|
Part IV
|
|
21 A Conqueror who Knows How to Rule
The Merovingians and their stewards - The kingdom of the Franks -
Charlemagne's battles in Gaul, Italy and Spain - The Avars -Battles with the
Saxons - The Heldenlieder - The crowning of the emperor - Harun al-Rashid's
ambassadors - The division and decline of the Carolingian empire - Svatopluk -
The Vikings - The kingdoms of the Normans
|
Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, where he stopped an Umayyad
invasion force.
|
|
Reading these stories may make you think it's easy to conquer the
world or found a great empire, since it happens so often in the history
of the world. And in fact it wasn't very difficult in earlier times. Why
was that?
Imagine what it must have been like to have no newspapers and no post.
Most people didn't even know what was happening in places just a few
days' journey from where they lived. They stayed in their valleys and
forests and tilled the land, and their knowledge of the world ended
where the neighbouring tribes began. Towards these they were generally
unfriendly, if not openly hostile. Each tribe harmed the other in
whatever way it could, raiding cattle and setting fire to farmsteads.
There was a constant tit-for-tat of stealing, feuding and fighting.
All they heard of a world beyond their own small realm were rumours and
hearsay. If an army of several thousand men happened to turn up in a
valley or clearing, there was little anyone could do. The neighbours
thought themselves lucky if their enemies were slaughtered, and it
didn't occur to them that their turn might be next. And if they weren't
killed, but were merely forced to join thai army and attack their
nearest neighbours, they were grateful enough. In this way armies grew
bigger and a tribe on its own would find it more and more difficult to
resist, no matter how bravely it fought. The Arabs often went about
their conquests like this, and so did Charlemagne, the famous king of
the Franks, whose story you are about to hear.
If conquest was easier than it is today, ruling was much harder.
Messengers had to be sent to distant and inaccessible places, warring
peoples and tribes had to be pacified and reconciled, and made to look
beyond their old enmities and blood-feuds. If you wanted to be a good
ruler you had to help the peasants in their misery, and you had to see
that people learned something, and that the thoughts and writings of the
past weren't lost and forgotten. All in all, a good ruler in those days
had to be a sort of father to the vast family of his subjects, and make
all their decisions for them.
This was the sort of ruler that Charlemagne was, and it is why he is
rightly called 'the Great' (the Latin word magnus means 'great'). He was
a grandson of Charles Martel, the commander who drove the Arabs out of
the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks. The Merovingian kings were not
much good at ruling. They had flowing hair and long beards and they did
nothing but sit on the throne and parrot the words their advisers had
taught them. They moved around in ox-carts, like peasants, not on
horseback, and that was how they attended tribal gatherings. The actual
governing was done by an able family to which Charles Martel belonged,
as did Pepin, the father of Charlemagne. But Pepin wasn't satisfied with
being a mere adviser, whispering instructions into his king's ear. He
had the power of kingship and he wanted the title as well. So he
overthrew the Merovingian king and proclaimed himself king of the
Franks. His kingdom covered roughly the western hall of what is now
Germany, and the eastern part of France.
But you mustn't imagine that this was a settled and well-organised
kingdom, a proper state with officials and some sort of police force, or
indeed that it was in any way similar to the Roman empire. For at this
time the population wasn't united as it had been in the days of the
Romans. Instead there were a number of tribes, all speaking different
dialects and with different customs, who tolerated each other about as
much, or as little, as the Dorians and Ionians of ancient Greece.
The tribal chieftains were known as dukes, from the Latin word ducerc,
to lead, because they marched into battle at the head of their troops.
Their lands were known as their duchies. There were a number of these
tribal duchies in Germany: the Bavarians, the Swabians and the Alemanni,
among others. But the most powerful of all was the duchy of the Franks.
It drew its power from the allegiance it was owed by other tribes who
had to fight on the side of the Franks in time of war. This supremacy
was established in Pepin's time. And like his father, Charlemagne would
use it when, in 768, he became king in his turn.
First he conquered all of France. Then he marched over the Alps to Italy
where, as you remember, the Lombards had settled at the end of the
Migrations. He drove out the king of the Lombards and gave control of
those lands to the Pope, whose protector he would be throughout his
life. Then he marched on to Spain, where he fought the Arabs, but he
didn't stay there long.
Having extended his kingdom to the south and west, Charlemagne turned
his attention to the east. New hordes of mounted Asiatic warriors called
Avars, similar to the Huns but without a great leader like Attila, had
invaded the region where Austria is today. Their camps were always well
dug in and protected by rings of dykes which made them hard to capture.
Charlemagne and his armies fought the Avars for eight years before
defeating them so thoroughly that not a trace of them remains. However,
their invasion, like that of the Huns before them, had forced out other
tribes. These were the Slavs who had founded a sort of kingdom, albeit
one even less stable and more disorderly than that of the Franks.
Charlemagne attacked them too, forcing some to join his army and others
to pay him annual tribute. Yet in all his campaigns he never lost sight
of his goal: to bring all these various Germanic tribes and duchies
together under his rule, and forge them into a single people.
Now at that time hardly any of the eastern half of (iermany belonged to
the kingdom of the Franks. The Saxons lived there, and they were as wild
and warlike as the Germanic tribes had been in Roman times. In addition,
they were still heathens and would have nothing to do with Christianity.
But Charlemagne saw himself as the leader of all Christians and in this
he was not unlike the Muslims who thought you could force people to
believe. So he fought with the Saxon chieftain, Widukind, for many
years. Each time the Saxons surrendered, they would be up in arms again
the next day. Charlemagne would then return and lay waste to their land.
But he had only to turn his back for the Saxons to free themselves
again. They would follow Charlemagne obediently into battle and then
turn and attack his troops. In the end they paid a terrible price for
their resistance: Charlemagne had more than four thousand of them put to
death. The remaining Saxons allowed themselves to be baptised without
protest, but it must have been a long time before they were able to feel
any affection for the religion of loving kindness.
Charlemagne's power was by now very great indeed. But, as I said, he was
not only good at conquering: he knew how to govern and take care of his
people too. Schools were especially important to him, and he himself
went on learning all his life. He spoke Latin as well as he did German,
and he understood Greek. He was an eloquent and ready speaker with a
firm clear voice. He was interested in all the arts and sciences of
antiquity, taking lessons in rhetoric and astronomy from learned monks
from Italy and England. It is said, however, that he found writing
diffficult because his hand was more used to grasping a sword than
tracing rows of beautifully curved letters with a delicate quill pen.
He loved hunting and swimming. He generally dressed simply. Under a
striped silk tunic, he wore a plain linen shirt and long breeches held
by gaiters below the knee, and, in winter, a fur doublet over which he
flung a blue cloak. A silver- or gold-hilted sword always hung at his
belt. Only on special occasions did he wear gold-embroidered robes,
shoes decorated with gems, a great gold clasp on his cloak and a gold
crown set with precious stones. Try to imagine that towering and
imposing figure in all his finery, receiving ambassadors at his
favourite palace at Aachen. They came from everywhere: from his own
kingdom - that is, from France, Italy and Germany - and from the lands
of the Slavs and Austria as well.
Charlemagne kept himself informed about everything that went on in his
kingdom and made sure his instructions were faithfully carried out. He
appointed judges and had the laws collected and written down. He
nominated bishops and even fixed the price of foodstuffs. But what
concerned him most was uniting all the Germans. He didn't simply want to
rule a handful of tribal duchies. His aim was to weld them all into a
single, strong kingdom. Any duke who objected was deposed. And it's
worth noting that, from now on, whenever anyone referred to the language
spoken by the Germanic tribes, they no longer said Prankish or Bavarian
or Alemannish or Saxon. They simply said 'thiudisk', meaning German.
