Historical Context | Saint-Pierre de Beauvais | Briefing | Professor Murray

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Saint-Pierre de Beauvais | Historical Context
Professor Stephen Murray

France, Beauvais, Map of the medieval town

The county and diocese of Beauvais had been in the hands of powerful count-bishops in the period immediately prior to the construction of the Gothic cathedral. The Beauvaisis formed a march between lands controlled by the King of France and potentially dangerous neighbors to the north: Normandy and Flanders. [Pop-up text as already in Paris section] The count-bishops had provided a powerful military buffer for the Capetian kings. The city, located in the basin of the river Thérain, had grown up around two Roman centers, Caesaromagus and Bratuspantium. The cathedral was set alongside but not perfectly aligned with the transverse road within the rectangle formed by the walls of the old Roman castrum. To the west was the episcopal palace, built against and upon the Roman wall; to the north and east were the houses of the canons. The powerfully independent count-bishops controlled the cité, with its various collegiate churches, and dominated the economic activities of the medieval bourg that had grown up outside the Roman walls. With considerable agrarian holdings as well as the ability to tax the economic and judicial life of the city, the count-bishop drew upon very substantial revenues contributing to the economic muscle that lay behind the construction of the great Gothic cathedral. However, the growing power of the king of France and his ability to intervene directly in the affairs of episcopal cities, as well as royal taxation imposed upon cities and dioceses to finance the crusade of 1248, eliminated the propitious economic circumstances that had facilitated the construction of great cathedrals. "Gothic" is not just a style or a structural revolution: its greatest achievements responded to a period (relatively limited in duration) of economic surplus controlled by the great ecclesiastical institutions, principally cathedrals.

With its commune established around 1100 and its flourishing textile industry, Beauvais had grown far beyond the old Roman castrum and had been enclosed within late-twelfth-century walls. After the fall of Normandy to the forces of Philip Augustus in the first decade of the thirteenth century and the victory at (1214), threats from the north became less pressing and the kings of France had less need of powerful Bouvines military count-bishops on the northern flank. Louis IX, having succeeded to the throne as a minor in 1226, faced a critical challenge from disaffected magnates to the north, in particular Peter Mauclerk, count of Brittany. The count-bishop who in 1225 began the construction of the Gothic cathedral, Miles or Milon de Nanteuil (1217–1234), was characterized as being as "proud as Nebuchadnezzar." While he had not offered active military support to the rebels, he claimed to be free from allegiance to the king and dependent only upon Saint Peter, patron of the cathedral, as represented in the person of the Pope who had consecrated him bishop. Milon is said to have fostered seditious rumors about the young king's mother, Blanche of Castille, claiming that she was pregnant by the papal legate.

In 1232 the bourgeois of Beauvais rioted over the appointment of a new mayor. In the uprising the more powerful members of the bourgeois tended to oppose the power of the count-bishop whose taxes were considered onerous while the ordinary folk remained loyal. The event provided the pretext for an intervention by the King, and in the subsequent struggle the count-bishop fled the city and his income was confiscated. Bishop Milon's successor, Godfrey or Geoffroy de Clermont (1234–1236), remained unable to regain possession of his temporalities. It was only with the capitulation of Bishop Robert de Cressonsac (1236–1248) that episcopal revenues were restored. In 1248 Bishop Robert left with Louis IX to participate in the Crusade. He died on the island of Cyprus.

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