de Châtillon, count of Blois (1381–97), who subsidized Froissart’s researches for Book 3
of his Chroniques, sold Blois to Charles VI’s brother, Louis of Orléans, in 1391.
The château of Blois, which dominates the bluffs above the Loire, was begun by
Thibaut I in the 10th century. Nothing, however, remains of his fortress in the
Renaissance château now on its site. The Tour de Foix and Salle des États, with its timber
vaulting, are all that still stand of a 13th-century reconstruction. Charles d’Orléans, the
poet and son of Louis of Orléans, began construction in 1440 on what was destined to
become the current château, which was a favored residence of French Renaissance kings.
The church of Saint-Nicolas preserves a transept, lantern tower, and ambulatory from the
first campaign of construction (1138–86) and has a nave, side aisles, and façade with
towers from ca. 1210.
Theodore Evergates
[See also: CHAMPAGNE; CHARLES D’ORLÉANS; CRUSADES; THIBAUT]
Brundage, James A. “An Errant Crusader: Stephen of Blois.” Traditio 16(1960):380–95.
Chédeville, André. Chartres et ses campagnes (XIe-XIIIe s.). Paris: Klincksieck, 1973.
Devailly, Guy. Le Berry du Xe siècle au milieu du XIIIe. Paris: Mouton, 1973.
Dunbabin, Jean. France in the Making, 843–1180. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Hallam, Elizabeth. M. Capetian France, 987–1328. London: Longman, 1980.
Soyer, Jacques. Étude sur la communauté des habitants de Blois jusqu’au commencement du XVIe
siècle. Paris: Picard, 1894.
Werner, Karl Ferdinand. “Untersuchungen zur Frühzeit des französischen Fürstentums, 9. bis 10.
Jahrhundert.” Die Welt als Geschichte 19(1959):146–93.
BLONDEL DE NESLE
(fl. 1180–1210). An early trouvère, Blondel was part of the lyric coterie that included
Conon de Béthune, Gace Brulé, and the Châtelain de Coucy. No doubt noble, he may
have been Jean II, lord of Nesle from 1202 to 1241, but there is no firm evidence. His
two dozen poems date from ca. 1180 to 1200–10; all preserved with music, they are
courtly love songs in a style derived from the Provençal tradition. Often repeated since its
appearance in the mid-13th-century Récits of the Ménestrel de Reims, the story of
Blondel’s daring rescue of Richard the Lionhearted from captivity in Austria seems
groundless.
Samuel N.Rosenberg
[See also: TROUVÈRE POETRY]
Blondel de Nesle. Die Lieder des Blondel de Nesle, ed. Leo Wiese. Dresden: Gesellschaft für
romanische Literatur, 1904.
van der Werf, Hendrik, ed. Trouvères-Melodien I. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1977, pp. 3–122.
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