Geoffroi de Charny
Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1306 – 19 September 1356) was the third son of Jean de Charny, the lord of Charny (then a major Burgundian fortress), and Marguerite de Joinville, daughter of
He took part in a successful crusading expedition to Smyrna in 1344 and shortly after his return from this King Philip VI appointed him a royal councillor and bearer of the Oriflamme, the sacred battle-standard of France. This role, one in which he continued under King Jean II, made its holder an automatic target for enemy forces on a battlefield, and it was thus that he met his heroic end during the closing moments of the Battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356.
Geoffroi de Charny was one of Europe's most admired knights during his lifetime, with a widespread reputation for his skill at arms and his honour. The Tournai-based abbot-chronicler Gilles le Muisit wrote of him: ‘a vigorous soldier, expert in weaponry and much renowned both overseas and here. He has taken part in many wars and in many mortal conflicts, in all of them conducting himself with probity and with nobility’.[3]
Early career
Because Geoffroi de Charny was a third son, he did not inherit the lordship of Charny, which on the death of his father and his eldest brother Dreux went to Dreux’s daughter Guillemette’s husband Philip de Jonvelle.[4] From the two literary works of which Charny is the certain author, he seems to have needed to earn a living competing in jousts and tourneys at public tournaments, pursuits in which he became expert. When he married his first wife Jeanne de Toucy in 1336 he possessed no fief of his own, hence on the muster lists that record his participations in the early campaigns of the Hundred Years’ War he is repeatedly described as based at the Toucy family fief of Pierre-Perthuis.[5]
In 1342, Charny led a cavalry charge at the Battle of Morlaix in Brittany which foundered due to a cleverly disguised trap laid by the English. Taken captive, Charny was transported to Goodrich Castle in England as the prisoner of Richard Talbot, 2nd Baron Talbot, who according to an English letters patent of October 1343 allowed him to return to France “to find the money for his ransom".[6] Having earlier performed some valuable services for Dauphin Humbert II de Viennois, for which he had been promised revenues from the Dauphiné town of Saint-Marcellin, Charny urgently sought full payment of these, only to be baulked at every turn because of Humbert’s chronic bankruptcy.[7] During the summer of 1344 he rode far to the south of France to confront Humbert face-to-face, but Humbert merely issued further irredeemable money orders, following which, instead of returning home, Charny seems to have boarded a sailing ship bound for the east, a voyage that he very graphically describes in his Book of Geoffroi de Charny poem.[8]
Crusade
The next that Charny is heard of is as a crusader, taking part in the capture of the harbour fortress of
Later career
In the event, due to the French commanders’ over-confidence of victory, Charny’s advice was ignored, and King Jean successively launched all three divisions of his army against Edward the Black Prince’s well-placed English forces in what became known as the battle of Poitiers. The result was an overwhelming defeat for the French. Charny was killed gallantly upholding the Oriflamme to his last breath, and King Jean was obliged to surrender almost immediately after. Following the battle Charny’s body was given a makeshift burial at a nearby Franciscan convent, however in 1370 his remains were exhumed, transported to Paris, and solemnly reburied in the city’s prestigious church of the Celestines.[16] There his hero’s tomb was one of the many casualties of the French Revolution.
Literary works
Three literary works: (1) a Livre Charny poem known as the ‘Book of Geoffroi de Charny’; (2) a set of questions on jousting, tourneys and war; and (3) a lengthy prose Livre de Chevalerie or ‘Book of Chivalry’ are preserved in a handsomely bound manuscript in the Royal Library in Brussels long regarded as the prime authority for Charny’s writings.[17] Although handwriting specialists having dated this manuscript to at least a generation after Charny’s lifetime, leading scholars have understandably assumed Charny to have been the ‘Book of Chivalry’s author.
Recently, however, this assumption has become seriously challenged by the discovery of two other Charny manuscripts, one in Oxford,[18] the other in Madrid,[19] both self-evidently prepared for practical use by the Company of the Star, the French counterpart to England’s Order of the Garter. Due to King Jean II peremptorily shutting it down, the Company existed for only a single year, 1352, and a similarly abrupt abandonment evident in the Oxford and Madrid manuscripts enables these too to be dated to the same year,[20] thereby within Charny’s lifetime. Whilst both the manuscripts contain the ‘Book of Geoffroi de Charny’ and his set of questions (the latter notably with blank spaces left for the Company’s answers), neither of them has the ‘Book of Chivalry’, an omission now readily explicable thanks to a fine recent translation of the ‘Book of Geoffroi de Charny’ by medieval specialist Nigel Bryant.[21] This never-before-translated poem reveals such subtle yet telling personality and style differences between its author and whoever wrote the ‘Book of Chivalry’ that it now seems highly unlikely that the latter was composed by Charny. More logically, it was the work of his son of the same name, who though a tiny infant at the time of his father’s death, undoubtedly tried to emulate his military and political career, including going on crusade. Via the Brussels manuscript Geoffroi II de Charny arguably sought to honour and preserve his father’s abandoned chivalric works by including them along with his own brand-new ‘Book of Chivalry’.
Shroud of Turin
In 1353, just three years before his death, Geoffroi de Charny had founded a collegiate church at his tiny fief of Lirey near Troyes. Though the tediously lengthy Act of Foundation for this still exists in the local archive office at Troyes,[22] curiously it makes not the slightest mention that he had entrusted Christ’s shroud to the Lirey church.[23] Yet according to a bishop of Troyes writing in 1390 a cloth bearing imprints claimed as authentically from Christ’s crucified body was being displayed there ‘circa’ three years later, i.e. sometime around 1356.[24] Apparently Troyes’ then bishop Henri de Poitiers had investigated these authenticity claims and angrily shut the displays down on finding the purported ‘shroud’ to be a cunning fake concocted by a contemporary artist.
The cloth in question still exists to this day as the controversial ‘Shroud of Turin’ kept in the
There has long seemed to be no explanation for this dichotomy, until 2009 when metal detectorists exploring a field in Machy, the next-door village to Lirey, turned up a casting mold for a Shroud pilgrim badge which although partly damaged is clearly of a type similar to that found in Paris, yet with certain very significant differences.[26] Although the Shroud is again depicted accompanied by the Charny and Vergy coats of arms, the shields’ positioning is reversed, that of Jeanne de Vergy’ now being in the dexter, or ‘in charge’ position, with Charny’s subordinate to this. And whereas a banner-like label that was once on the Paris badge has long been almost completely lost due to the damage, on the Machy badge its straight-line inscription is intact, reading ’SVAIRE IhV’, ‘Shroud of Jesus’. Clear from this is that it was created for the authenticity-claiming showings that had so enraged Bishop Henri de Poitiers, and it was Charny’s very young wife Jeanne de Vergy who had been in overall charge of these. Whatever the circumstances that had prompted the showings, they had evidently been held shortly after Charny’s 1356 death rather than before it. As for the pilgrim badge found in Paris, in the light of certain styling characteristics, notably its banner-type inscription (which probably read simply ‘SVAIRE’, as appears on some later pilgrim badges featuring banner-borne inscriptions), this was most likely commissioned by Charny’s son Geoffroi II de Charny for showings that he is known to have held in 1389, apparently incorporating his mother Jeanne de Vergy as his co-sponsor.
Yet this does not necessarily contradict the commonly held supposition that Charny was the Shroud’s first historically certain owner. Both his son Geoffroi II, and his grand-daughter Marguerite would later attest quite independently of each other that it was he who had acquired it. Whatever may have been the true story behind the Shroud’s acquisition, evidently during his lifetime Charny chose not to say anything about this, nor even publicly disclose its existence, let alone try to profit from it.
In literature
Geoffroi de Chargny is a main character in The Road to Poitiers by Jonathan Lunn.[27]
References
Constructs such as named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (February 2024) ) |
- ^ Richard W. Kaeuper & Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation. Middle Ages Series. (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania U.P, 1996).
- ^ Ian Wilson, The Book of Geoffroi de Charny, with the Livre Charny edited and translated by Nigel Bryant, (Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2021).
- ^ Gilles le Muisit Chronique et annales de Gilles le Muisit, abbé de Saint-Martin de Tournai (1272-1352), ed. Henri Lemaitre (Paris 1906), p.295.
- ^ Père Anselme de Sainte Marie, Histoire Généalogique et Chronique ed la Maison Royale de France vol VIII (Paris, 1733), p.202
- ^ Philippe Contamine, ‘Geoffroi de Charny…’Le plus prud’homme et le plus vaillant de tous les autres’, Histoire et société, Mélanges Georges Duby, textes réunis par les médiévistes de Publications de l'Université de Provence, vol. 2, (Marseille, 1992), note 22.
- ^ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1343–45: 130.
- ^ Ian Wilson, 2021, op.cit., p.134.
- ^ Ibid., pp.116-118
- ^ Richard W. Kaeuper, 1996, op.cit., p,7
- ^ Auguste Molinier, 'Description de deux manuscrits contenant la règle de la "Militia passionis Jhesu Christi" de Philippe de Mézières, Archives de l'Orient Latin 1 (Paris, 1881), p.348.
- ^ Paris, BnF MS. Clairambault 29, p.2133, nr. 63. See Germain Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de la Collection Clairambault à la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1885), entry 2226, p.235
- ^ Paris BnF, PO 683, dossier Charny en Bourgogne no.15492, pièce 5.
- ^ Richard W. Kaeuper, 1996, op.cit, Introduction.
- ^ André Duchesne, Histoire Généalogique de la Maison de Vergy (Paris, 1625), p.387.
- ^ Mildred K. Pope and Eleanor C. Lodge (eds.), Life of the Black Prince by the Herald of Sir. John Chandos (Oxford 1910). Not in Copyright p. 141-142.
- ^ Ian Wilson, 2021, op.cit., p.29.
- ^ Royal Library of Brussels, MS. 11124-26.
- ^ Bodleian Library, Oxford, Holkham Misc.43.
- ^ Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid MS. 9270, online http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?lang=en&id=0000139688&page=1
- ^ Ian Wilson, 2011 op.cit, chapter 2.
- ^ Ibid., pp.109-128.
- ^ Archives of the Département of the Aube, Troyes, file 9.G.1.
- ^ A transcript of its Latin text can be found in Nicolas Camusat, Promptuarium Sacrarum Antiquitatum Tricassinae dioecesis, (Troyes, 1610).
- ^ Herbert Thurston, S.J., ‘The Holy Shroud and the Verdict of History’, The Month, 101, (1903), pp.17-29.
- ^ Catalogue no. CL 4752.
- ^ Ian Wilson ‘The Earliest Pilgrim Badges Produced for the So-Called ‘Shroud of Turin’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture (Gambier, Ohio, Spring 2021), pp.174-211.
- ^ Lunn, Jonathan, The Road to Poitiers, Canelo Adventure, 2024.
Further reading
- Ian Wilson, The Book of Geoffroi de Charny, with the Livre Charny edited and translated by Nigel Bryant, (Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2021).
- Richard W. Kaeuper & Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation. Middle Ages Series. (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania U.P, 1996).Includes the Middle French text, an English translation, and editorial commentary.
- Richard W. Kaeuper & Elspeth Kennedy, A Knight's Own Book: Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny. (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania U.P., 2005). A shorter version of the above, including an English translation and editorial commentary.
- Arthur Piaget, 'Le Livre Messire Geoffroi de Charny', Romania, 26 (Paris, 1897), pp. 394–411
- Steven Muhlberger, Jousts and Tournaments: Charny and chivalric sport in fourteenth-century France, Union City, Calif: The Chivalry Bookshelf, 2003.
- Steven Muhlberger, Charny's Men-at-Arms: Questions Concerning, the Joust, Tournaments and War. Wheaton: Freelance Academy Press, 2014.
- Froissart's Chronicles (various editions).