THE mediæval chroniclers often make bare and uninspiring work of the barons and kings of feudal times. Conning their dry annals seldom stimulates our imaginations, unless we can reconstruct before our minds the world in which they lived. The life of the period of the earlier Capetians, when the royal power was weakest and feudal anarchy at its height, often seems further removed from us than the life of old Athens or Rome, despite the fact that Hugh Capet stands much nearer to us by chronology than does Pericles or Augustus. Anything like a perfect picture of feudal conditions is out of the question, even in a much longer book than this; and indeed matters were so confused in the Middle Ages that generalizations about how people lived, thought, and acted are more than ordinarily unsafe. Nevertheless certain things we may set down as typical and true; and even a very imperfect statement of the conditions under which the kings of France had to build up their monarchy will help us to realize the difficulty of their task and the slow and painful steps which the French people had to take before they could become a great modern nation.
In the Middle Ages there were really only three classes of people – feudal warriors, privileged priests, and servile peasants. We will consider now the life of the first two of these classes – the only two classes then usually reckoned to be of real importance.
The regular unit of life in the Middle Ages was not the city or the open farmstead. It was the feudal castle – a more or less pretentious fortification, situated if possible upon a lofty hill, and often with a little village of the rude huts of the lord's peasants clustered close beside it. During the earlier feudal period these castles were of a very primitive nature. In most cases they would be simply a single huge wooden, and then later a stone, tower – round or square, with merely a rude palisade with a ditch for outworks. The height would baffle any scaling-ladder. There would be no opening in its blank masonry until a considerable distance from the ground. Then the narrow door would be entered only by a flimsy wooden bridge, easy to demolish, or by a frail ladder – drawn up every night. Inside this tower there would be a series of dark, cavernous rooms, one above another, communicating by means of ladders. The sole purpose of such a comfortless castle was defense: and that defense by mere height and mass, not by any special skill in arranging the various parts.
Little by little this simple donjon became more complicated. The original tower was kept, but only as the last citadel of a great complex of fortifications. There developed outer palisades, moats, flanking towers, gates defended by drawbridge and portcullis, a great courtyard surrounded by fairly habitable buildings, with the donjon still frowning down as the center of all. Great ingenuity was displayed in making a series of concentric lines of defense. To force the outer barriers meant simply that you had a far stronger inner bulwark before you. The best kind of mediæval castle needed only a very small garrison. From behind its walls even an inferior baron could defy a kingly army. In this castle (more or less extensive according to the power and ambitions of its owner) would live the feudal lord (seigneur), his family, and some scores or hundreds of personal retainers – men-at-arms, "varlets," and serving-women. For a normal mediæval nobleman there was only one legitimate calling – warfare, or the preparation for the same. In the earlier part of the feudal period a French lad of noble family would learn to read and write only by exception. From his earliest manhood he would be taught the use of arms – to mount a "destrier," one of the ferocious war-horses; to leap and strike actively in ponderously heavy armor; to handle sword and lance with precision. Probably his father would send him to the court of his own feudal suzerain to be "nourished "; that is, taught all the things which pertained to a high-born warrior. Here as his lord's "squire" he would be given certain lessons in court ceremonial, in the courtesy due noblewomen, the waiting on banquets, fêtes; but his main education would still be military. When about twenty, his training would be complete. He would be a first-class warrior now; a match with his great horse and formidable armor for twenty less trained and poorly armed footmen. His lord at length would give him an elaborate feast, where the young noble would be given new spurs and girded with a new sword. Finally, the lord would give him the formal buffet on the head or shoulder – the accolade. "Be valiant!" he would enjoin. The young squire was henceforth a "knight" (miles).
