Constructing kingship

The Capetian monarchs of France and the early Crusades

James Naus

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781526100450
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Crusading kings such as Louis IX of France and Richard I of England exert a unique hold on our historical imagination. For this reason, it can be easy to forget that European rulers were not always eager participants in holy war. The First Crusade was launched in 1095, and yet the first monarch did not join the movement until 1146, when the French king Louis VII took the cross to lead the Second Crusade. One contemporary went so far as to compare the crusades to 'Creation and man's redemption on the cross', so what impact did fifty years of non-participation have on the image and practice of European kingship and the parameters of cultural development? This book considers this question by examining the challenge to political authority that confronted the French kings and their family members as a direct result of their failure to join the early crusades, and their less-than-impressive involvement in later ones.

Part I

Crisis

1

Framing the Capetian miracle

The last Carolingian king, Louis V, died in the spring of 987 from injuries sustained from a fall from a horse. Since Louis left behind no legitimate heirs, his uncle, Duke Charles of Lorraine, claimed the throne for himself. The monk who chronicled this transformational moment in the history of the French monarchy alleged that Charles declared that ‘everyone knows that by hereditary right I should succeed my brother and my nephew’.¹ As it happened, though, not everybody agreed with this claim. Archbishop Adalbero of Reims led the opposition against Charles, delivering an impassioned speech on behalf of Hugh Capet, who, as duke of the Franks, made his claim to the throne on the basis of his descent from the Robertians. Adalbero argued that Charles, while perhaps a viable candidate from a hereditary perspective, did not possess the necessary wisdom to govern France effectively. The Archbishop thus presented the crowd with a clear choice: ‘If you wish misfortune on France, then elect Charles to the throne, but if you prefer that [France] is blessed, then crown as king the distinguished Duke Hugh’.² Hugh’s subsequent election and elevation to the throne in the summer of 987 was a monumental event in the history of France; the dynasty he founded would produce fourteen successive kings who would rule France uninterrupted for more than three and a half centuries.³ By the time the last Capetian, Charles IV, died in 1328, the French King was among the most powerful rulers in Europe, reigning over a strong and bureaucratically centralized State. This was a far cry from the kingdom that Hugh inherited; his power extended only to the limits of the Ile-de-France, and even there it was routinely challenged.

The seemingly miraculous survival (and slow but steady growth) of French royal institutions during Capetian rule has long captivated the interest of historians, who have sought in various ways to understand the mechanisms of transformation in this crucial period.⁴ It is precisely because of the contested nature of early French kingship that it is worth revisiting this issue. In the particular context of the crusades, the tenuous nature of early French kingship required a close relationship with a number of religious houses, which ultimately played a key role in shaping the crusading image of the French kings in the central Middle Ages.

The stock narrative of French royal institutional growth almost always celebrates the reign of Philip II Augustus in the late twelfth century as the key period of transition. After this period, French kingship looks more like it would during the reign of Charles IV in the fourteenth century, slowly pushing onto the pinnacle of royal power in the seventeenth century. It is important, however, not to read the climactic period back onto an early age. During most of the period covered by this book, French kingship was not so strong. In fact, it was quite weak. For much of the early Middle Ages the main element that separated the French kings from their (often more powerful) nobles was a claim to divine selection, what was commonly considered to be a sacred claim to rule. Indeed, it was this claim to a sacred status that allowed the Capetians to enjoy the status as ‘first among Franks’, when, according to one author, they were in reality mere ‘servant[s]‌ in the order of kings’.⁵ In the late eleventh century, on the eve of the First Crusade, the sacred foundation on which French kingship depended only tenuously survived the increasing challenges from lower-ranking nobles. This is a crucial point, because up to the period of the First Crusade, castellans and other low-ranking nobles had not had the ability to challenge the sacral status of the French kings, or, more to the point, were not able to claim such a prominence for themselves. They were able to enjoy the ability to exercise real power, particularly as the knightly class began being recognized as part of the nobility, thus recasting the value of fighting and power. And yet, no matter how strong a castellan or knight would become, none other than kings could claim a consecrated status. The First Crusade changed that, and this is a point that lies at the core of this book’s argument. To understand the gravity of the challenge to Capetian power that came from the successful capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by French nobles, it is important first to understand the stakes. Why did the failure of the Capetians to participate in the First Crusade present such a unique challenge to their power and prestige?

