'The city is like an electric transformer - it augments social tensions and precipitates change - it is like a great ever-lasting brewing vat for human life."' The cathedral interacted with the social, economic, and visual fabric of the city, simultaneously part of it, yet distinct (Pl. 3). At the period of construction of the Gothic cathedral (1220-C. 1269), there were three powerful authorities established in the city: the clergy, the secular power (king), and the municipality. The relative power of each of these agencies was subject to constant change. Such change might occasionally be precipitated by violence. The balance of power within the urban topography differed greatly from one city to another and from one decade to the next. In some cities, the bishop held considerable economic and jurisdictional authority, whereas elsewhere he was relatively impotent, with a limited sector of control, overshadowed by king or count. Modern scholarship, dominated by simplistic concerns with class struggle, has sometimes failed to recognize the complexity of the medieval urban fabric. The situation prevailing in our city was partly the result of the interplay of factors (geographical; military; commercial; institutional) going back at least to Roman times, and it was partly the result of accident. A man like Suger, abbot of Saint Denis, or Philip Augustus, king of France (1180-1223), had the power to turn a situation in an unexpected fashion. Might such a man have been thefounding bishop of our Gothic cathedral, or its master mason? Could he turn aside the otherwise "inevitable" course of events? The form of our Gothic cathedral might, in some ways, respond to or reflect historical circumstances. Or, conversely, and counter to current prejudices, the construction of the great edifice might have remained quite free of material restaints. Before we can reach any such conclusions, and in order to understand the Gothic cathedral, we must be familiar in general terms with the peculiar history of the city of Amiens and with some of its key personalities.
SAMAROBRIVA: ROMAN AMIENS
The earliest references to the city that was to become Amiens are found in the writings of Julius Caesar.' In the campaign against Gaul and Britain (60-51 B.C.),the Ambiani sided with the Bellovaci and the other Belgae against the Romans, furnishing a force estimated at ten thousand men. The Bellovaci, the largest and most ferocious group, are said to have provided one hundred thousand. The Ambiani were quick to surrender to the Romans. Caesar mentions not only the people, but also their city, known as Samarobriva, a crossing point over the river Somme. This was a regional center for the Belgae, and it formed a natural strategic base for the Romans in their pacification of this volatile area and in the eventual conquest of Britain.
By the early first century A.D., this center on the important road between Lyon and Boulogne had all the physical trappings of a great provincial Roman city: a formal street plan based upon a regular grid system, public buildings including baths, a great amphitheater and forum, and eventually, inreaction to the increasingly unstable military situation, defensive walls (Pl. 14). All these features had sign)ficance for the future cathedral. The street system ran roughly from east to west, aligned with the river Somme (and perhaps also with the rising sun), and the builders of the pre- Gothic churches on the site found it convenient to align the church with one of the main east-west arteries of this grid. The builders of the Gothic cathedral respected this alignment. As in so many other cases, the principal church was set with its east end toward the Roman wall. Before the construction of the cathedral, the great Roman amphitheater was the only large structure in the city to combine a hemicycle based upon central planning (in this case, an oval, 100 m by 113 m) with a longitudinal forum.
Recent excavations and research provide a general picture of the development of Roman Amiens - a historical pattern like that of many other urban centers of northern Gaul. Although it is impossible to be certain of the size of its population, it seems that imperial Amiens was relatively large: Its position on one of the greatest Roman roads of Gaul and on the river Somme allowed it to grow in importance as a center for supplying the Roman legions in Britain. In the first century A.D., the population may have reached 15,000 - substantially more than the 7,ooo of Lutecia (later Paris), but less than Reims, at around 20,000. The construction of stone edifices was facilitated by the ready availability of local stone (chalk), extracted from the subterranean quarries to the north of the city. Despite the sheer size of the city, one of the largest in the western provinces, the quality of urban life was probably mediocre in comparison with the great Roman cities of the Mediterranean. There is no trace of any public water system.
With the late Empire came a period of demographic decline, caused partly by military pressure from successive Germanic invasions. With the reorganization of the Empire at the end of the third century, Samarobriva gained a ring of defensive walls, enclosing the castrum." These walls were carefully constructed, 3 to 4 meters thick at the level of the foundation, and probably about 10 meters high, but without towers. Stones were pillaged from the public buildings that had lent Amiens a veneer of urban sophistication. The walls were surrounded by a ditch or moat some 7 meters deep and 22 meters wide. It now seems that the city of the Late Empire, although it had shrunk considerably in size from its extent in the previous period, was still much larger than had been supposed - about 20 hectares (50 acres), as opposed to Paris and Beauvais (about 10 hectares), Soissons (12 hectares), and Arras (8.5 hectares) It was in late-Roman Amiens that the young legionary Martin was stationed during the extraordinarily cold winter of 354. Seeing a beggar perishing from cold in front of the city gate, Martin divided his cloak in an act of charity that has become legendary.
