#comminges

[illustratus]

[philoursmars]

En l'honneur du Nouvel An Chinois qui nous fait passer dans l'Année du Serpent, en voici quelques-uns !

Ici, le Serpent d'Adam et Eve, dans des bâtiments romans, parfois gothiques ou byzantins :

Le Mans, cathédrale Saint-Julien

Canaries, Gran Canaria, Las Palmas - Maison de Christophe Colomb

Lavaudieu (Auvergne)

Saint-Gaudens (Comminges) collégiale

idem

Monreale (Sicile) - Cathédrale

Palermo (Sicile), Palazzo dei Normanni - chapelle palatine

[misterdust]

25/05/2013 tournage Waterproof Résurection par Dust... Via Flickr : un tueur de la KKK, société appartenant à l'immonde Kaalbuth qui recrute des adolescents pauvres des quartiers bas de la ville, sur le point d'éliminer la fille de l'ex inspecteur Georges Feelgood qui s'était infiltrée dans la société... un film produit par A.nonyme, réalisé par Michel Escaillas aussi à la caméra sur ce cliché Le tueur : Elie Cazaneuve La victime : Emma Chesnot a killer from the KKK, a company owned by the filthy Kaalbuth who recruits poor teenagers from the lower parts of the city, about to eliminate the daughter of ex-detective George Feelgood who had infiltrated the company... a film produced by A.nonyme and directed by Michel Escaillas un asesino del KKK, una empresa propiedad del asqueroso Kaalbuth que recluta a adolescentes pobres de los barrios bajos de la ciudad, a punto de eliminar a la hija del exdetective George Feelgood que se había infiltrado en la empresa... una película producida por A.nonyme y dirigida por Michel Escaillas 

[l-ours]

couvreur Saint-Gaudens

[viajero2000]

Occitania 4.-De Caraman a Fos

Entre Toulouse y el Valle de Arán español, serpentea esta carretera. El primer destino es un pueblecito llamado Rieux-Volvestre. Antigua ciudad episcopal. (https://www.plusbeauxdetours.com/tous-les-plus-beaux-detours/detour-par-rieux-volvestre-en-haute-garonne/), la Catedral recuerda mucho su torre a Toulouse. Los puentes, las fachadas...

Montesquieu-Volvestre, es un pueblecito, cuya organización recuerda a sus tiempos de bastida.

A continuación un pueblo con un nombre especial, Cazéres. , fue una casa de campo de finales del siglo XIII,

Pasando por St Gaudens, Y su Colegiata románica de San Pedro.

Pasando por el templo  de Saint Just de Valcabréres, una Basílica Románica.

Llegamos a Saint Bertrand de Comminges, Un pueblo medieval, amurallado, famoso por su Catedral en el Camino de Santiago y su Claustro, tres lienzos románicos del siglo XII y uno gótico, pequeñito y con unas vistas a los Pirineos...Casas de madera del siglo XVI, una maravilla a descubrir, así como sus fiestas medievales, a las que pude asistir, con una buena amiga.

Y por último Fos., la última villa antes de entrar en España, por el Valle de Arán.

 Cerca de aquí, el Valle de Oô

St Beat

Y Bagneres de Luchon, ciudad termal y con pistas de esquí, en Superbagneres.

[talonabraxas]

The Green Man by Talon Abraxas

Symbol of life and nature:

The most common and perhaps obvious interpretation of the Green Man is that of a pagan nature spirit, a symbol of man’s reliance on and union with nature, a symbol of the underlying life-force, and of the renewed cycle of growth each spring. In this respect, it seems likely that he has evolved from older nature deities such as the Celtic Cernunnos and the Greek Pan and Dionysus.

Some have gone so far as to make the argument that the Green Man represents a male counterpart - or son or lover or guardian - to Gaia (or the Earth Mother, or Great Goddess), a figure which has appeared throughout history in almost all cultures. In the 16th Century Cathedral at St-Bertrand de Comminges in southern France, there is even an example of a representation of a winged Earth Mother apparently giving birth to a smiling Green Man.

