The regale entitled the king to collect the revenues of (typically) a bishopric after the
bishop died, was promoted to cardinal, resigned, was translated to another bishopric, or
engaged in public rebellion. This enjoyment of ecclesiastical revenues, known as the
“temporal regale,” gave the king incentive to prolong a vacancy. A newly installed
bishop had to request that the king deliver to him the regalia before he could have access
to the revenues of his episcopacy. The king would sometimes seek to delay doing so.
A more controversial part of the regale was the king’s right of appointment to
ecclesiastical benefices in a dio-cese during an episcopal vacancy, the so-called “spiritual
regale.” This right concerned only benefices without cure of souls, but it occasioned
serious friction between the French crown and the papacy, especially in the 14th and 15th
centuries, when each wanted control of as many benefices as possible.
The regale was most important economically when the crown’s ordinary revenues
were proving inadequate and the temporalities of the church still generated considerable
wealth (i.e., ca. 1250–1350). Thereafter, as royal taxation grew to maturity and the profits
of ecclesiastical estates were in decline, it was not an important source of royal income,
and in 1465 Louis XI assigned the profits of the temporal regale to the Sainte-Chapelle in
Paris.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
Lot, Ferdinand, and Robert Fawtier. Histoire des institutions françaises au moyen âge. 3 vols.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957–62, Vol. 3: Institutions ecclésiastiques.
REGIS, JOHANNES
(ca. 1425–1496). Composer. From 1451 until his death, Regis was at the church of Saint-
Vincent in Soignies, first as master of the boys and then, from 1462, as canon and
escollastre (master of the school). In the 1440s, he appears to have been a singer at
Cambrai cathedral and acted as clerc for the most famous composer of the day, Dufay.
His two known Mass cycles are unusual in both texture and structure, as are his two
known songs. But Regis’s main success appears to have been as a composer of motets;
with their flowing lines, rich chording, and ambitious design, those in five and six voices
on a cantus firmus line may be the first of their kind and were certainly among the works
that generated a new style in the 1470s.
David Fallows
Regis, Johannes. Johannes Regis: opera omnia, ed. Cornelis Lindenburg. 2 vols. N.p.: American
Institute of Musicology, 1956.
Fallows, David. “The Life of Johannes Regis.” Revue belge de musicologie 43(1989):143–72.
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