Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

The state charger, with his housings entirely covered with crimson velvet studded with Cyprus fleurs-de-lis of gold, was led by two esquires; and upon each side came dismounted heralds-at-arms chaperon en tête.

Behind the master of the horse, hooded and wearing at his side the royal sword, followed the effigy, drawn upon a car, and holding in its right hand the sceptre and in its left the hand of justice.

It was succeeded by the personage who was conducting the funeral procession, and by the first or high chamberlain, bearing the banner of France. Next to them marched the provost of the merchants and the aldermen in full dress, bearing the dais and the pall which had been used in the mortuary chamber, and which were carried at a certain distance from the effigy, so as not to prevent the latter from being seen.

Then came the princes, mounted upon small mules, the trains of their mantles being each held up by a gentleman on foot in deep mourning. After the princes were the ambassadors, dressed in mourning, but without hood; the royal knights, wearing their insignia and a mourning hood; the lords and gentlemen of the chamber; the captains of the guards and archers in mourning, with their silver-coated hocquetons (a sort of jacket). Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the prelates and almoners also followed the cortége.

In the evening a solemn service was celebrated at Notre-Dame, and another the next morning. In the afternoon of the latter day the cortége repaired in the same order to St. Denis, stopping half-way at a stone cross called the Croix du Sien, where the monks of the abbey came out in procession to receive the king’s body and effigy from the Archbishop of Paris, who thereupon withdrew, accompanied by his clergy. As soon as the body entered the town of St. Denis, the monks of the abbey bore the pall. In the evening the service was celebrated in the cathedral, and on the following day the body was placed, covered by the great pall of cloth of gold, in a chapelle ardente. The effigy was removed, and the crown, the sceptre, and the hand of justice were given to the heralds, who handed them over to three princes of the blood. The gentlemen of the king’s chamber then took charge of the body and carried it to the entrance of the vault in which it was to be interred, and into which one of the kings-at-arms descended, and in a loud voice bid the other kings-at-arms and heralds to do their duty. Thereupon they all came forward and divested themselves of their coats-of-arms. The king-at-arms standing in the vault bid five esquires bring him the spurs, gauntlets, shield, coat-of-arms, and crested headpiece; from the first valet tranchant he received the fanion, and from the captains of the Swiss and the archers of the guard their insignia; the master of the horse handed him the royal sword; the high or first chamberlain, the banner of France; the grand master and all the maîtres d’hôtel threw their staves into the vault; the three princes brought to him the hand of justice, the sceptre, and the crown. He then cried three times in a loud voice, “The king is dead; pray to God for his soul!” and he then added the cry, also three times repeated, “Long live the king his successor!” This cry was taken up by another herald; the trumpets sounded, and the ceremony was at an end. After this the grand master, accompanied by the prelates and knights of the royal orders, repaired to the principal table of the Parliament, where the officers of the king’s household were collected, and there he broke in their presence “the magisterial staff,” telling them that they were henceforth without a master.

Fig. 403.—Funeral Service for Anne of Brittany, Queen of France, who died on the 9th of January, 1514, at the Castle of Blois.—The service was celebrated on the 4th of February, in the Church of St. Sauveur, Blois.—In the middle of the choir was laid “the body of the noble lady, beneath a chapelle ardente (catafalque) which had five pinnacles, each ornamented with a double cross with lighted tapers, crowned with a circle of black velvet, and decorated with several escutcheons.” In front of the coffin stood the effigy of the Queen, holding the crown and sceptre. Around are kneeling Franciscan and Jacobine nuns. Mass is being said by the Bishop of Paris.—From a Miniature in a contemporary Manuscript, the “Trespas de l’Hermine regrettée;” in the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.

A similar order of proceeding was observed at the funeral of a queen, where the crowned effigy, with the royal mantle studded with fleurs-de-lis, and with the sceptre in the right hand and the hand of justice in the left, also figured in the ceremony. But in addition to the princes, the body was followed by the princesses, and by several ladies and maids-in-waiting, all of them dressed in mourning.

Isabel of Bavaria, widow of Charles VI., is the only queen of France who was not buried with the honours due to her rank; her body having been taken to Notre-Dame (1435), where the customary prayers were said, the funeral procession and the Parliament followed it to the Port St. Landri, where the coffin was placed in a boat, and taken by water to St. Denis under the escort of two clerks and a chaplain.

Under the first Merovingian dynasty, immediately on the death of the king, his body was washed, embalmed, and arrayed in the royal robes; it was then taken to the church, which was always some basilica of note previous to St. Denis being selected as the royal burying-place.