Kaeuper R.W. - Chivalry and violence in medieval europe (1999)(en)

on autonomy, the quick recourse to violence. Chivalry was not simply a code integrating generic individual and society, not simply an ideal for relations between the sexes or a means for knocking off the rough warrior edges in preparation for the European gentleman to come. The bloody-minded side of the codeÑeven if it seems to moderns, as Twain might say, a shuddering matterÑwas of the essence of chivalry. The knight was a warrior and not Everyman.

After all, the division of high medieval society outlined in spoken or written word was always threefold: the imagined world divided into those who Þght, those who pray, and those who work.2 The Þghting, let us remember, was not merely defensive, not simply carried out at the royal behest in defence of recognized national borders, not only on crusade, not really (despite their selfdeceptions) in the defence of widows, orphans, and the weak, never (so far as the historian can discover) against giants, ogres, or dragons. They fought each other as enthusiastically as any common foe; perhaps even more often they brought violence to villagers, clerics, townspeople, and merchants.

The lay elite cherished as a deÞning privilege this right to violence in any matter touching their prickly sense of honour. ÔBecause I like it (pour ce quÕil me plest)Õ was the belligerent motto of the late fourteenth-century Breton lord Olivier de Clisson.3 Such a combative sense of autonomy is encountered time and again in all the evidence relating to chivalry; the sense of honour it conveys was secured with edged weapons and bloodshed. In the provincial leagues that formed in 1314, French lords demanded that the Capetian crown recognize their right of private war; a generation earlier they had pointedly reminded clerics that the French kingdom itself had been founded Ôby the sweat of warÕ.4 ÔI will be justice this dayÕ, exults Gamelyn in the fourteenth-cen- tury English romance; he has just recovered right and honour by violently overwhelming the meeting of a corrupt royal court, has hanged the sheriff and jurors, and will shortly hang the kingÕs justice, after cleaving his cheekbone and breaking his arm.5 English and French judicial records can produce parallels from life to this violent scene of autonomy imaginatively realized in literature.6 The identity of chivalry and status with proud violence will continue throughout the medieval centuries and into those we call early modern.7

dans la sociŽtŽ fran•aise des XVIeÐXVIIe si•cles; Kiernan, The Duel in European History; Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree.

Of course we need no more believe that most knights were constantly out of control, moved by sheer glandular urges to cut and thrust, than to believe that most of them had happily experienced a complete taming of such impulses simply by learning courtesy. The problem that distinguishes the medieval chapter of the story of public order, however, is that (as we will see) the right and personal practice of warlike violence has fused with honour, high status, religious piety, and claims about love, so that those knights who are inclined, or who see opportunity, will be likely to act with whatever force they can muster, conÞdent in their course of action. This ethos, moreover, will inevitably and understandably extend beyond the caste of knights to play a role in society generally. It will be a long time, indeed, before conÞdence in the role of heroic violence is truly shaken.

1

THE PROBLEM OF PUBLIC ORDER AND

THE KNIGHTS

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The High Middle Ages and Order

The millennium of European history we call medieval has known more than one scheme for subdivision into shorter thematic and chronological periods. Charles Homer HaskinsÕs Renaissance of the Twelfth Century stands among the most enduring, fruitful, and debated of these plans.1 However polemical its chosen title, however excessive we may think the bookÕs untiring emphasis on revived classicism as the key indicator and engine of change, HaskinsÕs book was one of the key works to focus our attention on the period beginning in roughly the mid-eleventh century (or even earlier, as many scholars would now insist), often termed the Central or High Middle Ages. A distinguished body of scholarship emphasizes the fundamental importance of this period of European history: to Henri Pirenne, Roberto Lopez, M. M. Postan, it represented the transformation of economic and urban life; it was the inßuential Ôsecond feudal ageÕ for Marc Bloch; for R. W. Southern the age embodied Ômedieval humanismÕ; for Robert Fossier it was Ôthe beginnings of EuropeÕ, for Georges Duby it brought the Ôearly growth of the European economyÕ and the Ôage of the cathedralsÕ; for Joseph Strayer it created the Ôorigins of the modern stateÕ; for Karl Leyser its early decades marked Ôthe ascent of Latin EuropeÕ.2 The list could be considerably extended, but the basic point remains that many historians have argued that in so many varied and important dimensions of life the generations between something like the eleventh and the early fourteenth centuries saw change and accomplishment on a scale truly important for the long course of Western history.

1 Hasking, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century.

2 Pirenne, Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe; Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages; Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance and Medieval Society and Economy; Marc Bloch, SociŽtŽ FŽodale; Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies; Fossier, Enfance de lÕEurope; Duby, Early Growth of the European Economy and Age of the Cathedrals: Strayer, Medieval Origins; Leyser, Ascent of Latin Europe .

