The Age of Chivalry

by Hywel Williams

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  OTTONIAN RULERS 919–1024

  HENRY I

  [“the Fowler”]

  (876–936)

  r. 919–36

  OTTO I

  [“the Great”]

  (912–73)

  r. 936–73

  OTTO II

  (955–83)

  r. 973–83

  OTTO III

  (980–1002)

  r. 983–1002

  HENRY II

  (973–1024)

  r. 1002–24

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  Otto III died in 1002 after contracting malaria in the marshes near Ravenna. Following his death various factions supported rival candidates for the succession. The year 1002 was marked by violent disputes among the imperial nobility, but the dynastic principle won the day as the best guarantor of order. Thus it was that Henry, duke of Bavaria, a direct descendant of Henry the Fowler, was elected to rule. Henry II had a thoroughly Ottonian view of the Church’s role: he wished it to be powerful, and he expected it to use that might in support of the empire. Like his predecessors, Henry ruled through the bishops, which is why he opposed the monastic clergy’s attempts to establish their own jurisdiction independent of the episcopate. Henry was a genuine Church reformer, but his initiatives also suited his own goals as a strong territorial ruler. The imposition of clerical celibacy, for example, meant that the powerful clergy had no chance to create their own family dynasties.

  FURTHER INSURGENCY IN ITALY

  Henry was attracted to Italy for the same reasons as his predecessors: the prestige of an association with Roman antiquity, the power that came with the role of protector of the Church and the opportunity to fight the peninsula’s dissident aristocrats. The latest of these rebels was Arduin who, like the equally troublesome Berengar half a century earlier, was margrave of Ivrea. Arduin had seized the opportunity presented by Otto III’s death and, like his predecessor, proclaimed himself king of Italy. Henry’s army marched into Italy in the spring of 1004 and crushed the margrave’s forces at a battle fought near Verona. Henry then marched on to Pavia, where he was crowned king of the Lombards. He then proceeded to burn most of Pavia to the ground as punishment for its past support for Arduin.

  It was necessary to embark on a second Italian campaign in 1013 as a result of Arduin’s renewed military activities. In the following year Pope Benedict VIII, an imperial ally in the project of Church renewal, crowned Henry emperor. Henry’s third, and most ambitious, Italian expedition was the result of a direct appeal from the pope, who feared that Lombard rulers in the south were flirting with Byzantium. Henry dispatched three armies to the south in 1022 in order to assert his sovereignty over the whole of Italy. He also took personal charge of the siege of Troia, a fortress on Puglia’s northern boundary.

  The failure of the siege was a significant setback, but the submission of the rulers of Capua and Salerno demonstrated the empire’s continuing ability to enforce its authority despite the daunting task of waging such long-distance wars. Henry died shortly afterward in 1024 and, since he had no heirs, the line of Saxon emperors lapsed with him. The Ottonian century was over. The German empire’s involvement with Italy would, however, be the central drama of European warfare and politics for the next three centuries.

  ABOVE An ink-on-vellum illustration from the Liuthar Gospels (c.1000) of Otto III enthroned.

  THE OTTONIAN ARTISTIC LEGACY

  The Ottonian rulers’ artistic patronage was directed toward projects that would illustrate and reinforce their imperial ideology. Religious foundations, such as the Abbey of Corvey in Westphalia and the monastery of Reichenau on Lake Constance, benefited from direct royal sponsorship, and the illuminated manuscripts produced by their scriptoria contain magnificent representations of the emperors being crowned by Christ.

  The style of Ottonian manuscripts built on the earlier Carolingian renaissance, an artistic and literary movement which owed its origins to Charlemagne’s patronage. Ottonian art nevertheless contained its own distinctive motifs, often reflecting Byzantine influences.

  Itinerancy was an integral part of Ottonian government, and the rulers had no fixed capital. Their power was exercised instead at a number of royal residences, episcopal cities and religious communities, and the journeys they made between these centers were public demonstrations of regal authority. Assemblies, legal proceedings and public ceremonials were held at these buildings while the kings were in residence and, often designed in the Romanesque style, their architecture reflected the Ottonian grandeur. This is particularly true of the great abbey founded at Quedlinburg by Otto the Great in 936 to honor his father’s memory. The abbey was home to a community consisting of the unmarried daughters of the higher nobility, and it was here that the Quedlinburg Annals were compiled in the early 11th century. The Annals provide an account of the reigns of Otto III and Henry II, and the author may well have been a canoness of the community.

  The poet and playwright Hroswitha (c.935–1002) was a major figure in the Ottonian renaissance, and she spent most of her life as a member of another religious community in Saxony, the Benedictine abbey at Gandersheim. She wrote a series of prose romances as well as six comedies based on the work of the Latin poet Terence. Even a writer as imaginative as Hroswitha could not escape the contemporary impact of Ottonian politics, though, as is shown by her verse eulogy of Otto I and his achievements.

  Quedlinburg Abbey, Germany, founded by Otto the Great in 936.

