The Age of Chivalry

by Hywel Williams

  William Rufus’s relations with the Church were turbulent. The king quarreled violently with Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose revenues were seized when he died in 1089 and appropriated for Crown use. Lanfranc’s successor Anselm maintained his opposition, and on going into exile in 1097 he appealed to the pope for support. But Urban II was involved in a major dispute with the German emperor Henry IV and could ill afford to make another enemy. He therefore endorsed the status quo in England. William made a statement recognizing the pope’s authority, and in return he was allowed to keep the revenues of the archbishopric of Canterbury since Anselm remained in exile.

  HENRY I—AN ASTUTE OPERATOR

  As William the Conqueror’s fourth son, Henry I was not expected to rule either in England or Normandy, and his scholarly education led to him being known as “Beauclerc.” But he was an acute strategist. Taking advantage of the fact that his brother Robert was away on crusade, in 1100 he seized the royal treasury at Winchester shortly after burying William Rufus there. Since the baronage had colluded with him in sidelining Robert, the king gratified them by issuing the Charter of Liberties, a document that both affirmed aristocratic freedoms and corrected William Rufus’s abuses of power. The charter also recorded the king’s formal grant of the laws of Edward the Confessor, as amended by William the Conqueror, to the English people. Very little new legislation was in fact issued either by William or his sons, and the Conqueror—a great admirer of Edward’s laws—had applied them as the basis of English common law. Formal restoration of these laws proved to be quite compatible with the entrenchment of Norman royal authority, especially through the use of Henry’s establishment of the exchequer, an institution specifically designed to combat tax fraud and corruption.

  Henry’s reign marked the high point of the Anglo-Norman dynasty’s administrative machine. The Concordat of London (1107) represented a major papal concession to the English Crown’s institutional control over the English Church, and Henry’s reign witnessed an English assimilation of Norman authority. Unlike his father and brothers, Henry could speak English fluently. Marriage to his first wife linked him with the ancient nobility, since she was Edgar Atheling’s niece. Nevertheless, Normandy remained important to him. Robert had first agreed to recognize his brother’s right to rule in England, but hostilities then resumed. Although Robert was captured at the Battle of Tinchebrai (1106) and remained a prisoner for the last 28 years of his life, Henry’s control of the duchy was not secure until the death in 1128 of Robert’s son William Clito. Appropriating Normandy as a possession of the English Crown, Henry ruled the duchy through his title as England’s king. Viceroys governed in his name there while he was in England, and when he was in Normandy the close-knit nobility administered his kingdom. These networks had been the very basis of Norman order in England, and though appearing so adamantine, they fractured after Henry’s death. The English nobility rejected the claim of Henry’s daughter Matilda and placed his nephew Stephen of Blois on the throne in 1135. Anarchy followed, and the Anglo-Norman order that had once seemed so entrenched looked set for dissolution.

  ABOVE Statue of Henry I of England (r. 1100–1135), Canterbury Cathedral, England.

  MEMORIALIZING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

  The development of Edward the Confessor’s posthumous reputation shows how subsequent royal regimes tried to assimilate the Anglo-Saxon past and sought to ensure its continuity with their own authority.

  An anonymous author in c.1067 completed a Life of King Edward, commissioned by his widow Edith. The second part of that work describes events that demonstrate the king’s holiness and his miracle-inducing prowess. It was this section that was then worked up by Osbert de Clare, a Benedictine monk at Westminster Abbey, in his more explicitly hagiographical Life of Edward, which was finished by the late 1130s.

  Belief in kings’ ability to heal the sick by their touch was widespread in medieval Europe, and episodes that illustrate Edward’s powers in that regard are included by de Clare in his Life of Edward. As prior, and then abbot, of Westminster, de Clare was a well-connected figure and he spent some time in Rome lobbying for Edward’s canonization. Saints were divided into two categories by the medieval Church: martyrs who had died for the faith and confessors who had witnessed to it. The king was formally canonized by the papacy in 1161, and thereby acquired his soubriquet. Edward’s remains were then placed in a shrine at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony that took place in 1163 with Aelred (1110–67), abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx in Yorkshire, preaching the sermon. Aelred wrote his own version of Edward’s life, and his many other works include a Genealogy of the Kings of the English which was partly intended to show that Henry II (r. 1154–89) was a true descendant of Anglo-Saxon kings. Henry was a vigorous promoter of Edward’s reputation, and by the late 12th century the Confessor was widely recognized as England’s patron saint.

  The Wilton Diptych.

