The perspective of the Grandes chroniques
A significantly more detailed version is offered by the Grandes chroniques de France, an anonymous collection of vernacular translations of Latin histories of the reigns of the kings of France, existing today in roughly 130 manuscripts.
The chronicle originated as the Roman des roys, written at the monastery of St. Denis by the monk, Primat, and presented to Philip III in 1274.[40] Continuators of the Roman des roys drew on a number of different sources for information to update the work: Guillaume of Nangis’s Chronicon with its Latin continuations along with the still unedited vernacular continuation of Guillaume’s Chronique franςaise abregee des rois de France. E. A. R. Brown has signaled the importance of the latter, which was long overlooked, including by myself, for the story of the Burgundian princesses.[41] Continuators also drew on vernacular translations of lives of Louis IX and Philip III originally composed in Latin by Guillaume; the Latin chronicle of Girard of Frachet with its continuations; and the anonymous Chronique de Flandre. Although the Grandes chroniques has often been considered a “royalist” history, this characterization has been much nuanced in the recent scholarship.[42]The section of the Grandes chroniques devoted to Philip the Fair is packed with tales of betrayal and intrigue.[43] Some of these are verifiably true, others are fantastical, but, in their entirety, they give the impression of a tenure plagued by conspiracies: the Count of Acerra commits sodomy and conspires against King Charles of Sicily, for which he is impaled on a burning pole (153—54); a group of Jews persuade a nurse to give them a two-year-old child, whom they crucify and eat (192); Bernard Saissset, Bishop of Pamiers, tries to arouse discontent against the king and is thrown in prison (195—96); conflicts between the king and Boniface VIII and revolts in Flanders arise; Bernard Delicieux (although not named) instigates an uprising in the Languedoc against the Inquisition during the king’s visit (226—29); the false prophet Dulcinus and his complices are executed for attempting to overthrow society by preaching, among other things, that women cannot refuse sexual relations without sinning (254—55); Guichard, Bishop of Troyes, is thrown in prison for conspiring to cheat Philip’s queen Jeanne and then killing her through sorcery or poison (263—64); the menu peuple of Paris, outraged when their rents rise threefold because of Philip’s monetary policy, plot against the king, descending on him and forcing him to take refuge in the Temple (250—52); the Templars, who do mysterious things in a dark chamber, conspire with the Sultan of Babylon and sell Christians to him, take money from the King’s treasury to give to those who want to harm him, commit heresy, spit on the cross, worship a cat, know each other carnally, are arrested and 59 of them burned at the stake (272—76); Marguerite Porete is burned at the stake for having transgressed holy scripture (273); a Jew spits on images of Our Lady and is burned (278); the Lyonnais rebel against the king (278); Flanders rebels (283—84); Guichard is found innocent of procuring the queen’s death with the revelation of the true murderer (293—94); the grand masters of the Temple are burnt at the stake (295); Clement V dies, but a faction of cardinals conspires to prevent election of a new pope (295—96); a tax is imposed at the advice of bad counselors and revoked by the king (296—97); the princesses and their knights are prosecuted for adultery (297—98); the barons’ consent to an(other) exceptional tax for the war, masterminded by royal favorite Marigny (299—301); the French withdraw from Flanders without actually engaging in combat, bringing shame upon the kingdom (301—2); Philip IV dies (302—4).
