for its use. The chamberlains played a role when the king received homage, for this
customarily took place in the bedchamber. Royal chamberlains, always knights, were so
regularly in the king’s company that he often made them councilors.
The duke of Burgundy’s chamberlains attended his coucher. His premier chambellan
kept his privy seal and the key to his bedchamber.
Richard C.Famiglietti
Favier, Jean. Un conseiller de Philippe le Bel: Enguerran de Marigny. Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1963.
Lacour, René. Le gouvernement de l’apanage de Jean, duc de Berry 1360–1416. Paris: Picard,
1934.
Lot, Ferdinand, and Robert Fawtier. Histoire des institutions françaises au moyen âge. 3 vols.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957–63.
Luchaire, Achille. Manuel des institutions françaises: période des Capétiens directs. Paris:
Hachette, 1892.
CHAMBIGES, MARTIN
(d. 1532). Known during his lifetime as supremus artifex, Martin Chambiges must be
viewed as one of the most gifted architectural designers in Late Gothic France. A
Parisian, Chambiges is first mentioned between 1489 and 1494 as the master mason
charged with completing the south transept of Sens cathedral. This commission was
symptomatic of Chambiges’s major works, which comprised additions to 12th- and 13th-
century edifices. His personal style, evolved from an original fusion of High and
Rayonnant Gothic elements with forms derived from the contemporary Parisian milieu, is
distinguished by its disciplined visual richness and exuberant plasticity.
In 1499–1500, Chambiges was called in as a consultant on the foundations of the
collapsed Pont-Notre-Dame in Paris. His evident structural expertise and proven ability to
work harmoniously yet creatively with older structures doubtless led to his appointment
in 1500 as master mason of Beauvais cathedral, where he supervised construction of the
north and south transepts and the eastern bay of the nave. Soon after his arrival in
Beauvais, he appears to have begun the new choir of the parish church of Saint-Étienne,
while his design for the north transept of Sens (after 1500) was executed under the
direction of an assistant, Cuvelier. Chambiges’s activity was extended to Troyes
cathedral, for which he authored plans for a new west façade in 1502–03. The triple-
portal and twin-towered scheme of Troyes looks back to such High Gothic models as
Paris or Reims, but the projection and recession of buttresses and portals as well as the
deeply excavated statue niches, framed by sharpened moldings and nodding ogee
canopies, vigorously animate the façade.
Chambiges has been credited with additional works, including the west rose of the
Sainte-Chapelle, the portal of the Dominican church, and the parish church of Saint-
Gervais-et-Protais in Paris, although documentary evidence is absent and stylistic
demonstrations are inconclusive. The influence of his architecture was felt strongly in
Troyes, where masons from the cathedral workshop adopted the flat east end, steep two-
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