Foix Castle

Illumination of the hall in the comte de Foix's castle at Orthez, capital of Bèarn.  (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group)

Castle Foix, in the city prefecture of Ariège, was built from the twelfth century on the foundations of an earlier building on a rocky spur overlooking the city.

It allowed to control the access to the valley while protecting the city whose inhabitants could take refuge inside its walls.

First made up of a single tower (there will be three in the end), the castle became seat of the county of Foix is reworked in the fourteenth century after having suffered a number of attacks during a crusade against the Albigensians, but without having ever been taken.

Under the era of the famous Gaston Fébus, in the fourteenth century, the castle is enlarged and embellished with ransoms paid by the prisoners he imprisoned over his conquests.

When the count does not reside in Béarn but comes to Foix, however, he stays rather in a palace below the castle.

Having become a veritable prison after the Revolution, the building underwent major changes. Classified Historical Monument since 1840, it was then the object of a restoration carried out by a pupil of Viollet-le-Duc which restored the site a medieval look (crénelages) without always respecting the historical realities.

In 1930, a museum is opened which evokes the history of the department since Prehistory.

Currently closed to the public, the castle and its museum will reopen after museum modernization work. At the foot of the castle, an area of ​​2000 m² will evoke the life of the Counts of Foix and a route will plunge into what was the castle in the time of Gaston Fébus (fortifications and military elements outside the indoor ceremonial room, especially).

John ii of France

Battle At Poitiers, 1356', (c1850).Photo by The Print Collector

It was never expected that the future King John II would ever become king, considering King Philip IV (r. 1285-1314) had three sons, at least one of whom was expected to have male issue. Therefore, in his early life, John was not given any sort of upbringing to prepare him for kingship. He received a solid education but particularly excelled in martial activities, such as horse riding and weaponry. In 1328, however, John's life took an unexpected turn when the last of Philip IV's sons died, and his father, Philip VI, succeeded to the throne as the closest male relative of the royal family, becoming the first Valois monarch of the Capetian dynasty. The new royal family immediately moved to Paris, and at the age of nine, John was now heir to the throne of France. By 1332, John had married Bonne, daughter to the King of Bohemia, and the marriage is believed to have been a happy one, producing eight children, including the future Charles V in 1337. For the next several years, events within France remained relatively calm, but by 1337, war had erupted between France and England under the command of King Edward III. By the time the English landed in France, they had already won a major naval battle at Sluys and continued their dominance after arriving on the continent. Although John showed no lack of bravery or reluctance to fight alongside his men, he was nowhere close to the commander that Edward III and his captains were, and the French suffered heavy losses in men and territory. The war dragged on intermittently for the next ten years or so, and the French were most certainly on the losing side, suffering a huge defeat at Crecy in 1346.

To make matters worse, the Black Death was working its way through Europe, and both the English and French suffered major losses, with their respective populations being severely decimated. In 1350, Philip VI passed away and John succeeded as King John II. He ascended to the throne of a nation that was deeply in debt and ravaged by the plague. His lavish spending on banquets and tournaments (undoubtedly inherited from his equally extravagant father) and favoring of his close friends did not help matters along, and before long, the king made some powerful enemies within his own realm. Charles II of Navarre, a pretender to the throne and a distant cousin to the king, was the most powerful amongst them. After a number of years of backbiting and tensions between the two men, John II was finally able to outwit his enemy when Charles was turned in by the dauphin for supposedly attempting to depose the king. Navarre was promptly arrested and thrown in prison to rot. Despite achieving this significant victory, John II now had to deal with the problem of the English, who were once again on the verge of invading France.

After arriving, the English handed the king and his army a crushing defeat at the Battle of Poitiers, which saw the Black Prince subdue a French force that was five to six times the size of his own army. Thousands were killed and John II himself was taken prisoner. The French king was taken to London where he would remain a prisoner for four years, though he was treated with great respect as a king and member of the royal family should (John II was a maternal cousin of Edward III). Finally, in 1360, after much negotiating, a treaty was set up, and John II was ransomed, being allowed to return to France after the first installment was paid. Unfortunately, John found his country in bad shape when he returned and spent the final years of his life attempting to repair the ravages that war and plague had inflicted on the realm. In late 1363, Louis, Duke of Anjou, one of the king's sons who had been left as hostages in the English-controlled city of Calais as reassurance that the remainder of John's ransom would be paid, escaped from captivity. John II, the honorable man he was, turned himself in to the English king for this grave offense and returned to London, not to return until his full ransom was paid. However, in 1364, John became sick and suddenly passed away, shortly before his forty-fifth birthday. He was given a funeral fit for a king in England before his body was shipped back to France. Despite John's brave and honorable character, his reign was faced with far too many hardships, and in the end, it is hard to deny the fact that he was simply no match for a man such as Edward III.

