Gone Medieval - The Dynasty that Made Medieval France

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

From Hugh Capet to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Capetian dynasty considered itself divinely chosen to fulfil a great destiny. From an insecure foothold around Paris, the Capetians built a nation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and from the Rhône to the Pyrenees, founding practices and institutions that endured until the French Revolution. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis explores the Capetians’ dramatic rule and legacy with Professor Justine Firnhaber-Baker, author of House of Lilies: The Dynasty that Made Medieval France.This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. From a splintered part of an empire to the powerhouse of medieval Europe. One royal house transformed France and left an indelible mark on medieval history. In her new book, House of Lillies, the dynasty that made medieval France, Professor Justine Fern Harbour Baker of the University of St Andrews explores the ups and the downs of one of the most important families of the medieval period

and I'm delighted that Justine is going to help us get to know some of them a little bit better. Welcome to Gone Medieval Justine. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me on. And a great topic to talk about. I'm really excited to talk about House of Lillies. Wonderful. To start us off with, can you tell us a little bit about the origins of the House of Kappert? So who was Hugh Caput and how does he come to power? The man we now call Hugh Capet or Hugh Capet was the founding king of this dynasty,

the Capitians that ruled France for over 300 years from Hughes' accession in 987 to the death of the last direct Capitian king in 1328. History has not been kind to Hugh Capet. He was very soon after his accession painted as a usuper, even a low-born usurper. This isn't true. He was a great prince. He was not even the first of his line to be king of France, which was then known as West Francia. He was from a line of great princes whom we call the reversions after their founder, Robert the Strong.

he was actually quite close to the family that had been ruling West Francia, and they had been trading the throne back and forth for actually over 100 years at that point. So that other family are called the West Frankish Carolingians, and they are descendants of the Emperor Charlemagne. When Hugh Cape came to the throne, the last direct heir to that line, had died. And so Hugh was chosen to be king at an assembly of the great magnates of the realm. There was nothing underhanded about that. But because there were Carolingian sympathizers and there was a member of the Carolingian dynasty, just not a direct heir around to contest that, he's gone

down in history as this sort of surreptitious figure. But it wasn't true at all. And he was a great military leader. They chose him for a reason. It's interesting. I think I definitely had a view of Hugh as being just a nobody around the palace who sort of fell onto the throne and it was kind of he rose out of nowhere. But it's interesting to put him in a bit more context as actually one of the most important men in the realm. It stepped into the breach of a vacant throne, you know. How significant and unusual for the time was it that he was effectively elected to be king? Not unusual at all. And I think part of our sort of modern shock at that process comes from the translation of the Latin word electio. So electio, we often

translated as election. It is the origin of our word election, but it also means selected or chosen. And that's a bit closer to what happened. It's not that a bunch of candidates stood up and there was a hustings and then people voted. It's more that. there was an obvious candidate and he was acclaimed. And this is a very normal process in medieval Europe when there is not a clear successor to the throne. And in some kingdoms, the Visigothic Kingdom, the Lombard kingdom, the German kingdom, very soon after this point, that's normally how you choose the king, even if there is an obvious heir. And the reason for that, is that kingship is seen as an office that is exercised in conjunction with the other great powers in the

realm. So we don't have a sort of idea of absolute royal power in this time period. You have to cooperate with the other great people in the realm. So it's important that they be on board with whoever takes the throne. England at this period has something similar going on with the Wittendenhamoth, and it's just that the Holy Roman Empire, as it will emerge, is the one place where this seems to linger. But at the time, it was a fairly standard way of getting a king. And I guess it means that the political body of the realm are able to install someone as king that they feel they can work with. And having those working cooperative relationships is really important because we're in a period of decentralized power where really the great kind of go off and do their

own things in their own lands. And nobody's really worried about that. I think we can look back on that from our own centralised modern states and say, oh, what a mess. But people at the time didn't think that. No, I mean, it's similar to devolution, I guess, that we're increasingly getting, particularly in the UK today. You know, we're devolving powers down to ever more local regions and local mayors. It's not that dissimilar to that, really, is it? No, I don't think so. And there's a lot to be said for that kind of approach to power because it gives people autonomy and allows them to do things in a way that is locally acceptable. And can you just give us an idea as well of what West Francia as a kingdom looked like at this time? How close is it geographically to what we would call France today? Pretty close.

