Agnes Sorel

Agnès Sorel was born at the beginning of the 15th century, extremely probably in the Années 1420. She became favorite King de France Charles VII.

Its youth

The place of its birth still divides the historians. Some think that it was born with Fromenteau in Touraine, others locate this birth in Picardy, with Coudun, close to Compiegne, from where were originating his/her father, Jean Soreau or Jean Sorel, lord of Coudun, and his mother, Catherine de Maignelais, lady of the manor of Verneuil-in-Bourbonnais. Agnès Sorel had four brothers: Charles Sorel, Andre Sorel, Jean Sorel and Louis Sorel. Certain family members are not unknown for the historians: Geoffroy Sorel, which was bishop, and Jean de Maignelais, captain of Creil. How the girl of Jean Soreau become did Agnès Sorel? Was she married with Regnaut de Sorel like says it Vasseur?

It is in Picardy that it accepted a neat education. One prepared it there to occupy at the court the envied load of lady's companion of Isabelle of Lorraine, queen of Sicily and woman of the king Rene. This load was not coveted for the material advantages which it got: Agnès Sorel received ten per annum books. This load was intended to him as of its more young age because of its birth and of the recommendations from which it profited.

At the court

Its youth and its beauty very quickly will point out it by the king of France, Charles VII, the small king of Bourges, this dolphin without beauty, much intelligence and fortune, wire of an insane king and Isabeau of Bavaria, considered per many its contemporaries as a ogress (perhaps because of its appetites which the king could not satisfy because of his Folie).

Pierre de Brézé, which noticed the glances of its suzerain for this new arrival at the court, present at Charles VII that which will be looked like the prettiest woman of the kingdom.

Very quickly, in 1444, Agnès Sorel passes from the row of young lady of honor of Isabelle of Lorraine to that of first semi-official lady of the kingdom of France. Officially, it is young lady of the house of the queen Marie of Anjou. She has the statute of favorite official, which is an innovation: the kings of France had mistresses up to that point but they were to remain in the shade. Charles VII had other mistresses besides, but they did not have the importance of Agnes Sorel. Its art of living and its extravagances reject the queen in the shade. The veils and others guimpes are abandoned, and she invents the Décolleté naked shoulders qualified of “ribaudise and dissolution” by the chroniclers of the time. Vertiginous pyramids surmount its hairstyle. Some eight meters length drags lengthen its dresses bordered of invaluable furs: Marten or Sable. In this year 1444, the king offers twenty thousand six hundred ecus of jewels to him of which the first known Diamant cut to date.

To get these invaluable atours, it becomes the best customer of Jacques Cœur, international merchant and Minister of Finance of the king, who piled up treasures come from the East in his palate of Bourges. It consumes great quantities of invaluable fabrics and, of course, all the women of the court imitate it.

But Agnès is not only one young woman frivolous. She is also a skilful intrigante. Thus it imposes her friends to the king or is acquired the favor of the advisers of the Crown, who see in it the means of securing the royal benevolence. It is thanks to these operations that the king, in the space of a few months, grants to him the strongholds of Beauté-sur-Marne (from where his nickname of “Lady of Beauty”), Vernon, Issoudun, Roquesezière and the field of Loches offers to him.

The dolphin, future Louis XI, does not support the relation between Agnes and her father the king Charles VII. It estimates that his/her mother is ridiculed and has more and more evil to accept it. One day it lets burst its rancour and continues, the sword with the hand, unfortunate Agnès in the parts of the royal house. To escape to him, it takes refuge in the bed of the king. Charles VII, courroucé per such an amount of impertinence, drives out his son of the court and sends it to control the Dauphiné.

Life with the king

Then, run out of long years of happiness, marked out by voyages through this France in form of S reversed. Agnes waits Razilly close to Chinon, with Beaulieu close to Loaches, in Dames close to Mehun-on-Yèvre, the return of the warrior or the hunter. Believing, it regularly makes Pèlerinages and offerings with the Église. It gives to her royal lover three girls, the “bastard ones of France”, which he legitimates:

  • Marie de Valois which marries, in 1458, the lord de Coëtivy and of Taillebourg;
  • Charlotte de Valois which becomes, in 1462, the woman of Jacques de Brézé and will be assassinated by him a few years later of a blow of sword between the shoulders to be surprised in the arms of his/her lover to some steps of the marital bed;
  • Jeanne de France, born with Beauté-sur-Marne, that Louis XI will marry with Antoine de Bueil, count de Sancerre.

These births make write to the moralists Thomas Basin and Jean Jouvenel of Ursins that Agnès is responsible for the sensual alarm clock of Charles VII. They severely judge its freedom of morals and show it to make of this “pure” king a discharged king, entirely submitted to its mistresses.

Is this Agnès Sorel who blows in Charles VII that the reorganization of royal finances passes by the reconquest of the Guyenne and of the Normandy occupied by the English? Always it is that at this point in time it was going to put at the world a fourth child, that Agnès undertakes, in full winter, to go to find the king with Rouen where it orders his army. No one does not know the reasons of this voyage; did she languish herself of its royal lover, or wanted it to prevent it of a new plot warped by the dolphin, future Louis XI?

Children resulting from the connection of Agnes Sorel with Charles VII

Its death

As soon as it is installed by Charles with the manor of the Vine with Mesnil-under-Jumièges close to Rouen, it is suddenly taken of a “flow of belly” and dies in a few hours, not without recommending its heart to God and the Virgin Mary. She has time to bequeath her goods to collegial Loches so that masses are known as there for the rest of its heart, with the abbey of Jumièges where its heart is deposited, like with the members of his family and the king to which she bequeaths her jewels. That which was the first official mistress of a king of France, dies at the twenty-eight years age with Mesnil-under-Jumièges, the February 9th 1450. The child dies a few weeks after it.

Its death is so fast that one believes first of all in a poisoning. One shows even Jacques Cœur, which was undoubtedly more than one friend and than it had designated as executor, to have made it assassinate, but he was washed of this criminal charge. The suspicions went then until the 21e century on the dolphin, the future Louis XI, enemy of the party which it supported.

An autopsy of its corpse revealed into 2004-2005 that its digestive Tract was infested with Ascaris, and that it had absorbed mercury, like last recourse to get rid some. It is the ingestion of this heavy metal which resulted in a very fast death. However, the mercury amounts observed at the time of the autopsy are such (a hundred and thousand times the therapeutic amount) which it is difficult to accept a medical error. Poisoning is not thus to draw aside. Among the ideal culprits remain his German cousin, Antoinette de Maignelais, who three months after the death of Agnes Sorel took her place in the bed of the king, and her doctor, Robert Poitevin, who touched part of the heritage.

Its burial

Éploré, the king orders two splendid tombs of Marbre, one is with Jumièges in Seine-Maritime and contains its heart, the other is in Loches and its body rests there.

One put the second of these tombs in the chorus of Collegial the Saint-Bear of Loches. This tomb was moved in the nave in 1777 on order of Louis XVI which one had persuaded that it obstructed the religious services.

In 1794, after its tomb had been ransacked by the " volontaires" of Indre, its remainders were put in a ballot box and deposited in the cemetery of the chapter. The Pomereul prefect decided reinstallation of the tomb in the royal Home, one moved it in 1970 in another room of the castle.

In 2005, the remainders of the bones of Agnes Sorel were the subject of long series of analyzes carried out at the request of the General advice of Indre-et-Loire and his president in load of the inheritance Jean-Yves Couteau. The study was launched and financed by the General advice owner of the tomb and the remainders of Agnes Sorel were entrusted to Philippe Charlier and twenty-two specialists in eighteen laboratories and institutions. This group was coordinated by Doctor Philippe Charlier (service of pathological anatomy and cytology, CHU of Lille; School practices high studies). They revealed that Agnès Sorel was victim of an acute intoxication to the mercury, without one being able to conclude as for the criminal character or not from this intoxication. “At that time, mercury salts were useful like vermifuge treatment. However one knows that the lady suffered from an intestinal parasitic infection, according to our examinations. But there, there is really an excessive amount given by accident or voluntarily. We cannot affirm it. ” Doctor Philippe Charlier declared. April 2nd, 2005, an official demonstration in the presence of the Minister for the culture had the results of ordered work.

Representations of Agnes Sorel

Agnès Sorel was fair with the clear skin. Some of its contemporaries say that between beautiful it was most beautiful of the world. According to the fashion of the time, it carried the deep machine-made ones which let see its chest.

The representations which remain of Agnes Sorel are:

  • the virgin with the child surrounded by angels of Jean Fouquet (left right the diptych of Melun, preserved formerly at the Collegial Notre-Dame of Melun) and maintaining with the museum beautiful arts of Antwerp (Belgium).

Agnès Sorel is probably the model of this crowned Virgin Mary. She is represented with a small mouth, a high face and with a center discovered.
  • its lying
A statue of lying Agnes Sorel is on its tomb. Allotted to the sculptor Jacques Morel, the statue was restored in 1807. On this occasion, the head and the hands were replaced ( Voir Tombeau of Agnes Sorel ).

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