Thanks to David Crouch, Kathleen Thompson, and the anonymous reader, whose suggestionshelped me much to improve this paper; remaining errors of any kind are obviously mine.

David Bates, England and the Feudal Revolution, in Il Feudalesimo nellalto medioevo, 8121

April 1999, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sullalto medioevo, 47, 2 vols (Spoleto:Centro Italiano di Studi sullalto medioevo, 2000), pp. 61149; Pierre Bonnassie and Pierre Toubert,England around the Year 1000, in Hommes et socits dans lEurope de lan mil, ed. by PierreBonnassie and Pierre Toubert (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2004), pp. 10112.

Georges Duby, Les Trois Ordres ou limaginaire du fodalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1978); The2

Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1980).

BETWEEN PARADISE AND REVOLT:LABORATORES IN THE SOCIETY OF THE THREE ORDERS

Mathieu Arnoux

There is no doubt that during the last thirty years we have learnt much aboutthe social and political organization of the French and Anglo-Normanterritories. Important questions have been raised about the nature offeudalism on both sides of the Channel and about the relationship and similaritiesbetween the two monarchies. Institutional studies have highlighted the ideological1

basis of royal authority, and the pioneering work of Marc Bloch, Ernst Kantoro-wicz, and Percy Ernst Schramm has described the different forms of justificationissued by rulers and clerks. In this constantly changing landscape, the image of theThree Orders has been something of an exception and has received less examina-tion. Frequently quoted and commented on, Georges Dubys great book Les TroisOrdres raised debate on two points: the actual existence of a Feudal Revolutionat the beginning of the eleventh century, and the origins and birth of an ideologicalformula: laboratores, oratores, bellatores. Even the best books on French and2

Anglo-Norman history usually neglect the problem of the implementation of this

Mathieu Arnoux202

Jacques Le Goff, La Civilisation de lOccident mdival (Paris: Arthaud, 1964), pp. 319283

(Medieval Civilization 4001500, trans. by Julia Barrow (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), pp. 25564);Jacques Le Goff, Note sur socit tripartite, idologie monarchique et renouvellement conomiquedans la chrtient du IX au XII sicle, in Pour un autre Moyen ge: temps, travail et culture ene e

Occident: 18 essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), pp. 8090.

G. Dumzil, Mtiers et classes fonctionnelles chez divers peuples indo-europens, Annales4

ESC, 13 (1958), 71624; Jean Batany, Des trois fonctions aux trois tats?, Annales ESC, 18(1963), 93338.

social classification of orders. This paper reappraises the evidence and reconsidersthe problem of the development of the model of the Three Orders in Anglo-Norman and European social history. Readers are asked not to forget, however,that this is work in progress, intended to promote debate and open to correction.

From Dumzil to Duby

Although it was taken for granted for a great part of the European society from theMiddle Ages until the end of the Ancien Rgime that each man should belong toone of the three tats that is, the nobility, the clergy, or the third, or common,group the problem of the origin, birth, and enforcement of such an idea was oflittle interest to historians until the 1960s.

In investigating this theme, first in his great book of 1964 and then in a paper in1968, reprinted in 1977, Jacques Le Goff considered the anthropological point ofview. Its origins lay in the idea expressed by Georges Dumzil that Indo-European3

religious, juridical, and political thought was characterized by a trifunctional or-ganization, where the first function was related to religious and magic sovereignty,the second to warfare, and the third to fertility and economic activities. The rela-tionship between this scheme and the three parts of European society in the laterMiddle Ages and early modern times had been explored by Dumzil himself andthen by Jean Batany, in a short article published in 1963 in Annales. Both writers4

favoured the continuity of the Indo-European structure, especially into Anglo-Saxonsociety, where at the end of the ninth century the idea of the Three Orders wasexpressed for the first time by King Alfred the Great, in his Anglo-Saxon translationof and commentary on Boethiuss De consolatione. Jacques Le Goff took a historicalperspective on the religious and social representation of the orders and pointed outthat, since the earliest evidence of the idea was to be found in the tenth century, thetheory of Indo-European continuity had to explain the disappearance of the modelat the beginning of the Middle Ages or its rebirth around the year 1000.

