An Unsuitable Job for a Bishop
Richard the Lionheart told Philip, the martial Bishop of Dreux, to decide whether he was a bishop or a knight.
1197
King Richard I 1189-1199
Richard the Lionheart told Philip, the martial Bishop of Dreux, to decide whether he was a bishop or a knight.
1197
King Richard I 1189-1199
During the Third Crusade, Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, spread the rumour that Richard the Lionheart had procured the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat; and after Richard was taken prisoner in Austria in 1192 he tried to make his detention as long and unpleasant as he could. In 1197, three years after his release, Richard stumbled across an opportunity for payback.
spelling modernised
WHEN the same King Richard had fortunately taken in a skirmish Philip, the Martial Bishop of Beauvais,* a deadly enemy of his, he cast him in Prison* with bolts upon his heels, which being complained of unto the Pope,* he [Pope Celestine] wrote earnestly unto him not to detain his dear Son, an Ecclesiastical person, and a Shepherd of the Lord’s, but to send him back unto his flock. Whereupon the King sent unto the Pope the Armour that he was taken in, and willed his Ambassador to use the words of Jacob’s Sons unto their Father, when they had sold away their Brother Joseph, “This we found; see whether it be the Coat of thy son, or no.”*
“Nay,” quoth the Pope, “it is not the Coat of my son, nor of my brother, but some imp of Mars,* and let him procure his delivery if he will, for I will be no mean* for him.”
spelling modernised
* Philip of Dreux (1158-1217), Bishop of Beauvais from 1175 to 1217. His brother Rupert II, Count of Dreux, was also a Crusader.
* First in Rouen, then following an attempted escape, in Chinon.
* Pope Celestine III (r. 1191-1198).
* Genesis 37:32.
* Mars was the ancient Roman god of War, roughly equivalent to Greek god Ares.
* Here, ‘mean’ has the sense of ‘mediator, intermediary’. Philip does not seem to have learnt any lessons from this contretemps: he was a combatant once more on the French side in King Philip II’s victory over England (now governed by Richard’s brother King John) and her allies, the County of Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire, at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. The energetic bishop so doughtily wielded his mace that the English commander William Longsword, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, was stunned and captured, a turning point in the war and in the fortunes of English kings in France.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Leopold held Richard captive. Bishop Philip tried to prevent his release. Richard remembered it.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IForget. IIGrudge. IIIRankle.