March 25, 2025 • 28 mins
Agnes Sorel was the first official mistress in France, the lover of King Charles VII. But with her official position came a target on her back. Her influence meant that she would make enemies, and even the love of a king can't protect you from everything.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised. In the
fourteen forties, a scandal overtook the French court of Charles
the seventh. It was the women and the salacious way
(00:21):
they were dressing. One contemporary was outraged by quote openings
in dresses in the front through which one can see
the breasts and nipples of women, and long furred trains, chains,
and other things which are quote displeasing to God and
to the world with good reason. While this first trend
(00:43):
reporter kept things general, another chronicler wasn't afraid to name names.
He accused one person of leading the charge towards tainting
the court's moral decency. Agnes Currell, King Charles the sevenths
official mistress.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
According to that source, Agnes quote wore trains a third
longer than any princess of the realm, headdresses, higher by half,
costlier dresses, all of this encouraging the debauchery and dissolution
that she produced and initiated. She left her shoulders bare
and in front her breasts. She promoted lasciviousness among men
(01:25):
and women frittered away time, day and night to lead
people astray. It was a pity that in most of
France and the adjacent marches, the entire sovereign sex dirtied
itself following her morals, and the nobility of the realm
did the same, given almost entirely over to vanity at
(01:46):
her urging and example, I personally first came across Agnasarel
when I saw a portrait of a strikingly beautiful, pale
woman with a fashionably high forehead and her her left
breast exposed. A tidbit frequently repeated on the Internet is
that she had her dresses specifically tailored to expose her
(02:10):
favorite breast. That idea is fun, but unfortunately it's not
really something that appears in any academic sources. When you
see a painting of her with a breast out, it's
actually because she was used as a model for a
specific rendition of Mary and the Infant Jesus, which are
(02:30):
known as Madonna lactans or nursing Madonna's. Of course, using
such a scandalous figure as a model for the Holy
Mother was controversial enough, but more on that later. Agnes
Sorel was a polarizing figure, and not just for her
exposed skin. Born in relative poverty, Agnes managed to rise
(02:55):
through the ranks of the French court to become Charles
the Seventh's personals mistress. Having an affair with the most
powerful man in France was controversial enough, but what shocked
the court even more was that, for the first time
in French history, Charles the seventh formalized the role. Unlike
(03:16):
previous royal mistresses, who may have gotten a pension or
a few gifts behind the scenes, but kept their status
under wraps, Charles the Seventh made Agnes an officially designated
mistress with a salary, benefits, political power, and a public role.
In doing so, as one writer put it, quote, the
(03:38):
King had raised up a poor girl and put her
in a position of such triumph and power that her
station might be compared to that of the great princesses
of the kingdom. The king had created a new role
for women in court and set a precedent for French
kings to follow. It's unclear exactly why the king had
(04:00):
become so devoted to Agnes that he was willing to
establish an official position just for her, but one factor
behind the decision was undeniable. Agnes's extraordinary beauty, as historian
Tracy Adams wrote, quote blonde, blue eyed, pale, and thin,
(04:20):
with a narrow waist and high round breasts, Agnes embodied
the contemporary ideal of beauty. She was nicknamed Belle by
many members of the court, while others referred to her
role as the quote mistress of beauty because of her
strikingly good looks. But not everyone was taken with Agnes.
(04:43):
Not only were her revealing outfits and her vanity the
subject of disdain. Many thought that her official position in
court was an insult to the queen. One chronicler took
pity on Charles the Seventh's wife, Maria Vanjous, for having
to witness a quote tramp, a little servant of low birth,
(05:04):
being and living in intimacy every day with the Queen,
having Agnes's quarter in the King's hotel better maintained and
outfitted than the Queen's own, having all royal honors and
services for Agnes as if she were the queen. Although
Agnes's newly created role brought her fame, riches, and power
(05:27):
beyond her wildest dreams, it also put a target on
her back at a time when the French court was
divided by bitterly feuding factions. Agnes's privileged position represented a
political threat. She could persuade the king who to promote
and who to depose. In this power struggle, Agnes's enemies
(05:51):
would consider drastic measures to bring her down, even murder.
I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. The beginning
of Agnes Sorel's life is a mystery, starting with when
she was born. Some historians think she was born fourteen
(06:13):
twenty five, while others believe she was born in fourteen
oh nine or fourteen ten. While we don't know much
about her early life, some contemporaries believe she came from
modest origins. She was born in the region of Pickhardy,
and her father was a counselor to a minor nobleman.
Her father could have facilitated her entry into the court.
(06:36):
Perhaps that nobleman might have mentioned Agnes to the royal family.
Even with those family connections, Agnes's quick rise to power
was uncommonly meteoric. Agnes ended up in a position in
the household of Renee, the first of Naples, as a
maid of honor to his consort Isabel Duchess of Lorraine.
(06:58):
Agnes started in fourteen forty four, making only ten livres
per year. Despite the paltry salary, she seemed to be
one of Isabel's favorites. According to one source, Isabelle had
given Agnes so many gifts that she maintained the estate
of a princess. A few months later, she was promoted
(07:21):
to lady in waiting for Marie d'anjous, Charles the Seventh's
wife and Isabella's sister in law. It's unclear when exactly
Agnes first met Charles the Seventh. One option is that
the king met Agnes at a convocation celebrating a truce
with the English in the spring of fourteen forty four.
(07:43):
The French and the English had been fighting the One
Hundred Years War since thirteen thirty seven in fits and starts,
before finally agreeing to a truce almost one hundred years later.
The king invited the Duke of Suffolk, as well as
the rest of the English delegation to France as a
gesture of goodwill. Agnes, as a member of the court,
(08:06):
attended the festivities. The king might have noticed Agnes's striking
beauty One contemporary called her one of the most beautiful
women he had ever seen. It's also possible that Agnes
had already met the king in fourteen forty three. Many
historians believed that Charles the seventh started his affair with
(08:29):
Agnes while on vacation at Isabelle's chateau at Somour in
Anjou back in September of fourteen forty three, since their
travel itineraries were shown to overlap. In any case, by
the time the affair got under way, Agnes and Charles
were inseparable. As one scholar recalled, he fell so much
(08:52):
in love that he could not even spend an hour
without her, whether at table, in bed, at council, she
was always by his side. Later, in fourteen forty four,
the king had given her a property, but so Marne,
inspiring her nickname the Mistress of Beauty, that Christmas, Agnes
(09:13):
joined the royal family in Nance for the holidays. Agnes's
assent was striking, according to historians tracing Christine Adams quote.
Chroniclers seem not to know what to make of the
fact that a woman with no dynastic claim to power
had gotten herself set up in great estate within the
(09:35):
space of a few months. In the following years, the
luxuries Agnes received only multiplied. In fourteen forty six, the
king gifted her a large swath of land to oversee.
In fourteen forty seven, she was awarded a pension of
three thousand libres. Agnes didn't keep all of this money
(09:56):
for herself. She donated much of it to foundations across France,
and she also used her wealth and power to help
her family. She set up a lifelong pension for her
mother and secured positions for her four brothers in the
King's household. This newly amassed wealth attracted some ire from
(10:16):
those around her. A contemporary complained that Agnes not only
had been given her own household at court, but that
her accommodations were better ordered and appointed than the queen's.
But Agnes's life of luxury would be put into jeopardy
when the king's son, the Dauphin, began jocking for more power,
(10:37):
much to his father's chagrin. As the Dauphine and his
allies started plotting to take the king down, Agnes would
soon become a target. Charles the seventh reign had been
controversial since the beginning. He rose to the throne in
turbulent times. The English were still occupying much of France,
(11:00):
and his father disinherited him, prompting a succession crisis. A
coup allowed Charles to become the king after the fourteen
twenty two death of his father, whom we actually covered
a few years ago in the episode Charles the Beloved,
the Mad, the Fool. But the chaos would cast a
permanent shadow over Charles the seventh rule. Chroniclers called him indecisive, ineffectual,
(11:26):
and even ugly. They said he had protruding lips, beady eyes,
a long nose, and an uneven posture that he had
to cover up with long tunics. He had even more
trouble coming from his immediate family. The king and his son,
the Dauphin, had already been beefing since the early fourteen forties.
(11:48):
Charles the seventh and his son always had a fraught relationship.
The king would constantly ignore and belittle his tryhard son,
stoking his resentment. Historian Tracy Adams writes that Charles the
Seventh was a quote controlling father, hesitant to award much
responsibility to an ambitious son who very much wanted to
(12:12):
prove his medal. This simmering tension came to a boiling
point in fourteen forty when the Dauphint teamed up with
a group of lords hoping to overtake the throne from
his father. Charles the Seventh put down the revolt, and
father and son actually seemed to reconcile for a short period,
(12:34):
but a few years later the Dauphin's relationship with the
king took a turn for the worse yet again. This
drama centered around a man named Pierre de Brezet, a
high up member of the court. In fourteen thirty seven,
Pierre was promoted to Seneschal of Anjou and captain of Agers,
(12:55):
and he continued to amass political power over the following years,
which made the prince incredibly jealous. But it wasn't until
fourteen forty four that the rivalry between Pierre and the
Dauphant was in full swing. Pierre hadn't given the Defont
sufficient provisions for a battle against the Swiss Federation, and
(13:17):
he had recalled many of his soldiers. Despite Pierre's mistake,
the Daufant managed to still win the battle, insulting the
Dauphant's military achievement, the king promoted Pierre to second in
command instead of his own son. The prince took Pierre's
promotion personally and vowed to exploit the political turmoil afflicting
(13:42):
the French court to depose Pierre and the rest of
the king's allies one by one. Charles the Seventh's temperament
only made the atmosphere more tense, seeming to favor one
faction over the other, according to his mercurial temperament, not
a great approach for a leader, one contemporary wrote. The
(14:05):
watchful king, with his subtle regard, would play the factions
off against each other and profit from the situation, keeping
everything within his gaze. He created a situation where all courtiers,
no matter how great, felt threatened, had no idea where
they stood, and lived in constant fear of losing favor.
