Jean de Venette

French friar and writer

• Born: 1307 or 1308
• Birthplace: Probably the village of Venette, near Compiègne
• Died: 1368 or 1369
• Place of death: Probably Paris, France

A friar who wrote a chronicle recording the political and social events of northern France between 1340 and 1368, Jean captured the sense of urgency and distress of the times in which he lived, while criticizing those whom he thought to be at least partially responsible for the time’s troubles.

Early Life

Some details of the life of Jean de Venette (zhahn duh vay-neht) can be gleaned from references in his chronicle and the records of the Paris convent in which he lived much of his adult life. He wrote that he was seven or eight years old when the famine of 1315 struck Europe, indicating that he was born in 1307 or 1308, most likely in the provincial village of Venette, northeast of Paris, on the banks of the Oise River. Of peasant stock, Jean was reared in the rolling and fertile countryside of northern France. In the years following the famine of 1315, it is probable that Jean, having shown interest and promise, began his formal education, learning the basics of reading and writing Latin at a local monastery. In all likelihood, he was the only individual from his village to acquire training beyond the memorization of prayers and psalms that the parish priest might have provided.

At some point, probably in his teens, Jean decided to devote his life to the Church and joined the order of Carmelite friars. The Carmelites, also known as the White Friars for their white cloaks, had originated in Palestine, where in the twelfth century groups of hermits lived on the slopes of Mount Carmel, having dedicated their lives to prayer. Members of the group soon migrated to Western Europe, and, in 1250, Pope Innocent IV formally recognized the order and approved their constitution. Each friar pledged to devote himself to prayer, preaching, and study and to live a humble beggar’s life in the urban centers of Europe. Rejecting the accumulation of property, the convents of Carmelites shared their meager resources and preached to townspeople about charity, humility, and the simple life of Christ. Jean’s early years as a Carmelite have escaped the records of history, but in the 1320’s or 1330’s he joined the Parisian convent of Carmelites on the Place Maubert and studied theology at the University of Paris. After studying theology for several years, he became a master of theology; by 1339, he had become the prior, or head, of the Paris Carmelite convent.

Life’s Work

As prior of a Carmelite convent in the capital city of France, Jean likely had many official duties to fulfill, such as running his own convent and inspecting the smaller convents in towns near Paris. He held this post until 1342, when the Carmelites selected him as the head of the order of the province of France, a post that he apparently held until his death. Despite his official duties, which undoubtedly consumed much time, Jean developed an interest in past events and historical accounts. He stressed the importance of historical study to the younger friars and likely enlisted their aid in collecting evidence and stories about the history of the Carmelite order. In 1360, Jean compiled this information in a brief history of the order from its legendary founding by Elijah until the mid-twelfth century, when two English barons brought to Europe some Carmelite hermits from Palestine.

Jean’s historical avocation further appears in Chronicon (The Chronicle of Jean de Venette, 1953), a book better known than the history of the order itself. The chronicle, which describes events from 1340 to 1368, contains many eyewitness accounts and tidbits of news that Jean received in Paris or on his travels to other convents throughout northern France. The chronicle’s narrative like most medieval chronicles consists of entries for each of the years recorded by the author. In these yearly summaries, Jean wrote of weather conditions; political events; military campaigns, victories, and defeats; the wartime condition of the cities, villages, and countryside of France; and the social conflicts present in the France of his day. While parts of the book appear to have been written on a day-to-day basis, most of the Latin manuscript was written after Jean had spent some time reflecting on the dramatic events of the mid-fourteenth century.

Throughout the text of the chronicle, Jean’s sensitivity and humaneness are apparent. Coming from peasant stock, he understood the hardships and sufferings of peasants during times of war, famine, and plague and was clearly proud of the endurance and fortitude of his social class. As one who dedicated himself to a life of humility, he was sharply critical of the fourteenth century French nobility, whom he perceived as lax, vain, and impotent. Jean particularly criticized the aristocracy for their inability to protect the French from the English during the repeated invasions of the Hundred Years’ War. Unlike many medieval chronicles or historical accounts, Jean’s history comes alive with feeling, giving his audience the sense that Jean was often in the middle of the events he describes or was at least deeply concerned about their outcome.

Jean’s history has a stately unity in that it begins and ends in years when Jean reported that a comet was observed in the skies above France. Despite this astronomical coherence, the years between 1340 and 1368 were years of social and political turmoil in the kingdom. Beginning in 1340, when the English king, Edward III, crossed the English Channel and invaded France to claim the throne that had belonged to his grandfather, Jean described a world that was increasingly unstable. He noted in 1340, for example, that men were beginning to wear unbecoming clothes and garments that were so short as to be indecent. Noblemen, except those of royal blood, grew their beards long and seemed to lose their courage in battle. Far from being prudish, Jean was seeking from the very beginning of his chronicle to provide an explanation for France’s having nearly succumbed to English conquest in the 1350’s and 1360’. Throughout the 1340’, Jean described the English military successes and depicted the incredible hardship that confronted the common people of France. Not only was the war difficult to endure when grain fields were trampled or set afire, but the king also seemed unable to protect his subjects from the depredations of his officials, who continuously levied taxes and altered the currency so that coins did not retain their true value. While the commoners thought that they were contributing their hard-earned pennies to the French war effort, Jean cynically and angrily noted that nobles and knights used the funds for their own pleasures, such as gambling.