Because Charlemagne was interested in all things German, he made people
write down all the ancient songs about heroes, tales which probably came
from the time of the wars of the Migrations. These songs were about
Theodoric (later called Dietrich of Berne), and Attila, or Etzel, King
of the Huns, and Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer who was stabbed by the
treacherous Hagen. But they have almost all been lost and we only know
them from versions noted down some four hundred years later.
Charlemagne saw himself not only as king of the Germanic peoples and
lord of the kingdom of the Franks, but as the defender of all
Christians. And it seems that the pope in Rome, who had often enjoyed
Charlemagne's protection against the Lombards, agreed with him. On
Christmas Eve, in the year 800, when Charlemagne was kneeling in prayer
in the great church of St Peter's in Rome, the pope suddenly stepped
forward and placed a crown upon his head. Then the pope and all the
people fell on their knees before him and proclaimed Charlemagne the new
Roman emperor, chosen by God to preserve the peace of the empire.
Charlemagne must have been very surprised as it appears that he had no
inkling of what was in store for him. But now he wore the crown and was
the first German emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as it later was
known.
Charlemagne's mission was to restore the might and grandeur of the old
Roman empire. Only this time, instead of heathen Romans, the rulers
would be Christian Germans, who would become the leaders of all
Christendom. This was Charlemagne's aim and ambition, and it would long
be that of German emperors who came after him. But none came as close to
achieving it as he did. Envoys from all over the world came to his court
to pay him homage. The mighty emperor of the Roman Empire of the East in
Constantinople was not the only one anxious to be on good terms with
him. So was the great Arab prince, Caliph Harun al-Rashid, in far-off
Mesopotamia. From his fabulous palace in Baghdad, near ancient Nineveh,
he sent precious gifts to Charlemagne: sumptuous robes, rare spices and
an elephant, and a water clock with the most amazing mechanism, unlike
anything seen before in the kingdom of the Franks. For Charlemagne's
sake, Harun al-Rashid even let Christian pilgrims visit Christ's tomb in
Jerusalem, unhindered and unmolested. For Jerusalem was at that time
under Arab rule.
All this was due to the intelligence, energy and undoubted superiority
of the new emperor, as rapidly became clear after his death in 814 when,
sadly, it all fell apart. Soon the empire was shared out among
Charlemagne's three grandsons in the form of three separate kingdoms:
Germany, France and Italy.
In the lands that had once belonged to the Roman empire, Romance
languages continued to be spoken - that is, French and Italian. The
three kingdoms would never again be united. Even the German tribal
duchies rebelled and won back their independence. On Charlemagne's
death, the Slavs proclaimed themselves free, and founded a powerful
kingdom under their first great king, Svatopluk. The schools Charlemagne
had founded disappeared, and the art of reading and writing was soon
lost to all but a handful of far-flung monasteries. Intrepid Germanic
tribes from the north, the Danes and the Normans, mercilessly pillaged
and plundered coastal cities in their Viking ships. They were almost
invincible. They founded kingdoms in the east, among the Slavs, and in
the west on the coast of what is now France, where Normandy still bears
their name.
Before the century was out, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,
Charlemagne's great achievement, was no more. Not even the name
remained.
|
|
|
22 A Struggle to Become Lord of Christendom
East and West in Carolingian times - The blossoming of culture in China -
The Magyar invasion - King Henry - Otto the Great - Austria and the Babenbergs -
Feudalism and serfdom - Hugh Capet - The Danes in England - Religious
appointments - The Investiture Controversy - Gregory VII and Henry IV - Canossa
- Robert Guiscard and William the Conqueror
|
Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, along with his wife and young son, spent
three days barefoot in the snow at Canossa
|
|
The history of the world is, sadly, not a pretty poem. It offers
little variety, and it is nearly always the unpleasant things that are
repeated, over and over again. And so it was that, barely a hundred
years after Charlemagne's death, in times of chaos and misfortune,
hordes of mounted warriors from the east invaded yet again, as the Avars
and the Huns had before them. Not that there was anything remarkable
about that. It was easier, and therefore more tempting, to take the path
which led from the Asiatic steppes towards Europe than to launch raids
on China. For behind the protection of Shih Huang-ti's great wall, China
had now become a powerful and well-organised state, with large and
prosperous cities, where life at the imperial court and in the houses of
its learned high officials had reached levels of refinement and taste
undreamt-of elsewhere.
At the same time as people in Germany were collecting ancient battle
songs - only to burn them soon after on the grounds that they were too
heathen - and monks in Europe were making timid efforts to turn Bible
stories into German rhymes and Latin verse (that is, in about 800),
China was home to some of the greatest poets the world has ever known.
They wrote on silk, with elegant flourishes of brushes dipped in Indian
ink, concise and brief verses which, in the simplest way, express so
much that you need only read one once and it is in your head for ever.
Because the Chinese empire was well administered and well protected, the
mounted hordes continued to direct their raids towards Europe. This time
it was the Magyars' turn. With neither Pope Leo nor Charlemagne to stop
them, they made short work of the lands that are now Hungary and
Austria, and invaded Germany to loot and kill.
This danger forced the independent tribal duchies to elect a common
leader. In 919 they chose Henry, duke of Saxony, to be their king, and
he eventually succeeded in driving the Magyars out of Germany and
keeping them outside the frontiers. His successor, King Otto (known as
Otto the Great), did not destroy them completely, as Charlemagne had the
Avars, but after a ferocious battle in 955 he forced them back into
Hungary, where they settled and have remained to this day.
Otto the Great didn't keep the land he had taken from the Magyars for
himself, but bestowed it on a prince, as was then the custom. His son,
Otto II, did likewise when, in 976, he bestowed part of present-day
Lower Austria (the district around Wachau) on a German nobleman called
Leopold, a member of the Babenberg family. Like all noblemen granted
land by the king, Leopold built himself a castle and ruled over his land
like a prince, for while the royal grant endured he was no longer merely
a royal official but the lord of his domain.
Most of the peasants who lived on these lands were no longer freemen, as
German peasants had been in earlier times. They belonged to the land the
king bestowed, or to land owned by a nobleman. Like the sheep or the
goats that grazed there, like the deer, the bears and the wild boar in
the forest, like the streams and the woodland, the meadows, the pastures
and the fields, the people belonged to the land they tilled. They were
known as serfs, or bondsmen, because they were bound to the land. Nor
were they free citizens of the kingdom. They had neither the right to go
where they wished nor the right to decide to till or not to till their
fields.
'Were they slaves, then, like in antiquity?' Well, not exactly. For as
you remember, the coming of Christianity had put an end to slavery in
our lands. Serfs weren't slaves, because they went with the land, and
the land still belonged to the king even after he had bestowed it on a
nobleman. A nobleman or prince was not allowed to sell or kill serfs as
masters once could their slaves. But he could make them carry out his
orders. The serfs had to cultivate his land and work for him, when he
told them to. They had to send regular supplies of bread and meat up to
the castle for him to eat, because a nobleman didn't work in the fields.
Most of his time was spent hunting, whenever he felt like it. The land
the king had bestowed on him, known as his fief, was his land, and would
be inherited by his son, as long as he did nothing to offend the king.
In return for his fief all a prince had to do was to take his lords of
the manor and his peasants with him into battle to fight for the king,
if there was a war. And of course, there often was.
At this time virtually the whole of Germany had been granted in this way
to different lords. The king kept little for himself, and the same went
for France and England. In France, in 987, a powerful duke called Hugh
Capet became king, while in 1016 England was conquered by a Danish
seafarer called Cnut, or Canute, who also ruled over Norway and part of
Sweden, and he, too, granted his lands as fiefs to powerful princes.
The power of the German kings was greatly increased by their victory
over the Magyars. Otto the Great, having defeated the Hungarians, made
the Slavic, Bohemian and Polish princes recognise him as their feudal
overlord as well. This meant that they had to look on their own lands as
being held in trust for the German king, and were obliged to bring their
armies to his aid in time of war.
