Pod Insights Noble Blood Agnes, Mary, and Mary Magdalene About this episode 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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0:35 Dana Schwartz? Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised.
0:47 Dana Schwartz? In the 1440s, a scandal overtook the French court of Charles VII. It was the women, and the salacious way 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 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:
1:31 Dana Schwartz? Agnes Sorel, King Charles VII's official mistress. 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 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
2:11 Dana Schwartz? sex dirtied itself following her morals, and the nobility of the realm did the same, given almost entirely over to vanity at her urging and example."
2:24 Dana Schwartz? I personally first came across Agnes Sorel when I saw a portrait of a strikingly beautiful, pale woman with a fashionably high forehead and her left breast exposed. A tidbit frequently repeated on the internet is that she had her dresses specifically tailored to expose her 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 known as Madonna lactans, or nursing madonnas.
3:09 Dana Schwartz? 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 through the ranks of the French court to become Charles VII's personal 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 VII formalized the role.
3:50 Dana Schwartz? Unlike previous royal mistresses, who may have gotten a pension or a few gifts behind the scenes but kept their status under wraps, Charles VII made Agnes an officially designated mistress, with a salary, benefits, political power, and a public role. In doing so, as one writer put it, "The 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.
4:32 Dana Schwartz? It's unclear exactly why the king had 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.
4:49 Dana Schwartz? As historian Tracy Adams wrote, “Blond, blue-eyed, pale and thin, 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 “mistress of beauty” because of her strikingly good looks. But not everyone was taken with Agnes. 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.
5:29 Dana Schwartz? One chronicler took pity on Charles VII’s wife, Maria vanhouw, for having to witness a “tramp,” a little servant of low birth, 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 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
6:14 Dana Schwartz? position represented a political threat. She could persuade the King who to promote and who to depose. In this power struggle, Agnes’s enemies 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 1425, while others believe she was born in 1409 or 1410. While we don’t know much about her early life, some contemporaries believe she came
6:59 Dana Schwartz? from modest origins. She was born in the region of Picardy, and her father was a counselor to a minor nobleman. Her father could have facilitated her entry into the court. Perhaps that nobleman might have mentioned Agnes to the royal family.
7:16 Dana Schwartz? Even with those family connections, Agnes's quick rise to power was uncommonly meteoric. Agnes ended up in a position in the household of Rene I of Naples as a maid of honor to his consort, Isabelle Duchess of Lorraine. Agnes started in 1444, making only 10 livres per year. Despite the paltry salary, she seemed to be one of Isabelle'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 to lady-in-waiting for Marie d'Anjou,
7:59 Dana Schwartz? Charles VII's wife and Isabella's sister-in-law. It's unclear when exactly Agnes first met Charles VII. One option is that the king met Agnes at a convocation celebrating a truce with the English in the spring of 1444. The French and the English had been fighting the Hundred Years' War since 1337 in fits and starts, before finally agreeing to a truce almost 100 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, attended the festivities.
8:44 Dana Schwartz? 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 1443. Many historians believe that Charles VII started his affair with Agnes while on vacation at Isabelle's chateau at Somor in Anjou back in September of 1443, since their travel itineraries were shown to overlap. In any case, by the time the affair got underway, Agnes and Charles were inseparable.
9:23 Dana Schwartz? As one scholar recalled, "He fell so much 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 1444, the king had given her a property, Botsomarn, inspiring her nickname, "The Mistress of Beauty." That Christmas, Agnes joined the royal family in Nantes for the holidays. Agnes's ascent was striking. According to historians Tracy and Christine Adams, "Chroniclers seem not to know what to make of the fact that a woman with no dynastic claim to power had gotten herself
10:07 Dana Schwartz? set up in great estate within the space of a few months." In the following years, the luxuries Agnes received only multiplied. In 1446, the king gifted her a large swath of land to oversee. In 1447, she was awarded a pension of 3,000 libras. Agnes didn't keep all of this money 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.
