Link to Chronology
We resume after a longish break
Various complications in my "real" life have prevented my building up a reserve of chapters to start in on. None the less, I feel it is time to resume, as I'm hitting some quite interesting material about the development of the bourgeoisie in the 14th and 15th century. I'm hoping I can stay ahead of my posts here.
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter IV
Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII
1. The Cause of the Crisis
p356 ... On December 12th, 1294... [the Roman Curia] elected... a Roman noble, Benedetto Gaetani, who took the name of Boniface VIII.
p357 In this person the last pope of the line of Innocent III and Innocent IV ascended the throne of St Peter. His manifest aim was to restore to the Holy See the splendor, the prestige, the moral authority, and the universal political domain which it had enjoyed in their time... There was nothing new in... [his attempting to affirm] the primacy in the Church of the successor of St. Peter, and of reminding the world that the temporal power was subordinate to the Church, since, as part of the Church, it could make no pretension to shake off the authority of the head of the Church. There was nothing new in this, nothing that had not already been pointed out by Nicholas I and Gregory VII, clearly formulated by Innocent III, and logically demonstrated by the Scholastics... Boniface had merely summarized and repeated the principles of his great predecessors, without adding anything to them.
Why, then, did they excite such a storm of indignation, and result in catastrophe? Simply on account of their immutability. They were not in accordance with political realities; times were changed, and what the Pope, in conformity with tradition, promulgated as the essential truth, now excited the opposition of the most advanced nations in Europe, since both kings and peoples were agreed in regarding them as an insupportable encroachment on their most legitimate rights and interests.
Nothing to do with religion or politics is ever set in stone.
...[Boniface VIII] found Edward I [of England] no more tractable than Philip the Fair [of France], and the English Parliament repudiated his claims no less vigorously than the States General in Paris...
p358 ...the [English Parliament's] prerogative of granting taxation -- was formally acknowledged [by the Crown] in 1297. Henceforth the nation and the sovereign were associated in the government of the country. Although the personal power of the prince was subjected to definite limitations, and although, alone among his European peers, he had to renounce the possibility of waging wars inspired by mere dynastic ambition, and apply himself solely to enterprises approved and subsidized by his people, yet, on the other hand, what strength he derived from this compliance! From the end of the 13th century the English policy was truly... a national policy...
...what France had become she owed exclusively to the monarchy. It was the monarchy that had liberated her from the particularism of the feudal system, had defended her against external enemies, had protected her nascent cities, and had endowed her with financial and administrative institutions which safeguarded the people against violence and exaction... Thus in France the king enjoyed the same popularity which in England was enjoyed by the Parliament...
Philip (IV) the Fair, who succeeded to his father, Philip the Bold, in 1285, made a new addition to the kingdom on ascending the throne. His wife was the heiress of the Kingdom of Navarre, and what was more important, of the County of Champagne, which was united to the royal domain. With the exception of Guyenne, in the possession of the King of England, Brittany, which had always maintained an independence which was not particularly embarrassing, on account of the outlying position of the country, and Flanders, all the great fiefs had now returned under the direct power of the Crown...
I'm not going to go into the methods of his reign. His reliance on "men of obscure birth, who had emerged from the bourgeoisie or the petite noblesse to act as his agents.
p362 ... Hitherto [the Crown] has always supported [in the Low Countries] the house of Dampierre against the rival dynasty of Avesnes, and had helped it to extend its influence over Namur, Liege, Guelders and Luxembourg. In this way it set up the power of one of its vassals in those portions of the ancient Lotharingia which were dependent on Germany, and its support of the Count of Flanders against the Count of Hainaut was part of its skillful policy of encroachment at the expense of the Empire... In 1293, breaking with his past... [Jean d'Avesne] took his place among the proteges of the Capet dynasty. In this way Philip the Fair became the ally of the mortal enemy of the House of Flanders, whose suzerain he was, and to whom, according to feudal law, he owed comfort and assistance!...
