CHAPTER I

IN THE DAYS OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS

In the older conception, history was a record chiefly of battles, of intrigues, of wicked deeds; it was true that the evil that men did lived after them; at least, the even tenor of their ways was passed over without notice by the chroniclers, and only a salient point, a great battle or a great crime, attracted attention. If little but deeds of violence is recorded about men, still less notice does the average mediaeval chronicler condescend to bestow upon women. History has been unjust to women, and this is preeminently the case in the history of France at the period with which we are to begin in this chapter. The age of the good King Robert was an age of warfare; the basic principle of feudalism was military service; and what position could women occupy in a social system dependent upon force? The general attitude toward women is hinted at by the very fact that, in the great war epic of Roland, the love story, upon which a modern poet would have laid much stress, is entirely subordinated; it is the hero and his marvellous valor that the poet keeps before us. The heroine, if she can be so called, the sister of Roland's brother in arms, Oliver, is not once named by the hero. In the midst of the battle, when Roland proposes to sound his horn to summon Charlemagne to his aid, Oliver reproaches him:

"Par ceste meie barbe! Se puis vedeir ma gente soror Aide, Vos ne gerrez jamais entre sa brace."

(By my beard! if I live to see my sister, the beautiful Aude, you shall never be her husband!) After this she is mentioned no more until Charlemagne returns to Aix with the sad news of Roland's heroic death. Then comes to him _la belle Aude_ to ask where is her betrothed Roland. "Thou askest me for one who is dead," says Charlemagne; "but I will give thee a better man, my son and heir, Louis." "I understand thee not," replies Aude. "God forbid that I should survive Roland!" She falls fainting at the emperor's feet, and when he lifts her up he finds her dead. Then he calls four countesses, who bear the body into a convent and inter it, with great pomp, near the altar. (II. 3705-3731.) _La belle Aude_ has fulfilled her mission when she dies for love of Roland. If she had been on the battlefield, she might have dressed Roland's wounds, since the rôle of physician and nurse was frequently played by women. Otherwise there is little use for women in an age of warfare, and so we shall find most of the good women passed over in silence, and only those of more masculine traits prominent in the earlier parts of our story.

Before we can begin the story of those women whose names have come down to us from the France of the year 1000, it is necessary to have some sort of understanding of the social, if not of the political, condition of France, to learn what sort of influences environed and moulded the lives of women in those days. Such a survey of society, indeed, will be useful for the whole period of the Middle Ages, and will serve as a background for the figures of the women we shall have to consider, whether they be saints or sinners.

At the beginning of the reign of the good King Robert, the France over which he ruled was still scarcely consolidated. The power of the kings of France hardly yet extended, in reality, over more than the little duchy of France, a territory bounded, roughly, by the cities of Orléans on the south, Sens on the east, Saint-Denis on the north, and Chartres on the west. Not only were the more powerful barons, counts, and dukes, among whom the land was parcelled out, subject to the kings only at their good pleasure, but the very people over whom they directly ruled were still dimly conscious of the fact that they sprang from different races. Even as late as the middle of the tenth century we hear of "Goths, Romans, and Salians" as more or less distinct. The fusion of the several races on the soil of France was, however, at that time probably complete in all but name, if we except the Celts in Brittany; even the latest arrivals in France, the Norsemen, had ceased to be mere wandering freebooters and were fast developing, like the rest of France, a caste of hereditary nobles whose title and power depended upon the tenure of land.

We may roughly divide the society of the period into four classes. In the first we must place the nobles and their bands of retainers. In the second we find the churchmen, the greater among whom are hardly to be distinguished from the secular nobility, Below these, and a long distance below, come the inhabitants of the larger towns, the merchants and the better class of artisans. At the bottom, trodden down to the very soil from which they are forced to extract food for all the rest, and perhaps, if any is left, for themselves, come the peasantry.

Since the disruption of the great conglomerate empire of Charlemagne, the power of the nominal kings of France had been gradually restricted. Powerless to protect the kingdom from the attacks of foreign enemies, the king was also powerless to preserve order within it. Personal immunity from force could be obtained only by the use of force; and if one were not strong enough to protect one's self, the only way was to purchase protection from a stronger neighbor. This was the reason for the growth of the complicated system of feudalism, with whose remote origins and exact details we are not here concerned.

As regards the influence of the feudal system upon the position of women, it might be safe to say that feudalism at first made little change in their condition. They enjoyed neither more nor less rights than during the ages of barbaric _Sturm und Drang_; but certainly they found a little greater security against violence and oppression, since greater security was the general aim and the general effect of feudalism. The weak must always occupy a relatively better position in a compactly organized society than in a democracy of violence; and so the feudal system, retaining for women such small civil rights as they already possessed, added a greater personal security.

This was not all. Though the transmission of property, on which all social standing was based, was regularly from male to male, and though female heirs might be passed over or disposed of by violence or chicanery, there were exceptions, which become more numerous as we go on. It cannot be said that there was at any time absolute prohibition of a daughter's inheriting from her father. In the Salic law, so called, there was a provision that "no part _of the salic land_ shall pass to a woman;" but all land was not salic, or allodial, and this provision was later held to apply particularly to the lands of the crown, and hence to the crown itself, as we shall see. Under the feudal system, the fief was held on condition of military service, and each vassal, as a rule, must _servir son fief_ (do the service of his fief) in person; but it was expressly stipulated that ecclesiastics, women, and children could perform this service by proxy, generally through a seneschal or baillie.

Though warlike churchmen not infrequently led their vassals in person, witness the Bishop of Beauvais at the battle of Bouvines, "who shed no blood, though he brake many bones with his club," women appeared but rarely in the earlier time as Amazons, and then half in sport, as in the case of Queen Eleanor in the second Crusade.

But, however they chose to perform their duty in the _host_ summoned by the sovereign's _ban general_, women were recognized as members of the feudal nobility. At the very top we find them, among the immediate great vassals of the crown, the _pairs de France_. We find, for example, Mathilde, or Mahault, Countess of Artois, sitting as a peer in the assembly which rendered judgment against the claims of her nephew, Robert, to the countship of Artois, in 1309; and the same countess receives a special summons to attend the court of peers in 1315; and in the next year, at the coronation of Philip V., she is among the peers who hold the crown over the king's head. This function was also performed by another Countess of Artois at the consecration of Charles V., in 1364.

In less exalted stations, too, women held fiefs, and there may frequently have been personal reasons for the suzerain's preferring female vassals. For first by custom, and then by written law (see the _Assises de Jérusalem_ and the _Etablissements de Saint Louis_), the suzerain exercised a right of guardianship over his female vassals, maids or widows, as long as they were unmarried. In England very serious abuses followed from this right of wardship, as it was called, and the unfortunate French girls and children who were subjected to it were no better off than the English. We are not especially concerned here with the case of minor heirs under _garde-noble_, or ward, except where these heirs were girls. The girl so situated must not marry without the consent of the lord who held the _garde-noble_ of her person and of her domain. If she did so she was liable to fines and even to forfeiture of her fief; and this power was one which the feudal lords did not hesitate to exercise. We find Saint Louis objecting to the marriage of Jeanne, heiress of the county of Ponthieu, to the King of England, and to the marriage of the Countess of Flanders, widow of Count Ferrand, to Simon de Montfort, a vassal of the King of England. Both these instances show the reason which, in such a system as feudalism, underlay a power apparently so arbitrary; the suzerain, in mere self-defence, could not allow one of his fiefs to fall into the possession of a possible enemy.

There was another right, a corollary to this one. The lord could compel his female ward to marry in order that the military duties of the fief might be performed by a man. Saint Louis compelled Matilda of Flanders to marry Thomas, Prince of Savoy. The famous _Assises de Jérusalem_, organizing one of the most compact bodies which feudalism developed, to defend the Holy Sepulchre in the midst of hostile infidels, contains express provisions on this subject. According to this code, the baron could say to his female vassal: "Dame, you owe service of marriage." He then designated three suitable candidates, and she had to choose from among them. The regulations of the so-called _Etablissements de Saint Louis_ on this subject are so interesting that we may give a paraphrase of a considerable portion of them. "When a lady becomes a widow, and is advanced in years, and has a daughter, the seigneur to whom she owes allegiance may come to her and say: 'Dame, I wish you to give me surety that you will not marry your daughter without my advice and consent, or without the advice and consent of her father's relatives; for she is the daughter of my liegeman, and therefore I do not wish her to be deprived of this advice.' Then it behooves the lady to give him due surety. And when the girl shall be of marriageable age, if the lady find anyone who asks her in marriage, she must come before the seigneur and the relatives of the girl's father and say to them: 'Sire, my daughter is asked in marriage, and I will not give her without your consent, nor should I do so. Now give me your good and faithful counsel; for a certain man has asked for her' (and she must give his name). And if the seigneur say: 'I do not wish this man to have her, for so-and-so, who is richer and of better rank than the one you have named, has asked me for her, and will take her willingly' (and he shall name the man); or if the relatives on the father's side say: 'We know a richer and a better man than either of those you have named to us' (and they shall name him); then shall they deliberate and choose the best of the three and the one most advantageous to the demoiselle. And he who is chosen as the best should be really thought so, for no one should make a mockery of law. And if the lady marry her daughter without the consent of her seigneur and of the relatives on the father's side, after she had been forbidden to do so, she shall lose her movable goods," on which the seigneur is given the power of distraint. There is in this enactment elaborate provision for satisfying everybody but the person one would think most interested the young lady. Her consent to the arrangement was, to the mediaeval mind, a matter of small moment.

