Joseph R. Strayer

The Laicization of French and English Society in the Thirteenth Century

STUDENTS of mediaeval society have long been aware of a sharp change in attitudes and values which took place in the thirteenth century. During that period, while Europe remained sincerely and completely Catholic, the church lost much of its influence. Though it perfected its organization and carried on its religious activities with great energy, the standards which it had set for secular activities were increasingly disregarded. The forces released by the great revival of civilization in the twelfth century could no longer be controlled by the church. They broke out of the old channels and either found new courses for themselves or dissipated their energy in the swamps and backwaters of uncoordinated endeavor. This secularization of European society is apparent in every field of human activity, in art and literature as well as in politics and economics. But while the fact of secularization is undisputed, the reasons for this great change in European opinion and the way in which the change was brought about are not clear. It is a problem which is well worth studying, not only because it is the key to much of the later history of the middle ages, but also because it is an interesting example of the ways in which public opinion are changed. This paper is an attempt to study one aspect of secularization, the laicization of French and English society in the thirteenth century. Laicization may be defined as the development of a society in which primary allegiance is given to lay governments, in which final decisions regarding social objectives are made by lay governments, in which the church is merely a private society with no public powers or duties. When society has been laicized leadership has passed from the church to the state. In the modern period this assumption of leadership by the state is usually manifested in attempts to control social services, such as education, to regulate family relationships, and to confiscate all, or part of the churchs property. These particular manifestations of the idea of laicization should not be confused with the idea itself. There was no demand for government regulation of marriage and divorce in the thirteenth century and very little protest against church control of education. There were efforts to limit the churchs acquisition of new property, but only a few fanatics advocated confiscation of what the church already possessed. Yet during the thirteenth century leadership passed from the church to lay governments, and when the test came under Boniface viii it was apparent that lay rulers, rather than the pope, could count on the primary allegiance of the people. Laicization is the political aspect of secularization. As such, it cannot be wholly explained by purely economic factors. I am quite willing to accept the conventional view that the economic changes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries made society more worldly, but worldliness is not the same thing as laicization.

The Crusade against Aragon

1285 October: a half-starved French army plods through the passes of the eastern Pyrenees, lashed by the first rains of autumn, harassed by the last raids of its victorious opponent, the king of Aragon. Ahead lies Perpignan not yet French, but at least the possession of an ally of France. Perpignan is food, shelter, safety for most of the army. But not for the commander, the soldier of God and the Pope, Philip III of France. Sick at heart over the failure of his crusade against Aragon, sick in body ever since the retreat began, Perpignan for him is the last stage of the earthly pilgiimage, the place where he can die quietly, decently and piously, as befits a prince of his house. There the end comes on 5 October Philip the Bold has died on crusade, as did his father and grandfather before him. As an episode in military history the crusade of 1285 is scarcely worth noticing. It produced no great battles, no innovations in strategy or tactics, no significant alteration of frontiers. The whole campaign could be summed up in a slightly modified version of the old nursery rhyme:

Viscounts and Viguiers under Philip the Fair

VVE know something not nearly enough, but still something about the personnel of central government under Philip the Fair. We can identify not only the Nogarets and the Marignys but also a host of lesser men who served long apprenticeships in the judicial, financial and secretarial branches of the kings court and who only gradually, if ever, moved to higher position. We also know something about the chief agents of royal power in the provinces the baillis and seneschals, the enqueteurs and other special commissioners ent out from Paris. But we know very little about the personnel of local government below this top layer, about the men who were in direct contact with the mass of the population and who carried out the orders and policies of their superiors. These minor officials were important for two reasons. More than any other group they determined the popular image of royal government. If they were competent, hard-working and relatively honest the government was respected and admired; if they had none of these characteristics, loyalty and obedience to the government began to decline. In the second place, this group of minor officials formed a pool from which men could be recruited for more important posts. It is undoubtedly true that service in one of the bureaus at Paris was more apt to lead to promotion than service in a minor provincial office.1 Nevertheless, the bureaucracy was expanding rapidly under Philip the Fair, and men with any degree of administrative skill and experience were in demand wherever they could be found. The spectacular case of Nogaret, who began his career as juge-mage of Beaucaire,2 shows how far a provincial official could go. In this article I want to consider only two groups of lesser provincial officials, the viscounts of Normandy and the viguiers of Languedoc. They were more nearly professional civil servants than the prevots of the North and the bayles of the South. They were paid salaries, while prevots and bayles usually farmed their offices. They could be promoted to higher positions; this seldom happened to prevots and almost never to bayles. The only other minor local officials who were frequently promoted were castellans, and judges in Languedoc. Both of these groups present special problems. We have relatively little documentary evidence about the castellans, and the southern judges had special training in the written laws which made them rather different from other officials. A study of the judges would lead to a discussion of the impact of Roman and canon law on French government rather than to a discussion of administrative techniques. Thus the viscounts and the viguiers eem to offer the best sample for a study of some of the personnel policies of Philips government.

Cambridge Economic History of Europe, The. Vol. II: Trade and Industry in the Middle. Ages. Edited by M. Postan and E. E. Rich. Pp. xvi, 604. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1952.

the help of mechanical analogies or of considerations of social psychology. A feature of the book which is of especial interest to American economists is indeed the systematic emphasis on social psychology, which is given greater prominence than is customary in the standard treatments of the business cycle. Another feature which deserves study is the protracted attention given by the author to Betriebswirtschaf tslehre, a sort of managerial economics which has been intensely cultivated on the continent of Europe and to which Swiss economists have made a number of significant contributions. Students of this discipline, which has no exact counterpart in English or American economics, have in the past furnished some interesting interpretations of the business cycle. References to these can be found in the works of Mitchell and Haberler. For

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a more penetrating analysis than is shown in this book is essential even for good description. Such conclusions as are drawn rely heavily on the opinions of others. The text is interlarded with long footnotes consisting of parenthetical explanations or of quotations from authorities selected rather indiscriminately. On the whole, both the thought and the presentation give a rather studentish impression. EUGENE STALEY

BULLOCK, CHARLES JESSE. Politics, Fi nance, and Consequences. Pp. viii, 212. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939.

wheat price levels as accomplished with an &dquo;increasing unconscionableness&dquo; in the past fifty years (p. 489). He favors a moderate itatisme &dquo;which, while renouncing the substitution of itself for the individual and the prescription for him of his tasks and his methods, will limit itself to facilitating the accomplishment of the former and the application of the latter&dquo; (p. 537). But the collectivism of today cannot endure. Either it must become &dquo;productive&dquo; or yield to a less liberal r6gime on the Soviet or Fascist model. As a &dquo;citizen&dquo; he can only hope that liberty and democracy will triumph over itatisme, especially as exhibited in the dictatorships (p. 536) . The above dichotomy between libertycum-democracy and etatisme seems oversimplified and unduly formalistic. Thus, no doubt a given governmental expenditure

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can fully appreciate his combination of extensive and accurate information with analytical skill. &dquo;The cabinet is the core of the British constitutional system,&dquo; writes the author. The book consequently is a survey of the whole broad field of the principles and practice of the central government of England. Not so pontifical as Dicey nor so antiquarian as Anson, lacking in Bagehot’s literary skill and imaginative insight, without Lo~rell’s skillful selection of detail, Jennings’ book nevertheless belongs side by side with these few classics of the modern English constitution, and possesses the further advantage of being up to date. The author starts with a chapter on the British constitution, outlining briefly the modern theory as to the law, the practice, and the conventions of the constitution-