Apr 8, 2012

Stamps of France: Nicolas Rolin and Guigone de Salins


NICOLAS ROLIN

(1376 – 1462)




Nicolas Rolin was a leading figure in the history of Burgundy and France. Chancellor of Burgundy, in 1422, he was a sort of minister to Philippe le Bon, a rank he held for more than forty years as one of the principal architects of the monarch's success. He was the lawyer of Jean sans Peur, and presented at the lit de justice of 1420 conclusions relative to the murder at Montereau.

Rolin was one of the participants in drafting the 1435 Treaty of Arras by which Charles VII recognised the independence of Burgundy, thus separating it from the English in the Hundred Years' War.

Enormously rich, Nicolas Rolin contributed to the founding of the universities of Dôle and Louvain. He had luxurious tastes and was a protector of the arts.

Having founded the Hospices de Beaune with his wife Guigone de Salins, in 1443, in 1452 Rolin created a new religious order, "Les sœurs hospitalières de Beaune" (The Hospitaller Sisters of Beaune). He ordered the painting of an altarpiece, The Last judgement by the Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden for the hospices.

The house in which Rolin was born is now the Autun town museum and is known as the Musée Rolin. He owned the Château d'Oricourt and in 1435 he commissioned Jan van Eyck the famous The Virgin with Child and Chancellor Rolin, now at the Louvre.


GUIGONE DE SALINS

(1403 – 1470)


Guigone de Salins was the founder with her husband Nicolas Rolin, the Hospices de Beaune.

From the family of the lords of Salins, in the Jura, Guigone de Salins married at age 18, in 1421, with the Chancellor of Burgundy Nicolas Rolin.

She encouraged her husband to charity. They built the Hotel-Dieu in Beaune. It introduces the art in the hospital where the poor and pilgrims will be treated in the setting of a castle.

The tile in the main hall of the poor reflects the love of Nicolas Rolin to Guigone: it includes the Rolin monogram and his motto: "Seulle", in reference to his wife.

From 1462, widowed, she devoted herself to comfort the sick. She rests in the chapel of the Hotel Dieu.


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