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House of Lilies

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View the page of Justine Firnhaber-Baker

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Justine Firnhaber-Baker discusses the story of the most powerful kingdom in Christendom. From Hugh Capet to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Capetians were men and women of vision and ambition, who considered themselves chosen by God to fulfil a great destiny.

Image courtesy of interviewee. June 4, 2024

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This video is a summary of a discussion about a new book focused on the Capetian dynasty, which ruled France from 987 to 1328. The author notes that this is their first book aimed at a general audience, contrasting with their previous academic works. They emphasize the significance of the Capetian dynasty in European history, asserting it was one of the most important royal families, yet largely unknown among English speakers.

The author recounts their motivation for writing the book, which is to illuminate the fascinating history of the Capetians and to share the enjoyment of medieval history with others. The book is structured to follow the dynasty chronologically while exploring significant events, reigns, and personalities. It blends traditional historical analysis with engaging narratives to make the topic more accessible and enjoyable for readers who may not have prior knowledge about medieval France.

Key aspects discussed include the founding of the dynasty by Hugh Capet, the dynastic succession, territorial expansion, cultural identity, and the Pious branding of France as a crusading Catholic kingdom. This video also covers the later difficulties faced by the dynasty, including succession crises and the eventual rise of the Valois dynasty after the last Capetian king died without a male heir. The author expresses a hope that readers will connect with the human stories behind the historical figures and find the narrative compelling and enjoyable.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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It is, however, my first book for

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a general audience, right?

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So my first couple of books were academic monographs.

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The first one came out of the book of my thesis.

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The second one has been read more widely,

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but it was very much, directed at,

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at quite narrow specialist set of readers.

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So I was very much interested in the opportunity here

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to talk to a wider audience

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about this royal dynasty, the Ians

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who ruled France from 9 87 to 1328.

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They are one of, I, I would argue they're certainly one

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of the most important royal dynasties of European history.

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I would argue they're probably the most important

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of medieval European history.

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But among English language speakers,

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people really haven't heard of them.

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And I think that's a real shame for a, a couple of reasons.

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Um, one of those reasons is simply

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because of their importance.

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So working in a British university,

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a lot of my students already know a lot about

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the Plantagenets.

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Um, but in fact, English,

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medieval history doesn't make a lot of sense

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without the captions.

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And suddenly they realize, that's why John did that.

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Okay. Oh, the Magna Carta doesn't actually make sense

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unless we think about that battle in France first.

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But the other reason I really wanted to write this book

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and that I'm so excited to have it out

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and to have people reading it is

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because the captions are just an enormous amount of fun.

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And I really wanted to just share the joy of the Ians.

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I teach a year long fourth year special subject on the Ians,

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and often my students come in not knowing anything.

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And by the end of it that, wow,

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medieval French history is, is just so interesting.

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Justine, I wanna go to Paris and see all of these places.

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Um, you know, I will never forget these characters you've

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taught me about,

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how history moves over this period, the art.

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So really getting that out there just in a way,

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giving people a good time.

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And, and, for me, reading popular

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medieval history as a teenager, there was this biography

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of Eleanor Vaquita that really got me into medieval history.

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So I'm hoping that some readers have

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that same kind of experience.

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Well, I wrote the book very much as a story.

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So the book moves chronologically.

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It follows this dynasty,

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this Denis a dynasty is a family, right?

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So there is a way in which this is a family history,

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as well as a history of, of a kingdom.

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I already knew very much the broad outlines

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of the story I wanted to tell from my own research

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and from my own teaching.

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So in terms of actually getting down into it,

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I already had this, this outline

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and this idea of how I was going

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to divide up the book in terms of turning points,

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specific reigns people I wanted to pay attention to.

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And so what I did to kind of fill that out was to think,

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okay, I know these stories now in terms of research,

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let me go back to the primary sources

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through the scholarship.

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Um, what basis do these stories have,

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what are the details I can draw out?

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And also writing for a broad audience,

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what are the kinds of things they're gonna wanna know

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about, right?

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So if I'm writing for an academic audience,

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they really don't care what anybody

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wore to the coronation, right?

