III. CHAP. Pontlevoi in 1016, in which many thousands are said to have perished. The chronicles enumerate fourteen castles, which, with many others unnamed, were erected by Foulques. The building of churches kept pace with that of castles. Splendid ecclesiastical structures arose in every town. The cathedral of St. Martin of Tours, burnt about this time, was rebuilt with great magnificence. Robert repaired the church of St. Germain L'Auxerrois in Paris, and built that of St. Germain des Prés. "At this time," says Raduph Glaber, "churches were rebuilt all through the universe, especially in Italy and Gaul. One would think the world had agreed to shake off its old rags, to put on the white robe of churches. And not only cathedrals and monasteries, but the chapels of villages were restored." The reign of Robert, so insignificant in itself, is remarkable for the variety of new ideas which then took birth, and of new movements which commenced. Norman severity produced the first rising of peasants against their feudal lords. What they most complained of, was not the conditions of land tenure, but the vexatious mode of dispensing justice, with no end of pleas and fines, and still more especially the new pretensions of their lords to exclude the peasantry from the use of forest and river, with the rights of hunting and fishing. The Carlovingian monarchs had their preserves; but the Normans were the first who established rigorous game-laws as necessary to the maintenance of sport. The kings of France did not follow the example till much later. Philip Augustus soon after his accession first walled the park of Vincennes, as Rigord mentions; and Henry the Second sent up from Normandy by the Seine boat-loads of game to stock the woods of Vin cennes. At the same time commenced the agitation in towns, and amongst townsfolk, against feudal exactions, and tyranny of a similar kind. In these early times, the inhabitants of towns were by no means capitalists, traders, and artisans; living, as is now the case, on resources distinct from the land. The townsfolk, on the contrary, were generally proprietors or cultivators of land in their vicinity. In remote and completely rustic districts, the small owner of ground found no protection, save by doing homage to the feudal chief of the region. His land and person were thus absorbed in the domain and the lordship of his superior. The townsmen were not always under the same necessity. In many regions, especially in Italy and the south of France, and on the Rhine, the old Roman traditions and habits of municipal government survived. These enabled the Italian cities, the maritime ones first, to shake off all supremacy, and constitute themselves as republics. In the south of France, they elected consuls, or town counts. In Germany, towns naturally fell under the jurisdiction of the emperor or of his Vogt; from whence, the emperor being so often absent, and so much in need of succour, it was but a step to the liberty of appointing their own magistrates. In most places, however, the bishop inherited the imperial authority; which was but natural, as in time of conquest, and under a conquering race, the bishop was the compatriot and protector of the subject community. The lordship of townsfolk was not fiercely contested or grievously abused, until taxation became resuscitated and multiplied: when fines on judicial proceedings, amercements, tolls, and even direct taxation, began to be levied, it then grew important to get and to keep possession of a town, or half a town. In Amiens, for example, the king's bailiff held a portion of the houses, the count another, the bishop a third, whilst the lord of Boves, a castle contiguous, put in his claim, and frequently warred upon all three. Such, at least, was the anomalous state of things between Loire and Meuse. In the south, the citizens CHAP. III. CHAP. III. established their independence. In England and Normandy, the kings early recognised certain rights in the burgesses. The town paid a fixed ferm, and in return had several privileges. In those of the duchy of France, such as Paris and Orleans, the king was indisputably predominant, but ordonnances restrained any undue severity of his provosts. In Paris, moreover, there were guilds, which procured a degree of freedom to certain corporations, notably to that of the boatmen. But it was in towns of mixed jurisdiction, especially in those situated in that belt of territory which divided Germany from France, and which extended from the Somme to the Meuse, that the citizens suffered most grievances, and struggled most actively for relief. Most of these, such as Amiens, Beauvais, Cambray, Valenciennes, Laon, and Rheims, were episcopal towns. At first the bishop wielded paramount and unquestioned authority; but the citizens had a voice in the election of their