographies. Although, of course, they vary widely in intrinsic value, at their best, like Labarge's recent work, they blend aneasy and compelling style with some of the salient results of recent re- search. Where is Saint Louis scholarship now? A staggering number ofstudies have mined the published documents, and many of the re- cords which still remain in manuscript have also been the subject ofcareful analyses. On the basis of these and similar studies (many comparative in scope), it should be possible to write a satisfying synthetic history of Louis's reign. Indeed, this book has been undertaken withthat possibility in mind. Its scope, however, has been limited by mydecision to concentrate only on those aspects of the reign that owetheir fundamental form and content to the king's personal attention: for this is a study of a man and his efforts to rule well, not of the politi- cal and social history of his reign in general. Even limited in the way I have described, the task has been formidable.
The relative unevenness of specialized studies of the saint- king's impact in the south has necessitated a great deal of archival research in that region. The contradictions among various scholarly authorities have often led me to reappraise existing documentation.Some discussion of the difficult and elusive subject of the king's psy- chology has also seemed valuable, although no attempt has beenmade to write a complete psycho-biography. Finally, daily—or so it seems—new manuscripts are edited and new articles appear whichbear on the general theme of Louis's rulership. Undoubtedly, therefore, this study is tentative: a time will certainly come when, by one ofthose great collective efforts the French are famous for, the survivingacts of the king will be known and critically edited; problems whichnow seem unsolvable will melt away under close scholarly scrutiny; and someone will be able to write as comprehensive a study of Louis's role in government as medievalists have a right to expect. But until that lime comes, I hope this interim portrait of the king can meet ourmost pressing needs. I have imposed one further fundamental limitation on my work.
Above all, this study is thematic. It draws its organizing principle fromthe central concern of Louis's life, the crusade. It was the crusade appearing as a distant possibility—that helped Louis take the decisive steps on the road to personal rule of his kingdom. It was to assure the success of the crusade of 1248-1254 that he dealt imaginatively andfirmly with the problems that vexed the administration of his king-dom. And finally, it was the failure of the crusade that produced a profound crisis in his life, one whose outcome, the creation of the "ideal" medieval monarchy, was to leave a lasting impression in French government and politics. My close attention to the theme of the crusade should explain the particular aspects of Louis's rulership I have chosen to stress in this book. Consequently, the study has fallen quite naturally into three parts. The first (chapters one through four) is a detailed account of Louis's preparations for the crusade.
The second part (chapter five) examines the period of the crusade itself—the regency at home and the effect of the failure of the crusade on the personal development of the saint-king. The remaining chapters explore the continuing influence of the Holy War, both as a memory and as a new goal culminating in the crusade of 1270. Several technical matters merit a few words. (1) With regard to cur- rency I have used pounds and 1. (the abbreviation for livres) inter- changeably. I have always had French royal pounds {either livres tournois or Iwres parisis) in mind, not English sterling which was worth about four times more in the thirteenth century.
The internal rate of exchange between livres tournois and livres parisis was five to four. Unfortunately, from time to time prices or wages have had to be quoted in local French currencies for which our knowledge of the exchange rates is less certain. (2) With regard to nomenclature, established conventions have been followed: a few famous names appear in English; the majority, however, are given in French or Latin depending on traditional scholarly preference. (3) Editorially I have usually preferred the Hague translation of Joinville to the Penguin version (edited by Shaw) not because it is better overall but because it preserves the short chapter notation of Natalis de Wailly's critical text which, unfortunately, Shaw's does not and because it is a more literal rendering of the original. (4) In general the notes refer first to primary materials, when appropriate, and then to secondary sources in which there are discussions of the issue addressed in the text. Some attempt has also been made to direct the reader to discussions of comparative interest. (5)
The map at the beginning of the book should serve for all major references in the text and appendixes; a few specialized maps have been placed directly in the text. The author and publishers are grateful to the following institutions for permission to reproduce copyright material: the Trustees of the Pierpont Morgan Library for illustration two, MS 240, fol. 4, Moralized Bible, ca. 1250; the Trustees of the British Library for illus-tration three, MS Cotton Titus A XVII, fol. 43 verso, sixteenth century; the Abbey of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune, Valais, Switzerland, for illustrations four and five, reliquaries from the tresor; the Cabinet desMedailles of the Bibliotheque Nationale for illustration six, the ecu d'or of Louis IX; and the Department of Manuscripts of the Bibliotheque Nationale for the document published in Appendix Four, Languedoc-Doat volume 151 fols. 237-241 verso.