The powers thus given to the seigneur by formal law were certainly exercised by right of custom, and probably with far less restraint of justice than that provided for in the _Etablissements_. For caprice, tyranny, or avarice might be satisfied by forcing an unfortunate ward into marriage. Frequently, the unscrupulous baron forced his ward to marry the highest bidder, or proposed some absolutely impossible candidate for her hand merely to have her buy her freedom. "You will either marry this decrepit old knight, to whose rank and wealth you cannot reasonably object, or you will pay me so much." We can well imagine that the impulse of youth would suggest surrender of almost any worldly wealth to have "freedom in her love." The romances are full of incidents akin to this, where the authority of either father or guardian was exerted in vain; and the romances, however fantastic in some respects, are but the reflections of actual conditions.

The unmarried woman, whether princess or mere demoiselle, was in a condition almost as dependent as the serf. If she did not choose to marry, or if her face or her fortune could not tempt anyone to ask her in marriage, she might enter a monastery. Indeed, a father unwilling or unable to provide a suitable dower for her might force her to become a nun. The eldest son must be provided for first. If the patrimony were small and the family large, younger sons had to fend for themselves, and daughters had to take what they could get. The convent was the cheapest and the safest place in which to establish them.

Yet in the age of feudalism there were certain safeguards for women, whether these were altogether of feudal origin or merely survivals of homely, common-sense custom. To cite but a few examples, we find in the _Assises de Jérusalem_ most stringent provisions for the punishment of seduction or crimes of violence against women. The statute provides that the seducer, if he be able to do so and is approved by the parents, shall marry the girl. In another connection, we learn that in Paris it was for a while customary to marry such a couple, whether they would or not, in the obscure little church of Sainte-Marine, and with a ring of straw as a symbol of their shame. In case marriage was not acceptable to the parents of the girl, the seducer might provide for her suitably in a convent, and he himself might be punished by mutilation, confiscation of his goods, and banishment. The husband had to secure to his wife a certain proportion of, if not all, her dowry, and in the book of the customs of Anjou we find it definitely stated that: _Il est usage que gentil home puit doer sa fame a porte de mostier dou tierz de sa terre_ (It is the custom for a gentleman to endow his wife with the third of his goods at the church door). Then, to protect widows from oppressive feudal reliefs, as they were called, the _Etablissements de Saint Louis_ ordain that "no lady shall pay a redemption fee (to secure succession to the fief), except in case she marry. But if she marry, her husband shall pay the fee to the seigneur whose vassal she is. And if what is offered does not please the seigneur, he can claim but the revenues of the fief for one year."

Once admitted to the recognized class of the nobility, either as a wife or as one of the greater vassals, a woman's position was decidedly improved. Her rights were not many, but yet the feudal chatelaine occupied a position of some dignity and importance. She was regarded as in some sort the representative of her husband during his presence as well as during his absence. The _Assises de Jérusalem_ provide, among other things, that she shall not be proceeded against in court as the representative of her husband until a respite of a year and a day has elapsed, to allow for his possible return; and in the chateau, at all times the lady had charge of domestic affairs, and on state occasions shared the dignity of her husband.

The feudal chateau of a great baron was not only a fortress to secure him against his enemies; it was also a home for his family and for scores of dependents and retainers, and frequently a hostelry for the entertainment of travellers of high and low degree. The moat, the drawbridge and portcullis, the strong walls pierced with narrow slits to admit scant light and air in time of peace and to deliver arrows in time of war, the battlements, and the lofty tower of strength, all these are familiar in our conceptions of the feudal castle. Many of us have followed Marmion in his mad dash under the descending portcullis and across the drawbridge of Lord Angus's castle; and we have watched the arrows flying against the walls of Front de Boeuf's donjon and old mad Ursula raving on its battlements. But the other features of the dwellings, though sometimes described with equal care by the great Sir Walter and his disciples, attract less attention and fade sooner from our memories. Such a manor hall as that of Cédric the Saxon should be kept in mind if we wish to get a fair idea of the actual life of the better classes, not only in England but in France, for the main features of the architecture and of the furnishings were the same. The nature and extent of the fortifications might vary greatly, according to the power or ambition of the owner; but the domestic arrangements of the feudal home would be substantially the same in all.

The main portion of the house was given up to a huge hall. Entering the gateway of the outer wall, one found one's self in a court, around which were ranged the great hall, the smaller sleeping apartments, the domestic offices, and the stables. Every possible provision was made for men and animals to live within the enclosure in case of siege. The great hall itself was usually at least thirty or forty feet in length, and often so wide that its high, vaulted roof had to be supported on a row of columns extending down the middle. In the ceiling was a hole, or _louvre_, to allow the smoke to escape when fire was lighted on the hearth in the centre of the floor for chimneys were used as yet, if at all, only in the smaller rooms. At one end of the hall there was probably a slightly elevated dais, or platform, on which were the seats for the lord and lady, and perhaps for distinguished guests. In the tall ogival windows, which were glazed only in the houses of the very wealthy, were window seats, and along the rude board or table in the body of the hall were rough benches and stools for the retainers and guests of lesser rank. And if the lord were rich, there would be a gallery, at the opposite end from the dais, for the minstrels who played during banquets. Armorial bearings and weapons and armor hung upon the walls. If the roof were so broad as to require the support of pillars, these and the arches of the roof were decorated with carving. Sometimes a further effect of color might be added by tapestries upon the walls, and sometimes, though rarely, by mural paintings, as we are told in the lay of _Guingamor_:

"La chambre est paint tut entur; Venus, la devesse d'amur, Fu tres bein en la paintur."

(The room is painted all about; Venus, the goddess of Love, was beautifully pictured in the painting.)

The floor of the hall might be of wood, though at the early period of which we write it was very commonly of earth. There were no carpets, except in palaces of great luxury, even at a much later date; instead, the floor was covered with rushes or straw. Straw was anciently one of the symbols of investiture; in the Salic law the person conveying an estate cast a wisp of straw into the bosom of him to whom the property was to be conveyed. With this custom in mind, we can understand the anecdote told by Alberic des Troisfontaines of William the Conqueror. The floor of the room in which he was born was covered with straw. The newborn child, having been placed on the floor for a moment, seized in his tiny hands a bit of the straw, which he held vigorously. _"Parfoi!"_ cried the midwife, _"cet enfant commence jeune à conquerir."_ Obviously, the anecdote, with its allusion to the Conquest, was made up long after the event, but it serves to show that even in the mansions of the well to do straw was the usual floor covering; and even much later we do not find the old coverings of rushes, branches, or straw displaced by carpets. In 1373 the inhabitants of a certain town (Aubervilliers) were exempted from a feudal tax on condition of their furnishing annually forty cartloads of straw to the hotel, or palace, of Charles V., twenty to that of the queen, and ten to that of the dauphin. On special occasions the ordinary straw might be displaced by fresh green boughs upon the floor and against the walls. Froissart tells us that on a very warm day "the count of Foix entered his chamber and found it all strewn with verdure and full of fresh new boughs; the walls all about were covered with green boughs to make the room more fresh and fragrant.... When he felt himself in this fresh new chamber, he said: 'This greenery refreshes me greatly, for assuredly this has been a hot day.'" When the rushes or straw remained long on the floor without being renewed, as was assuredly often the case, trampled on by men and used as a couch by the dogs of the establishment, the effect must have been quite other than refreshing. This must have been the case in many a private house, but especially in such public places as the great churches and the great university of the Sorbonne, whose students sat on the floor upon straw, and had to pay twenty-five sous each to the chancellor for furnishing it.

In the hall of the castle thus rudely furnished the inmates lived a large part of their lives. There the household assembled for meals. There the minstrel, if one chanced to be present, recited his romance. There the lord in person, or his seneschal or baillie, held his court to administer justice. It was the common room of the house, and usually contained all there was in the way of decoration. Comfort even here was hardly to be found; one can fancy that the fire on the open hearth gave out more smoke than heat, and the windows, often entirely unglazed and ill-fitting, let in more cold than light.

