by Ian Mortimer
The idea that a king could be held to account by his feudal subjects in this manner did not go down well across Europe. John’s old enemy, Innocent III, voiced his horror in the most uncompromising language. He declared that Magna Carta was ‘not only shameful and base but illegal and unjust’, and went on:
We refuse to pass over such shameless presumption for thereby the Apostolic See would be dishonoured, the king’s right injured, the English nation shamed, and the whole plan for the Crusade seriously endangered . . . We utterly reject and condemn this settlement, and under threat of excommunication we order that the king should not dare to observe it and that the barons and their associates should not insist on it being observed. The charter, with all undertakings and guarantees, whether confirming it or resulting from it, we declare to be null and void of validity for ever.11
The pope’s protest was in vain. From 1215, kings of England were not at liberty to do whatever they chose. Magna Carta was reissued in different forms over the next years and was rendered permanent in 1237. In 1297, Edward I placed it on the statute book.
Throughout the various versions, two important clauses remained at the heart of the charter. The first was that ‘no free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way . . . except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land’. The second read: To no one shall we sell, deny or delay right or justice.’ Over the subsequent centuries English kings were constantly reminded of these provisions – especially that they were not at liberty to lock up anyone unlawfully. They continued to do so, of course, but hereafter the supporters of any wrongfully imprisoned person could invoke Magna Carta and accuse the king of acting illegally and thus tyrannically.
Most other European kingdoms did not see an equivalent to Magna Carta. But this does not mean they were not affected by it. Like the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, it did not require every country to experience its own Reign of Terror to appreciate the significance of what had happened. Instead, evidence of the widening desire to hold kings to account and for kings to involve their people more in decision-making can be found in the establishment of parliaments.
Previously kings across Europe had ruled with the advice of their royal councils, which were formed of the leading magnates and prelates in the realm. Exceptionally, in the Spanish kingdom of León, Alphonso IX called representatives of the towns, as well as his lords and clergy, to advise him at his cortes from 1188. In the thirteenth century this became more common. Scottish kings summoned groups of commoners to advise them from the 1230s. The kings of Portugal started to summon representatives of the towns to their cortes in 1254. Other Iberian legislative and tax-controlling parliaments included those of Catalonia and Aragon (which met from 1218 and 1274 respectively), Valencia (1283) and Navarre (1300). In France, the nearest equivalent, the Estates General, was first summoned in 1302. In all these assemblies representatives and lawyers sat and heard cases; grants and rights were recorded; and appeals were made to the king when men in positions of responsibility were found to be abusing their power. Particular points on which the king needed advice were debated. Discussions increasingly took place about whether he should be granted the necessary taxation to go to war. Thus Magna Carta is not an isolated case of enforced monarchical restraint but indicative of a growing mood for people to have a say in the government of the realm.
In England, Parliament developed a particularly strong role, following on from Magna Carta. In 1258, Simon de Montfort – a younger son of the instigator of the massacre at Béziers – forced Henry III to agree to the Provisions of Oxford, which called for regular parliaments to be held. These were to include elected representatives of the towns and counties as well as the lords and important clergymen. The representatives of the ‘commons’ thus came face to face with their king and negotiated the terms for granting extraordinary taxation, which the king usually wanted in order to fund military campaigns. Frequently Parliament asked the king to agree to new statute legislation in return. In an enormously important constitutional development in 1297, Edward I agreed that henceforth parliamentary assent would be required for all such grants of taxation. This meant that, in effect, Parliament could stop the king from going to war by simply refusing to approve the necessary finance. If you cast your mind back to the start of this book, and recall the powerlessness of the common man in the age of Viking invasions, you can see that society had come a long way in just three hundred years.
Friars
Have a thought for poor old Pietro Bernadone. He was a hard-working, prosperous cloth merchant from Assisi, in Umbria, who travelled regularly to the Champagne fairs, where he developed a taste for all things French. On one such trip he even acquired a French wife, a woman from a distinguished Provençal family, and brought her back to Assisi. Later, in celebration of his fondness for France, he renamed his son, who had been called Giovanni, Francesco, or Francis for short. Francis, however, turned out to be a disappointment. First he lived the high life, enjoying lavishing his father’s wealth on his friends. Next he decided to be a soldier in Apulia. Then, in his early twenties, he changed course yet again. Inspired by a vision in which he was told to rebuild the dilapidated church of St Damian near Assisi, he helped himself to a bundle of cloth from his father’s house and sold it, giving the money to the priest of St Damian. The cleric refused to accept the proceeds of stolen goods, leaving Francis embarrassed. When his father found out what Francis had done, he was furious. He reported his son to the civic authorities and forced him to forgo his inheritance.
Francis was living as a hermit, repairing local churches and helping lepers, when in late 1208 or early 1209 he heard someone reading out Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew, in which Christ exhorted his disciples: ‘as ye go, preach, saying the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely have ye received, freely give. Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves . . .’ At that moment he decided to live his life according to that Biblical text. He began preaching his message of absolute poverty and penance around Assisi. Before long he travelled to Rome to see Innocent III and outline his vision for an order of brothers, or frères – hence our word ‘friars’ – who would spend their lives in poverty. The pope was impressed and gave Francis his blessing. Thus the Franciscans – otherwise known as the Order of Friars Minor, or Greyfriars (after the colour of their habit) – came into being.
