Nantes

Who holds it

Name

Arthur, with Constance and Guy of Thouars; the bishop

Title

Duke of Brittany (count of Nantes) and bishop of Nantes

Confidence

high

Lord in 1200

The duke as count of Nantes (Constance and Guy governing for Arthur), with the bishop holding his own quarter and court.

How things stand that morning

Ducal; quiet.

Charter

No commune.

Council

None recorded.

Communities

Jews are attested in Brittany until their expulsion in 1240; not pinned at Nantes in 1200.

Militia

Not recorded.

Walls and castle

Gallo-Roman wall around the old city; the ducal castle by the Loire (the later castle is thirteenth-century and after).

Trade and crafts

Loire wine and Breton salt, river and sea shipping, the Loire tolls, the ducal coinage.

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