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History of Jews-Joan of Arc

Visit of the chateau

City and museums

Gently and friendly, enhanced by palm trees already evoking the south, the city of Chinon extends all along the Vienne river. Its medieval houses nestle against a hillock dominated by the vestiges of a chateau and its ramparts. This is the region of France where François Rabelais passed his childhood, the region of the lively wines of Chinon, these perfumed red and dry white wines that you can savour in the cellars and wine bars scattered in the city.
Chinon was used as a fortified place from the 10th to 15th century. A certain Thibault (Thibault le Tricheur), duke of Blois, being the almighty ruler in the 10th century started a first attempt to build a castle. Called fort Saint-Georges east of the tour de l'Horloge. But the comtes d’Anjou made an end to it in 1044 and kept the hegemony for 160 years. Henry II of Plantagenet, just crowned king of England, considered Chinon as a very important strategic position and chooses Chinon as his favourite residence reinforces and builds the greatest part of the fortress into the dimensions we see today. Contemporary sources say that he died in 1189 on the altar of Chapelle Sainte-Madeleine, which remains you can still see on the middle terrain of the chateau .
In 1205, the Touraine is definitively annexed to the kingdom of France, and since then illustrious Capetiens will sojourn here. Since then the chateau was fortified several times to house its illustrious guests: a dungeon, a tower, like the tour de Coudray where Philippe le Bel imprisoned in 1307, the Templars he arrested and whose graffiti are still visible on the walls.
The period following the Templars episode can be qualified as not very happy for the Jewish population.  As it happens unfortunately often in these times, people, church and nobility look for something to amuse the people, make them forget their misery and awful life conditions, give them a little vibe, a thrill. Chinon, unfortunately, followed the general trend of those times in France and didn’t escape the virulent anti-Semitism that rages through the country. In 1321, 178 Jews are arrested, thrown in jail, judged (?). Let’s be honest: not judged but sentenced right away burned alive and thrown in a pauper's grave. The grave was set up for them on the ile de Tours, just in front of the city
The ultra-classic, archi-famous and fallacious motive of this “rightful executions” were that the Jews poisoned the wells with the excrements of the leprous, my oh my !!

It’s with a rare and extreme violence that the Hundred Years War, will spread out, bringing many evils and senseless dramas.  It’s the era of Joan of Arc. She met the dauphin (future king still to be crowned) Charles VII on March 8 1429. To be sure that she acted by orders of divine origin, Charles VII dressed as a courtesan and mixed with the 300 gentlemen (?) in the great hall of the castle. Jeanne, the "Pucelle"(Maid of Orleans) recognized him immediately. After she transmitted him the divine message, that he would beat the English in Orleans and would be crowned in Reims (to regularize the situation, I suppose), after all, he was only the "dauphin".

But, under the pressure of his advisers, who pretended that he dealt with an"illuminated" (which was not entirely wrong), Charles VII sent her to be examined by the shrinks of that epoch, the theologians of Poitiers. After three weeks, they decided she was not a “witch” and she was armed and trusted with the leading of an army to liberate Orleans, thus “La Douce France”. Everybody knows the suite of this affair: the Englishmen were chased, the dauphin sacred king and Joan of Arc burned alive in Rouen, practically abandoned by her majesty and friends.
Charles VII declared Chinon as the siege of government. He enhanced the city and still today we can appreciate the considerable vestiges of its past splendour. But after his death the royal court prefers to move away from the medieval castle to the more comfortable Renaissance chateaux like Amboise and Chenonceau, and then Fontainebleau and Paris. Chinon loses slowly its aura and the chateau, as the one in Loches, is used as a prison. And finally, when Richelieu gets it in 1634, he starts to demolish it but a double petition of the inhabitants of Chinon stops him. Democracy???? It’s a mystery. He stopped the demolishing but for centuries the castle remained unattended and the heirs of the chateau left what remained to run wild.

Bibliography

Guide du Patrimoine, Centre, Val de Loire , by Perouse de Montclos (ed.Hachette 1992)—Het dal van de Loire, by A.Sperber (Brussels, ed.Harenberg 1997)—Guide du Routard 1998 (ed.Hachette)—de kastelen van Frankrijk, by L.P.Boon (1956)-La Terreur en 1418, Charles VII, by Ch .de la Maurienne (Livtours 1986)-Histoire de la Touraine, by Pierre Leveel (ed.LCD 1988), Histoire de l’Anjou, by  J.L. Ormieres (ed.Que sais-je, P.U.F.1998)