trying to appropriate the lands of the abbey of Saint-Médard at
Soissons, claiming to be entertained anywhere within them, to compel
the peasants to come to his justice and the knights to go with him to
war, and (worst of all) to exercise jurisdiction over the merchants and
wine-dealers of Flanders when they came to Saint-Médard to trade.^87
King Philip II remitted to monastic communities ‘vicariaand all other
unjust customs’ imposed by his provosts against earlier kings’ grants of
exemption from ‘all secular disturbance and power’. Philip Augustus
also arranged arbitration between the dean and chapter of Chartres
and the Countess of Blois in a dispute about jurisdiction, in particular
about ‘a man whose ear was cut off’ (as a convicted thief), which was
held to turn on which party had magnam justiciamin a certain town-
ship.^88
Jurisdiction over thieves was a usual source of contention. In
Louis IX’s reign, parlement, the king’s high court, is found deciding that
the monks of Longpont did not have justice over thieves caught on their
lands and must restore a latronissato the knight who did.^89 The capture
of a thief in the act apparently gave the count of Nevers jurisdiction
against the prior of Saint-Étienne of Nevers, even as to the fact of the
delinquent’s clerical status. On the other hand, the bishop of Autun had
to release an offender he maintained was his clerk, because he was not
arrested committing the wrong (in presenti delicto deprehensus), and
also because the prior of La Charité claimed him as his burgess, who
had renounced his clergy on marriage, held courts in criminal cases, and
participated in many judgments of blood.^90 Julian of Péronne repulsed
the suit of the dean and chapter of Noyon for jurisdiction over the
public ways (justicia viarum publicarum) in Montaucourt, for that place
was neither a city nor a castlery, and no tolls were collected on those
roads: he held the land there from the king, so that high and low justice
was his ‘by common law’ (de jure communi).^91
Bishops, abbots, and priors as lords of urban communities of clerks
and laymen, had to contend for their liberties not only against territorial
lords, in which case they sometimes had the townsmen’s help, but also
against the communes (which were backed on occasion by their royal
patron). The bishop of Beauvais was in trouble in parlementin 1278
because he had allowed a citizen to pose as his officer, seize a horse in
Competitors for jurisdiction and power 63(^87) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Ier, 79–83 (xxvii, a. 1066), and cf. 138. 27 (li), 141. 18 (lii),
- 7 (lxiv), 194. 20 (lxxvii).
(^88) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, i. 439 (no. 361, c. 8), iii. 9–10 (no. 967); in Les
Olim, i. 53 (xl), an abbess defeats a lay lord’s claim to simplex justiciaover his men living in
her village.
(^89) Les Olim, i. 26–7 (xv), 221–3 (vi–viii).
(^90) Ibid. i. 304–5 (iv), 878–9 (xxxiv).
(^91) Ibid. i. 378 (vii); cf.ii. 82 (xvi) for a right of viaria, viz. the seisin of a thief, successfully
asserted by a knight against an abbey.