Because by far the most common occurrences of the Green Man are stone and wood carvings in churches, chapels, abbeys and cathedrals in Europe (particularly in Britain and France), some have seen this as evidence of the vitality of pre-Christian traditions surviving alongside, and even within, the dominant Christian mainstream. Much has been made of the boldness with which the Green Man was exhibited in early Christian churches, often appearing over main doorways, and surprisingly often in close proximity to representations of the Christ figure.

Incorporating a Green Man into the design of a medieval church or cathedral may therefore be seen as a kind of small act of faith on the part of the carver that life and fresh crops will return to the soil each spring and that the harvest will be plentiful. Pre-Christian pagan traditions and superstitions, particularly those related to nature and trees, were still a significant influence in early medieval times, as exemplified by the planting of yew trees (a prominent pagan symbol) in churchyards, and the maintenance of ancient “sacred groves” of trees.

Tree worship goes back into the prehistory of many of the cultures that directly influenced the people of Western Europe, not least the Greco-Roman and the Celtic, which is no great surprise when one considers that much of the continent of Europe was covered with vast forests in antiquity. It is perhaps also understandable that there are concentrations of Green Men in the churches of regions where there were large stretches of relict forests in ancient times, such as in Devon and Somerset, Yorkshire and the Midlands in England. The human-like attributes of trees (trunk-body, branches-arms, twigs-fingers, sap-blood), as well as their strength, beauty and longevity, make them an obvious subject for ancient worship. The Green Man can be seen as a continuing symbol of such beliefs, in much the same way as the later May Day pageants of the Early Modern period, many of which were led by the related figure of Jack-in-the-Green.

Symbol of fertility:

Although the Green Man is most often associated with spring, May Day, etc, there are also several examples which exhibit a more autumnal cast to the figure. For example, some Green Men prominently incorporate pairs of acorns into their designs (there is a good example in King's College Chapel, Cambridge), a motif which clearly has no springtime associations. In the same way, hawthorn leaves frequently appear on English Green Men (such as the famous one at Sutton Benger), and they are often accompanied by autumn berries rather than spring flowers. The Green Man in the Chapelle de Bauffremont in Dijon (one of the few to retain its original paint coloration) shows quite clearly its leaves in their autumn colours.

This may have been simple artistic license. However, acorns, partly due to their shape, were also a common medieval fertility symbol, and hawthorn is another tree which was explicitly associated with sexuality, all of which perhaps suggests a stronger link with fertility, as well as with harvest-time.

Symbol of death and rebirth:

The disgorging Green Man, sprouting vegetation from his orifices, may also be seen as a memento mori, or a reminder of the death that await all men, as well as a Pagan representation of resurrection and rebirth, as new life naturally springs out of our human remains. The Greek and Roman god Dionysus/Bacchus, often suggested as an early precursor of the Green Man, was also associated with death and rebirth in his parallel guise as Okeanus.

Several of the ancient Celtic demigods, Bran the Blessed being one of the best known, become prophetic oracles once their heads had been cut off (another variant on the theme of death and resurrection) and, although these figures were not traditionally represented as decorated with leaves, there may be a link between them and the later stand-alone Green Man heads.

There are several examples of self-consciously skull-like Green Men, with vegetation sprouting from eye-sockets, although these are more likely to be found on tombstones than as decoration in churches (good examples can be seen at Shebbear and Black Torrington in Devon, England). Such images might be interpreted as either representing rebirth and resurrection (in that the new life is growing out of death), or they might represent death and corruption (with the leaves growing parasitically through the decaying body).

The Green Man as archetype:

The very fact that images of the Green Man have appeared historically in such disparate and apparently unconnected locations have led some commentators, notably Roweena Pattee Kryder and William Anderson, to suggest that the figure is part of our collective unconscious, and represents a primeval archetype (in Jungian parlance) which is central to our relationship with Nature.

Phyllis Araneo has suggested that the appearance of the Green Man in European and worldwide art is a cyclical phenomenon triggered by times of crisis or significant change. For example, she suggests the proliferation of Green Man imagery after the 11th Century can perhaps be associated with feelings of relief and celebration after the widely predicted apocalypse of the millennium failed to materialize.

In the same way, the modern resurgence may have been triggered by the environmental crisis we are currently living through. In its modern revival, in the wake of James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis and the birth of the modern Green movement, the Green Man can be seen as the archetype of the “conservator”, whose brief is to counsel us to take from the environment only what we need to survive and to conserve the rest, and to remind us of our responsibilities for the stewardship of the natural world. A quote from Mike Harding succinctly summarizes this position: “If anything on this poisoned planet gives us hope of renewal it is this simple foliate head that has been there in one form or another since the beginning.”

-The Enigma of the Green Man - Theories and Interpretations

[emvidal]

The facade of Notre Dame de Paris,

Inscribed in a Renaissance frame, this remarkable view of Notre-Dame serves as an illustration for the ceremony of a church placed in a view, at the head of the second part of the Roman Pontifical written in 1485 by Piccolomini, Bishop of Pienza. Destined for John II de Mauléon, bishop of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, this French copy was decorated around 1523-25, probably by the Anwerso painter and illuminator Noël Bellemare, who then occupied a house on the Notre-Dame Bridge. The choice of the Parisian cathedral for this opening image reflects the eminent authority it enjoyed... Christianity.

THE SYMBOLS OF THE FACADE

Symbolism is a way of thinking and sensitivity inherent in the Middle Ages.

It meets the facade in two ways:

- Number three.

Designed in a ternary mode, the facade is divided into three parts vertically and horizontally. This number three is the symbol of the Trinity, central mystery of faith and Christian life: one God in three separate divine persons between them (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit).

- Square and circle.

Without the towers, the facade looks like a large square. In the center, the circle of the rosewood fits into a smaller square. The circle and the square are traditional primordial symbols, already widely used in the Roman churches figuring out the cosmological order according to the Christian tradition.

The square represents the Earth (the four directions of space, or cardinal points, the four seasons, the four elements: earth, water, fire, air).

The circle is a symbol of Heaven and heavenly things. At the center of the great rose of Heaven is a smaller one: this central point is God, principle and end of everything. Thus, symbolically, through a game of simple geometric figures, the facade proclaims to all the mystery of the Incarnation, a distinctive sign of the Christian faith. "The Word became flesh and dwells among us." "(John 1:14) Permitted by the "yes" of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, came to earth to save all mankind.

Enlightenment: Roman Pontifical at arms of John II de Mauléon, Bishop of Saint-Bertrand-de Comminges - Enlightenment, Christmas Bellemare, early XVI century - BnF, Ms. Latin 1226-2

[une-sanz-pluis]

For these and manie other valiauntises, noble feates, and victories, which God of his infinit goodnes daily gaue vnto him, the Prince was honnored and renound not onlie in his Realme, but also in other Realmes and quarters. He was also taken of the Kinge his father as the first and principall of his Cuntrie Councell, and as nature appeareth he was right deere and welbeloued of the Kinge, vntill such time as his fame appeared by the sinister report of some euell disposed people, wch laboured to make discension betweene the Kinge and the prince his sonn ; by reason whereof, and by th'actes of youth, which he excersised more then meanely, and for the greate recourse of people vnto him, of whom his courte was at all times more aboundant then the Kinge his father's, the Kinge suspected that he woulde vsurpe the Crowne he beinge aliue, which suspicious Jealosie was occasion that he in parte withdrewe his affeccion and singuler loue from the Prince.

But when this noble Prince was aduertised of his father's iealosie and mistrust by some his secret friends of the Kings Councell, he disguised himselfe in a gowne of blewe satten or damaske made full of iletts or holes, and at euerie ilet the needle wherewith it was made hanginge there by the thridde of silke, and about his arme he wore a doggs Collor sett full of S. S. of goulde and the terretts of the same also of fine golde. And thus apparrelled with greate Companie of Lords he came to the Kinge his father, who at that time lay at Westminster ; where at his comminge by his owne commaundement not one of his companie durst aduance himselfe further then the fire in the hall, notwithstandinge they were greatlie and ofte desired to the contrarie by the Lords and greate estats of the Kings Courte. And that the Prince had commaunded to giue the lesse occasion of mistrust to the Kinge his father ; but he himselfe accompanied of the Kings house to only passed forth to the Kinge his father, to whome after due salutacions he desired to show the intent of his minde in secrett manner. Then the Kinge caused himselfe to be borne in his chaire, (because he was diseased and might not goe) into his secrett chamber ; where in the presence of three or foure persons in whome the Kinge had his most confidence he commaunded the Prince to shewe the effect of his minde. Then the Prince kneelinge downe before his father saide to him these words : 'Most redoubted Lorde and father I ame this time come to your presence as your Liegeman, and as your sonn naturall, in all things to obey your Grace as my Soueraigne Lorde and father. And whereas I vnderstande that you haue me in suspecte of my behauour against your Grace, and that you feare I would vsurpe your Crowne against the pleasure of your highnes. Of my conuersacion your Grace knoweth that if you weare in feare of any man within your Realme of what estate soeuer he were, my duty were to the endainger of my life to punish that person, thereby to araise that sore from your harte. And then howe much rather ought I to suffer death to bringe your grace, that hath bene and yet be the most hardie and renowned Kinge of the worlde, from that feare that ye haue of me, that ame your naturall sonn and liegeman. And to that intent I haue this day by confession and by receauinge my maker prepared myselfe. And therefore most redoubted Lorde and father I desyre you in your honnor of God, for the easinge of your harte heere tofore your knees to slaye me with this dagger': (and at that worde with all reuerence he deliuered to the Kinge his dagger, sayinge) 'my Lord and father, my life is not so desirous to me that I woulde liue one daye that I shoulde be to your displeasure, nor I couet not so much my life, as I doe your pleasure and wellfare. And in your thus doinge here in the presence of those lords, and before God, and the daye of Judgement, I cleerelie forgiue you my death.' At these words of the Prince, and the Kinge taken with compassion of harte caste from him the dagger, and imbraced the Prince, and kissed him, and with effusion of teares saide vnto him : 'My right deere and hartelie beloued Sonn, it is of troth that I partlie had you in suspect, and as I now perceaue vndeserued on your part, but seeinge this your humilitie and faithfullness, I shall neither slay you nor frome hencefoorth anie more haue you in mistrust, for no reporte that shalbe made vnto me. And therefore I assure you vppon myne honnour.' And thus by his greate wisdome was the wrongfull imaginacion of his fathers hart utterlie avoyded,and himselfe restored to the Kings former grace and fauour.

Anonymous, The First English Life of Henry the Fifth, ed. C L. Kingsford, (written 1513, published Clarendon Press, 1911)

A partial modernisation can be read here. This account is believed to have been sourced from the (non-surviving) report of the Earl of Ormond, a member of Thomas, Duke of Clarence's household.

[francepittoresque]

12 septembre 1213 : bataille de Muret ➽ http://bit.ly/Bataille-Muret Elle a lieu dans le cadre de la lutte contre les Albigeois menée par l’Église catholique contre l’hérésie et oppose : d’un côté Raymond VI, comte de Toulouse, Pierre, roi d’Aragon et seigneur de Montpellier et Bernard de Comminges ; de l’autre les troupes du roi Philippe Auguste commandées par Simon de Montfort, vicomte d’Albi, de Béziers et de Carcassonne

[mothmiso]

Lauragais (2) (3) (4) by Pableauo

Via Flickr:

(1) Blé encore vert, arbres et ciel chargé, juste avant un orage. Wheat still green, trees and cloudy sky, just before a storm. (2) Un ciel menaçant, comme on les aime. A threatening sky, as I like. (3) Les alentours de Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges. The surroundings of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges. (4) La tour de la Basilique Saint Just dans le Comminges. Vue depuis la colline de Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, elle émerge au-dessus des arbres, au milieu d'une ambiance rendue verdoyante par une petite pluie plutôt inhabituelle à la mi-août. On devine le village de Barbazan au loin, dans la brume. The tower of the Saint Just Basilica in Comminges Seen from the hill of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, it emerges above the trees, in the middle of an atmosphere made green by a rather unusual little rain in mid-August. We can see the village of Barbazan in the distance, in the mist.        