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But people reading House of Lilies care about

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what people wore to the coronation.

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So it involved, using a lot of sources

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like Royal account books to find that kind

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of information out that I wouldn't normally have used.

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And it also involved, doing a lot more

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with visual sources and art history than I might, than I did

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for previous academic work.

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It was fascinating, and I think it actually

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gave me a much better sense of the Middle ages

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of, of, of this period, of the Middle Ages,

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because there is an extent to which in a book like this,

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you need to do something

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that fantasy authors call world building.

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So thinking about how this world feels, what are

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the social rules of the world?

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Um, and, and once you kind of have that getting,

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showing people what that world looks like, it gave me

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as a medieval historian, as an academic historian,

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actually a much better feel for the world I write about.

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Okay, well, several questions there.

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Let me, let me start with who the family was. Okay.

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So we date the beginning of the Ian Dynasty

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to the election

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and coronation of a man we now call Hugh Kabe.

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Um, so his first name Hugh, his surname Kabe

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may refer to it's his nickname, may refer

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to a short cloak he wore may refer

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to his association with St.

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Martin of Tour, who famously gives part

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of his cloak to a beggar.

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Um, Hugh Inaugurates,

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an unbroken line of Father to Son succession that lasts

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for three centuries, which is an

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unprecedented feat in European history.

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They're probably the longest

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lived direct father to Son Dynasty,

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certainly in Europe, maybe in the world.

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One of the sort of myth that grows up around

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Hughes Coronation is that he's a usper, that

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he sort of steals the crown from

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its proper inheritor, who is

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a descendant of the Emperor Charlemagne, who was crowned

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the first Western emperor in, since the fall

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of the Roman Empire in 800.

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And his dynasty, the Carol Engine,

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per the Carol Lyon dynasty, had been ruling this part

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of Europe, since the seventh, since the eighth century.

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That isn't actually true.

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Um, the Carol Engine claimant was,

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not a direct descendant.

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Um, and, and his succession was proper,

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and he was actually not the first of his line

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to become a king of this place.

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We now call France at the time was called, was Frankia.

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He's actually the fourth of his line.

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Um, his line up until Hugh Kepe, we call, we refer to

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as the reversions after its ninth century founder

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Robert the Strong.

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So there's a sort of a, a false distinction there,

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between the reversions and the cap.

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And there's also this sort of false sense that Hugh is,

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Hugh Kepe is some kind of upstart,

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and that the Ians are kind of interlopers.

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Um, so there, there are, there are major

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Prince Leaf family.

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The name Kian doesn't actually get given to the them

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until the French Revolution.

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They don't call themselves the Capitan.

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Um, it comes from,

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when Louis the 16th was tried

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by the revolutionary government under, they had

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to give him a surname to make him feel

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like a regular citizen.

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So they called him Louis Cappe

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after the founder of that dynasty.

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So, but that initial direct line of captions

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that rules France for 300 years, as I argued

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as the subtitle of my book, advertises,

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really made Medieval France.

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And they did that in a couple of different ways.

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So territorially, if we look,

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and politically if we look at the territory

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that becomes medieval France, when Hugh Cappe comes to it

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in 9 87, it is very fragmented.

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It is quite large.

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Um, it covers an area from about Catalonia through

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what is today Flanders.

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Um, but it's very fragmented

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and Hugh doesn't have much control over it.

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And for the first century

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or so that, that kind of gets worse,

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but in a few decades between 1180

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and 1230, the Capitan,

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hugely expand their own territory and consolidate it.

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So they take Normandy from, the English king.

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They take other territories like from the English King,

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and they also conquer the south of the country,

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the long dock, in a war

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that's called the Alba Genian Crusade,

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because it was a crusade against a heresy that, was,

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was pretty rampant down there in Long Dog.

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So they really, by the end of the Kian Dynasty,

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the territorial outlines of France are pretty clear.

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They're, they're pretty close to

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what they are in the modern day,

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but culturally also the Ians

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have a very conscious policy of knitting those territories

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into a single French nation that is defined

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particularly by its Christian orthodoxy.

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So it is the most Christian kingdom.

