The same writer relates an incident of the same year, which throws a vivid light upon the social conditions of the days of chivalry. War was the profession of your true chevalier and brigandage his pastime. The excesses of a life spent in these occupations were to be repeated and at the same time expiated by the Crusader. The preliminary expenses of equipment for the Holy War were only to be met by selling some portion of his property to the Church. Many transactions of this sort are recorded in the telltale Chartularies of Notre-Dame and S. Père. The incident to which I refer will serve as an example of this:--
Nivelon, son of Faucher, Lord of Fréteval, confesses that, as often as he was carried away by chivalrous ardour (of a sort sufficiently inconvenient to his neighbours), it was his custom to fall upon the village of Emprainville with a troop of his followers and to ‘commandeer’ all the provisions to be found there belonging to the men of the Abbey of S. Père. But when, in after years, he determined to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he agreed, in order to obtain pardon for his trespasses and money for his journey, in consideration, that is, of thirteen silver pounds from the monks, to forego this vexatious habit of his.
And he adds that if any of his descendants dispute the validity of this concession, he hopes he may ‘be struck down by the thunderbolt that awaiteth on perjurers, and that he may be condemned with Dathan and Abiram to hell fire, and there to suffer everlasting torture.’ There is a fine ecclesiastical ring about the legal documents of those days, it will be noticed. Imprecations on breakers of contracts are indeed common enough in mediæval diplomatics. The monk Paul supplies us with an instance in which the guilty man is consigned ‘to the everlasting fires of hell along with Nero, who caused the Apostle S. Peter to perish on the cross, and S. Paul the Apostle to perish by the sword.’ In another case the hope is expressed that the transgressor may incur, amongst other inconveniences, the penalty of eternal damnation, the loss of his eyesight, and the infliction of the _mal royal_.
Nor was it a marauding knight only or an aggressive seigneur who was likely to interrupt the even tenor of a man’s way in those times. There were not infrequently bishops in his path also--bishops of the feudal, fighting, robbing sort, whose style of blessing was a blow with a sword.