Part 11

With these episodes of Norman feudalism it is interesting to compare the picture of Anglo-Norman society a hundred years later which we find in that unique piece of feudal biography, the _History of William the Marshal_. Companion to the Young King and witness of the final shame of Henry II, pilgrim to Jerusalem and Cologne, advanced to positions of trust under Richard and John, earl of Striguil and Pembroke and regent of England under Henry III, the Earl Marshal stood in close relations to the chief men and movements of his day. His biographer, however, does not let himself wander to tell of others’ deeds, and while his work contains material of much importance for the general history of the time, its chief value lies in its reflection of the life of the age and its faithful portrait of the man himself--soldier of fortune, gentleman-adventurer if you will, but always loyal, honorable, straightforward, and true, by the standards of his time a man without fear and without reproach. Brought up in the Norman castle of Tancarville, the Marshal, like the Young King his master, became passionately addicted to tournaments, _par éminence_ the knightly sport of the Middle Ages, which made hunting and other pastimes seem tame and furnished the best preparation for real war, since, as an English chronicler tells us, in order to shine in war a knight “must have seen his own blood flow, have had his jaw crack under the blow of his adversary, have been dashed to the earth with such force as to feel the weight of his foe, and unhorsed twenty times he must twenty times have retrieved his failures, more set than ever on the combat.” Unknown to England before the reign of Richard, these manly sports flourished most of all in France, the country of chivalry and feats of arms, and for several years we follow the Marshal from combat to combat through Normandy and Maine, Champagne and the Ile-de-France, so that his renown spread from Poitou to the Rhine. At one period in his life he tourneyed every fortnight. The tournaments of his day, however, were not the elegant and fashionable affairs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which the word is apt to call to our minds, assemblages of beauty as well as of prowess, held in special enclosures before crowded galleries, with elaborate rules respecting armor and weapons and the conditions of conflict. On the contrary, they were fought like battles, in the open, with all the arms and methods of war and all its manœuvres and ferocity of attack; indeed they differed from war mainly in being voluntary and limited to a single day. After one series of such thunderous encounters the Marshal was found in a smithy, his head on the anvil and the smith working with hammer and pincers to remove his battered helmet. In a great tournament at Lagni three thousand knights are said to have been engaged, of which the Young King furnished eighty. Knights fought for honor and fame and for sheer joy of combat; they fought also, we must remember, for the horses and armor and ransoms of the captives. In a Norman tournament the Marshal captured ten knights and twelve horses. Between Pentecost and Lent of one year their clerks calculated that he and his companion had taken prisoners three hundred knights, without counting horses and harness; yet he seems to have preserved the golden mean between the careless _largesse_ of the Young King and the merely mercenary motives of the large number who frequented tournaments for the sake of gain.

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Concerning the great agricultural class upon which the whole social system rested, our information is of a scattered and uneven sort. The man with the hoe did not interest the mediæval chronicler, and he did not gain a voice of his own in the period which we have under review. The annals of the time are indeed careful to record the drouths and floods, the seasons of plague, pestilence, and famine of which Normandy seems to have had its share, but they tell us nothing of the effects of these evils upon the class which they most directly concerned; while the charters, leases, and manorial records from which our knowledge of the peasants must be built up give us in this period isolated and unrelated facts. Moreover our information is confined almost entirely to the lands of churches and monasteries, where agriculture was likely to be more progressive because of their closer relations to the world outside. Normandy was a fertile country, and, so far as we can judge, its agricultural population fared well as compared with that of other regions. Certainly there is here, after the eleventh century, no trace of serfdom or the freeing of serfs, and the free position of its farming class distinguished the duchy from most of the lands of northern France. In other respects it is hard to discern important differences between the Norman peasants and those of other regions. After the suppression of an insurrection at the beginning of this century, we do not hear of any general rising of the Norman peasants, parallel to those risings which make a sad and futile chapter in the annals of many parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. It was, however, a local revolt of the thirteenth century on the lands of the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel that brought out one of the best descriptions of life on a Norman manor, the _Conte des Vilains de Verson_,[51] and, while it is a bit late for our purpose, it is confirmed by documentary evidence, and may well serve as an illustration of the obligations of the agricultural class:--

In June the peasants must cut and pile the hay and carry it to the manor house. In August they must reap and carry in the convent’s grain; their own grain lies exposed to wind and rain while they hunt out the assessor of the _champart_ and carry his share to his barn. On the Nativity of the Virgin the villain owes the pork-due, one pig in eight; at St. Denis’ day the _cens_; at Christmas the fowl, fine and good, and thereafter the grain-due of two _sétiers_ of barley and three quarters of wheat; on Palm Sunday the sheep-due; at Easter he must plow, sow and harrow. When there is building the tenant must bring stone and serve the masons; he must also haul the convent’s wood for two _deniers_ a day. If he sells his land, he owes the lord a thirteenth of its value; if he marries his daughter outside the seigniory, he pays a fine. He must grind his grain at the seigniorial mill and bake his bread at the seigniorial oven, where the customary charges do not satisfy the attendants, who grumble and threaten to leave his bread unbaked.

