[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal (28 page)

T
here are
dates attributed to events and people in histories that may or may not be accurate. This letter, duly copied into the sixteenth volume of a collection of letters to three French kings, is dated 1165, so we may assume that that is the year Constance left Toulouse and returned to Paris. But the date given for the birth of her third son and last child, Baudoin, is also 1165. Where was he born? What month? The texts are silent.

The historian Laurent Macé states that Baudoin came to Toulouse for the first time in 1205. Given Raimon V’s penchant for trading his children’s marriageability like baseball cards, it seems unlikely that Baudoin had spent any time there previously, or he would have had the same marital adventures as had his siblings before him. The question remains, where was Baudoin for the first forty years of his life? This translation of the chronicles of the Fools’ Guild suggests that he was in Paris, but I have found no references either to him or his mother after their arrival. Given the disappointment and the shame of the failure of the marriage, it is not surprising that Constance was banished from the pages of contemporaneous accounts. She was adamant in her refusal to return, standing firm even in the face of the pressure brought by Pope Alexander III in 1174.

One account of the Albigensian Crusades states that Baudoin returned to Toulouse in 1194 after the death of his father, but that Raimon VI refused to recognize him, forcing him to return to Paris. Again, the accuracy of this account cannot be verified. One Internet genealogy posits the marriage of Baudoin to a noblewoman of the house of Lautrec, a town not far from Toulouse. This Toulouse-Lautrec lineage supposedly continued unabated until the nineteenth-century production of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, the famous painter. However, a close examination of the Web site reveals the candid acknowledgment that there are no records supporting this claim prior to the fourteenth century.

Baudoin’s inability to communicate would have been likely. The linguistic differences between langue d’oc, spoken in the south of what is now France and langue d’oïl, spoken in the north, were significant. Langue d’oc was much more closely related to the Catalan of that time, to the point that native speakers of the two languages would have had a much easier time understanding each other than a Toulousan would a Parisian.

Peire Roger, the viguier at the time of this account, did step down from the post in 1205, according to known accounts. The reasons for his resignation had been unknown until this translation. One thing may be said for him: His predictions of the falling out of the two brothers and Baudoin’s eventual fate proved to be accurate. The histories of the Albigensian Crusades agree that Baudoin abandoned his brother to join the crusading forces led by Simon de Montfort in 1211. After years of battle, Baudoin was betrayed and taken captive while sleeping. Raimon, when presented with the brother who had betrayed him, ordered that he be executed. The order was carried out by, among others, the Count of Foix. Baudoin, cousin to the King of France, brother to the Count of Toulouse, was hanged in 1214.

T
he English translation
of the
Hymn of Saint Agnes
is by Friar J. T. Zuhlsdorf, and is used with his permission, for which I give him my profound thanks.

Having my jesters stay in the same place for two consecutive books allows me to thank once again all those scholars acknowledged in the previous book. In addition, I owe a great debt to Fredric L. Cheyette’s
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours
and Leah L. Otis’s
Prostitution in Medieval Society.
The ever-growing list should also include Malcolm Lambert, Arnaud Esquessier, Gabriel de Llobet, and Claudie Pailles. I take full responsibility for any errors made.