The maps for this book were drawn by Trudy Glucksberg. I would like to take this opportunity to thank those people who at one time or another have stimulated me to think about the problemsdiscussed in this book. Chief among them are the students I havetaught and the colleagues I have worked with at Princeton University, especially my own teachers. Professors Gaines Post and JosephStrayer. A substantial debt of gratitude is owed also to Professors Charles Wood and John Baldwin, whose vigorous criticisms helpedlight my way. Mention should also be made of the special libraries andarchives which opened their facilities to me, and of the Ford Foundation, the Department of History of Princeton, and the University Committee on Research of Princeton which, at different times, helpedsupport the research which went into this book.
The list would not becomplete, however, without the name of Miriam Brokaw of Princeton University Press, who gave me needed help and encouragement at every stage in the preparation of the manuscript for publication. There is no doubt in my mind that whatever is good in this study derives much more from the assistance I received from these scholars, students, and friends than from my own efforts. I can claim only the errors as uniquely my own.
SWEARING THE VOW
Louis IX first swore the crusader's vow at the abbaye royale of Maubisson in Pontoise in December 1 244. Most chroniclers misrepresent the event by concentrating their attention on the happy juxtaposition of the sacramentum and the king's recovery from a grave illness. They give little hint that there might have been opposition to the vow or that the magic of this moment found less than a welcome response throughout the kingdom.^ In fact, most Frenchmen—most of those whose opinion counted—probably disapproved of the decision.
To the learned the vow was an aberration, a brief slipping into depression caused by the sickness. To others the idea of the crusade was dis- couraging in itself: there had been too many defeats and too many misguided efforts in the recent past. For some no doubt there was less uneasiness about the crusade than about the regency it would mean at home: social and political confusion was characteristic of regency governments.^ Louis's enthusiasm in the face of such opposition is not easy to explain. Of course, there is always something heroic in standing up to opposition, and this very likely played a part in his pertinacity in fulfilling the vow. But there was much more involved, for he was re- markably steady in his appeal for support; and gradually he found resonances in the desire of many of his people to relive the ancient heroisms.
Under the force of his personality, recollection of the problems and failures of the past gave way to nostalgia and an intoxicating affirmation of traditional values. Only sustained effort could have produced this change, and it was the personal commitment of the king that underlay that effort. His capacity to restore confidence in the idea of the crusade, however, was part of a broader "commitment" to the integrity of his own selfhood, for at the time of his vow in 1 244 Louis IX was not yet an autonomous adult. He was thirty; he was married; he was a father; but he had nothberated himself—politically or personally—from the domination ofhis mother, Blanche of Castile. In the p)eculiar conditions of the early thirteenth century, theQueen Dowager, a strong-willed and resolute woman, had becomethe focal point of central political authority in France.^ Although shehad not openly sought out this role, the untimely death of her husband, Louis VIII (1223-1226) and the youth of Louis IX, then onlytwelve, had thrust the regency and its powers upon her.
That Blanche regarded the regency as a trust and intended to carry out herhusband's and the dynasty's traditional jaolicies vigorously has never been questioned, either by her contemporaries many of whom sheovercame in diplomacy and war or by historians who have evaluated her rule.^ But the first of the three regencies of Louis IX's long reign, successfully weathered though it was, raises some important and difficultquestions. The foremost concerns the date of its termination, for al-though a picture of Blanche as a power-hungry despot bent on barring her son from his rightful kingship would be ridiculously over-drawn, the habit of power was apparently a comfortable life-style.Thus—or so it might seem—the chroniclers never mention Louis IXcoming of age.^ In the absence of explicit evidence historians havelooked to circumstantial factors. Many have regarded Louis's marriage to Margaret of Provence in1234 and its neat coincidence with his twenty-first year as twin symbols of the end of the regency, but neither symbol is really persuasive.With the matter of age we seem to be encountering a modern juridicalprejudice,^ for there is little contemporary evidence that people believed royal minorities should end at twenty-one. When we do haveevidence on the subject, the age is lower. Philip IV the Fair accededwithout a regent at age seventeen in 1285, and a fourteenth centurylaw on the subject laid down fourteen as the preferred age.
The question of the marriage itself is more comphcated. The marriage partner had been selected by Blanche for political reasons, but what commentators mean when they suggest that the marriage symbolized the end of the regency is that it should have been difficult for Louis to reconcile his new role as a husband to the tutelage of his mother.^ There is some truth in this. Certainly, the opposition baronial party levied the charge up until about 1234 that Blanche was deliberately keeping Louis unwed,'" from which it seems reasonable to conclude that contemporaries expected Louis's new role to free him to make his own policies. But this expectation was not fulfilled. Policies did not change, and the barons were or should have been sadly disappointed in the king's deference to his mother even on the most intimate of subjects regarding his new married life. According to Jean de Joinville, the king's close friend and biographer, Blanche restricted her son's visits to his young wife (she was only fourteen at the time of marriage) and inter- fered in other ways.
