The Friar of Carcassonne (34 page)

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his massive marble tomb . . . apostolic deputy:
Both details in Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias,
Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim,
New Haven, 2000, pp. 215–16. 13
The expansive pope had called the Jubilee to celebrate the commonwealth
of Christendom:
Like Christianity itself, the notion of Jubilee is derived from Judaism. The traditional Jewish jubilee, like the timing of the Sabbath, was connected to the number seven. Thus, every forty-nine years—that is, seven times seven years—was a jubilee year. Kessler and Zacharias,
Rome 1300
, p. 2.

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a despairing Pope Celestine:
Details of the papal politicking are found in many of the books consulted. I found most useful to have at hand: J. N. D. Kelly,
The Oxford Dictionary of Popes
, Oxford, 1986; Walter Ullmann,
A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages
, London, 2003.

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the old man dutifully died:
Celestine's imprisonment and demise had two important consequences: it would be used by Guillaume de Nogaret to accuse Boniface of murder, and in the eyes of radical Spirituals and Joachites, Celestine became the “angel pope” foreseen in apocalyptic prophecy.

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a newly completed fresco:
Kessler and Zacharias,
Rome 1300
, p. 30.

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Holy beggars stripped to the waist, fakirs at fairgrounds:
The literature on the rise of heresy and the notion of apostolic poverty is very large and very entertaining. The bibliography should be consulted. I especially recommend two excellent one-volume works: R. I. Moore,
The Origins of European Dissent
, Toronto, 1994; Malcolm Lambert,
Medieval
Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation
, Oxford, 2002.

*
It had excommunicated orthodox proponents of poverty:
The Waldenses were the subject of a bull of excommunication issued at Verona in 1184 by Pope Lucius III. The followers of a certain Valdes, or Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyon who gave away all his wordly wealth, the Waldenses were, in fact, no more radical than the Franciscans were at the time of their foundation. Innocent III was shrewd enough to embrace the mendicant movement; Lucius lacked his acumen and needlessly expelled the Waldenses. According to historian Jonathan Wright: “Sometimes people like Valdes were denounced as heretics; sometimes very similar people were lauded as pious harbingers of a new and better age. This only goes to show how hard it was to draw the line between heresy and challenging, acceptable Christianity. There is no better proof of this than the story of Valdes's close contemporary, Francis of Assisi, who did many of the same things but, instead of being persecuted, ended up being revered as a saint.” Jonathan Wright,
Heretics:
The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church
, New York, 2011, p. 137.

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Giovanni Francesco di Bernadone:
His second name is thought to have been given him as a token of his father's respect for France. Francis spoke French and most certainly attended the fairs of Champagne in his father's company.

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other sons of affluent traders:
C. H. Lawrence,
Medieval Monasticism:
Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages
, London, 1990, p. 248.

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the Ayyubid sultan, Malik al-Kamil:
The remarkable meeting occurred near Damietta in 1219. The sultan was a supremely intelligent man, as proven by his negotiations with Emperor Frederick II (
Stupor
Mundi
), which allowed the latter to take the title of King of Jerusalem and hold the holy city on a fixed-term lease. The arrangement scandalized both Christendom and the lands of Islam, but through it the bloodshed of yet another Crusade was avoided. The two rulers showed exceptional judgment and statesmanship in the matter. For more on this agreement: Stephen O'Shea,
Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in
the Medieval Mediterranean World
, London, 2009, pp. 238–239.

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hotbeds of recruitment and brotherly achievement:
The mendicants were by no means welcomed to the universities with open arms, as the competition for students and their fees, faculty positions, and comfortable quarters was fierce. Guillaume de St. Amour led the charge of the secular faculty in Paris and managed to have the friars expelled for a time. The first half of the 1250s were particularly trying for the friars, as Pope Innocent IV sided with their critics. Their rights and privileges were reinstated by his successor, Alexander IV, in 1256.