p363 The social unrest which was manifest in the Flemish cities from the middle of the 13th century offered the royal policy a fresh occasion to intervene, which it did immediately with extraordinary success. In the great industrial centers of Gand, Bruges, Ypres, Lille and Douai, the masses of the workers -- weavers, fullers, clothworkers, etc. -- were inspired by a veritable class hatred of the patricians who constituted the municipal government. They accused the aldermen of administering the affairs of the municipalities to the sole advantage of the wealthy bourgeoisie, of sacrificing the workers to the interests of the rich wool and cloth merchants, and of reducing them to starvation wages... In 1280 a general revolt broke out simultaneously in all the Flemish and Walloon cities, leading to veritable street battles in several of them. Guy de Dampierre had taken this opportunity of intervening. Incapable, unassisted, of dealing with the patrician municipalities, which for some time past had openly defied his authority, he adopted an attitude of great benevolence to the people, in order to induce them to defend his princely prerogatives. [Thus] Threatened by the alliance between the count and the "vulgar," the patricians immediately sought a protector in the suzerain of their prince, the King of France. Already, in 1275, under the reign of Philip the Bold, the Thirty Nine of Gand, [Footnote: Sheriffs, representatives of the patriciate who governed the commune.] dismissed by Guy de Dampierre, had appealed to the Parlement of Paris. The Parlement had pronounced an equitable judgement... But the legists of Philip the Fair had before long to replace the impartiality of the law by the parti pris of politics... Mere "sergeants" were despatched to the Flemish cities as "guardians," in the name of the Crown; the fleur-de-lys banner was flown from the city belfries, conferring upon then an immunity which enabled them to confront their seigneur and his bailiffs with flat defiance. The arrogant plutocracy which dominated the cities had nothing to fear now that it could take shelter beneath the formidable emblem of the royal power. Henceforth it could laugh at the efforts of the count and the "vulgar." It gloried in the name of leliarts (lily-men) which the people conferred upon it as a term of abuse. To the novel methods of the pitiless policy now directed against him, Guy de Dampierre, threatened from without by the alliance of Philip the Fair with Jean d'Avesnes, and from within by the king's protectorate over his great cities, could have devised no means of resistance, had not the war which had just broken out again between France and England inspired him with the hope of opposing force with force.
I'm finding these peeks into the workings of the cities the most interesting part of these chapters. That there was already a plutocracy with a patriciate and, my favorite, "the Thirty Nine of Gand," already in the late 13th century is remarkable. The rivalry of the kings of France and England is much less interesting, though how we are getting from this stage of history to the stage I'm more familiar with (during the wars of religion) I am curious to learn.
Edward I defeats the Scottish king, Baliol, at Dunbar in 1296, ending the Kingdom of Scotland. He then moves against Philip the Fair in the Low Countries in alliance with Guy de Dampierre and Adolphus of Nassau. Unfortunately, as soon as Edward landed in Flanders the Scots revolted again. He was forced to make a quick peace with Philip and return to deal with Scotland. Flanders was confiscated by the Crown. Holland and Zeeland were inherited by Philip's ally Jean d'Avesnes, the Count of Hainaut. The new king of Germany, Albert of Austria, was defeated when he advanced to "Nimeguen."
p366 ...Already the French were beginning to regard the Rhine as the natural frontier of the kingdom. The power of the Capets had attained its apogee.
The final result of the Pope's Crusades
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Sorry for the delay. It's been a little crazy around here.
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter I
The Papacy and the Church
2. The Papal Policy
p298 It is often said that the 13th century was a theocracy. But we must define the term. If by theocracy we mean a state of affairs in which the Church enjoys an incomparable prestige and in which no one can escape from its moral ascendancy, the 13th century was undoubtedly a theocracy. But it was not a theocracy if theocracy consists in confiding to the Church itself the guidance and government of political interests. [Footnote: Theoretically the Popes aimed at theocracy, although they never actually achieved it, but it was acknowledged that they possessed... a rudimentary power of supreme arbitration, which... often excited opposition, though not quite open conflict.]
p299 [About the Fourth Crusade] ...Innocent III... still inspired by Christian idealism, made preparations for a new expedition [after the Third Crusade achieved nothing] with the intention of attacking Egypt... This time... the kings had had their fill of crusading... The princes of the Low Countries, Champagne, and Blois, set out on the Crusade; but the Venetians, the owners of the fleet, who had not been paid in full for their services (these expeditions were becoming more costly, and the nobles were ruined), persuaded the Crusaders to attack Zara, a Christian city which incommoded their trade in the Adriatic. The Pope excommunicated them, but in vain... The Pope was opposed... [to the plan to attack Constantinople] However, his opposition was ignored... On May 16th [1203, after seizing Constantinople] Baldwin, who had the largest number of soldiers, was elected Emperor and crowned by a Papal legate. Innocent III had suddenly reversed his policy. His confidential agent, the Venetian Tomaso Morosini, was created Patriarch of Constantinople. However, it was not really the Church that profited by this expedition, but mainly Venice, who founded a magnificent colonial empire in the ancient Byzantine provinces.
