Jacques Cœur
Jacques Cœur (/kɜːr/,[1] French: [kœʁ]; c. 1395 in Bourges – 25 November 1456 in Chios) was a French government official and state-sponsored merchant whose personal fortune became legendary and led to his eventual disgrace. He initiated regular trade routes between France and the Levant. His memory retains iconic status in Bourges, where he built a palatial house that is preserved to this day.
Family and early life
He was born at Bourges, the city where his father, Pierre Cœur, was a rich merchant. Jacques is first heard of around 1418, when he married Macée de Léodepart, daughter of Lambert de Léodepart, an influential citizen, provost of Bourges and a former valet of John, Duke of Berry.[2]
About 1429 he formed a commercial partnership with two brothers named Godard; and in 1432 he was at Damascus, buying and bartering, and transporting the wares of the Levant—gall-nuts, wools and silks, mohair, brocades and carpets—to the interior of France by way of Narbonne. In the same year he established himself at Montpellier, and there began the gigantic operations which have made him illustrious among financiers. Details are wanting; but it is certain that in a few years he placed his country in a position to contend fairly well with the great trading republics of Italy, and acquired such a reputation as to be able, mere trader as he was, to render material assistance to the knights of Rhodes and to Venice itself.[2]
Rise to prominence
In 1436, Cœur was summoned to Paris by
At this point, Cœur's glory was at its height. He had represented France in three embassies, and had supplied funding for the king's successful reconquest of
Cœur also actively acquired titles and properties during his heyday: e.g. the lordship of Ainay-le-Vieil in 1435, the Château de Boisy by Pouilly-les-Nonains in 1447, the Château de Menetou-Salon and the lordship of Barlieu in 1448, the lordship of Puisaye in 1450, the Château de Maubranche in 1451.[5]
Downfall
Cœur's huge monopoly also caused his ruin. Dealing in everything (money and arms, furs and jewels, brocades and wool), and acting as a broker, banker, and farmer, he had absorbed much of the trade of the country, and merchants complained they could make no profit because of him. He had lent money to needy courtiers, to members of the royal family, and to the King himself, and his debtors, jealous of his wealth, were eager for a chance to cause his downfall.[2]
In February 1450
On 5 June 1453 the sentence took effect. At Poitiers, the shame of making honourable amends was accomplished and for nearly three years nothing is known of him. It is probable that he remained in prison. Meanwhile, his vast possessions were distributed among Charles VII's favorite courtiers.
Escape, Papal patronage and death
In 1455 Jacques Cœur contrived to escape into
Aftermath
Following Cœur's disgrace and death, his heirs attempted to recover some of his former properties in legal procedures that lasted several decades. They had partial success when
Legacy
The urban palace Jacques Cœur had built for himself in
Other buildings are allegedly or inaccurately associated with Jacques Coeur. The maison de Jacques Cœur in Paris is generally viewed as having been built or purchased by Jacques Cœur's son Geoffrey, thus a misnomer.[6] Other ancient houses are known as maison de Jacques Cœur, in Pézenas, Sancerre, and L'Arbresle.[7]
During the Second French Empire, Jacques Cœur was celebrated as a precursor of the policy of economic expansion promoted by Napoleon III.[8] He was portrayed by Élias Robert as one of a series of statues of illustrious Frenchmen in Napoleon III's Louvre expansion. Another public statue of Jacques Cœur, by sculptor Auguste Préault, was erected in 1879 in Bourges in front of the entrance to his palace.[9]
He was portrayed on a French banknote, the Billet de 50 francs Jacques Cœur designed at the end of the Third Republic, in use under Vichy France and until June 1945.
Streets and squares named after Jacques Cœur exist in numerous French towns and cities, including Bourges, Montpellier, and Paris. Bourges honored its native son in multiple instances, e.g. the Lycée Jacques-Cœur (Cœur High School) and the Théâtre Jacques Cœur (Cœur Theater). In Montpellier, Jacques Cœur is associated with the development of the local port of Lattes. Several projects were named after him in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as the city expanded towards the sea along the river Lez. These include a marketplace in the Antigone neighborhood along the Lez; an artificial lake, the Bassin Jacques Cœur in the city's new Port Marianne district; and a theater in Lattes.
The Route Jacques Coeur is a scenic route that links together a number of sights and castles near Bourges, many of which however have no historical associations with Jacques Cœur.
Assessment
In a 1997 biography,[10] French historian Jacques Heers revises the established view in French historiography, according to which Jacques Coeur exhibited outstanding skills and success as a merchant. He notes that there is no evidence that Cœur's ventures, e.g. in mining near Lyon, were particularly profitable, and that the fleet he established for Levantine commerce was modest in size (never more than four galleys) compared with those of prominent Italian or Catalan merchants. Instead, Heers suggests that Cœur's success was overwhelmingly due to his position at the royal court, and that his riches came from leveraging his privileged access to state resources. Thus, Heers implies that, rather than a brilliant merchant, Cœur is best viewed as a skilled technocrat and a predecessor to the likes of Nicolas Fouquet or Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
Cultural references
François Villon, in his poem Épitaphe, refers to Cœur's fabled wealth:
De pauvreté me guermantant,
Souventes fois me dit le cœur :
"Homme, ne te doulouse tant
Et ne démène tel douleur:
Si tu n'as tant qu'eut Jacques Cœur,
Mieux vaux vivre sous gros bureau
Pauvre, qu'avoir été seigneur
Et pourrir sous riche tombeau."
To ease my poverty,
my heart sometimes says to me:
"Don't fret so
and go crazy with pain:
If you haven't as much as Jacques Cœur,
it's better to live in your coarse burrel,
poor, than to have been lord
and rot in your rich tomb."
Jacques Cœur appears in Fulcanelli's Mystère des Cathédrales (1926) where the "master alchemist" speculates that Cœur was a successful alchemist or associated with alchemists and that he was a silversmith in the literal sense, i.e. that he could transmute base metals into small quantities of silver.
He is the titular protagonist of Le Grand Cœur, a 2012 novel by Jean-Christophe Rufin who was also born in Bourges.
Publications
- Jean-Pierre Clément, Jacques Cœur et Charles VII (Paris, 1866)
- Hendrik de Man, Jacques Cœur, argentier du Roy (Jacques Cœur, der konigliche kaufmann Paris, 1950) (Tardy, 1951)
Notes
- ^ "Coeur". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cœur, Jacques". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 645–646. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ISBN 9780742553095.
- OCLC 758309072.
- ^ Roland Narboux. "Les biens immobiliers de Jacques Cœur". Jacques Coeur de Bourges : Site des Amis de Jacques Cœur.
- ^ "La maison Cœur". Paris Promeneurs.
- ^ "La Maison dite de Jacques Cœur". Les Amis du Vieil Arbresle.
- ^ Guy Nicot (1993). Au Louvre : La cour Napoléon transfigurée. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux. p. 41.
- ^ "Bourges : statue de Jacques Cœur". L'Inventaire du Patrimoine - Région Centre-Val-de-Loire.
- ^ Jacques Heers (1997). Jacques Cœur, 1400–1456. Paris: Perrin.
External links
- Media related to Jacques Cœur at Wikimedia Commons