In due time this youth, if an eldest son, might hope to inherit his father's castle. A younger son must turn adventurer and try to win a vacant fief – or a rich heiress – by the grace of some prince in whose service he fought. The times which were spent at the castle without actual warlike occupation could be whiled away by endless hunting, with dogs or hawks, with wild feasting (too often turning into bestial carousals), or with tournaments; that is, mock battles, in which the element of deadly risk was often great. The average feudal seigneur had few enough quiet avocations. He might make a winter's evening endurable by playing chess, or listening to a minstrel's tale of "the great deeds of Roland and Charlemagne"; but he was likely to find such diversions weary stuff.
The women of the castle were of like temper with the men. The seigneur's dame had probably been married to him by her parents while a very young girl, with little heed paid to her own wishes. At times he might treat her almost as brutally as he did his oafish serving-men; but she in turn would often be a hardened, masterful woman, well able to chastise her dozens of slovenly "weaving-women," and to command the castle garrison when her lord was off on the foray. The age was a strenuous one, and few weaklings would be able to survive the physical perils of childhood.
Theoretically the feudal system was a most humane arrangement between "lord" and "man" – of reciprocal loyalty and protection, service and reward. Actually it put a premium on contention, oath-breaking, aggression, and insurrection. Practically, every "noble" – that is, member of upper feudal fighting class – was a vassal of some one, and had vassals under him. The vassal was bound to kneel before "his gracious lord," and take oath to be a faithful helper in return for the landed fief granted him. This was "doing homage." The main duties of a trusty vassal were to give his lord good counsel, to supply certain limited money aids, and especially to fight for him (along with his own followers) so many days each year, and, of course, never to do anything to injure the lord's interests. The latter in turn owed his vassal "justice and protection."
The value of this pact usually depended on the power and tact of the lord in enforcing it, and the necessities of the vassal. An ambitious, skillful prince could build up a great feudal dominion; under a weak heir, however, there would be a general "refusal of homage" – and the dependent fief quickly would crumble away from him. Many a baron nominally subordinate would "hold" his various of two or more suzerains at once – and often these might be at war: the result would be that the vassal would play off one against the other to his own great advantage. Often the "homage" became the merest formality, and the vassal was to all intents and purposes an independent prince. Then, too, the question of the relation of his vassals to the overlord was always a delicate one. The overlord was always trying to get away the sub-vassals (of his dependents), so as to have them as his "immediate" (direct) liegemen, as being then more subservient and therefore more serviceable to himself. "The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal" ran the saying. Over these questions of "sub-infeudation" would come endless friction.
Feudal wars were incessant. Every baron was likely to nurse a grudge against his equal, – the lord of the next feudatory, – against his suzerain (or suzerains), and against his own vassals, for all kinds of reasons. The right of "private warfare" was cherished by even the lowest nobles. The Church, aided sometimes by the kings, tried to mitigate these local wars by the "Truce of God" (cessation of fighting between Wednesday night and Monday morning and on holy days) and by various other restrictions, but to settle one's troubles with sword and battleaxe was a "noble right"; it was really a concession, often, if the contending barons fought out their troubles in single combat (the so-called "judicial duel") before judges who arranged fair play, and did not call in their vassals, kinsmen, etc., and embroil the whole country-side in general warfare.
Quarrels over hunting and fishing rights, over boundaries of fiefs, over titles to fiefs, over the division of a fief between brothers, over the dowry claims of a widowed mother, over the right of the overlord to declare a fief vacant – these were a few of the pretenses for plunging a community into misery. Contrary to general belief, feudal wars saw few great battles. The weaker bands would shut themselves up in their castles; the stronger party would try to coerce its foes by burning their open villages, ravaging their fields, driving off their cattle, persecuting their peasantry. What fighting there was usually came in single combats, raids, ambuscades, or in skirmishing on a small scale. The main sufferers were the wretched peasantry, the helpless prey of either party. At length one party would become exhausted. Peace would be made – and duly sworn to upon the box of holy saints' relies in some near-by church; but at any time the feud might be resumed if the side which was dissatisfied saw new hopes of victory. There was exceedingly little, therefore, that was morally ennobling in this warfare of the sometimes lauded days of "chivalry and romance."