  Henry III (r. 1216–72) was devoted to the cult of the Confessor, and he decided to honor his predecessor by replacing the original Romanesque structure of Westminster Abbey raised by Edward in the late 1040s with the Gothic building that survives today. He also ordered the construction of a magnificent shrine to replace the earlier one, and the Confessor’s body was brought to its new place of rest in a solemn procession on October 13, 1269. Edward III (r. 1327–77), a very martial figure, decided that Edward should be replaced as England’s patron saint by George, an obscure soldier saint of the third century who has been linked to the then Greek-speaking eastern region of Asia Minor. But the Confessor was central to the elevated role that Richard II (r. 1377–99) claimed for English kingship and which is illustrated in the Wilton Diptytch, commissioned to accompany the king on his travels. On the left the Confessor is joined by John the Baptist and Edmund, king and martyr, as they present the kneeling Richard to the Virgin and the infant Christ who, encircled by angels, are portrayed on the diptytch’s right panel. By the side of the Savior and Virgin stands an angel holding a pennant bearing the Cross of St. George. The sense of the scene suggests that the king has presented England into the Virgin’s care and protection, and the presence by Edward the Confessor’s side of Edmund, the king of East Anglia killed by the invading Danes in 868, is highly suggestive. Edmund was much venerated by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, and that popularity was used to support the post-Conquest regime’s claim that it was offering continuity with the Anglo-Saxon past. On the back of the diptytch a heraldic shield incorporates two coats of arms side by side: that of the kings of England, and that of the Confessor—which was devised for him after his time, since armorial bearings were only invented in the mid-12th century. By such means the Confessor lived on.

  THE BIRTH OF THE EUROPEAN CITY-STATE

  1073–c.1300

  From the 11th century onward urban centers concentrated in central and northern Italy, as well as in parts of France and southwest Germany, were starting to grow both in size and institutional importance. The markets and craft guilds located in these towns and cities were at the heart of Western Europe’s economic development, and the new prosperity was reflected in rising population levels. An equally novel movement was evident among citizens who wished to assert greater control over their own destinies: like-minded individuals organized themselves into “communes,” groupings sustained by oaths of mutual defense.

  The 11th century saw the advent of communes in both rural and urban settings. For example, adjacent villages in northern France combined to form communes that guaranteed the security of local roads, and the later Swiss Confederation owed its origin to the communes established in the alpine valleys. But it was the ancient towns built by the Romans that provided the commune with its most characteristic setting with walled fortifications protecting the population from the world outside. The communes helped to give physical security to townspeople and their goods, and also helped safeguard the livelihoods of travelers who were frequently threatened with attacks by bandits—as well as by the as
saults of dominant nobles who held themselves to be above the law. A desire for revenge therefore led the communes to launch retaliatory attacks on their enemies, but it was the more political and economic focus of their activity that encouraged greater urban independence.

  TAMING THE ARISTOCRACY

  The charters granted to towns by monarchs gave them the right to hold markets and to run their own civic and financial administration without being subjected to interference by local lords. European kings and emperors who wished to elevate their central authority therefore found the towns to be useful allies in a common cause: the attempt at taming the territorial nobility. England’s powerful 12th-century monarchy was able to impose its authority without relying on such local alliances, however, and the impact of the communal movement in England was therefore restricted to the work of the guilds that regulated craftsmen and merchants. France’s Capetian monarchs came to enjoy a comparable institutional success. But the lack of an equivalent center of power in Germany and Italy meant that conurbations in these areas became increasingly autonomous. As a result, many towns devised their own, often tightly regulated, internal systems of government.

  ABOVE A map, dated 1549, showing the Bavarian town of Nördlingen whose encircling medieval wall remains in place today.

  THE GROWTH OF GERMAN TOWNS

  The German towns of ancient Roman foundation were mostly in the Rhine and Danube river valleys, and many of these were episcopal sees. During the tenth century successive German emperors had delegated juridical and administrative powers to the bishops who therefore appointed officers in the towns’ government. The great walls originally raised to surround these centers of population had in many cases survived, and this explains why the German term burgh or fortification was used to describe settlements that were so clearly divided from the surrounding countryside. Legal offenses were more severely punished if they had been committed within this privileged area, and its inhabitants, including those who had fled to the burgh from rural areas, could only be prosecuted in the town’s own courts. Such arrangements emphasized the ancient towns’ special status, and the same provisions would also apply to the new towns established by the bishops and nobility on the lands they owned in the center of Germany.

  RIGHT A grisaille (monochrome) illustration showing life in a late medieval town. (From Chroniques et Conquetes de Charlemagne by David Aubert, c.1458).

  Vibrant markets in both these types of German towns, as well as the possibility of practicing their skills as craftsmen, encouraged the migration of serfs who often left the rural areas without seeking their lord’s permission. Urban courts came to accept the principle that a serf who had stayed for a year and a day within his chosen town was henceforth a free man. Population flows from the countryside increased accordingly, and the attempts by some bishops to continue treating these arrivals as serfs led the emperor Henry V to declare, in his charters for Speyer and Worms, that serfdom should cease in all towns. There was, therefore, a real enough basis to the common German saying Stadtluft macht frei (“city air makes one free”). Thus encouraged at the very highest level of imperial government, the German towns acquired the institutions of self-government, including the Rat or town council. Headed by the Burgermeister or mayor, they started to create their own legislation and to raise money by imposing an excise duty. Groups of town merchants also began to issue the legislation that governed their trading activities.

