Under his protection: securing land, loyalty and sovereignty in thirteenth-century Champagne and Navarre

Abstract

In 1241, Brother Étienne, abbot of Vaux-la-Douce east of Langres in the quasi-autonomous county of Champagne, wrote of the disturbing events taking place at his abbey: every day, ‘evil men’ were attacking and ravaging his church.¹ But Brother Étienne was not without hope. For to combat this destruction, he sought a formal protector for Vaux-la-Douce and all its holdings: Count Thibaut IV of Champagne (r. 1234–53), who was also king of Navarre. Thibaut IV inherited the small Iberian kingdom upon the death of his maternal uncle, Sancho VII (r. 1194–1234). Thibaut IV’s son, Thibaut V, ruled both principalities after him from 1253 until 1270. Thibaut V’s brother, Henri III, succeeded him upon his death on the Tunis crusade. At Henri’s untimely death in 1274, he left behind an eighteen-month-old daughter, Jeanne (r. 1274–1305). Philippe III of France (r. 1270–85) eventually became her regent in Navarre, and she would marry his son, the future Philippe IV (r. 1285–1314), in 1284. Champagne–Navarre thus became a composite lordship, a phenomenon that transcends the Middle Ages and was subsequently manifested in the composite monarchies of the early modern world. Granting protection to institutions like Vaux-la-Douce was a key way that the ‘count–kings’ navigated their new reality as uncontested rulers of two geographically, linguistically and culturally disconnected polities.

Brother Étienne’s charter is not the only document granting, claiming or seeking the express protection of the counts of Champagne from 1234 to 1274. As the following demonstrates, dozens of such documents survive that testify to the ability of the count–kings to rule both the county of Champagne and the kingdom of Navarre effectively while earning the trust and loyalty of their inhabitants by performing an essential, valued service. The count–king’s protection in both principalities created a bond between him and those he safeguarded that endured even when he was absent. It circumvented complex social hierarchies, transcended the connection between ruler and ruled and manifested physically through the comital–royal seal. Furthermore, the Champenois and Navarrese frequently sought the count–kings’ protection in moments of precarity when the need for such security was most acute. Such moments were tense for the count–kings, too, for they were times when proclaiming sovereignty was paramount. In this way, formal, written grants of protection given to monasteries, hospitals, groups of people and towns were a key element of the count–kings’ administrative practices in Champagne–Navarre.

Grants of protection from the count–kings were fundamentally expressions of their sovereignty. In theory, protection could only be granted if the property or person(s) in question were subject to the protector. Yet the reality was more nuanced, for rulers could and did use protection grants to extend their reach beyond their holdings.² In Noël Didier’s words, ‘a prince only meant to grant his protection with the recognition of his lordship’.³ Safeguard was likewise a potent means for rulers to assert their power in areas firmly within their domain. Because protected ‘property appeared for all intents and purposes royal’, protection embedded the count–king’s sovereignty and presence into the very landscape of Champagne–Navarre.⁴ Although his protection was not fundamentally different from that granted by other lords, comital–royal protections had to be embedded even more deeply because they had to hold in the protector’s absence, which was always the reality in one if not both of his principalities.⁵ By granting protection, the count–kings secured their land, built relationships with their subjects and communicated their power and sovereignty. At the same time, factors such as unrest and conflict, the departure or arrival of the count–king and geography motivated the people of Champagne–Navarre to seek protection when and where they did. Protection benefited both protector and protected.⁶

I

Grants of protection or safeguard evolved from Merovingian immunities, Carolingian advocates and the tacit protection of a lord over a vassal.⁷ The latter derived from the ceremony of homage. One of the promises a lord would make to a vassal was to protect them from physical and legal harm.⁸ Theoretically, all subjects were under their tacit protection, which was expected of the ruling elite and not formalized in writing and was distinct from express, written protection. Grants of protection from lords, barons and kings explicitly stated that the benefactor was under their protection and would be defended should that protection be threatened or trespassed. Protectors vowed to treat protected property ‘as if our own [tanquam nostra propria]’.⁹ As lords themselves could not physically ensure the safety of every entity that they protected, they appointed local guardians to act in their stead.¹⁰ In some cases, beneficiaries compensated their protectors in kind and coin.¹¹ They were also expected to pay the guardian’s wages.¹² The right of protection could be requested in person at the lord’s court or in writing. The lord would then issue a charter stating that the beneficiary was under their protection. These documents were often confirmed at the accession of new rulers, testifying to the value they had for those who received them and highlighting the often tense nature of such transitions. It was also possible to claim protection in a charter that the lord had to approve subsequently.¹³