So long as mediæval society remained almost entirely agricultural there was no need of adapting its organization to other classes than those which have just been described. In course of time, however, the growth of industry and commerce, very slow before the eleventh century, but rapid and constant in the period during and after the Crusades, as may be seen by the large number of markets and fairs in Normandy, created a new class of dwellers in towns who demanded recognition of their peculiar character and status. By reason of the nature of their occupations they sought release from the seigniorial system, with its forced labor, its frequent payments, and its vexatious restrictions upon freedom of movement and freedom of buying and selling; and as their economic needs drew them together into industrial and commercial centres of population, they developed a collective feeling and demanded collective treatment. They asked, not, as has sometimes been said, for the overthrow of the feudal system, but for a place within it which should recognize their peculiar economic and political interests; and the result of their efforts, when fully successful, was to form what has been called a collective seigniory, standing as a body in the relation of vassal to lord or king, and owing the obligations of homage, fealty, and communal military service. But while not anti-feudal in theory, this movement was often anti-feudal in practice, so far at least as the rights and privileges of the immediate overlord were concerned, and it led to friction and often to armed contests with bishop, baron, or king. In Normandy, significantly, we find none of those communal revolts which meet us throughout the north of France and even as near as LeMans; the towns are always subject to the ultimate authority of the duke, whose domanial rights were considerable even in the episcopal cities and who favored those forms of urban development which strengthened the military resources of the duchy. The early history of the Norman towns is one of the most obscure chapters in Norman history, but it indicates a variety of influences which do not fit into any one of the many theories of municipal origins which have been the subject of so much learned controversy. Some towns were originally fortified places, like the baronial stronghold of Breteuil or Henry I’s fortresses of Verneuil, Nonancourt, and Pontorson on the southern border. Some took advantage of the protection of a monastery, as in the case of Fécamp or the _bourgs_ of the abbot and abbess of Caen. The great ports, like Barfleur and Dieppe, obviously owed their importance to trade, and it was trade which created the prosperity of the chief towns of the duchy, Rouen and Caen. However developed, the Norman municipal type exerted no small influence upon urban organization: the laws of Breteuil became the model for Norman foundations on the Welsh border and in Ireland; the _Établissements_ of Rouen were copied in the principal towns of western France,--Tours and Poitiers, Angoulême and La Rochelle, even to Gascon Bayonne on the Spanish frontier.

If we take as an illustration of this development the principal Norman town, Rouen, we find no evidence regarding its institutions before the twelfth century, while its organization as a commune dates from the reign of Henry II and probably from the year 1171. The fundamental law, or _Établissements_, which Rouen then received and which became the model for communal government elsewhere in Normandy, constitutes a body of one hundred peers who meet once a fortnight for judicial and other business and who choose from their number each year the twelve _échevins_, or magistrates, and the twelve councillors who sit with the _échevins_ to form the council of _jurés_. Besides these boards, which are typical of mediæval town constitutions, the peers also nominate three candidates for the office of mayor, but the choice among these is made by the king, and the greater authority of the mayor in this system is evidently designed to secure more effective royal control. It is the mayor who leads the communal militia, receives the revenues, supervises the execution of sentences, and presides over all meetings of magistrates and boards. The administration of justice through its own magistrates is perhaps the most valued privilege of the commune, but the gravest crimes are reserved for the cognizance of royal officers, and the presence of the king or a session of his assize is sufficient to suspend all communal powers of justice. In a state like the Norman the limits of municipal self-government are clear.

