Marie of Brittany, Lady of La Guerche

Marie of Brittany (18 February 1391 – 18 December 1446) was the Countess of Perche and Lady of La-Guerche from 1396 until 1414, and the Countess of Alençon from 1404 until 1414.[1] In 1414, Marie’s titles became Duchess of Alençon, Countess of Perche, Lady of La-Guerche, when Charles VI of France raised her husband’s county of Alençon to a duchy.[2] After the death of her husband at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, Marie retained the title of Lady of La-Guerche when her son, John II took the titles of Duke of Alençon and Count of Perche.[3] Marie was the link between the House of Montfort of the duchy of Brittany and the ducal House of Valois-Alençon. Her son, John II of Alençon, was instrumental in the Last Phase of the Hundred Years War, and a strong partisan of Joan of Arc.[4]

Childhood

Marie of Brittany was born to John V of Brittany and Joan of Navarre on 18 February 1391 in Nantes.[5] She was the fourth child of nine, and the second child to survive to adulthood.[6] In the first four years of her life, Marie was offered as a possible wife for Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV of England, but negotiations fell through when her father instead married her to John I d’Alençon in 1396.[7] Instead, after the death of John IV of Brittany, Marie’s mother Joan would marry Henry IV of England.[8]

Marriage

On the 26th of June, 1396, John IV of Brittany signed a contract with Pierre of Alençon and Perche which wedded Marie of Brittany to Pierre’s son, John of Perche.[9] The wedding was celebrated in July of that year at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, Ille-et-Vilaine, near Fougères.[10] Marie’s dowry was to be 100,000 francs, but her father never paid the entire amount, creating tension between the duchies of Brittany and Alençon in later years.[11] In 1404, John of Perche succeeded his father as the Count of Alençon and Perche.[12] On 4 October 1407, at the age of sixteen, Marie gave birth to a son at Argentan Castle.[13] He was given the family name of Pierre.[14] Less than a year later, Pierre died, on 16 March 1408.[15] Almost precisely a year after her son Pierre died, on 2 March 1409, Marie gave birth to another son, who was named John. Like Pierre, John was born at Argentan Castle.[16] Along with Pierre (4 October 1407 – 16 March 1408)[17] and John II of Alençon (2 March 1409 – 1476),[18] Marie gave birth to three more children between 1412 and 1413, but only two survived infancy.[19] Jeanne (17 September 1412 – 17 October 1420)[20] Marie (died, age 2)[21] Charlotte (15 December 1413 – 24 March 1435)[22] On the first of January in 1414, Charles IV of France raised the county to Alençon to a duchy, and made Marie’s husband, John, into the first duke of Alençon.[23] Marie’s husband died at the Battle of Agincourt, where he fought alongside the King of France.[24]

Later life

After the death of her husband in 1415, Marie was forced to flee Normandy, where she had been living prior to the Battle of Agincourt.[25] Her son, John, became John II of Alençon. It is highly likely that Marie fled south through Anjou with her two surviving daughters. The elder of her two daughters, Jeanne, was buried at Bourgueil Abbey in Anjou in 1420.[26] The younger of her two daughters, likely a nun, died in 1435, and was buried in the Church of Our Lady at Lamballe in Brittany.[27] Marie’s son, Duke John II of Alençon, was captured at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424.[28] He paid for his freedom from the English in 1427, and became well known as a strong partisan of Joan of Arc.[29] Marie died on 18 December 1446.[30] It is unknown where she was buried, despite the fact that all of her children’s burial places are known. At her death, Marie was simply Marie of Brittany, Lady of La Guerche. She had outlived all of her children but John II, Duke of Alençon.

In Context

Marie was relatively typical for upper-class women in medieval France. She was married off for political reasons, and at an extremely young age, and outlived her husband. When she died, all of her possessions likely reverted to the estate of her son, John II, as her only surviving child. It is highly likely that, like Gisela of Aquitaine, Mahout of Artois, and her own great-niece Margaret of Brittany, Marie was both literate and the owner of at least a Book of Hours.[31] She was certainly at least a semi-religious Catholic, as a noblewoman from fourteenth-century France, and one of her daughters may have become a nun. If there are any surviving prayerbooks or possessions which belonged to Marie of Brittany, they have since been absorbed into other collections.

