The Capetian Dynasty
Hugh Capet was crowned King of France at Noyon on 5 July 987. He was the son of Hugh the Great, Duke of Francia,
the grand-nephew of Eudes, Count of Paris and King of France (888-98), the grandson of Robert I, King of France (922-3),
and the nephew of Raoul, King of France (923-6).
His accession was due as much to the intrigues of Archbishop
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Adalbero of Rheims as to his own personal actions.
Contemporary opinion probably did not look upon the occasion as the
inauguration of a new dynasty.
We may even suspect that those who elected Hugh as king would not have done so,
had they been able to read the future. The great feudal magnates of France north of the Loire who chose the Duke of
Francia to be their ruler had no intention of committing themselves to his descendants. Indeed, everything suggested
that they would react to his death as they had done to that of the last Carolingian, Louis V, and make a free choice of a
successor.
Hugh Capet had rather different ideas, and these were shared by his descendants. A few months after his election -
on 25 December 987 - the king's son Robert was crowned and associ-ated with him on the throne. Robert, who reigned alone
after his father's death in 996, in his turn associated his eldest son Hugh with himself in 1017; when Hugh died his
younger brother Henry took his place, in 1026. On 28 May 1059 Henry, who had been sole king since 1031, had his
own son Philip crowned at the age of seven.
Philip succeeded in 1060. His son Louis was made co-ruler at some
unknown date between 1098 and 1100, when he was chosen rex designatus by an assembly of nobles and bishops,
though he does not seem actually to have been crowned during his father's lifetime. In the same manner, Louis VI had
his son Philip crowned on 14 April 1129. It was after Philip's death that his younger brother Louis was anointed by Pope
Innocent II, on King Louis' request, in Rheims Cathedral, on 25 October 1131.
Louis VII waited until 1 November 1179,
when he was on his death-bed, before he had his only son, the future Philip Augustus, crowned; the latter was already
fourteen years old. Philip himself was the first of the dynasty to feel secure enough to omit the formality of association,
and to leave his heir to succeed without previous coronation.
The kings thus acted deliberately to secure hereditary succession. There does not seem to have been any very
determined opposition. The only reported instance came at the association of King Robert with his father, but the
poverty of the sources may conceal other cases. The opposition to Robert's successor Henry came mainly from the
queen-mother Constance, and arose from family quarrels.
It should be noted, however, that despite this lack of
opposition the Capetians never made a specific claim to a hereditary right to the throne. Philip III, his son, and
his grand-sons made arrangements at various times for the succession, or for a possible regency, but they never laid
down by ordinance any rules for the inheritance of the crown.
The idea of election, which had brought Hugh Capet to the throne, never gave way completely before this cautious
introduction of the hereditary principle. It survived in the assemblies of prelates and barons which every ruler,
until 1179, convoked to give formal designation of the heir-apparent as associate-king. It survived also in the homage
which every new king received from all his vassals at his accession, and, in a symbolic form, in the acclamatio which
accompanied the ceremony of anointing, and which had once been more than a mere symbol.
The idea was still alive in the
fourteenth century, as was shown in 1316, 1322, and 1328, when fortune at last deserted the royal house. Louis X,
Philip V, and Charles IV all died in quick succession, leaving only daughters as heirs. On all three occasions
females with undoubted hereditary rights were passed over - twice in favour of brothers of the dead rulers, and once in
favour of a cousin-german, Philip of Valois. Further, these important decisions were in contradiction of the wishes
of the dying kings.
They were taken by assemblies of prelates, nobles and burgesses of Paris. These assemblies would
have been of doubtful legality if the Capetians had ever dared to lay down that the succession to the crown went by
primogeniture inside the house of Hugh Capet. The caution of their ancestors thus lost the crown to the granddaughters
of Philip the Fair, and the dynasty ended through the very processes which had in-augurated it.
Given similar circumstances, it might have ended long before. But fortune long favoured the Capetians. Every king
from 987 to 1314 left - and was careful to leave - a male heir to succeed him. There is considerable evidence to suggest
that the continuity of the dynasty was never far from their minds.
In 988 Robert the Pious, when only sixteen, married Rozalle Suzanna, daughter of King Berengar of Italy. The new
queen was no longer young, and her husband hardly exaggerated in calling her `an old Italian'.
Her first husband was
Arnoul II, by whom she had a son, Baldwin the Bearded, who became Count of Flanders on his father's death in 988.
Her marriage to King Robert was politically advantageous to the Capetians. Nevertheless, he repudi-ated her in 992,
to the great scandal of the virtuous, as for example the chronicler Richer.
The reason given was the great disparity in
age between husband and wife, but it may not have been irrelevant that after four years of marriage no heir had been born.
At some unknown date, the young king acted as godparent at the baptism of a son of Bertha, wife of Count Eudes of Blois
and daughter of Conrad the Peaceable, King of Burgundy. We do not know whether it is from this event that we
must date Robert's infatuation for her; it may have begun even earlier. In all events, Bertha, some years older
than the king and the mother of five children, was left a widow at very much the same time as Robert became sole
king through the death of his father, and they were married, most probably late in 996.
The marriage was not a
fortunate one for the king. It aroused the anger of the Church, for the two were related in the sixth degree, and in
addition had acted together as parent and godparent. In 997 Robert was threatened with excommunication if he failed to
separate from her.
Extract from “The Capetian Kings Of France”, Written by Robert Fawtier.
Macmillan & Co Ltd, London: 1960.
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