Geoffroy de Charny
Geoffroy de Charny (also Geoffroi de Charny ; * around 1300 ; † September 19, 1356 in the Battle of Maupertuis ) was a French knight, lord of Lirey , Montfort and Savoisy and, among other works, author of the knight's mirror Le livre de Chevalerie . He and his second wife Jeanne de Vergy were the first verifiable owners of the Turin Shroud .
Life
Early years
He came from a not very wealthy family and did not have a significant fief until his death. He had inherited Lirey near Troyes in Champagne no later than 1319 from his father Jean de Charny et Mont-St.-Jean, who brought his mother Margarete de Joinville as a dowry into the marriage. His grandfather Jean de Joinville was confidante and biographer of the holy King Louis IX. The name-like Knight Templar Geoffroy de Charnay, who was burned at the stake in 1314, was his uncle according to the genealogical research of Noel Currer-Briggs . His first marriage was to Jeanne de Toucy, mistress of Pierre-Perthuis, and after her death, he was married to Jeanne de Vergy. Around 1320 Charny was knighted .
Since then, his life has been shaped by his involvement in the Hundred Years War between England and France. In 1337 he served King Philippe VI. and fought against the English troops in Gascony . He was captured that same year and released after paying a ransom.
After the armistice of 1342 he took part in the crusade enterprise of Dauphin Humbert II of Vienne in 1345 . When the war with the English flared up again, Charny took part in the fighting again from 1346, but was not personally present at the French defeat at the Battle of Crécy . Instead, he was involved in the defense of Béthune .
Advancement in royal service
In the following years his reputation in France increased. So the king gave him the ultimately fruitless negotiations with the English. In 1347 he was entrusted with the Oriflamme . He carried this battle standard of the French king before the army for the relief of Calais . The enterprise failed and the city fell into the hands of the English. This was not accused of Geoffrey de Charny, rather he was in January 1348 by King Philip VI. accepted into the Privy Council and received a house in Paris as a gift from the king . In 1349 he was again captured by the English and brought to England. King John II paid a ransom of 12,000 Goldécus for him in 1351 and brought him back to France.
Le livre de Chevalerie
King John saw in Charny a suitable personality to support him in founding the Star Order , into which he was accepted on January 6, 1352. Charny has drawn up the statutes for this new knightly order. Last but not least, this knightly order should serve to renew French chivalry after the defeats of recent years. However, its lifespan was short. Already in 1356 it ceased to exist before it was officially dissolved in 1364.
Charny had already put down his interpretation of the knight ideal in writing. The book was probably written during the time of captivity in 1350 and 1351. It is written in French. Only two copies have survived. The book was intended to provide practical instruction to knights. In addition to behavior in war, it also contained information about court life. In addition, it should also propagate the ideals of chivalry.
In his book Livre de chevalerie he wrote about the ideal typical goal of a knight: “What more can a knight ask than what Judas Maccabeus, the warrior of God, achieved: fame in this world and redemption in the hereafter.” His work was influenced by comparable writings. But the Arthurian legend also played a role. Charny also wrote two other writings.
Late years and death
After the foundation of the Star Order in 1352, Charny took on diplomatic tasks again. For taking the Vermandois , he received the fief of Montfort and Savoisy in 1355. On June 25, 1355, King John the Good reappointed him as the bearer of the Oriflamme and gave him a mansion in Paris and a country house in Ville-l'Évêque outside the walls of the capital as proof of the satisfaction of his services . With the oriflamme in hand, Geoffroy de Charny fell on September 19, 1356 during the last attack in the Battle of Maupertuis against the English. According to the chronicler Jean Froissart , the English knight Reginald, Lord Cobham , is said to have killed him. He was buried in a nearby Franciscan monastery.
Turin Shroud
The owners of what is now known as the Turin Shroud can be traced back to Geoffroy de Charny and his wife Jeanne de Vergy. How they came into possession of the cloth is not yet known.
On April 16, 1349 Geoffrey de Charny wrote to Pope Clement VI. and informed him of his intention to found a church with five canons in Lirey, the small village of his fief (1975: 59 inhabitants), which was granted to him by the Pope. His capture by the English in the same year delayed the founding of the monastery until July 1, 1353, for which he received an annual pension from King John the Good. The small, wooden, collegiate church Ste. Marie was finally consecrated in 1356, just a few months before Charny’s death, after Pope Innocent VI had already died on August 3, 1354 . Indulgence granted to pilgrims attending Lirey Church. The shroud was first exhibited in this little church around 1355/1357. The exact date is not known, nor is it known whether this took place shortly before or after Geoffroy de Charny's death. What has been preserved, however, is a small pilgrim medallion that was found in Paris in the mud of the Seine in 1855, on which the cloth and the coats of arms of Geoffroy de Charny and his second wife Jeanne de Vergy are depicted. The Bishop of Troyes, Henri de Poitiers (of the House of Poitiers-Valentinois ), mentioned in a letter of May 28, 1356 “the pious devotion of the knight [Geoffroy] with which he venerated the cloth to this day and every day more venerated ”and on June 5, 1357 twelve bishops of the Holy See in Avignon granted indulgences to all those who visit the church at Lirey and its relics and pray for the souls of the knight Geoffroy and his first wife Jeanne de Toucy.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joachim Ehlers: The knights: history and culture. Beck, Munich, 2006, ISBN 3-406-50892-8 , p. 14.
- ↑ Thomas Johnes (Ed.): Sir Jean Froissart's Chronicles of England, Spain, France etc. Henry G. Bohn, London 1857, Volume I, p. 223, ( archive.org ).
- ↑ Ian Wilson: The Turin Shroud. Goldmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-442-15010-8 , p. 378.
literature
- Richard W. Kaeuper, Elspeth Kennedy, Geoffroi de Charny: The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation . University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8122-1579-6 . (limited online version of Google Books)
- Rainer Lanz: The ideal of knights and the reality of war in the late Middle Ages: The Duchy of Burgundy and France. Diss. Zurich, 2005, pp. 39–50. (Digitized version)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Geoffroy de Charny |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Geoffroi de Charny |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French knight and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1300 |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 19, 1356 |
| Place of death | at Poitiers |