See also

Alençon

Argentan

Rulers of Brittany

Hundred Years War

Notes

  1. ↑ Perceval de Cagny and Henri Morganvillé, Chroniques de Perceval de Cagny, publiée pour la première fois pour la Société de l'histoire de France, (Paris, France: Renouard, H. Laurens, successeur, 1902), 20, 38; Charles Cawley, “Brittany, Dukes and Nobility: Dukes of Brittany 1213-1514 (Dreux-Capet),” in Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families, (Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, 2014), http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/BRITTANY.htm#JeanVdied1399A; Cawley, “France, Capetian Kings: Comtes et Ducs d’Alençon,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/CAPET.htm#JeanIAlencondied1415A.
  2. ↑ Cagny, Chroniques, 93.
  3. ↑ Cawley, “France, Capetian Kings: Comtes et Ducs d’Alençon,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/CAPET.htm#JeanIAlencondied1415A, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/CAPET.htm#JeanIIAlencondied1476A.
  4. ↑ Anselme de Sainte-Marie, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la Maison Royale de France: le tout dressé sur les titres originaux, (Amsterdam: Chatelain, 1713), 135.
  5. ↑ Cawley, “Brittany, Dukes and Nobility,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/BRITTANY.htm#JeanVdied1399A.
  6. ↑ Ibid.
  7. ↑ Michael Jones, Ducal Brittany, 1364-1399: Relations with England and France During the Reign of Duke John IV, (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1970), 134-36; Michael Jones, “The Finances of John IV, Duke of Brittany, 1364-1399,” in The Creation of Brittany: a late medieval state, (London, UK: Hambledon Press, 1988), 252; Cawley, “England, Kings 1066-1603: House of Lancaster, Descendants of John of Gaunt,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ENGLAND,%20Kings%201066-1603.htm#HenryIVdied1413B.
  8. ↑ Cawley, “England,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ENGLAND,%20Kings%201066-1603.htm#HenryIVdied1413B.
  9. ↑ Jones, Ducal Brittany, 134; Jones, “The Finances of John IV,” 252; Cawley, “Brittany, Dukes and Nobility,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/BRITTANY.htm#JeanVdied1399A; Cagny, Chroniques, 38.
  10. ↑ Cagny, Chroniques, 38.
  11. ↑ Jones, “The Finances of John IV,” 252.
  12. ↑ Cawley, “France, Capetian Kings: Comtes et Ducs d’Alençon,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/CAPET.htm#JeanIAlencondied1415A.
  13. ↑ Cagny, Chroniques, 20.
  14. ↑ Ibid.
  15. ↑ Ibid. Cagny states that Pierre’s death date is 6 March 1407, which would imply that he died seven months before he was born. In fact, this confusion of dates is actually due to the fact that medieval Frenchmen counted the New Year from Easter, and not January first. Thus, October of 1407 is counted as part of the same year as 6 March, which precedes Easter. For more about different new years and styles of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, see John Tierney, “New Year's Day,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11, (New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1911), http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11019a.htm.
  16. ↑ Cagny, Chroniques, 20-21; Tierney, “New Year's Day,” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11019a.htm.
  17. ↑ Cawley, “France, Capetian Kings: Comtes et Ducs d’Alençon,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/CAPET.htm#JeanIAlencondied1415A.
  18. ↑ Ibid.
  19. ↑ Cawley, “France, Capetian Kings: Comtes et Ducs d’Alençon,” in Medieval Lands, http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/CAPET.htm#JeanIAlencondied1415A.
  20. ↑ Ibid.
  21. ↑ Ibid.
  22. ↑ Ibid.
  23. ↑ Cagny, Chroniques, 93.
  24. ↑ Cagny, Chroniques, 21.
  25. ↑ Cagny, Chroniques, 22.
  26. ↑ Anselme, Histoire, 135.
  27. ↑ Ibid.
  28. ↑ Ibid.
  29. ↑ Ibid.
  30. ↑ Ibid.
  31. ↑ Susan Groag Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture,” Signs 7, no. 4 (1982): 747-48, 751, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173638 (accessed August 26, 2014).

References

Anselme de Sainte-Marie. Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la Maison Royale de France: le tout dressé sur les titres originaux. Amsterdam: Chatelain, 1713.

Bell, Susan Groag. “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture.” Signs 7, no. 4 (1982): 742-768. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173638 (accessed August 26, 2014).

Cagny, Perceval de, and Henri Morganvillé. Chroniques de Perceval de Cagny, publiée pour la première fois pour la Société de l'histoire de France. Paris, France: Renouard, H. Laurens, successeur, 1902. <http://books.google.com/books?id=xN9AAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PR5&ots=Fa2QbQofaL&dq=Cagny%2C%20Perceval%20de.%20Chroniques%20des%20ducs%20d'Alen%C3%A7on&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Cawley, Charles. Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families. Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, 2014. <http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/index.htm>. (accessed December 7, 2014).

Jones, Michael. “The Finances of John IV, Duke of Brittany, 1364-1399.” In The creation of Brittany: a late medieval state, 239-262. London: Hambledon Press, 1988.

Jones, Michael. Ducal Brittany, 1364-1399: Relations with England and France During the Reign of Duke John IV. London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Tierney, John. “New Year's Day.” In The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11019a.htm>. (accessed December 7, 2014).

External links

1. http://books.google.com/books?id=xN9AAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PR5&ots=Fa2QbQofaL&dq=Cagny%2C%20Perceval%20de.%20Chroniques%20des%20ducs%20d'Alen%C3%A7on&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

2. http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/index.htm

3. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11019a.htm