The feudal anarchy was at its worst in the tenth century: from about 1000 onward matters steadily improved, yet even by 1200 law and order were woefully lacking in many parts of France, as elsewhere in Europe. It requires some stretch of imagination to think of a time when war, not peace, was the order of the day, and when to "take one's weapons" was almost as usual as to don one's cloak. A journey of any length without arms for one's self, and if possible a strong escort, was (except for churchmen and ragged peasants) practically unthinkable.
There were also many other drawbacks to life in the feudal ages, apart from this reign of armed violence. Outside of the Church practically all men were illiterate. Great barons and peasants alike were victims of crass superstitions. The Church did well to lay great emphasis on the warnings of hell-fire – it was only the animal fear of the eternal burning that kept many a sinful nobleman within the bounds of decency. Castles and hovels lacked the merest rudiments of modern sanitation and consequent healthfulness. On the floors of the great halls, where the lords and retainers feasted and drank deep, would lie a thick litter of rushes, changed only a few times each year. Into these rushes would be cast most of the scraps from the meal. What the numerous dogs did not devour would there remain until the distant day of sweeping. Probably as late as 1200, there was not a castle in Europe (even of a great king) where a modern visitor would not have been utterly horrified by very many matters to offend eyes, ears, and nostrils. Medical science was often mere quackery. A great proportion of children were born dead: another great fraction died in infancy. In short, thanks to bad sanitation, lack of medical treatment, and ignorance of the laws of health, the proportion of persons who grew to old age (apart even from those cut off in war) was much less than to-day. Those were truly times of "the survival of the fittest."
The original feudal castle was merely a cheerless barracks, and fortunate it was that the folk of the Middle Ages spent as much of their time as possible in the open air. The later castles became more livable and in the end – in a crude way – luxurious, although never really comfortable in the gray days of winter. But to the man of modern ideas, the great drawback to mediæval life was its extreme mental limitations and monotony, – the lack of most intellectual pleasures, the extreme paucity of ideas, the narrowness of the human horizon, the perpetual round of carousing, hawking, boar-hunting, tournaments, and downright warfare. It was amid this almost soul-deadening monotony that the great seigneur lived. Was there, indeed, any escape from such a melancholy stagnation, for men of weaker bodies and nobler intellects? The answer came – "in the Church."
From 900 to 1250, or later, the best intelligence of Europe was usually in the Church. It absorbed the energies which to-day are absorbed, not only by the clergy, but by the lawyers, physicians, teachers, and many of the more important forms of business. The Church had entered the feudal system. Possibly nearly one third of the lands of western Europe were held by churchmen – doing homage for them to overlords, and receiving the homage in turn of lay vassals. Many a dying baron, stricken in conscience after a turbulent life, had willed most of his estates to some bishopric or abbey "for the eternal profiting of his soul." Of course, the "one Catholic Church" was the only one allowed to exist by public law and public opinion. It was as inconceivable to have two permissible religions on earth, as to have two suns in heaven; and by both secular and church law the stake and fagots awaited heretics as certainly as the gallows awaited murderers. No one dreamed of having things otherwise.
The churchmen fell roughly into two great classes – the "secular" clergy, who lived "in the world" and had the "cure of souls"; and the "regular" clergy; that is, monks subject to the monastic rule. The bishops had often great revenues from the estates of their "dioceses" (districts): they were usually feudal overlords of a considerable principality, and besides managing the churches of the region, were immersed in secular business. They were often the king's ministers, diplomats, and sometimes even leaders of his armies. Men of humble birth occasionally rose to be bishops, but as a rule they were noble-born – a neighboring bishopric proving a very convenient depository for the younger sons of a noble house when the eldest obtained the principality. The humbler parish priests were usually appointed by the rich layman (or his heirs) who had endowed the local church, and these priests were frequently peasant-born. Compared with the bishops they were inferior, indeed, but among their fellow peasants they were revered, not merely as the sacred intermediaries between God and man, but as the only individuals, often, in the parish who had the least education; that is, could read, write, and speak a little Latin.