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They are the most Christian kings.

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France is a crusading nation. France is a Catholic nation.

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So the Ians are fantastic at what we,

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what we would now call branding.

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My book is called House of Lilies after the Lilly

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or the Delise that the Ians adopted

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as their emblem from about the 1130s onward.

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So if you are not familiar with the, the Flo lease,

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you actually see it everywhere.

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It's a, it's a three pedaled lily.

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It first appears on one of their coins in the 1130s,

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and it just sort of expands outward.

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Now. You see it everywhere.

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They start using it on their robes.

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They use it on their banners,

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they use it on their bed hangings.

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It really becomes the emblem

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of their dynasty, but also a France.

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And it is very much a Christian symbol.

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So by the end of the 13th century, we are told

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that the lilies three petals

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signify the three cardinal virtues of France,

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which are faith, wisdom, and chivalry.

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But that's only one aspect of this

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very Christian, very specific Ian Christian identity.

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So the Ians, the French alone

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among European kings are anointed not just with Holy Prism,

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their coronation,

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but with a special holy oil that is said

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to have been brought down from heaven by a dove.

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Um, so, you know, they're, they're

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anointed by God.

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Um, and obviously the

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anointing at Coronation is meant to have,

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christocentric meaning,

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but to be anointed with oil brought down from heaven makes

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that even more so.

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The Ian, supposedly, once they have

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and once they have been anointed with this prism, are able

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to heal people suffering from,

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a throat disease called Sula.

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So they have anus saintly power.

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Um, they are, as I mentioned

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before, really closely associated with the crusade.

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So the first crusade is very heavily French,

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although no kings go on the first crusades.

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But the second crusade is really called

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by a French king Louis III husband, unhappy husband

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of Eleanor Aquita.

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And they really retain that association with the crusade.

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And all of this kind of reaches a high point

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under in the reign of Louis the ninth

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who reigns from 1226 to 1270.

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Louis actually goes on crusade twice.

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Um, both of these crusades are disastrous.

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He dies on the second one,

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but it, it makes him look almost like a martyr.

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And indeed, he is canonized as a saint in 1297.

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So if anybody out there lives in St.

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Louis, that's why it's named St. Louis after this king.

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Um, Louis also

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makes, France makes a play for France to be seen as,

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a new Israel, a new a home of a, of God's new chosen people.

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Um, and Paris as a new Jerusalem, he acquires

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the crown of Thorns relic from Constantinople.

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And he and his mother have this gorgeous chapel,

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the Saint Chappelle, which you can now visit in Paris, built

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as a sort of relic query for it to really show off

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that France is the home of Christian kingship.

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He also reforms his kingdom,

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and in fact, sort of sets out a almost constitution

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for medieval France that reforms it morally.

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And this is a point that I think is really important

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to get across, is that

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Louis makes these governmental reforms,

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but he thinks of them as moral reforms.

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Because in the Middle Ages, politics

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and religion are not separate spheres at all.

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They are absolutely intertwined.

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Um, and Louis would actually probably think of it

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as sacrilegious to do something political

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that wasn't also religious.

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All of this does have a real downside, which is

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that the Ians are very persecutory,

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toward heretics, but also toward Jews.

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And if you think about that whole rhetoric of

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the chosen people, the New Israel, well, okay, so

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what happens to the old Israel,

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the old chosen people, right?

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So this is, this is a rhetoric about replacement,

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and it is, very explicitly an anti-Semitic rhetoric.

15:35.865 --> 15:39.805
Yes. So it's, it's funny, the Ians had been sailing along

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for 300 years.

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Um, and then we get this King Philip IV who dies in 13, 14.

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He's got three sons. The succession is safe.

15:48.575 --> 15:52.045
Those three sons managed to die, each of them

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in a 14 year period.

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None of them leaving a son.

15:59.145 --> 16:00.965
Um, and so

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after the first one, dies in 1316, he leaves a daughter.

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Um, but his younger brother, Philip,

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really wants to be king.

16:10.145 --> 16:11.565
So he has it declared

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that women do not inherit the throne of France.