(14:27):
Not a great work environment. Agnes was a key figure
in this dispute. Agnes bore three daughters by the king,
cementing her place in court and her public role as
the King's mistress. As the king's closest confidante, she could
convince him to promote certain members of the court to
(14:48):
positions of power. She and Pierre incidentally were close allies.
A contemporary wrote that one cannot help but see a
correlation between the favor of Pierre and that of the mistress,
which developed, as mathematicians say, one as a function of
the other. Knowing that the Dauphant was targeting him, Pierre
(15:11):
began to try to turn the king against his son
for good. Pierre hired Guillam Mariette, an officer at the
Dauphine's court, to sow seeds of discord between the king
and his son. Guillem was ordered to tell the king
to watch his back because the Dauphant was planning to
overthrow him and destroy Pierre. That plan backfired. The Dauphant
(15:35):
discovered the scheme when Guillam was arrested for an unrelated charge,
and the police found written instructions from Pierre hidden in
Guillem's boot that detailed precisely what Guillam should say to
sway the king against the prince. That document mentioned Agnes,
(15:56):
implicating her in the plot. Guillem was supposed to use
her as a tool to influence the king. In these instructions,
she was referred to by a code name Helias, which
evokes the brilliance and power of the sun, as well
as Heloise, the legendary lover of Abelard, who represented an
(16:17):
ideal of courtly love, so not a particularly difficult code
to crack. With the conspiracy against the Prince out in
the open, Pierre was put on trial in Paris. Agnes
went to Paris for the only time in her life,
actually during the trial, which was no coincidence given her
(16:38):
close relationship with Pierre and the trial's infamy. Agnes's trip
to Paris was one of her only public appearances, and
Parisians were shocked by the openness with which she inhabited
her role as mistress to the King, taking it as
an insult to common decency and to the reputation of
(16:59):
the Queen. The anonymous journal of a bourgeois of Paris
described her arrival harshly, writing, there came to Paris a
young lady of whom it was publicly said that she
was the lover of the King of France, without faith,
without law, without truth, to the good Queen he married,
(17:20):
and it even appears that she had great status, like
a countess or duchess. She came and went often with
the Good Queen of France without shame of her sin,
from which the Queen had much sorrow in her heart.
While Pierre was not convicted of treason, the trial confirmed
(17:40):
Agnes and Pierre as legitimate threat to the prince. As
one contemporary wrote, the Dauphant believed that Pierre was quote
destroying everything with the help of Agnes, through whom he
held the king in subjection. Worse, the prince feared that
his father would divorce the Queen and Mary Agnes instead,
(18:02):
leaving him out of the line of succession. The queen
and the king were second cousins, which should have prevented
them from getting married in the first place, but the Pope,
as was common at the time, chose to overlook it
if it was politically expedient, though Charles could have the
marriage annulled on those grounds. By the time of Pierre's trial,
(18:25):
it seemed as if the king had already taken decisive
steps to oust his wife from court. According to Tracy
Adams in fourteen forty five, the king had cleared his
wife's Anjou family out of the government, which, in addition
to Agnes's presence, may have suggested to the Daufin that
still more sweeping change was coming. In the beginning of
(18:49):
her time as the king's mistress, Agnes had remained under
the prince's radar, But now that her alliance with Pierre
had been revealed so publicly, her political influence u represented
a legitimate threat. This bad blood with the king's son
would prove dangerous for Agnes, even deadly. In fourteen forty nine,
(19:14):
the rivalry between Agnes and the Dauphont would come to
a head. As one contemporary wrote, the hatred of Charles
the seventh against his son came from the fact that
the prince had many times blamed and murmured against his
father because of beautiful Agnes, who was in the good
graces of the king much more than was the Queen.
(19:36):
A good and honorable woman, the Dauphont was full of spite,
and through spite advanced her death. Indeed, one day, ostensibly
defending his mother's honor, the Prince Louis berated Agnes before
drawing his sword and chasing her to his father's bed.
Shortly after that event, the prince was exiled from court,
(19:59):
which many blamed on that violent outburst. One chronicler wrote
that Agnes, who had escaped from the hands of the
Dauphin was, according to common opinion, the reason that the
Dauphin had to flee. Intensifying Agnes's lack of safety, political
strife forced the king to head out to the battlefield.
(20:22):
By fourteen forty nine, both England and France had broken
that little truce. The English seized the town of Fougerae
at the Norman border, and in May fourteen forty nine,
Charles headed there to try to reclaim it, leaving Agnes behind.
The king was gone for months as he and his
(20:42):
army tried to keep the British forces at bay. By
January fifth, the king had made his way to the
north of France, fleeing to a Benedictine abbey near Roua
after winning a battle a few weeks earlier. There he
could relax, and shortly after he arrived, according to a chronicler,
he found a demoiselle named the Belle Agnes. It turned
(21:07):
out that Agnes had crossed two hundred miles of frozen
landscape while heavily pregnant to meet up with the king.
It's not clear exactly why she embarked on that perilous journey.
When contemporary said that she wanted to warn the king
and tell him that some people wanted to betray him
(21:28):
and deliver him into the hands of his enemies, the English,
and in response to her warnings, the king quote did
nothing but laugh. Not long after arriving at the monastery,
Agnes suffered a flux in her stomach. As the pain worsened,
she began fearing death. One monk reported that she repented
(21:50):
her transgressions, recalling Mary Magdalene, and that she called on
God and the Virgin to help her as her health worse,
and she gathered her friends around her and said, quote,
it is a small thing rotting and feted our fragility,
after crying out. She died on February eleventh, fourteen fifty
(22:13):
Agnes's sudden death, in conjunction with her sudden appearance at
the monastery, raised suspicions across the court. Was she poisoned?
Could the rivalry between Agnes Pierre and the prince have
turned deadly? Contemporaries certainly thought so. One reported that in
(22:35):
fourteen fifty six, a team of armed men arrested the
prince after Agnes's death or unknown reasons, Some thought that
the king deposed the prince because he had destroyed the
province of Dauphine through heavy taxation. But this one chronicler
also alluded to another motive, quote, the Daufi had already
(22:58):
caused the death of a demoiselle named the Belle Agnes,
who was the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, and
with whom the king his father was entirely in love.
These speculations of foul play had no concrete evidence to
back them up, and for centuries the cause of Agnes's
(23:20):
death was unknown. In two thousand and five, a forensic
specialist and his team examined Agnes's remains and found that
Agnes died of a massive overdose of mercury that could
only have occurred as a result of poisoning. The specialist
concluded quote, Thus, Agnes Sorel's poisoning has been confirmed by
(23:43):
an investigation worthy of the best to detective or historical novels.
No one can say whether the poisoning was voluntary or
not vile crime. We are waiting for historians to solve
the mystery and unmask the guilty party. When Agnes died,
Charles the Seventh had two tombs erected, one where Agnes
(24:06):
passed away that enclosed her heart, and another at Notre
Dame de Loche which held her body. Before her death,
Agnes had donated a statue of Mary Magdalene to the
collegiate Church of Loche, along with one of her ribs
and some hairs. Agnes's deathbed devotion to Mary Magdalen, along
(24:27):
with these gifted relics, hint at the way she conceptualized
her own life. Even though Agnes may have seen herself
as Mary Magdalene, she would be immortalized in art as
the Virgin Mary. French painter Jean Fouquet was commissioned to
paint a portrait of Mary, and he used Agnes as
(24:50):
a model the painting that I alluded to in the
introduction of this episode. Historian Susie Nash writes that the
first incomplete version of the painting may have been commissioned
by Charles the Seventh to imagine an alternate future for Agnes.
Quote Agnes as queen and Agnes as mother to a
(25:11):
son a future king, all in the guise of the Virgin.
This portrait of the Virgin Mary as a mediator between
God and Earth was an apt image to encapsulate Agnes's
power and beauty. As Adams writes, the image reflects in
a sacred register the principal functions of the royal mistress,
(25:34):
who was the mediator par excellence, the person whose good
will was more valuable than any other courtier because of
her special access to and influence with the King. That's
the story of Agnes Sorel. But stick around after a
brief sponsor break to hear about a mystery surrounding her tomb.
(26:04):
In fifteen twenty five, almost a century after Agnes's death,
something strange happened to the tomb that encased her heart.
According to the Royal History of the abbey, written by
a monk, a new epitaph suddenly appeared engraved in the stone.
The epitaph Laud's Agnes, calling her an unaffected and mild dove,
(26:28):
whiter than a swan, rosier than a flame, mild enough
in speech to calm any courtly spat. This epitaph was
identical to the one engraved at her other tomb. In
loche someone must have gone to both tombs, noticed the
difference in the engravings, and had them fixed. But who
(26:49):
could have done it and why was the first tomb
only amended seventy five years after Agnes's death. The monk
doesn't speculate. Tracy Adams proposes that it could have been
the King of France. Then Francois the First. Francois may
have heard of Agnes from stories at court, and he
(27:11):
had the opportunity to visit both tombs around the time
that the first tomb was re engraved. There's no concrete
evidence to suggest that Francois the First was the culprit. Still,
he would have had good reason to honor Agnes's memory.
