FrenchKate

April 11: Why feudalism is a terrible, terrible form of government

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Raymond V, Count of Toulouse, was in a complicated position when he granted Toulousains the privilege of running their own city in 1189. It was an even bigger mess than I described.

First, there was the hundred years of abandonment. William IV, Count of Toulouse (1040 - 1094) left the County of Toulouse in 1088 on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where he died in 1094. His younger brother, Raymond, Count of St-Gilles, (1042-1105) succeeded him as Raymond IV, but in 1096 he became a leader of the first crusade and left for the Holy Land. He gave charge of Toulouse to his illegitimate son, Bertrand (1065 - 1112) who followed his father to the Holy Land where he died in 1112. The mortality was very high in the Holy Land.

Bertrand, Count of Toulouse, was succeeded by his young half-brother, Alphonse Jourdain (1103 - 1148) who was born in the Holy Land and baptised in the Jordan river. Despite odds, Alphonse Jourdain  managed to both secure his inheritance (with the help of the Toulousains) in 1123 and leave a male heir, Raymond V (1134 - 1194).

Second, complications arose from disputes over who was the rightful Count of Toulouse. William IV (who died in 1094) had a daughter, Philippa (1073 - 1118) who was married to the powerful duke of Aquitaine. She claimed that she was the rightful Countess of Toulouse, not her uncle, Raymond IV. Off and on between 1096 and 1123, she and her husband bribed the Toulousains with gifts and battled Bertrand, Alphonse Jourdain and others for control of Toulouse until, finally, everyone lost interest or died. For a few years things were quiet and Alphonse Jourdain was able to patch together some piece and stability. But Philippa was the grandmother of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and when Eleanor married Louis VII (1120 - 1180) in 1137, the royal couple revived the claim and beseiged Toulouse in 1141. That came to nothing, but in 1146, Alphonse Jourdain, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII all took off on the 2nd Crusade. Rumor has it that Eleanor poisoned Alphonse Jourdain in Caesarea in 1148. Upon his death, his son, Raymond V (Eleanor's third cousin) succeeded as Count of Toulouse.

The "Who gets to be Count of Toulouse" question was further complicated in 1152 when Eleanor of Aquitaine divorced King Louis VII of France and married King Henry II of England. Thereupon, all her estates between Toulouse and the Atlantic and her claim to the County of Toulouse, came under English control. Eleanor's ex, Louis VII, developed a strong strategic interest in the County of Toulouse. A sign of his interest was that he arranged a marriage between his sister, Constance, and Raymond V in 1153. When Raymond V divorced Constance in 1165, the chill from the French court was palpable. So to the north, Raymond V had the alarmed and offended French, and to the West he was facing the aggressive English.

A third complicating issue for the Count of Toulouse was the general belligerence of his neighbors to the south and east. These noble thugs seemed to play a constant game of land grab. There were skirmishes with the Count of Barcelona to the south and the Counts of Provence and the Trencavels of Carcassone to the east, sometimes with all three at once. The Count of Toulouse faced threats on all sides. He thought he had settled things with the Trencavels when he arranged a dynastic marriage between his heir, Raymond, and Beatrice of Béziers, sister of Roger II Trencavel, but that backfired when the girl turned out to be a Cathar, possibly even a parfait.

The final issue complicating the life of Raymond V--a problem that escalated under his son, Raymond VI, and ultimately defeated his grandson, Raymond VII, the last Count of Toulouse--was the growth of the Cathar heresy. In the immediate moment, it is hard to convince Bishops that you care about Orthodoxy when your son is married to a Cathar so Beatrice was repudiated in 1189 (the same year that Raymond V granted so many privileges to Toulousains.) She spent the rest of her life in a Cathar convent. But that wasn't enough to convince the Catholic church, of course. Ultimately, the French and the church joined sides and the resulting Albigensian crusade (1204-1222) both ended the County of Toulouse and cleansed it of heresy.

From wikipedia, two maps of France showing some of the territory that everyone was fighting over.

