The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople

by Bauer, Susan Wise

  The appeal was answered from an unwelcome quarter.

  While Louis was devoting himself to reinforcing the walls of Acre, a mad Hungarian monk began to preach, throughout northern France, that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him with a revelation: King Louis would be relieved not by barons and knights but by the humble and the poor. His message mined a deep vein of resentment of the privileged and powerful, the nobles and the knights. “The poor people . . . pay for all the wars of their lords,” the Norman churchman William the Clerk had written, not a score of years before, “and often weep thereat and sigh.”

  The monk assured those same poor that shepherds and peasants had been “granted by heaven the power, in their humility and simplicity, to rescue the Holy Land . . . for, as he said, the pride of the French soldier was displeasing to God.” This was a popular message, and the monk, styling himself the “Master of Hungary,” soon stood at the head of thousands of followers. All of them—farmers, swineherds, cowmen, and a healthy salting of murderers, thieves, and outcasts—dressed themselves as shepherds, and the movement became known as the Pastoureaux: the shepherds.3

  At first, their enthusiasm was widely praised, and the regent and queen mother Blanche herself welcomed them to the capital city and listened to the Master’s message. But soon the movement turned dark. Before long, the Master began to preach an anti-Church message even stronger than that of the Waldensians and Cathars a few decades before. “[He] condemned all orders excepting their own,” writes Matthew Paris; the Franciscans were vagrants, the Cistercians greedy, the priests and bishops “only money-hunters.” He was tapping into a deep vein of resentment, not just of well-to-do knights, but of all who prospered while the poor struggled. “I would like to strangle the nobles and the clergy, every one of them,” announces a character in a thirteenth-century French satire. “Everything that is tasty and good goes to them.”4

  In January of 1251, the Pastoureaux entered Orleans, armed with “swords, axes, darts, daggers and long knives” (“They seemed to cherish the thoughts of war more than of Christ,” Paris remarks), and swept through the city, attacking and killing clergymen, burning and raiding as they went. Similar mobs stormed churches in Tours and Bourges. Blanche immediately withdrew her support. “I believed that they, in their simplicity and sanctity, were about to win the whole earth,” she declared. “But since they are deceivers, let them be excommunicated, seized, and destroyed.” Royal officials began a manhunt. Within the year, the Pastoureaux had been cut to pieces in hand-to-hand fighting, arrested and hanged, or driven into the rivers to drown; the Master himself was killed by a militant Parisian butcher wielding an ax, who “struck him on the head and sent him brainless to hell.”5

  51.1 The Pastoureaux

  France, vulnerable to English ambitions and wracked by internal chaos, soon lost its regent as well. In November of 1252, Blanche—well into her sixties—died after a short illness. Hearing of his mother’s death, Louis shut himself in his chambers for two days, speaking to no one, and then finally made preparations to return to France.

  He arrived back in Paris on September 7, 1254. For six years, he had been away; he had managed to free some of his captured followers and had built new fortifications around the Christian cities in the east, but he had failed to recover Jerusalem. The collapse of the Seventh Crusade had changed him. “After the king returned from overseas, he lived in such devotion that never did he wear fur . . . nor scarlet, nor gilded stirrups and spurs,” writes Jean de Joinville. He gave up wine, declined elaborate feasts; he was ascetic in clothing, in food and drink, and in his habits, dedicating more and more of his income to the poor, praying constantly, studying the scriptures late into the night.6

  His piety had a direct effect on France; Louis was as concerned with justice in his realm as with his own private devotions. Within two years of his return, he had passed multiple restrictions on the conduct of his royal officials. They were not to swear or to frequent taverns; they were to treat native Frenchmen and foreigners the same; bribes and gifts were forbidden, as were random seizures, jailing without cause, and violence. He banned duels as a way of settling legal arguments, outlawed prostitution and gambling and public blasphemy.7

  Like the late Frederick II, he resisted the encroaching power of France’s bishops; unlike Frederick, he did so out of his conviction that the king should be a servant of the Church. When they petitioned him to arrest and “constrain” men they had excommunicated, as a way to bring them more quickly to repentance, he refused: it was possible, he told them, that the judgment of the pope might yet declare such men innocent, and the power of France could not be used to support the decisions of local bishops who might be mistaken. It could be wielded only on behalf of God (by way of the pope).8

