Texts in Context:
O Rose Thou Art Sick
By Gabriel Blanchard
Like every other time, the High Middle Ages were doomed to pass; but as they did, a certain kind of civilizational innocence seems to have gone with them.
The Ninth Hour
Over the course of the thirteenth century, something—it is difficult to describe, but not so difficult to perceive—begins to feel as if it has been lost. There are artistic hints of the change. Around the beginning of the century, Marie de France is translating Arthurian lays of fae mistresses rescuing their lovers from treacherous queens, and knights cursed to be werewolves proving their identities through fidelity to their liege-lords. Yet by about 1240, we also have Li Hauz Livres du Graal (“The High Book of the Grail”), in which the relic is not only not found by the likes of Gawain and Lancelot, but even eludes the presumptive Grail knight, Perceval1; no one achieves it—a strangely pessimistic touch.
Dante‘s career as a poet and statesman falls in this time too, the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century (he dies in 1321); the Comedy is hard to call either pessimistic or optimistic, but it is certainly the mature poetic work of a man whose political hopes have been irrevocably crushed—something we know not from his poetry, but from history. In 1312, when Dante had already been exiled from Florence on trumped-up charges of corruption, his ideal candidate for the imperial throne was elected, Henry VII of the House of Luxembourg—and this, after an interregnum of over sixty years. Henry, it is said, hated the very names of Guelf and Ghibelline; he was a chivalric idealist, notable for mercy to defeated enemies, and fervently desiring to be the monarch of a united Empire, rather than having the constant partisan squabbling and bloodshed that had wracked northern Italy for a century. Dante was overjoyed when Henry crossed the Alps, intending to be crowned in Rome; his political pamphlet Monarchia (often cited as De Monarchia) seems to have been composed in response to the imperial visitation, attempting to stir patriotic zeal for the crown among his fellow Italians.
In the summer of 1313, with many of the Guelf cities in revolt against him despite his unargued legitimacy and the grace and temperance with which he ruled, he resolved to pacify the whole region. Not long into the season, he contracted malaria; a week later he was dead. And that was that.
Vespertide
In ecclesiastical affairs, the century opens with the reign of Pope Innocent III, a strong-willed man, imperfect but armed with considerable intelligence and good intent, capable of bringing kings and emperors to heel. It closes during the pontificate of Boniface VIII, widely accused of obtaining the tiara through simony; he was as obstinate as Innocent, but lacked his prudence, his goodness, and the popular confidence his predecessor had earned through both; on the contrary, Boniface was quite unpopular, and made the exceedingly questionable decision to pick an administrative fight with the King of France, now for centuries the traditional protector of the popes. After a series of what the monarch considered increasingly insulting papal bulls (one of them was actually titled Ausculta Fili, which, word for word, means “Listen, Son”), he sent soldiers to kidnap and imprison the septuagenarian pontiff in 1303. The outraged Boniface was quickly rescued, but died only about a month later. Dante is his most famous and bitterest foe, but not the only one; Dante’s contemporary and fellow Florentine, the historian Giovanni Villani, wrote of His Holiness that he was
very wise both in learning and in natural wit, and a man very cautious and experienced, and of great knowledge and memory; very haughty he was, and proud, and cruel towards his enemies … and much feared by all people; and he exalted and increased greatly the estate and the rights of Holy Church … A man of large schemes was he, and liberal to folk which pleased him, and which were worthy, very desirous of worldly pomp according to his estate, and very desirous of wealth, not scrupulous … to enrich the Church and his nephews. … Pope Boniface was more worldly than was fitting in his dignity, and had done many things displeasing to God …2
Much earlier, back in 1231, Gregory IX formally organizes the Inquisition, determined to have done with slipshod trials conducted by the uninformed that were as likely to condemn the innocent as anything else; just over twenty years later, Pope Innocent IV is legalizing torture even in ecclesiastical trials, determined to have done with heresy at any cost. In 1202, we see the beginnings of the Fourth Crusade whose partisans (whatever we think of it) certainly found it promising; in 1291, Acre, Outremer’s last city, falls—the Kingdom of Jerusalem is no more.
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Out of Orders
Not many years thereafter, between 1307 and 1314, a “loose end” from the old realm of Outremer was tied up as well: The Knights Templar had lost their raison d’être, but not their organizational structure, membership, pan-European reach, or resources; and King Philip IV of France was in serious debt to the order. Fortunately for him, he very suddenly discovered that the Templars were all a whole lot of heretics and witches and heretical witches. Oh, and, worshiped some idols that definitely, absolutely existed (Philip would show them to you, only he’s out today and didn’t say when he’d be back). With the delayed, reluctant, but ultimately acquired cooperation of Pope Clement V, the king’s close personal, uh, hostage—more on that shortly—King Philip was able to get the order disbanded, and laid his hands on some of its former wealth, for all the good it did him. In March, he was having the last Grandmaster of the Templars burned at the stake; at the end of November that same year, he was dead, after suffering a stroke while hunting.
