Guillaume III. Roger de Beaufort

Guillaume III. Roger and his father out on the hunt ( Papal Palace in Avignon ), Chambre du cerf (Deer Room), Robin de Romans , 14th century

Guillaume III. Roger de Beaufort (* 1332 ; † March 26, 1395 in Paris), Vice Count of Turenne , son of Marie de Chambon and Guillaume II. Roger , Vicomte de Lamothe et de Valernes , Comte de Beaufort et d ' Alès , was the nephew of Pope Clement VI and the brother of Pope Gregory XI. who both resided in Avignon .

The castle of the Viscounts de Turenne

Remparts de Pertuis in the 14th century after a drawing by Métois

Life

A prestigious marriage

Guillaume married Aliénor de Comminges , fourth daughter of Bernard VIII, Count of Comminges , and Mathé de l'Isle-Jourdain. In anticipation of this marriage, Guillaume III was. on November 28, 1349 by his father declared of legal age and received all fiefs of the Count of Beaufort in Languedoc and half of the Vice-County of Valernes. On the marriage contract between Guillaume III. and Aliénor, who was set up in Narbonne on December 15, 1349 , was followed by a marriage by proxy ( par procuration ). At the official marriage on February 7, 1350, Clemens VI. It is important to the young couple to give the Vice-County of Turenne, one of the most prestigious and richest fiefs in the Limousin, into their possession .

Queen Joan I of Naples , Countess of Provence , had received absolution from the Pope after the murder of her first husband Andrew of Hungary and thanked him for it by giving his family fiefs and titles. In this context, she made the Viscount de Turenne Grand Chamberlain of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1351, and in January 1352 she gave him the dominions of Pertuis , les Pennes , Meyrargues and Séderon . It was his uncle Hugues Roger , the Cardinal von Tulle , who gave him his other dominions in Languedoc and Velay between 1351 and 1353 .

The confidante of the Valois

According to the clauses of the Treaty of Brétigny , signed on May 8, 1360, the Vice-County of Turenne became English. But it wasn't until March 8, 1361 that Guillaume agreed to pay homage to the King of England. Loyalty to the Valois family was a constant in his life. It was confirmed in the autumn of 1365 when the Viscount took part in the crusade against Alexandria (1365) under the leadership of Peter I of Cyprus . He set out in the company of Jean de la Rivière , the first chamberlain to the King of France, and Philippe de Mézières , then Chancellor of the King of Cyprus and later advisor to Charles V.

Guillaume was valued at the French court, but also at the imperial court. On December 8, 1373, Emperor Charles IV , an uncle of the King of France, enfeoffed him with the Tuscan city ​​of Chiusi and the castles, cities and lands that are dependent on the Diocese of Chiusi : Monteleone , Montegabbione , Sarteano , Cetona , Chianciano , Piegaro , Panicale , Paciano , Monticchiello , Camporsevolo, Castiglione del Lago , as well as everything that was under the jurisdiction of Cortona .

On January 28, 1374 Guillaume III. Roger de Beaufort in Avignon was appointed guardian of his granddaughter Alix des Baux by Nicola Spinelli , Seneschal of Provence for Queen Johanna .

When the English and French had agreed in March [1375] to open negotiations in Bruges , Gregory XI instructed. his brother Guillaume and both cousins Guillaume de Lestranges , Bishop of Carpentras , to attend. Charles V in turn sent his brother Philip the Bold , Duke of Burgundy , Edward III. of England was represented by his son John of Gaunt .

In the same year, on October 28th, Guillaume III entered. the rights of use to his vice-county to his son Raymond de Turenne . From then on, the vice-count title was actually held by Guillaume and Raymond de Turenne.

Rector of the Comtat Venaissin and Captain General of the Sénéchaussée de Beaucaire

His brother Gregory XI. handed over to him before his return to Rome (1376) the office of rector of the Comtat Venaissin with seat in the papal palace in Sorgues . On October 19, the Viscount de Turenne officially appeared at a reception in Carpentras and settled in his Rector's Palace, which he decorated with magnificent tapestries. The Viscount held this office until Clement VII returned to Avignon.

