The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, vol. 06, No. 07, July 1900 House of Jacques Coeur: Bourges; Gothic Carved Woodwork

THE BROCHURE SERIES House of Jacques Coeur: Bourges Gothic Carved Woodwork JULY, 1900

THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION.

1900. JULY No. 7.

HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: BOURGES.

The house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges is, to architect and historian alike, one of the most interesting monuments which have survived from the Middle Ages,--interesting to the architect not only for its intrinsic beauty, but from the fact that it is the most complete and important specimen which remains of all the civil buildings in France of the Gothic period, and which, because of the brief time occupied in its construction, exhibits the style of the fifteenth century in unusual purity, and interesting to the historian from its connection with Jacques Coeur, one of the most picturesque and remarkable figures in French history. That Jacques Coeur was the son of a wealthy fur merchant of Bourges, and that he was born in 1395, are the only facts of importance in his eventful career that are known, until he first makes his appearance on the historical stage, under rather disadvantageous circumstances, in 1420. The Dauphin of France, driven across the Loire by the English and their Burgundian allies, had made Bourges the seat of his government, and had appointed a certain Ravant-le-Danois master of the Bourges mint,--a post of some importance. Ravant-le-Danois had taken into partnership (for at this time the coining of public moneys was farmed out to private enterprise) Jacques Coeur, and the two, finding that the profits of the business were not so large as they had expected, presently resorted to illegitimate methods of increasing them; and Coeur appears to have been active in the process of issuing money which was considerably under the standard weight. The fraud was discovered; but the kings of France themselves had been too often guilty of tampering with the coin of the realm for the offence to carry with it any deep disgrace; and, perhaps considering the state of the royal treasury, justice considered itself satisfied with a fine equal to about $7500. Thereafter, however, Jacques Coeur appears to have cast about for a more honorable channel into which to direct his energy. Enterprising, keen-eyed, determined by some means or other to make his fortune, he naturally turned his face eastward. The trade between Europe and the Levant had never been more active than it was in the early part of the fifteenth century, in spite of the ecclesiastical restrictions laid upon it. For the Church, still dreaming of new crusades and a Christian rule in the Holy Land, censured all peaceful dealings with the infidel. But the demand for Eastern luxuries--silks, gems, perfumes and spices--was immense, and the trade too lucrative to be renounced; and so Rome satisfied her conscience by allowing the traffic to be carried on by certain persons within certain well-defined limits, and was handsomely paid for the concession. The merchants of Montpellier in France had obtained a license from the pope to send one ship yearly to Eastern ports, and to their fraternity Jacques Coeur joined himself in 1432. He had chosen a propitious moment to begin his operations. France was beginning to recover from the prostrate condition in which the civil war had left her, and Coeur's ventures prospered marvellously. Before long he is the recorded owner of seven vessels, and employer of no less than three hundred agents who represented him in all the chief commercial centres in France and abroad. His ships sailed to the furthest harbors of the Levant, and his relations with the sultan assumed political importance. A contemporary chronicler describes him as "a second Jason, with Cairo for his Colchis strand."

A merchant of such wealth and importance could hardly be overlooked by Charles VII., who had a talent for putting the right man in the right place; and when in 1436 Paris at last consented to admit the king, he re-established an Hôtel des Monnaies in the capital, and gave the direction of it to the man who had managed his own monetary affairs with such striking results. It was in connection with this office that Coeur rendered his country his most important and permanent service.

France was flooded with debased coin, English, Burgundian and French: indeed so little could the merchants depend upon the nominal value of the pieces which passed through their hands that they stipulated with each other for payment by weight instead of in the usual legal tender. Jacques Coeur recognized the disastrous effects of this system; and as soon as he became master of the Paris mint undertook to reform it. Money suspected of being under weight was arbitrarily seized, wherever it was found, and a new gold and silver coinage of full value was struck. "The new treasurer," says a chronicler, "believed that the way for the king to grow rich, as for other people, was to pay his debts."

In 1440 so high did Jacques Coeur stand in royal favor that he was made a member of the King's Council, granted letters of nobility and created keeper of the privy-purse, a post which carried with it many valuable privileges connected with the court, and by which he profited to the fullest extent. He had the right of selling merchandise in the precincts of the royal residence to the nobles and courtiers, and to loan money to the whole court. There exist among the treasurer's papers of the time notes to the effect that the queen borrowed a sum equivalent to $700 from him and pledged a pearl for its repayment, and that the king's youngest daughter Madame Aragonde borrowed $650 "_pour avoir une robe_."

His talents found recognition outside of the domain of finance. He served on royal commissions and went on important embassies. On one of these, his entry into Rome was so magnificent that the spectators declared "it was sixty years since they had seen the like, but that the expense of it was outrageous."

All this time his wealth had continued to increase. Poets celebrated it in their verses; his rivals watched it with bitter envy. Exaggerated stories of his lavish expenditure became current. It was reported that the commonest utensils of his house were of silver, that even his horses were shod with it. From impoverished nobles, who were his debtors, he commenced to buy great estates all over France. It was at this time, in 1443, that he began to build his unrivalled house in Bourges, his native town, although he already possessed mansions at Marseilles, Montpellier, Beaucaire, Lyons, Tours, Béziers and Paris.

When in 1449 the four years' truce with England was broken, the French threw themselves vigorously anew into the war, and Charles set himself with unusual energy to efface the last traces of his country's long humiliation. The campaign was actively planned, but there was no money in the royal treasury. The king appealed to the only man in France able to meet the urgent necessities of the case, the merchant Jacques Coeur. He was walking alone with the king when Charles broached the subject and asked him to advance the money for the Norman enterprise. "All that I have, sire, is yours," was the answer; and Charles had no further anxiety about the payment of his troops. The nominal loan, but virtual gift, of Jacques Coeur to the crown was an amount equivalent to $2,500,000 in our money.

After a series of brilliant victories Charles at length triumphed, and the English empire in France ended. The part the treasurer had taken was not forgotten. In the triumphal entry into Rouen he rode, magnificent in crimson velvet and fur, beside Lieutenant-General Dunois, the hero of the day. Apparently he was in the heyday of his prosperity, and outwardly all continued to go well with him; but his downfall was pending. The whole court owed him money, and each debtor was a foe in ambush; the king, who invariably grew weary of those who were for long about him, was secretly not unwilling to sacrifice this man who had held so chief a part in his affairs for fifteen years, and Coeur had made two bitter enemies, high in court favor,--the Comte de Dammartin and Otto Castellani, an Italian, the latter of whom coveted the treasurer's office for himself. The blow fell at last, and with dramatic abruptness. In 1451 Jacques Coeur was arrested on the trumped-up charge of having poisoned the king's mistress, Agnes Sorel, who had died eighteen months before, and one of whose executors he had been.

A special commission was appointed to try the case, and the first two names on the list of his judges were those of the Comte de Dammartin, president, and Otto Castellani! Before the trial began the prisoner's property was declared forfeit to the crown, and a first charge of $1,250,000 was levied upon it for the expenses of the war in Guienne. Jacques Coeur's generosity had redeemed one province; a second was to be recovered by his ruin.

The accusation of poisoning was so obviously groundless that it was at once abandoned; but half a dozen other charges were quickly formulated against him, amongst them those of having exported French money to the East; of having sold arms to the infidel; of having administered the king's affairs fraudulently and tyranically in Languedoc, and of having issued light money from the mint.

Coeur defended himself bravely, but he might have spared himself the trouble. His judges had already agreed upon a verdict. He was dragged from one prison to another, continually protesting his innocence, continually appealing to the Church for protection; till at last in 1453 he was brought into the torture chamber of the Castle of Tours and threatened with the rack. Weary and weak from twenty months of suspense and confinement, his heart failed him, and he agreed to admit all the charges against him except that of having poisoned Agnes Sorel.

In consideration of the pope's intercession and of Coeur's former services his life was spared; but he was condemned to pay the king $1,250,000 as restitution money, and $2,500,000 as a fine, and to be banished forever from the kingdom. On being notified of the decree, Jacques replied that he could not possibly raise the sums demanded. He himself owed money which he had borrowed for the king's affairs, and his goods were not worth so much. He was accordingly thrown again into prison, and the procurer-general proceeded to sell, by public auction, all the property of the prisoner which, after diligent search, he could find throughout the kingdom, including the house at Bourges.

Two years passed, and the sentence of banishment was not yet executed, perhaps because the fines were not yet paid. At the end of that time Coeur, by the help of one of his former clerks, contrived to escape from prison, and fled to Rome.

The end of his life is almost as obscure as the beginning. It is clear however, that, though now a man of over sixty, whose last five years had been years of intense suffering, Coeur was recognized by the pope, Calixtus III., as a man of ability and spirit. Constantinople had fallen, and the pope was anxious to undertake a new crusade. But the days of crusades were over; and his envoys pleaded and reasoned with the sovereigns of Christendom in vain. At length, in despair, the pope fitted out sixteen galleys himself, and in 1456 sent them to succor the Christian colonies in the Archipelago. The patriarch of Aquileia was the nominal leader, but an actual leader was required, and Calixtus offered the secondary command to none other than the French exile, Jacques Coeur. Coeur accepted the post; but his new career was a very short one.