He would claim that quote, a court without women is
(27:32):
like a year without spring, and he had an official
mistress of his own, extending Agnes's legacy. Noble Blood is
a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
(27:56):
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with a
ditiontional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender,
Amy Hit and Julia Milani. The show is edited and
produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il Kaali
and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
(28:18):
For more podcasts, from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised. In the
fourteen forties, a scandal overtook the French court of Charles
the seventh. It was the women and the salacious way
(00:21):
they were dressing. One contemporary was outraged by quote openings
in dresses in the front through which one can see
the breasts and nipples of women, and long furred trains, chains,
and other things which are quote displeasing to God and
to the world with good reason. While this first trend
(00:43):
reporter kept things general, another chronicler wasn't afraid to name names.
He accused one person of leading the charge towards tainting
the court's moral decency. Agnes Currell, King Charles the sevenths
official mistress.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
According to that source, Agnes quote wore trains a third
longer than any princess of the realm, headdresses, higher by half,
costlier dresses, all of this encouraging the debauchery and dissolution
that she produced and initiated. She left her shoulders bare
and in front her breasts. She promoted lasciviousness among men
(01:25):
and women frittered away time, day and night to lead
people astray. It was a pity that in most of
France and the adjacent marches, the entire sovereign sex dirtied
itself following her morals, and the nobility of the realm
did the same, given almost entirely over to vanity at
(01:46):
her urging and example, I personally first came across Agnasarel
when I saw a portrait of a strikingly beautiful, pale
woman with a fashionably high forehead and her her left
breast exposed. A tidbit frequently repeated on the Internet is
that she had her dresses specifically tailored to expose her
(02:10):
favorite breast. That idea is fun, but unfortunately it's not
really something that appears in any academic sources. When you
see a painting of her with a breast out, it's
actually because she was used as a model for a
specific rendition of Mary and the Infant Jesus, which are
(02:30):
known as Madonna lactans or nursing Madonna's. Of course, using
such a scandalous figure as a model for the Holy
Mother was controversial enough, but more on that later. Agnes
Sorel was a polarizing figure, and not just for her
exposed skin. Born in relative poverty, Agnes managed to rise
(02:55):
through the ranks of the French court to become Charles
the Seventh's personals mistress. Having an affair with the most
powerful man in France was controversial enough, but what shocked
the court even more was that, for the first time
in French history, Charles the seventh formalized the role. Unlike
(03:16):
previous royal mistresses, who may have gotten a pension or
a few gifts behind the scenes, but kept their status
under wraps, Charles the Seventh made Agnes an officially designated
mistress with a salary, benefits, political power, and a public role.
In doing so, as one writer put it, quote, the
(03:38):
King had raised up a poor girl and put her
in a position of such triumph and power that her
station might be compared to that of the great princesses
of the kingdom. The king had created a new role
for women in court and set a precedent for French
kings to follow. It's unclear exactly why the king had
(04:00):
become so devoted to Agnes that he was willing to
establish an official position just for her, but one factor
behind the decision was undeniable. Agnes's extraordinary beauty, as historian
Tracy Adams wrote, quote blonde, blue eyed, pale, and thin,
(04:20):
with a narrow waist and high round breasts, Agnes embodied
the contemporary ideal of beauty. She was nicknamed Belle by
many members of the court, while others referred to her
role as the quote mistress of beauty because of her
strikingly good looks. But not everyone was taken with Agnes.
(04:43):
Not only were her revealing outfits and her vanity the
subject of disdain. Many thought that her official position in
court was an insult to the queen. One chronicler took
pity on Charles the Seventh's wife, Maria Vanjous, for having
to witness a quote tramp, a little servant of low birth,
(05:04):
being and living in intimacy every day with the Queen,
having Agnes's quarter in the King's hotel better maintained and
outfitted than the Queen's own, having all royal honors and
services for Agnes as if she were the queen. Although
Agnes's newly created role brought her fame, riches, and power
(05:27):
beyond her wildest dreams, it also put a target on
her back at a time when the French court was
divided by bitterly feuding factions. Agnes's privileged position represented a
political threat. She could persuade the king who to promote
and who to depose. In this power struggle, Agnes's enemies
(05:51):
would consider drastic measures to bring her down, even murder.
I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. The beginning
of Agnes Sorel's life is a mystery, starting with when
she was born. Some historians think she was born fourteen
(06:13):
twenty five, while others believe she was born in fourteen
oh nine or fourteen ten. While we don't know much
about her early life, some contemporaries believe she came from
modest origins. She was born in the region of Pickhardy,
and her father was a counselor to a minor nobleman.
Her father could have facilitated her entry into the court.
(06:36):
Perhaps that nobleman might have mentioned Agnes to the royal family.
Even with those family connections, Agnes's quick rise to power
was uncommonly meteoric. Agnes ended up in a position in
the household of Renee, the first of Naples, as a
maid of honor to his consort Isabel Duchess of Lorraine.