BETWEEN PARADISE AND REVOLT 203

Georges Duby, Le Chevalier, la femme et le prtre: le mariage dans la France fodale (Paris:5Hachette, 1981), translated by Barbara Bray as The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Makingof Modern Marriage in Medieval France (New York: Pantheon, 1983).

The question was raised by both Pierre Bonnassie, Idologie tripartite et rvolution fodale,6

Le Moyen ge, 86 (1980), 25173, and Bates, England and the Feudal Revolution, p. 675.

After Georges Dubys election to the Collge de France in 1970, he decided todevote his seminar to this problem. The book he published in 1978, which un-doubtedly remains one of his major works, presented the results of a collectiveinvestigation, in which Jacques Le Goff had been involved, as were many otherFrench and European medievalists. It presented all the pieces of the dossier for thetenth to twelfth centuries and outlined the chronology of the idea of the ThreeOrders in society. Two crucial moments were identified: the first expression of thetheme in the beginning of the late tenth century, and its enforcement as the officialexpression of the monarchic ideology of the Plantagenet and Capetian kings in thesecond half of the twelfth century.

The book is an important piece in Dubys reconstruction of the feudal moment,because it was the first expression of feudalism as the result of a social and ideo-logical mutation of post-Carolingian society. The birth of a new model of socialorganization, which broke with the stratification of the early Middle Ages, was amajor element of the evolution. Eventually, studies in marriage and family patternsof the feudal group in the eleventh and twelfth centuries made it possible to have anall-encompassing view of feudal society. The weakening of public authority at the5

end of the tenth century and the associated outburst of violence from the militesformed the background to a general debate on social organization and evolution,where the Three Orders scheme had to compete with other propositions on socialand religious organization: heretical ideas, the Peace of God, and the social proposalof the Cluniac monks. Then both the idea and the social debate that prompted itdisappeared for almost a century, perhaps because of a preoccupation with ecclesi-astical reform, until its second birth in the middle of the twelfth century.

Dubys book was written in the context of a broad inquiry about feudal society,which may account for some of its more controversial points. For example it focusedmainly on the French and Anglo-Norman lands, and nothing was said about howthe theory of Three Orders was received outside France and England, either in theEmpire or in Italy and the Mediterranean regions. Another curious factor is Dubyspresentation of the occurrences of the idea in Adalbero of Laon and Gerard ofCambrais texts in the 1020s as the most significant pieces of evidence, despite thefact that Abbot lfric of Eynsham and Archbishop Wulfstan of York had madeearlier and equally convincing expressions of the idea in the years around 1000.6

Mathieu Arnoux204

Otto G. Oexle, Die funktionale Dreiteilung der Gesellschaft bei Adalbero von Laon:7

Deutungsschemata der sozialen Wirklichkeit im frheren Mittelalter, Frhmittelalterliche Studien,12 (1978), 124; Jacques Le Goff, Les Trois Fonctions indo-europennes, lhistorien et lEuropefodale, Annales ESC, 34 (1979), 11871215.

Dominique Iogna-Prat, Le Baptme du schma des trois ordres fonctionnels: lapport de8

lcole dAuxerre dans la seconde moiti du IX sicle, Annales ESC, 41 (1986), 10126.e

Timothy E. Powell, The Three Orders of Society in Anglo-Saxon England, ASE, 23 (1994),9

10332; cf. also Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century,vol. I: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 45762, and about Wulfstanspolitical theory, Patrick Wormald, Archbishop Wulfstan: Eleventh-Century State-Builder, in Wulf-stan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. by Matthew Townend,Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 927 (pp. 1819, 20).

Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, vol. I: 8711204,10

ed. by Dorothy Whitelock, Martin Brett, and Christopher N. L. Brooke, 2 vols (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1964), I, 252, n. 45.