Doesn't include Provence. Provence is an acquisition of the 15th century, but it does include Catalonia. So it's probably about the same size. is just slightly different shape. And Brittany is pretty much independent. West Frankea comes into being in the year 843 as the result of a treaty called the Treaty of Verdun, which is agreed between three of Charlemagne's grandsons who have been fighting a civil war

and divide up his empire among themselves. So there is West Francia, which has given to the youngest grandson, Charles the Ball. there is East Francia, which is analogous to Germany. And then there is a kingdom in the middle that is literally called the Middle Kingdom. Eventually it gets the name Lothorangea. It doesn't stick around for too long as an independent kingdom. It gets absorbed into East Germany, though West Franke is always going, maybe I would like to have Lothorangea. And that's actually part of the conflict in the years leading up to Hyukapé's ascension. So West, West

Frankia is made up as a confederation of different great, what we would really call principalities. So you have the Duchy of Aquitaine, which is most of southern France. You have the Duchy of Normandy, which is going to really be a real problem for later Capitians, but in the beginning, the Dukes of Normandy are great Capitian supporters. You have some independent counts, the Count of Anjou, the Count of Blois, and all the people are pursuing their own interests. They do owe their loyalty to the king of West Frankeia, but they don't expect to be interfered with very much. And in fact, Hugh and his immediate successors don't expect to interfere. Yeah, so one of the hallmarks, I think, of early Capitian kingship

is that lack of any centralized control, particularly when we compare it maybe to England, which does seem to have a really centralised government by this point. Does that mean that Capetian kings have to become adept at kind of building and maintaining this network of alliances to facilitate their rule? It's always seemed to me that Capetians are quite fragile in Paris, that all of the ties that bind everyone to them can't be pulled on too strongly. Yes, I think that's very much true. They are absolutely dependent on alliances,

with other great houses, and there's often a sort of balance of power where the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The other thing that Capetians have to draw on, though, even from the very beginning, is a sense that there is something sacred about being king of West Francia. And there is a certain prestige there

that can't really be gainsaid. And we see that even at the coronation, of Hugh Capet. So he is not just dependent on great lay princes. He's also very dependent on the support of the bishops. And it is actually the Archbishop of France, who gives the speech that makes Hugh king. And what they do immediately after that is they go and have Hugh crowned in the same place where Charlemagne was crowned, king of the Franks. And then, they take him to the cathedral at once, and they have him anointed with this special holy chrism that is said to have been brought by a dove from heaven. So the kings of West Francia

aren't just anointed, as all kings are following the biblical example of David in the Middle Ages. They are anointed with a very special oil. And pretty much immediately, under Hugh Capet's son, a man named Robert the Pious, that sense that there is something sacred, special, even saintly, about the Capitian kings is reinforced. Robert is thought to be able to heal lepers with his very touch. So it's not just that they are powerful princes allied with other powerful princes. It's not even that they are first among equals. there is something special about being king.

Do you think to some extent that extra level of religious approval or something is a way for them to cover up this slight fragility in their political situation, even if they were not able to maintain those networks of power, that the fact that they are specifically chosen by God is another form of armour that they can put on to protect the crown? Sure. Even when story about the Holy Chrism was first put, together in the night century, it's put together for a Carolingian context. The idea is this is a

way to shore up power. I don't think that it's necessarily a cynical ploy. I think that people truly believe this. So I don't think they're covering it up, but I do think that it does function in ways that we as modern people who consider religion and politics incompatible at the the time, they consider these things completely compatible. They don't consider them separately. So I don't think it's covering up their fragility, but I do think it's bolstering their strength. And do we see then a kind of grand plan amongst the capitions that follow over the decades and centuries after Hugh to develop a more autocratic style, to centralize power in France? Is there sort of a grand plan to do that?

