Du Castel, Pierre (…-circa 1465). Musician

Collégiale Saint-Barthélémy de Béthune, 1432. Mentionné dès 1432 dans des plaintes déposées contre plusieurs chanoines ayant commis un délit, il pourrait avoir exercé une charge de maître des enfants dans cette église. Son activité à Béthune Plaintes déposées contre “maistre Baude de Lanssais, chantre et canoine de l'église Saint-Betremieu, sire Pierre du Castel, sire Bertran Le Long, maître Gille de Viloing, sire Willaume Fernagu, sire Pierre Blancquesmains, tous prestres et portans abit en laditte église, acompaigniez de pluisseurs enffans de l'escolle, tant grans comme petis, jusques au nombre de xx à xxx, qui, outre le gré de laditte ville, avoient cœuillie es marez de la ville certains fais d'erbes et pluisseurs harcelles”. On envoie consulter, à ce sujet, à Amiens. (Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de France - 1865 p.42 - DOCUMENTS INEDITS POUR SERVIR A L HISTOIRE DES USAGES ET DES MOEURS, Commnniqués par M. de Lafons-Melicocq
(Suite). p.40-42)

• Cathédrale de Cambrai, 1434-1449. Planchart: Pierre du Castel: first documented as a small vicar in an entry dated 03 January 1434 reporting that he had held the feast of fools [LAN, 4G 5068, 27r]. An undated entry in the aumosne, entered between those on 14 July (letting go of Rénaud Liebert) and 01 October 1434, reports the replacement of the straw in the beds of the choristers “in the reception of Sire Pierre du Castel,” implying that he had replaced Liebert as magister puerorum [LAN, 4G 7761 (1434-35), 10r]. He was probably just a temporary magister puerorum, since by 25 February 1435 Pierre de Béthune is mentioned as the magister puerorum [LAN, 4G 7761 (1434-35), 10v]. Pierre had acquired the chaplaincy of St. Lawrence, but he is not in the lists of chaplains of the grand community and neither is his chaplaincy listed as a foreign chaplaincy; which indicates that he belonged to the small community, which has left no records for the first two thirds of the 15th century. On 20 April 1435 he resigned this chaplaincy in an exchange for the parish church of Doucy with Guillaume de Gardane [CBM 1057, 2r]. On 10 November 1437, when he collated the grand vicariate of Nicolas Raimillies he is referred to again as magister puerorum [CBM 1057, 59v] and the accounts of the aumosne have numerous entries concerning his duties during the following ten years. His last mention in this capacity is an undated entry shortly before All Saints of 1447 [LAN, 4G 7762 (1447-48), 11v], and on 09 December 1447 he is referred to as “recently dismissed” [CBM 1058, 140v]. On 31 May 1446 he had exchanged his grand vicariate for a chaplaincy at the altar of All Saints with Henri Macheclier [CBM 1058, 46v] and in 1448-49 he became a canon of St. Géry [cf. LAN, 7G 2412 (1447-48), 17v-18r and (1448-49), 18v-19r]. By 22 May 1454, however, he was in Paris, when canon Jehan Artut presented the chapter with a littera de fructibus for Pierre from the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle [CBM 1059, 90r], and by 27 June 1455 he had resigned his chaplaincy at the cathedral [CBM 1059, 146r]. He died most likely in 1465 or 1466, for his obit first appears in the accounts of the fabric of St. Géry in 1466-67 [LAN, 7G 2225 (1466-67), 10v]; at his death, as noted in the obituary of the grand vicars, he was canon of Noyon [LAN, 4G 2009, 3v]. His name is entered as an acrostic, “Petrus de Castello canta,” in the motetus of Du Fay’s Fulgens iubar ecclesia dei.