16:14.705 --> 16:17.005
And so when his son dies two weeks later

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and he never has another son, he has to be succeeded

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by his brother, who also never has a son.

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So in 1328, when that third son dies,

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the French barons have to decide what to do.

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Now, Philip IV had had a daughter, Isabel of England,

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who had a son Edward iii.

16:38.235 --> 16:41.855
Um, so that's where Edward III claim comes from.

16:41.995 --> 16:44.815
The French barons decide to give it to,

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basically a cousin of the last King Philip Valis.

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And we mark that as the beginning of the Valis dynasty.

16:51.955 --> 16:56.615
But in a way that break is kind of, artificial,

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as artificial as the break between the reversions

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and the captions.

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Philip, I six thought of himself simply as royal,

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and a as did all the kings who came after him.

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So after the Valis, we had the boon.

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But it is also common to talk about all of these people, all

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of these dynasties as Capitan.

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Um, so it's, in a way, it's not so much

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that the Ian line ended as that it splintered.

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I hope they fall in love with the Capuchin.

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There are many things to dislike about the Ians,

17:28.635 --> 17:31.495
but my goodness, these people, what I,

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what I loved about writing about,

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about them was just getting to know them as people, getting

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to watch their marital difficulties, getting to watch their,

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their struggles with their children and their siblings,

17:46.675 --> 17:48.455
and the adventures they go on.

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I got a wonderful comment from a reader a couple

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of weeks ago who said, you know,

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there are points in this book where I forgot

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that I was reading nonfiction.

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Um, reads almost like a novel.

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So I hope that people have that experience

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of getting really wrapped up in the story.

00:00 - It is, however, my first book for a general audience, right? So my first couple of books were academic monographs. The first one came out of the book of my thesis. The second one has been read more widely, but it was very much, directed at,

00:18 - at quite narrow specialist set of readers. So I was very much interested in the opportunity here to talk to a wider audience about this royal dynasty, the Ians who ruled France from 9 87 to 1328. They are one of, I, I would argue they're certainly one of the most important royal dynasties of European history. I would argue they're probably the most important of medieval European history. But among English language speakers,

01:01 - people really haven't heard of them. And I think that's a real shame for a, a couple of reasons. one of those reasons is simply because of their importance. So working in a British university, a lot of my students already know a lot about the Plantagenets. but in fact, English, medieval history doesn't make a lot of sense without the captions.

01:30 - And suddenly they realize, that's why John did that. Okay. the Magna Carta doesn't actually make sense unless we think about that battle in France first. But the other reason I really wanted to write this book and that I'm so excited to have it out and to have people reading it is because the captions are just an enormous amount of fun. And I really wanted to just share the joy of the Ians. I teach a year long fourth year special subject on the Ians, and often my students come in not knowing anything.

02:05 - And by the end of it that, wow, medieval French history is, is just so interesting. Justine, I wanna go to Paris and see all of these places. you know, I will never forget these characters you've taught me about, how history moves over this period, the art. So really getting that out there just in a way, giving people a good time. And, and, for me, reading popular medieval history as a teenager, there was this biography

02:38 - of Eleanor Vaquita that really got me into medieval history. So I'm hoping that some readers have that same kind of experience. Well, I wrote the book very much as a story. So the book moves chronologically. It follows this dynasty, this Denis a dynasty is a family, right? So there is a way in which this is a family history, as well as a history of, of a kingdom. I already knew very much the broad outlines

03:09 - of the story I wanted to tell from my own research and from my own teaching. So in terms of actually getting down into it, I already had this, this outline and this idea of how I was going to divide up the book in terms of turning points, specific reigns people I wanted to pay attention to. And so what I did to kind of fill that out was to think, okay, I know these stories now in terms of research, let me go back to the primary sources

03:46 - through the scholarship. what basis do these stories have, what are the details I can draw out? And also writing for a broad audience, what are the kinds of things they're gonna wanna know about, right? So if I'm writing for an academic audience, they really don't care what anybody wore to the coronation, right? But people reading House of Lilies care about

04:14 - what people wore to the coronation. So it involved, using a lot of sources like Royal account books to find that kind of information out that I wouldn't normally have used. And it also involved, doing a lot more with visual sources and art history than I might, than I did for previous academic work. It was fascinating, and I think it actually gave me a much better sense of the Middle ages of, of, of this period, of the Middle Ages,

04:51 - because there is an extent to which in a book like this, you need to do something that fantasy authors call world building. So thinking about how this world feels, what are the social rules of the world? and, and once you kind of have that getting, showing people what that world looks like, it gave me as a medieval historian, as an academic historian, actually a much better feel for the world I write about. Okay, well, several questions there.