The smaller apartments were even less pretentious in the way of comfort. Opening out of the hall, or arranged around the court, were little cubby-holes of places to serve as sleeping apartments. The furniture in them was of the simplest description, and one was not even sure of finding a bedstead; for unless the occupant were outrageously affected by what the old folks doubtless called the degenerate effeminacy of the age--in the year 1000--his bed was apt to be made on the floor, or in a bunk against the wall. Sometimes there was a larger apartment opening from the rear of the hall and destined for the private use of the lord and his lady. As luxury increased, this apartment gradually became better furnished, and at length there developed the lady's bower, where she might retire with her maids. Of these there would often be a goodly number, some mere domestics, some young girls of good family sent to learn polite manners and domestic arts under the lady of the castle. In the bower also tapestries would be hung on the walls, and, in place of arms, perhaps there would be the various musical instruments in popular use, particularly the harp, in various forms, known as _psaltérions, cythares, décacordes_; the rote, which was what we should now call a viol; various forms of violins, such as the rebec and the lute; guitars; and perhaps flutes. The use of these instruments was, of course, not unknown to the ladies themselves, and we find many references in the romances to maidens at the courts playing upon the harp and singing, though the professional minstrel or the page in training was oftener the performer.

In the bower, the lady was not occupied with mere amusements. We are apt to forget that our more complex civilization has taught us to rely upon others to do many things which even our great-grand-mothers had to do for themselves. Placed in the position of Robinson Crusoe, even with the help of the simple tools which Defoe allows him to have, how helpless would be the average man of to-day, simply because, from long dependence on the little conveniences of modern life,--from Lucifer matches and cooking stoves to ready-made clothing and ready-made houses,--he would have lost the use of the most elementary faculties. So the female Crusoe, in a feudal castle lone island, far from the conveniences of town and shops, must, if she expected to get any comfort for herself and those around her, know how to do innumerable small things that even the modern shopgirl finds done for her as a matter of course.

She must know how to make bread, without question. In the romance of King Florus a faithful wife disguises herself as a page and accompanies her husband without his recognizing her. They fall upon evil days, and the wife-page earns a living for herself and her master by starting a bakery and eventually an inn. The lady of the manor must not only know how to make the greater part of the clothing that she wears, but must know how to weave the cloth of which her gown is made, and to spin the yarn from which cloth and thread alike must come, and to card the wool or prepare the flax before that. If soap be considered necessary,--and there seems to have been no excessive use of it,--it would be wise for her to know how to make it, since there might be no place near by where soap could be bought. Candles, too, of a rude sort, or some sort of rushlight, for domestic use, it would be well to know how to make; and, of course, she should know how to make cheeses and to cure meats for use during the long months when fresh meats might not be had. Even on the tables of the rich, salt meats were the staple article. Unable to provide for the feeding of large flocks through the winter--forage was scarce, root crops were little cultivated for stock, and the omnipotent potato had not yet come to its own,--the lord's steward would have a large number of animals slaughtered just at the beginning of winter, and the flesh of these had to be salted down. The good housewife would, of course, know something of the process. Though in large households the management of the male servants, the outdoor servants generally, fell to the steward or baillie, the lady even here undoubtedly had to give a general supervision, and had to provide work for and maintain discipline among the women of the household. It must have required no small amount of ability and tact, therefore, successfully to be the lady of the chateau.

We need not pause here to consider the amusements and the traditional occupations of women, such as fine sewing and embroidery, or music and the care of flowers. These can best be noticed when we examine the romances of a later age.

For women of the upper classes feudalism was not, we may say, entirely unjust or evil in its operations; but as feudalism meant oppression verging on slavery for Jacques Bonhomme, the peasant, his wife Jeanne could hardly have been in better case. With peasant marriages the seigneur could interfere even more tyrannically than with those of his feudal wards. In some places the bride and groom owed to the seigneur certain gifts called _mets de manage_. On the day of the wedding these "must be brought to the chateau by the bride, accompanied by musicians; the said mets shall consist of a leg of mutton, two fowls, two quarts of wine, four loaves of bread, four candles, and some salt, under pain of a fine of sixty sous." In some places that most infamous right known _par excellence_ as the _droit du seigneur_ was claimed, and we find a writer even as late as the seventeenth century recording the fact that the husband was sometimes required to purchase his bride's exemption from this right.

At the early date of which we write, however, there is little or no information to be had about the peasantry; the monkish chroniclers mention them but rarely, and then unsympathetically. Popular literature, with its _lais, contes, fabliaux_, or rude dramas in which Jacques and Jeanne appear, did not yet exist. We may, however, guess from the barbarity with which they were treated how near to that of the brutes was their condition.

About the year 997, soon after the death of the glorious Duke Robert the Fearless, the peasants of Normandy began to murmur against the wrongs they had to suffer. "The seigneurs," they said, "only do us harm; on account of them we have neither gain nor profit from our labor. Every day they take from us our work animals for feudal services. And then there are the laws, old and new, and pleas and lawsuits without end, about coinage, about forest rights, about roads, about milling our grain, about _hommage_. There are so many constables and bailiffs that we have not one hour of peace; every day they are pouncing down on us, seizing our goods, chasing us away from our land. There is no guarantee for us against the seigneurs and their men, and no contract holds good with them. Why do we allow ourselves to be treated thus, instead of trying to right our wrongs? Are we not men as they are? Courage is all we need. Let us therefore bind ourselves together by an oath, swearing to sustain each other. And if they make war upon us, have we not, for one knight, thirty or even forty young peasants, active, and fit to fight with clubs, with pikes, with bows and arrows, yea, with stones if there be no better weapons? Let us learn how to resist the knights, and we shall be free to cut the trees, to hunt, to fish at our own sweet will; and we will do as we please upon the water, in the fields, and in the forests." They held secret meetings, and finally formed some sort of an organization. But the seigneurs got wind of their designs. The young Duke Richard sent for his uncle, Raoul, Count of Evreux. "Sire," said Raoul, "do not you stir a foot, but leave it all to me." He collected a force of knights and men at arms, and, informed by a spy of the meeting place of the peasants, bore down upon them suddenly and arrested all the ringleaders. Then came the punishment, the like of which was not uncommon, though the victims were more numerous than usual. Some were empaled outright; some were cooked before a slow fire; some were sprinkled with molten lead. Others had their eyes torn out, their hands cut off, their legs scorched; and of these victims the few who survived were sent back among their fellows to inspire terror.

One can well believe that these horrors and the ever present sight of those who had suffered from them kept the peasants in awe, as the old chroniclers exultantly tell us. The account as given in Wace's _Roman de Rou_ has in our eyes a pathos and a poetic grandeur far greater than the chronicler's enthusiastic record of the deeds of the great Norman dukes. With us the democratic spirit, or mere humanity, is so much stronger than with him that we read his lines with feelings of pity and indignation quite unforeseen by him. Is it not pitiful, this cry of the peasants?

"Nus sumes homes cum il sunt, Tex membres avum cum il unt, Et altresi grant cors avum, Et altretant sofrir poum."

(We are men even as they are, we have limbs and bodies like theirs, and can suffer as much.) One hears the echo of Shy lock's "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" The feudal ages would have answered Jew and peasant alike with an emphatic "No!"

The barbarism in the suppression of this revolt is merely a typical instance of the prevailing cruelty of manners. It was not the peasant alone, regarded as hardly the same flesh and blood, to whom the seigneur was cruel. Let us look at a few of these famous knights, and first at the deeds of one notoriously wicked even in his own day. This was Foulques, surnamed Nerra, the black, Count of Anjou, and ancestor of the Plantagenet line. This same Foulques was twice married. His first wife, Elizabeth, accused of adultery--probably because he wished to get rid of her,--he disposed of by violent methods. One account reports that he had her burned alive; another, that he had her thrown over a precipice; and as she survived this, he, scandalized by her refusal to die in this more picturesque fashion, stabbed her himself. One is reminded of Nero, that most cheerful of the Roman murderer-emperors, who contrived an elaborate machine to drown his mother, and, when she swam ashore, was so irritated by the failure of his scheme that he had her summarily decapitated. Foulques's second wife was so ill used that she fled to the Holy Land. The pious count once burned down the church of Saint-Florent at Saumur, calling out to the saint: "Let me burn your old church here, and I'll build you a far finer one in Angers." And later he did build a huge abbey, which no one of the neighboring bishops would consecrate; but a judicious application to Rome, backed by a present, brought a cardinal to consecrate it; and the wrath of Heaven was shown, says the chronicler, for the new church was destroyed by lightning. At length the devout Foulques, who had made two previous pilgrimages to the Holy Land, was so smitten by remorse that he undertook a third. When he arrived at Jerusalem he had himself tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets, while two of his servants flogged him, and he cried out at every blow: "Have mercy, O Lord, on the perjured traitor, Foulques!" We are not told--but it is probable--that the servants who did the flogging either did not survive very long, or else were wise enough to flog very gently. Foulques, however, died on his way back from Jerusalem.

Then there is the story of the chatelaine of the magnificent castle of Ivri, Albérède, or Aubrée, wife of Raoul, Count of Evreux, half-brother of Richard I. She employed Lanfred, the most accomplished architect of the time, who had built the strong castle of Ponthiviers (about 1090), to build the castle of Ivri, stronger and more cunningly devised than any other. When he had finished, in order that he might build no better castle, or might not reveal the secrets of the fortifications of Ivri, she had his head cut off. But Count Raoul was a prudent man, and took the hint. He had Albérède executed too.

