Anjou

**Anjou** (UK <templatestyles src="IPA/styles.css"/>/ˈɒ̃ʒuː, ˈ**[unsupported input]**ʒuː<templatestyles src="IPA/styles.css"/>/

, US <templatestyles src="IPA/styles.css"/>/ɒ̃ˈʒuː, ˈæn**[unsupported input]**d**[unsupported input]**ʒuː, ˈɑːnʒuː<templatestyles src="IPA/styles.css"/>/

 French: <templatestyles src="IPA/styles.css"/>[ɑ̃ʒu]; Latin
*Andegavia*) was a French province straddling the lower Loire River. Its capital was Angers and it was roughly coextensive with the diocese of Angers. Anjou was bordered by Brittany to the west, Maine to the north, Touraine to the east and Poitou to the south. The adjectival form is Angevin, and inhabitants of Anjou are known as Angevins. During the Middle Ages, the **County of Anjou**, ruled by the Counts of Anjou, was a prominent fief of the French crown.
The region takes its name from the Celtic tribe of the Andecavi, which submitted to Roman rule following the Gallic Wars. Under the Romans, the chief fortified settlement of the Andecavi became the city of Juliomagus, the future Angers. The territory of the Andecavi was organized as a *civitas* (called the *civitas Andegavensis* or *civitas Andegavorum*).

Under the Franks, the city of Juliomagus took the name of the ancient tribe and became Angers. Under the Merovingians, the history of Anjou is obscure. It is not recorded as a county (*comitatus*) until the time of the Carolingians. In the late ninth and early tenth centuries the viscounts (representatives of the counts) usurped comital authority and made Anjou an autonomous hereditary principality. The first dynasty of counts of Anjou, the House of Ingelger, ruled continuously down to 1205. In 1131, Count Fulk V became the King of Jerusalem; then in 1154, his grandson, Henry "Curtmantle" became King of England. The territories ruled by Henry and his successors, which stretched from Ireland to the Pyrenees, are often called the Angevin Empire. This empire was broken up by the French king Philip II, who confiscated the dynasty's northern French lands, including Anjou in 1205.

The county of Anjou was united to the royal domain between 1205 and 1246, when it was turned into an apanage for the king's brother, Charles I of Anjou. This second Angevin dynasty, a branch of the Capetian dynasty, established itself on the throne of Naples and Hungary. Anjou itself was united to the royal domain again in 1328, but was detached in 1360 as the Duchy of Anjou for the king's son, Louis I of Anjou. The third Angevin dynasty, a branch of the House of Valois, also ruled for a time the Kingdom of Naples. The dukes had the same autonomy as the earlier counts, but the duchy was increasingly administered in the same fashion as the royal domain and the royal government often exercised the ducal power while the dukes were away. When the Valois line failed and Anjou was incorporated into the royal domain again in 1480, there was little change on the ground. Anjou remained a province of crown until the French Revolution (1790), when the provinces were reorganized.

## Notes

1. ↑ Anjou. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
2. ↑ "Anjou" (US) and Anjou. *Oxford Dictionaries UK Dictionary*. Oxford University Press.
3. ↑ Anjou. *Merriam-Webster Dictionary*. Retrieved on 11 May 2019.

## References

* Baynes, T. S., ed (1878). "Anjou". *Encyclopædia Britannica*. **2** (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 58.

* <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Collins, Paul, *The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century*.

**Attribution:**

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:
Halphen, Louis (1911). "Anjou". In Chisholm, Hugh. *Encyclopædia Britannica*. **2** (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 55–58.

## Further reading

* The chronicles of Normandy by William of Poitiers and of Jumièges and Ordericus Vitalis (in Latin)
* The chronicles of Maine, particularly the *Actus pontificum cenomannis in urbe degentium* (in Latin)
* The *Gesta consulum Andegavorum* (in Latin)
	+ *Chroniques des comtes d'Anjou*, published by Marchegay and Salmon, with an introduction by E. Mabille, Paris, 1856–1871 (in French)
* Louis Halphen, *Êtude sur les chroniques des comtes d'Anjou et des seigneurs d'Amboise* (Paris, 1906) (in French)
* Louis Halphen, *Recueil d'annales angevines et vendómoises* (Paris, 1903) (in French)
* Auguste Molinier, *Les Sources de l'histoire de France* (Paris, 1902), ii. 1276–1310 (in French)
* Louis Halphen, *Le Comté d'Anjou au XIe siècle* (Paris, 1906) (in French)
* Kate Norgate, *England under the Angevin Kings* (2 vols., London, 1887)
* A. Lecoy de La Marche, *Le Roi René* (2 vols., Paris, 1875). (in French)
* Célestin Port, *Dictionnaire historique, géographique et biographique de Maine-et-Loire* (3 vols., Paris and Angers, 1874–1878) (in French)
* idem, *Préliminaires*. (in French)
* Edward Augustus Freeman, *The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results* (2d vol.)
* Luc d'Achery, *Spicilegium, sive Collectio veterum aliquot scriptorum qui in Galliae bibliothecis, maxime Benedictinorum, latuerunt* (in Latin)