But, contrary to what one would expect, the Grandes chroniques does not bring the section on Philip IV’s reign to a close with the king’s death. Before Philip IV’s reign ends, the chronicler recounts the prosecution and execution of Marigny, whom the new king Louis X would eventually hold responsible for evils committed during Philip’s reign (304—316), and the death of Marguerite of Burgundy, Philip’s eldest daughter-in-law (316—17). In certain manuscripts of the Grandes chroniques, a few additional events ensue: the death of Marguerite’s brother, Hugh Duke of Burgundy, the excuses of Robert Count of Flanders, a couple of burnings, a shortage of wine.[44] All texts, those that end with Marguerite’s death as well as those adding further information, conclude with “here ends the history of the king Philip the Fair; here afterward begins the chapters about his son king of France and Navarre,” even though Louis X had been reigning for at least six months before the deaths of Marguerite and her brother.[45]
Why does the reign of Philip IV not end with that king’s death in the Grandes chroniques? Certainly it is partly because the author was following the narrative laid out in the continuation of Guillaume of Nangis’s Chronique abregee des rois de France, which, as noted above, exists today in a single manuscript, franqais 10132 of the Bibliotheque nationale de France; but why then does the Chronique abregee adopt this ordering? The story of the Burgundian princesses appears in some mysterious way to require closure before Philip’s reign can end.
Approaching this section of the chronicle as a persecution text provides an answer, I believe. From this perspective, the princesses episode deflects from or substitutes for a different crisis that is omitted from both franqais 10132 and the Grandes chroniques, a crisis still in swing when Philip IV died: a rebellion of the barons. The king had failed to refund taxes collected to finance a war with Flanders, which, scheduled for September 1314, was avoided by a truce, and the barons directly under royal rule as well as many from adjacent areas formed leagues and marched against the king.[46] Filling in for the baronial revolt, the princesses episode substituted a manageable betrayal for an unmanageable one.
The princesses episode in the Grandes chroniques is surrounded by entries on taxes. The entry just before the princesses episode is a fiction, a tax supposedly imposed for the “wars that had been waged in Flanders” (296) in what would have been April 1314, judging by the entry’s placement between the death of Jacques de Molay in March 1314 and the princesses’ prosecution in late April 1314.[47] This exaction, according to the Grandes chroniques, was the fault of Marigny, and it incited protest. The king, who had been unaware of what was happening, quickly revoked the tax. This did not happen in the real world; there is no other record of such a tax and its speedy revocation at that time.
Immediately after the princesses episode the Grandes chroniques correctly reports that on 1 August the king summoned an assembly to create support for
Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 19 continuing the war against Flanders (299—301). At this assembly, Philip orders his subjects to appear in Arras in September, ready for battle. The chronicle, corroborated by other sources, reports that many of the king’s men pledged their support and that Marigny imposed a burdensome tax to support the war, arousing the hatred of the menu peuple (301). Still worse, the tax revenues raised to finance it remained with the king even after a truce prevented war (302). Omitted from the chronicle are this failure to refund, the anger that it incited, and the subsequent rebellion that spread throughout the kingdom; nor does the chronicle note that on his deathbed, in late November, 1314, the king finally revoked the tax.[48]
The betrayal of the barons was different in nature from the many acts of treason and conspiracy recounted in the chronicle, a showdown that revealed the king to have failed in his most fundamental duties and that broke the bonds that held the kingdom together. The chronicler, although generally approving of Philip, seems to have been uneasy about the king’s taxes, and he instinctively cuts the catastrophic response of the barons to them out of the reign.
In the literary world of this chronicle, the betrayal of the young women, carried out within the bosom of the royal family, functions as a proxy for the betrayal of the barons. In fact, Philip IV’s reign concludes with two tales of scapegoating. In addition to the princesses, the king’s unpopular counselor Marigny is blamed for all of Philip IV’s fiscal wrongs and executed. The difference, however, is that the scapegoating and murder of the unpopular favorite is a well-known trope. The story of the princesses is more subtle. And yet, the Grandes chroniques clearly positions it as key to the king’s final year, by ending of the reign only after the death of Marguerite.The final line of the princess entry had revealed the unifying power of the persecution, the chronicler declaring that the “unfortunate case greatly angered and troubled the barons and the king of France and his sons” (298). Marguerite’s death brings to a final resolution both that episode and Philp IV’s reign. Louis X is free to remarry, which he does in the first lines of the narrative of his own reign. The page is turned, the princesses vanish, having served their purpose.