One Norman gentleman, Ascelin de Goël, having had the good luck to capture his feudal lord, held him for ransom; and in order that he might be encouraged to pay more, had him exposed at an open north window, in his shirt, and poured cold water over him, that the winter winds might freeze it. And even the mild and saintly King Robert, in his war against the Duke of Burgundy, laid waste the country far and wide, massacred defenceless peasants, and did not spare even monasteries and churches, since peasants and monasteries alike were regarded as but the goods of the duke, which it was his right to destroy.

The Church had some redress for the evils suffered. The pious and superstitious king was tormented nearly all his life by the threats of eternal damnation which the Church held over him. This brings us to a consideration of the influence of the Church upon manners in general and upon the condition of women.

Though there were many ambitious, greedy, and cruel priests; though many of them lived in open defiance of the Church's prohibition of marriage among the clergy,--there were several married bishops at an earlier period, and one of these, the Bishop of Dole, actually plundered his church to dower his daughters,--the Church as a whole unquestionably stood for the best in manners and in morals. After Charlemagne's vain attempts to revive popular education, what learning there was existed only among the clergy. Though themselves forming part of the feudal nobility and holding fiefs for which they owed military service, the bishops, abbots, and priors almost always espoused the cause of the weak and the oppressed. Within the precincts of the church the poor fugitive from violence done in the name of justice was offered sanctuary, and the right of sanctuary was usually respected.

Within the walls of the monastery women were offered safety. There were many, of course, who might choose the quiet and the comparative ease of the cloister life from motives little better than worldly, and others who might enter with sentiments of romantic devoutness which it is hard for most of us to appreciate in this day; and both were doubtless satisfied with what they found in the convent. But there were many others who had been forced into a life absolutely distasteful to them and alien to their temperaments. How many of these withered away in discontent! how many revolted more actively and led lives that brought reproach and disgrace upon the Church! Among the earliest of the satires against social abuses we find those against hypocritical, avaricious, gluttonous, or licentious monks and nuns; and the stream of satire runs throughout the Middle Ages. Monks live in the _pays de Cocagne_, to gain admittance to which one had to wallow seven years in filth; monks and nuns are in Rabelais's _Abbé de Thélème_, and _en leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause: fais ce que vouldra_; and monks and nuns again play anything but edifying roles in the _fabliaux_ and their successors, the short tales such as one finds in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_.

Monasteries for women abounded all over France, most of them under some form of the Benedictine rule. Within their own monasteries women could govern themselves, though the whole convent was usually dependent upon male ecclesiastical control, either attached to a neighboring monastery, or under the jurisdiction of a bishop. In the great double monastic community of Fontevrault, established about noo by Robert d'Arbrissel, women were exalted above men; the nuns sang and prayed, the monks worked, and the entire establishment was under the guidance of the abbess.

The abbess or prioress occupied a position of responsibility and dignity not unlike that of the chatelaine. She too had the control of a large domestic establishment, and she was responsible not only for religious discipline but for the temporal provision for her nuns. The abbess had the power of a bishop within the limits of her convent, and bore a crosier as the sign of her rank. She might even hold some feudal tenure in the name of her convent. She drew revenues from her holdings and was in every sense the executive head of her house. At first--always under some of the stricter rules--the abbess carried on business outside the convent through some male agent. Greater freedom undoubtedly prevailed at times, however, and the rule against her leaving the convent was ignored. She was in some cases appointed, but usually elected from among the nuns, though cases are found, of course, where the abbess was the mere creature of some powerful lay or ecclesiastical authority. To become abbess of a nunnery was not considered beneath even a princess of the blood; and in some convents probably the same caste distinctions were observed as prevailed outside, and the nuns were nothing more than elegant retired ladies of birth and fashion.

The abbess appointed her subordinates, who varied in number and rank according to the power of the convent. There was generally a sub-prioress, second in authority to the abbess, and certain minor executive officers, whose duties were nevertheless important, such as the chaplain, the sexton, and the cellaress. The chaplain was in most cases a monk chosen to celebrate Mass for the nuns, since women were not allowed to become actual priests; but in some cases the officer called the chaplain was a nun, whether or not she could officiate in all capacities. The sexton was a nun whose duties were to ring the bells for services, to keep in order the chapel, the altar, and the sacred vessels, and sometimes to act as a treasurer. The most interesting of these officers, however, and the one whose position must have been really most trying, was the cellaress. It was she who had general supervision of the commissariat. She was usually chosen upon the advice, if not by the election, of the whole community, and it was especially important that she should be a tactful person and a judicious manager. As housekeeper of the establishment, she had to control the servants and to satisfy the nuns. In providing food and drink for the household, she had to manage receipts and disbursements of considerable amounts. Very frequently a farm was attached to the nunnery, or there were several farms whose produce was to be used for the support of the institution. For whatever was bought or sold the cellaress had to make an accounting. With the proceeds of her sales or of the rent of the farms under her control, or with the money allowed her, she had to buy such provisions as were needed: grain, flesh, fish,--usually a very large item, especially in the Lenten season,--condiments, such as preserved fruits, spices, salt, etc., and, where the rule did not utterly forbid it, wine or ale. Of these details we shall speak more fully in connection with the rules for a model nunnery which Abélard wrote for Héloïse and upon which she based her government of the famous monastery of the Paraclete.

Aside from the protection they afforded to women who might otherwise have been utterly lost in the rough world, the monasteries were of great importance in other ways. Whatever it may have become during the period of the decline of monastic purity, the life in the nunneries, even in the comparatively dark period about the year 1000, was not an idle one. The day was carefully portioned off into periods of work, of religious devotion, and of leisure, which long custom fixed into a routine. The occupations included what we should now class chiefly as artistic work, though much of it was at the time really useful in a more homely way,--weaving of hangings and tapestries for the church, embroidery, painting and illuminating, and copying of manuscripts. This last was, of course, work of the highest utility, though the artistic skill displayed in the writing itself and in the beautiful illuminations made it also an art. We have few names of actual scribes of either sex, since they rarely signed the manuscripts they copied; but among these few there are some of women. The magnificent tapestries, sometimes large enough to cover in one piece the side of a church, are perhaps the most noteworthy of the products of the monasteries. So famous was the work of the nuns in this particular that tradition assigned to them, though perhaps mistakenly, the production of one of the most famous historical authorities for the Norman Conquest, the Bayeux tapestries, said to have been wrought for Bishop Odo of Bayeux by nuns under the direction of Queen Matilda.

Most important of all in the activities of the convent was education. At the time of which we write, the standard of learning in the convents was higher than one would think, and higher than it was some centuries later; for Latin was still used familiarly among some of the women educated in convents. The most famous instance of learning is that of the Saxon nun Hrotsvith, or Roswitha, of the tenth century, who wrote legends of the saints, dramas on the model of the comedies of Terence, and chronicles. There were other learned nuns, though none famous in the French literature of the time, all of whom gained their knowledge in convents; for it was in convents alone that women could ordinarily receive any education at all. One of the main purposes of the convent was to train young girls. Sometimes there was only such training as would fit them to became novices and eventually nuns, and the degree of education was of course determined in part by social standing; that is, a princess would be more carefully trained than a mere demoiselle; but some convents became famous schools, where education was given for its own sake, not merely to train those who meant to become nuns. In many cases, children of both sexes were taught, and girls and boys together learned Latin. In the romance of _Flore et Blancheflore_, the hero recalls how he and Blancheflore loved when they were children at school, "and told each other of our love in Latin, and none understood us." But the girls were probably better educated, in our sense of the word, than the boys; for teaching a boy to avoid breaking Priscian's head was then less necessary than teaching him to break that of his opponent in battle.

Leaving the convents out of the question, the Church helped the cause of woman and of humanity by its constant endeavor to repress violence. About the year 1030 France was afflicted by a succession of bad crops, resulting, together with the constant waste and ravages of petty wars, in the most frightful famine. The people in their misery became almost inhuman; men died in such multitudes that it was impossible to bury them, and the wolves fed on their flesh; human flesh was actually offered for sale in the market of Tournus; and one monster, near Macon, living as a hermit, enticed unwary travellers into his den and there slew and devoured them! When found out he had a pile of forty-eight human skulls, those of his victims. In the midst of this horrible state of affairs the bishops and abbots of all parts of France met in council and decreed punishment upon whoever should carry arms, and upon whoever should use violence against defenceless persons, merchants, monks, and women; not even the refuge of the altar was to protect him who disobeyed this decree. Raising their hands to heaven all those present cried out, _Pax! pax! pax!_ in witness of the eternal peace compact, the _Paix de Dieu_--the Peace of God. Wars had caused much of their distress, and the kingdom was indeed weary of war, but the millennium had not yet come,--philosophers still tell us that it is "just beyond the sky line,"--and the Peace of God was ineffective.