prelate, and thus exercised a certain amount of precaution and control. Sometimes the bishop, after election, proved a rapacious tyrant, and then there was no remedy, save the townspeople meeting in the public square, and swearing to support each other in the maintenance of a commune or municipality. The people of Cambray leagued in 957, to expel and keep out their archbishop, but were overcome by the hosts of the emperor. In 1024, they renewed the attempt, with the same result. The Count of Flanders aided them later in obtaining the object of their desires. Ecclesiastical writers speak most bitterly of the commune and its partisans, wherever they appeared; as they deprived the Church precisely of those subjects and that jurisdiction which gave most power and wealth. But the lay aristocracy do not seem as yet animated by that * Such as the privileges granted to Domfront. For the liberties left, even by the Conqueror, to towns in England, see Palgrave. contempt and hatred for townsfolk, which, after the crusades, became gradually part of their character. Amidst these struggles of each class to attain some degree of freedom and independence, the dominant sentiment of the age was indisputably that of religious fear. The ravages and ruin, the sweeping destruction of property and life during the tenth century, had reduced men's minds to a state of permanent panic, from whence had sprung the belief that the world would terminate in the year 1000. Even the non-fulfilment of such an expectation did not relieve men from heavy presentiment. A rude and lawless age gave occasion to many crimes; the best mode of atoning for which was to undertake long pilgrimages. These were at first directed to Mount St. Michel, Mount Garganus, or to Rome. Bernard, Abbot of Beaulieu, going to Rome on a pilgrimage, was so disgusted with the infamies of Pope John that he hurried away. Similar sentiments of disgust may have induced many to prefer the more tedious journey to Jerusalem. This was at first undertaken by sea. But King Stephen of Hungary, being converted to christianity, opened the way by land, says Glaber, to pilgrims from the west. Foulques Nerra of Anjou had been twice to the Holy Land; and such pilgrims were regarded with great veneration. How great then was the sensation when tidings arrived in 1009 that Hakim, Kaliff of Egypt, had utterly destroyed the Holy Sepulchre. This was followed by rapidly succeeding accounts of the extortions and indignities practised upon pilgrims. The pious resentment thus created received fresh food and impulses every year, until at last it produced the great movement of the crusades. But before armies, with pious intent and hostile array, took the road to the Holy Land, a piece of good fortune befel some Norman adventurers who were visiting the Roman shrines, and added incentives of greed and conquest to those of penitence and religion. CHAP. III. III. CHAP. Pope Benedict besought these Normans to aid him against the Greeks, then occupying the duchy of Beneventum. Rodolph and his companions attacked the Greeks, and soon replaced them as lords of the duchy. Word was soon passed to their native land of Normandy, that wealth and estates were to be won by the stout arm of the military adventurer in southern climes. A stream of soldiers accordingly began to flow over the Alps; they overran Apulia, and led to the foundation of the Norman kingdom of Naples. The success of this enterprise had not only a great influence on future expeditions to the Holy Land, but was one of the main causes which prompted William to undertake the conquest of England. Whilst the populace maltreated and massacred the Jews, and the military noblesse were getting up enthusiasm and associations for invading Palestine, the clergy relit the flames of persecution for heretics. According to Glaber, a woman of many accomplishments brought from Italy to Orleans the tenets of a sect, with which she contrived to inoculate the clergy and teachers of that town. This sect impugned the Trinity, denied the value of good works, those at least which the Church pretended to have amassed. It doubted the nature of the Eucharist as interpreted by Rome, and declared that it possessed an earlier and a purer tradition than that Church. Claude, Bishop of Turin, was the most eminent and most early professor of such doctrines. If not the founder, he was the earliest expounder (he lived in the 9th century) of the religious opinions of the Vaudois or Waldenses. Several of the clergy of Orleans, on being interrogated, professed to hold those doctrines, and they were burned in consequence in the great square of the town, Constance, queen of Robert, being foremost in inveteracy against them. Thus was inaugurated in France another cruel habit; perpetuated by the great power accruing from it to the Church, which found in |