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St-Julien de Brioude
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Late 200s |
A soldier martyr who was in
the army of Diocletian, the last and most vicious of the Christian
persecutor Emperors. A relic from his tomb is in the
beautiful Auvergne Romanesque
Basilica St-Julien de Brioude, and
there is a medieval
memorial window celebrating his life in the
Cathedral St-Gatien in Tours.
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St-Denis
Patron Saint of
France |
? - c258 |
St-Denis (Dionysious in
Latin) is thought to have been one of a group of seven or so Roman
bishops sent by Pope Fabian to convert Gaul to Christianity. He became Bishop of
Paris, was later martyred there by execution and, legend has it,
walked, carrying his head in the fashion of
San Miniato of Florence, from
the execution site in Paris to what is now the site of the
Basilique (then Abbeye) St-Denis
just north of town. This led to a grizzly
iconographic tradition in the sculptures of cathedral portals (like
Reims) and frescos (like
Lavardin), which portray the standing saint in full
bishop's kit holding his severed head in front of him and with a few
bits of artery and gunk jagging out of his neck stump.
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St-Gatien
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First half 200s - 301
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Gatianus was another of the
Bishops sent to Gaul (Tours) along with St-Denis. Others in the group
included Trophimus (Arles), Paul (Narbonne), Saturnin (Toulouse),
Austromoine (Clermont), Martial (Limoges) and they joined Irenaeus
who was already in Lyon.
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Ste-Foy |
c290 - 303 (13) |
Teenage girl martyr from
Agen, whose relics were "discreetly
transferred" (code for stolen and removed) to
Conques in 866. "Sainte Foy"
translates as "Saint Faith" in English and, much more romantically,
"Santa Fe" in Spanish. |
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St-Hilaire de Poitiers |
Early 300s - 368 |
A son of Poitiers who became
Bishop of Poitiers c350 and died there in 368. In between
times he travelled widely, mainly to preach against Aryanism.
The "Hilary Term" in some older English Universities and Legal
Institutions is the one beginning in January, the month of his
Saints' Day. |
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St-Martin de Tours (Patron
Saint of France) |
c316 - 397 (81) |
A Hungarian who unusually
survived life in the Roman army as a declared Christian, and went on
to an apprenticeship in Poitiers under its bishop St-Hilaire before
very reluctantly accepting the role of
Bishop of Tours in 371. At
heart, like many of his medieval ilk, he was an aesthetic hermit
monk with a lot in common with the late 1100s St-Francis, and
amongst other foundations he was responsible for building up Marmoutier into one of the greatest early medieval abbeys. On
the way he got a reputation for having visions and doing miracles,
and after his death soon became widely venerated as a saint (like
St-Hilaire, one of the earliest non-martyr saints).
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St-Remi (or Remy)
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c437 - c533 (96) |
Bishop of Reims whose main claim
to fame was the conversion and baptism of the powerful King Clovis
I (below) on the site of a predecessor to the present Reims
Cathedral on Christmas Eve 496 (or maybe 498).
The huge
Romanesque
Abbey Church of St-Remi is about
half an hour's unmemorable walk from Reims Cathedral, and thus never visited
(in fact it's not difficult to drive there and there is plenty of
parking).
The most impressive of the surviving Romanesque pilgrimage churches
of northern France, it has a magnificent nave space, and the adjoining monastic
buildings house a
chapter house of Cistercian beauty,
and one of the best
regional museums.
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Clovis I -
First Merovingian King of
the Franks |
c466 - 481 - 511 (44) |
United most of the Frankish
tribes under his kingship, then converted to Christianity and
according to tradition was baptized c498 by
St-Remy in a church which was where
Reims
Cathedral now stands. |
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511 - Clovis' 4 sons
each get a kingdom - map in the
Musée St-Remi, Reims
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Clotaire
I (aka Lothair) |
c496 - 511 - 561 (65) |
One of four sons amongst whom
Clovis divided his kingdom in the tradition of Merovingian
succession - a tradition that ensured that the succesees spent the
rest of their lives fighting each other for territory, with the
"last one standing" becoming King of all or most of the Franks (although the
alternative English system often had just as many problems).
In this case Clotaire was the last one standing, andf eventually became
"King of all the Franks" after the death of his brother
Childebert I.
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Childebert I |
496 - 511 - 558 (62) |
Another of the four sons amongst whom
Clovis divided his kingdom.
