Anthony & Lesley Green Home Page:Information about Francoise Pidoux
Francoise Pidoux (b. date unknown, d. Abt. 1640)
Notes for Francoise Pidoux:
In the LDS Family History Library index is a reference to a book in the library at Salt Lake. I have obtained photocopies of the first few pages of this book, which is a typewritten manuscript dated 1964, in French. The translation is mine.
A more polished copy of these notes is to be found in my WordPerfect document files.I do not know how to insert typographic symbols into this FTM notepage, so have had to manage without accents and umlauts.
TITLE: Sylvain PIDOUX DE LA MADUERE de l'Academie de Besancon du College pontificale heraldique de Rome, membre du comite de la maison de Jean de la Fontaine a Chateau-Thierry
(Sylvain P de la M, of the Besancon Academy of the papal college of heraldry of Rome, member of the society of Jean de la Fontaine'shome in Chateau-Thierry.)
"LA FAMILLE MATERNELLE du fabuliste JEAN DE LA FONTAINE: LES PIDOUX"
"The Maternal Family Ancestry of the writer of fables Jean de la Fontaine: The Pidoux".
(Address of Sylvain Pidoux?) Le Perreux, 17 allee de Stalingrad, MCMLXIV
Chapter I : The lineage of the Evroin family
At the end of December 1246, in a wealthy home in the rue Neuve Notre Dame in Paris, a meeting took place of the heirs of Mrs. Hersend, widow of the late Jean Evroin, the money-changer.
The estate was an important one. Reimbaud, the grandfather, had been a money-changer and his son, Evroin the money-changer, as he was called, had ....?set up an annual commemoration of his birthday at Notre Dame with a loan ? on the Maison du Chien, on the bank of the Seine, in the suburb of Saint Germain D'Auxerre. Married to Agnes de Gournay, daughter of William, provost of Paris - someone equivalent to today's Prefect of Police - he was chosen by Philippe Augustus, in 1190, to participate in the Regency Council which ruled the kingdom during the king's absence on Crusade. In this he was in company with Thiboud le Riche, Athon de la Greve, Nicolas Boucel and two other bourgeois (=respectable townspeople).
He left a son Jean who added the pronoun d' to his surname, thus d'Evroin, and who enjoyed considerable good luck: besides his place of business on the Grand Pont he had the Maison du Chien, the Maison Cornuaille in the suburb of St. Germain l'Auxerrois and another house at the Baudoyer gate, near that of Roger de St. Germain.
By his wife Hersend he had had a son Nicolas, ordained a priest in 1233 and doubtless dead before 1246 because he does not appear as an heir to the estate, which was shared between the three daughters or their heirs in title.
The eldest, Fleurie, dead at 16 in february 1233, had married Nicolas Arrode, Provost of Paris, son of Eudes Arrode, supplier of provisions to Philippe Augustus, and of Perronelle d'Arras. By him she had a son, Jean, lord of Chaillot, provost of the merchants of Paris in 1291 and whose descendants were to marry into the Gentien and Bourdon families.
The second (daughter), Genevieve, married Eudes Popin, provost of Paris, from a family which would leave its name on the village of Popincourt. He had two daughters married respectively to Pierre Gontier, provost of Paris in 1259 and to Jean Augier, provost of merchants in 1268. His son Jean was himself provost of merchants in 1289.The third daughter was called Agnes. It was she who married Guillaume (William) Pidoux and who was widowed in 1246, the occasion at which this family meeting took place.
To this gathering came Nicolas Arrode, representing his son Jean who was still a minor, Eudes Popin and his wife Genevieve, and Agnes the widow of Guillaume Pidoux.
The report of this meeting explains to us the purpose of it: itwas concerned with the safeguarding of the interest of the minor Arrode. Eudes Popin has brought as companions his sons-in-law Gonthier and Augier, Agnes Pidoux has her son-in-law Etienne Barbette, Junior and her sons Jean, Eudes and master Baudouin Pidoux. All accept as arbitrators Adam Le Flameng and Raoul de Pacy, citizens of Paris, and agree to revise the distribution made on the death of Jean Evroin if it is tainted with any inequality: the Pidoux children further ratify, as they had promised in advance to do, their renunciation of the legacies which they had received from their grandfather.
The witnesses to this deed are Andre de Pacy and Raoul his brother, Gautier le Grand, Eudes Le Roux and Nicolas his brother, and Henri le Petit.
The Pidoux lineage.
This Guillaume Pidoux, whose widow we meet in 1246, but who was still alive in 1245, would be of even greater interest to us if we could learn his background beyond indications from his social standing that he was by no means a nobody.
In fact, we are not entirely without knowledge of them; and, if the deeds which mention his "predecessors", as they said then,do not allow us to define precisely the ties which linked them, at least they are of interest in placing the family in its social context.
In the same time period as Guillaume there lived a priest who could be his brother, Hugues Pidoux, architect and painter to St. Louis, (King Louis IV) and who died in 1251. Perhaps they are the sons of a Jean Pidoux who in 1180 lived in the town of St. Germain des Pres, unless of Hugues Pidoux who holds the fief of La Ferte in 1172, or of Robert Pidoux who is a man-at-arms under Philippe Augustus in the bailiwick of Yevres le Chatel (in Loiret) in 1180-1223, as is Ponce Pidoux at Ferrieres (in Loiret). Their name is spelled Pisdoue, Pisdoe, Pizdoe, Piz d'Oe, which is an exact translation for the latin Pectus Anseris most commonly used, or Pes Anseris. But, for the first people that we meet in France, Robert and Anseau, witnesses to a deed of gift in 1099, the name takes a form that seems italian: Pes de Alcha. This reminds us of the theory held by italian genealogists who, without knowing this detail, have thought that this family, like those of a number of money-changers,could have come from Italy during that period. It would be only one branch of the Pedochi family, originally from Genoa, which claimed descent from a youger branch of the ancient family of Manfred. It is, moreover, of interest to report that, in spite of illiustrated documents which attribute to the Piz d'Oe a coat of arms with a fretted cross quartered with lions, Chevillard indicates for them the shield of the Pedochi: on a field of blue, three crow's feet in gold. Thus one would more easily understand how, from the beginning, they placed themselves in a social circle which would not accept just any marriage alliance.This theory is well supported. (Note: here there is a lengthy footnote referring to armorial bearings registered to Pidoux families which I will translate later). Paris is at the confluence of the great pilgrimage routes along which, at the start of the thirteenth century, streams of people flow. Naturally, they are taking them from the north or the east to go to St. James of Compostella. Along them they meet the "jongleurs" (jugglers or entertainers) who enliven the great fairs of Champagne and Brie. The valleys of the Rhone and the Saone, of the Yonne and the Seine, make up the routes that the traveller instinctively follows. At the same period cities like Venice, Pisa or Genoa are beginning to play a commercial role, while in Flanders other trading centres are emerging. Paris will naturally be the hub of this traffic. The Lombards would come here in great numbers. It is the point in time -1227- when the Pedochi were driven from the Mirandole by the Pics and scattered to different regions. It would not be surprising that one of them, a money changer like many of his compatriots, should have settled in Paris.
Children comfortably settled.The numerous children of Guillaume Pidoux and Agnes Evroin were born in any case with a patrimonial inheritance as comfortable socially as it was materially.