[anastpaul]

Saint of the Day – 16 October – Saint Bertrand of Comminges (c1050-1123) Bishop

Saint of the Day – 16 October – Saint Bertrand of Comminges (c1050-1123) Bishop of Comminges, in the Archdiocese of Toulouse, France, Reformer – both religious and civil, Peace-maker, Miracle-worker. Born as Bertrand de l’Isle in c1050 in France and died on 16 October 1123 of natural causes. Patronage – of the Town named after him, Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, France. He was Canonised in 1222 by…

[des-paroles]

Le Comminge le temps d'une journée sait réserver quelques jolies surprises au détour d'un chemin ou d'une ruelle. Un jeune cerf élégant, un joli lac et bien sûr la rivière "je n'ai rien d'autre à faire, rien de rien...".

[philoursmars]

Nouveau retour à mon projet de présenter la plupart de mes 55500 photos (et des brouettes).  Plus trop loin du présent….  

2016. De retour de chez Christine, je passe quelques jours chez ma nièce, à Saint-Gaudens dans le Comminges (entre Toulouse et les Pyrénées)

Ici la collégiale romane (avec un joli petit monstre qui ne veut rien voir)

[misterdust]

06/05/2016 Lost in the forest II par Dust... Via Flickr : pour vivre heureux il faut vivre caché.. surtout quand T différent... déja en france, c'est compliqué mais c'est une chose quasi impossible à faire dans un petit pays comme la #Palestine notamment à #Gaza, plus grande prison à ciel ouvert au monde, régulièrement bombardée par israël... #apartheid #genocide tranquille.... 

 to live happily, you have to live hidden... especially when you're different... In France, it's already complicated, but it's almost impossible to do in a small country like Palestine, especially in Gaza, the biggest open-air prison in the world, regularly bombed by Israel... 

 para vivir feliz, hay que vivir escondido... sobre todo cuando se es diferente... En Francia ya es complicado, pero es casi imposible hacerlo en un país pequeño como Palestina, sobre todo en Gaza, la mayor cárcel al aire libre del mundo, bombardeada regularmente por Israel... 

[histoireettralala]

Expansion of the royal domain

The way in which the kingdom was ruled in its different provinces had always varied according to the degree that power had been permanently or temporarily devolved to apanage princes and great nobles or that representative assemblies continued to function. It is therefore axiomatic that there was no 'system of government' in the France of the Renaissance. The question is: was there a tendency for the kingdom to become more centralised? R. Bonney has wisely cautioned against the over-use in French history of the term 'centralisation', a term coined in 1794. The main distinction drawn in the early modern period, as Mousnier made clear, was that between the king's 'delegated' and 'retained' justice, the latter covering all the public affairs of the kingdom in which the crown was supreme and the former the private affairs of his subjects. No one would pretend, however, that a clear line of division was ever established between the two.

If we consider the case of the apanages and' great fiefs, for instance, the century from the reign of Louis XI is usually considered definitive in their suppression. In 1480, there were around 80 great fiefs. By 1530 around half of these still existed. The rest were in abeyance or held by members of the royal family. Within the royal house, the apanage of Orleans was reunited to the crown on the accession of Louis XII, although thereafter used periodically for the endowment of the king's younger son, permanently so after the reign of Louis XIV. The complex of territories held by the Bourbon and Bourbon-Montpensier families fell by the treason of the Constable in 1523. Burgundy (and temporarily Artois and Franche-Comté) were taken over in 1477. Among the great fiefs, the county of Comminges was united to the crown on the death of count Mathieu de Foix in 1453, the domains of the Armagnacs (such as the county of Rodez) were confiscated on the destruction of Jean V at Lectoure in 1473. They found their way by the reign of Francis I into the hands of the royal family, through the marriage of Jean V's sister to the count of Alençon. The last Alençon duke, Charles, married Francis I's sister, Marguerite of Angoulême, and Alençon's sister, Françoise, married duke Charles of Vendôme, grandfather of Henry IV. Brittany was acquired through war and marriage alliance in the 1490s, Provence and the domains of the house of Anjou after the death of king René and then of Charles d'Anjou in 1481. The archives of the Chambre des comptes of Anjou for the early 1480s give ample evidence of the king's determination to exploit his new acquisition as soon as possible.