No. You only really begin. to get centralization in maybe the middle of the 12th century and it's really not until the kingship of Philip Augustus, who becomes king in 1180, that we see something that looks like a grand plan. Now, this doesn't mean that the capetians aren't trying to strengthen their hand. And under the kingship of Louis the 6th, also known as Louis the Fat, Louis reigns from 1108 to 1137. He does try for a stronger grip militarily on the kingdom. He's out conquering little lordships, conquering even big lordships. There's an ideological compliment to his kingdom from the abbot of an important monastery called Sandinie, north of Paris. That abbot named Suje,

writes a life of Louis that is all about his kingship as being the protection of the church, and he even has this idea that there should be a sort of feudal hierarchy, almost a feudal pyramid, with Louis on top and then great lords, and then underneath them, lesser lords, and everybody owes loyalty to the person above them, meaning that everybody ultimately owes loyalty to the king. this isn't a view widely shared, but there is a foundation there that can be exploited later on. Once you get to Philip Augustus and his successors, then yes, there's more of a plan. But even in the 14th century, when we get a really autocratic king, Philip the 4th, known as Philip the Fair, even he really has to work with local powers, other lords in his kingdom, and when he overreesome,

reaches, those lords get together and rebel against him. So yes, there is over the centuries a tendency towards centralisation is often in fits and starts, a grand plan. There is some of that here and there, but it always runs into trouble really quickly. I did want to talk about capetian nicknames. So it's not something we do particularly with English kings, with a couple of exceptions. But you've already mentioned the pious, Augustus, we've got the fat, the stubborn, the fair. Were they contemporary to start off with, or are they bequeathed to the kings later on? Most of them are contemporary. Hugh Cappé's nickname, which means like the Little Cape, actually doesn't get associated with him for about a century, and it was probably his father's

nickname. But most of them are contemporary. And in France, most of these kings are known by their nickname. If you talk about Louis the Six, people might not automatically twig, but Louis Leco, people know who that is. Philip Augustus, his chronicler, gives him that appellation. He's always called Philip Augustus. And actually, no one at the time really takes that forward, but modern historians use it almost exclusively. Are they fair? Some of them seem a little bit pejorative, particularly Louis the fat. It's actually Céééé, who calls him Louis be the fat and it's not meant in the way if we called someone fat today that would really be thought as an insult. It might be a little bit of commentary on maybe this man is not as moderate

in his habits as one might like him to be. In terms of whether or not it's accurate, it's absolutely accurate. We know that Louis was so heavy he couldn't sit on a horse and had to be carried when he was going through mountain passes and such. I think it's quite interesting that the king seemed to have embraced a lot of these things when you would think modern world leaders might not appreciate being called the fat and the stubborn. Yeah. I don't know that they were necessarily used to their face.

Philip Augustus, I think, did know that his chronicler was calling him Augustus. But that's quite a nice one. You're right with that one. Yeah, exactly. The nice one, sure. Louis the Lion knew. Philip the Fair. Philip the Fair's nickname confuses English speakers.

So in French, he's Philippe LeBelle. He's Philip the pretty. That's what we mean by Fair. So he certainly did know that he was considered one of the handsomest men in the entire world. As lots of kings and princes seem to coincidentally be, everyone tells the king the handsome. Yes.

And do you think either through these kind of nicknames, but also through the ways that they operated kingship, are we able to get close to the personality of some of these figures? And if so, what impact do we see their personalities having on their rules? Yeah, House of Lillies is very much a personality-driven book and very much a relationship-driven book, which I think comes a lot out of my background as a social historian. I'm really interested in how people interact and how that shapes what they do. We're really lucky with the capitions that we can get to a sense of their personality.

often through chroniclers writing, through people who actually spent a lot of time with them, sometimes through their own writing, and obviously, again, through what they do, too. Now, it can be quite tricky because when a chronicle tells us, oh, this king was always angry, or, oh, this king was besotted with this woman, we have to think about, okay, why are they telling us this, right? What's their program? So there has to be a lot of triangulation there. But it's really important to think about who these people were as people, what their emotions were, what their relationships were like. Because power in this period is so personal.

Power in this period is very much a family affair. Whether a king and a queen get along can have really important implications for how they govern or don't govern the kingdom. So Robert the Pius' second wife, Constance of Arl, those two hated each other. And Constance actually allies with their children and rebels against him. Even in a later period where kingship is much more, we would call it administrative kingship, administrative kingship as opposed to personal kingship, it's still quite personal. Philip the Fair, who was handsome rather than fair in the sense of just, really seems to be deeply affected by a very difficult childhood

where his stepmother was thought to have poisoned, his younger brothers, his older brother. Then he really flies off the handle when he loses his wife. And after that, he becomes this really very paranoid, persecutory king. It's at that point that he does things like suppress the Templars through a terrible regime of persecution. I wanted to also ask you about how important some of the Cappetian women were. So either women that marry into the family as queens,

but also the princesses, the daughters of the Cappetian kings. You mentioned a little bit there, the importance of the relationship between the king and the queen and how that could affect how the kingdom was run. How often do we see that working in a positive way? Constantly. So Hugh Capet's wife, Della of Aquitaine, He calls her the participant and sharer in our power, and he sends her on diplomatic missions,

and she's really very important. There are a number of really important queens, not just in terms of wives of kings, but also mothers of kings, certainly the most important, is Louis the ninth's mother. Louis will later be St. Louis. His mother, Blanche of Castile, becomes regent for him when she is widowed, and he is 12 years old. But even when he grows up, she is still really important in taking care of the kingdom, in advising Louis. When he is young, she faces down a big baronial rebellion. And when Louis goes on crusade, he gives her the regency again. And she's responsible for really the integration

of the Long Dock into the Kingdom of France. Her husband died crusading against the Elbeginzi and heretics of Longdok, so it's up to her to actually integrate that conquest. She's responsible for what we call the first piece of capetian legislation, worthy of the name. She's very important. But you ask about princesses too, and we expect mature, married women, particularly once they've produced a son, to be important in medieval politics. Princesses are another issue. So we definitely we see a lot of very young Capitian women married off just as pawns, headed for unenviable fates. But we also see some very strong princesses. So actually, Louis the Ninth sister, Lanch of Castile's only surviving daughter, Isabel, decides

she's not going to get married. She is supposed to marry the Holy Roman Emperor. and she decides actually that she would rather found a Franciscan nunnery. She does not actually become a Franciscan nun. So she doesn't even take vows, but she does found this very important nunnery called Longchon, outside of Paris, which Louis XIII is very much involved in founding. And we actually think that Isabel is such an influence on Louis,

that example of standing up to their mother, the redoubtable Blanche of Castile, and saying, actually, I have this religious calling that means we're not going to play politics anymore. I'm not going to be part of your project. That maybe provides a model for Louis himself, who the way he stands up to his mother is by going on crusade, which Blanche is not in favor of at all, but what can she say? They are this Christian crusading dynasty. She has to say yes. Go, Isabel, I say.

But quite a big step, I guess, for a princess in a position like that to, as you say, absent herself from the political chessboard. You know, she's meant to make an alliance a marriage that will benefit her brother. And kudos to her for just saying, nope, not doing that. Yeah, and she's their only option. Blanche has 12 children, only one daughter survives. Yeah. It's interesting to see the important roles that women can play

in a lot of these dynasties in lots of different ways, you know, as queens, but as princesses and as influences on brothers and sons and husbands and all of those kinds of things. So the book covers obviously all of the Cappetian dynasty from Hugh down to Charles IV, another one who's called The Fair, should we assume they're all incredibly handsome? I thought I'd give you a bit of a pop quiz to end on. It's obviously deeply unfair, but I'm going to do it anyway. Who's the best Capetian king? Oh, Philip Augustus, definitely.

Actually, I shouldn't say that because he wasn't very nice to most of his wives, and he did really start a capetian tradition of anti-Jewish persecution. So there are some bad things about Philip Augustus. But what I love about Philip Augustus is he is clearly very intelligent, and he has a very clear idea of how he is going to deal with the Plantagenets, who are an almost existential threat to his dinner. and he executes that plan just beautifully over decades. He's very uninterested in anything that smacks of silliness. He's a very serious guy who knows his own mind and is not going to be swayed by things like, you're a great king, you ought to have a fancy court, or you're part of a crusading dynasty, therefore you should go on crusade. He does go on crusade, but he stays for three months and then

goes home. He's really responsible for turning the Capitian dynasty into the most powerful and prestigious dynasty in medieval Europe. And do you think to some extent that becomes a response to the plantagenets and the threat that they pose in France by this point? Because him and his dad, you know, Louis the 7th and then Philip the 2nd, do develop this incredible. strategy for utterly dismantling plantagenet influence and authority on the continent until by the end of Philip's reign, they have none, basically. Yeah, early on, the Capetians figure this out. Louis the Fat has already figured out that what you need to do with William the Conqueror

and his sons is play them off against one another. Louis the Six is a great fan of Robert Kurtos, William the Conquer's eldest but least favorite son. and so he's always supporting Robert to bother his father and his brother. So that divide and conquer is always there. Louis the 7th, okay, yes, that's part of it too, but the reason that the Plantagenets really grow in strength under him is because he divorces Eleanor of Aquitaine,

who then marries Henry Plantagenet, who at that point is only Count Vangelo, but is about to inherit England and the entire Norman domain by right of his mother Matilda. And then, of course, Eleanor has all these sons, which she didn't do for Louis the Seventh, which is why he divorces her. But Louis the Seventh does really inculcate this strategy in Philip Augustus. They are often fighting together, Louis the Seventh, giving Philip advice about this. And then in a way, Philip just gets lucky.

Henry should have been succeeded. He had four sons who could have succeeded him. The young king dies young. Jeffrey dies young. Isn't, in fact, buried in Notre Dame because he died in a Parisian tournament. Richard was at first closely allied with Philip Augustus. They even slept in the same bed sometimes. But when he becomes king, he's a very worthy adjudy.

He really puts Philip in the shade. So had there not been that lucky crossbow that hit him in 1199, that could have gone very different way. Philip was just really lucky that then he got John. And then Eleanor Vakotene dies. I think she was really restraining influence on John, but once she's out of the picture, he's a mess. Yeah. It's constantly amazing that English kings and their families never cottoned on to what pretty much every French king is trying to do at this point. If Philip Augustus can be considered the best, then I think we definitely need to differentiate best from being nice at all. Obviously, most medieval kings aren't nice people.

If Philip Augustus is the best, who's the worst? Oh, it's a close run thing between Philip I and Philip the fourth. Philip the first, he is King of France when William invades England, right? So that happens on his watch. and he does himself no favors by running off with the Count of Anjou's wife, which means that he destroys his own alliance with Flanders, because his first wife, who is still around, when he runs out with the Count of Anjou's wife,

she's from Flanders, and the Count of Flanders is not going to play with Philip anymore. And, of course, he also destroys his alliance with the Count of Anjou, who is not keen on being publicly cuckolded, and he also destroys his relationship with the papacy because he gets excommunicated for this bigamous marriage. And that's part of why he can't go on the First Crusade because he's excommunicated at the time. Kings didn't go on the First Crusade,

but maybe that's also because Philip couldn't go. And with him not being able to go, then William Rufus couldn't go either. It's really under his kingship that the Capitius, reach their nadir. There are all these little lords around Paris who are perfectly willing to do things like invade Paris itself. So things just really fall apart under Philip. He's even thought to have lost the royal touch, the ability to heal with his touch. So the capetians are really lucky that his son, by his first wife, was Louis the Fat, who took these castellans in hand and had