Two were canons, one of St. Thomas du Louvre and the other of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Eudes is noted in 1270 among the "masters or provosts of trading". Guillaume was provost of merchants in 1276 and Thomas, their younger brother, provost of Paris in 1286. Eudes marries a Flameng and marries his son to a Gentien. He leaves his name on the rue de la Barre Eudes Pisdoe. His wife, with those of his brothers Macy, Guillaume and Thomas, is among the upper class bourgois ladies described in a poem entitled "The social whirl of the ladies of Paris". As to their sisters, they married Etienne Barbette, son of the Provost of Paris and Jean Sarrazin, chamberlain and writer of the history of St. Louis, King Louis IV.It is easy to picture the society in which they grew up: King Philippe Augustus has just died on July 24, 1223, leaving a magnificently beautified city of Paris. From their house on the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, the Evroins had seen the new cathedral begun by bishop Maurice de Sully in 1163, rising little by little. Perhaps they had been present at the consecration of the high altar by a Papal Legate on May 19, 1182. Guillaume Pidoux saw it completed in 1235. At the same time, the King endowed his city with a new girdle of thick walls flanked by seventy three towers and opened with twelve gates. On the side of this enclosure, the Louvre was the stronghold of this fortification. It stands on the right bank of the Seine. On the left bank is the student quarter and only the Petit Pont links it to the Ile de la Cite. It is the Grand Pont, bordered with houses, which connects this to the right bank.
From this side, near the Seine, by the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the "great parish church" as it was called, the fashionable section, close to the Louvre, Les Halles (the central market) the Petit Bourbon palace and the d'Alencon mansion, at the centre of commercial life. That is where all the Pidoux lived, in the quadrilateral formed by the Rue St. Honore to the north, the Rue aux Lavendieres on the east, the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, then called the Rue de la Croix du Tiroer, on the West and the high street Rue St. Germain on the south. Eudes lived on Rue Guillaume Bourdon. He was a neighbour of lord Guillaume Bourdon, provost of the merchants, who had married an Augier, his cousin, and of Antoine Boucel and Jean le Flameng. . . . . . .
This is a translation of the first five pages of the typescript. All sources are footnoted but I have not included those references except for the one dealing with coats of arms which I will translate below. There are 144 pages of narrative of which I have only ordered the first five pages. There are also 127 pages of "genealogie documentaire" which I assume to be the documents referenced in the footnotes, and 21 pages of appendices covering unrelated branches of the Pidoux family. These I am now requesting (Jan. 19, 2001) from Salt Lake. I already have received nine pages of portraits ( but xeroxes of xeroxes are rather poor quality) and some sketches of coats of arms taken from seals and of various old family homes connected with the author's Pidoux family line.
Now for the lengthy footnote(1) Favouring this thesis we can bring in two papers found in the Bibliotheque Nationale. One indicating the existence, in Genoa, of a Padoua family which was added to the House of Fiesque when the Republic decided to regroup families, the other, attributing to this Padoue-Pizdoe family a coat of arms of a blue field with a silver bird. The other arguments are: 1) the fact that the name is spelled in the singular or the plural, as in Italian, Pidou or Pidoux, similarly to Pedoca or Pedochi; 2) the parallels of variations in the coat of arms: we find in France: "three gold crow's feet on a blue ground" (Chevillard) or "gold with two crow's feet in a diagonal (Riestap) or "gold (or silver) with three criss-crosses in black (Judgement of the State Council 1667) or "black with three silver criss-crosses (portrait of Philippe Pidoux de Montanglaust) or "black with three drops of gold" (Pallyot). Mervache, in his armorial list of 1506, says that the Pidoux of la Rochefaton formerly carried a design of three sheep's feet" (Biblioteque Natnl). We also find three silver crows or three silver birds in flight on a field of blue for the Pidoux of Saint Olon (Bibliotheque Natnl and Raunie: "Epitaph record of old Paris" III.129) - In Italy we find " blue field with three gold crow's feet", or "blue field with three gold x's (the criss-crosses of the Pidoux in France are x's), or a black field with three drops of gold" - 3) the early italianised form of the name: Pas de Alcha = Pedoca. The Pedochi family line died out in 1811.
More About Francoise Pidoux and Jean de La Fontaine:
Marriage: Abt. 1620, Chateau-Thierry, Champagne, France.
Children of Francoise Pidoux and Jean de La Fontaine are:
- Jean de La Fontaine, b. July 8, 1621, d. 1695.