H MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE CHAPTER VII ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ILE DE FRANCE ISTORICAL conditions of the Ile de France in the XI cen tury were in sharp contrast to those of Normandy, where the concentrated monarchy and the reformed church proved so favorable to the development of architecture at the same period. In the royal domain, the XI century was the age of feudalism, a time when the powerlessness of the Capetian monarch reduced the land to practical anarchy. It was above all the age of the degradation of the Church. Yet the historian, who possesses the great advantage of knowing what was to come after, can easily see that this age was all the while paving the way for the great economic advances of the XII century, and amid the darkness, he is consequently able to trace occasional flashes of the coming light. Architecture, however, reflected only the darkness; light was still in the future tense, and the material development of art is always influenced by the present or even by the past, rather than by the future. The XI century was, then, in general, an age of lawless feudalism. The Capetian king, sitting on his hollow throne, offered a strange spectacle of mingled misery and grandeur. The impotent monarch, notwithstanding the pomp of his title and the prestige of his office, was totally unable to cope with the lawless feudal lords who ran riot in the land. Fearless of the king's authority these barons pillaged and burnt at will, and racked the land with all the horrors of petty warfare. The very excess of this feudal tyranny and oppression, however, at last roused the indignation of the people, and thus was kindled that spark of popular loyalty and democracy, which in the XII 0 century burst into so brilliant a flame, and enabled the Capetian king to subdue and bring to order one after another of the great lords. Such political conditions were inevitably reflected in the Church. At the beginning of the XI century simony was everywhere rampant; many bishoprics had even become the hereditary patrimony of ducal or noble families, and were used as a provision for younger sons or bastards. In Gascony a single baron possessed no less than eight bishoprics, and passed them on to his heir, while in the Ile de France matters seem to have been not much better. Under such abuse it was natural that the episcopacy should lose its temporal power, and the authority of the bishops was still further weakened by the claims of the popes, which assumed such prominence about the middle of the century, and by the constant struggle of the abbeys to gain independence. The spiritual authority of the bishops, on the other hand, was endangered by the very fact that the episcopacy had become feudal, since prelates, who were also great lords and landed proprietors, naturally transferred their energies from ecclesiastical to secular affairs. This decadence of the episcopacy did not appear everywhere, it is true, in the same degree. In one see the bishop was scarcely to be distinguished from a baron; in another he preserved something of his spiritual character, his independence, and his dignity. But everywhere the episcopacy had become largely feudal. In the Carolingian epoch the king had named the bishops, and the palace had ruled the Church; but now the Capetian had kept his authority only over the bishoprics of Sens, Reims, Lyon, Tours, and Bourges." Everywhere else, in Normandy, in Brittany, in Aquitaine, or in Languedoc, the duke or count had supplanted the king. The bishop elect paid the local feudal lord homage, and by this very fact the majority of bishoprics were transformed into fiefs, and the bishop into a feudal personage, with all the obligations of a vassal. Here again, however, the very degradation of the Church caused a reaction, for the danger which menaced Christianity 2 Lavisse, op cit. II, 108. 1 Lavisse, Histoire de la France II1, 111. became so apparént, that in certain monasteries and at Rome there came into being a current of opinion destined to sweep over all Europe as the Gregorian reform. To tear the bishops from the temporal interests which absorbed them, from the feudal customs that debased them, to prevent the clergy from becoming secular, — this was the program of the first phase of the Cluniac movement.1 It was in the last half of the XI century that the question of reform first became burning. Leo IX (1049-54) summoned a great council at Reims. This, the first alliance of Pope and monasteries for the purpose of reform, attacked simony and especially the simony of bishops, several of whom were deposed. Everything depended upon the attitude which the bishops should assume in answer to these measures. In fact, the episcopacy was divided as to the course to be pursued. A few bishops quietly acquiesced in the Cluniac program; the vast majority, however, remained faithful to the traditions and interests of the episcopal body, and demanded the maintenance of old conditions. When the character of the episcopacy is considered, the wonder is, not that the majority of the bishops sided with the old régime, but that any accepted the ideas of Cluny. If the bishops were divided on the question of the Gregorian reform, the monastic world in overwhelming majority was ultramontane. There could be only one result. France became in the second half of the XI century the scene of a desperate battle between the non-reforming bishops and the abbots. This strife of the two clergies, the secular and the regular, was only an incident of an antagonism as long as their existence; but never, before nor after, did the quarrel degenerate into such open warfare. On both sides recourse was had to physical violence. Other powers entered the lists: the papacy and the reforming bishops backed the cause of the abbots; the party of the non-reforming bishops was supported by the king and the feudal lords, that is, by those laymen who did not wish to be deprived of their power over the Church. This position of the king on the side opposed to reform is 1 Lavisse, op. cit. II 1, 108. noteworthy. At the beginning of the XI century the Capetian monarchs had firmly believed in the religious superiority of the monks, and they had admired the efforts of certain reformers, notably the abbots of Cluny, to introduce into the cloister of the order, the regularity, the discipline of the ascetic ideal. In consequence they had been inclined to favor the monasteries and even to increase their power by emancipating them from the control of the bishops. Furthermore, in addition to this purely altruistic preference, the kings were not slow to perceive that the royal authority had much more to fear from the power of the bishops than from that of the abbots. Thus under Robert I (996-1031) the monarchy became openly the champion of the monks, and defended them against their enemies. The episcopal body complained bitterly against this partiality, as is witnessed by a satirical poem Adalbéron, bishop of Laon.1 The extreme pretensions of the pope, however, at last tried the patience of the Capetians, and forced them to support the non-reforming bishops. Still this support was always halfhearted, and after a time the king changed back again to his original position on the side of the monks. His temporary aid, however, enabled the bishops to prolong the strife up to the very end of the XI century (1099). Although king and bishop might join forces to oppose, they were powerless to prevent the popes from founding their universal monarchy over the consciences of Christians and over the Christian Church. All the Middle Ages had been tending towards this end. From the days of Charlemagne, the papасу had been steadily undermining the episcopal power, both from above by opposing the claims to power of the archbishops, and from below by favoring the independence of the chapters and abbeys. The clergy of France, with some few exceptions, ended by yielding to the irresistible force which concentrated at Rome all the thoughts and all the energies of the religious world. G The condition of the French Church in the XI century was therefore one of strife and turmoil a state of affairs far differ 1 Lavisse, op. cit. II,1 119. |