Confident in his might, Otto the Great marched on Italy, where, amidst
fearful confusion, savage fighting had broken out among the Lombards.
Otto declared Italy a German fief too, and bestowed it
on a Lombard prince. Greatly relieved that Otto had been able to use his
power to bring the Lombard nobility to heel, the pope crowned him Roman
emperor in 962, just like Charlemagne in 800.
So once again, German kings became Roman emperors, and by that title the
protectors of Christendom. They owned the land the peasants ploughed
from Italy to the North Sea, and from the Rhine to far beyond the Elbe,
where Slav peasants became serfs of German noblemen. The emperor didn't
grant these lands only to noblemen. He frequently bestowed them on
priests, bishops and archbishops. And they too, being no longer mere
ministers of the Church, ruled like noblemen over great estates and rode
into battle at the head of their peasant armies.
At first this suited the pope very well. He was on good terms with the
German emperors who protected and defended him and were all very pious
men.
However, the situation soon changed. The pope didn't want the emperor to
decide which of his priests should become bishop of Mainz, or Trier, or
Cologne, or Passau. 'These are religious appointments,' said the pope,
'and I, as head of the Church, must decide them.' But the fact remained,
they weren't just religious appointments. Take the archbishop of
Cologne, for example: he was both guardian of the souls of that district
and its prince and lord. Therefore the emperor maintained that it was
for him to decide who was to be a prince or a lord in his land. And if
you think about it for a moment, you will see that each, from his own
standpoint, was right. Bestowing land on priests had created a dilemma,
for the lord of all priests is the pope, but the lord of all lands is
the emperor. This could only lead to trouble, and it soon did. This
trouble became known as the Investiture Controversy.
In Rome, in 1073, an exceptionally pious and zealous monk, who had
already devoted his life to defending the purity and power of the
Church, became pope. He was called Hildebrand, and as pope took the name
of Gregory VII.
Meanwhile in Germany a Prankish king was on the throne. His name was
Henry I\/. Now it is important to realise that the pope saw himself not
only as head of the Church, but also as the divinely
appointed ruler of all Christians on earth. At the same time, the German
emperor and successor to the ancient Roman emperors and Charlemagne saw
himself as protector and supreme commander of the entire Christian
world. And even though Henry IV had not yet been crowned emperor, he
still believed, that, as German king, it was his right. Which of the two
should yield?
When the struggle between them began, the world was in an uproar. Some
were for King Henry IV, others sided with Pope Gregory VII. So many
people were involved in this contest that we know of 155 arguments
written for and against the king by his supporters and opponents. A
number of these portray King Henry as being a wicked and hot-tempered
man, while in others it is the pope who is accused of being heartless
and power-hungry.
I think we should believe neither. Once we have decided that each, from
his own standpoint, was right, whether King Henry behaved badly towards
his wife (as his opponents said), or pope Gregory was elected pope
without following the usual formalities (as his opponents said), matters
little to us. We can't go back into the past and see exactly what did
happen, and find out whether these accusations against the pope and the
king had any truth in them. They probably didn't, for when people take
sides they are usually unfair. However, I'm now going to show you just
how hard it is to get at the truth, after more than nine hundred years.
We can be sure of one thing: King Henry was in a difficult situation.
The nobles on whom he had bestowed lands (that is, the German princes)
were against him. They didn't want their king to become too powerful in
case he started ordering them around. Pope Gregory opened hostilities by
shutting King Henry out of the Church - by which I mean that he forbade
any priest to give him Holy Communion. This was known as
excommunication. Then the princes let it be known that they would have
nothing to do with an excommunicated king, and that they were going to
choose someone else to take his place. Somehow Henry had to get the pope
to lift this terrible ban. His fate depended on it. If he failed, he
would lose his throne. So, all alone and without his army, he set out
for Italy to try to persuade the pope to lift the ban.
It was winter, and the German princes who wanted to prevent King Henry's
reconciliation with the pope occupied all the roads and paths. So Henry,
accompanied by his wife, had to make a great detour, and in the freezing
winter's cold they made their way over the Alps, probably by the same
pass that Hannibal had used when he invaded Italy.
Meanwhile the pope was on his way to Germany to negotiate with Henry's
enemies. When he heard of Henry's approach, he fled and took refuge in a
fortress in northern Italy called Canossa, convinced that Henry was
arriving with an army. But when Henry appeared alone, only wishing to
have the excommunication lifted, he was amazed and overjoyed. Some say
the king came dressed as a penitent, wearing a rough, hooded cloak, and
that the pope made him wait three days in the castle courtyard, barefoot
in the snow, before he took pity on him and lifted the ban.
Contemporaries describe the king as whimpering and begging the pope for
mercy, which the pope, in his compassion, finally granted.
Today people still talk of 'going to Canossa' when somebody has to
humble himself before his adversary. But now let's see how one of the
king's friends tells the same story. This is his version: 'When Henry
saw how badly things were going for him, he secretly thought up a very
cunning plan. Giving no warning whatsoever, he set out to see the pope.
His intention was to kill two birds with one stone: on the one hand he
would have the excommunication lifted, and on the other, by going in
person, he would prevent the pope from meeting his enemies, and so avert
a great danger.'
So the pope's friends saw Henry's going to Canossa as an outstanding
success for the pope, and the king's supporters saw it as a great
triumph for their leader.
From this you can sec how careful one must be in judging a dispute
between two rival powers. But the struggle did not end at Canossa, or
with the death of King Henry - who had actually become emperor meanwhile
- or with the death of Pope Gregory. For although Henry later managed to
have Gregory deposed, the will of that great pope prevailed. Bishops
were chosen by the Church, and the emperor was only allowed to say if he
agreed with the choice. The pope, not the emperor, became lord of
Christendom.
You remember those Nordic seafarers, the Normans, who conquered a
stretch of land along the northern coast of France still known as
Normandy today? They quickly learnt to speak French, like their
neighbours, but they didn't lose their appetite for adventurous sea
voyages and conquest. Some of them went as far as Sicily, where they
fought the Arabs, then conquered southern Italy and went on, under their
great leader Robert Guiscard, to defend Pope Gregory against Henry IV's
attacks. Others crossed the narrow stretch of sea that lies between
France and England, known as the English Channel, and under their king,
William (afterwards named 'the Conqueror'), defeated the English king (a
descendant of the Danish King Canute) at the Battle of Hastings. This
was in 1066, a date which all the English know, because it was the last
time an enemy army succeeded in setting foot on English soil.
William had his officials draw up a list naming every village and
property in the land, many of which he bestowed on his fellow soldiers
as fiefs. The English nobility were now Normans. And because the Normans
who came from Normandy spoke French, the English language is still a
mixture of words from Old German and Romance languages.
|
|
|
23 Chivalrous Knights
Horsemen and knights - Castles - Bondsmen - From noble youth to knight:
page, squire, dubbing - A knight's duties - Minstrelsy -Tournaments - Chivalrous
poetry - The Song of the Nibelungen -The First Crusade - Godfrey of Bouillon and
the conquest of Jerusalem - The significance of the crusades
|
"Arrival of the Crusaders at Constantinople", by Jean
Fouquet
|
|
I am sure you have heard of knights of old from the Age of Chivalry.
And you have probably read books about knights and their squires who set
out in search of adventure; stories full of shining armour, plumed
helmets and noble steeds, blazoned escutcheons and impregnable
fortresses, jousting and tournaments where fair ladies give prizes to
the victors, wandering minstrels, forsaken damsels and departures for
the Holy Land. The best thing is that all of it really existed. All that
glitter and romance is no invention. Once upon a time the world really
was full of colour and adventure, and people joyfully took part in that
strange and wonderful game called chivalry, which was often played in
deadly earnest.
