[35] A. A. Hentsch, De la littérature du moyen âge s’adressant spécialement aux femmes, Cahors, 1903.
AGNES SOREL
So much glamour has attached, and rightly so, to Joan of Arc, the soldier-saviour of Charles the Seventh of France, that another woman, Agnes Sorel—Charles’s good angel of a less militant order—has been almost entirely overlooked, and where she has been remembered, has been treated by the few with the honour due to her, and by the many merely as Charles’s mistress. But to her it was given to be a great inspirer of Charles, and much of the good that this weak king and ungrateful man did for his country may assuredly be in large measure attributed to her influence, just as the greatest merit that can be recorded of him personally was his devotion to her whilst she lived, though the memory of her availed naught after she had passed away. Agnes Sorel came as it were between the ebb and flow of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when chivalry, not as a passing emotion but as an education, still lingered in men’s relation with women. Respect for womankind grew in the Middle Ages in France under the double influence of religion and chivalry, of which the cult of the Virgin and the cult of woman were the outcome. In honour of both, men strove in tournament and fought in battle. With the cry, “For our Lady,” or “For God and my Lady,” men hurled themselves into the thick of the strife as if the goddess, whether divine or human, in whose name they ventured, had made her champions invulnerable. And, in a manner as it would seem of action and re-action, the goddess became humanised and the woman deified. The former tendency may be traced in miracles attributed to the Virgin, and, later, in the “Mysteries,” and the latter in tales of chivalry, where love is treated as a gift from Heaven, and the recipients of it are idealised. Stories which seem to contradict this, and to refute all accepted ideas of chivalry and honour, are frequently original only in details, the bases being borrowed from Oriental tales. Buddha’s country, the land of the Zenana, supplied much material of an exaggerated nature which in the West became mere travesty.
It is always difficult to determine exactly the origin of anything so subtle as a sentiment, especially one which gradually pervades and influences a people. It is, in its way, at first like a soft breeze, of which we can only see the effect. But as we try to discover some definite, if only partial, reason for this interchange of simple human relations between the Virgin and her votaries, we remember that St. Francis, the embodiment of exalted human sentiment, had lived, and that scholasticism, in that phase of it which treated the dialectical subtleties of words as paramount, was on the wane. Hence spirit, which had so long been restrained, and which is ever in conflict with form, again prevailed, and mankind discovered that a loving Mother had taken the place of a stately Queen in the Heavens. This attitude towards the Virgin is revealed in the miracles attributed to her agency. It is also shown in one of the greatest works of piety of the thirteenth century, the Meditations on the Life of Jesus Christ,[36] which, through the medium of the “Mysteries,” introduced into sacred pictorial art some of its most dramatic and appealing scenes. Where is there to be found anything more tenderly human than the incident of “Christ taking leave of His Mother” before His journey to Jerusalem to consummate His mission?
This note of the womanly element in its fairest form, gradually insinuating itself more and more, and permeating life, art, and literature, is the key to the right understanding of the position which woman had attained in the civilised world.
Before turning our special attention to Agnes Sorel, let us recall the condition of France at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
When the lunatic King Charles the Sixth died in 1422, and Charles, his son, at the age of nineteen, succeeded under the title of “King of Bourges,” Paris was held by the Burgundians, who were in league with the English. The Dukes of Burgundy and of Brittany were alike vacillating in their policy, being at one time attached to the king’s party, and at another allied to the English. With the exception of a few castles, the strongholds of lords loyal to the Crown, the English possessed the whole of France north of the Loire, from the Meuse to the Bay of Mont St. Michel. Hither the Duke of Bedford was sent as regent for the English king, Henry the Sixth, then ten months old, who, by the terms of the Treaty of Troyes (1420), was the lawful king, the right of succession having been conferred on his father, Henry the Fifth, when he married Catherine, the daughter of Charles the Sixth of France.
Charles the Seventh divided his time between Bourges and Poitiers, where the government was carried on, and Loches, Chinon, and Tours, the places he dearly loved, and in which he sought the solitude he craved for. But even in these seemingly peaceful retreats his lethargy and indolence were disturbed by perpetual intrigues, which it must be admitted were largely fostered by his own caprices and fickle affections. Meanwhile a cry of misery was arising from the war-devastated land. Churches and convents, castles and cottages, were all fallen into ruin, and brambles grew on the untilled land where once golden corn had waved. Peasants hid their horses during the day and brought them out to graze at night. As Alain Chartier wrote at the time, “Les pays champestres sont tournez à l’estat de la mer, où chascun a tant de seigneurie comme il a de force.” Men of all conditions, from the proudest lord to the poorest peasant, joined in spasmodic and detached efforts to drive out the English, but with the result that they did little else than harass them. Want of cohesion was the characteristic of the national resistance until, from a small village in the east of France, there appeared a deliverer in the person of Joan of Arc. Instantly, as if her sword were a magic wand, all the fighting men, impelled and inspired by the strength of her personality, rallied around her, and victory was assured.
The story of the siege and surrender of Orleans, of the crowning of Charles in Rheims Cathedral, of Joan subsequently falling into the hands of the Burgundians, who sold her to their allies, the English, of her shameful trial and cruel death, are facts so well known that they may well be passed over here as briefly as possible. Suffice it to say, that, except for a time, even the triumph of this maiden-patriot did little to rouse the indolent king, who speedily returned to his selfish life in Touraine. War, pillage, and anarchy again devastated France. But gradually a change came over Charles. He seemed to awake as from a stupor. Dissolute and self-seeking favourites were dismissed, and the king was surrounded by able and high-minded men. He bestirred himself to make a final peace with Burgundy and Brittany, and to take part in the war which was still smouldering, though there were signs of its approaching end.
What was the secret of such a change? That it was due, in the first instance, partly to the wise influence of his mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, and partly also to that of his wife, Marie of Anjou, sister of the good Duke René, seems almost certain, but that it was intensified when Agnes Sorel came into his life, there can be no doubt. When we consider the king’s earlier life, and what it was whilst he was under the influence of Agnes, and his relapse into indolence and debauchery after her death, we can only attribute much of this change to her sympathetic and wise guidance. Joan of Arc had represented the popular element, Agnes Sorel represented the aristocratic. Joan of Arc aroused the people to united action by her enthusiasm and success, Agnes Sorel, in her time, helped to complete the consolidation of the kingdom, by inspiring and sustaining the king. Perhaps no one man could have accomplished such a revolution. It took two women to do this, and what they did was not of mere passing worth. Phœnix-like, France arose from the ashes of the Hundred Years’ War, and it was Agnes Sorel, as priestess, who stirred the embers which hid the new life.