Despite its ongoing use in the Middle Ages, protection and the charters that granted it prior to the late thirteenth century have received little scholarly attention, and much of what the scholarship claims regarding protection does not hold for Champagne–Navarre. The most recent comprehensive treatment of protection remains Fredric L. Cheyette’s article published in 1972.¹⁴ Glossing over the period considered here, he argues that protection in France only reached its apex beginning with the reign of Philippe III and that ‘the late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century princes who sought to convert their traditional role as protector of the Church into current political coin could only try to pursuade [sic] or cajole potential evil-doers into restraining their aggressive appetites’.¹⁵ As this study demonstrates, this assertion is not correct.¹⁶ Norman Schlesser considered French royal protections in Champagne briefly in his 1981 thesis, but largely only those for religious institutions.¹⁷ More recently, Hollis Shaul has examined protection as it applied to state-building in Angevin Provence, a composite lordship like Champagne–Navarre, but focuses primarily on the fourteenth century and religious institutions.¹⁸ Nathan Meades has likewise studied French royal safeguards in the city of Lyon, but Philippe III issued the first of such grants only in 1271.¹⁹

Before these scholars, we must look to the early twentieth century. In his 1927 thesis, Didier examined protection as it applied to churches and religious institutions in the long thirteenth century. Although he frequently drew from cartularies from Champagne, he was only interested in protections granted for the Church.²⁰ In a thesis from 1910, Ernest Perrot touched on safeguard in his study of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French royal jurisdiction, but he, too, contended that the fourteenth century was the ‘era of full blossoming’ for protections.²¹ Overall, historians have only traced protection for churches broadly defined—with the exception of Meades and Lyon—and most consider only French royal safeguards. Nevertheless, effective grants of protection extended far beyond the ecclesiastical realm and further back than the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The count–kings granted them for individuals, towns and villages and their inhabitants, municipal councils, fiefs and land, beginning in the second quarter in the thirteenth century. Protection, often granted at precarious moments in their reigns, was thus a useful tool for the count–kings to exercise and proclaim their sovereignty to an extensive array of those they ruled and any seeking to challenge them.

Protection was an institution manifest in multiple types of administrative documents. Most grants are recorded in charters whose primary purpose was to formalize the count–king’s promised protection, although their documentary form varies. They either initiated or confirmed the relationship between protector and protected and were generally quite brief. Monasteries, hospitals and town councils in particular gained protection in this manner. Protection was also commonly recognized in an agreement known as a pariage or associatio. Sought for various reasons, protection among them, monasteries frequently associated a lay lord with part of their holdings on the condition that the parties split the revenues of the associated property. The charter of pariage spelt out, often in meticulous detail, how such income would be divided in addition to other obligations of the monastery and lord. In many cases, the agreement included the lord’s protection over the shared entity.²² Towns and villages came under comital–royal protection through pariages with monastic institutions.²³

Protection relationships could also arise less directly. During the reign of Thibaut IV, several groups of Navarrese villagers and labourers, at their own request, received the status of realengo, a standing that did not exist for Champagne.²⁴ Being realengo meant becoming ‘part of the property of the royal patrimony’.²⁵ The designation entailed a promise not to be ‘sold, donated, given as security, exchanged or alienated to any man born of this world’, generally in return for an annual payment.²⁶ These quasi-franchises relieved villagers of labour obligations, but they were still subject to Thibaut’s other reserved rights. Nevertheless, such status alone would have certainly endeared villagers to the one who heard their pleas and bestowed it.²⁷ For malefactors, transgressing upon rural villagers was one thing; transgressing upon property deemed royal meant confronting the king himself.²⁸

