ALFONSO THE MAGNANIMOUS AND THE FALL OF ANJOUemphasis on chivalric duty, on feats of arms and public dis-
play as well as on chivalric literature.^11 Rene himself is said
to have been a painter of passable merit, who learned his
craft while imprisoned by the duke of Burgundy at Dijon;
he was certainly a distinguished poet, and his Livre du Cuer
d'Amours Espris ('The Book of the Heart of Captive Love'),
of 1457, is a major fifteenth-century poetic discourse on
the nature of love, an allegorical fantasy concerning the
adventures of the knight Cuer, or Heart, who travels with
his faithful squire Desire to find Lady Mercy, trapped by
Danger in the lands of Rebellion.^12 The work was influenced
both by the celebrated Romance of the Rose of the thirteenth
century and by the Arthurian tale of quest for the Holy
Grail. Whether the quest in any way reflects Rene's political
travails, amid rebellion and danger, is a more difficult ques-
tion to answer.
A vigorous patron of tournaments, Rene's cult of chivalry
found strong political expression in the foundation of a
chivalric order based on the duke of Burgundy's Order of the
Golden Fleece. Rene's Order of the Croissant or Crescent was
founded in 1448. The motto of the order was los en croissant,
'increasing honour' or 'honour in increasing'; it has been
suggested that here too is a political reference, to the aim of
increasing the Angevin domains. Fifty knights of impeccably
noble birth, able to show no fewer than four generations of
noble descent, were elected to the order. Vassals from Lor-
raine, Bar, Anjou, Maine, Provence but also Naples populated
the ranks of the Croissant; it was the only institution binding
together Rene's scattered subjects.^13 Though second to none
in his love for gorgeous display, Rene was not blind to the
practical uses to which his passion for chivalry could be put.
- de Merindol, Fetes de chevalerie; also fundamental is F. Piponnier,
Costume et vie sociale. Lacour d'Anjou, X/Ve-XVe siecle (Paris/The Hague,
1970). - For the illustrations, see F. Unterkircher, Le Livre du Cueur d'Amours
Espris (London, etc., 1975); for the text, S. Wharton, ed., Le Livre du
Cuer d'Amours Espris (Paris, 1980). Bizarre and muddled claims have
been made that the illuminations in the Vienna codex of this work
reveal that Rene was the guardian of secret knowledge about the loca-
tion of the Grail and of the 'tomb of God' in southern France, all of
which proves that Rene has lost none of his standing as a cult figure. - M. Reynolds, 'Rene of Anjou, king of Sicily, and the Order of the
Croissant', Journal of Medieval History, 19 (1993), pp. 125-61.