Childebert expanded from his Paris base into Burgundy and Provence, took over
Chartres and other western places, and also had an unsuccessful go
at Spain - which is how the tunic of St-Vincent arrived back in
Paris and was ensconced in the purpose built abbey of St-Vincent
(now called St-Germain-des-Prés), which was dedicated by Bishop
Germain on 23 December 558 - ironically the day on which Childebert
died.
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Left: Childebert
I - a c1240 trumeau statue originally part of the portal of the St-Germain-des-Prés
(Paris) monastery refectory - now in the Louvre Museum.
Right: St-Germain and
Childebert I in a stained glass panel from St-Germain-des-Prés
(Paris) c1240 which somehow ended up in the V & A (London)
from "Medieval
Stained Glass in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London"
Buy from Amazon USA
Buy from Amazon UK |
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This 1163 gisant of
Childebert I from / holding the Abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés (Paris) is
said to be the oldest surviving gisant in the north of France - it
was moved to
St-Denis in 1816 when they were
"rebuilding" their royal collection.
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St-Germain |
496 - 576 (80) |
Appointed by Childebert I as
Bishop of Paris, he was said to have exerted a "good influence" on
the excesses of the king and his subjects (ie he was a wowser). |
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St-Gregory de Tours |
c538 - c593 (55) |
A less ambitious French
version of the English
Venerable Saint Bede, Gregory was
Bishop of Tours but is remembered mainly for his historical writings
and in particular for his accounts of the Miracles of
St-Martin
(see earlier),
whose tomb in Tours became the happening pilgrimage place of the 600s in west
Gaul. |
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Ste-Radegonde |
c519 -
587 (68) |
One of the Queen Consorts of King Clovis'
son Clotaire I (see above). Founded the first known nunnery / abbey (Saint
Croix) in the west at
Poitiers, where her tomb still lies in
the church dedicated to
her. |
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Clotaire II (aka Lothair) |
584 - 613 - 629 (45) |
aka The Great and The Young
... became a comparatively long serving Merovingian King of all the
Franks, but ceded most of his powers to his nobles (the 615 Edict of
Paris was a sort of early run of Magna Carta) and the Pope.
One of his queens, Arégonde, left behind these beautiful jewels in
her tomb, which was discovered during excavations in the
Abbey Church of St-Denis in the
latter 1900s.
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Photo from guidebook to
the Royal Tombs of St-Denis
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King
Dagobert I |
c603 - 629 - 639 (36) |
Another one of a team of
brothers who eventually became King of all the Franks. The
first king to be buried in the
Abbey Church of St-Denis, and the
last effective king of the Merovingian Dynasty.
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St-Genest |
600s |
Bishop of Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand). Dedicatee of
painted church
at Lavardin on the River Loir. |
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St-Porchaire |
d732 |
Poitiers' St-Porchaire was the
Abbot of the Community of St-Hilaire at the end of the 500s.
His sarcophagus was later incorporated into a pilgrimage shrine, and
nowadays can be found in the church bearing his name in the centre
of Poitiers. There is another more famous St-Porchaire (aka Saint Porcarius), who was abbot of the large island abbey of Lérins (just off
the French Riviera - now known as Île de Saint-Honorat) when
it and he was overrun and extinguished by Saracens.
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Charles Martel |
688 - 741 (53) |
Although called a "Mayor" he was
a bit different to today's grey civic leaders, being in all but name the
King of the bulk of the Frankish Kingdoms. A more than
competent soldier and strong leader, he is mainly known today
for
turning back the Islamic advance on
north western France in 732 in a series of skirmishes in the area
between Tours and Poitiers in 732 (called the Battle of Poitiers if
you came from Poitou or Aquitaine, or the Battle of Tours if you
were a Frank, but either way it was not the big set piece battle it
is often portrayed as) and then further south, after which the
Muslim threat faded away back across the Pyrenees into Al-Andalus.
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Pepin I (The Short)
- First King of the Carolingian Dynasty.
|
714 - 751 - 768 (54) |
Son of Charles Martel and
father of Charlemagne the Great.
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Charlemagne |
c745 - 768 - 814 (69) |
AKA
King Charles the Great.
In addition to significant territorial expansion, Charlemagne
established schools, reformed and developed legal, administrative,
agricultural and commercial systems, promoted the arts and enforced
Christianity. A by-product of this and the accompanying
military stability, was the re-emergence of stronger inter town
trade.
It is interesting that
Charlemagne's long reign was paralleled by two outstanding long reigned
Popes -
Hadrian I (Pope 772 - 795) and
S Leo III (Pope 795 - 816), and
also by a long reigned Baghdad based Abbasid
Caliph, the famous Harun al-Rashid
(763 - 786 - 809 (46)), who at one stage sent Charlemagne an
elephant called Abul Abbas and was also the featured Sultan in "A
Thousand and One (Arabian) Nights".
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Link to maps showing
Charlemagne's huge empire and the constantly moving court which ran
it |
This little statuette,
only 27 cm high, is dwarfed by its display case and surroundings in the Louvre in
Paris. There is a school of thought that the king is in fact
Charlemagne's grandson, and that the horse is much younger than the
rider - but whoever it is it's the only contemporaneous lifelike image of anyone
from the early Middle
Ages still in existence. Interestingly our man was not using
stirrups, which probably originated in China in the early ADs, and
spread across Asia to Europe in the 500s and 600s. By the 700s
they were in much more general use in Europe and one would have
expected a serious frequent traveller to have discovered their
advantages. The big stirrup leap forward came with the
Mongol cavalry and bowmen in the 1100s.
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Louis the Pious |
778 - 814 - 840 (68) |
Served as King of Aquitaine
when his father Charlemagne was Emperor then unnotably took over the
main gig on Charlemagne's death in 814.
In 816 passed a law making the
Rule of Benedict compulsory in
Frankish monasteries.
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St-Gerald |
855 - 909 (54) |
St-Gerald of Aurillac.
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Cluny Abbey
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Founded 910 |
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St-Odilo
|
c962 - 1048 (86) |
A nobleman from the Auvergne who
became the 5th Abbot of Cluny c994. He established
All Saints (/Souls) Day (Ognissanti - nowadays
November 1)
in the church calendar in the early 1000s. |
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First Crusade
|
1095 - 1099 |
The
1st Crusade (1095 - 1099) was launched with a fiery speech by
the French Clunaic
Pope Urban II (1042 - 1088 - 1099) on
Nov 27 1095 in a field in Clermont (France). The era of the
crusades lasted for 200 years.
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Cistercian Order
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Founded 1098 |
Link to Paradoxplace pages on the
Cistercian order. |
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Abbot Suger
LINK to
BASILIQUE ST-DENIS |
1081 - 1151 (70) |
Abbot of
St-Denis (10km North
of Paris) from 1122, Suger, a small energetic man like his larger
than life Euro-contemporary St-Bernard, knocked down and rebuilt
the west and east ends of the monastery's great abbey church into the first soaring
Gothic church structure in Europe (the nave followed a century
later). His interest extended to
the beauty of all church furnishings - stained glass, sculptures,
artefacts and
furnishings. Suger, who was also worldly and bright (and the
only non saint / king member of this page), got
on well with King Louis VII, and was appointed Regent of France
whilst Louis and Eleanor of Aquitaine were off at
the Second Crusade (1147 - 1149).
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Stained glass
representation of Abbot Suger in the Jesse Window of the Basilique St-Denis.
Contrary to most descriptors you will encounter, this replacement
panel is an 1800s product of the restoration work by Viollet-le-Duc. Photo from "Stained Glass" by Lawrence Lee et al.
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Porphyry, gold and
silver eagle vase from either ancient Rome or Egypt, acquired by
Abbot Suger for St Denis and now in the Louvre Museum.
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St-Bernard of Clairvaux
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1190 - 1153 (63) |
Abbot of Clairvaux and
Chief Traveller and Spruiker for the Cistercian Order
(successfully), who rose to become a major figure on the
international stage and particularly in the
Second Crusade (not so successfully).
Portrait of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in the Cathedral Treasury, Troyes.
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Eleanor of Aquitaine
(Aliénor d'Aqiitaine)
|
1122 - 1204 (82) |
Link to Eleanor of Aquitaine
entry in Paradoxplace's "World of the Middle Ages" |
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Saint Louis |
1214 - 1226 - 1270 (56) |
Capetian King
Louis IX of
France had a dynasty of strong women behind him - he was great
grandson of
Eleanor of Aquitaine
(1122 - 1204 (82)),
grandson of her daughter
Queen Leonora of Castile and son of Blanche
of Castile. A holy man with a strong sense of justice and
duty, he brought an end to the debilitating Albigensian Crusade in
1229 by making peace with the very nasty Count Raymond VII of
Toulouse. Raymond VII was born at
Fontevraud, whence his mother Joan,
also a daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, had fled to escape his
equally nasty and abusive father Raymond VI.
Louis dabbled in crusading, though
heaven only knows why as he was useless at it and eventually it did
for him. At one stage he
had to be bailed out by a massive loan from the
Knights Templar, and
his death was due to something nasty he picked up crusading in
Tunis. He was canonized by the Anagni
Pope Boniface VIII in 1297.
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The Popes move to France
|
1309 |
French
Pope Clement V (Raymond Bertrand de
Got) (1264 - 1305 - 1314 (50))
goes all the way and moves the seat of
the Papacy to France - firstly
Poitiers then Avignon, where it stayed
until tentatively returning to Rome
in 1376, then
seesawing during the Great Schism until
definitely settling in Rome following the Council of Konstanz in 1417.
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The Hundred Years' War
Wikipedia Page on the 100 Years War
|
1337 - 1453 |
Paradoxplace Insight Page on the Hundred
Years' War. The war was interrupted for a
surprisingly short time by
the Black Death (1348), which killed off two thirds or so of the
population of Europe.
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Jean le Bon (King)
|
1319 - 1350 - 1364 (45) |
A
multidimensionally
dysfunctional spender who alienated his own courtiers and ended up
being soundly beaten by
England's Black Prince on 19
September 1356 at Nouaillé-Maupertuis ("maupertuis" means a bad
route) near
Poitiers. He ended up dying
in London after conditions of his ransom were broken.
The earliest
portrait of a French King, now in the Louvre Museum. It was
done before 1350 (before he was king and had a crown) and therefore
before the
first portrait of an English King
(Richard II) (who had his
crown on for his sitting).
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Charles V the Wise
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1338 - 1364 - 1380 (42) |
Charles the Wise got
French things together again after the "le Bon" disaster, cleared out the
Mercenary Companies
(into Italy in part) and set about the English in a winning way.
He even saw off the Pope. When he died in 1380 only Calais, Bordeaux and a couple of other ports were
still in English hands. Mind you, Henry V of England and
Agincourt (1415) were still to happen.
Contemporaneous statues of Charles V and his Queen Jeanne de
Bourbon, with replacement limbs / accessories after minor revolutionary
monstering in the late 1700s. Then and now in the Louvre,
Paris.
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Ste-Jeanne d'Arc (Patron Saint
of France)
Link to a website about Joan's life
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c1412 - 1431 (19) |
La Pucelle (the Maid) -
virgin saviour of France towards the end of the Hundred Years' war, or
a 19
year old witch and heretic who heard voices and was justifiably burned at the
stake by the English (masquerading as the church). Although
her
conviction by the English was overturned by the church in 1456 after a six year
"Trial of Nullification", it was a difficult to explain 500 years
before she was canonized in 1920.
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Francis I
Link to "an Emperor, two Kings, a
Banker, a Priest, a Medici Pope and a Sultan launch the Age of
European Nation States" |
1494 - 1515 - 1547 (53) |
Valois French King contemporary of Emperor
Charles V, King Henry VIII, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent,
Medici Pope Clemente VII, Martin Luther and Megabanker Jacob
Fugger in the opening act of "The Nation States of
Europe".
François
I c1520, by Jean Clouet, Louvre
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Henri II
|
1519 - 1547 - 1559 (40) |
Son of Francis and husband of
Caterina de' Medici, who came to a
grizzly end as a result of a jousting accident.
Henri II,
Musée Condé, Chantilly
Three of their sons - Francis II, Charles
IX and Henri III - succeeded each other as Kings of France, the last
of the Valois Line which ended with the death of Henri III in 1589.
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The French Wars of Religion
Wikipedia Page on the Wars of Religion
|
1562 - 1598 |
Stop start wars of attrition
between Catholics and Protestants (aka Calvinists and Hugenots)
across France, which can be broken down into 8 sub-wars, numerous battles,
ineffective treaties
and edicts, and an unbelievable half century of self inflicted misery and suffering for people and
church buildings and furnishings.
The wars hit their low
low point in August 1472 with the
St-Bartholomew's Day Massacres.
In very general terms the
north and east of France, and the south coast states, were
dominantly Catholic, whilst the Huguenots were strongest in the west
and south west.
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Henri IV
|
1553 - 1589 -
1610 (57) |
Imported from Navarre (he became a Catholic after previously being
the Huguenot / Prorestant King Henry III of Navarre), Henry IV, the
first Bourbon King of France, first
married Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Catherine de'Medici and
Henri II, and after she died,
Maria de Medici, fresh from Florence.
Henri IV,
Frans Pourbus the Younger, Louvre
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Link to Wikipedia page on French Monarchs
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