Dominic de Guzman gave his father and mother an easier time as he was growing up in Calaruega in northern Spain. They too were well off, described as of ‘gentle birth’, which in twelfth-century Spain meant that they came from a line of warriors. In the Guzmans’ case, however, the whole family was deeply pious. Dominic studied at Palencia, and when a famine overtook Spain he sold his books and possessions to raise money for the poor. Twice he offered his services as a labourer in order to buy the freedom of men who had been enslaved by Muslims. His willingness to demonstrate his piety through action inspired many, and he was welcomed as an Augustinian canon in the cathedral at Osma.
He was in his early thirties when, in 1203, he joined a diplomatic mission to Denmark with the Bishop of Osma. On his return, he decided to see Innocent III to ask for permission to go as a missionary to eastern Europe. The pope, however, gave him a more pressing task: to deal with the heretics of south-west France. Dominic thus found himself in the county of Toulouse, trying to convince Cathars to return to orthodox Catholicism. He was no doubt shocked by some of the Cathars’ beliefs – such as their condemnation of marriage and their refusal to accept the resurrection of the body – but at the same time he was inspired by their vows of poverty. In 1206, he established a house at Prouille where women who resented being forbidden marriage and treated as concubines could live in their own religious community. Over the followin
g years he developed a mission that centred on both of these strands of faith: preaching against heretical beliefs and advocating poverty. Various attempts were made to give him a bishopric, but Dominic resisted, insisting that his first priority was to found a preaching order. In 1215, he was able to realise this dream when a wealthy citizen of Toulouse gave him a large house for his growing band of followers. Later that year he attended the Fourth Lateran Council and put his proposal for a new religious order before Innocent III. The pope died before he could agree, and it fell to Innocent’s successor, Honorius III, to give official papal blessing to the Order of Friars Preachers, or Dominicans, otherwise known as the Blackfriars.
The Greyfriars and Blackfriars spread with astonishing rapidity. Honorius issued bulls on behalf of the Dominicans, effectively advertising the order throughout western Christendom, and approved of the Rule written by St Francis in 1223 for the Franciscans. Their success meant that they were soon joined by other orders of friars. In 1226, Honorius gave his approval to the Order of Carmelite Friars (Whitefriars). His successor Gregory IX approved the Augustinian Friars in 1231. The idea of holy men taking vows of absolute poverty, chastity and obedience, and preaching to the common people in their communities, proved extremely attractive. Associating the mendicant orders’ way of life with that of Christ, thousands flocked to join them. Both the Franciscans and Dominicans catered for women too: the Franciscans with a sister order of cloistered nuns, the Poor Clares, founded by Clara of Assisi in 1212; the Dominicans with their order of nunneries, stemming from the original convent at Prouille. The friars also became recognised as important educators. Dominicans could be found at the University of Paris as early as 1217, at Bologna in 1218, at Palencia and Montpelier in 1220, and at Oxford in 1221. The Franciscans similarly established theological colleges across Europe, most notably in the universities of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge.
What was so significant about the advent of the friars? The new mendicant orders sliced through a society strictly divided between religious and secular, and created an interim body of men who had many of the virtues of the religious and all the flexibility of the secular. They were educated like monks: they could read and write and they understood the international language of Latin. They were disciplined like monks: they followed a set of rules and answered to an ecclesiastical hierarchy. They carried the good name, trustworthiness and integrity of holy men. Unlike monks and other regular clergy, however, they could roam free: they were not bound to remain in any one house, community or parish. They lived in towns, mixing with people, and they were cheap – they did not require tithes or prebends to endow their prayers and furnish their habits. If the monastic orders of the previous century constituted a network that created, stored and disseminated knowledge, then the friars allowed that network to penetrate further, deeper and faster than it had previously done. Friars became the diplomats of choice for secular rulers and Church leaders alike. As educated messengers travelling and reaching out to people in the name of God, they made excellent administrators and negotiators. And they also made good inquisitors: popes and bishops increasingly relied upon Dominicans to interrogate heretics and, after 1252, even to torture them.
The friars demonstrated that the Church was able to move with the times – in the sense that they could travel freely, preach to merchants as well as to lords, and tackle new questions of faith – while retaining the spirit of humility and poverty that characterised early Christianity. If the Church had not been able to avail itself of this versatile body of holy men, heresy would undoubtedly have spiralled out of control. Perhaps, in addition to the Albigensian Crusade, there would have been English and German Crusades – and the Spanish Inquisition would have been established well before the fifteenth century. As it was, the three centuries after 1215 saw only minor and localised forms of heretical practice in Europe. It seems that the friars, especially the Dominicans, played a major role in securing for the pope another 300 years of spiritual authority over Christendom. That is not something to be sniffed at.