Coyolxauhqui

Coyolxauhqui ruled over her brothers, the Four Hundred Southerners, she led them in attack against their mother, Coatlicue, when they learned she was pregnant, convinced she dishonored them all.

 

 

Attack On Coatlicue

 

The miraculous pregnancy of Coatlicue, the maternal Earth deity, made her other children embarrassed, including her oldest daughter Coyolxauhqui. As Coatlicue swept the temple, a few hummingbird feathers fell into her chest. Coatlicue’s child Huitzilopochtli sprang from her womb in full war armor and killed Coyolxauhqui and her other 400 brothers, who had been attacking their mother. He cut off her limbs, then tossed her head into the sky where it became the moon, so that his mother would be comforted in seeing her daughter in the sky every night.

Sin of Pride

Asmodeus appearing before Don Cleophas, illustration from The Lame Devil (Le diable boiteux) by Alain-Rene Lesage (1668-1747), Croci edition, Milan, Italy, 1871.

Pride is the excessive love of one's own excellence. It is ordinarily accounted one of the seven capital sins. St. Thomas, however, endorsing the appreciation of St. Gregory, considers it the queen of all vices, and puts vainglory in its place as one of the deadly sins. In giving it this pre-eminence he takes it in a most formal and complete signification. He understands it to be that frame of mind in which a man, through the love of his own worth, aims to withdraw himself from subjection to Almighty God, and sets at naught the commands of superiors. It is a species of contempt of God and of those who bear his commission. Regarded in this way, it is of course a mortal sin of a most heinous sort. Indeed St. Thomas rates it in this sense as one of the blackest of sins. By it the creature refuses to stay within his essential orbit; he turns his back upon God, not through weakness or ignorance, but solely because in his self-exaltation he is minded not to submit. His attitude has something Satanic in it, and is probably not often verified in human beings. A less atrocious kind of pride is that which impels one to make much of oneself unduly and without sufficient warrant, without however any disposition to cast off the dominion of the Creator. This may happen, according to St. Gregory, either because a man regards himself as the source of such advantages as he may discern in himself, or because, whilst admitting that God has bestowed them, he reputes this to have been in response to his own merits, or because he attributes to himself gifts which he has not or, finally, because even when these are real he unreasonably looks to be put ahead of others. Supposing the conviction indicated in the first two instances to be seriously entertained, the sin would be a grievous one and would have the added guilt of heresy. Ordinarily, however, this erroneous persuasion does not exist; it is the demeanor that is reprehensible. The last two cases generally speaking are not held to constitute grave offenses. This is not true, however, whenever a man's arrogance is the occasion of great harm to another, as, for instance, his undertaking the duties of a physician without the requisite knowledge. The same judgment is to be rendered when pride has given rise to such temper of soul that in the pursuit of its object one is ready for anything, even mortal sin. Vain-glory, ambition, and presumption are commonly enumerated as the offspring vices of pride, because they are well adapted to serve its inordinate aims. Of themselves they are venial sins unless some extraneous consideration puts them in the ranks of grievous transgressions. It should be noted that presumption does not here stand for the sin against hope. It means the desire to essay what exceeds one's capacity. 

Excerpt From

Delany, Joseph. "Pride." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911

Gascony

Henry III sailing home from Gascony - from drawing by Matthew of Paris, 1243. MP: Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, c. 1200 – 1259. Henry III of England, 1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272. (Photo by Culture Club)

Taken from the Visigoths by the Franks after the Battle of Vouillé (507), the region was overrun from 561 by the Basques (Basque), or Vascones; in 602 the Frankish kings recognized Vasconia, or Gascony, as a duchy under the national leader Genialis. In the latter half of the 7th century, the Gascon duke Loup (Lupus) extended his power over adjacent areas, and by the latter half of the 10th century his successors controlled all of Gascony as well as Bordeaux, Bazadais, and Agenais (now Agen).

      In 1032 a war of succession broke out, and Gascony was eventually won in 1052 by Guy-Geoffrey (from 1058 William VIII, duke of Aquitaine). But in the meantime, effective power within the duchy had devolved on the greater counts and viscounts (such as those of Armagnac and Lomagne), who were to dominate Gascony for centuries. In the 12th century the ducal title passed with the Aquitanian inheritance to the Plantagenet kings of England. Throughout the years of intermittent warfare between England and France, up to the definitive French reconquest at the end of the Hundred Years' War, Gascony remained the kernel of English royal power in southwestern France. Gascony was merged with Guyenne in the gouvernement of Guyenne-et-Gascogne during the ancien régime.