Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
Next follow, or once followed, a pair of windows (numbers 29 and 30)
which were removed by the sculptor Bridan, in 1788, in order to
obtain light for his statuary below. The donor was "DOMINA JOHANNES
BAPTISTA," who, we are told, was Jeanne de Dammartin; and the window
was given in memory, or in honour, of her marriage to Ferdinand of
Castile in 1237. Jeanne was a very great lady, daughter of the Comte
d'Aumale and Marie de Ponthieu. Her father affianced her in 1235 to
the King of England, Henry III, and even caused the marriage to be
celebrated by proxy, but Queen Blanche broke it off, as she had
forbidden, in 1231, that of Yolande of Britanny. She relented so far
as to allow Jeanne in 1237 to marry Ferdinand of Castile, who still
sits on horseback in the next rose: "REX CASTILLAE." He won the
crown of Castile in 1217 and died in 1252, when Queen Jeanne
returned to Abbeville and then, at latest, put up this window at
Chartres in memory of her husband.
The windows numbers 31 and 32 are the subject of much dispute, but
whether the donors were Jean de Chatillon or the three children of
Thibaut le Grand of Champagne, they must equally belong to the later
series of 1260-70, rather than to the earlier of 1210-20. The same
thing is or was true of the next pair, numbers 33 and 34, which were
removed in 1773, but the record says that at the bottom of number 34
was the figure of Saint Louis's son, Louis of France, who died in
1260, before his father, who still rides in the rose above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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