The Château de Portes in Portes (Gard) , one of the fiefdoms of the Roger de Beaufort in Languedoc

Then he settled in his fortress in Bagnols-sur-Cèze . In 1382 and 1383, the Cevennes , then the part of Languedoc on the Rhône, experienced the Tuchin uprising , which spread from the Auvergne. At the end of January 1382, the tax policy of Jean de Valois, duc de Berry , brought the Tuchins to new followers throughout the Languedoc. In order to oppose them, the Seneschal Enguerrand d'Eudin appointed the Viscount de Turenne as captain general of the Sénéchaussée de Beaucaire et de Nîmes.

Guillaume Roger de Beaufort tried to convince the Duke of Berry to convene the three estates of Languedoc in order to obtain the necessary funds for the fight against the Tuchins. The Estates General finally met in September 1382 in the castle of Alès . With the financial help he now had, Guillaume was able to raise new troops, which he concentrated in his seigneurie Bagnols-sur-Cèze .

Since Thibaud de Budos had contested his fiefdom and the Château de Portes since 1383, the Viscount did not hesitate to recruit Tuchins himself through Jean Coq, his captain in Bagnols, to fight against him. Together with Raymond de Turenne they managed to hit a blow that banished the leaders of the Tuniques Blanches . The unity of the Tuchinat was broken and the conditions for an armistice together. Indeed, in February 1383, a peace signed by the Assembly of Municipalities in Alès, chaired by Guillaume Roger de Beaufort, ended the uprising.

The pillage of his Provencal fiefdom

On March 8, 1383, Guillaume Roger de Beaufort, despite his loyalty to Louis I. d'Anjou , a. a. Count of Provence, and his wife Marie de Blois , contested his Provencal fiefs, in particular Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and Les Baux . His reaction was unusual: he left his duties in Languedoc to work alongside Charles VI. of France to participate in the war in Flanders. The Viscount joined the royal army in Orléans on August 13, 1383 . With six squires and fifty-three riders from his hotel he took part in the ride to Bourbourg . Only four years later, on June 23, 1387, did he evade his duty of obedience. He made an alliance with Raymond II d'Agoult. It was said that this agreement between the great and powerful men Messire Raymond d'Agoult, Seigneur de Sault and Vicomte de Reillanne, and Messire Guillaume Roger was Vicomte de Turenne, signed for them and for their parents, friends and servants , the The aim of this union was to get the regent Marie de Blois to return her goods and fiefs to the allies in the previous state.

It was only a flash in the pan, however, since Marie de Blois met her council on July 19, 1387. This meeting was attended by Jean Lefèvre , Bishop of Chartres and Chancellor of the Regent, Artaud de Mélan, Bishop of Sisteron and Bartolomeo de Giudici, Bishop of Ventimiglia , Raymond d'Agoult and Guillaume Roger de Beaufort, who have now ended their alliance.

On August 9, 1390, the Viscount, heir of the late Guillaume II Roger, bequeathed his brother Nicolas Roger de Beaufort Chambon and Rosiers to his son, who had switched to the English side, on the condition not to pass them on to Jean de Limeuil.

Guillaume left Provence and retired to Paris. When he refused to accept that his son refused to marry his granddaughter Antoinette de Turenne to Charles d'Anjou, the youngest son of Marie de Blois, he stopped eating. The Viscount wrote his will on March 26, 1395 and died two days later. He was buried in one of the chapels of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral.

The descendants of the Viscount de Turenne

The viscount had five children. His four daughters were married very well. Jeanne, the eldest, married Raymond des Baux, Count of Avellino ( House Les Baux ), Aliénor married Édouard II, Seigneur de Beaujeu ( House Albon ); Marguerite married Armand de Polignac ( House of Polignac ), and Cécile married Louis de Poitiers, Comte de Valentinois ( House of Poitiers-Valentinois ).

