[A] “I am a poor voice crying helplessly in this wretched kingdom, seeking only peace and the good of all.”
This aptly expressed the weary sense of disaster which saw that fateful year expire, but for the King and Queen of Sicily-Anjou-Provence a gleam of the brightness of Epiphany fell athwart their marital couch. Yolande was for the third time a mother, and her child was a boy. Born on January 6, 1408, in a crenellated tower of the castle gateway of Angers, his mother had to bear the anxiety and the vigil all alone, for Louis II. was in Italy fighting for his own.
As before the birth of the Princess Marie devotions had been addressed to the Mother of God and to the saints for a favourable carriage, now, in view of the troubles of the land, special petitions were addressed to the most popular saint of Anjou, St. Renatus, that the new deliverance might presage a new birth of hope for France, and that the holy one,—the patron of child-bearing mothers who sought male heirs,—might supplicate at the throne of heaven for a baby-boy.
Baptized in the Cathedral of St. Maurice eight days after birth, the little Prince had for sponsors no foreign potentates, but men of good renown and substance in Anjou: Pierre, Abbé de St. Aubin; Jean, Seigneur de l’Aigle; Guillaume, Chevalier des Roches; and Mathilde, Abbée de Nôtre Dame d’Angers. The Queen by proxy named her child “René—reconnaissance à Messire St. Renatus.”
The Queen folded her little infant to her breast, but after weaning him she gave him over to the care of a faithful nurse, one Théophaine la Magine of Saumur, who came to love him, and he her, most tenderly.
Among the documens historiques of Anjou are Les Comptes de Roi René—notices of public works carried out in various parts of the royal-ducal dominions. Many of these enterprises were undertaken at the direct instance of Queen Yolande, and they throw a strong light upon her character as a loyal spouse and sapient ruler. For example, on July 26, 1408, a marché, or contract, was made between the Queen’s Council and one Julien Guillot, a master-builder, for reslating the roof of the living apartments and the towers of the Castle of Angers, and also of various public buildings in the city, and the manor-houses of Diex-Aye and de la Roche au Due, at an upset price of fifty-five livres tournois (standard gold coins), “to be paid when the work is complete, with twenty more as deposit.”
A MYSTERY OR MIRACLE PLAY, FIFTEENTH CENTURY
From “L’Album Historique de France”