Powell vs Duby

The book was well received, but few further publications on its topic followed.7

Dominique Iogna-Prat investigated the theological background to the evidence fromthe tenth and eleventh centuries, looking especially at the masters of the Auxerreschools, Heiric and Remigius, who expressed ideas about the social organization ofChristendom which might, in some ways, explain the later theories. A major con-8

tribution to the topic was the influential article published in 1994 by TimothyPowell in Anglo-Saxon England. It provided a clear and exhaustive status quaestionis9

after Dubys book and a precise commentary on Alfreds, elfrics, and Wulfstansimportant texts. Like Le Goff and Duby before him, Powell rejected the hypothesisof the continuity of an Indo-European trifunctional pattern from pre-Christiantimes into the eleventh century and presented the theory of the Three Orders asa historical construction, an intellectual reaction in a period of social crisis. Theproblem of violence and social cohesion was central to his most significant piece ofevidence, lfrics letter of canonical consultation to Wulfstan, as it would be twentyyears later in the French texts. But in the English case, it did not refer to the mis-10

deeds of the milites but to an older European problem, the military competencies ofthe bishops. The presentation of the Three Orders, laboratores, bellatores, oratores,as the providential framework, where there is a place for everyone, was a preliminaryto an examination of the specific case of the bishops. As the chiefs of the spiritualismilitia (spiritual struggle), they had to fight with weapons specific to their ordo:lorica justitiae, scutum fidei et galeam salutis, et gladium spiritus, quod est verbum

BETWEEN PARADISE AND REVOLT 205

David Fraesdorff, Beten fr die Gesellschaft: die oratores: Theorie als Deutungsmodell der11

sozialen Wirklichkeit im Mittelalter, Historisches Jahrbuch, 125 (2005), 338; in a recent article,Theo Riches has rightly suggested that the protection of the episcopal status and authority was amajor issue of Bishop Gerard of Cambrais speech:Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai-Arras, the ThreeOrders, and the Problem of Human Weakness, in The Bishop Reformed, ed. by John S. Ott andAnna Trumbore Jones (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 12236.

Die Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical: ein Werk Erzbischof Wulfstans von York, ed.12

by Karl Jost, Schweizer Anglistische Arbeiten / Swiss Studies in English, 47 (Bern: Francke, 1959),pp. 5557, quoted by Powell, Three Orders of Society, p. 116.

Dei (Ephesians 16. 1417; the breastplate of justice, the shield of faith, helmet ofsalvation, and sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God). But were there anycircumstances in which they could lay down the staff and use the sword in thebattlefield? The rules of the ordines strictly prohibited such a transgression which,in the bishops case, implied a move from the militia Dei to the militia secularis.

In late tenth-century England, such a proposal had not only theoretical but alsopractical implications in the struggles between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes. ForArchbishop Wulfstan and his fellows, the bishops role was to preach, convert, andbaptize the pagans after the battle; they were not permitted to fight them on thebattlefield. Timothy Powells interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon evidence made theordo oratorum the target of lfric and Wulfstans theory, whereas Georges Duby hadearlier detected that the ordo bellatorum was the critical point of the scheme forAdalbero and Grard. There is no contradiction between them on this point, and11

Archbishop Wulfstan, in his Institutes of Polity, presented the ordines as follows:

Every rightful throne that stands fully upright rests on three pillars: one is oratores, andanother is laboratores and the third is bellatores. Oratores is clergy, who must serve God dayand night, interceding zealously for all the people. Laboratores are working men (weorcmen)who must provide that by which all the people live. Bellatores are warriors, who mustdefend the land valiantly with weapons. On these three pillars, every throne shall standupright in a Christian nation. And if any of them weakens, the throne will soon totter; andif any of them should break, then the throne will fall and that will damage the people.12

As Timothy Powell points out in the conclusion of his paper, the Three Ordershad both to be seen as a model for stability and unity and yet broadly enoughdefined to enable those like Aelfric (and in Francia Adalbero and Gerard) to maketheir particular points. So far we have considered how the model of the ThreeOrders was applied to the oratores and bellatores, let us now try to discover whatkind of message was given to the laboratores, who were by far the large majority ofthe population. After all, the ordo, in which they gathered with no other considera-tion of social status, can be seen as the very novelty of the system.

Mathieu Arnoux206

Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. by Dorothy Whitelock (London: Methuen, 1939); Wormald,13

Making of the English Law, p. 344. For a reference to slave trading in late eleventh-century Bristol,see William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, ii, c. 20, in William of Malmesbury, Saints Lives, ed.by Michael Winterbottom and Rodney M. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), pp.10002. At the very same moment on the eastern border of Christendom, Bishop Adalbert ofPrague took similar action among Czech people in favour of ecclesiastical reform and against theslave trade: Vita Adalberti episcopi Pragensis auctore Johanne Canapario (BHL 37), ed. by GeorgHeinrich Pertz, MGH Scriptores, 4, p. 581; available online at .