The Black Death (the bubonic plague) struck the kingdom in 1347 and ushered in a new era, in which, according to Jean, children developed only twenty or twenty-two teeth, instead of the normal thirty-two. Jean thought that humans had become more covetous and brawling, suing one another at every turn. Despite the vast mortality of the plague, however, the war between England and France continued, adding to the fear and suffering of those devastating years. In 1354, a nighttime political assassination ushered in new calamities for the French: With the murder of a leading royal official by Charles of Navarre, the son-in-law of King John, civil war erupted in the kingdom. On the heels of this tragedy followed the English capture of King John himself on the battlefield at Poitiers in 1356. With the king a captive in England, the states general attempted to provide some order in the kingdom, but its efforts were in vain, as noblemen utterly refused to cooperate with the representatives of the towns. In the ensuing confusion, aristocrats sought to exploit their subjects and refused to defend France from further English attacks. It seemed to many that the noblemen, who were charged with the responsibility of protecting the realm from its enemies, had severely neglected their duty. Revenge came when the exploited peasants rose up and slaughtered hundreds of these dissolute aristocrats. Seeking justice, the peasants became overzealous in their vengeance; they were then overpowered by noblemen who brutally restored a semblance of order.

Throughout the account of the calamities that befell France in the 1350’, Jean displayed not only his human sensitivity but also a deep love for his homeland. In 1359, when he wrote about the destruction of the region surrounding Compiègne, Jean emotionally described how vines were left unpruned and rotting, how the fields were not plowed or sown, how no hens called to their chicks, and how robbers and thieves freely wandered from village to village carrying off whatever they could find. The reader senses Jean’s love of France and his recognition that France had the potential to be a great and rich kingdom, if only the noblemen responsible for its defense and protection would fulfill their duties. This attitude, prevalent among townspeople and peasants through the later 1350’, not only captured the frustration created by years of military misfortune but also condemned the upper classes for their corrupt lifestyle, their self-centeredness, and their exploitive greed.

Jean’s sentiments about his kingdom and society, however, were not limited to sorrow and condemnation. In his accounts of the mid-1360’, after the captive King John’s death in London and the accession of Charles V, Jean recorded the gradual process of reestablishing order and peace in France. After some lengthy negotiations, truces were arranged between the royal adversaries, the civil war between Charles of Navarre and the king ended, and noblemen began once again to fulfill their social role as the kingdom’s protectors. Throughout these final annual accounts, Jean reflected the tentative hopefulness of his times and glorified the recently established Valois Dynasty , which had the opportunity to create a powerful and peaceful France.

Significance

Although Jean de Venette was clearly a dedicated friar and capable administrator within the order of Carmelites, he is best known for his chronicle of the mid-fourteenth century. While the veracity of a chronicle cannot always be judged from the distance of several hundred years, it is clear that Jean’s writing has great historical value. Arising from the peasantry, Jean was an individual who understood and appreciated the value of learning and writing in an age when illiteracy was predominant. Using his skills, he recorded the passage of time, the events, the pleasures, and the tragedies of his era. Unlike many dry, emotionless records of the Middle Ages, however, Jean’s work comes alive, reflecting his personality, his ideas, his dreams for France, and his moral judgment of the French people.

This living work offers the historian a special opportunity to comprehend the mentality of the fourteenth century. Understanding the war-weariness of France and the frustration of the lower classes provides a perspective that corrects the overly romantic idealization of the Middle Ages as a time of knights in shining armor performing feats to please ladies. Instead, Jean reveals a population gravely concerned about the fate of the kingdom and hopeful for the return of peace and order. Within Jean’s writing, the reader can glimpse patriotic stirrings that were to give France a powerful cohesiveness in later centuries.

Bibliography

Fowler, Kenneth. The Age of Plantagenet and Valois: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1328-1498. New York: Putnam, 1967. A beautifully illustrated book that covers the origins of the Hundred Years’ War, its key battles, and the political and social changes the French and English kingdoms experienced.

Froissart, Jean. The Chronicle of England, France, Spain, Etc. Edited by Ernest Rhys. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1927. A chronicle of the fourteenth century and the Hundred Years’ War. Incorporates English evidence and gives the reader a slightly different perspective on the international conflict.

Jotischky, Andrew. The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and Their Pasts in the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Explores the history of the Carmelites, including the Carmelite habit, defending the tradition, Carmelite theology in the 1300’, and the development of a historical narrative.

Kooper, Erik, ed. The Medieval Chronicle: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999. A collection of essays on the significance of the medieval chronicle in the history of literature of the time. Includes bibliographical references.

Kooper, Erik, ed. The Medieval Chronicle II: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle. Atlanta: Rodopi, 2002. A second collection of essays from a subsequent conference on the medieval chronicle.

Lawrence, C. H. Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. London: Longman, 1984. This survey of monasticism provides basic information on the monastic movement throughout the Middle Ages, including a chapter on the friars and mendicants such as the Carmelites.

Perroy, Edouard. The Hundred Years’ War. Translated by D. C. Douglas. New York: Capricorn Books, 1965. A good survey of the late medieval conflict between the kings of England and France. This book describes not only the military conflict between the kingdoms but also the social upheavals in France caused by Charles of Navarre’s civil war and the plague.

Seward, Desmond. A Brief History of the Hundred Years’ War: The English in France, 1337-1453. London: Robinson, 2003. A valuable adjunct to an understanding of the complicated period of struggle between France and England, with attention to the Burgundian faction. A clear, historical overview of a most difficult subject. Includes illustrations and maps.

Tuchman, Barbara W. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. A very readable book that not only uses Jean’s chronicle as one of its sources but also carefully explains the political and social turmoil experienced by France during the 1340’s and 1350’.

Venette, Jean de. The Chronicle of Jean de Venette. Translated by Jean Birdsall. Edited by Richard A. Newhall. New York: Columbia University Press, 1953. An excellent English-language edition of the chronicle, this volume contains a good introduction to the life and times of Jean and copious explanatory notes on the complexities of the fourteenth century.