(06:58):
Agnes started in fourteen forty four, making only ten livres
per year. Despite the paltry salary, she seemed to be
one of Isabel's favorites. According to one source, Isabelle had
given Agnes so many gifts that she maintained the estate
of a princess. A few months later, she was promoted
(07:21):
to lady in waiting for Marie d'anjous, Charles the Seventh's
wife and Isabella's sister in law. It's unclear when exactly
Agnes first met Charles the Seventh. One option is that
the king met Agnes at a convocation celebrating a truce
with the English in the spring of fourteen forty four.
(07:43):
The French and the English had been fighting the One
Hundred Years War since thirteen thirty seven in fits and starts,
before finally agreeing to a truce almost one hundred years later.
The king invited the Duke of Suffolk, as well as
the rest of the English delegation to France as a
gesture of goodwill. Agnes, as a member of the court,
(08:06):
attended the festivities. The king might have noticed Agnes's striking
beauty One contemporary called her one of the most beautiful
women he had ever seen. It's also possible that Agnes
had already met the king in fourteen forty three. Many
historians believed that Charles the seventh started his affair with
(08:29):
Agnes while on vacation at Isabelle's chateau at Somour in
Anjou back in September of fourteen forty three, since their
travel itineraries were shown to overlap. In any case, by
the time the affair got under way, Agnes and Charles
were inseparable. As one scholar recalled, he fell so much
(08:52):
in love that he could not even spend an hour
without her, whether at table, in bed, at council, she
was always by his side. Later, in fourteen forty four,
the king had given her a property, but so Marne,
inspiring her nickname the Mistress of Beauty, that Christmas, Agnes
(09:13):
joined the royal family in Nance for the holidays. Agnes's
assent was striking, according to historians tracing Christine Adams quote.
Chroniclers seem not to know what to make of the
fact that a woman with no dynastic claim to power
had gotten herself set up in great estate within the
(09:35):
space of a few months. In the following years, the
luxuries Agnes received only multiplied. In fourteen forty six, the
king gifted her a large swath of land to oversee.
In fourteen forty seven, she was awarded a pension of
three thousand libres. Agnes didn't keep all of this money
(09:56):
for herself. She donated much of it to foundations across France,
and she also used her wealth and power to help
her family. She set up a lifelong pension for her
mother and secured positions for her four brothers in the
King's household. This newly amassed wealth attracted some ire from
(10:16):
those around her. A contemporary complained that Agnes not only
had been given her own household at court, but that
her accommodations were better ordered and appointed than the queen's.
But Agnes's life of luxury would be put into jeopardy
when the king's son, the Dauphin, began jocking for more power,
(10:37):
much to his father's chagrin. As the Dauphine and his
allies started plotting to take the king down, Agnes would
soon become a target. Charles the seventh reign had been
controversial since the beginning. He rose to the throne in
turbulent times. The English were still occupying much of France,
(11:00):
and his father disinherited him, prompting a succession crisis. A
coup allowed Charles to become the king after the fourteen
twenty two death of his father, whom we actually covered
a few years ago in the episode Charles the Beloved,
the Mad, the Fool. But the chaos would cast a
permanent shadow over Charles the seventh rule. Chroniclers called him indecisive, ineffectual,
(11:26):
and even ugly. They said he had protruding lips, beady eyes,
a long nose, and an uneven posture that he had
to cover up with long tunics. He had even more
trouble coming from his immediate family. The king and his son,
the Dauphin, had already been beefing since the early fourteen forties.
(11:48):
Charles the seventh and his son always had a fraught relationship.
The king would constantly ignore and belittle his tryhard son,
stoking his resentment. Historian Tracy Adams writes that Charles the
Seventh was a quote controlling father, hesitant to award much
responsibility to an ambitious son who very much wanted to
(12:12):
prove his medal. This simmering tension came to a boiling
point in fourteen forty when the Dauphint teamed up with
a group of lords hoping to overtake the throne from
his father. Charles the Seventh put down the revolt, and
father and son actually seemed to reconcile for a short period,
(12:34):
but a few years later the Dauphin's relationship with the
king took a turn for the worse yet again. This
drama centered around a man named Pierre de Brezet, a
high up member of the court. In fourteen thirty seven,
Pierre was promoted to Seneschal of Anjou and captain of Agers,
(12:55):
and he continued to amass political power over the following years,
which made the prince incredibly jealous. But it wasn't until
fourteen forty four that the rivalry between Pierre and the
Dauphant was in full swing. Pierre hadn't given the Defont
sufficient provisions for a battle against the Swiss Federation, and
(13:17):
he had recalled many of his soldiers. Despite Pierre's mistake,
the Daufant managed to still win the battle, insulting the
Dauphant's military achievement, the king promoted Pierre to second in
command instead of his own son. The prince took Pierre's
promotion personally and vowed to exploit the political turmoil afflicting
(13:42):
the French court to depose Pierre and the rest of
the king's allies one by one. Charles the Seventh's temperament
only made the atmosphere more tense, seeming to favor one
faction over the other, according to his mercurial temperament, not
a great approach for a leader, one contemporary wrote. The
(14:05):
watchful king, with his subtle regard, would play the factions
off against each other and profit from the situation, keeping
everything within his gaze. He created a situation where all courtiers,
no matter how great, felt threatened, had no idea where
they stood, and lived in constant fear of losing favor.
