In the decades before the First Crusade, European society was being reshaped by debates over power, warfare, and faith. Bishop Gerard of Cambrai offered a striking vision of fighters, farmers, and the faithful that challenges modern ideas about the origins of knighthood.
By David Bachrach
During the 1020s, two bishops from the old kingdom of Lotharingia, Adalbero of Laon (977–1030) and Gerard of Cambrai (1012–1051), independently from each other described contemporary society as being organized in three orders: those who fought, those who labored, and those who prayed. Influenced by the anthropological and sociological turn in historical studies in the period after the Second World War, the famed French historian Georges Duby drew upon these early eleventh-century works to assert that medieval European society participated in a general worldwide societal structure in which two elite groups were raised above the common mass of humanity, namely warriors and priests.
Duby argued that in the region of the Mâconais, some 500 kilometers to the south of Lotharingia, he could demonstrate that the Latin term miles, which originally had denoted a professional fighting man, gradually became synonymous over the course of the tenth century with the term nobilis. On this basis, he concluded that society throughout the old Carolingian Empire had become reorganized into the three orders described by Bishops Adalbero and Gerard. The position of the nobility, in Duby’s view, was based upon its monopoly on the exercise of military force, and particularly in mounted combat.
The novelty of Duby’s argument rested on his identification of the changing semantic field of the term miles and, concomitantly, his redating the transition to a “feudal” society. Earlier scholars, including the great Marc Bloch, had argued that a hereditary nobility did not develop in Europe until the twelfth century. However, Duby did retain the older idea that the origins of the nobility rested on their military superiority over the rest of the population, which dated back to Heinrich Brunner’s classic study Der Reiterdienst und die Anfänge des Lehnswesens (Mounted Military Service and the Origins of Feudalism, 1887).
Although still frequently cited and accepted by some scholars, particularly in France, there has been considerable criticism of Duby’s conclusions regarding the changing meaning of the term miles and consequently his co-identification of a miles as a heavily armed fighting man and either a noble or the socially elite retainer of a noble. In a focused study on the county of Anjou from the late tenth through the early eleventh century, Bernard Bachrach showed that the term miles on its own had no specific social or economic connotation. Rather, milites came from different ranks of society including the social elite and the socially insignificant. More broadly, Jean Flori criticized scholars for translating the term miles in eleventh-century texts willy-nilly as knights and for assuming that men denoted as milites belonged either to a defined social class or that they fought in a particular manner, i.e. as heavily armed, mounted warriors.
Bishop Gerard of Cambrai and the Three Orders
A folio from Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai – Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 75 F 15 fol. 3
Yet another problem with Duby’s arguments, which has not received significant scholarly attention, is the fact that one of his two base texts for deriving a tri-partite structure of society, namely the Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, presents an entirely different societal structure. The passage in question, by the anonymous author of the Deeds, records that Bishop Gerard claimed:
the human race was divided from the beginning into three parts, that is those who prayed, those who farmed, and those who fought. Moreover, it is quite clear that each of these parts was supported by the other on the left and on the right. The efforts of those who pray are directed toward God while absent from the business of the world. It is because of those who fight that those who pray are secure in their retreat into the holy quiet. It is because of the farmers and their labor that there is nourishment from food for their bodies. Moreover, the farmers are raised up to God through the prayers of those who pray and are defended by the arms of those who fight. In the same manner, the fighters are fed from the produce of the fields and supported by the proceeds from taxes.
The context for this speech was the effort of a number of bishops within the West Frankish (French) kingdom to organize what would become known as the Peace of God. Bishop Gerard, as a loyal subject of the German king Conrad II (1024–1039), rejected this effort and asserted that the keeping of the peace was the duty of the ruler and not of bishops. Gerard’s description of the structure of society was not intended as a sociological statement about the monopolization of warfare by a noble, warrior elite. Rather, the bishop was making an ideological claim about royal power and the obligations of bishops to follow the directives of the king.
There are two notable points in Gerard’s statement itself which should have caused Duby to pause before drawing his conclusions about the rise of the warrior nobility and the establishment of a “feudal” system. The first of these is the rather prosaic fact that Gerard is not presented by his biographer as discussing milites at all but rather uses the term bellatores. Secondly, and more importantly, these bellatores were not nobles but rather men who were supported from the produce of the fields and from the proceeds of taxes (emphasis added). These men, in short, were professional fighters who were paid by the government.
This idea is key in the context of Gerard’s rejection of the Peace of God model, whereby bishops arrogated to themselves the responsibility for keeping the peace. For the most part, their fighting men, usually denoted in tenth- and eleventh-century narrative sources and charters as milites, were supported with lands owned by the church. By contrast, the king’s milites often were supported by revenues derived from various types of taxes and tolls, which were collected by royal officials. Thus, to an audience familiar with contemporary military organization, Gerard was stating quite clearly that it was up to the king and his men to keep the peace.
Whether Duby was correct that writers in the Mâconais in the early eleventh century used the terms miles and nobilis as synonyms, it has become clear that this practice was not universal throughout the West Frankish (French) kingdom in this period, or even in the twelfth century. Rather, during the eleventh century, milites in the polities that emerged in the west of the old Carolingian Empire were characterized by their profession as fighting men rather than by their elevated social or economic status.
David Bachrach is a Professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he researches medieval military history, particularly in England and Germany.
In the decades before the First Crusade, European society was being reshaped by debates over power, warfare, and faith. Bishop Gerard of Cambrai offered a striking vision of fighters, farmers, and the faithful that challenges modern ideas about the origins of knighthood.