  King as servant of the church: Louis was, in this, following the views of the Dominican scholar Thomas Aquinas. Barely thirty, Aquinas had just finished his first teaching job at Cologne. He had arrived in Paris in 1252, and was now lecturing and writing in the French capital. Like Anselm at the beginning of the twelfth century, like Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard and Bernard of Chartres after that, Aquinas devoted himself to the study of the Greek masters and their synthesis with Christian thought. His greatest theological works were still unwritten, but he would manage to lay out in full, during Louis IX’s lifetime, a massive reconciliation of Aristotelian ideas with Christian revelation.9

  In The Politics, now translated into Latin, Aristotle had argued that a just ruler works for the common good of all his subjects. Aristotle’s “common good” encompassed justice and prosperity for all, and by his definition Louis was indeed a virtuous monarch: “The king . . . made it his chief concern,” writes Joinville, “to find out how the people were governed, and their rights and interests protected. . . . [G]ood justice prevailed . . . and things were so much better, that goods and property and everything else sold for double their value.”10

  Aquinas accepted Aristotle’s definition and then expanded it. Kings have the task of bringing justice and prosperity to their subjects, but leading them to ultimate salvation is beyond the monarch’s reach. “Man does not attain his [ultimate] end, which is the possession of God, by human power but by divine,” Aquinas concluded. “Therefore, the task of leading him to that last end . . . has been entrusted not to earthly kings but to . . . the chief priest, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff.” There was, in Aquinas’s mind, no conflict between king and pope, any more than there was a clash between natural law and heavenly law, between reason and revelation. They walked hand in hand, the king attending to earthly matters, the pope to heavenly ones. But there was no question as to who had the final say: “To the Roman Pontiff, all the kings of the Christian people are to be subject,” Aquinas concluded, “as to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.”11

  The anticlericalism of the Pastoureaux had been the far swing of the pendulum; Louis brought it back to the other extreme. “Love and honour all persons in the service of Holy Church,” he told his son, at the end of his life, and added a further instruction: Even if wronged by the Church, the king should hold his tongue. For considering “the benefits God had bestowed,” it was better to give up royal privilege than to struggle against an authority bestowed by God.12

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The Lion’s Den

  Between 1252 and 1273,

  three popes work to separate Sicily from the empire,

  the king of England tries to face down his barons,

  and the line of Frederick II comes to a violent end

  AFTER THE DEATH of his enemy Frederick II, Pope Innocent IV had returned triumphantly to Rome. “To the Roman Pontiff, all the kings of the Christian people are to be subject,” wrote Thomas Aquinas; and Innocent IV agreed. “Whoever seeks to evade the authority of the vicar of Christ,” he declared, “thereby impairs the authority of Christ Himself. The King of kings . . . has conferred full power on us.”1

  He used this power, at once, in t
wo different directions. In 1252, he issued the papal bull Ad Extirpanda, an elaborate set of procedures governing the Inquisition in Italy. Every ruling civil official was ordered to appoint committees that would be responsible for hunting out and arresting heretics. And the officials themselves were commanded to “force” the heretics to confess, citra membri diminutionem, et mortis periculum: by any measure, short of death or permanent disfigurement. This left plenty of options (flogging, starvation, the rack) by which heretics could be questioned; it was the first papal legitimization of torture as a tool of inquisition.2

  At the same time, Innocent IV busied himself reducing the power of the next Holy Roman Emperor. He had long hoped to divide Sicily off from the triple realm of Germany, Italy, and Sicily. While Frederick II’s son and heir Conrad was occupied beating off his German rival to the throne, William of Holland, Innocent IV sent messengers to Henry III of England, offering to crown his second son Edmund as the rightful king of Sicily.