But when exactly was the Age of Chivalry, and what was it really like?
The word chivalry comes from the French word chevalier meaning horseman,
and it was with horsemen that chivalry began. Anyone who could afford a
good charger on which to ride into battle was a knight. If he couldn't,
he went on foot and wasn't a knight. Noblemen whose lands had been
bestowed on them by the king were also knights and their serfs had to
provide hay for the horses. A nobleman might, in his turn, bestow part
of his fief on his agent or steward, who would also be rich enough to
own a fine horse even if, in other respects, he had little power. When
his lord was summoned to war by the king he had to ride with him. So
stewards were also knights. Only peasants and poor servants, farm-lads
and labourers who went to war on foot weren't knights.
It all began around the time of the emperor Henry IV - that is to say,
after the year 1000 - and went on for several centuries, in Germany and
in England, but above all in France.
However, these knights weren't yet knights as you or I would imagine
them. That only happened gradually. First the princes and nobles set
about building themselves great fortresses, fortresses that were
intended to be secure against all assault. These can slill be seen today
in hilly places, or standing, proud and defiant, on sheer cliffs, with
only one approach along a tiny, narrow track.
Before you reached the castle gate there was usually a wide ditch or
moat, sometimes full of water. Over the moat was a drawbridge, with
chains on either side to haul it up at any moment. When (he bridge was
raised, the castle was secure and no one could get in. On the other side
of the ditch were thick, strong walls with loop holes to shoot arrows
through and holes for pouring boiling pitch down on the enemy. The walls
themselves were topped by tooth like battlements, behind which you could
hide to spy on the enemy. Within this thick wall there was often another
one, and sometimes even a third, before you reached the castle
courtyard. The court yard then gave access to the rooms where the knight
lived. A hall with a fireplace and a fire was reserved for the women,
who were not as hardened to discomfort as the men.
For there was nothing comfortable about life in a castle. The kitchen
was a soot-blackened room where meat was roasted on a great spit over a
crackling log fire. Apart from the rooms for the knights and their
valets there were two others: the chapel, where the chaplain held divine
service, and the keep. The keep was a massive tower, generally in the
heart of the castle, where stores were usually kept, and in which the
knights took refuge once their enemies had overcome . . . the mountain,
the moat, the drawbridge, the boiling pitch and the three walls. At
which point, they were confronted by this mighty tower, where the
knights were often able to hold out until help arrived.
And of course, we mustn't forget the dungeons! These were cramped and
freezing cells in the depths of the castle into which knights threw
their prisoners. There they were left to languish in the dark until they
died or were ransomed for a vast sum.
You may have seen one of these castles. But the next time you do, don't
just think of the knights in chain mail who lived there. Instead, take a
look at the walls and towers and spare a thought for the people who
built them. Towers perched high on tops of mountain crags, walls hung
between precipices. All made by peasant serfs, men deprived of liberty-
bondsmen, as they were called. For it was they who had to split and
carry the rocks, haul them up and pile them on top of each other. And
when their strength gave out, their wives and their children had to take
over. A knight could command them to do anything. Better a knight than a
serf any day.
Sons of serls became serfs and the sons of knights, knights. It wasn't
so very different from ancient India and its castes.
At the age of seven a knight's son was sent away to another castle, to
learn about life. He was called a page, and had to serve the ladies -
carry their trains and perhaps read to them aloud - for women were
rarely taught to read or write whereas pages usually were. On reaching
the age of fourteen, a page became a squire. He didn't have to stay in
the castle and sit beside the fire any more. Instead, he was allowed to
accompany his knight when he went hunting, or to war. A squire had to
carry his knight's shield and spear and hand him his second lance on the
battlefield when the first one shattered. He had to obey his master in
all things and be true to him. If he proved a brave and loyal squire, he
in his turn would be dubbed a knight at the age of twenty-one. The
ceremony of dubbing was a very solemn one. The squire first had to fast
and pray in the castle chapel. He also received Communion from the
priest. Then, in full armour, but without his helmet, sword or shield,
he knelt between two witnesses. His lord, who was to dub him a knight,
tapped him on each shoulder and on the neck with the flat blade of his
sword, while reciting the following words:
In the name of God and of Mary his mother
Accept this blow and never another.
Be upright, true and brave.
Better a knight than a slave.
Only then was the squire allowed to rise. He was a squire no longer. He
was a knight who might now dub others knights, whose shield now bore his
coat of arms - a lion, a leopard or a flower - and who would usually
choose a fine motto or device to live by. He was solemnly presented with
his sword and helmet, golden spurs were fitted to his boots and his
shield was set on his arm. Off he rode in his bright plumed helmet, with
his mighty lance and a scarlet cloak over his chain mail, accompanied by
his own squire, to prove himself worthy of his knighthood.
From all this solemn ceremony you can see that a knight was by now
something more than just a soldier on horseback. He was almost a member
of an order, like a monk. For to be a good knight, bravery was not
enough. A monk served God through prayers and good works and a knight
served God through his strength. It was his duty to protect the weak and
defenceless, women and the poor, widows and orphans. He was only allowed
to draw his sword in a just cause, and must serve God in each and every
deed. To his master - his liegelord - he owed absolute obedience. For
him he must risk all. He must be neither brutal nor cowardly, and in
battle must only fight man to man, never two against one. A vanquished
opponent must never be humiliated. We still call this sort of behaviour
chivalrous, because it conforms to the knights' ideal.
When a knight loved a lady, he did battle in her honour, and went in
search of adventures to win fame for his beloved. He pronounced her name
with reverence and did everything she asked. That, too, is part of
chivalry. And if it seems natural to you today to let a lady go through
a door first, or to bend down and pick up something she has dropped,
it's because inside you there is a remnant of the thinking of those
knights of old who believed that it is a gentleman's duty to protect the
weak and honour women.
In peacetime, too, a knight would demonstrate his courage and his skill
in games of chivalry known as tournaments. Knights from many countries
gathered to test their strength at these war games. Dressed in full
armour they galloped towards one another at full tilt, each doing his
best to unhorse the other with his blunted lance. The lady of the castle
presented the winner with a prize - usually a garland of flowers. To
please the ladies a knight had to do more than shine at feats of arms.
He had to behave in a moderate and noble manner, not curse or swear as
soldiers usually did, and master chess-playing and poetry and other arts
of peace.
In fact, knights were often great poets, who wrote songs praising the
women they loved, telling of their beauty and their virtue. They also
sang of the deeds of other knights of the past. There were long stories
in verse, telling of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, of
Perceval (or Parsifal) and Lohengrin and the Quest for the Holy Grail
(the cup Christ drank from at the Last Supper), of the unhappy love of
Tristan and Isolde, and even stories about Alexander the Great and the
Trojan War.
Minstrels wandered from castle to castle, singing of Siegfried the
Dragon-slayer and Theodoric, King of the Goths (who became Dietrich of
Berne). These songs, sung in Austria on the Danube at that time, are
among the earliest we know, because those transcribed under Charlemagne
have all been lost. And if you read the story of Siegfried in the Song
of the Nibelungen, you will find all the ancient Germanic peasant
warriors behaving like true knights. Even the terrifying Attila the Hun,
solemnly celebrating his marriage to Siegfried's widow, Kriemhild, in
Vienna, is portrayed as a noble and chivalrous king.
As you know, a knight's first duty was to fight for God and for
Christendom. And it wasn't long before they found a wonderful
opportunity to do so. Christ's tomb in Jerusalem was, as was the whole
of Palestine, in the hands of Arab unbelievers. So when reminded of
their duty to help liberate the tomb by a great preacher in France, and
by the pope - whose victory over the German kings had made him the
mightiest ruler of Christendom — Christian knights in their tens of
thousands cried out enthusiastically: lIt is God's will! It is God's
will!'