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  THE BIRTH OF THE CITY-STATE

  1073 The city of Worms affirms its independence by providing the emperor Henry IV with refuge at a time when German princes are rebelling against imperial authority.

  1155 Arnold of Brescia is burned to death having sought to revive ancient Roman republican institutions while leading the commune of Rome in the late 1140s.

  1162 Following Frederick I Barbarossa’s attack on the city of Milan a revolt directed against the emperor spreads to other north Italian towns, that combine to form (c.1167) the military alliance known as the Lombard League.

  1176 The Lombard League inflicts a defeat on Barbarossa’s forces at the Battle of Legnano.

  1248 The emperor Frederick II is defeated at the Battle of Parma.

  1250 A popular rebellion in Florence expels the republic’s nobility from power.

  1294 Election of Benedetto Caetani as Pope Boniface VIII. The pro-papal Guelph party divides subsequently into a “Black” and a “White” faction. Black Guelphs support Boniface’s interpretation of papal authority. White Guelphs advocate the extension of constitutional rights in Florence.

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  CURBING CLERICAL POWER

  Bishops often took a dim view of these developments, and in the 13th century they began lobbying the imperial court to issue decrees limiting the powers of the Rat. These attempts at restoring the episcopal initiative proved futile, and the establishment of craft guilds had long since entrenched the cause of town independence among the wider urban population. Craftsmen such as bakers, butchers and shoemakers who brought their produce to markets had been subjected to quality control by town authorities since Carolingian times, and the “masters” were the individuals who represented their fellow craftsmen at such inspections from the ninth century onward. These practitioners subsequently claimed the right to elect their master as well as to play a role in framing the by-laws regulating the production and sale of their wares. These successful attempts at self-regulation encountered further opposition from bishops keen on maintaining their own authority. Nevertheless, the craft guilds’ societies—sometimes called the bruderschaft or fraternity, and which were devoted to social, philanthropic and religious activity—were keenly supported by the Church. Episcopal opposition to trading self-regulation waned accordingly, and the craft guilds that spread from their German origins to neighboring lands became a distinctive feature of Western European urban existence.

  The fact that the bishops owed their original authority in the German towns to an imperial delegation of power proved useful if it became necessary to defend urban autonomy. In 1073, for example, the citizens of Worms rebelled successfully against their bishop in order to provide a place of refuge for the emperor Henry IV at a time when he faced a German princely revolt. Bishops could therefore be reminded on occasions that they were in fact mere representatives of the imperial authority rather than lords exercising power in their own name. The Vogt was an official who presided over each town’s chief court of law as the senior legal officer appointed by the bishop, but he received the ban or power of executing justice directly from the king or emperor. And during the period when the emperor held a diet or imperial council in a particular town, he and his circle of officials resumed control of all the powers that had once been delegated to the locality by his imperial predecessor. The independence of the “imperial free cities” of medieval Germany, such as Basel, Speyer, Regensburg, Worms and Cologne, was based on these early developments, and their numbers were greatly augmented when the Staufer dynasty established towns on its own demesne land in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Independence nonetheless proved to be quite compatible with oligarchy. A small number of rich families dominated the towns’ councils, which included the craftsmen whose guilds sought to exclude competition by adopting protectionist measures.

  ITALIAN CITY-STATES’ STRUGGLE FOR AUTONOMY

  From the 11th to the 13th centuries northern Italy was Europe’s most densely populated region as well as the richest. It was also home to a myriad of vigorously independent city-states, each of which would eventually succumb to a system of political control exercised by a single powerful individual (the Signoria) despite the maintenance of republican constitutional forms. Italian political turbulence took its cue from the nobility who, in contrast to their German equivalents, established their headquarters in the towns that consequently witnessed intense conflicts between the capitani or greater nobility, the valvassori or lesser nobility, and the popolo or mass of the population who included affluent merchants.
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  Lombardy’s prosperous and well-fortified towns were in the front line of the struggle to maintain Italian city-state independence against the expansionist ambitions of German emperors. Geography also explains their central economic role. The Po valley connected the trading networks of the Middle East with Western Europe, which was well served by the itinerant Lombard merchants—many of whom also acted as bankers to the Holy See. Temporal authority exercised by bishops was an early casualty of the city-states’ assertiveness, but the papacy was nonetheless a willing ally in the joint struggle against the threat from the German north. That danger did not stop these states from competing against each other initially for regional predominance, with the alliance headed by Milan clashing with the group of towns led by Cremona and Como. Frederick I Barbarossa sought to take advantage of this division while pursuing what he took to be his imperial rights in north Italy, but his military onslaught on the city of Milan in 1162 led to a general uprising that united the region in a common hostility. The Lombard League, which included most northern Italian cities, inflicted a decisive defeat on Barbarossa’s army at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. Frederick II was subjected to similar humiliation when he insisted on the unconditional surrender of Milan and its allies; his imperial army was routed by the Lombard League at the Battle of Parma in 1248. These defeats were significant economically as well as strategically; military power financed by commercial wealth had proved superior to an army raised by land-based feudal kingship.