The importance of Rouen as a commercial and industrial centre was not, however, dependent upon its form of government. Its ancient gild of cordwainers had been recognized by Henry I and Stephen, its trading privileges were confirmed in one of the earliest charters of Henry II. Save for a single ship yearly from Cherbourg, the merchants of Rouen had a monopoly of trade with Ireland; in England they could go through all the markets of the land; in London they were quit of all payments save for wine and great fish and had exclusive rights in their special wharf of Dowgate. Later in Henry’s reign they were even freed of all dues throughout his dominions. Only a citizen might take a shipload of merchandise past Rouen or bring wine to a cellar in the town. Besides the great trade in wine we hear of dealings in leather, cloth, grain, and especially salt and salt fish. Under Henry II the ducal rights over the town were worth annually more than 3,000 _livres_. Apart from their share in this general prosperity, the citizens had special exemptions in the matter of duties and tolls on goods which they brought in, while the freedom from feudal restraints which characterized all burgage tenures put a premium upon their holding of property. Besides the privileged areas belonging to the cathedral and the neighboring abbeys, a foothold in the city was valued by others: the bishop of Bayeux had a town house; the abbot of Caen prized a cellar and an exemption from wine-dues which he owed to the generosity of William the Conqueror; the clerks and chaplains of the king’s household took advantage of their opportunities to acquire rents and houses at Rouen, as well as at London and Winchester.

Unfortunately no one has left us in this period a description of the busy life of Rouen such as Fitz Stephen has given of contemporary London, and it is only with the imagination that we can bring before our eyes the ships at their wharves with their bales of marten-skins from Ireland and casks of wine from Burgundy and the south, the fullers and dyers, millers and tanners plying their trades along the Eau de Robec, the burgesses trafficking in the streets and the cathedral close, the royal clerks and serjeants hastening on their master’s business. Still more to be regretted is the disappearance of those material remains of its ancient splendor which until the last century retained the form and flavor, if not the actual wood and stone, of the mediæval city. To-day scarcely anything survives above ground of the Rouen of the dukes--of its walls and gates, destroyed by Philip Augustus, of the castle by the river, with the tower from which Henry I threw the traitor Conan and the great hall and rooms renewed by his grandson, of the stone bridge of the Empress Matilda, of the royal park and palace across the Seine at Quevilly. Only the great St. Romain’s tower of the cathedral and an early bit of the abbey-church of Saint-Ouen still body forth the unbroken continuity of the Norman past.

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The Norman church throughout the period of our study stands in the closest relation to the general conditions of Norman society. The monasteries and churches of the region had been almost completely wiped out by the northern invasions, and while the Northmen soon adopted the religion of their new neighbors, it was many years before ecclesiastical life and discipline again reached the level of the other dioceses of France. As late as the year 1001 a Burgundian monk reported that there was hardly a priest in Normandy who could read the lessons or say his psalms correctly. The prelates led the life of the great feudal families of which they were members, distributing the property of the church as fiefs to their friends or gifts to their numerous progeny; and the lower clergy, for the most part married, sought to pass on their benefices to their children. In the course of the eleventh century, however, more canonical standards began to prevail, largely through the influence of the monks of Cluny. Older foundations like Fécamp were renewed, and the Norman lords soon began to vie with one another in the endowment of new monastic establishments. To the half-century which preceded the Conquest of England we can trace the beginnings of twenty important monasteries and six nunneries, not counting priories and smaller foundations, a movement for which contemporaries could find no parallel short of the palmy days of monasticism in Roman Egypt. In course of time the monastic ideal reacted upon the secular clergy, and the monastic schools raised the level of learning throughout the duchy, until provincial councils succeeded in establishing the celibacy of the priesthood and the stricter discipline of Rome. In all this movement for reform the dukes took a leading part, inviting the reformers to their courts, aiding in the foundation and restoration of cloisters, and lending their strong support to the efforts for moral improvement in the secular clergy. They also asserted their supremacy over the Norman church, presiding in its councils, revising the judgments of its courts, appointing and investing its bishops and abbots. Moreover, while ready to coöperate with the moral ideas of the Papacy, they resisted all attempts at papal interference in Norman affairs. When Alexander II sought to restore an abbot whom William the Conqueror had deposed, the duke replied that he would gladly receive papal legates in matters of faith and doctrine, but would hang to the tallest oak of the nearest forest any monk who dared to resist his authority in his own land. William’s resistance was equally firm in the case of Gregory VII, who failed completely in his efforts at direct action in William’s dominions. Nowhere on the Continent, concludes Böhmer,[52] was there at this time a country where the prince and his bishops were so energetic in the suppression of simony and violations of clerical vows; nowhere was the church so completely subject to the secular government.

