Château de Châteaurenard: A Medieval Fortress in Provence
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- County of Provence, Crown of Aragon
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page7 sections
History
Château de Châteaurenard is a medieval fortress in Châteaurenard, France, developed from a tenth-century defensive work on Griffon Hill by local and Provençal lords. The name is also associated with the separate Château-Renard castle in the Loiret, whose long history includes royal attacks, Protestant occupation, and repeated rebuilding.
The castle in Châteaurenard
A defensive work stood on Griffon Hill in the tenth century under the lord Raynardus, whose name gave the commune its name. Ildefons of Aragon, then Count of Provence, transformed the site into a stone castle in the twelfth century. The fortress was later adapted to newer projectile weapons, with its towers raised during the fifteenth century.
In 1403, Pedro de Luna, known at the time as Pope Benedict XIII, took refuge there after fleeing Avignon. He was the Avignon claimant to the papacy during the Western Schism, a period when rival popes contested the papal office. The town later bought the castle, and its surviving remains received classification as historic monuments through an order dated 27 July 1921.
The successive castles of Château-Renard
The Château-Renard castle in the Loiret occupied the upper part of its fortified enclosure from 961 to 1131. Known as Château de Renard, the first castle was attacked and destroyed by Louis VI in 1110. The king destroyed it again in 1131 when it appeared to be undergoing secret rebuilding. During the following century, the church within the castle was rebuilt and a priory was established.
Milon de Courtenay held the property in the twelfth century as lord of Châteaurenard, Saint-Maurice, and other places. His sons joined Louis VII on the Second Crusade, a major Christian military expedition to the eastern Mediterranean. After the eldest son, Guillaume, was killed in Palestine in 1148, his brother Renaud hurried back to France to claim the inheritance.
Blanche of Castile, acting as regent for her young son Louis IX, known as Saint Louis, authorized Gaucher II de Châteaurenard to rebuild the fortress in 1232. Gaucher, Count of Joigny and a descendant of the original Renard, was married to Amicie de Montfort, daughter of Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester. The work established the basic arrangement visible today and was completed in 1242, the year Gaucher was crucified in the Holy Land. The medieval fortress represented an advanced form of military architecture.
Reformation-era conflict and later destruction
The property passed to the Coligny family in 1531. During the Wars of Religion, the prolonged sixteenth-century conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in France, Protestants occupied the Loiret castle. It was attacked and partly destroyed in 1568. Gaspard II de Coligny recovered his rights in 1570, repaired the castle, and added a second fortified enclosure.
Through Louise de Coligny, ownership rights passed to the children of her second husband, William of Orange, the principal leader of the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, William appointed Gédéon de Vaufin, also called Waulfein, as governor. The castle held a small Protestant garrison, and Vaufin barred Catholics from entering its church.
In May 1622, townspeople occupied the castle after an agent of Louis XIII lured Vaufin and some of his men away. Louis XIII then ordered the smaller fortified section, known as the chastellet, destroyed. A third castle, or chastellet, had occupied and reused the upper part of the second castle between 1570 and 1662. The Loiret property belongs to the commune and has been classified as a French historic monument since 1911.
Remains
The two castles associated with the name present different surviving forms. The Provençal castle occupies Griffon Hill above Châteaurenard and was arranged on a trapezoidal base with four towers and a fortified enclosure. The Loiret castle developed as a larger medieval fortress with a keep, sixteen wall-linked towers, five doors, and a six-metre moat.
Château de Châteaurenard in Provence
The entrance passage at the castle in Châteaurenard was protected by a double portcullis, a pair of vertically rising defensive gates. The surviving fabric comprises the southwest and northwest towers together with part of the fortified enclosure. The northwest tower survives to roughly half its original height, and the site has been partly rehabilitated.
Château-Renard in the Loiret
At Château-Renard, the current entrance is the Porte Rouge, or Red Gate, reached by a drawbridge across the moat. Its name refers to the hunting trophies once hung there. Two dismantled round towers flank the gateway. The castle’s surviving layout also preserves the relationship between the entrance, the enclosure walls, the keep, the priory, and the named medieval towers.
The tower names, recorded from at least the fourteenth century, include the Cistern Tower, Round Tower, Red Tower, Tower of the late Louis de Girolles, Perrichoy Tower, Gastelier Tower or Chastellet Tower, False Gate Tower, Grant Tour, Clément Tower, Sesneau Tower, Breton Tower, the turret behind the priory, Marichaut Tower, and Portier Tower. Much of the medieval fabric is ruined, while dressed stone was reused in local buildings.
