Scale armour, depicted on a fresco on Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia, dating to 1180. Battling clergy were common enough on the Continent, but after the Conquest of 1066 they were not unknown even here. William the Conqueror’s most trusted lieutenant at Hastings was his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux; and Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, helped Edward I to defeat William Wallace’s army of Scots at Falkirk in 1298. Bishop Philip may reasonably have felt somewhat aggrieved to hear Pope Celestine adopt such a high moral tone.
WHEN the same King Richard had fortunately taken in a skirmish Philip, the Martial Bishop of Beauvais,* a deadly enemy of his, he cast him in Prison* with bolts upon his heels, which being complained of unto the Pope,* he [Pope Celestine] wrote earnestly unto him not to detain his dear Son, an Ecclesiastical person, and a Shepherd of the Lord’s, but to send him back unto his flock. Whereupon the King sent unto the Pope the Armour that he was taken in, and willed his Ambassador to use the words of Jacob’s Sons unto their Father, when they had sold away their Brother Joseph, “This we found; see whether it be the Coat of thy son, or no.”*
“Nay,” quoth the Pope, “it is not the Coat of my son, nor of my brother, but some imp of Mars,* and let him procure his delivery if he will, for I will be no mean* for him.”
* Philip of Dreux (1158-1217), Bishop of Beauvais from 1175 to 1217. His brother Rupert II, Count of Dreux, was also a Crusader.
* First in Rouen, then following an attempted escape, in Chinon.
* Pope Celestine III (r. 1191-1198).
* Genesis 37:32.
* Mars was the ancient Roman god of War, roughly equivalent to Greek god Ares.
* Here, ‘mean’ has the sense of ‘mediator, intermediary’. Philip does not seem to have learnt any lessons from this contretemps: he was a combatant once more on the French side in King Philip II’s victory over England (now governed by Richard’s brother King John) and her allies, the County of Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire, at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. The energetic bishop so doughtily wielded his mace that the English commander William Longsword, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, was stunned and captured, a turning point in the war and in the fortunes of English kings in France.
Précis
It rankled with Richard the Lionheart that Philip, Bishop of Dreux, had tried to prolong his captivity in Austria. So when in 1197 Philip was himself captured by the English, Richard threw him in prison. Philip appealed to Pope Celestine, but when Richard (cleverly invoking the story of Joseph) showed him Philip’s unchurchmanlike armour, the Pope hurriedly backed off. (58 / 60 words)
