Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church: The Career of Philippe of Cahors by William Chester Jordan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church: The Career of Philippe of Cahors by William Chester Jordan Gregory Lippiatt Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church: The Career of Philippe of Cahors. By William Chester Jordan. [Medieval Academy Books.] (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2020. Pp. xi, 128. $28.95. ISBN 978-1-487-52461-6.) This short biography of Philip of Cahors, bishop of Évreux (c. 1220–81), examines the character and career of an important—if hitherto only regionally [End Page 187] recognised—figure in both French royal administration and the Norman Church. With his characteristically admirable archival scrutiny and attention to illustrative detail, William Chester Jordan has produced a succinct but illuminating account of a member of the reformist circle surrounding King Louis IX of France and an exemplary shepherd of his diocese. As with all good biography, this concentration on Philip of Cahors also brings more fully to light the wider field of northern France in the latter half of the thirteenth century. The book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 reconstructs Philip’s early life from what hints are available from the evidence and wider context. Offspring of a Cahorsin family that made good as creditors to the Albigensian Crusade (1208–29), Philip became a clerk and almost certainly a student of law, probably at Orléans after preparatory schooling in Cahors, before serving as an officialis for the archdeacon of Rheims—and future pope—Ottobuono Fieschi. Much of the information about Philip’s life before his appearance in Rheims is presented as conclusions rather than argument, as the latter appears in a chapter of Elizabeth A.R. Brown’s Festschrift. While understandable, the need to consult a separate volume may frustrate a reader hoping to consult immediately the reasoning behind the claims made for this less thoroughly documented period of Philip’s life. Philip’s effective service in the archdiaconal court recommended him to royal service in 1256/7, the subject of chapter 2. As a legal clerk of the Parlement, Philip investigated claims competing with royal jurisdiction on a host of issues and assisted in rendering judgements. His skill and reliability earned him the post of keeper of the royal seal—‘chancellor in all but name’ (p. 31)—in the early 1260s. He emerges from Jordan’s study as a skilful diplomat and disinterested judge, marked by strict fidelity to both the structure and the content of custom, as in his ruling against the peasants of Ézy, a Norman village, who in 1263 pleaded without (written) proofs for exemption from a triennial hearth tax, a case again dealt with by Jordan at greater length elsewhere, this time in the Haskins Society Journal. Chapter 3, the longest of the book, treats Philip’s career as bishop of Évreux from his election in 1269. As the head of an important Norman see, he leaves a greater personal impression on the sources. Philip’s recommendation to the episcopate by his friend, Louis IX, was swiftly followed by the king’s death before Tunis on his final crusade. His decade as bishop therefore took place under the reign of Louis’ son, Philip III, and was spent upholding the saintly king’s legacy (including in a literal sense, as one of the dead crusader’s executors). Amidst disputes and controversies with the powerful interests of his diocese—such as the abbey of Saint-Taurin d’Évreux and various knightly families—and despite his reduced role in the new court, Philip of Cahors maintained the reforms introduced in Louis’ reign, though Jordan may too confidently read the silence surrounding the bishop’s attitude toward the important Jewish population of Évreux as benevolent. The ‘formalism’ (p. 28) of Philip’s earlier years seems to have been tempered by an inclination toward mercy, though still exercised within the bounds of procedure. For instance, Jordan interprets Philip’s warning of the widowed [End Page 188] mother of one of his wards against an unauthorised betrothal of her daughter as sparing the family from the crippling fine to which he would have been entitled had the marriage gone ahead. Elsewhere, Philip relinquished his rights to the...