CHASTELLAIN, GEORGES (c. Burgundian poet and chronicler, was a native of Alost, in Flanders. He saw active service in the Anglo-French Wars and elsewhere. In he received a gift from Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, for his military service. After the peace of Arras 5) he abandoned soldiering for diplomacy. The next ten years were spent in France, where he was connected with Georges de la Tremoille, and afterwards entered the household of Pierre de Breze, at that time seneschal of Poitou, by whom he was em ployed on missions to the duke of Burgundy, in an attempt to establish better relations between Charles VII. and the duke. On the further breach between the two princes, Chastellain left the French service to enter Philip's household, and in 1457 he be came a member of the ducal council. He was continually employed on diplomatic errands until 1455, when he was made Burgundian historiographer. He worked at his Chronique, with occasional interruptions in his retreat to fulfil missions in France, or to visit the Burgundian court. He was assisted, from about 1463 onwards, by his disciple and continuator, Jean Molinet, whose rhetorical and redundant style may be fairly traced in some passages of the Chronique. Chastellain died at Valenciennes on Feb. 13 (according to the treasury accounts), or on March 20 (according to his epitaph), 1475. Only about one-third of the whole Chronique, which extended from 1419 to 1474, is extant.
Among his contemporaries Chastellain acquired a reputation by his poems and occasional pieces. He was no mere annalist, but proposed to fuse and shape his vast material to his own con clusions, in accordance with his political experience. The most interesting feature of his work is the skill with which he pictures the leading figures of his time.
The known extant fragments of Chastellain's Chroniques with his other works were edited by Kervyn de Lettenhove for the Brussels Academy in 1863-66 (Brussels) as Oeuvres de Georges Chastellain. This edition includes three volumes of minor pieces of considerable interest, especially Le Temple de Boccace, dedi cated to Margaret of Anjou, and the Deprecation for Pierre Breze, imprisoned by Louis XI. The attribution to Chastellain is in some cases erroneous, notably in the case of the Livre des faits de Jacques. de Lalaing, which is probably the work of Lefebvre de Saint-Remi, herald of the Golden Fleece. In the allegorical Oultre d'arnour it has been thought a real romance between Breze and a lady of the royal house is concealed.
See A. Molinier, Les Sources de l'histoire de France; notices by Kervyn de Lettenhove prefixed to the Oeuvres and in the Biographie nationale de Belgique; and an article by Vallet de Viriville in the Journal des savants (1867) .