En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château de la Bristière, in Échillais in Charente-Maritime, was one of the commune's two châteaux at the time of the Wars of Religion; the other, owned by a Huguenot lord, hosted the Protestant poet and military leader Agrippa d'Aubigné, who reported on the peculiar religious practices of the local parish priest. The small Château de la Bristière, inherited by Jean de Mathan and his wife — descendants of the former lords and of the Fénelon family, two portraits of Abbé François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, future royal tutor and Archbishop of Cambrai, being kept on site — has been restored by the couple, who regularly hold events and living readings there. La Bristière has thus become a centre of the Livre Vivant (Living Book) movement, founded in 1946: the estate hosted in 1999 an exhibition of archives of Vice-Admiral de Tilly for the château's 400th anniversary, in 2003 a performance of Marivaux's L'Île aux esclaves in the gardens, in 2008 a staged reading of the letters of Élisabeth Bégon, and in 2009 a celebration of the 300th anniversary of Fénelon's Les Aventures de Télémaque.