II

The count–king’s protection charters would have included a large hanging seal, which could dwarf the parchment itself, affixed with a cord or threads.²⁹ The viewer of such a document would be struck by the size and heft of the comital–royal seal, a testament to the might of the count–kings. As Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has argued, seals should not be regarded as distinct from the parchment and text, as all are physically and conceptually connected.³⁰ Seals had a much more forceful function in the Middle Ages than simply authenticating written documents. Eleventh- and twelfth-century scholars commented on the intellectual significance of seals, particularly through their ruminations on the Eucharist and the Trinity and their reliance on the wax seal as a metaphor to explicate these complex concepts.³¹ Bedos-Rezak writes that ‘seals not only mediated but embodied the real presence of the individuals who affixed them. Seals allowed simultaneous presence and representation. Their mode of signification was through incarnation’.³² Along the same lines, seals were intimately entwined with power and manifestations of authority since ‘the seal … became an efficacious sign, a power … enabled to confer on the document its own authority, transforming the document into a monument’.³³ By granting sealed charters of protection that were subsequently preserved by the protected entity, the count–kings made themselves and their power present with and visible to their subjects throughout their lands even as they were frequently on the move. It was understood that where a comital–royal seal was present, the count–king, albeit not in body, was present as well, for ‘persons absent in time or place were substituted by seals, which operated as alternates for those who were absent, acting in their place’.³⁴ The unity and conceptual interchangeability between the seal and the entity it represented mirrored the concept of sovereignty. Not only did the count–king have the right to intervene and protect where he was sovereign, he also had the right to be present as lord as embodied in the seal. With the seal as surrogate for the count–king and the charter as text recalling Scripture, the composite document forged a ‘social relationship’ between protector and protected, count–king and subject.³⁵ The count–king promised to uphold and defend the protected; the subject in turn recognized and thus promoted the count–king’s sovereignty.

Charters of protection were also inherently political in their relationality. As Carl Schmitt first articulated in 1932, the ‘political’ is an entity that a group of people is ultimately willing to defend against an enemy by means of war.³⁶ He designated units so defined as ‘political communities’.³⁷ What Schmitt describes is what arose from protection charters: the count–king and the protected entity formed a political community with threats to protected entities functioning as potential enemies. Even though the protected could not adequately defend themselves on their own, they could, however, still possess that willingness without a reasonable means of acting on it, hence enlisting the count–kings to defend them by military means if necessary. In affirmation of this point, in a notable instance from 1258, Thibaut V took the field against Count Hugues of Burgundy over the protection of the abbey of Luxeuil.³⁸ Although not necessarily formally recognized or territorially delimited, the political communities that the count–kings created were no less real. The very idea of them gave assurance to the protected, pause to troublemakers and prestige to the protector. Moreover, like the political community of the state, the political community of protection in theory held against any and all ‘enemies’, however broadly defined. Indeed, even as the dates of their issue often correspond chronologically with times of uncertainty or their location hints at geographical concerns, very few of the Champenois–Navarrese charters explicitly give a reason for seeking protection, and even fewer refer to specific fears or malefactors.³⁹ The threats that protection confronted were less important than the fact that protection was meant to hold for all threats against the community it engendered, both during the crisis that necessitated the protection and once it had been resolved. The lone protection charter that contains a preamble echoes this expansiveness. In a grant from February 1256 to the hospital of Roncesvalles, Thibaut V stated:

Because the ordering of Divine Providence, with regard to these things, appointed secular powers to defend the good from the bad, the just from the unjust, the pious from the impious and the innocent from the guilty, they must therefore relinquish the sceptre of sinners over the fortune[s] of the just, not be duly restricted by lack of defence, because it is absent of justice, [and thus] extend their hands toward the unlawful.⁴⁰

Vague categories covered the full range of perpetrators and protected entities. With each protection charter they granted, the count–kings formed a new political micro-community that was small only in that it encompassed just a few members. In doing so, they further bound themselves to their people and reinforced their perceived power. At the same time, the creation of such a community through protection did not mean that the count–kings would not also militarily or judicially protect other groups and institutions in their domains. Express protection was an explicit statement of the protected entity’s place in the wider political community of Champagne–Navarre.

Protection also resulted in increased political legibility for the count–kings. In James C. Scott’s formulation, ‘legibility’ is how states categorized the people(s), resources and territory under their control.⁴¹ The concept resonates in the Middle Ages in that legibility in the form of protection expanded and maintained the count–kings’ reach and sovereignty without requiring the presence of their persons. It proclaimed to themselves, their peers and their subjects where and over what/whom the count–kings were sovereign.⁴² Charters written in Navarrese Romance and Old French reveal how this ‘documentary intelligence’, to use Scott’s phrase, could have been conveyed beyond the reading of the charter itself.⁴³ The standard Navarrese opening clause, which parallels the French, states, ‘let all who see and hear this present charter know’.⁴⁴ Although it is unclear whether or not charters were read aloud in the thirteenth century, by the early fourteenth, at least, town criers were proclaiming protection publicly.⁴⁵ By creating and fostering political micro-communities in which the count–king was recognized as lord over a vassal, protection constituted sovereignty and made this sovereignty legible. For all parties involved, whether in Champagne or Navarre, protection meant presence, political community and legibility.

III

The most obvious time for people to seek protection—and for the count–kings to exert their sovereignty—was when they faced conflict and unrest.⁴⁶ It is also through these moments that we see that protection in the thirteenth century, in contrast to earlier periods, was more than a mere ceremonial gesture.⁴⁷ In late January 1240, the priory of Varennes in northern Champagne was experiencing ‘daily oppressions … by means of the wickedness and injury of their neighbours’, specifically the priory’s then-guardians, the lords of Choiseul.⁴⁸ As a result, Bishop Robert of Langres stated that he wanted the villages of Coiffy[-le-Bas] and Vicq, both dependencies of the priory, ‘to be placed in the custody [custodiam] or in pariage [societatem]’ of Thibaut IV.⁴⁹ He believed that the count–king would be more successful at halting the persecution than his own ‘ecclesiastical censure’.⁵⁰ Thibaut did not obtain the right of protection until a pariage agreement in 1250, presumably because of the priory’s reluctance to share its revenues.⁵¹ Five years later, Jean of Choiseul, at that time plagued by financial woes, challenged the pariage.⁵² The resolution stipulated that Thibaut V, whose father had died in 1253, would retain the villages and could build fortifications there but must do homage for the land to the bishop of Langres.⁵³ Coiffy[-le-Bas] possibly had a castle when Thibaut acquired it, and the count–king began construction of his own fortress there as well.⁵⁴ Such fortifications would help secure the count–king’s presence in the region. In Adrien Bonvallet’s words, ‘nothing could have been more lethal to the primacy of the house of Choiseul than the intervention of the count of Champagne in the affairs of the priory, undoubtedly less due to the fact itself of the association than because of the pretext that it must have given Thibaut for extending his supremacy over the region’.⁵⁵

Similarly, sometime in 1241, Brother Étienne—whose predicament opened this study—detailed the situation at the abbey of Vaux-la-Douce. He requested Thibaut’s protectio and custodia because ‘we could not preserve the customs of our order for lack of custodia, considering that destruction threatens the church itself and because of the assault of bad men [who] were daily destroying the said house, [which] was empty of divine offices’.⁵⁶ Brother Étienne’s request was likely due to the harassment of Gui II of Vignory, who earned two excommunications for his behaviour in 1224 and 1234. The protection request came a year before Gui ceased menacing the monks and returned to the Church.⁵⁷ Given the severity of the violence and its implications for the abbey’s very survival, Brother Étienne and his fellow monks would have only sought a protector who could have physically defended them, either through the strength of his name or the force of his men.