The correct interpretation of the location of the eastern wall of the castrum is of particular importance for the site of the cathedral within the city. Some historians had supposed that this wall ran to the west of the cathedral, which would have thus remained outside the walls. However, recent discoveries confirm that the wall ran along a line one bay to the east of the transept of the present cathedral (to the east of the present Rue Robert de Luzarches). Thus, the first church on the site of the future cathedral lay within the walls (P1. 14) Each of the four walls of the castrum is thought to have been pierced by a gate: The eastern gate was the one associated with Saint Martin. A church, SaintMartin-aux-Jumeaux, was later built against this eastern wall to honor this saint.
In the late Roman period, the old amphitheater was transformed into the fortified residence of the governor - the seat of imperial administration in Amiens. The same fortified position, known later as the Castillon, was to provide the military base of secular power (the counts) in the city until its demolition in the twelfth century.
EARLY MEDIEVAL AMIENS
Little is known about the fortunes of the city between the periods of the Germanic incursions and the Carolingian Empire. As with most French cities, our knowledge of the establishment of Christianity in Amiens is vague and colored by the polemics of much later hagiographic sources. The first Christian community is said to have been founded by Saint Firmin, claimed as the first bishop of the city. The date of Firmin's mission is a matter of debate, traditional sources giving a date as early as the second century, but more cautious authorities suggesting the late third or fourth centuries. Firmin was imprisoned and executed by the governor Sebastianus, presumably on a spot close by the Roman prisons, attached to the tower or Castillon.
After Firrnin the Martyr, according to local tradition, came another Firmin, known as the Confessor, claimed as the third bishop of Amiens. Firmin the Confessor had a sanctuary built on the site of his predecessor's tomb, located at Abladene in an extensive rural estate to the southeast of the city. The estate, said to have been given to the church by Senator Faustinien, became the core of the great parcel of land held by the bishops of Amiens. The sanctuary, also known as Notre- Dame des Martyrs, was later known under the names of two other local saints whose relics were preserved there, Ache and Acheul, and finally simply as Saint-Acheul. This was a cemetery church, and its relationship with Amiens was similar to that of Saint-Denis with Paris. It is to be presumed that a body of clerks was established there, and this church is sometimes called the first cathedral of Amiens. However, recent scholarship discounts this legend, favoring the idea that the principal church of the city was always located on the site of the present cathedral." The relics of the sainted bishop were transferred from the unprotected rural site into the city in the early Middle Ages (generally put in the seventh century) by Bishop Salve (or Sauve).
It seems probable that a group of edifices dedicated to the Christian cult was established on the site of the present cathedral as early as the fifth century. The episcopal group included two churches probably placed side by side. The northern church was initially dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, later becoming Saint-Firmin the Confessor, whose relics it enshrined. The second church, to the south, the one used by the bishop, was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to the martyr Firmin. By the twelfth century, the southern church was normally referred to simply as Notre- Dame. It housed the relics brought from Notre-Dame des Martyrs including those of Firmin, Martyr. The twin churches may have been placed in a parallel fashion, level with the eastern end of the present (Gothic) nave with their choirs toward the city wall. In addition, the complex included the bishop's house and (or so it is thought) a baptistery dedicated to Saint John - a dedication later attached to the hospital (Hdtel Dieu) that belonged to the same episcopal group. The future of the city churches as the seat of the bishop and the center of the diocese of Amiens was ensured by the continuity of religious life within the city, the growing prestige of the relics preserved there, and the repeated destructions of the churches located outside the city. Despite this relative security, the churches of the episcopal group must have suffered repeated destructions of the city at the hands of the Norsemen in the ninth century as well as through accidental fires. Nothing is known of their form.
At least from the seventh century, secular power in the city was in the hands of a count who occupied the powerful Castillon, while much of the land to the north and east belonged to the powerful monastery of Corbie, located about 10 kilometers to the east of Amiens.
The vacuum of power created by the breakup of the Carolingian Empire led to a struggle for control of the county of Amiens. The two parties vying for control of the county were, on the one hand, Hugh the Great, count of Paris, and, on the other hand, the ambitious Herbert II of Vermandois, who already possessed Saint-Quentin, Reims, and Soissons. Herbert II was able to establish himself within the city of Amiens (in the Castillon). However, Bishop Raimbaud of Amiens sided with Hugues, allowing him to use the episcopal tower in the Mez Eveque on the east side of the city.
The topography of the city thus provided a visual expression of the structure of medieval society, with the west and east sides of the old castrum dominated by the secular and ecclesiastical power, whereas outside the old walls developed the industrial activities that would provide much of the economic power of the city.
The authority of the counts was enhanced in the tenth and eleventh centuries by their success in establishing the hereditary nature of their office and in imposing family members on the episcopal see - between 992 and 1077, three members of the house of the counts were bishops. However, after Count Simon's retirement to a monastic life at the Cluniac house of Sainte-Claude in 1076, the succession of the county of Amiens became more irregular and uncertain. But the power of the counts' agents, the viscounts, tended to increase and to become more abusive, particularly in the arbitrary administration of justice. An alliance of opposition thus tended to unite the clergy with leading members of the bourgeois of the city. And under these confused and confusing circumstances the bishops held, at least in name, sovereignty over the city."