Under the leadership of a French knight, Godfrey of Bouillon, a great
army set off along the Danube in 1096, first to Constantinople and then
on through Asia Minor towards Palestine. These knights and their
followers had crosses of red material stitched to I heir shoulders and
were called 'crusaders'. Their aim was to liberate the land in which
Christ's cross had once stood. When, after long years of battles and
unimaginable hardships, they finally reached the walls of Jerusalem, it
is said that they were so moved by the sight of the Holy City, which
they knew from the Bible, that they wept and kissed the soil. Then they
besieged the town. It was valiantly defended by Arab soldiers, but
eventually they took it.
Once inside Jerusalem, however, they behaved neither like knights nor
like Christians. They massacred all the Muslims and committed hideous
atrocities. Then they did penance, and, singing psalms, proceeded
barefoot to Christ's tomb.
The crusaders founded the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, with Godfrey
of Bouillon as its Protector. But because it was small and weak, far
from Europe and in the midst of Muslim kingdoms, the little state was
forever under attack from Arab warriors. This meant that, back in
England, France and Germany, priests were forever urging knights to go
on new crusades. Not all of these were successful.
However, one good thing came of the Crusades, although it wouldn't have
pleased the knights at all. In the distant Orient the Christians
discovered Arab culture - their buildings, their sense of beauty and
their learning. And within a hundred years of the First Crusade, the
writings of Alexander the Great's teacher, the books of Aristotle, were
translated from Arabic into Latin and eagerly read and studied in Italy,
France, Germany and England. People were surprised to find how similar
many of his teachings were to those of the Church and filled heavy Latin
tomes with complicated thoughts on the subject. All that the Arabs had
learnt and experienced in the course of their conquests around the world
was now brought back to Europe by the crusaders. In a number of ways it
was the example of those they looked on as their enemies that
transformed the barbaric warriors of Europe into truly chivalrous
knights.
|
|
|
24 Emperors in the Age of Chivalry
Frederick Barbarossa - Barter and the money-based economy -Italian towns -
The empire - The resistance and defeat of Milan -The dubbing feast at Mainz -
The Third Crusade - Frederick II -Guelphs and Ghibellines - Innocent III - The
Magna Carta - Sicily's rulers - The end of the Hohenstaufens - Ghengis Khan and
the Mongol invasion - The lack of an emperor and 'fist-law' - The Kyffhauser
legend - Rudolf of Habsburg - Victory over Otakar -The power of the House of
Habsburg is established
|
This was the size of the warlike Mongols' mighty empire when they
threatened the whole of Europe after the destruction of Breslau.
|
In these fairy-tale times, full of colour and adventure, there was a
new family of knights ruling in Germany. They took their name,
Hohenstaufen, from their castle. One of them was the emperor Frederick
I, nicknamed Barbarossa by the Italians on account of his magnificent
fiery-red beard. Now you may wonder why history should choose to
remember him by his Italian name - after all, Frederick I was a German
emperor. It is simply because he spent much of his time in Italy and the
deeds that made him famous happened there. It wasn't just the pope and
his power to bestow the imperial crown of Rome on German kings that
attracted Barbarossa to Italy. He was also determined to rule the whole
of Italy, because he needed money.'Couldn't he gel money from Germany?'
I can hear you asking. No, he couldn't. Because in those days in Germany
there was almost none at all.
Have you ever wondered why people actually need money? 'To live on, of
course!' you say. But that isn't strictly true. Try eating a coin.
People live on bread and other foods, and someone who grows grain and
makes his own bread doesn't need money, any more than Robinson Crusoe
did. Nor does anyone who is given his bread for nothing. And that's how
it was in Germany. The serfs cultivated their fields and gave a tenth of
their harvest to the knights and monks who owned the land.
'But where did the peasants get their ploughs from? And their smocks and
their yokes and the things they needed for their animals?' Well, mostly
by exchange. If, for example, a peasant had an ox, but would rather have
six sheep to give him wool to make a jacket, he would exchange them for
something with his neighbour. And if he had slaughtered an ox, and spent
the long winter evenings turning the two horns into fine drinking cups,
he could exchange one of the cups for some flax grown by his neighbour,
which his wife could weave and make into a coat. This is known as
barter. So in Germany people managed perfectly well in those days
without money, since most of them were either peasants or landowners.
Nor did the monasteries need money, for they too owned a lot of land
which pious people either gave them or left to them when they died.
Apart from vast forests, small fields and a few villages, castles and
monasteries, there was almost nothing else in the whole great German
kingdom - that is to say, there were hardly any towns. And it was only
in towns that people needed money. Shoemakers, cloth merchants and
scribes can hardly satisfy their hunger and thirst with leather, cloth
and ink. They need bread. But can you see yourself going to the
shoemaker and paying for your shoes with bread for him to live on? And
in any case, if you aren't a baker, where will you find the bread? 'From
a baker!' Yes, but what will you give the baker in return? 'Perhaps I
can lend him a hand.' And if he doesn't need your help? Or if you have
already promised to help the lady who sells fruit? You see, it would be
unimaginably complicated if people who live in towns were to barter.
This is why people agreed to decide on something to exchange which
everyone would want and therefore accept, something easy to share out
and carry around, which wouldn't go bad or lose its value if you put it
away. It was decided that the best thing would be metal - that is, gold
or silver. All money was once made of metal, and rich people went around
with purses stuffed with gold coins on their belts. That meant you could
give the shoemaker money for shoes, and he could use it to buy bread
from the baker, who could give it to the peasant in exchange for flour,
and the peasant might then use your money to buy a new plough. He
wouldn't find that for barter in his neighbour's garden.
However, there were very few towns in Germany in the (lays of chivalry,
so people there had little need of money, whereas in Italy money had
been in use since Roman times. Italy had always had great cities and
many merchants with bags of money on their belts and even more stowed
away in great chests.
Some of these towns were by the sea, like Venice, which is actually in
the sea on a cluster of little islands where the inhabitants had taken
refuge from the Huns. Then there were other great harbour towns such as
Genoa and Pisa, whose ships sailed far across the seas and came back
from the Orient with fine cloth, rare spices and weapons of great value.
These goods were sold off in the ports, to be sold again inland in
cities like Florence, Verona or Milan, where the cloth might be made
into clothes, or perhaps banners or tents. These then went to France,
whose capital city, Paris, already contained almost a hundred thousand
inhabitants - or to England, or even to Germany. But not much went to
Germany because there was very little money there to pay for such
things.
People who lived in towns grew richer and richer, and no one-could give
them orders because they weren't peasants and didn't belong to anyone's
fief. On the other hand, since no one had granted them land, they
weren't lords either. They governed themselves, much as people did in
antiquity. They had their own courts of law and were as free and
independent in their cities as the monks and the knights. Such citizens
(called burghers in Germany or the bourgeoisie in France) were known as
the Third Estate. Of course, peasants didn't count.
This brings us back at last to the Emperor Barbarossa, who needed money.
As Holy Roman Emperor he wanted to be the actual ruler of Italy, and to
receive tribute and taxes from Ttalian citizens. But the citizens would
have none of it. They were used to their freedom and didn't wish to give
it up. So Barbarossa took an army over the Alps to Italy, where he
summoned a number of famous jurists in 1158, who solemnly and publicly
declared that as Holy Roman emperor and successor to the Roman Caesars,
he had all the rights his predecessors had had a thousand years before.
The Italian cities took no notice. They still refused to pay. So the
emperor led his army against them, and in particular against Milan, the
town at the heart of the rebellion. It is said that he was so incensed
by their refusal that he swore not to wear his crown until he had forced
the town into submission. And he kept his oath. Only when Milan had
fallen, and was utterly destroyed, did he hold a banquet at which he and
his wife appeared with their crowns once more on their heads.