Thibaut IV’s son Thibaut V also received requests outlining similar distresses. In July 1258, the second count–king entered into a pariage agreement with the abbey of Luxeuil in the neighbouring county of Burgundy.⁵⁸ As a result of internal Burgundian crisis between Count Hugues and his father, the abbot and brothers sought Thibaut’s protection in exchange for half the rents and other rights from their holdings.⁵⁹ They entreated him ‘in compensation … to defend [and] preserve [us] from all injury or violence … as if his own against all’.⁶⁰ The abbot even permitted Thibaut to build up to four castles on their land. The count–king accepted the alliance the same day.⁶¹ Luxeuil was thenceforth effectively an ‘annexe’ of Champagne.⁶² Thibaut and Hugues then warred briefly before Louis IX intervened. He did not, however, fully resolve the protection issue, which came to a head after Hugues’s death in 1266 when his widow seized the abbey.⁶³ The following March, several monks of Luxeuil wrote to the count–king enumerating the many ‘torments and despairs that we and our church have suffered’.⁶⁴ Out of ‘despair of losing all our goods’, they asked Thibaut to see to it that someone come to the church to ‘support’ them.⁶⁵ After a series of truces, protection remained in Thibaut’s hands, and his sovereignty was upheld beyond his lands.⁶⁶

The count–kings’ Navarrese subjects sought their protection in times of crisis as well, especially the people of Pamplona. The neighbourhoods of Navarre’s principal city had a tense, complicated and sometimes violent relationship with one another that both predated and outlasted the count–kings.⁶⁷ Just a few months into Thibaut V’s reign in 1253, when he had not yet reached his majority, he granted protection to the council of the Población de San Nicolás, a quarter of Pamplona favouring the count–king.⁶⁸ At that point, Alfonso X of Castile (r. 1252–84), ever covetous of Navarre, promised the San Cernin quarter of Pamplona safe passage in his lands in an attempt to ingratiate himself with its residents.⁶⁹ Likely in response to Alfonso’s overtures and the mounting animosity between San Nicolás and neighbouring San Cernin, Thibaut issued the grant on the same day, 27 November 1253, that he swore in Pamplona to preserve and abide by the fueros, or law codes, of Navarre.⁷⁰ In May 1272, the entire town, temporarily unified in 1266, and its ‘twenty sworn [veinte jurados]’—councillors overseen by an alcalde (analogous to a mayor or judge)—came under Henri III’s protection.⁷¹ On 13 April 1274, Henri took the council of the Población of Estella under his protection.⁷² The following day, he granted protection to the residents of San Salvador del Arenal in Estella.⁷³ Going against either of the Estella documents would ‘burden our heart’.⁷⁴ María Raquel García Arancón has suggested that the Población and San Salvador del Arenal bribed Henri to secure these rights in order to sow discord among the city’s neighbourhoods.⁷⁵

These documents describe time-sensitive problems that required genuine solutions. Desire for the count–king’s protection and/or assistance reflects a shared belief that he could and would maintain their security and come to their aid if necessary and that potential predators would be deterred by the threat of such intervention. The count–kings had both perceived and concrete power in that beneficiaries and their adversaries regarded them as potent and effective and that the count–kings could and did use military force to protect their charges. Regardless of whether Thibauts IV and V ever militarily defended anyone, those seeking protection, and indeed those seeking to harm, believed that they could. The assurance of the count–king’s protection backed by the force of his seal was at least considered enough to neutralize threats and ensure peace henceforth for all. Comital–royal subjects put their faith in the promise of protection, and this promise formed political communities that reinforced (and in some cases, geographically expanded) comital–royal sovereignty.

IV

The count–kings typically granted protection when they were about to depart—about to become absent—and when they had newly arrived—when they had just ended a period of absence—which were both times of unease.⁷⁶ Their itineraries are relatively well-mapped out.⁷⁷ Within two months of arriving back in Champagne after his elevation in Navarre, Thibaut issued a charter to the abbey of Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts in Châlons-en-Champagne in March 1235. The document describes the ‘danger [periculo] of your property and bodies’, prompting the count–king to take them ‘sub nostra protectione’ of his own volition.⁷⁸ The monks of Saint-Pierre-aux-Monts had that same month released Thibaut from his obligation to pay them ‘for the damages that we incurred and can incur on account of’ Thibaut’s founding the abbey of Saint-Jacques de Vitry in 1233.⁷⁹ In return, and because of the possibility of further injury, the count–king granted protection. Thibaut left Champagne sometime between June and September 1236. In a single charter from 27 November 1236, the towns of Mirafuentes and Ubago, ‘by the requests of good men’, became royal at the beginning of Thibaut’s second stay in Navarre as king.⁸⁰ The grant, which contains a clause threatening potential transgressors, also occurred during a period of unrest in Tudela brought on by Thibaut’s swift departure after his elevation and his lack of enthusiasm for remedying the abuses of his late uncle.⁸¹ Around the same time, the first count–king granted realengo status to the inhabitants of Artajo.⁸² At their request, and certainly with the recent turmoil in mind, the villagers became ‘always royal [siempre realenques]’.⁸³ They sought protection as soon as they could, just after the return of the king.

