The House of Savoy
Posted: April 19, 2025 Filed under: France Leave a comment
I expect to be at the Annecy Animation Festival in Annecy, France this year, a great treat. If you’ll be there, hmu. As prep I’m reading about the history of that region, known as Savoy.
The land we call Savoie had a curious destiny: a land of empire in the Middle Ages, but divided from the outset between the call of the Rhône valley and that of the Po valley. Over the centuries, it was the cradle of a dynasty of French language and culture, but the fortunes of its history made it the mother of Italian unity, fighting at different times against the Dauphiné, against the Valais, against the Calvinist Geneva, against the Milan, and succeeding despite these incessant wars, It was for a long time a bone of contention between France and the Holy Roman Empire, then between France and Spain, and finally between France and Austria, and is now a link between the two friendly countries that occupy both sides of the Alps.
— André Chamson, Archives de l’ancien duché de Savoie (source.) From the same article:
Pre-Christian Alpine traditions date from this period (Austria, Switzerland, Savoy, Northern Italy, Slovenia), whose characters – Krampus, Berchta (Perchten), wild man – are part of an endangered, folklorized cultural heritage, on the verge of extinction due to the disappearance of traditional ways of life that have been preserved for longer in the Alps.
Bercha/Perchta
Humbert Whitehands was called that because his hands were as white as snow. Or because he was honest in his dealings, his hands were white. Or it’s a misunderstanding, it came from white walls, an easy confusion in sloppy Latin.
Charles Previté-Orton was a scholar of the early house of Savoy:
And he weighs in on what we can know from the years around 1000, and our sources:
He does seem to have put in the work. You can read his Early History of the House of Savoy online if you so choose.
It seems we can agree that Humbert I was granted the lands that became Savoy for his loyalty to Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II. There followed various Amadeuses and Humberts, until we get to Thomas, the Eagle of Savoy.
In 1195, Thomas ambushed the party of Count William I of Geneva, which was escorting the count’s daughter, Margaret of Geneva, to France for her intended wedding to King Philip II of France. Thomas carried off Margaret and married her himself.
So says Wikipedia. But Eugene L. Cox, who published a couple of books about the House of Savoy, isn’t so sure:
How much truth there is in this story we shall probably never know, except that Thomas did marry Guillaume’s daughter and in due course found himself faced with the very serious problem of providing suitably for his numerous offspring.
(Side note but if you’re at Wellesley College why not see if you can get the Eugene L. Cox Fellowship? $10,000 to go poke around some castles or something.)
Thomas’s children were married off and scattered into various religious and secular posts (the distinction not being very clear at the time) all over Europe. As a result, the family had wide influence. Cox:
the Savoyards did play a remarkable variety of roles on the international scene, sometimes as adventurers and sometimes as members of a kind of one-family “United Nations” working to assist in the pacification of international conflicts. Thanks partly to the labors of their father and, more literally, to the labors of their sister Béatrice, the countess of Provence whose four daughters all became European queens, the uncles from the Alps could by their presence alone convert a diplomatic conference into a family reunion, a fact which may have contributed to the settlement of some of the more emotional issues in which they were involved. As friends and ambassadors of kings and popes, as men with homes in many lands and connections that stretched from Scotland and Flanders to Sicily and Rome, the Savoyards furnish a very unusual illustration of medieval “universalism,” yet they were not men without a country. No matter how far afield their enterprises may have taken them, all of the eagles kept an eye on the Alpine homeland. Whenever they could, they contributed to the advancement of family interests in Savoy, and all but one returned to the Alps to end his days.
One of Thomas’s granddaughters, Eleanor of Provence, married the king of England. So many of her family came with her that an area of London became known as Savoy, thus the Savoy Hotel, which gave its name to a Harlem ballroom, and thus Stompin at the Savoy.
Eventually after Thomas there was the Green Count, Amadeus VI:
(source)
and then the Red Count, Amadeus VII, and then Amadeus VIII, the Peaceful, who was elevated to duke status.
