Le soleil: un embléme redoutable: une lecture typologique de la crise de folie du roi Charles VI

Abstract

The crise de la fôret du Mans drove King Charles VI mad for seven years. God, as he sometimes did to Israel in biblical times, had struck the head of the fille aînée de l'Eglise to punish the sins of a court and a nobility who had forgotten their duty. According to the supporters of the Most Christian King, in Latin Charles means Clara Lux, clear light, which was the light of Christ, the Sun of Justice. Like his father, Charles V therefore, the king of France had taken the sun for his emblem, for it was supposed to be a sign of his membership of the divine plan, especially important in the circumstances of the Hundred Years War. However, on 5 August 1392, while pursuing the attackers of Olivier de Clisson through the forest of Le Mans, Charles imprudently exposed himself to the sun which, on that summer day, was particularly hot and dazzling. Froissart, the most prolific of the historians of the crise, collected together all the details which expressed God's anger; for him the sun on that day was, without any doubt, like an eschatological vision of Christ. Thus, the spectacular manifestation of the king's emblem through the physical sun appeared as a condemnation of its bearer, who had forfeited God's light.