Fort Saint-Andre
For Saint-Andre is located in the south of France on the opposite side of the Rhone River from Avignon. The fort is a medieval fortress built by Phillipe le Bel, the King of France. In the Middle Ages, Avignon was a border city and not part of the Kingdom of France. Although Philippe had ceded control of Avignon to his cousin, Charles of Naples in 1292, he wanted to maintain control of the Rhone River, so he was granted permission by monks who’d built a monastery on a bluff opposite Avignon to build a fortress around their monastery. Once the Pope officially moved the papal state to Avignon, the fortress acted as a visible reminder of the power of Philippe, should the papacy make decisions unfavorable to the French crown. Philippe also built a tower at the end of the Read more…
Aigues-Mortes
Located on the south coast of France, Aigues-Mortes is a fortified city built by the kings of France to be a port on the Mediterranean. The name Aigues-Mortes comes from Latin and means ‘dead water’ or ‘stagnant water’. Although it was possibly founded as long ago as 102 BC by a Roman general, the first tower was erected in 791 by Charlemagne as protection for the fishermen and salt workers. In 1240, Marseille was controlled by the King of Naples, and King Louis of France was determined to have his own access to the Mediterranean. He built roads and a canal in order to ferry troops to the sea. He launched both the eighth and ninth crusades from Aigues-Mortes. Still visible today are the 6 towers and walls of the city, encompassing 1640 square meters. Also, King Philippe, King Louis’s Read more…
Edward I and the Crown of France
King Edward as a historical figure looms large over my books, both the After Cilmeri series and my new book, Crouchback. Because in the middle ages, the King of England was also the Duke of Aquitaine, not to mention Norman, Edward had ties to France even before he became king. “France”, however, didn’t exist as we know it today, in that Aquitaine was a separate kingdom and the people there were not “French.” Aquitaine had come under the auspices of the kings of England after the marriage of King Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine in the late 12th century, as an addition to Henry’s already extensive “French” estates, which included Brittany and Normandy. Over the next century, the Kingdom of France wrested all but Aquitaine away from the Kings of England. Thus, when Edward left for Crusade from Aigues Read more…
The Kings of France: Louis and Philippe
The Kings of France in the 13th century, namely King Louis and his grandson, Philippe, between them ruled France with an iron hand. Both sought to centralize power within themselves while expanding the borders of their kingdom. In the process, they built extensive fortresses throughout the country, started wars, and in the case of Philippe, expelled the Jewish community from France, destroyed the Templars, and assassinated a pope. During our recent visit to France, we visited numerous monuments to their respective rule, including Aigues Mortes, Carcasonne, and Sainte-Chapelle on the Ile de La Cite in Paris. Although Charlemagne built a tower at Aigues Mortes, the founding of the city dates to 1240 during the rule of King Louis. At the time, Louis had no port on the Mediterranean, so to gain access, he did a land exchange with the Church Read more…
The Templar Order
The Templars were formed in 1118, when nine knights took holy vows to defend Jerusalem. In 1128, their founder received a blessing from the pope to formally form a new order of warrior knights. They adopted the order of St. Benedict and the white robes of the Cistercians and began recruiting. Men flocked to join, and were accepted in a hierarchical system of knights, sergeants (who wore black robes), farmers, and chaplains. Within fifty years, the order became one of the largest landowners not only in the Holy Land but in France and England. They became money lenders in the major cities, and were one of the finest fighting forces in the world. On the way to accumulating land, wealth, and the power that came with it, they established monasteries throughout Europe, called commanderies. We visited five such commanderies on Read more…
The Fall of the Templars
Other than a few unsuccessful raids on the Syrian and Egyptian coasts, after 1291, the Templar Order deteriorated into one of bankers and moneylenders. A series of verbal attacks was launched against all military orders, the Templars in particular, suggesting they no longer had a purpose for existence since they failed to take steps to regain the Holy Land. Nothing came of these attacks until a renegade Templar, Esquiu de Floyrian, made specific charges of blasphemy, idolatry and sodomy against the Order to Philip the Fair (Philip IV) of France.” http://www.mostly-medieval.com/explore/temphist.htm (for previous discussion on the origin of the Templar Order see: https://sarahwoodbury.com/the-knights-templar/ This was the beginning of the end for the Templars. On Friday the 13th (and this is the reason the day is said to be unlucky, or so I understand), Philip of France arrested all of the Read more…
Robin Hood (2010) movie review
Since I’m a sap for anything medieval, I knew I would probably enjoy Ridley Scott’s, Robin Hood, even if his movies are generally too violent for my taste. I have to say that I liked the movie more than I thought I would. He refrained from his usual slo-mo blood spray as the hero kills another man (or dies himself), for which I was grateful. In summary, the movie follows Robin from France, where he was in King Richard’s army on the way home from the Holy Land, to England, where he falls into an impersonation of the dead heir to the Locksley lands. To be fair, Robin did impersonate the poor dead Sir Locksley initially, but he approached the dead man’s family on the up-and-up. Meanwhile, John, now King John as Richard died in a final siege in France on Read more…
The Kingdoms of France
You might ask, and reasonably so, why a blog about medieval Wales would be posting about the kingdoms of France in the Middle Ages. The main reason is that it’s hard to understand the Norman conquest of England (and Wales and Scotland), without reference to the fact that they were Norman. That means, they came from the Kingdom of Normandy, a region on the north coast of France. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Aquitaine ‘France’ wasn’t ‘France’ as we know it today until after the Edwardian period. As the map dating from 1154 to the right shows, the King of France controlled a relatively small portion of the country. Edward I was the Duke of Aquitaine, whose lands are comparable in size to what the King of France held. The dispute of the control of France and these kingdoms, in fact, was one of the Read more…
We’re all descended from Charlemagne … and related to each other.
Charlemagne, or ‘Charles the Great’, was the ruler of what is now France in the early Middle Ages. He had 18 children by 10 different wives and concubines. His children then went on to populate Europe, which is why it is a truism that everyone with European ancestry is descended from Charlemagne. At one point, I overheard a waitress telling one of her tables that her brother had told her she was descended from Charlemagne. I did not say, “we all are”. From the Guardian: “If you’re vaguely of European extraction, you are also the fruits of Charlemagne’s prodigious loins. A fecund ruler, he sired at least 18 children by motley wives and concubines, including Charles the Younger, Pippin the Hunchback, Drogo of Metz, Hruodrud, Ruodhaid, and not forgetting Hugh. This is merely a numbers game. You have two parents, Read more…
Medieval Moneylending
Edward Longshankes (Edward I) got himself in debt to various moneylenders in order to fund his wars. During his reign, he fought with his father in the Baron’s War against Simon de Montfort, against Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales, against the French, and against the Scots. All of these wars cost money. A king had a couple of options when on a quest for funds. One, he can tax his people. Edward certainly did that. Two, he can confiscate funds from those over whom he wields power. I blogged earlier about what he did to Jewish coinsmiths in 1278 (https://sarahwoodbury.com/?p=179). Henry VIII had the great plan of starting his own religion and confiscating the wealth of the Catholic Church. That was a little more radical than Edward, who often relied on the third method, money lending. In the Read more…
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