Rassemblement
Various explanations have been offered for the widespread popularity of Gothic. In particular it has been stressed that Gothic was a method of building which offered new solutions to the problems architects had long encountered in the construction of large and well-lit edifices. But even if Gothic originated as a series of new devices in architectural engineering, it was far more than a mere way of building. The revolution was aesthetic as well as technical, inaugurating an age of discovery in the resources of the plastic arts. Its birth and success are not to be explained away by the simple statement that the potentialities of the pointed arch had been realised.
The beauties of the Gothic style were not its only attraction. For it was the style of the royal domain and in consequence fashionable everywhere. Fashion is a matter of taste, not of reason, and there have been periods of the history of art when bad taste has triumphed. It is a fair assumption that the prestige of the Capetian monarchy helped to create a preference for the artistic styles favoured in the royal domain and the great royal city of Paris. When a clerk who had studied at the University of Paris acquired a benefice or an ecclesiastical dignity it was natural that he should want to rebuild his church in the "Parisian" manner. Very little is known of the artists of this period, but some of them seem to have been remarkably cultivated men. The architect Villard de Honnecourt certainly was. In those days apprentices in the arts may well have mixed freely with university students as they do today. The student who got preferment and rose in the world would eventually want to employ artists himself, and would give his old artist friends the benefit of his patronage. The aesthetic fashions of the bourgeoisie were learned from the great lords; those of the great lords from the royal domain.
It is conceivable that to copy royal fashion in the arts was a method of paying court to the powerful kings of the thirteenth century. The artists themselves are almost completely anonymous. But systematic research on their patrons, though very difficult to carry out, might clarify the motives which led them to adopt the new styles and to employ the artists of the royal domain. This may well have been a way of demonstrating loyalty, paying one's addresses to the royal officiers, or pleasing a bishop noted for his devotion to the crown. The question is worth investigating.
To sum up: at the very time when the Capetian kings were bringing together under their authority the various territorial lordships of the kingdom, the vernacular spoken in the royal domain was beginning to be accepted and spoken throughout France and to become the predominant language of literature. A new art-form, created by the eclectic artists of the royal domain, was spreading to every corner of the kingdom, and was ultimately to establish itself all over Europe. At Paris, the seat of government and the king's own city, the university had won an undisputed ascendancy over the minds of the French clergy. Rival universities- those already in existence and those which were to be founded in the fourteenth century- were doomed to obscurity or the pursuit of a few specialised studies.
The political achievement of the Capetians had included the bringing together of the great fiefs of the kingdom and their subjection to closer control; in the realm of thought and culture the dynasty bad accomplished, consciously or not, a similar rassemblement of the leading minds of France. And there is a last process of this kind to be considered. It might fittingly be called the rassemblement of the mass of the crown's subjects.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century Philip IV twice appealed, on religious issues, to the public opinion of his entire kingdom (not merely that of the populace of the royal domain) and gathered together its representatives. In 1303, at the most critical stage of his conflict with Boniface VIII, Philip decided to appeal to the Church Universal, sitting in a general council, against a pope whose legitimacy and orthodoxy he now denied. He resolved to appeal to a general council not only in his own name but also in the name of his whole realm. Consequently the people had to be consulted first. An assembly of delegates from the different estates of society was decided on, and a great campaign was launched to secure the support of the French people for the request for a general council which Philip had put forward in their name. The people of each town and village assembled in church or market-place, cloister or cemetery, heard the royal commissioners give an account of the situation, and with virtual unanimity declared themselves in favour of the royal policy, though it is true that some of those present saw in the projected general council a forum in which the pope would be able to justify his own cause.
Some historians have regarded Philip's campaign to recruit support for his demand for a council as no more than a dishonest farce. They deny that the Frenchmen who were consulted were allowed to voice their true opinions. There were, however, groups which openly refused to support the king. Whether these historians are right or wrong is of no consequence. For even if the consultation was a sham, the fact that even a pretence of it took place was of great importance. For the first time a question affecting the whole realm had been placed before all the king's subjects, without distinction of class or sex. (The official reports from various urban and rural communities mention the names of women who took part in their local assemblies). Frenchmen had their first opportunity ever to realise that they all belonged to one community and that there was indeed a kingdom of France.
Robert Fawtier- The Capetian Kings of France