Most terrible of all, perhaps, was a sign that came to pass within the first thirty years of the century. In 1209, St. Francis obtains recognition for his little community from Innocent III. Ten years later he is appearing before the Sultan of Egypt, hoping to convert him or be martyred in the attempt; to all appearances, he earned the Sultan’s sympathy and personal liking, but not his assent. Francis returned to Italy—sailing back, incidentally, from Acre, and making landfall in Venice. Assisi is right in the center of Italy, so Francis had to go south; about a hundred miles south of Venice stands the city of Bologna, where, as elsewhere in Italy, the Franciscan expression of the apostolic poverty movement had grown by leaps and bounds.
There had notably been established at Bologna a magnificent mission house of the Friars Minor; and a vast body of them and their sympathizers surrounded it with a chorus of acclamation. Their unanimity had a strange interruption. One man alone in that crowd was seen to turn and suddenly denounce the building as if it had been a Babylonian temple; demanding indignantly since when the Lady Poverty had been thus insulted with the luxury of palaces. It was Francis, a wild figure, returned from his Eastern Crusade; and it was the first and last time he spoke in wrath to his children.3
The Franciscan Order was only beginning its woes at this time. Throughout the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth, quarrels over the exact nature and extent of the Franciscan commitment to poverty raged throughout France, Italy, and the Empire, mounting to the creation of at least one antipope.
And talking of Babylonian temples …
The Avignon Papacy
As was commonplace for noble offices at the time, not all of the land possessions of the popes were in the contiguous territory called the Papal States. A little inland from the Mediterranean coast, the tiny County of Venaissin was a papal enclave, with a palatial residence for him at Avignon (pronounced ä-vēn-yôn). After the appalling treatment of Boniface by Philip IV, he, Philip IV, pointed out to his successor, Pope Clement V, that staying in Avignon long term would be just lovely, especially as they’d be able to stay in such close communication about—well, anything really! Surely friends have no secrets, and so on.
Clement and Philip had, in fact, been friends (or at least friendly) years before, when Clement was a mere French subject who happened to be a cleric. There is, on the other hand, no evidence that Clement V was cripplingly stupid. He must have known or at least suspected, as he and his court journeyed to Avignon in 1309, that there would be no going back to the neutrality and safety of Rome for a long time. He may not have realized how long a time: nearly seventy years; that is half of how the period got the nickname “the Babylonian Captivity of the papacy.” The other half is the political partisanship of these Avignonese popes, all Frenchmen, all surrounded by a college of cardinals that was mostly French. St. Catherine of Siena would eventually be instrumental in reversing the relocation; but before we come to her period, we have a new visit from an old friend that requires discussion.
1So far as is known, the first poet to introduce the quest of the Holy Grail into the Arthurian cycle was the twelfth-century French author Chrétien de Troyes, who finished four major Arthurian stories (Cligès, Erec and Enide, Lancelot, and Yvain) and began composing a fifth, Perceval ou le Conte du Graal (“Perceval and the Story of the Grail”): In Chrétien, and for a long time after him, Sir Perceval was the lone knight to achieve the Grail (a role to which he is restored in, of all things, the bizarre 1981 film Excalibur). Though Chrétien did not complete his Perceval, it became the basis of four “continuations” by later poets. In Malory, three knights achieve the Grail: Galahad, a relative latecomer to the mythos, who is assumed into heaven; Perceval, who dies in the achievement; and Bors, the only knight to come back to the Round Table.
2This passage comes from Rose E. Selfe’s partial translation of Villani’s Cronica (“Chronicle”), executed in 1906, the text of which can be found here.
3G. K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi, Chapter VIII: The Mirror of Christ.
Gabriel Blanchard (widely accused of obtaining the tiara through simony) is CLT’s editor at large. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
If you’re new to our weekly Texts in Context series, which provides some of the historical background to our Author Bank (particularly historical background too remote to really fit into our Great Works and Authors series proper), you can use the following links to find our three-part introduction on history, historiography, and pseudo-scholarship—or dive straight in with these posts on the Stone Ages, the beginnings of proto-history, and the culture of Bronze Age civilization, the forerunner of Classical Antiquity.
Published on 12th May, 2025. Page image of an illustration of the Battle of Montaperti, fought in 1260 between a Guelf coalition led by Florence against the Ghibelline city of Siena and her allies; the Guelfs were resoundingly defeated.