Art -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- History
So it was with this model of chivalry, Philibert the Beautiful; three
years of ecstatic happiness were granted him and his duchess, Margaret,
and then he also died, in the room in which he had been born, at Pont
d’Ain, only twenty-four years before. Margaret withdrew at once from the
world, cut off her great wealth of golden hair, and devoted herself to
prayers and devotions, and to the building at Brou, in memory of the
dead duke, of that matchless piece of architectural jewel work, the
shrine that occupied the energies of the greatest artist-craftsmen in
Europe for a period of twenty-five years, From every part of France,
Flanders, Burgundy, Italy architects, painters, sculptors, glassmakers,
wood-workers, craftsmen in metals were gathered together, and thus they
laboured year after year, at first supervised by the Duchess Margaret
from an oratory she had built where she might divide her time between
intercessions for the repose of the soul of her knight and
superintendence of the building that was to immortalise his memory and
form the place of sepulture for him, and for her when God willed. In the
money of our time the cost of this shrine, small as it is, was over
$4,000,000, and it represented the ending of art as it marked the ending
of a great epoch.
The peace and the withdrawal from the world the poor princess desired
above everything were denied her. Two years after the death of the Duke
of Savoy, Philip, the only son of Maximilian, brother of Margaret,
husband of poor Dona Juana, who was destined to a life of madness,
Philip, Archduke of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, King of Castile,
another of the promising princes of Christendom, died at the age of
twenty-eight, leaving five children, with another shortly to be born,
and amongst them was the seven-year-old Charles, the heir of the world.
At the solemn obsequies in the Cathedral of St. Rombaut in Malines (the
same whose tower is now shattered by Prussian shells), at the end of the
mass, the King-at-Arms of the Golden Fleece cast his baton
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF ST. ROMBAUT, MALINES]
along the pavement and cried three times in a loud voice: “Le Roi est
mort!” Raising it again he cried again: “Vive don Charles, par la grace
Dieu, Archiduc d’Autrice, Prince des Espagnes!” and without a pause a
herald continued, raising his great banner from the ground, “de Bourbon,
de Lostric, et de Brabant”; and a second, “Comte de Flandres,
d’Arethorys, de Bourgone, Palatin d’Haynault, de Hollande, de Zelande,
de Namur, et de Zutphen!” and a third continued the long list, and a
fourth, the last ending: “Marquis du Sainct Empire, Seigneur de Frise,
de Salins, et de Malines!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account