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the parish two or three times a year in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary, and all the Apostles and saints while the funeral knell tolled, candles were put out, and the cross and missals laid on the floor. Supposedly the guilty one was cut off from all social and occupational relationships, but the inconveniences for everyone resulting from this rule were such that his neighbors either resorted to throwing stones at his house or other measures to bring him to repentance, or ignored the ban. In Enguerrand III’s case the cessation of all religious services was a fearful sentence upon the community, which brought him to settlement and absolution in 1219 after he had performed penance. But it did nothing to quench his civil ambitions, for he went on to build the great castle that cast its shadow over Paris.
    His urgency in the construction was stimulated by expectation of a battle with his sovereign, for during the minority of Louis IX, the future St. Louis, Enguerrand III led a league of barons in opposition to the crown; even, as some say, aspired to the throne himself. He had inherited royal blood through his mother, Alix de Dreux, a descendant of Philip I. His
donjon
, designed to surpass the royal tower of the Louvre, was taken as a gesture of defiance and intent. The regency of the boy King’s mother withstood the threat, but the Sire de Coucy remained a force to reckon with. He piled on property and international standing through marriages. His first and third wives were women of neighboring noble families who brought him additional estates in Picardy, and his second wife was Mahaut de Saxe, daughter of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, granddaughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, niece of Richard the Lion-hearted, and sister of Otto of Saxony, subsequently Holy Roman Emperor. His daughter by one of these wives married Alexander II, King of Scotland.
    In the constructions at Coucy he employed (as estimated from masons’ marks) about 800 stonemasons, uncounted oxcarts to drag the stones from quarries to the hill, and some 800 other craftsmen such as carpenters, roofers, iron and lead workers, painters, and wood-carvers. Over the doorway of the
donjon
was carved in bas-relief the statue of an unarmored knight in combat with a lion, symbolizing chivalric courage. Walls of both castle and keep were decorated with painted borders and garlands of fantastic leaves, all on a scale to match the structure. Manteled chimneys, built into the walls, were a feature in every part of the castle. As distinct from a hole in the roof, these chimneys were a technological advance of the 11th century that by warming individual rooms, brought lords and ladies out of the common hall where all had once eaten together and gathered for warmth, and separated owners from their retainers. No other invention brought more progress in comfort and refinement, although at the cost of a widening social gulf.
    Tucked into an interior angle of the second story was a small room with its own chimney, perhaps a boudoir for the Dame de Coucy, where from the window she could see a view stretching over the valley with here and there the bell tower of a village church poking up behind a clump of trees, and where, like the lady of Shalott, she could watch the people come and go on the road winding up from below. Except for this tiny chamber, the living quarters of the seigneur and his family were in that part of the castle least accessible from outside.
    In 1206 the citizens of Amiens, Picardy’s proud and prosperouscapital, already a commune for a hundred years, acquired a piece of John the Baptist’s head. As a fitting shrine for the relic, they determined to build the largest church in France, “higher than all the saints, higher than all the kings.” By 1220, resources having been gathered, the noble vault of the cathedral was steadily rising. Within the same decade Enguerrand III built, alongside his
donjon
, a grandiose