  The deal was a lousy one for England. Innocent had nothing to offer except the empty title; Henry would have to swear, on peril of excommunication, to hand over a substantial payment to Rome, and also to send an army to take Sicily away from Conrad. Nevertheless, Henry III (an idle, cowardly, and foolish king, says Matthew Paris) accepted on nine-year-old Edmund’s behalf.3

  As it turned out, enthusiasm for the Sicilian struggle was nonexistent in England, and Henry had enormous trouble raising an army. He was still working on the project when Conrad, fighting in the lowland swamps south of the Apennines, died of malaria. His heir was his two-year-old son Conradin; at once, Conrad’s younger half brother Manfred claimed the right to serve as the child’s regent.

  Manfred sent the toddler to grow up safely in Bavaria and opened negotiations with Innocent IV, apparently believing that the pope might retract the offer to crown Edmund in favor of himself. But the talks failed; Manfred exhorted the Sicilians to rise behind him and resist the papal order handing them over to foreign rule. In December, he crossed over to southern Italy with his troops and led an army against the papal soldiers stationed at Foggia, defeating them easily.4

  Innocent himself was in Naples, suffering from a gradually worsening sickness. When he heard the news of the defeat, his condition took a sharp turn downward. He died on December 7, 1254.

  In his place, the cardinals elected Alexander IV: “kind and religious,” says Matthew Paris, “assiduous in prayer and strict in abstinence, but easily led away by the whisperings of flatterers.” In his sixties, Alexander IV had ambitions but little clout. He excommunicated Manfred and confirmed Edmund’s kingship, but the papal troops were no match for Manfred’s armies, and Alexander IV was forced to retreat to the Papal States and leave Sicily in Manfred’s hands. By 1258, Manfred was sure enough in the loyalty of the Sicilians to crown himself king of Sicily, excommunication notwithstanding.5

  At the same time, young Conradin lost his claim to Germany. Conrad’s rival William of Holland had drowned crossing a stream; after Conrad’s death, the electors of Germany gathered together to decide on the next king of Germany. No one voted for Conradin. It seemed clear that Germany, after nearly ten years of chaos, needed a grown-up as king—and preferably one from outside the country, since all the German candidates could claim only fragmented and partial support.

  But there was no clear outside choice either. After nearly a year of bickering, half of the electors decided to vote for Alfonso X, king of León-Castile, an experienced statesman who also happened to be the grandson of the German baron Philip of Swabia (by way of his mother). The rest preferred Henry III’s younger brother Richard of Cornwall, second son of John Lackland. Richard managed to get Alexander IV on his side, and even went to Germany to be crowned. But, faced with the necessity of conquering over half the country to actually rule it, he soon gave up and went home again.6

  Now the English royal family had tangled itself up in two foreign struggles—one in Sicily, the other in Germany—for personal gain. Henry III, never a popular king, had enmeshed himself in a web of stupid decisions. Married to Eleanor of Provence, he had promoted too many of his wife’s French relatives into plum court positions, annoying his local courtiers. He had raised taxes in an attempt to collect the pope’s fee for the Sicilian crown, annoying everyone else. And after an adolescence spent under the thumb of a regent, he had grown into a spiky and irascible man, resentful of any advisor who seemed too controlling. He feuded with his officials; he fell out with his brother-in-law, the younger Simon de Montfort; when he needed the approval of the Curia Regis, the gathering of churchmen and landholders named by the Magna Carta as the “common counsel of our realm,” he summoned only those men who were certain to agree with him; he led expensive and pointless campaigns into the French lands that had once belonged to England. “He despoiled his native subjects, and enriched his brothers, relations, and kinsmen,” Matthew Paris sums up, “. . . [and] the kingdom . . . was all full of suspicion and fox-like treachery.”7

  Henry was also facing the possibility of excommunication. He had not managed to raise either an army or the necessary funds that his oath to Innocent demanded. In March of 1258, Alexander IV sent him a stern final warning: if he didn’t pay up by June 1, he would be excommunicated.

  Henry had no choice. To raise the necessary funds, he needed the entire Curia Regis to agree to new scutage. So in early April 1258, he summoned the priests and barons of England together in London and demanded more money.

