Saint-Malo

Who holds it

Name

Pierre Giraud (Géraud)

Title

Bishop of Saint-Malo (Aleth)

Since

1184

Confidence

high

Bishop from 1184 to 1218 (English Wikipedia).

What it holds

• Saint-Malo: lordship of the island town, shared between the bishop and the chapter
• Aleth, the old see on the mainland opposite (rights not pinned here)

How it was acquired

The see moved from Aleth to the island under Jean de Châtillon (bishop 1146-1163), who built its first fortifications.

How things stand that morning

Held.

Wealth

The port, fishing and coastal trade.

Threats

• The Breton succession war between John and Arthur's party

Advocates and rivals

The dukes of Brittany; the monks of Marmoutier, who had a priory on the island before the see moved there (details of their quarrel not pinned here).

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The move of the see and the church's lordship of the town are attested; the terms of the shared lordship in 1200 are not.

On the map: A small disc for the island town; the modern commune is far larger.

Primary sources for Brittany

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Chronicles of the Churches of Anjou (Saint-Aubin, Saint-Serge, Saint-Florent and others), Various (monks of Angers and the Loire) (11th to 13th centuries; the Saint-Aubin annals run to the 1220s). The Angevin houses' own annals of the succession crisis in their city: Arthur received at Angers in 1199 with Constance and the Breton and Angevin barons, John's counter-moves, the defection of William des Roches and the Angevin lords to John, and the peace of 1200 that left Arthur John's vassal. Read online
• The Great Chronicle of Tours, Anonymous (a canon of Saint-Martin of Tours) (about 1227). The Loire valley's view of the Angevin succession. Read online
• History of the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of England, Anonymous of Bethune (a clerk in the household of Robert VII of Bethune) (about 1220). A Flemish lord's clerk writing twenty years on, with a soldier's interest in who fought whom. Read online
• The Acts of Philip Augustus, with Delisle's Calendar, Various (the French royal chancery) (1179 to 1223). The king's own charters and treaties for the year: the peace of Peronne with Baldwin IX in January 1200, the treaty of Le Goulet with John on 22 May 1200, the marriage settlement for Louis and Blanche, the privilege for the scholars of Paris, grants to towns, abbeys and Norman lords, and the first acts of the king's new acquisitions in the Vexin, Evreux and Berry. Read online