Finally, we must bear in mind the intellectual impact of individual friars. As the mendicant orders eschewed personal wealth but prized learning, they appealed to a great many unworldly men keen to engage intellectually with the principal debates of the time. Among the Franciscans was a string of great theologians – Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham are the most prominent. But the foremost intellectual Franciscan of the thirteenth century was. undoubtedly the remarkable scientist and philosopher Roger Bacon, who lectured on Aristotle at the universities of Oxford and Paris, studied Greek and Arabic works on optics, argued for the introduction of scientific teaching in universities, and wrote a substantial compendium of scientific knowledge, philosophy, theology, languages, mathematics, optics and experimental science. He was the first person in the West to describe gunpowder; he provided the first description of spectacles; he theorised that a copper balloon filled with ‘liquid fire’ might fly; and he was blessed with the most extraordinary open-mindedness. He believed, for instance, that it was possible to build colossal ships that had no oars but could be sailed by a single man; that vehicles could be invented that would travel at incalculable speed without having to be drawn by a draught animal; that men might propel themselves in machines ‘like a bird in flight’; that suspension bridges might cross wide rivers ‘without a pier or prop’, and that divers could explore the seabed in special underwater suits.
The Dominicans had a number of intellectual heavyweights too. There was the mystic and theologian Master Eckhart; the scientist, philosopher and theologian Albert of Cologne (known as Albertus Magnus); and the master theologian of them all, Thomas Aquinas. It was Aquinas who followed Abelard in applying Aristotelian logic to religion and modified his maxim ‘doubt leads to enquiry and enquiry leads to truth’ to ‘wonder leads to enquiry and enquiry leads to knowledge’. Whereas Abelard was prepared to accept that some things, such as the nature of God, were above and beyond rational enquiry, Aquinas felt that everything should be subject to investigation and rationalisation. He deduced the existence of God from nature by arguing that because everything that is moving has been set in motion by something else, there must have been a prime mover at the beginning of that chain. Another of his arguments is still rehearsed regularly today: the fact that the world displays order and constantly rejuvenates itself demonstrates God’s role as an intelligent designer. We may suspect that Aquinas would have produced the works that made him the most important theologian of the Middle Ages even if he had not been a friar, but there can be no doubt that he and many others were supported in their learning by the resources and networks of the mendicant orders, and that they were inspired to even greater achievements by their intellectual curiosity.
Travel
There is a widespread belief today that people did not travel far before the advent of the railways in the nineteenth century. This way of thinking is superficially backed up by our family trees: prior to the mid nineteenth century, our ancestors usually married people from the same parish or a neighbouring one. But there is an obvious weakness in this argument: just because we wouldn’t consider walking long distances today does not mean that people in the past were not prepared to do so. And just because people married someone from their own community, where they could be sure of support and perhaps an inheritance, this does not mean that they never went anywhere else.
There is a frequently repeated counter-argument that is also deeply flawed. The ocean-going Vikings, the sea-crossing Saxons and the road-building Romans all demonstrate that people did travel long distances. The bluestones at Stonehenge, for instance, come from the Preseli Hills in south Wales, 250 miles from where they now stand. Thus people have always been able to travel if they wanted to. To which the scholar must respond: people, yes, but not most people. Evidence for long-distance travel before the thirteenth century relates predominantly to politically influential individuals and groups that were able to protect them
selves, such as Roman armies, Vikings and Crusaders. Royal officials were guarded by the king’s men wherever they went. Great lords travelled with large households, accompanied by many armed men. Ordinary people, however, did not regularly travel much further than the distance to their manorial court, their animal pastures, or their church. As we saw in the chapter on the eleventh century, travelling away from home was just too dangerous. You had to have a very good reason to risk it.
In the thirteenth century, however, many people did have good reasons to travel: to attend fairs and larger markets further away from home; to obtain a grant from the king or a judicial decision from a central court, or to attend parliament. You might travel to ask for the attendance of a physician or surgeon. You might go right across Europe to attend a university, or walk a few miles every week to school. If you were a friar, travelling was part of your vocation. Pilgrimages became extremely popular in the thirteenth century, with thousands of people walking for a day or so to visit a local religious attraction or travelling to one of Christendom’s three principal destinations – Santiago de Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem. For Italian merchants, travel was part of daily life, both by land and sea. The Venetians had established trading posts throughout the Mediterranean and the Genoese had set up a number of fortified outposts in the Crimea. The criminal law also required more people to travel. Judges sent out to administer the law or hold inquiries went on long journeys. Criminals had to be taken to towns where they would be judged. Jurors sworn in to hear a case would have to go wherever the court sat. After Gratian, canon law stipulated that archdeacons and bishops had to supervise the moral life of their flocks, and people now had to attend consistory or archdeaconry courts. This might be on account of a moral wrongdoing, such as bigamy or adultery, or a case of heresy; alternatively it could be a routine matter, such as the need to prove a will. And the more people travelled and the longer they were away from home, the greater the need for messengers to tell them of important news in their home town. Travel led to more travel.