It is an issue worthy of revisiting, since any consideration of the Capetian status in the century before the First Crusade must confront a broader historiographical debate concerning the nature of social and political transformation taking place at this juncture. Many historians in the early twentieth century argued that the collapse of the Carolingian principalities in the tenth century was the precursor to a period of anarchy in which quotidian violence was the dominant theme in the sources.⁶ Although such a position has been challenged and often revised over the past several decades, nevertheless, scholars must recognize that during the course of the eleventh century the public power of the Carolingians had, in effect, disintegrated into territory locally dominated by a single family who controlled the castle. These men and women – called castellans – proved one of the main challengers to Capetian supremacy. It is significant that this group also contributed a good portion of the first crusaders. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the various ways by which the Capetians held off the challenges of these low-ranking nobles and castellans in the period leading up to the First Crusade. As we will see, a claimed sacred status, forged and preserved at a number of religious houses, provided enough counterweight against the rise of the castellans to keep them at bay. However, should the latter group acquire a claim to a sacred nature, the stakes for the Capetians could be very high indeed. Such is what happened on the First Crusade.

The basis of sacred kingship

The claim by generations of Capetian kings to be God’s anointed was based on a tradition that stretched back to the early Middle Ages. By the time Hugh Capet ascended the throne in 987, he was the inheritor to a late Carolingian vision of monarchy that held up claims of sacral status and legitimacy as the main components of kingship.⁷ These ideas were Carolingian in origin, and gained a special importance in the context of the fragmentation of the empire that followed the death of Charlemagne in 814. The inability of the later Carolingians to revive the centralized political structure of Charlemagne’s reign put them at risk of deposition by ambitious and treacherous nobles, and, thus, the claims of legitimacy and sacrality afforded them a claim to rule, seemingly in spite of their inability to do so.

Through the Treaty of Verdun (843), Charles the Bald inherited the Western Frankish Kingdom, his two surviving brothers gaining the remainder of the Carolingian territory. The early years of his reign were reasonably peaceful, but in 859, following the death of the third brother, Louis the German invaded Western Francia and attempted to overthrow Charles. He did so with the tacit approval of several disaffected nobles, who hoped that Louis would prove more generous in his gifts of land. So weak and unpopular was Charles that he could not muster an army, and was forced instead to flee to neighbouring Burgundy. When the recalcitrant nobles attempted to have Charles deposed in favour of his brother (whom they wanted to crown), the only thing that saved him and his office was the refusal by the Frankish bishops to crown a man they saw as a usurper king. It was not out of love of Charles that they did this, however, but rather from a firm belief that secular society did not have the right to depose an anointed king. In the ninth century, the anointing and coronation of a king recalled the Old Testament coronations of David and Saul, and perhaps the more recent imperial coronation of Charlemagne in 800. In all these cases, the anointing ceremony transferred to the new King a sacred status that could not be undone by a layman. Thus, at a time when kingship was weak by any practical standard, the legitimacy conferred by royal coronation functioned as a key mechanism by which the early French kings held onto their power and transferred it to their heirs. As late as 1108, Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis would describe the coronation of Louis VI in terms of his assumption of a sacred responsibility. ‘With the approval of the clergy and the crowd’, Suger recalled how ‘in addition to the other royal insignia, he [the Archbishop] solemnly handed him [Louis] the sceptre and the rod that symbolize the defence of the church and the poor’. From this point onward, Louis was referred to as ‘King of the French by the grace of God’.⁸ Indeed, legitimacy through coronation would be a key marker of early Capetian kingship. It is significant that the first king to feel strong enough not to have his son crowned as co-ruler during his own lifetime was Philip Augustus, who is often seen to have marked the transformation of French kingship to a strong and centralized monarchy.

The early medieval French kings were in need of the sacral claims to legitimacy since they were very often much weaker than the nobles around them. During the reigns of the first Capetians, in fact, their weakness was openly acknowledged. Based on the annals of Vendôme, the ineffectiveness of the first three members of that dynasty almost reached a comical level. The text describes Duke Hugh as ‘the son of Robert the pseudo-king, father of that other whom we saw ruling like a dead man. His son, Henry, the present kinglet, had departed not a whit from his father’s laziness.’⁹ As the effective power of the French kings continued to decline in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, the kings and those close to them began looking for new sources of royal propaganda. They found them in a small circle of religious houses that had historical connections to the French kings and thus a vested interested in promoting the image...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Crisis
• Part II Response
• Bibliography
• Index