Moreover, although the stories that Joinville tells about how they got around her interference (the secret visits, for example)'^ suggest that Margaret and Louis had a tender and happy marriage in the beginning,'^ it is evident from a wide variety of sources that a gradual stiffening developed in their personal relationship.*'* If anything, this temporarily strengthened the king's bond with and emotional dependence on his mother. The platitude is that Margaret found it difficult to live with a saint, as any normal woman would.
This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. The fact is Louis soon discovered he could not trust Margaret. Edgar Boutaric, the author of the only substantial monograph on Louis's queen, has argued that the king and hismother found it necessary to Hmit Margaret's field of poHtical actionas early as 1241 and 1242. During this period, that of the last rebellionof the reign against the crown, she was compelled to swear to abide byroyal policy whatever her own personal interests might be.'^ Nor wasthis bridling of his wife an isolated incident.
Whether in importantmatters or the most trivial Louis consistently restricted her freedomof action, a situation Margaret bore with difficulty. She was not permitted to accept presents and loans of any importance, to appoint orgive orders to the crown's officials, or to appoint her own without theprior consent of her husband and the royal curia. Her control overher children was also limited in mundane matters: without the consent of king and council, she was not allowed to accept presents ontheir behalf or to employ servants for them.'^ Much more evidence could be furnished, especially from the laterperiod of their life together, on the coldness of Louis's treatment ofMargaret,'^ but Boutaric's argument strongly suggests that the rootsof their tensions went back to Louis's long tutelage by Blanche. Substance is further given to this assertion by the fact that Margaret herself eventually tried to duplicate in her authority over her own son,the future Philip III, the type of ascendancy which Blanche had hadover Louis. But when Louis discovered that his wife had persuadedthe young Philip to take an oath to obey her, in the event of the king'sdeath, until the age of thirty, he intervened and had the pope quashthe oath. He then prohibited his son from encumbering himselfagain.
If marriage was not the singular event that should be taken to symbolize Louis's passage from tutelage to full authority as a ruler, what should? This is not an easy question. It would be more appropriate, or so I shall argue, to regard the silence of the chroniclers on Louis's coming of age as evidence that a gradual and quite natural shift from the rulership of the aging Blanche to that of her youthful son oc- curred almost imperceptibly. Blanche may have clung to her powers as regent slightly longer and more tenaciously than another mother would have; this might account for the appearance which persisted that she dominated government. It could also account for the fact that the transmission of authority to her son was punctuated by many difficult moments of which the marriage, or more properly the presence in the household of Margaret, was one of the most important. One senses this gradual translation of the focus of rulership to Louis in his assumption of his mother's former role as a military leader against hostile barons. He grew in stature as he progressively took over military authority. Some historians see the decisive moment in 1230; others in 1235.
Joinville implicitly seems to favor a later date, the early 1240s, when Louis led the victorious troops who crushed the last rebellions. Writers of fiction tend to follow Joinville's sketch.^' Of all the events which mark the phases in the gradual transmission of rulership to Louis, the one which created the most public tension between the king and his mother and played the most important symbolic role was his vow to go on crusade. The circumstances are well known. Soon after reducing the last vestiges of rebellion, the king fell desperately ill, so ill, as Joinville reports, that an attendant wished to cover his face with a sheet because she believed he had already passed on. Barely able, Louis vowed to fight another war, a Holy War, if God would permit him to live.^^ Regarding his recovery as God's gift in return for the vow, the young king set about almost immediately to make preparations for the crusade. Blanche, fundamentally opposed to his projected course of action ("when she heard he had taken the Cross . . . she was as miserable as ifshe had seen him dead"), was the first and in some ways the most sig-nificant obstacle in his path.
She started by objecting to the quahty ofher son's vow. With the aid of the bishop of Paris she persuaded Louisto renounce the vow because a vow sworn during an illness was notbinding. According to Matthew Paris, who was soon to be a familiar inthe royal household and would have access to such information,Louis's renunciation of the original vow was followed immediately bya new promise given in perfect health. ^^ Yet Blanche would not bedeterred. She had lost her husband on crusade; she could not helpbut be apprehensive over the safety of Louis and her three other sonswho intended to accompany him. She pleaded with tears in her eyes,it is related by the gossipy Minstrel of Reims, and tried at the last tokeep her son from leaving her with her own physical strength, but tono avail. ^^ For Louis the crusade (or the idea of it) quickly became the fundamental vehicle for his profound piety. ^^ Because the crusade was service for God, his defiance of his mother could be justified or ra-tionalized in his own mind.
This is not to say that his struggle withBlanche was without pain to himself. He sincerely loved his mother,but if her piety, which was as deep and genuine as his, did not expressitself in enthusiasm for the crusades (a trait she shared with manyofher generation), in a certain way this was a positive factor for theyoung king. It allowed him to assume the sole leadership of a majorpolicy for perhaps the first time in his life. Indeed, in the years immediately preceding the crusade one detects in him a creative vigor soebullient at times and so full of bravado that one is tempted to as-sociate it less with his religious zeal per se than with an outpouringofenergy triggered by his successful liberation from parental domina-tion.^^ By invoking God against his mother he had, as it were, assured his own personal emancipation.
Louis, as it has been pointed out, was thirty years old in 1244. Nonetheless, emotionally he was still an adolescent when he swore the crusader's vow. The transition from adolescence to maturity com- menced in earnest at the moment he decided that nothing and no one would be allowed to stand in his way in fulfilling the vow. The pattern, suggested here, is a familiar one, for although adolescence is the final phase of biological childhood, the adolescent process, it has been shown, reaches its appropriate culmination only when a "new kind of identification" or, rather, commitment "for life" replaces the hitherto undiflferentiated and constantly shifting identifications of childhood. There is no precise year or series of years in the life cycle when this transformation must take place: as cultures and families vary, so do the fundamental life experiences of those who must confront the demands of culture and family in order to take their proper place in society.
We must, therefore, always keep in mind that the French royal court in the thirteenth century possessed, as it were, a special ambiance, that it was endowed with its own rules and unique behavior. Louis's search for autonomy within this setting was indeed disruptive, but only up to a point, for his environment was the sort in which fer- vent religious devotion was constantly stressed. There was tension only because people in the royal circle differed about the proper form it should take, although by modern standards the range of these dif- ferences was extremely narrow. In this respect what Louis did in find- ing his own proper place in the structure of relationships in the royal household—the swearing of the crusader's vow during an illness; the defiance of his mother in the name of the vow—paralleled the actions of his sister, Isabella, in finding hers. In the summer of 1243 Isabella had rejected the offer of marriage of the heir presumptive of the emperor.
The union, proposed by Frederick II and at the time supported both by Blanche of Castile and Pope Innocent IV, was declined by Isabella after her recovery from a dangerous illness. Anticipating Louis, she successfully opposed the plans for her future with the vow that if she recovered from her ill- ness she would be forever virgin and dedicate her life to God.^^ As thecrusade would dominate Louis's life, so loo the commitment to virginity would be the unifying theme of Isabella's. Besides the biographical evidence of Isabella's friend and biographer, Agnes de Harcourt, on this point, ^° we know that thosearound her came to regard her chastity as the fulfillment of her life.Thirty years later, the designers of her tomb felt it necessary and appropriate to draw the attention of pious pilgrims to the theme. ^* Andthose who accepted the deceased Isabella as an intercessor for theirtribulations on earth saw in her chastity the mark and characteristic ofher holiness.
In one of the miracles attributed to her, she was to demonstrate, or so the recipient of her intercession believed, that shecould be counted on to use her power to protect that precious gift:seeing a maiden tempted by worldly attractions and in periculo perdendae virginitatis , Isabella interceded to convince her to abandon theworld, enter the convent which Isabella had founded, and remainforever chaste. ^^ The similarity of Isabella's affirmation of a commitment for life toher brother's decision to become a crusader becomes more importantwhen it is recognized that in the royal household she and Louis werethe closest of friends. Again, though Agnes's own evidence is the mostdirect, ^^ various sources suggest the vigor of their friendship. Shedisplayed in many ways an ideal religiosity which Louis consciously orunconsciously tried to imitate. She led the life of a nun without beinga nun, much as Louis would someday lead the life of a friar withouttaking the vows.^"* She wore simple clothes as part of her humility, amotif which Louis would one day adopt for himself.^^ Love for thepoor was as important a theme in her piety as in his.
Such ties wereindissoluble by death: both brother and sister would be portrayed at her tomb.^^ The pious would see them working their wonders to- gether in Paradise.^* Ultimately both would be recognized as saints. ^^ The relationship was not one-way. Indeed, it is hard always to know who was influencing whom; but if Louis did learn from and admire his sister, she too could understand and appreciate his longings, his need to act the king. Further, she recognized the tension which this need precipitated in her brother's relations with the other women in the household. At every opportunity she was deferential to the king. She would kneel before him in awe of the sanctity she recognized in him.^** She abhorred the exercise of power: she refused to be prioress of the convent which she founded at Longchamp in Normandy and which Louis richly endowed, preferring to make the preparations for its foundation through her brother as an act of humility.
