An introduction to some of the most astonishing architectural monuments the world has ever known—Gothic cathedrals. We shall study the art, literature, intellectual life, economics, and new social arrangements that arose in the shadow of the cathedrals and that were such an important part of the revival of cities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The goal of the course is a better appreciation of the High Middle Ages, a world that is still recognizably our own.
20.1 Church and State
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From the course by Yale University
Age of Cathedrals
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From the lesson
Cathedrals and Crusades
In Module 7 we examine in some detail The Song of Roland, portions of which are depicted in the stained glass of Chartres, and we explore the relationship of relics from the Middle East to cathedral building.
Meet the Instructors
Howard BlochSterling Professor of French
French
Welcome back to the Age of Cathedrals.
Today we leave the world of old French literature and the first epic,
the Song of Roland,
to return to architecture in the Parisian style.
As we began to look at one of the masterpieces of what was known
as radiating Gothic embodied in the Sainte Chapelle,
which still stands like Notre Dame on Paris's Île de la Cité.
The site of the Sainte Chapelle may have been occupied
by Gallo-Roman and Merovingian castles.
Robert the Pious, king of the Franks,
who ruled from 996 to 1031 rebuilt the palace at the beginning of the eleventh century.
Philippe Auguste, at the beginning of the 13th,
Philippe's grandson Louis IX or Saint Louis,
who ruled from 1226 to his death in 1217,
lived between his palace at Versailles on the eastern outskirts of Paris,
and the palace which stands on the side of the current Palais de Justice,
France's Supreme Court, and which served as a royal residence
until Charles V moved to the Louvre in the 14th century.
These were years of great expansion of the royal domain.
Louis VI, who died in 1137,
had modestly increased the direct holdings of monarchy.
Louis VII, who reigned until 1179 added little.
His son Philippe-Auguste tripled the extent of the domain.
To the northeast he acquired Artois, the Vermandois,
Valois, Picardy, and the counties of Beaumont-Sur-Oise and Claremont-Sur-Oise.
To the northwest, he acquired the Duchy of Normandy,
the counties of Melun, Evreux and Alencon.
To the west, Touraine,
Anjou, Maine, and part of Poitou.
To the south, Western Berry, Gien,
Montargis, Sancoins, Riom, and part of Auvergne.
In his brief reign as king of France from 1223 to 1226,
Philip's son Louis VIII conquered Saintonge and Aunis,
Perche, and Sainte Riquier in Picardy.
While his campaign of 1226 in the south,
made a reality of the rights granted to him by Ann-Marie de Montfort over Beziers,
Carcassonne, Beaucaire and other towns in Languedoc.
Despite such expansion, the King of France was still just primus inter pares,
a powerful feudal baron but not qualitatively superior to the dukes of Normandy,
Brittany, Aquitaine, or the count of Champagne,
also known as the poet Thibault IV of Champagne.
Evidence of the fragility of the monarchy could be found in the rebellion of barons
against Louis IX who became King of France at the tender age of 12.
Among the rebels opposed to the rule of a minor
was Peter Montclaire, whose image we saw under the south rose window in Chartres.
The barons who revolted against the rule of a minor,
had not reckoned however with Louis's mother,
Blanche of Castille, who was a courageous, savvy, formidable personality.
Blanche managed to keep the kingdom together until Louis reached the age of maturity,
and the ferocious king's mother ruled in her son's long absence
during the Fourth Crusade which we read about in The Life of St. Louis by Joinville.
Louis IX, was a muscular Christian,
and unlike almost all who had proceeded somewhat of an intellectual.
He knew enough Latin to follow liturgical offices,
or to read a passage from the writings of St. Augustine,
in whose City of God he was steeped.
Louis appreciated ideas somewhat.
He appreciated belief a lot and when it came to a conflict between ideas and belief,
he opted for the latter.
Lord Jean de Joinville,
whose Life of St. Louis is an abundant source of knowledge of France,
in the mid- to late- thirteenth century,
tells us that hearing the story of a knight who interrupted
a debate between Jews and Christians by striking the former spokesman,
he said to Joinville,
a layman whenever he hears the Christian religion abused,
should not attempt to defend its tenets,
except with his sword,
and that he should thrust it into the scoundrel's belly as far as it will enter.
To a degree unheard of up until then,
and on the model of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire including Charlemagne,
Louis realized the powerful potential of linking church and state,
and this alliance which culminated in the saint-king will progress
haltingly but steadily until the eighteenth century with Louis XVI the Sun King.
Louis IX not only combined altar and crown,
he rooted the legitimacy of the realm in New and Old Testament history.
He furthered the participation,
which we saw at Chartres,
of the kings of France in the aura of biblical beginnings.
We cannot assume bad faith or even conscious strategy,
for Louis IX was deeply moved by his belief,
of which we have evidence when he was only 18.
Evidence which leads directly to the building of the Sainte-Chapelle.
One of Louis's biographers who also wrote a life of Saint Louis,
Guillaume de Nangis, recounts an incident that occurred in the year 1232,
involving the loss of a unique object,
one of the holy nails of the Crucifixion,
from the treasury of Saint-Denis, and this incident had wide implications.
Guillaume de Nangis writes: the following year,
which would be 1232,
it happened in the same church of Saint-Denis that the very saintly nail,
one of those with which our Lord was crucified and which was brought there,
in the time of Charles the Bald,
King of France and emperor of Rome,
who gave it to the aforementioned church,
the nail fell from a vase in which it was kept,
while one was giving it to be kissed by the pilgrims.
And it was lost amidst the multitude of people who were kissing it.
The third day of the calendes of March,
which would have been the 28th of February.
The sorrow and the pity that the holy King Louis and his noble mother,
Queen Blanche, felt for such a great loss must be mentioned.
King Louis and the queen his mother,
when they learned of the loss of this very exalted treasure,
and what had happened to the holy nail under their reign,
felt great pain and said that one could hardly bring
them a worse piece of news nor make them suffer more cruelly.
The very good and noble King Louis because of the great pain he experienced,
could not contain himself,
but started to cry out loud that he would have preferred
that the best city of its realm were destroyed and perished.
When the inhabitants of Paris heard the cry of
the king and the news of the loss of the holy nail,
they were tormented, and many men, women, children,
clerics, and students started to bray and a cry from the bottom of their heart,
with crying and in tears;
they ran to the churches to call upon the help of God in such a great peril.
It wasn't only Paris that cried,
but all those who in the realm of France,
learned of the loss of the holy and precious nail also cried.
Many wise men believed that this cruel loss,
which occurred at the beginning of the reign,
was the sign of great disaster or epidemics,
and that it prophesied the destruction,
God forefend, of the whole body of the realm of France.
The great French historian, Jacques Le Goff,
claims that the Romans did not believe more firmly,
in consulting the livers of their victims or in the flight of birds,
than the French of the thirteenth century in the foreboding loss of the holy nail,
which was by the way found again a couple of months later.
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