THE GOLDEN AGE OF MEDIEVAL AMIENS: ELEVENTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
The eleventh and twelfth centuries brought a period of extraordinary population growth to Amiens and to Picardy in general. It is impossible to provide precise documentation of this phenomenon because the first tax lists allowing fairly accurate figures to be computed were not compiled until the fourteenth century. However, it is thought that this was one of the most densely populated provinces of thirteenth-century France, and that the population of medieval Picardy may actually have been more considerable than in modern times. It has been estimated, based on the census of 1328, that more than two million people inhabited an area (Picardy) now occupied by about a million and a half. Because the cities were smaller than they are at present (Arras, one of the largest, probably had about 25,000 inhabitants), it follows that the density of population in rural areas must have been considerable. This rural population was concentrated in villages where, in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a framework of municipal government developed, with village councils made up of aldermen and mayors. The modern visitor to the empty Picard countryside, so devastated in repeated wars, tends to forget this lost village culture. Between 1175 and 1235, about sixty charters were issued to such Picard villages, granting them a framework of administration, system of justice, and sometimes even a seal. The early triumph of personal liberty in rural Picardy is attested by the absence of serfs.
A combination of factors led to the economic surge in the fertile and relatively densely populated Picard plain. This easily cultivable flat land had been dominated by man at an early date. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, grain yields were increasing as a result of improved methods of farming and may even have come close to modern levels. Further land clearance and the more intensive use of horses and improved iron equipment also led to a surge in agrarian production that was accompanied by a sharp increase in population. This population was urban as well as rural, and a town like Amiens, which may have numbered about zo,ooo inhabitants by the thirteenth century, might be expected to consume about 8,ooo tons of grain each year- a tremendous incentive to the producers of the surrounding countryside.
This is ideal land for grain production - even today, the three departments that constitute Picardy with 4% of the land surface of France produce 12% of that country's grain. Not only were methods of production becoming more efficient, but the type of grain planted was changing in favor of wheat, which became the predominant crop after about 1150.
Thus, the period of the construction of the Gothic cathedral was generally a time of plenty in Picardy- the last great famines had been in the early twelfth century, and the chroniclers record no more such disasters until the early fourteenth century. Not only was the quantity of grain production increasing, but so also was its market price, which escalated in the years around IZOO - bringing an extraordinary flow of cash into the hands of clerical landowners who were often involved in ambitious construction projects. In our own times, the phenomenon might be compared with the flow of revenues to the oil- producing countries in the immediate aftermath of the crisis of 1973.
Inextricably linked, therefore, were the demographic surge, the agrarian revolution, the expansion of village life, the growth of urban populations, the development of commerce and industrial production, and technological innovations such as the use of water mills. The economic boom may also have been powered by an increasing supply of coinage and rising prices of agricultural products. Gothic architecture should be seen as part of this boom. It depended upon the development of certain technical innovations (ribbed vaulting, for example) and upon a copious flow of cash.
In the city of Amiens, the new prosperity is reflected in the foundation of new religious houses and the reestablishment of old ones: For example, the church of Saint-Martin was reconstructed in 1073 by Bishop Guy and the collegiate church of Saint-Nicolas was established beside it (Pls. 3 and 14). The plan of the town was being transformed through the development of new suburbs. To the north of the old castrum, enclosed in a great loop of the river Somme, arose a new commercial and industrial neighborhood. The river was diverted into a network of narrow channels (many of which still exist) to provide water and power for mills and other industrial plants (for tanning and the dyeing of textiles). In 1077, Guy de Ponthieu gave to the chapter twelve mills in this neighborhood as well as rights over the navigation on the river Somme. In the course of the twelfth century, with the establishment of the textile industry in this northern sector of the city, the parish of Saint-Leu, the population must have been relatively dense. The escarpments outside the city wall to the north were pierced by numerous subterranean quarries. The chalk building stone extracted from these quarries is of mediocre quality and the builders of the cathedral chose to go further afield. But the local quarries supplied rubble for the cathedral. And the air of the northern suburb would be thick with smoke from the kilns used to produce mortar.
The dynamic interaction of agrarian, urban, industrial, and commercial development might be compared, in general terms, with the situation that existed in parts of the United States in the halfcentury after the Civil War. Such a situation will produce a building boom and it will foster the dynamic development of new ideas, techniques, and institutions.
THE COMMUNE
The increasing numbers of urban residents and the flowering of trade and industry enhanced interest in municipal liberties and the establishment of a commune.- Although the exact circumstances that attended the creation of the commune remain unclear, a key factor was certainly the interest of the bourgeois (inhabitants of the city) in establishing security and acquiring some measure of autonomy through an alliance with the clergy that would offset the arbitrary power of the military aristocracy. Picardy was an area where such communes developed relatively early - in the decades around 1100. clear indication of civic consciousness at Amiens is found in the treaty made in 1020/1 with neighboring Corbie. The inhabitants of each town agreed to put an end to hostilities and to meet each year on Saint Firmin's day in the presence of the count and the bishop in order to find a peaceful resolution to any litigation. The meeting place was first in Amiens and later at a spot midway between the two cities. Coinage struck in Amiens at this time carried the word PAX.
The treaty between Amiens and Corbie resulted from a reaction against the disorder of the time and it expressed a growing sense of urban identity. The objectives of the communal movement were clear - to gain control over urban jurisdiction, to substitute elected magistrates for appointed ones, to gain some power over the means of industrial production, and to establish the identity of the universality of the citizens as a free and sovereign corporation.
The establishment of a commune meant that the participants would swear an oath of mutual defense, and would take responsibility for an annual payment (taille) that could be used for purposes such as defense. The commune would take responsibility for low (or petty) justice in the city. The local seigneur (king or count) would inevitably lose certain powers through such an arrangement, and as might be expected, Count Enguerrand de Coucy of Amiens showed himself hostile to the nascent commune, whose aspirations were expressed in a 'conjuration," a joint oath. Bishop Geoffrey, on the other hand, supported the right of the bourgeois to have a commune, as did the king of France. A violent conflict ensued (1113-14) in which the count was supported, after initial hesitation, by his son, the infamous Thomas de Marle (who had actually supported the revolted bourgeois of Laon), while the bishop was supported by his vidame, Guermond, seigneur of Picquigny. Within the city of Amiens, the count was represented by his chatelain, Adam, who occupied the fortress of the Castillon. Thus, while Adam was able to harrass the bourgeois from this strong point, Thomas de Marle devastated the rural holdings of the bishop, who, desperate about the outcome and under attack from his fellow bishops, chose to withdraw to the abbey of Cluny and then to the Grande Chartreuse. The situation turned in a dramatic way, however. The synod of ecclesiastics gathered at Beauvais expressed its support of Bishop Geoffrey, enjoining him to return to his city. Appeals for royal assistance received a favorable response, Louis Vl coming in person to Amiens (in 1115) with a contingent of troops. He arrived in the city on Palm Sunday. Bishop Geoffrey pronounced an impassioned sermon, "more like one of Catalina's speeches than one that proceeded from God" (Guibert de Nogent). Although the initial attack on the Castillon by the royal troops and bourgeois was repelled with considerable loss of life (the king himself received a javelin in the chest), a prolonged siege led to the eventual fall of the tower (in 1117), which was then demolished, sharply curtailing the military power of the count within the city of Amiens.
The death of Enguerrand de Boves led to the establishment of a new house of counts, that of Vermandois, in the person of Adele de Vermandois, niece of Simon de Valois. Adele and her husband Renaud de Clermont recognized the commune in a charter that has not survived.
The memory of the heroic events of the early twelfth century may have established the basis for a benign relationship between the clergy, the commune, and the king, while the power of the count, having been dramatically reduced, was eventually eliminated altogether with the extinction of the line of the counts in 1185, after which time King Philip Augustus assumed direct sovereignty over the city. This was obviously a mixed blessing for the bishops, for while it removed abusive local secular power from the city, it deprived the bishop of any pretense of sovereignty. Whereas in the previous period the power structure in the city had been fragmented one, with four seigneurs (bishop, vidame, count, and chatelain, an extraordinary centripetal implosion now concentrated power into the hands of a single agency: the monarchy.
Among the bourgeois, a group of individuals known as the hommes de Saint Firmin fell under the protection of the bishop and owed him a fixed cash payment each year known as the "Respite of Saint Firmin." This payment was understood to express the bishop's status as seigneur of the city, and to represent the commutation of certain customary dues that the bishop had previously held. With the events of 1117, and in a manner that is not fully understood, the constituency was widened to include all the bourgeois of Amiens - an arrangement that expressed the bishop's status as seigneur of the city and the role of the patron saint under whose banner the bourgeois had gained the victory over oppressive secular power. Inscription in the table de Saint Firmin was necessary in order to hold bourgeois status in the city, and in addition to the annual payment of four (later reduced to three) pence, each communier owed payments at the time of the initial inscription, at marriage and at death.
Thus, events in Amiens suggest a pattern quite unlike, for example, Reims or Laon, where clergy and townsfolk were, at various times, pitted in violent opposition one to another. The twelfth century was a time of growth and prosperity for Amiens. The wealth of the city was based, above all, upon commerce and the textile and dye industry. From the twelfth century, a fine woolen cloth known as Miensa or Mensa ("from Amiens") was found in Italian markets. The chapter and members of the bourgeoisie cooperated in developing the river ports that allowed Amiens to become a key center in trade with England. The ready availability of wool, power provided by water mills, the proximity of the Fairs of Champagne, and the absence of oppressive seigneurial authority - all these factors allowed Amiens to outstrip many of its competitors, becoming one of the largest and most prosperous towns of the north.
Another major industry that contributed to prosperity in this period was the cultivation, processing, and sale of woad, used to dye fabric in a range of different shades of blue Grown in the rich valley of the Somme and its tributaries, the Avre, the Celle, the Encre, and the Noye to the east of Amiens, the leaves were brought to the city to be milled to release the dye, which could then be exported via the river Somme especially to Flanders and England.
The growth of the city's population (probably about 20,000 inhabitants by the end of the twelfth century) and military insecurity resulting from the confrontaffon between Plantagenet and Capeffan kings led to the reconstruction of the city walls to enclose the new suburbs, especially to the north. Such walls were being built in many other cities of northern France, and they are commonly referred to as the "walls of King Philip Augustus." However, it is possible that those of Amiens were begun even before 1185, during the period of control by the counts. The new wall, about 1,700 meters in length, enclosed the northern quartier of Saint-Leu, following the northern loop of the river Somme. To the east and west, the new city wall ran only a short distance in front of the old one, and to the south, the old Roman wall was simply reinforced. The construction of the new wall to the east of the city meant that the old Roman wall could be demolished, thus increasing the space available for the episcopal complex - it is not clear whether this demolition took place immediately or whether it was delayed until a fire (1218) damaged the complex, making way for the construction of the Gothic cathedral. A great east-west thoroughfare ran to the south of the cathedral penetrating the new city wall by means of the Porte Saint- Michel. Another gate placed on this road, the Porte de l'Arguet, marked the line of the wall of the old castrum. To the east of this gate, level with the cloister, was the Tower of Jerusalem, so-called because of its sculptured scenes of the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. At Easter, the clergy would process to this tower in order to sing the Gloria Laus.
Within the new city walls, the area to the north (the parish of Saint-Leu) was occupied primarily by industrial activities, to the west was the commercial center, occupied by leading members of the city's bourgeoisie, as well as the belfry of the commune and the buildings that housed the municipal government, and the area to the east was the ecclesiastical area, with the episcopal complex, the cloisters, and the churches of Saint Martin-aux-Jumeaux and the adjacent Saint-Nicolas. The canons
lived in their own separate houses mostly to the south of the cathedral. The cathedral itself, having burned in 1137, was rebuilt, presumably on a larger scale, and was rededicated in 1152. The twelfth-century cathedral of Amiens must have seemed a physical expression of the union between clergy and townsfolk that had allowed the overthrow of abusive secular power in the city. We know nothing of this edifice, but it would be reasonable to suppose that it was of considerable size, probably having its east end against the old Roman wall. The area controlled directly by the bishop (the terreI'eveque) included the neighborhood of the river Hocquet up to the river Somme, with the ports of the river Don and the Queue de Vache, as well as the eastern suburb of Le Riquebourg. With the commercial and industrial growth of the city in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, the western part of the city, with its newly constructed bourgeois houses, may have outshone the ecclesiastical eastern enclave.
This brief narrative has reached the years around 1200 - the period immediately preceding the construction of the Gothic cathedral. Amiens developed from a pre-Roman settlement to an expansive imperial city; from a diminished, fortifiedcastrum to a flourishing medieval center of commerce and industrial production. Intense struggles for power in the city culminated in the triumph of the royal house and the establishment of civic liberties in the form of a commune. This development was not unlike that of many other cities in northern France - except that Amiens was exceptionally large and prosperous, and royal power was established relatively early, owing to the extinction of the house of the counts. The prolonged period of harmonious relations between clergy and municipality also seems somewhat unusual, given the violent clashes in Laon, Beauvais, and Reims.
CATHEDRAL BUILDING IN ITS INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK: COMMUNE, KING, AND CLERGY
The commune was governed by a mayor and a body of aldermen (echevins) elected annually by the city folk, the bourgeois. The authority of the commune was expressed visually both by a seal upon which was depicted six heads alternating with fleurs-de-lys surrounding a rose, and by the great tower, the beffroi, constructed on the edge of the land previously occupied by the Castillon. The replacement ot the tower representing the power of the count with one expressing the identity of the commune was entirely appropriate, because the jurisdictional power of the count had been absorbed bv the commune. The monarchy, represented in the city by a bailiff, reserved to itself capital cases (high justice), but left lower justice to the aldermen, who, in effect, became municipal magistrates.
We should avoid the mistake of concluding that the commune was a monolithic entity whose interests were automatically opposed to those of the cathedral clergy. On the contrary, the clergy often cooperated with members of the bourgeois in common enterprises, for example, in developing the two ports of Amiens. In 1130, Mainier Le Moine, a member of the bourgeois, constructed a quay on the river Somme, and in 1145, an agreement was reached between his son, Nicolas, and the chapter of the cathedral for exploiting the river trade. The chapter was seigneur des eaux and held most of the mills. Merchandise handled by the port included wool from England and Ponthieu, pepper, alum, salt, fish, cereal, wine, woad, honey, oil, and apples. Of course, the structure of the municipal government of Amiens expressed the heavily stratified nature of the population: the menus yens and the gros gens. The latter group, the substantial bourgeoisie, was made up of individuals who had become wealthy in the world of high finance and administration. Such men formed an oligarchy, dominating the administration of the commune. Thus, in twelfth- century Amiens, certain names revealed the fiscal or administrative basis of a family's power: Mainier le Monetaire, Hubert le Tonloyer, and Arnoul le Prevot. In the late twelfth century, eight such families shared all the key offices in Amiens. ln the urban conflicts at Beauvais, such men tended to side with the king of France, whereas the menus yens sided with the bishop.
By the thirteenth century, a broader range of people, including representatives of commerce and manufacturing, had begun to assume power in the commune. By the end of the century, the structure of the governance of the city had crystalized. The number of echevins had been increased to twenty-four, still led by a mayor chosen each year by the heads of each of the professional groupings known as bannieres from a list of three candidates prepared by the previous administration. There were twentyfour such bannieres dominated by the manufacturers of woad and the taverniers. Representatives of the food industry (butchers, bakers, etc.) had six bannieres, textiles had five, leather production was represented by four, and metallurgy and construction (blacksmiths, masons, carpenters, and roofers) by three. Four bannieres remained for the other commercial interests. The bannieres were, in effect, electoral colleges, and their existence ensured the perpetuation of a oligarchic government.
What of the involvement of the monarchy in the affairs of Picardy and the city of Amiens? From the breakup of the Carolingian Empire until the late twelfth century, the area had been subject to the sometimes conflicting pulls from the powerful neighboring territorial blocks, namely, Normandy and Flanders. Local seigneurs attempting to consolidate their own position might ally with one group or another. However, in the long run, neither the extraneous power nor the local petty seigneur triumphed, but rather the monarchy. A major stepping stone in this process was the king's ability to bind communities to himself through communal charters, and it has been seen that Picardy developed very quickly in this direction. Second, the royal domain, land controlled directly by the monarchs, was already planted firmly on Picard soil along the rivers Oise and Aisne, and was to be substantially augmented through the acquisition of the Vermandois and Santerre. Thus, the king of France gained a strong foothold in central and southeastern Picardy, with substantial concentrations of land around Corbie, Roye, Peronne, Saint-Quentin, Noyon, Senlis, Crepy, and along rivers such as the Therain, the Canche, and the Scarpe. Royal provosts were established to administer these holdings at Bray, Bapaume, Peronne, Athies, Ham, Roye, Ribemont, Saint-Quentin, Pierrefonds, and La Neuville-Le- Roy. Royal coinage replaced local currencies that had been minted in cities such as Laon, Corbie, Beauvais, and Amiens, and the speed of this process was accelerated in the decades around
The dramatic events of the royal "annexation" of Picardy took place between 1185 and 1223 under King Philip Augustus. In order to neutralize the danger of an alliance between Normandy and Flanders, Philip married a daughter of the house of Flanders, gaining through this marriage substantial parcels of land, including Amiens (in 1185) and Boves. When the Count of Flanders, Philippe d'Alsace, died without heir in 1191, Philip Augustus made further substantial gains: Bapaume, Hesdin, the north of the Amienois, and the western part of the Vermandois, Clermont and Beaumontsur-Oise came later, as a result of the same marriage giving the king control over central, southern, and eastern Picardy. The crushing royal victory at the Battle of Bouvines (1214) extended this control to parts of northern Picardy, including Doullens and Saint-Riquier. In this way, the rich and populous province became a mainstay of royal France.
It was at Amiens that King Philip Augustus, after the death of Isabella of Hainault, married the Danish princess Ingeburg.
In his extraordinarily useful study of the cathedral clergy, W. M. Newman stressed, above all, the importance of the local interests represented by members of the seigneurial families whose younger sons were canons of the cathedral chapter. One of the peculiar features of Picard society in the decades before work began on the Gothic cathedral was the fragmentation of seigneurial power. No single well- established house dominated for any extended period of time. The key to power often lay in the hands of the secular champions originally appointed by the Church to defend its interests: Thus, the house of the avvoes of Saint- Riquier became the house of the counts of Ponthieu; the vidames of the cathedral of Amiens, the lords of Picquigny, were amongst the most powerful lords in the area. Between 1175 and 1250, more than a thousand seigneurial unities dominated the land and the population of Picardy. Of course, an individual might hold in his hands several of these pettyseigneuries. Such local families, represented by their younger sons who were canons of the cathedral chapter, might be able to block the centralizing policies of king or pope, especially as episcopal elections were freely conducted in this period. Bishops were lords themselves, generally with strong family connections with the surrounding countryside. They might even be required to perform military duties.