  Henry’s dilemma gave the barons of England the chance to air thirty years’ worth of complaints and grievances. Certainly Henry could have his money, the barons told their king, as soon as he fulfilled their conditions: he was to expel most of his French-born officials from England; he was to reaffirm all of the provisions of the Magna Charta; and he was to hand final decisions of policy over to a chamber of twenty-four leading barons, twelve chosen by him, twelve by the Curia Regis. “They moreover insisted that the king should frequently consult them, and listen to their advice,” Paris concludes.8

  Unlike his father John, Henry was unwilling to risk excommunication. On June 11, 1258, he agreed to sign the barons’ demands, set down in a written treaty known as the Provisions of Oxford. The original demands had morphed: he was now to accept a standing council of fifteen who would have to ratify all his decisions, as well as another committee of twelve and the original council of twenty-four.9

  But the army to conquer Sicily, and the pope’s fee, did not materialize. A dry season in England led to a drastic shortage of food, which led to famine and disease: “A measure of wheat rose in price to fifteen shillings and more,” Paris writes, “at a time when the country itself was drained of money, and numberless dead bodies were lying about the streets.” Alexander IV extended the deadline for payment. Meanwhile, the English barons expanded the Provisions of Oxford into the more elaborate Provisions of Westminster, placing even more limitations on Henry’s ability to raise money.10

  Henry III had given up a whole raft of royal privileges and gotten nothing in return. But he had King John’s example to lead him; he opened secret negotiations with Alexander IV, pointing out that he could raise the money he owed if he were freed, by papal decree, from the Provisions of Oxford.

  Alexander seems to have agreed. On April 13, 1261, he issued a papal bull freeing the king from all obligation to both Provisions; and on June 14, Henry sent the bull to be read out loud to the newly formed councils, which had assembled at Winchester.11

  The barons, led by Simon de Montfort, began to prepare for war.

  Fighting did not begin immediately. Neither the barons nor Henry were ready to launch a full-scale civil war; and the famine of 1258 had been followed by several good years of crops and rising prosperity, which meant that the English as a whole were not inclined to revolt. Instead, nearly three years of increasingly ill-tempered negotiations commenced. Alexander IV died, shortly after issuing the bull, but his successor Urban IV confirmed it; Simon de Montfort remained Hen
ry’s most inflexible foe, but other barons went back and forth between allegiance to their peers and loyalty to the king; Henry’s oldest son and heir, Edward, at first took a virtuously principled stance of disagreement with his father (refusing, says Paris, “to accept of or profit by this absolution”) and then reversed himself, made up with Henry III, and became the leader of the royal army.12

  In the summer of 1263, Simon de Montfort began to agitate, openly, for armed resistance. By March 1264, the two armies—the barons behind Montfort, the royalists led by Prince Edward—had advanced towards each other and lay only nineteen miles apart. Raids, skirmishes, and plundering of nearby estates began.

  On May 14, the armies met at Lewes, on the southern coast of England. Edward, in charge of one wing of the attack, crushed the barons facing him and chased them well into the countryside. But the rest of the royal army faltered. By the time Edward returned, Henry III had surrendered after his horse was killed underneath him, and the royal forces had scattered.

  Edward too was forced to surrender. Montfort, leader of the baronial cause, was now the most powerful man in England. He put Edward and Henry under courteous guard, in the Tower of London. “From that time,” Paris records, “he showed himself less inclined to treat for peace . . . because he had the king and the whole kingdom in his power.” For fifteen months, the monarchy remained under his control.13

  Early in 1265, Edward managed to talk his guards into allowing him to ride outside the city gates for exercise. When they agreed, he challenged them to a race, and then quickly outrode them and took refuge with royal partisans at the castle of Wigmore. He found plenty of support for the royal cause outside of London: “Thus released from his imprisonment,” Paris says, “Edward assembled a large army, as numbers flocked to join him.” The war began again. Clashes in July and early August both ended with Simon de Montfort’s army driven backwards. In the third encounter between the two forces, at the field of Evesham on August 4, Edward’s army massacred the opposition in a brief violent two-hour confrontation. Simon de Montfort himself died in the fighting.14