By David Bachrach
During the 1020s, two bishops from the old kingdom of Lotharingia, Adalbero of Laon (977–1030) and Gerard of Cambrai (1012–1051), independently from each other described contemporary society as being organized in three orders: those who fought, those who labored, and those who prayed. Influenced by the anthropological and sociological turn in historical studies in the period after the Second World War, the famed French historian Georges Duby drew upon these early eleventh-century works to assert that medieval European society participated in a general worldwide societal structure in which two elite groups were raised above the common mass of humanity, namely warriors and priests.
Duby argued that in the region of the Mâconais, some 500 kilometers to the south of Lotharingia, he could demonstrate that the Latin term miles, which originally had denoted a professional fighting man, gradually became synonymous over the course of the tenth century with the term nobilis. On this basis, he concluded that society throughout the old Carolingian Empire had become reorganized into the three orders described by Bishops Adalbero and Gerard. The position of the nobility, in Duby’s view, was based upon its monopoly on the exercise of military force, and particularly in mounted combat.
The novelty of Duby’s argument rested on his identification of the changing semantic field of the term miles and, concomitantly, his redating the transition to a “feudal” society. Earlier scholars, including the great Marc Bloch, had argued that a hereditary nobility did not develop in Europe until the twelfth century. However, Duby did retain the older idea that the origins of the nobility rested on their military superiority over the rest of the population, which dated back to Heinrich Brunner’s classic study Der Reiterdienst und die Anfänge des Lehnswesens (Mounted Military Service and the Origins of Feudalism, 1887).
Although still frequently cited and accepted by some scholars, particularly in France, there has been considerable criticism of Duby’s conclusions regarding the changing meaning of the term miles and consequently his co-identification of a miles as a heavily armed fighting man and either a noble or the socially elite retainer of a noble. In a focused study on the county of Anjou from the late tenth through the early eleventh century, Bernard Bachrach showed that the term miles on its own had no specific social or economic connotation. Rather, milites came from different ranks of society including the social elite and the socially insignificant. More broadly, Jean Flori criticized scholars for translating the term miles in eleventh-century texts willy-nilly as knights and for assuming that men denoted as milites belonged either to a defined social class or that they fought in a particular manner, i.e. as heavily armed, mounted warriors.
Bishop Gerard of Cambrai and the Three Orders
Yet another problem with Duby’s arguments, which has not received significant scholarly attention, is the fact that one of his two base texts for deriving a tri-partite structure of society, namely the Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, presents an entirely different societal structure. The passage in question, by the anonymous author of the Deeds, records that Bishop Gerard claimed:
the human race was divided from the beginning into three parts, that is those who prayed, those who farmed, and those who fought. Moreover, it is quite clear that each of these parts was supported by the other on the left and on the right. The efforts of those who pray are directed toward God while absent from the business of the world. It is because of those who fight that those who pray are secure in their retreat into the holy quiet. It is because of the farmers and their labor that there is nourishment from food for their bodies. Moreover, the farmers are raised up to God through the prayers of those who pray and are defended by the arms of those who fight. In the same manner, the fighters are fed from the produce of the fields and supported by the proceeds from taxes.
The context for this speech was the effort of a number of bishops within the West Frankish (French) kingdom to organize what would become known as the Peace of God. Bishop Gerard, as a loyal subject of the German king Conrad II (1024–1039), rejected this effort and asserted that the keeping of the peace was the duty of the ruler and not of bishops. Gerard’s description of the structure of society was not intended as a sociological statement about the monopolization of warfare by a noble, warrior elite. Rather, the bishop was making an ideological claim about royal power and the obligations of bishops to follow the directives of the king.
There are two notable points in Gerard’s statement itself which should have caused Duby to pause before drawing his conclusions about the rise of the warrior nobility and the establishment of a “feudal” system. The first of these is the rather prosaic fact that Gerard is not presented by his biographer as discussing milites at all but rather uses the term bellatores. Secondly, and more importantly, these bellatores were not nobles but rather men who were supported from the produce of the fields and from the proceeds of taxes (emphasis added). These men, in short, were professional fighters who were paid by the government.
This idea is key in the context of Gerard’s rejection of the Peace of God model, whereby bishops arrogated to themselves the responsibility for keeping the peace. For the most part, their fighting men, usually denoted in tenth- and eleventh-century narrative sources and charters as milites, were supported with lands owned by the church. By contrast, the king’s milites often were supported by revenues derived from various types of taxes and tolls, which were collected by royal officials. Thus, to an audience familiar with contemporary military organization, Gerard was stating quite clearly that it was up to the king and his men to keep the peace.
Whether Duby was correct that writers in the Mâconais in the early eleventh century used the terms miles and nobilis as synonyms, it has become clear that this practice was not universal throughout the West Frankish (French) kingdom in this period, or even in the twelfth century. Rather, during the eleventh century, milites in the polities that emerged in the west of the old Carolingian Empire were characterized by their profession as fighting men rather than by their elevated social or economic status.
David Bachrach is a Professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he researches medieval military history, particularly in England and Germany.
Click here to read more from David Bachrach
Further Readings
Bernard S. Bachrach, “The Milites and the Millennium,” Haskins Society Journal 6 (1995), 85–95.
Jean Flori, “Knightly Society,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, c. 1024–c.1198, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge, 2004), 148–184.
The Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai: Translation and Commentary, David S. Bachrach, Bernard S. Bachrach, and Michael Leese (London, 2017).
Top Image: British Library Ms Sloane 2435, f.85
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts