anointed administrators of justice, and they had several advantages that the Carolingians
and Ottonians, or for that matter most ducal or comital lineages, lacked.
First, they managed to produce a male heir in every generation. Although the kings
from Hugh Capet through Louis VII in the 12th century all practiced anticipatory
succession, associating their oldest sons on the throne with them before their deaths, no
other family challenged the Capetian claim to royal rule after the end of the 10th century.
The production of an heir was, however, sometimes difficult, as in the case of Louis VII,
whose only son was born to his third wife, after he had divorced his first wife, Eleanor of
Aquitaine, and his second, Constance of Castile, had died. Second, the Capetians were
believed capable of healing scrofula, “the king’s evil,” by their touch; Robert II was first
credited with this ability at the beginning of the 11th century. Third, they had few internal
quarrels, unlike, for example, the Plantagenêt kings of England. Some of the kings (Hugh
Capet, Philip I, Louis VII) had only one legitimate son, thus eliminating sibling quarrels.
In other cases, younger sons were given territory of their own. Robert II had his second
surviving son, Robert, succeed to Burgundy while Henry I, his oldest surviving son, was
designated the royal heir; the Capetian dukes of Burgundy ruled until the middle of the
14th century. Henry in turn married his second son to the heiress of Vermandois. The
kings did not divide the central family patrimony, which was attached to the crown from
the time Capetian rule began and went whole to the oldest son, but they found it useful to
distribute newly acquired territories, like Burgundy, to cadets. The vast territorial
acquisitions of the kings in the 13th century made possible the birth of the most
developed form of this practice, the apanage system.
While building their political power, the Capetians enjoyed better relations with the
church than did other western kings. They did not, like the German emperors, become
embroiled in the investiture issue or in the delicate question of secular justice for
ecclesiastics, as did the English kings. Philip I worked out a compromise with the pope
on royal investiture of bishops that anticipated the Concordat of Worms between the pope
and the emperor (1122). Popes fleeing Italy or archbishops fleeing England routinely
sought refuge in France in the 12th century.
When French kings were excommunicated in the 11th and 12th centuries, it was for
their matrimonial difficulties, not for open breaks with the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Robert II married his cousin Bertha, the widowed countess of Blois, in 996 but was
ultimately forced to separate from her on grounds of consanguinity. His grandson Philip I
repudiated his first wife in 1092 for an alliance with Bertrade de Montfort, an alliance
that he was able to have recognized eventually but that caused him a good deal of
difficulty. Philip II’s most serious differences with the papacy stemmed from the
repudiation of his queen, Ingeborg of Denmark, in 1193.
Although Philip I, excommunicated at the time, could not go on the First Crusade,
Louis VII and Philip II were leaders of the Second and Third Crusades, respectively,
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