Normandy were nearer to Brittany than France. Besides, as I have said before, Philip growing in years was oppressed by lust; and, allured by the beauty of the countess of Anjou, was enslaved to illicit passion for her. In consequence of his being excommunicated by the pope, no divine service could be celebrated in the town where he resided; but on his departure the chiming of the bells resounded on all sides, at which he expressed his stupid folly by laughter, saying, "You hear, my fair, how they drive us away."[1] He was held in such contempt by all the bishops of his kingdom, that no one, except William,[2] archbishop of Rouen, would marry them: the rashness of which deed he atoned for by being many years interdicted, and was with difficulty, at last, restored to apostolical communion by archbishop Anselm. In the mean while, no space of time could give satiety to Philip's mad excess, except that, in his last days, being seized with sickness, he took the monastic habit at Flory.[3] She acted with better grace and better success; as she sought the veil of a nun at Fontevrault, while yet possessed of strength and health, and undiminished beauty. Soon after she bade adieu to the present life: God, perhaps, foreseeing that the frame of a delicate woman could not endure the austerities of a monastery.
Lewis, the son of Philip, was very changeable; firmly attached to neither party. At first, extremely indignant against Robert, he instigated Henry to seize Normandy; seduced by what had been plundered from the English, and the vast wealth of the king. Not indeed, that the one offered it, but the other invited him; exhorting him, of his own accord, not to suffer the nerves of that once most flourishing country, to be crippled by his forbearance. But an enmity afterwards arose between them, on account of Theobald, earl of Blois, son of Stephen who fell at Ramula;
- ↑ He probably intended a joke on the custom of ringing the bells to scare evil spirits.
- ↑ "Ordericus Vitalis attributes this act to Odo, bishop of Bayeux; but Pope Urban II., in his Epistle to Raynald, archbishop of Rheims, ascribes it to Ursio, bishop of Senlis."—Hardy.
- ↑ "Although king Philip, a few years before his death, entertained some notion of embracing a monastic life, as is seen in the epistle written to him by Hugh, abbat of Cluni, yet it appears that he never carried his design into effect."—Hardy.
