AGNES SOREL 



So much glamour has attached, and rightly so, 

 to Joan of Arc, the soldier-saviour of Charles the 

 Seventh of France, that another woman, Agnes 

 Sorel Charles's good angel of a less militant 

 order has been almost entirely overlooked, and 

 where she has been remembered, has been treated 

 by the few with the honour due to her, and by 

 the many merely as Charles's mistress. But to 

 her it was given to be a great inspirer of Charles, 

 and much of the good that this weak king and 

 ungrateful man did for his country may assuredly 

 be in large measure attributed to her influence, 

 just as the greatest merit that can be recorded of 

 him personally was his devotion to her whilst 

 she lived, though the memory of her availed 

 naught after she had passed away. Agnes Sorel 

 came as it were between the ebb and flow of the 

 late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when 

 chivalry, not as a passing emotion but as an 

 education, still lingered in men's relation with 

 women. Respect for womankind grew in the 

 Middle Ages in France under the double influence 

 of religion and chivalry, of which the cult of the 

 Virgin and the cult of woman were the outcome. 



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