(14:27):
Not a great work environment. Agnes was a key figure
in this dispute. Agnes bore three daughters by the king,
cementing her place in court and her public role as
the King's mistress. As the king's closest confidante, she could
convince him to promote certain members of the court to
(14:48):
positions of power. She and Pierre incidentally were close allies.
A contemporary wrote that one cannot help but see a
correlation between the favor of Pierre and that of the mistress,
which developed, as mathematicians say, one as a function of
the other. Knowing that the Dauphant was targeting him, Pierre
(15:11):
began to try to turn the king against his son
for good. Pierre hired Guillam Mariette, an officer at the
Dauphine's court, to sow seeds of discord between the king
and his son. Guillem was ordered to tell the king
to watch his back because the Dauphant was planning to
overthrow him and destroy Pierre. That plan backfired. The Dauphant
(15:35):
discovered the scheme when Guillam was arrested for an unrelated charge,
and the police found written instructions from Pierre hidden in
Guillem's boot that detailed precisely what Guillam should say to
sway the king against the prince. That document mentioned Agnes,
(15:56):
implicating her in the plot. Guillem was supposed to use
her as a tool to influence the king. In these instructions,
she was referred to by a code name Helias, which
evokes the brilliance and power of the sun, as well
as Heloise, the legendary lover of Abelard, who represented an
(16:17):
ideal of courtly love, so not a particularly difficult code
to crack. With the conspiracy against the Prince out in
the open, Pierre was put on trial in Paris. Agnes
went to Paris for the only time in her life,
actually during the trial, which was no coincidence given her
(16:38):
close relationship with Pierre and the trial's infamy. Agnes's trip
to Paris was one of her only public appearances, and
Parisians were shocked by the openness with which she inhabited
her role as mistress to the King, taking it as
an insult to common decency and to the reputation of
(16:59):
the Queen. The anonymous journal of a bourgeois of Paris
described her arrival harshly, writing, there came to Paris a
young lady of whom it was publicly said that she
was the lover of the King of France, without faith,
without law, without truth, to the good Queen he married,
(17:20):
and it even appears that she had great status, like
a countess or duchess. She came and went often with
the Good Queen of France without shame of her sin,
from which the Queen had much sorrow in her heart.
While Pierre was not convicted of treason, the trial confirmed
(17:40):
Agnes and Pierre as legitimate threat to the prince. As
one contemporary wrote, the Dauphant believed that Pierre was quote
destroying everything with the help of Agnes, through whom he
held the king in subjection. Worse, the prince feared that
his father would divorce the Queen and Mary Agnes instead,
(18:02):
leaving him out of the line of succession. The queen
and the king were second cousins, which should have prevented
them from getting married in the first place, but the Pope,
as was common at the time, chose to overlook it
if it was politically expedient, though Charles could have the
marriage annulled on those grounds. By the time of Pierre's trial,
(18:25):
it seemed as if the king had already taken decisive
steps to oust his wife from court. According to Tracy
Adams in fourteen forty five, the king had cleared his
wife's Anjou family out of the government, which, in addition
to Agnes's presence, may have suggested to the Daufin that
still more sweeping change was coming. In the beginning of
(18:49):
her time as the king's mistress, Agnes had remained under
the prince's radar, But now that her alliance with Pierre
had been revealed so publicly, her political influence u represented
a legitimate threat. This bad blood with the king's son
would prove dangerous for Agnes, even deadly. In fourteen forty nine,
(19:14):
the rivalry between Agnes and the Dauphont would come to
a head. As one contemporary wrote, the hatred of Charles
the seventh against his son came from the fact that
the prince had many times blamed and murmured against his
father because of beautiful Agnes, who was in the good
graces of the king much more than was the Queen.
(19:36):
A good and honorable woman, the Dauphont was full of spite,
and through spite advanced her death. Indeed, one day, ostensibly
defending his mother's honor, the Prince Louis berated Agnes before
drawing his sword and chasing her to his father's bed.
Shortly after that event, the prince was exiled from court,
(19:59):
which many blamed on that violent outburst. One chronicler wrote
that Agnes, who had escaped from the hands of the
Dauphin was, according to common opinion, the reason that the
Dauphin had to flee. Intensifying Agnes's lack of safety, political
strife forced the king to head out to the battlefield.
(20:22):
By fourteen forty nine, both England and France had broken
that little truce. The English seized the town of Fougerae
at the Norman border, and in May fourteen forty nine,
Charles headed there to try to reclaim it, leaving Agnes behind.