suje up in Sandini making up this capetian ideology for him. Philip the Fair, really in a way the Hundred Years' War is his fault. He sees demons everywhere, he persecutes everybody. He goes to war with England over Gascany in 1294. Really, for no good reason, and this is really the first preliminary to the Hundred Years' War, as is the way he treats Flanders, which is going to be. be a big ally of England in the Hundred Years' War. Edward III actually first makes his claim to France at the urging of Flemish rebels. He also casts doubt on the legitimacy of his grandchildren because

he has his daughters-in-law arrested for adultery and their supposed lovers put on very public trial. No one's going to think that those children are necessarily capetian. And he really just turns his realm into a very unhappy place and lays the seeds of a lot of really nasty flowers that will bloom a few decades down the road. Yeah, that's two pretty strong contenders for being bad kings, I guess. And having said that none of these were probably nice men, which one of them would you most like to go to the pub with? Ah, the one we haven't talked about at all. Henry I, who was successor to Robert the Pius

and the father of Philip I, the one who runs off with the Countess-en-Ju. But the reason I would like to go to the pub with him is just because we know so little about him. So finally I could sit him down and say, why did you marry that princess from Kiev, which is a strange thing to do? Why did you name your child

Philip, which at the time is a Greek name not in Western use at all, are you gay? Because this is something that people thought maybe at the time and actually maybe why he marries that princess from Kiev, because she's so far away, maybe she won't actually make it to France. I just have so many questions about Henry and there are no ways of answering them. Playing with a few beers and I'm sure we'll get them out. Yeah, maybe some tequila. It's fabulous. And what do you think we should consider to be the legacies of the Capitian kings. So how much of later medieval and perhaps even modern France can we trace to the roots of the Capitian kings?

They are foundational. They are certainly not the only influence on modern France. The revolution, the world wars, post-colonial migration, all of that really plays a big role in modern France today. but there is this stratum foundational that is the capetian's work and the work of the people they ruled over so certainly the territorial boundaries of France is the capetians who put most of that together there are going to be some further acquisitions and they do lose Catalonia right away but France pretty much looks like France by the mid-13th century culturally they're also quite important

This is a double-edged sword. To emphasize the glory of Capitian friends, they're responsible for fostering Gothic architecture, and some of the greatest examples of Gothic are theirs, particularly the Saint-Chapelle in Paris. If you've never been to the Saint-Chapelle, it must be on your bucket list. There's an absolute monument to Gothic artistry,

but also to Capitian kingship. The Flordalee that we see everywhere now is a motif that this. they essentially invent in the 12th century as an emblem of their Christian kingship. So it symbolizes the Trinity. It's also related to the cult of the Virgin Mary. The three petals are supposed to symbolize wisdom, chivalry, and faith. So there is a lot just in the physical identity of France today that is a Cappetian heritage.

They did forge a sense of what it meant to be French. And they very much consciously cultivated that, not just among the great of the kingdom, but among their subjects as well. Now, here is where it gets a little bit problematic from a modern standpoint, because part of what that meant was to be the most Christian and most Orthodox. and not just in a positive sense of belief and practice, but also in a sense of persecuting non-believers, persecuting Jews, going on crusade against Muslims, persecuting heretics at home. And eventually this also gets fused with the persecution of gay people as well.

And there are strands of French identity that still think that this is a good thing, that true France is Catholic and white and maybe even royal. So that's still there. I think we should enjoy the capitions for what they were rather than for what some modern people now try and make them mean today. Absolutely. Well, I mean, House of Lillies is a fantastic exploration of the relationships between kings and their kingdom, kings and those that they ruled, which gives us a real insight into this foundational series of monarchs in France's history. So thank you very, very much for joining us, Justine. It's been wonderful to talk about some of them. Thanks very much for having me. Justine's brilliant new book, House of Lillies, the dynasty that made medieval France, is out now

so you can meet some of the members of this incredible family. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to all Also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help new listeners to find the show. Anyway, I've better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.