Mailes estello paliran
Quand te verraut.”
This was the spirit of the life to which King René introduced his young and beauteous consort—a romantic existence which appealed forcibly to the sweet instincts of the royal bride. Her response was the joy of René’s heart; if denied the fruit of sexual love, he and she were productive of the issue of kindred souls. They lived for one another in an elysium of bliss, chaste and unalloyed, with no qualms of conscience and no aftermath of reproach.
René’s love of Jehanne became a passion; her freshness and animation and the evenness of her disposition were to him like so many springs of invigorating water, whence, quaffing, he ever rose to new activities. She became the inspirer of his poetry, the spur in his official duties, and the pivot of his benevolence. He was never tired of extolling her virtues in prose and verse, nor of painting her in miniature and in large. It was said that he always carried about with him wherever he went her portrait, which he himself painted upon a small oval piece of walnut wood let into a locket frame of chiselled gold and enamel. More than this, his most treasured trophy of the “Lists”—the lance with which he unseated Charles VII. at the nuptial tournament for Queen Marguerite d’Anjou—contained an orifice wherein he inserted another likeness of “la bonne Jehanne.” In the inventory of his garderobe at Angers Castle we read: “Item, Ung bois de lance creux, ou il y a dedans un rollet de parchemin, auquel c’est dedans la portraicture de la Royne de Sicile.”[A]
[A] “Item, A hollow lance pole wherein there is a roll of parchment upon which is a portrait of the Queen of Sicily.”
The Comptes de Roi René, filling very many folios, wherein are noted household, State, and private expenses and other correlative matters, were stored in the Chambre des Comptes which René caused to be built at Angers Castle. A suite of apartments facing the river was used for the transaction of business matters and for the deposit of valuable documents. Here, too, was the King’s council-chamber, whilst in the gardens stretching in front along the river-side were cages and caves, wherein were kept many lions and strange beasts the collection of which became a royal hobby. Beyond the spacious buildings at the centre of the gardens was a pavilion which René used as a study and a sanctum, wherein he spent much of his leisure time dreaming, reading, and writing. Here he kept a register of artists and artisans, noting their several qualifications, their works, and their honorariums and salaries. He had a sort of school of architect-surveyors who, under his personal direction, prepared plans and projections of all the works, public and private, in which he was interested—markets, bridges, fountains, cottages, etc.
A work at Angers in which he took the greatest interest, and on which he lavished large sums of money, was the erection and decoration of a chapel within the Cathedral of St. Maurice, which he dedicated to the ever-blessed memory of St. Bernardin, his cherished friend and confessor.
Giovanni della Porta was born at Massa di Carrara at the close of 1384. He took the cord and cowl of St. Francis d’Assisi, and was sent with other brethren of the Order to evangelize the people of Marseilles. He became attached to the household of King Louis II., René’s father, and thus an intimacy sprang up between the two. He accompanied René on all his expeditions to Italy, and remained in priestly attendance upon him when at home. The good man died of fever at Aquila in Calabria in 1449, and René, ever grateful to his mentor and spiritual father, in 1450 prevailed upon Pope Nicholas V. to order his canonization. Certain miracles said to have been wrought at his tomb in Southern Italy, and weird happenings as his body was translated to Anjou, convinced the Curia of his sanctity. His memorial chapel at Angers was a sumptuous erection, and in its adornment the King took an active part, painting the glass windows and the altar and its reredos. Before the resting-place of the dead saint’s corpse René directed a funeral chamber to be made, wherein he subsequently ordered by his will that his heart should be deposited. This was an action truly characteristic of “le bon Roy.” He had so often unburdened himself to the saint, and from him had obtained not only absolution, but direction, that their two hearts beat in accord in life, and in death they were also joined.
Not only did the heart of René rest near St. Bernardin, but the hearts also,—each in its golden casket,—of Jehanne and the valiant and chivalrous Jean de Calabria, René’s eldest son.
King René and Queen Jehanne were pious folk indeed. At Marseilles, at Tarascon, and at Aix itself, they assisted humbly at Church festivals, processions, and pilgrimages. The lives and loves of the humble home at Bethany in Palestine, transhipped to the reverent shores of tuneful Provence, kindled the affection and the reverence of one and all. The feasts of “Les Maries,” St. Marthe de Tarasque, and of St. Maximin, good Lazarus’s disciple, were honoured by enthusiastic annual devotions. No one tired of hearing of those saintly lives, and no sacrifice was too great to show the heart’s devotion. King René and his consort’s offerings took the form of costly reliquaries in gold, enamels, and jewels, depositories upon high-altars for holy relics. The royal couple assisted at the translation of St. Martha’s relics to Tarascon, May 10, 1458. In 1461 from Aix went a splendid casket to the collegiate church of St. George at Nancy, in pious memory of that redoubtable warrior and of the gentle Isabelle de Lorraine. It was intended for the encasement of a thigh-bone of the Knight of Cappadocia. The King and Queen in 1473 presented another precious reliquary to the Church of St. Nicholas du Port at Angers, and with it they bestowed upon the clergy the unique gift of an arm and a hand of the saint. Twelve leagues from Aix is the curious little town of St. Maximin, where, in the thirteenth-century church,—built by Charles II. of Naples and Provence, ancestor of Queen Giovanna II.,—are preserved the sacred bones of St. Mary Magdalen. The skull, it is said, has still a small fragment of flesh adhering where Christ touched her forehead. Here, too, the kingly couple bestowed a golden reliquary for the saint’s right arm and founded a perpetual Mass. This sad saint of Christ, the repentant one, ever had great influence with René and his royal consort. Not content with listening to her sweet voice,—perhaps an imagination, after all,—in the streets of Marseilles (as the King himself has depicted), in a beauteous retreat near Angers he fixed a sweet shrine, La Baumette, or Bausome, near Reculée, where he founded a hermitage, “La Madeleine de St. Baumette.” This was partly in honour of “St. Baume,” as the Magdalen, the patroness of Provence was familiarly called. In the chapel the King painted a picture of St. Bernardin hearing confession—perhaps his own.