Among the "regulars," the abbots of the monasteries often had positions of feudal influence almost equal to the great bishops. The monks were as a rule more learned than the parish priests, because they had less work to do among the laity and could devote their leisure to studies. At its worst, the monastic life was said to imply great idleness and gluttonous dinners: at its best, a monk was intensely busy with all kinds of peaceful arts and with continuous hard study. Neighboring abbeys differed often in character. One might be extremely lax; the next famous for its learning and pious austerities.
One thing all churchmen claimed in common: exemption from trial in the ordinary lay courts. A priest must be tried by his bishop, a monk by his abbot. The Church was, in fact, "a state within a state."
Down to about 1200, almost all intellectual life seemed centered in the Church – at first only in the monasteries, which maintained schools for the training of their novices or intended priests, and later in the schools attached to the great cathedrals. The learning preserved in these monasteries was almost entirely in Latin, and based either upon the Bible, the early Christian writers (the "Fathers"), or upon such old Roman authors as Cicero and Virgil. There was exceedingly little originality of scholarship, almost no personal investigation of the phenomena of nature, and a great willingness to say, for example, "thus says St. Jerome," and to consider all discussion of the case closed by merely citing a time-honored authority. This, of course, often led to many absurd notions, when either the ancients themselves were wrong, or when (very often) their real meaning was misunderstood. Nevertheless, it was of great merit that the monks kept any intellectual life at all in the Middle Ages, considering the general storm and stress. Also, it was of no less service that the gains for civilization by the ancients were in the main preserved until the next age could build a nobler civilization upon them. The mediæval monk, despite his slavish bowing to the dicta of "MasterAristotle," his endless parchments upon the obscure mysteries of theology, his hopelessly unscientific "chronicles" which record so imperfectly the annals of his own time, should nevertheless be the hero of an age when to fix one's ambition on anything save feudal glory must have been infinitely hard. By about 1200, we find the hitherto despised "vernacular" of the laity – North French, Provençal, etc. – beginning to express itself in literature, but for a long time the stately Latin of the mediæval churchmen held its own as the language of all learned men. It had been hardly displaced by the age of the Protestant Reformation.
In its own especial way this mediæval society was intensely religious. It showed its zeal in a series of great architectural monuments which remain as the most glorious witnesses to the best in the Middle Ages. The great mediæval churches cover, indeed, Germany, Italy, northern Spain, and England, but especially in France did they find their most elaborate and noblest development.
Sometimes great barons built them, sometimes bishops or abbeys, but often whole communities united in one great offering to God – devoting their wealth and energy for a century more or less to building a stately cathedral. At first these were in the Romanesque (rounded arch) style. After about 1150, they began to rise in the more elegant Gothic (with pointed arches) which seems to have originated in the "Île de France" near Paris. The climax came in such French cathedrals as Notre Dame of Paris, and, even better still, Amiens, Chartres, and Reims – with many others such as Tours on a hardly inferior scale. These "symphonies of stone" – with their soaring towers, lofty vaulted roofs, elaborate stone carvings, multitudes of sculptured saints, vast windows of inimitable stained glass – are witness to the truly devout and artistic life that could develop in the Middle Ages, as well as proof of wholly admirable technique, and tell us how despite the feudal anarchy the forces of civilization and righteousness were steadily winning the victory.
The knights and the priests with their swords or their pens made nearly all the history of the earlier Middle Ages; yet barely one man in forty belonged to these two favored classes taken together. It is time to say a little of the less favored thirty-nine.