Failing to suppress war, the Church next sought, with more practical wisdom, to modify its horrors. In 1041 was proclaimed the _Trève de Dieu_--the Truce of God. All private feuds were to cease during the period from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, under penalty of fine, banishment, and exclusion from Christian communion. Then the days of the great feasts were included in the period of truce, as well as Advent and Lent. "Churches and unfortified cemeteries," says the chronicler Ranulph Glaber, "as well as the persons of all clerks and monks, provided they did not carry arms, were put under the perpetual protection of the Truce of God. For the future, when making war upon the seigneur, men were forbidden to kill, to mutilate, or to carry off as captives the poor people of the country, or to destroy maliciously implements of labor and crops." This last provision in particular is very interesting. Of course, powerful barons broke the truce again and again; but it was there as a real moral force of restraint, and the Church did not forget to contend for its observance, so that it must have had some effect. To no class in society could peace have been more welcome, more essential, than to women, always the sufferers in war.

We have left to the last one most important question in considering the moral influence of the Church. Surely, the sanctity of the marriage tie is one of the foundation stones of morality and of civilization; upon it rests the home, where woman has always found her greatest and surest happiness. The Church had been struggling for centuries, and was to struggle some time longer, to make effective its opposition to marriage among the clergy. Among the secular priests, those not connected with a monastic order, marriage or concubinage had not by any means ceased, and we find even bishops leading scandalous lives. But the Church continued to fulminate its decrees, and the evil grew slowly less and less, till it existed only among the lower orders of the clergy and in out-of-the-way places. Monks and nuns alike took the three vows of poverty, of chastity, and of obedience. We are not concerned with the general question of whether or not priests should be married, or whether or not it is wisdom to force the observance of a vow of perpetual chastity upon young men and women who may have taken such a vow without duly considering their own temperaments, or who have been compelled to take it against their wills. Despite the scandals,--scandal has always a noisy tongue,--there should be no doubt that in the great majority of cases the vow of chastity was sincerely kept. Within its own limits the Church discouraged and was soon utterly to forbid marriage; what did it do to sanctify and to protect marriage outside of the ranks of the clergy?

Marriage was made one of the seven great sacraments of the Church, and the breach of the marriage tie was one of the sins most severely punished. Adultery had been severely punished under the customary laws of the Franks, usually by the death of both parties with frightful tortures; and the Church added to the physical punishment inflicted by the civil law in this world the threat of eternal torments in the next. Nevertheless, according to the testimony of many who are satirists and of some who are not, it was the unmarried priest who was the most frequent offender. An anecdote will illustrate the prevailing looseness of clerical morals. Wace tells us that a sacristan of Saint-Ouen, in Rouen, fell in love with a lady who lived across the little river Robec. As he was stealing across to meet her one dark night, his foot slipped on the plank by which he was crossing the stream, and he tumbled therein and was drowned. A devil was just about to pitchfork his soul and carry it off when an angel appeared, contending that the sacristan had not yet committed the sin. The case was submitted to Duke Richard, who ordered that the soul should be returned to the body, and that he would then judge according to the sacristan's actions. Presto! it was done; and the monk, his ardor cooled by the ducking, went back to his abbey and confessed to the abbot. A popular proverb makes the story survive: "Sir monk, step lightly, and take good care when you cross the plank." Not only in the Church, but in the world, immorality was too common and too easily pardoned. It is significant that illegitimacy was the rule rather than the exception among the Norman dukes, and that William the Conqueror, himself illegitimate, was conspicuous in his age for marital fidelity.

The moral theory of the Church was correct enough, however it failed in practice. Every precaution was taken--indeed, too many were taken--to prevent hasty and ill-assorted marriages. The banns had to be read three times in the church; the contracting parties must be of proper age; they must have the consent of parent or guardian; they must not be related within the degrees prohibited by the Church; they must not be bound by any previous vow of chastity or be guilty of any mortal sin.

These provisions would seem to be in the main wise enough, and yet out of one of them grew a considerable moral evil. Divorce had been recognized by the Salic law: "Seeing that discord troubles their union, and that charity reigns not in it, N. and M., husband and wife, have agreed to separate and to leave each other free either to retire to a monastery or to remarry," without question or opposition from either party. So ran one of the formulas; and as a sign of the divorce the keys of the house were taken from the wife, or a piece of linen was torn before her. The Church, however, opposed divorce, and declared it contrary to the spirit of Christianity. Yet, if one were wealthy or powerful, it was easy to have a marriage annulled, on one pretext or another. The most frequent was the plea for divorce for reasons of conscience, since the contracting parties, being within the prohibited degrees of relationship,--a fact which they had not known at the time of the marriage,--were guilty of incest in the eyes of the Church, and prayed to be relieved from the danger of perilling their immortal souls by deadly sin. Other pleas were resorted to, but this seems to have been a favorite one. By a subtile division of a hair "'twixt south and southwest side," this might be considered as not divorce, but the mere annulment of a contract which had been illegal and unsanctified from the start; and the distinction was an important one, since the rich noble or the monarch who had disposed of an objectionable wife in this way, and who had absolved himself by proper penances and by sufficient gifts to the Church, might, and generally did, remarry.

It is with the story of a divorce or forced separation that we are concerned in the case of Queen Bertha. Robert, the son of Hugues Caput, and the first real king of the Capetian line, was a devoted friend of Eudes, Count of Champagne and Blois, who proudly styles himself, in his charters, _Comes Ditissimus_,--richest count of France,--and whom Robert had honored with the title of count or seneschal of the royal palace. This Eudes had a beautiful and virtuous wife, Bertha, daughter of King Conrad the Pacific of Aries, and descended from the great Emperor Henry, the Fowler. Robert, then married to a princess named Rosella, was godfather to one of the children of Eudes and his fair cousin Bertha. Both Princess Rosella and the Comes Ditissimus died. Bertha and Robert already loved each other, it would seem, since neither mourned very long. Within a few months they were married, in spite of the protests of Hugues Capet, who would have liked a more powerful alliance for his son and heir. Although Bertha and Robert were cousins, it was only in the fourth degree. This actual relationship, though within the proscribed degrees, would have been overlooked probably, as well as the spiritual relationship established by Robert's having stood godfather to one of Bertha's children, had it not been for the prince's ill luck in incurring the enmity of certain powerful and active churchmen. Archambaud, Archbishop of Tours, had issued a special dispensation, and had blessed the marriage in the presence and with the consent of several other bishops. But to understand fully the violent opposition which the marriage encountered from the papal party we must go back to an episode in the reign of Hugues Capet.

In the course of the last effort of Carl, the heir of the Carlovingian line, to recover dominion, the Archbishop of Rheims had betrayed Hugues Capet, and had agreed to introduce Carl's forces into Rheims. It was proved that this man, Arnoul, or Arnulph, had surrendered the keys of the city to the emissaries of Carl, and he himself confessed his guilt. Accordingly, with the sanction of an ecclesiastical court, Arnoul was deprived of his see, which was given to Gerbert, the tutor of the young King Robert. The papal party refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the court which had deposed Arnoul, and which still kept him imprisoned at Orléans, and a special legate was sent to France to protest against this action at the very time of Robert's marriage to Bertha. The legate raised his voice in protest against the incestuous and sinful marriage. Thinking to appease him, Robert released Arnoul and restored him to his archbishopric; but to do this he had to depose Gerbert, and by so doing he made an enemy of one of the most active and able men in the Church, famous as a theologian, and afterward to become Pope Silvester II.

For a time, however, Bertha and Robert, who loved each other devotedly and lived in a simple piety quite in contrast to the licentious habits of the period, were left unmolested. The bribe to Rome was sufficient for the moment to purchase for them innocent happiness. Robert was most singularly devout, and was ranked almost as a saint by the ecclesiastical chroniclers who preserve his story for us. Though a handsome and well-formed man, and not altogether unfit for martial exercises, he delighted in pastimes rather befitting a monkish scholar than a soldier. He was gentle and kind to those about him, especially the poor and the unfortunate, and was devoted to music. He himself composed a number of Latin hymns for the Church, some of which are still retained, notably the sequence to the Holy Spirit, _Adsit nobis gratia_, and he set many others to tunes of his own composing. He was innocently vain of his powers as a musician and singer, and on a pilgrimage to Rome in after years, 1016, he deposited on the altar of Saint Peter his Latin poems set to music. The very graces and virtues for which his contemporaries praise Robert are the ones that make him manifestly out of place as King of France in the year 1000, and the misery of his domestic career is only more pitiful than the disorder which reigned in his kingdom. That one of the most pious kings of France should nevertheless have begun his career in opposition to the Church is very remarkable.

While Bertha and Robert were enjoying their brief respite from persecution, the papacy itself was struggling for existence.. At last the Emperor Otho fought his way into Rome, seized the leader of the popular party, John Crescentius, "Senator and Consul of Rome," and pitched him over the walls of the castle of Saint Angelo. The unhappy Pope, John XVI. was replaced by the emperor's nominee, Gregory V. Almost as soon as Gregory was seated he summoned a council (998), in which Gerbert, now Robert's bitter enemy, sat as Bishop of Ravenna. This council, largely controlled by the vindictive Gerbert, threatened the kingdom of France with a universal interdict, suspending all religious rites but those of baptism and extreme unction, if Robert would not repudiate Bertha. The decree commanded "that King Robert, who has, contrary to the holy canons of the Church, married his cousin, Bertha, shall forsake her at once, and shall perform a penance of seven years, in accordance with the rules and customs of the Church. If he obey not, may he be anathema! And so also be it as regards Bertha! That Archambaud, Archbishop of Tours, who consecrated this incestuous union, and all the bishops who sanctioned it by their presence, be refused the Holy Communion until such time as they shall have come to Rome to make amends to the Holy See!"