April 9: a bit of Toulousain history

 

The Capitole has been on the same site since 1190. The town fathers purchased land and buildings to house their new city government, a privilege which had been formally granted to the Toulousains by Raymond V, Count of Toulouse, in a ceremony in Saint-Pierre-la-Cuisine in January 1189.

It was a complicated period for the Count. The Counts of Toulouse had been absent from their lands for some time, and the Toulousains had taken advantage of their absence and political blunders to take over a number of responsibilities. The first mention of a city council was in 1152 in Raymond V's father's time. These first capitouls served as judges of sorts; they sought to get to the truth of cases by torturing the accused with boiling water, hot irons and duels.

Unlike his father, Raymond V had jealously guarded his rights over Toulouse--the capitouls had been reduced to dealing with water issues--but by 1189 he was 55 years old, and he needed friends. On the one side, he was getting heat over the Cathar heresy from various bishops and the King of France. On the other, the English were harrassing the Count's territories from their territories in Aquitaine, now administered by Richard the Lion-Hearted in the name of his father, Henry II. In 1188, Richard, threatening here and there on the borders of the Count of Toulouse's lands, had menaced Toulouse, but its citizens remained loyal, more or less, to the count (they had asked the King of France for protection since the Count was absent.)

The Count of Toulouse needed to acknowledge the loyalty of the townsmen. Whether you call the granting of town privileges a reward, a bribe or extortion by the town fathers depends on your perspective. Whatever the motives, the "Republic of Toulouse" had begun.

The location of the new town hall was about as far from the Chateau Narbonnais--the count's seat of power-- as it was possible to be. It nestled against the old Roman wall next to one of its three gates,the one that led north to the popular suburbs that had grown up between the Roman wall and Saint Sernin (consecrated in 1096).

The first image is an artist's recreation of the Roman wall and its northern gate around 250 AD. This is from a charming and informative brochure published by the maire of Toulouse. The second image is the model in musée St Raymond of the gate as it was excavated in the 1990s. The third image is a crude screenshot of modern Toulouse with the rough line of the roman wall marked in and the sites of the Capitole and the Chateau Narbonnais. Yes, I've misspelled the name of the chateau on the screenshot. I'll fix that when I have time.

April 3: Toulouse City Walls

I don't know if the history of the old walls of Toulouse can generalize to other walled cities. I think of walls as fairly permanent structures, but the walls of Toulouse were built, fortified, and demolished at least twice.

The original Roman walls were built in the 1st century. Toulouse was well inside the pax Romana guaranteed by Roman empire, but the walls were erected as a mark of Toulouse's distinction. This wall, roughly three kilmeters long, had three gates and enclosed an area of 90 hetares (220 acres).

In the 3rd century, menaced by barbarians as the empire began to crumble, the Toulousains fortified the Roman walls. The foundations of this wall were built in haste--building materials included fragments of statuary and bas-relief from destroyed buildings. And by the 5th century, Rome had handed over southwestern France to the Visigoths; well-fortified Toulouse became the capitol of the Visigothic kingdom.

Eight hundred years later, in 1213, Toulouse was captured by wicked Simon de Montfort during the Albigensian crusade. de Montfort ordered the Toulousains to destroy their walls, knock down their towers and fill in the moat which surrounded the city. Before the work was finished, a group of Toulousain women lobbed rocks from a tribuchet and crushed Simon de Montfort' skull. This halted demolition for a few years, but in 1229, the peace treaty that ended the Albigensian crusade signed by the King of France and the Count of Toulouse still required the demolition of Toulouse's walls.

Then, just a little over 100 years later, in 1345, the Toulousains were authorized to rebuild their walls. The Hundred Years War had started and this time the Toulousains needed to defend the city against the "Black Prince" and his English armies. These new wall enclosed land that had formerly been outside the city wall (notably Saint-Sernin.)

By the 18th century, these walls were choking the city. Most were knocked down in urban renewal projects in the 1860s.  But traces remain.

The first picture is one that I took last summer. This tower is visible from the jardin Royale, and it gives you some idea of how big these towers were.

The second picture is a satellite view from google maps. The red circles are existing towers--the one pictured above is the circle in the upper right corner-- the line connecting them gives you an idea of the placement of the old wall.