10:47 Dana Schwartz? This newly amassed wealth attracted some ire from 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 jockeying for more power, much to his father's chagrin. As the Dauphin and his allies started plotting to take the king down, Agnes would soon become a target.
11:25 Dana Schwartz? Charles VII's reign had been controversial since the beginning. He rose to the throne in turbulent times. The English were still occupying much of France, and his father disinherited him, prompting a succession crisis. A coup allowed Charles to become the king after the 1422 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 VII's rule. Chroniclers called him indecisive, ineffectual, and even ugly. They said he had protruding lips, beady eyes, a long nose, and an uneven posture that
12:09 Dana Schwartz? 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 1440s. Charles VII and his son always had a fraught relationship. The king would constantly ignore and belittle his try-hard son, stoking his resentment. Historian Tracey Adams writes that Charles VII was a "controlling father hesitant to award much responsibility to an ambitious son who very much wanted to prove his mettle."
12:49 Dana Schwartz? This simmering tension came to a boiling point in 1440 when the Dauphin teamed up with a group of lords, hoping to overtake the throne from his father. Charles VII put down the revolt, and father and son actually seemed to reconcile for a short period. 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 Brézé, a high-up member of the court.
13:24 Dana Schwartz? In 1437, Pierre was promoted to seneschal of Anjou and captain of Angers, and he continued to amass political power over the following years, which made the prince incredibly jealous. But it wasn't until 1444 that the rivalry between Pierre and the Dauphin was in full swing. Pierre hadn't given the Dauphin sufficient provisions for a battle against the Swiss Federation, and he had recalled many of his soldiers. Despite Pierre's mistake, the Dauphin managed to still win the battle. Insulting the Dauphin's military achievement,
14:04 Dana Schwartz? 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 the French court to depose Pierre and the rest of the king's allies, one by one. Charles VII'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 watchful king, with his subtle regard, would play the factions off against each other and profit from the situation.
14:48 Dana Schwartz? 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. 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 positions of power. She and Pierre, incidentally, were close allies. A contemporary wrote: "That one cannot help but see a correlation
15:32 Dana Schwartz? between the favor of Pierre and that of the mistress, which developed, as mathematicians say, one as a function of the other."
15:42 Dana Schwartz? Knowing that the Dauphin was targeting him, Pierre began to try to turn the king against his son for good. Pierre hired Guillaume Mariette, an officer at the Dauphine's court, to sow seeds of discord between the king and his son. Guillaume was ordered to tell the king to watch his back because the Dauphin was planning to overthrow him and destroy Pierre. That plan backfired. The Dauphin discovered the scheme when Guillaume was arrested for an unrelated charge, and the police found written instructions from Pierre, hidden in Guillaume's boot, that detailed precisely what Guillaume should say
16:25 Dana Schwartz? to sway the king against the prince. That document mentioned Agnes, implicating her in the plot. Guillaume was supposed to use her as a tool to influence the king. In these instructions, she was referred to by a code name, Helios, which evokes the brilliance and power of the sun, as well as Eloise, the legendary lover of Abelard, who represented an 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.
17:06 Dana Schwartz? Agnes went to Paris for the only time in her life, actually, during the trial, which was no coincidence, given her 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 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,
17:49 Dana Schwartz? without faith, without law, without truth to the good queen he married; 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 Agnes and Pierre as legitimate threats to the prince. As one contemporary wrote, the Dauphin believed that Pierre was "destroying everything with the help of Agnes, through whom he held the king in subjection."
18:30 Dana Schwartz? Worse, the prince feared that his father would divorce the queen and marry Agnes instead, 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, it seemed as if the king had already taken decisive steps to oust his wife from court. According to Tracy Adams, in 1445, the king had cleared his wife's Anjou family out of the government,
19:14 Dana Schwartz? which, in addition to Agnes's presence, may have suggested to the Dauphin that still more sweeping change was coming. In the beginning of 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 represented a legitimate threat. This bad blood with the king's son would prove dangerous for Agnes, even deadly.