But no matter how many great and successful campaigns he led, Barbarossa
had only to turn his back and head for home for the rumblings of revolt
to start up again. The Milanese rebuilt their town and refused to
recognise a German ruler. In all, Barbarossa led six campaigns against
Italy, but his fame was always greater than his success.
He was seen to be the very model of a knight. He was extremely strong -
mentally as well as physically. And he was generous and knew how to hold
a feast. Today we have forgotten what a real feast is like. Everyday
life, compared to ours, may have been mean and monotonous, but a feast
in those days was unlike anything you could imagine. It was
indescribably lavish and magnificent, like something out of a
fairy-tale. Barbarossa held one in Mainz when his sons were dubbed
knights, in 1181, to which forty thousand knights with all their squires
and attendants were invited. They stayed in brightly coloured tents and
the emperor and his sons had the grandest one of all, which was made of
silk and stood in the centre of the encampment. Fires blazed all around
with whole oxen, wild boar and innumerable chickens roasting over them
on spits. People came from far and wide dressed in all sorts of costumes
— jugglers and acrobats and wandering minstrels who sang all the great
songs of old in the evening while they feasted. What a sight it must
have been! The emperor himself displayed his skills, jousting with his
sons, while all the nobles in the land looked on. A feast like this went
on for days. Long after it was over the minstrels continued to sing
about it.
As a true knight, Barbarossa eventually went on a crusade. This was the
Third Crusade, in 1189. King Richard the Lionheart of England and the
French King Philip also took part. They went by sea. But Barbarossa
chose to go by land and was drowned in a river in Asia Minor.
Frederick II's troops paid with leather coins, from
Chigi Codex, Vatican Library.
His grandson Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was even more remarkable, even
greater and altogether more admirable than Barbarossa. He was brought up
in Sicily, and while he was still a child and unable to rule himself
there was a lot of trouble in Germany between the great rival families
over who was to be the new sovereign. Some favoured Philip, Barbarossa's
youngest son, while others had elected Otto, whose family was called
Welf. This gave people who already couldn't endure each other yet
another reason to squabble. If one was for Philip then his neighbour
would side with Otto, and the happy custom of these rival factions
-known in Italy as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines - persisted for many
years. Even after Philip and Otto were long gone.
Meanwhile Frederick had grown up in Sicily. And I mean grown up. Both in
body and in mind. His guardian, Pope Innocent Ш, was one of the most
important men there has ever been. What Gregory VII - the German king
Henry IV's great adversary - had fought so hard for, and had failed to
achieve, Innocent III had accomplished. He really was lord of all
Christendom. A man of exceptional intelligence and culture, he ruled
them all - not just the spiritual leaders of the Church, but all the
princes of Europe. His power even reached as far as England. When, one
day, King John refused to carry out his orders, he excommunicated him
and forbade any priest to celebrate Mass in England. The English
nobility became so angry with their king that they took away almost all
his power. In 1215 he had to solemnly swear that he would never again
oppose their will. This was the famous Magna Carta, the Great Charter to
which King John put his seal, in which he granted his barons a whole
host of rights which English citizens hold to this day. But England
still had to pay taxes and tribute to Pope Innocent III, so great was
his power.
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen wasn't only highly intelligent: he was an
attractive and likeable young man as well. In order to claim his crown
as king of the Germans, he set out from Sicily, virtually on his own, on
an adventurous ride which took him through Italy and over the Swiss
mountains to Constance. However, when he arrived he found that his rival
Otto was marching towards him at the head of an army. There seemed
little hope for Frederick. But the burghers of Constance, like all those
who met him and came to know him, were so charmed by him that they
rallied round and hastily closed the city gates. When Otto arrived
exactly one hour later, all he could do was turn round and go away.
Having similarly won over all the German princes, Frederick suddenly
found he had become a mighty ruler, lord of all the vassals of Germany
and Italy. So again the two powers were in conflict, just as in the days
of Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV. But Frederick was no Henry. He did not
go to Canossa, and he didn't intend to beg the pope for mercy. Like Pope
Innocent III, he was convinced that he had been called to rule the
world. Frederick knew everything that Innocent had known - after all,
Innocent had been his guardian. He knew everything the Germans knew, for
they were his family. And finally, he knew everything the Arabs knew,
for he had grown up in Sicily. He was to spend much of his life there
and in Sicily there was more for him to learn than anywhere else in the
world.
Sicily had been ruled by everyone: the Phoenicians, Greeks,
Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Italians and Germans. Soon it
would be the turn of the French. It must have been just like the 'lower
of Babel, except that there people had ended up understanding almost
nothing, whereas Frederick ended up by understanding nearly everything
there was to know. Not just every language, but many whole branches of
knowledge. He wrote poetry, and he was a superb huntsman. He even wrote
a book on falconry, for people hunted with hawks in those days.
Above all, he knew about religions. But there was one thing he could
never understand: why people were always fighting. He liked to have
discussions with learned Muslims, even though he was a devout Christian.
When the pope got wind of this he was angrier than ever. And in
particular a pope whose name was Gregory. He was just as powerful, but
perhaps not as wise as his predecessor, Pope Innocent III. He wanted
Frederick to undertake a crusade at all costs, and threatened to
excommunicate him if he didn't. So in the end he did. But what all other
crusades had achieved only through great sacrifices and loss of life,
Frederick did without any fighting at all: Christian pilgrims were
allowed to visit the Holy Sepulchre without fear of being attacked and
all the land around Jerusalem was held to belong to them. And how did he
do that? He just sat down with the sultan who ruled there and they came
to an agreement.
Both sides were happy that things had gone so well, and that war had
been averted, but the bishop of Jerusalem was not content, for no one
had consulted him. So he complained to the pope that the emperor was too
friendly with the Arabs, and the pope became convinced that Frederick
had become a Muslim. But Emperor Frederick II didn't care. He just
rejoiced that he had achieved more for Christians than anyone else had
ever done and crowned himself king of Jerusalem, for no priest could be
found who was willing to crown him against the pope's wishes.
Then he set sail for home, taking with him presents given to him by the
sultan: hunting leopards and camels, rare stones and many other
curiosities. And he made a collection of these in Sicily and
engaged great artists to work for him, and took pleasure in beautiful
things whenever he was tired of ruling. But he certainly did rule. He
disliked the custom of granting land as fiefs. Instead, he appointed
officials and, rather than give them land, he paid them a monthly
salary. For this being Italy, they already used money. And he ruled
justly but also with great severity.
Frederick was so different from everyone else around him that nobody
understood what he was trying to achieve. Least of all Pope Gregory, who
called him the Antichrist, while others called him stupor mundi, which
means the wonder of the world. In far-off Germany few people paid any
attention to their strange emperor with his odd ideas. And because
people didn't understand him, he had a hard life. Even his own son
turned against him and stirred up trouble among the Germans, and his
best-loved adviser went over to the pope, leaving Frederick entirely
alone. Of all the ingenious and practical schemes he had hoped to show
the world, very few saw the light of day. Unable to carry them out, he
became increasingly bitter and ill-tempered. And so he died, in the year
1250.
His son Manfred died in the struggle for power when he was still a young
man, and his grandson Conradin was taken prisoner by his enemies and
beheaded in Naples at the age of twenty-four. Such was the sad end of
that great ruling family of knights, the Hohenstaufens.
But while Frederick was still reigning in Sicily and quarrelling with
the pope, a dreadful misfortune overtook the world which neither could
prevent. New hordes of mounted warriors arrived from Asia. This time it
was the Mongols, the most fearsome of them all. Even Shih Huang-ti's
great wall could not restrain them. Under their leader, Ghengis Khan,
they first conquered China, looting and sacking with appalling savagery.
