ENQUÊTEUR
. Beginning ca. 1247, the crown periodically commissioned a small group of special
investigators and judges, probably no more than twenty or so at a time, to uncover abuses
of power, malfeasance, and other irregularities committed by public officials in France.
To Louis IX belongs the credit of creating these enquêteurs, although earlier and
contemporary rulers in France and elsewhere occasionally commissioned vaguely similar
sorts of investigators. Louis’s enquêteurs, largely Dominican and Franciscan friars, were
originally commissioned to receive complaints on the eve of the king’s departure for
crusade. The courts they held as they traveled about the country were deliberately
informal in order to encourage ordinary people to appear before them. Other lords, like
the king’s brother Alphonse of Poitiers, followed Louis’s lead and employed enquêteurs
in their lands as well. After Louis’s return from crusade in 1254, he regularly issued new
commissions to panels of enquêteurs right up until his death. The same pattern is
discernible in the policies of Alphonse.
After the king’s death in 1270, enquêteurs were retained in the royal administration,
and much of their work, even if more formally conducted than in Louis’s time, continued
in the tradition he set. Although friars were rarely appointed after 1270, the enquêteurs
continued to investigate abuses of power and initiate salutary reforms. Known as
enquêteurs-réformateurs on account of this work, their investigative powers could
nevertheless be used in less beneficent ways. The later Middle Ages saw the enquêteurs
employed as agents to mulct local communities and provincial notables, to such an extent
that there was sometimes strong opposition to their being commissioned in the first place.
William Chester Jordan
Brown, Elizabeth A.R. “Royal Commissioners and Grants of Privilege in Philip the Fair’s France.”
Francia 13 (1985): 151–90.
Fournier, Pierre-François, and Pascal Guébin, eds. Enquêtes administratives d’Alfonse de Poitiers.
Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1959.
Henneman, John Bell. “Enquêteurs-Réformateurs and Fiscal Officers in Fourteenth-Century
France.” Traditio 24(1968): 309–49.
Jordan, William. Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1979.
ENSENHAMEN
. See DIDACTIC LITERATURE (OCCITAN)
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