H. C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp.14

7274, 8687 and maps at pp. 7677, 87; David A. E. Pelteret, Slavery in Early Medieval England,from the Reign of Alfred until the Twelfth Century, Studies in Anglo-Saxon History, 7 (Woodbridge:Boydell, 1995), pp. 23240; David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland,

Ordo laboratorum: Emancipation and Order?

Before any interpretation of the few bald words devoted to the laboratores, we haveto be clear on the exact nature of the evidence. The description of the orders,especially in Anglo-Saxon sources, cannot be read as prescriptive: even in lfricscanonical consultation, the reference to the ordines is not a juridical statement nora moral exhortation. This may explain why the simple word laborator can beapplied to a group of men for whom, in England or on the Continent, there weremany different names, which referred to their degree of freedom, the status of theirtenure, or the nature of their economic functions. lfric and Wulfstans aim laybeyond the intricate social and legal system of the end of the tenth century and wasto restore the genuine condition of people, as Holy Providence had fixed it, as ameans for human salvation. As expressed by key agents of ecclesiastical reform suchas lfric, Wulfstan, Gerard, and Adalbero, these descriptions of Christian societyhad to be understood as propositions of reform with related action.

In Wulfstans case, it is possible to link the theory of the orders, that is, the ideathat the laboratores were one single group in the eye of God, with his decisive state-ment against slavery, which was still widespread in tenth-century England. A greatpart of his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos was devoted to a sharp condemnation of the slavetrade, which sold many Christian English men, women, and children to Viking,Welsh, Irish, or other traders. In lfrics didactic works, there are frequent hints13

to the slaves (theow or thraell) who lived and worked on the domestic estates.Domesday Books lists of dependent countrymen provide significant evidence ofthe diffusion of slavery in Anglo-Saxon society in the time of King Edward. By theend of the eleventh century, however, this population had vanished, as had the oldAnglo-Saxon words referring to it. Although the process is particularly obvious14

BETWEEN PARADISE AND REVOLT 207

8001200 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). For the practicalities, see Christopher Dyer, Bishop Wulfstan andhis Estates, in St. Wulfstan and his World, ed. by Julia S. Barrow and Nicholas P. Brooks, Studiesin Early Medieval Britain, 4 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 13749 (pp. 14446). It is absolutelyessential to make the distinction between evidence for slavery and the slave trade and the issue ofthe origins of serfdom: Bates, England and the Feudal Revolution, pp. 63536.

Cf. for example the Irish poet Moriuht, whose wife was captured by the Vikings, then sold15

in Rouen (Pelteret, Slavery, p. 76); when Ademar of Chabannes describes in his Chronicle theassault of Narbonne by Mauri Cordubenses and the Viking expedition against the shores ofAquitaine (c. 100019), slavery is clearly the fate promised to all captivi: Ademari CabannensisChronicon, ed. by Pascale Bourgain, Corpus Christianorum, 129 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp.17172, chaps 5253, bk III.

for England, it was a European one, whose importance cannot be underestimated.Even if very rare on the continent, slavery and the slave trade were still present asa danger in the beginning of the eleventh century. By the end of the century, they15

had disappeared forever, leaving behind them states of dependency or non-freedom, which were completely different from the old slavery. When importanttheologians such as Wulfstan or lfric expressed the idea that agricultural workwas by itself fulfilment of providential design, their implication was clearly thatsuch work had to be done voluntarily.

Even in those areas of Europe where slavery had long ago disappeared, thehypothesis of a single group of laboratores, alongside the group of milites, hadstrong social and juridical implications, because it rendered ineffective the oldsocial stratification, in particular that between free and unfree men. In Carolingiantimes, freedom meant military service; in the new scheme of things, no peasant hadto serve in the army, or to bear weapons, working in the field being his only duty.In other words, the ordo laboratorum was also the ordo laicorum inermum, to whicha tripartite society granted full protection, as the Pax Dei was supposed to do inother parts of Europe. The actual history of European peasantry shows that theprocess of disarmament of the countrymen did not take place at the beginning ofthe eleventh century. My hypothesis is that the process of disarmament wasachieved, not by general enslavement of the peasants, but through the enforcementof the society of Three Orders as an implicit way of ordering the French andEnglish kingdoms. It was reached through negotiation between the orders andthrough granting to the ordo laboratorum symbolic gratifications and real eco-nomic guarantees (which I will not consider in this paper). The evidence for thisevolution is sparse, but it does exist.

