Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2. Edwards Henry Sutherland
do him honour brought before the altar a large silk carpet, on which the Pope knelt to pray. After the mass the sovereign pontiff retired to the vestry, when his servants, lay and ecclesiastic, took possession of the carpet, claiming that it belonged to them simply because the Pope had made use of it. The servants of the canons being of a different opinion snatched the carpet from the hands of the Pope’s servants. The carpet, dragged on one side and the other, gave way and was soon in pieces; the accident caused insults on both sides followed by blows. The king, who had witnessed the tumult, went forward to stop it; his authority, however, was powerless against the fury of the combatants, and in the confusion he himself was struck. Victory remained with the holders of the place – the attendants in the Church of Sainte-Geneviève. The Pope’s followers, with torn clothes and bleeding faces, went before their master, who complained to the king and begged him to punish the insult. Thereupon the Pope and the king resolved to change the constitution of the Sainte-Geneviève Monastery.
It was first resolved to send away the canons and replace them by monks from Cluny, but this idea was abandoned. A new abbé was named and twelve new canons were introduced from the Abbey of Saint-Victor, who were formally installed in the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, to the great displeasure of the former canons, who did all in their power to get rid of these strangers.
They employed against them calumnious threats and even violence. In the excesses of their animosity they ordered their servants to go in the night and break in the doors of the church, take possession of the building, and prevent the new canons from singing the matins, uttering shrieks which prevented them from being heard.
In spite of the precautions taken by the Abbé Suger, in charge of the church, they took possession of a great portion of the treasure, detaching from the shrine of Sainte-Geneviève gold ornaments which weighed fourteen marks, their object being to get together a sum sufficiently large to send to the Pope in order to prevail upon him to change his resolution in regard to the monastery. The conduct of the canons caused all kinds of reports to be circulated; among others one to the effect that the head of Sainte-Geneviève had been cut off and removed from her shrine, whereupon the shrine was solemnly opened and the body of the saint displayed, with its head, while at the same time the Te Deum was sung.
Those indeed were lawless times; nor had matters improved in Paris in the next century, when Jacques de Vitry, Archbishop Cardinal and Legate of the Pope in France, wrote such an account of life in Paris as Pope Eugène III. would doubtless have approved.
“Although the Lord has said,” wrote Jacques de Vitry in his “Western History,” “that it is more blessed to give than to receive, the men of our time, above all those who are in a position to command others, do not confine themselves to extorting money from their subjects by requiring from them unlawful presents, or by filling their greedy hands with the product of the taxes and exactions with which they so unjustly oppress them; they do far worse. The thefts, the rapines, and the acts of violence which they exercise, now openly, now in secret on the wretches under their dependence, render their cruel tyranny insupportable. These lords, notwithstanding the pompous titles of which they are so proud, do not omit to go out robbing and to perform the trade of mere thieves; also that of brigands, for they ravage whole tracts of country with their incendiarism. They respect nothing, not even the property of the monasteries, nor of the churches. They profane even the sanctuary, from which they carry away the objects consecrated to the celebration of the mass. Whenever, for the slightest causes, disputes arise between the poor and their lords and masters, the latter succeed through their satellites in selling the property of these unhappy beings. On the highways you see them, covered with iron, attack the passers-by without sparing either the pilgrims or the monks. If they wish to exercise personal vengeance against simple, innocent men, they attack them through their bandits, scoundrels who follow the streets of the towns and boroughs, or who, concealed in secret places, lay traps for these poor wretches in order to catch them and shed their blood. On the sea they are pirates, and without fearing the anger of God, they plunder passengers and merchants, in many cases burning the ships and drowning in the waves those whom they have despoiled. Princes and nobles without faith are the associates of these robbers. Far from protecting their subjects and maintaining them in peace, they oppress them; far from repressing the rascals and keeping them down through the fear of punishment, they favour them, become their patrons, and for the money they receive from them help them in their scandalous actions. The French nobles are like unclean dogs, who, always famishing, dispute with greedy crows the flesh of carcases. The nobles, by the agency of their provosts and their satellites, persecute the poor, rob the widow and the orphan, lay snares for them, pick quarrels with them, and attribute to them imaginary crimes in order to extort money. It is a common practice with them to put in prison and load with chains men who have committed no offence, and to make these innocent persons support cruel tortures in order to extract sums of money from them. This is all done in order to obtain supplies for their prodigality, their luxuries, their superfluities, their mad expenditure on the vanities of the century, to pay their usurers, to support mimes, singers, actors, jugglers, parasites, and flatterers, veritable dogs of their courtyards.”
“This sketch,” says Dulaure, “traced by a man of serious character, proves how great was the evil, how excessive was the disorder, how entirely all principles were subverted. Such were the knights of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose loyalty, so much exalted in novels, in poetical compositions, and on our modern stage, is constantly disproved by history. These men, to whom so many glorious exploits, so many generous actions are attributed, were merciless brigands, wretches who would now figure at the hulks or in the dungeons of Bicêtre.”
Some idea of the extreme corruption of the French clergy in the thirteenth century may be formed from a letter written by Pope Innocent III. in 1203 to the Abbé of Saint-Denis, close to Paris. “There are,” he said, “in your town priests who, abusing the clerical privilege, go through the streets at night and visit the most disreputable houses, breaking in the doors and taking the same liberties with the daughters of respectable citizens. The provost and the officers of justice, from respect for the liberties of the clerical order, do not dare to lay hands on them; and if you, my son, wish to stop these disorders, the culprits at once appeal to us, invoke our authority, ignore your jurisdiction, escape the canonical punishment, and continue with audacity their lawless habits.” The Pope then authorises the Abbé of Saint-Denis to exercise against these “priestly libertines” all ecclesiastical powers, without attending to their appeals.
The period of religious and warlike fanaticism was also a period of licentiousness and persecution.
The Jews, at the chivalrous time of the Crusades, were particularly unhappy. Their faith, their wealth, their usurious practices, exposed them at all times to persecution, and the Crusaders, before starting for the Holy Land, habitually massacred them. Kings drove them from the country, and then, on payment of large sums, allowed them to return. Dulaure (“Singularités Historiques”) attributes simply to avarice the accusations, always justified by the fanaticism of the people, which rulers brought against them, and which were withdrawn on payment of money.
In 1290 a woman living at Paris had pawned some clothes for thirty sous to a Jew named Jonathan, and wishing to take them out for the Easter holidays without repaying the money advanced, was told, according to her sworn testimony, that she might do so if she would bring to the Jew a piece of the Holy Sacrament, which she did. Then the Jew thrust his penknife into the Host, from which blood flowed in abundance without in any way terrifying him. Then he took a nail and hammered it into the Host; threw it into the fire, when it hovered above the flames; plunged it into a kettle of boiling water, which it reddened with its blood, receiving meanwhile no injury. These miracles did not frighten Jonathan. The son of this Jew, seeing Christians go to church, said to them, “It is useless for you to pray to your God, my father has killed him.” Then a woman who lived next door to Jonathan entered his house under pretext of getting a light, and took away the Host in the skirt of her dress; after which she placed it in a wooden vessel and carried it to the curé of Saint-Jean-en-Grève, to whom she narrated what she had seen. The Bishop of Paris had Jonathan arrested, tried to convert him, and as the Jew refused, burnt him alive.
“Jonathan,” says Dulaure, in commenting on this strange story, the authenticity of which he regards as undeniable, “possessed a large fortune. Was he convicted in any legal manner?