Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women's Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne

2. Cities of Refuge: The Social World of Religious Women

45 q Chapter 2 Cities of Refuge The Social World of Religious Women Toward the end of his universal chronicle, the Cistercian monk Aubry of Trois-Fontaines commented dryly that in the year 1231 “the count of Champagne created communes of townsmen and peasants, whom he trusted more than his knights.”1 Aubry’s text, the only local history of Champagne composed in the thirteenth century, follows the descent of aristocratic families, enumerates their genealogies, describes crusades and their recruits, and faithfully notes the passing of abbots and the founding of new religious houses. His terse remark on a matter of social class is provocative for it alludes obliquely to the series of urban franchises that Count Thibaut IV granted between 1230 and 1232 to six of the major towns within the county. Although the count and his predecessors had bestowed franchises to communities in the past, the scale of the grants made in the 1230s to Troyes, Provins, and Bar-sur-Aube—the three most prominent fair towns—as well as the castle towns of St.-Florentin, Villemaur, and Bar-surSeine was unprecedented.2 For the attentive Aubry it signaled a significant 1. “Comes Campanie communias burgensium et rusticorum fecit, in quibus magis confidebat, quam in militibus suis.” Aubry of Trois-Fontaines, “Chronicon,” ed. Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, in MGH SS (Hannover, 1874), 23:621–950, at 929; also Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, “Aubri de TroisFontaines , historien entre la France et l’Empire,” Annales de l’Est 36 (1984): 163–92. 2. See Theodore Evergates, Feudal Society in the Bailliage of Troyes under the Counts of Champagne, 1152–1284 (Baltimore, 1975), 41–57. 46 CITIES OF REFUGE social change. It heralded the rising burgher or bourgeois class’s eclipse of the traditional nobility, a change that would have a tremendous impact on urban spirituality, social networks, and Cistercian patronage. Urban franchise was liberation. Two main effects followed for those city dwellers given comital charters in the 1230s: the arbitrary tax levied by the count (the taille) and the personal taxes and inheritance restrictions (often called mainmorte) over the count’s men and women were converted into a standard-rate tax on wealth.3 This annual payment granted unrestricted movement and economic freedom within the urban community. In addition, the count’s charters instituted a jurée of twelve townsmen (comparable to the groups of échevins and scabini of other northern French towns) and a mayor to oversee tax collection,facilitate municipal affairs,and render judgments in legal cases involving townsmen. Thus the major towns in the county came to enjoy a measure of self-government. Once created, such institutions fostered a mentality of independence that persisted and shaped the bourgeois class.4 Self-government became a necessity after 1234, when Count Thibaut IV inherited the kingdom of Navarre from his uncle and the towns of Champagne were forced to function in his absence. Theodore Evergates concludes that ultimately the “new tax system and municipal self-administration separated those” free residents of the comital towns “from all other rural and urban tenants under private lords and still subject to the old obligations and restrictions.”By sealing and confirming the charters of franchise in 1230–31, “the count had effectively created a new social category.”5 The charters of franchise fostered four new groups that were closely tied to urban society and whose members shaped Champagne’s religious and economic trajectory in significant ways. First, under the direct lordship of the count, a new category of non-noble, non-knighted, small landholders (known as armigeri or escuiers, rather than milites or domini) began to play a more prominent role in politics and society. At the same time, women, who had always had access to property through the practice of partible inheritance customary in Champagne, also began to exercise a greater degree of control over the disposal of land and wealth. Added to this was the appearance of 3. The tax was proportional to wealth and assessed at “a rate of 2 d. per pound of real estate and 6 d. per pound value of movables,excluding clothes and household furniture,but including gold and silver utensils,especially wine cups.”Evergates, Feudal Society, 49. The charter for Troyes was a model for the subsequent grants. See Dominique Coq, ed., Chartes en langue française antérieures à 1271 conservées dans les départements de l’Aube, de la Seine-et-Marne, et de l’Yonne (Paris, 1988), 3–6, no. 1, translated in Theodore...