ABSTRACT
In 1420, Jean V de Montfort, duke of BriĴany, was captured by ruse and imprisoned for five months by his arch-rivals and cousins, who still contested his father’s victory in the War of Succession in 1364. AĞer negotiations by Duchess Jeanne de France, the duke was released. He aĴributed his liberty to hours of devout prayer and to his pledge that, if freed, he would offer his weight in gold to the Carmelite brothers at Nantes. A Carmelite prior, writing in the early seventeenth century, recounts how the duke’s pledge was made good on 14 July 1420:
Arriving at the image of the good Virgin, his liberator, he threw himself on the ground before her in thanks while the religious chanted a suffrage of grace, and before all present, he drew on his heaviest harnois and had all his vessels and jewels brought (because he lacked sufficient coin) and had them placed on one side of the balance and he on the other. And he gave the convent the equivalent of his weight, which was 304 marks, 7 ounces in gold, as one shall see towards the end; all these things and many others can be seen well painted and illuminated in an old missal on parchment dearly looked aĞer in the sacristy of Nantes.1