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The saint's first biographer:
Thomas of Celano. For an edifying treatment of the life of this remarkable man: Julien Green,
God's Fool: The Life
and Times of Francis of Assisi
, trans. Peter Heinegg, San Francisco, 1985.

*
They were discharged from their duties . . . because of their venality:
David Burr,
The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the
Century After Saint Francis
, University Park, PA, 2001, p. 5.

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the evangelization of Bosnia . . . was held up for several years as Franciscans
and Dominicans fought:
Dossat, “Les origines de la querelle,” p. 318.

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metanoia:
Lawrence,
Medieval Monasticism
, p. 239.

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“the greater jihad”:
Islamophobes may be surprised, but the “lesser jihad” is the struggle with others. The struggle with one's self, in striving in the way of Allah, is considered the greater and more important task.

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Commercial Revolution:
This passage on the vigor of the medieval economy covers ground explored by many historians. For the general reader, I recommend the widely available Joseph and Frances Gies,
Life
in a Medieval City,
New York, 1981, a wonderful evocation of life circa 1250 in Troyes, Champagne. Another, more general treatment is found in Francis Oakley,
The Medieval Experience
, Toronto, 2005. The chapter “Making and Doing: The Nature of Medieval Economic Life” (pp. 73–107) is a particularly deft introduction to the complex subject.

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Latin westerners ruled Greek Constantinople:
The so-called Latin Empire of Constantinople lasted from 1204 to 1261. The Paleologus family, an old and powerful Byzantine clan, reasserted Greek control after a lengthy siege.

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The precious number zero:
Its promotion in the Latin West is commonly attributed to Fibonacci (1170–1250), the son of a Pisan merchant. He learned of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system during extended stays in Algeria, where his father ran a trading post for the Republic of Pisa. He subsequently became a honored guest at the Sicilian court of the ever-curious
Stupor Mundi
, Emperor Frederick II.

2. T
HE
K
ING'S
M
EN AT THE
D
OOR

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the day of reckoning for the Knights Templar:
The Templars have spawned entire libraries of speculative and historical literature. The best of the recent works for the general reader is from the reliably clearheaded Piers Paul Read,
The Templars: The Dramatic History of the
Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades
, London, 1999. The opening of King Philip's order for their arrest reads: “A bitter thing, a lamentable thing, a thing which is horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of, a detestable crime, an execrable evil, an abominable work, a detestable disgrace, a thing almost inhuman, indeed set apart from all humanity.” Cited in Michael Haag,
The Templars: History
and Myth
, London, 2008, p. 216.

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the obscene kiss:
This involved the rear end of a cat. It was a common charge leveled against heretics, who were thought to perform this particular osculation as part of their nocturnal orgies. Indeed, the word
Cathar
may not originate from the Greek for pure,
katharos
, but from the Low German for a cat lover,
Ketzer
. As for other specifics of the heresy charge: “It was claimed that new initiates were required to deny Christ three times and spit on a crucifix. Then, having stripped naked, they would be kissed on the mouth, the navel, and the spine by their superiors: a foretaste, it was suggested, of the life of sodomy and bestiality that awaited them. A life, so the accusations continued, that was punctuated by the despoiling of sacraments and the worshipping of idols—including jewel-encrusted human skulls.” Wright,
Heretics
, p. 124.

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“drink like a Templar”:
Alistair Horne,
La Belle France
, New York, 2006, p. 59: “For centuries after their demise ‘Boire comme un templier' was common currency in France, while the old German word Tempelhaus became synonymous with a house of ill repute.”

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Only very recently has a scholar found in the archives of the Vatican:
Barbara Frale, “The Chinon Chart, Papal Absolution to the Last Templar, Master Jacques de Molay,”
Journal of Medieval History
30, 2, 2004, pp. 109–134.

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long-lived monarchs in the Capetian line:
Philip II (Philip Augustus) reigned 1180–1223; Louis IX (St. Louis) reigned 1226–1270; Philip IV (Philip the Fair) reigned 1285–1314.