19:48 Dana Schwartz? In 1449, the rivalry between Agnes and the Dauphin would come to a head. As one contemporary wrote, "The hatred of Charles VII 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, a good and honorable woman." The Dauphin 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.
20:30 Dana Schwartz? Shortly after that event, the prince was exiled from court, 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. By 1449, both England and France had broken that little truce. The English seized the town of Fuseray at the Norman border, and in May 1449, Charles headed there to try to reclaim it, leaving Agnes behind.
21:14 Dana Schwartz? The king was gone for months as he and his army tried to keep the British forces at bay. By January 5th, the king had made his way to the north of France, fleeing to a Benedictine abbey near Rouen 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 out that Agnes had crossed 200 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.
21:56 Dana Schwartz? One contemporary said that she wanted to "warn the king" and tell him that some people wanted to betray him and deliver him into the hands of his enemies, the English. And in response to her warnings, the king "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 her transgressions, recalling Mary Magdalene, and that she called on God and the Virgin to help her. As her health worsened, she gathered her friends around her and said,
22:37 Dana Schwartz? "It is a small thing, rotting and fetid, our fragility." After crying out, she died on February 11, 1450. 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 1456, a team of armed men arrested the Prince after Agnes's death for unknown reasons. Some thought that the King deposed the Prince
23:21 Dana Schwartz? because he had destroyed the province of Dauphiné through heavy taxation. But this one chronicler also alluded to another motive. "The Dauphin had already 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."
23:47 Dana Schwartz? These speculations of foul play had no concrete evidence to back them up. And for centuries, the cause of Agnes's death was unknown. In 2005, 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, “Thus Agnes Sorel's poisoning has been confirmed by an investigation worthy of the best detective or historical novels. No one can say whether the poisoning was voluntary or not. Vile crime?
24:29 Dana Schwartz? We are waiting for historians to solve the mystery and unmask the guilty party.” When Agnes died, Charles VII had two tombs erected: one where Agnes passed away, that enclosed her heart, and another at Notre-Dame-de-Losch, which held her body. Before her death, Agnes had donated a statue of Mary Magdalene to the Collegiate Church of Losch, along with one of her ribs and some hairs. Agnes’s deathbed devotion to Mary Magdalene, along with these gifted relics, hint at the way she conceptualized her own life. Even though Agnes may have seen herself as Mary Magdalene,
25:13 Dana Schwartz? 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 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 VII to imagine an alternate future for Agnes. “Agnes as queen and Agnes as mother to a son, a future king, all in the guise of the Virgin.” This portrait of the Virgin Mary as a mediator between God and earth
25:56 Dana Schwartz? 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, who was the mediator par excellence, the person whose goodwill was more valuable than any other courtier because of her special access to and influence with the king.”
26:23 Dana Schwartz? That’s the story of Agnes Sorel, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about a mystery surrounding her tomb.
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27:37 Dana Schwartz? In 1525, 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 lauds Agnes, calling her "an unaffected and mild dove, 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 Loesch. Someone must have gone to both tombs, noticed the difference in the engravings, and had them fixed.
28:21 Dana Schwartz? But who could have done it? And why was the first tomb only amended 75 years after Agnes's death? The monk doesn't speculate. Tracy Adams proposes that it could have been the king of France then, Francois I. Francois may have heard of Agnes from stories at court, and he had the opportunity to visit both tombs around the time that the first tomb was reengraved. There's no concrete evidence to suggest that Francois I was the culprit. Still, he would have had good reason to honor Agnes's memory.
29:01 Dana Schwartz? He would claim that, quote, "A court without women is like a year without spring." And he had an official mistress of his own, extending Agnes's legacy.
29:23 Dana Schwartz? Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Reema Ilkayali, and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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