The lower tower was incorporated into the wall of a prison, Haut-Murat (third photo) The building is from the 19th century and had a tower at both ends. One remains but the other is a shell (last photo)

May 30: A last note on St Edmund

I have difficulty believing that the relics of St Edmund were simply left behind when Prince Louis abruptly broke the siege of Toulouse in 1218. It makes more sense to suppose that the body of St Edmund was delivered to Saint-Sernin as a diplomatic gift from the King of France on some special occasion, now forgotten.

For example, consider the day that Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, signed the Treaty of Paris in 1229, the treaty which formally ended the Albigensian Crusade, married off his heir to the King's brother and guaranteed the end of independent Occitan culture. Doesn't that seem like a good day for the King of France to offer the relics of St Edmund to Saint-Sernin, a very gracious gesture under the circumstances? "Look," the gift would communicate, "here's the body of another king, a saint, who got his head chopped off while defending his country against invaders." The message would not be lost on Raymond VII.

The Hundred Years War provided other occasions when a special diplomatic gift might have been welcome. For example, in 1350 when the walls of Toulouse--knocked down after the Treaty of Paris--were rebuilt (at the city's expense) to defend the city against the English. There would be a kind of delightful revenge in having the bones of England's patron saint resting on the French side of the border. Or in 1420, when the King muscled in on Toulouse's autonomy by establishing his law court there, the gift of a saint famed for defending his kingdom against invaders would have special significance..

But this is just speculation on my part. The tradition is that the remains were found by Toulousains pillaging the camp left when Crown Prince Louis abruptly raised the siege of Toulouse and departed north with his army.

But Edmund was of greater significance to the English than I can appreciate. Before forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, the barons made a pilgrimage to Bury St Edmund and quarrelled over who would carry St Edmund's standard. In 1415, King Henry V rode to Agincourt under St Edmund's standard.

A quick google search turns up arguments that his body resided at Bury St Edmund until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1549. Anything else seems terribly wrong to these modern Englishmen. They prefer to believe that the body was buried on English soil and lost to time at the dissolution. Other Englishman argue that St. Edmund should be restored as patron saint of England, replacing St. George (who emerged only in the middle of the 14th century.)

Who should be the Patron Saint of England is an English decision, but arguing that the French didn't carry off the body of St. Edmund seems wishful thinking. In 1539, when envoys of Henry VIII came to Bury St. Edmund to open St Edmund's casket and remove and burn the relics, they found only a few nail clippings and hair. I assume the monks at the Abbey faceda hard choice in 1217 after the French rode off with the body of the Saint who had brought fame and riches to the Abbey. They could on as if nothing had changed or they could go public with the news that the relic of Patron Saint of England had been downgraded from well-preserved body to nail clippings. Not checking inside the casket for several hundred years seems to be prudent self-interest, under the circumstances.

But one mystery remains. In 1901, at the instigation of the Pope, the relics of St Edmund were repatriated from Saint Sernin to England, intended for the high altar of Westminster Cathedral, but they have been housed at the Fitzalan chapel at Arundel Castle, near Brighton in Sussex, to this day. In the 1980s, a historical commission was formed to validate the relics, but the only hint of what this commission found is an elusive comment on the internet that "they were found to be not quite what people supposed so the French bishop won on points."So what did carbon dating find?

photo 1: a remnant of the 1350 wall of Toulouse

photo 2: the gatehouse at the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds

photos 3 & 4: Arundel Castle in Sussex

last image, three gold crowns on a blue background: St Edmunds standard

 

May 29: The remains of St Edmund arrive in Toulouse

Although they are not mentioned in the records of Saint-Sernin until 1425, according to the French tradition, the bones of St Edmund came to Toulouse with Prince Louis in 1219 when he beseiged Toulouse in the closing stages of the Albigensian crusade. By this time, Simon de Montfort was dead--his skull crushed by a stone lobbed by women from the walls of Toulouse--and Raymond VI of Toulouse had regained many of the lands that he had lost. 