Mathieu Arnoux208

Cf. for a recent example Robert Fossier, Le Travail au moyen ge (Paris: Hachette-16

Littratures, 2000), p. 19: En revanche, il [le travail] est moralement abject. Cest une punition,celle que le crateur infligea au premier couple aprs la faute.

Sancti Aureli Augustini de Genesi ad litteram duodecim libri, ed. by Joseph Zycha, Corpus17

scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 28 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1894), VIII, 89, pp. 24245.

Labour and Original Sin: Augustine vs Augustine

The evidence on the social model of the Three Orders is often misread because ofmisunderstanding of the Augustinian nature of the theory. Obviously, SaintAugustine is present in almost every theological dispute in the eleventh century,and the definition of the new social organization as an ordo is in some way anadmission of the Augustinian identity of the theory. In the commonly understoodAugustinian view of original sin, the ordo laboratorum expiates, by painful andweary work, the sin of our father Adam, as the Almighty had explained to him,after he had to leave Paradise. Such an interpretation is consonant with our16

modern representation of Augustine and with views of clerics and lords on thepeasant group, but it makes it difficult to understand how the new organizationwas taught to the peasant group, who represented the larger part of Christendom.There was nothing that specifically explained why the laboratores were to bear allthe burden of the sins of mankind. Pessimistic theological statements about theblind justice of Providence are not impossible to find, but they were difficult to useas the grounds for a theory of social cohesion. This ubiquitous clich has remaineduntil now a major obstacle to a correct understanding of the model of the ThreeOrders, but it is grounded in Augustines later and pessimistic thought, which isone of the many possible representations of the African Father. In fact, there arein the works of Augustine other texts, well known to medieval theologians, whichfit far better with the sources on the Three Orders. The most important is thechapter of the treatise De Genesi ad litteram which he devoted to comment onGenesis 2. 15: Et sumpsit Deus hominem quem fecit, et posuit eum in paradiso,ut operaretur et custodiret (The Lord God took the man and put him in theGarden of Eden to work it and take care of it).17

Today, this text is known almost exclusively by historians of medieval philosophy,who regard it as the major scholastic authority for the theory on mans cooperationin creation and salvation, but until the end of the Middle Ages, it was one ofAugustines best-known works. It survives in numerous manuscripts, and this verychapter was copied into almost every commentary on Genesis in the early MiddleAges; eventually, it took a place in the glossa ordinaria of the Bible, thus becoming

BETWEEN PARADISE AND REVOLT 209

Sancti Aureli Augustini de Genesi ad litteram, ed. by Zycha, XI, 37, pp. 37172.18

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, First fragment, vv. 52932; Wernher der Garte-19

naere, Helmbrecht, vv. 24258; cf. Clair Hayden Bell, Peasant Life in Old German Epics (New

the main authority for every comment on this part of the holy book, and a startingpoint for the preachers. Questioning the fact that Adam cultivated Paradise beforehe sinned and was expelled, Augustine wondered whether work might not havebeen intended as punishment for the sinner: An non est credibile quod eum antepeccatum damnaverit ad laborem? (Is it believable that he condemned man to hardlabour before the Fall?). The answer was positive, beyond any doubt. Work in thefields of fertile paradise was only pleasure, joy, and participation in the magnificentwork of the Creator: non enim erat laboris afflictio, sed exhilaratio voluntatis (Itwas no chore, but a joy willingly accepted). The idea that something of this exulta-tion survived the Fall and the expulsion from Paradise is important for our topic,since it could prefigure, in those who loved their agricultural work or work amongnature, Mans predestination to become again Creations gardener: nisi videremuscum tanta voluptate animi agricolari quosdam, ut eis magna poena sit inde in aliudavocari (So we may suggest some people till the fields with great satisfaction tothemselves, so that it might be regarded by them as a dreadful trial were they takenfrom it to do something else). This theory of the nature of work is very differentfrom the usual Augustine, philosopher of the expiation of sin through the pain ofwork. If used in preaching to the peasants, it could have very important implica-tions for the religious interpretation of the Three Orders. Indeed, if labourers werecompared to men from before the Fall and if the ordo laboratorum was presented asthe very witness to the experience of Paradise, rather than as those who had to expiateoriginal sin, then it was not difficult to argue that the ordo bellatorum and the ordooratorum had been instituted after the Fall (and Augustine in the same treatise pro-vided abundant material for this idea). For example, he explained that war and thedomination of the lord over his serf were unthinkable in Paradise, as too was thedomination of the husband over his wife. The two orders of priests and of knights18

were firstly consequences of sin, then reaction to and perhaps remedy for it.It would not be difficult to collect texts from French, German, English, or

Italian literature where the laboureur was described as a perfectly good and justman, an unquestionable exemplum of the true right life in the face of the Almighty.Piers Ploughman and another ploughman, the brother of the good priest, in theCanterbury Tales, or the wise father of the young Helmbrecht, and the Ackermanfrom Bohemia all demonstrate the same model of innate faith and charity, whichwas so deeply rooted in medieval peasant ideology. When Renart the fox decided19

Mathieu Arnoux210

York: Columbia University Press, 1931), pp. 4344; Johannes von Tepl, Der Ackermann, ed. andtrans. by Christian Kiening (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2000).

Le Roman de Renart le contrefait, ed. by Gaston Raynaud and Henri Lematre, 2 vols (Paris:20

Champion, 1914), II, 47, vv. 2698127029.

Medieval English Political Writings, ed. by James M. Dean, Middle English Texts (Kala-21

mazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), p. 140.

to convert and become a good Christian, in the last and satirical version of hisdeeds, in the French kingdom of the early fourteenth century, he decided tobecome a ploughman:

Un aultre mestier veult aquerre,Cest ester laboureur de terre;Cest celui quon doit mieulx prisier,Chier tenir et moins desprisier,[]A cel labour Adam tendiQuant de paradis descendi;Au labourer toudis se tient,Ce est dont sa vie maintint.Dieu a labourer lenvoyaSa vie ainsi lui ottroya.20

[Another job he wants to getThat is to be a ploughman.That is one have highly to appraiseTo love so much and not despise.[]To ploughing Adam appliedWhen he went out of Paradise:Everyday, he kept on ploughingAnd his life so earned.God to plough sent himSo granted him his life.]

Obviously, Renard failed in this attempt at redemption: work and the honest lifegained him nothing but pain and poverty. This is a common theme in the socialliterature of the fourteenth century, which describes either with satirical, pathetic,or rebellious words the injuries inflicted on the peaceful and defenceless group oflabourers. Its most famous slogan was that of the leader of the 1381 revolt, JohnBall: Whan Adam dalf, and Eve span, | Wo was thane a gentilman?. This was21

indeed, a very concise and efficient comment on Augustines treatise on Genesis.

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Lothar of Segni [Pope Innocent III], De miseria condicionis humane, ed. and trans. by22

Robert E. Lewis, Chaucer Library (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978), pp. 11112.

JW, III, 198203.23

Conflict and Rebellion

Even if the peasantry as a group was unarmed (inermes) and its ideology seeminglypeaceful, removing it from all conflict, the social form of the ordo laboratorummust not be seen as generally accepted in all European societies. The Romanchurch never accepted the theory of the Three Orders, which presented the clergyas one among other orders of society, granting them neither priority nor specialdignity. Perhaps Gregorian hostility to it was the main reason for the disappearanceof the theory of the orders during the period of the Investiture struggle. Even at theend of the twelfth century the debate was not extinguished. In his most famouswork (now preserved in more than six hundred manuscripts), the De miseria condi-cionis humane, Cardinal Lothar of Segni, who would later be Pope Innocent III,described incessant work among mortals as a mere vanity. It was an insane attemptto escape the vision of the wretched human condition, as was economic growth, ofwhich Lothar gave the most impressive and convincing description:

Mortals rush and run about through fences and paths, climb mountains, cross hills, ascendcliffs, fly over the Alps, step over pits, go into caves; they explore the inner parts of the earth,the depths of the sea, the uncertainties of the water, the shadows of the forest, the inwardway of solitude; they expose themselves to winds, to rains, to thunders and lightnings, tofloods and storms, to disasters and dangers. They hammer and melt metals, cut and polishstones, cut down and chop wood, spin and weave fabrics, cut and stitch clothes, buildhouses, plant gardens, cultivate fields, grow vines, fire ovens, erect mills, fish, hunt, andcatch birds. They meditate and cogitate, consult and arrange, complain and dispute, roband steal, cheat and trade, contend and fight, and do countless things of such sort in orderto accumulate riches, to multiply profits, to pursue wealth, to acquire honors, to raise theirranks, to extend their powers. And this also is labor and vexation of mind.22

Disagreement was not confined to the members of the ordo oratorum. The fearof revolt, particularly from the peasants, lies behind much evidence about thetheory of the Three Orders. One particularly striking example is the narrative byJohn of Worcester concerning the threefold nightmare of King Henry I of England,who was threatened by a crowd of peasants standing by him with agriculturalimplements, then by a large band of knights, wearing armour, bearing helmets ontheir heads, each of them holding lances, a sword, spears and arrows, and finally byarchbishops, bishops, abbots, deans and priors, holding their pastoral staffs.23

Mathieu Arnoux212

Stephen de Fougres, a royal chaplain (c. 1160 x66), provides an earlier and explicit allusion24to the use of the Three Orders model in the same court circle (I owe to David Crouch thisreference and its translation): We ought to cherish our tenants, | for the peasant carries the burden| of maintaining us all our lives | knights, clerks, and lords. | Peasants, yes! But they are Christianfolk, | not pagans or Saracens. | We should not pillage them | nor ought we to put them in chains.| Knighthood was once a high order, | but it is now no more than debauchery (Le Livre desManires, ed. by R. Anthony Lodge (Geneva: Droz, 1979), lines 57786, p. 81).

Dudo of St-Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. with introd. and notes by Eric25Christiansen (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), pp. 7778.

Indeed the most famous and complete description of the Three Orders, thatwhich appears in the Norman chronicle of Benot of Saint-Maure, is also linked toa narrative of revolt. King Henry II Plantagenet commissioned Benot, a poet fromhis native Anjou, after he had dismissed the Norman canon Wace, author of theunfinished Roman de Rou. It is particularly significant that the model of the ThreeOrders is introduced at the point when the narrative describes discussion around940 between Duke William Longsword and Abbot Martin of Jumiges. It was a24

modification which upset a long historical tradition that went back to the time ofDudo of Saint-Quentin (around 1000).

The discussion centred on the person of the Duke. William, Christian-born,son of the converted Rollo, had invited the Cluniac monks of Saint-Cyprien inPoitiers to restore the ancient community of Jumiges and asked Abbot Martinwhether he could resign his ducal dignity and enter the monastic community as amonk. His crucial question was about the opportunities available to the laity andthe clergy for obtaining salvation. The Three Orders of the Christian religion werethe key to the problem:

Why are there three orders of Christian in the church? Will there not be one mercy andone reward, for those who perform separate offices in the Christian religion?

Martins answer is a classic of the post-Carolingian theology of the orders:

Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. [] The totality ofthe Christian religion consists of three distinct orders. It is practised by the generous labourof laymen, canons and monks, and follows the trinity of persons and the one God insubstance, according to the articles of belief. Their service, successfully accomplished, leadsby regular steps to heaven, and while there are three orders in the conduct of the worshipof the true Faith, the way divides into a double route according the hope of certainbelievers. Of which one is called PRAKTIKES, and it goes more gently, and has earned thename of canonica, and under its jurisdiction, the secular order lives and abides. But theother, called THEORIKES is hedged in on all sides by strict limitations and does not goalong level ground, but is committed to retirement and rejoices in perpetual seclusion andalways strives towards the high places.25

BETWEEN PARADISE AND REVOLT 213

Laurence Mathey-Maille, critures du pass: histoires des ducs de Normandie, Essais sur le26

moyen ge, 35 (Paris: Champion, 2007), p. 33.

