Feast of Saint Thomas Becket

The Feast of Saint Thomas Becket was the religious observance on which Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris fought their judicial duel at Saint-Martin’s dueling ground in late December 1386. Falling during Christmas week, the feast day shaped the atmosphere in Paris: shops were closed, the city was festive, and a vast crowd gathered to witness a contest whose outcome would determine not only the men’s fates but also Marguerite de Carrouges’s life.

The Feast Day and the Gathering

The duel took place on the feast day of the martyred Saint Thomas Becket, during the Christmas season. The holy day did not quiet the city. Spectators began arriving soon after first light; by sunrise, between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m., people streamed along the rue Saint-Martin and through the priory gate. By mid-morning, many thousands had packed the grounds. News had drawn people from distant parts of France, including Normandy, where the participants and their families were known.

The crowd encompassed sharply different ranks and circumstances. Nobles, members of the royal court, foreign visitors, and church prelates had assigned places in timber viewing stands, while most Parisians and people from the suburbs stood or sat around the field. Shopkeepers, artisans, laborers, apprentices, university students, fishwives, beggars, and cutpurses competed for a view. In the bitter, snowy winter, those without seats endured the cold; some climbed onto monastery walls or into trees as space around the field dwindled.

A Day Ordered by Ceremony

The feast day’s public gathering was carefully arranged and controlled. Officials watched from wooden towers at the field’s corners, where they could observe the combat and supply the fighters with food and drink. Guards surrounded the outer wall and its gates, separating the crowd from the duel ground. The viewing stands likewise made social rank visible: the central stand was reserved for the king, his uncles, and other leading nobles; other stands accommodated courtiers and foreign nobles, while separate places were provided for ladies and, lower in the hierarchy, burghers and merchants. Most commoners had to watch from the ground through gaps in the fencing.

The king was both the most exalted spectator and, by law, the presiding judge. The Parlement of Paris had authorized the duel in his name, and Charles VI had postponed it for a month so he could attend after returning from Flanders. Nothing could begin until he arrived and took his seat on a cushioned, coal-warmed throne. Carrouges entered first in a formal procession, carrying a blue pole topped with a silver crucifix and repeatedly making the sign of the cross. Marguerite followed in a carriage draped in black, accompanied by her father and cousin. Her recent childbirth may have prompted the carriage; her black clothing also marked the mortal danger she faced if her husband lost.

Heralds announced strict rules as the combatants’ weapons were examined: spectators were forbidden to carry weapons, remain mounted, obstruct others’ views, or make noise during the fight. Even an involuntary cry could bring severe punishment. The crowd’s silence made the duel unlike a noisy public entertainment. The day’s ritual instead framed the combat as a solemn judgment, with equality and order asserted through procedures such as checking that the weapons matched and raising Le Gris, who was a squire, to the rank of knight before the fight.

Verdict and Thanksgiving

The silence ended with Carrouges’s victory. Turning toward the royal stand, he bowed to the king, acknowledged the crowd, and called out to ask whether he had done his duty. Ten thousand voices answered together, their affirmation carrying beyond the monastery walls into the surrounding streets. The collective response transformed the feast day’s carefully restrained audience into a public witness to the duel’s outcome.

Later that afternoon, on the same feast day, Carrouges and Marguerite went to Notre-Dame Cathedral to give thanks for surviving the ordeal. One account says that Carrouges offered the slain Le Gris’s still-bloody armor at the altar, a customary spoil of victory presented as an acknowledgment of his debt to God. The contrast between the field and the cathedral gave the day its concluding movement: a legally authorized combat before the king and thousands of spectators was followed by the victors’ private act of prayer, while Le Gris’s relatives and friends were left to bear the shame attached to his death.