4 - ELECTORAL PRACTICE: GREATER ANJOU

Summary

Long before Geoffrey Plantagenet set out to conquer Normandy in 1135–6, the counts of Anjou had added the counties of Touraine (in 1044) and Maine (in 1110) to their native county of Anjou. These three counties formed what as a matter of convenience can be called Greater Anjou, which comprised the archbishopric of Tours and two of its suffragan bishoprics, Le Mans and Angers. The count was the most important individual baron in Greater Anjou, holding possessions in the Loire valley, western Touraine, and the towns of Le Mans, La Flèche, and Trôo in Maine. Count Geoffrey had been largely successful in his attempts to defend, strengthen, and expand comital power, but the substantial lordships of other barons in Greater Anjou posed a constant challenge to his rule. In Maine and northern Anjou, the viscounts of Beaumont and the lords of Craon, Laval, Sablé, and Mayenne were the leading families, while in southern Anjou the lords of Montreuil-Bellay were the count's greatest rivals. In northern and central Touraine the influence of the counts of Vendôme, the counts of Blois, and the lords of Amboise was particularly notable, while the lords of Ste Maure, L'Isle-Bouchard, La Haye, and Preuilly dominated the south. In the absence of a dominant ruler, however, the cathedral chapters of Greater Anjou had been gaining more and more control over episcopal elections in the first half of the twelfth century.