p301 ...in history nothing is improvised, and here once more we can see how untrue it is that little causes lead to great results. Here the events were on a small scale, and so were their results. The Westerners could enter Constantinople by assault, but they could not keep it... In 1261 Michael Palaeologus, with the help of the Genoese, who were jealous of the Venetians, recaptured Constantinople and restored the Empire. Of the union of the Greek and Roman Churches not a trace was left... The Empire was weaker than it had been [since it was unable to reclaim the lost islands from Venice], less capable of resisting the Turks. This was the practical result of the Crusade!
p303 ...Europe had no need of Syria and Jerusalem. She took them in a fit of enthusiasm and had not the strength to retain them. Their retention would have involved a permanent crusade, and the transformation of all Europe into a military order. This was impossible. Moreover, the agricultural civilization which had made the levy en masse possible was gradually disappearing, so that each successive Crusade was recruited with greater difficulty. The urban populations, and the rural populations who maintained them, could no longer be uprooted. The knights were ruining themselves, and they had to be paid... In the Christian sense of the word, in the sense understood and intended by the Popes, the Crusade had failed, and with it, the pontifical policy. It was shattered against the realities of a Europe whose conditions of political and social life had evolved while the papacy had remained faithful to its ideals... Taking it all in all, the universal policy had been as unsuccessful in the spiritual sphere, with the Popes, as with the Emperors in the temporal sphere.
And yet, the resulting rise of the cities and of the bourgeoisie also lead in time to the global spread of the Roman Church (and the Protestant faiths) in the baggage of colonialism and empire.
History really is just "Good luck. Bad luck. Who knows?" writ large.
Rise and rot of Papal power
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter I
The Papacy and the Church
1. The Situation of the Papacy in the 13th Century
p291 ...Neither the humiliation of Henry IV at Canossa, nor that of Frederick Barbarossa at Venice, nor that of Otto IV at Bouvines, was the humiliation of the civil power before priestly arrogance. In reality, the conflict was not a conflict between State and Church: it was an intestine struggle within the Church itself. What the Emperors wanted was to compel the Popes to recognize them as governing the universal Church... Their pretensions thus imperiled, in every country, that temporal independence of which, by the strangest of confusions, they had been regarded as the defenders. The cause of the Pope was the cause of the nation, and with the liberty of the Church was bound the liberty of the European States; to such an extent that the victory of Philip Augustus at Bouvines was the triumph of both causes.
p292 ...the collapse of Otto IV did not mean the end of the Empire... Yet we may say that from the beginning of the 13th century the historic role of the Empire was finished. It ceased to exist as a universal power, as a European authority... they [the later Emperors] were actually merely the sovereigns, or to speak more exactly, the suzerains, of the medley of principalities and municipal republics constituted by the Germany of the late Middle Ages and the modern epoch, and which from the 14th century onwards was known as the "Holy Roman Empire of the German nations."
After the fall of the Empire only one universal power was left in Europe: that of the Pope...The whole government of the Church depended on the Pope... All the bishops now swore fealty to the Pope; no religious order could be founded without his authorization... The canon law, whose most ancient monument, the Decree of Gratianus, was proclaimed in Rome in 1150, was rapidly enlarged under those great jurists, Innocent III and Innocent IV. By the end of the 13th century it was complete... [Discussion of the various taxes throughout Europe that funded the Pope] It was these taxes that constituted the treasury of the Holy See, and enabled it to play the universal role which was allotted to it: to subsidize the Crusades, to maintain the missions, and to add to its spiritual influence the purely worldly influence of gold... On the other hand, it must be noted that this financial power, which was nourished and maintained by the Catholic hierarchy in every part of Europe, was made possible only by the economic progress due to the revival of trade... when the circulation of money was an accomplished fact, when it was replacing, more and more completely, the system of revenues in kind, the fiscal system of the pontiff was free to develop within the extreme limits of the pontifical authority... they [pontifical taxes] are the consequence of the economic transformation which was at the same time beginning to render possible a regular system of taxation in the various States. And it is interesting to see how the Pope took advantage... of the capitalist organization which was beginning to evolve in the great Italian communes. The men whom he entrusted with the collection and transmission of his revenues were merchants, the bankers of Siena, and afterwards those of Florence. The Popes, even earlier than the lay sovereigns, were in intimate relations with the financiers, and the fact that the latter had to collect their revenues in all parts of Europe, convert them by exchange into Italian or international money, and place them at the Pope's disposal, without the necessity of transporting them, at the cost of great expense and danger, across mountains, contributed in no small degree to the origin of the first banking operations and the first letters of credit, the most remote ancestors of our bills of exchange... Like ecclesiastical law, theology was essentially an achievement of the 13th century. The scholastic philosophy of the previous centuries finds its climax in the Summa of St Thomas (1274), in which Christian morality and the Christian dogmas are expounded in accordance with the Aristotelian method.