Then came Persia's turn, after which they took the path of the Huns, the
Avars and the Magyars towards Europe. Sowing terror and destruction,
they raged first through Hungary and on through Poland. Finally, in
1241, they reached the German frontier town of Breslau, which they
seized and burned to the ground. Everywhere they went there was
slaughter. No one was spared. Their empire was already the greatest the
world had ever known. Just imagine: from Peking to Breslau! Moreover, in
the course of their invasions their troops had changed from savage
hordes to well-trained warriors with very cunning leaders. Christendom
could do nothing to stop them. A great army of knights fell before them.
And then, when the danger was at its height, their emperor died
somewhere in Siberia, and the Mongols turned back, leaving nothing but
wasteland behind.
In Germany the death of the last Hohenstaufen led to greater confusion
than ever. No one could agree on a new king so none was chosen. And
because there was neither a king nor an emperor, nor anyone else in
control, everything went to the dogs. The strong simply robbed the weak
of everything they had. People called it the right of might, or
'fist-law'. Of course, might is never a right, nor is it right. It's
simply wrong.
People knew this well enough and despaired, and wished they could return
to the old days. Now you can wish, and you can dream. But if you keep on
wishing and dreaming you sometimes end up believing that what you want
has come true. And so people began to persuade themselves that the
Emperor Frederick wasn't really dead, but under a spell in an enchanted
mountain, where he was sitting and waiting. And this in its turn had a
remarkable effect. I don't know whether you have ever found yourself
dreaming of someone who appears first as one person and then as someone
else, and then, somehow, as both at the same time? Because this is what
happened. People dreamed that a great, wise and just ruler (this was
Frederick II of Sicily) was sitting deep down under the Kyffhauser
mountains and would one day return and make his purpose known. And yet,
at the same time, they also dreamed that he had a great beard (this was
now Frederick's grandfather, Frederick I Barbarossa), and that he was
all-powerful and would vanquish all his enemies and create a kingdom as
wonderful and magnificent as it had been at the time of the great Feast
of Mainz.
The worse things got, the more people expected a miracle. They pictured
the king asleep inside the mountain, where he had slept so long that his
fiery red beard had grown right through the stone
table on which he leant. Once in every hundred years, he would wake and
ask his page if the ravens were still circling the mountain. Not until
his page replied 'No, Sir, I can't see them' would he rise and split the
table with his sword and shatter the mountain in which the spell had
imprisoned him and ride out in shining armour with all his men. You can
imagine what people would make of that today!
But in the end no miraculous apparition came to set the world to rights,
just an energetic, able and far-sighted knight, whose castle, the
Habsburg - or Hawk's Castle - was in Switzerland. His name was Rudolf.
The princes had elected him king of the Germans in 1273, hoping that a
knight so poor and obscure as he would be biddable and weak. But they
hadn't reckoned on his intelligence and shrewdness. He may have started
out with little land - and therefore little power - but he knew of a
very simple way to obtain more, and with it more power.
He went to war against the rebellious King Otakar of Bohemia, defeated
him and confiscated part of his kingdom. As king he was entitled to do
this. Then, in 1282, he bestowed the same lands -which happened to be
Austria - on his own sons. This formed the basis of his family's power.
The Habsburgs were able to increase this power with a succession of new
fiefs, and by marriage and inheritance, until they had become one of the
most esteemed and influential noble families of Europe. It must be said
that they ruled more over their vast family fief (by which I mean
Austria) than they did over the German empire, despite their title of
German king and emperor. Those lands were ruled by other lords - dukes
and bishops and counts — all of whom lived like princes, enjoying almost
unlimited power over their domains. Nevertheless, with the last of the
Hohenstaufens the real Age of Chivalry had ended.
|
|
|
25 Cities and Citizens
Markets and towns - Merchants and knights - Guilds - Building cathedrals -
Mendicant friars and penitential priests - The persecution of Jews and heretics
- The Babylonian Captivity of the popes -The Hundred Years War with England -
Joan of Arc - Life at court -Universities - Charles IV and Rudolf the Founder
|
Joan of Arc, by
Jean-Auguste Ingres
|
|
In the course of the hundred years that passed between the deaths of
Frederick Barbarossa in 1190 and Rudolf I of Habsburg in 1291, Europe
changed in more ways than it is possible to imagine. As I have already
said, at the time of Barbarossa there were powerful cities, mainly in
Italy, whose citizens were bold enough to oppose and even take up arms
against the emperor, while at that time Germany was largely a land of
knights, monks and peasants. But over the following hundred years the
situation in Germany changed beyond recognition. Many eastward crusades
had already taken Germans far from home and they had established trading
relationships in distant countries. They no longer exchanged oxen for
sheep, or drinking horns for cloth, because they, too, were using money.
And where there was money there were markets where all sorts of goods
could be bought. These markets could not be held just anywhere. They had
to be in fixed places protected by walls and towers, usually near a
castle. Anyone who set up a stall in one and traded, as a burgher was no
longer bound in serfdom to a landowner. People liked to say 'city air
brings freedom', because burghers in the bigger towns answered to no one
but the king.
But you mustn't imagine that life in a town in the Middle Ages was
anything like it is today. Most towns were small, crooked mazes of tiny
alleys and narrow houses with high, pointed gables. Merchants and
craftsmen lived there with their families, crowded together in little
space. When a merchant went on his travels he was usually accompanied by
armed guards. This was because many knights in those days had forgotten
all about chivalry and were little more than brigands. High up in their
castles they sat, waiting for merchants to rob. However, the burghers
didn't put up with this for long: they had money and they were able to
hire soldiers. As a result there were frequent fights between burghers
and robber knights, and quite often it was the burghers who won.
Craftsmen such as tailors, shoemakers, drapers, bakers, locksmiths,
painters, joiners, stonemasons and master builders all belonged to
groups or associations known as guilds. A guild such as that of the
tailors was almost as hard to enter and had rules that were almost as
strict as those of the knights. Not just anyone could become a
master-tailor. First you had to serve your time as an apprentice. Then
you became a journeyman and went on your travels in order to get to know
other towns and other ways of working. Young men like these went on
foot, and often spent years wandering through many countries before they
returned home, or found a city which had a place for a master-tailor.
Small towns didn't need many tailors, and the guilds made sure there
were no more masters of any trade than there was work for them to do. A
journeyman had to demonstrate his skill by completing a masterpiece
(perhaps a fine coat) and only then would he be ceremoniously declared a
Master and admitted to the guild.
Each guild had its own rules and entertainments, its banners and fine
mottos, just like the knights. And of course their mottos, too, were not
always respected. But at least they had them. A member of a guild was
bound to support his fellow members and not steal their trade, nor must
he cheat his own customers with poor goods. He was expected to treat his
apprentices and journeymen well and do his best to uphold the good name
of his trade and his town. He was, so to speak, one of God's craftsmen,
just as a knight was a warrior fighting for God.
Indeed, while knights gave their lives in crusades to liberate Christ's
tomb, burghers and craftsmen would often sacrifice their wealth, their
strength and their well-being when it came to building a church in their
town. The new church or cathedral had to be bigger, more beautiful and
more magnificent than any building the neighbouring towns could boast
of. The whole town shared this ambition and all the inhabitants devoted
themselves to the project. The best-known master-builder was summoned to
draw up the plans, stonemasons were engaged to cut stone and carve
statues, painters to paint pictures for the altar and make windows that
would shine like jewels within the church. But more important than whose
idea it had been, or who had designed or built it, was the fact that the
church was the work of the whole town, a communal offering to God. You
only need look at one to see it. For these churches are no longer the
massive fortresses that were still being built in Germany in
Barbarossa's time, but glorious, high-vaulted halls with slim pillars
and slender bell towers, and room inside for the whole town to gather
when they came to hear the preachers. For by now new monastic orders had
sprung up whose monks were less concerned with tilling the soil around
their monasteries and copying manuscripts, but chose instead to roam the
land as beggars, preaching repentance to the people and explaining the
Holy Scriptures. Everyone flocked to the churches to hear them and wept
over their sins, promising to mend their ways and live according to
Christ's teachings of loving kindness.
