A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [11]
They were not built by slave labor. Though limited serfdom existed, the rights and duties of serfs were fixed by custom and legal memory, and the work of medieval society, unlike that of the ancient world, was done by its own members.
At Coucy after the death of Thomas, a sixty-year period of more respectable lordship followed under his son and grandson, Enguerrand II and Raoul I, who cooperated with the crown to the benefit of their domain. Each responded to the renewed crusades of the 12th century, and each in turn lost his life in the Holy Land. Perhaps suffering from financial stringency imposed by these expeditions, the widow of Raoul sold to Coucy-le-Château in 1197 its charter of liberties as a free commune for 140 livres.
Such democratization, as far as it went, was not so much a step in a steady march toward liberty—as 19th century historians liked to envision the human record—as it was the inadvertent by-product of the nobles’ passionate pursuit of war. Required to equip himself and his retainers with arms, armor, and sound horses, all of them costly, the crusader—if he survived—usually came home poorer than he went, or left his estate poorer, especially since none of the crusades after the First was either victorious or lucrative. The only recourse, since it was unthinkable to sell land, was to sell communal privileges or commute labor services and bonds of serfdom for a money rent. In the expanding economy of the 12th and 13th centuries, the profits of commerce and agricultural surplus brought burghers and peasants the cash to pay for rights and liberties.
In Enguerrand III, called “the Great,” builder of the reconstructed castle and donjon, the excess of the Coucys appeared again. Seigneur from 1191 to 1242, he built or reconstructed castles and ramparts on six of his fiefs in addition to Coucy, including one at St. Gobain almost as large as that of Coucy. He took part in the slaughter of the Albigensian Crusade, fought in every other available war including, like his great-grandfather Thomas, one against the diocese of Reims growing out of a quarrel over feudal rights. He was accused of having pillaged its lands, cut down its trees, seized its villages, forced the doors of the cathedral, imprisoned the doyen in chains, and reduced the canons to misery.
When the Archbishop of Reims complained to the Pope in 1216, Enguerrand III too was excommunicated and all religious services in the diocese were ordered to be terminated if he should appear. A person under the ban was deprived of the sacraments and doomed to hell until such time as he made amendment and was absolved. In major cases only the bishop or in some cases the Pope could lift the ban. While it was in force the local priest was supposed to pronounce the curse upon the sinner before the parish two or three times a year in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary, and all the Apostles and saints while the funeral knell tolled, candles were put out, and the cross and missals laid on the floor. Supposedly the guilty one was cut off from all social and occupational relationships, but the inconveniences for everyone resulting from this rule were such that his neighbors either resorted to throwing stones at his house or other measures to bring him to repentance, or ignored the ban. In Enguerrand III’s case the cessation of all religious services was a fearful sentence upon the community, which brought him to settlement and absolution in 1219 after he had