  THE RISE OF THE CAPETIANS

  987–1179

  The kingdom of the Western Franks was created by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, and members of the Carolingian dynasty reigned within that territory until the late tenth century. As anointed kings, their authority, like that of their Capetian successors, had a sacramental quality that was acknowledged by the princes who ruled in significant centers of power such as Normandy, Burgundy, Anjou, Poitou and Toulouse. Aquitaine, however, had ceased to be part of the West Frankish kingdom in the early tenth century, and Brittany was entirely independent. Capetian and Carolingian rulers conceded the nobility’s right to run their own territories in return for loyalty and military assistance when needed.

  Despite these agreements between kings and nobles, disputes concerning land and influence nonetheless recurred between the monarchy and the effectively independent dynasts. As a result, the kings’ unfettered authority was confined to their personal fiefdom or “demesne” in the Île-de-France, an area of the middle Seine centered on Paris and Bourges where the Capetians actually owned land. The primacy accorded these reges Francorum was therefore often merely ceremonial, and until the 13th century—when the title “king of France” was first used—they struggled to assert themselves.

  The Capetian monarchy eventually persuaded the nobility that solidarity with the Crown was in their own best interests, and a more cohesive governing élite emerged as a result. But the evolution of a widespread national identity was a very long-term development in medieval France, as in other parts of continental Europe. The loyalties and identities of the great mass of the population were local and particular rather than general and uniform. Linguistic profusion emphasized further the plurality of cultures which barely communicated with each other. If the north was the land of the langue d’oil it was the langue d’oc that predominated in the south, and out of these two broad linguistic groups there emerged several distinctive dialects, such as Norman and Burgundian, Provençal and Languedocien. “Middle French” also existed by the 14th century, but this standardized language made few inroads in the south.

  RIGHT The Grandes Chroniques de France, a richly illuminated sequence of manuscripts that relate the history of the French monarchy, were compiled between 1274 and 1461. This detail from the Chroniques, dated c.1335/40, shows Hugh Capet at the council of St. Basle, held near Rheims in 991.

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  THE RISE OF THE CAPETIANS

  843 The Treaty of Verdun divides Charlemagne’s former empire into three kingdo
ms: East and West Francia are separated by a “middle kingdom” extending from the North Sea to north Italy.

  987 Hugh “Capet,” founder of the Capetian dynasty, is elected king of West Francia.

  1108 Accession of Louis VI to the French throne. He reasserts rights of lordship over lands within the Capetian royal demesne in the Île-de-France.

  1124 Louis VI leads his army to a victory over the forces commanded by the German emperor Henry V.

  1130s Teachers and students are established in the area of Parisian area known as the Latin Quarter. Abbé Suger becomes the French monarchy’s chief adviser.

  1148 The Second Crusade is abandoned; Louis VII’s participation undermines Capetian royal finances.

  1152 The marriage of Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, and Louis VII of France is annulled. She marries Henry, count of Anjou, and duke of Normandy, who succeeds to the English throne in 1154 as Henry II.

  1180 Accession of King Philip II Augustus.

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  HUGH—CLAIMANT TO THE THRONE

  The Carolingian succession had been usurped on two occasions before the reign of Louis V, the last member of his family to rule in West Francia, with Odo of Paris and Robert I—both members of the Robertine dynasty—reigning as kings in 888–98 and 922–23 respectively. Hugh, the duke of the Franks, belonged to the same family, and his father Robert the Great had been guardian of Lothair IV’s estates during the king’s minority. Surnames had yet to be established as a general convention in tenth-century Europe, and Hugh “Capet” owed his nickname to the headship or authority he enjoyed among the nobility who elected him to succeed Louis V in June 987. That prestige came to signify the start of a new phase in the history of kingship in West Francia, and the Capetian dynasty would go on to acclaim Hugh as its eponymous founder.

  Hugh’s claim to the throne was supported by his cousin Otto II. That family connection had deep roots, since the Capetians’ Robertine ancestors had originally been members of the East Frankish nobility before establishing themselves in West Francia by the mid-ninth century. As crowned Roman emperors, the Ottonian dynasty could nominate West Francia’s senior clergy, and these placemen enforced their patrons’ policy by refusing to back the later Carolingian rulers of the western kingdom. Adalberon, the archbishop of Rheims, was one such nominee and his support for Hugh Capet had been crucial at the assembly of 987. Although Charles of Lorraine—King Lothair’s younger brother—had a legitimate Carolingian claim to succeed the childless Louis V, it was not difficult to find reasons why he should be denied a crown. He had falsely accused Lothair’s queen of infidelity with the bishop of Laon, and after being driven from the kingdom he paid homage to Otto II who made him duke of lower Lorraine in 977. In the autumn of 978 an invasion force led by Otto and Charles compelled Lothair to retreat to Paris where he was besieged until Hugh Capet’s army stepped in and drove the invaders back across the frontier. Charles’s ambitions did not cease on Hugh Capet’s accession to the throne, however, and he managed to take both Rheims and Laon before he was seized in the spring of 991, after which he died in captivity.