His son Raymond de Turenne (1352-1413) distinguished himself as a papal captain in Italy and followed Juan Fernández de Heredia as captain general in the Comtat Venaissin . The Viscount de Turenne let him, arms in hand, contest the plundering of his fiefs in Provence, which in 1380/1390 was one of the most important private wars between Roger de Beaufort, Marie de Blois, Countess of Provence, and Popes Clement VII. And Benedict XIII. triggered.

Remarks

1. ↑ Known in Tuscany under the name Villata , Guglielmo di Beaufort kept his fiefdom for only six years before he sold it to Cione di Sandro Salimbene for 20,000 gold florins . When Wenceslaus of Luxembourg , King of the Romans and son of Emperor Charles IV, wanted to be officially recognized as his father's successor on the imperial throne in 1378, he turned to Gregory XI, and in order to have some prospect of success with the Pope, the since the golden bull had lost the right to intervene in the election of the emperor, the heir asked, among other things, for the support of the viscount.
2. ↑ Some of these tapestries are now in the European museums of Limerick , Glasgow , Amsterdam and Lugano . Others are on display overseas, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, and the Alistair Bradley Martin Collection at the Brooklyn Museum ( The Tapestries of the Hunt Museum in Limerick ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) 
3. ↑ According to Pierre Flandin-Bléty, this command would have been carried out very poorly by the Viscount de Turenne, who appealed to the delegates of the three Sénéchaussées (Beaucaire, Carcassonne and Toulouse) that met in February 1383. These called for the king's military intervention (cf. Trahison ou pacification? À propos d'une rémission de 1389 , 111th Congrès national des Sociétés savantes, Poitiers, 1986). In November 1382 he was also accused of having lodged in Bagnols Bernard Regis, Vachon, Verchiere and Étienne Augier, called Ferragut, the captains of the Tuchins and their "Tuniques Blanches", who marched with music and unfurled banners. The Viscount even entered into a dialogue with Verchiere, a former officer of his father's, and invited his companions to drink a cup of wine in his hotel (cf. Vincent Challet, Au miroir du Tuchinat, relations sociales et réseaux de solidarités dans les communautés languedociennes à la fin du XIVe siècle , Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales, 2003. online )
4. ↑ He was the adopted son of Queen Joan I of Naples
5. ↑ This essay is written in Provencal and is in the archives of the Bouches-du-Rhône department under No. B 589
6. ↑ . See R. Veydarier, Raymond de Turenne, la deuxième maison d'Anjou et de Provence: étude d'une rébellion nobiliaire à la fin du Moyen Âge , Thesis at the University of Montreal (Quebec), 1994.
7. ↑ See Journal de Jean Le Fèvre, évêque de Chartres, chancelier des rois de Sicile Louis 1er et Louis II d'Anjou , ed. by Henri Moranvillé, Paris, 1887.

literature

• Ch. Justel, Histoire généalogique de la Maison de Turenne, Preuves , Volumes 1 and 2, Paris, 1645.
• Charles Cottier, Notes historiques concernant les recteurs du ci-devant Comté Venaissin , Carpentras, 1808
• JF André, Histoire du gouvernement des Recteurs dans le Comtat , Carpentras, 1847.
• A. Vayssière, Documents relatifs à l'histoire de la maison de Turenne , Bulletin de la Société scientifique, historique et archéologique de la Corrèze, 1885.
• C. Faure, L'entrée du recteur Guillaume de Beaufort, vicomte de Turenne, à Carpentras , Mélanges archéologique et historique, 1906.
• C. Faure, Études sur l'administration et l'histoire du Comtat Venaissin du XIIIe au XIVe siècle (1229–1417) , Paris-Avignon, 1909.
• T. Pataki, Hommages rendus au vicomte de Turenne (1350–1351) , Bulletin de la Société scientifique, historique et archéologique de la Corrèze, 1969.
• LD Denoix, Études et documents sur les Turenne du XIVe au XVe siècle , Bulletin de la Société scientifique, historique et archéologique de la Corrèze, 1975.
• Jean-Pierre Saltarelli, Les véritables portraits de Clément VI, Grégoire XI et des Roger de Beaufort, vicomtes de Turenne? , Bulletin de la Société scientifique, historique et archéologique de la Corrèze, 2006.