Benot de Saint-Maure, Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. by Carin Fahlin, 3 vols27

(Uppsala: Universitas Upsaliensis, 195167), I, 38392, vv. 13229548.

Mathieu Arnoux, Classe agricole, pouvoir seigneurial et autorit ducale: lvolution de la28

Normandie fodale daprs le tmoignage des chroniqueurs, Le Moyen ge, 98 (1992), 3560.

Thus there are three orders, one for laymen and the other two for clerics secular(canons) and regular (monks) but two distinct ways, one gentle for the secularpeople, and the other, sheer and precipitous, for the happy few. As the head of thelay order, the Duke had to remain in his own place and fulfil his responsibilities toorganize his succession and strengthen his legitimacy.

The dialogue remained unchanged in its meaning in the Latin version of thechronicle written by William of Jumiges in the middle of the eleventh century,then in the French version, the Roman de Rou, which Wace undertook in 1160 andleft unfinished. Around 1170 Wace was dismissed by the King for unknown rea-26

sons, and the Angevin poet, Benot of Saint-Maure, began the redaction of a newFrench versified chronicle, where the topic of the discussion between William andMartin changed completely. Duke Williams project of monastic life and his27

question about the rewards promised to each order were still present, and thesecond part of Martins answer, with the description of the two ways towardsheaven, canonical/monastic, were a mere copy of Waces text. This was not the casefor the presentation of the orders. The Three Orders of society, Chevaliers, clercset villains, were presented twice, first by William, then by Martin, in a clear viewof political philosophy, exactly as Wulfstan had described them in the Institutes ofPolity more than a century and a half before.

The other famous part of the Chronicle, where Waces narrative was amplified,was devoted to the great revolt of the Norman peasants at the end of the tenthcentury. The short and rather enigmatic description of the revolt written by28

William of Jumiges in the middle of the eleventh century was interpreted byWace and Benot as a great confrontation between the laboratores and the milites.Waces version of the peasants slogans was strangely empathetic:

Son of a whore, said some, why do we put up with all the harm which is being done to us?Let us free ourselves from their control. We are men as they are; we have the same limbsas they do, we are their equal physically and are able to endure as much as they can. Theonly thing we lack is courage. Let us unite on oath, defend our goods and ourselves andstick together. If they wish to wage war on us, against one knight, we have thirty or forty

Mathieu Arnoux214

Wace, vv. 86482, pp. 12427.29

Benot de Saint-Maure, Chronique des ducs de Normandie, II, 197203, vv 2885429052.30

Mathieu Arnoux, Travail, redistribution et construction des espaces conomiques (XI XVe e31

sicles), Revue de synthse, 2 (2006), 27398.

peasants, skilful and valiant. Thirty men in the flower of their youth will be cowardly andshameful if they cannot defend themselves against one man.29

They received no answer from the milites other than violence and slaughter. InBenots version, the rebellion was presented as a transgression of the order ofsociety, especially when the peasants attempt to eat fish and game, to keep forthemselves the fruit of their labour, and to resist their lords looting. The answer30

to the peasants, a horrible outburst of violence, probably conformed better to theideas of the king and courtiers than the presentation by Duke William and AbbotMartin of the dignity and duties of the laboreors. One point remains enigmatic,however: there is no known rebellion by Norman or English peasants till thefourteenth century. Instead of a celebration of the glorious victory of the milites,Benots text can be read as an exorcism of their fear of a peasant revolt.

Thirty years after the publication of Georges Dubys great book, the history ofthe Three Orders has retained a great part of its fascination, and much remainsto be studied. Although generally analysed from what might be described as agenealogical point of view, that is, looking back towards the origins of the scheme,the threefold representation of Christendom must also be examined from a func-tionalist viewpoint, as an attempt to negotiate an ordered and peaceful society. AsDuby and others have shown, it addressed not only the violence of the milites andthe laicizing temptations of the oratores, but also the rebellious character of thelaboratores. Literary and religious sources have preserved some elements of theintellectual construction of the three orders. They were also economically efficient,with redistributive institutions, which gave a material form to the necessarycooperation between all Christian people. But this is a part of the story where31

work remains to be done.