Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
On the whole, this catastrophe was perhaps the grimmest of all the
Shakespearean tragedies of the thirteenth century; and one would
like to think that the Chartres window was a memorial of this
Pierre, who was a cousin of France and an emperor without empire;
but M. d'Armancourt insists that the window was given in memory not
of this Pierre, but of his nephew, another Pierre de Courtenay,
Seigneur de Conches, who went on crusade with Saint Louis in 1249 to
Egypt, and died shortly before the defeat and captivity of the King,
on February 8, 1250. His brother Raoul, Seigneur d'Illiers, who died
in 1271, is said to be donor of the next window, number 40. The date
of the Courtenay windows should therefore be no earlier than the
death of Saint Louis in 1270; yet one would like to know what has
become of another Courtenay window left by the first Pierre's son-
in-law, Gaucher or Gaultier of Bar-sur-Seine, who seems to have been
Vicomte de Chartres, and who, dying before Damietta in 1218, made a
will leaving to Notre Dame de Chartres thirty silver marks, "de
quibus fieri debet miles montatus super equum suum." Not only would
this mounted knight on horseback supply an early date for these
interesting figures, but would fix also the cost, for a mark
contained eight ounces of silver, and was worth ten sous, or half a
livre. We shall presently see that Aucassins gave twenty sous, or a
livre, for a strong ox, so that the "miles montatus super equum
suum" in glass was equivalent to fifteen oxen if it were money of
Paris, which is far from certain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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