#jean fusoris

[une-sanz-pluis]

That his health may not have been as robust as has been assumed might be inferred from the substantial and recurrent entries for purchase of medicaments in his household accounts as prince. As king, he often appears to have consulted university-trained physicians, and the names of Masters Peter de Altobasse, John of Coventry, Jean Tiphaine, Gilbert Kymer and Jacopo of Milan recur through the household accounts. During his last illness, his need for skilled medical attention was indicated by the summons, on the king’s express order, of Master John Swanwych, MA, Bachelor in Physic, from England to France, to ‘do him service’. Henry’s physicians, given the fever from which he was suffering, had apparently been afraid to give him medicines to be taken internally, and he seems to have taken action on his own initiative. Swanwych was, on 14 July 1422, paid 100s. ‘which the … king, with the assent of his council, ordered to be paid to the same master, to have as his gift for his expenses in coming [to him] for the aforesaid reason’. The regular provision at this time of portable urinals, housed within the king’s ‘privy seat’ (privata cathedra), transported in leather cases, might suggest a response to urgent medical needs. And the ‘chronic intestinal condition’ from which he was to die had certainly manifested its severe symptoms by mid-June 1422, when he became too ill to ride. An earlier testimony of Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, a close intimate of the king, to the astrologer Jean Fusoris, in 1415, is noteworthy in this respect. Courtenay was apparently concerned for Henry’s state of health and requested Fusoris to draw up the king’s horoscope, or birth chart, thereby offering some prognosis.

Malcolm Vale, Henry V: The Conscience of a King (Yale University Press, 2016)

#henry v #the death of henry v #henry v's health #richard courtenay bishop of norwich #jean fusoris #historian: malcolm vale

[heartofstanding]

Did I just buy a book about science in the Middle Ages for three pages about Richard Courtenay? Why, yes I did.

In fairness to my bank account, Seb Falk’s The Light Ages is really pretty and was already on my to-read list but finding out Courtenay was referenced in it made me pounce. And hell, I got to buy it from my favourite indie bookshop and it ended up getting here within a couple of days of ordering so score. I’m looking forward to reading the whole book soonish too.

Courtenay is only mentioned in three pages, largely about his connection to Jean Fusoris. There’s not a whole heap of information about Courtenay that’s new to me but I picked out three of my favourite quotes to share.

They [Fusoris and Courtenay] met again when Courtenay's mission to Paris resumed in January 1415. Then, according to Fusoris's trial testimony, the bishop was keen to discuss medical matters. He was very overweight and complained of light-headedness, especially when he got out of bed. Fusoris advised him to eat a little toast with spiced wine in the morning. Courtenay remarked that the young King Henry was also unwell, and complained there were no good doctors in England.

The information about Courtenay’s health is pretty much the only new information for me (ODNB mentions him having put on weight, not that he was “very overweight”, and not being in the best health, nothing about the light-headedness). I like that Henry V’s complaint about no good doctors comes on the heels of the news of Courtenay’s ill-health - I’ve wondered before how much that complaint (though apparently fairly commonly expressed) reflects Henry’s recovery from his arrow wound but this makes it seem that his attitude is also like “and Courtenay’s sick and the useless wankers can’t cure him”. (It is possible that this is just a quirk of Falk’s narrative, I haven’t read (and can’t read) the actual document (which is, afaik, a Latin text in a French article).

(and yes, this is making me want to write fic wherein Hal tries to look after Courtenay and giving me horrible ideas for when Hal finds out Courtenay’s got dysentery on top of whatever else is wrong with him. And yes, they would both be terrible patients.)

The bishop did eventually introduce him to King Henry, and he presented the king with an astrolabe and several books on instruments and their uses. The king, who was rather suspicious of astrology, spoke only to thank him in Latin and and French.

I definitely knew this before but it’s still hilarious. Even more hilarious is Courtenay being into astrology and Henry being suspicious of it.

And the required deathbed tending/sharing a tomb quote:

In September 1415, just two weeks after Fusoris's arrest, Courtenay fell victim to the dysentery that ravaged the English army at Harfleur. He was only thirty-five. Henry V personally closed the bishop's eyes and sent his body back for burial in the royal tomb in Westminster Abbey. When Henry himself died in 1422, Courtenay's feet had to be amputated and placed under his armpits to make room in the tomb for his friend and master.

I think I’ve said before that I don’t believe Henry V and Courtenay are sharing a tomb - I just don’t think the evidence is there. We have diagrams and newspaper articles from Courtenay’s tomb being discovered in the 1950s. We also have the ring that was found in Courtenay’s tomb. I’ve never come across anything about Henry V’s tomb ever being opened. But still. :(

#richard courtenay #jean fusoris #henry v

[heartofstanding]

Richard Courtenay's association with Henry V was briefer, but its intimacy may have been closer still. Born in 1381 into the distinguished house of Courtenay, he had been a bachelor of civil law and chancellor of Oxford in his twenties. He had accompanied the Prince of Wales in the Welsh campaign of 1407, and his differences with Archbishop Arundel over the visitation of Oxford had reached a crisis in 1410 during the prince’s ascendancy in the council. He took part in both of the embassies to Charles VI in 1414-15, perhaps because he knew the king’s mind better than his colleagues. As treasure of the chamber he played an important role in the financial preparations for the Agincourt campaign, receiving the ready cash lent in return for the king’s jewels in pledge. A curious sidelight on his activities just before and during the expedition comes from the trial for treason in France of the astrologer Jean Fusoris. Courtenay had met Fusoris in the course of his missions in Paris, and had brought a number of books and an astrolabe from him. Subsequently, claiming that he had been not been paid for these, Fusoris persuaded the Archbishop of Bourges to let him accompany the final French embassy which met Henry V at Winchester in June 1415. From Fusoris’s account a series of vignettes of Courtenay emerge: eating almonds in the garden of the Celestines in Paris, while his graver colleague Bishop Langley, upstairs in the library, was comparing the Celestine and Benedictine Rules; back in England, consulting his almanac and his astrolabe on the fortune of the proposed marriage of Henry V with the Princess Catherine; saying mass for the king and presenting to him Fusoris, on the basis of a common interest in astrology. At Harfleur Courtenay seems to have acted as an intelligence officer, attempting perhaps successfully to use Fusoris as his agent in Paris: only the king ‘who is very discreet as you know’, Courtenay wrote, being privy to the transaction.

Jeremy Caton, “The King’s Servants”, Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (ed. G. L. Harriss)

#henry v #richard courtenay #jean fusoris #oh my god they were tomb mates