Louis's ideas on obedience, the obedience of a wife to her husband and of social inferiors to their superiors, which he considered a necessary part of "perfect" love, reflect the ideal which his sister manifested. He explicidy desired his daughters to imitate this ideal in their relations with the men with whom they would spend their lives, for he summarized his notions at the end of his life in a set of instructions addressed to the daughter he named after his sister.^^ The king's sister, it must be remembered, was a decidely peculiar phenomenon in the king's circle—not in the intensity of her religious devotion but in her ascetic unworldliness.^^ For all their mutual dislike, the other adult women constantly around Louis—his mother and his wife—were alike in their enjoyment of a hfe of activity. Isabella,throughout her life (she died in 1269, the year before Louis), was retiring and contemplative and, therefore, a perfect counterweight tothe able and aggressive Blanche and the able but frustrated Margaret.
That Isabella had managed to be herself in such a world andto resist the role that had been mapped out for her as an empress andthat she had done so in the name of God were remarkable achievements. Louis had watched her, and when the time came, perhapswithout consciously intending to do so, he followed in her footsteps.This joining or even confusion of personal autonomy with religiousdevotion was a fundamental element of Louis's personality. An episode directly relevant to this issue was to occur in the Holy Land in the1250s. There Louis met the young prince of Antioch, BohemondVI.The king could not resist putting his support behind Bohemond's desire to end the cautious regency of the prince's mother in order thathe might assume leadership of his besieged crusader principality. Itwas not to the point that Bohemond's mother wanted to continue theregency as she knew best. How could she have known the best course?The enemies of Christ needed to be confronted and destroyed (or sothe explicit argument ran). I am convinced, however, that in this in-stance piety again became the handmaiden in a struggle for personalselfhood.
It is no surprise then that Louis's preparations for crusade, viewedas the culmination of his own search for autonomy, have about themabouyancy and even overconfidence unparalleled in any other periodof his life. It was as if nothing were too much for him (was not Godonhis side?). He foresaw his crusade as the biggest in history. ^^ He wasprepared to risk a great many resources and most of his prestige byundertaking to construct a completely new port in the south of Franceso that his crusaders would have the benefit of departing en masseand well organized to do battle with Christ's enemies. Here he actuallyaccomplished what few men could have believed was possible. ^^ Heenvisioned himself leading the troops; against the cautious wisdomofhis associates he personally—almost recklessly—led the assault on thebeaches of the Infidel.
When the king heard that the ensign of St. Denis was ashore he strode across the galley, refusing even for the Legate who was with him to lag behind the standard, and leapt into the water, which came up to his armpits. His shield round his neck, his helmet on his head, lance in hand, he joined his men on the beach. . . . He couched his lance under his arm and put his shield before him, and would have flung himself upon . . . [the Saracens] had not his wiser companions held him back.^^ All this was still ahead in 1244, but it did not take long for his adolescent exuberance over this new and dangerous adventure to strike his contemporaries. A story told by Matthew Paris is especially in- structive. Around 1246, Louis surreptitiously instructed his tailors to sew crosses on the robes that he intended to present to his barons at the traditional gift-giving ceremonies. By voluntarily accepting the gifts (and who could refuse?), they too "took" the cross casting their lot with the king.
The sense ofjoy and eagerness implicit in this story, this "whimsical piety" as it has been called, ^" is far removed from what we would ex- pect of a thirty-year-old king. It challenges our notions that at every stage in the king's life he was dominated by the somewhat more somber piety of his mother, a piety whose essence historians find in her admonition to her son that death was eminently preferable to the commission of a mortal sin.
Whatever we wish to call the cluster of emotions that characterized Louis and explain the earnestness and zeal in his behavior between late 1244 when he took the vow for the first time and June 1248 when he departed Paris, it is fairly certain that in those years he became his own man. A spirit of personal free- dom with an accompaniment of religious messianism penetrated his policies and gave them, one might say, an immoderate aspect which it is difficult to ignore. Perhaps some stupid or regrettable things were done in the colossal effort of preparing for the crusade, but no hindrance could dampen the king's overall enthusiasm and determination. The future, as he regarded it, was clear and straight. To put it another way, on the eve of the crusade, Louis was (or, at least, he felt himself to be) finally, firmly free.
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