Thibaut remained in Navarre until late April 1238. A few weeks before his departure, three other groups of Navarrese villagers—from Asarta, Acedo and Villamayor—became realencas, again at their own request.⁸⁴ Thibaut would be absent in France and on crusade for over five years.⁸⁵ They no doubt recalled the violence that occurred during Thibaut’s previous absence and knew the difficulties of having a king on crusade. Back in France in July 1239, a month before he would embark for the East, Thibaut gained the guard of the town of Molesme.⁸⁶ It was in this same month that the priory of Varennes sought Thibaut’s protection for Coiffy[-le-Bas] and Vicq.⁸⁷ Finally, just two months into his penultimate stay in Navarre, the Población de San Nicolás in Pamplona was taken under Thibaut’s protection once more.⁸⁸ The grant was partial compensation for giving Thibaut the tower of María Delgada, the main tower on the district’s walls.⁸⁹

Grants of protection connected to comital–royal movement occurred under Thibaut V as well. In April 1254, days after leaving Navarre but not yet in Champagne, he granted protection to Roncesvalles using language virtually identical to a grant his father gave it in 1249 and one his brother would give in 1273.⁹⁰ The hospital was a favoured institution of the count–kings, receiving additional protections in 1244 and 1256.⁹¹ Thibaut V’s scribe likely had Thibaut IV’s charter with him to copy, and the hospital would have wanted a new redaction of the document bearing the new count–king’s seal. The charter states that offences against the hospital would ‘burden our heart’ and that perpetrators would have to ‘pay us 200 maravedís in gold alfonsinos and remedy the damage done to the hospital’.⁹² In late 1263, while en route to Navarre in Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines south-west of Paris, Thibaut asked the constable of Champagne to take the collegiate chapter of Saint-Quiriace de Provins ‘sub vestra custodia … as if our own’.⁹³ Saint-Quiriace was then in the middle of an eight-year conflict with the archbishop of Sens over its disregard for the interdict he placed on the town in 1258.⁹⁴ Thibaut likewise granted the Cordeliers of Provins protection in May 1265 at the beginning of a short stay in the county.⁹⁵

At least two groups received Thibaut’s protection in the days leading up to his departure on the Crusade that would ultimately claim his life. Ten days before leaving Champagne for the last time, on 5 April 1270, Thibaut granted protection to the Trinitarians of Troyes.⁹⁶ He no doubt had their dedication to ransoming captives in mind when he issued the charter. The document describes their property ‘as if our own’.⁹⁷ Two days later, Thibaut commanded that his baillis, prévôts and other officials ‘guard and defend’ the priory of Foissy and its holdings ‘as if our own property’.⁹⁸ Finally, the third count–king issued two protections that coincided with his movements. Sometime between April and June 1271, Henri had returned to his lands in Champagne from Navarre. On 21 July 1271, he promised that he would ‘guard and defend’ the property and goods of the chaplains of his hall in Provins ‘as if our own’.⁹⁹ At the beginning of the same stay, and at Thibaut V’s request, Henri placed the Cordeliers of Troyes, whom his late brother had protected in 1265, under his protection.¹⁰⁰

From rural farmers to wealthy abbeys, people sought and received the count–king’s promise of protection backed by a shared confidence in his might, name and seal. The chronology of comital–royal grants often mirrored the insecurities that their people felt at critical points in their reigns. Arrivals and departures created anxiety, as the length of a visit was not always clear nor was it certain when, or even if, the count–king would return. In the same vein, the count–king needed to affirm his sovereignty in these moments. He had to make his presence felt both when present and absent. Through charters with their influence, implications and explicit threats, the political communities that bound protector and protected achieved that goal.

