The Fairy Melusine, the House of Lusignan, and the Château de Saint-Jean-d’Angle

The Château de Saint-Jean-d’Angle is a modest castle in the west of France, surrounded by salt marshes along the Seudre River, near the mouth of the Garonne. The original castle was a plain shell keep, a type more common in England than France. The exact date of its contruction is much disputed, with various sources offering dates from the 980s to the 1280s; I lean toward the reign of Henry II of England, 1154-1189. Much of what you see today dates to a major restoration completed in 1624, as shown by a dated stone in the foundation of the hall. But anyway the castle might be quite old, which is crucial to its contemporary reputation. 

Because whenever it was built, it belonged to the Lords of Lusignan. The Lusignan family was famous for two things. First, their part in the Crusades and the Latin East in general; one branch became the Kings of Jerusalem when that title meant ruling mainly over Cyprus. Second, they are supposed to have been made great by the Fairy Melusine. One of the things Melusine is supposed to have done is built a bunch of castles for her Lusignan husband, and the propaganda of the privately owned castle proudly proclaims it the only Lusignan castle remaining from the time of Melusine.

The earliest full version of the Melusine story was The Romance of Poitou or Lusignan, alias the Tale of Melusine, composed around 1390 by Jean d'Arras. Arras said he was following "old chapbooks and spinning tales," and there is no reason to doubt him, since various elements of the story are ancient and widespread. The first historical figure in the House of Lusignan was Hugh I, who would have lived around 900 AD. In fact the first six Lords of Lusignan were all named Hugh, which creates certain difficulties for tying the legend to history, since in the Romance the Lord of Lusignan is named Raymondin. But who cares! Let's just say our castle dates to "the time of Melusine" anyway.

The story of Melusine starts like this:

One day while King Elainas was out hunting he stopped to quench his thirst at a spring, whereby he heard the voice of a woman singing. Here he met the fairy Pressine, though he questioned her he could not learn from where she came. They were married with the one condition that Elainas promise to never interrupt her while she was lying-in. Pressine gave birth to triplets, three daughters; Melusine, Meliot, and Palatine. Upon hearing the news that Pressine had given birth, Elainas could not contain his joy and burst in upon her while she was bathing her daughters. Pressine flew into a wrath of anger and promised that from then on her descendants would avenge her. She left with her daughters for the home of her sister the Queen of the Lost Island.

Medieval illustrators loved this discovery scene

The theme of broken taboos repeats twice more in the story, always leading to disasters. Melusine's personal curse, acquired by violating one of her mother's prohibitions, is that every Saturday her lower body turns into a snake. She eventually marries Raymondin of Lusignan, strictly prohibiting him from ever seeing her on Saturday, which of course he eventually does, but not until after they have had ten sons, each with a different strange deformity, and she has made the family rich and powerful. The Lusignans have lots of descendants, including both the Hapsburgs and the English royal line, so the story became quite famous across Europe.

My personal favorite story from the Romance concerns Geoffrey of the Giant Tooth, one of Melusine's sons, who went crazy and massacred a hundred monks over an incident invovling one of the monastery pigs. Incidentally Melusine didn't die at the end but only sank into a rock, and if you find her golden key you can set her free and marry her. But I'm not sure I recommend her as a spouse.

As a prominent house the Lusignans had many homes much grander than our little castle. Their main seat, Lusignan, is illustrated in the Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry, but nothing of it remains standing.

But back to Le Château de Saint-Jean-d’Angle. Poitou was fought over for centuries by the kings of England and France, and one assumes that the castle had some role in these wars, but neither the usual online sources nor the PowerPoint-mad local historian of Belle Saintonge has any details.

The first known fight at the castle took place in 1568, which it was besieged by Protestant forces during the Wars of Religion. This did "significant damage" to the castle, which is presumably why it needed the major restoration of 1624. The restoration was carried out by Charlotte Saint-Gelais de Lusignan, about whom I have been able to find out nothing else. At that time the castle acquired a carving showing Melusine in her bath, or so written sources say, but it must not look like much because I can't find a picture of it.

By 1990 the castle is pretty bad shape, as this image shows. Removal of the vegetation, I read, revealed "catastrophic" conditions.

In 1994 it was acquired by a businessman named Alain Rousselot. Rousselot got some grants from the French government and restored it, turning it into a "medieval theme park" with trebuchet demonstrations and the like.

Whatever it takes, I guess. And if "from the time of Melusine" helps draw people in, I'm not really going to complain about that, either.