Matilda’s invasion truly initiated anarchy. England was already unstable and divided; her presence made things worse. A number of disaffected barons joined her cause, but they were few, and many of them wanted to unseat Stephen rather than support the legitimate candidate to the throne. England split in two. Matilda had a number of successes at first; as her army advanced up the country, Stephen’s forces were unable to hold their ground or recapture what she had taken. However, she did not have the strength to defeat Stephen and take control of England. While she had her first major victory in 1141, capturing the city and castle of Lincoln and kidnapping Stephen himself, the effort was doomed to failure.14 With her nemesis in captivity, she dubbed herself “Lady of the English” and began to make arrangements for her coronation in Westminster. Interestingly, Stephen’s brother Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, came over to her side, as did many of the king’s barons, who may have concluded that the end had come for the usurper.
Flush with victory, Empress Matilda did not reckon on one force that could be turned against her: Stephen’s wife, Queen Matilda,15 a woman scorned who roused what was left of Stephen’s forces and made a spirited attack on Empress Matilda’s army. Meanwhile, Empress Matilda was now arguing with the bishop of Winchester, and she did not impress her newfound allied barons with her arrogance. It was when she refused to grant the independent-minded Londoners financial concessions that things really turned sour. They chased her out of the city; she was reclining on a couch, waiting for dinner when the bells of London began to ring, announcing the attack of Londoners. She had just fled her accommodation when a mob broke into her apartment and began to loot it. She fled for the safety of Oxford.16 If that were not enough, her brother Robert tried to settle scores with the bishop of Winchester by besieging the bishop’s diocesan seat and was captured in the attempt. When a request for a prisoner exchange arrived, Empress Matilda knew her situation was unraveling. As she traded King Stephen for Robert, she likely saw that she was losing whatever grip she had on power.17 By November 1142, under siege in her castle in Oxford, she knew her campaign was in tatters.
Her husband, Geoffrey, was faring much better. His campaign in Normandy was meeting with success as he conquered one city after another, pressing his son Henry’s claim.18 That he left devastation in his wake and rendered Normandy a wasteland seems to have been lost on him. His accomplishments allowed him to come to his wife’s rescue, and so he promised to send three hundred knights to her aid; however, she was still waiting for them at Christmas in 1142. No doubt frustrated by cabin fever and the tardiness of her husband, Matilda made a risky decision — she would slip out of the castle in Oxford and make her way to Abingdon. In the dead of night, covered in a white cloak, she managed to creep out past the guards, and, camouflaged in the snow, she traipsed the eight miles to friends who were waiting for her.19 Spirited away to the West Country, Matilda lived to fight another day and prolong England’s agony.
Gathering fresh troops, she reengaged Stephen, but she was too weak to overcome him, and he was too weak to defeat her. England descended into a stalemate as two courts emerged with a claimant to the throne in each. Public order dissolved into chaos; the rule of law stood for nothing. England was divided three ways: those loyal to Stephen, those loyal to Matilda, and those loyal to no one but themselves. It was indeed anarchy. Taking advantage of the situation, King David I of Scotland20 invaded the north of England, annexing Westmorland, Cumberland, and Northumberland. Foreign soldiers invaded various areas of England, attacking and ravaging the people, as there was no real army to defend them. Flemish mercenaries arrived and seized castles with their estates and assets. Hordes of violent ne’er-do-wells terrorized and robbed the simple folk of the country. In an attempt to safeguard their homes, possessions, and livelihoods, landowners took whatever measures were necessary to defend themselves.
While England was falling around their ears, Stephen and Matilda tried to lend legitimacy to their administrations. Both set up official governments, issued decrees, and passed laws — to no effect. They minted their own coin, ran their own courts, and established their own systems of patronage. They even sought to establish diplomatic relations with other realms. It was all a charade, a delusion. Finally, at the beginning of 1148, Matilda decided to return to Normandy.21 She was not giving up on her claim, but she had had enough; it was time for someone else to take up the cause. She made her way to the priory of Notre-Dame-du-Pré, just outside Rouen, to spend her remaining years in peace and quiet. Stephen may have thought that he had won, that he had finally rooted her out through an exasperating stalemate. But it was not to be so. Matilda passed the baton to her eldest son, Henry of Anjou, who was now sixteen and often called FitzEmpress after his mother.22 His father had successfully pressed his claim for Normandy, but the young prince could now take up his own campaign for England. Stephen would not know what was coming until it hit him. Henry of Anjou was no Matilda; he aimed to be Henry II, his grandfather’s true heir in every respect, and he could be just as brutal and unforgiving.
5
Paris
As Thomas was romping around Sussex, his father, Gilbert, was planning how to prepare his only son for a life of work. His mother, Matilda, also harbored dreams of greatness for him, while growing ever more concerned for his well-being. Ambitious for Thomas, and perhaps all too aware of his inherent laziness and his new love for the privileged life, they plucked the young man from his life of pleasure, with all its attendant foibles and dangers, and packed him off to Paris to continue his education, most likely in the fall of 1139. Less fortunate contemporaries were already engaged in earning a living, perhaps married and struggling to raise families; Thomas had had a much easier life.
Paris was the ideal place for an ambitious father to send a bright and promising son.1 Even in medieval times, it was a glamorous city. A cosmopolitan hub, it attracted people from all over Europe for business and pleasure. Among the most fascinating institutions within the city were the emerging schools where scholars took up positions to teach the brightest minds in Europe. The University of Paris would become one of the most renowned academic institutions in the world and a major theological center for the Church for many centuries. It would educate vast numbers of young men — popes, theologians, saints, and royalty among them. Among its greatest teachers would be Saint Albert the Great and his student Saint Thomas Aquinas, who would write much of his Summa contra Gentiles during his first stint as a master in the university in the middle of the next century. When Thomas of London arrived in Paris, the formal foundation of the university was still sixty years away; what he found was a constellation of renowned schools, some centered on an individual master, situated in various places around the city and suburbs and educating about 2,500 students.
The schools and the eventual university were ecclesiastical foundations, so their students came under the direction of the Church. Those attending them were tonsured, not to indicate that they had entered the clerical life, though many of them would, but to signify that they were now under the protection of the Church. It is not certain whether the tonsure applied as early as Thomas’s sojourn, but his experience of education in Paris was certainly ecclesiastical, and many of his teachers would have been priests. The quality of the education was second to none, and the academic life of the city was exciting and innovative, though not without controversy. Teachers, or masters, were theologians in their own right, developing their ideas in lectures and composing treatises that were read throughout the Church. Many of these thinkers would become highly influential not just in their day but for centuries, and the writings of a number of these masters laid the foundations of many of our theological positions today.
Among those educating the future leaders of Europe were Peter Lombard, the compiler of the Sentences, which formed the basis of theological education for centuries; and Peter Abelard, a theologian whose personal life is now more famous than his theories. Lombard arrived in Paris in 1134 and was teaching at the cathedral school of