One can imagine that, to a nature as devout as Robert's, such a curse was almost overwhelming. Yet he and Bertha endured for some time the horrors which this excommunication brought upon them, and Robert resisted with far more spirit than one would have supposed him to possess. The curse fell upon France, and upon its king and queen, who were surely no more morally guilty than their unfortunate subjects. Awful were the effects of the curse, according to Petrus Damianus, who records with pious unction most of the signs and wonders with which the age was filled. All save a few of the lowest servants fled from the accursed presence of Robert and his queen, and even these menials, when they had prepared the king's food, deemed the very vessels from which he had eaten polluted by his touch, and purified them by fire or destroyed them. Bertha was reported to be a foul witch, and to have the foot of a goose, and was nicknamed _la reine pedauque_, or _pied d'oie_ (Queen Goose-foot). In her agitation and misery, the child she should have borne was prematurely brought forth. The charitable Damianus tells us that it was currently reported to be of monstrous form, having the head and neck of a swan and not of a human being.

Whether these horrors were direct effects of God's wrath or had birth in the zealous imagination of a writer whose interest it was to lay on the colors in his description of the blasting effects of excommunication, Robert and Bertha had to resign themselves to the cruel separation. Robert's superstitious fears were worked on by his monkish advisers, particularly Abbo, Abbot of Fleury, "who incessantly reprimanded the king, in public and in, private." This holy man, says the biographer of Robert, "continued his reproaches until the good King acknowledged his fault and abandoned the wife whom it was not permitted him to possess." The separation seems to have taken place definitely about the year 1006, and Robert was to be miserable in his domestic life all the rest of his days.

He and Bertha had passed part of their married life together in the midst of a veritable reign of terror. All over Christendom the belief was general that the end of the work! was at hand. The lurid prophecies of the Apocalypse were supplemented by texts believed to be prophetic of the Judgment Day, raked together from all parts of the Scriptures and from what superstitious ignorance regarded as almost of equal authority, the Sibylline Leaves. Preachers took as their text the horrors of the approaching dissolution of the world, when, according to Revelations: "The stars of heaven fell unto the earth... and the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together;" or in the magnificent words of a hymn written long after: _Dies iræ, dies illa Solvet, sæclum in favilla: Teste David cum Sybilla_. (Day of wrath! O day of mourning! See fulfilled the prophet's warning! Heaven and earth in ashes burning!) They supplemented this picture by accounts of the torments of hell as reported in the legends of those who had been granted a vision of them. "Repent ye! repent ye! for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Woe unto him who in that day shall be found still a sinner!" There was naturally a paralysis of all useful activities. What was the use of preparing for the morrow, if there was to be no morrow? During the last year of the century the terror reached its highest point, and only absolute needs were attended to. There were great donations to the Lord on the part of tardy sinners who thought thus to purchase remission of their sins. But there were also those who refused to repent, and who resolved, since their life was to be short, to make it as merry as it could be. While the former crowded the churches, weeping and praying and surrendering themselves to the terrors suggested by the priest, the latter gave themselves up to the wildest dissipation. The year 1000 passed away, and still the stars were in heaven, and the wicked on earth began to breathe more freely; and when the next year went by without any Day of Judgment, courage revived, and the Church began to make use of the immense gifts which impulsive sinners had turned over to her. New cathedrals and new abbeys rose all over the land.

The pathos of the story of Bertha is heightened when we look at her successor on the throne. Even in her own day Constance, daughter of Guilhelm Taillefer, Count of Toulouse, was considered harsh and cruel; one chronicler euphemistically expresses this when he says: "There was as much constancy in her heart as in her name." She probably came by her nature honestly enough, for her mother was Arsinda, sister of that Foulques Nerra of cheerful memory, who, indeed, according to some accounts, forced the weak Robert to marry his niece. She was, says the chronicler, surnamed Candida on account of her excessive fairness, and is not infrequently called Blanche, the "fair queen." Into the rather primitive court of the French king, surrounded by his monks and probably longing for the banished Bertha, she came with a scandalous display of luxury and frivolity.

The south of France, in contact with Italy, with the cultured Moors of Spain, and, through its Mediterranean ports, with the most advanced civilization then known, that of the Arabs, was far in advance of the northern provinces in civilization, or at least in luxury and knowledge of the arts usually accompanying civilization. Provence, especially, with its ancient port of Marseilles to recall memories of the most cultured nation of antiquity, was in material prosperity and in arts already advancing to that stage of civilization which was to make her, in the course of the next century, the mother of the first real literature France had known and of the first extended protest against the Church of Rome. The troubadours were soon to make Provence and the Provençal tongue famous, and the Albigenses, with their heresy, were to invite the destruction of this gay, brilliant, but unsound society. The south was already far more gay and pleasure loving than the north, where the ravages of wars foreign and domestic had been more terrible. And out of the south came Queen Constance, _la Blanche_, to a court where the king was more monk than king.

The northerners, always disliking the men of Provence, exclaimed in horror against the manners and the costume of the horde of Provençal attendants whom Constance brought with her. "The favor of the queen," says Glaber, "attracted into France and Bourgogne many natives of Aquitaine and Auvergne. These vain and frivolous men showed themselves to be as ill-regulated in their morals as they were immodest in their dress. Their armor and the furnishings of their horses were extraordinary. Their hair fell scarce to the middle of their heads (the fashion of shaving the back of the head was strange in northern France, though afterward so prevalent that William's Norman knights were reported by Harold's spies to be all shaven-crowned monks); they shaved their beards off as smooth as play actors; they wore boots indecently turned up in long points at the toes, robes cut off short, reaching to the knees and divided behind and before; in walking they hopped along!" Alas for France! the French and the Burgundians, formerly the most honest and sober of all nations, eagerly followed the "sinful example" set by the queen's favorites. The whole nation copied these indecent costumes, and short hair, short robes, and sinfully pointed shoes became the fashion. As the Puritans inveighed against Babylonish apparel, the livery of the "scarlet woman," in the shape of Cavalier curls and long plumes, so the divines of France made a crusade against this livery of the devil. They declared that the finger of Satan was in all this, and that the pointed shoes would infallibly carry their wearers to the realm of the master whose livery they wore. One can hear the very voice of Ben Jonson's Ananias, the Puritan, as he testifies against the costume of the Spaniard: "They are profane, lewd, superstitious, and idolatrous breeches."

Nevertheless, the satanic livery was never utterly thrown aside; and clothes were not the only things satanic about the new queen. Constance, high-tempered and energetic, reigned over France through or in spite of King Robert. Coming of a forceful and warlike race, she must have found many things distasteful in the weakness and superstition which were the chief traits she noted in her husband. She and her kinsfolk left him free to compose hymns, while they ruled France. But when one of his favorites, Hugues de Beauvais, whom he had made count of the palace, suggested to Robert that he might get rid of Constance and send for the ever-regretted Bertha, Constance notified her strenuous uncle Foulques. Foulques promptly despatched a dozen brave knights, with orders to slay Hugues whenever and wherever they found him: they found him and murdered him in the very presence of the king. Robert was too weak to resist effectively, made his peace with the queen, and gave himself up more and more to religious devotions.

He used to go to the church of Saint-Denis and sing with the choir and challenge the singers to a trial of skill. When Constance one day asked him to compose some song in her honor, he responded with a stave of his hymn: _O! Constantia martyrum_ (O! faith and constancy of the martyrs), with which she was as well pleased as if the reference had not been a bit ambiguous. On a certain occasion, as he was besieging a castle on the feast of Saint Hippolytus, to whom he professed a special devotion, he left the army and repaired to Saint-Denis to sing hymns in honor of the saint. While he was thus engaged, the walls of the castle fell, and the king's troops entered in; a manifest reward for his singing _Agnus Dei, dona nobis pacem!_ While he was one day at prayers, shedding many tears, as was his wont, the vain and worldly-minded Constance adorned his lance with silver ornaments. The king, finding this sinful waste, looked out of his door and saw a poor man near by. He sent him off to get some sort of tool to cut off the decorations, shut himself up in a room with the fellow, stripped the lance of its silver gewgaws, and gave them to him, bidding him begone in haste lest the queen see him. Constance asked what had become of the silver, and Robert "swore by the Lord's name, though not in earnest," that he knew not what had become of it.

