Georges Chastellain

Georges Chastellain (c. 1405 or c. 1415 – 20 March 1475), Burgundian chronicler and poet, was a native of Aalst in Flanders. Chastellain's historical works are valuable for the accurate information they contain. As a poet he was famous among his contemporaries. He was the great master of the school of grands rhétoriqueurs, whose principal characteristics were fondness for the most artificial forms and a profusion of Latinisms and graecisms.

Georges Chastellain derived his surname from the fact that his ancestors were burgraves or châtelains of the town; his parents, who belonged to illustrious Flemish families, were probably the Jean Chastellain and his wife Marie de Masmines mentioned in the town records in 1425 and 1432. A copy of an epitaph originally at Valenciennes states that he died on 20 March 1474-5 aged seventy. But since he states that he was so young a child in 1430 that he could not recollect the details of events in that year, and since he was an ecolier at Louvain in 1430, his birth may probably be placed nearer 1415 than 1405.

He saw active service in the Anglo-French wars and probably elsewhere, winning the surname of L'adventureux. In 1434 he received a gift from Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, for his military services, but on the conclusion of the peace of Arras in the next year he abandoned soldiering for diplomacy. The next ten years were spent in France, where he was connected with Georges de la Trémoille, and afterwards entered the household of Pierre de Brézé, at that time seneschal of Poitou, by whom he was employed on missions to the duke of Burgundy, in an attempt to establish better relations between Charles VII and the duke.

During these years Chastellain had ample opportunity of obtaining an intimate knowledge of French affairs, but on the further breach between the two princes, Chastellain left the French service to enter Philip's household. He was at first pantler, then carver, titles which are misleading as to the actual nature of his services, which were those of a diplomatist; and in 1457 he became a member of the ducal council. He was continually employed on diplomatic errands until 1455, when, owing apparently to ill-health, he received apartments in the palace of the counts of Hainaut at Salle-le-Comte, Valenciennes, with a considerable pension, on condition that the recipient should put in writing choses nouvelles et morales, and a chronicle of notable events. That is to say, he was appointed Burgundian historiographer with a recommendation to write also on other subjects not strictly within the scope of a chronicler.

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