Guy de Châtillon-sur-Marne, II

Medieval France: an encyclopedia By William W. Kibler

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Pg. 214

CHATILLON. Taking its name from the castle of Châtillon-sur-Marne (Marne), the Châtillon family served as castellans there for the counts of Champagne, who held the fortress in fief from the archbishops of Reims. The First member of the family known to hold this office was Gui (fl. 1059-87), from whom descended a line of knights whose sphere of activity and influence soon passed beyong the border of Champagne. By 1127, Henry I de Châtillon was lord of Montjay, located about 18 miles from Paris.

The office of castellan of Châtillon was hereditary and included rights and property that formed the nucleus of a castellany that must be distinguished from the more important count's castellany of Châtillon, which included the donjon and the town and continued to exist as a separate entity. The holdings at Châtillon eventually were among the less important possessions of the family, which advanced to a higher social level through the marriage, in the early 1160s, of Gui II to Adele de Dreux, granddaughter of King Louis VI. At the time, Gui was already lord of strategically located Montjay, and the marriage served a political purpose for both Adele's uncle, Louis VII, and her father, Robert I de Dreux.

The children of Gui II and Adele included Gaucher III, who married the heiress to the county of Saint-Pol, and Robert (d. 1215), who became bishop of Laon in 1210, Gaucher III was bouteiller of Champagne, seneschal of Burgundy by 1193, and in 1210 one of the leaders of the royal army. He fought heroically at Bouvines in 1214. His sons, Gui III and Hugues I, married descendants of Louis VI, heiresses, respectively, to the counties of Nevers and Blois. Gui III (d. 1226) left a son who died childless, but from his daughter Yolande, countess of Nevers and wife of the lord of Bourbon, descended the dukes of Bourbon and Bar and the later dukes of Burgundy. From Hugues I descended the counts of Porcien and the counts of Saint-Pol. The latter line ended with another Gui, who died in England as a hostage ca. 1363. His sister's marriage brought Saint-Pol into the house of Luxembourg.

Gaucher de Châtillon (d. 1329), called (perhaps erroneously) Gaucher V, was a grandson of Hugues I. He united the two castellanies of Châtillon by receiving from Philip IV in 1290 the rights that had belonged to the counts of Champagne, whose heiress was Philip's queen. By the end of 1303, he had returned the count's castellany to the king in exchange for other lands and rights, some of which were combined with his newly purchased lordship of Chateau-Porcien to form, by royal grant, the county of Porcien. Gaucher also held the office of constable, both for Chapagne and for France. The counts of Porcien and the lords of Dampierre were descended from his son Gaucher. Jacques de Châtillon, lord of Dampierre and admiral of France, died at Agincourt in 1415. From Constable Gaucher's son Jean, lord of Châtillon (d. 1363), descended a line that died out in the second half of the 15th century.

Richard C. Famigleitti

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