Similarly, a network of close family connections linked the chapter with the powerful members of the local bourgeois. The cathedral chapter of Amiens consisted of thirty-eight canons, increased in 1190 to forty. Each canon's income was provided by a prebend, drawn from the landed holdings and rights of the chapter in and around Amiens. That these prebends were more than adequate is indicated by the tendency to divide them - in l279, the bishop claimed that the canons of Amiens were too rich. Each canon would own a small house situated in the area to the south of the cathedral. The dean ot the chapter was the only elected officer. There were six officers or dignitaries until 1218, when Bishop Evrard (the founding bishop of the Gothic cathedral) added three more - a prechantre, ecolatre, and a penitencier. Because the bishop had the right to choose the officers, he gained considerable political clout by the arrangement. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, certain great local families were heavily represented amongst the canons - especially the Heilly, the de Boves, the d'Airaines, the Breteuil, and the d'Abbeville. The continuity of such family representation was helped by the power (albeit ill-defined) of canons to designate their successors. The bishops and dignitaries were nearly all local men, either from the diocese or the immediately surrounding area. This situation changed in the second part of the thirteenth century, when the pope began to impose his will on the appointment of new canons. The king held considerable potential power because this was a royal diocese, and the chapter was obliged to ask royal permission before proceeding to an episcopal election. However, there is no evidence that kings actually attempted to influence the course of episcopal elections in our period, and kings Philip Augustus and Philip the Bold were both obliged to concede that they did not hold the power to confer the prebends during a vacancy.
What do we know about the bishop and officers of the chapter who presided over the start of work on the Gothic cathedral? Evrard de Fouilloy became bishop in 1211 after a brief vacancy, perhaps caused by quarrels within the chapter (his predecessor, Richard de Gerberoy died in 1210). Evrard must have been born before the mid-twelfth century, for he was a subdeacon and canon of the chapter of Amiens in the 1160S. Those decades spent as a canon of Notre-Dame of Amiens must have given him personal contacts and experience that would serve him well as future bishop and builder. Possibly his promotion to high office at Amiens was initially blocked, for in the 1190S, Evrard left Amiens, and between 1198and 1210, he was chanter of the chapter of Arras Cathedral. A period of high office spent elsewhere would certainly enhance his prestige, and in 1212, he was elected bishop of Amiens. In 1215, he participated in the great Church council summoned by Pope Innocent III to the Lateran Palace in Rome. His name is associated with a series of religious foundations, including a chapter of canons at Noyelles-sur- Mer (in 1217) and a convent of Arras (1218). He died in 1222 and was buried in the nave of Amiens Cathedral (see Appendix A, item 4)
What of the dean of the chapter? In 1215, the papal legate deposed Dean Simon, who was found to be illiterate and unworthy of his charge. There had been a period of difficult relations between the bishop and chapter that went back to the period of Evrard's predecessor, Richard de Gerberoy. This situation seems to reflect badly on the chapter, because the dean had been freely elected, and the legate denied the chapter the right to choose a successor. Despite this, the chapter proceeded to elect two of its members, Ebrard de Royes and Jean d'Abbeville, regent of theology at Paris. In 1218, Pope Honorius III nominated Jean d'Abbeville as dean. D'Abbeville had previously been a canon at Saint-Wulfran in Abbeville - thus, he as well as the bishop had associations with the area to the north of Amiens. His subsequent career was illustrious - in 1225, he became archbishop of Besancon and was later nominated patriarch of Constantinople. The historians of Amiens record that his full name was Jean Halgrin (or Alegrin) d'Abbeville, and it is said that he wrote six commentaries on the Song of Songs. Noted as a distinguished writer of sermons, he was sent to Spain to preach the crusade against the Saracens. He died in 1233.
The chapter maintained a school that, although it did not rival the schools of Paris, provided the elements of education for lavfolk, especially the children of local bourgeois, who, increasingly, were learning to read. A lay culture was emerging, propagated to some extent, by representatives of the Church, such as the canon Richard de Fournival (1201-60), the half-brother of Bishop Arnoul de la Pierre, author of several treatises on courtly love (conseils d'amour; puissance d'amour and bestiaire d'amour). It is sign)ficant that the majority of fah liaux (popular tales with a moral purpose) were written in the Picard dialect.
Shared dialect, shared culture, shared faith - were these enough to offset the sharp distinctions in material possessions and social rank that divided the gros yens from the menus; the secular world from the ecclesiastic? To what extent are stories of the cult of the carts and similar "spontaneous" manifestations of medieval piety the result of clerical manipulation or invention? What was the nature and the depth of piety in medieval Picardy? The written sources relating the history of medieval Amiens return again and again to a single powerful
force linking the interests of clergy and townsfolk - devotion to the local saint, Firmin the martyr. Thus, for example, in 1137, when the clergy needed funds for the reconstruction of the burned cathedral, they prepared a great quest, in which the relics of the saint were to be taken out of the city in a fund-raising drive. This intention was blocked by a combination of a miracle (the relic refused to pass through the city gates) and the people of Amiens who rose to return the relic to its church and to offer their own wealth. Whatever one thinks of such stories of miracles and "spontaneous" outpourings of devotion, the record of substantial gifts made by individual townsfolk of Amiens to the cathedral is an impressive one.- It is certainly true that hund raising was substantially helped by the family ties that linked members of the clergy with the wealthy bourgeois of the city and the seigneurial families of the surrounding countryside.
Revenue for the construction of the Gothic cathedral probably came from three sources: The first and most important was the regular income from the property and jurisdictions of the bishop and chapter, a fixed proportion of which might be diverted toward the fabric. Although the land held by the clergy within the city was limited to a block in the eastern sector, and the prosperous commercial and industrial quartiers were not included, the bishop and chapter held numerous very profitable rights both inside and outside the city of Amiens. Especially profitable were various taxes on the passage of produce and manufactured goods through the city or along the waters of the river Somme. The fire of 1218 destroyed the documents that could have permitted the reconstruction of any twelfth- century expansion of holdings of land and legal rights. The wealth of the chapter is suggested by a capitular act of 1220 to increase the level of distributions made to canons during the offices (Appendix A, item 3). That this step should have been taken in the same year as work began on the cathedral is extraordinary.
What impact did the economic effort involved in cathedral building have upon the attitude of the clergy toward the exploitation of their rights? In some cases, it is clear that acute financial difficulties might drive the clergy to become oppressive in their levies of indirect taxes upon the townsfolk - this was certainly the case at Beauvais, where violent rioting resulted from oppressive episcopal taxation. In the long term, however, the financial needs of the clergy might force them to make changes in the tax structure that were to the advantage of the townsfolk. This is especially true of payments in kind or labor that was commuted in order to secure revenue for a cash-paid workshop of masons, carpenters, and other laborers. With the effects of inflation, such cash payments would become progressively less onerous. Moreover, to secure the goodwill of the townsfolk necessary for prolonged construction and fund raising, the clergy were sometimes led to make sign)ficant concessions, as, for example the reduction of the annual tax known as the Respite of Saint Firmin (Appendix A, item 6).
Second, revenue for the fabric came from substantial contributions made for personal, political, or religious reasons by family and friends of the clergy, who dominated the upper levels of the urban bourgeoisie and who comprised the scores of seigneurs of the countryside around Amiens.
Third, contributions were made by the pious layfolk of the diocese. These contributions would be solicited, above all, through quests and sermons.
How can we begin to determine the relative weight of each of these sources within the fabric fund? The earliest building accounts of Troyes Cathedral, from the 1290S, document the surprising predominance of the third kind of source - contributions from the faithful of the diocese. The modern commentator tends to think solely of "the cathedral in the city," forgetting the importance of the cathedral as a symbol of the faith of an entire diocese, where the rural population would far outnumber the urban population. Questions are often raised about the spirit in which funds were contributed for cathedral construction by the people of the diocese, whether out of love for the Mother Church or through spiritual or economic constraints. It has even been claimed that cathedral construction might destroy the economic vitality of the city where the great edifice was located. However, if it is difficult to understand the relative importance of regular revenues as opposed to "voluntary" contributions, how can we begin to inform our comments on the spirit in which such contributions were made? Certainly, the support of the townsfolk is suggested by the donation of a considerable number of stained glass windows that originally adorned the cathedral. Although, as we shall see, a number of incidents of the 1240S and 1250S indicate tension between the cathedral clergy and elements of the bourgeois, it would be difficult to argue that the massive bulk of Amiens Cathedral is a visual expression of the oppressive domination of the city by the clerical elite - particularly given the relatively slender powers of the clergy in the city On a broader level, John Van Engen reached a similar conclusion in rejecting the concept of a two-tiered religious culture - "popular" and "high" - and in emphasizing the importance of the cult of local saints and relics as a unifying force.
Thus, the cathedral was in the city, but it was not entirely of the city. The Mother Church of an entire diocese and symbol of the Church Universal, the cathedral of Notre-Dame was built with funds that were probably raised, at least in part, outside the city. Many of the artisans (and probably the master mason) came from elsewhere. Visually, its soaring exterior forms and disciplined manipulation of unified and light-filled interior spaces were quite unlike anything else in the urban landscape. It was in the figurative programs (sculpture and glass) that specific references were made to city's history and to city folk. Yet the fortunes of the cathedral were inextricably linked with those of the city The symbiosis was not a destructive or cynically exploitive one at the time of the construction of the cathedral. City memories are often quite long, and when the French Revolution gave licence to destroy and loot ecclesiastical edifices and their decoration, Amiens Cathedral sustained little damage. Mayor Louis Alexandre Lescouvre, charged with the dispersal of the relics, hid away the most precious relic in the possession of the cathedral, the head of John Baptist, in order to return it again later, when circumstances had changed.