In 1000, the bulk of the peasantry in France were serfs – bound to the soil, subject to the extremes of forced labor and personal taxation, able to marry only with the consent of the seigneur, and able to transmit their little farm and personal belongings to their children only by the payment of a heavy tax, paid again to the seigneur. They could be actually bought and sold, but only along with the land to which they were unalterably attached. If they ran away, they could be chased down as "masterless men" and reclaimed like runaway slaves. There were, however, also an increasing number of free peasants. These men could marry and change their abode at will, and transmit their property. But their social status was scarcely better than that of the serfs. They were without effective protection against the lords, who could tax and maltreat both "serfs" and "freemen" with almost impartial brutality and arbitrariness.
Nobles and churchmen alike taught that it was the duty of these "villeins" to submit cheerfully to their lot, to support the upper classes with their labors, to thank Heaven if they were treated with a modicum of justice, and to endure patiently if the feudal lord flogged and otherwise abused them (as too frequently) a little worse than his dogs and cattle. Truth to tell, the villeins were probably a brutish lot. Their days were consumed in grinding field labor with very clumsy spades and mattocks; their homes were mere hovels of wood, sun-dried brick and thatch; their clothing a few coarse rags; their food always scanty. Of their intelligence, manners, cleanliness, nothing need be said. In the average peasant's hut, the dirty, half-naked children would struggle on the earthen floor along with the little pigs and the poultry. "How could God and the saints love such creatures?" – Betwixt peasant and noble there was surely a great gulf fixed!
In the Middle Ages the towns were at first few and insignificant, and nearly all peasants lived in miserable huts on the feudal estates. Agricultural methods were extremely primitive; a drought or a wet year meant famine and misery for a wide district. During times of great shortage there are grim tales told of feasts on human flesh, and of the multiplication of wolves, human and quadruped. Even the rights which the feudal law secured to the peasant were seldom enforcible if his seigneur were an unscrupulous man: – for how could the serf ever hale his mail-clad lord to justice? Sickening stories of extreme tyranny and cruelty abound. Nevertheless, little by little, the peasantry found their lot improve, for various reasons:A. (a) On the ample Church lands, the churchmen as a rule treated their peasants with greater humanity than did the average seigneur. B. (b) The Church declared the freeing of serfs a most meritorious act for a nobleman. Frequently a conscience-stricken baron would try to square accounts with Heaven by freeing all or a part of his peasants.C. (c) Especially in crusading times the lords had great need of ready money for their wars. Wretched as the serfs were, individuals or villages had often saved up a little private stock. They could now "buy their freedom" by one lump payment.
So the serfs were always tending to become "free peasants." They were still despised villeins and "non-noble," but they were not quite so defenseless. They were next able to make an agreement with their lords so that the taxes they paid on their lands, and the amount of forced labor requirable of them, should be limited to a certain fixed amount. Besides, the kings were growing in power. They would give a certain protection to the peasants, as a makeweight to the nobles. Nevertheless, the country villeins continued to be as a rule oafish, ignorant, and outrageously oppressed all through the Middle Ages. The non-nobles of Europe first found their opportunity and their power in the growth of the towns.
The Roman Empire had been covered with stately cities. Many of these had perished outright; others were, in the last Carolingian era, merely starving villages inside the ruins of the old walls. But in the decades following the year 1000 came a revival of civic life. Sometimes a reviving commerce reawoke a nigh-dead community; sometimes an unwontedly intelligent seigneur fostered its growth; sometimes the presence of a pros- perous monastery was the decisive factor. By 1100, there are signs of city life over western Europe. By 1200, cities are numerous and relatively important.
At first these cities were mere collections of a few nobles and a mass of peasants who preferred trading to farming. Ordinary feudal law (or lack of law) obtained in a community. The peasants were subject to about the same burdens as if they had worked in the fields. But in these towns the non-nobles could join together as never in the open country. They soon learned their numbers and their strength. Merchants and master artisans were becoming wealthy. They, too, were no longer utterly defenseless against the seigneur. The towns soon built walls which could defy an ordinary feudal army. Inside the gates the mounted knights – so formidable in the open field – were almost helpless in the narrow streets when stones and boiling water rained on them from the houses above. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the cities of France were winning charters from their king or lords.
Occasionally these charters were freely granted by magnanimous and intelligent princes. Often they were purchased – through an extraordinary payment by the townsfolk. Sometimes, also, the king or great suzerain would grant them – perhaps in the teeth of the local feudal ruler – to set up a rival power beside that of the dangerous baron. Or often city folk rose en masse: the gates would be closed; the great alarm-bell rung; the residence of the local prince or prince-bishop would be stormed, and the charter would be granted before the threat of gleaming weapons. The ordinary result in any case is the same, a carefully drafted and sealed document creating a "free town"; that is, with specific rights of local self-government, and all taxes and other obligations due to the lord defined and limited. Hereafter the inhabitants of such a town are no longer helpless peas- ants. They are called (in France) bourgeoisie, – "free-burghers," – with their own especial rights. They elect their own magistrates, levy their local militia, raise their own taxes; and if fortune favors, the bond uniting them to their old feudal lord becomes very frail indeed. The cities then become veritable little "city-states" – almost on the old Greek model.
This new order of burghers, which intruded itself between the two favored upper classes and the peasants, was unwelcome, indeed, to the former. "Commune – a name new and execrable!" cries a priestly chronicler. But the nobles and churchmen were fain to make the best they could of these intruders; for wealth, intelligence, enterprise, and new ideas made haste to find their way to the free towns.
The government of a mediæval city differed with time and country. In any case the mediæval city was never a democracy. Sometimes various petty nobles actually settled in the town, fraternized with the non-nobles, and made a civic aristocracy. More often, the great merchants, the heads of the trading and craft guilds, etc., formed a body of city "patricians," which dominated the city council, and usually supplied the "mayors," sheriffs, or however the head magistrates were variously called. Yet while it was an aristocracy, such a government was usually intelligent and public-spirited. A "mayor" could hardly dare to imitate a feudal prince in his contempt for the wishes and rights of the lower classes. The government of a "free city," in short, would often be founded on efficiency and practical justice, though not on human equality.
As presented to the eye, a typical mediæval city would be a remarkable sight. Its extent would be small, both because of the limited population, and the need of making the circuit of the walls to be defended as short as possible; but within these walls the huge, many-storied houses would be wedged closely together. The narrow streets would be dirty and ill-paved – often beset by pigs in lieu of scavengers; but everywhere there would be bustling human life with every citizen elbowing close to every- body else. Out of the foul streets here and there would rise parish churches of marvelous architecture, and in the center of the town extended the great square – the market-place – where the open-air markets would be held; close by it, dwarfing the lesser churches, the tall gray cathedral, – the pride of the community; and close by, also, the City Hall (Hótel de Ville), an elegant secular edifice, where the council met, where the great public feasts could take place, and above which often rose the mighty belfry, whence clanged the great alarm-bell to call the citizens together in mass meeting, or to don armor and man the walls. The magnificent houses, walls, churches, and civic buildings of many French towns to-day, testify to the glories of most of the greater mediæval cities toward the end of the Middle Ages.
Such, then, were some of the physical, political, and social conditions under which the great nation known as France advanced to unity and strength. Everywhere things ugly and iniquitous struggled with things virtuous and lovely. The contrasts of life were probably far more pronounced in every respect than with us to-day. But whatever else be said, there was power, energy, and indomitable courage in those nation-builders of the feudal centuries. The school of the Middle Ages was often a very rough one, but it was an efficient school, and the peoples which survived it were trained for mighty deeds alike of the body and of the spirit. To-day, it will doubtless be asserted, Europe and France have nearly completed the process of casting away the relics of the Middle Ages – relics to which France at least clung, all too closely, down to 1789. But it is not good for any country to be ashamed of its past, and the France of the twentieth century has no reason to be ashamed that it was the heir of the France of Philip Augustus and St. Louis.