Here are a few photos of architectural details at the Château du Moulin, located near the town of Romorantin in the Loir-et-Cher (France). I was there again on July 2, 2016, after previous visits in 2000, 2003, and 2008.
The guide said this elaborate geometrical pattern in the brickwork seems to depict an African game called le jeu des crottes de chameau, played by children in the Sahara Desert. That would be "the camel dung game", for which the "board" is traced in the sand by the people who play it. Nobody knows why the pattern appears on a such an old wall in central France.
This is the coat of arms of the family of Philipped du Moulin, who had the château built in the last quarter of the 15th century. He wasn't really a nobleman, but he had saved the life of the French king during a battle in Italy. The king knighted or ennobled him on the spot and helped him build this château in the Sologne. Those are two lions carved into the stone.
Windows like these, above and below, are called fenêtres à meneaux, or mullioned windows, and are characteristic not of fortified medieval châteaux but of buildings designed to serve as comfortable residences.
Such windows show that the Château du Moulin is a transitional structure, built as the tumultuous Middle Ages and the 100 Years War waned and the more peaceful era called the Renaissance began in France, around the year 1500. The larger windows let a lot more daylight shine into the building, making it a more pleasant place to live.
It is the pattern for the game the English call Nine Men's Morris and German's and Hungarians called Muhle and Malom which words mean The Mill. I can imagine children in the desert playing it, too. A classic.
ReplyDeleteThe details of the chateau are very nice, I think.
I'm wondering if the architect who built the château du Moulin knew about that German and Hungarian game the name of which means moulin to incorporate it in the walls of the château of the Mill? Or was it M. de Mill himself who suggested it?
DeleteBefore today I had never heard of le jeu du moulin which according to Wikipedia has been around in Europe and elsewhere for two thousand years or longer. In France it is also called marelle, but that is a homonym of another game la marelle which most children have played at some time. It is quite different from le moulin. That shows you can always learn something new, no matter how old you are!
DeleteSo it is very appropriate that the board of that game was constructed in a wall of château du Moulin.
Thank you, chm, for putting two and two together as I was too sleepy to do last night. I recognized the game pattern because our family plays it, or used to when my kids were younger. But of course, it must have been used because of the connection to the name of the Chateau. Thanks!
DeleteWell, thank YOU, Thickethouse, because you mentioned the German and Hungarian name of that game that meant moulin in French. I still don't know what the game's connection is to a mill. (Mill = three pawns in a row?) I'll further my research.
DeleteThis website in French gives the rules of the game and says a simpler version is ..."tic-tac-toe". Who knew?
And if you wondered about les crottes de chameau, they just were used as pawns. Lol.
It is very late and I am mad that I put that apostrophe in the word Germans. Bah!
ReplyDeleteIt's too bad comments on Blogger can't be edited, but that's the way it is.
DeleteThe amount of work that went into these places is mind-boggling. Gorgeous photos.
ReplyDeleteDid you know the start-off point for the Renaissance is 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue?
The larger windows also coincided with better glass-making. In the Middle Ages, people put up a kind of waxed paper in windows, so you can imagine they kept the windows small, not to let in too many drafts in winter.
I knew a man who grew up in south Florida in the 1930s and 1940s. He said his family's house didn't have windows with glass in them but waxed paper. That kept out the rain and the mosquitoes in the summertime. In the winter, it was all the insulation people needed. His family didn't live in a château, that's for sure (nor did mine in N.C.).
ReplyDeleteWow ... I will be thankful that we always had windows.
ReplyDeleteI would not say no to a home with mullioned windows.
There is always something interesting to learn here on your blog, Monsieur Ken :)
ReplyDeleteLove the carved stone window frames with moss. Also the leaded glass window panes that have shifted over time.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if, in addition to the possible references to games and names, there might have been some memory or experience there then of the Middle East -- tales of crusades, or Moorish influence (did it get that far north?).
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