The most prominent figure in the Norman church of the eleventh century, Odo, for nearly fifty years bishop of Bayeux, was far from fulfilling the stricter ideal of a prelate’s life. Half-brother of the Conqueror through their mother Arlette, he received the bishopric as a family gift at the tender age of fourteen and became thereby one of the greatest princes of Normandy. His hundred and twenty knights’ fees furnished him a body of powerful vassals; his demesne gave him manors and forests for the support of his household, fuel for his fires and reeds and rushes for his hall, rents and tithes at Caen and the monopoly of the mill at Bayeux, tolls and fines and market rights which produced a considerable income in ready money. For the invasion of England he is said to have offered a hundred ships, and he took an active part in the battle of Hastings, swinging a huge mace in place of spear and sword, since the shedding of blood was forbidden to an ecclesiastic. In the distribution which followed, Odo received large estates in the southeast, as well as the earldom of Kent and the custody of Dover Castle, and he seems to have ruled his lands with a heavy hand both as earl and as regent in William’s absence. It even became his ambition to succeed the mighty Hildebrand as Pope, and he had already spent considerable sums at Rome when William, accusing him of tyranny and oppression, put him in prison, answering his assertion of ecclesiastical privilege with the statement that he imprisoned, not the bishop of Bayeux, but the earl of Kent. There he languished for five years till William on his death-bed, against his better judgment, released him for ten years more of rule in Normandy. Yet, though Odo’s eulogists admit that he was given overmuch to worldly ambition, the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life, they tell us of his vigorous defence of his clergy by arms as well as by eloquence, of the young men of promise whom he supported in the schools of Lorraine and other centres of foreign learning, of the journey to Jerusalem on which he met his death, of the great cathedral which he built in honor of the Mother of God and adorned with gold and silver and probably with the very Bayeux Tapestry which is the chief surviving monument of his magnificence.

With the twelfth century the type changes. To the monastic historian a bishop like Philip d’Harcourt, likewise of the see of Bayeux, may appear wise in the wisdom of this world which is foolishness with God,[53] but his wisdom shows itself in frequent journeys to Rome and persistent litigation in the duke’s courts, not in battles and sieges, and he owes his appointment to his influence as Stephen’s chancellor and not to blood relationship. Arnulf of Lisieux is another royal officer, versatile, insinuating, shifty, anything but truthful if we may believe his fellow-bishops, but proud of his Latin style and his knowledge of law and prodigal of letters to the Pope. Their contemporaries continue to owe their promotion to service as chaplains or chancellors to the king, but they also have an eye toward Rome and must be canonists as well as secular officials. The contrast between Becket the king’s chancellor and Becket the archbishop of Canterbury is symptomatic of the new age, although the conflict to which it led affected Normandy but indirectly. Relations with the lay power which once rested on local Norman custom come to be formulated in the sharper terms of the canon law of the universal church; appeals to Rome and instructions from Rome increase rapidly in volume and importance; the Norman clergy attend assemblies of the clergy of neighboring lands; and by the end of the Plantagenet period the Norman church is ready to be absorbed into the church of France.

Respecting the daily life and conversation of the cathedral and parish clergy the twelfth century is silent, save for the condemnations of particular evils in the councils of the province. From the middle of the thirteenth century, however, Normandy furnishes us, in the diary of visitations kept by the archbishop of Rouen, Eudes Rigaud, a picture of manners and morals which for authenticity and fulness of detail has probably no parallel in mediæval Europe; and one is tempted to carry back two or three generations his description of the canons of Rouen wandering about the cathedral and chatting with women during service, the nuns of Saint-Sauveur with their pet dogs and squirrels, and those of other convents celebrating the festival of the Innocents with dance and song and unseemly mirth, the monks of Bocherville without a Bible among them to read. It is hard to believe that there was anything new in the disorders which this upright archbishop chronicles place by place and year by year--ignorance, drunkenness, and incontinence among the parish and cathedral clergy, lax discipline, loose administration, and neglect of learning in the monasteries and nunneries. What was old in the time of Rabelais was probably old in the thirteenth century, and there is abundant evidence of abuses in the mediæval church, in Normandy and elsewhere. What we want most to know is how general these abuses were and how many there were to counteract them like Chaucer’s ‘povre persoun of a toun,’ who taught “Cristes lore and his apostles twelve,” but first “folwed it himselve.” Data of this sort are always lacking in sufficient amount for any moral statistics, and they must be supplemented and interpreted by the evidence which has reached us of popular piety and devotion. Such are the processions of priest and people throughout the diocese to the cathedrals at Whitsuntide, the miraculous cures of disease by Our Lady of Coutances, and the extraordinary burst of contrition, religious enthusiasm, and zeal for good works which broke forth at the building of the spires of Chartres in 1145 and spread throughout the length and breadth of Normandy. Forming associations of those who confessed their sins, received penance, and reconciled themselves with their enemies, the faithful harnessed themselves to carts filled with stone, timber, food, and whatever might help the churches which they sought to serve, and drew them long miles until they seemed to fulfill the saying of the prophet, “the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.” The abbot of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, to whom we owe our fullest account of the movement, tells us of these processions:[54]