In spite of this pious perjury, we are told that Robert had a great horror of lying. The proof of this statement is very interesting. He had a reliquary made of crystal, set in a golden case, and containing no relic. Upon this his nobles, ignorant of the deceit, could swear without danger of risking their souls, in case the oath was false. And as common folk had souls, too, and might endanger them by false swearing, he had a similar reliquary, made of silver, in which was deposited nothing more sacred than an egg. He was constantly endeavoring to shield the petty malefactors whom his unworldliness had tempted to wrongdoing, and whom Constance would have punished. It was his habit to have the poor fed from his table, and on one occasion he had a fellow concealed under the table at his feet. The man found time between bites to cut off a heavy gold ornament attached to the king's knee. "What enemy of God, my good lord, has dishonored your gold-adorned robe?" cried Constance. "Undoubtedly," said Robert, "he who took it wanted it more than I, and with God's aid it will be of service to him." One day he saw a young clerk named Ogger steal a candlestick from the altar in his chapel. The priests were much disturbed over its loss; and the queen, in a rage, swore by the soul of her father that she would have the eyes of the priests torn from their sockets if they did not account for what had been stolen from the sanctuary. The priests questioned Robert, who, denying all knowledge of the theft, at once sent for the thief. "Friend Ogger," said he, "haste thee hence, lest my inconstant Constancy eat thee up. What thou hast taken will be enough to carry thee to thy own country. The Lord be with thee." When the thief was beyond danger of pursuit, Robert cheerfully said: "Why all this pother about a candlestick? The Lord has given it to some of his poor."

One can well understand that however churchmen might commend this sort of meekness it was most irritating to Constance. She was full of energy and vigor, and never jested, says her biographer, about anything. She and her uncle Foulques, whom Robert had made governor of Paris, ruled France and fought against the turbulent and rebellious barons, chief among whom was Eudes II., Count of Blois, of Chartres, of Tours, and of Champagne, the son of the deposed queen, Bertha. She led in the first important attack upon heresy. Certain clerks in the city of Orléans developed a secret, heretical sect which gained many proselytes, among others a certain Etienne, who had been the confessor of Queen Constance. Their secret was discovered; they were brought to trial, refused to recant, and were ordered to execution. As they marched from the church where they had been tried to the immense funeral pyre, they passed Constance in the porch of the church. Recognizing Etienne among the thirteen prisoners, she attacked him furiously, and with a whip put out one eye of the defenceless victim. This vindictive queen, aggravating the tortures of the first victims of the new religious persecutions, is not a pleasant figure in French.

As Robert grew older and it became necessary to determine on a successor,--the right of the oldest son was not yet altogether fixed,--Constance began to intrigue against her husband. Robert was in the habit of saying: "My hen pecks, but she gives me plenty of chickens." They had had six children; but had lost their eldest son, Hugues, in 1025. Of the three remaining sons, Eudes, the eldest, was an idiot; Henry, the second, was his father's choice; and Robert, the youngest, was favored by Constance, "with her habitual spirit of contradiction." She said, with some reason, that Henry was weak, inactive, deceitful, and negligent of affairs, and could no more be king than his father could; whereas Robert had far more energy and sense than his brothers. For once, the king resisted, and with the consent of the peers assured the succession to Henry. Constance fomented ill feeling between the two sons, and between Henry and his father. Robert, with the notion that injustice had been done him, was soon in revolt against his father. But the queen had always been so harsh to all her children that none of them seem to have had faith in her or affection for her, and the two brothers, Henry and Robert, soon became reconciled to each other and made a joint invasion of their father's dominions, pillaging his castles and territories. The poor king, after many ravages had been committed, at length bribed his sons to let him sing his last hymns in peace. Henry was to succeed to the throne, and Robert became Duke of Burgundy.

The peace thus made did not long outlast King Robert. He died in July, 1031, and the monks mourned their friend and protector, and many of the poor sincerely bewailed the loss of their "good father"; but there is no sign of any excessive grief on the part of Constance. She soon gave the kingdom cause to mourn in other fashion; for no sooner was Henry I. seated on his throne than his mother began to stir up rebellion against him. She had always been violent in private as in public life, and treated Henry in particular "as if she hated him like a stepmother." Her intrigues now were so far successful that she won over to her side most of the direct vassals of the crown, and the greater number of the towns in the duchy of France declared themselves in favor of placing Robert, Duke of Burgundy, on the throne. By surrendering the county of Sens to her old enemy, Eudes, Count of Blois, Constance gained his aid. This plot of a mother against her son was successful in all but one main point: the other son, in whose name she was preparing to wage civil war, took no active part against his brother, and appears to have remained quietly in Burgundy. Perhaps he was wise enough to understand that what Constance was really scheming for was the continuance of her own power, and that if placed on the throne he would have been completely under her control.

In this crisis of the affairs of the kingdom, Henry, fleeing with a following of but twelve vavasours, called upon Normandy for aid; and most effective aid he had from one whose name was to become famous, a nucleus for the gathering of romance. This was Duke Robert of Normandy, surnamed Robert the Devil, who carried on a predatory warfare so savage and so successful that most of the revolted lords near the borders of Normandy "bowed their heads before him." Old Foulques Nerra, probably in one of his edifying fits of repentance, at length brought Constance to a reconciliation with Henry, reproaching her with the brutal fury with which she was treating her son. The miserable queen, who had caused so much unhappiness to her husband and to her sons, did not long survive the peace, dying at Melun in July, 1032. Her ally Eudes continued the struggle some little while, but was at last vanquished and forced to disgorge half of the county of Sens which Constance had given him as a bribe.

Thus ends the life of one of the first of the French queens who really took an active part in affairs. Beautiful, witty, and full of graces and caprices essentially feminine, as well as of some masculine qualities, she yet appears to have inspired no love, nothing but dread, in anyone who came near her; and the chroniclers of the time seem to delight in telling anecdotes illustrative of her wickedness as contrasted with Robert's saintliness. But we must remember that at least she accomplished something, and that her enemies tell her story.

At the period of which we write, Normandy was all powerful, and the Capets had come to look upon her dukes now as their most dangerous foes and now as their most useful friends. Duke Robert the Magnificent, as his courtiers called him, or Robert the Devil, as literature knows him, had an amour which is interesting as showing that class distinctions were not so rigid as one might think. According to Wace's story of the romance:

"A Faleize ont li Dus hante,... Une meschine i ont amee, Arlot ont nom, de burgeis née."

(The duke did much frequent Falaise,... There he loved a girl named Arietta, born of a burgess of the town). Arietta, the tanner's daughter, was to become a figure of romance in the story of Robert the Devil; but, romance or no romance, she was the mother of the greatest of the Norman dukes, William the Conqueror, born in 1028. William had hard work to keep his place in Normandy, but we cannot stop to tell of the long and successful struggle which he waged against the haughty barons who refused to bow to the illegitimate son of the tanner's daughter. We all know the story of how the citizens of Alençon, which he was besieging, beat skins upon the walls of one of their redoubts, crying: "Work for the tanner!" and how William captured the redoubt, cut off the hands and feet of the unlucky jokers, and threw them over the town walls.

With a man of such temper, it is not unnatural that there should have arisen a curious story of his courtship, which began soon after this episode at Alençon. Engaged in constant conflict with his neighbors, William determined at least to secure the friendship of Flanders. He sought the hand of Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. Mauger, William's uncle, objected to the marriage, because Matilda and William were cousins, and caused the clergy to prohibit it. The Pope issued a special pronouncement against it. With him William could not proceed after the manner which doubtless most commended itself to him, but when the Italian Lanfranc, at the monastic school of Bee, dared to pronounce the marriage sinful, William promptly gave orders to burn down the farms from which the monks drew their sustenance, and to banish Lanfranc. But a shrewd display of courage and wit on Lanfranc's part made William his friend; and soon it was agreed that if William would found two monasteries the sin of his marriage would be forgiven him.

The chronicles of Tours report that Matilda herself objected to wedding the bastard of Normandy. The match, however, had been agreed to by her father, and William had set his heart on it. As proof of his determination, if not of his lover-like devotion, he waited for her as she came out of church one day, and whipped her till she consented to marry him! And as some writers assert, even after the marriage he continued to use this sort of suasion with his duchess, finally causing her death by his brutality. Despite this unlovely beginning, the marriage was a happy one. Matilda was beautiful, virtuous, and of strong character, so that she won her husband's confidence and love. In an age of scandalous marital infidelity, he was faithful to her. She was his faithful friend and counsellor through life; and when he went on that perilous voyage of adventure to win the English crown, it was she who was left in charge of the duchy of Normandy; she who was praying for her husband's safety in the priory she had founded at Rouen, when she heard the news of the great victory of Hastings, and christened the church Bonne Nouvelle; she who welcomed him back to his capital of Rouen after the success in England.

The purity and devotion of the Conqueror's queen present a picture very different from that of Bertrade de Montfort, who, like the wicked Constance, was connected with the house of Anjou. Philip I., a pitiable _roi fainéant_, had married, in 1071, Bertha of Holland, by whom he had had three children. Having wearied of her, he sent her off to the chateau of Montreuil, prepared for her long before as a wedding bower, and then discovering one of those convenient relationships we have mentioned, succeeded in having his marriage annulled. Having thus relieved his conscience, it was but natural that he should begin to look about him--he may have looked before--for a wife whom he might keep for a while without distressing his conscience. He found this helpmeet in Bertrade de Montfort, with whom he fell in love while on a trip to Tours, in 1092. It is true that "a good man could find naught to admire in her but her beauty," and that her husband, another Foulques of Anjou, was still living. But these are small matters when one is King of France and has one's heart set upon some particular lady. Foulques was not an attractive man; he seems to have had something like a club foot, and to have worn long, pointed shoes to hide his deformity; besides, he had already been twice divorced. Bertrade, young, beautiful, ambitious, was quite ready to go to the king and replace the unhappy Bertha. She eloped on the night following the king's visit to her husband, found an escort waiting for her at Meung-sur-Loire, and was conducted to Philip at Orléans.