It should not be assumed that the crown pursued a consistent determination to lay hands on all these territories and rule them directly. There was usually a more or less lengthy period of adjustment to a new status. Some apanages and territories taken over by Louis XI were absorbed into the general administration of the rest of the kingdom. This was clearly the case with Burgundy and Picardy-Artois in 1477, both of them in the area under the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris. Yet even here, Louis XI had to tread warily in winning over the support of the regional nobility and discontent was apt to break out until the end of the fifteenth century. On Louis's death, for instance, a rising occurred in Picardy at Bertrancourt near Doullens, with cries of 'there is no longer a king in France, long live Burgundy!' The absorption of Artois proved to be an impossible undertaking and had to be renounced in 1493.

Elsewhere, absorption of apanages that were distant from the centre of royal power left affairs locally much as they had been before. The little Pyreneen county of Comminges was governed much as it had been under its counts, with privileges confirmed by Charles VIII in 1496. Only with the work of royal commissioners in the tax-assessing process in the 1540s, the first time an outside power had actively intervened in the affairs of the local nobility, did this begin to change. Auvergne, an apanage raised to a duchy in 1360, was confirmed to the Bourbons in 1425 on condition that their whole domain became an apanage. The duchy was confiscated from the Constable in 1523 but transferred by the king to his mother in 1527 and only absorbed into the royal domain in 1531. Even after that, it formed the dower of Charles IX's queen and then part of the apanage of François d'Anjou, his brother. In the contiguous county of Forez, also confiscated in 1523, little local opposition emerged to the change of regime; although the local chambre des comptes was shortly suppressed, most local judicial officials, along with the entire administrative structure, were retained. Except for a few partisans of the Constable, it seems that there was no great upheaval. Louise de Bourbon, the Constable's sister and princess of La Roche-sur-Yon, demanded a share of the inheritance - Forez, Beaujolais and Dombes. Beaujolais and the principality of Dombes eventually went to Louise's son, Montpensier.

The county of Auvergne, enclaved in the duchy, was held by the duke of Albany in his wife's name, and was then inherited from the last of the La Tour d'Auvergne family by Catherine de Medici. Catherine brought it to the crown by her marriage with Henri II in 1533 but she continued to administer it as her own property. She left it to Charles IX's bastard, Charles de Valois, but her daughter Marguerite made good her claim to it in 1606 and it only entered the royal domain definitively when she willed it to Louis XIII.

After her marriage to Charles VIII in 1491, Brittany was administered as her own property by queen Anne, technically still duchess but in reality sharply circumscribed in her power, until her husband's death restored some of her freedom of action in 1498. Having already established friendly relations with Louis XII when he was still duke of Orleans, she was prepared to accept his offer of marriage after the annulment of his marriage to Louis Xl's daughter, Jeanne, had been agreed. The contract which accompanied the marriage in January 1499 tied the duchy to the crown provisionally on condition that it always passed to the second son of the marriage, while in the absence of issue the duchy was to revert to Anne's heirs on her own side. Anne was able to act rather more independently during her marriage to Louis XII though the conditions of the contract were not observed. On her death Brittany was inherited by her elder daughter Claude, wife of Francis I, who transmitted her rights to her son the dauphin. The queen had, however, transferred the government of the duchy to her husband in 1515 and he continued to rule it in the name of his son François on Claude's death, entitling acts as 'legitime administrateur et usufructuaire' of his son's property. When the dauphin's majority in 1532 brought the question of the imminent personal union of the duchy to the kingdom to the foreground, it was arranged for the Breton estates to 'request' full union with France but on terms which guaranteed Breton privileges and maintained the principle that the dauphin would be duke of Brittany. Only in 1536, on the death of the dauphin, was the union with the kingdom complete and no more dukes were crowned at Rennes. What had been done was the annulment of the Breton succession law, which included females, in favour of the French royal succession law. Late in 1539, it was decided that the new dauphin Henri would have the government of Brittany 'to govern as he pleases', though the documents were delayed by the king's illness. A 'Declaration' transferring Brittany to Henri was drawn up in 1540. In practice, the government of the duchy seems not to have been much changed.

