Corpus Anjou

The archives of the second Angevin house are no longer present in Anjou since the end of the 15th century. The Archives départementales de Maine-et-Loire and the Archives départementales de Mayenne do not have an A category (“Acts of the sovereign power and of public domain”) in their classification of the old series. Nevertheless, the administrative history of the duchy of Anjou and of the county of Maine can still be reconstructed through the documents of the Archives nationales of Paris.

The return of Anjou and Maine to the crown of France in 1480-1481 determined the fate of Angevin institutions as well as their archives. The archival transfer started in February 1485, after the abolition of the Chambre des comptes of Angers and Le Mans in the month of October 1483 by the king of France Charles VIII. Records, titles and supporting documents were then transported to Paris by several accounting officers. The rest of the archives was delivered only in 1492 and inventoried in detail in 1541 (AN, PP 33).

Chapel of the castle of Pimpéan,
Grézillé (Maine-et-Loire), 15th century, ph. J.-M. Matz

The Anjou archives filled 13 closets installed in a room of the Chambre in Paris, which bore the name of Anjou Room. But only in the 1870s the archives of the duchy were sorted, classified, inventoried. This huge work was carried out by Albert Lecoy de La Marche (1839-1897), whose inventory is still in use. His study of the Anjou archives led in 1873 to the publication of the Extraits des comptes et mémoriaux du roi René pour servir à l'histoire des arts au XVe siècle, followed two years later by the three volumes of Le Roi René, sa vie, son administration, ses travaux artistiques et littéraires (tome 1, tome 2, tome 3).

Documents from the archives of the duchy of Anjou are mostly found in the P series (“Chambre des comptes et comptabilités”); Angevin documents have the codes P 1334 to P 1354. The sub-categories PP (“Anciens inventaires de la Chambre des comptes”) and KK (“Monuments historiques: État des inventaires”) also contain documents of the Angevin period.

The digitization carried out by the ANR EUROPANGE program concern more than 300 documents of the PP and KK series, related to the period from 1262 to 1541. The documents that have been digitized in the P series have the codes from P 1334 to P 1343. This group includes, on the one hand, a series of titles and documents concerning the rights of the second house of Anjou in the Angevin apanage (creation of the county then duchy as an apanage, feudal reviews), but also the family's dynastic policy (wills and marriages).

There are also many practical writings, including those of the archives of the Chambre des Comptes of Angers, a register of the ducal council and another of the chancery, and a record of the expeditions of the Chambre des Comptes of Le Mans.

Finally, many acts concerning the Angevin fiscal policy have been selected, in particular those related to the movements of the ducal properties (gifts, sales, leases, annuities...), judicial affairs, exemptions and tax privileges, or even the creation of anniversary masses for the memory of the princes and princesses of the second house of Anjou.

In the KK series, 10 registers have been digitized for this program. They correspond to the accounting of the princely hôtels (Chambres aux deniers, Argenterie, Treasurer, Chapelle des chantres), from Mary of Blois to Charles of Anjou.

 

Justine Moreno

 

Here are the links to access the corpus in the Archives Nationales website.

 

Partners:

Archives nationales

Archives départementales de Maine-Loire