The iconography of Saint Yves and the dynastic policies of the Montfort family at the end of the Middle Ages

The Saint-Yves portal of the west facade of the cathedral of Nantes, which is unusual both because of its location and size, provides evidence for the complex political situation surrounding the recto of Tredrez at the end of the Middle Ages in Brittany. Far from being the Breton extolled in the his toriography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a characterization which authors of the beginning of the twentieth century continued, the sai nt of Kermartin was, on the contrary, imported into the duchy by the Montfo rts (at the head of which was, of course, Jean V), who appropriated the pra ctices of the Capetian monarchs. The specific context of Brittany in the fo urteenth century, on the one hand, and the primary role of Charles de Blois in the success of his canonization, on the other, provide an explanation f or the political investment which was made in Saint Yves. Almost exactly a century after the canonization of the saint, the cycle of Nantes, located a t the eastern most point of the duchy, illustrates this rehabilitation of t he saint. Saint Yves had to make a detour through Capetian politics in orde r that Jean V could make him a Breton saint.