V

The count–kings also issued protection grants in moments whose significance is not clear-cut. That said, the geography of many of the protected entities explains their desire for protection, especially for Navarre. The popular pilgrimage route to Compostela—the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of Saint James—passes through Navarre, as the region contains some of the more easily traversable paths through the Pyrenees. Roncesvalles, Pamplona and Estella were all on the Camino and thus always had people passing through them.¹⁰¹ In April 1266, Thibaut V received Santa Maria de Salas, located outside Estella’s walls, ‘sub nostra protectione et custodiam [sic]’ while staying in the town.¹⁰² The charter warns that ‘whoever should go against this our command will know our incurred indignation’.¹⁰³ In addition to its location along the Camino, Estella, like Pamplona, faced internal conflict necessitating the protection of various factions within the town. Several villages west and south-west of Estella, which would see many pilgrims, too, received grants in this period. Thibaut IV endowed the village of Etayo with realengo standing in the middle of his brief first visit to Navarre for his elevation in 1234.¹⁰⁴ The charter threatens potential malefactors with an eternity in Hell in the company of Judas Iscariot. In March 1245, during Thibaut IV’s third stay in Navarre, the labourers of Olandáin sought and received royal distinction.¹⁰⁵ In the same way, the people of neighbouring Oco became royal in April 1250.¹⁰⁶ The villages of Mirafuentes, Ubago, Asarta, Acedo and Villamayor were likewise near this route. These villages were also unnervingly close to Castile, a constant threat to Navarre’s autonomy.

Other villages and their inhabitants likely received protection because of their proximity to Navarre’s borders. On 1 September 1237, Thibaut IV made the labourers of Gallipienzo realencos.¹⁰⁷ Both Gallipienzo and Artajo border Aragon, Navarre’s much larger and more powerful eastern neighbour. In Champagne, in another pariage with the abbot of Molesme in July 1250, Thibaut IV swore to protect and defend everything in ten villages, all of which lay in the southern part of the county near the frontier with Burgundy, a frequent rival.¹⁰⁸ The rationale behind some protections, however, remains elusive. Later that decade, the Hôtel-Dieu de Troyes, which the count–kings patronized ardently, came under Thibaut V’s protection ‘as if our own property’.¹⁰⁹ During a visit to Clairvaux just before Easter 1259, Thibaut offered the esteemed Cistercian monastery where his mother was buried protection ‘on account of our sacred piety, for the salvation of ours and our ancestors’ souls’ and produced a second, similarly worded charter in the same hand the next day.¹¹⁰ Finally, once back in Navarre in April 1264, the Dominican convent that he founded in Estella received his assurance of protection, too.¹¹¹

VI

The count–kings of Champagne–Navarre granted protection to their towns and villages in addition to the lands and property of laypeople and religious institutions as a means of reinforcing and asserting their sovereignty over their ancestral county and newly inherited kingdom. Protection typically came in moments of insecurity, primarily due to local crisis or movements of the count–kings, or in regions under perennial strain. In this way it was complementary: the protected needed protection at the same times and in the same places that the count–kings needed to flex their sovereignty. Protection advanced the aims and desires of both parties. Additionally, the wide range of entities under the count–kings’ protection challenges past historiographical assumptions about who could receive protection in the middle two quarters of the thirteenth century. The fact that protection was actively granted and sought at key moments demonstrates that the safeguards granted by the count–kings were not ceremonial gestures but rather effective deterrents against real, tangible threats. Seals stood in for the absent count–kings and gave the charters their force and power. For the count–kings, in both principalities, creating political micro-communities of protection asserted their sovereignty and made their presence felt in their physical absence, an occasional problem for many medieval rulers but a structural one for the count–kings as rulers of a composite lordship. This challenge and the strategies princes used to overcome it—protection among them—profoundly transformed medieval government and its administrative structures and informed modern state-building and imperial programmes in Europe and the Atlantic world.

Footnotes

Author notes