The king was gone for months as he and his
(20:42):
army tried to keep the British forces at bay. By
January fifth, the king had made his way to the
north of France, fleeing to a Benedictine abbey near Roua
after winning a battle a few weeks earlier. There he
could relax, and shortly after he arrived, according to a chronicler,
he found a demoiselle named the Belle Agnes. It turned
(21:07):
out that Agnes had crossed two hundred miles of frozen
landscape while heavily pregnant to meet up with the king.
It's not clear exactly why she embarked on that perilous journey.
When contemporary said that she wanted to warn the king
and tell him that some people wanted to betray him
(21:28):
and deliver him into the hands of his enemies, the English,
and in response to her warnings, the king quote did
nothing but laugh. Not long after arriving at the monastery,
Agnes suffered a flux in her stomach. As the pain worsened,
she began fearing death. One monk reported that she repented
(21:50):
her transgressions, recalling Mary Magdalene, and that she called on
God and the Virgin to help her as her health worse,
and she gathered her friends around her and said, quote,
it is a small thing rotting and feted our fragility,
after crying out. She died on February eleventh, fourteen fifty
(22:13):
Agnes's sudden death, in conjunction with her sudden appearance at
the monastery, raised suspicions across the court. Was she poisoned?
Could the rivalry between Agnes Pierre and the prince have
turned deadly? Contemporaries certainly thought so. One reported that in
(22:35):
fourteen fifty six, a team of armed men arrested the
prince after Agnes's death or unknown reasons, Some thought that
the king deposed the prince because he had destroyed the
province of Dauphine through heavy taxation. But this one chronicler
also alluded to another motive, quote, the Daufi had already
(22:58):
caused the death of a demoiselle named the Belle Agnes,
who was the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, and
with whom the king his father was entirely in love.
These speculations of foul play had no concrete evidence to
back them up, and for centuries the cause of Agnes's
(23:20):
death was unknown. In two thousand and five, a forensic
specialist and his team examined Agnes's remains and found that
Agnes died of a massive overdose of mercury that could
only have occurred as a result of poisoning. The specialist
concluded quote, Thus, Agnes Sorel's poisoning has been confirmed by
(23:43):
an investigation worthy of the best to detective or historical novels.
No one can say whether the poisoning was voluntary or
not vile crime. We are waiting for historians to solve
the mystery and unmask the guilty party. When Agnes died,
Charles the Seventh had two tombs erected, one where Agnes
(24:06):
passed away that enclosed her heart, and another at Notre
Dame de Loche which held her body. Before her death,
Agnes had donated a statue of Mary Magdalene to the
collegiate Church of Loche, along with one of her ribs
and some hairs. Agnes's deathbed devotion to Mary Magdalen, along
(24:27):
with these gifted relics, hint at the way she conceptualized
her own life. Even though Agnes may have seen herself
as Mary Magdalene, she would be immortalized in art as
the Virgin Mary. French painter Jean Fouquet was commissioned to
paint a portrait of Mary, and he used Agnes as
(24:50):
a model the painting that I alluded to in the
introduction of this episode. Historian Susie Nash writes that the
first incomplete version of the painting may have been commissioned
by Charles the Seventh to imagine an alternate future for Agnes.
Quote Agnes as queen and Agnes as mother to a
(25:11):
son a future king, all in the guise of the Virgin.
This portrait of the Virgin Mary as a mediator between
God and Earth was an apt image to encapsulate Agnes's
power and beauty. As Adams writes, the image reflects in
a sacred register the principal functions of the royal mistress,
(25:34):
who was the mediator par excellence, the person whose good
will was more valuable than any other courtier because of
her special access to and influence with the King. That's
the story of Agnes Sorel. But stick around after a
brief sponsor break to hear about a mystery surrounding her tomb.
(26:04):
In fifteen twenty five, almost a century after Agnes's death,
something strange happened to the tomb that encased her heart.
According to the Royal History of the abbey, written by
a monk, a new epitaph suddenly appeared engraved in the stone.
The epitaph Laud's Agnes, calling her an unaffected and mild dove,
(26:28):
whiter than a swan, rosier than a flame, mild enough
in speech to calm any courtly spat. This epitaph was
identical to the one engraved at her other tomb. In
loche someone must have gone to both tombs, noticed the
difference in the engravings, and had them fixed. But who
(26:49):
could have done it and why was the first tomb
only amended seventy five years after Agnes's death. The monk
doesn't speculate. Tracy Adams proposes that it could have been
the King of France. Then Francois the First. Francois may
have heard of Agnes from stories at court, and he
(27:11):
had the opportunity to visit both tombs around the time
that the first tomb was re engraved. There's no concrete
evidence to suggest that Francois the First was the culprit. Still,
he would have had good reason to honor Agnes's memory.
He would claim that quote, a court without women is
(27:32):
like a year without spring, and he had an official
mistress of his own, extending Agnes's legacy. Noble Blood is
a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
(27:56):
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with a
ditiontional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender,
Amy Hit and Julia Milani. The show is edited and
produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il Kaali
and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
(28:18):
For more podcasts, from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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