He became a pope, or an anti-pope, depending on who you ask.
Léon Menabrea sums up the period with these words: “Little by little, the petty feudatories faded away; a star grew and blazed in the middle of the feudal firmament: the star of the House of Savoy“.
(source)
At this time the Annecy region was not part of Savoy, it was run by the Counts of Geneva. Robert of Geneva, one of the last counts, was elected the first of the French antipopes at Avignon. When he died, sonless, the title Count of Geneva went to Humbert VII, who then died, and the title went to Odo, who sold the region to Amadeus VIII for 45,000 gold florins. Why did Odo need florins so bad? I don’t know. French Wikipedia doesn’t elaborate. Odo wasn’t really expecting to become count of Geneva. How much was 45,000 gold florins? Let’s ask Perplexity AI:
The Florentine gold florin in the late 14th and early 15th centuries was a high-value coin used mainly for large transactions, not everyday purchases. Its value in modern terms is hard to pin down exactly, but estimates based on gold content, purchasing power, and historical wages offer some perspective:
- The gold content (about 3.5 grams) would be worth roughly $187 USD today based on current gold prices
- In terms of purchasing power, a florin could buy about 1/12 of a metric ton of wheat in the 1330s, which would equate to about $28–$30 USD in modern wheat prices1.
- In the 15th century, annual salaries for skilled professionals in Florence ranged from 14 to 100 florins, and a city residence might cost 200 florins, with elite palaces valued at 3,500 florins.
- The florin was worth between 65 and 140 soldi (a silver coin) during this period, and was used for major transactions, dowries, and international trade rather than daily expenses
In summary, a single gold florin represented a significant sum—roughly equivalent to several hundred modern US dollars, or more, depending on the comparison method
Not a bad deal. Call it 45 million dollars, and you get a bustling town with canals and a flowing river and big lake and a lot of nice land.
The trade didn’t include the city of Geneva, which was ruled by the bishops of Geneva.
In Peter Wilson’s history of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Savoy was a part, he mentions the following:
The rapid development of cartography from the fifteenth century made a profound impact by providing a ready image of territorially defined political power. Maps now showed political boundaries as well as natural features and towns. The members of the House of Savoy celebrated its elevation to ducal rank in 1416 with a huge cake in the shape of their territory.
Would’ve loved to have a slice of that.
Eventually, during the French Revolution, revolutionary troops took Annecy back, but the House of Savoy was going strong. You can follow the line of the House through battles, marriages, regents, half-brothers, etc to Victor Amadeus II, who, as a result of some complicated negotiations after the War of the Spanish Succession, ended up as King of Sicily. From this lofty job he was demoted to King of Sardinia.
In a set of trades and turnarounds, the actual land of Savoy ended up officially as part of France, while the House of Savoy, led by Victor Emmanuel II, became the royal family of the newly united Italy.
The story of what happened thereafter is entertainingly told in Robert Katz’s book The Fall of the House of Savoy, which is full of mistresses and cunning ministers and morganatic marriages.
One of these books where even the footnotes are good:
From this turbulence the House of Savoy ended up on top, and they survived World War One, but it was not to last.
Victor Emanuel III messed it up:
He remained silent on the domestic political abuses of Fascist Italy
sadly relevant to our time. Mussolini took over, and we all know how that ended. VEIII ended up in exile in Egypt. Umberto II, his son, spent years in exile in Portugal. He died in Geneva.
Umberto’s son Vittorio Emanuel led a seedy life, including shooting a 19 year old kid in a strange yacht incident, and going to jail on charges of organizing prostitutes for casino patrons. Here he is in happier times, watching the launch of Apollo 11:
source. His son was on Italian Dancing With the Stars, and granddaughter, Vittoria, is of course an influencer.
Thus, the house of Savoy.
I look forward to returning to this lovely part of the world!
Helytimes 