p294 ...men no longer sought to attain salvation through mysticism, through immediate contact with God. Everywhere the Church interposed... What men were now seeking to achieve was the government of their souls by the Church, itself governed by the Vicar of Jesus Christ. And these souls were accepted in the bodies which they animated; which is to say, that society was accepted; heroism was not required of it, nor were men expected to desert the world. They had only to obey the Church, and allow it to lead them to salvation. Every human being, every profession was subject to the Church, and therefore to the Roman pontiff... All those who had received baptism belonged to the Church, and had to bow to its teachings, under penalty of penitence, or excommunication, or, in case of need, of taking part in a Crusade. Here was a majestic unity, a complete doctrine, which imposed itself upon a world of believers, all of whom accepted it...
p296 At the moment when the Church... had arrived at this summit of power... a new adversary rose up against it: heresy. Since the Arian heresy, which the Goths had brought from the East in the 4th century, the Latin Catholic world, for many centuries, had unanimously professed the same faith, and acknowledged the same dogmas, presenting a notable contrast... to the religious disputes which, down to the 10th century, had never ceased to trouble the Greek Church... In the West... there was no philosophical tradition, no learning outside the ranks of the clergy; there was no contacts with civilizations professing different religions, no social conditions liable to direct men's minds toward dangerous innovations. How could faith have been disputed, in a society living in isolation... and in which the Church, the only literate body in the midst of universal ignorance, knew no other literature than the Latin -- that is, a completely orthodox literature? The 1th century, which saw the rise of the revival of commerce, the development of navigation, and the rise of the first cities, was also to see the first symptoms of restlessness appear in religious life. ...the Manichaean doctrines were trickling in from the East -- into Lombardy, and from Lombardy into France and Rhenish Germany. Few at first, their adepts became more numerous in the course of the 12th century, and... were concentrated more especially in the County of Toulouse and the region of Albi, whence their name of Albigenses. Even more mystical and ascetic than their orthodox contemporaries, they went so far as to reject in the name of the Spirit, the sole principle of life and truth, not only society, but the Church itself, corrupted as it was by wealth and power. In order to attain to Christ, whose only disciples they declared themselves to be, a man must divest himself of the whole terrestrial nature, arriving at a state of perfect purity. Hence their name of Cathars... [the "pure ones"] as greatly dreaded and abhorred in the 12th century as the name of Anabaptists was in the 16th, and from which is derived the word that denotes the heretic in the Germanic languages (Ketzer, Ketter). Like the Anabaptists, moreover, these visionaries menaced both the social and the religious order. They preached both the community of goods and the annihilation of the Church... Between 1208 and 1235 they were hunted down and exterminated in every part of Languedoc... [a Crusade preached by Innocent III] Until the appearance of Wycliffe nearly all the heretical sects -- Apostolics, Brothers of the Free Spirit, Begards, etc. -- the Waldenses alone excepted -- seem to have had some fundamental relation with the Cathar mysticism... The radicalism of their aspirations could never be realized in practice, and everywhere it excited the hostility of the social authorities. It was among the proletariat of the cities that they recruited most of their adherents; and this explains both the naivety of their communistic dreams and -- except for certain moments of crisis -- their somewhat restricted diffusion. Save in a few of the great industrial cities, the proletarian workers constituted only a very small minority of the bourgeoisie. The great majority of the bourgeois consisted of small employers, master craftsmen, etc.; in short, that middle class which is as hostile to capitalism as it is to communism.
p297 ...from the end of the 12th century the Church employed every means of persecuting and opposing heresy. It tolerated the Jews because they were outside the Church; but it could not tolerate heretics... If they refused to adjure their doctrines it cut them off from its communion; then, having passed its capital sentence on the soul, it delivered them to the secular power, which undertook to destroy the body... Before the 12th century we find... in the upper ranks of the clergy, the expression of doubts as to the legitimacy of inflicting the sentence of death on heretics. But no such doubts recurred after Innocent III had ascended the Papal throne... Orthodoxy, having become a body of doctrine which was imposed on all men and on all their activities, could no longer tolerate dissidence, and every individual opinion, every deviation from the norm, became a crime. The Order of the Dominicans, founded in 1216, devoted itself especially to the examination and persecution of heretics. Side by side with the ancient episcopal Inquisition there now appeared the pontifical Inquisition created by Gregory IX in 1233, a kind of universal police whose function it was to watch over the safety of dogma. ...anyone who placed himself outside the Church was regarded as a criminal. Did not the kings hold their power from God, and were they not the protectors of the Church?