But like the crusaders, who in the name of piety had carried out that
dreadful massacre in Jerusalem, there were many citizens who failed to
hear in those penitential sermons a call to mend their ways, and instead
learnt to hate all those who didn't share their faith. Jews, above all,
were their targets, and the more pious they felt themselves to be, the
more they abused them. You must bear in mind that the Jews were the only
tribe from antiquity left in Europe. The Babylonians, the Egyptians, the
Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls and the Goths had all
either perished or merged with other peoples. Only the Jews, whose state
had been repeatedly destroyed and who had endured all those terrible
times when they had been persecuted and hounded from one country to the
next, had survived. After two thousand years, they were still patiently
awaiting the coming of their Saviour, the Messiah. Forbidden to own
fields, they couldn't be peasants, let alone become knights. Nor were
they allowed to practise any craft. The only occupation open to them was
trade. So that is what they did. Even then they were only permitted to
live in specified parts of the town and only allowed to wear certain
clothes. Yet, in time, some of them were able to earn a lot of money
which knights and burghers borrowed and were often unable to repay. This
only made the Jews more hated and they were repeatedly attacked and
robbed. Having neither the power nor the right to defend themselves,
they were helpless, unless the king or a priest chose to take their side
- but this was rarely the case.
Bad enough then to be a Jew, but worse still if you were someone who,
having pored long over the Bible, began to doubt some aspect of its
teaching. Such people were called heretics and the persecutions they
suffered were terrible. Anyone perceived to be a heretic was publicly
burned alive, just like the Christians in Nero's time. Whole cities were
razed to combat heresy and entire regions laid waste. Crusades were
waged against them, just as they were against Muslims. And all this was
done by the very people who, for the God of mercy and his Good News,
were building those magnificent cathedrals. Buildings which, with their
soaring towers and great decorated porches, with their stained glass
windows gleaming like jewels in the darkness and their thousands of
statues, seemed to offer a glorious vision of the Kingdom of Heaven.
France had cities and churches before there were any in Germany. France
was richer, and had had a less turbulent history. Moreover, the kings of
France had been quick to find a use for the citizens of the new Third
Estate. After about 1300 they rarely assigned land to the nobility, but
kept it instead for themselves and paid burghers to manage it (just as
Frederick II had done in Sicily).
As a result French kings held more and more land. And land in those
days, as you know, meant serfs, soldiers and power. By 1300, the French
kings were the most powerful sovereigns, for it was only now that the
German king, Rudolf of Habsburg, was beginning to establish his power by
bestowing land on his relatives. Besides which, the French did not only
rule France, but southern Italy as well. It wasn't long before their
power had become so great that, in 1309, they were able to force the
pope to leave Rome and take up residence in France where they could keep
a close eye on him. The popes lived in a great palace in Avignon
surrounded by wonderful works of art, but they were, in effect,
prisoners. And this is why, remembering the Babylonian captivity of the
Jews (which lasted, as you know, from 597 to 538 вс), this period from
1305 to 1376 is known as the Babylonian Captivity of the Popes.
But the kings of France were still not satisfied. As you remember, a
Norman family had conquered England in 1066, and they had been ruling
England ever since. This made them nominally French and, as such,
subjects of the kings of France, who could therefore claim sovereignty
over England as well as France. However, when no heir was born to the
French royal family, the kings of England claimed that, both as
relatives and as vassals of the French kings, they should now rule
France as well as England. The dispute that followed turned into a
terrible struggle. It began in 1337 and lasted for more than a hundred
years. What had started as a chivalrous contest between a few knights
became a war in which great armies of soldiers were paid to fight each
other. These were not members of a grand, communal order for whom battle
was a noble pursuit, but ordinary Englishmen and Frenchmen, fighting one
another for the independence of their lands. The English won more and
more land for themselves, conquering ever greater parts of France - not
least because the French king who was in power towards the end of this
war was thick-witted and incompetent.
But the French people did not want to be ruled by foreigners. And it was
then that the miracle happened. A simple seventeen-year-old shepherdess
called Joan of Arc, who felt herself called by God to the task,
succeeded in persuading the French to put her at the head of an army,
dressed in full armour, and the English were driven from the land. 'Only
when the English are in England will there be peace,' she said. But the
English took their revenge. They captured her and sentenced her to death
for witchcraft. And in 1431 Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. But
perhaps it isn't so surprising that they thought she was a witch. For
doesn't it seem like magic that a simple, uneducated peasant girl, all
on her own, armed with nothing but courage and a passionate conviction,
should be able to wipe out the accumulated defeats of almost a century
in just two years, and bring about the crowning of her king?
And yet this time of the Hundred Years War was also a time of
unimaginable brilliance and excitement, a time when towns were expanding
and proud knights no longer sat in grim seclusion in their lonely
strongholds, but chose instead to inhabit the courts of rich and
powerful kings and princes. In Flanders and Brabant (now Belgium), but,
above all, in Italy, life was truly magnificent. Here there were
prosperous towns, trading in precious cloth such as silks and brocades,
and offering every conceivable comfort and luxury. Knights and noblemen
feasted at court in splendid, richly embroidered robes. And when they
danced in rings with their ladies, in great halls and in flower gardens,
to the music of lutes and viols, I, too, should have liked to be there.
The dresses worn by the ladies were even richer and more elaborate than
the clothes of the men. And they had head-dresses that were tall and
pointed like church steeples, to which long, fine veils were attached.
In their pointed shoes and sumptuous robes glittering with
thread-of-gold they looked like delicate and graceful dolls. How unhappy
they must have been in the smoke-filled halls of those ancient
fortresses! Now they lived in castles that were spacious and airy, with
turrets and battlements and thousands of windows, in rooms hung with
brightly coloured tapestries, where the conversation was elegant and
refined. And when a nobleman led his lady into the banqueting hall, to
the feast laid out in all its splendour, he would hold her hand lightly
with just two fingers, spreading the others as widely as he could. By
now, reading and writing was common in towns. It was a necessity for
tradesmen and artisans, and many knights liked to address artful and
elegant poems to their elegant ladies.
Nor was knowledge any longer the preserve of a handful of monks in their
cells. Soon after 1200, students from countries far and wide were
flocking in their thousands to the famous University of Paris, where
they studied and argued a great deal over the opinions of Aristotle, and
how these might or might not agree with what was written in the Bible.
This way of life, both at court and in the city, finally reached
Germany, and in particular the court of the German emperor. His court,
at that time, was in Prague. For after the death of Rudolf of Habsburg,
other families of kings and emperors had been elected. And since 1310 it
had been the Luxembourg family who ruled from their seat in Prague. But
the fact was that by now this rule hardly included any German lands at
all. Power was once more in the hands of individual princes who ruled
independently in areas such as Bavaria, Swabia, Wtirttemberg and
Austria. The only real difference between the German emperor and these
princes was that he was the most powerful among them. The Luxembourgs'
land was Bohemia, and Charles IV, a just sovereign and lover of
splendour, had been ruling there from Prague since 1347. The knights at
his court were no less noble than those of Flanders and the paintings in
his palaces were just as fine as those at Avignon. In 1348 he, too,
founded a university, in Prague. It was the German empire's first
university.
Hardly less splendid than the court of Charles IV was that of his
son-in-law in Vienna, Rudolf IV, known as 'the Founder'. As you can see,
none of these rulers lived in lonely fortresses any more, nor did they
set out across the world on adventurous military campaigns. Their
castles were built in the centres of towns. This alone tells you how
important towns had become. But it was only the beginning.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