05:22 - Let me, let me start with who the family was. Okay. So we date the beginning of the Ian Dynasty to the election and coronation of a man we now call Hugh Kabe. so his first name Hugh, his surname Kabe may refer to it's his nickname, may refer to a short cloak he wore may refer to his association with St. Martin of Tour, who famously gives part of his cloak to a beggar.

05:54 - Hugh Inaugurates, an unbroken line of Father to Son succession that lasts for three centuries, which is an unprecedented feat in European history. They're probably the longest lived direct father to Son Dynasty, certainly in Europe, maybe in the world. One of the sort of myth that grows up around Hughes Coronation is that he's a usper, that he sort of steals the crown from

06:38 - its proper inheritor, who is a descendant of the Emperor Charlemagne, who was crowned the first Western emperor in, since the fall of the Roman Empire in 800. And his dynasty, the Carol Engine, per the Carol Lyon dynasty, had been ruling this part of Europe, since the seventh, since the eighth century. That isn't actually true. the Carol Engine claimant was, not a direct descendant.

07:15 - and, and his succession was proper, and he was actually not the first of his line to become a king of this place. We now call France at the time was called, was Frankia. He's actually the fourth of his line. his line up until Hugh Kepe, we call, we refer to as the reversions after its ninth century founder Robert the Strong. So there's a sort of a, a false distinction there, between the reversions and the cap.

07:46 - And there's also this sort of false sense that Hugh is, Hugh Kepe is some kind of upstart, and that the Ians are kind of interlopers. so there, there are, there are major Prince Leaf family. The name Kian doesn't actually get given to the them until the French Revolution. They don't call themselves the Capitan. it comes from, when Louis the 16th was tried

08:18 - by the revolutionary government under, they had to give him a surname to make him feel like a regular citizen. So they called him Louis Cappe after the founder of that dynasty. So, but that initial direct line of captions that rules France for 300 years, as I argued as the subtitle of my book, advertises, really made Medieval France. And they did that in a couple of different ways.

08:49 - So territorially, if we look, and politically if we look at the territory that becomes medieval France, when Hugh Cappe comes to it in 9 87, it is very fragmented. It is quite large. it covers an area from about Catalonia through what is today Flanders. but it's very fragmented and Hugh doesn't have much control over it. And for the first century

09:15 - or so that, that kind of gets worse, but in a few decades between 1180 and 1230, the Capitan, hugely expand their own territory and consolidate it. So they take Normandy from, the English king. They take other territories like from the English King, and they also conquer the south of the country, the long dock, in a war that's called the Alba Genian Crusade, because it was a crusade against a heresy that, was,

09:50 - was pretty rampant down there in Long Dog. So they really, by the end of the Kian Dynasty, the territorial outlines of France are pretty clear. They're, they're pretty close to what they are in the modern day, but culturally also the Ians have a very conscious policy of knitting those territories into a single French nation that is defined particularly by its Christian orthodoxy. So it is the most Christian kingdom.

10:24 - They are the most Christian kings. France is a crusading nation. France is a Catholic nation. So the Ians are fantastic at what we, what we would now call branding. My book is called House of Lilies after the Lilly or the Delise that the Ians adopted as their emblem from about the 1130s onward. So if you are not familiar with the, the Flo lease, you actually see it everywhere. It's a, it's a three pedaled lily.

