Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/208

 FRANCE

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FRANCE

against the Albigenses under Louis VIII (1223-20) brought in its train the establishment of the influence and authority of the French monarchy in the soutli of France.

St. Louis IX (1226-1270), "ruisselant de pi^te, et enflanime de charite", as a contemporary describes him, made kings so beloved that from his time dates that royal cult, so to speak, which was one of the moral forces in olden France, and which existed in no other country of Europe to the same degree. Piety had been for the kings of France, set on their thrones by the Church of God, as it were a duty belonging to their charge or office; but in the piety of St. Louis there was a note all his own, the note of sanctity. With him ended the Crusades, but not their spirit. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries proj- ect after project, attempt after attempt to set on foot a crusade was made, and we refer to them merely to point out that the spirit of a militant apostolate con- tinued to ferment in the soul of France. The project of Charles of Valois (1308-09), the French expedition under Peter I of Cyprus against Alexandria antl the Armenian coasts (1365-1367), sung of by the French trouvere, Guillaume Machault, the crusade of John of Nevers, which ended in the bloody battle of Ni- copolis (1396) — in all these enterprises the spirit of St. Louis lived, just as in the hearts of the Christians of the East, whom France was thus trying to protect, there has survived a lasting gratitude towards the nation of St. Louis. If the feeble nation of the Maron- ites cries out to-day to France for help, it is because of a letter written by St. Louis to the nation of St. Maroun in May, 1250. In the days of St. Louis the influence of French epic literature in Europe was supreme. Brunetto Latini, as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, wrote that " of all speech [par- lures] that of the French was the most charming, and the most in favour with every one." French held sway in England until the middle of the fourteenth century; it was fluently spoken at the Court of Con- stantinople from the time of the Fourth Crusade, and in Greece in the dukedoms, principalities and baronies founded there by the Houses of Burgundy and Cham- pagne. And it was in French that Rusticiano of Pisa, about the year 1300, wrote down from Marco Polo's lips the story of his wonderful travels. The University of Paris, founded by favour of Innocent III between 1208 and 1213, was saved from a spirit of exclusiveness by the happy intervention of Alexander IV, who obliged it to open its chairs to the mendicant friars. Among its professors were Dims Scotus; the Italians, St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure; Albert the Great, a German; Alexander of Hales, an Englishman. Among its pupils it counted Roger Bacon, Dante, Raimundus Lullus, Popes Gregory IX, Urban IV, Clement IV, and Boniface VIII.

France was also the birthplace of Gothic art, which was carried by French architects into Germany. The method employed in the building of many Gothic cathedrals — i. e. by the actual assistance of the faith- ful — bears witness to the fact that at this period the lives of the French people were deeply penetrated with faith. An architectural wonder such as the cathedral of Chartres was in reality the work of a popular art born of the faith of the people who worshipped there.

Under Philip IV, the Fair (1285-1314), the royal house of France became very powerful. By means of alliances he extended his prestige as far as the Orient. HLs brother Charles of Valois married Catherine de Courtenay, an heiress of the Latin Empire of Con- stantinople. The Kings of England and Minorca were his vassals, the King of Scotland his ally, the Kings of Naples and of Hungary connexions by marriage, lie aimed at a sort of supremacy over the body ixililic of Europe. Pierre Dubois, his jurisconsult, dreamed that the pope would hand over all his domains to Philip and receive in exchange an annual income,

while Philip would thus have the spiritual head of Cliristendom under liLs influence. Philip IV laboured to increase the royal prerogative and thereby the national unity of France. By sending magistrates into the feudal territories, by delining certain cases (cas Toyaux) as reserved to the king's competency, he dealt a heavy blow to the feudalism of the Middle Ages. But on the other hand under his rule many anti-Christian maxims began to creep into law and politics. Roman law was slowly reintroduced into the social organization, and gradually the idea of a united Christendom disappearetl from the national policy. Philip the Fair, pretending to rule by Divine right, gave it to be understood that he rendered an account of his kingship to no one under heaven. He denied the pope's right to represent, as the papacy had always done in the past, the claims of morality and justice where kings were concerned. Hence arose in 1294-1303, his struggle with Pope Boniface VIII, but in that struggle he was cunning enough to secure the support of the States-General, which represented public opinion in France. In later times, after cen- turies of monarchical government, this same public opinion rose against the abuse of power committed by its kings in the name of their pretended Divine right, and thus made an implicit amende honorable to what the Church had taught concerning the origin, the limits, and the responsibility of all power, and which had been forgotten or misinterpreted by the lawyers of Philip IV when they set up their pagan concept of the State as the absolute source of power. The election of Pope Clement V (1305) under Philip's influence, the removal of the papacy to Avignon, the nomination of seven French popes in succession, weakened the influence of the papacy in Christendom, though it has recently come to light that the Avignon popes did not always allow the indepen- dence of the Holy See to waver or disappear in the game of politics. Philip IV and his successors may have had the illusion that they were taking the place of the German emperors in European affairs. The papacy was imprisoned on their territory; the German Empire was passing through a crisis, was, in fact, decaying, and the kings of France might well imagine themselves temporal vicars of God, side by side with, or even in opposition to, the spiritual vicar who lived at Avignon.

But at this juncture the Hundred Years War broke out, and the French kingdom, which aspired to be the arbiter of Christendom, was menaced in its very ex- istence by England. English kings aimed at the French crown, and the two nations fought for the pos- session of Guienne. Twice during the war was the independence of France imperilled. Defeated on the Ecluse (1340), at Crecy (1340), at Poitiers (1356), France was saved by Charles V (1304-80) and by Duguesclin, only to suffer fresh defeat under t^harles VI at Agincourt (1415) and to be ceded by the Treaty of Troyes (1420) to Henry V, King of England. At this darkest hour of the monarchy the nation itself was stirred. The revolutionary attempt by Etienne Marcel (1358) and the revolt which gave rise to the Ordonnance Cahochienne (1418) were the earliest signs of popular impatience at the absolutism of the French kings, but internal dissensions hindered an effective patriotic defence of the country. When Charles VII came to the throne, France had almost ceased to be French. The king and court lived beyond the Loire, and Paris was the seat of an English government. Blessed Joan of Arc was the saviour of French nation- ality as well as French royalty, and at the end of Charles's reign (1422-61) Calais was the only spot in France in the hands of the Engli.sh.

The ideal of a united Christendom continued to haunt the .soul of France in spite of the predominating influence gradually assumed in French politics by purely national aspirations, .ti'rom the reign of