A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [44]
Contemporary writers rapidly found an audience. In Dante’s lifetime his verse was chanted by blacksmiths and mule-drivers; fifty years later in 1373 the growth of reading caused the Signoria of Florence, at the petition of citizens, to offer a year’s course of public lectures on Dante’s work for which the sum of 100 gold florins was raised to pay the lecturer, who was to speak every day except holy days. The person appointed was Boccaccio, who had written the first biography of Dante and copied out the entire Divine Comedy himself as a gift for Petrarch.
In an Italian biographical dictionary at the end of the century, the longest articles were given to Julius Caesar and Hannibal, two pages to Dante, one page each to Archimedes, Aristotle, King Arthur, and Attila the Hun, two and a half columns to Petrarch, one column to Boccaccio, shorter mentions to Cimabue and Giotto, and three lines to Marco Polo.
For Enguerrand at age seven, the usual pattern was abruptly interrupted when his father was killed in the war against the English at about the time of the fatal Battle of Crécy in 1346, but whether in that or another engagement is uncertain.
When a fief owing an important number of fighting men to the King was left in the hands of a widow or minor heir, the question of control became crucial, the more so now when the kingdom was already at war. As governors of the barony of Coucy during Enguerrand’s minority, the King appointed the chief of his Council, Jean de Nesles, Sire d’Offémont, a member of the old nobility, and another of the royal inner circle, Matthieu de Roye, Sire d’Aunoy, Master of the Crossbowmen of France, an office exercising command over all archers and infantry. Both were seigneurs of Picardy with lands not far from Coucy. Enguerrand’s uncle, Jean de Coucy, Sire d’Havraincourt, was named his guardian and tutor or adviser. His mother, Catherine of Austria, left in a situation vulnerable to predatory ambitions, quickly concluded an agreement with the numerous brothers and sisters of her late husband who during his lifetime had held the property in common. They were confirmed in possession of various castles and manors, and Enguerrand VII, who had no brothers or sisters, was confirmed as successor to the major portion of the domain, including the territories of Coucy, Marie, La Fère, Boissy-en-Brie, Oisy-en-Cambrésis, and their towns and dependencies.
In 1348 or ’49 Enguerrand’s mother remarried, presumably by her own or her own family’s choice, a fellow Austrian or German named Conrad de Magdebourg (also called Hardeck). Catherine bore no children of this marriage; within a year she and her husband were dead, victims of the great holocaust that was about to overtake Europe and leave Enguerrand an orphan.
During her lifetime Catherine was said to have taken great care of her son’s education, wishing him to distinguish himself in “the arts, letters and sciences pertaining to his rank” and frequently reminding him of the “virtue and high reputation of his ancestors.” Coming from a 16th century account of Enguerrand de Coucy, this statement may have been the kind of tribute routinely paid at that time to noble personages: equally well it could have had some basis in fact. Like other medieval childhoods, however, Enguerrand’s is a blank. Nothing is known of him until his sudden emergence onto the pages of history in 1358 at the age of eighteen.
Of chivalry, the culture that nurtured him, much is known. More than a code of manners in war and love, chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole