contempt of the legal mandates of kings, and that the purpose of royal
power was to correct the guilty where priestly words failed, so leaving
religious men to pray for the peace and stability of Christian empire.^8
This power was early exerted to protect the independent jurisdictions of
great immunists. In further acts of 1112 Louis ordered (decrevimus et
statuimus et regio edicto precipimus), for his health and that of his
successors ‘and for the stability and peace of our realm’, that the abbot
of Saint Denis should have full power to free the serfs of the abbey and
to give justice to everyone, including Jews, within the banlieu of Saint
Denis; the king himself would prosecute for injuries to his majesty in the
abbot’s court.^9 Again in a privilege of 1136 for the cathedral and canons
of Laon, issued out of his duty to maintain churches and clergy in ‘the
state and vigour of their original liberty’, the king granted that a com-
plaint against a canon should be heard by the dean and chapter; but
anyone coming to Laon for the great feasts and fairs would receive a
three-day protection from the king himself, royal indignation descend-
ing on those who infringed.^10
In property disputes involving great abbeys the king would give judg-
ment himself, or at least arrange and confirm a settlement by arbitra-
tion. Among many complaints decided before the king in palatio
publiceat Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire in 1112 was a complaint by the abbot
of Fleury of the injuries inflicted on his church by Fulk, vicomte of the
Gatinais, and his vassal Goscelin: the latter acknowledged the disputed
land to be Fleury’s to hold, but at an annual rent to Fulk for which it
was adjudged that he might distrain the abbey.^11 In another case
Barthelemy de Breteuil failed to appear for a hearing at Beauvais and
was sentenced by the king’s justice to lose the tenement he was disputing
with the abbot of Bec.^12 In 1132 King Louis notified all his faithful
people, present and to come, of an important judgment given before
him by a court of prelates and barons in an appeal of false judgment
brought by Alvise, bishop of Arras, against his own episcopal court. In
finding for Alvise the king’s court decided that a previous bishop should
not have made a feoffment of lands belonging to his church without the
assent of his chapter and of the king; and Louis pronounced the judg-
ment henceforth to be a rule binding all churches in his realm.^13 On
another occasion the great Abbot Suger entered the king’s presence
complaining (conquerens) of the many injuries and exactions he had
Justice on complaint to the king of France 111(^8) Ibid.i,no. 67.
(^9) Ibid.i, nos. 70, 74.
(^10) Ibid.ii,nos. 348, 378, 402.
(^11) Ibid.iii. 29 and i, no. 66, and cf. i, nos. 16, 95, 132, 215, ii, nos. 316, 409, and iii. 29;
cf. also Luchaire, Études sur les Actes de Louis VII, nos. 33, 36, 365, 766 etc.
(^12) Recueil des Actes de Louis VI, i. 215.
(^13) Ibid.ii, no. 316.