Louis came reluctantly, however. His first stop was Marmande, a village north of Toulouse. Marmande had been under seige for six months,  but when Louis surrounded it with his army--twenty bishops, Cistericians and Benedictine monks, three-three Counts with their knights and footsoldiers, German and Flemish mercenaries and French volunteers--the town quickly fell. The inhabitants , every man, woman and child, were slaughtered and the town was left in flames.

Fully aware of the fate of the citizens of Marmande, Toulousains made desparate preparations as Louis's army marched south. They packed in food supplies and fortified the walls, the garrison was readied. When Louis and his army arrived, there was an initial attack, which the Toulousains were able to resist, and then Louis's army, large enough to encircle the city, made camp before the walls of the city. For six weeks Louis's army  encamped there, and then, on August 1, forty-five days after his arrival, Louis broke camp, burned his siege engines, released his prisoners and left. The Toulousains were flabbergasted. According to the French source, they raided Louis's abandoned camp and there found the remains of St Edmund.

The first image is from the Siege of Orléans which occurred in 1429, several hundred years after the siege of Toulouse. But I imagine that it felt very much the same to the citizens of Toulouse.

The second image of St Edmund is a rare 14th century wall painting from a St Mary's church in Lakenheath, Suffolk.

 

 

 

May 27: How did the relicts of St. Edmund get to Saint Sernin, part 1?

  A month ago I wrote about St Edmund of England and the mystery of how the relicts of an English saint ended up in Saint Sernin in Toulouse. A French reader found an answer in the French archives. The body of St Edmund was taken from the monastery at Bury St Edmund by the Crown Prince of France, Louis.

But this explanation astonishs. Prince Louis of France was in England? What was the Crown Prince of France doing in England?

The answer to that also astonishes. Louis was in England because he had been acclaimed as King of England! The English barons were so fed up with King John that they invited Louis to come be their King instead. With the backing of these English barons, Louis landed in England in 1216 with 1200 knights, marched on and captured London and was proclaimed King in Westminster Abbey (although not actually crowned because the Archbishop of Canterbury was detained by Pope Honorius in Rome). This episode is known to history as the First Baron's War.

But then things went badly for Louis. John died suddenly in October, 1216, and the fickle English barons rallied to John's nine-year old son, who was declared Henry III. Then, Louis's army was defeated at the Battle of Lincoln and his navy, under the command of a pirate known as "Eustace the Monk," was defeated in a sea battle and Eustace was killed.

So back to France went Louis, where he signed the Treaty of Lambeth, abdicating all claim to the throne of England. But, according to some records, on his route out of England, he picked up the bones of St. Edmund, patriotic defender of England against foreign invaders, on his way out of town, "by grace or by act of war."

More on this tomorrow.

photo 1: shows an manuscript of the Battle of Lincolm

photo 2 shows the Battle of Sandwich in which the French under Eustace the monk were defeated.

photo 3: shows the route from Lincoln to the Abbey at Bury St Edmond.

image 4: The shrine of St Edmund in Bury St Edmund.

May 13: One more thing at Porte Miègeville

Above the the Porte Miègeville entrance to Saint Sernin, the cornice is supported by eight sculpted images, including the face of unveiled moon, the sun emerging from a cloud, a wildcat devouring its foot, a grape vine.  One finds this architectural feature--corbels and joists decorated with faces, monsters (real or imagined), foliage--in Romanesque architecture throughout Southern France, Spain and England.

I have been trying without success to discover more about this particular form of small-scale sculpture. When did it start? When did it stop?

Obviously the images have hidden meanings that are meant to insruct. Pope Gregory the Great wrote that "What scripture is to the educated, images are to the ignorant...they read in them what they cannot read in books."

And according to one medieval writer, around 1000 AD, "this visible image represents an invisible truth." But exactly what is represented by the "the moon unveiled" in the first photo?

 

 

May 9: At least one might balk at the expense!

The last of four capitals surrounding the Porte Miègeville is the Chapiteau des lions, a naturalistic sculpture of lions in foliage. So we find lions in three of the six sculptures at the Porte Miègeville; in addition to these lions, we saw the Lions in the King David console and the Lion skins on the Gemini console.

Possibly their meaning is taken from Proverbs 28:1..."The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion." That seems like a fitting sentiment at a Pilgrim's church.

Or, possibly, there was no deep meaning. Maybe this art was just fanciful sculptor play, the kind of capital that drove St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), the founder of the Cisterian reforms, to exclaim,

"What excuse can there be for these ridiculous monstrosities in the cloisters where the monks do their reading, extraordinary things at once beautiful and ugly? Here we find filthy monkeys and fierce lions, fearful centaurs, harpies, and striped tigers, soldiers at war, and hunters blowing their horns. Here is one head with many bodies, there is one body with many heads. Over there is a beast with a serpent for its tail, a fish with an animal's head, and a creature that is horse in front and goat behind, and a second beast with horns and the rear of a horse. All round there is such an amazing variety of shapes that one could easily prefer to take one's reading from the walls instead of from a book. One could spend the whole day gazing fascinated at these things, one by one, instead of meditating on the law of God. Good Lord, even if the foolishness of it all occasion no shame, at least one might balk at the expense."

Photos:

1) The Chapiteau des lions

2) the same, in situ

April 21: Old photos of Saint Sernin

Saint Sernin has three official entrances. The double doors of the Western front are one; the second is Porte Miègeville on the south side; and the third entrance is formed by the two great doors in the southern transept, the Gate of the Counts, Porte des Comtes.

  I found cool old photos of the three entrances on the French government's culture site (the photographer was Henri Deneux.)

These photos were taken before 1927 when the left hand stub of the western facade was raised to be symmetrical with the right side. I would guess from around 1900, from the wagon and the clothes of the children.

Image 1 is the Western facade.

Image 2 is Porte Miègeville, one of the great works of Romanesque art, was the principal entrance to Saint Sernin. Miègeville comes from the Occitan for "middle"--this was the entrance from the middle of town. You can make out some of its beautiful detailing. Other details here--the two circles at the top--date to Viollet le Duc's 19th century "improvements."

Image 3 shows the Porte des Comtes in the southern transept. This entrance takes its name, I believe, from the little enfeu just to the left of the doors, where several comtes of Toulouse were interred in Gallo-Roman sarcophaguses.

Saint Sernin was consecrated in 1096 by Pope Urban II, who was making a tour of Southern France to keep himself useful while Rome was controlled by the powerful Anti-Pope, Clement III, during the Investiture Controversy. In addition to consecrating churches in exile, Pope Urban II launched the first crusade, the one in which the Count of Toulouse, Raymond IV or Raymond St Gilles, played such a large role. The last count, Raymond VII, died in 1249 so the Counts of Toulouse entered and departed from the gate named for them for only 150 years.

You can see the stylistic similarities in the three entrances. The rounded Romanesque arch is distinctive. Each door is defined by columns. I think the photos make clear how unfinished the Western facade was.

April 18: Sculpture of Saint Sernin

One of the glories of Romanesque architecture are its small scale sculptures--the capitals of columns,  the sculpture surrounding doors, the tympana above doors. Many of St. Sernin's beautiful sculptures can be attributed to master mason, Raymond Gayrond, who died in 1118.

Over the centuries, and especially after the Revolution, when Toulouse earned itself the reputation as "the Ville of Vandalism," many of its wonderful old buildings, Saint Sernin included, were destroyed, disfigured or maimed. Toulouse dismantled priceless sculptures and shipped them off to the highest bidders.

One of these treasures from Saint Sernin,a lovely head of a young man, found its way to the Metropolitan Museum (first photo here). Its original context, function and meaning have been lost, but it is made from the same marble, and it shares its style, size, and depth of carving with one the most famous sculptures from Saint Sernin--now in the Musée des Augustins--the mysterious "Sign of the Lion and Sign of the Ram" (the second sculpture here).

Between the two female figures, an inscription reads, "Sign of the Ram / Sign of the Lion / This was made at the time of Julius Caesar” and no one knows what any of this means though many have speculated.

Some speculate that both sculptures once adorned the portal of the western facade, others place them in the Southern Porte des Comptes, but again, no one knows for sure.