Change on this scale inevitably produces tensions, many of which have been explored by medievalists. The uneasy coexistence of spirituality and commercial expansion is an excellent case in point.3 Yet in all of the discussion of this central period of medieval history one of the most signiÞcant issues has attracted less close analysis than it deserves. This basic issue is public order. We have studied ecclesiastical and lay government in detail, we have analysed war, and, more recently, crime; chivalry as an ideal has long attracted scholars, and some have even descended to consider it in daily life; but we cannot truly understand public order by studying any one of these topics in isolation.

Working to create and sustain the order, the regularity, the acceptable degree of peacefulness that make civilized life possible is, of course, a fundamental need of all societies. The effort will always raise signiÞcant questions. What violence is licit or even sanctiÞed? What violence is considered destructive of necessary order? Who has the power to decide these questions and how are such decisions actually secured?

If these questions are universal, however, Western Europeans in the High Middle Ages confronted the issues with particular urgency; they had quite speciÞc and compelling reasons to concern themselves with issues of violence and order. How do we know this?

We can be certain of their concerns because they so clearly uttered them and because they effected broad changes in the institutions and ideas by which they lived. Looking at the views of several twelfth-century historical writers can give us an initial sense of this evidence; then, after brießy considering some well-known evidence about social and institutional change, we will turn to the rich Þeld of imaginative literature.4

Three Witnesses

The Þrst of our three historians, Orderic Vitalis, though born in England, spent his life as a Norman monk at Saint-ƒvroul. His wide-ranging chronicle, The Ecclesiastical History5 shows that monastic walls formed no impenetrable

3 Little, ÔPride Goes Before AvariceÕ, 16Ð49; Southern, Western Society .

4 This is, of course, not the only evidence that could be used. The books of miracle stories of St Benedict which were compiled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries Ôare very much concerned with men who appear to be knights and are almost invariably represented as agents of violenceÕ: Rollason, ÔThe Miracles of St BenedictÕ, 82Ð7. Though the topic is little investigated, Europeans of this period may even have painted their concerns; see RaynaudÕs study of the portrayal of violence in manuscript illuminations, La Violence au Moyen åge. Canon law also reßects a concern over violence: Gaudemet, ÔLes collections canoniquesÕ; Richard M. Fraher, ÔTheoretical JustiÞcationÕ and ÔPreventing Crime in the High Middle AgesÕ.

5 Chibnall, ed., Ecclesiastical History. For general discussion of this work in context, see ChibnallÕs introduction, and her article, ÔFeudal Society in Orderic VitalisÕ; Holdsworth, ÔIdeas and RealityÕ; Strickland, War and Chivalry, especially 12Ð16.

barrier to a genuine understanding of the outside world or to writing an account of its major features; in roughly 1123Ð37 Orderic, in fact, wrote one of our most useful accounts of the society taking shape around him.6 In the sections of his history dealing with northwestern Europe, as opposed to his derivative accounts of the Þrst crusade, Orderic reveals an almost obsessive concern for order and the elusive goal of a more peaceful society. As a monk, he shows a thoroughly professional distaste for sexual laxity in any form, as we might expect; but a more consistent and urgent leitmotiv in his history, highly signiÞcant for our purposes, is the need for Þrm, authoritative action against the violence, disorder, and constant warfare that so characterized his world.7

Orderic is no paciÞst. Violence in the right cause, carried out by the proper people, can cause him to wax eloquent, as, for example, he does frequently when narrating the crusade.8 Violence of Christian against Christian troubles him more, but even here he can show approval if the goal and end result seem to be a more orderly society. His language describing even the monastic life can take on the martial tonality not uncommon for religious writers of his time: monks are Ôsoldiers of ChristÕ battling demons; they use the Ôweapon of prayerÕ. But looking out over monastic walls at the violence in his own society, he repeatedly laments the impulse to war in such terms as: ÔThe turbulent are chafed by peace and general tranquillity and, while they attempt to destroy the pride of others, are themselves through GodÕs just judgement very often slain by their own weapons. How blind and foolish are the men who desire war in times of peace.Õ When a marriage alliance ended one of these local wars, he is relieved Ôthat multiple crime did not proliferate from the root of evil and put out new and worse shoots continually in future generationsÕ.9

He is certain that the cure for such disorder rests with proper authorities who can at least attempt to restrict the practice of major acts of violence to their own capable hands. In an ideal world there would perhaps be no need for violence at all, but in a speech he puts into the mouth of Count Helias at the time Henry I is establishing his rule in Normandy, Orderic says, Ôas the popular saying goes, Òwrong must be done to put an end to a worse thing.Ó This

6 Chibnall, ed., Ecclesiastical History, I, 32. Duby says that Orderic has given us Ôdu premier XIIe si•cle la meilleure vision, sans douteÕ: ÔGuerre et sociŽtŽÕ, 474. Orderic comments on the frequent conversations between monks and visiting knights: see, e.g., Chibnall, Ecclesiastical History, III, 206Ð7, and ChibnallÕs helpful comments in I, 36Ð8; also see her article, ÔFeudal Society in Orderic VitalisÕ. Cf. Flori, LÕEssor de chevalerie, 271Ð4.