  Hugh’s determination to secure a dynastic succession meant that Robert II (“the Pious”) was elected king during his father’s lifetime. But he had argued that the succession needed to be established because he was planning a campaign against the Arab forces that were threatening Borrel II, the count of Barcelona. Hugh may well have seen an opportunity here for an extension of his power, but the nobility refused to support him and the military offensive never materialized. Such an inability to enforce the royal will illustrates the real limits to Hugh’s power, as well as explaining the king’s anxious eagerness to get his son confirmed as his successor.

  AN UNEASY PEACE

  In 1023 Robert II and the German emperor Henry II arrived at a landmark decision: they resolved not to pursue claims to each other’s territories. Although an agreed boundary between the French kingdom and the German empire was now in place, this early phase of Capetian history remained one of dynastic insecurity. Possessed of so few lands of his own, Robert pursued his rights to any feudal territories that became vacant. However, the fact that these were invariably also contested by other claimants embroiled him in numerous military campaigns. He tried to invade Burgundy in 1003, but it took another 13 years before the Church recognized his title as the duchy’s ruler. Furthermore, the civil wars waged against him by his own sons—Hugh Magnus, Henry and Robert—were prolonged and bitter struggles centered on inheritance rights. The dynastic style meant that Hugh Magnus was crowned a king in his father’s lifetime, and from 1017 onward he was co-ruler. But although earmarked for great things, he rebelled against Robert II and after his early death in 1025 the two surviving brothers continued with the campaign. When Henry succeeded to the throne, Robert maintained his dissidence until he was given the dukedom of Burgundy. In an age that was accustomed to violence Robert I of Burgundy remained notable for his uncontrollable behavior. He set aside his wife Helie of Semur in c.1046 and then killed her father—having already arranged for her brother’s murder.

  The question of how to deal with the increasingly powerful duchy of Normandy preoccupied both Henry I and his two immediate successors. Henry had helped Duke William to assert his authority internally in 1047, when he was threatened by rebel vassals. However, William’s marriage to Matilda, daughter of the count of Flanders, threatened the French Crown with a pincer-like alliance, and the two military campaigns that Henry launched in 1054 and 1057 sought to subjugate the duchy. These ended in an unsurprising failure, and Philip I reconciled himself to the reality of Norman power by making peace. The reign of Louis VI nevertheless saw a resumption of the Franco-Norman conflict and a dramatic improvement in the fortunes of French monarchy, along with a vigorous assertion of royal rights.

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  CAROLINGIAN KINGS OF WEST FRANCIA 954–87

  LOTHAIR IV

  (941–86)

  r. 954–86

  LOUIS V

  (967–87)

  r. 986–87

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  THE RESTORATION OF ORDER IN THE ÎLE-DE-FRANCE

  By the end of the 11th century large areas of the Capetian demesne in the Île-de-France were controlled by feudal lords who ignored their duties of vassalage and exercised an independent power by illegal and violent means. Although the military campaigns fought by Louis on his own lands lasted some quarter of a century, he had succeeded in reasserting his feudal rights by the 1130s, and orderly government was restored in the royal demesne. Louis’s foreign policy was just as strenuous, and here he could take advantage of a split within the Norman élite when William Clito, the son of Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, rebelled against his uncle Henry I and sought to replace him as ruler of both England and Normandy. In 1124 Louis’s army and its allies won a great victory over the forces of Henry V—the German king and emperor who had been persuaded by Henry I that he should attempt an invasion of France. This martial success recalled Hugh Capet’s prestige and earned Louis his acclamation as the second founder of his dynasty’s authority.

  ABOVE The Battle of Val-ès-Dunes, in which Henry I and Duke William quelled a Norman rebellion in 1047, is depicted in this section (c.1335/1340) from the Grandes Chroniques de France (1274–1461).

  An arranged marriage between Louis’s infant son and Eleanor of Aquitaine meant that the French Crown was, for a while, reunited with the duchy of the southwest. That union nonetheless proved to be one of history’s most significant mésalliances because, following her divorce, Eleanor married Henry, count of Anjou (who was also Normandy’s duke, following his father Geoffrey’s conquest of the duchy in 1144). Henry’s accession to the throne of England as Henry II therefore created the vast power block of the Angevin empire. In theory, Henry held Normandy and Anjou as a vassal of the French monarchy and, since he had married Eleanor without seeking his suzerain’s permission, Louis declared war on him. Subsequent defeats showed how much greater were the resources availa
ble to Henry, but if Louis could not compete in that particular theater of war his pro-papal policies gave him a more positive role on the European stage. At the start of his reign he had rejected the papal nominee to the archbishopric of Bourges, and Louis’s territories had therefore been placed for a while under a papal interdict. His intervention in the great quarrel between Pope Alexander II and the German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa nonetheless showed the depth of Louis’s attachment to the papal cause. Alexander had been elected pope by a majority of the College of Cardinals, but the minority who supported Cardinal Octavian broke away and elected him as Pope Victor IV. This anti-pope and his two successors enjoyed Barbarossa’s support, and the years of Alexander III’s exile in 1162–65 were spent in France where he enjoyed Louis’s warm support. The alliance between the Church and the French Crown deepened as a result, and the strong identification of the French clergy with the monarchy gave Louis a chain of command that enabled his will to be imposed in areas far from the core royal demesne