Philip and Bertrade decided to get married, for the duchess was anxious to be called queen. They were indignant because most of the bishops suggested that the proceeding was rather irregular, since Foulques was not only still living but at that moment actually preparing to bring back his runaway spouse by force of arms. Nevertheless, by large gifts, the king persuaded one bishop to consecrate his union with Bertrade. Foulques and the friends of the deposed queen, Bertha, made forays into Philip's territory, but accomplished nothing. Meanwhile, Philip incited one of his barons to make war on and imprison the Bishop of Chartres, who had dared to denounce the marriage with Bertrade. The whole power of the Church was soon enlisted against him, and Pope Urban II. despatched a special legate to dissolve the marriage, or to excommunicate Philip if he did not leave his paramour. The Bishop of Chartres was promptly released, and Philip attempted to forestall further action on the part of his enemies by calling a special council at Rheims to try the bishop on a frivolous charge. But the legate summoned another council at Autun, which issued a decree of excommunication against Philip and Bertrade in October, 1094.

Though Queen Bertha was now dead, the ecclesiastical censure still held good. According to one of the conditions of the decree, Philip was to put off his crown. He obeyed this to the letter, refused to wear any insignia of royalty, and feigned to have ceased all intercourse with Bertrade. The Pope gave him till All Saints' Day, 1095, to reform, being afraid to use extreme measures while a rival Pope, already sustained by the German Emperor, might entice the King of France into his following. All Saints' Day came and went, and still Philip and Bertrade were living as man and wife. Once more Philip was excommunicated, by a council held at Clermont; he again made fine promises of reformation, broke his word, and even had the audacity to have Bertrade consecrated as queen. Excommunication after excommunication was pronounced against him, and the kingdom was put under an interdict; he continued to make most generous promises about sending Bertrade back where she belonged, and still never did he do what he promised.

The terrors of excommunication had evidently lost their force, or else laymen and clerks alike were too much occupied with other important work before the council of Clermont, work whose effects were to influence profoundly the whole history of Europe and to bring about great social as well as great political changes: men were talking of the First Crusade. In the mighty stir of preparation, in the wild enthusiasm of that great movement, the king and his paramour were for the moment lost sight of. While men and women, and even children, were listening to the fierce eloquence of Peter the Hermit, and in inspired frenzy shouting out their approval: _Dieu le veult! Dieu le veult!_ who could stop to think of the idle and shifty King of France? Were they not all going to battle in the service of a greater king than he?

Yet the motives of even these first Crusaders were in some cases far from that consistent purity which one would expect. Among the leaders is one Guilhelm, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers, a gay and famous troubadour, who has founded in his own domain a _maison de plaisir_ where the inmates are dressed like nuns, a sort of Persian heaven ("A Persian's heaven is easily made 'Tis but black eyes and lemonade"); who bids an affecting farewell "to brilliant tourneys, to grandeur and to riches, to all that enchained his heart, for he goes in the service of God to find remission for his sins;" and who yet carries with him on this holy war a perfect swarm of the beauties (_examina puellarum_) who enchained his heart, and continued to enchain it, probably, until they were captured by the Turks. But this Guilhelm gives a still more interesting proof of the motives of his pious warfare. Two papal legates came to Poitiers in November, 1100, to hold a council. Having preached the Crusade, they next proceeded to renew the curse of excommunication upon Philip, who was still living with Bertrade. The good Count Guilhelm, with the red cross already upon his breast, stirred up a mob against the legates, led the way into the church where the council was sitting, and encouraged his followers to stone the assembled bishops. There were broken heads, and there was some bloodshed, but enough of the bishops stood their ground to pronounce the excommunication once more.

Bertrade bore the censures with amazing effrontery, and jested about how the bells of the churches, silent during their stay, would begin to ring as they left a town; and she actually forced some priests to hold a service for her. But repeated curses, or the debauchery in which he had all his life indulged, seem to have undermined Philip's constitution. At any rate, he determined to relieve himself of the cares of government. In spite of the protests of Bertrade, who wished to prevent the power of the sceptre from going to the son of Queen Bertha, Philip, in 1100, associated his son Louis in the government.

The young man proved himself a vigorous ruler, and won the love of his subjects by attempts to punish some of the robber barons who made life miserable for merchants and travellers. He became too popular to be altogether agreeable to his amiable stepmother, who set about planning to get rid of him. Louis went to visit the English king, Henry Beauclerc, in 1102, and was received with all the courtesy and honor due his rank. Bertrade despatched after him letters, sealed with the royal seal of Philip, instructing Henry to seize Louis and confine him in prison for the rest of his days. But Henry was either too wise or too humane to perpetrate this outrage, and sent the young prince back with every honor. Louis was furious; Philip denied all knowledge of the infamous letters; and Louis, guessing whence they came, planned to kill Bertrade.

She, however, was not easily to be caught, and began devising means to procure the death of Louis. She first had resort to three clerks, who proposed to destroy the prince by means of sorcery, if they could conduct their incantations unmolested for nine days. But one of them confessed the plot, and the black art was abandoned for some surer method. The queen had Louis poisoned. He languished for several days, unable to eat or to sleep, and given over by the best physicians in France. At length, one who had learned some of the art of the Saracens volunteered his services; and under his care Louis's life was saved, though he bore traces of the poisoning all the rest of his days.

Queen Bertrade, like an affectionate mother, had hoped to see one of her own sons seated upon the throne, and was much grieved at Louis's recovery. Philip, completely under her influence, actually implored his son to forgive this second direct attempt upon his life; and Bertrade, in a great fright now that her crime had failed and had been found out, cringed before Louis like a common servant, and at length won his forgiveness.

Philip determined to be reconciled to the Church. At a council held at the close of 1104 he appeared as a sincere penitent,--barefooted, with unkempt hair and beard,--and solemnly swore never to live with Bertrade again. The curse of excommunication was removed; the council discreetly went about its business; and Philip went outside, and put on his shoes, and had his hair cut, and put on his crown, and had one ready for Bertrade, too. But the Church was tired of contending with him, and took no further notice of his irregularities, though what happened soon afterward was, if possible, more scandalous than all that had gone before.

Bertrade had the address to reconcile her two husbands; and in 1106 she and Philip actually went to visit Foulques, in Angers, where all three hobnobbed most amicably, sitting at the same table, or occupying seats of honor in the church, with Philip seated by Bertrade's side and Foulques on a stool at her feet. One can hardly credit a statement like this, but there seems to have been no limit to Bertrade's effrontery, and the complete subjection of Foulques is recorded in the Latin life of Louis the Fat: "Although he was banished outright from her bed, she so mollified him that... often sitting on a stool at her feet, he submitted in all things to her will."

Foulques, though he sat at the feet of his wife and the king's paramour, and though he ceased to make active claim to his share of Bertrade, has recorded his and his wife's infamy for us. One of his charters, for example, is dated thus: "This donation was made in the year one thousand and ninety-five after the incarnation of Our Lord, Urban being Pope, and France befouled by the adultery of the infamous King Philip." But this was in the salad days of his wrath, before Bertrade had induced him to sit on a stool at her feet and submit to her will in all things.

In the year 1108, Philip, feeling his sins and his diseases lie heavy upon him, determined to take an allopathic dose of repentance to purify himself from the first before the second carried him off. He addressed special prayers to Saint Benedict, ordered that his wicked body should not be buried in the royal tombs at Saint-Denis, and clothed himself in the habit of a Benedictine monk. Thus he expired, having existed--not reigned--as king for forty-eight years, and was succeeded immediately by Louis the Fat, who was crowned within five days after the death of his father.

This haste was not altogether without excuse, for Bertrade was still alive, and not wasting her time in prayers to Saint Benedict. Taking advantage of the disturbed state of the kingdom, she managed to form a coalition, headed by her brother, Amauri de Montfort, and by the successor of her Angevin husband, to dethrone Louis and put in his place her own son, Philip, Count of Mantes. But Louis was too active to be caught as the conspirators had planned. He summoned Philip to appear before the court of peers of the duchy of France, and, on his refusal, seized upon the strongholds of his enemies before they were prepared, and deprived Philip of his county of Mantes.

Bertrade's last card was played, and she succumbed to her defeat. Though still in the height of her beauty, with not a wrinkle on her brow, she retired to the convent of Haute Bruyère, a dependency of the famous monastery of Fontevrault. Whether or not she was truly penitent for the evil life she had led we do not know. But there was to be short time left her for the cultivation of the monastic virtues; for the austerity of the new life soon wore her out, and she died in the convent.