7 Orderic, for example, praises Henry I to the skies for his role as a provider of peace, despite the kingÕs record number of illegitimate offspring. William Rufus and Robert Curthose, much less successful kings, are scorched by Orderic for their sexual laxity: Chibnall, Ecclesiastical History, V, 286Ð7, 300Ð1. For general comments on OrdericÕs concerns, see sources cited in note 5.

8 See, e.g., ibid., V, 68Ð9. Examples abound throughout all OrdericÕs crusade accounts. 9 E.g. ibid., III, 260Ð1, 292Ð3; VI, 328Ð9; IV, 200Ð3.

indeed I repeat as a common proverb, I do not claim divine authority for it.Õ Orderic imagines his hero Henry I speaking in similar terms: ÔI saw with sorrow the afßiction of my ancestral inheritance, but could bring no help to the needy except by force of arms.Õ10

Believing in right order secured, if necessary, by the coercive violence of the right authorities, Orderic speaks high praise for the stern governance of both William I and Henry I as dukes of Normandy. A deathbed speech he puts into the mouth of William the Conqueror has the king confess: ÔI was brought up in arms from childhood, and am deeply stained with all the blood I have shedÕ, but he pictures the king going on to justify his action on the grounds that his Norman subjects Ôneed to be restrained by the severe penalties of law, and forced by the curb of discipline to keep to the path of justiceÕ.11 Praising this Þrm and just rule of William, Orderic provides at one point a wonderfully concise statement of his belief. The king/duke, he tells us, Ôforbade disorders, murder and plunder, restraining the people by arms and the arms by lawsÕ. Narrating one of WilliamÕs visit to Normandy, he elaborates on this capsule assertion of one of his major themes:

At the news of the kingÕs coming peace-lovers everywhere rejoiced, but trouble-makers and criminals trembled in their evil hearts and quailed before the coming avenger. He assembled all the nobles of Normandy and Maine and used all his royal powers of persuasion to move them to peace and just government.12

Vivid accounts of disorder after WilliamÕs death and again after HenryÕs death underscore the importance of authoritative curbs on lordly violence.13 Orderic has no kind words for Robert, WilliamÕs eldest son and heir in Normandy, who was unable to suppress local warfare and brigandage. In a speech which Orderic creates for Henry, RobertÕs brother and supplanter, Henry tells Pope Calixtus that he actually wrested Normandy not from Robert but from the robbers and evildoers who effectively controlled it. OrdericÕs blessing on this work is clear: Henry has Ôcalmed the tempests of war by his royal mightÕ.14

10Chibnall, ed., Ecclesiastical History, VI, 96Ð7; ibid., VI, 284Ð7. Henry continues: ÔI did not wish to refuse my service to holy mother Church, but endeavoured to use the ofÞce laid on me by heaven for the general good. So by taking up arms to Þght and spreading Þre I . . . recovered the inheritance of my father . . . and strove to uphold my fatherÕs laws according to GodÕs will for the peace of his people.Õ

11Ibid., IV, 80Ð1. Compare the deathbed speech of Robert Bruce, thanking God he has been given time to repent for all of his bloodshed, quoted in McDiarmid and Stevenson, eds, BarbourÕs Bruce, book XX, ll. 169Ð81.

12Chibnall, Ecclesiastical History, IV, 192Ð3, 284Ð5.

13See the opening of ibid., IV, bk. viii, and ibid., VI, bk. xiii. On HenryÕs death, Orderic, writing of the local lords, laments Ônow they imagine no law will constrain them.Õ Ibid., VI, 450Ð3.

14Quotation at ibid., IV, 138Ð9. For his attitude towards Robert and Henry as peacekeepers see the opening of IV, bk. viii, and VI, bk. xi, passim, especially 32Ð3, 58Ð65, 92Ð3, 98Ð9, 146Ð9.