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Stupor Mundi:
Frederick II is a singular figure in European history and has received considerable well-deserved scholarly attention. The modern foundation text of Frederick studies is Ernst H. Kantorowicz,
Frederick the Second, 1194–1250
, trans. E. O. Lorimer, New York, 1957. Norman F. Cantor devotes a chapter to the odd Hitlerian backdrop behind Kantorowicz's scholarship in his entertaining, if controversial,
Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists
of the Twentieth Century
, New York, 1991.

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the 1268 beheading:
With the execution of Conradin, the once-mighty Hohenstaufen line became extinct. The event was romanticized in later centuries in a sort of homoerotic haze. Genre paintings show the beautiful Conradin in the company of his dearest friend, the nineteen-year-old and equally beautiful Frederick of Baden, calmly playing chess in their prison cell in Naples as they are informed that death is imminent.

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a pivotal event:
The extinction of the Hohenstaufen is not just marked as a key event in German history. There is a remarkable passage on its significance in Friedrich Heer,
The Medieval World
, trans. Janet Sondheimer, New York, 1961, an enduringly useful one-volume overview of the Middle Ages. Heer writes (p. 331): the Middle Ages. Heer writes (p. 331):

The public execution of the last of the Hohenstaufen in the market-place of Naples was a revolutionary event, without precedent in the history of Europe; until it had happened anyone would have said it was unthinkable. In terms of “the logic of history” it may seem the “right” conclusion to the papal revolt against the Emperor. It was only papal approval and the tenor of papal propaganda over the past two centuries that made the deed possible. The Popes, by diminishing the status of imperial descent, had prepared the scaffold for future princes of noble birth (or of “divine descent,” according to popular belief ): for the execution Charles I and Louis XVI. It was fruitless for Popes of more modern times, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, to set themselves up as the sworn allies of “Christian princes” in the task of crushing “infamous rebellions” instigated by heretics and “the scum of society”; it was fruitless for papal ideologists to try to breathe fresh life and meaning into post-revolutionary attempts at restoration. The Papacy had encompassed the destruction of the Empire only by a revolutionary breach of the continuity of European history; the transformation of the popular image of the Christian monarch from a sacred and sacrosanct figure into a diabolical object of execration had called for the most blatant techniques of propaganda and political manoeuvering. Scarcely a generation elapsed after the execution of Conradin before the Pope was forced to pay the first instalment of the penalty for having degraded and dishallowed the highest office in Christendom apart from his own. In 1303 Boniface VIII was taken prisoner at Anagni by William of Nogaret, Councillor to Philip IV of France. Subjected to all manner of ignominy, the Pope's pride and self-confidence were mortally wounded and he died in Rome only a few weeks after his release.

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“the Church's eldest daughter”:
The expression, in the original, is
la
fille aînée de l'Eglise
. It got a lot of play from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries as factions in the French church disputed its place vis-à-vis Rome. The party who saw their church as a national one were known as the Gallican wing, while those who looked south to the Pope for guidance formed the ultramontane wing, that is, “beyond the mountains”—the mountains in question being the Alps. In the square in front of the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, recently made famous by Dan Brown, there is a fountain bearing statues of four prominent Gallican churchmen. They face the four cardinal points of the compass. Thus, with the usual Parisian love of wordplay, the fountain is known as
Les Point(s) Cardinaux
, which means “the cardinal points” with the silent
s
, but means “the not-at-all cardinals” (
point cardinaux
) without the
s
. As the four great Gallican churchmen favored the national church, their respective popes, all of whom had reason to be annoyed with them, never made them cardinals.

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His biographers:
I have used, primarily, Jean Favier,
Un Roi de Marbre,
Philippe le Bel, Enguerran de Marigny
, Paris, 2005, and Joseph R. Strayer,
The Reign of Philip the Fair
, Princeton, 1980.