Attached to the cloister was the Hospital or Hôtel-Dieu of Notre-Dame. It was founded about the tenth century; restored and spoilt in the eighteenth century. The hospital has recently been removed to a more suitable spot, and the old Hôtel-Dieu, with its thirteenth-century chapel, now serves for the École Mutuelle of the town. It stands in the south-west corner of the space which has been cleared in front of the Cathedral, between the Rue Fulbert and the Rue de la Cathédrale.
[Illustration: Street Entrance to Old Hôtel de Ville]
The departure and death of Etienne left Chartres and its bishop more than ever exposed to the brigandage of the Viscount Hugues, who was always in a state of excommunication, and whose bands of mercenary robbers held the roads, so that S. Ives could not attend the great Council at Sens or at Paris. With his violence, as with the greed and slackness of his own clergy, S. Ives carried on unceasing war, and it was not long before he found himself involved also in a bitter quarrel with the Countess Adèle, widow of Etienne. The Chapter had bound themselves by oath not to admit into their ranks any of those known as _conditionarii_--men, that is, freed from serfdom but still held under servile obligations to the Countess. The Countess exerted herself with extraordinary energy and persistence to advance the claims of certain clients of this description. S. Ives strove to calm her and to support his Chapter. The Countess retorted by violent reprisals and seized the wine of the precentor, Hilduin, in the street des Corroyeurs. S. Ives threatened her with excommunication, and she interdicted the canons from the use of the roads, and of bread and water throughout her domain. It was time to give way, and S. Ives, by a judicious compromise, obtained the Pope’s consent that the Lady Adèle’s men should be admitted to share in the revenues of the Cathedral.
In support of his suzerain the Viscount Hugues had been devastating the diocese. But a new Crusade saved S. Ives from his enemies. Bohémond of Tarentum, Prince of Antioch, came to Chartres to marry Constance, daughter of the King, and to receive the nuptial benediction from the hands of S. Ives, to whose efforts the marriage was due. The Countess Adèle displayed on this occasion a hospitality worthy in its magnificence of the daughter of William the Conqueror and of the noble House of Thibault the Trickster. The marriage ceremony was performed, and thereafter, before a vast assembly standing on the steps of the altar of the _Vierge-aux-Miracles_, the Prince of Antioch related his wonderful adventures, and bore witness to the miraculous protection afforded to him by God in the former Crusade. Men listened and wondered and waxed enthusiastic. When Bohémond concluded his discourse by inviting his listeners to follow the example of the first Crusaders, a crowd of knights rushed forward and then and there took the sign of the Cross. Foremost among them was the excommunicated brigand, Hugues, Viscomte de Chartres.