10:57 - It first appears on one of their coins in the 1130s, and it just sort of expands outward. Now. You see it everywhere. They start using it on their robes. They use it on their banners, they use it on their bed hangings. It really becomes the emblem of their dynasty, but also a France. And it is very much a Christian symbol. So by the end of the 13th century, we are told

11:27 - that the lilies three petals signify the three cardinal virtues of France, which are faith, wisdom, and chivalry. But that's only one aspect of this very Christian, very specific Ian Christian identity. So the Ians, the French alone among European kings are anointed not just with Holy Prism, their coronation, but with a special holy oil that is said to have been brought down from heaven by a dove.

12:09 - so, you know, they're, they're anointed by God. and obviously the anointing at Coronation is meant to have, christocentric meaning, but to be anointed with oil brought down from heaven makes that even more so. The Ian, supposedly, once they have and once they have been anointed with this prism, are able to heal people suffering from,

12:45 - a throat disease called Sula. So they have anus saintly power. they are, as I mentioned before, really closely associated with the crusade. So the first crusade is very heavily French, although no kings go on the first crusades. But the second crusade is really called by a French king Louis III husband, unhappy husband of Eleanor Aquita. And they really retain that association with the crusade.

13:14 - And all of this kind of reaches a high point under in the reign of Louis the ninth who reigns from 1226 to 1270. Louis actually goes on crusade twice. both of these crusades are disastrous. He dies on the second one, but it, it makes him look almost like a martyr. And indeed, he is canonized as a saint in 1297. So if anybody out there lives in St. Louis, that's why it's named St. Louis after this king.

13:46 - Louis also makes, France makes a play for France to be seen as, a new Israel, a new a home of a, of God's new chosen people. and Paris as a new Jerusalem, he acquires the crown of Thorns relic from Constantinople. And he and his mother have this gorgeous chapel, the Saint Chappelle, which you can now visit in Paris, built as a sort of relic query for it to really show off that France is the home of Christian kingship. He also reforms his kingdom,

14:31 - and in fact, sort of sets out a almost constitution for medieval France that reforms it morally. And this is a point that I think is really important to get across, is that Louis makes these governmental reforms, but he thinks of them as moral reforms. Because in the Middle Ages, politics and religion are not separate spheres at all. They are absolutely intertwined. and Louis would actually probably think of it

15:01 - as sacrilegious to do something political that wasn't also religious. All of this does have a real downside, which is that the Ians are very persecutory, toward heretics, but also toward Jews. And if you think about that whole rhetoric of the chosen people, the New Israel, well, okay, so what happens to the old Israel, the old chosen people, right? So this is, this is a rhetoric about replacement,

15:31 - and it is, very explicitly an anti-Semitic rhetoric. Yes. So it's, it's funny, the Ians had been sailing along for 300 years. and then we get this King Philip IV who dies in 13, 14. He's got three sons. The succession is safe. Those three sons managed to die, each of them in a 14 year period. None of them leaving a son. and so after the first one, dies in 1316, he leaves a daughter.

16:06 - but his younger brother, Philip, really wants to be king. So he has it declared that women do not inherit the throne of France. And so when his son dies two weeks later and he never has another son, he has to be succeeded by his brother, who also never has a son. So in 1328, when that third son dies, the French barons have to decide what to do. Now, Philip IV had had a daughter, Isabel of England,

16:34 - who had a son Edward iii. so that's where Edward III claim comes from. The French barons decide to give it to, basically a cousin of the last King Philip Valis. And we mark that as the beginning of the Valis dynasty. But in a way that break is kind of, artificial, as artificial as the break between the reversions and the captions. Philip, I six thought of himself simply as royal, and a as did all the kings who came after him.

17:09 - So after the Valis, we had the boon. But it is also common to talk about all of these people, all of these dynasties as Capitan. so it's, in a way, it's not so much that the Ian line ended as that it splintered. I hope they fall in love with the Capuchin. There are many things to dislike about the Ians, but my goodness, these people, what I, what I loved about writing about, about them was just getting to know them as people, getting

17:37 - to watch their marital difficulties, getting to watch their, their struggles with their children and their siblings, and the adventures they go on. I got a wonderful comment from a reader a couple of weeks ago who said, you know, there are points in this book where I forgot that I was reading nonfiction. reads almost like a novel. So I hope that people have that experience of getting really wrapped up in the story.

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