The lands of the house of France-Anjou posed a complex problem. René of Anjou, titular king of Jerusalem, Sicily, Aragon and Naples, was count of Provence in his own right, of Maine and Anjou as apanagiste and Guise by succession. As early as 1478, Louis was scheming to ensure that king René, who had no surviving son, did not leave his territories of Anjou, Provence and Bar to his grandson, René II of Lorraine, warning the general of Languedoc that his region would be 'destroyed' if Provence fell into other hands. On the 'good' king's death in 1480, most of his domains passed to his cousin Charles IV d'Anjou, count of Maine, who died childless in 1481, when Maine and Anjou reverted to the crown, thereafter to be granted out to members of the royal family such as Louise of Savoy. At the same time Provence was acquired by Louis XI by Charles IV's will and the county of Guise was disputed between the houses of Armagnac-Nemours, Lorraine (heirs of René I of Anjou and successors as titular kings of Jerusalem and Sicily) and Pierre de Rohan, marshal de Gié. From 1481, however, the king ruled in Provence as 'count of Provence and Forcalquier'. The lord of Soliès, Palamède de Forbin, who had persuaded Charles d'Anjou to leave the county to the king, was rewarded with the post of governor. The major change came in 1535 with the edicts of Joinville and Is-sur-Tille on the government of Provence, limiting the scope of the old institutions of the Estates and the Sénéchal and increasing that of the Parlement of Aix in justice and of the royal governor in administration. Curiously, Francis I was reported as having said that he felt an obligation to 'ceux de Guise', the house of Lorraine in France, since Louis XI had despoiled them of their inheritance of Provence and Anjou.

The major surviving complex of apanage lands by the middle of the sixteenth century was that held by Antoine de Bourbon, now first prince of the blood and next in line to the throne after the immediate royal family, and his wife Jeanne d'Albret. These involved a group of territories held by different tenures. The Albret inheritance brought the titular kingship of Navarre with a small fragment of the ancient kingdom of Navarre north of the Pyrénées that was held in sovereignty. In the counties of Foix, Albret and Béarn, the family held effective sway under only the most distant royal sovereignty, though Louis XI saw fit to pose as the protector of the young François-Phébus in 1472. In 1476, he sought to revise local tariffs against Albret interests and in 1480 attempts to levy a taille for the gendarmerie there stirred up a rebellion. In western France, the duchy of Vendôme, erected as late as 1515 to detach it from dependence on the duchy of Anjou, was held as an apanage under rather closer royal supervision. In the north, the complex of lands administered from La Fère-sur-Oise and centring the county of Marle was held directly of the king or of the Habsburg ruler of the Netherlands, rendering the family, to some, unreliable. Practical power stemmed from the holding of the governorships of Picardy and of Guyenne by the Bourbons and Henri d'Albret.

Other independent territories persisted, such as the vicomté of Turenne, where the vicomte (of the La Tour d'Auvergne family) ruled with regalian rights until the eighteenth century, could raise taxes, coin money, make war and render justice as a limited monarch in conjunction with very active local estates.

David Potter - A History of France, 1460-1560- The Emergence of a Nation State

[derniererondeavantlanuit-blog]

La basilique Saint-Just de Valcabrère au premier plan et la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges