I first came across the 15th century writer, Georges Chastelain, in a book on the Scottish writer William Dunbar. The author – Tom Scott was it? – thought that William Dunbar’s ‘aureate diction’ poems enrolled him amongst the ‘grand rhetoriquers’ still in ascendency in France in William Dunbar’s time.
And then, of course, there is the hugely influential The Waning of the Middle Ages/ The Autumn of the Middle Ages, by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. This book mines Georges Chastelain’s Chronicles for its first-hand depictions of the period.
So here are a few things to clarify.
Firstly, who were the ‘grand rhetoriquers’ ? Georges Chastelain seems to have been the person that the group formed around. They consisted of George Chatelain’s successor as Chronicler, Jean Molinet, and … well ,Wiki lists them as
Georges Chastellain (1415–1474)
Jean Molinet (1435–1507)
Jean Marot (1450–1526) father of Clément Marot
Jean Meschinot (1420–1491) (active from 1450 to 1490)
Jean Robertet (active from 1460 to 1500)
Guillaume Crétin (1461–1525)
Jean Lemaire de Belges (1473–1516)
Jean Bouchet (1476–1555)
André de La Vigne (active from 1485 to 1515)
Octavien de Saint-Gelays (active from 1490 to 1505)
Jean d’Auton (active from 1499 to 1528)
Pierre Gringore (1475–1538) (active from 1500 to 1535)
The following poets are sometimes also grouped with the rhétoriqueurs:
Guillaume Alexis (active from 1450 to 1490)
Jeacques Millet (active from 1450 to 1466)
Henri Baude (active from 1460 to 1495)
Jean Castel (active from 1460 to 1480)
Roger de Collerye (1470–1538)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grands_Rhétoriqueurs
They are known for their ‘high style’ writing and subject matter. ‘High style’ meant use of ornate diction, Latinisms, but also experiments with rhyme schemes, assonance, puns, and also with typography, font size.
Secondly, The Autumn of the Middle Ages is now a classic social history text that draws its details of exuberant and festive life from the chronicles of the period, most notably those of Georges Chastelain of the life and funeral of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy.
For more on Philip the Good, the lavish, self-styled, ‘grand-duke of the West’, see
https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/24-how-philip-the-good-promoted-himself-to-grand-duke-of-the-west
We have a few dates for the life of Georges Chastelain: born in 1415, and died 1475. He is recorded as attending the University of Louvain between 1430 to 1432.
– What initially drew me the study of history was the gaps, the lives of people unrecorded between the dates of the famous. Consider our daily ups and downs, our months and years. Their lives were the same. James Joyce’s Ulysses sought to play with this Idea. It is all our lives.
Graeme Smalls’ meticulously researched great book George Chastelain and the Shaping of Valois Burgundy, (The Royal Historical Society. The Boydell Press. Published 1997) goes a long way to filling in George Chastelain’s gaps.
We learn from internal evidence that he was born in Aalst, Flanders, about 1414/5. His family were merchants; at one point they owned their own ship. He schooled in and around Ghent, and was destined for the family business. He inherited money at one point, but his mercantile skill were… not good, and lost most of the inheritance.
Ok, we cannot document his days, but Graeme Small goes a long way to unearthing traces, fragments, records, of his places of being and doing.
Was he the first of his family to go to university ? It is suggested so, the family reputation would have rested upon him. He had other siblings, part of the family business; but reputation also meant civic position and honour, fame if you like. And so when he dropped out of Louvain University after two years… you can imagine the home atmosphere. His two years there, though, did prove crucial to his later career (and it was a bit of a ‘career’ around France and Flanders at first), providing priceless contacts with noble’s sons.
Back with the family business he and two other brothers inherited money. His mercantile skills however lost his own portion rather quickly. And so his career began. It was around this time also that his first known writing was done: L’oultre d’amour. His later work Le throne azure was a further advance in his writing mastery.
The sudden career hiatus was a good time to catch up with contacts; he rode in campaigns around France and Burgundy for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. A meeting with Pierre de Beze proved to be a life-saver. All this did not go unnoticed by campaign leaders. He became a dependable and loyal name to be called upon.
– Riding skills must have been taught to merchant sons – how wide-spread was horse owning ? What levels of society had access to horses and the training ?
I do wonder about sword-skills, though. Where and how did he gain those ?
Then came the Treaty of Arras, and that put paid to ten years of campaigning. And so to his career. He journeyed to France, and became part of the Burgundian contingent at the French court.
Contacts, contacts, that will prove vital later.
Especially as the growing power-tensions between ducal and royal courts grew, and demanded choosing of sides. Georges returned to the duke of Burgundy.
For this loyalty he was rewarded with a position in the ducal court.
As a dependable, he became a very useful conduit between the Burgundians and the Royal Court, in effect an ambassador. This role became his own.
The fall of Constantinople had wide-ranging consequences. Crusade was called, and Philip of Burgundy was determined to be in with the leaders. This meant a drastic cut-back on expenses, and many of his entourage were laid off.
A crusade takes an age to organise, and then the Pope died. It all fell apart.
Georges Chastelain had been retained, due to ‘his proven ability to write … Chastelain’s career after 1457 was built on a skill which the aspirant – an adept, of necessity, in the art of pleasing the prince – had gleaned from his new court peers and nurtured as his pastime.‘ (Graeme Smalls)
He knew his man, and the duke’s own literary ambitions especially. And so when the duke’s daughter was to be married, Georges celebrated the union with a special piece, Complainte d’Hector.
And it worked.
It took Philip’s fancy, and there was a court performance before the literary luminary Charles d’Orleans, ascendent after his return from long English arrest.
Charles gave Georges his ‘blessing’ so to speak, and a bond was created, and Georges’ subsequent works were contained in Charles’ collections of contemporary’s writings.
The position of Chronicler was very appealing to Philip’s reputation ambitions. This was to be Georges’ own role.
The model was Froissart, an impossible target perhaps.
The French court had their own Chronicler, and now the Burgundian court had their own.
With Georges’s proven diplomatic background, his literary accomplishments, and his ongoing ambassadorial work between both camps, he was ideally positioned for the work.
Correspondence still exists between both Chroniclers, and an expanding group of literary people. They would engage in literary challenges, audacious word games, puns, and the alpha-male (because, yes, that’s how they were comprised) competing that can nurture the best work.
Following the death of Philip the Good, Georges Chastelain was kept on as Chronicler by the very different Burgundian duke, Charles the Bold.
His remit was more relaxed, open, and allowed space and time for more personal works.
He lived in Valenciennes, rather than in-court. For a description of his living quarters there, see my earlier post:
https://wordpress.com/post/michael9murray.wordpress.com/10009
He was knighted for his services.
The merchant’s son who failed, drifted, had won through to a position of nobility and fame.
His Chronicles walked a very fine line between two touchy powers, both highly conscious of their reputation and how they were perceived.
George Chastelain and the Language of Burgundian Historiography, by Rolf Strom-Olsen, an article in French Studies journal, explores the ways he wrote to tip the balance in favour of the duke of Burgundy without upsetting the French court. A very tricky and delicate achievement.
You can see how fortunes rose and fell continually and suddenly throughout the period. Georges was very much a survivor.
*
Graeme Small’s book is excellent on its diligence and style, but although he liberally quotes from the writing, Chronicles, and correspondence
He Does Not Translate !
This is frustrating, maddening. We are brought so far towards the works of the arch Grand Rhetoriquer… and no further.
One of Georges’ works is available on project gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44162
but still no translation.
We perhaps have an excerpt translated from a Chronicle in Vanished Kingdoms, by Professor Norman Davies (Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, by Norman Davies. Published by Penguin, 2012.
ISBN-10 : 0141048867
: The remains of Duke Philip … were placed in a closed leaden coffin weighing more than 240 pounds. A cloth of gold measuring thirty-two ells and lined with black satin covered the coffin. Twelve Archers of the Guard carried [it], [while] the pall of gold cloth … was held by sixteen grand barons … A canopy of golden cloth mounted on four large spikes was a borne (sic) aloft by four Burgundian noblemen: the counts of Joigny, Bouquan, and Blancquehain, and the seigneur of Chastelgnion. Directly behind … walking alone was Meriadez, the Master of the Horse … [and] the principal director of the funeral. [He] carried the ducal sword of his late master in its richly ornate sheath, pointed down towards the ground.
from Edward Tabri, quoted in Vanished Kingdoms/ Burgundia
Graeme Smalls shows us how the Chronicler ‘built’ the duke of Burgundy for future generations. Why Philip ‘the Good’ ? For similar reasons. Georges Chastelain presented Philip as spotless, the supreme leader, virtuous, wise ….
It was the style in which he wrote his Chronicles that is as important as what he relates.
If we compare the deliberately plain style of Latin of Geoffrey of Tours in his History of the Franks (although I find the translated work vigorous at times ie not plain but lively), and also Jean Froissart’s French in his Chronicles (a more homely language, less lively, with the author more to to fore), we see a glorying in embellishment in George Chastelain. He is writing in a way that expresses Burgundian ascendency.
And yet it was a one-off achievement. Each group of emergent stylists often spurn their predecessors, but also absorb.
You would think that Johan Huizinga may help us out here with translations. He writes that Georges Chastelain’s ‘… ornate style has something of an elephantine clumsiness about it …‘. (page 342 ibid). For all his comments it was Johan Huizinga who rescued the Chronicles.
We need to ‘place’ George Chastelain in the literary chronology of the culture and region, and I don’t mean just Burgundy, or Flanders.
After Alain Chartier we find a burgeoning of writers, first-most must surely be Christina de Pisan, with Eustace Deschamps, but even that generation was topped by the achievements of Charles d’Orleans, Clement Marot, and the underworld greatness of Francois Villon breaking with rhe moral-heavy subject matter.
There could not be a greater difference between the works of this generation and the artificial and ornate diction of Georges Chastelain and the Grand Rhetiqueurs.
So it is no surprise to find that they in turn were followed by the intimacies of Pierre de Ronsard and the Pleiade Group, and Joachim du Bellay.
It may be that this ornate style was very much a passing characteristic of the Baroque period. I call in support the Spanish poet Luis de Gongora.
Graeme Small’s book further discusses for whom the Chronicle was written, its intended audience, the resources used, and its reception. A very thorough book, and all the better for that, full of layered detail: ‘thick description’.
The Chronicles as they have come down to us, however, are by now very incomplete, fragmentary.
If anyone would like to read deeper into the period and the man, try
https://www.unifr.ch/mediaevum/fr/assets/public/files/veranstaltungen/freiburger_colloquien/2023_freiburger_colloquium/abstracts/Mühlethaler_Abstract_eng_fr.pdf
michael9murray 