 
Last
reigning Prince of the House of Anjou, known as an artist,
a lover of culture and a great builder
The Dynasty of Anjou
From 1265 to 1480, the princes of the House of Anjou reigned ,
from their lands in the Loire valley, over Provence, Italy and
Central Europe (Hungary). By a clever policy of alliances and
marriages, the presence of the House of Anjou stretched from Anjou
to the Danube. Shrewd politicians, the princes were also art lovers
and the luxury of the Court of Anjou favoured rich artistic productions.
Evidence of the riches of Mediaeval art, precious metal work,
frescoes, paintings, illuminated texts, and statues are so many
examples of the exceptional productions commissioned by the sovereigns.
The period from the 12th to the 15th centuries is one of the finest
in the history of art leading up to the Renaissance.
 King
René
René Ist of Anjou, known as “the Good”, belonged
to the third House of Anjou.
(Angers 1409 – Aix-en-Provence 1480, buried in the cathedral
of Angers)
Duke of Anjou, of Bar (1430 –1480) and of Lorraine
(1431 – 1453).
Count of Provence (1434 – 1480)
King of Naples (1438 – 1442), Titular King of Sicily (1434
– 1480) and nominal King of Jerusalem.
Anjou and Bar owed allegiance to the Crown, Lorraine, Provence
and the Kingdom of Naples were completely independent, the King
of France had no authority there.
The
story of King René
He
was the son of Louis II of Anjou and Yolande of Aragon (their
marriage took place in Arles in 1400), she was “the Queen
of 4 Kingdoms” (Aragon, Sicily, Cyprus and Jerusalem).
This wise and intelligent woman reigned over Anjou and Provence
during the many absences of her husband and ensured the future
of her five children. René was a younger son and as such,
was not destined to inherit his father’s lands, that is
why his mother Yolande worked to ensure an inheritance for him.
She had him adopted by an uncle, the Cardinal-Duke Louis of Bar,
who had no heir, as a gurantee she proposed that René would
marry Isabelle of Lorraine. René then left the Duchy of
Anjou to be brought up by his uncle who gave him his taste for
erudition, art and chivalry.
When he was eleven yars old, he married Isabelle, daughter and
heiress of Duke Charles II of Lorraine, on October 24th 1420,
he fell in love with her and they had 4 children. He had to fight
for the succession to the Duchy of Bar with his rival, Antoine
De Vaudemont, a descendent of the House of Lorraine who claimed
the right of succession and held René prisoner in the Franche-Comté.
René was finally freed after long years, thanks to a large
ransom, sacrifices and marriages of “reconciliation”.
He was faithful to King Charles VII who had married his sister
Marie, he was present at the coronation in Rheims in 1429. Always
a friend to the King, he contributed to the cessation of Franco-Anglo
hostilities by his active part in the negociations of Tours and
the marriage of his daughter Marguerite to Henry VI of England
in 1445. He then took part in the reconquering of lost provinces.
On the death of his elder brother, Louis III of Anjou, on November
15th 1434, his succession, by right and by his desire, went to
René, Duke of Bar and of Lorraine. On February 2nd, Jeanne
de Duras, Queen of Sicily, willed her succession to the second
son of Louis II. René, already Duke of Bar and of Lorraine,
found himself Duke of Anjou, King of Sicily and ofJérusalem*,
and Count of Provence. Never had a Prince of the House of Anjou
possessed such a vast and varied domain. He became a great feudal
power, with a weighty destiny. Henceforth, he was always called
King René or the King of Sicily. Like his father and his
great grand father before him, he launched himself into the Italian
adventure, where several parties had been fighting for power for
two generations. The Aragons, thanks to alliances with Italians,
gained ground and René finally lost his Kingdom of Naples
in 1442.
From then onwards, he devoted himself to administering and developing
Anjou, Lorraine and Provence. It was thus that the towns of Angers,
Aix-en-Provence and Tarascon prospered, a mint was established
in each town.
René travelled a lot and divided his time between his different
domains, transporting furniture, tapestries, objets d’art
and the wine which he produced himself at his manor of Chanzé
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King René’s Sojourns in Provence
 During
the King’s first stay in Tarascon (1447 –
1449), the Dauphin Louis, future Louis XI, coming
from the Dauphiné, came to visit his uncle,
René of Anjou, King of Sicily and Count of
Provence, in May 1447, as he wished to make the pilgrimage
of Saint Madeleine to Saint Maximin and the Sainte
Baume. He arrived in Tarascon where his uncle greeted
him with ceremony and affection. He, of course, visited
the church of Saint Martha and encouraged his uncle
to carry out the project of excavations in the church
of Our Lady of the Sea (Les Saintes Maries) which
were carried out the following year. However, the
Dauphin had also come to make an alliance with his
uncle against his father King Charles VII of France,
this was not possible for his uncle who had always
been a faithful friend to his childhood companion.
Louis XI always bore a grudge towards his uncle after
this useless visit.
Although he resided in Angers, René governed
Provence. In February 1447, René left Anjou,
taking with him his Council and all his Household
by boat up the River Loire to Roanne, from Roanne
to Lyons over land, from Lyons to Tarascon by boat
down the River Rhône. The voyage lasted fifteen
days. He had already done it several times with less
followers, on horseback from Angers to Lyons, then
down river to his County. The King of Sicily and his
family spent two and a half years in Provence, where
he busied himself defending his County against incursions
by the Aragonais. In 1447, a Spanish galleon contrived
to enter the port of Marseilles;for its future defence,
René decide to build a tower. Started in 1448,
it was finished in 1452.
During his stay in Provence, René did his best
to obtain a treaty with Alphonse of Aragon to re-establish
safety for navigation and commerce on the Mediterranean.
He established a truce which Alphonse refused to prolong
thus causing a complete break with the monarch of
Aragon. The Count of Provence had more luck with the
Genoese: on August 20th 1448, a treaty was signed
guaranteeing free navigation for the ships of Provence,
under reciprocal conditions and the opening of the
port of Genoa. René thus showed how much he
wanted to bring prosperity to his subjects.
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King
René and Les Saintes Maries de la Mer
 At
the Dominican convent in Aix, the Dauphin Louis learned
from a speech that the town of Notre Dame de la Mer (Our
Lady of the Sea), possessed hidden relics of the Holy Maries.
Knowing his uncle’s great veneration for the Saints,
Marie-Jacobée and Marie Salomé, he encouraged
him to set up a search for the relics. The pious Count went
to Les saintes Maries de la Mer, questioned members of the
church and listened to local traditions. Convinced of the
presence of the relics of the Holy Women, King René
asked Pope Nicolas V for permission to carry out the necessary
search. The Pope consented by means of a Papal Bull dated
August 3rd 1448 and delegated as Apostolic Commissioners,
Robert Damien, Archbishop of Aix, and Nicolas de Brancas,
Bishop of Marseilles. The King’s Chamberlain, the
Chevalier d’Arlatan, was in charge of the work. When
they dug down into the ancient oratory, situated in the
centre of the church, they found the bones of Saints Marie-Jacobée
and Marie-Salomé plus those of Saint Sarah. King
René immediately informed the Pope of this discovery
and asked him to delegate the authentification to Cardinal
Pierre de Foix, Papal Legate for the Comtat Venaissin.
After numerous formalities, undertaken to prove the authenticity
of the holy relics, on November 21st, Cardinal Pierre de
Foix, in the church of Our Lady of the Sea, in the presence
of King René, officially recognized the seals and
the authenticity of the bones. A great ceremony took place,
setting up a shrine to the Saints on December 2nd. On that
day, the Count of Provence, King of Sicily and Jerusalem,
Queen Isabelle of Lorraine, the Cardinal de Foix, Legate
of Pope Nicolas V, and other important dignitaries were
all present.
King René found great joy in presiding over the verification
and exaltation of these relics with the Cardinal de Foix,
all the bishops of the province, a great number of priests,
doctors of philosophy …
The ceremonies were magnificent, King René then gave
to the small town beside the sea, the name of Les Saintes
Maries de la Mer, with a coat of arms showing a boat with
no sails, sailing on the open sea and bearing several passengers.
The account of the ceremonies presided over by the King,
written on parchment, is conserved in the church archives.
René of Anjou offered the church three paintings,
and two silver basins, later used to form the two reliquaries
known as the Holy Arm.
Finally, a date was decided upon in perpetuity, for the
ceremony commemorating this authentification.
In 1948, a ceremony presided over by Mgr. Roncalli (the
future John XXIII), celebrated the five hundredth anniversary
of the discovery of the relics by King René.
The health of Queen Isabelle, his wife, who remained in
Anjou, later forced the King to return there urgently. After
32 years of marriage, on February 28th 1453, His wife died
at the age of 43. Much affected by the death of his beloved
wife, a prey to deep sadness, the King showed this in touching
ways : mourning emblems, added to the paintings of the places
they had most loved, and to their prayer books. The King
of Sicily was much affected by the death of his wife who
had always supported him during dark days (imprisonment
by Philippe Le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, the problems of the
Kingdom of Naples and her departure for Italy to reconquer
her royal husband’s domains while he was in prison
…) and her courage had helped him to defend the heritage
of their ancestors.
After the death of his wife, Isabelle of Lorraine, he tried
once again, but in vain, to enforce his rights to the Kingdom
of Naples. He transferred the Duchy of Lorraine to his son
Jean de Calabre (1453) and entrusted the administration
of the Duchy of Bar to his son in law, Ferry II de Lorraine-Vaudemont
(1456). On February 21st 1464, he created the latter Senechal
of Anjou, then Governor and Great Senechal of Provence,
he also made him his Lieutenant General in Naples and later
in Catalonia where he succeeded his son, Jean d’Anjou.
A year had not elapsed before this grief-stricken widower
(aged 45) married a young girl of 22 : Jeanne de Laval,
daughter of Isabelle of Brittany and Guy de Laval. This
second marriage was as happy as the first.
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After
his remarriage, King René gave up high politics and
spent his life between the provinces he still possessed,
Anjou and Provence. He busied himself with restoring economic
prosperity and reforming the administration.
During another stay in Provence, in Tarascon, King René
gave to his wife, known as “The Reine Jeanne”,
the Barony of Les Baux, which belonged to the Counts of
Provence.
On July 22nd 1461, Charles VII died, the irascible Dauphin
became King, René was not fond of him (when the Dauphin
came to Provence in 1448, and when he was involved in Italian
affairs,in 1453, Louis had tried to get René on his
side, then tried to supplant him and had failed).
René returned to Anjou in February 1462. At the Court
of Charles VII, he had occupied a position of power, he
knew that with his nephew, his role would be only a minor
one.
After he finally lost Naples (1462-1463), René considered
it vital to strengthen his County of Provence; a possession
totally independent of the Crown of France.
Later, René was to lose almost all his heirs, sons
and grandsons. Only a nephew, Charles, was left, who was
allied with Charles Le Téméraire. It was for
this reason that, on the death of René, in 1480,
Louis XI took advantage to annex the Duchy of Anjou to the
Kingdom of France. Thus
Louis XI constituted the unity of France but at the same
time ended the glory of the Dukes of Anjou.
As he had given up all political ambitions in 1471, René
organized his succession. He excluded his nephew, the King
of France, Louis XI, who, furious, seized all the revenues
of the Duchy of Anjou.
Shortly after, by the Treaty of Lyons (1476), King René
had to agree that his possessions would revert to the French
crown. King René passed away in Aix-en-Provence on
July 10th 1480, bequeathing Anjou to his nephew, Charles
du Maine, who died the following year in Marseilles on December
11th 1481. Charles bequeathed Provence to King Louis XI,
the Rhône as a frontier was abolished, and the County
of Provence like the Château of Tarascon now belonged
to the Kingdom of France.
René, whose affections were grievously wounded, repeatedly
betrayed by his political allies, tossed about by fortunes
and events, now the victor, then vanquished or prisoner,
knew the splendours of the Court of Lorraine, the friendship
and fidelity of his Provençal subjects, and the merriment
of his Neapolitan capital, but he was always only passing
through. Much annoyed by the harrassment of his nephew,
the King of France, he returned to his Duchy of Anjou and
his County of Provence, where the King of Sicily and Jerusalem
was to lead the life of a feudal lord and a Renaissance
prince.
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To find out more
The English episode and his daughter
Marguerite:
In England, where the quarrel between Edward
IV and Warwick had suddenly replaced on the
throne Henry VI and the Red Rose, at Easter
1471, the White Rose fought Queen Marguerite
at the bloody battle of Tewkesbury,where Warwick
was killed. Marguerite was then imprisoned in
the Tower of London where she joined her husband
who was to be killed there, by having his throat
cut. Her son, the Prince of Wales, was brought
before Edward IV, he refused to recognize the
latter as his sovereign, and was massacred under
the eyes of his mother. Her father, King René,
sent 50 000 ecus to his daughter to pay her
ransom, and Louis XI, her cousin, did the same,
under the condition that Marguerite cede to
him her eventual rights to Lorraine, Anjou,
Bar and Provence. Marguerite returned to France
and, shattered by the slaughter of her husband
and son, retired to Anjou.
The Catalan episode :
On the death of Don Pedro of Portugal, brought
to the throne by the Catalans, after Jean II
lost his throne early in 1468, the Catalans
offered the throne to René because of
his rights to the country by his mother Yolande
of Aragon. René accepted the offer and
entrusted the expedition to his son, the Duke
of Calabria. René raised Gerona to a
principality and gave the title to his son in
1470. His son died of illness on July 16th 1470
in Barcelona. The natural son of Jean of Anjou,
the Bastard of Calabria, who was campaigning
with him, then received the title by an act
dated March 14th 1471 from the Government of
Spanish Affairs. However, the Catalans proclaimed
as King of Aragon, the only male heir of the
Duke of Calabria, Nicolas, Marquis du Pont;
this young prince, involved in the affairs of
the Duchy of Lorraine, was in no hurry to go
to Catalonia. Most of the territories won were
lost within a year, Catalonia gave up to Don
Juan of Aragon at the end of 1471.
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A
Portrait of the King
 During
this violent century, the Court of Anjou was amongst
the most splendid, with numerous counsellors and servants,
many artists and the fêtes loved by the Valois
(tournaments, balls and festivities).
The Patron of the Arts
LThe
patronage of the Dukes of Anjou greatly contributed
to the development of art and architecture and the
stamp of Good King René can still easily be
seen in Provence and in Anjou.
A lover of art, fêtes and the pleasures of the
table, King René was a generous patron to artists,
architects and poets.
His long stay in Naples allowed him to meet Masters
of the Italian School : Coleulino del Fiore, Angelo
Franco, Antonio Solario. He liked to be surrounded
by writers, painters and musicians. He brought Flemish
painters from Lorraine where he had known Van Eyck,
from Naples, famous sculptors, from the famous Avignon
School of Painting, the finest Masters of the 15th
century : Nicolas Froment or Enguerrand Charton, artists
who illustrated his reign. At the end of the 15th
century, about 40 artists resided in Aix-en-Provence,
working under contract for King René, producing
works of quality and taking part in the decorations
for festivities.
The King also collected illuminated manuscripts (a
novelty in his period), and printed books. He encouraged
early printers and acquired first editions of Cicero,
Herodotus, Saint Jerome and others.
He was particularly interested in public education,
he protected the university of Aix and also endowed
free scholarships to the schools of Aix, Avignon and
Angers. He also oversaw the production of elementary
books. The education of children was of particular
importance to him and he set up, in his own château
of Anjou, a school where children were housed, fed
and educated free of any charge.
A generous man, King René was also close to
his people, he mixed with them in a familiar way and
happily took part in tournaments and fêtes.
He also organised them himself.
His Residences
The
Palace of Aix, the Château of Tarascon, the
Manor of Pertuis, the Royal House in Marseilles were
all his residences. The sovereigns were particularly
fond of Tarascon and often stayed in the Château
built by their ancestors.
From his ancestors, he had received numerous residences
which he improved and transformed sumptuously through
the years. The walls, in the fashion of the 15th century,
were covered by the finest tapestries, the floors,
by woolen carpets and furs …In his Châteaux
of Tarascon, Angers and Saumur, he had galleries built
which allowed him to follow spectacles and ceremonies
without leaving his apartments. These new preoccupations
with pomp and ceremony are a foretaste of the Châteaux
of the Renaissance.
René also loved gardens. He took a keen interest
in the creation, the lay out and the upkeep of those
around his residences. He was a moving force in the
development of pleasure gardens at the end of the
Middle Ages. A lover of floral decorations, René
contributed to the beautifying of the gardens of his
châteaux. Amongst the flowers he loved, he preferred
carnations and roses; he was also interested in animals,
he set up large aviaries, he bred horses and dogs,
he even had a menagery with all sorts of wild animals
(lions and leopards) in the outbuildings of the Châteaux
of Angers, a flock of sheep …
In these beautiful surroundings, countless festivities
and balls took place; it is well known that the Valois
were passionately interested in these amusements.
Mystic or more down to earth spectacles, processions
were a usual part of any festivity.
The
artist and man of letters
 Thanks
to the painters of Flanders and Lorraine that he frequented
at the Court of Nancy, King René cultivated
his natural talent for painting. While he was a prisoner
in the Bar Tower in Dijon, he learned to draw on glass.
Throughout his life, he enjoyed painting mottos, emblems,
hunting scenes …
Great works were produced under his direction :”
the Burning Bush” conserved in the cathedral
of Aix,” the Sermon to Magdeleine”, which
is in the museum of Cluny.
After his wife died, the King took up miniature painting
on parchment, where he achieved a very high standard.
Between wives, he painted a manuscript known as the
“preces pioe” or the Book of Hours in
Latin of King René. This pious work was a homage
to the memory of Isabelle, he later gave it to his
new wife.
Under the influence of Jeanne, King René developed
his taste for nature, for country retreats, he studied
letters, arts and sciences, for he was one of the
most cultivated men of his time and a wise patron
of the arts.
After he remarried, he finished a mystic work in prose
and verse : “The Mortifying or Mortification
of Vain Pleasures”, a pious dialogue between
the heart and the soul. He also wrote poems in French,
Italian and even in Provençal, rondeaus, fables,
comedies, dialogues, and even a few satires.
He also wrote an allegory “The Loving Heart”,
magnificently illustrated by the illuminations of
Van Eyck and conserved at the National Library of
Vienna.
As time passed, his taste for letters and arts grew;
He devoted his talent to decoration : painting emblems,
arms, mottos, hunting scenes and rustic scenes.
René was one of the most all rounded minds
of his period, he spoke Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian
and Catalan. He played and composed music, wrote poems,
was interested in theology, astronomy, mathematics
and medecine. He was also particularly interested
in geography and in the law.
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