Between 1138 and 1145, that is just a few years after Orderic wrote his informative general history, another monk, Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis just outside Paris, was writing a much more particular but equally informative kind of history, an admiring account of the deeds of King Louis VI of France (Louis le Gros).21 Abbot Suger was not second to Orderic in his admiration for royal agents of imposed peace, nor in his belief that they might act with force in the interests of order.22 He praises OrdericÕs hero Henry I as a man known throughout the world, and pointedly quotes a prophecy of Merlin about the coming of a Lion of Justice; after giving good justice to England as king, he came to Normandy as duke and imposed order there by force. Suger always refers to him approvingly, using some such phrase as Ôthe illustrious king of the EnglishÕ. Peacemaking is the great quality in a leader. He even praises Pope Calixtus for the somewhat surprising achievement of clearing brigands out of Italy and Calabria.23

But Louis le Gros was his subject as biographer, and it is signiÞcant that the king is lauded not only because he is SugerÕs friend and the benefactor of his monastery, but above all because he was a guarantor of order and, as such, the imago dei, the image of God on earth. In fact, Suger tells us, Louis began to play this role even before he came to the throne in 1108 on the death of his father, Philip I, who had been much less active and successful as a promoter of peace and order, a fact noted even by Orderic.24 Louis, though, as Suger observes approvingly, had always been the proper son and had never brought disorder in the realm Ôas is the custom of other young menÕ.25 A very great deal of SugerÕs account in fact consists of colourful vignettes showing Louis, either as prince or as king, moving out into the ële de France (the central royal demesne between Paris and Orleans) to play the policeman, leading his knights and the parish militia against some offending lord, Þghting pitched battles, or, more frequently, besieging the castles that served, in SugerÕs view, as the nodal centre for the spread of the cancer of disorder. Of one of these local strongmen, Eudes, Count of Corbeil, Suger states that his death strengthened the peace of the realm; he then adds, warming to the subject, that Eudes thus transferred his battle to the depths of hell where he could carry on

21Waquet, Vie de Louis VI. In their introduction to their translation, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, Cusimano and Moorhead insist, with reason, that this is an account of the deeds of Louis, rather than a biography.

22His support for royal peace efforts was not merely chauvinistic. He commended Henry I of England for his judicial organization and could think of him as the Lion of Justice. Ibid., 98Ð9.

23Waquet, Vie de Louis VI, 206Ð7.

24Chibnall, ed., Ecclesiastical History, VI, 154Ð7.

25Waquet, Vie de Louis VI, 82Ð3. On the turbulence of Ôthe youthÕ, see Duby, ÔDans la France de Nord-OuestÕ.

war eternally.26 Like Orderic, he reserves the term tyrant for just such terrorizers of some locality, men who Ôprovoke wars, take pleasure in endless pillage, trouble the poor, destroy churchesÕ; if not restrained, these tyrants would grow more bold still and act Ôin the manner of evil spiritsÕ. It pertains to the ofÞce of kingship to repress the impudence of tyrants. Against such men, he writes, a kingÕs hand is very strong.27

The chief villain in SugerÕs story is probably Thomas of Marle (though Hugh of Le Puiset runs a close second). Thomas is homo perditissimus, a man who, aided by the Devil, devoured the countryside in the region of Laon, Reims, and Amiens Ôlike a furious wolf Õ, sparing neither clerics out of fear of ecclesiastical sanctions, nor the common folk out of any sentiment for humanity. Louis moved against him in 1114, backed by the blessing of the Church, which had, under the leadership of a papal legate, declared Thomas excommunicate and unÞt to wear the cingulum militarem, the belt of knighthood. Seizing the castles of CrŽcy and Nouvion, Louis Ôpiously massacred the impiousÕ. Captured at Marle, Thomas offered indemnities to both Church and King, and won a pardon unwisely granted him by Louis. He quickly went back to his old work, requiring a second royal expedition in 1130. By this time the expedition went without the king, since Louis was too fat to mount a horse, but Thomas was again taken, and died in captivity, being at the last, Suger gleefully reports, unable to take the Eucharist.28

Thus, however ill SugerÕs idealized portrait of Louis VI may have matched the imperfect man, the biographerÕs great concern for order, his worry about grasping strongmen as a source of disorder, and his belief in a royal disciplinary role are as clearly set forth as OrdericÕs. The latter would approve SugerÕs borrowing from Ovid the maxim that kings have long arms.29

For a third witness, we can turn to a different sort of historian writing a quite different sort of history. After the murder of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, in 1127, Galbert of Bruges, a notary (who may have been in minor orders but was apparently not a priest or canon), wrote a strikingly precise and detailed history of events in Bruges and in the surrounding countryside. In The Murder of Charles the Good (De multro, traditione, et occisione Gloriosi Karoli Comitis Flandriarum)30 he narrates the collapse of order, the ensuing, almost

26Waquet, Vie de Louis, 150Ð1.

27Ibid., 172Ð3. He later (pp. 232Ð5) gives the bishop of Clermont a speech accusing the Count of Auvergne of playing the tyrant against him.

Pirenne, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, but I will cite Rider, ed., De multro. Cf. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 62Ð70; Dhondt, ÔLes ÒSolidaritŽsÓ mŽdiŽvalesÕ.